Torchlight

by Theresa Dahlheim

  Reminding himself that he had taken a lot of time, and that everyone in his Circle was tired of standing in the dark, he took a hard look at the conical rock and the embedded key. Maybe he could simply lift out the rock and pull it apart.

  Even with all the threads of his own magic anchored to the earth magic, the conical rock still felt slippery. But it wasn’t heavy, and if he guided it with his hands, and ignored the truly awful noise it made coming out of the floor, he could focus clearly enough to bring it all the way up and lay it down sideways with a thump.

  This is it, he told himself, and took a deep breath. Break open the stone.

  Lifting each thread in the pattern he had mapped, he pulled at the earth magic. The white mist gathered beneath him, billowing in dense layers like clouds, tingling through his palms pressed against the stone. He suddenly felt Tabitha and Koren and the others very close, and knew that they could sense what he was doing. Their colors at the edges were bleeding into his own, as if the earth magic was attuning itself to all of them through him. Awe, thrill, relief, dread ... they were all one ...

  He had so much power at his command at that moment. All he had to do was wrap that power around the stone ... and press ...

  With barely a sound, the stone disintegrated. It crumbled over his hands in a river of coarse sand and poured through his fingers until a small object landed with a clink against his Torchanes signet ring. It sent a tingling rush through his mind, a stirring in his power that echoed down the white lines of the earth magic. Thaumat’argent. And yes, by the shape, it was a key.

  He felt he needed to take another deep breath. Then he released each thread, one by one, letting the pattern of the earth magic slip free. It still swam close by, always ready, but now it would rise for him, not at him.

  A shot of satisfaction warmed him like hot coffee. God, it felt good to know what he was doing. He realized he was grinning as he again built the image of the see-saws on the stickball field. Almost as an afterthought, he drew in a single strand of earth magic before pulling everything down and in to relight the water globe.

  The others winced, stepped back, held their hands up to block the light. It was even brighter now, and took no effort at all to sustain. Graegor sent it up high enough to be most useful, then peered down at the key he held in his hand. Yes. The key was his, as surely as his ring and medallion were, because Telgardia’s Circle emblem colors glittered on its flat turnplate—amethyst and pearl.

  He looked at the others. Tabitha quickly looked away, and their bond told him that her anxiety had grown instead of easing. Arundel’s frown was troubled, but Daxod’s was intent as he studied the pile of coarse sand beside the hole in the floor. Ferogin still held the block with the keyhole, and he gestured impatiently for Graegor to give him the key.

  Still kneeling on the floor, Graegor leveled his eyes at Ferogin, silently inviting the Adelard sorcerer to acknowledge what he had done, and how. Ferogin looked back at him coldly. He gave no sign that he was unnerved by Graegor’s control over this power, offered no apology for not telling Graegor that he could, in fact, use earth magic to sustain the light.

  They stared at each other for a long time. Then Ferogin slowly held out the thaumat’argent block, and Graegor took it.

  The block was even heavier than it looked, and Graegor set it on the ground. The shape of the keyhole seemed different than it had when Koren had first showed it to him. A trick of the shadows? ... He turned the key over and put it in.

  Something happened—something most definitely happened, because a rush of white moved past his shields and every hair on his body stood on end. But then the magic faded, and when it had gone, nothing had actually changed.

  “Again,” Daxod murmured. Graegor did, but the spell did not trigger again—if what they had felt before was truly a trigger.

  He didn’t understand—what had happened? After everything he’d done!—

  “It’s all right,” Arundel said hurriedly. “We just need to find the door. It’s here.” But a quick look around made it plain that there was no door anywhere at all in the cave, even as far back as Rossin and Ilene, where Rossin now stood upright, touching his forehead to the wall, while Ilene hovered behind him.

  “Congruent spells are delicate,” Ferogin said. “If one or both artifacts’ touchpoints are warped out of alignment, they won’t fit together. He may have twisted the lock just enough—”

  “Then we’ll need to fix it,” Graegor interrupted. “Is that something you can do?”

