The Fire Mages (41 page)

The Drashon looked shockingly old and grey, and leaned on Yannassia’s arm the whole time. There were only three steps up to the door, but he needed his guard’s help as well to manage them. We’d found a room fitted out with soft chairs, several tables, the wood rather scuffed, and a not too badly worn sofa, where the Drashon flopped, exhausted.

I lowered myself awkwardly to kneel before him. “Highness, you are unwell. Would you like me to heal you?”

“Axandrei usually does that,” he said petulantly. “Why have you not found him yet?”

“We can’t get to where he is.”

“He may be injured or in danger. You must find him!”

“He is perfectly safe, Highness, and everything possible is being done to find him. Until then, won’t you let me see if I can help you?”

“He is the only one who can help me. He told me so. No one else can make me feel better, not even Krayfon.”

“Rannassor,” Krayfon said gently, “Kyra is very skilled. Let her have a look at you.”

The Drashon leaned back against the sofa, eyes closed. I looked at Krayfon, and he gave a small nod, so I took the Drashon’s hand. I was shocked to see brown everywhere, in every part of his body. All the signs of age were here multiplied many times over. If I hadn’t known his true age, I would have thought he was eighty, at least. There was another colour too, tiny spots that flared and died away to nothing and flared again, in bright pink, a colour I’d never seen before. I didn’t know what to make of that.

I pushed a little magic into the Drashon and where it connected with the pink dots they disappeared, only to pop back a moment later. It was like trying to stamp out a grass fire; every time I thought a spot was defeated, it burst back into life. I released his hand.

“I’ve never seen anything like this. What’s happened to him?”

“We think a kind of low-grade poison,” Krayfon said. “Cayshorn root, perhaps. Axandrei managed to relieve the symptoms, but now it is getting worse again.”

“Poison.” My magic had struggled against the poison in me, but that was a different type, faster acting and more potent. This kind was debilitating over time. Perhaps that didn’t matter, though. What had worked for me was large infusions of magic, first from the stone vessel and then from the pillar. It was worth a try. Closing my eyes, I took the Drashon’s hand again and this time I poured in magic as fast as I could, imagining it spilling in like a lake overflowing its banks, trickling, pouring, rushing, cascading in a great waterfall. The Drashon’s whole body lit up in pink and gold, flaring and sparkling like a bonfire. Still I flooded magic in to him, and gradually the pink began to disappear, winking out and not returning. It took almost all my power, and the Drashon still carried the signs of age inside him, which couldn’t be changed, but the poison was gone. I rested a moment, relishing the tranquillity of that strange state, the connection at an intrinsic level with another human being.

I opened my eyes. Sound crashed into my head, screaming, shouting, many voices bellowing in my ears. I shrieked at the sudden pain. Instantly the cacophony ceased, and the only sound was Yannassia sobbing and the Drashon’s rasping breath, great shuddering gasps that rattled in his chest. He lay rigid on the sofa, his back arched, eyes wide, mouth a shocked circle. Then, with terrifying slowness, he settled back and his face took on a more normal demeanour. One imperious finger brought a guard running, with an arm to support him to an upright position.

“Well,” he said, then paused to catch his breath. “Well. Interesting.”

“Father? Are you all right?”

“Better... than all right... I think. Like... myself again.” Krayfon rushed wine to him, and he sipped a little and smiled, then sipped a little more, and gradually the colour began to return to his cheeks. He actually laughed. “I feel years younger.” Another laugh, and then he winked at me. “Many years younger.” A broad grin and something which in anyone else would have been a giggle.

I think I gave the Drashon something close to a renewal experience. Cal helped me to my feet and found me a chair, eyebrows raised as he tried not to laugh, but I was too tired to manage more than a wan smile. Silently he pushed a glass of wine into my hand, and set a plate of cakes at my elbow.

After that excitement, we all settled to the purpose of the meeting, for me to tell the Drashon my story directly. He asked a few questions, but he’d already heard everything from Cal and Krayfon and I could tell him nothing new. Before long they had moved on to more general issues surrounding Drei’s disappearance.

