EIGHTEEN
Yar, baffled by the sudden lack of a gardener, woke the sleeping Elver, brought him out of the brickwork, where he could see the blinking, dream-glazed eyes.
“Did Brenden tell you where he is going?”
The boy tried to shake his head and look around him at the same time. “Is he gone?”
Yar sighed, loosed him. “Yes. And I won’t stop him this time.”
“Where did he go?”
“Home, I would guess. I don’t know how far he’ll get, but it seems best to let him try. I’m going back to the school. Coming?” He paused, watching Elver wake a bit more as he remembered the dilemma he had gotten himself into. “You may have expelled yourself from the school, but I’m sure Wye will allow you a bed until someone can come for you. She’ll want to question you, of course. And, since you were with me, so might Valoren.”
Elver’s voice wobbled slightly. “About what?”
“About your reasons for breaking the school’s rules. About that powerful gift for magic you are taking home with you. You brought it here, made it subject to the king’s law and the king’s use; now you are withdrawing it. Valoren will explain very clearly what you will and will not be permitted to do with it.”
Elver swallowed. Yar waited, wondering how far away home was. The boy said finally, reluctantly, “One of my uncles lives here in Kelior. I could go to him.”
“Where in Kelior?”
“On Crescent Street. My father told me to go there if I got into—if I needed someone.”
Yar nodded. The street was not far from the Royal Quarter, in an old and tranquil section of the city that never saw much excitement. “Do you want to come back to the school with me and get some sleep before you face your uncle?”
Elver shook his head. “I’d rather face him than Valoren.”
“I don’t blame you. But Valoren will find you when he wants you. Do you know the way? Shall I take you?”
“I can find it. I stayed with my uncle before I came to the school.”
“What is his name?”
“Bream. Bream Marsh.”
Yar consigned it to memory: another water dweller. “He can send to the school for your possessions. Wye may want to talk to you when things are calmer. If you can’t find your uncle, or run into trouble, come back to the school.”
“I will,” Elver said, beginning to shiver again. He took a few heedless steps to the corner and was brought up short by the motionless line of guards across the gate. He tiptoed back to Yar, asked softly, “Will they let us out?”
“I’d walk through the wall if I were alone,” Yar said. “But I’ll have to explain you.”
“You could teach me—” the boy began eagerly.
“I wish I could,” Yar said with sudden intensity. “I wish every student in the school had such a bright and curious and fearless mind as yours. But as things stand I would only get us both into deeper trouble.”
Elver smiled at him ruefully and slid back down next to the warm bricks of the fire pit. “I’ll wait here until the guards change, and sneak through with them when they ride out. I won’t make the horses as nervous then when they smell someone invisible passing by.”
Yar hesitated. But the boy seemed in no hurry; his eyes were already drooping again. And it would be much quicker for Yar to melt through stones than to talk his way out of the gate, since he saw no sign of Arneth. He fished a coin out of his pocket and unclasped his cloak.
“Here,” he said, consigning both to Elver. “You can bring my cloak back to the school when you come for your things. If you happen to remember it.”
He startled another smile out of the boy, who promptly vanished into its voluminous folds. “Thank you, Master Yar.”
“Be careful.”
“I will.” His face popped out again. “I’ll come and talk to you again before I leave.”
“I will be breathlessly waiting.”
Yar, visible only to the wind, eased himself through the stones in the wall and took the shortest way back to the school.
He expected, after being thoroughly questioned by Valoren and the king, to be sent back out to search for the princess, whose disappearance, Yar suspected, had more to do with her impending marriage than with Tyramin. He hoped that he would not have to persuade her out of some unfortunate lover’s bed. He emptied his mind of such thoughts when he entered the school, and resigned himself to whatever fate he encountered in Wye’s chambers when he reappeared under Valoren’s bleak eye.
