by DAVID B. COE
“I must protest!” Sartol stormed. “He’s supposed to name all his witnesses in advance.”
Odinan nodded. “He’s right, Baden. We had no prior notice of these two.”
“There’s a reason for that,” Baden persisted. “I had cause to believe that their lives were in danger, that if it had been known that they were here, they might have been murdered. I’m allowed to bring witnesses without notice if there are extenuating circumstances. I felt that this threat qualified.”
Sartol gave a short, incredulous laugh. “There was no threat! He’s fabricating one now to justify his request.”
Odinan shrugged. “It’s not for me to decide. As with all other disputes of this sort, this will be resolved by the gathered mages.” He glanced around the room. “All those in favor of allowing Alayna and Jaryd’s testimony?” Every mage in the chamber except Sartol lifted a hand.
“You may proceed, Baden.”
“Thank you.” The Owl-Master turned to his nephew. “Jaryd, Sartol has said that after we reached the grove, just as the storm began, he was down at the river filling our water pouches, while Jessamyn and Peredur were gathering torches. Does that match your recollection of what happened?”
Jaryd looked at Sartol and shook his head. “No, it doesn’t. Sartol, Alayna, and I were having a conversation when Jessamyn approached us to say that she needed someone to cover the food and gear, and someone else to gather torches. Sartol volunteered to do the latter, leaving Alayna and me to tend to the supplies. A short while later, we saw Jessamyn making her way toward the cluster of trees where Sartol had gone. Soon after that, Peredur came by looking for Jessamyn, and we told him where he could find her. A minute or two later, we heard Jessamyn cry out. We ran to see what had happened, and, when we got there, we found Sartol standing over the bodies. I saw his owl holding the carcass of Peredur’s familiar, and I accused him of murdering the sage and the first. That’s when he tried to kill me. Alayna stopped him and we started to run. I thought for sure that he would kill us before we got away, but Orris intervened. We kept running, and ended up in Theron’s Grove.”
“Do you have any idea why he would kill Jessamyn?” Baden prompted.
The young mage held up an arm-length tree limb, within which lay his glowing blue ceryll. “This is a torch that Sartol was preparing when Jessamyn interrupted him. He placed this ceryll in it so that Theron’s spirit would be able to use it to draw upon his power. He hoped that the Owl-Master would kill us all.”
“Nonsense!” Sartol scoffed. “Why would I risk my own life with a stunt like that?”
“Sartol had been sick,” Jaryd went on coolly, ignoring the mage’s comment. “Most likely he had been pretending to be sick—and Jessamyn decided that Orris, Trahn, and he would wait for the rest of us outside the grove. He never intended to enter the grove, and he never intended for us to return. But Jessamyn uncovered his plot, and he killed her.”
“This is ridiculous!” Sartol snapped. “Obviously these two are in league with Baden, and obviously, given that they’re here with us, they never set foot in Theron’s Grove—that was merely a ruse, intended to confuse our emotions and create just this type of contrived melodrama.” The rhetoric was bold, but Niall could see in the Owl-Master’s eyes that this was just another gambit. Sartol had already seen the other object that Jaryd carried, the token that Niall had looked upon the night before, scarcely trusting his own eyes. The Owl-Master was merely gambling that the rest of the mages would not believe it. Niall could also see that it was a gamble Sartol expected to lose.
“You know better, Sartol,” Jaryd countered, his pale eyes blazing beneath the shock of light brown hair. “You see what I carry. Behold the staff of Theron!” he cried out, raising the charred, splintered stave over his head, and bringing a collective gasp from the gathered mages. “It was given to Alayna and me by the Owl-Master’s spirit after our second night in the grove. With it, he offered his aid in combatting the outlanders responsible for the attacks on Tobyn-Ser!”
“Ridiculous!” Sartol repeated, the denial sounding hollow following Jaryd’s ringing declaration. “I still have seen no proof of these outlanders, and I refuse to accept that the worthless stick he holds is Theron’s staff!”
“It matches the description in the old legends,” Radomil argued, drawing nods of agreement from the other mages. “As for the outlanders,” he went on, turning to Baden, “I, too, would like to see some evidence.”
Baden nodded. “Fair enough. Jaryd?”
