The Summoned Mage (Convergence Book 1)

by Melissa McShane

  But now, the base of the tower. Actually, it wasn’t the base of the tower but the base of the palace below the tower, all seven stories to the ground instead of just the three of the round tower below the observatory. At the end of the curving, descending passage was another brass double door, but this one looked beaten, as if someone had tried to break it down once.

  It was also locked, as I learned when I pushed on it, and then I very nearly became a dead thief for my carelessness, because the person on the other side of the door immediately unlocked it and flung it open. I’d skipped backward a few steps when the door began to open, and I worked the concealment pouvra and pressed myself against the wall, grateful for the pouvra’s protection even though it made it hard for me to feel my fingertips and my toes.

  Light came through the open door, blinding me, forcing my eyes shut. “Up there,” a deep voice said, and two people jingled past me, the second coming close enough that the wind of his passing ruffled my shirt. It took me a minute to recover from the see-in-dark pouvra to see who’d opened the door. At first, I thought I hadn’t recovered enough, because the man who stood in the doorway looked as if he was wearing a chicken on his head.

  I blinked harder and realized it was a helmet made to resemble a falcon, with wings folded to either side and head thrust forward, beak slightly open as if crying out. He was looking up the passage toward two other men wearing matching helmets, who were carefully searching in all directions for invisible thieves. Fortunately for me, they used their eyes and not their hands, and I pressed back so far into the wall I might not have needed a pouvra to go through it.

  “Nothing,” said one of the two men, and they both came back down to join their comrade at the door. All three wore, in addition to the chicken falcon helmets, short-sleeved shirts made of a fine steel mesh over long-sleeved black linen tunics, snugly-fitting black leather pants, hard black boots I would not like to be kicked with, and sword belts with sheaths for a longsword and a nine-inch-long knife.

  “I told Prenz these hinges needed work,” the first man said, and all three went back inside and shut the door, and locked it. I stood there breathing peacefully for a while. Nothing guarding the treasure, but three men, possibly more, standing a very careful watch over whatever was beyond these doors?

  I retreated up the passage a long, long way, maybe two stories, then dropped the concealment pouvra and rubbed feeling back into my fingers and toes. Getting past those men would be difficult, because there was no way in hell I was going to try passing through living flesh. All my instincts told me it was a bad idea. Hard enough maintaining my identity against a stone wall; how much harder against another creature, whose instinct to remain complete was as strong as mine? And if two of those men stood in front of those doors at all times…more reconnaissance was needed.

  I crept back down, feeling my way in the blackness because I didn’t want to be blinded again when I did the see-through pouvra, and carefully patted the wall with the tips of my fingers until I was certain I was facing the door. Then I did the see-through pouvra and took a look around.

  Only one man stood in front of the door; the other two were in position a short ways off down a long corridor the door opened onto. I couldn’t see where the light came from, but the corridor became dark just past where the other two men stood. They were all three of them very alert despite the hour, and after giving it some thought, I turned and went back up the sloping passage, finding my way in the dark to make it a bit of a challenge, until I reached the door I’d come in by, then I went silently back to my room. Which brings me to now.

  I’ve been trying to think of what might be beyond that passage. The most logical explanation is that it leads to the God-Empress’s personal chambers. The only thing a ruler wants to guard more closely than her treasure is herself. And she might want to maintain a direct route to her treasure rooms, even if she doesn’t care enough to protect them more fully. But logic only applies if you assume the ruler is sane, which the God-Empress is not, in which case, who knows what’s beyond those doors? There could be any number of things she might want closely guarded, intrinsically valuable or not.

  I should just leave it alone. I’m in enough danger as it is. I certainly can’t tell Cederic what I’ve learned, because he would definitely tell me to leave it alone, and I’d feel bad about disregarding his wishes. The thing is, I’ve never regretted gaining knowledge, even when that knowledge has been personally painful. I have, on the other hand, regretted not knowing enough. The God-Empress has an unhealthy interest in me, and the more I know about her, the safer I’ll be. And that includes discovering as many of her secrets as I can.

