Chapter 13

Moghran sat in his cabin and studied the written reports from his subordinates. The sharp, angular writing gave him a headache if he read too much, but he had only just begun this task, as odious as it was.

The huge warbarge rocked only slightly with the waves and he was long used to the motion, a veteran of many long campaigns for the Theocracy. Distant creaking noises told him that they were under sail and the light from the chained lamps moved slightly with the slow, steady motion.

The long table, normally for his private dining, was covered in parchments and a long wooden box to store them in. A half dozen of them were crumpled into balls and lay strewn about the floor, where he had tossed worthless reports. He would have a slave gather them and take the names of those men who needed a reminder of the value of well-penned reports, in addition to the usefulness of making worthy observations.

Tarasha slipped into the sitting room from his bedchamber, still pulling a sheer silken robe about her slender body. The woman harbored a burning desire, a result of her Becoming ritual, no doubt, to be as elven as she could be. She kept her body shaved and the silk slid smoothly over her contours. "My master is discomfited," she said in a placating and caring voice as she knelt at his feet. "Come, allow me to soothe you."

"I've no time for that," said the Templar, stroking her smooth black hair with an idle hand. "What did you learn before we withdrew?"

She gave a disappointed sigh then settled back onto her heels, still kneeling, but also meeting his gaze. "The palace held, near as I can tell, because of a wizard among them," she said in a smooth, perfunctory delivery. "I questioned a man, a guardsman, who said her name was Siska." Tarasha shook her head and made a sour face. "The odd part is that he claimed that she is an apprentice."

"An apprentice mage held off our attack?" he asked, setting down the parchment he had been examining to stare at the kneeling sorceress. "Surely that man was mistaken."

"I would think so, as well," she said, nodding, though with his full attention upon her, she began to smile and ran a hand up his bare leg beneath his robes. "However, the fact that our infiltrators know of most of their powerful magi leads me to wonder if, perhaps, she were not a Tressenite, but instead one from outside who came to learn from the Blue Order."

"Maybe," said Moghran, nodding. "Then I could see the confusion, if she is a student of the Blues, yet already a mage of considerable power." He hated to say those words together: 'mage of considerable power', for such was an abomination and a terrible thing to even contemplate. Sorcerers were damning enough without bringing wizards into the matter.

"Nonetheless," continued Tarasha, "They firmly place the failure of the first attempt to take the palace in her hands, both our men and the heretics agree. I took - measures - to put this wizard down, though they were hastily contrived and I cannot ensure their success."

"Speak to a few more of the new slaves, to determine if their stories keep aligning and tell me your findings," ordered Moghran, turning back toward his papers and dislodging her seeking fingers upon his thigh. "Though perhaps your efforts may bear fruit and the heretic wizard shall not be a matter of worry." He wondered what sort of 'measures' the sorceress had taken, then decided to let her have her little secrets.

She gave him a long, searching look and did not allow her disappointment to register upon her face. "I can, perhaps, learn more by offering honey instead of the lash, my master," she said, her lips quirking upward. "Men, even heretics, can be so stoic. Some die before they can tell all they know."

"Do what you wish with them," said the Templar. "I care little how you acquire your knowledge from the heretics, so long as you cleanse yourself afterward."

She bowed her head, nearly touching it to the polished hardwood floor. "Always, master," she said before rising and leaving the room into the corridors of the barge, still wearing the nearly transparent garment. She would attract eyes moving about like that, and not a man of the crew or marines aboard would touch her, unless she invited them to do so. The wiser among them would balk even if she offered.

Moghran considered for long moments, smiling. He knew Tarasha's appetites were far-reaching. She might well learn something of value or not. At the least she would not bother him for attention for some days while she tried gleaning information from the hold full of new slaves.

He picked up another report and tried to decipher the barely-legible scratching on the mottled surface.

Siska walked the corridors of the Palace of Tressen. She observed that they were whole and unbroken, bearing no signs of the just finished battle. She turned toward the throne room, seeing the heavy bronzed doors open wide. Inside a red glow lit the glass case behind the iron straps of its enclosing cage. She walked toward the case, a feeling of expectancy building in her with each step.

