“Then what is it?”
“As near as I can tell, this is an offshoot of wild magic,” Curasir said.
“But there’s never been wild magic like this!”
“I know of one other case, but that was many, many years ago. Suffice it to say that this is extremely rare. So rare, in fact, that I came to be of assistance to you.”
“You came here… for me?”
“I did. It is not what I told your Master and the other mages, of course. And it is true that I wish to be involved in the Passing, at least as an observer. But my primary reason for coming was you.”
Seri didn’t know what to say.
Curasir leaned forward. “Listen to me, for I cannot instruct you openly or interfere with your education here. We must take advantage of brief times together, when we may. Do not speak of this to your Masters.”
Seri furrowed her brow, but nodded.
“Your vision is going to continue to change. You will gain more and more glimpses into the Otherworld. I do not know if you will become able to see both at once, but at the very least, you should understand what is happening. Should the visions become harmful to you in any way, or if you cannot bear them, put a patch over the eye and come find me. I will do whatever I can to help you.”
“Thank you,” Seri whispered.
“It is I that should thank you. No human has been able to perceive the Otherworld in… well, in many years. I will be fascinated to hear your observations.”
With that, Curasir got to his feet. Seri looked up at him and once again saw him in two forms. Now that she understood what she saw, it wasn’t as unnerving. She tried to get a better look at Curasir’s other form and squinted. He smiled.
“That will come in time,” he assured her. He turned on his heel and strode from the room.
•••••
After the conversation with Curasir, Seri completely forgot about Jamana’s secret. For the next few days, she kept to herself as she debated Curasir’s offer of training. Come to think of it, he hadn’t “offered” at all; he had simply announced he would be training her. He had not given her any choice in the matter.
She did not experience any more visions of the Otherworld and felt comforted by that. Perhaps her talent had already reached its zenith.
Her suspicions regarding Master Simmar’s death continued to nag at her. Curasir’s arrival seemed oddly timed. Had he been here sooner? Was he involved, somehow?
Jamana caught up with her as she came out of the copyist room. “You have been avoiding me!” he accused, but his grin remained as huge as ever.
“No, I haven’t. I’ve just been… thinking.”
“How can I tell you my secret if you’re too busy thinking?”
Seri wrinkled an eyebrow. “I thought you didn’t have permission to tell me.”
“That was then. This is now. Come on!”
Seri hesitated. “I just… I…”
“I will not accept any answer from you, except ‘Yes, Jamana. Show me this secret.’”
“Yes, Jamana. Show me this secret.” She gave an exaggerated sigh.
“Wonderful!” He bowed and led the way.
Seri had to admit her curiosity grew the longer they walked. Jamana took her toward the Masters’ quarters, but then rounded the corner which led to the Inner Sanctum stairs. Right before reaching the stairs, Jamana turned into a small hallway that appeared to go nowhere. More like an antechamber for visitors before they went downstairs, Seri assumed.
Jamana checked to make sure no one else was nearby, then knocked on the left wall of the antechamber. They waited for a few moments. Seri opened her mouth to say something, but Jamana raised his hand.
Right at Seri’s eye-level, a portion of the wall slid inwards and off to the side, revealing a passageway barely wide enough to crawl through. Dravid grinned at her from inside.
“What are you doing here?” Seri’s voice exploded with joy.
Dravid laughed and jumped down from the passage. Seri grabbed him in a tight hug, then released him just as quickly. She took a step back and composed herself. Jamana looked even happier than usual. Was he bouncing on his toes?
“Well?” Seri asked. “Are you going to explain?”
“I did not want to leave,” Dravid said. “After they made me get on the boat, I waited until we were out of sight of the island. Then I paid the rower to bring me back. He didn’t care, and I paid him very well.” He gestured back at the passage. “Just before the incident, Jamana and I had discovered these passages. I’ve been hiding there since. Jamana brings me food.”
“Which is easy, since I keep getting sent to work in the kitchen,” Jamana said.
