The steward nodded, painfully aware of her opinions on that subject. “Yes, he spoke of that… after Lady Drianna left.”
“Left? More like he cast her off.”
Athaya’s goblet stopped halfway to her lips; what had she just done? Drianna hadn’t told anyone where she was going when she left Sare, and if he had not already discovered her presence in Delfarham, the Sage might make a concerted effort to do so were he to learn she had joined the ranks of his enemies.
Tullis put that particular fear to rest at once. “I knew she would go to you. Where else was left to her?” He let out a heavy sigh, genuinely regretful. “Lady Drianna was a charming and spirited woman. I saw her leave the fortress that day, heading for the port. His Grace did not ask what had become of her, so I suppose it wasn’t too deceitful of me not to mention what I’d seen. She was devastated by his rejection.” He shook his head sadly. “I miss her a great deal. She brought much laughter to this place. His Grace should not have hurt her so; if he did not wish to marry her, at least he could have broken the news to her more gently.”
Athaya lanced a bit of fish with her knife, savoring the tender filet in spite of the lord who provided it. “If he had wanted to marry Drianna as much as he claimed, then why didn’t he simply put this lunatic plan of his to the test and give her a seed of power? But no,” she went on, biting down angrily on an almond, “he heard about me and decided a trained adept would be a more suitable wife for someone of his godlike stature.” She cast the knife at her fish again, fancying that the blade sank deep into the Sage himself. “But if not Drianna, he will try his scheme on someone else, presuming to do what it is not our place to do by granting the gift of power. Not satisfied with God’s miracles,” she finished scornfully, “he sets about working his own.”
Tullis’s face was profoundly blank. “What are you… I don’t—”
“Hasn’t he told you yet?”
She knew by the bewilderment in his eyes that the Sage had not. Perhaps Brandegarth had shared his schemes only with her, hoping to lure her from her convictions—and her husband—with the untold glory of founding an unbreakable dynasty of wizards in Caithe. As the Sage’s devoted servant, Athaya waited for Tullis to launch into a fervent defense of his lord’s plans, confident that anything the Sage did was sanctioned by God. Instead, his gentle face sagged with despair, as if he had long anticipated bad news and was simply saddened that this was the day he received it.
“The books,” Tullis murmured, as if she were not there. “He was reading those books…”
Then he aimed his gaze at her like a blade, and Athaya felt an ensuing tickling sensation around the inside edges of her skull; feathers of inquiry, silently seeking proof of her claims. When the feeling subsided, Tullis sank down at the table across from her, his eyes hollow and lost.
“You speak the truth. His Grace has indeed told you these things.” He drew in a long, melancholy breath, and for a brief moment, his lower lip trembled as if his composure was close to crumbling.
“Tullis, I know this plan of his sounds crazy, but I can’t promise you it won’t work. It just might, if he ever gets the chance to try it. Don’t you realize what that means? Once he starts interfering with the natural order of things, taking magic from those he doesn’t think worthy of it and giving it to those he does, the power will consume him. I tried to tell him that the ability to see the seeds will fade in time, but he didn’t believe me. And I can’t even guarantee that I’m right,” she pointed out. “Drianna told me his power was released from its seal under rigid controls—that it took you and two others to contain it—whereas mine flooded out in a rush and made me ill for weeks. Maybe that made a difference—I just don’t know. But even if his ability does fade, it won’t do so for months yet… and think of all the lives he can disrupt in the meantime.”
Never mind stealing Mailen’s future from him, she added inwardly. As Durek’s heir, Mailen’s very existence would be a constant threat to the Sage’s position; Athaya put no credence in the Sage’s claims that he would let the boy live in peace as long as he remained in exile. At the very least, he would seek him out to determine what kind of foe the little prince might grow up to be. And were he to discover the dormant magic within the boy—as Athaya had done months ago, without intending to—the Sage could stop that precious seed from sprouting, robbing Mailen of his gift before he ever realized he possessed it.
