Read A College of Magics Online

Authors: Caroline Stevermer

A College of Magics (42 page)

BOOK: A College of Magics
3.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
“Nothing's done. The rift is still waiting.”
“We'll get there.”
The steps that brought them up into early morning were the steps Faris had remembered from Greenlaw. The new stair ended with a familiar pepper-pot tower. But the tower door did not open on the heights of Greenlaw. Faris and
Tyrian stepped out onto a rooftop covered with shattered brick and stone.
After so long in the dark, Faris was struck silent by the light. She blinked stupidly around as Tyrian moved past her to reconnoiter the ruins of the old throne room.
It was early morning, so early the city below had only just begun to stir. The sky in the east was bright with the coming dawn and the sparse clouds promised a fair morning. The lions ranged in the ruins around them were still asleep.
Tyrian was nearly unrecognizable, weary, unshaven, filthy. Faris found it hard to judge what was bruise and what was grime. He had lost his jacket. His shirt was torn, gray with dirt, collarless, its cuffs stiff with something suspiciously like dried blood. His wrists were likewise stained and looked painfully swollen.
Faris glanced down and discovered she was at least as dirty as he. What she had taken for dust on the stairs turned out to have been ash. Sweat had mingled with the soft gray stuff and the result daubed her like paint. She itched prodigiously.
Tyrian covered the palace door and beckoned to her. Faris left the shadow of the pepper-pot tower.
The sun had just begun to edge over the horizon and the world was changing color from moment to moment. There was light everywhere, so much light that Faris could hardly make out the pattern underfoot.
Faris lifted her eyes. If she watched the horizon, she had her bearings. If she didn't look where she was going, she
knew where she had to go. She had seen the way the pattern shifted in the early light. She moved slowly, careful not to lose her footing.
Touch showed her the rift before her other senses perceived it. She felt something alter subtly beneath her feet, as though the pattern were softening. She looked down. She was in the center of a pattern set in white glass against white stone. Beneath her battered slippers, the pattern had changed. White glass had become smoky green glass, the color of sunlight in seawater. The green glass rose into yet another flight of stairs. Wearily, Faris began to climb.
When the green glass became clear glass, Faris stopped. With only reflected sunshine to betray its presence, the staircase continued up as far as she could see. Faris stood still, eyes lifted. After her time under the castle, the warmth of the sun was welcome, the sky was a fascinating thing. Faris did not mind keeping her attention on it. All around her, she could feel the rift.
This was the moment she had dreaded all along. At last she had reached the rift. Yet she had no idea how to mend it. Whatever she had learned at Greenlaw, it had not prepared her for this.
Or perhaps it had. Faris remembered the pepper-pot tower. Perception and will, she told herself sternly.
She wished Hilarion were with her. She wished the Dean were too. And Jane, most of all.
The ward, she reminded herself. The ward that balanced Greenlaw had two anchors.
Remembering the silence of St. Margaret's chapel under Greenlaw, she thought of the cisterns and passages beneath
the castle. Set the lower anchor there, in Graelent's chamber.
Faris let the rest of the structure fall into place, all the while lifting her eyes to the sky. There would be an upper anchor when she was finished. Until then, there would be only the sky. Not the rift. She would not let her attention stray into the rift.
So far, and no farther, Faris managed to go before she heard a rustle, a small sound, one that she could not put a name to. It might have been the flounce of starched petticoats. It might have been the little sigh a dry branch made as a fire took it, twigs and leaves and all.
Faris knew she was no longer alone on the glass staircase before she turned.
Five steps below her Menary stood, looking around as though admiring the view. She no longer wore a wig. Her own blond hair fell past her shoulders, richer silk than the gray silk gown she wore, which was just the color of her eyes. “What are you doing here?” Menary asked.
Faris scowled. “What are you doing here?” The small sound came again. She realized she had heard the rustle of Menary's silken skirts. How long had Menary been watching?
“I've never been up this high before.” Menary craned her neck to look upward. “Why did you stop here?”
“Who let you out?”
Menary's eyes were bright. “Someone knocked an extra bit of magic out of the rift for me on Twelfth Night. It overloaded every spell for miles. So I left Sevenfold and came home to see my dear father. He told me you and Jane
paid a call here that night.” Her small porcelain smile widened. “Do you think there's any connection?”
“Who told you about the rift?”
“I grew up here, remember? I dreamed about the rift in my cradle. It sang to me.”
“How very poetical.”
“I found it when I was just a little girl. I tried to show the rift to Agnes but she was afraid. She told Father and he told Grandfather. I was punished. From then on, everyone tried to keep me away. They even brought lions to guard it. But I'm not afraid of the lions. I rather like them. They respect me.” Menary looked sharply at Faris. “Who told
you
about the rift?”
Faris ignored the question. “You were lucky to get away from Sevenfold. Why come here and risk being sent back?”
Menary looked around and drew a deep breath of sheer contentment. “Isn't it obvious? The power is here.”
As Menary gazed out at the horizon, she seemed to absorb the morning light, to take on some of its fire. It brought color to her face and blazed in her hair. “I used to think I would share the rift with Father, but he's afraid of it. He didn't want me to come up here. He's so used to getting his way. I had to put him to sleep. I've put them all to sleep, everyone in the castle. I was in a hurry and it saved arguing. Now I think you should go to sleep too. I'm tired of explaining things.”
The wind stirred Menary's hair into a wild pale aureole as she lifted her hands to the sun. So brightly did she give the light back that her fingertips were nearly transparent
against the sky. After a long moment, she folded her hands and smiled seraphically up at Faris.