Seri shot him a look. That explained his frequent kitchen duty. He was deliberately getting himself punished. What a friend.
“It’s not bad at all,” Dravid said. He looked back into the passage. “I have a good place to sleep, and there’s so much to learn back there.”
Seri eyed the passage. “Where does it go? Why is it here?”
Dravid grabbed the edge and effortlessly pulled himself back up. “Come on. I’ll show you!”
Jamana gestured. “You go ahead, Seri. I am too big for that little tunnel.” He offered his hands for her to step on.
Seri stepped on his hands and accepted Dravid’s help in climbing up. “It’ll be tight here just for a moment, while I put the cover back up.”
Seri pushed herself up against the wall and let Dravid get past her once he got the cover in place. It was a surprisingly intimate moment and she felt a surge of embarrassment. Once Dravid moved far enough ahead, she followed on hands and knees. She had expected the passageway to be totally dark, but small slits here and there let light stream in from somewhere. It had been bad enough learning her way around the citadels themselves. She became completely confused in these secret passageways once Dravid took a couple of turns.
“Don’t worry about getting lost,” he said. “There aren’t that many passages and I’ve mapped them all now.”
Seri found the passages clean, to her relief, and quite spacious. “Jamana could have fit in here,” she said aloud.
“I know it. I think he doesn’t like enclosed spaces. He came in just a little bit the first day we found these, but hasn’t come back.”
“How did you find them?”
Dravid chuckled. “Honestly? It was my big mouth. I said something stupid about Mandiatans, and Jamana did not approve. He tossed me into the wall. I hit the entrance and it came loose. After that, I just had to explore it all.”
Seri frowned. She couldn’t picture big, gentle Jamana throwing someone against a wall. Dravid must have said something truly insulting.
The passage opened up into a tiny room about a quarter of the size of Seri’s bedroom. A mattress took up most of the room, leaving only a narrow gap beside it. Dravid dropped down onto the mattress and laughed. Seri crawled in and stood up beside him. Dravid pointed and Seri looked up. Above her head, a glass window let the sun shine in.
“We’ve tried to find that window outside,” Dravid said. “We’ve walked all over as much of the top of the citadel as we can, and, well, we just can’t find it.”
“So this is where you’ve been the last couple of weeks?” It was a stupid question, but Seri felt somewhat uncomfortable. After all, she was standing inside a young man’s bedchamber. Her mother would have been shocked at the impropriety.
“Most of the time,” Dravid said. “I wander through the other tunnels and listen in on some things. Jamana brings me books to read, too.”
“But… why? Why are you doing this?”
Dravid sat up, looking a bit grim. “My father was against my becoming a mage,” he said. “If I were to return home to Kuktarma, he would never let me leave again. If I am to continue my education, I must stay. When the new master is chosen and arrives, I will reveal myself to him and plead my case. With any luck, he’ll admire my dedication and let me stay on as his acolyte.”
; “Or he may punish you for your disobedience and send you home, anyway!”
“I’ll take my chance.” Dravid shrugged. He sat cross-legged. “Now that you know the secret, you can come any time,” he offered. “There’s a lot to see in here.”
“Like what?”
He grinned and reached for the passage they had entered. “Let me show you something incredible.”
He led the way back up the passage and took a different turn. At least, Seri assumed it to be a different turn. After a few minutes, Dravid paused, then turned himself around to face her.
“Look here.” He pointed at the side wall of the passage. Seri saw a tight grid of metal that allowed airflow. Beyond it, she could see a room, but couldn’t make out any details.
“It’s one of the rooms the Lords stay in when they come for the Passing!” Dravid said, excitement lacing his voice. “The passage circles around and has one of these grids at each room.”
Seri’s head filled with the possibilities. “Were these passages designed to spy on them?”
“I don’t know, but that’s only half of it. Follow me!”
