The Measure of the Magic (19 page)

“Doesn’t look to me like anyone’s here,” he said.

She appraised him critically. “I suppose now that you’re here you want to help me look?”

The boy shrugged. “Depends. What am I looking for?”

“Anything that looks interesting. Any sort of clue that my grandmother might have left that would tell me what happened to her.” She threw up her hands. “I don’t know. Just look.”

They prowled through the empty cottage, moving from room to room, searching the darkness, afraid to light a lamp or even a candle because anyone watching or passing by would know there was someone inside in an instant. Phryne moved cautiously but confidently, familiar with the layout of the cottage, pretty much knowing where things were. Xac Wen didn’t seem bothered by unfamiliarity or darkness, slipping sure-footedly through the shadows, and Phryne found herself wondering if he had been here more often than he let on.

Their search was thorough, but there was nothing much to be found. Furniture was overturned, vases smashed, cabinets kicked in, and bedding thrown everywhere. Not only had Mistral been attacked, her cottage had been searched—which would suggest Isoeld was indeed looking for the blue Elfstones. Phryne knew Mistral had retained possession of them after their last meeting and apparently had hidden them again. Perhaps she had done so only as a precaution before the King’s murder, but afterward she would have understood that she
might be in danger, too. Mistral was no fool. If she had hidden the Elfstones, it was unlikely that Isoeld would find them here.

Or that Phryne would, for that matter.

Still, she kept looking, taking time to study everything. Xac Wen trailed after her, searching the same places, examining the same things. But neither of them saw anything helpful.

“This is a waste of time,” the boy said finally. They had reached the back porch and were staring out the window into the old woman’s gardens. “We could search this cottage from now until doomsday and never find anything. Whatever it is you think you’re looking for, I don’t think you’ll find it. Let’s go. It will be light soon.”

She knew he was right, but she was feeling stubborn about this. If her grandmother had felt threatened, she would have made preparations. She would have done something either to get word to Phryne or to leave her a clue as to where she had gone. She would have been prepared when Isoeld and her minions came calling. She wouldn’t have been caught off guard.

“We’ll look a little longer,” she replied.

She had just decided to go back to Mistral’s bedroom and start over when she spied the flowers. They were sitting in a vase by the open window, their petals caught in the faint starlight, radiating a soft crimson. Beautiful, she thought suddenly. But then she realized that flowers in a vase in an abandoned house should be wilted and dying, not fresh and new. She walked over to them, reached down and touched them experimentally.

To her surprise, they began to glow with a soft, steady light that suggested somehow they were lit from within.

“Um, Phryne,” she heard Xac whisper.

When she turned to face him, she found him staring fixedly at something off to one side, his mouth hanging open. He tried to say something more and couldn’t.

She followed his gaze and found herself face-to-face with Mistral Belloruus. Except that it wasn’t her grandmother exactly—it was something that approximated her. This Mistral Belloruus was vaguely transparent and so washed of color she was reduced to various shades of gray. She stood in place facing Phryne, but not exactly seeing her, eyes staring at a point somewhere in between where they each stood.

Phryne, listen to me
.

The voice was as pale and insubstantial as her image, and Phryne was certain in that moment that her grandmother was dead and this was her ghost. She sobbed audibly, and it was more than the night’s chill that made her shiver. Her grandmother had always seemed so indestructible. That she was gone seemed impossible.

“Grandmother,” she whispered.

This avatar will not last more than a few minutes, but I wanted you to be certain that it was I who was speaking to you. Isoeld and her creatures will come for me soon. It is inevitable. She knows about the Elfstones. Your father made the mistake of confiding in her. When she finds them missing from the palace, she will know who has them. With you imprisoned, there is no one to stand with me. My faithful will try, but they are old and lack even my strength. So the outcome is settled
.

Phryne was confused anew. If this was not a ghost, but an avatar created by some form of magic, then there was a chance that her grandmother was still alive.

