Eric Flint - The Shadow of the Lion

Sophia had decided?and told him?that he must have some powerful enemy in the city to have earned such treatment, and he had caught fear from her. For the longest time he hadn't wanted to know; it seemed safer when he didn't. And he particularly didn't want to use magic. Sophia had told him that magicians could tell where other magicians were using magic, and even who it was that was doing it?as if there would be any other magician in the Jesolo!

But when nothing happened, and no one came seeking him, then he dared, a little at a time. He dared first a little magic, a very little magic, something that he remembered bits of, that Sophia knew bits of, to call the undines to him. And it worked; they came out of friendship more than anything else, but stayed because he could feed them tidbits of power out of his own stores. It was the undines who came often enough for his tidbits and stayed to chase fish into his traps. It was the undines, also, who frightened the locos sufficiently, with their clawed hands and shark-tooth smiles, that he and Sophia were left unmolested. They could even, at need, make dangerous locos like the late Big Gianni feel threatened enough that he could have made Big Gianni back off from Marco if he'd been there when it needed doing.

And finally he tried getting those memories back of who, exactly, Dottore Marina was, and what he could do.

"Here," Sophia said, nudging him. "Better eat."

He accepted the piece of grilled fish from her and ate it mechanically.

It was a good thing that it was the memories of danger that came back first, and not the ones he had just gotten over the last few days, or his enemies would have surely found him. Someone had paid for very, very skilled bravos, dressed head-to-foot in fine chain mail, to ambush him within the Accademia itself. His defensive magics, the ones he could do without thinking, had all been of the sort to use against another mage or a creature of magic. When striking cold steel, they had fizzled and died, like a wet firework. That was all he remembered; the blow to his head that must have followed blanked out everything else.

For a while at least.

He had struggled since then, trying to put a face on the faceless enemy. Who could have hired these men? Obviously someone conversant enough with magic to know exactly how to disable a Magister Magus, a Grimas, a master of all three of the stregheria traditions. He had enemies, but none that virulent. Some were political; he was?had been?the spokesperson, not only for the Strega but also the rest of the non-Christian mages, the Jews and Moslems and that bizarre little fellow allegedly from the Qin empire. He had managed to get a single voice out of that chaos of conflicting personalities, even though for the most part it was like trying to herd cats and just as thankless a task. But the Strega were little more than an afterthought in the politics of Venice; he couldn't think of anyone who would consider him a political threat.

What did that leave? A mystery, a faceless threat, and somehow that unnerved him, unmanned him, and left him determined to hide out here and depend on no more than the little dribs and drabs of magic it took to just stay alive.

But then that poor child had shown up, running from faceless enemies himself, men who had killed his mother. And on him, guiding him?the Lion's Shadow, the sign that Chiano had not?then?recognized for what it was, because he himself was not aware that he was the wearer of the Winged Mantle. He only knew that Marco could be a magician if he chose, and through Marco, he himself could work the magic that would elevate life in the swamp above mere survival.

Until now. Until now…

Now he knew what he was?the force through which the Protector, the Soul of Venice could work, a Soul that went right back through the Romans and to the first Etruscan fishermen who had plied the Jesolo. The Soul that now took the shape of the Winged Lion of Saint Mark, but who was older than even Dottore Marina could guess. And the Shadow he had seen on young Marco was not just the shadow of potential power, it was the Shadow of the Lion, showing that Marco?if he lived, if he grew into and accepted his power?would be the next to wear the Winged Mantle. Marco might even?Chiano was not sure about this yet?be the first to assume the Lion's Crown as well, something which no one had done in centuries.

Now he knew why he had lived?because the Shadow had dispersed his attackers with the brush of its wings that called up terror, and called the undines up the canal to rescue him before the assassins could complete their business. Because the Shadow had told the undines to take him to Sophia, deep into the Jesolo, where he could live and regain his memories.

But there was no reason to follow Marco into the city, to go back. Was there? The boy had Harrow to protect him. He didn't need Chiano, nor did anyone else.

Except?

Except for the stories that came drifting into the Jesolo like mist, like the echoes of bells from the city, the stories that spoke of the sinister and cruel acts of the Servants of the Trinity?

Who would burn you, if they could take you, Chiano?

And of a monster who prowled the waterways and killed?

And what business is that of yours?

The shadow of wings brushed through his mind, reminding him that?yes, it was his business. It threatened the city. It was not just politics, but evil, that had sent him into the canal that night, not merely to serve as a warning to those who might think to challenge it but to rid the city of its protector.

Dottore Marina would have scoffed and taken up the gauntlet. Chiano had come too close to death. Chiano was afraid.

The truth is?

The truth was, he didn't know enough.

That's easily remedied, some small inner voice told him. He sighed. Yes, it was?except he was afraid of the remedy.

No more softness!

He stood up abruptly, and jumped down off the raft. It was not quite sunset; there was still time for magic. Sophia paid no attention. By now, she was used to the way he would just get up and go off somewhere without a word.

Sophia was more than a little loco herself. Odd behavior meant little or nothing to her.

There were places, even in the Jesolo, where there was pure water. Springs bubbled up from beneath the marsh, rainwater collected?you could find it, if you knew where to look. Anyone who was friend to the undines could find it without difficulty at all.

It had rained last night. Chiano waded out onto a thread of a path that took him to a place among the hummocks where he had left a bowl to collect water. It would be fresh and sweet and pure?exactly what he needed for scrying, since he would use something other than the stregheria rite, which would surely pinpoint him to anyone who was looking for him.

Dottore Marina did not need to go through an elaborate ritual to invoke and erect a Circle of Power and Protection anymore; he just thought a few key words, and it sprang up around him. Invisible to most eyes, and only barely visible to those with the Inner Sight, it ringed him with the Inner Fires that would screen his probing from those watching for magic. Holding his hands over the bowl of pure water as he squatted beside it in the dying light of day, he breathed another invocation, and watched patiently. As the last of the sun vanished, and the first rays of the moon touched the surface, it misted over, then cleared, showing him the once-familiar canals and walkways of his city.

Show me the threat, he commanded silently. Show me the peril to my city.

He had hoped to see nothing. But the water misted and cleared immediately, and showed him, in rapid succession?a voluptuous woman with red-gold hair?

Lucrezia Brunelli? ?her brother, Ricardo? ?a sour-faced, fanatic-eyed man in a cassock with three crosses emblazoned on it?