by Carol Berg
I freed a hand and shoved the Archivist’s arm aside before he could dispense his salve. “First, if you would, Knight Archivist, tell me where is Commander Inek.”
“Inek is resting comfortably out of his mind not fifty paces from here. Out of his mind because there was some alteration in the infernal trap and I don’t know how to repair the damage it’s done. Cursed pattern’s entirely crosswise, like to finding thorns on ivy.”
“Out of his mind!”
“I’ve put him in stasis, hoping the damage is arrested as well, but I’ve no way to tell. He says you might. Were it anyone else . . . I ought to have you drowned for harboring such skills without me knowing of them.”
Inek had told Cormorant that if I couldn’t find Inek himself, I should consult the Archivist. Which meant he had some measure of trust in the man. “So you didn’t harm him?”
“Deunor’s fire, he told me you were intelligent! I am the Knight Archivist of Evanide. I could have fractured his memory in a hundred different ways at any time I wished over the last thirty years—a bit longer if you count the last year of our training together, the year we studied Evanide’s greatest magic together, and I discovered it was my calling and certainly not his.”
Which answer, I noted, was neither yes nor no.
“Late last night,” he continued with wounded patience, “a concussive magic drew me to this chamber. It wasn’t the door wards. Inek let himself in very easily, because he recognized the spellwork on the door—maybe years ago, maybe sometime in between, maybe in the same hour he came creeping in here to steal your relict. We developed the ward together. I should have created something different when I was named Archivist, but I had far too many other things to learn, and Inek is imminently trustworthy. . . .”
Steal your relict! “Please, Knight Archivist. Dispense your salve and start at the beginning, if you would. I’ll be missed when seventh hour rings.”
I’d no sense to follow his meanderings with my eyes smoldering like a dragon’s gut.
“Head back.” Just as he always commanded in the Seeing Chamber.
I tilted my head back obediently. The gooey globs of salve he dropped into my eye sockets spiked needles of ice into my skull, and when he wiped it off, the pressure drove them deep. I pressed the heels of my hands to my forehead. “You were speaking of my memory relict. . . .”
“Inek sneaked in here night before last, evidently to steal it, though I don’t at all understand why. He’s been bothering me about it for two years, which makes no sense at all, as he knew it was interdicted. But then who ever tells the Archivist anything of importance?”
He paused his rattling narrative. I felt more than saw his accusing glare, as if my very existence offended him.
“In his search he encountered a trap,” he continued. “A nasty, dreadful bit of spellwork that began snarling his memory. Like snakes, he told me when I found him. His cries were terrible. It was the convulsive energy of the trap spell that drew me here, you see. I tried to reverse the damage, but concluded quickly that I’d no idea how to do so. It was a cleanly worked trap spell, but damaged somehow . . . perverse . . . difficult to read— Well, it had no business being where he encountered it. The Order’s discipline is falling to ruin.”
Distress was tearing at the old man, whether due to the Order’s lacks or Inek’s condition or his own incapacity was unclear. But it had shaken loose more words than I’d ever heard from him.
“Before I put him in stasis, Inek had enough sense remaining to tell me that his mewling paratus Greenshank might have the magic to help sort him out, and that he’d left orders for you to find him. I questioned Second, of course, as he can access the relictory at any time. He denied altering the trap, but he had a memory hole where your name should have been. I put him down for the time being, until I could probe deeper. Then I waited. Either you would show up or . . . someone else . . .”
Perhaps the person who set the damnable thing? Did he suspect someone? Feathers stroked my spine.
“Is it common for a trainee’s name to be excised from someone’s mind?”
“Not common at all. But then nothing’s been usual since—” He stuffed a linen square in my hand. “Such matters are beyond a paratus’s concern.”
Blotting sticky tears, I rose. The leather straps dangling from the chair I’d just vacated choked off argument, especially when I noted similar straps binding the limp Second Archivist to another chair.
“Please take me to Commander Inek. I’ll try my best to help him.”