But something intruded into the stillness where his thoughts had been, just before he made his way upstairs. He stood in the silent hallway, listening with both his mind and his ears. The students were still sleeping; shadows clung stubbornly to the walls, while the high windows in the vast upper regions grew filmy with encroaching dawn. Images teased him, tugged at him, as though someone called soundlessly to him without knowing his name. A student, he thought, awake and playing with power. But he lingered, struck by some elusive quality in the magic, something not quite familiar. Or was it, he wondered, the mind behind it that was unfamiliar?
And the n a narrow, darkened stairway that went down instead of up caught his attention. Someone, he realized, had ventured into the labyrinth to work magic in the night. It wouldn’t be the first time. He debated ignoring it. But again the hint of strangeness, of familiar music played on an unfamiliar instrument, drew at him. He turned to it finally, followed the beckoning power down into the labyrinth.
It didn’t riddle with him long. He took a step or two into it, and a name flowed into his mind. Smiling, he followed the thought of Ceta and found her at the heart of the maze. And there with her, he found the heart of the magic. Dark, disheveled heads together, they watched a candle flame, one of many stuck and burning on the center stone. Their faces were pale with sleeplessness; they must have been there all night, he realized. An odd assortment of buttons were strewn among the candles, along with tangled string, strips of cloth, rings, a jeweled shoe, an intricately ornamented goblet, half a loaf of bread, and a little pile of carefully arranged bones.
Ceta turned her head and saw him. He saw the relief in her eyes, and then her smile. Still entranced within her own spell, the princess said a soundless word to the flame. It grew, fluttered, then detached itself from the wick and floated a moment in the air before Yar’s astonished laugh made it fall again, missing the candle wick to dance among the bones.
Startled, Sulys turned. She said uncertainly, “Yar?”
“Yes.”
Unaccountably she loosed an exasperated huff of air. “I give up.”
Illumined, he guessed, “You were summoning Valoren.”
“She has been trying to get his attention,” Ceta explained.
“For days.” The princess sighed and sat down on the stone among bread crumbs, buttons, and wax drippings. Ceta blew out the little flame before it caug ht at her skirt.
“What were you doing with those bones?” Yar asked curiously. “And whose were they?”
“They belonged to a roast chicken, which I begged from the kitchen,” Ceta answered.
“Is there more of it?”
“We ate it all,” Sulys told him apologetically. “But we can offer you bread and cheese.” She passed him the bread; Ceta rummaged in a basket for cheese, added half a browning pear to her offerings.
“The bones?” he prompted, and took a ravenous bite, still standing to remind himself that he should be elsewhere.
“It was an experiment,” the princess explained, gazing perplexedly down at them. “Of course, my great-grandmother didn’t encourage me to play with my food, even for magical purposes. But she said that she knew someone, long ago in Hestria, who could tell fortunes with bird bones.”
“Perhaps not chicken bones,” Yar suggested. “They rarely leave the ground.”
The princess regarded him thoughtfully. “They don’t soar,” she agreed, “beyond the present.”
“So it was your great-grandmother Dittany who taught you this secret magic?”
She nodded, her mouth tightening a moment. “I hoped it would attract Valoren’s attention. We badly need to talk.”
“Yes, I see you do,” Yar murmured. He reined in his own thoughts, which were roaming curiously among the oddments the princess used like flint to spark her spells. “It was your absence that caught his attention first.”
“Really. How unusual.”
“And the king’s.” Her brows went up; her eyes widened, glimpsing, he saw, the first intimations of trouble.
“My father noticed I was gone? He never notices me when I’m around; I didn’t expect him to notice that I wasn’t.”
Ceta, who read his expressions like a language, said abruptly, “Valoren could have found her easily.”
“Valoren didn’t think to look for her in the school. He and the king are convinced that some power within the Twilight Quarter—perhaps Tyramin’s—has stolen the princess away. The royal guard has closed the Twilight Gate, and I suspect that the wizards have engaged the full force of their powers to set a guard along the riverbank so that no one can enter or leave the quarter. They are all searching in the wrong place.
