Torchlight

by Theresa Dahlheim

  “Yes. There have been magi since the Arrival.”

  “Did they help make the obelisks?”

  “Yes, there is clear evidence that magic was used when carving and placing the obelisks. Have you seen the obelisks that are here in Farre?”

  “I’ve seen the one near the bridge gate. And I just found another one that I hadn’t known about before, up near the north wall.”

  “There is a third in the central courtyard of the duke’s keep, and right next to it is the base of a fourth. Have you heard of the Avenue of Obelisks on Maze Island?”

  “Yes, sir.” All the obelisks ever found in the entire world were said to be reproduced along that famous street.

  Maze Island. He was going to go to Maze Island.

  The thought took him unaware, and he had another unnerving moment, like he’d had in the bathing room. He put his fork down because he felt like he was going to drop it, and he stared at his plate without really seeing it.

  “Graegor?”

  He suddenly couldn’t believe he was sitting here, talking and eating with Lord Contare—oh my God, the Lord Contare! He looked up at the old man, who was frowning with concern. “It’s really me?” he all but whispered.

  “Can you doubt it?” the sorcerer asked quietly. “After what happened yesterday?”

  “No ...” He couldn’t explain. He couldn’t make it real in his own mind.

  After a pause, the sorcerer refilled Graegor’s glass with water. Graegor took a sip, just because it was an ordinary thing to do. Lord Contare said, “You will adapt. You all will.”

  “All ...”

  “Remember that there are eight more young sorcerers like you. And like you, they are all having their lives turned upside-down.”

  Eight more. One from each race. Probably none of them were homeless day-workers like him ... they all probably had real lives to turn upside-down.

  “Graegor, I can sense your gen right now.” Lord Contare said it calmly. “I know this feels overwhelming. Please take a deep breath and try to relax.”

  Graegor obeyed, focusing tightly on the air passing through his nose, filling his lungs, expanding his chest. He held it, then slowly released it, and sometime during this ritual, the feeling of strangeness eased. But it didn’t go away. It would probably never go away completely.

  “How did you find out?” he asked, his voice still half gone. “When it was you?”

  The question didn’t come out well, but Lord Contare understood. “I suspect that you have heard the story,” he said. “I was the second son of the Duke of Volney. Zacharei Torchanes was the crown prince, and I was one of his friends. He was betrothed to a Khenroxan princess, and she was visiting the court at Chrenste to meet him before their wedding.”

  “Sorceress Josselin,” Graegor murmured.

  “Zacharei had a private gathering for all his friends to meet the princess and her ladies. When it was my turn to greet her, I took her hand to kiss it. But as soon as our hands touched, it woke the magic in both of us. I’ve been told that the room was filled with blue and green light, but I did not see it. I only saw her.”

  Something even more than love at first sight. Many tales were told of Lord Contare and Lady Josselin’s fiery romance, and if this, the first of those tales, was actually true, maybe some of the others were too ...

  Eight more young sorcerers. Surely some of them were girls.

  But then he thought of Jolie, and felt guilty for feeling glad that she hadn’t wanted to come with him. If Farre scared her, how would she have reacted to this?

  Lord Contare was saying something. “... discover what I could do. Sorcerer Roberd was a patient teacher, as I hope to be with you.”

  “Have you ... have you been looking for me? Or did you know that I was here?”

  “I could sense which direction I should go to find you. You might say I followed my nose.”

  “I’m sorry I went so long between baths.”

  At this the old man laughed out loud, and Graegor found himself grinning, even though he hadn’t meant to make a joke. He was hungry again, and picked up his fork to finish the roast duck.

  “Sir?” he said after a few bites.

  “Yes?” The sorcerer was buttering half a roll.

  “Why didn’t you come to find me sooner?”

  “You had to grow up first. The Circle made a decision about when we should return to our homelands and bring back our successors. We didn’t want to take children from their families, for many good reasons.”

