The Floodgate (13 page)

The wizard’s puzzlement deepened. “It’s the name you used when we met. You also claimed to be an illusionist, though, so how should I know?”

Disappointment surged, then quickly receded. Tzigone had survived by being cautious; if this woman had once been Keturah, she would be equally wary. Their reunion, if such this was, would of necessity proceed one small step at a time.

She slanted a look at the beautiful wizard and saw nothing that reminded her of her own face. “I wonder what I’d look like with your hair.”

A horrified expression crossed Sinestra’s face, and she clamped both hands to her raven-hued curls. “Forget it! You already said I could I keep it!”

Tzigone chuckled. “I wasn’t thinking of clipping it for a wig. I was just admiring it. Maybe I’ll go to an illusionist and have him drop a spell over me.”

A flicker of emotion flashed in Sinestra’s dark eyes, quickly replaced by her usual expression of slightly amused boredom. She patted her gleaming tresses. “This is all mine. It reaches my knees when I take it down.”

A distant memory assailed Tzigone, an image of her mother at play, running after elusive globes of light. Her unbound hair flowed behind her like a silken shadow.

“Yes,” Tzigone said in a slightly strangled voice. “I imagine it does.”

For several days, Matteo tried to honor the king’s request and serve his patron as best he could. Beatrix did not require his counsel. She turned aside his requests for audience.

Yet a steady stream of artisans and craftsmen and wizards flowed through the queen’s laboratory. Matteo’s frustration grew with every passing hour.

One morning he could take no more. He left the palace before dawn by way of the kitchen gates, weaving his way through the merchants who kept the palace tables supplied. He dodged a small flock of geese and nodded a courtly but absent response to the goose girl’s greeting.

A glance at the rising sun prompted him to increase his pace. Procopio Septus usually left his villa early. The wizard would not welcome Matteo’s inquiries in his home or at the city palace, but perhaps he would speak more freely in the moments between.

During his service with Procopio, Matteo had often walked this route. He caught sight of the wizard a few streets away from the city’s pink marble palace.

“Lord Procopio!”

The wizard glanced up. His smile was slow and studied, his black eyes unreadable. “So the hero of Akhlaur has returned at last! A rogue magehound unveiled, a laraken vanquished, a nation of wizard-lords saved. Gods above, Matteo! You left my employ three moons past, and this is how you account for your time? I thought I’d trained you to do better.”

Matteo chuckled. “Had I stayed in your service longer, I might have woven a tighter tapestry. The edges of this tale are sadly frayed.”

The wizard lifted one snowy brow. “Flattery, subtlety. A neat segue from jest to compliment to the matter at hand. You are learning quickly, young jordain. What are these loose threads you think I might help you bind?”

“You know that Kiva, the elf inquisatrix, was taken to the Temple of Azuth.” Matteo chose his words carefully to avoid betraying his oaths of secrecy. “I assume you know the issues involved.”

Procopio’s jaw tightened, and he took a moment before responding. “As the sages have long known, the secret of the swamp’s expansion was a leak from a gate into the Plane of Water. The presence of the laraken made it difficult to deal with this leak. Any magic used against the monster simply made it stronger. Conversely, were the gate closed, the laraken would be forced to seek magical sustenance elsewhere. Eventually the creature would have been destroyed, but the blow dealt to Halruaa’s wizards would be considerable. The Council of Elders believes that this was Kiva’s intent. Now the laraken has been dealt with and the gate closed, thanks to you and your friends.”

“Not closed,” Matteo stated. “Moved.”

Shock flared in the wizard’s eyes, quickly extinguished by a wave of doubt. “That is an extraordinary claim. I assume you can defend it?”

With a few terse words, Matteo described the final moments of battle in Akhlaur’s Swamp. The laraken disappeared into a shallow spring. Kiva tossed an enormous square of black silk over the water.

“Both spring and silk disappeared,” Matteo concluded. “Closing a magical gate requires great strength-more, I would think, than Kiva possessed at that moment. A powerful artifact might have done the job, but very few magical items could have survived the laraken’s hunger.”

“A portable hole would,” Procopio said grimly. “Since the magic is focused upon the escape site rather than the silken portal, the laraken would find less nourishment in Kiva’s silken scarf than it might in a lady’s gown. I agree with your assessment: The gate was moved. Why is this not known among the council?”

