by Carol Berg
“I guard him, yet he’s done naught but bless me and join me in the litanies.”
The comment struck a note as dissonant as a duck playing a harp.
Portier was quiet, sober, a gentleman born. But none would call him a pious man or one who doled out blessings beyond the politenesses his birth had instilled. I wasn’t sure he believed in the divine any more than I did. He had deliberately sought out a Cult mentor with a scholar’s credentials, not a priest’s. And in his sparse correspondence, I’d heard no evidence of sudden or miraculous conversion to Cult devotions.
What small trust I had in my guide dissipated rapidly. I redoubled caution. No footsteps followed.
The young man drew open the narrow door. The iron bands in the thick wood and the scents of camphor and heated iron bespoke a cell unfriendly to spellwork. I made sure he left the door open, lest my own magic be fatally crippled.
The large chamber was mostly empty. But the scene in its center near took my breath. All appeared as I had seen in Rhymus’s vision—the black hearth, the blazing fire, the iron rod protruding from white-hot coals.
I blinked. Inhaled the stink of fear and heated iron. Folded my arms across my chest, pinching and poking. I was awake.
A few steps farther. What appeared to be a simple grave incised the floor. A pit scarce big enough to contain a man had been hacked from the slick, dark stone and lined with iron. Beside it lay a slab of iron exactly the size of the opening. Dirt had been heaped at its foot.
Portier, the King of Sabria’s cousin, the man who had given my magic a purpose and honored it even when he believed me Fallen, was bound to the floor of the pit with leather straps. Someone had scattered a handful of dirt over him. Unwashed skin streaked and smeared with blood, he writhed and strained within his bonds, exactly as I had seen him in Xanthe’s vision. It was the exactitude of that scene, its perfect horror, that screamed warnings. And I’d swear that others in this labyrinth were breathing.…
I hated what I was about to do more than I hated any of the vileness I had wreaked in my life. Even after so brief an exposure, I knew the Seeing Stones were my puzzle to solve. Any chance of preserving my deception and discovering the truth, and likely any hope of rescuing Portier, depended on my actions here. This was my trial. Somewhere, I believed, Xanthe watched and waited.
I stepped into the soldier’s pool of light. “Ah, Portier, you do get yourself into wretched fixes.”
“Dante!” His croaking greeting wavered. His deep exhale shook. “Knew you’d come…heard your promises…” His heavy eyelids drooped with sleep or drugs.
My foot nudged a loose fragment of paving stone. It bounced and clattered into the pit and against his bound leg. “Do you learn nothing, librarian? You’ve let them take you again.”
“Woman made a fool of me. But had to come. They mentioned Sirpuhi of the Red Cliffs.…” The words slurred, tumbling out one atop the other. “Been here ’fore…recognize it. Afraid to believe. You won’t, but must. Must.” He grasped the word, as if dragging himself up a well. “Scroll explains about the fire…about me…about you.…”
Explained his dreams of multiple lives? What did I have to do with his delusions? Gods, I dared not ask.
“I helped you out of similar trouble once. I could likely do so again.”
“No. Must listen. Was coming home to tell you. The Seeing Stones, the temptation…The danger is yours, not mine.”
I crouched beside him and tweaked the strap at his ankle. “I disagree. Which of us is in the pit?”
He dropped his voice even lower and tugged fitfully at his bindings, fighting for the words even as his eyelids sagged. “Your strength. Gifts. You are born to do the unthinkable.” Fear beyond mortal comprehension was bundled in those whispered words, all courage, all pretense drained away. “Must not fall. Must not yield…”
His words trailed off as I bent closer where I could view the perfect horror in his eyes and he could see my own, void of sympathy or hidden meaning. Though more than anything I wanted to comfort him, to ask what in the name of sense he was talking about, I dared not waver or misstep.
“I never thought we’d meet again, librarian.” I spoke loud enough that anyone in the dark corners of the chamber could hear. “I did my best for you at Voilline. How could I allow such a valuable asset to be lost to Gautier’s bungling? But you thanked me by running away on your own private quest, leaving me crippled. You and the rest of those cursed aristos…You’ve kept secrets, haven’t you? You never trusted me.”
“Secrets?” For a moment, he was naught but bewildered. And then he looked on me with such sympathy as must be lunacy from a man half starved, half mad, and strapped into his own grave. “Worried about you…so angry, so empty. That’s the danger. I wrote to—”
“I don’t think I can bring myself to help you this time,” I interrupted. I could not let him talk too much. Or think too much. “My new mistress would not approve. And I owe her everything.”
“Mistress?” He squinted. Stared. Grew still. “Heaven and earth, you can see. How—?”
“Be silent, holy man, and hear me. The Lady Xanthe and no other has given me this gift, and so for her will I do service, and no other. Never again for those who’ve cost me everything I’ve reached for in my life. What kingdom is worth what I lost?” I let my voice rise in anger and madness. I knew well how to do that. “Think on the life you made me lead and you’ll understand what I do.”
“What—? Spirits, Dante!”
His eyes darted wildly as I rose and snatched up the iron. Its tip glowed red, pulsing as I waved it in front of his face.
