The Spirit Lens (6 page)

“Your masters at Collegia Seravain would have you believe they can recreate a memorized formula and bind a potion to smooth the skin of an old woman or generate a finger of holy fire to ensure a royal counselor’s honesty. They preen when they succeed and provide a litany of excuses when the crone dies wrinkled and the counselor is caught embezzling from the treasury. They fail to inform their patrons that a common laborer could hold the lenses they’ve used to focus beams of light or that any decent herbalist can provide a salve of apricots and olive oil to improve the skin as long as the woman is not
too
old and eats well and stays out of the sun.”

The mage’s warm fingers arranged my hands side by side on the cool flattish stone in my lap. His hardened palm remained atop my hands. “True sorcery begins with small things,” he said, his ever-present scorn yielding to something more kin to reverence. “Every natural object in this world—tree, stone, person, honeybee—carries with it a pattern of sound and light that our eyes and ears cannot perceive. Some call it the object’s
cast. .
. . ”

I released my held breath. What a hypocrite!
Cast
was naught but old-wife twaddle—the trickster’s love philtres, ghekets, and fairy rings this man purported to disdain. Yet before I could protest, the space behind my eyes—the center of my thinking self—began to heat like a glowing ember.

“. . . but it is more accurately called
keirna
, for this patterning lies beyond our natural senses. A properly disciplined mind can perceive these patterns, just as refined lenses can perceive stars invisible to our eyes. Consider this particular object you hold. . . .”

Against the dark background inside my eyelids appeared lines of shimmering gray light, some lighter, some darker, stacked one atop the other like some arcane glyph, the line at the bottom thicker than the one at the top. I’d never experienced the like.

“The pattern reflects the solidity and strength that is the stone’s nature. . . .”

As the mage spoke, another line appeared at the top of the stack curving gracefully around to connect at the bottom, touching every other line in the array.

“. . . as are its continuity, enclosure, boundedness. Now consider the specifics of
this
rock, the minerals it contains, the shape and weight and source and history that make it like no other.”

And woven in and out of the gray lines appeared slender threads of bright red, dull gold, and other colors I could not name. Permeating all was a low thrum, a sound so precise it was almost visible, a pulse that gave the pattern life.

“Were I to strike the rock with a chisel, I would alter this pattern—its keirna—but only in small ways. Because I study the language of keirna, the pattern would yet speak to me of stone, cut from yonder crags, formed in fire in the recesses of history and shaped apurpose to build this font.”

Ridiculous. Stone was stone—an amalgam of the divine elements of wood, water, and base metal. Stone was softer or harder—more or less of the wood that made it firm and the base metal that made it impermeable. It was black or red or white, grainy or smooth. Such properties helped us judge the concentration of the elements in a particle and create the proper balance to bind spells. No magical
essence
hung about it.

“Human thoughts have patterns, as well.” The mage’s rich and resonant voice seemed strained, as if he balanced fifty such stones high above his head, demonstrating their shapes and sizes to the world. “Those of true talent—and though there are more of them in this world than you might suspect, few wear mage’s collars or reside in palaces—are capable of extending their patterns of thought and will to touch keirna, to link and bind and manipulate the keirna of various objects . . . creating . . . magic.”

Into my vision intruded a finger of light, a pinpoint of dark blue brilliance with a tail of silver and crimson. The finger shredded the thick lower line and picked out some of the thinner weavings. In that same moment, as the surety of enchantment settled over me like a garment, I would have wagered my life that someone lifted the stone from my knees, though my hands told me it had not moved and had not changed in length or breadth or thickness. And when I opened my eyes, unable to contain myself longer, indeed
nothing
had changed but the weight of the massive stone. A burden little heavier than a pebble rested on my lap.

No, no, you cannot alter the fundamental properties of a particle—an object of the Pantokrator’s creation.
I lifted my hands, shoving his away, and shifted my knees, expecting to disrupt his illusion. Nothing changed. I inserted my fingers between the stone and my thighs and hefted it. Turned it over. Shook it. Held it in one hand and raised it higher than my head, before resting it in my lap again and staring at it. A child could have tossed the thing into the air or skipped it on a pond. Illusions deposited a faint magical residue the texture of dry meal. Dante’s left the air crackling like summer lightning.

