The Daemon Prism: A Novel of the Collegia Magica

by Carol Berg

  We retired to the study and de Cuvier asked for brandy. I kept to tea, as I needed nothing that would cloud my judgment or dull my perceptions. Only at that late hour did the old man ask what had happened during the previous night, and what was likely to happen during the coming one.

  “I’ve questions of my own first,” I said. “How did you find me?”

  “As I told you, the folk in Bardeu—”

  “But what led you there?”

  “Ten years I’ve sought help to silence these dreams. The Camarilla said magic could not affect dreams, though some years later, a mage came to ask about the dream and the emerald. He couldn’t help, but told me of a mage who had practiced mind healing in Bardeu, but then went off to court, caught up in royal politics.” His voice slowed. Wary. “Indeed, your name was all over Merona. None denied your talents. But I decided you weren’t one to be interested in me. Instead, I traveled up to Jarasco, where a Temple tetrarch named Beltan de Ferrau is said to cast out daemons. He claimed my visions daemon-wrought, but his incense and chanting did naught to help. He warned me to stay clear of you. But I’ve got desperate, and your name is ever rattling in my head as the only help I’ve not tried.”

  De Cuvier had heard no mention of the Tyregian Emeralds or Seeing Stones or Maldivea in his long search for answers. I didn’t like hearing that some daemon-obsessed tetrarch knew of me.

  “Last night I witnessed your dream,” I said. “It’s no daemon’s doing. It’s spell-wrought.” I told him how I’d unraveled it before its climax. “Should it appear again, I can approach it with a bit more vigor. You should be quit of it tonight.” I didn’t mention the woman’s interaction with me.

  Tired from the day’s activities, de Cuvier made his way to bed early. I stood and sat, paced and fidgeted. It wasn’t de Cuvier’s ultimatum caused my fretfulness; I believed I could preclude his self-murder. More like it was my own interrupted sleep.

  When sufficient time had passed, I again settled myself at the grenadier’s side. After what seemed but a moment, the yellow sparks flashed and stretched into snakes of citrine glass. The portal opened to pearly mist and moldering damp.

  The woman beckoned and offered the Stone. Her eyes were deep gray, struck with silver, and she did not weep. “See,” she said. “That which you most desire can be yours if you’ll but rescue me. Please, take my gift.”

  Her brow was finely drawn. The form revealed by the rippling gown was womanly and ripe. But it was the gemstone drew me, as strong wine draws a drunkard. It seemed only natural that I was transported to her side and took her smooth hand. My shoulders strained as I rowed her across the milky water, my useless hand bound to the oar.

  My hand? Was de Cuvier dreaming or was I?

  Then we were ashore, and I looked deep into the Stone. Once again the veils of night and phantasm fell from my dead eyes, and the world lay before me…a library vaster than the collection at Castelle Escalon…the squalid alley where I had sought healing for my ruined hand and found my life instead…rolling waves of dewy grass…

  From a distance, a woman sang a cheerful ditty, “The heart of a man charts a four-legged course.…” White-hot sunlight bathed my shoulders as I labored to build a fence to contain a horse that was naught but bones.

  Three people stood outside the sunlit fence. I moved closer to see who they were. A short, balding man with shoulders like Coverge’s mountains and forearms like cannons whirled round and halted my steps.

  “Da?” How long had it been since I’d looked on Galdo de Raghinne? Seventeen years since my father had last laid a fist and a curse on me. Why was he here?

  He vanished in the sun glare.

  A slight, dark-haired man sat on the fence jotting notes in a leather-bound journal. A cane was propped on the fence beside him.

  “Portier?” He peered at me over his spectacles, as if he’d heard me, then faded.

  Left alone was a small woman, shading her eyes as she gazed into the sun. The wind tugged wisps and curls from her thick braid.

  I opened my mouth to call her name. I needed to see her face, to read what lay there when she promised to come back—

  Hold, fool. What’s happening here? I was immersed in de Cuvier’s dream, my sight restored. But no dream had this clarity. And the grenadier did not know these three.

  Though my spirit hungered to look on her, I did not will the woman to turn. Rising dread forbade me even to speak her name. Names were rich with keirna and could be woven into spellwork.

  The meadow and its occupants faded into a green haze, and I once again stared deep into the great emerald.

  The world lay in shadow. Gloomed cities were crumbled to ruin. Towns and villages were barricaded in dread of what roamed in the deeper dark. People thronged the roadways through charred fields and vineyards, dragging scarecrow children—a tide of fear. Yet life had ever been so for many of the world’s people. It was their eyes that shivered me. For some in the crowds, their eyes did not reflect their souls, but only empty hunger. And for some, hidden among the others so none could pick them out by shape or garb, the eyes were alien to the bodies that bore them—eyes of glass or ice. Not human. White frost curled from their mouths. They breathed malevolence as a dragon breathes fire.

