The Element of Fire (5 page)

Besides, Grandier hasn't asked for shelter,
Thomas thought.
Unfortunately.
And since the Bisran sorcerer had announced his arrival in Ile-Rien by abducting a prominent Lodun scholar of Galen Dubell's reputation, it hardly seemed possible that he would.

But it was likely that the ambassador was only using Grandier's presence in the city as an excuse for a confrontation with Ravenna, and if he was being prodded by the Bisran War College to take a more aggressive stance with the Dowager Queen, it could only mean trouble. Bisra was miles of dry flat plains, and only tribute from its conquered states kept its coffers full. The Bisran Church exercised rigid controls on a populace that was land-poor and half-starved in the country and hovered at the brink of mob violence in the crowded cities. Ile-Rien had its uprisings and city mobs as well, but usually over taxes, and they were scattered outbreaks that were settled within a few days. Bisra seemed to teeter always on the edge of chaos, and with Ile-Rien's rich land and its Church's policy of tolerance toward the pagan Old Faith as a constant irritant, war had been inevitable and frequent.

And now Urbain Grandier's depredations had made them even more desperate.

Thomas watched critically as the ambassador nodded with bare courtesy to Lord Aviler and strode to the anteroom door, the page stationed there barely managing to swing open the heavy portal in time.

As the door closed Aviler shook his head and said softly to Galen Dubell, "My apologies, Doctor. To a Bisran, any man in a scholar's gown is half demon."

Dubell's expression was closed and enigmatic. "And a sorcerer, of course, is all demon."

From the Privy Council Chamber two Queen's guards entered and stepped to either side of the doors as the Dowager Queen came into the room. Everyone bowed and she acknowledged them with a nod and a slight smile. "Gentlemen. Forgive the delay." Her graying red hair was tucked up into a lace cap and she wore a dark informal morning gown. She was over fifty now, and the years hadn't diminished her beauty, but transformed and refined it. Only the faint laugh lines around her mouth and the shadow of strain at the corners of her eyes betrayed her age. She took a seat in the brocaded canopy chair beside the hearth, her attendant gentlewoman settling on a cushioned stool behind her. "Dr. Galen Dubell, I'm glad to find you in good health. Perhaps you can help us in explaining this matter."

"Yes, my lady. You saw my letters concerning Urbain Grandier?" Dubell said, stepping forward.

"Yes. Dr. Surete brought them to me when he requested your return to court. His unfortunate death delayed the matter just long enough, it seems. When the messages came from Lodun telling of your disappearance I had already sent an order lifting the ban and requesting your return." As she spoke she was already unfolding a square of half-completed black-work embroidery and looking for the needle that marked her place. Ravenna always had to have something to do with her hands. It was a habit that disconcerted all but the most resolute of petitioners and foreign ambassadors, but Thomas noted it didn't seem to faze Dubell.

The old sorcerer bowed to her. "I am honored, my lady."

Ravenna gestured that away. "Tell me more about this Grandier. He has an odd name for a Bisran."

Watching the Dowager guardedly, Aviler said, "We have some knowledge about his early life. Urbain Grandier was a Bisran sorcerer and scholar, though it is believed his father was from Ile-Rien, possibly a visiting priest, or even a noble, journeying there during one of the temporary treaties in force in the year of Grandier's birth. This would explain his surname, which is certainly not Bisran. Stubbornly, he refused to take another name, and this probably contributed to the suspicion with which he was regarded there."

She frowned at her embroidery. "His original offense was some outrage concerning nuns, and the Bisran Church removed his sanction to perform sorcery? And then he was arrested by the Inquisition?"

"Yes, my lady. After his escape from the Inquisition, Grandier brought on a plague and apparently made subtle changes in the weather over the Kiseran plain, some of their richest farmland, and destroyed most of their last year's harvest. The Bisran theurgic sorcerers are said to be near exhaustion with holding off magical attacks on Church officials and the War College."

Ravenna smiled tightly without looking up from her embroidery. She hated Bisra even more than she had hated her dead husband, the old king Fulstan. "One might point out that it is nothing more than they deserve."

