Dust and Light (30 page)

Floating idly on the water, I propelled myself about the pool’s periphery, occasionally ducking my head under as if trying to examine the chipped mosaic that lined its walls. Never did my right hand leave the wall, however, and I linked spellwork to the boundary I traced.

When the circuit was complete, I lunged onto the verge. Water cascaded onto the floor as Herai brought lengths of linen to dry me. Bidding him wait, I circled the chamber, making reverence before each of the four ugly statues that occupied the corners, as if I knew what nymph or godlet each one represented. At one of the female sculptures, my pious touch lasted a bit longer, and I infused the thing with another spell.

Beside another statue, in the very place where Gab, the sweeping girl, had spied on my ablutions, I touched my head to the floor as if to offer prayers. I swept up a pile of stone dust and infused it with the aerogen web I had created in the Tower cellar.

When all was ready, I leapt to my feet.

“Sweet youth, truly our goddess moves in me!” Breathing rapidly, I returned to Herai, while triggering a simple spell called an excitement, another favorite among pureblood children. Orange sparks should be visible in my eyes, my cheeks should display a heated flush, and my hair should be writhing in wet curls. “I must to the caldarium . . . now!”

Though his eyes grew huge as blue plates, Herai kept wit enough to escort me down the steps to the hot pool. “What should I—?”

I plunged into the scalding water, diving deep to its center. A touch linked my grandest spell to this pool—an illusion more complicated than the knife-and-pen illusion in the hirudo, but no more difficult.

Now to set things in motion. Noise, illusions, some smoke, and a void hole would have to do. I had to save true power for my bent.

My body pulsed with red and purple light as I rose screaming from the water. “She comes! Tell them all! The goddess comes in triumph and wrath!”

As I staggered forward, Herai retreated up the steps toward the tepidarium. “
Domé
, what’s happening to you?”

Sparks flew from my spread arms. Growls and rumbles beneath my bare feet sounded as if the foundation of the temple crumbled. “Hurry! Gather her worshippers! The lady comes to greet us, to warn us, to punish.”

I shrieked and spasmed as the steam swirled into cyclones and the screen of illusion took hold around me. My body would appear to swell. Blood would drip from my swollen flesh as purple fire appeared in the splitting seams of my skin. Bastien had said it was quite disturbing.

“Bring them all!” I cried. “She wants her children here—priestess and sweeping girl, Seeker and servant, initiate, attendant, cook—every soul who bides here this hour, else she will open the earth and swallow this house!”

Move, fool of a boy!

“Hurry! She has sanctified me to be her passage, the coals of her fire. Bring them. She must not . . . must not come to an empty—”

A scream I considered nicely bloodcurdling at last dislodged Herai from his paralysis.

The instant he vanished into the passage, I sped to the changing room, grabbed my undertunic from the clothes chest, and threw it over my nakedness. I had only moments. Still emitting bleats and shrieks, I rummaged deeper and found the tight bundle Garen had smuggled in under his own cloak. A small sack, a coarse shirt, and black hose.
Good lad—every bit what Bastien said of you.
Alas, the boots that were better than my own had to stay with the other things, to bear witness to my miraculous vanishing. Should anyone come investigating, naught must connect either the clothes or the ephemeral magic to Lucian de Remeni, closely confined in Necropolis Caton.

Back to the baths under cover of cloud cyclones and lightning. A touch
triggered the voiding spell I’d laid on the tepidarium pool. Water and mosaic floor vanished, leaving an empty dirt hole. A touch of the floor here and there left jagged cracks.

To the caldarium and set an illusion of the hot pool bubbling. Unfortunately I didn’t know how to heat the water to boil of itself.

To the corner statue and trigger the inflation spell to gradual increase and install the small illusion of Arrosa’s silver crescent moon above the statue’s ugly head.

Voices and footsteps echoed from the main passage and the upward stair from the caldarium.

“Corruption! Sin!” Punctuating my bellowing with an agonized cry, I dumped Garen’s little sack of ashes on the top step and set a small whirlwind of true flame atop it. Then I snatched up a towel and ducked behind the statue nearest the changing room, waiting, hidden, as Arrosa’s devotees flocked into the tepidarium.

