C. S. Friedman - Magister 01, page 21
It was there she found one of the Magisters, standing as still as the stone itself, and as dark as the shadows surrounding him. As soon as she looked in his direction she knew with utter certainty that his eyes were fixed upon her, and she felt the chill touch of his power inspecting her, seeking information on her history, her identity, her purpose. It took little effort to turn it aside; it was one of the first tricks Ethanus had taught her. She was only sorry she could not see the Magister’s face more clearly as his spell failed, could not judge his reaction. Had he heard she was a witch, or was this the first hint he’d had that she possessed power of her own?
She began to ascend one of the staircases, not heading toward the gargoyle-like Magister—it was clear from his aspect he would accept no invasion of his space—but seeking a higher vantage point from which to look for others of his kind. Holding her clinging skirts up perhaps a bit higher than a lady should, she ascended to a narrow balcony, where a group of young men who were clearly in their cups invited her to join them in making ribald comments about the crowd below. She smiled as politely as she could and kept climbing. A deep-set gallery lined with armorial displays finally offered her what she was looking for—a comfortable perch from which she might observe the whole of the great hall, balconies included; she pulled up a bench to the railing and knelt upon it, tucking her train underneath so that passersby would not trip over it.
Now that she knew what she was looking for, she was able to locate them all. They all stood at the periphery of the gathering, watching over the morati like hawks. The unnatural black that they wore made them almost invisible in the shadows, but their power blazed forth like beacons to her sorcerous senses. Now and then one of the highborn guests would approach one, and they did so with such obvious humility as made her toes curl. Princes might drape themselves in jewels and silks, build great towers, and even send out armies to conquer nations but in the end, the real power lay in the hands of the Magisters, and the course of mortal empires was determined by whom they favored, and whom they did not.
There were four of them in all. One kept to the shadows, drawing power about him so that only with the greatest effort could she make him out at all, and she could see no details of his person. Another looked almost youthful, and eventually he made his way down to the main floor and spoke to a few of the guests—though most stayed well clear of his path—but his presence was without warmth, and he allowed no one to touch him. Another had taken up station on a balcony opposite Kamala’s, and at one point she looked up to find him staring at her with an intensity that left her shaken. He had a deep scar running down one cheek that had healed badly, twisting the surrounding flesh like some grotesque sculpture, and when at last he moved she could see his long robes rippling as if stirred by a breeze though no breeze was present. You may know a Magister by the flesh he chooses to wear, Ethanus had told her. What kind of man could adopt any appearance he liked, yet preferred such a twisted, damaged countenance?
The fourth Magister appeared so old and fragile it was hard to believe he was a living creature; that was a show of power all its own, she realized, intended to make the morati aware of just how ancient a sorcerer he might be. Like his youthful counterpart he eventually descended to the main floor of the great hall to greet several of the morati; like the other he offered his hand and cheek to no one, encouraged no false intimacy, tolerated no foolishness for the sake of polite society. These men were soulmates to her spirit, she thought, playing by their own rules, and she hungered to meet them, to begin the process that would win her acceptance as one of their kind. But she did not know how to begin. She’d been spoiled by Ethanus, and had perhaps assumed that the others of his kind would be equally approachable… equally human. But these black-robed creatures seemed like a different species altogether, and she was beginning to realize just how difficult it would be to strike the right note when she finally presented herself to them… and how badly things might go if she failed.
Take your time, she told herself. You have as many lifetimes as you need to work this out. But the words echoed emptily in her soul, where the fire of restlessness blazed with mortal heat.
Your lack of patience, Ethanus had warned her, will be a greater danger to you than any enemy.
A party of revelers was making its way up toward where she knelt; drunken voices promised a more aggressive invasion of her space than she was in the mood to deal with. Looking about for some convenient path of exit, she spied a small door leading outward from the next balcony over. The sudden thought of fresh air and a moment alone to gather her thoughts was appealing, and she hurried along the staircase that led from her current perch to that exit.
It was a small door, and a mere whisper of power was sufficient to unlock it; she opened it and peered out into the twilight. There was a bridge beyond, a narrow thing, clearly not intended for grand processions but for more private use. It probably led to a subsidiary tower owned by the Savresi, permitting them to come and go without drawing attention to themselves. Whatever its intended purpose, its position out of sight of the crowded walkways near the main entrance of the tower promised a few moments of peace and solitude, a welcome respite.
She stepped through and let the door close behind her, moving out onto the bridge, into the fresh night air. There were torches burning at both ends of the bridge but none along its length, and azure shadows danced be-fore and after her as she walked to the middle of the bridge, sighed, and leaned against the rail.
Her spirit was tired, she realized. Tired of letting strange men kiss her hand, strange women kiss her cheek, the things that were expected of her here. She had once sworn she would never let a stranger touch her, and now she had let dozens of strangers do so. She smiled at jokes she did not think were funny, admired jewelry she did not think was beautiful, and endured the suggestive comments of men whose brains were clearly in their codpieces. And all the while the Magisters watched, disdaining such social games, aloof and independent. She hungered to be one of them. No… she was one of them. She hungered for them to know it.