  I’m running out of pages in this book, and I don’t know how I’ll be able to make another. Maybe Cederic will let me scrounge paper out of the books, but that still leaves me with no leather for the cover and no thread and needle for the binding. I’ll have to find an alternative, I suppose.

  Chapter Fourteen

  12 Lennitay

  I haven’t had time to write for days, which considering how few pages are left might be a good thing, if it keeps me from wasting space writing “same as before” all the time. I come back from dinner so exhausted I fall into my bed unconscious and sleep for ten hours until it’s time to start again.

  I don’t think I’ve mentioned that Vorantor is not an advocate of the leisurely Darssan morning; he has an obnoxious belief that early rising is a virtue nigh unto Godliness, something I believe he learned from her actual Godliness, the God-Empress Renatha Torenz. So it’s up at 6 a.m. and off to work again, every morning, and even if I weren’t exhausted from practicing th’an and pouvrin, I still wouldn’t have the energy to poke around.

  It’s afternoon now, and I got a reprieve in the form of Cederic, who stopped to look at my th’an (I still haven’t achieved the requisite twelve successes, two more and I’m ready to move on to fire), then looked at my face, took the writing tool out of my hand and said, “Go take a nap. You’re exhausted.”

  I started to protest, realized I wanted a nap, and thanked him. But when I was leaving, Vorantor appeared in front of me and said, “You’re not leaving us, are you?”

  “I’m going to take a nap,” I said.

  He said, “But that’s not fair to everyone else, is it? Should everyone be allowed to take a nap? You’re so close to success, Thalessi, you don’t want to give up now, do you?”

  “Sesskia has been working harder than anyone else, Denril,” Cederic said, appearing as suddenly as Vorantor had, “and she will have no success if she pushes herself past breaking. I instructed her to rest.”

  “Did you,” Vorantor said, and then the two of them faced each other in silence. Vorantor was glaring. Cederic was impassive as usual. They were fighting, but on no battleground I could see. Then Cederic raised an eyebrow at Vorantor, whose face flushed. Without looking at me, Cederic said, “Go and rest, Sesskia.”

  “Yes, of course, you need rest,” Vorantor said, but it came out as a kind of stammer and his face went redder than before. I fled before their battle could go further. It’s comforting to know Cederic can trounce Vorantor without a word, but it’s only just occurred to me to worry about what might happen if Vorantor ever pushed his authority to a point that Cederic might have to disobey. I don’t understand the details of the oath Cederic swore, but I’m certain he won’t let it stop him fighting Vorantor if Vorantor ordered me, or anyone, to do something evil or dangerous.

  I’m going to nap now, and see how I feel afterward.

  Afterward

  I can’t believe how much that nap helped. I slept for two hours, woke when Audryn came to call me to dinner, ate heartily, and felt completely refreshed. And then I wasn’t sleepy. Thank you, Cederic, for insisting I rest, because what I found later—well, I’m still not sure what it means, but it’s all down to you that I found it.

  So when full dark came, and all the sensible people were in bed, I sneaked back down to the bottom of the tower. This t
ime I was dressed in my own dark gray trousers, a close-fitting dark shirt, and a pair of soft-soled boots the wardrobe servants had brought me, and I was prepared to do some proper sneaking about.

  The see-through pouvra confirmed the door was still guarded by one man standing next to it and two others standing a short distance away. I took a few deep breaths, released them slowly, then filled my lungs, held my breath, and slid through the brass door as far from the guard as I could manage without inserting myself into the corridor wall.

  The guard didn’t notice me; as I entered, he shifted his weight and looked off into the distance down the dark corridor. I didn’t stop moving or let out my breath; the last thing I needed was to give my position away by exhalation. My shoes made hardly any noise on the uncarpeted stone of the hallway, just a couple of scuffs no louder than the guards’ breathing. I slipped on between the two other guards and kept on walking, slowly, and didn’t breathe out until the shadows surrounded me. Behind me, one of the guards sneezed, and the other said something in response. I stopped to do the see-in-dark pouvra, then moved on down the hall.