I regret I did not have a way of rescuing you. I have sent word to others who might. One way or another, you will be set free. When that happens, you will come here to look for me and for the Elfstones. But we will both be gone
.

Xac Wen edged forward to stand closer to Phryne. His voice was a harsh whisper as he said, “I don’t think that we should …”

But the avatar was already talking over him.

To keep the Elfstones safe for you, I am taking them to a place that I know even Isoeld will not think to find me. If I hide the Elfstones here, they will be found. If I choose to remain behind, I will be found. So I am leaving. When you find the cottage empty, you will touch the flowers, and this avatar will awaken. In departing, it will tell you where I am. Read it on the air. Come to me after you do, and I will give you the Elfstones. Your destiny is settled. It has arrived much sooner than either of us expected and comes cloaked in misfortune and grief. But it cannot be turned away; it cannot be denied. Embrace it, child
.

Then she was gone, disappeared back into the night. Like smoke on a stiff breeze, the avatar shimmered and faded away. Phryne kept staring at the place it had last been, waiting for something more to appear.
Read it on the air
. She was trying, but there was only darkness and the memory of her grandmother’s words.

Finally, Xac pulled at her arm. “We have to go, Phryne! I hear voices!”

Still, she lingered, unwilling to give up. If she left now, she would know exactly nothing of where her grandmother had gone. She would never find the Elfstones. Everything would be lost.
Read it on the air
. Shades! She was trying!

“Phryne!”

Xac Wen’s voice had changed to a harsh whisper. She could hear the voices now, too. They were coming from outside the front of the cottage, soft and guarded. Men’s voices—Elven Hunters or something much, much worse.

Then the gloom right in front of her blazed to life, filling the darkness with huge words written with flames in bright red letters that sizzled and popped as if the air itself were burning.

Phryne felt her breath catch as she read:

With Xac Wen in tow, she went out the back door, across a small grassy open space, and into the gardens. Swiftly they gained the forest beyond, pausing there to crouch down and look back. Lights were moving inside the house, two or three, and she could hear the scrape and clump of heavy boots on the wooden floors. If she could have done so, she would have shuttered the house and trapped them inside. Buffeted by too many emotions to sort out all at once, she embraced the one that was strongest and made it her own.

Rage.

Someday, she would make Isoeld and those responsible for whatever had been done to her grandmother pay for their arrogance and their hateful disregard for any form of moral code. She would track them down and hurt them. She envisioned what she would do, but as she did so the anger leached away and tears filled her eyes. She brushed them away, not wanting the boy to see. When she looked over at him, though, he was looking back.

“Don’t worry, Phryne, she’ll be all right. Your grandmother, I mean. She got away from them.”

He was trying to help, to make her feel better, and she gave him a smile for his effort. But she wasn’t convinced that he was right. All she knew for sure was that her grandmother had created that avatar with magic Phryne hadn’t even suspected she possessed and left it behind to let the girl know where she had gone.

To the Ashenell. To the tombs of the Elven people.

There were few places in the valley she wanted to go to less. The tombs were dark and haunted, a resting place for the dead, but a reservoir for wild magic, too. Specters and ghosts roamed its grounds, and it was said that an old city was buried deep beneath the earth in which the oldest of the dead were buried. Once, centuries ago, when Arborlon was still settled in the Cintra, Kirisin Belloruus and his sister, Simralin, had gone down into those tombs to recover the Elfstones from the matriarch of the Gotrin dead, a wraith presence still able to cross over from the other side. She knew a little of the story, enough to be wary of venturing anywhere near of her own volition. Yet here she was, faced with the need to do exactly that.

She would go, of course, her fears and doubts notwithstanding. She had no choice unless she wanted to ignore her grandmother’s avatar and abandon her search. But she loved Mistral, and she knew she would not disobey her in this.

