Nor Iron Bars A Cage (32 page)

Secondmage said, “Ah. There you are.” As if we hadn’t followed right on the heels of the guard who summoned us. He gave the king a small bow. “We will explain the basics, Your Majesty. Then if Sorcerer Lyon has more technical questions he can ask them.”

“Go ahead.”

“Put simply, the problem is that we have a ghost who has taken up residence in a living person. The spell structure intended to keep him there failed with the death of Firstmage, and yet the ghost remained. We speculate that it was the pressure of daylight around the subject that prevented the ghost from escaping.”

“His name is Sorcerer Lyon,” Tobin growled. “Not
the subject.
”

Secondmage gave him a small nod. “My apologies, Voice Tobin.”

I thought it would have been nice if he’d apologized to
me
, but I didn’t want to slow down the proceedings.

“In any case, Your Majesty, we speculated that the onset of night might cause the ghost to leave. However that didn’t happen.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Correct?”

“He’s still here,” I said shortly.

-Someday he’ll be stuck with his face twisted that way,
Xan said dryly.
-What does he say?

For once, I was on the side of the tribesman.
-He thought the night might call you forth from my body, but it didn’t. Could you go now, if you chose?

-No. I’ve tried. I wouldn’t stand between a man and his lover for hours, if I had a choice.

-Not even to remain in flesh?

-I’m tired, young man. I’ve seen and felt enough. But I have no idea how to begin to leave. I have no form but yours.

“He’s still here,” I repeated. “He’ll leave if he can, though.”

Secondmage’s expression wasn’t one of belief, but he let my statement stand. “We have concluded that the death of Firstmage was natural and not a result of the working. It was a cause, and not a consequence, of our current difficulties.”

“But you have an answer?” the king asked.

“We hope so. What we intend to do is to set up a summoning for Chief Xan with Sorcerer Lyon inside the circle.”

“Inside!” I couldn’t help exclaiming. “A sorcerer never steps inside the circle during a summons. It invites… contact.”

“Well, yes, normally. But first of all, we will be the sorcerers guiding the summoning. You will not be part of the call, but only hold the focus, the necklace. And then, Chief Xan is already inside you. So the harm that could result is minimized.”

“Minimized.”

“Well, this particular spell structure is new to us. Possibly there are books back in Riverrun in our working libraries that might offer alternatives, but here we must work with what we know. There are no guarantees.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to wait, then?” King Faro asked. “See if daybreak does anything. If not, then ride back and consult the libraries?”

“We thought of that.” Secondmage’s superior tone really invited a violent response. I clenched my fist, and pressed my bad hand against my thigh. “Our investigation of the existing spell-remnants showed a strong probability that if we don’t separate Chief Xan from Sorcerer Lyon before the end of the original span, meaning sunrise, then we may not be able to do it at all. Instead of separation, the rising of the sun is likely to complete a binding.”

“How sure are you?” I demanded. “That sounds like a strange outcome.”

“We will of course show you the energy calculations. It’s a rebound effect from the breaking of the original binding.”

“Show me,” I insisted.

Secondmage heaved a barely-concealed sigh, but gestured to Thirdmage, who brought over their working notebook. He went through the logic symbols with me, showing where they thought the binding had inverted with Firstmage’s death. I wasn’t skilled enough to have made that conclusion, but once shown the flow chart, I couldn’t argue with it either.

“Satisfied?” Secondmage asked.

“I see the possibility,” I admitted.

“Our plan is to perform a summoning, slightly modified, to call the ghost already inside your body, and then have you toss the focus through the circle to the usual balance point. You
can
toss a necklace into a square of floor accurately with your existing hand?”

I gritted my teeth.

Tobin said, “He hit a R’gin with a rock while clinging to a cliff-face forty feet in the air.”

Secondmage inclined his head. To Tobin.
Again.
Feck it, I was going to surprise the bastard somehow if it was the last thing I did. Of course, in this situation it might be.

“Once the focus leaves the circle we anticipate that the ghost will be forced to manifest within the circle as usual, outside of Sorcerer Lyon’s person. At which time we will banish and close the summoning. The banishment should get rid of the ghost but should not affect a living person.”

