Denaven sat brooding on the porch of the empty house in the empty village as the sun rose. The home Ortala had found for him at least contained none of the eerie, immobile living people. He’d managed sleep in the narrow bed, but he was hardly refreshed, for instead of the resolution he’d expected he was left with more complications. Kyrkenall left them in his wake like a weaving drunkard dropping bottles.
Somehow Belahn had failed him. Somehow Elenai had killed him, for there wasn’t a mark on his body. It defied reasoning that such a newcomer could defeat someone so skilled with the stones. Maybe he’d just been too weakened to combat her. He looked like he should have died weeks ago.
Finally there were the notes, stabbed into one of the gate doors courtesy of kitchen knives. The more alarming of them had been terse and direct for all the precise elegance of the hand that had written it:
We observed a Naor troop that is likely in advance of a larger force. Send warning to all Allied Realms. Mobilize defenses.
Summon mages to release the trapped here in Wyndyss.
Belahn’s body lies within his home. See to his funeral. We lacked time to inter him properly.
N’lahr, Altenerai Commander
If not for Denaven’s spell of influence, that one note would have shattered the fragile shield of lies he’d forged. He’d had to apply a great deal of careful pressure through the links to both Decrin and Tretton, reminding them that Kyrkenall might easily mimic the look of N’lahr’s orders. Fortunately, sight of Belahn’s remains had eased their building skepticism, for it certainly appeared as though Kyrkenall had been responsible for the death of another alten.
As for the second note, well, that had been signed by Kyrkenall himself: a bit of doggerel that suggested improbable events involved in Denaven’s conception and ancestry. That had neither helped nor hindered his cause with the others, but the lines of verse set Denaven gritting his teeth each time he thought of them.
This morning Decrin and the squires were escorting Belahn’s emaciated body to the village’s cliffside crypts, Tretton and Lasren were following subtle tracks out a hidden exit, and Ortala was inspecting the statue-like citizens for some clue as to what had happened. He was left with Gyldara, on the off chance Kyrkenall and N’lahr had doubled back. You could never quite predict either of them, and when they worked together they were doubly problematic.
The younger woman was restlessly looking over her gear. Moments ago she’d left off sharpening a sword that needed no honing, and was now sitting on the porch edge inspecting her arrow points.
He could see her crisp profile as she stared into the distance. The lines of her face were exquisitely arranged: high cheekbones, full lips, slim-nostriled nose. It was a shame she was said to have no interest in men. At some other time he would have been delighted to have the company of so beautiful a woman, and to see about proving those rumors wrong.
As she sorted the belongings in her pack there was something pensive and bitter to her expression. He hoped she wasn’t questioning their goals, as he was quite tired.
He tried a jest. “Are you thinking of where you’ll plant those arrows?” He certainly was.
She was silent for a long moment, then blurted: “I can’t recall the last time I spoke to my sister.”
That was what she was thinking about?
She shifted closer and looked over at him, her lovely eyes shadowed with fatigue. “I didn’t really see her very often. We’re both … I mean we were both … busy with our duties. And I can’t remember if I saw her last when we shared a meal a few weeks ago, or when we stopped in a hall for a brief chat. I’d like to know which came first. Or last. It’s been driving me mad.”
He tried to sound interested. “Why is it important to you?”
“I’d like to know what our last words were.”
“Grasping at memory is like clutching at fog. You come away with nothing but the sense you missed something. And in this case it’s pointless. The important thing is that she thought well of you. She told me several times how proud she was of you.”
“She did?”
She hadn’t at all, but a little fabrication seemed most likely to bring this dull talk to conclusion. “I can’t recall her exact words, but I mentioned you in conversation, and she told me that she’d always admired your dedication.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Who doesn’t admire it? You’ve proven yourself the most devoted of the newly appointed Altenerai. I think you have a real future with the corps.”
There was sincere gratitude in her voice. “Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me. You’ve earned it.”
He thought that would close things, but she kept talking.
“I’ve been thinking an awful lot about Kyrkenall, too, Commander. He was a hero, once. He was best friends with the best of us all, wasn’t he? Commander N’lahr, I mean.”
Denaven considered pointing out that being famous or particularly skilled in one area didn’t mean you were the best, then decided not to interrupt.
“Yet he went crazy. What could make someone go bad like that?”
That was easy to explain. “You take someone with a little talent and then offer them everything in the world and they get to thinking they deserve it. And maybe they take more than their fair share and they get used to that. They make excuses for themselves, and bend the rules a little, and before they know it they’re less than they used to be.”
