“I want you to use a technique called mining. It is dangerous in the wrong hands, and perilous in the right ones. Still, given the unusual talents you’ve displayed... I wouldn’t be surprised if you could do it effectively.”
“Show me.”
She wore a strange sort of smile. “You must use my power to make this form...” A long, thin string of fiery light sprang into the air before her, which she wound into a complex knot. The seahorse-shaped form seemed to collapse as soon as she released it.
“Show me again.”
This time she extracted his hand from the folds of blanket and wielded through him. Her fires were... tumultuous, barely controlled. There was something about them, an element of their nature that he had sensed before in her hair. The knot was no less convoluted with her second wielding, but Morghiad was fairly sure he had memorised its construction. “You must place it at the very centre of my head, and it must be exactly that size,” she said in low tones. “It is supposed to stimulate my memories while I think of the things I need to
think about. Practise in the air, first.”
He made his best attempt at mimicking her form and, though it wobbled, it was not too far from the original.
The Lady D’Avrohan drew her mouth into a slight grimace at his efforts, but eventually nodded in apparent approval. “Let’s see if this will work.” She placed his hands at her temples, and closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed until it was barely perceptible, while her fires seemed to insist upon his fingertips with raging heat. He drew them inside himself once more, and began to wield.
At first her eyelids fluttered and her eyes moved rapidly beneath them, but then they snapped open. Her gaze locked onto him with such surprise – or perhaps pain – in her expression that he very nearly released her. She said nothing, however, and so he continued to work the peculiar form into her mind. After several minutes had passed, she mouthed something silently, and then she collapsed, unconscious, into the folds of sheeting. Morghiad waited for a moment to see if she would move. When she did not, he reached forward to shake her shoulder. The former queen did not stir.
He tried again. “My lady?” No response. Morghiad watched her chest closely to see if she was still breathing, at least until he realised he was staring directly at her breasts beneath the improperly thin silk of her nightgown. Fires of Achellon, he was starting to give himself the wrong idea! Wrong, so very wrong. He cleared his throat, and placed his ear close to her mouth. There was a definite movement of air around it, which most probably meant she was still alive. That was good. Now was not the time to be branded a murderer.
He nudged her again, and once
more she refused to respond. Was this another ploy of hers? And if so, why make up such an odd story to seduce him? Morghiad waited for another minute to see if she would stir, but it was a vain deliberation. Perhaps she was simply tired; it couldn’t have been his wielding that had done this to her, surely? He grimaced to himself and placed his cloak over her body in an attempt to make it more decent. Even that was pointless. He could still make out the curve of her blasted bosoms beneath it!
Now irritated, he flung his head back onto the hard pillows to try to
sleep, but something tickled the side of his jaw. Was there to be no peace in this place? He reached to scratch at the offending nuisance, only to find and extract a long, gold-red hair. The damn thing had managed to travel from the other end of the couch! It buzzed softly between his fingers, echoing the power of its former owner. He hissed in exasperation and tried to shake the strand off. It clung fast to his fingers. Blazes, but he was too tired to fuss with a stupid hair! Instead he finally resigned himself to discomfort, and only then did he succumb to the restfulness of sleep.
A sharp thud awoke him suddenly, and the sharper thrust of accompanying daylight caused him to squint. Someone was standing over him.
“Wake up, fool!” said a foreign voice, “What’s the point of employing you to use those lightning-fast reactions if you’re just going to move like a slug in wine?” Another jolt followed, presumably a kick from the voice’s owner.
Morghiad sat up and rubbed his head. For some reason he felt... groggy. “Hunter?”
“Yes. Would you care to tell me
what has happened, and why our beloved former queen is currently in stasis – or something that looks very much like it? And put some bloody clothes on, boy! No one wants to see that.”
He reached for the shirt and pair of trousers that lay over the arm rest of the settee, and hurriedly shrugged into them. He caught sight of a motionless Lady D’Avrohan as he dressed. “She asked me to help her.”
“With what?”
“Recalling a name, I think. She made me wield a form for a thing called mining.”
“What?” The Hunter’s voice was toneless; it was barely even a question. The old fighter knelt down to assess his heroine, and ran his fingers across her cheek. “Tem, what have you done now?”
“Will she be alright?” “Eventually - possibly. It depends upon how much of her blazed brain you’ve burned away, doesn’t it?”
“Oh.” This would not be good: not for him and not for his plans. Morghiad folded his arms and began to pace. “She asked me to do it.”
“Sometimes she is even more of a fool than you.” The Hunter slid his
arms underneath her and hefted her up from the couch. “Oh, for Achellon’s sake,” he hissed, “get your eyes off her tits and go and find Silar for me.”
“I wasn’t looking at-”
“Don’t answer me back! Just find the blond dandy.” The dark man strode gracefully toward the lady’s bedchamber with his unconscious prize, and Morghiad was left with no choice but to follow orders. He paced with purpose to the apartment doors, but his progress was interrupted when they opened before him. Lord-General Silar stepped through.
