“The break? I don’t understand.”
“The flaw in the Pattern. It follows you through Shadow. It is always there beside you as you travel, sometimes as a hair-fine crack, sometimes a great chasm. It shifts about; it may appear suddenly, anywhere-a lapse in reality. This is the hazard for those of the Broken Way. To fall into it is the final death.”
“It must lie within all of your spells then also, like a booby trap.”
“All occupations have their hazards,” she said. “Avoiding them is a part of the art.”
“And this is the initiation through which you took Julia?”
“Yes.”
“And Victor?”
“Yes.”
“I understand what you are saying,” I replied, “but you must realize that the broken Patterns are drawing their power from the real one.”
“Of course. What of it? The image is almost as good as the real thing, if you’re careful.”
“For the record, how many useful images are there?”
“Useful?”
“They must degenerate from shadow to shadow. Where do you draw the line and say, ‘Beyond this broken image I will not risk breaking my neck’?”
“I see what you mean. You can work with perhaps the first nine. I’ve never gone farther out. The first three are best. The circle of the next three is still manageable. The next three are a lot riskier.”
“A bigger chasm for each?”
“Exactly.”
“Why are you giving me all this esoteric information?”
“You’re a higher-level initiate, so it doesn’t matter. Also, there is nothing you could do to affect the setup. And finally, you need to know this to appreciate the rest of the story.”
“All right,” I said.
Mandor tapped the table, and small crystal cups of lemon sherbet appeared before us. We took the hint and cleared our palates before resuming the conversation. Outside, the shadows of clouds slid across the mountain slopes. A faint music drifted into the room from somewhere far back along the corridor. Clinking and scraping noises, sounding like distant pick-and-shovel work, came to us from somewhere outside-most likely at the Keep.
“So you initiated Julia,” I prompted.
“Yes,” Jasra said.
“What happened then?”
“She learned to summon the image of the Broken Pattern and use it for magical sight and the hanging of spells. She learned to draw raw power through the break in it. She learned to find her way through Shadow-“
“While minding the chasm?” I suggested.
“Just so, and she had a definite knack for it. She’d a flair for everything, as a matter of fact.”
“I’m amazed that a mortal can traverse even a broken image of the Pattern and live.”
“Only a few of them do,” Jasra said. “The others step on a line or die mysteriously in the broken area. Ten percent make it, maybe. That isn’t bad. Keeps it somewhat exclusive. Of them, only a few can learn the proper mantic skills to amount to anything as an adept.”
“And you say that she was actually better than Victor, once she knew what she was about?”
“Yes. I didn’t appreciate just how good until it was too late.”
I felt her gaze upon me, as if she were checking for a reaction. I glanced up from my food and cocked an eyebrow.
“Yes,” she went on, apparently satisfied. “You didn’t know that was Julia you were stabbing back at the Fount, did you?”
“No,” I admitted. “I’d been puzzled by Mask all along. I couldn’t figure any motive for whatever was going on. The flowers were an especially odd touch, and I never really understood whether it was you or Mask behind the bit with the blue stones.”
She laughed.
“The blue stones, and the cave they come from, are something of a family secret. The material is a kind of magical insulator, but two pieces-once together-maintain a link, by which a sensitive person can hold one and track the other-“
“Through Shadow?”
“Yes.”
“Even if the person doing the tracking otherwise has no special abilities along these lines?”
“Even so,” she said. “It’s similar to following a shadow shifter while she’s shifting. Anyone can do it if she’s quick enough, sensitive enough. This just extends the practice a little further. It’s following the shifter’s trail rather than the shifter herself.”