Authors: Carol Berg

Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Fantasy fiction

The Soul Mirror (32 page)

BOOK: The Soul Mirror

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I
WAS
PLEASED, I THOUGHT, late that night as I closed Eugenie’s bed curtains. Not merely for the selfish reason that I might learn more of Dante and Duplais and the murderous Antonia by orbiting the perilous sun that was Eugenie de Sylvae, but because the lady herself, open-hearted, loyal, and kind, deserved to have some ally beyond her foolish brother. Though Lord Ilario was not, perhaps, as inept as he appeared. The chevalier had gotten me into the Spindle within hours. And a single day after expressing his wish that Eugenie might listen to my warnings, I was her new maid of the bedchamber.

I finished tidying the room and tiptoed into the passage.

Lady Antonia had near split her skin when Eugenie informed her that I was to assume her bedchamber service. Antonia herself would take up Lady Cecile’s duties, training the maids of honor. A good thing I was already wary of the woman.

I paused at the door to Doorward Viggio’s chamber. Soft footsteps padded through the quiet apartments behind me. Thinking it might be Eugenie needing something, I retraced my steps.

Indeed she was up again and wearing the deep blue bedgown that flowed around her in elegant simplicity and set off her fair skin and dark hair. But she was not alone. The glow of the watch candle I’d left on her dressing table illuminated a romantic tableau, as a bearded man in voluminous scarlet sleeves kissed her hand. His out-of-fashion blue velvet chamarre fell to his knees, its lappets and hem banded richly with pearls. The elegant gentleman, the same I’d seen before, must have slipped up the servants’ stair.

Embarrassed, I retreated quickly. Her friends were her business.

FOUR CHAMBERMAIDS AND A FOOTMAN Stood in a whispering huddle at the corner of the passage where my bedchamber lay. Furtive glances my way seemed to intensify their murmuring. I almost reversed course rather than pass them by. But I was done with cowering. “Divine grace,” I said, exposing my hand as I passed.

Some choked the proper response. Two girls bobbed their knees. None looked at me.

Gratefully, I pulled the bedchamber door closed behind me and sank to the bed. Heart and mind whirled with the strange and terrible day just past: poisoning and death, the wonders of this tangle curse and the strange intimacy with a person I had never seen, the vile prospects of alliance with Derwin of Gurmeddion, the intrigue of my new position, the pleasant prospect of getting to know Ganet de Roussel, and my deep and abiding fear for my brother.

I pulled off the falcon’s head ring and tucked it away for the night with the potion vial. As the voices I’d held at bay—the
mindstorm
, my mysterious correspondent had called it—faded into the more familiar, subtle disturbance beyond my senses, I found myself sorely tempted to seek out the one who lived in the aether,
where the unseen energies of life are expended.
It was not so much that I could lay out the puzzle of poisons and pregnant queens, magical heresy, and ancient rivalries, but to hear a voice without suspicions, without connection to the tangled mysteries of Castelle Escalon, a person who could speak only truth and took such joy in sharing his strange gift.

Common sense scolded
.
Why would I believe his insistence that he could not lie?

No reason any sensible person would admit. But I did.

A booming staccato on my door propelled me to my feet. Before I could do more, the door burst open to a sour-mouthed, gray-haired fellow wearing a gray academic gown. Beside him stood a tall figure draped in flowing black robes. An enveloping green hood left only a raptor’s nose and pair of seedlike eyes exposed to view. A mage’s silver collar encircled his neck.

The gray-haired man waved a rolled parchment and shoved a heavy garment of dark wool into my arms. “Anne de Vernase ney Cazar, the Camarilla Magica summons thee to Witness in a matter of Treason and Sorcery.”

CHAPTER 18

19 OCET, NIGHT

S
uffocation had never been one of my terrors. Not until the Camarilla inquisitor dropped the hood of wool and iron over my face. My shoulders already bore the weight of a voluminous gown, designed to mask a Witness’s identity, and sewn with iron rings, designed to confound spellwork. So the gray-haired man had explained to me.

