The Daemon Prism, page 5
Something else had occurred to me as I waited for the grenadier to wake, exploring the flimsy links of a soldier’s obsession and the experiences of the past six years. “You said a mage had come asking you about the dream and told you about me. When was that? Did he give you his name?”
He considered that carefully. “’Twas three or four year ago. He said his name, but I don’t recall it. Wore a collar like yours and claimed he came from the Camarilla. A tall man. Gray-haired. Well spoken, talking of sorcery and how important it was to keep the world in balance. The kind of man soldiers would fight for, though he might have a plan to send ’em right off a cliff.”
Great gods of the universe! He’d given me a perfect description of Kajetan, Portier’s despicable mentor, who had been traveling to all sorts of places during the years of our partnership, who had raged when Lianelle de Vernase’s death and her sister Anne’s interference had foiled some plan to bring “a new source of power” to our conspiracy. Of a sudden the connections I’d seen were no longer flimsy. Was de Cuvier’s dream another loose end from Germond de Gautier’s and Kajetan de Saldemerre’s plotting? Or was the dream’s sudden resurgence a trumpet heralding a new assault? There were not curses enough in the world to suffice for my dismay.
I did not sleep that afternoon. On this day, my preparation must be to empty myself of desire, of sympathy, of curiosity, stripping away everything in me that might influence the dream. Finn and I patched the stable roof, abandoning our guest to the company of his horse. Finn was so relieved at not being trapped in the study that he was practically babbling. All to the good. I didn’t want to think. To the grenadier’s surprise, after a supper of eggs and mushrooms, I suggested a game of stratagems.
“But how—?”
“I keep it in my head. Just tell me your moves.”
My teacher, Salvator, had taught me the game in my first days with him, forcing me to play it blind long years before that would become a necessity. It required absolute focus. Ignorant and undisciplined, I’d come near running away because of it. But no training had stood me in better stead. De Cuvier was a good player—not very imaginative, but solid. After a few moves, he did not hold back. I worked at it harder, so I won.
When the game was over, de Cuvier bade me divine grace and headed to bed. Rain gusted against the windows. I pulled my chair close to Finn’s hearth fire and forced my mind to remain fallow. I wanted to go naked into that night.
The clock struck tenth hour. Enough was enough. As on the previous nights I settled myself in the bedside chair. For some two hours I watched with the grenadier and saw naught but soldiers, horses, and women. I took my hand away, settled back in the chair, and let myself go to sleep. After a sun’s turning without, sleep … and the dream … came quickly.
“Help me,” she said in a whisper that could draw tears from stone. “I’ve been here so long. Please, you who hear me—come!” I saw no yellow sparks or portal, only the angelic vision and her wrenching grief and black eyes, weeping.
Across the milky pond the green gem sparkled, beckoning, resting on her pale hand. It promised to reverse the hateful future awaiting me, to repair the damage and rid me of the fire that lanced my nerves every time I strained to see. It promised me power: speaking in dreams, augury, wisdom, magic I had never imagined.
My preparation held. Because I had made myself empty, I could resist the compulsion to go to her. I refused to look into the Stone, or regain my sight, or in any way follow the path laid out for those who dreamt this dream.
In a shattering of yellow-orange light, the mournful weeping ceased and the fog vanished, as if blown away by the same wind that howled under the eaves at the remotest edges of my awareness. All that remained were chaotic patterns of light and shadow, as if I sat in the eye of a cyclone.
“So you’re clever as well as powerful,” she said from out of the chaos, her voice no longer soft and pleading, but edged with brass and wariness. “Long have I awaited a savior. When the dreary soldier stumbled into my prison, I believed Fortuna Regina had favored me at last. But the divina had her little jest, dispatching such a priggish fellow. So disappointing. But now … Tell me, are you wizard or godling? How did you confound the dream?”
Being in my own dream, I could not control what I did beyond the emptiness I had created of myself. Evidently that was enough, for I did not speak.
