Assault in the Wizard Degree, page 14
“True, I have been in contact with Sir Jorvath. But I did not know of Sir Caltrop’s challenge until we arrived and I spoke with my father privately. When he explained how serious it was, I realized that a solution had to meet extremely specific criteria.”
“You mean the fact that Angbor couldn’t challenge Caltrop without risking the loss of the throne.”
“It’s a little more complex than that,” Galen said. He straightened up, put his hands behind his human torso, and arched his back in a stretch. “Consider this point, for example. My father could have simply ordered Sir Jorvath at any time to kill Caltrop. Even if Jorvath lost the fight, the throne would not be placed in any immediate additional risk.”
“True.” I chewed that idea over in my mind for a bit and didn’t like where it went. “But that would feel like…well, my own father would have called it ‘dirty pool’. Depending on who won, you might have House Jormond feuding with House Zakaris.”
“And that in turn would lead to civil war among the centaurs. Not a pleasant idea at all, I must say.”
“Which means that your father needed something that looked more ‘legitimate’. Well, we did go through a trial of sorts. With lots of supporting witnesses.” I stood up and began to pace as I worked it out in my head. “On top of that, he did actually rule in Caltrop’s favor. So, no one can accuse him of favoring his offspring over the accuser.”
“All correct. In conclusion, I should add that any stain on the House of Friesain – whether over the guilty verdict of sacrilege or the ire of House Zakaris – would fall on Rikka alone.”
“Who is already considered ineligible for succession,” I concluded. I turned to look at the Wizard. “I can’t say I’m pleased at how you used my talents, but I have to admire how well you thought things through.”
Galen gave me a hopeful look and reached his hand out to me. “Might you see it fit to forgive me my transgression, then?”
“I suppose so,” I said, though I took his hand and squeezed it between both of mine. “If our positions had been reversed, I might’ve done the same thing.”
Galen made a slight bow to me. His voice remained polite and restrained as always. But his hand trembled, giving lie to his cool demeanor. Like with Shaw, my forgiveness was worth a great deal to him.
“I thank you, Dayna,” he said. “You helped me fulfil my personal prophecy from our soothsayer friend.”
“Did I? I’m not sure.” I let the Wizard’s hand go, and I had to force myself not to resume pacing. “Rikka’s been proven innocent, and I’m sure the story about what I found inside the sacred tent will get out. Especially considering what Sir Caltrop did at his ‘trial by combat’. But if anything, she’s even further disqualified for the throne now. How did I bring ‘salvation’ to your sister in any of this?”
“I believe I have the answer to that. Zenos said that ‘salvation shall come to one the Court Wizard loves, and it shall spring from a kernel of the truth’.”
“And it did! The kernel of a hazelnut, in fact.” A thought struck me, and I gave Galen a look. “But Zenos didn’t say it was your sister’s salvation, did he? We just assumed that.”
A trace of a smile returned to Galen’s face. “My father and I never got along that well when I was a colt. But I’ve always loved him.”
I shook my head ruefully. Trying to untangle prophecy could make my head hurt. I’d have actively avoided the whole mess, given a choice. Unfortunately, Zenos’ warnings were about the ‘doom of Andeluvia’. So, that made choosing the right interpretation a literal life-and-death matter.
Unfortunately, there were more pressing problems at hand than trying to divine which way a prophecy was headed.
“There is one major problem with what happened this morning,” I said. “And that’s everything about Sir Caltrop. His sudden use of powers, his escape, and whatever the heck his plans were. It can’t have been to benefit House Zakaris, I’ll tell you that much.”
“Given his sacrifice of Sir Halvar’s life, that’s a given,” Galen agreed. He sighed as he added, “Your forensics talents would have proven his guilt in the case of the ceremony of Equilux. Yet I doubt you can predict where Caltrop will turn up next.”
“Maybe not, but there is a chance. Did anyone happen to pick up my crime scene case from the area of the sacred tent?”
