Wedding Bells, Magic Spells (21 page)

“By who or what?” I asked.

“Still unknown. They came, they killed or took the people, and they left.”

“Killed or
took
?”

“Astava, the city most easily accessed from our own world, didn’t contain nearly enough remains to account for the population.” Cuinn shrugged. “And we assumed that the invaders left since no one’s there any longer to ask.”

“So the Khrynsani have this world—or at least a portion of it—to themselves,” Mychael said.

“We assume so.”

“And they sent the Rak’kari into the Void from there?”

Cuinn nodded. “They would need an unlinked mirror and a mage who had the talent and strength to hold it open.” He saw my confused expression and backtracked. “When a mirror is linked to another, it forms a tunnel inside the Void from one place to another, a destination. Tunnels are what give mirrors their stability and enable travel. When an unlinked mirror opens directly into the Void, the Void itself is the destination.”

“But nothing—well, other than Rak’kari—can live there,” I said.

“Exactly. And in the hands of anyone other than a master mirror mage, such an opening would instantly turn into a vortex. Everything in its pull would be sucked into the Void. If the mage completely lost control of the mirror, theoretically there’s no limit to what would be pulled inside.”

I whistled. “That would be bad.”

“Very.”

“But if the mirror mage was strong enough to hold and stabilize an unlinked mirror,” I ventured, “you’re saying that it would give them direct access to the inside of the Void itself.”

“Correct.”

“And they could essentially toss in the spiders and ‘slam the door,’ so to speak.”

“Precisely.”

“You’re the strongest mirror mage on the island right now, which makes you one of the strongest in the Seven Kingdoms.”

“Well, that’s open for debate, and—”

“Yes or no.”

“Yes.”

“Are you strong enough to hold an unlinked mirror?”

“I believe so, yes. However, I’m not stupid, desperate, or insane enough to try.”

I turned to Mychael. “If an elf mirror mage allied with the Khrynsani, that’d qualify them as insane, or at the very least arrogant enough to believe they’d survive dealing with Sarad Nukpana’s inner circle and an unlinked mirror.”

“Are you thinking of a member of Carnades’s family?” Cuinn asked quietly.

Silence.

“We are,” Mychael admitted. “His older sister is reputed to be—”

Cuinn was shaking his head. “His mother.” His lips curled in a humorless smile. “Another advantage to eavesdropping. I heard Carnades telling one of his…” He paused as if searching for the right word.

“Minions?” I offered helpfully. “Cronies? Bootlickers?”

“All of the above, and some you politely didn’t mention. He bragged that he inherited all of his skill from his mother. According to Carnades, Methena Silvanus is considered to be the most powerful mirror mage the Silvanus family has ever produced.”

Mychael and I exchanged a glance.

“I’d say that bumps her up the list to our prime suspect,” I told him. “And what do you want to bet she blames all of us for her son’s death.”

“Can you pinpoint exactly where on Timurus the Rak’kari were released into the Void?” Mychael asked Cuinn.

“There are only six places on Timurus—at least that are documented by explorers—that are accessible from our own. Of those, there is one plateau where the soil is so permeated with iron that it’s the color of rust. The plateau overlooks the city of Astava, or at least what’s left of it after the war.”

“Could you open a rift at or near that location?” Mychael asked.

“Uh, yes,” Cuinn replied uneasily, “but I don’t think…”

“I don’t want to do it, either, but we need to get a look through that rift.”

“You said the population of Timurus was wiped out about seven hundred years ago?” I asked Cuinn.

“Seven hundred forty-seven, to be precise.”

“Before we risk taking a look, why don’t we talk to someone who was alive then and traveled—a lot.”

My father, Eamaliel Anguis, was nine hundred thirty-four
years old, and had spent most of those years on the run from the Khrynsani and everyone else who wanted to have the Saghred for their very own. It was simply good logic that if you needed to avoid someone, you needed to know all of the places where they could possibly be. Depending on how long the Khrynsani had used Timurus as their secret hideout, my father might have more than a passing acquaintance with it.

Cuinn Aviniel said that it would take him and two of his colleagues the rest of today and possibly most of tonight to calibrate a rift to open onto Timurus’s Table of Iron. That gave us a little time to figure out how to do this without any unfortunate and deadly consequences.

