Sorcerer's Legacy

by Janny Wurts

  Punished into a frame where only the absurd became tolerable, Elienne laughed. Mirette’s mouth opened in shocked protest. She whirled and fled the room, leaving Elienne alone, weeping, by the window.

  * * *

  The morning Kennaird chose to apply for continuation of his training, sunlight through mullioned windows patterned elongated yellow diamonds across the floor of Taroith’s study. The Sorcerer sat at his desk, chin rested on laced fingers. A yellow tabby cleaned her paws by his elbow, untroubled by the concern that furrowed her master’s brow. Though the spring equinox was nearly come, the weather had not broken. Icicles still runged the eaves. Yet from the yard below his window, Taroith heard the crack of quarterstaffs interspersed with an occasional thump or shout as a blow landed. Darion was at practice, again, though the ground was still frozen iron-hard.

  Taroith sighed. The cat looked up, then resumed her washing. Through the long winter he had seen the relationship between Prince and Consort progress from stiff to strained. Darion was left preoccupied and temperamental; and Elienne had withdrawn inside herself until even rice powder could not hide the imprint of the unhappiness that left circles beneath her eyes. Though the court gossiped openly, Taroith had not interfered. Now, with the Consort’s pregnancy near term, he questioned the soundness of his judgment.

  Outside, a quarterstaff smacked padded leather. Someone applauded, and the Prince’s voice called challenge to another opponent. Listening, Taroith reflected grimly that Darion would be the first heir to carry bruises at a peacetime coronation. The thought spurred his concern. In bringing Elienne to Pendaire, Ielond had initiated a master plan to preserve Darion’s succession. Everywhere, Taroith had encountered evidence of the Guardian’s handiwork, not least in the instant and undeniable rapport between Consort and Prince, which, broken, was starving them both. Though he had implicit faith in Ielond’s judgment, he wondered increasingly what had gone amiss.

  The wall clock chimed the hour, and Taroith frowned. Kennaird was late. The man’s haphazard habits had always been irritating. As Master of the League, he had granted the apprentice an appointment strictly out of a sense of duty.

  The flat crack of quarterstaffs resumed beyond the window. Between the interplay of blows, Taroith heard a running step in the hall, followed by a sharp knock. The door opened.

  Kennaird stepped in, red-faced and breathless. “I’m late. Master, will you accept my apology?” He pulled nervously at the sleeve of his rust-colored jerkin.

  “I would hear your reason, first.” Taroith gestured to the chair across from his desk. “Sit. You’re going to be here for a while.”

  Kennaird’s eyes widened until full rings of white showed around the blue. “You’re going to—” Taroith’s expression stopped him. He blinked and dumped himself into the chair, startling the tabby from the desk top. “I forgot the time, Master.”

  Taroith leaned on his elbows and tried to be sympathetic. “I can take nothing for granted, Kennaird. As Ielond’s apprentice, you were Ielond’s responsibility. If you would become mine, I must gauge for myself precisely how far your training has progressed. There is no better way than to repeat the examination for candidacy. Do you object?”

  “No.” Kennaird pushed knuckled hands beneath his cuffs as though chilled. “No, not at all. I just hadn’t expected another soul-search, even as a formality.”

  “This is no formality.” Taroith rose and gently nudged the tabby away from his calf. “The only difference, I hope, will be the fact we require no drug to align your consciousness. You’ll be able to resolve your focus?”

  “Of course,” said Kennaird, affronted. “I studied nine years under Ielond.”

  Taroith withheld comment. After nearly a decade under one of Pendaire’s finest Masters, Kennaird showed remarkably poor progress. Unsettled, the Sorcerer left the desk and positioned himself behind Kennaird, his back to the sunlit window. Had the apprentice simply been slow, or had Ielond deliberately held him back? Either way, Taroith knew he would shortly find out. He placed his hands on Kennaird’s shoulders. “Resolve your focus.”

  Obediently, Kennaird concentrated. A faint, greenish glimmer presently illuminated the air above his head. Taroith waited briefly for the force to brighten. When it did not, he silently summoned his own focus and directed its harsh white light through Kennaird’s pallid glow. The apprentice flinched under his touch.

