"Secret Of The Sixth Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hardy Lyndon)

CHAPTER FIVE
The Purging Flame

JEMIDON flung open the door to Farnel's hut. Even though he had not stopped to rest since he had instructed Delia to get some sleep, everything was still not quite ready. He looked anxiously at the brightening sky and hurried through the debris that littered the floor between him and the sorcerer's bed. Gently he shook Delia awake.

"It took longer than we thought," he said. "Some of the other sorcerers did not take kindly to Farnel's requests in the middle of the night. He is at the hall trying to put into order what we have already collected."

Delia rose to sitting and stretched. "The list I made for master Farnel before you left," she said after a long yawn. "Did you use it to ensure that a scene was found for each charmlet?"

"Farnel worried about the details." Jemidon shrugged. "For my part, the basic concept was enough."

"Without a plan and attention as things progress, the most brilliant insight produces nothing." Delia shook her head. "My fear of Drandor was overwhelming, yet I did not attempt to flee until I had decided exactly what I would take and knew when he would be preoccupied."

"But despite that, if I had not been on the cliff, you would not have the chance you do now," Jemidon said.

"If not you, then I would have found some other."

Jemidon frowned. Delia laughed as his face clouded over. She stood and smiled. "Indeed you were the one. And please do not think that I am ungrateful."

With a fluid motion, she suddenly clasped her arms around his neck and pulled his lips to hers. Jemidon blinked in surprise, but then felt his pulse quicken. He stepped forward and drew her close. For a long moment they embraced. Jemidon's thoughts of sorcery faded away. Bodies pressed together, he pushed her toward the bed.

Delia teetered for half a step and then suddenly stiffened. "No," she whispered, "that is not what I meant."

Jemidon stroked his hand down her back, pressing her tighter. He thrust his legs against hers, forcing her another step backward.

"No!" She wrenched her face away and pushed down on his entwining arm. "I have given you all I meant to offer."

Jemidon stopped. He backed away as she smoothed the front of her gown. He looked at the hard lines that had replaced her smile and shook his head. "With the bracelet of iron, surely there have been many," he said. "And after your invitation, what was I to think?"

Delia opened her mouth to speak and then snapped it shut. Jemidon saw the anger that flared out of her eyes and twitched the muscles in her cheeks.

"Gambling in the token markets was a choice I made freely," Delia sputtered at last. "And I admit that I knew what the consequences could be." She waved her arm with the bracelet in Jemidon's face. "But despite this, I am still more than a toy to be pawed by an owner and then passed to another when he grows tired. That is my past, not what I will be."

"I have no legal claim over you," Jemidon cut in quickly.

"Nor am I some doxy from the sagas who swoons to do every bidding of her rescuer in boundless gratitude," Delia rushed on, "I am free-willed as much as you. I asked for your help. You gave it without qualification. And I have thanked you. My obligation goes no further."

"A weakness of the moment," Jemidon said thickly, turning away his eyes. He felt foolish that he had misjudged her intent and relied too strongly on some ill-defined feeling that now he could not quite describe. And what would she think of him? Probably as a bumbling tyro from the wheatlands, who thought with his loins rather than his head, or an apprentice puffed with vanity, so sure of his attractiveness that he did not bother to ask.

Jemidon frowned at the direction of his thoughts. And if she did, why was it so important? If Farad's production won the competition, she would be free to go her own way. After that, could it any longer matter?

For a long moment, there was a heavy silence. "Perhaps if I did not indeed wear the bracelet," Delia said at last, "then the feelings that mold me might be different. But the ring of iron is the reality; I cannot deny all the rest that has happened because of it. I feel a bonding to you, Jemidon, but not like that." Her cheeks colored slightly. "At least not now, not yet."

"We still have business together." Jemidon looked back after a moment, trying to speak as if nothing had happened. "For now, our fates are intertwined. And we must rush. Gerilac has already started. Drandor is ready to be second. And the other masters have made it quite clear: if we are not prepared in time, our chance will be forfeited."

"Then let us be off," Delia said. "A meal can come later."

Jemidon started to say more, but hesitated. The moment had passed. There was too much yet to be done. Without speaking, he turned for the door. In a short while, they were on the path of crushed white stones, walking swiftly to the presentation hall.

