The Spirit Lens (35 page)

Mustering every scrap of will inside me, every remnant of longing, belief, and desire, I called on the magic of my blood and spoke the proper words to complete the formula for fire, the most fundamental of spells.

Faint as a snake’s heartbeat in winter, cold as a dead man’s nose, a rill of power threaded my veins. Gold sparks burst from the center of the looped thread like grains of sunlight scattered in the encroaching dark, promising warmth and safety. My heart swelled to bursting . . .

. . . and shriveled again, as one-by-one the sparks winked out, my veins warmed, and the heartbeat of my magic stilled. As ever.

The sky dulled to ocher, streaked with purple. The land lay silent and empty.

I could not swear. Could not weep. Could not allow myself to feel this yet again.

And so I did as I had always done. Forced my lungs to pump. Forced myself to move. I folded the handkerchief and tucked it away with my compass. I brushed the leaves, the stone, and the thread aside, lest someone notice their particular arrangement. Certainly the balance of elements had been inexpert. Rushed. So many untried particles. Just because Adept Fedrigo’s crocodile charm had worked so explosively, it didn’t follow that this place would enhance
new
spellwork. Excuses. Explanations. Anything but admitting the unshakable truth.

“Aaaagh!” Irrational, uncontrollable, a lifetime’s disappointment exploded from my every pore. I snatched up the piled silver and flung the coins across the temple floor. The kentae scattered, bouncing and rolling. The double strike coin flew farther, spinning in the air, catching the last stray beam of the vanishing sun. Then, like a hummingbird feeding, the coin paused in its flight and hung suspended in the air . . .

And hung.

Moments passed. I blinked. Squinted. Surely this was some trick of evening light. Tired limbs propelled me to my feet. The breeze of dying day wafted over the plateau. Mesmerized, I moved to stand beneath the coin, scarce an arm’s reach above my head. It remained stalwart in its defiance of de Vouger’s acclaimed treatise,
Principles of Falling Objects
. It gleamed as if it were the first star awaiting a blackening sky.

I plucked it from its hovering, and it sat heavy in my hand; ice cold, not warm as it should have been from its recent housing in my boot. Dante had declared the thing magically inert, and even yet, I detected not the slightest trace of enchantment about it. I launched it again. It bounced across the paving as any coin would do.

Accuracy. Precision. Repeatability. Without them, you’ve naught but accidents and happenstance.
Dante’s teaching echoed as if he stood at my shoulder. I threw the coin again.

It hung in the air, spinning slowly like a gear wheel in a mill. I reined in soul, body, and mind, not daring to feel, not daring to admit, even by wondering, that an object could so violate the simplest, clearest laws of nature without aid of enchantment.

Again, I threw the coin, Gruchin’s luck charm, the sole object found in the assassin’s pocket. And again . . . Never did it behave the same way twice running.

I tucked the double strike into my boot, gathered the scattered kentae, and repeated the tests. The silver coins behaved properly. I tried copper kivrae, a gold kesole, the crocodile charm, a button, a buckle cut from my boot. No oddity. What was different about the two-faced coin?

I snatched up a shard of mosaic half the size of my palm and tossed it across the temple floor. It rolled lazily, end over end, drifted to the floor, bounced higher than my head in an entirely unlikely direction, and landed back at my feet. A pebble flew ten centimetres, then plummeted to the ground as if it had slammed into a wall, though I used the same motion, the same strength for its launch. A handful of dirt tossed into the air drifted slowly onto my shirt, as if the grains were dandelion cotton. Merciful angels, this was madness.

Recalling the debris I’d thrown into the pond, I gathered a handful of variously sized stones and ran across the field, trying to outrace the settling dark. I threw one of my coppers into the water. It sank as I would expect. Another, and it did the same. Then I tossed the stones into the pond. Some sank. Some floated. I knelt on the bank, the scent of onion grass sitting like thickened paste on my tongue, and retrieved three of the floating stones as they circled past. They weighed solidly, one near the size of an egg. I tossed them in again. One sank. One bounced off the surface of the water and onto the shore beside me. The egg-shaped one settled to the surface as gracefully as a black swan.

Footsteps crunched on the weedy field behind me. “Lord chevalier, hurry! Come look at this!” I called over my shoulder. “By the Creator, you’ll never believe it!”