My father’s soul was presently living in the body of a twenty-year-old Guardian. When Sarad Nukpana had escaped from the Saghred, so had my father. That escape had coincided with the death of a young Guardian named Arlyn Ravide at the hands of the Demon Queen. Arlyn’s death had given my father’s soul a home.

Arlyn Ravide had been a good disguise and one that my father had needed, because apparently there wasn’t a statute of limitations on Saghred-stealing. About nine hundred years ago, he had led the team that had gone to Rheskilia and recovered the Saghred from King Omari Mal’Salin and his chief mage, Rudra Muralin. Once he’d brought the stone back to the Isle of Mid, the survivors of that team and a few of the most magically powerful Guardians tried to destroy the Saghred and failed. It didn’t take long for word of what the Saghred was capable of to spread around the island and through the Conclave. The more powerful the mage, the more they wanted to get their hands on that rock.

To keep it out of the hands of anyone who would abuse its power, Eamaliel fled from Mid, taking the Saghred with him. While he occasionally managed to stop running and live like a normal person, most of those hundreds of years were spent on the run. The Saghred bonded itself to him and, as a result, kept him alive and prevented him from aging. During one of those stops, he’d met my mother, Maranda Benares. They’d fallen in love and I’d been born. They’d remained together during most of my first year. But eventually, as always, the Khrynsani had picked up his trail. Dad had left us, drawing his pursuers with him. But not all of them followed. Mom had been only a marginal sorceress. She didn’t stand a chance against Khrynsani bounty hunters. Garadin Wyne had been my mother’s best friend and had taken me in.

Now that the Saghred’s orb had been destroyed, my father didn’t know whether he would age normally in the young Guardian’s body that his soul was living in or whether the antiaging qualities the Saghred had given him would continue in his new body. Either way, an elven mage and Guardian with nine hundred thirty-four years of experience couldn’t be expected to live the life of a twenty-year-old novice knight. As a result, “Arlyn Ravide” had resigned his commission, and had supposedly returned home.

Eamaliel was presently using a glamour to reassume his own appearance. Those like Carnades Silvanus would have demanded his execution as a traitor, even though his supposed “crime” of taking the Saghred away from the Isle of Mid to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands had been committed nine hundred years ago. Those men and women hadn’t cared about time, only persecution and—if they got their way—execution. They had been the real criminals and traitors. They were gone, either permanently by death, or for long enough by imprisonment.

My father was now the safest he had ever been in his entire long life.

Justinius had provided him with an apartment in the citadel, though Eamaliel was spending most of his time in the Scriptorium. He was a scholar at heart, and had been happily spending his days, and much of his nights, reading and researching.

The peace talks were due to pause for lunch in another few minutes, and Mychael was waiting to tell Justinius, Tam, and Imala about Timurus and determine our next steps.

I was knocking on my father’s apartment door, hoping he was at home and not in the Scriptorium. After my run-in with Chief Librarian Lucan Kalta soon after I’d arrived on the island, I knew I wouldn’t be welcome on his turf ever again.

“Come in, Raine,” Eamaliel said.

I didn’t know how he knew it was me, but he’d done it often enough that I chalked it up to nine hundred years of experience on the run.

I opened the door and froze.

Eamaliel Anguis’s original body had been that of a silver-haired, gray-eyed, pure-blooded high elf. That’s what he looked like right now…

…sitting across the table across from my godfather, Garadin Wyne.

The smile stayed plastered on my face as I just stood there in the doorway looking from one to the other.

Eamaliel was my biological father, and my mother had been the love of his life. To save her and me, he’d led the Khrynsani away from us. I’d heard that story from him and Sarad Nukpana. For my father, it was a source of shame; for Nukpana, a source of gloating. I accepted it as truth.

I didn’t know what Garadin believed.

All he knew as fact was that my mother had been murdered and I’d been left behind. Did Garadin believe that Eamaliel had left to draw his enemies away, or that he had run to save his own skin?

That the two of them were sitting there alive, fully conscious, and without apparent injuries implied that they’d smoothed over any awkwardness and uncertainties, and had moved on like two mature—and in my father’s case,
very
mature—adults would do.

As to who would be walking me down the aisle, I wanted both of them to, but I hadn’t actually asked either one of them yet.

