Magesong (6 page)

"I said that I'm not certain.  And besides, I don't
understand how the six
Aevir
can be bound together to unleash the old
power."

"The frost dragon has told me that it will be revealed
when they are in one place.  I've always sensed that it could happen in my
lifetime, but I never really believed until now."  He looked to where his
robe and mask hung near the door.  "If you have really found it, they'll
elevate you to the inner circle."

"Not if Serendipity gets wind of this.  One word to her
and I'll be ordered to stay here and teach until she can figure it out and go
after it herself.  Anemone is already suspicious."

"Serendipity knows that her little protégé is easily
excitable," Cipher said, already recovering from the jolt.  "She's
not going to take her too seriously."

He rubbed his long thin nose.  "So what is it that you
need from an old man who is too frail to travel — other than keeping this quiet
for a while?"

Ephemeris rose lightly to his feet and went to the brazier
to let smoke flow over his hands.

"I want to get into the inner shrine," he said,
"I want to see the other imprisoned elementals and know what it is to feel
their presence."

"That is not possible.  At least it is not worth the
risk of getting caught.  Believe me, if you find the last
Aevir
you will
know it as such.  But you know that already — what is it that you really need
from me?"  He leveled his gaze at Ephemeris, who could not meet it
easily.  The old man still had the power.

"To look at one of the Eddaic scrolls.  The restoration
of Graifalmia."

"The Pallenborne?  You just told me that it was in
Jakavia."

"It is.  The countryman of mine that may have it
recently returned from the Pallenborne.  I think that
E'alaisenne
was
summoned and formed in the Pallenborne, and it is possible that it was returned
to the place of its making by Graifalmia after she overthrew Derndra.  I find
the symmetry of this appealing."

Cipher motioned to the pillow in front of him.  "Show
me what you have."

Ephemeris brought a sheet of linen paper from under his
robe.  "Here is a copy of the celebrated passage from the Chronicles of
Derndra.  It has always been translated as,
'Into a valley of men in the
lands to the north came Derndra seeking the Stone of Deepness.  There he
summoned the great elemental through the Stone, taking with him the life of the
land
.'  But look here.  This line can be translated
'Into a valley in
the lands of the northmen came Derndra
' — do you see?"

"Hmm.  I suppose you could interpret it that way, but
it is a bit of a stretch."  He looked at his former student.  "I'll
get the scroll for you if you want, but I can tell you now that it will confirm
your feeling of symmetry."

"I knew it," Ephemeris said, crushing the paper
against his chest.  "What does it say?"

"Only that Graifalmia returned the captured spirit to
the lifeless valley, hiding it well."

"Then that is it.  I'll leave tomorrow at first
light."

"I hope this isn't another false trail," Cipher said. 
"Who is this Jakavian and what do you know of him?"

"His name is Airen Libac — I've told you about him. 
He's the treasure hunter who lives in Mira-Delvin, a rich aristocrat with
influence and an estate and such.  It makes things harder."

"Mira-Delvin.  That's where you spent your early childhood
is it not?"

"Yes.  I lived as a water-front urchin before I went to
sea, and still know the city and its ways quite well.  I should be able to move
quickly."

"Listen to me.  Do not attempt any kind of foolish act
such as a room-to-room search in the middle of the night.  There's always a
chance of something going wrong in a situation like that no matter how good you
are.  You must proceed slowly and work your way into his trust.  Then strike
when everything is certain."

Ephemeris nodded.  "As you say."

The stones lining the dry wash lay covered with blue and
green lichen.  It had never been a stream, except perhaps for a few weeks in
the early spring when it served as a drainage channel for the runoff of melting
snow.  The going was steep, yet the footing was sure, and to Reyin it seemed
the best path to take, a straight course running from the base of the heavily
wooded ridge to the very foot of the Skialfanmir.  From the valley floor, the
pinnacle appeared to be unscalable.  In the remembered history of Lorendal no
one had ever tried to climb it.  That was what Farlo had said.

Reyin hadn't known what Jonn had said until Farlo
translated, but he had known what touched him.  The Unknowable Forces had
clearly marked that pitiable young man.

He halted at a level spot where morning light bled through
the pines.  Sitting down on a flat stone, he let go a quiet snort that served
as ironic laughter.  This was, after all, what he had been seeking was it not? 
What Artemes had told him to search for, a chance meeting that was not chance,
one in which he would feel the very breath of the Essa in the air.  He had
dreamed of this, dreamed that he could breathe in the Essa to intertwine with
his own spirit and become one with it. That was the way it had happened for all
of them: Ty'kojin, Artemes, Dimietri, all who had become true magicians, but
Reyin did not feel anything like that happening to him.  He only felt the hand.

He ate a small portion of the flatbread Kestrin had given
him for this day's journey, and the scent of her hair came to him unbidden.  He
pushed it from his mind.  He was too old for these schoolboy thoughts.  Perhaps
his thoughts ran to this woman to hide from himself.  He wanted to pretend that
he knew nothing, that he could walk away from the unseen realm, that trying to
forget the secret ways of power posed no danger.