“I should hope so. You’re an oath-sworn paratus of the Equites Cineré.”
He led me past an alchemist’s bench to a desk burdened with a hundredweight of books and papers. He retrieved the seven silver medallions that were the symbol of his office from a glass box, pulled their silver chains over his head, and flicked a hand at the ceiling. Lamps flared into life, one and then the next, into the depths of the chamber.
The blooming light revealed a sight that staggered me. The rear half of the chamber was filled with bronze racks, row upon row of them, one stacked atop another. Arrayed on the racks, each in a frame of its own, were identical cubes of thick glass, each edge the length of my finger.
Only as I looked on them—thousands of them, stacked ten racks high—did the subtle majesty of their massed enchantments settle on me. Each cube was bound in layers of spells, designed to protect the intricate, powerful enchantment that held a man’s memory—the black-and-white relicts just visible through the cloudy glass. Some cubes were empty, though, save for wisps of flame that spread a golden glow through the glass walls like stray sunlight.
“Memories,” I whispered, as if these scraps of souls might hear me. “There must be one of these for every tyro to train at Evanide. How in the name of the gods do you keep them straight?”
“They are as individual as every man. And we key them with magic, of course, bound to the tyro’s soul.”
The touch of his finger caused silver tracings and sigils to appear along the bronze rails. Some I recognized from my studies here; others were strange.
“Some say we should toss out the relicts of those who fail or die. But I agree with my predecessors. They are holy, in the way a man’s or woman’s bones are holy, no matter the person’s worthiness in life. So they remain.”
“What are the cubes with a flame?”
“Those of the knights, of course. In our early years, the residue of a knight’s destroyed relict was returned to its vessel. But terrible spells can be worked with fragments of a soul.”
“That’s why the knight throws the dust of his relict into the sea.”
To move between the stacks was like swimming through liquid glass. At the far end of the chamber Inek lay on a pallet of blankets and cloaks. His eyes were closed, skin flushed, hands clenched. But he did not breathe.
My own breath halted, as if one of the massive pillars supporting the fortress had collapsed. “Dead . . .”
“No. In stasis, as I told you. Unchanging until I wake him and the snakes devour him from the inside out, or he remains in this state for more than a month and his body hardens and crumbles. So what is it you do? How can you possibly help?”
Something . . . gods, please . . .
“At one time my magic could reveal secrets. I’m not sure I can—”
“Your bent has been returned to you?”
“By chance. I don’t— It just happened.”
“Hmph. A bent often breaks through on its own, especially if it was used intensively before it was masked. Masking bents is one of the most difficult things I do.” Lecturing seemed to soothe his frenzy. “Bents are nature’s imperative, as much a part of physical memory as of intellect. If some external spellwork cracked your mask, which from the way you prevaricate sounds likely, I’d be very interested in hearing about it. But I think you can have some confidence your
talent will serve you—and confidence is a great part of our skill, yes?” He sounded almost friendly.
“Yes, certainly.” From Fallon’s testimony and Bastien’s, I had used my bent for portraiture very deeply indeed. “I’ve no idea how long it might take to produce something useful, but if you would . . . I must return to Cormorant by seventh hour.”
“I’ll be needed for tonight’s rites as well. But if you can give me some idea of what’s been done to him, I’ll work the rest of the night if need be. Reach deep for him, Greenshank.”
Whether for guilt or friendship, he cared deeply.
As did I. “I will.”
I settled on the floor beside Inek, unrolled the parchment, and sharpened the pen. Opening the ink cup released the oaky smell of tannin and the sour stink of green vitriol. In these two years the smell of ink and paint had roused longings I could not name. Now I could.
Bastien said I ran my fingers over the faces of the dead as I drew them. Easy to understand. I’d learned a great deal about magic at Evanide—about the huge role our senses play in designing the structure of our spellwork, allowing precision I hadn’t known was possible. It was why we worked so vigorously to stretch our sensory perceptions. I would have to trust that my instincts knew how to link those perceptions with my two bents, and that my right hand recalled how to create a likeness, for I needed to reveal not just Inek’s nature but what had happened to him.
