The day after her first search for Yeriel, a heavy pounding came at the door to Rhiannon’s burrow. The door groaned open, and a hushed conversation followed. One voice was Sister Merida’s, the other Brother Mayhew’s.
The conversation quickly escalated. “She will attend me now,” Brother Mayhew said.
“She will attend you after she’s had her morning meal,” Sister Merida replied.
“It’s mid-bloody-afternoon!”
“She was up late.”
In the ensuing pause, Rhiannon thought she was going to be forced to leave the burrow hungry, but Brother Mayhew relented. “Just have her hurry.”
The door thumped closed.
“No time to waste,” Sister Merida said, standing in the doorway of her bedroom. “Get dressed.”
Rhiannon hurried, as much for Sister Merida’s sake as her own, and changed into a fresh robe. She headed to the kitchen, where Sister Merida had set out pine milk, mulberries, and cinnamon biscuits. Rhiannon gobbled it up as fast as she could.
“You heard Brother Mayhew?” Sister Merida asked.
Rhiannon nodded while stuffing a biscuit into her mouth. Then she felt embarrassed over how many crumbs had fallen down the front of her robes, and she dusted herself off.
“You’ll be curious about his hand,” Sister Merida said, ignoring her ill manners, “but I’m warning you, don’t ask him about it.”
“Why not?” Rhiannon asked. “What happened?”
“Swallow, then talk. He went to Ancris and was captured by their inquisitors along with Aarik. Aarik was burned by their bloodthirsty shepherds, but Brother Mayhew was put in a dungeon and tortured. He . . . told them some things he shouldn’t have. He was lucky to escape with his life, but Llorn is wroth with him. I don’t think a man can blamed for talking under torture, but Brother Mayhew will no doubt feel ashamed of it. So don’t mention it.”
Rhiannon nodded, then tossed several tart berries in her mouth. She covered her full mouth with her hand and said, “But why should he lose a finger? It’s barbaric.”
“You’ll get no argument from me, but Llorn must think he needs to make examples to maintain order now that he’s King of the Wood.” Sister Merida busied herself around the wash basin. “You’re to meet your mother at the vyrd, but Brother Mayhew wishes to speak with you first.”
Rhiannon wolfed down the last of the berries, chasing them with the pine milk, and left the burrow. It was late. The bright sun was already falling. Cant was only a few hours away. On her way downtree, she found Brother Mayhew talking with the archdruin, Sister Dereka. The bandage on Brother Mayhew’s hand had been changed—there was only a tiny spot of blood where his pinky had been. He still had his wyvern-claw staff, which made Rhiannon wonder if he’d somehow got it back before he escaped or if he’d never taken it to Ancris in the first place. Sister Dereka left when she saw Rhiannon approach.
“I hear you mucked up the ritual,” Brother Mayhew said.
Rhiannon, feeling her cheeks go hot, said nothing.
Brother Mayhew waved to the stairs, and they began circling their way down. “Was your mind wandering again?”
“It wasn’t that.”
Brother Mayhew’s staff thumped on the steps. “Then what was it?”
“She’s my mother.”
“So?”
Rhiannon stopped. “She’s my mother, and she was dead. That was supposed to mean something in the Holt.”
Brother Mayhew turned to toward her, vaguely annoyed. His bald pate reddened. “It still means something, but we live in precarious times. Your mother is crucial to our plans to overthrow the imperator, as are you now that she’s reliant on you.”
“I didn’t want to force her to relive her torture. That’s why I hesitated.”
Brother Mayhew shrugged. “What’s done is done.” As they continued down the stairs, he said softly, “When Llorn first came to me and asked if you were strong enough to help raise your mother, I told him yes. I thought your involvement would end when your mother was returned to us. You should have been back in the abbey by now.” He glanced down at her. “I’m sorry you’re not.”
Rhiannon’s mouth nearly fell open. Brother Mayhew never apologized.
Below, men and women in drab clothing filed into the workhouse. Near it, the dragon pen was empty, Tiufalli, Llorn, and Irik having gone on some trek to formally begin the process of his bonding.
