4th Corvil, 410 A.A.
Breodanir, King’s City
ZARETH KAHN WAS a pale and unbecoming shade of green when he stepped out of the golden circle onto the hard, polished wood. He saw his reflection, saw it waver, and saw—although it took him time to comprehend exactly why—its sudden approach.
Elodra Carlsenn caught his shoulders with the flats of two braced palms, easing his rapid descent. “You’d have to be face forward,” he grunted.
Jareme Margon laughed, stepping into the range of Zareth Kahn’s peripheral vision; he was dowdily dressed but handsome as always. He was a member of the mages’ school because his curiosity, when it caught him, drove him hard. Unfortunately, he was adept at not being so caught; Jareme defined the word lazy. “He couldn’t be guaranteed that you’d try to catch him if the only thing at risk was his thick skull.”
Their voices were comforting, familiar, and slightly distant, the aftereffects of a spell woven by the combined powers of four members of Averalaan’s Order. Four members, and the power of circles that had been carved into stone and wood by an Artisan whose name was history.
“Zar?” Sela stepped forward last as Elodra propped him up and skillfully wound an arm beneath his arms and behind his back. “You look awful.”
“And you, Sela Mattson, look wonderful.” He would have kissed her hand at the very least—although she hated the gesture—but he didn’t have the energy to lift his own.
“We’d word that you were coming. It came half an hour ago through the crystal relays; nearly scorched the mirrored surfaces. I’d guess some first circle mage condescended to pass it on, with more thought to speed and less to power level. What’s going on in the capital?”
“I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to tell you,” he said stiffly. His lips felt numb. “But Matteos has sent the fire-mages out after Krysanthos.”
Sela and Jareme exchanged a wary glance.
“What?”
“We’ve a missive from the Queen’s representative.”
“A message?”
“A missive. You’ll want to read it yourself.”
He doubted it. “Well, it won’t be my problem for the foreseeable future.” Straightening out as much as he could, while still leaning against Elodra, he pulled a creased scroll out of the length of his sleeve. “Elodra.”
The slender lines of Elodra’s brow drew up in suspicion. Suspicion which, quite frankly, was well-deserved.
“You’re going to have to take it,” Zareth Kahn said. “It’s council writ.”
“Elodra?” Jareme said, his voice rising on the last syllable as the member of the Order stared uneasily at Zareth Kahn’s offering.
“Leave him be,” Sela said. “He knows what it is, and if you’d half a brain, you’d know it as well.”
Elodra Carlsenn straightened out a shoulder—the one against which Zareth Kahn wasn’t leaning—and accepted the weight of the Magi’s writ. “They’ve made me Master, haven’t they?”
“Of the college in Breodanir, yes.”
“But I’m not—but you’re—”
“Zoraban wasn’t either. Apparently, second circle mages of my age and dignity have a very good chance of achieving first circle if not bothered by the day-to-day travail of keeping an Order in one piece.” He smiled grimly. “And look what happened to the only other second circle mage that Breodanir boasted.”
Elodra swallowed. “But I hate speaking to the Queen,” he said softly, to no one in particular.
“She won’t bite,” Sela said, smiling broadly. “Well, all right. She might a bit—but she’s reason for it. Elodra, you know this is perfect, both for you and for the Order here. There isn’t another man who could pull us out of this mess. Or any other mess, for that matter.”
“Wonderful. So instead of finally forcing the lot of you to become independent, responsible human beings, I’m forced to give in and take over.”
“It’s not,” Zareth Kahn said politely, “as if you don’t already pursue that course. Can we move? My legs are about to collapse.”
• • •
It was not just as messenger, or even diplomat, that Zareth Kahn was returned in such haste to Breodanir’s lesser Order. He was a second circle mage, and his specialty was in the gathering of information. In a month—if, he thought grimly, they had a month—his brethren from Averalaan would join him in greater numbers. Krysanthos had dwelled a decade and more in the Western Kingdom of Breodanir. Evidence of his life, his dual life, lay waiting to be uncovered.
