IGMS Issue 7 Page 10
Iseau pulled the pouch's drawstring, slid her fingers in and took out a thorn apple. It had always amazed her how such a valuable secret as the clarification of glass could come down to such a simple ingredient as a thorn apple. But there was no time now to speculate what Sharad might do with what he was about to learn.
Letting out her breath, Iseau went to the furnace.
Petro had propped open the furnace door; inside, the molten glass waited in the crucible. Her pipes were also ready; she selected one, and twisted the apple onto its end. As she had done so many times, Iseau used the pipe to force the apple into the crucible full of molten glass. The glass roiled up, bringing the impurities to the surface and leaving the untainted glass below. Now Sharad had seen her family's secret -- all that remained was to make the heart.
Iseau took her pipe from the furnace. On the end where the apple had been, a ball of liquid glass glowed as orange as a torch. She crossed the room and rolled the pipe against the workbench. The hot glass cooled and the first hint of clarity showed.
In her mind, Iseau conjured the image of the heart lying on the galley's deck. She blew into the pipe, a subtle breath, then took her pipe back to the furnace and heated the glass again. She took it out, blew with gentle force, and compared the width of the orb to that of her palm.
Silently Petro held out a damp cloth, the glass hissed . . . . Again she heated the glass. Then she pinched the chambers to form the heart. Petro heated a second pipe. The heart passed from one pipe to the other. Now the mouth of the heart was open. Iseau heated the glass again, pinched again, wiped with water . . .
A door opened and closed, and Iseau knew Petro had gone. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Sharad standing like a statue, his arms raised. She pictured the little girl, the gray heart. Focus . . . She nipped the glass heart, forming two arteries. She moved like liquid from furnace to workbench. It was time now, she could feel it -- the magic was starting.
The first sensation felt as if her clothes vanished and a lover approached her from behind, lifting her off her feet, each fleck of her skin, each downy hair, ecstatic . . . She pushed the feeling from her mind, her hands working, moving, following the path she envisioned for them, swift and accurate.
The magic entered her, piercing her at the base of her spine. The shock girdled her. Concentrate . . . She nipped each artery in half, now there were four. A small pipe to shape them, more heat . . .
The magic prickled up her spine. It blazed in her skull. Its tendrils twisted from her eyes and scorched her nostrils as the magic braided with her breath. Her blood was heating, her skin a liquid shell, crystalline and shining, and her fingertips were rods of light.
Suddenly the light became flame. Sparks crackled the length of the pipe, then surged backwards, ramming her fingers and shattering her hold on the pipe.
The pipe fell, metal to stone, and the pliable glass buckled as it collapsed on the floor.
Iseau slumped to the ground, her shoulders quaking. It was over. The heart was ruined.
Turning, she looked up at Sharad.
His concentration had not flinched. His eyes were closed, his body tensed.
"It's over," Iseau cried. "Over!"
"Keep quiet," he growled.
His voice startled her, awakened her. He did not care about the heart. Alberto was right; Sharad was a thief of arts and nothing more.
She tried to get to her feet, but his magic threw her flat against the floor. Iseau screamed and tried to roll away. But the braid of his magic shackled her to him.
Sharad's eyes opened, white and flaming like opals. From deep in his throat came a sound like the rumbling of the sea.
The room chilled.
Sharad chanted louder and waves of pain consumed Iseau's strength. Darkness pulled in from the corners of the room. She groaned. If only she could drive Sharad's voice from her mind.
Iseau gulped air. She fought against the encroaching darkness. Within her chest her heart raged --
Within.
That was it.
The way to fight him was from within.
Sharad had instructed her to focus only on the making of the heart: on something outside of herself. But now, where she had so often felt a stirring in her blood, she felt a surge: her mother's blood, the magic from Tintagel.
Closing her eyes, Iseau pictured the heart floating in the crock of brine, then her own heart. She breathed deeply, in through her nose and out through her mouth. She breathed like the scrolls had said and turned her concentration within herself.
