The Daemon Prism: A Novel of the Collegia Magica

by Carol Berg

  “I was hoping you’d found an exit that wasn’t the gates,” I said, planting my feet carefully as we scrambled upward.

  Andero didn’t reply until we’d reached the verge and he’d set Portier on his feet. “Might have had a couple ways out earlier—service gates or such. But not with this row. He’s a scrawny thing. I suppose we could wrap him tight and stuff him in the big bag with the clothes, balls, scarves, and such. I could carry it crost my shoulders. ’Tis only for a bit.”

  “They’ll be searching everything large enough to hold a man.”

  “Well, then, only one way as I can see. Our permit’s for four. Your friend must pass in my place. I can likely get all the way down that cliff we just come up. Grew up in the mountains, didn’t I?”

  “No clothes,” said Portier. “And noticeable marks.” He bared one arm, a horror of crosshatched lacerations.

  I couldn’t see a good alternative. “We brought extra costumes. No one’s going to be judging the fit. And we brought face paint and kohl.…We’ll mark you up like a Fassid warlord—a proper juggler—and you can walk out.”

  Dodging searchers and departing guests, we trudged through the gardens to a grove of prickly juniper just outside the entertainers’ doors. The bells had just rung second hour of the night watch, and from the line of guests waiting to exit the gates, no one was going to be demanding a second entertainment from Marco Flamberge and his women.

  Portier drowsed as jugglers, dancing girls, and dog trainers straggled out. At last, two tall figures were silhouetted in the lighted doorway. They called farewells to several people and ambled down the walkway. I slipped out of the patchy shadows and joined them, grabbing the kithara as if I’d been with them all along. “Done for the evening?”

  “Oh, Anne,” whispered Rhea, glancing around at the other entertainers streaming before and behind us, “we were so worried.”

  “Saints and angels,” said Ilario, raising his face to the heavens. “I very much disliked leaving without you. From the yelling and the guards barreling in and out the last two hours, I’d say you’ve had some success?”

  “A new member has joined Sonjeur Flamberge’s singing players,” I said, exhaustion making me fey. “We need to get him into costume.”

  Rhea’s steps slowed. “You brought someone out? I thought tonight was just to learn.…”

  “It couldn’t wait,” I said. “Portier’s with Andero.”

  “One moment.” Ilario darted away.

  While the chevalier had a boisterous exchange with the master of the dogs, I grabbed the costume bag from Rhea and scooted across the grass.

  Before my eyes could adjust to the shadows, the chevalier was beside me, waving a flask. “I had bet Groubert the juggler a flask of beer that my dancer wouldn’t spend all night with the smarmy suitor who grabbed her on our way out. And he paid up! So where is he?”

  I parted the juniper’s spiky branches.

  Ilario took a hard breath, dropped onto his knees, and clasped Portier’s shaking hands in both of his. “Ah, merciful Creator…my brother.”

  A drowsy grin lit Portier’s face. “Knew you’d come rescuing. Expected the swordsman. Black mask, not frost-faire clown…”

  “Best go,” said Andero. “You’re safest if you’re not straggling. He’ll need your strong arm, lord.”

  “Aren’t we two fine men?” said Ilario, as we decked out Portier in pantaloons and Andero’s full-sleeved shirt, which near swallowed him. “Having these women save us. My black mask is lost, and my captain”—he swallowed hard—“is not here. Good Andero had best watch himself or he’ll get in a pickle, too, and the ladies will have to do for him.” He fed Portier a few swallows of the beer and then sprinkled it liberally over their clothes.

  “Ladies?” Portier’s brow creased.

  “Introductions later.” Yet I couldn’t see Rhea anywhere. “She’s probably keeping a lookout.”

  Andero stuffed the voluminous costume bag in my arms.

  “Are you sure you can get down that cliff?” I asked.

  “It’s like to take me a while, but I’ll be safer than you. Godspeed, damoselle, my lord, and you, my new friend.”

  “Divine grace, Andero.” We said it together. “And mind your feet.”

  The crowd had thinned a bit, but there was still a long line of performers queued up to get through the iron gates. We took it slow, as if we were enjoying the night. Ilario hooted and waved his flask at his new acquaintances, while watching for Rhea. “Where in Gedevron is she?”

  Ilario and Portier were ahead of me, Portier’s arm draped over the chevalier’s shoulder as if they were drunk. Ilario interspersed his commentary with snips of tavern songs.

  “Who are we looking for?” said Portier.

  “My physician,” said Ilario. “I had a run-in with a sword a few months ago. You and I can compare scars. She’s a Temple— There she is. Saints, woman, I thought we’d lost you.”

  Rhea slipped into the queue behind me. “Had to…go…you know,” she mumbled.

  “Temple healer?” Portier craned his head around. “Ani…”

  Ilario burst into song.

  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.

  He nudged Portier. “Come, partner mine. Marco Flamberge’s players are talented in all aspects of entertainment. Especially the delights of beer and ale and the magnificence of spirits!”

  Portier appeared to be wriggling out of his embrace, but Ilario only clutched him harder, spewing drunken nonsense and bumping into everyone nearby.

