Betharad took a long sip of tea.
She was glad to have finished her explanation of all the upheavals that had beset Naerun in recent days. Her throat felt raw, not just from talking, but also from the emotions that kept bubbling up. She did her best to suppress them, to impress upon the custodians she was logical and measured. That her opinion should have weight when making their decisions. Amacet’s frown had diminished, and he had nodded several times as she spoke, which she interpreted as cautious respect, so she had succeeded. Perhaps the old custodian might unbend a little now.
They all sat around the family dining table, Elian and Betharad on one side, Amacet and Relchen on the other. It reminded Betharad of the time she represented the Council in a legal dispute. Kavilas sat to her right at one end of the table. He said little, other than confirm what Betharad said and add the occasional point she missed.
Niedde had placed her chair at one end, sometimes examining them all with the resigned superiority of an experienced judicial officer. At other times, her gaze roved around the room without attempting to pretend she was paying attention. Betharad tried not to cringe as she imagined what a custodian from the Academy would think of their modest home. Their simple wooden furniture, walls with plain white lime render, and small smattering of understated ornaments, would no doubt look very provincial to their eyes.
By the end of her account, Relchen’s eyes were wide and his jaws clamped hard together. Betharad was still working him out, but underneath his general alarm she detected sadness as well as embarrassment. Although she was still shocked about what he and her parents had done, Betharad was beginning to feel a little sympathy for him. Of all these custodians who had appeared in her life without warning, he was the one who showed the most compassion. Her instincts told her he could be a friend, but first she needed to find a way of overlooking his appalling lack of judgement all those years ago.
But it was Niedde who broke the silence first. She turned her stare on to Amacet and said, in that flat, unforgiving tone, “Thought you said Urzed perished in the fire.”
Amacet’s face hardened once more, and he took several deep breaths. It was the same technique Betharad used, and his tone was unruffled when he said, “It was the logical conclusion. Several witnesses assured me they saw him enter the Hall, and none saw him leave.”
“You searched the remains?”
Amacet glared at his colleague, who smiled back. Betharad thought she was beginning to read Amacet now; a tightening of his jaw when he was annoyed, a narrowing of his eyes when he was deciding how to respond. “Yes, of course we did. There was nothing to be seen but ashes and charcoal. Veric did his job well—to sustain the fire for long enough to trap his enemy, knowing full well it would mean his own end, must have taken an impressive amount of skill and willpower.” Grudging admiration coloured the custodian’s voice.
Betharad tried to imagine what it would have been like for her father; surrounded by flames that were eating up the hall, facing someone as cunning as Urzed, hoping to hold him there long enough for the fire to do its work. Long enough for them both to die.
Her imagination failed her.
Elian sniffed, and when Betharad glanced her way she saw tears in her eyes. She placed a gentle hand on her grandmother’s shoulder; some wounds could still sting even after so many years. Betharad would do what she could to save Elian from having to witness such traumatic events once more.
She did have a question she thought she could ask without upsetting Elian too much. “How did our mother—Maenna—die? I have a letter written by our father which says she should have survived.”
Relchen took her hand. “I don’t know. She was supposed to destroy the weapons—the creatures. I have no idea why she failed, or what happened to her, but we looked everywhere, afterwards, and we found no sign of her. She must have gone to the hall and got caught up in the fire.” His voice sounded wistful, and he blinked. There might have been moisture in his eyes, and Betharad wondered he had felt more than friendship for her mother.
“She may not have gone there,” Amacet said. “You and Leadra both told me quite a few of the locals set fire to their own homes and businesses, rather than hand the slightest advantage to Urzed. She may have perished elsewhere.”
“Could she have been killed by the creatures themselves?” asked Kavilas, with a stern look at Relchen.
The custodian shifted in his seat and let Betharad’s hand go. “I doubt it. They were still very new, and I think they would have lacked any awareness of how to use their powers.”
“It could have happened by accident, or incompetence on her part,” Niedde pointed out as if she was discussing the weather, rather than talking about the death of Betharad’s own mother.
