by Carol Berg
But Dante was fighting even to breathe. Faster than an owl takes a mouse, Jacard plunged a dagger into Xanthe’s back. He snarled as he yanked it out again. “Good riddance!”
Turning to the catafalque, he kicked at the debris. “Where are they, uncle? What did you see? Or have you hidden them?”
“Hands of flesh have taken them, fool. Muster your own power, you puling little weasel. Use Tychemus. Once we’ve done the switch, the other Stones won’t matter. Hurry!”
But Jacard’s fury spun him to face Portier. “Is it you, librarian? You and Dante again. And that woman…” He inhaled sharply. “Anne de Vernase, the Mondragon witch. Did she set you free? She and this damnable, cursed mage. Xanthe said she’d found a woman’s trinket on him.”
“Nephew! Attend!” Kajetan was panicked now. “We must do this before they invoke the power of the two! Tychemus can accomplish the switch alone if you but focus! The rite to free our master can come after.”
Jacard bared his teeth and raised his Stone to the wall. “Conforme desiti novae!”
“No!” I screamed. The surge of power through the Seeing Stone near knocked me from the step.
The phantom Kajetan bellowed in triumph.
Jacard wasn’t using the three together—a partial victory—but success or failure could kill Dante. I drew my zahkri and cut the straps holding him to the wall, letting his weight slump onto my shoulders and slide to the ground. I freed the wailing Zevi, who flailed his arms and backed away crabwise. Once disentangled, he scrambled to his feet and bolted for the stair, sobbing.
Dante shuddered and the trembling earth shook beneath us. I threw my arms around him as if I could shield him from what was to come. His flesh was cold as a dead man’s. “I know you,” I said, drilling the words into his head. “You will not be what he wants you to be. You are mine, Dante de Raghinne. Mine!”
Kajetan roared in fury, “No, no, no! You incapable runt, what have you done?” There followed such an ode of malediction as I had never heard, wails and screaming and bellowing, until they all faded into one extended scream that was the very sound of madness.
When I looked around, I saw Jacard’s terror-filled eyes bleeding and his swollen body shaking violently. The Seeing Stone dropped from his hand and clattered down the steps. His eyes went entirely black…and then entirely white, again, and then again. Holding his skull together as his skin wept blood, Jacard screamed and staggered in frenzy, until he followed the course of his Stone and tumbled into the pit to lie still.
The gray smoke thinned and dissipated, and as I cradled Dante in my arms, I began to laugh and sob together. The blood-painted words on the wall had changed. They now read: Vosi Kajetan de Saldemerre au recivien, Jacard de Viole. Vosi Jacard de Viole au recivien, Kajetan de Saldemerre. From Kajetan to Jacard. From Jacard to Kajetan. Not only had Dante switched the original receiver to Jacard himself, but every time Kajetan took control of Jacard’s body, the enchantment had replaced him with its former owner.
“You had your little joke on them after all, didn’t you?” I said. “And it does matter.…”
Across the cavern a tall, slim form rippled the air like a child behind a bedsheet. Ilario became visible. Oblivious, he carried Xanthe’s two Stones into the dark maw of the prison passage. My own enchantment faded as I laid Dante on the step and retrieved the Stone of Reason from the floor.
Unspeaking, Dante curled into a ball. Spasms racked him continually. The walls trembled. Candles toppled from their niches. I stroked his sweat-soaked hair. “We’ll solve this,” I said. “But first the Stones. As you instructed me.”
Perhaps destroying the Seeing Stones would set him free—one way or the other.
Rhea knelt beside Andero. She pressed a clean cloth to a nasty laceration on his scalp, where Jacard’s blast had thrown him against a shard of broken angel. To my relief, the smith was slowly coming around. “Stay still,” she said, “at least until you can hold this yourself. You’re going to have a wicked headache for a month most likely.”
I stuffed a lit candle into Portier’s hand, helped him up, and we made a slow progress into the prison passage. Ilario sat in the last cell, the one with the collapsed wall, clutching Xanthe’s Stones close to his breast. His eyes were closed, his slender face drawn and creased as if he’d aged fifteen years.
“Stars of night, my friend,” said Portier, crouching beside him, “are you all right?”
“Makes a skewered gut seem like a holiday.” Ilario rubbed his forehead. “I need a nap. I need to give these infernal things to someone. And I need to get away from here and never see—” His eyes popped open. “Ah, gods’ teeth, Portier.”
“We did well, all of us,” said Portier, shaking off Ilario’s anguish. “We need to finish this quickly. For Dante’s sake. And Mancibar’s…and everyone’s…”
The newest tremor dislodged dust and pebbles from the ceiling.
“We oughtn’t leave Dante out there alone,” I said.
“I’ll go.” Ilario held out the Stones to Portier. “I believe these are yours.”
Portier smoothed the polished green facets and perfect edges with his thumb, then glanced up at us with a sheepish smile. “It’s so strange I don’t remember them, save in those fragments Ferrau dug out of me. We need to see to the tetrarch and his men.…”
But we couldn’t. Not yet. We needed all of us to make this work. Once begun there would be no second chance.
