Beynor had expected Vra-Kilian’s ancient treatises to provide the key to the Unknown’s mysteries, as well as more information on the powers of the other Great Stones; but that hope had been dashed, at least for the foreseeable future, by the Royal Alchymist’s downfall.
The boy-king had also abandoned any notion that the exiled Cathran magicker might be compelled to share Darasilo’s trove of sigils with him. He now prayed with all his heart and soul that Kilian had managed to hide the stones in a secure place before being captured and windsilenced. If Prince Conrig got his hands on the sigils and somehow empowered them, he’d become the true Emperor of the World.
And tiny Moss’s saucy young ruler would be lucky to escape into the fens with a whole skin, to seek sanctuary among his Salka friends…
Reverently, Beynor lifted the inactive sigils from their velvet nests and set them on the table. Destroyer was rod-shaped, almost like a stubby wand with a drilled perforation at one end; it was incised with the phases of the changeable Moon. The Unknown Potency had the strangest form of all the collection, a kind of twisted ribbon of thin, delicately wrought stone that resembled a figure eight. The symbols engraved on it were so minuscule that they were almost imperceptible to the strongest magnifying glass, and their meaning was a mystery. As he had often done before, Beynor ran one of his slender fingers along the ribbon’s cool surface. In some miraculous way, he was able to caress both sides continuously without let or hindrance, as though the thing had only one surface with no beginning or end. The ribbon had but a single edge as well.
Destroyer and the Unknown Potency. Either one of them could be the key to solving his dilemma… or the instrument of his destruction.
Earlier, when the seriousness of Ulla’s threat to him had finally sunk in, he had sought counsel from those aloof Salka shamans in the Dawntide Isles who had been cronies of his crackbrained father. After all, their ancestors had created the stones, and some of the monsters were even old enough to remember dealing with Rothbannon. But Kalawnn, the Master Shaman, had only laughed at Beynor’s plea for advice and told him to grow up a bit before messing about with high sorcery.
Arrogant troll!
The Salka of the Darkling Sands, who had so fortuitously befriended him when he was a foolish child in imminent danger of drowning in a flood tide, and had even encouraged him to empower Rothbannon’s lesser sigils, could tell Beynor nothing about the nature of the two inactive Great Stones. Such important matters were beyond their simple ken, and they feared even to discuss them.
Beynor had even considered seeking help from his paternal aunt, the sorceress Thalassa Dru, who dwelt far to the west in the high mountains along the disputed borderlands of Didion and Tarn. She had a reputation for great wisdom, and Conjure-King Linndal had lately claimed that the long estrangement between the two of them had been mended. Thalassa had even agreed to take charge of troublesome Ullanoth and see that the girl never returned to Moss again.
But what if the sly old witch had only feigned a reconciliation with the king in order to rescue her niece from an increasingly difficult home situation? Would Thalassa be sympathetic to Beynor’s quandary concerning the Great Stones, or would she side with Ullanoth for reasons of her own and play some perfidious trick on him?
In the end, he’d decided not to windspeak his problematical aunt, going instead to the two high officials of the Glaumerie Guild who had tacitly approved his magical experiments from the first, Master Ridcanndal and Lady Zimroth. They had advised him as best they could.
He stared now at the inactive sigils before him, milky-translucent and compelling. Which one would enable him to dispose of his sister once and for all, no matter how many stones of her own she had squirreled away? (The astonishment and intimidation of Didion by the new stone’s sorcery would be a mere bonus.)
He picked up the wand called Destroyer.
When he had discussed his problem with Ridcanndal and Zimroth, they had both urged him to activate this sigil. Rothbannon had utilized it to secure his new kingdom, and by itself, it might very well enable Moss to conquer all of High Blenholme. But the first Conjure-King had been extremely circumspect in wielding this particular stone; and when he brought it to life he was a profoundly experienced sorcerer who had dealt successfully with the Beaconfolk for many years.
Beynor knew he was nothing of the sort.
Furthermore, Guild Master Ridcanndal and High Thaumaturge Zimroth were not the ones who would have to endure the mind-draining agony that Destroyer inflicted on its conjurer. King Linndal had confided to Beynor that the stone had wreaked terrible physical and spiritual damage upon Queen Taspiroth when she botched its use eleven years earlier. The king blamed the sigil for sending his wife to the Hell of Lights after two weeks of unspeakable torture. She had been only three-and-twenty years old.
