Sindérian stood in the heart of the vortex, in the eye of the storm. Colors whirled madly around her: bold crimson, tattered yellow, scintillating blue-green, a purple so vibrant it made her eyes ache. Thunder roared in her ears. Struggling against the shifting tides of magic, she used every ounce of will she possessed to fight her way free of the spell that held her. Raising her arm with an effort, she tossed her handful of salt into the maelstrom.
Abruptly, the tumult ceased; the air cleared. Yet she was still a prisoner, still bound, trapped inside a circle of blue flame. The other women, the ones who had lured her into the trap, had all disappeared; she thought she could hear their retreating footsteps echoing all down the corridor back the way they had come. They had dropped one of the torches—it was just sputtering out on the floor—and farther down the passage she saw a little pool of burning oil that the blond girl had apparently spilled in her haste to be gone.
The women were gone, but they had been replaced by two armed men who stood as if on guard just outside the fiery circle. They had bright two-handed swords, which they held unsheathed, and though they did not speak, their eyes followed Sindérian’s every movement.
They do not like what they have been set here to do, she thought, but they will do it.
She took a step forward to test the spell, but the flames leapt up like a row of bright spears, and the heat was intense, forcing her back again.
The taste of despair rose bitter in her mouth, yet she could not—must not—accept defeat. She swallowed several times, dredged up all the reserves she still possessed, and squared her shoulders.
Suddenly remembering Prince Ruan, Sindérian wheeled around, searching the passage from one end to the other, hoping to find him somewhere nearby. The shadows along the walls were so deep, she could not penetrate them, but she did hear a very light footfall, and a moment later had a strong sense of Ruan’s presence.
She turned her attention then to the pattern etched into the floor at her feet: the source of the fire and the binding that held her. It was a maze, a knot, one of the old Earth Magics, remnant of an earlier time that had likely waited harmless for centuries until someone (undoubtedly Thaga) had activated the spell.
She drew in a long breath to steady herself, to focus her will, and cried out:
There came a clap like thunder, a flash like lightning. The fire wavered and almost died, but then it sprang up again, even hotter than before. She felt the sweat start out on her skin, could smell the fur at the hem of her gown beginning to singe.
One of the men took a step in her direction, menacing her with his sword, but he stopped outside the circle, helpless to do more. The fire kept the men out as effectively as it kept her in, and even afforded her a kind of protection.
She tried her spell again, this time with an even greater effort of will. “Anésadach rhiod dioha Sindérian.” The flames turned from blue to gold, but that was all.
Putting her hands to her aching skull, she struggled to concentrate. Think—I must think. How have they done this? A series of scenes flashed through her mind—the stairs, the ramp, the series of passageways. And then she knew: the path she had followed to get here, crossing and recrossing her own footsteps, was a part of the spell. Like a fool, she had helped to create the charm that bound her, the great labyrinthine knot, more complex and powerful than the thing on the floor. But what she had made, she could unmake again.
Tracing the pattern with her fingernail on the palm of her hand, Sindérian watched the blood well up, the figure she had drawn begin to glow with a faint silvery light. “Anwaetha séo whath!” she commanded. “Séo lledrion oma andéinath!”
A great gust of air blasted through the corridor and extinguished the flames.
The guards stood as men stunned. Before either had time to react, she stepped outside the figure and in the same moment Prince Ruan leapt from the shadows, sword in hand.
Ruan’s blade flashed, and a body fell to the ground. The other guard turned, flung up his sword to parry the next blow, but Ruan’s blade beat it down and somehow kept on going. There was the dull, sickening sound of metal striking flesh, a spurt of red blood, and another body collapsed on the stony floor.
“We may need a light,” said the Prince. There was blood on his hands and on his cloak, but his voice was steady. He picked up the torch, lit it again in the pool of flaming oil, and resheathed his sword. Then, without another word, he reached out and took Sindérian firmly by the wrist and started down the corridor at a brisk pace.
