"Captain Geffron is in charge of the search; he's at the inn." The officer turned to look at the mage behind him. The mage nodded; the group of men left the shop. Dur closed the door, bolted it, turned back to Ellen.
"Before we fetch your young man down from the roof you might want to restore a few years. No need to confuse him—or give him ideas."
She nodded: "And you might want to take a few years back off."
Chapter 18
Lord Iolen looked around the inn room. Two of his own people—Rikard for the mages and Ivert, commander of his guards—and Captain Geffron. A second mage was standing in the doorway; he nodded to his lord, left the room. Iolen waited a moment to be sure he had the attention of the others before he spoke.
"We are as secure as magic can make us, so it is time to sum up our present situation and tell you my plans. We have no further need for the assistance of Captain Geffron, so he may take his men back to their garrison under strict orders of confidentiality, to await his call to the capital to confirm my report to His Majesty on this matter.
"Magister Coelus and the missing student have eluded us. Coelus, we must assume, is the Prince's creature and has gone to his master. When I report to His Majesty, I shall argue that His Highness has tried, treasonously, to obtain the secret of Coelus' work for himself, without informing His Majesty."
He stopped a moment, looked at the other two, continued.
"My coming here myself without informing His Majesty was of course justified by the need for my actions not to reach the ears of certain of His Highness's friends at court, since His Highness was then in a position to implement the spell with Coelus before he could be stopped.
"You are free to pass on as much of this to our people as you think prudent, save only that nothing should be said concerning the nature of the spell we were seeking. Make it clear that, in case of difficulties, I will continue to protect them. Are there any questions?"
Ivert got up. "None, my lord. With your leave I will make the arrangements for our departure in the morning."
Rikard waited until the guard commander had left before speaking.
"My lord. What if the Prince hears what we have been up to and attempts to seize power for himself immediately by implementing the spell? Should we not forestall him by doing so ourselves? There is some risk to whatever mage serves as the focus, but since Your lordship and I are now the only members of our party who have read the complete report on the previous attempt … ."
He fell silent; Iolen responded with a cold smile. "If we do, and it works, how are you proposing that the spell should be used?"
"His Highness depends for protection chiefly on his own mages. The mage at the focus will have an enormous amount of magery at his command—including the power of the mages protecting His Highness and of His Highness himself. That should make it possible to breach any protections His Highness may have established, determine if he is in fact engaged in treason, and if so take suitable actions against him."
Iolen's face did not change.
"I presume that would require skill as well as power?"
"It would, my lord. I propose that we attempt the Cascade once, here, using Albin as the focus. I will first cast a loyalty spell on him; your lordship will instruct him to terminate the Cascade as soon as it is clearly established. If that succeeds, I propose that for the second attempt, somewhere closer to his Highness, I should be the focus."
There was a long silence before Iolen spoke.
"Yes. Write out the instructions for Albin; the other four should still have their copies. As before, each only needs to know his own part."
* * *
Dur lifted his hand from the lid of the small furnace, exposing the fire rune inlaid into its center, turned to his daughter, spoke softly.
"Your young man is asleep?"
"Magister Coelus was asleep a minute ago. Did you get through them?"
Dur nodded. "If you two ever create an adequate privacy shield, Iolen should be your first customer. They're going to try again tomorrow morning—outside the College. In the inn, in fact; the main dining room is big enough."
"How do we stop them from doing it?"
He shook his head. "We don't stop them from doing it, we stop it from working. You haven’t figured out yet how to push the Cascade’s efficiency below its critical value, so we need to try something simpler. Can you weave your mother's shadow cloak?"
An hour later, Ellen was moving furtively through the village, stepping off the path into a dark passage between the inn and a neighboring house as a handful of travelers passed out through the inn’s brightly lit door. Once through the doorway herself she moved quickly into a corner where nobody was likely to run into her, stood still watching the stairway and the area at its foot.
Her first attempt got only as far as the landing. A man appeared at the head of the stairs heading down; she considered briefly the size of the landing, chose the more prudent alternative. The second attempt succeeded, bringing her to the top of the empty stairway, from there to the corner farthest from the doors to the second floor rooms.
Two men emerged from the upstairs dining room. One went down the stairs, the other, the mage who had tried to capture her outside her own window three days before, turned right and went into one of the bedrooms. He put the papers he was carrying down on the small table between the beds, one already occupied, turned, closed the door.
Ellen waited as the inn gradually grew quiet, with guests straggling out the front door, the thud of doors closing on rooms. The upper hallway, lit faintly by the light of a lamp at each end, was empty. Closing her eyes, Ellen let her mind pass through the door in front of her. Inside both men slept. The guards at the hall’s far end were awake, absorbed in a game of dice; a fourth guard stood at the front door of the inn, now shut. Iolen and one of his mages occupied a second bedroom, on the other side of the large upstairs room where Mari had entertained her friends. The lord seemed to be asleep; the mage riffled studiously through a stack of papers.