“Tell me!” Venom laced her rising temper.
But I had nothing in me with which to answer her.
“You hide yourself from me, cowardly. But it’s too late, blind man. I know who and what you are. And understand this: I do not like teasing."
Blackness shuttered my dream sight.
I jerked awake. De Cuvier snored softly. A steady rain spattered the roof. I sensed it was still night but wasn’t sure until the clock struck third hour. I laid a hand on his head and searched for enchantment. This time, the spellwork was truly gone, the structure shattered as cleanly as I had destroyed a thousand other spells.
Grabbing a cloak, I trudged across the soggy garden to the guesthouse. There was nothing more for me at de Cuvier’s bedside. I slept the rest of the night in my own bed, neither dreams nor phantoms intruding.
As I knew he would be, de Cuvier was up with the birds, claiming that he’d slept like a youth. “Ye be a saint’s hand, Master! I’ve no way to repay you for this service.”
“Have no more dreams.”
I stood on the steps as he rode away, a chill dampness teasing my cheeks. Fog. The grenadier was scarce ten metres from the door when the sounds of hoof and bridle were absorbed as if he’d never been. I wished he’d never come. Surely the world could not face a new threat before we had healed the wounds of the last.
Ignoring his woeful sighs, I required Finn to write down all I could remember of what had occurred. It unnerved me that the woman had called me blind man and included faces I knew in her dream shaping. Yet, such complexity and power is unendingly fascinating, and I hungered to know more.
Unfortunately, every avenue to learn more seemed so wretchedly complex as to be impossible. I was forbidden to enter Merona. The mages of Collegia Seravain would scoff. At any Temple, major or minor, they’d likely hang me in the marketplace to rot, for to those who believed in soul journeys in the afterlife, necromancy was a mortal blasphemy. And even were I allowed to enter some scholarly library where I might learn more of dream sendings or extraordinary emeralds, I could hardly demand people read to me. They’d go voiceless in terror … or claim my condition righteous punishment … or preach at me of the Souleater and his daemons.
I’d have given much to talk of the experience with Anne. Her good sense and orderly mind would help me dissect it and decide if this was truly a trumpet blast foreshadowing a new battle. I felt her vibrant presence in the aether as if she were standing beside me. But she was two hundred kilometres distant, and beyond thirty or so our individual voices were lost in the maelstrom. I could do no more than touch her presence, like a beggar pawing the hem of a rich man’s cloak.
All I could think to do was pass the inquiry to someone who might do what I could not. On a threat of withholding his pay, I conscripted Finn to make copies of all the notes he’d written and post them to Portier in distant Abidaijar. If the librarian could pull his head out of his saintly ass, he might be able to piece together something from it.
Not for the first time, I wished Portier had not chosen to seclude himself beyond the eastern borders of Sabria. Letters took a month or more to pass between. Yet, I could hardly blame him. Two years previous, de Gautier had crippled and drowned Portier, believing him a Saint Reborn who could not die until the holy purpose of his life was accomplished. Anne and I and Portier’s own resilient nature had kept him living. Though distance and secrecy likely kept him safe from any more madmen who wished to test his sainthood by killing him, I could use his good counsel.
Once the notes were dispatched to Portier, I forced the entire incident into my mind’s refuse heap, where the rest of my life was rapidly piling up.
Life soon fell into a dull rhythm. Finn and I finished patching the stable roof and set about other such chores we wished to complete before winter. I had notions of a baking oven. I didn’t dream of the woman or her emerald again, though I wasn’t fool enough to imagine it had been only a dream after all. The incident nagged at me like street boys. Lacking recourse, I muted their goads and snickers with sweat by day and spellcasting by night.
Anne wrote. I came near tossing the letter before unsealing it. I knew what it would say. She had arrived safely. Her father was yet living half in dream and half in truth; her mother was completely absorbed in his care. Without Ambrose, only Anne was left to see to the grapes and the tenants’ brats and the unending tasks of maintaining estates that diminished Pradoverde to the size of an anthill. She would have to stay longer than she planned. Perhaps until midwinter.
