Shadow and Light

by Peter Sartucci

  Sevan and Uncle Ger and Ger’s eldest son were with him, and Pieter and Grandfather and Uncle Sevan right behind them. All but Grandfather were wearing tights and clearly ready to perform.

  “What is it? An exhibition piece?” He guessed, added, “For some Gwythlo lord and his friends?” since none of the family’s women were with them.

  “Yes, for Duke Darnaud of Guglione,” Pieter explained. “Not much challenge, but good pay and exposure to potential patrons.” He clapped Kirin on the shoulder approvingly. “You look happy and tired. Your teacher put you through your paces today, I’ll bet.” Keeping things ambiguous for the listening ears around them in the crowded Bazaar, he added, “Your control better today?”

  “You bet!” Kirin almost spilled the details, caught the warning in Pieter’s look, and contented himself with saying, “A perfect three-in-a-row!”

  Pieter nodded understanding and hugged him while Sevan and Attir pounded Kirin on the back. “Excellent. I’m very proud of you, son.”

  The others congratulated him too, even Grandfather unbending enough to say something positive. Which the old man immediately followed with a harrumph and a pointed reference to the setting suns. Kirin gave them the traditional acrobat’s well-wish of “Touch the sky!” as they hurried off to their appointment.

  As he watched them disappear he thought wistfully, I wish I was going with them. But he’d been at the Wizard’s tower most of the day with no chance to rehearse whatever exhibition Grandfather and Uncle Sevan had devised, and he knew better than to try any acrobatic maneuver without practicing it first. Besides, with most of the adult men gone the women and children would be almost alone. He turned his face back toward the Old City and hurried.

  He halted in annoyance at the sight of the sulfur caravan’s huge wains groaning through the narrow passage of Oldgate. The line looked to have recently arrived, so it would be the better part of an hour before the gate cleared enough for foot traffic. He could cut around east through the warren of alleys in the Old City and try to get ahead of the caravan. If he was very lucky he’d be able to cross Sulfur Street before the wagons reached the Serpentine and cut him off, but he knew from previous tries that game rarely worked. He also briefly considered trying to swarm over and across one of the moving wagons. His tired muscles and Pieter’s warnings about stupid risks put that thought to rest.

  Instead he stepped into the alley next to Fresci’s bakery and went to the laundry located behind it. The laundress provided a urine bucket for passers-by to relieve themselves and supply her with the valuable basis for cleaning fluids after it had fermented. He used the bucket while trying to concentrate on the fading scent of the day’s baking rather than the appalling stench of the fermenting vats. When he finished he laced his hose up and headed back toward Oldgate through the silent alley.

  Before he got there a stranger in a long robe stopped him. Kirin’s Shadow immediately filled him to the skin and he used his magesight on the man. He saw layers of complex spells, including one on the surface that shifted the stranger’s real features to look quite different.

  He’s wearing a disguise spell. But I remember seeing his real face at Millago’s house. He’s Mage Yellow from the Council. Kirin recalled Chisaad’s warning about unprincipled mages as his scalp prickled and his heart quickened.

  The man had pushed back his hood and displayed a friendly smile as he said, “Say, aren’t you Kirin, the star acrobat of the DiUmbra family? I’ve seen your troupe perform.” He waved a hand in the direction of the space now occupied by the Suliemons.

  “Yup.” Kirin looked Mage Yellow over. Fancy slippers were protected from the muck of the Old City’s streets by spells. The man wore quality clothes similarly guarded, with an extra spell laid on to make shoes and clothes look coarser and poorer. Half a dozen more spells wrapped him; to Kirin’s magesight the man positively glowed. He might as well have brought a herald to declare the presence of money and power.

  A season ago such a combination would have frightened Kirin. Even a few tendays ago he’d have been nervous and deferential. Now ten nights of bad dreams and more days of building confidence joined to spark a different response. I’m powerful too, and in a way that’ll surprise the hell out of you.

  He boldly said, “You’re a mage disguised as a young scribe. Pretty good disguise too, you even have fake ink stains. But your real hands are clean, and you don’t have pimples and you aren’t young. I’d say from the wrinkles on your face and the gray in your hair that you must be nearly fifty.” He couldn’t resist smirking.