She allowed him to lead her tamely enough, back along the passageway and down a steep flight of stairs, through room after room. She was spattered with blood, dazed and shaking with reaction. They went so swiftly, she hardly had time to catch her breath.
But after a time, her steps lagged, and she held back, dragging on his arm. “Where are you taking me?”
“To find Aell and Jago, then out of this place by the quickest way possible.”
Sindérian braced her feet against the floor, refusing to take another step. “No, no! We must find my father, even before we look for the others.” She struggled against the grasp of his strong, slender fingers. “He may—he will be in terrible danger.”
“You were able to defeat their spells, and without much effort that I could see. Why shouldn’t Faolein do the same?”
“Thaga and Dreyde thought that they took my measure, but they were wrong,” she explained breathlessly. “What do they know of me, after all? But they won’t make the same mistake with a Master Wizard. Whatever they have planned for Faolein, it will be many, many times worse.”
“I wish to speak with you apart,” said Dreyde of Saer. “I have things to say that are not for all ears.”
Faolein walked a few steps behind him, allowing the young Lord to lead him down one echoing dark corridor after another. He thought: You have already said quite enough to put your head in a noose if any hint of your plans came to the Duke at Clowes—why turn discreet now?
Yet the wizard made certain that his face gave nothing away. What more he thought he kept to himself; he simply let Saer lead him wherever he wanted to go, knowing that no good would come of it.
Because Faolein was fey, moving, speaking, feeling as one under a compulsion. His mouth was dry with fear, his heart ached with the knowledge that was in him, yet it was too late to change course, even if he would…and he knew that he would not.
Before the gate, he had seen a vast array of possible futures play out in his mind and from them he had chosen his path. It promised him little but suffering and grief, but every other alternative that he had seen was infinitely worse.
They came to a door: solid oak planks and ornate iron hinges, no different from a hundred doors they had already passed. Saer produced a large brass key from somewhere about his person and fitted it into the lock. The door swung open, and they walked through, began to climb a winding stone staircase, lit every fifteen or twenty feet by torches. On the first landing, Faolein thought he heard the door below slam shut, the rattle of another key in the lock.
No matter. A locked door was nothing compared to the tangled web of deadly circumstance that held him now, both like and unlike the aniffath he had tried to unravel so many years ago, which had claimed Nimenoë. Perhaps this, too, was a curse, one he could by no means escape, once he had willingly walked in. Very well, then. A wizard had always one last recourse, if he could bring himself to accept the necessity.
Saer threw open another door, and they came out on a wall-walk, behind the jagged line of battlements encircling the fortress. It was so dark that Faolein could scarcely see two yards in front of him, as though a mist or a cloud obscured the moon; but he could smell the air, feel the night around him.
“You hesitate to commit yourself or the other Masters of Leal,” said Saer. They had reached a round open place, surrounded by a crenellated parapet wall and walkways radiating out in all directions, and there they paused. “I have letters, documents to show you,” said Dreyde. “If you will deign to examine them.”
Documents, here? He is not a very good liar. But Faolein was scarcely listening anymore. There was a distraction, a disruption in the flow of energy along the ley lines. He glanced around him, looking with his inner Sight.
The source of that disruption was a great unworked stone set into the tower wall. Roughly triangular in shape, it glimmered faintly in Faolein’s mind; not as though it reflected light, but as though it deflected it, turned it aside. And cold, bitter cold seemed to flow from that stone.
This is the reason the fortress was built, he realized. Not to protect. Not to preserve. But to guard and contain whatever is prisoned inside that thing. Yet all this time, Dreyde seemed unaware, he continued to babble on, about plots and incriminating letters, as though he never guessed that the stone was there, as though he never thought that Faolein would sense anything amiss. Because he could not feel the power himself, he imagined that the wizard could not either.
