Amber and Iron - Margaret Weis [27]
Nuitari decided to try another experiment on Mina—an oddity his Black Robes had observed about her. He secretly cast a spell on her. The spell was a simple sleep spell, one of the first learned by the novice mage. Nuitari could have cast it in an eye blink, but he did not want her to have any suspicion that he was working magic on her. Strand by strand, he plied the threads of magic back and forth, back and forth, weaving the spell over her and around her, the magic covering her like a warm blanket. All the while, he kept her engaged in idle conversation, so that she would not notice what he was doing.
“You know nothing of your childhood,” he said to her, as he worked his magic. “According to what Basalt wrote, you were found on board an abandoned ship at the age of eight, washed up on the shore of Schallsea Isle near the Citadel of Light. You remember nothing—not your name, not your parents, nor what happened to the ship—”
“That is true,” said Mina, frowning. She added impatiently, “I don’t see what this has to do with anything.”
“Humor me, my dear. You were adopted by Goldmoon, a former follower of Mishakal, who had been the first to bring the worship of the true gods back to the world after the Cataclysm. She was the one who brought the power of the heart into this world during the Fifth Age. Goldmoon was a good woman, a devout woman. She took an interest in you, loved you like a daughter.”
He finished his sleep spell and cast it on Mina. Nuitari watched and waited.
Mina tapped her foot on the floor and looked meaningfully at the locked door. “You promised me an hour of freedom,” she said.
“All in good time. As a child, you were curious about many things,” Nuitari said softly, his wonder and mystification growing. “You were known for asking questions. You were particularly curious about the gods. Why had they left? Where had they gone? Goldmoon mourned the absence of the gods, and because you loved her, you wanted to please her. You told her you would go seeking the gods and bring them back to her—Do you feel at all sleepy?”
She glared at him accusingly. “I cannot sleep, not in this cage. I walk like this half the night trying to wear myself out—”
“You should have told me sooner that you suffered from insomnia,” said Nuitari. “I can help.”
He reached into the magic, snatching some rose petals from the ethers. As a god, he didn’t need spell components to work this magic, but mortals were impressed by them. “I will cast a sleep spell upon you. You should lie down, lest you fall and hurt yourself.”
“Don’t you dare work your foul magic on me!” Mina cried angrily, striding toward him. “I won’t—”
Nuitari tossed the rose petals into the air. They fell down around Mina as he recited the words of the magical sleep spell, the same spell he’d cast on her earlier.
This time, the spell worked. Mina’s eyes closed. She swayed where she stood, then collapsed onto the floor. She would have bruised knees and elbows and a bump on her head when she awoke, but then, he’d warned her to lie down.
He knelt beside her, studied her.
She was, to all appearances, fast asleep, wrapped in the spell’s enchantment.
He pinched her arm, hard, to see if she was shamming.
She did not awaken.
Nuitari rose to his feet. He cast one more look at Mina, then walked out of the room. He went over again in his mind Basalt’s report.
The subject, Mina, is magic-resistant, Basalt had written, but with this qualification: she is resistant to the magic only if she does not know that magic is being cast upon her! Basalt had underlined this twice. If a spell is cast upon her without her knowledge, the magic—even the most powerful—has no effect upon her. However, if she is told in advance a spell is going to be cast upon her, she falls victim to it immediately, without even an attempt to defend herself.
Basalt concluded by writing, In several hundred years of practicing magic, I have never before seen a subject behave like this, nor has my fellow wizard.
Nuitari stood outside Caele’s room. Peering through the walls, the god could see Caele