“The ceiling gets lower again up ahead,” I told her. “We’ll both have to walk, and maybe even the horse will have to duck its head.”
“Terith will manage.”
Once down off the horse, I felt both better and worse. Less danger of falling off or banging my head. More danger of my legs collapsing under me. Thought of beet juice, gritted my teeth. Wasn’t going to ask Fenra for strength, at least not yet. Once I would have, without thought. Would have just taken it, would have thought myself justified.
I always thought myself justified.
“I’d forgotten how boring this is,” I said. Too much time to think.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened in your vault?”
That would teach me to complain about boredom.
“Metenari cut me.” I found I was rubbing at the inside of my practitioner’s arm and let my right hand fall to my side. “He knew how to extract my pattern from my blood. Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure which cabinet held the Godstone. He’d narrowed it down to three—don’t ask me how—but he had to try each one. Every time he tried a new cabinet or a different unlocking forran, he needed more blood.”
“He did not find the correct one right away, then?”
“No.”
Fenra brushed her finger along a black growth level with her head, examined it carefully, and wiped her hand off on a handkerchief she’d pulled out of her sleeve. “Did you see much of what happened afterward?”
I closed my eyes, tried to call up the scene from memory. As practitioners our memories were our greatest assets. That’s what made the blank spots in mine so frightening.
“I knew when Metenari found the Godstone, because his boy—”
“Noxyn? The redhead?” She stepped aside to the edge of the walkway, opened the soiled handkerchief, and dropped it. I imagined I heard a distant splash of water.
“Yes, that one,” I said. “When Noxyn stopped coming back to me for more blood, I knew that they’d found it.” That’s when I tried to see. I should be able to remember whatever my eyes saw. “The stupid apprentice was standing in my way at first. For some reason I wasn’t worried.”
“Perhaps you were lightheaded from blood loss.”
“Could be. I knew—or thought I knew—that the seals were composed of layer upon layer, complex, some interdependent, no single one good enough.”
“A sum greater than the whole of its parts.”
“Yes. Who said that?”
“Lorist Medlyn. So you did not use up your power making the seals, your power was the seals.” Fenra wasn’t asking a question. “Metenari could not have known what he was dealing with. He should have realized that the highest level of caution was necessary. Well, he was always too sure of himself.”
“By the time the boy moved out of my line of sight, Metenari already had the Godstone in his hands. In a way. In a manner of speaking.”
“What do you mean?”
“We talk about it as if it were a physical object, but it isn’t. At least, that’s not all it is. It can look like a crystal, true, but I think that’s just our minds trying to make sense of it. It’s made of light, and power. More of an artificial entity, alive, and unexpectedly self-aware.”
“Did he awaken it somehow? Could he use your pattern for that as well?”
Rubbed at my eyes, fingers stiff. “You don’t understand. It was awake when I sealed it away.” I was afraid to look at her. “It would have been expecting me. I’d have been the only one it could expect.”
“But you were there.”
“It didn’t sense me. I must have been too empty.”
Her eyes were full of concern, calculation. “How did you make it in the first place?”
“I don’t remember.” Wondered if she believed me. Wasn’t sure myself. Never tried to remember. Except the fear. “I remember the fear.”
“What about Elva? Have we left him alone with that thing?”
“Elva’s in no danger. The Godstone doesn’t know him.”
She nodded, didn’t look happy.
* * *
Fenra
We did not speak again for a very long time. Eventually there were no more water reservoirs, and the tunnel narrowed again. It appeared to have been cut from granite at this end. Finally it began to rise, but abruptly came to an end as if the people cutting it had just packed up their tools and walked away.
“What powers the forran that keeps this door closed?”
“This isn’t practice. This is engineering.”
“That might have been true, once.” I laid my palms flat on the rock and leaned in. “Disuse and time have fused the mechanism almost solid.”
“Can you do anything?”
I thought for a moment. I could not release the rock as I had the mortar and bricks. It was already in its natural place. But there was something else I could try. I had a forran I frequently used on people, minute vibrations, at a deep level, that encouraged stiff muscles and joints to loosen without damaging them, and stimulated damaged tissue to heal. Here, it might do the same for the old mechanism, shiver it open. Without saying anything to Arlyn, in case it didn’t work, I repositioned my hands, hummed to myself, and gently pushed again at the door.
The stars were out, and the third-quarter moon up. I was glad to see them.
“I am starving,” I said.
“If you can wait a bit, we can sit down to eat in a civilized way.”
Another hour of walking along a well-maintained road brought us to what the locals undoubtedly called “the village” but I called a “town,” having lived so many years in actual villages in the outer Modes. A small livery was happy to rent us a cabriolet—in exchange for what he thought was a brooch of three gold leaves—and not so happy that we did not need a horse as well. We went along the street to an inn for a meal while everything was being organized. The hostler called his boy—in this case a girl—to come help him clean the cabriolet and harness Terith. I gave him a look as Arlyn and I walked away, and he blinked at me in answer.
