A surfeit of wizards 8

 

Chapter 8

 

I had not forgotten Harmon’s murder; do not think so for an instant. But as it seemed to have been over the desire for a woman tied to demonology, it seemed sensible to treat it merely as a side issue to the main problem. And the main problem was, and always had been, Fishface and his ilk.

We chatted in the evening and I burst out in irritation, “I don’t understand why we have to have the priest and priestess of Frotterand and Frottelina at the conference about the school. It’s only the local aspects of Arcana, Agapa, and Silvana, after all, because something as mighty as the sun ‘must’ be male.  And I’m uncomfortable about heavenly bodies being gods.”

“Of course they aren’t, dear one,” said Arcana’s voice, speaking through my staff. “The sun is a burning ball of gas further away than you could be comfortable knowing, and the moon is a dead planet orbiting the Earth.”

“But the false moon…” I said.

“THAT isn’t a moon, it is a construct, a crystal sphere made by the High Fae to escape the world they destroyed, and it interferes with the flow of magic. You must have noted that it does not change position. It orbits at the same speed as the earth spins to be forever over the Elven city.”

“Oh!” I said. “Is that how it works? How fascinating.  But it’s not very apparent in the sky, I think only wizards and astronomers are aware of it as being a moon, of sorts.”

“Well, yes, but it has confused you into over-thinking my portfolio. The workings of the sun, and the other suns, which are the stars, but too far away for you to see them as such, are under the Portfolio of the Great Commissioner, and it’s none of your business, and not much of mine,” said Arcana. “You worry about this world and let Him worry about the rest. As to why the priestly representatives of the local aspects of my siblings and I should be present, it’s a matter of politics.”

“But it’s insulting to you!” I burst out. “You are married to Emaxtiphrael, and… and it’s all wrong!”

“Dear one, mortals try to second-guess the powers that aid them and most of the time, they get it wrong.  I speak to my special ones, as does Emax, but the power of worship helps sustain us, and we accept the fallacies. In Agarak they worship Amenrey, their sun-god, and Wennenefer, god of the underworld and magic, so combining me with aspects of Emax.  Did you think that because I can come into the dreams of my followers that I bother to set all of them straight?”

“Well, yes,” I said.

“I don’t have the time or the inclination,” said Arcana. “It suffices, and we collect the souls from the place of waiting in whatever aspect they wish to see. It is easier for most people to have a very humanised view of a royal couple of gods than the less comfortable view of me and of Agapa, who is my sister and my brother, and we can merge; and with the added aspects of Silvana. I think most mortals would find it too confusing and messy.”

I have to admit, I find it hard enough to get my head round.

“Oh, Arcana, I do love you,” said Florisin, yearningly.

“Courage, dear one, there is still work for you, guiding Castamir and Chessina,” said Arcana. “I love you too.”

And then she was gone.

We were all much moved.

 

oOoOo

 

We set out early for the old temple to retrieve the chest.

“Silvana should reclaim this place,” said Florisin.

“For want of a druid or druidess, isn’t going to happen,” said Ceslin. “I asked.”

“This is ridiculous,” said Chessina. “Arcana has contact with Silvana, she can ask for a druid or druidess from her worshippers. She knows what is needful; I am sure one will be sent. You can build a house for her, Ceslin.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Ceslin.

I did not snigger. I knew what was going on behind the wild look in Ceslin’s eyes; it was a look I’d worn myself a lot when Chessina first took over my life.

 

We went down into the cellar, and left Chessina at the top on guard. There was no need for her to have to go through this again. I hoped Ceslin would not be too upset.

As it happened it was Florisin who bolted back up the ladder and puked up his breakfast on the ground.

We followed, with the chest, to find Chessina, ministering to him.

“I read Abyssal,” he was saying. “It brought a lot of things back, and I was sixteen again, facing my first demon.  Which of course was the same as Shareen… I don’t suppose you remember being Shareen.”

“I don’t, but I remember some of the terror of waking up in the Abyss,” said Chessina. “What was written down there is disgusting, but the demon was insane with confinement.”

“I’m not about to feel sorry for a ruddy demon,” said Florisin.

“Castamir was sorry for me,” said Chessina. “If he hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have a soul.”

“You never were truly a demon, and he sensed that, I’m sure,” said Florisin.

“I don’t know if I did or not,” I said. “But she was so frightened and hurt.”

“Demons fear, but their fear is always mixed with anger,” said Florisin. “And they look for someone to intimidate, to pass on the fear.”

“Chessina never even tried.”

“It never crossed my mind,” said Chessina.

