The Spirit Lens (2 page)

 

Berg, Carol.
The spirit lens: a novel of The Collegia Magica/Carol Berg.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-16331-3

I. Title.
PS3602.E7523S75 2010
813’.6—dc22 2009030454

 

 

 

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Thanks to all those who helped me bring this story to life. It’s impossible to say enough about Linda, my brilliant muse, consultant, and friend—the spirit of Lianelle. And then, of course, Susan, Laurey, Glenn, Brian, Cath erine, and Curt, who prod me to be better, and Brenda, who prods me to be. Thanks to Markus, the Fighter Guy, for his valuable consultations. But most especially this is for Pete, the Exceptional Spouse, whose patience and care keep life beautiful and together. I love you all.

PRELUDE

P
hilosophers claimed the Blood Wars had irredeemably corrupted magic. Historians insisted that Sabria’s growing sophistication in physics, astronomy, and alchemistry—the almost daily discoveries that exposed another spell as nonsensical and another magical practitioner as a charlatan—was but a grand human evolution, on the order of our discovery of fire, the wheel, or sail. Whoever had the right of the discussion, a sensible man could not but admit that the practice of magic had lost its glamour—and I was an unendingly sensible man.

Of course it was not good sense, but rather my own incapacity that had caused me to relinquish my aspiration to life as a mage of the Camarilla Magica. Sixteen years’ residence at the sole remaining school of magic in Sabria and I could not charm a flea to a dog’s back.

With encouragement from my mentor, I had faced disappointment squarely, weathered the storm that followed, and accepted what solace was offered me. Yet somewhere, nurtured by the lost dreams of youth and exposed in the ruthless self-examination required to recover from despair, lay a small, intractable conviction. A seed that would not let me spit it out. A stone that would not be shaken from my shoe. I ought to be more than I was. Even if I lacked the blood-born talents of a mage, somewhere, in some capacity, my service would make a difference in this world. Perhaps that’s why the summons intrigued me so, though it made no good sense at all.

The odd missive had arrived in the late afternoon. Spring sunlight streamed through the casements of the collegia library, stretching all the way across the scuffed floor to the book cupboard labeled FORMULARY: POTIONS AND HERBALS
.
Only incidentally did the beams illuminate the fold of fine paper in my hand
.

I peered again at the outside of the page. No insignia had manifested itself in the broken wax seal in the past few moments. The handwriting that spelled out my name remained unrecognizable.

Bold and angular—a man’s hand, I judged. Seven years of intensive study in this library and nine more as its keeper, with little companionship but five thousand mouldering manuscripts and a transitory stream of increasingly vapid students, had left me unskilled in the discipline most important to me, but knowledgeable in many arcane branches of learning.

I flipped back to the enigmatic message.

NO PERSONAL SIGNATURE. NO POLITENESSES. I had no acquaintance with Villa Margeroux or with any person who lived in the vicinity of Ventinna.

The note could be a prank, perpetrated by some student I had reprimanded for marking in books or dripping lamp oil onto irreplaceable pages. Mage Rutan’s much-praised validator, the small pewter charm I had wheedled out of the old sturgeon only with extraordinary groveling, wavered maddeningly between dullness and brilliance, refusing to designate the message as truth or falsehood.

Yet the request was stated with a certain directness uncharacteristic of students. Uncharacteristic, too, was the distance involved; Ventinna lay a good four days’ ride westward. And a particular detail tickled my imagination, one that might escape a reader unburdened by the excessive expectations of names and bloodlines—or the private convictions of some greater destiny too embarrassing to mention, even to his longtime mentor. The outer address used my common appellation,
Duplais
being my father’s unprepossessing demesne. But the inner included
Savin
, the family name I had long discarded, which could not but lead my thoughts to one particular kinsman and couch the imperious tone of the message in an entirely different light.
Present yourself . . . We require . . .

A prickle of excitement minimized all sober considerations, such as how to request leave from my duties while maintaining
utmost discretion
, and how ridiculous it was to imagine that my fifteenth cousin, the King of Sabria, had summoned me to a clandestine meeting. I had never even met the man.

My finger traced the Savin family device scribed on the back of my left hand at birth, then moved inevitably to the ragged, nine-year-old scar that bisected it, scoring my wrist and vanishing up my sleeve.
If not now, Portier, when?

In an instant’s resolve, I stuffed the missive inside my threadbare doublet, snatched up my compass, journal, and pen case, and locked my desk without so much as returning my books to the shelves. A hastily scribbled note directed students to see Adept Nidallo for access to the archives or the vault. At the modest age of two-and-thirty, I’d spent precisely half my life inside these walls. My bones had near fossilized. Did my royal cousin bid me suckle his children, I’d do it.

