“Ah, here you are,” Jaggus said. “My black shadow.”
I wasn’t his. I got to my feet and leaned against the wall and didn’t say anything. Maybe he’d tell me why he’d brought me here.
“Bring me my chair,” he said without taking his eyes off me. Behind him, Half-finger nodded at somebody. After a moment a chair appeared; the guard captain set it inside the room, then stepped back to fill the doorway.
Jaggus settled himself on the chair. The light from the locus stone stayed bright, filling the room with sharp shadows. The lump on his shoulder turned its head and I saw that it was a white cat with a flat face, sharp, raked-back ears, keen pink eyes, and a long white tail.
“My Shadows have been watching you for a long time,” he said. “I know who you are, Connwaer. Not a servant of the Lady Rowan, but a spy and thief. I venture so far as to guess that you are the young wizard responsible for the disruption of our plans last year in Wellmet.”
Our plans? “What d’you mean?” I asked.
“You had not realized?” He smiled. “The wizard Pettivox and the Underlord Crowe. They did not know the role they played, but they served our purpose. We supplied them with slowsilver and with the plans for their device. They were weakening the magic of Wellmet, making it ready for me. And they would have succeeded if not for you.”
I shook my head, trying to get the new thought into my brain. Crowe and Pettivox, and their device. That had all been part of another plan—Jaggus’s plan? “Why?” I asked. “I mean, why did you attack Wellmet’s magic?”
“I can think of a better question,” Jaggus said. His long, thin fingers stroked his locus magicalicus, which looked like a clot of blood in his hand. “Why were you brought here, my shadow? That question will exercise your clever brain, will it not?”
That question was already exercising my brain; I didn’t need Jaggus to ask it.
“Well, I will tell you,” Jaggus said. “I did not bring you here. It did.”
It?
On his shoulder, the white cat watched me with sharp eyes. Jaggus gave a small, secret smile. “Arhionvar brought you,” he said.
I stared at him. What was he saying?
“You understand, don’t you, little black shadow?” he said. “Arhionvar is a magic, just like the magic of your city. Arhionvar is here. It has chosen you, just as it chose me.”
Oh. The dread I’d felt outside the fortress. It was a magical being, he was saying. But magic without a city? That was wrong. It couldn’t be right. I didn’t understand, no matter what Jaggus said.
“Now, because Arhionvar wants you,” Jaggus said, “we will help you. To begin with, we will help you find another locus magicalicus.”
Another locus stone? I straightened up from the wall and stared at him.
Jaggus smiled. “Ah, I see that this interests you.”
It did.
“Pyrotechnics is your current method, I believe, as you have no locus stone. I will give you slowsilver. And tourmalifine, and whatever other materials you need. You may use my workroom.
I will teach you a finding spell, and you can use pyrotechnics to cast it.”
A finding spell? That was a very good idea. I didn’t know any finding spells; I wondered if Nevery did.
“We will find your locus stone. Wouldn’t that be nice? And then you can join us.”
I shook my head. Finding my locus stone would be more than nice. But I wasn’t going to join Jaggus and his dread magic.
Jaggus frowned. “Well, then.” On his shoulder, the white cat yawned, showing off long, sharp teeth. “I will give you a night to think about it. Arhionvar will persuade you.” He got to his feet. “Have a pleasant night, my little shadow.”
Taking the bright locus light with him, Jaggus and the guard captain left the room. The door swung closed and locked.
By the time they left, I was so tired my thoughts were whirling around inside my head.
So was the spellword the Wellmet magic had spoken to me.
Damrodellodesseldeshellarhionvarliardenliesh.
The dread magic’s name was Arhionvar. Arhionvar. Another part of the spellword. The magic of Wellmet had known about the dread magic all along. This was why it’d sent me to Desh. I was supposed to deal with Arhionvar.
I fell asleep thinking about magical beings without cities and finding spells and Jaggus’s strange cat.
I woke up in the blackest, darkest part of the night. The dark pushed up against my eyes.