Gasps and murmurs swelled into a terrified babble. Cries to kneel, to stay back. A rising chant to the glories of the goddess, sweet voices in unison. Good. Priestesses had arrived.

I twisted my fist. The blinding sunburst from the face of the illusory goddess lit the chamber as if the sun had exploded.

Frenzied babble burst out afresh. In the dazzle, none should notice my inflated statue’s faded paint . . . or me, as I slipped from my hiding place, the length of linen wrapped about my head and shoulders, as if I’d just come from one of the common baths. The enchanted stone dust was tucked safely in my hand.

Seventy or more. Priestesses, silk-gowned initiates, half-dressed bathers, gawping sweeping girls, and sweating cooks. Gab’s little face lit in wonder at the display; I believed she would welcome what I was going to show. I shaded my eyes and craned my neck to see, as if the spectacle was not already engraved on my mind. One person was yet missing.

“Quiet, my children. Let me pass.”

The mellow voice halted the chanting. The wails were muffled. High Priestess Irinyi’s cloud of wheat-colored hair was just visible across the sea of heads. Bodies pressed me back toward the wall as the crowd parted to let her through.

Flush with satisfaction, I whispered,
“Snatchit
,
”
feeding the word with magic. Goddess grant that Garen was listening . . . and careful.

Irinyi faced the spelled statue, now grown near ceiling height, across the voided pool. Her slender arms rose in supplication. “Divine Arrosa, speak your will! We are your handmaidens, your worshippers, your servants. Tell us the meaning of this apparition.”

The crowd shifted uneasily. Unfortunately, a simple inflation as I had put on the statue allowed for no animation. I didn’t know how to make the illusory goddess speak or smile or frown. The lightning and swirling clouds would have to disguise the rigid expression. I poked a little more magic into the thunder spell, as well, and flashed colored beams from the statue’s empty eyes.

Irinyi spilled out prayers. When no answer came, she spun to face the crowd. Even from across the chamber, her painted eyes glared sharp.

“What’s happened here?” The high priestess did not sound afraid, nor was she even so reverent as one might think before such a manifestation. Worrisome. But I needed to get on with things.

As the crowd shouted,
“The goddess . . . Pool vanished . . . Earthshaking . . . Fire. Terrible screams. Lightning and blood . . .”
I slipped backward and sidewise toward the lattice wall. Soon no one stood behind me.

“Hush, all of you!” Irinyi’s command could have shattered crystal. “Did anyone witness its beginning? The
goddess
does not visit empty chambers.”

“I, Sinduria.” The pale-haired Herai stepped forward, his voice trembling. “It was the pureblood from Cymra at his devotions. His flesh swelled and split . . . his body burned from the inside . . . just there.” He pointed to the pile of smoldering ash. “He spoke of prophecy, mistress. Of Arrosa Triumphant. He said the goddess was coming to punish corruption in her house.”

Every eye was on Irinyi and the hovering apparition behind her—not on me. So I flung the dust high and infused the aerogen enchantment with magic.

Gasps filled the air as the dust formed into rings, sparking in the torchlight like black diamonds. Then I released the last illusion I’d hidden in the hot pool, the livid clouds that showed a child bent over the tepidarium pool, a cloaked figure blacking her hair.

Screams and pointing spun Irinyi about, where she could see the illusion as well. Another burst of light from the hovering goddess, and black dust began to shower down onto the crowd. Every person in the chamber
stood transfixed, the high priestess at the front of them. The vile Motre Varouna, priestess and procuress, slumped to her knees just in front of me. I hoped the sight burnt holes in her eyes.

“
Grabbed!
” Garen’s voice, straight into my ear.

No time for relief. My every scrap of wit was engaged with the magic. Laying a hand on a post supporting the latticework, I diverted all my power into a last enchantment.

A howling whirlwind snuffed every torch, candle, and lamp. Lightning and colored beams winked out. The private bath chambers of the purebloods were as dark as Caton’s tombs.

The mob surged with the force of a sea tide. Wails and screams tangled with grunts and moans. Groping through the doorway at my back, I shoved the painted clothes chest to block any escape through the changing room, then fled blind into the steamy passages.