The Hawk-Mage reached into his cloak and tossed onto the table the glittering glass and gold disk, and the strange scrap of dark, flexible material that Niall had seen the night before.
“Unfortunately, this is all that remains,” Baden remarked, watching as the two tokens were passed around the chamber for inspection. “The golden object is the eye of one of the mechanical birds Sartol and I encountered in Watersbend. The other is a fragment of its outer covering. Orris saw more—he held the fire-throwing weapons that I have mentioned, he examined the complete remains of the two birds. But Sartol took them when he left Watersbend.” He looked at the Owl-Master. “I presume they’ve been destroyed. Is that correct, Sartol?”
The other man began to chuckle and shake his head. “That’s your proof?” he asked. “A dusty, half-burned scrap of who knows what and a shiny disk that I could balance on my little finger?”
“These objects are strange, Baden,” Ursel commented, as if it were an admission, holding the two tokens in her hand. “I’ve not seen anything like them before.” She faltered, an apology in her pale eyes. “But I find it difficult to see in these small scraps the deadly birds you’ve described. Don’t you have anything else to offer, some other proof that outlanders are responsible for the attacks?”
“Nothing tangible,” Baden conceded, “nothing I can show you.” Suddenly, he grinned. “But maybe Sartol can help us with this.” He turned toward the Owl-Master. “You did concede a short while ago that, during the battle in Watersbend, before you killed the outlanders, I destroyed their birds. Do you remember saying that?”
“Yes,” Sartol answered, shifting uncomfortably, although his voice remained even. “Well,” he hedged, “I said that you killed the birds. I never referred to the men as outlanders.”
“But you admit that I destroyed the birds.”
Sartol bristled. “I just said that!”
“Then why did you kill the men?”
The Owl-Master blinked. “What?”
“You told us before that these men were mages, although, you said, they didn’t belong to the Order. And you just confirmed that I had already killed their birds. So why kill them?”
“They . . . they were destroying the village!” Sartol stammered, caught completely off guard by Baden’s question. “They were attacking you!”
“How could they do any of those things!” Baden roared.“They had nofamiliars! They should have been powerless!” He paused, allowing the import of his question to reach the other mages in the chamber. “But they weren’t powerless, were they, Sartol? They were still throwing fire at me, and they were still a threat to the villagers! How’s that possible, Sartol?” Every other mage in the room was staring at Baden, but the lean Owl-Master had not taken his eyes off Sartol. “Well?” he goaded. “How is this possible? You can’t have it both ways: either they were mages, and you killed them for no reason, or they were outlanders, as I’ve been saying! Which is it!”
Sartol had not moved, but Niall could see the muscles of his jaw contorting with rage, and a single, pulsing vein standing out boldly from his neck. “No answer, Sartol?” Baden asked a moment later. “That’s fine. Let’s try another one: what are you doing to the Summoning Stone?”
The gaze of every person in the room swung to the giant crystal.
“What are you talking about, Baden?” Odinan asked, his voice quavering with apprehension. “What has he done?”
“He’s altering it,” Niall heard himself say. “H
e’s trying to link himself to it. Look closely at the stone and you’ll see that it has begun to glow with Sartol’s ceryll-hue.”
Odinan took a step forward. “Is this true?” he asked breathlessly.
Sartol began to laugh, drawing their attention back to him. “I’ve been an idiot,” he said to no one in particular.
“That,” Alayna observed, her voice shockingly cold, “is the first truth you’ve spoken today. I’m pleased to hear you say it.”
Sartol looked at her, laughing no more, but still smiling thinly. “Don’t be naive, child,” he returned, the ice in his tone a match for hers. “I’m not repenting. This is no last-minute conversion to the side of light and virtue. I’m merely disgusted with myself. For all this time, I’ve had the means to achieving my purpose right here with me, and it took a useless old fool like Niall to make me realize it.” He stopped, still gazing at her, the smile lingering on his lips. For her part, Niall thought, even pale with fright and heartache, Alayna looked exceedingly beautiful in that moment.
“Please believe me, my dear,” Sartol went on, his voice sounding almost tender, “when I tell you that of all the things I have done, and all that I have yet to do, killing you will be the most difficult.”
And as he said this last, he raised his staff as if to smite her with his magefire.