The inquisitor himself or herself—there was no way to know—had not spoken and would not. His silence signaled to all that the Camarilla would hear no plea, no testimony, no bargaining or command until the Witness had been taken to the Bastionne Camarilla and properly questioned.

“You’ve no right to question me. I’ve done nothing.” I stumbled backward, wrenching the thick wool away from my mouth. “I am King Philippe’s gooddaughter, the queen’s maid of honor. This is the
king’s
house.”

I struggled to keep from babbling. Did they believe I had poisoned the serving girl? How did one prove innocence?

A body behind me halted my retreat.

“The Concord de Praesta prescribes that the Camarilla needs no authority but this warrant to enter any house, even a palace, or to summon or detain any Witness, even a king’s goddaughter, pursuant to investigation of criminal matters involving sorcery.” The gray-haired man’s voice quivered with excitement.

“Then name my crime.” I scrabbled at straws. Poisoning was not equivalent to sorcery.

“All will be revealed in time. Unless you are accused, you shall be returned here without prejudice. If you cooperate, we’ll have no need for shackles.”

Saints defend, shackles . . . the Bastionne . . .

They tugged the hood downward, deadening sound and cutting off the light, leaving me in the dark, accompanied by images of the gaping ruin and its floating lights. My stomach lurched as if I were plummeting from the splintered floors into the pooled darkness. My spirit boiled with fear.

We moved briskly, the adept holding one arm, the inquisitor the other, supporting me firmly enough I would not stumble. Heat and fear made my head swim, and I quickly became confused at the turns. No one spoke to me. I was alone with my jerky breaths and thudding heart.

Camarilla inquisitors had led Adept Fedrigo and Mage Orviene to their execution in shackles, shrouded in these same awful garments. Orviene had wailed from beneath his hood,
Do you know what they do to you in the Bastionne?

No one did. Rumor spoke of terrible magics. My father had said that, whether or not the flesh displayed scars or bruises when a Witness emerged from the Bastionne, the spirit certainly did.

I considered calling on my friend in the aether. If he was close, he could get a message to the queen . . . someone. Or what if the inquisitors could detect such things? Hearing voices . . . speaking to them . . . they’d accuse me of practicing sorcery without Camarilla sanction, which would put my fate solely within their purview. He might even be one of them.

My father had railed against the Camarilla’s prerogatives to adjudicate all matters of sorcery. He felt it an unwarranted infringement of civil authority. The Camarilla insisted that no civil authority was fit to judge the particular demands, requirements, and possibilities of magical practice. But Papa had argued we might as well give the Temple sole authority over believers, or fishmongers sole authority over fishermen. No, the Camarilla would bear no good feeling for Michel de Vernase’s daughter.

But as my captors rushed me down steep stairs and through short turns, alternating sudden halts with bursts of haste, I came to the most unsettling impression that they were sneaking me out of the palace. If no one saw them take me, who might guess my whereabouts when I turned up missing? Panic won out. “Wait!”

Another short descent—stone steps without enclosing walls—and we trod on gravel and dirt. I flailed within my shroud. Screamed. Dragged my feet. Surely someone would see. But as iron fists crushed my arms, a hand thrust under my hood and forced a bitter draught into my mouth. Muffled in the heavy wool, unable to get a breath, I had no choice but to swallow.

“Wildcat witch . . .” The two words were all I heard before slipping into a terrifying blackness.

AWARENESS RETURNED WITH HELLISH NOISE. Saints save me, my cranium rattled with a din worthy of Dimios the Souleater’s return at world’s end—the mindstorm in full bluster.

“. . . supposed to be a last resort, you toadwit! Why dose her when you’ve already got her in hand?” The woman stood close by.

My face lay on a firm surface of scratchy linen. Cool air bathed my cheek. My upper arms throbbed but were under my command, causing me immense relief, until I recalled where and why they had been trapped. Saint’s mercy, I was in the Bastionne Camarilla. I blinked my gritty eyes but did not move.