Something was in the room with me. I could feel it, pressing down on me like cold stone until my breath came short. I sat up and backed into a corner and opened my eyes wide, straining against the dark, trying to see. Misery eels? I waited for the soft, icy touch of a misery eel on the back of my neck. Nothing happened; they didn’t come.
The air grew heavier, and the feeling of dread gathered in my stomach and spread outward into my arms and legs and up into my head until all I could think of was dread. I heard my own breath, gasping in and out, and behind it the roar of the room’s quiet. Was there a Shadow in the room with me?
No, not a Shadow. It was Arhionvar.
I curled into a ball in the corner for a long time, my eyes squeezed shut and my teeth clenched to keep from crying out loud. The dread magic watched me, and it waited. I felt like I’d been turned to stone.
Slowly, the watching dread went away, like a heavy hand being lifted from the top of my head. After a while, I caught my breath and stopped trembling, and sat up against the wall. The long slit of a window had turned gray—morning had come.
CHAPTER 33
In the dusty, gray light of morning, I heard the key in the lock and got to my feet.
It was Jaggus and his cat. He looked me over with a keen eye. “A bad night?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“Were you persuaded?” he asked.
I shook my head. No.
Jaggus ordered his chair again and sat down. He held his locus magicalicus in his hand. In the dim room it looked dull and dark. Darker than before, I thought, as if the rot in its center had spread. It meant Jaggus was rotting too, weak and ready to crumble. “A fine jewel,” Jaggus said. “Just as your locus magicalicus was.”
I nodded. Except that my stone hadn’t had a poisoned, rotten center.
“See?” Jaggus said. “You and I are just alike.”
I blinked. “No, we’re not.”
“Try not to be stupid, shadow boy. We are the same. Let me prove it to you. I have received reports. Your Lady Rowan has left you behind and fled back to Wellmet. You have been exiled from your city by the very people who should be your colleagues and friends. Your own master has disavowed you. You are alone, are you not?”
I shrugged.
Jaggus frowned. “Before you became a wizard. You were alone then, were you not? The most miserable, lonely person in your entire city?” He nodded. “When Arhionvar came to Desh, the magic of the city was weak from years of slowsilver mining. Arhionvar knew it could take the city, but it needed a wizard to do its work in the world. It chose me above every other wizard in the city because my family sold me into the service of a master whom I hated. Your Wellmet magic chose you, shadow boy. Not because you were a great sorcerer, but because you are just like me. You are alone.”
While he spoke, my heart started pounding and I leaned back against the wall because my knees were shaking. He was right. Before I’d picked Nevery’s pocket on the streets of the Twilight, I had been, sure as sure, the most alone person in all of Wellmet.
“And now your own magic has cast you out,” Jaggus said. The darkness grew in his eyes, blotting out the blue, and his voice got deeper. “You are alone again. But Arhionvar wishes to take you up. Join us, and you can be a sorcerer. You will not have to be alone anymore.”
I shook my head. “Wellmet didn’t cast me out. It sent me.”
“You are lying to yourself if you think so,” said Jaggus. “You have no locus magicalicus. You are useless to your magic.”
I gulped down a sudden surge of fright. “I won’t join you, Jaggus,” I said.
He leaned forward, his eyes empty windows. “I can see, my shadow,” Jaggus said, “that you must think further on this. Arhionvar will visit you for another night or two. I will come back when you are persuaded.”
That second night alone in the dark was worse than the first. I was like a wet cloth, and the dread magic picked me up and wrung me out until I was dry, and then stretched me out and carefully tore me into rags. It got into my head and made me think of all the bad things that had ever happened to me. Exile from Wellmet, Heartsease a ruin, Benet hurt. Dee dead and cold. The cell full of misery eels under Pettivox’s house. Nevery saying he didn’t need an apprentice. Shivering in cold doorways with nothing to eat. Being led into a room with a bed in it and seeing Black Maggie, my mother, lying still and white and cold. Leaving me alone.
