The Margrave

9

Swear no oaths.

Oaths are chains on the soul.

Poems of Anjar Kar

RAFFI GRABBED THE BOY and hustled him out into the corridor. “Show me!”

Milo searched his pockets and found a grimy piece of paper. “She knocked me out,” he said sullenly. “After all I did for her!”

Raffi stared down at the dirty sheet, then turned to find some light. The boy trailed after him, complaining bitterly. “I helped her out on the road. They treated her roughly, and I stood up for her. Got water for her. Even warned her about Uncle’s plan. How was I to know she was a spy?”

“Shut up,” Raffi said fiercely. He tried a door and it opened. The room seemed full of light. A movement ahead made him jump, until he saw it was his own reflection, grimy and cobwebbed in a vast mirror that leaned in front of a stack of others.

Behind him, the spotty boy peered in. “Don’t like this room,” he muttered.

But Raffi was too interested in the paper. It was a list, a roster of some sort. On the back a few words had been scrawled in a hurried line that blotted and smudged and broke off abruptly. And it was in code. It looked like Carys’s writing.

“Did she say it was for Galen? What did she say!”

The boy wandered in. He rubbed the dust from a mirror with his finger. “Yes. For the keeper. Then she knocked me out.”

“Was anyone else there?”

“The castellan. And Captain Quist.”

Raffi turned. “He brought you in.”

Milo nodded. “She didn’t want them to know, because she whispered it and shoved the paper in my pocket.” He examined a bruise on his face in the dusty glass, jutting his jaw this way and that. “Then she knocked me out.”

“I’ll knock you out,” Raffi snapped, “if you say that again.” He tried to think. Why had she gone with them? What was going on? And if the Sekoi was right, why had she gotten herself deliberately captured? He looked up. Thirty other Raffis looked up too.

The chamber was a labyrinth of mirrors. They were stacked in great piles, higher than his head. Milo was climbing one heap like a ladder, up into the dim vaults. Glass slabs gleamed; they were slanted, forming archways and tunnels, and in the thousands of reproductions of the room, only light was reflected and Raffi himself repeated endlessly, from the front, sides, and back, looking unfamiliar in the depths of the myriad looking glasses.

“I need a pen.” He turned, ducked under a tent of glass; looking up, he saw his own face, grotesquely foreshortened, staring down. “What is this place?”

“The Watch brought them all in here.” Milo’s voice, muffled with distance, came from somewhere near the ceiling. “They didn’t like them. They were all over the castle. One of the prisoners told me there’s supposed to be a ghost in one, but no one knows which. Of someone crazy who used to look in them.”

“Halen’s mirrors!” Raffi stared. They were all sizes and shapes, oval, tiny, enormous, elaborately gilded. In them he looked dirty and harassed and for a second thought he saw, far back, the shadow of a man, reflected from one to another. He turned, unsure. The sense-lines were reflected too. They tangled and confused him. Just as he felt dizzy, a small object dropped from above, landing with a rattle.

“Pencil. That’s all I’ve got.”

Raffi took a deep breath. Halen had lost his mind here. That was what Galen thought. Tormented by the Makers’ failure, by the thought of Kest’s treachery.

He bent down and groped after the pencil; when he found it, it was small and the end had been chewed away. He looked at it in disgust. “Thanks.”

He sat in the dust with his back against one of the mirrors and worked on the code. Carys had taught him how codes were broken; he was sure she would be using one of those she had invented herself, and hurriedly he listed alphabets, slotting in the different code words they had agreed on. At the fourth attempt the words started to make sense. “Got it,” he whispered. The room was oddly silent. He raised his head. “Milo?”

The mirrors were empty. Only a spider ran across the floor, or the reflection of one. He worked quickly. The message formed, letter by letter, along the edge of the grimy paper. GONE TO MAAR AS PLAN. IMPORTANT. MARGRAVE LOOKING FOR

He stared at it, cold. Looking for what? There was another word, completely smudged. Was it Raffi? Without knowing it, he crumpled the paper, staring at himself in the dim recesses of glass. The Margrave is looking for Raffi. His vision had been right. It was true. She had found out.

He forced himself not to panic, smoothing out the paper, rubbing his tired eyes. It might not be. It might not. Staring at it didn’t help. It had five letters. Or four. It could be Crow. But they knew the Margrave must be looking for the Crow. Why would she bother telling him that?

“Got you!”

With a yell that made him jump, a shadow fell from the stack of mirrors and crashed against him; Raffi cried out and rolled in shock, whipping out a mind-flare that made Milo huddle up with a screech.

He banged his head against a mirror and stared. “What was that?”

Raffi was shaking, sweating. “Brainless idiot!” He rubbed one hand down his face. For a moment he had thought . . . but that was stupid.

“And what does she mean by ‘plan’?” he whispered.

GALEN WAS DOWN in the ground-floor hall, a vast assembly chamber with a tiny fire blazing at each end. He and the Sekoi were organizing care for the wounded; as Raffi came in, a crowd of Alberic’s men streamed out past him. Raffi was almost too angry to speak.

Galen turned, but before he could say anything, Raffi flung the crumpled letter down on the floor.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The keeper looked at him steadily, then down at the letter. “What is that?”

“A message. From Carys.”

The Sekoi made a small mew of surprise. Neither of them looked around. Galen took a step toward the paper, but instantly Raffi stamped his foot on it. He felt as though his whole body was trembling with wrath.

Galen sensed it. He looked at Raffi, sidelong, a dark look. “Say what you want to say, boy.”

“You should have told me! You let us think that she’d been captured, that they could be torturing her! Or worse, that she’d gone back! And you knew all along!”

“Explain,” the Sekoi said tightly, sitting on a table.

