by Carol Berg
CHAPTER 2
PRADOVERDE
“Dark as a tomb in here. Can’t see a wretched thing!”
“A moment,” I said. A twitch of my staff raised a steady warmth from a lamp Anne kept on a stool beside the stair. Pivot. Three paces. I laid a hand on the back of Anne’s chair.
“I heard ye don’t see. It’s true, is it?”
So he’d talked to someone of more recent knowledge than Bardeu. “Yes. But there’s no need for you to sit in the dark. Sit where you like.”
He sat himself in the large chair nearest the fire. I took Anne’s chair and waited for him to begin. He didn’t seem shy.
“Tell me, sorcerer, have ye sight in your dreams?”
I’d told no one of my dreams or my daily horror upon waking. My frights were no one’s business. But I answered Masson de Cuvier. His was no idle question.
“Yes. Every night. And every morning on waking, I lose it all over again. It’s like suffocation.”
“Aye. Just so.”
“Tell me of your dream.”
“I got to tell ye some history first. I’m a professional soldier, no conscript, no tenant summoned to service a king’s liegeman. Nor am I a chevalier. I’m a common grenadier, and a cracking good one, too. I’ve served on every border and in every campaign for fifty-three years under three kings. I’ve no family save my cadre. My men don’t love me, but they know what I drill into them keeps them alive. A paragon, ye might say, and so I have been.
“There’ve been things that troubled over the years, for certain. Men dyin’ from a commander’s foolishness. Enemies a man can’t fight face-to-face with honorable weapons. And the people in these far places…some of them good people, but enemies nonetheless, some wicked folk we must treat as allies. I’ve seen things, too, oddments a man can’t explain: some fair, some fearful. I’ve seen evil.”
His practiced delivery suggested he’d told this story many times. Yet at the mention of evil, his voice trembled again. I waited for him to go on.
“Near twenty years ago, young King Philippe chased the witchlords from their stronghold in Kadr. We run ’em to ground like rabbits in a place called Carabangor, an abandoned fortress city deep in the desert. That ruin was a labyrinth, made ten times larger by the witchlords’ illusions. But the king’s alchemists devised incendiaries that allowed us to sight the difference between their illusions and the true walls, and we soon took the gates. The night fell quiet, as if all were dead.
“’Twas too dangerous to move men into the city to clean the last of ’em out. Their wicked enchantments seemed to feed on the night. But we dared not give them time to slip away or rebuild their magics. So I took a party into the city to spy out where they were hid. Five of us were on the scout, Des de Roux, Unai Focault, Benat Toussaint, a boy called Hawk, and me. Soon as we were under the walls, we split up. Des and Unai headed for the old citadel. Benat went off to scout a barracks near the southern gate. Hawk and me combed the streets in front of the gates, working our way to meet up with the others.
“It was a terrible place. Mostly rubble. Ye didn’t know what ye was going to find around the next turn in the road or behind some ragged scrap of leather flapping in the wind. There was no moon, and ye dared not show a light. Ye crept along those twisty streets quiet as death, wishing ye’d left your boots behind so as to silence your steps the more. Ye’d think none but rats and fere-cats had walked there for a thousand years.
“We was a half hour in when we heard the crying—a woman or child sobbing as if the world had ended. Hawk was of a mind to ignore it. He was a hard boy, no family, no close friends among the men. Fine tracker, though. Best we had. But I’d never left woman or child crying that I could help, and said we had to look. It could’ve been a witchlord woman, after all.
“So Hawk and me tracked the sound to a grand place, more a temple than a house, with six great eagles stood in the front of it. A deal of the roof had caved in, so we’d starlight to navigate by. We followed that crying down and down a curved stair, past more great birds and beasts standing in the dark, till we thought we must come to the heart of the earth itself.”
The grenadier paused and cleared his throat.
“We’d come to a lake down there, the water milk white, and a fog hanging over it. Stars shone so bright through the broken roof, the fog glowed like pearls. Stone paving, slick with mold, ran right up to the edge of the water, so that ye might call it a pool more than a lake, save it was so big. Some fifty metres from the bank lay an island, naught but a rock in the center of the pool. And there stood the comeliest woman I ever looked on.
“Like a willow withe she was, with ghost-pale hair, though her skin was the color of good earth and eyes black as ebony. Her hair and her white robes floated out from her in the white fog so ye couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. She called out, weeping, begging us to set her free.
“A shell boat lay moored by the bank, and Hawk moved to jump in, but I stopped him.
“ ‘Wait,’ I told him. ‘This be no ordinary maiden to be rescued. Consider if it be some phantom, planted here by the witchlords to lure us to our destruction—and mayhap our king and comrades with us.’
“Hawk glared at me in his cold way, and said I’d led us on this merry chase instead of doing what we’d come to do, so how was I to have it both ways?
“Whilst I stood there, undecided, the woman held out her hand to show a green gem the size of a plum. ‘Take it!’ she says to me. Though her voice had dropped and she was so far away, it sounded as if she whispered right in my ear. ‘It is beyond price. Transport me across the lake and it’s yours evermore. ’Twill bring you what you most desire.’ ”
“Hawk moved again to fetch her, but I said no. ’Twould take precious time and our duty was to king and comrades. But indeed, I feared that place more than any weapon I’d ever faced. Already the jewel plucked at my yearnings.