After all, she told herself, she would be aboveground in the cemetery. She would be among the dead, not beneath them as Kirisin and Simralin Belloruus had been all those years ago. She had no idea what she would do once she got there. She had no idea what to expect. Perhaps she would find nothing more than a clue indicating where she was supposed to go next. Or perhaps Mistral herself and not an avatar would be waiting this time.

She stared at her grandmother’s cottage a moment longer, watching the lights bob and weave through the darkened interior, and then she rose and whispered for Xac Wen to follow her. She went back into the trees, safely out of view, and began to circle the cottage at a distance that would keep her hidden. The boy slipped along behind her, a silent presence. She would have to do something about him soon. She couldn’t let him continue to follow her blindly. He had exposed
himself to enough danger already, all to help her, and it was time for him to step aside.

“Are we going to the tombs?” he whispered once they were safely away from the cottage and walking back down the pathways toward the city.

She glanced back at him. “I should go alone, Xac.”

“So I won’t be in danger?” he guessed.

“That’s right. So you won’t be in danger. I know what you’re going to say about the Orullians, but they can’t expect you to do more than you’ve already done. You have to go home and let me carry on from here.”

He stopped walking and looked at her. “I thought we already agreed on this. I thought I was staying with you until you were safe.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We did. But that was before I realized how long this might take and how dangerous it might be. I can’t keep letting you risk yourself for me. Even Tasha and Tenerife would agree. There isn’t anything more you can do.”

The boy looked down at his feet, his young face a mask of disappointment. “Well, I don’t agree.”

She felt herself relenting, told herself not to, and then relented anyway. “Let’s make a bargain. You come with me as far as the Ashenell. I wouldn’t mind having someone with me when I go into that place. I don’t like it there. But afterward, you leave me and go back home.”

He looked up again quickly. “Agreed. Except that afterward, we talk about it some more.”

She started to object, but he had already turned away, walking quickly up the path, not giving her the chance. She stared after him for a moment, and then gave it up. She could deal with it later, after they had found whatever it was they were going to find in the tombs.

Dawn had appeared as a faint brightening on the eastern horizon, its vague coloration making just enough of a difference in the darkness to reveal it was on its way. Time was shortening for what needed doing in the tombs, and while Phryne had no desire to go into the Ashenell while it was still dark she knew that it would be much more dangerous once the sun came up. She picked up the pace, passing Xac Wen, who glanced at her in surprise, then hurried to catch up.

Together they wound along the pathways until they had arrived at
the edge of the city on the north side and come up to the near entrance to the tombs. As they reached the gates, they drew to a halt and stood looking at what lay beyond.

The Ashenell was huge. It had been transported along with the city when Kirisin Belloruus used the Loden Elfstone to rescue his people after the Great Wars. In it were hundreds of thousands of Elves who had died over the centuries, some buried in huge stone mausoleums that held as many as a hundred members of a single family, some buried in the earth in layers that ran twenty to thirty feet deep, and some even buried standing up beneath inscribed flagstones measuring no more than three feet square. There were hundreds of thousands more who had been cremated and had their ashes stored in urns, sometimes entire families, preferring that their remains be joined for all time. No one knew for sure how many Elves were buried here. Some markers had been shattered or their inscriptions damaged so badly they were unreadable, and those to whom they were dedicated had been lost. Some of the tombs had collapsed, and some of the grave sites had been rededicated. Keeping track after so much time in a city that had existed since the dawn of Faerie was impossible. There were records kept in the palace archives, but even these had not survived entirely intact.

But it wasn’t this that made the Ashenell such a forbidding place for Phryne. It wasn’t the dead or their tombs and markers.

It was the dark magic that resided in the earth.

Everyone had heard the stories. Elves who had disappeared without a trace while venturing into the tombs after sunset. Elves who had tinkered with the markers and the writings and been found burned to a crisp. Elves who had wandered in thinking to find their way out again and been lost. Elves who had encountered things so terrible that it had cost them their voices and their sanity. Elves who had been changed into something unrecognizable.