Knights Magi (Book 4) (19 page)

“Then we’ll find my stone – and punish whoever took it!” Tyndal said, resolutely.

“One step at a time,” she said, amused.  “Where do we cast it?  The library?  Or check out a student laboratory?”

“We can do the spell in our room,” Rondal said, flatly.  “We don’t need all the symbolic stuff for this,” he decided as he studied the spell.  “The essence of the work is pretty straightforward.”

“You want to do high level magic . . . in your bedroom?”

“That’s where I do my best work,” quipped Tyndal, smugly.”But we should do it in the Manciple’s Library.  Believe me, no one will disturb us there.”

“It sounds like an intriguing place,” Estasia said, an eyebrow arching.

“We should study together there sometime,” Tyndal said, with a smirk.  “We could-”

“Oh, shut up!” Rondal moaned.  “Yes, she likes you, you like her, you’re going to get married and have twenty fat babies but
let’s do this.
  Now.  If I have to keep hearing him whine . . . “

“Not now,” pleaded Tyndal.  “As much as I want my stone back, I want food more.  I haven’t eaten in forever.  And I vomited, don’t forget!”

“I really wish I could,” Rondal said, mildly. 

“We can do it this evening, assuming the thief doesn’t try to get away.  And Ancient Galdan is inspecting everyone and everything leaving the campus.  What do we need, then?” Tyndal asked, ignoring Rondal.  He knew he’d been complaining about the theft.  He wondered how Rondal would have reacted to it.

“It’s fairly straight-forward,” she said, referring to the text.  “From the Cylomancian scrolls on thaumaturgy.  The good news is that this spell can carry another, and I think I have just the spell to restore the criminal’s memory too, while we’re at it.  But that will take yet more time to build yet more power.”

“No, it won’t,” Rondal said, digging out his own shard of irionite.  “I can build a couple of
apises
and feed the power to you two.  You can do the inauguration, Lady Estasia, and Tyndal can do the scrying, which takes far less power.  Then at the end you can do the memory restoration.”

“That could work,” agreed Tyndal, a little more annoyed with his competent rival.  “But it means we’re going to be . . .”

“Intimate, I know,” Rondal swallowed.  They’d only combined their efforts in the traditional Imperial manner during instruction, never for any real work. Irionite gave them plenty of power, reducing the need for such techniques.   It made them both uncomfortable – being pressed up mind-to-mind with someone put you very close to them. 

“I’m game,” Estasia said, giggling.  “I’ve done very little group work like that.  Alchemy rarely requires that sort of work.  I’d love to try, though.  And . . . I don’t mind being intimate,” she added, softly.

*
                            *                            *

Tyndal wasn’t particularly hopeful, but he was willing to give the scheme a try.  He was desperate, feeling s if he had betrayed ll of the people in his life who had invested in him.  This idea wasn’t his style, but he didn’t have a better idea,  There was no harm in it, he supposed.  It wasn’t the sort of thing that would alert the thief, say, if he had warded the stone somehow. 

They timed the spell for late evening on the premise that less movement and a still campus would make tracking the results easier.  Tyndal arrived first, as he had the key, and he brought his mageblade, a warwand, and a waterbottle.  Then he stood in the dark for ten minutes while he tried to cast a magelight.  The result was so mockingly impotent that he banished it, preferring the darkness to the mockery.

“I don’t know why you did that,” Estasia said, as the globe of pale illumination faded.  “I’ve only been able to do that spell once.  In the lab.  One candlepower for three whole minutes.”

“It gets easier with practice,” Tyndal said.  “But it takes too much power and concentration, without irionite.  I’m just used to doing it.”  Instead he found a taper from a cluster in a sconce and used  cantrip to make it light.  “I suppose I could still have a career as a marketplace performer.  Cantrips are still relatively easy.”

“Let’s not be pessimistic, shall we?” Estasia said in an overly-casual voice.  “I know this has been hard for you, but you have a lot of really good people helping you find it.  You’ll have it by dawn  I promise.”  Before Tyndal could protest that she had no real assurance of that, she swept him into an unexpected - but not unwelcome - kiss. 

