“Sartuul is priceless material, one that is held sacred. It is proof against water, fire, and the decay of age. For those reasons and more, it was only used for recording the most arcane magic. It would never be used for something as mundane as a summons.”
“But...if it were urgent? Korr said that the Seraphine might be dying out.”
“Urgent? How urgent? And as far as dying as a people, I have doubts. How worried could a phoenix be about dying...when coming back from the dead is what they are known for?”
Thea had a point. Two points, as a matter of fact. Korr had even agreed to a four-day delay without too much urging. That didn’t exactly support the ‘urgency’ line he’d been playing up.
“What are you saying, then?”
“I believe this message is a forgery,” Thea said plainly. “Korr, or ‘Pirr’, or another party, is trying to impress on King Fitzwilliam how desperate their plight is. In order to guarantee that the one person they want is sent.”
I pondered that for a moment. If Thea was right, then the whole thing could be some kind of setup or trap. If I ended up all alone in wherever this ‘Vale of the Seraphine’ was, I could be at anyone’s mercy. And all over this strange bit of green-sheened...
Something went click in my head. I knew where I’d seen this particular shade of green before.
“Wait a minute,” I said quickly. “Was this ‘sartuul’ ever used in anything else besides scroll work? Could they be bound together, say, in book form?”
Thea nodded. “I have seen portions of sartuul bound together before. They are coated in some unknown substance so that each sheet turns rigid, like parchment-thin sections of flat stone.”
That settled things in my mind.
“Albess, I hear your worries, and I’ll figure out a way to address them...but I think I have to visit the Seraphine. You recall my telling you about the book in my possession? The Codex of the Bellum Draconus?”
Thea looked surprisingly troubled as she replied. “I know that you have not yet translated more than a few symbols and phrases from it.”
“That entire book is made of sartuul, I’m sure of it. Even if the message itself is a forgery, if the phoenix are still using sartuul, I need to know where that summons came from. You said it’s made of ancient material. And everyone says that phoenix themselves are old, or that they live a very long time. This might be the ‘lead’ I need to find out more as to what happened in the Old War...and what might be in store for all of us in the future.”
Thea looked disturbed at that, but she merely nodded. “If you must go, then I cannot stop you. But I shall worry about the only hero I have found. The only one who can tip the balance of fate in our favor.”
I stopped in my rush of enthusiasm. I still didn’t know exactly how I felt about being a ‘hero’, even under Thea’s definition. And she wasn’t acting the way I thought she would. I thought she’d be excited at our chance to find out more about the past, maybe to give us a chance to decode more of what Belladonna had said.
Until I remembered something.
A short time after I’d rescued Thea and put her back in her position, I’d asked her what else she could tell me about the Old War. She’d said that we would leave it for another day. That what she knew was shameful. Something she preferred not to face.
“Thea...” I said quietly. “What I want to find out from the Seraphine...is this tied into what you haven’t told me about the Old War?”
The Albess dropped her eyes and shifted on her perch. “It may be. It may not. Truly, I do not know.”
My voice took on an edge. “Then can you speak to me now? If I’m the hero you chose, don’t you think I deserve to know?”
Thea’s eyes focused on me, watery but still keen. “I think you deserve to survive. To help us all through the dark times ahead. Are you truly set on traveling to the home of the phoenix?”
I thought about it for a minute. Finally, I met her eyes and nodded my head in the affirmative.
Thea let out a sad ‘hoo!’ at that. “Then know this. If you perish on your mission to the Seraphine, then nothing I could tell you will matter to anyone. For all my hopes rest with you and you alone.”
I took a breath. “And if I return?”
The Albess looked almost mournful as she answered.
“If you return, I promise to tell you all that I know about the Old War.”
Chapter Ten
At a quarter to six in the morning, Los Angeles was still dark. Certainly it was in my bedroom, and that was the way I liked it whenever I wanted some shuteye. Yet, even as I sat up, awake in bed, wide awake at a time I should have been slumbering; I could make out a lot in the ambient light of my digital alarm clock. The pile of clothes I needed to put away from last night. The stack of novels I needed to get back to reading.
