Casting Shadows (The Passing of the Techno-Mages #1)

by Jeanne Cavelos

  Ing-Radi leaned across Elizar’s body and laid her hands on his arm. She wore her crystal on a long chain, and it hung over his body as she worked. After a few seconds, she closed her eyes and began to hum. Elizar’s breathing began to slow, and some color returned to his face. Galen tried to follow the slight variations in pitch, in volume. The sound carried hints of patterns upon patterns upon patterns, overlapping and interfering with each other in such complexity that any overall pattern was lost. The humming seemed tuneless, shapeless, yet Galen found himself caught in it. He realized he had no idea how long he’d been listening to it.

  Pale, hairless skin began to grow down from the shoulder over the charred arm, like a sleeve. Ing-Radi was not only stimulating the right types of cells to divide, but guiding them into the right pattern, an impossibly complex task. The skin spread down over the elbow, the forearm, the wrist, the fixed claw of the hand closing itself around the fingers.

  For a time after that, there was little external change. Then a tiny slit appeared in the skin just above Elizar’s elbow, and yellow-brown pus began to stream out of it. Several other slits appeared up and down the arm, releasing more of the liquefied tissue. It smelled like rancid fat. As the ruined tissue drained away, the new skin became baggy and wrinkled hanging on the remnant of the arm.

  At last the pus stopped draining, and the tiny slits healed. The structures beneath were now being rebuilt, nerve fibers growing along their old pathways, tracks of collagen forming to act as the foundation for tendons, muscles being reconstructed from what had been undamaged. The arm began to regain its shape, and the skin was pushed outward wrinkles smoothing out. The arm gained a slightly pinkish tone. Finally, the hand opened relaxed.

  Ing-Radi at last straightened and her humming stopped. The arm had an odd look to it, too uniform, too soft, yet it appeared restored. Elizar was asleep, his breathing calm, his color good.

  Isabelle gasped as Ing-Radi fell over into her arms. “Are you all right?” Isabelle asked. “Do you need anything?”

  “I am fine,” Ing-Radi said. But her skin had gone from its normal intense orange to a paler shade, and she seemed unable to straighten.

  “She needs rest,” Kell said. “Blaylock, if you please.”

  Blaylock gave a short nod and knelt beside Ing-Radi, taking her from Isabelle.

  Galen realized that his legs below the knees had gone numb, and the rest of his body was stiff. Many hours had passed since Ing-Radi had begun her healing. He’d somehow been caught in her song and lost track of time. At some point most of the mages had left or been sent away. All that remained now were the members of the Circle—save Elric—and he and Isabelle.

  Blaylock conjured a flying platform for himself and Ing-Radi and guided them toward her ship.

  Kell conjured a platform below Elizar, raised him several feet off the ground. Although Kell’s face was in shadow, Galen sensed Kell’s dark eyes studying him. From the darkness came a heavy sigh. “You are not injured?” he asked.

  “No,” Galen said, and Isabelle echoed him.

  “We will discuss this in the morning,” he said. His steps were heavy as he walked away with Elizar and Herazade.

  Galen felt no desire to stand. He felt no desire to move, ever again.

  “I thought he was going to attack us too,” Isabelle said. “He was so angry. I had my hands ready to conjure a shield the entire time we were talking.”

  Galen remembered her hands clenched together in front of her, remembered the tiny movements that had generated the shield back in the hall. He realized now that she had thrown up a shield, in the middle of everything. He hadn’t needed to act at all.

  “You walked in on the middle of it,” Isabelle said. “You weren’t as prepared as I was.”

  “It never occurred to me that he would attack us, until he brought his hands to his mouth. Then it was just instinct,” Galen said. “Somehow it was just my first reaction. My first reaction to kill him. I don’t know why.”

  “But—you did something, didn’t you? Something to stop it. It wasn’t the same as in the hall.”

  “I tried to make it harmless. It was too late.”

  They remained in silence for a few minutes. Then Isabelle extended her hand. She held the sensor-pad. “You dropped this. In the explosion.”

