by Rick Shelley
It was a trek that Silvas made but rarely. For so many centuries he had spent most of his days either on the road or in the villages and towns of the realm that he seldom had the opportunity or need to climb the 150 steps from the main level of the keep to its parapets, the highest of the castle's seven towers. Satin and Velvet met them on the stairs as they passed the level of the wizard's apartments.
There was a single human guard on duty when they arrived. He walked the perimeter, looking out through each of the crenels that he passed. The guard looked to Silvas when the wizard and his companions emerged from the doorway at the top of the stairs.
"Pay us no mind," Silvas told him. "We merely came to look. Go down to the level below until we finish, if you please. Take a rest from your watch."
"Aye, my lord." The guard hurried to obey.
"Look at that sky!" Silvas said after the sentry was gone. "Though it still worries me that one of the gods sought to seal us away from the world, that is a magnificent sky. I could glory in it for hours."
"All the colors that are," Paul said, feeling a catch in his chest. "So delicate, yet so rich, an affirmation of the promise given to Noah." Paul hesitated for a moment then, feeling embarrassed that he had drifted so quickly back to the basics of Scripture. "Can it be seen from outside this valley?"
"No. From the outside, it appears as if this valley doesn't even exist," Silvas said. "The roads bend around it. Even the hills show no memory that we are here."
"Is it really a defense against your enemies?" Paul asked. "Against any of the enemies who might do you harm?"
"It was certainly not proof against Satan," Maria said.
"Here," Silvas said, turning toward her. He opened the corner of his mind where he had walled away his experiences in Hell and let her see and feel them. The process took less than an instant. Paul was never even aware of a lapse as Maria absorbed everything that had befallen Silvas the night before.
There were a few high clouds in the morning sky, but no trace of the storm clouds that had ceiled the valley and its environs during the night. The sun was bright, moving gradually above the blue band in the rainbow sky. Within the valley, Silvas and his companions could see some signs of damage, trees down, split by lightning and felled during the storm.
"It wouldn't hold out any of the old gods for long," Silvas said, speaking to Paul while Maria probed the memories he had just opened for her. "But it might give us time to prepare more effective defenses. Even before we strengthened this barrier, it took some effort for Maria and me to pass through it. Now, there might be enough of a delay for an enemy to put us on our guard. The Unseen Lord or one of his brethren, that is."
"You think my Unseen Lord might be your enemy now?" Paul asked cautiously.
"He doesn't seem to be an active enemy," Silvas said. "But he will not take our part in whatever comes, either."
"I am finding it difficult to rise above the teachings of the Church that I learned from my childhood," Paul said. "I have seen beyond. Bishop Egbert assured me of the greater validity of the higher mysteries. But a lifetime of training and discipline is difficult to put aside."
"I realize your difficulty," Silvas assured him. "Maria and I will do what we may to help, but it will still come down to the voice within you. Give your trust to that rather than to the words of others, even our words."
"Satan was beyond our reckoning," Maria said, finally satisfied that she had missed nothing in her review of what had happened to Silvas in Hell. She pulled herself up to sit in one of the crenels.
"He's not one of the divine siblings," Silvas said. Despite his attempts to wall off those memories, some part of his mind had continued to probe at them. "He's not a brother to Mikel and the others. He may even antedate them. Despite his low station, his ties are to the realm above the land of the gods, to the land of their parents."
"There's so much we need to teach you," Maria told Paul. "And we know not how much time we may have."
"I will learn as quickly as I am able," Paul promised.
"You've had a long vigil. Do you feel the need of sleep?" Silvas asked.
"Sleep?" Paul repeated in surprise. "How could I sleep? I've met the Devil in combat, and somehow survived. I've been whisked across much of England in the space of a blink."
Silvas grinned. "I feel that I could sleep for a week, but I won't notice if that sleep is yet postponed. We'll begin your new education at once. But not up here. We'll go down to the library and let the guard return to his post."
—|—
"I spent many years as apprentice to Auroreus, the wizard who built the Seven Towers," Silvas explained to Paul when they were all seated in the library. But Silvas could not remain seated. He got up and started to pace.
"Apprentice." Silvas turned and looked directly at Paul, then he glanced at Maria. I've given this no thought. Yet here I find that I assume that it is necessary to make Paul my apprentice in the Greater Mysteries of the Trimagister.
It must be right, Maria replied. She glanced at Paul, who was looking back and forth between them, aware that something was going on, but not what. But he must enter this path of his own free will.
"Yes," Silvas said. He crossed to Paul and stood just in front of him. "I'm getting far ahead of myself here. I must ask you a question, and I must advise you to think most carefully before you hazard an answer."
"Ask your question, Lord Silvas," Paul said. He felt proud that his voice did not quaver.
"Bishop Egbert took you to St. Ives to study the Greater Mysteries of the White Brotherhood. I ask you to study the way of the Trimagister instead, a course that may take you beyond even the Greater Mysteries of that calling. I ask if you will become my apprentice."
