When they reached the inn at Almunt, the hired coachman unloaded their luggage into the hands of a grizzled muleteer who looked them up and down and joked that they’d do better to wear the contents of their wardrobes. It would save the mules the trouble of luggage and keep them from freezing. But the bitter weather had been in place long enough that the residents of Almunt had risen to the task of outfitting those hardy travelers who came their way. In addition to the pack animals and a guide, they were presented with heavy cloaks and fur rugs to tuck around them for the muleback ride.
“You’ll be as comfy as a chair in your own parlor,” the muleteer assured Serafina when she looked askance at the awkward sidesaddle. She’d never ridden before, and the lurching gait took all her attention in the first hour as they threaded the trail between banked snow that had been cleared where a carriage road should have run.
Further from the border, the reaching fingers of the weather mystery had seemed to flow aimlesly. Now it spilled down the valleys and crested over the peaks of the hills like drifts of malevolent fog, fraying out as it met with the edges of Alpennia’s protections. Having seen those protections at their heart, in the cathedral of Saint Mauriz, she could distinguish them here. The bright pulsing glow of the saint’s blessing should have been a sharp-edged spear and gleaming shield. Here it felt more like the faint flickering of a sanctuary lamp: a promise of the Presence, but no more than that. And with every flicker, shadows slipped closer, like moths drawn by that dim glow that would have been driven off by daylight.
The castellum was stronger. Serafina could feel the layers, the courses that had been laid down with each repetition of the ceremony. The mystery had been designed as a defense and she felt it all around, growing thicker and stronger as the air grew thinner and colder. But the foreign mystery filtered through it, seeping through cracks in the walls, working its way around the stones, seeking blind spots between the towers. She could feel the pressure of its presence on the other side in dark reds and purples, swirling around the mountain peaks like the storms it gathered.
Having opened her senses to the fullest, Serafina could see other mysteries at work. A pulse like a beacon shining from someplace ahead of them. A monastery, she guessed from the shape of it, and a mystery meant to draw lost travelers to safety. The mules in their train each carried a charm—local work, no doubt—keeping their feet sure on the path. And along the trace of the stream they paralleled, there was a strangely familiar thread. It lapped in waves against the tendrils of the weather sorcery, whispering rise up, flow, be a river once more.
Rise up. She craned her head around to look over her shoulder down into the ravine, though mortal eyes meant nothing to what she sought. Rise up. No, she hadn’t imagined it. There in the ice-rimmed waters of the stream was an echo of Tanfrit’s song. Let the waters rise up. It had cut through the frozen power in the mountains and freed some small portion of the stream to flow down toward the valleys and, in time, to the Rotein. Looking more closely, she saw how it had prevailed, how the fierce pride and passion channeled into that aria had drawn power from the listening crowd, and followed their love and fear of the great river up through its tributaries and their sources and here to where the lifeblood that fed the Rotein was held captive. It had called to the ice, Rise up. Let the waters rise up.
They were moving through the borders now, past the limits of Mauriz’s grace, outside the ambit of Margerit’s castellum. The full force of what they held at bay battered at her senses like a blinding storm and she cried out.
“Serafina, what’s wrong?”
She heard Frances’s voice at a distance. And then their guide calling back, “Keep moving. We can’t stop here.”
Her mount continued forward, oblivious to the mystic winds that howled about them. It had gone wild, Kreiser had agreed, like a mad dog unleashed. It had been one thing to trace those forces on a map, another to be inside it. Kreiser had traveled these roads and others a year past. Had it been like this? But his visio was much weaker, hence his need for her eyes. There was no way to compare.
She could see Kreiser’s map in her mind and found their place in it and all the small traces they’d hunted together. They formed a pattern, even in their chaos. She saw the remnants of protections—not those of Alpennia alone—and how the assault was drawn to them, hungry for what was forbidden to it. Those structures still stood, but like the shape of a house eaten from within by rot and ready to crumble at a touch. Would Archbishop Fizeir’s mending of the Mauriz tutela repair them? Could the Royal Guild master the changes in the castellum in time? How long would even such protections hold in the face of continued assault?
