Of Limited Loyalty

Chapter Twenty

10 May 1767 Prince Haven Temperance Bay, Mystria

Prince Vlad ushered his wife into his laboratory and bade her sit at a small table. It had been cleared entirely of books and specimen jars. Instead it had a wooden panel two feet tall clamped to the middle, and two small blocks of wood set between it and the chair Gisella lowered herself into. Each of those blocks had a small brass firestone retention collar fitted to it, and firestones trapped beneath the collars, ruby on the right, amber on the left.

She smiled up at him. “I am certain this will work.”

“As am I, which terrifies me.” The Prince pulled a blindfold from his pocket. “It is not that I don’t trust you…”

Gisella laughed. “Despite my father’s best efforts to keep me ignorant, I do understand certain things about the manner of Ryngian science. You must blindfold me so I cannot possibly react to anything I see.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Thank you.” He slipped the blindfold over her eyes and knotted it at the back of her head, being careful not to tangle any of her golden hair in the knot. “There, right hand on this block, left hand there.”

“I know, husband. When I feel heat beneath my palm, I am to raise that hand.”

“Perfect.” Vlad retreated to another table, similarly shielded. Behind his shield he had corresponding blocks with identical firestones. He also had a quill, an inkpot, paper, and a die. He rolled the die and it came up a five. Since it was an odd number, he touched the amber stone on the left. He triggered the spell to light a candle and pushed it into the firestone. Then he waited.

About four seconds later, Gisella raised her left hand.

The Prince continued through twenty trials, randomizing each time. In seventeen of twenty tries his wife raised the correct hand. The only failures came in the last five attempts, when he was so excited he wasn’t concentrating as well as he should have been. With shaking hands he capped the inkpot and set the quill down. “We’re done.”

She pulled off the blindfold, her blue eyes positively bright. “How did we do?”

“Seventeen of twenty.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I shall do better. May we go again?”

He stood and crossed to her, taking her hands in his. “No, darling, that is a very good result, better than I expected.”

“Then what bothers you?”

He sighed, his shoulders slumping. “What bothers me, my love, is that in doing what we have done, we have invalidated a perceived truth of magick. As we are taught now, to make you feel heat, I would have to touch your hand and invoke a spell.”

Gisella raised one of his hands to her lips. “You do not need magick to have that effect on me, beloved.”

Vlad looked down upon her face, both unable and unwilling to hide his smile. How he had been so fortunate to have her chosen for him by his aunt was completely beyond him. She had become his partner in every way, sharing some tasks equally, but willingly shouldering some burdens alone while he handled yet others by himself.

He had not, in fact, intended to tell her at all about his discovery concerning the Good Book, but he had read the concern on her face as easily as he could read Scripture. She knew he was worried and asked if she could help. He confided in her and instead of recoiling in terror, she had smiled eagerly. “My ability to use magick is tiny, but it is at your disposal, beloved.” And when he agreed to let her help him, he could scarce remember a time she had seemed so happy.

He nodded toward the wooden blocks with the firestones affixed to them. “I did what I could to eliminate some variables. The blocks and the brass fittings are all from different places and types of trees. The firestones are from the same lots and as close to a match in color, shape, and clarity as I could manage. Now it could be that the magick just passed through the air from one stone to the other, or through another channel, or that I directed it to the stone under your hand, since I knew what it looked like, without the stone under mine having anything to do with it.”

Gisella’s eyes narrowed. “We could blindfold you, too, and someone could mix up the blocks, so you only touch one. You’d not know what color firestone it was. I would still raise my hand. We’d need someone else to record the results. Caleb Frost, perhaps?”

“You’re right-blindfolding both of us would work. As for an aide… I dearly wish Owen was here, or Count von Metternin. I trust Caleb, but he is still young and enthusiastic.” Vlad frowned. “He might let things slip by accident. The fewer people who know, the better. If Bishop Bumble ever comes to suspect what we’ve learned, we’re undone. The same is true of Colonel Rathfield.”

“Do you truly think Colonel Rathfield was sent here to find Ezekiel Fire and destroy his settlement before he could share the secrets of the Good Book?”

Vlad slipped his hands from her and began to pace. “I’d not have thought so, save for Bishop Bumble wanting Fire returned here to stand trial for heresy. It also bothers me that papers which Bumble claims to have had destroyed have come into my possession anonymously. A second packet has been delivered, which confirms things in the first, and hints at Fire’s having taken things further. Someone knows things that Bumble does not, and wants them shared on a limited basis. Or do I imagine that the notes were sent to me so they could be found on me, setting me up for a trial on the same heresy charges? What we have just done here would make a prima facie case against us.”

“Will that concern stop you?”

“I would stop if you ask. For the sake of our children.”

“But not otherwise?”

“How can I, really?” Vlad looked at her directly. “What we have discovered here must already be known in Tharyngia. Owen described as much in terms of things du Malphias was able to do. This means that failure to pursue studies would put Mystria at risk.”

“Norisle, too.”

“Yes, of course. I meant Norisle and her colonies.” Didn’t I? “The risks here, at least in the eyes of those like Bishop Bumble, would be that all controls over magick would vanish. We would end up with those who are strong magically carving out their own little empires and lording their power over others. This has not happened in Tharyngia, however, and when you look at it, has not the Church set itself up as the same sort of tyranny through magick, albeit covertly?”

“We may believe the Church has, beloved, but what proof have we of it?” She turned in her chair and smoothed her skirts. “Do you see Bishop Bumble as some sorcerer?”

Vlad remembered back to Bumble and his hardships on the way to Anvil Lake. “No, but if he were indeed one, and had been tasked with watching over magick in Mystria, would he be effective if he could be easily spotted? Were Richard Ventnor sent on that sort of mission, he would be suspect immediately.”