Choose your time carefully, Ethanus had warned her. They are creatures of habit, more wary of change than any morati, and they will not accept a woman as one of them without considerable resistance. Do not let any of them know what you are until you are sure of what your reception will be. Remember that if they deny you are truly a Magister, their Law will not protect you.
But how can I ever be sure? she despaired. For one brief, mad moment she wished herself back in Ethanus’ forest. There at least she had understood the rules.
“Ravi’s witch.” The sudden voice startled her; she had not heard the tower door open. “Tell me, does he pay you in coin for the life force you sacrifice? Or is it love that buys death, these days?”
A sharp retort came to her lips and she turned around to let it loose… and then stopped, the words frozen, and felt her heart skip a beat.
It was the Magister with the scar.
He walked out onto the bridge. She could see his black robes ripple about his feet as he moved, a strangely sensual movement, unnatural. Each movement of cloth cost some morati a moment of his life, she thought. Would she too someday reach the point when she would be willing to drain a consort of life for such a pointless affectation?
The torchlight played upon the scar on his face, making the wound look livid, fresh. “You have not answered me, child.”
A flush of indignation rose to her cheeks, but she managed to keep the worst of her temper bridled. “You assume you know what I am. Assume whatever answer pleases you.”
Anger flickered in the backs of his eyes; clearly he was not accustomed to having mere witches talk back to him. “Your manners were better inside.”
“Men were more polite to me inside.”
“Morati men fawn upon you. Magisters watch in silence. Whose judgment is more meaningful?”
A faint smile flickered across her lips. “Perhaps I did not come here to be judged.”
His voice was knife-edged. “Perhaps it is not your choice.”
He stepped closer to her and reached out a hand toward her face. Her smile vanished and she stepped back out of reach, hackles rising. I have not given you the right to touch me.
The Magister’s expression darkened. “Afraid?”
She said it simply, with an equally cold expression. “No.”
He reached out for her again. This time when she tried to move away his power wrapped itself around her and held her in place. For one brief moment his hand fell upon her cheek, a mocking caress… then she gathered her own power and broke through the sorcerous bond, stumbling over her train as she backed away yet again. Her heart was pounding so loudly she could hear it. Could he?
“Don’t,” she breathed.
Fezsf of Soujs
“Do what?” His black eyes glittered in the torchlight. “Touch you as a man might—as Ravi no doubt does? But you are used to that, aren’t you? Whoring and witchery are the same art, after all. One barters one’s soul instead of one’s flesh, but the act itself is no different.”
Her first instinct was to respond indignantly to his words. Her second, more intelligent one, was to say nothing, to keep her expression calm. Ravi did not know I was a whore, she told herself, and the Magisters at the fete who tried to read my past failed to do so. He is but casting out random insults to see which will make me lose control He knows nothing of my past.
“So…” There was amusement in his eyes, but it was a cold, reptilian thing, wholly divorced from any mortal concept of humor. “Will you best all my sorcery with your witch’s art, if I persist? Or simply run away?”
/ know your kind, she thought. When you were young you beat anyone who crossed you, and probably assaulted any maiden that took your fancy. Your peers feared you and your parents feared you and probably the authorities as well, and now that you have the ultimate power you expect the whole world to do the same. Only I won’t. I am your rival in power, your equal in fierceness, perhaps even your better… you just do not know it yet.
“I do not run,” she said quietly.
The hem of his gown suddenly stopped its obscene fluttering. He was drawing the power to him, she realized, readying it for some more significant purpose. A cold chill ran down her spine. Did he think he could toy with her like he would a morati? If so he was in for an unpleasant surprise.
… and a voice whispered in the back of her mind that this was the not way she should be dealing with Magisters… But great waves of rage were roiling to the surface, the frustration of too many hours spent pretending to be something that she was not. She had not come this far in life, at so great a cost, only to have this snake of a Magister treat her like a common whore. Very well, if he wanted to spar with her, let him try. He was in for a bigger surprise than he could imagine.
He struck.
His power was a whirlwind that sucked the breath from her lungs, leaving her stunned and gasping. She grabbed the railing beside her as she tried to defend herself, but the raw power of the assault was like nothing she had ever felt before, and it broke through each spell of defense she invoked. She could feel tendrils of his sorcery winding themselves around her legs, sucking the strength from her muscles, forcing her limbs to fold, and she realized with a rush of fury that he meant to make her kneel to him. Not with some sophisticated spell, like the kind Ethanus had taught her to counter, but with a battering-ram assault, primitive in form, brutal in purpose.
NO!!!
