Silverglass s-1

by J F Rivkin

  “Are you mad? She won’t turn against him!”

  “I believe she will, once she’s freed from his Influence. When she broke the Discipline she abandoned her defenses, and now she’s beyond my reach, within his domain. But you can go there freely. She trusts you, and Shiastred has no reason to harm you. He’ll not consider you a threat.”

  “I know. I’m beneath his notice.”

  He leaned closer to her. “Do you dare to return there?”

  It was a wise choice of words to put Corson on her mettle. “I’ve daring enough.

  But I warn you, for such a deed I command a noble fee.” She did not much trust Kastenid, but without a magician’s help she could never hope to foil Lord Erystalben. It could do no harm to hear him out. As he talked, she reached absently into her pouch for the gold earrings and put them on.

  “Come for a ride with me,” said Corson. “I want to talk to you.”

  Nyctasia was more than ever a stranger to her. She treated Corson as a favorite, whose familiarity was to be indulged. Shiastred simply took no heed of her-how Nyctasia managed her servants was her own affair.

  They rode along a path that led up into the hills toward the stone but where Kastenid was waiting. “Bring her as far as you can,” he’d told Corson. “I’ll try to create an Influence to draw her on, but I can do nothing while she remains within his walls.”

  Nyctasia reined in her horse, frowning. “We’ve come far enough, Corson. What have you to say to me?”

  Corson dismounted. She seated herself on a fallen log and waited for Nyctasia to join her. “I’ve been with Kastenid, Nyc. He says you’re spellcast and I believe it. You’re not the same.”

  “One behaves more freely on the road, of course-formalities may be put aside.

  But the journey is over now.” She looked off into the hills. “So Kastenid hopes to use you to sway me? He is wrong to bring you into this. You do not understand the risks you run.”

  “I don’t trust any magician. Never mind Kastenid-you should come away from here for your own sake. This place is a prison!”

  Nyctasia rose. “This is where I belong. Go back to Chiastelm, Corson, you can do no good here.” She held out her hand. “Farewell.”

  Corson shrugged. “I’ve done my best.” She suddenly smiled and reached her right hand out to meet Nyctasia’s. “Farewell, Nyc.” Her fist caught Nyctasia neatly under the jaw in a swift, stunning blow.

  38

  “How do you, Lady Nyctasia?” Kastenid asked worriedly, holding a skin of water to her lips. “Can you rise?”

  Nyctasia gingerly touched her sore jaw and winced. “I trust you enjoyed doing that,” she said to Corson.

  “Oh, I did. It was a great pleasure.”

  “She’s been wanting to hit me for a long time,” Nyctasia said, turning to Kastenid, “but I do not see what you hope to gain from this. I have answered you for the last time. If you cannot stand against him, you must fall!”

  Kastenid was silent, shaken by Nyctasia’s unlooked-for scorn. Wearily, he passed his hand over his face and sighed, “At every turn you elude me, lady.”

  “I’ll not be bait to lure him from his stronghold.” She went to the doorway of the hut, only pausing to say, “And if you’re wise, you’ll be gone from here before he takes up your challenge.”

  “Shall I hit her again?” Corson suggested.

  Kastenid looked blindly after Nyctasia. “You were right,” he said finally, “she is dead.”

  But a moment later they heard Nyctasia’s high, clear laughter outside. “No, it was my own fault,” she said. “Come away.”

  “Shiastred! You’ll deal with me first!” Kastenid shouted. Corson reluctantly followed him outside.

  “Just as you will,” said Erystalben ar’n Shiastred, smiling. “I should have dealt with you long ago.” He was perfectly confident and at his ease.

  “’Ben, there’s no need for this,” Nyctasia urged. “He can be no threat to us now.”

  “It is not I who insist upon it. I’ve spared you once before, Kastenid. I shall do so again if you let me.”

  Kastenid, too, smiled. “I’ll not find you so far from your lair again.”

  Shiastred gestured in resignation. “Speak to him, ’Tasia. Perhaps he’ll listen to you.”

