The Daemon Prism, page 17
18 Desen. Forty-two days ago! For more than two years running, Calvino de Santo had never strayed far from Ilario. That meant he’d likely gone to Pradoverde as well. If the captain lay dead in Montclaire’s soil, then where, in the name of all gods, were Dante and Ilario?
Such a pall of dread fell over me, I could scarce move. Pressing fists to my face, I closed my eyes and lowered my barriers. The aether was turbulent on this day, disturbed as I’d rarely felt it so far out in the country as Montclaire. Dante was there. I felt the pulse of his life, but far away and strangely quiet. All his anger, wonder, guilt, joy, doubt were but echoes. Despite the bright sun, the touch left me shivering.
Within an hour I had penned a short message to Finn. One of the stable boys ran down to the village with coin enough to ensure Mistress Constanza’s hire messenger would take it north to Pradoverde at once and bring an answer as soon as might be.
Only to Bernard did I entrust the truth. As I told him of de Santo, reasoning shaped a story. The captain could not have been so brutalized for so long anywhere nearby. Vernase was too small. Strangers would be noticed. His appearance—his own belt as a bond, the rifled pockets, the slash to the throat, the shallow burial—spoke of haste. Someone didn’t want him to get to the house. Perhaps he had escaped his tormentors, and they had followed him here….
With his ineffable calm, Bernard used a variety of ruses from missing cats to eradicating potential vine pests to ensure that one person or another visited every house, shed, gully, and grove in the neighborhood. No stranger, alive or dead, could possibly be lurking within five kilometres. I mentioned rumors of thieves to our captain of the guard; he knew how to heighten the watch without alarming anyone.
After eight long days, Constanza’s bleary-eyed lad Remy rode into the yard. I tore open the splotched paper before he could pocket his tip.
Damozelle,
This is Finn writing to you in answer to your letter. The Lord Hareyo is not at Pradovairday. None is here but me. Certain he was here in Desen’s month when he and his soljer rode north with the master to see to the master’s da. The master said they would return in seventeen days, but is now running more than a month past. Mayhap his da refused to die as quick as the letter said or hes learned something more about the majical dream. Theres a few men new in the village say they just come from the north and the winter storms are feerce. So mayhap that has delayed him.
Your horses are fine but oats are dear. I cannot buy more nor pay the New Year tax without you or the master unlock the box.
Finn
Dante’s father? Dante had refused to share his blighted childhood. But I knew enough to judge that something more than his father’s dying must have spurred him to set out for Coverge in midwinter, with an urgency that forced him to seek help from Ilario. Now one of the three who had gone north, Ilario’s soljer, had somehow ended up tortured and dead. And Ilario was missing. A better friend and nobler spirit did not exist in this world. And Dante … My probe of the aether told me he lived, but distant and somehow … altered. Where are you, friend of my heart?
“Bernard!” I called, spurred to a decision unthinkable even a day earlier. “I’m leaving….”
One thing and then another conspired to delay my departure. One of our tenants was found beating his wife, which required my father—with my help—to hold an inquiry and give judgment. A shortage of oak was threatening the vintage and new supplies had to be found.
Then Papa lost another unhealthy tooth. As ever, it catapulted him back into horror. He huddled in corners, believing he was yet held in his underground cell, body and mind disintegrating as his captors repeatedly drained his blood to feed their magic. To draw him out again required constant comfort and reassurance, long walks outdoors, and unceasing talk. My mother was immensely strong, but she could not tend him every hour of every day. An old military friend of Papa’s who often came to share memories and news agreed to stay over in my absence.
I never questioned my decision to go. My spirit would not be settled until I knew Dante and Ilario were safe, and I could think of nowhere to begin the search than the place they began their own mysterious journey.
For the sake of speed and secrecy, I decided to make the five-day journey to Pradoverde alone. I informed our guard captain that Queen Eugenie had summoned me to Merona and would send companions to meet me in Tigano. I had Mistress Constanza dispatch a trunk to Castelle Escalon, ensuring my story would be widely propagated.
