The Locksmith

by Howe, Barbara;

“I know, I just didn’t expect… It was unnerving.”

  “Like being trapped in a glass cage, where you couldn’t breathe?”

  “Well, no. Is that what it was like for you? Interesting. Oh, don’t get up. I’ll deal with the mess.” She waved a hand. The broken crockery reassembled and jumped onto the tray. “I couldn’t feel anything. Not the tray, not my clothes—nothing.”

  After she recovered from the initial shock, we tried it again. We found, to her relief, that she could break out of it. The more power I put into the lock, the harder it was for her to break, but I couldn’t summon enough power to make it unbreakable.

  As she was leaving, she stopped with her hand on the door. “Promise me you’ll be careful who you use that on. You could scare the daylights out of someone if they didn’t know it was coming.”

  I woke the next morning certain that the Locksmith had left a way out. Could I find it in time?

  The gnawing feeling was becoming a compulsion; an itch that I had to scratch. It was telling me to go to Jean. Why? Even if I gave in to it, how could I get there? The tunnel was closed.

  Mother Celeste was out of the Warren, and wasn’t due back until after dinner. By that time the itch was almost unbearable. I paced the floor at the tunnel exit, wringing my hands and fighting with myself. Hazel paced with me, a hand on my arm, helping me stay rational.

  Mother Celeste and the Frost Maiden ambled in together, smiling. A moment later, they were hustling me into the amber room. The shielding in the room seemed to help. My pacing was not as frantic, but I couldn’t keep still. I told them about the compulsion while I made circuits of the room, twisting my shawl into knots, trying not to listen to the pounding of my heart. The Frost Maiden did not look bored at all.

  Hazel said, “There are two compulsions working on her.” We all turned to stare at her. She spread her hands. “I don’t know who is sending either one.”

  I said, “I think the Fire Office is sending one of them.”

  They turned to stare at me. They didn’t believe me. I wasn’t sure I believed it myself.

  The tranquil Earth Mother looked as agitated as a temperamental air witch. “I have never heard of the Fire Office sending a compulsion. That doesn’t mean it can’t do it; there’s lots about that office I don’t know. But why would it?”

  The Frost Maiden said, “Come here and sit down, be quiet.” She placed the palms of both hands against my temples and closed her eyes. I squirmed and grabbed the seat with both hands. When she took her hands away, I bounced out of the chair.

  “Your turn, Celeste,” she said.

  I groaned and sat back down. When Mother Celeste let me go, I resumed racing around the room. The two witches looked at each other for a long moment before turning to frown at me.

  The Frost Maiden said, “Yes, there are two compulsions at work, and one does seem to be coming from the Fire Office. I do not recognise the witch or wizard sending the other one. I do not understand this.”

  Mother Celeste said, “Jean sent her here with orders not to put herself in danger, but if the Fire Office is driving her like this, who are we to argue with it?”

  The Frost Maiden went to a table by the door, and brought back a large flat bowl and a pitcher of water. She said, “I will survey the battlefield. Perhaps that will enlighten us.”

  While she worked her spell on the water, I asked Mother Celeste if there was a tunnel that came out near the Fortress, and she said she could cut one that would come out anywhere we needed it, short of in the Fortress itself.

  The Frost Maiden described what she saw in the water. “Jean is on the ramparts of the second tier. He looks exhausted, but there is no attack in progress. Arturos is in the Warlock’s study, trying to read the future in the fire. Part of the town is burning. The other warlocks are reaching the end of their powers to put the fires out. The Empire’s wizards are scattered below the Fortress, and on the mountain’s shoulders.

  “There is an unused guard tower on the way to the funeral pyre, but there is someone there. Oh, dear God. The Empire’s Chessmaster enchanter is there, and he has a young woman with him, a hostage.”

  She looked up from the bowl, her face, even her lips, white. “The girl is one of my water witches. She’s a silly little level three with no sense, I’m not surprised she walked into a trap, but she’s a cousin to the king. She’s royal. The Fire Office will make him rescue her.”