However, before she crossed half the long chamber, a voice behind her made her stop. "I see you've finally come," he said. She spun about, gasping. It was Tarviel. His broad shoulders and tall frame were backlit from light entering the hall behind him through wide panes of glass. He held out a hand to her, smiling. "Your future lies here."

The apprentice nodded. "I can feel something," she said.

"Indeed you do, Siska," he said, still holding out his hand. He took no steps toward her, though, and still stood in the doorway. She went to him, instead, and startled herself by feeling moved to embrace the tall, muscular man.

When her arms went about his middle, he returned the hug, caressing her shoulders. It surprised her how comforting the embrace felt. It was a warm embrace, but it felt like embracing one's own father, not the embrace of a lover.

From behind her came a dull thud as the two massive doors closed, sealing the throne room.

Siska pulled back and tilted her head a little as she regarded him. "We are akin," she declared. Somehow she knew she spoke truth, even if a truth she did not understand.

The broad smile that Tarviel always wore widened still more. "That I am, Siska," he said in a pleased voice. His powerful hand reached out and stroked her golden hair, a soothing gesture for an agitated child. She noted that in this dream, only her own plait of silver interwoven with her own gold remained of the four she wore.

She did not pull away from the touch, but she cut it short with her gaze. "Who are you?" she asked, her brow furrowing with concentration.

"I cannot say just yet, not until other events come to pass," he said. "If you were to come from the shadow too soon, it would do more harm than good."

Siska blinked. "The shadow?"

Tarviel shook his head. "I'm sorry, darling Siska, I cannot say more," he said. "I came to teach you something, another skill you need to know."

Of a sudden, her eyes gleamed with alert attention. "What?" she asked. The burning heat of her curiosity surprised even her. Was she so eager for new knowledge of the arcane? Perhaps that, more than anything, defined being a wizard.

He cast a spell, his fingers moving in an intricate way and mouthing syllables that both sounded foreign and were perfectly clear in her ears. Siska could feel the knowledge of these motions and sounds burning themselves into the paths in her mind becoming knowledge, becoming instinct.

"What does it do?" she asked.

"I cannot demonstrate it, for it requires two wizards or more to actually enact," he said. He looked as if he were about to say more, but Siska interrupted him.

"Yet you're a wizard, that makes us two," she said.

Tarviel chuckled. "I am no more a wizard now than your shoes are, Siska. I was once a wizard. Not nearly of your power, but still a wizard." He looked sadly at her. "But no more, not for many a long year."

She nodded. "Then how..." she let the question drift off even as she started to ask it.

"You did it all, I only showed you how," said Tarviel. "I cannot cast the weakest of spells nor draw even a dram of mana."

Siska took a few moments to absorb all this, but finally she straightened her back and looked levelly at him. "So, what does it do?" she asked. "The spell you just showed me."

Tarviel laughed loudly this time. "Eager girl," he said. "But no, I'll not allow you to become too lazy. Think on what I showed you and piece together its use from the parts you recognize."

Siska looked at him angrily for a moment, but then relaxed. "I see a character for soul, or energy," she said. "I see a sharing word, a word of binding together." Her eyes reached upward as she concentrated and her brow furrowed. "A command."

The muscular man nodded. "All correct, but nothing like the sum of the parts," he said then smiled eagerly. "Use it."

"I'm asleep, I can't cast spells," she said, her voice rising slightly.

"Use it," he said again. "No harm shall come of it and you may full well know what it does, then."

Siska shook her head, then her eyes became accusing. "You said you would not try to teach me more until we had met," she said, taking an angry step forward.

Tarviel stepped back a pace, blinking in surprise at her sudden vehemence. "We've all but," he said, defensively. "You're in my home right now."

Siska looked about the palace. "You live in the palace?" she asked.

"In a manner of speaking, yes," he said. "Though 'live' is probably too generous a term. Now, use the spell, time grows short."

