A Shadow All of Light (20 page)

It was with surprising good grace in the meantime that Mutano submitted to my desires in service of the Sativius family, helping me to transport my apparatus across the city, into the household, and up the stair to the room with the bay window's light. Horseface Graysmock watched us arrange the pieces with undisguised disfavor. I rather hoped she would bestow some disdaining remark upon Mutano. He had no patience with females of her strain and would send her sprawling with the back of his hand did she once overstep.

The schema was disposed as thus:

I) The long table before the window was removed and the children brought forward toward the light;

II) the pair stood close together to cast a shadow behind;

III) directly posterior to them a large sheet of transparent glass was mounted, so that the shadow of the children fell on it complete;

IV) this glass was framed all around with a molding of purest copper;

V) the glass itself had been dusted over with a light coating of a silver salt that allowed the shadows to pass through

VI) to a mirror behind the silvery glass:

VII) which mirror was made of a peculiar glass tinted dark blue that had the power of absorbing images deeply, pulling them far into itself.

Sativius and Funisia gazed with apprehension upon this trifold arrangement. The father was very particular in inquiring whether Maestro Astolfo was aware of what I had projected and if he had approved. I assured him that Astolfo knew all and had contributed wise advice of optical nature. Funisia welcomed any venture that might benefit her brood.

As I instructed the twins that they must stand very still for quite a little while, they only stared mutely into my face, as if trying to read not only my intentions but any trace of doubt my mind might harbor. I murmured softly as I stood them in compliance with my design. When I was satisfied that the images of the shadows passed through the dusted glass into the mirror, I made a finger sign to Mutano where he stood at the side of the glass. He produced a piece of amber about the size of his palm, took from his belt pouch a small patch of lynx fur, and rubbed it over the amber. When he had rubbed for a short time, he touched the electrum to the copper molding of the mirror. This action he performed continuously as I observed. I stood to one side, facing away from the light, watching the shadow of the pair as it fell upon the dusted glass and seeing the image of the children as it entered the blue mirror.

This process required the better part of an hour and I tried not to allow my apprehensions to ruffle my demeanor. If the children grew restless and moved about, the silvered shadow would be blurred, the darker core more difficult to distinguish from the outer penumbra. If Mutano grew impatient, flung the lump of amber at my head, and stalked from the house, all would be ruined. If my scheme proved ineffective, if the spark from the rubbed amber did not transfer itself through the salt across the pane in sufficient force to animate the more passive shadow that was absorbed as the core of the other, I would again be a figure of ridicule to Astolfo and Mutano and must endure their humors and rude satires for a long time to come. And when again would Astolfo entrust me a commission to work upon by myself?

At last there occurred a change in the shadow in the glass. The dark core grew lighter in tint and extended its shape until it was almost identical in size with its envelope. In the blue mirror the images of the twins grew more distinct, their outlines more sharply defined. When the inner and outer shadows verged close to identity in size and density, I sharply bade the children to stand apart, to go quickly to the places I had marked on the carpet with two linen handkerchiefs.

When they did so, the shadow on the glass divided into two and at that moment, following my signal, Mutano smashed the glass with the pommel of his knife hilt. The shards dropped to the rug, clinking upon one another like counted coins, and across them and stretching beyond lay two shadows separate and individual. Mutano hurried to the blue mirror and turned its face to the wall. We could not draw from the children any more of their
vis animae
than was necessary for our task.

I was jubilant at the success of my experiment, but my joy immediately gave way to chagrin as the boy Rudens became even paler than before. His face drained of all color and he fell to the floor. I rushed to him, arriving at his side even before his mother, and put my ear to his face. His breath came but faintly and I asked for water to bathe his face and hands. He stirred a little at the touch of the water but did not open his eyes. Seeing this, Funisia gathered him up and bore him away.

Graysmock ran over to accuse me. “You have killed him! You have murdered the young master!”

“Silence your tongue,” I said. “No real harm has come to him. Go prepare a strong effusion of ginger root and give it to him when he wakens from sleep.”

