Salamander (16 page)

"For the past several months I have been creating, and several times told you I was creating, spells of woven fire. You were so confident in your first guess about me …"

"Of course; I should have seen it the first day."

"The first day?"

"The first day I saw you, when you had let down the veil. Fire, a lot of fire, but you didn't look like other fire mages. I had never observed a weaving mage before. So you pool both fire and weaving. Meaning you can build the thing by yourself?"

"I can build a sphere. I have built one. But it was only about a foot across so I do not think you can fit His Majesty and a troop of mages into it."

"What limits the size?"

"Weaving provides structure, fire provides power. It is the power that determines the size. I might manage two feet across if I wasn’t planning to do anything else for the next day or two, but that is about the limit."

Coelus
looked
puzzled.
"Then how was the containment sphere built? Durilil was stronger than you are, but not a hundred times stronger. How did he manage a sphere almost three hundred feet across?"

"You can expand it over time, especially with several fire mages. You just keep pumping in fire. It does not all have to come from the mages so long as there are fire mages to control it. When you have the sphere as bright as it can be without bursting, you expand it. Keep repeating the process and you can get it as big as you want—if you have enough time and enough fire. Big enough to hold the royal palace won't be easy, though. And at that size it will take quite a lot of fire to maintain it."

Coelus nodded agreement. "That was the problem we started with; how the containment sphere maintained itself all these years. You thought it might be drawing power from the mages inside of it."

"I was wrong. The answer is much simpler. The creators of the sphere made arrangements for additional fire to be added from the outside from time to time to make up for the losses."

"And kept doing it for forty years. How in the world did they manage it?"

Ellen said nothing.

"I see. And you cannot tell me more."

"I cannot tell you more. But it did occur to me …"

Coelus broke in. "That the containment sphere is more than we actually need."

She nodded. "The sphere blocks physical force, sight, and a wide range of magic. All we need is something the Cascade won't penetrate. I thought, since you devised the Cascade, that you should be able to work out the least protection that would block it."

Coelus thought a moment, then shook his head.

"It is not that simple, I'm afraid. We have to defend against any cascade that might be invented. Mine was based on the elemental star. Someone else's might not be.

"Still you are correct that it should not take something as powerful as the sphere. How much less ..."

He closed his eyes, thought a minute, opened them and his wax tablet, and began to scribble.

* * *

Coelus stopped pacing, turned to Ellen. "His Majesty can be protected, but …"

She finished the sentence: "Not very well."

He nodded agreement. "We have a schema that will enclose a building of significant size in a sphere sufficient to block expansion of a cascade.
But defending it from the power of a cascade in the hands of an outside enemy won’t be easy. It might defend against another Maridon, with magery and nothing else. But it won’t slow down an invading army with both the Cascade and a substantial team of battle mages very much."
Coelus' face, usually bright with enthusiasm, grew grim.

"We’ve exhausted that line, we need to try another tack,” said Ellen. “You know more about the Cascade than anyone else. What were the hardest problems in making it work? Is there any way we could make them harder?"

"Telling you more about the Cascade makes you more of a risk for the Prince. It might be dangerous."

"Not as dangerous as leaving the problem unsolved. What we have so far is a paper solution—we have to do better. Tell me."

He hesitated, thinking. "There were about half a dozen hard problems, ones that looked as though they would make it impossible. I don't see how any of them will help us, but I suppose the most likely is the efficiency ratio."

Ellen looked curious and uncomprehending; he again thought a moment before explaining. "I'm going to have to oversimplify, ignore the differences among mages, the effects of distance and geography, and a lot more. Imagine you are starting with a pool of four mages plus one focus. The focus needs his power to control the process.

"Pulling someone into the Cascade costs you power, but doing it gains you power—both the new member's current pool and his ability to slowly refill it. Suppose each mage added to the Cascade costs you twice as much power as he brings. You start with four mages, use up their pooled power bringing in two, use up their pooled power bringing in one. You now have seven mages in the Cascade and not enough power to bring in another—the series converges. If you are patient enough, and if you can hold the present group together without spending power, you could wait a day or two for the pools to refill and get about five more, but it would be a slow process.

"Suppose instead that each mage added costs you half as much power as he brings. Four bring in eight, eight bring in sixteen, sixteen bring in thirty-two. The series diverges. In almost no time you pull everyone in the region into the pool.

"Generalizing, if the efficiency is below one, the series converges and the Cascade breaks down. If it is above one the Cascade works. When I wrote my first schema for the Cascade, its efficiency was at about eight parts out of ten; ten mages had enough power to pull in eight. By the time I did the full scale experiment, it was up to nearly eleven. I might be able to get it a little higher, but not much."

"So the series diverges, the Cascade works, but barely, and you end up with most of your mages depleted?"

"For a while. But remember you still have their inflow. You end up with pooled power from the final layer of additions, the inflow from everyone. As I said, I'm leaving out a lot, but that's the basic logic of it."

Ellen thought a moment, spoke slowly: "So if you could somehow push the efficiency down a little, by making the cost of pulling someone in a little higher, the Cascade breaks down?"

Coelus nodded. "But I don't see how. It's hard enough to put a protective sphere around the King with a whole team of mages. Now you want to put one around every mage in the kingdom."

Ellen nodded. "Smaller bubbles are a lot easier. And weak bubbles; they don't have to stop the Cascade, just make it a little harder. I'm not sure we can do it, but I'm not sure we can't."

