The Circle Opens #4: Shatterglass

by Tamora Pierce

  Several hours passed after he came back. He spent them in the Mages’ Museum, marveling at the many objects they had created, and briefly in their library, flipping through books. For a moment he thought he’d glimpsed braided red hair and the gleam of light along a long, curved glass edge passing by a stack of shelves on his right. Rather than see if it was the lightning girl or not, he went back to the museum.

  At midafternoon his clerk-escort brought him to one of the university’s mages, Vishaneh Amberglass. Keth felt better the moment he was ushered into her ground floor offices. Amberglass’s office was a glassmaker’s workshop, stifling hot from the fire in the furnace.

  The mage herself was a tiny creature in her sixties, perched on a high stool. She had icy gray-green eyes, olive skin, and black hair worn in a coil ruthlessly pinned to her scalp. Instead of the Tharian kyten and stole, she dressed in the long tunic coat and leggings of a Trader or Bihanese. “I am told that you are a journeyman glassmaker,” she said, eyeing him through round spectacles.

  “Yes, dhasku,” replied Kethlun.

  “There is a crucible in the oven. Blowpipes over there.” Amberglass pointed them out. “Have you studied breath control through meditation?”

  “Of course,” he replied, startled by the question. “You don’t get past your ’prenticeship without it.”

  “Do you know that meditation is a form that mages use to get at their power?” Her voice was crisp.

  “Yes, dhasku. I learned from my uncles, who are glass mages.”

  “Then blow me a round glass ball, meditating as you do so,” the mage instructed. “Don’t take forever about it.”

  He didn’t take forever. He did take his time, inspecting several blowpipes before he chose one that suited him, then eyed the crucible in the glory hole of the oven. “Dhasku Amberglass, you do understand that it’s blowing glass where I get into trouble. It’s why I’m here at all.”

  She inspected a thumbnail. “Either you are a journeyman, or you are not,” she said tartly. “Which is it?”

  Kethlun sighed. Closing his eyes, he fell into the breathing rhythms he had learned years ago. Meditation and breath control were as much a part of his family life as meals. Slowly he counted to seven as he inhaled, then held his breath to a count of seven, let it go for a count of seven, stopped for a count of seven, then began to inhale once more. Like magic his troubled mind instantly calmed. He could almost smell his mother’s lavender sachet, his father’s spicy hair pomade, the scent of baking bread in the kitchen. Gently he slid his pipe into the crucible, into the mass of molten glass, and collected a glob of it at the pipe’s end. Bringing it out, he began to spin the pipe as he blew into it carefully.

  “Let your mind drift,” murmured that sharp voice, its edges blunted. “Close your eyes — I’ll watch for you. Clouds go by, you smell spring rain —”

  His mood shattered. He smelled hot metal and death. The hairs on his arms went stiff: lightning was here! He had enough sense to yank his mouth away from the pipe before he gasped in panic. The bubble at the end of the rod shimmered, then flashed with lightning. Miniature bolts rippled on its surface and through the center of the globe so thickly, it was impossible to see inside it.

  Amberglass raised her hands and snapped her fingers. The bubble tore free of Kethlun’s pipe and flew to her. She caught it in her palms. If the hot glass burned her, she gave no sign of it.

  Trembling, Kethlun lowered the rod. “I did say —”

  “Be quiet,” she snapped, eyes fixed on the ball.

  He knew the voice of a master; he shut up. Quietly he cleaned the excess glass from the pipe, cleared the inside of it, and put it away. When he finished, he glanced at the stool. Amberglass was gone. She soon returned, with his companion clerk, who carried the lightning ball, tucked into a silk-lined basket. Keth noticed that the lightning that covered the outside of the ball seemed to have no effect on the silk.

  “This is beyond my skills,” Amberglass told him. Her gaze gentled slightly. “I’m sending you to Dhaskoi Rainspinner. He works on weather.”

  With anyone else Kethlun might have complained, but not with this woman. She had gone to some trouble to see precisely what was wrong with him. He bowed to her, resigned, and followed the clerk to the upper floors of Mages’ Hall.

