by Carol Berg
I near broke my wrists in my desire to reach for him, to comfort, to apologize.
Glaring at me as if I had done it, Kajetan returned to his place.
“We’ve no reason to stop, you see,” said Dante, as if discussing the grape harvest. “Do as you’re told.” The basest and most basic of threats . . .
Or a reminder of my promise. What was changed, save my bound hands? These devils did not know of the tangle curse. Dante and I could still do what was needed.
The yellow flames hissing from Dante’s staff—our only light—took that moment to wink out, abandoning Ianne’s Bench in tarry darkness. He cursed and bellowed that some adept had cast a spell in error. He would have to rework it. A girl piped up with excuses, and Roussel snapped at them both to get it done, as the night was deepening.
This could not be coincidence. As Dante’s accusations roared, I lunged forward as far as I could over my bound hands and the rim of the basin, whispering, “You must not consent to die, Portier. He will keep you breathing. He says to tell you a student must trust and obey his master.”
The words made no sense. The last person Duplais should trust was Kajetan. But when Dante’s staff blazed high again, this time in a shower of purple and red, Duplais lay still, save for a quiet trembling. His hands were clenched together and pressed to his forehead as one did to acknowledge a divine gift. Evidently the words made sense to him.
“Read,” snapped Dante.
I began. “ ‘As the light of nature fails, seal the circle with phoenix hue.’”
I paused. Dante waved his staff around the first circle and purple-red flames tipped with gold burst into life atop each column, illuminating the circle with a wavering glow. A low thrum shivered my bones.
My mind fully open to the churning aether, I had to concentrate on each word to get it right, leaving it impossible to make sense of the whole. “ ‘Particulae settled in triune power . . . drawing forth what lives to join and bind . . .’”
At each pause I felt a new shiver, as if a different string were plucked on a monstrous violone. The tones did not fade, but blended and swelled and transformed one another, growing the magic.
“‘. . . to break and rend . . . subject, spelled weapon, primal element . . . as sigils marked upon the eternal Veil . . .’”
My father had described the hour before battle thus: The world, a trebuchet straining at its tether. The mind, a spear hand reared back. The gut, a crossbow cranked taut. So it was in the first circle at Voilline.
“ ‘Each of three grope for the crossing, the frayed and glissome warp and weft . . . as glass encircled to see beyond . . . infuse power into the three tethers. . . .’”
The water in the narrow trough began to burble, slopping over the angel’s wings that blocked its passage. The Aspirant touched a glazed bowl at his feet. When the water flared emerald green, he brought it to the dry pool and poured it over Portier’s chest. Kajetan laid living willow branches across a blood-smeared knife.
“ ‘Draw in the chosen element, touched in power, and enact the marriage of death and life.’”
The stars quivered through the veil of smoke. Roussel returned to his pillar, while Kajetan descended into the basin and wrapped Duplais’ wrists in a length of chain.
“Master,” rasped Duplais, “I am not what you think.”
Kajetan leaned down and laid his clean, long-fingered hand on Portier’s bruised forehead.
“You are everything I hoped you would be, my son: noble, generous, a mind for the ages. Never will I love another as I have loved you.” Then he pulled a length of chain from the tangled pile and laid it across Duplais’ chest. Another went across his thighs, and two more diagonally from each shoulder to the opposite hip.
I didn’t understand it. Duplais was too broken to move. They’d no need to put him through the agony of binding him. But then the prefect shifted the stone angel, allowing the rising water in the trough to spill into the basin. These chains were not bindings, but weights. God’s mercy, they were going to drown him.
“Savage!” I said, appalled, outraged. “Love does not murder!”
Kajetan grabbed my hair and yanked my head back, forcing me to look into his heated gray eyes. “Silence,” he whispered. “You do not wish to know the forces you disturb. Read.”
Without releasing my hair or my gaze, he yanked another length of chain from the pile and dropped it across Duplais’ ankles. What small struggles Duplais had managed stopped abruptly. His head lolled. My punishment for disobedience.
