“Need to—” Gods, my voice! No more than a hoarse whisper, numb from the poison. Try again. “Need to get—” Such an effort! A long pause. “The walls.”
“The Shining Walls? You want to go to the Shining Walls?” I nodded. “Urgent?” A stronger nod.
“Here, Drenks, take this.” Some clinking. He was unclipping his sword, by the sound of it.
Then, bless the man, he picked me up in his arms as if I were a child, and set off at a steady jog. In no time, we were along one street, round a corner, down a narrower alley and out into the big square which looked up to the Imperial City. His breathing became laboured – I’d never been exactly dainty, and pregnancy and a fondness for cakes hadn’t helped – but he didn’t slow until we drew near to the walls. He’d brought me right to the main gate, I realised.
“This . . . all right?” he puffed.
“Yes.” Then, with an effort, “Down.”
He deposited me gently within a handspan of the wall, and I reached out to it, placing the palm of one hand flat against it. The Shining Walls were not really a source of power, but there was so much magic in them that it spilled over into me and I felt the effects immediately. I wondered if I could replenish the stone vessel, but when I tried, nothing happened. There just wasn’t enough magic for that. But I was at the Imperial City, and all I had to do now was get to the tower with the pillar in it. Surely there was enough magic inside the walls, emanating from buildings, in the air itself, to get me there?
I wasn’t sure, but I had to try, even though I barely had the energy left to put one foot in front of the other. I shuffled along the wall to the mark and pressed on it to open the gate. There was the broad road leading to the library, with the ceremonial arch in between. For a moment I hesitated, quailing as I remembered how far away the pillar tower was, and all uphill. But it had to be done. I took a deep breath.
“Lady.” I’d almost forgotten the guard. “Lady, I’ll carry you wherever you want to go, if you can protect me from the birds.”
My heart lifted. He would carry me! All I had to do was touch him – a hand, his face – to keep the birds away from him.
“Thank you.” It was all I could manage.
He picked me up again and strode through the open gate and up the paved street. His hands were lost in the folds of my cloak, so I raised one hand to his face, resting it against his cheek. The effort of so small a thing was almost more than I could manage. Every muscle in my arm burned with fire, and gradually my hand slipped until it lay on his shoulder, just one finger pressed against his bare neck. It was lucky he was not better mailed, or it would have been impossible.
My head rested against his chest, and I had no power to move it, so whenever we came to a junction he stopped and revolved until I could see all the ways and direct him accordingly. And finally we reached the pillar tower. We had a bit of trouble opening doors, because the great metal rings were too stiff and heavy for my useless fingers. He slowed as we climbed up and up the stairs, his breath rattling in my ear as he struggled on, but he never once stopped. The final door was warded and I had only to touch it to hear the lock snick open.
And then we were there, and the power thrummed around me, invisible but potent. The guard set me down, and I walked slowly across to the pillar and set my hands against it. There was a sudden wash of energy into me, then a dwindling, then another rush of it before it settled down to a steady flow. It wasn’t the usual ecstatic experience, perhaps my body was too battered and exhausted for that, but I felt better at once. Gradually, in minute steps, the poison was driven out of my body.
When at last I felt completely well and unsullied again, and lowered my hands, I found the guard still standing exactly where he’d set me down, his face a picture of terror. What must he make of all this? The pillar, indeed the whole process of renewal was a huge secret amongst the mages, so the poor guard would have no idea what he’d just seen. Just as well the effect was muted this time, otherwise he would have had a huge surprise when I tore his clothes off. I smiled to reassure him.
“Thank you for your help. You saved my life.”
He relaxed then, and smiled a little himself, wiping his sweaty face with one arm. “Then my debt is repaid, Lady.”
That was a surprise. But looking at him properly for the first time, I realised I knew him. “You’re one of the guards who followed me through the gate when I was running away.”
“Yes. You kept the birds away from me when the commandants were – taken. Are you well now?”
“Yes, I’m completely better.” A frown. “I think so, anyway.” I could hardly believe it, but I could detect no trace of the poison.
“What—? But I have no right to ask what happened. It’s not my concern.”
“I was poisoned.”
“Deliberately? Someone tried to kill you? By the Gods! But that thing—” He waved at the pillar. “It cured you?”
“Yes. It’s full of magic.”
“Is it safe for me to move? Without you touching me, I mean?”
I reassured him, and he walked slowly round the room, half awed and half puzzled.
“Can you feel it?” I said. “The magic?”
“No. The air is warm in here, but nothing unusual in that. It just looks like a plain marble pillar.”
I laughed. I could feel it beating down on me, and the whole air was charged and tingling. I could feel the power of the pillar from scores of paces away. Yet he felt nothing. I couldn’t quite imagine it. Maybe it was like being blind, and hearing people talk about colours and clouds and butterflies.
