The Night of the Solstice (11 page)

In the darkness, Claudia buried her head in Alys's shadowy lap.

“But I've already told you I'm busy.” Elwyn put her head on one side and smiled at him ingenuously. “You see, there are reed whistles to make, and flowers to gather, and I want to fly my falcon and see her bring down other birds… .”

“I am aware of the many pressing demands on your time,” said Cadal Forge. “But for the sake of our long friendship, surely you can spare an hour. I really must insist.”

The way he said it, Alys could not imagine anyone daring to refuse. But—

“No,” said Elwyn flatly, dropping the smile and shaking her silvery head for emphasis. “I've made up my mind, Cadal Forge, and I don't wish to argue. I will not go.”

“Then you will
stay
,” cried the sorcerer, suddenly unrecognizable with fury. Strangely, his hooded eyes hardly seemed to see Elwyn, but rather stared blindly through her. “You will remain a prisoner in this house until you obey me!”

“And how will you keep me? I see no thornbranches here.”

“You see a Red Staff.” Something passed, blindingly fast, from Aric's hands to those of the master sorcerer. It was a length of wood like a quarterstaff, dull red in color. The head was carved in the hideous semblance of a griffin, and as Cadal Forge pointed the staff at Elwyn, long twisted branches, laden with thorns, shot out from the griffin's mouth.

With a ringing laugh, Elwyn danced lightly out of the way, and in a single movement reached the window. No one saw how the shutter came open, but it did. Placing her hands on the sill, she swung herself lithely through it. Her sweet laughter hung mockingly on the air for a moment and was gone.

Aric sprang to the window and leaned out. “We must stop her!” he cried. “If she speaks of this—”

“No, no. Let be,” said Cadal Forge. The savage passion had left him. He passed a hand over his forehead, blinking, and seemed to withdraw. “She will have forgotten it within the hour,” he added, as Aric still looked out.

Reluctantly, the younger sorcerer turned, closing
the wooden shutter once more. “She was our only hope of finding what lies beyond the mirrors,” he said dully.

Cadal Forge had recovered himself, and a faint smile touched his lips. “No,” he said. “I suspected it would come to this. And there is another, more intelligent and reliable ally at hand.”

“Who?”

“Thia Pendriel.”

Aric stared at him as if he had gone mad. When he spoke at last, it was in the flat voice of unbelief. “Thia Pendriel. Silver Guildmistress and a magistrate of the Council. Originator of the Plan of Separation. Thia Pendriel,
who ordered you executed for treason, who herself helped to cast the portal which placed you in a Chaotic Zone to die—”

“And thus was unwittingly responsible for what I found in that Zone.” Reaching into the folds of material at his breast, the sorcerer drew out a fist-sized jewel, a ruby, irregularly shaped but so clear it looked like a chunk of red ice. He weighed it in his hand as he continued speaking. “Thia Pendriel, who hates Morgana for winning the Gold Staff away from her in her youth more than she ever hated me. Thia Pendriel, who has skills surpassing all others' at bringing far-distant scenes to light, and who can turn the mirrors themselves into windows so that we may see the other side.”

Aric was still shaking his head as if stunned. “But should the Council learn of the Society's existence—”

“They will not learn of it from her,” said Cadal Forge. Once again his expression was thoughtful, remote. “There is much you do not understand, Aric. Thia Pendriel has made a study of the mirrors; she knows all there is to know about them—except what no one but Elwyn could tell her, that on the night of the solstice they open to all. And this last secret she will pay dearly to learn. She is interested in the Stillworld for her own reasons.”

“Which we do not know.”

“Nor does she know ours,” murmured Cadal Forge. The dreaming look enfolded him as he stared into the darkness and smiled.

Aric looked at him in uneasy surprise. “But she
must
know ours, if she is to aid us. And I daresay she must have her share of the Stillworld as well—”

“Yes, yes, whatever her price is we must meet it.” Cadal Forge had refocused with a start. Now he turned to Aric and examined him. “You still do not agree. What are you afraid of? Perhaps”—he straightened, his shadow lengthening on the far wall—“you think I cannot match her power.”

