The Daemon Prism, page 37
The night wind shifted the draperies. Xanthe scowled at me unhappily. Pouting, she drew a shawl over her revealing garments.
“He can’t read it!” I said, one small truth bursting free of confusion. I raked my fingers through my hair again and laughed in sick pleasure, “Iaccar’s thick wits may give us time.”
“What could possibly be laughable, magus?”
“I think Iaccar is working some ritual written in his uncle’s journal possibly to raise his uncle from the dead to live again in another body. He’s done things I didn’t believe him capable of. But you, lady Mistress, have shown me that he doesn’t have the power to do it on his own. He cannot understand how to use Tychemus. His revenant uncle has to learn the Stone’s properties as I do and teach him how to use it.”
Though not so powerful as de Gautier had been, Kajetan was a learned sorcerer. But what did he know of the aether, of keirna, of the truths of magic I had studied since boyhood? I had seen Kajetan’s work, and he was lacking in these basic understandings. Or did death provide enlightenment?
“Give a dead man a new body?” Xanthe had developed an unwholesome glitter in her eyes. “Could I learn to do that?”
“I’ve no idea. But I know now that we’ve some time, though not enough to waste. I must examine Tychemus before Kajetan can teach Iaccar how to use it more effectively.”
“So what if Iaccar plays with ghosts? I think I’d rather have you teach me to do the same.”
Gods, why could she not understand?
“Heed me, good Mistress. Before, we were in a tug of war with Iaccar, a sometime adept whose incompetence forever makes his workings go awry. As long as it was Iaccar, I had every confidence we would be able to wrest control of Tychemus from him as soon as we understood enough. But now I discover that the idiot is sucking the life from Mancibar to get assistance from his family—his dead uncle, who very nearly succeeded in upending the very laws of nature that make arrows fly where we aim them or stones fall to the ground when we drop them. Kajetan is a wholly different and more dangerous adversary. He has set all this in motion, first with his notes and journals and books, and now through these rites.”
And another consideration I could not ignore. “Iaccar in his pride and ignorance most likely believes his loving uncle retains some blood loyalty and will do whatever he, Iaccar, wishes. But Kajetan is a creature of blood no longer. And he is not a man who will like being dead. So you can be absolutely sure he will get great satisfaction from wreaking havoc on the living. Your life, as well as your power for magic, is not worth a pile of dung if Tychemus can tell Kajetan how to circumvent its protections.”
Kajetan would be in a hurry to escape Ixtador. He would wish to retain his own mind, his own purposes, and not become one of the starving spectres we had seen. And already Jacard had enough power to make Altheus’s tomb shudder….
I believed I had her worried. Gods knew I was. But I had learned one thing of infinite importance.
Hold on, student. I know where they keep you. The grate in the cavern wall.
CHAPTER 29
MANCIBAR
A few days after the bloody adventure, Captain Hosten delivered me to the stable instead of Xanthe’s apartments. “Pleasure riding?” I said, astonished.
“Never fear, I’ll be alongside you. And I’ve archers posted all over the mountain to take you down do you choose to ride off somewhere on your own.” A tenday past, Hosten would have grinned at me with his warning. But the big man’s easy, soldierly confidence had yielded to rigorous obedience. Dealing with the bloody evidence of Xanthe’s rage and the monstrous indoor thunderstorm that had put his family in the way of it would bring anyone up short.
“The lady’s chained my cods to Mancibar,” I said as I inhaled the bright morning. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He squinted into the crimson sunrise. “You’re a crafty one, mage. I’ve a mind you’ve chose to be here. So I’m watching for the day you regret the choice. You’ll not get away.” As always he spoke this without anger, threat, or hostility.
“You’re a fine jailer, Hosten,” I said. “You’ve done your duty fair.”
“Don’t presume. Don’t test me.”
I bowed to him. I’d known that from the first.
