93: AN UNEXPECTED VISIT

(Teraeth’s story)

Teraeth woke when Janel threw off the covers and got out of bed. He’d been sitting in a chair by her bedside all night, although at some point during the evening, she’d stopped with whatever seizure had grabbed her and transitioned into what could only be described as normal sleep. Or what would have been normal sleep if it had involved anyone else. The fact that she was visibly sleeping, chest rising and falling, was troubling.

Khaeriel had examined Janel and pronounced her perfectly fine, completely free from any physical illnesses, poisons, or defects. Unfortunately, having Khaeriel examine Janel had meant subjecting himself to Khaeriel’s questions about just what he’d been doing and why.

That conversation hadn’t gone well at all, and it was far from over.

Worse, Khaeriel threw a spell over Talon the moment she saw the mimic again, and while Teraeth might not have minded that so much under normal circumstances, it made him feel uncomfortable this time. Mostly because he had given the monster his word, and to his vast surprise, that apparently meant something to him.

All of which was a problem for another time, trumped as it was by the much more pleasant realization that Janel was awake and fine. He smiled as he went to her. “Janel, thank the gods, I’d been worried—” He touched her shoulder.

She pulled away from him as her eyes flared. “Don’t touch me.” Her expression was malignant.

Teraeth pulled his hand back. “I don’t understand. What happened?”

“I have no idea,” she said at last. She looked down at herself, noted the pile of clothing that had been folded off to the side, and began to dress herself. “Get out of my room,” she said.

Teraeth frowned. Even when Janel was very, very angry with him, she usually managed a more congenial tone than that. “It’s not just your room,” he reminded her.

She threw him a disgusted glance. “I’m tired of sharing it. A woman needs her space. Leave.”

Teraeth opened his mouth to say something, but he honestly had no idea what to say. She was tired of sharing it? He thought they had patched things up, to put it lightly. What exactly had happened while he was sneaking off on his own at the palace? “It won’t be for much longer,” he finally managed to say. “Just a few more days until parliament reconvenes and the trial begins.”

She nodded, eyes scanning the room as if she was seeing it for the first time. “Fine.”

Janel didn’t say another word to him as she finished dressing. Shocked by her unexpected behavior, Teraeth decided it might be better if he waited outside. When he exited, Doc, Valathea, and Khaeriel waited for him. Khaeriel had Talon trapped in a column of spinning air in the center of the rows of silk-farm houses, where several cleared plots had created a central courtyard. Teraeth assumed someone had cloaked them in an illusion. Probably Terindel, who liked using illusions even when he wasn’t using Chainbreaker.

He looked at Talon, who was in her Lyrilyn form, and then back at the ant house where he’d left Janel. If he hadn’t known better, Teraeth would have genuinely wondered if they’d accidentally brought two mimics back with them when they’d escaped from the palace.

“Janel will be along in a minute,” Teraeth said.

“Could you please talk some sense into them?” Talon asked him. “You did promise that you wouldn’t hurt me.”

“He promised,” Khaeriel pointed out. “I did not promise. And I am not happy with you right now. Not happy at all.”

The door to the ant house opened, and Janel exited. She paused, staring at the gathered crowd as if they were all strangers. Teraeth motioned her over, but she ignored him.

“I would also like to discuss your attempt to kill my brother,” Khaeriel said to Teraeth, “and what idiocy possessed you to try to do that.”

“Oh, that idiot would be me,” Doc said.

Teraeth would have smiled at his father if he hadn’t been worrying at his lip over whatever was going on with Janel. Teraeth hadn’t been sure the man would own up to the fact this had all been his idea.

Khaeriel glared at him. “I expected better of you.”

Doc shrugged. “It was worth a shot. And you have to admit, we came pretty close.”

“If only body doubles counted,” Valathea reminded him. “And if only Kelanis wasn’t almost guaranteed to bring this up again in front of parliament.”

“I was disguised,” Teraeth offered. “And the mimic will probably throw him off.”

Doc frowned at Talon. “How did you get inside the palace, anyway?”

“Pardon?” She smiled at him.

“How did you get inside the palace. The wards are designed to stop the mimics—” He paused and then shook his head. “Never mind. I figured it out. The Stone of Shackles.”

“Right,” Teraeth said. “Took me a little while to realize too. Now that being the case, I really think we should use that to—”

But he never had a chance to finish his sentence.

A gate—an actual magical gate in the middle of the damn Manol—opened on the balcony, just a few feet away from Terindel. Before anyone had a chance to fully digest this information, let alone react to it, three women emerged from the portal: two Khorveshan women (one holding a glass bottle and the other a black sword) and a white-skinned woman with pale hair. They were all covered in what looked like tattoos—swirling black marks on their faces and hands. The woman with the bottle smashed it down against the balcony, releasing a giant cloud of white smoke. At the same time, the white-haired woman gestured and encased Talon—already trapped by Khaeriel—in a glowing green field of energy.¹ The last woman, holding the sword, lowered the edge of it to Doc’s neck.

She looked over at Khaeriel. “Move and he dies.” The warning had been spoken in Guarem.

The moment that sword touched Teraeth’s father, all illusions surrounding them at the silk farm disappeared. The illusions that Doc had been maintaining vanished as though they’d never been. Teraeth eyed that sword, harboring a nasty suspicion about just what they were facing.

It was the wrong color, but Urthaenriel was a shape-changer too.