Only Ella and Bernard knew my true destination, just as only they knew I could summon magic to protect myself—raw magic, not wrought spells as Dante could work.
After two years of practice, I could control, shape, and release power enough to foil an attacker, while retaining control of my emotions so I didn’t kill anyone without intent. That was all I had ever wanted from Dante’s lessons. Magic had destroyed my sister, crippled my family, and come near bringing the ruination of the world. Its creeping energies in my body still left me queasy and ill.
Dante didn’t understand that. He seemed convinced that if I learned enough about spellworking, I would embrace the wonders of sorcery as he did and work some grand rite to finish what we had begun on Mont Voilline. I didn’t believe it. I didn’t want it. Our shared gift meant he could draw on my blood-born power, and I would ever stand ready to give what he needed of me. He feared that blindness would destroy his own talent, and I grieved at his pain whenever some small failure seemed to confirm it. But if any man was born for one great purpose, Dante was born to wield magic. Neither gods nor nature could be so cruel as to steal it away.
But for now he’d won our argument. I trusted that he had not forgotten Lianelle and the depleted dead, and I embraced the discipline that was his only joy. Through our shared experiences in the aether, I had touched the beauty, the harmony, the rich spirit buried beneath his anger and selfdoubt, and I would not it give up. Not ever.
At last all was settled enough for me to go. I was stuffing a few last things into my traveling bag when Ella called out from my window. “There’s riders come into the yard. Five, six, seven of them in green-and-white livery.”
I joined her at the window, prepared to fly down the back stair to avoid yet another delay. But surprise held me as Bernard stepped out to greet the newcomers. They were Temple servitors.
The visitors dismounted, deferring to a man of middle height who waited for Bernard to come to him. A man of rank, then. Why would a high-ranking Temple servitor come to Montclaire? My father had always been the king’s man, a champion of science and reason, no enemy of the Temple, but no more its devotee than he was a partisan of the Camarilla Magica.
Bernard bowed and turned for the door, glancing up at my window on his way. Had they come to see me? Fleeting guilts suggested they’d come to accuse us of Captain de Santo’s murder. But that was ridiculous. The Concord between Crown, Temple, and Camarilla Magica left religious crimes alone to Temple jurisdiction. And my arrangements with Dante were known to only a very few.
I pulled off my cloak and passed it to Ella. “Take this, my riding gloves, and my bag to Bernard’s office. I’d best go down.”
She nodded in understanding and headed for the back stair. I descended the main stair and met Bernard in the foyer. “What are Temple servitors doing here?”
“One of them’s a tetrarch, damo—”
“A tetrarch!”
“Aye. Name of Beltan de Ferrau. Begs an interview with you on a ‘matter of grave import.’ Says Mistress Constanza told him you were off to Merona today, so he risked arriving early. I could tell him you’re sleeping.”
“No, I’d best hear him out. I can’t have him bothering Papa. Bring him to the grand salon.”
I sat in a cushioned chair beside the tall window in our best room and took some of Melusina’s embroidery to hand. Though I detested needle-work, I felt the need to let a Temple man find me engaged in innocent occupation. My mind was entirely too fixed on murder and a missing necromancer.
The door swung open. “Lady Anne de Vernase, His Excellency Beltan de Ferrau, Tetrarch of the Jarasco Temple Minor.”
“Excellency.” I rose and dipped a knee slightly as the clergyman strode through the doors. Court and Temple protocols would rank my father, the conte of a demesne grande, equal to the Tetrarch of Merona’s Temple Major, and thus well above the administrator of a Temple Minor of a city small enough I wasn’t sure where it was located. But I was a woman, and daughter, not wife. I well knew what protocol deemed my own rank. “Welcome to Montclaire on behalf of the Conte and Contessa Ruggiere.”
I dabbed my thumb on my forehead as a gesture of respect and exposed my marked hand on my shoulder as the law required. He would not find fault with my deportment.
