Lost (8 page)

N
every found Benet, and between them they got me home and wrapped in blankets in front of the fireplace in Nevery’s study. Then Nevery did the dancing statue spell on me, and sent Benet down to the storeroom for more coal.

I sat in the chair and
coughed up dust. Lady climbed into my lap and lay there like a warm pillow.

“Dust all over the floor,” Nevery said. He paced in front of the hearth. “Glass shards. A smell of smoke. My guess is that you defeated a Shadow using a blackpowder explosive.”

I jerked out a nod.

“Boy, you set off a pyrotechnic device
in the duchess’s chamber
. You may have saved her life, I grant you that, but no one can learn of this, especially not the magisters.” He shook his head. “You do have a talent for getting yourself into trouble.”

I wasn’t sure it was a talent.

Benet came in carrying a bucket of coal.

“All well?” Nevery asked him.

“Yes, sir. Before we left, Captain Kerrn said to tell you the Shadows retreated. One guard killed, six wounded.” He added more coal to the fire and nodded at me. “He all right?”

“He will be,” Nevery said. “Tea.”

Benet went out.

I wormed my arm out of the blankets, lifted my hand, still clenched around the Shadow’s eye, and rested it on the table. One by one I pried my fingers open, and the stone rolled out of my hand and onto the table. It lay there glowing purple-black.

“What is that, boy?” Nevery asked, coming over to the table.

“Sh-sh-sh—,” I said.

“Curse it,” he muttered. He reached for the eye.

“No—,” I gasped out. It might turn him to stone, too.

Nevery paused, staring at me. “Don’t touch it, you mean, lad?”

I nodded.

“Very well,” Nevery said. He pulled the blankets over my arm again and sat down at the table, looking closely at the stone. “Ah,” he said, glancing over at me. “This was inside one of the Shadows, was it? The one you destroyed in the duchess’s room?”

“Yss-s-s,” I said.

Benet came in with tea. He poured a cup and set it on the table before me. “Manage that?” he asked.

I nodded and dragged my arm out of the blankets again. The teacup felt hot to my numb fingers. I leaned forward and took a drink, my teeth bumping the edge of the cup. The tea scorched a path down my throat, into my stomach. The stone inside me started to melt.

Benet sat down, tilted his chair back to lean against the wall, and picked up his knitting.

Nevery had fetched his magnifying glass from a shelf and leaned over the table, peering at the Shadow’s eye. “Hmmm,” he muttered. “I’ve seen this before, haven’t I?”

Setting down the glass, he went out of the room, up to his workroom, I guessed. In the silence, Benet’s knitting needles went
clickety-ticky-tick
. After a few minutes Nevery came back.

“Look at this, boy.” He set a pot on the table. It was about as big as his hand, made of smooth,
red clay, with letters in black, swirling script along the side. “I bought slowsilver in this pot. Hmmm.” He leaned back in his chair and stroked his beard. “The same kind of writing, faint and fine, is etched on the eye. Slowsilver. The markings on the stone. I believe I know where the Shadows came from. They came from Desh, the desert city.”

Desh?
Oh, how could I have been so stupid. The magic’s spellword. It had the word
Desh
in it. The magic had known about the Shadows and where they had come from. But I’d been too stupid to understand it.

In the morning I woke up bundled in blankets, lying on the hearth, with Nevery nudging me with his foot. He added a shovelful of coal to the fire. “Well, boy?”

I creaked up and leaned against the wall beside the hearth. Even with the blankets and the warm fire, I still felt the ache of cold stone in my bones. “Better, Nevery,” I said. “Is the duchess all right?” In my sleep, I’d dreamed the Shadow raising
the stone knife, then plunging it down. And I’d dreamed Dee, too, with Shadow dust swirling around him.

“It is very early morning,” Nevery said. “I haven’t yet received a report from the Dawn Palace.”

I climbed up to my chair and sat at the table. The Shadow’s eye was gone. In its place was a shiny, hand-sized puddle, as if a bit of night had spilled onto the scratched tabletop. I leaned closer to see.

Nevery joined me. “Yes, it is odd, isn’t it.” He held out his hand. “Give me a lockpick wire.”

