Feast of Souls

by C. S. Friedman

  When his shirt and breeches were as dark as black cloth could possibly be, when the midnight perfection of them was so well set that not even the high noon sun could compromise it, he thought to himself, These cheap tricks are the coinage by which life is bought and sold. Who shall pay the price for this one?

  Together they entered the prince’s chambers.

  The young man inside didn’t look particularly ill so much as restless and annoyed. Prince Andovan was blond, unlike the king, and had clearly inherited his good looks from somewhere other than his hook-nosed, eagle-browed father. Colivar guessed he must have been a robust youth before the mysterious illness took hold of him, and an active one as well. The Magister made note of the hunting tapestries that lined the walls, the customized crossbows that hung beside the spacious window, and a collection of claws and teeth that were framed over the bed. Likes to be outdoors, with the wind rushing in his hair, chasing down some poor animal that only wanted a quiet noonday meal. Colivar looked at the young prince again, more discerning this time. That being the case, he is very pale, even for one of northern blood.

  “Is this the southerner?” the prince asked. He brushed a lock of golden hair from out of his eyes as he spoke. It was the kind of gesture that maidens doted upon. “You spoke of bringing one here, but I still don’t understand the reason.”

  Ramirus bowed his head slightly. “Master Colivar is especially accomplished in the healing arts, Your Highness. Your father gave me permission to bring him in as a consultant.”

  “I would think one of Farah’s Magisters would have more interest in encouraging my death than delaying it.”

  “Highness.” Colivar offered his most respectful bow. “Our countries have been at peace for years now. I am a messenger of that peace.”

  “Yes, yes, yes . . .” The young prince waved aside the argument as casually as he might have swatted at a fly. “Magister business, I’m sure, and I won’t poke into it, but you will excuse me if trusting you about my person comes hard. Most of your countrymen would as soon stick a knife in my back as measure my pulse, I’m sure you know that.”

  As would I, Colivar thought, but as you said, this is Magister business.

  “I have told him nothing of your situation, Highness.” Ramirus’ tone was the very essence of formality. “I did not wish to prejudice his inspection.”

  “Yes, well. My father trusts you. He knows the customs of Magisters better than I, so I will respect that. So.” He looked up at Colivar. His eyes were a pale blue, clear in color, but the whites were faintly bloodshot; the color of sleeplessness. “What do you need from me, Magister? I warn you I’ve been poked and prodded by the best; you’ll be hard pressed to come up with anything new.”

  “A few questions first. May I?” he asked, indicating a chair near the young man. He knew Ramirus was glaring at him as he sat down, but that was his problem. Colivar hadn’t come many hundreds of miles to play standing courtier to the son of his country’s great enemy. In Farah’s domain he sat when he wanted to; he would not honor an enemy prince with greater courtesy than he offered his own.

  “Tell me of your symptoms first,” he said quietly. And he settled in to listen not only to the young prince’s words, but to the shadow play of memory behind them.

  The young man nodded. His expression made it clear that he had told this tale many times and was wearying of the repetition. “It began a year ago, nearly to the day. I had just returned from riding. Suddenly there was a terrible weakness . . . that is the only way I can describe it. Like nothing I had ever felt before.” He paused. “My father was most upset. He called in Master Ramirus to look at me, but by then it was as if nothing had ever happened. My strength had returned in full, and the Magister said there was no sign of any illness or bodily damage to correct.”

  “Tell me about the weakness,” Colivar directed.

  The prince drew in a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. “It was as if, all of a sudden, I was very tired. Not only in my limbs, but in my very soul. Not that I lacked strength per se, but that I lacked the desire to use it. I know that seems strange. It is difficult to describe, especially now, after so much time has passed. But that is how I recall the sensation.

  “There was a servant who gave me a flagon of ale. I remember holding it, and being unable to bring it to my lips. Not that it was too heavy. It was too . . . pointless.”

  Colivar’s expression grew progressively darker as the story was told. “Go on,” he said quietly.

