by Julian May
It was laughably easy to pick the lock, slip inside, and refasten the door behind him. His talent ignited the tapers of a silver candelabrum standing on a table, which he took up to illuminate his way.
The alchymist’s sitting room gave onto his bedchamber and the inner sanctum, the latter being secured with two complex locks, which Snudge spent some time opening. That small room, where the most important books and magical apparatus were kept, was a windowless place having a single worktable and a tier of shelves holding curious contraptions, some protected by glass covers. Against the wall on the right stood four magnificently carved oaken cabinets equipped with elaborate locks—and indwelling magical spells to prevent windsnoopers from discerning their contents. Snudge had already opened and scrutinized the contents of two of them. Several of the ancient volumes inside had provided him with general information on the Beaconfolk and the Glaumerie Guild of Moss, facts that he had dutifully shared with Prince Conrig; but there had been no details about the sigils’ function, only emphatic warnings against using them.
It took Snudge nearly half an hour to open the third enchanted cabinet, using his most delicate picks. The thing turned out to be packed with sacks of gold coins, bejeweled rings, and other portable riches that the austere Brothers of Zeth weren’t supposed to concern themselves with. Snudge grunted in disgust, wondering whether the prince would be interested to know about his uncle’s inappropriate cache of valuables. He never thought of taking any of it for himself.
The fourth cabinet was smaller than the others and bound about sturdily with heavy iron bands. It was not secured by a mortise lockset, as the other three had been, but had a steel escutcheon with a type of locking device that Snudge had never seen before. It had no keyhole and thus was immune to his picks. Four tiny revolving ring-cylinders were set into the plate beside the handle, and each was etched with a succession of odd characters, like letters of an alien alphabet. The boy quickly decided that opening the lock would require aligning the appropriate characters, and there seemed to be a dozen or more on each cylinder.
Snudge’s knowledge of mathematics was only rudimentary, but he realized that the potential number of character-combinations was very large.
Hopeless! Unless…
Was Vra-Kilian as lazy as ordinary mortals? Would he bother spinning the four rings each time he locked the cabinet, or was he so confident of his magisterial authority over his underlings that he used a shortcut?
Snudge turned the lowest cylinder clockwise a single notch to a new character. Nothing. He turned it counter-clockwise—
Click.
Yes!
Easing open the cabinet’s weighty door, he choked back a blasphemous exclamation. Most of the shelves were empty. But the middle one held two wicker baskets full of sigils.
They were of various shapes and sizes, thick and thin, densely carved or nearly plain. Many were perforated and strung on rotting cords, or on golden chains like the one worn by the dead sorcerer Iscannon. All were carved from blue-white, translucent mineral. None of them possessed the uncanny foxfire glow of magical life, but Snudge was still afraid to touch them.
Three volumes bound in stained, crumbling, pearl-colored leather lay beside the baskets. Each had a round wafer of moonstone in a golden setting fastened firmly to its cover. There was no lettering stamped on the books to hint at the subject matter within. He picked one up and felt the fragile pages shift, as if they were separating from the binding.
How old was this collection? Had Vra-Kilian inherited these things from some long-dead predecessor, and had he kept them hidden, too prudent (or fearful) to invoke the magic of the Beaconfolk himself?
But if that was so, why had he left the strange lock ready to open? Had he anticipated that he might sometime need the cabinet’s contents in a hurry?
Snudge removed the three books and sat on the floor to study them by candlelight. The two larger ones were in an unknown language, and he set them aside. The third volume, smaller and more slender than the others, seemed to be written in some variant of the Cathran tongue; but the inscribed letters were faded and oddly shaped, and the spelling was strange. Many of the words were incomprehensible, and he realized that it would take some effort to decipher the book’s contents.
He turned the brittle pages cautiously. There were five short chapters with titles he could read fairly easily: A [Brief?] Thaumaturgia of the Cold Light Host; A Catalogus of Sigils; Conjuration and Abolition of the Sigil; Commanding the Sigil; and, last and most ominously, Vital Precautions for the Thaumaturgist.
