“Am I not your mind’s child?” I pressed his bony hand to my forehead and my heart.
His other hand, palsied like that of a man fifty years his senior, caressed my hair. “Never dreamt you so real as this before.”
“I’m no dream. I’ll save—”
Kajetan yanked me away from him. “You’ve work to do, damoselle.” Papa turned away without protest as they fixed me to Kajetan’s pillar. Perhaps it was better he thought me a dream. I memorized his skeletal form and leashed my swelling rage.
“You
what
?” Dante’s scornful question rang out, an offense against the pregnant night. “You’ve never once worked a successful summoning. Would you infuse the entirety of his blood directly into your hand, this wretch’s
carcass
would summon a revenant sooner than you.”
“Nonetheless, I shall serve as principal practitioner for the second rite,” said Roussel. “You’ve taught me well, mage. The prefect shall serve as mediator. That should give you adequate time to translate the book. Your transcriptions of the second and third rites seem quite lean.”
Dante had assumed he’d introduced enough flaws in the other mages’ spellwork that he would always serve as principal practitioner. Something was wrong. “So where is the book?”
“I’ve deposited the personal attractors for our revenant in the vault as you specified. The index requires that the nireals be positioned with them for the second rite and removed to the third circle
after
the summoning. The adepts are busily preparing the royal lady, so you must see to the nireals yourself. It’s just as well, as you’re so meticulous about such things. When you’ve done, take your place as guide, and I’ll give you the book.”
“I did not become traitor and apostate to do adepts’ chores,” Dante spat. “You’ve not ever worked—”
“If you note the summoning slipping out of my control, Master, halt the work and we’ll shift positions.”
The aether link between us rumbled.
I peered into the night beyond the ring of pillars. The first circle, where Portier lay, remained dark and silent, save for the floating threads and trickling water. Ivory lights flickered from the third circle. It appeared at first as if sylphs danced around the azinheira. But the dark shapes were just the tree’s trailing lower branches shifting in the wind. I’d often played or read in the cool green bower formed by an azinheira’s branches. That’s where the adepts were
preparing
Eugenie to create a child with Soren—not for Antonia, but to bridge the gap between life and death. A supremely unnatural being whose conception would upend the laws of nature.
Dante retrieved the five silver spheres from a box outside the pillar circle. He fumbled with them, dropped several, as the clawed fingers of his right hand could not grasp more than one. Growling, he propped his staff on the pillar and gathered the silver spheres in his arms.
Wait!
Dread and warning burst from me. But he had already swept across the circle, mounted the steps in two strides, and descended into the space below the trapdoor. A flash of brilliant yellow seared the night from the opening in the platform, accompanied by a short, sharp bark of surprise. Only when the dark form emerged from the vault did I breathe again.
The bronze door crashed shut. A bolt clattered. “There you are, you arrogant devil,” he shouted through the grate. “Never saw sweeter than you locked in a pit. In the
dark
.”
The knot in my gut exploded fire into chest and limbs, turning bone to porridge. The dark-robed figure was not Dante, but Jacard.
“Did you not think we’d wonder why the spellwork you granted us never worked as your own did? Did you not think we’d notice that the prisoner in the Spindle was useless after your visit? And did you think to lure a Mondragon witch to your hermit’s bed by lying about her blood?”
“Enough, adept!” said the Aspirant. “Fetch the shield plate for this grate. And make sure your master’s staff is well outside the circle.”
Vermillion lightning burst through the grate, accompanied by a shattering resonance that shivered stone and sky. A concussion of rage . . . of pain . . . of profound dismay . . . ripped through the aether and into my skull.
I blinked and squinted, the painful red glare subsiding only slowly.
Dante!
“He’s not my master. Not anymore.”
Roussel mounted the steps and crouched over the grate in the trap. “Hear me, Master Dante, and be very clear,” he said. “I’ve no desire to kill you. One does not destroy a resource of your considerable value. But I cannot brook intentionally flawed spellwork today, and I’ve a more efficient linguist at hand to translate my book. Alas, we’ve no sorcerer’s hole at Voilline, so I’ve left you a Gautier family heirloom called a contrabalance, intended to occupy the talents of a captive mage when no other containment is at hand. With an application of your power you can shield yourself from its effects. But ignore its eruptions at your peril; I allowed Jacard to select the particular torment it will apply. You are a dreadful lash-tongue with your inferiors, and he is a vengeful creature. Now, excuse me. I’ve business.”
As the Aspirant descended the steps, the lightning flashed again.
“Ah, Portier,” said a soft voice behind me, “I believed you had exacted the world’s most astonishing deceit, convincing me you had embraced your humble calling. But Dante a
king’s
man? Nothing shall ever surprise me again.”
I had forgotten Kajetan, who stood behind me, shielding his eyes as he watched the scene play out.
Friend, tell me you’re all right. What do I do?
Another scalding flash. I looked away, but still the red glare obscured my sight.
Jacard hurried up the steps, carrying a flat square of steel. He propped the metal sheet on its edge. “Magic is all about seeing, you told me.
Uncover the windows, weevil. Get out of my light, weevil. Can you not make the simplest fire spell? You are blind, groveler . . . insect . . . weevil.
Well, who is the weevil now? Enjoy the light I’ve made for you.”
He let the sheet fall. Yet another flash of searing orange-red was shut off with its dull clank.
All I could think was of one friend drowning in the dark, the other in that flaying fire. I called Dante again.
We continue
, he said
. Just give me time. I’ve lost Portier. . . .
Confused, desperate, riven with pain.