  “Come to your senses, Kastenid. You seek your own destruction.”

  He barely glanced at her. “If you will not stand with me, stand aside.”

  “Enough!” said Shiastred, and suddenly they were surrounded by an intense silence. Corson could not tell when the conflict had begun. Neither man moved-they still stood facing one another across the stony ground, but they no longer smiled. No leaf stirred and the air grew still and heavy. But Corson remembered how Shiastred had struck her down on the road without a blow, and nothing could have made her walk between the two magicians.

  Nyctasia was white and rigid with tension. She never took her eyes from Shiastred, and when he reached out to her she went to his side at once. Kastenid staggered suddenly and fell back a pace.

  “Nyc, don’t!” Corson gasped, hardly knowing what she meant. Nyctasia turned to her, and Corson was certain that for a moment her grey eyes were a vivid blue.

  “Don’t interfere in this, Corson. I have no quarrel with you.” She raised her hand in warning, and Corson suddenly saw what had been before her eyes all the time. Seizing Nyctasia’s outstretched hand, she wrenched off the golden wedding band and flung it from her with all her strength.

  Nyctasia cried out like a lost child. At the same time, Shiastred whirled to face Corson, and the full force of his fury struck her before she had time to think. The sky seemed to wheel, and she was crushed to the ground by an agonizing weight. Pain seared her to the bone, but she could not even draw breath to scream. She knew she was dying.

  “Kastenid, help me!” Nyctasia called. She stood over Corson, her face like a white-hot flame. Vhar Kastenid walked slowly towards them, his gaze fixed on his enemy, and came to stand at Nyctasia’s side.

  But Shiastred took no heed of him. Stunned by Nyctasia’s betrayal, he stared at her in disbelief and sorrow, but Nyctasia did not waver.

  He turned away, then, like a man wounded, walked aimlessly for a few paces, then stopped and pulled off his cloak, holding it out before him. As he tore it across, the air was rent with a shaft of gleaming darkness that blinded the eye.

  When sight returned to them, the three who remained found nothing but the sundered cloak where Lord Erystalben had stood, Nyctasia walked slowly over to it and picked it up. “It is always carelessness that defeats one,” she said softly.

  Vhar Kastenid helped Corson to her feet. “I owe you my life, my friend. I’ll not forget your courage. But how did you know?”

  “She doesn’t wear gold.” Corson said brusquely. To her amazement she found herself uninjured. Only minutes before, she had thought that her bones must be crushed to dust. But she felt weak and shaken still. “Let me alone. Look to Her Ladyship.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said gently.

  Nyctasia was kneeling on the hard ground, holding the riven cloak tightly against her, her head bowed, her slender frame racked with sobs.

  Vhar Kastenid touched her shoulder. “Come home, Lady Nyctasia.”

  “I have no home!” The tears denied by years of discipline coursed down her face unchecked. “Only now do I know what it is to be an exile, I left everything without regret, but now I have lost myself!”

  “What is truly yours cannot be lost or taken,” Kastenid said gravely. “Though the heedless may throw it away.”

  39

  When they returned, there was no sign of Shiastred’s servants-the halls were silent and empty.

  “My people will return to me now,” said Kastenid, “and I shall be able to show you a more fitting welcome. I would have you treat my home as your own.”

  Corson was relieved to find the hall deserted. It seemed a different place, and no longer afflicted her with nightmarish memories and for
ebodings. She took full advantage of Kastenid’s hospitality and enjoyed her unaccustomed idleness at first, but soon began to grow restless. Only her concern for Nyctasia made her reluctant to be on her way.

  It seemed that nothing would ever rouse Nyctasia from her grief. She barely left her chamber, sitting day after day at the window, long after it grew too dark to see more than the moonlit surface of the quiet pool below. Her will to heal herself had left her.

  “Do not war against the vahn in this way,” Kastenid pleaded with her. “You must allow it to console you. Despair destroys the spirit.”

