Dust and Light (33 page)

Oldmeg’s hands remained steady. “Swear, or our bargain is voided and you learn nothing.”

The white hand loomed behind her, a mystery bordering on the divine. Layer upon layer of spellwork teased at my senses. I could not leave here without knowing.

I snatched the dagger and pricked my palm, and then pressed the stinging wound to hers. Her hand was dry and cold, save for the blood.

“The secrets you tell this night shall remain with me,” I said. “On my family name and blood, on our holy gifts, on the lines of magic unbroken. Witness my oath, great Deunor, Lord of Fire and Magic. Witness my truth, mighty Erdru, Lord of Vines.”

I heaved a great breath. “Now,
Naema
,
sengé
, tell me all.”

B
efore I could blot my bleeding palm, Oldmeg was on her feet and Demetreo had dragged her chair aside.

“Here is our question and your answer all at one,” said the woman, gesturing to the wall of smoke-stained plaster. “A marvel lies hid beneath the mark of the white hand. As my mothers before me, I’ve spent my days wandering the world in search of it, and once we found it, trying to unmask it.”

Awe and reverence engulfed her small body as she gazed on the fresco, causing the hairs on my arms to rise. But when she reverted her gaze to me, it was only a wry, sad humor sparked her smile. “But my feet grow cold and my bones weary, and with these times—good Eodward’s death, a new king of less scruple, no matter which brother takes the throne, famine, riot, winter, and everyone seeking to blame those who are ever scapegoats—we’ve no more days to spare. So tell us what a man with stronger blood than mine finds here.”

Demetreo folded his arms across his breast. Oldmeg bowed her head and spread her arms. Waiting for magic.

Warmth and drink had restored me somewhat. Yet it was the need to
know
that drove me past depletion to dredge up every scrap and seed of power in me. Whatever mystery entangled my gift, a creature straight out of myth had told me that some
meaning
lay down a path marked with a white hand. I would have stolen power from the gods themselves to find meaning in the events of these past months.

Closing my eyes, I stretched my spread fingers toward the wall. Eerie enchantment flowed from the stained wall, an illusion that swirled around me like veils of silk, soft, smooth, flimsy, but not at all crude. The plaster wasn’t real.

With a twitch of my finger, I expelled a single sharp burst of magic.

“Magrog’s balls!” It felt as if the entirety of my blood had been sucked out through my eyes, drained by the unraveling veil.

Perhaps a third of the plaster had vanished, exposing a stony bulwark—not the even courses of pale blocks found in Caedmon’s Wall, but age-blackened, undressed stones, laid and mortared as they were dug from the ground.

Centered on this crude expanse was a low, round arch, worked of bronze and decorated with vines, flowers, leaves, and beasts of all kinds. Exquisite work. Yet my eyes did not dawdle, for within the arch writhed sheets and strings of light, deep purples and blues and colors beyond those my paint pots could mime. They shaped and reshaped themselves into patterns of line and color—scenes of meadows and mountains and seasons, as well as purest abstractions—a living tapestry woven of magic as deep and rich and fresh as the grasses of Ardran meadows in springtimes that came no more to Navronne. Enchantment so complex, so far beyond what I knew, it made my chest ache with yearning.

“Ah,” said Oldmeg, breathing a long sigh.

“What is it?” I whispered, unable to peel my eyes from the wall.

“Our elder stories tell of hidden doors across Navronne,” said Demetreo with ill-contained eagerness. “We have ever been told that the sign of the white hand marks each of these doorways. We hope you can show us where this one leads.”

Magical doors. A path marked. That connection made sense—astonishing, but reasonable. But surely they knew more. “The hand marks more than doorways, yes?”

“Naught else that we know,” said Demetreo. “We hold the mark secret. Sacred. Some wear it inside their clothes, believing it will bring strength in time of need.”

“But Cicerons once wore it openly, like a blazon. Why you? Who told you of hidden doorways? Who worked the magic?”

Demetreo’s earrings glinted in the enchanted light and his dark eyes glittered. “Some tales say the doors were created by
your
ancestors in days
when we were friends. Some say they were created by the god Valo himself—he you name Deunor, Lord of Magic—as a heritage for his lost children. There are a thousand stories. But in all the years of our wandering, this is the only one we’ve found.”

