The Windrose Chronicles 2 - The Silicon Mage (30 page)

In the woods beyond the stables, Caris folded up his spyglass and settled back against the warty bark of the elm beneath which he sat.

So the Regent was coming to Devilsgate.

That would explain the troops searching the woods for half a day's walk in any direction, whose sign Caris had crossed again and again on his way to the manor. Pharos was said to fear and suspect everyone and everything; Joanna's first, disastrous, encounter with the de facto ruler of the Empire of Ferryth had stemmed from the Regent's insistence upon having any house he entered searched and surrounded before he would set foot over the threshold.

But the old-fashioned manor was Cerdic's home, two days' journey from Angelshand. The Regent was certainly spiteful enough simply to take it away from his cousin on general principles; nevertheless, Caris felt uneasy. What he had seen in the divining well on Tilrattin Island still echoed in his mind, like the harsh, ambiguous note of an iron gong. At the time he had the impression that what he had seen was at Larkmoor, but he realized it could just as easily have been here. The thought turned him cold with anger and hopeless dread.

Was that what I saw?
he
wondered bleakly. That he lied to her, deceived her?

In his heart he hoped that it was. That was, in a way, the lesser of his fears.

Along the pale streak of road between the gray cutouts of the trees an outrider came cantering, his coat gaudy as outseason poppies against the colorless afternoon. Caris knew what his coming heralded. He rose cautiously to his feet, making sure he was out of clear sight of the house, and began his slow drift through the rim of the woods, edging along the knotted knees of tree roots where he could keep above the frost-stiff mats of leaves between, covering his tracks carefully where he could not. In another hour, he calculated, it would begin to get dark. That should offer some concealment as he crossed the vast brown spaces of the empty gardens toward the house itself.

A marble gazebo of the sort popular forty years ago stood amid the open lawns to the west of the house; through his spyglass Caris had glimpsed the gold flash of sleeve-braid in its trellised shadows and the glint of a watcher's glass. He approached the house from the stables on the east; with his own glass, he watched the point at which the half-mile drive from the main road cleared the trees. When at long last the dark bulk of the Prince Regent's carriage appeared, its lamps primrose in the gathering darkness, Caris folded up his glass, straightened his quilted coat, strode boldly across the open space between the woods and the stable, and thence along the drive to the house. Sasenna and guards from all quarters of the grounds were converging on the front of the house to greet their master. Those that saw Caris as he entered the kitchen quarters questioned him no more than they questioned one another. Unerringly, he passed along the halls to his chosen destination and place of concealment.

A fire had been kindled in the room that had been Prince Cerdic's study. The long curtains of crimson velvet had been drawn over the north-facing windows, cutting out the sight of the dark teeth of the Devil's Road against the dun-colored hills. Pharos hated the thought of being spied upon. Caris settled himself into a window embrasure, one of his dirks unsheathed in his hand.

He was prepared to wait for hours, if need be. But a servant came almost at once, lighting a holocaust of candles in every holder and sconce in the room—Pharos abhored the darkness—and Caris felt a twinge of satisfaction that he had guessed aright. In a short while he heard the distant vibration of doors opening and closing and the rattle of the carriage teams being led around to the stables. Then, faint but approaching, high heels clicked on the parquet of the floor.

Caris had already arranged a small parting in the curtains, natural as a dark fold in the heavy velvet. Through it he saw a man enter from the shadows of the hall; from Joanna's description he must be the Regent's bodyguard Kanner, well over six and a half feet tall, scarred, ugly, and armed to the teeth. A former sasennan, Caris remembered, Kanner had been made deaf by a high fever and, instead of killing himself as sasenna did when they became physically flawed, he had recanted his vows to remain as Pharos' servant.

Immediately behind him walked a handsome, freshfaced boy of seventeen or so in white velvet and far too many pearls, and behind him, like a dainty flame of black and gold in the refulgent light, minced the Regent himself, Pharos Giraldus of the House of Destramor, pervert, sadist, and Pella's rightful husband and lord.

It was the first time Caris had seen him up close. His former glimpses had all been brief, and the last one—in the yard of the roadhouse on the way to Angelshand last summer—had been blurred by the changeable flicker of torchlight. This was the man who had legal power over Pellicida, Caris thought, feeling oddly cool—this doll-like, dainty, evil little creature with his painted eyes and bitten lips.