  “Do I look like I have five hundred years of experience setting congruent spells? The lock and the key haven’t triggered the door, so it’s clear that—”

  Then Tabitha interrupted. “Lord Ferogin, you’re the one who said that Lord Pascin must have been in charge of building this. He may have built something that even you don’t understand. So please stop talking as if you know more than he does. Better yet, just stop talking.”

  Ferogin studied her for a long time, and Tabitha stood serenely, enjoying his silence. To sense this from her—to know that she was letting him sense her feelings—sent thrills through Graegor’s blood as it pounded through his heart.

  Eventually, Ferogin said only, “You have no idea what any of this means.”

  A soft scraping sound came from behind them. Graegor turned to see Rossin stepping back from an opening in the wall.

  Ferogin was the first to reach Rossin, whose eyes grew wider as everyone bore down on him. “Wait,” Ilene urged. “Give him room.”

  “Quit coddling him,” Ferogin muttered as he inspected the door. It was like the trapdoors in Castle Chrenste turned on end—a sheet of stone pivoting on an axis running top to bottom instead of side to side. “Light,” Ferogin called over his shoulder, as if to a servant, but Graegor was too relieved to refuse on principle. He floated the water globe to the door, where it showed them the first few feet of a narrow stone passageway.

  Arundel and Ilene were talking softly to Rossin, but if Rossin was answering, Graegor couldn’t hear him. Ferogin was also talking—to himself—in a monotone as he ran his hands over the slab of rock. The rest of them waited, Borjhul leaning against the opposite wall, Daxod and Tabitha watching Ferogin, and Koren—

  Where was she? Graegor looked over his shoulder to see if she had stayed behind. She had; she was bent over something on the ground. Then she rejoined them, and when she reached his side, he could see that her face, her entire body, was relaxed, more relaxed than he had ever seen her.

  “Here,” she said softly, and gave him back his key.

  It touched his signet ring and sent a tingle through his arm. Beside him, Tabitha shivered, and he wondered if she had felt it through their bond. “Thank you,” he said to Koren, very glad that she had thought to get it, since they might not be done with it. He looked down at her as he slid the key into his pocket. Something within her had definitely changed. Somehow, she was better.

  “Why do we stop?” she asked in her lilting accent. Her eyes were the same color as her magic, a forest of evergreen trees. “Can we go in?”

  “I ... I don’t know.” Why had they stopped, exactly? Almost by reflex, he looked at Tabitha, but she didn’t look back at him. Had he upset her again? How?

  Ferogin turned from his study of the door. “Let’s go,” he announced.

  No one moved. Ferogin’s face twisted, but then Arundel glanced at him. “Yes, of course.” He said something else to Rossin, then raised his voice to them all again. “I think Rossin sensed the trigger when the key turned, and he followed that sense to this point and pushed at the wall. Ferogin, is the hinge made of thaumat’argent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it must be part of the same spell as the key and the lock.”

  “Agreed,” Ferogin said impatiently. “Let’s go.”

  Arundel made a sweeping motion in front of Graegor. “Lead the way, my lord.”

  Ferogin stepped away from the opening with a sarcastic version of Arundel’s gestur
e. Graegor eased through sideways, floating the light before him into the darkness of the tunnel.

  After a dozen paces, he looked back. Tabitha was behind him, her beautiful eyes large and serious. Koren followed her; next came Arundel and Daxod, then Ilene, who was turned toward Rossin to coax him along. Rossin’s head was bowed, but he was moving. Ferogin was behind Rossin, and last came Borjhul.

  No matter what else they were thinking, they all had to be wondering what forms their own challenges would take.

  Graegor went forward. The tunnel, like the door, reminded him of the secret passages in Castle Chrenste. There were differences—no dust on the ground, no stale smell in the air, and the walls were roughly hewn from the rock instead of smoothly laid in mortared courses. But both held the ancient power of earth magic. Magic that would not overwhelm him again.

