Tagaza spent an almost-sleepless night in his cell after Falk left him. He’d known Falk was ruthless and utterly determined that his Plan succeed; he just had never really expected to be on the receiving end of that ruthlessness.
More than a quarter of a century we’ve known each other, he thought. I discovered how to bring down the Barrier. I brought him that information. I’ve helped him every step of the way. And yet on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence, he was ready to believe I would throw all that away.
It was his own fault, he thought as he lay on the narrow cot, staring up into the dark. He had been honest with Falk when they were just starting out, and honest since. He’d made it clear his reasons for wanting the Barriers removed were not the same as the Unbound’s. He’d thought that didn’t matter, as long as they both shared that ultimate goal. But that was why Falk had been so quick to mistrust him. Falk doesn’t believe magic will fail if the Barriers remain, he thought bitterly. I explained everything I’ve found, but there is no room within the belief system of the Unbound for magic that is a limited resource, like… like coal, or lumber. They think they will always have magic, whenever they need it, as much as they need. They think they can count on using it to conquer the lands Outside the Great Barrier.
But they’re wrong. And now Tagaza was glad he had not been entirely honest with Falk. For there was one thing his research had uncovered that he had never shared with Falk, for fear Falk would be the one to decide the Barriers should remain in place: the First Twelve, while searching for the lode on which the Kingdom was centered, had found no other lodes of similar power anywhere else in the world.
Tagaza had a theory about that, too. The Unbound believed that the SkyMage had created the Mageborn to rule over the obviously inferior Commoners, that their ability to use magic was a sign that they were favored by the Creator.
But Tagaza did not believe in the SkyMage, or any other supernatural being. Tagaza believed that the Mageborn had appeared simply because their ancestors were the first people to settle the land above the great lode of magic at the heart of the Old Kingdom. Over time, the magic power surrounding them had changed them, altered them, generation by generation, until they could draw on its power and use it to change the world around them.
His theory was bolstered by the fact, otherwise inexplicable, that at rare… very rare… intervals, a child born to Commoner parents was found to have magical ability: to be, in fact, a brand-new Mageborn. This had historically been a matter for great rejoicing, both on the part of the Mageborn and the Commoner parents, whose child was then assured of being lifted out of servitude: although the rejoicing was tempered by the fact that the child was then promptly taken from its parents and raised by Mageborn surrogates. (Some Commoner parents had tried to hide their children’s ability when it manifested, usually about the same time they started to talk; such deception was, of course, punishable by death.)
In any event, as far as the First Twelve had been able to determine there were no other lodes of magic anywhere in the world except for the site of the Old Kingdom… and the one deep beneath the Earth below Tagaza right now.
Why that should be so, no one knew. Tagaza leaned toward the theory that magic had arrived from outside the world, that it belonged to some other world, some alternate world invisible to this one but somehow close at hand, and had somehow leaked between the barrier hiding the one from the other: but that was just idle speculation, since there was absolutely no evidence one way or the other.
In any event, the scarcity of magic outside the two known lodes of it meant, Tagaza suspected-but had never dared suggest to Falk-that if the Unbound escaped the Great Barrier and set out on a war of conquest against the supposedly defenseless Commoners of the Outside, their conquest would be short-lived indeed, for they would soon find themselves outside the regions in which magic could be easily drawn upon.
What Tagaza had argued with Falk was that the best course for the Mageborn to follow was not to use their magic for conquest when the Barriers fell, but only to defend themselves. Best of all would be for them to seek cooperation with the Commoners. Surely both cultures had a lot to offer each other.
As Falk had just thrown in his face as evidence of his perfidy, Tagaza had long advocated a gentler approach to the Commons, pointing out that the Commoners greatly outnumbered and were outbreeding the Mageborn, and that reforms aimed at placating the Commoners were therefore only prudent.
Falk had rejected those arguments, too. And if he had now destroyed City Hall, and was threatening even more retribution for Karl’s disappearance… then the opportunity for greater cooperating between Commoners and Mageborn had quite possibly passed forever.
And it was that that particularly kept Tagaza awake that long night before Falk’s expected summons in the morning. Because whichever way he looked, he saw disaster looming.
