The Daemon Prism: A Novel of the Collegia Magica

by Carol Berg

  Once away from the gates, Andero, wearing a green bedsheet and carrying his bag of juggling balls, slipped into the sculpted evergreens and blooming shrubberies of the inner gardens. While we performed, he would survey guard posts, procedures, entrances, and exits. This occasion was as much for information gathering as for any hope we could steal Portier away so soon.

  Harassed factotums herded the press of costumed performers into a great barren hall. The scene inside was chaos. Balls and swords flew through the air. Musicians tuned instruments. Acrobats careened into everyone while practicing cartwheels and pyramids. A dog, absurdly outfitted in a red silk jacket and pink feathers tied to its head, caused havoc among a flock of birds.

  Three little dancing girls, lips painted red, cheeks highly rouged, and eyes blackened with kohl, wailed as their trainer yelled at them for mussing their gold-encrusted costumes. “The Spider God will eat you for his dinner,” screamed the woman. “Your blood will trickle down his chin.”

  A bulbous man in red pantaloons yelled from a doorway, “Jugglers!” The flashing swords and flying balls disappeared through the swinging doors.

  Ilario, Rhea, and I huddled together and reviewed our plan. A quarter hour we would work until our finale.

  The red-pantaloon man called for dancing girls, then fire-eaters. We’d near despaired when he bellowed, “Marco Flamberge!”

  He led us down a long passageway, squeezing past servants burdened with wine bottles and clean plates, bowls of fruit and heaping platters of meat and cheese. “The table you requested is set up at the left side of the performance floor,” he said between wheezing breaths. “Arrange it yourselves.”

  Rhea fastened a veil across her face in the Syan style. Ilario had greased her hair into curls again, and we had all applied kohl to eyes and brows. Neither Jacard nor Dante should recognize Ilario or me. At the factotum’s nod, Ilario tugged his hat low and shouldered a decrepit kithara. Then, Rhea and I danced into Jacard’s hall.

  My first impression was naught but light and shadow. Great wooden beams holding hundreds of candles hung from the tall ceiling, illuminating the empty center of the hall while leaving the crowded peripheries dim. The dancing required a concentration I regretted, leaving me only vaguely aware of the clattering dishes and noisy conversation that surrounded us.

  Dante could be here in this room. Jacard almost surely was. And the woman, the enchantress who spoke in macabre dreams, she could be here as well.

  While Ilario strummed and sang of a maiden whose lover had gone off to fight the witchlords, Rhea and I moved the table into the center of the light and draped it with the velvety fustian. We thrust our tall walking sticks into loops we’d sewn onto the heavy fabric and let them hang so they paralleled the long side of the table.

  I paused my steps, hand above my eyes as if I were sighting down the road for my returning lover. Rhea played my friend on whose shoulder I leaned, and also my mother who brought in Ilario as a new suitor. Our wordless dancing play was obvious and dreadfully sentimental. Only the purity of Ilario’s singing raised it to a worthy height. When Rhea, swirled in enormous lengths of black crepe, brought word of my lover’s death at the hands of the witchlords, I lay on the table and plunged a wooden dagger toward my breast.

  Now for the dangerous part. Ilario laid down the kithara. During his unaccompanied lament, he and Rhea draped me in metres of billowing crepe and fustian. Well hidden, I downed sixteen drops of Lianelle’s potion. By the time my smearing vision had settled enough that I knew I could not be seen, Rhea had joined Ilario in his song. Her rich contralto was a fine complement to his tenor, what I could hear of it through the layers of fabric and the thumping of my heart. Obscured by their activities, I slipped out from under the mounded draperies, crept under the table, and huddled there to wait.

  Ilario strummed a few final bars on the kithara and sang of the wounded soldier who arrived to find his beloved lying dead. Humming a dirge, he and Rhea lifted our makeshift litter by the poles and marched slowly toward the door.

