“Maybe you can.” And I told him about the belt of jade, and how if he wore it next to his skin it would store far more power than any single vessel. “You may end up more powerful than me or Drei.”
Needless to say, he wanted to try it straight away. He was always volatile, Cal, swept by enthusiasm one minute, weighed down by gloom the next. This was one of his high times.
Most of the belts were too big for him – he was very skinny round the middle. A couple were too small. Then he found little clips that adjusted the size. So clever, the people who invented these, they thought of everything. He chose a belt with eight jade pieces stitched into it, the belt soft and comfortable, yet stiffened somehow so that it fitted his form exactly.
I couldn’t help stroking his chest while he had his shirt off.
“Now don’t get me started again,” he said, but he reached to kiss me all the same, making me giggle. I so much enjoyed sex with Cal.
With all the distractions, it must have been close to midnight before we set off for the pillar. The moon was a distant flush on the horizon, but the city was never dark. Many walls glowed with their eerie yellow light, and elsewhere there were lamps that puffed to brilliance as we approached and faded after we passed by. We took a small lamp up the stairs of the scribery, though, for the walls here were dark and lampless. As soon as we got to the pillar room, Cal strode across and placed both hands flat against it, throwing his head back as the magic poured into him. For a moment his whole body seemed to light up, but then gradually it dimmed as the energy he drew settled into the vessels. It seemed to take for ever, and he howled with ecstasy the whole time.
At last he quieted and rested his forehead against the pillar.
“Are you all right?”
He nodded, and when I went closer he was shaking so violently his teeth were chattering. But he turned a radiant face to me. “Gods, Kyra! Gods!”
And inevitably we ended up making love again. He had too much energy spilling out of him.
As soon as we’d finished, he jumped up. “I want to try it! Show me what you do.”
“Erm – what?”
“The fire thing – I want to see if I can do it too.”
“Oh. Just hold your hand out and imagine it. Look.” I cupped my hand and created a small glowing ball.
He took a step back and held out his hand, and flames the height of a man shot across the room, filling it with smoke. The hair would have been crisped off my head if I’d been standing two paces to the left.
Cal roared with laughter, and did it again. He was far better at it than I was, with my barely visible glow-globes and timid finger flames. He could create surging jets of flame without any effort. I wondered if it was a male thing, for Drei was pretty dramatic with fire too.
“This is so much fun!” he shrieked, blazing from both hands at once. “You must teach me everything! And I’ll teach you how to defend yourself against the mages. Then when they come for you we’ll be ready.”
~~~~~
It was five suns before anyone came.
By then we’d had plenty of time to practise and experiment and find out what was possible. We discovered that spells rolled off me like rain on oiled wool. Cal tried to spell me to sleep or to stand immobile or to fall to the ground, but nothing worked. He even tried to bind me, but all I felt was a slight warmth washing over me and then it was gone. The mages might come up with something more complicated, but the simple spells were ineffective and we were reasonably sure they wouldn’t try anything harmful, like a bleeding spell or a death spell.
Cal’s jade belt gave him a huge boost in power, enough that I could see the vessels in a ring around his waist, miniature auras in orbit. When I tried to transfer power to him, as if for healing, only a trickle passed across, suggesting that his power almost equalled my own. None of the mages could come close to it, each with their single vessel. What he couldn’t do was to create anything out of nothing. While I could create a wine glass or the wine but not both, Cal could change a beaker to a glass and water to wine, but he needed something to start with. He still couldn’t see my aura very clearly – “Is it a bit hazy, like rippling water?” – but he could see the blue flares that betrayed lies.
“There’s no need for anyone to know about the belt,” Cal said. “Let’s keep my new abilities in reserve, in case you get into trouble. Like stationing an archer behind the rocks, you know? Surprise them.”
“All right, but I don’t want you to really hide. It’s better if you’re there with me, just keep the extra magic in case we need it. Anyway, it will be a distraction – they must be wondering where you are.”
“If they’ve even missed me,” he said gloomily.
Each sun we went to the pillar to keep our energy topped up, because sooner or later they would come. And eventually, they did.
I was aware of them as soon as they came out into the open. I suppose my magic was getting more sensitive the longer I stayed in the city, where magic oozed from the very walls. I was vaguely aware of something in the tunnels, dim and wavering like a dream half-remembered, but when they emerged from underground, I knew at once.
“The mages are here!”
“Then we’d better go and meet them.”
There were five of them, creeping through the streets with cautious steps, vessels held in front of them. They wore their robes, which I thought was sweet but impractical. I recognised Krayfon, leading with a touch more confidence than the rest, and one of the others had also been at the hearing, but the other three were strangers.
