Liaden Universe Constellation Volume 3

by Sharon Lee

  It wasn’t until she reached her own room, the door closed and sealed behind her, that she released Serenity and began to cry.

  THE ACE OF PENTACLES

  The beginning and the end

  The Moon had risen since he had quit Goddess Square, and the access streets were crowded with those who wished to partake of the foundation rituals performed on Beltane eve.

  The devout made a river of humanity, carrying Lute toward Dyan Temple and the living heart of the city.

  A human river, however, could be fought as a Goddess-sent compulsion could not. Lute used shoulders and elbows to steer himself through and across the current, to land at last, ill-tempered and sweaty, at the door of the Magician’s Guildhall.

  It was locked.

  Lute stared for a long moment, bag heavy across his shoulder, then grabbed the bell-rope and pulled. The door remained shut.

  “Damn you,” he gritted and renewed his grip on the rope. Over and over, he hauled down, waking such a peal that his head fair rang with it—and at long last the door came open a cautious inch.

  “Go away,” snarled someone from within. “It’s Beltane eve.”

  Lute glared into the dark as if he could see the speaker well. “Tell the Guildmaster that Master Magician Lute is here to speak to him upon a matter of utmost urgency.”

  “Be silent, or are you Moonkissed?” The keeper would have shut the door then, except that Lute’s foot prevented it. “Maiden’s tits, man, will you have us all called to Circle? It’s Beltane. Go away.”

  “It is most certainly Beltane eve, and I will just as certainly not go away.” Lute snapped. “I will see the Master of this Hall if I have to ring the bell until the roof falls in! Let me in—my right as Guildsman!—and fetch the Master.” He paused for the beat of two, called up the voice-power as his master had taught him and released it in one word: “Now.”

  It worked. It nearly always did work, even against those who knew the trick of it. The doorkeeper sagged back a step, the door widened an inch more, Lute got his shoulder into the gap and shoved.

  A half-beat later he was standing in the dim entrance way, closing the door behind him over the keeper’s sputtering, and scrupulously lowering the bar. He fixed the older man with a stern eye.

  “Fetch the Guildmaster.”

  “He’s not here,” said the keeper, sullenly. “Nor should you be, if you have a taste for health.”

  Lute lifted a brow, magnificently ignoring the man’s surliness. “If the Guildmaster is not here,” he said, keeping his voice sweet, “then send for him.”

  “But—”

  “And after you’ve done that,” he continued, brooking no debate, “you will show me to a parlor and bring me the latest log books, and a sup of ale. And some cheese. That is all.”

  The doorkeeper gaped at him, so Lute was forced to clap his hands sharply and flick the voice-lash: “Go!”

  “Yes, Master,” muttered the servant, startled into a bow. He scuttled off down the hallway, leaving Lute in dimness. Sighing, he walked to the wall, noting the position of the three ready sconces—set well above his overlong reach, a silly place, really, for torches, unless one wished to make a point.

  He backed away from the wall, counting his steps, then, exactly centered upon one of the fine-cut granite blocks flooring the hallway, he stamped his heel three times, cried, “Ho!” and flung his arms high, fingers stretched wide, miming the flames that leapt instantly in all three sconces at once.

  Slowly, he lowered his arms, keeping his face as solemn as if there were a crowd to impress, and as if satisfaction did not soar in him, that he had not lost the trick of it.

  “Master’s work,” commented a voice to his right, abruptly enough to intend to startle. Lute finished the gesture properly, allowed his cloak to wrap him in mysterious stillness and held it for one long beat before he turned to face his audience.

  “How pleasant to hear you say so,” he purred and had the satisfaction of seeing the man’s jowly face take on a pinkish tinge. He bowed, sweeping the cloak out and making it seem of velvet and ermine, to thus place it on a level with his host’s ’broidered scarlet sash and silken shirt.

  He of the scarlet sash bowed also, with grace, but without wit. “I am Feldris, newly Master of Dyan City Magician’s Hall.”

  “And I am Lute, Master Magician, who had been apprenticed to Master Magician Cereus.”