“Deunor’s lost
children
?
” Unsure whether to laugh or yell or run, I threw my hands up. “You say these rogue magics are
yours
? This wonder,
yours
? You claim yourselves
pureblood
?” How could one express the death-inviting madness of it? “That is sheerest lunacy. Our bloodlines are recorded back to the earliest Aurellian invaders.”

“Certainly not pureblood.” Demetreo shrugged, unimpressed by my outrage. “We’ve no magic to match yours and would never be so foolish to claim so. Who knows where stories come from? At every fire, we sing and spin tales of those who wear the white hand—hero tales, magic tales. Oldmeg studies the stories; I do not. But if you can teach us more of this one, and it saves us from the next scouring”—Demetreo shrugged, his gaze never leaving the old woman—“perhaps I’ll pay closer mind to them.”

Oldmeg had approached the bronze arch close enough that the light of its shifting scenes bathed her face. Abruptly, she pressed her bony fingers to the magical artwork that for the moment appeared as concentric rings of sunlight. The tapestry of light dipped inward, but her touch did not penetrate. She withdrew and the pattern continued its shifting from a vista of rippling grass to a well of night, sprinkled with stars. At each change, she tried again.

I held my breath, half expecting, half hoping, entirely terrified that she would succeed. If a Ciceron elder could master such magic, then nothing in the world was as I believed.

After yet another failure, the old woman heaved a great sigh. “No further revelation comes to me.”

She glanced up and read my question: What was she expecting? “Alas, naught in our lore tells us how to
use
the door. We’ve always believed we would know in our hour of need. And that hour is so near we can smell it.”

And here, so near I could taste it, was the answer I craved—the key to mysteries that had grown to encompass matters far beyond my own life. “Use it for what?”

Neither of them answered. Yet as my question faded into their silence, logic and practice drew links among Oldmeg’s words—concerns of war
and winter and famine, reminders of powerful families who damned Cicerons for every wickedness—and Demetreo’s desire to protect his people from the next murderous rampage that would drive them from their shacks and alleys. Rumors, sickness, plagues . . . all were laid at their doorstep. I had laid such slanders myself and believed them. They wanted to survive what was coming.

One could not have a much better back door from the hirudo than the narrow gate that led to the necropolis. But these two weren’t just thinking of crossing Caedmon’s Wall.

“You think to use this portal for escape.” A Dané had spoken the word that brought the Ciceron’s mystery and mine to a meeting point, as if some mystical circle was now complete. “You seek
sanctuary
.”

“If the gods could grant us a boon, that would be its name,” said Demetreo. “That name is whispered in our tales. We cannot abandon this place unless this door gives us the means to find something better, something safer. We need to know.”

Why the Cicerons? How were they connected to the Dané and her cryptic references to a place of safety? Surely the clues to these larger questions lay in the magic. Craving understanding, I pressed my own fingers to a writhing nest of spiderwebs . . .

. . . and in the same instant yanked them back, clenching them to my breast until the burning agony went away, checking by the moment to make sure acid had not eaten away my livelihood.

“You didn’t feel—?”

The two Cicerons watched me, brows creased. Oldmeg’s bony fingers were folded at her breast, apparently unharmed.

Steeling myself, I tried again, pressing the shifting surface that felt like tight-stretched canvas woven with honed blades. With the last shreds of my magic, I tried to penetrate the barrier.

Again, nothing.

“I don’t think I can tell you what you want,” I said, when my jaw was no longer clenched against a groan. “The enchantment is seamless, impermeable. And I sense no hook or release point. Perhaps some other sorcerer could do better.” Though how I, deemed a murdering madman, could persuade a pureblood to aid a Ciceron was beyond imagining.

Demetreo’s foot beat an impatient cadence. “We’ve no time for bargaining,
Naema
. We should tell him.”

With a small gesture Oldmeg agreed.

“We don’t believe any other sorcerer would do,” said Demetreo. “When we heard the coroner had got himself a pureblood, we rejoiced. Never before had a true sorcerer come so near the hirudo, much less walked amongst us alone. We schemed to capture and force you, but then you showed us your magic—”

“—and later you saw me in chains. And tonight I walked straight into your lair and gave you what you wanted with no trouble at all. Is your triumph sweet?”

Childish. Weak. I pressed the heel of my hand to my brow. The hour was so late and depletion had my bones rattling. I longed for a real bed. For clean sheets. For good wine. For Maia’s roast venison. For warmth and peace and a family to surround and shield me from this cursed world.