Tullis avoided her gaze, fixing his attention on the half-eaten filet on her plate. “His Grace could not… he will see his error…”
“He won’t reconsider,” Athaya told him, as sure of that fact as she was that the full moon would inevitably follow the new. “Rhodri never did.”
It was too much for Tullis to bear; everything that he had believed in was suddenly disintegrating before his eyes. He scrambled from his chair and hurried away, shaking his head in fervent denial, as if he had just been told of a beloved wife’s infidelity. “I must go. I can hear no more of this tonight.”
“Tullis, wait—” But he paid no heed to her as he stumbled blindly from the chamber, and Athaya could not pass beyond the binding spells to pursue him.
* * * *
Tullis did not come to her chamber the next day. Nor did he come on the second day… or the third. Her meals were delivered by another of the Sage’s staff, this one far more dreary and closemouthed than his predecessor. When she asked whether the steward was ill, she was first ignored, then told it was none of her concern, and finally informed—quite tersely—that an unspecified emergency had called him away from the palace for a time and that she should not inquire about it again.
The steward’s continued absence made her uneasy. Their last conversation had clearly unsettled him, and Athaya feared he may have gone to see the Sage, perhaps to gain his lord’s assurances that her dark prophecies were simply the ramblings of a desperate woman.
Then, three days later, she was eased awake in the predawn hours by the gentle shake of a knotted hand. She blinked against the nearby radiance of an oil lamp, glimpsing in its dim glow a weathered face framed by white hair, and thought—for only an instant—that it was Master Hedric’s phantom come to haunt her.
“Tullis, where—” He placed his finger over his lips and Athaya quickly dropped her voice to a whisper. “Where have you been?”
He offered her a pensive smile. “Out searching my soul.”
As Athaya slid out of bed, Tullis gallantly turned his eyes away until she had covered her shift with one of Drianna’s embroidered robes. Strange, she thought as she looped the silk belt around her waist, how unusually alert she felt despite being roused at such an hour. Her head was unclouded and she did not feel even slightly off-balance.
She looked at Tullis sharply. The sealing spell was broken.
“It was not easy,” he remarked, subtly proud. Even in the dim light, Athaya could see the fatigue shading his eyes. “The Sage sets a powerful seal.”
She groped for adequate words of thanks—did he truly realize the precious gift he had given her?—but Tullis did not need to hear them. “A small number of wizards came back to Sare to recover from injuries they sustained during the invasion. Without going into my reasons for doing so, I asked them about the Sage and his actions. The things they told me…” Tullis flinched at the mere memory. “His Grace was always an exacting lord, but never a brutal one; his viciousness in murdering the priesthood… it grieves me terribly. He may not agree with them about the nature of our gift—I certainly do not—but Caithe’s priests serve the same God we do, though in an admittedly wrong-minded fashion. He could have given them a quick and honorable end.”
Athaya was tempted to observe that men like Lukin and his Tribunal of Justices doled out little enough mercy—why should they be granted any in return? But she also knew that just as all wizards did not believe their power endowed them with inborn supremacy, not every priest shared in the official opinion that the Lorngeld should be systematically hunted down and destroyed. Sadly, the Sage wou
ld not bother to discriminate between the two.
“I should have seen this coming,” Tullis went on, sinking down on a cushioned stool at her bedside. His fingers absently followed the scalloped tracery on the bedcurtains. “I feared something like this might happen… months ago, after I released him from the sealing spell. His Grace was an ambitious man before, of course—no man without aspirations could attain the office of Sage—but he was always mindful of his proper place; God’s chosen, but also His servant. He forgets that now, I think. He disavows his limitations and reaches for more than is his due.”
“Should that surprise you?” Athaya asked. Try as she might, she could not envision the Sage in the more humble form Tullis described.
“It does, because such folly almost killed him once and not so long ago that he should have forgotten.” Tullis looked to the oil lamp, idly watching the steady flame as he spoke. “It was at his last Challenge, over a year ago. His opponent, a wizard named Bressel, feigned weariness and defeat as the contest drew on. As a result—a result that Bressel anticipated and exploited to perfection—the Sage grew confident… and thus careless. Bressel then surprised him by lashing out at full strength with his deadliest spells. The Sage was the better magician, but it took every bit of his talent to save himself that day. Even so, he came away badly injured.”