“I had an attendant place it back in your room,” Galen said. He gave me a look that was equal parts curious and hopeful. “How can this be possible, Dayna? We’ve been stymied in the past cases when Wyeth and Sirrahon disappeared.”
“Yes, but this time, our suspect left some fresh evidence behind.” I pulled the plastic sample bag out of my pocket and held it up. “Come on, I have some testing to do.”
The Wizard followed me at a high-stepping walk as I made my way back to my quarters. With Galen’s help, I tugged one of the wooden chests from against the wall and a bit closer to the center of the room. That gave me a high, but flat, open surface I needed to do my work.
“I guess I should have figured that Sir Caltrop had access to transport spells,” I said, as I cracked open my case and began to assemble the pieces for the test I had in mind. “That’s how he was able to frame Rikka so easily. He could have watched Rikka leave the morning offering from one of the Holt’s guard posts. Then Caltrop blips himself into the sacred tent, locates something to steal that won’t set off his food allergy, and blips back out, with no one the wiser.
Galen watched with interest as I set out a quartet of colorful squeeze bottles, each the size of a large thimble. “Your ideas certainly seem plausible. I concur with them.”
“That’s why, when he first arrived for his guard duty shift, he made sure to spot the ‘theft’ right away. Halvar said that Caltrop spotted that one missing cake among a couple dozen before he’d taken more than a step inside the sacred tent. It left no doubt that Rikka had to be the culprit.”
“Which leads to the next question. Where did he get the magic to do all these things?”
I looked up from my work. “You were hardly able to hide the manifestation of your talent, Galen. I don’t think anyone expected Caltrop to do any of the things he did. Binding spells, death magic…he couldn’t have learned those tricks on his own. Could he?”
“And thus we come to the central paradox,” Galen said. “To put it bluntly, it is inconceivable that any centaur so in the public eye could have hidden magical talent of that magnitude. Yet, how could he cast these spells without said talent? Equally inconceivable.”
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means, I thought for a split second. Instead, I said, “What about an amulet? Some other magical item?”
I got a firm shake of the head in response. “Straightforward magic like charms or binding spells can be placed on a ring or amulet. The spells for transport I give you are about as complex a piece of magic as can be embedded onto an object. But death magic? Or something as specific as a spell to ‘disarm’ one’s opponents? Hardly. We are dealing with a truly skilled, truly powerful wizard.”
“But if Sir Caltrop’s never shown any talent before…” I snapped my fingers as the answer came to me. “Transformation. Just like what you did for me when I visited the fayleene’s Sacred Grove with Liam.”
“An excellent supposition, but alas, an incorrect one.” The wizard put a hand inside his jacket up by his open collar. He pulled out an oblong golden medallion that hung securely from a sturdy iron chain. “Since Magnus impersonated Duke Kajari via transformation magic, I have taken steps to avoid being fooled again. This amulet never comes off my neck. It alerts me to transformation magic that has been performed on any being within my sight.”
I cursed as I got out my sample bag and a fresh set of forceps. “Then, if Sir Caltrop’s just a centaur, we’re back to square one. Dead end.”
“I wish that were true,” Galen said, in a deadly quiet voice. “Sir Caltrop is not just a centaur. Based on what I have seen and heard, I believe I know exactly what he is.”
The hair on the back of my neck quivered, then stood straight on end as the Wizard told me what creature we were now up against.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Unlike the rest of you, Sir Caltrop’s ability to use magic wasn’t what startled me the most,” Galen stated calmly. “It was his method of incantation.”
“What?” I looked up from where I’d just set out a small stack of miniature plastic petri dishes. “You have to be kidding. He spoke his incantations, just as you do.”
The Wizard shook his head. “Not like I do. I am familiar with each of the three languages of sorcery. He used a magical tongue that I have never heard before. Since it is not found in the archives, I would hazard a guess that this language predates the oldest existing wizardly works themselves.”