“Tyramin!” Sulys exclaimed incredulously. She stood, looked down at her bare feet and reached impatiently for her shoes, one of which for some reason held a candle in it. She shook it out. “It is so like them both—Valoren and my father— to blame some innocent trickster for what they failed to see under their own noses.” She dropped the shoes, stepped into them. “Where are they?”
“I last saw them in Wye’s chambers,” Yar answered. “But that was in the late afternoon, when Valoren sent me out to search for our missing gardener. I doubt that the king is still there at this hour.”
The women looked at one another, then back at him. “At what hour?” Sulys asked warily.
“It’s nearly dawn.”
She sucked in a horrified breath. “It can’t be.”
“Time plays odd tricks in the labyrinth, especially when you bring magic into it. Spells take their own time, here.”
“You’ve been out all night looking for the gardener?” Ceta said incredulously. “When I heard that the king was angry, and you were missing, I thought—” She checked, a little color rising into her face. “I couldn’t guess what you might have done.”
“Nothing,” he said softly. “Yet. I looked for you before I left, to tell you not to wait for me. I gave the librarian a message for you.”
“I had gone up to your chambers to look for you. I didn’t return to the library; I came here with Princess Sulys. I didn’t talk to the librarian until much later. He told me then where you had gone. Did you find the gardener?”
“Yes. And no.”
“You found Tyramin.”
He looked at her silently, added the question in her eyes, the water in the goblet, and the princess’s magic together. “Yes,” he said again, “and no. Somehow the gardener became confused with Tyramin, so I went to look for him among the Illusions and Enchantments. Did you really think I would offer my talents to a traveling magician?”
“Not to the magician,” she answered simply. It was one of the rare moments that he saw her face without a smile anywhere in it. “Down here, I realized that I don’t know anymore what you might or might not do.”
“Strange,” he breathed. “Up there, so did I.”
He felt the princess’s tension then, and stepped very close to Ceta to study the map on the stone underneath all the odds and ends scattered over it. “I’ve never used this, but it might be easiest for you if— ”
He was interrupted by something resembling a snort from Ceta.
“That will get you anywhere but out,” she said roundly; her voice sounded less strained. “But, Yar, look—I think it has more to do with—”
“It really doesn’t work?” he marveled. “No wonder the students get lost down here. What was she thinking?”
“It does lead somewhere. Look at this.” She brushed a few buttons and bones off the stone, tapped the carving beneath. “Yar, I think this pyramid in the center is Skrygard Mountain, and the path is the way to it.”
He looked at her. Then he closed his eyes, held them closed, trying to follow the labyrinthine path of her logic and failing utterly. “How,” he demanded, “could your mind make that leap from the depths of a school in Kelior to a mountain in northern Numis?”
“I can’t quite remember at this hour of the morning how I got from here to there, but I bet I’m right.”
The princess cleared her throat. “I don’t really care where we go,” she said uneasily, “but I suppose we should go somewhere. Yar, can you lead us out?”
“I can try.”
Ceta blew out flames, swept everything off the stone into the basket, leaving some candle drippings and a lighted candle for each of them. “In case we get separated,” she told them. The corner of her mouth slid upward faintly as she handed Yar his candle. “Lead us into morning,” she suggested, and, with no small amount of astonishment, he did.
He took them both to Wye’s chamber, since neither showed any sign of wanting to go elsewhere. He felt the power within as he opened the door, like air so massed and fused it seemed about to transform itself into a different element. The princess seemed aware of it as well; her weary face grew paler, set as against a coming storm.