We cornered them at a tight walled square where three streets met. There was a gnarled tree there, covered with a haze of tiny white blossoms, with ivy twining round the trunk, and a couple of stone seats set into the wall, but nothing else. It was not a large enough space for Cal’s fireballs but I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Krayfon stopped when he saw us, registering relief as he looked at me, and puzzlement when he caught sight of Cal. Probably they’d never met. I stood in the middle of the square, Cal a little behind and to one side, while the mages formed a semi-circle around me. They were not quite near enough to touch, but close enough.
“You’d better leave,” I said.
Krayfon laughed. “Not without you, Kyra. I hope you will be sensible and come quietly. We have no desire to hurt you. We mean you no harm.”
“You mean to kill me, eventually, and I can’t allow that. I advise you all to leave quickly, before the birds find you.”
“Birds? Is that some illusion? I assure you...” One of the others hissed at him, and he nodded. “Very well. You leave us no choice.”
They began to chant, and I have to say, it was quite impressive, with the robes and the vessels and the drone of their voices, all in unison. I recognised it as an immobility spell. They intended to stop me working any magic of my own. Unfortunately for them, my magic didn’t need incantations, so it was a lot quicker.
I didn’t have to so much as raise a finger, just concentrate. They carried on chanting, but that was because the tree with its vine was behind them, and they couldn’t see tendrils snaking across the paving slabs, stretching out for them. It was only when the first shoot reached a foot and wrapped itself round an ankle that the mage screamed, and for a few moments there was chaos as they all jumped to disentangle her, to stamp on the vine and skate out of reach to the far side of the square.
“Sorry,” I said. “I think your spell got broken. You’ll have to begin again now.”
Krayfon growled at me. “At least we have proof of your magic, witch.”
“Have you? This whole city is magic. Maybe the vine just doesn’t like you?”
“From the beginning!” he snapped, and they began to chant again.
“Better hurry. The birds are coming.”
They never did finish their spell. Within moments shadows slid silently over the square and the chanting died away. They watched the sky as the great dark shapes spiralled lazily down. In tha
t small space, the five birds loomed overhead like the lid of a box. None of the mages broke and ran, but there was fear in their eyes.
“A dispersal spell!” one of the mages shouted.
“No!” I cried. “Don’t try anything against them. Just stand still and hold onto your vessels.”
“Protection charm!” Krayfon said, and despite my protests they began chanting again, more rapidly this time, and out of rhythm, each of them rattling through the words as fast as they could.
This didn’t seem to anger the birds, though. Maybe it was only violence that annoyed them, not magic. They circled closer and closer, until we could all feel the rush of wind from their wings as they passed by. One by one, the mages fell silent. Krayfon held his vessel higher, as if to ward the birds away. One mage stood with head bowed, shaking. Then one screamed, a piercing wail of pure terror, and slapped at the nearest bird with his staff. The bird shrieked, and if the sound had been terrible in the open space of the main street, here between the high walls of this little square, where it echoed and crashed all round us, it froze the blood. The staff flamed and burned and turned to ash in a moment, and the man screamed again and ran.
If he had run towards me, I might have got to him in time, but he didn’t. He took no more than five steps before one of the birds caught him and he was lifted, wailing and thrashing, into the sky. Then he was gone.
The other mages stood, rigid with fear, but the birds were satisfied. They flapped once, twice, then lifted up and away and out of sight.
Nobody moved. Krayfon took a long shuddering breath. Then he lifted his vessel a little higher, raised one hand with a finger pointing at me. “Sleep!” he yelled.
I have to give him credit for trying. Any normal person would have melted into a puddle of incoherence after an experience like that, but he was smart enough to try something snappy while I was distracted. It rolled off me, of course.
“Sorry, but you’ll have to do better than that. Would you like to try something else?”
He glared at me, but he kept his composure. “Well, entertaining as this is, young lady, I think we will continue this discussion another time.”
“As you please. Come any time, I have no other engagements.”
He almost smiled that time. “We will succeed, you know.” He tried to project confidence but it wasn’t very convincing.
I laughed. “That remains to be seen, Lord Mage.”
~~~~~
“They’re just going to keep coming back, aren’t they?” Cal said, as we lay in bed that night.
“Yes. The Drashon can’t let me get away with it.”
“It’s going to be a real nuisance. Especially now they know how to deal with the birds.”
“An inconvenience. But I’ll know where they are, so we can avoid them if we want to. And they don’t seem able to do anything against me.”
“They were badly prepared this time, but they’ll devise more sophisticated spells. Krayfon’s very smart. And sooner or later, they’ll catch us asleep or something, or hit on a spell that works. A death spell, perhaps.”
