Masques (15 page)

Wolf walked past that and took her into a smaller opening twenty paces farther along. As he entered the dark tunnel, the crystals on his staff began emitting a pale blue light. Aralorn hadn’t noticed that he was carrying the staff while they were walking, but she supposed that it was just part of being a mysterious mage . . . or maybe it was just Wolf.

“These caves would make a much better shelter than the tents. Why aren’t you using them?”

Wolf motioned to a small branch and halted her with a hand on her arm. He tilted the staff slightly until she realized that directly in front of them was a dark hole. “Aside from the problem of lighting them—which could be managed—there are several of these pits. That one goes down far enough to kill someone, and there are some holes deeper than that. If there were no children, you might risk it, but it’s too difficult to keep them from wandering. We are storing a lot of the supplies in a few caves near the surface, and I drew up a map for Myr of a section that is pretty isolated from the main cave system. If it becomes necessary to move the camp into the caves, we can. But it is safer in the valley.”

Aralorn looked at the blackness in front of them and nodded. She also stayed close to Wolf the rest of the way through the caves.

They came to a large chamber that he illuminated with a flick of a hand. The chamber was easily as spacious as the great hall in the ae’Magi’s castle. Carved into all the walls were shelves covered with books. Wooden bookcases were packed tightly with more books and stacked in rows with only a narrow walkway between them. Here and there were careful stacks of volumes waiting to find places on the crowded shelves.

Aralorn whistled softly. “I thought that Ren’s library was impressive. We’re going to read all of these?”

Wolf shrugged. “Unless we find something before we have to read them all.” As he spoke, he led her through one of the narrow pathways between bookcases to an open area occupied by a flat table that held an assortment of quills, ink, and paper. On either side of the table were small, padded benches.

Aralorn looked around, and asked, “Where do you want me to start?”

“I’ll take the grimoires. Normally, I know, you can tell if something is magic, but for your safety let me look at the books before you open them. There are spells to disguise the presence of magic, and some of the grimoires are set with traps for the unwary. I’d prefer not to spend valuable time trying to resurrect you,” he said.

“
Can
you resurrect people?” She kept her voice mildly curious though she’d never heard of such a thing actually happening. He’d brought all of this here from somewhere, just as he’d transported that merchant and the supplies. She was ready to believe he might bring people back from the dead.

“Let’s not find out,” he said dryly.

“So, what do I look for, I mean other than a book titled
Twenty-five Foolproof Ways to Destroy a Powerful and Evil Mage
?”

He gave a short laugh before he answered. “Look for the name of a mage who fought other mages. Some of these books go back a long ways, when dueling was allowed between mages. If I have a name, I might be able to find his grimoire. You also might note down any object that could be of use. Magical items are notoriously hard to find—even if they’re not the creation of some bard’s overactive imagination—and we don’t have the leisure time to go on a quest.”

She could go though the books methodically. Doubtless that was what Wolf was doing. But sometimes . . . She blew on her fingers and thought hard on how much a little luck right now would be of use. She didn’t pull more than a breath of magic for it—luck magic could backfire in unexpected ways. It was best to keep such things small. Then she walked to a random shelf and took out the first book that caught her eye. She ran her fingers lightly over the metallic binding of the book. Originally, it had been silver, but it had tarnished to a dull black.

She could read the title only because she once coaxed Ren into teaching her the words inscribed on the old wall mosaics in some of the older places in Sianim. Reluctantly, she put it away without opening it, knowing that it wouldn’t have anything of use. The people who used that language had disliked magic to such an extent that they burned the practitioners of it. They had been a trading people, and merchants in general were not overly fond of mages. She thought about the chubby merchant she’d seen in another cave and smiled; maybe merchants had good reason to dislike magic.

It took several more tries before she found a book that suited her and passed it by Wolf for inspection. He handed it back to her with a perfunctory nod and went back to his work.

This book was, in her estimation, about three hundred years old and told the history of a tribe of tinkers that used to roam the lands in great numbers. They were scarcer now and tended to keep to themselves. Whoever wrote the book she was reading still believed in the powers of the old gods, and he intermixed history and myth with a cynicism that she thoroughly enjoyed. Taking a piece of blank paper, she kept careful note of anything that might be potentially useful.

Her favorite was the story of the jealous chieftain whose wife was unfaithful. Frustrated, he visited the local hedgewitch, who gave him a fist-sized bronze statue of the demi-god Kinez the Faithful. When his wife kissed a man in its presence, it would come to life and kill the unlucky suitor. The chieftain had the statue placed in his wife’s wagon, and after several of her favorites died, she sinned no more. Or, noted the author of the book, at least she found another place to sin.

At last satisfied that his wife would be faithful, the chieftain entered her wagon to engage in his husbandly duties. He forgot to remove the statue first. His widow became chieftain, enjoyed her widowhood, and ruled for many prosperous years.

Wolf wondered why it was that mages had such wretched handwriting. The fine motor skills prerequisite to spellcasting should be reflected in decent writing: His own was very nearly flawless. He painstakingly cross-checked the word he was trying to decipher with several others to compare the letters. As he was writing the actual word neatly in the space above the original in case he ever had to read the book again, he heard Aralorn laugh softly.