F
lame bowls and lamps yet blazed in the temple proper. The halls and stairs appeared deserted, as we’d planned. How long would it take for others to find their way out through the main passage or the caldarium stair? The cracks in the floor, one pool a gaping void and the other seemingly aboil, the noise and panic and the ever-present fear of encountering the angry goddess should grant me half an hour at the least. Lacking magic to feed them, the spells I’d used would slowly fade: the illusions and inflation going first, the void hole last. The dark would be gone as soon as someone had the wit to relight the lamps.

Half-dizzy with apprehension and heady magic, I raced up the stair and into the priestesses’ household. Garen waited in the antechamber where I had first met the high priestess. The painted panel that led into Irinyi’s private rooms stood open, her wall-sized scroll case in clear view.

Garen’s glance darted from the outer door to the inner. “Sorry if I took too—”

“You did well,” I said, snatching the scroll from his hand and spreading it on the floor. My false signature glared at me from the bottom of it. “Close the panel all but a crack and keep eyes and ears sharp. Lay a hand on my shoulder if you hear anyone coming.”

Kneeling beside the spread parchment, I swept aside the scraps of common spellwork that lingered in my head like bones on a platter. My back prickled as if a spear were aimed at it; discipline banished that, too. With a quiet invocation, my fiery bent flooded through vein and sinew.

This artifact of vellum and ink, intent and contract—the false pledge I had signed to give a phantom child into corruption—was a gateway to the murderer’s identity. Gab’s Bear Lord with Shiny Boots had signed a document just like it when he left Fleure in Irinyi’s grasp. I trusted this page to trigger my bent, allowing me to follow the threads of history to the scroll with the murderer’s name and seal. Once we had that, we could run.

As the power in my hands built, I raised images of Irinyi’s painted eyes, of a girl child with fair hair and rosy skin, of golden curls hacked off and left on the floor, of polished black boots and wide hands throttling a slender neck.

I set urgency aside, and only when my hands quivered with magic did I touch the scroll and let it flow. . . .

Flashes of candlelight . . . Smooth pale vellum . . . the seal of the temple. A walk down the steamy passages behind the mincing steps of Motre Varouna . . . divine terror, laced with the dizzying sweetness of moonflowers. The baths . . . busy with men . . . with women . . . oiling coarse skin . . .

No, I wasn’t interested in the baths, certainly not the common baths. Fleure would have been kept back for the Pools of the Illustrious or, gods forbid, purebloods. I wanted to see the children, the contracts, the words. High Priestess Irinyi, who negotiated those most special contracts, wore amethyst rings. I searched for hands writing. . . .

Hard, thin hands; soft, plump hands; scarred hands; men’s, women’s, one and then another . . .
vanishing as quickly as they manifested. But one ivory hand appeared repeatedly, adorned with rings of pearl and amethyst. I grasped that image and hunted the blooming child of Fleure’s first portrait.

Images grown from my bent cascaded through my inner sight:
Sadness and terror, a blur of faces flushed with holy fervor, stained with tears. A small voice wailed, “Don’t leave me!”

Not that one. Fleure would not have cried out after the man she feared.

Another child, another. There!
Eyes as bleak as winter sky. Older than her tender years. She knew what was coming. Royal children learned early how things were done.

“Voices in the passage,
domé
.” A hissing Garen heralded the real world.

But I clung to the magic. Weave the other threads:
the parchment, the amethyst rings. A man’s thick hand, black hair on its back, scribbled on a vellum sheet. . . .

Garen gripped my shoulder.

“A moment,” I whispered, and squeezed my own eyes tight so as not to lose the fading image. We were so close.

The handwriting blurred.
A gigantic, dark-furred beast—a monstrous bear bellowing rage rose on its hind legs. A gold collar circled its huge, stretched neck, and its great teeth were lancets and steel axe heads.
 . . .

No, no, a big, hairy man had killed her, not an actual bear! I ripped the bestial image aside. If I could see the devil’s name, we’d not need to locate the scroll.

The hairy hand had vanished, as the fingers ringed in amethysts rolled the page, tied it with a ribbon, and stuffed it into the scroll case.

That would have to do. “Fifth row from the bottom of the case,” I whispered, counting, “ten, eleven,
twelve
slots from the right. Get it!”

But as I shook off the vision, the earth jerked and wobbled. My head flopped forward and my legs slid across the stone.