  “… and mourning denies the Discipline,” Nyctasia rejoined. She looked up from the piece of sewing that lay across her lap. “I know the Principles as well as you, my friend. But now that I need them the most, I find them hollow… No, the fault is in myself, not in the Discipline, I know that. I am too weak to achieve Balance.”

  “Then let me help you.”

  “You’ve tried to help me before, and you did not find me grateful.”

  “You know now that I am not your enemy.”

  “No, I have been my own enemy all the while. You think me as true a vahnite as yourself, but I tell you I’ve done things that would turn you against me if you but knew-”

  “You have left Rhostshyl, yet you still dwell within its walls, Edonaris. That life is behind you now.”

  “Erystalben is part of that life.”

  He watched her draw the silver needle deftly through the dark cloth. “You follow a dangerous course, my lady.”

  “What ’Ben did was more dangerous! He couldn’t know what awaited him beyond that Threshold. It was madness!”

  “It was his only hope of escape.”

  Nyctasia’s voice trembled. “No, he wasn’t afraid. He risked that spell rather than strike at me-though I had turned on him!”

  “You cannot blame yourself for that, you had no choice. Shiastred used you.”

  Nyctasia shook her head. “I warned you that I would stand with him-you refused to take me at my word.” Her voice grew hard. “I turned to you because I had to protect Corson. But he believed that I’d betrayed him; that is why I must do this, danger or no. He may be dead-I have to know.” She shook out the folds of the mended cloak, neatly stitched where Erystalben ar’n Shiastred had torn it.

  “I don’t believe it either,” Corson said. Kastenid had found her in the stable, busy grooming her horse. “But I don’t believe much of what Nyc says about anything.” She had finished with the curry comb and was going over the animal a second time with a soft brush. Kastenid took up another and began working on the horse’s other side.

  “She believes it, and as long as she does she’ll, never be free of him,” he said.

  “That one’s such a clever liar she’s begun to believe her own lies.”

  They worked in silence for a few minutes. Corson knelt and gently ran her fingers down the horse’s foreleg. Then, lifting the hoof, she began to clean out the mud and pebbles with a pick.

  “I’m afraid of what she may do,” he said at last.

  Corson looked up at him. “You’re in love with her yourself.”

  He did not deny it. “She will take nothing from me,” he said helplessly. “I have won, and yet I am defeated.”

  40

  For the most powerful spells, the preparations are the simplest. Nyctasia lifted the heavy mirror from the wall and laid it on the round table, then covered it with Shiastred’s cloak. For a long time she only stood there, calm and still, her hands resting on the draped mirror. At last, she silently recited the necessary words, and swept aside the mended cloak.

  Behold in this enchanted mirror

  Images reversed but clearer.

  The silent echo of the spirit

  Speaks to those who choose to hear it.

  Her reflection appeared dim and distant as though seen at the bottom of a dark well. But it was not her own face that she sought in the mirror.

  Erystalben knelt at the edge of a pool like black glass, and Nyctasia saw her reflection appear to him in the quiet water. “Why did you do it?” she whispered, and saw that his lips formed the same words. Her tears spilled onto the mirror’s surface, making the images waver like broken water. She saw her pale reflection ripple as Shiastred leaned over to touch the pool, and a feeling of faintness came over her. She reached to steady herself against the table but tears blinded her, and her hands closed on empty air. As she fell, her forehead struck sharply against the heavy silver frame of the mirror.

  Nyctasia drifted in darkness till a dim light glimmered somewhere above her, and she reached toward it, curious. A hand parted the darkness and clasped hers, drawing her upward easily. She stepped from the dark water, her hand still clasped in Erystalben’s.

  “Forgive me,” both said, but no sound broke the unchanging stillness. Silent as shadows, then, they came together, and their wordless lips met to say all that was needful between them.

  41

  Corson paced restlessly about the chamber where Nyctasia had lain all that day, motionless, never waking, hardly seeming to draw breath. To Corson she looked paler and more fragile than ever.