The muscled back of the sleeping man in my bed.
Even now, listening to his deep exhalations, it seemed incredible that Alanzo was here, a tangible weight next to me. He lay curled up, almost on his stomach, all while radiating enough warmth to power a small sun as he slumbered. I had to resist the urge to run my fingers through his dark hair.
So far, we were ‘trading off’ days spent at each other’s place. Esteban worked around my schedule in Andeluvia as best he could, while I did the same for his longer shifts at Homicide. It was a clunky way to mesh two people’s working schedules, but it worked for the most part.
The deal was that whoever played host did the dinner and got to pick the movie afterwards. Of course, on many evenings we never made it to the movie at all. My bed was getting a lot of use, but the mattress used memory foam, so it was quiet during our lovemaking. Esteban’s box spring had a more old school feel to it, and the squeaky coils counted out the beats of each pleasurable thrust and counter-thrust.
I hadn’t had a problem sleeping recently, not since we’d gotten Shelly and Thea out of imminent danger. Yet, something had woken me. The memory of an unsettling dream. It wasn’t one of those terrifying nightmare type of dream, the ones brought special delivery from Destry’s dam. But it was enough to get me to sit up and spend the last fifteen minutes debating over whether to pull up the covers or head to the kitchen and get some herbal tea.
The tea won by a nose.
I got out of bed and padded over to the bathroom in the near dark. Once I had the door closed, I turned the light on and blinked until my eyes adjusted. I gathered up the folds of a tee shirt I’d borrowed from Esteban and pulled it over my head. It was loosely comfortable, to the point I felt like I was wearing a tent, but it carried just a smidgen of his unique scent.
I ran some water over a washcloth and did a quick clean-up, taking a look at the last remnants of a long, yellow-brown bruise running along the bottom rib on my right side. That was the price I’d paid for assuming that Raisah, the leader of the Noctua, was safely dead before turning my attention elsewhere. I barely even got a twinge from the wound anymore, but for a while, doing anything more than heavy petting had sent me scurrying for a painkiller.
Once I was freshened up a little, I put the shirt back, on along with a pair of exercise shorts. Then I turned out the light and groped my way out into the living room, then traced my way along the wall to the kitchen. Only then did I flick on the switch to a soft pair of bulbs over the stove and begin my hunt for the tea.
I microwaved a cup of water, set the pyramid-shaped bag in it, and let it steep for a bit. The grassy aroma of natural peppermint steamed up from the surface, and I gratefully inhaled it. The minty scent acted like a scouring pad for my mind, both cleansing and calming.
I had just taken my first sip when I heard the soft sound of shuffling feet. Esteban entered the kitchen, blinking owlishly. He’d found and put on the boxer shorts that I’d all but torn off him last night. And even after a shave less than twenty-four hours ago, he’d sprouted a haze of manly beard stubble from chin to jawline.
“It’s still early,” he murmured, but he brightened as he saw
me. He came over and shared a hot little kiss with me before taking a seat across the table. “Mmm. Buena de menta. You taste delicious this morning.”
I couldn’t help but grin at that before I took another drink. The liquid warmed my insides almost as much as the kiss had. “You don’t taste too bad yourself.”
“You’re being kind. Morning breath, ugh. I don’t think of it too much when I’m on my own, but now...” He smiled at me, and his teeth gleamed in the dim light. “I don’t want to end up being rated on the ‘Chrissie Scale of Stinkiness’.”
“Patent pending,” I reminded him, and we shared a quiet laugh at that.
“Well, if I’m not moving the dial on that scale, what’s got you up?”
I bit my lip. “I’m not sure I should say. It’s not about you and me.”
He gave me a look. “If it’s not about ‘you and me’, then it’s about something you’re worried about discussing with me. Our friends in the other world?”
I nodded in resignation. “You are starting to know me very well, Mister Esteban.”