But this time,
I
fell. A bludgeon slammed into my back, just between the shoulder blades. My face met the ground with all expected force.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

31 QAT 30 DAYS UNTIL THE ANNIVERSARY

“
N
ow who exactly might you be?” said the owner of the boot grinding my nose and cheek into the crushed onion grass and the rocky soil beneath. “And where bides your pretty, sneaking
lord
who carries such a fine sword?”

“Ow! Stop!” I said, though the words came out somewhat garbled. “I’m Damiano de Sacre Vaerre. Pilgrim. Ho—pthew—holy place.” I spat out the words along with dirt and grit, and grabbed on to the ankle attached to the offending boot, determined to remove it from my cheek-bone. And perhaps break it.

Pain exploded in my side. Yet another boot. My breath seized, and my arms flopped to the ground, limp as a dead bird’s wings.

A huge, warm weight settled on my back, pressing the remaining air from my lungs, and then a hand snarled my hair and wrenched my head backward. Wiry hair pressed against my cheek, accompanied by warm, beery breath. “What common pilgrim ventures a warded bridge?”

“Or travels with a lord knight dressed common? They’ve secrets, Quernay. Secrets. He’s blood born sure.” This voice, more excited than the first, came from in front of me, though my watering eyes revealed only a black blur. Two men. At least two. Friendly as jackals.

“The holy brother told us—aagh!” My scalp threatened to rip. “Please, let me spea—”

The one on my back—Quernay—jerked and twisted my neck into an impossible angle and spat on my cheek. “Answer our questions. Where be the noble swordsman?”

“Out east, waiting for me at Fe-hikal. He dresses poor to discourage thieves. Please, he’ll travel on without me.”

“Are you so worthless? Why are you here?”

“Awaiting the Reborn.”

This time the boot landed on my chin. Blood spurted from my lips and chin. Pain lanced through my jaw, trebling the strained agony of my neck.

“Try again,” said Quernay’s overeager friend with the boots, mashing his gritty sole into my face.

“Back off, Merle,” growled the one at my ear. My stomach churned at the stink of him and the onion grass and the strained posture. “You’ve been working spells, oddments. To what purpose?”

My prepared story thinned like wafting smoke. I needed something better, perhaps closer to the truth lest I be tested worse; dizziness already clouded my thinking. “I am a failed acolyte,” I said. “The mendicant’s tales . . . thought I might succeed up here.”

“And your pretty lord?”

“Despises me. Calls me lackwit. Dunce. Wanted to show him. Please, take what you will and let me go. Master said he’d leave me behind did I not join him by sunrise.”

“Mmm,” wheezed Quernay. “Methinks you’ve seen a bit too much to let you go.” The heavy man slammed my face to the ground as he climbed off my back, then snagged my clothing when I attempted to scramble away.

Without wasted word or breath, the two immobilized my legs with cords wrapped from ankles to knees. They bound my wrists behind my back and wound the rope all the way to my elbows, pinching my arms together so tightly they near left their sockets. I could not inhale a full breath.

Blessed angels, keep Ilario hidden. These two were no common bandits. They’d not touched my purse or scattered silver, and, certainly, they themselves had crossed a warded bridge. At least one of them must have some trained sensitivity to magic.

“Get him through the trap,” said Quernay. “I’ll take a look around.”

As the bigger man strode away, his excitable partner looped a rope around my chest and under my cramping shoulders and dragged me across the field. Sharp-edged grass slashed my face. Rocks ripped my clothes and gouged my chest and thighs. I fought to keep my head up, so as not to have it bashed against the rocks. Oblivion would have suited better.

Once he had bumped me up the steps, my captor dropped me on the faded mosaic like a goat brought for sacrifice. The world drifted lazily, like the water in the pool.

“
Aberta
,” he spat.

A great whipcrack of magic split the air, trembling the ground beneath my cheek. I tried to press myself into the stone.

Grunts of effort, mumbles, thumps, and creaks located the brutish Merle to my left. “Why the frigging saint did you have to show up here at sunset?” he grumbled. “Oughta slit your throat just for the trouble. Quernay’s, too.
Get ’im through the trap. I’ll take a look around.
Dung-eating goatherd thinks I’m his slavey. Thinks he’s aristo ’cause he can conjure a spell or two.”

