Salamander (23 page)

“Iolen wanted to use the Cascade to make himself king; he never said so, not even to his own people, but it’s clear enough. He bribed his way to the mages who helped Maridon, tricked them into revealing all they knew about the Cascade, and tried to get you to give him your new version of the schema. That was where his plan broke down. He thought you were working for me and that all he had to do was pretend that he was working for me too.”

Coelus nodded. “I didn’t give it to him for the same reason I wouldn’t give it to you.”

“Yes. A week ago I was willing to accept that. A week hence, Iolen will be in Forstmark and everything he knows about the Cascade will be on its way to whatever mage the Forstings think can best reconstruct your work. That means that I need the Cascade now. The royal mages have implemented your protective schema, so His Majesty is for the moment safe, but there is no way we can hold Northpass or the Keep if the Forstings have all the magic on their side.”

“And if I still refuse?”

“Do you? I think I have made it clear what is at stake.”

Coelus held his voice steady. “I will be happy to work on designing further defenses against the Cascade, perhaps even a way of making it impossible. No more.”

The Prince shook his head. “That no longer suffices; we do not have time to try to work out something new. If you will not give me what I require to defend the kingdom willingly, I will take it by force.”

He hesitated, but only for a moment. “You know how to make the Cascade work and I am willing to gamble your lady knows it as well; you have made it clear enough that she had been working with you. There are ways of forcing knowledge from a mind, even a mage’s mind. Dangerous ways, sometimes fatal, but they exist, and they usually work. If you refuse to tell us what you know, I will use them on her; I regret the necessity, but it exists.

He turned to Ellen. “I did warn you, in this room the last time we spoke.”

“You did.”

“And you warned me; I took my precautions accordingly. An hour ago you held all our lives in your hand; I know what an angry fire mage can do. Wilham is the strongest water mage I know and you are now linked to him, your talent cancelled by his.”

“The business with the wine cup?”

The Prince nodded. “We arranged matters so you both drank from the same cup, one after the other, water and burnt wine mixed. Part of the spell.”

Coelus finally spoke. “And if neither of us knows how to make the Cascade safe, will you destroy us both trying to tear the information from us?”

“If neither of you knows the solution you have only to tell me so; one of my men at the door is a truth teller.”

Coelus opened his mouth, closed it again, said nothing.

“You have until morning to make your decision. Until then Wilham will keep your lady company. No harm will come to her tonight.”

* * *

Ellen waited until the mage in the other bed was asleep, judged at least by his breathing. Eyes closed, she let her mind explore the room. Iron bracelets were riveted about her wrists, the chain between them wrapped once around the oak plank that joined the bed posts. Enough slack to lie comfortably but no more … . The key to the iron lock to the bracelet around her right wrist wasn’t in the room; she had seen it leave with the Prince. The cup … .

Outside the room two guards, two more by the inn door, a mage with them. The Prince was being careful.

She moved her perception to the other bed; Wilham was indeed soundly asleep, his head beside the pillow. Everything in the inn was quiet save for a faint murmur of voices from the guards by the door. One step at a time. Shadows, at least, there was no shortage of. She wove them carefully about the head of the sleeping mage, that nothing she did would wake him.

Next the chain. Too strong to break, and she could get no hold on the mechanism, shielded as it was by the iron case of the lock. The bed then; the frame was held together by glue and the tension from the rope mesh that supported the mattress. She felt her way into one of the sockets, into the linked fabric of glue and wood, unwove it.

When she had finished with the glue joints she eased herself out of the bed, shifting her weight from the mattress and the rope mesh beneath it to one of the side boards of the frame. She wrapped both hands around one of the head posts of the bed, set her feet against the other, pushed the two apart with all her strength. For a moment nothing happened. Again. The far post moved. Another inch and she was just able to ease the end of the plank she was fastened to out of its socket.

Once free of the bed, she slid the plank back into its socket, pulled the bed posts back together and rewove the glue; the Prince might as well have a puzzle to occupy his time. Wilham still slept. She crossed the room silently, slid her hand under his pillow, and drew out the wine cup, wrapped in a silk cloth. Clay not metal, but with at least five men awake in the inn, noise would be a problem.

She felt a touch of cool air and looked up; the shutter was open a crack. She slipped to the window, swung it wide, unwrapped the cup, and threw it as hard as she could. It shattered on the stone flags of the inn courtyard. One of the guards at the front door of the inn said something; a moment later she heard the door opening and voices in the courtyard.

The guards at the door heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and abruptly came to attention as their commander came into sight.

“Any problem in the room?”

“No sir. What’s happening?”

“Someone in the courtyard; I sent Hermann to check it out. But just to be sure...”

He opened the door quietly, looked in. Both beds were occupied, mage and lady prisoner sound asleep. He eased the door closed again.

Once the guard captain had gone, Ellen went back to work. When she wa
s done her bed sheets were gone;
in their place was a long rope of tightly braided linen. She tied one end to a foot of Wilham’s bed; he should be easily heavy enough. The other end of the rope went out the window; Ellen followed it. The rope tightened with her weight, then loosened, shook itself, and came free from the foot of the bed. A few moments later Ellen was standing in the courtyard hidden in the shadow of the inn wall, the rope coiled at her feet. She pulled shadow as a cloak around her, paused to be sure nobody had seen her escape, then set off for the jeweler’s shop.

Once safely inside she went to the large casting furnace at the back of the workroom—the small furnace had gone with its owner and contents. The lid came off easily; under it was a layer of fire bricks, under that a collection of flat wooden chests. The second of them contained jeweler’s files; she set to work with them on the iron bracelets chaining her wrists.

