In Camelot’s Shadow: Book One of The Paths to Camelot Series (Prologue Fantasy) (24 page)

“Could it really be reached out and touched so simply?”

“Not so simply.”

Master Lucius stood in the library doorway. Euberacon made some feeble attempt to hide the book, but soon realized it was pointless. His master already knew what it was he read, and what was more, he was pleased.

“Much of what that book says is pure foolishness.” Lucius was a tall man, and he crossed the library in three strides, lifting the slim, red volume out of Euberacon’s hands. “But there is enough of truth in it to begin with.” He smiled and ran his hand across the leather binding. “You have the talent, Euberacon. I saw it in you. You can learn the High Arts, if you want.”

Euberacon did not hesitate for so much as a heartbeat. “Yes, Master. I do.”

That night, Euberacon had dared the curfew and crept out to the city walls. He had sat on the warm stones beneath the sky’s million stars and he’d thought about what the book said, about the angels and how each ruled a day and an hour, about the devils and their ranks and orders. It seemed to him that all that was solid had become soft, like clay, and that it could be molded and worked, and if one could speak to the hands that molded it, if one could tell them what to do … then anything was possible. Even for a clerk with a mouse for a father.

It was no wonder the Father Church forbid such studies, it was a dangerous route he undertook. The Church disapproved, and while they were willing to tolerate a number of heresies in Constantinople, this was not one of them. If he were caught in its practice, he would die, publicly and painfully. The Church, hand-in-hand with the imperial powers, traded on the ignorance of the people and would permit only those they blessed looking into esoteric matters. Master Lucius assured him that if he went into the church, it would be one way could continue study in safety. But Euberacon did not mean to cloak his studies in a cleric’s robe. He would take the other route.

In Constantinople, wealth bought power. Power, in turn, brought safety and safety brought peace. With enough wealth, he could buy the peace he needed to practice the highest arts. He could study without fear, and he could understand all the greatest secrets, of angels or of devils, of the workings of the universe and how they could be made to turn or not, as
he
chose.

A few of the smallest miracles, and men began to come to him. A chariot race won unexpectedly. A successful prediction, a caught spy, a dead thief. They came with documents to be copied, or to have letters written, and they left with cures and charms, potions and prophecy, and Euberacon’s house grew rich with books and fat with secrets. He was able to purchase the dragon’s blood and gems, and even poisons needed for the most subtle and complex of summonings. He was able to bribe the proper officials to keep their eyes averted.

Then, a fat and sweaty man calling himself Octavius had come to Euberacon, sodden with drink. He wanted a girl. A girl he had seen that day in the Hippodrome. He would pay to have her, but it could not be done the ordinary way. Her father had worked with the animals, been a bear-keeper or some such. He might still have friends. But he would pay for a love potion so the girl would come to him willingly.

Euberacon had sent him away, staggering even more badly than when he had come. But the fool had returned. He would have his girl. He would pay for her to come to him willingly.

By this time, Euberacon had heard something of the story. Apparently it had been a small and sordid drama. A woman, the wife of the Greens’ bear trainer, had stood up in the Hippodrome, before the emperor and all the public, with her two daughters beside her and exhorted, cried, shamed and begged for the pension owing her so that she and those same two daughters would not starve.

“Why not buy the one you want from her, if she’s short of money?” Euberacon had asked.

“No, no,” the fat fool had insisted. “She must come to me. She must be willing. She must love me.”

It was as unsavory as anything Euberacon had yet done. In addition, it was a complex spell involving a particularly difficult sacrifice. He named an enormous sum. “Octavius brought it soon thereafter. Apparently the mother had been only partly successful with her public plea for help and had been forced to put the girls on stage to help earn their keep. He had seen her. She was marvelous. He could not sleep for wanting her.

“Why do this?” Euberacon remembered asking, although he normally cared little what his clientele were doing, unless it might be something of use to know later. “An actress can be purchased for one-tenth what you give me.”

