by Sarah Ash
A trickle of moonlight leaked in through the high dormitory window, illuminating Paol’s empty bed. Paol should have been back by now. It was only chapel duty, after all. And it was odd that neither Père Albin nor the senior monitor patrolling on dormitory duty had noticed his absence. Had they caught Paol trying to sneak back in and hauled him down to the headmaster’s study to be punished? Jagu felt guilty now, for letting Paol cover for him while he spent time with Maistre de Joyeuse. He crept over to Kilian’s bed and shook him by the shoulder.
“What’s the matter?” Kilian mumbled.
“Paol’s not back.”
“What?” Kilian, still half-asleep, sat up, blinking at Jagu. “Where’s he got to?”
“I’m going to go look for him.”
“Wait. I’ll come with you.” Kilian grabbed his breeches from the end of the bed and started to pull them on; Jagu did the same. Holding their shoes, they tiptoed to the door and quietly let themselves out.
“I’ll scout round outside,” said Jagu.
“I’ll check the library,” said Kilian. “The little swot may have forgotten what time it is. You know how he loves to read.”
“Meet me back here in a quarter of an hour,” Jagu called over his shoulder as Kilian sped away. Jagu took the back stair, which led out into the quad. Lights were burning in the masters’ study windows; he inched along the wall before risking a quick look inside through the lozenge-paned glass. Père Albin was marking the essays they had handed in earlier, frowning as he scribbled critical comments in the margins. He could hear two of the senior masters discussing the bishop’s recent sermon.
Howls of laughter erupted from the opposite side of the quad, where the older students were housed. Jagu and his friends often wondered how the seniors amused themselves in their rare free time. Had they sent Paol out on an errand?
Jagu slipped silently across to the seniors’ dormitory and stood on tiptoe to look in.
“And if any one of you wastrels has failed to gain full marks in the translation paper,” one of the seniors was imitating Père Albin’s choleric manner and the others were doubled up with laughter, “I shall take pleasure in applying the cane with more than my usual enthusiasm. You, boy! Yes, you, bend over…” Jagu could smell liquor fumes and spotted a couple of empty wine bottles on a desk. But there was no sign of Paol.
And then he heard a cry, distant and high-pitched, from the direction of the garden. It could have been a hunting owl, or its terrified prey…
Jagu sped from the quad, tearing along the path, scuffing up gravel as he ran.
A full moon was rising, turning the dark seminary garden into a lake brimming with silvered light. The cedars stood starkly black against the brightness and the white blossoms on the trees glimmered like stars. An unfamiliar perfume drifted on the air, sweet yet bitter-spiced, as if a thurifer had been burning incense beneath the trees.
The cry came again.
Jagu ran faster now. He trod on something that crunched like glass beneath his foot. Bending down to see what it was, he picked up the twisted metal frame of a pair of spectacles. Fragments of one shattered glass lens fell onto the path through his fingers.
“Paol!” he called. “Paol!” He reached the tall ironwork gate and rattled the catch, but it was locked. There was no choice but to clamber up the crumbling stones of the high wall, clinging to the ivy to pull himself to the top. The feeling of dread was growing stronger all the time, like chill fingers slowly closing around his heart.
The creamy scent grew stronger as Jagu hurtled through the dark garden. The tree was a mass of lacy blossom, luminously white against the shadowy foliage. And the light radiating from the tree seemed to be intensifying, growing brighter, as if it were leeching brightness from the moon. He skidded to a halt.
A boy lay at the foot of the tree, his fair head lolling against the trunk and a man was kneeling over him. For a moment, Jagu dared to hope that one of the masters had come to the rescue. Then he knew that no one had heard the cries but him.
As Jagu watched, a shadow issued from the boy’s mouth and darted upward, outspread wings black against the moon’s white disc.
Jagu tried to move. He could not even blink. He was paralyzed. He could do nothing to help.
The boy’s body went into sudden spasm, his head jerked upward, and a faint cry issued from his mouth. Only then did Jagu recognize him.
“Paol?”
The man turned around. In the moonlight, Jagu recognized the magus, his green eyes glittering. At the same moment, he heard voices calling his name.