“After,” I said. Only for Portier there would be no after. Not here.
Ilario was back in moments, followed by a bandaged Andero cradling Dante in his arms. “Couldn’t leave him out there naked, could I?”
Rhea held Dante’s ancille gingerly in two fingers. I snatched it away, as her hand was shaking. She said she had seen to the youth in the bleeding chair and sent him running.
We laid Dante in the other cell. Again he curled into a quivering knot, his breath coming in strident gasps. His eyes were open but looked on nothing we could see.
Ilario and Andero moved down the passage to stand guard. Rhea sponged Dante’s face and said she would watch over him. And so it was left to me.
I whispered in Rhea’s ear that when she heard me call Portier into the cell, she should fetch Ilario. Portier was watching from the doorway when I rose.
“Are you ready for this adventure?” I tried to smile but didn’t think I made a good job of it.
He drew me into his arms and squeezed much too tightly. “It’s all right, Ani. To be honest, yes, my gut’s in a knot. But also”—he stepped back and held out his hand, which was now as steady as my father’s love—“this is why I’m here. Had I never heard mention of Ianne or saints or the Souleater or the Seeing Stones, I’d know it. When I heard the stories of how Altheus came down here and lay down to die, I assumed them metaphorical. But now? I don’t think so.”
“I’ll do my best for you. You understand I’ve never woven a spell completely. Pieces. Small things, but…”
“…but we had the same teacher, so I trust you. Tell him…I’ve never known anyone with his courage or his strength or his goodness. Tell him I never had a true friend either until him. And tell him I will never forget him…or you…or our magnificent chevalier. I’ll likely come haunt you all, just to see how you’re getting on, as you’re the only people I know who wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
I opened my mouth, but no words came.
“I know. You’ll think of what to say tomorrow. I promise I’ll listen, Ani, no matter what the rules are. I think I was done with rules a very long time ago.”
I laughed at the imagining, ignoring the dark things he must surely encounter along his way. Time enough for that as I wove. “You’d best wait out here…and you’ll need this.…” I pulled out the third stone.
Something fell out of my pocket and chinked on the floor as I gave him Tychemus. Dante’s nireal. On his bit of paper, Dante had written: Wear it always.
“Would you put this on Dante? He brought it all t
his way.”
“Certainly.”
Kneeling at the door opening, just outside the boundaries of my enclosure, I ran through a series of quick exercises to clear my head. Then I heeded my teacher’s instruction.…
Begin with intent and hold it in mind always, the core of any spell: mortal death, a natural passage, one we humans feared but should not. But the Veil had been damaged, torn repeatedly, and to avert further damage I must use its aberrant nature and shove these mystical bits of the aether back through the hole, carried on the wings of Portier’s soul.
And then construct the shape of the work: Piece by piece, I wove my containing vessel, warp and weft…physical and spiritual, as I had planned. Then, I wove in Ilario’s dagger, keen, light, to be wielded by a skilled hand, moved by grief and love, duty and mercy.
Only when the construct begins to glow with light, bring in the focus: first the Stones—which I knew from history, from Dante’s tale. They did not have keirna, for their essence was the aether itself, with which I was very familiar. And then I wove in Portier…the man I had loathed and come to respect and then to admire and then to love as a brother. His talents, his failings, his shyness, his muddleheaded approach to women, his own difficult family history, his friendship with a man who had no concept of friendship. Portier and Dante had saved each other from things far worse than death…and given each other gifts beyond measure.
Pausing. “I need you in the circle now, where I’ve marked your head and feet,” I said. My voice existed somewhere outside the aether where my great construct shimmered with the light of magic, the blue and green and yellow fire of Heaven.
I didn’t open my eyes. Instead I felt the shifting warmth as he passed me, but heard no footsteps. He must have removed his boots. He grunted softly as he lay down—his leg, of course. And then stillness, and I began again, encompassing his keirna with that of my enchanted vessel.
Behind me Ilario waited, but I wasn’t ready. My stomach churned with familiar disgust. I hated spellwork…or was it merely that something wasn’t right? Dante’s constant warnings blared: Think deeper. Don’t assume that everything’s right because it fits. Think about what does not fit; dig deeper for what you’ve not considered.
The pieces were well chosen. Their woven keirna shone like strings of drawn glass. I parsed through them, one by one. One particular piece felt awkward, as if the weft had collapsed, leaving a great hole in my vessel. Healing…the snake symbol. What was I missing?
All my doubts crashed in on me. Ixtador. The starving dead. Lianelle, perhaps devoured already. Captain de Santo, condemned. Could even Portier’s soul escape the Souleater now the daemon was so strong and emboldened? There would be no true healing unless we destroyed Ixtador. And once this spell was bound, there would be no magic in the living world.
And of course, now I saw the problem, the answer came clear. What had de Ferrau said about the snake symbol? Reversal. The antithesis of death. Not healing, then, but something to represent life itself—strength and passion and determination. The gifts we needed to accomplish our purpose. I touched the scrap of paper in my pocket…then turned to Ilario and told him what to do.
“Ani, are you certain?”