She left in silent fury and Sativius knelt to Rudensia. She appeared to me much less affected by the splitting of the shadow than her brother had been, yet it was obvious that she had felt a change rush upon her. Her father peered into her eyes, then clasped her tightly to his chest. “Is it so?” he asked. “Have my children each a shadow now?”

“It is so,” I replied. “The effect of the division is less strong for Rudensia because what was taken from her was not correctly hers in the first place. For the boy, the sudden accession of his shadow overpowered him with a feeling that something long lost had been wholly returned. His was the lesser, darker umbra that Rudensia's had absorbed in their earliest hours. We have been fortunate in our day of restoration. Had it occurred later, we might have lost one or both of the twins.” I went on to explain, as Astolfo had explained to me, that if once their souls entwined, they must face the doom of either madness as their spirits melted together into one or of physical death if ever they had to be separate one from the other.

He stood, still embracing the girl in his right arm. “I do not comprehend these matters,” he said. “I am but a blunt man of business and all this spiderweb machination with shadows perplexes me.”

“That is because you are unaccustomed. Think with what bewilderment a ploughboy looks upon a ship as it weighs anchor and steers from harbor. All will seem but arrant confusion to him, with sailors darting here and yon and the masters bawling orders and the sheets tying off and the cables laid by, but to your practiced eye all the commotion is of a pattern and every action is demanded by a necessity. It is the same with shadows. One must learn the ropes.”

“I believe the fee you set was two hundred eagles,” he said. “If my son revive in sound health, as you say that he shall, I will add another fifty.”

“That is unlooked for,” I said. “
The fee is set and to be met,
as the saying goes. Only do make certain that Horseface carries out her duties in good order and all shall be well.”

“Horse—?”

“Please pardon me. I meant no offense. The term rose unbidden to my lips.”

“As it sometimes has to my thoughts.” He smiled. “Yet she is fitting in her office, however imperfect in manner. Nevertheless, she shall see that you are offered wine and cake before you depart.”

“I thank your kind courtesy, but I must hasten to other duties. Maestro Astolfo always has several affairs in hand and I seem always to lag behind the order of his requests. If you will dispatch the eagles to him by messenger, along with a letter favoring or disfavoring my labors here, as you see fit, we shall be obliged.”

“That is soon done,” he said, “and again I tender my gratitude. I shall fully commend your execution of the matter.”

With the usual bows and flourishing of my short cloak, I took leave.

*   *   *

There was to be a petite fete of celebration for the three of us, marking a success in my first unguided excursion into sciomantic venture. We hoped also to be celebrating the return of Mutano's voice, but he had so far kept silent in our company. He had, in fact, kept apart from us for long stretches. We surmised that he was exercising his throat; the voice of a man of his make, confined for a long period in the voice-box of a cat, must have suffered diminution, if not deterioration. Astolfo suggested that he might be practicing an aria supple and trillful and difficult to execute to amaze us.

The cook had told the steward to lay out our supper on a corner of the long table in the dining room, but Astolfo would not have it. The rains had returned and he desired the closeness of the kitchen, with its oven heat and lamplight glancing from the surfaces of burnished copper and polished crystal. He was punctilious upon the victuals too: turbot and cold veal, varied herbage, a roast of venison, and then an apple tart with a great wedge of cheese from my native province. Topery would include cider and beer and a bottle of wine, aged and heady.

He and I sat at the table the steward had brought in and sipped at draughts of cider whilst we waited for Mutano to appear.

As I expected, Astolfo used the time to ask sharp questions about the Sativius children and my procedure in dividing the shadows. I described in detail every stage of preparation, every step of the process, and every piece of apparatus. During my peroration, he smiled at certain passages, closed his eyes, and appeared to meditate during others. When I concluded, he pressed his fingertips together and considered silently for a space. Then: “I will say it is to your credit that you appear to have discovered, by strength of your own wit, another of the traditional methods of taking shadows.”