Yannassia rose to fetch her father more wine from a side table, and with a flick of her head summoned me to her side.

“Thank you!” she whispered. “I have another favour to ask of you.” My heart sank; I wasn’t sure I had the energy for another healing. She held out her hand. “Would you tell me what you see?”

Reluctantly I did so, and at first I could see nothing. She was perfectly healthy. Then, “Oh! Congratulations!”

She beamed at me. “It is too early for me to be sure, but Axandrei knew. He says it is a girl, is that true?”

I nodded, pleased for her. “Have you told your father yet?”

“No. I hope...” A flicker of anxiety crossed her face. “I hope all this trouble will be resolved soon, and then I will tell him.” A hesitation. “It will be all right, will it not? Drei will be found safe and well?”

“Oh, yes. The city won’t hurt him.” She smiled at me, relieved, and I said nothing more, but inside I quailed. Drei was perfectly safe for now, but who could say what the future might bring, for any of us?

Cal was in a fever of anxiety, even worse than the other mages. He’d been given the task of trying to retrieve Drei from the servants’ domain before he emerged at some random part of the city, but success eluded him. He was at his most restless and volatile, constantly shooting off on mysterious errands or distractedly hopping from one place to another, as ideas occurred to him. He’d taken to wearing a long knife on his belt, although I was sure he had no idea how to wield it. Although he came to my bed each night, I would wake hours later to find him gone. Sometimes he returned by morning, but sometimes I wouldn’t see him again until evening board. If I asked what he was up to, he would say vaguely that he had things to do.

In the midst of this whirlwind, I was serenely calm, content to wait and see what happened. Perhaps it was pregnancy that made me that way, wrapping me in a protective cocoon, or it might have been the city itself, where every breath tingled with magic, reassuring and soothing me. Whatever the cause, I sailed placidly through the hours, eating well, sleeping deeply and dreamlessly, like a pig in its pen, and almost as round.

There was one unsettling moment, though. One morning I was leaving my house to go to the library when I passed two servants in their brown uniforms creeping silently into the board room to clear away. We’d all developed the habit of checking any servants quite closely, in case one of them turned out to be Drei, but these were both women.

One of them was Marras, the scholar who’d first helped Drei and me at the library. I made some exclamation, and the two stopped and looked at me in slight puzzlement before their faces returned to blankness.

“Marras?” I said. “Is it you? How are you?” I’d never yet had a response from a servant, even though I’d tried many times to talk to them, but Marras at least would understand me. But no, her face remained perfectly expressionless. “Marras? Do you remember me? At the library... you showed us the books, remember? And then you followed me through the town...”

There was nothing, not a flicker of understanding. She bowed – they both did – and then she made some reply in gibberish, and they turned and walked on, in step and unhurried.

When I reached the library and told Cal about it, his eyes were alight with interest. “Marras! And now she speaks their language. Fascinating! And the two guards must be around, as well, and Reshon... the mage who was taken, remember? And now Drei.”

“It’s so odd that we can’t find any way to get them back,” I said, “or at least find out how they’re being treated.”

Cal shrugged. “They’re treated well enough, I’d say. They all seem healthy enough, and well fed.”

There was something in his tone that made me suspicious. “What about getting them back?”

A long silence, as he chewed his lip. “Actually... I’m working on that.”

“Really? How?”

I thought he’d talk about following the servants again, or exploring the underground passages, but he surprised me. “I’ve been trying to get that thing to help.” He nodded his head towards the great stone sphere, resting in its still pool of water. “We can
feel
the power, we
know
it does something, we just don’t know what, or how. I thought it might be a sort of oracle stone – you know, you ask it a question and it answers. But I can’t get any response from it. It’s full of magic, but what it does is beyond me.”

“So that’s where you’ve been creeping off to at night.” He had the grace to look sheepish. “You’ve been sneaking over here to talk to the ball.” I giggled, and he saw the funny side too.

“But I found something... Do you want to see?”