The lamp at her end of the hall went out. Ellen waited a few moments to be sure no inn servant was coming to relight it, then moved to the door of the room and eased it open. Its occupants were still asleep, one with his face towards the wall, the other on his back, snoring peacefully. She moved to put her body between him and the papers on the table before calling a tiny flame from her fingertip to read by its light the top sheet of paper.
The writing was in a clear hand, a set of instructions interspersed with single words written in the true speech, once a whole phrase. In some places words, in one a whole line, had been crossed out and replaced. From the wallet at her side she drew out a quill, a tightly stoppered bottle of ink.
In a few minutes she was done, quill and ink back in her wallet, and had slipped back out the door. She stopped at the head of the stairs, looking down to be sure there was nobody between her and the front door; the space was lighted by several lamps and the dull glow from the fireplace. The door was closed, the guard seated in a chair blocking it.
Ellen closed her eyes, pulled shadow out of the corners of the room, and wove it about the man's head. Gradually his neck bent his head forward onto his chest; there was the faintest sound of a snore. She drew a long breath and started down the stairs.
A blow from behind. Ellen stumbled down, caught herself on the landing and turned.
"What the… ."
It was one of the guards, looking straight at her. For a moment neither moved.
Suddenly, all the lamps and torchlights went out. The guard grabbed for her arm. She twisted free and fled down the stairs through the dark, the guard blundering down after her, calling out for help. The guard at the door, still half asleep, took a few steps towards the stair. She dodged around him, pushed the door open—the bar was off—and a moment later was running down the street through the night.
* * *
“My Lord.”
Iolen finished pulling on his over tunic, turned to Rikard. �
�Something wrong?”
“Perhaps, My Lord. Last night, after we went to bed, one of the guards, coming down the staircase, ran into someone.”
“And? Had he been drinking?”
“I don’t think so, My Lord. It was a woman. Everything went dark; she pulled away and went running down the stairs. By the time they got the lamps lit again, she was gone.”
Iolen said nothing, waited for the mage to continue.
“All the lamps and the fire on the hearth went out at the same time, just after the guard ran into the woman on the staircase. The guards couldn’t see in the dark; the woman had no trouble getting down the stairs, around the guard at the door, and out.”
“You believe it was magery?’
“Yes, My Lord.”
Iolen thought for a moment. “Can a mage make himself invisible?”
“I can’t, My Lord. I wouldn’t be astonished if someone else could; I’ve heard of things at least close. Coelus, by all accounts, is a mage who invents new spells.”
“And his missing student is a woman. So, you think it was she?”
“Something like that, My Lord. Coelus is air, not fire, so I’m not sure he could put out the hearth fire that fast.”
“Did she get anything?”
“Not as far as I can tell, My Lord. I checked the chest with the papers in it; the spells hadn’t been touched. Getting through them would not have been easy for a trained mage, let alone a girl and a student. We don’t know what she might have heard.”
“There has been no time for a message to the Prince to bring anyone from his camp here yet. Either Coelus had people in the village or someone else is taking a hand. Who?”
Rikard shook his head. “This time of year there are hardly any mages at the College. Perhaps someone else at court got word of where you were going, or why?”
“You think one of our people …”
“Isn't. We can question them all.”
“While you do that,” Iolen said, “I will secure the main dining room of the inn to reinvoke the spell in; I’ll tell the innkeeper we are having a conference and want none of his people within earshot. Have Ivert station one guard outside the door, another outside the windows. What am I forgetting?”
Rikard thought a moment.
“We will need to clear the floor; I'll borrow one of the guards to help move furniture. Easiest if you have everyone meet in the upstairs room for morning meal, keep them out of the way until needed. I’ll let you know when we’re ready.”
An hour later, Rikard, Iolen and the five mages filed into the big downstairs room which had been cleared, with positions for the mages marked in chalk on the floor, each with its proper symbol. The mages assumed their places, along with their written instructions. Albin took the central position, gave Rikard an enquiring look; Rikard turned to Iolen.
“We are ready, My Lord.”
“Albin understands his instructions?”
Albin turned his head. “First, Rikard will enspell me. As soon as I feel power flowing into me beyond our five, I will dismiss the spell I have just cast. If I cannot, I am to cut the nearest line with my athame.”
Albin nodded. Rikard raised his hand, spoke a long sentence in the true speech, let his hand fall. Albin began the first invocation, the other mages joining in in turn, each answered by Albin. Rikard, watching with his eyes closed, saw the first line appear, the second, the third. Albin spoke the final word.
“It isn’t working.” Rikard turned to Albin. "What did you feel?"
“A trickle from Gilbert, Vyncent and Gregor, nothing from Steffan. The last word, that was supposed to start the Cascade, didn’t do anything.”
“Are you sure you got everything right? I didn’t see anything happen when Stef was supposed to come in. And something sounded off—not quite as I remembered it.”
“I said it just as you wrote it,” Steffan said. “See for yourself.”
Rikard peered at the sheet of paper. “That’s not my writing. Not all of it.”
Iolen was the first to react. “Something got changed?”
“Yes, My Lord. In two places what I wrote has been crossed out, inked over so it can’t be read, and different words written above to replace it."