“Shhh!” Garen shoved me into the space between the end of the banquette and the wall, kicked my feet close, and pressed my head to my knees. The document and its ribbon tie landed on top of me, followed by a heavy blanket of musty wool—or Garen’s cloak? Another soft
plop
on top could only be a cushion from the banquette.

“Who are you? What business have you in the high priestess’s quarters?” The man’s rumbling challenge pounded the air.

I dared not breathe.

“I am the servant of
Domé
Etan de Serrano-Pristé of Cymra.” Garen’s muffled voice sounded respectful but not servile. Urgent but not panicked. “A youth rousted me and others in the servants’ waiting room, saying we were commanded by the goddess to go down to the baths. I could not, as my master had instructed me to await him in the servants’ room. But when I heard the terrible screaming from below, I feared some disaster. And where should I inquire about one of the gods’ chosen, save the most noble quarters in the temple? Please to tell me, sir, where I may rejoin my master.”

“The Cymran pureblood! What was his purpose here?”
Damnation!
Irinyi was here already, voice brimming with suspicion. Had my enchantments been so transparently false?

“Surely all who come to this holy place are pursuing devotions to the goddess, my lady. . . .”

No, no, Garen. Do not tease her. You are not Bastien.

“But of course, I cannot discuss my master’s business.”

“I am a Sinduria of the Elder Gods,” snapped Irinyi. “Your master has blasphemed! A Registry spy, isn’t he? I was warned about him. What does he think to learn here?”

Warned?
Who believed the
Registry
had any interest here?

“The law forbids— Ungh!” A grunt punctuated Garen’s answer.
Gods!

“Show some respect, belly crawler.”

“Answer the high priestess,” growled a second man.

If these were the thick-shouldered, well-armed bodyguards I’d noted on my first visit, even Garen and I together would never take them, not without magic. I crushed the stolen document and stuffed it under the lacings of my hose, then scrabbled through ideas—illusions, diversions, anything useful. I needed to be fast but not stupid.

“My apologies to the most excellent Sinduria, but I am not permitted—” Garen’s unrepentant declaration dissolved into a choking gargle.

My own throat knotted.
Think, Lucian!

“Sarat!” The high priestess’s fury crackled. “Fetch the duc! Tell him we’re holding one of our violators. Fal, remove this insolent vermin to the inner chamber and teach him reverence.”

From the furious grunts, hammering feet, and sharp blows, Garen did not go easily. The panel to the inner chamber snicked shut. I had to get him out of there. Where was the priestess?

A muffled yell filtered through the layers of wall and cloak. A heavy thud shuddered the painted panels behind me. Unintelligible words rumbled. Another yell. And then another, louder, filled with pain.

I dragged my hands out from under my chest, ready to plow a fist into the wall if I could devise no better. The scuff of a slipper paralyzed me. Irinyi was still here.

Garen screamed in agony. I dared not wait.

The outer door was directly across the chamber from the banquette. I constructed an imaginary path from the exquisitely detailed stone frieze above the door to the cushioned bench, and then along the bench to my hand that rested on its painted surface. That line could serve as a conduit allowing me to feed a simple enchantment into the depiction of Arrosa’s gardens. Thank all gods the room was small; such extensions drain a sorcerer’s power like children devour sweets. A simple noise would be the least taxing.

As Garen’s awful cry died away, I forced myself still. Silk brushed the floor, taking up a quiet ebb and flow. The priestess was pacing. Agitated.

When she was some halfway through her circular path, I released magic.

As the thunder of gushing water spilled from the direction of the door, I threw off my coverlet, lurched forward, and grabbed the distracted priestess from the back, covering her mouth and wrapping her arms beneath my own. She was tall for a woman and fierce, but thin and older and surely unaccustomed to an angry attacker. In moments I had her subdued. My bare foot kicked open the painted panel.

Garen lay face down on the floor beside the scroll case. The sight of his back, flesh striped with gore, did naught to make me gentle.

“Throw down the cane or I break this creature’s neck.” I growled and jerked tighter. As I linked a light spell to Irinyi’s bead collar, my grasping fingers detected an unmistakable shape at her waist. The goddess of love’s high priestess carried a dagger sheathed inside her gown.

Irinyi bucked and sank her teeth in my arm. As if on signal, the snarling thug brandished the bloody cane and lunged.

