The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (36 page)

Judgment circles.  The copper stripped wards, the silver thwarted energy-magics, and the gold dispersed illusions.  Any mage but a mentalist standing within them would be powerless.

It took a bit more than circles to break a mentalist.

Only three of the six Council chairs were taken right now, and he recognized two of the occupants.  Warder Archmagus Cassa Farcry, Geraad's path-superior, lounged in her well-padded chair second from the left: a shapely woman in her middle years with only a touch of grey in her smooth dark hair and a faint, indulgent smile on her lips.  She wore cerulean robes with a delicate white floral pattern, belted high and cut deep to display a mesmerizing V of cleavage.  Geraad kept his eyes up, and she dimpled at him and wiggled beringed fingers.

Across from her, in the far right seat, sat Psycher Archmagus Dzuren Qisvar, whom Geraad knew from introductory mentalist lectures.  Qisvar was an expatriate Padrastan who never bothered to hide it.  His robes were fashioned in the southern style—bright patterns of yellow, orange and olive, wide-sleeved, open-collared, with a black under-robe—and his shaven scalp was concealed beneath a nearly piratical headscarf.  Though in his late fifties or perhaps sixties, his bronze skin showed little sign of age and his small, pointed beard was jet-black.  He had been a fixture in the Tower of the Inner Eye for more than thirty years, long predating the hostilities between the Empire and Padras, but because of the current situation he was not trusted in the Psycher Archmagus’ usual role: head of the Inquisition.

When their eyes met, Qisvar gave Geraad a nod and a thin but polite smile.  Geraad bowed in return and felt the Psycher Archmagus touch his thought-shields, inquisitive.  He passively resisted, and the sensation withdrew.

A non-mentalist would have considered that an attack, but only because non-mentalists had no native protections.  They were naked against the power of the mind.  Geraad could feel that Qisvar’s defenses were relaxed, allowing him to be receptive, but the other Archmagi were mentally blocked—their thoughts hidden by walls crafted by the mentalists in their pay.  It did not surprise him.

The third Archmagus, seated to Qisvar’s left, was a weathered old Jernizen woman who Geraad guessed to be Artificer Archmagus Varrol—the so-called Lioness of Valent.  She was known to disdain the lady-mage style of robes-as-dresses not because she was in her seventies but because she considered it silly and impractical; her robe was simple, grey and sleeveless, showing muscular arms covered in tattoos and scars, and her hair was cut to short white bristles.  Deep-set eyes considered Geraad with little interest and no pity; when he bowed, she made no motion in return.

Like Qisvar, she was an expatriate.  The joke went that she and a few books were the last artifacts of the Citadel at Darakus—the old Silent Circle bastion that had crashed in Jernizan ninety years ago.  Obviously no one said that to her face.

Missing were the Summoner Archmagus, Evoker Archmagus and Scryer Archmagus.

“Come in, Geraad,” said Warder Farcry.  “You have nothing to fear.”

Geraad nodded mutely, not sure what to think.  He stepped over the iron circle and felt the faint crackle and sizzle of ambient Valent energies being drawn off of him.

“Don’t stand in the middle,” Warder Farcry added as he approached the table.  “You’re not being judged.”

“
Yes, Madam Archmagus.”

“
Technically we’ll only have five, not the full Council, but considering the circumstances, I think—“

Behind him, the great doors flew open as if kicked, and a sharp, angry voice said, “—burn the whole place down!”  Geraad stopped in his tracks to stare over his shoulder.

Through the doorway came two men who could have been related if not for the difference in height.  The taller man stared ahead, his superior smirk and hooked nose giving him the look of a bird of prey on a high branch.  Grey-eyed like most Trivesteans, he had close-cropped black hair and sideburns sharp enough to cut, and wore a high-collared robe of deep sapphire blue covered in sigils.  The sleeves ended just above the elbows, leaving his forearms bare to show the rows upon rows of rune-covered bands, not one looking like something so flippant as jewelry.  Fine strands of power drifted from each like spider-silk: a Summoner’s slave-bonds.

