“Great Heaven,
Voilline
!” Understanding set my blood racing. Not belief that Duplais was some altruistic soul repeatedly returned to life throughout history, but the meaning of the place he’d gone to meet his fugitive friend. “This came from a history text Dante was reading, about the Gautieri and the Mondragons and the last great battle of the Blood Wars.”
The text poured from my lips: “ ‘Abandoning the broken Ring Wall, the Gautieri retreated into the Voilline Rift. . . . Backed deep against the foot of the crags where Ianne, the first Saint of the Reborn, had brought humankind the gift of fire, the valiant Gautieri mage line unleashed the fires of Creation.’”
Did Kajetan believe this cult idiocy or was it merely that his master, the Aspirant—the down-on-his-luck nobleman, the Gautier survivor—wanted to revisit the place where his ancestors had been slaughtered by the hated Mondragons?
I shook the treacherous paper. “This was a trap, and the fool Duplais suspected it before he went. This morning, he insisted I let events unfold, as that was the only way we could comprehend this grand scheme. That’s exactly what he’s done . . . full knowing. I don’t know what they’re going to do with him, but as sure as sunrise, they’ve take him to the Voilline Rift. That’s where they’re going to work their cataclysm.”
“Not the rift,” said Ilario, softly. “Portier told me about places on the earth where magic works better than others. People name them holy sites, like the field where the Creator planted the first grapevines, or cursed ones, like that damnable village of Eltevire, where stories say one human first shed the blood of another. He also told me that in one of his dreams, he was chained to a rock in punishment for a crime he could not remember.”
Ilario extended his hand into the candlelight and twitched one long finger, setting the gold phoenix ring flashing. When he raised his gaze from the ring to meet my question, his blue eyes burned as if a thousand candles had been lit within.
“He didn’t know me then—
this
me—so I didn’t mention the Cult story. And I didn’t know about the battle in the rift, but your text tells you. When Ianne the Blessed brought fire to humankind on Mont Voilline, he tore a rip in the Veil to fetch the flame from Heaven. Some say the Creator punished him for the damage by chaining him to the mountainside until he died, and that’s why he chose to return to the world again and again instead of moving on to Heaven. Some say the Souleater chained him to the rock in vengeance for giving fire to humans, so they were less frightened of him and his Fallen, and that Ianne remained there forty years until his human friends could learn how to break the devilish chains. They’ve taken Portier to the mount, Anne. God’s mercy, they’re going to kill him—”
“Thinking he won’t die,” I said. If persons and objects carried intrinsic power, as my friend of the mind had told me, what power for magic might be bound up in a being who could refuse death?
“Or perhaps that this time, he will,” said Ilario. “Killing one of the Reborn before his work is done must surely alter the universe forever.”
“Lord, we must get the Mondragon
Book of Greater Rites
from Dante. Tonight. That way, when the king arrives tomorrow night we can tell him what they plan.”
“I can arrange a meeting with Philippe. He’s the only other person that knows . . . this.” He pointed to himself and rolled his eyes. “But the damnable book . . . I’m willing, but last time I ventured into Dante’s laboratorium, I ended up most of dead, and I am no Saint Reborn.”
“I’m no saint, either,” I said, “but I know a way to get the book and decrypt it. The mage will never know it’s gone. As soon as you and Antonia return for the night watch, I’ll steal it. But then . . . you wouldn’t happen to know enough about magic to help me
interpret
the cursed thing?”
“Glory, woman, I’ve managed to fill my head with a few useful things through the years, but a scholar I am not. I still maintain Philippe’s clocks are daemon work and that mathematics beyond calculating the cost of new breeches is a language meant for the Pantokrator and his angels.”
“I’ve another friend who might be able to help me,” I said, teetering on the unlikely verge of laughter. Or hysteria. “I’ll get word to you when I can.”
He kissed Eugenie on the forehead and let his temple rest against hers for a few moments. “Stay with me, sweet Geni,” he said softly. “We’ll fight through this and find your happiness.”