Kavilas ran a hand through his hair. “It seems to me there’s a lot we don’t know about what happened in those days. Information that we should have been told.” He looked at Amacet. “It’s time you shared everything you know with us.”
Amacet remained silent, eyes narrowed, and Betharad wondered whether he would resist the marshal’s demand. This made Betharad more annoyed than she would have expected; she had been open and forthcoming with him, the least he could do was reciprocate.
She was surprised when Amacet said, “Relchen was very much involved in past events here, so he can tell you.” When Amacet turned his gaze to the younger man, Relchen stiffened and his eyes widened. He had not been expecting that.
“Well,” Relchen began, sounding uncertain. “I should start at the beginning, I suppose...”
“What a good idea,” remarked Niedde, rolling her eyes.
Relchen cleared his throat. “I met Maenna and Veric at the Academy, along with the others. We were part of the same intake and became good friends quite quickly.
“We all progressed well in our studies, but in time we became fascinated by what we were not being taught, the secrets we believed the Academy was withholding from us. According to rumours, there were many of those—knowledge too dangerous for mere students to learn. But despite all the questions we asked, and the different ways we invented to ask them, the only thing we learned was that the Academy staff were extremely skilled in the art of obfuscation.” Relchen’s laugh was rueful as he went on. “Of course, that only made us more determined to find out what they were holding back. We managed to uncover a few interesting morsels, but nothing we thought was significant. Then after we graduated, we all went our separate ways. You already know Maenna and Veric were posted here, and I was sent to be custodian of a small town on the coast of Emlairic. The rest were assigned to locations scattered across the continent. In hindsight, I think splitting our group up was deliberate.”
“It was,” Amacet confirmed with a brusque nod.
“But a few years later I received a letter from Veric, telling me I had to come and visit them, that I’d never forgive myself if I said no. He mentioned an exciting discovery, and he was hoping the six of us would reunite to work together.” Relchen looked at Amacet and added, “That was all he wrote. I was so bored at the time, with nothing to do other than healing the occasional broken bone, and I accepted the invitation in a heartbeat.”
Betharad found herself drawn in to Relchen’s story, and some of her earlier disapproval faded. She knew what it was like to be underestimated, and eager to prove she was capable of more. Perhaps she could begin to understand her parents’ actions better.
“Most of our group assembled in Naerun over the course of a few weeks,” Relchen continued. “Leadra and Yskolian were already here when I arrived, and Tuvan joined us a few days later. We gathered together in this house, in fact.” He paused to look around the room, and Betharad wondered what memories stirred for him then. “Maenna and Veric revealed what captured their interest and made them write to the rest of us and urge us to reunite; in their secret explorations of the deserted fortress at Creonze, they discovered the Orufasu was there. They felt the thing was waiting—in our more egotistical moments, we flattered ourselves it was waiting for us!
“It was an opportunity none of us could pass up. Here was the fabled Serpentstone, with its sinister reputation and mythology. We were all eager to discover if any of the legend was true.”
“I’ve heard some of those stories,” Betharad put in, “and they all sound appalling. I don’t understand why anyone would want to get involved with such evil.” She gave Relchen an apologetic look.
Niedde spoke as if she was giving a lecture. “Demonstrably dangerous, yes,” she pronounced, “but evil is a subjective term. Most of the tales circulating about the Orufasu are true, though embellished and added to over time, until they have taken on the most unbelievable and inconsistent elements.
“The Orufasu is an extreme concentration of the Lifespring, one of the most undiluted forms in the world. The Lifespring is the fundamental energy that shapes our world and creates life itself.” She looked at them all, including Amacet and Relchen, who surely knew this already. “Perhaps ironically, so much raw energy makes the Orufasu a strong force for chaos rather than creation. The Orufasu also possesses a degree of sentience, of independent will, although how that has come about is unclear. But the combination makes it extremely dangerous. It tends to have a corrupting influence when anyone has tried to control it—the Cathruban royal family being a famous case in point—but we do not know whether it does so with intent, or whether the effect is a by-product of its nature.”
She looked at them all again, and Betharad had the distinct impression she was surprised they were not taking notes.