There was a shriek like metal against metal; a flash of deep indigo light split the fog. Faolein instinctively turned away, gathering up the skirts of his robe to flee; though his course was set, some things there are that flesh and blood do not willingly endure. Yet even as he took the first step the trap was sprung.
One—two—three—four—five rainbow-hued flames rose up in swift succession. Lightning forked from tower to tower, leaving behind shimmering lines of pure force, forming a gigantic five-pointed star. And Faolein stood frozen in place, completely immobilized, trapped inside the pentagram. His hand lost its grip on the staff, which clattered at his feet, and Saer, with a look equally compounded of malice and fear, kicked it aside.
The fog was rapidly dissipating. From the corners of his eyes, Faolein could see most of the trap that held him. Dreyde could apparently see it, too, though he had been blind and deaf to the stone, for he gave a triumphant laugh and stepped easily outside the pentagram.
“Had I thought it such a small matter to trap a Master Wizard, I might have better enjoyed my dinner.”
As the last flags of mist faded, Thaga appeared on one of the walkways, just outside the lines of the figure. In the waxy moonlight, his face was as pale as death, and his hands worked nervously. “We cannot hold him so forever,” he shouted across at Saer. “Look at his eyes. Though he doesn’t speak, doesn’t move, already he is working a lledrion to free himself.”
Dreyde took several more steps along the wall-walk. His face, which had seemed so pleasant before, was distorted with fear and something even uglier. “But can he free himself? You told me the pentagram would be effective!”
Thaga’s nervous hands caught at his hanging sleeve, began to twist the silk. He seemed overwhelmed by what he had done already and terrified of what he had to do next. Almost, Faolein could find it in his heart to pity him. “It is the Great Pentacle—harmless to ordinary men, but potent against even the greatest wizard. It will hold him long enough.”
Young Saer took another involuntary step, putting more distance between himself and Faolein. “But why do you delay? You promised me—”
“These things require time, they require—certain instruments. One such instrument is being prepared as we speak. To kill a Master Wizard with or without magic, is no small task, and it is dangerous, dangerous.” Thaga spoke in short, panting breaths. “There are only a very few ways that the thing can be done at all, and each of them carries its own risk.
“Have patience, Lord. It will soon be over. Then we can send word of our success to our noble visitors.”
It was a maze; it was an endless labyrinth of rooms and corridors, of chambers, halls, passageways, and closets; it went on like a nightmare, forever. Sindérian had known that the fortress of Saer was old; now she had a confused vision of workmen laboring under the hill for centuries upon centuries, burrowing in the earth like moles.
She and Prince Ruan had been prowling through the castle and that part of the fortress that was under the hill for some interminable period, the Prince stalking on ahead with his lighted torch and Sindérian following, haggard and spiritless, reeling with weariness.
Thanks to Ruan’s keen eyes and ears they had so far avoided any encounter with the inhabitants. There had been several close calls and moments when she was absolutely certain they would be discovered, but always they managed to pass undetected.
Nevertheless, their efforts to find Faolein and the two men-at-arms had so far proved fruitless. And sooner or later, Sindérian reflected hopelessly, we will make a mistake, blunder into a room full of people.
Prince Ruan touched her lightly on the arm, cocked his head as though he was listening to something only he could hear. Then he extinguished the torch, and she was able to see a faint ruddy glow in the passage ahead of them.
Moving even more cautiously, they approached the source of the light: another low-ceilinged corridor that met the one they had been following at right angles. Now Sindérian could smell smoke and just make out faint voices around the corner, a conversation that came to her in fragments:
“…gives me the creeps, that wizard up there. And whatever devilry our Lord and that blasted Thaga are planning—”
“—had a notion you’d not be able to stomach it. Well, I think it uncanny, too. I’ve brought something to put a little courage into us all.”
Peering around an edge of rough stone, Sindérian saw five guardsmen camped outside a door at the far end of the cross corridor. They were warming their hands at a small charcoal brazier and passing a wineskin between them. She thought she had never seen men look so panicked, or so determined to hide it.
