Kerim eyed her speculatively. “I think Lord Arnson will be called back to his estates. He has a large holding in Cybelle and the return might be beneficial to his health.”
Sham wasn’t used to being so easily read and found it disconcerting. She batted her eyes at him, and with artificially thick accents said, “Does the poor man find our climate unhealthy?”
Before Kerim could reply, Dickon opened the door for a pair of servants bearing a large and aromatic tray, covered to keep the food hot, as well as an assortment of dining-ware. Dickon looked around and found a table that had survived Sham’s cleansing of the room. He pulled it forward, and directed the servants to set it for dining.
Sham rose to her feet and gathered a pair of chairs while Dickon ushered the kitchen helpers out the door. She set the tray cover on the floor and snatched a thick, crusty slice of bread. She buttered it and took a large, satisfying bite, ignoring Kerim’s amused glance with the same insouciance she accorded Dickon’s disapproval.
Kerim pushed his chair forward to one of the place settings and cut a slice of the roast off with his eating knife and placed it on his plate opposite Sham’s.
“Lady,” said Dickon hesitantly, taking a seat after he made certain all the plates were set properly.
Sham smiled at him and continued chewing as she sliced some meat.
“What did you mean when you said I was mageborn?” He spoke in Southern, and mispronounced the last word—as if that would make it mean something other than what he thought it meant.
“Well—” she said, when she was sure she wouldn’t laugh, “—only a mageborn person could have broken through an illusion as strong as the old wizard had. Nine-tenths of the magic most wizards work are illusionary—like this frog.” She held out the little frog again.
“What frog?” asked Dickon.
Kerim frowned warningly. “Don’t play games with him.”
Sham shook her head. “I’m not. Look at it closely, Dickon.” She muttered a few words, increasing the power of her spell. “Tell me when you see a frog instead of a rock.”
She was perspiring with the effort of her spell weaving before Dickon sat forward and drew in a swift breath. “I see it.”
Sham closed her empty hand. “Illusion—” she managed finally, with only a hint of amusement, “takes on the appearance of something that it is not. There are three ways to penetrate the spell. One is by magic. The second is by touch; there are very few mages who can create illusions that are real to more than one sense at a time. The third method is simple disbelief. Anyone can break an illusion that way, you don’t have to be a wizard to do it. But most illusions set by a wizard of any power are miserably hard to dispel by disbelief—unless you are a wizard yourself.” She glanced at Dickon’s discomfited expression, feeling a surprising amount of sympathy for him; it wasn’t easy to find your long-held beliefs crumpling at your feet. “Your disbelief in magic is so strong that when you walked into the magician’s cottage you didn’t even see the illusions. I have never heard of such a case before; the only possible explanation is that you are mageborn.”
Dickon muttered a foul word that indicated his disbelief in graphic terms.
Sham’s eyebrows climbed at the vocabulary the fastidious servant had used, and she commented with interest, “I’ve never heard of it done that way before, I wouldn’t think it possible.”
Dickon looked at her with the expression of a cornered boar.
Deciding he was still too shaken for teasing, she sobered and touched his sleeve lightly. “There is sleight-of-hand, Dickon, but magic is real, too. Illusion is only part of it. Here—I’ll demonstrate.”
There was a fingerbowl full of water near her plate. She pushed the plate aside and pulled the bowl in front of her.
“Water is a common means of scrying, because it’s easy to use. The important thing to remember is that water is a liar, easily influenced by thought. If I expected the demon to look like a giant butterfly and I asked the water to show me the demon, I might see a giant butterfly, possibly I would see something really related to the demon, or I might see a kitchen maid cleaning vegetables. It isn’t illusion though, so you should be able to see something.”
Sham looked into the bowl and muttered a soft spell, waving her hand three times over the water.
When she was done, she set the fingerbowl before Kerim and said, “We’ll let Kerim try it first. I have called the water to show the person you hold most dear—probably, it will only show you the face of the person you think you care about most. Don’t take it too seriously.”
