“For the record, how many useful images are there?”
“Useful?”
“They must degenerate from shadow to shadow. Where do you draw the line and say, ‘Beyond this broken image I will not risk breaking my neck’?”
“I see what you mean. You can work with perhaps the first nine. I’ve never gone farther out. The first three are best. The circle of the next three is still manageable. The next three are a lot riskier.”
“A bigger chasm for each?”
“Exactly.”
“Why are you giving me all this esoteric information?”
“You’re a higher-level initiate, so it doesn’t matter. Also, there is nothing you could do to affect the setup. And finally, you need to know this to appreciate the rest of the story.”
“All right,” I said.
Mandor tapped the table, and small crystal cups of lemon sherbet appeared before us. We took the hint and cleared our plates before resuming the conversation. Outside, the shadows of clouds slid across the mountain slopes. A faint music drifted into the room from somewhere far back along the corridor. Clinking and scraping noises, sounding like distant pick-and-shovel work, came to us from somewhere outside — most likely at the Keep.
“So you initiated Julia,” I prompted.
“Yes,” Jasra said.
“What happened then?”
“She learned to summon the image of the Broken Pattern and use it for magical sight and the hanging of spells. She learned to draw raw power through the break in it. She learned to find her way through Shadow —”
“While minding the chasm?” I suggested.
“Just so, and she had a definite knack for it. She’d a flair for everything, as a matter of fact.”
“I’m amazed that a mortal can traverse even a broken image of the Pattern and live.”
“Only a few of them do,” Jasra said. “The others step on a line or die mysteriously in the broken area. Ten percent make it, maybe. That isn’t bad. Keeps it somewhat exclusive. Of them, only a few can learn the proper mantic skills to amount to anything as an adept.”
“And you say that she was actually better than Victor, once she knew what she was about?”
“Yes. I didn’t appreciate just how good until it was too late.”
I felt her gaze upon me, as if she were checking for a reaction. I glanced up from my food and cocked an eyebrow.
“Yes,” she went on, apparently satisfied. “You didn’t know that was Julia you were stabbing back at the Fount, did you?”
“No,” I admitted. “I’d been puzzled by Mask all along. I couldn’t figure any motive for whatever was going on. The flowers were an especially odd touch, and I never really understood whether it was you or Mask behind the bit with the blue stones.”
She laughed.
“The blue stones, and the cave they come from, are something of a family secret. The material is a kind of magical insulator, but two pieces — once together — maintain a link, by which a sensitive person can hold one and track the other —”
“Through Shadow?”
“Yes.”
“Even if the person doing the tracking otherwise has no special abilities along these lines?”
“Even so,” she said. “It’s similar to following a shadow shifter while she’s shifting. Anyone can do it if she’s quick enough, sensitive enough. This just extends the practice a little further. It’s following the shifter’s trail rather than the shifter herself.”
“Herself, herself… You trying to tell me it’s been pulled on you?”
“That’s right.”
I looked up in time to see her blush.
“Julia?” I said.
“You begin to understand.”
“No,” I said. “Well, maybe a little. She was more talented than you’d anticipated. You already told me that. I get the impression she suckered you on something. But I’m not sure where or how.”
“I brought her here,” Jasra said, “to pick up some equipment I wanted to take along to the first circle of shadows near Amber. She did have a look at my workroom in the Keep at that time. And perhaps I was overly communicative then. But how was I to know she was making mental notes and probably formulating a plan? I’d felt her too cowed to entertain such thoughts. I must admit she was a pretty good actress.”
“I read Victor’s diary,” I said. “I take it you were masked or hooded and possibly using some sort of voice-distorting spell the whole time?”
“Yes, but rather than awe Julia into submission, I think I roused her cupidity for things magical. I believe she picked up one of my tragoliths — the blue stones — at that time. The rest is history.”
“Not for me.”
A bowl of totally unfamiliar but delicious-smelling vegetables appeared, steaming, before me.
“Think about it.”
“You took her to the Broken Pattern and conducted her initiation…” I began.
“Yes.”
“The first chance she had,” I continued, “she used the… tragolith to return to the Keep and learn some of your other secrets.”
Jasra applauded softly, sampled the veggies, quickly ate more. Mandor smiled.
“Beyond that I draw a blank,” I admitted.
“Be a good boy and eat your vegetables,” she said.
I obeyed.
“Basing my conclusions concerning this remarkable tale solely upon my experience of human nature,” Mandor suddenly observed, “I would say that she wished to test her talons as well as her wings. I’d guess she went back and challenged her former master — this Victor Melman — and fought a sorcerous duel with him.”
I heard Jasra’s intake of breath.
“Is that truly only a guess?” she asked.
“Truly,” he answered, swirling his wine in his goblet. “And I would guess further that you had once done something similar with your own teacher.”
“What devil told you that?” she asked.
“It is only a guess that Sharu was your teacher — and perhaps more than that,” he said. “But it would explain both your acquisition of this place and your ability to catch its former lord off guard. He might even have had a stray moment before his defeat for a wishful curse that the same fate attend you one day. And even if not, these things do sometimes have a way of running full circle with people in our trade.”
She chuckled.
“The devil called Reason, then,” she said, a note of admiration in her voice. “Yet you summon him by intuition, which makes it an art.”
“It is good to know he still comes when I call. I take it Julia was surprised, however, by Victor’s ability to thwart her.”
“True. She did not anticipate that we tend to wrap apprentices in a layer or two of protection.”
“Yet her own defenses obviously proved adequate — at least.”
“True. Though that, of course, was tantamount to defeat. For she knew that I would learn of her rebellion and come soon to discipline her.”
“Oh,” I observed:
“Yes,” she stated. “That is why she faked her death, which I must admit had me completely fooled for a long while.”
I recalled the day I had visited Julia’s apartment, found the body, been attacked by the beast. The corpse’s face had been partly destroyed, the remaining features gory. But the lady had been the right size, and general resemblances had jibed. And she had been in the right place. And then I had become the object of the lurking doglike creature’s attention, which had distracted me more than a little from the minutiae of identity. By the time my struggle for my life was concluded, to the accompaniment of approaching sirens, I was more interested in flight than in further investigation. Thereafter, whenever I had returned in memory to that scene, it was Julia dead whom I beheld.
“Incredible,” I said. “Then whose body was it that I found?”
“I’ve no idea,” she replied. “It could have been one of her own shadow selves or some stranger off the street. Or a corpse stolen from the morgue. I’ve no way of knowing.”