Lost (18 page)
Authors: Sarah Prineas
T
he bread was hard as rocks, but after soaking it in the water, I ate and drank. I was tired enough after that to go to sleep, but first I had to try to get out.
I tried the door. The lock was impossible without lockpick wires. The hinges were on the other side, so I wouldn’t be able
to work on them, either.
Then I tried the window. The walls were as thick as I was tall, and the window was just a narrow slot. If I lay sideways, I might be able to squeeze far enough out to see what was what. Maybe the wall outside would have some nice cracks in it; maybe I could climb down and get away. I jumped up and caught the windowsill and pulled myself up. I squeezed myself in on my side, wriggling forward. Outside, I heard the
hiss, hiss
of wind blowing past the tower.
I wriggled farther into the window slot until I put my chin over the rough edge of stone and looked down. The wall was slick and smooth, just like inside. And it was way too far to jump. I wriggled back out again and dropped to the floor of my cell.
Drats. I was stuck.
I lay down with my back against the wall to sleep. My eyes were just closing when I heard a fluttering at the slitted window.
A bird sat there, folding its wings and fixing me with a sharp, yellow eye.
“Hello,” I said, sitting up. My voice sounded thin in the empty room.
Awk,
said the bird.
“D’you have a letter for me?” I asked.
It did. It swooped down from the window to the floor and let me take the roll of paper from the quill tied to its leg. A letter from Nevery.
Connwaer,
It has been ten days since your last letter. I must conclude that either you have broken your promise to report your progress, or that you have gotten yourself into some sort of trouble in Desh and cannot write. Your previous letter leads me to believe that Jaggus has something to do with it. I trust that the Lady Rowan is safe; she, at least, knows how to look after herself.
When you have received this, write at once.
—Nevery
I had nothing to write with, but Nevery was going to be furious if he didn’t hear back from me. I looked over his letter again.
I did have something to write with, of course. Carefully, I tore a few scraps from the paper, scraps with words written on them. With my teeth, I ripped the edge of my sleeve, then picked free a rough thread and bit it off. I took the paper scraps that read
Rowan is safe
and tore
cannot
in half for
not
and
in Desh
, rolled them together, and tied them with a length of thread. Then I put together another message—
Connwaer
and
into some sort of trouble
and
Jaggus has something to do with it
—and tied it with another bit of thread. Both the notes I slid into the quill tied to the bird’s leg.
“Off you go,” I said. Nevery would know what the notes read; and he’d have no difficulty believing I’d gotten myself into trouble. I wasn’t sure what he could do about it, though.
The black bird flapped up to the wide windowsill and perched there, then it hopped forward
and launched itself out into the gray day.
I hoped it would hurry. Then I went to sleep.
I woke up when I heard the
jink-clink-kajink
of the key slotting in and the puzzle lock turning over, and then the door swung open.
“
Lothfalas,
” said a voice with a sharp accent, and the room filled with brilliant light.
I blinked the brights from my eyes. Jaggus stepped in, holding his locus magicalicus. He had a big, furry lump on his shoulder. Half-finger stood in the doorway behind him, and in the hallway outside, I saw Shadows flinching away from the light.
“Ah, here you are,” Jaggus said. “My black shadow.”
I wasn’t
his
. I got to my feet and leaned against the wall and didn’t say anything. Maybe he’d tell me why he’d brought me here.
“Bring me my chair,” he said without taking his eyes off me. Behind him, Half-finger nodded
at somebody. After a moment a chair appeared; the guard captain set it inside the room, then stepped back to fill the doorway.
Jaggus settled himself on the chair. The light from the locus stone stayed bright, filling the room with sharp shadows. The lump on his shoulder turned its head and I saw that it was a white cat with a flat face, sharp, raked-back ears, keen pink eyes, and a long white tail.
“My Shadows have been watching you for a long time,” he said. “I know who you are, Connwaer. Not a servant of the Lady Rowan, but a spy and thief. I venture so far as to guess that you are the young wizard responsible for the disruption of our plans last year in Wellmet.”
Our plans?
“What d’you mean?” I asked.
“You had not realized?” He smiled. “The wizard Pettivox and the Underlord Crowe. They did not know the role they played, but they served our purpose. We supplied them with slowsilver and with the plans for their device. They were
weakening the magic of Wellmet, making it ready for me. And they would have succeeded if not for you.”