"All right," she said, raising her voice in frustration again. "You swear no harm shall come of it?"

"I swear it upon my soul, which is all I have left," said Tarviel.

Siska cast the spell.

There passed a moment where nothing happened. She could feel an expanding sphere of her mind reaching out from her, growing slowly. Something came into contact with it, gleaming white in her mind's eye, like a star. When her sphere surrounded the bright glow, it started expanding faster, she drew mana from the little star just engulfed to feed the sphere's needs. Another of the glows, slightly different in color and size fell within the effect, and the sphere grew still. Then two at almost the same instant fell to lay within the sphere with her, and she could feel power pulsing through her faster. More glows fell within the expanding globe, then still more.

A few moments later she distantly heard Tarviel say, "That is more than enough." She willed the sphere to stop expanding and it halted its growth. Thirty glowing miniature stars were within it with her, tiny fibers of mana connecting them to her, forming a miniature constellation of bright points in all directions. Some were larger than others, some smaller, some flickered fitfully like candles, others blazed steady like a light stone. It seemed that some of them were moving.

The thing that stunned her, though, was the sheer volume of raw mana she felt at her fingertips. It was as if she could do anything with it. If she created the white fire now, it would be a cone the size of a large mansion. She could lift a castle. She could flatten a whole company of those Theocracy marines with a single blow of energy.

One of the lights, the first she had touched upon, winked out and she felt the mana at her disposal drop slightly, not a lot, but a bit. She regretted the loss.

"You did well," said Tarviel. "Few can hold so many without charring their minds to a cinder. And you can hold more, still, I can sense that."

She turned to look at him and was suddenly awake.

The sting of the slap to her cheek left her blinking and small white spots danced before her eyes. "What the hell are you doing?" demanded Salira, jerking her up to a sitting position with a mighty heave upon Siska's shoulders. She may well be larger than the petite woman, but Salira manhandled Siska like a small child.

Siska blinked once again. "I was dreaming," she said, her voice still muzzy with sleep.

"You were bloody well forming a circle!" yelled Salira, glaring at her. "And you had over thirty of us in it before I managed to ward myself. Had you been using the energy you had tapped, I wouldn't have been able to do even that. One protect me if you didn't have the sleepers within it as well."

Salira sat heavily on the bed. They were in one of the dozens of bedchambers in the Palace of Tressen. Salira had been sleeping beside her, as most people were doubled and even tripled up in the beds this morning. Sunlight peeked in through chinks in the curtains and cast a pale pool around where the heavy velvet covered the windows.

The room was beyond beautiful. The walls were paneled to the waist in polished mahogany. Above that, they were painted in delicate hues with flowers and fine tracery of gold. Every surface was either painted with the miniature pastel flowers or gilded, all the way to the crown molding, showing repeating dragon's heads.

Even the ceiling was painted to cleverly look like a blue sky with puffy clouds scutting across them and cherubic angels perching on the edge of the crown molding. So convincingly rendered were the cherubs that it seemed one could reach out and touch their little dangling feet to tickle them.

"Where did you learn to do that?" asked Salira. "Few know the spells of the circle, they are not taught by the Blue Order."

Siska shook her head. "Tarviel taught me," she said, "in my dreams."

"Tarviel?" asked Salira. "You accept knowledge from men in your dreams?" Her expression was disbelieving and on the verge of bursting into anger again. "You trust someone who approaches you thus?"

"I trust him," said Siska, suddenly feeling defensive, and her head rose to meet the older wizard's eyes. Her back straightened, too, lifting her head above the other woman's by several inches and giving Siska a powerful presence. "He is of my blood, the grandfather of my mother's mother."

Siska was not sure how she suddenly knew this, but she knew it as a certainty. Had he put that knowledge in her mind while teaching the spell? She shook her head and some of the newfound stiffness in her spine fled. "I have to trust him, I don't think I can keep him from my dreams."

