Magic Steps (18 page)

That would happen, the mage had said. She would never meet anything so complicated as the inner keep’s layers of spells unless she penetrated some other ancient kingdom’s private stronghold. They could slow her, but as long as she pressed forward, they would not halt her.

The air pressed more thickly against her body. She fought to go on—why? Was there a point? Yes, she remembered dully, the killing to come. Once it was done, she could stop. She could do nothing. No one would insist that she get up, walk about, eat, dress. They would leave her alone. That would be good.

She knew, in the part of her that said she used to love Nurhar, that she owed everything to the family. House Dihanur had saved Alzena when her parents were murdered, had raised and taught her, had given her a husband. Dihanurs had gone to the expense and loss of family lives it took to capture the mage and ensure he would obey her. They had bought dragonsalt to keep him dependent on Alzena and Nurhar. Without it, who could say whether he would stay grateful to those who’d saved him from the pirate who crippled him?

Alzena halted, fighting to breathe under the weight of magic that encased her.

The hall had opened onto a broad, wide corridor that followed a curved stone wall. She could see that wall only near the ceiling. Its stones were so black and pitted that they had to be the stones of the inner keep. The rest was hidden behind a wood bar ricade ten feet high. It reached as far as she could see in both directions; she would have bet that it went all the way around the inner keep.

How dare they add one more obstacle, even one as stupid as a wooden fence? It could only slow her down, but it could never stop her. Alzena’s eyes were fixed on the thing, already examining it for weakness. If she could not wait until someone opened the lone door in the barricade and slip in that way, she might have to climb it. Calculating, she didn’t see the low, treacherous step down to the floor that wrapped around the inner keep. When she missed it and stumbled, she made a perfectly audible thud.

The six guards loitering around the door through the barricade sprang to their feet, drawing their swords. They spread until they were within sword’s reach of one another, sweeping in front of them with their weapons.

One of them blew a shrill blast on the whistle that hung around his neck.

Oh, they had been well briefed, and she had been a fool to let a sound escape.

They knew they might not see her, but they could slice her, just as the arrow had punched through the spells and into her flesh. If she had been quiet, if she had not missed that step, she might have worked her way around them. She could have gotten to the door and slipped in, just as she had walked into this building. They were ready for her now. The guard at the end of their line stayed within sword’s reach of the door.

She turned away in disgust, and blundered into three guards who had been hidden by yet more spells. The sight of their comrades coming to alert had brought them out of their concealment—or had they, too, heard that stupid noise of hers?

The layered magics dragged on her as she drew her sword and cut down the one she’d run into. She chopped at his neighbor’s leg; the woman fell to the floor.

The third guard who had been hidden swept his blade from side to side, feeling for her. Only a few inches lay between Alzena and his weapon, and she could hear running footsteps. Reinforcements were on the way.

She oozed back from the guard whose blade sought her flesh. The guards on the barricade were advancing carefully. Older and wiser than the one she had killed, they were leaving no room for her to get by them and through the barricade door.

She backed down the hall, her sword ready, glancing back twice to make sure she walked into no one else. Fresh guards poured into the area around the barricade from an adjoining hall.

“There.” one of them said, pointing. Alzena looked down and shook her head. Her sword was dripping, leaving a blood trail. She dropped it and continued to back out, moving faster as she put distance between her and those cursed spells.

She had to stop in the main hall, when a trickle of warmth down her leg told her she was bleeding. One of the guards had cut her side. Cursing under her breath, she filched a lace runner from a side table and wadded it against the cut, tightening her belt over it until the thing pinched. Only when she was sure that she wouldn’t leave a trail did she make her way out of the residence.

She had plenty of think about as she inched by milling guards, placed on the alert by their comrades at the inner keep. She and Nurhar could manage the layered spells, but what of the barricade? The guard on that small door would be doubled, and it would be alert—these people were very well trained. She and Nurhar would have to climb the barricade, which meant they would need tools, and the mage to hide the noise they made. And if she had discovered anything about these people, it was that they learned from their mistakes. Next time it would be harder to get as close to the inner keep as she’d done today. She had to find another way in.

