A Young Man Without Magic (41 page)

He tried to sleep, but the chair was designed for reading, not sleeping, and he could not find a truly comfortable position. The light of the lamp was mildly distracting, but far more so was the knowledge of where he was, and at what risk. He was also eager to get on with the business at hand, of finding some way to save Reva. The taste of brandy lingered on his tongue, but the alcohol did little to ease his mind. He considered drinking more.

He wanted to be alert in the morning, but which would be worse for that, a sleepless night, or the lingering effects of an excess of brandy? He had never been a heavy drinker; it would probably not take much to send him to sleep. He pushed his hat back and reached for the decanter.

Just as he did, he heard a woman's quiet laugh. He looked up.

Mimmin li-Dargalleis and Lord Allutar were standing in the gallery, just outside the library door; Mimmin's head was resting on the landgrave's shoulder. It was she who had laughed, presumably at some witticism Allutar had whispered in her ear.

“My lord,” another voice said—Hollem's voice. Anrel froze for an instant, then slowly sat back in his chair, praying that none of them would glance in and recognize him. He tugged his hat back down over his face.

“I'm going to bed,” Lord Allutar said. “See to our remaining guests, would you?”

“Of course, my lord,” Hollem said. Anrel could not see him, but he imagined the servant bowing politely. “To what limits shall I extend your hospitality?”

“I would prefer to have them all safely in their own beds by dawn, and I certainly don't want to find any carriages still waiting out front when I arise, but if anyone doesn't look fit to go home, offer a bed here. There's no need to move anyone who's already asleep, either—let them stay until morning.” Anrel thought he could feel the landgrave glance into the library as he said that. “Don't feed them, though, or we'll never get rid of them.”

“Very good. And the witch?”

“She should be fine where she is, but see she has water, and food if she asks for it.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Good night, Hollem.”

“Good night, my lord, Mistress li-Dargalleis.”

Then there were footsteps, and blessed silence descended. Anrel waited several long minutes, staring at the dark inside of his own hat and becoming far better acquainted with the smell of his own sweat than he liked, before he dared move.

When at last he dared lift his hat, his hand trembled. He looked quickly out the door.

The gallery was silent and dim; obviously, several lights had been extinguished. There were no signs of life; the voices from the salon had ceased.

Anrel decided he really needed that drink. He poured himself another brandy.

That was followed by a second, and a third, and by then his hands were steady again. He set the decanter back in its place, took a final look around, sighed, then sank back and pulled the hat down once more.

At first, upon awakening, Anrel did not remember where he was. His back was stiff, and his side was sore where he had been slumped against the arm of the chair. He brushed his hat off his face before he was entirely awake, thinking it was some random bit of material that had fallen onto him as he slept.

Then he blinked at the white plaster ceiling and realized he was neither at the Boar's Head, nor back in Alzur, nor in his rented rooms in Lume. He sat up, and the previous evening's events came back to him. He snatched up his hat and clapped it back in place.

The white-haired man was still snoring gently in the other chair; the lamp on the desk had long since gone out, but more than enough sunlight was leaking in through the shutters to let Anrel see his surroundings—and to tell him that it was well past dawn, and well past when he should have headed for Lume. He got to his feet and straightened his coat.

As he did, he began reconsidering his intentions. He remembered that his plan the previous night had been to rush to Lume to see if he could use his reputation as Alvos to coax a pardon for Reva from the Grand Council, but now that he had slept on the idea, it seemed even more hopeless than he had thought it last night. The Grand Council was not in session, after all—that was why Lord Allutar was in Beynos in the first place. Yes, the three-day recess in honor of the emperor's new heir would be ending soon, but Reva was to hang tomorrow morning, and
the Grand Council would not reconvene so quickly as that. Could enough of them somehow be convinced to issue the pardon in time anyway? Not all of the delegates considered Alvos a hero, after all—roughly half of them were sorcerers or their supporters.

Even getting to Lume quickly would not be very easy; the road was probably a mix of mud and snow, and the morning coach on this route ran westward, from Lume to Beynos, rather than the reverse. He would have to walk, and that would mean arriving in Lume muddy and tired, not in the ideal condition to impress delegates.

What's more, he was right here in Lord Allutar's home, where Reva was being held. Was there no way he could free her himself? It seemed cowardly not to try. He had followed the rules and obeyed the law when Urunar Kazien had been sentenced to die, and again when Lord Valin had inadvertently challenged Lord Allutar, and they were both dead, while he had saved himself in Naith by taking direct action, heedless of laws and limits. If he was to save Reva, perhaps he should once again discard rules and propriety.

She was in Lord Allutar's study, which would ordinarily be where Anrel would expect to find the landgrave himself, but last night Allutar had apparently taken Mimmin li-Dargalleis to bed with him, and surely he would be gracious enough to entertain her for a time this morning before sending her about her business. Furthermore, he might involve himself in the search for Alvos, if that was ongoing. He had charged Hollem with seeing that Reva had the essentials, so Hollem would presumably be checking in on her every so often, but Lord Allutar himself would quite likely be kept busy elsewhere.

Anrel thought he could handle Hollem, should the need arise, though he now rather regretted leaving his sword at the inn.

This was certainly as good an opportunity for rescue as Anrel could reasonably hope to have; at the very least, he thought he should investigate further. Where, then, would the landgrave's study be?

There were, Anrel knew from growing up among sorcerers, two schools of thought as to the best location for a magician's workroom. One was to put it as high as possible, as close to the sky as it could be, so as to draw upon the power of the heavens. The other was to put it as
deep in the ground as possible, so as to draw upon the power of the earth. The other, lesser power sources—chiefly blood, death, and sex—were not limited to a specific location.

