“What is this place?” Kabot asked.
“You could call it the palace of your ancestors,” the Voice suggested.
“My ancestors?” Kabot echoed incredulously. “My ancestors were mostly greengrocers who took advantage of a tendency toward minor plant magics. Everyone agreed my talent was extraordinary for one of our line, and originated possibly because my mother had spent too much time in the ruined lands. Some whispered that Mama had done more than magic while she was away, but my father was crazy enough about her not to care if I was a bastard.”
Kabot suddenly felt very excited. When he was younger, he had spent considerable time daydreaming that his father actually was someone much more interesting than the quiet, steady man Fate had assigned him. He heard something of that younger self in his inflection as he asked the Voice:
“Are you saying that I actually am a bastard, and that this palace belongs to my father?”
The Voice sounded apologetic. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to open old wounds. No. I was actually speaking symbolically. The last resident of this castle was a woman who did what you dreamed of doing. Onorina was Rhinadei-born, but found her way back to the Old World because she was interested in learning blood magic. While she was there, she became friends with a woman I’ve mentioned to you before: Jyanee the Unweaver.”
“Jyanee? So this was, what, a hundred and fifty, two hundred years ago?”
“Somewhere in there. I will admit, I’m terrible with dates. Going back to my story… When Jyanee gave Sykavalkay to her uncle, she made certain that Onorina knew. When the four threads were separated, Onorina claimed Guulvalkay, the thread tied to Rhinadei, and chose this place to study it. Her reasons were sound: What better place to hide something of great power than amid powerful and erratic mana flows?”
“So Guulvalkay is here?” Kabot asked eagerly.
“It is, although it will not be as easy to reach as the other three were,” the Voice warned. “Onorina was very concerned about Guulvalkay falling into the wrong hands.”
Kabot—thinking about digging through the ruins of Azure Towers, climbing a gutted tower, breaking the lattice; about spending days stuck in a tree trying to figure out how to steal Teyvalkay from a temple in a village (and still failing in the end); about being trapped in a dank, doorless, windowless cellar, battling not one, but two competitors—Kabot decided to keep his thoughts about “easy” to himself. If Daylily or Uaid had been there, he would probably have mitigated his annoyance by rolling his eyes and mouthing “Easy?” but since he couldn’t, his irritation came out in other ways.
“I’ve been meaning to ask for a while,” Kabot said sharply, “just who are you anyhow? You’re not Phiona, although you sometimes sound like her. You’re not Uaid’s ‘master,’ or whatever man Daylily hears. Just now when you were talking about Jyanee and Onorina, you sounded as if you knew them personally. Who are you?”
“Jyanee called me Zazaral,” the Voice replied, sounding amused. “That’s Tishiolan for ‘Busy Bee.’ She said that’s what I reminded her of, buzzing in her ear, offering suggestions. I’m the one who suggested the line of research that led to her discovering the threads, I’m proud to say.”
“You suggested it to her? So you’ve been around well over two hundred years?” Kabot was surprised how difficult he found accepting the idea.
“Oh, far longer than that,” the Voice—or Zazaral, as Kabot was now determined to think of her—said. “I’m immortal. Now, I mean. I didn’t start out immortal, but I rapidly realized that one lifetime really wasn’t enough to allow a person to have a proper influence on events, so I set out to extend my lifespan. I succeeded and, well, here I am!”
Zazaral sounded positively chipper, and very, very pleased with herself. Himself? Itself? Kabot decided to settle on the pronoun he was accustomed to, since he didn’t think gender mattered for a disembodied spirit. That led to another question.
“We’ve always encountered you just as a voice. Do you have a body somewhere and are using mind speech or something?”
“Oh, I gave up on bodies long ago. Really, they’re so very limiting and they do influence how one thinks. Look at you now. You’re one of the most intellectually focused humans I’ve met in a long time, but part of you is distracted by physical sensations. Your stomach is reminding you, oh so subtly, that the last thing you had to eat was an overripe fig. Your aesthetic sense admires this room in which you find yourself, but your feet are aware that marble floors are extremely hard. Your skin is telling you you’re just a little chilly. You’re tired, too, although excitement is balancing that for now. When you get over being excited, you’re going to be more weary than ever.”