  “You had to wait until I turned fifteen?”

  “It made the most sense for everyone. In the L’Abbanist lands, fifteen is the legal and traditional majority age, but in other places it’s as young as twelve or as old as eighteen. We couldn’t wait until you were all eighteen, though, because our own time is limited.”

  “Limited?”

  “We have probably less than five years.”

  How Lord Contare could say such a thing so calmly? Five hundred years, now reduced to less than five—that was like death staring him in the face from a single pace away. His mind shrank from that, casting about for some other question to ask, and the silver-colored ring on the sorcerer’s right hand sparked another thought.

  “Those heretics, the white heralds—why are they called ‘ringless ones’?”

  Lord Contare did not even blink at the abrupt change of subject. “I think of it as a symbol that went too far. Their leader has never been shackled during his imprisonment, and so his followers think they shouldn’t be either. They symbolize this by not wearing jewelry, not even wedding rings.”

  Graegor raised his eyebrows as he swallowed another bite. “How do their wives feel about that?” No married woman he knew back home would have let her husband walk around without a wedding ring.

  “There are women among them, and they also give up their rings. The white heralds believe their leader, Brandeis, is a prophet, and that the time of the One is at hand, so they enjoy overturning traditions.”

  “They said they were from Orest—is that where their leader is?”

  “He is imprisoned in Orest as a heretic. The Archpriest there is too nervous about him to release him, but also too nervous to execute him.”

  “Why does this leader think I’m the One?”

  “It appears that he is prescient. In that sense, he really can be considered a prophet.”

  “But only sorcerers have that gift, right?”

  “It is a peculiar thing. At each succession, there are people who were born at the right time and have some of the gifts, but none of the power. Unfortunately, if you are born with the gifts but not the power, it damages your mind. Such people are always hermits, or insane, or holy men, or all three.”

  “I don’t understand,” Graegor had to confess.

  “Actually, neither do I, not entirely. I will try to explain again after I talk over my observations about Brandeis with Pascin.”

  “Sorcerer Pascin?”

  “The single most intelligent person I’ve ever known.—There’s something else I should tell you. I went to Orest because I thought Brandeis might be my successor. He showed me drawings of people that he’s seen in his visions. One of those drawings was of you with your quarterstaff.”

  It seemed that Graegor’s capacity for shock had been reached, because this new revelation didn’t punch straight through him like the others had. “He drew a picture of me? Why?”

  “He associates you and the people in the other pictures with the coming of the One. I asked him why he was so sure, and he said that God had chosen him to reveal the One to mankind.”

  “But I’m not the One.”

  “No.”

  “So is he ... “ Graegor twirled his fingertip at his temple, but Lord Contare just shrugged, so he asked, “Who are the other people in his pictures?”

  “I believe that some of them are the other new sorcerers. There were several young faces from several other races.”

  That was interest
ing. “Did you bring any of the pictures with you?”

  “No. However, we could go to Orest on our way to Chrenste, and you could see them for yourself.”

  Graegor was not sure about that, and said nothing. He served himself some berries in cream, and they were silent for a little while as he ate.

  “My lord?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are the ringless ones and the shovel-men truly heretics, or are they right?”

  “Right about what?”

  Graegor realized that he didn’t know what either heresy actually stood for. “About ... anything.”

  “Well, some of the Archpriests sympathize with the ringless ones, and some sympathize with the shovel-men. Most think like the Hierarch does, that both groups are heretics. No one seems to know what exactly to do about them.”

  “But you’re the sorcerer. Can’t you just ...” Graegor trailed off, not really knowing what he thought Lord Contare could “just” do about heresy, but it seemed unlikely that Telgardia’s Lord Sorcerer would have no opinion on the subject.

  “Just tell everyone what they should believe?” Lord Contare suggested, his eyebrows raised. “Perhaps I could. But I am not the Hierarch, so I stay out of it.”