  When the last trailing draperies fell away from the table, I felt dreadfully exposed. But the faint tinge of blue that limned the table and my departing companions assured me none could see me.

  Scant applause burst out here and there. The buzz of conversation increased as a troop of acrobats raced in leaping, tumbling, and doing cartwheels.

  Now to action. I crept out from under the table and rounded the room examining faces. Nervous, hard-faced women, and men with swiftly darting eyes, who laughed too loud and drank too much wine, peopled the crowded tables. Their silks and satins seemed faded, the jewelry tarnished, the good humor feigned. No eye took note of me.

  Dodging scurrying servants and a man doing backflips, I moved toward the table at the apex of the great horseshoe. And there was Jacard.

  He’d added weight these two years. Gray pouches drooped beneath his eyes. His dark beard, fuller than the sharp wedge I recalled, could not disguise a jaw gone soft, nor could a gold circlet hide the gray threads in his hair. Clothed in elegant dark blue brocade and a velvet cape, he was whispering asides to a small, strikingly beautiful woman. She was like a character in a book come to life. Her deep-hued skin contrasted dramatically with a sheer white gown and a cloud of pale hair that floated free, scarce touched by the forces that hold us to earth.

  No other familiar figure occupied their table. Crushing disappointment, I stepped close enough to hear their talk.

  “…could not find a fortune-teller as you asked,” Jacard was saying to the woman. Xanthe, John Deune had named her.

  “You should scorch his naked feet,” she said, popping a grape in her mouth. “It always works to get a servant’s attention. Though I’ll say the singer’s voice was pleasing. Perhaps I’ll have him brought to my bedchamber without those awkward women.”

  “We’d have to blindfold him.” Jacard traced the long line of her neck with a finger. Disgusting. He looked ready to lick her face.

  “All in all, I’d rather have a seer.” She ignored his attentions. The guests on either side of them kept their eyes on their food.

  “To remind your mentor of all he’s forgotten?”

  “For a number of things.”

  After a quarter hour of such unrevealing nonsense, I decided to move on. Neither of them wore any green jewels.

  As I was deciding which way to go, the acrobats tumbled out the door, and fifteen costumed dogs burst yipping into the hall. Xanthe stood abruptly. “Enough of this. I hate dogs. Costumed dogs the worst.”

  Jacard’s hand brushed her waist. “Will you not reconsider my offer?”

  “I’ve no wish to spend the rest of the evening hearing you argue with a dead man, Regent Iaccar. It doesn’t amuse me. I’m not yet desperate enough to let a corpse teach me what I want to know.”

  A corpse. I’d thought Dante was teaching her.…

  “Then why do you do it, vixen?” muttered Jacard. He reached for his wine goblet. As his glare was fixed to the lady sweeping through the doors behind the dais, his hand tipped it. Wine splattered all over him, the tablecloth, and the woman next to him. I thought the overrouged, overjeweled woman might prostrate herself.

  “Clumsy cow!” snapped Jacard, jumping to his feet as if the hapless guest had done it. He turned to the rest of the guests at the head table. “Excuse me while I retire to remedy this mess.”

  Meanwhile Xanthe began dispensing orders to the train of servants and aides on the far side of the doorway. “Wine in my apartments,” she told one. “Draw me a bath,” she told another, at a volume guaranteed to be heard by every person at Jacard’s table. “I wish to get this graveyard stink off of me.” Brushing her fingers on the gawking face of a fair youth no more than seventeen, she winked. “Stay tonight after the others leave.”

  I’d never witnessed a display so perfectly natural and yet so knowingly crafted to enrage.

  Jacard knocked over his chair as he bulled his way after her. I slipped around and exited the same door
while it yet swung open with his passing. The lady was already vanished.