Rose-tinted clouds hung low over the hilltops in the center of the island, while the sky above the harbor was just beginning to show its blue. Canthor's banners hung limply from his keep, and beyond it, the details of the hall were muted in shadow. The faint groan of rigging in the harbor mixed with the crunch of their rapid footsteps on the rock, but otherwise the air hung heavy with the morning silence.

"They expect Drandor to be finished when the sun tops that ridge." Jemidon nodded to the east. "There barely will be enough time to get you in the well. But with my sliding about the scenery, I could come for you no sooner."

"I still do not quite understand," Delia said as they hurried along. "The scenery is supposed to be an aid to help the sorcerer cast his spell. An aid to put the watcher in the proper frame of mind. We were working with helmets and pikes, swords and battle-axes, to suggest battle scenes. Now you have replaced them with wavecaps and fogs, totally unrelated to what I will chant."

"Precisely the point," Jemidon said. "The more divergence, the better our chances will be. You see-"

He stopped suddenly and pointed ahead to the hall. "Look, waiting at the stage doorway are some robes of brown. Hurry, we can ill afford delay when dealing with Gerilac's tyros."

Jemidon grabbed Delia's hand, as he had done on the granite cliff, and sprang into a run. Together, they covered the remaining distance in a rush. As they approached the stage entrance, Jemidon recognized Erid and the others, standing with studied nonchalance in the frame of the door.

"Faster, faster," Erid shouted as they drew close. "I want to see your expressions when your entry is barred."

In response, Jemidon put on a burst of speed, tugging on Delia's arm. But she gasped and stumbled; reluctantly, he slowed his pace.

For a moment more, Erid watched without moving. Then, when they were about fifty paces away, he and the other tyros sprang back into the hall and slammed the doors. Jemidon heard the bar drop with a heavy thud.

"The patrons' entrance," Jemidon said. "Before they can secure it as well. Somehow we will work our way back to the stage."

Delia nodded, and they quickly circled the hall. Seen from the front, wings of unlike design jogged away from the central structure, one sprouting twin towers at its far end, the other a staggered tier of small boxes. Four doors cut the entrance facade, each one grander than the one adjacent, the last filling an archway twice the height of a man. Together, Jemidon and Delia bounded from the rock path and through the largest entryway into the hall.

Immediately they plunged into dimness. Two candles in a wall sconce illuminated three identical doors and a single staircase leading off to the right. Delia ran forward to try one of the latches, but Jemidon pulled her back.

"No, let's try upstairs," he said. "These probably all lead into the Maze of Partitions on the first floor. It would take who knows how long to work our way through to the stage. Perhaps in a balcony we can find a faster way around."

They raced upstairs and found a long corridor snaking off to the left. The wait nearest the stage was lined with doorways and elaborate portals that opened onto boxes beyond. Jemidon poked his head in one and saw that it was completely empty, the far wall hung with shutters that had been pulled firmly closed. In the next were lavish furnishings, couches with gilded frameworks, and deep floor cushions of shiny silk.

"Come along," Jemidon shouted as he withdrew. "These probably all open onto a balcony above the Maze. Let's follow the corridor to the end. There should be another stairway there."

Running faster on the smooth floors than they had been able to do outside, Jemidon and Delia traversed the straight mns of the passageway and followed the bends that wound about the outer wall of the hall. Finally they reached a barrier of brick and stone that blocked them from going further. In growing desperation, they looked for another exit, either up or down, but found none.

"By the laws, it is too late to retrace our steps back to the entrance and try again," Jemidon said. He grabbed savagely at the closed door on the last box in line and tried to wrench it open. The thin wood creaked, bowing from the jamb, but bolts at the top and bottom set from the inside held it in place. Tendrils of cold air whiffed from the crack as the door sprang back.

"Someone is in there!" Jemidon exclaimed. "Who could it be? All of the masters will be in the first row, and these presentations are for no others."

"Does it matter?" Delia asked. "I thought our goal was to get me to the well."

Jemidon grunted and tried the door on the next box adjacent to the one that was sealed. It flew open. With no better plan in mind, he motioned Delia to follow him in.

The interior was decorated more luxuriously than most, with patterned draperies hanging on three sides and even a painting on the closed shutters facing the stage. Lighted cressets brimmed with scented oil, and additional bottles stood amidst sand buckets underneath.

Jemidon climbed over a down-filled bed in the middle of the room and flicked at the latches on the shutters, pushing them open to look out onto the lower floor of the hall. His eyes swept the stage, and he suddenly stopped in mid-glance.

