by Sarah Zettel
Damn the woman! There was no time for this. There was a danger hanging over them that would not care who was Isavaltan, who was Kasatani or Stovorish, and who was Tuukosov. That was where her mind should be.
But in trying to turn her thoughts from Tuukos, she found she could think of nothing else, and her frustration just redoubled.
“Mistress Urshila!”
At once startled and relieved, Urshila turned her head. A young boy in imperial blue with a gold sash around his waist splashed through the mud and puddles, barely keeping his feet as he skidded to a halt in front of her.
“What’s the matter?” asked Urshila at once. Despite his exercise, the boy was nearly white.
The boy opened his mouth, but he was panting so hard he could not speak. He swallowed hard to clear his throat and tried again. “The lord sorcerer has collapsed!” he gasped. “They found him … it was … you’re wanted. All the sorcerers are wanted.”
“Take me to him.” Urshila caught up her hems almost to the point of immodesty and followed the page boy, concentrating only on picking her way across mud and slick grass as fast as she could without turning an ankle.
They squelched through the work yard with the guards at the gate giving them no more than a curious glance. They skidded and slipped through the back hallways, leaving dollops of spring behind them. By the time they reached the front of the house, their soles were relatively dry and the boy could run and Urshila could stride close behind.
Lord Daren collapsed? The words rang through her mind again, and again. What was he trying to do?
Whatever it was, it must not have worked, or he would have gone straight to the emperor for credit and not bothered with the rest of them.
She had thought the page would take her to Daren’s apartments, but instead he led her up the west stairs to the palace’s third story, where the minor courtiers and boyars were housed, and where the lord sorcerer’s new workroom had been created.
It was a long, low chamber running along the northwest wall that had once been a music room. There were still pegs on the walls where instruments had hung and the inlaid floor had a pattern of roses, harps, and lutes. Most of the furnishings had been cleared away to make room for long tables and writing desks. The tables were covered with rich and filigreed artifacts; silver clocks, gold-framed mirrors, bottles of colored glass with swan necks and sealed corks, small chests of sweet-scented woods banded and locked with brass or copper, large oak chests banded with iron.
These were part of Medeoan’s legacy to Isavalta. In her isolation, she had collected or commissioned a startling variety of artifacts that were either themselves magical or could be used in the working of spells. Once they had all been locked in one room of the imperial apartments, but now it was the work of the lord sorcerer and his assistants to sort them out, to understand them and to catalogue them for the treasury.
At the far end of the room, under the largest windows, was a single great table spread with a white linen cloth. On it waited fragments of wire, loose jewels, delicate filigree spheres of bronze, gold, and copper that had been dented and twisted. Gears, cogs, and springs lay in tidy rows between bits of ruined art.
This was Lord Daren’s personal labor. Once these fragments had been the Portrait of Worlds, the greatest tool of divination ever created. If it had still been whole, the Firebird could never have hidden from them. They would have known at once where Bridget’s lost child was, even if she was the tiniest wisp in the Land of Death and Spirit. Medeoan, however, had smashed it before she fled to her doom. Daren had sworn he would repair the Portrait, or duplicate it, if it took a hundred years, as, indeed, it might.
But there was no work in Daren now. He slumped in a heavy chair, his skin a muddy grey and his head hanging to the side as if he lacked the strength to hold it up. His hands twitched and scrabbled at the chair arms, making sounds like mice skittering behind the walls. Korta, the youngest of the recalled sorcerers, stood beside his chair with a wooden goblet in his hands. Red stains on Daren’s beard said he had not even been able to drink the wine.
There should have been a dozen there to attend him, but they were only six, counting the lord sorcerer and young Korta. The recall of the old court sorcerers had been proceeding only slowly. Some had vanished, some were believed murdered, but the emperor was insistent that all should be offered their old places before new court sorcerers should be chosen. He might come to regret that stubbornness.