Gisella shivered. “The idea that Duke Deathridge could wield powerful magicks frightens me.”

“Heavens, you are a genius!”

Her face brightened. “I am?”

“You are.”

“Tell me, beloved.”

Vlad smiled. “Just as the first spell we all learn is how to extinguish a fire, so perhaps there needs to be magick developed which can extinguish or diminish other magick. Of course, that would only work if we can determine the medium through which magick travels. If it would require matched items, as we used here, then it would be difficult to employ. If it can travel through air, or some other unseen medium, then it might be more effective.”

Gisella nodded. “Could it be that there is more than a single channel? Sound travels through air, and through water, but at different speeds, yes?”

“Excellent point. It could be that magick might travel faster or slower in some cases. It might be faster through linked items, and slower through air or water. And it might have range limitations based on the strength of the person using it.” Vlad returned to his desk and began jotting notes. “We will have to devise a series of experiments to determine what we can. But, first, there is an even more important bit of work I need to do.”

She smiled. “Yes, darling?”

“I need to create a spell which, to my knowledge, has never been created before. If I can do that, we open a world of possibilities, and will urgently need to explore them all.”

After lunch Vlad returned to his laboratory. From the woodpile outside it, he chose a small stick of oak roughly two inches in diameter. Using a saw he sliced off two disks, each roughly a half inch in width. He sanded them down until smooth, then, using a stencil, he decorated each side with identical images of a bell. He heated a small iron rod in his stove and then used it to burn the image into the wood.

He set the disks aside and pulled a small brass bell from an upper shelf, blowing the dust and cobwebs from it. He hung it from a small wooden stand and used a tiny hammer to ring it. The tone pealed crisply. Closing his eyes, he struck it repeatedly, forcing himself to remember the sound. He listened to it rise, then fade and echo back from the walls. He focused on how he could feel it reverberate in his chest, and then rested a finger lightly on the top so he could feel the vibrations in the bell itself. He weighed the bell in his hand, sniffed it, and even licked it, getting as much sensory information about it as he could. He pressed the cool metal to his neck, memorizing that sensation as well, then hung it on the stand again.

He took one of the disks and crossed to the table his wife had used in the morning. He set the disk down and then placed on top of it a teacup and saucer. From a pitcher he filled the cup to the very brim with water. Careful not to jostle the table and spill anything, he returned to his desk and laid his right hand on the other wooden disk.

As he had been instructed to do when learning how to light a candle, he closed his eyes and focused on how a bell looked and sounded and felt when it rang. He visualized the bell he’d been experimenting with, knowing he could shift to the image of a massive bell in a cathedral steeple if needed. For his experiment, however, he felt that the immediacy of experience with the smaller bell made it perfect for his purposes. In his mind he drew an image of a bright, sunny day, cool and crisp like the sound of the bell. He thought about how the word peal seemed so perfect to describe a bell’s sound.

He concentrated on that word, imbuing it with all the other sensations, and pushed magick into it. And then he shoved that magick through his hand and into the wooden disk.

Eight feet away, the teacup clattered in its saucer, and water spilled.

Vlad forced himself to measure the volume of water he had spilled, less because it was important, than it gave him sanctuary from considering what he had done. When he sat back down, the enormity of it hit him: he’d created a brand new spell where none had existed before. Even more amazing, it had not been that difficult. All he had done was to analyze one spell and how it had been taught to him, then he repeated that process with a parallel phenomenon.

But if it was so easy for me, why haven’t others done it?

He shivered. Likely they had, hundreds if not thousands of times, perhaps tens of thousands of times. But just as with Mugwump using magick of which he had no clear understanding, a spell could drain a man, hurting him badly. In the battle for Fort Cuivre, Makepeace Bone had fired a swivel-gun, assuming it was, in essence, just a big musket. While that was true, the magick necessary to fire it off had bruised his arm to the elbow and left him completely exhausted. Had he been a smaller man and lacked the constitution of a mammoth, it likely would have killed him.

The Prince looked at his right palm. Blood had risen in tiny blisters, barely the size of freckles, in a circle the diameter of the disk. The presence of blood did not surprise him-but he had expected to see more. Why would I get away so easily with a new spell?

Vlad tapped a finger against his chin. It was easy enough to suppose that the Church began imposing limitations on magick as a way to prevent people from killing themselves. This would naturally lead to them refusing to teach spells or branches of magick that they found morally objectionable-necromancy being a case in point. That did not mean, however, that Church officials would not study it, or other things, in order to understand the true nature of the threat they imposed. From there, the creation of a self-perpetuating thaumagarchy would only make sense. It would have to destroy any threats to its monopoly on power and knowledge, and would do so behind the guise of preventing people from unleashing unspeakable evils.

The difficulty there was simple: they had no monopoly on magick, only a monopoly in Auropa and the Near East. The Twilight People had their own magickal traditions. Vlad assumed the same was true of the Far East and of the Dark Continent. The Tharyngians, since their revolution, had created yet another magickal tradition, the destruction of which could explain why Norisle was willing to bankrupt itself waging wars it could never be truly expected to win.

That thought brought him all the way back to Ezekiel Fire. Assuming the man knew at least as much as Vlad did, there seemed no question that Postsylvania could be home to its own, brand new, magickal tradition. Not only would it have the freedom of the Tharyngian system, but it would be paired with an absolute belief that God intended men to know this new way of magick. Power, when coupled with a vibrant theology, often wrought havoc.

Vlad rose and left the laboratory, walking down toward the river. He looked west. “If you find a new magick out there, my friends, I don’t know whether I hope you bring it back, or destroy every trace of it. My fear is that if any of it is even rumored to exist, Norisle will feel forced to extinguish it, and I do not think the Crown will be particularly concerned with how many people die to make that happen.”