"Just what is involved?" A mixture of fear and elation nearly overwhelmed Paul, but he managed to keep most of that from his voice. Only the quickness of his reply gave him away.
"Hard work and danger," Silvas said. "I spent many years learning from Auroreus. I was seven when he brought me here to be his apprentice. It was not until I was twenty-one that he permitted me to undergo formal initiation in the Greater Mysteries, and I continued to study under his tutelage until the very day of his death, many years later. You will have to compress those years into perhaps as many days. With Carillia's gift, I have ways to assist you that Auroreus did not, but it will be difficult work, and you won't have the advantage of years to get used to your new talents and knowledge. That will add, perhaps, to the danger that is always implicit in such expanded circumstances."
"Here is the scroll you gave me," Maria said, handing Dei et Deae to Silvas. She had not left the room to fetch it. She had merely willed its return, and it had appeared in her hand. Paul had been looking at Silvas and had not noticed the magic.
Silvas looked at the closed scroll and laughed softly—within himself—at the way Maria had collected it. Then he looked at Paul again. "Take whatever time you need to make this decision. It wants even more assurance than the final vows you took to wear that cassock."
Paul bowed his head for a moment, then looked up to meet Silvas's eyes. "Yes, this does take reflection—and prayer."
"Take what time you need," Silvas repeated. "Though we don't know what time remains to us, this must not be rushed. If you accept, you must do so thoroughly, without question."
Paul nodded again and stood. He looked from Silvas to Maria, then left the library, going to the stairs to climb once more to the parapets.
"I had no memory of any past when Auroreus brought me here," Silvas told Maria after the monk left them. "I knew no other life but the one he gave me. To hear Auroreus, you would think that no one who came to the study of the Trimagister older than I was could possibly win through to initiation."
"You feel that our gift makes it possible?"
"It must. I can't explain this sense that I have that this is right and necessary, but it is overpowering."
I feel it as well, Maria replied. We will do whatever is necessary.
—|—
Paul climbed the stairs slowly this time, taking little notice of his route. His mind was directed within. Meditation was an old friend, a skill he had learned as a boy when his path was first directed to the Church.
I was meant to be a country priest, he told himself. The way of the White Brotherhood is the only one I know. I'm too old to change my path.
He felt a large measure of fear, and recognized it. After the night's foray, fear was as strong and real as the feeling of the presence of God when the Host was elevated during Mass.
That is real. That is what I know, he told himself.
It was almost a shock when there were no more stairs to climb. His foot went up again, reached for one more step, then came down hard when there was no step for it to reach. Paul looked around quickly. The sentry had heard that last footfall and turned to look. When he saw that it was merely the cleric who had been with Silvas and Maria before, the sentry turned his attention back to the outside, his thoughts his own.
You have already learned much, though, a voice inside the friar said. You are not what you were a fortnight past. You can never be that person again.
Paul started to sink to his knees to pray, but he stopped, almost without willing it. He looked down.
I know only the Church.
You know more, the other voice in his mind said. You have participated in a Wizard's Council. You have fought a great battle, been part of incredible magics. You fought Satan in his own realm. Your bishop said you were fit for greater things and thought to start you on the road to the Greater Mysteries of the White Brotherhood. Silvas offers you even more.
"More danger," Paul whispered, so softly that the sentry did not overhear.
The opportunity to do more good, the advocate within Paul said. You have no choice but to accept.
I have every choice, Paul countered. Lord Silvas made that clear.
Then he did retreat to prayer, but he prayed standing on his feet, looking up into the rainbow-hued sky. The many special birds of the Seven Towers came to circle over his head, to sing and romp in the sunlight. Paul watched them and wondered at the purity of their colors and song, at the innocent abandon in their song and flight.
Then he made his choice.
—|—
"I will be your apprentice, if you still want me," Paul announced when he returned to Silvas and Maria in the library.
"I am glad you've made your choice," Silvas said. "I welcome you to the path of the Trimagister. I will not say that you'll never regret your choice. You will, perhaps often. But it is my firm belief that this is the path on which your feet belong. Come, we'll start immediately."
Silvas seated Paul at one of the reading desks and placed the scroll Dei et Deae in front of him.
"There's one thing we should do even before this," Silvas said then, suddenly changing direction in his mind. "It is customary for a person new to this path to take a new name, one by which he will be openly known. There are certain magics that are fully effective only if they are summoned with a person's birth name, so we avoid that. I haven't spoken the name I was christened with since I first came to the Seven Towers."
"Will you give me my new name, or do I choose it myself?" Paul asked.
"Auroreus gave me Silvas, but I was but a lad of seven and from a far distant place. Choose your own if you will."
Paul looked around the library. He looked at the racks filled with scrolls, the shelves lined with books. He looked at Silvas, at Maria, and at the two large cats. His eyes lingered longest on Satin and Velvet.
"If you have no objection, I would be known as Felix," Paul said finally. "Felix both for these magnificent cats and for the happiness I would find."