As it was, the court sorcerers were divided, cantankerous, and few in number. There was crabbed, old Luden who had been bribed by Mother Nacherada to forsake his warlord master and serve the imperial throne, and who had stuck by his oath since then. With him stood Sidor, whose grey beard hung down to his waist and who leaned on a walking stick he had carved with a pattern of braids Urshila still had not been able to decipher. Nedu, the only other woman present, was golden and petite. Her head barely came up to Urshila’s shoulder. Her delicate appearance disguised a subtle sorceress and it was a common mistake to underestimate her.
If either Bridget or Sakra had been sent for, they were not here yet.
“What happened?” demanded Urshila.
Daren lifted his gaze to look at her, but his eyes were cloudy and unfocused. It was Sidor who answered, gripping his stick so tightly that his hand trembled. “The lord sorcerer has seen the Firebird. It is coming.”
Urshila felt herself blanch. “When?”
“Soon,” croaked Daren. His bleary eyes rolled to try to take in the whole assemblage. “I tried … to stand … it scarce looked at me …” His breath rattled in his throat.
Urshila had once healed a man whose house had succumbed to fire. He’d inhaled a quantity of smoke, and his breath had sounded as the lord sorcerer’s did now. It had been most painful, but Urshila’s sympathy refused to rise.
“You tried to stand before the Firebird?” she cried. “Alone? What in Vyshko’s name did you think you could do?”
Daren stared at her. So did all the others.
“We should not be casting blame at this time,” began proper, petite Nedu. “The lord sorcerer is ill.”
“And whose fault is that?” Urshila planted her fists against her hips. “His pride and his need to prove himself in his new position led him to do something the gods themselves would hesitate to do, and look what he has accomplished. We will be without his strength for days.”
“What would you have him do?” croaked Luden. His eyes were still bright in his wizened face. How old was he? Twice her age? Three times? “We are vulnerable here.”
“We are vulnerable everywhere.” Urshila tried to collect herself. This would not do. “We have been scattered to the four winds, our most powerful tools are lost or locked away in chests, for which we do not even have the keys anymore.” She glowered at the nearest box locked with silver and magic. “This thing finds us not only unready but jostling each other for pride and position in a brand-new court.”
“I ask again, Mistress Urshila, what would you have him, have us, do?” Luden spread his hands. “We are as we are, and this thing comes, whether we like our circumstances or not. Would you have us remake its cage? Excellent. Where is that knowledge please?”
Urshila’s mouth hardened into a straight line. Luden’s criticism was a fair one, if wholly unwelcome.
“We must destroy it,” she heard herself say, as if from a long way off.
The statement was greeted with absolute silence, except for the rasping breath of the lord sorcerer.
“Not enough power …” he gasped. “Never be enough …”
“There might be, my lord.” Urshila straightened her back and met the eyes of her compatriots. “The Vixen has informed Bridget Lederle that the daughter she thought lost is still alive. That daughter is a third-generation sorcerer. With such power as she will possess at our command, we will have enough. Bridget wishes to find her daughter. Let me recommend she be allowed to do so. While she is gone, we can find the knowledge to put the
power of that child to use.”
Vyshemir help me if I am wrong, she thought as she watched them take in the possibilities. But, oh, Vyshemir help me if I am right, for I am offering up the life of a child to try to save such a meaningless thing as an empire.
It had taken a life to cage the Firebird. How much more would it take to destroy it?
Oh, Vyshemir, help us all.
Senja Palo, who had masked herself many years ago with the murhata name of Samona, hobbled across the muddy work yard. Each step brought muck oozing up through the loose soles of her shoes, adding to the filth already caked on her feet. She entered the scullery with its blast of heat and stink, and shrugged the yoke off her shoulders. She grabbed up one of the buckets that she’d filled from the canal and lugged it across the kitchen. Preparations for the midday meal were proceeding in their usual frenzy of banging, clattering, thumping, and shouting. No one spared a moment for one old woman with a bucket of water. Let her finish whatever her errand happened to be and give her another when her bucket was empty.