The boy in white was gazing around with wide eyes the color of ripe blueberries, his rouged mouth parted. He breathed, “Oh, my lord, it's beautiful. Thank you! Thank you.”

Pharos smiled and reached up to pat the rosy cheek. “No more beautiful than you, my lovely Leynart. It was time my charming cousin Cerdic learned that, even though he's the biggest moneylender in Angelshand these days, the property of the Imperial House is mine to do with as I wish. If I wish to install you here for a year, ten years, or in perpetuity... you've certainly given me more pleasure than he ever did or is ever likely to.”

The boy laughed and hugged him, the dark velvet curls mingling with the pomaded gold. Then he straightened up again—he topped the older man by a good five inches—and looked gravely down at the Regent, his hands resting on the bullion-stitched shoulders. “I wish I could travel with you.”

“My pet,” the Prince said, his rather shrill voice quiet, “you know that's not possible.”

Leynart broke away from him, walked around the great desk of inlaid fruitwood to the pink marble mouth of the fireplace, close enough that, if Caris had reached out from his hiding place in the window, he could have touched a velvet sleeve. He extended his hands to the blaze, and the shape of them shone pinkly through the flawless lawn of his sleeve ruffle with the saffron glow. “Why not?” he demanded after a moment. “You know you can do anything you want. Who is she to object if you bring me with you?”

“She,” said Pharos, folding his arms and regarding the boy inscrutably, “is my wife.”

The scene he had glimpsed in the silver depths of the pool returned to Caris again, with cold and sinking dread, like the news of a cancer one has tried for months to tell oneself is indigestion. He felt no surprise, but only a grief that filled his body and hurt it to the marrow of his bones. As if it had been spoken aloud, he knew now where Pharos was bound, and why, and what it was that he had seen.

Leynart laughed, trying to be boyish and ingenuous and only sounding tinny. “I still think yours is the best description of her: one of those big black mares decked out to pull the processional cart on a peasant's saint's day. I still have nightmares thinking about that awful yellow riding habit...” The tone was of a familiar gambit, rallying for a response that he did not get.

“She's welcome to wear what she pleases,” Pharos began impatiently.

“Not the lavender satin, surely!”

“I certainly don't have to look at her all the time. But I wasn't fooled by that tarradiddle about the cold. Her?
Cold? Pah.”

The young man shuddered with exaggerated delicacy. “What a bruiser! I'll bet she takes baths in rainwater straight out of the barrel! I can't think why you simply didn't take a crop to the slut when she slapped you.”

“Can't you?” Pharos cocked his head a little, his pale eyes in their insomniac circles glinting oddly in the dancing light. “She would have taken it away from me and flogged the daylights out of me. A filthy little brute, that dog—but hers.”

“As I am yours.”
Leynart turned from the fire and walked back to where the Prince still stood. Taking one lace-cuffed hand, he raised it to his lips. “You'd be welcome to torment any number of pets, for all of me. You know that.”

“Yes,” said the Prince softly. The boy's head was still bent over his hand, so Leynart did not see the glint of contempt in those pale eyes. “Yes, I know that.” Pharos turned abruptly away and walked out of the narrow field of Caris' vision. By the sound of his voice, he was near the other window, close to the pedimented niches where the statues of the Old Gods clustered between Cedric's beloved books of occultism and quackery. Leynart stood where he had been, anxiety and apprehension in his face.

“I won't be at odds with her, Leynart,” Pharos' voice said at last. “I need a child.”

The boy laughed crudely. “Is that all? Since when has a man needed to ask permission to mount his own mare? I'm astounded you can even rise to such an occasion. I certainly couldn't.”

Caris was aware of the pain in his palm from the crush of the dagger's hilt in his grip and forced himself to relax it. There was the faint slither of satin against lace, the muted creak of the corner of the desk taking the Prince's slight weight perched upon it. “They're trying to murder me, Leynart,” that soft, edgy voice said. “All of them are plotting against me—Cerdic, Magister Magus, the Council of Wizards who wouldn't let me skin and slice Windrose when I had the chance to do it. Who's to say they weren't behind his escape? Or that the Bishop Herthe wasn't, with her sanctimonious whining? The only reason I married that musclebound Amazon was that Cerdic is my heir, and I won't have the country given over to a pack of superstitious dog wizards when I'm dead. But having married her, the least I can do is give her the respect due to my wife.”