Finn’s halting reading revealed exactly those things. Only she proposed no specific end to her stay, and she remained mired in self-deception.
I practice spell construction every day, though I lack the nerve to bind them where you cannot protect me from errors. Your instructive voice is quite clear in my recollections.
I’ve decided to use Lianelle’s silver finger rings to create my own ancille. It will remind me that if my little sister could work with Mondragon magic, I can, too. Perhaps one to presereve her soul. (No, I am not content to wait until then.) Naturally, that will reuire my return to Pradoverde for further instruction.
Meanwhile, be merciful to Finn. Hire a reader from Laurentine. Maia Fuller’s boy is fifteen now, and very quick. And very brave. Tell him it will be a temporary position until the damoselle returns.
It is good to be here, but I miss my home at Pradoverde almost as much as I miss my friend of the aether. If you hear from him, tell him I said so.
Anne
I burnt the letter and did my best to drive her out of mind with work.
Every spare moment I devoted to my seeing spell. After a tenday with almost no sleep, I came up with a variation I could maintain for three hours running. I could make out no more than gross shapes in a landscape of ink, tar, and charcoal. No colors. No details. I could neither read nor distinguish faces or textures. And as before, the binding demanded every spit of power I could scrape together; thus I could work no other magic while I used it—or for hours after—a price only desperation could make me pay. Nonetheless, on the day I walked the entire perimeter of Pradoverde without touching a cairn, getting lost in the wood, or falling in the stream, I felt as if I’d vanquished the witchlords of Kadr for myself.
On a chilly morning lath in Desen’s month, more than a month after de Cuvier’s departure, I received another letter, forwarded from Castelle Escalon, yet originating from the unlikeliest of sources. I’d not seen my elder brother Andero since I was fourteen. When I knew him he could neither read nor write, and I would have wagered a fortune he was long dead.
Dante,
I don’t know how to address you, nor if your thoughts ever turn to us as knew you long ago. Like not, and none could blame you. A blowout at the forge has left Da hard broke and burnt. The old devil is not in his mind most days. But in or out, your name is ever in his mouth. This after sixteen years without a whisper of it. He says an angel caused the fire to bring you back so he could pass you a message. I’ve no truck with dream angels, but I fear his shade will haunt us if dies without you’ve come. Spare us that, little brother.
Abdero
It was no sentiment for the man whose seed begat me that determined me instantly to go. Nor was it to soothe Andero’s anxiety, though he was the only member of my family I would cross a room to acknowledge. What spurred me was a pent-up dread in my gut, released to flood limbs and soul and mind at the mention of an angel who passed messages in dreams.
CHAPTER 4
PRADOVERDE
I was not what my father wanted in his sons. He had no sympathy for a life of the mind, no belief in anything more ephemeral than the fire and iron from which he molded his life. He was the headman of our village and a smith, a man of skills among men who ground their short lives away hacking coal from the rocks of Coverge. Yet he prided himself that he, like the rest of them, could scarce count the coins of his pay or the heads of his children. Like them, he drowned pain and poverty in ignorance, ale, and brutality.
I had learned early on not to speak of the whispers in my head. When I asked other children what they heard inside their heads, they called me ognapé—crazed, like miners whose skulls had been crushed by rocks. So I asked my mother what was wrong with me. She locked me in the cellar without food until I swore that I was lying. Two days it took me to “confess.” Naturally, my father beat me for the lies, and beat my mother for coddling them in me. My father was the most righteous of all those righteous villagers. I was five years old.
Books saved my life. Estebo Lemul, the mine steward’s son, had gone to school in Fadrici, the principal town of Coverge. He came home to Raghinne to marry a local girl and open a school, bringing a treasury of five books with him. My father would not allow his children to participate in such frivolity as education. It was pointless for boys destined for the mines, he said, or for girls destined to bear miners’ children or go whoring in the remotest mining camps. That meant no other miner’s child went to school, either. As Estebo’s wife would not leave her mother, Estebo was left to dig coal or starve. I spent every moment I could with him … until he died coughing up blood and coal dust. He was nineteen and left me his books.
