“Locate him,” General Merial said, the two words sword slashes. “You think he came here to Azure Towers. Earlier, you mentioned that one reason you speak a form of Pellish is because most of those who settled Rhinadei had studied at the university. If Kabot was seeking those who would not outright reject him and his interest in blood magic, the university would be a very reasonable place for him to go. Is that it?”
“I could not have stated it better myself,” Wythcombe said with deceptive mildness. “The question is, will you sanction my looking for him?”
Trahaene the Once Dead said sternly, “I am certain that my associates and I would be aware of the arrival of a group of alien sorcerers. As do the Nexus Islands, we monitor for indications that a gate has been used.”
Wythcombe nodded. “I am certain you do. When I analyzed what remained of Kabot’s workings, I came to the conclusion that he did not use a gate, as such, but a transport spell.”
“What’s the difference?” snapped General Merial.
“A gate is intended to be used more than once. A transportation spell is impermanent, meant only to be used once.”
“Very good. Continue.”
Wythcombe looked directly at Trahaene and spoke peer to peer—a rank Blind Seer was certain the Once Dead did not merit.
“Depending on how your circle is monitoring, it is possible that you might not detect a transportation spell. You see, unlike a gate, which requires magic on both sides, transportation spells invest most of their magic on the side where the spell begins.”
“Ah… I see,” Trahaene said, nodding sagely.
“Well, I don’t,” General Merial said. “Would you clarify?”
To everyone’s surprise, Queen Anitra spoke. “I believe that a transportation spell would be akin to a slide. All the energy goes into creating the slide, then pushing off.”
Wythcombe beamed at the queen as he sometimes did at Ranz and Blind Seer when they showed they had understood one of his lectures. “Very nice! A slide provides an excellent image because it’s meant to carry a person one direction, while a gate permits travel in two. Yes, an excellent analogy.”
Not to be left out, General Merial added, “So this spell would be like a snow slide in winter. Impermanent. Leaving no trace after the snow melts.”
“Except,” Wythcombe said, “perhaps for scuffs on the muddy ground beneath. Those scuffs are what I studied.”
“You made that examination very quickly,” Merial said suspiciously. “Arasan’s tale gave us to understand that your group took many days and dealt with numerous perils to reach Mount Ambition. You then returned nearly immediately via a spell. When did you have time to search for ‘scuffs’?”
“Very astute,” Wythcombe replied, unruffled, although Blind Seer could smell Ranz starting to bristle at the implication that the old spellcaster was lying. “Before I left Mount Ambition, I placed a recall spell. I knew that my associates would wish to see for themselves that Kabot was gone. They then helped me with my analysis.”
“Very clear,” the queen said. “Let me consider.”
A respectful silence followed as Queen Anitra drew into herself. Laria traced a finger along the hem of her dress tunic, but otherwise the humans might have been statues.
At last, the queen spoke. “Very well. We understand what has brought you to us. While we appreciate your courtesy, and consider ourselves duly warned about this Kabot, if you are hoping for permission to seek him in Azure Towers—especially within the university ruins—I must refuse you. Entry into those ruins has been forbidden even to our own trusted retainers. I cannot make an exception for outsiders.”
Her face was stony. Nothing in her scent gave Blind Seer hope the queen could be convinced to change her mind.
“I believe you are being hunted,” said the Voice within Kabot’s head.
There had been many times since they emerged into the university ruins that Kabot had almost convinced himself that the Voice was nothing more than elaborate wish fulfillment. He missed Phiona; therefore, he talked to himself in her voice as the closest he could come to seeking her counsel. But these words—coming just when he’d been thinking about how isolated he felt—certainly came from some other source.
“What?” Kabot spoke aloud, garnering surprised glances from Daylily and Uaid. He waved a hand at them in reassurance. “Sorry! Pinched my finger on a rock.” Then he continued within the confines of his own mind. “How would you know?”