I tried not to show that I was a little crestfallen. “Then this method was known already?”

He blinked his gray eyes and slowly rested them upon mine. “The world was here long before you and I scuffed its soil with our boots. There were mages of great mentation who came in the centuries before, rank on rank. Much of the lore they gained has been devoured by time. If we had it in its greater bulk, we should feel ourselves as small in comparison to them as scurrying voles.”

“Hath this method I thought mine own a name?”

“
Severing
you know as the term for the thieving of a shadow surreptitiously, without its caster being aware.
Sundering
you know as when a shadow is taken by violence, raped away from the parent object.
Surrendering
we call it when a person voluntarily gives over a shadow to the purposes of another. You have discovered without the aid of instruction the process of
seduction,
wherein the shade is lured from the parent object and leaves it gradually by force of attraction to another object or under its own volition.”

“You have before now hinted that shadows might possess minds and wills independent,” I said. “I do not see how this can be.”

“Yet you might have tried another ‘experiment,' as you call it, and then come to a different turn of mind.”

“How so?”

“Your procedure is so ingenious and so complicated that I hesitate to describe this one other method. After your machinations, it will seem but puerile.”

“You think I will scoff at Astolfo?”

He smiled more genially. “You might have separated the children, placing one in a room completely dark and the other in a room with good light. Sitting in a chair opposite the one in the dark, you might have whispered,
Shadow, find your own.
They hate and fear the dark, do our umbrae, for it obscures them completely. In the dark they fall into a state nearly comatose. They flee it to swim to the light. But then other sages hold that they enter darkness as into an ocean and swim about in it, keeping to their accustomed forms by some unknown power they possess.”

“How do you know which subject to place in the dark when you lure them forth one from another?”

“In the instance of children, that one most confident in the love of its parents, or of one of them, will have the stronger shadow and it shall absorb the weaker. You yourself observed that Rudensia's mother gave her a caress habitual, without thinking. Her shade was the stronger.”

“That is a simpler and less expensive method of division,” I admitted. “Still, I believe that mine would more impress the paterfamilias.”

“I must agree,” Astolfo said. “But yours had a large element of danger. When you profused the shadow in the silvered glass with energetic spark, you were fortunate that it did not acquire enough
vis
to escape on its own and leave our child bereft.”

“That is why I told Mutano to smash the glass upon the precise instant.”

He nodded. “Yes, you had that forethought, at least.… And having spoken of him, we have summoned his presence.”

Mutano entered the kitchen with something of a swagger in his march, strode to the table, and gazed down upon the viands with hearty pleasure. He smiled upon Astolfo and me, as beamingly as if he first saw us upon returning from a wearisome journey.

“Now we are complete,” Astolfo said, “and the occasion is meet for the proposal of toasts. Falco, if you will but pour Mutano a healthy measure”—I poured the good beer into his mug—“I will begin by congratulating our younger friend upon his triumph in an enterprise of his own.”

We drank and refilled and I raised my glass in Mutano's direction. “And Mutano must be feted,” I said. “He has made it certain, without taking the man's life, that Castilio will never again despoil young maidens or steal away the paramours of others. I present also my grateful thanks for his aid at the house of Sativius.”

We drank and refilled and Mutano pointed his glass toward Astolfo and me in turn. He cleared his throat officiously, took a deep breath, and spoke in three melodious tones:

“Miaou.”

 

PART TWO

The Gathering of Shadows

 

V

Shadow of the Valley

Among the most avid and wealthiest of the collectors of rarities who apply to our establishment is a small group of the nobility who name themselves the Green Knights and Verdant Ladies. Theirs is a cult of gardeners. Upon their spacious estates they roll out smooth greenswards and carve parterres tier upon tier; they shear topiary into curious shapes, heraldic, and allegorical and obscene; they plant gaudy exotic flowers rank after rank. They vaunt themselves upon the magnificence of their grounds and comb the world to search out curiosities.