“Can you read my mind, then? Feel what I’m feeling?” Kabot asked indignantly.
“Oh, no! Not at all,” Zazaral reassured him. “That’s why the summoning spell was necessary to bring me to you. Even when I came to you of my own accord, say to bring you a warning or bit of advice, then it was easiest to get your attention if you were a little detached: sleeping, dreaming, meditating. No, dear Kabot, I may have abandoned the limitations of the flesh, but I remember them all too well. It’s like when you take off a pair of too tight boots that have been rubbing blisters. You don’t forget them just because you’re grateful to be rid of them.”
Kabot shook his head, suddenly all too aware that he was chilly, hungry, and beginning to feel tired and anxious. Worse, he had no one to watch his back while he slept. He looked around the black-floored chamber. There were doors in the rose quartz walls, not so much concealed as made to be discreet. He wondered if any of them led to someplace as prosaic as a toilet.
Immortal, he thought, very carefully keeping his thoughts to himself. That would be nice, and so very convenient. I have in my possession threads that tap directly into the mana of two continents. I wonder if Zazaral is interested in a companion?
Zazaral might be immortal, but she hadn’t lost touch with what mere mortals needed to function at their best. Kabot had sidestepped the mana-depletion hangover, but his last full meal had been baked duck eggs, cattail tubers, and overripe fruit in the jungle. He had slept in that filthy cave, but rest alone couldn’t fuel a body that had been short of proper care for…
He considered. Did the decades they’d spent in a suspended state count? Or should he just count the days since they had been dropped into the ruins of Azure Towers? Even there, accommodations had been less than ideal. If it hadn’t been for Daylily’s skills both magical and not, he and Uaid would likely have either starved or been taken prisoner by Azure Tower’s guards.
When Zazaral directed him to a small apartment in a far less grand area of the massive edifice they had been exploring, Kabot was ridiculously grateful for a clean bed and bathroom with hot and cold running water. When he learned that the pantry was stocked with a variety of provisions sealed against spoilage, he nearly wept.
Properly washed, his hair trimmed, dressed in a clean set of loose trousers and long-sleeved shirt that was among a wide assortment of attire he found in a wardrobe off the bathing area, he felt more himself than he had since this entire debacle began.
“Will someone be likely to show up here?” he said as he put water on in which to cook noodles, set a package of dry beef and vegetables to soak, then began grating some sharp cheese. “Or is this someone’s seasonal palace?”
“We haven’t tripped the wards,” Zazaral replied, “so I don’t think anyone will show up. Enjoy your meal, and I’ll tell you what we’re up against. As I said earlier, getting Guulvalkay isn’t going to be as easy as getting the other threads, but I’m confident that you can manage.”
Kabot nodded absently. Should he have a glass of wine? Probably not. He’d need a clear head. He settled for sloshing a liberal amount of a dark red over the meat and vegetables. After pouring the noodles into boiling water, Kabot cleared his throat to show he was listening.
“Obviously, something like Guulvalkay would not be kept where any visitor might co
me across it. Physically, it’s as unremarkable as the other threads: just a large coin of polished copper. However, unless appropriately contained, it shows a distinct and very strong magical signature. First, then, we need to get into a portion of the palace that isn’t discernable from the outside.”
“Underground?” Kabot guessed. He poured some olive oil into a pan and began to heat it. “Uaid would have been useful, but I’m not helpless. So much of being a rising sorcerer in Rhinadei when I was growing up involved searching through what remained of the dwellings of the earlier inhabitants. Much of what survived was underground. I hope we won’t need to clear away fill like we did in Azure Towers, though. If I need to do that alone, Wythcombe will catch up before I can reach Guulvalkay.”
“Oh, no,” Zazaral reassured him. “Nothing like that! The clearing away was done long ago. The problem will be dealing with the obstacles put into place to keep adventurous types from taking advantage of this palace being empty so much of the time.”
“Magical or mechanical?”