I led the guard – Killin, his name was – back to the gate behind the vegetable market where I could let him out inconspicuously. I gestured for him to go through.
“Aren’t you coming?”
Go back out there, where anyone with a box of cakes could try to kill me? “No, I’m safer here.”
“In case they try again? Do you want me to notify the authorities? The mages?”
Would that help? Not really. “Can you get a message to Lord Mage Cal for me? I can write something for you to take.”
“Better not write anything. In case it gets intercepted.” I hadn’t thought of that. “I’ll tell him you’re here. Where will you be – at the room with the marble pillar?”
“Yes. Can you get into the mages’ house?”
He blushed. “Yes, I’m – erm, friendly with one of the laundry workers there. Right, Cal, you said?”
He turned to leave, but I caught his arm. “I haven’t told you my name.”
He grinned, looking very young. “Everyone knows your name, Lady Mage Kyra.”
I went back to the pillar tower and waited for Cal. Then I wished I’d said I would be at the house we’d stayed in before. At least then I could get dressed and have something to eat. I was famished. But I’d said I would be here, so I didn’t like to leave in case Cal came looking for me and I missed him.
I ended up going back downstairs and into the little two storey house next door to the pillar tower. I guess that in the era when the tower was a proper scribery, the house was where the Masters lived, for it had bedrooms and sitting rooms and something more comfortable to sit on than the floor. When Cal came, he would have to pass through the central corridor to get to the tower, so I moved a long chair to a position where I could watch for him, and sat with my feet up, waiting.
It was good to be alone, to be alive, to feel my heart pumping and the blood coursing through my veins and my magic swirling, to be able to wriggle my fingers and toes without that terrifying numbness. Into that quiet moment of contentment, another awareness, a tiny pinprick of insistence. My daughter was still alive! Tears prickled behind my eyelids, and I rested my hand on my belly. She responded with a hard kick and I laughed out loud for joy.
“Well, little one, we made it, didn’t we? Someone wanted us both dead, but here we are, safe and well.”
I didn’t voice the thought that perhaps it was her father who wanted
us dead. Yet who else could it be but Drei? Who else would think to send me poisoned cakes? Well, if I was honest, half the Keep probably knew of my fondness for cakes, but surely only Drei would put poison in them. I’d thought I was safe at least until the baby arrived, but apparently not. Why? It was a good question. He’d seemed quite affectionate towards her, and fiercely protective of her drusse-born status. What was it he’d called himself? A disregarded drusse-born child, that was it, and he’d sworn she wouldn’t be neglected as he was. Would he now kill her, just to rid himself of me? Did he hate me so much? Or fear me... I had the same power as him, I could resist his charms, I knew when he lied. I was just too dangerous to him.
Hunger and exhaustion were catching up with me, and I must have slept for a while. When I woke, I was aware of a mage walking briskly through the city. Cal! He’d come for me at last. I struggled off the long chair – by the Gods, I’d be glad to get back to some sort of practical shape – and waddled into the corridor to surprise him when he opened the door. I still wasn’t at all sure what I felt for him, but I was always glad to see him, and this morning more than ever before. With Cal I always felt safe.
The door opened, he strode into the dark corridor, the courtyard behind him brilliant with sunlight so that at first he was only a silhouette. I started forward with a cry of pleasure.
“You came!”
Then stopped, fear twisting my gut.
“Drei?”
39: Dungeon
“Kyra?” He sounded as confused as I was.
“I thought you were at the coast,” I burst out.
He smirked. “Sorted out already. They caved in. But what are you doing here? I thought—”
“You thought I was dead?” It was a stupid thing to say, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Well, I’m not.”
“I can see that.” He recovered his poise quickly, looking me up and down speculatively. “In fact, you are positively blooming, a very long way from dead.”
“No thanks to you,” I spat. My shock at finding him here instead of Cal sparked anger in me.
“Really, Kyra! You were such a placid little thing when I first knew you. Pregnancy may have put colour in your cheeks, but it hasn’t improved your temper.”
“My temper? By the Moon Gods, Drei, you tried to poison me!”
He licked his lips. “Why would I do that?” He was having to think carefully about his words; one slip and I’d see the lie.
“You tell me. You’re the one who sent me poisoned cakes.”
“No, I didn’t. Truly I didn’t.” His eyes were fixed on my face.
There was no obvious blue flare, but there was something, some haze of blue around him. It was the merest shimmer, but it was there. “Ha! There’s a lie in there somewhere. You told someone else to send them, maybe. Oh – your mother?” He exhaled sharply. “And you killed Lakkan.”
“Lakkan?”
“He was a wild mage, too, I found him at a river town. And you shot him.” He was silent. “You can’t deny it. Just tell me why.”
“By the—! He lifted your skirts, all right? No one touches my drusse and gets away with it.”
