Torchlight

by Theresa Dahlheim

  Suddenly he saw red—a blaze of dark red knifing through the forest—fire—he stretched, pulled—a wave of cold tightened his skin—

  He heard excited voices and opened his eyes just in time to see the light die and feel the water splash against his riding boots. “You did it!” Arundel exclaimed. “It was much brighter this time. Try again.”

  What had happened? Graegor breathed deeply and rebuilt his picture of the stickball field, and realized that the dark red was a new element, new gen—Borjhul. Borjhul must have joined them. Graegor didn’t like how the color was translating. But when he’d seen the fire, he’d summoned the water and the light ... how had he managed to pull everything together?

  Pull everything together ...

  Pull, don’t push. Pull the see-saws down. Pull the water out of the air. It was metaphorical and literal at the same time.

  Ferogin had told him not to push all the see-saws down at the same time, because the particles of light, like the grains of sand, would all appear and disappear together. But if he created the water globe in the same moment, then the light particles would bounce around inside the globe. As long as they didn’t escape the globe all at once ... yes ... and if he did it quickly, he wouldn’t give the earth magic time to rise.

  He imagined sitting down on the grass, so that the ends of the nearest see-saws were above his head. His gen was centered, literally and metaphorically. He thought about the see-saws, thought about the colors surrounding him, thought about the water in the air. With one sharp heave, he pulled everything down and in.

  No one spoke. He opened his eyes, then half-closed them against the radiance of the purple star, reflected and refracted inside the globe floating in the air above him—another victory. A bigger one.

  Cautiously, he let the picture of the see-saws on the stickball field slip to the back of his mind. The bright light flickered, but steadied. It was easier to maintain now, easier even than other water globes he had summoned over the last few days, as if the light, the water, and everyone’s colors were all holding each other together. He just had to flex a mental muscle to keep it all in place, like using his arm to hold up a torch. It did feel as if something was trickling away, like the globe was draining, but the “leak” was the light, not the water ...

  He glanced at Ferogin. The Adelard sorcerer was looking up at the light as if expecting it to burst into a rain shower at any second. Borjhul stood a few paces away, his hood pushed back now, but his face the usual model of impartial observation. In that moment, they both reminded Graegor of his father—critical, taciturn. It really made him appreciate Contare.

  “Very well done,” Arundel said, just as Contare would have. But Tabitha, standing next to him, was looking warily up at the light like Ferogin was. Graegor wished he could reassure her, wished she would trust that he knew what to do now. Daxod had crouched down at the keyhole again, and Koren was scanning the ceiling high above their heads. Graegor lifted the light to it and moved it slowly back and forth, but there were no long cracks, no obvious clues.

  “We need a key and a door,” Ferogin muttered, his arms still crossed over his chest, and his brow deeply furrowed. “A key and a door ...”

  Graegor felt something green brush against his shields. He looked over his shoulder at Daxod, who was still kneeling beside the keyhole. “Was that you?”

  “Yes,” Daxod said, spreading his hands at the floor. “Look.”

  Graegor brought the light down. Scrawny flowers were shooting up through the scattered cracks in the floor, and he realized that these were the same weeds he’d seen closer to the cave entrance. But he should have noticed such bright colors before—mostly yellow, but with a cluster of purple and pale blue near the outcropping. “Where did these come from?” he asked Daxod.

  “I made them bloom.”

  Of course—his wife had a baby. He can father children. Graegor suddenly wondered if he himself had been meant to make the flowers bloom. Back in Chrenste, Contare had seemed quite sure that Graegor could do it, and the purple and blue flowers were the colors of Telgardia’s Circle emblem—the pearl against the night sky. This meant something. Contare had left him this clue.

  He cupped his hand around another patch of weeds. The flowers were there, closed, waiting. He thought about them opening, not through heavy-handed telekinesis, but through nature’s magic, the sun and the rain ...

  Tabitha was there ... he thought about kissing her ...