Thus, as Inek hovered between death and life, uncomfortably exposed without his mask, my left hand traced the lines of his prominent cheekbones, his high, straight brow, his stern jaw. Then I dipped my pen, reached deep for the magic burning in chest and brow, and began to draw. . . .
• • •
“Greenshank!”
My wrist seemed to be caught in a foot trap. Fruitlessly, I tried to retrieve it. “Let go!”
“The last quarter’s rung and you must run for the Aerie. But Deunor’s fire, look what you’ve done. I’ve studied it as you worked.”
The heat of my bent had cooled a goodly while earlier. But I was trying to push deeper, to find more. I’d surely failed.
No more noble figure could ever have worn the silver mail of the Equites Cineré than the man looking out from the page. His right hand wielded the warrior’s sword; his left gripped the staff of magic. But the eyes peering through Inek’s mask were solid black. Black blood streamed from a terrible, ragged gash across his brow and pooled near his feet. Images crowded the pool—a palatial home, an old man’s scarred hand, a woman’s face, a drowning tyro . . . But none of it gave a hint of Inek’s assailant or any key to his healing. The background remained blank—solid white.
“There must be more,” I said, “if I just knew how to reach for it.”
But the flame in my breast had died. I felt a surety of completion. The image inside me was exactly this, and as well as I knew anything, it was true.
“But this is extraordinary!” said the Archivist, tapping the page in a woodpecker’s rhythm. “Don’t you see? This wound is devouring Inek’s memory, certainly. But notice that all of the images are in the pool—perhaps the past that he has already given.”
“But the drowning tyro is his present life. Surely . . .”
“That could be a tyro, but I see no other sign of the Order. Silverdrake is lost in all this whiteness, but he holds on. Look at his fists—bloodless and pale—clenched about his weapons. And this neck chain”—he tapped on the thick-worked loop about Inek’s neck—“is no simple decoration. Memory work is all about symbols, and this chain surely details the spellwork that binds him. Each link is a glyph. The symbology that memorists work with is a language to itself—because the concepts we deal in require thousands of words. And those words could be in any dialect of any language, though truly I’ve never seen glyphs representing any but a variant of Aurellian—which comprises only about three hundred dialects . . .”
Time pressed. “Knight Archivist, will Inek—?”
But he wouldn’t stop. “If I could determine what alteration has been made to the original trap spell, Inek might have a chance. There are thirteen links in the neck chain, thirteen glyphs, which are not half enough for such a working, but all of them are familiar pieces of a memory trap. Perhaps—” He held the page just under his nose. “Yes, see this one!”
Manic, he snatched the pen from my hand and pointed the tip to a link in Inek’s habergeon, a link right over Inek’s heart. It was brighter than others, as if a layer of tarnish had been polished away from that particular curl of steel.
“This is the same as the first in the neck chain. There’s more of the pattern hidden in his mail. Just pray it is the key to unwind the spellwork, and that I can find and decipher it in time to help him.”
He dipped the pen and scribbled some of the patterns in the white space of the drawing, aligning them in various arrangements. “Get out of here! I’ve work to do. Say nothing of these matters to anyone.”
“Aye, sir knight.”
“I’ll be in the Hall when Cormorant— Oh, wait!”
I was halfway to the door when his biting call stopped me. He fingered one of his silver medallions, then beckoned me down an aisle of the glass cubes. He touched one at just about head height.
Dissipating magic buffeted my face like a gale, as the cube’s front face melted away. The Archivist pulled out a half-relict—a broken fragment that held a man’s life—and laid it in my hand with gentle reverence.
World and time stood still. I glanced up, unable to speak, choked with words, thoughts, imaginings . . .
“No, no, Greenshank,” he said, impatiently. “This is Cormorant’s, not yours. You must carry it to his rite. Second was supposed to do it, but—” He shrugged.