The Aspirant joined Kajetan and me. “You really must leash your kinsman, Prefect. Teach him respect, at least until his talents measure up to those of his foes. If he fails us tonight, you and he will both join Dante in the oubliette.”
“My nephew alerted you to the mage, Aspirant. He deserves the chance to prove himself.”
“That, and Antonia’s vicious little end play that required this morning’s northward chase, give him this opportunity. With Dante’s loyalties compromised, I needed the girl more than I needed a better guide. And so . . .”
Roussel dropped the
Book of Greater Rites
in my lap. He crouched beside me, and without ceremony produced a knife, stabbed it into my right index finger, and touched my stinging, bloody finger to the open page. “Now speak the key. The consequences of your misbehavior will be applied to your father. Do not imagine he is beyond pain.”
“Andragossa
.
”
The letters shifted and twisted into readable text.
Grunting in satisfaction, he pointed at the middle of the page. “When I signal, read from this point through the mark of the skull.”
He did not wait for a response. “Jacard, prepare.”
The night settled around us as Roussel and Jacard took their positions.
You’re to translate the book?
“Of cou—” For a moment I’d thought it was Kajetan.
Yes. This is my fault. Stupid
. . .
I had offered the kindly physician my arm, allowing him to pull out the fibers, giving him free taking of my blood. Naive. Thick-headed. My blood had proved Dante false.
We’re all fools. But now you must tell me what they do, every gesture, every pause. I’m holding Portier, for the moment, but to accomplish any other work, I
have
to
see
. The words first. And quickly.
Dante’s impatient prodding taught me right away that I didn’t have to comprehend in order to show him the page. I skimmed through the words to the mark of the skull.
Now everyone’s positions
. . .
I described Jacard beside my father and Kajetan looming over me. Roussel had returned to the principal’s pillar, where Dante’s fading staff yet cast a faint light. The physician pulled out a small brass tube, a syringe like those used to suck putrefaction from wounds. Yanking up his sleeve, he plunged the sharp end into his arm. But instead of drawing out the ivory plunger, he depressed it.
My curiosity must have intruded on my description.
Your father’s blood. The Aspirant told me he’d perfected the infuser, allowing him to deliver the blood, cleansed of imperfections that might sicken him, directly into his veins. I didn’t believe him.
Dante’s colossal self-reproach was a reflection of my own.
The syringe clattered to the stone. Roussel raised a hand. “Begin!”
I read. “ ‘Within the hour of rending, tighten the lens, sealing with the hues of royal might, dual circles, one and then the other.’”
My reading paused, but my narrative continued, describing how Roussel waved his hand twice in a circle, and gold-tipped flames of purple and indigo blazed from the tops of the pillars.
But he’s not satisfied
, I said.
He’s halted my reading and tries the gesture again.
He’s done it wrong.
A fierce approval.
It should be purple on the pillar circle. Indigo on the—
Mountaintops
, I said. Flames of indigo and gold blazed on the Ring Wall. All the world beyond that dual ring faded into insignificance.
I read on. “ ‘Particulae settled in triune power . . . the embodiment of undeath holding the way. . . .’”
I could not say what Dante did as I read. Unlike the rite of the First Circle, the three sorcerers faltered frequently. Never did any of them speak beyond the instruction of the book, but Roussel’s hand extended my pauses, giving me ample time to describe what Dante could not see or feel. Yet always we moved forward again.
“‘. . . mediator conjoins the physical attractors for the one to be summoned with bulk matter to shape the physical manifestation.’ ”
Another halt while Kajetan repeated some working with incense, earth, and water.
Dante’s disruptions did not come without a price, for we’d not even finished the first page when he began to tire.
Repeat
, he would say, or
Again
.
Eastward or toward the center? Which sorcerer?
Or,
Gods, I’m losing him . . .
And his frantic grief told me he had slipped control of the spell that maintained Portier’s life.
Slower . . . read slower.
He had to split his attention and his power between the rite, sustaining Portier, and defending himself against the Gautier device.
The assaults of the contrabalance came with the regularity of a cannonade. He would withdraw momentarily, then growl,
Go on
. The pain and visceral fear borne on the words shook me. The very fact that I could perceive it told me how harried he was. But he refused to acknowledge my concern, and we continued.
Eventually, as the rite moved on to the second page, Dante stopped speaking at all. I sensed when he could not listen and would dawdle until Kajetan kicked me. The magic surged unimpeded. The night felt swollen. Huge.
Of a sudden a great wind howled across the tableland, as if the windows of the world had been opened, sucking the air through the constricted enclosure of the two great rings. Colored lightnings split the sky above, and the earth below us shook.
“‘. . . and with the dissolution of the sacrifice, so is the exchange accomplished and the passage readied.’”
The final words remained meaningless until I looked up to describe the subsequent occurrences for Dante. That’s when I noticed Jacard watching, waiting for me to look at him. And then he smiled and slammed a knife blade into my father’s chest.
“Papa!” My scream should have ripped out Jacard’s heart, flattened Mont Voilline, toppled the pillar beside me, or at least torn out the bolt that bound me to it. Anger and hatred erupted from the molten pool waiting in my gut. Fire seared my lungs, scorched my limbs, and shriveled my heart. I wrenched at the chain and beat my bleeding fists on the pillar, ready to break the one and splinter the other.
But a quiet, calm, desperate voice interrupted my fit:
Gods, I thought you would never take hold of it! Yield me this power, Anne Sophia Madeleine. Grant me the fruit of your anger. We can only do this together . . . as I told you . . . I’ve an answer half wrought, but we’ve a way to go as yet, and I’ve nothing left.
Take it! Kill them all! Shatter this mountain and end it.