Analindë (The Chronicles of Lóresse) (48 page)

The water settled, turned inky black, then shifted to a bluish white. It took a moment to realize that Arandur was sleeping outside, surrounded by snow; the light of the moon and stars filled the landscape with a glowing blue light. Fatigue lined his face. Analindë felt a sharp pang inside. Her friend was suffering.

She pulled back to a wider perspective, and his companions came into focus. There were five of them in all; two of them she recognized. These days Arandur didn’t travel anywhere without Sintriel and Thalion. It was because they worked so well together that they’d risen through the ranks of the scouts so quickly. Rumor said that they read each other’s minds and completed each other’s thoughts. She could almost believe it, except that Elves couldn’t read minds. They simply knew each other extremely well.

Wanting to know how far they camped away from the Mountain City, she zoomed out yet again to view the landscape around them. Large piles of snow-covered rocks surrounded the scouts, separating them from the icy white barrens. They slept about a half day’s journey away from the city.

Where were the Humans?

She envisioned the Human wizard and the bowl filled with blackened mist. Alarmed, she dropped the thought, refocused, and then switched back to a view of the Mountain City. This time she simply searched for any signs of passage. The Northern and Southern entrances to the city were well used; the snow had been trampled and was icy in places. They must not have an apprentice to melt the path, she mused. Everywhere else the snow lay crisp and pristine as if it had just fallen. Unless they’d smoothed the snow behind them, no one had passed over other routes.

She scanned the valley, occasionally finding a path broken by a scout or sentry and by deer or other wildlife. She glimpsed no other signs of passage.

With trepidation, she changed tack; thinking firmly of the three Humans, the sight of the city vanished only to be replaced by swirling black mist. She waited for a moment, and when the ominous black mist didn’t do anything to her, she continued on.

Thinking that perhaps the Humans had split up, she thought only of the wizard. Water swirled and black mist rose and pooled over the side of her bowl, but other than that, she saw nothing. She thought of the woman and then the burly man in turn, then of the three Humans together in different combinations, and then of places they could be hiding. She pictured them hiding in a cave or inside the hollow of a great tree, or perhaps inside the burrow of some large animal. She imbued each place with a sense of where the Humans were. Nothing worked.

Analindë focused her mind back on the valley containing the Mountain City and pushed the image toward the bowl. A pre-dawn blush now lit the sky as the stars and moons slowly faded away. A few moments later and there would be enough light to aid her search of the caverns which Master Therin had mentioned. She turned her focus to the western foothills near the city walls and painstakingly searched them out.

She looked into each crevice or crack she saw, looking for signs of habitation, and found many burrows and caves filled with wildlife. She found a fox and her kits, rabbits burrowed deep within the earth, even a puma sleeping in its den, but no Humans.

Her hopes were raised when she found the faint tracks of something that walked on two feet; the signs of passage were expertly hidden. She followed the tracks along as they wound through the forest until they neared a cave of sorts.

Elated, she pushed the image forward. She rounded the cavern opening and her excitement plummeted; there sat an elven scout warming his morning meal. No wonder the tracks were so expertly hidden. She criticized herself.

With sinking hopes she turned her thoughts toward the forestland on the eastern side of the city. The hunt for tracks was accomplished that much easier in the pale morning light. She made quick work of the last bits of her search.

With the search of the surrounding areas completed, she released her hold on the scrying spell and watched the residual energies from the spell dissolve away. Disappointed, she slumped back into the chair and drummed her fingers quickly along the desktop.

She abruptly sat up straight in the chair and gripped its arms; her knuckles went white and the fabric strained beneath her touch. Only the void remained. She’d have to try again. She took deep breaths attempting to steady the rapid beat of her heart. She thought one more time of asking Andulmaion to come and sit with her, but he would never consent. Not now. She pushed thoughts of doom away from her mind and reached down to the stone beneath her yet again.

Seeking the solidity of the ground beneath her, she meticulously reinforced her anchor, blending another tendril of thought down into the stone below her until she could not tell where one began and the other ended.

Again and again she sent tendrils down until she had four anchors in the ground beneath her. Not until she had calmed herself and become completely focused on the task at hand did she push herself out into the void beyond. She immediately recognized her surroundings.

No wonder she’d felt so drained last night, she’d forced the void to take shape. And it had held! The inky blackness immediately surrounding her was still black, but not quite as inky.