“Adept Vronsard said—”

“Adept Vronsard is not a
prefect
, fool! Tell me what prefect wrote the warrant, and I’ll—” She stopped abruptly. “Natti, you blighted, ignorant dunderhead. When I find out what lackwit summoned a Witness—
this
Witness—at middle-night without notice or preparation . . .”

“A high-level sanction was called. The plan says, in that case, we pick her up.” The man’s spindly silhouette manifested itself from the blur. “Can’t help it no one’s ready.”

Grinding the heels of my hands into my eyes, I wrestled the internal clamor into submission. Then I sat up. A searing white brilliance did naught to soothe the pain in my head. But I held my eyes open and mustered every shred of my wits. My life could depend on it.

“Awake, are you?” said the belligerent woman, little more than a shadowed shape within the fracturing light beams. “Give trouble and we’ll dose you again. Probably ought to anyway.”

I knew better than to imagine this was all a mistake, but perhaps these two weren’t so sure. “You’ve no cause to hold me,” I said, managing to sound calm and reasonably sure of myself despite a frog in my throat. “I am no sorcerer, nor do I pretend to be. I wish the queen notified of my whereabouts.”

“You are a Witness in a crime of sorcery, here to answer what’s asked of you.” The stout woman, shapeless in a gray gown and clearly unhappy over her assignment, passed her hand across the source of the blinding light, which began immediately to fade. “None cares what you wish.”

My eyes squeezed shut briefly, grateful for the reduced glare, and opened again to a windowless box of a room. A single door centered the whitewashed wall in front of me. I sat on a padded bench fixed to a similarly bare wall. Naught else occupied the space but the three of us.

The woman pressed the bronze door latch. “I’ll advise that truth is your best ally. You’ll not want us to extract it. We can and will. And don’t imagine we won’t know the truth when we hear it, no matter your family
brilliance
that mocks and destroys whatever stands in your way.”

Oh yes, she hated my father. And, indeed, the matronly woman, blessed with eyebrows thicker than a shoe brush and hands worthy of a blacksmith, appeared quite qualified to wrest truth from anyone—woman, man, sheep, or bear.

“Natti,” she said after a moment of contemplative scowling, “we’d best put Damoselle de Vernase in a resident cell. Put her in a day cell and we’ll have every accountant and registry clerk gaping at her by morning, especially once people guess who she is. We must proceed carefully. And get out of that gown. If a prefect sees you . . . by my mother’s womb,
you’ll
be resident here.”

“
You
take her! Prefect Angloria said we shouldn’t go down there.”

“Prefect Angloria has naught to say about this one. And don’t you be prattling to her about it.”

The ill-favored young man she’d called toadwit voiced his objection in a high-pitched squeak. He busily stripped off the black gown that flapped about his gawky frame, then unhooked the dull green cap that dangled around his neck and stuffed it into the gown’s sleeve.

That odd green cap . . .
He
was the formidable Camarilla inquisitor! Yet I’d have sworn he’d worn a mage’s collar when he arrested me.

“Then send Vronsard to transfer her.” Natti afforded me only the briefest of glances, as if I might not hear his whispering if he weren’t actually looking at me. “She’s a wolverine. Felt her claws straight through the Witness gown when I searched her pockets.”

I breathed in relief that I’d put away the potion and the ring before the inquisitor arrived.

Sputtering in disgust, the woman yanked open the door. “I’ll send your rival in idiocy, Natti, and pray for the day we’ve acolytes who can follow procedures and control a slip of an untrained girl. If it’s the master from the palace who’s called this sanction, I suppose we must proceed. If it’s one of the others, I’ll have that one skinned and roasted.”

My brief surge of assurance withered. The
master from the palace
could only be Dante.
The others
. . . Other masters? Others from the palace? Who?

The woman slammed the door behind her.

“This is all a mistake, isn’t it?” I said to the bony Natti. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Sanction was called,” he mumbled.

BOOK: The Soul Mirror

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