The daemon prism, p.3
The Daemon Prism, page 3
“Soon as we return to shore, I take that great emerald, green as moss … beyond price … and it shows me my desires fulfilled. But it has a foul heart. I look deep and see a doom unleashed upon the world that is evil beyond anything I can speak. The woman laughs, and her laugh is all wicked and all desire, and I cannot put things back right again.”
“But you were strong,” I said. “You didn’t fall into the trap. What you dream never happened. Why is it so fearful?”
“Because I want it—that green jewel. I desire it the way a blind man craves his sight, and when I wake without it in my hand, ’tis like a suffocation.”
“Twenty years on, she’s escaped or dead,” I said. “Assuming she existed at all.” Yet spider feet teased at the hair on my neck.
“Oh, she’s still there, all right. When the dream wouldn’t go away, I hunted up Des and Benat. She calls to them in their dreams, too. They never even saw her, just heard her wailing, but they can describe her and the lake to me in every aspect. They hunger for the emerald, though I never told them of it. But they were both crippled up and couldn’t travel.”
“And you?”
“I’ve resisted thus far. But this year past, the dream comes every night, much stronger than before. If ye cannot take it from me, it’ll drive me to Carabangor. I’ll free her, then, and take her evil talisman and loose it on the world. That’s why I daren’t live with it longer.”
There was no doubting his determination.
“What of Hawk?”
Rapid fingers slapped softly on solid flesh—his own hand, chin, or forehead. I waited, curious as to his hesitation.
The tapping stopped. “Hawk was ready to go back. I couldn’t allow it.”
Night’s daughter … murder.
Needing time to assess a sensible course, I offered de Cuvier wine or beer. He refused. But I betook myself to the cellar to fill a new mug for myself.
In the years of my apprenticeship, my mentor had squeezed every spell, every book, and every scrap of magical knowledge from his far-flung web of friends and acquaintances—a granny here, a hedge wizard there, a tessila Reader too poorly educated or too drunk to work in a temple. Among this lot, two or three claimed to use Kadr magics. The Kadrites—the witchlords as they called themselves—had been a race of barbarian sorcerers who had settled in the desert country bordering Sabria and Aroth. Cruel and skilled in war, they had partnered with the mighty Arothi Empire to invade Sabria when we were weakened by the Blood Wars. From what I’d seen, the witchlords’ spellwork reflected their lives—brutal and unsophisticated. Subtle work like prisoned maidens or compulsive dream sendings seemed entirely unlike them.
In my practice at Bardeu, I’d dealt with a number of compulsions caused by ill-wrought charms or potions, death curses, or the like. I’d seen naught so powerful as would drive a soldier like de Cuvier to murder one of his own, yet experience testified to some small hope I could help him be rid of it. Certainly no Camarilla practitioner would attempt such a healing. The Camarilla believed magic a strictly physical discipline, producing results that could alter physical perceptions alone. They’d name de Cuvier a lunatic to imagine ephemera like dreams compelled his actions.
The grenadier pounced as soon as I topped the cellar stair. “So, sorcerer. Can you help me?”
I shook my head. “Can’t be sure. I need to be with you when the dream comes. Probe it to discover its nature. If I judge the task possible, we’ll need a few days.”
“No matter. Can’t do naught but think of it, anyway. If I cannot be rid of it, I’ll not live.”
“We’d best give it a try, then.”
“I’ll pay whatever fee you set,” he said, “sell my horse, my sword. And you’ll have my undying grat—”
“Wait till I’ve done, and we’ll settle. Stripping dreams … touching the mind. This is a dice game with many ways to lose that have naught to do with coin. So understand, I make no promises, save to take all good care and stop when I can do no more.”
“Agreed.” He didn’t hesitate.
“Come back tomorrow evening, and we’ll begin.”
“What’s wrong with tonight? To my mind, it can’t be soon enough.” What was wrong with tonight? Only that it had been a long day already, and an all-night vigil at de Cuvier’s bedside would not improve on it. But the tale … the magic … was superlatively intriguing. No harm in looking.
