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Another year passed, and even Ussene grew routine. The rest of the world drifted away. Giserre, with Spit’s help, began seeing to the needs of the fortress’s slaves with more than just sweaters and scarves. Reiffen helped by mixing salves and potions, though his mother still refused any magic for herself. Somewhere in her room she had hidden the green stone but, as far as Reiffen knew, she hadn’t yet availed herself of its power.
In the meantime he studied with Fornoch in the Library every day, and also with Usseis on occasion, in other parts of the fortress, examining things he would have preferred never knowing about at all. From Ossdonc, however, he learned nothing, no matter how often the Black Wizard came to call.
One day in the Library, as Reiffen pored over his books trying to decide just what was meant by the phrase ‘...the twisted knot of lust’s unborn...’ he noticed the Gray Wizard looming beside him.
“Have you been here long?” asked Reiffen without bothering to look up.
“Not very. Do you fear what I might have seen?”
“No. I assume you know everything about me. It was unsettling once, but I’m used to it now.”
Unwrapping his hands from his sleeves, Fornoch gestured to his pupil. “Come. You have advanced greatly in your skill. It is time for more than books.”
Without a thought, Reiffen accepted the Wizard’s proffered palm. The Library whisked away, replaced by a dim cavern where a red fire glowed in a deep hearth. Frogs croaked in the shadows; lamps flickered on the walls.
“Your own workshop,” the Wizard said.
At first glance the cave looked to be a smaller version of Usseis’s own laboratory, lacking only creatures chained to the walls. A small pool gleamed at the end opposite the hearth, its dark surface reflecting the nearer lamps in wriggling eels of light. Three stone tables lined the space between. The first supported a scaffolding of pipes and alembics, crucibles and retorts, while the second carried jars of glass and stone stacked in a wide pyramid at the center. The third was empty.
“I’ll need more light,” Reiffen said, looking forward to having a more appropriate space than the Library for his experiments. “I can’t work in the dark like Usseis.”
“You know the spells.”
Reiffen gestured toward the ceiling. The darkness lifted. Small things scuttled back into the cracks in the walls.
“Where is this place?” he asked. Now that the edges of the room were better lit, he saw there was no exit.
“Away from Ussene,” replied the Wizard.
“We’re not in the fortress?”
“No.” Fornoch picked up a jar from the second table. Something thick and wet sloshed inside, dripping slowly down the glass.
“Where is it?”
“Does it matter?”
“What if I can’t use my magic? Then I’ll need to know where this place is to get here.”
“Magic is the only way to travel to this chamber.”
Reiffen looked about the room once again. The stone walls looked thick and strong; he guessed the workshop was buried deep within the earth. Only a Dwarf could ever find it. But Reiffen had perfected the traveling spell now, even without thimbles. Once this place was fixed in his memory he would be able to come and go whenever he wished.
“This would be a good place for a Reliquary,” said the Wizard. “Usseis does not know it. Far safer for you to carry yourself here than back to the Library, or your apartments in Ussene.”
Opening his gigantic hand, he revealed the companion to the golden casket that housed Reiffen’s little finger, the one Fornoch had previously kept to himself.
“Both are yours, now,” he said, placing the case upon the empty table. “Even Usseis trusts you will not run away.”
The Wizard departed, and Reiffen spent the next several hours closely examining the chamber and all it contained. He found the pots and jars filled with every substance he had ever heard or read about, and quite a few others besides. From ratwing to earloam, fleabite to wortwattle, jellied nimbus to nail parings of the freshly dead, everything was there. And the collection of vessels on the other table was complete, though they showed all the tiny scratchings and dullness of having been heavily used. The frogs croaked in their pool; the flames twisted in the hearth. Reiffen’s shadow watched him from the walls.
When he was finished, he selected his ingredients and prepared a traveling spell. Lying atop the third table, small pots smoking at his feet and head, he readied his memory for his return. The table suited his purpose better than the floor because, if the casting took too long, he didn’t want any of the small things his light had scared away to interrupt his concentration.
