This time when she was ready to release her spell, he erased his own, letting the essence disperse.
Those strange guide-marks converged on the sugar cube a moment after the essence. They described the outline in light briefly, just lines in empty air, for there was no sugar cube.
Tabitha was delighted. She had cast a successful Order-spell.
“Where has it gone?”
“You don’t know where it has gone?” the Lorewarden asked, “See if you can discover that for yourself.”
She focused on the fading spell trace that surrounded the space where the sugar had been. Runes, numbers and lines came at her thick and fast, but none of it made any sense. Something pressed against her mind, but she couldn’t accept it. Tabitha was overloaded with information, and suddenly very tired. She closed her eyes.
“I don’t think you’ll ever find that sugar cube,” said the Lorewarden. “You sent it to three different places at once. You need to learn how to read an ordered matrix. You need to understand how the inertial calculations are made, and how the distance of your Reference influences the effective speed which can in turn bend the space out of shape and cause the Reference to fail.” He looked at her knowingly. “You see, there is much you need to learn before you are ready for something as complex as the Transference. You can join with another wizard for a jump, but to do it on your own is just too dangerous. So I’m afraid you’re just going to have to wait, before charging out to face down the Sorcerer.”
Tabitha knew what they were trying to do. They were inundating her with knowledge, to show her how ignorant and unprepared she was. They were trying to keep her away from danger. She should have been glad for their concern, but they were trying to control her, and all she could see in her mind’s eye was Ethea’s face, growing smaller and smaller, lost, forlorn and abandoned. She gazed at the pitted stone floor, and watched the frantic patterns of encoded lore that flickered across her vision. The patterns seemed to respond to her thoughts, throwing nets and graphs across whatever she saw or imagined—categorising, ranking.
“What are you doing?” someone demanded. Tabitha looked up to see Twardy Zarost standing behind the Mystery and Lorewarden, bobbing from one foot to the other. The two wizards turned, surprised.
“Why, hullo Riddler,” the Lorewarden answered. “That was a very subtle entrance for you. We’re trying to help the Lifesinger understand the Gyre’s magic. I’m not doing too well.”
“But what are you doing?” the Riddler asked again.
“Passing on lore, Riddler. It is my role, remember?”
“What are you doing?”
“You and your three questions! I am filling in the chasms in her knowledge caused by your vague tutelage, Riddler. It is not wise to leave everything to guesswork. The Lifesinger is ill prepared for her place in the Gyre.”
“She has her own lore, her own talent to follow! She should not be encumbered by our knowledge. That is the whole point! The Sorcerer has surpassed every lore we have. We need new wisdom.” He turned to look at Tabitha, stiffened, and came up close to her. “Why, oh why, does she have an eye?”
“So she can see as we do, Riddler. You are very wrong—our lore is not worthless. We all have a part to play in shaping her future.”
“But we should not shape her at all!” Zarost exclaimed, moving on the Lorewarden. “She must seek her own truth. Oh, the eye is the last thing she needs. You have cursed her with our limitations.”
“Riddler, you insult me, you insult us all! This is our lore you are looking down upon. There is nothing greater than our lore. It is the truth. It is above all of us!”
“Lorewarden, hold! Tabitha has already gone up against the greatest combined spell the Gyre has ever created, and she broke it. The Shield of Eyri is cracked along every meridian, I’ve just checked. Have you not considered what it means? How can she be so good, so soon? She has none of the training of the fundamentals, she doesn’t even know of the balancing of the axes, does she? We are unlike the Lifesinger. None of us has succeeded in balancing all three. She has a way of working the essence that does not bring down the wildfire! She must be allowed to grow on her own!”
“She can work around the wildfire?” The Lorewarden looked shaken. “Maybe…maybe she ... How is this possible?”
“Maybe it is because she hasn’t had the disadvantage of our education. She sees things in a different way. She sees sound instead of theory.”
“But she might be a danger if she sees us in a different way to the way we see ourselves.”