Faris stared back. Menary's beauty made her painfully aware of her own dishevelment, and that made her cross. “How quickly your hair grew. I suppose you must have used some kind of spell on it.”
Menary's smile faded. “Why don't you go to sleep?”
“Must you talk like a six year-old? It's so tiresome.”
Menary stamped her foot. “Go to sleep.”
Faris stamped back. “Make me.”
“I am.” Menary's eyes flashed. “Oh, I'd like to kill you.”
“Yes, so I gather. I dislike you, too, but I don't go around hiring assassins.”
“Of course not. Father wouldn't let you.”
“What does your father have to say—
oh
.” Faris remembered Brinker's perfidious arrangement with the king. “Believe it or not, I have no ambition to become your stepmother. In fact, I can't imagine a worse fate. The moment I finish here, I'm going home to Galazon.”
Menary looked sly. “Finish what?”
Faris put her hands on her hips. “Well, first I thought I'd kick you downstairs.”
“You're trying to close the rift, aren't you? I could feel it before. I'm sorry but I can tell you right now it isn't going to work.” Menary smiled scornfully. “Don't let me distract you. Go ahead. Try.”
Perception and will, Faris reminded herself. Before Menary's blazing power, she felt woefully ill-prepared. She wished for a ring or a wand or any other sort of magical
artifact. Even the comforting heft of a poker.
A pointed hat sprinkled with silver stars and moons would be nice
, she thought wistfully. She could not even make impressive hand gestures. All she could do was stand, bedraggled and sullen, on the glass staircase, while she felt the rift gaping all around her.
“Tell me when you're through.” Menary looked bored but the malice in her voice betrayed her interest.
The rift shifted. Faris felt the glass staircase soften a little beneath her. Green rose. The clear glass retreated five steps.
Faris sat down on a step and put her hands flat against the glass. It was cold but not slick, more like sea glass than window glass. Faris smoothed her hands across the step, gentling it as if it were alive. The staircase trembled and steadied.
Menary's voice seemed to come from a distance. The condescension in her tone was impossible to miss. “That was nice. Are you finished?”
It took an effort to see Menary, so brightly did the sun shine upon her. Faris squinted. “You did that on purpose.”
“You can't close the rift. I knew you couldn't. But it's so amusing to watch you try.”
“Keep watching. I was given this job for a good reason.”
“Fool. You think you were the first choice? When have you ever had a thing that I haven't had before you and discarded?”
Menary's scorn struck Faris where she did not even know she was weak. “What are you talking about?”
“What do you think? If I'd wanted to be the warden of
the north, I would have been the warden of the north. You only get my castoffs.”
Faris hardly trusted herself to speak. “You're mistaken.”
“Go ahead. Name one thing you've had before I was finished with it.” Menary smiled sweetly. “I dare you.”
“That's easy.” Faris felt her hands curl into fists. The glass was icy against her knuckles. “Love.”
“Love?
You
?” Menary's laughter was prolonged. “Oh, do you mean your blond servant? That's really very funny. Do you think I would have let you have him back if he hadn't already bored me? Oh, you're too quaint. Try again.”
If love were the only thing
… Well, it wasn't, was it? “Friendship,” said Faris.
“Are you thinking of your time at Greenlaw? At Greenlaw, where I did everything there was to do before you even thought of it? At Greenlaw, where your so-called friends referred to you as the Ferret behind your back?” Menary shook her head, still chuckling. “Is that the best you can do?”
Faris was accustomed to Menary, but in her weariness she found the mockery difficult to bear. It was all true, in its way. She thought hard before she spoke again. “Responsibility,” she said at last.
Menary looked puzzled. After a moment, her brow cleared, and her voice grew still more patronizing. “I've tried everything, dear. I'm bored with all of it.”
It was finally Faris's turn to be amused. “You don't know what I'm talking about, do you? Whatever you have,
you don't have Galazon. You'll never have anything like it, and you wouldn't know how to take care of it if you did. You have only yourself.”
Menary's laugh was golden. “I have the rift.”
“Do you? Are you sure?” Faris raised an eyebrow and pressed her palms flat on the step. The next wind that lifted Menary's wild mane of hair did not release it. “Are you quite sure?”
Menary's eyes widened. She raised first her hands and then her voice. “Stop!” Still her hair blazed above her like a candle flame. She struggled to escape.
The glass under Faris's hands grew so cold her fingers burned.
Perception and will
. She could feel the rift straining toward Menary's long hair, a blind hunger, like the moth for the flame.
Take it back then
.
Menary cried out as the illusion of long blond hair left her. More beautiful than before, her own hair as fine and short as a child's, she glared at Faris. “Just try that again.” Her tone was ugly. “Go on, try. You can't do anything to me. You can only send back the power I took for myself.”
Faris did not waste breath on a reply. Into the rift she sent the power Menary had used to satisfy her great vanity. She felt the rift respond subtly, as if eager to reclaim its power.
Had it been anyone else, anyone less tangled in the forces of the rift, Faris's sending would have had little effect. Even so, there was not much to see.
Menary did not scream. She did not lift a hand. She simply went out, as completely as a candle flame. The rift flinched, then gaped for more.
Faris found herself alone on the glass staircase. “You took more power than you knew, perhaps,” she whispered into the emptiness.
She could still feel the rift all around her. Sending Menary's power back should have aided the balance. Yet her refusal to surrender the power had sent Menary into the rift along with it. That had upset the balance further. She was keenly aware of the eagerness in the rift. Menary had been best at taking. Perhaps nothing had ever been given to the rift before.
BOOK: A College of Magics
3.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Empire Trilogy by J. G. Farrell
Healing Touch by Jenna Anderson
Birthmarked by Caragh M. O'brien
BSC08 Boy-Crazy Stacey by Ann M. Martin
Ungifted by Oram, Kelly
Las Armas Secretas by Julio Cortázar
Queen Without a Crown by Fiona Buckley
Unexpected Magic by Diana Wynne Jones