“That adds an additional layer of ‘impossible’ to things.”
“Impossible for an ordinary centaur, yes. Not to one playing host to a being that can do all of these things.”
That stopped me. A chill ran up my arms and down my back. The same kind of chill I got when a horror movie teased the first reveal of the monster.
“Wait a minute,” I said, in a hushed tone. “Are you saying that Caltrop the Bastard…is possessed?”
“In Andeluvia, the term used is ‘hosted’,” Galen replied. “But I suspect it is roughly analogous. Whether a willing host or not, we are dealing with an entity that knows an especially ancient form of magic.”
“It must have access to Caltrop’s memories,” I put in, continuing along Galen’s line of reasoning. “Otherwise, how could it have fit in so well at court? More importantly, how else would it have known to avoid foods that its ‘host’ was allergic to?”
“Agreed. And I believe we can safely assume that it is one of the ever-growing panoply of beings aligned with the ‘Creatures of the Dark’. Elsewise, why would it insert its host into a position where it could have ascended the throne of the Centaur Realm?”
That sent a second wave of goosebumps down my spine. “If this thing’s able to possess people, is it an ethereal being?”
The Wizard nodded. “I would hazard a guess that Caltrop’s hosting a demon, one much like the Old Man of the Mountain. ‘Rocky’, as you called him, was skilled at clouding and manipulating minds, not possessing them. Yet to date, we’ve only encountered a single demonic creature. Others may have powers we can only guess at.”
“More to the point, can we protect ourselves against this thing?”
Galen bit his lip. “I’m not sure. Based on my limited observation, I believe that I can certainly banish it from someone, but only if it’s not actively fighting me. Beyond that…I would need to study it further up close.”
Well, that news made my day all the sunnier. And worse, I was about to try and help the Wizard do that very thing: get closer to a demonic being that could kill us all. I picked up the sample bag and held it up to the light.
“Whether for knowledge or combat, figuring out where this thing has been recently would help,” I said, as I opened the bag. I began breaking off tiny chunks of the dried rime of soil, placing each piece in one miniature petri dish. “This crust of dirt came off one of Caltrop’s hooves. I can perform a basic soil analysis and perhaps that will give us the clue we need.”
There was a soft rap at the door as I finished siting each soil sample in its dish. Galen opened the door, and a tired-looking Rikka joined us. Her voice quavered a bit as she related the latest news to us.
“The deed has been done,” she reported. “I looked back as I galloped away from the kiln, and the smoke coming from the chimney had turned bright green. Jorvath is finding it easy to keep our people away from it.”
“Hopefully,” Galen said, “he’ll be able to get the stonemasons on it as soon as possible.”
While I began my experiments, the Wizard quickly filled his sister in on their sire’s state and our conclusions about Sir Caltrop’s ‘hosting’. Her eyes went wide as Galen spoke. Though I wasn’t sure if it was from the news about Caltrop, or the vibrant colors that formed as I squeezed minute amounts of various chemicals onto the different smidgens of soil.
“How can these colors trace where our enemy has been?” she asked, as she bent over to look more closely at the petri dishes.
“Careful,” I warned her, as I motioned for her to back up a step. “The fumes from this might harm you, and I don’t want to make you sick.”
Her hooves clopped on the wooden floor as she backed up, then knelt by folding her equine legs under her. “First your human drink, then my father’s medicine…it’s becoming an open question as to whether you or my brother will be the first to successfully poison me.”
“I would refuse any bet on the subject,” Galen said smoothly. “Given that we share the same sire, I know firsthand how hard it would be to kill you.”
She playfully punched him in the shoulder for that comment.
“Actually, there’s a couple of tests going on here,” I said. “What I’m using are called reagents. Those are chemicals added to a substance to see if a reaction takes place.”
“What does it mean if a ‘reaction’ takes place?” she asked.