The image of the spreading petals of a rose no longer seemed apt. More like the spreading ripples in a pond from where a stone had been dropped. But not one stone alone. No, the image was leading her astray. She worked to focus on those spreading forces and then to follow them back to the core, to that one pass, far to the east, that had been the center and origin of the mystery. There. It drew her as a lodestone draws a compass needle. Her awareness sped across the miles like a bird in flight. This time she pushed aside the image of roots, of interwoven spiderwebs, and saw that center as a vortex, a whirlpool, a spinning wind, and this time she dove down through the center of it, seeking its source.
The fluctus spun around her and she felt her body clutch at the saddle to keep from falling. Down, in, through. A shade rose up before her: a dry empty husk of a soul lost to salvation. She passed through it and it crumbled to dust around her. Other dry shadows swirled around her, caught up in the storm. And now a circle of men, chanting, high walls and colored windows. A woman’s cry—of pain or passion. The brief flash of a face, dark like her own, glimpsed in a clouded mirror. Other faces, more empty ghosts. She recognized the signs of a mystery being performed, but this was only an image of what had gone before. A fading echo of the ceremony that had created the catastrophe. Where? Who? Kreiser had thought Paris, but she’d never been there, she had no bearings. What she had was a taste of the celebrants, a scent, an image—not of their physical selves, but of their essences. She might not know them on the street, but she would know their work if she encountered it again. And she had seen the shape of their errant mystery—seen it as clearly as in a depictio laid out on the floor of the chamber of mysteries— and she knew how it could be defeated.
One of the ghostly figures turned, saw her, reached out. Serafina fled sideways into the darkness. He grasped at nothing. And she was lost—lost except for the gleam of a beacon shining faintly through a blizzard. A bell, calling to wandering travelers. A voice…
“Serafina! Serafina, wake up!”
Her eyes fluttered open and Frances was bending over her. Warmth and shelter.
“Serafina, are you well?”
She sat up and drew her hands across her eyes to clear away the traces of the vision. “I’m here. I was following the mystery.”
“We didn’t know what had happened to you. The guide wanted to go on, but I insisted we stop here.”
Serafina looked around. Yes, it must be the monastery whose beacon-mystery she’d seen earlier.
“Frances, I need to go back.”
“Back?”
“It’s all bound up together—I see it now. The walls are crumbling, and when they fall— Margerit…she needs to know. I know how to break it.” Would they believe her or think she had gone mad? Serafina lowered her voice and spoke as calmly as she could mange. “I must go back to Rotenek.”
* * *
It wasn’t as simple as turning around and returning. Serafina argued long with Frances before she would agree to continue on her own journey. And then there was the maddening wait in the monastery guesthouse until a party heading north through the mountains could be convinced to add a stranger to their midst. In Almunt, another wait until a ride could be begged as far as Nofpunt for a fee of five teneirs—as much as she could spare and still leave the public coach fare from Nofpunt to Rotenek.
The coach deposited her just inside the city walls at the Tupendor late in the evening with an empty purse. Truly empty. There would be nothing more from Paolo. The money was the least of it. Her thoughts shied away from tracing the consequences of her decision to its final end. This would mean a complete break. She would never see him again—not unless he chose to pursue her here to Alpennia. If she never returned to Rome, she would never see her father or Michele either. Was it worth it, what she had come to do? What did she owe to Alpennia that could match that cost? But it wasn’t Alpennia, she knew that. It was some vision of the rightness of the world that had gone out of balance. And above all else, it was Margerit and Luzie and Celeste and the rest. Two years past, she had come to Rotenek seeking something. And if she hadn’t found it, she had found so much more.