Or so Zareth would have said. But Krysanthos was a man who had hidden his arts and his practice for a long time against the admittedly poor vigilance of the Order. Had he time to prepare? Had he known that he might fail in his assassination attempt at the Elseth preserve? Zareth Kahn thought it unlikely, for Krysanthos had always been an arrogant man. But he’d always been a cunning one as well.
The evening of his arrival in Breodanir, Sela quietly led him to the chambers of the Order which Krysanthos habitually occupied. Her demeanor was the only warning she gave of what he would find within; charred stone, ashes, shards of broken glass. Of his books and papers, very little remained, although evidence of ruined leather bindings that had been spell-protected lay fragmented among the ashes.
He hoped the Order’s mages were up to the task of reconstructing.
4th Corvil, 410 A.A.
Averalaan, Senniel College
“Kallandras, are you all right?”
“I—y-yes,” the golden-haired bard replied, with about as little conviction as Sioban had ever heard him use. His face was twisted in a momentary grimace, as if a spasm of extreme pain had unexpectedly come upon him; he used his long, golden curls as a curtain.
Sioban, her own hair peppered with time and drawn back in an unruly bundle, shook her head slowly to indicate her lack of belief. “What happened?” She straightened up, pulling her elbows from their perch on the sea-facing wall of Senniel College. The wind was heavy with the tang of salt; it was a brisk day, if a warm one. “Kallandras?”
Kallandras shook his head; his face was the white-gray of ash. He bowed, low and stiff, and then leaned onto the stone tops of the wall as if by doing so he could avoid her scrutiny. Sioban Glassen was a stern woman, the Master of Senniel, but also a very patrician mother figure for at least half the college. It was rumored—although she denied the rumors strenuously and severely when some youngling had the temerity to ask about them to her face—that she had served in the Kings’ army during the skirmishes with the Dominion of Annagar; if she had, Kallandras was certain that it was as the representative of the magisterial courts. She had the voice and the demeanor for it.
He took a breath, and then another one, filling his lungs with the wet air and his mouth with the aftertaste of salt. Many argued that Senniel was not ideally positioned for the training and care of young vocal cords, but few indeed were those who, when offered a post or position at Senniel, refused it.
Senniel had been his home for the last ten years, and Sioban had been bardmaster for all of them. He doubted that there would ever be another Master of Senniel; she seemed part of the pillars and foundations that stretched from the vaults to the heights.
“Kallandras, I asked you a question.”
“I—had a momentary cramp,” he replied.
She snorted. “I’ve seen you break your arm without grunting, young man. I don’t appreciate a lie, and I’ve half a mind to speak the truth out of you.”
He didn’t even stiffen; he knew it for the hollow threat it was. Not that she couldn’t do it had she the mind to, for although not all bards were talent-born, Sioban was. She had the voice—he had heard her use it precisely once—but he wasn’t certain how strong the gift was.
At the moment, he didn’t care.
The sea shifted along the horizon like murky water in the grand aquariums of the Royal zoo. He tried to grip the stone beneath his hands and felt it, hard and cold, refuse his hold.
“Kallandras!”
Her voice was in his ear, beside his face; her arms were around his chest. He felt them, but they were distant.
The screams were not.
She could not hear them; no one who had not been trained by and bound to the Kovaschaii could. But the dead were calling in pain and isolation, and somehow, for reasons that he did not understand, his brothers were not responding.
“Kallandras, go to the healerie. No, never mind. Amerin! Come, bring Tallos with you!”
The echoes of the screaming died; he took a deep breath and pulled himself away from the Master’s awkward embrace.
“Stay where you are, Kallandras.”
“I’m—fine,” he forced out.
“The Hells you are.” She looked past his shoulder at the sound of running feet; there were two, one heavy tread and one light. “Good. Help me with him.”
“Amerin—”
“Shut up, Kal. Don’t argue with the Master.” A red-haired man six years Kallandras’ senior caught his left arm; a dark-haired older master caught his right.
“Well, he’s not feverish,” Master Tallos said gruffly. “Out a little late last night, eh?” Then his eyes narrowed. “It’s Kallandras, isn’t it?”