As I neared fourteen, the voices in my head grew incessant. Half crazed with the noise, forever angry, my growing body entangled in hungers none bothered to explain, I discovered I could force my will upon younger children—to give me their bread or throw stones at each other instead of me. On the day an outburst of rage caused fire to blossom from my hand, I became convinced the Souleater had chosen me to join his legion of the Fallen. Desperate, I sought help from my father, hoping that because I spent long hours at the forge each day, working at his side, he would tell me the right prayers to save my soul.
His face had been red and sweating, as pitted and scarred as his leather apron. The heat from the forge throbbed in time with the pulsing of my blood, the fear inside me swollen near to bursting. But with fury that near split my skull, he called me daemon-spawn and promised to thrash the wickedness out of me so thoroughly I would never again speak my own name, much less such deviltry. He beat me with a knotted rope he kept for hobbling mules.
When I regained my senses, the smithy fires were banked and dim. The shabby bindings of my precious books lay empty beside the great furnace. Their pages were ash.
I could not run away that night. I could scarce crawl up to the loft I shared with Andero and two younger brothers. In truth, anywhere I knew to run, Da could find me and drag me home.
For a year I spoke not a word to anyone. I yet believed I was daemonpossessed, but I knew I was not as wicked as my own father, who was judged a respectable citizen. I worked hard and grew stronger and ever more skilled at smithing, determined to supplant my father and watch him wither in this life, even if I was destined to become the Souleater’s smith and forge daemon chains in the next.
When I was almost sixteen, Da came by a few slips of silver from a dying bandit and schemed to coat some pewter slugs with silver and sell them as “magical charms” at Jarasco market. He set me to cast the slugs. As I poured the slugs, the molten pewter encountered moisture in the mold—the mold I had checked three times to make sure it was dry. The pour erupted like a newly waked volcano, spewing scalding metal over my right hand.
My mother coated my hand with herbs and pig fat, and Da bound it tight. Out of my head with pain, I did not question that a smith and his woman knew how to treat a burn. On the day we finally unwrapped the bandages, my favored hand was a clawed ruin and my prospects as smith or miner or laborer were over. I left Raghinne that same day. I pierced my finger and dripped blood on the dirt as I walked past the last house, uttering a curse and a vow never to go back.
I could not put the phrases of my brother’s letter out of mind. The coincidence was like a cannon shot that crumbled my defenses and lodged iron in my bowels. Body and mind demanded I head north.
Which brought me to the dilemma of travel. Though I despised the idea of taking a minder to lead my horse, choose my bed, and point me where to piss, it seemed my only choice. The thought of hiring a stranger for the task left me ready to vomit. But Finn was the only person I knew roundabout, and even if the lad were willing to go, I needed him to finish the work at Pradoverde before winter settled in, to see to Anne’s horses … and to be at the house when she realized she wanted her beasts and the rest of her things sent on to Montclaire.
A simple locator spell planted in the mind of a random traveler might keep me from riding off a cliff. But of course I’d be left alone and powerless should my guide decide to die of wound fever or alter his route or snatch my purse. Though I’d studied maps of Sabria, I’d traveled very little. In a practical sense I was as ignorant of the roads of Sabria as a bondsman who’d never left his master’s land.
And whether I followed someone by magic, or buried pride and hired a nursemaid, the individual choice bore its own dangers. The law—the Concord that set the peace between king and Camarilla Magica—forbade me hide my mage collar. I was on rocky enough ground with the King of Sabria that I dared not be caught at so brazen a violation. That meant I needed a companion who wasn’t going to stick a knife in me because his brats had died from inept healing charms or because her granny’s fertility potion had gotten the crone whipped by the Camarilla.