  The mirror, cracked and blood-stained, gave back to her a crazed reflection of herself each time she passed by. She found herself trying to avoid the sight of it. Shiastred’s cloak still lay at the foot of the table and she kicked it aside, then, puzzled, picked it up. The material was all of a piece-there was not a seam or stitch to show that it had ever been torn. With a shudder, she dropped it over the broken mirror.

  Nyctasia opened her eyes and sat up, looking around her in bewilderment. She smiled when she saw Corson. “You’re still here, then, my Corson? I’d have thought you’d be on your way to the coast by now.”

  Corson crossed over to her. “It was only this morning you knocked yourself senseless.”

  “So it was… it seems a long time ago.”

  “But I would be on my way if you could stay out of trouble for half a day.”

  “You needn’t worry about me,” Nyctasia said, taking Corson’s hand. “I’m all right now. There’s nothing to keep you here.”

  Corson hesitated. “Well, and what’s to keep you here? Why don’t you come with me?”

  “You know I dare not show my face near Rhostshyl.”

  “But I’ve a long way to go before I even reach Mehomne-I don’t mean to cross that rutting forest again! And you ought to see something of the world before you wall yourself up in some wizard’s den. Besides, you could profit from lessons in sword fighting,” Corson reminded her.

  Nyctasia toyed absently with one silver earring. “There’s something in what you say,” she mused.

  “We could go south to the Edonaris vineyards and visit your relatives on the way, if you like.” She saw a flicker of interest light Nyctasia’s wan features.

  “That is tempting,” she admitted.

  “Well, we shouldn’t lose any time-I want to reach Lhestreq before the turn of the season. Ships are scarce once the rough weather sets in.”

  “Will tomorrow suit you?”

  “We can’t get away from here too soon to suit me. But are you fit to travel?”

  Nyctasia lay back against the pillows. “I will be.”

  Corson bowed low. “With your permission, then, my lady, I shall leave you to your repose.”

  “Corson… I had reason to act the lady with you as I did. The Influences at work here could have destroyed you. Don’t you see, I had to drive you away for your own sake, and what better way to do it than to offend your pride? And it worked, but then you came back… I warned you not to interfere… when you attacked me. ’Ben knew you for Kastenid’s pawn. He had to deal with you quickly, before Kastenid could recover.”

  Corson was unconvinced, but she knew it was useless to argue with Nyctasia.

  “What does it matter now? He’s dead, Nyc, forget him.”

  Nyctasia hesitated. “Well… he’s gone.”

  “But isn’t he dead?�
�� cried Corson, not concealing her dismay.

  Nyctasia looked up at her with a ghost of her old mischievous manner. “I can explain-” she offered.

  “Not if I know it!” Corson protested, and hurried from the chamber.

  “I cannot stay here.” Nyctasia finished looking through the books she’d brought from Rhostshyl. She chose only one, and put it back in her satchel, “I’m no longer as sure as I was, what sacrifices I’m willing to make. I must decide that alone, Kastenid-away from the Yth and its temptations.”

  And how to find ’Ben unless she took up her travels again? But she kept her own counsel as to that.

  “Don’t you see that together we could hold this place without making the compromises Shiastred was driven to?” he urged.

  “If I’d been with him he’d not have been forced to pay that price! But the city was in chaos-I hoped I could prevent a civil war if I stayed. But I only made more enemies for myself, and I failed ’Ben when I knew that he needed me here.

  You’re well rid of me, I tell you-I’m poison to those who trust me!”

  “You do not know yourself, Nyctasia, but I have tested you, and I know your true worth. There’s no need for you to run away again-you’re making a mistake.”

  “I’ve made many,” Nyctasia said bitterly. “I’m sorry.” She turned away from him abruptly. “Will you keep these books for me? I daresay you can make use of them.”

  “Done.”

  Nyctasia wrapped Shiastred’s long cloak about her, then took up the black harp and hung it at her back. “I may need this,” she said tightly. “Perhaps I’ll have to make my way as a minstrel.”

  “Nyc!” Carson shouted from below, “I’m waiting for you! I told you I want to get an early start.”

  “Yes, I’m coming,” Nyctasia called to her. “I’m ready now.”