Spellslinger (Spellslinger #1)(21)
Deeper inside the gardens I finally saw the small, darkened cottage hidden among the flora. It couldn’t have been more than ten by ten feet and the walls barely rose to the height of a man.
‘The dowager is in there?’ I asked incredulously.
The guard gave no reply. He just kept standing there, arm pointed towards the cottage, waiting for me to proceed. My father’s words came back to me: There will be a price for refusing her.
Having never been inside the palace grounds, I hadn’t known what to expect – but it certainly wasn’t a ramshackle cottage that looked as if it belonged in the Sha’Tep slums. Unfinished logs supported the roof in each corner, while rough wooden slats made up most of the walls and the ceiling that sloped down on one side, presumably to keep rain from collecting. The inside was clean and reasonably well kept. I saw no signs of mould or filth. Had the cottage been a human being you might have said it carried itself with a quiet dignity, but to me it just looked old and tired. Its lone occupant gave much the same first impression.
‘Is this the obeisance one may expect from the House of Ke?’ she asked.
The dowager magus sat in the cottage’s lone chair, a book in her hand. She wore black from head to toe, the garments appearing to have been made from a single long bolt of silk that she’d wrapped around her arms and body and tied here and there with blue cords to keep it from billowing out. It looked rather a lot like the kind of thing the undertaker dresses a body in for burial. Only her face and hands were visible, and what I saw of them confused me.
‘Forgive me …’ I mumbled, stumbling through a series of bows, realising I had no idea how to do so properly nor how to address her. ‘My … Lady?’
‘You may call me Dowager Magus.’ Then she added, ‘But only if you close the door before I catch cold.’
I quickly closed the door behind me, careful not to turn my back on her. That, at least, I knew would be impolite.
The dowager appeared at first to be my mother’s age, but as the single glow-glass lantern hanging overhead swung back and forth, I would have sworn she aged deep into her seventies and then back again. ‘Distressing, isn’t it?’ she asked.
I cursed myself for staring. ‘What is, My Lady … I mean, Dowager Magus?’
She rose to her feet and folded her hands in front of her. ‘The sight of someone so long past the appointed time of her death.’
She took in a deep breath and her features seemed to shift again, to those of a much younger woman.
I really had no idea what I was supposed to say. ‘You look …’
She smiled. ‘Beautiful?’
Not exactly the word I would have used, but I was a little too nervous to judge. ‘Yes, Dowager Magus.’
She gave a tired laugh that, even though her appearance stayed the same, made her seem much older. ‘I will save you a great deal of awkwardness, Kellen, son of Ke’heops.’ She spread her hands wide and with that gesture I saw lines of energy sliding all around her, glowing beneath the folds of her black silk garment, lighting up her skin from the inside. ‘I am some three hundred years old, held together by nothing more than spells and will. I stopped caring about what a callous boy might think of me roughly two hundred and eighty-three years ago.’
I suppose on some level I’d known this would have to be the case. The recently deceased clan prince had been the same man who’d fought and defeated the Mahdek nearly three centuries ago. He and his wife had never sired an heir, which was why we were about to have our first-ever election for a new prince. I found I was holding my breath just watching her. It’s one thing to hear such stories and quite another to come face to face with them. ‘How do you …?’
‘Stay rooted to this place, foregoing the dubious honour of the grey passage?’ She set aside her book and raised a hand. As I watched, tendrils of force slid along the lines of her fingers. ‘Spells to hold my bones together, spells to make the blood course through my veins, spells to keep my mind sharp, spells to … well, I imagine you get the idea.’
The amount of magic for such effects – not to mention the skill and precision required to work them – was staggering. A thought occurred to me then. ‘With such power, why do you not—’
‘Heal myself permanently? Simply make myself younger?’ She sat back down in the chair. ‘Some costs cannot be avoided, even with magic.’
I shook my head. ‘Forgive me, but I was going to ask why you are not the clan prince now.’
She looked up at me from her chair, one eyebrow arched, and then she reached out a hand. ‘Come here.’ I did, and she took my hand and kissed it. ‘Thank you, Kellen. I find I’m so rarely surprised these days. The heaviest price of a long life is that people become so predictable. One needn’t even ask most of them questions, for their responses are so dependably calculated by the simple equations of self-interest. From now on, you will call me Mer’esan.’
I took my hand back, feeling distinctly uncomfortable at the odd intimacy. ‘Is that why you summoned me, Mer’esan? To ask me questions?’
‘Why? Have you any answers?’
‘To some things,’ I replied, then thought about it for a moment. ‘But probably not to anything that would interest you.’
She smiled again. ‘Good – clever. I like clever.’ She rose to stand in front of me, looking much younger now, perhaps in her late twenties, and beautiful indeed. I wondered if she were truly as unconcerned with appearances as she pretended. ‘I have many questions, Kellen. None of which you can answer, of course, but my hope is that together we might work them out.’ She tilted her head for a moment. ‘Ah, but you are in the midst of your mage’s trials, aren’t you? So it is incumbent upon us to test this mind of yours. Ask me the question.’