This Rough Magic

work on your focus, and your defenses. You are very vulnerable when you are scrying like that, and I fear that this time only your bond with the Lion saved you. Part of you was outside the wards—and your ability stretches the window of vision. It is rare that one person can do that sort of scrying alone and unaided. As a consequence, you can see much more than, say, I can. Unfortunately, it also means you are then visible to anything lurking, waiting for the sign of your magic. You are at your most vulnerable under such circumstances.'

'And something attacked me.'

The information that he, and not the merfolk, had been the object of an attack made him feel a moment of relief. At least he had not been the cause of two innocents getting in harm's way.

Brother Mascoli made the sign of the cross. 'Something is definitely out there,' he said quietly. 'Something that dares not venture within the ancient boundaries of our current Venice, but knows what Marco Valdosta's mage-work feels like. Something that is so evil that the wards were called on to guard your very soul.'

Marco's relief evaporated, and he felt as if he had been doused in iced water. And now that he came to think about it . . .

There'd been something very recognizable about that image, a feeling that he'd met it when they'd fought Chernobog's minions. He could almost taste the magic, foul beyond measure and polluted, yet with an edge of seductive sweetness—seductive, at least, if you were not aware that it was the sweetness of corruption.

'But . . . I thought the Lion had defeated the evil that attacked Venice?' he whispered.

Brother Mascoli was the gentlest and kindest of all the men that Marco knew. Right now he did not look gentle. 'We have won a battle,' he said quietly, sighing. 'A battle, not the war. We need to go on being vigilant. And we need to remember that in this war it is love and care that are our weapons, as much as swords or magics. Our foe can match us sword for sword, magic for magic. But love and care are ours and ours alone. Our enemy cannot give those. They would destroy him if he tried.'

It was Marco's turn to sigh; he had given so much already, and now that things were settling down for him, he had hoped for a respite. 'I'm just so sick of fighting. I thought . . . I thought we could give peace a try.'

The Sibling shook his head. 'I am not a man of arms. But it is no use simply calling for peace when our foe takes our desire for it to be an opportunity to conquer brutally without meeting any resistance. We need swords, aye, and magic, beside the love and care. You and I and the Hypatian Order want to serve the latter. But we need the former, also. We need to support them.'

The still canal water, greenish in the pale light, was suddenly ringed. The mermaid and the triton popped up.

The triton's voice boomed in the brick-walled water-chapel. 'Greetings, Mage Marco. We had a sudden squall there. Very strange.'

'You are unhurt?'

Marco's anxiety plainly struck the two of them as very funny. 'Storms are to us what a fresh breeze is to you humans,' said Androcles.

'That was no natural squall,' said Brother Mascoli, quietly. 'Marco is right to be anxious about you. That was caused by some magic.'

'Weather magic is hard and expensive on the user,' said Althea, her mercurial expression going from mischievous to somber in an instant.

Mascoli looked grim. 'The squall was little more than an accidental slap of some great force's tail. Be careful, beloved ones. It was magic of the blackest, and powerful.'

The two looked doubtful, and their tails beat the water behind them, in slow, measured waves of their fins. 'Well,' said the triton Androcles, 'it wasn't trying to stop us reaching you with the news you asked us for, Marco. The truth is: We have next to none. If this friend's father is dead . . . he lies on land. But we will widen our search, and there are friends of fresh water, like the undines, that we can call upon the wide world over.'

The mermaid, whose aquamarine eyes sparkled with mischief again, had wrapped her long, wet blond hair several times around her upper torso, creating an effective 'garment' to cover her unclothed breasts. Her companion, the triton, blond-bearded and long-haired, looked exactly like the creatures that adorned the borders of tapestries and the basins of fountains all over Venice. Like the mermaid he had a fish's tail; unlike her, he also had a fish's dorsal fin adorning his backbone.

'Faugh! Magus Marco, how you humans can live among such filthy waters I cannot imagine!' The triton somehow managed to grin and grimace at the same time.

'Because we aren't very bright?' Marco replied, cautiously. That seemed to be the correct answer, for Althea joined in the triton's chuckles.

'Well, I cannot fault you overmuch for doing what we ourselves do,' Androcles admitted. 'You know, I have a friend Antonio, a netman. He drinks nothing but grappa and I asked him why he rotted his gut with the stuff. And do you know what he said?'

Marco shook his head.

'He said: 'What am I to drink? Water? After what you people and every fish in the sea do in it?' ' The triton roared with laughter, which echoed in the brick-walled water-chapel and drowned out every other sound.

'If he is there, in the sea, we will find him eventually,' said the mermaid, smiling with confidence. Her teeth, unlike those of undines, were white, pearly, and exactly like human teeth. Althea was very pretty indeed; Marco wondered idly if at some point his artist-friend Rafael de Tomaso would be interested in having her pose for him.

'We can follow the source of a single drop of blood in the water for leagues; it will take time, a year perhaps, but we will find him. And when we do find him? What would you have us do?'

Marco thought about the horror of Kat being presented with a body half-eaten by fish and crabs, or a skeleton—but then thought of the value of having something to weep over, something to bury, even if it wasn't much.

'Please,' he said. 'Can you bring him home?'