But for now there was the question of where to go. It was late and she would need to walk. The innkeeper would hold her valise for now as a pledge. In this part of town she knew only which streets were safe to keep to. The university district was a half hour’s walk up Market Street. A year before, she might have sought Akezze at her lodgings there, but now Akezze had rooms at the academy. It would take another half hour to walk to the upper part of town, but Luzie would…no. She counted up the days. Luzie and all the rest would be at Akolbin. It must be Margerit. Margerit needed to know what she’d discovered. Margerit would know what to do. In the Plaiz Vezek by the university, she lost her way in the dark and had to ask a passing student which street would take her to the Pont Ruip. From there she knew the way.
The knocker on the door at Tiporsel House echoed hollowly. What if they had left on holiday as well? She’d paid no mind to anyone else’s summer plans, knowing they had nothing to do with her. But perhaps the darkness within the foyer and the long minutes before a sleepy footman unbarred the door were only the lateness of the hour.
“Maisetra Talarico!” he said in a startled voice.
“It’s unforgiveable, I know,” Serafina said. “The hour, and with no notice. But I’ve only just returned to town and I have nowhere to stay. And I hoped Maisetra Sovitre…”
He stared at her in confusion for a moment, then said, “You haven’t heard? The Maisetra has gone down to Turinz.”
Turinz? Serafina’s heart fell. “When do you expect her back?”
“Maisetra…we don’t know. The baroness has been shot.”
In the end it was Margerit’s cousin Iulien who was roused from her sleep to make some sort of decision. She came down wrapped in a pale yellow dressing gown, her face paler still, perhaps expecting worse news than what the house had already received.
“Oh, Serafina!” she exclaimed. “I thought you were in Rome! What’s happened?”
“I’m well,” Serafina hastened to reassure her. “I came back because…oh, it doesn’t matter just now. What’s this about Baroness Saveze?”
She took in the jumbled story of bandits and chases on horseback, mixed up with pistols and swords, and guessed that half of it was one of Iuli’s fanciful inventions.
“And are you here by yourself?” she asked Iuli in concern.
“Only until Aunt Bertrut comes back. They’re only off at Marzim and should be here by tomorrow. When I heard the knock I thought they might be early. And you mustn’t tell anyone that Margerit left me here alone!”
It was a peculiar sort of alone that could be had in a house full of servants, but Serafina nodded reassurance. “I shouldn’t stay, then. I’ve only just arrived back and had nowhere else to go. Even my valise is still at the coaching inn.”
The frightened indecision left Iuli’s face. She straightened and Serafina could see just what sort of woman she might someday become.
Iuli turned to the waiting footman. “Marzo, please ask someone to wake Mefro Charsintek. Tell her that Maisetra Talarico will be my guest tonight and will need a bed made up.”
The man looked from one to the other of them, clearly judging whether Iulien had the authority to give such a command, but then he bowed, saying, “Yes, Maisetra Iulien,” and went to make arrangements.
Chapter Thirty-One
Margerit
July, 1825
Barbara should have been here. This was her world—the game she had played since her youth. It was hard not to feel like a green girl in Princess Annek’s presence, surrounded by the lords of state on one side and Archbishop Fereir with the masters of the most powerful mystery guilds on the other. Margerit had last known this scrutiny when she had been approved—no, approved was wrong, admitted—as Royal Thaumaturgist. This time it was Serafina who laid out the pages of the depictio with shaking hands and led the watchers through what she had seen.
Barbara should have been here—no, she should be at Barbara’s side. Cooling her brow through the fevers, lighting candles to run through every healing mystery she knew, helping to change the bandages that covered the torn flesh and bound to it an array of amulets delivered from Antuniet’s workshop. It didn’t matter that every member of the household clamored to keep that vigil for her. She should be there.
“This is an extraordinary claim.” Setun, the guildmaster of Saint Benezet’s had claimed the role of challenger. Convincing him might not be essential but it would make the rest easier.
“We face an extraordinary danger,” Margerit answered. She would have continued but the archbishop waved her to silence.
“Let the foreign woman speak. It is her vision we must judge today.”
Knowing Serafina’s unease in public, Margerit expected her to stutter and stumble. But she had worked with Fereir before in the spring. Perhaps that eased the way.
