Her eyes filled with tears. The face before her was not recognizable as Keturah—was barely recognizably human. Skin and flesh had been flayed off, and what remained had been deeply burned by fire and acids. The woman had no ears and not much of a nose. On that horrific face, the elaborate white and silver wig was a mockery, like gems on a corpse.
Without thinking Tzigone reached to remove the wig. The queen seized her wrists with a surprisingly strong grip.
“No,” she said quietly.
Tzigone’s heart shattered. This simple gesture convinced her as nothing else could have. She backed away, dipping in a bow. “Good night, my lady.”
She turned and fled the room. Matteo followed. He found her on the stairwell, sitting with her face turned to the wall and her arms encircling her knees. He settled down beside her and waited.
“I should have known better than to touch her wig,” she said at last. “My mother had beautiful hair. Even now, she can’t bear for anyone to see her without it.
“So you believe it’s true.”
Tzigone lifted one shoulder. “Why wouldn’t I? You’ve never lied to me. Of course, you haven’t exactly been lavish with the truth, either.”
He started to reach for her, then pulled back. “What will you do now?”
“Hmm?” She glanced up at him. “I’m heading straight for the tower. You have my word on it,” she added in a sharper tone when Matteo lifted a questioning brow.
He nodded and walked her to the nearest exit. As Tzigone sped into the twilit city, she blessed Matteo for his particular brand of logic. He assumed she would return to Basel. It never occurred to him to ask her which tower!
Pebbles crunched under Uriah Belajoon’s feet as he crept through the garden surrounding Basel Indoulur’s tower. He considered casting a globe of silence but regretfully abandoned that idea. A yellow haze clung to the tower, the mark of warding against magical intrusion. He wouldn’t risk discovery. Too much rested on surprise. He would have but one chance.
He crouched behind a flowering hibiscus along the main path and not far from the tower door. His fingers tightened around the hilt of a dagger. Magic would be perceived, but who would expect a single man to come to the mighty conjurer’s domain armed with little more than a table knife? Sooner or later Basel would pass, and he would die.
Uriah waited as the moon crept above the rooftops of the king’s city. Finally his patience was rewarded. The fat little toad who had killed his beloved Sinestra emerged from the tower and slipped into his garden. Basel Indoulur stood gazing up at the moon and the seven bright shards that followed it through the sky, as if the answer to some great puzzle might be written there.
A heavy sigh escaped the wizard. To Uriah Belajoon’s ear, it held the weight of conscience. He gripped the dagger, slowly raising it as the hated wizard began to stroll down the path.
As Basel drew alongside the hibiscus, Uriah poured all his strength into a single lunging attack. For a moment, he was airborne and invincible—a wolf attacking a rival, a young warrior defending his lady, a god avenging evil.
The next, he was lying on his back and marveling at how the moonshards danced and circled.
“Lord Belajoon,” said a surprised, familiar voice.
Uriah’s eyes focused upon Basel Indoulur’s face. A sense of failure swept through the old man, and the crushing weight of futility gripped his chest like a vise.
There was nothing more to be done. Sinestra was gone, and gone also was the dream of vengeance that had sustained him. On impulse, he snatched up the fallen knife and placed it over his own heart. He gripped the hilt with both hands and prepared to plunge it home.
The crushing pain intensified, and the weapon slipped from suddenly nerveless fingers. Waves of agony radiated from Uriah’s chest into his arms. He could not move, he could not even curse the wizard who took this from him.
Dimly he sensed Basel drop to one knee. The portly wizard seized the knife and tossed it aside. He struck Uriah’s chest hard with the heel of one hand, placed his ear against the old man’s chest, then struck again.
Uriah watched these efforts as if from a great and growing distance. He understood the truth of his death and the nature of Basel Indoulur’s efforts. Suddenly it did not matter to him that the wizard he hated still lived and that he seemed determined to pummel life back into Uriah’s body.
The old wizard turned his eyes toward the moonshards, remembering every bright legend he had ever heard about what might await him and believing them all. The lights grew and merged, filling his vision with brightness.