Tullis turned from the lamp, blinking away the afterglow that danced before his eyes. “But he is more powerful now than he was then, and it makes him feel invincible.”
“But you knew he wanted more power all along,” Athaya pointed out. “And you knew the sealing spell would give it to him. You even cast the seal yourself.”
“Yes,” Tullis admitted, without pride, “but only because he commanded me to do so. I never favored the plan, Princess, as Lady Drianna herself can tell you. In my mind, it is ungrateful for any wizard to deliberately try to gain more magic than God chose to grant. But his Grace did not care to listen to my reasoning—in fact, he rebuked me for it and caustically suggested that I tender my ethical complaints to the Circle of Masters. I had no choice but to obey his orders if I wished to retain my place in his household. And though he trusted me above all others, he still had me watched after that; Connor—the man you knew as Lady Drianna’s husband—was put under a compulsion to kill me if I failed to release the Sage on the prearranged date.”
Recounting the tale had made him restless, and Tullis rose from the stool with the dull snap of tendons. “Once his power was freed, the Sage began to search for the seeds of power among the household staff. After Lady Drianna left, destroyed by what he told her, I went to him again. I implored him not to use this new ability—to refrain, as you had done. Drianna’s fate was proof of the harm it could do. And again, he censured me. And now he thinks not only to seek the seeds, but to plant them where he will? No,” Tullis said firmly, “that I cannot allow. I had already seen the idea of obtaining more power begin to corrupt his judgment… now that he possesses it, the corruption grows steadily worse. I can no longer serve a man who twists God’s plan as he does.”
Athaya studied the man before her, deeply impressed by his convictions and the risks he took to stand by them. “When the Sage learns that you have released me, you will certainly lose the position you sought to keep before… if not your life as well.”
“Only if you fail to stop him. And I have faith that you can. But do not mistake my motives, my Lady,” he added, lifting up a crooked finger. “My father’s family descends from Dameronne himself, and I affirm the Lorngeld’s natural right to rule. But in payment for that right we must strive to make wise use of God’s gifts; not for senseless domination, but for just and fair government. The Sage, I fear, has forgotten that distinction in pursuit of his own fame. You, your Highness, have not.”
“But I don’t want to govern anyone—I’ve told that to anyone who would listen for the past two years.”
“Perhaps you do not. But he who will be the wizard king—I no longer think it was meant to be his Grace, the Sage—would do better to follow your leadership than his. I see that clearly now.”
He glanced to the window, judging the time from the pattern of the stars. “It is almost morning; I will be expected in the storehouse soon. Go,” he said, without turning around. The single word held all the solemnity of a formal commission from king to vassal. “Return to Caithe and stop his coronation. You must not let the Sage become king.”
Athaya stepped behind the wardrobe screen and hastily changed from Drianna’s robe and shift into her own gray gown. The worst wrinkles had softened after two days of disuse, and after dragging a comb through her hair and tossing on a lightweight traveling cloak, she looked almost presentable.
She went to the steward’s side and took his hand. “Come with me,” she urged him. “I can use you to help train the new students. You risk too much by staying.”
Although visibly grateful for the offer, Tullis nonetheless refused it with a squeeze of his hand. “No. This island has been my home for over sixty years; I have no wish to uproot myself now. Curious,” he added with a wry grin. “Generations of expectant Sarians have awaited the day of our return to Caithe, and now that it has come I find that I would much rather stay behind. But should you defeat the Sage,” he added, “I will be glad to continue as caretaker here and serve you as his successor.”
Athaya folded her brows inward. “Successor?”
“You will be so, should you win the Challenge.”
“The—?”