  “Steady.” Taroith adjusted the balance of power. The beam from his focus passed through Kennaird’s like lamplight filtered by lenses and caused a pattern projected upon the floor. Though it was a geometric abstract, the Master Sorcerer’s trained perception could read from the configuration the motives and the events that comprised Kennaird’s life since birth.

  The effect upon the apprentice was comparable to having the mind’s most secret recesses exposed and minutely searched. Taroith felt Kennaird warm under his hands. He knew his subject would shortly suffer as aftereffects a headache, and perhaps nausea, and worked swiftly to forestall as much discomfort as possible.

  “... second time you’ve scored,” said Darion, voice dimmed by concentration. “I must be tiring. Can you make one more bout?”

  Taroith did not hear the opponent’s reply. Sensation and sound left him. The design encompassed his entire awareness, surrounded him as a sculptured prism of light. Almost at once, he spotted imbalances in the symmetry. Alarmed, he probed, and discovered more. Ielond, what have you done? he thought, embarrassed to look further. Kennaird was not, and never had been, qualified for League apprenticeship. Taroith faced the fact that Ielond would not have overlooked so gross an error. He had chosen to train Kennaird himself; there would be a reason.

  Grimly the Sorcerer conjoined with the pattern; by tracing Kennaird’s instabilities through past events, he hoped he would find his colleague’s purpose. The scenes he traversed impressed him with trivia: a petty squabble over a toy that ended with a young brother’s bloody nose; a misdealt card; plates filched from the palace kitchens; and later, a maid maneuvered into a tryst she had not wanted. She had escaped with nothing worse than embarrassment, but gossip inferred otherwise. Distastefully, Taroith searched for reason amid a tortuous maze of small-minded actions. Over the course of an entire life, he found none.

  He surfaced at last, preoccupied by dilemma, and allowed his soulfocus to dissipate. Kennaird stirred. Taroith lifted his hands, silenced by the scope of his discovery.

  Ashen-faced and groggy, the apprentice pressed damp palms to his temples. “That was more unpleasant than I recalled.”

  Taroith settled on the window seat. The courtyard below lay empty, dull gray with frozen puddles under the noon sun. As Master of the League, he could never sanction Kennaird. Yet he was reluctant to refute the man’s apprenticeship publicly before he had spent more thought on the subject. He had far too much regard for Ielond’s vision to discard anomaly as a mistake.

  “Well?” said Kennaird. Unsettled nerves and a savage headache made him cross.

  The tabby leaped lightly to the windowsill. Taroith stroked her absently and tried to smooth the gravity of the situation without arousing suspicion. “I’ve seen enough to know how far you progressed under Ielond. After Elienne’s child is born, we’ll discuss the matter further in depth.”

  Kennaird’s mouth gaped. He stared, resentment tightening his hands on the chair until tendons quivered beneath his cufls. “That’s all? You perform soul-search for half a morning, and have nothing more to say?”

  Taroith rose and unlatched the door with dispatch. “We’ll begin, I think, with the subject of courtesy.”

  Kennaird swallowed. “I’m sorry. I had no right to question.”

  “Ask the kitchen for broth,” said Taroith with an effort at kindness. The apprentice would probably be wretchedly ill most of the day. He offered his arm to steady Kennaird’s first few steps.

  “Thank you.” The apprentice pushed
sweat-drenched hair from his brow. “I’ll be fine.” Yet his course as he departed down the corridor was anything but straight.

  Taroith saw him out of sight and left at once for the Library. There he requested to see Ielond’s writ. “The original,” he insisted, “not a copy.”

  The Archivist vanished into the stacks, grumbling, and reappeared presently with a jeweled slip case. “Were you aware his Grace had to consult this very document for the name of his intended?”

  “No.” Taroith accepted the parchment, the seals rough against dry fingers. “Should I be?”

  He carried the document to a carrel and blew out the wax candle in its glass stand. Taroith had not come to consult the official words of state inked in Ielond’s bold hand. Enveloped in thick shadow, he focused his inner awareness and flicked one thumb down the left margin, much as he had that day Elienne had arrived in the Grand Council Chamber. At his touch, a row of glyphs flashed like starlight on the page. Thin as thread, and fainter than their original appearance, the message was still cipherable. In the dim silence of the Library, Taroith reread the lines Ielond had left for his eye alone.