Tzigone crept through the streets toward the Belajoon mansion, intent upon retrieving something that had belonged to Sinestra. Basel was free today, but that was no guarantee against tomorrow.
One thing puzzled her—why hadn’t Sinestra’s death been investigated? Usually magehounds were called at once. Once the murderer was revealed, the remains were promptly cremated and the ashes scattered so that no further inquiry could be made. By law and custom, the secrets of Halruaan wizards died with them.
The ancient, sprawling mansion was amazingly easy to enter. All the lights were dimmed in mourning, and the windows were open. This spoke volumes about old lord Belajoon. Halruaan custom was to close all windows—an old superstition, based on the idea that open windows beckoned the spirits of the departed and tempted them into lingering. Apparently Belajoon wanted to hold onto his wife as long as he could!
Magic wards protected the windows and skittered across Tzigone’s skin like delicate insects as she climbed over the sill. She slipped through the quiet house toward a room ablaze with candles. Sinestra’s room had been left untouched, almost like a shrine.
Shaking her head at the old man’s fond foolishness, Tzigone set to work. She found a small silver brush with a broken handle, tossed negligently into a drawer. This was important—whatever Tzigone presented for testing had to appear to be discarded. No magehound could legally test a stolen object.
As she picked up the brush, a bit of folded paper caught her eyes, something tossed into the drawer and forgotten. She lifted one edge of the packet and recognized the oddly colored powder Sinestra had taken from Procopio’s tower.
“Don’t touch that,” advised a male voice behind her.
Tzigone leaped and whirled, coming face to face with Matteo’s friend Andris.
He caught the packet she’d inadvertently tossed into the air and leaned away from the small puff of dust that escaped it. “You really shouldn’t take this. If Lord Belajoon realizes the loss, they’ll look for the thief.”
“He probably doesn’t know she had it. She didn’t know what it was,” Tzigone explained, feeling rather dazed and stupid. It had been a very long time since someone had crept up on her! “For that matter, I don’t know what it is.”
Andris folded back the paper and showed her the powder. “This particular shade is known to artists as ‘mummy brown.’ Once it was precisely that—a pigment made from the ground remains of mummies. It has not been used for years, of course, but was fairly common during a period when northerners were given to exploring and despoiling the Old Empires.”
Tzigone lifted one eyebrow. “I can see why you and Matteo get along. Why did you follow me?”
“Actually, I didn’t.” He cleared his throat. “I came to help Lord Basel, on Matteo’s behalf.”
“Now I know you’re lying. Matteo wouldn’t have sent you here.”
Andris’s ice-green eyes narrowed. “Did he send you here?”
“Good point,” Tzigone admitted. After a moment, she added, “Did you find anything?”
Andris moved over to the wall and tapped lightly on a carved panel. It slid aside silently to reveal a hidden passage. He shrugged aside Tzigone’s incredulous stare. “The original designs for nearly every mansion of note are in the jordaini libraries.”
She whistled softly. “If you’re ever in need of a partner, I might be available.”
They made their way down a s
eries of hidden stairs and halls. Finally Andris led her into a deep-buried chamber. The room was round and empty but for a long, glass box resting on a marble table. Uriah Belajoon had entombed Sinestra under glass.
Tzigone edged closer. Her friend had changed from a raven-haired beauty into the woman Tzigone had once glimpsed in a magic-dispelling mirror.
“She does look a bit like my mother,” she mused.
“Keturah,” Andris remembered. “Kiva spoke of her in the Swamp of Akhlaur.”
Tzigone nodded, but her thoughts were elsewhere. She placed one hand on the glass and sank deep into concentration, seeking the spell that killed Sinestra. Its nature was familiar enough—a particularly virulent silence spell often placed upon servants—but try as she might, Tzigone couldn’t feel who had done the casting. The person was powerfully, magically shielded from her sight Tzigone felt a faint echo of her mother’s magic.
“Dhamari,” she said, pronouncing it like a curse.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Andris and Tzigone had no problem entering the palace, for Matteo had listed them in the guardhouse book. They were ushered through with an extravagant courtesy that Tzigone would have found amusing had she been in a brighter mood and more congenial company.
