The Salamander flowed into him through their clasped hands. Fast enough that Cilarnen didn't have time to think of ways to stop it, slow enough that he knew what was happening and had time to think of the precise word to label the sensation.
It was intolerable.
That was what it was.
It was intolerable.
He was being stretched from within, his lungs pressed against his ribs so hard he could not take a breath, and the same cloying unclassifiable burning scent was all around him now, except now it was coming from inside: It was on his breath, in his nostrils, on his tongue. He felt light filling his brain and shining out through his eyes, blinding him; he gagged on thick radiance filling the back of his throat and he tried to cough it out, to empty his throat and his stomach and his lungs, but he couldn't. It was there, stretching him until he thought his skin might tear like a too-tight glove. But what would spill out?
Slowly all of it faded away: the light, the smell, the gagging pressure. He was alone in the ice pavilion, and suddenly he was shivering with cold.
He felt a faint numbness in his hands and lips, like frostburn or poison, but in a few minutes that faded, too, and Cilarnen realized he was cold because all of the braziers in the ice-pavilion had gone out and he was standing in four inches of cold water.
The Salamander was gone. Cilarnen felt as if he'd just suddenly awakened from an odd dream. As if the spell had been a dream. It had all seemed very logical and even compelling at the time, but now that he was awake, its events seemed peculiar, even absurd, and the more time that passed, the more the events of the dream became vague and unreal.
He knew from his reading that the Great Spells were often like that, but he had never cast one before and didn't know if this experience was what it ought to feel like. He simply felt as if he ought to be terribly frightened, and for some reason his body wouldn't cooperate.
He stepped carefully to the edge of the circle there was more ice beneath the water, and a scrum of ice was already re-forming at the edges of the circle and stepped out onto the ice. As he walked toward the braziers, his shoes began to stick to the ice as they froze.
With a gesture, he lit the braziers.
All of them.
He shouldn't have had the power to do that after the ritual, but he did.
He felt the Salamander's ghostly presence as it shifted beneath his skin. It wasn't there, not of itself. That would kill him in truth just as he had feared during the ritual. But he was now linked to the land-wards of the Elven Lands, and through them, to the Elemental Powers that gave them life: sylph, gnome, undine, Salamander.
He had the power he needed.
* * * * *
HE completed the ritual the prayers and glyphs that ended it were simple, compared to the preparations and spent the rest of the night reinforcing the
wards around the ice-pavilion, making them as strong and complex as he could. Now that he could practice really practice there was a lot more potential for disaster than ever before.
Warping a Mageshield, or… some of the spells for summoning lightning, or a rain of fire… I don't want to even try those without the best damping wards I can possibly cast. Layers of them.
And if he meant to go viewing over a distance, the most important thing was that no one he chose to look at be able to look at him.
Cilarnen knew that both Idalia and Kellen thought that the High Magick contained no spells for seeing things at a distance. He smiled. As if no High Mage had ever wanted to see something on the other side of the City without leaving the comfort and privacy of his own chambers! The City might not be as vast as the Elvenlands, but it was the whole world to its inhabitants, and contained the world in miniature. Of course, the spells of Far-Seeing were not made available to every Apprentice or Journeyman who might be tempted to misuse them. It would be as unfortunate to look in the wrong window as to look beyond the bounds of Armethalieh, and it was much better for all if the Lower Grades were not tempted. But that didn't mean such spells didn't exist, and they were in the books that Kindolhinadetil had provided him with. It would be simple enough to adjust the parameters of the spell to compensate for the increased distance from the place he wanted to view, and he could visualize where he wanted to see very clearly.
The Council Chamber of Armethalieh.
But not now. Now he needed rest, and sleep, and food. The sun was rising, the traditional signal to the end of the labors of a High Mage.
Cilarnen doused the braziers, wrapped his cloak tightly around himself against the morning chill, and headed for his own tent.
Chapter Seven
The Sword of the City
IF ARMETHALIEH WERE known anywhere outside her own walls a matter of supreme indifference to both her inhabitants and her rulersshe was known as the City of Mages. Wildly inaccurate tales were told about Armethalieh in the lands beyond the sea, but one thing known about her was the simple truth: Mages had built her and Mages ruled her, for Armethalieh was a city of magick.
The ultimate authority in Armethalieh was the High Council: twelve High Mages ruled over by the Arch-Mage, the ultimate authority in the City. At least, that had been true once.
