Nor Iron Bars A Cage (24 page)

Firstmage stared at me for a long minute, then said, “I suppose we could redraw the summons with the five-point star, rebalance the equations. About fifteen minutes work, Sire.”

“Do it.”

“If I may, Sire, I’d like to examine, um, Sorcerer Lyon’s knowledge first. To be sure he’s really capable of carrying out his part.”

“Swiftly, then. Let me know when you’re ready.” He bent over the map again, and resumed a discussion of where to post scouts for the best view of the terrain in question.

Firstmage beckoned me with an imperious finger. I went to him, with Tobin trailing me. The sorcerer shook his head at Tobin. “Not you.” I gave Tobin a reassuring glance and then followed the old man into a corner. There he quizzed me up, down, and sideways, about basic theory. I think I did well, although the answers came less quickly than they had during my apprenticeship. When he reached the theory of transference, I said, “We never touched on that aspect. I have no experience with that. But…” I didn’t want to discuss the wraith with this man, but I knew that balance was all, in writing the summoning equations. And my past might have to be factored in. I added, “Meldov did summon a wraith once, and that’s what killed him.”

“He’s fortunate to have just died,” Firstmage muttered. “Criminal carelessness. No amount of information is worth that risk. Were you in that working?”

“No. But I, um, encountered it before he, they, died.”

His eyes seemed to pierce me. “Encountered. How closely?”

My courage failed. “It spoke to me. Through him.”

“Ah. Well, that’s not too bad then.” He nodded. “You’ll do. Nothing that a few weeks retraining wouldn’t improve, but at least for this, you need only lend your voice and strength to the summons, and then stand ready to receive the transfer. Nothing difficult.”

Nothing difficult.
I tasted acid in the back of my throat, but stood tall and tried to look unconcerned as he ran through all the technical details.

The three King’s Mages and I… lords above, I can’t believe I said that sentence. But it’s the truth. The four of us, working together, erased their circle in a square, and created a new working, consisting of circle in a five-pointed star. We placed Xan’s necklace in the focus point and took our places on the other four. The men around the room turned from their own discussions to look at us, and quieted.

Firstmage said, “We’ll summon Xan again first and simply try more questions, but if he cannot give us the information we seek then we’ll proceed to transference. Sorcerer Lyon will be the ghost’s host, and I will anchor the sorcery.”

I deliberately didn’t look at Tobin at all. If I saw any doubt in his eyes, I thought it might undo me. Here I stood, where I’d sworn I never would again, on the edge of a summoning circle with the power of sorcery humming in my veins. In the past, it had made me feel strong and in command, to hold the reins of a working. Now it just made me feel ill. But I was committed.

Firstmage said, “We’re ready, Sire.”

“Begin.”

Thirdmage lit the candles, one at each intersection point. They were fine beeswax, burning smoothly with almost no smoke. We raised the star first, containing the working, and then the circle, to contain the ghost. Working with these three men was an order of magnitude different from working with Meldov, less familiar, but filled with power. As we chanted the invocation, linking the necklace on the ghost-point as the focus for our summons, I could almost feel the pull in my own chest. No surprise that even a thousand-year-old ghost would heed it. The only surprise was that it took several minutes for him to appear.

When Xan did materialize in our circle, he looked less solid than the last time. Firstmage frowned but didn’t comment. The sorcerer nodded to the king, who approached the edge of the circle. Beside him, several men brought papers and canvases.

The king said, “Chief Xan, our need is serious and immediate. We must find the end of that tunnel before the invasion from the east begins.”

I translated, and Xan turned to look at me. He said,
“Why should I care?”

We were back to this. How could I get this man long dead to care about the fate of living people he didn’t know?
“Is there anything you want?”

He ran a hand down his side, and then held it in front of his eyes. It was transparent enough we could see each other through it.
“What could I want now?”

“For your people then?”

“I have no more people. They died, long ago.”

“There are still tribes in the hills.”

“No more of mine.”

“If you answer my king’s questions, we will trouble you no more.”

Xan smiled and it was feral.
“Oh, it’s no trouble at all to watch you desire something I will not give you.”

