He wished they had Della’s help; she knew this castle at least as well as he. But she was in charge of the infirmary, helping Skylark tend the wounded—and the dying.
A knock came at the door.
Muller glanced up, puzzled, an odd apprehension tickling his throat. Could some menace await them on the other side of the door?
Cube-General Fieldson straightened, looking at the king. “Shall I answer?”
Jarid continued to study one of the parchments, tracing his finger along lines indicating a corridor. He had an eerie intensity, inwardly focused. Muller suspected his cousin knew far more than the rest of them about finding places he had never seen.
After a while, Muller said, “Jarid?”
“Eh?” The king absently waved his hand at Fieldson. “Go ahead.”
As the general crossed the room, Brant pointed out another set of rooms on a scroll of the second level in the castle. “You see that ring of five-sided chambers? They don’t fit together. Spaces exist between them.”
“Those are broom closets,” Muller said.
Jarid spoke mildly, still intent on the map. “She will pulverize you, Mull.”
Muller blinked. “She?”
Jarid stood up straight, a smile playing about his lips. “Your wife.”
“My wife?”
Brant looked at them, his hand braced against a map. “Lady Chime is safe with the army.”
At that moment Fieldson opened the door.
“Good eve, Cube-General,” a melodious voice said. A golden vision swept into the room, her disheveled hair tumbling over her wool tunic and leggings. She came forward and stopped across the table from Muller. Her lovely smile did nothing to hide the flash of her eyes.
“My greetings, husband,” she said.
Ah, hell. Muller knew the signs. He was in trouble. But he was the lord in their family, a prince of Aronsdale. He refused to be intimidated. Pulling himself up to his full height, he glared at her. “What the blazes are you doing here?”
“I am glad to see you, too,” she said sweetly. “So here you are, warm and comfortable in our home while your wife sleeps in the woods and agonizes over your safety.”
Muller crossed his arms. “You should be out there with the army. You have no idea what we face in here.”
She looked around the Octagon Room, her gaze lingering on the fire in the hearth, the tapestries, the goblets of wine on a nearby octagonal table. Then she gave Muller another of her devastating smiles. “I see your terrible hardship here. My sympathies.”
“Chime.” He made his voice stern. “You must follow the orders of my officers in the field.”
She put her hand on her hip. “Yes, well, you’re so convinced you know what is best for me, you are hoisting yourself on your own metaphorical sword.”
Muller blinked. “What did you say?” Whoever mistakenly thought his wife didn’t have a biting intellect had never faced her in one of these moods.
She made an exasperated noise. “I can help you, my handsome but befuddled husband.”
His face flamed with a blush. He saw Fieldson at the end of the table now, holding his chin, his fingers over his mouth as he tried to hide a smile. Brant and Jarid were watching, too. He gave Chime his most formidable stare. “Wife,” he thundered. “You will obey me.”
“Oh, Mull.” Chime sighed. “I didn’t come to bedevil you. I really can help.”
He could tell she believed it. But that didn’t change the necessity that she leave Suncroft as soon as possible. “Your magecraft is a great asset, Chime. But you should be as far away from here as possible. You don’t know about the danger.”
“You mean Anvil?” she asked.
Saints above. How had she known? It didn’t help that Jarid, the always brooding king, was grinning. At least Fieldson had the discretion to hide his smile. Muller glowered at the king. “You find it amusing that my wife risked her life to come here?”
Jarid waved his hand. “You try telling her she can’t do what she wants. See how well it works for you.”
Muller frowned at Chime. “You must go back.”
“It wouldn’t be safe to run around in the dark out there,” she said, using her most sensible voice.
Muller slapped his hand on the table. “Then why are you here? It wasn’t safe to come, either.”
“You need my help.”
“I need you to stay put when the army tells you to stay put.”
Chime fixed him with a formidable stare. “Do you want me to find Anvil for you or not?”
“No! I don’t want you anywhere near him.”
“I don’t have to go near him.”
“How did you know he was here?” Muller meant to be firm, but he sounded bewildered instead.