“Hawk shrugged it off and ran back up the stair. I called to the woman that we’d duties but would come back for her quick as might be. She wailed till my blood curdled. When we came out of that temple, we found the dawn wind blowing, the whole night gone, though it seemed less than an hour.
“We worked our way quick to the citadel. Des reported Benat had found the sorcerers’ lair in the old barracks. He and Unai had gone back two hours since to bring on the assault. They feared we’d been caught in a witchlord spelltrap, as I believed we had been.
“So came the final assault, and on that terrible morn King Philippe and his friend Ruggiere, the Great Traitor who’s now redeemed, wiped the plague of Kadr from the earth.”
The old man stopped, breathing hard, as if he had come straightaway from that battlefield to tell his tale. Half the night could have passed, I was so caught up in it. “So did you go back?”
“Nay. Unai, Hawk, and I were dispatched right off to the occupation of Kadr. I told Des and Benat about it, quick before we marched out. Told them to have a care and take a mage if they could, to see if the woman was real or no. Years later when I saw them again, they said they’d gone no farther than the beast statues. Her wailing had spooked ’em, and they’d run away.”
“Likely she was only a phantom,” I said. “A Kadrian spelltrap after all.”
“Ah, nay. For there’s the dream, ye see. And the witchlords of Kadr be all dead and their stronghold burnt. I saw it all.”
“Tell me about the dream.”
“When the dream came in those first days, Hawk said ’twas ’cause we left the woman. Yet I didn’t and don’t feel guilty. I was right to choose as I did. But each time I see her face, she weeps and cries, and begs me come and save her. And in the dream, I row out there and fetch her away.”
His growing terror near lifted me from my chair.
“Soon as we return to shore, I take that great emerald, green as moss…beyond price…and it shows me my desires fulfilled. But it has a foul heart. I look deep and see a doom unleashed upon the world that is evil beyond any
thing I can speak. The woman laughs, and her laugh is all wicked and all desire, and I cannot put things back right again.”
“But you were strong,” I said. “You didn’t fall into the trap. What you dream never happened. Why is it so fearful?”
“Because I want it—that green jewel. I desire it the way a blind man craves his sight, and when I wake without it in my hand, ’tis like a suffocation.”
“Twenty years on, she’s escaped or dead,” I said. “Assuming she existed at all.” Yet spider feet teased at the hair on my neck.
“Oh, she’s still there, all right. When the dream wouldn’t go away, I hunted up Des and Benat. She calls to them in their dreams, too. They never even saw her, just heard her wailing, but they can describe her and the lake to me in every aspect. They hunger for the emerald, though I never told them of it. But they were both crippled up and couldn’t travel.”
“And you?”
“I’ve resisted thus far. But this year past, the dream comes every night, much stronger than before. If ye cannot take it from me, it’ll drive me to Carabangor. I’ll free her, then, and take her evil talisman and loose it on the world. That’s why I daren’t live with it longer.”
There was no doubting his determination.
“What of Hawk?”
Rapid fingers slapped softly on solid flesh—his own hand, chin, or forehead. I waited, curious as to his hesitation.
The tapping stopped. “Hawk was ready to go back. I couldn’t allow it.”
Night’s daughter…murder.
Needing time to assess a sensible course, I offered de Cuvier wine or beer. He refused. But I betook myself to the cellar to fill a new mug for myself.
In the years of my apprenticeship, my mentor had squeezed every spell, every book, and every scrap of magical knowledge from his far-flung web of friends and acquaintances—a granny here, a hedge wizard there, a tessila Reader too poorly educated or too drunk to work in a temple. Among this lot, two or three claimed to use Kadr magics. The Kadrites—the witchlords as they called themselves—had been a race of barbarian sorcerers who had settled in the desert country bordering Sabria and Aroth. Cruel and skilled in war, they had partnered with the mighty Arothi Empire to invade Sabria when we were weakened by the Blood Wars. From what I’d seen, the witchlords’ spellwork reflected their lives—brutal and unsophisticated. Subtle work like prisoned maidens or compulsive dream sendings seemed entirely unlike them.
In my practice at Bardeu, I’d dealt with a number of compulsions caused by ill-wrought charms or potions, death curses, or the like. I’d seen naught so powerful as would drive a soldier like de Cuvier to murder one of his own, yet experience testified to some small hope I could help him be rid of it. Certainly no Camarilla practitioner would attempt such a healing. The Camarilla believed magic a strictly physical discipline, producing results that could alter physical perceptions alone. They’d name de Cuvier a lunatic to imagine ephemera like dreams compelled his actions.
The grenadier pounced as soon as I topped the cellar stair. “So, sorcerer. Can you help me?”
I shook my head. “Can’t be sure. I need to be with you when the dream comes. Probe it to discover its nature. If I judge the task possible, we’ll need a few days.”
“No matter. Can’t do naught but think of it, anyway. If I cannot be rid of it, I’ll not live.”
