Salamander

by David D. Friedman

  “Yes. Nobody but you knows how to do it—today. But how long do you think another mage would take, even one less brilliant than you, knowing what I do, to work out the rest for himself? You are not the only able theorist in the world, and not all of them are within the kingdom. I may be mistaken, but the hard part seems to be the idea, first of the pool and second of the Cascade. Once that is known, and shown to be possible, can the rest be so difficult?”

  Coelus was silent.

  “So, I want the names of the two students you mentioned. Bring them here. I have mages who will see what can be done to assure their silence, or remove the knowledge from their memories, in hopes that more extreme measures will not be necessary. I have already arranged to have Nikolas brought here for the same purpose, and Raynald is here already.”

  “That seems drastic, Your Highness. Neither student has committed any crime against His Majesty, or shown any inclination to. Surely a warning against speaking carelessly of what little they know should be sufficient.”

  “Perhaps. I will speak with them myself and decide. What are their names?”

  Coelus hesitated a moment.

  “The student who participated in an experiment is Joshua son of Maas. The student to whom I mentioned the project is Ellen. As Your Highness knows, all instruction takes place within the college, so I can hardly send them a message bidding them come here, and it would be odder still if strangers came into the college seeking them.”

  He thought a moment.

  “Let me send each a message arranging to meet in the college, not too far from the gate; I can then escort them out. I sometimes hold instruction out of doors when the weather is good. That will make it easier to avoid any unnecessary fuss.”

  “Very good; several of my people will accompany you. Gervase, fetch paper and pen from my servants in the next room.”

  In a moment the mage returned. Coelus wrote two notes, folded each, wrote “Joshua” on one, “Ellen” on the other.

  “If we return to the college now, I can give the notes to a porter and then meet them in the orchard.”

  Chapter 12

  Ellen re-read the note. The hand was certainly his; she knew it well enough. The words:

  “Meet me again in the orchard.”

  Why he had written it, or at whose command, she could not guess, but the meaning was clear enough. She got up, went over to the clothes chest at the foot of her bed, and opened it. From the bottom she drew out a tunic, flame colored, of some odd shimmery material. She changed into it, over it a plain tunic, long sleeved. She reached into the chest again, drew out an amulet on a tightly woven silk cord, put it around her neck. She took her wallet from the peg it hung on, put the strap over her shoulder.

  One more thing. She shut the chest, turned it on its side to expose the bottom, spoke a Word softly, and pressed down on one of the planks. It slid smoothly to one side. From the cavity revealed, she drew out a small leather bag full of coins and put it into the wallet, then put the chest upright again. She glanced around the room for a few moments, thinking of whether there was anything she had forgotten, took her cloak from its hook and opened the door. The corridor was empty.

  Clearly someone other than Coelus was involved. Considering what he was doing, it would hardly be surprising if rumor had spread even outside the college. If so, the entrance to the College might be watched. Instead of turning into the main corridor she crossed it, continued down the student wing, turned right at its end through a door that opened on a corner of the front lawn. Nobody was in sight. Just ahead of her was the surface of the containment sphere; she sunk her hands into its web, stepped forward.

  A few minutes later Coelus arrived at the orchard, accompanied by three of the prince's mages and one guard, armor hidden by his cloak. It was, to his relief, empty. One of the mages spoke briefly to the others, then the three spread out, leaving Coelus and the guard alone near the dome.

  "What do you want me to do?"

  "Nothing. When they arrive we will take care of it."

  They waited in silence. In a few minutes he heard footsteps in the cloister. A moment later Joshua came in sight.

  "Magister Coelus, you wanted to speak with me?"

  Before Coelus could answer, the three mages moved together with practiced skill. Joshua had barely time to look around before he was enveloped in a grey mist. When it cleared, he was standing perfectly still, his face frozen in its expression of a moment before. One of the mages spoke softly to him. He walked over to the bench a little rigidly and sat down, expression frozen.

  The guard spoke to Coelus: "That was easy enough. As you can see, they know what they are doing. The girl should be easier still."

  "Do you know if the spell does him any injury?"

  The guard shook his head. "When he comes out of it he will be a bit confused, not knowing where he is or how he got there. Until then, obedient as a lamb. The Prince said he didn't want any trouble, anything to get the college talking. This seemed the best way."

  Coelus paced nervously up and down, listening for another footstep. None came. The guard stood patiently, waiting.

  Ellen, listening on the far side of the barrier barely ten feet from the two men, stood up and set off for the village.

  * * *

  It was full dark by the time the men got back to the inn with their captive. The Prince sent Coelus off to one of the inn rooms, Gervase back to the College to see what he could find out about the missing student. That accomplished, he sent for provisions and invited Alayn, the guard who had accompanied Coelus to the college, to join him.

  "Did Magister Coelus expect the girl to show up?"

  Alayn thought a moment. "Feared she might, hoped she wouldn't, would be my guess. He looked nervous when we heard someone coming, relieved when he saw it wasn’t her, less and less worried as time passed."