He rose and continued his climb up the ravine.  The hillside
lay thick with evergreens and silence, broken only by the sound of his
footfalls and the crackling of dry branches strained by the breeze.  Becoming
aware of a dull soreness in his ankle, Reyin slowed his pace.  The natural
trail grew even more steep, approaching the vertical in places, and he now had
to climb in earnest, picking his footing carefully.  Through a part in the
trees he saw the crest of the Skialfanmir looking down on him from a thousand
feet above.

As he neared the top of the wash he couldn't help but think
of his old master.  For years they had climbed the winding trail from
Ty'kojin's log house, high on a shoulder of Wind Peak, to the top of the
mountain almost every day.  How many times had they climbed it?  Perhaps a
thousand?  And every time, his teacher had said the same words as they labored
up the final length of trail to the summit.  "Look Reyin, look how the
path is deeply rutted.  Many have walked this path countless times.  They are
all great and powerful magicians now.  They were all like you, once.  Think
upon this as you go."

Reyin broke though the tree line, and in a dozen long
strides reached the open ground at the base of the crag.  His heart beat fast. 
He had no need to reach for the Essa — it was there, flowing up from the earth
and falling down from the sky to complete its circle by touching at the center
of his being.  And so too had it been on Wind Peak.  Ty'kojin had said that
many such places existed, some at the tops of mountains, others where springs
welled up from the depths of the earth, and far out on the Western Sea whole
islands stood in the flow of power, as did unmarked places in desert lands.

It had been a long time since he last stood on magic ground,
and he wished for a reason to use the art magic.  But he wasn't a novice
yearning to say his first spell; he had been to this place many hundreds of
times.  He sat down and brought out the remainder of the flatbread, eating it
slowly, patiently scanning the cracks and crevasses and angles and faces of the
Skialfanmir.  There was no way up.

He had been certain that the sheer, seamless look of the
pinnacle was an illusion of distance, and that one of the spurs would offer a
route to the summit.  Close now, he saw overhangs that would turn back the most
nimble climber.  The first hundred feet of the near face stood rough and
rounded and looked easy to climb.  He popped the last bit of crust into his
mouth and began picking his way up the first boulder that belonged to the
mountain proper.  He stopped.

The Essa was stronger here, so strong that he feared to take
another step — even on Wind Peak it was not so high.  He felt as if he could
perform magic simply by thinking of it, but that was impossible.  Not even
Artemes could cast a spell without sound or movement.

He climbed over rough-hewn granite until he reached the
vertical wall that formed the east face of the pinnacle.  What stood before him
was more than obvious, and he wondered why he hadn't seen it from below.

It was a door, smeared with crumbling plaster the same color
as the surrounding stone, perhaps hundreds of years, or even hundreds of cycles
old.  At one time, no doubt, it had been perfectly camouflaged.

Reyin looked at it in the way a magician can look at things
if he so chooses.  The doorway had set upon it an elaborate guard of fasten, a
ward against weakening, and possibly other unseen spells were bound there too.

He tried a few simple words of the Essian Tongue.  "Open. 
Let pass."  Nothing happened.  No, it would not be so easy as that.  He
looked more closely.  The fastening was too complex for him to ever unravel
it.  Maybe it had a weak link.

He spoke again in the speech of power, this time the words
circling and building in strength at the center of his being — "Thou art
broken and severed, split asunder!" — at last letting them burst forth as
he kicked the door three times to fix the spell.

He stood there for a moment sweating freely, slightly
winded.

A soft grinding — the door swung open and a dank, damp odor
drifted past.  A stair-stepped tunnel curved up and away into the heart of the
crag.  Just inside, held by wall brackets, a pair of torches burned brightly as
if newly lit.

He lifted a torch from its holder and started up the passage
with a cautious gait.  Not that he thought anyone was there.  He figured,
rather, that the torch had been left there for anyone who could open the door.  A
flame that never burned out was well within the power of the old grammaries.

The passage twisted upward and he soon lost all sense of
direction.  The stepped tunnel, carved into solid granite, was void of shoring
timbers and cross beams, void of any feature, even scars left by cutting
tools.  It must have taken an entire cycle of thirty-six years to build.  He
could imagine even an army of miners taking thousands of days to finish it.  He
frowned, puzzled.  Never had any kind of empire, any people with enough
resources to undertake such a project lived in this land.  Only the elder
grammarie of the age of magic could have made such a passage.

He paused at the entrance to a wide, level gallery.  Demonic
shapes carved into the walls looked out at him, their faces scarred with runes
of fear.  His breath coming out frosty in the deepening cold of the mine, Reyin
started down the passage.  Then the ghosts came.

They came out of the dark on jagged, torn wings, their
silvery translucent bodies twisted and shrunken, their fanged mouths open in
silent agony.  But with his magesight Reyin knew them for what they were.

"You are mere illusion," he told them, "less
than the weakest ghost.  By my
sight
you are dismissed and banished, now
and forever."

Ty'kojin had said that in the lost age, illusions were a
simple trick that any magician could perform, but now there was no modern
grammarie that allowed for that kind of art.  The nature of the Essa itself
could no longer embrace the sheer power of that time.

