Sorcerer's Legacy (11 page)

“Ielond gave his
life
to save you,” she whispered, and paused, arrested by the sight of a silky tangle of white hair twisted in the links of the medallion’s chain. A memory from the mirrowstone surfaced: Taroith, raising his head from examination of the Prince, hair snagged in the ornament; the impatient gesture that had jerked it free.

Elienne gripped the Prince’s shoulder hard. Hair, Ielond had said, bound the interface that allowed her contact with Darion through the mirrowstone. If the stone were unset, and the Prince’s hair exchanged for Taroith’s, might she be able to reach the Sorcerer by means of the same enehantment? Kennaird had said the cell that confined Taroith was warded. Elienne wondered whether its defenses would exclude a force applied from without. She looked at the mirrowsone, hesitant. She had little knowledge of lore, even from her own time. Meddling might well destroy the spell that bound the stone’s function. Elienne touched Darion’s lifeless cheek, suddenly firm in her resolve. The Prince’s condition would not wait; and if he died, the jewel’s linking properties would be useless anyway. With trembling hands, Elienne untwisted the hair from the chain. Then she covered the Prince well with blankets and seated herself by the single candle left burning on the nightstand.

The thin gold of the mirrowstone’s bezel yielded easily to the cuticle knife’s edge. Elienne tasted sweat on her lips as she pried the gem clear of its setting. Half-braced for the dazzling flare of a broken spell, she sat rigid as the stone tumbled into her palm. But the crystal only flashed with reflected light, teardrop cool and inert in her hand.

Elienne released a pent-up breath. Coiled tightly against the gold backing lay a strand of chestnut hair. She tipped it carefully onto the table and laid the silvery thread she had robbed from Darion’s chain in its place. When she returned the mirrowstone to the setting, the gem’s glassy depths clouded instantly.

“My Lady?”
The voice was Taroith’s!

Elienne flinched, startled. Jerked by its tether of chain the mirrowstone’s setting tore from her grasp. A winking arc of light marked the jewel’s fall, extinguished at once by the table’s shadow.

Elienne swore, bent, and groped across the carpet until her fingers touched ice. Prepared now for the unexpected, she retrieved the stone and set it back into place over Taroith’s hair.

“Elienne?” The inquiry this time was gentler, less surprised. “In the name of Ma’Diere, who taught you the art of mindspeech?”

The jewel’s interface worked, then, on a mental level. Elienne released her hold on the mirrowstone, rewarded by a view of a narrow, stone cell lined with closely spaced iron bars. Taroith sat on a wooden bench, white head disheveled and ascetic brows raised in astonishment.

Reluctantly, Elienne covered the gem with her finger. “Gifted? I’ve had no training. Only a jewel Ielond left to allow me contact with his Grace.”‘

Elienne
felt
rather than saw Taroith’s nod. “A mirrowstone? I understand. But how did you alter the interface?”

“Never mind that.” The words sounded sharp, even to Elienne’s ear. “Forgive me. Darion is very ill, perhaps dying. The guardswomen would not allow Kennaird to treat him.”

“He hadn’t the skill, in any case.” Taroith rose and paced the cell. “I have been consumed with worry ... Elienne, you must explain how you changed the mirrowstone’s interface. The precise nature of the enchantment is crucial if I am to help the Prince. And you are right, without care he might well die. Nairgen was recklessly heavy-handed with the drug.”

“I used hair,” Elienne said, and added a concise account of her deductions.

Taroith shook his head, bemused. “I have to concede Ielond’s judgment, my Lady. You have been admirably resourceful.” The Sorcerer paused with clasped hands. Framed by the bleak, barred expanse of cell wall, his face looked lined and weary. “Tell me how his Grace fares.”

“Not well, Gifted.” Elienne described the Prince’s condition ignoring her own self-doubt. Even with Taroith as consultant, there seemed little she could do to relieve the Prince’s condition. Yet when she released the mirrowstone, the Sorcerer had summoned his soulfocus. The cell’s close confines blazed with the blue-white brilliance of a lightning flash, and Taroith’s features carried a hammered look of determination.

“Lady, there is only one course of action open to us.”

His evident apprehension made Elienne’s stomach tighten unpleasantly, but she held her questions. Taroith’s gaze caught her through the mirrowstone. “I can—possibly—escape the prison’s ward if I transmit myself, in spirit, across the jewel’s interface.”