Inside her skull Sharad's chant rang as the tendrils of his magic entwined her mind.
She concentrated on her heart and, fought, and found the power of her mother's blood. Iseau raged, pushing Sarad's flames of magic back from her fingertips, her hands, her arms, her mind. With every ounce of her ancestor's magic she struggled to drive him from her body.
Sharad's braid was deeply rooted, his resistance fierce. He was much stronger than she, stronger than her mother's blood. She needed something more . . .
In front of her on the stone floor lay her pipe. In one motion she grabbed it and swung. The pipe connected solidly with Sharad's knees. He went down. For a second her pain flickered.
Sharad raised his fist and the magic surged back harder.
At that moment she saw it, the hint of blue satin between his fingers. Despite her anguish, she swung again, with all her fury, and hit her mark.
Sharad's knuckles cracked. He yowled in anger as his fingers spasmed, a blue bundle fell to the floor and a silver vial rolled out.
"You're too late. The spell is beyond need of fingernails and blood." Sharad struggled to his feet, his eyes like steel. He threw his head back and intoned, "Breiden -- Arti --"
Iseau lunged forward, her hands throttled Sharad's windpipe. In that second, from the deep cistern of her ancestor's magic, the answer rose into her blood. "Tintagel," she said, inches from his face.
He ripped her hands from his throat. Gasping he staggered back, his eyes widening.
From outside the room, from the basilica of San Marco came the singing of bells across the water of the Grand Canal.
"Tintagel!" Iseau screamed again and, like a changing of tides, she felt the magic sucking from her and raging toward him. Stunned, she watched it: a braid of sparks, flames, and darkness swirling at Sharad -- wave upon wave, tossing him in the air, flinging him against a wall, and then throwing him forward -- his head hitting the workbench and his steel eyes going white, then blank as he dropped to the floor.
At first Iseau thought Sharad was dead. Then he moaned as the dark undertow of magic shimmered silver and rippled away from him -- toward her. She froze, unable to move as it pooled around her legs, its coolness grasping her by the ankles and pulling itself up like a living creature. She shivered as a chill entered her at every pore. It felt as if a sheet of ice were smothering her heart, stifling its beat. This must be the grip of death.
Yet, her heart beat again, she warmed, and when she looked down the magic had disappeared. Her legs, however, trembled and her chest resounded with a powerful stirring.
The door opened and Alberto stood staring, not at her or the motionless Sharad, but at the fist-size lump of glass on the floor.
In her fury to save herself, Iseau had forgotten about the heart -- about the girl.
Tears filled Alberto's eyes. "We've kept the girl alive, but you've destroyed the heart," he said.
Iseau's stomach twisted. She had saved her own life, her memories and art, but in truth she had failed. Failed the girl, failed the Doge, failed her grandfather.
But, something more had happened deep inside of her, something greater than her mere survival. The stirring, the whispers in her blood, had magnified a hundred times. She knew many things she ought not: how to work silver, the feel of a sword as it slices flesh. "The magus . . ." She gestured toward the unconscious form of Sharad.
Alberto bowed his head and turned to leave.
"Wait, you do
n't understand. He isn't dead." Her heart raced, and despite the stiffness in every portion of her body, she moved quickly and took hold of Alberto's arm. "The magus lives, but has no power." She let go of him and crossed the room to the furnace. She stared back at Alberto. "We can still make the heart. The core of his magic, the arts he had stolen, did not just evaporate. His art, all the arts, are here -- within me."
Alberto paled.
Iseau's voice was firm. "Find my apprentice. I may fail again. I may run out of time. But I am going to try to braid the glass and magic, myself." Wildly she threw wood into the furnace and began to ready her pipes.
Alberto ran to find the apprentice.
Iseau rushed to the workbench, and took an apple from the pouch.
The molten glass roiled as the impurities surfaced. She rolled the glass against the workbench. Petro returned and handed her a damp cloth. Alberto fed the furnace. She rolled and pinched, heated, and cooled the glass. She transferred it from pipe to pipe and nipped arteries . . .