“Should,” Tobin said.

“Yes. This is all theoretical. But I assure you that I have an excellent grasp and decades of training in the theory of summoning.”

“And yet you’ve never come across this before.”

“Transference is rarely practiced, due to the complexity and energy control needed. A sorcerer dying during a working is even more rare. The two together? Well, it may have an historical precedent, but I haven’t heard of one.”

I asked, “What about just the closing and banishing with a person in the circle? Has that been done before?” Clearly, Meldov had only touched on the basics with his “never, ever do this” lecture. I had visions of my spirit being sent elsewhere by the banishing, while my body fell over uninhabited.

“The technique has been used for the wraith-ridden. That’s the source for the template we’re using.”

“And did it work?”

“If you can get the spirit out of the person, yes. That’s more difficult with a wraith than a ghost, of course, since they can compel their host not to remove the focus. It’s not unknown to have to weaken and then bind the subject in the circle, wait until the host collapses and hope that the focus for the wraith rolls free, clear enough to be reached from outside the circle.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“You can dismantle the working without banishing and try again. Or just perform banishment and closure.” He looked slightly uncomfortable.

“Which does what?”

“Well, if the wraith is still within the host, it kills the host. But it does banish the wraith.”

“Lovely.”

“That hardly applies in this case. You stated time and again that Xan has no control. We’ve examined you and there’s no sign he’s one of the undead. And we were the ones who summoned the ghost originally. You only have to watch when Thirdmage cuts an opening for you to the focus point, and then toss the focus out where it belongs. It should be simple.”

Meldov had been fond of saying when you are told something is simple and obvious, start looking for the catch. But I couldn’t argue with anything Secondmage had said. “I want to see the equations. I need…” I needed to know it would work, but I was never going to get that certainty. And really, what were my choices? Refuse to let them try, and take a chance, a good chance, on being bound to old Xan forever? He was no wraith, but he was in my mind, inescapable. And he stood between me and Tobin and a future. I knew there were some people who could have a three-sided relationship. I would never be one of them. And if one of the sides was a dead man? Just no.

So it was either trust the talents of the two most capable living sorcerers in the land, or… nothing. I pressed my palm to my forehead for a moment. “Just show me how it will be done.”

Thirdmage turned to a new page in the notebook. I ran through the code and diagrams. “That’s a lot of power in the circle.”

“This is the technique used for wraiths. There has to be really good confinement. Probably not necessary in this case, for Xan, but he’s deeper in your mind than we anticipated, and we didn’t want to change the known parameters where it wasn’t necessary.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Unlike the previous time, I wouldn’t be able to just walk through this circle with a ghost in my head. Thirdmage would be cutting an opening in it briefly with his working knife to let me in, and then the focus out. I didn’t like the thought that I’d be trapped in there, held at his will, even if it would be temporary and more metaphysical than physical. But I could hardly blame them for being careful. If I’d had a wraith in me, that strength of circle would have been a good thing.

I turned the page. “Wait. Here. I have to be naked?”

“Other than the necklace that’s the focus, yes, of course. You’ll be inside the circle during a summoning. You should have nothing on your person that might be a focus for another dead spirit. What if the cobbler who made your boots has died and lingered? Or the seamstress who stitched your drawers? It would be unfortunate if your smallclothes served to draw someone to you.”

And Tobin had to snicker suggestively. Which made me laugh in the startled sorcerer’s face. I would
kill
Tobin when this was done. “Sorry, Thirdmage. A stray thought. But I do see the point.” I might not like standing there naked, but I’d enjoy sharing my body with a seamstress even less. A randy seamstress. I pressed my lips together. Tobin would
die. The dear man.

“This part is the separation.” Thirdmage pointed to the diagram. “And here the banishing and closure. You see that the working should collapse around you, taking the dead, leaving only the living with intrinsic energy signatures like this.”

I could see it. I could believe it. I
would
believe it. “Yes.”

