The Fortress of Glass by Drake David Read Free Book Online Page B

"Why, these are the finest rooms in the palace, the finest rooms in the kingdom! They were the king's rooms!"
    "They were a wizard's rooms," said Tenoctris, seating herself cross-legged on the floor. Cashel set her satchel beside her, open; she took from it a bundle of yarrow stalks wrapped in a swatch of chamois leather. "The work Cervoran did here leaves traces behind which can be felt by people who aren't themselves wizards. It affects Princess Sharina, and it might very well affect Prince Garric."
    The queen's suite had a floor of boards laid edgewise and planed smooth, solid and warm to the feet even without a layer of carpets over it. The king's side of the building had probably started out the same, but at some point a layer of slates had raised it an inch. Words and figures had been drawn on the floor in a variety of media: chalks, paints, and colored powders. The fine-grained stone retained them as ghostly images.
    "Really!" said Martous. "It wouldn't be proper to place Prince Garric anywhere else. These are the royal apartments!"
    "Protas said his father didn't use spells to hurt other people, Tenoctris," Cashel said. "Was the boy wrong, then?"
    Tenoctris held the yarrow stalks in the circuit of her right thumb and forefinger. She cocked her head quizzically toward Cashel with a expression.
    "No," she said, "I think Cervoran was interested in knowledge for its own sake rather than for any wealth or power it could bring him. I'm of a similar mind myself, so I can sympathize. Only... only I've gained most of my knowledge by reading the accounts written by greater wizards than I. Cervoran searched very deeply into the fabric of things himself. He gathered artifacts as well as knowledge-"
    She nodded toward a rank of drawer-fronted cabinets against the west wall. Above them hung a tapestry worked mostly in green. It showed a garden in which mythical animals strutted among the hedgerows.
    "-and stored them here. To me these rooms are a clutching tangle, like being thrown into briars. Even to laymen, at least to a sensitive layman like Sharina, I expect this would be evident and uncomfortable."
    "It's like shelling peas in bed," Sharina said, speaking precisely to emphasize her point, "and then lying down on the husks. Milord, I've become quite sure that my brother will require other accommodations."
    "This is very unfortunate," the chamberlain said, hugging himself in obvious discomfort. Sharina couldn't tell whether he was complaining about her decision or if he felt the whirling sharpness of ancient spells also. Martous might not know himself. "Very. Well. I'll give orders. There are rooms in the west wing, though that'll mean...."
    He caught himself and straightened. "Be that as it may," he resumed in a businesslike tone. "Are you ready to go over the arrangements for the apotheosis and coronation, in lieu of the prince?"
    "Tenoctris?" Sharina asked. The old wizard was looking into a drawer she'd just opened, holding her hands crossed behind her back as if to prove that she had no intention of touching the contents. The yarrow stalks lay on the floor where she'd been sitting. So far as Sharina could see, they'd fallen in a meaningless jumble.
    Tenoctris pushed the drawer shut. She looked up and said, "I'm done for the moment. There's nothing acute to be dealt with, though-"
    She turned her head toward the chamberlain with her usual birdlike quickness.
    "-Lord Martous, I suggest you have these rooms closed until I've had time to go over the collection. There's nothing that I'd consider dangerous in itself, but there are a number of items which could be harmful if misused. Also there's a chance they could draw actively dangerous things to them."
    The servants had stopped working and moved to the south wall when Cashel and Sharina entered. Sharina made a quick decision and said to the steward in charge, "Master Tinue, please move Prince Garric's impedimenta back out of here and carry it to the west wing. Lord Martous will