  The Prince nodded and took a sip of his wine. "Remind me not to underestimate academics,” he said. “Coelus has no sense of what he ought to be paying attention to, but once he gets hit over the head with the need to think, I expect he is very good at it. Something in that note warned her."

  "There might have been a warning from someone else; she may be a spy and have accomplices. Perhaps we were seen at the inn and someone drew the right conclusion. Short of a trumpeter and a banner, we couldn't have been more obvious. A town inn doesn’t usually entertain a party of guests with armed guards."

  The Prince cut himself a slice of mutton, chewing slowly before responding. "If she was a Forsting spy and not just a student who heard too much, we are wasting our time trying to catch her. Coelus did his last experiment almost a month ago. Her report on whatever she discovered about it will be over the border by now, and our only hope would be to get Coelus’s weapon working for us before they get it working for them. It may come to that, but I am still hoping we can keep the information from getting out, secure everyone who knows anything, and have time to complete the project with more care.

  "It would help if we knew what she looks like. If I were sending a girl to the College to get information out of a susceptible young scholar, I would pick a pretty one. When Gervase comes back, we'll see what he can tell us."

  The next morning, Alayn brought Coelus into the room as the Prince was eating his breakfast. Kieron motioned them to join him, spoke to Coelus as he sat down. “Your missing student. How much do you know about her? Could she be a spy for Forstmark or the League, or for someone else?”

  Coelus thought a moment. “If you are asking about her background, where she came from or who her parents are, I am afraid I cannot help you, although I suppose someone in the College must know. It never occurred to me to ask such questions. But I am quite sure she was not a spy.”

  “Because you could read her mind?”

  “Your Highness persuaded me yesterday of the limits of my abilities in that direction. My conclusion is based not on mind reading but on logic.”

  Prince Kieron gave him a quizzical look, said not
hing.

  “I invited Ellen to help me with the Cascade project. She refused, in quite clear and unambiguous terms, on the basis that it ought not to be done, and showed no interest in how I expected to do it after that. A spy might have tried to discourage me from working on the project, in the hope that her employers could complete it first. But a spy would surely have wanted to know all she could learn about what I was doing, and I would have been glad to teach it to her.”

  “That sounds convincing. I hope you are correct. But I am still left with several problems, beginning with what I am to do with you.”

  Coelus nodded. “Yes. I have been thinking about your problems a good deal of the night. So far as dealing with me is concerned, you could of course kill me. That would keep me from misusing the Cascade myself, a possibility that it finally occurred to me you must be concerned about. And it would keep me from telling anyone else about it. But if you wish to employ the Cascade yourself, you would then have to find someone else to finish the project. I can only think of two people in the kingdom who could do it, and I do not think either would be willing to.”

  “And who are they?”

  Coelus shook his head. “Lying would, I expect, be pointless. But I choose to remain silent. There is no way to extract information against a mage’s will without injuring him. Until you have no further need of me, I don’t think that’s a risk you will want to take.”

  The Prince gave him an amused look. “I would certainly prefer to avoid such risks if I can. But you have not yet answered my question.”

  “Surely the answer is obvious. If your only objective is to suppress the invention, you should kill me and anyone else who knows anything about it, possibly including yourself—and somehow do it without calling attention to my work and so encouraging others to try to continue it.

  “If, on the other hand, your objective is to complete the project and implement it, with yourself or someone else you trust as the focus, then the simplest way to avoid attracting more attention than you already have is to send me back to the college to continue my teaching and my research, and trust me to keep my mouth shut. Unfortunately, if that is your intention, I am afraid another difficulty arises.”

  “That being?”

  “Last night, I concluded that Ellen was right about the problems posed by the Cascade. Completing my work would make the world a worse place, not a better one. You and Maridon have shown me the danger of the Cascade being used for evil. She showed me that, even used for good purposes, the talent I wished to borrow to cure a plague or divert a flood was talent that already had uses in the hands of those it belonged to, perhaps, taken all together, uses at least as important.

  “Ellen would not help me create the Cascade. Now that I am persuaded that she was right, I will not help you. I am sorry. I can see that the situation raises serious problems for you and perhaps for the kingdom. But it seems to me that the alternative raises still more serious problems for the kingdom, and the world.”

  There was a long silence. At last Prince Kieron spoke. “I concede the strength of your argument. Nonetheless, I have my duty. Suppose that I do not develop the Cascade. How then can I fulfill my obligation of protecting my brother the King from enemies who will show no such restraint?”

  “I have been thinking about that too. I do not think the situation is quite as hopeless as you suggested yesterday. The containment sphere blocks magic, including the magic by which the Cascade spreads. It should be possible, by containing his Majesty and the mages that protect him in something similar, to keep the Cascade from spreading to them. A mage controlling the pool from a Cascade would still have a very considerable advantage, but perhaps not an overwhelming one, especially if there were other places also so protected, such as the College.”

  The Prince gave him a skeptical look. “Maridon breached the sphere using only the power of the mages within the College.”