  The tips of the brown weeds rapidly unfolded into purple petals. At the same moment, his body reacted with a tight surge of embarrassing strength, making him very glad he was crouched down. He hoped that Tabitha hadn’t sensed it through their bond ... or maybe he hoped that she had. Brushing his hand over the flowers, he saw the tiny crack in the floor that connected these purple ones with the purple and blue ones near the outcropping.

  Green passed against his shields again. “Under here,” Daxod murmured. His hands were pressed to either side of the crack, and Graegor did likewise. The light floated near his head, and he kept part of his mind on it while reaching down with his power—very carefully. The earth magic was there, quiet like a sleeping bear, but so was something else ... a solid object ... like his Saint Carlodon medallion ...

  “I think it is the key,” Daxod said to him. “Circle silver.”

  Thaumat’argent—like the lock. “Hidden under the rock. Let’s try to lift it up.”

  They found a series of cracks marked by purple and blue flowers forming a rough square about a foot across. They set their hands flat on it, and Daxod nodded at Graegor, who took that to mean he should try first. He focused on the stone, pictured how telekinesis would work on it, decided on a certain amount of force—

  Unexpectedly Daxod’s magic crowded into his, aimed directly at the thaumat’argent key instead of the rock covering it. The white mist surged beneath them, and Graegor slammed his power downward to keep the earth magic from rising—but it did rise, it went up like a geyser, channeling through his medallion, blasting straight through his shields and straight through him, hurling him to the ground so hard he stopped breathing.

  He heard a scream from far away in the dark. In gasping panic, he clenched at the ground, scraping up loose rock as he struggled for air. The silver threads linking him to Tabitha felt both taut and tangled—she was all right, she was still standing, but the noise had been so loud and she hated the dark. She was all right. He was all right—he was breathing again. His head hurt fiercely, but he was breathing.

  Everyone’s voices and colors were spinning and weaving and darting through his thoughts. It took all his presence of mind, all his self-control, to let them jumble together and fall apart, jumble together, fall apart, and slowly sort themselves out. It was all right. It was all right.

  His head hurt a little less. He thought he could move. He got his hands under him and pushed himself up, until he was sitting, and that was enough for now. He breathed deeply and pressed his hand to his chest, feeling the warmth of the thaumat’argent medallion against his skin. Then he started to rebuild the image of the see-saws on the stickball field.

  The first thing he saw in the light of the water-globe was the rock wall where the keyhole had been. It was now crumbled into a slide of dust and stones two yards high and a yard deep. Breon’s blood, why can’t I stop breaking things!?

  “You stupid, lumbering clods,” Ferogin said with heavy disgust. “You’re like children playing with rockets!”

  Daxod was coughing, and Graegor leaned toward him. “Are you all right?”

  “We’re all fine,” Ferogin assured him sarcastically. “But if you would kindly take a look at the wall?”

  Daxod nodded to answer Graegor, clearing the dust from his throat. “What happened?” he rasped.

  “I thought you meant I should try first.”

  “I thought we lift the key together.” His angular eyes studied Graegor closely. “Earth magic came to you very fast. You called to it?”

  �
��I was trying not to.”

  “This is exactly what I was worried about,” Ferogin declared, spreading his arms to encompass the ruin of the wall. “We don’t know where the door is, we can’t reach the key, and now you’ve destroyed the lock. Brilliant.”

  Graegor got to his feet, releasing a cascade of pebbles across the floor. Tabitha took a step back to avoid them, her skirt sweeping the ground. Her mind was tightly shut against him, and it hurt. “If you were that worried about it,” he growled at Ferogin, “why didn’t you try to get the key?”

  “Don’t try to push this one on me!”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “There isn’t much to do after your stupid—”

  “I’ll take stupid over weak!”

  “You think it is weakness that—”

  “Enough!”

  There he is. Part of Graegor had been wondering about Arundel’s silence. The Aedseli sorcerer was standing in front of Koren, who was turned away from everyone else. “I know you don’t care,” Arundel said, his patience at last exhausted and his dark face twisted in contempt. “But when you scream at each other like hyenas, it makes my head hurt so badly I can barely think.”