Kerim leaned forward until he looked directly into the bowl; he nodded thoughtfully and shifted it across the table to Dickon. With a doubtful look at Sham, Dickon leaned forward in his turn. He looked in the bowl, then tensed. A white line rose on his cheeks as he clenched his teeth, staring into the pool of water.
“Remember,” she cautioned him, because he seemed so distressed, “what you see is what you expect to see.”
Dickon shook his head and said softly, “It’s not that. My wife was killed in a bandit raid shortly after we were married. I haven’t seen her face for ten years; I’d forgotten how beautiful she was.” Dickon drew in a swift breath through his nose and looked away from the water as if with great effort.
“This is magic?” he questioned warily.
“Yes.” Sham pulled the table back to its original position and dipped her fingers in the water—cleaning them and dispelling the magic.
Dickon eyed her cautiously, but he seemed to be considering the matter, which was the best that she could hope for under the circumstances.
“With that done,” said Kerim, cutting the meat on his plate with his eating knife. “I need your thoughts on the wizard we met this afternoon, Shamera.”
He had plainly decided that Dickon needed some time to think about magic alone. Well, enough, she didn’t mind changing topics.
She frowned thoughtfully. “Yes, Lord Halvok. That was . . . interesting.”
“Why would he work so hard to keep his identity a secret?” asked Kerim.
She raised her eyebrows. “How would the Eastern lords react if they knew they were negotiating with a wizard? It would destroy his credibility with those who do not believe in magic. Those whodo believe in magic would distrust him even more, fearing his power.”
“Halvok’s personal ambitions aside,” she continued, “—I imagine it would be difficult to find another noble who was not consumed with bitterness toward you Easterners and still commanded the respect of the other Southwood nobles. It is only his singlehanded defense of the northern reaches at the end of the war that allows him to negotiate at all without being named a traitor and losing the support of the Southwood factions.”
“So you think Halvok was trying to help?” Kerim sounded as if that were the answer he was hoping for.
Sham shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know him very well—I only know what I have seen and heard. Although he apparently likes you, his first loyalties seemed to be given to Southwood. I don’t think he would jeopardize his position to help you, but as long as you are no threat to his goals he shouldn’t go out of his way to harm you either.”
“So he was just trying to give us information? Couldn’t he have sent word through the Whisper?” asked Dickon.
Sham sighed and brushed her hair back from her face. “I don’t know.”
“What else would he be doing?” asked Kerim.
“I can think of one other reason Halvok could have called us there,” she said reluctantly. “The quality of Lord Halvok’s illusions make him a master sorcerer—perhaps better than I am. Black magic is proscribed and punishable by the most dire consequences if the Wizard’s Council finds out. In the last two decades I’ve heard of only three wizards discovered using it anyway.”
“Meaning?” asked Kerim when she hesitated.
“Meaning there are almost certainly more black mages,” Sham answered. “If Lord Halvok is such a one and summ
oned the demon himself he might have told us the story to concentrate our efforts on the demon, rather than looking for a human summoner. Lady Tirra said the men who died all opposed your protection of the native Southwood lords—certainly Lord Halvok would have seen them as a threat.”
Kerim sat for a moment, before shaking his head. “The wrong men died, Shamera. The men who died were petty lords for the most part; none of them, my brother included, had much power.”
“Maybe Halvok’s purpose was just what it appears,” said Shamera. “I’ll visit his house tonight and see what I can find.”
Kerim nodded, saying, “I’m not all that anxious to find out that one of the few Southwood lords willing to consider the good of the whole country rather than trying to recapture the past is involved with a demon—but I’d rather know as soon as possible either way.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to wait until tomorrow, when you know he’ll be at court?” asked Dickon.