The earth rumbled under her feet, and Sindérian caught at the wall to keep from falling. Around the corner, faces blanched, and the man who was holding the leather flask dropped it. There was another jolt; a wooden doorframe groaned and splintered, and a stone cracked. But it was only a stronger version of the tremors they had all been experiencing for days.
“Full moon,” said one of the men, picking up the wineskin, and they all laughed uneasily.
A third shock followed, and a little rain of dry sand dribbled out between stone blocks, where their grinding together turned mortar into dust. Then there was silence.
Sindérian glanced back over her shoulder. By the set of Ruan’s jaw, the way that his fingers strayed to the hilt of his sword, she realized he was about to try something heroic, something foolhardy. “No,” she whispered. “Do nothing so reckless. I beg you, Prince Ruan, leave this to me.”
He turned on her an incredulous look, as if to remind her of who he was, that he was not accustomed to taking orders from anyone. So they stood for a moment, eye to eye, equally stubborn, both of them determined, but Ruan gave in first, shrugging.
Sindérian closed her eyes. It would not be easy at this distance to put a spell on the wine, but she thought that she could manage it. Wine made men sleepy and stupid; it was only a matter of increasing its natural properties. She mumbled the words hastily under her breath, picturing the leather flask in her mind, focusing all of her will on the task.
Yet she felt a twinge of guilt doing so. She had been making sleep charms since she was a child, but she had never witched wine before, and to put men under a spell of sleep for any purpose but healing or relief from pain was coming unpleasantly close to a waethas, a sorcerous binding. But I intend them no actual harm, she told herself. And surely it is, it must be, pardonable on that account.
She felt the spell take hold. Opening her eyes, she edged back to the corner, and watched as the wineskin passed from hand to hand. It made one circuit, then another, amidst increasing merriment.
Ruan drew in a hissing breath, she could hear his restless movements in the shadows beside her. Sindérian herself was painfully conscious of the passage of time. Had her spell been enough? Should she have done more?
But as the wine went around for a third, then a fourth time, the guards went from boisterous to muddled and silly. From there, their descent into drunkenness was gratifyingly swift. They giggled, they slurred their words, they made foolish jokes. And then, one by one, they began to slump or topple to the floor.
The last man standing remained on his feet for almost a minute, staring down at his comrades with a puzzled expression. Then his face relaxed, his knees buckled, and he fell down across the inert bodies of his friends.
Up on the moonlit battlements, the same young servant whose signal to Lord Dreyde had alerted the Prince earlier appeared out of the night, carrying in his arms a long awkward bundle wrapped up in scarlet silk.
“Ah,” said Thaga, as the youth shuffled in his direction, along the high walkway. “Here comes my apprentice, his task complete.”
Dreyde had retreated from the round tower where the wizard was bound, in order to join Thaga on the wall-walk. He lounged against the embattled parapet, feigning a confidence he did not feel.
A moment later the boy was beside them, laying his burden at the magician’s feet. Thaga bent down, threw off the scarlet covering, and opened the lid of a long ebony box banded in iron. Very carefully, he removed two objects, handling them reverently. One was a silver bow strung with silk, and the other a long crystal arrow, the shaft inscribed with geometric figures and hieroglyphs, the barbed head covered with a pungent oily substance. He spoke in a breathless whisper. “Prepare to see what few have seen before: the destruction of a Master Wizard.”
But just as he spoke, the earth trembled, and the walls shook; the walkway heaved under their feet. The apprentice scuttled away sideways, not wanting to turn his back, yet not wishing to see what was about to happen. At the next jolt, the boy lost his nerve altogether and bolted. Down in the stable yard and the sheep pens, all the animals set up a commotion at once, wild with fear.
“Is this his doing?” asked Saer sharply, jerking his head in Faolein’s direction.