“You’re lucky, in a way,” Brother Mayhew said. “My father died when I was very young. My mother made scrimshaw cameos and wanted me and Maladox to follow in her footsteps, but the ones that sold the best were profiles of quintarchs or dominae or illustrae. I refused to pay them homage, so I left home and joined a crew of trappers. My mother was furious.”
Rhiannon hid a smile. “Are you saying you disobeyed your mother?”
“Don’t get smart. I stayed with the trappers for three years, then joined a band of mercenaries. I was never good at fighting, but I was good at stitching flesh, and I knew a thing or two about herbal medicines, so I became their surgeon, tending to their wounds, patching them up after run-ins with the empire, the Red Knives, or even other mercenary bands. Then one day we came across a druin.” He pointed uptree. “Sister Dereka. She was wounded and dying from a fight with a juvenile onyx. I made an elixir to help her body fight the infection. It was touch and go for a while, but she eventually recovered.”
“That’s how you became a druin?”
“In a manner of speaking. She offered me a place in her order before we went back to the forest. I declined and spent another two years as a surgeon. But I eventually tired of it. I wanted to make a difference, so I went to the abbey she’d told me about and became her aspirant.”
“You’re the same age, though.”
“True, but a fledgling in the druinic ways. My point is, it took me nearly two decades to find my calling. You learned to speak to the wood when you were barely out of nappies. The lessons of aura and umbra come to you easily when you put your mind to it. Don’t take it for granted. Use it. For yourself. For your mother. For all of us.”
He seemed to leave out the part that he had had the freedom to make his own choices, but he wanted her to obey Morraine and Llorn. She wasn’t sure she wanted to. “Did it hurt, your finger?”
“Of course it bloody hurt.”
“Llorn shouldn’t have made you do it.”
Brother Mayhew stopped. “I deserved it, girl.”
“For what, getting caught? It wasn’t your fault. If anything, it was his.”
His eyes went wide. “Never say such things. Do you hear me? Especially where other folk might hear you.” He held the hand out for her to look at. “It’s a small price to pay to gain independence for the Holt. The way ahead will be difficult. You must be brave.”
“I’ll try.”
Brother Mayhew seemed unconvinced.
When they reached the vyrd, Morraine was inside it, holding the crystal and standing beside the looking glass.
“Go on now,” Brother Mayhew said, “attend your mother well.”
Rhiannon headed between the standing stones.
Morraine watched her approach. “You don’t seem pleased he’s come back.”
“It’s not that. It’s what Llorn did to him. It wasn’t right.”
“Yes, well”—Morraine held the crystal out for Rhiannon to take—“Llorn has always confused suffering with virtue.”
“And you don’t?”
Morraine shrugged. “Suffering is a currency of sorts, the cost of change.” They knelt on opposite sides of the looking glass. “The greater the change, the more one must suffer for it.”
“But that’s not true. Llorn didn’t have to cut off his finger. But Brother Mayhew hardly seems bothered by it.”
Morraine dumped the old sapwater and poured more from the jug. “Brother Mayhew considers it penance.”
“Before I died, I was taken by the inquisitors. Brother Mayhew was there. He tried to save me but failed. When he told Aarik about it, he fully expected Aarik would punish him, but he didn’t. He admitted to me how it pained him to pay no price for not saving me, as if Aarik thought him not worthy of the effort. I suspect he’s secretly relieved that Llorn did demand a price for what happened in Ancris.”
“But what did he do that was so terrible that—”
Morraine raised a deathly pale hand. “Enough.” She gestured to the basin. “Begin.”
As she had the previous afternoon, she took a deep breath, spread her awareness, and entered the looking glass with a flick of a fingernail. For a time, she gripped the shard and searched for the thread that connected it to Yeriel, but the strange crucible and its black pillars were like a lodestone, constantly drawing her toward them each time she cast her consciousness over the Holt.
“Concentrate,” Morraine said.
“I am.”
“No, you’re not.”
She was right, but Rhiannon couldn’t make herself ignore the black pillars she’d seen the night before.
“Bough and branch, girl,” Morraine said. “Will your curiosity be slaked if I show you the bloody thing?”
Rhiannon hoped she wouldn’t be punished for it, but she nodded.