And the heart was made, from liquid shimmer to perfect form, and was ready for the magic. As the scrolls taught, she concentrated, focusing until all she could see was the sparkle of the heart, like rain in the morning sun. Then, as the scrolls did not teach, she focused deep inside herself to the stirring of her mother's blood, to Tintagel and the art that had once belonged to Baladji, a gifted Persian magus.
Without thought for the sear of hot glass against mortal skin, Iseau balanced the pipe on the table and took the molten heart in her hands. As if they were two halves of a shell, her hands enclosed the sparkling heart. She closed her eyes and saw the magic spinning a cocoon of light around the heart. The webbing drew inward, and her fingers felt the cooling, the curing and the writhing as the heart began to beat with life.
When Iseau opened her eyes she could see only shadows and mist. Petro appeared like a swirl of fog as he moved toward her and held out her string of beads. She lowered her head, and he clasped them around her neck. Then, as if in a dream, she followed him -- a glassblower-magus led by her apprentice. They passed Alberto, his head bowed. They traveled back down the tunnel, to the stairs, and the kitchen, into the chancery and through the revelers who had returned from San Marco's. The servants, nobles, guards and tradesmen, stared silently as Iseau passed, her hands glowing with the light as she walked in a trance between them and down the citrus scented hallway to the stairs and the Doge's quarters.
Once she entered the child's chamber, Iseau could make out the Doge, and she heard the sound of a woman weeping. The girl was no longer in her bed. She was lying on a white table in the antechamber. Next to her, Iseau saw the haze of a blue shadow that she knew to be the physician-magus. He was opening the girl's chest with a silver blade.
Iseau opened the white shell that was her hands, and the glass heart beat as she placed it into the girl.
Coolness wiped Iseau's brow. The air was heavy with the scent of the sea and the grind of oars filled her ears. Her body ached and her stomach churned from a lack of food. She wondered if there was enough fresh water for her to both drink and bathe.
There were voices of two men, Petro and Baladji. It seemed hours before she understood their words.
"She's awake. Get the captain," Petro said.
Slowly the dreamy fog lifted from her vision and the cramped cabin came into focus: walls lined with books and swords, crocks and orbs and strange silver chimes, tinkling.
Petro knelt by her, touching her forehead. "The Doge granted you the magus' galley." He paused. "They didn't think you'd recover. They wanted to send you home to Grandfather."
"The girl?" Her voice was hoarse and fractured.
"She's well." He grinned. "The Church is claiming it was a miracle of San Marco's. But everyone knows it was you."
"Sharad?"
"The Doge's dungeon is not far from the furnaces."
Boots clanked against the board floor. Baladji and a man in a captain's garb crouched by her bed.
"You have brought us luck. The winds are gentle and the sea calm." The captain pointed to the small window as he spoke, "Look on the horizon -- the island of Carpus."
Iseau looked out. She could not see well enough to focus on the horizon. But suddenly everything else clarified: the magus' cabin she lay in, the face of the captain, Baladji and Petro -- and what she was going to do.
There was a power inside of her, something she barely understood. However, she was certain of one thing: she could make clear-glass and braid it with magic. Legends spoke of where this power would lead: crystal spheres for scrying, wands of glass that could transmute . . .
As a glassblower she had respected and feared the Doge and the Venetian law that forbade any artisan from leaving the Republic. But now she had new concerns: what would the Doge command her to do? The Church -- how would they view this sort of magic? And her grandfather -- what would he require of her?
She pulled herself up on the pillows. "Captain, when we get close to Carpus, lower a boat so my apprentice may go ashore," she said.
"But . . ." Petro started to protest.
She turned her head toward him and raised her hand. "You question the wisdom of your master?" She glared at Petro. "Go to my grandfather, tell him I've returned honor to my father's name. Tell him I have gone to Tintagel to find my mother's family. Tell him I'm no longer his servant." She looked at Baladji and the captain. "Once we are beyond sight of Carpus, come and help me to the deck so that I might fill the sails with wind." She let out her breath. "The Doge was grateful when he thought I was dying, but he will be outraged when he learns that a glassblower-magus has fled beyond the boundaries of the Republic."
