Тамора Пирс - Magic Steps

"Your grace, you know we can't allow that," Lark said gravely.

He looked up, and raised a finger. "Ah. You are powerful enough to stop me from tossing your council bodily into my harbor, but you tell me you cannot stop the Dihanur assassins and their mage. Can you see that I might feel somewhat—confused?"

Lark settled herself in a chair in front of Duke Vedris's desk. "You may as well get comfortable, dear," she advised Sandry. "He's going to be difficult." Sandry obeyed, taking the seat beside hers. To the duke Lark said, "We will do all we can—prepare the materials she needs, guard her and Pasco when the time comes, and dispose of what remains of the enemy's work. We won't send a fourteen-year-old girl and a twelve-year-old boy naked to do battle with a blighted mage."

"Strange," remarked Erdogun. He sat just behind the duke's chair. "That's what it sounds like to me."

Lark folded her hands. "You know I am classed as a great mage." The duke nodded. "I work spells by passing them through my thread. I must bind my power to real thread and whatever I use to handle it, or none of my spells work. That's true of every weaver-mage I know—except Sandry. She handles magic itself like I work thread. She can spin magic. She can weave it. She can embroider, or knot, or even tie a fringe with it, if she wants to—,"

"Lark," Sandry protested.

"No, my dear, it's important that people know how unique your gift is. In this case it's vital—I'd hate to have to fight the Dihanur mage and his grace."

The duke smiled, but his eyes were grim. "I'm honored that you would think the task difficult."

"But why?" Erdogun demanded. "You're a great mage—your fellows on the council are great mages, legendary for power and craft. You have an arsenal of capture-magics and spells to drain the power of other mages. Do you really expect us to believe you people can't take this—fellow—and turn him into a tea cozy, if that's your fancy? However powerful this madman may be, I do not believe that he can stand against all of you."

"But he can," Lark insisted. "The nature of his magic is the absence of ours, don't you see? We could grip him with all we have, and he would not only walk away, but his magic would consume ours. Sandry got a taste of that when the Dihanurs escaped. His unmagic almost pulled her into the door he'd opened."

"Then how will anything that my lady does trap him?" demanded Erdogun.

Sandry told the baron, "I'm going to spin his unmagic into a rope and knot it into a net. Then Pasco will dance the spell to bring the mage and the two killers to us. They won't be able to fight it, any of them, because they're all so tainted with the nothingness that it's like their own lifeblood. The unmagic net will pull them in."

"Once we have them, we can cleanse them," said Lark. "You'll have the killers for trial, and we'll keep the mage in custody. And it must be soon, before they can work their way through the layers of spells on the inner keep."

"What?" cried Erdogun, offended. "The inner keep is impregnable once the protective spells are activated!"

"It isn't impregnable to this mage, haven't you been listening?" Lark demanded. "Thank your lucky stars that he doesn't know the rooms where the families are kept, or he would simply walk through from where he's hiding now into those rooms. Once he tires of trying that, he'll just bring the Dihanurs here and send them through the spells. It may take them time to go through each and every layer—think of acid eating its way through a bolt of cloth—but eventually they'll get through."

"Are there are no spells against nothingness in the layers?" asked the duke quietly.

Lark shook her head. "To spell against it, you would have to use it—and then it would spread and eat all of the other spells." To Erdogun she said, "Must they break into this castle before you’re convinced?"

"They can’t," Erdogun said flatly. "You Winding Circle people are alarmists."

Someone hammered on the study floor. "Your grace! Your grace, please open up!"

Alzena was getting very tired of Duke Vedris. Putting all of the Rokats in one place for safekeeping should have been perfect for her and Nurhar, but this duke was an old fox who knew the ways of hunters. He had brought them into his own residence. Now they hid in the castle's very heart—a stone tower hundreds of years old, with more layers of spells to ward it than there were stars.

Why do this? Alzena wondered as she slid by the guards at the last gate to the duke's residence. Everyone knew Vedris only tolerated the Rokats for their myrrh. If he hated them, why bring them here?

She would kill him, when she was done with the Emelan Rokats—or she would if she wished. She cared about so little except that one goal, the end of these Rokats. The family had invested so much to send them here, the expense greater than that spent on the teams in any of the other Pebbled Sea countries. Jamar and Qasam had been the brothers of the Rokat who had killed Palaq Dihanur and displayed his heacbin dishonor; many of those now in the inner keep were the grandchildren of Jamar and Qasam Rokat. Their deaths came first; they had to. Only when the last Ernelan Rokat was dead could Alzena tell this duke what she thought of his interference.

The numbers of people in this Citadel were a nuisance, but only that. She simply had to be careful that no one blundered into her.

At first the palace spells were laughable, cobwebs against her face as she climbed the steps to the duke's residence, The main doors were closed and guarded. Alzena waited. Sooner or later they would open—as they did now. A woman, in servant's gray emerged, arguing with a pair of guards. Alzena slipped around them and, went inside.

Today was a scouting mission only with no palace maps; available for study one of them had to explore the place. Next time when they were ready to finish their work, Nurhar would come to help with the killing. It was time that he did. Even she would not be quick enough, to slaughter them all before someone thought to attack the place where she, might be, or to throw a net over her.

Alzena found her way by feel, choosing her direction by the number of cobweb-magics that brushed her as she walked. The thicker they felt, the closer she was to her quarry. On she trudged, eyes straining as she peered through the slit in her spell-mask. The feel of cobwebs got heavier; it took more and more effort to walk through them. The very air gained weight, until she could manage just one labored step at a time.

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 barricade 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.