Magic Steps Page 14

  For a moment there was only silence as the duke’s eyes met hers. Then he said, “No. We have provost’s mages, even battle-mages, with more experience in the taking of killers than you.”

  “This is different, Uncle.”

  “I forbid you to put yourself in such danger,” the duke said tightly.

  Sandry gulped and stood her ground. “I don’t like it either, but I don’t see another way. They must be stopped.”

  The duke turned his gaze to Lark, who stood just behind Sandry. “How can this be? Of all the mages at Winding Circle, how is my great-niece the only one who can handle this monster?”

  “Not just me, Uncle,” Sandry told him. “Pasco’s going to help.” The moment she spoke the words, she wished she could unsay them — or at least unsay her student’s name.

  The duke rested his shaved head on his hands. “That feckless, rattle-pated … Well. Knowing that he will assist you makes all the difference. Now, instead of wishing to throw Winding Circle’s mage council into the harbor, I will do so. Immediately.”

  “Your grace, you know we can’t allow that,” Lark said gravely.

  He looked up, and raised a finger. “Ah. You are powerful enough to stop me from tossing your council bodily into my harbor, but you tell me you cannot stop the Dihanur assassins and their mage. Can you see that I might feel somewhat — confused?”

  Lark settled herself in a chair in front of Duke Vedris’s desk. “You may as well get comfortable, dear,” she advised Sandry. “He’s going to be difficult.” Sandry obeyed, taking the seat beside hers. To the duke Lark said, “We will do all we can — prepare the materials she needs, guard her and Pasco when the time comes, and dispose of what remains of the enemy’s work. We won’t send a fourteen-year-old girl and a twelve-year-old boy naked to do battle with a blighted mage.”

  “Strange,” remarked Erdogun. He sat just behind the duke’s chair. “That’s what it sounds like to me.”

  Lark folded her hands. “You know I am classed as a great mage.” The duke nodded. “I work spells by passing them through my thread. I must bind my power to real thread and whatever I use to handle it, or none of my spells work. That’s true of every weaver-mage I know — except Sandry. She handles magic itself like I work thread. She can spin magic. She can weave it. She can embroider, or knot, or even tie a fringe with it, if she wants to—”

  “Lark,” Sandry protested.

  “No, my dear, it’s important that people know how unique your gift is. In this case it’s vital — I’d hate to have to fight the Dihanur mage and his grace.”

  The duke smiled, but his eyes were grim. “I’m honored that you would think the task difficult.”

  “But why?” Erdogun demanded. “You’re a great mage — your fellows on the council are great mages, legendary for power and craft. You have an arsenal of capture-magics and spells to drain the power of other mages. Do you really expect us to believe you people can’t take this — fellow — and turn him into a tea cozy, if that’s your fancy? However powerful this madman may be, I do not believe that he can stand against all of you.”

  “But he can,” Lark insisted. “The nature of his magic is the absence of ours, don’t you see? We could grip him with all we have, and he would not only walk away, but his magic would consume ours. Sandry got a taste of that when the Dihanurs escaped. His unmagic almost pulled her into the door he’d opened.”

  “Then how will anything that my lady does trap him?” demanded Erdogun.

  Sandry told the baron, “I’m going to spin his unmagic into a rope and knot it into a net. Then Pasco will dance the spell to bring the mage and the two killers to us. They won’t be able to fight it, any of them, because they’re all so tainted with the nothingness that it’s like their own lifeblood. The unmagic net will pull them in.”

  “Once we have them, we can cleanse them,” said Lark. “You’ll have the killers for trial, and we’ll keep the mage in custody. And it must be soon, before they can work their way through the layers of spells on the inner keep.”

  “What?” cried Erdogun, offended. “The inner keep is impregnable once the protective spells are activated!”

  “It isn’t impregnable to this mage, haven’t you been listening?” Lark demanded. “Thank your lucky stars that he doesn’t know the rooms where the families are kept, or he would simply walk through from where he’s hiding now into those rooms. Once he tires of trying that, he’ll just bring the Dihanurs here and send them through the spells. It may take them time to go through each and every layer — think of acid eating its way through a bolt of cloth — but eventually they’ll get through.”