“Lady Anne, please forgive me intruding on your home and your peace.” His voice was pleasant and solid, neither prim nor self-aggrandizing. Indeed, when I raised my eyes I was astonished to see quite a young man for his elevated office. Fair-haired, with rugged features, and strongly built, he more fit the image of soldier than of priest. Indeed, even his garments, though bearing the rich green hue and the white-embroidered symbol of the three pillars, were simply fashioned of common kersey. The blue of his eyes was so clear as to be visible across the room.
“We delight in visitors at Montclaire. Unfortunately, my father and mother are yet abed. They’re in fragile health.”
“I am fully aware of your parents’ ordeals, my lady. And I understand that those of your brother, your young sister—may her Veil journey be swift and true—and you yourself were no less horrific. But it is you I’ve come to visit this day, early, as I’ve told your man, so as not to delay you on your travels.”
“Then, sit, Excellency.” I waved to a chair facing mine, bypassing such politenesses as refreshments. This man had no more interest in politeness than would a battering ram. Well and good. I knew how to build walls.
“I don’t believe in dancing around subjects to make them more palatable, my lady,” he said as soon as I’d sat down again. “I’ve come to speak to you about the sorcerer Dante.”
I blessed Melusina for scattering her needle projects around the house. It gave me good excuse to keep my eyes fixed on her intricate design of a golden-leaved azinheira. My fingers pushed the needle deliberately through the stretched linen, no matter the warning trumps sounding inside me.
“A dark subject for a bright morning,” I said. “My family’s ills are, in some part at least, attributable to that mage.”
“Very dark. I’ve come seeking your help to apprehend him.”
“Apprehend?” I refused to let my voice heat and deliberately pushed the needle through its next position before continuing. “I understood he was paroled two years ago by order of the king.”
“Only the Temple can absolve a man of blasphemy. And the sorcerer has not been brought to trial for his newer crimes.”
Blasphemy. The needle stabbed my finger and I curled it for a moment so as not to stain the linen. Necromancy was blasphemy of the highest order, punishable by torture and burning.
Rumors of Dante’s deadraising had been rampant throughout Sabria. But if any beyond Eugenie and me had actually witnessed the things I had in the palace Rotunda, they had never stepped forward. So we had believed. And what newer crimes?
“Naturally, I’ve heard rumors,” I said, waving my needle in the air, “but I assumed them naught but gossip from a fearful time. I leave such weighty judgments to my goodfather, the king, and to others wiser than I. As to newer crimes, I’ve no idea what those might be—though everyone in my family and in Sabria, for that matter, could believe any wickedness of that man, true or not.”
De Ferrau’s posture did not shift, as if I’d said only what he expected. “Many of my fellow tetrarchs, older and more experienced than I, have seen fit to accept the king’s judgment in this matter. Perhaps it displays my youth and ignorance to believe that rumor is often founded in truth. Perhaps those of us from the northern demesnes where life is harsh are more like to pay close attention to sacred matters—and require their strict distinction from civil law. Or perhaps it requires younger eyes, like mine, to observe that the rumors of necromancy coincided with very visible and well-described daemonic occurrences in the royal city, and that these same incidents and same rumors ceased entirely on the day Master Dante was exiled from Merona.”
Though his body had settled easily into his chair, the young tetrarch’s pale eyes did not waver from my face. A frisson of fear feathered my spine. This man was Dante’s enemy. My enemy.
He leaned forward slightly. “After the dreadful events of four years past, which neither king nor Camarilla has ever explained to us, Sabrians properly turn to the divine Pantokrator and his Temple for answers. We tetrarchs are required by our vows to provide them. It is abomination to me that Master Dante has not been brought to any Temple for questioning. I intend to change that.”
In a long, slow motion, I drew the gold thread through the linen and poked the needle back through the fine weft, while words raced and whirled through my head like dry leaves in a gale.
“Why come to me? Of all people I have reason to despise the man.”
“I have witnesses who claim you have maintained contact with Master Dante these two years since.”
“Contact? I’m not sure what you are insinuating, sirrah.”
The only people who both knew of Pradoverde and had been in any position to witness Dante’s deadraising were people we trusted. Yet neither had we hidden ourselves. I dared not deny the association.