  “Registered of what Hall?” The question was an insult; the names of all Master Magicians were inscribed in the Book of Masters kept in each Guildhall and it was the duty of each Hallkeeper to have that Book by heart. Lute lifted an eyebrow.

  “Hagsmere, and it please you, great lord.”

  Feldris colored again, mouth tightening ominously. “I regret,” he said stiffly, “that I am new to the house and have not committed the names of all the Masters to memory.”

  “A failing deserving of regret,” Lute acknowledged, around a sudden sense of foreboding. “Let us step over to the Common Room and pull down the register, that you may satisfy yourself of my—authenticity.”

  The other man fluttered his hands—a formless thing, and thoroughly unlike the measured gesture one expected from a brother magician. Lute felt his foreboding grow, the parchment in his sleeve as heavy as stone.

  “I am certain you are who—and what—you say you are,” Feldris Hallkeeper said soothingly. “Did I not with my own eyes see you light the torches? But the doorkeeper spoke of an urgent matter you must discuss, and I have kept you waiting long enough. In what way can Dyan Guildhall aid you?”

  Foreboding flared into active dismay. Here? Lute wondered, keeping his face bland. In the very entrance hall? With neither table nor greet-wine nor the witness of others of the Guild?

  “It is a matter of sufficient import,” he murmured, “to interest all currently resident within the hall.”

  “Ah.” Feldris folded his unschooled hands before his sash. “That would be myself,” he said. “And the doorkeeper, of course.”

  “Is everyone at the Foundation Rituals, then?”

  “They are no longer in the city,” the Guildmaster said softly.

  Lute took a breath, and then another. “Well,” he said lightly, “I can see that I’ve wasted my time and yours, sir! Good Beltane to you—” He turned smoothly and went, smoothly, toward the door, ignoring his stammering heart and the lungs that wished to labor.

  “Hold!” The Guildmaster’s tread was heavy behind him and Lute was too far from the door—fool that he had been to bar it!

  “Hold!” Feldris cried again as Lute laid his hands upon the bar and—

  “Hold!”

  “Hold!”

  “Hold!”

  Cried three separate voices from three corners of the entrance way, so that Feldris spun on his heel, surprised by words in the hall he knew to be empty. Lute flung the bar aside with a clatter, jerked the door wide—

  And ran.

  To become invisible it is merely necessary to become one of many.

  Thus had his master taught him, and good lore it was, as far as it walked. It was certainly no failing on the part of Master Cereus that his apprentice wished most ardently to avoid the place where the shielding crowd was thickest.

  “If I wanted congress with Circle, I could as easily have clung to Master Feldris’ side.”

  So saying, Lute left the crowd two streets short of Goddess Square and ducked into the shadow of an ornate garden gate, there to complete his preparations in private.

  Master Cereus had been a gentle man, but no one’s fool. He had walked a rough road for upwards of forty years and took no lasting harm from it. It had been his ardent wish that his ’prentice did as well.

  “Of course,” Lute muttered to himself in the privacy of the gate-shadow, “he never meant you to fight Circle, either. Each as the Goddess made us, master. Excepting only that the Goddess has lately reached forth her hand and made some of us more perfect than others.”

  He freed his b
ag from its carrying strap and knelt by it on the paving stones, hands hasty on the secret clasps. In the very act of unsealing it, he stopped, hands gripping the worn black leather.

  The Guildhall where he—three times a fool!—ignored the gatekeeper’s most obvious warning. And Feldris—no magician he, nor even one who had much experience of the breed, to be so startled by a minor bit of ventriloquism. Newly come to the post, was he, by the Moon? And by whose aye, with the Guildhall empty and Dyan City’s magicians “gone”? Lute sat back on his heels and shivered as might-have-been ran down his back on many cold feet.

  Feldris might well follow him: For his own safety, Lute must suppose that the hunt was already on. However, the pretty sash and soft hands spoke of one not so familiar with the rough, twisty streets along the city’s outer ring. It was in those streets that Lute intended to pass the night, and be out the Western Gate the moment it opened, tomorrow.