“Why did you not destroy the creatures back then, as Maenna was supposed to do?” asked Kavilas.
Amacet turned his forbidding stare on the marshal, but if Kavilas was disconcerted, he did not show it. “I assessed the risks and determined they were too great. The Orufasu was nowhere to be found, but that does not mean it would not detect our attempts and react accordingly.”
Kavilas nodded. “That seems logical. And was it not possible to take them to the Academy, to be kept secure there?”
It was Niedde’s turn to stare at him now, with a look on her face that suggested she thought the marshal was particularly dim. “Of course not. The creatures may possess the same corrupting influence as the Orufasu—can you imagine the chaos their presence at the Academy might lead to, with so many powerful custodians there?” She sighed. “Which is a pity. The world has never seen creatures’ like before, as far as we can be sure. They could have proven invaluable in much of my research. For example, how the Orufasu reputedly moves at will.”
Elian’s earlier remark that the Serpentstone vanished after the Enjeb were defeated had seemed fanciful at the time, but Betharad was fast learning improbability was no barrier to being true.
“A plausible explanation has eluded the best of us for centuries,” Niedde continued, “but one theory suggests it may be able to transport itself instantaneously from one location to another, though they may be hundreds of miles apart. However there is an alternative hypothesis that it does not move at all; for the last few centuries it has been seen nowhere else but Creonze, and it simply conceals itself until such time as it wants to be seen again.”
Niedde was enjoying this. Perhaps she thought she was in her Academy engaging in a theoretical debate, instead of talking about real life events that led to people being killed, houses burned, towns and cities devastated.
Amacet was now frowning, and she wondered if he was thinking the same thing. But he too was being drawn in. “It has not exclusively appeared in Creonze,” he countered. “It was discovered by the people of Cathrubas in their extensive mines deep under the Chiaion Mountains, and was kept at the Cathruban court for a time.”
“There are several theories as to how it was brought to Cathrubas, and then moved to Creonze after the city fell. There may be human agents who have had the rare ability to carry it.”
“I thought nobody could touch it without being burnt to death,” said Kavilas.
“The Enjeb may be able to,” said Niedde. “As far as we know, they are descended from a branch of the Cathruban royal family—I believe the word ‘Enjeb’ means ‘royal’, in as much as a direct translation is possible. So they may have been... modified... by their centuries of association with the Orufasu, and are able to come into contact with it without being fatally harmed. But there is no solid evidence any of them were present on each occasion the Orufasu has disappeared or reappeared at Creonze.”
“As far as I remember,” said Relchen, “Urzed never touched the Stone himself.”
“Hmmm, did he not? I find that quite illuminating.”
“The name ‘Serpentstone’ conjures up all sorts of sinister images,” said Elian. “I’ve never understood why it would be called that.”
Niedde laughed. “It is not a stone, as far as we know, but nobody with any capacity for objective research has been able to examine it. It is the Lifespring taken on physical form. As for the ‘serpent’ part... who knows?” She shrugged. “People are too eager to invent all sorts of inaccurate and dramatic terms for things that already have perfectly good names.”
“To look at,” ventured Relchen, “it does seem to shimmer and shift, like the scales of a snake. And like a serpent, it can be dangerous if threatened.”
“What did you... do with it?” Betharad asked him.
“When we arrived at Creonze, we knew it was the Orufasu, without question. It was so full of power, more than any of us had ever come across before—it was like standing next to an inferno.”
“You should have taken that as a warning not to meddle,” said Niedde in a voice that allowed no dissent. “The Orufasu has been the nemesis of many strong custodians who have tried to harness its power for themselves. Custodians with far more experience than you.”
Relchen nodded. “Yes, we knew that. But there were six of us, all quite strong in our own right. We practised meshing ourselves together so we could work as one, which we felt we needed to do if we were going to master it. Or defend ourselves from it.”
“But why?” asked Kavilas. Like Betharad, it was clear he could not imagine any sane person choosing to take such risks.