I reached into my pocket and brought one out and handed it to Nevery. He poked the end of the wire into the puddle. A black-dark bead stuck to the end of the wire; he tapped and it dropped onto the table, formed into a snail, and oozed back into the puddle. It left a sizzling trail of steam behind it.

“Slowsilver?” I asked.

Nevery shook his head. “Something else, I think.
Darksilver. Certainly it has magical properties.”

“How’d it make the Shadow come alive?”

“I suspect it was used to contain a bit of magic, which animated the Shadow and allowed it to carry out its orders.” He sat down. “It is of very great concern.”

“It’s from Desh?” I asked. I remembered Rowan telling me about Desh. A city built on sand and slowsilver mines, she’d said.

“Mmm,” Nevery said. “I visited the city of Desh during my years of exile from Wellmet. The city is ruled by a sorcerer-king, Lord Jaggus. A very powerful wizard, though young.” He glanced at me from under his bushy eyebrows. “His locus magicalicus is a large jewel stone.”

Like mine had been. “D’you think Jaggus sent the Shadows?” I asked. The magic hadn’t said the sorcerer-king’s name, though, so maybe he hadn’t.

“Possibly. I cannot imagine what he hopes to accomplish if he did. The Shadows are spies, perhaps, and are certainly murderers and assassins.
Such aggression from one city toward another city; it makes no sense, and it is almost without precedent. There must be an explanation.” Nevery shook his head. “I expect the duchess will send an envoy to Desh in order to discover the truth of the matter.”

Yes, she would. “Nevery, I have to go with them. The magic warned me about Desh, and I think it wants me to go there.” I didn’t want to leave the city, but if a group from Wellmet was going, I needed to go, too.

Nevery leaned back in his chair and pulled on the end of his beard. “Hmmm. Perhaps,” he said.

He said
perhaps
, but he knew I was right.

Nevery was right about the duchess. She summoned him to the Dawn Palace the next day.

I went with him, putting on my black sweater and my apprentice robe, so they’d know I was a wizard.

As we walked up the front steps of the Dawn Palace, the guards at the door gave me a squinty-
eyed look, but Nevery swept-stepped past them, me right behind him. We went up to the duchess’s rooms. Outside the door, Trammel whispered to Nevery that the Shadow had struck the duchess with a stone blade that was spreading stone inside her, and that he should make his visit short.

“He should stay outside,” Trammel said, pointing at me. “She doesn’t need to be upset.”

“Well, boy?” Nevery asked, pulling at his beard.

I stayed outside; Nevery went in.

The guards outside the duchess’s door glared at me, but I ignored them. I sat down with my back against the wall and closed my eyes. My neck felt numb where the Shadow had touched me.

Hearing hurrying footsteps, I opened my eyes.

Rowan, with a guard.

She stopped. “Hello, Connwaer. You don’t look much better than the last time I saw you. What are you doing here?”

I looked up at her. Her mother was right in the next room, and Kerrn’s guards were an arm’s length away; I wasn’t going to talk to Rowan here.

Rowan waited for me to answer. “Still not talking to me, then?” she said after a few moments.

I shook my head.

“My mother,” she said with a sigh. “I know.” She reached down with her hand; I took it, and she pulled me to my feet. “You can come in with me,” she said.

But the guards wouldn’t let me past the door. Rowan shrugged and went in, and I went back to sit against the wall and wait.

After a while, she came out. I got to my feet.

“Well,” Rowan said. “You aren’t talking to me, but I’m going to tell you my news anyway.” She smiled and her eyes sparkled. “Conn, I’m being sent as an envoy to Desh to meet with the sorcerer-king, to try to find out if he sent the Shadows, and to bring back proof of it if he did.”

She
was going to Desh? Drats. The duchess would never let me go if Rowan was going. I shook my head.

Rowan frowned. “I’m leaving as soon as possible. Will you come see me off?”

I shook my head again. Why couldn’t she just stay here?

Rowan straightened, and suddenly she looked older, more like her mother. “I thought you would be excited for me, but I can see that you’re not. I am my mother’s heir, Connwaer. One day I will be duchess. I’ve been trained for this; I’ve been taught diplomacy and policy and sword fighting for a reason. I will go to Desh and I will find out if they sent the Shadows, and I will make it right.” With one last glare, she turned with a swish of her skirts and stalked away down the hallway, followed by a guard.