“It is indeed Kallandras, as you well know,” Sioban said curtly. “I wish him taken to the infirmary. I will be down shortly to see what the physicians have to say.”
Both Amerin and Tallos nodded in unison at the commands of the Master of the college.
Kallandras did not argue further. Instead, he suffered himself to be steadied—to be almost lifted—and led away from the wall.
• • •
Kallandras was a mystery, and Sioban was too old to be attracted to the mysterious. She was, however, the bardmaster of Senniel, and it was her responsibility to see that the college ran both safely and securely. It was Sioban who had first interviewed young Kallandras when he was brought to the college, and it was Sioban who decided that, past unknown, she would accept his word of honor that that past posed no threat to her or her Order and allow him to take one of Senniel’s coveted positions as a student.
There was, of course, minor outrage, for Kallandras was considered young. That outrage was both calmed and further incited—depending on which master it was who had originally raised the uproar—when Kallandras proved an adept and able student with concentration enough for five students his age and an ability to remember that even Sioban found difficult to believe. Such focus, and in such a seemingly normal youth was unheard of, but it was his song, his voice, that truly made him special.
He was bard-born, there was no doubt of it.
He had graduated from the ranks of the applicant to the apprentice, and from there, in six short months, to journeyman. He had traveled for a year each with Amerin and Sorrel, and then, at the end of that second year, he had again outraged the masters of the college by taking the bardic challenge. He had emerged, if not unscathed, as a bard.
It had not come as a surprise to Sioban.
If Kallandras sang it right, she was certain that he could call down the wind and the rain from the heavens itself—that the Gods who were listening, who must listen to such a voice, would grant him their blessing and their boon.
She shook her head, wondering if she had ever had that effect on those with the ear to hear it. She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye, thinking herself maudlin, but not particularly embarrassed to be so. Kallandras was all angry youth, and his song spoke to the heart, but there was little joy in it yet. She hoped that one day, that would change.
Ah, but that was a matter of song, and this a matter of the college. What are your secrets, Kallandras? She rose. As a bard, she knew how to listen, and in his voice, in the few words that he had spoken as he began his collapse, she could hear a horror so strong it had shaken her.
She was not a woman who liked to be shaken.
• • •
The screams returned, and in them, wordless, was the pain of a betrayal so vast that it made Kallandras feel—for perhaps the only time since his desertion—that his own crime had been paltry. He started to rise, and the glowering man beside the pallet caught his chest with the flats of both palms and pushed him back.
It was the physician Hallorn, a man with the right disposition for a cook in a very fine house. “This is the last warning you get, Kallandras. You lie back, or I’ll have you strapped down. Do I make myself clear?” His face was ruddy, and seemed sweat-dampened; the lines in his brow were deeper and darker than usual.
Kallandras nodded, but the nod did not appear to placate Hallorn. He wasn’t certain why; although Hallorn was known for his temperament, he was not often angry at the college’s youngest bard.
He closed his eyes a moment, and then opened them again; he could hear them, distant now, although he was not certain they would stay that way. There were two voices; it was hard to identify them because they were so distorted in their despair and anger. But he knew why they were screaming.
They had died, but the dance was undanced; their bodies had failed, but their spirits, by compact, were trapped. The Lady could not come to them, come for them.
That will be me. He shuddered and then turned away from the thought as the screaming grew louder and more pained, calling all of his attention.
“That’s it!”
It was Hallorn, and the voice was a rumbling growl. He felt arms against his chest; he stiffened in preparation for defense before he remembered where he was. Who he was, now.
“What are you trying to do?” It was not the physician’s voice.
Free them, Kallandras almost replied. But he did not and would not. These were the rites of the brothers who had once been his, and whom he loved above all else, even dishonored as he was. He would not share them with any outsider.
But it was hard; the screaming grew, and try as he might, he could not feel the direction that it came from; could not see—as he had seen at every other death since his joining—the place of death. Oh, my brothers.
• • •
“Well?” Sioban’s voice was about as soft as the rounded curve of her lute.