“Comes with the territory, mi angél.”
“There’s a fair bunch of stuff, mi querido.”
Esteban ran a hand through his unkempt hair with a sigh. “I should never have lent you those books on conversational Spanish.”
“I learned that from Isabel Vega,” I admitted. “I have another translation problem to deal with, but that comes farther down the line. The big news is that three men got into a swordfight yesterday over Dame Chrissie’s favor.”
That woke up Esteban fully for the first time. I’d filled him in long ago on my Andeluvian promotion, but he still threw me a quizzical glance. “I guess you’re a bigger deal than you’ve been making out. Fighting for your ‘favor?’ Is that a euphemism for becoming your suitor?”
“Not quite,” I said. I explained about the Spring Tournament, my rise in social rank, my unwilling induction into the Order of the Weasel, and my sudden debt problem.
“So, you’re saying that I don’t have to go out and learn how to swing a sword if I want to keep seeing you,” he said, only half-jokingly. “Or does it mean you’re going to have to marry some old geezer for his inheritance?”
“I’m sure that the locals wouldn’t mind,” I hedged. “It’s the way they do things. However – and this is a big however – that’s not the way I do things. I’ve got until next fall to figure out how to handle this pile of other people’s drinking debts, and I’m going to take full advantage of that.”
Esteban thought on that for a moment. Then he assessed me with that coolly objective gaze that the cops in Homicide seemed to be able to slip into at will. Some indefinable talent that allowed them to size up character, and project ‘what ifs’ with any given person. Whatever Esteban saw; it seemed to reassure him.
“I think you’ll figure it out,” he said seriously. “I don’t see why the King doesn’t just release you from the debt. Or simply force some other knightly order to accept you. Come to think of it, since you serve at his whim, he could just order you to marry someone, end of story.”
“The debt thing is really handled by the owls. I think the extension on payment time is about as far as his power goes. I was told that he specifically put me in the Order of the Weasel, so maybe there’s a reason there that I’m not seeing. As to him ordering me to marry...”
That stopped me. Actually, I had wondered that myself. I’d also noticed that Fitzwilliam seemed relieved that I’d chosen not to marry anyone over the debt issue. My mind flashed back to what the King had told me in private, right after he’d completed my investiture.
There are many reasons I wished you raised above the salt, he had said. Some noble, some perhaps less so, but just as important. Wheels run within wheels, Dame Chrissie.
“As for him ordering me to marry...” I concluded lamely, “I just don’t think it’s what he wants to do.”
My boyfriend leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “You do have a full plate. And here I thought that you were still troubled about what you told me a few weeks past. About what happened with that owl, the one named Nox.”
I sipped my tea again. Staring into the liquid’s dark brown surface, I wished that I could read the leaves at the bottom of the cup. In truth, even with Esteban’s counseling, I was still working that event out in my head. A not inconsequential part of me still grieved over the fates of Hollyhock and Perrin.
“It wasn’t that,” I said, with a shake of the head. “It was a dream I had. Not a nightmare, exactly, but disturbing all the same.”
“Fill me in, then.”
I furrowed my brow, trying to recall the details. Like a lot of dream-imagery, it had already begun melting away like frost in the morning sun. I focused and tried to fix what I could in my memory.
“I was standing in a large room,” I began. “It was dim, so I couldn’t make out the details of where I was. I just knew it was large...because I could hear echoes.”
Esteban raised an eyebrow. “Echoes of what?”
“The sounds of people talking.”
“Were you able to make out any of what they were talking about?”
“Very little.” My head drooped. “I’m not helping explain anything, am I?”
Esteban reached across the table and brought his fingers to touch my face, just under my chin. He gently nudged my head back up so he could see my eyes.
“You’re always too hard on yourself,” he said. “It’s a dream, they’re supposed to be tough to bring back with photo-perfect recall. Just tell me what you heard, what happened, as best you can. Tell me the details, even the little ones that you think won’t matter, or that might sound strange. I want to learn what’s bothering you.”