  Portier’s prison would most likely be somewhere in the heart of Sirpuhi—the oldest part of the palace, surely downward and west toward the cliffs. Unfortunately, Jacard went up. Two bodyguards accompanied him up a grand stair and through brightly lit passageways to apartments of exactly the tawdry grandeur I would expect of him. Abandoning his attendants in a gilded salon the size of an amphitheatre, he moved on to an equally sizable bedchamber. Perhaps he intended to change his stained garments, as he said. Like a guardian wraith, I followed.

  His first move was to lock the door behind us.

  I froze in place between an armoire and a boot chest. Had he heard me?

  He threw off his cape and doublet and donned a mud-colored tunic right over his wine-splotched shirt. With quick, silent movements, he opened a small door in the base of a marble statue of a man with a goat’s lower body and pulled out a polished wood box. Sliding its lid aside, he pulled out a heavy silver chain bearing a single…huge…green Stone in a cage of silver wire.

  My breath caught. Size alone named it worth a city. But who knew how to value a gem of such power? Yet…

  A probe of the aether, as Dante had taught me, came up empty. Why did I perceive no enchantment? Surely this was one of the Seeing Stones.

  Jacard threw his purple velvet cape over all, hiding the Stone and his plain garb. I followed him into the outer passage. Again I was torn. Follow Jacard and his gem or seek out the lady? No doubt her apartments were nearby…and her daemon mage. Her teacher. Surely she kept him close. I had to know.

  I had to traverse the entire upper floor of the palace to find Xanthe’s rooms, yet it was strangely easy to find my way. Around every corner was a statue or table or arch that seemed familiar. When there was a choice of turning, one way would sing out, Take me. The lady had demanded a bath, and sure enough, off the middle of a passage in exactly the place it ought to be was a servants’ stair and a parade of serving girls lugging steaming water jars. I took up with them like a spare shadow, following them into a great bathing room, lined with richly colored tiles, arranged in erotic designs.

  A short passage took me into a large, candlelit bedchamber. And there, in a velvet-lined box on a bedside table entirely exposed to anyone who passed, lay two faceted green Stones, locked into a cage of silver wire. I had just bent over to study them, when a male voice from the next room set my heart thuttering. I scurried to the bedchamber doorway.

  “Your hair is the moonlight’s mist; your feet the rosy color of spring dawn.…” The gawking youth Xanthe had invited to stay groveled half-naked at her feet, uttering inanities. But my attention was captured by the white stick leaning on the wall across the room, beside a curtained doorway. Dante’s staff.

  Saints’ mercy, did he live in these apartments with her? I’d never considered…Two years he’d kept himself in our guesthouse. Yet Xanthe was extraordinarily beautiful. Fascinating. Sensual. Perhaps she was a more devoted student than I.…

  “I’ve changed my mind.” The lady’s naked foot shoved the youth onto his backside. “You’re not at all to my taste.”

  Wide-eyed and gasping, as if he teetered on the verge of a cliff, the youth scrambled away, snatched up his wadded doublet and shirt, and scuttled through the curtained arch.

  The lady called to the servant girls to keep the hot water coming, and then hurried through the arch after her failed lover.

  Emotions in foolish disarray, I followed them out. The bells had rung tenth hour. I needed to be back with Ilario in three hours, lest we be summoned to repeat our performance. I’d best be off to find Portier.

  Xanthe had gone only a short way down the main passage. A red-haired man in green livery stood beside another curtained door. A well-armed man…a guard. I paused, the prickling sense of familiarity luring me after her.

  “Is he here?” said Xanthe.

  “As ever. No change.” The guard held back the draperies. I slipped through right on her heels, taking care not to brush the guard or the curtain.

  A single candle glinted in a great window. The dark chamber seemed spacious. Uncluttered. A few darker bulks could be chairs, a couch, a table. Thick carpet caressed my bare feet.

  “Why have you no light here?” asked Xanthe, irritated.

  “It does not seem necessary.” The voice rattled my heart. Dante’s voice, no question. As I focused on the shadows rather than the soft candlelight, I made out the still figure in a chair, facing toward us, his back to the windows. He chose the dark, though he could see.…

  I wrapped my arms about my aching breast.