The older woman put a gentle hand on Siska's cheek. "Okay, okay," she said, calming herself as much as the sad-eyed apprentice. "Perhaps we can find a way to ward your sleep against it." She spoke idly now, offering placating words to the young apprentice.

"Why is forming a circle not taught by the order?" asked Siska.

Salira chewed her lip for a moment, a look of concentration in her round face. "Circles are dangerous," she said, finally. "When you control one, you must take great care, or you can pull too much mana through people within it and destroy them."

Siska nodded. It seemed that doing something like that would be quite dangerous. She had read, already, the recounts of what happened to those who drew too heavily of mana from outside themselves. Most of the recountings were third person and spoke of the wizards who had miscalculated their abilities in the past tense.

"Wizards die in circles, it's that simple," said Salira. "No one has fine enough control of their mana to prevent it every time. One may form a circle a hundred times and not have a single death, then the next all die, including the circle's master." She held up her hands in a show of opposition. "When one person falls from the circle, for example, from being overwhelmed, even if they live. The demand does not drop back that you have placed on it for your magical castings. The demand shall suddenly be that much more on every member of the circle. Often, before the circle's master can release it, more have fallen as one after another falls out and the demand climbs upward with each loss."

There was a knock on the door and Siska pulled the sheets over her naked body as Salira rose, wearing a cotton slip. She opened it a crack and spoke to whomever it was, then shut the door. "That was Phillip. The others are all atwitter at what just happened," she gave Siska a weak smile. "Considering what you're already in the soup for, I told him that we were awakened the same way. They think it might have been some sort of attack by the Templars."

"Thank you," said Siska, curling her knees to her chest and resting her chin on them. "I am always making mistakes."

Salira giggled. "At least when you make a mistake it's a grand one," she said. "No one shall soon forget anything you do. I fear mediocrity is not a part of your fate." Salira's expression became almost eager and she smiled wide. "What did it feel like?" she asked, climbing onto the bed and leaning toward Siska eagerly.

The apprentice remembered Renna's face and pose from years before when Siska had announced that she had been kissed by one of the grocer's delivery boys. She also remembered it in herself when Renna had told her of her first time spending the night with one of Mistress Tomana's gentleman guests only a few months later. Siska found herself inclined to share with Salira.

"It felt like I had control of the world - I could do anything," said Siska. "It was - overwhelming."

Salira nodded and got a distant look in her eyes. "It would be," she said. "I know the circle spells, and have been in a few, only a half dozen wizards, mind you, and strictly controlled." Her voice had taken on that lecturing tone that Salira seemed to slip into so easily. "When I was given control of it, it was exhilarating, that's for certain. I cannot even imagine what it must have been like for thirty." Her expression again changed to one of curiosity, her brow furrowing a bit. "Was that as many as you could bring into the circle?"

"No," said Siska, plainly, not bragging, but stating fact. "I could feel the strain it was putting on me. I could, maybe, bring in another thirty."

"Sixty," said Salira shaking her head slowly. "One only knows what a person could do with that kind of power at their disposal."

"Why doesn't that much power destroy me?" asked Siska. "I mean, if I drew that from around myself, it would ignite me like a oil-soaked torch. I can feel that much."

The lecturing tone returned to Salira's voice as she said, "When you draw power through a person, such as in a circle, it's been - purified - for lack of a better word. It isn't raw mana anymore but a more organized stream of energy. Some spririts must be filtered through various materials to make them fit to drink, it's something like that."

Salira stopped speaking for a moment and held up her ring with the faintly glowing manastone. It had been glowing much more brightly before the activities of last night. Salira had drawn mana from it repeatedly and it was nearly drained. "Manastones do the same thing. You can draw more from them, because the mana stored inside them has already been processed by the person who put it there."

Salira seemed determined to give a full lecture on this matter. Siska, for her part felt not the least unwilling to listen. She always welcomed new knowledge. "I understand that someone once did an experiment with self-charging manastones, but the mana was raw and just as likely to backlash against the person using them as raw environmental mana."

