The Harrowing of Gwynedd (12 page)

“Maybe it will come to that, Gregory,” Joram said. “God knows, it's an almost impossible choice, if we have to take only one—Niallan's maturity and level-headedness against Tavis' enthusiasm and unique talents.”

“However,” Evaine said, pausing to indulge in a giant yawn, “it isn't anything we can even consider until after Queron is part of our company—which will never happen, if we don't finish up our final preparations. So if you gentlemen will all proceed down to the
keeill
, we should be finished in time for everyone to have a few more hours' rest.”

As they filed out, Ansel lingered to press her hand in wordless thanks for the decisions made regarding his family.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

He hath set fire and water before thee: stretch forth thy hand unto whether thou wirt
.

—Ecclesiasticus 15:16

Later that night, when they were sure that the rest of the residents of Saint Michael's slept and Tavis had, indeed, gone to Dhassa, it was Ansel who was sent to fetch Queron. Ansel found the Healerpriest in the chapel, kneeling before the three blank slabs closing the tombs of the men that Jesse, Queron, and one other would replace. Though the green-badged white mantle of a Gabrilite Healer was draped around Queron's shoulders, he wore the simple grey habit of the Servants of Saint Camber beneath it, and his feet were bare.

“Dom Queron, it's time,” Ansel said softly.

Sighing, Queron rose, a sad little smile on his face as he turned to greet the saint's grandson.

“I am ready,” he murmured. “I only hope I may be half as valuable to the Council as these were. May Saint Camber be my guide in these next hours, as he was theirs.”

Ansel said nothing, though he obviously noticed the Saint Camber medal that Queron wore on a silver chain around his neck, along with a Healer's seal on a green cord. Not meeting Queron's eyes, he only turned and gestured toward the open chapel door. Silence accompanied them all the way to the Portal chamber, Ansel finally speaking with his mind only, when he laid his hand on Queron's arm as they stepped onto the Portal.

Our destination is no secret, but I'm to take you through Blind
, Ansel sent.
You're to do nothing to help or to hinder. Do you agree?

Of course
.

As further assent, Queron immediately closed his eyes to eliminate mere visual sight and began a slow, deep breath, stilling and pulling back his shields to give over control of his
other
Sight. He was pleased to realize that Ansel did not seem intimidated by him—though he was certain some of the others still were, even though they should not be.

Softly, very tentatively at first, he felt the younger man's controls surround and bind him. The shift, when it came, was so smooth that Queron hardly noticed it—just a slight catch to his breath as he reoriented vaguely,
knowing
that they had passed to the Portal outside the Council chamber. His opening eyes confirmed that it was so.

Leave me a control link
, came Ansel's further instruction, as they stepped into the dimly lit landing before the great bronze doors of the Council chamber, and Ansel conjured handfire with his free hand.
Follow my handfire. We'll take a turnpike stair. Go slowly, because it's steep. I'll be right behind you
.

A section of the wall slid back before them as the handfire touched it, opening into a downward-spiraling wooden stairwell whose location Queron had not even suspected, though he had known such a stair must exist. Joram had told him the day before of the
keeill
—the ancient word meant sanctuary or chapel—the
keeill
, which lay directly beneath the Council chamber.

Ansel's grip shifted to his shoulder and urged him forward, controls still lightly but firmly in place. The boy was
very
good. Queron braced his left hand against the newel post as they started down, his other hand just brushing the stone on his right, and kept his mind stilled, receptive. At the bottom of the stair, a few steps beyond, Ansel's handfire came up against another bronze door—this one single, not nearly as tall as the ones above, and carved with several of the intricate, spiraling motifs anciently called staring patterns.

“I'll release your controls now,” Ansel murmured, shifting his grasp to Queron's left elbow, “but don't raise your shields.” His free hand seemed to press the handfire into the carvings of the top spiral so that it glowed like molten silver. “Work the first staring pattern. It's a spell for centering. I'll follow it with you.”

