The Black Robe (The Sword and the Spell) (42 page)

Now the tower had changed again and if it hadn’t been for the dome at the very top protruding above the foliage he could have easily ridden passed it without realising it was there. The jagged stone had gone, or at least he thought it had gone, it was difficult to tell beneath the thick tangle of trailing snapweed, thornbush and briars which stretched from the forest edge to the base of the tower. Where the shrubs and undergrowth finished other foliage took over. Firebush, with stems as thick as a man’s forearm climbed over the tower entwined with redthorn, its thorns blood red and dagger long. Another plant, the colour of a seeping wound, filled the spaces in between, its tendrils writhing as if it were a living creature instead of a plant with its roots in the soil.

If the tower had windows or doors they were well hidden beneath the vegetation which left nothing exposed except the dome at the top and the space where the stone dragon had once lain. Jonderill wasn’t surprised that it had gone. On the day he’d woken the Princess with a kiss, he’d killed such a creature outside the palace in Alewinder. Or at least he’d killed Maladran in the form of a dragon and had assumed that the two were connected. He shifted uncomfortably in his saddle, suddenly aware of the torc's presence, hidden in its black silk bag inside his saddlebag. The torc had been quiescent since the day Maladran had given it to him but now he could feel it stir, whispering to his own magic in a low sibilant hiss which he tried his best to ignore.

“It’s a bit overgrown,” commented Rothers nervously. “Has it always looked like this?”

Jonderill shook his head. “No, it’s changed since I saw it last. It was even more frightening then.”

Rothers looked at him in disbelief and then back at the tower. The place terrified him with its thick covering of twisted vines and writhing tendrils that reminded him of venomous sand crawlers. He was certain that if he approached too close the tendrils would reach out, snare him and pull him onto the thorns of the redthorn vine, holding him there until he bled out. Fortunately the shrubs and briars were too thick for them to approach close enough for the tendrils to reach him, but he could still feel their intent.

“It looks like we’ve had a wasted journey,” said Rothers, hoping that Jonderill would take the hint. It’s all overgrown and there are no windows or doors.”

It was true, the tower was closed and sealed but Jonderill knew that if he were to take Plantagenet’s old iron blade and walk forward the undergrowth would part and a door would open for him. He laughed ironically to himself; the sword was long gone along with the hands to wield it, but he had something else and it was calling to him. With a whispered command Sansun went gently to his knees so that he could sweep his leg across and slide from the saddle. Sansun stood and waited, throwing his mane from side to side and showing the whites of his eyes. Apparently Rothers wasn’t the only one who didn’t like the place and wanted to be elsewhere.

“If you reach into the pouch at the back of my saddle you will find a black silk bag with a draw string which I need you to open, but be careful, the contents are dangerous and have a power that I don’t yet understand.”

That wasn’t exactly true. Whilst he’d been at the Enclave, a lifetime ago or so it seemed, he’d learnt quite a lot about the torc and how it had been made by one of the High Masters at the command of the Goddess, to prevent the power of a black robe sending them into madness. He knew that the torc had to be placed around the magician’s neck by their master, and that Maladran had received it from the hands of King Sarrat of Leersland. He had no master to collar him but even if he had, he would rather end his madness with his own blade than to be bound to another.

It was of no importance in any case, he was a white robe and had no need of the torc. All he needed now was the torc’s power to open a way into Maladran’s tower. He watched as Rothers opened the silk bag, holding it out as if the contents would burn his fingers to ashes. Jonderill slipped his wrist into the bag and withdrew it with the torc looped over his bandaged stump, letting it fall up his arm to his elbow. The baleful eyes of the dragon glowed dully as it hung from his arm and the whole thing felt oddly cumbersome and somehow wrong.