"Then Felix you are," Silvas said. "That is not to say that you will never use another name for convenience. But the name that you bore before now becomes a word unspoken."
"Unless I chance on those who have known me before?" Felix asked.
"You'll learn to deal with that, if the occasion should arise," Silvas said. "It never has with me."
"Felix. I like that name," Maria said. "It speaks of hope, of promise."
"And now, we really must start, Felix," Silvas said. During the hours to follow, he used the new name as frequently as possible, helping to wed the name to its owner. It felt appropriate. Silvas spoke of trees and forests, and Silvas had spent much of his life riding through such vistas; and had even found Carillia in a forest. Auroreus had spoken of gold and other bright things, and much of his life had been spent in the courts of greatness, among emperors and senators in Rome. Felix did speak of cats and of happiness, joy. Perhaps it would prove to be a fortunate choice for its owner.
"This scroll is one that Auroreus wrote as a primer for me when I first came to the Seven Towers. It is in a melange of languages that would drive you to distraction if you were forced to piece out the meaning the way I was. This is where we will take the first of our shortcuts. Turn your attention to the beginning of the manuscript and read."
Silvas stood behind Felix and put his hands on the former monk's head. Felix started to read. Though he recognized that there were many different languages in the document, he read them as easily as if they were long-memorized passages of Scripture, and the various languages became a part of his store of knowledge, knowledge spreading far beyond the actual words and constructions used in the manuscript. At the same time, Silvas lectured him, in spoken words and in direct thought, glossing the manuscript and adding so much more of the preliminary lessons that a wizard's apprentice had to know before he could attempt even the simplest application of the power of the Trimagister.
At first, Maria sat and observed, her mind linked to Silvas's so that she was aware of all that passed between the wizard and his pupil. Then she left the room without Felix's notice. She went about the castle, even out to the mews to inform Bay of what was transpiring in the keep—and what had happened the night before after Silvas had disappeared from before the horse's eyes. At times, Maria returned to the library to observe for a few moments, to take stock of Felix's progress. Under direct link to Silvas, the new apprentice could hardly help but learn quickly. Such study could not be easily shirked.
Silvas poured himself into the task, concentrating as fully on teaching Felix as he had ever concentrated on the most complex magic. He molded the mind between his hands to hold everything that an apprentice had to learn, and he dug into his own memory in more detail than he had in ages to recall the sequences in which Auroreus had taught him.
Hours passed as minutes. Neither Silvas nor Felix was truly aware of the passage of time. Together, they explored the pathways of Felix's mind and placed new stores of data there, as workers might cache bags of grain in a warehouse. As the day passed, Felix found ample opportunity to marvel at the amount of room for storage within him, and the new ease with which he could retrieve stored memories. Silvas tested him mercilessly, over history and practical knowledge, forced him to parse the spells and explain in detail how each could be erected, what it was meant to do, and what complications might arise. Felix went beyond exhaustion into exhilaration. He found himself rushing the pace rather than begging leave for a moment's respite. The lore of the Trimagister took him in its grip. Hunger for knowledge drove him forward. Brother Paul was lost in the shadows of Felix's greater knowledge.
At mid-afternoon, Maria returned to the library once more and sat where she had been sitting earlier. She took note of Felix's progress with a smile and more than a little pride. The onetime vicar of Mecq, the friend of her childhood, was proving to be an excellent candidate. Maria settled in to follow his continued education, and to make sure that Silvas and Felix broke off their work when it was time for the evening meal.
Maria had been there for nearly an hour when Bosc burst into the room, radiating agitation so powerfully that Silvas came out of the near trance he had been in since taking his position over Felix that morning.
"What is it?" Silvas asked, blinking repeatedly.
Felix put his hands to his temples and pressed against the sudden ache in his head, also blinking as he became aware of the light in the room again. He had lost his guide so abruptly that he needed a moment to find his equilibrium.
"You must look, lord," Bosc insisted. "Bay told me to bid you climb to the battlements to look for yourself."
Silvas and Maria shared an impulse to simply project their minds outside, to look without moving, but—together—they suppressed that instinct. If Bay thought that they should climb to the top of the keep and actually look, it was likely important that they do so.
Silvas and Maria led the way up the stairs. Felix did his best to stay close behind them, but the education of the day had not included any new reserves of physical strength. He quickly lagged behind, as did Bosc. The esperia's shorter legs would not allow him to keep up with racing humans on stairs. Satin and Velvet moved past Felix and Bosc.
The sight that awaited them was enough to stop Maria and Silvas in their tracks at the top of the stairs.
"The sky," Maria whispered.
"Of course," Silvas replied, just as softly.
The sky's colors had deepened from the pastel rainbow of the morning. There was an angry look to the colors now, particularly the reds and oranges of the west that now filtered the light of the afternoon sun. But even the blues and violets of the eastern horizon seemed to boil and seethe with anger. Close to the horizon, all around, there was a new eerie reflectiveness to the sky, as if the walls around the valley were becoming more solid, closing them in more thoroughly. Faintly, they could hear a distant whisper of battle music.
