by Carol Berg
“How is this possible?” I snapped, angered that she could know so much and I so little even yet. “To speak through dreams. To learn and manipulate minds through dreams. How could there be two of you? Who is this regent? I set you free, but I don’t even know free of what!”
“Ah, my dark one, I am tempted to silence. To keep you ignorant would be a cruel torment.”
She was even more contrarian than I.
I leashed my infernal temper. “You may do as you will.”
“Exactly!” Her breath brushed my cheek. “I have waited seven centurias, locked away by those who beat and starved me, insisting the gods had given me breath for one reason only: that I might hold the world’s greatest treasure and give it up to the first man who asked for it. Never again will I serve men. What do you say, magus? Tell me how you burn to know these things.”
Just keep this up until evening, I said silently. “Yes, I burn to know all.”
“ ‘Only a few days,’ the priests said when they bound us in sorcery and put us in the Cavern of the Ancients. ‘Mayhap a moon’s cycle.’ The barbarians were ravaging the city. Imperator Maldeon was already dead. Only when the roof fell and horrible wild men came to gape at the cavern and steal the gold and jewels did Nessia believe it.
“The priests had taught Nessia to use Rhymus to send messages in dreams, and she called to them repeatedly. No one came. I couldn’t wield Nessia’s Rhymus for myself, or use Orythmus to command her, but I knew how to make her dreamers see me instead of her. Once they saw me, they heard me, too, so I could put ideas in their heads about Rhymus. So angry Nessia was! Ever after she pretended I didn’t exist.
“A few wanderers came in through the years. Cowards all. But at last the righteous soldier arrived, and I set to work. Let someone rescue the fair Nessia and set us both free.”
“So you could control both Stones,” I said, turning my head as she circled me. “But why ensnare some madman to slay her when you could command anyone to do it?”
“Because the Seeing Stones forbid it! ’Tis impossible for the holder of one to kill the holder of another, or to pay or ensorcel another to do the deed. The knife will not cut or pierce; the rope will not choke. Neither may the Stones be used or taken against the holder’s will. Poor Maldeon tried it once, and his children died in the firestorm that resulted! The Stones must be freely given or claimed from the dead, as I did. That’s why we of the Tareo were trained so harshly to surrender the Stones to their rightful owners.”
Indeed, Adept Denys had told me the same.
“I needed the dreamer to destroy my sister of his own will or near enough. The righteous soldier was very close. But you’re righteous in your own way; it was very easy to ensnare you. I just had to convince you she was dangerous.”
Her fingers lifted my chin, her touch the tingling precursor of a lightning bolt.
“Tell me, was not it a wonderful plan? Come, come, thou’rt quite a somber fellow. The Regent, who is also a magus, says he and I shall wield the Stones together and create an empire of magic. His price is you. But if I keep you as my own magus, I can strike a harder bargain. You may come out of all this far better than you expect. Alive, even! And I can grant your deepest desire.”
“What makes you think I would want anything you could give? You can compel me to walk or sit or stand on my head, but you cannot make me do magic for you. A sorcerer can only use his talent unbound.” Bile stung my throat. No compulsion was required. Anger, confusion, and fear—my own corruption—had already driven me to murder.
“But you will, magus. I am Xanthe, not Nessia the Limpet. I’m not so shifty as to promise what I cannot give.”
Laughing, she whispered a word and brushed her finger across my eyes. With a searing fire like the iron rod of her illusion, the world changed.…
The sun was at its zenith. Its beams shot through the broken roof like the arrows of Heaven. The white lake glittered like a sunlit snowfield, and the velvet green vines that blanketed the walls were laden with a profusion of flowers of pink, yellow, and red. The plumed birds that had screeched in the dark were scarlet and green, and soared on the beams of light, their grace and plumage mocking the ruins of human works.
Gods save me…I could see.
“Now let us begone from this place. Assergio de nom Maldeon! Follow.”
“Wait!” My head spun, disbelieving, but she didn’t slow. But even without my cooperation, my legs pushed me up. One foot set itself before the other, taking me up the stair behind her like some juggler’s trained dog. Her white gown swirled as she hurried up the stair, already drying in the desert air. She smelled of lemon flowers.
When my eyes were hit with unfiltered noonday in the sun-drenched streets of Carabangor, I’d no mind left to doubt. I cried out and threw my arm across my face.
The lady laughed, her delight wriggling into my bowels like gut worms that made eating repugnant to a starving man. Evil it is that can take our deepest desire and twist it so wretchedly. The sunlight held no glory. Beauty and color but infused my soul with acid. I hated Xanthe for the deaths I had wrought in service of her schemes, but more truly terrifying was a corruption that could make the world of light loathsome.
Impossible to kill her. Depleted as I was, the same finger that could open my eyes could surely strike me down. Getting my own self killed would serve no purpose but to silence guilt.
To stay alive long enough to understand the limits of Xanthe’s power and what her partner planned to do with it would be the greater penance. To stop their schemes, or pass the knowledge of them to one who could, was the better choice. Yet how would such be possible when I could not take a step of my own will?