"It is like what I saw the night of the storm," he said. "But this time Drandor has made it much more real."

The trader had tilted a mirror over the chanting well. The light that arched upward did not project throughout the hail, but reflected horizontally onto a curtain that hung from the stage. On its surface, Jemidon saw a scene that moved and changed as he watched. From some impossibly high vantage point, he viewed the offshore islands of Arcadia, sparkling in the sea like pearls on a string. Then, in a breathtaking dive, the islands grew and moved from the center of focus to vanish off the edges of the screen. Morgana remained in view, swelling larger with each instant. The hills, the harbor, and the individual buildings resolved into recognition. The detail was not that of a sorcerer's illusion or even of a good painting, Jemidon knew; but somehow the production was compelling, drawing him in so that he could not turn aside. He felt like a hawk swooping on its prey, expecting any minute to see a small rodent scamper among individual tufts of grass.

With a stomach-screeching "turn," Jemidon felt himself stop the plummet and reverse direction above the highest tower of the presentation hall. He raced over the peak with only inches to spare. He banked to the side and glided for a pass over the harbor. With a final turn away from a setting sun, he sailed from the island in a growing twilight.

The first row of the lower level which contained the masters burst into an incoherent babble. Jemidon blinked his thoughts back to attention and saw Drandor emerge from the well with his smile at its widest.

"Most interesting." The sorcerer on the right rose to greet him. He stepped past the small table with the open scroll and bulging bag of coins. "These glamours do not have the detail, but if I had to decide between yours and what I saw of Gerilac's today, my choice would be clear."

"Intriguing, I agree," the next in line said, "but should not master Gerilac be given the benefit of the doubt? We all have seen his Women of the Slave Quarter before. The high prince himself whispered that he enjoyed it well."

"You are to judge only what you see now." Drandor's smile melted away. "Past performances were not to be a factor."

"But it is so little time from our celebration," the second sorcerer continued. "Like us all, master Gerilac was not fully rested. It is no wonder he was unable to weave again the splendid glamour that we enjoyed so well when the prince was here."

"You have seen two performances," Drandor insisted. "It is no concern of mine that the other did not match its expectations." The trader looked about the hall. "And if the last does not start immediately, then we should waste no more time and proceed to your vote."

"A moment more," Farnel called out from backstage. "My tyros will arrive shortly."

"The vote," Drandor repeated, and several masters nodded their heads in agreement.

Jemidon tore his eyes away from the stage and finally looked down to the floor. "There," he exclaimed. "From our vantage point, we can see a path below the long tapestry on the left, a narrow walkway that winds to the front of the hall."

He turned back into the box and grabbed the nearest draperies from their hangings. While the masters argued, he tied several together and threw one end of a makeshift rope over the shutter rail. Delia nodded understanding. With Jemidon bracing against her weight, she shimmied down its length to land on the floor below. She paused and looked up expectantly, but he waved her on, holding up the free end of the drapery still in his hands. As she sped onto the walkway, he glanced back into the box, looking for a means to anchor his own way down.

While he tested the weight of the bed and tried to maneuver it into a position so that it would not slide, the agitation of the masters increased as more joined in the debate.

"But we agreed to three," one shouted above the rest.

"It does not matter," another answered. "Farnel has not yet started and has forfeited his chance. Let us vote and then be done."

Other voices blurred the argument into indistinction, but then suddenly Delia's clear tones cut through them all. Her words pulsed with energy, crystal sharp and demanding attention, filling the expanse of the hall. Not strained or forced, they carried rich harmonics of mystery and allure.

For a moment, the babble rumbled onward. Then, one by one, the masters stopped to listen, their own voices quickly hushed when they became aware of what they heard. Like enraptured children, they settled back into their seats, concentrating on the charm.

Delia ran through the first glamour with the same skill she had exhibited in Farnel's hut. The spell for Dark Clouds blended smoothly into that for Clinton's Granite Spires. As she reached the last syllables, the stage curtains parted in darkness. Then, with the final word, the scene behind sprang to life. Jemidon dropped the drapery and returned to the open shutters to watch what the reaction would be.

On the stage, a two-masted sloop, its sails billowing from offstage fans, frothed in a shallow sea. Bellow-driven sprays dashed against canvas boulders. The largest rock was topped by a light that swept in slow circles and caught the dust that churned in the main vault of the hall.