“Futter me!” he whispered, stricken with awe and delight. “Bull’s-eye at last!”
Now what?
He didn’t dare take any of the stones. Having one of them in his possession was hard enough to explain to his overcurious peers. But the smallest book could be concealed easily enough, and perhaps Vra-Kilian wouldn’t notice that it was missing. Snudge reckoned it must hold the secret to activating his own sigil, if he could only puzzle it out.
Time had flown, and he had to cover his traces and get out quickly. It had to be nearly ten, the hour when the guardian novices secured the main library for the night. He couldn’t risk being locked in. Snudge knew well enough that none of the picks he carried were large enough to open the massive lock on the outer door. And, of course, the Royal Alchymist himself would be returning to his rooms shortly after the king’s train arrived…
Hastily, the boy scooped up the two foreign-language books and replaced them on the shelf. He shut the cabinet and reset the lock combination as he had found it.
Now, how to carry the other book safely? If he hid it in his clothes or crammed it into his wallet, the old thing might fall to pieces.
Snudge sighed. The lining of his brand-new armiger’s doublet would have to be sacrificed. He used his knife to slice out a strip of silk, wrapped the book, and thrust it under his shirt, where it nestled against the sigil on its long cord. What next? A few crumbs of pale bookbinding had fallen to the floor. He moistened a finger, picked them up, and tapped them down his neck.
The burnt-down candles would have to be replaced. Snudge had found unused ones in the sitting room’s candelabrum when he first broke in. He wasted frantic minutes searching tabourets and presses until he discovered a box of fresh candles. The stubs and fallen blobs of beeswax went into his wallet. He scried the main library to be sure it was unoccupied and went out, locking the door to the private rooms behind him.
Another quick windscan showed him the two novices nodding over their work. He heard the castle chimes begin to strike the tenth hour. The young wizards sighed, stretched, and grinned at each other as they began putting their work away inside their desks.
Snudge concentrated his talent and slipped through the outer door. Neither robed figure looked up as he moved down the gloomy corridor, retrieved his shoes, and went away quietly. Behind him, the sound of an enormous iron key grated in its lock. He hurried toward the wing of the palace where the Prince Heritor’s apartments were, intending to show his master what he’d discovered; but when he arrived, the lord-in-waiting on duty, whose name was Telifar, turned him away.
“His Grace is preparing for the arrival of the king,” the man said, “as well as an extraordinary meeting of the Privy Council. You won’t be giving him your usual report tonight, young Deveron. He says to come tomorrow after breakfast if you’ve anything important to tell him.”
“Very well, my lord,” said Snudge, disappointed. But as he walked toward the armigers’ quarters in the Square Tower of the palace, he decided that the delay was all for the best. If he had time to explore the book’s contents, he might have something really useful to tell Prince Conrig.
His hand stole inside his jerkin, then beneath the shirt where the book was hidden. He felt the slippery silk wound around it starting to come loose. Codders! Better stop and wrap it up tightly again lest the book be damaged. He ducked behind a heavy window-drape and began to unfasten his clothes, then stopped abrup
tly as a faint aching pain spread across his chest.
A greenish light had ignited beneath the white linen of his shirt.
“Oh, God!” he moaned, tearing open the rest of the buttons. The silk had fallen away from the book, and the moonstone disk attached to its cover was pressed against the sigil that hung about his neck. Both pieces of stone were aglow. Carefully, he lifted the book away, holding it through the silk.
The disk’s light winked out, but that of the sigil continued to shine. The dull ache persisted as well, and out of the corner of his eye he thought he spied a quick movement. But he was almost completely enveloped in the drape, concealed between it and the window, with dark night beyond the panes of thick glass. When he looked about the constricted space he saw nothing—no fluttering moth, no drifting bit of lint, no disturbed spiderling creeping on the dusty cloth.
Once again he detected that elusive movement just beyond his field of vision. And there was a harsh deep voice, asking a question.