  Though you discover discrepancy, allow my choice to stand. I have seen the course of my decisions. Have faith. Darion will legally inherit.

  Slowly the message faded. Taroith ran cramped fingers through his hair and sighed. He had encountered discrepancies enough to undermine the stability of the entire Kingdom. Elienne’s ancestry was straight out of legend. His Grace could father no children, as the Sorcerer had seen the night he performed the healing for drug overdose. And now Kennaird proved hopelessly incompetent for a post he had held for nine years. Where, thought Taroith, did faith end, and duty begin?

  That moment, the stuffy silence of the Library was shattered by the resounding peal of bells from the tower of the East Keep. Taroith started upright.

  “Damn it to Eternity!” The bells could signal only one event: Elienne had gone into labor. Taroith rose and banged his knee in the dark. She was early, by a full week, according to the League astrologer’s conception chart.

  “Discrepancy!” Taroith muttered. He abandoned the writ where it lay. “I call it mayhem!”

  Chapter 13

  Backsplice

  LATE IN the afternoon, the endless tolling of the bells in the east tower of the keep was joined by sweeter tones from the belfry of Ma’Diere’s Sanctuary. Although Kennaird knew the added peals signified the arrival of a new heir to the Crown, he took no joy in the occasion. From the lofty height of the window in Ielond’s study, he gazed sourly downward at the guard captain who strode across the arch above the gate, arms clutched around a massive bundle of pennants. The fellow paused beside a leaning row of halberds, the owners of which industriously cleared flag halyards stiffened with ice.

  Kennaird shivered. No fire had burned in the grate since Ielond’s death, yet he made no move to lay kindling. Below, the first of a multitude of banners flapped slowly skyward, gold and black, and sewn with the royal stag. Cheers arose from the crowd in the bailey. Surrounded by mounted lancers, a tabarded official waited with a coffer; tradition granted largesse to the city’s poor, that all might celebrate the birth of Elienne’s son.

  Kennaird retreated from the window before the coins were distributed. Noise only added to his headache. But the sound of the rejoicing populace disturbed him even among the still, dust-layered rows of Ielond’s books. The crease between his sandy brows deepened into a frown of displeasure. Once the library of his former Master had provided a refuge from the dissatisfaction which had galled him since childhood. But now the place aroused nothing but emptiness and the torment of remembered happiness.

  Kennaird touched a familiar calf spine in sudden longing. Something had gone wrong during his appointment with Taroith that morning. He knew the Sorcerer’s oblique dismissal masked refusal. Ielond had misled him. He would not be granted training to complete his Mastership.

  Spurred by a bitter pang of loss, Kennaird swore and hammered the shelf with his fist. The blow raised a dense plume of dust in the air. He stumbled back, choking. The carpet absorbed his enraged step.

  “Why did you lie to me?” he shouted, as though Ielond could hear.

  Immutable stillness answered. The gold-leafed titles of ten thousand books taunted him with awareness of fulfillment he would never own. The void left an ache. Kennaird clenched shaking hands and whispered, “You promised.”

  Yet, in truth, Ielond had not, memory reminded. “I offer you the chance to study,” the Sorcerer had said to the boy who knelt at his feet. He had never mentioned Mastership, though for years Kennaird had served apprenticeship under the assumption League investiture would be his. The Master had never seen fit to correct him, even when he voiced his ambition openly.

  “That’s as good as a lie.” Silence swallowed the statement. Agonized by his misery, Kennaird sank onto the battered wooden stool by the desk, as he often had when Ielond was alive. The brown quill pen still stood in the ebony stand, though mice had gnawed the feather end. The Sorcerer had used that same nib to inscribe the writ which granted Darion his Consort. Ielond had spent his life to ensure his ward’s inheritance. Kennaird cradled his chin on folded arms, resentful. “Did you leave no legacy for me, Master?” he said to the tenantless chair.