  The Mage’s smile changed into something colder and more calculating. “Very well, boy, you can see through my disguise spell. Impressive, since I see that you have no spells of your own. I do wonder how a youth with no visible mage talent manages such a trick.” Even as he spoke he brazenly launched a probing spell.

  Kirin let his Shadow gulp it down whole, snapped back, “Why in the nine hells would I tell you?” He poked the mage’s disguise spell with a finger and ate that too.

  The mage gasped and stepped back, his eyes wide and his hands raised. A violet glow of power gathered in his palms.

  “Don’t try it,” Kirin growled. “If you had any respect for me and my talents, you’d have come to me honestly and not like a sneak-thief. My teacher warned me about mages like you.”

  “Chisaad?” The mage barked a laugh as he took another step back. He gave Kirin a bitter sneer, hands lower but still holding spells that glittered like blades. “That’s rich. He’s a bigger schemer than Blue, bigger than the whole Council! He’s survived eighteen years as Royal Wizard, boy, and that takes more lies and dealings than a peasant like you can imagine.”

  Kirin propped his fists against his hips and sneered back. “‘Grimy arse, said the kettle to the pot.’ You’re no better, Mage Yellow. Yeah, I recognize you from Millago’s party. I’ve heard plenty about you, and not just from Magister Chisaad.”

  Mage Yellow visibly throttled his own words, lowered his hands, took a deep breath, and went on in a softer voice. “Look, we got off to a bad start here, and I’m sorry for that. But whatever a bunch of jealous backstabbers say about me, you should think about maybe relying on more than one teacher.” His eyes widened in eager anticipation and in a wheedling tone he added, “You know, I can be very helpful to a novice like you.”

  “Dung to that. I already know you can’t be trusted.” Kirin pressed closer, poked another spell with a finger and ate that too. “Stay away from me and mine or I’ll make you sorrier than you can imagine.”

  Yellow yelped and scrambled back several more steps. “How are you doing that? Have you got a demon familiar?”

  Kirin’s spine chilled at the implied threat. His mind skipped to an image of himself tied to the Temple’s iron stake while flames seared his flesh and boiled his blood. He glared. “Watch your tongue, mage, or I’ll cut it out. If I start hearing evil slanders about me, I’ll know where to look. Get this through your head right now; I can hurt you a lot worse than you can hurt me.”

  He leaped across the distance between them, let his Shadow gulp down the spells the mage hurled, and raked Yellow with claws of inky darkness. The rest of the mage’s spells shattered and the man went reeling back against a wall. Kirin’s Shadow lapped up the fragments and left the mage naked of spells. Yellow sagged and gasped, his hands raised in helpless protest and his eyes wide as a dried fish.

  Kirin stood over him with his fists balled, trembling with anger so strong he could barely stop himself from pummeling the man. “Now get out of here and leave me alone. If I hear anything about this, if you cause me any trouble, you’ll get worse.” He pointed to the alley entrance. “Go!”

  Yellow bolted with a strangled gasp and vanished into the Bazaar.

  Kirin leaned against the wall to give in to a fit of shaking. More visions of being burned in front of the Mother Temple swam through his mind and made his guts churn, each one worse than the last. “Bastard!” he whispered, gulped
and fought down his fears. I’m not a demon! Lady Ymera said so. The Royal Wizard himself thinks I have a new talent never seen before. Not a demon!

  He didn’t know how long he leaned there, caught in his own private terror. Eventually he noticed that the distant rumble of the sulfur caravan had faded. He pushed off the wall, straightened his tunic and tried to saunter casually back to Oldgate. He couldn’t help looking around every corner for the thrice-cursed mage. A pair of Temple Inquisitors in black and yellow robes passed by. He hid in an alley and shuddered in fear until they were gone. I’m not a demon! His mind conjured threats everywhere.

  By the time he made it to the Sulfur Serpent his neck threatened to cramp from trying to watch everywhere. He climbed the main stairs and took off his buskins on the top landing as usual, then racked them inside the door to the family’s private floor of the Inn while jauntily calling, “Hey everybody, I’m home!”