She mentally wove her way through the tower shields and with little effort followed the path she’d taken before. While she traveled, she realized her grievous error. She guessed that forever more these spots of her void would retain the form she had forced it to. Never again would she be so foolish as to make everything take shape before her eyes so that she could see. It was a beginner’s error that had almost cost her more than she had to give.

She paused in the black velvet surroundings of a forest glen deciding she might as well try the version of the scrying spell she’d adapted for the void. She looked back to check her anchoring. It remained intact. She checked her source; Energy flowed into her through the connection. She smiled at the newfound knowledge that anchoring brought and turned back to the forest.

Honing her focus even sharper she brought the image of the Humans to her mind for the second time that night and said, “
Palan
Sinomë
.” There was a slight resistance; she gripped the image harder, giving it a punch of Energy. Then she flew, first being pulled then pushed quite a distance from where she’d been. The familiar prickling black lights she’d tracked in her mind so many weeks ago flared to life in front of her, zooming ever closer.

When her movement finally stopped she looked back to her anchoring. Shaken, she realized how truly lost she would have been had she not clearly marked the place to return. This knowledge was almost enough to have her scampering back to safety, but she didn’t.

She’d decided to act, not quake in fear. Well, that wasn’t quite true. It was possible to quake in fear and to act at the same time. She was doing it right now.

Analindë spun slowly around in a circle, attempting to sense her location in the void, trying to gauge her distance by the points of her anchors dimly glowing in the distance. It was impossible.

To determine what sort of place she was in, she once again wove power so that the void would take shape around her. This time it was more difficult. She wasn’t sure if it was because of the distance or because of the shields and wards of this place, but she did know it was necessary. And so she put a forceful rush of power behind her intent as she felt the contours of space around her. First there was a wall, then a floor, a ceiling, doors, tables and chairs, and then shelves appeared. The humans appeared to be sleeping, sprawled out on couches.

She pulled back to a wider perspective, then wider and wider again. The place was enormous. She forced the general outlines of the buildings to take shape, then finally reached the broken city walls. They had crumbled in one place. It appeared to be an abandoned city, far off to the east; she couldn’t quite make it out in its entirety.

She once again tried to find her bearings to figure out exactly where she was but didn’t have much luck; she didn’t have markers to gauge the distance within the void. She knew she was east, but how far east? The best she could guess was that she was several days travel east of the Eastern Hills.

She watched the flickers of the Humans stir, then wake, as they went about their morning routines. She concentrated on the thought of her room and said “
Palan
Sinomë
.” Once again she was abruptly catapulted through the void toward her room in the tower; buffeted back and forth, she arrived in less time than it took to draw a breath. She worked her way back through the shield into her room. It was a jarring way to move within the void, but it worked and she couldn’t fault it.

She opened her eyes and turned her attention to the silver bowl in front of her. She fixed the inky black image of the abandoned building in her mind and said “
Palan
.” The water swirled, it solidified, then twisted this way and that. For a moment, the blackened mist reappeared and it seethed turbulently. Analindë firmly imposed the form of the building in her mind on the water; it rippled then stilled. Going completely black, an image began to unfold within the bowl.

First a wall appeared, then the image stretched out to form a room, a few couches, and a couple of doors. Stacks of books lay on a nearby table. Some of the stacks moved back and forth between the shelves and table as if they floated. Ha. She’d found them.

The Twenty-Seventh Chapter

S
he couldn’t see the Humans,
but their movements betrayed them. It looked like they were still searching for the Mageborn Books, but where were they? She tried to zoom the image out so that she could find some identifying object or signal that would indicate where they were. But the wards of the city pulled against her. They were powerful. Trying to zoom the image wider was like prying a sealed box open with a crowbar. It was difficult work. She didn’t stop to wonder too long about why she’d gotten through the ward in the first place; she was just thankful that her attempt had worked. So she pitted her will against that of the ward, forcing the city to take shape. She succeeded, but the process was painstakingly slow. Bit by little bit, the image from the void turned into something she saw.

The walls of the buildings were different from any she had seen before. The architecture placed them quite some time in the past, but she couldn’t date them. They were somewhat elven in design and formed what appeared to be an abandoned fortress-like city. The walls were formed from a reddish stone she’d never before encountered.