The morning birthed cool and sunny, the dome of clear blue promising a searing noonday. Xanthe said it would never get any colder than I’d seen. Her home had not been far from here. She seemed to feel no regrets or even any strangeness at knowing that all her past life, including everyone she had ever known, lay in long-buried ruins. My former life felt much the same.
The lady was late. Hosten got involved in a long argument with the head groom over the care of his horse, and I wandered into the stable, thinking to have a word with Devil. Did the day come I could shed this place, perhaps in a hurry, I’d not want him to have forgotten me.
A pale, scrawny youth was grooming Devil. The boy mumbled and sniffed, pausing every so often to wipe his nose on his sleeve. An over whelming odor of pipeweed filled the horse box.
Pipeweed … skin the color of paste … ill-fitting clothes … Gods!
I came up quietly behind him. Devil nickered and bobbed his head. Under the cover of the horse’s greeting, I grabbed the boy’s wrist, clamped my right arm about his throat, and shoved him hard into the corner of the horse box. “Who the devil are you? You’ve followed me on half a year’s journey to the netherworld, so you know I can destroy you if you lie to me. Speak—and quietly and I might not hurt you.”
“Followed you? I was born just a ways down—”
I pressed his face into the splintered wood and twisted his arm up his back. “Do not play with me. You were at the caravanserai at Mattefriese, and hung about us on the road for days before that, and though I was blind, I saw you, hiding in a clump of locusts. I need to know what you’re doing here.”
He was a squint-eyed, blister-faced boy still in his teens. His slack lips gave me no great confidence in either his intelligence or his goodwill. “If ’twere my saying, mage, I’d run my knife crost your foul throat and rid the world of a pestilence. But I’m not here of my own wish, and not to do you ill, but only to keep watch on you. To see what comes about. Go on. Kill me if you like.”
Brave words, but his voice shook, his cold body quivered, and the odor of fresh piss wafted up his back.
“Why would I want to kill you? I don’t know you. You’re not Iaccar’s man, I’d guess, not hiding out here in the stable. Who set you to keep watch?”
“My da.”
“Angels’ grace, boy. Who is your da?”
“One as saved your nasty skin. I’m Will Deune.”
I let go of him and stepped back. Stupefied. “John Deune’s boy! And the other one, too?”
He nodded. He didn’t move a whit, but kept his face planted on the wall.
Excitement ruffled my spirit. “And your father, is he in Mancibar?”
“Not sayin’.”
Tiresome beast. “Then, is anyone with him—a big man, built like a smith? Bossy.”
“I know who you’re talking of. Smith’s not here.” Sobs cracked his whispers. “So are you gonna kill me or no?”
“I’ll not kill you, nor even cut off your cods. But you’ve got to tell me why. Why did you follow? Why are you watching? Your da never came back.”
“We done you no harm,” said the boy, on the verge of wailing. “You sent Da away.”
“Yes, I told him to go. But why are you here?”
“Watching is all.” The boy’s shoulders shook, the flood of snot augmented by tears.
Outside the stable, Hosten was bellowing. “Magus?”
I pressed close, spitting in Will’s ear. “I’m out of time, boy. Tell me a place where I can find you, should I wish to send a message to your da. I swear to you, I’ll know if you lie.”
“I co-come to the kitchens each morning at dawnbreak to carry breakfast to Wat, the head groom.” He sniffled and stuttered. “B-but I’ll not aid you in your foul plots! K-kill me if you want.”
I pressed a hand on his forehead, as if to drill a hole straight into his skull. The librarian is caged in the navel of the world.
The stable door burst open. I’d no time for more or to aim this bit of information anywhere in particular, but I felt better that I’d passed it on.
“You’re awfully ready to die,” I whispered. “Don’t. Now, get out of here.”
I stepped back, and this time he scrambled away quick and quiet as a stable rat. I snatched up his brush and applied it diligently to Devil’s hide, shaking my head in mystification at the workings of fate.
“Where are you, mage?”