Then, as quickly as the scene had appeared, the stage returned to blackness and Delia started the next portion of the charm. An excited murmur started to swell along the masters' row. Jemidon smiled. It was working as he had thought. The sorcerers could not have doubted that Delia's words would produce images of the mountains surrounded by high clouds. Her voice was too pure. And to see scenes of the ocean instead had to be an intriguing surprise.

"But that is no sorcery," Jemidon heard Drandor shout. "I have made sure that there is none. I am the one who must win. By logic's laws, there can be no other way!" Louder hisses for silence drowned out the trader. Except for Delia's voice, the hall quieted like a wizard's tomb. The masters sat attentively now, anxious to see what the next images would be. Drandor stomped his foot in frustration and looked up in Jemidon's direction to the box on his left.

For a moment, nothing happened in response. Only Delia's voice filled the expanses of the hall. Then, as the curtains began to part for a second time, the shutters on the next box banged open loudly and a bottle of oil sailed out to crash onto the walkway immediately below. A lighted torch followed and, in a flash, the long wall tapestry burst into flame.

Two more bottles hurled from the opening and shattered like the first. A brace of torches scattered over a wide arc. In two heartbeats, the first level was ablaze with half a dozen fires.

Jemidon looked back at the doorway and then to Delia, still chanting in the well. He threw the drapery aside and impulsively climbed up onto the ledge. Without pausing to take aim, he vaulted from his perch.

The momentum of his kick carried him past the walkway directly below. He crashed through a thin panel canopy, hit a pillowed divan, and tumbled to the floor. He staggered to his feet and looked about to catch his bearings. The sorcerers were aflutter. They had seen the fire, and Delia's voice no longer held them in thrall. Like huge black birds, they ran in all directions, tripping over buckets and shouting commands.

But the frenzy of the fires was already greater. Licks of flame touched oiled paneling, bursting the wood into glowing splinters that started dozens of additional blazes where they landed. A storeroom of paints and canvas suddenly exploded, sending globs of incandescence throughout the interior. Far faster than one could believe possible, the entire hall was embraced in the beginnings of a fiery death.

Jemidon saw the mirror that projected images from the well; reflected within was Delia's frown of apprehension as she debated what to do. She might remain, struggling to continue until it was too late. He had to get to the well and help her escape. But the walkway she had taken was now engulfed in flame. He glanced to the side and then quickly dove through a low doorway as the expanding fire caught another tapestry that billowed in yellow and orange.

Jemidon raced along the snaky corridor, trying to move in the direction of the stage, ducking at intervals into the boxes to see if they had another exit to shorten his path. He heard a rush of air like that from an anthanor and climbed a small ladder to peer over a wall. A wave of fire raced down both sides of the hall, exploding the tapestries along the way in globs of blazing anger. The stage curtain caught. To the rear, Jemidon heard the groan of a massive beam sagging as its supports began to burn.

Jemidon saw Drandor appear from an aisle to the side, the imp buzzing free around his head. The trader swiped at the small table near the front of the stage and scooped up the bag of tokens as he ran.

"It is all rightfully mine!" the small man shouted. He looked around once quickly before plunging down the stairs that led to the well. Jemidon heard Delia scream and then only the roar of the fire.

Blistering air rolled past Jemidon's face, forcing him below. He looked back the way he had come and saw it blocked. He touched the wall at his side, and it was hot to the touch. Acrid smoke billowed overhead, stinging his eyes and forcing him to his knees.

Reaching the stage was no longer possible. He would have to get out as best he could. He closed his eyes to block the sting and began to grope along the floor. He felt the cold metal of a water pail and quickly doused it over his head. Pushing along the baseboard, he grasped the hinge of a door. But the metal was hot, burning his hand, and he crawled further down the aisle.

He detected an opening to the left and scrambled into it, only to crack his head against a panel a few feet beyond. He flung his hand about and felt a wall on one side and open space on the other. The smoky air pushed lower. He choked as he gasped for breath. Flinging himself to the side, he proceeded another few feet before again bouncing off a wall directly ahead.

Jemidon opened his eyes. The haze of gray and black was worse than before, but he saw high wooden panels of slick veneers. Like the first storey of a house of cards, the wooden walls zigged and zagged off into an unfathomable distance.

"The Maze of Partitions," Jemidon said aloud as he recognized where he was. He pondered for a moment on how to proceed and then grimly made up his mind. "It eventually leads to another entrance at the front of the hall. If the passages are simply connected, then I may have a chance."