“As to that, I cannot say,” Matteo answered carefully. “I gave full report of these details to the Jordaini College and to the priests of Azuth. There is related matter, a very delicate one.” When the wizard nodded in encouragement, Matteo added, “The jordain Zephyr was Kiva’s ally.”

Procopio’s face went cold and still.

“I know that Zephyr died a traitor, and understand that speaking his name and deeds is an egregious error of protocol,” Matteo hastened to add.

“Then why speak?” The wizard’s voice was curt, his eyes fixed straight ahead. A red flush stained his face, and he quickened his step as if to outdistance this distasteful subject.

Matteo matched the man’s pace. “Perhaps Zephyr let behind some small threads that might lead to the gate’s new hiding place. For the good of Halruaa-“

Procopio stopped dead. He turned and impaled Matteo with a glare that stopped the young jordain’s words as surely as a lance through the throat.

“You presume to tell me what that ‘good’ might be? The wizard-lords decide such things! A jordain provides information and advice-judiciously, it may be hoped, and with proper discretion.”

Matteo heard the accusation in Procopio’s voice. “I served you faithfully,” he replied. “The queen has no reason to complain of my counsel or my discretion. Never have I betrayed a confidence.”

“Yet you come to me with winks and nudges, if not words!”

This was neither fair nor accurate, but Matteo did not protest.

“Zephyr did what he did,” Procopio continued. “I cannot explain or excuse it. I will not, despite those who wish me to run about shouting undignified disclaimers. You are young and far too idealistic for your own good or anyone else’s, but surely you’ve observed that ambition is Halruaa’s ruling star. Every ambitious wizard in this city-every wizard-will remember my jordain’s disgrace and use it as a weapon against me. Do not add arrows to their quivers!”

“That is not my intention.”

“Your intention? The Jordaini have a dozen proverbs about the worth of good intentions!” snapped Procopio. “Forget your intentions and remember your oath. You may speak of nothing you saw or heard while in my employ, not with direct words, not even by innuendo. If you do, I swear by wind and word that you will come to envy the old elf’s fate!”

The wizard gained height and power with every word, and by the time he finished his rant he towered over the much-taller jordain. It was a simple spell, a glamour that some wizards evoked almost unthinkingly when angered or challenged.

“You need not remind me of my Jordaini vows,” Matteo said with quiet dignity. “If you wish, I will swear anew that all I learned and saw while in your employ will stay within the walls of memory.”

“As long as it does,” Procopio growled, “I will have no reason to speak to the Jordaini Council. But know this: If I charge you with betraying confidence, your exploits in Akhlaur’s Swamp will not save you!”

The wizard disappeared in a flash of azure fire. Matteo was still blinking stars from his eyes when he felt a light touch on his back, tracing a lightning bolt surrounded by a circle. The symbol of the jordain.

He turned to face a small woman who wore an apprentice’s blue robe and an insouciant grin. She leaned against a garden wall and casually twirled a jordaini pennant from one finger. Matteo glanced down. His medallion was missing. He, a highly trained warrior, had neither heard Tzigone’s approach nor sensed the theft.

Chagrin sharpened his voice. “Have you no duties, no responsibilities?”

Some of the high spirits faded from Tzigone’s face. “Basel sent me shopping,” she said glumly. She held aloft a string of small, pungent mushrooms. “You wouldn’t believe what he intends to do with these.”

Matteo answered automatically. “The spores are used as a spell component. Strewn upon a battlefield before rain, they conjure an instant army. In times of peace, the spell can be altered to guard against intruders. The mushrooms are also used as an ingredient in cockatrice stuffing, a natural antidote to any poison that remains in the fowl’s flesh.”

Tzigone regarded him with a sour expression. “You must be very popular at parties. What did old Snow Hawk say?”

Since he was becoming accustomed to the girl’s lighting-quick turns of mind, Matteo made the necessary shift. Actually, “Snow Hawk” was an apt name for the lord mayor.

“Nothing of value, I’m afraid. Lord Procopio did not wish to discuss Zephyr and warned me against making further inquiries. It appears that yet another door is closed to me. I’m sorry, Tzigone.”

She shrugged away his apology. “Has Procopio found a jordain to replace Zephyr?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good. Then the elf’s quarters are probably undisturbed.”