“Your presence here is not by chance, not dependent on a failed errand to Arrosa’s Temple or your damnation by your own kind,” said Oldmeg, unfazed by my petulance. “Once we
saw
, we were prepared to ask you for your help. Can you not recognize your own gift? This door magic is unlike any other pureblood magic used in Navronne. Nigh on a hundredyear have I breathed the air of this world and read the lines of enchantments strewn about by Registry sorcerers. None is like to this, save only yours.”

“The same as
this
?” I snorted. “That’s ridiculous. I’ve never been here before tonight. My hand burns like acid when I touch it.”

“Not that you yourself cast these spells, no. But I recognize the likeness in that way a master weaver can look at the wool, the stitch, the artistry, the rough or delicate hand and say for certain where a fine tapestry was woven—in the port of Morian or a particular warlord’s fastness in Evanore, in the western cliff cities or in that Karish monastery down to Elanus.”

“That makes no sense. I wish— Great gods, if my gifts could create something like this, I would be one of the Registry curators already. How could you possibly know anything of my work?”

The old woman smiled in sympathy. “Did you not demonstrate your magic for us one morning as you walked to Caton? And on that same evening, you knelt in the mud behind the willows and invoked a kind of power I had never witnessed, save in what lies behind this wall. Whoever created this portal could be your twin, Lucian de Remeni. If any sorcerer can explain its mystery, it is you.”

She had been there. I recalled her now wearing her bone necklace,
petting a dog, carrying a torch, watching as I made a grand show from a knife and a pen, and again when I explored Fleure’s death place. I wanted to press, to ask how she learned to analyze spellwork and why she believed my simple enchantments mimed something so marvelous as this in front of us. Yet, in truth, my mind could shape no sensible argument.

“I can do no more for you tonight. Our hour’s bargain is surely done and my master expects me. If you’re so familiar with true magic, then you know a sorcerer’s expenditures must be replenished. I can’t explain what you perceive,
Naema
. Perhaps with some thought, once I’m refreshed, I might, and if so and Bastien allows, I’ll send word. I need to go.”

Yet even as I sagged against the wall, knees like porridge and the rest of me shaking so violently that my ability to reach Caton was in serious doubt, the words of the silver-marked Dané resounded in my memory, rebuking me for turning away from the white hand—and from where it had led me.
To certain of my kind and certain of thine own kind, thy gifts might be the answer to a long waiting
.

Thine own kind
—humans, perhaps, not purebloods. And what humans had waited longer than a tribe of outcasts who’d spent centuries searching for their god’s grace?

So follow the path, Lucian. Prove your quality.
But how? The Dané said my gifts could vanquish
boundaries—indeed, I’d done exactly that with each of my bents, and with the mystery of their entwined power that seemed to make each more than it was alone. If this daunting magic was one of those boundaries . . .

And in that moment, I knew what might tell us more. But no matter how I wished, I had no capacity for magic just then.

“Elsewise I’ll have to have food,” I said, “and a blanket, cloak, or rag of some kind to get me warm. Even two hours’ sleep would restore me enough to try one more thing. But of course, I’d need a message carried to Bastien and someone to persuade him to send down my writing case and parchment and permission to use them.”

The words were scarce out of my mouth before Oldmeg had my belly stuffed with sour ale and leek stew, and my quaking limbs bundled in a ragged rug beside the still-warm hearthstones of the commons house. At some point Demetreo vanished through the red door, while Oldmeg settled in her chair and began to hum. A most pleasurable sound, as my chattering teeth kept time.

“Tell me one thing,” I said as drowsiness slurred my speech. “Why do Cicerons staple dead men’s tongues?”

“’Tis only for those who babble our secrets,” she said. “You’d never do that.”

T
he floor was hard. The
hearthstones cooled. The rug itched me—fleas, my groggy instincts warned. And the subtle menace in Oldmeg’s answer reminded me that she was no gentle, dithering gammy, but the Goddess Mother’s heart in a clan of murdering thieves.

But it was the magic kept me drifting in the twilight verge instead of sleep. The scraps of enchantment hanging about the room—Ciceron magic? Oldmeg had so much as told me outright. And though my eyes were closed, the portal enchantment hung before me in all its marvelous complexity—lighting the darkness inside—a complete, harmonious image as if I had studied it my entire life. As if it were my own.

Oldmeg’s humming eased my snarled thinking. Still, I knew that whenever she stopped, the questions these things raised would drive me into territory unimaginably dangerous.