The Daemon Prism: A Novel of the Collegia Magica

by Carol Berg

  Too late, blind man…The enchantress in white had promised vengeance. Sometimes, in the dark, I heard her laughing.

  CHAPTER 5

  JARASCO

  On our sixth day out, we rode into thick-walled Jarasco, the bustling city that straddled the borders of Challyat, Delourre, and Coverge. Ilario, claiming he was wholly dilapidated, insisted we take accommodation at a local inn. “It’s already dusk, Dante, and it’s threatening rain, and the gate guards told us the entire town will be locked down less than an hour hence, so we can’t change our minds later.”

  “But surely we can squeeze in a few more kilometres before nightfall.” Though it was true the day’s overcast had my hours wholly confused.

  “You’ll be there tomorrow no matter—and likely sooner if you sleep in a bed. Beds are one of humankind’s finest inventions.…”

  “You must understand, Chevalier. I need to be there. If I could push on alone, I would. You can ask whatever you wish of me once I’ve seen to my business: charms, protections, or potions, far more effective than those you buy in the markets. Something’s terribly wrong.…”

  Everywhere. Inside me. In the aether, the realm of souls and dreams. In the land of the living and the land of the dead. Not even at Mont Voilline had I felt it so strongly. If someone had said my body was stripped of flesh and muscle and the winds of the netherworld were howling through my bones, I would have believed it so.

  “We need to save the horses for the mountains.” The chevalier rode close beside me. “Saints’ mercy, you didn’t tell me we’d be climbing a rampart! Besides”—he dropped his voice—“Vino says three fellows have kept us in sight since we entered the gates.”

  “That’s hardly surprising when a fine lord rides in with such a small party.” Every cutter and snatch in three demesnes would be after Ilario. Especially as one of his companions had to be led by a leash. “Another reason to keep moving.”

  “Honestly, mage, I’ve a tad of sense. I’ve…subdued…my wardrobe for our journey. Only kersey and leather. No lace, no jewels, not even an earring. I feel quite frumpish. Even you would think me a right common fellow. Besides, I’ve spied a dust cloud behind us for two days running. Stopping when we stopped. Rising again when we rode out.”

  “You never thought to mention this dust cloud?”

  “What would we have done differently? You’ve hardly welcomed any insight of ours.”

  Indeed. Officious twit. I should congratulate him on being bold enough to address me at all. I summoned patience. “So are these on our trail thieves? Or mages? Temple bailiffs?”

  “Not mages, unless they’re hiding it. The captain spied no mage collars. But it’s why we’ve taken so many turnings. None will threaten us in a public house, and we’ll be better fit to face them after a decent night.”

  His logic was worthy of Portier himself. Perhaps the events at Mont Voilline had sobered the fool a bit. I’d never understood how Anne could bear his company.

  “All right, then. But make sure we’ve more than one exit, even if it means we sleep in the washhouse.” I’d rather run than be delayed. “Of course, I’ll set wards as before.…” If I could make the damnable spells work. My working senses were dulled with lack of sleep.

  All but one of the city’s five public houses were already bolted up tight for the night. The fifth had no accommodation save the common bunkroom. When de Santo informed the hostler at the Bell Shaft that his traveling companion was a veteran of the Kadr war who oft screamed in his sleep, we were offered the stable loft.

  The captain offered to fetch our supper. I swallowed pride yet again and entreated him to bring something more palatable than the pig whose scorched fat filled the yard with rancid smoke. As Ilario supervised—and distracted—the hostler’s lad, I climbed up to the loft alone. The fewer people who noted the blind mage, the better.

  Before anything else, I crept about the small loft, using smell and touch to learn of its size, shape, and materials. More familiar with haylofts than public hostelries, I constructed wards across the trapdoor and the hay doors at either end.