“Here,” Serafina said, pointing to the first of the diagrams, “is what I saw as we approached the mountains just north of Almunt.”
Margerit had been led through the journey five times or more and it chilled her anew each time. Serafina’s description had been honed and distilled through repetition.
“The fractures in the Mauriz tutela have not only weakened its protections but provided a path for this foreign—” She hesitated before using the word. “—this foreign sorcery to enter the land.”
They had argued over that. But one could hardly call the weather mystery a miracle, and the spreading effects of its disruption were scarcely coherent enough for the word mystery. Even curse implied more intention than seemed accurate.
“The All Saints’ Castellum was meant to provide a different type of protection. Not a replacement. If there had been time for it to become stronger and more…more settled, then it might have kept the sorcery somewhat at bay. Instead, it too provided cracks to draw it in. It’s as if—” Serafina’s gaze unfocused as it always did when she was trying to find the best description. “It’s as if the sorcery pushed harder wherever it found resistance. On the Swiss side of the mountains, Mesner Kreiser said it only affected the weather, but in Alpennia, in Piedmont, and along the Dolomites it fought the mysteries it found there and became wilder.”
That was what had cut to Margerit’s heart: the fear that the imperfections in her mystery might have caused more damage than it prevented. The Mauriz was Fereir’s responsibility, but the castellum was hers.
The debate lasted for three days, but Archbishop Fereir lent the deciding voice.
“We have already begun the restoration and revisions to the Great Mystery of Saint Mauriz. This revelation only adds urgency to implementing them this year. We have two months to complete the preparations. And two months—” He fixed the Benezet guildmaster with a commanding gaze. “Two months to assist Maisetra Sovitre in preparing the Royal Guild for their castellum.”
They would perform both together, it was decided. Saint Mauriz on the morning of his feast day to cast his restored protection over the land. The All Saints’ Castellum in the afternoon to raise walls and towers as a bulwark against what followed. The castellum wouldn’t be as effective as on its proper day, but there was no help for that. And afterward, a new mystery was being devised that would be a spear in
the heart of the sorcery. But for all Margerit’s probing, the guildmasters declined to share those plans.
* * *
Iulien’s concerns always seemed to intrude at the worst possible time. Margerit knew that if it had been left to her, she would have given in to all of Uncle Fulpi’s demands, simply to be able to focus her attention on Barbara and the castellum. Fortunately, she had LeFevre to serve as her patience. He’d made her swear to promise nothing in advance of the contract and to hold her tongue when they finally gathered for the signing.
Several days of truce preceded that signing. It might have been better to lodge Uncle Fulpi somewhere other than Tiporsel House, Margerit thought, too late to make any change. It was the first time he’d come to Rotenek since her first Advent season here, when she was still newly arrived in the city and under his guardianship. To be sure, they’d crossed paths in Chalanz in summers past, but that had been on his ground—his, in some sense, even at her house on Fonten Street. Here he was reminded at every turn that Rotenek was her domain and it made him stiff and prickly. The only saving grace was that injury kept Barbara confined to their room. She had no such escape. Uncle Fulpi sat opposite from her now, unspeaking, while his lawyer and LeFevre went over the contracts in minute detail with the air of seconds before a duel.
Iulien waited anxiously in the library, with Aunt Bertrut to keep her company. They’d both lectured her sternly in preparation for this visit: be pleasant and agreeable, not meek, but biddable, no pertness or impatience. It might have been easier to wait there with her.
“There is a question,” Uncle Fulpi’s lawyer said, “of the provisions regarding the property in the case of marriage.” He exchanged glances with his employer and continued. “The current provision is that the property at Zortun is to be deeded to Iulien Fulpi at the time of her marriage. We wish to specify that the final deed is to be transferred only if she marries with her father’s approval. If she marries without approval, the property is to be held in trust until she has attained thirty years of age.”
Mother of Souls: A novel of Alpennia Page 45
