But frustratingly, he was no longer there, and no one seemed quite sure where he had gone.
As his men silently drank their ale in a tavern near the town square, Giancarlo fumed. Erich had not seemed to be hiding his identity, which suggested to Giancarlo that he had no idea he was being pursued. That meant they could be on the verge of catching him—just as long as he could learn where he went.
The one lead Giancarlo had was a man named Walther the artificer. The smith had told him Erich had taken service with him. But Walther had left as well.
Giancarlo was sure Erich had left with Walther, wherever he was going. That much seemed clear. But while quite a few people he asked knew Walther had left, none of them knew his destination.
He was about to order another round of ale—they were going nowhere that day, it seemed—when he saw a young man in a green velvet doublet approaching nervously.
“What you need, young sir?”
“I am told you have been asking about Walther the artificer.”
Giancarlo perked up.
“I have. Do you know of him? Join me here.” He motioned to the chair beside him. The boy sat down.
“What is your name?”
“Hans, sir.”
“What do you know of Walther?”
“I wish to marry his daughters,” he said sadly.
Giancarlo smiled.
“And they have left, have they? With their father?”
“Yes.”
“Are they pretty? Do they like you?”
“They are so beautiful. But I am not sure they care about me.”
Giancarlo patted him on the shoulder.
“Love is a game, my young friend. You must not concede so easily. Now tell me, do you know where they have gone?”
“Yes. They have gone off to Köln to seek husbands. Walther is a mage, and his daughters can only marry other mages.”
Giancarlo’s affected mood wilted.
“Köln? Did you say Köln?”
“Yes.”
“And how did they go?”
“I don’t know. I assume the west road, along the river.”
Giancarlo’s head swam. That was exactly how they had come. How on earth had they missed him? They had seen no man traveling with two beautiful girls.
“Was there a man with them? A man carrying a jeweled rapier?”
Hans looked up. “Oh, yes. He went with them, as their guide, I assume.”
Giancarlo cursed internally. However they had managed it, the two groups had passed each other on the road. It had been that close.
He stood, calling to his men.
“To your feet! We are leaving at once!”
Hans watched in confusion as the men stormed out of the tavern, wondering what it was he had said to provoke such a reaction.
24.
Astrid picked at her dinner, listening to her father and Johannes going on about university gossip and reminiscing about things that had happened before she was born.
“Do you remember Albert Vogel, the one with the red hair?” Johannes asked.
“The one who taught animal summoning? Whatever happened to him?”
“Louis, the Count of Isenburg-Büdingen, hired him as his court mage about three or four years after you left. From what I heard, it did not go well. The count’s daughter, Anna, was to be married, and the count wanted him to conjure a flock of peacocks at the wedding feast. Somehow or another, he got the conjuration wrong, and summoned a huge flock of ravens, which proceeded to attack the guests and tear apart the dinner.”
Walther roared in laughter. “Lovely! I am sure that went over well. Albert liked his drink, as I recall. I suppose he was drunk when he attempted it.”
“I heard the same,” Johannes said. “He spent a while in the count’s dungeon after that, I believe.”
Franz laughed, perhaps a bit too earnestly to Astrid’s ears.
“That reminds me of the automaton cat you built once, Father,” Ariel said.
Walther snorted. “We will not speak of that one.”
“What happened?” Franz asked.
“It had difficulty distinguishing between mice and mere shadows under the furniture,” Ariel replied. “It smashed itself to bits crashing into the walls over and over.”
“I have refined my technique since then,” Walther replied. “The most recent rat-catcher has worked out quite well. I have learned to focus on functions and not attempt to mimic the natural world.”
Astrid was not prepared to agree with that. The spider-thing Father had built recently had an annoying tendency to attack her feet. Still, it did catch the rats and mice much better than his earlier inventions.
Franz turned to her. “Ariel, there is a museum of automata here at the university. Perhaps you and Astrid would like to go see it?”
She smiled thinly at him. “I’m Astrid.”
“Oh. Sorry.” He looked over at her sister. “Would you like to see it?”
“Things might explode,” Astrid said. “Ariel is good at that.”
Ariel smirked at her, while Franz looked lost.
“Only Erich seems to make automata explode,” Ariel said.
Johannes spoke up. “Are you referring to the man you arrived with?”
“Yes,” Walther said. “A fine swordsman. We would not have made it here otherwise.”
“He killed two ogres singlehandedly,” Ariel said.
“But he’s not a mage?” Johannes asked.
“No,” Walther replied. “The girls are referring to an unfortunate incident that occurred before we left. I am still not sure what happened.”
Astrid went back to poking at the remains of her dinner. She wished Erich had come with them, but he had disappeared before they were dressed. Father said he had things to do and Johannes had not exactly invited him anyway.
She knew what Johannes was up to. It was painfully obvious he hoped Franz would match with them. Franz seemed intelligent enough, but after less than an hour, she was already bored with him. She was sure she did not want to marry him.
Erich did not gape at her and Ariel the way Franz kept doing. Even poor Hans Bergdahl was not this bad. How could she respect a husband who looked at her like that?