Hosten came running and burst through the gate. He wrenched away the brush, flung it to the floor, and slammed me against the wall, much more effectively than I’d manhandled Will Deune. “Thinking of leaving us, are you?” he said in a deadly whisper. “Working spells?”
“I always dawdle about grooming horses before I escape,” I mumbled, spitting out splinters as he maneuvered me into the stableyard and back to the palace. I took great pleasure imagining what I could do to him did I loose my magic along the way.
“Seems your mistress has come up ill this morning,” he said as we trudged down the gallery to my rat hole. “Wouldn’t be your doing, would it?”
“No.” Dismay chilled my momentary satisfactions. “I wouldn’t—”
“You’ll have time to think over your story. You’re to stay here until she sends for you.”
The door slammed and the bolt shot. The dark closed in.
No one came, hour flowed into endless hour, worry and then hunger gnawing at my gut. My mouth grew dry and dusty as Carabangor’s streets. Nightmares plagued both sleep and waking. Asleep, I dreamt of emerald prisons and legions of the dead. Awake, I fretted that Jacard had gained the upper hand and chosen to let me wither in my dark coffin of iron and laurel—fit punishment for abandoning Portier in his.
When the door opened at last, I could scarce crawl to my feet. I stumbled into the light, shaking, but determined not to beg or weep.
Hosten passed me a mug of ale and a bun, which I devoured almost before they’d left his hand.
“Never thought it would go most of three days. But I dasn’t come without orders.” It was as near an apology as he’d likely ever made. That didn’t stop him from pricking my side with his sword. We took the familiar route to Xanthe’s apartments as if nothing had happened.
Hosten rapped on an inner door, hidden behind a curtain of yellow beads. “I’ve the magus, lady.”
Bolts slid and snapped. A pause. “Send him.”
Wrapped in a red silk bed gown and propped up by a score of fat, white pillows, Xanthe looked like a strawberry floating in a sea of cream. Though her complexion lacked its vibrant luster, she was entirely in command.
“Lock the door, magus.” Never had I heard such determined hatred in so frail a voice.
I obeyed. As soon as I occupied a stool at her bedside, she grabbed my tunic and pulled me close. “He’s tried to kill me again!”
“But the Stones prevent—”
“Oh, it was neither his hand nor a paid surrogate’s,” she snarled. “But it was his doing. ’Twas surely the same with my balcony. All these days he’s fed lies to his subjects. That I’m a priestess of the Spider God. That I devour men. That my sinister magus is the Spider God’s minion, who forces me to torture innocents.”
“I thought all loved you.” I said, my dry rasp no better than hers. “Who did it?”
“That morning I planned to take you riding, I woke early. As I walked in the gardens, a handsome youth brought me a lemon tart. You know how I adore them, and the youth was … quite … familiar, so I took it. Yet, two bites and I knew I’d not a moment to spare. I’ve witnessed poisonings of every kind. So I paralyzed the boy, dispatched Hosten to secure you, and locked myself in here. How I suffered! Your charmed potion and old Mutiga’s hag-root purge saved me.”
“Who was the youth? Why would he harm you?”
She waved her hand as if it was no matter. “He was the son of that wine merchant, Lastegiere. The vile creature spouted that I ‘was never going to devour his soul.’ What nonsense! It was Iaccar’s lies spurred him.”
It wasn’t nonsense. Lastegiere was the man whose house we’d burnt for a public slight. Xanthe had taken the son to bed first, and then the father, and then played them against each other for a tenday. The boy had many reasons to feel his life devoured.
“Iaccar executed the boy and his father and sold the wife and younger children to a slaver who’s already hauled them off to Syanar. Convenient, is it not? I’ve none to question and none to trust but you.”
“What would you have me do?”
Her features were those of the beast masks that warded deadhouse gates. “I want Iaccar dead. And I want Tychemus. Alter the Stones; rip out their magic and reshape it so I can kill him and take his Stone. Do these things for me and I’ll share all with you. I’ve promised you that which you most desire. Your sight, your freedom, those are important, but your life’s blood is sorcery, and I can give you all three. As my sworn consort, you shall have the Seeing Stones to wield as my equal.”
