Vinthor gave Karl another hard look, but didn’t speak. Instead, he followed Goodwife Beth out.
Karl pulled off his trousers and drawers, and quickly pulled on the clean ones he’d been provided. They fit perfectly. Goodwife Beth, he’d wager, had sized up more than one young man in her life. Whatever she was, or had been, she was definitely not just a simple farm woman.
And a good thing, too, or he might be lying on the floor spitting out teeth… or worse.
Falk destroyed City Hall? Karl thought. That seemed extreme even for him. Especially since he had to know Karl had left his room of his own free will and certainly wasn’t “kidnapped,” whatever he was telling the Commoners. There’s something else going on. He’s worried about something… something big. Something I don’t know anything about.
He gazed around the simple room, so different from his grand quarters back in the Palace. And something I am unlikely to find out anything about.
He remembered thinking the Lesser Barrier was just one big prison, and longing to escape it. Now it seemed he had simply fled one prison for another, much smaller one.
But things were moving, out there in the big world. Falk was at the center of it, along with Davydd Verdsmitt… Tagaza…
… and this mysterious Patron.
It was like being buffeted from all directions by gusts of wind, seemingly unconnected… but all harbingers of a much greater storm to come.
Stuck in Goodwife Beth’s not-at-all-what-it-appeared farmhouse, it seemed all he could do was wait for the storm to break.
Well, he thought, at least there’s no reason to face it hungry; and off he went to find something to eat.
CHAPTER 16
Tagaza spent an almost-sleepless night in his cell after Falk left him. He’d known Falk was ruthless and utterly determined that his Plan succeed; he just had never really expected to be on the receiving end of that ruthlessness.
More than a quarter of a century we’ve known each other, he thought. I discovered how to bring down the Barrier. I brought him that information. I’ve helped him every step of the way. And yet on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence, he was ready to believe I would throw all that away.
It was his own fault, he thought as he lay on the narrow cot, staring up into the dark. He had been honest with Falk when they were just starting out, and honest since. He’d made it clear his reasons for wanting the Barriers removed were not the same as the Unbound’s. He’d thought that didn’t matter, as long as they both shared that ultimate goal. But that was why Falk had been so quick to mistrust him. Falk doesn’t believe magic will fail if the Barriers remain, he thought bitterly. I explained everything I’ve found, but there is no room within the belief system of the Unbound for magic that is a limited resource, like… like coal, or lumber. They think they will always have magic, whenever they need it, as much as they need. They think they can count on using it to conquer the lands Outside the Great Barrier.
But they’re wrong. And now Tagaza was glad he had not been entirely honest with Falk. For there was one thing his research had uncovered that he had never shared with Falk, for fear Falk would be the one to decide the Barriers should remain in place: the First Twelve, while searching for the lode on which the Kingdom was centered, had found no other lodes of similar power anywhere else in the world.
Tagaza had a theory about that, too. The Unbound believed that the SkyMage had created the Mageborn to rule over the obviously inferior Commoners, that their ability to use magic was a sign that they were favored by the Creator.
But Tagaza did not believe in the SkyMage, or any other supernatural being. Tagaza believed that the Mageborn had appeared simply because their ancestors were the first people to settle the land above the great lode of magic at the heart of the Old Kingdom. Over time, the magic power surrounding them had changed them, altered them, generation by generation, until they could draw on its power and use it to change the world around them.
His theory was bolstered by the fact, otherwise inexplicable, that at rare… very rare… intervals, a child born to Commoner parents was found to have magical ability: to be, in fact, a brand-new Mageborn. This had historically been a matter for great rejoicing, both on the part of the Mageborn and the Commoner parents, whose child was then assured of being lifted out of servitude: although the rejoicing was tempered by the fact that the child was then promptly taken from its parents and raised by Mageborn surrogates. (Some Commoner parents had tried to hide their children’s ability when it manifested, usually about the same time they started to talk; such deception was, of course, punishable by death.)
In any event, as far as the First Twelve had been able to determine there were no other lodes of magic anywhere in the world except for the site of the Old Kingdom… and the one deep beneath the Earth below Tagaza right now.
Why that should be so, no one knew. Tagaza leaned toward the theory that magic had arrived from outside the world, that it belonged to some other world, some alternate world invisible to this one but somehow close at hand, and had somehow leaked between the barrier hiding the one from the other: but that was just idle speculation, since there was absolutely no evidence one way or the other.
In any event, the scarcity of magic outside the two known lodes of it meant, Tagaza suspected-but had never dared suggest to Falk-that if the Unbound escaped the Great Barrier and set out on a war of conquest against the supposedly defenseless Commoners of the Outside, their conquest would be short-lived indeed, for they would soon find themselves outside the regions in which magic could be easily drawn upon.
What Tagaza had argued with Falk was that the best course for the Mageborn to follow was not to use their magic for conquest when the Barriers fell, but only to defend themselves. Best of all would be for them to seek cooperation with the Commoners. Surely both cultures had a lot to offer each other.
As Falk had just thrown in his face as evidence of his perfidy, Tagaza had long advocated a gentler approach to the Commons, pointing out that the Commoners greatly outnumbered and were outbreeding the Mageborn, and that reforms aimed at placating the Commoners were therefore only prudent.
Falk had rejected those arguments, too. And if he had now destroyed City Hall, and was threatening even more retribution for Karl’s disappearance… then the opportunity for greater cooperating between Commoners and Mageborn had quite possibly passed forever.
And it was that that particularly kept Tagaza awake that long night before Falk’s expected summons in the morning. Because whichever way he looked, he saw disaster looming.
If he failed to find Brenna, or if she were dead, Falk’s plan would fail, the Barriers would not fall, magic would dwindle away.. . and the Commoners would take their revenge.
If he did find Brenna, and Falk succeeded in his Plan, and brought down the Barrier, but then pushed aggressively into the outside world, he would soon run into the limits of magic. The Outsiders would defeat the Kingdom… and this time, there was nowhere for the Mageborn to flee.
Falk’s summons came very early in the morning: the cell’s magelight, reacting to the impending day outside the dungeon, had barely begun to glow. But Tagaza was awake. “Hello, Charic,” he said to the Royal guardsman who opened the cell door. “Time to attend Falk, I presume?”
Charic had been in the Magecorps before joining the guard; he’d once accompanied Tagaza on his annual inspection trip to the Cauldron. He half-smiled, looking a little shamefaced. “Yes, First Mage,” he said. “I’m to put the manacles back on you, if you don’t come willingly.” He looked down at his feet. “I’d really rather not.”