For a long, long minute after the messenger told the duke that one guard was dead and another wounded in the inner keep, no one made a sound. Sandry rested her hands on the duke’s shoulders, not liking the expression in his eyes. She knew this had to cut deeply. An assassin had made his or her way to the very heart of Vedris’s power. Erdogun’s brown face was tinged scarlet with humiliation at being proven wrong almost as soon as he had called Lark an alarmist.

At last the duke looked up at Sandry and gave her a thin smile, patting one of her hands. “Must you do this with Pasco?” he inquired. “The boy is nice enough, but he doesn’t seem very reliable.”

Sandry glanced at Lark. “We did talk about another way, but—,” She swallowed.

“Truly, Uncle, I prefer this.”

The duke frowned. “What is this other way that you find so distasteful?”

Lark sighed. “We discussed shaping the unmagic as a web, rather than a net, and blanketing the inner keep with it, like a spiders web. When the assassins come, they’ll touch it and—well, they won’t stick to it, exactly. The nothingness in them would become part of the web.”

“Then I could take the web and unravel it, maybe even spin it into one cord,”

Sandry explained. “The problem is, Uncle, I couldn’t save the parts of them that are still real. If I had to do it that way, I’d kill them—if it even worked.”

“We know the net-spell will do the job,” Lark assured the duke. “And if Pasco calls these people to the net, we can make sure no innocents will be trapped.

We’ll meet the Dihanurs on our terms, not theirs.”

“Have you spoken to Pasco?” asked the duke wearily.

“No,” replied Sandry. “I wanted to work it all out be fore I talked to him.”

“He’ll refuse,” Erdogun said tartly. “If he has a whit of sense, he’ll refuse.”

I could help catch rats?” Pasco demanded, eyes alight. It was the next morning, at Yazmin’s school. “By dancing?

“That’s the idea,” Sandry told him.

Pasco jumped up gleefully. “That will show them!” he cried. “Tippy-feet indeed!”

Sandry looked at her hands and smiled. She had thought Pasco might see it that way. “We’re not sure we can do it,” she warned. “I still have to make the net.”

“But you will, and I’ll dance it, and we’ll have rats in it. A nice day’s fishing for a Toren and an Acalon, don’t you think?”

Sandry grinned at him. “I do think.”

Pasco carefully lowered himself into a split, wincing as he completed it. “We can do it,” he told her, his face serious. “You can do anything.”

“We’ll see,” she replied. “It may come to nothing if I can’t work that stuff into a proper net. Now settle down. Let’s try meditation.”

He did a little better today. Sandry could see his magic did not stray so far from him. It also didn’t flicker as much as it had, which told her that his attention wandered less. Maybe he just needs something useful to do, she thought as the city’s clocks chimed the hour. Some thing his family thinks is useful, anyway.

As she took up her ward and Pasco stretched his legs, Yazmín walked in. “You said when you got here that you’ve something important to discuss?” she asked Sandry.

“We’re going to make a net-dance for rat-trapping,” Pasco told her cheerfully.

“And I’m going to dance it.”

“It’s a way to catch these killers,” explained Sandry. “If you don’t mind, we’d like your help with creating the dance, and getting Pasco ready for it.

Everything has to be planned to the inch. One wrong step—if he so much as brushes the unmagic—,” Sandry gulped. “I think the net would devour him.”

“Never fear,” Yazmín said cheerfully. “I can get him so he’ll be able to hit a dot on the floor, blindfolded, every time. A small dot.” Pasco sat with his left leg straight out in front of him as he tried to grip his foot and touch his forehead to his knee. Yazmín pressed down on his left knee with one hand as she pulled back on his toes, forcing him to stretch an extra inch. He whimpered, then touched his forehead to his knee and held the position to a count of ten.

Sandry watched them solemnly. “If you’ve any doubt he’ll be able to do it, I have to know right now,” she told Yazmín quietly.

The dancer looked at her and smiled. “You’re using that dance he showed me the other day as the basic, right?”

Sandry nodded.

“How long till you’re ready to go?”

“I want another look at the net he used for the fishing spell,” Sandry replied.

