I wondered how many of the ghosts had perished as the battle raged. Certainly the square looked emptier than it had previously. Had Alfric been caught up in it all? I couldn't see him, but that didn't prove anything. I supposed time would tell.
I looked up at the arch that loomed over my head. This close, I could see it wasn't made of stone, but of a filmy, almost greasy, material that shifted and flowed in the strange light. I didn't know how the ghosts were drawn here, but I was certain I now knew why. They were the raw material from which the arch was made.
"He's building a door to the living realm," I breathed.
There was a slow, sardonic handclap to my left. Malgyne stood there, once again in the form of the young boy I'd first met.
"Edric?" Arianwyn's voice tightened with concern.
"Just keep going. He can't do much without his minions." I turned to Malgyne. "Have you been here all this time?"
"If I had, do you think I'd have allowed this?" he said derisively. "Still, I congratulate you on a game well played; you're even more annoying than I thought. But you've chosen the wrong side."
"Perhaps." I wasn't at all sure I'd chosen a side. They kept choosing me. "Can we go now?" I asked Arianwyn.
"Yes, I think so." She smiled sweetly at Malgyne. "Let's leave this child to put his toy box back in order."
Twenty One
Arianwyn's portal cast us into the living realm in the cathedral grounds – fortunately where a buttress concealed our emergence from prying eyes. We made our cautious way through the city as the sun's pre-dawn light suffused the sky, careful to avoid the occasional constabulary patrols.
Upon reaching the Tower of Stars, Zorya promptly packed us off to get some rest. I refused at first. I'd wanted to talk to Jamar and Constans – or at the very least discover whether or not Constans could still be counted amongst the living. Only when Zorya – with a somewhat exasperated manner – assured me that Constans had been alive and quite well not a half hour earlier, did I relent. She then calmly stated that she'd be quite prepared to haul me up the stairs and lock me in my room if I ignored her further. I decided further resistance on my part was pointless, and went to get some sleep.
Waking a few hours later, I found that Zorya had once again provided a hearty breakfast and a change of clothing. I dressed, wolfed down the food, and left the room in search of the others.
I'd assumed the library was the best place to begin my search, and so it proved. Arianwyn sat at the far end of the great wooden table, toying with the first portalstone fragment.
"Good morning." She smiled tiredly. "Sleep well?"
I took a seat beside her. "Not really. I had too many dreams of darkness and evil-eyed birds."
To describe them thus didn't do full justice to the horrifying nature of my nightmares, but the details had faded, leaving only an oppressive memory.
"I'm sure it's nothing," said Arianwyn. "Given everything we've seen, nightmares are only to be expected."
"Who's having nightmares?" Constans entered the library behind me. "Not me. I slept the sleep of the dead." He took a seat opposite. "Personally..." He broke off, at last noticing the sour expressions on mine and Arianwyn's faces. "What?"
"Edric thinks he saw you in Otherworld," said Arianwyn. "Well, not you exactly: a ghostly version of you."
"Ah..."
This was a new concept: Constans genuinely speechless.
"She told me I was mistaken," I said, "but under the circumstances..."
"...it was a singularly ill-chosen remark." Constans nodded. "I can assure you that I've not died and returned to life recently. Other than that, I'm not sure what to say. Did you see it, Ari?"
"No." She glanced briefly at me. "I told Edric he must have been mistaken."
The library door opened to admit Jamar and Zorya. Jamar still wore his Hadari uniform and armour. I thought he looked much better than when I'd seen him last, and told him so.
"Yes, savir. I'm all mended now, or near enough." He took up position a little behind me and to my right, just as he would have done at a state function. "What Zorya lacks in bedside manner, she makes up for in aptitude as a mender of wounds."
Thereby hung a tale, but I let the matter lie. I instead insisted Jamar take a seat at the table, which he did with only a little protest. Zorya, I saw, had taken up station a few paces behind Arianwyn. I doubted there was a chair in this whole room that would take her weight.
"Now we're all here, what happened last night?" asked Constans.
