He looked up at me. “What? When did you get so ruthless, Kyra?”
“He’s kidnapped me, forced me to become pregnant and tried to poison me. D’you expect me to feel sorry for him? And he’s murdering his way to the Drashon’s throne.”
“His crimes should be dealt with properly, through the law,” he said coldly. “All we need to do is take his magic and lock him in the warded cell. It’s not far from here. He’ll never recover his magic then.”
“Why not just lock him up first? He can’t use his magic inside the cell, can he?”
“He’ll still have it available, though, if he does manage to escape. Stop arguing, we don’t have much time.”
“Right.” I pulled my stone vessel from my shoulder bag, and eased myself down next to Drei. “We’ll need more vessels, I expect. This won’t be enough.”
“Shit, of course.” He jumped up and looked round wildly. “What can we use? There’s nothing here!”
“Anything stone or – or mineral. Jade. Crystal. Look in the scribery, there’s a lot of stuff lying around.”
“Will you be all right? With him?”
“Have to take that chance. Go.”
He ran, a glow ball bouncing in front of him. I held the stone vessel in one hand and rolled Drei’s sleeve up to place my other on his arm, since I really didn’t want to touch his head. I could see the injury very clearly, a pulsing mass of vivid red-brown, and I took a moment to heal him a little. No point in draining his magic if he then died of a broken skull. It interested me that he hadn’t healed himself at all. I’d assumed that automatic self-healing was the norm for all wild mages, but perhaps he could only heal himself when he was conscious.
There was something strange about his head. At first I couldn’t work it out, but then I realised – the two small purple blobs I’d seen in his head had grown to a dozen or more, larger and blending together into one angry blotch. But there was no time to wonder what it meant.
Then I began to pull his magic into the stone vessel. It was slow going, and long before it was full Cal returned with an armful of assorted objects – several stone lamp bases, a carved piece of marble, a matched pair of crystal paperweights, some diamond and amethyst jewelry.
“Will this be enough?”
“I don’t know. We’ll just have to see. Is there any rope around?”
“Rope?”
“To tie him up in case he comes round before we’re finished.”
“Shit! I should have thought of that.”
He dashed off again, but came back more quickly this time with a curtain cord. It was amazing how nothing rotted here. While Cal tied his hands, I switched to Drei’s forehead but to my horror he moved under my hand, uttering a low groan.
“This is too slow,” Cal said. “Shit, shit, shit! He’s waking up!”
“You can do this too. Try the marble.”
He tried, his face screwed up in concentration. “It’s not working.”
“Pull all the magic into your hand, and eventually it will just overflow.”
A long sigh of relief. “That’s got it. Can I do two at once?”
“Try it and see.” Drei moved again, and I gave a little scream, dropping my stone. “Here, you take this one, I’ll start another.”
We filled four vessels in panicky haste before we got all the magic out. It was strange to touch him and feel no shimmering energy inside his body. It was almost as if he were dead. Cal got the last of it out because towards the end I couldn’t stop my magic from flowing back in to fill the void.
We started to drag him towards the cell. Cal had found it on one of his many explorations, but he’d got so used to the jade belt and a constant supply of magic that entering a room where it was ineffective was a terrifying experience. He hadn’t seen the purpose of it until the Forum discussion, and realised it was the perfect place to confine Drei until a more permanent solution could be found.
We never made it. Drei was heavy and an awkward load with his hands tied, and we just couldn’t get him to the cell in time. He woke up and roared in anger. We dropped him and skittered away.
“Should we run?” I whispered.
“No, we have to get him locked up, somehow. He can’t hurt us now.”
We were very stupid to think so, but when you always have magic at your disposal, you can’t imagine how people manage without it.
Drei roared again, and began writhing on the floor. I quickly gathered up the vessels and stuffed them in my shoulder bag, in case he rolled near enough to touch one and undo all our efforts. Cal started prodding him with the table leg, which just enraged him more. What we really needed was five or six sturdy guards to pick him up bodily but one weedy mage and a pregnant woman were not enough.
“Sleep spell!” I hissed at Cal, and at once he held his hands out and began to chant. I almost groaned. I’d been sure he would have one prepared, so that he could just yell “Sleep!”, as Krayfon had once tried with me.
Drei writhed more violently, his face red with exertion. Then with a final twist his hands were free and he sprang up and tore across the cellar towards us. We jumped apart and back, as he held his hands out in front of him – and stopped, bewildered.
“What have you done to me?”
“We—” My voice was the merest squeak. I tried again. “We’ve taken your magic.”
“You—!” He switched direction to march directly towards me. “You little—”
Cal picked up the table leg. “Leave her alone!” He swung wildly, but with almost casual grace Drei stretched one arm and twisted it out of his grip. In one smooth movement he circled it round his head and brought it crashing down on the side of Cal’s jaw.