  A tall, comely young man with golden skin and hair that fell about his shoulders like strands of gold and gray silk walked among the crowd as graceful as a court dancer. He wore a long coat of a color I could not name, and it shifted with his stride as if in a goodly breeze, revealing a plain, well-used sword. He glanced over his shoulder at me, the hint of a smile on his radiant visage. For the duration of that glance, everything else faded into insignificance. Then he turned away and vanished into the crowd, leaving behind a faint scent of rosemary and ash.…

  I’d no use for folk who allowed hopes of angels or fear of daemons to shape their lives. Nor did I heed the blather of philosophers who claimed they could expose the secrets of faith and reason in the truth of mathematics and planetary motion. But I knew what I saw in that dream, and I could only name it as de Cuvier did. Unnatural. Evil. Save, perhaps, for the enigmatic young man, who seemed no more a part of the scene than I was.

  Revulsion spurred my magic. Goaded by the enchantress’s wicked laughter, I wrenched my attention from the gem to the portal and its magical construction. I twined my own power in the structure like a grapple and tore the spell-wrought thing apart. With an explosion of yellow fire, the world was pitch once again.

  Finn said later that he heard me cry out in the night. He likely did, but there was no help he could have given me.

  WHEN DE CUVIER AWOKE IN the predawn stillness, I was not asleep. He yawned and sat up.

  “How passed your night?” I asked.

  “Ah, master sorcerer! ’Twas a miracle! No dream at all this night!”

  His enthusiasm but affirmed my conclusions. The night’s vision was not de Cuvier’s, but my own.

  “Good.”

  “So ye think I’m done with it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sonjeur, if this be true, I owe you my life. I’ll not forget!”

  He agreed to stay over one more night to test my theory.

  “I do have a few more questions,” I said.

  “But if it’s gone—”

  “I collect such information in lieu of payment.” That, he understood.

  After eating, we adjourned to the study, snaring Finn to take notes. “Has the dream always been the same, identical in every detail?”

  He puffed and blew. “Not precisely. Small things might have changed over the years.”

  “Give me examples.”

  “At the beginning, ’twas exactly as I remembered. Her so sweet and sad, beautiful as an angel, begging me and offering me the Stone. I’d look into the Stone and see…well…my desires. As I’ve told you. No wickedness. I would see women, natural women of my own sort. But it was mostly soldiering. Battles. Victory flags flying. Then it began to change; I’d still see fine things—house
s or treasure that I’d earned. But the battlefields were littered with Sabrian dead, the flesh rotting right off their bones, or burnt villages. And in these two years past, it’s got worse. I’ve not the words to describe it, save that it wasn’t just battlefields anymore, but cities and streets and villages and desolation. Dead men everywhere and birds pecking out my boys’ eyes, only…”

  I leaned forward, as if to squeeze it from him. “Only what? What about the eyes?”

  “The eyes weren’t dead. Someone was still looking out of them, but it wasn’t the men I knew. It was like the jewel would steal my boys’ souls.”

  Knots uncurled inside me, and I settled back into the chair. I wasn’t wholly mad. “Go on.”

  “The sights came more twisted and wicked, like the change when deviltry is done by a man, rather than a child. A boy would think that pulling wings off of flies or trapping a bird in a barn is a fair thing to do for nasty amusement, but when he comes a man, he might find the same fun gouging the eyes from a prisoner, or breaking the arms of an injured man on a battlefield so’s he can’t crawl out of the sun.”

  Exactly so. Two years. As always my mind reverted to Mont Voilline and the rending of the Veil. Connections. I who had lived half in the aether all my life dared not discount connections in the realms of magic and dream.

  “When did the comely young man appear?” I described the fair young swordsman.

  “Never saw any like that. Certainly not in the middle of the ruin. Only dead maybe…”

  He wasn’t dead. Nor did I believe him any more ephemeral than the woman in white.

  Though we talked an hour more, I came to no additional conclusions. I’d witnessed an extraordinary enchantment that seemed singularly focused on eliciting an active response and that constantly adapted itself to the dreamer’s life. Magic. Astonishing, incomprehensible magic.

  Something else had occurred to me as I waited for the grenadier to wake, exploring the flimsy links of a soldier’s obsession and the experiences of the past six years. “You said a mage had come asking you about the dream and told you about me. When was that? Did he give you his name?”

  He considered that carefully. “ ’Twas three or four year ago. He said his name, but I don’t recall it. Wore a collar like yours and claimed he came from the Camarilla. A tall man. Gray-haired. Well spoken, talking of sorcery and how important it was to keep the world in balance. The kind of man soldiers would fight for, though he might have a plan to send ’em right off a cliff.”

  Great gods of the universe! He’d given me a perfect description of Kajetan, Portier’s despicable mentor, who had been traveling to all sorts of places during the years of our partnership, who had raged when Lianelle de Vernase’s death and her sister Anne’s interference had foiled some plan to bring “a new source of power” to our conspiracy. Of a sudden the connections I’d seen were no longer flimsy. Was de Cuvier’s dream another loose end from Germond de Gautier’s and Kajetan de Saldemerre’s plotting? Or was the dream’s sudden resurgence a trumpet heralding a

  new assault? There were not curses enough in the world to suffice for my dismay.