At that mention of unfairness, his own feelings of resentment flared. He’d earned his ring. Unlike Kyrkenall and N’lahr, he’d followed orders, yet they’d won the accolades, and the promotions, months before him. N’lahr had taken his sword. Irion. And Kyrkenall had taken Rialla.
Denaven still remembered the strangely opalescent corona around the sun that day. They’d been in Alantris, only a few days after Rialla had helped forge Irion, and the night after she’d been awarded the ring. He’d come by early that morning to ask her to breakfast. And who should come sliding out of her door, boots in hand, khalat undone, but Kyrkenall.
He snarled at the memory, remembering the satisfaction of seeing the breath go out of the smaller man as he smashed him in the stomach. Kyrkenall had been outmatched by Denaven’s ferocity and his combined use of spell work and physical combat. And Kyrkenall had been an alten, with him a lowly squire.
Gyldara interrupted his memory. “If Kyrkenall really did see some Naor, is it possible they put the spell on these people?”
“No. That’s hearthstone work.” More specifically that was Belahn’s work. He’d been obsessed with finding ways to preserve, or “protect,” living creatures ever since N’lahr had cut open a hearthstone and somehow frozen himself. But Denaven had convinced them that the squire had wrought the spell. He didn’t want them at all inclined to think Elenai an innocent. She had to be killed along with the others.
“I just can’t imagine that Elenai did this,” Gyldara said. Her bright eyes were heavy with regret. “I had no idea she was so powerful. She … she seemed a nice young woman.”
And here he thought Gyldara was firmly on his side and needed little urging. “She’s probably been deluded by Kyrkenall. He can be very charming. I know. I used to think he was my friend.”
He shifted the subject back to the squire and pushed a little energy through the invisible thread he’d tied to the young woman beside him. “Elenai had tremendous potential before all this. And she’s using the stone of Rialla. I don’t know if you’ve heard of her or not, but she was a great weaver, and her stone was one of the easiest to use with sorcery.” Many thought that wasn’t luck, but because Rialla herself had somehow altered it to her will.
“I haven’t heard much about her,” Gyldara admitted. “What was she like?”
“The most talented mage the corps had ever seen,” he admitted, a little wistful in memory. “She was the first one to learn how hearthstones could be opened for use. No one’s ever been better at it, even after all these years. She’s the reason Irion is such a fantastic sword.”
“How so?”
He spoke on, a little cautiously. “She was there when it was forged,” he went on, “and imbued it with magic. I saw the whole thing. She had planned to give it to me.”
He decided to test some version of the truth with her. He could better argue his right to the weapon, now that it would finally be available to him, if the younger corps officers understood his connection.
“I never knew that,” Gyldara said. “Why did she give it to N’lahr, then?”
He was silent for a moment, thinking how best to begin.
With Rialla. So much of it started with Rialla. “She’d been experimenting with enhancing weapons, and she told me she’d like to make one for me.” This was a drastic oversimplification. She’d actually manufactured Lothrun and Arzhun for Kyrkenall first. She and the little archer had developed a weirdly close relationship, though both denied it was sexual.
They’d been lying, of course, but he hadn’t known it then.
No one, not even Renik, had managed to unravel the secrets of the hearthstones before Rialla. No one, not even the Mage Auxiliary that followed, had such an intuitive grasp of them. And no one ever cast so beautifully. Seeing her work in the inner world was like watching a master painter lay brush to canvas. Everything she touched became perfection. He’d decided she was someone he needed to know better, no matter how odd she was.
But he was out of time. Rialla, Kyrkenall, and N’lahr were to be awarded the sapphire for a controversial bit of heroics that happened to work in their favor. Soon she’d be consumed with responsibility and, with a brevet between them, any pretense of friendship would be even more challenging. He had to create an opening.
The ceremony was planned for that evening. They’d be sworn in before the whole of Alantris and the assembled members of the corps. Even if a Naor army hadn’t been expected on the city’s doorstep any day, Denaven knew that morning was likely his best chance to get her alone.
Rialla, though removed as ever, was fairly tractable. She clearly liked experimenting with the hearthstones, and he suggested that another great weapon could help in the battle to come. To his delight, she’d agreed to fashion one right away. She rose early to walk with him through the streets in search of a blacksmith.
The air in the city had been clear and chill, but there was no missing the oppressive mood. Denaven had no way of knowing that the woman at his side would be dead soon. That day he merely savored her company, smiling down at her as they walked. She was a full head shorter than he, with fine, straight dark hair that swayed with every swing of her wide hips.
