by Carol Berg
I dredged up memory. Jarasco was the only town I’d ever seen until I escaped Raghinne. “They’ve not replaced the portcullis? It’s a wooden lattice, only the barbs tipped with iron?”
“It’s dark as a pit down there, Dante.”
Iron was the bane of sorcery. In the presence of iron, enchantments could fail or rebound in dangerous ways. But if the crosspieces themselves were wood, no matter if they were old as the mountains and thick as trees, I could likely account for smaller amounts of iron.
“Take me there,” I said, dropping to the ground and clutching Devil’s neck until the world stopped spinning. “You’ll want to keep the horses well away.”
Ilario marched me down a cobbled road. The flanking walls were close.
“Wait here,” he said, pressing my back to the cold stone. Spits of sleet pelted my face as his light footsteps covered the few metres to the portcullis and back. “Wood lattice, spikes tipped with iron, just as you said. It’s seven metres, more or less, straight ahead of you. What should I do?”
Astonishing how terse Ilario had become. And how competent. A preening aristo with the intelligence of a sparrow. Yet Portier hadn’t spoken a slighting word about him since our adventure at Eltevire six years ago. And Anne, who had no use for courtly games, laughed with him, confided in him.…Secrets and lies. A heated wire tightened in my belly.
I shook my head to clear it. This wasn’t the time to challenge him. “Be ready to grab me and run,” I said. “Every man searching is going to see this.”
He retreated. I fingered my staff, locating the carved triangle with a smooth depression in the center. That was fire. And then the recessed nub, the carving of an eagle’s eye. That was death. I hoped no innocent came knocking at the postern.
Summoning the power that threaded my veins and sinews, I poured it into the melded pattern of the two waiting spells. Bracing the heel of the staff waist-high on the wall at my back, I let the enchantment build. The ancient postern was likely steeped in spellwork. As Salvator had hammered into me and I had hammered into Anne, a wise practitioner would study its making before attempting any such working as this. But we had no time, so the sheer magnitude of my enchantment must overpower whatever lingered there. When body and spirit felt swollen to bursting, a simple infusion of my will bound the spell.
Flaying heat burst from the head of the staff. The eruption raised a clamor worthy of a typhoon slinging hailstones the size of pigs. Its light would be red and orange and a thousand colors that had no name—a lethal beauty that would carve a hole in the night.
Power drained out of me in a flood. When my knees began to quiver, I declared it enough and released the binding.
Frozen raindrops whispered across the world. Though the stench of burnt oil and charred timber set me coughing, it was the silence worried me.
Hooves clattered on the cobbles, and four hands boosted me into the saddle. “By the Creator’s mighty hand, Dante,” said Ilario.
“Was it enough?” I said between coughs, as we passed through a wall of heat. “I can’t hear flames.”
“There’s naught left to burn. Gate, portcullis…you brought down the gate tower and half the wall!”
“Sure they’ll know which way we’ve gone,” said the captain. “Give us a bit of light and we can go faster on the straight. Once we’re in the rocks, you can let it go. I’ll dismount and lead.”
I bit off my earnest desire that the bullnecked soldier stick his head up his ass and triggered the spell. Fortunately, to cast a faint light on the road ahead required little effort.
In general I recovered quickly from an intense working, but it required food and sleep, not jouncing in a saddle in the dead hours, raddled by the virulent aetherstorm and burgeoning dread. But I had to make use of what peace I had. I attached myself firmly to Devil, promised him apples at our next stop, and closed off the world, setting myself adrift in the gulf between sleep and waking. I had to trust my companions.
From time to time my finger touched the grooved arc on my staff and I stretched my hearing backward. Slow, measured hoofbeats followed. Perhaps the Temple riders were less expert than the two who led me. Perhaps they had no way to make themselves a light. But they were coming.
CHAPTER 6
DEMESNE OF COVERGE
“Let go the light now, mage,” said de Santo, softly, drawing me back to full wakefulness.
We’d come to a halt. The sleet had turned to snow. I licked my lips, perishingly thirsty, and the captain pressed a cup into my hand, and my hand into a trickle of water dribbling down a cliff.
“We’re into the mountains, and the horses need a rest,” he said. “Chevalier is scouting ahead to make sure the pursuit hasn’t sneaked ahead. We’ve yet to spot them.”
“Behind,” I said, my voice crusted with the hours of silence. “Heard them all night. The three Temple bailiffs in the loft—did you leave them dead?”
“One was sorely broken, the others just out of sense. Chevalier said we’d best not finish them, as they knew your name.”
I doubted a few dead Temple servitors could damage my reputation, but these two…“They didn’t recognize Lord Ilario or you? Hanging about with a blasphemer is dangerous.”
He hesitated. I could almost feel a shrug. “Nay. They wouldn’t. We’ve a way about it.”
Disguise? Charms? Ilario was a devoted magic user. “An efficient way, it seems.”
He gave no answer to that. Cup by cup, I swallowed half a litre of water and gratefully sloshed a little over my face. I rummaged deep in my cloak and found one apple. Devil snuffled it out of my hand and nosed my pockets for more.