“One such as I am does not possess precisely the same senses as you do. I’ve been concerned for you. As I told you, these ruins are off-limits, and the penalties for trespassing are severe. I’ve been doing what I can to find if you were in any danger. Today, I sensed—what to call it?—emanations? That will have to do. I traced these and discovered that others are on their way here.”
“That doesn’t mean we’re being pursued,” Kabot protested, more out of habit than because he didn’t believe what the Voice said. “Places are not forbidden unless there are those who would desire to enter them.”
“Wise words. Will you forgive me if I anticipated that chain of thought? I have—call it ‘peeked.’ Among those who have arrived in Azure Towers is one I recognize from your memories.”
“Wythcombe!”
“You have it.”
“Here? In the Old Country? How?”
“That I cannot say. But I can swear that I have seen Wythcombe. He is not alone. His companions include several bearing weapons, a monstrous wolf, a falcon, and… a goat.”
Kabot shuddered, envisioning this horrific company and, at its head, Wythcombe, his gaze holding no pity as he surged forth to find those he must view as rogues and rebels, to arrest them, to drag them back to Rhinadei where, at the very least, they would meet with censure and, most likely, would be executed. In all his long years of isolation, Kabot had never believed that what Rhinadei would mete out to him and his companions would stop with a few harsh words.
Panic closed his throat so that Kabot struggled to speak, even within the confines of his mind. “How long do we have?”
“Several days?” The mental voice lilted with uncertainty. “Wythcombe radiates such power that looking toward him is like looking into the sun. Several of his companions carry ample magic within their auras. The wolf may even be a shapeshifter of some sort, for I read a trace of spellcasting in its aura.”
Kabot felt his pulse rising. Shapeshifting was not unknown in Rhinadei, but it was shunned—especially when the shape taken was that of a powerful carnivore. Most of the tales told about beast-shifters dwelt on the insanity that occurred when the bestial impulses overwhelmed the human.
“But you’re sure they’re coming after us?”
“Why else would they be here—at this place, at this time? You’re not a child to fool yourself that it could be otherwise.”
“No. You’re right. We must take counsel with Uaid and Daylily. Or have you told them already?” Kabot was aware of a splash of irrational jealousy. He hoped the Voice had not noticed.
“I have not. Even when you were all trapped within the webwork of the same spell, I found it easiest to reach you. Now, without the spell, you are the only one I can speak to almost as if I had lips and tongue. Don’t tell them this, though. I do consider them my dear friends. I trust you can find an excuse to work the summons I taught you.”
“I can.”
Kabot felt the Voice recede. As always after an extended mental communication, he had to anchor himself anew in the physical world, and that physical world never failed to be horribly disappointing. When their spell had dropped them into the university ruins, the three rebels had found themselves in what they had later decided must be a test laboratory. Such rooms were usually underground, constructed with thick, often rounded, ceilings and walls, which could be inscribed into a full-coverage protective circle. Since these rooms were usually multipurpose chambers, they were rarely furnished other than with light blocks built into the walls.
&nbs
p; The door of their room of emergence had been smashed so that jagged stone fragments jutted from the aperture’s edges. When they had ventured without, they had been forced to spend day after day burrowing through rubble-choked corridors. Here Uaid’s specialization in earth magics had proven of great worth. Greater, Kabot privately admitted, than his own more esoteric and academic lore had been.
Kabot had come into his own when, after many days of searching, they had found what seemed to be a professor’s office, intact behind a concealed door. The tomes and scrolls on the many shelves had been nearly untouched, although they were brittle with age. Since then, they had been carefully examining the ancient writings, but so far there had been no revelations.
As Kabot turned to inspect his companions, Uaid was unrolling a scroll with meticulous patience. Daylily was examining a diagram in a tome about blending mana channels. After so long as phantoms caught within a distorted spell, it still seemed odd to actually see them. Kabot forced himself to study them, to remind himself that they were not just elements within his imagination.
The first thing that struck him was that—although Kabot was accustomed to thinking of the three of them as young—all of them were past their first bloom. Magic was a demanding craft. While someone quite young might become an expert in a single area—as Uaid was with earth magics—versatility took time and considerable study.