Kajetan returned to his pillar. The water splashed cheerfully. Trembling with hate, I read all the way to the end of Dante’s transcription.
“‘. . . by will and intent and consent are subject and universe joined. And so will the rent remain forever unhealed.’” And that was the end.
Duplais’ hair was floating. He remained insensible as the rising water swirled away dirt and blood. The surface of the water would be forty centimetres above his face before the basin began to overflow.
When the cool water licked at his cheeks, Portier’s undamaged eye flicked open, widening as he tried to move. Even to inflate his chest against the weight of the chains must be a supreme effort. The movement sloshed water over his face. Panic overcame pain, and he writhed and struggled against the cold iron. “Master,” he croaked. “Please . . .”
The three sorcerers remained in their positions. The flames atop the ring of pillars thundered.
Molten fire in my veins, I strained forward again, whispering so none but Portier might hear. “Do not consent to their villainy. Your friend will sustain you as long as he has strength to give. A student must obey and trust. . . .”
The words stilled his terror. He fixed his gaze on me as if searching for some answer in my face. “Tell him—” But the water lapped the corners of his mouth. He nodded deliberately and closed his eye.
Five times more I repeated the message, the last through five centimetres of water. Bubbles floated idly to the surface. The flames atop the pillars died, and the dark water hid his face.
CHAPTER 41
27 OCET, NIGHT
The wind gusted fitfully across the tableland, damp and heavy, its skirling music eerie in the dark. Elsewise all was hushed movement and whispers, joined with the quiet dribble of water as it seeped out of the filled basin. The night smelled of cedar and juniper, dry grass and old leaves, touched with moisture and laced with a faint tinge of rot. The mindstorm had quieted as well, as if its riotous participants had been notified that the world was changing, and they were holding their lives in check to see what came of it.
It was only inside me that anger and hatred boiled like liquid fire. I wanted to slash something, to hit something, to fight, not sit here waiting for doom to fall. I needed to know how to wield it to some purpose.
Grinding my jaw, I yanked on my wrist chain, pulling this way and that as if I might worry the ring from the stone. When it failed to budge yet again, I wanted to scream. But I would not. Not here beside Duplais.
I rested my head on my hands, dreading the moment they would make me abandon him in his watery coffin. If he was dead, it would be sacrilege. If he lived, it would surely be torment for him, to be abandoned in the dark with only a relayed promise. Once they settled the basin lid in place, no pilgrim would ever know a man lay under the water.
Something brushed my cheek. A windblown hair, a leaf torn from the maquis? A world away, it seemed, that afternoon hour in the steamy, fragrant heat with Roussel.
Another brush, tickling. I rubbed my cheek on my forearm, but the sensation didn’t stop. The soft touches were cold, tainted.
I lifted my head. Purple and green threads floated in the air above the pool, their numbers in the hundreds, multiplied by their reflection in the dark water. A lens, Ilario had said. Just as Dante had created in the Rotunda, they had created the lens here, the symbol of concentric circles on the diagram. Were the floating lights a result of imperfection, Dante’s subtle work to ke
ep the villains dependent on his magic? I should have insisted Dante teach me how to use my own magic.
Now. The second and third circles. Dante’s unvoiced command was hard-edged against the quiet, like stars in a winter sky.
Relieved to be of use, I did not waste words, but sketched out the diagrams of passage and inversion—the skull, the three spirals, the concentric rings, the passing arrows, the dotted line that carried the alchemical symbol for air forward to the vessel and the tree of life. Already he was allocating places and positioning urns of earth and water within the shelter of the tree.
What’s our plan? I said. We must end this. I wanted to spend this seething fury that threatened to split my skin.
Leash your rage. Focus it. It was a warning, yet surely his matched my own.
Kajetan arrived to unfasten my wrists and deliver me to the second circle. I spat on him. It was not at all as satisfying as it should have been. He ignored me.
