3: SECRET PLANS

Teraeth’s memory

Grizzst’s Tower at Rainbow Lake

Twenty-two days after the Battle of the Well of Spirals

Before breakfast

Janel set a plate of jam-smeared sag bread on the table next to Teraeth’s bed. “I would’ve made porridge,” she said, “but you’re the only one who has any clue how to cook.”

Teraeth stared down at the plate, frowning. When had he last eaten? He wasn’t hungry. He mostly slept. It seemed preferable to the alternative: thinking.

Thinking led to remembering. And if he remembered, he relived what had happened over and over. His father’s death. His mother, forcing him to be crowned king against his will. Kidnapping him. Trying to sacrifice him as an act of genocide.¹

His mother’s death at his own hand. In the end, it hadn’t been Relos Var who’d killed Thaena. He had.

Teraeth had known two things when he’d seen his mother, Khaemezra, toss Urthaenriel down to the floor: she’d unwittingly broken her magical control of him, and if he hesitated even for a moment, she’d take Kihrin’s life.

Teraeth made his choice. It wasn’t even a hard choice.

At least, it hadn’t been a hard choice at the time.

It turned out choices could linger like a wound, reminding a person every waking second of their consequences. Choices were ghosts; they haunted.

“Teraeth.”

Teraeth tried to collect himself. What had he been doing? What was—? He stared at the food, then at Janel. She’d started braiding her laevos flat against her skull. Or wait, no. She always did that before she slept, didn’t she?

She wasn’t preparing for sleep now. Janel wore red-and-gold mail, with a motif of flame and scales. She dressed for war, not lounging around a wizard’s tower. She clearly intended on going somewhere. Leaving.

Teraeth knew he should get up. He knew he should eat, bathe, dress—but he couldn’t make himself move. It all seemed so unimportant. No, insignificant. What did it even matter?

What did anything matter?

“I want you out of bed, Teraeth,” Janel said again. “It’s been almost three weeks. That’s enough.”

He closed his eyes.

Janel yanked the sheets off the bed. “Time’s up. You’ve had your chance to wallow in guilt, and now you have to work. You have people who need you, a crown to abdicate, and a very short list of enemies to kill.”

Teraeth rolled over. “Leave me alone.”

“No. Personally, I’d let you be Kihrin’s problem, but I can’t: Kihrin’s missing.” Her voice crackled with anger.

He felt plunged in cold water.

When had he last seen Kihrin? He wasn’t sure. He remembered Kihrin being around a lot in the days after … what had happened. Dim memories of falling into deep, possibly drugged slumbers wedged between Kihrin and Janel, as if both were afraid to leave him unsupervised for fear of what he might do to himself. Kihrin had seldom been around during the day, and then he had simply … not been around.

Teraeth hadn’t noticed. No, that wasn’t true. He’d noticed. He’d just thought it was … appropriate. Exactly what Teraeth deserved. Between Kihrin and Janel, at least one of them had been smart enough to back away before they ended up hurt.

Teraeth turned to her. “What?”

“He left to do … something.” Janel stared off to the side as if she could see through the walls to wherever Kihrin had hidden himself. “Thurvishar keeps saying nothing’s wrong, but Thurvishar’s a damn liar. Kihrin’s been gone for five days without a note, without saying a word to anyone. He wouldn’t do that.”

An even colder splash of water that time. The shock of fear and worry. He sat up and swung his feet over the side of the bed. “What the fuck?”

“Yes!” Janel said, gesturing toward him. “What the fuck, indeed. That’s exactly how I feel. Where are you? Where’s your mind? I need you focused. I need the Teraeth who doesn’t accept failure. I need the Teraeth who hates injustice. I need the Teraeth who’s afraid of nothing!”

Teraeth stood. “I hated the injustice of Quur because I was a hypocrite too blinded by my mother’s bullshit to see that she was the one keeping Quur in shackles the whole time. I was afraid of nothing because I was a fool whose mother was the literal Goddess of Death! Failure had no consequences. I couldn’t die! And you’re the fool if you think failure is something you can reject. Some failures are final. There are some failures from which you can never return!”

“Not yet!” Janel screamed. “I need your help! I need you to be here with me now, do you understand me?”

