15

"We'll need more light, surely?" Lora dithered as she set her candle in the wall sconce inside the door of what was normally her room. "I'll go fetch—"

"Be silent, woman," Asera snapped. "Better yet, get out and stay out unless I call you."

Instead of obeying, Lora backed against the sill of the dormer window with a fixed expression on her face. Sharina put the wooden candleholder on the three-legged table. The room's other furniture comprised a bed, two clothes chests, and a round pine chair made by hollowing out the upper half of a section of tree trunk. She glanced at her mother in unvoiced surprise: she'd have guessed that if the procurator asked Lora to jump out the window, she'd have done so.

"No, no, get that off there," Meder said in distracted snappishness as he lifted a flat ironbound box about a foot long onto the chair seat. "I'll use the top for the written invocation."

He knelt and inserted a key with four pins of varying length in line with the shaft. They rotated a quarter turn as Meder murmured something under his breath.

Sharina took the candle off the table. She thought the box glowed faintly, as if it were reflecting light from a hearth.

"Bring it near," Meder ordered as he lifted the lid. The interior was broken into small compartments, each holding an object in neat isolation. A knife of ruddy copper, its handle marked in the ornate curlicues of the Old Script, was clipped to the inside of the lid.

The young magician took out the knife. When he turned and saw Sharina leaning close with the light he said, "No, not you—I need you for the summoning! Give it to one of the others."

Asera opened her mouth to protest at being grouped dismissively with a maid from the hinterlands, but she closed it again without speaking. It was clear to everyone that when Meder focused on his task, he had no consideration for any of the ordinary social parameters.

Sharina gestured to her mother and stepped away as Lora silently took her place with the light.

Meder took out a lump of what looked like ordinary chalk, placed it on the table, and again closed the box. He straightened and looked at Sharina. He appeared taller than he had in the dining room below.

"I'm going to prick your finger with the athame and touch the chalk with a drop of your blood," he said brusquely, gesturing with the copper knife to make his meaning clear. "It's not really necessary to write the entire phrase in blood; the attraction is quite sufficient for the purpose. And I'll take a lock of your hair."

Sharina looked at her mother. There was nothing in Lora's still face; as well look at the tabletop for help.

"All right," Sharina said, extending her left hand. She wondered what Meder would do if she refused. Judging from the way he spoke, the thought literally hadn't crossed his mind.

Meder's touch was surprisingly warm. He glanced up and locked eyes, seeing Sharina as a person rather than a piece of paraphernalia for the first time since he and the procurator had discussed the rite.

He frowned and said, "Hold still," in a return to his former manner. He stabbed the copper point into the ball of her thumb. There was a burning sensation that Sharina's imagination screamed was subtly different from what she'd felt the times she made a mistake with a needle when sewing.

A dome of blood swelled from the slight wound like a mushroom breaking the ground after a rain. Meder traded the athame for the chalk and rubbed it in the blood. He turned and began to write around the tabletop with quick, firm strokes. The phrase had no punctuation nor any gap between individual words. It was in Old Script, like the symbols on the athame's hilt.

Men in the common room spoke in raised voices, quarreling or simply cheerfully enthusiastic. Sharina felt separated from the activity below by more than just the thick oak flooring. A cold wall was rising between her and everything familiar from her past.

Meder scraped the blood from the chalk's surface with the athame and put away the remainder of the lump. "Here," he said as he stepped close to Sharina again. "I'll take the hair now."

He had to saw several times, pulling the roots painfully, before he was able to separate a few strands. The knife was sharp, but hair is tough and quickly dulled the copper edge.

Meder put the honey-colored lock in the center of the little table, surrounded by the chalk writing. "No one speak," he ordered.

Touching the athame's point against the wood, he muttered, "Huessemigadon iao ao baubo eeaeie..."

To Sharina the words sounded like frogs on a summer night, or the grunting of penned sheep.

"Sopesan kanthara ereschitigal sankiste..."

Meder shifted the point of his copper knife at each tortured syllable. He moved to the left around the table so that he never had to reach over the surface to touch the next chalked symbol.

"Akourbore kodere dropide..."

The partition which isolated Sharina from the rest of the world was growing thicker. A red mist suffused the air above the table, though when she blinked the color faded for a moment before seeping back into her consciousness.

"Tartarouche anoch anoch!" Meder shouted. He thrust his athame into the lock of Sharina's hair.

Deep red fire billowed soundlessly from the copper point. The cold flames touched the ceiling, then shrank back and coalesced into a head: a man with shoulder-length hair, aristocratic features, and a precise goatee. The image rotated, not as a man turns but instead like a bust displayed on a turntable.

Lora put her left hand to her mouth and bit her knuckles to keep from screaming. The candle in her other hand trembled like a leaf in a windstorm.

The image vanished as suddenly as a lightning flash. The candles, dimmed by the ruby glow, were again the room's only illumination. Meder sank back onto the chair on top of his ironbound box. The color had drained from his face.

"That was your father, girl," Asera said with satisfaction. "Not the innkeeper downstairs."

Sharina turned and opened the clothes chest behind her in the corner of the room. She reached down the side, feeling past the layers of shifts and outer tunics to the oval bronze canister she'd first seen when she was a child playing while her mother was downstairs. Lora whimpered but didn't attempt to stop her.

The small container was packed with a scrap of purple satin. Within that nest was a gold-hinged locket. Sharina opened the ivory panels and held the miniature paintings of a young couple out toward her mother in the palm of her hand.

"It's him, isn't it?" Sharina said. "I'm their child, not yours and Reise's!"

The man's features were those of the image Meder's incantation had raised. Above the head of the painting was the legend Niard, Count by the Lady's Grace. Over the stronger, darker face of the woman was Tera, Countess by the Shepherd's Grace.

Asera dusted her hands together in a gesture of completion. "We've found the heir we were looking for," she said. "You'll go with us to Valles, girl!"

Meder looked up from the chair with exhausted eyes. "It's your destiny, Sharina," he said.