  My heart stopped. I saw black, the black of death, all around me. Beorn had said the enemy could kill the Warlock if they could force him to leave the safety of the Fortress.

  No, dammit. Not while I still had magic.

  The black turned to red as I burned with rage, the fiercest I have ever felt. I would have torched the Chessmaster if he had been within range.

  Stay in control, girl. I couldn’t help Jean if I wasn’t in control.

  I snapped, “Send me there. I don’t know what I can do, but that’s where I need to be.”

  The two Officeholders exchanged glances, and came to a decision. As the Earth Mother moved towards the door, the Frost Maiden stopped me and gazed over her wand, thrust at me like a sword. She said, with the bite of ice once more in her voice, “If we are wrong, and you are an agent of the Empire, I will drown you and bury you in the northern ice for eternity.”

  I looked her in the eye. “And I would welcome it, as my due.”

  She lowered the wand. “Good luck. We will help if we can.”

  I ran through the door and into the antechamber, where Mother Celeste was waving her wand at the wall. A tunnel appeared, and I ran through, stopping at the other end to get my bearings. The tunnel ended in the guard tower. Where were the Chessmaster and his hostage? They must be outside, on the path cut into the side of the mountain, leading down to the Fortress.

  I stepped out of the tunnel. It snapped closed behind me.

  The enemy enchanter stepped back into the tower, his wand pointed at me, and said, “Good day, Miss Guillierre. I’ve been expecting you.”

  The Escape Clause

  The Chessmaster’s smile made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. “The royal water witch was an illusion to entice you, my dear, not your lover. I am more confident he will come to rescue you. Now you will walk ahead of me out onto the path, and I will call on him.”

  The Chessmaster had decades of battle experience. How could I hurt him when I couldn’t even flame René? Black once more settled around me; the black of death and despair. I’d been stupid—fatally so. His prediction of the Warlock’s downfall was about to come true, and I was at fault.

  I snarled at him. He prodded me with his wand. He wouldn’t risk hurting me; I was no use as a hostage, dead. I took my time walking out of the guard tower, and poured my rage—rage as strong as the first Locksmith’s against the Frost Maiden—into the lock spell I had used on Hazel.

  Fire bloomed on the path next to the guard tower and my captor whipped around, pulling me in front of him as a shield. Jean stepped out of the fire, wand raised. I snapped the lock in place on the Chessmaster and dove for the ground, pulling out of his grip. Surprise registered on Jean’s face, terror on the Chessmaster’s.

  Hurricane-force winds hit us, knocking the Chessmaster down and slamming Jean into the rock wall of the tower. He crumpled to the ground and lay still.

  The winds tried to push me over the edge of the path. I clawed at the rocks and lay flat, using my mind’s eye to find the air wizards who were whipping up the wind. Two stood on the funeral pyre outcropping. As I was halfway through the lock spell the second time, the wizard I had focused on rose in the air to ride the wind closer to the tower. When I snapped the lock closed he fell twenty feet, and lay without moving. The intensity of the wind dropped by half.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jean move, and breathed a silent ‘Hallelujah.’

  I slammed dow
n a shield covering a quarter of the hillside, then cast the lock on the second air wizard by the pyre. Wizards in the distance turned tail, the air wizards sailing off on the winds. A drenching rain sprang out of nowhere, drowning the attempts by the fire wizards to wink out of sight in bursts of flame.

  Thank God they were running. My head spun, and I was wet through with sweat despite the bitter cold. I didn’t have enough power left to use the lock again.

  The Chessmaster staggered to his feet. I flamed him—a feeble spurt that would have disgusted René, but enough to set a sleeve on fire. He screamed and rolled on the path to beat down the flames, then ran away downhill. Farther down, Beorn was running up the path, several guardsmen behind him.

  I raised my head. Jean’s left arm… I closed my eyes and rested my head on the rocks for a moment. Arms don’t bend at that angle. God help me, I was not going to faint.