  “Are there are no spells against nothingness in the layers?” asked the duke quietly.

  Lark shook her head. “To spell against it, you would have to use it — and then it would spread and eat all of the other spells.” To Erdogun she said, “Must they break into this castle before you’re convinced?”

  “They can’t,” Erdogun said flatly. “You Winding Circle people are alarmists.”

  Someone hammered on the study floor. “Your grace! Your grace, please open up!”

  Alzena was getting very tired of Duke Vedris. Putting all of the Rokats in one place for safekeeping should have been perfect for her and Nurhar, but this duke was an old fox who knew the ways of hunters. He had brought them into his own residence. Now they hid in the castle’s very heart — a stone tower hundreds of years old, with more layers of spells to ward it than there were stars.

  Why do this? Alzena wondered as she slid by the guards at the last gate to the duke’s residence. Everyone knew Vedris only tolerated the Rokats for their myrrh. If he hated them, why bring them here?

  She would kill him, when she was done with the Emelan Rokats — or she would if she wished. She cared about so little except that one goal, the end of these Rokats. The family had invested so much to send them here, the expense greater than that spent on the teams in any of the other Pebbled Sea countries. Jamar and Qasam had been the brothers of the Rokat who had killed Palaq Dihanur and displayed his head in dishonor; many of those now in the inner keep were the grandchildren of Jamar and Qasam Rokat. Their deaths came first; they had to. Only when the last Emelan Rokat was dead could Alzena tell this duke what she thought of his interference.

  The numbers of people in this Citadel were a nuisance, but only that. She simply had to be careful that no one blundered into her.

  At first the palace spells were laughable, cobwebs against her face as she climbed the steps to the duke’s residence. The main doors were closed and guarded. Alzena waited. Sooner or later they would open — as they did now. A woman in servant’s gray emerged, arguing with a pair of guards. Alzena slipped around them and went inside.

  Today was a scouting mission only: with no palace maps available for study, one of them had to explore the place. Next time, when they were ready to finish their work, Nurhar would come to help with the killing. It was time that he did. Even she would not be quick enough to slaughter them all before someone thought to attack the place where she might be, or to throw a net over her.

  Alzena found her way by feel, choosing her direction by the number of cobweb-magics that brushed her as she walked. The thicker they felt, the closer she was to her quarry. On she trudged, eyes straining as she peered through the slit in her spell-mask. The feel of cobwebs got heavier; it took more and more effort to walk through them. The very air gained weight, until she could manage just one labored step at a time.

  That would happen, the mage had said. She would never meet anything so complicated as the inner keep’s layers of spells unless she penetrated some other ancient kingdom’s private stronghold. They could slow her, but as long as she pressed forward, they would not halt her.

  The air pressed more thickly against her body. She fought to go on — why? Was there a point? Yes, she remembered dully, the killing to come. Once it was done, she could stop. She could do nothing. No one would insist that she get up, walk about, e
at, dress. They would leave her alone. That would be good.

  She knew, in the part of her that said she used to love Nurhar, that she owed everything to the family. House Dihanur had saved Alzena when her parents were murdered, had raised and taught her, had given her a husband. Dihanurs had gone to the expense and loss of family lives it took to capture the mage and ensure he would obey her. They had bought dragonsalt to keep him dependent on Alzena and Nurhar. Without it, who could say whether he would stay grateful to those who’d saved him from the pirate who crippled him?

  Alzena halted, fighting to breathe under the weight of magic that encased her. The hall had opened onto a broad, wide corridor that followed a curved stone wall. She could see that wall only near the ceiling. Its stones were so black and pitted that they had to be the stones of the inner keep. The rest was hidden behind a wood barricade ten feet high. It reached as far as she could see in both directions; she would have bet that it went all the way around the inner keep.

