The impossible vision before her was a perfect duplication of the man Elenai had seen years before. The straight brown hair that hung to the nape of his neck. The sharp nose and deep-set eyes. The spare, angular frame draped in blue Altenerai khalat, the dark pants and knee-high boots.
The twin of N’lahr addressed them in a low, tense tone. “Kyrkenall? What are you doing here?”
The archer stared, his sword leveled. “Elenai, is someone weaving us?”
Her sapphire glowed. A warning that magic was being employed, or a leftover effect from her hearthstone use? She still didn’t know enough about the rings to be certain. The most recent exercise of power had already left her short of breath, but she acted without hesitation.
With her eyes open, the inner world lay across the outer. There was no missing the brilliance of the hearthstone now lying on the moth-eaten rug or the diminished glow of its shattered look-alike in two halves nearby, or the shifting golden corona around Irion. More importantly, N’lahr’s duplicate was formed from the same complex mix of threads as she and Kyrkenall. He was no more an illusion than either of them. But was he the real N’lahr?
“Squire?” Kyrkenall demanded without looking away.
She stammered her answer. “He’s real.”
“No he’s not,” Kyrkenall said savagely. “This is some hearthstone shit. Another trap.”
“Kyrkenall?” N’lahr asked. “What’s going on? Where’s Denaven?”
“You’re not real!” Kyrkenall charged him.
N’lahr neatly batted the swing aside and back-stepped to the fireplace, brow drawn.
“Stop!” Elenai shouted, but the archer bore in.
“You’re not him!” he screamed.
N’lahr parried each of the attacks. His eyes slitted as he parried a deft slice.
“The real N’lahr would fight back!” Kyrkenall said.
“I am N’lahr!”
“He’s dead!” Kyrkenall beat his opponent’s blade to thrust home.
“No!” Elenai cried.
She needn’t have worried. N’lahr wrenched himself to the right—his only movement, she realized, that hadn’t looked effortless—and locked his opponent’s blade at the hilt with his own. “I’m not dead!”
They stared, face-to-face. Kyrkenall bared his teeth. “I saw you interred!” He strove to push the blade away by sheer force of strength.
Though his voice was strained, N’lahr still somehow sounded calm. “I swear I’m as real as you are. Put down your sword.”
“Tell me something only N’lahr would know.”
“Like what?”
“Prove you’re him! What did you say to me before the battle at Broken Ridge?”
The taller man’s brow furrowed. “I don’t remember. You were galloping ahead of me anyway.”
“No, you idiot, before! When you and Rialla and I rode out after Asrahn!”
N’lahr looked blankly back.
Gods. Elenai licked her lips. Was Kyrkenall right after all? Was this some kind of elaborate trick?
“You mean when I laid out the ambush,” N’lahr asked, “or how I asked Rialla to link us?”
“Not the tactics! You don’t remember the speech?”
“Something about standing together? I don’t know.”
Kyrkenall cursed under his breath and backed away. He spoke softly, almost resentfully. “It is you.”
“I’ve been telling you that.”
He slowly lowered Lothrun. Still staring, he slid his blade home into its sheath.
“Now would you tell me what’s going on?” N’lahr looked to sheath his own weapon and found no sword belt at his side. “And where are we? This looks like the Chasm Tower.”
“We are in the Chasm Tower,” Kyrkenall answered dully. “You’ve been dead seven years.” To N’lahr’s stolid look, Kyrkenall replied: “I used to come to your tomb on your birthday and raise a drink.”
“I was dead?” N’lahr asked.
“I saw your body.”
“It must have been faked.”
“I guess so! But it was a good fake. It fooled all of us.”
N’lahr frowned. “You still haven’t answered me. What am I doing here, and what’s going on? And why is a squire wearing a khalat and ring?”
Kyrkenall tensed a bit, but indicated her with a wave of his hand. “This is Elenai Dartaan.”
N’lahr considered her formally and offered a courteous nod while Kyrkenall looked to the floor. It took a moment for him to muster an answer, and when he did so, Kyrkenall was uncharacteristically terse. “A few days ago, Asrahn took your sword down to polish it for a big festival they hold in your honor each year. He could tell it was a fake, and when he talked about it, he was murdered.”