The green eyes bored into mine, watching, waiting, judging me. I stared into their fiery depths and felt the foundations of my world crack.

The mage did not smile, but nodded as if a conversation had been concluded. “That, student, is the truth of sorcery.”

His clawed hand gripped his walking stick, and he rested his head on it. A sighed word and the stone’s full weight pressed down on my knees again.

I could not ask him how he’d learned it. To do so would have been to admit that I had failed not only in my aspiration, but in my striving. That I had wasted sixteen years. That my chosen masters, the priests of my mind’s temple, the most honored mages of history—By the Ten Gates to Heaven, I had
read
their teachings hunting answers to my failure, and none gave a moment’s credence to
cast
—the idea that magic lived not solely in the blood and will of a practitioner, but in all of nature, waiting to be drawn out. How could they all be wrong about the fundamental truths of the world?

I wanted to scream at Dante that he was the Souleater’s servant, a trickster demon. Yet I knew better. Illusions deceived the external senses, but this strange patterning of light and sound had appeared inside my mind where only I could render judgment. Unless I was myself a madman, he had shown me truth.

Perhaps he understood the lump the size of his rock that had lodged itself in my throat, for he spoke quietly and without rancor or hubris. “The mages at Seravain proclaim that only those they choose, only those born of proven bloodlines, only those who memorize their lists and follow their formulas, can work magic. Sorcery acknowledges no such limits. Most of the truly gifted work their small magics by rote, imitating what their grannies told them, or by instinct, because they have not separated themselves from nature by dividing all things into five divine boxes. Some of these people actually sense keirna and are able to manipulate a pattern as I did.”

“Why don’t we hear of this?” I said, grasping at arguments that evaporated with my touch. Fools and tricksters everywhere swore by their charms, philtres, wards, by their mother’s healing power or their uncle’s virility potion. What few claims ever proved true had been traced to a blood family’s bastard or some true practitioner’s deception.

“All those I’ve met work blind,” said Dante, scritching the end of his staff in the dirt. “None claim to see the actual structure of keirna or attempt to display it for another as I did with you. Yet even if they did, who would believe? The Camarilla would name them cheats and deceivers and fine them into starvation, or torture them until they recant and brand them on the forehead, all to prove that collared mages alone hold the mighty reins of power. Cursed be their blackguard souls—”

He bit off a snarl, and his good hand tugged at his silver collar, as if it chafed; as if the masters at Seravain, jealous of his talent and despising his rude manner, had left a burr inside its enchanted circle or unbalanced its elements so that it would not accommodate the play of his muscles. No wonder they had been happy to forget him. His results and the lack of a blood mark on his hand must have confounded them. And he was correct; if the Camarilla had any idea of the magical heresies he propounded, they would bury him so far below Sabria’s deepest dungeon, he would never see light again.

The mage had leaned his back against the fountain and closed his eyes as if to sleep. Not a peaceful sleep, but that of a wary traveler on an unknown road. “So, do I pass your test?”

I could not accept an entire reversal of my beliefs. Somewhere between his truth and mine must lie a connection I was too simple to recognize. But I could not deny him. Sainted ancestors, if all this were true, my mind could not encompass the possibilities of his talent.

I raised my head and sucked in the heaviness that weighed upon my spirit far more than the stone I had rolled off my knees. “If you agree to the terms of our partnership, I’ll show you what we face and what I propose for you to do about it.”

 

 

OF COURSE, DANTE ACCEPTED MY terms: absolute secrecy, loyalty to Sabria’s interests, and acknowledgment of my direction. These were not difficult oaths for him, I thought, a man who had secrets of his own. He clearly cared naught for the gold or political gain that could come from betrayal. More significant to my mind, this unpleasant and forbidding man had opened a small window into himself and shown me the one thing in the world he cared about—magic. What greater offering of trust exists than that? I liked him.

