A Dragon In the Palace

by William King

  “Interesting, sir?”

  “There is definitely linkage between you and your familiar. A very strong bond I would say. I can see it glowing from here. And your aura tells me that if you study hard, you will be a very powerful sorcerer someday.”

  “Powerful, sir?”

  “Powerful.”

  “How can you tell that, sir?”

  “An experienced sorcerer can usually sense the relative strength of people once he’s had some experience of doing such things. My aurascope simply makes it easier and more precise. Your aura is very intense.”

  “Intense, sir? I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “It is very bright. In the cases of some mages it is feeble. A mage with an aura that is dim will never be very powerful. Unless certain very unusual circumstances occur.”

  That got my attention. “And what would those be, sir?”

  “Some mages develop late, young man. Some need experiences to catalyse their powers. Sometimes a mage will undergo something that transforms them, that allows them to draw on more power.”

  “Like we were talking about earlier, sir? When you were discussing overdrawing my power.”

  “Just so. In any case your aura is particularly intense but that’s not the most interesting part of it.”

  Once again I felt flattered but I had no idea what he was talking about. “What would that be, sir?”

  “Your aura is very mixed. No colour of the spectrum is dominant.”

  This meant precisely nothing to me. He must have seen it written on my face because he laughed.

  “Each type of magic has a colour associated with it. Your mistress for example is very strong crimson aura. This is the colour of destructive magic. My own is azure dominant.”

  “And that means that you are good at healing, sir?”

  “Yes, among other things. At one end of the azure spectrum it can mean that you are good at healing. At the other, it can mean that you are good at divination. The two tend to be connected.”

  “Why would that be sir?”

  “It probably has something to do with the fact that in order to cure a person you first have to find out what is wrong with them.”

  “That makes sense, sir.”

  “It’s nice of you to say so,” he said. Even I could detect the note of irony in his voice.

  “So you’re saying that my aura has no colour?”

  “No dominant colour. There are many colours scintillant, including azure and crimson, aurean and viridian as well. They swirl about you. I suspect that once you decide to concentrate your studies on something, one will become dominant. That is normally the case. In any case, you certainly have some interesting possibilities ahead of you.”

  “Assuming that I can find someone to teach me,” I said. I could not keep the sour note out of my voice.

  The old man smiled. "I don’t think that will be difficult. Your mistress is a very accomplished war mage. Had she not bonded you first, I would be inclined to offer you an apprenticeship myself.

  “I doubt that I could afford it, sir. My family is very poor.” It was customary for an apprentice to pay a fee to his master in all professions.

  “I’m sure that we could work something out,” Master Lucas said. “You could have worked as an assistant until your debt is paid off, for example. Anyway, it’s pointless discussing this. Things are as they are. I will let your mistress know what we have discovered here.”

  It was then that I started to suspect that this had nothing whatsoever to do with uncovering the link between myself and Red and everything to do with establishing what my talents and strengths might be. That seemed to be the primary purpose of the old man’s device.

  “Have your apprentices been placed in front of your aurascope, sir?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Master Lucas said. “I try to use it on everybody when I get the opportunity. Most mages are not quite so accommodating as you. We work in a very suspicious profession.”

  It was a nice touch that use of the word we. So far I had no practice in the profession of being a wizard whatsoever. “I’m glad that I could be of assistance to you, sir,” I said.

  “Every little helps us advance the field of human knowledge,” Master Lucas said. “I thank you for sitting for me.”

  He stared through the lenses again and then muttered the incantation once more one by one the glass ovals went dim, the light faded, the colour vanished. I thought about what he had said about the colours of magic and I wondered if each lens was connected with a particular colour. I put my thoughts to Master Lucas.

  “An excellent observation,” said. “You grasped that very quickly.”

  I nodded in acknowledgement of what he said. “It must take very complex magic to create such a device, sir.”

  He placed his hands on the aurascope proudly and stood there, a man pleased to have found a willing audience before which to expound upon his creation. “It is a very complex device. It does not require power so much as time and the willingness to work subtle, intricate spells.”

  “You have placed the spells on the device itself, sir?”

  “I inscribed the glyphs within the crystal.”

  “Within, sir?”

  “That is where the magic comes in. No tool could be used to work inside crystal without breaking it.”

  “So the glyphs are entirely the product of magic?”

  He nodded. “Then everything has to be arranged in a pattern that harmonises. Flows of energy have to be calibrated. There also have to be runes to channel the power I feed the device, which can be a little draining.”

  I could see that there were small beads of sweat on his forehead. His hands shook a little. Clearly working with his device had affected him. He looked a little ill. Even as that thought struck me, he walked over to another table and poured himself a glass of wine from a flask. I smelled alcohol and something herbal. I was reminded of the flask from which my mistress drunk. I also remembered what Master Lucas had told me earlier about the use of drugs by sorcerers. I was afraid to ask.

