The Office of Shadow (38 page)

Paet allowed his Shadows a certain amount of leisure, but that was only
because he sensed that rough times were ahead. Cries for war continued to
escalate in Corpus, and there would soon come a time when cooler heads
would cease to prevail. When war came, as he knew it would sooner or later,
the lives of the Shadows would change in ways they couldn't imagine.

Spring grew; Faerie warmed; the waters of the Inland Sea grew calm and
lost their chill. Spring, however, was only a season. Summer would come soon
enough, and then autumn would be back for more.

The cynosures are objects with remarkable thaumatic
properties, though because they are objects of worship
the Chthonics do not allow them to be studied. Twelve
were created in the wake of the Rauane Envedun-e, but it
is not known how many of them are still in existence, as
the Chthonic priests refuse to discuss them in any detail.

The philosophical significance of the cynosure is
multifarious. Its wholeness represents the wholeness of
the spirit. Its size, the area of each face, the angle of
each vertex, the length of each side, all relate to both
the religious and thaumatic aspect of the object. As I
will show in the following chapter, the two can be seen
as indistinguishable.

-Prae Benesile,
Thaumatical History of the Chthonic Religion

ourneyer Timha sat in Master Valmin's study, stuck on a passage in
Beozho's Commentaries. It was an exceedingly dense passage in a work well
known for its obliqueness. Alpaurle himself had referred to it as "the ravings
of a great man in decline." Over the centuries, scholars had debated the value
of the work; for a tome ostensibly about thaumaturgy, there was very little
spellwork in it. The Coninientaries was, rather, a massive philosophical work,
littered with partial references to and quotations from documents that had
been lost to the ages, but which Beozho clearly expected his audience to be
deeply familiar with. About these secondary documents, Alpaurle had com- mented, "some are works of genius, others flights of fancy, and yet others are
intellectual self-pleasure."

The passage now plaguing Timha was in one of many sections of the
work that appeared to have nothing whatsoever to do with thaumaturgy. It
was, however, referenced twice in the notes that the black artist Hy Pezho
had left in the margins of his plans. Valmin had gone over the passage twice
and found nothing of interest, and now Timha was reviewing it only because
he could think of nothing else to do.

The panic among the senior staff had been growing daily in the months
since the Bel Zheret's visit. They'd elected not to tell the rest of the group
about the approaching deadline. What good would it do? Everyone understood the urgency of the project.

Timha reached the end of the page and realized that he had no idea what
he'd just read. He went back to the top of the page and tried to find where
he'd left off, but recognized nothing. He had to flip back three pages to find
the passage at which he'd stopped paying attention.

"We are bound by division," the paragraph began. "Categories mean
nothing at depth. All Gift is flow. Eternal, unchanging. We refuse eternity,
refuse what we unsee, and so must make what we can see and judge. It is our
nature, but it is also our failing."

What the hell did any of that mean? It was all loopy doublespeak as far
as Timha could tell. More to the point, it had nothing to do with reitic
mechanics whatsoever. What Timha needed was a derivation of Folding that
would solve the energy containment equations. He needed a solution to
Vend-Am's inequality with a resulting force greater than the square of its
input vectors. The Commentaries contained not a single spell, no concatenations of triggered bindings, nothing that might ever be remotely considered
to be practical thaumatics.

They were all going to die. There was nothing for it. It had become clear
to Timha that Hy Pezho's talents had not only been greater than anyone had
imagined, but they were greater than any of them could comprehend. And as
a result, everyone here was going to die. Bel Zheret didn't make idle threats.
They were Mab's personal secret police, loyal as hounds. The ultimatum had
come from Mab herself.

There was no possible way that the Project would be finished in the time
remaining to them. Even if Timha had discovered the innermost secrets of
the universe in Beozho's Commentaries, there wasn't enough time to translate
that into a working weapon.

Master Valmin, who'd been sleeping in his chair, sat up with a start.
"How goes it, journeyer?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

"The Commentaries are still as opaque and meaningless as ever," said
Timha, without looking up.

Valmin leaned back in his chair. "I discovered at university that, in a
pinch, I could get high marks in my history classes by writing term papers
about that book."

Timha looked at him. "Really?"

"Oh yes," said Valmin with a rueful smile. "None of the professors
wanted to admit that they didn't understand the thing, so they never argued
with anything that I said."

Timha laughed, weakly. Valmin was looking off into the distance.

After a few minutes' silence, Valmin rose from his chair and stretched
slowly. He strode to Timha's side and patted the younger man on the
shoulder.

"All will be well, journeyer. All will be well."

But all would not be well. And they both knew it.