“All right, then. I’ll have my … assistant … prepare a room for you.” The wayward Finn, reeking of ale, had just clattered through the back door.
While de Cuvier installed his horse in our stable and fetched his kit, Finn and I dragged a bed down the stair and placed it in the middle of a barren little chamber just off the study. Finn, keeping his lips shut and muffling his hiccups as if I were too thick-witted to deduce his condition, set a chair next the bed and brought in a night cupboard, table, and lamp. I knelt and laid my hand on a glassy ring that encompassed most of the floor. As the circumoccule’s magical structure took shape in my mind, I strengthened the enclosure, sweeping it clean of spell scraps and repairing blemishes in its structure caused by Anne’s errors and my own fumbling. If the grenadier’s dream was caused by enchantment, then I could better disentangle it in a magically uncluttered environment.
When de Cuvier returned, I encouraged him to make all his usual preparations. He expected no problems, he said, as he was a man of regular habits, well accustomed to bedding down in unusual circumstances. “A cup of warm milk laced with brandy will put me out till sunrise.”
I’d give him two hours to settle.
Once Finn had set out the posset, I sent the boy off to the guesthouse where we two made our beds. Yawning, stumbling, and giggling like a milkmaid, he’d be little use until morning.
Unfortunately, his absence prevented any useful preparation for the work. I’d written notes about the Kadr spellwork in the journals of my apprenticeship. And among my books were a bound manuscript on dreams and a text that related to gems. Emeralds, in particular, had interesting and complex magical properties. But pages were useless without eyes to read them.
I resisted slamming a fist through the wall. Instead, I paced the sitting room. Twenty steps, turn, fifteen, turn …
Naught remained of the night sounds I had studied earlier, save the ticking of the mechanical clock on the hearth shelf, as if time was all that was left in the world.
Anne’s father had gifted her the clock. She’d laughed when it arrived, describing it as an inducement to stay grounded in the world of scientific truth, while abiding in the countryside with a daemon.
Five years of torture to fuel a sorcerer’s power might have changed Michel de Vernase’s beliefs about magic’s efficacy, but the ordeal had imbued him with no love for its practitioners. His younger daughter had died at Collegia Magica de Seravain. I hadn’t killed her or conspired in her murder. But I’d known of it, hidden it, in the same way I’d known of and chosen not to report a prison warder’s abuse of his son, Ambrose. Those weren’t even the worst things I’d done to insinuate myself into de Gautier’s grand plan. Understandably, Michel and Ambrose, along with the Camarilla Magica, the Temple, and most of the residents of the royal city, held something of a grudge.
Anne didn’t like thinking about the choices I’d made during those years. I didn’t, either, come to that. Once I’d met de Gautier and grasped the breadth and complexity and danger of his scheme, I’d dared not retreat from our plan to thwart him. The incisive brilliance of his mind—knowledge and insight that dwarfed even Portier’s, and so far above my own haphazard education as to clamor that my proper place in the world was the coal mines I had escaped—told me he would pick up the least hint of duplicity. Thus I’d done what I deemed necessary to convince de Gautier I wanted to join him, acts reprehensible enough to convince my only friend, the stubborn, naive Portier, that I had deserted his cause. I’d buried myself so deep, I’d come near believing in my own infamy.
I refused to brood about it. That wouldn’t change anything. The un-comfortable part was how easy it had been. The magic, both de Gautier’s desired perversions of the Mondragon rites and the work I’d done to delay and subvert what I did for him, was elegant, intricate, and challenging, exactly the kind of sorcery I most relished. And to live as a man of heedless violence and moral indifference scarce took thought. I’d always manifested a perverse nature. For most of my first sixteen years, I had been convinced a daemon lived inside me. After four years of a double life, giving that perversity full rein, I’d scarce recalled any other way to live.