The platform I had seen from the mountain’s shoulder was raised above the level ground by four or five wide steps. A hinged trapdoor of thick bronze stood open in the center of the slab, a small circle of bronze grid-work set in the middle of it. The Aspirant emerged from the hole in the slab as Dante waited on the steps.
As Kajetan led me around the platform, someone behind me sighed wearily. I glanced backward and Dante’s warning became clear.
A man sat resting his head against the pillar. Or perhaps he was no man, but a scarecrow stolen from a barley field in Challyat. His garments were rags, his long limbs fleshless sticks, his unhealthy hair and beard tangled and filthy. A strap of leather circled his rooster’s neck and tethered him like a dog to the pillar.
I wrenched my hands from Kajetan’s grip and ran to him, my knees skidding on the hard stone. Though nothing on this person resembled the man who five years ago had twirled me in his powerful arms, thrown himself on his favored stallion, and galloped away from Montclaire, I would know my father anywhere.
Crosshatched cuts marked every centimetre of chest, belly, arms, legs, back—fresh wounds layered across older scars. Scarificators, the blockish instruments that popped ten blades at a time into the skin, were much more efficient than a single lancet for milking a mule’s blood.
“Papa,” I whispered, dashing aside murderous tears before touching his hair with my bound hands. “Papa, look at me. I know you’re innocent.”
He twisted his neck, as if his head was too heavy to lift. His mane of hair fell aside. Saints, they had scored his brow, cheeks, and neck, too. But his sunken eyes flared, and his colorless lips stretched in the ghost of his ebullient smile. “Ani, love,” he whispered. “You’ve come.”
“Am I not your mind’s child?” I pressed his bony hand to my forehead and my heart.
His other hand, palsied like that of a man fifty years his senior, caressed my hair. “Never dreamt you so real as this before.”
“I’m no dream. I’ll save—”
Kajetan yanked me away from him. “You’ve work to do, damoselle.” Papa turned away without protest as they fixed me to Kajetan’s pillar. Perhaps it was better he thought me a dream. I memorized his skeletal form and leashed my swelling rage.
“You what?” Dante’s scornful question rang out, an offense against the pregnant night. “You’ve never once worked a successful summoning. Would you infuse the entirety of his blood directly into your hand, this wretch’s carcass would summon a revenant sooner than you.”
“Nonetheless, I shall serve as principal practitioner for the second rite,” said Roussel. “You’ve taught me well, mage. The prefect shall serve as mediator. That should give you adequate time to translate the book. Your transcriptions of the second and third rites seem quite lean.”
Dante had assumed he’d introduced enough flaws in the other mages’ spellwork that he would always serve as principal practitioner. Something was wrong. “So where is the book?”
“I’ve deposited the personal attractors for our revenant in the vault as you specified. The index requires that the nireals be positioned with them for the second rite and removed to the third circle after the summoning. The adepts are busily preparing the royal lady, so you must see to the nireals yourself. It’s just as well, as you’re so meticulous about such things. When you’ve done, take your place as guide, and I’ll give you the book.”
“I did not become traitor and apostate to do adepts’ chores,” Dante spat. “You’ve not ever worked—”
“If you note the summoning slipping out of my control, Master, halt the work and we’ll shift positions.”
The aether link between us rumbled.
I peered into the night beyond the ring of pillars. The first circle, where Portier lay, remained dark and silent, save for the floating threads and trickling water. Ivory lights flickered from the third circle. It appeared at first as if sylphs danced around the azinheira. But the dark shapes were just the tree’s trailing lower branches shifting in the wind. I’d often played or read in the cool green bower formed by an azinheira’s branches. That’s where the adepts were preparing Eugenie to create a child with Soren—not for Antonia, but to bridge the gap between life and death. A supremely unnatural being whose conception would upend the laws of nature.
Dante retrieved the five silver spheres from a box outside the pillar circle. He fumbled with them, dropped several, as the clawed fingers of his right hand could not grasp more than one. Growling, he propped his staff on the pillar and gathered the silver spheres in his arms.