“Morghiad,” he said with a nod.
His dark blue eyes flicked to the open door beyond. “She did the memory thing, didn’t she?”
He blinked. “How do you know?”
“I know.” The general sighed and stepped past him. “Sometimes she’s more of a fool than you.”
Morghiad shook his head in confusion. He had been told to expect Lord Forllan’s peculiar talents, but he was sure he was hearing parts of these conversations incorrectly. He followed his superior into the bedchamber, soon catching sight of The Hunter as he hovered over the red-haired woman.
Something passed between the older men’s eyes as their gazes met, something that was not altogether amicable.
“Well, you must be losing your touch, general, if you did not get here in time to stop it,” The Hunter pronounced, and hunkered into a nearby armchair.
“I was incapacitated. Besides... certain things - people... blind me.”
“Excuses!” the Calbeni spat.
Silar scratched at his short beard, and Morghiad found himself oddly inclined to tell the man that facial hair did not suit him. But instead he
kept to the darkest corner of the room in silence, and resigned himself to the role of onlooker.
The Hunter spoke again, his tone no softer, “The bodyguard said Tem was trying to recall a name. Do you know what it was, prophet?”
“I am not a bloody-” The general sighed. “She knew the name already. She was trying to put a face to it.” He turned to Morghiad abruptly. “Did she tell you the name?”
He shook his head.
“Hmm.” Lord Forllan studied him closely for a very uncomfortable time, seemingly measuring any reaction he might produce. But the younger man had already armed himself. Light and fire: those were the images that must fill one’s mind... nothing but light and fire. An insurgent thought, one he had certainly not invited, placed itself firmly amongst the flames. It looked like a strand of hair. Hair! Bloody, blazed, flaming hair! Morghiad struggled not to grimace outwardly, or even flinch from his own anger.
But the general tilted his head suddenly, as if he had seen something. “T
hat is interesting.”
Damn his own mind, and damn her!
“Go and take the rest of the day to bathe and sleep, if you will, Private Zennar,” the general instructed.
What had he seen? Morghiad bowed formally and departed without question. He had a sense that this was not a good turn of events. Everything was coming perilously close to unravelling, at an increasingly alarming pace.
The world appeared alarmingly grey to Silar; even amongst the pure white of Artemi’s rooms the light was dulled somehow. Aglos had said it was an after-effect of the high dose of swift he’d received, but it did not feel like that. Morghiad’s presence was having a catastrophic effect on his ability to predict people’s actions, and the way
he had presented a wall of utter nothingness to Silar’s question... It should not have been possible. Even impassiveness ought to have indicated something of the former king’s intentions. With Talia there had been wild images and visions beyond interpretation. But when Silar studied his old friend he found himself looking into an endless, dark pit of infinite possibility. It was unnerving, to say the least.
He moved his eyes back to Artemi, still deep in her false slumber. She seemed to him the only thing with any colour to it in the whole room. No
longer his queen. That would take some getting used to. The end of another era; and it meant he would not spend so much time with her ever again.
“Well?” The Hunter’s clipped word snapped Silar out of his reverie. “What did you see?”
“It is for Artemi’s ears. Not yours.”
“Is this going to interfere with her destiny, Lord Forllan? Because if it is, then I do need to know.”
“Destiny can apply to a great many things. It may be her destiny to slap your stupid face when she realises
you deserve it, but I would hardly wish to stand in the way of that.”
The Hunter pulled an expression of disgust at him, and turned to look at the broad window. “It is better when you are honest with me. And you know the destiny I mean,” he muttered.
Silar did know of it since meeting that earth woman, and he was very much aware of the horrors that would come with it. Protect Artemi: that had been his instruction from Morghiad so many years ago, and he was not about to give up on his duty now.
Another hour passed before the
legendary warrior began to stir. Her eyes flickered open slowly, and she immediately smiled at the other Kusuru. Her look at Silar, however, was one of apparent confusion. “Do you remember me, Artemi?”
She pushed herself up, frowned in thought for a moment and then shook her head.
“No loss there,” The Hunter chuckled.
“And your family, do you remember them? Morghiad?”
Artemi formed a weak smile. She uttered a few words in a language Silar did not understand, something that sounded like a question. He had a good idea of what that question might have been. “Your husband,” the general answered softly. This was just wonderful. He was in a castle surrounded by amnesiacs!
Artemi’s deep, dark eyes widened. She asked another, somewhat panicked, question to The Hunter. He burst into laughter at it, which immediately told Silar he was the subject of amusement.
“No,” the Calbeni wheezed, “not him! Morghiad’s the one with funny eyes and a grim expression. We asked him to step out for a moment.”
Oh, of course, because the idea of Artemi even considering Silar as her mate was that ridiculous.
She mumbled something else at The Hunter, and he nodded slowly in response.