At the sound of his confusion, her posture eased. “Ah, love.” She came around the table, not stopping until she stood right next to him. “Do not worry so.”
Seeing her soften relieved him so much that he almost reached for her, wanting her warm and lovely body in his arms. He couldn’t do it with his audience, of course. But he did lower his voice. “You sense Anvil?”
“I recognize his emotions.”
Jarid spoke. “You can feel his moods?”
She turned to the king. “Yes. His inability to use mood spells doesn’t mean other mages can’t sense him. I think even he can sense green power. He just can’t invoke it.” She shuddered, folding her arms for warmth. “His mind is…slippery somehow. Wrong.”
“And you believe you have located him?” Fieldson came around the table to Jarid so she wouldn’t have to turn from the king to speak to him.
“Roughly,” Chime said. “He is in this wing of the castle.”
“That is more than we knew.” Muller wanted to be angry with her, and he would be later, when he didn’t have an audience. But apparently she did have important help to give them. “We weren’t even sure he was here.”
Her face paled. “Can’t you feel him?”
He froze, afraid Fieldson would understand what she meant. Only another mage would “feel” Anvil’s presence.
Jarid answered as if she had spoken to him. “Only in a vague sense. More than that, I cannot say.”
“But you wield so much more power than the rest of us,” Chime said.
The king shrugged. “We each have our strengths. Green isn’t mine. I am less attuned to him than you.”
Even knowing his cousin had limitations, it startled Muller to hear him speak of such. “Jarid, do you remember the day Unbent and I found you in the forest? You were sleeping in that hollow.”
“I remember. Why?”
“Somehow in your trance you gathered power from the forest, focused through that hollow. The woods seemed…” He struggled for the words. “Alive somehow. I heard a cry from your dream as if it were there, in the forest.”
Jarid stiffened. “What cry?”
Muller spoke with the gentleness he usually tried to hide. “Your father. My cousin. Prince Aron.”
Jarid rested his fists on the table and leaned forward, staring at the plans of Suncroft, though Muller doubted he saw them. He answered in a low voice. “I had a nightmare about my parents’ death.”
“I’m sorry,” Chime murmured.
Jarid looked up at them. “Why do you mention this?”
“I think you have another ability,” Muller said. “In your trances or dreams, your spells fill everything. It happens here, too, I think, because Suncroft has so many shapes, in mosaics, tapestries, engravings, windows, the towers, all of it. Your power fills this castle like wine fills a goblet.”
Jarid straightened up. “I’ve no idea what you mean.”
Muller spread his arms out from his sides. “I don’t know how else to describe it.”
“You believe that if I harness this filling spell, I can locate Anvil?”
“How could you miss him?” Muller hoped he wasn’t angering Jarid by asking him to recreate a spell borne within a nightmare. “Your mind wil
l reach everywhere within this castle.”
Jarid’s face took on a shadowed look. “I was asleep when you felt this spell. I have no idea how I made it.”
Chime’s melodic voice flowed over them. “Perhaps if you went into a trance?”
“I just meditate.” Jarid spoke tightly, obviously discussing part of his life he preferred to keep private. “I’ve never known it to ‘fill’ anything.”
“You probably don’t realize it,” Muller said.
“Mull, I don’t know.” Jarid rubbed the back of his neck, his motions slowed by fatigue. “I doubt it will help.”
Fieldson motioned at the plans strewn across the tables. “We’ve had no other luck in locating Anvil.”
“Very well.” Jarid exhaled. “I will try.”
37
The Chambers
Jarid stood in the circular room atop the Mage Tower. The chamber had no furniture, no paintings, no hangings, nothing but a window that looked east. The candle he had set on the sill gave only dim light, making the pale violet stone of the walls appear white.
As a child, Jarid had often snuck up here. The King’s Advisors admonished him, saying he had no business playing in a place reserved for mages. Only his mother understood, recognizing the stirring of his power.