“That is the whole point, you fool!”
“Riddler!” The Lorewarden raised a finger in his face.
“Warden!” The Riddler raised two.
“Men! Stop it, you are both right,” declared the Mystery. “Don’t forget that she is the one who chooses where she walks. It was my gambit, Riddler, I have played this piece into the pattern.”
“But what you have just done will only allow her to see one path, Mystery!” exclaimed Zarost.
“What is wrong with seeing Order, Riddler? This path leads to a brighter future than the path where she is blind.”
“Then you gamble against me, Mystery. I would see it done another way.”
“Would you rather she follows Chaos?” asked the Lorewarden. “Have you lost your mind again?”
The scribe-lines burned in the air between the two arguing wizards, lines of potential; lines of danger. Jagged arcs of anger crackled overhead, billows of symbols and diagrams surrounded the two wizards, until they were obscured by the bright gathering of tension. Tabitha was submersed in information. She knew what kind of magic each wizard was likely to use, what the blast radius would be, the precise fraction of time she would have to cast a Transference to escape—the knowledge came at her with all the other data. It was too much to look at, and again there was that hollow nausea. Tabitha blinked the tears out of her right eye.
“I did not bring her here to have her abused!” Zarost exclaimed. The Lorewarden backed away from the Riddler; his hands spread ever so slightly as he moved, but Tabitha could see the sudden gathering of essence. The air tightened as Zarost readied himself too.
Someone needed to diffuse the argument or there would be a disaster. She didn’t think the Lorewarden had intended to abuse her—she had been the one asking the questions, driving them on. “I asked to have this explained to me Twardy! I accepted the eye myself. I never got answers out of you, only riddles. The Lorewarden has been answering my questions directly. I am glad that he has.”
The Riddler turned toward her slightly while still holding an illuminated segment of attention on the poised Lorewarden. “Oh Tabitha my young friend, it is not answers you should be seeking, but the questions—those questions you need to ask yourself. When you seek answers from others you just delay finding your own truth. He can give you no answers. The ogle-i can give you no answers. You are the answer. You must be the answer.”
“You expect too much of me, Twardy. I know so little of your three-axis magic, the forms of essence, the effects of casting a spell, all the knowledge you take for granted. Sometimes I just want a straight answer.”
“Ah yes, but the ogle-i will burden you with more than you need to know.”
“If it will help me to understand you all, then I can deal with it.” But she had to close her right eye altogether when she looked at the Riddler—the flood of images was now too intense.
“I believe you shall learn to deal with it, given enough time,” he said, his voice softening. “But I had wished that you wouldn’t have to. The eye is not like the ring. It will become a part of you, a part which I do not believe that you need as the Lifesinger.”
“Pah!” exclaimed the Lorewarden. “We all have one eye on power, Riddler, it is our way. If she is to join the Gyre, what can be wrong with following our customs?”
“Our mistakes are encoded in our customs. What if she should be leading, and not following?”
An awkward silence hel
d them enthralled, making the force-lines Tabitha could see become jagged and unbalanced around the Riddler. His answer scored a five for relevance, a four for content and a poor two for logic. She blinked, and he scored an eight for intelligence, six for constitution, ten for charisma, but to confuse her further, the numbers weren’t fixed—they shifted second by second.
“I shall not pay too much attention to it,” she said, in a small voice. She hadn’t realised that the lens was permanent. “I can still look at the world normally, can’t I?” She had noticed that if she willed the lines away, her vision cleared. But the lines came back with the slightest hint of desire for information, as if it was activated by the idea of a question mark.
“We shall see, we shall see.” He stepped away from both Tabitha and the Lorewarden. “I might have read the riddles wrong.” The tension between them eased. “Now is not the time to dwell on regrets. Gyrends! I have found the Warlock! We need to plan our assault. Come to the chamber, all of you.” He twirled, and bounded from the hall, as if by his movement alone he would sweep them up in his wake.