But there had come a night when I had driven myself ragged while raising the revenant of a dead king. I returned to my apartments, only to discover one of my erstwhile allies prying through my personal belongings. Rage had shredded what control remained in me. As I lashed out in mindless hate and fury, teetering on the verge of a murderous madness from which I might never have drawn back, a cry of pain tore through the aether straight into my skull. The shock of that cry—Anne’s cry—had prevented me bludgeoning the queen’s foster mother to death and thus losing the slim advantage I had gained on those who would upend the world. Anne had saved me that night and over the ensuing days offered me a companionship that became my refuge, a link to sanity and rightful purpose.
Ixtador Beyond the Veil was no divine realm installed by the Creator to teach us lessons about savage wars, but an unnatural result of magical experimentation by Anne’s ancestors. Portier had a theory that its aberrant nature somehow corrupted true magic, requiring a practitioner to expend resources beyond nature’s intent. He said it was going to kill me eventually or drive me back into that abyss of madness from which Anne had rescued me. I didn’t believe him. There were plenty of good reasons to solve the mystery of Ixtador, but that wasn’t one of them. Magic was everything of beauty and order and sanity in this world. I wanted Anne to see it.
But her family’s disapproval weighed on Anne like an iron yoke. Only her terror that her raw, uncontrolled power might explode into violence had kept her from them for so long. Now that fear was gone, and so was she.
The clock struck tenth hour of the evening watch. As the next long hour passed, I found myself touching things—a chair, the bookshelf, the annoying clock—-just to make sure the entire world hadn’t vanished with her.
Eleventh hour, time to begin. Anticipation strumming my nerves, I removed my boots, picked up a blanket to ward off the night chill, and padded softly into the little chamber.
The room was filled with the grenadier’s throaty breathing, the air rank with brandy and peppermint. He slept on his back, his face turned away from the door.
I’d instructed him not to move the chair, despite its cramped placement. He’d done as I asked. On hands and knees, I felt my way around the circumoccule, sealing the enclosure with intent and will. The barrier closed, I settled myself in the chair, grasped my staff between thumb and palm of my weak right hand, and laid my left on de Cuvier’s forehead. I imposed my will on his mind, planting a simple humming inside him—a beacon of sorts, nothing like to disturb the natural course of his sleep. Then I opened myself to the aether.
Alien passions surged through my spirit—tenderness, fright, anger…. So remote as this house was, the relentless expressions of human feeling were subdued. Most folk within fifty kilometres were sleeping. But darker things drifted on the currents of night….
The aether is a universe entirely apart from the one ordinary senses reveal, a place where human passions become tangible, alongside magical energies and threads of power, and keirna—the accumulated essence of every person and natural object. Strong remnants of hatred emanated from the darkness outside Pradoverde’s walls. Bloodshed. Mystery. This land had seen more than one dispute. The wood to the west of the pasture was a remnant of an ancient forest that had once stretched hundreds of kilometres over the hills into Tallemant. Its keirna created a rich and mysterious presence in the deeps. Some things I could not identify, even after two years here. Eventually, I would. I never tired of exploring the aether.
Anyone with a scrap of talent for it could touch this other universe. Some worked true magic. Some glimpsed things other folk could not see. Some heard whispers or felt creeping certainties about what had happened in a particular place or what might happen there in the future, when they walked places rich with history. But as far as I knew, only Anne and I could interact with the energies of the aether—hear, feel, and speak.
But there was a great deal more Anne had only glimpsed. Since the days I’d come to understand the nature of the voices I heard, I had worked to understand the aether’s structure and composition, its possibilities, its rules. Most important, I’d learned how to envision the structures of spellwork, and how to manipulate them.
Dreams were just another stream of energy feeding this ephemeral universe. My gift of hearing and a great deal of practice allowed me to trace, distinguish, and share the dreams of another. If the dream was spell-wrought, there was a possibility I could alter or release the binding of the enchantment as I could with other magic.
Thus, with control and discipline, I sorted through the aether until I found the humming beacon I’d planted in de Cuvier …
… and a shattering of light, sensation, and urgency. Horses, galloping like thunder. Windblown … racing across a great plain … past crofts and ruins … streaked orange and purple sky … Ah, gods, all the unnamable colors of dream. Hurry … hurry … there’s battle to be joined…. To be late is to fail….