He closed his eyes. One had to be relaxed for the traveling spell to work, which was why emergencies required a connection, finger joints or an ear. Fornoch had told him that Usseis, when committing a servant to return, always preferred removing something more important, but that was not the sort of thing to think about if Reiffen wanted to relax. Composing himself, he settled his back against the hard table and allowed the smoke to fill his mind. Close to sleep was when the spell was easiest.
He concentrated on his room, on the black and orange coverlet, and the lines in the stone ceiling. The world had become so much sharper since he had started learning magic. Now he knew how colors smelled, and the shapes of sounds. What figures laughter formed, and the textures of the air. His own room, thick with his own odor, but also of his mother and Spit, two oddly similar fragrances like a pair of crossed roses. And the trail of the cat as well, dragged across the other scents like an earthworm wriggling in the hoofprints of an ox. Flickered memory, touched with the barbed tails of the dust lingering in every hall and cavern of Ussene.
The stone beneath him turned soft as a mattress. Reiffen remained still a moment longer to make sure he had left nothing of himself behind. Like spun sugar, the line between this place and the one he had left stretched and sagged. Gently he pulled. The tethered end came free.
He opened his eyes as his door squeaked open. Spit jumped in surprise, the loose hair around her ears frizzing in fright.
“Reiffen! Oh, you gave me such a shake! One of these days it’s going to kill me, you popping out of the empty air like that!” Fanning herself with both hands, the poor woman rushed from the room. “Milady! Milady! He’s doing it again! Please say something to him for me, won’t you?”
A few days later he was returning to the apartment in the more regular way when he heard the rolling boom, like boulders tumbling down a mountainside, of the Black Wizard’s voice. Scowling, he quickened his pace. He preferred to have his mother to himself when he came home, and was growing weary of the Wizard’s endless visits. Spit was one thing: Reiffen had grown up in the Tear with Anella as well as his mother, and Spit wasn’t much different. But he had no wish to share his mother with a Wizard.
He stopped when he could hear both voices clearly. “I tell you again,” Ossdonc was saying. “Your life will be much easier.”
Anger lanced Giserre’s reply. “My life does not require easing.”
“I will make your son’s life easier as well.”
“Reiffen requires relief no more than I. He shall follow the path he has chosen.”
“Paths can be rough or smooth, milady. You would not want your son to stumble.”
“I will not pamper him.”
“Most humans are not so hard upon their offspring.”
“Most children will not have such purpose placed upon them as mine. Believe me, sir, your offer is unattractive any way you make it.”
“My offer, my lady, is likely to be the most attractive you will ever have.”
“I assure you, Cuhurran, I am uninterested in offers of any sort.”
“Perhaps if I permitted some others within the fortress to make their attentions known, your preference would change. One of my captains? A sissit?”
Hands clenching, Reiffen wished he had a sword. Better yet, he wished he had mastered a few more spells. No doubt magic would prove more effective on a Wizard than plain iron.
“You demonstrate your vileness, sir, in even alluding to such things. I would have you leave.”
“There are other ways, milady. Usseis is not the only one who can compel.”
“I do not fear your compulsion, sir. That is the way of a coward. You have committed many crimes against many people, but no one has ever accused you of cowardice.”
The passage echoed with Ossdonc’s heavy mirth. “My lady, your temper is as charming as your aunt’s. I have never regretted anything so much as when my brother killed her. Have you yet taken the Stone? I know all about it, you know, and urge you to take advantage of a boon so offered. It would be a shame if your own gifts were lost as foolishly as Loellin’s.”
A note of uncertainty arose in Giserre’s voice. “I have not, as yet, decided what to do with the Stone.”
“I suggest you choose quickly. We both know your son would be lost completely, should you cease to be by his side. Not to mention my own feeling in the matter.”