“You lured me into your plots, Portier. You are responsible. And here you are trying to do it again—to wreck my life that is just now being rebuilt. Perhaps you should share the agony I suffered because of you. Two long years in the dark, no moment of which has been without pain. Do you understand what that means?”
I heaped curses and accusations on him. I drew the glowing iron across his brow, singeing his eyebrows, and I feinted so close to his eyes, he surely felt his tears seared dry. But when his throat could not voice another plea, and he had shrunk back against the plate iron beneath his back as if it might absorb him, I threw the rod back in the fire and kicked dirt onto
his face.
“You’d best return me to my room,” I said to the freckled soldier. “I will not steal my lady’s pleasure.”
“Dante.” The harsh whisper floated on the heated air. “He’s going to come for you. You are the Daemon.”
Flesh and spirit froze. But I did not, could not, ask what he meant. Instead, I turned my back on my only friend and walked away.
CHAPTER 24
34 ESTAR, THE NIGHT WATCHES
The door of the sorcerer’s hole slammed. The bolt shot. I wanted to tear down the walls with my teeth. Yet I dared not allow the freckled guard or anyone else to hear my rage, lest my unholy play be proved a lie. I had to settle for silent curses, heaping every malediction I knew upon myself as an execrable, cowardly, inhuman wretch. Imagining what might be happening to Portier at that very moment emptied my guts into the night jar.
As I ground my head on the wall, trying to erase images of suffocation, our exchange played out again and again. His first thought had not been to beg for help, but to warn me.
“Mayhap Saints Reborn don’t need help,” I spat.
But as reason penetrated self-loathing, the magnitude of his declarations overwhelmed me. He’d claimed some scroll might explain about the fire. His writing in Rhymus’s seeing face had mentioned a scroll. Was Portier de Savin-Duplais, a man of relentless logic, of science, of scholarship, a man who withheld judgment in any investigation until all evidence was in, now telling me he had been chained to Mont Voilline millennia ago as punishment for stealing fire from Heaven? Gods save us.
I slid to the floor.
… Sirpuhi of the Red Cliffs…been here…recognize it. You’ll not believe, but must…So he believed he was Altheus, a
s well, the Holy Imperator? I was near dizzy with the imagining. Continuing rebirth…the fire of Heaven brought to humankind. What did that even mean? I had ever reminded Portier that combustion was an entirely natural process that any alchemist could explain.
Yet somehow in the dark, stripped raw by guilt, I could not call Portier mad or deluded or idiot as I would any other man in the world who told me such. And if he was right…
My back curled forward and my hands splayed on the floor, as if to ensure the Stone had not dropped out from under me or become water, sand, or silk.
… then what of the rest? Your strength. Gifts. Your are born to do the unthinkable.
The unthinkable what? Another voice echoed in the dark, one hoarse with age and prophecy. Thou’rt other, born in darkness, gifted with strength to quench the light of Heaven.
He’s going to come for you. I doubted Portier was speaking of Jacard.
I curled up on my pallet and begged the night for sleep.
You are the Daemon.…
HOSTEN DRAGGED ME FROM THE dark the next morning without word or sign to indicate he knew of my trip to Portier’s hell. The soldier with the freckled face was not among my five escorts.
“Put him here beside the table,” Xanthe said, when the captain removed the bulky bracelets. “I’ve work for you today, my magus.” She was wreathed in smiles, and patted my head as I knelt to receive her bounty. She acted as if the days of my exile had not happened.
Blood hammered in my veins. I wanted to bring the walls down to crush us all. Instead, I ate.
I did not believe in fate or destiny—unhappy or happy. Our lives were what we made of them hour by hour, day by day. It was the only way I knew how to live.
Begging had not yielded me oblivion in the night just past. So I had relied on practiced discipline, instead. I set Portier and destiny aside and worked on the problem of the Seeing Stones. I had devised a theory about their magic, then buried hate, conscience, and urgency and slept ferociously. I could not indulge petty vengeance. I needed power. I needed information.
“I wish to have a new command for my Stone by the end of the day,” said Xanthe, wiping her greasy fingers on a towel of yellow silk. “Do not displease me again.”
“I shall do my best, Mistress.” I touched my forehead to the carpet, then knelt up and crossed my arms on my breast. “But first I must beg forgiveness. These days of exile have given me pause, as you so wisely understood, giving me occasion to recall my life as it was. I was born in ignorance and poverty to a man who crippled me. I was scorned by those at Collegia Seravain, who resented me for earning a master mage’s collar without licking their feet. For six years I enslaved myself to ambition, serving those born to power in Sabria. Like you, instead of my lord’s favor, I earned his disgust. I am barred from the circles of power, exiled from Merona, forbidden to cross paths with the elite. Blindness made me see what their proffered friendship meant. I was but a crude and ignorant commoner of no more use to them.”
I swallowed bile and subdued all thought and feeling save the part I had chosen to play.
“You judged me rightly, Mistress, perhaps because we are so much the same. Ambition is a part of me as much as it is a part of you. But what I desire most is knowledge of magic. You have earned the right to lead our partnership, and I must and will yield to that right. For the gifts you have given me, I swear to serve you honestly from this day forward.”