CADAYANRUDAY?
Snudge gave a great start and almost yelped in terror. Then he realized that the words were being spoken on the wind. But it was no human voice asking the question. The words meant nothing to him.
CADAYANRUDAY?!
The pain! It was sharper, and the windvoice was louder as well, an invisible giant bellowing out of an echoing cavern. Getting impatient, too.
CADAY AN RUDAY?!!!
The voice was like rolling thunder in his mind. A sudden piercing chest-thrust from the moonstone, like an icicle’s stab, bent him over double. His vision was beginning to dim and he choked back a scream. The sigil swung on its cord away from his flesh and the pain ceased abruptly. He clawed at the cord and pulled the amulet off. It fell to the floor, where it lay with its glow extinguished.
In his mind, there was only silence.
Chapter Twelve
Louring clouds hid the sky over Moss, and decrepit old Fenguard Castle seemed more dank and uncomfortable than usual to Ullanoth when she returned from her windflight.
Earlier, before she had Sent herself to Prince Conrig in Cala, she had her trusted slave Wix build a goodly fire in her sitting room and batten up the shutters on all the windows. Now she went to the hearth to savor the warmth of the glowing peat. A pot of heated wine with cinnamon and darnel hung waiting on a crane, and she helped herself to a soothing cupful. She had suffered from an unquiet mind often of late—and no wonder, with all her plots and stratagems to keep in order, like a juggler with too many duck-eggs in the air.
Beynor’s unexpected return to the castle that evening had been a most unwelcome development. His magnificent new barque, a gift from the two princes of Didion, had appeared in the estuary without warning, masked by Fortress sorcery until the last moment. He had rebuffed her invitation to supper and gone immediately to see Conjure-King Linndal, doubtless to crow about his diplomatic coup on the Continent.
She had hoped her brother’s voyage home would take a few days longer so that she might sort out the spunkies without risking his interference. Well, there was no helping it now. With Beynor here, even though he was still closeted with their father inside the spell of his Fortress sigil, it wasn’t safe to summon the little creatures to the castle. Since they refused to engage in long windspeech conversations for fear of attracting their Salka enemies, she’d have to endure an uncomfortable journey into the fens in the middle of the night.
Ullanoth finished off the cup of hot wine, enjoying the way the spicy fumes went to her head and eased both anxiety and the perpetual minor discomfort of the guardian moonstone. She let her mind dwell briefly on her hopes for the future. They would succeed, she and Conrig. In a short time the Sovereignty would control the island. And she would control the Sovereign…
She went to her bedchamber for outdoor clothing. On a stand beside the bed was a little ever-burning lamp that she kept filled with the finest scented oil. It illuminated a portrait painted on precious narwhal ivory and framed in solid gold, a crowned woman with fair hair drawn tightly back. Her face was thin to the point of gauntness, and her black eyes enormous and bright with dangerous talent. Only her smile was beautiful, sweetly tender, as if about to kiss a beloved child.
Ullanoth inclined her head to her mother’s portrait, then found and put on waterproof boots and took from her wardrobe a hooded sheared-seal robe that was both warm and light of weight. Back in her workroom, she removed Concealer and Interpenetrator from the gold-mesh purse where she kept all of her moonstones save Fortress and carefully conjured them into readiness. As commanded, they glowed brightly and were active only when in contact with her bare hands—and hurt her only then, as the Lights had decreed. She wrapped the amulets separately in black satin squares, put them back into her belt-purse, and donned sturdy leather gloves.
She glanced about the capacious chamber, reluctant to leave now that her brother was back in residence, even though the place would be safe enough. Her Sending couch was here, her books, the sheets of parchment with her maps and battle-plans, and benches and shelves crowded with arcane equipment. In the center of the workroom stood an iron candlestick nearly two ells in height, holding a waxen blob. Affixed in it was the green-glowing plaque of moonstone called Fortress, which shielded all rooms on this top floor of the South Tower from windwatching, and interdicted any person other than herself from entering or leaving without her freely spoken permission. Only a Sender sigil could penetrate the spell of couverture—and no one possessed such a sigil save herself.
