by Rick Shelley
"Aye, my lady," Bosc said, bobbing his head. "She's new to the Seven Towers."
"Even newer than I am," Maria said. Bosc did not respond to that.
"Our work isn't over yet," Silvas reminded Maria. "Even though it must be close to midnight."
"Close to or past," Bay commented. "I think a bit past."
"We have to close down the pentagram, and we have to contact Mikel," Silvas said.
"Tonight?" Maria asked. "Will we rouse him from sleep?"
"If needs be," Silvas said. "Though I fancy that Mikel will be sleeping little at present."
"I'll warn Braf," Bosc offered.
"Yes, do that," Silvas said. "It will be a short time yet before we make the attempt. He'll have time to alert his men, if they aren't already at full alert."
"He's doubled the guard, an' then some," Bosc said.
Maria unsaddled Camiss herself, and took the harness from her head, talking the whole time. She would have given the horse a rubdown also, but there was more pressing work, and Bosc had grooms ready to care for Camiss. Bosc would see to Bay himself, as he always did.
Silvas and Maria took the back way into the keep, going from the mews into the curtain wall, up through a corner tower and across to the keep. Satin and Velvet moved in front, prowling, watching for the dangers that were within their purview. The hours of the night were their primary watch. But they reached the private apartments on the second level of the keep without encountering anything more than sentries on patrol, gurnetz and human, all armed and tense. The battle for Mecq had touched the Seven Towers. The fighting had been horrifying. No one was anxious for a repeat.
There was no time for relaxation. Silvas and Maria went up to the workshop to shut down the remaining spells and deactivate the pentagram.
"I don't think I've ever been so tired in all my life," Maria said when she and Silvas left the now idle pentagram. "It seems as if this day has gone on for a week, and it isn't finished yet."
"I can recall a few times when I've felt this spent," Silvas said, "but not so many that the memories trip over each other. When Auroreus initiated me into the Greater Mysteries of the Trimagister, the ordeal lasted a full seven days and nights without rest."
They went downstairs, through the library and on to the small sitting room next to their sleeping chamber. Koshka was there with wine and the inevitable selection of fruits and cheeses. There were treats for the cats as well, over in a corner. Satin and Velvet went to it with good appetite.
"Will you be wanting baths now?" Koshka asked.
"Not yet, I'm afraid," Silvas said. "There's still work to do, and a hot bath might put us both to sleep before we're finished."
"A long night yet?"
"Yes, Koshka, perhaps both long and dangerous." Silvas took a drink of wine. It was the special alpine vintage that he and Carillia had both been so fond of. Carillia. Chance remembrance still brought pain.
Maria saw the flash of agony and touched Silvas's arm. When their eyes met, so did their minds.
I know how difficult it is for you, Maria told him. I share your pain.
Let us hope there's time to share pleasures as well. You've already experienced far more than you bargained for when first we met.
Maria was unable to stop herself. She laughed, deeply and long, bringing a flush to her face. "Far more, indeed."
"Don't keep anyone up to heat water for us, Koshka," Silvas said. "We'll make do. Perhaps we can save everyone a little work now."
Koshka nodded an acknowledgment and left.
There was work to do, but Maria and Silvas sat on the divan and spent some minutes fortifying themselves with food and wine. Both remembered what had happened earlier when they had thought to contact Mikel. Gioia had come to call on them instead. What will happen this time? was a question that did not really need the intimate merging of their minds to come to both of them.
"Are you ready?" Silvas asked finally, and Maria nodded. She set down her goblet and leaned back on the sofa, reaching out to hold Silvas's hand. The cats took up their normal positions at either end of the divan.
Making contact was easier than either expected. Together they pictured Mikel in their minds. Silvas framed a shared thought: Mikel, we need to talk. Immediately, the room in front of them changed. It was as if half of the sitting room had been sliced away, and half of a new room spliced to it. The dividing line was sharp, unmistakable. Silvas and Maria needed no explanation to know that the view in front of them was part of what passed for a "small" room in Mikel's palace. There was every evidence of reality, as if the two rooms had been physically joined. There were perfect seams.