“Pride and curiosity, initially,” Relchen answered. “And a belief we were invulnerable which is typical of youth, I suppose. Here was one of the secrets the Academy went to great lengths to prevent us knowing about, now within our reach and nobody to stop us. We were aware of its nature, that it's the Lifespring embodied. If we could control it, there would be no limit to the good works we could achieve, and we would receive the respect of the Academy at last.”
Niedde thinned her lips and shook her head, but remained silent.
“The process of working out how to combine our own abilities took longer than we expected,” Relchen continued, “but after several weeks, and a lot of trial and error, we felt we were ready to link up with the Serpentstone itself.”
Though Betharad already knew what terrible events their actions would lead to, her hands clenched into fists in her lap as if she could stop the slide into darkness.
“What happened?” asked Kavilas.
“When we first tried, the Orufasu threw us back straight away, despite our combined strength. It was quick to sense a threat and defend itself. So we tried again and again, refining our efforts, and with time and practice we discovered how to push beyond its resistance and tap into its power.
“But then the Enjeb appeared and attacked us.”
Niedde asked with an undisguised sneer, “And why did the Enjeb attack?” It was a rhetorical question, for she continued without pausing. “You didn’t stop to think, did you? All your years of studies at the Academy, and none of you remembered the Enjeb have virtually worshipped the Orufasu for centuries. Either they felt you interfering with their beloved Orufasu and came to investigate, or it summoned them to help it. Against them both, I’m surprised you survived as long as you did.”
Relchen bristled, then subsided almost as quickly. “Of course we’d heard of the Enjeb, but we understood they were no longer considered a threat,” he said, his tone more resigned than defensive. These were old wounds. “As far as we knew, they had settled down and nobody had heard of them for at least fifty years. Their reappearance in these lands would have taken anyone by surprise.”
Kavilas looked at Amacet and Niedde. “I’m about to send a group of Town Protectors to Creonze to search for Jessa and Sarnd. From what you’re saying, I could be sending them into more danger than they can handle.”
Amacet nodded. “Even your most experienced people would not have a chance of prevailing against the combination of the Orufasu and the Enjeb, weakened though the latter may be.”
Betharad’s urge to stop talking and start acting welled up again. “We must get to Creonze as soon as possible, if you’re right that Jessa and Sarnd have been taken there.”
“I agree,” said Amacet, surprising her. “But we need to weigh up all the possibilities and risks so we are as prepared as we can be.
“That said, I have been researching the Fissures for many years, and Niedde is the Academy’s expert on all things related to the Orufasu, and there is much about this situation even we cannot predict. Relchen was the one to create bindings around the weapons to suppress their true natures, but his link to them can only tell us so much. When we do reach Creonze, we may need to make some difficult decisions. It is our duty to make every effort to put a stop to the perils the world will face.”
Betharad agreed with him. She would do whatever it took to save her siblings, regardless of whether she put herself at risk in the process. She nodded, anticipating he was now ready to discuss their options.
“There is another danger, too,” said Niedde. “One that could prove to be far more difficult to contain. The Fissure at Creonze is where the demon Karrti was trapped, I believe.”
Was that a note of glee in her voice? Betharad found herself shaking her head. The last thing she wanted to hear was that Karrti was involved.
“Indeed,” Amacet replied. “But the barrier there is strong, and has held for over a thousand years. There is no reason to think the demon is a factor in all of this.”
“Urzed mentioned Karrti to Jessa,” Betharad reminded him.
“And he was trying to use the Orufasu to break the barrier last time,” said Relchen.
“That could have been catastrophic,” said Niedde. “At least you managed to do one thing right, and stop him. While we do not believe the Orufasu and Karrti have ever encountered one another before, we have enough information to understand the potential consequences if that occurred.” She crinkled her forehead before nodding. “We can only hope it was the Orufasu itself that resisted Urzed’s attempts to use it for that purpose.”
“It could have been,” Relchen said. ”It resisted the six of us for a long time, before we worked out how to overcome it.”
“If it took six of you to do that,” Amacet said, “then alone, Urzed lacks the strength to force it to his will.”
“Perhaps,” said Niedde. “But who knows what he can achieve, if he works out how to control the creatures?”