“Friends of the King’s Counselor,” she muttered in a dead-on imitation of the guard’s obsequious tones. “I’m surprised there’s no medal to go along with that title.”
“Yes, I rather expected someone to pull out a sword and knight us.”
Tzigone shot a surprised glance at the translucent jordain. His tone matched hers—bemused humor, untainted by envy over Matteo’s position.
She considered the puzzle Andris offered. “You two have been friends for a long time?”
He shrugged. “All our lives, but considering our relative youth, I’m not sure that qualifies as a ‘long time.’ ”
“So why did you go over to Kiva?”
“Those are two separate lines of occurrence,” he said evenly, keeping his eyes straight ahead.
Tzigone made a rude noise. “Mineral-rich soil enhancers—rothe manure sounds pretty good when you put fancy words to it, doesn’t it?”
A fleeting smile touched the jordain’s lips. “You have a knack for finding the salient point. For a long time, I tried to convince myself that one thing had nothing to do with the other.” He glanced at her. “I suppose you know my story.”
“I’ve heard it. I just don’t understand it.”
“We Halruaans are raised with a strong sense of heritage and destiny. It was you who told me I was elf-blooded, so it should come as no surprise to learn there are blood ties between me and Kiva.”
“That explains part of it”
“Not all,” he agreed. “For a while, I thought Kiva’s goals justified her methods. Admittedly, there was the battle itself. As a jordain, the most I could expect was to advise wizards on tactics and watch from afar.”
“Which is why Kiva snatched you in the first place,” Tzigone concluded. “Matteo says you’re the best to come out of the Jordaini College in years. Better even than he is.”
Andris sent her a wry grin. “Honest to a fault, isn’t he?”
“I’ve noticed that.” She stopped at the door leading to Matteo’s chambers and appraised the jordain. “I think I could like you,” she said, her voice sounding surprised even to her own ears, “but that won’t stop me from killing you if you turn against Matteo again.”
He didn’t smirk at this announcement, as many men might have. Tzigone was waif-thin, and her head didn’t reach the jordain’s shoulder. She was unarmed, and he was a skilled fighter who carried several fine weapons. He had been trained in methods of combat against powerful wizards. She wore light blue robes that marked her as a mere wizard’s apprentice. Yet he appraised her with the same intense scrutiny that she focused upon him.
“Then Matteo is doubly protected,” Andris said at last, “for I will extend to you that same courtesy.”
Tzigone nodded, satisfied. The door opened, and Matteo’s eyes shifted from her to Andris. “You two look uncharacteristically earnest. I don’t suppose this bodes well.”
“The good news is that Sinestra Belajoon was never cremated,” she said without preamble. “The bad news is that Dhamari Exchelsor is in the city, and he knows about my mother.”
Matteo muttered a barnyard epithet and turned to Andris. “Forgive me for leaving you without a word of explanation, but these are not my secrets to share.”
“You don’t need to explain anything to me,” Andris protested, but his eyes lit up at the inferred trust.
Matteo briefly clasped his friend’s shoulder, then he and Tzigone set off down a long corridor. He slid her a sidelong glance. “You and Andris seem to be on better terms.”
“You might say we have an agreement.” When Matteo sent her an inquiring glance, she shrugged and elaborated: “We set boundaries around when and why we’d kill each other.”
“Ah. An important step in any burgeoning acquaintance,” he said in a dry tone. “Tell me of Dhamari.”
Her face grew troubled. “Kiva must have brought him back across the veil. He hasn’t the skill to manage that kind of spell. Where are we going?” she asked abruptly as they took a turn into a wide, marble corridor.
“Zalathorm’s council hall. He must hear at once that Beatrix’s secret is not as well kept as we’d hoped.”
“This will hurt the king,” Tzigone noted, considering this aspect for the first time. “Zalathorm has been Halruaa’s mortar for a very long time. Without him holding the wizards together, things could get very messy.”
“I don’t think we can stop that from happening,” Matteo said quietly. “Nor do I think we should try to hide the truth in an attempt to prevent trouble. Truth has a way of coming out, and those who try to hold it back are the first to be swept away.”