“Good. We’ll get set up, and you get stripped and we’ll begin. There’s only an hour until sunrise. Although if this works it really shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”

Oh, hells, he had to say “if.” I ducked my head in mute assent, and turned away. The sorcerers put their heads together, checking all the inscribed lines for precision. I turned my back on them and moved toward a corner of the room, almost unaware of where I was going. Naked. I needed to be naked. I reached for the buttons of my jacket, and realized my hand was shaking.

“Here.” Tobin was at my side, reaching to help. “Let me. You need everything off?”

I swallowed. “Yes.”

“I’ll consider it practice.” He slid my jacket off my shoulders.

In my head, Xan said,
-What happens now?

-They’ll try to separate us. Set me free and send you… back.

-Will it work?

-I certainly hope so.
I paused. Where would Xan go when he was banished? I’d never seen any real answer other than “the far side of the veil” or “across the veil”, lovely meaningless euphemisms.
-Do you remember anything about where you go when you’re… not here?

-No. You say I’ve been dead for so, so long. But when I’m with the living, all I remember clearly are the other times of summoning. A handful of snatched hours in dark places, and now one rather interesting day.

-I’m sorry. There’s no way…

-No. I meant what I said. I’m tired, and my fire is all burned out. Maybe this time I’ll cross, to somewhere.

-I hope so.

Tobin said, “Will he fight it? Try to stay in you? Do you trust him?”

“I think he’ll go. Trust? I’m not sure, but I believe him when he tells me he’s tired.” I could feel the truth of that. Xan’s hate and anger and fear and disdain had all faded into a deep sea of exhaustion. All he longed for now was rest.

“And you think those two old sorcerers have it right?”

“If they don’t, I can’t imagine who would. It looks right to me.”

Tobin pulled my shirt over my head. I shivered with the air on my bare skin. He knelt, reaching for my boots. Looking somewhere around my knees, he said, “If there’s danger… I don’t mind sharing you with Xan. Even if we never, um, do anything more, I’d rather have you in my arms like we just were this last hour than lose you.”

“But I wouldn’t.” I laid my hand on his hair. “I wish I could say that was possible, but I think if I go for much longer without being alone in my own head, I’ll go crazy. Xan isn’t malicious, but he is
other.
I sometimes want to claw my eyes out, to dig him from my brain.” My voice was shaking by the end of that. I hadn’t realized how close to the edge I was, until the words tumbled free.

Tobin took hold of both my wrists and kissed them behind the screen of my body. “Hold on. You’ll be all right.”

“Yes.”

He let go to undo my belt. I put my hands back on his head. They felt safest there.

I was down to my smalls when the king stood and came over to us. I resisted the impulse to put my hands over my privates. He’d been a soldier; he’d seen far worse. Hells, he was going to see me completely naked in a moment, if he stayed. I said as casually as I could, “Will you watch this, Sire? Or retreat and await a report?”

He looked steadily at me. “You saw the plans. Do you think there’s danger to onlookers?”

“No. Or I’d have sent Tobin away already.”

“Like I’d have gone,” Tobin muttered.

“Then We will stay,” King Faro said. “You went through this at Our request and on Our behalf.” I could hear the stately capitals in that. Although he spoiled the effect by adding meditatively, “And curiosity has always been one of my besetting sins.”

Tobin stood and said, “It’s not a bad thing in a leader, sir, to want to know the why of things. In moderation, of course.”

“Thank you, I think.” The king held out his hand to me. “Best of luck. If there’s anything I can do to make this work better, let me know.”

There was an awkward moment, as he worked out why I was holding out my left hand, inverted, instead of my right. Then he shook it gravely.

“Think good thoughts,” I suggested. “If you happen to be beloved of a god, you might ask for a favor.”

His mouth twitched. “Sorry. A simple petition might have to do.”

“Not unless it’s to Na.” The other gods and the goddess generally had little patience with sorcery.

“All right.” He retreated back to his chair, well away from the working. His captain moved slightly ahead of him, as if he might have to fend off an attack, but the king reached out and pushed him over to the side, out of his field of view. I imagined that protecting King Faro might be a bit of a challenge.