Elienne fought dismay. The linking enchantment was surely too tenuous to act as a bridge for anything more complex than words.

Taroith understood her concern. “There is danger. But Ielond’s work was exceptionally thorough. I trust his hand better than my own.”

Though intended as reassurance, the carefully measured phrases implied a risk all the greater for being left unmentioned. “Gifted, no!” At once ashamed, Elienne wished the words unsaid.

Taroith was patient. “Have courage, my Lady.”

“Courage!” Elienne shook her head. She swallowed, half-sickened by fear. “Then, I beg of you, be cautious.”

The Sorcerer returned a quiet smile. “I shall be, for Darion’s sake, as well as my own.” His face sobered as he explained how the transfer would be effected. “Lady, are you ready?”

Elienne forced herself steady. A large measure of Taroith’s safety rested in her hands, and his confidence wrenched at her heart. She laced the mirrowstone’s loosened setting securely between her fists and nodded.

Taroith set his soulfocus, first to trace and define the construction of Ielond’s spell. Physical sensation failed Elienne from the first instant of contact, and, despite all previous warning, the sudden plunge into black, weightless silence came as a shock. Blinded, deaf, and adrift in what seemed oblivion, she strove to regain the attitude of calm Taroith required, but her fear fed off that unnatural night, enfolding her like the wings of some monstrous creature. Just when she thought she would suffocate, a pinprick of light appeared.

Watch
. Taroith’s thought reached Elienne, strangely disembodied.
Every Master’s work is unique. Ielond’s sorceries were wrought with indescribable beauty.

The light source waxed brighter, acquired a bluish tinge. Elienne recognized Taroith’s soulfocus. Where it moved, she saw a thin needle of luminosity scribed against the gulf of negative space. Elienne seized the distraction hypnotically, following the focus’s progress as it shuttled to and fro, tracing out—curve and countercurve—the path of Ielond’s artistry. A structure gradually took shape. Awed, suddenly, by recognition of geometrically perfect symmetry, Elienne forgot herself. The spell’s pattern extended delicate as interlaced threadwork, line for line a harmonic consummation of balance.

Taroith patiently mapped an interlocking mesh of circles. Elienne wondered at the delicacy of his touch, until a flat, angular flash of reflection caught her attention. Intricate as glass lattice, a crystalline array of planes appeared across the spell.

The mirrowstone’s matrix,
Taroith sent.
The
enchantment passes through the stone near the origin. You may experience a sensation. Keep steady, whatever happens.

The master pattern narrowed, converged into a series of straight doubled lines. Elienne sharply recovered awareness of her body, as an alien touch hooked the vitals behind her heart. There followed an uneasy feeling of tension. Elienne fought revulsion. The sorcery tugged like fish line. Gooseflesh prickled her neck and arms.

I have crossed the prime command.
Taroith’s soulfocus drifted, separated at last from the softer luminescence of the spell.
As I thought, Ielond aligned the interface outward. Lady, you are the source. The mirrowstone will activate for communication to your touch alone.

Which reduced the risks to Darion, Elienne knew. But the success of Taroith’s transfer would rest all the more heavily upon her. If she lost contact with the stone while he crossed the interface, the dissolution that would result might well carry his spirit with it, since his entire awareness would be attuned to the link. Elienne battled fresh fear. When the interface assumed a psychic burden beyond its intended capacity, much of the stress would be transferred directly to her. And however soundly Ielond had wrought, the strength of his original handiwork was limited by her own frailty.

Taroith tried to encourage her.
Lady, Ielond had faith in you. My safety is in good hands.

But Ielond surely had not known of the Seeress’s prediction of failure. Elienne’s grip on the mirrowstone was slippery with sweat.

Let me know if the discomfort becomes more than you can bear.
Elienne nodded with false bravado.

Before her, the spell’s linear pattern blazed to blinding brilliance as Taroith left his physical body and merged conscious awareness with his soulfocus. The result shone with the solitary splendor of an evening star, framed by the ingenious subtlety of Ielond’s interface. Yet the display’s raw beauty escaped Elienne entirely. As Taroith’s spirit began the journey across the net, the physical pull within her increased to a searing pain.

