But this was an illusion, for even as the strange idea occurred to Tan, the door flew soundlessly to pieces—well, not soundlessly; it was only that the crashing, splintering sounds did not seem important.
Linularinan soldiers surged into the room but then flung themselves aside rather than forward. Tan wondered what they saw; indeed, he wondered what he saw. Mienthe had come to the end of her line, and Tan to the open center of the spiral, but, though he stopped, she kept on, placing one foot neatly before the last. Though she had no quill or ink, the line drew itself out under her feet, or she drew it after her by the act of walking forward. Tan wondered whether he should follow after her, but he could not see how there was room for him to go forward—nor could he see how Mienthe found room to walk forward, only she made her own space as she made her own line. But Tan did not know how to do that.
Istierinan Hamoddian came through the door after the soldiers, who pressed back to give him room. Tan turned to gaze at Istierinan, across what seemed simultaneously an immense distance and the span of an ordinary, rather small room. The Linularinan spymaster looked old, much older than he had bare weeks ago. Old and ill. The bones of his face had become prominent, his eyes dark and hollowed, his hands skeletally thin. He was holding something—a quill, Tan saw, made of a white falcon’s feather, its tip glistening with ink so dark a red it might almost have been blood. Then Tan blinked again and saw that it was blood.
Istierinan spoke—he was shouting: The tendons stood out on his throat. In a way, Tan could not hear him, or only dimly, as from a long way away. Yet if he thought about the sounds, he realized they were actually loud. “You don’t know what you’re doing!” he cried. “You don’t know what you can do!” He started toward the entrance to the spiral, his white quill held out before him like a weapon.
At the same time, Mienthe faltered, but not because of Istierinan. “It’s not enough,” she said, her tone dismayed. “I can’t finish it—the turns are too tight—it doesn’t go deep enough—it’s not right, I’m not doing it right, it’s all wrong—”
“Ignorant child!” Istierinan was beside himself with fury and a terror so great it was almost exaltation. “Of course you’re not! How could you? Get out of it, turn it around—You!” he shouted at Tan. “Give what you stole back to me now and I may even yet be able to set this right!” He strode forward, set himself at the entrance of the spiral, but then hesitated there, his breath coming hard, his hands shaking, gathering himself for that first step.
“You’ll never set it right,” Mienthe cried. “You can’t, you won’t, you don’t even want to! Get out, get away!”
“Mie—” said Tan. “If you can’t do this, if you can’t do whatever needs to be done, then maybe—”
Mienthe turned to him. She was weeping with frustration and fear, and her voice was shaking, but even so she spoke with passionate conviction. “He can’t! He set it up all wrong before; it was him, if it wasn’t him then it was someone like him. I’m sure it was! And he didn’t do it right! It’s never been right, not from the first time it was ever set down!”
“Mie, what was set up wrong?”
“Everything!” Mienthe cried. “The law of the world! He’s a mage as well as a legist! He hates fire, and if he writes the law down in that book, he’ll write it all wrong!”
Istierinan stepped into the spiral, between the black lines.
Tan turned so as to meet him when he came around the last turn, but for all Istierinan’s age and evident illness, he moved toward Tan like a superior swordsman might stalk toward a rank novice who’s had the temerity to issue a challenge. Tan had thought he understood legist-magic. Now he knew he didn’t understand anything, and the only thing he knew with perfect certainty was that he was afraid of the older man.
“I see the way it should go—if I could only finish it,” cried Mienthe, but though she turned and tried to draw her spiral forward and inward and down, it was as though she leaned against something solid, tried to press herself forward through air that had become as sheer and hard and unyielding as glass, and not nearly so easily broken.
Without warning, fire blazed out of the air and into the outer reaches of the spiral, slapped against Mienthe’s empty black line as against a physical barrier, and rose, towering to the ceiling.
Tan, staggering, dropped to his knees and tucked himself forward over the book he still held, as though it contained all his hope of life and sanity. But the fire did not rush into the center of the spiral at all; rather, it whipped outward around the curving lines of the spiral and roared out into the room. It sheeted past and over Istierinan, who staggered but did not burn.