They walked quietly into the vaulted marble chamber that was the king’s council hall and waited in an alcove while a trio of angry wizards presented complaints to the king. All were connected in some way to the slain wizard Rhodea Firehair. The Council of Elders had ordered an inquisition into their affairs. All three protested. They were heavily invested in important magical research. Magical inquiry at this time, they insisted, could open their secrets to other wizards and bring financial ruin.
“Never mind the ruin a wizardwar could bring,” Tzigone muttered darkly. She looked up to find Matteo staring at her. “What?”
“The good of the king, the fragile peace.” He shook his head. “You did not ponder such things before.”
She shrugged and ran her fingers through her short, tousled, brown hair to tame it somewhat. “I’ve never had an audience with the king before, either.” She caught the hem of Matteo’s tunic as he turned toward the throne. “Does he know about me? That I’m the queen’s daughter?”
Matteo hesitated. “He learned this not long ago, yes.”
“Will he let me walk out of here? Halruaa’s laws don’t exactly embrace people like me.”
“Zalathorm is a lawful king, but he is also a powerful diviner. If he acted upon everything he knew about his subjects, he would soon have no kingdom to rule.”
“Cynical, but probably true.” She blew out a long breath and tried not to dwell upon the things Matteo was so obviously not telling her. The man had no talent for lying—he couldn’t even hold something back without looking pained.
That was one of the reasons she trusted him and why she followed him into the throne room of Halruaa’s king.
Zalathorm’s gaze flicked toward the newcomers, then slid to his seneschal. The blue-robed man immediately strode over to the guards, who ushered out the still-angry wizards with promises of a swift resolution. He followed them out and shut the chamber doors, leaving the two young people alone with the king.
Matteo dipped into a low bow, which Tzigone imitated deftly and precisely. It occurred to her, too late, that a jordain’s bow and an apprentice wizard’s were two
very different things. The king didn’t seem to notice, but Matteo’s expression—quickly mastered—couldn’t have been more horrified if Tzigone had drop-kicked the king’s favorite hunting dog.
The jordain hastily cleared his throat. “Your majesty, this is Tzigone, apprentice to Lord Basel.”
Zalathorm rose from the throne and took her hand. “Welcome, child. How can I serve the hero of Akhlaur’s Swamp?”
“Tell me about my mother,” she blurted out. From the corner of her eyes, she saw Matteo blanch at this egregious broach of protocol. Most likely, a string of fancy phrases was required before getting to the point.
To her surprise, the king merely nodded. He led the way to an alcove with several chairs and waited until all were settled.
“Where would you like to begin?”
“Did you know her before she left the city, her tower?”
“No,” the king said. “I had heard her name, of course, for Keturah was considered a master of evocation and a wizard likely to ascend to the Council of Elders at a remarkably young age. But in the years preceding Queen Fiordella’s death, I had become something of a recluse.”
“How did you meet?”
“A chance meeting during her exile. She presented herself as a wizard tired of magic’s demands and in need of solitude.”
“That’s it?” Tzigone said incredulously. “You had no idea who she was? What she was accused of doing?”
Zalathorm hesitated. “I could discern that she possessed a good heart I did not inquire into her name and past.”
Tzigone leaned back and folded her arms. “And years later, you married her.”
The king looked to Matteo with lifted brows. “I did not tell her, my lord,” the jordain said hastily.
“I didn’t think you had. So the queen’s secret is known.”
“How widely, I cannot say,” Matteo admitted, “but it seems likely that this and more will be brought to light in Beatrix’s trial.”
Zalathorm merely nodded and turned back to Tzigone. “Yes, I married your mother in a public ceremony years after our first meeting. She came to Halarahh in the most extraordinary of circumstances—the lone survivor of a brutal Crinti raid, her beauty and her memory lost beyond recall. The council was so delighted by my decision to wed and so charmed by Beatrix herself that they were remarkably accepting. The history provided by the magehound Kiva was considered enough. Even I accepted this as truth, not having reason to suspect otherwise.”
The Wizardwar Page 23