Trudi Canavan - The Novice

“Perhaps.” Derril lifted an eyebrow. “Barran has come for dinner. Why don’t we go in and ask him to tell you more about it?”

Lorlen nodded and followed the old man into the house. They entered a large guestroom, its windows covered by paper screens decorated with paintings of flowers and plants. A young man in his mid-twenties sat in one of the luxurious chairs. His wide shoulders and slightly hooked nose reminded Lorlen instantly of the man’s brother, Walin.

Barran looked up at the Administrator, then rose hastily and bowed.

“Greetings, Administrator Lorlen,” he offered. “How are you?”

“Good, thank you,” Lorlen replied.

“Barran,” Derril said, waving Lorlen into a seat, “Lorlen is interested in this suicide you’ve been investigating. Can you tell him the details?”

Barran shrugged. “It’s no secret—just a mystery.” He turned to look at Lorlen, his blue eyes troubled. “A woman approached a guard in her street and told him that she’d discovered her neighbor dead. He investigated and found a woman with her wrists cut.” Barran paused and his eyes narrowed. “The mystery is that she hadn’t lost a great deal of blood yet and she was still warm. In fact the wounds were quite shallow. She should have been alive.”

Lorlen absorbed this. “The blade might have been poisoned.”

“We’ve been considering the possibility, but if that’s the case, then it must be a subtle poison we’ve never heard of. All poisons leave signs, even if the damage is only visible in the internal organs. We found no weapon, which might have retained some residue, and that is strange in itself. If someone slashes their wrists, the implement they used is usually close by. We searched the house and found nothing but a few kitchen knives, which were clean and still in their box. She wasn’t strangled, either, from what we can tell. But there are other details which make me suspicious.

“I found footprints that didn’t match the shoes of any servants, friends or family. The intruder’s shoes were old and strangely shaped, so they left some distinctive markings. In the room where the woman was discovered, the window was unlocked and not quite closed. I found fingerprints and smudges on the sill that looked like dried blood, so I had another look at the body and discovered the same fingerprints on her wrists.”

“Hers?”

“No, the fingerprints were large. A man’s.”

“Someone tried to stop the bleeding, perhaps, then fled through the window when he heard others approaching?”

“Perhaps. But the window is three stories up and the wall is smooth and has few handholds. I don’t think even an experienced thief could have climbed down.”

“Were there any footprints below?”

The young man hesitated before answering. “When I went outside to inspect the ground I found the strangest thing.” Barran traced an arc in the air. “It was as though someone had flattened the dirt into a perfect circle. In the center were two footprints, the same as those in the room above, and others, leading away. I followed them, but they led onto pavement.”

Lorlen’s heart skipped a beat, then began to race. A perfect circle on the ground and a drop of three stories? To levitate, a magician must create a disk of power below his feet. It could leave a circular impression in soft soil or sand.

“Perhaps this imprint was already there,” Lorlen suggested.

Barran shrugged. “Or he used some kind of ladder with a circular base. It is a strange case. There were, however, no cuts on the woman’s shoulders so I don’t believe she was a victim of the serial murderer we’ve been looking for. No, that one hasn’t struck for a while, unless we simply haven’t heard—”

The chime of a gong interrupted them. Velia appeared in the doorway, holding a tiny gong and striker.

“Dinner is ready,” she announced. Rising, Lorlen and Barran started toward the dining room. She gave her son a hard look. “And there’ll be no talking about murders or suicides at my table! It’ll put the Administrator off his meal.”

Dannyl watched from the carriage windows, as the grand yellow stone buildings of Capia moved in and out of view. The sun was low in the sky, and the whole city seemed to glow with warm light. The streets were full of people and other carriages.

Each day and most evenings of the last three weeks he had been occupied with visiting or entertaining influential people, or helping Errend deal with ambassadorial business. He had met most of the Dems and Bels that frequented court. He had learned the personal history of every Guild magician living in Elyne. He had recorded the names of Elyne children with magical potential, answered or forwarded questions to the Guild from courtiers, negotiated the purchase of Elyne wines, and healed a servant who had burned himself in the Guild House kitchen.

That so much time had passed without a chance to begin Lorlen’s research worried him, so he resolved that the next time he had a few hours free he would visit the Great Library. A messenger sent to Tayend to ask if an evening visit was possible had returned with the assurance that he could explore the library at any time he wished, so when Dannyl learned that he would have this evening free, he had ordered an early meal and a carriage.

Unlike Imardin, Capia’s streets wound about in a haphazard way. The carriage zigzagged back and forth, occasionally rolling around the side of a steep hill. Mansions gave way to large houses, which were replaced by rows of small, neat buildings. A turn over a rise took Dannyl along the edge of a shabbier area. Wood and other, cruder, materials replaced yellow stone, and the men and women roaming the street wore coarser clothing. Though he saw nothing as confronting as the sights he had seen in the slums of Imardin while searching for Sonea, Dannyl was mildly dismayed. The face of Elyne’s capital city was so beautiful it was disappointing to find that it, too, had its poor area.

Leaving the houses behind, the carriage set out into rolling hills. Fields of tenn swayed in the slight breeze. Vare berry vines, planted in rows, hung full of fruit waiting to be harvested and then stored ready to make wine. Orchards of heavily laden pachi and piorre trees appeared here and there, some of the fruit being picked by teams of Vindo who travelled to Elyne each year for the work.

As the last rays of sunlight deepened from yellow to orange, and the carriage continued to roll farther away from the city, Dannyl grew concerned. Had the driver misunderstood his instruction? He lifted a hand to knock on the roof, then paused as the carriage turned around the foot of a hill.

Ahead, the dark ribbon that was the road curved to meet the base of a tall cliff. In the light of the setting sun, the yellow stone glowed as if a fire burned within. Shadows stood out starkly, marking straight edges, windows and arches of a towering facade that he recognized from sketches in books.

“The Great Library,” Dannyl murmured in wonder.

A huge doorway had been carved out of the cliff face, filled with a massive wooden door. As the carriage drew closer, Dannyl saw that a small square of darkness at the bottom edge was actually a man-sized doorway built within the larger door. A figure waited beside it.

Dannyl smiled as he saw the man’s bright clothing. He drummed his fingers on the window frame impatiently as the carriage slowly closed the distance to the library. As it pulled up before the facade, Tayend strode forward to open the carriage door.

“Welcome to the Great Library, Ambassador Dannyl,” he declared, bowing gracefully.

Dannyl looked up and shook his head in wonder. “I can remember seeing pictures of this in books when I was a novice. They don’t come close to showing what it’s really like. How old is it?”