“I don’t know.” Hallorn, wearing the lines of years of service quite heavily at this moment, shook his head. “We had to restrain him; he’s been in some sort of delirium. But it’s not one I’ve encountered before—there’s no fever, no vomiting, no widening of the pupils—nothing.” He wiped his forehead with a rough cotton cloth, and then dipped it in warm water and began to wash his face down.
“Do you think it’s magical in nature?”
Hallorn raised a dark brow and then turned to look at his patient. Kallandras slept, but the sleep was almost violently fitful. “I’m not of the mage-born,” he replied at last, but with some reluctance. “I wouldn’t recognize magic if it had been used. But if what you’re asking is, are these the mage-fevers, than the answer is definitively no.”
“What can we do for him?”
“We’ve got something that’ll dull the senses some—but we don’t usually give it unless someone’s in great pain.”
“He is,” she said softly. “Go ahead.”
He shrugged. Hallorn was not a physician who liked to overuse the herbalists, and she could hear his reluctance in every word that he spoke. That was right, and as it should be in a man of Hallorn’s care and fastidiousness. She, on the other hand, felt no reluctance whatsoever. “How long?”
“How long until what?”
“Until it starts to have an effect?”
“It depends on the person,” he said, and then, seeing her face darken, added, “probably an hour. Maybe half that.”
“Good.” She pulled up a chair—one of two, and at that, a rather rickety one—and took a seat beside the door. “I’ll wait.”
“So I gathered.”
• • •
“Kallandras.”
He opened his eyes. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, but the voices were almost a whisper. If he tried, he could ignore them. He wanted to try, but it was too much of a betrayal. There were straps around his arms, his chest, and his thighs. He raised his head and saw his body as if it were someone else’s.
“Kallandras, be still.”
He nodded, groggy, and sank back into the pallet. There was something running through his system, some hint of heaviness or wrongness.
“We’ve given you seablossom,” Sioban said, as if reading his thoughts. “You’ve been delirious, but it’s not something Hallorn recognized. There isn’t,” she added, “much that Hallorn doesn’t recognize.”
Seablossom. Niscea. “Can I sit up?”
She watched his face for a moment, as if waiting for something to happen; when it didn’t, she nodded and began to unbuckle the straps that Hallorn had, with such difficulty, put in place.
He sat, hating the sense of fuzziness, of heaviness—of otherness—but knowing that it was the seablossom that kept the pain at bay. Wary, he watched her as she watched him, aware that his facial expressions were on the outer edge of his control.
“What’s wrong?” It was a question, but there was a demand in it.
Kallandras knew that she could hear the lie in his words, and without the screaming, without the viscerality of fear and the blind need to find and aid the helpless, he could think clearly enough that he had no desire to make the attempt. He said nothing.
Sioban waited. And waited. And waited. Finally she spoke. “We can’t help you if you don’t tell us what the problem is.”
“I know.”
“This has something to do with your past, doesn’t it?”
He did not reply.
“Kallandras, you—”
“Bardmaster?”
Sioban turned toward the door; it was ajar, and the head of a young applicant peered around its edge. “Yes?” she said, in a tone that made it clear that she did not appreciate the interruption.
“There’s someone here to see Kallandras.”
“Oh?”
“Y-yes, Bardmaster.”
“Kallandras is indisposed at the moment; I don’t believe he’s expecting visitors.”
The young face paled but nodded and disappeared. The door closed quickly in its wake. “Good. Now we—” She stopped speaking as the door opened again. “Courtney,” she said, in as severe a tone as she ever used.
“I’m afraid he’s gone back to his tasks,” was the reply.
Sioban turned at the sound of a stranger’s voice, and saw a woman in long, midnight-blue robes. Her face was hidden, but her hands were not; they were smooth but strong; the hands of a woman in her prime, not her youth.
Kallandras smiled, but the smile was peculiarly bitter. “Hello, Evayne,” he said softly.