Tears gleamed suddenly in Leynart's cornflower eyes. Impulsively he strode out of Caris' line of sight, leaving only Kanner in view, standing impassively, arms folded, near the door. There was the swirling flounce of laces and silk as the boy flung himself to his knees. “So what do you think she's going to do?” his voice demanded, suddenly trembling. “Drive you out of her bed with a stick? She has to want a child as badly as you do, to make her someone at Court and not just the jumped-up provincial nobody she is! Your child for preference, to keep the family looks, but I'm sure anyone with blond hair will do! Pharos, I love you! I don't want anything from you except your love! If I don't have that, I swear I will die!”

Caris turned his face away, sickened, staring for a time out into the thin darkness beyond the windows' misted glass. Against a leaden sky, the Devil's Road was nearly invisible; the long stretch of open garden and lawn was lost in a lake of shadow, broken at the very edge of his sight by the gleaming white island of the gazebo's dome. He had no business here, he thought; no business hearing that spoiled child's hysterical sobs, or the dry swish of lace as, uncaring of his bodyguard's presence, Pharos stroked the dark, ruffled head.

Leynart wept, Caris knew, because he saw in Pharos' eyes the dawning of respect for his wife. And like Caris, he knew what that respect might become.

In the gray pool he had seen them together, Pharos and Pella, sitting side by side in talk while Kyssha slept on Pella's swollen lap. Pella's face had been grave, but in her eyes had been no fear, merely her matter-of-fact willingness to take people as she found them. Her husband's pale eyes, so shifty with everyone else, had been on her.

I will never have her,
Caris thought, the desire for her consuming his flesh at the same time cold grief drowned his heart. When the sasenna had arrived to search the island, he had thought the scene was one of betrayal, but now he understood. In a way, for Pella to be tricked or forced into telling her husband of their whereabouts would have been preferable to what he now knew the scene had been. It was as it should be, he knew. He never could have had her anyway—neither her, nor magic, nor the brightly colored life that he sensed stirring like a perfumed carnival beyond the dark boundaries of his destiny. He wondered despairingly if it was a mark of love to wish that her husband would continue to hate her, so that she could be his, at least in his heart for the little that remained of his life. But having no experience of loving, he did not know.

“Antryg?”
Joanna said softly and felt the movement of his pectoral muscles beneath her cheek as he turned his head. They had lain a long time in silence, twined together in a stone burial niche in the ruined chapel's wall. At some distance, in the center of the ruin, two small fires burned a few feet apart. The light of them filtered through the hanging curtain of brown vines, dappling Antryg's face in a moire of shadow and light. He'd put his spectacles back on, and fragments of red and orange skated across the cracked lens and glinted in the diamond of his earrings. “What are the long-range effects of magic upon inanimate objects?”

“I don't know.” His mellow baritone was little more than a vibration in his chest against her ear. “In that, I'm like Suraklin, except that Suraklin always refused to believe that there were any at all. He has always discounted reasons for not doing what he seriously wanted to do.”

“You said that the stones in the circle had voices, spoke to one another, because of all the magic that had been drawn through them over the years.”

“Yes.” His bony arm tightened around her shoulders under the pile of blankets, coats, and cloaks, as if to protect her against whatever lay beyond the black fog of the night. "Magic isn't a science, as the Council of Wizards claims it is, nor an art, as Suraklin always said. It's life itself. It imbues all things, and particularly those things it touches for long periods of time. I keep thinking about that poor scientist, playing the Dead God in Far Wilden, gradually poisoning himself by the very thing that kept him alive. You're right, Joanna—software is only as good as the hardware it travels through. Suraklin believes that, because the teles-balls that make up the power-relays, and the stones along the energy-lines that convey the life-force to him, don't speak to him, there will never come a time when they might. But they do absorb magic. The teles-balls are practically indestructible, and some of them are older than any memory. There were two or three in Suraklin's collection that—frightened me. I don't like to think of them, lying hidden in the Bone Well beneath the Citadel with the black carrion strippings of half demons he called into existence and then imprisoned there because he couldn't quite kill them when he was done.