The Fire Mages (18 page)

I touched each mirror in turn, very gently, feeling the buzz of power inside each one. How many centuries had they sat here, untouched, yet still they were ready to send and receive messages. On a whim, I pulled out a quill and trimmed it to shape, and sat down at one of the flat mirrors. I had never written a mirror message, but I had seen it done often enough. Carefully, I set my quill to the mirror’s surface and wrote:
‘Greetings from the Imperial City.’
The letters flared and shimmered as I wrote, before settling. I moved along to the next mirror and scribed again, and then a third time.

Drei laughed. “Who is watching the other end, do you suppose?”

“
Where
is the other end?” I smiled up at him, seeing understanding dawn on his face. Were these just spare mirrors, ready to be retuned to replace a broken one? Unlikely, for the malfunctioning Callamorn mirror at Ardamurkan hadn’t been replaced. So they must connect somewhere. But where?

We waited a little while until the letters had all faded away, but of course there was no reply. I hadn’t expected any.

There was just one floor left above us. The renewals room.

The stair was narrow and twisty, just like at Ardamurkan, and ended in a small landing with a door. Drei followed me in silence, feeling the energy thrumming ahead of us, just as I did. I turned and grinned at him, and his face reflected my own anticipation, although tinged with fear, perhaps. He had never been in the secret parts of a scribes’ tower before.

I should have been nervous too, for what we were doing was absolutely forbidden. The renewal ceremony was the most mystical part of a mage’s life, hedged around with ritual and oaths of silence, and here we were just walking in. Yet it was exhilarating, too. I desperately wanted to see that pillar again, to touch it, to draw power from it, more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. Nothing could stop me.

“That door’s locked,” Drei said, pointing to a keyhole. He was right, the flag was set to locked. But I knew what to do.

I laid my hand on the door and with a soft snick it opened a little.

“There!” I pushed the door open and ushered him through. Inside, the energy all around us was overwhelming. And there it was, right in the centre of the room, a simple marble column, shimmering a little but otherwise looking much like any other. There must have been thousands of them in the Keep, in different sizes and colours, just polished marble. But none of them were like this one, calling to me and radiating such glorious power.

“Is it safe?” Drei whispered.

“Of course,” I said. “Watch.”

I strode across the room until I was next to the pillar, closing my eyes to bask in the warmth in my mind. Almost I could draw the power from it just by standing beside it, not even touching.

Almost.

I reached out and laid my hand on it.

There was a violent crack, a sizzling fire, a great force hurling me backwards. Then the world went black.

“Kyra! Kyra!”

I woke in a haze. A voice calling me in the distance. My cheek resting on cold, rough stone. One arm bent beneath me. And pain, knifing across my chest and shoulder, and all down my back. Even as I became aware of it, it began to fade, just a little.

I groaned.

“Oh, thank all the Gods! Kyra, can you speak?”

I tried, but all that came out was a gargle. Then, with an effort, “S’all righ’. ’M fine.”

I opened my eyes. I could see the stone floor, and a pair of woollen trousers kneeling beside me. A face loomed into view, upside down. “Kyra?” I shifted a little to see him better, provoking a shaft of pain through my shoulder and forcing a gasp from me.

He gave a low moan. “Oh, Kyra, what have we done! We shouldn’t have come!”

The pain subsided, and I could feel warmth spreading through my injuries, soothing away my hurts and calming me. Even as I lay there, my body was healing itself. I lifted my uninjured arm experimentally, and with an effort lifted myself up a bit.

I licked my lips and tested my voice. “I’m all right.” It came out as a croak, but more coherent. “Don’t think... anything...” A pause for breath. “Serious.” Another pause. “Getting better.”

“Getting better? Oh! You mean... your healing powers? Oh, that’s good, that’s very good.”

It seemed to take a long time, but very gradually the pain diminished, and finally vanished, apart from my shoulder which burned deep inside, and spat agonisingly down my arm and over my chest whenever I moved. Eventually even that drained away to nothing. I felt weak, but no longer injured.

“Will you help me up?”

“Are you sure? Well, if you think so...”

He tried his best to be gentle, but surprisingly nothing hurt as he hauled me off the floor. I leaned limply against the wall at first, but even the wobbliness disappeared and I felt almost normal again.

“What happened?” I said.

“You touched it – the column there – and you flew – you
flew
across the room like a crossbow bolt, and crashed into the wall. Then you just lay there. I thought you were dead! Kyra, you said it was safe, that it was the same as the ones the mages use, but it can’t be. No, no, no! Come back here! Don’t go near it!  It’s vicious, it will kill you!”

Now that I felt better, I was drawn to it again, like a moth to the light, drifting closer, mesmerised.