  Coelus nodded. “Yes. But he was standing next to the sphere, and as you know, magic weakens with distance. I expect His Majesty’s guards could make it difficult for an enemy mage to tear open the sphere protecting them and His Majesty.

  “And the containment sphere had no supporting mages. Its makers are long dead. I think it at least possible that such a sphere, actively supported by the mages it contains, could withstand a very great force.

  “But I must concede that so far this is speculation. I have not built a containment sphere. So far as I know, only one has ever been constructed, its builder is dead, and I do not yet know how to duplicate his work. Ellen has done more research on the subject than I have, but she, I gather, is gone. I have no idea how to find her and, if I did, I would not. I will, however, be happy to do what I can to devise defenses against the threat the Cascade poses.”

  “I thank you. I will consider your points and try to decide what to do with you. You have already missed your morning lecture, so I have at least a few more hours to make up my mind.”

  It was nearly noon by the time Gervase returned and was immediately brought in to the Prince.

  "I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you."

  "Under the circumstances, I thought your Highness would want as much information as possible. I used the guest room that Coelus had arranged for me for an evening of gossip with some of the magisters, and breakfast gave me a chance to listen to the students. Afterwards Magister Bertram was free, so I talked with him for a while."

  "And you learned?"

  "They all know something lethal happened to Maridon, of course, in an experiment Coelus was doing that other magisters were glad not to have volunteered to help with, and that it had to do with pooling more than two mages. They don’t seem to know much more than that.

  "Coelus had a morning lecture; someone else filled in for him after I passed on his note about being taken ill in town. Nobody seems to have noticed that one or two of their students are missing. Apparently it would not be the first time the boy stayed out all night. Some of his fellow students had at least a guess as to where he was."

  "Not, I hope, a correct one."

  "No. With the town whore, if I correctly took their meaning."

  The Prince put another question. "What about the girl—Ellen? What could you learn about her?"

  "She was not at breakfast—I asked. One of the other girls is a good friend of hers and seemed a bit concerned."

  Alayn broke into the conversation.

  "Did you find out what the missing girl looks like?"

  Gervase nodded.

  "Short, stocky but not fat, dark hair."

  "Not a looker?"

  Gervase shook his head.

  "By what I could gather, brains not beauty. Her friend Mari, on the other hand … ."

  The Prince thought a moment.

  "I will send someone to fetch the friend; I expect if he tells her it is about Ellen the girl will come."

  * * *

  "Send her in."

  One of the guards opened the door. Mari walked through it, dropped a low curtsey to the Prince.

  "Greetings, Your Highness. It has been some time."

  The Prince stood regarding her silently for a long moment. Mari spoke again.

  "It is a common name."

  He replied with a visible effort. "Yes. I had not expected to find Duke Morgen's daughter as a student at the College."

  "It is surely not that surprising, Highness. I am told that even princes can sometimes be found here."

  "Sometimes, but rarely." He closed his eyes a moment. "It is true that you have talent. And yet … . Just when did your father decide to enroll you?"

  "This is my first year, Highness."

  "And Nan died a little more than a year ago, leaving me … . If I were inclined to suspicion, and if your father were not a man utterly without subtlety or intrigue, I might suspect some connection."

  "Indeed, Your Highness. As might I, were I not an innocent and unsuspicious damsel."

  Their eyes met, held.

  "You w
ere a clever child, and I see that you have become a clever lady. I do not think this is the time and place to discuss your father's plans. Still, it would at least not be boring."

  "Even so. How then may I serve your Highness?"

  "You may tell me everything you know concerning your friend Ellen, who seems to have vanished from the surface of the earth just when I wished her presence, and about Magister Coelus. It appears that their doings may touch nearly upon the kingdom's welfare, and my duties to it. And … I would advise you to speak the truth."

  Mari nodded. "Advice you would not have to give to Ellen, were she here. To judge from my experience, that is her fixed policy, even when there is no truthteller in the next room. A weakness, I suppose, but an endearing one. Is that the sort of information that is of use to your Highness?"

  "It might be. I take it you are fond of the girl?"

  Mari nodded. "Very. In some ways an innocent, in others the wisest person I have had the pleasure of knowing. And very generous with her time and knowledge. She has taught me and several of our friends more about magery these past months than all of the magisters together."

  "And her connection with Magister Coelus?"

  "Magister Coelus has been giving her a tutorial on the theory of magic, a field in which I understand, at least from her, that he has no masters and few equals."

  "I thought she was your year. Have they started giving tutorials to students in the first year now?"

  "To students, no. To Ellen, yes. She arrived, so far as I can tell, already knowing more than any student and half the magisters. It took a month or two for Coelus to realize that he had finally found a student fully able to learn what he had to teach. He offered her a special tutorial, she accepted. She attends the lectures and is very helpful in explaining them to the rest of us, but most of what she learns is from him."

  "How much does she know of his work?"

  "Whatever he has been willing to teach her; how much that is I do not know. He cannot have taught her all of it yet, since she has shown no sign of wanting to depart."