Dinner consisted of a thick soup of pureed vegetables, thin slices of rare lamb off the leg, roasted potatoes, and a treacle tart for dessert. I forced myself to eat slowly, as if this wasn’t the first meal I’d had in more than a day. We refused wine or beer, but the coffee was most welcome.
“By carriage we’re no more than another day or so away,” Arlyn was saying. “Less if we don’t stop.”
“A night in a cabriolet is not my idea of comfort,” I said. “But I have slept in worse places. And Elva said he would try to make sure Metenari follows us, so we will want to be there first.”
* * *
Elvanyn
It takes time to organize an expedition, even a simple one. The captain wanted to send ten men, and tried to insist, but Metenari coldly stated that he would take only Elva and his two senior apprentices.
“Any idea why the practitioner suddenly wants to go on a journey?” The captain looked at him with narrowed, speculating eyes.
“Not a clue.” Elva smiled and shrugged.
“And why take only you? Why not take more guards?”
Elva shrugged again. Maybe it’s the Godstone. Elva took care to keep the thought off his face. “Want me to ask him?”
Pressing his lips together, the man finally turned his attention away. The set of his shoulders said “damned practitioners” as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud.
Once they were out of the City proper, Elva found it colder than he was accustomed to, maybe even colder than he remembered. No one else appeared to notice that he wore his own linen shirt and suede waistcoat under his uniform jacket. He tugged at the knee of his right trouser leg. Come to that, he would have preferred to be wearing his own trousers. The uniforms of the City guards weren’t designed for riding. His cartridge belts were slung on his saddle horn and he fel
t naked without them.
“Does your uniform not fit?” The thing sat its horse awkwardly, as if its last ride had been a long time ago.
Elva brushed away a nonexistent streak of dust. “Not at all, Practitioner. It’s just the wrong kind of uniform for riding, that’s all. The trousers should be looser here, and here.” He indicated thigh and knee. “You see how the material tightens and pulls against itself.”
“I do see.” It reached across the distance between them and tapped Elva on the knee.
Elva felt a shock pass through him, tightening his grip on the reins. His horse moved forward, picking up its pace as he unintentionally squeezed his knees together. Once he brought the animal under control, he glanced back at the thing, to find it frowning and flexing its right hand. Obviously it had tried some forran that hadn’t worked.
Its right hand. Not its practitioner’s hand. Practitioners often used both hands for a forran, but when using one hand only, they always, always used their dominant hand, the practitioner’s hand. The Godstone had used the wrong hand without noticing. Elva didn’t know exactly what the thing had intended, but its frown clearly showed that it didn’t know what had gone wrong.
“Practitioner?”
“Hmmm?” It looked up again, straightening in its saddle. Just for a moment its eyes appeared to be a different color, green-hazel, not brown. “You know me,” it said. “You don’t want to admit it, but you do know me.” The strangest smile tilted up the left corner of its mouth. “Go ahead, say it.”
Elva pressed his lips tight. Xandra?
The Godstone smiled, just as if Elva had spoken aloud.
* * *
Fenra
The building resembled nothing so much as one of the round towers in the White Court. I had seen towers like this in other Modes, but they usually overlooked harbors. They were named after the engineer who had designed them, but if I had ever known her name, I had long forgotten it. In the Third Mode, towers should be square. From the look of the stone foundation, this one was older than the brick of the upper stories would have you believe, the whole a patchwork of different surfaces, different materials. The sun had dropped considerably closer to the horizon, and I thought I saw it flash off glass in the windows of the upper stories.
“The carriage won’t fit,” Arlyn said as we approached the arched gateway.
“I will unhitch Terith, and we will leave it outside.”
When we got closer I saw a wooden door deep within a stone arch. Thick oak planks, bound with iron strapping that showed streaks of rust. The wood was weathered to silver and the center plank had a crack in it for almost its entire length. Arlyn put his hand on the metal plate set to the right side.
“If there’s a lock behind that, it would take a key as big as my hand,” I said. Terith snorted and I stroked his flank, hiding my smile.
“Not a lock exactly,” he said, his brows drawn down. He pulled his hand back until only his fingertips were resting on the metal. “I forgot . . .”
I waited, but he did not continue. “Does it take a practitioner to open it?” I said as gently as I could. Perhaps it was his recent ordeal, but I had not seen Arlyn as shaken as this before.
“I’m afraid so.” He stepped back from the entrance and looked up, blinking, as if he thought he could see the top of the tower from here. “Would you mind?”
I gave Terith a final stroke and rubbed my hands together. “Is it your pattern?” I saw him nod out of the corner of my eye. I brought my hands up in front of my face and blew on them, flexing my cold fingers. I placed my palms together, concentrated, and drew them slowly apart. The lines of light at first refused to change to Arlyn’s pattern, but after several tries, I finally had something I could apply to the lock. With no apparent change to the mechanism, but with a trembling I could feel under my fingers, the lock clicked, and the door swung open the width of my palm.
“Is it safe?” I was not going to insert my fingers into that gap without asking.