  That moment, he discovered the box. It lay as though waiting for him, the shine of black lacquered enamel out of place amid dust-filmed surroundings. The top bore, in white, the same glyph Ielond had used to verify the writ.

  Infused by a thrill of excitement, Kennaird straightened. Often as he had visited, he knew the layout of the desk by heart. The box had never been there before. Driven by curiosity and a giddy rush of hope, he reached out. As his hand touched the edge of the box, he felt the familiar, cold prickle of sorcery.

  I am your legacy, the box informed through mindspeech. Unsurprised and trembling with renewed expectation, Kennaird tilted back the lid. Nestled within scarlet velvet lay a ring of gold, cunningly wrought in the shape of a scaled creature out of myth.

  I am knowledge, whispered the ring to his innermost soul.

  Kennaird hesitated. The glitter of the metal absorbed his conscious awareness like the magnetic pull of a compass. The beast shape seemed almost alive, so perfectly was it crafted. Carefully he lifted the box. Tiny, slitted eyes glared from beneath a spiked crest, and the interlocked loop of tail and taloned limbs was extraordinarily accurate. A current of uneasiness welled beneath his excitement. Never in memory had Ielond wrought any spell with a demon’s form.

  I am the completion of your training, the ring replied, as though in answer.

  The words bounced like echoes in Kennaird’s mind. Headache forgotten, he laid the box flat on the desktop, but did not withdraw his hand. “Explain,” he said softly.

  I am the key to Mastership, yours by right. I was left in this place by Timesplice for you to accept or reject, as your will dictates.

  “But the demon,” Kennaird whispered.

  The ring cut him short. Power can be used for good, or ill. The user chooses. A body of knowledge that contains the secret of Time would be poorly guarded were it left in a form an enemy might identify.

  Kennaird licked his lips and tasted sweat. Although Faisix was imprisoned, dissidents remained who would rather Jieles inherited in Darion’s stead, a Master Sorcerer among them. And in the hand of one such as Emrith, the key to the arts of Timesplice could even now disrupt the succession Ielond had died to preserve. Kennaird studied the ring’s sinuous contours, as though his eyes could somehow unravel logic and reveal a hidden flaw beneath the ring’s smooth answer. Its reason had not entirely eased his distrust. He shifted position, conscious he wanted to close the box and ponder the matter further, yet reluctant to release his hold upon hope. The encounter with Taroith had introduced the joyless, bitter vista his life would become were his training suspended. Uncertainty opened like a wo
und in his mind.

  Kennaird lifted his hand. The box’s shiny finish lay marred by a film of fingerprints as he paced nervously to the window once again. The bailey was crammed with townsfolk. Above, thin, high clouds smeared the sky’s edge, harbinger of thaw and spring rains, yet a band of street children burrowed like rabbits through the mob, towing baskets of paper lanterns to light the square by night. Carpenters labored over construction of a platform for musicians. There would be dancing, Kennaird remembered, but the celebration of the populace seemed transient and shallow beside the realities which hedged him. Without training, he was nobody and nothing. The ignominy galled.

  Kennaird’s fist tightened against the graveyard cold of the sill. He knew, then, with the simple pleasures of ordinary men spread like a tableau before him, that he lacked the humility to endure such a life. Having tasted the wide, solitary spaces of a Sorcerer’s power, he could never again be content with common toil and marriage as his lot. The ring won him, in guilt, like a street whore’s promise: desire assuaged without threat of rejection. But the price no longer mattered.

  Kennaird returned to the desk, determined despite the hollowness in the pit of his stomach. He grasped the box with roughness born of self-loathing. Weakness, not strength, founded his decision. He knew, and accepted the fact. Yet having chosen his course, it angered him to discover he was not master enough to silence the whimper of his conscience.

  I am your legacy, the gold soothed as he reopened the lid. With a trembling hand he scooped the ring from the blood-dark velvet. The demon curled like ice in his palm, bright with the sparkle of highlights. He thrust it on his finger.

  The ring slid into place smoothly as water. Kennaird experienced a sharp, thornlike sting as sorcery entered his mind. An arctic tingle coursed through his body. The sensation did not surprise him; he had anticipated the ring would establish linkage of one form or another.