  By the end of the afternoon, Kethlun was more adrift than he had been that morning. He had seen two more mages after Rainspinner. Like Amberglass, they had sent him on to other glass or weather mages. Keth yearned to go home. If he spent much more time up here, Yali would have left Ferouze’s and gone to perform by the time he got home.

  When the clock struck the fourth hour, his guide led him back to the area where the mages’ clerks sat, copying out schedules and lessons and reviewing correspondence. “You’ll have to return tomorrow,” the clerk said, wetting a reed pen in a pot of ink. He had placed the basket, with its sparking glass ball, at the farthest corner of his desk. The clerks at neighboring desks inched away from it. “Present yourself at —”

  “Come back?” Keth asked, cursing his slow speech. What he wanted to do was scream, but he couldn’t. If he didn’t force himself to speak carefully, the stammer would return. Then no one would be able to understand him. He leaned on the counter between him and the clerks, his head and feet aching. “I have a debt to pay, work to do. I cannot spend my l-life h-here waiting like a pet dog. Aren’t y-you p-people sup-posed to help?” There, he heard it: the stutter. He thrust the knuckle of his index finger into his mouth and bit down just hard enough to grab his attention, pulling it away from his fury. He did meditation breathing until he thought he could continue. None of the clerks had budged since he started talking. “Your charter says you are duty bound to instruct new mages,” he said, letting each word finish its journey from his mouth before he tried the next sound. “Well, here I am. All new and shiny, fresh from the lightning strike. I need help now. Who knows what I will make next, when I do not know what I am doing?”

  People were emerging from their offices. Most wore tunics and kytens, with the mage blue stole looped to waist-length in front and left to dangle to the knees behind. Kethlun looked around, counted, and gulped: twenty-three mages now stood in the room.

  “How is it, my peers, that anyone can make such a complaint on this of all weeks?” The speaker was a tall chestnut brown woman with startling blue-gray eyes. Her nose was long and thin with broad nostrils, her wide mouth smoothly curved. She wore her graying dark hair in curls bound up with ribbons, covered by a sheer blue veil weighted with tiny glass drops at the hems. Like most Tharian women she wore the kyten and sandals that tied around her calves. Her ribbon belts were the same shade of blue as her mage’s stole. Kethlun hadn’t seen her or her companion, a white-skinned older man, emerge from an office behind him. The woman continued, “Here we have gathered a conclave of seers, glass mages, truthsayers, and masters of visionary magics from half the world, and we cannot name one man’s power?”

  “It is a mixture, Dhasku Dawnspeaker,” explained the clerk who had shepherded Kethlun all day. “Something the mages and assistants who have seen Koris Warder have never encountered before.”

  “You give it a try, Jumshida Dawnspeaker,” said the mage Amberglass with a sigh. “I’ve never gotten such a mangled reading of someone’s power.”

  “Then perhaps we must stop wasting everyone’s time, and go to the best vision mage present,” replied Dhasku Dawnspeaker. She looked at her male companion. “Dhaskoi Goldeye?” she asked with a smile that Keth judged too warm for a woman who addressed a mere colleague.

  Goldeye was a lean, wiry fellow, dressed in a sleeveless lilac overrobe, light gray silk shirt, and loose gray breeches. His long hair was black-streaked gray, held back from his craggy face with a tie. His eyes, dark and fathomless, set between heavy black lashes, caught Kethlun’s gaze and held it well past the time Keth would gladly have looked away. At last he nodded, freeing Keth of the power in his eyes.

  “I see why those wh
o tested you were confused,” he told Keth. “You have ambient glass magic, which means you draw power not from inside yourself, as academic glass mages do, but from glass and the things that go into making it, including earth, air, water, and fire. The thing that has transformed it, however, is lightning. That lightning gives your power strength and unpredictability. Your power flickers, jumping from element to element within you.”

  “Then we have a problem after all,” Dawnspeaker admitted. “We have the finest glass mages in the world in Tharios, but lightning … changes matters. Does anyone here work in lightning at all?”

  One of the other mages replied, “None. Lightning mages are rare, if any even exist.”

  “They exist,” Goldeye said. “There are lightning mages among the Traders, and one of the academic mages at Lightsbridge has learned to handle it. For that matter, there is a lightning mage in Tharios. A very accomplished one, as it happens.” He looked at Kethlun. “How advanced in the Glassmakers’ Guild are you?”