Khaeriel wouldn’t be able to handle that, but Teraeth knew what to do. Urthaenriel would protect its wearer from magic, but not from something as mundane as a blade. He sprang into action immediately, skillfully stepping up behind the woman, quickly sliding a dagger under her rib cage, into her heart. The same motion carried a second dagger across the woman’s throat.

He had just enough time to notice that she didn’t react to his attack, didn’t start bleeding from any of the wounds, and most infuriatingly, didn’t go into shock and die. Then the white billowing gas reached him and cut off his vision.

He started choking. Teraeth’s eyes burned and tears sprang up. He wasn’t the only one having this reaction; he heard coughing from other people on the balcony, including his father. That was the only comfort to be had in the situation, since it meant the attacker hadn’t shoved Urthaenriel forward in response to Teraeth’s actions. At least for the moment.

Gods, he hated undead.

Teraeth sheathed one of his knives, sliced the edge of the other against his lower arm, and wiped away the welling blood. Of course, trying to draw that damn sigil while he was in pain and blind was a bit of a challenge, but he didn’t have many other options.

Then everything exploded.

Exploded was the wrong word. This was applying a flame to pure alcohol. A giant flash of heat filled the air and burned away the cloud of gas in its wake. Teraeth’s eyes were still full of tears, but at least the situation wasn’t growing worse. He finished drawing the glyph on the back of one hand, just in case someone brought back the smoke, and pulled out more knives.

Khaeriel was on the floor unconscious, although Teraeth suspected that it had less to do with the fire than with something the white-haired wizard had done. And said woman was trying to find the source of the fire, which Teraeth was curious about himself.

Teraeth noticed Valathea, standing over by one of the railings and looking quite serene and untroubled. The white-haired woman must have seen her too, because she scowled and drew back her hand, probably to cast some spell.

Valathea pointed to the woman’s feet with the same sort of manner one might use to point out someone was about to step in a puddle.

A tangle of greenery, pretty red flowers and sharp thorns grew out of the platform under the woman’s feet, shifting and moving like a living snake instead of a plant. As the woman looked down at this, the thorns sprang forward, piercing her leg like an attack of needles.

The woman’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed to the ground. The force field trapping Talon vanished.

The bare-handed woman—the one who had smashed the bottle and released the white smoke—ran up to Janel and touched her on the shoulder. Nothing seemed to happen, but Janel’s reaction was immediate; she pushed hard against the other woman, sending her flying back and through one of the nearby ant structures. She then started screaming at the swarm of ants, which immediately began biting the very unwelcome intruder.

“Talea!” Talon shouted and ran to the woman.

Doc, meanwhile, had seemed only slightly bothered by the smoke, even though he also had tears streaming down his cheeks. When Talon called out that name, the undead woman couldn’t help but look to the side for a split second.

Doc smiled at the woman holding the sword to him and then moved—very quickly—batting the blade out of the way as he stepped back and pulled out his own sword. She recovered right away and swung downward, missing him by a matter of inches.

But not missing the necklace supporting Chainbreaker, which broke and fell to the ground.

“Not bad,” Doc said as he moved his sword in line. “You’ve studied with the Terrini school.”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “You’re familiar with it?” Teraeth had either missed her vocal cords or she didn’t really need them.

“I should be; I founded it. I doubt there’s a sword move you know that I didn’t invent, and believe me, I can beat myself.”

She choked back a laugh. “Shouldn’t you be in private for that?”

Doc sighed. “That’s not what I meant.” Doc lunged forward with his sword, a move she easily blocked.

Teraeth looked around. The white-haired woman was unconscious, and Talon—Talon!—was helping the other woman stand, trying to shoo ants away. Janel was … Janel was gone. He couldn’t see her anywhere.

While he was searching, the ground under the swordswoman’s feet vanished.

Doc clearly hadn’t expected this. His eyes went wide as she fell past him. She made a wild grab for the ledge, so she was hanging on with one hand and still holding Urthaenriel with the other.

Doc gave his wife a rather reproachful stare. “Did you have to do that? We were just starting.”

Valathea crossed her arms over her chest. “Yes, I did have to do that. She’s holding Godslayer.” She looked over at the unconscious pale woman. “Who are these people?”

“I don’t know,” Teraeth said. “Talon? Mind explaining?”

“Oh, uh…” Talon turned to the woman she was helping—Talea—with an embarrassed expression. “Lucky guess? We’ve never met before. Ever.”²

Doc looked down at the hole in the balcony wood, the woman holding on. She looked alive enough if one ignored the milky eyes, the clearly slit throat. “If you drop the sword, you could probably pull yourself up.”

“Not going to happen,” she growled.

“It’s a long way down,” Doc pointed out. “The fall is guaranteed to kill you.”

“So? I’ve been dead for years.” The woman started pulling herself up, using the sword as leverage. “And we’re not here after any of you. We’re here because Janel’s been possessed by the witch-queen Suless.”

Talea was still busy trying to remove ants, but she raised up a hand to show that another one of the strange ornate glyphs was drawn there. “Exorcism sigil,” she volunteered.

Doc and Valathea glanced at each other.

Teraeth heard the words like an ocean wave slamming down on him. He remembered Janel’s seizure the night before, her inexplicable shift in personality on waking. How she had actually slept. The way she’d referred to herself as a woman.

Almost as if she were a different person.

“You people really should have started with that,” Teraeth said. “Pull her up.”