I screamed. Cal made a soft little mewing sound and dropped like a sack of flour.
Drei turned his attention on me next, and in a panic I hurled fire at him. I was a roiling mass of abject terror and anger by this time, and flames shot spectacularly across the room, nearly singeing Drei’s eyebrows. With an exclamation, he pitched the table leg in my general direction and tore off towards the stairs.
I raced over to Cal, tears rushing down my face. “S’all right,” he whispered. “Healing... Go... Stop him.”
It was the last thing I wanted to do, but he was right. If Drei reached the pillar, he would replenish his magic and all our work would be wasted.
I rushed after him, a glow ball bobbing erratically above my head. He was well ahead of me, half way up the long flight of stairs, but he had no light to guide him, and I heard his slow shuffling steps as he felt his way upwards. I climbed laboriously, out of breath long before I reached the top. Loud clatterings came from the cellar above, as he stumbled in the dark. As I emerged from the stairway, he was only just vanishing up the opposite stairs.
I crossed the cellar slowly, breathing heavily, and had to pause before the next ascent. Late pregnancy made me unfit for chasing round underground, and I couldn’t help wondering how sensible it was for me to pursue him alone. What could I do to stop him? Unless I burnt him to a crisp, I had no means to attack him. There were no vines down here to wind round his legs, nothing that I could transform into a weapon. He was strong enough to strangle me with his bare hands, and ruthless enough to do it the instant he saw an opportunity. I’d never thought I’d need to prepare spells for fighting crazed noblemen, and I certainly didn’t have time to chant a spell.
Yet still I followed, slowly, reluctantly, shaking with fear.
This flight of stairs was shorter than I remembered, and at the top I paused, disoriented. This was not the kitchen of the house beside the scribery. I was in a long corridor dimly lit by lamps, probably still a floor below the scribery house. At the far end, Drei was just disappearing round a corner. Perhaps there were two staircases leading up from the cellar, and he’d led me up the wrong one, in which case he was now further from the pillar tower. He must have realised his mistake himself, for he reappeared, saw me, hesitated, then disappeared in the opposite direction. I g
ave chase again, reached the corner, turned after him. This was easier going, a smooth flat surface, cool under my feet, and enough light that I no longer needed the glow ball.
There he was, pelting along some distance in front. It was easier going for him, too. I stopped, knowing I could never catch him now.
Then the air shimmered around him and he was gone. Vanished.
40: Waiting
Cal hadn’t moved since I’d left, lying exactly as he’d fallen. He looked better, though, with some colour in his cheeks, and he managed a slight smile when he saw me, followed by a wince.
“How are you feeling? Do you want me to help?”
A slight nod. I took his hand and closed my eyes. There was damage to one side of his jaw, but it was only cracked and not fully broken, so it was easy enough to heal. He sighed as he felt my magic seeping into him, washing away the pain. I saw that his stomach had its little brown patch again, the one I’d healed before, so I tidied that up too. He laughed, knowing what I was doing. Then he sat up and hugged me tight, as best he could with my huge belly.
“So where is he?”
“Gone. The same thing that happened to you. He just – vanished.”
“Shit! Now we’re really in trouble!”
As if we weren’t in trouble before. “No, we’re safe now, surely. He’s been turned into a servant.”
“Yes but for how long? Sooner or later he’ll emerge from that fastness underground, and touch something infused with magic or maybe the sun will do it...”
I saw his point. Drei was a natural mage, with the ability to draw magical energy from around him – the sun, the earth, who knows where it comes from? The city itself was full of magic, too; it was in the very air we breathed. As soon as he drew in some magic, he would stop being a servant and would be free again. When that happened, we had to be ready.
“Let’s get back to the Keep and get the mages together,” Cal said, leaping up and heading off to the stairs.
“Wait!”
He stopped and half turned. “What? We haven’t any time to waste.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m still in my nightgown. I’ve had a trying night, and I’d like a bath, some clean clothes and something more nourishing to eat than poisoned cake.”
He smiled, his thin face softening. “Of course you would. And you can get them all at the mages’ house.”
“I don’t want to walk all the way back through the streets like this.” I lifted one bare, muddy foot. “I’ll go back to my house here, and you can go and rouse the mages.”
A frown. “I don’t like leaving you here alone. What if he escapes from – well, wherever he is?”
“He won’t know where I am. Go. You’ll be back in no time. But don’t forget the cake.”
“You want me to bring you cakes?”
“I want you to make sure no one eats any more poisoned cakes from the box I was sent, which is still sitting in my bedroom.”
He paled. “Moonshit, I’d forgotten that!”