His gaze flicked between me and Arianwyn, unsure as to who made the decisions. Receiving a ghost of a nod from Arianwyn, I launched into an account. Arianwyn occasionally interjected with additional snippets of information that I had forgotten.
I held very little back, but I was deliberately vague concerning the manner in which we'd defeated the praetorian sell-swords, and said nothing at all of what had passed between Arianwyn and I afterwards. It would have felt too much like breaking a confidence. For her part, Arianwyn made no attempt to fill out my sparse account of these events.
If the others noticed that some things passed unsaid, they made no comment. Constans was intrigued by the vault's lion guardians, and pressed me for detail after detail. Jamar muttered a series of angry Hadari curses under his breath when I repeated my second conversation with Malgyne. Then, remembering himself, he offered an apology for the use of language only I'd understood.
For her part, Zorya stood silently. Of the three of them, she was the only one who stirred whenever I skipped over a detail regarding Arianwyn. But she passed no comment and merely continued her quiet vigil, inscrutable as ever. After I'd finished, the room was quiet for a good long time as the implications sank in.
Predictably, Constans spoke first. "Well, ladies and gentlemen, if we weren't aware we were swimming in deep waters before, we certainly should be now." He rubbed his chin. "Solomon's looking more and more like the least of our problems."
"That's easy for you to say," Arianwyn growled. "He's still as much a threat as ever he was."
Constans opened his mouth to speak, but quickly closed it again as Arianwyn glared at him. I squeezed her hand, and she subsided.
"I was merely about to suggest that when engaged in a battle against godly beings, mortal enemies grow less intimidating." Constans spoke in a wounded tone, his eyes flicking briefly to mine and Arianwyn's clasped hands
"I'm sorry," said Arianwyn. "I overreacted."
Constans shrugged, more concerned than offended. "How likely is it Nierev survived?"
"I don't know," I said. I'd been wondering myself. "She'd lost a lot of blood. Why do you ask?"
"If she did, Quintus might see matters in a different light."
"That's possible," I allowed, "but I've no idea how much she heard. She could well have been slipping in and out of consciousness." Although she had told me to go. Perhaps she'd been awake after all.
"That's a lot of 'ifs'. 'If' she heard anything, 'if' she survived…"
"…and 'if' Quintus believed her anyway," Arianwyn finished. "I think we have to assume Quintus is still our enemy."
"If we must be surprised by his deeds, better to be pleasantly so," Jamar agreed. "I assume you have the second fragment?"
I extricated my hand from Arianwyn's grasp and reached into my pocket. Fishing out the chunk of portalstone I'd recovered from the vaults, I set it on the table next to Arianwyn's piece.
"That's something, at least," Jamar rumbled. "Now all we have to do is win what appears to be a four-way battle."
"You're saying we should give up?" Constans seemed intent on provoking each of us, one by one.
"Not at all." I noticed Jamar didn't address Constans with the honorifics he customarily employed when talking to myself or Arianwyn. "It's our duty to stand against such things." If I'd made that statement, I'd have sounded terribly pompous, but Jamar infused the words with simple dignity. "Losing a battle of this nature is by far preferable to not fighting it in the first place."
"How inspiring," muttered Constans.
I cleared my throat. "I agree with Jamar, but personally I entertain the hope of fighting and winning. I'm just not sure how we're going to do it."
[[May I make an observation?]] Zorya asked.
"Of course," said Arianwyn.
[[You have missed the key lesson of your recent experiences.]]
We waited expectantly, but Zorya seemed to have nothing more she wished to contribute. "And what is that lesson?" I asked.
[[That allegiance and enmity are not absolute concepts; that a soul in motion is ill-placed to pronounce upon stillness.]]
To my mind, that wasn't a terribly enlightening answer. "I don't understand."
[[No, Master Edric, you do not. This too is part of the lesson.]]
Master Edric? That was new. I looked at Arianwyn, and wondered how much she'd told Zorya. Arianwyn smiled slightly and looked away, again provoking a curious look from Constans.
"I think I understand," said Jamar. "We're so caught up in our own interests that we can't see what's truly going on?"