“Perhaps he encourages it,” said Thaga, with a nervous shift of his eyes. “But if he had the ability to bring down the walls, I can assure you, Lord Dreyde, he would have done so by now.”
He fitted the arrow to the bow, aiming the point directly at the wizard’s heart. The sorcerer began to chant. His spell hissed and mumbled; the air around him grew heavy, leaden, sickly. The moon overhead turned a dull red, like an old wound.
“Andeissach séo feilh oewislin,” cried Thaga, drawing and loosing the crystal arrow. “Om yffran dioha Faolein.”
Perhaps his hand was unsteady, perhaps the earth gave another slight imperceptible shake; however it was, the missile did not fly true. The arrow streaked through the air and buried itself in the wizard’s side, under his ribs.
A shudder passed over Faolein, a shivering across the skin. His face contorted in agony. All the air around him seemed to shatter, then flesh and blood began to fray, to dissipate like smoke, but just as the last faint traces threatened to disappear entirely, they began to take on substance again, a boiling cloud of matter writhing and spinning in the air, as if struggling to assume its accustomed form.
All at once, the five colored lights on the towers went out, and the lines of the pentacle faded. Where Faolein had been, chaos shaped itself into a great bird of prey, an immense sea eagle. With a cry that rent the night, it spread its wings and rose high into the air. Light blazed up again, but this time it was golden and pulsing with life.
Thaga gasped and fell back against the parapet wall, but Dreyde stood rooted to the spot. The eagle was beautiful and terrible, all silver and gold, its talons swinging like scythes overhead. The thunder of its wings seemed to rock the towers anew. Light poured from it like water, spilling from its feathered wingtips and setting the night on fire. The sorcerer shaded his eyes; Saer covered his with both hands.
Then, suddenly, the eagle’s light was extinguished; a cold wind blew across the battlements, across the tower roof. With another shrill cry, the great raptor launched itself into the sky. For many minutes more, they could hear the mighty strokes of its wings, like a gigantic heartbeat, as it flew off into the night.
For a time, neither man spoke, neither moved. Then Thaga rose unsteadily to his feet, dusted himself off. Dreyde uncovered his eyes, passed a hand across his forehead, which was drenched in sweat.
“It is done,” said the magician, in a shaken voice.
But the Lord of Saer ground his teeth and gnawed on his lower lip. “He isn’t dead. He ought to be dead.”
“He is as good as dead,” said Thaga, in a dull, flat voice. “He is trapped in that shape more effectively than in the pentacle; he will never escape it. And the change will drive him mad. Either he will fly until his heart bursts from exhaustion, or he will freeze to death in the upper air.”
Two flights below, Faolein’s daughter and the Prince crept out from their place of concealment and approached the sleeping guards.
Ruan was all for cutting their throats while they slept, but Sindérian threw out a hand to stop him. “No. I can’t permit you to do that.”
He bridled again, gave her another black look under his silvery eyebrows. “Lady, we are surrounded by enemies.”
“But these are helpless.”
“We may encounter them again when they are not helpless. And we have already been betrayed. These people,” he said, with a sudden intensity, “these people may have injured you even more than you know.”
Sindérian drew in a breath. She could guess what he meant: that Faolein might be dead, or hurt in some way that she could not heal. “For all that,” she replied in a voice shaking with outrage, “I did not render these men helpless so that you could slaughter them like sheep!”
The earth rumbled again; the fortress rocked like a ship in a storm. There was an underground concussion like a clap of thunder, which stunned the ear. But the foundations held.
Sindérian could see the hunger for revenge in Prince Ruan’s face, the Ni-Féa compulsion that burned so fiercely within him. For a moment, she was afraid that he would kill the men in spite of her. But he only swore under his breath and rammed his dagger back into its sheath. Then, bending down, he began to search the fallen guardsmen, one by one, until he found the key to the door.