  “Fortunate, indeed, if dawn sees you out of the city,” he told himself grimly. “Remember this and never again go within gates.”

  He took a deep breath then, and performed the linked series of mental images that had been the first magic his master had taught him. Calmed by the exercise, hands steady and mind cool, he finished the necessary adjustments to the bag.

  A moment later he was out on the street, joining the crowd running there, and let it bear him, resistless, toward Goddess Square and the choice of multiple routes to the outer city.

  Some time later he was moving toward a spur street tending westward and out and feeling a bit more sanguine regarding his chances of winning clear. So he ambled along, angling through the crowd, the picture of a man vaguely questing—for a lover, perhaps, or an aged parent—nothing frantic, to draw the eye, nor even particularly purposeful.

  Inside the cloak, he rounded his shoulders to disguise his height and took care to walk heavy on the paving stones, to foster the illusion of bulk.

  It took time to do the thing thus, but he judged it to his advantage to allow time for his scent to grow cold to the nose of whatever hounds the false Guildmaster might call out to the chase.

  So he thought and so he believed. And so did this endeavor appear to have the Mother’s smile, for he had the proper street in his eye; and was beginning to count the steps until he began once more to be safe—when he of the ’broidered sash, Master Feldris himself, stepped out of the street that Lute had thought his salvation, stopped and looked directly into the magician’s eyes.

  His jowly face lit as if he’d been chosen for Temple consort, flushing pink as he pointed at the place where Lute had been and looked over his shoulder to call out, “Here he is, Lady! Come quickly!”

  But whether the lady obeyed such ungenteel summons or not, Lute could not have said. He was running, pushing and shoving and not caring whose feet he trod on—running, back into the thickest of the crowd.

  THE FOOL

  Simplicity, Faith

  Upon her balcony overlooking the innermost garden, Moonhawk sat in meditation. Outer eyes closed, she yet saw the greening bushes, the budding trees and the soft new grass with exquisite clarity. The garden was a haven of tranquility, after all, and many potent spells had been woven to insure that tranquility. It was a fitting model for the meditations of one judged by her sisters to be hasty and arrogant.

  It had taken work to shed her bitterness at being excluded from Beltane eve circle; work that, in her current meek state, only illustrated more painfully that she was not fit for Inner Circle; and much less than fit for her duty as a vessel of the Goddess.

  With these realizations newly in hand, she had eschewed the more sophisticated trance-patterns and opted for one that needed no drawn-out ritual to birth it, but merely required her own unimpaired Sight, and a relaxing of her arrogant will.

  Upon the balcony, deep in meditation, Moonhawk was the garden and the peace therein.

  Until, in the garden, there was—discord.

  It was a slight thing, quickly gone, but it was enough to pain her, linked as she was—more than enough to break the web of trance.

  Eyes still closed, but alert now, and seeking, Moonhawk cast her net out to capture the cause of discord.

  She found it nearly at once: A pattern startling in its clarity, tinged with elusive familiarity. From the surface thoughts she caught frustration and anger, desperation, yet not despair. She received the impression that the intruder was being hunted, without expectation of either mercy or succor.

  Hunted, on Beltane! Moonhawk stood, and opened her outer eyes, coordinating what she saw with what her other senses brought her. She established the intruder’s location and nodded.

  Hunted, in the very garden of the Inmost Circle!

  Moonhawk went to the edge of the balcony, stepped off and walked the air down to the ground.

  Feet upon the path, she paused once more to be certain of her direction, then set off at a rapid walk.

  He had been a fool to think that the hounds Feldris would bring to the hunt could be any less than Witches.

  Not one Witch, as he had first thought, but three. Almost, he laughed. Three Witches and a false Guildmaster to run one ragged conjurer to ground? Soberness claimed him in a chill rush. Was this the reason the Goddess had herded him to Dyan City? That he might be held as an example to others of his profession?

  Yet, for whatever reasons, three Witches. More than enough to push him in the direction they chose, and to deny him any hope of the streets beyond the square.