So no one remarked and few even noticed when she took her bucket through the nearest inner door into the dim and narrow corridors that were the world of the lowliest servants of Vyshtavos.
The back corridors were a maze. They actually took up most of the lower story of the palace, allowing the servants to flit back and forth and spend a minimum amount of time where they might actually be seen. Footmen and maids, valets, butlers, and waiting ladies might come into view of the high and the mighty, but old women with buckets … not unless absolutely necessary.
The advantage of all these hundreds of yards of corridors, storerooms, and cramped quarters was that if one wished to hide, one had plenty of choices. There were dozens of storerooms that would only be entered once or twice a year on set days to be aired and inventoried. Once, the illegitimate child of a scullery maid had been discovered living in one of these rooms two years after his mother had died of fever.
One of the smaller, unlocked rooms was a former drying room that was now full of nothing but bales of stained and unfashionable linens. Once they had been put there to be cleaned and mended, but that mending had never occurred and no subsequent mistress of the house had thought to throw them out. Senja set her bucket just inside the threshold, so she would have some warning if the unthinkable happened and someone besides herself decided to open this door.
With the door shut, the storeroom was pitch-black. In the late afternoon, a few slim shafts of light might squeeze through the ventilation slits, but that time was hours away. Senja, however, knew her way by touch. Behind a stack of bales her fingers found the cold skin of a tin lantern, then found the tinderbox stored inside it along with the whole tallow candle she had risked much to steal.
It was the work of a few patient moments to make her light. Senja closed the lantern housing and pushed it back into the deepest shadows under the shelves so that she had only a few slivers of light to see by, but no stray glimmer beneath the door would betray her. From under the nearest bale, she drew out a knotted bundle of canvas. There was no magic in the knot, only some tricks of tying so she would see if it had been meddled with. She was not a murhata to waste her gifts on trivia.
Those destined for bondage in the weaving shed, in the tannery, the forge or pottery were all carefully examined by the lord sorcerer to make sure that they had none of the invisible gifts about them. Not so the drudges in the scullery, or old women who swept the yards and carried the slops, not even when the lord sorcerer was on the prowl among the bondsmen to prove his diligence.
While Valin Kalami held the post of lord sorcerer, she had little need for such precautions as she now took. She had only to keep eyes and ears open to know that the cause of the Holy Island was being served. Senja was not even certain Kalami knew she was there, but she had kept her head down. If she was needed by him, blood and destiny would lead them to one another.
Senja smiled, remembering the day she had first seen Kalami. He was striding through the work yard on his way to interview the mistress of the weaving shed. He was so straight, so confident, already looking as if he owned the palace. She had smiled then as well, because he reminded her of other things, yet further back, that she sometimes wondered if she had dreamed.
He reminded her that there was a time when the sorcerers of the True Blood had met together openly in the sacred grove on the day the sun vanished and the day it returned. The bone fires had burned hot and red, and justice and prophecy had been spoken. The seer had not been broken then, living cramped, crooked, and half-mad in his cave. He had been tall and proud, the crown carved of antler and ivory on his brow. Senja had knelt before him when her time came, offering up the viina she had brewed herself in a bowl of glass as clear as ice that had cost her father three calves and three lambs. With a proud smile, he had accepted the drink and her petition to be tutored in the invisible arts, even though her voice had trembled as she spoke the request. She had felt warm at that smile, as if she were the one who had drunk the viina.
Senja closed her eyes for a moment. The glass. The glass had been real too. The most sacred art, combining all the elements, earth, fire, air, water, and metal, and synthesizing them into a form new and indivisible. She remembered the sharp smell of the furnaces, the heat of the blowpipes, the searing of steam in her lungs, the sparkle and brilliance of the finished creation.