“Sartol, no!”Niall screamed, thrusting out his own staff and sending a rippling barrier of burgundy energy to shield Alayna from the blow. Alayna, too, had moved to guard herself, throwing up a wall of purple magic.
But the burst of power never came, had never been intended to come. At least not toward Alayna. In the last instant, even as his ceryll arced forward, Sartol spun away from his former Mage-Attend toward the one person in that magnificent hall whom he hated most. Toward Baden, who, without his ceryll, could do absolutely nothing to protect himself. Helpless to do anything but watch, his power already extended elsewhere, Niall saw a bolt of yellow fire leap from the Summoning Stone to Sartol’s crystal, where it was redirected and propelled forward like a fiery comet. Hissing with energy, filling the chamber with its dazzling glow, the fireball soared over the oval table, straight at Baden’s heart.
But then Niall saw something so glorious and unexpected that he actually cried outloud with wonder and hope. A shimmering curtain of blue power streamed like sunlight from Jaryd’s ceryll, blocking Sartol’s fireball just as it reached Baden with a concussion that rocked the hall and drove the lean Owl-Master to the floor. Drawing upon abilities as yet unfathomed, the promise of which were embodied in the fierce grey bird on his shoulder, Jaryd poured all the magic to which he had access into that shield. He held his ceryll out before him, the muscles in his arms corded and trembling, his face covered with a sheen of perspiration. Even his hawk had gone rigid, its eyes closed and its beak open, as if in a soundless cry. Together, bird and man channeled every ounce of their beings into resisting Sartol’s yellow fire.
And it wasn’t enough. Perhaps against Sartol alone, armed only with his ceryll, the shield would have held. Certainly it could have withstood an assault from any other mage in the room. But against the force of that blow, magnified as it was by the giant crystal that Amarid and Theron had transported back from Ceryllon a thousand years ago, the shimmering sapphire wall had to give way. How could it not? Slowly at first it bowed, sagging under that great weight like a ship’s sail against a howling wind, curving, but not failing.
But the stone was so vast, and Sartol’s power went so much deeper. With a malicious grin, but barely a hint of effort, Sartol escalated his assault, drawing a brighter, angrier flame from the vast crystal. Jaryd collapsed to one knee with a desperate gasp. A dreadful rending sound, emanating from the blue shield, stretched now beyond endurance, echoed through the hall. It would have failed then—indeed, the yellow had begun to seep through the blue, reaching toward Baden like a deadly hand—but, in that instant, a third light entered the fray. Sonel’s green, bolstering Jaryd’s blue, stopping Sartol’s advance. A moment later, Radomil’s ivory joined as well, and the yellow began to be pushed back. Purple from Alayna. Maroon from Niall. And soon, a myriad of colors had come to Jaryd’s aid, coalescing into a white light so blinding that it seemed the sun itself burned in Amarid’s Great Hall.
Yet still Sartol fought. The strain of it was visible now, in his damp, distorted features, in the sweat that darkened his cloak, and in the wild, unseeing appearance of his owl’s yellow eyes. But Sartol fought. And, once again, the yellow fire began to inch forward. So strong was he, stronger, because of the stone, than any mage to have come before him, that even the combined power of all the mages in the chamber could not withstand him.
Shuddering with the effort of the battle, barely able to stand, Niall felt his power being driven back. Fighting for his life, for the memory of Vardis and the love of this land, he tried to resist. But Sartol was like the tide; he could not be stopped. Niall glanced around him, trying to gauge how much longer the rest of the mages could hold out, and, doing so, he saw one of the hall’s giant, blue-clad attendants rush toward Baden. He started to cry out in warning, fearing that the man meant to do to the Owl-Master what Jaryd had kept Sartol from doing. But then Niall stopped himself, realizing with a surge of hope that the man was not threatening Baden, but rather was bringing him his staff. He also brought Trahn his ceryll, and, immediately, the two mages added their strength, orange light and brown, to the radiant white force opposing Sartol.
Once again, the balance of the battle shifted. And this time, it did not turn back. Gradually, inexorably, the pale yellow fire flowing from the Summoning Stone was halted and then repelled. His eyes widening with the realization that his power would not be enough, Sartol roared with frustration, backing toward the stone so as to concentrate all of its power toward the phalanx of mages before him. To no avail. The white light continued to advance more swiftly now, until it was Sartol who was projecting a shield against the combined power of his foes.