They turned a corner by one of the city’s impossibly beautiful flower gardens and passed through a stone arch into an open courtyard where three heavy-limbed men worked lengths of metal over molten red coals and boys pumped bellows near at hand. The craftsmen had been laboring long hours to make as many weapons as possible ahead of the invasion and they all looked tired.
A rank of finished swords hung on a rack nearby, and there were varied lengths and weights and hilts that were adorned or plain. Mostly, there were spears of different heights and thicknesses. A half-dozen serious youths sat beneath an awning, working in two assembly lines to take finished points, slide them into precut lengths of wood, then lace them in with cord and glue.
A slim teenaged girl, hair wrapped tightly in a white scarf, emerged to greet them. “How may we serve you?”
“We will be purchasing a weapon this day,” Rialla answered with abstract assurance.
Denaven’s eyes swept over the swords laid out on the tables even as the girl started her patter about this being the finest metalwork in the city.
“I know,” Rialla said distantly. Her face was rarely home to much expression, which lent her a serene, withdrawn quality, heightened by her pale blue eyes, the color of a washed out summer sky. “May I speak to the blacksmith?”
“Which one do you want? My brother, or my father? Or my uncle?”
“I want the best,” Rialla said, and the girl’s face clouded with perplexity. After a moment, she stepped away, and before long she returned with a thickly muscled, bearded man, shirtless but wearing a heavy leather apron. There was gray along his temples, and lines creased his face. He dabbed his sweaty forehead with a brown rag.
His voice was hoarse. “How can I help you, Squires?”
“Are you at work on any blades?” Rialla asked.
“I am.”
“I wish to be involved in the crafting of a sword for my comrade.”
Denaven’s heart swelled to hear these words drop from her lips. This would be life changing.
“We’ll do whatever we can to aid the war effort,” the blacksmith said. “What do you mean by being involved, though?”
“I mean to work a spell while you work the metal. I want to make sure you’re comfortable with that.” Her airy, rather emotionless way of talking didn’t sound especially reassuring. The blacksmith’s forehead wrinkled.
“This is Squire Rialla,” Denaven said quickly. “I don’t know if you’ve heard of her or not, but she’s to be inducted as an alten tonight. She’s the most gifted sorceress in the entire corps.”
The blacksmith’s bloodshot eyes studied the strange young woman.
“You’ll be in no danger,” Denaven assured him.
After a long moment, the blacksmith nodded. “If it will help the corps, then I’ll try.”
“Good. I wish a long, straight blade,” Rialla stated.
This was going quite well. Denaven preferred a straight sword and such would set his apart from that reckless Kyrkenall’s.
The blacksmith—Denaven learned his name was Bralt—said that he had four blades in process, and then asked Rialla which of the half-finished swords she liked best. She pointed to one without hesitation.
Bralt bowed his head formally to her. “That’s my favorite as well.”
The smith set immediately to work, shoving calloused hands into thick gloves and then heating the metal over coals. Before long, he used tongs to carry it to his anvil to beat at the glowing cherry steel as red sparks flew.
“It’s almost time to start,” Rialla said blandly.
“Do you mind if I watch while you work?” Denaven asked. “From the inner world?”
Her eyes met his for a brief, rare moment, and the sight of that pale blue staring into his own soul left him feeling exquisitely vulnerable. She looked away. “If you wish.” She didn’t sound especially happy with the idea.
Denaven politely bowed his head. “I thank you,” he said, deciding he would leave her be. He should simply have left his mouth shut and watched without asking.
A change came gradually to the blacksmith as he hammered the metal. His focus seemed greater, his breathing deeper.
The same transformation struck Rialla. The little woman grew fixed, rigid, and her fair eyes burned fiercely. She had grown positively stunning, and Denaven’s heart thrummed at the sight of her. He hesitated no longer to watch through the inner world.
He was instantly spellbound by the flow of energies wrapped about the little mage. He’d known she carried one of the hearthstones in her shoulder pack and had likewise guessed she’d call upon it, but he’d never imagined one person could control so much at the same time. The glowing tendrils that writhed between her and the blacksmith were beyond counting. She wasn’t just linked to him; astoundingly, she was linked to the sword as well, reshaping the character of the steel so that portions of the hearthstone’s intricate pattern were worked into its surface.
Gods, what a weapon this would be! And for him! He could feel the future opening wide before him, knew that he would be renowned as one of the great heroes of the corps, one celebrated for generations, like Alvor, or Altenara herself.
A hand closed on his shoulder. He heard Kyrkenall’s voice, hushed beside him. “What’s going on?”
