By the time he got to the cellars, Delia, Isla, the entire Circle, and Jonaton were already there, waiting impatiently, among all sorts of small cats.
By design there was absolutely nothing down here that could have been connected with a magical workspace—not until and unless someone who had been keyed to the place entered it. Then the walls, floors, and ceiling glowed with diagrams, runes, and wards, until you almost didn’t need mage-lights to see by.
Each of the seven cellars served a different purpose. The one Kordas entered now was marked “Seeds—Hard Grain—Preserved Nuts”—the least interesting stores a prowler would want a look into, but a logical place to find mousers hanging about. It had been designated from the beginning for the use of whatever mage or mages were going to make that all-important first small Gate into the unknown.
“Well, you took your time,” Isla chided. “I thought Jonaton was going to split himself in two, he’s been vibrating so hard.”
Kordas just shrugged. “I’m here now,” he pointed out, as one of the many, many manor cats twined itself around his ankles and threatened to trip him. “And I see the Preserved Nuts are here.” One of the Circle made a very rude gesture in response. Kordas began unbuttoning his Ducal jacket, starting at the top and ending just past his baldric, then tugged the jacket open, to be more comfortable. As usual, Kordas had a dark gray undershirt beneath the jacket, dyed and embroidered with violent stormclouds. “All right, then, what do you need me for, besides as a source of power?”
“What else are you good for?” jibed Ponu.
“It’s not his jokes, that’s for sure,” Dole groused, then snapped his fingers. “Go.” He pointed to an empty circle on one curve of an immensely complicated diagram on the floor. “Go stand there. Let the adults work.”
“Yes, sir,” Kordas said meekly, and took his place, “rooting” himself into the diagram and gathering up all of his magical reserves, ready to pour it into the work at hand. He exhaled and gazed down at the floor patterns. Some of the curves were clearly rebounds from where other lines clashed, and they looped gracefully to rods or glowing crystals firmly set into sockets. Brass and copper calibrators were tapped into their own sockets, marking the optimal timing for this particular spellwork.
Kordas looked up and gazed in admiration at Jonaton, who was truly in his element. Jonaton had his hair up, with three copper hairsticks holding the loops. Copper earrings and necklaces added to the look, which was paired with a black upper, corselet, and deep brown, leaf-patterned, widelegged skirt-trews. “You look great, Jonaton,” Kordas said.
“Oh thank you!” Jonaton replied, whipping around to have a look at Kordas. “It’s good to see you a little more casual for once. But still stormy under it all, huh?”
Kordas tapped at the undershirt. “I am what I am,” was all he said, acknowledging the subtext. Jonaton flashed a brief smile followed by a brief downcast, and turned back to his table.
Mages of the Empire were a highly predictable lot, as he knew from experience. They all studied the same lore, the same spells, and from the same teachers. Once they had reached a certain level of competence, they almost never learned anything new again. They certainly didn’t experiment. The Emperor didn’t much care for innovations in magic. A mage willing to innovate and seek out new ways of doing magic just might become dangerous to the Emperor’s plans, which was one reason Kordas had so many mages just like that hiding here.
Jonaton had stressed earlier that there was always a level of uncertainty and “fuckery” in trying anything new. He turned around and clapped his hands once. “No time like now, everyone. Magic like this is about reaching into unseen worlds where things already live, pulling and twisting at the environment around them, uprooting it and turning it toward what we want. Sometimes, even investigating what’s out there, well, it’s like picking a grape from a big fruit bowl, and a lot of deadly spiders can hide in a heap of fruit. Now, the kind of distance we’re trying for today is like me punching my whole arm into a narrow tunnel lined with spiders. I think we have it all set, but I’ll throw away the shot if I get ‘bitten’ even once, understood? So catch me if it goes badly.” Jonaton thoroughly washed his hands, in a very ritualistic way, in both of the basins at the table’s sides. The basins looked to be hammered copper, and were joined to each other by a graceful arc of the same material.
So Kordas really had no idea what to expect when Jonaton began work.
He certainly didn’t expect that the work was going to be so . . . simple.
He had expected muttered incantations, the drawing of diagrams, the sketching of runes in the air, and perhaps even the spilling of oils or scattering of essences.
He got none of those.
Instead, Jonaton set up a pair of matching, curved stones, like a pair of graceful, curving horns, atop his stone table. He placed a sliver of wood between them—the wood from that table he’d described?—and held out both hands toward the arrangement.
Kordas had to brace himself against the sudden draining sensation that coursed through him in that moment. The diagram of which he was a part pulsed with light, all of it flowing toward Jonaton. Two cats chased after the lights, eyes bright and tails twitching. There was a sudden sharp scent, all the hair on the back of his neck stood up, and then a flash of light and a snap exactly like an enormous static spark.
And light suddenly spilled from between the two curved stones, along with a breath of wind scented with pine needles and a hint of heated stone. From where he stood, Kordas saw what looked like an oval of blue sky. The Circle and Jonaton made happy noises, but then Jonaton frowned.
“Bugger all,” Jonaton muttered. “Punched through the world and came out too high. Looks good, though—Sai, pull the top axis guide down the arc another step—good.”
He made a swift gesture, something complicated and much too fast for Kordas to follow, and the image framed in the stones blurred, then settled again, this time a strip of blue sky streaked with white clouds, a stretch of grass, the suggestion of an old, enormous, long-fallen tree, and a tangle of undergrowth. The water in the basins started to boil.
The undergrowth gave a rustle suggestive of something small scurrying beneath it, and the black cat that had been trying to trip Kordas earlier gave a delighted meow—and leapt through.
“Sydney, you asshole!” bleated Jonaton, grabbing belatedly for his pet through the Portal.
Too late.
“Well,” said Dole. “It appears there are mice.”
“Delia—” Jonaton began, shaking the arm that he’d reflexively put through the Portal to grab the cat.
“I don’t Fetch live things,” she replied. “It’s dangerous. You want your cat to come back in pieces? This is bad enough—I can’t even see him! Now shut up.”