Shadow and Light

by Peter Sartucci

  He stared at the big stone ring of the Guardian. Its many faces were all silent and unlit, but the glow of latent magic rippled over the surface. Chisaad had told him about it, though the Royal Apartments were not part of his wizardly duties; some mage named Fantillin managed this artifact.

  It’s just a bunch of spells. It can’t see me, Kirin assured himself as he wrapped Shadow tightly around his skin.

  He took a deep breath and walked straight through the carved stone ring.

  Nothing happened.

  He exhaled happily and skipped the rest of the way across the bridge.

  The corridors of the Royal Apartments were dim, the courtyard pool a burnished mirror in the moonlight. Midnight had passed into memory and Kirin had heard the second bell ring some time ago. Two small magelamps burned in the main hallway. He avoided both and made his way to the double doors into the King’s Suite. The brass dragons embossed on their panels glittered in the dimness. Spells writhed over them so that their eyes seemed to track him as he approached.

  They can’t see me either. He reached out with both hands to push one of the doors open, expecting it to be so heavy that it would be a strain to move. But as his palms touched the cool brass, the dragon eyes lit.

  He froze as two vast presences crowded into his mind.

  WHO COMES? They asked in voices louder than trumpets. NAME YOURSELF.

  I’m Kirin! He cried, the darkness of his mind now shattered with light. Two incandescent beings pinned him between their pitiless gazes and held him fast.

  For an excruciatingly long moment they scrutinized him while he despaired. He’d failed, the guards would come, and they’d take him to prison, or to the iron stake in front of the Temple. Pieter would die in the sulfur mines. Death and shame, shame and death, nothing else lay before him.

  YOU MAY PASS.

  Their gaze released him, and he nearly fell over as the two big doors silently opened inward. He stumbled into the room beyond and dropped to his knees on a soft rug.

  They saw me! Did they call the guards?

  He trembled, sicker with fear than he’d been even after Millago’s, even at the news of Pieter’s sentence. Long minutes passed while he waited for doom, but except for the doors silently closing again, nothing happened. Surely guards would respond faster than this?

  The dragons not only let me go, they let me in here. Why? Do they know why I’m here?

  No answer came.

  Whatever they wanted from me, they’re letting me continue. Maybe the angels approve of what I’m going to do for the Prince? Maybe they want him to learn from my family.

  Encouraged, he looked around.

  Chisaad had only been able to describe the Prince’s personal apartment in general terms, since he had never been here himself. Kirin discovered that he had stumbled right into the middle of a big sitting room. Slanting moonlight lit the long dim room through three large skylights. A small mage lamp burned on an elaborate inlaid table next to one of the many long soft couches. A sleeping youth in servant’s garb had begun to stir.

  Kirin grabbed one of the wizard’s brass cylinders out of his pack, took a deep breath to hold, and twisted off the top. A drug-soaked cloth fell into his hand and he clapped it over the sleepy face as the boy’s eyelids began to flutter. The youth twitched, sighed, and sank into a deeper slumber. Kirin frantically stuffed the cloth back in the cylinder and slapped the lid on before he ran out of breath. The hand that had touched the cloth stung like a sunburn. He backpedaled away from the couch, sucked in lungfuls of clean air, and looked around.

  There were four doors, unevenly spaced, in the long wall opposite the dragon-doors. Which one lead to the Prince’s room?

  He combined rumors with what the wizard had told him. The prince had concubines, and his bodyguard slept here too. But Sir Penghar DuVerhys DiLione had gone to Sulmona, and the concubines slept in a separate room according to rumor.

  Kirin wondered at that. It seemed an unnatural way for a man and a woman to sleep.

  The four doors waited. They had handles but no latches. The left one and the second-from-left one were widely separated from each other and from the other pair, which were closer together. The bodyguard would probably have a smaller room than the Prince or his concubines. Kirin took a deep breath and tried the second-from-the-right door. Moving very gently and slowly, with his Shadow extended to block all sight of the moonlit room behind him, he pushed the heavy panel open one finger width at a time.

