Salamander (19 page)

He nodded to Rikard, who began the invocation. Fieras, after one desperate glance around, did nothing. Finished, Rikard approached Fieras and handed him a scroll; Fieras took it. Iolen spoke; "You may now begin the schema."

Everyone fell silent as Fieras began the first invocation of the schema. Rikard saw the first line of the star spring up, red as fire, as the first of the four mages spoke his Word. A second line, a third, a fourth. Fieras, at the center of the star, raised his hand, opened his mouth.

Ellen, watching with her eyes closed, separated from lawn and mages by brick and stone, spoke a Word. In front of Fieras the surface of the containment sphere rippled and began to dilate. Through the hole Iolen saw grass, a tree, men; he opened his mouth to yell. From the far side of the barrier the twang of a plucked string, then another. Fieras looked down, astonished to see the feathered end of a crossbow bolt protruding from his chest,
dropped to one knee, then to both, collapsed. A third twang; the mage on the fire point of the schema, in front of Fieras at his right, clutched at his stomach, doubled up, and fell.

* * *

As soon as Coelus heard through the open window of his room the first word of the invocation he picked up the pen and began to write. A moment later, he beckoned one of the two guards over. The man looked down at the paper. It was covered with symbols, each a cluster of what looked like stylized pictures. He leaned over, looked more closely. Something about them … .

As the guard slowly raised his head, Coelus nodded in the direction of the other. The first guard motioned the other over. "Take a look at this."

The other guard bent down to look. The first guard untied the cord holding the gag in Coelus' mouth as the other bent to free his legs. Coelus stood unsteadily, picked up the sheet of paper, folded it, and slid it into his pouch.

"You were instructed to remain here until I returned,” he said, softly. “Do so. Remember nothing more."

His cloak was hanging by the door; he put it on and left the room.

* * *

Dur turned to his daughter. "Good work. With luck, Iolen will think Fieras opened the hole. We have to find Coelus and get him out of here. I don't want to look like this when we find him, so we only have half an hour or so. There is a limit to how much fire the sphere can hold for me."

Ellen nodded, closed her eyes, in a moment spoke.

"He got himself out; I don't know how. He's on his way to the front gate."

"Can you get us to him before he reaches it? There are guards at the gate."

Ellen nodded, led her father into the north wing, out a door opening on the paved courtyard that separated the kitchen from the magister’s wing. At its south edge another door gave access to the main corridor.

Coelus saw the door open. Through it, to his surprise and relief, came Ellen
,
followed by a stranger, a man of about forty with a vaguely familiar face. Coelus was the first to speak. "You are all right? They didn't do anything to you?"

"I'm fine, but we have to get out of here; follow me." She turned back through the door.

"You can't; that doesn't lead to the gate."

The stranger spoke: "Just follow her; you'll see."

Iolen looked around the lawn, turned to Rikard. "You're the mage; you tell me. How did Fieras overcome your loyalty spell? Did he somehow use the spell he was casting?"

Rikard considered his lord's question for a moment before answering. "I am not sure he did overcome it, my Lord. I saw him do nothing related to the containment sphere in the seconds before it opened."

"The mage who died before had made a hole in the sphere, trying to spread the Cascade across the kingdom. So did Fieras."

"What mage who died?"

Lord Iolen’s puzzled look vanished. "Of course. You haven't seen the report on the Cascade—I was trying to keep it to as few people as possible. Take Fieras' copy; it’s over there on the table, underneath his athame. Take your spell off it first; a stack of blank pages won’t be of much use to us.

"We just tried to replicate Coelus’s experiment of months ago—a spell to permit one mage, with the help of four others, to drain power from all the mages he can reach. One of Coelus’s colleagues was the focus. He took control, breached the containment sphere, and was about to spread the Cascade outside the sphere when something burned him up. I had men stationed on the other side of the boundary in case it happened again."

Rikard began to speak but changed his mind. Bowing to Iolen, he crossed the lawn to gather Fieras’s papers and returned. "I will read these. Maybe they will help me understand what happened. Who else here knows about the containment sphere and how one opens it, your Lordship?"

"Magister Bertram is the most senior of the magisters still here,” Iolen replied. “If he does not know, he probably can tell us who does; report to me at the inn after you have spoken with him. Bring all that you can find in Magister Coelus’ office that might be of use, anything in his writing."

An hour and a half later, Rikard, on his way up to Iolen, passed a worried Captain Geffron coming down the inn stairs. A servant brought in goblets of wine, then withdrew. "I saw the Captain coming out, my Lord," said Rikard.

Iolen nodded. "I told him Magister Coelus had vanished, kidnapped, perhaps, by Forsting agents using a compulsion spell. I offered two of my men who know what Coelus looks like, one for the forces watching the road and one for those searching the village. I also offered your help; a truth teller should be useful in the search. If anyone asks, you are looking for a missing magister who had a spell go wrong and might be a bit off his head as a result. With luck, if Coelus starts talking, nobody will believe him. What have you learned about how Fieras got through the containment sphere?"

Rikard had spent some time thinking about what to say. His lord was, on the whole, a fair as well as a generous master, but pushing the argument too far might be risky.

"As far as Magister Bertram knows, the entrance gate is the only way through the sphere and only the gatekeeper, a retired magister who knows the spell, can open it.
I don’t know what they would do if the gatekeeper happened to drop dead.
But I learned two other things. The papers you gave me say that Maridon didn't breach the sphere until after the spell was complete, and the power of everyone inside the sphere had been gathered. And he did it by walking up to the surface of the sphere and literally ripping it open with his hands. That doesn't accord with what we saw Fieras do."

Iolen thought a moment before answering. "Fieras had read the account, had plenty of time to make his own plans. Even if we don't know how he managed it, we did see him do it."