If he failed to find Brenna, or if she were dead, Falk’s plan would fail, the Barriers would not fall, magic would dwindle away.. . and the Commoners would take their revenge.
If he did find Brenna, and Falk succeeded in his Plan, and brought down the Barrier, but then pushed aggressively into the outside world, he would soon run into the limits of magic. The Outsiders would defeat the Kingdom… and this time, there was nowhere for the Mageborn to flee.
Falk’s summons came very early in the morning: the cell’s magelight, reacting to the impending day outside the dungeon, had barely begun to glow. But Tagaza was awake. “Hello, Charic,” he said to the Royal guardsman who opened the cell door. “Time to attend Falk, I presume?”
Charic had been in the Magecorps before joining the guard; he’d once accompanied Tagaza on his annual inspection trip to the Cauldron. He half-smiled, looking a little shamefaced. “Yes, First Mage,” he said. “I’m to put the manacles back on you, if you don’t come willingly.” He looked down at his feet. “I’d really rather not.”
Tagaza sighed. “No need,” he assured the guard. “I told Falk I would do what he asked, and so I will. I presume we’re going to the Spellchamber?”
“Yes, First Mage.”
Tagaza smiled. “Shall I lead the way, or will you?”
Charic laughed. “Perhaps you should, First Mage. So I can follow and make sure you don’t run away.”
Tagaza chuckled. “Charic, have you ever seen me run anywhere?”
“No, First Mage,” Charic admitted, still grinning. “This way, then.”
“This way” led up stairs, down one of the long corridors running down the middle of each wing of the Palace, to the Grand Entrance, and then up more stairs, climbing, climbing, Tagaza having to stop halfway, puffing. He gave Charic a rueful smile, then resumed climbing.
At last they reached a great hallway, wide and curving, following, he knew, the outside wall of the dome that was the Palace’s central feature. Through two doors of beaten silver, and…
The Spellchamber. Tagaza, still breathing hard, stood just inside the doors, looking up at the high domed roof, decorated with silver stars and golden comets in a painted sky of deepest blue. Here a mage could draw most easily on the energy of the roaring fires of the MageFurnace far below. Few magics required that much power, but the spell Tagaza would use to locate Brenna certainly did. More typically, the Spellchamber was used when there was a need to fine-tune the weather or the course of the magical sun within the Lesser Barrier, perhaps two or three times a year. The rest of the time it stood empty.
But it wasn’t empty today. Falk already stood there, waiting. “First Mage,” he said coldly. “How kind of you to come.”
“How kind of you to invite me,” Tagaza answered, tone equally icy. He looked up at the magelights in the ceiling, and willed them to glowing blue life. Their illumination made the ceiling seem darker and set the silver-and-gold decorations sparkling.
The room was uncomfortably warm. All around the edges of the dome were vents which could be opened to make it hotter still, to counteract the deep chill the magic worked there would produce, even though the bulk of the energy would be drawn from the MageFurnace.
A warning tale told to young Mageborn studying at the College of Mages recounted the fate of a mage who worked a mighty spell in an enclosed space and was discovered in the morning frozen solid. The tale was so well known that a popular students’ pub was called The Frozen Mage.
“You may go,” Falk said to Charic. Charic saluted and left, closing the silver doors behind him.
Tagaza walked past Falk to the center of the room, where what looked like a circular pedestal emerged from the floor. He could feel heat radiating from it. It was, in fact, a pipe, driven through the heart of the Palace, straight down into the fires of the MageFurnace. A bit of magic… a substantial bit of magic, actually… kept the exhaust gases from pouring up that pipe into the dome, venting them instead through the Chimneys, located a few miles to the east of New Cabora. All the MageFurnace’s wastes were likewise dealt with. After centuries, the Chimneys had become a vast, blighted wasteland of smoke and ash where nothing grew.
A metal cap on top of the pipe gave it its pedestal-like appearance. Sliding open that cap would simultaneously open the hot-air vents along the outer wall of the chamber.
Tagaza turned his back on it to face Falk. “Before I begin this,” he said, “it might be helpful if you told me more about Brenna’s escape. Do you have any idea where she might be now? So that I know approximately where to look first.”
