Lizaveta raised her eyebrows. 'My word,' she said, running a hand through her thinning, white hair, 'this is a sorry state of affairs; a witch within my own Order! I will have her expelled immediately.'
Dalquist shook his head. 'That is not all, Reverend Mother. The girl Madeleine does not appear to be casting the magic on her own. Much of the power seems to originate from outside her.'
Lizaveta's friendly expression disappeared in an instant, as if washed from her face by some sudden, torrential downpour. She closed her eyes and muttered a few words. Dalquist staggered backwards, raising a hasty counter-spell with a nonsense phrase of his own as he felt the cold thrill of some unfamiliar force beginning to bite into his bones.
'So, now the truth is out,' he snarled, 'Know that you are dealing with a Mage Questor, witch. I am no besotted adolescent, unaware and unprepared. I suspected that some such treachery might be in the offing, and you will find me a harder nut to crack than my poor, love-struck colleague. Akukka-huck-k'kakka!'
A battle of iron wills was under way.
The Prioress flinched as Dalquist's spell struck her, a shocked expression on her face as the pain of the Questor's power scorched her very nerves. Panic rose and agony began to wash through her body, but she knew that the mage was merely a man, a pathetic slave to the demands and complaints of his body.
Lizaveta was a woman, and she had borne three children, two of which had been stillborn.
Men have no idea of what real agony is!
Marshalling her strength, she accepted the pain and dismissed it, subsuming it into the depths of her psyche. All Lizaveta could do was to hold the awful force at bay, but she managed to prevent it from disorienting the higher functions of her brain.
This mage made a bad mistake by assaulting me with a spell of pain, she thought. A spell of destruction would have been all but impossible to ward off, but the fool still sees me in some neglected corner of his male brain as a life-giver, a weak, little old lady; a grandmother.
While her body twitched, no longer under her direct control, the Prioress drew to herself the power of the earth, the potent energy of Geomancy: an energy that came from without, not from within her own spirit. Communing with the earth, Lizaveta directed it at Dalquist with a single, mighty effort of will.
She felt the Questor's spell weaken and fail as he fought to block the Compulsion spell she had hurled at him. The Prioress knew she could not access the deepest recesses of his will. She could not see deeply enough into the realms of the man's soul, so well-protected by bands of discipline and willpower, but she was, at least, able to hold him at bay.
He is a strong one, she thought, as the mage made a fortress, a battering-ram of his masculine strength and resolve that threatened to overwhelm her own defences. Now it was down to a naked struggle, a war of inner forces.
I will win. This helpless…
With a frigid shock of sheer terror, Lizaveta began to feel her resistance crumble as the Questor's awful, shocking, masculine energy battered her. Under the ruthless, animalistic assault, she felt her will becoming compressed to a mote, a poincture, as she felt the layers of her personality stripped away from her, one by one.
The dwindling soul called Lizaveta knew she had made a bad mistake: she had allowed herself to become slack in the forty years since she had last taken a Guild Questor's will…
Just as she knew she was on the point of surrendering to the powerful magic-user, all resistance ceased. Gasping for breath, her vision misty and tinged with grey, she looked up to see Madeleine standing in the room, arms outstretched, a broken alabaster vase in one hand. Dalquist was kneeling before her, motionless, expressionless, his face a mask of vacuity.
Madeleine, too, was red-faced and breathless. 'I sensed that you were in danger, Reverend Mother, and rushed to your aid. I made my excuses to Questor Grimm, saying that I would return in a few minutes.
'I met this mage not thirty minutes ago, and I thought that he might prove troublesome. I am glad I arrived here in time.'
Now that Dalquist was safely restrained, Lizaveta took a few moments to compose herself. She smoothed her hair and her white dress, and she drew a succession of deep breaths, trying to still her pounding heart. Madeleine, younger and stronger, seemed already to have recovered, and she reached towards Dalquist's floating staff, Shakhmat.
'Sister!' Lizaveta screamed. 'Do you not know the power resident within a mage's staff?'
Madeleine stopped her hand with a jerk and looked at the Prioress with wide eyes.
'Reverend Mother,' she gasped, 'what can we do? We cannot leave the Questor in this state indefinitely.'
Lizaveta snorted. 'I do not know enough to control the man's total will, but it is a relatively easy task to manipulate memories without disturbing his basic drives. Go back to your puppy; I can deal with this situation alone, now.'
The Prioress waited until Madeleine had departed. She rolled her eyes and made a simple gesture. Dalquist's gaze flicked upwards into Lizaveta's amber eyes, his body as still as a statue.
'You remember nothing of our struggle, Questor Dalquist,' the Reverend Mother said in an intense voice. You are happy for your friend, Grimm Afelnor, and you see nothing wrong in this innocent little flirtation. There is nothing unusual about this relationship, and you will inquire no further. When you leave here, you will not remember that you have met me, but you will remember what I have said as if the conclusion is your own. You slipped on the marble floor of the bar and hit your head on the wall. This is too embarrassing to admit, and you dare not mention it to your peers.'
For a few moments more, Dalquist knelt, immobile, and then blinked and shook his head as if trying to clear a momentary confusion.
'So, you see, Questor Dalquist,' the Prioress hissed in a poor facsimile of a calm, honeyed voice, 'Nothing in the rules of our Order prohibits our Sister Madeleine from carrying on an innocent friendship with your colleague.'
Dalquist appeared to come to his senses, but his eyes were still distant. 'Ah, yes, thank you, Reverend Mother, I just wanted to be certain that my friend would not get into any trouble with you. I am relieved that he will not. He and Sister Madeleine will make such a nice couple.'
Chapter 18: Like Sunshine in Summer
Grimm awoke early, with the name of Madeleine on his lips. He felt joyous; perhaps a little too happy, he thought, as the room seemed to begin to sway and swivel; slowly at first but at an ever-increasing pace.
A low throb began to build in his right temple, rising to an insistent, thudding pain that seemed as if it might burst his head. His stomach began to protest, also, and his mouth felt as dry as a desert.
He had enjoyed himself so much the night before, talking to and even dancing with Madeleine, and he had not noticed at the time the effects of the considerable amount of alcohol he had consumed. He reached for Redeemer, but he realised that he must have left his staff in the bar.
'Redeemer, come here.'
Nothing in the mortal world could prevent a mage's staff from returning to him when summoned. If it was within plain sight, it could travel directly to his hand; if not, it would utilise a form of teleportation without the mage needing to cast the least spell. In a few moments, the rod appeared in his hand. Grimm felt the pounding in his temples and his entrails cease, and he took stock of his surroundings.
He was on top of his bed, still wearing his velvet robes. A colourful profusion of other clothes lay scattered in bright abandon across the floor, along with toppled bottles of bath oil and scented powders. Grimm, shocked at the disarray he saw, began to realise the depths of intensity of his feelings on the previous night, in his eagerness to impress Madeleine.
During his long, difficult years in the Scholasticate, the Magemasters had drilled a strong sense of neatness