“You can’t win, Sartol!” Baden cried, his voice taut with exertion. “Surrender or die!”
In response, Sartol gave a short, high gasp of laughter. And then he did something none of them could have foreseen. His eyes gleaming exultantly, his teeth clenched and bared in a terrible grin, he abruptly swung all of his fire, all the might he possessed, toward the source of his power, toward the great owl sitting on his own shoulder. The yellow flame engulfed the bird, killing it instantly. A split second later, with his resistance suddenly gone, the merged power of all the masters and mages in the room crashed down upon Sartol with the obliterating might of an avalanche, burying him beneath a mountain of white fire, and wiping him utterly from the face of the earth. But in that scintilla of time between the death of his owl and the impact of that fire, he rendered himself unbound, and so became one of the Unsettled, using Theron’s Curse to win for himself a measure of immortality.
21
Watching the ebb and flow of the battle raging in the Gathering Chamber, seeing the two walls of light, one white, the other yellow, warring for supremacy, with Tobyn-Ser’s fate poised in the balance, Orris cursed his own impotence. For at least part of the time, he knew, Baden and Trahn shared his frustration. True, they had some power that they could lend to the cause, but without their cerylls to concentrate their magic, their efforts remained superfluous. So the three of them watched, with disbelief and bitter despair, as Sartol’s magic, sourced in his splendid owl, fed by his fierce ambition, and amplified by the giant crystal he had somehow managed to master proved too much even for the combined might of all the mages he faced.
Only the actions of the Great Hall attendant whom Baden had threatened the day before saved them, for it was he who brought Baden and Trahn their staffs, allowing them to tip the balance of the struggle in the very moment of Sartol’s apparent victory. As it happened, the brawny attendant carried a third staff as well: Orris’s staff. How could he know that this one would make no difference in what unfolded under the domed ceilin
g, with its magnificent likeness of Amarid and Parne? Yes, he might have noticed that Orris carried no hawk, but to most of the people in this land, the cloak and the staff were as much symbols of power as the hawk or the owl. Orris did not blame the man for bringing his staff—he was grateful beyond words for what the attendant had done in bringing Baden and Trahn theirs. When he perceived that the addition of his two friends would be enough to defeat the renegade Owl-Master, the relief he felt overwhelmed him. Still, he was not accustomed to feeling useless. Even as he observed, with grim satisfaction, the slow retreat of Sartol’s yellow flame, his mind was flooded with memories of Pordath, and his heart ached once more with the pain of losing her.
Those images and emotions remained with him, albeit changed in ways he could never have anticipated, as he witnessed Sartol’s final, desperate act of defiance. There had been a time, just after Pordath’s death, when Orris had wished that the Owl-Master might one day experience the anguish of losing his familiar. But never had he imagined that Sartol would take the bird’s life himself. He could scarcely comprehend the ruthlessness of it, the uncompromising belligerence and single-mindedness that would drive a man to choose such a violent, irrevocable solution. Orris, who had been afraid of nothing for as long as he remembered, had come, over the past few weeks, to fear Theron’s Curse and the prospect of eternal unrest. And yet, Sartol had embraced these willingly, preferring them to either surrender or death. It was too much to fathom.
Glancing around the Gathering Chamber, Orris saw his own shock mirrored in the faces of his fellow mages. An appalled silence had enveloped the room. Not for a thousand years had a mage challenged the power and will of the Order; not since Theron had a mage died at a Gathering; and never before had one been killed in such a manner. Perhaps, in an odd way, a corpse would have helped to make real the incomprehensible scene that had just played itself out. But there was nothing left of the Owl-Master who, it had seemed just a short while ago, would soon lead the Order. Nothing remained even of his owl. Only the Summoning Stone, quiescent now, dark and colorless, served to remind that Sartol had attempted to rule the Order. Only a golden medallion on the Great Hall’s domed roof evidenced that the Owl-Master had ever sat at the oval table. Tonight, though, in a remote corner of the Northern Plain, a figure would appear, suffused with pale yellow light, and carrying not an owl, but a large, dark hawk, the first to which he had ever bound.