Blackness shrouded my sight in nauseating abruptness, as if my stomach had been yanked out through my nose. I waited in the dark.
Ear-splitting thunder … blood-splashed masonry crumbling, crashing, pelting, pummeling … shattered walls … Into the breach! For glory … forking … for brothers-in-arms … Hurry …
On through the night, I viewed these fragments, like snippets of conversation heard in a crowded room, many of them nonsense. Interspersed were fallow times, some brief, some hours long.
When my head lolled, I threw off the blanket and sat up straighter. Concentrate … focus. Sleep and you’ll miss it.
Formless clouds and vapors … fleeting images of faces that evoked familiarity … Coming faster now. A grin … a salute …
I probed deeper. There! What was that?
Yellow sparks stretched into tendrils of shimmering light. Light with out warmth. Even for one who lived in darkness, this was cold fire, as alien to the other dream stuff as stone discovered in the heart of a flower. More so, for stone and flower were both of nature, and this yellow infusion was of no relation at all to Masson de Cuvier and his dreaming.
The yellow tendrils grew more solid, interlacing, becoming stronger, like heated threads of glassy citrine cooling into the shape of a cyclone. This I had seen before—a structure of enchantment, a portal through which magic could flow.
Superimposed upon the structure was the dream, the woman wrapped in a fog of pearled white—she of the old soldier’s story—dark skin, ebon eyes, pale hair, and wrenching grief. Beneath my hand de Cuvier groaned and tossed his head, and I almost lost contact with him. But I held on, for I could not bear to lose that vision. Such terrible beauty, prisoned by a milk white lake as deep as the Souleater’s caverns.
“Noble warrior, please don’t leave me here!” The great emerald rested on her outstretched palm. Huge, its facets glittered, transforming yellow-orange light into arrows of fiery emerald.
What sorcery could create so vivid a dream? The cavern’s dampness chilled my skin. I felt as if I could reach out and touch her smooth skin and drifting hair. Such need filled me. Such desire …
De Cuvier resisted but, in the miraculous way of dreams, found himself standing beside her. Taking her hand, he led her into the shell boat and rowed her across the white lake. Once ashore, he accepted the gem and peered deep within it. So did I with him, unthinking, unwary …
Oh, gods, I could see! Not just phantasms and memories and dream stuff, but towering trees and hawks soaring from rocky heights. Soon I became the hawk and looked down on a boisterous river, rippling, frothing, burbling between rocks….
And then I was back in Coverge, smothered by the raging heat of the smithy, while a frigid gale howled beyond the door. Blue-white flames thundered in the forge as a glowing shaft of iron glowed red and the hammer fell….
My books … My fingers caressed the leather bindings on unfamiliar shelves. Ours here at Pradoverde, I knew, though I’d never seen them, each title familiar, each holding a treasure of knowledge open to me again….
Green fire obscured the visions, and with de Cuvier, I reached greedily into the emerald’s depths in search of more, only now the world was bathed in livid light, as if it suffered a massive bruise—a deep rot in the core of the Stone. New images coalesced in the dark center, and the woman convulsed in laughter. Young. Wicked.
Her laughter brought me to my senses. I’d entered the dream to help the man, not pursue my own desires.
I withdrew, pushing aside de Cuvier’s lust and growing fear. Shoving aside my own curiosity and desire, I sought the pathways of enchantment … the structure, the hook, the point of linking where the keyword binds keirna.
I touched the apex of the citrine-hued portal. Enchantment thrummed with the energies of stars, threatening to incinerate me, but the spot darkened to a deep ocher, and one strand fell loose. Carefully, strand by strand, I unraveled the complex weaving, and the vision began to fade….
The laughter ceased as I worked, but only at the end did I notice the woman staring at me. Her pale hair floated in the mist. Her black eyes, now flecked with silver, had narrowed in puzzlement.
“It’s you at last!” she said, cocking her head. “My partner said you couldn’t resist. But what is this you do?”
In an explosive rush of magic and a burst of yellow sparks, the dream evaporated, and profound darkness enshrouded me in sleep.
CHAPTER 3
PRADOVERDE