I waited for her invisible lash to sear and crush. But instead, her hand ruffled my shorn hair, then pinched my ear to lift my head. She did not quite twist it off.
“I’m not sure I believe you,” she said. “Time will tell all. Earn my trust and your life will be better than any of these other people could give you.”
A cage of silver wire hung about her neck, holding Rhymus and Orythmus captive. She removed Orythmus and laid it on the table. Then she shoved my staff into my hand. “A new command to please me. You have today. Remember the consequences of misbehavior.”
“Always, Mistress. I cannot forget.” I would not forget.
Gripping my staff and setting my focus, I set to work to test my new theory. Tyregious the wizard had told Xanthe that his little demonstration told all that was needed about the Stones. My own examination had found no spell structure within them. So perhaps he meant the Stones themselves were just as I saw, complex lenses—prisms—that enabled sight in varying, if mysterious, ways. In that case, the command Orythmus embodied lay not in the crystal itself, but in the spell threads attached to it, the bits I had assumed extraneous.
I plunged into the aether and this time turned my attention to the clustered enchantments that surrounded Orythmus. The first thread I chose to examine was exactly the command to move or stay that Xanthe already knew. The spell held numerous additional complexities Xanthe had not yet demonstrated. The command to move directly into danger, as to step off a cliff. The command to move in ways the body was not designed to do, as to bend an elbow backward. The command to move in ways designed to kill another. I preferred she not test these on me, so I moved on.
Much as an anatomist dissects a living animal and creates a map of veins, tissues, nerves, and bone, learning how they interconnect and incite each other, I pulled each spell thread into its component parts—words, objects, sensory details, logic—and sketched them in simpler patterns of color and light that I could recall and manipulate. Removing, rearranging, or replacing the elements in the spell and observing the resulting patterns taught me of its structure and suggested its nature. All remained in the realm of theory and logic, however. Without being linked to Orythmus, I could not test what I found.
I lost track of the passing hours. Though I craved to alter or destroy the vilest enchantments, I dared not. Modifying such complexities took an immensely long time. My freedom to learn would be measured solely by Xanthe’s resolve to remain independent and Jacard’s inability to undermine that resolve, and neither was so certain as I would like.
Hosten was a more immediate concern. Destructive magical energy was entirely different from even the most complex spell construction. Noisy, one might call it. Or dissonant. Hosten or any trained watcher could detect it and guess I was destroying some component of the Stone.
And, too, Orythmus as a whole was a marvel. Even the most terrible of its individual commands could surely be turned to good purpose. How many lives might be saved by sending a barbarian general over a cliff? I felt in no fit moral state to judge, save in what pieces of its whole I would entrust to Xanthe.
A twisting thread of yellow gossamer held the spell to command obedience or rebellion. Xanthe already used her control of pain, seeing, and immobility to enforce her wishes. With the more direct command, she could force Jacard’s subjects to defy him, or ensure my own obedience without damaging me. Neither were skills I wished to give her.
As weariness bled my concentration, I feared I’d have nothing from the day’s work I could entrust to her. Yet the very next thread, a thin clear strand of scarlet glass, seemed harmless enough. I crafted a keyword and linked it to the spell thread.
“Silence,” I said, raising my head as I returned my awareness to Xanthe’s rooms.
“How dare you command me! I’ve been silent this entire day, watching you do nothing but grip that stick and stare at my treasure. I’ve said not a word!”
“No, no, my lady.” I jumped in quickly, raising my hand before she could punish me. “I’ve found you a way to command a person’s sense of hearing. Far better than wooden stoppers.”
To my dismay, once I’d told her how to invoke the little spell, she took away my staff and summoned Captain Hosten. “I’ll not have you working spells alongside as I play, thinking to deceive me that they are my own. The Stone’s power must be in my hands alone.”
Xanthe was no fool. The thought had occurred to me.
Reckoning by the fading daylight through the gallery portals, I had spent ten or twelve hours at the work. My muscles and joints felt stiff as new
boots, and I had scarce begun unraveling Orythmus’s myriad enchantments. As Hosten locked the door behind me, I crawled through the dark onto my pallet and fell instantly asleep.
“OUT, MAGUS.” THE RITUAL OF the wooden bracelets and readied swords and spears awaited.
I’d not slept for long. I could scarce focus my eyes on the route to my mistress’s rooms.
“Oh, my slave, good work! Most excellent work!”
Xanthe flew across the room as I entered and threw her arms around me from the back, deftly avoiding the thorny manacles. Before I could accommodate the shock of her embrace, she danced away, spinning and whirling, until the caged crystals dangling from her neck made rings of emerald in the lamplight. When she collapsed on the divan, her cheeks were rose brown and the silver streaks in her eyes sparking and glimmering.
“Such chaos I set off in the kitchens when no person could hear any other. And when I threw a blanket of silence over the aviary, the birds flew into a frenzy, crashing into each other and tangling themselves in the trees! And my serving girl screamed so delightfully, clawing at her ears until they bled. Of course, I undid the spell quickly and soothed her with wine, but she was still weeping when she left me.”