“Both. Sometimes in combination, sometimes separately.”
Kabot nodded absently as he stirred the rehydrated meat and vegetables into the hot oil, added spices, and then set it to simmer, trying to ignore how his stomach rumbled.
“Mechanical obstacles alone may be the harder to deal with,” he said. “I can usually find the other sort by reading their magical auras, although…”
“Yes.” Zazaral anticipated what he hadn’t said. “The mana surges can make that more difficult, especially when they’re erratic like the ones here. Still, if I didn’t believe you and I could handle this, I wouldn’t have said what I did.”
She waited until Kabot had drained his noodles, poured the contents of the skillet over them, and had savored a few bites before continuing. “I could help you better if you let me synchronize more closely with you, use your senses.”
Kabot frowned. “Surely that isn’t necessary. You are already using them to some extent, or so you indicated. You can get into my dreams and talk with me without using sound. What more do you need?”
Zazaral trilled a laugh that sounded heart-tuggingly like Phiona’s, but if Busy Bee thought that would sway Kabot, she’d tried the wrong tactic. When he and Phiona had argued, it had most often been over sharing authority.
Perhaps Zazaral sensed this, because she didn’t push. Instead, she went off in another direction. “I’m not going to be able to sense Wythcombe’s approach as I have before. There’s too much else going on magically here to let me read such a relatively small magical signal. I wouldn’t advise using Palvalkay and Xixavalkay either. I doubt Wythcombe would be aware of your working, but I can’t figure out what that wolf can do. Since he seems to have claimed Teyvalkay, we can’t dismiss him from consideration.”
“True,” Kabot replied, although in reality he was still having a hard time believing the wolf could actually do magic. Not a wolf, a shapeshifter, maybe, perhaps one seriously gone over into its animal nature.
He finished his meal and swallowed a sigh. What he really wanted now was to make some tea, put his feet up, select a book from the collection he’d glimpsed in the other room, and read himself to sleep. But that would be plain stupid. He used the time it took to wash the dishes to organize his thoughts.
“Do you know where the entrance to this off-limits area might be?”
“I have a fairly good idea.”
“Then let’s get started. Eventually, I will need to sleep—fragile mortal that I am—but so will Wythcombe and his allies. We have a head start, and I’m not going to waste it.”
After Laria had caught up on her sleep, she and Ikitata had had a long talk about whether Laria should continue on, especially after how she’d been taken prisoner by Kabot.
“You could stay here and help Daylily and Uaid adjust,” Ikitata suggested. “No one would think twice about your choice or label you a coward.”
“Except me,” Laria said, “because I’d know I was staying because I was scared to go, scared to see Kabot again, scared I’d fall apart if he made a move in my direction.”
“You’re not seeking revenge, are you?” Ikitata asked, only the force with which she shoved her awl through the leather of the boot sole she was making showing the effort it took to discuss this with Laria, adult to adult.
“Not revenge,” Laria said. “I want to prove to myself that I can face what I’m scared of.”
“You’re not…” Ikitata paused, as she had not when discussing matters of mortal peril, “going because of handsome Ranz, are you?”
Laria blushed, but if she could face Kabot, surely she could talk about a crush. “No. I’m not. I wanted Ranz to like me, more than like me, I mean. I mean, he does like me, even respects me as a companion and friend, but he doesn’t like me. I don’t think he likes anyone right now, or even has room to. He has too much else on his mind, in his heart, all bound up with finding out that blood magic is a lot more complicated than he’d thought. I’m not even thinking ‘maybe someday,’ because I’m not sure I’d want to live with a sorcerer. Whatever else Ranz is going to be, he’s going to be a sorcerer.”
Later, Laria went picnicking with Kitatos and Nenean near the New World gate, not so much waiting for the wolves’ return as to keep Farborn company while the merlin kept vigil, since Farborn was determined to have the pleasure of giving first report.