“Here!” he shouted, standing his ground, silently daring the magus to attack him when help was on its way. “In the garden!”
The magus raised his arm and his hawk familiar swooped down onto his shoulder. A cloud covered the moon and when Jagu looked again, he was gone.
“Paol!” Jagu stumbled forward and cradled his friend in his arms. “Stay with me!” But there was something about the unnatural way that Paol’s head drooped against his shoulder that told him he had come too late.
Jagu could not control the trembling in his legs. He was afraid he was going to fall over.
“Drink this.” Abbé Houardon placed a steaming cup in his hands. “It’ll make you feel better.” Jagu automatically raised it to his lips and obeyed. The hot sweet tea contained something strong that stung the back of his throat and made him cough and splutter. Through watering eyes, he saw the headmaster pour a measure of spirits into his own teacup and swallow a mouthful.
“I’m going to have to ask you to answer some questions, Jagu.”
Jagu nodded. He supposed that he was still in shock. Everything that he had witnessed in the garden seemed like a confused dream.
“I want you to be completely honest with me, Jagu. You have nothing to gain by lying. Did you cause Paol’s death?”
Jagu’s head whipped up. “No! Paol was my friend.”
“This wasn’t just a boyish prank that went wrong? Or a dare? I want the truth, Jagu.” The headmaster leaned out across his desk, staring searchingly into Jagu’s eyes.
“I swear to you, on—on Saint Sergius’s crook, I had nothing to do with it.”
“I’ve had to inform the constables of the watch. They’ll want to investigate the area where the crime took place. They’ll also ask to interview you. Do you feel ready for that? I’ll stay with you.”
Jagu did not want to have to relive the past hour so soon. Yet he knew he must do it if only to ensure that no one else died as horribly as Paol had. Though how the constables of the Kemper Watch could track down a magus as cunning and devious as this one, he had no idea. He stared at the floor, studying the sanded whorls and knots in the polished boards. “Thank you, sir.”
“And I have the sad duty to send for Paol’s family, of course.” Abbé Houardon seemed almost to be talking to himself. “But I’ve written again by express post to the Commanderie, Jagu. We need an experienced exorcist. This is beyond my skills. We’re all in danger until this evil man is brought to justice.”
Jagu is walking through the seminary garden beneath a slow snowfall of white blossom.
There, beneath the tree, stands the magus, soft green eyes glinting through the pale cloud of falling petals, his hawk familiar perched on his shoulder.
“Did you really think I would let you escape me, Jagu?” he asks softly. “You have seen my true face. And for that you must die.”
Jagu turns and breaks into a run.
The hawk comes flying after him, swooping down, knocking him to the ground. He flings up his hand to shield his eyes, but the hawk’s sharp beak pecks and pecks at his wrist, until it burns like fire.
“It’s no use; you won’t get away.” The magus leans over him, taking hold of him by the wrist. “See? I have put my mark on you. Now you will do as I bid you.”
A sigil glows in raw, red fire on the inside of Jagu’s wrist, over the pulse point.
Jagu opens his mouth and screams.
&nb
sp; “Jagu. Jagu!”
Jagu woke with a start to see someone leaning over him in the half-light. He gave a shout of fear and struck out wildly.
“Idiot, it’s me, Kilian.” Kilian grabbed him by the wrist before he could hit him again. “You were dreaming.”
Jagu sat up, staring about him, certain that the magus’s hawk was still hovering in the shadows above his bed.
“D’you want to wake the whole dorm?” hissed Kilian.
Only a dream. Yet it had been so vivid. Jagu could still feel the stab of the hawk’s beak as it burned the magus’s mark onto his wrist. He left his bed and went to the window, pulling back the loose sleeve of his nightshirt to examine his skin.
“What now?” grumbled Kilian, joining him.
Jagu stared. Even in the dull light before dawn, he could see the faint shimmer on his wrist, above the pulse point—a mark that looked just like the sigil in his dream.
“Look.” He thrust his wrist in front of Kilian’s face. “Now tell me I’m only dreaming.”