  How dare they add one more obstacle, even one as stupid as a wooden fence? It could only slow her down, but it could never stop her. Alzena’s eyes were fixed on the thing, already examining it for weakness. If she could not wait until someone opened the lone door in the barricade and slip in that way, she might have to climb it. Calculating, she didn’t see the low, treacherous step down to the floor that wrapped around the inner keep. When she missed it and stumbled, she made a perfectly audible thud.

  The six guards loitering around the door through the barricade sprang to their feet, drawing their swords. They spread until they were within sword’s reach of one another, sweeping in front of them with their weapons. One of them blew a shrill blast on the whistle that hung around his neck.

  Oh, they had been well briefed, and she had been a fool to let a sound escape. They knew they might not see her, but they could slice her, just as the arrow had punched through the spells and into her flesh. If she had been quiet, if she had not missed that step, she might have worked her way around them. She could have gotten to the door and slipped in, just as she had walked into this building. They were ready for her now. The guard at the end of their line stayed within sword’s reach of the door.

  She turned away in disgust, and blundered into three guards who had been hidden by yet more spells. The sight of their comrades coming to alert had brought them out of their concealment — or had they, too, heard that stupid noise of hers?

  The layered magics dragged on her as she drew her sword and cut down the one she’d run into. She chopped at his neighbor’s leg; the woman fell to the floor. The third guard who had been hidden swept his blade from side to side, feeling for her. Only a few inches lay between Alzena and his weapon, and she could hear running footsteps. Reinforcements were on the way.

  She oozed back from the guard whose blade sought her flesh. The guards on the barricade were advancing carefully. Older and wiser than the one she had killed, they were leaving no room for her to get by them and through the barricade door. She backed down the hall, her sword ready, glancing back twice to make sure she walked into no one else. Fresh guards poured into the area around the barricade from an adjoining hall.

  “There,” one of them said, pointing. Alzena looked down and shook her head. Her sword was dripping, leaving a blood trail. She dropped it and continued to back out, moving faster as she put distance between her and those cursed spells.

  She had to stop in the main hall, when a trickle of warmth down her leg told her she was bleeding. One of the guards had cut her side. Cursing under her breath, she filched a lace runner from a side table and wadded it against the cut, tightening her belt over it until the thing pinched. Only when she was sure that she wouldn’t leave a trail did she make her way out of the residence.

  She had plenty of think about as she inched by milling guards, placed on the alert by their comrades at the inner keep. She and Nurhar could manage the layered spells, but what of the barricade? The guard on that small door would be doubled, and it would be alert — these people were very well trained. She and Nurhar would have to climb the barricade, which meant they would need tools, and the mage to hide the noise they made. And if she had discovered anything about these people, it was that they learned from their mistakes. Next time it would be harder to get as close to the inner keep as she’d done today. She had to find another way in.

  For a long, long minute after the messenger told the duke that one guard was dead and another wounded in the inner keep, no one made a sound. Sandry rested her hands on the duke’s shoulders, not liking the expression in his eyes. She knew this had to cut deeply. An assassin had made his or her way to the very heart of Vedris’s power. Erdogun’s brown face was tinged scarlet with humiliation at being proven wrong almost as soon as he had called Lark an alarmist.

  At last the duke looked up at Sandry and gave her a thin smile, patting one of her hands. “Must you do this with Pasco?” he inquired. “The boy is nice enough, but he doesn’t seem very reliable.”

  Sandry glanced at Lark. “We did talk about another way, but—” She swallowed. “Truly, Uncle, I prefer this.”

  The duke frowned. “What is this other way that you find so distasteful?”

  Lark sighed. “We discussed shaping the unmagic as a web, rather than a net, and blanketing the inner keep with it, like a spider’s web. When the assassins come, they’ll touch it and — well, they won’t stick to it, exactly. The nothingness in them would become part of the web.”

  “Then I could take the web and unravel it, maybe even spin it into one cord,” Sandry explained. “The problem is, Uncle, I couldn’t save the parts of them that are still real. If I had to do it that way, I’d kill them — if it even worked.”