  Galen took it. He was out of words.

  “I better go. Burell will be worried.”

  Galen nodded. Her dark figure vanished into the mist.

  He couldn’t go home now, couldn’t face Elric. He would leave tomorrow, after he made sure Isabelle and Elizar were not blamed for what had happened. He would go to the city, find a job. Give up any dreams of being just a little bit in control of events around him, of manipulating power and using it for good.

  Better to do no harm.

  The wind had calmed, and the night was quiet, except for the susurration of the sea. The sound of death, Razeel had called it.

  Galen looked absently at the sensor-pad, pressed its buttons without thought, called up the record of what he had done in the hall. It had recorded the same great energies, the same great instabilities that his sensors had found. Yet it recorded other details as well. It not only had a sophisticated array of sensors built into it, but it gathered information from sensors Elric had in place all about the planet.

  Galen had thought perhaps the sphere was a black hole, based on the distortion of time and space. Yet a black hole would have pulled them all toward it, and this did not. Some of the readings suggested a wormhole or jump point, yet those would have radiated energy, and the sphere did not. According to the data, the energy he had first sensed all around him had gathered itself in the membrane of the sphere. As the sphere formed, it seemed to seal itself off more and more from the surrounding hall. The images of Kell and Isabelle standing on the far side of the sphere, which had at first been visible through the sphere, had later been blocked by it. The light that had been contained within the spherical area when the spell was cast found it harder and harder to escape, so that the sphere seemed to darken. The reddening of the light suggested a Doppler shift, as if the sphere were moving rapidly away from them.

  Just before Elric had interrupted the spell, the sphere had begun to fade and collapse. The energy readings had begun to drop back to a more normal range, as if the membrane and what was contained within it were simply vanishing.

  Yet energy didn’t simply disappear. It went elsewhere. As he thought about it, the fading was the last logical step in the sphere’s process of sealing itself off. It had not only sealed itself off from the light and energy in the hall, but from the space and time in the hall. The sphere had pinched itself off into a separate universe.

  Although he couldn’t be sure, that would explain the fading, the return to normality. But why had the sphere begun to shrink at the end? The gravitational waves recorded by the sensor-pad indicated major instabilities. The universe created seemed inherently unstable, in a state of collapse.

  The second term of the equation must be the one to stabilize the sphere, to make conditions within it consistent with those without, and to allow the passage of energy, space, and time in and out of the sphere. In the absence of that second term, the sphere tried to seal itself off from everything, and in so doing, destroyed itself.

  The image returned to him—the sphere reddening and darkening around Elizar. How could he have cast that spell against his friend? If he hadn’t altered the spell, would Elizar have been sealed into his own universe, a collapsing universe that would have crushed him to nothingness?

  He could not be sure. He still hadn’t seen the final result of the spell. Perhaps the membrane holding the unstable universe would fail, its energies flying out like a miniature big bang. The contents of the two universes would mix, and if the physical constants, the physical laws governing them differed, it could trigger a huge chain reaction of destruction.

  Other mages fought, yes, but it was sound and fury, fireballs and shields, contests like Elizar
and Isabelle had fought in the hall. No mage had died of anything but old age in hundreds of years.

  Gradually Galen became aware of a sound beneath the steady murmur of the sea, a quiet sobbing. He searched for the source, found a dark silhouette in the mist. He climbed awkwardly to his feet. His legs refused to move at first, until the blood circulation returned. As his legs began to tingle he moved toward the sound dragging his feet ahead step by step.

  He stopped a short distance away from the figure, still unsteady. “Fa.” He had told her to go home.

  “That man went on fire.”

  He could barely see her in the dark, in the mist. She was crouching on the ground. “Yes.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  “He didn’t,” Galen said. “I did.”

  She wiped at her eyes. “I don’t want to see any more people on fire.”

  “Then you better go home.” He realized how late it was, how tired and scared she must be. He bent and opened his arms. “I’ll carry you.”