  Empty. A neatly made bed lay undisturbed. From the personal possessions on shelves and the garments incompletely returned to a wardrobe, he guessed this must be Sir DiLione’s room. Another door in the side wall stood slightly ajar. From beyond it came a faint snoring. He tiptoed to it and cautiously peered through.

  The bedroom beyond had ten times the space of the room he and Maia shared. The bed by itself was bigger than their whole room. A man lay on it, yellow curls disarrayed around his sleeping face. He glowed with an inner light.

  The Prince.

  Kirin slipped through the door. He drew the other cylinder from his pack as he padded across the plush rugs and tile floor. When he reached the bedside, he stood a moment staring down at the sleeping man. Prince Terrell’s face shone. He didn’t look cruel or harsh. Kirin clutched the drug-cylinder and hesitated.

  He’s . . . young. Like me. But all that Light spilling out of him! How does he stand it?

  His Shadow reached for the man on the bed and touched him delicately, worshipfully. The Prince’s glow diminished, and only then did Kirin realize that his Shadow had drunk some of that upwelling Light.

  Like a vampire.

  Hastily he seized his personal monster with his mind, tried to forbid it from touching the Prince. It churned unhappily around him like a storm of black clouds but stopped drinking the Light. Kirin decided that he could hope for no better.

  I’ve got to do what I came for. The angels let me in, they must approve. I can teach him how to be a real Silbari. I’ve got to do it to free Pieter.

  He pushed through his uneasiness, took a deep breath as he twisted off the cylinder’s lid, bent over the Prince and pressed the drugged rag over his mouth and nose.

  An instant before it touched, Prince Terrell’s eyes opened.

  * * *

  Terrell gasped in shock and got a deep breath of something heavy and strange. His hands had instinctively grabbed at the muscular arm pressing something against his face. His eyes followed that arm to a face wrapped in darkness, out of which two black eyes stared . . .

  . . . and with a dizzying jerk he found himself looking down at his own face half-covered by a cloth clamped in a golden-brown hand that was not his own.

  Sleep overcame him and he knew no more.

  * * *

  Kirin almost passed out on the bed beside the Prince. He managed to stagger away, and his head cleared enough that he remembered to stuff the drugged cloth back into the cylinder and seal it again. He tried to put it back into his pack, dropped it instead. Thankfully the metal tube landed on a plush rug and not on the echoing tile. He fell on his face when he bent over for the brass tube. He managed to catch himself on his hands and knees, again grateful for the rug, and had to crawl to it. On the third try he finally got the tube put away secure.

  He lay there trembling in a pool of moonlight.

  It happened again. What did he do to me?

  He covered his face with his hands and remembered one of Pieter’s sayings. Once is just the thing itself, and twice might be coincidence; but if it happens a third time—

  Kirin’s mind groped for an answer. There had been such a wave of surprise both times that he couldn’t believe the mind-swap had been deliberate. Could it be a special talent of the Prince? There hadn’t been any gossip about any such thing, but maybe he had kept it a secret.

  Remembering the shock in the other mind, he thought it upset Prince Terrell as much as it upset him.

  Holy Haroun protect me, what if it happens wh
ile I’m teaching him trapeze work? He imagined the confusion, a missed catch, an embarrassing and dangerous fall into the net. It happened both times when I looked at his eyes.

  I better not ever look him in the eyes again.

  And with that he remembered that he lay on the floor of the Prince’s bedroom while Chisaad waited outside.

  Kirin got to his feet, still unsteady, and made his way to the room’s middle window. All three were open to admit cool night air. Layers of spells screened them, woven so thick that they wouldn’t allow a gnat through. He knelt and rested both hands on the low sill, hesitated for a moment remembering the dragon-doors, then took command of his Shadow. He leaned forward and stuck his head and shoulders through the screen.