She left without locking her door. There was no need. Then she unwrapped Concealer, slipped it into her glove, and spoke its spell. Immediately, she vanished from sight.
A spiral staircase of rusting ironwork led from her tower rooms to the second floor of the keep, where the regal apartments, presence chamber, and cavernous throne room were situated. She descended the once-grandiose flight of broad steps giving access to the great hall, meeting no one on the way.
Fenguard Castle was a rather small place but massively fortified. The mighty sorcerer Rothbannon, first Conjure-King of Moss, had furnished it richly using gold wrested from Didion; but over the years his successors shrank away from using his powerful Seven Stones because of the concomitant penalties demanded by the Beaconfolk. For all their expertise in glamour, scrying, and other conventional magic, the rulers of the isolated little kingdom had been poor for many generations, and the royal seat had sadly deteriorated. Fenguard’s tapestries and insulating arras had succumbed to moth and mildew, brightwork had tarnished, and the thick carpets had worn to shreds and were replaced—at least in the common rooms—by lowly rush matting. Firewood had always been scarce in Moss, where most trees were small and gnarled by the soggy soil and northerly climate, and charcoal was too dear for any use save forging. In these straitened times, even the king’s household burned mostly peat blocks for warmth and cooking, and used rushlights, fagot-torches, or smelly seal-oil lanterns for light rather than expensive wax candles.
When I am Conjure-Queen, Ullanoth promised herself, all that will change.
She hurried through the gloomy great hall, where the freeborn servants were long since asleep on their pallets, down the staircase to the forebuilding, which was guarded but not locked, and out into the torchlit inner ward. Rothbannon’s Marvel, a spectacular mechanical clock mounted above the massive gatehouse, showed a quarter past three in the morning.
She looked back toward the keep and saw lights shining in the royal chambers above. The occupants were shielded by Beynor’s own Fortress sigil. For a moment she contemplated Sending herself to them and forcing a confrontation. Her Great Stone had the power to penetrate Fortress’s guardian spell, and Interpenetrator would make the strongest door as easy to pierce as smoke. But she discarded the notion at once. She was not yet ready to reveal her own powerful weaponry to the enemy. Beynor believed that her sigils were only capable of defending her and performing minor sorcery. She’d taken care not to contradict his misapprehension, and now was not the time
to disabuse him.
No one was about as she hurried past the quiet cookhouse, bakery, and stables and approached the guardhouse beside the inner gate, where special caution would be needed to avoid detection. She paused in the heavy shadows and slipped Interpenetrator into the palm of her other glove. Mentally, she spoke its enabling spell, gritting her teeth. Fortunately, the pain associated with the magic of the two minor sigils was not too severe.
Concealer had enabled her to vanish completely, except for a faint shadow cast by the light of the guards’ peat brazier. Three armed men were gathered around it, warming themselves and gossiping in low voices. They never noticed the shadow drift past. Another pair of sentries stood on either side of the lowered inner portcullis next to the ropes of the alarm bells. They seemed half-asleep and ignored the almost inaudible sound of footsteps approaching the black iron grating… and the shadow that melted through the heavy metal without hindrance, then conquered the outer portcullis with equal ease.
She continued through the barbican, seeped past its barred oaken door, and traversed the outer ward, which was deserted except for sentries at the torchlit towngate and Watergate. She approached the latter, keeping close to the wall to obscure her shadow, and used magic to make the four men on duty sneeze. As they were distracted, she drifted through the closed gate like a wraith, went cautiously down the long flight of stairs that wound through the rocks, and came finally onto the landing stage along the Darkling River.
She deactivated Interpenetrator and tucked it away. The shield of invisibility hurt hardly at all. A number of skiffs were chained at the far end of the landing. She unlocked the cleanest-looking one with a tap of her finger, climbed into it, and caused it to move rapidly upstream.