Uaid, the youngest, had celebrated his fortieth birthday shortly before they set their plans in action. Physically, Uaid showed his age more than did Daylily, even though she was nearly two decades his senior. Uaid looked very much like an earth mage should: short and stocky, with weathered brown skin. His thick fingers were, despite their apparent clumsiness, astonishingly skillful. If earth magic had not drawn him, Uaid could have become famous as a jeweler. He still might choose a future as an enchanter of arcane items. Uaid’s coarse black hair was showing iron grey at the temples and in a few streaks within his tidy spade-shaped beard. His brows were bushy, shadowing eyes the dark brown of freshly turned loam.
Daylily looked about the same age as Uaid: a well-preserved early forty. She was a generalist, not from lack of focus but because what fascinated her were connections, the more disparate the better. Alone of their group, her interest in blood magic probably had less to do with the ready access to mana it provided than with a reluctance to relinquish even one aspect of the arcane arts. Daylily loved to play with cosmetic arts so, at the present moment, her skin appeared a pleasant golden-brown, her hair a shimmering pale pink, and her eyes a clear topaz blue. She was not so much pretty as elegant, every feature well-balanced, her figure rounded without being lush. Many men had fallen hopelessly in love with her, but none had held her heart tightly enough to keep her from this adventure.
But that’s true of all of us, Kabot thought. Except possibly Uaid, and I’m not certain if what he felt for Caidon was love or adoration.
When he’d been a boy, Kabot’s nickname had been “Foxy,” not only because his hair was red, but because something about his sharp features—triangular face, pointed chin, expressive brows—had reminded others of a fox. Now in his mid-forties, Kabot’s hair, which he usually wore brushed back to display a slight widow’s peak, had lost its fire brightness, shading to a pleasant reddish brown. Since their transition, Kabot’s hair had grown long enough that he needed to tie it back. As soon as he could find the ingredients to do so, he planned to make a pomade; then he’d ask Daylily to cut his hair to its more usual “just below the ears.” As was typical of the descendants of Rhinadei’s settlers, Kabot’s skin and eyes were variations of brown. Indeed, one of the more startling things they’d found in these ruins was how many of the humans depicted in the fragmentary illustrations were fair-skinned, with light eyes and hair. Kabot doubted that his red hair would have been worthy of comment here, and weirdly felt as if something special had been stolen from him.
Kabot closed the tome he’d been perusing—one on elementals—and shook his head as if something had buzzed in his ear. “Did you two hear that whisper? I think the Voice wants to talk to us.”
He knew that neither Uaid nor Daylily would deny that they had heard something. Uaid was very aware that of their original group of five, he had been junior, included as much because Caidon would have refused to leave him than because of his own qualifications. Daylily thought of herself as “sensitive.” Part of the appeal of blood magic to her was because she felt that the best route to knowing “other bloods” was by sharing their blood.
After a moment, first Uaid, then Daylily, nodded.
“I think he has a message for us,” Daylily said. Her clear topaz eyes clouded. She always referred to the Voice as “he,” which irked Kabot. However, since he didn’t want to discuss his own impression of the Voice, he kept that annoyance to himself. “Poor soul,” Daylily continued. “He must get so very, very lonely. Shall we go back to our room and work a summons?”
“By all means,” Kabot said, pleased she had spared him the need to make the suggestion.
“Definitely!” Uaid weighted the scroll so it wouldn’t roll up, then shoved himself to his feet.
At their base camp, the two men set up the brazier and selected certain powdered herbs. They were lucky that, although they had lost much equipment during their first failed transition, they had retained many of the basics, including camping gear and apparatus for creating more complex spells. As they had explored the university ruins, they had augmented their supplies in little ways: a cup, mineral powders, a flask, and the like. “Treasure” was indeed relative to situation.
Daylily sang softly to herself as she heated liquid ingredients over a small lamp. Kabot reached out a tendril of awareness, but caught no hint that Daylily was focusing her gift—a reasonable suspicion since, like many others, Daylily often used song to feed mana into her spells. This, however, sounded like a love song. Fleetingly, he wondered if the Voice sounded like some particular person to her.