I shook my head, trying to get the new thought into my brain. Crowe and Pettivox, and their device. That had all been part of
another
plan—Jaggus’s plan? “Why?” I asked. “I mean, why did you attack Wellmet’s magic?”
“I can think of a better question,” Jaggus said. His long, thin fingers stroked his locus magicalicus, which looked like a clot of blood in his hand. “Why were you brought here, my shadow? That question will exercise your clever brain, will it not?”
That question was already exercising my brain; I didn’t need Jaggus to ask it.
“Well, I will tell you,” Jaggus said. “I did not bring you here.
It
did.”
It?
On his shoulder, the white cat watched me with sharp eyes. Jaggus gave a small, secret smile. “Arhionvar brought you,” he said.
I stared at him. What was he saying?
“You understand, don’t you, little black shadow?” he said. “Arhionvar is a magic, just like the magic of your city. Arhionvar is here. It has chosen you, just as it chose me.”
Oh. The dread I’d felt outside the fortress. It was a magical being, he was saying. But magic without a city? That was wrong. It couldn’t be right. I didn’t understand, no matter what Jaggus said.
“Now, because Arhionvar wants you,” Jaggus said, “we will help you. To begin with, we will help you find another locus magicalicus.”
Another locus stone? I straightened up from the wall and stared at him.
Jaggus smiled. “Ah, I see that this interests you.”
It did.
“Pyrotechnics is your current method, I believe, as you have no locus stone. I will give you slowsilver. And tourmalifine, and whatever other materials you need. You may use my workroom.
I will teach you a finding spell, and you can use pyrotechnics to cast it.”
A finding spell? That was a very good idea. I didn’t know any finding spells; I wondered if Nevery did.
“We will find your locus stone. Wouldn’t that be nice? And then you can join us.”
I shook my head. Finding my locus stone would be more than nice. But I wasn’t going to join Jaggus and his dread magic.
Jaggus frowned. “Well, then.” On his shoulder, the white cat yawned, showing off long, sharp teeth. “I will give you a night to think about it. Arhionvar will persuade you.” He got to his feet. “Have a pleasant night, my little shadow.”
Taking the bright locus light with him, Jaggus and the guard captain left the room. The door swung closed and locked.
By the time they left, I was so tired my thoughts were whirling around inside my head.
So was the spellword the Wellmet magic had spoken to me.
Damrodellodesseldeshellarhionvarliardenliesh.
The dread magic’s name was Arhionvar.
Arhionvar.
Another part of the spellword. The magic of Wellmet had known about the dread magic all along.
This
was why it’d sent me to Desh. I was supposed to deal with Arhionvar.
I fell asleep thinking about magical beings without cities and finding spells and Jaggus’s strange cat.
I woke up in the blackest, darkest part of the night. The dark pushed up against my eyes.
Something was in the room with me. I could feel it, pressing down on me like cold stone until my breath came short. I sat up and backed into a corner and opened my eyes wide, straining against the dark, trying to see. Misery eels? I waited for the soft, icy touch of a misery eel on the back of my neck. Nothing happened; they didn’t come.
The air grew heavier, and the feeling of dread
gathered in my stomach and spread outward into my arms and legs and up into my head until all I could think of was dread. I heard my own breath, gasping in and out, and behind it the roar of the room’s quiet. Was there a Shadow in the room with me?
No, not a Shadow. It was Arhionvar.
I curled into a ball in the corner for a long time, my eyes squeezed shut and my teeth clenched to keep from crying out loud. The dread magic watched me, and it waited. I felt like I’d been turned to stone.
Slowly, the watching dread went away, like a heavy hand being lifted from the top of my head. After a while, I caught my breath and stopped trembling, and sat up against the wall. The long slit of a window had turned gray—morning had come.
I
n the dusty, gray light of morning, I heard the key in the lock and got to my feet.
It was Jaggus and his cat. He looked me over with a keen eye. “A bad night?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“Were you persuaded?” he asked.
I shook my head. No.
Jaggus ordered his chair again and sat down. He held his locus magicalicus in his hand. In the dim room it looked dull and dark. Darker than before, I thought, as if the rot in its center had spread. It meant Jaggus was rotting too, weak and ready to crumble. “A fine jewel,” Jaggus said. “Just as your locus magicalicus was.”