With all the composure I could muster, I raised my eyes to de Ferrau. “Two years ago I was made a pawn of Germond de Gautier in his conspiracy to assassinate King Philippe and topple the throne of Sabria. I witnessed horrors. I was subjected to vile enchantments and poisons. My family was brutalized, my sister murdered. No one could emerge from such events unscathed. My symptoms—screaming fits, nightmares, uncontrolled frenzy, which many residents of Castelle Escalon can substantiate—induced me to confront the man who was responsible for them. He was the only living person who might unravel the illness I suffered. He did so as a condition of his parole. Our association was not pleasant, nor is it something I wish to relive for a stranger. Suffice it to say, I now reside here with my beloved family in the home of my childhood, helping my parents recover from torments far worse than my own. I cannot help you.”
I laid the sewing aside and rose.
“Creator’s peace, Tetrarch de Ferrau. And I will ask that you refrain from disturbing my parents with any mention of Master Dante.”
He dropped his gaze before I did, but I suspected it was not from embarrassment. I could almost hear him assessing and evaluating my answers. At last he rose briskly and snapped a bow. “Thank you, Lady Anne. I appreciate your candor.”
I showed him out of the salon. As Bernard opened the outer doors, de Ferrau swung around. “Perhaps you would be interested to know that these new crimes I spoke of include a sorcerous explosion that destroyed one of Jarasco’s town gates, a fire that leveled the stable of one of our local hostels, the incineration of a Camarilla adept, and a rain of deadly arrows that slew a dozen of my Temple’s bailiffs. Civil, magical, and sacred crimes, and he is implicated in the direst form of murder this side of Heaven’s gates—that of one’s own father. I have brought witnesses to Merona. Whether you choose to hear their testimony or not, Dante de Raghinne is an abomination. I strongly recommend you take any further symptoms to a different physician.”
Incineration … explosive destruction … more than a dozen murders … And now de Santo, too, dead. Dante would never—But did I believe that?
Tetrarch de Ferrau and his servitors rode out before I could move from the doorway. Breathing away a wicked fit of the shakes, I grabbed my small traveling bag, bade farewell to my parents, and raced away from Montclaire on a track through the vineyards and hills that no Temple servitor could possibly expect.
Dante
CHAPTER 13
6 ESTAR, AFTERNOON DEMESNE OF ARABASCA
Winter chased us south and west and into the new year. The three of us rode as long and hard as the winter roads and care for the horses permitted. Though we glimpsed no signs of pursuit, we took precautions. I hid my collar.
Midmorning of our tenth day out from Castelivre, Andero brought us to a halt atop a shallow rise. “I’ll tell you, Master Mage, I’ve seen the ice barrens and sea cliffs of the northland, and every sort of hill and mountain you could imagine, but never such a road as this one lies below us. It’s got neither curve nor blemish, as if it could take us right over the rim of the world without us meeting another breathing person.”
My heart raced. “The Syanar high road. Be sure, we’ll encounter blemishes enough along it—caravans, thieves, Cult shrines, and enough pilgrims to choke a priest. Mattefriese lies only a few days east.”
“And there we turn south to Carabangor?”
My back stiffened.
“Be easy, Dante; the hoptoad has lagged again to dig his mushrooms or roots or whatever. I just need to understand what’s going on with you. You’ve not spoke three words of explanation since we left that blighted ruin.”
“There’s naught to explain. We’re going after Portier.”
“And if he’s not to be found? I know you don’t want to think about that, but what if? If this jacard and the enchantress are as wicked as you say, perhaps someone else ought to know what you’re about. Perhaps your lady?”
“She’s not my lady, and I’ve naught to tell her as yet. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I understand you’ve not worked a smat of magic since we’ve been traveling. I understand you’ve not sent word to those who might care about you. Something happened that night at Castelivre and you’ve locked it up inside you.”
“I told you that’s none of your concern.” I spat it through my teeth, then yelled over my shoulder, “John Deune! Get back here or I’ll boil you in your own pots!”