“Oh, for the Gods’ sake, Drei, grow up! I wasn’t bound to you by then, remember?”
“You were still my drusse, and he boasted about it! It made me mad as fire, and I couldn’t touch him any other way, so I shot him. And then I realised I was better off without any other mages around. No one to rival me, no one to know when I tell a little lie. You should have stayed down south, Kyra. I thought you’d stay on in Ardamurkan, have the baby there, maybe, then you’d have been safe. But no, you have to come back here and stir up all the mages against me. So yes, I asked my mother to deal with you. I imagined she’d find something a bit more subtle, though. Stupid woman.”
He paced across the room, his hands running through his hair. Such a fine looking man, and yet evil to the core. Such a pity.
“Didn’t you even care about the baby?”
His face softened. “I – of course! My first child... I didn’t want to hurt her, no. If there were any other way... But you have to die, Kyra. There’s no way round it, and I can’t wait.”
That chilled me to the bone.
“You were a good man once, Drei. You were kind to me for a while, until you got ambitious. At least tell me that Yannassia is safe from you.”
“What a question! She’s my wife, I—” He paused, choosing his words. “I have no reason to want Yannassia dead.”
Again, the faintest haze of blue. True, but not the whole truth.
“Yet,” I said.
“Fire and lightning, Kyra, this is the trouble with you! You’re too – too perceptive for your own good. You see far too much. You know those stupid tests the mages gave us? It drove me insane, the number of times they said, oh yes, very good but Kyra did so much better than you. Pah! Kyra this and Kyra that, even from the Drashon! I should have dealt with you a long time ago, before you dragged me into your stupid messes and got me this!” He pointed to the mage mark on his forehead. “You’ve no idea how much more difficult life is when everyone knows what I can do. Come on, time to go.”
He grabbed my wrist and gripped it so hard that I cried out with pain.
“Go where?”
“A nice cosy place where you can rest.”
“I can rest here.” But he was pulling me along, and I was powerless to stop him. How was Cal going to find me if Drei took me away somewhere? “No! I have to stay here!”
He let go abruptly and I banged into his shoulder, a more solid obstacle than cloth-covered flesh. I remembered that he wore chain mail under his clothes.
“You’re waiting for him aren’t you? Your mage lover? How you must have laughed at me, the two of you. There I was, putting silk on your back and the finest fish and game in your belly, and he was keeping you warm at night. Poor Drei, such a fool – was that what you told each other? And thinking yourselves so clever, with your little secrets, your bedroom whispers and your mage conspiracies. Oh yes, I know everything you do. You may be better at detecting lies, my love, but I’m far better at secrets and conspiracies.”
“If you mean Cal, he’s not my lover.” He looked at me closely, but I knew he’d not see any blue.
“Stop talking,” he grunted, taking my wrist again. This time there was no delaying him. He took me into one of the side rooms in the house, a kitchen, perhaps, although there was no range. A door in the far side led down steep stairs. Not another cellar! It seemed it was my fate in life to be tossed into cellars by Drei.
But he didn’t linger, pulling me straight through to another door in the far side, then down more stairs, a long flight with no lamps. We both lit glow balls to light the way, his large and pulsing yellow, like the sun, mine small and pale, almost transparent. Eventually we came out into another cellar, wide and echoing, cut into rough red stone. The floor was grainy under my bare feet.
“I’ve never seen this place before,” I said, my voice bouncing around the emptiness.
“It’s much older than the rest of the city,” he said, lapsing disconcertingly into the genial teacher of our early time together. “Look, there are engravings all over the walls. I don’t know what they mean, though.”
We floated our glow balls around the room, lighting up one stretch of wall after another. There were whole panels filled with meticulous lines of etched symbols, a neat kind of writing, although unintelligible now. Other patches of wall were daubed with seemingly random scratchings, or crude drawings, or nothing at all. It was cold, too, unlike everywhere else in the city which was a uniformly pleasant temperature.
“Right, that’s enough history for now,” he said, for all the world as though we were in the library, studying together. “Come on.”
He turned towards me, his hand already out to reclaim my wrist, when he stopped. I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye, then a blurry shape appeared, something swung round and made a loud thunk, and Drei collapsed in a heap, his fie
ry glow ball popping out of existence.
I spun round, fear thickening my throat, then laughed out loud in relief.
“Cal! You found me!”
“You weren’t keeping your voices down, and the glow balls are easy to follow. Are you all right? The baby—?”
“We’re both fine.”
He exhaled loudly, then tossed the piece of wood aside – it looked like a table leg – and knelt down beside Drei, placing a hand on his forehead. There was a small pool of blood spreading from his temple. “He’s out cold, but we may not have much time. We need to get his magic out of him before he comes round.”
“We could just kill him.”
The Fire Mages Page 43