  The effort wrecked me. As Ilario and the stable boy chattered and rattled about down below one of the hay doors, I fumbled through my pack and found the skin of Pradoverde ale I’d saved back for an emergency. Yearning for sleep, I crawled into a corner, savored a long pull, and begged the pain in my eyes and the noise of the aetherstorm to go away.

  They didn’t. Instead, the brush of spiderwebs, the smell of hay, tar, and mouse droppings, and the cramped joining of wall, floor, and roof beams roused memories of the sleeping loft I’d shared with my three brothers. Andero, as the eldest, had a mattress to himself. Though Andero and I had played together when we were small, he’d kept away from me once I spoke of voices in my head. Yet on the night my father beat me half to death, it was he who’d come to me once all were asleep, bringing a wet cloth and what clumsy comfort he could manage. Big and sturdy as a man grown, he was but sixteen himself and could not read. But he knew I’d done naught to justify such punishment. He offered to carry me to a cave we knew and tend me till I could run. I refused. Da would have killed him. Not a tenday after, Andero himself ran away to serve in our duc’s legion. Da was livid. That’s when I decided to wrest the forge from him, never imagining he would mutilate me to prevent it.

  All these years I had assumed Andero dead. To think that I would be with him in one more day, back in that hateful place…

  I took another pull at the ale skin. And another.

  Cheery farewells echoed from below. The rusty, misaligned hinges of the stable doors screeched. The footsteps on the ladder triggered the scalding signal in my hand.

  I stayed where I was. Ilario’s smell was unmistakable. Somehow he always managed to be clean. And no matter the crudeness of his garments, they carried a trace of his favored perfumes.

  “You look a fright, mage. Are you ill?”

  “Would you mind moving through the ward a bit faster?” I said, pressing my hand under my left arm. “The sensation of burning flesh is an effective alarm, but not at all nice.”

  He dropped a heavy bundle off to one side, tramped across the creaking boards, and crouched in front of me. “Ye graceful gods, Dante, have you ever considered using some warning signal that is not pain?”

  His question must have tweaked a long-dead nerve, or perhaps it was the half skin of ale I’d drunk, but laughter burbled up from my gut. I sagged into my corner cackling like a goose. It was true. What kind of perverse creature couldn’t trust anything but agony to rouse him to attention?

  Ilario’s boots shuffled backward. “Perhaps I should leave you alone for a while.”

  “Not—having—a fit,” I croaked, gasping for air. “Not mad.” Though I was and ever had been. “Tired. Drunk.”

  “Is that wise?”

  Another spew of hilarity flooded through me, uncontrollable as a flux from bad meat. Unfortunately it spurred the lightning in my eyes to new vigor and sapped my control of the babbling torrent pouring through the aether. I pressed balled fists to my face, all humor fled.

  “Not at all. I never—” I clamped my mouth shut so as not to heave and curled up in a knot. “Just need to be still…sleep.”

  “DANTE.” THE EARTH RUMBLED IN WARNING. “Dante, wake up. Saints, Dante…”

  My teeth rattled in my skull, setting off spikes of agony behind my eyelids. I blinked. Blinked again. Scrambled to sitting and whacked my head on something painfully solid. The bottom dropped out of the world. Growling, I lashed out at the prodding hands and the body attached to them, groping through the blackness to find boundaries…limits…solidity.

  “Glory, Dante, it’s just Ilario.” An iron grip on my wrists stopped my flailing, while the sharp whisper penetrated my thick head. “We’re at the Bell Shaft in Jarasco and there’s trouble afoot.”

  A taint of sour ale coated my mouth. Ilario. The Bell Shaft—a hostelry, not the pit shaft of a coal mine. My head scraped the rafters of a loft.
As the image settled around me, I dismissed my waking panic. “What trouble?”

  He released my hands. “De Santo hasn’t come back. It’s been two hours, and the common room’s dark. You need to be awake and…sober.”

  Had I not recognized his scent, I mightn’t have believed the man crouched in front of me to be Ilario de Sylvae. His voice had dropped a full register and taken on a gravity entirely alien to him.