No. The bird was on its way to Nevery. I was not alone. I pushed away the rags and bits of memory and fixed my thoughts on the bird. The connwaer, a black shadow swooping over the golden, thorny desert. Then over the grasslands and through the dark forest, pausing to perch on a high branch to rest. Then on to Wellmet. It flapped up to a window at the academicos and went tap-tap-tap with its beak against the glass. The window cracked open and it hopped inside.
Morning came at last. I uncurled myself from my corner, stiff and aching in my bones. I didn’t know if I could last another night like that one.
The day got later and later. I couldn’t stop thinking about the dread magic. What would happen if I gave in and let it have me? I’d be like Jaggus, was what. My own dread grew and grew. I went to the door and checked it, but it was locked, and then I paced around the room and checked it again. Still locked. Curse Half-finger for taking my lockpick wires.
Night was coming.
I sat with my back to the wall with my arms wrapped around my knees, and watched the window slit. The sky outside, the narrow slice of it that I could see, grew darker, but it was too early for night. Then I heard a rumble of thunder, far away, and rain started. It came down hard, like a waterfall, and even in the high-up tower room I could smell the wet desert. The dry dust in the room settled.
At the window came a flap and flutter, and the black bird tumbled in. It hopped to its feet and shook a spatter of rain off its wings. Then it flew down to the stone floor.
Its quill was longer this time. My hand shaking, I untied it carefully, turned it upside down, and tapped it. A roll of damp paper fell out, and also two wires bent in half—lockpick wires.
The letter was from Nevery, of course, but the rain had gotten into the quill, leaving the letter nothing but smudges. That was all right. I could guess what it said.
CHAPTER 34
I had the whole night before anyone would come looking for me. As soon as the sun set, I brought the lockpick wires over to the door. I’d heard the lock open and close enough times to know exactly what it looked like inside. Quick hands, steady hands, I picked the lock. I eased the door open and peered out into the hallway. It was empty and dark. After slipping out the door, I slunk down the hallway, quick-quiet on my bare feet. Then down some stairs, across another hallway, and down again, until I got to the ground floor.
Nobody was about. I felt the heaviness of the dread magic gathering. I wondered if all the human guards hid themselves away at night when the magic came out. I wasn’t sure about the Shadows, though.
My legs were shaking, and I couldn’t quite catch my breath. Not enough to eat and not enough sleep. I stayed close to the walls in case I stumbled, and crept through empty stone rooms on the ground floor until I found a small doorway at the end of a passage that let out at the edge of the courtyard.
Every thief knows, when planning to steal something, that the first thing you do is find another way out of the place you’re sneaking into. That way, if the job goes wrong, you may not nick the thing you came for, but at least you don’t get caught at it.
Jaggus still had his locus magicalicus, and he and the dread magic were planning some kind of attack against the Wellmet magic. They must have tried weakening the Desh magic with slowsilver mining, just like they’d weakened the Wellmet magic with Crowe’s prisoning device. I had to stop them if I could. But first I needed an escape route.
I opened the door onto the courtyard and looked out. The rain had cleared off, and the clouds had thinned enough that the moon, a little off full, shone through, making the night shadowy, not completely dark. A good night for creeping around.
I crept across the courtyard until I came to the wall, and then I followed it away from the main gate, hoping I’d find a smaller door, one less likely to be guarded. Sure enough, I found one, down at the end of a passageway through the thick wall.
The lock on the outside door was a simple lock. After picking it, I put the lockpick wires into my pocket and cracked the door open.
The door was jerked out of my hand and swung wide.
A shadow loomed up before me. “Be still,” growled a deep voice, and then a cold sword edge rested against my neck.
I stayed still. Why did they have guards on the outside?
“Wait,” said Rowan’s voice. “Conn, is that you?”
I laughed. I’d thought she’d be halfway to Wellmet by now. “Hello, Ro.”