Next to him, taking long strides to keep up, was the mage who had shouted.  He was more than a head shorter and rather unkempt, but they shared their coloring: midnight hair, pale eyes, blue robes—though the shorter mage’s robe was darker and covered by a black outer-robe.  He wore no other mark of authority, but his gloved hands were clenched and his face was white enough with anger that the scar on his brow stood out.

“Really, Enkhaelen,” said the tall mage as they crossed the iron circle, sparks popping and dancing across both their shoulders, “do you think me so weak that I might lose control over a few dozen specimens?”

“
That’s not the point, Salandry,” snarled Enkhaelen.  “The point is that you put those things out there specifically to piss me off.  And it worked.  So have them removed before something unfortunate happens.”

“
And I thought you’d gotten beyond your squeamish phase.”

“
I’ll show you squeamish, you—”

“
Gentlemen!” said Warder Farcry.  “Please, let’s not have another one of those meetings.  This is important.”

“
It had better be.  I have too many things to do and too little time already.”  Enkhaelen stomped around the table toward the two middle seats, then stopped and glared as Salandry slid smugly into one.  “Who set these chairs up?” he said.  “I am not sitting next to him.”

“
You’re welcome to sit here,” said Farcry, gesturing to the empty seat at her end of the crescent.

“
In the corner?  I don’t think so.  Salandry, you—“

“
Sit down and stop whining,” said the Artificer Archmagus gruffly.

Enkhaelen gave her a dirty look, then sat at the very edge of the seat by Salandry.  Though high up in the Emperor’s hierarchy and bearing the titles of both Evoker Archmagus and Inquisitor Archmagus, here Enkhaelen was just another member of the Council, and by his tightly crossed arms, that did not sit well with him.

Beside him, the Summoner Archmagus smiled a thin, cold smile and toyed idly with his rings.

“
Where is Snowfoot?” said Enkhaelen.

Exhaling a sigh, Warder Farcry sat up from her comfortable lounge and laced her hands together at the edge of the table.  “A pertinent question.  Scryer Archmagus Snowfoot is in Cantorin, trying to salvage energy signatures from the watchtower that exploded this afternoon.  Also, several of her Master Scryers are combing the site of a battlefield in southern Amandon where an entire Gold company and twelve mages disappeared.  They’ve found bodies and portal traces but none that go to anywhere but the watchtowers and here.  And there are signs of necromancy.”

Geraad’s eyes widened.  Necromancy and its practitioners had long been the bogeymen of the Silent Circle: little-understood but widely rumored, said to possess power over life and death and the soul itself.  For centuries, there had been a bounty on anyone who practiced such magics, but though accusations cropped up regularly, it was common knowledge that all real necromancers had been exterminated in the first years of the Risen Phoenix Empire.

Of course, Geraad knew better.

The Archmagi all sat up, stricken by the word.  “Necromancy?” said the Artificer Archmagus incredulously.  “That must be a mistake.”

“
Evidently not,” said Warder Farcry, and gestured to Geraad.  “I called Warder Iskaen in because he recently witnessed a necromantic event in Wyndon.  The Hawk’s Pride hushed it up, but Iskaen dictated his report to me upon his escape, and I do not doubt his assessment.  And with this new attack...”

“
Why were you informed first?” said Enkhaelen hotly.  “I’m the Inquisition commander.  If there’s been an incident, I should be out there, not Snowfoot.”

Warder Farcry shrugged, which did distracting things to her cleavage.  “Enkhaelen, this is not an Inquisition matter.  There is no one to interrogate.  And as I hear it, you were away from your scry at the time of the blast.”

“I was occupied.  You should have sent a servitor.”

“
You should have told us of the necromancer immediately,” said Artificer Varrol.

“
If we convened to discuss every necromantic rumor, we would never leave this room,” said Farcry.  “The Hawk’s Pride has put nothing on the public Psycher Weave about the first incident, so all I’ve had to work with is Iskaen’s report.  This new one, though…”  She looked to Geraad.  “There are troubling similarities between the two.  Qisvar?”