He had known that the pretty alchemist liked him, and was certainly flirting with him, but this was the first tangible sign that she had feelings beyond professional respect and admiration. As her softer-than-dew lips pressed against him, her tongue playfully dueled with his.  The effect was erotic and mind-stopping - for a few moments he forgot bout all of his other troubles and just enjoyed kissing the sweet-smelling girl.

When they finally, reluctantly broke the kiss, Tyndal had found himself possessed of a new optimism about his situation.  Estasia’s kiss gave him the validation he needed that he was on the.right track, like a sign from Ishi.  He also understood that it was a feeling born more of desperation than reason, but that very desperation allowed him to ignore that fact. 

“Why did you do that?” he asked, curious.  “Not that I’, objecting . . . it just seems . . . a little out of character.”

She smiled in the candlelight.  “What, taking advantage of a powerless, incredibly handsome hero who I’ve lured into a dark, deserted library?  Considering the folks back home who believe I’m destined to become an evil sorceress, that’s completely in character.”

“No, I meant . . . why kiss me, when it’s clear you’re set on a career in magic, not a husband.  I mean, you remind me of Lady Pentandra, and despite her discipline-”

“Sex magic?” Estasia asked wickedly, delighting in the scandal of the controversial field of study.

“Uh, yeah.  She’ll screw a maiden goat.if that’s what her studies demand, but she doesn’t go around . . cultivating romances,” he finished, lamely.

“Maybe a girl just likes you, Sir Tyndal,” Estsia said softly, with humor.  “Maybe she’s just taken by your charm - or lack thereof - your wit, your bravery, your, your . . . muscles,” she said, reaching out and feeling his bicep.  “Dear Ishi’s dewy- well,” she said, dropping her hand and regaining her composure.  “Can’t a girl just like a boy and want to be intimate with him?”

“Sure,” Tyndal said, not entirely displeased by her commentary.  “I’m fond of the practice.  You have to understand, though, why I’m cautious.  My master has enemies-”

“And apparently you do as well,” she pointed out.  “I don’t know much about your master, but I imagine he also has allies?”

He thought of Lady Pentandra, Lady Alya, Sire Cei, Baron Arathanial and all of the other good folk Master Min had surrounded himself with,

“Well, yes,” he admitted.

“And now, so do you,” she concluded.  “It’s  wizard’s prerogative to cultivate allies.  That’s essentially what I’m doing with you and Rondal.  Good, dependable, powerful, well-placed allies.”

“So you aren’t trying to just get me drunk and drag me to a priestess?” he asked, only half joking.

“Ishi’s twat!” she swore, unexpectedly.  “Get over yourself!  You might be Sir Tyndal the great Knight Mage, but I do have a career to think about.  You might be cute, but you aren’t cute enough to convince me to give up magic!”

“My wife would never have to give up magic,”
  Tyndal said, absently.  “But I’m not looking for  wife!” he added, desperately.

“Nor I aspirations of being one,” she said, coolly.  “But it’s good to know your feelings on the matter.”

For once Rondal arrived in a timely enough manner to cut short the conversation’s uncomfortable direction.  If he suspected the two had been kissing, he showed no signs.

“It’s way too dark in here,” he said, as he took his bg off of his shoulder and casually cast a bright magelight.  Tyndal suppressed a surge of envy.

“Let’s get this started,” he told them.  “I don’t want to wait one second longer than necessary.”

“I’ll spellbind the door so we won’t be disturbed,” Rondal offered. “You get ready.”

They took positions on the floor after Rondal warded the door.  Tyndal sat down and tried to make himself as comfortable as possible.  He was pretty good with action-based spells, like combat magic or spellmongering. These more contemplative workings were the stuff of academics and scholars, not warmagi.  He glanced at Estasia and vowed to cultivate such disciplines more in the future.