~~~~~
Cal summoned all the mages to a meeting in the library. They fussed about it, of course; mages fuss about everything out of the ordinary. It was unheard of, they protested, they only ever met in the mages’ house and besides, many of them couldn’t manage the trip through the sewers. And who was he anyway to order them about? But Cal told me gleefully that he’d raged and shouted and stamped his foot until they gave in, and then organised a wagon for the most infirm, for he insisted they were to enter through the principal city gates and make their way up the main street to the library.
“This is no time for sneaking about in the dark,” he told them firmly. “We have to act against Drei because we are the only ones who can act, and we have to do it publicly for once. The time for secrecy is past.”
So they came, most of them terrified, holding their vessels in front of them and muttering protective incantations every step of the way. We opened the front door to the library for them, and they scuttled in like crabs to the safety of the great room. A few of them lingered over the book set on its plinth in the entrance lobby, which they’d never seen before, but sighed when they realised it was empty, every page blank.
“It must be important,” Krayfon said. “Why else would it be placed here, so prominently?” No one had an answer.
We’d banished the scholars and set out a large ring of chairs in the open central space of the library, with a supply of decent wine from the house. There were no cakes available – how I wished we could ask the servants for what we wanted! – but we had bread and cheese and also a different kind of bread, hard, but sweet and crumbly. The mages sipped and nibbled, but they were not overawed by their surroundings, having seen them many times before. Even the great stone sphere, resting majestically in its pool, was uninteresting to them; they couldn’t feel the power humming inside it as I could.
Cal paced about inside the ring, explaining everything that had happened. The poisoning shocked them deeply. Even with what was already known of Drei, this was an unexpected twist. “His own child, too!” one of them said, appalled. A few of the mages knew about Cal’s disappearance, for I’d told Krayfon and the Drashon about it, but it was new to most of them and there were many questions, most of which we couldn’t answer.
The questions tailed off into a long, musing silence. I’d said very little, except when asked directly, but I could see how their minds worked and how reluctant they were to break their long traditions of inaction. Mages were there to advise the Drashon’s court on magical matters, and to use their powers for the good of the realm, but they were always subservient to the nobles and the law. Now we were asking them to intervene against a member of the Drashon’s family. But they surprised me.
“We should kill him,” someone said, to a murmur of agreement around the ring. “He’s a rogue mage, using his powers for ill.” At once dissenting voices spoke out, but Cal waved them to silence.
“There is another way,” he said into the stillness. They listened, every eye on him. “We can take him alive, I believe. Then he can be confined in the warded cell underground, where he cannot retrieve his magic, and we can put him on trial under the law, as is proper. This is how we can do it...”
Cal had always been a good speaker, but now he was magnificent, forceful but eloquent, and very, very convincing. I half wondered whether he had developed some power in his voice, like Drei, until I remembered that the mages were immune to such magic. The mages nodded and murmured approval and the talk turned to practical details.
Since Drei could emerge at any time, there were to be mages patrolling the Imperial City at all hours, light or dark, in pairs and each with a horn to raise the alarm if Drei was spotted. They would prepare sleep spells and immobility spells; once unconscious, Drei could be carried off to the warded cell to be safely confined. It was a large, comfortable room, fitted with all the usual furnishings and a solid metal door with a complex and entirely unmagical lock.
Only two mages would take the night watch, since we were fairly sure all the servants would be underground from shortly after evening board until morning. More would patrol during the hours of sun. Most of the mages would return to the Keep between patrols, but guards would be stationed just beyond the Shining Walls to listen for any alarm and alert them.
I insisted in living in the city. Despite Drei being somewhere about and liable to pop up at any time, I felt safer there. Drei’s mother, with her knowledge of poisons, was still in the Keep and might feel obliged to have another attempt at finishing me off.
Cal wasn’t happy about it. “I don’t like you being here at night, it’s far too dangerous. In fact, I’m not sure you need to be here at all. You could go to Ardamurkan – anywhere.”
“I’m better here where there’s only Drei to worry about, and I know the food hasn’t been tampered with. Out there...” I shivered.
“Even so, there’s no knowing what he might do. Why was he dragging you underground anyway?”
> “I think he wanted to put me in that cell, so I couldn’t use my magic. He said he wanted to kill me, but I’m not sure. He could have done that without dragging me through cellars.”
“It’s hard to kill a mage in full power, he must know that. Maybe he wanted to shut you in there and then feed you more poisoned cake.”
I went cold. Why hadn’t I thought of that? He’d tried to poison me, but my magic had healed me. What better way to kill me than to remove my magic and then try again? All at once my legs wouldn’t hold me, and I sat down precipitously.
Cal’s face softened, and he knelt in front of my chair, taking both my hands in his. “Poor Kyra! You’ve had a miserable time, haven’t you? Very well then, we’ll stay here for now.”
“We?” I said, my voice weak with relief. I hadn’t dared to ask.
The Fire Mages Page 44