Giserre’s voice firmed. “As I said, I have not yet made up my mind.” Reiffen, who knew his mother better than the Black Wizard did, understood she had made her choice in the moment of speaking.
“Very well then,” continued Ossdonc. “I leave you to your decision. Understand, however, you and I are not finished. Not by many days and years.”
The voices ceased. Reiffen took a step forward, wishing to comfort his mother, but stopped as the thought occurred to him that Ossdonc might be already coming down the corridor. It was one thing to tell Giserre he had spied upon her conversation, but he preferred Ossdonc not know. Hurrying back toward the Library, he retraced his steps as far as the first bend in the passage. Even so, when Ossdonc passed, the Wizard gave Reiffen a broad wink and a short laugh, as if to say he understood it all.
He found his mother at her usual place on the couch, her knitting in her hands. Small lines of anguish lingered in her face as she smiled.
“Reiffen. I did not think to see you until supper. I am glad you have returned early.”
“So am I. I heard you and Ossdonc from the hall.”
“I would rather you had not. Our talk was not suitable for you to overhear.”
“He is the vilest of the Three.”
“He is certainly the most human.”
“If he hurts you in any way, I will kill him.”
“Thank you, Reiffen.” Giserre nodded modestly. “For my part, I shall do my best to make certain your vengeance is unnecessary.”
She held out her hand. Reiffen, though he thought he was too old for holding hands, took it just the same.
“I heard what Ossdonc said about taking the Stone,” he confessed. “How do you think you would do it?”
“The Stone is not so large it cannot be swallowed entire. A glass of wine to oil my throat would not be amiss, either.”
“Do you have it?”
“I do. In the sewing box.”
Reiffen found the box on the low table before the couch. Beneath the pincushion, needles, and thread lay the stone, dark and still.
“You’ve made up your mind, haven’t you,” he declared.
“I have.”
“When are you going to do it?”
His mother dropped her work in her lap and looked up. “Now, if you want. I suppose I can put it off no longer. You told me yourself I should do this when we arrived.”
“I would never have brought you, if I hadn’t thought I could keep you safe.”
“There is no safety now, Reiffen. Only boldness.”
The green stone gleamed among the tangled threads as soon as Giserre’s fingers approached the sewing box. She picked it up like a jewel from the nest of a jealous bird and held it in her hand. Its pulse quickened.
“I am more nervous than I would have hoped,” she said.
Reiffen poured his mother a glass of wine. Thanking him, she took a small sip. With her other hand, she slipped the stone like a large green grape past her lips. Her cheeks were pale; her dark hair topped her face like a spreading crown. Taking a fresh mouthful of wine, she swallowed with some effort. Her eyes teared, her throat struggled with the thickness. When she was finished, she coughed delicately behind her hand.
Reiffen’s heart pounded in his chest.
“That was not so difficult,” said Giserre. “I feel no difference.”
“You look no different, either.”
“Perhaps the effects take time.”
“Can you feel it? In your stomach, I mean?”
Giserre shook her head. The color returned to her cheeks. “I feel nothing at all. It passed down my throat more easily than I would have expected. I believe the wine was an excellent idea.”
Reiffen settled back on the couch without taking his eyes from his mother. “I suppose there is no way to test it.”
“No, there is not.”
“You could prick yourself.” Reiffen offered his mother a pin from the pincushion.
“Prick myself? Why should I want to do that?”
“Fornoch said the stone would make you live forever. I wonder if he made it so nothing could hurt you, either.”
“If you insist.”
With a shrug that suggested she would never have done such a thing had her son not proposed it, Giserre accepted the pin. Pausing to give Reiffen one last view of her hands, she jabbed her left forefinger.
“Does that satisfy you? I certainly felt the pain.” She held her finger out to her son’s gaze, a crimson dot welling at the tip.