He squinted his eyes shut and placed the palm of his left hand firmly on the panel. Moving slower than he had done before, he crawled on his knees along the boundary and into the Maze. The panel ran for a good distance before it finally ended, abutting another wall at a square angle, barring the way. Jemidon turned to the right with his hand still in front, guiding his movements, and continued on in the new direction.

The air grew hotter. It hurt to take a deep breath. He heard the crackle of the fire funneled down the narrow passageway. With a burst of effort, he tried to crawl faster through the Maze.

Time dissolved into a meaningless agony. Onward he crawled mindlessly, moving to the right when he ran into a barrier directly ahead, in the other direction when he felt his fingertips curve around a corner to a panel going to the left. He snaked into a spiral, back out again, and then along a narrow straightaway. He blindly climbed one set of stairs and descended another. He scrambled through a long traverse and then a set of convoluted aisles.

For what seemed like the thousandth time, Jemidon reached the end of a panel. He slid his hand across rougher wood in front of him and then felt smoothness projecting back along the other side.

"Another dead end," he mumbled as he turned around and continued back in the direction he had come. He winced at the intensity of the heat and coughed with the choking smoke that now filled every breath. Faltering, he pushed himself another step onward.

Jemidon opened his mouth to lick his lips and then quickly snapped it shut again. He steeled himself to slide another half step into the heat, but he could not find the strength. He had to follow the left-hand wall all around the Maze. It was like solving a complex puzzle on paper, horribly inefficient but the only way that was sure. Only then could he be certain of finding the doorway that led back out to the front of the hall.

Doorway, his thoughts dimly lumbered as he laid his head down on the ground. Doorway to the outside. Visions of the Maze, the presentation hall, and the swirling smoke tumbled in his head. He remembered Delia's puzzle, familiar and yet somehow a little strange.

Jemidon felt a blistering pulse of heat course across his hand and he pulled it back. The fire now danced on his clothes. He sprang to his feet and whirled in desperation in the other direction. He clawed frantically at the wall until he felt the wood of the door. With a last effort, he pulled it open and saw daylight ten paces away. He tumbled forward into the brightness, trying to snuff out the flames as he rolled.

Jemidon stretched himself awake and took a deep breath. Vaguely he remembered the helping hands that smothered the fire and then the application of the sleep-inducing salve. Its caressing aroma still lingered. With surprising ease, he managed to sit up on the hard flagstones and look at what remained of the presentation hall.

Only a few charred timbers still stood. The rest smoldered under the collapsed roof and piles of charcoal debris. The onshore breeze had not yet blown away all the smoke and haze. A few of the masters directed their tyros to douse the remaining spots of fire. Others wandered aimlessly around the perimeter, eyes clouded in a daze, A shadow blocked out the sun, now low in the western sky. Jemidon looked up to see Farnel kneel down and touch his arm.

"I can get more," the sorcerer said. "Canthor puts great store in the salve, but if a second application is required, it does not matter."

Jemidon struggled to his feet and shook his head. "It heals burns as well." He waved his arm at the others still sprawled on the entry way.

"I have provided for them all," Farnel said. "Even if there are no tokens to go with the honor, I will not be regarded the same as tight-fisted Gerilac after he has won an accolade."

"Then the spell worked!" Jemidon exclaimed.

"Better than the others." Another master approached and solemnly gripped Farnel's arm. "Better than the others. With what we saw, there was no other choice. Gerilac failed totally. Not one image came to my mind when he was done. And the trader's technique was amusing, but nothing compared with the shock that you produced, Farnel. The effect caught me totally by surprise. I expected mountaintops and clouds; with the words I heard, there could be no other. And then to view the sea-a masterstroke. The image was not strong; it remained entirely on the stage, rather than surrounding my senses as any good illusion should.

"But such difficulty you must have had to make the charm sound so like the other! A little weakness in execution can easily be overlooked. Something only a master could appreciate, it is true. But within our craft, it is a spell that will become a classic. A pity that we were interrupted before you proceeded further."

The sorcerer looked over his shoulder at the ruins and then shook his head. "No, not a new technique from which to build next year's productions to the high prince. But with the work of a dozen generations burned away in a morning, it is unclear that that is very important."

"We must proceed." Farnel straightened to ramrod stiffness. "For the next year, we must make the start of a new hall and a new direction in our craft as well-charms that challenge the mind, rather than cater to its weakest desires."