I nodded. Except that my stone hadn’t had a poisoned, rotten center.
“See?” Jaggus said. “You and I are just alike.”
I blinked. “No, we’re not.”
“Try not to be stupid, shadow boy. We are the same. Let me prove it to you. I have received reports. Your Lady Rowan has left you behind and fled back to Wellmet. You have been exiled from your city by the very people who should be your colleagues and friends. Your own master has disavowed you. You are alone, are you not?”
I shrugged.
Jaggus frowned. “Before you became a wizard. You were alone then, were you not? The most miserable, lonely person in your entire city?” He nodded. “When Arhionvar came to Desh, the magic of the city was weak from years of slowsilver mining. Arhionvar knew it could take the city, but it needed a wizard to do its work in the world. It chose me above every other wizard in the city because my family sold me into the service of a master whom I hated. Your Wellmet magic chose you, shadow boy. Not because you were a great sorcerer, but because you are just like me. You are alone.”
While he spoke, my heart started pounding and I leaned back against the wall because my knees were shaking. He was right. Before I’d picked Nevery’s pocket on the streets of the Twilight, I had been, sure as sure, the most alone person in all of Wellmet.
“And now your own magic has cast you out,” Jaggus said. The darkness grew in his eyes, blotting
out the blue, and his voice got deeper. “You are alone again. But Arhionvar wishes to take you up. Join us, and you can be a sorcerer. You will not have to be alone anymore.”
I shook my head. “Wellmet didn’t cast me out. It sent me.”
“You are lying to yourself if you think so,” said Jaggus. “You have no locus magicalicus. You are useless to your magic.”
I gulped down a sudden surge of fright. “I won’t join you, Jaggus,” I said.
He leaned forward, his eyes empty windows. “I can see, my shadow,” Jaggus said, “that you must think further on this. Arhionvar will visit you for another night or two. I will come back when you are persuaded.”
That second night alone in the dark was worse than the first. I was like a wet cloth, and the dread magic picked me up and wrung me out until I was dry, and then stretched me out and carefully tore me into rags. It got into my head and made
me think of all the bad things that had ever happened to me. Exile from Wellmet, Heartsease a ruin, Benet hurt. Dee dead and cold. The cell full of misery eels under Pettivox’s house. Nevery saying he didn’t need an apprentice. Shivering in cold doorways with nothing to eat. Being led into a room with a bed in it and seeing Black Maggie, my mother, lying still and white and cold. Leaving me alone.
No.
The bird was on its way to Nevery. I was
not
alone. I pushed away the rags and bits of memory and fixed my thoughts on the bird. The connwaer, a black shadow swooping over the golden, thorny desert. Then over the grasslands and through the dark forest, pausing to perch on a high branch to rest. Then on to Wellmet. It flapped up to a window at the academicos and went
tap-tap-tap
with its beak against the glass. The window cracked open and it hopped inside.
Morning came at last. I uncurled myself from my corner, stiff and aching in my bones. I didn’t know if I could last another night like that one.
The day got later and later. I couldn’t stop thinking about the dread magic. What would happen if I gave in and let it have me? I’d be like Jaggus, was what. My own dread grew and grew. I went to the door and checked it, but it was locked, and then I paced around the room and checked it again. Still locked. Curse Half-finger for taking my lockpick wires.
Night was coming.
I sat with my back to the wall with my arms wrapped around my knees, and watched the window slit. The sky outside, the narrow slice of it that I could see, grew darker, but it was too early for night. Then I heard a rumble of thunder, far away, and rain started. It came down hard, like a waterfall, and even in the high-up tower room I could smell the wet desert. The dry dust in the room settled.
At the window came a flap and flutter, and the black bird tumbled in. It hopped to its feet and
shook a spatter of rain off its wings. Then it flew down to the stone floor.
Its quill was longer this time. My hand shaking, I untied it carefully, turned it upside down, and tapped it. A roll of damp paper fell out, and also two wires bent in half—lockpick wires.
The letter was from Nevery, of course, but the rain had gotten into the quill, leaving the letter nothing but smudges. That was all right. I could guess what it said.
