“So that’s what convinced Duplais that Dante was past saving,” I said. “The crowning blow, delivered
after
he arrived.”
“That, and what was done to your mother. He’d seen her, too. I don’t think anything else would have made him give up his faith in the god-blasted sorcerer.”
An inerrant perception of righteousness. I carried the book to the game table, burying wonder deep inside me. If I only believed in saints and angels, Ilario might have converted me to the Cult of the Reborn right then.
The bells were ringing another quarter hour gone. I’d no time left to read the whole book, but I could not yield these treasures without a look. “I need a clean, sharp knife and your steady hand,” I said, unwrapping the kerchief bundle.
“
Cut
you?” he said, when I stuck out my finger and told him what to do. “Have
you
gone mad now, alongside the rest of us?”
“This is a page from a spellbook. I’ve got to read it, and this is the only way.” The thought of cutting my own flesh revolted me.
“But I can’t—”
“Please, lord, just do as I ask.”
“Santa Claire, protect all queens, fools, lunatics, and madwomen.”
I heartily concurred with his prayer as I touched my bleeding finger not to the
Book of Greater Rites
, which I had no time to read, but to its missing page—Lady Cecile’s fragment. The key to unravel it had been with me all this time. Mage Orviene’s loose tongue had let slip the essential question:
M vitet or G vitet?
Mondragon blood or Gautier blood to unlock the encryption? I already knew it was Mondragon. As I knew the key.
“Andragossa.”
The mindstorm surged, this time in raucous energies that battered my tired skull. But as Ilario hissed over my shoulder, the letters and symbols labeling the three diagrams shifted and rearranged themselves into a puzzle worthy of Montclaire. I could not deny my excitement.
Atop all sat a compass rose, indicating the top of the diagrams as east. Each circled triangle bore a prominent title that seemed to signify sequence as well as purpose. The leftmost,
Opening
; the center,
Passage
; the rightmost,
Inversion
. Dante had described this as a map designating positions of the practitioners, objects, and activities involved in the spellwork. He said he intended to act as
principal
, so it was easy to interpret the labels
principal
,
mediator
, and
guide
that appeared at the vertices of each triangle. These would be the sorcerers.
Each side of each triangle displayed one or more symbols. The first diagram showed a plumed bird, a set of three waved lines, and three interlinked ovals; the second, a skull, a cluster of three tight spirals next to an empty vessel, and two concentric rings. Positioned on the third were a tree, a similar vessel but with a knot inside it, and what appeared to be an oval mirror reflecting a three-lobed knot.
“I’ve learned these are patterns for spellwork,” I said. “They describe a magical rite to rend the Veil, linking all these preparations the conspirators have made to the chaos Duplais fears. If we can interpret this, perhaps we’ll know what we face and how to counter it. I know these three—the alchemical symbols for water, air, and earth.” I pointed to the waved lines, the three spirals, and the vessel. “And I was told that in spellwork, the skull represents mortality.”
“If we’re to interpret these as parallel ideas, then not simply mortality,” said Ilario, touching the two symbols that corresponded to the skull, “but
death
. Because the bird is a phoenix, as we use in cult texts to represent the
undeath
of the Reborn, and the tree is the Temple representation of the Creator’s gift.
Life
.”
“The others, though . . .” I stared at the links, the concentric circles, and the reflecting mirror, willing them to reveal their meaning. “The things my sister brought to spellwork told a story. And I think Dante’s magic works that way, as well. So what story do these tell?
Opening
, as in opening the rent in the Veil, must be created by
water
and
undeath
, and these links . . .”
Symbols appeared in the center of each triangle. Inside the first appeared the same symbol of two concentric rings that appeared beside the second diagram. A dotted line connected the two symbols, as if the first fed the second. I considered the phoenix and the Cult of the Reborn, and recalled the earth and water set in the sorcerer’s ring and scattered across the Rotunda during Dante’s deadraising. In the night just past, Dante had arranged water and stone in his circle of magic, along with Duplais’ journal. And chains—links.
They’re going to make me kill the self-righteous little prick.
“This first diagram must be about Duplais. If they believe he is a Saint Reborn, it’s about killing him, chaining him to the mountain, as in his dream. The water? I don’t know. But Duplais’ death—or the undeath of a Saint Reborn—must rend the Veil, allowing the
passage
shown in the second diagram. Perhaps the symbol in the center of each triangle is the result, because each diagram is linked to the next.” In the center of the second diagram, two curved arrows were drawn head to tail.
Passage
in both directions. And centering the third, what I first thought to be an inkblot might actually represent a hole . . . a void . . . an emptiness. . . .
“I’m thinking the concentric circles could be the lens,” said Ilario, crouching beside me. “Think of a spyglass collapsed. Portier told me that at the Exposition, Dante made the Rotunda into a lens, a larger version of Gaetana’s spyglass, through which one could see past the Veil. He said that those dreadful lights one sees floating inside the dome leak through the lens, like sun glints through an imperfect window.”
Eager, I took up his chain of reasoning. “Assuming they’ve opened the way, then in this second diagram the principal practitioner would use the lens to facilitate a passage between the realms, an
exchange
symbolized by the opposing arrows. We know they plan to use necromancy, and so we raise the revenant . . .”
“But someone would have to die to make it happen.” He tapped the skull. “And then what?”
The second dotted line led from the symbol for air into the third diagram, where it looped about the vessel, the alchemical symbol of earth.
All the bits and pieces I’d seen and heard fell into place. In the third diagram appeared the mirror—the nireal, the soul mirror that I believed brought vivid life to a revenant. I tapped the three spirals. “Air, the revenant spirit, given passage from beyond the Veil and provided a body made of earth”—I touched the empty vessel—“and instilled with a soul.” I touched the mirror. “And here is the tree of life.” They would be using
fundamental things
, Dante had said.