Reyin stood still for a moment.  There was a pattern to this
way, a test that only a magician could pass.  The door had been a test of
power.  The gallery a test of sight.  There would be one more, a test of art.  And
it came at once.

The far end of the gallery opened into a darkness the
torchlight could not penetrate.  He inched his way into the blackness, his feet
sliding searchingly along the stone floor, his hand reaching for walls and not
finding them.  The torch was swallowed by the dark.  He could feel its heat,
but no light escaped, and his skin revolted against the inky touch of the
darkness.

The solution to this test was obvious — a spell of light
would illuminate this magical dark.  Another simple thing for the magicians of
old.  That power, too, had been lost in the Cycle of Ice.  He continued sliding
forward and pondered the price of failure.

Although he half expected it, when his leading foot found
the drop-off he lost his balance and nearly fell.  He lowered himself and lay
on his stomach and reached downward then out, trying to find a step or the
other side if this was indeed a crevasse.  Nothing was there.

He had come too far to turn back now.  Maybe there was some
other way through.  He crawled along the edge of the drop till it ended in a
side wall, then he felt his way back to the gallery opening looking for a door
or even a hole, then repeated that with the opposite side wall, finding the
drop-off again and returning to about where he started.  He listened — for the
sound of running water, air whistling through a shaft, a sign, anything.

Maybe the crevasse was only a few inches deeper than the
length of his arm.  He called down into it, and the echoes sounded far and
deep.  No, he would have to cross over if he wanted to see this way to its end.

He called again.  "Hello."

No echo to the front.  A wall stood opposite him, not far away. 
He was sure of it.

He sang a clear high note.  He sidled along the edge of the
crevasse until he got there and sang the note again.  Yes, this was it.  An
echo nearby, straight across.  He summoned every secret way of knowing he had
ever learned.  No more than five or six feet away lay an opening, big enough,
with a safe place to land.  But this wasn't some exercise with Artemes,
standing on a log just a foot off the ground with a cheesecloth blindfold.  If
he was wrong he would fall to his death.

Against all logic he knew he was right, knew that he could
do it.  He closed his eyes against the awful dark and found the edge of the
crevasse.  He took one deep breath, then leaped into the blackness.

The landing came sudden, shocking as he fell sprawled on
hard rock.

He had dropped the torch.  On hands and knees he felt for
it, then stopped.  A strange shape lay carved in the stone beneath him.  He
traced it with one finger — the rune of darkness, that which powered the
enchantment on this place.

He found a loose stone and scratched through the old rune. 
The unnatural dark gave way to the shifting light of the torch.  He sat in the
opening of a tunnel that had been bored into a sheer wall.  Reyin picked up the
torch and looked into the crevasse.  There was no bottom.

He turned and went deeper into the mountain, the tunnel
inclining sharply upward again with stair steps.  Each step was now a labor. 
He stopped several times to rest, but it was a long climb.  He pushed himself
forward and up, forward and up.  The stairwell rounded tightly about, then
straightened into a steep grade, the rise of the steps becoming taller.  Then
there were no more steps, only the sound of rushing wind.  He stood in a low
stone hut with a narrow archway that opened onto the mountaintop.

He went out and was surprised by the girth of the summit. 
From below it had looked sharp as the tip of a rapier.  Flat, and roughly oval,
it likely measured two hundred paces across.

In the center stood a dome of bronze.

Black and green and silent with age, it shone dully metallic
in the afternoon sun.  It must have been struck with lightning a thousand times
since its construction.  The dome was supported by concentric rings of white
marble columns triple the height of man, offset and so closely spaced that they
screened the interior from direct sight.

Reyin slowly circled the structure.  He discovered that one
pillar was deliberately missing, and he took this to be the entrance.  He went
in.  The ancient marble floor peeked through a blanket of dust in places where
a recent visitor had left scuffs and footprints.  He followed them to the space
at the center.  Beneath the dome, smaller than the poorest peasant's hut, sat a
one-room house of translucent glass.  A huge copper statue stood to each side
of the low double doors of the house like a pair of palace guards.  They were
dragons, the creature that embodied the Unknowable Forces themselves.

He looked up at them, and for a moment imagined that they
would suddenly come to life and spring at him.  Ty'kojin had never spoken of
power like that, but Reyin knew that almost anything had been possible to the
ancient mages.

Standing between the guardians, he gently released the
silver latch holding the doors.  They slowly swung outward.

The floor of the inner chamber was simply the raw, rocky
surface of the crag itself.  A waist-high upthrust of stone, the very tip of
the pinnacle, rested inside that fragile place.  It looked familiar.  Yes, a
stone much like it sat in the center of the village, with the same flat top and
the same four-point star etched into its surface.

In this place, he felt, he could initiate oneness with the
Unknowable.  But the shrine had been violated, entered by one who had not
passed the tests of the sorcerous passage.  It would have to be purified. 

He rummaged in his knapsack and found the tiny purse he kept
full of salt.  Regents were not really necessary in places where the Essa ran
high, but Reyin thought it would lend elegance to his incantation.