“We’d best give it a try, then.”
“I’ll pay whatever fee you set,” he said, “sell my horse, my sword. And you’ll have my undying grat—”
“Wait till I’ve done, and we’ll settle. Stripping dreams…touching the mind. This is a dice game with many ways to lose that have naught to do with coin. So understand, I make no promises, save to take all good care and stop when I can do no more.”
“Agreed.” He didn’t hesitate.
“Come back tomorrow evening, and we’ll begin.”
“What’s wrong with tonight? To my mind, it can’t be soon enough.”
What was wrong with tonight? Only that it had been a long day already, and an all-night vigil at de Cuvier’s bedside would not improve on it. But the tale…the magic…was superlatively intriguing. No harm in looking.
“All right, then. I’ll have my…assistant…prepare a room for you.” The wayward Finn, reeking of ale, had just clattered through the back door.
While de Cuvier installed his horse in our stable and fetched his kit, Finn and I dragged a bed down the stair and placed it in the middle of a barren little chamber just off the study. Finn, keeping his lips shut and muffling his hiccups as if I were too thick-witted to deduce his condition, set a chair next the bed and brought in a night cupboard, table, and lamp. I knelt and laid my hand on a glassy ring that encompassed most of the floor. As the circumoccule’s magical structure took shape in my mind, I strengthened the enclosure, sweeping it clean of spell scraps and repairing blemishes in its structure caused by Anne’s errors and my own fumbling. If the grenadier’s dream was caused by enchantment, then I could better disentangle it in a magically uncluttered environment.
When de Cuvier returned, I encouraged him to make all his usual preparations. He expected no problems, he said, as he was a man of regular habits, well accustomed to bedding down in unusual circumstances. “A cup of warm milk laced with brandy will put me out till sunrise.”
I’d give him two hours to settle.
Once Finn had set out the posset, I sent the boy off to the guesthouse where we two made our beds. Yawning, stumbling, and giggling like a milkmaid, he’d be little use until morning.
Unfortunately, his absence prevented any useful preparation for the work. I’d written notes about the Kadr spellwork in the journals of my apprenticeship. And among my books were a bound manuscript on dreams and a text that related to gems. Emeralds, in particular, had interesting and complex magical properties. But pages were useless without eyes to read them.
I resisted slamming a fist through the wall. Instead, I paced the sitting room. Twenty steps, turn, fifteen, turn…
Naught remained of the night sounds I had studied earlier, save the ticking of the mechanical clock on the hearth shelf, as if time was all that was left in the world.
Anne’s father had gifted her the clock. She’d laughed when it arrived, describing it as an inducement to stay grounded in the world of scientific truth, while abiding in the countryside with a daemon.
Five years of torture to fuel a sorcerer’s power might have changed Michel de Vernase’s beliefs about magic’s efficacy, but the ordeal had imbued him with no love for its practitioners. His younger daughter had died at Collegia Magica de Seravain. I hadn’t killed her or conspired in her murder. But I’d known of it, hidden it, in the same way I’d known of and chosen not to report a prison warder’s abuse of his son, Ambrose. Those weren’t even the worst things I’d done to insinuate myself into de Gautier’s grand plan. Understandably, Michel and Ambrose, along with the Camarilla Magica, the Temple, and most of the residents of the royal city, held something of a grudge.
Anne didn’t like thinking about the choices I’d made during those years. I didn’t, either, come to that. Once I’d met de Gautier and grasped the breadth and complexity and danger of his scheme, I’d dared not retreat from our plan to thwart him. The incisive brilliance of his mind—knowledge and insight that dwarfed even Portier’s, and so far above my own haphazard education as to clamor that my proper place in the world was the coal mines I had escaped—told me he would pick up the least hint of duplicity. Thus I’d done what I deemed necessary to convince de Gautier I wanted to join him, acts reprehensible enough to convince my only friend, the stubborn, naive Portier, that I had deserted his cause. I’d buried myself so deep, I’d come near believing in my own infamy.
I refused to brood about it. That wouldn’t change anything. The uncomfortable part was how easy it had been. The magic, both de Gautier’s desired perversions of the Mondragon rites and the work I’d done to delay and subvert what I did for him, was elegant, intricate
, and challenging, exactly the kind of sorcery I most relished. And to live as a man of heedless violence and moral indifference scarce took thought. I’d always manifested a perverse nature. For most of my first sixteen years, I had been convinced a daemon lived inside me. After four years of a double life, giving that perversity full rein, I’d scarce recalled any other way to live.
But there had come a night when I had driven myself ragged while raising the revenant of a dead king. I returned to my apartments, only to discover one of my erstwhile allies prying through my personal belongings. Rage had shredded what control remained in me. As I lashed out in mindless hate and fury, teetering on the verge of a murderous madness from which I might never have drawn back, a cry of pain tore through the aether straight into my skull. The shock of that cry—Anne’s cry—had prevented me bludgeoning the queen’s foster mother to death and thus losing the slim advantage I had gained on those who would upend the world. Anne had saved me that night and over the ensuing days offered me a companionship that became my refuge, a link to sanity and rightful purpose.