Nearly all of the teaching wizards were in there, silently weaving thought and will together, so still they didn’t seem to breathe or even see. Some of them had slipped out of their human shapes, to come closer yet to their makings: one had blurred into the half shadows of dawn, another’s face seemed roughly shaped out of the uneven bulges and cracks of stone. Valoren, gazing at the interruption out of wide, unblinking eyes as it entered, seemed, to Yar, oblivious of them all. But Sulys gave a little, startled gasp at the predatory stare, and Valoren blinked. The dense air, trembling as with some low, immense sound too deep to be heard, seemed to thin a little as his thoughts frayed out of it.
“Sulys,” he breathed, a cob strand of sound, but enough to tangle the threads of the spell around them like a stone thrown through a web. His eyes went to Ceta, then to Yar. “Where have you been?” he asked. “Where did you find the princess?”
Color flared into Sulys’s face; she took a step toward him, catching his attention again, though for a moment she seemed unable to speak.
“You might ask me,” she said when she could. “I am, after all, standing in front of you. I’ve been down in the labyrinth, doing everything I could think of to get your attention.”
“The labyrinth?” he said bewilderedly. “Why didn’t you just come up here?” He turned again to Yar. “Then where have you been?”
“Doing what you asked me to do,” Yar said tersely. “Looking for the gardener.”
“You didn’t find him.”
“I found him, and lost him again.”
“You lost him! How could you lose him? Is he with Tyramin? Is he, himself, Tyramin? And powerful enough to elude even you?”
Yar hesitated, trying to find the simplest way through that tangle. “No. Brenden Vetch is not Tyramin. He is our gardener. Or was, until he frightened himself with his own power.”
“Why didn’t he come back here with you?”
“We frightened him, too, I think. He didn’t explain himself, and he didn’t tell me where he was going.”
The pale eyes slid away from him briefly, as though they saw through walls, across the sleeping city. “I’ll find him,” the wizard said simply. “What about Tyramin?”
“I don’t know. You didn’t ask me to find Tyramin. If he hasn’t been found, Arneth Pyt must still be looking.”
A trace of color fanned across the wizard’s sallow cheeks, the nearest Yar had seen to a display of temper. “It shouldn’t be that difficult to find a gardener or a traveling magician. Must I look for them both myself?”
“I found the princess,” Yar reminded him.
“Apparently she was never lost.”
“Apparently,” Sulys said abruptly, “I am invisible. You talk around me, you don’t see me when I’m under the same roof, even when I’m in the same room—”
“You were hiding from me,” Valoren said slowly. “So it seems.”
“I wanted you to find me—I wanted to talk—”
“Yes. There are simpler ways to do that than to play games and worry the entire court.” Sulys drew a breath sharply; he held up his hand. “Now, perhaps, is not the time.”
Sulys held her breath; so did everyone, it seemed to Yar, in that precarious moment. Then the princess turned, pulled open the heavy door, and went through it without a word, slamming it so hard behind her that Yar winced and Wye, on the far side of the room, put her hands over her ears.
Ceta broke the spellbound silence. “You,” she said crisply to her cousin, “are going to lose her.”
He looked at her, then at the door, as though he were trying to figure out why it had made such a noise. “Nonsense,” he said absently. “We are bound by contract and by our fathers’ wishes. We’ll have time to discuss this later.”
Ceta rubbed her eyes tiredly. “Talk to her, Valoren. Go after her.”
“I haven’t time,” he protested. “There are dark powers loose in Numis, and we must find them. I am going to the Twilight Quarter myself to search for Tyramin. Yar, come with me; I want to question you. And you can take the magician back to face the king when we’ve captured him. I’ll find the gardener then, if I have to track him all the way to the north country.”
“What do you want us to do?” Wye asked resignedly.
“Bind the Twilight Quarter again. Tyramin may have slipped through our net when the princess interrupted us, but it’s unlikely he has had time.”
Yar put a hand on Ceta’s arm, met her rueful smile with his own. He would have bid her farewell, but Valoren, taking a step toward the door, paused as though he sensed the unspoken words behind his back.
“Yar.”
Yar bowed his head, not trusting himself to speak, and followed.