Mikel was there, no more than six feet from them, sitting in an ebony chair inlaid with intricate designs in gold and silver. The golden chalice in his hand would easily hold a quart, and the exterior was studded with every variety of precious stone. Mikel lifted the goblet and took a long drink. His eyes were bloodshot, and he gave every indication of being thoroughly inebriated.
"We were concerned that we might disturb your sleep," Silvas said when it became clear that Mikel would not open the discussion.
"You have disturbed my drinking, and I take that far more seriously," Mikel replied, finally deigning to look more or less at his callers.
"There seems to be some urgency to this, or we would have waited for morning."
"Urgency to what?"
"When we returned from the Shining City, we found a shimmering dome covering the valley of the Seven Towers, a barrier closing it off from the surrounding countryside. The people in the village can't pass out through the veil. Outsiders not only can't pass in through it, the veil makes it appear as if the valley doesn't even exist."
"So there's a veil. What of it?"
"Whoever put it in place did not sign it, but it obviously took godly power to create that veil and make it difficult for us to manipulate it."
A slight pause was the only indication that Mikel heard anything of note in that statement. "A minor matter. I have no knowledge of who did it. It does not surprise me, though. Many of us here would as soon close you away where you could not disturb our peace any farther. The surprise is that there are so few who seem inclined toward quick action."
"I know of Barreth and Gioia. Both have made their feelings clear. Are there more as vindictive as them?"
Mikel shrugged. "At least one, perhaps three. Do not ask me to name names. I will not do that. Though you were a good servant when you were my servant, I will not betray my siblings to a deicide."
"I was merely the weapon. You and your allies were the deicides. Even by your standards I have call on your loyalty."
"You brought death to us. Those deaths will be avenged, whether I will it or not. Some of my siblings keep close accounts. You are in over your heads, but not—I suspect—for long. For me, for most of us, it would be enough to have that barrier close you away."
"It does not close us away. It is merely an inconvenience, mostly for the mortals who live in this valley. As a matter of fact, I've taken steps to strengthen the barrier."
Mikel stared at Silvas, openly appraising now.
"You think it could hold out any of us who chose to pass through it?"
"I did not say so," Silvas said.
"You think you have long memories, but you have known so little," Mikel said. "We go back to a time when these mortals, such as you used to be, had neither language nor society, when they huddled in caves like the meanest of rodents, prey rather than predator. We took those beasts and educated them, molded them over to be a reflection of us."
"Rather to reflect glory on you," Silvas suggested.
"Every people who ever came to glory in your world did so because of our favor."
"Because they gave you flattery."
"Because they realized that we made their greatness possible, not the recluses of the land above ours," Mikel said. "They care not at all for anyone but themselves."
"You and your brothers and sisters do?" Silv
as did not try to hide his skepticism.
"You have so little idea of our history," Mikel said.
"More than you know," Silvas said, letting annoyance take hold of him and run free. "More than you told me yourself when you poured so much of your mind into mine. What of your parents? Where have they gone to since they disowned the lot of you?"
Mikel growled noisily and took a long drink of wine. Then he took a carafe from a table next to him, refilled the chalice, and drank again.
"Are you at all familiar with the Holy Bible that your Christians revere?" Silvas asked while Mikel was still drinking. "In the Old Testament, there is a list of ten commandments that are meant to be the guiding laws of Christian living. At least one of those commandments, so I am told, was directed more at you and your brothers and sisters than at the mortals who hold it sacred. 'Honor thy father and mother.' "
For a moment, Silvas thought that Mikel might hurl his chalice at him. Unbidden, a spell came to mind that would deflect the object harmlessly to the floor. But Mikel held his temper close enough that he did not waste his wine, or throw away its container.
