Lightborn. Part 23

"I'm glad it is nothing that I asked Magister Tammorn to do. But I am not certain that this is not earthborn business, given how my father died."

He heard movement behind him, and despite himself, the skin of his back tightened against a blow. Helenja's voice said, "Fejelis, what is this?"

Orlanjis sidled up beside him on his left, his wide eyes taking in the bound Tam, and the archmage. By his indrawn breath, he recognized the latter immediately. The barest flicker of his attention betrayed his urge to look sideways at Fejelis, and then he stared front, unblinking, as he would a deadly sand viper. Fejelis heard their mother hiss Orlanjis's name.

"Fejelis," Prasav said, "show some common sense. You cannot interfere in Temple matters."

Floria White Hand moved silently up on his other side. She had changed her clothes, but her hair was a toweled tangle and she was sashless and barefoot. And quite deadly, poised on the b.a.l.l.s of her bare feet, her bruised face a cool, attentive fighter's mask. Remembering her ensorcellment, he felt his skin p.r.i.c.kle.

Too few allies, and the man he most trusted lying bound on that tent rug. He had no choice but to risk-he did not know what. ". . . I think I must, since I believe it concerns the magic that killed my father, specifically, the magic of Shadowborn."

"Shadowborn are a myth," Prasav said, curtly. "You're just making a fool of yourself."

A flicker of movement to the right of him, Perrin, in her dusty clothes, reaching a hand toward him. "Jay," she said, voice urgent and low, "don't. I-mistook what was happening here. It's-it's Temple discipline. Yes, I know it looks bad-but-it's really not as bad as it looks. Just go now."

Did he know her well enough to believe her before the testimony of his eyes? No. And why, having summoned him here, was she so bent upon having him leave now? ". . . Are the Shadowborn a myth?" Fejelis asked the high masters quietly. "Or are they something you have known to fear for five hundred years, because lineage mages cannot sense their magic, and so cannot counter it?"

Valetta's eyes flicked past him to whoever stood behind him. He heard his mother breathe, "Oh, you young fool."

Valetta said, "Prince Fejelis, we forgive your confusion. This mage, Tammorn, was influenced by a deranged and uncontrolled master." From the mat, Tam gave a gargling shout of rage. "It is probably as well that Lukfer died in the Temple's ruin. We may still be able to salvage Tammorn."

She lied well, Fejelis thought, but watching her, watching her with all the experience gained in surviving court, he knew she lied.

He walked slowly forward, alert to any motion toward him. The archmage watched his approach with those black eyes whose depths went down three hundred years. From the vantage of his mere nineteen, Fejelis tried to fathom those eyes, those centuries. How long since the ancient mage had spoken directly to an earthborn, even to a prince? Did he even know modern language? Was this by his preference, or that of the high masters around him? Had he been sealed away beneath layers of veneration, growing ever more isolated amongst his own? Princes had met that fate, too, though only over decades, not centuries.

Still holding the archmage's eyes, he knelt and gently squeezed Tam's outstretched hand, trusting that while the mages might have bound magic, mage sense, and speech, they had discounted touch and its consolations. He heard an indrawn breath from their brightnesses, likely offended by the symbolic submission in his kneeling, or maybe by the touch. He didn't care if their brightnesses were offended, if the mages respected compa.s.sion for one of their own.

He said quietly, ". . . I may be too willing to believe an explanation that implicates a third party and exonerates my family. But no one else has been able to tell me why the lights in my father's room failed."

The woman started to speak; the archmage held up his hand. Fejelis's heart beat faster, as the copper- skinned little man studied him. ". . . Magister Lukfer, Magister Tam, and at least two Darkborn mages sensed magic behind multiple fires that killed Darkborn, and the annulment of the lights that caused my father's death. Magister Lukfer said that he had come to a.s.sociate such magic with the Shadowborn.