“What?” exclaimed the Lorewarden. “Riddler, wait! The Warlock? Where?”
But Twardy Zarost had gone.
“Confound that man, he can work on my nerves!” the Lorewarden exclaimed. “But he has done well if he has found the Warlock already. Lifesinger, would you go on ahead? I would have a private word with the Mystery before we reach the Chamber.”
“I… Certainly. Thank you for spending time with me, and thank you Mystery, for the eye. I will try to use it. I want to learn as much as I can.”
“Don’t mind the Riddler’s comments—we all see things in a different way, regardless of the knowledge we have available to us. That is important to remember. Knowledge is a tower we can look out from, not a prison.”
Tabitha headed for the exit. As she passed from the hall, she caught a snatch of the Mystery’s quiet words to the Lorewarden.
“…you and the Riddler were badly divided there. This is the second time since the Warlock stepped from the circle. I have never sensed so much Chaos among us before. It’s as if the Sorcerer is here, in the Sanctuary. We must be very, very careful. If we are divided a third time, something vital shall break.”
“Then we must find the Warlock,” answered the Lorewarden, “before it is too late.”
32. THE WIZARD’S WAY
“Be sure you want a snake in your hands
before you reach for a serpent’s tail.”—Zarost
Prince Bevn gripped on for dear life. The big dogs were running wild. The sled careened over a ledge, slapped down upon the flat rocks and slid into the coarse grass again. Black Saladon shouted at the dogs. One tossed his head and snarled back at the wizard, dirty foam flying from his jagged teeth.
They had been marching along a forest trail, the big wizard demanding ever more speed, when the sled and its team of dogs had come upon them from the north. Two Hunters rode within the sled with a load of skins.
“Bow your heads and stand aside,” Saladon had hissed.
Bevn had been reluctant to drop his gaze. The dogs were so strange looking, fell-eyed and fierce, and the two Hunters intrigued him. They were tough warriors, heavy and square-jawed. There was something different about them. The driver had both hands on the reins, but his companion held his bow ready, two shafts nocked.
Black Saladon gripped Bevn’s hair and pulled his head down. The sled scraped past and continued on its way southward. The Hunters had let them be.
Saladon waited a moment longer then he ran after the sled, blurring with speed. He leapt upon the Hunters, his battleaxe raised, and the two men fell before they had even turned, cloven through by the butcher at their backs. They had never expected such a fast attack from a man on foot. They had not expected such a ruthless fighter. They should have paid better attention to the tall battleaxe.
Saladon hauled on the reins and turned the dogs around. When they passed the bodies of their dead masters, the dogs became frenzied, barking and baying and biting each other, but Saladon boomed some commands from his position behind them and he bent low and gestured across the pack. They howled and began to run again in a pace that didn’t slacken for anything, not for hills or roots or rocks, not for fallen trees or gravel or broken marshy ground. Bevn wished he had never jumped aboard. He’d been eager to take the exciting ride. He hadn’t expected such jarring, crashing, shuddering, slamming agony, on and on, hour after hour. The wizard wouldn’t let them stop, not even to water the dogs.
Bevn’s fear of crashing had filled his bladder to bursting. At last he could hold out no more. “I have to pee,” he said.
“Then go off the side. I won’t stop until we are at Slipper, because they might turn on us. For now, their fear drives them, but fear grows old and bitter in the end. These are marrow-wolves. They’re never kept in the villages, they are too aggressive. The fur-traders keep them tied up to separate trees when they are at rest. I’ve heard of a team that killed an entire Hide before. They are vicious beasts, but there’s nothing better than a marrow-wolf if you want speed.”
Bevn decided it might be better to keep the hounds running. He waited until Gabrielle was looking the other way, before peeing over the back of the sled, clutching on with one hand. He complained about his broken ribs, but Saladon had no sympathy for him. “The present was built in the past,” was all he said.