  It went on for several minutes. I think the passage goes the full length of the palace and beyond; there’s no exit on the far side, and I wasn’t certain how thick the walls were, so I didn’t dare go insubstantial and try to find a way out that way. But it was straight, and lightless, and boring, or would have been if I hadn’t been keenly aware of being somewhere I wasn’t allowed. Eventually I saw a light ahead, at enough of a distance that I could drop the see-in-dark pouvra before I was blinded. I concealed myself again and moved forward more cautiously.

  That turned out to be unnecessary. There were no guards at this end of the passage, and the lights were th’an-powered, not torches as they’d been at the other end. I don’t know why the lights were there at all, since there was no one to take advantage of them. There were also no doors; the passage simply ended at a room maybe half the size of the mosaic chamber, and that comparison occurred to me because like that room, the walls were covered with mosaics. But that was all I noticed before my attention was drawn to the things filling the room.

  They looked like metal wagons, really heavy iron wagons that could not possibly move despite each being mounted on four wheeled axles. None of them had yokes for horses or oxen, either. Each one carried a tapered cylinder I could barely wrap my arms around (that’s a guess, because of course I went up and hugged the mysterious metal things, I’m not insane) with a hole the size of my doubled fists at the narrow end and a funnel the same diameter at the fat end, with a blank brass plate fastened to the cylinder below it.

  I circled the nearest one and found it became more complicated at the rear: there was a metal stool permanently attached to the wagon behind the cylinder, and a metal tankard of some kind that looked as if it had been melted to the side of the cylinder, just below the funnel, and another brass plate whose shining gold surface looked incongruous next to the rough, blackened iron the rest of the wagon was made of, fastened where it would be at waist level to whoever sat on the stool.

  Engraved into the brass plate were several complicated-looking th’an, and this time I was certain I’d seen them before, or something like them. I don’t know what seemed familiar—something about the shape, maybe. It’s been bothering me since I returned from snooping around. I’ll have to remember to tell Cederic, see if he has any ideas. Or—I don’t know. I feel as though I take all my problems to him. Maybe he finds that annoying. I’ll have to think about it.

  But first, the wagon. I thought about climbing onto the seat, decided against it—if anything were going to have a silent alarm attached to it, this thing would—and circled it again. Some kind of collenna, then, but what? A th’an could make the thing go, might make up for the heaviness of its construction, but to what end? The stool couldn’t be comfortable for long-distance travel, and I couldn’t see the point of the cylinder. It baffled me, so I stepped back and examined my surroundings more closely.

  The mosaics were pale where the ones in the main chamber are robust, and it took me some time to work out what they depicted. It was immediately obvious the craftsmanship here wasn’t nearly as fine as that of the mosaic chamber, more at the level of the person who’d put the God-Empress’s face on all the heroes. A closer look suggested this artist was the same person who’d defaced those mosaics. Then the pictures came into focus, and I almost walked backwards into one of the wagons. They were pictures of Death.

  I shouldn’t sound so certain about that. It’s only that I’ve traveled in so many countries where Death is given a shape—not like Balaen, where we symbolize it by absences, things missing from places where they should be, like a gap in a hedge, or a hole in a sleeve, things like that. In fact, Balaen’s in the minority on that, because in most places the grieving want something on which to focus their grief, and it’s astonishing to me how often Death is given human form. To me it feels like bad luck, like drawing Death’s attention to the fact that humans are vulnerable to it.

  Anyway, I suppose the mosaics of dancing figures robed in white might have been anything. But my instincts tell me the chamber was a celebration of death, and it made me feel as if I’d entered my own grave.