  “It’s full night, and someone’s crossing the yard without a lamp. We need to be ready.”

  “We can’t afford confrontation,” I snapped. “I can’t be delayed.”

  “We’re not leaving here without Vino.” Impregnable, unwavering in his resolution. “The loft door is two metres to your right. Below the door is a hay wagon. Distract and delay them as long as you can, and then get out. I’m going after him. Do you understand? You can…work?”

  “Yes. Yes, certainly.” Discipline reasserted itself. I shoved aside the aetherstorm and my astonishment and the fire in my eyes. Only…“Chevalier, how big is this hay wagon?”

  “Jump from the center of the doorway. You’ll not miss it. I’ll fetch you after.”

  He evaporated into the dark. Gods…Ilario?

  Taking up my staff, I groped for the edge of the loft door. The opening was some two metres wide, the latch simple. The prospect of jumping into blackness did not bear thinking of.

  I slid deep into the corner. My foot encountered the ale skin, and I kept it beside me. Then I closed down all fear and distraction and listened for movements below.

  My fingers slid down the smooth hornbeam of my ancille and touched a raised pattern of points here, a carved crescent there, shaping the waiting enchantments into a pattern on my mind’s canvas. As I hammered and molded the stuff of magic into the pattern of my desire, a draft wafted through the trap. It carried the savory aroma of broth and a faint metallic noise—screeching hinges, muffled as if someone had laid sacking over them. Had Ilario not alerted me, I’d never have noticed how long the door stayed open. Enough to admit several men.

  I sat on my haunches, staff laid across my lap. Still. Focused. Waiting. Sorely tempted to touch my copper bracelet and see what shadows I could. But I dared not waste power.

  My right hand spasmed with phantom pain, then quieted. Someone had crossed the stair ward and moved slightly left. “Who’s there?”

  A second body paused at the top of the ladder, exactly in the middle of the ward field as Ilario had done earlier. He emitted a small grunt.

  “Just me. Brought your supper, Master.” De Santo was under duress. He never called me master.

  “Man could starve, waiting,” I snapped, listening.

  The burning in my hand relented as de Santo shuffled forward, and then pulsed again right away. A second intruder had masked his movements with the captain’s. And yet another passage. Three of them besides de Santo.

  “Bring it over here, Vino,” I said. “My leg’s cramped from the damnable horse and I’m like to fall flat on my face if I try to get up.” I never called him Vino.

  “Aye, Master.”

  I felt—or imagined—two men slipping toward my flanks as de Santo and his shadow moved across the creaking boards. It was ten steps straight across from the ladder. At the ninth I detected the flankers’ breath closing in. At the tenth I whipped my right arm across the air in front of me, knocked the soup bowl away, and caught hold of Captain de Santo’s leather jerkin. Hauling down on it, I spat a whisper, “Eyes closed!”

  Hot soup splattered. The captain’s massive body crashed to the floor. Meanwhile, I tossed the ale skin into the air and snatched up my staff. “Luminaire!”

  Heat burst in front of my face. The air hissed and steamed. Hot droplets kissed my skin, a satisfying discomfort as three voices rose in pained surprise. I bound the second part of the spell—streaks of eye-searing light should be bouncing about the walls and roof. Harmless, but they didn’t know that. They were already screaming.

  “Clear,” I whispered, nudging de Santo.

  He leapt up with a savage yell. Bodies crashed against the floor and walls.

  The long-dead nerves in my hand flared again. Someone else had crossed the ward.

  I edged backward crabwise and gripped the edge of the hay door, only to have someone plant a boot in my chest and shove, crushing my back to the door frame. His fingers clamped my jawbone, and his enveloping stink reeked of incense, burnt skin, and righteous anger.

  “Dante, daemon mage of the Camarilla Magica,” he said through clenched teeth, “by the authority of Tetrarch Beltan de Ferrau, you are under arrest for the blasphemous evil of necromancy.”