"Yes, to plunge onward is best." The sorcerer managed a weak smile. "That is why we went ahead with the vote, to salvage as much as we could of our tradition. By eleven to ten, Farnel, you are the winner of the supreme accolade. And perhaps there is even something of value in what you have wrought. You must teach me the technique when I feel I am able."

"Instructing you might prove to be a disappointment." Farnel coughed. "It is perhaps best to wait until the excitement of this day is mostly forgotten. And besides, I have my part of a bargain to honor first. A just payment for favors rendered." He looked at Jemidon and smiled. "No small part of my success today is due to my tyro here. He has helped me to the prize, and in return I must give him the knowledge it takes to become a master."

Jemidon smiled back, His plan had worked exactly as he had hoped. There had been no sorcery involved at all. Delia had failed, just as she had the night before. But her words were so perfectly uttered that the masters could not bring themselves to believe that a charm was not cast. And so, guided by the stage props Jemidon had designed, they saw a sea scene, somehow formed with the words that should dictate mountains and clouds. Of course it had been weak. But, they would have reasoned, what more could one expect with a charm so inappropriate for what was produced?

And from here on, there could be no more stumbles. Despite how it was accomplished, Farnel had achieved what he wanted. Now the others would listen to the sorcerer with more respect. And this time, Jemidon thought, he would study diligently and master each charm along the way before he proceeded to the next. This time he would learn the Power of Suggestion so that it would never be forgotten. This time-His thoughts suddenly faltered and then stopped. He knew the Power of Suggestion. Effortlessly, he could recall the simple glamour and many more. That was not the problem. He ticked off his own failures, Delia's, Farnel's, and now even Gerilac's. He remembered his deduction in Farnel's hut, his conviction on how to proceed to win the prize. Sadly he shook his head. As preposterous as it seemed, there could be no other answer.

"Has any one of you tried to cast a charm since your celebration after the high prince left?" Jemidon asked.

"We were all too indisposed from the revelry," the master answered, "although several did attempt something simple to steady themselves after the fire."

"And the result?"

"Miscast, every one." The sorcerer shrugged. "It is still too soon, and the events of this morning could only make one more upset. And whatever the disturbance is, it will wear off soon enough. We often rest for months after a season to recuperate our powers. When it comes time to prepare for the next, we will all be ready."

"But if the charms continue not to work, what then?" Jemidon persisted.

The sorcerer cast a worried look at the remains of the hall and ran a hand across the nape of his neck. "Then we will be forced to act like all the others. Deep enchantments, cantrips of far seeing, curses, and ensorcellments. All life-draining and making us feared by everyone."

"And if they, too, have lost their power? If the basic law of sorcery,'thrice spoken, once fulfilled,' is now no more than a rhyme of nonsense?"

"A law no more? Impossible," Farnel scoffed. "A charm is sometimes misremembered or forgotten; that has happened. Or even a master discovers that he can cast no more. But the law applies to all charms and all men, on Procolon as well as Morgana, on the seas, under the ground, and on the stars at the very limits of the sky. Stopping the law from working is the same as suddenly preventing every tossed rock from returning to earth. What mechanism could possibly cause such to happen? How could you even conceive of such a thing?"

"I do not know," Jemidon said, "but for me, the evidence is compelling. Since the night of the presentation to the high prince, there is no charm that has been completed successfully. The simple and the complex, joined or unrelated, they all do not work. What else can it mean but that the law no longer functions?"

"But there was Farnel's charm this morning," the sorcerer protested. "And even, in a peculiar way, the moving illusions on the trader's screen."

"Drandor!" Jemidon cried. "After his ritual on the night of the celebration, there were no more working charms. Yes, somehow the trader is connected!" He wrinkled his brow, trying to piece the events together: the presentation on the screen in the hall; before that, the more primitive enactment at the bazaar; and at the first, the tent with the objects from far away.

"Delia!" Jemidon suddenly blurted aloud. His struggle to reach the chanting well jarred into memory. "What happened to her? Was everyone rescued from the hall?"

"I was backstage directing the change of scene when I heard her falter," Farnel said. "But the curtain was in flames before I was able to come to her aid. And I have talked to other masters who were closer. They babble about the imp shielding the trader from the heat as he dragged her away and of something else that met them at the rear door, dark and shadowy-a presence black and cold that directed both Drandor and the imp. But then their burns were bad, and the sweetbalm had not yet begun to work."

