The Daemon Prism: A Novel of the Collegia Magica

by Carol Berg

  Ixtador Beyond the Veil was no divine realm installed by the Creator to teach us lessons about savage wars, but an unnatural result of magical experimentation by Anne’s ancestors. Portier had a theory that its aberrant nature somehow corrupted true magic, requiring a practitioner to expend resources beyond nature’s intent. He said it was going to kill me eventually or drive me back into that abyss of madness from which Anne had rescued me. I didn’t believe him. There were plenty of good reasons to solve the mystery of Ixtador, but that wasn’t one of them. Magic was everything of beauty and order and sanity in this world. I wanted Anne to see it.

  But her family’s disapproval weighed on Anne like an iron yoke. Only her terror that her raw, uncontrolled power might explode into violence had kept her from them for so long. Now that fear was gone, and so was she.

  The clock struck tenth hour of the evening watch. As the next long hour passed, I found myself touching things—a chair, the bookshelf, the annoying clock—just to make sure the entire world hadn’t vanished with her.

  ELEVENTH HOUR. TIME TO BEGIN. Anticipation strumming my nerves, I removed my boots, picked up a blanket to ward off the night chill, and padded softly into the little chamber.

  The room was filled with the grenadier’s throaty breathing, the air rank with brandy and peppermint. He slept on his back, his face turned away from the door.

  I’d instructed him not to move the chair, despite its cramped placement. He’d done as I asked. On hands and knees, I felt my way around the circumoccule, sealing the enclosure with intent and will. The barrier closed, I settled myself in the chair, grasped my staff between thumb and palm of my weak right hand, and laid my left on de Cuvier’s forehead. I imposed my will on his mind, planting a simple humming inside him—a beacon of sorts, nothing like to disturb the natural course of his sleep. Then I opened myself to the aether.

  Alien passions surged through my spirit—tenderness, fright, anger.…So remote as this house was, the relentless expressions of human feeling were subdued. Most folk within fifty kilometres were sleeping. But darker things drifted on the currents of night.…

  The aether is a universe entirely apart from the one ordinary senses reveal, a place where human passions become tangible, alongside magical energies and threads of power, and keirna—the accumulated essence of every person and natural object. Strong remnants of hatred emanated from the darkness outside Pradoverde’s walls. Bloodshed. Mystery. This land had seen more than one dispute. The wood to the west of the pasture was a remnant of an ancient forest that had once stretched hundreds of kilometres over the hills into Tallemant. Its keirna created a rich and mysterious presence in the deeps. Some things I could not identify, even after two years here. Eventually, I would. I never tired of exploring the aether.

  Anyone with a scrap of talent for it could touch this other universe. Some worked true magic. Some glimpsed things other folk could not see. Some heard whispers or felt creeping certainties about what had happened in a particular place or what might happen there in the future, when they walked places rich with history. But as far as I knew, only Anne and I could interact with the energies of the aether—hear, feel, and speak.

  But there was a great deal more Anne had only glimpsed. Since the days I’d come to understand the nature of the voices I heard, I had worked to understand the aether’s structure and composition, its possibilities, its rules. Most important, I’d learned how to envision the structures of spellwork, and how to manipulate them.

  Dreams were just another stream of energy feeding this ephemeral universe. My gift of hearing and a great deal of practice allowed me to trace, distinguish, and share the dreams of another. If the dream was spell-wrought, there was a possibility I could alter or release the binding of the enchantment as I could with other magic.

  Thus, with control and discipline, I sorted through the aether until I found the humming beacon I’d planted in de Cuvier…

  … and a shattering of light, sensation, and urgency. Horses, galloping like thunder. Windblown…racing across a great plain…past crofts and ruins…streaked orange and purple sky…Ah, gods, all the unnamable colors of dream. Hurry…hurry…there’s battle to be joined.…To be late is to fail.…

  Blackness shrouded my sight in nauseating abruptness, as if my stomach had been yanked out through my nose. I waited in the dark.

