Dust and Light

by Carol Berg

  I needed something that would not only hold a linked spell, like the iron grave marker or my silver bracelets had done, but a great deal of pure magic. The number of objects that could do that was small—gemstones, pearls, the black glassy stone found near volcanoes, and such rarities. Fortunately my father’s ruby would serve, though to taint his ring with violence scarred my conscience. Patronn had been such a gentle man, his talent fine but narrow compared to my grandsire’s—or mine. Generous, too. I’d never considered how much. Not once had he chided me for spending my youth so eagerly with his own father instead of him.

  Believing he would appreciate his ring’s saving my neck, I shaped a voiding spell and linked it to the gold ring. Then, eyes closed, I laid three fingers on the ruby itself and let my magic flow. The fire in my blood erased the chill and damp. Such sweet fire . . .

  “Got it. You owe me— What the devil are you doing?”

  “Wait . . .”

  I couldn’t stop, not until I’d stored enough power to ensure the enchantment worked. There’d be no recourse if we failed. Keeping only a little in reserve, I lifted my fingers. “Done.”

  “Didn’t think you dared undress yourself.” His eyes were on the ruby ring that gleamed with an unnatural fire. “A ruby and a cripple’s stick and an unmasked pureblood. I hope this plan isn’t crazier than the last.”

  “I take the stick; you take the ring. It won’t burn you or anything . . . unless you were to run off with it.”

  My attempt at humor didn’t help. He glanced from the ring to my face three times before touching it.

  When it didn’t explode or scorch him, his shoulders relaxed. Slightly. “You and your steel spine,” he mumbled. “Make a man do things he knows he oughtn’t, just to keep up.”

  He was wrong about the steel. My spine felt like soggy bread. “Whatever you do, keep this safe as well,” I said, opening the rucksack and showing him the spindle tucked inside. “I’ve no idea what it is, but if anything happens to me, bury it in your graveyard and never speak of it. Doesn’t matter how important it might be or how useless; it’s naught but trouble should any ordinary be caught with it.”

  He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

  “Now I’m going to walk a very particular loop down in the bailey. Watch me and mark the placement and dimensions exactly. If you’re off a finger’s breadth, this isn’t going to work.” Actually, there would be a slight overspill on either side of the line, but he had to get it right. “Be ready by the time I get back to the place I started, and when the Registry men cross the boundary nearest them—you can judge the timing—touch the ruby to any spot on my path. Exactly on the path. Farther from where I’m standing would likely be better, but be sure.” I tugged the brown hood lower and the flapping, stinking wool about my chin. “Keep trying until it works, and, whatever you do, stay on the outside of the loop.”

  Bastien’s grin blossomed hugely. “So I get to see one, eh?”

  “If I do it right. Elsewise I’ll see you in Idrium.”

  “Won’t come to that,” he said, quickly sobered. “I’ve got my sword. Besides, you’re mine for most of four years to come, bought and paid for. We may have sucked a dry tit today, but I’ll be damned if I let you loose till I know what’s in those accursed portraits and what’s this Path of the White Hand and if that was truly a Dané that talked to you about it. Would hate to think you’re a loony after all.”

  “I must be,” I said, lifting my eyebrows at him for a change. “I’m thinking . . . we partner well.”

  * * *

  A knight caught in battle unarmored must feel this way, I thought, as I limped down the stair and across the yard without pureblood cloak and mask. I couldn’t shake the sense the two Registry men could see straight through the wretched brown cape.

  Begin at a spot straight out from the wicket gate no more than thirty paces. I didn’t want to leave us too far to run. Five paces straight toward the man sawing on the vielle . . .

  I limped as fast as I dared through the crowded bailey, bobbing my head to the music while dragging the stick to create the enclosing loop. Inside my head, I held the spell of the ring, weaving its edges to the line I walked. Not the easiest way to work a void, but it should do.

  Left at the hurdy-gurdy man; now past the knot of singers toward the soldier turning the spit . . . I made the perimeter as nearly rectangular as I could estimate. Easier for me to get it right. Easier, I hoped, for Bastien to find a place to trigger the spell. My stick left a line in the dirt as well as the thread of enchantment, but jigging dancers, messengers, mule carts, and dogs quickly erased most of the visible boundary.