Matteo blew out a long breath. “I don’t like where this is going.”

“Don’t worry,” she said with a blithe wave of one hand. “I’ve been to Snow Hawk’s villa recently, and I’m not eager to return.”

“Oh?” said Matteo warily.

Her gaze slid away. “I’d sooner be stripped naked, smeared with honey, and staked out where bugs could crawl over me than face that man again. How’s that for a deterrent?”

“It will serve.” A rumble of thunder rolled in from the lake. Matteo gestured to the mushrooms. “You’d better get those to your master before the rain starts.”

Tzigone blew him a kiss and sauntered off. She sang as she went to keep from screaming in frustration. If Matteo couldn’t bypass the barriers they encountered around every turn, what possible hope had she of success?

She went directly to Basel’s study. He looked up, a smile of genuine affection on his plump face. On impulse, Tzigone decided that Basel was probably her best hope of learning about her mother. He was patient with her questions and did not plague her overmuch with his own. Basel had a dark secret or two-she’d gone to considerable trouble to ferret them out-but who didn’t?

“Lord Basel, can you tell me of a wizard named Keturah?”

His face went rigid with some incomprehensible emotion. His eyes dropped, and he cleared his throat. When he lifted his gaze to her again, he was composed and faintly smiling. Tzigone marked the effort this had cost him, and wondered.

“Where did you hear that name, child?”

“Akhlaur’s Swamp. They said that Keturah was skilled in evocation. They compared me to her.” That was true, as far as it went. Tzigone elbowed her protesting conscience into silence and kept her gaze steady on Basel’s shrewd face.

“Who was this ‘they’ you speak of?”

She responded with a shrug and a vague, milling gesture of her hands. “You know. Them.”

“Tzigone.” His voice was uncharacteristically stern.

“Kiva, the elf magehound.”

“Ah.” Basel exhaled the word on a sigh. “Well, that follows. What else did this Kiva tell you?”

“Not a thing. Unless tossing fireballs counts as conversation, we didn’t exactly chat.”

“I see. So from whom did you hear this name?”

The wizard’s persistence puzzled her. “Andris, the jordain who has lived through the laraken’s magic drain.”

“Ah, yes. That tale created quite a stir.” Basel propped his elbows on the table and laced his plump fingers together. “Fascinating story. A jordain shows no sign of latent magical talent, yet magic-echoes of some distant elf ancestor-lies dormant within. The Jordaini Council debated whether Andris possessed magic or not, was a false jordain or true. Nor are they alone. A wizard cannot leave his own privy without encountering a philosophical debate on the nature of magic and life. The Azuthans won’t solve that puzzle, but I’m eager to read their reports concerning this Andris.

“Back to the subject at hand,” Basel concluded. “If I may ask, what is your interest in Keturah?”

Tzigone gestured to the portraits that ringed the room, an ever-present circle of Indoulur ancestors. “You come from a long line of conjurers. I have no family. No one can say, ‘Don’t worry, your sister had a hard time with that spell, too.’ You’ve said yourself that my magical talents are puzzling. Maybe talking to someone who’s even a little bit like me will help.”

Basel leaned back and gazed at some distant point, as if he were studying one of the portraits on the far wall and measuring the worth of kith and lineage. “A reasonable argument,” he said at last, “but wouldn’t it make more sense to seek out your own family, rather than a wizard with a similar talent?”

“Of course it would,” she answered quickly, understanding that a disclaimer would be too blatant and obvious a lie. “Don’t think I haven’t tried. I even tended behir hatchlings for a while so I could learn how to read genealogy records. With all the tinkering breeders do, the records are almost as complex as the wizard-gift charts.”

“Very ingenious,” he murmured, “but unless your forebears were eight-legged crocodilians, such efforts will only get you so far.”

Tzigone hesitated, considering how much more she could safely tell even her kindly master. “I tried to get at the Queen’s Registry.”

The wizard stiffened. “What did you learn there?” he asked, a bit too casually.

His reaction put her into swift retreat. “Before I could find much of anything, Cassia, the king’s jordain, interrupted and tossed me into a locked room.”

“To which the door mysteriously opened, I suppose.”

“Life is full of mystery,” Tzigone agreed.

“And Cassia was murdered before she could chase you down,” he added.