“You want a Teraeth that doesn’t exist anymore. He’s gone. I lost him!”

She loomed so much larger than her true size. Janel shouted at him with tears running down her cheeks. “Then go find him! Listen to me. Listen!” She paused, panting, then lowered her voice. “I. Need. Your. Help. Do you understand? I am asking for you to help me. Do I need to beg?”

Pure ice. Facedown against a glacier. He blinked away the sting. Teraeth hadn’t thought … Janel was admitting she needed help, that she needed his help. Janel, for whom going to someone for help meant submission, meant admitting vulnerability. She would rather chew off her own arm.²

“Five days,” he said.

“Yes. So it’s well past time for you to wake up.” Janel’s face twisted. “Thurvishar knows something.” She threw a pile of glittering cloth at him. “Get dressed. We have work to do.”

---

Teraeth was embarrassed by how long it took to track down Thurvishar. He blamed it on assuming the wizard would be trying to avoid them. Instead, the D’Lorus high lord sat in the main room of Grizzst’s tower, reading a book. Teraeth hadn’t been paying much attention, so he almost didn’t recognize the place; Thurvishar had made significant progress organizing and cleaning the wizard’s library in the several weeks since they’d arrived.

He’d never questioned why they ended up at the tower. It had just happened. Neither Kihrin nor Thurvishar had wanted to go back to the Capital, Teraeth hadn’t wanted to go back to the Manol, and Janel wasn’t sure she even had a place to go back to in Jorat.³ They had defaulted on staying at the now unoccupied tower, mostly because Thurvishar had wanted to look through Grizzst’s notes.

He was still doing that when Teraeth and Janel found him.

“Where’s Kihrin?” Janel asked, wasting no time on such frivolous questions as “How are you?” or “Figured out how to defeat Relos Var yet?”

Thurvishar raised his head. The man had always been good at keeping an expression off his face, but it didn’t stop Teraeth from recognizing the dread lurking in his eyes.

Thurvishar closed the book and set it aside. “I don’t know. He’s overdue. We set aside a location and time for a meeting. He missed it, but that doesn’t mean there’s cause for panic.”

“And how long ago,” Teraeth asked softly, “was this meeting supposed to take place?”

Thurvishar gave him a wary look. “Three days ago.”

“Three days ago,” Teraeth repeated. “And were you planning to say anything? Go looking for him? How was this supposed to work?” He stepped forward suddenly and took note of the moment when Thurvishar flinched.

“It’s … complicated.”

“Simplify it,” Janel pressed. “It’s not that we don’t trust you, Thurvishar—”

“Speak for yourself,” Teraeth said. He wasn’t feeling in a friendly or forgiving mood.

Janel crossed over to Thurvishar’s table. She clearly wasn’t feeling in a friendly or forgiving mood either. “Where did he go, Thurvishar? What was he doing?”

“Ah, well,” Thurvishar said.

Teraeth waited.

“Don’t make me feel the need to be rude,” Teraeth said, “because you know I’ll hurt more than your feelings.”

The wizard pressed his lips together. “Kihrin thought you’d try to talk him out of it.”

The air vanished from the room—or at least from Teraeth’s lungs. He knew Kihrin, after all. He knew how much of a well-intentioned fool the man could be, all in the name of some greater good. How reckless he could be. How self-sacrificing. “What did he think we’d talk him out of doing?”

“He returned to the Blight.”

Everything stilled, a moment of silent shock that so often heralds a blur of outrage, shouting, violence. Maybe under different circumstances. Now Teraeth just felt dizzy. Hollow. Unbalanced. No, no, no.

“He what?” Janel’s voice was deceptively calm.

Thurvishar exhaled. “I couldn’t have stopped him. The single location he can teleport to without any assistance is Kharas Gulgoth.”

Teraeth grabbed the desk’s edge, his lungs burning.

“You let him—” The timbre of Janel’s voice betrayed her loss of temper, and Janel was even more capable of murderous rages than he was. Teraeth nursed his grudges along with careful sips until the final poisoning came due. She’d let it out all at once, explosively.