Denaven turned on the instant, his sense of elation falling at sight of the shorter man. Like Rialla, and Denaven himself, Kyrkenall wore the gray tabard of the Altenerai squires, and his shoulder was decorated with six brevets. Beside him, naturally, stood tall, solemn N’lahr, his attention centered upon the blacksmith.
“She’s making me a sword,” Denaven said.
“I was hoping she would. I talked with her about it last night.”
Denaven frowned. Dammit. It had been foolish to think he’d begun to have some influence upon her. It had been Kyrkenall, of course.
The little man nodded. “We all feel bad about you being left out.”
Left out. That was a wholly inadequate way to describe what had happened. He’d obeyed the orders, and they hadn’t. And yet they’d received commendations, and risen in importance. Him, well, he’d gotten a kind word but also the implication that he hadn’t acted because he was too cautious. Or worse. It was monumentally unfair, and he wouldn’t forget. He’d find some way to repay the debt of inequity.
But he fought his anger. Only a fool grabbed the edge when the pommel was offered.
“Are you sure you two should be taxing her before the battle?” N’lahr asked.
Kyrkenall answered, “Well, I didn’t expect her to get on it this quickly. But I’m sure Rialla has a good reason for such effort. Maybe she thinks it’ll be key in coming days.”
N’lahr nodded as if it were well understood they defer to Rialla’s judgment on matters of timing.
One of the young assistants let out an exultant cry, and then another called out: “He’s done!”
Denaven and Kyrkenall and N’lahr turned to watch as the blacksmith set down the hammer, took his tongs, and plunged the blade into a barrel of water. He lifted it—steam rising at the same time searing water rolled down the naked blade—gleaming almost with a light of its own. Then, in his gloved hand, he raised it to the blue vault of the sky.
Rialla lifted her own right hand, swordless, at the same moment as the smith. She and Bralt spoke as one, her alto and his baritone echoing somehow across the whole of the blacksmith’s shop. All there halted their work to listen.
“Behold Irion,” they said, one being with two voices, “forged for the killing of kings, for he who shall be alten and commander, slayer of Mazakan!”
Denaven grinned, his hands tightening into fists. Already he imagined himself holding that sword and lifting it on high.
The two spoke on together: “Forever and always shall their names be linked: Irion, and its bearer, N’lahr Barcahnis!”
Even as Denaven’s mouth fell open at this betrayal, both the blacksmith and Rialla dropped as if sleep had struck them while standing. Kyrkenall raced to her side, shouting her name. And N’lahr turned to Denaven, confusion writ on his face. “I thought it was meant for you?”
“Apparently not,” he’d answered, stunned and bitter. To this day he wondered if he could have salvaged the debacle if he’d kept his wits to say something better.
His only consolation in that horrible moment had been watching the orphaned rustic scramble to pay the new weapon’s cost.
As he concluded his simplified account of the incident to Gyldara, he played the matter to his advantage, lying to reinforce his rightful ownership at the same time he strengthened the thread between them with the weight of truth: “Even though Rialla had changed her mind while she was working on it, N’lahr himself said it was meant for me.”
“Then you should be carrying it now he’s gone,” she told him. “Especially if the Naor really are on the march.”
He shook his head with weary reluctance. “Maybe I should have taken it up sooner, but that didn’t seem right after his untimely death.”
“You’re his successor,” Gyldara said. “And if Rialla had begun the sword for you, and even Commander N’lahr acknowledged it was rightfully yours, you shouldn’t hesitate.”
Exactly so. Except that he hadn’t been able to use the sword because it was locked away in a hunk of crystal for seven years. Now, though, it was time to fulfill his destiny.
“We’ll reexamine the whole matter should it prove necessary.” He wasn’t sure how he’d explain laying hands upon the sword they’d surely recover from N’lahr when there was a duplicate weapon in the hall, but he supposed he’d work that out when the time came.
Deciding there was nothing more to be gained from talking with Gyldara, he rose. “Excuse me. I’ve other matters I’d best look in on.”
“Of course.”
As he left her, he congratulated himself again on the lengthy experiments he’d performed against the defenses of the vaunted sapphire rings. Long years of effort had prepared him for exactly this kind of moment, when it had become necessary to shape the opinions of the Altenerai, allegedly unassailable by all but the most powerful, and obvious, sorceries.
His success was just further evidence that no problem was insurmountable if you put in the proper amount of preparation, especially if blessed with ample savvy and determination. He smiled grimly as he climbed onto the porch of another house farther down the lane. Sooner or later, his skill would overcome Kyrkenall’s luck.
Inside the home, Ortala was sitting right on the bench where he’d left her, the hearthstone on the little table beside it.