Three High Mages Lords Breulin, Isas, and Volpiril had left the Council under mysterious circumstances to retire into private life.
One had died during a ritual that he had been far too old and frail to participate in Lord Vilmos.
Two Lords Arance and Perizel had been murdered by evil Wildmage magic, that much everyone in the City knew.
Only one of the six empty seats had been refilled, and that by the Arch-Mage's own adopted son, Anigrel Tavadon.
The High Council had once debated strongly and at endless length over every facet of the numerous laws that governed every facet of life in the Golden City, for as well as being a city of Mages, Armethalieh was a city of Law, and the High Council was the ultimate expression of that law. Now the only voice heard within the Council Chamber was Anigrel Tavadon's.
Had it not been Anigrel's idea to set a group of Wardens over the Commons to report all suspicious activity, so that never again would treason be attempted against the Mageborn? And because the Wildmages were so viciously clever, extending their taint to the Mageborn themselves, there were Wardens to watch over the Mageborn themselves. For their own protection, of course.
But Anigrel's reforms had not stopped there. Since the tanks of the High Council were now so sadly depleted by treason and murder within their very ranks, proof of the growing Wildmage menace had not Anigrel drawn from the ranks of the Magewardens a group of loyal young acolytes to take over some of the most important spellwork involved in running the City itself, so that the Council could expend its own resources on only the most vital matters?
Indeed, as the sennights stretched to moonturns, the High Council found with varying senses of relief and unease among its members that more and more of its magickal work was turned over to the Magewardens. And there was less of it to do than ever before, for at Anigrel's urging, the Council had reinstated a series of ancient taxes on the citizens of Armethalieh for the privilege of calling upon the Mages for magick at all.
The Great Spells of Protection and Preservation were still cast, of course: Food was preserved, fires were quenched, walls were strengthened, the bells that kept time in the Golden City continued to do so. And most of all, the Great Wards that strengthened the high stone walls of Armethalieh against any assault, magickal or physical, remained firm.
* * * * *
OR so they believe.
Anigrel Tavadon he had possessed another name once, but it was quite unimportant to him now stood in his private robing chamber, preparing to take his place in the Circle. Though his rank entirely unofficial, to be sure, but influential just the same would have allowed him to delegate this task to his subordinates without eliciting any comment, Anigrel always attended the Warding Circles.
It was the most important thing he did; the keystone of his secret life. Long before Anigrel had pledged his service to the City, he had sworn his allegiance to an older, darker power. From earliest childhood, Anigrel had served the Queen of the Endarkened, and everything he had done in life looked toward the day when he could lay the Golden City at her feet as her prize.
The City Wards were centuries old, layer upon layer of protective spells to ensure that nothing that was not human could enter the City of Mages, that no spell of Darkness, that nothing Tainted, that no creature of baneful intent, could pass its gates or soar over its walls to imperil those who lived within. Any who had attained the rank of High Mage could read these wards as easily as one of the unGifted could read a book of wondertales, and would instantly recognize any change in them.
That was why he had needed to be so very careful.
Every change he had made had been insignificant in itself. And at the same time he worked upon the wards, he had changed the City, creating such a climate of fear among the Mageborn so that by the time the changes could no longer be hidden and that time was very near, perhaps even tonight anyone who could see the changes to the City Wards, and who dared to speak of it, could easily be arrested and condemned as a traitor.
Anigrel smiled. But the time in which any would see the change to the City Wards would be very brief, for when the changes became visible, it would be the signal that his Dark Lady's powers could reach within the City at last.
Oh, she would not yet be able to enter in person. Much more work would still have to be done. It was no light thing to dismantle the spells of centuries: he did not have such power. But when the wards had been transformed, her influence would be able to extend within the City openly and easily not along the tiny thread he had nurtured all his life, but as a rushing torrent of blessed Darkness. She could protect him from any who opposed him, erase the knowledge of his tamperings from the minds of those who discovered it.
And help him winnow the High Council still further.
Once Lycaelon had dreamed of ruling Armethalieh alone and unopposed. Perhaps, before the old man died, Anigrel would grant him his wish. Meron and Harith were annoying old fools, and once Anigrel had the power that compromising the City Wards would grant him the power to conceal his own dark magic he could ensure that even more members of the High Council met with unfortunate… accidents.