“Northeast of the manor,” Falk said. “Quite likely in the vicinity of the Great Lake, or even on it.”
Tagaza blinked, startled. “How did she get that far in such a short time?”
“You don’t need to know that,” Falk said. “Prove your loyalty by finding her, and then, perhaps, I’ll tell you. But not yet.”
Tagaza shrugged. “All right.” He turned back toward the pipe, closed his eyes, and reached inside himself for the immensely complex spell he was about to attempt, made more complex by the fact it had been developed by a previous First Mage, and reflected his personal idiosyncrasies.
Magic of this strength required fierce concentration. A slip of the mind could send the spell awry, and with the energies involved, that could be catastrophic. In fact, one of the functions of the Spellchamber was to contain the damage should that happen.
Damage to the Palace, that was; the damage to those within the chamber would just be too damn bad.
Tagaza had no fear that his spell would go catastrophically awry. Whether it would actually work, of course, was a different matter, because he had never attempted it before.
It was a brilliant piece of theoretical work, though, he had to admit, even though it wasn’t his. First Mage Cassik, who had served Queen Castilla, whose inheritance of the Keys had disrupted the dynasty of Falk’s family, had theorized that since the Great Barrier drew a little bit of magic from every Mageborn in the Kingdom all the time, it should be possible to trace those threads of magic to an individual.
In practice, he had found it impossible to differentiate one ordinary Mageborn from another in that vest web of magic: but the Heir was different. Linked as he or she was in two directions, to the Barrier, and to the King, the Heir must, of necessity, be a conduit for a much greater share of the Barrier’s energy, and so the Heir’s thread stood out like a thick cord among threads of gossamer.
Tagaza finished forming the spell in his mind. To him, spells were like complex patterns of light that he visualized, then let pour out into the world through his hands. This pattern was horrendously complex, and he was hardly conscious of his physical actions as he held it in his mind’s eye and stepped up onto the low stair that surrounded the pipe.
Falk reached out and pulled the lever that opened the cap and, with a great grinding noise, all the vents along the wall.
Heat roared out of the pipe into Tagaza’s face… and vanished as he released the pattern in his mind through the hands he had thrust into the uprushing column of scorching air.
He felt as if he had suddenly grown enormous, as though his body, insubstantial as a ghost, had exploded in size, swelling out through the walls of the Palace, across the city, across the Kingdom, his head soaring higher and higher until he could look down on everything within Evrenfels.
The Great Barrier blazed in his mind, a huge silver circle. Like the circle of the Unbound, Tagaza thought with a remote part of his mind that was not caught up in the power of the spell. But still unbroken… for now. The Lesser Barrier, on this scale, was a single white pearl of light at the very center of the Great Barrier’s vast circumference.
And then, suddenly, a web of power exploded in his vision, streams of light, all colors of light, red, blue, gold, green, pouring out from the Palace, from the city, from everywhere there were Mageborn, pouring into the Great Barrier: and it no longer appeared silver, but was an ever-shifting, intertwined mass of color, like an impossible bright aurora brought to Earth. It’s beautiful, he thought, his heart aching with it. It’s so beautiful…
But he wasn’t there to sightsee. He began searching for the thread of power from the Heir, thicker, brighter than all the others… and Falk had given him some idea of where to look.
The Great Lake. It was easy to distinguish in his mental view of the Kingdom. He could see no physical terrain, of course. For all it felt as if he were standing high over the Kingdom looking down at it, he was really still trapped in his physical body, and his “vision” was only his mind’s way of making sense of the information it was receiving from his magical senses. But he knew the map of the physical Kingdom as well as he knew the layout of his own bedroom, and in his mind, he could superimpose it on the magic he sensed. Toward the northeast, there were very few Mageborn. Those small clusters had to be the villages of Westwind and Pelican Nest on the western shore, the threads of their handful of Mageborn residents adding to the weft and warp of the Barrier.