“This happened before.” I’d forgotten in my excitement, but now I remembered touching the pillar at Ardamurkan, and it spat at me in a similar way, only a lot less violently. “It’s all right now, I think. It’s just the first touch, after that it’s perfectly normal.”

“Are you sure?”

Stupid question. “Of course I’m not sure! How can I know for sure? But there’s one way to find out.”

He howled in protest, but I was close enough to touch it now. Before he could stop me I reached out and slapped my hand against the pillar.

No reaction. I didn’t fly.

I could feel the warmth under my hand, I could feel the energy roiling around inside the stone, wanting to reach across to me, burning to enter me, to fill me with its majesty. Yet there it stayed.

I knew what to do. I brought my other hand alongside and placed it, too, on the pillar. In that instant, a great golden stream of energy poured into me, fizzing and sparkling and cascading through my whole body. I could feel every limb, every organ filling with glorious fire, so that the pillar and I were one being, one vessel of swirling potency. Every part of me was filled with it until it seemed to pour out of my skin and into the air. I threw back my head and cried out in ecstasy.

When the stream slowed to a trickle and stopped, I withdrew my hands, shaking, panting and close to hysteria. Alongside me, Drei also rested his hands on the pillar, his face showing shock and joy and an awed reverence. When he drew away, he turned to me, eyes wide, panting. “Gods! Gods! That was – so amazing.
Gods
!”

We laughed for sheer joy. Then the influx of energy had its natural effect, and we fell on each other, ripping off clothes, grunting and squealing like rutting rodents. Sex driven by magic was an astonishing experience, and totally different from mundane coupling, which wasn’t a big event for me. Drei liked the regular variety well enough, but he too seemed different this time. It was more than sex, it felt like being at one with the universe and each other, an experience so all-encompassing it was hard to believe anything existed beyond our two entwined bodies. Eventually we slept a little, woke and coupled again, then slept some more.

We woke to the blackness of a moonless night. We hadn’t thought to bring any lamps with us, and we could see nothing in the room. But there was light, of a sort.

“I can see you,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Your aura – I can see it. It’s really bright. I can hardly look at you.”

“Yours is the same,” he said. “You can really see mine?” I nodded. “Does that mean I have the same power as you now?”

