Salamander (12 page)

“I confess that I had not considered that possibility. Your Highness may well be correct. I will try not to make the same mistake again.”

Prince Kieron shook his head. “That is not the only mistake you can make, or have made. Maridon, fortunately, is dead. But surely there are others to whom you have mentioned your plans. You told Gervase enough, and he told me enough, to bring me here. Who else? With which of your students, your colleagues, have you discussed your work? Which other mages outside the College?

“Very few, Highness. At Maridon’s urging, I told my colleagues only that I had a schema for pooling four mages, not what I planned to do with it. None of the others expressed much interest in the project. I described it to one student whom I hoped to involve, but she was not interested. Another student was used in an early experiment; he did not know its nature, and the design of the experiment was such that he saw nothing. Of course, Raynald and Nikolas were involved along with Gervase, and I suppose they know as much as he does.

“Raynald and Nikolas I know of, and am taking steps to deal with. We will have to do something about the students; what are their names?”

“I am not sure I understand your Highness. What peril do you fear, and what precautions do you wish to take other than to select the focus of the pool more wisely the next time we do the experiment?”

“We can discuss that later. My present concern is not with your experiments but with what others might do. Have you considered the consequences should the Cascade be achieved and the pool controlled by a mage in service to Forstmark? Perhaps it has escaped your notice, but there has been trouble on that frontier for some years now; we have been recruiting both troops and mages and may need to use them. Your Cascade would be very useful to us—but equally so to the Forstings, should they happen to hear of it and succeed in duplicating your work.”

“I understand your Highness’s concern. But the core of the work, the theory and the mathematics, is known to no-one but me. Even the mages who assisted with the first experiment knew each only his part of it, not the whole, as Gervase will confirm. Maridon knew the most of any of them, and he is dead.”

“Yes. Nobody but you knows how to do it—today. But how long do you think another mage would take, even one less brilliant than you, knowing what I do, to work out the rest for himself? You are not the only able theorist in the world, and not all of them are within the kingdom. I may be mistaken, but the hard part seems to be the idea, first of the pool and second of the Cascade. Once that is known, and shown to be possible, can the rest be so difficult?”

Coelus was silent.

“So, I want the names of the two students you mentioned. Bring them here. I have mages who will see what can be done to assure their silence, or remove the knowledge from their memories, in hopes that more extreme measures will not be necessary. I have already arranged to have Nikolas brought here for the same purpose, and Raynald is here already.”

“That seems drastic, Your Highness. Neither student has committed any crime against His Majesty, or shown any inclination to. Surely a warning against speaking carelessly of what little they know should be sufficient.”

“Perhaps. I will speak with them myself and decide. What are their names?”

Coelus hesitated a moment.

“The student who participated in an experiment is Joshua son of Maas. The student to whom I mentioned the project is Ellen. As Your Highness knows, all instruction takes place within the college, so I can hardly send them a message bidding them come here, and it would be odder still if strangers came into the college seeking them.”

He thought a moment.

“Let me send each a message arranging to meet in the college, not too far from the gate; I can then escort them out. I sometimes hold instruction out of doors when the weather is good. That will make it easier to avoid any unnecessary fuss.”

“Very good; several of my people will accompany you. Gervase, fetch paper and pen from my servants in the next room.”

In a moment the mage returned. Coelus wrote two notes, folded each, wrote “Joshua” on one, “Ellen” on the other.

“If we return to the college now, I can give the notes to a porter and then meet them in the orchard.”

Ellen re-read the note. The hand was certainly his; she knew it well enough. The words:

“Meet me again in the orchard.”

Why he had written it, or at whose command, she could not guess, but the meaning was clear enough. She got up, went over to the cl
othes chest at the foot of her bed, and opened it. From the bottom she drew out a tunic,
flame colored, of some odd shimmery material. She changed into it, over it a plain tunic, long sleeved. She reached into the chest again, drew out an amulet on a tightly woven silk cord, put it around her neck. She took her wallet from the peg it hung on, put the strap over her shoulder.

One more thing. She shut the chest, turned it on its side to expose the bottom, spoke a Word softly, and pressed down on one of the planks. It slid smoothly to one side. From the cavity revealed, she drew out a small leather bag full of coins and put it into the wallet, then put the chest
up
right
again
. She glanced around the room for a few moments, thinking of whether there was anything she had forgotten, took her cloak from its hook and opened the door. The corridor was empty.

Clearly someone other than Coelus was involved. Considering what he was doing, it would hardly be surprising if rumor had spread even outside the college. If so, the entrance to the College might be watched. Instead of turning into the main corridor she crossed it, continued down the student wing, turned right at its end through a door that opened on a corner of the front lawn. Nobody was in sight.
Just ahead of her was the surface of the containment sphere; she sunk her hands into its web, stepped forward.

A few minutes later Coelus arrived at the orchard, accompanied by three of the prince's mages and one guard, armor hidden by his cloak. It was, to his relief, empty. One of the mages spoke briefly to the others, then the three spread out, leaving Coelus and the guard alone near the dome.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Nothing. When they arrive we will take care of it."

They waited in silence. In a few minutes he heard footsteps in the cloister. A moment later Joshua came in sight.

"Magister Coelus, you wanted to speak with me?"

Before Coelus could answer, the three mages moved together with practiced skill. Joshua had barely time to look around before he was enveloped in a grey mist. When it cleared, he was standing perfectly still, his face frozen in its expression of a moment before. One of the mages spoke softly to him. He walked over to the bench a little rigidly and sat down, expression frozen.