  “That was all that happened the first time. Father made some offerings at the temple to assuage any gods that might be displeased with me, and said not to worry about it otherwise.”

  “But it happened again.”

  He nodded. “Yes. It was not nearly as dramatic, the second time . . . or the third.” He sighed heavily. “These days I do not recover so quickly. The spells of weakness, the days of normal strength . . . they bleed one into the other, till I cannot rightly sense the border between the two. Sometimes the sun shines in my soul, and all seems well with the world. Sometimes . . . sometimes I cannot get out of bed. And I wonder if the day will come when I truly will never rise from it again.”

  Colivar could feel Ramirus’ eyes upon him. He pointedly did not look up to meet them.

  “Others have said it is the Wasting,” the prince offered. He managed to say the word without fear, which said much for his courage. The mere name of that terrible illness would have most men wetting their beds.

  “It may be that.” Colivar kept his tone noncommital, his own emotions under lock and key. “Or it may simply be some disease with a random pattern of remission and recurrence. There are many of them in the southlands.”

  Ramirus offered, “That is why I called Magister Colivar here as consultant.”

  The prince spread his hands wide in invitation. It was a graceful motion, infinitely polished, that almost disguised the fear lurking behind it. Almost. “What do you need from me?”

  Colivar held out his hands. After a moment the prince realized what he wanted and placed his own in them.

  Blood flowing through warm flesh, heartbeat steady, pulse weak but regular . . . Colivar let his senses flow into the flesh of the prince, tasting the essence of his life, assessing the purity of his mortal shell. There was no disease there, he noted. No sign of it at all. Yes, he had suspected that would be the answer, but it was such an undesirable answer he’d been hoping he was wrong.

  Diseases could be cured.

  Drawing more power from within himself, he looked deeper into the prince’s flesh, seeking anything physical that might cause such illness: parasite, infection, unnatural growths, unseen injuries . . . but there was nothing. A broken bone that had healed long ago, with fragments of memories adhering to it: a fall from a horse.

  And then, only then, he looked where he did not wish to look, for the answer he did not wish to find.

  At the prince’s soulfire.

  It should have been bright, in a man this young. There was no excuse for it to be otherwise. To say that his spirit’s fire was banked low and dying was the same as saying that this youth, this attractive and energetic prince, was in fact a doddering old man.

  And yet it was so.

  No disease could explain it. No injury, no tumor, no parasite.

  Only one thing.

  He looked up at Ramirus. The man’s expression was dark. Now Colivar understood why.

  “Well?” the prince asked. “See anything useful?” Colivar let go of the young man’s hands. And yes, now that he knew what to look for, he could see the signs of the Wasting all over him. It took everything he had to keep his expression neutral, so that the prince could not read his emotions. That was for his own protection, of course. If he knew for a fact what was killing him, there was no telling how he would react. Or how his father would react, learning of it.

  You did not exaggerate, Ramirus, when you said we were all at risk.

  “I must confer with my colleague,�
� he said slowly. “There are some diseases in the south with like symptoms. We must speak on them before I can be certain of a diagnosis.”

  The prince exhaled dramatically in frustration, but nodded. One did not argue with Magisters. How like a young lion he was in his aspect, Colivar thought: bold, restless, independent. If a human enemy had struck at him, no doubt he would answer the offense as a lion might, teeth bared and claws unsheathed. Yet this illness was not a thing of leonine conflict but of secrets and shadows and mysterious causes; clearly it assaulted his pride as much as his flesh that he had not yet declared victory over it.

  If the answer is what I think, my prince, there can be no victory.

  Colivar was silent as Ramirus led him from the room. He almost forgot to bow on the way out. When the door was shut behind them he stood there for a moment, still as a statue, trying to absorb what he had observed and its implications.

  “You see,” Ramirus said quietly.

  “He is doomed.”

  “Yes.”

  “And we—”

  “Shh. Wait.” Ramirus gestured for Colivar to walk with him back the way they had come. This time Colivar did not notice the dust or the faded tapestries. His thoughts were too dark and too focused for such trivia.