  What they had aimed for, he thought, was to pin him against the base of East Tower, there to gather him up at their leisure. But he had moved a little too quickly; played the crowd-currents a little too adeptly. He came to the wall near the tower, certainly, but to the north, hard by the wicket he had noted earlier in the evening. It was the work of a moment to pick the lock and slip through, and hardly more than that to make sure the gate was locked again behind him.

  He doubted his ploy would hold his pursuers long, but he hoped it would hold them long enough for him to hide himself. For in all the great pile of Dyan Temple, he thought, treading the conch-lined path with care, there must be one small hole into which he might crawl, there to sleep through Beltane. He would let himself out the way he had come in tomorrow.

  The path made a sharp turn and twisted through a taelberry arbor, turned again . . .

  And ended at a blank wall.

  The wall must protect a private garden, Lute thought, refusing to accede to despair. The private garden, perhaps, of some Witch, who, if she held rank high enough to possess such a quiet spot, might well be a part of the Beltane eve rituals taking place in the Moon Court even now.

  Beltane itself did not come to fruition until Moonrise tomorrow and there were certain other rituals after, so he had heard, that might keep a ranking lady well away from her garden.

  It was the best gamble he had, who should have quit the table long ago. He brought gloves from beneath his cloak and pulled them on before he set his hands carefully among the wallstones and began to climb.

  The wall was admirably supplied with hand- and footholds. Moments later Lute dropped lightly into the garden beyond, stripped off his gloves and headed for the shalmon bush at the base of the cort tree. He slipped in tight against the trunk, cloak melding with the black bark. The bush clothed him with leaf to the knee.

  He leaned his forehead against the tree and deliberately emptied his mind of everything that was Lute or of Lute’s concerns. He was a part of the garden, just quickening with spring. He was the cort tree, warm, smooth bark, widespread branches, soft, feathery leaves.

  And then he was nothing, merely a blot of shadow among the other shadows beneath the tree. Invisible, not there, never there, safe and calm and—

  “It is you!”

  The voice shattered his self-hypnosis and he jumped; stumbled within the embrace of the shalmon bush, and would have fallen except that strong hands caught his shoulders and held him gently upright.

  “It is you,”
the voice reiterated. “But however did you come here?”

  The speaker was nearly his own height; yellow-haired and angular, dressed in the blue, breast-baring robe of an Initiate. Lute felt his heart go to ice.

  As if she felt his dread, the woman held out a slim hand and stepped away from his hiding place. Rings of power glittered in the moonlight—enough silver to feed him for a goodly number of years, baring an unnaturally short life.

  “Come,” the woman said gently. “You don’t need to be afraid. No harm will come to you here, I swear it!” She moved her fingers, beckoning, as if he were a bashful child.

  “Come,” she said again, and he stepped out of the bush and went two steps toward her across the grass. He could think of no place, now, to run.

  “Good,” said the woman—the Witch. “I saw you earlier, at the base of Maidenstairs and was sorry you had not come in. But you are here now and may find peace, for the Goddess is Mother of us all and Her Temples are safe havens for all Her children.” She tipped her head.

  “You are still afraid, but you needn’t be. No one will hurt you here. Haven’t I said so?”

  “There he is!” He heard the words and felt the blow at the same time: A blow as from a giant’s fist, slamming into his skull, driving him to one knee as the world shimmered and started to go gray . . .

  “No! I have said he is safe here!” The world steadied and took back its colors; the pain in his head receded to a dull ache. Lute looked up, saw Feldris and another woman in Circle blue coming toward himself and his champion. This woman was smaller, rounder, darker, and frowning like a thunderhead.

  “You have said he’s safe here,” she snapped. “And what have you to do with it?”

  The yellow-haired Witch pulled herself up. “He failed at the door at First Hound—I saw it! Now, he comes to us, but afraid. Afraid of being hunted, Sister! Remind me, is it not Beltane eve?”

  The dark one lifted a brow. “You know very well the name of the ceremony from which you are excluded.”