"They never honored anything or anyone," he said instead, bitterness and hate in his voice. "They cared for nothing but each other. I have no idea where they might be, if they still live. Somewhere in the land above us, no doubt. I really don't care. Had they appeared while we were preparing for the recent battle, I have no doubt that we would have put aside our differences to attack them in conceit."
"Your parents bear you no hate. They're merely disappointed, and they regret that they paid so little attention to you," Silvas said. "When they tried to make amends, it was already too late."
"What do you know of our parents, bastard?" Mikel demanded.
"I've spoken with your father, not all that long ago," Silvas said. "While we were arming for Mecq."
"Unlikely," Mikel said, mountainous anger showing on his face. "He has taken no interest in us since before Babylon first ruled the world."
"However unlikely, it's true," Silvas said. "He took me to a place where my power did not work. He told me of your family, much more than you would find comfortable. And he warned me what would come from the battle we so recently fought as allies."
Silvas waited for Mikel's rage to erupt. But after long minutes of struggle, Mikel simply disappeared, with the room in which he sat. Silvas and Maria were alone with their cats.
Outside, a monumental storm erupted to batter the valley of the Seven Towers.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was impossible for Silvas and Maria to miss the coincidence of a tremendous storm breaking at the very instant that their conversation with Mikel ended. Several peals of thunder sounded almost simultaneously, and heavy rain slammed at the one window in the small sitting room. Lightning flashed past the window, colored spectacularly by the rainbow hues of the veil over the valley.
"Mikel's final word?" Maria suggested, going to the window.
Silvas followed her. "That seems unlikely. He was too morose, too intoxicated, to come up with a spectacle like this so quickly. Besides, I've never known him to waste energy on empty shows."
"Then one of the others listening in on our talk? The sky was clear when we strengthened the barrier. There wasn't a cloud to be seen."
Silvas shook his head uncertainly. "I don't think that the storm has anything to do with our talk. If it's a response to anything, it must be to the work we did before, strengthening the veil."
"Nothing more than mere coincidence?" Maria asked, opening her eyes wide and putting mock surprise into her voice.
Silvas laughed. "It might well be. We're too eager to see enemy action in everything. But we can still watch this storm with particular interest."
"Is there somewhere we can get a better view of the storm without being soaked?"
"The closest vantage would be the turret above the workroom."
Silvas led the way up through the library and workroom. On the side of the workroom, a narrow doorway opened onto a steep and tightly curled stairway leading to a turret that protruded from the side of the keep. Its main function during the centuries that Silvas had ridden circuit for Mikel had been to give him a view of whatever place he had ridden to and called in the pillar of smoke that allowed him access to home. That one turret showed the remote locale rather than the immediate environs of the Seven Towers.
The walls were thick enough that Silvas and Maria could stand close to the slit openings in the turret and look out at the storm without catching more than a little spray from the rain outside. A chill breeze came through, though.
"I've never seen a storm so fierce," Maria said after a few minutes of observation.
"I recall a couple of storms that matched this one, though I don't think that either was the least bit stronger," Silvas said, absently thinking of those other storms. One of them had caught him, and Bay, on the road, going from one village to another in the Scottish Highlands, far beyond the usual limits of their peregrinations. After enduring a few minutes of the cloudburst, Silvas had given up on riding any farther that day. He had spoken the words of magic that summoned the pillar of smoke to let them return to the Seven Towers. The other storm so fierce had happened while they were in a village near Rouen, in the king's Norman possessions. At least he had been under cover when that storm broke. Silvas related those experiences to Maria, sharing the most vivid images directly.
While they talked in the turret, Silvas and Maria roamed the skies over the valley in the spirit, probing the storm, searching for any hint of design to it. The storm was a broad one, covering the valleys both east and west of the now hidden valley of the Seven Towers. The clouds were moving rapidly from southwest to northeast, failing at the front, new clouds building at the rear, seething as if they were at a rapid boil. The result was that the storm seemed to hang overhead as new clouds replaced older ones that had drained themselves of rain. An extraordinarily large number of lightning bolts flashed, often as many as a dozen simultaneously.