  No small victory, that.

  Chapter 10

  Graegor held the block of cheese in both hands for a long time. It was strange that something so ordinary could upset him so much and so suddenly. Strange that something from Jolie could tie his stomach in a knot about Tabitha.

  The entire length of Contare’s dining room table was covered with opened packages, and Karl was only now paying the porters and sending them on their way. The villagers had been generous, which did not surprise Graegor, considering their basic good nature, and considering the array of gifts that he had sent to them with his letters home. They had been generous in their letters, too, filling a big leather pouch that sat on the chair at the head of the table. Jolie’s letter was somewhere in there.

  Just like Tabitha’s presence was always in his mind. He didn’t know what to do about either one.

  The labyrinth should have solved something. They’d spent the entire day in each other’s company. Admittedly, they’d been in all the others’ company as well, but being so close to her for so many hours should have given him the opportunity for some kind of breakthrough.

  “Let me take that for you, m’lord,” Fiona the housekeeper said to him. “I’ll put it here with the preserves.” She and the other servants were trying to bring order to the chaos of crafts and foodstuffs. Graegor put the cheese back inside the dairy box and pushed it over to Fiona, near Pritchard’s big jars of jam. A stick of pepperoni nearly as big as his arm rolled off the table, and he ducked down to retrieve it, taking a deep breath at the same time. It was ridiculous that he had to take a deep breath. He was more unsettled by Jolie’s gift than by Magus Hugh’s report of the river battle.

  Contare was obviously still bothered by that report. The exhausted Magus Hugh had gone upstairs for some well-deserved sleep, and Contare was standing at the window, frowning into the night with his arms crossed over his chest. Karl joined him there, and Graegor could tell that they were speaking mind-to-mind.

  Five days ago—the day the Ninth Circle had spent in the labyrinth—Contare had spoken with Magus Andru in Chrenste, who had told him that heretics had seized and burned the ferry near Orest. The ringless ones had fought the duke’s men for hours before scattering, and only a few had been captured. Magus Hugh, whom Contare had sent to Graegor’s village with his letters and gifts, had been caught in the battle while bringing the townsfolk’s packages back downriver. The fighting had been fierce, the magus was lucky to be alive, and all the packages had been lost in the process. Hugh had returned to the village to tell them what had happened, then continued to Farre to report to Duke Richard. The townsfolk had spent his absence replacing the letters and gifts that had been lost. And that was why Magus Hugh’s return to Maze Island had been delayed by over a month.

  As Graegor watched, Karl nodded and left the room, but Contare continued to stare out the window. Of course it worried Graegor that the ringless ones—the white heralds—had won over so many people. The intensity of Magus Hugh’s telepathic report to Contare, Graegor, and Karl had left no doubt of his impression of how widespread this religious infection was, and Graegor hoped he wouldn’t see heretical sympathies in the villagers’ letters to him. But his worry about that felt distant. It wasn’t right under his skin, itching, like his worry over Jolie and Tabitha.

  He worried that it had been painful for Jolie to pack the gift box—twice. He worried that she hadn’t packed it, had let her mother and sisters do it because she wanted nothing to do with him. He worried that she wouldn’t wear the pearl bracelet he had sent to her. He worried that Tabitha may be waiting for him to give her a gift before she talked to him—but what could he give her that she didn’t already have?

  Biting his lip in frustration, Graegor turned to the corner of the room to look at his family’s gifts, to remind himself that his worries about them, at least, had eased. He still didn’t know why they hadn’t made the trip here for the presentation ceremonies, and he still wanted to know if his father had known about their Torchanes heritage. But they couldn’t possibly be too upset with him—their gifts seemed to prove that. His father had sent a small round walnut table with mother-of-pearl inlay and a fluted pedestal base. From his mother were fifteen white candles cast into the shapes and sizes of different birds, all exquisitely true to life as they perched on the table. These were among the finest pieces he had ever seen come out of his parents’ shops, and all the more amazing because they’d only had a short time to replace whatever their original gifts had been. It meant they must have accepted the apologies in his letters to them. It meant when he saw them again everyone would be happy.