Reaching deep into her own soul—and through it to the consort who fueled her sorcery—she called up all the power within her own reach. Stolen life raged through her veins in a flood tide and she forced it to take the form she desired, she fed it on her fury, she armored it with her determination… and then she let it loose. It was a wild and terrible thing, better suited to her own fiery spirit than the studious habits of her mentor. It burst forth from her in a blaze of sorcerous light that would surely have blinded any morati spectator. Even so it could not could not drive back his sorcery entirely, though it was enough to break the stranglehold he had upon her flesh. Her legs straightened, her muscles regained their accustomed strength, and just in case the meaning of those things was not clear to him, she stiffened her back and raised up her head and met his gaze squarely with her own.
“I also do not kneel,” she said quietly.
He did not seem angered, but rather amused. For a moment she was startled by that and then, with a cold shudder, she realized the truth. The man believed she was a witch. That meant that, as far as he knew, every time she used her power to defend herself from him, she must sacrifice precious moments of her life to do so. That was what this was all about, she realized. He was daring her to waste the essence of her life in self-defense and laughing inwardly, no doubt, as she took the bait and hastened her own death. You are not my equal, his actions pronounced, and if you persist in pretending that you are, your pride will cost you your life.
It was the ultimate violation of her person. The fact that she was not truly a witch only made it worse. How long would he play with her like this—toying with her as a cat does with a mouse—forcing her to use up more and more of her life essence, seeking that moment in which her prideful soul would expire of exhaustion at his feet? The fact that such moment would never come, and he did not know it yet, only made the game more repulsive in her eyes.
/ am no mouse, she thought. It ends now.
Rage was a conflagration within her, and she loosed it in all its heat. Not as she had in the Quarter, blindly and desperately, fearing her own power. This blow was focused and deliberate, and targeted to the seat of his male pride. He wanted to play dominance games with her? Very well, let him learn what violation felt like.
Perhaps he did not expect her to strike at him, or else the time between impulse and action was simply so short he had no time to respond. The battering ram of her power broke through his defenses—if there were any—and slammed straight into his gonads. The force of it drove him backward against the far railing, and for a moment he acted like any man would, gasping for breath as he tried to master the pain and do something other than vomit. You chose the wrong whore to play with, she thought, as she made the rail shatter behind him. A cascade of stone fragments rained down upon the street below as he struggled for balance, but his weight had been too far committed to the railing for him to save himself now, and—
He fell.
She stepped quickly over to his side of the bridge to watch the fall. Any sorcerer could save himself, of course, but how would he do so? Would he turn himself into a bird, perhaps, or some great cat that could land safely on its feet? Or simply slow his own fall so that he landed safely, still in human flesh? In the end it was all about power, of course, and whether one wished to make modest demands upon one’s consort, or suck a stranger dry for the sake of some dramatic flourish. She had little doubt about what choice this kind of man would make. But would he save himself first and then strike back at her somehow, or combine the two intentions into one smooth action in the hopes that she would not see his attack coming? That was an answer that mattered.
She watched as he fell, and she made ready to defend herself yet again.
And then he struck the ground. The sound of the impact echoed between the towers. It was not unlike the sound a man’s head might make when struck with an iron bar, but ten times louder, and a hundred times more final. It passed through her flesh like a Shockwave and left a cold knot of dread lodged in her gut.
He did not move.
She waited.
He still did not move.
There were voices coming now, approaching from below. Seeking the source of that terrible sound.
Get up, she thought desperately. Strike back!
He did neither of those things.
She leaned over the edge of the railing and expended enough power to magnify her senses in order to study him more closely. It was hard to see him in the shadows of the towers, but she thought that his robes no longer seemed to be that sorcerous black, but rather something more normal. There was no rise and fall of his chest, nor any heartbeat she could detect. And the angle of his neck was wrong, all wrong. Living men did not lie in that position.
Cold, afraid, she backed along the bridge to the nearest wall and leaned against it, trembling. The fall shouldn’t have killed him. No fall could kill a Magister. The only death a Magister need fear was one that came too swiftly for him to react to, and a fall was not that kind. A fall was a long, leisurely end, full of opportunity to reach out with sorcery and save oneself—
Unless his power failed him, she thought.
Unless he went into Transition.
Unless he could not claim a new consort in time.
There were men down by the body now, shouting things. She heard them as if from a great distance, without understanding, as if they spoke a language she had never learned.
She had killed a Magister.
There is but one Law, Ethanus had told her, paramount above all others: no Magister shall ever kill another.
Someone came out of Tower Savresi, to see what the ruckus was about. She wrapped the shadows of twilight about her closely, that none might see her. Her legs were weak, and without the strength of the wall behind her she might have fallen.
/ have broken the Law.
Any minute now, one of the visiting Magisters would come out and see the twisted body. She did not know what would happen if they looked her way. Probably they would see right through her trembling sorcery to the pale, frightened woman within. She could certainly not return to the fete and try to pretend that nothing was wrong; any sorcerer who looked at her would be able to sense the deception.