Accepting that a mountain was not about to fall on me, I drew my bound legs toward my belly and rocked onto my side to get a look. My captor’s black shape was outlined against the violet afterglow. The temple reader’s red-haired manservant from the shrine—Merle—was wrestling with . . . I blinked dirt away. Everything looked wrong.

No matter my blinking and squinting, the view did not change. The slight, wolfish Merle was raising a rectangular slab that must surely weigh ten times his body’s total. Grunting, he gave a prodigious shove, and the slab . . . drifted . . . to the pavement. Yet it landed with a teeth-rattling thud. Then he reached
through the floor
and withdrew a paned lantern. My stomach heaved.

I blinked again, and my perceptions shifted. A layer of illusion masked a rectangular gap in the temple floor. But was the slab that had closed it granite or silk? Experience and estimation no longer sufficed.

Merle set the lantern on solid ground, then stepped back a few paces.
“Illuminatio
.
”

Ah, not fair at all that a brutish thug should key a fire spell so soon after my abortive attempt to create one. But indeed, flame blossomed atop the thick white candle inside the lantern. Yet its light entirely contradicted Watt the lens maker’s tidy diagrams and explanations. My eyes did
see
the light, but not a beam illumined anything beyond the glass. The night, deeper black than before, snugged up around the lantern panes and trapped the fiery glow inside the glass walls.

This time, flame engulfed the lantern, a wind-whipped bonfire of gold and yellow that could likely be viewed as far west as Tallemant. Merle stood well away from it, his outstretched hand held flat against the flame as if to shield himself. The light beams curled about his outlined fingers.

“
Illuminatio
, you demon-cursed bit of wax.”

The third invocation of the key quenched the bonfire instantly. But a new flame sprouted like an eager weed from the blackened wick and burned brightly within the lantern’s confines. The beams spread softly across the paving, clean and straight as they ought.

The wolfish man bellowed laughter. “Guess you’re fuddled, eh?” He swung the lantern at my bruised face. I jerked my head back, the glare near blinding me. “We’ll fuddle you all.”

Truly my senses were entirely fuddled. The first two attempts to key the spell had not satisfied him, yet, had my eyes been closed, I would have been unable to distinguish their residue from the third, successful attempt. Impossible, I would have said a day before, yet perhaps no more extraordinary than coins that flew, stones that floated or sank as if by whim, or light beams that cast no reflection save in a human eye.

My captor gave me little time to sort it out. He lowered the bright lantern back through the hidden gap in the floor, then took up my leash and hauled me toward the same location. Gods . . .

Though the sharp edge between
floor
and
no floor
was not wholly unexpected, the gut-plummeting drop near sliced my arms off when the rope reached its abrupt limit. Gasping for air, I spewed curses as I had never in my life produced. I hadn’t realized I knew so many.

After three or four jerky lowerings, my toes touched ground, slackening the rope. I toppled like the stone slab onto the very hard, very cold floor.

Lamplight spun. The world blurred and bent. Harsh whoops dragged air into my burning chest. “Souleater’s servant!” I spoke in true conviction of Merle’s identity.

The heavy leash rope smacked the back of my head.

Boots ground on steps. Merle’s warm body stank as he bent over me. Quivering fingers pried at my pockets, unbuttoned my shirt collar, pawed my neck, tugged at my sleeves . . . searching. He crowed when he snapped the courret from its slender chain about my neck and stuffed it in his pocket. Everything else—purse, knife sheath, spall pouch, compass, crocodile charm, Gruchin’s coin, and the boots from my feet—he lobbed into the corner. I didn’t regret the wardstone’s loss. It hadn’t warned me about him.

“The Aspirant will be quite interested in your mark.” Somewhere beyond the red-hot skewers inside my shoulders, he shook my needling-numb left hand. “You’ll keep no secrets from
him
.”

Damnable incautious fool!
I swore at myself, not at Merle. All our efforts would be wasted if the conspirators learned my identity or, angels defend us, Ilario’s or Dante’s. Who were these people? An aspirant was a magical apprentice, not even a student of my own rank.