Turold ducked into a coffee house, though he couldn’t abide the drink personally. The aroma, alone, was enough to keep him awake, as were the bubbling vats of gossip that swirled from table to table. If anyone had seen the Codex, or had any dealings with Sir Otrygg, it would trickle out in whiffs of caffeine. Two gentlemen spotted him as soon as he entered, stopping in mid-conversation. He gave a slight bow and took a seat some distance off, with his back to them. The gentlemen resumed talking almost immediately, giggling about someone named “Arabella.”
A servant approached and took his order, a drink he had no interest in drinking, at a price he would prefer not to pay. As he waited, he took stock of the caliber of coffee-drinkers around him. Several gentlemen in blue coats and pink stockings (quite fashionable this year); a young lady with an older maid servant, looking profoundly bored; at least one magician, as revealed by his threadbare cloak and his squinting gaze (from reading too many manuscripts at night); and a handful of merchants who talked too loudly and drank too much.
In short, no one with much to tell him. The suspicious lawyers who eyed him at first were whispering about an acquaintances’ mistress. They hoped to have her, too, but her price was too high; she demanded personal items from various rivals to use as blackmail, which the lawyers were hard-pressed to obtain. Turold found himself sucked in to the pointless conversation long after his coffee arrived. His master had often scolded him for not staying on task and finishing one task before he took up another.
Hildigrim. He never expected him to die so soon. Of course, he had lived quite long—extraordinarily long for a magician of his temperament. It was just Turold’s bad luck to be born too late to complete his apprenticeship. Hildigrim reminded him of a chest full of family heirlooms, each one a document of priceless vintage. He might have spent his entire life—if he lived as long as Hildigrim—pouring over each one, trying to master their secrets. As it was, he only got to handle a few of them before the lid slammed shut on his fingers.
Again, not paying attention! He shook the memories off and took out the fragment from Sir Otrygg’s apartment. Perhaps a clue lay buried in the cryptic metaphors of the broken-off spell? From memory he recited the opening words:
Winter shall wane
fair weather come again
the sun-warmed summer!
Nothing striking here; an obvious winter/summer dichotomy, common to many spells. A spell of regeneration, perhaps. Unless the ‘winter’ referred to wasn’t a single life but something larger, more encompassing? He continued:
The sound unstill
the deep dead wave
is darkest longest.
He found these lines disturbing. Disturbing, because they didn’t make any sense. The sound unstill? What sound? And how did sound become “unstilled?” Was it a poetic way of saying “to create sound from silence”? Or did it refer to an echo?
He also puzzled over the “deep dead wave”? A wave of sound? Was this a single sentence: the sound unstill the deep dead wave, or did an error in transcription drop the punctuation which should have read, the sound unstill; the deep dead wave?
Why would a “deep dead wave” be “darkest longest”? He assumed this meant death itself, which is a wave that rolls across the land, plunging men into doom and darkness. If so, why use the word “dead” with the wave? It seemed too obvious. Perhaps death was the connotation, but not the literal meaning of the phrase?
He read on:
One shall break
frost’s fetters
free the grain
from wonder-lock.
Was this a general “one,” as in, “anyone”? Or did it mean a specific person, as in “the one”? Uncertain. “Frost’s fetters” returned to the winter metaphor, which could also mean death, yet the lines “free the grain” puzzled him mightily, as did “wonder-lock.” An obvious kenning. Was it alluding to seeds, which are freed by the warmth of spring to sprout from their darkened tomb? If so, what possessed Sir Otrygg to write a spell about agriculture, who had never farmed a day in his life?
He sipped the coffee (bitter, scalding) to help him think, but it did the opposite. The ideas seemed to retreat before his grasp and the general murmur of the patrons crowded in, forcing him to listen to mistresses and the prices of gowns and off-color jokes. What a fool! He could see himself approaching Sonya Vasilyevna in a few days’ time only to admit he had no leads, had discovered nothing. Then she would know why Hildigrim didn’t recommend him for the Seeker of Hellebore. At the time, he had blamed his height, the obvious bias of the ruling Council (and Hildigrim, for not standing up to them). The truth cut much deeper, suggesting that Hildigrim had looked past his size, his challenges, and observed a general want of character or ability.
In the end, he simply wasn’t good enough. And now she would see it, too. Someone else would take his place and find the book in an afternoon, probably right under his nose. With his luck Churkov actually did have it, but was instructed not to sell it to someone as useless as him, holding out for a more capable astrologer-magician, someone like Kastril. Kastril. Their botched duel still tormented him, knotting his heart in pointless regrets. One day he would find a way to apologize, not just to him, but to Giacinta for accepting the challenge. Though she would never forgive him.
So much for gossip. He slid back his chair to get up when he suddenly felt light-headed. The room shifted beneath his feet. Though everyone else continued talking and drinking as before, Turold lurched forward, snagged hold of the chair with a desperate embrace. Sounds became slow, elongating on a single syllable until they filled the room like smoke.
He blinked and shook his head but his eyes betrayed him. The people vanished; the room itself turned upside-down and broke apart. He seemed to be standing in a ruined courtyard, the remains of a once-great castle or palace. Stumbling forward, he found a stairwell vanishing into the blackest catacombs. The sounds of the patrons’ conversation—for they were both here and not here—sounded like the roar of the sea.
The room moved like a dream: he suddenly found himself halfway down the stairs, then in another room. Before him, encased in ice which stretched from the floor to ceiling, was a silver goblet. His hand reached out and touched the ice. It was wet; melting! As he stared at the cup, he could make out a figure in faded paint: small, yet vast, arms aloft, reaching for the stars. The ice dripped onto the floor, each drop echoing like a hammer blow in the distance.
Then, cutting through the sound, came a bottomless voice:
drink.
Drink.
Drink!
DRINK!
The ice cracked open. The cup rolled out of its prison and fell to the ground, where he stooped to catch it, and—
And found himself outside on his hands and knees, the coffee house behind him, and a crowd of on-lookers mocking his actions.
“I almost stepped on the little madman!” someone scoffed.
“Watch it, runt!”
“Damned beggars!”
“Move!”
He scrambled out of the way and found safety in a nearby alley. Panting, sweating, he tried to make sense of the vision. For it was no accident, no case of frazzled nerves, but a bona fide vision. The poem—those words—they were a powerful spell. They had allowed him to see…well, he didn’t know what. Not yet.
But now he knew what to do, and where he would find it.