  A muffled groan answered him.

  “Maia?” Terror boiled through him. Had Mage Yellow gotten here first and taken vengeance? “Maia!” He ran to their room. “Maia!”

  “Stop yelling,” Aunt Silla told him in a brusque tone as she blocked the door. “You’ll wake the kids and we barely got them to sleep.”

  Kirin’s heart skipped a beat when he saw that her hands were full of soiled, bloody cloth. He danced in frustration as he tried to get around her. “What’s happened? Is she hurt?”

  “No more than usual,” Silla tossed the bloody cloths into a laundry basket sitting outside the door. “For a woman who’s just had a baby. Come back in a candlemark and you can help name him.”

  She shut the door firmly in his face.

  For a long moment Kirin stood there staring at the wood panel. Finally, his thoughts managed to focus on one word.

  “Him?”

  * * *

  Carlai collected Kirin and took him to the family’s little dining room, made him sit and eat something while she nursed her own baby and chattered.

  “Sevan and the others are at that private party, I suppose it’ll be another couple of bells before they return. I hope this Duke Darnaud likes them and has them back again, Grandfather said the man paid the whole fee up front! It’s only an exhibition, not a real performance, but it gets us seen by his guests and who knows? One of them might want to be our patron. I’m so glad Grandfather didn’t make a fuss about working for a Gwythlo lord. I told Sevan we’d better get used to it, they’ve got most of the money now, and besides, the old man never complained when there were Gwythlos in our crowds in the Bazaar. Some of them threw good money.”

  Kirin mechanically ate what she had put in front of him while her words washed through him. His thoughts roiled around the enchanting word. Him. I have a son. I’m a father! The amazing thought went around and round through his mind. He was no different, and yet utterly transformed. I’m a father!

  Finally, half of eternity later, Aunt Silla fetched him to see his wife.

  Maia lay on their bed looking utterly exhausted and yet triumphant. Carmella tucked a little wrapped bundle against her breast. He heard a tiny cry before the baby latched on and began to suckle.

  “What will you name him?” Dona Abbithana, acting as midwife priestess, asked as she packed her bag. She still tended to look warily at him but a season of ministering to the DiUmbras had softened her suspicions.

  Kirin looked at Maia. “Do we still want to name him after Grandfather?”

  Maia nodded. “It’s a good name, and it might soften his heart towards you.”

  Kirin turned to the priestess and said formally, “Our son is named Grigor Sule DiUmbra.”

  Dona Abbie wrote it down, tucked her tablet in her bag and congratulated him in a low voice, and quit the room. Kirin barely heard her and did not see her amused smile. All he could see, as he knelt on their bed-pad next to Maia, was the incredible beauty who had married him, and the wonderful, terrifying, marvelous, astonishing new life she had brought forth.

  Kirin curled up, still clothed, on the bed next to her as the rest of the women vacated the room. He tenderly kissed her and whispered, “Hello beautiful. Looks like you lost some weight.”

  “Traded it for something better,” she told him with a tired smirk.

  He took her free hand in one of his and kissed it too, then lay next to her and watched their son enjoy his first meal.

  * * *

  He woke up hours later to voices in the hallway. Maia had set baby Grigor between them while she slept. Kirin got up and went out to see about the noise.

  “—course not! It has to be a terrible mistake,” Sevan-the-younger protested.

  “Terrible doesn’t begin to describe this!” His father snapped. “The Watch dragged him away in chains!”

  “That wasn’t a mistake,” Grandfather growled. “We were set-up, used to cover up a murder and take the blame for it. Probably the reason we were hired in the first place.”

  Grandmother began to keen softly in grief. Grandfather put his arms around her as he glared at the ceiling and declared, “I should never have trusted a Gwythlo lord.”

  “What’s happened?” Kirin demanded as he stared from face to face. “Tell me!”

  Sevan-the-younger, Attir, Gir, and Gir’s oldest son stood around hanging their heads in grief as other family members came out of their rooms into the hallway. Sevan the Elder looked at Kirin and his craggy features softened. “I’m sorry to have to say it, son. Pieter’s been arrested. A man was found dead at Duke Darnaud’s party, with Pieter’s belt knife stuck in his back.”