“Asrahn? Murdered?” N’lahr looked disconcerted for the first time. He glanced at the sword in his hand but didn’t challenge anything else in his friend’s narrative. His voice dropped. “Who killed him?”
“Do you remember Squire Cargen and Squire K’narr? They were made Altenerai. They did it, along with some weavers. I killed them. Elenai helped.”
She felt N’lahr scrutinize her. The lanky general sank onto one of the battered backless chairs near the crude camp table opposite the door. His lips were pressed in a thin line and his hands were clenched, but his tone continued an enforced calm. “Go on.”
“We don’t know much more,” Kyrkenall confessed. He pointed a finger at her. “Elenai pulled an image out of Cargen’s head right before I drove a sword through him. It was of this tower. We were asking him where Irion was. As for the khalat and the ring, well, we’ve been chased ever since, and I figured she could use the protection because she was riding with me. Cargen sure didn’t need it. Now maybe you can explain to me what you’re doing here. Alive.”
“What about the war? Have we won?”
Kyrkenall held up a hand. “You’ve got a hundred questions, I’m sure. I don’t blame you, but I really need to know what you’re doing here.”
N’lahr stared for a moment, then set his famed sword across the table. “The war, Kyrkenall. And where’s Kalandra?”
“I’m asking the questions, remember?”
N’lahr’s gaze was fixed.
Kyrkenall threw up his hands. “She’s missing, N’lahr. Like Commander Renik.”
Elenai had never before heard anyone refer to Renik as “missing,” although she supposed that was technically correct. Missing and long since assumed dead.
N’lahr’s expression darkened further. “For how long?”
“Since right before you … died. Or whatever you did.”
Elenai noted that a muscle in N’lahr’s jaw clenched. “Didn’t you look for her?”
“Yes! Damnit, N’lahr, focus. The Naor sued for peace; they keep raiding and biding their time, but that’s not our most important problem right now. Odds are we’ve got an army, our army, riding toward us with Denaven in command, and they may be in a mood to kill first and sort it out later. I might have thrown them off when I rode into the Shifting Lands, but Elenai and I can’t turn off our hearthstone, so they could be right over the horizon for all I know. It really depends on how soon they found the bodies.”
“Bodies?”
“Cargen, K’narr, and the other yankers who murdered Asrahn. Now. You’re all caught up. What are you doing here?”
N’lahr looked down at his khalat and carefully hooked it up—he seemed to be deliberating. For the first time, Elenai noticed he was moving his left arm stiffly.
“I assume it’s the queen and the hearthstones,” he said flatly.
“Which means?” Kyrkenall demanded.
N’lahr stood to finish adjusting his robe. He then knitted his brow and simply stared into space.
After this continued for a long moment, Elenai wondered if she’d missed some telltale sign when she’d studied his magical nimbus earlier. She’d heard of powerful weavers creating images of living creatures. In the story of the “Witch of the Wastes,” Derwyn had realized he was being tricked when the witch was distracted and the griffin simply stopped moving. Might N’lahr be nothing but an image controlled from afar?
She had just decided to look into the inner world to recheck when she noticed the archer actually growling in exasperation, and she was momentarily alarmed to find him addressing her while gesticulating dramatically. “He’s always like this! He’ll stand there working it all out and then give you a three-word answer and tell you to get moving.” Kyrkenall’s words lashed out with a vicious snap as he turned to N’lahr. “You miserable hastig! I thought you were dead!”
He came forward so suddenly Elenai feared he meant to tackle the other man. Instead, he hugged N’lahr tightly, the way a child hugs a returned parent. And he hung on as if he might collapse at any moment. His friend, startled, carefully patted him on the back.
“I thought you were dead,” Kyrkenall repeated.
“I’m here.” There was a hint of softness in that answer. N’lahr continued in a more normal voice: “We’ll just have to find Kalandra and get all of this sorted out.”
“Kalandra’s dead.” Kyrkenall broke away and cleared his throat. “She’s got to be, N’lahr. I’ve looked for her everywhere. I’m sorry, but if she were alive she’d have returned to Darassus by now.”
A momentary look of pain crossed his face before N’lahr shook his head.
Kyrkenall groaned, his customary impatience reasserting itself. “Enough about her for now, N’lahr. Say something. What’s going on?”