The notion that came to me then was abhorrent. As it hardened into conviction, I fought it with the same disgust I’d experienced when chasing vultures from my flayed teacher, dying in his cage. But the Syanese say life is a wheel, and we cannot escape those things that come around to us again and again.
I could not give life where I had taken it. I could not recall the names spoken so foolishly in a dream. I could not send my brother back to safety; nor could I teach Anne or Portier one more nuance of magic that might serve them in the dangerous future. Live a deception, though. That I could do.
Thus, fashioning an expression proper for the occasion, I bowed before those silver eyes and dropped to one knee in the dusty street. Taking Xanthe’s hand and pressing it to my forehead, I infused my voice with unbounded awe. “Lady, for such a gift as you’ve just given me, I shall do whatever service pleases you.”
CHAPTER 20
CARABANGOR
Xanthe laughed in delight, so I knew from the first that she could not read my thoughts outside of dream. “I knew it!” she said, grabbing my collar and drawing me to my feet, so close I could feel the heat of her beneath her flowing gown. “What magus could live crippled?”
She was, if possible, more striking than the woman of dreams. Though she was impossibly young, not out of her teens, her gown of white gossamer revealed a figure in the fullest bloom of womanhood. Her pale hair rippled like water and made a most pleasing contrast with her deep-hued skin. Silver glinted in her black eyes like moonbeams on the night sea, and any painter must sell his soul to capture the line of her brow or the flush of her cheek.
“Now, my slave, where is your horse?”
Run, John Deune! Ride! With utmost urgency I willed him to ride for Andero. Then I bowed to Xanthe again and stumbled forward slowly, pretending to lose my way, making sure to stomp my boots and curse at every street crossing lest he be nearby. Truly it was near impossible to find the path to the gates in the noonday glare, with tears streaming from my eyes and no magic to lead me.
A scouring lash ripped across my shoulders, dropping me to the dirt. “Stop this foolery, magus! I am not an idiot! You’ll not escape my service so easily!”
“Lady, please!” I said, once I’d caught my breath and realized my shirt was neither aflame nor shredded. I wasn’t even
bleeding. The lady’s hands held no whip, but only the two green Stones, flashing and sparking in the sunlight. “I used magic to find my way in, but I’ve naught left to discover the way out.”
“Summon more, then.” Another lash near drove me into the dust. “Do not dare disobey me. I can scourge you for a month and you’ll never die. I can take back what I’ve given.” Darkness fell over my head like a leather hood, then vanished again. Pain incised my eyes like a knife blade.
Swallowing rapidly to curb the urge to vomit, I bent so low around my hollow gut, my head near touched the dirt. “I serve you willing, lady. Your gift…I cannot explain the magnificence, but it’s difficult— So bright after two years in the dark, and depleted as I am. Soon repaired, of course.” I’d not wish her to deem me useless.
“What does it take to repair this depletion? I believed you exceptional.” Her disappointment was that of Castelle Escalon’s noble children refused sweets at table.
“Rest and food. That’s all. An hour. Surely your master has told you how a sorcerer, a magus, expends power.” Almost any magic working would deplete Jacard’s power. An advantage to me, if her partner was my adept. “If we could just sit in the shade until the sun slips a bit lower and my eyes adjust to seeing.”
“He is not my master. And he never visited us long enough to deplete anything. All right.” She took my elbow and guided me into the lee of a wall. “Sit. We’ve no food, and I’ve no idea how to conjure it with my Stones as yet, but I know where water’s found. Do not expect me ever to serve you again.” Her voice receded. “Husband your magic more carefully. You must devote it entirely to my pleasure.”
My agreement came out like the bleat of a dying goat.
She soon returned, marveling at the size of Carabangor and lamenting its ruin. The liquid she carried in a potshard was hot and stale but welcome. I drank half and bathed my eyes with the rest. The shade helped even more. Shocked by midday brightness and bruised from the stoning at Hoven, my head drummed like a legion on the march. A dull ache settled behind my eyelids.
“Tell me more of this Regent,” I said when Xanthe settled beside me. “That is, if it pleases you.”
Talking clearly pleased her. “He rules the Principate of Mancibar to the south of this wasteland. He came there two years ago, he told me, an exile from Sabria, where a cowardly wicked magus had ruined him with lies and scandal. Ah, the stories he’s told of that wicked magus! Now, who might that villain be, do you think?” She nudged me and giggled a little. “Iaccar says you even murdered his kinsman!”
And so was my last remaining doubt put to rest. Iaccar was the Arothi variant of my adept’s name. Jacard. And he believed I, not Anne, had killed Kajetan. I buried my satisfaction deep.
“Iaccar told me he’d had his eye on Mancibar as a good place to plan his revenge on this nefarious Sabrian mage and his king. It’s a lax and easy sort of place, and small, only the one city and a few villages, without many soldiers to complicate matters. He spread rumors.…Well, in truth, once he wheedled sweet, gullible Nessia into helping him with dreams of spiders and blood sucking, he didn’t have to spread so very many rumors. ’Twas hardly a season till the people overthrew their prince and raised Iaccar to rule them.”