He was right, of course. I tried again, starting over at the beginning.
Chapter Eleven
It took me another good half-minute to figure out how to best describe my dream experience. But I found that, once I got started, the telling got easier and easier.
“I felt like I was a ghost,” I said. “An ethereal creature, as an Andeluvian might say. Like I was just a pair of eyes and ears, observing, but unable to touch or affect anything. I felt like I was rushing through space, or across a dark void, until I arrived in a large, dim room.”
I closed my eyes and tried to will back some of the sounds and smells.
“The place smelled damp. Not the way a basement or someplace moldy can smell. This was moist, but fresh. There was a repetitive thumping sound. Like the beating of some giant heart. The entire scene rattled me, made me jumpy. Then I heard two or three voices in conversation. I could only make out a few words. ‘Safety’. ‘Darkness’. ‘Turned’. All the voices were male, I’m pretty sure. But I only could make out one well enough to recognize it.”
“Who?”
“Destry.”
Esteban nodded, remembering what I’d told him. “The pooka that messed Shelly up and supercharged Bob McClatchy. Did you see him? Or at least a horse figure in the dream?”
“I think so. I’m just not sure, it was so dark. But it was Destry. He’s got a distinctive voice. He sounds a lot like Maurice Chevalier, actually.”
To his credit, Esteban bit back a laugh when he saw how serious I was. “You mean Destry sounds...French? That’s about all I know about Chevalier.”
“I like his old musicals,” I said with a shrug. “Anyway, after listening to this strange, muffled conversation, my point-of-view drifted away. Back into that darkness. Until it settled into a new scene. It was brighter. Daytime, I’d guess, but in some ways the image was harder to make out. Like it was further away.”
“Were you back in that same room as before?”
“No. Somewhere inside of a castle, I think. The walls were stone, and curved in the same manner as one of the turrets in Fitzwilliam’s palace. Strange objects hung from the ceiling. Mobiles, maybe, but all brown with white paint. A man and a woman faced each other on a staircase that ran along the curve of the wall.
“The man was tall, well-muscled, bare-chested. He was black, and he had an...I don’t know, an exotic look about him. Like an Egyptian statue carved out of obsidian. The woman was also dark-skinned, like a deep olive or mahogany. She had long hair, all the way down to her waist, and she swung her hand down at the man.”
“Were they fighting? Did she strike him?”
“Maybe they were fighting. I’m not sure. But the woman was casting a spell. I saw a bright spark of lightning glance off the man. I don’t know if it hurt him.” I looked up. “That’s when I woke up.”
Esteban said nothing while I paused to finish drinking the last of my tea.
“There’s something that bothers me about that dream, though,” I said at last. “Two things, actually. The latter part of the dream, with the man and woman? It felt unfocused. Unreal. Like it was something that hadn’t come to pass, or simply never will. But the first part, with Destry...it felt...visceral. Different.”
“Could it have been a message? After all, you said that the pooka bring dreams. Could this have been one of them trying to tell you that Destry’s in trouble?”
I pursed my lips. “That’s a possibility. But if he’s in trouble, I’d have felt something more urgent. And I’d have been given a better clue as to where he was. Maybe it was a warning.”
“A warning of what?”
I felt worry tug at me like a couple of ropes lashed to my chest. “I’m not sure. Maybe that Destry’s encountered the enemy on his own.”
Esteban let out a slow breath. “Well, you’ve got me. I was hoping that you had a dream like showing up at work naked. You can interpret something like that pretty easily.”
“That’s probably all this is,” I said, with a wave of my hand. “My mind’s processing all the extra stress and anticipation in some weird way.”
“Wait. Extra stress and anticipation? You mean the promotion and debt you acquired in Andeluvia? Or...is it about something else on top of that?”
“Yeah...I was getting around to telling you about that. I’m planning an expedition to visit the ‘Vale of the Seraphine’. That’s where the phoenix live.”
Forgery of the Phoenix Page 6