Reiffen’s eyes narrowed. There was something odd about that drop of blood. A slight, sparkling sheen glimmered green in the light. He could barely see it, and for a moment he thought it was a trick of the Dwarven lamps in the room. Then it was gone, his mother wiping her finger clean with her handkerchief.
“Did you see it?” he asked.
“I saw nothing but a drop of blood.”
“You didn’t see the green?”
“No.” She gave him a sideways look. “Did you see something?”
“I think so. There was the tiniest hint of green, almost a glow, really.”
Giserre looked back at her finger, but the blood was gone. She squeezed it and a fresh drop appeared. Frowning, she said, “I still see nothing.”
“I do. It’s right there.” Reiffen was even more certain than before. The slightly green hue was plain to him; he didn’t understand how his mother could miss it. “Maybe if you held it closer to the light.”
But, no matter how his mother looked at her finger, she couldn’t see the green hint in the drop of blood. Blotting her finger a second time with her handkerchief, she held the sheer fabric up before the lamp, but still found nothing in the stain. Reiffen, however, saw it clearly, even after the blood had dried.
Her brow furrowed. “How can I not see it, if you do? My sense of color is excellent.”
“Maybe I’m more attuned to the magic. My spells are coming much more easily now that I have my workshop. Watch.”
“Light reflects, and burns and turns.
Bend its beam so none discerns.”
At the end of the last word, he disappeared completely. Even he couldn’t see his hand before his face.
Giserre cried out. “Reiffen! What have you done?”
“I’m right here, Mother. On the couch beside you.”
Her eyes darted back and forth along the cushions. “Reiffen, this is far worse than the blood. I cannot see you at all. Come out at once!”
Leaning forward, he tapped his mother’s knee. Giserre started as he popped back into view beside her. Never had he seen her so flustered.
With a deep breath, she put a hand to her throat. “You frightened me. And touching me like that was almost as bad as the disappearing.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s not a very difficult spell. If I could do it well, nothing would make me reappear until I spoke a word of recall.”
Giserre took a second breath, not so deep as the first. “Your expertise seems quite sufficient. But perhaps you are correct. If you can effect such magic so easily, with only a simple rhyme, then perhaps you did see something in my blood unavailable to my untrained eye.” She looked once more at the pinprick on her finger, as if she might be able to perceive what Reiffen had seen now she had a firmer belief in his power.
“I’m getting stronger,” he said. “Would you like another demonstration of magic knitting?”
“No thank you.” Giserre’s mouth pinched. “You have frightened me quite sufficiently for one evening. I shall, however, require more substantial warning the next time you wish to demonstrate your skill.”
It wasn’t that night, but several days later, when Reiffen dreamed again that he was back in Valing. It was springtime, and the ice had melted on the lake. A heavy curtain of cloud rose above the falls to mingle with the snow-shouldered mountains. He was in the Tear, the roar of the gorge echoing dimly through the misted glass. Avender was with him, and Ferris. And Skimmer too, though Reiffen couldn’t remember how Skimmer had managed to waddle all the way up the long stairs from the lake. They were eating mussels by the fire while waiting for Giserre to join them. The humans took turns tossing shelled meat at the nokken, who caught their presents in his whiskered mouth before gulping them down.
Despite the blazing hearth, Reiffen shivered with cold. His mother was bringing the blankets, he remembered. Beyond the windows the fog raced quickly around the hanging tower. Where was she?
The door opened. Giserre stood on the doorstep, a single blanket in her arms. Reiffen watched as the Tear separated from the stone bridge connecting it to the Neck and fell into the gripping fog. Giserre screamed.
He woke shivering, his quilt kicked to the floor. The room was dark, but the cracked door let in a wedge of light from outside.
His mother screamed again.
Leaping from the bed, Reiffen rushed into the sitting room. Spit, eyes wide in terror, clutched her blanket by the fire. Reiffen raced on into his mother’s room, where he found Ossdonc gripping Giserre tightly by the shoulders. She slapped him; the Black Wizard laughed. Blindly, Reiffen raised his right arm and called out words he’d only recently learned. A flash of light, and a bolt of fire struck Ossdonc in the back. Giserre collapsed on top of the wrinkled bed; the Wizard rolled across the room. The smell of burnt clothing hung on the air.