Sham shook her head. “This is the night he spends with Lady Fullbright, to get information about her husband’s business. The servants have the night off.” She grinned at them. “I see that hasn’t made it to the rumor mill yet—it’s nice to know the Shark hasn’t lost his touch.”
THE NIGHT WASdark, the moon hidden by drizzling clouds. Sham hoped the rain would take care of the dust that Purgatory and Kerim’s room had left on her working clothes.
Lord Halvok’s mansion was in a quiet area of town some distance from the Castle. The shortest way there brought her past the Temple of Altis. Although it was still under construction—and would be for several more decades—it was already an impressive edifice.
Dickon was not the only one finding his beliefs altered abruptly. Since she had taken up her role as the Reeve’s mistress, Sham had found herself in danger of forgetting her hatred of Easterners. It felt odd not to be angry all the time—she felt naked and defenseless. That vulnerability made her resent Altis all the more. Things were changing, and very few changes in Shamera’s life had been for the better.
“You do not belong here,” she said to the god.
Great windows on either side of the massive entrance glistened darkly against the light-colored stone like two large eyes. As she resumed walking, she could almost feel someone watching her until she was well away from the temple.
Lord Halvok’s residence was a modest manor to be the home of an influential noble, but Sham was suitably impressed by the amount of gold he must have spent to buy two hundred rods of land in the middle of the city. She had plenty of time to view the lawn as she walked completely around the building to make certain there was no light that would suggest a servant was up and about.
As she stepped onto the grass, the hair on the back of her neck stood on end: if she’d had any doubts that Halvok was a wizard they were clearly resolved. She hadn’t tripped any obvious warding, but the tingling sensation strongly suggested there was one nearby.
She inched forward until she found it. It was a simple spell, designed to warn Lord Halvok if a thief was about, but not to keep out wizards—such a spell would be too taxing to sustain, even with runes. Carefully, gently, Sham stepped across leaving the spell undisturbed.
The lower floor windows were shuttered, but those on the second floor were open. Scrambling up the native rock face and through a parlor window gave her little trouble. She stood in the darkness in the small room and pulled a sliver from her thumb with her teeth.
Places where magic was worked frequently began to collect a certain aura about them. Even people who couldn’t normally sense magic would begin to feel uneasy, as if they were being watched or followed. Such places tended to get the reputation of being haunted. Chances were good that Halvok’s workroom was in an isolated area of the house to avoid driving off the servants.
Sham closed her eyes and whispered a scrying spell to find where the workroom was. The return information was immediate and strong. Hastily she pulled the shutters on the window and lit a dim magelight to look around.
“Plague take him,” she muttered irritably.
The darkness had hidden the exact nature of the room she was in. The dark forms she’d assumed were bookcases were filled with a wide variety of antiques, each neatly labeled by a piece of parchment tied by wire to the artifacts. At another time, she would have been fascinated and covetous—particularly of the fine dagger display.
Unfortunately, there were several items radiating magic, a few as strongly as her flute. She was going to have to sneak through the dark house hoping no one heard her until she could get far enough away to find any other magic.
Sham called her magelight, restored the shutters to their former position, and opened the only door in the room. Rather than a hall, she found herself in a large bedroom. The bed was neatly turned back and a bed warmer was set near the banked coals of the fireplace.
She walked through the room and opened a door into a dimly lit hall, deserted except for a yellow-eyed tomcat. The cat stared at her indifferently from its perch on an open window sill before returning its gaze to the night.
A dark stairway broke off from the hall, too narrow to be anything but the servant’s staircase. Sham crouched low and listened for any sound that might indicate that it was in use.
She counted slowly to twenty before creeping quietly down the wooden stairs, walking as close to the edge as she could so the stair wouldn’t flex and squeak. Pausing briefly on the first floor, Sham decided to continue to the basement before trying to scry magic again. The further she was from the little collection room the better her chances of making the spell work would be.
She traveled down several steps when something both soft and sharp touched her gently on the back of the neck.