That some perverse triumph arose from a stupid boy’s attempt to remedy his family’s foolishness shamed me. That despite my constant avowals, apprehension, and deep-rooted fears, my soul yet quivered with desire at the power she offered disgusted me. But I was what I was. I relished the moment and swore to make use of it.
“A bargain to set my soul afire, Mistress, as you well know. But it would be the most dangerous work I’ve ever attempted, our chances of winning through so small as to be unseeable. Yet one thing I must have before I can agree.”
Her grip near gouged my forearm bones. “What thing?”
“I must read Tychemus before we reveal our hand.”
“He’ll never allow that.”
“Then you must find a way to separate him from the Stone so I can get to it. To subvert the Stones’ protections will require time and preparation. I’ll need to know everything possible about Tychemus … and the three together.”
She laid back on her pillows. “I can separate him from Tychemus. Women always throw themselves madly on men after a narrow escape from death. And stupid men always believe it. He’ll not refuse what I offer.”
“And how will that give me access?”
“I’ll tell Iaccar that I fear you’ve conspired with this boy to poison me. When I confess how ill I was and how terrified of dying when I’ve only just begun to live, he’ll display great sympathy and invite me to dine with him. It is his habit. Afterward, we’ll come back here. I’ll arrange for someone to bring you here while I’m out.”
“Hosten will suspect—”
“It will not be Hosten. Hide yourself here and you’ll know when Tychemus awaits. You’ll have until dawn. I’ll not stomach the snake longer.”
Somehow I did not doubt her.
“Then we’ve a bargain.”
Once I’d downed as much food and drink as I could stomach, Xanthe summoned Hosten. By the time he arrived at her apartments, she had me on my knees, my back afire and near losing all I’d just eaten. “You arrogant, incompetent worm! I’ll teach you not to hide things from me. Perhaps I’ll lock you away for three more days. Perhaps I’ll have your hole bricked up.”
Hosten drew his blade and motioned me out.
“Do not succor him, Captain,” said Xanthe, snarling. “Do not listen to his pitiful cries. Do not even stay near his door, else I’ll blind you as I do him, and stopper your ears so they’ll never again hear your children’s voices.”
She touched the Stones and spat the word that would remove my sight. Yet even as my stomach lurched, no darkness fell. She must have touched Rhymus instead of Orythmus. But I cursed and staggered forward at Hosten’s shove. I knew well how to play this part.
Through the rest of that sweltering afternoon, I forced myself to sleep. Trying to wrestle more meaning from the evidence I had would be no use, and I would need every smat of power I could muster. The key to Kajetan and Jacard’s plan, to the use he planned to make of Portier and me, would lie in the three Seeing Stones together. I dreamt of emerald walls and firestorms and young men’s skin cracking as Kajetan tried to wrestle his way into them.
When the door scraped, I leapt to my feet drenched in sweat, but instantly awake. Gold and purple wisps streaked the western sky. The young man with freckles, the same who had led me to Portier, guided me along a circuitous route to Xanthe’s door. “She said to be patient,” he whispered, waving me into the deserted salon. “This could take a very long time.”
I settled into a wall niche behind a man-high statue of a winged horse. As the hour crawled past and the light dimmed, I wrapped my mind around all I needed to do. Nothing so different from my approach to the other Stones. Care. Precision. I could not allow the pressure of time to drive me to mistakes.
In our early days together, I had repeatedly set Anne urgent problems, requiring her to unravel some puzzle to stave off an unpleasant result. I would berate her and yell at her throughout the time. It had taken her months to learn to stay focused when I hurried her. But she had never complained. She had come to me to learn discipline.
At the first opportunity I must dispatch Will Deune to warn her. Compel him with magic, if necessary. Kajetan knew very well who had driven the knife into his heart. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes and tried to put her out of mind.
