Sun Cross 1 - The Rainbow Abyss (22 page)

“Oh, I don’t know,” Rhion said. He’d had a long discussion with the boy on the subject of the general irksomeness of dancing lessons, and Syron had expressed undisguised astonishment that a wizard’s apprentice had ever been subjected to anything so mundane. “He did ask me if it were possible to lay spells on a dog to drive away fleas, so it shows he’s thinking.”

“Is it?” Tally asked curiously. “Possible, I mean. Because my dogs suffer something cruel in the summer.”

“Of course,” Rhion said. “The problem is that for the spell to last more than a few days, you have to shave the dog and write the runes on its skin, and even then they don’t work for more than a couple of weeks.”

“Oh, the poor things!”
Tally laughed, evidently picturing her own red and gold bird-hunters naked and crisscrossed with magical signs.

“Why is that?” the Duke inquired, leaning forward as a slave entered with brazier, grinder, and pot, and the room was slowly filled with the languorous scent of coffee. “I mean, how does a spell like that work and why can’t it be made to work indefinitely?”

And while the Duke himself poured out the aromatic liquid into tiny cups, and Jaldis explained the problems inherent in causing fleas to believe that a certain dog was actually made of copper, Rhion’s eyes met Tally’s across the table in an unspoken comment on the Duke’s cook’s coffee, and they both had to look aside to keep from giggling.

After that, Jaldis was asked to dine at the palace fairly frequently—as often, Rhion guessed, as the Duke was not required to entertain nobles who might have objected to the presence of wizards at his board or members of the various priesthoods who most certainly would have done so. A nobleman who was seen too often in the presence of mages frequently came under suspicion of using the wizards’ powers to oppress his subjects or spy upon his neighbors, just as a businessman was usually suspected of using wizardry to ruin his rivals, or a shopkeeper, to cheat his customers. And the Duke, tolerant man that he was, was still a usurper, a man who had overthrown his liege lord, no matter how many years ago it had been and how badly that liege had misgoverned. He had to be careful what people said.

But in private, he did not conceal his interest in Jaldis’ company, and what had started as an intellectual patronage blossomed into genuine friendship as the summer advanced. Hardly a week went by that a messenger did not arrive at Shuttlefly Court with a gift: food from the Duke’s table, game birds, fatted beef, or the sweet-fleshed orange fruits of the south; coffee; sometimes lamb and rabbit skins beautifully cured for the making of talismans, or small gifts of silver and gold.

In gratitude for this, on the last night of April, the night of Summerfire, Jaldis did what he had not done since he’d been court mage to the ill-fated Lord Henak in Wemmering—he agreed to use his magic to enliven the Duke’s Summerfire masking.

To Rhion’s surprise and delight, Jaldis abruptly taught him a whole new series of spells of whose very existence he had previously been ignorant, and together the two of them spent three days manufacturing and ensorcelling a powder of nitre, crushed herbs, pulverized bone, and silver, which the servants of the Duke then dusted over every tree and shrub in the palace’s garden.

“What’ll it do?” Tally asked, pacing at Rhion’s side down the graveled path that skirted one of the garden’s canals.

Rhion laughed. Morning sunlight filtered warm on their faces through the overhanging lime trees; the small lawns that lay between copses of willow and myrtle and jacaranda glittered with quick-burning dew. Tally had offered to guide him through the maze of pools to the small grotto that marked the garden’s farthest corner, and on all sides they were surrounded by the bustle of the upcoming fête. Slaves were stringing garlands around the cornices of the little gazebos and shrines, pulling the ubiquitous, spiky leaves of dandelions from the miniature lawns, plucking pondweed from among the miles of waterlilies and setting up tables for buffets or platforms for musicians. Others—with a disgruntled air and suspicious care—were dusting the faintly musty-smelling powder over rosebush, laurel, and linden tree that made up the intricate knots of foliage at the crossings of the shaded paths.

“Theoretically,” he said, “it’ll glow. It’s one of those silly, useless spells that someone came up with and handed down, something only a court wizard out to delight the heart of his patron would think up in the first place. I’ll show you…”

Tally led the way down a twisting path that turned from the ponds, leading through a myrtle grove and around the side of an artificial hill crowned with gum trees. A tiny pavilion had been built out of one of the hill’s sides, its domed roof half-covered with mounded earth which supported full-grown trees and dangling curtains of flowering vine. Doves fluttered, cooing, from beneath the eaves as they entered, and far in the back, where the marble walls gave way to rock, cool even in the summer heat, a fountain whispered its secrets to the dark.