“It means that a specific element is present.” I pointed to each dish in turn. “The reactions are mostly based on color. See the pale green in this dish? That tells me the soil is poor in copper. And this brown one here shows no reaction at all, so there’s very little if any organic matter present.”
“If I understand correctly,” Galen mused, “that means Sir Caltrop cannot have recently visited an area under cultivation.”
“Correct. That would also rule out grasslands and wooded areas. In fact…” I tapped on a pair of dishes glistening red and purple-violet. “I’m only getting hits for two substances. And they’re very strong hits, at that.”
“Praytell, which ones?”
“Iron,” I said, looking at the deep blood-red of the sample. The second sample had continued to purple, so much so that the dish looked like a perfectly circular bruise. “But the other one, that’s the real head-scratcher. The reagent I’m using only turns purple in the presence of tungsten.”
“Tongue-sten,” Rikka repeated, trying to wrap her mouth around the word. “Is that how you say it? Because it’s new to me.”
“That’s how you say it.”
“How odd. It sounds like something you would each.” Her brother gave her a nudge, and she quickly amended her words. “That is, it sounds like something you would eat.”
“I have never heard of it either.” Galen’s voice was rueful. “Perhaps we are truly at a dead end here. What does ‘tung-sten’ do, exactly?”
I considered. “Well, in my world, it’s used in industrial processes. For example, in filaments for making light bulbs.”
“So, they make things like plant bulbs weigh less,” Rikka said, understanding. “There’s nothing like that in the Centaur Realm.”
“Uh, that’s not…” I began, before I decided it wasn’t the time or place. “Tungsten’s mostly used in a compound called tungsten carbide. That’s used to make high-grade steel.”
Galen and Rikka’s faces froze for a moment before they immediately began whispering to each other.
“Could it be?”
“Wolfram, that’s what it is.”
“We grew up with it–”
“He’d never go there!”
“But he must have! Did father tell you?”
“He did! This can’t be!”
“Hey, when you two are done with the staff meeting, fill me in,” I said. “I take it that ‘wolfram’ is what you folks call ‘tungsten’?”
“Our precise thoughts,” Galen said, after trading a last look with his sister. “We are intimately acquainted with this substance. There is but a single place it is found in any abundance within the Centaur Realm.”
“There’s only one problem,” Rikka added. “We’ll have to wait until our father recovers to take any action.”
I frowned. “What? Why?”
Galen looked glum as he answered. “Because it’s the one spot that King Angbor has forbidden my sister and I to ever go.”
I grasped the edge of the wooden chest to keep from falling over. This was just too much. The first time we’d gotten a break in our pursuit of the Creatures of the Dark…and we weren’t allowed to follow it up.
Just my rotten luck.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Look,” I said, trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice. “Were you two forbidden from going to wherever this place is recently? As in, the last ten years or so?”
Rikka shook her head. “It was so long ago, it felt like we were but foals.”
“We were slightly older than that,” Galen chided her. “But our father was rather firm about his warning to us.”
I considered that. “From what I’ve seen of Angbor, his ‘being firm’ could make a big impression on a kid. But hear me out on this one. Whatever happened, you were both different centaurs back then. So was your father. I don’t think he’d blow his top if you approach him today. As adults, not children. Or foals, whatever.”
Amazingly, that urging was all it took.
“Dayna is correct,” Galen admitted, as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Once again, she shows an uncommonly perspicacious mind.”
“There you go with the fancy words again,” Rikka grumbled.
“I would prefer to think of it as ‘exact’, not ‘fancy’ wording,” came her brother’s rejoinder. “It is silly to be so roundabout. The only place this soil could have come from is in the distant southern reaches of the Centaur Realm. An entire region called the ‘Hinter Lands’.”
“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere,” I said. “What makes you so sure?”
“The Hinter Lands is a region that looms large in centaur…well, I suppose you might say it figures heavily in our superstitions.”