As night fell on Lady Susanna’s wild garden, I led Master Dante down the courtyard stair to the Conte Olivier’s iron-bound cell. “Fifteen days ago, I was brought down here, sworn to the same oath I asked of you, and told a strange story. One afternoon nigh on a year ago, the King of Sabria rode out to exercise with his household guard—the Guard Royale—as he does every tennight. He jousted, sparred with his favored partners, shot close targets with a pistol, and practiced with his longbow. His captain of the guard, a man who had stood at his back since he was crowned, challenged him to a wrestling match—a sport he much enjoyed in his youth. Though the king was soundly thumped, both he and the captain were laughing at the end of it.”

I unlocked the door with the key my royal cousin had entrusted to me. The arrow, the spyglass, and the coin lay on the stone table, exactly as the king and I had left them.

“As His Majesty rode from the field, this arrow struck his saddle, scarce missing the great vein in his thigh, to the peril of his life”—I locked the door behind us and hung the lamp from a wire loop above the table—“for, naturally, he had not donned his armor after the wrestling. The horse fell, but the king managed to leap free, unharmed.

“His guardsmen scoured the field, in a fury that so bold an attempt was made in their very midst. Two of them noted a man wearing their own livery drop his bow behind a tree. They attempted to question him, but discovered the man incapable of speech. Before they could alert their comrades, he hamstrung one of his captors and strangled the other. As he ran away, he dropped this spyglass. When he retrieved it, the hamstrung guardsman threw his ax, and fortunately or unfortunately as you may see it, felled the assailant before he himself died. The villain would have gone free if he’d kept running.”

Dante’s brow creased. He leaned his walking stick in the corner and squatted low to get a closer look. He did not touch the artifacts. “Go on.”

“The guard captain stripped the corpus in search of his identity, and instantly forbade any other to come near. The man’s arms and legs were scored and scabbed, bruising, scars, and cupping marks every centimetre. . . .”

“Transference,” said Dante softly, his two fingers tracing the line of the half-split arrow shaft without actually touching it. “The archer was a source—a mule. And the sorcerer who leeched the archer’s blood to grow his own power persuaded . . . induced . . . forced him to wield the nasty bit of weaponry. Did the arrow deliver poison?”

“The king assumes so, as the horse convulsed and died. Philippe immediately commanded his most loyal friend, Michel de Vernase, Conte Ruggiere, to investigate the assault. The conte ordered the horse and saddle burned in place as a precaution against a contaminating poison or a lingering spell-trap. With a mage implicated, Vernase-Ruggiere chose not to call in a practitioner to examine the arrow.”

“But you’ve looked at it.”

“I detect no extant enchantment, only a strong magical residue. But I’ve no skill to analyze it.”

He took no note of my admission. “I’d guess the aristo lackwit had the assassin-mule’s corpse burnt, as well.”

“They could not allow word to get out.” A hint that an unknown mage was practicing blood transference would send blood families running to their fortresses, unraveling two centuries of concord between factions. “The conte immediately arrested the guard captain, for on any other exercise day, the king would not have shed his armor before leaving the practice field. And there the problem becomes infinitely more complex.”

The mage glanced up at me, sharp-eyed. “Could it be the
queen
set the captain to propose the grapple?”

No longer amazed at his quickness, I nodded. “There is a history of strain between our liege and his wife—their marriage when she was widowed so young, her failure to birth a living heir since their first boy died, disagreements over the role of sorcery in their aligned households, and more, I think, that he did not tell me. His own counselors have long pressured him to set her aside. Yet he holds determined faith in her innocence and would not . . . and will not . . . have her questioned.”

“So what is the coin?”

“Likely nothing,” I said, “though you’ll see it is a double strike. Some people consider a two-faced coin lucky. The conte found it in the mule’s jerkin, the sole item he carried. I sensed no enchantment on it, yet—” I could not explain the sensation that had come over me when I’d first held the coin. It was as if I’d been thrown into a plummeting waterfall and emerged to the nauseating certainty that my body had been turned wrong side out or hung up by my feet, and all the blood rushed to my head. “There is a strangeness about it.”