Siska considered the lesson as Salira laid herself down beside her again. "Now, go back to sleep, and no more dreaming," said the older woman. "I imagine the next few days shall be quite interesting enough for the both of us."

It took Siska a short while to actually fall asleep, thoughts raced through her head of what she had done, and there remained a niggling desire, scratching on the back of her mind, to hold that much power again.

Siska looked thoughtful for a moment. "What is a sleeper?" she asked, remembering what Salira had said when she awoke.

"A sleeper is a person with the gift of wizardry that is too weak to normally warrant training. They can, perhaps, cast spells, but they would be exerting themselves strenuously for even the tiniest of effects."

"And I drew mana through them, as well?" asked the apprentice.

Salira nodded. "The flickering lights were sleepers, they probably do not even know they have a tiny capability of the art."

All who had remained after the battle had been offered bedding in the palace until they were rested. Some of the folk could not have walked home had they tried. There were people laying in the corridors on makeshift pallets of folded blankets and all the rooms had people in them. The staff was beside itself, when it finally managed to pull itself together. It was only a small staff, normally maintaining a place that was little more than a museum with some offices in the first cellar.

The palace had guests for the first time in over a century.

The staff tried admirably, though, to provide for the comfort of the people who, by their presence, had ensured there would be a palace. Cooks had even been roused and food brought in to set fire in ovens a century cold in the kitchens.

The Commandant and command staff of the Defenders, with only three or four hours of sleep, were now closeted in the main audience chamber of the crown with the Council of the Blue Order. Runners had been sent to find the Admiral-General of the Graysails, both to attend the meeting, and to explain just where the Graysails had been the night prior.

The liveried staff of the palace, reinforced by their family members, wearing only gold and blue armbands to mark their position among their street clothing, ran to and fro throughout the palace.

Varan and Mannis moved through the burned out husk of their former home amid the Defender's compound. They hoped to find some bit of their past amid the rubble, but little had survived the conflagration. The Templars had sent the majority of their sorcerers against the compound, and the damage was extensive.

Mercifully, most of the students had managed to escape, guided by the upperclassmen into the wooded parks behind the compound. To their credit, the older students, those within a year of completing their training had mounted a counterattack after ensuring the safety of the junior trainees. They managed to drive the Theocracy marines out of the compound before the Shrine of the Fallen could be razed. That group would be decorated veterans now, even before receiving their silver hilts.

The blocky marble structure of the shrine looked odd standing, pristine and gleaming in the morning sun, amid the destruction.

Late in the morning, it acted as a rallying point for the Defenders, and there was soon a tent erected before the shrine. Inside were half a dozen men writing in ledgers as Defenders reported in. Those that had been off-compound, or even out of the city when the attack came, trickled in throughout the afternoon.

The loss of the bay towers was a sore blow. The Templars had destroyed both of them, burning them to the ground, leaving only a pile of broken stone where a pair of two-hundred foot towers had stood for more than five centuries. Fully manned, they would have given the Templars pause coming into the city's wide bay with those bastions at their backs.

"You asked her?" asked Mannis, grinning despite the upset he felt inside. He was glad for his best friend's happiness, and that outweighed the sense of mourning in his heart.

"Yes, and she agreed," replied Varan, though his face looked considerably less pleased than Mannis'. "I don't know, though, with the attack and all..." he let that morbid train of thought drift off without completing it.

"She'll not change her heart, despite all," said the lanky red-haired Defender. "Though it may make for a delay."

Varan nodded. "During wartime a delay could be a lifetime," he said.

"Tatyana?" asked Tornadin, his voice coming to her through the thin door to the manservant's room off his bedchamber.

She slipped through the door, beaming a smile at him as she pressed the door shut. He tried to peer past her into the room, but it was darkened, the curtains drawn and lamps snuffed.

"Now, lover," she said in a chiding tone, "You know what I do in there is a surprise for you."

Somehow, when she spoke like that to him, he felt like he had been upbraided by his mother, and yet, somehow, it also aroused him fiercely. He grabbed her slender arm and pulled her unresisting body to him, kissing her.

