The Spirit Lens

by Carol Berg

  “Duplais!”

  I near jumped out of my skin. A firm hand on my sleeve drew me out of the stream of footmen and maidservants to the window wall. “I’ve been hoping to speak with you, and here you manifest in my own haunts.”

  “Mage Orviene!” Every distraction receded as I bestowed my entire attention on the neat little man with pomaded hair, silver collar, and pleasant smile. I inclined my back. “Divine grace, sir. How may I serve you? ”

  His wide, soft features drew into a focused concern. “Excuse my abruptness, Sonjeur de Duplais, but I hoped you might be able to enlighten a grievous darkness.”

  “Whatever I can.” Curiosity scorched my mouth dry.

  “My assistant, Fedrigo, has gone missing for more than a tenday. A reliable report says he’s been stabbed in a brawl and drowned, but I”—a nervous finger rubbed his rounded chin—“I cannot accept it. Drigo was an abstemious man, not at all inclined to gaming or rowdiness. I’m extremely worried about him.”

  Had I charms or amulets or enchanted swords to defend myself, every one would have been raised. Why would Orviene come to me with this?

  “A grievous matter indeed,” I said carefully, “but I scarce see how I can help you. Though my employer ever sings Adept Fedrigo’s praises, I’ve met the fellow only once.”

  Orviene propped himself on the window seat and examined me with a sharp, wry glance. He cleared his throat. “Well, this is about your employer. Lord Ilario frequently hires Fedrigo for private spellworking, so I thought perhaps he might know why the lad might have gone down to Riverside or whom he might have met there. But your chevalier forever behaves as if I am a goblin lurking in his closet and refuses to speak with me beyond formalities. If you could enlighten me, I’d need not bother your master. And truly . . .” Of a sudden, the mage’s whole posture shifted, as if a mask had dropped away. “My apprentices are as sons to me, Acolyte Portier. Drigo has no family save his mother in Delourre. How can I write her of his death, offering no more explanation than drunken foolery? She cannot even claim his remains.”

  The world stilled. “His body’s not been found, then,” I said.

  The mage motioned me to bend my head closer. “You’ll have heard whispers of the resurgent evil abroad in Merona, and that the practice might even be linked to the events on the Swan. I wish I could declare such rumor false. Any with a marked hand is at risk. I’ve urged my aides to stay wary, and so you should, as well. I fear greatly for Drigo’s fate.”

  No trace of the bantering courtier remained, but only a sincerely troubled man afraid his missing apprentice might face a death more terrible than a tavern rowdy’s blade in his craw. Dared I believe him?

  “I can try to find out, sir mage,” I said, slowly. “Naturally, I could not betray Lord Ilario’s confidence.”

  “I’d never presume that.”

  “But if he knows aught of your assistant, I’ll let you know.”

  “I would be most grateful.” He offered his hand, palm up, requesting a trust bond—an old-fashioned custom among magical practitioners. Though I had no magic to forego, I laid my palm on his without qualm. Warm and steady, his hand conveyed no ill.

  “Mage,” I said, seizing an opportunity unexpected, “if you’ve evidence . . . or suspicion . . . that the fire on the Swan was linked to illicit practice, should not the Camarilla be warned? So many died.”

  One small hand flew to his mouth; the other jittered in a vigorous denial. “Merciful saints,” he whispered, eyeing the passing maidservants and courtiers. “Forget the ravings of a loose tongue. Of all men, you should understand my position. Do I speak my suspicions, all will name it jealousy and ambition, an attempt to divert attention from my own . . . limitations. Even so, if the murderous fire itself gave me pause, I would speak out. But, it was not in the crime but in the remedy I felt the stirring of strength . . . extraordinary.”

  “In the caelomancy, then,” I said. “You believe transference enhanced the magic wielded to bring the rain?” That jibed with Dante’s experience.

  He winced at the word spoken aloud. “We all reached for strength beyond our own that day. That was likely what I felt. If you hear aught of Fedrigo . . .”

  “I’ll inform you right away, of course.”