When the wolves emerged onto the hill that held the New World gates, Farborn glided down and landed on Blind Seer’s back. The trio stood, looking rather like the sort of painting Laria had seen in Nergy’s hunting lodge when they’d stayed with him in Azure Towers: silent and noble denizens of the wild. Knowing them better, Laria guessed that Farborn was talking up a storm. Firekeeper didn’t even lower the carcass from her shoulders, but stood listening with flattering attentiveness.
Laria saw the change in Firekeeper’s expression when she realized that everyone had been waiting for the wolves, rather than, as was more typical, the other way around, and giggled aloud.
Firekeeper grinned widely and called to Laria, “So we keep you waiting? Still, I think I can drop this venison at the kitchens. We will not leave before you hug your mother, I think.”
Laria grinned back. “Of course not!”
With her little brother and sister at her heels, Laria ran off to her mother’s cobbler’s shop. There were tears, of course, and admonishments, and promises to be careful and even, to Kitatos, who was a little mixed up as to exactly what Laria was doing, assurances that Laria would bring back presents, if at all possible. Then, feeling her family’s love warm around her, Laria ran—by herself, but not in the least alone—to join the others near the docks where Chaker Torn would sail them to the island that held the Rhinadei gate.
Wythcombe had surprised them all by not only agreeing to go around Rhinadei’s emergency council, but by being the one to suggest that they do so. Seeing the look of undisguised loathing that Firekeeper gave Silver Lady, he explained why they were even using the gate.
“I wish I had the skill to jump us across the world as Kabot has apparently been doing,” he said, leaning on his staff, his tone wryly apologetic, “but I don’t think that—even with Teyvalkay and the portion of Xixavalkay to draw on—this is the time for experimentation. Actually, after talking at some length with Uaid and Daylily, I am not completely convinced that Kabot has been working the transportation spells on his own. I suspect that his Voice has been assisting, while letting Kabot believe he is capable of such enormous magics. Why his Voice would do this, I don’t know but, from what I’ve learned about Meddlers, it’s doubtless very complicated and ‘for Kabot’s own good.’”
The last phrase was spoken with an inflection that managed to be ironic without insulting “their” Meddler, a skillful bit of social manipulation that made Laria admire Wythcombe far more than she had been.
It’s funny. We went looking for Wythcombe to teach Blind Seer magic. If I think about the magic I’ve seen him do
, sure it’s amazing, but when I really admire him is when he’s scratching Rusty between the ears and chattering about gardening or how you make different sorts of cheese. I wonder if Ranz realizes that being a sorcerer is only part of the person. I wonder if Kabot realizes that.
Chaker Torn had finished running up the sails, and Symeen motioned for them to board. Once they were settled, Wythcombe continued. “Varelle will doubtless meet us soon after we arrive. Who else, I cannot guess. However, I think she will see why we don’t have time for long debates. Gatewatchers are permitted to make solo decisions. Although I cannot transport us halfway around the world, if Blind Seer and Ranz will help me, I can take us to Mount Ambition. There we’ll have ample mana to draw upon. Using that, we can refine just where Kabot might have gone without needing to tap Teyvalkay or Xixavalkay.”
He thoughtfully scrubbed a hand over his mouth and chin. “Although Arasan’s song kept me from acting when we last faced Kabot, I was able to watch what happened on a magical as well as physical level. It seemed to me that the pieces of Sykavalkay had—perhaps saying ‘an agenda of their own’ is too strong, since that implies intelligence—but ‘an inclination to be reunited’ might not be too extreme.”
Firekeeper, who had gulped her anti-seasickness potion at the last minute, so it hadn’t had time to take effect, spoke despite obvious misery. “Blind Seer say he agree. Also, I feel Xixavalkay tugging when I hold it. What happen when these four are together?”
“I suspect,” Wythcombe said, “that the ‘dampening’ by the Unweaver’s uncle and his allies may be cancelled, possibly immediately. If one of these threads is potent by itself, all four together could be overwhelming.”
Ranz said thoughtfully, “Maybe that’s why the four threads were separated. Ever since Chsss first told us about Sykavalkay, I’ve been wondering why did they split up the threads? Wouldn’t it be easier to meet the Unweaver’s challenge working in collaboration?”
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