* * *

Coelus looked around the small stable, one of the inn’s outbuildings hastily converted into a cell for his benefit. The mage sitting in the other chair gestured at the empty bed. “I don’t know what His Highness wants of you and don’t want to know, but most things are easier with a night’s sleep.”

Coelus shook his head, said nothing. If there was something he could do to escape, he could not see it. Unless Durilil came back, which seemed unlikely, or his daughter found a way out of the trap they were in. The Prince had made one mistake that Coelus could see—he had once made the same mistake himself—but he doubted that it would be enough.

Rorik, the mage guarding him, was surely both stronger and more skilled in the application of magic than he—at least applied to situations like this. Inventing spells was a useful skill, but he was used to taking weeks to do it, not hours or minutes. No doubt there was some spell ideal for the circumstances. No doubt he would come up with it a week too late.

Absent force or guile to use against the Prince, what about persuasion? Ellen did not, after all, know how to construct the Cascade. The Prince’s truthtellers would vouch for it if she said so. But then there would be more questions. Whether she knew what had gone wrong, first with Maridon and then with Fieras. That knowledge, forced from her, could cost her father’s secret as well as his.

It occurred to Coelus that he had one advantage in any conflict with the Prince’s people; they could restrain him but could not risk any serious injury. No doubt His Highness had made that clear.

Looking down, Coelus noted a tiny dust devil swirling a foot from his chair, recognized it for his own absent minded work. Fire was good for killing people; how could air be used? He gradually eased the miniature whirlwind along without looking at it, until it was spinning a few feet behind his guard’s back. The floor of the stable was dirt, dried dirt was dust. Dust … .

It took most of five minutes to sweep enough dust into the whirlwind, now a good deal less miniature. Coelus stood up.

“I suppose you are right; I’m for bed.” He took two steps towards the bed and the door behind it, spoke a Word, bolted for the door. He heard a crash behind him
as Rorik, blinded by a faceful
of dust, pitched over his bed and down.

The door was closed but unbarred; Coelus pushed it open, stepped into the darkened courtyard, and collided with a large, solid figure. Effortlessly, the guard picked the mage up, carried him back into the stable and held him firmly until Rorik, face dripping, returned with his eyes cleared of dust.

Coelus spent the next hour in bed pretending to sleep, feeling through memory for voices and words while Rorik, his chair pulled back into a corner, watched him. It took two hours more to assemble the pattern of voices, spells, and acts, occasionally mumbling sleepily to himself. The first few times, Rorik came over to the bed to listen, returning to his chair only as Coelus fell silent.

Outside the door the air began to move. The faint moonlight would have shown a watcher, had there been one, a spiral of dust and straw, its top knee-high to the silent guard whose eyes were fixed on the door. The baby cyclone drifted across the yard, picking up air and force from gusts of wind blowing past the corners of the outbuildings, straw from the ground, more as it passed over a half-full manger, growing. It was a column of whirling straw nearly twelve feet high when its foot touched the guard’s lantern, caught fire.

Rorik heard footsteps outside, a clamor of voices, then one he knew, the Prince’s, pitched as in speech but loud as a shout. “Fire. A Fire mage.”

By the sound of it, one of the horses must have taken fright. Men were yelling. The Prince’s voice was heard again, lower, from just outside the door: “You had best come with me.”

Rorik glanced at the figure on the bed, spoke three Words, made a twisting gesture, and went to the door. The Prince was out of sight, but the cause of the commotion was clear enough, a towering figure of flame twice a man’s height moving about the inn courtyard. He stood frozen for a moment. The sound of the Prince’s voice from the far side of the figure sent him off around the courtyard in search of it.

Coelus tried to throw off the blanket; nothing happened. His arm was limp against his chest, his muscles like water. He took a deep breath; his torso at least was still his, and his voice. A wriggle and twist got him to the edge of the bed, to the floor in a tangle of blankets. With luck, with the mage who cast the spell gone, the shock would be enough. He made it to hands and knees but no farther, and in a moment collapsed back onto the ground.

Water. The words of Rorik’s spell; Coelus reached back through his memory. Water and weakness. The fourth counterspell he tried worked; this time he made it to his feet. The other mage’s cloak and hood, both of dark wool, were on the back of his chair; in a moment Coelus had them on and was out of his cell into the chaos of the courtyard, whipping more wind into the burning column of straw.

The back door of the inn opened, a tall figure against the fire-lit room. This time it was the Prince’s real voice, lifted in a yell; Coelus filed it in his memory for future use.

“The fire mage is out. Ward as best you can.”

Behind the Prince a second figure. Coelus discerned Wilham’s voice, words in the true speech, moving hands.

The burning whirlwind went out—where it had been was a column of steam that a puff of wind blew away from the inn door. Shadowed by its spreading fog, Coelus darted for the nearest passage between two outbuildings. In a moment he was in the street beyond.

“Get rid of the cloak; they may be able to track it.”

Coelus spun around, saw nothing, reached out, gathered Ellen into his arms.

An hour north of town, the two mages stopped to rest their stolen horses in the shelter of a grove of trees just off the royal road. When they had dismounted, Coelus gave Ellen a long hug. “I was afraid I was going to lose you.”

Barely visible in the thin moonlight, she shook her head. “Never. Who would you talk to?”

“That too. But I am afraid we may be making a mistake.”

She looked up at him curiously. “In running from the Prince?”

“No. In running to your parents.

“I have been listening for pursuit and thinking about what the Prince will do. Chasing us would be risky; he can’t afford to kill us and he has no way of knowing how willing you are to kill him or his people. Nor does he know what our limits are, especially after tonight. If I were the Prince I would have people following us, far enough away so that we wouldn’t spot them; he may have someone whose perception is even better than yours. Once he knows where we have taken refuge he can recapture us at his leisure with as many of his people as he thinks he needs.”