  The spells parted around him; his Shadow didn’t even try to eat the magic, which surprised him. He found himself looking at the southwest side of the Hill of Sight. Using magesight through his Shadow revealed the vast core of spells woven into it, a multi-sided column of blazing purple fire that saturated the Hill and ran deep into the World. He hurriedly closed his magesight and blinked to rid himself of the after-images. When he could see normally again he stared at the north flank of the Hill where only ordinary protection spells flowed and coiled. Chisaad had said he would conceal himself on that slope in the shade of the western pergola, under an illusion spell.

  Kirin found him. The wizard crouched on a carpet that floated above the wall-less pergola’s floor. Without the illusion spell he looked as obvious as the proverbial priestess in a whorehouse. But only someone immune to magic could see him. Kirin stretched his arms apart, shaped his Shadow into an open-ended tube, and pushed back the window spells to the very edges of the frame.

  The wizard saw. His carpet lifted and flew arrow-straight at the window. Kirin strained to push every bit of his Shadow out from the inside of the tube. Chisaad neatly threaded the gap and landed his carpet silently on the floor of the Prince’s bedchamber. Kirin let his Shadow collapse back into him, still without trying to snack on the spells, and sagged back onto a rug.

  The wizard tossed spells at all three doors to bar anyone from entering, then hurriedly flipped back one of the plush rugs. He took out a rolled cloth and spread it on the floor, aligned it minutely until spells on it activated to make a glowing blue decagram. He shot a hard look at Kirin as he said, “Be sure you stay well back, there’s no time to fix this if you damage it.”

  Kirin nodded, not trusting his voice yet. Between the drug and the mind-swap, the floor seemed like a fine place to be right now.

  Then Chisaad rolled up his flying carpet and stepped on the decagram, spoke a word—and vanished.

  Kirin stared. Chisaad had told him the decagram carried a teleportation spell, but he had had only a foggy notion what that meant. Moments later the wizard returned with his golem, still looking eerily like the Prince. The golem peeled back the sheet and effortlessly scooped up the drugged Prince, carried him to the decagram, and the two of them and Chisaad disappeared again. Several very long minutes passed before the wizard returned with the golem and without the prince, and now the golem moved with a fluid and natural ease that it hadn’t had before, and glowed with the same Light the Prince had shown. Chisaad gestured to the bed impatiently and the naked golem climbed in and drew the sheet over itself while Kirin stared.

  On the surface it looks exactly like the prince, right down to his Light. It even moves like a real man. Only when I look under the spells can I see the golem. Wow.

  Chisaad gave a relieved sigh and relaxed, looked at Kirin. “Why are you still sitting on the floor?” He whispered. “Are you injured?”

  “No.” Kirin scrambled to his feet. “The drug made me dizzy.”

  The wizard shook his head. “You should have followed my instructions more exactly. Give me the canisters.”

  Kirin turned them over. “I’m sorry, Magister.”

  Chisaad tucked the drugged canisters in his robes, then looked at Kirin’s face intently. “We’re almost done. Are you able to make it back out of here? Can you find your way to the Diplomatic Gate?”

  Kirin bridled a little at that; he had made it in here, hadn’t he? But he contented himself with simply saying, “Yes, Magister.”

  “Good.” The wizard did something to the decagram and then scooped up the cloth that had carried it. The glowing pattern remained on the floor, muted but still visible to Kirin’s eyes. Chisaad rolled the rug back over it, which hid the glow not at all, then carefully dispelled his locking spells from the three doors. Without another word or even glance at Kirin he stepped onto the decagram, said the triggering word, and vanished. A moment later the decagram’s glow also winked out.

  Astonished, Kirin lifted the edge of the rug and peeked under. The ten-pointed diagram had gone as if it had never been. He dropped the rug and looked around.

  He was alone in the Prince’s bedchamber, save for a sleeping golem.

  He sighed and set about the task of sneaking back out of the Royal Apartments.

