60. THE GLITTER OF BLUE

Kihrin’s story

The Free States of Doltar

Just after dawn, several hours after the attack on Grizzst’s Tower

When Jarith had first brought me the news that Relos Var had the Stone of Shackles—sort of—well, I might have been a touch worried. I really didn’t want Relos Var to have that damn rock, for all kinds of reasons.

Then Jarith had also let me know that Anlyr had it, wasn’t using it, and indeed had been ordered to hide it. Strangely, it had engendered in me a feeling suspiciously analogous to panic. Because this was what I’d been waiting for.

Relos Var had finally made a mistake.

I say that like he hadn’t made mistakes before. He had. But they’d always been recoverable mistakes, errors that sooner or later he twisted to his advantage. Not this time.

I hoped.

Anlyr had stayed on the move after leaving the Soaring Halls. That was the smart play. Even if anyone was tracking him (and we were), by the time another wizard could open up a gate to his current location, he’d already be on to the next one.

Except I didn’t care about his current location, because I wasn’t interested in finding Anlyr. I cared about the fact that at some point during this jumping game, he’d hidden the Stone of Shackles. I didn’t need to know where he was, only where he’d been. So I visited each and every stop he’d made along the way, until I found the right one.

That turned out to be an abandoned sandstone temple half buried by a dune desert in the rain shadow of the Doltari mountains. The desert itself would be miserable by midday, but this was just after dawn, so the air was still cool. The red sun had turned all the yellows and browns to a beautiful pink-orange hue and limned the ruin walls in scarlet light. Tall columns and stepped pyramids spoke of an elaborate structure that would remain visible even after the worst sandstorms.

It was the perfect location, really. Desolate, unlikely to be visited casually, known to very few. If you didn’t already know it existed, you’d never find it.

Inside, the ruins had been long since cleaned out by robbers and looters, assuming that there’d ever been anything valuable left in the first place. Anlyr had been at this location for less than fifteen seconds—if he’d hidden the Stone of Shackles here, he would have had to do so quickly.

As it turned out, Anlyr had left the Stone of Shackles lying at the bottom of a clay pot, probably where he’d simply thrown it. And it was the Stone of Shackles. I could tell, just looking at it, in a way that had nothing to do with the fact that I’d once worn the damn thing for almost twenty years.

I didn’t even try to touch the stone. I still wasn’t able to hold any object for a great length of time with 100 percent certainty. The risk was too great.

I teleported both stone and vase back to the moon.

Then I destroyed the entire temple and summoned up a windstorm to fill in the hole left behind. By the time it finished, there was no sign that a building had ever been there at all.