Iseau lay back on her pillow. Feeling the weight of the clear beads around her neck, she closed her eyes and asked for guidance.
A single word came to her: Tintagel.
The word for strength, for freedom . . .
for magic.
After This Life
by Janna Silverstein
Artwork by Tomislav Tikulin
* * *
The woman next to Warden Chapelle was the first female Jake Drogan had seen in person in years. She sat on one side of a circle of folding chairs set up in the blue room. That was where they held group therapy sessions for other inmates: touchy-feely stuff, pastel colors, a little too much lemon-scented air freshener and waxy floor cleaner. The wire-embedded windows looked out onto chain link fences and razor wire, putting a lie to the illusion of normalcy. The four guards didn't help, either.
He was surprised the conference wasn't being held in a non-contact room, but he wasn't going to ask about it. It was time out of his cell, cushy and colorful; that was what mattered. But he was still cold from the strip search.
This woman -- as Drogan took a chair in the circle, he couldn't stop looking at her. His mouth was dry and he licked his lips, rubbing them with one hand at the same time to hide it.
She seemed to be in her thirties. Nice figure, he guessed, but he couldn't be completely sure because of the dark suit jacket she wore. The jacket hid her hips, too. Slim legs in tailored pants. Smart not to show her legs here, but damn! Straight hair cut short and falling around her cheeks like parentheses. Dark-rimmed glasses perched on her forehead. Egghead chic.
A woman. A pretty one.
Drogan squeezed the half-dollar in his left hand, feeling the edges cutting into the calluses in his palm. Weird to feel again, to feel anything again, here.
He took a seat along with the three other prisoners escorted to the room -- Mitchell, Villanova, Pasco, he knew all these guys -- leaned his elbows on his knees, looked at the woman and waited.
"All right now," Chapelle drawled. "This is Dr. Louisa Ferrara. She's got a proposition for you boys, approved by the governor. You be good now. You listen to what she's got to say."
"Gentlemen," she said.
Villanova -- 24, scarred across one brown cheek, stick thin, tattooed and unrepentant -- snickered. "Who she think she talkin' to?"
"I'm from TransLumina Transports, with the R&D group," she went on. "We're developing something new, and we need people to work with us."
Drogan knew the name TransLumina. Twelve years ago, they were the first company to market commercial teleportation services. They'd revolutionized business, put a bunch of shipping companies into the crapper and created a new economy. At least, that's what Drogan had gotten from the newspapers. To a guy like him, a gardener -- well, a death row convict -- it was pretty remote.
Ferrara opened a leather briefcase and pulled out a handful of booklets, handed them to Mitchell on her left. "Please pass these around," she asked.
Drogan put away his half dollar, took the batch, kept one and passed the rest to Villanova. Beneath a cover page sporting the slick TransLumina logo and the word "Confidential" were thirty pages of information and technical-looking diagrams. Drogan flipped through it, suppressed a smile. Who'd they put these things together for? He had an associate's degree, but most of the guys in here hadn't finished high school.
"Until now," Ferrara said, "TransLumina transport technology has been used only to ship construction materials, manufactured goods and so forth. We've spent the last five years working on something new. Would you please open your booklets to page five?"
Drogan flipped over the table of contents and confidentiality statements. There the heading said, "Light transmission of living subjects."
"Woo-hoo," Villanova said. "Beam me up, Scotty." A chuckle rippled around the circle. But Drogan didn't laugh.
A couple of days ago, Harville, Drogan's lawyer, had come to visit. He'd told Drogan that because he'd earned credits for good behavior, he'd been offered an opportunity that could change his sentence. Harville had him sign a form that said he wouldn't talk about anything he heard in this meeting -- easy enough. He'd learned how to keep his mouth shut after ten years in the pen. Besides, it was another chance to get out of his windowless, eight-by-ten foot cell. Worth a little ink and silence.