  Orviene could certainly be accused of jealousy and ambition. Gaetana was a master mage and the queen’s First Counselor, privy to the queen’s secrets, always first to be consulted, always at her right hand. No matter Orviene’s popularity with courtiers and servants, it must appear impossible to gain ground on her. Was this only a play for sympathy or did he suspect my role? I could get no firm sense of the man.

  I watched the mage hurry up the queen’s stair, then turned into the passage where the three mages had their apartments. Morning light revealed naught but dancing dust motes. When I rapped on Dante’s door, enchantment grazed my knuckles like broken glass.

  “He’ll not answer.”

  I lurched around and slammed my back to the door. Truly, the morning had my nerves shredded.

  A dark young man in adept’s gray lugged a desk toward me, a stool upended on its top. His sharp features and trim beard looked vaguely familiar, which could likely be said of every young male adept in Sabria. Every one of them had passed through Seravain’s library at some time or other. And every one of them grew a manly beard once he escaped the collegia’s strictures.

  “Is the mage away, then?” I asked, lending him a hand with the heavy table.

  “Not that I know. He’s only given up answering the door.” He bobbed his head toward the stretch of wall beside Dante’s door. “Just there, if you would.”

  We placed the desk as he wished, and he unstacked the stool, setting himself on it to catch his breath. “If the door is locked and warded, even I can’t get in, which is why I’ve commandeered this desk. I’m hopeful that if I demonstrate a resolute spirit, my new master will decide he can use me after all.”

  “You’re Master Dante’s new assistant.” Curse my distracted mind, where had I seen him?

  He entwined his long fingers and rested them on the desk. “I confess it. Assigned three days ago. I’ve hopes of learning a great deal once he allows me into his chamber. You’re the librarian from Seravain, the royal cousin. I’m greatly reassured that you survived your fiery resignation.”

  The deadhouse! This was Conte Bianci’s adept. Recalling my craven posturing on that night set my complexion ablaze. “Aye, that’s me,” I said. “My temperament is ill suited to violence.”

  “Mine, as well,” he said, grinning, “but the magic is incomparable.” He flicked coal-dark eyes to Dante’s door. “I’d sell my gammy to learn how he does it.”

  “I just know my gullet clamps shut whenever he points that staff at me,” I said, resisting the temptation to compare experiences of Dante’s wonders. The poorer the common assessment of my capabilities, the better. “Paper knowledge feeds the soul and intellect, but provides little defense against fire spouts that char your clothes.” I exposed my hand and bowed. “Portier de Duplais.”

  He returned the courtesy. “Jacard de Viole. I never thought to see you outside your archives, Curator. You were as imposing as the library facade. I believed you must have lived there unaging all the centuries since it was built and had accumulated all the knowledge to be found there. Your direction helped me through many an examination.”

  But not the final examination as yet. He wore no collar.

  Many adepts left the collegia to apprentice with master mages, hoping to make the leaps of talent and insight that would carry them through mage testing. Most never made those leaps and never returned, remaining minor practitioners of the art under strict Camarilla supervision.

  “Glad to hear I was useful,” I said, unable to recall Jacard or his talents. “This new direction my life has taken . . . I’m not sure it suits as well. Which leads to business: I must inform Master Dante about the errands I’ve run for him—my last, as it seems.”

  “We can try
.”

  Jacard popped up from his stool, tapped on the door, and pressed the latch. He did not flinch, nor did he examine his fingers as I did every time I touched one of Dante’s wards. Nor did he seem to sense the flood of magical energy that rushed through the open doorway like a herd of newborn lambs. The whorls and eddies of power made me feel sixteen again, full of vigor and unsullied hopes.

  “Master,” said Jacard, as he stepped through the doorway, “Sonjeur de Duplais wishes to speak with you.”

  When I stepped out from behind the adept, shock stole my tongue. Illness or exhaustion had rewritten Dante’s body in the five days since we’d visited Calvino de Santo and his spectre. He stood in the center of his circumoccule, leaning heavily on his staff. His eyes, circled in gray, had sunk deeper under his already-heavy brows. His gaunt cheeks were faded, as if these weeks of palace life had not just paled the sun-darkening of his skin, but sucked out its natural coloring, as well. His thick, wide shoulders bent as if holding up the vault of the sky. Great Heaven, what had he been up to?