  The iron gate loomed over us. The guard closed in. I pushed forward, fumbling with the pass Andero had left with me, trying not to drop it or the cumbersome bag. “The Mysterious Marco and his players,” I said, no need to feign my weariness. “Four of us. Only two drunk.”

  The guard examined our paper, looked us over, and then, without a word, stabbed a short sword into the canvas bag. The tip pricked my shoulder.

  I staggered, but Rhea grabbed me and kept me upright. Her eyes were like bronze shields.

  Portier gasped. But the guards’ words played Heaven’s music. “Be on your way,” the guard said. “Put that screecher to bed else I’ll gut him.”

  “Aye, your honor.”

  They moved on to the next in line. We quickened our steps across the causeway and onto the divided road that descended through the terraced gardens. The blaze of torchlight faded behind us, only a few hanging lanterns showing the way. As soon as we were out of view of the gates, Portier shook off Ilario’s arm and stumbled to the shadowed parapet. Propped on the marble rail, he caught his breath and glared at me…no, not me.…

  “Introduce me to your physician, Ilario. She’d not be a Temple girl newly converted to the Cult of the Reborn, would she? Troubled? Shy? Scintillating intelligence? Oh yes, and a betrayer?”

  “Please, Duplais,” she said, “you’ve got to listen. I swear—”

  “Betrayer?” Naught could measure my dismay.

  “Did they pay you well to turn me over, girl? A nice stipend to the poor Temple girl in exchange for the heretic, the naive blasphemer who confided that his own nature confused him. And who cared what end the Regent of Mancibar had planned for such a one, for the world would be purified, yes? Rhea Tasserie, I never thought to see you in this life again.”

  CHAPTER 35

  “You were ready to go back to Sabria…to the necromancer,” said Rhea, backing away down the slope. “I had to keep you away from him.”

  “You gave Portier to Jacard?” I said.

  But Rhea spoke only to Portier. “The man said the Regent of Mancibar wished to hire a resident scholar who knew both of magic and the Cult. You needed money. I thought you’d be safe with them until I could fetch the tetrarch to speak with you. So I arranged the meeting. I never imagined the Regent knew you or would take you by force or— Crea
tor’s grace, how could I imagine what he planned?”

  Every word we’d spoken since Pradoverde scalded my memory. About Dante, about magic, about Mont Voilline and necromancy and Ixtador. I had lost all caution, allowed her to know everything. I believed myself a woman of the world who had survived a mystery beyond imagining, and I saw Rhea as the naive, sheltered girl I had once been. Only she wasn’t. She was a spy.

  “So you learned what Portier could tell you, disposed of him, and then were assigned to dupe Ilario. All so your true master could get evidence against Dante, so he could gut and burn him in Temple Square.”

  She didn’t deny it. How could she? Gods save me, after hearing Dante’s cold voice, learning what I had of his deeds, I couldn’t even say they were wrong to do it. But the tetrarch’s motives surely extended beyond one savage show.

  “Dante’s fall would damage the king, too,” I said, “and tarnish the Camarilla beyond repair. The Temple would rise triumphant, and Beltan de Ferrau, the commoner holy man, would become the youngest High Tetrarch in living memory.”

  “No! You’re wrong about him. It’s what he sees beyond the Veil.”

  Ilario glided around behind Rhea and blocked her retreat. Night shadows masked his face. “We can’t stay here,” he said, entirely without emotion. “Portier needs care. You will give it, damoselle, taking a full measure yourself of anything you put in his mouth. And then we’ll have explanations all around.”

  “Lord, please. I told you—”

  “Later,” he said.

  “One problem with that,” I said, recalling green scraps scattered along the roadside and Rhea’s increased agitation as we approached Mancibar. “Think carefully before you answer, Rhea Tasserie. Did you lead Tetrarch de Ferrau here?”

  She drew a shaking breath. “I need to explain—”

  “Yes or no.”

  “Yes.”

  My hand trembled with power and fury. “Does he know where we’re lodged? Consider carefully. Yes or no.”

  “No. I decided to tell you first. To convince you to listen to him. To convince him to listen to you. He’s a Reader, the most sensitive there’s ever been. You carry your sister’s tessila, so some part of you believes a Temple Reader can touch her soul beyond the Veil. He believes your mage to be a daemon walking the living world.”

  The crowd was scattering quickly. With so little resource and so much need to be out of the streets, we had to move. “Is she lying, Ilario? If she brings that bloody-minded holy man down on Portier, I’ll kill her myself.”

  “I’m no fit judge,” he said, persisting in his strange flatness. “She scraped herself to the bone to keep me alive. When Ferrau questioned me, he knew only the fool. She is exceptional in so many ways, but perhaps lying is one of them after all.”

  “No,” she said, softly, eyes fixed on the ground. “Never to you, lord. Never once.”

  “Portier?”

  “Women have ever made me an idiot, Ani. But, the gods’ truth, my knees fail me.”