Her own thirst taking hold after her centuries of enchantment, Xanthe fetched more water. Convincing her it was necessary to access my full talents in her service, I begged her to bring my staff from the cavern. She did so but made sure I could not reach it. Once she settled again, I urged her to tell more of Jacard. She was willing to talk of anything.
“He told me he forbade his subjects to call him prince, claiming he was worthy only of the title Regent and would guide them only until a rightful heir could be found. At first I thought him humble, a pious man like the old imperator, though for certain mush headed, as why go to the trouble to raise a rebellion, if you’re only going to give up the prize again? But I didn’t say that to Iaccar, as it was a marvelous diversion to have someone new to converse with. Once he’d visited me a few times, I decided he wasn’t humble at all.”
Indeed. “Was it a dream sending brought him to you?”
“Nay, ’twas magical writings told him legends of Holy Altheus and the Seeing Stones. He taught me all about this marvelous age of the world. How life has changed since I left my own! ’Tis like scorpion stings that I must wait longer to see these ladies’ court gowns and mirror glasses.”
So Kajetan’s notes, perhaps even information gleaned from Adept Denys, had led Jacard and me to the same place. “Why did Jac—Iaccar—not set you free?”
“Indeed I planned to induce him to slay me for the Stone—and have it be Nessia, of course.” So casually she spoke of twisted murder. “But I soon discovered that would be impossible.”
“Why so?”
“Why, because Iaccar holds Tychemus.”
Gods in all heavens! In the span of a moment, a situation I’d thought wretched became infinitely more dangerous.
“He couldn’t kill Nessia for me. And I certainly didn’t want him spoiling my plan. So I told him it had to be a dreamer that took us across the lake. That’s when he suggested you.”
“I believed the third Stone lost,” I whispered. “Buried.”
Jacard had a source of true power. And wielding only one of the Seeing Stones, this untutored woman with no magic of her own could already drive my mind to madness and my body to painful groveling.
Xanthe untied a scarf from around her neck and laid the two green crystals side by side. “Iaccar said his gods led him to it. That may be true. The gods prevent the Stones from being truly lost. But they can be hidden. When the Earthshaker destroyed the kingdom of the imperator’s brother—”
“The imperator.” Only now did her use of the term stir up recollection. “Altheus of Maldivea?” A humble, pious man. The benevolent warrior who had won an empire. Who lay down and died when his work was done. Whose enemies feared he would return…like a Saint Reborn. Who had lived seven centuries in the past.
“King Maldeon—Nessia’s beloved—was Altheus’s third son. Maldeon began calling himself imperator after tricking one of his brothers into releasing Rhymus to him. Some said Maldeon caused the earthshaking to gain Tychemus from the third brother. Mayhap. Either way, Garif, who held Tychemus, died of the earthshaking, as did most of his subjects. But Garif’s priests hid the Stone and sent a messenger to Maldeon saying it was buried in the rubble. Then they killed themselves, so he could not force them to reveal its hiding place. The priests believed the gods had sent the earthshaking to protect the world from Maldeon, who was a clever man, but very cruel. He searched for it every day thereafter, dismembered people, crucified them.…”
She chattered continuously through the scorching afternoon, speaking of torture and murder in the same breath that expressed her childish wonder at the construction and materials of my garments and the marvels Jacard had told her of—clocks and books, lace and silk and sailing ships. Her prattle revealed naught about the qualities of the Stones or Jacard’s true intentions, but much of Xanthe herself. Those of her caste were not taught to read or cipher or allowed to see maps of the world or learn of it. They must desire nothing the Stones could provide and be ready to relinquish them instantly upon command of those who put the treasures in their hands. Xanthe had repudiated her training from the beginning, but had been wily enough to make sure that no one knew of her rebellion.
In midafternoon Xanthe willed me to my feet, tying the scarf pouch holding the Stones to her knotted belt. “No more stories until we are safely in Mancibar, my dark one. Take me away from this daemonish place.”
With no more excuse to delay, I led her through the gates to the ruined caravanserai. Devil cropped at the dry grass under the locust tree. Alone.
Good. A first step. But relief at John Deune’s absence was but a temporary balm. Would he go to Andero? For himself if not for me?
Devil nuzzled my hand in greeting. What a fine horse he was, a shining bay, sleek a
nd powerful in the leg, with a lightning-shaped marking on his forehead and a spark in his eyes that spoke of wild and noble ancestors. I’d not have looked twice at any horse before this journey, much less accounted one of them noble. My hand apologized that I’d naught to give him.
“Where are we bound?” I said, as Xanthe shoved my staff into the saddle loops.
“South from the main gates,” she said gaily, as I pulled her up behind me.
She clasped her slim arms around my waist. I did not allow myself to recoil from her touch.
With barely a nudge Devil raced through the streets of Carabangor and around, if not through, the collapsed southern gates. For a while, I let him have his head, wishing the rushing glories of color, shape, and open sky could lift my spirits as they did his. But heeding Anne’s lessons, I soon slowed him to a comfortable gait. It wouldn’t be for long. A rolling dust cloud was headed straight toward us. The ground rumbled with beating hooves.