  “I’ll see no visitors today. No flea-wit assistants. And no failed cowards ever. Weakness offends me.”

  Cursing Jacard’s presence, I stammered, “Master, I’ve only a brief—”

  “I said not ever!” Blue and purple lightning belched from his staff. Gleaming spicules scored exposed flesh and pierced garments, flesh, and bone, stinging like frozen needles. Throat and lungs were seared with frost and my mind with a ferocious repudiation. Only a determined observer would have noticed how Dante’s hand trembled as he extended the staff.

  Jacard hurriedly dragged me back over the threshold. The door flew shut behind us.

  The adept rubbed his arms, as if to make sure his skin remained whole. “Why did he leave the god-blasted door unlocked if he didn’t want company?” he mumbled, kicking his stool against the wall so hard it bounced into the middle of the corridor, causing a passing maidservant to squeal and scuttle past.

  I knew why. Dante had wanted to warn me off. Don’t come here ever. Something had changed. My glance flicked to Jacard, reappraising. Did the danger lie in the new assistant himself or some other threat?

  “Who can explain one like him?” I said. “When he allows you inside again, inform him that the materials he requested are on their way from Seravain. Father Creator, I’m pleased to leave him to one younger than I. May you learn enough to make your difficulties worthwhile.”

  “I’ll give it a little time,” he said. Heaving a sigh, he retrieved the stool, and settled himself on it, feet propped on the desk. As I rounded the corner into the window gallery, he pulled a book from the folds of his gown and began to read. He seemed ordinary enough.

  Frustrated and concerned, I set out for Ilario’s apartments. My imagining faltered at any magic which could cause so great a change. And what could induce Dante to refuse this one last meeting for which I had a reasonable excuse? I needed to tell him all I’d learned.

  As I hurried up the broad curved stair to the royal level that housed the elite of the queen’s household, a cluster of ladies in cream-colored silks started down it. They twittered and buzzed softly like moths, the luminous Eugenie de Sylvae at their center. I moved to the side and bowed deeply as they passed.

  As I straightened, the queen glanced over her shoulder and smiled ever so slightly. A tweaked corner of her mouth, crinkles at the corners of dark, sad eyes . . . I could not have said exactly how she framed an expression that left me awash in the knees. How could such ethereal beauty be tainted with the vileness of this conspiracy?

  But then, I thought, as I moved on down the passage, Ophelie de Marangel might have grown into such a graceful woman. Who was left to weep for Ophelie but Lianelle ney Cazar and I? And if I didn’t see to it, Lianelle’s fate might mirror her friend’s. I rapped on Ilario’s elaborately carved door harder than I might have otherwise.

  Oddly, the door opened but a crack.

  “Lord?” I said, recognizing the pale blue eye that peered out at me.

  “Heaven’s mercy!” breathed Ilario as he opened the door just enough I could squeeze into his private sitting room. “I am not at all suited to hidings and sneakings.”

  As Ilario threw the latch, I watched in astonishment as another visitor stepped through a narrow gap in the red brocade wall, then shut a hinged panel, quickly rendering the wall whole again. Dante leaned his back against the hidden door and slid slowly to the floor.

  “I JUST NEED SLEEP,” SAID the mage, once Ilario and I had hauled him up and over to a couch. “Stop fussing.”

  “You look like death,” I said, “or near enough. And you’re not so fine as all that, if your legs’ll not hold you up. When did you last eat?”

  “Can’t remember.” He brushed his shaggy hair from his face and scrubbed his sunken eyes. “What did you want to see me about? I need to get back. Gaetana might come for me.”

  Ilario held a glass of wine under Dante’s nose. “Start with this. I’ll send for food.”

  Dante hesitated.

  “Shall I sip from it first?” snapped Ilario. He slammed the glass onto the table he’d shoved next to Dante’s knees, slopping the dark liquid over the rosy marble.

  “I just . . .” The mage reached for the glass. His hand trembled so violently, he could scarce get it to his mouth without spilling it over himself. “Gods.”

  Making any plans or decisions in his state would be unlikely to serve us. “If you would, Chevalier, food is an excellent idea,” I said. “I’ve not eaten since I got back last night. And you must partake, Master. I’d not like to waste my time on a corpse.”