“There’s a notch up ahead with a bit of grass,” said the captain, taking Devil’s reins. “I’ll take him. Wait here.”
Staying in contact with the cliff wall, I paced and stretched, trying to loosen my stiff joints. My nap in the loft and my hours adrift had left my mind better refreshed than any time in five days, but the body felt battered. Beltan de Ferrau, the Temple tetrarch who claimed to cast out daemons. Of all the ill luck…
Captain de Santo’s footsteps were quite distinctive. Forever brisk, but much heavier than Ilario’s. As he rejoined me, a quiet drop onto the dirt brought Ilario as well.
“It’s still black night, so I couldn’t see much of anything, and yet…” It was the first uncertainty I’d heard from the chevalier since he’d waked me in the loft. “I should have taken you with me, Dante. The sky isn’t squirming anymore, but I’ve a sense we’re walking into trouble.”
“I’ve a notion your sense is better than I’ve been led to believe all these years. Tell me where we are.”
The two men described a narrow defile threading a fortress of granite walls and man-high boulders. I knew the place exactly. We’d come some five kilometres beyond the point where the foot track into Coverge’s interior diverged from the wagon road. I had hoped the foot track, rougher, shorter, less traveled, would shield us from attention. Evidently not.
“An hour’s walk ahead, the defile opens up to a meadow—much of it a bog,” I said. “Quarter of an hour across if we pick our path right; eternity if we don’t. Then we climb again through a forest patch.” The details of this route had been etched into my mind the first time I’d ever left Raghinne. “The track comes out of the wood onto a shelf path. Cliff on one side, chasm on the other. Wide enough for a horse, though I’ve never ridden it.” The imagining drew a cold sweat to my back. “If someone’s circled ahead of us, they’d have had to come around from the wagon road and through the bog. I don’t see how they could have done. It’s a much longer way, and they’ve lagged behind us since Jarasco. Perhaps…it’s just a very bad night.”
I wished I could explain this night’s mysteries. Anne and I had destroyed the enchantment that allowed movement between the realms of living and dead. I had assumed our act had closed the physical portal—the “rent in the eternal Veil”—as well. We had pulled Portier from the pool where de Gautier had chained him, b
elieving that Portier’s supposed inability to die would make the gap in the Veil permanent. Yet this night felt so like that one…ragged, unnatural, hollow, as if the flesh of the universe had dissolved and wind scoured its bones. Someone, somewhere, was working powerful, dangerous magic.
A low thud shuddered the ground, as if a cannon had fired deep in the earth beneath our feet.
“Crei diavol!” shouted de Santo. “Where’s it coming from? Get over here.”
“Saints’ mercy!” Ilario wrenched me aside as an arrow whined past my arm. As the arrowhead clattered on the rocks, the chevalier crushed me to a slab of granite. “They’ve lit up the sky like a midsummer firework. Cascading green light, but slow. There’s six…eight…of them…just ahead of us. An archer to either side, and half a dozen swordsmen at the ready.” His sword slipped out of its sheath. “Stay here. Stay flat. There’s a bit of an overhang will keep you in shadow.”
“But what—?” They ran off. Shouts, grunts, and the clash of swords filled the narrow space, bouncing from wall to wall, preventing me from locating any of them.
Great gods of men and beasts! I could kill a man with my bare hands. I’d done it more than once. But I could no longer aim a blow on my own any more than I could aim a bolt of magical fire.
Yet, if the enemy’s advantage was enchantment, perhaps I could do something.…
I tasted the air, pulled up my sleeves, and let the swirling snow tease at my arms. Inhaling, I probed the roiling aether, ran through the steps of subtle detection, did everything that might reveal spellwork that I could dissect and wrench apart. But whatever had created the light that exposed us was entirely mundane. Incendiaries, I supposed, like the royal legions used. Without a device to examine or someone to describe its effects more thoroughly, I could do nothing.
Frustration smoldered into rage. Why was I born to such skills and left no way to use them? Every night these two years past I had screamed that question into my blankets, where none could hear my shameful display. So many in the world had nothing. As a boy in Coverge, I had been destined to stand ankle deep in muck, hacking at the ground until I coughed up blood up like Estebo. And then Salvator had shown me glory, guiding me down paths of illumination and power he himself was too unskilled to travel. I was born to wield magic. And now…Had I believed in Heaven or the netherworld or fate or destiny or gods who took pleasure in tormenting the objects of their creation, it might have been easier to cower in the shadows and leave the fight to others.
“Captain, behind you!” Ilario’s shouts were punctuated with grunts and blows. Arrows whizzed through the air like murderous insects. “Mage! Any help you could offer! Soon, please!”
Stupid, self-pitying fool, Dante. Of course there was another way. “Need time!”
Shutting out the noise, the cold, and my anger at the empty cosmos, I dragged my staff in a half circle in front of me, beginning and ending at the granite cliff wall. Then I summoned my ready spells for light, for fire, for warmth and color. Their patterns were as much a part of me as the articulations of thighbone and knee, ankle and foot. I linked their sundry aspects on the canvas of my mind in scalding blues and yellows, reds and greens. And then I gathered in the spell of my copper bracelet and wove its white threads throughout my work.