Or thought the things he did. She had seen it in Shadow’s mind after she had lunged at Franz. He had been envisioning them naked, and worse.
She prayed they would not match. Going to his bed was sure to be the torment she had imagined.
After dinner, Astrid and Ariel stood apart from the others as Johannes showed Walther around his library and Franz stood around looking unsure of himself.
‘What do you think of Franz?” Astrid asked softly.
“I think Johannes means for us to match with him.”
“Yes, it would appear so. What do you think of that?”
“I think I should be terribly bored. I don't want a life here in the university.”
Astrid nodded. “Neither do I.”
“Maybe there will be interesting mages at the equinox ball.”
“Perhaps. I hope so.”
♦ ♦
Erich returned to the apartments to find Walther and the girls still at dinner. He had eaten a simple meal at a tavern outside the university gate, keeping his face hidden as best he could.
There was a bottle of wine in the front room of the apartments. He poured himself a glass and sat down. Shadow came out of the girls’ bedroom and sat on the floor at his feet. He scratched her head, and she gazed up at him with her yellow eyes for a moment before laying down to doze.
He wasn't certain when the others would return. Across the room, he noticed a bookcase with about a dozen books and got up to see what might be there. Most were on scholarly subjects he neither understood nor cared to, but one was entitled An Introduction to Magery. He pulled it from the bookcase and went to his bed to read it. Shadow followed him, and jumped up on the bed with him.
The title was accurate enough. Much of the book was a tedious introduction
to spellcasting, the first few chapters of which essentially repeated what Ariel had explained to him by the fire that night. He was about to cast it aside when he flipped past a chapter entitled “On Marriage and Family.”
He stopped, found the beginning of the chapter, and began to read.
As Walther and the girls had explained to him, the characteristics of one’s flow determined much in life. But this book laid out the actual mechanics of it.
Mages married mages for a specific reason, and it wasn’t anything Erich had really considered.
It was about lovemaking.
“The act of love,” the book explained, “is a conjoining of both body and flow. In non-mages, this matters little because disruptions of the flow have few obvious effects. In mages, however, conjoining with an incompatible flow can be disastrous.”
Such close proximity to a flow opposed to one’s own, it went on, damaged a mage’s ability to control the larger Flow. One such episode might mean only temporary damage, but repeated conjoinings would rapidly render both mages incapable of controlling the Flow.
Essentially, you married one compatible person, and lay with him or her—and no one else, ever—or you lost your talent.
Erich was stunned. All along he had been thinking in the back of his mind that this was some quaint custom mages used to keep themselves separate from the rest of the world, notwithstanding what Walther had told him. He had never imagined that for mages, the Sixth Commandment had real teeth.
And it meant the little fantasy he had been nurturing in the back of his mind—just to amuse himself, really—about somehow, some way, being the girls’ match and marrying them both, had truly been in vain. He could see now there was no way it could happen, not unless they were willing to give up their talents for him. And he knew that was impossible, not that he even wanted them to.
Still, a tiny little bit of something died inside him at that moment.
There was more. Marriage for mages was more than reciting some vows before a priest, and many of them did not even bother with that part. There was a spell involved, one that formally bound their respective flows. But it would only work if they were compatible, and to get to that point, compatibility had to be tested.
There were a number of ways to see if two mages had compatible flows, but it came with a steep risk. Testing compatibility was a one-way trip: If two mages’ flows were proved to be compatible, there was no going back. They then had to marry, because the testing seemed to bring the flows into alignment such that no other mage would ever be compatible with either of them. No one had yet found a way to check compatibility of flows without creating this permanent match. The theory was that testing brought compatible flows into close enough proximity that a sort of marriage bond was created, before the marriage spell.
Such a match could also occur spontaneously, but only if two mages who were compatible—perhaps unknowingly—were to cast a spell together. Thus, the book warned sternly against this between unmarried mages. Once marriage had occurred, the marriage bond seemed to prevent such things, and mages could collaborate without risk.
Erich put the book down and reached over to scratch Shadow’s head.
He was sick to death of magery. It was time to move on.
25.
Walther rose the next morning to find Erich packing his things.
“Are you going somewhere?” he asked.
“I must leave Köln. It is not safe for me.”
He grumbled loudly. “You were at some point going to tell me what it is you are concerned about here. I think that time has come.”
Erich explained briefly about his brother and the sellswords coming for him. Walther shook his head.
“That is unfortunate. I had hoped for your assistance in returning to Weilburg, and that is assuming the girls do not need you as well.”
“You engaged my services to bring you to Köln. I have done so.”
Walther fumed. “Is there nothing I can do to change your mind? You are safe inside the university. Köln is an imperial city; your brother has no authority here.”
“That will not deter the men he has hired. I can assure you they will not be stopped by niceties of jurisdiction, having performed such work myself in the past.”
“They would not dare attack you on the university grounds. There are mages here who could boil their blood in their veins should they try.”
“Who is attacking him?”