CHAPTER 13
Does it ever stop raining in Armel? Ruaud wondered as the sky darkened and the cold drops began to spatter down again. After serving in the searingly dry desert heat of Enhirre, he still found the moist air of Francia’s western province seeped into his bones.
Maistre Donatien had established an efficient post-horse service for this kind of emergency, but even with this advantage, Ruaud had already been four days on the road to Kemper. And as he rode on through the mist and rain over the bleak moors that surrounded the distant cathedral city of Kemper, he began to wonder if it might not take five.
It was high summer, and yet the moors were swathed in low cloud that filtered out the sun. “Unless this is some mage-mischief designed to slow me down,” he muttered to his horse as he pulled up his damp collar against the persistent drizzle. He passed bedraggled sheep sheltering in the lee of a ruined barn. He had not seen another traveler in the past three hours, and was beginning to wonder if he had lost his way in the mist. He had been so absorbed in his own thoughts, going over and over the facts of the case as set out in Abbé Houardon’s letter, that it was possible he might have missed a vital milestone.
“I suspect that this may be the work of Kaspar Linnaius,” Donatien had told him when assigning him the mission.
“But why would he risk coming back to Francia, where there’s a price on his head?”
“Be careful, dear Ruaud. Linnaius is a cunning and dangerous adversary…”
Had Donatien’s farewell smile, as he offered him his ring to kiss, been wholly sincere? Ever since Ruaud had been on the road, he had been wondering about the Grand Maistre’s decision. It was, of course, his duty as a Guerrier to go wherever his commanding officer sent him. But relations between the two of them had been more than a little strained of late. Ruaud had twice been forced by his conscience to openly disagree with Donatien’s decisions in council meetings. From odd little comments and digs, he could not help wondering if Donatien suspected him of plotting to take his place.
Yet the brutal facts of the Kemper case were enough to make Ruaud put aside these concerns: a boy had been murdered. And worst of all, Ruaud feared from the evidence that the victim’s immortal soul had been stolen. Other children were in danger if this magus was still at large.
The mists were lifting at last and traces of whey-thin sunlight began to penetrate the cloud. A signpost appeared ahead through the shreds of mist; a bird of prey was sitting hunched on one of the arms. As Ruaud rode closer, he saw that it was a hawk, regarding him coolly with its bright, cruel amber eyes. Suddenly the bird lifted on powerful wings in a shower of glittering wet drops and skimmed silently away.
“Only a hawk.” And yet why had he shivered so violently as if another drenching shower were about to fall? Stronger shafts of sunlight pierced the clouds; the rain had stopped.
Ruaud reined his horse to a stop and gazed up to see which way he should take. Rain dripped from the peeling sign. KEMPER read the arm that pointed in the direction taken by the hawk. Below him the moor mists were slowly parting to reveal the hazy outline of a good-sized city and, beyond, the sea.
“Ormas. Return.” Through the shadow hawk’s keen eyes, Rieuk had seen enough. A Commanderie officer was approaching. And he was not just one of the regular military; he wore the golden insignia of the Order of Saint Sergius. Like his patron saint, he would be trained in exorcism and the casting out of daemons.
Rieuk stood at the open casement, watching the rooftops for sight of his Emissary. From time to time, he closed his eyes, merging his consciousness with Ormas’s to scan the terrain beneath for any other signs of approaching danger. This officer might be just the first of a whole troop of Guerriers.
“So I merit a visit from a top-grade Commanderie exorcist? I’m flattered.” But even though the thought brought a wry smile to his lips, he knew that the danger was real. A skilled exorcist would seek to use the very Angelstones Rieuk had come to destroy against him.
A flecked shadow swept toward him across the sky.
“Ormas.” The shadow hawk alighted silently on Rieuk’s outstretched arm. Amber eyes stared challengingly into his. “Help me find the boy. There isn’t much time left.”
Jagu sat in the dormitory staring at Paol’s empty bed. The shouts of the other boys kicking a ball around the seminary courtyard drifted up through the open window. He had slept badly again, convinced that he had heard Paol calling his name in the darkest hour of night.