Somehow, she had always known it would come down to that—a duel to the death between them—but the reality of it struck her like a cold slap in the face. Suddenly, her immediate future took on an entirely new—and deadly—aspect. She felt as if someone had thrust a sword into her hand, shoved her before an experienced soldier, and told her to survive as best she could. She had studied battle magic, of course—Master Hedric had not set her upon this crusade unprepared for the worst—but conceptual knowledge of killing spells was far different than hard experience in using them. Granted, her own abilities had often surprised her in the past—her talent for seeing futures, her discovery of translocation, her unexpected ability to discern the seeds of power—but a duel to the death was not the time to rely on something as intangible as luck. Not when Caithe’s future—and her own life—was the price of miscalculation.
“But I only want to stop him—to drive him out of Caithe. How can I Challenge him?” she went on, aware that her nerves were making her ramble. “He’s more powerful than I am… never mind that he’s done this several times before and knows what he’s doing.”
“His spells are potent, yes, but his mastery is not what it was.”
Athaya threw up her hands with a muffled curse. “A swordsman can have the finest technique in the world, Tullis, but it won’t matter a whit if somebody fires a cannon at him.”
“It must matter, Princess. He will be defeated only by his death—you know that as well as I. And if he is defeated by your hand, then you become Sage after him. It is the law.”
“But I don’t want to be Sage,” she replied, ignoring for the moment the very real possibility that she would not defeat him and that her objection would be moot.
“Once he is crowned king,” Tullis explained, “Dameronne’s prophecy will have been fulfilled; the role of Sage will pass into obsolescence. His Grace will feel no obligation to accept your Challenge. And it is only victory by formal Challenge that will make you the sanctioned leader of the Lorngeld who follow him; you will never gain their obedience without first gaining that title. After that… well, I suppose you could simply command them all to go back to Sare and never return.”
It was a tempting notion, but one that she could not allow to seduce her. “All right. I’ll grant that the Sage has lost some of his edge. But I’m no Sarian; I don’t know the first thing about the rite of Challenge.”
“There is nothing to know; there are no rules or restrictions within the arena. It is quite simply a battle to
the death with your inborn spells your only weapons. But beware of the Sage’s mind-magic,” he added gravely. “It has been the downfall of every wizard who has opposed him.”
Athaya pressed her fingers to her temples, sensing a growing headache; she was being pushed headlong into a confrontation for which she was in no way prepared. “Yes, mind-magic,” she repeated absently. “I saw what it did to my brother Nicolas.”
“No, that was a spell of compulsion,” Tullis corrected. “Mind-magic is somewhat different—a more fragile kind of magic, but far more insidious. Compulsion wills the victim to perform a specific task; mind-magic deludes him into believing a thing is true and then acting accordingly. His actions, however, are all of his own choosing… more or less.”
Tullis rested his hands on her shoulders, bracing her against the truth. “The Sage will attempt to use your own thoughts against you. He will pluck out your deepest fears and fashion them into weapons and cripple that part of your mind that discerns truth from falsehood. In the same way a wizard might steal a drop of your life’s essence to create a likeness of you, the Sage will steal slivers of your mind to create an illusion of your own making and discourage you from questioning what you see. In this way, the enemy ultimately defeats himself. Mind-magic is not easy,” Tullis finished, “but his Grace has had much practice at it.”
Athaya was grateful for the steward’s warning, but found herself far more apprehensive about the Challenge than she had been before receiving it. Her life was littered with fears and regrets and unpleasant memories; the notion that the dark secrets of her heart might be ripped from their hiding place and brandished before her in all their ugliness was more fearful than a battle of shields and fire spells could ever be.
Still, she forced herself to remember that she knew something that the Sage, as yet, did not. A precious pouch of corbal crystals was still in Jaren’s possession. Granted, she had only used the gems to work magic that one time, but at least she had a chance to take the Sage completely by surprise, much as Bressel had done. It wasn’t much, but it was a branch of hope to cling to in the flood that threatened to sweep her away. Athaya kept her secret from Tullis, however; he had proved himself trustworthy, but she feared the Sage might force the knowledge from him if he were caught before the Challenge—which now seemed her only option—could take place.
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