• • •
“I cannot stay,” she said at once, as she pulled the hood from her face, ignoring the bardmaster. She was thirty-five, he thought, or maybe a little older; her forehead already had soft lines, and her cheeks seemed hollow or shadowed. Her violet eyes were darkened. “I heard that you were unwell.”
He said nothing, his lips turning down in the subtle scowl with which she—at any age—was familiar. She turned to the silent older woman who sat by Kallandras’ side.
“Bardmaster, I believe?”
“Sioban Glassen,” the bardmaster replied, speaking through slightly clenched teeth.
“We must speak alone for a moment, Kallandras and I.”
Sioban glanced at Kallandras, surprised at the expression on his face; his lip was curled slightly, and his eyes narrowed enough it seemed his lashes might touch. In anyone else, the expression might be one of irritation, or even momentary anger—but coming from Kallandras, Sioban knew it for the open hostility that it was. Certainly very little provoked that reaction from him; she could not, offhand, recall a single other occasion. There was a song here, but it was probably an evening’s work, and at that, one which required multiple voices.
“Kallandras?” Sioban said, although she thought she knew his answer.
“I’ll speak with her,” he said at last.
Sioban nodded curtly. She wanted to warn Evayne not to exhaust him or otherwise cause his condition to worsen, but she didn’t want to reveal something that Kallandras might consider personal or private. Instead, she stopped in front of the shorter woman and met her gaze, brown eyes against violet. She took her measure in that glance and was unsettled, although she couldn’t have said why.
But she left them alone.
• • •
“Why are you here, Evayne?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, coming to sit by his side in the chair that the bardmaster had vacated. Her robes eddied and then settled into perfect folds in her lap. “But Stephen of Elseth is now in Averalaan. The year is 410. Kallandras, do you have the spear?”
The bard started and then relaxed. “Yes. She brought it to me. The wild one.”
“Good.”
“Why?”
“I believe—although I am not certain—that you will have to deliver that spear to either Stephen or his Hunter Lord Gilliam.”
“Stephen is the boy you sent me to protect.”
“He is no more a boy,” she replied gravely, “than you.”
He nodded and then closed his eyes; his equilibrium had been damaged by the mixture that Hallorn had given him.
“Kallandras?”
“I am well,” he replied, without opening his eyes. “Where is Stephen?”
“I believe he is at the court of the Twin Kings.”
Kallandras gagged and then forced his body to bend to his control as it almost always did. He was fighting the effects of the brew, or rather, his body was; his mind knew that without it, he might not be able to function.
What happens to the rest of my brothers? he thought. What happens to those who are already on the Lady’s mission? The answer was horrible to contemplate, but the Kovaschaii did not flinch from horror. Or at least, Kallandras reflected bitterly, he did not.
If he could find them . . . if he could simply see . . .
He opened his eyes suddenly and met Evayne’s. They were guarded, as they always were in his presence. He started to speak and then fell silent; three times he opened his lips, and three times, the words would not come.
The screams, dim and distant, came instead. And, as before when he hovered on the brink of the choice that she had given him, he could not simply listen passively; he could not let his brothers suffer and die, even if to save them was to betray their edicts. He stared at her; she was perhaps ten years older than he at the moment, and more peaceful for the years.
I left my brothers for you, he thought bitterly. What is one more betrayal?
“Evayne, I have given you obedience, and I have served you in all things as you have requested since you first found me.”
She nodded, waiting. Unlike Sioban, her wait was not in vain.
“I have asked you for nothing; I have done what must be done, measure for measure. If you walk your road alone, you have condemned me to walk mine in loneliness.”
She nodded again.
“But now, I wish a return for my efforts. I wish you to tender a service to me.”
She was tense, as he spoke, and that tension seemed to tighten her and hold her in place. “What would that be?”
“I need the aid of the vision that you were born to.”
“Why?” One of the things he most hated about Evayne was the neutrality of her voice. Only young, with anger and pain, was it easy to read what she felt in her tone.
He swallowed.
He was surprised when she met him halfway. She reached into her robes; they parted for her, showing him a glimpse of silvered shadow. The light came out of shadow into her hands, turning into crystal-encased mist—the seer’s crystal. With care, she settled the ball between her cupped palms and waited; her robes settled back into the folds that gravity—and not magic—decreed.