He fitted the key in the lock, and the door swung open with a grating sound; something had settled during the earthquake. Sindérian could see the foot of a stone staircase curving upward into shadows. Prince Ruan led the way, and she followed after him.
“You thought me a fool back there,” she said as she climbed.
Ascending three steps ahead of her, he shrugged his shoulders but did not look back. “I have heard it said that wizards are overscrupulous. Now I see that it’s true.”
“Wizards must needs be overscrupulous—and princes, too. It is far too easy for us to become tyrants, arrogant and merciless!”
He glanced back at her then, a quick look under his long eyelashes, not without irony. “I might take that to heart, Lady, if there were fewer than a dozen kinsmen between me and the throne.”
At the top of the stairs, Sindérian felt a sudden urgency. Possessed by a reckless feverish haste, she pushed past the Prince, threw open the door, and slipped on through. She came out on the walkway behind the battlements, with a clear view in all directions.
The moon shone down, huge and horrible, almost as bright as day. Sindérian set off walking, following the parapet wall, going as fast as her legs would carry her, until she came to the flat roof of the round tower, where Ruan finally overtook her.
“Take care,” he warned, catching her by the arm. “I sense a trap.”
She shook him off, took another two steps. Something brittle crunched underfoot. She could still sense the lines of force from tower to tower. They left a smell like lightning on the night air, and the stones continued to sizzle with energy. Something had drawn on the power here, on the wards and the ley lines. When she closed her eyes, it was as if she could see a faint residue of the pentagram lingering on the air, but rapidly fading. “A trap has already been sprung!”
She opened her eyes. Catching sight of something at her feet that glittered in the moonlight, she bent down and picked it up. It was a splintered shaft of crystal about as long as her hand.
As she realized what she held, her fingers suddenly went slack, and the crystal shaft dropped at her feet. Over by the parapet she caught sight of the silver bow, gleaming with a sullen light, where the magician had cast it aside.
With a wrenching cry of despair, Sindérian threw herself down on her knees. “There are not many ways to destroy a wizard like Faolein, but they have found one—they have found one!” She beat both fists against her knees.
Never there when I am needed, she thought. Tears ran down her face and her breath came out in great tearing sobs. Why will they never let me stand with them and die? She bent almost double, and pain shot through her entire body.
He had no right to leave me, she raged into the night. He had no right!
“Is he dead, then?” said Prince Ruan, sounding bewildered.
Raising her head, Sindérian was surprised to see him kneeling there beside her, one hand extended, as if uncertain whether to offer sympathy or not. She gasped for breath, gazed up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “If he’s not dead now, he will be soon.” She shoved a fist into her mouth to stifle the sobs.
Yet she was a wizard and a healer, trained since childhood in a hard, hard school to put grief aside and do whatever had to be done. She might wish to stay there and wail like a lost child, but she knew that she would not. Too much depended on her—too much depended on whether she could think clearly, and make the right decisions. She had all her life before her to grieve for Faolein’s death.
Wiping her eyes on her sleeve, she put back her hair with both hands. “Do you see—this was not the work of a moment, or even an hour,” she said hoarsely. “The preparations necessary for casting the Great Pentacle take an entire day, and to hallow and prepare the crystal arrow takes even longer. Beyond all doubt, we were expected here!”
At that moment, there was a clatter and a rush of footsteps along the walls. The Prince sprang lightly to his feet.
“We have been spotted,” he said, catching her up just behind the elbow and forcing her to stand. She stumbled, tripping on the hem of her gown, and would have fallen except for his painful grip on her arm.
Recovering her balance, she allowed him to pull her behind him, back the way they had just come. Men shouted, a gong somewhere began to sound, and an arrow flew past Sindérian’s head, so close that she could feel the feathered fletching brush against her cheek. She saw Ruan duck his head just in time to avoid another.
At last they reached the doorway and passed on through. Ruan pulled the door shut behind them and slammed the bar into place.