Powerful evocations of life and death
. “Soren, the ghost king, the revenant, would be brought here, where the second vessel waits beside the tree of life.”
“Eugenie.” We spoke together.
I was more and more appalled as I recalled Eugenie’s dreams, her flushed cheeks, her
need
. “They’ve been preparing her for what’s going to happen there at Voilline. Eugenie and Soren are to make a child . . .”
. . . and the result was the blot, the emptiness, a gaping hole in the cosmos.
Inversion
. Chaos.
Ilario upended the little table, sending the book to the floor and the page flying. “Burn the daemon book, and I’ll kill the cursed mage. Let’s be done with this madness.”
My own impulses clamored the same. How was I to reconcile Duplais’ beliefs and Dante’s with the drives of Ilario’s good heart and the promptings of my own god? The Lord Reason insisted we stop this today and worry about the future later. To do otherwise required proceeding on faith, which I had so long disdained.
And yet, Reason had—and still—proclaimed my father’s guilt. Intellect and logic gave me no other answer to the handwriting of the treacherous letters . . . the phrasing that so clearly echoed his own . . . the spare sentences, direct and clear and unambiguous. Lacking faith, I had betrayed him. But I had learned a different truth in the aether. My father’s voice proclaimed his innocence and I believed.
“Yes, burn the page. But we can destroy neither book nor mage,” I said, “not yet. For one, the conspirators have Portier. My father and brother, too, I believe. They’re all dead—or worse—if we move now. And I’ve concluded that the Aspirant himself is a sorcerer. Even if we remove Dante, it’s possible he can proceed on his own. Secrecy . . . deception . . . is our only advantage, the only way we can be sure we destroy their threat.”
“Then what, in the name of all saints, do we tell Philippe?” he snapped, kicking at the overturned table. “He’s not going to stand by and allow them to do this to Eugenie on Portier’s word or mine, and certainly not on yours.”
“We’ll think of something. But first I have to return the book before Dante discovers it on me. It’s already far later than I’d planned. Please, I need to go now.” I hated lying to him, but if I told him our hope lay in a half-mad sorcerer who spoke in my head, he’d likely chain me up, too.
We poked the banked fire to life, watched it consume the blood-marked page in flames of purple and green, and without further conversation, hurried through the wall panel and into the web of passages. Only when Ilario deposited me in a closet nearest my own room did he speak. “I’ll fetch you as soon as I’ve arranged an audience with Philippe,” he said. “You’ll take care as you return the book, damoselle? The mage will surely be watching.”
“He’ll not see me. I promise.”
As I turned to reinforce my lies eye to eye, the lamp illumined Ilario’s handsome face, perfectly composed and slightly foolish. Neither worry line nor whitened knuckle betrayed the man inside the fool.
Deception lingered in my mouth like sour milk. I felt dirty and weak. Corrupt.
I had just pulled open my bedchamber door when the blast of trumpets overwhelmed the soft gurgle of rain from the gargoyle spouts outside my window. A ripple shook the mindstorm, or perhaps it was my own shudder. It was difficult to tell the difference anymore. The King of Sabria had come home.
CHAPTER 37
26 OCET, MIDDAY
“
S
o you vouchsafed a return to duty, didyou, damoselle?” An annoyed Lady Patrice snagged me as I hurried into the royal apartments. “When I encouraged you to spend a few hours making yourself decent and ensuring your alertness, I had no intention of your using half a day.”
“My apologies, my lady. I’m ready to sit with Queen Eugenie as long as needed.”
The
Book of Greater Rites
was safely shelved in the royal library. My face and gown were clean. Negotiating the crowds flocking to the entry hall to witness Philippe’s arrival had taken more time than either task.
“As matters stand”—the marquesa glanced over her shoulder toward the bedchamber, where two footmen blocked the passage—“you must turn right around and return to your own room. His Majesty is on his way here, and Ducessa Antonia has instructed that you are not to be present. Indeed, she insists that you are not to intrude yourself on the king at all in this mournful time. She deems it best you remain in your chambers.”
Shock devised my retort. “How does the lady intend to enforce this rule? The king is my goodfather. He’s surely aware of my presence and is quite likely to summon me, don’t you think?” Especially as I’d asked Ilario to arrange a meeting.
Not that I was looking forward to telling my goodfather that his wife was to be mated to a dead man in a rite to throw his kingdom into madness. Convincing him to allow events to move forward without interference might get me hanged.
“An audience is highly unlikely. The king does not allow your father’s name to be spoken in his presence. And it has been learned that it was
not
His Majesty’s order to summon you to Castelle Escalon. As Sonjeur de Duplais is conveniently not present to explain his reasons for acting on a false premise, it could be surmised that you falsified the summons yourself or in concert with him.”
Or that I had arranged Duplais’ disappearance. I’d announced before witnesses that I was the last to see him. My arms prickled.
“Come, let’s ensure you’ve left no personal item here.” Patrice propelled me into a cloakroom. “Anne, do not dispute this instruction. Antonia’s antipathy for you has reached a dangerous pass.” The lady had shed her imperious manner. “No one has challenged her authority so successfully in decades. Truly, I’ve never seen her so angry and . . . frantic. I fear for her reason.”
“I’ll not hide from her.” But fear already nibbled at bravado.
The marquesa’s voice came a whisper. “Antonia claims she mentioned to you that the queen’s smelling salts seemed to have no efficacy, and that she proposed suspending their use until Mage Dante could examine them. She whispers that you seemed nervous at this prospect, and only then caused the accident that broke the vial. The mage has analyzed the residue the servants collected, and Antonia reports that they were not aromatics at all, but something unknown.”