N’lahr pursed his lips. “I’m not sure, but I can guess.”
“Yes.” Kyrkenall extended an open hand, then spun it in a circle, as though N’lahr should get the wheel moving.
The swordsman seemed to come to some resolution. “Healers came to me after the Second Battle of Kanesh, and they had a hearthstone. My arm wound was deep, but the weavers knitted it together. I was putting on my robe when Denaven walked in with two squires, and one of them tried to maze me. I grabbed Irion. I cut down the squire working magics, and then felt the power of the whole hearthstone bearing down. Denaven was attacking, using the healer’s stone, trying to will me to sleep. I swung out and cut deep into the thing.” N’lahr looked over at his sword. “A strange sharpness spread through my body, and the last I recall was Denaven screaming that I’d broken a hearthstone. And then I was here.”
“Denaven.” Kyrkenall spat the name like a curse. “He’s commander now, by the way.”
“Lovely.”
“What was he after?”
“I presume he meant to silence me, at least for a crucial period. I’m sure he didn’t expect for the hearthstone to break, but it appears some unforeseen magics imprisoned me. Perhaps it was easier to keep me that way once it happened.”
Kyrkenall nodded. “And why would he want you out of the way?”
N’lahr looked up after rubbing one hand across his forehead. “The queen had received a Naor peace overture and I’d advised against it. Strongly. The Naor were all but beaten.” He paused as if a new thought occurred. “Why isn’t Aradel the commander?”
“She resigned in disgust when the queen announced the treaty. Are you saying they attacked you and faked your death because you didn’t want the truce?”
“Not really. The Naor offered to trade hearthstones for our withdrawal. A big cache of them. The queen was frantic because the Naor claimed to be able to destroy them, and threatened to do so unless we agreed.”
Kyrkenall pounded his hand against the mantelpiece “So that’s why she signed us over.”
“Didn’t anyone in the corps wonder why the Naor sent us so many hearthstones?” N’lahr asked.
“That must have been done in secret,” Kyrkenall said. “The official line is that we agreed to the peace treaty ‘to spare our citizens the privations of extended warfare’ and ‘demonstrate the civilizing influence of mercy and tolerance.’ Common opinion has it the queen wasn’t sure we could carry on without ‘the great N’lahr.’” Kyrkenall’s sideways gaze and slight crooked grin emphasized the last phrase.
N’lahr evinced no humor at the irony. “You mentioned that you were being pursued.”
“We think so. It looks like some of the Altenerai are leagued with Denaven and the auxiliary and they’re trying to cover up your disappearance.”
“Auxiliary?”
“The queen formed them. All mages. It’s like a separate corps.”
“That’s … concerning. And exactly why are you being pursued?”
“Because I avenged Asrahn. I thought finding the sword would clear things up, or at least piss them off—”
“That sounds like you.”
“—but now we’ve found you. I guess that’s what they were really worried about from the beginning.”
“Are they on horses, or ko’aye?” N’lahr asked.
Kyrkenall made a scoffing noise. “No one has ko’aye anymore. Except maybe Aradel.”
“Why not?”
“The queen didn’t honor your word to Drusa. The ko’aye were, shall we say, irritated. They didn’t understand.”
N’lahr scowled. “I don’t imagine they did.”
Elenai recalled that “Drusa” had been the name of Kyrkenall’s ko’aye mount. As curious as she was for more details about the creatures, she had more pressing questions, and had been waiting for a long enough pause in the conversation to ask one. “So do you know what the hearthstones are, Alten? Commander, I mean? And why the queen wants them so much?”
N’lahr weighed his response for a moment. “I wish I knew the answers to those very questions. I sent Kalandra to find out more. I hope she’s gotten to the heart of it.”
Kyrkenall’s eyes widened. “Wait a moment. You sent her out? I thought the queen did.”
“I told her to ignore the queen’s instructions.”
“So you know where she is?”
“I know where she was supposed to go. The fact it’s been seven years has me worried. As you said, she should have been in contact with you, or Asrahn. Any of the Altenerai. How many are still alive?”