“Was the last time I was here.” Arlyn answered my question by sliding his own fingers into the opening and curling them around the edge of the door. Not the thickest slab of wood I had ever seen, but very close.
From the age of the wood, and the streaks of rust, I expected the hinges to be stiff and noisy. They opened smoothly and without a sound. The interior, windowless and dark, smelled faintly of earth and stone. Arlyn pulled the door open enough to step inside over the threshold. I followed him through, leading Terith by a grip on his bridle.
“Would you make a light?”
I clapped my hands and a small ball of light rose to the center of the timber ceiling. The inside of the tower was bigger than I had expected. Perhaps the wall was not as thick as it looked from the outside.
“How is it so cold?” I asked, shivering. Considering the dirt floor, the temperature should have been warmer.
“I’ve never been sure,” Arlyn said. “It’s always been this way.”
This space was set up as a stable, with three proper wooden stalls to the left of the entry, and what would have been the equivalent of a tack room arranged to the right. Along with bits of harness and two large wooden wheels banded with metal, there were two saddles and tools for taking care of horses, brushes, knives to trim their hooves, and so forth. What had looked like a stone shelf proved to be the edging around a small wellhead. A gleam of water showed not too far down. A ladder led to a shallow loft and continued upward through an opening in the roof above. As the space gradually warmed from the heat of our bodies, I could smell fresh hay. Someone’s forran was still working.
“We go up,” Arlyn said, with his hand on the ladder. “And I’ll bet the horse doesn’t climb ladders.”
If Terith could roll his eyes, that would have been the moment. As it was, he tossed his head and snorted.
“It’s almost as if he could understand me,” Arlyn said.
“Yes, isn’t it.” I made sure that Terith had plenty of water, hay, and even a scoop of oats before I followed Arlyn up the ladder.
The trapdoor opened into a fine lady’s sitting room, from at least the Fifth Mode, judging by the tapestry covering the closed shutters of the window. A hand-woven rug rested on fresh rushes. I could smell lavender. I sneezed. I have never liked lavender. The furniture consisted of heavy wood benches covered with hand-stitched pillows, some filled with straw, some with goose down. The work was exquisite, but I could not help wondering what it and indeed the whole room was doing here, only two Modes away from the City.
No fire in the hearth, but the room felt considerably warmer than the stable space below it, warmer than it should have, considering the stable was empty. Normally, the body heat of the animals helped to warm the floors above. There were two doors in a wall to the left of the ladder. I saw no stairs to an upper story. There was, however, a door in the curved outer wall where sound judgment would say there could be nothing behind it. Just like Xandra’s workroom. I left Arlyn struggling with the window shutters and crossed over to the door. Maybe there were stairs, if you knew how to look for them. Whatever was behind the door, it generated heat.
* * *
Arlyn
Hauling on the shutters, I didn’t immediately take in that the sounds I barely heard over the wrenching of the hinges were footsteps. Fenra’s footsteps. Going to the inner door. Turned fast, but her hand was already on the latch.
“Fenra, stop!”
Door swung open outward and a fierce wind sucked her off the threshold into the nothingness. Somehow she kept her grip on the latch handle, and I ran to her, hoping it wasn’t already too late. Fenra’s knuckles whitened under the pressure, and her wrist bent at an impossible angle. Wrapped my hand around it just as her fingers loosened. Muscles and tendons hard as steel cables under her skin. Braced against the lip of the threshold, threw myself backward with as much force as I could. If I fell and broke s
omething, Fenra could heal me. So long as she was here to do it.
At first nothing happened. The wind continued to suck at the doorway, its deafening howl enough to disorient me. Don’t let go. All I had to do was not let go. She wouldn’t let go. She wasn’t the same kind of fool as her friend Hal. Strained further, brought my practitioner’s hand to bear. Still leaning backward like a man rappelling down a steep cliff, moved my right foot a few inches back, dragging Fenra with me. Her hand, wrist, elbow were now inside the doorway. I managed another step. Her whole left arm, her shoulder, and her head jerked into our space and her right hand braced tight against the edge of the opening.
“We have to shut the door!” I had no idea if she’d heard me. I couldn’t even hear myself.
Another step. And then another. Fenra’s upper body came back into the room. Maybe she could have used a forran to pull herself further in, or even to begin shutting the door against the chaos of the void, but I was holding on to her practitioner’s hand and couldn’t risk letting go. Another six inches. Hands were damp with sweat, could feel her wrist slip ever so slightly. As if she could feel it too, Fenra twisted in midair and grasped my wrist in turn. Sliding stopped. Now she was pulling herself toward me. I had to brace myself even harder.
Finally most of Fenra’s torso was on this side of the door. The suction of the void, the noise of it, hadn’t diminished. She twisted again, this time bringing one leg in through the doorway. First her knee and then her foot braced against the threshold jamb. With both feet in, she bent and reached for the bottom edge of the door, her arm flailing in her attempt to reach it.
Terrified that one of us might slip, I moved sideways, drawing Fenra closer to the edge of the opening. My shoulders creaked. My elbows, wrists, and knees were on fire. I wasn’t sure I could feel my feet.
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