The duchess’s door opened and Nevery came out, looking grim. He put on his wide-brimmed hat. “Come along, boy,” he said, sweep-stepping down the hallway. I followed.

In the tunnels on the way back to Heartsease, I asked him about his talk with the duchess.

He strode along, his cane going
tap tap
against the slippery slate floor of the tunnel, the blue glow
from his locus magicalicus lighting our way. He paused to open a gate and we went through. “We spoke about the envoyage to Desh,” he said at last. “I suggested to the duchess that you be allowed to go along, but she would not allow it.”

Of course she wouldn’t. So I’d be staying in Wellmet. That wasn’t such a bad thing. Leaving Wellmet and the magic would be like walking away from a warm fire into a howling snowstorm; I didn’t really want to do it.

“I wanted you out of the city,” Nevery said. “It didn’t escape my notice, boy, that you did magic using pyrotechnics in the duchess’s chamber. The lothfalas spell, I assume?”

I nodded and kept quiet. He didn’t look happy about it.

“The magisters are watching you,” he said. “Captain Kerrn is watching you. They’re both waiting for you to get into more trouble.”

“But Nevery, if I do pyrotechnics, I think I can talk to the magic,” I said.

Nevery stopped suddenly, bent, and stared straight into my eyes. “Listen, boy. Whether that is true or not, it is far too dangerous. You
must not
do any more pyrotechnic experiments.” He gripped my shoulder. “Do you understand?”

I understood. But if I didn’t do pyrotechnics, I was no use to the magic at all. I didn’t answer Nevery. I didn’t want to lie to him.

Rowan and the rest of her envoyage left the next day. Only one main road came to Wellmet, and it led from the Dawn Palace, through the city, and then east, to Desh eventually, I guessed.

Crowds of people, mostly from the Sunrise, had gathered along the street, standing under umbrellas in the drizzly rain, watching Rowan’s envoyage leave. A few people cheered; a few more people worked the crowd, picking pockets.

The envoyage went past. First a group of guards in uniform, walking in quick-step through the puddles, then a wagon loaded with
supplies with a waterproofed canvas spread over it, then a shabby carriage, full of servants, most likely. Then another carriage; I saw Nimble sitting inside. So they’d sent a wizard along. That was a good idea.

Then came Rowan. She rode a gray horse; its hooves clopped on the cobbled street. She wore dark green trousers, high boots, and an overcoat embroidered in green, and in the gray light her hair burned red, like flames. On one side of her rode Captain Kerrn in her green uniform; on the other rode her friend Argent on a fierce-looking black horse.

Rowan looked tall and noble and a little cold in the chilly wind. As she passed where I was standing, she looked down at me and then away, straight ahead, and rode on.

Rowan Forestal

My mother has asked me to write a journal, to note my observations. She says that writing things down will help me to “articulate my experiences and thereby to understand them.” I suppose she is right about that. One thing I do not need to articulate any further is the fact that it was raining when we departed Wellmet, and continues to rain as I write this in my tent. The rain is articulated quite clearly in my wet coat, my wet boots, and the wet firewood that made the task of starting dinner rather difficult for our cook.

We need to hurry to Desh,, so I insisted that we put in a long day of travel right out of Wellmet. Argent looked very fine in his blue frock coat, mounted on tall Midnight, but I noticed that he climbed stiffly out of the saddle when we stopped to make camp. We will soon be travel hardened. The road to Desh is a long one, and we must travel it swiftly.

Desh will be a challenge. The magister my mother assigned to accompany us, Nimble, thinks it is unlikely the sorcerer-king of Desh, Lord Jaggus, is responsible for the Shadow attacks. But Nimble strikes me as a fool. He makes me wish Conn had come with us. I have taken enough apprentice classes to suspect that Conn knows more about magic than all the other magisters combined. I don’t know how he manages to make them, and my mother, and Captain Kerrn, so furious with him. Well, I suppose I am furious with him, too. It must be his particular talent.

In any case, this envoyage will be my chance to prove to my mother and her council that I have learned my lessons and am perfectly capable of carrying out the mission they have given me.