The process of forming an apis was incredibly difficult without the crutch of his witchstone, Tyndal realized.  But once it had manifested, he connected it with Rondal’s matching spell and suddenly he had a surge of power at his disposal like he hd not felt in days.  Not nearly as much as if he’d had his own irionite, but more than enough to do the job at hand.

But Rondal had been right to be concerned about the intimacy of the working, Tyndal realized as they settled into the first big spell they’d done together.  After making the connection with the other two magi, he suddenly knew and felt things about Estasia he never would have known.  Just how much she liked him, for one.  The strength and intensity of the feeling was potent.  She, too, suddenly recognized some things about him, things that made him uncomfortable.

And his fellow apprentice, too, had some residual feelings that bridged the connection along with the power.  The longing, the loneliness, the envy, the disappointment, the self-deprecation, the . . . the whole long sad litany of things that made Rondal who he was inflicted itself on Tyndal with an understated sadness.  Tyndal felt sorry for him and was irritated by it at the same time.

Then he realized just what feelings he might be projecting, and he resolved to focus his mind and emotions more tightly.  He felt the emotions of the other two pull away as they made their own adjustments.

They said very little while they worked.  Rondal provided the power until Estasia was able to cast her portion of the spell.  The moment she nodded her head, Tyndal turned his attention to scrying.

The results came in much more slowly than if he’d had his witchstone, but even so their combined efforts yielded a number of “blank” spots in their scrying.  More than Estasia had figured upon.  But luckily there were but a few within the area they had decided would be the only possible places the thief could have stashed the stone. 

“Time to let the thief remember what he did,” Anastasia said, “Casting the recall spell . . . now!”

Without a means of knowing whether or not the spell had worked, they let the working fail and discussed the results.

Soon they had narrowed the field significantly, and were excited by the spell’s success - excited enough that they didn’t feel the need to speak about the unaccustomed intimacy.  They had gotten plenty of data, enough so that they were able to make some astute guesses about just which, exactly, of the “blank spaces” might be hiding the stone.  They narrowed it down to a list of the most likely, and decided what order they would explore their options.

They trudged up the stirs to the North Tower, where their first target field lay.  It lay outside of their room.

“Let’s go get it,” Tyndal said, at once, as he looked out the window that had allowed the thief to come in.

“No!” Rondal insisted.  “He’s got to have it warded.  Spellbound, even.  With shadowmagic we could spend days searching for it and never see it.  We have to get the thief to lead us to precisely where it is, and then get him to dispel the cloaking and protection spells.”

“Which I’m certain he’ll do out of a sense of contrition,” Tyndal said, dismissively. 

“No, you’ll threaten to stab him if he doesn’t,” Rondal pointed out.

“That is my plan,” agreed Tyndal.

“Well, don’t,” argued Rondal.  “At least not yet.”

“You have a better suggestion?” Tyndal asked, skeptically.

“I do.  We need to flush him and his confederate out.  We’ve narrowed the list of prospective thieves, we’ve re-constructed the crime, and we have some good guesses about who it is . . . and who their confederate is.”

“We do?” Tyndal asked.

“Don’t we?” Rondal responded.  He named a few suspects who fitted the facts.  Tyndal considered each one, then added another.  Estasia chimed in with two more possibilities, and then they argued until they had discarded some of their suspects.  She left soon after they had concocted a plan that might flush the thief out, the boys thanking her profusely for her help.

“So do we really think we can flush this guy out?” Tyndal grumbled.  “Can’t we use your witchstone as bait?”

“Hells, no!” Rondal said, appalled.  “No, we’re using
your
stone as bait.  And our story to motivate him.  Just keep calm and let the magic work,” he encouraged.  “We spread the rumor that Master Min is coming here for a surprise visit, let it be known off-hand that it amounts to an inspection, and the only people who will be troubled are the guilty ones.”  He sighed, expressively.  “You know, that was . . . that was amazing!”

“What was?” Tyndal asked, still staring out of the window.

“That spell.  The way we were connected.  It was like . . . like watching her breathe.  From the
inside
.”