“Janel, please try to stay calm,” Thurvishar said, a basic error in judgment as far as Teraeth was concerned. Telling Janel to stay calm rarely had that result. It was ridiculously satisfying to watch her direct her temper at someone other than himself.

“Calm?” Janel’s eyes could set the whole room on fire. Which happened to be literally as well as figuratively true. “You’re telling me that with Kihrin out there in the Blight, when we know Vol Karoth would love nothing more than to devour him whole, I should stay calm?”

“That might have been the wrong choice of words,” Thurvishar allowed. He pushed his chair back from the table. “But I’m not going to apologize for Kihrin’s decision.”

“You should have—” Janel started to say.

“What? Tattled on him? Treated him as though he were a child who shouldn’t be allowed to make up his own mind?” Thurvishar stared at them both, no longer nervous. Now he just looked annoyed. “Why don’t you stop for a good, long minute and think about why Kihrin might not have wanted to tell you the truth concerning his plans. Why he didn’t think he could trust you to work with him.”

Teraeth flushed. “How dare you—”

“Oh no,” Thurvishar interrupted. “How dare you. With the whole world at stake and thousands dying, how dare you say he’s not allowed to risk his own life. I understand that you both care for him. The idea that he’s in danger is painful. But you don’t have the right to lock him away in a cage.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I should have left a letter.”

“Thurvishar.” Janel managed to pack an amazing amount of venom into one proper noun.

“He was right,” Thurvishar said. “Kihrin was right to not tell you. You’re both proving it this very moment.”

Janel narrowed her eyes. “No, you don’t get to put this on us! I refuse to accept—”

“I don’t care,” Teraeth said.

Both Thurvishar and Janel stopped to look at him.

“I don’t care who’s to blame,” he said. “I care about where Kihrin is. I care about what happens next.” Teraeth was lying. He cared a great deal about who was responsible, but acting on that emotion wouldn’t get him what he wanted. So he pushed it all down—his anger, his rage, his despair. He’d done it before. He was good at it. “You wouldn’t have done this without a plan for what’s next. What was that supposed to be?”

Thurvishar sighed.

“Just answer the question—” Janel looked ready to set the entire room ablaze.

“I can’t,” Thurvishar snarled. He corrected himself. “No, I won’t. You both know this”—he gestured around the room—“isn’t safe from eavesdropping by our enemies. So no, I don’t believe I will tell you just yet. We’ve already said far too much.”

“So where to, then?” Janel said. “Shadrag Gor? Where do we go so you’ll be comfortable telling us the truth?”

“Yes, fine. Shadrag Gor.” Thurvishar’s face twisted in frustration; he swept all the papers off the table, sending them flying. “I can’t find what I need here, anyway. I’ve spent days reading through these damn papers, and for what?”

Teraeth leaned against a wall and said nothing. He couldn’t believe it. Except no, of course he could. It was a perfect cap to the perfect ruin of everything he held dear. Kihrin had gone back to the Blight. He must have found something. Thought he could do something to deal with Vol Karoth. Something dangerous and stupid, of course, which was the reason he’d gone alone.

And hadn’t come back.

“These are C’indrol’s notes.”⁴ There was a funny catch in Janel’s voice. She’d picked up one of the scattered pieces of paper and stood there reading it.

Thurvishar lifted his head from his chest. “Yes, well. Kihrin assumed you’d be able to remember what you did to separate his souls from Vol Karoth’s, but I realized after you sat down for our talks that you don’t.” A rueful, unhappy smile touched his lips. “I had hoped something in Grizzst’s copies of C’indrol’s research notes on ousology⁵ might have held a clue. No such luck.”

Janel’s hand started to shake. She let the page fall from her fingers as she stared at Thurvishar with wide eyes.

Teraeth felt his own pulse quicken with dread. “What did you just realize—?” He held up a hand before she could answer. “No, don’t tell me. Don’t say it aloud. Thurvishar’s right about that much.”

Thurvishar scoffed.⁶

Janel balled her hands into fists. “You’re never going to find the answers you need in this room. Grizzst didn’t have all of C’indrol’s notes, and he had no idea more existed. I doubt Grizzst knew Elana Milligreest created a library to store information. Every scrap of information. If she ever wrote down what you need, it’s there.”