Beynor had been a child of five when it happened. He only remembered his mother as a remote and beautiful woman with burning eyes and a braid of fair hair coiled at the base of her neck, who never had time to cuddle him or play magical games as dear old Lady Zimroth did. The death of the Conjure-Queen hadn’t saddened the little prince much. He’d been rather glad that his big sister Ullanoth was so prostrate with grief that she forgot about tormenting him during the months that followed.
Father, on the other hand, during his interludes of sanity, seemed to discover for the first time that he had a son…
Beynor replaced Destroyer and picked up the Unknown Potency, the sigil neither the Salka nor Rothbannon had dared to empower.
Might it combine the powers of all the other sigils into one? Would it convert dross into gold? Would it make its owner supremely intelligent? Might it change the dreary clime of Moss into paradise, or cause all enemies to bend servile necks to the wielder’s foot? Could it grant any wish—-transforming that she-demon Ullanoth into a tiny swamp vole he might drown in a slop bucket? Or was its magical action so rarefied and esoteric that only some scholarly armchair-thaumaturge would find any use for it?
The only way one could find out was to activate the Unknown Potency and beg the Great Lights to explain how it worked. After enduring the terrible pain of the empowerment, he’d have to risk his life and mind questioning the capricious sky-beings, who might only respond with riddles, or even torture him to death because of some fancied insult.
He put the Unknown back into its place.
In his frustration, Beynor cursed Deveron Austrey for depriving him of the small magical book that might have helped with the difficult decision. The Guild’s library had plenty of information about the lesser sigils, but almost nothing concerning the safe operation of the Great Stones. Sweat trickled from his scalp as his hand hovered again over the small, deceptively simple-looking wand named Destroyer. It was the undeniable instrument of triumph, but one that might also provoke the wrath of the Beaconfolk in some unimaginably horrible fashion.
“What shall I do?” he whispered. “Activate Destroyer and risk my mother’s fate? Or defy logic and common sense and empower the Unknown Potency itself?”
With time running out before he must greet his royal guests, he knew at last that he was going to do nothing. Along with the realization, a vast sense of relief welled up in him.
“I won’t bring either Great Stone to life,” he said to himself. “But not because I’m afraid. I’m a prudent man, one who doesn’t take unnecessary risks. If I choose not to empower one of these sigils now, it’s no discredit to me. I’m only exercising discretion, as a mature man should. Who knows what I’ll do in the future, when my situation changes?”
But the great predicament remained: Ullanoth barricaded in her tower, capable of anything.
If only he had more time! But he did not, and the truth of the matter was plain enough. There was no one to help and advise him: not his dead father, not the Guild officials, not impotent Kilian nor his mysterious aunt nor even the Salka. Beynor ash Linndal, Conjure-King of Moss, was alone on his throne, with no one but himself to rely on.
Abruptly, he began to laugh. He snatched Weathermaker from its nest, fitted it on his finger, then slammed shut the platinum case.
“I don’t need advice on choosing a new sigil!” Beynor cried aloud. The softly shining moonstone ring seemed to gleam more brightly in anticipation. “The stones I have already are sufficient for my needs—and I’ve just thought of how to use this one to finish off Ulla in fine style. And if the Diddly barbarians don’t appreciate my trick, then futter ‘em for having no sense of humor!”
Still giggling, he hung the sigils named Subtle Armor and Shapechanger around his neck by their golden chains, then began to put on the gem-encrusted garments and jewels laid out by his servitors for the welcoming festivities. When he’d finished dressing, his young frame was oppressively weighted down by the ceremonial regalia, so for the first time he decided he would not carry the additional burden of the heavy platinum case with its two inactive stones. They would be perfectly safe left in his bedchamber, guarded by the indomitable sigil named Fortress.
==========
“So your nerve did fail you at the end, little brother. And now, thanks be to the compassionate Moon Mother, I’ll live to bring you down!”