“Sitting here moping won’t bring him back.”
Jagu’s head jerked up. Kilian was standing behind him, the light blue of his eyes bright with a harsh, angry light.
“I know. But I can’t stop thinking it was my fault. Why didn’t I get there in time to save him?” This feeling of guilt had been eating away at him, and it was unlike anything else he had ever experienced, shadowing everything he did, leaching the taste from his food, the colors from the daylight, even the pleasure of playing music.
Kilian gave a shrug. “We’re one player down. You’re needed on the team.”
“And I could do nothing. Nothing to help Paol!” Jagu kicked his heel against the bed leg. “I just stood there. While he—he—”
“Are you coming or not?”
Jagu heard Kilian at last. But he was not in the mood for playing games.
“Suit yourself, then.” The dormitory door slammed behind Kilian and Jagu was left alone again with his thoughts.
Why couldn’t Kilian understand? They had been friends, the three of them, united since their first day at the seminary. Was this Kilian’s way of dealing with Paol’s death, throwing himself into physical activity?
“Jagu…”
That voice. So faint, yet so familiar. Jagu went stiff, sensing that he was no longer alone. Slowly, unwillingly, he turned his head.
There, standing beside his bed, he could just make out Paol’s diminutive figure, but indistinctly, as though peering through thick glass.
“Paol?” he whispered. “B—but you’re—”
“Help me, Jagu.” Paol’s elfin features were twisted into a heartrending expression of terror and pain.
Jagu rubbed his eyes, certain he was hallucinating. Was this Paol’s ghost? The insubstantial image looked like Paol, but there was a taint of corruption about it; his wispy hair looked like dusty spiderthreads and his dulled eyes were sunken too deep in their sockets.
“Wh—what do you want?” Jagu stammered.
“Set me free, Jagu.” Paol’s hollow eyes implored him. “The magus has stolen my soul. Even though my body has begun to rot, I’m still bound to this place. I don’t want to be trapped here forever. Or worse still…to be forced to do his will.”
“But how can I set you free? I’m no match for that magus. I don’t know what spells he’s used to bind you.”
“All you have to do is to find the soul-glass, and shatter it.”
“This soul-glass, where is it? And what is it?”
“Follow me. I’ll show you.”
Jagu hesitated. “How do I know you’re not leading me into a trap?”
“You’ll have to trust me. And you’ll have to be quick too. The magus is distracted at the moment.” A quizzical little frown appeared on the ghost’s cloudy features. Jagu saw it with a quickening of the heart, recognizing one of Paol’s most familiar expressions. “But he won’t stay distracted for long.”
That little frown, if nothing else, had convinced Jagu that the apparition was not an illusion. He followed Paol’s shadowy figure as it flitted downstairs and along the vaulted passageway.
A triumphant cry came from the outer courtyard as one of the teams scored. “One to us! One-nil!” Jagu felt a pang of regret, wishing now that he had gone with Kilian. Kilian would be in a foul mood for the rest of the day if his team lost.
“Where are you taking me, Paol?” In daylight, Paol’s ghostly image was so pale that anyone glancing out of a classroom window would not even have noticed it. But when they reached the chapel, Jagu saw the apparition slide right through the weathered wood of the door, disappearing from view. “The chapel?” This seemed so unlikely a place for a magus to conceal a soul-glass that Jagu hesitated.
But he had to do this for Paol. And Paol had assured him that the magus’s mind was occupied with other matters. Jagu’s fingers closed around the iron door handle and the chapel door slowly opened.
As Ruaud rode into Kemper beneath the Armel Gate, he gazed up at the slender spires of the cathedral piercing the drifting clouds. The glistening sheen of rain on the slates was drying fast as the sun broke through. Why was the saint’s benign influence not strong enough to stop this magus infiltrating the city and wielding his dark arts within the holy precincts?
He passed through the market-day bustle of tradesmen and farmers who had set up their stalls in the cathedral square, past cages of squawking chickens and plump ducks, fishermen with slopping buckets of dark seawater, filled with fresh mussels, crabs, and oysters from the bay.