But I couldn’t answer him.

~~~~~

That experience changed us both. I realised that the ritual aspect of renewal was a fraud, none of it necessary. Anyone who wanted could go to the pillar and draw as much magical energy as they needed, without any prancing about or incantations. And Drei realised that he could have as much power as I did. We quickly discovered that he could now see the blue lights just as well as I could. From then on, he no longer needed my magic and he began to drift away from me.

It wasn’t a sudden thing. Gradually as the suns passed, he went out more often on his own. His endless meetings with important people, which bored me rigid, were no longer compulsory for me and I stopped going along. I still went to the court assemblies and big formal events, but they were more enjoyable now that I wasn’t required to be attached to Drei’s arm. He stopped caring what I read, or testing me on it. When I practised my riding, only the stable worker accompanied me.

There were some suns when I only saw him in bed. Of course, he still needed me for that. I suppose he’d missed a lot of years of sex, but sometimes it seemed as if he wanted to catch up all in one go. He would reach for me as soon as the bedroom door was closed, and in the morning he’d be pawing me again. More than once, I woke in the night to find him all over me, sometimes already inside me, even if I were turned away from him. It was what I’d signed up for, but it was tedious, nevertheless, and sometimes I wished he’d be a little more affectionate, maybe kiss me, or touch me a little less fiercely. I didn’t expect him to profess undying love, but it was all a bit perfunctory.

While he was off doing who knows what, I enjoyed my free time. My hours were largely my own now, to fill as I pleased. In some ways that was a relief. I liked Drei well enough, but he was a strange and unpredictable man, and I was more comfortable without him constantly around. I could wander the restrained shops of the Keep for hours, or the more riotous streets and bazaars of the town outside. I could go to the Keep library and choose my own books for a change. I discovered the harmonium, where musicians and singers performed all afternoon.

But mostly, I confess, I went into the Imperial City. Drei had kept the token that allowed entry through the sewers, but even if I could get hold of another one, I couldn’t go to the library without him, so my first task was to find another way in. I walked all round the outer walls, from the towering stone crags at one end to the matching rock face at the other. There were hand-shaped markers at regular intervals all the way along, but most were in full public view, too open to be usable. One, however, was near a vegetable market, with wagons parked and crates stacked just beside the wall, giving me a nicely hidden approach. The market was busy until quite late, so there was always enough noise to hide the shushing noise of the door.

My favourite time to go was late afternoon. The town was still busy enough that a cloaked figure walking purposefully wouldn’t attract attention, but it was getting dark enough to hide my features. I would stride through the vegetable market, duck down a short alley and then round the back of a warehouse to the door. Hidden by the crates, my disappearance would be unobserved. Later, when I returned, the market was closed and I could be reasonably certain that no one would be about.

Freed from Drei’s more cautious influence, I wandered over the whole city. I explored buildings, climbed stairs, descended into underground tunnels and walked, enchanted, through gardens with statuary that waved or smiled or sang to me, fountains that began playing as I arrived and flowerbeds whose blooms opened just for me. I found ponds full of plump fish which swam across to me in the expectation of food. Many walls glowed with that eerie magical light, but elsewhere there were soft street lights that burst into life as dusk descended. Underground, lamps lit up as I approached.

When I found a quiet spot, I practised my magic. I wanted to know if I could do everything that Drei could, so my first objective was to learn to create fire. It was surprisingly easy. I had only to visualise it in my hand, and there it was, a small glowing ball or a spout of flame gushing from my fingers, whichever I wanted. I could make the plants grow, too, twining a vine no bigger than my hand all the way up a street lamp pole. Killing them was much harder, though. The best I could manage was to make the thing droop a little, and drop a few leaves, and even so I was exhausted afterwards.

I had no trouble replenishing my magical reserves, though. I went quite often to the scribes’ tower to touch the marble pillar. There was no shock from the first touch now and, strangely, no overflow of energy afterwards. I just topped up with energy and left feeling pleasantly full.

Sometimes I scribed spellpages, too. I could have got enhanced paper from the scribes’ tower, but I wanted to know if I could make the spellpages work with ordinary paper. Many buildings had ordinary paper and ink, and that was what I used. Once when I heard that the Drashon had some minor complaint, I scribed a spellpage for him and solemnly burned it in a crucible. I didn’t know whether it had worked, but he was at the next court assembly two suns later, fit and well. I did the same when one of my own servants was ill, and she was better before I even returned to the apartment. I even scribed a fertility spellpage for Deyria, although I didn’t think that would work. Breaking an existing spell is much more complicated than merely scribing a counter-spell.

The other really difficult undertaking was to create something out of nothing. One sun I was thirsty, and decided to spell myself a goblet of wine. I could make something appear, and it sat tantalisingly on a wall looking quite convincing, but as soon as I reached for it, it popped like a soap bubble. With practice, I learned to pick it up and even drink from it, but it tasted foul. When I tried taking a goblet from one of the houses, I could fill it with a very decent Callamorn red, but no amount of effort enabled me to create both goblet and wine, and it was so tiring that I gave it up.

I soon discovered there was no need to magic my own wine. Many of the buildings had cupboards, entire rooms, even, full of food and drink, including wine. I found one which laid out a full meal every evening. There were pots of hot food on burners, baskets of bread and fruit, flagons of ale and wine, pies sitting, knife ready, waiting to be cut. My mouth watered, but I told myself sternly that it couldn’t be real. It must be some magical illusion. The next night I went back, just to check, and there was a different array of dishes, all looking as real as anything served in the Keep.

And strawberries! Here in the depths of winter was a bowl of fresh strawberries, shining and plump and smelling of summer, and a jug of cream. I had no idea how that could be, but I hadn’t the willpower to resist. I picked one up, sniffed it, rolled it in my fingers, admired the deep red ripeness. Then I plopped it into my mouth, and bit down, the flavour exploding into my mouth. A little trickle of juice ran down my chin. I wiped the stickiness with my fingers and licked the juice off them.

I waited.

Nothing untoward happened, so I sat down and filled a bowl with strawberries and drowned them in cream. There’s nothing quite so enticing when there’s snow on the ground than the taste of summer.

After that I started on the hot food, a meaty stew and something with beans and vegetables, mopped up with a herby bread still, it seemed, warm from the oven. Then a slice of fruit pie, and a couple of small cakes. After that a few more strawberries.

I was so bloated I could hardly move.

“Thank you very much, that was delicious,” I said to the air.

The next afternoon, I went straight back there, but to my disappointment, there was no food. The table had been cleared, but nothing was set out.

“Am I too early?” I said. “I’ll come back later, shall I?” I giggled. It seemed so foolish to talk to the empty room, but surely someone was listening. The carefully manicured gardens, the swept streets, the food – there had to be someone doing all this work. The question was – who? Or perhaps what?

I wandered around for a bit, rather randomly because I was thinking about food, and later I went back to the same building, and there it all was – a different selection of foods, but the same groaning board. I ate roast duck in a rich wine sauce, a plum pie and fresh peaches.

“That was lovely,” I said loudly. “Might I have goose tomorrow? And an apple crumble with cream would be wonderful.”