The guard spoke to Coelus: "That was easy enough. As you can see, they know what they are doing. The girl should be easier still."

"Do you know if the spell does him any injury?"

The guard shook his head. "When he comes out of it he will be a bit confused, not knowing where he is or how he got there. Until then, obedient as a lamb. The Prince said he didn't want any trouble, anything to get the college talking. This seemed the best way."

Coelus paced nervously up and down, listening for another footstep. None came. The guard stood patiently, waiting.

Ellen, listening on the far side of the barrier barely ten feet from the two men, stood up and set off for the village.

* * *

It was full dark by the time the men got back to the inn with their captive. The Prince sent Coelus off to one of the inn rooms, Gervase back to the College to see what he could find out about the missing student. That accomplished, he sent for provisions and invited Alayn, the guard who had accompanied Coelus to the college, to join him.

"Did Magister Coelus expect the girl to show up?"

Alayn thought a moment. "Feared she might, hoped she wouldn't, would be my guess. He looked nervous when we heard someone coming, relieved when he saw it wasn’t her, less and less worried as time passed."

The Prince nodded and took a sip of his wine. "Remind me not to underestimate academics,” he said. “Coelus has no sense of what he ought to be paying attention to, but once he gets hit over the head with the need to think, I expect he is very good at it. Something in that note warned her."

"There might ha
ve been a warning from
someone else; she may be a spy
and have accomplices. Perhaps
we were seen at the inn and someone drew the right conclusion. Short of a trumpeter and a banner, we couldn't have been more obvious. A town inn doesn’t usually entertain a party of guests with armed guards."

The Prince cut himself a slice of mutton, chewing slowly before responding. "If she was a Forsting spy and not just a student who heard too much, we are wasting our time trying to catch her. Coelus did his last experiment almost a month ago. Her report on whatever she discovered about it will be over the border by now, and our only hope would be to get Coelus’s weapon working for us before they get it working for them. It may come to that, but I am still hoping we can keep the information from getting out, secure everyone who knows anything, and have time to complete the project with more care.

"It would help if we knew what she looks like. If I were sending a girl to the College to get information out of a susceptible young scholar, I would pick a pretty one. When Gervase comes back, we'll see what he can tell us."

The next morning, Alayn brought Coelus into the room as the Prince was eating his breakfast. Kieron motioned them to join him, spoke to Coelus as he sat down. “Your missing student. How much do you know about her? Could she be a spy for Forstmark or the League, or for someone else?”

Coelus thought a moment. “If you are asking about her background, where she came from or who her parents are, I am afraid I cannot help you, although I suppose someone in the College must know. It never occurred to me to ask such questions. But I am quite sure she was not a spy.”

“Because you could read her mind?”

“Your Highness persuaded me yesterday of the limits of my abilities in that direction. My conclusion is based not on mind reading but on logic.”

Prince Kieron gave him a quizzical look, said nothing.

“I invited Ellen to help me with the Cascade project. She refused, in quite clear and unambiguous terms, on the basis that it ought not to be done, and showed no interest in how I expected to do it after that. A spy might have tried to discourage me from working on the project, in the hope that her employers could complete it first. But a spy would surely have wanted to know all she could learn about what I was doing, and I would have been glad to teach it to her.”

“That sounds convincing. I hope you are correct. But I am still left with several problems, beginning with what I am to do with you.”

Coelus nodded. “Yes. I have been thinking about your problems a good deal of the night. So far as dealing with me is concerned, you could of course kill me. That would keep me from misusing the Cascade myself, a possibility that it finally occurred to me you must be concerned about. And it would keep me from telling anyone else about it. But if you wish to employ the Cascade yourself, you would then have to find someone else to finish the project. I can only think of two people in the kingdom who could do it, and I do not think either would be willing to.”

“And who are they?”

Coelus shook his head. “Lying would, I expect, be pointless. But I choose to remain silent. There is no way to extract information against a mage’s will without injuring him. Until you have no further need of me, I don’t think that’s a risk you will want to take.”

The Prince gave him an amused look. “I would certainly prefer to avoid such risks if I can. But you have not yet answered my question.”

“Surely the answer is obvious. If your only objective is to suppress the invention, you should kill me and anyone else who knows anything about it, possibly including yourself—and somehow do it without calling attention to my work and so encouraging others to try to continue it.

“If, on the other hand, your objective is to complete the project and implement it, with yourself or someone else you trust as the focus, then the simplest way to avoid attracting more attention than you already have is to send me back to the college to continue my teaching and my research, and trust me to keep my mouth shut. Unfortunately, if that is your intention, I am afraid another difficulty arises.”

“That being?”

“Last night, I concluded that Ellen was right about the problems posed by the Cascade. Completing my work would make the world a worse place, not a better one. You and Maridon have shown me the danger of the Cascade being used for evil. She showed me that, even used for good purposes, the talent I wished to borrow to cure a plague or divert a flood was talent that already had uses in the hands of those it belonged to, perhaps, taken all together, uses at least as important.

“Ellen would not help me create the Ca
scade. Now that I am persuaded that she was right, I will not help you. I am sorry. I can se
e that the situation raises serious problems for you and perhaps for the kingdom. But it seems to me that the alternative raises still more serious problems for the kingdom, and the world.”