The king held up a painting of the Rockcomb range, clearly done from the vantage of the top of this very tower. “Chief Xan, tell me what boon I might offer to have you direct Sorcerer Lyon to a location on this picture.” He nodded to me to translate.

“Bring back my wife and my sons. For that, I’ll walk you to the very mouth of the cave from which the invading army issued into the daylight.”

The king said to Firstmage, “Can we offer to raise them as ghosts for him to speak to?”

“No, Sire. We have no focus for any of them. Moreover, it’s very unlikely that any of them died with enough will and emotion to hold them on this side of the veil for a millennium. You recall how hard it was to find
anyone
from that era, even among heroes and rulers.”

I told Xan,
“We don’t have that power.”

“Of course not. You would have to be gods, and not small, impotent men.”

Firstmage said, “Sire, he’s growing fainter. If we want the transference to work, we must begin soon.”

“You believe Sorcerer Lyon will be able to get more from Chief Xan that way?”

“I don’t know. But it will preserve the ghost longer, using Lyon’s body to shield and protect it. It’ll give us time, and the chance to question him outside and in daylight. Even that may still fail, but I see no other better choice.”

I felt my fingernails cutting into my palm.
Using Lyon’s body.
He hadn’t meant that in the way I heard it, like a knife sliding through my skin. I’d agreed to this. I could do this. It occurred to me that it wouldn’t take much now for me to let Xan’s ghost escape the working and fade away. I could sabotage this and perhaps not be seen as anything but clumsy. But I forced my feet to stay fixed to the floor at my correct station. I didn’t scuff the smooth elaborate lines drawn just inches from my toes.

King Faro turned to me. “I’m reluctant to ask you to do this. I wouldn’t want to have another person inside my mind. And yet, the gain seems worth the risk, if you’re willing. Sorcerer Lyon, do you consent to this?”

I hated that he was giving me another choice, that he was making me fight my fears and say yes yet again. But I also would have hated to be forced to do it without that chance. I managed to get my thick, spitless mouth to shape the word, “Yes.”

The king nodded to Firstmage. “Proceed.”

I caught one glance of Tobin’s worried face, and then made myself look away. I fixed my gaze on the center of our working and the ghost prisoned there. If I was going to do this, I was damned well doing it right. I wasn’t risking my sanity, only to mess things up by not paying attention.

The process was basically simple, although the spell-working that had been set up to permit it was not. I took a deep breath, and then another. In front of me, the curved wall of our containment circle was visible to me, although I knew it was invisible to those outside the spell. At most, they would see an unnatural curling of the faint candle-haze, marking its place. That translucent barrier, humming with energy, stood between me and Xan, between present and past, living and dead. And I would have to cross it.

Quickly, before I could change my mind, I said the triggering words that opened my way and stepped into the circle.

Xan reared back as I crossed, his expression shocked. For a moment I stood and looked at him. Through his thinning chest I could see Secondmage, reciting the words that kept the rest of the barrier intact. Xan said,
“No one has ever come into the circle with me, and I’ve been brought here to the living world a hand of hands times. What are you doing?”

“What I must.”
I stepped closer to him, and reached out to touch him, my hand just brushing his bare arm, feeling an odd, crawling, stickiness of not-flesh. Then I pushed against the other side of the circle, moving into the focus point, and bent, and picked up his necklace. Around me the circle bowed and stretched. I could feel it deform, trying to contain me. Then it snapped, the two candle-flames at my feet went out, and with the suddenness of a slap to the face, I
felt
Xan arrow home to my mind.

-By the Skygod! What have you done, witchman?

I was too busy dropping to my knees to answer, teeth clenched, trying not to throw up all over our elegant working before it had done its duty. I heard Firstmage’s rapid chanting, designed to stabilize the new arrangement, to hold the ghost inside me, outside the circle’s confines.

Standing a bare foot from the limits of the spell, Tobin demanded, “Can I touch him?”

The mages’ voices rose together, blended, echoed in completion of the spell, and cut off. I heard the sizzle as Thirdmage snuffed the remaining candles hurriedly with dampened fingertips. Then Firstmage said, “Now, yes.” Tobin’s arm around me was sudden support and anchor. I retched again, then vomited bile, the dizziness almost overwhelming me. Through the buzzing of my ears I heard the king demand, “What’s wrong? Didn’t it work?”