  Snarling, I brought up my right arm to break his hold, but before I could raise magic, someone ripped him off me. A heavy impact shook the floor. The wall at my back rattled. I planted my staff and leapt to my feet. The hay door latch dug into my hip.

  “Go now!” A solid blow punctuated Ilario’s breathless command. Scrabbling feet, a ferocious growl, a cracking noise, and a roar, and he was back beside me. “More coming from below.”

  Though far from helpless, I dared not spray true havoc about the loft, lest I injure my allies. So I ripped open the latch, swung the door outward, and positioned myself in the approximate middle of the opening. Cold, damp air bathed my face. Gods, gods, gods…

  “Fly, mage!”

  A solid thud behind me elicited someone’s stifled cry. Hinges screeched and more boots thudded below the trap.

  I jumped.

  An eternity of stomach-hollowing nothing, then my boots hit and slid out from under me. My elbow whacked a wooden edge, and my staff struck the bridge of my nose. Sprawled twisted and sidewise, I embraced the hay that was scratching, prickling, and poking into ears, eyes, nostrils, and mouth. I wasn’t broken, but my heart was going to require a goodly while to settle.

  “Move!” The heated whisper from above set me scrambling, envisioning bodies dropping on top of me. I dove over the side, reaching back to grab my staff just as a solid rush and a quiet, two-footed thump signaled that someone had landed much more gracefully than I. A hand yanked me aside just as a third body caromed into the wagon. De Santo’s curse roused my better humor. The captain was accustomed to doing everything right.

  I limped across the yard, my hand on Ilario’s shoulder. The chevalier’s clean smell now bore the distinctive taint of blood.

  Someone—the chevalier again?—had cleverly stashed our saddled horses behind the washhouse. Four hands shoved me onto Devil’s back and we were off. The bells of Jarasco’s Temple Minor struck middle-night.

  My satisfaction was short-lived, the race through Jarasco unnerving me entire. Not even at the dead hours would I expect we could thread the streets of Jarasco at a gallop.

  “Where is everyone?”

  My yell slowed Ilario enough to drop back. “Mayhap they warned— Creator’s fire, what is that?”

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “Just hold on!”

  As I cursed, he slapped Devil’s hind end and we sped faster, turning, scarce slowing, until walls closed in around us, trapping the stink of offal and soot. I had to trust them, Ilario, de Santo, and Devil. I couldn’t spare time or thought for second-guessing, for the aetherstorm surged into pandemonium. Howling, raging, hungry…threatening to scour me dry.

  Winding Devil’s reins tight about my hands, I summoned discipline. As a scribe prepares a new page, I erased thought and fear. Next vanished memory and prescience, past and future fading into transparency. Pain and desire followed—a task far more difficult when one could not use eyes to focus outside the body. Once reduced to naked bones, I reopened my inner ears and promptly shut them down again. This wasn’t just the mindstorm, but a desolation so pervasive it could sap the will, a tempest of anger, of terror, of howling hopelessness and starvation. I’d felt this only once before. Better to remain empty.…

  “Dante! Are you wounded?”

  I lifted my head, only to realize we’d halted. The air w
as foul. Damp. Walls on three sides.

  “The sky was pulsing, wasn’t it? That’s what you saw,” I said, my throat as raw as on the day my hand was burnt. “Like a pregnant woman’s belly.”

  Anne had seen such a display at Mont Voilline on the night I had ripped a hole in the Veil between life and death, the night I’d heard the howling of starving spirits, the night I’d come to believe something was devouring the souls of the dead.

  “Saints, yes, but we’ve no time. We’re just off the ring road inside the postern. The gate’s deserted, but we’ve a horde of Temple servitors in pursuit. Unfortunately, the portcullis is down and the mechanisms appear to be rusted shut. Doesn’t look as if anyone’s opened the thing since the Blood Wars. If you can’t get it open, we’ll have to backtrack—which will get very ugly—or climb the wall and escape afoot.”