She returned the kiss with equal energy, pressing to him harder and sighing through her nose. "I don't know that I like surprises," he said, pulling back from the breath-stealing kiss.

"You should like this surprise, Tornadin - Master," she said, lowering her eyes to look up at him through the short, straight-cut bangs of her graying black hair. While partly gray, that hair was still silken soft and he could not resist running his hands through it. It felt like cool water over his fingers and she seemed to revel in the touch, tilting her head back and breathing heavily through her nose.

She still occasionally dropped a 'Master' into their conversations, and every time she did so, it fanned the flames of his ardor all the more. The small reminders that he owned her and could take her and use her at his whim thrilled him. That he seemed to only do so when she wished was simply a reminder of her desire for his touch.

Tatyana seemed more than willing right now, giving him an eager look with glittering eyes. Ten or more years sloughed from her features when she smiled and she smiled broadly at that moment.

One's blessing, he's strong, thought Tatyana as Tornadin lifted her and placed her on the bed without so much as a grunt of exertion. Such an enthusiastic lover was he that he never even noticed her soft murmurs of incantation as they tousled the bed.

Having never used her magics in this way before, Tatyana was amazed at how strong the hold she had over him grew in such a short time. It seemed reinforced by their intimacy and strengthened every time they made love. She wondered, in idle moments, if she truly needed to keep reinforcing the enchantment. The strands of mana flowed over and around his mind before settling inward and taking root.

Already the young man did her bidding, quickly justifying anything she requested as his own idea with the slimmest of excuses.

Afterward, Tatyana lay listening to Tornadin's soft snore. He was a more than enthusiastic lover, leaving himself exhausted after his passions spent themselves.

She slipped from the bed to the armchair beside it. The chair was positioned to gather the light from the three tall, slender windows that lay against the wall opposite the entry door from the sitting room. She picked up the first of his gifts to her, a book. Opening the worn leather tome, she began to read intently, curling her legs up under her in the chair, getting comfortable.

"A day late and a full mark short," said Phillip, glaring toward the port as one sleek ship after another slid into their slips along the Graysails docks. There was frenetic activity at those docks, both from the ships and people moving toward them. He could make out, from his vantage point atop the observatory of the Palace of Tressen, the knot of light blue robes that would be some of the council of the Blue Order, and he was sure some of the black-clad shapes among the same press of people would be the command cadre of the Defenders.

Siska busily examined the bronze, steel, and glass contraption that stood in the center of the observatory. "It makes the stars closer?" she asked, looking up at Salira.

"They just look closer, dear," said the older woman. "Like a spyglass, only moreso."

Siska peered into the spot that the wizard had showed her and yanked her head back violently. "Bright," she said, blinking her right eye quickly and giving the other woman an accusatory look.

Salira laughed. "It's meant to be used at night, Siska," she said. "It's probably useless in daylight."

"Not that anyone cares," said Phillip, his voice rising with a hint of annoyance, "but Tarmal is among the ships now."

The two women looked up from the telescope and blinked at him. "I'm certain we shall hear later, in amazingly painful detail, all that happens," said Salira dryly. "Unless you expect the council to start blasting fireballs amid the ships to show their upset."

"They just might," said Phillip looking back toward the docks again. "They were furious that the Admiral-general had no idea why there were no ships defending the harbor last night."

Keeley and Garel emerged from the spiraling stairs that descended from the flat marble floor of the observatory and looked around at the metal and glass dome that covered the round tower, almost twenty paces across.

"Dad said you were up here," Keeley announced, her expression decidedly neutral. "He wished me to tell you that we shall be taking mother to the pyres at sunset." Her practiced straight face broke at that and her shoulders slumped.

Siska rushed forward, and Salira was only a step behind her in putting their arms around the girl and comforting her. She wept openly as soon as Siska embraced her, clinging to the rumpled and only half cleaned formal dress. Salira stood back a pace, though, unsure what to do. She looked toward young Garel, who seemed to be bearing up more stoically under the stress of the moment.