  She skittered away from him. “No. I can go myself.” He had wanted her to respect the power of the mages. Now she did. She was terrified of him.

  “I won’t hurt you.”

  She popped to her feet and ran into the night.

  Then he was alone.

  He felt the worst for Elric. Elric hadn’t been able to choose his own apprentice, instead being saddled with Galen. He’d dedicated eleven years of his life to teaching Galen, only to have his undeserving student fail so miserably on the night before initiation. Galen wanted everyone to know it wasn’t Elric’s fault. Elric had been the best teacher an apprentice could have.

  The fault was in him. Galen hauled the sensor-pad back and threw it over the cliff. It disappeared in silence.

  Elric raced across the mak on a flying platform, late for the meeting of the Circle. He was not himself. He’d lost track of the time, sitting up all night, and had nearly forgotten to scour his head.

  His place of power informed him of the various tasks it had performed and the latest data it had collected as it did every morning. It alerted him to situations he had been monitoring; it summarized the images collected by the probes; it presented him with options he commonly accessed in the morning. Each morning—as each night—he liked to access probes across the planet, checking on this place of which he had made himself a part, to keep their bond strong, to help the planet and its inhabitants as needed.

  This morning, though, he had to neglect that part of himself. He had no time for the beauty of the morning, for the sun, the mist, or the sea breeze. His mind refused to focus, save on one thing.

  Elric flew into the tents and headed toward the chamber where the Circle was to meet. Unlike the vast chamber he originally had set aside for the Circle, this one was small, only twenty feet in diameter. About a third of the tents had been lost last night to the fire. The remainder he had reorganized after the fire had at last been stopped. They would be short on space. They would require replacements of supplies. He would make do.

  He dissolved his platform outside the chamber, pulled aside the tent flap, entered. The other four members of the Circle were already there.

  “My apologies for the delay,” Elric said.

  As usual, Ing-Radi had created the illusion of the great stone amphitheater at which, legend had it, Wierden and the original Circle had met. The mak on which he stood formed the floor of the amphitheater, and around it in a circle rose tier upon tier of stone levels, a vast dome of blue-green sky and a pale yellow sun visible at the top. The diameter of the amphitheater was smaller than usual, to fit within the constraints of the chamber, but still the illusion gave the sense of a much greater space than the one in which they actually stood.

  The nonexistent sunlight shone down at an angle, illuminating the ground and the lower levels of the far side of the amphitheater. The air even felt drier, as if he had stepped onto another planet. Around the bottom level of stone glowed the seven runes representing the seven principles of the Code.

  The setting reminded them all of the history of the Circle, and of the responsibility each held as a member of it. It was a responsibility Elric took very seriously, and it was a responsibility that, for the first time, demanded of him something he did not think he could do.

  He visualized a flying platform that resembled in shape and color a large stone chair. It appeared, and he sat down on it, then raised the chair eight feet to give the illusion that it rested on the first tier of the amphitheater, along with the others. They were spaced out in a semicircle, Kell in the center, Ing-Radi and Elric to his left, Blaylock and Herazade to his right.

  Kell pushed himself up from his seat with the support of his ivory staff. He looked tired, his shoulders more hunched than usual, the creases around his eyes deeper. The incident had upset him deeply. He began the meeting as was customary, and his vibrant voice carried a slight echo, part of Ing-Radi’s illusion. “We of the Circle meet to uphold solidarity, secrecy, mystery, magic, science, knowledge, and good.”

  Kell had loved Elizar from his infancy, delighting in his first step, his first word, just as a father would with a son. But Kell had also been proud of Elizar, as a teacher was with a pupil. He took great pains to make Elizar into a leader who could think independently, act decisively, and one day guide the techno-mages. He noted each of Elizar’s accomplishments with great joy. Kell had once confided in Elric that he saw something in Elizar, some hint of future greatness.