The room fascinated him. A long-ago sculptor had engraved its walls with vines, every blossom a perfect shape: triangles, squares, polygons, circles, polyhedrons, spheres. They curved around the walls in graceful designs. The room drew him even now, when a hostile army waited outside and a deadly mage prowled his home, ready to destroy all he loved, all he had thought he lost forever and then miraculously regained. It would destroy him to lose it again. If he could, he would fill the castle with his mood spell, saturate it, until he flushed out Anvil the Forged.
Jarid sat on the floor, facing the closed door. Gradually his mind relaxed and his power gathered, focused by the engravings, the circular room, the conical turret, the mosaics throughout the castle, the great Shape-Hall, the castle itself.
He became aware of people: Skylark, a blue glow of light, asleep in the Cross Room where she treated the injured; Della snoring in bed, her dreams restless, exhausted from her mage work during the battle; Chime, warmth and fire, vibrant with life, as was the tiny mage daughter she carried; Muller, a blaze of gold light, ragged and unfinished, with a bracing purity.
Jarid could imagine what acerbic comment Brant would have about Muller’s “purity,” given the way his cousin had wooed Chime. Muller wasn’t courting now, though. His mood came through clearly; he was trying to admonish his wife. Jarid took pity on his cousin, who for all his blustering was helpless in the face of Chime’s indomitable will, and sent a side spell to sooth their argument.
His main spell continued to expand. He had found many people now, but no trace of Anvil. Could Chime have mistaken his location? He reached beyond Suncroft, across the battlefields and the hills beyond. Such grief, fear, exhaustion. The soldiers wanted to go home, everyone, on both sides. He offered a spell of peace, but it wasn’t enough, even with his power. He couldn’t counter the years of hostility between Aronsdale and Harsdown with one spell.
A new mood came to him, one full of colors and warmth, deep and wide. Iris. His wife. She slept out there, safe in the woods, protected by his army. During the Tallwalk battle, he had blazed with fear for her life. He would do anything to protect her, even use his gifts in violence. The intensity of his emotions terrified him; what was this fierce, brilliant emotion she evoked?
His temples ached with the strain of his spell. He drew back into the castle and the pain receded. For a while he sat, clearing his mind. When his strength returned, he closed his eyes and filled his mind with images: spheres, rotating, sparkling, spinning. Their beauty saturated his thoughts. Filling. Muller had chosen a good word. So many colors filled the world.
Still he hadn’t found Anvil. Chime felt certain she had narrowed the search to this wing, but even in such a limited area, he found nothing of the dark mage.
A green spell shimmered into form around Jarid, sweeping him with emerald mage power like jeweled dust. He stiffened, unfamiliar with this intrusion. But the beauty of the spell drew him, as did the strength that went deep below its glimmering surface.
Chime.
Ah…. His mind relaxed and his spell blended with hers, swelling, expanding. She could find Anvil. They swept through Suncroft, through its halls, floors, walls, ceilings, shapes, and colors—
Darkness.
It hit him like ice. As soon as Jarid identified Anvil, he cut his link with Chime, shielding her from the darkness. He hadn’t found Anvil before because the dark mage was a lack rather than a presence. Chime had neither Jarid’s power nor his reach, but she had a green ability unmatched by anyone he knew, including himself, enough to find Anvil even by his absence.
Jarid tried to brighten the cavity of the dark mage, but it stayed black. His spell glided across it like water on oil. So. Now that he had found what they sought, his advisors would expect him to descend the tower and reveal Anvil’s location. But they couldn’t fight the dark mage; Anvil could too easily destroy them. Jarid had to face this dark mage on his own.
I am here, Anvil. He poured disdain into the words, goading. Come, little mage.
The darkness stirred.
Jarid opened his eyes, aware of how dim the chamber had become, the candle burned to almost nothing. He wove a shield, a gold and sapphire spell made from his abilities to soothe and heal, but directed outward to protect the people of Suncroft against emotions meant to harm. He layered the spell over their sleep and waking.
Then he waited.
The passage of time meant little to Jarid. He had spent so much of his life without reference to day and night, it no longer affected him. Just as he had meditated when he lived with Unbent, so now he sat in a trance. The candle guttered and flickered.
