had theorized that since the Great Barrier drew a little bit of magic from every Mageborn in the Kingdom all the time, it should be possible to trace those threads of magic to an individual.
In practice, he had found it impossible to differentiate one ordinary Mageborn from another in that vest web of magic: but the Heir was different. Linked as he or she was in two directions, to the Barrier, and to the King, the Heir must, of necessity, be a conduit for a much greater share of the Barrier’s energy, and so the Heir’s thread stood out like a thick cord among threads of gossamer.
Tagaza finished forming the spell in his mind. To him, spells were like complex patterns of light that he visualized, then let pour out into the world through his hands. This pattern was horrendously complex, and he was hardly conscious of his physical actions as he held it in his mind’s eye and stepped up onto the low stair that surrounded the pipe.
Falk reached out and pulled the lever that opened the cap and, with a great grinding noise, all the vents along the wall.
Heat roared out of the pipe into Tagaza’s face… and vanished as he released the pattern in his mind through the hands he had thrust into the uprushing column of scorching air.
He felt as if he had suddenly grown enormous, as though his body, insubstantial as a ghost, had exploded in size, swelling out through the walls of the Palace, across the city, across the Kingdom, his head soaring higher and higher until he could look down on everything within Evrenfels.
The Great Barrier blazed in his mind, a huge silver circle. Like the circle of the Unbound, Tagaza thought with a remote part of his mind that was not caught up in the power of the spell. But still unbroken… for now. The Lesser Barrier, on this scale, was a single white pearl of light at the very center of the Great Barrier’s vast circumference.
And then, suddenly, a web of power exploded in his vision, streams of light, all colors of light, red, blue, gold, green, pouring out from the Palace, from the city, from everywhere there were Mageborn, pouring into the Great Barrier: and it no longer appeared silver, but was an ever-shifting, intertwined mass of color, like an impossible bright aurora brought to Earth. It’s beautiful, he thought, his heart aching with it. It’s so beautiful…
But he wasn’t there to sightsee. He began searching for the thread of power from the Heir, thicker, brighter than all the others… and Falk had given him some idea of where to look.
The Great Lake. It was easy to distinguish in his mental view of the Kingdom. He could see no physical terrain, of course. For all it felt as if he were standing high over the Kingdom looking down at it, he was really still trapped in his physical body, and his “vision” was only his mind’s way of making sense of the information it was receiving from his magical senses. But he knew the map of the physical Kingdom as well as he knew the layout of his own bedroom, and in his mind, he could superimpose it on the magic he sensed. Toward the northeast, there were very few Mageborn. Those small clusters had to be the villages of Westwind and Pelican Nest on the western shore, the threads of their handful of Mageborn residents adding to the weft and warp of the Barrier.
Go farther northeast, and you were in the Great Lake, and farther northeast still, and there was only wilderness, home to the Minik and no one else, until you reached the Great Barrier again. And it was there, in that great blank expanse, somewhere on the lake but near the northeastern shore, Tagaza judged, that he found one final thread of magic. He peered closer, willing his magical eye to focus as sharply as possible on it… and saw at once that it was different from all the others: white rather than colored, thicker, brighter.
There could be no doubt. It belonged to the Heir. It belonged to Brenna. And she was on the Great Lake.
And then, as though from a great distance, he heard an enormous roar… and an instant later was hurled back from the pipe by a screaming blast of scalding-hot steam, erupting from far below.
His mental image of the Kingdom and the Heir’s whereabouts vanished, brutally severed from him along with his magical senses. The spell he had carefully constructed, the spell drawing on vast amounts of magic from the magic lode and vast amounts of energy from the MageFurnace, collapsed in ruin and blazing agony inside his head…
… and took his consciousness with it.
The pillar of steam erupting from the pipe blew Falk flat on his back, and hurled Tagaza away like a rag doll, to lie in a crumpled heap on the marble floor. The deep chill that had gripped the room as Tagaza worked vanished in the same instant. The temperature began to climb. Falk, staring up at the boiling mass of steam beginning to fill the room, realized that in moments he and Tagaza would be so much cooked meat.
He lunged at the First Mage and dragged him toward the closed doors, throwing his will against them so hard they burst from their hinges and smashed into the far wall, one striking a glancing blow on Charic, spinning him around with a shout of pain, clutching his broken arm. Falk instantly realized his mistake; the steam would soon fill the hallway outside the chamber as well. With another surge of will, he blew out every one of the tall windows set between fluted pillars that encircled the dome. Steam rushed out through the gaps. Coughing and stumbling, Falk dragged the unconscious Tagaza to the stairs, Charic staggering after him, clutching his arm, leaving a trail of blood behind: the bone had punctured the skin.
Leaving Tagaza slumped in the stairwell for the moment, Charic sitting beside him, bleeding, Falk ran down the stairs, emerging into chaos, servants and Mageborn rushing around like frightened quail. Falk grabbed the first servant who passed, a teenage girl. “Get a Healer,” he ordered. “Send him up the stairs to tend to the First Mage and the guard he’ll find there.” The girl gave him a frightened curtsy and hurried off.
Falk ran the other way-to a different stairway whose broad steps descended to the MageFurnace. Mingled steam and smoke poured up those stairs, and before he reached them, men began to boil up them as well: men with reddened skin and terrible burns, coughing, slumping against the white marble walls of the central chamber as soon as they were clear of the stairs.
Falk saw Healers arriving at a run and hoped that fool of a girl had been smart enough to send one to minister to Tagaza. He knelt by the nearest man, who seemed shaken but unhurt. “What happened?” he demanded.
“Water,” the man choked. “I don’t know where it came from. A flood of water, pouring into the Furnace…”
“Sabotage,” said a voice from behind Falk, and he straightened and spun to see Brich, grim-faced.
“Sabotage? How?”
“Someone,” Brich said, “found a way to direct the waters of the lake into one of the Furnace’s air intakes.”
“ Who? ” Falk snapped.
“We’ve had… a communication,” Brich said. “From the Common Cause. They claim responsibility. They say it’s in retaliation for the destruction of City Hall. They say they will do far worse if the ‘repression of the Commons’ is not eased.”
“They don’t know what repression is,” Falk snarled. “But they’re about to find out. I want a platoon of guards ready at the bridge in twenty minutes. We’re going back to the Square.”
Brich looked like he was about to say something, but, wisely, did not. Instead he just nodded and turned away.
Anger such as he’d rarely felt blazed in Falk’s heart. Not only had these Commoner criminals disrupted life in the Palace-temporarily, he thought with a mental sneer; the MageFurnace could not be doused so easily, and would soon be blazing at full power again-but, more importantly, they had disrupted the search for Brenna. And that meant that, once again, they had interfered with the Plan.
Falk was getting very tired of things interfering with the Plan.
He couldn’t do anything about locating Brenna… but he could do something about Commoner interference.
And he would take great pleasure in it.
He turned his back on the wounded men and the Healers tending them, and headed for the bridge into New Cabora.
CHAPTER 17
