45. THE MIMIC

Caless’s story

The Soaring Halls, the Upper Circle of the Capital City of Quur

A few minutes after making a deal with Relos Var

Logically, it took very little time for Relos Var to return, but emotionally, it felt like aeons. Eventually, another gate opened and spat out four people: Relos Var, Sheloran, Galen, and the small child, Tave.

Caless saw the child and immediately knew that she’d miscalculated.

No, it was worse than that: she’d been played.

“Mother, you have to—!” Sheloran said that much before her voice fled her, leaving her with a hand at her throat, staring venom and fury at Relos Var.

“All three, as promised,” Relos Var said.

The two powers in the room stared at each other.

Caless knew she could protest. Relos Var knew perfectly well that the spirit of the bargain hadn’t been for the return of a child she had naïvely assumed wasn’t in jeopardy. (Surely her daughter and son-in-law had already left the boy with the Milligreests, yes?) She’d been expecting Sheloran, Galen, and Qown.

But Caless was no fool. She’d agreed to three, Var had delivered three, and if she protested, he’d gleefully take the child back. That was assuming he cooperated at all. If Qown had been one of his people, as Relos Var had suggested, then it was likely that Var had never intended to return him, and any suggestion otherwise had always been fool’s gold and shadow plays.

Galen hadn’t made the smallest protest, but the way he watched Var, as if he would gleefully charge forward with a sword drawn at the smallest provocation, told Caless all she needed.

Caless pulled the necklace around her throat until the chain released with a soft snap and held it out to Var. “Here,” she said. “Take it and go.”

Sheloran was pleading at her with her eyes. Caless ignored her.

Var held out his hand under hers so that the stone fell into his outstretched palm. He stared at the stone for a moment, looking inordinately pleased with himself, before tucking it under his belt.

“A pleasure doing business with you,” he said. The next second, he was gone.

“Mother!” Sheloran screamed the moment Relos Var vanished. “He still has Qown.”

“I know,” Caless said. “Do you know where you were? Where he took you?”

“Somewhere in the Kirpis, I suspect. Near a beach,” Galen said. “Which would be far more helpful if thousands of miles of coastline didn’t qualify.” He breathed deep and took Sheloran’s hand. “Let’s not panic. Even if Relos Var suspects something’s wrong, he has no way short of torture to get the information out of Qown. He won’t just kill him.”

Caless felt a chill. “Torture? Does Relos Var think your Qown knows valuable information?”

Her daughter stared at her. Sheloran had always been good at tracking her moods, so she must have realized that something wasn’t quite right. “Yes. We all do. But it’s fine: they can’t read his mind.”

Caless grimaced. “Damn. I assumed—”

Ah, but she’d assumed far too much.

“You assumed what?” Galen asked.

“I assumed Var wanted Qown for punitive reasons, not for information,” Caless said angrily. “Relos Var claimed he had a mimic guarding you. Is there any chance he was telling the truth?”

“A mimic? But he didn’t have a mimic, just … Anlyr?” Galen looked at Sheloran, wide-eyed. “Anlyr can’t be a mimic. He was using illusions to impersonate Qown, wasn’t he?”

“That’s what I thought…” Sheloran looked horrified. “Remember when Var said Anlyr was so used to reading minds he’d forgotten how to read people? What if…?”

“You should assume the worst,” Caless said. “It was an oddly specific threat to make and a strange one if Relos Var was lying.”

Galen closed his eyes and visibly shuddered.

“What you’re saying…” Sheloran couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Can you—” Galen swallowed. “Can you use magic to find Qown? He’s not wearing Worldhearth anymore.”

“No,” Sheloran answered before Caless could. “Because we warded against that, Blue. We can’t be tracked.” She began laughing, hysterical, while the small boy with her sniffled and looked on the verge of tears.

“You … you don’t happen to know where Grizzst’s Tower is?” Galen asked.

Caless blinked. It suddenly occurred to her that she should have paid a little more attention to exactly what her daughter and son-in-law had been doing in the past month. Because most people, assuming they’d even heard of the place, would have classified Grizzst’s Tower firmly in the category of a god-king tale—something mythical.

“It’s been a few years,” she admitted. “But yes, I know where it is.”

For the first time since Caless explained about the mimic, Galen’s expression held something other than despair. The faintest hint of hope.

“Then if we might beg a kindness of you,” Galen said. “We need a gate opened to that location immediately.”

Sheloran handed the small boy to her. “And we’ll need you to watch Tave until we return.”