Stifling a scream, Sham jumped down two more stairs and turned, knife in hand to confront her attacker. She stared into the darkness, but saw nothing. Holding absolutely still, she listened for the sound of breathing.
The cat, sitting on a narrow shelf in the wall of the stairwell, purred smugly. She could hear it lick its foot in the darkness. Sham had passed by the animal without seeing it, and it had batted her gently with its paw.
Biting back her relieved laughter, she continued into the cellar. The temperature dropped noticeably as the last faint light faded behind her. She stopped and scried for the fragmented magic of the workroom again, though she didn’t close her eyes this time—it would have been pointless in the utter blackness of the cellar. She could still sense the spells tangled in the collection of antiques, but this time the stronger pull by far lay ahead of her, slightly to the left.
She decided the risk of someone seeing her light was less than the risk of someone hearing her as she tripped over the cat in the darkness, so she called her magelight once more. She kept it dim, so it wouldn’t spoil her night vision. The cat, with typical contrariness, was nowhere to be seen.
The first door that she came to opened into a storage area filled with foodstuffs. The second room was obviously a workshop—the wrong kind. Bits and pieces of broken or unfinished furniture were set in an organized fashion around the room. There was no third door, though she could feel the pulse of magic quite strongly when she tried.
Frowning, she tapped one foot with silent impatience and stared into the workroom. She inhaled and detected, underneath the smell of the lemon oil and varnish, the tang of herbs and the acrid scent of burned hair. Mentally she compared the size of the food storage room and the wood-shop. The storage room had been significantly narrower.
Back in the storage room, behind a shelf of dried parsley and fresh vegetables, she found a plain door that opened into Lord Halvok’s workshop—this one scented with magic rather than varnish. Stepping into the room gave her an odd feeling of going back in time. This was what the old man’s workshop in the Castle had looked like.
There was no trace of black magic here, as there had been none in the hut in Purgatory; but she hadn’t expected to find any. A magician who practiced the forbidden arts would hard
ly have done so in his own house. She began to search his books.
All magic had a certain signature that identified itself to a wizard. Because of that signature it was possible to tell what a spell would do, even if it were unfamiliar to the magician looking at it. Rather than waste time looking through each book, Sham touched the books in turn using her magic to search out the tomes that might contain black magic.
After twenty minutes of work, she laid three books on the smooth surface of a marble table. The first was an old copy of an even older text. It had several spells that called for the use of various body parts . . . “the forefinger of a man hanged on the vernal equinox,” “the eye of a man who died in his sleep.” Enough for the spells to be black magic, but a farseeing spell was not what Sham was looking for. She set it aside.
The second book, bound in butter-soft leather, was embossed with the enlightening title,Majik Boke . Unlike the first one, it was spelled shut so no unsuspecting person could casually open it. It took Sham some time to dismantle the protection spells, as they were old and powerful—also vaguely familiar. As soon as the spells lost their hold, the book fluttered open and the signature of evil increased tenfold.
“I found that in the ashes of the bonfire where they burnt the library of the King’s Sorcerer,” Lord Halvok spoke quietly from behind her.
Sham turned to him and nodded, with a casualness she didn’t feel. Never show fear or let them know they’ve surprised you. “I thought that I recognized the Old Man’s work in the warding. You haven’t opened this?”
Lord Halvok’s blunt fingers stroked behind the ears of the yellow-eyed cat that was draped limply over his shoulders. The cat purred. “No, I have one just like it—though I believe Maur’s copy is somewhat older than mine.”
He strode casually to the table where the books rested and picked up the one she hadn’t had time to examine. He unworked the spells that kept it closed and opened it to display essentially the same text as the page her book was opened to—although written in a different hand. “This is my copy. As Maur’s apprentice, I suspect the one you opened should be yours. I advise you to keep it somewhere no one will find it. Texts that deal with black magic are forbidden, Lady Shamera.”