Thurvishar blinked several times. “She—what? How have I never heard of this?”

Teraeth was glad Thurvishar had asked the question so he wouldn’t have to.

Janel’s smile was vindictive. “You have. You’ve heard about it all your life. It’s become so famous for gathering up every shred of anything even tangentially related to Xaltorath’s stupid prophecies that most of the damn things are named after the place.”

“The Devoran Prophecies?” Thurvishar asked. “The Devors Islands?”

“The monastery there, yes,” Janel answered.

“Fine.” Teraeth walked over to the other two. “So let’s go. You can find the information you need and then explain to us—somewhere secure—what is going on. And, Thurvishar?”

The wizard gazed at Teraeth like he knew exactly what he was about to say. It didn’t matter. Teraeth would spell it out, anyway, just to make sure there were no misunderstandings. “Kihrin had better not be dead, or you’ll be joining him.”⁷

Teraeth’s reaction

The Lighthouse at Shadrag Gor

Twenty-four days after the Battle of the Well of Spirals

Just after arrival

“What was that?” Janel asked. “What just happened?”

Teraeth opened his eyes after the vision faded. Or rather, Teraeth’s vision returned, as he’d never closed his eyes in the first place. No sooner had they arrived in the Lighthouse then he’d been overwhelmed by that memory, as sharp and painful as if he’d just experienced it again. Now he was in a room he recognized even though he’d only been there a few times before.

The last time, however, when his mother had brought him, had been recent and memorable. Teraeth had stayed there for three weeks before Thaena had been ready to sacrifice him.

This was the Lighthouse at Shadrag Gor. He nearly laughed. They were in the right place, but he didn’t like how they’d gotten there.⁸

The main tower was a huge, tapering, multi-floored structure of perfectly fitted stone, thick wooden planks underfoot, creaking circular stairs leading farther up or down. Dim mage-light provided the only illumination. The whole place smelled of fresh paint and the musty scent of confined spaces.⁹ Someone desperately needed to open a window, which was a shame, because there weren’t any.

Someone had painted the place since the last time he’d visited. Not in the sense of redecorating but in the manner of some sort of occult ritual.

All the people surrounding him had been there at the end on Devors, and thus snatched up when Senera arrived. A few were unfamiliar, but the majority he already knew, including one he wouldn’t have expected—his old sect-sister and former lover, Kalindra. Two he didn’t recognize: an elegant, slender young man with long hair and a Yoran woman who was probably one of Xivan’s Spurned mercenaries.¹⁰

And all of them except for Senera and the Spurned woman were sopping, wet cloth plastered to wet skin. It was unreasonably cold inside the Lighthouse too—or at least it felt that way to someone soaking wet—which just gave Teraeth one more thing to be angry about.

“Janel,” Senera said, hands raised, grimacing, “I don’t know what just happened. I’m not responsible for that.”

“Then who is, Senera?” Janel’s grip tightened on her sword. She still wore the same red-and-gold armor she’d worn when she woke Teraeth up that morning. Teraeth belatedly realized it must have come from the Manol, the same as his own clothing, which meant she must have traveled back there at some point during the last several weeks. He’d missed it.¹¹

“Did we all see that? Did we all see the same thing?” Galen D’Mon asked. He was dressed oddly too, wearing his agolé as a sash instead of the more traditional Quuros manner. That was an affectation Teraeth had only seen on Zherias, which implied some odd things about the Quuros prince’s recent travel history. “I wasn’t sure if it was just me hallucinating, except I can’t imagine why my mind would have picked that.” He glanced at Teraeth, and then quickly looked away.

“I should be surprised if we didn’t all see it. But as to what caused it—” The woman standing next to Galen made a distasteful face, as if someone had forgotten to wash the silverware. She looked like someone had dunked her into a bathtub fully clothed, but also like that bathtub had been made from solid gold and filled with milk and rose petals. He remembered Galen’s wife from Gadrith’s attack on the Blue Palace, but he’d forgotten her name.¹² Her gaze fell on Teraeth. “That was you.”

“Yes,” Teraeth said. “That was me.”

She stared at him as she moved her wet hair away from her face. “Thaena’s truly dead?”