  He took a sip of the cordial and his face regained some colour. His hand ceased to shake and he looked more relaxed. A small smile spread across his face and he walked back over to his device, still clutching his glass. "Where were we? Oh yes, the arrangement of the lenses and the runes. It took me several years to create this version. It is the last of the line I have been working on for the past twenty years or so.

  I thought about that. This man had invested twenty years of his life creating this device and to what purpose? It was not a weapon as far as I could tell. “Why have you done this, sir?”

  “For knowledge, young man. To advance it. I’ve always wanted to know about magic and how it works. I’ve always wanted to be able to see into its mysteries.”

  Something of his excitement communicated itself to me. He was almost dancing on the spot now and I wondered whether it was from glee or the side effects of what he was drinking.

  “Eventually, if we can find out what gives some people the ability to work magic and not others, we might be able to create sorcerers. If we can isolate what makes some mages strong, we could use that knowledge for the benefit of all mages, perhaps all mankind.”

  I looked around the chamber again. I looked at the dissected eye. I studied the skeletons. I inspected the map of muscles and bones within the statue nearby. I wondered how far Master Lucas was prepared to go in pursuit of knowledge. All of the old stories about sorcerers I had heard when I was growing up came rushing back to me and made me profoundly nervous.

  Master Lucas seemed lost in his speech. “I believe that the Old Ones once possessed this knowledge. Perhaps some of them still do. One thing is certain, they will not share it with us. Behind this knowledge, might be the secret of life itself. Once the Eldrim created new species, granted them strange powers. They changed people so that they could live and breathe underwater. They created beings who could fly. Some say that they created magicians to be the
greatest of their servants.”

  His voice dropped into silence at this point I could tell that he did not like that thought. He took a deep breath and continued, “Forgive me,” he said. “I get carried away. It’s not often I find someone prepared to listen as well as you. It’s a great gift. One of many that I have no doubt you possess.”

  He was laying the flattery on with a trowel. I wondered what his purpose was. One day it would become clear. “You can find your way back by asking directions from the guards,” he said. “I must write up my notes. You have given me a lot to think about.”

  It was quite clear I had been dismissed.

  Chapter Eleven

  “How did it go with Master Lucas?” Mistress Iliana asked, looking up from the open scroll on the table in front of her.

  I sensed the presence of the wards she had invoked as soon as I entered the room.

  “He is an interesting man?” I said.

  Her lips twitched and she seemed to be trying to stop herself from smiling. “What makes you say that?”

  “He showed me his laboratory,” I said. I could not keep my emotions from my voice.

  “I see,” Mistress Iliana said. “You sound disturbed.”

  I glanced around. I felt jumpy discussing the Duke’s healer even within my mistress’s warded chamber. Master Lucas was a powerful wizard too. Just speaking about what I had seen made me uneasy. I had had plenty of time to think about it after I had left the dungeons and made my way back. The full horror of what I had witnessed was only starting to settle in. “I saw things there, mistress, that I did not expect.”

  She laughed. It was not the theatrical scary laughter she used for others. It was warm and full of amusement. “By the Light, boy, it’s not like you to mince your words. You must have seen something that put the fear of the Holy Sun into you. Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”

  “He had human body parts, mistress,” I said. “He had chopped up an eye and had removed the livers of at least two men. There were skeletons and maps of the human body and a mass of flesh, I don’t know where it came from, that was tainted with blight. He told me so. He said he was studying it.”

  “He is studying it,” Mistress Iliana said. “He studies lots of things, some of them much more disturbing than that. It is part of his job.”

  Her calm took the wind out of my sails. “Oh. In what way, mistress?”

  “He is a healer. His work is mainly concerned with the human body and what goes wrong with it. One way of finding out more about such things is to see what is within us, to try and understand what causes the problems.”

  “But it’s horrible.”

  “Indeed it is. But there are many things in this life that are horrible and yet they still need to be done.” She paused as if she was considering such matters in her own life. No doubt she had seen plenty of horrors and been responsible for many too. But she was a war wizard. I had not expected the same thing from Master Lucas. He was so affable and calm and his work did not seem to have anything to do with the butchery I had witnessed below.

  “I see, mistress.”

  “I can tell from your expression that you do not. Don’t think that Master Lucas’s work is all swanning around the Palace counting the heartbeats of sick apprentices. Sometimes he has to heal wounded men. Sometimes he has to push their guts back into their bodies and seal their flesh. Doesn’t it seem like a good idea that he knows where to put their innards.”

  She spoke slowly and calmly and I could tell that she was trying to impress these facts upon me. “It does, mistress. But what about the blighted things?”

  She took a deep breath and I sensed something about that matter disturbed her although she was not willing to admit it in front of me. “Master Lucas believes that the blight has something in common with many diseases. He thinks that we might be able to find a way of stopping it or reducing its effects or reversing them. The church has sanctioned his work. The Inquisition too.”

  She seemed to be saying this as much to remind herself as to inform me, listing the arguments in a way that suggested that she was not entirely convinced by them herself.