  When they were far enough away that neither Andovan nor his servants could possibly overhear them, Ramirus said, “Danton suspects the truth. But he trusts me to provide a diagnosis, and I have not yet made it official.”

  “If it’s the Wasting . . .” Colivar breathed in sharply. “There is no cure.”

  “Yes.” Ramirus nodded grimly.

  “And that means one of us is killing him. A Magister.”

  “Yes,” Ramirus said. A muscle along the line of his jaw tightened. “You see now why I brought you all here.”

  “When Danton finds out the cause—”

  “He will not.” His expression was grim. “He cannot.”

  “But if he does—”

  The Magister Royal raised up a hand to warn him to silence. “Not here, Colivar. This business is too private for open spaces. Wait until we have returned to my chamber, where there are wards to keep away eavesdroppers. The others wait for your input.”

  “And you?” Colivar challenged him. “Do you wait for my input as well?”

  Ramirus looked at him. The pale gray eyes were unreadable. “The enemy of my king would not be here if I did not value his opinion,” he said quietly. The narrow lips quirked into something that might, ever so briefly, be called a smile. “Do keep it from going to your head, will you?”

  Chapter 4

  ETHANUS REMEMBERS:

  She stands in the doorway, an amalgamation of opposites. Fiery red hair like a corona of flame framing a face whose strength has seeped out into the night, leaving behind the visage of a ghost. Slender frame, wiry and strong, now moving with the hesitancy of age, as if every step takes effort. Motions that are normally lithe, like the motions of a cat, now made uneasy, as if somewhere between mind and body a vital connection has been severed. Every step is conscious, now. Every movement takes effort. The sheer strain of living has marked her youthful face as it marks the face of ancient peasants. A welcome mat for Death.

  Soon, he thinks. It will be soon.

  “I looked within myself as you taught me,” Kamala says softly. “Even that is harder, now.”

  “What did you find?”

  “A faint spark, barely alight. Heatless. Dying.”

  He nods.

  “You are driving me to my death.”

  “Yes,” he says. “That is the process.”

  “Yet you tell me nothing of what I am to face.”

  “Experience has shown that telling an aspirant the truth gains him nothing, and puts secrets at risk unnecessarily. Therefore you will proceed in ignorance.”

  “Don’t I need those secrets to survive?”

  Her gaze is the one thing about her that never changes, never weakens. Diamond eyes. He meets them with brutal honesty. “No book learning can help you now, Kamala. The part of your soul that is to be tested soon is a creature of instinct, that will not benefit from intellectual knowledge. Giving it facts will gain it nothing. Some believe it even hinders the process, by distracting it from the business it must focus on.

  “I have prepared you as best I can. Soon you must go off alone, to that place where Death will seek to claim you. The key to defeating him is something you must discover on your own, else it has no value.” He paused. “Trust me. All other ways have been tried by Magisters, and this has proven the best for training.”

  And no woman has ever won that battle. Or chosen to come back, once she knew the price.

  “This is how it is always done, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “With you?”

  He tries to remember that far back. “Yes. Though I was not as headstrong an apprentice as you, and I probably annoyed my Master a good deal less.”

  She gives him a wry smile; for a moment her face seemed young again. “Not like your house hasn’t benefited from my presence.”

  Fair enough, he thinks, and he smiles despite himself. In his quest to find new things for her to work on he’d let her have free rein with the house. The walls veritably vibrated now with the residue of powers awakened and bound to their substance, and the result was something far more elaborate and refined than the crude stone structure he had built for himself so long ago, if not always to his taste.

  If you die I will need to start chopping wood again. “No woman has ever survived this,” she says quietly. Her tone makes it clear it’s a question . . . and it’s the first time she has ever asked such a thing directly. He is about to give the easy answer when he hesitates and thinks suddenly, No. She deserves the truth. At least that much, to take with her into Transition.