Any competent sorcerer would draw on both sources, of course, as well as the lesser forces, depending on just what he wished to accomplish with a given spell, but a central location, where they might be in balance, was never considered; apparently centuries of experience had demonstrated this to be less effective than choosing one or the other. Since magic often consisted of disturbing the natural balance, this was perhaps not surprising. No magician would set his place of power in the center of a structure; it would always, always, be at the top or bottom. Some would even maintain two workshops, one in a tower or attic and the other in a cellar or earthen-floored room. Anrel's uncle Dorias had his primary workroom under the drawing room at the rear of the house, but kept a small area in the attic clear, as well.

From all Anrel had heard, despite his drawing on the sky to strike down Valin, Lord Allutar was generally given to the magic of blood and earth. That would imply that his study was in the cellars.

Then Anrel looked around at his surroundings, and frowned. He was in a library; wouldn't Lord Allutar want his library convenient to his study? Uncle Dorias did not keep many books in his study because the dampness was bad for them, but he did keep them shelved near the stairs. Anrel crossed to one of the nearby shelves and pulled out a volume in a fine leather binding, and opened it.

“Ah,” he said, as he read the title—
The Wantons of Quand.
The next volume revealed itself to be
Nocturnal Customs of the Old Empire
.
Mistress of the Harem
was after that.

These were not the sort of books a sorcerer would need close at hand. Anrel closed
Mistress of the Harem
and returned it to its place, then moved on to another shelf.

This second collection was somewhat more mundane—
Ten Years in the Cousins
,
Swordsmen of the Fallen Empire
, and other alleged histories. Anrel was familiar with some of these from his studies at the court schools. Again, these were not anything a magician would refer to.

That made sense, though—this library was open to guests. Presumably
Allutar had a more private one somewhere else. Probably, Anrel thought, in the cellars, near his study.

He put the books back where he had found them, gave the gently snoring white-haired guest a final glance, then slipped quietly out into the gallery and looked around.

There were no signs of life; the gallery was bright with sunlight from the windows at either end and a skylight above, but empty of people. Anrel hurried to the stairs and down, finding himself once again in the marble-floored hallway. The door to the salon was open, and that room was silent and still; the double door to the dining room was now closed.

Those did not lead anywhere he wanted to go; he turned and looked the other way. There were several closed doors; he chose one at random, and began exploring.

It took about three attempts before he found a passage leading to a stair going down, and each new exploration stretched his nerves tighter. He was, after all, in his enemy's home, and even if Lord Allutar was asleep or elsewhere—which was by no means certain—there were servants up and about, and if any one of them stumbled upon him in any of these places, there would be questions. Guests would not ordinarily go wandering about like this uninvited.

With his nerves so tense, he did not immediately recognize the wards. It was only when he found himself turning away from the head of the staircase without having made any conscious decision to turn back that he caught himself and forced himself to think about what he was doing and what he was feeling.

He stopped. He knew perfectly well that he wanted to go down a flight of stairs, and here was a flight of stairs leading down, but the thought of walking down it somehow filled him with loathing. He could feel his gorge rise at the very idea.

He smiled bitterly. He had felt this sort of ward before; when he was very young his parents had used them to keep him from going anywhere he shouldn't. Uncle Dorias had used them occasionally, as well. More than one of his professors had invoked them to keep the students from intruding where they were unwelcome. His own magical attempt
to avoid notice the night before had been similar in concept, though far less effective.

None of those other wards had ever been quite so strong as this, but Lord Allutar was a very powerful sorcerer.

Students being what they were, ways of defeating such protections had been discussed frequently in the taverns and residential courts, and various theories advanced. Certain of Anrel's classmates had even claimed to have succeeded in defying such wards, though they were not universally believed. Anrel tried to remember exactly what methods they had advocated. He closed his eyes in an attempt to recall Dariel vo-Basig's boasts; Dariel had been the most convincing of those who said they had gotten through serious warding spells unharmed.

Closing his eyes had been the right thing to do, Anrel immediately realized; once he could not
see
the stairs the incipient nausea vanished.

“It's all in your mind,” Dariel had said. “Oh, there are spells that set physical wards, but the ones that make you not
want
to go there, they work entirely on your mind—and not the surface, where you think about what you're doing, but down deep in your soul, where you
know
what you want, without thinking about it. So you have to fool that part of yourself. You have to
know
that you're doing something else entirely, not doing the thing the wards are preventing.”

That had a logic to it that had seemed very reasonable at the time, but at the time he heard Dariel's explanation Anrel had been slightly drunk and not personally involved. Now, as he stood in a corridor in Lord Allutar's town house, Anrel was not fully convinced. Dariel had not been a sorcerer, after all, merely a clever young man from a wealthy family of merchants. Anrel had grown up among sorcerers, as Dariel had not, and had heard his parents and his uncle discuss the nature of magic, and he could not quite see how Dariel's theory fit. Sorcery drew power from earth, or from sky, or from living things, or things that had once lived, and used that energy to manipulate the natural forces that kept the world in order. Bindings, the most common and useful spells, forced mind and matter into a particular shape, or tied a spirit to a specific course of action. Unbinding spells broke down the natural forces
that maintained forms, as Lord Allutar's unbinding had destroyed the integrity of Valin's flesh. Wards put forces in a particular place so that they would react when mind or matter of the right sort impinged upon them. How could you
fool
the forces of nature?

But then Anrel stopped, and smiled bitterly. He opened his eyes.

He had unconsciously been moving away from the stairs. The warding was still working on him, even if he did not feel ill. It was working on him in several ways. It was even, Anrel was sure, making him reject Dariel's ideas. Fooling natural forces happened all the time in sorcery. After all, how did a sorcerer draw power from the earth or the sky, other than by
convincing
it to flow through him?