  For himself, Elric found Elizar’s most admirable quality his passion for the history and accomplishments of the mages. That had drawn Galen to him. Yet in Elric’s opinion, Elizar took his future leadership a bit too much for granted. He had shown signs of arrogance. Although this trait was not rare among techno-mages, it was a poor quality in a leader. And Elizar’s behavior last night, which Elric had later observed through a probe’s recording, was extremely troubling.

  Still, Elric hoped that somehow Kell was right, and that Elizar would be the great leader to take his place. He knew how much Elizar meant to Kell. Almost as much as Galen meant to him.

  Kell asked Ing-Radi to report on Elizar’s health, and then he sat.

  Ing-Radi laid her hands, palms up, one on top of the other, and bowed her head. She returned her hands to the four arms of her chair. Her movements were graceful, hypnotic. “The burns were severe. Some scarring remains, both internally and externally. He can retrain himself to use the rebuilt muscles. He can retrain himself to understand the sensory input of the regrown nerves. He can work to regain his muscle tone. In a short time, he should have partial use of the arm. He will never recover its full use, though.”

  Kell leaned forward in his chair. “When he receives the implants—will they not further the healing?”

  “All that can be done, I have done. I am sorry.”

  The three apprentices were called in. Although Elric had shared his probe’s recording with the rest of the Circle, so that all knew what had happened, those involved must be questioned to see if they would give an accurate accounting.

  Galen’s cheeks were dark with stubble, and his robe hung heavy with moisture. He must have sat out on the mak all night. His chrysalis even seemed slightly discolored with hints of yellow among the silver. He took his place with the others before the Circle and stood completely still, head bowed. He expected to be cast away, Elric realized. And could there be any other possible outcome?

  Isabelle’s robe was wrinkled, but she looked clearheaded and determined. Elric accessed his sensors. Her heartbeat and respiration were high, signs of nervousness most likely.

  Elizar actually looked the best of the three of them. He was dressed in a clean outfit of blue velvet, which meant he had removed his chrysalis temporarily, in violation of custom. His left arm hung limply at his side. Elric knew he must be exhausted; the healing process put a great strain on the body. Yet he carried himself proudly.

  “We would know what happened last night between the three of you,” Kell
said. In a precise gesture, he extended two fingers toward Isabelle. “Speak.”

  Isabelle bowed her head. As she began to recount what had happened Elric found himself thinking of Tilar, who had been cast away by the Circle three years ago, on the eve of his initiation. This was rare, since most unfit apprentices were weeded out long before that point. Tilar had been a student of Regana, who was a good mage, though perhaps she had blinded herself to the flaws of her student.

  Now Regana seemed a ghost of her former self, lacking in energy, will, joy. The failure of Tilar, after she had devoted so much of her life to him, had devastated her. Maintaining any relationship with him was forbidden, once he had been cast away. Elric wondered, for the first time, what had become of him.

  “Elizar insisted that my shield had some special power,” Isabelle continued. “He pressed me to tell him its secret. I told him there was no secret, but he would not accept that. He became very agitated. I was alarmed by his vehemence, his insistence. Something serious has been troubling him. He believes the mages are under a threat of some kind. I don’t—”

  “If Elizar has such concerns,” Kell said “he can bring them before the Circle.” He ran his index finger over his goatee, one of the few gestures Kell made that was not precisely formulated controlled. Elric had seen him do it only a handful of times before, all when he was deeply upset. “Please focus on the incident.”

  It struck Elric suddenly that more had occurred yesterday than a fight between two poorly disciplined mages. Elizar had been speaking of a danger, a threat to their survival. But what danger could so frighten him? Did he have evidence that the Shadows were returning? And if he knew, and Kell knew, why would Kell try to keep this knowledge from the rest of the Circle?

  As with everything involving the mages, nothing was just what it seemed. There were layers on layers, circles within circles. And as with Carvin’s well-crafted conjury involving Alwyn’s boots, there was always misdirection.

  Isabelle took a breath, clearly frustrated that she couldn’t speak of Elizar’s concerns. Then she continued. “As I said Elizar was extremely agitated. I believed he might attack me, and I was prepared to conjure a shield.”