“Artemi,” Silar began, “since you still seem to be able to understand me, I should tell you how you’ve ended up like this. It appears that you were trying to retrieve something using a method called mining. You wanted to know about a man called Felis Hasarde. Does that name mean anything to you now?”
She blinked briefly, and
frowned. The Hunter’s reaction was more marked, however. He rose from his chair suddenly, and began to walk the perimeter of the room in his assassin’s silence.
“Then you know the name?”
The dark man chewed at his lip. “I do... but...That is odd.” He continued to pace the room.
“Oh, for bloody, follocking light’s sake! Clearly you both knew him, which means he’s more likely to be related to the things you have in common with one another. Think!”
Artemi grinned at him. She said something else he did not understand,
and provoked a harrumph from The Hunter. Silar thought it was probably complimentary. He smiled back. She reached up to his jaw and rubbed her fingers over his stubble, a frown blossoming on her face. “T’an naht cha cusaidarh,” she said.
The Hunter made another noise of exasperation. “Really? I think it is an improvement.” He snapped his olive eyes onto Silar. “She and I have at least four-thousand years of memories where our paths crossed or we were linked in some way. I’m afraid your observation does not narrow things down especially.”
Looking between the two men, the former queen tried to speak again. “Sta gurande ne toferin?”
“He is an idiot,” they both responded in unison.
“Bloody Achellon,” Artemi murmured.
That was encouraging to hear. “You said that in Post-Frontier Union.”
She looked thoughtful for a moment. “I suppose I did. Now, I would like to get dressed so that I can meet this husband of mine.”
Silar placed a hand on her arm. “He...ah... well, we’ll explain it to you once you’re ready. We’ll be waiting
outside.” The general rose slowly, feeling the dull ache from the pieces of metal that he was sure he could still feel floating within his body. The antechamber he moved into appeared to be even greyer than the last, but someone very familiar was already pacing about in it. Another, darker figure stood by the door.
“Is she alright?” Tallyn, now King Tallyn, asked eagerly. “We brought flowers.” He craned his neck to glance through the door as the Hunter closed it. Kalad shifted quietly behind his brother. A bouquet of white roses lay in his arms.
“Slight memory relapse. It’s probably best if you two don’t see her just yet. She’ll be fine. Go on, the two of you have plenty to keep yourselves occupied.”
“Is this how Calidellians speak to their kings?” The Hunter scoffed, perching himself on the edge of a dresser.
Silar very nearly kicked himself. “Of course, I’m sorry.” Tal – he could not say ‘Tal’ anymore. “Sire, it is my advice that you do not meet her just yet. Would you agree with me, Hunter?”
The assassin nodded sagely.
The upset was clear to see in Tallyn’s face. “Take care of my mother,” he said quietly. He turned. “Kal, I need you to use that economically orientated mind of yours to help me with this deal the Wilreans are offering. Come on.”
“Sounds thrilling,” Kalad murmured with a roll of his eyes. He strode over to hand Silar the flowers, and then traipsed behind his brother in silence. The mood of the youngest Jade’an was something that the general had observed before, but the dark nature of it made him worry. The shade panther was in them all, Artemi had said.
He suppressed another sigh and looked down at the winter-grown roses. Each one was scented, perfect and as white as the crystal in the city walls. They reminded him of the one he’d given to Artemi, and the way she had run forty leagues just to escape his company. He marched to the water stand, upended the jug into a glass and thrust the roses into it. These ones would not wilt before their time was done.
“I never took you for such a sentimental fool, general,” The Hunter sneered from his perch.
Sentimental to the end. His greatest burden, and his greatest strength.
Another man admitted himself into the antechamber, and Silar was not pleased to see his face at all. He was one of the special soldiers who would certainly have been set to trail Morghiad everywhere he went in Artemi’s absence. “Permission - speak, general?” the soldier panted.
“Granted
.”
“We lost him. I don’t know how... I don’t understand. We were outside his room and there was a bang – and we went in to check. He was
gone. No wielding, no open windows. No other doors. But he was gone.”
“Who’s gone?” Artemi stepped into the room, still tying on her numerous sword straps.
“The man you so foolishly decided to marry.” The Hunter quipped.
No, Artemi had not been foolish over Morghiad, Silar was sure. Foolish about her decision to allow a boy to play with the insides of her head, yes, but foolish was not the appropriate word for her choice of lover. Increasingly, the more he learned, the closer the general was coming to favour
Ice had formed along the edge of his cloak in a splintering of diamonds, and the cold was not limited to their proximity. Morghiad was close to frozen. He gritted his teeth and shook the hard water from his clothing, watching as it skittered across the floor in a sea of tiny shards. It was always
the same when he drew Blaze out of existing forms to make an accessway. His father had stood in awe of him the first time he had achieved it, but he had never understood how harshly it made the air bite.
Morghiad rubbed at his hands in an effort to get the blood moving through his skin once more, and started for the underground corridors. There would not be much time before people started to come looking for him. More importantly, this would be his only chance to wander as he pleased while he was employed as bodyguard. He had been given some hints as to where
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