"It looks as if this storm will not end soon," Maria said after they had spent a quarter hour watching it.
There's no sign I can find of conscious agency to it, Silvas told her. Nor does it seem to be causing any special damage.
A few trees struck, branches down, Maria commented, turning her attention toward the valley below the eyes of her spirit. If not a directed assault on us, an omen perhaps?
There is almost always conscious design driving true omens, Silvas replied. Most events that people call omens after the fact are mere coincidence.
"Superstition?" Maria asked softly.
"Perhaps. I see no point to spending the entire night here. Though little rain comes in, we're still getting damp, and there's a chill to the wind. We might as well be comfortable, even if we don't sleep."
"Don't sleep? You think this storm still bears our attention?"
"It makes me uneasy. This may be nothing more than what it appears, but it troubles me. I doubt that I could sleep while it continues."
They turned away from the storm and descended to the workroom. Silvas paused for a moment there, his eyes tracing the lines of the crystal pentagram, searching for any hint of damage to the pattern, and finding none. But yet he hesitated to leave the room. Maria stood near the door, with Satin and Velvet flanking her, waiting.
I'm tempted to use the pentagram to investigate this storm further, Silvas told Maria. I tell myself that it would be a waste of time and energy, but I am still sorely tempted.
"Time and energy we have at present, it seems," Maria said.
Silvas looked at her, then looked at the pentagram again, wavering. Finally, he shook his head and went to her.
"No, my mind is chasing shadows. If I give in to this impulse, I may find myself giving in to similar impulses all of the time. I can find no ready cause for the effort."
Silvas lingered again as they were going through the library on the floor below the workroom. He quickly scanned the rows of books and r
acks of scrolls, questing through his memory for some title he could retrieve to find a cure for his uneasiness.
"Obviously, you feel there is something we should be doing," Maria said.
"But I don't know what. That bothers me infinitely more than the storm itself."
"You think the answer is here?"
Silvas shrugged. "It might be. There is a wealth of knowledge in this room, beyond the ken of all but a few in this world."
"And the new store of knowledge within us?"
Silvas laughed. "You're right. But that knowledge is new. I have ages of comfort with the knowledge in these volumes." He shook his head. "This may be the largest library in existence since the one at Alexandria was destroyed. If any collection is larger, it can only be in the Vatican. In any case, there is one scroll I think you might scan. Auroreus wrote this tract as a primer for me when he first took me as his apprentice."
Silvas crossed to a rack of scrolls and reached for one. As always, he was able to go immediately to the document he wanted. He pulled it out and carried it across to Maria.
"Dei et Deae," he announced, handing her the scroll. "You won't have nearly the difficulty reading it that I did the first time."
Maria unknotted the cord that held the scroll closed and opened the manuscript to the first page. Her first glance encompassed the entire page.
"This makes even my father's scribbling look beautiful," she said. "What a tangle of words and languages."
Then, just briefly, she felt tremendous surprise. "Languages," she repeated. "I learned Latin from Brother Paul, enough to read the Bible. I learned to read a little of English and French from my father's second wife. But this..."
"There are seven languages in that scroll, thrown together as if mixed in a bowl and poured at random onto the sheet," Silvas said, letting amusement soften his mood.
"I can read them more easily than I could read a single language before," Maria said. "If only I had this gift when I was taking my lessons."
"Take the scroll with you. There's no need to read it now."
Silvas's uneasiness had passed. The interlude had taken the look of care from his face. They went on down to the small sitting room. There was still wine left in the carafe, and a considerable amount of fruit and cheese. Maria curled up on the divan with her legs tucked under her and started to read Dei et Deae. Silvas lit several extra candles, then went and stood by the window. The wall was eight feet thick, and the window was glassed. Neither rain nor wind troubled his continued observation of the storm.