She remembered Isavaltans riding their horses through the ateljee and the work of a hundred hands being smashed with a sound like the most fragile of bells. She remembered the blood and the smells of burning flesh as the priests and the sorcerers were pushed into the crucibles and the sound of the murhata’s laughter, and their curses as the glass cut the hides of their precious horses, as if that were the Tuukosov’s fault.
She remembered her own failing, standing there with the life blood of sorcerers flowing freely, with fire, water, and death, so much death. She remembered raising up her hands with their blood running down her bare arms and crying out every curse she knew, every prayer to bring down the lightning, the darkness, plague, fire, nightmare, and death, death, death.
Nothing had happened, nothing at all. She had been unable to think, unable to draw or shape the power she commanded. The murhata had laughed louder, believing her to be only a terrified young woman, and one of them had reached down for her. She was never sure after that just how she had gotten away, but she did and she remained hidden in the woods for the better part of a month. When she finally crept back, cold and starving, the world had changed. The Isavaltans were in control, and the sorcerers of the True Blood were hanging like fruit from the trees.
They called the Tuukosov dogs and whipped them through the streets. They called them worms and made them crawl, and Senja had vowed then to become what they believed she was. They believed she was a dog; she would live in their home until she found a way to bite. They believed she was a worm; she would dwell in their garden until she could infect its heart.
In the moment when she saw Valin Kalami in the work yard, it seemed to her that time had come. Now there would be more to do than wait and watch and relay what information she could to the seer. Kalami had played the weaknesses of Isavalta’s empress like a master musician, and almost, almost he had brought it all to the end.
He had fallen, and Senja had thought her heart would finally break when Mikkel took the throne, but now she saw the extent of Kalami’s triumph. He had brought all to the brink, and behind the rise of this new murhata emperor, all was still in motion. The last push was ready, and Isavalta would fall.
Inside her little bundle lay a stone mortar and pestle, a small packet of herbs gathered in the previous year and now dried almost to dust, another packet of coarse salt, a small but precious sphere of clear glass scarcely two fingers wide, and a short, sharp knife.
She picked up the sphere first. Despite the passage of years, she remembered the heat and the crucible stench of its making. It was called a witch’s eye, and if a murhata found it a
nd recognized it, she would be hanged from the walls.
She’d smuggled in two of the precious spheres with her when she had first come to Vyshtavos, but the other had been sacrificed for other work.
From her sleeve she drew the kerchief she had lifted from the pocket of the one who called herself Urshila. She laid it across her hand and then laid the witch’s eye in it. Reverently, she kissed the sphere’s smooth surface to awaken its sight. She breathed across so that it might recognize the presence of its maker. Leaning close to it she whispered, drawing out the magic she’d placed into the eye at its making.
“Open, open and see. Show me the one who owned the cloth where you rest, by the first witch, the Old Witch, by the earth and the fire. Show me.”
She closed her eyes and touched the sphere to her right eye. As the glass warmed by her skin touched her eyelid, her private darkness bloomed into fresh light.
Senja recognized the lord sorcerer’s workroom right away. There was a mirror there that had known the sands of the Holy Island, that had long ago been shaped and smoothed by careful artisans who understood the craft of fires and of earths. It had been carelessly propped up on a shelf by some seemingly unthinking hand before the lord sorcerer had decided to ban the usual palace servants from his workroom. Her witch’s eye could take her easily through that mirror, allowing her to look, and to listen.
All the sorcerers in the court of Isavalta, save for two, were clustered around their lord sorcerer who collapsed in a chair, but their attention was not on him. It was on the one calling herself Urshila.
“Mistress Urshila, that is a cold thought,” said Korta, the youngest of them.
She did not look away at that, displaying some courage of conviction after all. “Death is colder.”
Luden craned his bent neck so he could look up at her. “I take it you do not mean to inform Mistress Bridget what you intend for her child.”
“What we intend.” Urshila enunciated each word clearly.