The younger man turned the color of old cheese, and averted his eyes. “No, my lord,” he whispered after a long silence. “I know what you have found, and how you use it.”

“Then let me save it for the humans, and don't tempt me to use it on
you
,” said the other, relaxing, and smiling again. “My old friend, be at ease,” he added gently. “The councillor and I have met secretly more than once since my ‘execution,' and I know her weaknesses. I leave for Weerien tomorrow.” He moved to lay a hand on the shoulder of Aric, who still looked slightly sick—and stopped cold. Alys had been so mesmerized by the conversation that she had
left her shelter in the darkness and crept forward, by degrees, to hear better. At last, without realizing it, she had come into the line of sight of the mirror, and as Cadal Forge stepped forward he suddenly found himself gazing at the reflection of a very material young woman.

Their gazes locked in the mirror and Alys felt the force of those crystal gray eyes like a blast of heat from a furnace. With a gasp, she flung herself down into the shadows, and her reflection disappeared from the bright glass.

“What sorcery is this?” cried Aric, but it was Cadal Forge who whirled around swift as thought, his keen eyes razing the exact spot where Alys and the other three lay trembling. Yet even those eyes could see nothing, for shortly he turned back to his associate.

“I cannot tell,” he said, and several times as he spoke he looked from the mirror to the wall, and back again. “But you must bring the Gray Staff and work a spell to reveal all that is hidden in this room. And I … I must cast a portal to Weerien at once. Our need of Thia Pendriel is greater than I thought.”

Aric nodded and hurried from the room. But Cadal Forge, despite his words, hesitated, looking meditatively into the shadows. By his side Briony crooned deep in her throat, her yellow eyes fixed on Elwyn's hawk, which had not escaped with its mistress, but perched uneasily on a ledge in the rafters.

At the continued sound the sorcerer looked up, following her gaze. Then, with an abstracted glance at his familiar, he lightly laid the fingers of one hand across the Red Staff. The hawk, which had taken flight in fear, suddenly thrashed and plummeted to the stone floor, one wing broken.

Alys covered Claudia's eyes with a shadowy hand as Briony pounced.

“Are you truly beyond the mirrors, friends of Morgana? Are you indeed watching? Then see this.” Cadal Forge spoke above the noises Briony made with the hawk. Once again he brought out the great jewel, holding it in sight of both mirror and shadows. “Behold Heart of Valor, a jewel from the time of Unmaking, recreated again—by me. Shall I tell you how I did it?” The sorcerer spoke casually, as if
addressing honored guests he could see. In fact, all at once he seemed to be enjoying himself.

“When the Council cast me into the Chaotic Zone my faithful Aric managed secretly to send me my staff. Even with all the power of the Red I struggled—I nearly succumbed to the maelstrom. But my will to live was strong. I wrestled with that great Zone as if it were an enemy that could be conquered—and I did conquer. I woke from deathlike sleep to find desolation all around me, but no Chaos. All was quiet. Natural law had been restored. But on the ground before me lay a jewel. I recognized it as one of the
bas imdril,
one of the Gems of Power that the Council Unmade long ago, and that I, in my struggles, had somehow created again. And that I have mastered—so.” The sorcerer fit the great Gem into his staff, and the griffin seemed crowned with fire. “Not even the Council knows of its existence, or that, with a word, I can do
this
.” The ruby traced a wide circle in the air, and, as the sorcerer murmured intently, the circle became a cylinder, a tunnel of shimmering light stretching off to infinity.

“I defy you to oppose me,” said Cadal Forge quietly, and he stepped into the portal of light. It shrank and closed behind him, and the room was left to darkness and the flickering of the candle.

A dim figure took shape before that candle as Charles jumped from the shadows. “Hurry!” he said. “Before Aric gets back!”

“Hurry where?” whispered Janie.

Aric had reclosed the shutter and the door. There was no moonlight, and no escape.

Charles tried futilely to wrench the shutter open before turning back.

“We've got to do
something
—”

“We
can't
,” said Janie. Then she suddenly began to laugh. “We can't do anything. We're absolutely helpless!”

“Stop it,” said Alys. “Janie, be quiet!”