  “But you could be the Hierarch.” It was something he had wondered about ever since he was small, and had first started seeing the world’s general and particular injustices. “Sorcerers used to be kings and priests. Gods, even, for the pagans in the south. Why did they give all that up? Wouldn’t it be easier to just be king? If your word were law, who would be stupid enough to do anything wrong?”

  “Allow me to ask you to answer your own question. What do the holy tracts say?”

  “They say that Lord Patricio of Medea convinced the others in his generation—the third—to live apart from their lands and people in the city that Saint Davidon had built on Maze Island. They made the first Bond of the Circle. Because of the Bond, no one sorcerer can become too powerful.”

  “Correct.”

  “But how did he convince the others to give up being kings? Being gods? And even if he convinced his own generation to do it, why did their successors do it too? Why didn’t they say, forget it, we’re going back home and running everything?”

  “Some of them did.”

  “They did?” He’d never heard that.

  “Three of the sorcerers of the fourth generation refused to renew the Bond of the Circle and went back to their own lands. Our own Sorcerer Urland was one of them.”

  “He did? He was a Sorcerer-King?”

  “Not as such, but he was the power behind the throne for a long time. Eventually he grew tired of it and went back to Maze Island, and so did the other two who had left. Then they all reforged the Bond of the Circle—after a minor delay of a hundred years or so.”

  Graegor brooded on that for a minute. “I suppose ruling the world isn’t much fun,” he suggested.

  “No. Watching over people and making them do what you want them to do is tiring. It ages you, mentally if not physically. Ask any parent.”

  “I think—I think, also, it might be strange to not grow older when everyone around you is.”

  Lord Contare nodded. “I once called a girl by the wrong name, not because I mistook her for her mother, but because I mistook her for her great-grandmother. It made me feel as old as death itself.”

  “And also, just because you can tell people what to do doesn’t mean that you should.”

  “Yes. You have read the holy tracts, I see.”

  “Some.” Only what had been required in chapel and at school, but he saw no reason to point that out. “So when they all came back, those sorcerers in the fourth generation, was it also because they didn’t want that temptation anymore? They didn’t want to want to tell people what to do?”

  “Sorcerer Urland expressed exactly that sentiment in his writings.”

  “And all the sorcerers have been part of the Bond of the Circle ever since?”

  “Yes, and all but Sorceress Iseult chose it freely.”

  Graegor had heard about the Thendal sorceress, and it was a chilling story. “Did they really drag her to Maze Island in chains?”

  “I suppose you could call them mental chains. She refused to return to Maze Island after Sorcerer Marlon’s death, so the rest of the seventh generation went to Thendalia and attacked her. They used their magic to put her in a coma. Then they took her to Maze Island, woke her, and forced her to help forge their Circle.”

  Graegor stopped eating and looked intently at Lord Contare. He didn’t think the sorcerer would try to deceive him, but ... “Sir, you said that if I wanted to sit in the middle of the street and never move again, nobody could stop me.”

  “Yes, I did say that, and I meant it. Sorcerer Roberd was my teacher, remember. He told me that what he and the others had done to Iseult haunted him every day for the rest of his life. It was monstrously immoral, and dangerous for everyone involved.”

  “Dangerous, how?”

  “It would be hard to explain, since these concepts are so new to you. But if you want me to, I can try to clarify what I mean.” He left it there, waiting for Graegor’s response. Because he truly seemed willing to launch into a full discussion of forced bonding—which frankly sounded like rape—Graegor decided that he didn’t need the whole explanation just now.

  “Thank you, sir. I ... I wanted to be sure.”

  “This is your choice, Graegor, so you should think about it carefully. Whatever you choose is going to affect the course of history. Even though we vow to stay out of our people’s politics, we can’t help touching the world.”

  The course of history. That had never been in his plans.

  “My lord, when you vowed to stay out of your people’s—our people’s—politics, was that why you didn’t ... I mean, you said that you were a friend of Zacharei Torchanes, and he was ...”