  CHAPTER 25: CHISAAD

  The next day Chisaad went early to his office in the Palace. He refreshed all his ward spells to be certain nobody could spy on him and placed the glyph on his office door that warned the Palace staff that he was occupied with delicate casting and should not be disturbed. Then he rolled back his office carpet, took out the little rug he had concealed in his robes and spread it on the marble floor.

  It had taken him days to embed a very specific and complex spell into the fibers. He had invented it and tied it to another spell set with even greater labor into the floor of the topmost room of his tower. The two had to operate in perfect harmony for the first step of today’s plan to work. Delicately he adjusted the casting until the decagram embedded in the rug’s weave flashed twice and settled. He rolled the carpet back over it and made sure the spell remained aligned even in concealment.

  He checked the palace’s ward spells; not a ripple. He allowed himself a smile. Linking a spell inside the Palace to one outside it without triggering any of the various wards was an impressive achievement, but today he intended to dare much more. He began the work by stepping into the decagram and, with a whispered word, teleported to his tower.

  He experienced no dizziness or vertigo from the movement; he was simply in one place, then in another, travelling without moving. The roots of his hair and all his finger-and-toenails prickled with exhilaration and he drew a great lungful of air in sheer delight.

  Two miracles accomplished. Now for the third and most important.

  On his worktable lay his new golem, clothed in one of his spare robes and wearing a simulacrum of his features. He used a mirror to compare his face to the imitation, for even a small error could draw the eyes of observers and raise questions. He picked up the silver-and-jet spider he had crafted, set it onto his own head and covered it with a fez. It settled securely while he placed a similar fez atop the golem’s scalp and pinned that in place. When he had the spider prepared, he linked his mind through it to the elaborate construct inside the golem’s head.

  The golem’s stiff face flexed, became alive. It blinked and stood up, smoothly counterfeiting his natural movements right down to the small hesitation in his left leg where he’d overstressed it from climbing the Hill so often.

  Chisaad silently ordered the golem into the decagram. It obeyed as casually as if the command had originated within its false skull. He teleported them both back to the Palace, settle
d himself comfortably in his chair, closed his eyes, and shifted his mind’s attention entirely to seeing through the golem’s crystal eyes.

  It disturbed him to look upon his real body leaning back as if asleep, so he turned the golem’s attention away. He made the creature walk to and open the door to his outer office. He carefully closed it behind itself while sealing the protective spells and walked the golem out into the Palace.

  He had practiced this sort of movement enough that his mind quickly fell into an unthinking rhythm with the artificial body. He passed several servants and gave them preoccupied nods in return for their bows. None gave any indication of having noticed that the spell-wrapped thing before them was not the Acting Royal Wizard.

  First test passed. Now to try it on a mage. It should work, since I couldn’t tell the difference.

  He visited the office where his subordinate wizards worked. He entered as if he owned the place—before this year ends I shall!—and barked orders to the two mages to report on the latest repair to the Gray Fort’s spells. They did and faithfully explained their meticulous analyses of the break, all leading to the same conclusion. The Gwythlo battlemages and the Silbari battlemages had been showing off and the Gwythlo’s druid, Boerga, had egged them on until they made a mess, which would require costly repair. They would schedule it for the next few days, and recommended that the battlemages be forced to supply most of the power from their personal allotments. As for the Druid—they were both transparently glad she was some higher-up’s responsibility.

  When Chisaad grunted approval they both relaxed as if they had passed one of his frequent tests. He found the golem’s face smiling as he walked back out and quickly forced it back into a concealing blandness. Perhaps the golem responded to his mind a little too readily?

  No, it responds as it must if I am to deceive anyone who knows me well. Now to test it on a few more.

  The Temple bells rang the eighth hour. Fantillin normally conferred with the Commander of the Palace Guard and his captains at this time. Chisaad had long made it a point to drop irregularly. He sent the golem strolling that way while trying to minimize the small but aggravating limp it had developed in its left leg.