  More rumors pattered on my back like rain. Maybe Perryn started the rumors even before meeting me at the Repository, when he first realized I’d come to provide him an unimpeachable witness to the finding of his father’s will.

  Concentrate, fool. Six . . . seven . . . weave boundary and spell . . . eight, turn . . . Ten steps this direction to keep the proportion . . . I walked the gate side of the small rectangle, the Registry servitors so close I could smell what they had eaten last. Their faces were alert, scanning the shifting crowd.

  I ducked my head. Mumbled. Dragged the stick. Wove the spell. A slow collapse. Just deep enough it would take time to climb out. I waved my hand at those standing in my path and muttered, “Get out the way. This be a cursed spot. I can smell it.”

  Back at the beginning, midway along the boundary farthest from the gate, I closed the loop with a dollop of magic.

  One of the purebloods jerked his head in my direction.

  Heart dancing its own jig, I ducked my head and shuffled a few paces backward—enough I wouldn’t get caught in the void and tumble into the hole. Be quick, Bastien.

  The pureblood on the left edged forward a little. Called softly to the other. Waved a finger in a loop. As long as he didn’t figure out what spell I’d laid . . .

  Come on, Bastien, come on! The fleeting notion that the coroner had taken the ring and escaped on his own shamed me. But truly it seemed a month already.

  Bastien strolled into view. He bought a pocket loaf from a bread seller, and stopped beside the boundary to munch on it, nodding his head in time with a rattling tabor.

  Taking that as my signal, I ducked my head, slipped on my mask, and offered a heartfelt invocation. I crouched down, grabbed a handful of dirt, and in one grand gesture, lunged upward, threw off the brown cloak, and enchanted the flying cloud of filth and dust into a whirlwind of colored light.

  Horrified dancers scrambled away, shoving, pushing, yelling in panic. But cries turned quickly to laughing wonder as the drifting sparks tickled and did not burn. None stepped closer, though. I stood alone and exposed in the center of the bailey. Unfortunately, the purebloods, too, hung back, peering into the mottled light behind me . . . beckoning urgently.

  I spun around. Two men in masks and wine-hued cloaks shoved through the crowd on the stair. No, no! I needed the gate watchers inside the void perimeter.

  “Fire!” Bastien’s shout whipped my head around. He was pointing at me. “That madman’s firing the palace!”

  Taking his cue, I grabbed more dirt and sent up another burst of sparks, along with gouts of flame and a roar. Then I backed away a few more steps as if poised to retreat.

  That was enough. The two at the gate bolted toward me. And Bastien touched the ground and the earth collapsed inward, almost floating, carrying the two purebloods and perhaps three others along with it. The bailey erupted in panic.

  I released the spell of fog and noises into the melee, then sped around the small pit toward the wicket gate, happy I’d imprinted its position so firmly in my head. I kept my head down, tried not to get tangled with panicked ordinaries. . . .

  A missile slammed into my back, jolting me forward. My limbs seized, heated enchantment spreading through spine and sinew like cracks in shattered ice. Strength fled. No one around me seemed to notice.

  Stay on your feet, fool.
I was so close. The dancing gleam on my right would be the soldier’s roasting fire.

  Invisible lightning crackled through the fog on my left and thudded into my side. The impact staggered me. Threads of spellfire ripped through lungs and heart. One hand touched earth, as I stumbled forward, my feet like clubs. Pain threatened to shatter my bones.

  The wall loomed through the wisps of enchanted fog, a handsbreadth from my nose. Bastien, sword drawn, manned the wicket gate, encouraging people to pass through in an orderly fashion. When he glimpsed me, he stopped the flow, holding the frenzied crowd back with his blade. “Let him pass! Registry business. Godspeed, chosen!”

  I lurched toward the gate.

  Another crackling from behind me and the wicket gate exploded, battering all with shards of wood and iron and billowing black smoke. My right temple burned. My eyelids sagged.

  Panicked screams shrilled from every side. I needed to move, but my body just hurt. . . .

  Someone nearly wrenched my arm from its socket.

  “Don’t touch me.” But I’d no strength to draw my arm away. “The law . . .”