The gold doorknob moved.
Jarid stayed motionless, his shallow breathing the only sign he was human rather than a statue. The door opened, framing a man in its archway, a tall figure with broad shoulders and long legs, his dark hair combed back from his forehead. His black eyes seemed to absorb what little light remained in the room.
Jarid rose to his feet. “Anvil the Forged.”
The man regarded him impassively. “King Jarid.”
“Why forged?” Jarid asked his enemy.
“By my life. Beaten into the shape I am now.” Anvil stepped into the room and closed the door. “Made strong.”
Jarid cupped his hand as if he held a sphere. Light glowed within, blue, then indigo.
In response, Anvil folded his hand around the metal sphere that hung on a heavy chain from his belt. He raised his other arm, his palm out toward Jarid. Indigo sparks jumped from his hand, arcing across the space that separated them. Instead of hitting Jarid, the sparks shimmered around him, lighting his body but unable to touch him through his mage shield. The orb of light in his hand glowed, turning an intense violet.
“A violet mage.” Anvil stared at him, hatred in his gaze. “It cannot exist.”
“He.” Jarid’s gaze never wavered. “I am no ‘it.’”
“Tell me,” Anvil said curiously. “Why blind and deafen yourself?” Malice honed his words. “Why no voice? Perhaps the power is too much for you, eh?”
“It will do.” Jarid refused to respond to Anvil’s provocation, but he felt far less serene than the façade he presented. Although he had the greater power, he lacked Anvil’s experience and his ruthless nature. The darkness that scarred the mage went deeper than a lack of green. He was cold, like a windswept plateau high in the mountains where no trees survived.
Jarid focused on the sphere of light in his palm and it began to grow.
“You make spells without shapes,” Anvil said. Hard edges brooded beneath his casual words.
“My spell is my shape,” Jarid said.
“You cannot use your spell to make your spell.”
Jarid shrugged. He couldn’t explain. He didn’t care how it worked; suffice that it did. His sphere grew until it filled the room with violet light.
Anvil stepped back. “I feel nothing.”
“The spell does nothing but drain your power.”
“Nay.” Anvil’s jaw jerked. His hand tightened on his metal ball, his knuckles turning white. Indigo light intensified around him. It couldn’t force back Jarid’s spell but it stopped its advance.
Then Anvil struck.
Pain shot through Jarid’s chest as if he had been stabbed. He lurched back, his light dimming. His anger flared as it had the day Aronsdale soldiers wrested him away from his home with Unbent. But this time he faced a far darker foe. He gathered his power into a bolt and jerked back his arm. He barely regained control in time to stop himself from hurtling the spell at his enemy.
Anvil’s lip curled. “Smite me, Mage King.”
Jarid ignored the taunt. He brought both hands in front of his body, palms upward, cupping them to hold spheres. Blue light intensified within them until it filled the chamber.
“Stop!” Anvil raised his arm, shielding his eyes.
“It is only light,” Jarid said mildly. “It heals.”
“I scorn your healing.” Anvil clapped his hands and the blue light in Jarid’s hands turned red. Heat flared as if Jarid held scorching coals, and he jerked from the pain. In the few seconds it took to douse the spell, his palms burned, real burns, no phantom heat. Then the heat vanished, leaving him with sweat running down his neck and a searing agony in his hands.
“You cannot win,” Anvil said. “If you refuse to attack, I triumph. If you attack, it destroys you. Either way, you fail.” An oily smile creased his face. “Your name is a lie, Jarid Dawnfield. You are night rather than dawn. You realize this.”
Even knowing Anvil was baiting him, he recoiled from the truth in those words. Yes, he was night. He had felt that way since his parents died. It made no difference how many people felt otherwise, how many considered his deed justified and his mage light strong. They didn’t live with his memories. But for today, he would be light; for Iris, Muller, Chime, for everyone who depended on him, he could, this one day, be his name. Tomorrow, the next day, each day he overcame his crushing, self-inflicted guilt, he became stronger.