The exalt’s eyes were glazed, and the hearthstone shone from within. Ostensibly the bony weaver stared at the figures seated statue-like around a cold stone hearth, though he knew that she considered the delicate magical filaments that sustained, protected, and bound them in place.
He stepped deliberately into her line of sight and willed his Altenerai ring to full power. Even to someone enmeshed in the hearthstone, the sudden flare of magical energy would draw attention. “Report,” he said. “Are you any closer to freeing them?”
Ortala sat blinking against the slatted bench back before she could focus well enough to meet Denaven’s eyes.
She started to rise and he shook his head. “At ease. What have you found?”
Ortala’s square face was almost a comical scowl. “I’m just not sure if we can free them, Commander. It’s going to take a lot of effort. For each one.”
“It’ll have to wait then. I need the hearthstone to check on Kyrkenall’s whereabouts.” He actually didn’t want to have anything to do with the stone, but he couldn’t afford any more disasters. After the long ride and the expenditure of effort getting into the valley, neither he nor Ortala had been eager to magically track them last night, not when there were other signs Tretton could follow.
Ortala handed it up. Denaven nodded his thanks and left her there. The frozen woman and children in the home’s central room were unsettling, so he stepped for the porch, then sat down against the outer wall. He didn’t like holding the hearthstone in his lap as if it were a baby, either, and thus placed it under his hand on the planks beside him before slipping into the inner world.
It unnerved him that it was growing simpler and simpler to use this hearthstone. Once he returned to Darassus, he’d hand it back into the storeroom and make sure he requisitioned a different one the next time it proved necessary. The more he acclimatized himself to one particular stone, the more likely he’d end up like Belahn or the queen or one of the others enthralled to the cursed things.
He sent his spirit forth, seeking hearthstones northwest, the direction the outlaws had been heading.
Oddly, he felt nothing. Perhaps Kyrkenall and N’lahr had made excellent time, so he reached farther, drawing closer and closer to that maelstrom of incipient chaos that was the border of The Fragments and the Shifting Lands.
Might Kyrkenall already be traveling there?
He was loathe to search the nearby Shifting Lands with a hearthstone, dangerous as it was, but he did so.
And he discovered no active hearthstones inside.
Fighting down panic, he pulled back closer. They must have changed directions after they left the village. Yet there was nothing to north, or northeast, or west, or southwest, or south … more and more frantic, he searched each direction, discovering no stones active anywhere within days of travel.
He pulled back, stunned, and saw that Gyldara and Tretton stood on the porch beside him, and Decrin waited on the steps below. The larger man looked more weary than Tretton, though that might have been grief. Lasren, he finally noticed, sat on the steps swigging from his winesac.
“They’re gone,” Denaven said, immediately hating himself for the panicked edge in his voice.
Tretton disagreed. “They can’t be more than two or three hours ahead. Riding roughly northeast. They won’t hit the border for a few more hours. We can catch them.”
“But they’re not there,” Denaven said. “I can’t find their hearthstone.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Tretton said, dismissive. “The tracks don’t lie. They’re riding for the border.”
The answer came to him like a sword thrust. “By the gods.” Denaven held no faith whatsoever in gods and had long since struck reference to them from his vocabulary save for when he spoke to the religious. He put aside his surprise before the greater one of his revelation. “Elenai’s figured out how to turn down the hearthstone.”
Tretton understood his worry at last. “If even a minor storm whips up…” The older alten didn’t bother finishing his sentence. It was just possible to follow someone through the Shifting Lands, even without tracks, by detecting little echoes of order left in the wake of travelers. That assumed that the lands would remain calm, and that was far less likely than it used to be.
Denaven climbed to his feet, pushing Gyldara’s helping hand off. He could hope they’d catch them before they entered the shifts, or hope that when they entered there’d be no storm, but he wouldn’t “hang hereafter on a hope.” He put thunder into his voice. “Ortala!”
The exalt hurried out of the door and crowded onto the porch.
“I want you to seek the northeast border of the shifts through the inner world. And I want you to raise a storm. One so vast he won’t dare to venture into it.”
“Sir?” Ortala looked at him as if he were demented.
“It can be done,” Denaven said, striving his best to sound reassuring. Confident. “I saw Kalandra do it.” He’d do it himself, but it would badly weaken him. He couldn’t afford that, right now. “You’re one of the strongest casters in the auxiliary.”
“I’ll try, sir,” Ortala promised.
Tretton challenged him with his eyes. “If you raise a storm, they’ll become nearly impossible to find.”
“We’re going to stop them before they enter,” Denaven said. He called to the squires. “Ready the horses! It’s time to ride!”