He turned to see Ariel emerging from their bedchamber in her robe.
“Erich has come into some trouble, it seems,” he replied.
Ariel turned to him. “Is it your brother?”
Walther felt his eyes bulging in their sockets. “You knew of this?”
“He told me about his family.”
Astrid emerged as well. “What about his family? Is Wilhelm here?”
Walther threw up his hands in exasperation. “Am I the only one who knew nothing of this matter?”
“There are men coming to kill me,” Erich said sternly, “or at least take me back to Wilhelm in chains. They will be here in a matter of days. I cannot remain.”
Ariel rushed over to him, grabbing his arm. “You promised. You promised to stay until we were married.”
“I did not know. Would you have me attend your wedding as a corpse?”
“I think you overestimate the risk here,” Walther said. “Within the university, you should be safe.”
“And outside? When I must leave?”
“Couldn't you sneak out somehow?” Astrid asked.
“In all likelihood, they know I am with you. From what the guard captain who paid me the bounty for the ogres said, they were headed to Weilburg. And when they get there, there are those who can tell them where we have gone. They are likely on their way back here as we speak.”
Walther stepped between them, and put his hands on Erich’s shoulders. “And I will say again, you are safe in here. I will let Johannes know of the threat.”
Ariel took his hand again. “Please?”
Contact with his daughter seemed to melt Erich’s resolve. He sagged. “All right. I will remain for now. But you must all help me stay out of sight.”
“We will,” Astrid said. “I promise.”
“You can at least come to the equinox ball,” Ariel asked, “can you not?”
Erich laughed in disbelief. “Must I?”
“It will be held on the university grounds,” Walther said. “It is a custom of sorts here to wear masks or costumes. We can disguise you easily.”
Erich relaxed a bit.
“All right. A disguise it is.”
♦ ♦
The next few days were occupied with preparations for the ball. Ariel and Astrid tried on a succession of dresses and masks, insisting on Erich’s opinion. Since he did not dare leave the apartments unless necessary, he was stuck helping them. They settled on a matched pair in deep green, with bodices he wished were a bit higher to keep his thoughts in check.
A tailor came the second day to assist with adjustments to the dresses, which they had brought from home and now decided needed some embellishment. On the morning of the third day, he sent a page to the jeweler’s shop to check on the rings. He returned to tell Erich they would be ready that evening.
Wrapping himself deeply in his cloak, he slipped out the gate near dusk, watching carefully around himself at all times. He saw nothing. He likely had at least another day before the sellswords arrived.
The dwarf had done a fine job. The two rings were identical, with the sapphire cabochons set in ornately tooled bases of gold. He decided these were fair trade for the bracelet after all.
“Might I ask who these are for?” the dwarf asked.
“Two women who can never wear them,” Erich replied. The dwarf did not ask for further explanation.
On the fourth day, the day of the ball and the day Erich expected the sellswords to reach Köln, he remained in the apartments, refusing to leave or even look out the door. He did
not like hiding in this way, but prudence dictated he not risk confronting nine dangerous men, men who were seeking at the very least to return his head to his brother, and at worst take all of him back for a long stint in Wilhelm’s torture chambers. Walther reported mid-day that he had discussed the matter with Johannes, and the university guards were on watch for the men he described.
In the afternoon, the girls returned with a new pair of pants and a black shirt for him to wear, along with a full-face mask. Then they went to get dressed.
Walther emerged from his room a bit later in a new robe.
“So they will match tonight?” Erich asked.
“With luck.”
“I take it they were not impressed with Franz.”
Walther chuckled. “No. To the disappointment of my friend, I am afraid.”
Erich took the book he had been reading from the bookcase. “I found this the other day. Is it accurate?”
Walther flipped through it briefly. “This is a book for novices. There is quite a bit more to matching and such, particularly the theory behind it all, but as far as it goes, it is accurate.”
“How do you know when to begin testing?”
“Mages who are experienced with natural magic, as Johannes is, can often sense when a match is possible. It is then up to the parties involved if they wish to risk a test. Many times they will not.”
“I suppose it will be good to finally bring all this to an end.”
Walther took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
“The house will not be the same without the girls, but so it goes. All I can do is help them make a good match.”
♦ ♦
Erich dressed, then pondered how to arm himself, if at all. He did not relish going unarmed, but the war knife was far too martial a weapon for a ball, and wearing the rapier was too much of a risk. He settled for his throwing knives, which were easily concealed under his shirt, and his jeweled dagger, which should not attract much attention.
The ball was being held in the main hall of the university, back in the quad opposite the main gate. When they emerged from their apartments, the faculty and guests—all lavishly dressed—were already streaming in.
The girls walked in front of Erich and Walther, and all eyes were upon them as they entered. One after another, faculty members came up to greet Walther and introduce themselves. Erich hung back behind them. As they had discussed beforehand, Walther did not introduce him to anyone, not that it mattered. It would have taken much to draw attention away from Ariel and Astrid in their luminous green gowns.
The Wizard's Daughters: Twin Magic: Book 1 Page 13