Two souls I drew into my scheme: a dour man of war, grievously wronged yet offering good and loyal service in the cause of right, and a man wholly different from the one I would have included before this day—a man of deep-buried secrets, of intelligent command, a swordsman of skills, a serious playactor wrapped in foolery and lies. Anne’s friend. Portier’s friend.
Though time was critical, I dared not rush. Mistakes could have consequences far beyond this battle. I examined the pattern yet again and tested the logic of its working. The spell should create a surge of power far beyond what I had used to bring down the Jarasco postern, though without the same destructive force. I hoped.
Satisfied, I raised my staff and summoned power to create a circle of brilliance perhaps twenty metres in diameter with my everlasting darkness as its hub. But with a twist of mind and will, I inverted the pattern, reversing light and dark. I would be suffused with light, while every breathing creature within my circle, save my two protectors, would be left blind.
“Take them,” I yelled. “Hurry.”
I could not attend the sounds of dismay and death that ensued. Nor could I fret about the raging heat trapped inside the enclosure with me or the light that would announce my location to any human predator not trapped within my working. Determined to give Ilario and de Santo the time they needed to take out both swordsmen and archers, I emptied myself into the enchantment. If the captain and the chevalier failed to win this battle, what strength I did or didn’t have left would not matter in the least.
Time lost its shape. But when I felt snow melting on my eyelashes and the cold from the stone at my back seeping through my thick cloak, I knew I was approaching the limits of my endurance.
I drew in the ragged threads of conscious thought. Heavy breathing and steel-clad leather at my side. De Santo. Naught else broke the uncanny silence.…
“They’re all dead!” The anguished cry shattered the quiet. “Go back, Robierre! Run! Tell the tetrarch that the mage is Fallen!”
So confusing in the dark. Footsteps pelted back the way we’d come. Two survivors, clearly Temple bailiffs. Not so worrisome as long as they were leaving. It certainly wasn’t the first time I’d been mistaken for one of Dimios the Souleater’s rebellious brethren. Yet I still didn’t understand how they’d come to be ahead of us. Waiting.
Their steps faded, yet de Santo did not move. His breathing slowed.
“Tell me—”
De Santo’s hand clapped over my mouth. The taste of blood near gagged me.
He whistled two short bursts. More enemies nearby? Gods, how many had there been? Where was Ilario?
De Santo pressed one finger across my lips hard enough to reinforce the importance of continued silence. Gripping my shoulder and pressing my back to the wall, he guided me to the left. Up the steep track.
Fa-de-la, and hey and ho. To the deadhouse we shall go.
Seest thou, my ladies fair? This bold lad shall certain dare.
To venture realms none live should know.
The tavern ditty was rendered in Ilario’s clear and unmistakable tenor. For all anyone would tell, the man was drunk as a rat in an ale cask.
Fa-de-la, and hey and ho. My favored lady does not know.…
I tried to slow de Santo, but he drove me away from Ilario as quickly as was possible without noise. We crept onward. Upward.
“Who are you who declares himself Pantokrator?” The chevalier’s thick-tongued challenge was the kind one would hear in any tavern or fencing yard in Sabria. “You make the sun to rise in the dead hours and change snow to a rain of arrows! You slay a herd of Temple servitors like cattle. Your minions attack one of Dimios’s favored Fallen! Have I, a poor chevalier-for-hire, stumbled into the War for Heaven renewed?”
A rain of arrows? A herd of Temple servitors slain?
“I am merely a broker in this enterprise, Chevalier. Not heavenly, though your master shall certainly forever be known as the enemy of Heaven.” The voice emanated not from the heavens, but certainly from a position well above our heads and beyond my twenty-metre circle. He might have been discussing the price of a goose at the market. “No, someone wants him. Alive. Give him up, and you shall be on your way, skin intact. Understanding something of magical expenditures, I surmise his power is at a low ebb just now—unless he is Dimios himself after all. We’ve proper chains to bind him, so he’ll not wreak his formidable wrath on you.”
Boots shuffled on the road between us and Ilario. Gods, more of them. And still we stole away.
“Oh, so tempting,” said Ilario. “But he’s paid me well, you see, and what worth has a chevalier’s honor if he fails to defend his employer? You may wish to hire me next.”
“Sadly for
you, hireling, we’ve no interest in your skills. We were paid to fetch your employer, not kill him, so your honor is intact. And we can take him at our leisure.”
“Do you hear that, Master?” called Ilario. “I’d advise you hotfoot it after those pious Temple dogs. Offer yourself up to them if you can persuade them to slow down before they get to Jarasco and their tetrarch. I’ll fend off these unholy persons until you’re away, and if you’re speedy enough I’ll not trample you! Then I’ll expect a bonus, sonjeur, as there’s three of them to one of me. Four if we count this false Pantokrator. Yet the Creator has ever taken my part in quarrels.”
So the speaker and his three were not Temple dogs. I was more confused than ever.