He ignored his discomfort and drew on his magic, amazed by the speed at which it came as if the presence of the torc had given it an extra urgency. His magic felt wrong, as if it had been tainted like meat left out in the sun for too long, but there was nothing he could do about it now, he needed the extra power in case the tower’s defences should try to attack him. He took a deep breath and a step forward hoping that a pathway would open up in front of him, but it didn’t. Instead the briars and brambles and all the entwined foliage which made up the thick undergrowth withered and died leaving just a layer of dust over the hard packed, barren ground.

Jonderill thought of a breeze and in an instant the dust blew away and disappeared. It was such a surprising outcome that he couldn’t help smiling, but when he turned and saw the look on Rother’s face, a cross between amazement and utter terror, his smile turned into laughter. That helped Rothers no end and they probably would have shared a few light words but the torc tweaked at his arm in annoyance as if it was reminding him that there was other work to be done.

“If you take the horses to the other side of the tower, you’ll find a small stable. When they are settled come back here and hopefully, I will have discovered the entrance and how to get in by then.”

Rothers hesitated for a moment, not really wanting to go off on his own, but not wanting to be there when Jonderill worked his magic either. He gathered his courage and then hurried away leading the three horses behind him. Jonderill watched him go and then walked across the open ground never taking his eyes off the vines climbing over the tower. They seemed to twist and turn more violently with every step he took towards them. The vines reminded him of the lethal hedge Maladran had spelled around Alewinder which had ripped his friend Perguine to bloody scraps. He had broken through that hedge so he was fairly confident that he could find a way through the vines which now covered the tower.

Finding the door was a different problem. When he was a boy there had been two doors, the grand one that Maladran and Sarrat had used, and the one at the rear which opened into the kitchens. He knew that one had still been there and passable the last time he’d come to the tower. It might have therefore been sensible to start his search there, but sneaking into the tower by the back door like some sort of thief or beggar didn’t seem right. Apart from that, the weight of the torc was pulling insistently at his arm and he was getting desperate to get rid of the thing.

Carefully he stepped up to the wall of the vine-covered tower where he thought the door should be and drew on his magic. For a moment nothing happened and then slowly, reluctantly, the vines drew apart revealing a closed door. It wasn’t the door Jonderill remembered; a double arch made of wood and bound in iron. This was smaller and narrower and made entirely of bronze. The dark metal gleamed and the mouldings which covered every part of its surface moved and rippled.

He stared at them in disbelief recognising himself in each frieze captured in scenes from his childhood, most of which he would rather forget. It was a chronology of the darkest times from his youth from the gruesome death of his father’s protector, through the years of fear as a kingsward and the beatings and persecution at the hands of Tarris. The day he had been taken from Maladran was there, along with his failure at his apprentice day testing. At the very bottom the final frieze showed him as a young man with a knife in his hand and a dead man at his feet.

If the door was meant to intimidate him or shame him and make him turn back it failed; the dark side of his childhood was nothing compared to what had happened to him as a man. He put those recollections out of his mind and thought of the good things from his childhood, like Maladran’s kindness, Barrin’s friendship and the trust of the two old magicians. As he thought about those who had stood by him the friezes stilled and the door swung silently open. He stepped inside letting the heavy torc slip from his arm onto a table by the door and sighed with the relief of not having to carry its weight.

The large living room was just as he remembered it, with its big leather chairs drawn up around the hearth and several low tables for books and scrolls. It was where he and Maladran would sit in the evening and talk about anything that would interest a growing boy. A large weiswald table, stained and scarred occupied the far end of the room. That was where he had learned to read and write, and had been sent to bed once with no dinner for carving his initial into the table top with his dinner knife. He wandered over to the table and smiled at the mark which still remained despite Garrin rubbing it with sand and stone to erase it.

The thought of the old servant and his wife, who had treated him like their own son, and how Maladran had killed them, took the smile from his face and he turned and walked to the other door in the room. This led to a corridor with two other doors. To the left was a door which had been forbidden to him as a boy and which he’d only entered once. There were stairs behind the door which led downwards and he wasn’t ready to go that way yet.