"It still sounds impossible,
” Coelus said,
“
but I agree that it is worth trying to follow out that line to be sure. Most ideas don't work; you just have to keep trying until you find one that does."

Ellen looked again at his face, gave a relieved smile. "I have an idea that will work."

"And what is that, most original of students?"

"Sleep. Both of us need it; it's past matins. Good night; I'm for my room."

She went out of the room. Coelus looked after her for a moment, then turned back to his wax tablet, stared at it blindly for several minutes before getting up from his chair.

"You asked for an audience. What can one of my uncle's mages want from me?"

The room was bare of ornament save for a richly woven rug whose blue and silver echoed the silk robes of its owner. Fieras paused a moment to be sure he had his carefully rehearsed speech clearly in mind. "I am no longer in His Highness's service, my lord. For causes that are closely linked to my reasons for coming to you."

Lord Iolen said nothing, waited.

"I discovered His Highness engaged in a project about which I had serious suspicions. When I raised them, he arranged to have me accused of misuse of magic, convicted me, and on that excuse released me from his service."

"It must have been a serious matter to lead to such consequences. Tell me about this project."

Fieras paused a moment, did his best to look undecided. "His Highness is a powerful man, and I will be telling things he does not wish known. Can your lordship promise me your protection?"

"I am not without resources. If what you tell me can be used against my uncle, I will protect you so far as I am able. If I cannot, I will at least do my best to get you safely out of the kingdom."

"I rely upon it, my Lord."

Fieras paused. "What does your Lordship know of the mage's college at Southdale and of a mage there named Coelus?"

"It has the patronage of His Highness and His Majesty. Some of its graduates are in my service, more in my uncle's. I am familiar with none of the mages who teach there. What more should I know?"

Fieras spoke carefully. "Magister Coelus is, at least in His Highness's view, talented
not so much in the use of magery as in its invention. He has created spells, some in common use. He is now creating a spell so powerful that His Highness, on learning of it, dropped everything he was doing and set off for Southdale. I accompanied him. He has made arrangements with all who knew of the spell intended to prevent anyone else from learning of it."

"Secrecy has been so high that its nature has been kept even from those in his service. His excuse was that a group of mages wielding the spell would constitute a threat to His Majesty; he feared enemies outside the kingdom, if they learned of it, might work out the necessary schema for themselves. It is most disturbing that His Highness wishes to restrict knowledge of so potent a weapon to himself and a handful of mages under his control, especially since he is
himself
both a mage and heir presumptive."

Fieras fell silent. Iolen thought a moment before speaking: “I understand your concern. What do you propose that I do?”

“Your Lordship has contacts within the military. If some high ranking officer friendly to your Lordship was willing to detach a suitable force, on the understanding that the secret you searched for would be of great use in war …
.
His Highness is now considering how to deal with the Forstings at the far northern reaches of the Kingdom, or so it is said. The College will soon be empty of students and half empty of magisters. Coelus might well be persuaded, threatened or spelled to yield up his secrets, to serve the kingdom.”

“An interesting plan, and a token of your loyalty. I will consider it. Meanwhile I suggest that you move your possessions here. I shall instruct my people to provide you with suitable accommodations. The fewer who know of these matters the better, I think—though not quite so few as my uncle would prefer.”

“I thank your Lordship. There is one more thing I ought to mention.”

Iolen said nothing, waited.

“Three mages who took part in an early trial of the spell are in His Highness’s custody. I believe I know where. He intends to block their memories, which will take time. If your lordship could find a way of getting to them and the knowledge they hold, you would have as much information as His Highness does. If we are unable to obtain the services of the mage who invented the spell, we might obtain clues from them.”

Lord Iolen thought a moment, nodded. "Access should not be difficult; the golden key opens all doors. We cannot seize them, but there may be another solution."

***

The two girls watched the coach rumble out of sight bearing their friends home for the summer break. "Edwin wasn't with them,” Ellen remarked to Mari. “Isn't he going home?"

"He took the coach yesterday, and skipped the dinner last night."

"That's odd. Did he say why? Something wrong at home?"

"He didn't say, but it was obvious enough,” Mari said. “He didn't want to spend two days in the same coach with Alys."

"He spent a lot of time with her last break,” Ellen said, puzzled. “I thought they were friends."

"They were friends. The problem is that that was all Alys wanted to be."

"And Edwin?"

"Last week Edwin asked her to marry him. He’s in love. He wanted her permission to request his parents over break to speak to hers."

"And Alys doesn't want to?"
Ellen asked.

"Alys is happy to have men in love with her, three or four at a time by preference. College would be perfect for her, if only she didn't have to actually learn something here. She keeps them all interested by not favoring any one too much. When she drew the line with Edwin, he, being a nice boy, proposed. Having no desire for a big belly with or without a wedding ring to accompany it, she turned him down."

"He has been quieter than usual the last few days.
I thought it was just the end of term, with everyone about to go off. How did you …
?"

"How do you see things with your eyes closed? It's been obvious for the past month. And I have had the story from both of them separately. Poor Edwin. Two days in a coach with Alys would amuse her, but he’d be a wreck. Besides, a girl who likes lots of men in love with her is a bad prospect for a wife. I just hope he can get over it. He needs someone else. There are many more girls in the capital than here, so with luck … ."