Safe behind the mask, he smiled at the picture she made with her quill scritching frantically along the paper. Her handwriting wasn’t any better than what he’d just been attempting to read. The hand moving the quill was callused and ink-spattered. Ink also resided in blotchy patterns across her face where she’d pushed back her hair.

Reluctantly, he returned to his reading.

Aralorn finished her book and replaced the slender volume on its shelf. When she found another likely-looking candidate, Wolf was deeply engrossed in his grimoire, so she sat to wait.

“Wolf,” she said suddenly, startled by a strange thought.

He held up a hand to ask her to wait while he finished, which she did with some impatience. Finally, he looked up.

“What is the difference between standard and green magic to you? I have always been told that human mages draw the magic from themselves while green-magic users draw power from the outside world, but didn’t you say that the ae’Magi had found a way to link to outside power? That that’s how he manages to push his influence all the way out to Reth and Sianim? Does that make him a green mage, too? His magic doesn’t feel like green magic to me.”

In typical Wolf fashion, he started his answer with a question. “How much training have you had in magic?”

She grinned at him. “Not much. You mages are not especially open to sharing knowledge even among yourselves, and the shapeshifters are not exactly fascinated by intellectual pursuits. The only thing I know even about green magic is how to use it, and in that I’m by no means an expert. I spent enough time with my mother’s people to learn how to shapeshift and a few minor magics. I can feel the difference between the types of magic”—she put a fist against her heart—“here, but I don’t know exactly what it means.”

He grunted in acknowledgment and paused to choose his words. “I’ve heard that explanation, too. I would even venture that most mages believe it. That human magic is more powerful than green magic.” He tapped his fingers on the table a couple of times, which surprised her. He was so shut down, so self-controlled, that to see him make a movement for no other reason than that he was collecting his thoughts was unusual.

Finally, he said, “The Ancients believed magic existed in a secret pool in the castle of the goddess of nature, and she used this magic to make the seasons change and the grass grow. One day, a clever man found a way to steal some water out of the pool without the goddess’s knowing about it. He was the first human magician.

“Picture magic as a pool of raw, unshaped power that gradually seeps into the natural world to act as nature would have it—making the trees grow and the sun rise. My understanding of green magic is that it is the magic already harnessed by nature the green magician uses, persuading it with nudges here and there to take a different course. The magic that he uses is nature’s magic already shaped to a purpose. It is safer and perhaps easier to use, but it is not as flexible as the raw stuff.

“If you accept that story—even just as imagery—then normal . . .
human
magic . . .” He hesitated. “At least for most magicians, it works in steps. First, the human magician must tap into the magical pool. It is like drinking through a straw—when one runs out of breath, the liquid stops flowing. The magician then takes the raw power he has gathered and uses it to form a spell or pattern that he shapes himself. The more magic the magician can pull, the stronger he is, but he needs to know the patterns into which to shape the magic and begin the shaping immediately, while he is still drawing it out, so it doesn’t overwhelm him.”

He looked over her head. Aralorn took a quick look, too, but didn’t see anything that would hold his attention.

“If he cannot shape the magic, he must release it as raw power. Raw magic let loose in the world will take the form of fire and burn itself out. Few mages can call enough power that their uncontrolled magic will do much more than start a campfire. Because for most mages, it is the gathering of magic that is the most difficult. Containing it and making it follow one’s will is generally a matter of memorizing a spell or two, although a large amount of raw magic is more difficult to shape than a smaller amount.”

“Are you going to get kicked out of the secret society of mages for telling me all of this?” asked Aralorn, feeling a little breathless at the amount of knowledge he’d just given her.

“Secret society of mages?” His voice was amused, but it wasn’t happy. “If there were such a society, I ripped myself free of that a long time ago. Trust me, sharing a few stories is the least of my crimes.”

He looked down at the book in front of him, but she didn’t think he was reading it.

“The ae’Magi, powerful as he is, could not do
this
—” His whole body was tight, and he flung a hand outward—she supposed toward outside, though she’d have to think about it for a minute before she could be sure which direction was “outside.” “Could not take over the minds of a whole people without turning to older ways.”

“Older ways?”

He slumped, his hands petting the book as if it gave him comfort. “There is a lot of knowledge stored in the ae’Magi’s castle. They brought the things—books, artifacts, and the like—that could not be destroyed there, where they would be safely guarded against misuse. In the forbidden books, the ae’Magi found a way to leach energy so that he could use it to hold open the magical channels longer than he otherwise could have. He has greatly increased the amount of power that he can capture at any one time, making him stronger than any wizard living.”

She looked at him and thought again about Cain, the ae’Magi’s son. But the ae’Magi, by his actions, betrayed a lot of people. The personal knowledge that Wolf had could have come from any of the wizards who’d been close to the ae’Magi. One of his apprentices maybe. There were several who had “died” or disappeared five years or more ago—the study of magic at the higher levels wasn’t any safer than being a mercenary.