  He made a one-handed attempt to pull himself into a sitting position. I crawled on hands and knees towards him.

  He spoke through gritted teeth. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the rock wall, drawing in ragged breaths. Blood streamed down one side of his face. The other side was ashen, and beaded with sweat. “Never mind. Make a sling with your shawl.”

  “If I touch your arm, you’ll pass out.”

  “Do as I say. I must hunt down the Empire’s wizards.”

  “Why? The guards will be here soon, and can carry you back to the Fortress. You need a healer. You need rest. If you fight the Empire’s wizards now they’ll kill you.”

  He opened his right eye and glared at me. “If I do not, the Office will kill me, and send Beorn after them.”

  He leaned against the wall, unable to continue. Why hadn’t the Office killed him already? He wasn’t fit to fight.

  He rasped, “I may die fighting, but I will die like a man. I will not just give up.”

  Something in my heart snapped. I grabbed his tunic and snarled in his face, “And I am not going to give up and let you die. I don’t care about the damned Office and its unreasonable, idiotic demands.”

  He raged back at me, “And I wish I were not Fire Warlock, but wishing will not help.”

  But it will.

  I rocked back on my heels, blinded by sudden insight. The first Locksmith had left a way out, a way that had been used, but not understood, once before. No one else had understood for a thousand years. I even knew the magic words; Gibson had given them to me in his History.

  In complete confidence, I shouted, “Listen, you infernal Office. I love Jean Rehsavvy, and for God’s sake, I wish he wasn’t the damned Fire Warlock anymore!”

  The world shifted on its axis. The Office had summoned me to do this, and I floated in a state of rapture, my field of vision expanding to encompass the great wheel of the zodiac making its leisurely turn.

  And then I was slammed down onto the hard, rocky path. No time had passed. Enemy wizards were still fleeing; Arturos was still pounding up the slope.

  But the Token of Office had slipped from Jean’s finger. The monstrous ruby flashed with its own light as the ring bounced and clanged on the rocks of the path. It dropped towards the lumbering bear of a man, the new Fire Warlock, who pounced on it with a roar and vanished in a great spout of flame.

  And I, the Greater Locksmith, had found the key to free my love, once more a mortal man, lying bleeding and unconscious at my feet.

  The Warlock Unlocked

  The guards carried Jean back to the Fortress on a stretcher. I walked through the postern gate first, and encountered a wall of hatred from the watching multitude. They were eerily silent, the men with their hats off. What was wrong with them? Oh.

  “He’s not dead,” I shouted, “but he will be if he doesn’t get to a healer soon.”

  Pandemonium reigned. The crowd pushed me aside as they carried him off, who knew where. I wandered through endless corridors in a daze, until Master Sven found me and led me to the kitchen. He and Mrs Cole cajoled me to eat a bowl of soup, Mrs Cole spoon-feeding me until I woke up enough to push the bowl away and ask for buttered toast. Later, she made me take a bath and tucked me into bed, then sat with me in the dark until I fell asleep.

  I lay in bed late the next morning, unwilling to venture out. How could I face the crowds? Rumours would be running wild. How could I face the no-longer-Warlock, either? He had said he was tired of the Office and wanted out, but would he still feel that way now that I had forced retirement on him?

  The loss of his authority didn’t matter to me—I didn’t need the almighty Warlock. What had I said yesterday, anyway? Did I wish that he wasn’t the Warlock, or did I say a warlock? I didn’t even need a wizard—I would be happy with the scholar—but could a man who had been the world’s most powerful wizard for more than a century take such a comedown lightly? I buried my head in my pillow and cried.

  Hunger pangs forced me out of bed. The last few days had exhausted my reserves, and I had to eat. I got dressed, and gathered my courage. Jean had said I was a queen. Yesterday, I had indeed commanded the whole board. I was a warlock, and I had earned the right to be here.