Wait! Dread and warning burst from me. But he had already swept across the circle, mounted the steps in two strides, and descended into the space below the trapdoor. A flash of brilliant yellow seared the night from the opening in the platform, accompanied by a short, sharp bark of surprise. Only when the dark form emerged from the vault did I breathe again.
The bronze door crashed shut. A bolt clattered. “There you are, you arrogant devil,” he shouted through the grate. “Never saw sweeter than you locked in a pit. In the dark.”
The knot in my gut exploded fire into chest and limbs, turning bone to porridge. The dark-robed figure was not Dante, but Jacard.
“Did you not think we’d wonder why the spellwork you granted us never worked as your own did? Did you not think we’d notice that the prisoner in the Spindle was useless after your visit? And did you think to lure a Mondragon witch to your hermit’s bed by lying about her blood?”
“Enough, adept!” said the Aspirant. “Fetch the shield plate for this grate. And make sure your master’s staff is well outside the circle.”
Vermillion lightning burst through the grate, accompanied by a shattering resonance that shivered stone and sky. A concussion of rage . . . of pain . . . of profound dismay . . . ripped through the aether and into my skull.
I blinked and squinted, the painful red glare subsiding only slowly. Dante!
“He’s not my master. Not anymore.”
Roussel mounted the steps and crouched over the grate in the trap. “Hear me, Master Dante, and be very clear,” he said. “I’ve no desire to kill you. One does not destroy a resource of your considerable value. But I cannot brook intentionally flawed spellwork today, and I’ve a more efficient linguist at hand to translate my book. Alas, we’ve no sorcerer’s hole at Voilline, so I’ve left you a Gautier family heirloom called a contrabalance, intended to occupy the talents of a captive mage when no other containment is at hand. With an application of your power you can shield yourself from its effects. But ignore its eruptions at your peril; I allowed Jacard to select the particular torment it will apply. You are a dreadful lash-tongue with your inferiors, and he is a vengeful creature. Now, excuse me. I’ve business.”
As the Aspirant descended the steps, the lightning flashed again.
“Ah, Portier,” said a soft voice behind me, “I believed you had exacted the world’s most astonishing deceit, convincing me you had embraced your humble calling. But Dante a king’s man? Nothing shall ever surprise me again.”
I had forgotten Kajetan, who stood behind me, shielding his eyes as he watched the scene play out.
Friend, tell me you’re all right. What do I do? Another scalding flash. I looked away, but still the red glare obscured my sight.
Jacard hurried up the steps, carrying a flat square of steel. He propped the metal sheet on its edge. “Magic is all about seeing, you told me. Uncover the windows, weevil. Get out of my light, weevil. Can you not make the simplest fire spell? You are blind, groveler . . . insect . . . weevil. Well, who is the weevil now? Enjoy the light I’ve made for you.”
He let the sheet fall. Yet another flash of searing orange-red was shut off with its dull clank.
All I could think was of one friend drowning in the dark, the other in that flaying fire. I called Dante again.
We continue, he said. Just give me time. I’ve lost Portier. . . . Confused, desperate, riven with pain.
The Aspirant joined Kajetan and me. “You really must leash your kinsman, Prefect. Teach him respect, at least until his talents measure up to those of his foes. If he fails us tonight, you and he will both join Dante in the oubliette.”
“My nephew alerted you to the mage, Aspirant. He deserves the chance to prove himself.”
“That, and Antonia’s vicious little end play that required this morning’s northward chase, give him this opportunity. With Dante’s loyalties compromised, I needed the girl more than I needed a better guide. And so . . .”
Roussel dropped the Book of Greater Rites in my lap. He crouched beside me, and without ceremony produced a knife, stabbed it into my right index finger, and touched my stinging, bloody finger to the open page. “Now speak the key. The consequences of your misbehavior will be applied to your father. Do not imagine he is beyond pain.”
“Andragossa.” The letters shifted and twisted into readable text.
Grunting in satisfaction, he pointed at the middle of the page. “When I signal, read from this point through the mark of the skull.”