  “Journeyman, Dhaskoi Goldeye,” Kethlun said politely. His brain was racing with new ideas. His problem had a name, and a solution, right here in Tharios. He could gain control over it, and return to his real life. And his family would be pleased. Keth’s lack of magic had always disappointed them. In the world of the Namorn trade guilds, mages equalled power for their guild.

  Goldeye smoothed his mustache with a bony finger. “Since you know your craft, it seems to me that any spells you might need could be learned from books, perhaps with advice from a glass mage once your power is controlled.” There was a glint of mischief in the mage’s eye, one Keth didn’t understand. It vanished as the mage continued, “The lightning aspect is the thing that requires most of your attention.”

  “You mean you can help me?” Kethlun’s voice cracked with desperation. He blushed hotly. He didn’t want these people to know how scared he was. “What must I do?”

  Goldeye put a comforting hand on Keth’s shoulder and squeezed, then let go. Kethlun looked down a scant inch into the older man’s face. “Come to supper with Dawnspeaker and me,” Goldeye said. There was understanding in his gaze. “We’ll sort you out.”

  After she had chased the glass dragon first from the alum, then the salt, then the myrrh jars in the workroom, Tris used a ribbon to make a leash for Chime and secured the dragon to a chair leg in the downstairs dining room. “I can’t concentrate on these books with your rattling things,” she scolded as she made sure Chime could retreat under the table. Little Bear enjoyed washing his new companion, and Tris wanted Chime to have a place where the dog couldn’t reach her if the dragon decided she had endured enough.

  Tris also left a small bowl of water, though she wasn’t sure Chime drank water, and a dish with a tablespoon each of red and blue luster salts, as well as the powder that turned glass a deep emerald green. These she also tucked well under the table. Little Bear was as convinced as Chime that there was no harm in trying to eat everything at least once.

  With dog and dragon settled, Tris returned to the upstairs workroom to read. At first glance all that she had found was academic magic, not ambient. This troubled her. While any ambient mage could and did use spells, signs, talismans, and potions to amplify her power, the source of ambient magic came from outside the mage. It had to be approached differently. Academic mages reached first for spell books, ambient mages for the things that gave them their power. Only another ambient mage held the truth of that difference in her very bones. What if Keth didn’t find an ambient glass mage?

  I just need to look harder for books on ambient glass magic, she told herself. I’m sure they have them.

  Downstairs Little Bear was barking. Tris ignored him, fascinated by the instructions for making a bowl to scry with; the Bear tended to bark at anything and everything. Another sound did shatter her concentration, a bone-shivering screech like a shard of glass dragged over hard stone. She raced downstairs and into the dining room.

  Chime had climbed a table leg to the top. She clung there, tucked into the corner of the table’s frame as she made that awful sound. Tris scrabbled to undo the ribbon leash. The moment she freed the dragon, Chime threw herself at her, digging her claws into Tris’s clothes and skin.

  Tris crooned gently to the trembling creature, trying to calm her. Looking at the dragon’s food, she saw a few glass flames beside the dish. Holding Chime with one hand, she set the flames in the dish with the coloring powders and put it on the table, where she couldn’t break them by accident. Chime continued to screech. Over and over Tris stroked the dragon, trying to breathe meditation-style, hoping she would calm the frightened creature.

  The front door opened as Little Bear continued to bark. Tris’s breezes swirled into the front hall and returned to her with voices: Jumshida’s, then Niko’s.

  “It’s all right,” she assured Chime. “They belong here. You remember Niko, don’t you?” Now she was really puzzled. Chime had been admired by total strangers all day and had voiced nothing louder than her musical purr. What had upset her?

  Red-faced with effort, several of her braids knocked free of their pins, she edged out from under the table. Once in the open air she sat back on her heels and straightened, holding Chime to her chest with one hand.

  “Oh, no,” said a man with a slightly husky, slow, familiar voice.

  Tris whirled, forgetting that she still knelt, then fell on her side. Chime leaped free, taking flight. As the dragon zipped around the room, Tris glared up at Niko, furious to be caught unkempt and awkward before a stranger. Looking past him, she recognized the newcomer.

  “You!” she cried at the same moment as Kethlun did.