Raffi swung to it. “It was all a plan! Their plan—the two of them. You were right—she let herself be taken—and she’s using relics to mark her route for him, to pinpoint where she is. But I don’t understand why!”

He rounded on Galen, who was watching him, ominously calm. “Don’t you realize what danger you’ve put her in! If they find out, if they find the relics, they’ll burn her alive. After all she’s done to them, how could you put her through that!”

Galen looked grim. “You know I can’t make Carys do anything she doesn’t want. It was her idea as much as mine.”

“She wouldn’t say no! She’s as hotheaded as you. But you should have had more sense!”

Galen’s temper snapped. “By God, Raffi, don’t lecture me. We’ve got our backs to the wall here! We need every bit of information we can get—”

“About the Margrave!” The truth leaped into Raffi’s mind like a flame; he crouched and grabbed the paper and thrust it out. “That’s what you want her to do. To lead you to the Margrave!”

Sparks of energy snapped and coiled between them. The Sekoi watched, fascinated.

“What better way is there?” Galen snarled. “We need to find the creature.”

“You do! You need to find him because of that stupid, stupid oath you took! You swore to kill him and now you’ve put Carys into Maar! Because that’s where she’s gone—just like you told her to!”

Galen’s mind-flare struck him hard between the eyes; he hissed with pain, staggering back.

“Galen!” The Sekoi leaped up instantly.

“Stay out of it!” The keeper snatched the letter, his eyes black with fury. All the great hall seemed crammed with an inky, crackling darkness; they were both lost in it, swamped by months of pent-up wrath.

Raffi hit the wall and crumpled. He felt so sick and furious, he could hardly see, but Galen came after him, crouching, grabbing his coat and dragging him up so that his head jerked back.

“Yes, I swore that oath! What else was I to do? He destroyed Solon. He mined right into the heart of us, infected us, Sarres, everything, and we never even knew it! All the planet is tainted with his crimes, all of it!”

“You didn’t know,” Raffi croaked. “That’s what makes you so angry. That you didn’t know.”

Galen flung him down. Then he turned and shoved the anxious Sekoi aside with one hand, stalking down to the other end of the hall. They stared appalled as he flung a table over, picked up a jug, and smashed it viciously against the wall.

When he turned, he was someone else. The glossy darkness of the Crow had overwhelmed him. Even the fires died down before it; his face was shadowed, long hair fallen loose, the black and green awen-crystals tangled around one hand. “Think about me for once, Raffi,” he breathed, his voice painfully harsh, unrecognizable. “How it is for me. I have this presence inside me and it burns me, consumes me, and I have to use it, allow it to work, and I daren’t. Yes, I should have known about Solon, and the torment of that is bitter. All the things I’ve done may be wrong. I let Solon go through the Door of Air, but I don’t know where he is or why the Makers haven’t kept their promise. Where are they? Why don’t they come?” He dragged both hands over his face and through his hair. “Haven’t I done enough? God knows, I’ve tried. For years we’ve struggled, living like animals, hunted, burned out, always running, always trying to keep the relics, to keep the people close to what should be true. Have we become relics now? Where is Flain, and Soren, and Tamar? Are they dead, have they forgotten us, don’t they care about our agony? Why don’t they come?”

The sweat on Raffi’s back was cold. For a moment he thought a stranger was there; then Galen turned, his dark, hooked face eyeing them sidelong. “If faith dies, Raffi,” he whispered, “what’s left?”

Into the terrible silence the Sekoi said, “They will come. My people know that.”

“It will be too late. Unless the Margrave is destroyed.”

Raffi shivered; he felt confused and chilled, but he pulled himself up onto his knees. “Not me. I can’t be part of this.”

Galen came back. He said sourly, “You go where I go.”

“No. Not Maar.” He was shaking, and his teeth were almost chattering with sudden cold, with the reaction, but he stammered it out anyway. “The Margrave is looking for me. Carys says so. He wants me . . . He . . . he doesn’t want you.”

For a moment the hall was utterly silent. A door banged, far off in the castle. The fires flared up. And softly, Galen laughed. His laugh was cold, and rare, and it never failed to chill Raffi to the soul.

“It’s true,” Raffi whispered hopelessly. “I know it’s true!”

“You! What in God’s name does he want with you!”

“I don’t know!” Raffi hugged himself. “I just—”

“So this is what you’ve been terrifying yourself with since the Coronet. You saw him in that vision and it was just too much for you.” Galen stood over him, then crouched and faced him. “You’ve let it prey on your mind, Raffi, and if I keep secrets from you, you do the same, and yours are just as destructive. The Margrave doesn’t want you, he doesn’t even know who you are! This is a vision-echo and it has to be overcome before it grows and smothers you!”

It was useless. He had always known Galen would never believe him. Now the keeper dragged him up and dumped him on a chair, then limped to the fire, leaning on the high mantel. He looked drained, as if some vast energy had washed out of him.

“There’s only one way of dealing with it. As for Carys,” he muttered, staring into the fire, “do you think I haven’t blamed myself over and over for that? I prayed we’d find her here . . .”

“We could get her back. Give up the Margrave.”

“No. I swore an oath and I meant every word of it. But first we both need to pray and fast for forgiveness. For our weakness. And then—”

“You’ll leave. How lovely.” Alberic was leaning in the doorway, Godric behind him. Raffi wondered dully how much they had overheard. Galen looked over. There was something in his spent anguish that wiped the sly smile off the dwarf’s face.

“We stay. At least until Soren’s Day. We hold the feast here—reopen the shrine and do it properly, as it should be done. Because on that day”—he glanced at Raffi, his eyes black and hurt—“my scholar, my loyal, exemplary scholar, will finally attempt the Deep Journey.”

Alberic glanced at Raffi’s white face. “Him?” he muttered drily. “He looks scared stiff to me.”