  Ear-splitting thunder…blood-splashed masonry crumbling, crashing, pelting, pummeling…shattered walls…Into the breach! For glory…for king…for brothers-in-arms…Hurry…

  On through the night, I viewed these fragments, like snippets of conversation heard in a crowded room, many of them nonsense. Interspersed were fallow times, some brief, some hours long.

  When my head lolled, I threw off the blanket and sat up straighter. Concentrate…focus. Sleep and you’ll miss it.

  Formless clouds and vapors…fleeting images of faces that evoked familiarity… Coming faster now. A grin…a salute…

  I probed deeper. There! What was that?

  Yellow sparks stretched into tendrils of shimmering light. Light without warmth. Even for one who lived in darkness, this was cold fire, as alien to the other dream stuff as stone discovered in the heart of a flower. More so, for stone and flower were both of nature, and this yellow infusion was of no relation at all to Masson de Cuvier and his dreaming.

  The yellow tendrils grew more solid, interlacing, becoming stronger, like heated threads of glassy citrine cooling into the shape of a cyclone. This I had seen before—a structure of enchantment, a portal through which magic could flow.

  Superimposed upon the structure was the dream, the woman wrapped in a fog of pearled white—she of the old soldier’s story—dark skin, ebon eyes, pale hair, and wrenching grief. Beneath my hand de Cuvier groaned and tossed his head, and I almost lost contact with him. But I held on, for I could not bear to lose that vision. Such terrible beauty, prisoned by a milk white lake as deep as the Souleater’s caverns.

  “Noble warrior, please don’t leave me here!” The great emerald rested on her outstretched palm. Huge, its facets glittered, transforming yellow-orange light into arrows of fiery emerald.

  What sorcery could create so vivid a dream? The cavern’s dampness chilled my skin. I felt as if I could reach out and touch her smooth skin and drifting hair. Such need filled me. Such desire…

  De Cuvier resisted but, in the miraculous way of dreams, found himself standing beside her. Taking her hand, he led her into the shell boat and rowed her across the white lake. Once ashore, he accepted the gem and peered deep within it. So did I with him, unthinking, unwary…

  Oh, gods, I could see! Not just phantasms and memories and dream stuff, but towering trees and hawks soaring from rocky heights. Soon I became the hawk and looked down on a boisterous river, rippling, frothing, burbling between rocks.…

  And then I was back in Coverge, smothered by the raging heat of the smithy, while a frigid gale howled beyond the door. Blue-white flames thundered in the forge as a glowing shaft of iron glowed red and the hammer fell.…

  My books…My fingers caressed the leather bindings on unfamiliar shelves. Ours here at Pradoverde, I knew, though I’d never seen them, each title familiar, each holding a treasure of knowledge open to me again.…

  Green fire obscured the visions, and with de Cuvier, I reached greedily into the emerald’s depths in search of more, only now the world was bathed in livid light, as if it suffered a massive bruise—a deep rot in the core of the Stone. New images coalesced in the dark center, and the woman convulsed in laughter. Young. Wicked.

  Her laughter brought me to my senses. I’d entered the dream to help the man, not pursue my own desires.

  I withdrew, pushing aside de Cuvier’s lust and growing fear. Shoving aside my own curiosity and desire, I sought the pathways of enchantment…the structure, the hook, the point of linking where the keyword binds keirna.

  I touched the apex of the citrine-hued portal. Enchantment thrummed with the energies of stars, threate
ning to incinerate me, but the spot darkened to a deep ocher, and one strand fell loose. Carefully, strand by strand, I unraveled the complex weaving, and the vision began to fade.…

  The laughter ceased as I worked, but only at the end did I notice the woman staring at me. Her pale hair floated in the mist. Her black eyes, now flecked with silver, had narrowed in puzzlement.

  “It’s you at last!” she said, cocking her head. “My partner said you couldn’t resist. But what is this you do?”