To the right was the door which led to the kitchen, and in between there was a flight of stairs which climbed upwards to the top three floors of the tower. The last time he’d been up those stairs was the day he’d made elemental fire for the first time. It had been a day which had changed his life and he was curious to see what had happened to his old room. He climbed the stairs passing the closed door of Maladran’s room and continued upwards until he reached the painted door of the room where he’d slept as a boy

For some strange reason he felt nervous, almost as if he was dreading to see the changes Maladran would have made after he’d been taken away. He opened the door and looked inside and then smiled to himself. It was exactly as he’d left it. The patchwork quilt lay in a tangle on the bed, his second shirt was draped over the clothes chest where he’d forgotten to put it away, and the wooden horse, which Garrin had carved for him, stood on the table on a piece of green cloth. He knew, of course, that Maladran hadn’t sent him away and that it was Sarrat who had sold him, but all the same it was comforting to see that Maladran had kept his room just as he’d left it.

He closed the door and climbed the next flight of stairs intending to go to Maladran’s work room. Instead he stopped at the door on the next floor up, willed it open and went inside. He’d also been forbidden to enter this room but had gone inside anyway. It was where he’d found the old book about magic which had taught him how to produce elemental fire, and the strange metal globe which had shown him the life of a black magician he hadn’t seen before or since. The book had gone a long time ago, but the globe was still on the table where he’d left it.

Curious to see if it still worked he walked to the table and stared down onto its silver surface. Slowly shadows formed and from the shadows an image emerged.

The man in the dark robe was there as he had been before. Even the book was still there on the table in front of him, although it looked battered now. The solid cover was bent at the edges and several of the gems were missing from the cover making their empty clasps look like gaping mouths. The man looked at the book and sighed. His servant had tried to put the gems back in their place, but had been quietly relieved when he’d been told not to bother, but to spend them on things for the Primera’s home for unwanted children. The home had been named after him, and he’d been strangely touched by the gesture; most of the things which had been named after him had to do with death or destruction.

He flipped the book open, smiling in satisfaction as the spine and the pages parted, a grim reflection of himself. That had happened this morning when he’d propelled the book across the length of the room smashing it against the far wall. The outburst of anger had given him little satisfaction, it would have been so much better if it could have been the author himself. Instead he was at home with his wife, six concubines and a brood of squawking brats, now a man of wealth based on his ability to turn the truth into a puerile fairy tale.

The man turned the book over, opened it at the last page and studied the carefully crafted, hand painted picture of the final battle between the might of the sword and the power of the spell. It had been that which had made him expel the book from the table with such force. Whilst the book had mentioned his presence there, the picture only contained the handsome heroes and the villains they had fought, and even they bore no resemblance to the fearful creatures which had slaughtered so many. There were others missing too, both the good and the bad who had played their part. Some still lived, but many had died.

With a sigh he flipped the book closed, shut his eyes and tried to ease the cramped muscles around a back which would never move again. It was no use getting angry with the author, he wasn’t going to change his best selling history now, but he wondered what he would do if the ink ran from his lying words. He was still capable of that kind of power, but it was pointless really, even he couldn’t get the ink to reform itself into the truth.

His muscles cramped again and he gritted his teeth against the pain. His servant and friend had been surprised when he’d refused his Shrezbere Essence and had wept when he’d realised the reason why. Of course the man didn’t know what was going to happen, although he might have guessed. He’d made the travel preparations a long time ago, but now that the time had come, his long held hope of a reprieve for his master had been extinguished. His friend wouldn’t take well to his new freedom, but he’d made sure that there would be others to care for him, and his friend would never want for anything that money could buy.

He wondered if others would weep. Perhaps some would whilst others would be relieved by his passing. Although they may not have known, he’d already said his goodbyes to those who mattered. The Primera had probably guessed and had sat with him longer than usual talking about inconsequential things, but nothing about the past or the future. If she’d known for certain that he was leaving, she would have tried to stop him, but he’d been careful and it was only his last kiss which had nearly given him away.