"One might," Aviler agreed. "But the point is that Grandier has suddenly chosen to come to Ile-Rien."

Thomas shook his head, briefly amused. Aviler's relationship with the Dowager Queen was an acrimonious one.

For her part Ravenna merely studied the High Minister a moment. Her fine long-fingered hands had paused on the embroidery, the gold needle catching the firelight. That might mean anything; Thomas had known her to order an execution, explain to the culprit why it had to be done, and deny the family's fervent pleas for mercy, all without missing a stitch. Then she drew the strand of thread up tight and said, "Tell me about the events at the convent, Lord Aviler." She nodded to her gentlewoman. "Lady Anne knows she has permission to leave the room should she hear anything that causes her to fear for her modesty."

As Lady Anne bit her lip and looked studiously at the floor, Aviler frowned and said, "The original incident took place at a convent in a town called Lindre, in the northern part of Bisra. Grandier was accused of corrupting the nuns, causing them to blaspheme against their own Church, to attack each other, to perform rituals that..."

"According to the Inquisitors General of Bisra," Galen Dubell interrupted gently, "he caused them to corrupt themselves." The old scholar had moved toward the hearth and was staring into the fire, an expression in his eyes that Thomas couldn't interpret. "They found evidence of human blood used in rituals, symbols and books banned for centuries, the darkest magic... There was even some evidence of an agreement with a Lord of Hell."

As the others watched Dubell in silence, Thomas said, "In Bisra they still burn hedgepriests for putting curses on cows. Why do you feel you can trust the Inquisition's reports?"

"True, Captain." Dubell turned back to them. "The Inquisitors were, of course, lying. They manufactured the evidence, or most of it. Scholars who are not even sorcerers may have items in their possession that an evil mind can misinterpret. And Urbain Grandier was a scholar. He studied the stars, as well as the body and its ills and humors. He was also very outspoken in his opinions, and involved in the printing of inflammatory pamphlets. It was for this that he came under the Inquisition's scrutiny. The incident of some hysterical nuns at the Lindre Convent was used against him and he was given the usual sentence of torture and imprisonment."

Dubell's voice had an enthralling quality. It might have been facilitated by the growing warmth in the room or the fatigue that was catching up with Thomas, but the old sorcerer seemed to be painting a particularly vivid picture of the man Grandier had been.

After a moment Dubell shook his head. "It turned him, you might say. He escaped eventually, and began to commit many of the crimes of which they had accused him, but on a larger scale. The plague, for instance. It caused pockets of a poisonous humor to form beneath the skin, which burst when the victim was in death agony and spread the disease to anyone who stood nearby. It caused so much chaos entire cities were disrupted; the sick went untended... Only a man well versed in healing-sorcery could have devised something so terrible, and only a man driven mad with the lust for revenge could have brought himself to implement it." In the firelight, Dubell's face was a mask of pain. Then he sighed. "When I heard that a man calling himself Grandier had become established in the city and was believed to be a sorcerer, I thought it best to bring the matter to Dr. Surete's attention. I only wish I'd acted sooner."

Renier had gone to the round table in the center of the room and was looking through the faded parchment and leather maps stacked there. He pulled one out and found Lindre, then thoughtfully tapped the red cross that marked the town. "You knew Grandier very well?"

"No. His excesses and the motivation for them were much discussed at Lodun, where there is great interest in the natural, as well as the magical, arts." Dubell smiled. "And the printing of an occasional pamphlet."

"We know," Aviler said dryly. He paced a few steps, his face severe and only half-visible in the candlelight. Aviler's late father had made his fortune in trading voyages to the East before he had settled down to take over the Ministry, and the stigma of those origins made Aviler the Younger careful to preserve the proper aristocratic disdain toward the occasional political commentary from Lodun. But the High Minister dropped the subject and only asked, "Why does Grandier come here now?"

Dubell spread his hands. "I don't know. But whatever his reason, he must be stopped and driven away."