  “I am the law. Remember?” Bastien’s growl in my ear would have made me smile, had my knees not taken that moment to collapse and my stomach to empty itself of pignut bread and bile.

  The world spun and jostled and settled upside down with a boulder in my belly. My lacerated face bounced on leather that stank of horse muck.

  “Over here!” Bastien’s bellow rumbled in my ribs. Yet I seemed to be here already, wrapped around his broad shoulders.

  Jostling. The clash of steel very close . . . how was that possible? Bastien’s arms—both of them—pinned me tight. Had he grown extra?

  “Stand down, all of you!” A new voice, scarce distinguishable from the steel. “Stand down and move aside, by order of Prince Perryn’s consiliar prime!”

  Registry servitors? Tremayne the devil?

  I yelled at Bastien to drop me and run, but it came out a muddled mumble. He only yanked my arm and leg tighter over his shoulders and around his chest until I thought my side must rip.

  “One of the gods’ chosen has fallen in service to his prince,” spat the steely commander. “Get him to his people. A madman’s on the loose inside the walls. Bar the gates behind us.”

  Deeper darkness. More jostling. Hands grappling and then a dreadful sensation of slipping . . . falling. My limbs refused to answer my commands. Magic sputtered through my fingers and fell dead. My tongue produced gibberish.

  “Silence, conjurer.” A snappish whisper. Strong arms held me up from each side as if my rescuer had split into two. “Get him over behind the stables, and, for gods’ sake, hide that cloak and mask.”

  A hand ripped off my mask. A whipping of cloth, and a mantle fell over me. My feet whisked and bumped on the ground. Two men, then. One on each side, breathing hard. One of them smelled like fresh corpses. I knew him. I wanted to ask who the other was, but my tongue was a dead fish. The night grew darker, interminably.

  “His head’s bleeding, lord. We ought to take a look.”

  “Time enough for that. I’ve a horse kept here for dispatch riding. Have her back here by dawn.”

  “Done.”

  They propped me up against a splintery wall. I promptly crumpled. On the way downward, my throbbing side struck something very hard. Pain obliterated thought and sense entire.

  * * *

  Water splattered and dribbled over my back. Hot water. Blessedly hot. My head—or the pounding granite knob that had replaced it—rested on two bony lumps. Knees. My own, I guessed, though the knees themselves gave no evidence of it. I couldn’t feel anything that far away. Ridges of metal dug unpleasantly into my upper arms—my naked arms—propping me up, but everything beyond my elbows was dead, too.

  “This’n? Are ye sure? Seems cruel with slush floatin’ in it?” The woman’s voice bounced about the bottom of a well, and I was—

  A frigid downpour atop my head robbed me of thought, though it confirmed I was, indeed, naked as a babe. “M-m-m-erciful Mother!”

  “Ah-hah! You see, it worked.” The man bellowed from a barrel. “Just as the young lord told me. Do it again. From the front this time.”

  Wait! A scalding flood on my legs and feet that—gods in all heavens—splashed over my groin. And before I could beg mercy, another dousing straight from Magrog’s icy heart stole every whisper of breath and shriveled every quat of my flesh.

  “Again!” said the cruel man, laughing as a flashing pitcher emptied its hellish liquid on my head.

  And with the slurry of snow and water that quickly followed arrived the snap of a fire, the smells of ale and wet wood and greasy smoke, the sounds of muffled laughter, the stomp of boots in rhythm with a trilling pipe, and a murderous ache in my side. Water slopped just behind me—pitchers being filled.

  “Wait! Stop!” I yelled. “No more!” I would have leapt up and proved my state, but the female tittering all around kept me crouched in— My half-frozen, half-scalded forearm blotted my bleary eyes. I crouched in a bathing tub scarce bigger than Maia’s largest cookpot.

  Shrinking into a defensive knot, I glared at Bastien, who stood at the foot of the tub, grinning through his thicket of beard. Though chips of stone and wood were yet stuck in his tangled hair, he appeared to have suffered no injury from the exploding gate.

  “Welcome back, servant. And say thank you to the gentle ladies of the Bucket Knot, the finest sop-house in Palinur, for rousing you from your drunken stupor.”