“Well, Arcana took care of you both,” said Florisin, gruffly. “I am sorry; I let the memories get away from me.”

“Anyone who reads Abyssal hates that room,” I said. “I just decided not to look at the walls. I should have warned you.”

“I’m going down to check if there are any clues to help you, and then we are going to fill that damned cellar in,” said Florisin.

He went down the ladder alone; a brave man.

He emerged in about five minutes.

“Nothing but the insane scrawls of a crazed demon,” he said.

“Thank you,” said Chessina, fervently.

We turned stone to sand with a transmutation spell, and the writings were forever broken into grains with no more meaning than the odd random scratch on any grain of sand. The walls slumped in and the whole cellar fell in on itself, making a hole in the forest floor.

“Summon silt from the river bed to fill it,” said Florisin to me. “The staff can do that.”

I didn’t argue. Wet silt would drain and rearrange the sand still further.

It rained silt in a specific region for about an hour.

When I finished, it was to discover that Chessina had tampered with the snack of sandwiches we had brought, and added tea and scones, and there was a merry camp fire and feather-filled cushions to sit on around it.

Chessina was a great believer in home comforts.

And she had even managed to pull off a dome of warming over the place. I suspected Arcana had cheated. She is very fond of Chessina.

 

oOoOo

 

We took the chest back to the house to examine, so we could do so in a protective circle of runes. Wizards are… Wizards exercise constant vigilance.

Last time we had been more interested in what was in the chest, not the chest itself. Now I opened it to observe the lining.

The lining was a lightweight leather, pale in colour.

I paled. I suddenly realised what Agravar had done, and what he had used. And I suspected that he had started with Shareen still alive to drive her into the mirror to escape agony.

I managed not to be sick.  It helped that it was some hours since we had eaten.

Carefully, I unpinned it, my skin crawling at the feel of it. But it seemed wrong, somehow, to just cut it out.

“Castamir….” Chessina’s voice was a thin thread. “Is… was that…?”

“I’m afraid so,” I said, grimly.

“I have plans for Agravar when we kill Fishface,” said Chessina. She reached forward to touch it, to my cry of alarm.  She nodded. “There’s still a connection,” she said. “Castamir, I want to keep this; it may prove necessary for personal protection with a material component which is personal.”

I wasn’t about to deny that. Nobody in their right mind was barbaric enough to do such a thing just to use it, but as it existed….

Under the… lining… was another layer of lining. A blue crystal lining. The colour of the stone in the amulet I had stolen from Fishface.

A stone Dragovar had been unable to identify.

What had Arcana said?  The less moon is a crystal sphere in which the High Fae escaped…

“It’s from the false moon,” I said, intelligently.

The chime was enthusiastic.

“But if it interferes with magic, how can it be a storage for that lightning effect?” asked Chessina.

“I don’t know,” I said, investigating. “But there appear to be two layers, and I wager the crystal structure runs one way in one, and the other way in the other.”

I got chimed at.

“So, if we lined it up the same way, over a runic array for a spell, and put power into it, would it multiply it?” asked Chessina.

She looked pleased at her own chime.

“It’s odd,” I said. “Arcana, dearest, you don’t normally tell people if they are on the right track with experimentation.”

The orb flared.

“I don’t have time to mess about with this,” said Arcana. “Feel free to use the crystal here, and start crafting amulets but think about what to use them for and do mess around with the precise orientation of the crystal… oh, Emax says I may not say any more about that, but you know what to do, and you know when defensive is better than offensive.”

“The boy at the school,” said Chessina. She shut her eyes, and managed to reproduce the boy’s voice, almost intonation for intonation. “‘Behold! The Towermaster and the Beloved, who will throw down the false gods and rob the abyssal thief of the moonstone soulstealer!’”

“And the clue was right there,” I said. “The moonstone soulstealer.”

“I suspect Agravar used a crystal focus for that powerful soul-shattering spell,” said Chessina. “One use, and made by Fishface, in crude imitation of the Fae work on his amulet, at a guess.”

She got a chime.

All right, then. All working present and marked as we went.

“You youngsters move in very different levels of destiny to those I’m used to,” said Florisin.

“Interesting times,” I quoted him back to himself.

He laughed, and play-cuffed me around the back of the head.

“Well, we might as well get back to the city,” I said. “And I’ll take the trunk and its linings to store safely in the tower. And then, if we may, we would like to read Pondichook’s journals.”

“I’ll take your little lass to be getting on with that,” said Florisin. “I’m no seer, but I wager you may be a little held up.”

Wonderful.