“All but Asrahn. And you.” Kyrkenall smirked. “Aradel resigned, of course, and Belahn’s pretty much retired to Wyndyss. Actually Aradel’s been made governor of The Fragments now. Boy, did that irritate the queen. I guess that’s where we’ll have to go next. Aradel can give us safe haven and access to the council.”
Elenai had another idea. “Even if there’s a whole army after us, won’t they stop once they see N’lahr’s alive and well?”
Kyrkenall shook his head quickly. “First, I don’t know if it really is an army. I was using—”
“Hyperbole,” N’lahr supplied.
“Right. Denaven might just come with some of the Altenerai who are in on it. If they’re already against N’lahr, making himself known won’t matter at all.”
“Why don’t we just ride back to Darassus with Commander N’lahr? The more people who see us, the more uproar we’ll cause, and the less likely they can act against us.”
Kyrkenall looked as though he was mulling the idea over. It was N’lahr who objected.
“On the enemy’s ground, when we don’t know the terrain? Even presuming we survive the assassination attempts, we lack adequate information to effectively counter their treachery. We need Kalandra.”
“You keep saying that.” Kyrkenall sighed. “Suppose she can’t be found. Suppose they found her, and killed her.”
“I doubt it. She was on her guard, suspicious of the queen and her allies before I was.”
“What do you think Kalandra will be able to tell us, Commander?” Elenai asked.
“Hopefully, the truth about the hearthstones. What they are, why the queen’s desperate for them. How we can counter them. Everything. Beyond that, we’ll profit from her advice and her skill.” He paused to clear his throat. “Now. What resources do we have?”
Kyrkenall indicated himself and Elenai. “Us and our weapons. A few days’ worth of dried stores. My horse. Some eight horses in the guard’s barn outside, but I don’t know what kind of shape they’re in.”
“Who can we count on?”
Elenai felt a flush of pride when Kyrkenall pointed first to her. “Elenai. I’d like to say we could trust most of the other Altenerai, but I just don’t know.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe Decrin, Tretton, or Varama are part of some secret cabal.”
“Probably not,” N’lahr agreed.
“I don’t think Belahn or Cerai could be involved, either. He’s too homebound and she made her feelings about Denaven pretty clear. Not as clear as Aradel, of course.” Kyrkenall grunted appreciatively. “She cursed Denaven to his face, right after he accepted his promotion.”
“So Aradel, then. Any squires we can depend on?”
Kyrkenall shook his head. “I don’t know them anymore.”
“There are some fifth rankers I trust,” Elenai said. “But they’re in Darassus.”
“So that’s it?” N’lahr asked Kyrkenall.
“I’m afraid so. I haven’t been around the center of things.”
“You said Belahn’s retired.”
“Pretty much.”
“Then we go to him. He can shut down Elenai’s hearthstone. Then we ride for Kalandra.”
“Why don’t we just go straight to Kalandra?” Elenai asked.
“It’s on the way, and I don’t want Denaven to track us to her, which he can do as long as your hearthstone is, as you say, active. And I’d rather have Kalandra put that stone to good use for us than leave it for Denaven’s purposes. Let’s pack it up, along with these remnants.” N’lahr indicated the broken fragments of hearthstone beside the one she’d wielded. He then looked down to the weapon in his hand; the blade that had been their goal for so long. “I don’t suppose either of you have the sheath?”
“No,” Kyrkenall said. “There could be one in the old barracks building. If not, the bodies out there on the plain have one or two.”
N’lahr looked for a moment as if he might have more questions, then shook his head and started for the door.
“Be careful—there’s a dead monster right outside. At least, I think it’s dead.”
N’lahr stared, as if trying to decide whether his friend was serious. “I’ve got a sword,” he countered with a half grin, then stepped away while Kyrkenall smiled broadly.
Elenai watched him depart, still a little stunned that the legend was not only alive, but joking with them. As she stepped over to the hearthstones, she heard Kyrkenall behind her. “You’d best be careful with those hearthstone pieces. Seems like cutting the one in half made it unstable.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Use the cloth I was wrapping the other with.”
“I’m watching through the inner world. The pieces are inactive now.”
“You sure?”
“Which one of us is the mage?”
“Hah. Well, watch yourself. My supply of friends is low, despite recent events.”
She stuffed the first half into her satchel and then reached for the second part. She couldn’t hold back a smile of her own.