The scrying spell behaved differently here than it had at the Mountain City. What she saw was directly tied to how much of the void she’d forced to take shape. She saw the room the Humans occupied quite clearly, but she only saw the general outlines of buildings beyond that one room. It wasn’t long before she reached the bounds of what she could see. But she still hadn’t figured out where the fortress was, and she really needed to pull the view wider so she could see the city from afar. With a sense of urgency she reached for that spot in the void—where the fortress lay—in order to pull it into the bowl in front of her. She yanked a few times, and then with a great heave, it finally gave way. With a painful thunk the image landed in the bowl in front of her.

It felt as if something within her had ripped and given way, but Analindë didn’t care; she could
see
. Pushing the pain aside, she intently gazed into the glassy water. It showed a mighty fortress with immense walls as tall as an
asperill
tree and as thick as twenty paces. It had a look of being built primarily with defense in mind, not beauty. It looked raw, of brute force made to withstand anything and everything.

Despite their strength, a section of the powerful walls had been destroyed. Large chunks of the rock lay in piles. Scattered. Half buried under the desert sands that surrounded the fortress. The dark red rock of the walls blended with the red sands that swirled around them; from a distance the fortress would be virtually invisible. She doubted the high council would have ever found the abandoned city tucked far away in the east.

It was an ancient city even by elven standards. If forgotten books lay in the deserted buildings, the Mageborn Books were most likely among them. Analindë spoke the words to mutate her scrying spell to hear words, but it refused to adapt. She flung herself back into the void to search out the fortress once more. Now comfortable and feeling secure in the inky blackness before her, she quickly found the Humans once again in the room deep within the city.

She spoke the scrying word to listen and backed the word with a punch of Energy. Sound burst forth, startling her in the muted stillness that was the void.

“I’ve already searched this shelf twice over,” the scratchy voice complained.

“Do it again,” a man commanded.

“Yes, Rubric.”

Sounds of books sliding back and forth across shelves ensued. The sound of shuffling feet, strained breathing, and something heavy being plunked down onto a wooden table came next.

“Here’s the next stack; perhaps it’s among these?” said a lower pitched voice.

“Perhaps. Now start searching that set of shelves. Let me know when you’ve finished. I’d like you to re-search the other room when you’re done.” The confident voice then started to mutter ancient words over the books one by one as he moved them from one stack to another. Recoiling in horror, Analindë stumbled back out of the spell and found herself sprawled back in her chair with the beginnings of a raging headache.

She didn’t need to listen any further to know that the situation was more dire than they had thought. Understanding the words and recognizing the intent that lay within the them, she shuddered. He was searching each book with a spell of
knowing
, absorbing all the knowledge and spell work from each of the books he touched as he searched for the Mageborn Books.

Analindë had heard rumor that such a spell existed but had never actually known anyone to use it. It was a shameful thing to do. The process of gaining knowledge in such a way was only acceptable in the most desperate of situations; it was otherwise abhorred. The Human wizard must be stopped before he learned things that Humans should never know. Why, with the power that the Human wizard wielded he could unweave the entire world by accident.

She hurriedly retracted her senses back to herself from the other side of the shield, disengaged herself from the anchors that held her to the stone floor, and then ran quickly from her room.

She found Andulmaion pacing the tower library. She paused at the threshold; he looked so serious she wasn’t sure how to interrupt. Anger and frustration ebbed throughout the room so thickly that she felt it press against her; volatile emotions snapped at her. He approached the advanced books that were kept in the bookcase and reached out to open the glass doors protecting them. A boom ensued and he was thrown across the room. He smacked into a chair. An end table loaded with books toppled to the ground. Books scattered as a crystal bowl shattered on the stone floor.

“Andulmaion!” she rushed forward to help, but he’d already scrambled to his feet by the time she reached him. “Are you all right?
”

“He has locked me out!” he said, gesturing wildly at the glass bookcase across the room. He bent and helped Analindë set the chair and small table back upright and started picking up scattered books. He rubbed his shoulder while she fetched a broom to sweep up the shards of glass. “Don’t bother,” he said as he sent a swath of Energy out from his hand. The fragments disappeared.

“Why would he lock the case against you?”

“He knew I would try to follow.”

So Master Therin had already left; she was too late. She stepped back and watched Andulmaion study the bookcase as he paced.

“But things have changed. If I don’t go and stop him he’ll die. I have seen it, and I know.”

“You
know
?”

“Yes, I
know
.” He studied her consideringly. “Have you ever heard of Elenna the Wise?”