Naturally I did. He led me down to the floor below, but not by the usual staircase. At the bottom was a broad corridor with no doors or branching passages, and only one direction to go.

“I’ve never been here before,” I said, gazing around. “Is it safe?”

“Everywhere’s safe for us. Besides, I’ve been down here before. Come on.” He set off at a fast pace, leaving me to puff along in his wake.

“Where are we going?”

Without breaking stride he half turned, grinning. “Let’s see how long it takes you to work it out. I’ll give you a hint – we’re right below the main street now.”

“Oh! So we’re heading towards the gate. Does this go under the walls?” A shake of his head. “So – the guard room? Oh – no, it can’t be, because we started from the wrong side of the library, assuming this runs straight. So it’s the building on the other side of the gate.”

He smiled his approval. There were two matching buildings either side of the main gate, made of the usual glowing golden stone. One was the guard room but I’d never been inside the other. The Imperial City was a bewilderingly large place.

The passage ran spear-straight to a second set of stairs. Above it, a single large room with stone benches round the perimeter, high windows, a carved frieze filled with symbols and no furnishings, just a sculpture in the centre, a simple elongated bell shape not quite the height of a man set on a low platform. The striking aspect was that it was made of the same stone as the sphere in the library, and although it was smooth, I recognised many of the symbols in the frieze as being the same as those decorating the sphere. To one side was a plinth supporting a book, twin to the one outside the library: the same binding, the same creamy pages, every one empty of writing.

“See? There has to be a connection, I just don’t know what it is.”

I climbed up on the platform to touch the stone sculpture. It gave me the same fizzing sensation as the sphere in the library, but nothing else. We prowled around the room but there was nothing to suggest the purpose of it. Doors led to the city’s main street, the Shining Wall to one side and on the other the view through the great arch to the library up the hill, where the great sphere and the other book sat. Whatever the connection, it was beyond our understanding.

We walked back up the road, Cal keeping to the shade while I relished the sun. I was fairly sure now that my natural levels of magic came from the sun’s rays, although how that worked I couldn’t begin to guess. The sun powered the marble pillar, so it was reasonable that it powered me too. And Drei. The instant he emerged from underground into sunshine he would be free of his servitude.

“There has to be a way to get him out!” I said in frustration.

“Who, Drei? I know, and we have to work it out quickly. Look!” He gestured to a side street, where a pair of brown-clad servants wearing broad-brimmed straw hats swept fallen leaves into heaps. “They could send him outside at any time! We
have
to get to him before that happens. Every sun that passes, every
hour
is critical.” He ran his hands through his disordered hair. “Critical,” he muttered.

“Let’s look at it logically,” I said. “We can’t go into the servants’ areas, even when we know where the doors are.”

“Even when the door is open. There’s some constraint that prevents it.”

“Exactly. If we go through without magic, we become servants too, with no guaranteed way to escape. But there has to be a way. When this place was fully functional, there would have been people everywhere, the gates probably stood open all the hours of sun. Non-mages must have wandered in accidentally sometimes. Were they condemned to a lifetime of servitude for a simple mistake?”

We were both silent. How could we answer a question like that? We knew nothing of how the city operated in its prime.

“Maybe everyone knew the rules,” Cal said. “Maybe the gates stayed closed most of the time. Maybe guards kept the peasantry out. Maybe there was no town outside the walls at all then. Maybe, maybe, maybe. I don’t think we can solve this by trying to guess how things worked in a society we can’t even imagine. We have to come at it a different way, and I think the answer is in the library.”

“But we can’t read the books!”

“True, but I’ve been looking for maps and drawings, something to show me another way in.”

“That’s clever. What have you found?”

His face fell. “Nothing. Not a thing. I found a whole section of books full of plans of the city, but I can’t read the notes in the margins that explain them. But one of them showed that tunnel that we just walked through. That’s how I found it, and it had a picture of the stone sphere on it.”

“Will you show me what you found?”