A few feet later, Dravid turned into a new passage that sloped up in a gentle curve. “We are now below the pillars that support the King’s throne room,” he explained. He touched a portion of the wall with a slight indentation. “This is one of them.”
After a long crawl upward, the passage leveled out and they entered another tiny room. Like Dravid’s bedchamber, a glass window let the sunlight in, but the floor demanded Seri’s attention.
In the center of the circular room gaped a three-foot-wide opening. Dravid gestured for Seri to come closer. “But be careful.”
She came to the opening and looked down. Her mouth dropped open. An enormous chamber waited below them. She instantly knew it must be the Inner Sanctum, where the Passing took place.
Like their vantage point, the Sanctum was circular. Six platforms, divided by round marble pillars, surrounded a high dais directly below them. Behind each platform hung a huge tapestry depicting the crest of each of the six lands. Seri’s eyes instinctively sought out the golden sheaves of grain on a purple field, Arazu’s symbol. After a glance at the other tapestries, her eyes wandered back to the central dais. The stone below them looked as if it had been scorched many times.
“The Heart of Fire,” she breathed.
“The what?”
“That’s where it manifests,” she said. “Master Hain told me. When the King releases his power, it forms a heart of fire within the matrices of the other powers.”
“Oh. I never knew that.” Dravid nodded, eyeing the scorched platform.
Seri stared down at the dais, the platforms, the tapestries. And abruptly, everything changed. Instead of the Inner Sanctum, she stared down into a swirling vortex. At first, her brain refused to process what she saw. It was too bizarre. As her eyes gained focus, she began to comprehend. The vortex churned with a myriad of colors, swirls of light, light that seemed almost physical. The spinning of the vortex moved at a uniform rate, but everything else spoke of chaos. Curving beams of light shot out from it in every conceivable direction, dozens every second, sometimes more than she could count.
Dravid grabbed her by the back of her robe and yanked hard. She blinked and the vortex vanished. She stared down into the Inner Sanctum, empty once more.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “You almost tipped over!”
Seri took a deep breath and let it out. “Yes, I think so. Sorry. I… saw something.”
“Does it have to do with the star-eye thing?”
She glanced at him. “I guess Jamana told you about that.”
He shrugged. “He tells me lots of things.”
Seri pulled back away from the opening and closed her eyes. This had been far worse than anything she had ever seen. And what did it mean? If the Otherworld was the source of magic, as Curasir had said, it made sense for this spot to be significant. But what she had seen did not look stable. In fact, it looked more than anything as if it were…. unraveling.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DESPITE HIS MOTHER’S warnings, Marshal made several more surreptitious attempts to control the strange power within him. He made sure not to bring his hands together again. He succeeded only once in channeling a vibration from one hand into a small tree. The resulting explosion sent a few shards of wood flying in all directions. One grazed his cheek, but the wound was almost indistinguishable from the scars left by the curse-stalker.
Two weeks of travel went by without event. Aelia pressed on doggedly, continuing to travel seven days each week, ignoring Rest Days. At first, Victor had balked at this, worried that they would get cursed for traveling on a Rest Day. Aelia calmly explained that curses only resulted from serious crimes, no matter what overzealous priests might claim.
They passed through five villages over the course of their journey. For the most part, people treated them kindly and without malice. Marshal’s scarred face elicited a number of stares and comments, but no one attempted to interfere with them. Marshal began to doubt Volraag’s threats had been serious.
The weather continued to warm as they descended out of the foothills. They saw their last snow only six days out. Afterwards, generally cloudy skies produced little precipitation.
The first rain of the season arrived on the day they reached the large town of Efesun. The size of it made Drusa’s Crossing look quaint in comparison. Efesun sat on the Trebia River, which flowed down from the mountains, circled the outer edges of Varioch, and cut through Rasna before it reached the sea. Victor’s mood brightened when Aelia announced they would be staying at an inn that night.