  “I take it you two have met?” asked Niko mildly. “Kethlun, Tris — Trisana Chandler — is the lightning mage I told you about.”

  Chime screeched, that same earsplitting sound of a nail on glass, and flew straight at Kethlun. A foot away from him the dragon spat a flurry of glass needles into her maker’s face.

  “Chime, no!” cried Tris. “Bad!” Quick as a flash — she had practiced the movements for weeks so she could do this bit of magic in a hurry — she stripped the tie from one thin braid and collected a handful of sparks. She threw them at the dragon, imagining each spark as a tiny ball of thread connected to her fingertips. The balls spun around Chime to form a lightning cage with the dragon suspended inside. Tris reeled in the cage. Only when she held it in her hands did she look at Keth.

  He’d flinched when the dragon came at him, saving his right eye, but that side of his face and head was peppered with thin red, blue, and green needles. Niko tried to pull one out and cut himself.

  “Serves you right,” Tris informed Keth, scowling at him as she pinned up her loose braids. “You did try to kill her.”

  Keth looked from Tris to Niko. “Oh, no,” he said, voice shaking. “Not her.”

  “I’m afraid so,” replied Niko. “She is a lightning mage. You may have noticed,” he added drily.

  “I don’t understand,” said Tris, but she was afraid she did, all too well. She had tried to find other lightning mages, just as she had tried to find other mages who could master the forces of the earth or of the sea, with little success. It seemed that, of all the ambient magics, weather was the most dangerous. It drew its power from all over the world. Mages who tried to do more than call rainstorms or work the winds often misjudged their ability to handle the forces that supplied their power, and were crushed. It had been in the back of her mind since Niko had shown her the lightning in Chime, that Keth would have trouble finding a teacher who could help with that aspect of his power.

  “Of course you understand,” replied Niko.

  Tris glared at him. Niko knew her too well.

  “Moreover, you will do your duty,” Niko added, looking down his nose at her. “You accepted that when you donned the medallion of your certification.”

  About to argue or even refuse, Tris made the mistake of looking at Keth. He was the picture of misery, blood dripping fr
om the needles in his flesh, lines of exhaustion bracketing his mouth, dark circles under his eyes. Instead of speaking as she had meant to, she pulled out a chair with one hand. “Sit,” she ordered Keth. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  Dema

  For once the Elya Street arurimat was quiet when Dema sat at his desk. The night patrols had gone out; the higher-ranking officers had left. With no one to hang over his shoulder, Dema took out the envelope of reports on the Ghost murders, from Nioki’s, the first, to Iralima’s, the most recent. He’d had two arurimi carry in a long worktable: now he used it to lay out the notes on each killing in order, so he could look for a pattern.

  He was studying them when an arurim rapped on his door. “Dhaskoi Nomasdina, there is something you should see.”

  Dema turned, scowling. Standing beside the arurim was a little Tharian who wore the yellow stole of a clerk or scribe, hemmed with the white key pattern of Heskalifos. He clutched a covered basket with hands that shook. The silk of the cover shone to Dema’s magical vision: spells for purification and containment were stitched into every inch of the cloth.

  “I took it to the Heskalifos arurimat,” the clerk explained, wheezing. “The captain there said to bring it to you. It was blown by a man who claimed to possess magic. He was at Heskalifos looking for a teacher. When he made this, it was just covered in lightning.”

  “And now it is not?” asked Dema, taking the basket. If this was a joke at his expense, he would seek revenge, he thought as he pulled the silk covering aside. He had too much to do without dealing with jokes.

  Inside the basket was a globe of clear glass that sparkled. Curious, Dema touched a spark: it stung.

  “Lightning, you say?” he asked. He went to his mages’ kit and got his leather gloves.

  “Miniature,” replied the clerk, wheezing still.

  Dema glanced at his two guests as he pulled on his gloves. “Arurim, perhaps a cup of water for the koris?”

  The arurim bowed and hurried off. Dema lifted the globe from the basket. The globe was fully six inches wide and perfectly round, with something inside. When Dema held it before his eyes, he saw a room in its depths. It looked to be some public space. He saw a foot-high dais with seven backless chairs. Beyond it was a good-size room furnished with benches, and another, smaller dais with a podium set to face the chairs.