“COUSIN PORTIER. WE’VE NOT MET before, I believe.” The tall, broad-shouldered man in maroon and silver stood by a grand window that opened onto the sprawling country estate called Margeroux. His clear voice resonated with confidence. His extended hand bore a ruby signet, crested with Sabria’s golden tree.

“Indeed, sire, I’ve not had that privilege.” I dropped to one knee and kissed his proffered ring. “How may I serve you?”

I felt immensely relieved and a bit foolish. Four long days in the saddle give a man occasion to recall every synonym for
idiot
. Philippe de Savin-Journia was a sovereign in his prime. His wealth and open-mindedness had artists, explorers, scholars, and academicians of every science flocking to his court. What possible need had he of a librarian, schooled in a fading art? I had decided that, at best, the kinsman awaiting me would turn out to be some moronic relation as bereft of fortune and prospects as I. Worse cases abounded.

But the King of Sabria enveloped my left hand with his own—a broad, hard, warm hand, scribed with the myriad honorable scars of a warrior’s life, as well as the same Savin family device that marked mine—and hauled me to my feet. Eyes the deep blue of Sabria’s skies took my measure.

“I’ve a mystery needs solving, cousin. The matter is delicate, and certain aspects require me to seek counsel beyond my usual circles. Where better than with a member of my own family?”

“I’m honored you would think of me, sire.” Mystified, to be precise. Curious.

His well-proportioned face relaxed into a welcoming smile. “Good. I’ve heard decent reports of you over the years and was sure you were the man I needed. I’ve delayed this unconscionably, hoping—Ah, you’ll hear all the sordid complications soon enough. Come along.”

He led me on a brisk walk through a series of pleasant, sunny rooms to a deserted kitchen in the back of the house. Pausing only to light a lamp from the banked kitchen fire, which seemed odd in the bright midafternoon, he headed outdoors.

“Tell me, Portier,” he said, striding across a shady courtyard. “The methods of sorcerous practice have not changed in these years of my estrangement with the Camarilla, have they? No revelation of opticum or mechanica, no new-writ treatise on anatomy or mathematics or the composition of minerals has altered the teaching of spellwork?”

“Not at all, sire. Indeed some progressive mages believe that instruments such as the opticum will support our understanding of the physical melding of the five divine elements.” Not many. Most magical practitioners stubbornly maintained their posture that the
mundane sciences
offered nothing to sorcerers.

“And your brethren yet renounce superstition and demonology?”

“Mages of the Camarilla work entirely within the bounds of earth. They practice as methodically as do the scientists and natural philosophers you embrace.”

Had I ever imagined having the opportunity to seed the king’s mind with some good feeling for the art of sorcery, I would have prepared more refined arguments. Philippe was known as a man of lively intellect and devouring curiosity.

“Sire, it seems a sad waste that political disagreements with the Camarilla have so undermined your confidence in an art that has so much to offer your kingdom.”

He choked down a laugh. “I will not argue science and magic with you, Portier. My bodyguard reports that you yourself carry a compass rather than some ‘directional charm’ that might fail inexplicably at the dark of the moon and lead you off a cliff.”

We left the path and crossed a dark corner of the yard to a narrow downward stair. Wading through a litter of dead leaves, twigs, and walnut husks, we descended the stone steps to an iron grate that blocked the lower end.

Philippe twisted the latch and tugged a rusty handle, the grate rising more smoothly than its appearance and location would suggest. The low ceilinged passage beyond, much older than the house, smelled of stagnant water and old leaves. The king adjusted his lamp to shine more brightly. Once the grate slid closed behind us, a fierce sobriety wiped away my cousin’s affable demeanor.

“Last year, on the twenty-fifth day of Cinq, an arrow penetrated my mount’s saddle, not three millimetres from the great vein in my thigh. By the grace of the Pantokrator’s angels, the villain archer’s hand wavered, and he lies dead instead of me. Gross evidence implicates my wife.”

“Sainted ancestors! I never heard—” Well, perhaps a traveling mage had brought gleeful rumors of a foiled assassination plot, but I’d thought nothing of it. Few mages held excessive love for Philippe, who had set out to dismantle the Camarilla Magica’s pervasive influence in Sabrian society, scholarship, and business, and done exceeding well at it. But the queen . . .
the shadow queen
, rumor named her, or
the lady of sorrows
, who had lost one husband already, her parents in a fire, her firstborn to an infant fever, and three others miscarried . . .

We proceeded deliberately through a warren of dank passages. “Few know the complete story, in particular that the nature of the archer, and certain other aspects of the event, evidenced the collaboration of one from your magical fraternity. Somewhere a sorcerer has, for whatever reason, decided that his king ought to be dead. Though her two pet mages have no use for me, I utterly reject the idea that my wife could be involved.”