Morraine stood and led her toward a gap in the vyrd’s ancient stones. “Up. The sooner this is done, the sooner we can get back to our work.”
Lux was low in the sky by then, but cant was still a good hour away. A putrid scent filled the air, like rotten eggs, and it strengthened as they walked. The nauseous feeling that accompanied it intensified the cavernous feeling in her gut.
“I can feel your hunger, you know,” Rhiannon said.
Morraine guided them around a honeylocust tree. “So?”
“You need sustenance.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“All I mean to say is, you can take it from me if you wish—”
“No. Now hush. We’re here.”
The path cut through a tangle of meadowsweets. Their fragrant scent somehow made the noxious smell of the fen even worse. Beyond the bushes was the sprawling wetland she’d glimpsed the night before. Brother Mayhew was nowhere to be seen, but the first of the glittering black pillars was only fifty paces ahead. The others curved into the distance, forming a perfect circle. Between and above the pillars was what looked like a soap bubble. She stared up at it, blinking. She stepped closer and peered at the intricate, smoke-like patterns forming and dissipating like oily spots on the soap bubble.
“What’s the dome for?” she asked.
“The answer lies beneath the pillars.”
Rhiannon allowed her awareness to spread. She sensed the aura, the power of the bright sun, being dispersed by the dome. “It’s shading the fen from the bright sun.”
Morraine nodded. “Good.”
“But why?” Rhiannon asked. “What does it do?”
“The earth beneath our feet brims with umbra. You know this, yes?”
“Yes,” Rhiannon said, and repeated what Brother Mayhew had taught her. “Aura rises and collects in the mountains, where it slowly floats from Vanu toward the realms of Déu. Umbra sinks and flows like water through the earth. Some of it is carried off by the Diamondflow to the Olgasian Sea, but most is drawn deep into the earth and consumed by the seven hells of Kharos.”
“Very good. What about lowlands?”
“Much like water flow, the lowlands around bogs and fens are shaped in such a way that umbra lingers. That’s why many of the old rituals are performed in such places.”
Morraine pointed to the circle of pillars. “The pillars are driven deep in to the earth to give the crucible its power. Together, they create the curtain, which drives aura away, preventing it from weakening the umbra.”
“That would make the ground here powerful. Maybe more powerful than any other place in the Holt.”
“Precisely.”
Rhiannon watched as a fiddlehead shape formed on the oily bubble, unfurled, and scattered into smoke. “And the patterns?”
“They’re a byproduct of aura and umbra coming into contact. Each acts like fuel and flame. They burn each other up. But some of the aura slips down along the curtain to the pillars and then down into the earth.”
“That answers what it does, but not why.”
“Has Brother Mayhew taught you about sinkholes?”
Rhiannon shrugged. “Some, yes. They happen when the earth below a fen stops allowing umbra to pass through it. A downward pull is created, and eventually the earth gives and the land sinks, creating ponds or sometimes lakes.”
“Very good. That’s precisely what’s happening here. We’re creating a sinkhole.”
“But why? Why go through all this trouble?”
“Because in order to gain control of Strages, he must be awakened. And that can only happen if the powerful spell that protects the shrine is destroyed.” She pointed to the pillars. “The umbra the crucible is gathering will help us do that.”
Rhiannon wanted to know more, but she held her tongue on hearing the sounds of conversation coming from behind her. She turned and saw Brother Mayhew and Sister Dereka walking toward her along the path. They stopped short on seeing Morraine and Rhiannon.
Brother Mayhew gaped at them, his long beard waggling in the light breeze. “Are you certain it’s wise to show her?”
“She was going to find out sooner or later,” Morraine said.
Brother Mayhew’s bushy eyebrows pinched. “I rather think later would have been better.”
He looked ready to argue, but apparently decided not to. “As you say. It’s fortunate you’re here in any case. The sister and I would like a few words.”
Morraine laid a cold hand on Rhiannon’s shoulder. “Return to the vyrd, child. Begin your search anew. I’ll be along shortly.”
When her mother joined Rhiannon nearly an hour later, she seemed vexed and wouldn’t answer any of Rhiannon’s questions.