Although their entire purpose for coming to the Old World had been to seek those who routinely practiced blood magic, nonetheless, they were all intensely aware that each time they worked this spell they were taking an irrevocable step away from repatriation into Rhinadei. As they gathered around the brazier and took out small, razor-sharp knives consecrated to bloodletting, Kabot felt a blending of titillation and fear. Three times three drops of blood went into the fire, three times three more into each of their cups of tea. Words were said, spiced smoke inhaled, and finally the blood-infused tea was swallowed in a single long gulp.
Kabot felt his mana blend with that of Uaid and Daylily, then felt their braided power go forth to link to the Voice. The first time they’d worked this spell, the result had been much like what they had experienced during their inadvertent captivity within the transportation spell. Later, Kabot had experienced an additional visual component. At first it had been little more than the brazier’s smoke forming the lines of a face. Now, what shaped above the brazier was the body, from the waist up, of a full-breasted nude woman who bore more than a passing resemblance to Phiona.
Quickly, Phiona briefed them on Wythcombe’s probable arrival in Azure Towers, then the smoke form turned a much remembered, much missed, gaze upon him. “I believe I have discovered the means both for you to defend yourselves against those who might seek to take you captive and, more importantly, to prove your value to the sorcerers whose community you would join. I won’t promise that what I suggest will be either easy or without risk but, if you succeed, you will be more than supplicants, you will be hailed for rediscovering an artifact lost for centuries.”
“I know the queen forbad us the ruins,” Wythcombe said, pacing back and forth, staff in hand. “As a member of Rhinadei, I fully believe in abiding by the law. However, that doesn’t change that Queen Anitra has made a bad decision. Kabot must be found.”
After their audience with the queen had concluded, rather than returning to the Nexus Islands, they had taken rooms at an inn whose owner—reco
gnizing Firekeeper and Blind Seer—had given them a ground floor suite for what the wolf-woman understood was a very reasonable rate. The son of the inn’s owner, it seemed, had been among the troops who had huddled within the shield on the Nexus Islands awaiting morning and probable death. That Firekeeper had led the raid which had taken hostage the commanders of the various armies, thus ending the conflict before it could begin, made her a hero in the innkeeper’s eyes.
Firekeeper was pleased, but she didn’t have time or energy to luxuriate in this proof of her spreading reputation. Wythcombe was upset enough to do something reckless. She was wondering how she might stop Blind Seer’s treasured new teacher without offending either the spellcaster (which only mattered a little) or Blind Seer (which mattered a great deal more).
Arasan threw himself loose-limbed into one of the heavily cushioned chairs, then stretched so his joints audibly popped. “We have requested a second audience with the queen. How do we present our case in a fresh light? Wythcombe, you’re a skillful spellcaster– we’ve seen ample evidence of that. Can’t you—forgive my ignorance—somehow scry for Kabot? If we could confirm he was somewhere in the ruins, maybe we could—I don’t know—maybe ask for an escort in?”
“Even if we confirmed Kabot was there,” Laria said doubtfully, “it doesn’t seem like the queen would do that. I mean, an escort would draw a lot of attention. You’re not thinking clearly, Arasan. Are you well?”
“I feel a little out of it,” Arasan admitted. “Maybe the gate passage didn’t agree with me. If you”—He stared hard at Wythcombe and Ranz—“promise not to do anything impulsive, I’ll go rest for a bit.”
“Rest,” Firekeeper replied. “I will howl if Wythcombe and his apprentices begin running away.”
Arasan hauled himself from his chair and vanished into the room he was to share with Ranz. Wythcombe had been allotted a room of his own. Firekeeper was technically sharing one with Laria, although her intention was to see if Blind Seer wanted to go exploring once their more diurnal companions were settled. Now the wolf-woman was reassessing her intention. She didn’t trust Wythcombe not to do something against his own best interests.
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