". . . Yet I have had no mention, no report whatsoever, from the Temple of this magic, or of justice meted out for its abuse. I was also informed that the Darkborn are beginning to wonder at the Temple's apparent inactivity. . . ." He paused, gathered himself. "Magister Tammorn told me that the crossbow bolt that nearly took my life, despite the initial efforts of a mage of the lineage, was ensorcelled to annul life. I-believe-that that same magic might have accounted for the many deaths among you, even more than the Darkborn's sh.e.l.ls." He heard Perrin's indrawn breath, but the high masters were very still, frighteningly still. "To defeat this enemy, we need to come together-princes, brightnesses, earthborn, Lightborn and Darkborn. In the name of a compact that has served us for seven hundred years, please, help us, as Magisters Tam and Lukfer tried to do, in their own, perhaps flawed, way. And let us help you."

He had to wait for an answer now, thought it took all his courage to resist flinging more words after these, the best he could find.

"I find it hard to believe you care about the compact, Fejelis," said Prasav, from behind him.

Fejelis did not wish to turn away from the archmage, but even less did he wish Prasav at his back. He knee-stepped to one side and pivoted, to find Floria there, silent as ever, blocking Prasav's approach. Perrin had a hand on Orlanjis's arm, trying, against Orlanjis's resistance, to draw him back.

Prasav tossed something down onto the mat. "That mage," he said, "and this prince, who is hardly worthy of the name, have conspired together to undermine the compact, using Darkborn technologies to replace magic." He let the fragile electric bulb bobble around on the carpet until they had all recognized it and then, deliberately, stepped on it, crushing it to gla.s.s shards and wire. "Contrary to the impression they have so carefully conveyed, they've known each other for four years, during which the mage has drawn Fejelis into a circle of treasonous radicals he has cultivated."

". . . Innovation is not treason," Fejelis said, to the archmage. "The artisans are idealistic young people trying to find ways to ease the burden on the tower. And my father was well aware that I knew Tam."

Prasav smiled down at him, the expression a travesty of Isidore's. "Magistra Valetta, if you were to tell us the truth, might you not say that the murderer of Isidore, the captain of vigilants, and two others is that mage there, who ensorcelled the woman Floria White Hand to place a talisman capable of annulling the lights in Isidore's room, and then removed that talisman once it had done his work? He did so at the behest of the prince, his lover. He has violated the laws of the compact before, on behalf of this prince. It may be awkward to admit that any mage should be so corrupt, but there are always bad apples. You deal with your bad apple; leave us to deal with ours, and no word will ever leave this room."

". . . None of that is true," Fejelis said, surging to his feet. ". . . A touch will tell you." He offered his hand, striving neither to appeal nor importune by the gesture.

Valetta said nothing. Nor did she move to take his hand, and accept the truth. Fejelis felt suddenly chilled, tasting peach. Tasting betrayal. Floria, at his side, took the one measured side step needed to free them both for action, her hand slipping to her rapier pommel.

Rupertis said, "Floria, these men ensorcelled you. Move aside, if you can."

"If I am ensorcelled," the vigilant rasped, "then let the mages vigilant release me, if they can."

From outside the door, three vigilants stepped into the room, one moving up behind him and two to each side, crossbows coming to bear. It did not take Orlanjis's skill to triangulate their target. Floria stepped into the line of the woman on the right, though at this range, it might not matter.

Perrin cried out, "Don't. I won't take the caul stained with his blood. You promised!"

"You!" said Orlanjis and Helenja together. "You have no standing here," Helenja said. "You gave it up, ten years ago."

"It was taken away from me, ten years ago," Perrin spit. "And you let them do it to me, and you'll let them do it to him, all for your precious Orlanjis."

"Not for me!" Orlanjis cried out. In his horrified eyes, Fejelis could see his memory of the day before, his antic.i.p.ation of what was about to happen.

"I'm sorry, Fejelis," Perrin said. "I tried to warn you. You just wouldn't understand what this outrage meant to the tower."

". . .The compact does not allow a mage to be . . . ," Fejelis said.

"Even the compact can be amended," said Prasav, and gestured. Orlanjis shouted, and lunged forward too late, too short. Fejelis twisted frantically sideways, knowing the futility. He had a blurred impression of Floria moving, her rapier's edge slicing light as she drew, and then Orlanjis tackled him and brought them both crashing down onto the mat.

Winded, gasping, he waited for the sear of pain in his chest, the gurgle of blood in his throat. Lying on his back and staring at the ceiling . . . where the painted sun had gained three extra rays.