On a bench of green porphyry and bronze that stood near the fountain’s rim Rhion set down the satchel he’d been carrying, and took from it the things he’d prepared the night before: long slips of beaten silver inscribed with traced runes; three milky lumps of rose quartz the size of his thumb; candles; chalk; and half a dozen tubes of glass in which, capped with red wax, tiny rolls of parchment and leather could be seen.

“This,” he said, “is a talismanic resonator—or it will be, when I’ve got it assembled.” He knelt beside the bench, and Tally sat on the fountain’s rim, pulling off her big straw gardening hat and letting her hair hang down in a big sloppy fawn-colored braid, like a child’s.

“After the feast,” Rhion went on, “your father’s going to announce the masking. Everyone goes outside, to find the terrace dark. The maskers are assembled just below the terrace steps, and under the terrace itself, in that huge room where they keep the orange trees during the winter, is Jaldis, weaving a spell—and it’s not a very complicated one—that will make this particular combination of bone and silver glow in the dark.”

His hands worked while he spoke, quickly weaving the thin strapwork of ensorcelled metal into the proper patterns around the quartz. He paused, taking off his spectacles to concentrate, his mind summoning the runes, the constellations of power his master had taught him; Tally was silent, observing with grave interest. For a time there was no sound but the gentle plashing of the fountain; even the stirring in the main gardens was left far behind.

At length Rhion went on. “The trumpeters strike up a fanfare, which I’ll be able to hear even this far from the terrace. Jaldis speaks the word of power, I set the talismanic resonator into life, the resonator creates a field from the original spell, and in that field the stuff will glow all night. And everyone goes home saying how clever your father is.”

Tally leaned across to pick up and examine one of the glass tubes, turning the little talisman over in her long fingers. “Why the resonator? I mean, couldn’t Jaldis just put a spell on the powder?”

“He could, but it wouldn’t cover anywhere near all the garden, and it probably wouldn’t last all night. A talismanic resonator expands the area covered by a specific spell, and can be used to lengthen its effects as well, provided it’s got talismans of power to keep it going… these things.” He took the crystal tube from her hand, and with his other fingers gestured to the other talismans—not only tubes of glass and crystal, but little round discs of bone bound in gold, or slips of carved ashwood inscribed with sigils of power.

“Resonators,” Rhion continued, “draw one
hell
of a lot of power to keep up a field, even for a piddling little spell like this one.” He sketched a small circle of power in silvered chalk on the flat top of the bench, closing in the strange little tangle of silver and stone. “That’s why it isn’t practical politics, for instance, to keep a building illuminated all night—or even a ball of witchlight burning all night—with one.”

“Oh,” Tally said, disappointed. “Pooh. And I thought I’d just devised a new source of illumination…”

“It’s been tried. Also, with some spells—and light’s one of them—you get pockets in the field. In a house, for instance, illuminated with a ball of witchlight and a resonator, you might get places where someone would get lost, for no reason at all, on the kitchen stairway or on the way down the hall; or places where everyone would get furiously angry at nothing; or drop and break everything they touched. Or the pocket might draw every ant in the city to it… or every streetwalker. You never know.” He set the talismans around the initial circle of power, and was silent for a time, weaving the spirals of power to include them in the greater spell.

“Why is that?” Tally asked, when he straightened up again.

He readjusted his spectacles. “No one really knows. My guess—and Jaldis’ theory—is that it’s because of the impurities in the materials. A wizard’s always at the mercy of the materials he has to work with. The resonator magnifies even the smallest flaws of a crystal, or the slightest traces of copper or lead in silver. Which is the reason wizards have to work with as pure materials as possible…”

“Is that the story, then?” a thin, rather cold voice queried from the grotto’s vine-curtained entrance. Looking up, Rhion saw the slim gray shape of Lord Esrex framed against the silken light.

He had met the youthful scion of the White Bragenmeres two or three times since the first dinner with the Duke, a slender young man not much taller than himself and perhaps six years younger, always exquisitely garbed in the height of fashion, with the coldest gray eyes he had ever seen.