  Whether Jolie had accepted the apology in his letter to her was another story. And it was entirely possible that she had been too shy to ask anyone to read the letter to her, and that all his struggling over finding the right words had been useless. Frankly, it might be better that way. He was convinced that the letter had come out awkward and wrong, but he had run out of time to write it over.

  Awkward and wrong—just like every conversation he’d ever had with Tabitha.

  Karl returned, and Contare joined him at the dining room table with two pouches of dispatches, one from the duke and one from the king. Graegor picked up his own pouch of letters and sat down next to Contare. His stomach grumbled, and he broke into one of the arm-sized sticks of pepperoni for them to share while they read.

  He carefully opened the oiled leather pouch and pulled out a thick, uneven stack of folded parchment and paper. Resting on top was a single folded sheet with his name spelled out in Audrey’s careful printing, and he had to smile.

  But her letter was disappointingly short. She said that she missed him and was proud of him, that his gift of the charter to the town had made everyone very happy, and that she hoped he liked the gifts they had sent in return. Tucked into the fold of her letter was her own gift to him, a yellow-green bookmark woven from long reeds she had gathered from the lake shore. He put it in his shirt pocket so that it wouldn’t get lost on the increasingly messy dining room table.

  His mother’s letter was next, but it, too, was short, saying only that she missed him very much, was very proud of him, and wanted to thank him for giving the town its charter since that meant a lot to everyone. His father’s letter was even shorter, and might have come from any of the town elders for all its stiff formality. He read both of them twice, then Audrey’s again, and laid them all on the table to look at them.

  He told himself that he hadn’t expected much. Not from his father, surely. And he knew that his mother had never been good with writing letters—it was something his grandmother complained about. But he wished one of them had said something about why the family hadn’t come to Maze Island for the Equinox presentation, or about whether they had known about their Torchanes heritage. After waiting so long to have these letters in his hands, he could not help feeling cheated.

  He had spent a lot of time writing the letters he had sent to them. He had tried to strike the right tone, and to say something meaningful, in each. He wasn’t sure he’d succeeded, but surely the effort had been obvious ...

  These are replacement letters, he remin
ded himself. Maybe they had taken more time with the originals, the ones lost in the battle.

  He picked up the fourth letter in the stack. It was from his teacher, Master Rumstad, who humorously described the whirlwind of activity that had followed the news of Graegor’s good fortune. He said that Audrey had been jabbering to everyone in sight, and that Graegor’s grandmother had very quickly made the journey from Daviton once she’d heard about it. But he did not say anything about Jolie, even though she delivered milk and eggs to his house every week, and he had known that she and Graegor had been a couple.

  He was picking up the next letter when Contare spoke aloud. “Graegor?”

  “Sir?”

  The old sorcerer’s eyes were still scanning one of the letters from Duke Richard, and he was turning a slice of pepperoni over and over in his hand. “Have any of the townspeople mentioned the heretics, or the battle?”

  “No, sir, but I’ve only read four so far.”

  “Hm.” He paused to read more. “Duke Richard has expelled the ringless ones from all of Lakeland, not just Farre, and he’s requesting that King Raimund expel them from the Carhlaan holdings as well.”

  “Which he has done,” Karl said, gesturing with one of the two scribal dispatches he was holding. “This one’s the royal decree, and this one’s the Hierarch’s.”

  “What’s the date on those?” Contare asked.

  “The ninth of last month. A fortnight after the battle.”

  “From just the Carhlaan holdings, or for the entire kingdom?”

  Karl paused, his eyes flashing back and forth over the two sheets of parchment. “For the entire kingdom. They’d already been expelled from Chrenste last year.”

  “Just the ringless ones, or the shovel-men as well?”

  “Just the ringless ones.”