Go farther northeast, and you were in the Great Lake, and farther northeast still, and there was only wilderness, home to the Minik and no one else, until you reached the Great Barrier again. And it was there, in that great blank expanse, somewhere on the lake but near the northeastern shore, Tagaza judged, that he found one final thread of magic. He peered closer, willing his magical eye to focus as sharply as possible on it… and saw at once that it was different from all the others: white rather than colored, thicker, brighter.
There could be no doubt. It belonged to the Heir. It belonged to Brenna. And she was on the Great Lake.
And then, as though from a great distance, he heard an enormous roar… and an instant later was hurled back from the pipe by a screaming blast of scalding-hot steam, erupting from far below.
His mental image of the Kingdom and the Heir’s whereabouts vanished, brutally severed from him along with his magical senses. The spell he had carefully constructed, the spell drawing on vast amounts of magic from the magic lode and vast amounts of energy from the MageFurnace, collapsed in ruin and blazing agony inside his head…
… and took his consciousness with it.
The pillar of steam erupting from the pipe blew Falk flat on his back, and hurled Tagaza away like a rag doll, to lie in a crumpled heap on the marble floor. The deep chill that had gripped the room as Tagaza worked vanished in the same instant. The temperature began to climb. Falk, staring up at the boiling mass of steam beginning to fill the room, realized that in moments he and Tagaza would be so much cooked meat.
He lunged at the First Mage and dragged him toward the closed doors, throwing his will against them so hard they burst from their hinges and smashed into the far wall, one striking a glancing blow on Charic, spinning him around with a shout of pain, clutching his broken arm. Falk instantly realized his mistake; the steam would soon fill the hallway outside the chamber as well. With another surge of will, he blew out every one of the tall windows set between fluted pillars that encircled the dome. Steam rushed out through the gaps. Coughing and stumbling, Falk dragged the unconscious Tagaza to the stairs, Charic staggering after him, clutching his arm, leaving a trail of blood behind: the bone had punctured the skin.
Leaving Tagaza slumped in the stairwell for the moment, Charic sitting beside him, bleeding, Falk ran down the stairs, emerging into chaos, servants and Mageborn rushing around like frightened quail. Falk grabbed the first servant who passed, a teenage girl. “Get a Healer,” he ordered. “Send him up the stairs to tend to the First Mage and the guard he’ll find there.” The girl gave him a frightened curtsy and hurried off.
Falk ran the other way-to a different stairway whose broad steps descended to the MageFurnace. Mingled steam and smoke poured up those stairs, and before he reached them, men began to boil up them as well: men with reddened skin and terrible burns, coughing, slumping against the white marble walls of the central chamber as soon as they were clear of the stairs.
Falk saw Healers arriving at a run and hoped that fool of a girl had been smart enough to send one to minister to Tagaza. He knelt by the nearest man, who seemed shaken but unhurt. “What happened?” he demanded.
“Water,” the man choked. “I don’t know where it came from. A flood of water, pouring into the Furnace…”
“Sabotage,” said a voice from behind Falk, and he straightened and spun to see Brich, grim-faced.
“Sabotage? How?”
“Someone,” Brich said, “found a way to direct the waters of the lake into one of the Furnace’s air intakes.”
“ Who? ” Falk snapped.
“We’ve had… a communication,” Brich said. “From the Common Cause. They claim responsibility. They say it’s in retaliation for the destruction of City Hall. They say they will do far worse if the ‘repression of the Commons’ is not eased.”
“They don’t know what repression is,” Falk snarled. “But they’re about to find out. I want a platoon of guards ready at the bridge in twenty minutes. We’re going back to the Square.”
Brich looked like he was about to say something, but, wisely, did not. Instead he just nodded and turned away.
Anger such as he’d rarely felt blazed in Falk’s heart. Not only had these Commoner criminals disrupted life in the Palace-temporarily, he thought with a mental sneer; the MageFurnace could not be doused so easily, and would soon be blazing at full power again-but, more importantly, they had disrupted the search for Brenna. And that meant that, once again, they had interfered with the Plan.
Falk was getting very tired of things interfering with the Plan.
He couldn’t do anything about locating Brenna… but he could do something about Commoner interference.
And he would take great pleasure in it.
He turned his back on the wounded men and the Healers tending them, and headed for the bridge into New Cabora.