Alys herself was sick with fear, not the least because Briony had finished with the hawk and was now turning languid yellow eyes toward the sound of their voices. If they were truly shadows, those steely claws could not hurt them, but as it was …

“He's coming back!” cried Charles from the door.

Flattened against the wall, with Briony sniffing at her feet and Claudia sobbing convulsively beneath her arm, Alys tried to think. If only they were truly shadows—but Janie had said they
ought
to be, that they just weren't willing it hard enough.

She thrust Claudia away from her and sprang to stand before the closed shutter. “Briony! You hideous old lizard, come here!”

“Alys!”

“Charles, if this doesn't work out for me, you get the others back! At least you'll have moonlight. Here I am, kitty! You want me, don't you? Come on. Come for me, you
snake
!” She drew the gannelin dagger, and alone of all her possessions it shone out brightly, etched against the shadows. Footsteps sounded in the hall. Briony crouched low, snarling, her eyes fixed on the dagger. “Come for me, girl!”

With a blood-chilling yowl the beast leapt for her throat and Alys closed her eyes and thought for all she was worth about shadows, about vapor, mist, and ether. The savage yowl shrilled into a cry of surprise
as Briony passed right through her and crashed with a terrible impact into the shutter. With a tearing sound the ancient wood gave way and the sorcerer's familiar, unable to stop herself, went with it. Unlike Elwyn's laughter, the scream emitted by Briony did not hang on the air, but went down and down and down.

“Now!” cried Alys, moonlight pouring in the shattered window. As they plunged toward the mirror she saw Aric reflected behind them, and saw that he saw their reflections and had the Gray Staff outstretched, his face twisted with fury as he mouthed words. Then, with a final bound, she reached the Passage and the air blazed turquoise blue around her.

That same night, in the Wildworld, in a room that had been stripped of anything she might find useful, Morgana Shee leaned her head wearily against the sorcerous bars in the window.

It had been twelve days since her capture, and she still could not understand what Cadal Forge wanted.

She had known his mother, a lady of one of the great houses of Findahl. And she had known
him,
child, youth, and man. She had watched him win a Red Staff at an unprecedentedly young age and listened, with delight, as he then adroitly argued his way out of the traditional apprenticeship in Weerien. When he set himself up in a city-state of the Stillworld called Florence, and began to study with a human master, she had visited him often.

She remembered the last time she had seen him there, when he had showed her—oh, with what enthusiasm!—his chemical compounds and reagents and his newest treatise on the nature of matter. She had admired them—and then she had begged him to go to one of the Eastern countries where witchcraft was not a crime, or at least to come with her to England, where the Inquisition held less sway.

He had laughed at her, handsome in his loose silk shirt and fur-trimmed jerkin.

“I'm tired of wandering. Besides, how can I leave Firenze? My teacher, Signore Gallura, is here.”

“And his daughter, also?”

“Ah …” He had smiled sideways at her. “So you've seen Celeste. Well, they are both here, and I can leave neither of them.”

“Oh, my friend, you are so young… . Stay, then, but be on guard. What your teacher teaches is not orthodox, and
that
”—the treatise—“is close to heresy. If you need my help, send your cousin Terzian to me in England.” And she had left him.

Terzian had come less than a year later, not by
portal, for the White Staff had not the power to cast one, but over land and sea. By the time she reached Morgana, Cadal had been in the hands of the Inquisition for a month.

“And they will burn him soon, for they are afraid of him,” the young sorceress had said, shuddering, as Morgana made frantic preparations for the journey.

“They should be afraid! The wielder of a Red Staff—how could they even hold him?”

Terzian shook her head. “When they summoned Signore Gallura for questioning my cousin went, too, but he did not take his staff. Instead he took his notebooks and his drawings. He was convinced that even the Inquisitors could be swayed by reason, that he could make them understand that science is no heresy, no evil.”

“Oh, Cadal!”

“When they showed the signore the instruments of torture, he fell to his knees and wept. He recanted all he'd taught or written contrary to doctrine, and he said that he was not a heretic but that Cadal was
a sorcerer. If he'd known how right he was he never would have dared say it.”