Ullanoth momentarily relinquished the sigil named Subtle Loophole with a sigh of relief, pressing her fingers to her throbbing temples. Five days earlier she had empowered the second of her Great Stones in order to spy on Beynor while he hid behind Fortress. An open triangle with a small handle attached, through which one peered, Loophole was capable of giving her a vision—with all sounds attending, as windsight could not—of anything or anyone, even those protected by the most powerful magic. The only things safe from its oversight were sigils, alive or dead. But in Beynor’s case, this mattered not. His own actions and his solitary mutterings had betrayed his fear of empowering another Great Stone.
Activating her own new sigil had sent Ullanoth reeling to her bed, afflicted by hideous dreams and an agony so unbearable she feared she would die of it. But she lived, and little by little the pain of empowerment abated, until on the third day she was able to rise and steal food, having become invisible, and begin her close surveillance of Beynor.
Ullanoth knew instinctively that either Destroyer or the Unknown Potency would be able to seek her out and obliterate her, wherever she tried to hide, so on each subsequent day of her recovery she watched her brother through the Loophole and listened to his fevered soliloquies until she could no longer stand the pain caused by the vision.
Today, with her strength almost restored, she had observed Beynor’s final vacillations, praying that he would be too spineless to empower either stone. That prayer had been answered.
Having rested briefly, she lifted Loophole to her eye again, and saw—
Oh, compassionate Moon Mother! Look what that young booby was doing!
If only she could act in time.
Beynor clearly intended to leave the platinum case, with the inactive Great Stones, behind in his rooms. Even now she saw him moving toward the outer door of his sitting room. Could she use his own natural talent, with him all unaware, to solidify her Sending?
She seized the sigils named Sender and Concealer from her purse, hung them about her neck on their chains, and ran to her slanted couch. A few moments later, after the brief explosion of pain that accompanied the speaking of the spell, she stood in her brother’s bedchamber, invisible, hearing the outer door slam behind the departing Conjure-King.
It had worked! His Fortress still glowed serenely, no barrier at all to a Sending. She opened the case and removed Destroyer and the Unknown Potency from their velvet nests.
But now what?
A Sending could carry things held or worn by the original body to its destination. It could not bring any new object back nor leave anything behind.
“I don’t want the awful things, anyway,” she said aloud. “It’s enough that he be deprived of them.”
She went to the ornate fireplace, unlit on this warm day, set the little moonstone carvings on the hearth, and picked up an iron poker in her invisible hand. Inactive, the sigils were mere pieces of mineral that could be battered to bits with impunity; empowered, the tiny wand called Destroyer was an appalling weapon, while the amazingly delicate twisted figure eight of the Unknown Potency was… who knew what?
Ullanoth hesitated. Some day, her hated brother would be gone from Royal Fenguard and she would be Conjure-Queen. Her mother had assured her of it. Like her ancestor Rothbannon, she intended to become a scholar of sorcery; but unlike him, she would have at her disposal all the arcane libraries of High Blenholme Island—most especially those rare tomes at Zeth Abbey so jealously sequestered by the Brethren. She’d compel Conrig to give her access to them, and perhaps—just perhaps—
Why not?
Destroyer, she felt, was too dangerous to play games with; but she lifted the Unknown, stepped into the cold fireplace, reached up the chimney, and pushed the damper-plate full open. Beyond it, up the flue, was a shelflike projection having a thick accumulation of ash and soot. The castle chimneys had not been cleaned in years. She pushed the little moonstone carving into the far corner of the shelf, burying it in the powdery stuff.
With luck, it would be waiting for her when she was ready to study it.
When she emerged from the fireplace, she was amused to discover that her dirtied hand was visible as a disembodied black wraith. Well, she’d lose the mess when she sent herself home…
The poker made short work of Destroyer. When the deadly wand was reduced to grit, she carefully swept all traces of it into the ashpit.
Then she Sent herself back to her own tower, leaving behind only a light sprinkling of soot on the bearskin carpet in front of the hearth—too fine to be seen but still capable of soiling the bare feet of anyone who chanced to step in it.
==========
Ullanoth returned to her own tower none too soon, for a quick glance out the window showed her that the Didionite royal flagship and its four escorting men o‘ war were already approaching their mooring out in the estuary. She would have to step lively in order to meet the arriving royals at the waterfront.