  Ferogin made a rude noise. “No one can think around here except me.”

  “Then keep thinking,” Arundel shot back, “because look around—after all the shouting, we’re still right here with exactly the same problem.”

  Arundel was right—and Graegor felt sure that he was also lying. He wasn’t in pain—Koren was. She’d had a fever, Contare had said, and now she was turned toward the wall with her head bowed. Graegor took a deep breath, willing his anger at Ferogin to dissolve, the spinning purple knot of his power to release. If it was hurting Koren, he had to make it stop.

  “So far,” Arundel went on, his voice milder, “it seems this is specifically Graegor’s challenge, but that is likely to mean that other challenges lie ahead for the rest of us. If we help each other, we’ll get through them much faster.”

  Graegor suddenly wondered if Arundel had grown up in a large family. He seemed to have a lot of practice trying to keep the peace.

  “And to that end ...” Arundel was now looking intently at the pile of rubble, and he knelt down and pushed aside a double handful of pebbles. Graegor floated the light over to him, and he picked something up with both hands and lifted it. It was the keyhole, in the center of a thick block of dark grey metal.

  “The lock,” Ferogin snorted. “Doesn’t do much good blown out of the wall.”

  Arundel stood up, holding the block at eye level to inspect it. “Why not?”

  “Because ...” Ferogin stopped. His eyes lost focus, and his lips moved slightly, silently, maybe trying to remember something.

  Daxod got to his feet, brushing dirt off his shirt and trousers. Tabitha stepped closer to Arundel, tilting her head to look at the thaumat’argent block and pushing her long braid back over her shoulder. Past the cascade of collapsed rock, Koren still had her back turned and her head bowed, her hands braced against the wall.

  Ferogin held out his hand. “I want to see that.”

  Arundel passed the block over. Ferogin stared at it without blinking, slowly rocking it from side to side. In the expectant stillness, Graegor could sense Ferogin’s magic probing the lock. The Adelard sorcerer’s gen was not the same shade as his own; it was a much paler purple than the color of bruises and storms. It did not seem as potent, but that could be wishful thinking on a dangerous scale.

  Again Graegor wondered why Ferogin seemed so determined to be unpleasant. Did he honestly not care what his own Circle thought of him? Or had he spent his life insulting people and getting away with it, since his power protected him?

  “Good,” Ferogin murmured, then, louder, “Good. It will still work.”

  “You’re certain?” Arundel asked.

  “Yes. It’s a congruent spell. The lock is a thaumat’argent alloy, and the key should be as well. The spell will be triggered when the key and the lock are brought together, and the door should open.” Ferogin paused. “So get the key.”

  No one said anything, but one by one, Daxod, Tabitha, Ferogin, and Arundel all looked at Graegor. Graegor had to agree, because this was his challenge, as Arundel had pointed out. It was as plain as the purple and blue flowers growing in the cracks of the cave floor.

  “I’ll need to douse the light,” he told them. This was going to take all his concentration. Tabitha held her mouth shut against a protest, and he wished he didn’t have to do this to her yet again. Daxod and Arundel both nodded, and Ferogin rolled his eyes but fortunately said nothing.

  Graegor knelt on the floor again, and again placed his hands flat on the square rock he and Daxod had traced. He lowered the light to the ground, and it collapsed into a small puddle. In the renewed darkness, he centered himself with three meditative prayers in a row, gradually easing aside Tabitha and all the other minds that could not help crowding against his. Carving out mental space seemed even harder, now that he could give them each a particular color but had no metaphorical picture in which to put them.

  Ease them aside. You can see beyond them, you can see what is before you.

  It took a long time before he thought his control was firm enough, the distractions distant enough. He extended his magic in a thin needle down into the ground.