“Two of my brothers have been killed.” He spoke quickly and then looked away. She had always been an ally, but a hated one, someone whose presence he bore out of necessity and a greater sense of duty. He, who needed no one but the Kovaschaii, had asked for aid from no one when his brothers had been forever denied him. Until now. “I wish you to find their bodies.”
“I am not certain,” she said, in an even tone, “that it is possible for me to do what you ask. My—my vision does not work on demand, Kallandras; what the crystal reveals is, in a way, part of me.”
He was bitterly disappointed, and turned from her; he did not doubt her words, for he had never known her to lie to him.
“Wait,” she said, and touched his shoulder with the curve of the glass. She flinched as he did; for a moment, they were almost reflections of each other. “If you—if you will tell me more, if you will touch the ball—if you will take the risk that I will see too much of you—” She pulled the crystal’s surface away, and Kallandras was surprised at how cool the air against his skin was in its absence.
“And how much,” he asked her bitterly, “will I see of you?”
“More than you ever wanted, if you choose to look.” She held up the ball, and her eyes were very dark as she looked above its perfect surface to meet his.
He was not—had never been—stupid; he understood then that the risk she took was in some ways greater than his own—for he was cruel, and knew it. His cruelty, subtle and quiet, had only been reined in because he did not know how to hurt her. Did not know if he could ever hurt her as she had hurt him by forcing him to help her in her fight against the unnamed.
She waited, neutral and impassive, the sphere between her hands.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked at last, as he placed both hands across the warmth of the crystal. The sensation was profoundly disturbing; it was as if, for a moment, he had reached not crystal but something that existed beneath skin and bone and flesh. A heart. It pulsed in his hands.
“I am doing this,” she replied, “because you asked. You only ever had to ask.”
“Not true.”
Her smile was a rare and genuine one. “No, then—I was young and far more angry, I think, than you know. But save for that first year it has been true.”
“Do you know why I hate you?”
“I know.” He watched the muscles in her forearms cord as she forced her hands to hold the crystal sphere where he could reach it. “But speak not of hate if you wish to aid your brothers. Tell me, Kallandras. Tell me of the Kovaschaii.”
Silence then. The sound of three hearts; hers, his, and the sphere that lay between them, a bridge across the abyss. He did not want to tell her what she needed to know.
“I am of the Kovaschaii.” He spoke without inflection, as if the words were too brittle to contain real emotion. “I was raised by them. I grew up in the labyrinths of Melesnea, learning the rituals of the naming, the killing, and the dance.” He had desired little else for almost ten years, but to speak of it openly was wrong; he lifted his hands and his fingers fluttered a moment, like trapped butterflies, before he once again touched the crystal.
“I was bard-born, although they did not know it immediately. I came to the talent late in my training; I was small and grew slowly for my age.
“I learned to kill. Is that what you want to know? I learned how to kill quickly, and how to kill slowly, and how to kill secretly.” His eyes narrowed as he studied her face; it was still and perfectly composed. He wondered if she was listening, and it stung although he could not say why. But he continued to speak. “We did not practice on our kin, or even upon the unchosen; the blooding and the death are sacred to our Lady, and all death is upon her altar.
“What life did you lead, Evayne? For I led the life of a brother. We ate together and drank together and practiced our rituals in the secrecy of the world that we created. While others were dreaming of love and work and a home, I was dreaming of the dance and the death, of the approbation of the Kovaschaii.” He dreamed of it still, and once again his fingers convulsed as if they had a life of their own. Are you listening, my brothers? Can you hear the wrong I do?
“We are the servants of the Lady. We do not kill unless she blesses the killing: she chooses those deaths that she will accept.” He closed his eyes and he did pull away, covering his face. “She chose yours.”
“And perhaps one day you will give it to her.”
He laughed bitterly, aware that in doing so he told her more than he usually did. “I will not kill you, Evayne; the time has passed.” Swallowing, he forced himself to touch and speak again.