He lifted his head. Floria half crouched over him, rapier drawn. The vigilants, Prasav, and Helenja stared up at the embedded crossbow bolts. Ember and the mages stared at Tam.

Who reared up straight-armed from the carpet, face flushed and wild and smeared with tears and mucus, saying to no one and everyone, "You shall not have him."

"Them!" gasped out Fejelis, having just enough time to sling an arm around Orlanjis and pull him close.

Eleven.

Floria The crossbow bolt flashed as it spun in the air between the bow and her breast, and vanished. From overhead came a staccato triplet, almost unheard for the heavier thumps of Fejelis and Orlanjis tumbling to the carpet. She kept facing the bowmen, who were all staring upward. Rupertis swore vilely, staring past her to where Fejelis and Orlanjis must be lying. Then she turned, stomach clenching with trepidation at what she must see-one or both of them pierced and dying. But the brothers were gone. Tammorn, too. With that heightened awareness that comes with preparing to kill or die, she saw Valetta's head snap toward the archmage, who lifted his eyes from the empty carpet. In their exchanged glances, Floria saw avarice.

Prasav stepped forward. "Bring them back!"

The archmage regarded him in silence, across centuries and power. A distance far wider, Floria sensed, than the one between the archmage and the very young Fejelis.

Prasav, unlike Fejelis, could not sustain that eye contact. He turned to Valetta. "I'll contract with you to find and return the princes. I'll offer a good price."

The archmage said something. "The princes," Valetta said, "are irrelevant. The mage is ours to deal with." And that, Floria realized, explained the avarice. Tam had broken a binding imposed by the archmage and four high masters. Now, with their numbers decimated, they would want that power in their lineages.

Not least, if Tam could sense and manipulate magic lost to the lineages.

"All we need is to know where they are," Prasav said.

Perrin said, shrilly, "You promised me Fejelis would be deposed without killing him."

"Don't be naive, girl," Prasav tossed at her. "n.o.body leaves a deposed prince alive."

"If the compact can be amended," Perrin snapped, "then this so-called tradition can be amended. It wasn't always this way, that princes killed each other. I don't want Fejelis dead." To Valetta, "You can have the mage."

Prasav turned back to Valetta. "You don't know, do you, where they are? You have no idea where he took them."

The archmage turned in dismissal and walked away into the inner room, sandals softly slapping his feet. The three high masters trailed at his heels. Valetta looked on as Prasav and Perrin argued, the girl's face pale, frightened even, the man allowing his anger to show, now it had found a safe target.

"If you think, after this display, that Fejelis is not dangerous to us, you're more than naive; you're a fool. You heard him speak. You heard me say he has radical contacts in the city. He's known at court-you aren't. That mage of his broke a binding imposed by the archmage and four high masters. Fejelis isn't the fool nine-year-old you remember and that mage is no fifth-rank mediocrity."

Perrin's head jerked back. Color rose in her cheeks as though he had slapped her-with the reminder of her own small powers. Mother's Milk, but she was easy to make dance. The question was, whose would be the tune: Prasav's, or the Temple's?

Neither was righteous. Floria supposed she should take some thought to her own survival, but she was still caught up in that vaulting disregard of life or death characteristic of the fighter's mind. Each breath gave her a small shock of delight, and was equally a matter of indifference.

At a sound behind her, she whirled, startling the vigilants who stood nearest, who had not yet registered it. Rupertis was the first to look over his shoulder to find the prince's secretary standing pale but determined on the threshold, four vigilants flanking him. "There is a message for Prince Fejelis," he said. "From the Darkborn. It is urgent."

Perrin sucked in a breath, "I'll take it."

The secretary looked at her, trying to pa.r.s.e the chains of rank around her neck, her uncauled head, and Fejelis's absence. "Give it to me," she ordered. "I am princess now."

The vigilants looked uncertainly to Rupertis, their captain; he nodded, and the secretary slowly proffered the letter. Prasav made a move for it; Perrin put her shoulder between him and it, turning away as she tore it open. The sheet of paper she extracted was unevenly colored and blank of any ink, but bore the characteristic stippling of Darkborn script. Perrin's brows drew beneath her crafted cap of hair. Unlike Fejelis, she had not learned to read Darkborn script.

