He felt hot, started to sweat, and thought he would be sick. He looked about for the fastest way to fresh air, but knew there would be no respite outside either. Too many familiar sights, sounds, and smells. He wanted more than anything to jump on the nearest horse and ride for Villerauvais as fast as it would carry him. He clutched the ornately carved armrest of his chair, squeezing it hard for what little anchor it gave him amidst the maelstrom of memory, regret, and pain.
“Guillot? Are you all right?” Solène asked from her seat opposite.
Dal Sason reappeared, having booked rooms. He frowned and said, “Is he all right?”
Gill took a deep breath and swallowed hard. “Yes, came over a little dizzy is all. Probably hungry. I’ve been salivating over the thought of the dining room here for hours now.”
“Me too,” dal Sason said. “I’ve booked our rooms, so I suggest we all take a few minutes to freshen up. As soon as you’re ready, we can go get something to eat.”
“Perfect,” Guillot said, wondering if he’d be able to hold anything down. He didn’t want dal Sason to get any hint of what was really happening, but hiding it wasn’t going to be easy. “When do you need to report to your lord and master?” Guillot said, trying to direct his mind to something else.
“I already have. I sent word ahead from the city gate. I expect he’ll send for us as soon as he’s ready.”
CHAPTER 13
Amaury told his private secretary that he didn’t want to be disturbed, then closed the door to his office. Practising magic gave him little of the guilty thrill it once had—now it resulted mainly in frustration—but he persevered. His predecessors had chosen to ignore the contents of the great, ancient archive beneath the cathedral, out of either fear or the blinkered attitude that magic was evil, but Amaury had seen the opportunity it represented. He wondered why they hadn’t destroyed it all, but that might have meant admitting they had it in the first place, and he knew firsthand that the Intelligenciers weren’t averse to introducing members of the priesthood to the purifying nature of fire.
Every so often a priest on the fringes of church control would get it in their head that they had some great insight the church had overlooked in its two-thousand-year existence, and set up shop as a mystic. It rarely took the Intelligenciers long to rid the church of the problem they presented, and useful as that was, Amaury realised there was something of an irony that his interests would make him a target. At least he had the brains to keep quiet about his plans.
Sadly, the Intelligenciers were not the only problem. Most people feared and loathed magic—and that represented the greatest obstacle to his plans for the Spurriers. He would overcome it, as he had every other roadblock he’d encountered, but how to do so wasn’t clear to him yet. If he were a religious man, he would pray. The thought made him smile.
Seated in a comfortable chair, away from his desk, Amaury took a deep breath, forcing himself to relax as much as possible for a man of his responsibilities. He closed his eyes and did his best to push all of the matters vying for his attention to the back of his mind. When he opened his eyes, he fought to ensure there was only one thought in his head—the image of a glowing mote of light that gave off no heat. His brow furrowed as he tried to maintain the mental discipline needed to keep the question is it working? from popping into his head.
A glowing ember formed in the air in the centre of his office, no brighter than the wick of a dying candle. His breathing quickened but he forced himself to remain calm and focussed. The glow started to grow stronger, though it was still less bright than a candle flame. Sweat beaded on his brow and the veins in his forehead pulsed. He concentrated on the image in his mind’s eye rather than what he saw forming before him.
Leaning forward, he strained to put more of himself into the light. His muscles tensed. As suddenly as it had appeared, the glow vanished. Slumping back in his chair, Amaury sighed. It was ever the same, and he was reluctantly coming to accept this as the limit of his magical ability. He wondered: if he had found his way into the archive as a child, would he be capable of more? If only he could find someone with real power. He knew they existed; he had even thought, on a couple of occasions, that he had found one, but though they were able to do more than others, they were not strong enough for his needs.
He knew he was really talking about a weapon: a natural-born mage who would be capable of defending the Order until the children they were training came of age. More than one would be better, but even one would do. Natural mages were a curious thing. Even the old texts didn’t explain how they came to be or how to find them. He had thought of liaising with the Intelligenciers, who had a wealth of experience in such matters, but that would draw too much attention to things he did not want noticed.
It all came down to the Fount, and how attuned one was to it. It was a mysterious, fascinating thing; it was everywhere, but to benefit from it, to use it, one had to be aware of it, to accept it, to develop an affinity with it. Some had to be taught, while some crawled from the womb able to draw on it almost before they could draw breath. From that moment—whether they realised it or not—they used magic in everything. With his knowledge, he could train such a person to so great a degree of potency that the Intelligenciers would be a mere trifle.
As attractive as that was, it raised another problem. How could he hope to remain master of an order if he was its weakest member? At least he had a prospective solution to that worry: the Cup. From his hours poring over the Imperial papers in the archive, he had learned it could give a person of any age a strong connection to the Fount. The wasted years would be washed away when he drank from it, and he would become as powerful as any mage and secure in the leadership of the order he had created.
It was hard to fathom how such an important object could be lost, but he realised those had been difficult times. The Empire had been coming apart at its seams—the Imperial family had been overthrown and murdered, the College of Mages had stretched themselves to the breaking point, trying to maintain control. Their long-faithful servants, the bannerets, had found the extent to which their masters would go to hold onto power too horrific to allow.
Against that tumult, the Chevaliers of the Silver Circle, who chose to remain true to their duty of protecting mankind from dragons rather than take sides in the civil war, decided to take the Cup—their most sacred relic—to a place where they thought it would be safe. It never got there.
They had been transporting it and their treasury to their new headquarters, somewhere in the southeast of the country. Dragons had attacked their convoy and carried off the treasure, along with the Cup. Dragons were said to hoard gold in their dens, so it seemed to Amaury that the treasury, and the Cup, would have ended up in one.
At first it had seemed like looking for a needle in a haystack, but he had discovered that an object of such great magical potency left a footprint on the Fount. Seeking that footprint was the way to find the object. Fortunately, that could be done by even the weakest of mages—even me, he thought.
According to Leverre’s report, the commander was certain he had found the Cup’s location. It was damned bad luck that the cavern where it lay also held a dormant dragon. Worse still that they had managed to wake it up. It seemed each solution to his problems created more problems. To get the Cup, he needed to kill the dragon. To kill the dragon, his only solution so far was to use a disgraced drunk, and Guillot was sure to bring problems with him.