The library was empty when we reached it, for the scholars had been banished temporarily and the mages were all out patrolling. The book was on an upper walkway, but Cal brought it down to spare me the climb and spread it on a table. It was a large book, but thin, each page covered with detailed drawings of various parts of the city, but only one page was of interest. There was the library with its great dome, and the main street, the arch and the two buildings beside the main gate. Beneath them, but drawn in such a way that it was visible, was the tunnel. Most of the surrounding detail was not sketched in, except for two items: the stone sphere in the library and the statue in the building by the gate.

I leaned over the table as far as my belly would allow. “The library is safe, isn’t it?” I said. “And here’s a building just by a gate which connects directly to the library. I think it’s just a safe way for outsiders to get to the library. Probably it was open to everyone – well, it still is.”

“Oh. That’s not very interesting. Moonshit! There has to be a way.”

Two mages came in just then, so we hid the book to avoid having to explain it at tedious length and went back to our house. We went round and round the problem, but without getting any nearer to a solution.

After evening board, Cal said diffidently, “Would you mind if I go back to the library? I know the answer is there.”

A prickle of annoyance. “Are you avoiding me?” As soon as the words were out, I regretted them. This was hardly the time for us to be sniping at each other.

He flushed, and gazed at his feet. “It’s not like that. I mean, it’s not that I don’t want to, but... I’m so jumpy, I can’t concentrate on... things like that.”

“I’m sorry.” I reached awkwardly to kiss him. “I’ve been very selfish. Of course you’ve got other things on your mind. You go and talk to your stone ball.”

A wry smile. “I’ll be back soon enough. It’s not a great conversationalist.”

Impulsively I said, “I’ll come with you, if you like, and keep you company.”

“Really?” A pleased smile. “But you need your sleep.”

Impossible to explain how much I feared being alone. “I’ll only stay for an hour or so, but maybe two minds combined will come up with something. Or perhaps the ball needs a feminine touch.”

Most buildings are strange and different at night, but the library, with its vast windowless dome, was exactly as it always was. It was dark inside when we arrived, but gradually the walls began to glow and once they were fully light there was no way to tell the hour except for the clocks, four of them, each a different design. I’d never taken much notice of them before, but now the soft clicks and whirrs of the mechanisms helped to fill the night’s silence. I liked the water clock best, its many little clear pipes filled with a bubbling flow, driving wheels and filling containers which emptied in a sudden gush. There were several coloured markers which spouted through pipes and spun into pools, before ending up stationary for a while to mark the hour or section. Then they rushed on, only to bob up somewhere else a little while later.

As soon as there was enough light to see, Cal strode across the floor to the ball, his coat tails flapping. A few steps took him across the narrow bridge onto the platform high up the ball’s side. He placed his hand flat on the surface of the ball.

“Hello! I am Lord Mage Cal,” he began. Laughter bubbled up in my throat and I fought to suppress it. “This is Lady Mage Kyra, but you probably can’t see her unless she touches you. I have a question for you. Why does the sun rise every morning?”

Nothing happened.

“Why do you ask that? Don’t you want to find out about Drei?”

“Of course, but I’ve been through all the obvious questions. Now I’m working through various subjects in case something triggers a response. I’ve tried history and politics and art. I’m currently trying science. Hush now. Let me concentrate.”

I let him carry on, although it seemed pointless to me. If the ball wouldn’t respond to one question, it would hardly respond to a different one. I prowled about the base of the ball, looking closely at the pool that surrounded it. When I came to the bridge, I had the idea that the ball might work with two people touching it. I made to cross the bridge, but found myself engulfed in some invisible barrier, like thick treacle clutching at me, holding me back.

I must have cried out, because Cal stopped what he was doing and came rushing towards me. As soon as he broke contact with the ball, the barrier disappeared. When I explained, his face lit up, and he spent a considerable time racing back and forth, experimenting with ways to create the barrier. It was simple enough: whenever anyone had contact with the ball, the barrier appeared to prevent anyone else crossing the bridge.

Then abruptly his good spirits collapsed. “We’re getting
nowhere!
None of this helps! We’ll never work it out.”

“What about if both of us try?”