Rhion’s feelings about him had been mixed; knowing how wretched Esrex had made Tally over the previous winter, he had been inclined to dislike him, but sensed in him also the conflict of pride and his desire for his enemy’s daughter. Mingled with this had been a kind of guilt at having been instrumental in breaking that pride—probably all that Esrex had left.

The sympathy hadn’t survived their initial encounter. Esrex, coldly handsome in spite of a hairline already promising to betray him, had shown to Rhion and to Jaldis nothing but an impersonal and cutting contempt, and Rhion had observed that he treated the palace slaves—and such lesser members of the court whose lineages were not equal to his—in the same fashion. Rhion had been a little curious, up to that time, about Esrex’ allegiance to the egalitarian cult of Agon, but guessed that it, too, was merely a tool.

Esrex stood now with his arm possessively around the waist of the plump little Lady Damson, whose unwontedly loose-fitting gown and smug, secret sparkle told their own tale. She said nothing, only eyed Rhion warily from the pillared porch. Rhion wondered whether it was because she guessed that he might have been the wizard who had woven the love-philter—if the assassins hadn’t lied and said they’d accomplished their task—or because she was afraid, if she got too close to a mage, she’d miscarry. His beard might be recognizable—his voice almost certainly would be, if she were at all observant.

In any case her bulging eyes followed her young husband apprehensively as he descended the shallow rock-cut steps into the grotto, stepping daintily in his embroidered satin slippers with their ridiculously long, curled toes.

He stopped before the bench, and stood looking down at the resonator in contempt. “Pure silver,” he commented.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t touch it,” Rhion said politely, standing up and regarding the young dandy with a wary eye. “Once the spells are in place, if the circles are crossed or broken the whole thing has to be done again.”

“Is that so?”

Rhion could have bitten out his tongue with annoyance the next moment, because Esrex tucked the bouquet he carried into his belt, and, his eyes holding Rhion’s in deliberate challenge, slowly removed his glove, wet his forefinger with his neat little pink tongue, and drew a line exactly bisecting the circle of power and two of the talismanic spirals, all with a slow relish of one who knows he may commit outrage with impunity because he is who he is.

“It would be a shame if Uncle’s fête were a failure.”

“I’m sure your aunt would think so,” Rhion replied steadily, holding back the desire to slap that lipless little mouth.

Tally, who had no worries about ending up
fruged
in an alley, pushed her brother-in-law aside angrily. “Esrex, what a pill you are,” she said scornfully, and he turned and regarded her like an adult contemplating the fury of a child—not an easy matter considering she topped him by an inch.

“My dear cousin,” he said, holding his smudged finger to the soft harlequin sunlight that came through the vines. “Are you still so naive that you haven’t guessed the real reason wizards insist on pure materials? And always, you notice, silver and gold? How much silver did your father hand that blind old mendicant—if he
is
really blind—to sprinkle into his trees? He says that was what it was for, at least.”

Tally opened her mouth in angry denial, but Rhion only folded his arms and said, “Oh, probably about as much as he grants you for your monthly allowance.”

Esrex’ face blotched up an ugly red. “He does not
grant
me anything that isn’t mine by right, witch…”

Rhion widened his blue eyes at him, and put a hand to his heart. “Oh, I understand that. It’s a tremendous shame.”

The young man’s hand lashed furiously out, the white kid of the glove he held slashing across Rhion’s cheek with a slap like wet cloth. Rhion flinched, then bowed even more deeply. “Ah. I see. That must make it less of a shame.”

The red stains on those shallow cheekbones faded, leaving him almost yellow with impotent wrath. “You are a godless little cheat,” he whispered, “and your master a whore.” And turning, he stalked back toward the steps where his diminutive lady stood. The long toes of his embroidered satin slippers wobbled back and forth as he walked; it was nothing for Rhion to reach out with his mind and catch one of them underneath the other. Esrex went down with an undignified squawk, striking both bony shins on the edge of the worn stone step and tearing his white silk stockings like a clumsy schoolchild. He scrambled up as swiftly as he could, shins bleeding and eyes flaming, to meet Rhion’s innocent, bespectacled gaze.