“No!” cried the fat man, shrinking backwards. Beads of sweat rolled down his cheeks. “She must want me, as I want her! An actress … with other men … no, no. She must be all mine!”

Euberacon shrugged. He took a white dove and made the sacrifice. He drew the required picture and anointed it with the blood as prescribed. He wrote the necessary runes and said the incantations, and at last added the girl’s name. Comito. One look at Octavius while he had the parchment about his person and she would fall madly in love. She would burn for him and forsake everything she had to be at his side.

Euberacon took his payment. Octavius went happily to the theater. Euberacon continued to back his men, do their favors and pursue his studies in safety.

So he had thought.

No divination however powerful could have told him that the other sister, the one he had heard had been reduced to acting and wool-spinning for her keep, would catch the eye of Justinian, Emperor Justin’s heir, that she would help guide him through the maze that was politics in Constantinople, where a friend could as easily poison one as a foe, and be raised up herself in return. Any true man would have discarded her, but Justinian did not, and as soon as it became clear power was within her grasp, men began to die.

It seemed her father had not just died. He had been murdered. For money or favor, there were those who would right such wrongs. Theodora now had both, and she was going to find the men who robbed her of her father, and of her sister. Comito, it seemed, had never returned to her family, or anywhere else.

The men who had killed her father went first. “Octavius followed shortly thereafter. Euberacon was supposed to have been next.

How she found out it had been him, he did not know. Presumably, if she had assassins in her pay, a magus would not have been too much for her indelicate sensibilities. Or her men could have simply wrung it out of Octavius’s fat throat. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that she had paid her men enough that they had been willing to chase him up the coast all the way to Gaul and had only given up when he had crossed the sea to this God-forsaken place.

And now this woman was to be empress in Constantinople. Well, let her wear the purple. Let her rule Justinian and the empire for as long as they could stand her. It would be sweet indeed to watch her fall from that highest of all places.

But now there were different men to visit. The Saxons who held this place and the surrounding lands needed to be pricked and pushed. Things were not going well in Pen Marhas, and these men, their southern brothers, had to know of it. These were not men who wanted to believe they were weak, that those farther north and inland were better men than they. Some of them were even intelligent enough to realize that while Arthur’s cadre was out poking about in the western lands, his eastern border might be vulnerable for a very little while. These were men who were used to moving quickly, to seizing their opportunities, and Euberacon’s business now was to show them what those opportunities were, without them knowing it was he who had done so. There were ways to alter appearance, to make men forget where or how they had heard a thing.

Euberacon smiled at the distant Hippodrome some Roman overlord or the other had built. He’d see the real thing soon enough. The end was already in sight.

But if he was to accomplish anything, he had to work quickly. He wanted to summon his steed and be back in his fortress before the island’s night came with its mutterings and mysteries. Still, he would have that under control soon as well. All things were moving at his direction. This was his day, his hour and here he ruled. And if Arthur, Gawain and Theodora did not know that now, they would very, very soon.

Darkness came again. Jocosa’s women moved around her, lighting rushes and two good tallow candles. Una came in bearing a bowl that smelled of meat and pepper. Loyal Una. She had used some of the hall’s small fortune of spices to tempt her mistress’s appetite. She should try to eat. It would be a sin to waste such broth.

“My Lord Rygehil has returned.” Una offered up the news like the bowl of broth, as if one or the other might quicken Jocosa’s melancholic spirits.

Jocosa looked at the wooden screen that blocked the window now that night had come. A draft curled around the casements, further seasoning the scent of the broth with the hint of yet more rain. Rygehil had gone to find Risa. It was her ladies who told her this, not her husband. There was too little left between them that he should think to mention such a thing to her.

But if he was back … Slowly, Jocosa’s mind put the two facts together, and understood what was being said. Trembling, she turned toward her waiting woman.

“Is Risa with him?”

Una dropped her gaze toward the steaming bowl she held, as if aware her efforts were about to be for naught. “No, mistress.”

“Oh.” There was in truth nothing to be said. Nothing to be done. She had let her daughter go. That was all there was. Everything else had been done long ago.