  “I’ve given you sight. You should use it.”

  “So you say.” No anger, no passion, no kindness, no contempt. Never had I heard Dante speak so entirely without emotion. Save for its distinct timbre, the voice could have been any man’s.

  Xanthe circled the room like a stalking cat. “How can you not remember such a gift?”

  He didn’t answer.

  She planted herself in front of him. “You do nothing to restore yourself. Nothing to make yourself useful. How am I to justify your life? Iaccar insists I hand you over. All your rants about keeping the Stones from him…our partnership…my independence. You swore me an oath, you devil.”

  “I seem to have sworn oaths to everyone I encounter, living, dead, or…whatever. Kill me, if you wish.”

  With a lightning crack, her hand met his cheek. “It is not my wish!”

  He didn’t move. Didn’t grab her hand. Saints, what was wrong with him?

  She dropped to her knees. “I want you back, mage. All these spells you’ve taught me, but I’ve no idea which one might reverse this change. Tell me. You’re leaving me no choice but to partner with Iaccar.”

  “He won’t like what comes of it. Nor will you.”

  “Then to the seven hells with you!” She leapt to her feet and stormed out of the room.

  He sighed and rested his chin on his ruined hand, staring into nothing. “That is already accomplished.”

  I knelt to get a good look at his face. Gaunt, fleshless, and pale. An angry scar on one cheek. And his eyes…even when sightless their green fire could scorch. But now they were cold, dark, dead.

  In that instant, all my girlish imaginings were laid waste. Like the green leaf hidden in a hard, brown bud, hope had named him an agente confide again, or a prisoner, kept in some state of unconsciousness or stasis. My friends and I would break the locks of his dungeon and restore him. I had never dreamt of this. He lived but was not the man I knew.

  No question what I wanted—to do anything that would restore his unruly spirit to the aether. But I could not risk betraying Portier. This stranger might warn Xanthe or Jacard about me.

  He rose and wandered through the room, first to a table piled with books. He thumbed through them idly, moved on to a mahogany cabinet where he poured a glass of wine, and then drifted through a glass-paned door that led to a small balcony. The rising moon showed him rail thin. Strands of gray, new these months, threaded his dark hair, cut brutally short.

  Leaning on the balustrade, he peered upward to stars faded in the moon’s brightness. Then his gaze dropped to the rocky slope far below.

  Despair flooded the aether. Overwhelming. Suffocating. Unnatural. The longer he stared into the depths, the more afraid I became. Dante, hear me.

  He did not react at all.

  “The door is a better way out,” I said softly.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not,” he said, unmoving.

  “You can walk back through it if you don’t like what’s on the other side.”

  “Doesn’t matter. The scourge forbids easy solutions. It cannot compel me to do the impossible. But it can…discourage…all else. Eventually I will—” He turned around and peered into the gloom. “Who’s there?”

  “No one. I am part of you.”

  “I doubt that,” he said, shaking his head. “And Xanthe does not allow me to speak to other wom
en, even disembodied ones.”

  He exhibited no hint of recognition. When he was blind, he could recognize me by smell alone.

  “What’s happened to you?”

  “If you’re part of me, you should know, should you not?”

  “I’ve been asleep.”

  “Ah.” Glancing about once more, he made to return inside. I let him pass. He picked up the glass of wine and returned to the chair where I’d found him. “That I believe.”

  “Can you not remember?” I said. “Perhaps I can help.”

  “I’m lost.”

  “You don’t know where you are?”

  “I exist in the Regent’s palace in the Principality of Mancibar.” He said it as if reciting a schoolroom lesson. “But I don’t know how I come to be here. Or where I might have been before. Xanthe says my name is Dante and that I’m in love with her, but neither fact has any meaning. She may as well tell me that I am Arsano of the Broad Shoulders and I hold up the bowl of the sky.”