The Spirit Lens by Carol Berg Page A

gingerly upon the stone table and snatched his hands away, breath rapid, lips compressed, his eyes squeezed tight as if a dagger had pierced his skull.
    Dante did not tell me what he’d seen. But as we locked the cell door, I guessed that he, too, had glimpsed a scene beyond this life—a scene not even the most sophisticated enchantments should be able to show us.
    “The Veil teachings have never made sense to me,” he said. “Why would a god who bothers to create living persons suddenly decide to ship them off someplace worse than this life when they’re dead, all in hopes of some heaven that no one can describe? If I have to depend on my kin or some benevolent stranger to get me through ten gates to a paradise that might or might not be better than this, I might as well give up right now. Dead is dead, or so I’ve claimed. . . .”
    I disliked such bluntness. In my youth I had accepted what I’d been taught at the temple: that the Blood Wars had brought humankind to such a state of depravity that the Pantokrator had altered his creation, setting the bleak and treacherous Ixtador between the Veil and Heaven. Those souls who journeyed the trackless desolation and passed Ixtador’s Ten Gates would be well purified, worthy of the Pantokrator’s glory. Those who failed would be left for the Souleater to devour on the last day of the world.
    Unfortunately the dead could do little to further their own cause. The honor and virtuous deeds of the family left behind must provide the strength and endurance for a soul’s journey. As I came to see that my weak family connections were unlikely to provide much support for Ixtador’s trials, and that my prospects for improving the situation were exceedingly poor, I had shoved such concerns to the back of my mind, unwilling to relinquish either hope or belief. The spyglass insisted I confront the issue.
    The mage rubbed the back of his neck tiredly and tugged at his silver collar again. “But then we must ask what is this devilish glass? Gods, if you think I can answer that for you, you’ve less wit than that rock in the garden. It would take a deal of study. Experimentation. So that’s the job, is it? To find out the use of these things. Or, I suppose, it’s truly to tell your employer, who is the king , I’m guessing, and not his treacherous wife”—he paused and waited; I nodded and shoved open the outer cell block door—“what sorcerer in this blighted kingdom could create such enchantments and why an assassin—a voiceless mule—would carry them.” He ground the heel of his staff into the stone. “Did anyone see the mule use the glass?”
    “Not that we know.”
    “His Dimwit Majesty ought to question his queen. I could do that for him.”
    I had no doubt he could. His rumbling undertone shook me like the earth tremors I’d felt when I was a boy, on the day a godshaking had razed the city of Catram eight hundred kilometres away.
    “Yes, the king wants to know who’s responsible for transference and attempted murder,” I said. “He wants his queen exonerated. He wants to know how this instrument can show him a sixteen-year-old battlefield disgorging its dead men, many of whom he knows, into a wilderness that perfectly fits every description of Ixtador Beyond the Veil. And he very much desires to know what’s become of Michel de Vernase. Though he’s received no demand for ransom or favor in exchange for Michel’s life, he refuses to accept that his friend is dead.”
    We started up the dungeon stair.
    “Beyond all that lies his duty to Sabria. The king believes magic is dying, and he bids it good riddance. He sees it as a chain that binds us to superstition and causes us to descend into myth-fed savagery such as the Blood Wars. This event tells him that someone is attempting exactly that, seeking power of such magnitude as to touch the demesne of the dead. But for what purpose? As Sabria’s protector, he must understand what’s being done and by whom