It took him seven tries to get something that approximated his shadow-familiar. He performed the spell by candlelight, casting his silhouette against the far wall, which stretched out grotesquely. The first two times it merely collapsed into a ball and smoked, giving off an odor of burnt hair and onions. The third time it grew hideously, sprouting tentacles and heads, then vanished. The fourth and fifth times it became more solid and attempted to step out of the wall, but something held it fast. Each time it vanished into a wisp of smoke.
The sixth time it tried to speak. Not words, but a cry of anger or delight. But even then it couldn’t escape its two-dimensional prison, and melted into a putrescent slime. Turold cursed and peered out the window, seeing dawn gradually overtake the horizon. He would have to present himself at court in a few hours. The spell had bested him. Hildigrim knew some trick, some turn of phrase or vocal inflection that made the spell come together. But he had tried everything, even imagined how Hildigrim might have done it, even (badly) mimicked his voice.
Of course, Hildigrim couldn’t be copied so easily. As he often told him, to be ‘great’ isn’t a matter of wit or intelligence, as much as style; or as I like to call it, panache. You have to approach everything from the same angle, until casting a spell is the same as eating an apple. Soon, others will see you and think, ‘I never knew you could eat an apple like that,’ and they’ll try it, too. But their clumsy imitation will only set the original in greater relief. That’s panache.
Turold utterly lacked panache, as he tended to do things as quickly and clumsily as possible. Often sheer willpower and a fraction of talent saw it through. Not this time, however; not with a spell of this order. Just as he planned to admit defeat, Giacinta emerged from the shadows with a smile on her lips. That is, the mask’s smiling lips seemed to hide a second smile beneath them. A trick of the light, perhaps.
“I have an idea, something I learned from the Codex,” she said, taking the spell. “Naturally I know very little about spellcraft. Yet when I worked with Sir Otrygg, we noticed this phrase that recurred after each stanza, a word of great power: what if you inserted it into the spell?”
“A word? What does it mean?”
“It’s untranslatable; an invocation, of sorts. It goes back to the earliest days.”
She found his quill and inkpot and wrote the word under the first stanza, three letters and a series of dots that Turold had never before seen or heard pronounced. She said it for him, helping him get the proper intonation, and then read it along with the stanza. He shrugged. At worst, it could diffuse the spell and nothing would happen. At best…
He recited the spell once more, along with the three-letter refrain, as she stood close, adding her voice to his own. They watched his shadow stoop down, then stand tall; by the end, it slipped off the wall and spread out on the floor like a blanket. Suddenly, the flatness assumed definition: a black face emerged, the eyes opened, the mouth grimaced. The arms lifted up, the legs bent and twisted. As it stood, swirls of color danced over its face and colored in the cheeks with life. Moment by moment new details emerged, as if a master artist were painting from a living model.
A moment later, a second Turold stood in the room, its legs unsteady, but its expression uncanny. Even Turold hesitated to call it a copy. Now for the fatal moment, when the shadow took its first breaths, deciding whether to obey orders or violently reject its master.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked it.
“The one who commands me,” it said, after a pause. “Turold.”
“Yes, I am your master,” he said, feeling uncomfortable with the word. “You will obey me and I will protect you. This is Giacinta, and she is also your master. She has similarly vowed to protect you.”
“I understand,” it said, gazing at her. “How may I serve you?”
Turold had no response, since he never quite imagined pulling this off. What next? He couldn’t send the Shadow off to impersonate him just yet, as it took time to learn his personality and routine. Of course, it would be difficult to do that as Astrologer Royal with the entire court watching. He tried to explain this with empty gestures, but Giacinta caught the gist; as usual, she was two steps ahead.
“Shadow, can you return to your previous form?”
“Of course,” it said.
“And follow him wherever he goes, unseen?”
“I can.”
“So you see, Turold, he can memorize your routine, your movements and responses. What better way to impersonate you in the days to come?”
“But what if he…wanders off? Hildigrim’s did,” he said, lowering his voice. “Isn’t it dangerous to send him off so quickly?”
“Everything we do at this point is dangerous,” she warned him. “Death stares you down wherever you look. Only boldness and luck will overcome it.”
The sight of her eyes heightened the illusion so carefully maintained by the mask. He had truly begun to see her as a real woman, no different than anyone else in the city…though he liked her more than most. She said she knew him in some long-lost sense, and the more he knew her, the more he felt the same (or imagined he could).
But now he weighed the reality against the illusion. What was she, really? A woman snatched from the grave…or a macabre simulacrum? Or even more disturbingly, what if she, and not the Messengers, had killed Sir Otrygg? He only had her word for it, and she had lied to him before (the Codex). She claimed to be helping him, but couldn’t he just as easily be helping her, duped into doing her bidding against the Council?
She titled her head slightly, trying to read his silence. He realized then, with a touch of humility, that he wasn’t helping her much at all. What did she need him for, when she had the Codex, a book she could read cover to cover? It would take him a week to translate the title alone.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“I just feel a little out of my depth,” he admitted. “I’ve gone on many adventures with my Master, seen so much of the world, but he was always with me. I never had to be the one in charge, with so much at stake.”
“Sir Otrygg believed in you, and I do, too,” she said.
“I appreciate that, but look at me…I’m just a man, not even much of a sorcerer. You’re something else entirely. You’re intimidating, actually.”
“You mean terrifying,” she said. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have spoken of death. As if you needed another reminder.”
“No, not terrifying, nothing like that. I just don’t feel worthy of what you know, or why you need me. I worry I’m just in the way. You did say at one point I was useless.”
The frozen smile of the mask looked pained as she met his stare.
“We all say foolish things. But now I know…I could never do this without you. I can’t promise we can reverse what Sir Otrygg set in motion, but together, we at least have a chance. We have hope.”
They lapsed into silence, Turold feeling strangely elated and somewhat embarrassed. Her high opinion of him would undoubtedly fade with time, and what would remain? Would she see him as others did: Turold, the midget apprentice? Or did they see one another as they truly were, flaws and impurities aside? She may not be entirely human, but she chose him in a way that no one else ever had, not even Hildigrim. He hoped to maintain her delusion for as long as possible.
“I’ll get to work translating the opening pages,” she said, retreating to his desk.
“Good idea, thank you,” he said.
As he watched her go, he suddenly became aware of the Familiar, as it was staring at him intently. Almost with amusement.
“You find yourself attracted to this woman? But you’re not sure if she is a woman,” it said.
“Excuse me?” he gasped.
“I begin to know everything you do,” it continued, with the hint of a smile. “You don’t have much success with women.”
“Thanks for the reminder,” he muttered. “But this is hardly relevant—”
“Though there was this one woman…and she rejected you, so you fought a duel with her husband.”
“It wasn’t quite that simple—and please, that’s more than enough.”
“The duel didn’t go very well, I see. But at least you weren’t harmed. Though she’ll never speak to you again. She feels betrayed. You agree; you betrayed her.”
“By all the gods, enough! If you have nothing sensible to say, remain silent! I’ll call on you when the need arises.”
“You still question whether or not you’re a real sorcerer, like your Master,” it continued, matter-of-factly. “He never made it clear that your apprenticeship ended. He died too soon, or selfishly denied the information. I can’t say that I like him, though since I merely share your thoughts, I’m not sure you liked him, either.”
“I certainly don’t give a damn about you,” Turold snapped.
“How could you, when you don’t even like yourself?”
Turold glared at him open-mouthed, but decided not to pursue the conversation. It was just a spell, not a person, not someone who could insult him or have the faintest idea what it was talking about.
But damn it, every word was true!