Much later, when Bevn was a pitiful shuddering heap, cowering against the low rail of the sled and whimpering with every bump, they crossed a relatively smooth plain. Through bleary eyes Bevn saw that a wall of white-capped mountains rose ahead of them, blocking their way northward, but for a single gap. Saladon guided the sled toward that place. They travelled for a league on hard-travelled trails that cut into the foothills, and then made a long descent to the bridge on the western bank of a great river.
Tall cliffs rose on either side of the gap. In the centre of the river, built upon a wedge of land which split the falls, crouched a great fortress town. It divided the flow like an axe head, its great grey walls polished by the current, its ramparts crossing the town, reinforcing it, level by level. But for all its defiant geometry, even from a distance Bevn could see that its former strength had been eroded. The hook of the docks on the western side, where many small rowing boats were tied, was washed away in many places. On the eastern side, another dock held barges with cables running over the water toward the eastern bank, but cables dragged in the water and the ruins of some tall structure lay in the water. The lower levels of the town had a twisted look, although they were the northerly districts and were barely visible over the rise. From what Bevn could make out, the last two walls were just piles of rubble, stained silver.
“See there, that is Slipper,” said Black Saladon. “Watch your tongue when you get there. They have fought a bitter war against the creatures of the lowlands since it all began. They hate The One Who Can Not Be Named more fiercely than anyone. One mention of our plan to reach Turmodin, or the Sorcerer, and you will find yourself blowing red bubbles. The anger runs deep. They will take your head off at the shoulders and nobody would stop to question the murder.”
Gabrielle looked unimpressed. “That tumbled-down sprawl is Slipper?”
“The greatest defensive city of the heartlands, yes. Slipper is like a tongue thrust into the cleft of the Winterblade mountains. This is where the Alliance launches desperate forays, down the tongue and into the throat of the Sorcerer’s lowlands.”
“It looks like a ruin,” said Gabrielle.
It looked like a dead end, to Bevn. “If they are protecting against things coming up from the lowlands, how are we going to get past their defences?”
“We shall pretend to be resistance fighters,” answered Saladon. “There is a stair down to the advance garrison posts on the spine north of town. We shall wait until the early hours of morning. I shall find a place for us to rest and eat first.”
They left the dogs near the river, in a place whe
re the road curved in behind a spur just before a settlement. The hounds were so thirsty they didn’t realise their captors had jumped from the sled; they ran down to the water instead. Saladon considered the harnessed hounds for a moment, then snapped his fingers at them and turned away. “Chaos allows for interesting freedoms,” he said with a small smile, and led Bevn and Gabrielle quickly along the road.
They came to a great bridge that sat low over the speeding river. It ran over to the western edge of the promontory that was Slipper. A burly soldier challenged them, but just as Saladon was answering his questions, a commotion broke out in the riverside settlement below. Screams, shouts and barks, then a high piercing trumpet call, sounded over and over. The soldier ran to answer the frantic call. Another three ran from within the guardhouse.
There were people down there, running in a panicked knot, men and women, children too. There was a commotion upon a landing stage. A hairy beast was mauling a man, and three men with poles were trying to beat it off. More beasts entered the fray, one of them trailing a sled. The marrow-wolves were upon the people, marrow-wolves, wild with hunger. “Come,” said Saladon, and led them across the long bridge to Slipper. No soldiers remained to challenge them. Bevn realised just how good the wizard had been at setting up the diversion.
They arrived in Slipper with the setting sun. The blank outer wall rose before them like a wave, rippled and uneven along its crest, poised in the moment of breaking. They passed beneath the arched stone and into the town. The streets were busy, all manner of people pushing to and fro.
“They drink a lot in this place, they smoke a lot,” said Saladon. “They also fight a lot. It’s probably because they are so practiced at fighting each other that they can hold firm against the invasions from the lowlands. Don’t look for trouble with anyone tonight, and be alert. The Gyre might not have been fooled by our speed. They might be here already, waiting to trap us.”
“But if you think they will trap us here, why don’t we go somewhere else?” demanded Gabrielle.
Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong Page 55