Nodding, Queron drew a deep breath and complied. He knew the pattern well—probably far better than the younger, less experienced Ansel, but that might not be a safe assumption, based on the last quarter hour. So he made himself trace it slowly—no short cuts—savoring the gradual stilling and centering as his eyes tracked every curve of the mystical maze. At the centerpoint, the spell in place, he closed his eyes for just a moment and took another deep breath, letting it out slowly as he opened his eyes again to await further instruction. The glow of the staring pattern was fading as Ansel pushed the door open with the flat of his hand and ushered Queron in.

The
keeill
was round, rather than octagonal like the chamber above it. Stone floored the perimeter, wide enough to walk around, but a circular dais of seven steps dominated the room—grey-black slate whose planes of shadow and darker shadow seemed to swallow up the light of the torches at the four quarter-stations. In the center of the dais, the others were waiting around a cubic, waist-high altar that looked like giant ward cubes piled in two layers, the black and white cubes alternating. Pillars the thickness of a man's upper arm—two each of black and white—supported a mensa of some stark-white stone atop the cubes, and the whole rested on a base slab of obsidian black.

He could not see much of what lay on the altar, for Gregory and Jesse stood shoulder to shoulder on its north side, dark-clad backs blocking most of his view, but the purplish glow of a lamp of handfire at the altar's center spilled beyond them, revealing Joram's expected presence in the south. Evaine waited in the west, head bowed, her golden hair unbound and spilling down her back, ethereal and almost fragile-looking in white.

“This way, please,” came Ansel's low voice, his hand guiding Queron to the left rather than up the dais steps.

They had entered between two massive, rough-cut ashlar pillars flanking the door. Queron could see more of them set hard against the outer perimeter of the chamber, with dark, shadowed spaces between, barely wide enough to hold a man. Making a quick mental count as Ansel backed him partway into the nearest of those spaces, Queron realized there were twelve in all—which meant twelve niches as well, if one counted the one containing the northern door—apt symbolism for a magical working place.

But, there would be time enough, later, to ponder more subtle meanings. For now, Ansel's mind remained close at the edge of his shields, one hand now clasped lightly around Queron's left wrist as he reached into his dark tunic to produce a length of fine white woolen yarn.

“Give me both your hands, please,” Ansel murmured, deftly looping the yarn around the captive wrist and then the other one as Queron complied. “This binding of your wrists is symbolic of the loyalties and obligations which have bound you up until tonight,” he explained. “A little later, you will be asked to sever these bonds yourself, to free you for the commitment you are about to make. Stand against the wall behind you now.”

Yielding to the pressure of Ansel's hand against his chest, Queron eased back a step. The floor was cold and gritty beneath his bare feet, the space between the two pillars claustrophobic, like standing in a tomb, the pillars confining his elbows close against his sides, the stone icy cold along his back, even through his mantle.

Nor was he reassured when Ansel backed off a step to raise both hands to shoulder level, palms turned toward the pillars. The air began to tingle between them—irritating to Queron, with his shields still lowered—and he guessed that Ansel was about to invoke a stasis spell of some sort, perhaps similar to the Trap effect sometimes layered over a Portal to keep unauthorized users in place until they could be dealt with.

But Ansel totally surprised him. Instead of standard stasis, which would have immobilized Queron inside his tomblike niche, Ansel somehow called up a stasis veil. It skimmed the edge of Queron's niche like a fragile purple soap bubble, apparently of the most ethereal and insubstantial nature—but neither fragile nor insubstantial, as Queron quickly discovered. Not only would it keep Queron in, but absolutely
nothing
besides light and sound could penetrate that veil until it was dispelled from outside—not even air! It was a far more serious binding than the cords looped around Queron's wrists—which he could have broken in an instant, had he wished—
very
substantial magic! That knowledge was infinitely sobering; for though he truly believed he trusted this company implicitly, he had not thought they would place him so completely at their mercy and so soon!