  Ilario marched off to the next room to ring for a servant, slamming the door behind him.

  “What is this about?” I said.

  “Naught to concern you.”

  “Not so. We cannot afford you to be incapable. If you’re ill, we’ll fetch a healer. If it’s something else, I want to know. We’re nearing the crux of this mystery. I need you fit.”

  “I am not ill.”

  He would not meet my eye. Rather, his gaze traveled Ilario’s apartment, as if to make sure no one lurked behind drape or statue. Certain marvels, like the Syan silk hanging of human-sized dancers, the elephantine urns trimmed in gold and bursting with flowers, and the round tabletop of pink marble supported by intricately worked castings of fanciful beasts, caused his gaze to linger. Each time, he wrenched his attention away and fixed it on his staff for a moment before returning to his inspection. His color deepened when he noticed me watching.

  Odd how that simple reaction forced me to look at him with new eyes. Curious, yet embarrassed to be caught gawking, he’d likely never been inside a wealthy man’s private apartment. No matter his formidable talents, or his unique and powerful insights into magic, he was only a man, still young in countless ways. I needed to remember that.

  “If not ill, then what?”

  “There is a thing I can do . . . that I am learning to do . . . to read another mage’s spellwork from a distance and draw it into myself. So I can see the exact pattern of the enchantment—its keirna—even as it’s being shaped.” He gripped his staff and shifted uncomfortably on the thick blue cushions, as if he were eighty years old with grinding joints. “All sorcery requires certain expenditures. This requires more. That’s all. I can manage it.”

  “To see into a living enchantment . . .” So casually he spoke of it. To make his mind an opticum that could see the invisible cells, not of stems and leaves and crystals, but of spells. He would be able to understand a spell’s composition and intent far more completely than by analyzing its residue. He might be able to devise magic to counter it. Not even in the vault texts had I heard a glimmer of such a possibility. “Gates of Heaven, man, have you accomplished this?”

  Counterspells, as I knew them, required endless trial and error and an assumption that a particular enchantment would be repeated to an exactitude. If we could know what the other mages were doing, we’d not have to insinuate Dan
te into their trust, and hope to make them spill their secrets in words.

  He grimaced and ground the heel of his staff into Ilario’s fine carpet. “I’m no good at it yet. But the last few attempts . . .” He glanced up, and I caught the feral gleam I’d espied in him so often. “Orviene has all the magical skills of a tool grinder, but he’s careful. His poison wards are clean and meticulous. His sleep spells follow common practice and work as well as any. But Gaetana brings far more talent and a sharper will. Her work is complex; things like honing the fighting skills of the queen’s bodyguards; sharpening their awareness. I’ve yet to pattern one of her works completely.”

  But he would. I could read it in him. Though it might kill him, he would.

  Fed by his fever, ideas bloomed in my head like night lilies. “Perhaps we’ve been mistaken, assuming Orviene and Gaetana work together. Just an hour since . . .” I told him of the missing Fedrigo and Orviene’s hesitation to report his suspicions of Gaetana. “He seemed sincere. Perhaps Gaetana’s worked the transference alone or partnered with someone else.”

  “Mayhap.” He considered for a long moment. “Orviene craves to be more than he is. But his magic doesn’t reach. I’m no good to judge more than that. But the woman . . .”

  Dante shifted again, and downed the remainder of his wine, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. Then he stared at the heel of his staff without speaking. I refilled his glass and summoned patience.

  “I completed Gaetana’s little translation task,” he said, after a while. “A simple magical cipher. It was no treatise on the divine elements, but a few pages of a mage’s scribblings. He was trying to prove that animals have souls by teaching them to understand human words, exploring techniques to disrupt their natural behaviors with regard to hunting, mating, pain, and the like. Some very unpleasant techniques.” His lip curled. “I think Gaetana wanted to see if I balked at such practice. When I didn’t, she said she had another text for me to unlock and translate, a manuscript buried deep in layers of wards and ciphers. Even less savory, but carrying knowledge of the uses of magic that have been lost for generations. She prates that a practitioner of ‘exceptional talents and proper ethics’ can convert any knowledge to good purpose. I’ve yet to see that text.”