Moving quickly, Ilario tweaked a piece of a gilded pilaster. The wall panel swung open. “Saints guard you, damoselle.”
“And you,” I said as the panel closed. “And all of us.” I wished I had more faith in saints and angels. The daemons I already knew.
I COULD NOT PROCEED AS Duplais had asked me. I hadn’t his faith that unfolding events would reveal the Aspirant and his plan in time for us to do anything about it. Believing that Eugenie’s poisoning and Duplais’ disappearance signaled the opening salvo in the final battle, I could wait no longer to take action. I hoped I was not too late already.
Thus at second hour of the night watch, I stood outside Dante’s apartments, body and spirit a riot of nerves.
Fetch the book. Learn what they plan.
Words were so simple.
If he’s awake, retreat and try again later.
Lianelle’s potion, as always, had opened me to the mindstorm—tonight in full frenzy. As always I listened for my friend, not intending to delay my mission, but only to feel his steady quiet, a solid anchor in the chaotic aether. But I could not sense him. All logical reasons for dismissing Duplais as my friend of the mind crumbled. What had they done to him?
The wind had come up in the middle-night hours, sweeping away the rain and mist. The waxing moon dodged scudding clouds and gleamed through the tall windows at the end of the sorcerers’ passage. I would have preferred a darker night, no matter that Lianelle’s magic had rendered me invisible. Human instincts are difficult to overcome with logic, especially when one walks the most illogical realms of sorcery.
I pressed my ear to Dante’s door. Hearing no hint of activity within, I summoned every discipline of mind and pressed the latch.
Heat bit at my fingertips and riffled up my left arm. Bearable. The mage did not fear determined visitors. The heavy door swung inward. Catching it before it struck the wall, I crossed the threshold and closed the door softly behind me.
The unsteady moonlight bathed the sitting area before the great windows and the sorcerer’s ring in the center of the room, but did not reach so far as his worktables. It was enough to tell me he wasn’t there, asleep or awake. I released my pent breath.
I’d spent my last hours in the sickroom recalling every detail of Dante’s chamber, trying to guess where he’d keep such a precious book. Well hidden, I feared, with his door so easily breached.
I would dismiss the easy places first. Barefoot, slippers stuffed into my belt, I padded over to the whitewashed bookshelves. Only a moment to survey the contents. Another to scan the volumes scattered on couch and tables.
I set aside a cold lamp and opened the lid of the schoolmaster’s stool, a better hiding place. But its cavity sat empty save for the decades’ tally of spilled ink and dropped penknives. No dust, though. Ours at Montclaire had an extra compartment.
With a frisson of anticipation, I felt around the thin molding that framed the bottom of the cavity. A gap marred its continuity, and I fiddled and pushed until a piece of the molding slid sideways. There was a similar gap on the opposite side of the cavity. I shifted the corresponding piece and with trembling fingers lifted the false bottom.
No Mondragon book. Only a motley stack of journals and unbound pages, written in an oddly skewed script. Some yellowed; some faded. Most of them hard used. They might provide fascinating reading, but the book must remain my focus.
Bitterly disappointed, I restored all and moved to the worktables. Gloomed in shadows, the laboratorium took more care. I dared not disarrange anything. Fortunately the mage seemed to keep his books separate from the clutter of his work—the sharp edges and implements that might tear fragile pages; the liquids, plants, and dirt that might soil them. I removed the lids of baskets and crates on the floor, peered under benches. A wooden case with a small latch opened to reveal five palm-sized silver spheres. So Dante wasn’t out raising the dead this night.
Such a small volume could be tucked anywhere. Fate could not be so cruel as to dictate he’d taken it with him wherever he’d gone so late.
I riffled through stacks of papers in his cupboards, shifted polished wood cases, unstacked the piled herb boxes, hating the thought of abandoning the search. But my gut was tightening. He could return at any time. Foolish to imagine I would walk straight to the book, as if the stain of Lianelle’s death might leave it incandescent.