  “No woman has ever been presented as a Magister.” He picks his words slowly, carefully, not wanting to say too much. That is always a danger. An apprentice who learns the truth might react badly. There are a few on record from the early days, when teaching was different, who bolted and ran as soon as they were informed. One almost got away before his Magister hunted him down, and was going to spill the precious secrets he had learned to all the townsfolk, as an act of misguided philanthropy. It was a wake-up call to the sorcerous community. No one takes such chances now. “It is generally said that none of them survive Transition. I am not so sure anyone knows this for a fact. A percentage of those who gain the power of a Magister are driven mad by the process, and must be destroyed by their teachers. It may be that women have gotten that far. No one speaks of failed apprentices.”

  “Why are they driven mad?”

  He shook his head with a faint tsk-tsk sound. “Now now, Kamala. You know I’m not going to tell you that.”

  “That’s on the list of things I’ll understand when I get there.”

  “Yes,” he says.

  Soon. Very soon.

  She sighs, and the unbrushed corona of her hair sends a few red tendrils down across her eyes. She pushes them aside with a careless hand, not much caring what it looks like as long as it stays out of her way. Her casual disregard for her own appearance should have resulted in a less appealing creature than what stands before him, he reflects. But Nature is cruel that way, and will resign the princess in her ivory tower to a lifetime of paints and curling irons trying to mimic that natural beauty which, in a moment of whimsy, she granted a peasant-born whore. Kamala’s lean and athletic frame might not please men seeking dumplings in the cheeks of their women, but any man who values the spark of fire in womankind, whose desire to possess is aroused by independence, who is drawn to fierceness rather than languid beauty, will surely find her maddening.

  If she ever walks among mortal men again, he reflects darkly. That has yet to be seen.

  “So what is my lesson today, Master Ethanus? Or does it even matter anymore? Shall I simply move the clouds about, back and forth, until my athra is exhausted?”

  She
voices the question lightly but he does not answer her lightly. His eyes fix upon her with a sudden and disarming solemnity. Her tentative smile flickers out like a candle flame in a gust of wind.

  “Yes,” he says. “Move the clouds.”

  He sees her tremble, but she voices no questions. Good. She understands.

  She goes outside. He follows her. Twilight has come and the sky is a resonant blue, agonizingly beautiful, that shivers black about the edges. The clouds are misty ghosts that gather about the face of the full moon just above the crowning of the trees. A perfect night for such an exercise.

  He watches as she takes her place in the center of the clearing, facing the moon. He can sense her reaching inside herself to the source of all power, a process she once described to him as “turning one’s soul inside out.” He can see how much effort it takes her to do it this time, and how weak the result is. Her life force is nearly exhausted, burned out in a handful of years by magical exercises designed to empty her soul of all its natural strength at an unnatural pace. She is young still, strong in body, but almost lacking in that inner fire that keeps a human body alive. Tonight . . . tonight that last precious spark will go out. And if she is lucky, if she is strong, if she is above all else determined . . . something else will take its place.

  Whether she can endure living with that something is another question entirely.

  With a grace that seems more ghostly than human she raises up her hands to the heavens, as if she would implore the clouds to move of their own accord. It is not an easy task he has set her, for despite the showy tricks of witches in drought season, weather is hard to manage. One must take the power in a single human soul and weave it into the very substance of the earth and sky, until no star shines and no breeze blows without that soul shivering in resonance. Then, and only then, can one alter small parts without unbalancing the whole.

  He sees her take a deep breath. He wonders if it will be her last.

  He did not plan to watch her any more closely than this, using the eyes of his earthly body and no more. But the bond between apprentice and master is strong even in mundane arts, and a thousand times stronger among those who share the secrets of soulfire. Without need for conjuring a Magister’s sight he can see her power arching upward into the heavens, a blast so pure, so brilliant that for a moment it blinds him. What potential she has, his fierce little strumpet! He watches with satisfaction as she weaves her power into the substance of the wind, noting the skill with which she binds each separate layer of the heavens to her will, so that when she bids the clouds to move there will be no single wisp left behind. How well she has learned the arts of the witching folk! If only she would give way to reason, and save herself while there was still time. . . .