“I don’t know, Sire.” Firstmage bent over me. “Sorcerer Lyon, look up and answer me. Are you all right?”

I managed to raise my eyes to his, leaning against Tobin. “I’m… not sure.” I could feel Xan, in my head— his panic and wonder and grief and an ill-defined bottomless hunger.

Tobin said urgently, “Lyon. Do you know who I am?”

“Yes. Tobin. But… But my head hurts and it’s not just me. His head hurts too. I can feel it! He’s angry and afraid, and yet so curious.” I glared at Firstmage. “You swore to me! You swore that he could do nothing but speak to me. Oh, gods.”

“I told the truth!”

“Then why do I
feel
him? Why can I tell that he’s both terrified and thrilled at this event? How do I know that he has the most hatred for you because you’re the image of someone he loathed?”

“Perhaps it’s your imagination,” Firstmage said calmly. “It takes a prepared mind to not be overset by hearing another’s voice inside.”

-He’s a fool,
Xan’s voice told me.
He looks like the one who threw the stone. You felt the truth of my hate. This is strange.

I gripped my head with both hands, pulling on my hair. “This is more than just words. I
feel
him.”

The king said, “Can you bear it? Must we get him out of you?”

Firstmage said, “If we do that, we’ll lose Xan completely. That ghost won’t stand up to any more manipulations.”

“Does that matter?” Tobin’s growl was fierce. “If he’s harming Lyon, we won’t learn anything anyway. Get him out!”

“Wait.” I unclenched my hands from my hair. “Just wait. Let me see what’s what.”

They all froze, looking at me as I blinked hard. I moved one hand and then the other, touched my face. Everything worked. I didn’t feel as if this invader controlled me. But he might just be biding his time. The thought nearly sent me into a panic again.

-Calm down, young witchman. You’ll have us both overset. Be calm, so we can figure this out.

I said aloud in the modern vernacular, “Can you understand me?” How deep in my brain was he? I felt only puzzlement mixed with the roil of his other emotions. I said, “Your wife was a money-grubbing whore.” His emotions didn’t shift. Could I trust that? Could I believe that he knew only what I spoke in his own language? I said, “I’m going to slit our wrists.”

It was Tobin who grabbed me fiercely in his arms. The ghost didn’t react to my words, although he did send waves of surprise as Tobin’s arms went around me.

-Are you mare to this stallion then?

I gritted my teeth against the double emotions in me. To Tobin I said, “Stand down. I’m testing.” And to Xan, aloud to the room, but in his own tongue that only he would understand,
“Don’t call me a mare!”

-I meant no insult; it’s a common phrase for the half-souled man who receives.

His mind-voice was in fact dispassionate. Inside my head, I formed the words,
-Half-souled?
Despite all of Tobin’s assurances, this I didn’t want to discuss aloud in front of these men, even in a tongue none of them knew.

-Yes. Don’t you say it that way? The single-souled folk look for their match, man to woman, woman to man, to join and have children. But the half-souled yearn for the one of their own kind who completes them. Sometimes, once they find their other half, the two will then seek a third, and also have children. But some do not.

-We say
fay
. Or
synfay
, for two women.

-Do the words matter?
The old man already felt calmer, more curious and less panicked.

-I guess not. But I don’t like “mare.”
In my youth, the term bandied about had been “bitch” and I hadn’t liked that one either.

-He is yours, though?

-Yes. I suppose he is.
Tobin supported me still, his arms pinning me as if afraid to let go. He said nothing, but his eyes asked a thousand questions. Talking about him had taken the edge off my panic, anyway.

I turned to Tobin. “He’s in here. In my head. Chief Xan. More than just words, but I don’t feel… possessed. I feel like my body’s still my own. Mostly.” I tried a smile.

Tobin didn’t look enormously reassured, but he did relax his death-grip on my arms. The king came and knelt in front of me to meet my eyes levelly. “Sorcerer Lyon, Chief Xan, I greet you.”

I said, “Sire.”

“Can you bear to continue, Lyon?”