Ember stepped forward, holding out her hand. "If I may, Princess."

Perrin looked sharply at the woman, surely her rival now, and reluctantly extended the letter. Ember studied it, reading with her eyes what Darkborn read with their fingers. "It is from Seja.n.u.s Plantageter, his hand, his signature," she said.

Yet Mycene had said the archduke was critically injured. Was this truly his hand? Was the Darkborn script not the subtlety of a man limiting a letter's readership, but an insult from one indifferent to the letter's audience? For that matter, was Ember's interpretation what the letter itself said?

Perhaps so, for having read it, she returned it without hesitation to Perrin. "He agrees to meet with Prince Fejelis. He offers the chambers of the Intercalatory Council: though it is humble, it is equipped for such discussions. He suggests an hour after sunset, to give both ourselves and him the chance to bring together our retinues, and offers to clear the streets so that we may travel with lights in the open.

"The other thing he says is that the Darkborn are having trouble in the Borders. He says that they have had a message from one of their manors indicating that it has been overrun, and names the enemy"-to the mage-"Shadowborn."

"So he will not wish to engage two enemies," Prasav noted. "This works to our advantage."

"And if . . . these enemies are ours as well," Perrin ventured. Ah, Perrin was herself a sport; she, too, should be able to sense Shadowborn magic.

And suffer the same consequences as her brother for saying so. Valetta, Prasav, and Ember regarded her with similar expressions-not, Floria thought, unlike expert swordsmen waiting for the novice to make an inevitable error. Helenja shook her head, very slightly, more in resignation than in warning. Perrin's lashes veiled her eyes, and she did not press for an answer. But she looked frightened.

"Princess," said Prasav, with a dangerous kindness. "We must discuss the terms of Darkborn surrender and reparations, so we can speak with a united voice. This gives us a fine opportunity to reestablish the relationship across the sunset on a basis satisfactory to ourselves. Magistra Valetta, we would be most grateful if you could attend, since you are the most gravely injured."

Valetta inclined her head, an expression of dark irony in her eyes.

"Please write the Darkborn archduke that we accept his invitation," Perrin said, thinly.

"Do so," Prasav added, "in Fejelis's name."

Helenja was watching the exchange with a curled lip. "Mistress White Hand," she murmured, just loudly enough for Floria to hear, "come with me."

Floria weighed the consequences, briefly, of refusal. But she had no wish to stay here until Prasav's or Ember's or Valetta's attention returned to her. If what Tam and Fejelis had said was true, Helenja and the southerners were innocent of Isidore's unrighteous deposition. And if Floria knew Helenja, she would want her younger son back, safe, whatever she intended for her elder. That desire, Floria thought, might be parlayed into help for Fejelis. Quietly, she sheathed her rapier and followed Helenja's Vigilance from the room.

One of Helenja's many minor offenses against custom was in preferring her ground-floor chambers to the consort's official chambers. Those could be approached only through the well-watched halls of the palace, while the ground-floor chambers opened out into gated gardens with at least six gates. Easy enough for messengers to go and come, or visitors to come and go. Floria, directed to the door of lesser privilege, found herself in a receiving room whose floor and skirting were sandy-hued stone, and whose walls were sandy- hued, fine-textured wood. The reflected light was warmer than the desert.

The dowager consort circled her. "Whose creature are you? I find that utterly impossible to decide."

Floria turned with her, alert for the smallest glance or gesture that might be a signal to dispatch Floria. Or try to. She had not yet returned to the world of multiple dimensions; her perceptions remained narrowed to single choices, single actions. Within that narrowed s.p.a.ce, her focus was exquisite, her potential deadly.

"Were you ensorcelled, or did you willingly carry that talisman to my husband, and in whose service? Are you ensorcelled now, or did you willingly shield Fejelis with your body? Do you know?"

I know this, Floria thought. I am not yours.