  In an explosive rush of magic and a burst of yellow sparks, the dream evaporated, and profound darkness enshrouded me in sleep.

  CHAPTER 3

  PRADOVERDE

  Birds squawked…argued…flapped angry wings. My neck felt like a corkscrew. When I shifted, trying to get comfortable, a hard bar dug into my side. What the devil?

  I blinked. Blinked again, twisted my head, scrubbed at my face.

  My stomach flopped over, chills shivering my skin. Oh, gods, gods, gods…

  Wholly disoriented, I fumbled, flailing, for my staff. My feet thrust me upward…forward…and I crashed onto cushions, and the seat toppled out from under me, clattering to the floor. I’d been in a chair. The cushions…a bed.

  I rolled to my back and felt the room settle into place around me. Ceiling above. Walls to the side. Warmth bathed my left cheek—so the window. My bare foot located my staff, fallen to the floor. Once my heart slowed, I slid down to sitting beside the bed to fetch it.

  As on every morning, I pressed my head to the stick, near crushing the smooth, hard hornbeam. Would I could slaughter you again, Gautier. And you, Jacard, you sniveling lackwit, do I ever find you, I’ll set your bowels aflame. And you, Michel de Vernase, a pox on you for being so stupid as to botch a simple investigation, so that Portier inherited it and the ever-persuasive idiot librarian dragged me into that cursed conspiracy.…

  As I suppressed my trembling and the impulse to murder half the world’s population, I recalled where I was and why. “Cuvier?”

  I didn’t expect an answer. My senses had already reached out—in better control than my mind—and discovered no one in the chamber. I rubbed my muzzy head, trying unsuccessfully to recall anything beyond the end of the spell-wrought dream.

  What exactly had happened? Though I had unraveled the enchantment, I was under no illusion that I had destroyed it permanently. But I had also been a participant. The jewel showed me images entirely unrelated to Masson de Cuvier. And the woman saw me, recognized me as separate from the dreamer, spoke to me. How was that possible? Men of science, of religion, and of magic all dismissed true dreams as mystery. Those I had dealt with in my own practice were no natural dreams but pure enchantment, visions wrought by magic. And no one in any vision had ever interacted with me.

  A tap at the door and a hesitant “Master?” announced Finn. He sounded none the worse for his raucous evening.

  “Come.”

  “You look fairly well wretched,” he blurted.

  “A pig in your eye, too. Have you—?” The fragrant steam of black tea wreathed my face. “Ah, blessed…”

  Finn had brought me that for which I’d forgive him any trespass. I inhaled until I was near bursting, feeling only mild guilt at the aristo luxury. I’d never tried the stuff till Anne teased me into it, promising a potion for clear thinking that rivaled any of magic. She delighted in pricking my weaknesses.

  Only when the pungent beverage had swept the cobwebs from my head did I attempt another thought. “What’s become of the grenadier?”

  “He rose at sixth hour, tended his horse, ate half a loaf of bread and three boiled eggs. Asked about a farrier, as his horse has a cracked hoof. Said he’d be back.”

  “Good. That’s good.” I wanted to know what this dream meant, how it was done, and whether it would change now I’d been a part of it. Was the woman the enchantress or an illusion, masking the true practitioner? She looked younger than Anne, yet de Cuvier had seen her first some twenty years since. The tale was fascinating, the magic entirely new.

  “Repairing the stable roof will have to wait,” I said. “I’ve a need to prepare before Cuvier sleeps again.”

  “I can carry on alone,” said Finn, already retreating. “Leave you to it.”

  “No. I need you in the study.”

  “But—”

  “It’s just to read,” I snapped. “I’ll not turn you into a slug. Not today.”

  Anne insisted magic frightened Finn. Or I did. Likely both.

  Reining in my devil temper, I described the books I wanted and where I thought they might be. While I fidgeted and bit my tongue, Finn searched the shelves and stacks. Anne’s absence gaped, as if I’d opened a book cover to find no pages or spied a mountain removed from a familiar range.