  He could sense the thaumat’argent object in finer detail this time, as well as the earth magic woven into the stone like intricately patterned lace. It was reacting to him, individual threads stirring like harp strings, and he held still, hoping to become something like invisible. He must not touch the earth magic. He had to use telekinesis to move the rock and get the key—that was all.

  The rock, though—it was flat and square at the top, but as he followed the break between it and the adjoining rocks, he was surprised to find it angling down into a cone. Carefully, with part of his mind always watching the stirrings of the earth magic, he moved his focus all the way around the stone, growing more and more worried that the thaumat’argent key was inside the single stone and not underneath it.

  It was. Unless his magic was translating what he was sensing completely wrong, the key was embedded in the stone, with no crack or hole to show how it had gotten there. Even if he could move the rock without disturbing the earth magic, how was he going to break it open?

  ... Without the earth magic?

  No. That made no sense. Contare didn’t want him to work earth magic.

  Restlessness flooded his mind—from Tabitha, and maybe the others. It was taking too long. Within the earth magic, tension vibrated alongside his anxiety.

  Ease them aside. Relax. Take as much time as you need.

  The earth magic was so ready to rise to his call, and had always been ready, his entire life. It had risen in a freak wave from Long Lake at that long-ago Solstice. It had risen in a white mist when he had lost Jolie, and again when he had walked through that pitch-black night in Farre. It had cracked the ground in the cloister, and it had tumbled a cliff into the sea.

  It had snuffed out, then relit, the Eternal Flame. What else would it do through him unless he learned to control it?

  And here was the right place to learn and test that control. Here, no one could get hurt. The other sorcerers would be protected by their own magic even if he brought the whole hill down on top of them. Right?

  Breon’s blood. He didn’t know how else he could get the key out of the rock. He also didn’t know if there was another answer staring him in the face but he was too dense to see it. Would Contare really want him to do this? Would he be risking his life by doing this? His and Tabitha’s and everyone else’s?

  Take it very slow. Take it inch by inch. This is not Castle Chrenste. There is no spell already here.

  If the earth magic was attuned to him already, maybe he could refine that connection, hone it so that it would respond to his will the same way—or almost the same way—his own magic did, with precision. Right now, throwing the leve
r broke the whole dam, but maybe he could throw the lever and open just one sluice gate.

  He had to try. He decided that this had to be his challenge.

  Refine the connection ... the connection. The connecting lines, the threads of earth magic like fantastically elaborate lace.

  Could he weave it in? Weave threads of his own magic into the threads of the earth magic?

  He studied the pattern, and tentatively laid a curving line of bruise-purple across the white mist. It didn’t quite match, and other white threads rose toward the connection point, so he quickly backed away.

  This was going to be difficult. It reminded him of a box of mind-teaser games someone had given Audrey as a winter Solstice present one year. In one game the object was to jump pegs over other pegs on a board to reach a final pattern; in another, to separate two entangled metal shapes. When he’d worked through them, he’d had to think several steps ahead in order to make the right move at any one step of the process.

  But you solved all of them. Not as fast as Audrey did, but you solved them. You can solve this.

  It was slow going. First he had to figure out how many distinct threads made up the pattern of the earth magic throughout the conical stone and the surrounding rock. Then he had to test each thread against threads of his own magic to see if, and how, they might match. Frequently he had to return to the beginning when a series of promising steps led to a dead end, which was frustrating. And he had to do all this without triggering everything to rise. He kept needing to stop and back off, “turn invisible”, until the white mist settled again.

  He wished he could tap Audrey’s brain for this. He certainly wasn’t going to ask Ferogin for help.

  But, at last, just like with the mind-teaser games, once he’d painstakingly made a certain threshold number of matches, the pattern suddenly opened up, showing him the rest of the sequence. It still took a while to lay down all the rest of threads into the pattern, but now it was tedious instead of difficult. When his own magic was fully woven into the earth magic, he paused, and let himself feel the sense of depth and age that had been steadily climbing through his mind. It felt like he was tied onto the far, far edge of a thin white line that began far, far below, so far that for a moment he actually felt dizzy thinking about it.