Iolen turned to Albin. “When you went to sleep last night, where was the paper?”
“On the table by my bed, My Lord. I studied it before I went to sleep, went over it again in the morning to be sure I had it right.
Iolen smiled. “So that was what last night’s visitor was up to. Clever, but not clever enough. Rikard, come with me; the rest of you stay here. We’ll be back shortly.”
On the way up the stairs, Iolen spoke again. “If you hadn’t looked at the paper, their trick would have worked. Since you did …We can get one of the sets of notes out of the chest, redo the instructions from that. Then run the schema again.
“And it will work.”
Rikard looked at his lord curiously. “Because?”
“Because if what we were doing wasn’t going to work they wouldn’t have risked getting one of their people caught trying to stop us.”
* * *
Dur turned to Ellen and opened his eyes. “Rikard spotted your improvements to his instructions. That means I have to work quickly.” Coelus was seated on the bed. “Stay here; we will be back shortly.”
Ellen went downstairs and into the front of the shop to bolt the door, checked the back door as well, then joined her father by the small furnace. Taking a deep breath, he put his right hand down over the glyph on the cover of the small furnace and closed his eyes.
The fire poured into him, more and more fire, intoxication, pleasure verging closer and closer to the limit of what flesh could bear. With an effort he pulled back from the brink, found again the knife edge balance between the world of fire and the world of matter, between ecstasy and life. He let out the held breath, raised his left hand, pointing, held the pose for a long minute as he brushed past the privacy spells about the inn to explore one room and its contents.
“I think that should do.”
“Father.”
He looked up into Ellen’s worried face, raised his hand to feel his hair. A strand came off, dead white. “That is the other risk.” He leaned down, this time with both hands on the furnace. As she watched, fascinated, the wrinkles in the ancient face smoothed, the twisted veins in the hands shrunk away. When Dur stood up again, his white hair was the only visible change from his appearance an hour before.
Coelus spoke in a tone of astonished wonder. “You are all three of them.” He paused at the head of the stairs before descending.
“Ellen’s father, of course. And Master Dur, the old jeweler whose shop this must be; a minute ago you were even older than that. And the portrait of Durilil that used to hang in the lecture room. I thought you looked familiar the first time I saw you.”
Durilil nodded. "I should have burned it up twenty years earlier, but it was a good painting and I hated to destroy another man’s work. Once I decided to live here, there was no choice; I made Master Dur twenty years older than the picture, but someone with an eye for faces might still have recognized me from it.”
Coelus was still thinking. “So the Salamander did not burn you up after all.”
He stopped a moment, looked around the room. “You found it. You must have. That’s why … .”
“King Theodrick had a team of mages. I have something better.” He gestured to the furnace. It took Coelus only a moment to understand.
“I thought the glyph was a warning, wondered why it wasn’t in some form ordinary people could read. I forgot that the fire symbol has another meaning. Is it part of the binding?”
Durilil shook his head. “You cannot bind an elemental, as you of all people should know; you got things mostly right in your thesis. The glyph is a road sign to help keep the Salamander where it wants to be. When your world is nothing but fire it is quite easy to get lost, at least what we would call lost.
Another th
ought occurred to Coelus. “It was the Salamander that killed Maridon?”
Durilil nodded. “Quite unintentionally. I assume you had the spell devised so that some fraction of the power absorbed from the Cascade went to channel the rest, otherwise no mage could survive being the focus.”
“Yes. But it didn’t work.”
“How could it? When Maridon tapped the Salamander, all he had to protect him was the power of ten or twenty mages. He went up like a moth in a furnace.”
* * *
Iolen and Rikard were at the top of the stairs when they smelled the smoke. Iolen stepped forward towards the door; Rikard caught his arm. “Just a moment, My Lord. It might be a trap.”
He spoke a brief sentence, accompanied it with a gesture, stepped to the door, unlocked it and flung it wide, stepping back as he did so. The room was full of smoke. As it cleared, the two men could see that the pile of papers on the table had been mostly reduced to ash.
“Coelus’ papers from his office?”
“Yes, My Lord. I was looking through them for clues to how the spell worked last night.”
“Is the chest safe?”
Rikard said nothing, bent over the small chest sitting by the head of Iolen’s bed, said something softly. “You can unlock it now, My Lord.”
Iolen reached into his tunic and drew out a key hanging on a cord around his neck. In a moment the chest was unlocked. Rikard spoke more words over it before lifting the lid.
Smoke billowed out. The sheets at one end had been entirely consumed, reduced to a fine ash, but papers at the other end had fared better. Rikard lifted them out carefully. All were scorched, some destroyed, but many were at least partly legible.
Iolen was the first to speak. “I thought you had the chest protected.”
Rikard looked up from the pages. “A skilled and very powerful mage standing next to the chest could perhaps have defeated its spells, although I doubt it. But the room was locked, the inn guarded. I don’t believe any invisibility spell could be strong enough to have gotten a mage to the side of the chest undetected, after the precautions I took last night. No mage alive could have gotten a fire spell from outside the inn to inside that chest.”
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