  “We know the net-spell will do the job,” Lark assured the duke. “And if Pasco calls these people to the net, we can make sure no innocents will be trapped. We’ll meet the Dihanurs on our terms, not theirs.”

  “Have you spoken to Pasco?” asked the duke wearily.

  “No,” replied Sandry. “I wanted to work it all out before I talked to him.”

  “He’ll refuse,” Erdogun said tartly. “If he has a whit of sense, he’ll refuse.”

  12

  “I could help catch rats?” Pasco demanded, eyes alight. It was the next morning, at Yazmín’s school. “By dancing?”

  “That’s the idea,” Sandry told him.

  Pasco jumped up gleefully. “That will show them!” he cried. “Tippy-feet indeed!”

  Sandry looked at her hands and smiled. She had thought Pasco might see it that way. “We’re not sure we can do it,” she warned. “I still have to make the net.”

  “But you will, and I’ll dance it, and we’ll have rats in it. A nice day’s fishing for a fa Toren and an Acalon, don’t you think?”

  Sandry grinned at him. “I do think.”

  Pasco carefully lowered himself into a split, wincing as he completed it. “We can do it,” he told her, his face serious. “You can do anything.”

  “We’ll see,” she replied. “It may come to nothing if I can’t work that stuff into a proper net. Now settle down. Let’s try meditation.”

  He did a little better today. Sandry could see his magic did not stray so far from him. It also didn’t flicker as much as it had, which told her that his attention wandered less. Maybe he just needs something useful to do, she thought as the city’s clocks chimed the hour. Something his family thinks is useful, anyway.

  As she took up her ward and Pasco stretched his legs, Yazmín walked in. “You said when you got here that you’ve something important to discuss?” she asked Sandry.

  “We’re going to make a net-dance for rat-trapping,” Pasco told her cheerfully. “And I’m going to dance it.”

  “It’s a way to catch these killers,” explained Sandry. “If you don’t mind, we’d like your help with creating the dance, and getting Pasco ready for it. Everything has to be planned to the inch. One wrong step — if he so much as brushes the unmagic—” Sandry
gulped. “I think the net would devour him.”

  “Never fear,” Yazmín said cheerfully. “I can get him so he’ll be able to hit a dot on the floor, blindfolded, every time. A small dot.” Pasco sat with his left leg straight out in front of him as he tried to grip his foot and touch his forehead to his knee. Yazmín pressed down on his left knee with one hand as she pulled back on his toes, forcing him to stretch an extra inch. He whimpered, then touched his forehead to his knee and held the position to a count of ten.

  Sandry watched them solemnly. “If you’ve any doubt he’ll be able to do it, I have to know right now,” she told Yazmín quietly.

  The dancer looked at her and smiled. “You’re using that dance he showed me the other day as the basic, right?”

  Sandry nodded.

  “How long till you’re ready to go?”

  “I want another look at the net he used for the fishing spell,” Sandry replied. “I’ll do that today, and I’m to help Behazin and Ulrina — the harrier-mages — distill the rest of the unmagic out of what Master Wulf—” a lump rose in her throat. She coughed to clear it, blinked rapidly until her eyes didn’t sting any more, and went on — “out of what was gathered yesterday. Tonight I’ll sketch a rough net for us to look at in the morning. We’ll work on the dance while everything else is being made ready at Winding Circle — two more days, I think. And you can work with Pasco some more while I spin and make the net. Will that be enough time? Three or four days?”

  “I’ll spend every waking minute with our friend, here,” Yazmín said with a wink to Sandry. “I’ll give him all the personal attention he can stand.”

  Pasco, switching to stretch his right leg, muttered, “I’m doomed.”

  Do they really understand how serious this is? Sandry wondered as she set about creating a permanent warding on a room for Pasco and Yazmín to work in. Do they understand that if he touches this net he can’t even see, the power of his dance combined with the net will eat him up? Should I talk to them about it some more?