She remembered her wedding day. She remembered how happy she’d been. Not even her mother’s frowns could touch her. “At least he’s blooded,” mother had groused. “You could have gone and set your heart on some goose boy I suppose.” But nothing had mattered, nothing but Rygehil smiling at her, holding out his hand, speaking his vows clearly and without hesitation, kneeling beside him so they could take communion together, to let God witness that they two were now one person.

One person, one soul, one heart, and that soul was failing and that heart had grown cold.

“Mistress,” began Una tentatively.

She’s going to try to make me eat again
. Jocosa sighed. The peppery scent was beginning to make her feel ill. She hated to disappoint the woman, but there was nothing to be done about that either.

“Mistress, I heard him say … I heard him say …”

“Yes?”
If you must speak, Una, please do so and be done
.

“I heard him call her ungrateful, mistress. He’d found her and she ran away again, yesterday on the road from Pen Marhas, she’d gone with …”

Run away? Risa is free?
“But he’s given her …”

“No, my lady, she’s with Gawain of the Round Table.”

One muscle at a time, Jocosa straightened up. “Risa is with a champion of the Round Table?”

“Yes, mistress.”

“And her father calls her ungrateful?” He’d had beautiful eyes, once. Eyes full of laughter and wisdom and love. Where had those eyes strayed?

“He says she does not care whether you die or live. He says she could save you if she did as she was told.”

“He has said so before.”

“I beg you my lady, speak with him. It is some madness that seizes him. You are the only one who might bring him to his senses again.”

Risa’s comb lay on the table. Jocosa stared at it. She wanted to reach for it, to hold it close because she could not hold her girl, but her hands seemed to have lost the will for movement. “I have tried Una.”

“You must try again.”

But she remembered his face as he turned away from her that last time, and heard again his voice.
My father was right … Love is too inconstant a thing on which to build a life
. They had laughed at such words once, in their innocence, their ignorance of the payment God would exact for that laughter. “I cannot. There is nothing left.”

“There is always something.”

“No. You do not know what he has done.” Outside, the rain began to fall in slow, fat drops, smacking against the window screen, making a sound like fingers tapping to get in. “Leave me now.”

Una was not defeated yet. “You will want to get ready for bed.”

“I said leave.”
Perhaps I will be able to apologize one day for this anger
. “If I wish to go to bed, I will call for you.”

“Yes, my lady,” said Una.

“Yes, my lady,” said Aeldra, sounding even more tired than Una.

The door opened, and the door closed, and Jocosa was alone.

Will you come to me again, my husband?
she wondered.
What will you say if you do?

With slow and clumsy fingers, Jocosa undid the catches on the window screen and folded it back. Then, gripping the stone casement tightly, she thrust her upturned face out into the rain, letting the drops trickle down her cheeks, making use of the sky’s tears, for her own had been long ago drained dry.

When at last the cold became too much, she drew herself inside again, face, throat, hair, veil and dress all soaked through. To her surprise, she heard a new sound. The flapping of heavy wings.

A raven, fighting hard against the rain, landed on the sill. It shook itself, flipped its wings onto its back and cawed three times.

Jocosa blinked at the bird for a moment, and then turned away, leaving small puddles rain behind her. “Well, come in if you wish, Mistress Raven, though there is small comfort to be had here.”

“Thank you,” said a voice behind her. “I will.”

A woman stood before the window. She was tall and golden, half hidden by a cloak made entirely of black feathers. She stood still, letting Jocosa stare until comprehension finally came to her, accompanied, Jocosa found herself surprised to note, by nothing so much as relief.

For did not the angel of death have black wings?

“Have you come for me?” she asked the golden woman.

She inclined her head. “Yes.”

A very little fear fluttered in Jocosa’s throat. “Will it be quick?”

“If you do not struggle.”

Jocosa sighed. She wiped the last of the water from her face and smoothed her dress down fussily. Odd to wish to look one’s best at such a time. “I do not want to be a danger to my daughter any more, you see. She may weaken. She may try to return.”