  The Chessmaster’s prediction had played out, and I had proved I could defend myself. I no longer needed the lock hiding my talents. I released it, and stepped out into the hall. After two steps, I turned and went back. I pulled off my supplicant’s dress and put on the burgundy velvet I had worn only once.

  I was a fire witch. I was going to look like one. I was going to act like one, too. Jean was always so calm, strolling down the corridors. I throttled my desire to run, and walked at a measured pace, pretending I was balancing a book on the top of my head.

  People in the corridors drew aside as I walked by. The dining room fell silent when I came in. Jenny blanched and ran out the door. I was tempted to grab a plateful of whatever was closest, but I took the time to get what I wanted, then strolled to my favourite spot behind the curtains in the library.

  I was choking down my breakfast when the shutters opened, folding back into their resting places against the walls in a rolling chorus of reverberating bangs. Blinding sunlight streamed in.

  The war was over. My spirits rose, and I lifted my coffee cup towards the sun in a silent toast to our good fortune.

  René found me a few minutes later. “Hey, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you upstairs? He wants to see you. He sent me to look for you.”

  “Is he angry?” I asked.

  René looked bewildered. “Course not. Why would he be?”

  “Because the histories say powerful men don’t like having their power taken away.”

  “Oh.” He considered that a moment, then shrugged. “He looked pretty happy to me. Mostly he sounded worried about you.”

  Relieved, I got up and we walked out of the library, towards the stairs.

  He said, “What did you do, anyway?”

  I shook my head. “I’m in no shape to talk about it yet. Maybe after I talk to him.”

  “Fine, but I’ve got first dibs on the story.”

  “Deal.”

  “He would have come looking for you himself, but Mother Celeste wouldn’t let him. She ordered him to stay in the study and rest, and when he started to get up anyway she nailed him to the sofa.”

  “Nailed him?”

  “Not nails actually, but he can’t move. So he called her an officious old busybody with a heart of granite, and she called him…” He finished in a rush. “She called him a rutting old goat who’s thinking with his dick instead of his head. He said I shouldn’t repeat that in mixed company, but you’re as good as a boy. Why does she get to say something I’m not supposed to?”

  I had heard worse. I laughed, ending on a hiccupping sob. “The Earth Mother does have a reputation for being a bit, well, earthy sometimes, but they’ll have to try h
arder than that if they really mean to insult each other. What were the damages, besides the broken arm?”

  “Three broken ribs, cuts and scrapes, and some awesome bruises. But they’ve fixed him up. Mother Celeste says he’ll be fine if he doesn’t get hurt again before the bones have finished healing. And Arturos—I mean the new Fire Warlock—went off to sleep. He spent all night chasing down the rest of the wizards. He’s going to summon everybody to gather in the ballroom sometime this afternoon so he can tell them what happened.”

  René chattered away, telling me other news. Arturos had let the other warlocks out of their apartments. Warlock Sunbeam was disappointed, but offered his congratulations like a gentleman. Warlock Flint was livid; no one dared get in his way as he stormed down the corridors. Master Sven was sitting by himself in the practice room, staring off into space.

  The sea of faces packing the immobile centre stairs did not appear to bother René. My stomach began to unknot. The glances and whispers seemed more awed and fearful, and maybe even curious, than hostile. The crowd milling about on the landing at the top parted as we walked towards the door.

  I stared. Two grinning guards barred the door.

  “Morning, Miss Lucinda,” one said. “We’ve got orders to not let anybody but you in. He’s expecting you.” The other opened the door for me.

  I thanked them, then took a deep breath before slipping through.

  A ball of yarn rolled this way and that across the carpet, following the motions of his wand, moving just out of reach as the cat pounced. My knees threatened to buckle under me—he was still a wizard, at least. He looked at ease, propped up on pillows against the arm of the sofa, his legs up on the seat, the arm that had been broken resting on the sofa’s back.

  He put the wand down and held out his hand to me. “I hope you will forgive my bad manners, my dear, but I am unable to rise to greet you. Mother Celeste—drat her—has seen to that. Come and sit with me, please.”