“We join the brotherhood when we complete our first mission in the Lady’s name. She accepts us and anoints us, and we are suddenly linked or bound or woven into the very heart of the Kovaschaii; it is as if we become part of a single spirit. We know who our brothers are; we know them by more than sight.
“I’m sorry. What was I saying? Ah. That the Lady accepts us and anoints us and binds us. But the bonds are stronger than life or death, and when our bodies fail, or if we are killed on her mission, our souls do not leave.
“The threads she has woven with, only she can break. We know when a brother dies. We feel it, or see it, if we are close enough. And we go to the fallen, and about the fallen we perform her rituals.
“And then we dance the death. And when we dance it well enough, the Lady hears us and she comes. Only when she comes is the brother finally free.”
For the first time since he had started his halting speech, Evayne spoke. “And you are still a part of the Kovaschaii.”
“Yes.”
“And when you die?”
He did not answer, but it was answer enough.
She stared at him, and her eyes were slightly rounded; she was shocked or surprised; he had achieved at least that much.
But it was not to do either that he had asked for her aid. He swallowed. “I can hear them, Evayne; I do not know how long it has been since their fall—but I did not feel the death. They have been trapped, and isolated; they are not part of us, but not free. They have been betrayed by the Kovaschaii—and that is not possible.”
“You said you can hear them?”
“I—can.”
“Then listen to them, Kallandras; listen, but do not lift your hands.”
He did as she asked; he found it almost easy to follow orders. It was the drug, he told himself. But the crystal was warm beneath his hands, and as he opened himself up to the cries of the betrayed, he held the round surface as if he had never known warmth until he touched it.
They were crying now, with the wild anger that comes only from the deepest of wounds. He listened, trying to reach them; trying to find a voice with which to make himself heard. Where are you? Where are you, my brothers? We are coming! We are searching!
He opened his eyes and the light streamed in, hurting him. Tears ran down his cheeks as he stared at the seeress. She stared back, and he saw his own tears shining along her cheeks. “I’m sorry, Kallandras,” she said, and her voice was shaky. “But I—I cannot see them.”
The hope fled; his mouth became suddenly dry. “What do you mean?”
“ I—I don’t understand it. I should be able to find something—the connection between you is strong—but there’s only darkness. There’s nothing at all that I can see.”
She rose and pulled the ball back to her chest as if to absorb it. Her face was pale. The neutrality was gone, and in its wake were guilt and confusion. She smoothed these from her expression, but it took time, and Kallandras still saw the traces of it in her eyes.
And then he, too, rose. Nausea pulled him floorward, but he held himself steady, fighting it. When the sensation had dimmed, Evayne was gone.
He did not know how he felt, and that was curious. A day ago, he would have been happy, because he knew that she was suffering for her failure.
And he knew that she had not failed. He wondered if he would have explained it had she lingered—if he would have attempted to ease her of her guilt. He did not wonder long. Instead, he began to make plans; he had to visit the court of the Twin Kings and seek out Lord Elseth and his huntbrother.
Which was the only thing that would be easy; his services had already been requested by the younger of the Queens—Queen Siodonay the Fair—at any time of his convenience; she was a bright and sunny woman with a hint of the bardic about her, and he was one of the few youthful things with which she surrounded herself.
Hands shaking, he rose; if he wished to attend court, he must send word, for even if one was favored, one did not presume overmuch upon the grace of a monarch.
4th Corvil, 410 A.A.
Breodanir, King’s City
The glass shards were magicked, although they did not shine under the first of the three spells he chose to sweep over the remnants of Krysanthos’ chambers. He might never have known their nature, except that the young men that Sela sent—juniors in every sense of the word, were overzealous in their attempts to categorize everything they stumbled over with their cloddish feet. One boy, Zepharim, cut his palm upon a long and slender sliver.
It had been a fight to preserve his life.
Vivienne, the much called and underappreciated Priestess of the Mother, came at once, and worked long into the night. Her hair had silvered with the events of the last year, but her face was fine and strong, and her eyes, golden, shone brighter than they ever had as she pursued her life’s work. The Order’s doctor had suggested amputation as a recourse; it was not done, much to the Priestess’ relief.