Ravenna nodded. "Excesses in Bisra are all well and good, but he cannot be allowed to commit them here. I agree, Doctor. But why did he seek you out? Some special grudge?"

Dubell looked thoughtful. "It has been ten years since Dr. Surete and I last tended to the palace wards. With Surete dead and Grandier rumored to be in the city, I thought it best that I should see to them again. The warding stones that hold the etheric structure of spells in formation around the newer sections of the palace must be examined individually, though in the Old Courts where the wards are tied to the structures themselves such attention is not necessary. But now I realize the situation is even more urgent than I thought. If Grandier meant to keep me from examining the wards after Dr. Surete's death, then he must have some way to circumvent them."

Aviler looked up, frowning. "How is that possible?"

"The wards are not unlimited or infallible. The sorcerers who constructed them directed them to react to certain situations in certain ways. But their creators could not, and did not, think of every situation. If a fay knew where the gaps were that their movement occasionally creates, it could pass through them unharmed." Galen Dubell smiled. "Dr. Surete knew the most about the wards. He could tell you their names."

"I see," Aviler muttered.

"Do you? Good." Ravenna finished part of the pattern and spread the square of needlework out on her lap. "Dr. Dubell, when can you begin this examination of the wards?"

"Immediately," Dubell told her. "It will take several days, as some portions may only be performed during certain hours of the night."

"Good, but we must continue the search for Grandier."

Thomas said, "The King's Watch found that house; they'll find him." The King's Watch was a euphemism for the network of spies set up by the late Aviler the Elder to keep an eye on discontented nobles living in the city and the foreign cults that had begun to appear then. It was they who had been able to find Grandier's River Quarter house when the Lodun sorcerers had named him as Galen Dubell's abductor.

"Very well. That is enough for now. Dr. Dubell must rest before he begins his work and I know you gentlemen have much to attend to."

As they made to leave, Ravenna added, "Stay a moment, Captain."

Thomas waited, and when the doors had closed behind the last of the others, she asked, "It was difficult?"

"Fairly."

Ravenna lifted a brow. "That's hardly an answer."

He watched her a moment thoughtfully. That Roland had sent him on a mission designed to cause his death probably rankled her more than it did him. "Is that why you wanted me to stay, to indulge my sense of self-pity?"

"Oh, don't start. Roland could send you to the edge of the earth and I would not care." She smiled for a moment, but her expression became bitter as she smoothed a section of the embroidery. "Master Conadine was sent for today from the Granges to help deal with Grandier. He should be here within the week. It was the worst stupidity not to wait for him and to send you with only Dr. Braun."

"If I'd had the choice, I might have gone anyway," he admitted. "If we had waited any longer Grandier could have killed Dubell."

"And taken a handful of men, and only Dr. Braun?" Her lips thinned. "Never mind. Roland did it to aggravate me, and we know who encouraged him to it, don't we?" Ravenna tested the sharpness of her needle with a finger, then selected another out of the case Lady Anne held ready for her. "And what other mischief has Denzil been up to lately?"

Thomas took a seat on one of the stools near her chair, feeling his weariness as a tight pain across his shoulders. The episode with Grandier had worried Ravenna more than she had revealed to Aviler or the others, but he let her change the subject. He said, "He visited a banker on the Riverside Way yesterday, but that was about a gambling debt. If he's planning something now, he's taking more care with it."

"Perhaps." Ravenna carefully threaded the needle. "Someday he will miscalculate."

Thomas shrugged. "Roland can always pardon him." Denzil was Duke of Alsene, Roland's older cousin on his father's side, and acknowledged favorite. There were men who had more respect for the finer feelings of their dogs than Denzil had for Roland, but the young King still clung to him. It was undoubtedly Denzil who had talked Roland into sending a small contingent of the Queen's Guard to beard Grandier in his lair, knowing Thomas would be bound to lead them, and knowing that it would infuriate Ravenna. Thomas reminded himself there was nothing to be done about it tonight. But he was looking forward to the moment when the news reached Denzil that he had gone into Grandier's house and brought Galen Dubell out alive without losing a single man. "What did the Bisran ambassador want?"