“Yes. That was also me.”

“Talea,” Galen muttered. “Wait. Talea was hurt—”

Talea groaned as if to punctuate his point. Xivan laid Talea down on the floor, her expression frantic. Thurvishar summoned up brighter mage-light to reveal blood had washed Talea’s stomach and hips red.

Galen pulled Xivan away from the other woman. “I think you’ve done enough.”

Xivan didn’t fight him.

“Qown!” Sheloran gestured frantically. “What are you doing hiding over there? Talea’s injured!” The royal princess looked close to tears, despite her otherwise excellent posture. She whipped back around to glare at Talea. “And you! You said you’d be a fool to fight Xivan by yourself.”

“I’m fine, Sheloran,” Talea—who was clearly not fine—protested. “But hadn’t you noticed I’m a bit of a fool?”

Teraeth hadn’t missed the magic word Sheloran had yelled, however, and neither had Janel. Her eyes widened as the long-haired man hurried over to Talea’s side. Teraeth couldn’t help but notice the way the man avoided Janel’s eyes.

“That’s Qown?” Teraeth mouthed to Janel. She nodded.

Teraeth was surprised. Janel had always described Qown as if he were an impoverished monk, the kind who had taken every vow of self-denial—pleasure, material possessions—in favor of living a life with all his concerns wrapped around others and nothing left for himself. This man didn’t look like that. He was doing a fair impression of a Zheriasian rake, his agolé worn as a sash in the same manner as Galen.

“Whatever you did,” Kalindra growled, pushing herself toward Senera, “reverse it! Reverse it right now! That monster is still attacking, and my son is back there!” Her hair spattered water in an uneven circle around her as she held a dagger with shaking hands. Her eyes were wild.

“This is Shadrag Gor,” Thurvishar explained.

Teraeth sighed. Like Kalindra knew what the hell Shadrag Gor was. She’d never needed to know. And she was a newly widowed mother with a child in jeopardy. She had no patience whatsoever. Who could blame her? The woman crossed the room, fast the way only a Black Brotherhood assassin could be. Teraeth didn’t think she meant to kill Senera. More likely threaten, put that dagger to her throat, make her point a little … clearer.

But Kalindra’s blade slammed against a warp of iridescent magics and rebounded.

Teraeth sighed as Kalindra started to swing again. “Kalindra, stop.”

Complicated emotions played over the woman’s face as he addressed her. Anger. Worry. And, interestingly, shame.

“Teraeth?” Kalindra looked around as if hoping their location had shifted back to Devors between eyeblinks. “What are you doing here, anyway?” she asked. “What happened?”

“Later,” Teraeth said, his voice thick.

Kalindra shuddered. “Teraeth, I need to go back.”

“We will,” Teraeth growled. “After I have my answers. Time moves differently here. Only seconds will have passed when we return. There’s no need to hurry. There’s no point.” He stared at Thurvishar. “Someone said he was going to explain matters.”

“What was that about Kihrin?” Janel asked Senera. “And why did you show us Teraeth’s memories?” Steam rose from her clothing as she spoke. Teraeth wasn’t sure if she was purposefully drying the water from her clothing or if her body temperature was just running that hot.

“I didn’t do that.” Senera lifted her chin, but she still seemed nervous. Her gaze lingered on the tall, black-clad, and only living member of House D’Lorus.¹³ “I’m fixing your mistake,” she told Thurvishar.

He rolled his eyes to the heavens as if praying to every kind of divine being out there. “You checked.”

“Of course I checked!” Senera growled. “Don’t tell me you didn’t think I would!”

“Thurvishar, are you talking about Kihrin?” Janel’s voice was a warning wrapped in velvet.

Thurvishar ignored Janel, his focus entirely on Senera. “What have you done?” he asked. His gaze flickered to the strangely painted walls. “Senera, what is this?”

“Kihrin and Vol Karoth are fighting for dominance,” Senera explained. “What did you think was going to happen?”

“But why are we in Shadrag Gor?” Thurvishar asked, still frowning.

“Never mind that,” Teraeth cut in, raising his voice. He was out of patience himself. “Where is Kihrin?”

Before Senera could reply, the world changed.