“This is not glass,” she told Zareth Kahn darkly, standing in front of the pile of splinters and shards that he now kept under magical confinement.
“What is it?”
“I would say—although I know it to be impossible—that it is very much alive. Dormant, as you see it now. I don’t know what it was.”
“I do,” Sela said, her voice muted. “Vivienne—will you keep these events to yourself?”
“I have always,” was the wry reply, “been a trusted confidante. And I have no great desire to see panic or fear among the people of my city.”
“It was his mirror. He traveled with it almost everywhere. I thought him vain, but it was a fine, perfect surface.”
“Oh?”
She blushed. “I remember thinking it maker-made because there was absolutely no distortion in the image it reflected. I assume he kept it with him because he could not—on his stipend—ever afford to replace it if it were broken or stolen.” She grimaced. “That, and he was not averse to his reflection.”
• • •
He would have waited for the mages from Averalaan. In truth, he looked forward to their arrival—for Breodanir had become his territory, and he felt, although he would have been loath to admit it, much at home there.
But she came, although it would be the last time for many a year that he would see her shadowed face. He lay in the shadows, and she stood wreathed in them. But it did not seem strange to him that she should arrive so.
“You are not sleeping,” she said softly.
“No.” He paused. “Nor you.”
Her hood was low; he thought he saw the flicker of a smile across her lips, but he could not be certain. A smile was often a thing the eyes did, and her eyes, violet and strange, were well hidden. “I was not sent from Averalaan in such short order, at such a late hour.”
“It wasn’t my magic.”
“No.”
Silence. He was not certain if he dealt with the older or the younger woman; her voice was inflectionless and gave little away. Almost, he thought, as if she had no memory of their travels together—as if he were a stranger, or a near stranger. He did not ask. Instead, he said, “Why have you come?”
“To tell you—to ask you—to leave the Order. You will be wanted in Averalaan Aramarelas when the year is out.”
He rose, casting just enough light to see by. “Why?”
“If I could tell you that, mage, I would, and be done. But I cannot. I ask it as a favor; there will be no earth-shattering consequences should you choose to deny the request. But I offer you information in return for this service.”
“Information?”
She said nothing, waiting.
And he knew that he had responsibilities that should keep him in the King’s City for months to come yet. But he thought he heard something beneath the smooth words that troubled him.
“Evayne,” he said, calling her by name for the first time, as if she, like a demon or the First-born of old, could somehow be bound by the word.
“Yes?”
“Does this have something to do with Lord Elseth and his huntbrother?”
Her silence was long. When at last she broke it, she did not answer his question. Not directly. Instead, she said, “When you walk the road to Averalaan, please stop a moment at the eastern borders of Breodanir. Speak with Lady Elseth. Tell her of your travels, and the fate of her two sons.”
It surprised him, although later he would realize it for the answer that it was. “All of it?”
“All of it. She is not a fool, and not a girl; let her understand that her sons have left her for no small reason.”
“She knows it now,” he said dryly, touching his shoulder as if the wound still stung.
“She knows it,” was the quiet reply. “But time and fear erode the certainty of the feeling—and will erode it further ere the end. Tell her; you are good with words, and you have fought for your lives together. She will listen.”
He nodded, then, thinking it wise for the Order’s sake. Lady Elseth, of the Breodani, had been the noble wronged by the actions of the renegade mage. He took a breath, and silently began to enumerate the items that he would require in his travels.
“Zareth Kahn, your part in this game is at an end. What the mages seek here, they will find with or without your aid.”
“Or they will not find, as the case may be.”
She said nothing.
“I will travel as you request. But the information—I will require it as proof that this journey was undertaken as a method of barter, and not dereliction of duty.”
“As you will. The shards of glass and splinters of wood that you have so carefully gathered are the physical body of one of the demon-kin. Blood will wake it, and the correct spell; nothing else.” She turned from him. “It was a mirror, but more; it could speak directly to its master, no matter the intervening distance.”