“I’ll do that today, and I’m to help Behazin and Ulrina—the harrier-mages—distill the rest of the unmagic out of what Master Wulf—,” a lump rose in her throat. She coughed to clear it, blinked rapidly until her eyes didn’t sting any more, and went on—,”out of what was gathered yesterday. Tonight I’ll sketch a rough net for us to look at in the morning. We’ll work on the dance while everything else is being made ready at Winding Circle—two more days, I think. And you can work with Pasco some more while I spin and make the net.

Will that be enough time? Three or four days?”

”I’ll spend every waking minute with our friend, here,” Yazmín said with a wink to Sandry. “I’ll give him all the personal attention he can stand.”

Pasco, sitting to stretch his right leg, muttered, ‘I’m doomed.”

Do they really understand how serious this is? Sandry wondered as she set about creating a permanent warding on a room for Pasco and Yazmín to work in. Do they understand that if he touches this net he can’t even see, the power of his dance combined with the net will eat him up? Should I talk to them about it some more?

She was still wondering as she told Yazmín how to activate the wards on the room without a mage present. Yazmín tried it a couple of times, raising and lowering the protections that would keep Pasco’s magic from spilling out. Then she rested a hand on Sandry’s arm.

“I know you’re worried about precision,” she said quietly in her odd, cracked voice. “But really, take my word for it—enough practice with an accurate drawing of the net, and he’ll hit his marks every time. He’s got body memory, better maybe than mine. I don’t know if that’s because he’ll be a fine dancer or if the magic helps him. Either way, you won’t be taking a foolish risk, using him.”

A bit of Sandry’s worry evaporated. “Thank you, Yazmín.”

The dancer flapped a hand—no thanks necessary—then entered the warded room with Pasco. “Come on,” she cried gleefully. “I’ve got you all to myself. We’ll do some real work now!”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” muttered Pasco.

Sandry’s visit to the fishing village turned out better than she had hoped.

Grandmother Netmender was quite willing to let her examine the net that Pasco had used to dance for fish. Able to inspect every inch of it, Sandry found that some of the net’s power lay in the unusual knots that held the rope squares in place. The old lady taught her how to tie them, making her practice until Sandry could do each of the three different knots perfectly. Sandry could see that when she tied these with unmagic and combined them in her net, she would double her spell’s power.

From the fishing village she rode to the Market Square coop, where Wulfric’s office and workroom had been. There she talked to Behazin and Ulrina, who promised to distill the unmagic from the silk they had gathered at Rokat House the day before. She also looked at the stuff collected earlier, which was kept in spelled glass bottles. Since there was no weight to the nothingness, there was no way to tell how much they had, but Sandry was sure that with the unmagic from Rokat House, she would have enough for her net.

When they finished, they tidied up and went to the temple of Harrier the Clawed for Wulfric’s last rites. Harrier’s worshippers saw no point to burial or to preservation of a body for several days while mourners came to view it. They expected to join their god the day after their deaths. With the other mourners at the temple, Sandry made an offering of feathers and incense in Wulfric’s name. A priest called for testimony of his ser vice to the god. Then the lady provost Behazin, even two dedicates from Winding Circle—Monstream, the dedicate who ruled the temple city, and Crane, head of the Air temple and a friend of Wulfric s—all spoke about his honors and the work he had done on behalf of Summersea.

The duke spoke last, and simply. “Murderers have taken the best harrier-mage I have ever known,” he said, his voice ringing from the temples stone walls. “They shall, pay for It.”

Sandry fought tears all through the ceremony. Tears would just make her weak, she thought, and she had to be strong for the work ahead. They came anyway, as the acolyte set Wulfric’s funeral pyre ablaze. Sandry hadn’t realized the duke and Baron Erdogun had come to stand with her until Vedris put his arm around her. She leaned against her great-uncle for a moment, then straightened, and.

blew her nose. Watching the flames rise around Wulfric’s body, Sandry made him a promise: she would snap the trap on the killers and their mage.

That night she dreamed she drowned in unmagic, trying to scream when it flooded her mouth. She got out of bed and worked on her plans for the net until dawn.