Rikard hesitated a moment, then made up his mind. "We saw the hole, my Lord. We do not know if Fieras was the one who made it. I learned something else."

Iolen waited, said nothing, his face unreadable.

"Magister Coelus knew more about magic than anyone else in the College. He was interested in the sphere and had one of his students studying it for him. His office overlooks the magisters' lawn; when the sphere opened, he was not fifty feet from it."

"You think he somehow opened the sphere. How and why? He was bound and gagged."

"And got free just as Fieras was casting the spell, slipped two guards and left them with no memory of what happened or where he had gone. Perhaps he was planning to make a hole and leave through it and somehow got the placement wrong."

Iolen shook his head. "Speak up. If I made a mistake I want you to tell me, not polite lies."

Rikard relaxed; he was over the tricky bit. "As your Lordship commands. I think he somehow knew, or guessed, the precaution your Lordship had taken. How I do not know, any more than I know how his leman managed to get away from two mages and a guard. There's much going on here I don't understand."

"You think Coelus opened the hole as Fieras was finishing the spell so he would be shot down by our own people?" Iolen said, evenly.

Rikard nodded. "Yes, My Lord. I don't know how he did it, but it makes the most sense. The only other mage who could have done it is the gatekeeper. And that makes no sense at all."

"And he sent us—me—haring off on a false trail, Fieras’s. If so, our Magister Coelus is a very clever and very dangerous man."

"Yes, My Lord. I am afraid he is."

Iolen closed his eyes for a minute, sat thinking. Finally he opened them again. "If you were Coelus, what would you be doing now, other than laughing at us as fools?"

Rikard pondered. "If Magister Coelus is loyal to His Highness, he may be headed there. If in service to the Forsting or another faction, he may be playing for time until he has something to sell to them, or he may be on his way out of the kingdom along with his leman. If he is loyal to His Majesty and falsely suspects your Lordship is not … ."

Rikard faltered. Should Lord Iolen ever be arrested for treason, it would be useful to be able truthfully to say he knew nothing. Iolen finished his sentence for him.

"…then he is off to His Majesty. I have taken precautions to avoid any misunderstandings along those lines—His Majesty is not all that easy to get to, and I have friends at Court—but there is always some risk. The road to the capital goes past the garrison, and they will stop anyone suspicious. I only hope it isn't too late. Have you a fourth alternative?"

Rikard nodded. "Coelus said he told His Highness he would no longer work on the Cascade. He did not say why. Perhaps he believes that you are in truth working with his Highness, and is hiding from both of you.

"We have half a dozen competent mages available, and Gyrgas may survive. There must be many things associated with Magister Coelus in his rooms. If he is still nearby, I expect we can find him."

* * *

Coelus looked around the room curiously—a chair, a desk and a shelf containing several codices, a clay bowl with a spoon in it, and a mug. A single bed. He turned to the stranger. "I wasn't paying attention; where are we?"

"A room over one of the shops—we came in by the back door." He gestured to the ladder in the corner, "That goes to a trap door to the roof. If Iolen's people come looking for you, go to the roof and hide behind the low wall there. Ellen and I will dispose of the ladder."

"Don't they know about Ellen? The Prince did. She needs to hide too."

The other nodded: "She will. But hiding you from eyes and ears won't be enough; if Iolen decides to search for you he will have mages out as well. Ellen needs to make both of you invisible to them."

Ellen turned to Coelus. "I am going to weave you the same protection I used, making you invisible to a mage’s perception. Unless one is familiar with it, it blocks in both directions, so you will have to depend on your eyes for a while. And you have to stand still while I do it."

Coelus, standing still, closed his eyes, and took a last opportunity to examine the other man. Either not a mage or a very tight veil, tight enough to hold even at a range of a few feet. What else he was … .

Ellen gestured toward the lamp on the table; it flamed alight. From it she drew a thin thread of flame. Coelus watched, rapt, as her flickering fingers wove it into a fabric, formed the fabric about his body. He closed his eyes again; for a moment his world was flame, entirely surrounding him. The flame faded, but the world beyond him remained invisible. He opened his eyes. The other man was speaking.

"Don't forget yourself, love."

For a moment Coelus stopped breathing as he watched Ellen, with a gesture he had seen before, pull a final thread of flame from the lamp, stroke it down her body, and sit down on the bed. The stranger closed his eyes, turned from one to the other.

"That should be sufficient; I can barely see you, and I'm a lot closer than Iolen's mages will be." Which meant that, whatever else he was, he was a mage.

"Since Iolen won't be looking for me, I'll fetch dinner in a little from the cook shop. Before I do, it might be prudent to put together what we know to try to figure out what Iolen is doing and what he is going to do. Why don't you start." He nodded to Coelus.

"Before I tell you what I know,” Coelus said, deliberately, “I need to know a little more. In particular, who you are."

The other smiled. "Very prudent; you would not want to be telling a random stranger all about the Cascade. His Highness' warning seems to have done some good."

"You are from the Prince?"

"No; I have been watching both you and him for my own purposes. I think Ellen should make the introductions."

"I'm sorry; I should have. But everything was happening so fast." She stood up. "Father, this is Magister Coelus. Magister Coelus, this is my father."

A long silence. Coelus' expression was a mixture of surprise and relief; Dur, who looked quietly amused, was the first to speak.

"So that, at least, is one thing you do not need to worry about. As far as keeping secrets is concerned, I think I know at least as much about the Cascade as either Ellen or Iolen and his people. As I gather you already know, Ellen's mother helped create the containment sphere; one advantage of knowing how it was constructed is that it becomes possible, with practice, to see things happening inside it.