"Where are they now?" Jemidon asked. "A harbor pilot says that Drandor sailed on the tide for Pluton even before the blaze was fully controlled." Farnel shrugged. "Like the tokens, of the trader and the slave girl there is no sign."

"And the one who hurled torches and oil from the second-level box, starting the fire?"

"No trace, either," Farnel said. "Perhaps whoever it was worked with Drandor as well, creating a distraction when it appeared that the trader might lose the competition. But that is all speculation. We cannot be sure.

"In any event, Jemidon. forget all this irrelevant thinking. The important thing is the rebuilding of our craft. If there is some sort of blockage in our abilities, it will pass with time. We will be back at full strength well before the next season." He stopped and looked at the ruins. "We must. There is no other way."

Jemidon nodded slowly, digesting Farnel's words. Perhaps the master was right. How the charms stopped working probably did not matter. They could regain their potency again just as abruptly. And he would be ready with a full arsenal of glamours-enough to hold his own with Erid and advance quickly to the robe of the master. It was why he had come to Morgana. His plan would be successful at last, despite the twists along the way. He would become a master, with no fumbling failures like his first time in the well.

He thought of his first time in the well. He recalled the growing panic as the words slithered away from his grasp, the choking throat that would not respond, and the looks of the masters when he trudged back up the stairs. Jemidon shuddered at the memory and then felt an icy wave of doubt wash over his body.

That was before the night of the storm, he realized, before the final presentations to the prince, before the law stopped working, and before his tongue became so glib. Suppose the law were restored? What then would his abilities be? Would the practice be enough, would the phrases remain firm? Could he spout the Wall of Impedance as quickly as he had in Farnel's hut?

And would the powers really return unbidden? If Drandor's rituals were involved, was there not forethought behind what had happened-forethought coupled with some mechanism that shifted the very fabric of existence, as Farnel had said, throughout the world and encompassing the stars beyond? What a puzzle it was! Yes, a puzzle far grander than any he had worked before. Jemidon licked his lips as he stretched his mind, savoring how he would proceed to find out more, to reach for the insight that hinted at the first exciting clue. But how could he devote any thought at all to such a mystery while he studied in drudgery under Farnel, perhaps to no avail? Indeed, what was the surest way to the robe of the master? Instinctively Jemidon grasped the coin around his neck to steady his racing thoughts.

"And if the laws do not ever come back of their own volition?" Jemidon broke out of his reverie. "Suppose it takes a positive action to restore things as they were before?"

"What you speak of cannot come to pass," Farnel said. "It is only a matter of time."

"If our livelihood is taken away, by whatever means, and then someone through his own efforts restores it," the sorcerer beside Farnel replied, "then at the very least he would receive the master's robe without question-regardless of his station or his ability to cast a single charm."

The sorcerer looked back at the smoldering embers. "Yes, if by the slightest chance what you say were so, no honor would be too great."

Jemidon's eyebrows lifted. Another path to the robe! And one far more to his liking. It would not depend on innate reasonance with sorcery that he might or might not have, but just the solution to a puzzle, a complex one perhaps, but in principle no different from the ones he had solved so many times before.

"And Delia as well," he said aloud in a rush. "The goals are intertwined." His thoughts were still in a tumble, but deep inside, he knew what he must do-track Drandor to unravel his mysteries. At the same time he could also free Delia from the trader's grip. Yes, somehow, he knew he could. And the second time, her gratitude might be worth more than a kiss. Or better yet, he could turn his back and walk away when it was done so that she would know he was made of finer clay. He paused as he remembered their last time together. How did he really feel about her anyhow? But then he brushed the thought aside. That could be decided later, after he had accomplished his new plan.

"Yes, I must go to the harbor," he said excitedly. "I must book passage and sail for Pluton with the next tide."

"But wait," Farnel said. "Do you not understand? I offer you instruction, freely given so that you may become a master."

Jemidon bolted into a run and headed down the path ofcrushed stone. He gripped the brandel tightly to prevent it from swinging and called back over his shoulder, "My destiny lies elsewhere. I can feel it. When I return, it will be with sorcery restored."

"But how?" Farnel yelled.

"I must find Drandor on Pluton and learn what he knows. Examine the contents of his tent. Listen to the imp when he babbles about the lattice and his master, Melizar. Yes, the lattice, Melizar, and the Postulate of Invariance."