  “I do not doubt it, mistress,” I said. “It’s just the sight was upsetting.”

  “Over the course of your life you’ll see many things much more disturbing. It might be best if you became acclimatised to them now.”

  “You say the church approves of Master Lucas’s work, mistress?”

  “All such research must be cleared by them. Special dispensation is needed to work with human remains. They must belong to unbelievers or those who have been excommunicated such as suicides.”

  Funeral rites of the Holy Sun demanded that the bodies of believers be burned with full ceremony whenever possible. There would be nothing left to experiment on.

  That just made the whole thing more disturbing. It meant that those bodies I had seen or the parts of them that remained were unblessed, unhallowed and in contact with blight. The priest back in Khorba always claimed one reason bodies needed to be burned and the rites performed was to prevent them from coming back as walking dead. The ghosts of those unburned men might well be troubled by what Master Lucas was doing to their remains.

  “It does not seem right to me, mistress.” I felt strangely vulnerable as I said the words. I was criticising one of her fellow wizards and a master too, one trusted by the Duke and by the church.

  Mistress Iliana sighed and walked to the window and glanced out towards the sea. “I can see why you would think the way you do. You’re not the only one, which is why Master Lucas conducts his experiments out of sight, behind locked doors, down in the dungeons. However, sometimes if knowledge is to advance, unpleasant things must be done.”

  “And the Inquisition knows about this, mistress?” I could not quite keep my disbelief out of my voice.

  “Of course they do. Until they don’t.”

  “What do you mean, mistress?”

  “Think about what you have seen. What do you think would happen if it became common knowledge among the sort of people who burn witches?”

  “I thought that was the Inquisition, mistress.”

  “I mean the mob.”

  “They would demand Master Lucas’s head, most likely.”

  “Do you not think having that sort of hold over a powerful mage might prove useful to our friends in the Inquisition?”

  The sheer depth of her cynicism was breath-taking. It had never occurred to me that the Inquisition might know about such things and not do something about them. “I can see that it would, mistress,” I said eventually.

  “Letting Master Lucas perform his research is a promissory note they can call in at any time.”

  “And yet he showed me all this, mistress.”

  “And who are you going to tell that does not already know? And how would you explain what you know?”

  She was right, of course. I was not exactly going to run to the Inquisition with this knowledge. Nor was I likely to take my knowledge to the mob. I would be perceived as part of the problem. If anyone was interested in what I had to say at all.

  She glanced back at me. At this moment Red decided to crawl down onto her table and play amongst the ceramic skulls. I snatched him up and placed him back on my shoulder.

  “What else did Master Lucas have to say?”

  “He said there is a link between Red and myself. He could see it through his aurascope.”

  “So he put you in front of his device then?”

  “He did, mistress.”

  “And what did he see? Anything interesting?”

  “He told me that I might become a powerful sorcerer someday.” I felt strangely shy saying this, as if I was boasting and unworthy of the praise.

  “There was no need to use his machine to find that out. I could have told you that myself.”

  “He said that my aura was strange, that there was no dominant colour, that it might settle down once I chose the path that I wanted to study. He said t
hat I might be able to choose many different ones.”

  She sat down at her table and began to move the ceramic skulls into a pattern. She seemed to be giving all her concentration to this and I wondered if she had actually been listening to me as I spoke. Eventually she said, “That is interesting. Go on.”

  I racked my brain to see what else I could remember. “He said that there were many colours present in my aura, he mentioned at least four of them. He said one of them was a colour that you were particularly strong in, crimson, I think. And the other was the one that represented his powers.”

  “I see,” she said. “That complicates matters.”

  “In what way, mistress?”

  “It means that at some point soon you’re going to have to make a choice as to what you study. You cannot follow all roads at once.”

  It took a moment for what she was saying to sink in. “I am your servant, mistress. I signed a contract of indenture. You have said that I could be your apprentice.”

  She smiled as if my words pleased her. “All of those things are true but it’s a foolish magician who forces another to follow a path that does not suit them against their will. I take it that you are not inclined to follow the road that Master Lucas is on.”

  I was being asked to make a decision and I did not really understand what my choices were. The thought of being Master Lucas’s apprentice did not please me though. That being said, there was still a lot to be thought about. If I ended up being Mistress Iliana’s apprentice, I would spend at least part of my life on the battlefield.

  The thought excited me as did the prospect of power. But was it really any better than what Master Lucas did in a secret laboratory down in the dungeons? I would be killing people. I would be killing things and even if some of those things were monsters, they were still alive.

  Did that trouble me?

  I would have liked to been able to say that the answer was no but in all honesty I could not. It was one thing to imagine holding the awesome power of destructive magic in my hand. It was another to imagine using it.

  And the path that Master Lucas followed was one that would allow me to help people, to heal them and not coincidentally earn money and respect. He quite clearly had the ear of the Inquisition and influence with the church. No matter what I thought of his experiments, they were allowed. And just because Master Lucas performed his experiments, did not mean that I would have to.