Uneasy, Geraad looked to the Psycher Archmagus as he sat forward.  “I have my back-doors into the Gold Weave,” Qisvar said, his voice burred with a harsh serpent-lands accent despite his decades in the north.  “The Gold Army has threaded two reports about the situation—one on the disaster you mentioned, and another about an earlier mission to the north.  Both were attempts to capture a man named Cobrin.  He appears to be a former Crimson slave and some sort of spirit vessel, and via a third report it seems that he was imprisoned in the Thynbell Palace before escaping in another disastrous military maneuver.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” said Salandry.

“
This ‘Cobrin’ was captured by the Golds after being incapacitated by the destruction of the necromancer whom Iskaen encountered.”

“
And Cobrin then broke Iskaen’s bonds when they met in Gold confinement, allowing him to return here,” said Farcry.

All eyes turned to Geraad.

Sweat beaded on Geraad’s forehead, and his hands broke into sudden tingling pains.  This past month had been the most terrifying of his life, but now he saw that it was far from over; the kindness that strange young man had shown him had now come back to haunt him.  If the Gold Army was concerned enough to hide their reports from the general Psycher Weave and only communicate through their private sub-Weave, then some grim plot was unfolding.  Through his meager knowledge, Geraad had just been thrust into the midst of it.

“
I know nothing more than I have told you, Warder Archmagus,” he said, too aware of the tremor in his voice.  “My contact with the necromancer was at a distance.  All I saw were the ghostly wings, all I felt was the threatening aura.  As for Cob—or Cobrin—I knew him for perhaps a quarter-mark.  I could not observe his actions properly due to the arcane dampening, so I do not know what he was, or how he did what he did.”

“
Your goblin was his companion, though,” said Farcry.

Geraad could not conceal his wince.  Though he had gained permission to keep Rian as a pet, he had been trying to keep knowledge of the situation to a minimum.  He had not been able to keep his neighbors out, nor could he lie to the Warder Archmagus, but the fewer who knew of Rian, the safer the goblin was.  “Are you requesting that I turn him over for interrogation?”

“I would not call it a request,” said Enkhaelen.

"Respectfully, I—"

“Geraad,” interrupted Warder Farcry, though her expression was gentle, “this is not up for discussion.  I permitted you to keep that creature because of its potential as an information source.  With as much as they loathe magic, I am surprised it decided to stay with you, but we must now use that loyalty to our benefit.  I am sorry, but the goblin must be turned over to the Inquisitors.”

Geraad’s gaze slipped to Evoker Enkhaelen, who looked insufferably smug.  The thought of Rian in his hands—the man who had once recommended paralyzing shock as a method of Circle discipline, as well as refined the Inquisitors into a ruthless mob of flagrant mindwashers—made him sick to his stomach.  The man had no capacity to understand what a deep mental probe would do to any mind, let alone a young, fragile one like the goblin’s.

And despite his attempts to distance himself from the creature, Geraad could not help but feel protective.  Rian had no one else in the world right now, no one to stand up for him.  Yielding him to the Inquisition would be a greater betrayal than the Golds’ treatment of Geraad himself.

He opened his mouth to proclaim such, cringing inside at the inevitable backlash, but then had a thought.  The five Archmagi stared at him in varying shades of concern, indifference and contempt as he marshaled his thoughts.

“Respectfully, Evoker Archmagus, Warder Archmagus, I must propose an alternate plan,” he said quietly.  “I know the goblin well enough to predict that he would do injury to himself and to others were he to be taken from my suite, and I can not in good conscience deliver him to you.  However, I understand the importance of this information, and as a mentalist—though not a trained Inquisitor—I offer a compromise.  Allow me to investigate the goblin’s memories by myself and find out all I can about this Cobrin.  I will deliver these memories to you, whole and unedited, to do as you wish.  Please.”

“
Not good enough,” said Enkhaelen, sitting forward.  “What you can discover, the Golds can discover, and we can not permit them to pace us in knowledge, not when their behavior has taken such a turn.”

“
Then you propose to mindwash the goblin after it is interrogated?” said Psycher Qisvar.