C’Tan scrubbed at Drake’s scales, getting off the muck he’d collected on their last excursion. She could have had the servants do it, but for some reason, taking care of Drake’s needs was comforting. She felt almost at peace while scrubbing his neck or buffing his nails. She didn’t understand it, but didn’t bother to question it, either. Peace was something she had so little of in her life—she wasn’t going to turn away what bits of it she could find.
The dragon lifted his left front paw so she could scrub between his toes. “What did you do this time? Roll around in the mud?” she asked the black beast.
His head swung toward her and he answered in his deep bass rumble. “Not mud. Wet ash. The weather in Javak is horrid. Devil’s Mount erupted, just as you’d hoped, but instead of covering the countryside with lava, it’s spitting cloud after cloud of ash. And then it rained.” The dragon shivered, coughing a small lick of flame he cautiously aimed away from C’Tan.
The woman actually laughed. She knew how much Drake hated being dirty, but especially how much he detested the water. It was just one of the unfortunate side effects of being a creature of fire. “So what did you discover on this little jaunt? Did you find Shandae or the people who attacked her?”
Drake swung his head back toward her and lowered it to her level. “Shandae has left for the mage academy. The group that attacked her is nowhere to be found, though I heard it rumored they have captured one of the beings and he is being held in the cells at the academy itself, though I cannot confirm it as fact.”
C’Tan snorted. “Well, I can.” She set the dragon’s foot down and turned on the hose to wash him down one final time. She primed the pump, then let the water flow in a huge burst. If the dragon had been a cat, his hair would have been on end. As it was, he stood on his tippy toes and his tail went straight out. C’Tan was sure to wash under his belly and all the way up his neck. He closed his eyes as she washed the ash off his head, and shivered when she hit his ear hole. When she had washed him down from head to tail, she pushed down the hand pump to shut off the water—a nice combination of technology and magic—and Drake shook himself like a wet dog.
C’Tan evaporated the droplets before they ever reached her, and even did Drake the courtesy of running heat along his scales. He relaxed into the flame, and when he was dry, turned a smile on her. “Thank you, Mistress. I feel much better now. Is there anything further I can tell you?”
She shook her head. “No, I think you’ve done what you could. I appreciate your efforts, Drake. Rest now. I’ll need you for a ride later.”
The dragon nodded his head and C’Tan turned to leave, all business. She opened the door to her black castle and made her way from the dragon aerie to her work room. She picked up a particular sending stone, dropped it into a bowl of silver water, and waited.
After what seemed hours, but was probably minutes, the face of her daughter, Shadow, danced in the depths of the bowl, and she said only one word. “Yes?”
C’Tan spoke. “I have heard rumor that one of Ember’s attackers is being held at the mage academy.”
Shadow nodded. She always had been a child of few words. C’Tan wondered if she had any part of her mother within her at all. Part of her hoped not.
“Is he in the academy cells, then?”
Again the girl nodded.
C’Tan carressed the edge of the bowl. “I need you to get something from him—anything that is personally his—and send it to me. If I am to discover who attacked the girl, I need to know more, and he is the only accessible one. Will you do it?”
“But of course, Mother. I always do as you command,” Shadow answered, a sneer on her face.
“Everything but to stop calling me ‘Mother,’” C’Tan reminded her.
Shadow smiled. It was not a pretty smile. What an aggravating child.
“I shall do as you command, Mistress,” she said, and the picture in the bowl faded away.
C’Tan was forced to wait then. She didn’t pay attention to the time, just continued her search in her scrying bowl, hoping to find some evidence of the attack against Ember. She had never heard of this shadow power in anyone but her daughter, and she knew Shadow would not dare to rebel against her. Not yet, anyhow. Where could they have come from, then?
After what felt like hours, a single object appeared in C’Tan’s sending bowl. She picked it up with a stick, not wanting to contaminate the item with her own flesh. Who knew who else had handled the thing, but the less touched, the better reading she could get.
She dropped it into her scrying bowl with the silvery water and watched it sink to the bottom. She examined it for a moment before digging at its memories. It was a black leather cord with some kind of bird talon tied to the leather thong with silver. It was beautifully done, but she couldn’t place the bird it had come from. It wasn’t dragon—that she knew for sure, as it was much too small and yellow instead of black.
Phoenix, perhaps? Well, scrying would give her the answer.
C’Tan waved her hand over the top of the water, heating it and letting the power build just above the surface, turning the silvery liquid into a mirror of the past.
When the energy built enough, she released it, then looked into the bowl. The water bubbled and boiled for a moment, then stilled into a reflective surface that showed her the bird the talon came from was indeed a phoenix, the shapeshifting token animal for the priests of Sha’iim, the guardians of the light magic. Yellow magic. C’Tan growled under her breath. She hated yellow users.
She moved beyond that memory, and up came the memory of the cow from whom the leather had been taken. That was of no consequence. Nor was the silver mined from the hills high above Niedemar. What was important were the people who lived above those hills. C’Tan finally got glimpses of the shadow weavers, as she called them, as they looked much like streaks of shadow weaving throughout the village. Most of the villagers seemed innocent, but there was a small group that C’Tan followed with her scrybowl that were different from the others. They met in secret. She followed the necklace as it bounced against the chest of its wearer, winding down into the mining tunnels where small groups met and talked about destroying white magic altogether. It was a cult, she realized after watching them train together and listen reverently to a small, wiry man who seemed completely benign. He must be their prophet, she realized. And the things he taught were full of half-truths.
C’Tan was S’Kotos’ ear. She knew the truth behind the eruptions and the water rising up to drown entire cities. She knew his plan of destruction and it had absolutely nothing to do with white magic, except to try to deny it a chance to heal the world.
This cult wanted to weed out all white magi from existence forever.
It was a dangerous, dangerous thought.
C’Tan sat and pondered until long after the sun had set and then came to realize that because of S’Kotos’ plan for the wolfchild, C’Tan could not allow this cult of Shadow Weavers to get to her first. In order to steal Ember’s soul, she was going to have to protect her.
C’Tan shook her head, a malicious grin split her face that would have done her master proud. Her servants were going to love this change of plan. She gathered the call stones she needed, fished the remnants of the shadow weaver’s necklace from the water, and dropped the stones in. She needed to have a meeting with her spies at the mage academy, and sooner rather than later.