Elienne cried aloud. Her hands clenched convulsively over the mirrowstone. The ornamental setting bore deeply into her palms. For long, agonized minutes, unfamiliar forces closed over her with the cruel bite of trap jaws. Breath dragged in her throat. She tried to call Taroith’s name, and found speech impossible. As a whirlpool of dizziness sucked at her consciousness, Elienne clung to her ebbing senses with an animal’s blind instinct.

The crippling sensation suddenly ceased. Elienne slumped forward onto the table, drained and shaking. Something strangely insubstantial touched the fingers still fisted around the mirrowstone.

You may relax,
Taroith assured her gently.
My release is accomplished.

Elienne looked up, eyes assaulted by doubled images. The Sorcerer stood beside her in spirit, a luminous figure bound into existence by the pattern of the interface, which glittered like shot-glass thread through the bedchamber. Solid as a beacon, it seemed, while candlelit furnishings and stone walls wavered as though diffracted by water.

“But I won’t hear you if I let go of the stone.” Elienne transferred the jewel to one hand and pushed a damp lock of hair from her face. “And how else will you reunite yourself with your body in the cell?”

My return is no difficulty,
Taroith explained.
The prison’s ward is polarized only against sorcery applied from within. I will care for Darion. You should try to sleep.

Elienne rose, swayed, and caught the table for balance, betrayed by unsteady legs. The weakness made her cross. “Gifted, save your concern for your Prince.”

Insubstantial as a drawing in silverpoint, Taroith knelt on the pillows at the Prince’s head. Darion lay still as death in the light of the Sorcerer’s soulfocus. Elienne studied the waxy pallor of his features through the cross-weave of Ielond’s enchantment. In Trathmere, a healer would have treated the Prince with an elixir containing an antidote or, if none existed, strong potions steeped with herbs. She wondered how Taroith would effect a cure with nothing at hand but will.

Taroith glanced up as though she had asked aloud.
Every creature possesses innate awareness of its physical self, by Ma’Diere’s Law. It cannot be permanently altered, except by Black Sorcery.

Elienne watched as the soulfocus drifted lower and touched Darion’s forehead. Taroith continued his explanation.
A trained Master can call forth that awareness, and reinforce the original pattern with inanimate, elemental forces. Drugs, diseases, even injuries have no natural place in the structure and so cannot maintain existence.

As the Sorcerer finished, the soulfocus blurred, expanded, and enveloped the Prince’s comatose body in a shroud of illumination.

Darion.

The strength of Taroith’s call made the very air seem to quiver. Ielond’s enchantment pulsed with power, echoing the rush of surf against the headland beyond the palace walls. Elienne could feel the seething hiss of current and the tumble of sand grains against the seabed as if she stood, drenched by breakers, upon the rocky spine of the reef.

Darion.

Taroith’s second call all but summoned stars from the sky. Cold, fresh air settled around him, and the chamber expanded with silence. Elienne forgot her fatigue, fascinated as the faintest flush of rose touched the Prince’s cheeks.

Darion.

Taroith’s last call was but a whsiper. As if his control was spent, the light that clothed the Prince flickered, then dimmed. Elienne felt the heightened awareness fade beyond perception, until the bedchamber lay stripped of enchantment, shadowed and stale, and hemmed by stone walls filmed with fog. The candles guttered, burnt low in rimmed sockets. Darion remained unconscious, his features limp and lifeless between Taroith’s hands. Elienne watched through burning eyes, unwilling to recognize defeat, unable to accept that all their efforts had resulted in failure.

Taroith stirred, the soft glow of his presence barely visible in the gloom.
I could not maintain the final sequence in spectral state. But all is not lost. I believe the drug has been reduced to safe limits. The Prince should sleep off the final stages on his own. Let him waken naturally. And, Lady?

Elienne looked up.

Ask Darion to have Nairgen’s woman questioned. She may provide evidence qf his guilt, or possibly names of his accomplices.

Elienne nodded quickly, shamed by neglect; Taroith had entered no plea on his own behalf until now, and, swept away by concern for herself and the Prince, she had forgotten to offer any help. “I’ll see he does, Gifted.” Contritely Elienne touched Darion’s hand. The fingers were warm. But before she could voice her thanks, Taroith and all evidence of Ielond’s spell vanished, leaving her alone in near darkness.