“Wasn’t she the one who helped establish the elven lands and foresaw the–”

“The Elven Wars. Yes, she was blessed with the knowing. It was very strong with her. She saw many eventualities that could happen in the future if certain circumstances came to pass.”

“She saw how the Elven Wars would happen and how they could be stopped, didn’t she?” Analindë said quietly.

“Yes, but no one would listen. Those things were well documented so that we, her descendents, would know and could learn from her experiences. What is not known is that she saw a few things beyond the Elven Wars and wrote them down as well. Those volumes have been passed down from generation to generation among her descendants.

“I’ve written to my parents, but have not yet–”

“You’re related?”

“I am. The
knowing
pops up every now and then. Never as strong as it once was, but mighty enough. I happened to get it.” He frowned. “Analindë, a great evil is about to be unleashed against the world if the present course continues. Much is written about the second sons rising up. May the stars will it not so, but there is little doubt.”

“You said that Master Therin was going to die?” she prompted.

“If he faces the humans he will die. I saw it this morning just as I woke.” He threw himself into his favorite chair near the windows. The morning winter light harshly lit the room. “I would stop him if I could and take his place. But I have no way to follow, and he would not listen before he left.”

“About the visions, do you have them often?” She thought of her nightmares and wondered, just maybe, if she should have been consulting him instead of Master Therin for all of these weeks. “How do you tell if they’re real?”

A surprised look crossed his face; he opened his mouth to respond, but then shut it back up again. He looked confused. “It appears that I cannot speak on the matter,” he finally offered.

Analindë chuckled, just her luck. Of course he couldn’t speak on the matter. She wondered if his gift was similar to Mirëdell’s source. She let the matter drop.

“There is something you should know,” she said. “The Humans aren’t at the Mountain City, but in an abandoned fortress far into the Eastern Desert.”

Andulmaion’s head snapped up; his eyes sought the truth in her eyes. “How do you know this?”

“I found my way through the void and saw.” The stars in his eyes circled with worry but she hurried on, not letting him speak. “The Humans are searching through ancient books of knowledge for the Mageborn Books, but that is not all. The wizard . . . he is absorbing the knowledge from the books as he searches, becoming stronger with each one he reads.”

Andulmaion paled, “He must be stopped.”

An idea began to circle through her mind and she moved to a chair near him, stepping around a few scattered books still on the floor. She lowered herself to the chair, perching forward on the edge. “Andulmaion, I have thought perhaps we may be of use to each other. I made it through the tower shielding last night, and–”

“You did what? No, it’s not possible, Master Therin and I–”

“Andulmaion, I made it through the shields last night. They are still intact. Neither Master Therin nor yourself was alerted else we would not now be having this conversation.”

He sat back in his chair, considering her. Analindë waited for him to decide. She relaxed a very little bit as the seconds ticked by without him giving her an automatic no. He finally said, “You would have us work together . . . how?”

“I’ve become quite adept at shields and shielding in general; you can’t doubt that. And your new spell is quite a weapon.”

“It’s not finished.”

“But it works, and could do the job.”

He reluctantly agreed with a nod.

“All we need is a good warrior to back us up. You heard Master Therin; they want the Humans dead and don’t intend to question them. If that is all that needs to happen, then–”

“Analindë, Master Therin would not be pleased if I take you out into danger. I’ll be facing enough of a tirade if I go myself, let alone if you accompany me.”

“You need me,” she countered. Her heart raced and her skin tingled.

“No, I don’t.”

“You do, because I can get your book out of the bookcase.” He looked puzzled. She continued, “Master Therin knew that you would try to follow him; I doubt he had the same thought about me. He most likely set the ward against only you. Also, I know where the Humans are.” Something inside her twisted . . . perhaps guilt? He looked surprised at her newfound assertiveness. Was she forcing him into this? No. He wanted to go; she was just ensuring that she could go with him. She wanted to go with him to confront the Humans who had taken so much from her and see justice done.

“It does sound like him.” He didn’t look happy about the prospect.

“But first a bargain. If I get the right book down, will you let me accompany you? Shall I try?” With success in reach, she felt anxious.

She watched Andulmaion as he silently debated his options. He finally answered, “Only if you stay back out of the way, and only shield. I will not have you come else.” Something within her took flight and soared.

“Agreed.” She strode across the room, and some of her euphoria ebbed away as she remembered Andulmaion flying across the room and smacking into the table.

“Be careful Analindë,” he said as she neared the bookcase.

“Do you know which one you need?” she asked.