  CHAPTER 30: KIRIN AND TERRELL

  The third bell had rung before he made it through all the long hallways to the Diplomatic Gate. Fate had been kind this time. He had made it back onto the roof without being noticed—he had worried that his shadow-bats wouldn’t be enough this time—and no guards had been in the long corridors while he passed through.

  The Dragon Doors had opened to let him leave as if he had every right to do so. He tried to convince himself that was good, but it still unnerved him.

  The route from Chisaad’s office to the Diplomatic Gate went easier, as guards expected people to be about in this part of the palace even after midnight. Dozens of Palace officials and servants actually lived along those corridors. The Gate guards were sleepy and incurious, what attention they had left at this hour focused on anyone entering. He gave them his name and status and they looked him up in one of their books, where his name had already appeared since this morning.

  “Wizard’s got you working late on your first day, eh?” One guard said.

  “Lot to do,” Kirin grumbled, shifting the empty pack on his back. “Hope I can get something to eat before I have to come back. Some sleep’d be nice too.”

  The guard chuckled and waved him through.

  Kirin didn’t relax until he reached the end of Messenger Street. Traffic had ended for the night, he saw nobody but a trio of men repairing a wagon’s wheel. He hesitated at the corner, looking east into the Bazaar. Even at this hour someone would be awake and selling food and drink, and hunger gnawed at him.

  A knife almost got him.

  Kirin twisted aside at the last instant. The blade grazed his ribs with a deadly promise. The man wielding it had been working at the wagon wheel a moment before. The attacker stabbed again, barely missing as Kirin kept dodging.

  What in the Nine Hells? Kirin thought through his shock. Why is he attacking me? Then, as the other two came after him, Oh dung!

  A cowled and caped man stood up in the wagon bed and growled, “Gut him, you fools!”

  Kirin had heard that voice in the Hall of Justice. It’s Duke Darnaud!

  The three tried to surround Kirin, which would have been death for an ordinary man. Instead he drowned the street in Shadow.

  He dodged the first blinded-man’s stab in the darkness, kicked a knife out of a second one’s hand and then kicked the cursing thug in the crotch for good measure. Kirin danced out of the way of the third flailing attacker before the disoriented fool ran into the first man.

  Then he turned, ran out of his billowing Shadow, and found himself face-to-face with a growling wolf-beast as big as a pony. It carried the druid he’d met outside the cemetery gates a season ago, whom the priestess had named Boerga.

  “I knew you were evil’s servant!” Boerga cackled in Gwythlo. She kneed her beast in the ribs. “Kill!”

  He hurled Shadow in their faces as the beast lunged for him, then dodged and drew his knife. The snapping jaws closed on air half a foot from his elbow. T
he Druid swung a wickedly-curved sword in a vicious arc that missed him completely. He stabbed the beast, his knife sank in and grated along bone. The big creature jerked away, and Kirin barely held onto his blade.

  Boerga snarled commands as her steed tried to double back at him, almost unseating her. In the confusion in the Shadow’s darkness, beast and rider staggered for footing. The Shadow drank the power from her silver jewelry while her sword hunted Kirin. She shrieked something frustrated that he didn’t catch as he fled into the maze of the Bazaar.

  He drew his Shadow back inside him as he dodged between stalls and leaped over obstacles hidden in shadows. He paused behind one tent, wiped his belt knife clean on a washrag left to dry on one of the ropes, and then ran on. Behind him he could hear a growing uproar as the beast crashed into a stall and wrecked it. Rudely-awakened merchants howled, the druid cursed, and the beast whined in pain. He hoped the wound he’d dealt it was enough to stop it from chasing him.

  Long minutes later he slipped across the Processional while a cloud covered the moons. Shortly he crossed the South Road with a quick look north towards the plaza in front of the Middle Court, where the North and South roads met. He couldn’t see the mouth of Messenger Street from there, or the tangled mess he’d left behind in the Bazaar, which meant Duke Darnaud and Boerga couldn’t see him. The clean streets of the Clerk’s Quarter accepted him as he slowed to a walk and got his breath back.

  Understanding finally hit him.