Frustrated, I returned to the center of the room and circled slowly, hunting for some corner I had missed. The odd blue light that limned the world while I was under the influence of the potion sketched out a faint rectangular shape in the end wall opposite the windows. Another doorway. How had I failed to notice it on my earlier visits?
Amid a fusillade of nerves, I halted just inside, astonished. What would I expect to find in a mage’s bedchamber? Corpses? Spiders? Vats of blood or boiling oil? Certainly not a bare closet, an ascetic’s cell. Narrow bed. Battered clothes chest. A writing table holding ink bottles, stacked papers, a pen case. An old leather satchel resting on the floor beside it. The only oddity a bare knife blade protruding horizontally from the desktop—a wickedly dangerous position.
I was stooping to examine litter on the floor below the blade when a booming crash from the other room stood me up straight, nearly causing me to impale myself.
Get out. Get out.
Every sensible bone in my body screamed at me in warning. I crept to the doorway, hugged the wall, and peered into the great chamber.
The cloaked and hooded mage propped his staff just inside the doorway. Its support relinquished, he paused to readjust a large bundle laid across his shoulders. Hooking the wide-open door with his foot, he nudged it closed behind him. For a moment, he sagged backward, resting the shapeless burden against the oak panels. His breath grated hard enough that I could hear it from these six or eight metres distant.
The bundle’s burdensome weight was confirmed when he rolled it off his back and dropped it inside the amber ring. The muffled clank of metal shivered the wood floor. Not a corpse, then.
He dropped to his knees, yanked open the mouth of the large canvas bag, and extracted a length of heavy chain, tangled and gleaming dully in the darting moonlight. And then another length. And another. Five or six in all.
Bag emptied, the mage climbed wearily to his feet, picked a few items from his shelves, and set them around the heaped chains within the circle. I could identify only a few: a knife, a copper bowl, a small skull . . .
Needles pricked my spine.
From his cloak he pulled a flask that he emptied into the bowl, a flat tin containing chips of stone that he mounded across the circle from the bowl of water, and a flat rectangular object—a bound book of some kind, both too large and too thin to be the
Book of Greater Rites
. He laid the book atop the chains. When all was arranged, he abandoned the circle and headed straight for me.
Blood-pulse galloping, I drew back from the opening and pressed my back to the wall. He passed so close I could smell the outdoors on him—sweat-damped wool, horse, the smoke of autumn fires.
After only a few steps, he halted and swung around to peer into the dark behind him. My heart near stopped. I dared not even blink.
“Gods and daemons,” he muttered, ripping off his cloak and throwing it atop the clothes chest. “Lunatic.” A leather jerkin scudded across the floor, and the man sat heavily on the bed, not five steps from me.
Even as I dreaded it, my nose began to itch. No matter my bare feet or the thin wool gown I’d worn apurpose to be quiet, if I so much as twitched, he would hear it. And I was well within his reach.
His forearms rested on his knees. His head sagged. Whatever his thoughts as he contemplated his boots, they did nothing for his temper. He rose abruptly and left the little bedchamber, kicking a toppled basket out of his way so hard its contents—thin branches, it appeared—scattered all the way to the embedded circle.
It required my every discipline to remain still. And indeed Dante returned almost immediately with a lit taper that he jammed into a holder on the writing desk. Its light scarce spread beyond the few papers on the desk, but it showed me something unexpected. His hands, still clad in his ever-present black leather gloves, were trembling.
Did his tremors rise from fatigue, anger, or something worse? If Dante was afraid of what he was about to do, I wanted to be well away.
Let him choose sleep now. Saints, please.
He bent over the clothes chest and fumbled with his cloak. When he turned around, his hand clutched a small book. Unmistakably the one I sought.
Patience. Patience.
I could almost reach out and touch it.
He tossed the little codex on the writing table and peeled off his gloves. The sight shocked me cold. I had never seen Dante without gloves and now I knew why. His left hand was wide, with long, strong fingers. But the right was a purple-scarred ruin, constricted into a rigid claw.