He fancied he could feel his air growing stale already—and he
knew
his heart was pounding beneath the bound wrists clenched hard against his chest—but he made himself begin relaxing. He had submitted to this testing voluntarily; he would face far more serious threats than mere physical helplessness before the night was over. If he could keep his breathing light and shallow, he should be all right until they went on to the next test.

But it took him several more slow, controlled breaths before he could raise his eyes to Ansel's, watching coolly from beyond the glow of the stasis veil. The boy studied him intently for several seconds, apparently assuring himself that Queron was in no great distress, then gave him a respectful inclination of his head and turned on his heel to mount the seven shallow steps, careful to approach exactly opposite the door in the north. Queron, in an attempt to put his own situation out of mind as much as possible, set himself to note and remember everything that happened. The stasis veil obscured even light and sound a little, but he was able to follow without too much difficulty.

He watched with understanding and growing respect as Ansel paused and turned at the top of the steps, to crouch and pick up the ends of a dark cord or rope lying almost invisible in the angle between the dais and the step just beneath it. As Ansel knotted the ends loosely, right over left and left over right, closing the dais in a circle marked out by the cord, Queron reflected that the tradition was one not often observed these days, except in very special circumstances—yet it seemed entirely appropriate for the working intended tonight. The cord tied, Ansel glanced at him again before going to take a place at the east of the altar.

The general form of what followed was very familiar to Queron, though some of the nuances were subtly different. The first task of any magical working was to establish the boundaries of the working place, to purify it, and to invoke the presence and protection of appropriate Guardians. Thus, it was no surprise when Evaine took up an aspergillum and, beginning in the East, walked the perimeter of the circle sunwise while sprinkling it with holy water, accompanied by Joram's recitation of the beautiful Psalm of the Shepherd and pausing at South, West, North, and East again to make especial salute. He supposed that the torches already burning at the Quarters must signify for the stations of the four great Archangels who would later be summoned, for no additional lights were placed at the edge of the dais before Evaine began her circuit.

Joram censed the circle next, bringing a thurible to the eastern edge of the dais and raising it to the symbolic source of Light. Queron was pleased to note that the Michaeline had donned the customary blue of his Order for tonight's working and knew that the familiar and much-loved habit must give Joram comfort.

Bowing, Joram passed then to his right to trace the circle a second time, taking up his Psalm again, the thurible's chains jingling musical counterpoint to his voice. Incense smoke hung on the air in a blue-white trail that rose higher at each new quarter where he paused to salute again, though its scent did not reach Queron through the stasis veil.

But when Joram had finished in the East again and returned to his place, setting the thurible back on the altar, it was Gregory who took up the sword to seal the circle, carrying it under the quillons with a no-nonsense expression as he moved briskly to the East.

There he paused to bend one knee for a moment, head bowed to the weapon's cross hilt, before rising to execute quite a proper military salute. At the end, all in one graceful movement, he grounded the tip of the blade against the dais edge and turned sunward, steel slithering against slate as he began tracing the final circuit of the circle's casting. Light sprang up where the sword passed, a silvery ribbon a handspan high, laid on edge, enclosing the circle at the first step off the dais, just outside the knotted cord.

Gregory's performance took Queron a little aback, for he had not guessed that Gregory was particularly trained as a ritualist. But Gregory cut the circle with classic precision, never looking beyond its boundaries, not stopping until he had closed the two ends of the circle, back in the East. And there he did something that almost took Queron's breath away.

For just an instant Gregory paused there, the tip of his blade still impaling the silvery ribbon. Then he turned slightly toward the south, the blade now slanted obliquely across his body, and swept the blade slowly upward in a wide arc from east to west, following the path of the sun.

The fabric of the ribbon of light rose in answer, as if Gregory somehow had snagged the light and stretched it upward to canopy over their heads. The apex of a growing silvery triangle followed the path his blade traced, ever widening and broadening at its base until, as the tip was earthed between him and the altar, a softly glowing dome of energy enclosed the circle. Queron could hardly believe what he had seen.