[[Indeed, Halvorn Jamar.]]
I was embarrassed to note that she knew Jamar's first name. It was something I'd never troubled to learn.
"Jerack didn't renege on Edric's bargain, even when it would have served his purposes," Arianwyn mused. "He had at least one chance to disable or kill Edric and take the second fragment."
"That's true," I agreed. "Gnarl, in particular, had ample opportunity, but didn't seize it."
"Gnarl?" Constans interrupted. "You've taken to naming strawjacks? Anyway, perhaps he couldn't. You said Ashana was protecting you."
"Actually, what I said was that Malgyne told me Ashana was protecting me from him. There's no suggestion of that same status extending to Jack. If nothing else, being pinned against a wall by an angry strawjack would seem to prove her blessings have limits."
"Our legends have always told of the enmity between Ashana and Malgyne, but there's no suggestion that she'd offer to shield anyone from Jack," said Jamar. "In fact, I was always taught that Jack was as much a protector as Ashana was. He was just always a little bit more… flexible… in the form his blessings could take."
I'd heard such stories before, always from villagers who lived their entire lives in the shadow of Jack's forest of Fellhallow. I'd never had much reason to credit them with any truth, but that didn't mean Jamar was wrong.
"You're suggesting we hand Jack the fragments?" said Arianwyn.
"No," said Jamar firmly. "One honourable act doesn't guarantee trust. I merely point out that, at the very least, Jack brought himself to side with one enemy over another. We may be able to compel him to do so again."
"On a similar note," said Constans, thoughtfully, "do we know that Solomon isn't working with, or for, Death?"
"That's a revolting but well-suited match," said Arianwyn.
"Why wouldn't he be allied with Jack?" asked Jamar.
"Were that the case, I'd imagine that first strawjack wouldn't have torn through quite so many of Solomon's thugs," I said.
"I'd forgotten about that," Jamar shifted in his seat. "What would Solomon have to gain from such an alliance?"
"Whatever he wanted. Malgyne made all manner of promises when he appeared to me in the vaults. I'm sure Solomon would be quite imaginative under such circumstances."
"It would certainly explain why Quintus was on the scene so quickly," Constans said. "If Death's watched you since he sprung you from Jack's clutches, he could easily have clued Solomon into what you were doing."
"Why do all that and offer us a way out?" Arianwyn asked.
"Why not? It improved his chances of winning either way. The fact that you managed to escape the trap pretty much proves the wisdom of that course."
I got to my feet and met each of their eyes in turn. "I don't think it changes anything. We still don't want Solomon getting hold of these fragments, and we definitely don't want Malgyne or Jack getting them unless we gain a better understanding of their motives." I looked at Arianwyn. "I assume these are two fragments from the same stone?"
"Yes, I think so." She lifted one in each hand. "You can see where these two edges fit together... oh."
As the pieces of rock touched, their surfaces bled together, sealing the crack. Where once there had been two fragments of darkly-glowing rock, now there was one roughly hemisphere-shaped chunk of darkly-glowing rock.
I sat back down. "That at least answers the question of how the thing gets reassembled. Unfortunately, it also precludes the option of keeping the pieces separate."
"At least this way we don't have to worry about one of them rolling off into a corner," said Constans, "or falling down the back of a chair, or something equally embarrassing."
"Unfortunately, it also makes it much simpler to steal," said Arianwyn, her chagrin obvious. "Previously, we could have kept the two pieces apart."
"Which would have made it more likely at least one would be discovered by our foes," said Jamar. "Besides, do you have a safer place to keep it than in this tower?"
"No," Arianwyn conceded.
"Hopefully, it's not for long," I said. "Jack, Malgyne and Solomon have all expressed urgency. Perhaps the portalstone's value is transient. Maybe there'll come a time when none of them want it."
"That would save us a lot of trouble," said Constans. "But we're talking about two great powers and a maniac who measures his plans in years. I'm not ready to put my faith in this being over soon."
Arianwyn nodded. "If time's running short, then I guarantee one or more parties will start getting desperate. It also means we've potentially only a brief opportunity to stop them."