White-hot fire scored my cheek. I triggered the enchantment, and scarlet light beams blazed into the man’s eyes.

“Up, friend, or die!” I yelled, shoving the priestess into her bellowing guard. Her blade remained in my hand. As priestess and guard stumbled backward, I swept a circle with my foot, crouched beside it, and laid my hand on the boundary. But before I could seal a void ring between us and our attackers, my magic sputtered and failed.

The roaring guard shoved Irinyi aside and rushed me again. I lumbered to my feet. Bereft of power, I swept Irinyi’s knife across his path and struck flesh. Blood spurted across my arm as he dropped to his knees, his bellow reduced to gurgling dismay. The knife hilt slipped from my hand.

The guard toppled, blood gushing from a yawning wound in his neck.

“Murderer!” screamed Irinyi from somewhere beyond the fading scarlet glare.

Garen, head drooping, had made it to hands and knees. I heaved him up and dragged him through the panel door. Propping him against the wall, I shoved the heavy banquette across the broken panel to block the way. Irinyi screeched like a trapped wildcat.

“Hold on.” I grabbed the wool cloak and threw it around Garen, and we staggered into the passage. Irinyi’s screaming would draw a swarm of soldiers and servants up the atrium stair. I’d no choice but to retreat deeper into the household.

Doorways gaped on either side of the passage, some lit, most dark, all deserted. I picked a dark room at random. Spilled light from the passage revealed a barren little cell, a washing bowl and pallet with a thin pillow and a crumpled blanket its only furnishing.

We huddled in a corner hidden from any random glance through the doorway. Surely no one would imagine thieves hiding so close. Surely.

Footsteps raced down the passage, past the doorway, back again. Garen shook, his breathing erratic and tight between his teeth. The heavy cloak of scratchy wool must be torment on his lacerated back. Still we waited.

Shouts echoed, then faded into the quiet.

“Stay,” I whispered, and crept across the room to fetch the blanket. But first . . . my bloody hand trembled as I scrubbed at it with the bedsheet. My jaw clamped hard, muzzling my rising gorge. I had never struck a wounding blow, never torn living human flesh. These hands were made to channel the gods’ magic, not pain and ending.

The passage fell quiet. That wouldn’t last forever, not when they hunted a murderer. Certainly not long enough for me to reclaim power for substantial magic. My spirit felt as empty as a dry waterskin.

Blanket in hand, I slipped back to Garen, catching him as he crumpled. “We’re going to walk out of here now,” I said. “Bold as brass down the stair and out the front gate, just as we planned.”

Draped in blanket and cloak, we stumbled down the deserted passage to the top of the great stair. My intent to pass us off as two Seekers caught in the chaos of the baths was quickly proved idiocy. The atrium teemed with shouting, bedraggled people, surrounded by armed temple guards and other, more dangerous-looking warriors in black leathers—all with drawn swords. By my estimate every one of the seventy-odd occupants and visitors at the temple had been herded into the circle of soldiers.

A blood-drenched Irinyi watched over the chaos from halfway down the stair. A slender, bearded nobleman wearing a tabard of purple and gold—Ardran court colors—and a pectoral chain heavy with sapphires, stood at her side. Irinyi’s duc, no doubt. He wasn’t the murderer; Gab had described a big, hairy man. But the presence of a duc boded ill if we were caught. In the absence of an anointed king, a duc could interpret the Writ of Balance. He could condemn Garen and his pureblood master of violating the barriers between Registry and Temple—a crime much worse than simple burglary.

“They’re questioning everyone,” Garen wheezed. No one, whether initiate, Seeker, or servant, was leaving the atrium without challenge.

“Aye. And that fellow holding my boots knows my face. . . .”

A few steps below the priestess the bath attendant, Herai, clutched a wad of puce and pea-green brocade and my borrowed boots. We dared not go down. But not ten steps behind us gaped the archway leading to the sloping passage to the baths.

“But all’s well. I know another way out.”

T
he Pools of the Gods’
Chosen were deserted. Half the torches were relit, and the tepidarium pool was no longer a void. One of the statues had toppled and lay in three pieces. Only a few cracks remained in the floor, but the tiles were littered with broken glass and puddled water, mud, and oil. The scent of ephrain near choked me. Garen leaned heavy on my arm.