  “And he was the last Torchanes king.” Lord Contare wasn’t looking at him anymore, but at something far away, as he rested his folded hands against his chin. “When the Rohrdals killed him, I felt him die. It was ... very painful. Josselin and Pascin and the others had to keep me from seeking revenge.” It was such a strong word for a man who seemed so mild, and Graegor had another dizzy moment as he again fully appreciated just who it was sitting across the table from him. “Later I learned that Prince Augustin had survived the coup, and I could not abandon him. I went to Khenroxa, where he had escaped, and together we planned his restoration.”

  “Prince Augustin tried to take back the throne?” He’d never heard that. “And you helped him?”

  “At the time I felt very strongly that if I could save him, I should. The Rohrdals never stopped looking for him, so as long as he was still alive, I had to help.”

  Graegor let a moment’s silence stand, then asked, “My lord, you broke your vows to the Circle for Prince Augustin?” For my family.

  Lord Contare nodded. “And for that, I was formally shunned.”

  “Shunned?”

  “No one in the Circle spoke to me.” His face and voice were still distant, almost as if he was talking about someone else. “Telgardia had no voice in the Hall. Telgards living on Maze Island had no one to defend their rights. Telgard magi outside Telgardia were harassed, sometimes even arrested as spies. In many ways, I abandoned them all.”

  “No one in the Circle spoke to you? Not even Lady Josselin?”

  “Not even Lady Josselin.”

  Graegor let the weight of that settle over him. All unknowing, all his life he’d owed a debt to this man, a man he’d never known but as legend. “And ... what happened? Prince Augustin ...”

  “He was killed in a raid. A few nights later his wife left with their son, and I never saw either of them again.” Lord Contare sat forward again, apparently back in the present, and gave Graegor a long, appraising look. “And now, here you are. The new sorcerer, and the return of the Torchanes, both in one.”

  It’s really true. This is really
happening. “Yes, sir.”

  “You are going to turn Chrenste upside-down.”

  “Not literally, I hope.”

  This set Lord Contare laughing, and he seemed to appreciate the lightening of the mood. “Keep eating, Graegor. Would you mind if I excused myself? I have some people to whom to call.”

  “Call, sir?” Out the window?

  “I mean that I’ll be mind-sending—using telepathy—to reach some of my magi. My steward in Chrenste, first, to tell him when to expect us.” He set his hands on the table to prepare to stand up, but paused. “May I assume that we’re leaving tomorrow?” He was not taking Graegor’s consent for granted. He was fully prepared to stay here for as long as it took for Graegor to decide it was time to go. Even if Graegor decided to never go.

  But it made no sense to stay. And if it made no sense to stay at all, it made no sense to stay any longer than necessary. “I have no plans for tomorrow, my lord,” he said, “so we might as well go.”

  Lord Contare smiled. “Then I will send word to the riverboat.” He stood, and Graegor quickly stood as well, so he could manage a bow. He realized once the sorcerer’s chamber door had closed that it was the first time he had accorded this man the formal respect he was due.

  He found he wasn’t hungry anymore—or, even if his stomach wasn’t full, his mind was, and it needed time to digest. He walked slowly into his own room, closed the door and leaned against it.

  I’ve just been to dinner with Telgardia’s Lord Sorcerer.

  It was disorienting, how that kept jumping out at him. One minute it all seemed rational, and the next ... even his small joke, that he had no plans for tomorrow—it made no sense to have no plans. He’d been waist-deep in plans for a year. Planning his schoolwork, planning time with Jolie, planning his apprenticeship, planning his escape. Planning for the Khenroxan horse fair. Planning ways to save money. So many plans.

  None of them mattered. None of them had ever mattered. All his life, God had had another plan for him.

  Anything could happen now.

  He sat on the huge bed. Then he lay down. He stared at the ceiling, his eyes tracing the whorls in the white plaster. Outside, he heard bells tolling the second hour after noon.