  Two stringy-haired girls in wet aprons held dripping pitchers at the ready, while a third poked at a blazing fire. A tall girl with red cheeks and red-gold curls stood by with a length of not-so-clean linen, inspecting me with an experienced eye and a friendly grin. “Seem he has ’is wits back, Coroner. Do you s’pose ’e rathers the towel or should we get ’im up dancing to get him dry? Your runners always like the dancing and drinking well enough, though they never seem to fancy us girls!”

  A sop-house. Baths, beer, and bawds. A haven for thieves and twistminds and other low sorts, so I’d been warned. But the girls looked cheerful, the hearth fire merry, and the low-ceilinged room, lit with the smoky yellow glow of rushlights clipped in brackets around the walls, felt safe and friendly. Inexplicably so, when all the forces of Magrog’s hell were after us.

  “Mayhap we’ll have a dance later, sweet Tansy,” said Bastien. “For the present, give us the towel. And draw us a mug of whatever’s decent, now the fool’s breathing. We’ll come out to fetch it and celebrate the news.” He waggled his eyebrows as he did whenever he wished me to take especial note of his words. He thought I oughtn’t mention that it was magical thunderbolts from the Registry had paralyzed me. As for news, I wasn’t sure.

  The giggling girls bustled out, leaving only the ruddy-cheeked Tansy. She tossed the wadded linen to Bastien and winked at me before strolling out. “I’ll be waiting!” she called over her shoulder. “Dorrie’s a merry piper.”

  A man with more wits and fewer enemies than I would surely find her airs most inviting.

  “So, you’ve bones again, eh?” said Bastien, dangling the towel over my head.

  “B-brutal,” I croaked through chattering teeth. “That was brutal.” Thoroughly chilled, I sat in a finger’s depth of cold water. Every shiver wrenched the pain in my side.

  He dropped the towel over my head. “But you can move now . . . control your limbs, you see. Such paralyzing magics are oft thrown in battle, and his family’s pureblood told him hot and cold dousing was the only way to shake them off in a timely fashion. We owe him in a number of ways.”

  I climbed out and blotted myself, happy to note my garments draped over a wooden rack next the fire and that my forehead was the only part of me seeping blood. “He . . . the swordsman with the horse? The one who got us out.”

  Bastien leaned close and dropped his voice. “Fallon de Tremayne. When his father’s men barged into the Repository in search of us, he sent them off one way
and followed us out the other. Said he wasn’t going to let his da get away with another murder tonight.”

  “Gods, he could hang for thwarting the Registry’s hunt. And his father’s wrath could be worse.” Such courage was humbling. He didn’t owe me anything.

  “Aye. I’ve already sent his horse back to the stable. It’s trusty folk here at the Knot.” Good cheer fallen away, he passed me the warmed clothes. “More so than my own people, I suppose.”

  I’d no answer for Bastien’s angry hurt. I laced the baggy chausses around my waist and pulled on the stained shirt. There was no sign of my purple cloak or mask or the threadbare brocade doublet I’d worn to the palace. “I take it that this servant is to remain half-naked.”

  “Aye. I told them you gave your outer garments to a starving lady, as you had no food to offer. The girls think you’re one of these Karish saints. Tansy will cobble up something for you before we go; she’s near as good as Constance at providing what’s needed.”

  “We need to go now. Your people at Caton are in terrible danger.”

  “I sent Garibald a warning soon’s we got here—two, three hours ago. We’ve no chance to get there ourselves just now. The celebrations have clogged the streets worse than the famine riots.”

  “Celebrations?”

  “The criers are out. Despite the mad Harrower who used stolen magics in an attempt to fire the palace this evening, the chancellor of Navronne has announced the discovery of King Eodward’s will. Seems it names Perryn, Duc of Ardra, as his heir.”

  Expecting Perryn’s victory didn’t make it more palatable. But the other part . . . “They named me a Harrower using stolen magics?”

  “Several onlookers reported the dastard wore an orange scarf, though others swore he was a dragon, breathing fire. Certainly it couldn’t have been a true sorcerer, as the Registry is entirely loyal to our new king.” Bastien wagged his head wearily. “For our safety, Servant Filon, I believe we should remain in this merry company and drink to King Perryn—at least until the rest of Palinur falls down drunk and allows us safe passage to our beds.”