“You dare use magic on me!” The Wizard pulled a dagger from his belt and sprang to his feet enraged. “I shall take far more pleasure from you than I ever would have from your mother.”
“You shall not.”
Reiffen stiffened as Fornoch’s voice sounded from behind his shoulder.
“Stay out of this, brother,” said Ossdonc. “The boy attacked me. He is mine.”
“He was provoked.”
The Gray Wizard’s words coiled easily around the room, comforting in their cold assurance. Reiffen glanced toward his mother lying motionless on the bed, her dark hair unbound.
Ossdonc took a step forward. “None may strike me and live. You know that. You cannot protect him.”
“I can. And Usseis can, as well. Put away your blade. You know we have other plans for this one.”
“Singularly useless plans, if he prevents my taking what I want.”
“You are too short-sighted. You forget the promise of the future in the grasp of present desire.”
“You are an old woman and a coward.”
“There is wisdom in old women and cowards that is lacking in an intemperate child.”
Brushing past Reiffen, Fornoch entered the room. Unlike Ossdonc, he had not made himself human-sized, and had to stoop to fit through the door. He stood with his gray robes shielding Reiffen from his brother’s ire.
But not Giserre. With a sudden leap, Ossdonc bounded forward and plunged his dagger into Giserre’s breast. She gasped, a bubbling in her throat. A crimson stain spread across her white nightdress and dripped upon the bed. With a cry, Reiffen fell upon the quilt beside her, his eyes fixed in horror on her spreading wound.
“Imbecile!” Fornoch raised an angry hand: Ossdonc flew across the room, his weapon in his fist. “Leave now, before you cause more harm!”
“Do not think this is ended.” The Black Wizard wiped his knife blade with his hand.
Giserre coughed as her attacker strode from the room. Drops of bright blood scattered across the top of her gown. Gently Reiffen slipped a pillow beneath her head. He felt so helpless watching her die.
“I apologize for Ossdonc’s conduct,” said Fornoch, his great head bowed beneath the ceiling. “Had I known he had grown so lacking in self-control, I would have watched him more closely.”
Rage and bitterness welled out from Reiffen’s heart. “I don’t want your apology. My mother is dying.”
Fornoch’s eyebrows rose. “Is she? Can you already have forgotten what I told you about the Living Stone?”
“I don’t care what you told me.” Reiffen gritted his teeth and tried not to sob.
“She is not dying.” The Wizard wiped the blood from Giserre’s lips with the edge of his gray sleeve, but there was no tenderness in his touch, nor in the hard cast of his enormous mouth.
She coughed again, but no fresh blood welled at her lips. Spit appeared at the door, her concern for her mistress finally overpowering her fear of Wizards. Reiffen couldn’t bear the thought of his mother dying, but he couldn’t bring himself to hope Fornoch was right, either. It was so much easier to wallow miserably in between.
“Get back from the bed,” ordered the Wizard. “Give her room to breathe.”
Reiffen scrambled away. Fornoch bent over Giserre. Her chest rose and fell weakly. Before Reiffen could stop him, the Gray Wizard grasped the collar of her nightdress and ripped it open. Spit gasped.
“Look,” Fornoch commanded his student. “See what you already should have seen. The wound heals.”
Torn between his wish to cover his mother and his need to learn, Reiffen leaned forward. At first he thought her entire chest had been split open: dark blood smeared her pale skin. Forcing himself to focus, he noticed a narrow wound running across her chest. Ossdonc had struck upward as he thrust, to pass between the ribs. As Reiffen watched, the wound began to shrink, the skin closing. Already the blood had ceased to flow.
“Fetch water, Spit. Giserre will want washing when she wakes.”