Argent was the one holding the sword; it glinted in the faint moonlight. Rowan was just a shadow behind him. She pushed Argent’s sword arm down, swept past him, and grabbed me into a fierce hug.
“You’re all right?” she asked, letting me go.
I nodded.
“Don’t ever do anything like that ever again, Connwaer,” she said.
Argent muscled in between us and grabbed me by the scruff of the neck. “I should cut your throat right now,” he growled, “for all the trouble you’ve caused.”
“He has caused us trouble,” Rowan said. “But he came to meet us. That’s something, Argent. Let him go, and we can be off.”
Argent let me go.
“Ro, did you bring the guards with you?” I asked.
Her face looked pale in the moonlight. “Conn, we’re all here. We’ve been searching for a way in for hours. But we didn’t have anyone who could pick the lock on this door.” She gave me her slant-smiling look. “We’re leaving Desh, and we came this way because we guessed you might be imprisoned here. Come along.”
I shook my head. “I can’t.”
Argent growled. He still had his sword out. Kerrn stepped up beside him.
“Hello, Kerrn,” I said, glad to see her. “You’re all right?”
“I am well enough,” she said. “No more talking; we must go.”
I stepped back into the doorway. “I can’t leave,” I told them.
They were silent, staring at me.
“You don’t have to come,” I said quickly. “But I have to find Jaggus and destroy his locus magicalicus, and if I can’t do that, I have to steal it again.” That was the only way I could think of to deal with Arhionvar as the magic of Wellmet wanted me to. Without Jaggus and his locus magicalicus, Arhionvar wouldn’t have a wizard to do things for it, like order the mining of slowsilver in Desh to destroy its magic or make Shadows to attack Wellmet.
More silence. Then, “I suppose you have a good reason to do this,” Rowan said, her voice shaking.
I nodded. “The same reasons as before. You could wait out here. I’ll try to hurry.” I thought of something. “Can I borrow a sword?”
Kerrn huffed out a breath that sounded like a laugh. Then she winced. “I will come with you, thief, if the Lady Rowan permits it.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s go.” I felt the dread magic swirling around. We needed to hurry.
“We’ll all come,” Rowan said firmly.
“What is the guard contingent?” Kerrn asked.
I thought back. “At least three guards, and one of them is Half-finger, the captain. There might be more that I didn’t see. And some Shadows, I’m not sure
how many. We have to get past them to get to Jaggus.” I decided not to tell them about Arhionvar; it would take too long to explain.
Argent went to bring up the guards. Rowan stepped up next to me and handed me a sheathed sword on a belt; she wore her own sword at her waist.
“Would Magister Nevery approve of what you’re doing, Conn?” Rowan asked quietly.
She didn’t know about the birds or my letters from Nevery. “He would, Ro, sure as sure,” I said. My stomach growled. “D’you have anything to eat?”
She gave a half laugh. Kerrn gave her something, and she passed it along to me. A bag with food in it, cheese in a roll of bread. I took a big bite. She held out her canteen. I took it and had a long drink. Much better.
I heard the shuff, shuff of footsteps on sand, and Argent came up with seven guards. He’d left three with Nimble, he said, who refused to come along.
“You lead,” Kerrn said.
I gulped down the last of the roll and cheese and hung my sword belt over my shoulder. “Be as quiet as you can,” I said, and led them back into the fortress.
The guards wouldn’t have made good thieves because their footsteps echoed on the stone floors and they kept whispering questions to each other, and to Kerrn.
Jaggus, I guessed, would have his workroom in the tall tower in the middle of the fortress. It would likely have only one door in, and if any guards were around they would be there.
We rattled around the ground floor rooms for a bit, like noisy shadows, until we found a wide staircase leading up. A lone werelight turned low glowed from the top of the stairs. I headed toward it.
I got to the top step and paused; the guards and Rowan and Argent waited on the stairs behind me. At the top of the stairs was a wide landing. The werelight lantern hung from a hook beside a door, casting a small circle of greenish, wavery light onto the floor. Everything else was dark.
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