“Of course.” The flood drained away. “So mine remains in its glass. Inek didn’t find it.”
No matter his mask, I could read the Archivist’s discomfort clearly. The tale it told left me as still and empty as Inek. He led me down an aisle and pointed at the fifth cube from the end on the third row from the bottom—the glass that held my memory. I sank to my knees in front of it.
“Inek begged me to tell you he did not do this,” said the Archivist, his rust-colored robe brushing my shoulder. “The corruption in the glass tells me it has been this way for more than a year—perhaps from the day you arrived. Saints and stones, if Inek had only known that the man occupying these robes was his partner from the day we were tyros. . . . He could have come to me, explained why learning more of a nothing paratus like you was so important. I could have shown him where it was, and I’d have seen that perverted . . . corrupt . . . wicked enchantment waiting. But he didn’t know whether he could trust the Archivist, so he sneaked in, broke the seal, and touched what was inside.”
The cube’s glass front was dissolved. What lay inside was no thumb-sized fragment of stone, but black dust and white splinters and a purulent enchantment that could set snakes devouring a mind.
CHAPTER 19
“Paratus Cormorant, it has been an honor to serve with you. The hour has come for your choice.”
The man in sodden gray gave all the appearance of sleep, tucked into the rocks as he was. But my hand on his arm roused his grin before he even opened his eyes. “Call me Terryn for now. Terryn de Pescatori-Salvados. Let me hear it.”
“Gods’ bones! Terryn de Pescatori-Salvados . . . they gave you your—”
“A secret not to be shared,” he whispered. His face was animated, filled with life and experience and . . . knowing. “They give you back everything. So you can choose fully to hold or yield it. It’s terrible and wonderful and painful, and you’ve only the two days. But to see your life beginning to end, to make sense of the world and reasons and where you belong . . . It gives a man confidence.”
Unless there was nothing to give back. The shock was only beginning to settle in. My past . . . and the man shaped
from those years and experiences . . . was dust. Unrecoverable.
“Gods!” Cormorant slapped his head. “How could I—? Greenshank, did you find Inek?”
“He lives, but a spell trap has damaged his mind. The Knight Archivist is looking into it. For now, you’ve other things to think about. You know Inek would wish this night to go forward.”
Cormorant examined me carefully. “You’re injured as well.”
“To see a fine man laid low by someone in this fortress”—outrage elbowed its way past self-pity—“we are all injured.”
His hand clapped my shoulder. “Whatever I can do to forward justice, I will do. Until then, I’ll hold Inek in my thoughts. And you as well, brother. It’s been clear for some time that Inek believes greatness awaits you.”
Laughter emerged as a mirthless bleat. “I’ll hold to that as I walk the seaward wall tonight. Come, you must dress. I wonder if they left you a towel . . .”
He needed no help, so I didn’t see which tunic he chose, though I believed Dunlin correct that it would be black. Cormorant . . . Terryn de Pescatori-Salvados . . . whatever name he chose to carry forward . . . was destined for greatness.
A trudge down the Aerie stair and through the deep passage led us to the armory. As we passed the armory door, I unfurled the Order’s ensign—the white quiver blazon on a field of black—and led my brother into the lingering daylight on the side of Idolon Mount. Angled sunlight bathed the fortress in gold, the storm but a few bloated clouds in the east. To the cheers of three hundred knights, and a hundred parati, squires, tyros, and adjutants, we descended the outer stair and joined the Marshal and nineteen knights-commander in procession to the Common Hall of Evanide.
The anthem of the Order, sung with such strength and belief by the assembled brothers, raised the hair on my neck. But it did not send my soul soaring as every other time I’d heard it.
Inek should be here. To make a knight from ash and splinters was a work worthy of celebration. To harm one, as Inek had been harmed, was a work worthy of mortal judgment. I had to assume that the person who destroyed my relict was the same who had laid the spell trap, even if the deeds were two years apart. But it was the latter crime for which he would pay.