Yes, I was a coward.

“I see you two have met,” I eventually said.

“The way you’re running around here,” Garadin said, “if we waited for the three of us to be in the same room together, it’d be in the middle of your wedding.” My godfather smiled, an actual, real, and honest smile. “We’re big boys, Raine. We can do this ourselves.”

“This” covered a lot of ground—from taking care of their own introductions, to mending any misconceptions, and unless my instincts deceived me, becoming friends. Then I noticed a glass in front of each of them and a bottle of Brenirian whisky in between.

Friends
and
drinking buddies.

I blew out a double-lungful of air and let my shoulders sag in relief.

“Let’s hear it for good news,” I told them both. “I sure can use some.”

They exchanged a conspiratorial glance.

“Should we tell her?” my father asked Garadin.

“You heard the girl. She wants good news. She’ll like this.” My godfather’s blue eyes were bright with mischief. “At least I think she will.”

Eamaliel spoke. “Justinius asked me and Garadin if we would serve on the Seat of Twelve.”

“Tarsilia, too,” Garadin added.

I took a deep breath. “And?”

“And we all accepted,” Eamaliel said.

“Yes!” Tears welled up in my eyes. I brushed them away and hugged them both. Hard. “There are three more spots. Do you know who else he’s asking? And yes, I understand this is top secret.”

“Well, I imagine you could tell Mychael,” my father said.

“Good, because I would be.”

“There have never been goblins on the Seat of Twelve. Justinius wants to change that. He’ll be asking A’Zahra Nuru and Kesyn Badru.”

I clapped my hands and squealed like a little girl.

“We didn’t get that reaction,” Garadin noted.

“She cried when we told her,” Eamaliel said.

I ignored them both and reached between them for the bottle. “Do you have another glass, or can I just toast this news out of the bottle?”

Eamaliel stood. “I think I can find you one.”

“Good, because after the toasting, I need another drink for fortification.”

“That bad?” Garadin asked.

“And getting worse. Though we’re hoping you’ll be able to help.”

I told them everything, beginning with Markus’s attack, and ending with Cuinn’s findings.

Garadin’s response was a long whistle.

“Thoughts?” I asked.

“Besides we’re going to need another bottle?” my father asked.

“That doesn’t sound optimistic. I take it you’ve been to Timurus?”

“I have.”

“And?”

“I went there soon after leaving Mid with the Saghred. I had a friend on the east coast of Brenir who was a dark mage and a good man. Mirror travel didn’t exist then, but the Passages did. He knew of a stable entrance to the Passages, and the location there of a rift that would take me to a little, out-of-the-way world where I should be safe for a while.”

“Timurus.”

Dad nodded. “I came out of the rift near a fairly large city. Being noticed was the last thing I needed, so I always tried to stay in cities. A new face in a village is gossip for a year. I glamoured my ears and fit right in. The Saghred and I stayed there for…let’s see, about fifty-two years. Long enough to realize that I wasn’t aging, and whose fault it was.”

“What was the name of the city?”

“Phirai.”

“That wouldn’t happen to be near Astava, would it?”

Eamaliel raised one of his perfect eyebrows. “Just to the south. Why?”

“That’s where Cuinn Aviniel thinks the Rak’kari came from, a plateau that overlooks Astava.”

My father swore. I’d never heard him do that before, at least not that word.

“The Table of Iron, the locals called it. It overlooked everything within a hundred miles. I had to leave Timurus because the Khrynsani had found it. I don’t know if they had been there before, or simply tracked me there. I sensed them as soon as they arrived—through a rift on the Table of Iron.”

“Crap. Well, that confirms Cuinn’s theories.”

“They had seekers with them, good ones. When we were in Rheskilia getting the Saghred back, our camp was attacked one night. We survived, but we couldn’t go back to retrieve our gear. As a result, there was a possibility that the Khrynsani obtained some of my personal possessions, magical implements that I used that would hold traces of me and my magic indefinitely. If that were the case, they could find me. Phirai was only ten miles south of Astava. The goblins knew what questions to ask, and the time period that I had arrived there. Between that and the seekers, I knew it’d only be a matter of time until they found me. My Brenirian friend had given me a map he’d made of the Passages. I knew how to open a rift. I left the same day I’d sensed the Khrynsani and returned here.”