 

oOoOo

 

I dropped Chessina and Florisin off at his tower, a moderate and modest spire on the city’s edge, with views over the surrounding countryside, and the upper part of one side encased in glass as a greenhouse. I was a trifle smug that it was made out of panes some two feet square, where the Tower was talking about growing wide panes broken up decoratively, only to make sure nobody tried to walk or fly through them.

Well, that was the Tower for you,

I returned to our town house, and nipped through the gate.

I was met by Harmana.

“Master, Rosie, Matille’s daughter, wants to talk to you,” she said. “She said it wasn’t urgent, so I didn’t send a message,”

“Thanks, Harmana,” I said. “I need to store this in a safe place.”

“Oh, would you like me to take it for you, Master?” she asked.

“It’s too heavy for you, my child,” I said. “I won’t be long. Would Roise prefer to come here, or would she prefer me to go to her, do you think? Matille’s family is special to me, they virtually fostered me when I was orphaned, and newly apprenticed, and though some of their children are a bit distant, I never lost touch with Roff, who is also my verderer, and Rosie, who used to follow me around as a child. Both of them have some magic, Rosie being a Potstirrer like her mother, and Roff having some druidic magic.”

“Oh, that explains a lot. I like Matille a lot, she’s been teaching me some herb lore and cooking and simple-making,” said Harmana. “She said you would be happy for me to learn?”

“Yes, it’s very good of her. Sorry to abandon you, my dear.”

“Oh, I recognise that you have duties; I know all about duty,” said Harmana.

I sighed, and enfolded her in an embrace. Poor child, of course she knew about duty, having been a royal princess, her life had been very little else.

“I feel bad that it interferes with us being a family,” I said.

We had been walking through the Tower, and I stowed the chest in my workroom, as I would need it there. I warded it heavily; I did not want Harmana getting curious and finding human skin. Or messing about with moonstone. I wasn’t too sure what it could do.

“You can read about the properties of crystals used for magical storage and write me a brief essay on them, if you have finished all that I left you,” I said. She would have done; I had not loaded her down with work. “But if you want to take advantage of a pleasant winter afternoon, for goodness’ sake, go and play first.”

She grinned shyly at me.

“Some of us were seeing if the ice was bearing on the pond, and it wasn’t, so we had to rush Lele, Frottor’s daughter to Matille when she went through.”

“By the gods! She was lucky,” I said.

“I gave Matille a headache because I used a pull spell on her,” said Harmana. “Only, I sort of half made it up as I went along.”

“It worked,” I said. “A lot of magic is about intent, but some more complex spells can become harmful if cast inexpertly. As long as your intent was to pull your friend, you acted on her whole body. It could be used on hair, which would be very painful. But useful for bullies.”

She beamed at me.

“I’ll remember that,” she said.

 

I stepped down to Matille’s house.

Rosie greeted me cheerfully. It’s one reason I like the family; they remember me as Orgo, before I chose my name. Funnily enough, few people do; it seems to fade in the memory. I suspect Arcana of having a hand in protecting her wizards… yes, there went the chime.

“What can I do for you, Rosie?” I asked.

“Well, it’s about me having some magic, Cas… Towermaster,” she said.

“You, of all people, my little sister, get to call me Castamir,” I said. “Did you feel you needed more training?”

“I don’t think I have more magic than can be trained by my mother, but I would like, one day, to have a nice husband as good as my father is to my mother, and children.”

“And that’s a problem?”

“The boys in the village are either nervous of magic, or want me to brew potions for them to make them larger, or love potions. And I won’t do it, and I want a husband with enough magic not to think me a freak who should either stop my work, or should make stupid things just for him. I want a man who will respect my skill, and yet not disrespect me that it is but small compared to a real wizard. And I wondered if you would let me be a maid to Chessina, to increase her consequence, so I get to meet more people.”

I blinked.

I took her problem seriously; wizards who marry tend to either marry an apprentice of theirs, another wizard, or women who have no magic at all, without being scared by it.  It’s usually that way round; most female wizards still like to be the junior partner. Though I had heard of Clotilinna of Lagensburg, in the Archduchy of Osternlonde, who liked partners she could dominate. Apparently, some men like women like that, but I prefer a true partnership. And Chessina’s games about me being what she calls ‘Impressive.’

I shoved that thought to the back of my mind.

“I don’t object, on principle,” I said. “Can you pack and be ready to go in half an hour? If not, it’ll be a while.”

“I’ll be at the Tower in twenty minutes,” she said. “I already discussed it with my parents.”

So, I had a companion to go through the gate back to Adalsburg  and on the rug of travel to Florisin’s tower.  And Rosie, bless her, took it all in her stride.