"I would have said until yesterday that you were my husband's creature. Had you not been, he would have been dead at any one of a dozen times. You would have let him cut out your heart. But then, he never would have let a warrant be released against you. I was quite surprised that Fejelis did." She tapped her upper lip with a finger, and took it away to ask, "Was it the mage's influence? Was he jealous?"

Floria snorted, more in annoyance than amus.e.m.e.nt. Helenja's voice plucked and worried at the perfectly tucked- in corners of her awareness, threatening to expand it once more into multiple dimensions, blurring that perfect fighter's mind. She measured the distance of her hand to the pommel, the distance of the tip to Helenja's heart. Except that, in the presence of a mage, the a.s.sa.s.sination would be no more than a gesture.

"Or did he know, as Fejelis said?" To the mage, Helenja said, "Is this woman ensorcelled?"

Before the mage had taken a step toward her, Floria had the rapier drawn. "She can answer from there, or not at all."

"Madam consort," protested the mage, turning, and, meeting Helenja's gaze, wilted. "I sense no ensorcellment."

"But you were born of the lineages," Helenja said. "I wonder what the answer would be were I to put that question to my daughter."

She abandoned her circling, opening the s.p.a.ce between them to set her hips on a high table, propping herself against it. Despite her bulk, she still moved like a young woman, the haughty desert rider Isidore had contracted with. "You hate me, understandably. I was just a girl when I came to this court, foolish, crude, and proud. I brought with me ambitious men and women, and I believed with them at my back I could rule this court. Instead, they nearly ruled me, and they did things that cost me-the regard of my son, for one. I am watching my daughter make the same mistake.

"Do you understand what you saw in there, Mistress White Hand? Through Perrin, the mages have taken control of the princedom. How long they have been planning this I do not know, though I suspect it was initially the work of a faction within the Temple, and would have come to nothing without this Darkborn madness. But Prasav wants the caul for himself, and if not himself, Ember. I doubt he will get it; whether he realizes it or not, if he makes a move, he will be lucky to live. Ember is more subtle; I have no doubt that she is already cultivating alliances."

Floria made her voice work, "I do not serve Prasav. I do not serve the mages. I am a member of the Prince's Vigilance; I serve the lawful prince."

Helenja heard the "lawful," and smiled. "Then it appears we have a common cause, and uncommon enemies. I am prepared to allow that you were ensorcelled, whether by one of our mages or a Shadowborn, and that any part you had in Isidore's death was an unwilling one. I will offer you my own protection, and the protection of my mages-of whatever worth that may prove. In exchange, you will help me find my sons. Then we will settle which one is to be prince. Do you agree?"

Fejelis One moment he sprawled on the mat, looking up at the bolt-pierced ceiling, the next on hard ground and matted heather, looking up at-whiteness. Orlanjis struggled free of his grip and sat up, wild-eyed; Fejelis pushed himself up, feeling no less so.

"Where . . . ," said Orlanjis.

The light was filtered white, and directionless. His clothes and hair turned instantly clammy. Was this dusk? What should have been the agony of imminent dissolution was no more than a dull cramp in his limbs, no worse than when he dashed through the deep shade of full summer foliage. Not dusk, then, but cold mist.

". . . are we?"

Seacoast, island, or mountains. Much more pertinent was when? How near was sunset?

A few yards away, Tam lay on his face, one hand still braced flat, elbow jutting up, though he had collapsed over it. His breathing was imperceptible and his face-when Fejelis eased him over onto his back-mist gray. Even the freckles were grubby smudges under the smears and dirt. Fejelis's ear on his chest found a slow heartbeat; a cheek against his nose felt a wisp of stirring air. Fejelis pinched him, hard, eliciting no reaction.

"Is he . . . dead?" Orlanjis said, scrambling up beside him. "Did he do this?"

"No, he isn't, and yes, I think he did." He settled back on his heels, sweeping a damp sleeve across a damp forehead, and started to enumerate his wants. They had no food or water, no means of keeping themselves and especially Tam warm . . . and no lights.

"He has to take us back!" Orlanjis said, grabbing at the mage's shoulder. Fejelis caught his wrist, using his adult strength. The white of panic showed around Orlanjis's irises as they jerked to focus, dilated, on Fejelis. "When the sun sets, we're dead."