Timha waited a short while, pretending to examine a book by an Annwni
lunatic named Prae Benesile. Benesile's tortured writing made the Commentaries seem downright lucid by comparison. None of the thaumaturges here
in the Secret City had ever even heard of Benesile, but his books were referenced more than once in the marginalia of Hy Pezho's plans for the Einswrath. But if Beozho's work was tangential at best, Prae Benesile's were
beyond unconnected. This particular text, for instance, was entitled Thaumatical History of the Chthonic Religion.

Pointless. Folly.

"I'm going to go study in my room for a while," he said.

Valmin didn't even look up, just grunted and waved. Timha carefully
gathered a very specific set of documents, along with a few innocent books
and scrolls, and left the room, breathing hard.

Timha took the books and papers back to his room and dumped them on
the table. He would look at them in the morning.

But his desperation would not let him rest. He picked up a book-it just
so happened to be the Prae Benesile book again-and opened it at random.
The first line completed a sentence from the previous page: "bound like the
Chthonic gods at Prythme." Timha sat and stared at that line, which meant
nothing to him, until he heard a knock on the door.

It was Master Valmin. 'Journeyer, I'm afraid I've just received some terrible news. It's your mother. She's passed away."

Timha broke down crying. But not for his mother. Not much, anyway.

The next morning, Timha's bag was packed and he stood on the threshold of
his bedroom, looking back into it. The wooden doll his sister had carved him
for his tenth birthday he left on the table by his bed, along with the antique
clock his mother had given him as his graduation present from university.

He picked up the clock and turned it upside down. The inscription read,
"For Timha, who will do astonishing things." Indeed. He put the clock down
gently and began to cry again.

He left the palace and strode down the bone-white stairs toward the lock
landing. With every lonely step, he looked out across the vast city with its
silent spires and vacant shadows, thinking that within those long-empty
windows something was watching him. Something old and hungry, with
teeth the same color as the stones.

The two guards at the lock landing were Elev and Phyto, neither of
whom Timha knew well. Neither was notorious for being especially strict,
but that was only a relative comfort; these were Mab's palace guards, the
cream of the crop. They were not fools.

Elev took Timha's travel documents, signed by Master Valmin, and
studied them carefully.

"Sorry 'bout your mother," he muttered, handing the papers back.

"Surprised they're letting you go for the funeral, to be honest," said Elev.
"What with them canceling all leave and everything."

"Well, Master Valmin pulled some strings for me," said Timha. "One of
the perks of being a trusted servant, I suppose."

"Must be nice," said Elev.

Phyto reached out for Timha's bag. He opened it and pulled out each
article of clothing, waving a tiny wand across each piece. The purpose of the
wand was to dispel glamours, to ensure that Timha wasn't attempting to
smuggle anything out of the city.

Phyto replaced the contents of the bag neatly and refastened its latches,
then turned the wand on Timha himself. He started at Timha's feet, feeling
first with his hands, then following with the wand. Up Timha's body he
went, paying careful attention to the belt buckle and the brooch that fastened
Timha's journeyer robe. As Phyto moved the wand above Timha's neck,
Timha held out his hand.

"Please," he said, "not the hair." His eyes pleaded with Phyto to let it
pass.

"Bald on top, are you?" smiled Phyto.

"Yes," answered Timha, "and glamoured hair this believable costs a fortune in the city. I'd hate to lose it all just for a security check."

Phyto thought this over.

"Sorry," he said, and passed the wand over Timha's scalp. Timha's beautiful, thick hair vanished, leaving the fine wisps that were his natural complement. He sighed in relief, he'd considered hiding the documents he'd
stolen up there.

"Ah, I can see why you went with the glamour," said Elev.

"Thanks," sneered Timha. "Can I go please? I don't want to miss my connection on the other side of the lock, and it's almost highsun."

"Go on," said Elev, looking a bit regretful.

Timha knelt down to tie the bootlace he'd deliberately left slightly loose.
It had taken only the slightest touch of Motion to pull it entirely undone. He
looked up as he tied. Phyto and Elev had begun quibbling about whose shift
ended at highsun. Still watching them, Timha reached back and grabbed at
the loop of cord he'd left on the ground. It was glamoured invisible, so he'd
had to drop it a few paces back from Phyto and his wand.

Wrapping the cord around his wrist, Timha tugged on it, and the sheaf of invisible documents it was tied to followed along, floating easily on a
pillow of pure Motion, the same spell Timha's father had used as a bargemaster on the Stripping Sea. Timha nodded to Phyto and Elev and passed
through the gate, leading his potential death by treason along behind him
like a puppy.