I looked again at the chunk of portalstone. This wasn't getting us anywhere. "So what's next?"
Arianwyn shrugged. "In theory, that we have these pieces... piece... whatever... should be enough to stop Solomon, but I'd be happier if we kept the last fragment out of his hands, and out of Death's and Jerack's, for that matter."
"Do we know where it is?"
It was Constans who replied. "I've done a little more sifting through Dalrand's notes. It looks like it's in the hands of one of Solomon's fellow councillors. Lord Avanov, to be precise."
He smiled broadly, as did Arianwyn. Jamar and I exchanged a confused glance.
"Would you mind explaining what's so amusing?" I asked.
"Avanov doesn't much care for Solomon," Arianwyn replied. "In fact, he's the closest thing to a real enemy Solomon has on the council. He isn't brave enough to oppose anything serious – he has a daughter about my age, and I'm sure Solomon knows where to find her at all times. However, he's been our occasional ally over the years, so this fragment should be a lot easier to acquire."
Some good news, at last. "Are you going to speak to him?"
"I can if you want, but I'd rather Constans handled it. I've something else I'd like to look into."
Something more important than this? "What do you mean?"
"I keep thinking about that arch we saw in Otherworld. I want to see if anyone's made mention of such a thing before."
I looked around the library, at the nearly endless array of shelves and books. "That could take a while," I pointed out.
"Then it's best I start immediately, don't you think? Zorya will help me, won't you Zorya?"
[[Of course, Mistress Arianwyn.]]
I turned to Constans. "Do you know Avanov well enough to do this?"
He pulled a face. "Probably, but we may have to improvise."
"You mean steal it from him?"
"That's such a pejorative term."
"But yes?"
"Yes."
I sighed. "Very well, but we can at least go a little more prepared than last time." I looked across at Jamar. "I assume you're fit and able to accompany us?"
"Not only fit and able, but eager, savir. This is a wonderful fortress, but I confess a longing for the open sky."
"Good, but you're not going out like that. Zorya, can
you find some suitable clothing? I'd like him to blend in as much as possible. Imperial green is a bit of a giveaway."
[[Of course, Master Edric.]]
With a nod of her head, Zorya glided serenely from the room. Jamar stood, gave a slight bow, and followed.
Constans drummed his fingers on the tabletop. "I suppose I also have a few preparations to make." He rose lightly to his feet. When he'd left the room, Arianwyn and I stared at each other in silence.
"Are you alright?" I asked eventually.
She broke eye contact and looked away. "No. No, I don't think I am, but I'm sure it will pass." She smiled wanly. "I need time to come to terms with the path that's been put before me."
"You don't have to walk that path, just because it's there."
"We'll see." She didn't seem convinced. "I never thanked you for rescuing me, did I?"
"You've had a lot on your mind. Besides, you don't need to."
"I did get that impression. But I wouldn't want you to think I've taken your kindnesses for granted, so thank you Edric, for my deliverance and more besides."
"You're welcome," I said, inclining my head.
"But now you're needed elsewhere, and I have reading to do."
I took the hint. "I'll leave you to your research."
Before I left the room, I took one last look over my shoulder. Arianwyn still sat where I'd left her, staring into space.
I returned to my room to retrieve my sword. To my surprise, I found Jamar waiting, dressed in a much more inconspicuous blend of Tressian blues and greys. He looked worried.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Come with me." He spoke in hushed tones. "I think there's something you should see."
Without another word, he turned and left the room. Bemused, I grabbed my sword belt and set off after him.
Jamar led me downward through the tower by a route I'd not yet travelled, all winding staircases and narrow passageways.
"Where are we going?"
He eased a door closed behind us. "I've had opportunity to explore whilst you've been away."
We'd come a long way, and I had no doubt we were somewhere amongst the tower's foundations. In front of us was a double-leaved door, made not from wood, as all the others had been, but tempered metal. Bolts secured each door to its adjoining wall and to the other door. Jamar set about sliding these back.
Shadow of the Raven (The Reckoning Book 1) Page 25