“We can get more sophisticated, too. But don’t you think it’s odd? They said nothing to you at all. Didn’t even seem very surprised to see you.”
“They don’t really know me. I met Krayfon briefly when I first arrived, but the rest – I didn’t have much to do with them. I was left to the lowest ranked mages. I suppose they’d guessed I was here with you. You were my drusse once, after all. But don’t change the subject. We have to find a way to stop this.”
“I know, but for that we’ll have to go to the top.”
“Krayfon?”
“Higher than that. The Drashon. He’s the only one who can call a halt.”
“And how are you going to persuade him to do that?”
“We’ll have to talk to him.”
“Oh, so you’re going to walk out of here, stroll past his guards and demand an audience, is that the plan?”
I didn’t have a plan, as it happened, but one began to formulate in my mind as we talked. “No, I think he’ll have to come to me.”
“Even better. ‘Most Powerful, do please come for afternoon cakes tomorrow, dress informal, respectfully Kyra.’ ”
“Oh – d’you think that would work? I wish I knew how to ask the servants for more interesting cakes – I’m sure the Drashon won’t like those ones with seeds that weasel their way between your teeth.”
“Idiot,” he said, nibbling my ear. “You don’t have a plan at all, do you?”
But I did.
27: A Meeting
When I explained my plan to Cal he was horrified.
“Kyra, you’re insane! Here you are, accused of improper use of magic and facing execution, and your solution is to spell the Drashon?”
“How else am I going to get to talk to him, face to face, without all the protocol of hearings and law scribes and mages and guards hanging about waiting to whisk me off to the dungeons?”
“Write to him. I can put together a convincing case. I’m a law scribe, after all. People like you weren’t always executed, you know. It’s not your fault. You shouldn’t be killed just because you have magic in you. It’s not as if you’ve ever hurt anyone.”
I was silent, thinking of Deyria, sterile because of me. The Asha-Kellon was dead because of me. Then there was poor Den – I hadn’t heard if he was all right after hitting his head when he fell. And Marras and the guards and now the mage – all turned into mindless servants because of me. Even though I hadn’t intended any of it, I’d left a trail of havoc behind me, just like Drei and his fires. I couldn’t explain that in a letter.
Cal saw my face, and his voice softened. “It’s not your fault that things have happened around you. If they’d just leave you alone...”
“But it’s such a waste! I can do so much, I can help people, I can heal much more easily than trained mages can.” I remembered the sick baby at Ardamurkan; I’d written a spellpage that shouldn’t have worked, but it did. “I want to be useful,” I said quietly.
“Then ask him to allow you to be trained,” Cal said.
First I had to bring him into the city, and the spells to do that were horrendously complicated. Cal hovered over me as I scribed, cracking his knuckles and muttering, “But you can’t do that!” until he drove me half demented. I liked Cal a lot better than I used to but still his moods irritated me beyond endurance.
In the end I got rid of him by setting him to watch the servants, to see if he could find out where they all went to. He didn’t have much success; he followed them to doors that led to the lower levels but he couldn’t open them, and even if he tried to scuttle through just behind one of the servants, there was some kind of magical barrier against him. Probably he could have gone through without his belt or the stone vessel, but then without magic he might have become a servant again himself, so he never tried it.
While he was distracted, I devised my spellpages. It took me three suns to create them, but in the end I was pleased with my efforts.
Cal read them over in silence, several times. “This is clever, very clever. Mind you, I don’t understand all of it. What is this variance here?”
“I’m not sure exactly. I was thinking that the Drashon might get cold, might need a wrap or something, and that hook appeared on the paper. My quill seemed to know what to do. So I think it’s a dressing warmly variance.”
“You’re inventing variances now?”
“I don’t think I invented it. I discovered it, perhaps.”
“Hmm. Well, otherwise it all looks fine. So we’re ready, then?”
“There’s just one problem.” I gestured towards the large pile of practice spellpages, half-written or modified or abandoned efforts.
“Oh. At the scribery, they burn them.”
“Which we can’t do, because they might actually work. They’re not properly formed spellpages, who knows what might happen? And I can’t leave them lying around in case the servants get hol
d of them and toss them into the cooking fire.”
He frowned. “Shit. Can we tear them up?”
“If they all got burned together, the spells might still work.”
“Hmm. Difficult. I wonder...” His face lit up, as he shifted instantly from gloom to delight. “You can put magic into things, can’t you? Like for healing, you transferred energy to me. The spellpages – that must be what you do to make them work. Well, maybe you can draw it out again.”
The Fire Mages Page 29