  I did not sleep that afternoon. On this day, my preparation must be to empty myself of desire, of sympathy, of curiosity, stripping away everything in me that might influence the dream. Finn and I patched the stable roof, abandoning our guest to the company of his horse. Finn was so relieved at not being trapped in the study that he was practically babbling. All to the good. I didn’t want to think. To the grenadier’s surprise, after a supper of eggs and mushrooms, I suggested a game of stratagems.

  “But how—?”

  “I keep it in my head. Just tell me your moves.”

  My teacher, Salvator, had taught me the game in my first days with him, forcing me to play it blind long years before that would become a necessity. It required absolute focus. Ignorant and undisciplined, I’d come near running away because of it. But no training had stood me in better stead. De Cuvier was a good player—not very imaginative, but solid. After a few moves, he did not hold back. I worked at it harder, so I won.

  When the game was over, de Cuvier bade me divine grace and headed to bed. Rain gusted against the windows. I pulled my chair close to Finn’s hearth fire and forced my mind to remain fallow. I wanted to go naked into that night.

  The clock struck tenth hour. Enough was enough. As on the previous nights I settled myself in the bedside chair. For some two hours I watched with the grenadier and saw naught but soldiers, horses, and women. I took my hand away, settled back in the chair, and let myself go to sleep. After a sun’s turning without, sleep…and the dream…came quickly.

  “Help me,” she said in a whisper that could draw tears from stone. “I’ve been here so long. Please, you who hear me—come!” I saw no yellow sparks or portal, only the angelic vision and her wrenching grief and black eyes, weeping.

  Across the milky pond the green gem sparkled, beckoning, resting on her pale hand. It promised to reverse the hateful future awaiting me, to repair the damage and rid me of the fire that lanced my nerves every time I strained to see. It promised me power: speaking in dreams, augury, wisdom, magic I had never imagined.

  My preparation held. Because I had made myself empty, I could resist the compulsion to go to her. I refused to look into the Stone, or regain my sight, or in any way follow the path laid out for those who dreamt this dream.

  In a shattering of yellow-orange light, the mournful weeping ceased and the fog vanished, as if blown away by the same wind that howled under the eaves at the remotest edges of my awareness. All that remained were chaotic patterns of light and shadow, as if I sat in the eye of a cyclone.

  “So you’re clever as well as powerful,” she said from out of the chaos, her voice no longer soft and pleading, but edged with brass and wariness. “Long have I awaited a savior. When the dreary soldier stumbled into my prison, I believed Fortuna Regina had favored me at last. But the divina had her little jest, dispatching such a priggish fellow. So disappointing. But now…Tell me, are you wizard or godling? How did you confound the dream?”

  Being in my own dream, I could not control what I did beyond the emptiness I had created of myself. Evidently that was enough, for I did not speak.

  “Tell me!” Venom laced her rising temper.

  But I had nothing in me with which to answer her.

  “You hide yourself from me, cowardly. But it’s too late, blind man. I know who and what you are. And understand this: I do not like teasing.”

  Blackness shuttered my dream sight.

  I jerked awake. De Cuvier snored softly. A steady rain spattered the roof. I sensed it was still night but wasn’t sure until the clock struck third hour. I laid a hand on his head and searched for enchantment. This time, the spellwork was truly gone, the structure shattered as cleanly as I had destroyed a thousand other spells.

  Grabbing a cloak, I trudged across the soggy garden to the guesthouse. There was nothing more for me at de Cuvier’s bedside. I slept the rest of the night in my own bed, neither dreams nor phantoms intruding.

  AS I KNEW HE WOULD BE, de Cuvier was up with the birds, claiming that he’d slept like a youth. “Ye be a saint’s hand, Master! I’ve no way to repay you for this service.”

  “Have no more dreams.”

  I stood on the steps as he rode away, a chill dampness teasing my cheeks. Fog. The grenadier was scarce ten metres from the door when the sounds of hoof and bridle were absorbed as if he’d never been. I wished he’d never come. Surely the world could not face a new threat before we had healed the wounds of the last.

  Ignoring his woeful sighs, I required Finn to write down all I could remember of what had occurred. It unnerved me that the woman had called me blind man and included faces I knew in her dream shaping. Yet, such complexity and power is unendingly fascinating, and I hungered to know more.

  Unfortunately, every avenue to learn more seemed so wretchedly complex as to be impossible. I was forbidden to enter Merona. The m
ages of Collegia Seravain would scoff. At any Temple, major or minor, they’d likely hang me in the marketplace to rot, for to those who believed in soul journeys in the afterlife, necromancy was a mortal blasphemy. And even were I allowed to enter some scholarly library where I might learn more of dream sendings or extraordinary emeralds, I could hardly demand people read to me. They’d go voiceless in terror…or claim my condition righteous punishment…or preach at me of the Souleater and his daemons.

  I’d have given much to talk of the experience with Anne. Her good sense and orderly mind would help me dissect it and decide if this was truly a trumpet blast foreshadowing a new battle. I felt her vibrant presence in the aether as if she were standing beside me. But she was two hundred kilometres distant, and beyond thirty or so our individual voices were lost in the maelstrom. I could do no more than touch her presence, like a beggar pawing the hem of a rich man’s cloak.