Marshal had never stayed at an inn. In fact, he had never slept anywhere but at home or out in the wilderness. He paid little attention to the innkeeper and Aelia’s negotiations. Instead, his eyes wandered through the common room, fascinated by the variety of other travelers. Short, tall, skinny, fat, virtually every shade of skin from pasty white to nearly jet black.
“People come here from all over to trade stuff from the mountains,” Victor said beside him. “You could probably find just about anything here.”
“Just the one night?” the innkeeper’s loud voice asked. Marshal turned back to see Aelia handing him some coins. He wondered where she had gotten them. Villagers almost never paid her in coin.
“Yes, and we’ll be looking for passage across the river tomorrow,” Aelia said. “If you have any suggestions, I would welcome them.”
The innkeeper, a stout man dressed in immaculate clothing save for a filthy hand towel tossed over his shoulder, furrowed his brow. “Across the river?” he repeated. “Not down it? There’s naught to find across the river, milady, exceptin’ the Great Plains.”
“Nevertheless, that is our course,” she said. “Boys, let’s find our room.”
The small room contained only two unusually soft beds. Marshal tested one while Aelia took off her coat and stretched. “I am exhausted,” she announced. “Victor, if you two want to get something to eat in the common room, just have them charge it to me. I’m going to bed early.” She hesitated a moment, then added: “Just be careful.”
Victor and Marshal returned to the common room and found seats at a table. The heat in the room felt almost oppressive, thanks to the crowd and an enormous fireplace. Both boys shed their coats.
Marshal again wondered at the diversity of the crowd, but something else soon drew his stares. The serving girl who brought them some drinks dressed nothing like the girls back in Drusa’s Crossing. Her tight pants emphasized the shape of her hips, and her neckline plunged so low her ample bosom seemed on the verge of spilling out at any moment. Victor asked her for two plates and she moved away, swaying between the tables with careful grace.
Victor nudged him hard. “Stop staring!” He glanced around. “But to be honest, I’m right there with you. She’d keep me warm at night. I can tell you that much!”
Marshal looked at him, wondering abo
ut Careen, the girl Victor had left back home.
“It feels so good to be indoors again!” Victor said. “I am so sick of sleeping outside.” He frowned a little. “Your mom mentioned going to the Great Plains. I sure wish she’d tell us where we’re going. I don’t suppose you know?”
Marshal shook his head.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so. She likes her secrets, I guess.”
Victor’s attention was drawn to two men at the next table playing Mages and Lords. He elbowed Marshal and pointed. Marshal gave the game a cursory look. The deck appeared newer than Victor’s old copy, but otherwise looked the same.
“Wait! What’s that card?” Victor exclaimed. He got to his feet and looked down at the game.
One of the players looked up. “The High Master Mage, o’ course. Haven’t you played before?”
“I’ve played all my life!” Victor said. “But I’ve never seen that!”
“Then you haven’t been playin’ with all twenty-one cards,” the other player said, chuckling.
“But… there’s twenty cards…”
“Twenty-one. Devouring fire, boy. How do you even play the game without the High Master?”
Victor argued half-heartedly, but Marshal lost interest. His eyes wandered around the room again. Mentally, he tried to identify the lands each traveler hailed from. Those from Ch’olan were easy to spot with their brown skin and unique clothes. Those with even darker skin must come from Mandiata. Some of these men must be from Rasna, but he couldn’t tell for sure.
Victor returned to his seat, fuming. “High Master Mage! Hmph. Looks like a woman on the card to me. Stupid card. Stupid rules.” He scowled at the ongoing game. “Can’t believe I’ve been playing wrong all this time,” he said in a much quieter tone.
The serving girl returned with their food - pork and boiled vegetables. Despite Victor’s warning, Marshal couldn’t help staring some more, especially when she bent over to set the plates on the table. It gave him an unfamiliar feeling, a longing he couldn’t explain.
The girl smiled without scorn, a look Marshal wasn’t used to seeing from girls his age. “You have pretty eyes underneath those scars,” she said. “Do you have a name?”
Until All Curses Are Lifted Page 10