  I walked the perimeter of the room, growing increasingly afraid and counting wagons to stave off that fear. I reached three hundred before I couldn’t bear it anymore and bolted. Safely down the dark passage, out of sight of the lights in both directions, I squatted and put my head between my knees until my breathing returned to normal.

  I sneaked back through the guard post, still without any trouble—I’m afraid I’m going to grow too dependent on that pouvra—and crept back to my room, where I curled up on my bed with all my clothes still on and shivered. Then I wrote all of this down, in very tiny writing because there are now only a couple of pages left.

  I’ll have to tell Cederic about this in the morning. He might understand what I saw. Whatever it was, the God-Empress thinks it’s important, and I would bet the hard money I don’t have it’s dangerous to someone. That someone might even be me.

  13 Lennitay

  This will have to be my last entry. I still have no new book and no way of making one.

  I told Cederic the details of my nighttime adventure this morning, and he nearly killed me. Which is to say, he became so expressionless it was hard to believe he was still alive. He said, “How were you going to explain your presence to those guards when they caught you?”

  “But they didn’t catch me,” I said.

  “Because your God-given reserves of good luck are not yet exhausted,” he said. “That concealment pouvra is by no means a guarantee of security. It does not make you invisible.”

  “They didn’t know to guard against it,” I said, “and you yourself said it makes you want to look elsewhere. Besides, that’s not the important part.”

  “The wagons,” he said. “I can only guess as to their purpose.”

  “Which means you won’t tell me,” I said. At this point I was starting to be annoyed, because I was proud of myself and I wanted him to at least acknowledge I’d done well. He may not like that I’m a thief, but he ought to at least appreciate that I’m a good one.

  “I believe we agreed once you prefer knowing the truth to conjecture,” he said, and smiled.

  “That’s true, but I would like at least some idea of what general type of thing they might be,” I said.

  We were in his room, standing by the windows, and he took my arm and drew me to the center of the room, away from potential eavesdroppers and anyone who might be capable of seeing through windows one hundred feet off the ground. “Weapons of war,” he said in a low voice, as if those precautions still weren’t enough.

  “War?” I said, matching my voice to his. “But who does the God-Empress think she has to fight?”

  “She is preparing to bring order out of chaos, when the disaster occurs,” Cederic said. “What concerns me is, if we succeed in preventing the disaster entir
ely, she will have a large army and no one to turn it on. Which means we may be giving her the means to build her empire.”

  “But we can’t let the worlds destroy each other!” I said.

  “No, and it is a risk we will have to take,” he said. “You said there was no way for the wagons to exit the room where they were stored?”

  “Not that I saw, but I admit I didn’t look very closely,” I said. “And I can’t imagine she doesn’t have a plan for that.”

  Cederic frowned, and said, “This is good information to have, but at the moment I don’t see what we can do with it. I wish I could ask Denril if he has trained any masters in the th’an you showed me” (I’d sketched it out for him, and he said it would make two things move in tandem with each other, but couldn’t be more specific than that) “but I think that would be…unwise.”

  “You seem to be working well together,” I said, which was both a lie and a leading question, but Cederic chose not to respond. He shrugged and said, “He is still committed to his solution, and does not believe the Codex will tell him anything he does not already know. I have been planning what I will do against the day he is proven wrong.”

  “Do you think there might be a problem?” I said.

  “Possibly,” he said. “Denril has convinced the God-Empress of the truth of his position, and she is not someone who takes well to looking like a fool. He might be in danger. But I am not in a position to warn him.”

  “So what should I do?” I said.

  Cederic smiled and shook his head, and said, “Is there any way I can convince you to stay quietly in your bedchamber every night?”

  “If I did that, we would never learn anything interesting,” I said, and he shook his head again as if in despair. That ended our conversation, and we went to breakfast together, me in a better mood despite my late night. I didn’t tell him about feeling like I recognized the th’an because I forgot. No, that’s not completely true. I did forget, yes, but I also feel awkward about making a big deal out of some nebulous feeling that might or might not matter.