  We dodged squads of Jacard’s guardsmen all the way. They hammered on doors and rousted people from their beds, hunting an “escaped prisoner who consorted with daemons.” But by the time we arrived at the Street of Beggars, the shacks and dens had already been tumbled and the district’s denizens retreated into their squalor. Even so, Portier, Rhea, and I held back while Ilario scoured the neighboring lanes.

  The wind whined and howled down the streets of Mancibar like a pack of wild dogs. Or perhaps it was in the aether I heard the wailing. Neither moon nor star shone through the blackness, yet the night seemed alive. Flesh and bone pulsed with the beating of my heart.

  The last few lamps of the district winked out. Saints bring Andero back soon. We had to decide what to do about Dante.…

  Andero had told me of Castelivre and of Dante’s fear of losing control as he healed the foolish shepherd. What daemon feared his own wickedness?

  “Didn’t see anyone untoward,” said Ilario, gliding catlike into our refuge. “Even the rats are hiding.”

  ONCE WE’D SETTLED PORTIER ON Ilario’s pallet, Rhea brought out her medicine box. She insisted I feed Portier sips of ale while she prepared wound dressings. “He needs drink more than sleep.”

  I bit my tongue. Naught but jibes and hatefulness came to mind.

  Ilario watched her brew a tisane over a small fire in the alley. She tried several times to speak to him. Each time he shook his head. Without prompting, she drank the first cup when the tisane was ready.

  Portier scarce woke as we poured the tea down his throat. As he settled into a deep sleep, Rhea dressed the fresh bleeding cuts on his back, and some on his thighs that had festered, always explaining what she did and why. She offered to dress the nick on my shoulder, but I refused. Silly of me. Even I found no fault with her care.

  Somewhere near fifth hour, Rhea said she’d done all she could. “He needs to rest, drink, and eat.” She glanced up. Gray pouches circled her eyes. “We can talk now.”

  “Sleep,” I said. “We’ll settle accounts in the morning.” Ilario was watching.

  She curled up under her blanket, but I wasn’t sure she slept. I sat in the doorway, tending our little fire till we’d naught left to burn.

  On one of his passes through the alley, Ilario sat with me a while. I told him of Portier’s rescue and of my encounter with Dante. He let me weep on his shoulder, before setting out for another circuit of the neighborhood.

  My eyes drifted shut. Waiting behind my lids were the boiling aether and a cavern painted with blood. Images of Dante holding a burning iron over Portier and screaming vengeance. Of a madman incinerating those who crossed him. Of a madman with dead eyes and flames leaking from his skin, screaming to an unseen scourge. Of a madman.

  “ANI…”

  I blinked and sat up, finding a crick in my neck and a gouge in my back from the bare timber of the door frame. I grabbed my knife, fallen from my hand.

  “…could use a drink.” Portier had got himself up on one elbow, but the ale flask was a long reach.

  “Some protector I am,” I said, as Portier swallowed the weak ale like the king’s prized vintage.

  “I’ve been watching,” said a bulky figure occupying the doorway I’d just abandoned.

  “Andero! Blessed angels,” I said, relieved beyond measure.

  “Haven’t seen folk sleeping so sound since the Norgand coast, when my cadre fought four days straight. Not a man could move for two days after. The chevalier’s gone up to the roof to keep a lookout. And Rhea popped up when I fetched a bit of cheese so my belly wouldn’t cave. She said go ahead and eat all of it, as she’d bring more from the market. Don’t know how you scrawny folk keep going on so little.”

  “Rhea’s gone?” I spun around, engulfed in forgotten fury. “How long ago?”

  “Not half an hour yet,” he said, his wide brow crinkled. “Why?

  But, of course, he didn’t know about Rhea the Betrayer. How stupid we’d been not to bind her.

  “ ’Tis only an hour past first light,” said Andero, “though it don’t look as if we’re to get all that much light today. Never saw such clouds. Or mayhap it’s smoke. The whole city stinks of it.”

  Indeed, I could have believed we’d slept the clock around till dusk and that our little dung fire had incinerated the entire city. How could Ilario let Rhea get away?

  “We need to get Portier out of here. Rhea will likely have Ferrau and his bailiffs here in moments.”

  “Looks like John Deune she’s fetched.” Andero squinted down the alley. “And he’s found Will.”

  I’d wholly forgotten about Will Deune.

  “Get out of sight, Andero. Behind the roof stair. I’ll distract them.” I hurried off to meet the approaching party, while the smith slipped off unseen.

  John Deune was twitching and working his mouth, his seed-like eyes about to pop from his head. Rhea’s tatty basket held a blood-soaked straw packet and a small wheel of cheese.

  “You
came back,” I said to Rhea. “Where is your tetrarch?”

  “Portier needs meat to build his blood,” she said. “I went out early so as not to be seen. But John Deune was hunting us and making a noisy show of it. Figured I’d best bring him.” Her mouth was tight, and she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  The smoky gloom prevented me seeing much of the street beyond the alley. But I caught no sign of anyone. Rhea pointed to the door. “Andero’s likely inside, Will.”

  A lank-haired youth in filthy slops barged around all of us, following her direction.

  “Da, he’s not here!” His wail could have been heard for a kilometre.