The poor woman hesitated at the door.
“Spit. Bring us water. Now.”
Reiffen felt the compulsion in Fornoch’s voice. Spit blinked and shook her head, then hurried from the room.
Reiffen remembered the washbasin Giserre kept atop the dressing table. By the time he had brought both basin and a clean cloth back to his mother, her wound had closed completely.
“But how...?”
“Think. Or have you lost your wits entirely?” Fornoch sat on the edge of the bed and seemed suddenly larger, now that he no longer stooped beneath the ceiling.
Wetting the cloth in the basin, Reiffen wiped the blood from his mother’s pale shoulders. There was no trace of the wound at all; her healing had left no scar. His fear eased, and he was able to pay closer attention to what had happened. For the first time he noticed the same green shimmer to his mother’s blood he had seen before.
“It worked,” he breathed. “The Stone worked.”
“Why would it not? Did I not say the Stone would allow you to live forever? That would hardly be true if a simple knife-thrust, even from so deft a hand as Ossdonc’s, were enough to end it. What I should like to know, is how you broke the charm.”
“Charm?” Reiffen looked at the Wizard blankly.
“Ossdonc placed a warding around the apartment. Otherwise my own alarums would have revealed his presence far earlier.”
“I felt no charm.”
Fornoch’s black eyes pressed Reiffen flat as parchment. “My brother must have cast his spell around the outside of your suite,” he mused after a moment. “You seem to have broken it in your attack. Ossdonc’s concentration has never been the best.”
“I was angry,” said Reiffen. “He shouldn’t have touched her.”
“No,” said the Wizard. “He should not. As he has learned. But it is late, and you need your rest as much as the Lady Giserre. You have spent more strength than you know in your casting. Seek your bed. We will continue this discussion tomorrow.”
Reiffen looked at his mother breathing peacefully among the bloody bedclothes. The pain in her face was gone. “I don’t want to leave her alone.”
“She will not be alone. I shall remain until Spit returns.”
“And Ossdonc?”
“Ossdonc will not return.”
“Maybe I should stay and help Spit change the sheets.”
The Gray Wizard waved his hand. The bloodstains on the covers disappeared. A second gesture, and Giserre floated a few inches above the bed. The covers unrolled as if under the touch of an invisible hand. Giserre descended gently to the mattress; the sheets and blankets rolled back across her sleeping form.
Reiffen rubbed his temples. “I still don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep. Too much has happened.”
“You will.”
The Wizard raised his hand a third time. Reiffen yawned.
“You do that too easily,” he said, trying to stifle another.
“In time that power will be yours,” said Fornoch. “If you remain diligent. You have already done well. Tonight’s casting had force and power, or Ossdonc would never have been affected. Finally you have learned not to muscle the magic through on will alone, but to release it naturally, like blood spilled from a wound.”
His fatigue overpowering him, Reiffen stumbled back through the sitting room, where he met Spit returning with an ewer of water in either arm. Yawning, he collapsed into his bed’s thick softness. His last thought before he fell asleep was how strange it was that he was willing to leave Fornoch alone with his mother, though he would have killed Ossdonc for taking the same liberty.
The next morning he woke strangely invigorated. He had knocked Ossdonc down! Though he knew he would have received much worse in return had the Gray Wizard not come to his rescue, it was still a splendid feeling. Some day he would need no one, Wizard or human, to stand beside him. The strength would be his alone.
At breakfast he assured himself his mother was fine, then proceeded to the Library. Fornoch was waiting for him with a new Stone, red as blood, beneath the glass bowl.
“Perhaps you will not be so quick to give this one away,” said the Gray Wizard, “now you have seen Ossdonc’s temper.”
“Perhaps someday I shall make my own Living Stones,” Reiffen replied, still flush with last night’s success.
“Perhaps you shall,” said Fornoch. “Though that sort of magic may prove more challenging than you realize. Death requires little from the conjuror, but life is another matter entirely.”