The Spirit Lens Read Free

house. Pausing only to light a lamp from the banked kitchen fire, which seemed odd in the bright midafternoon, he headed outdoors.
    “Tell me, Portier,” he said, striding across a shady courtyard. “The methods of sorcerous practice have not changed in these years of my estrangement with the Camarilla, have they? No revelation of opticum or mechanica, no new-writ treatise on anatomy or mathematics or the composition of minerals has altered the teaching of spellwork?”
    “Not at all, sire. Indeed some progressive mages believe that instruments such as the opticum will support our understanding of the physical melding of the five divine elements.” Not many. Most magical practitioners stubbornly maintained their posture that the mundane sciences offered nothing to sorcerers.
    “And your brethren yet renounce superstition and demonology?”
    “Mages of the Camarilla work entirely within the bounds of earth. They practice as methodically as do the scientists and natural philosophers you embrace.”
    Had I ever imagined having the opportunity to seed the king’s mind with some good feeling for the art of sorcery, I would have prepared more refined arguments. Philippe was known as a man of lively intellect and devouring curiosity.
    “Sire, it seems a sad waste that political disagreements with the Camarilla have so undermined your confidence in an art that has so much to offer your kingdom.”
    He choked down a laugh. “I will not argue science and magic with you, Portier. My bodyguard reports that you yourself carry a compass rather than some ‘directional charm’ that might fail inexplicably at the dark of the moon and lead you off a cliff.”
    We left the path and crossed a dark corner of the yard to a narrow downward stair. Wading through a litter of dead leaves, twigs, and walnut husks, we descended the stone steps to an iron grate that blocked the lower end.
    Philippe twisted the latch and tugged a rusty handle, the grate rising more smoothly than its appearance and location would suggest. The low ceilinged passage beyond, much older than the house, smelled of stagnant water and old leaves. The king adjusted his lamp to shine more brightly. Once the grate slid closed behind us, a fierce sobriety wiped away my cousin’s affable demeanor.
    “Last year, on the twenty-fifth day of Cinq, an arrow penetrated my mount’s saddle, not three millimetres from the great vein in my thigh. By the grace of the Pantokrator’s angels, the villain archer’s hand wavered, and he lies dead instead of me. Gross evidence implicates my wife.”
    “Sainted ancestors! I never heard—” Well, perhaps a traveling mage had brought gleeful rumors of a foiled assassination plot, but I’d thought nothing of it. Few mages held excessive love for Philippe, who had set out to dismantle the Camarilla Magica’s pervasive influence in Sabrian society, scholarship, and business, and done exceeding well at it. But the queen . . . the shadow queen , rumor named her, or the lady of sorrows , who had lost one husband already, her parents in a fire, her firstborn to an infant fever, and three others miscarried . . .
    We proceeded deliberately through a warren of dank passages. “Few know the complete story, in particular that the nature of the archer, and certain other aspects of the event, evidenced the collaboration of one from your magical fraternity. Somewhere a sorcerer has, for whatever reason, decided that his king ought to be dead. Though her two pet mages have no use for me, I utterly reject the idea that my wife could be involved.”
    “Sorcery.”
    “That’s why I chose you, cousin. I need a sorcerer to serve as my confidential agent in this matter.”
    The snaky uneasiness in my belly quickly tangled itself into a familiar knot of disappointment. Though I held no grievance against Philippe, man or king, or his predecessor, King Soren, I forever cursed their presence in my family tree. As early as age ten, I had realized that our