  “I think I have them,” he said at last. “They look awfully difficult.” Finn hated reading as much as I hated having him do it.

  “Begin. The dream text first…”

  The treatise on dreams was useless. Though we spent two hours slogging through its archaic language, it mentioned nothing of identical dreams shared between multiple dreamers or of dream images that reacted specifically to a dreamer’s presence.

  Neither my notes on Kadrian spellwork nor any other reference on the witchlords mentioned compulsive visions or dream sendings. Evidently Kadrian spelltraps came in only two kinds—short-lived things that slowed a victim’s reactions till something extremely nasty dropped on his head, and some particularly virulent memory blocks.

  Finn laboriously recited the chapter headings of the little text on gems.

  “Stop! Try that one.” “Gems of Legend” sounded worth a look.

  Finn stammered through descriptions of a tiny Aesulpian emerald that could reshape the wearer’s voice and of almond-sized stones embedded in Julithean god-masks, said to give the priest-wearers the gift of farseeing. Supposedly, the one who wielded a particular rough-cut emerald from the mountain kingdom of Sarkhazia could summon storms and mold stone if the person lived long enough, which seemed to be never, as the gem drained the life from anyone who used it. Sarkhazia had vanished in an avalanche a thousand years ago. Perhaps the diabolical gem explained why.

  Sorting any real truth from the tales was impossible. Yet, one short passage sparked my interest enough, I had Finn read it three times over.

  Reputedly the most potent emeralds known are the Tyregian Emeralds, otherwise known as the Maldivean Seeing Stones. The earliest reference to the three occurs on a Cinnear tomb fresco, detailing the hand of their triune deity delivering to humankind a single jewel of extraordinary size in time of a great famine.

  The historian Podrenard claims that the Tyregian Emeralds, the single Stone split into three, enabled a petty mage-warrior named Altheus to bring down the savage First Empire of Aroth and create the hegemony of Maldivea. Unverified tales of Altheus, later known as the Holy Imperator, claimed him possessed of extraordinary magical prowess, as well as the gifts of augury, wise-judgment, and speaking in dreams. Temple records attribute the fall of Maldivea to the blasphemy of Altheus’s successor, who, it was said, imprisoned the souls of his fallen enemies in torment.

  Speaking in dreams attracted my notice. But the references to imprisoning the souls of the dead disturbed me more. Anne’s description of the ravenous occupants of Ixtador Beyond the Veil—spectres, phantasms of living souls drained of individual humanity, reduced to gaping, walking starvation—was locked inside my head with my memories of sight. Unlike the memories, her image did not fade. Foreboding skittered across my skin.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing more about these Seeing Stones?”

  “Naught I can see, Master.”

  Surely I was a fool to imagine any connection. Two years of investigation had convinced the king that Germond de Gautier had no other relatives lurking about, ready to plunge us into chaos with magical relics. I had destroyed de Gautier, and Anne had killed his partner, Kajetan, ending their grand conspiracy. Yet their journals, implements, a
nd source books had vanished along with Kajetan’s nephew on that same night. Jacard yet lived, but an untrained hedge witch could do more with those books and journals than my incompetent adept. Yet, it was most curious. She’d said, at last and you couldn’t resist as if she knew who I was.

  FINN SHOOK ME AWAKE IN late afternoon. Only the prospect of another long night would force me to sleep during the day; one bad waking in a sun’s passage was usually enough. The abrupt ending scattered my dream fragments like shattered glass. As we shared Finn’s offering of boiled leeks and overcooked fish, and the grenadier’s interminable monologue on army food, I could not shake the sense that I had missed something of great importance.

  I shoved my plate away untasted. When Finn asked if he could get me something other, I yelled that I would god-blasted eat when I was hungry. And then I had to ask pardon for the yelling, which only made the meal more awkward. The annoying youth did try. Finn and I could work for half a day with less than ten words between us. The grenadier’s need to fill the air with words rubbed my spirit raw.