“As anything in this world. Right beside Portier—touching. Otherwise, exactly as we planned.”
Ilario did as I asked, removing the vial of his medicine and replacing it. I wove in the new element—so familiar—and went through it all again. And then I was ready.
“Now.”
A small grunt. As the smell of my friend’s blood flooded the stale air, I focused my will on the shimmering structure and released every spit of power inside me. No use holding back when this was the world’s last enchantment. Magic boiled through my limbs, fueled by grief and anguish and rage at the loss of those I so loved. The spell structure grew luminous. Huge. Cruel. Glorious. Only here at the end did I understand Dante’s love for magic…
… and when I felt like a plummeting kite, or a wineskin when the final drop has fled, I bound the spell and opened my eyes.
Portier lay still, a faint smile on his lips. One hand was yet cupped at his breast. Empty. The other hand lay beside him where Ilario had laid the replacement for the snake symbol. Nothing was there, either. Along with the Maldivean Seeing Stones, Dante, the Daemon of the Dead, had vanished. For the first time in ten hours, the earth was still.
Dante
CHAPTER 39
Reach, Dante. Extend the staff. Your arm won’t break, else it would have done so a lifetime ago. Scribe yet another circle of power in the dry, grassy hillside that is neither grass nor earth nor even dry. How could a place lack water if none existed anywhere? There was no growth here, no replenishment of any kind.
The feral howl rose from behind me, traveling up my spine even as it traversed the chill wastes. Purposeful. The hunter was very angry. Hands and spirit trembled at the memory of his fury.
Raise the fire now; instill it with safety and warmth and the promise of protection. Circles of fire had ever been the best defense against predators. How did I know that? Even were I in possession of the mind I had lost, I could not have said, for there was room for nothing in me save magic and will—to endure, to fight, to destroy, to protect…what?
I had glimpsed an answer just after the world ended, erasing light, stone, smoke, color, blood, voices, and…blessedly…the pain that had left me mindless, quivering wreckage. What remained—this existence—was a chill, vomitous chaos, a dense whirlpool of hunger. Formless fingers pawed at me; gaping mouths wailed, begging, whispering of loss, anger, hunger, and lust. My mind and body came near exploding in the search for solidity. A creature of flesh, I needed walls, floor, tree, earth…anything I could grasp.
Then, for a single moment, a glare of white had enveloped me in calm stillness. “Time for only one lesson, student,” said a dry, familiar voice. Teasing? “Close your eyes.”
The whisper dissolved into my bones, a warmth that spoke of existence that was not pain, of common purpose and resolution, of trust, of a friend whose name was long lost in the abyss, but who bound me to other friends and a life.…
As the words and the brilliance faded, I was plunged back into chaos. Yet I did as my unknown friend advised and, in the dark, found clarity. No longer hampered by the confusion of shapes and colors I could not name, I created my own order. I knew how to do this. My feet were down, a grassy hillside under them. My head was sheltered by a colorless sky. A heated spark burned on my chest, centering me. Now the ravening spite of the approaching scourge—my cruel and comely master—stood out from the starved terror of these other beings as distinctly as a thorn among rose petals. I fixed him as the focus of my world and set my arm and the poulon—this white staff that seemed an extension of my hand—between us. The heel of the staff dug into dry soil. Did I not stop him, he would eat us all.
Ten circles…twenty…a hundred had I raised already.
The lash struck, ripping through nerves and sinew. Daemon! Servant! Your punishment has only begun. Do you think you shall escape the caves of Gedevron? Your chains wait. My scourge waits. Eternity waits.…
“Here. In here. Come.” Eyes squeezed tight, I drew them into my circle of fire, those beings I could not look on without madness. “He cannot reach you here. When he’s gone, I’ll set you free.”
Those who could yet comprehend words crowded in around me. Fluid shapes brushed my naked flesh like veils of cobweb. When the circle was filled, I stepped through the flame and looped the staff to raise the barrier high, until it was a dome of fire. I moved on and scribed another.…
A firm touch on my chest. I jumped backward and squeezed my eyes tighter lest I lose myself in the maelstrom. But unseen fingers gripped the bit of silver suspended from my neck. And other warm fingers touched the silver band around my throat, tapping on it softly.
We know you, mage. The man’s graveled voice sounded in my head, not my ears. Yet it seemed right. All who remain whole will help. Even the Emp
ty Ones know who contrives our ruin.
The lash jarred me again…colder, sharper, cutting deeper.
The bit of silver…the words in my head…in the aether…memory just beyond reach. Phantom images of a wild-haired girl and a sturdy-built man with black hair drifted through the darkness behind my eyelids like smoke shadows. These two were a part of the life the teasing voice had waked. They should not be here. And these others…my master would steal their immortal being.…
I’d thought I neared the last of my strength, but a cold, tarry rage surged slowly through my limbs, through my chest, into my arms.
“Can you bring the Empty Ones?” I said.
Yes, said the girl. But they’ve naught to give. Once he’s stripped them dry, they fade.
“I can’t restore them,” I said, “but I can give purpose to their loss. I need their help, and yours.”
