The Sleeping Life (Eferum Book 2)

by Andrea K Höst

  "Kellian are very odd-looking, aren't they?" Auri said, peering into Sukata's face as she and Kendall discussed how much swinging the hammock could take. "Almost just people at first glance, a bit over-tall, but look at how her left hand is so much harder to see out of the light of the mageglow."

  "The claws are odder, don't you think?"

  "Anyone can file their nails to a point. Does she have a sore throat or does she always sound like that? Is she friendly?"

  "Sukata?" Fallon hesitated, distracted by the way he could tell Sukata was laughing without even smiling. Her eyes were very bright and open, despite the grave line of her mouth. "Formally polite. No-one except Duchess Surclere is exactly friendly, but Sukata will answer questions and doesn't seem to hold Uncle against me. Kendall just glares, but I think that's her natural state." This was the first time he'd seen the village girl not wearing some level of black frown, and he was surprised by how pretty she could be.

  "And the Duchess?" Auri asked, diverted back to her original course.

  "Through here."

  Fallon led the way out into the corridor and into the big room at the end, trying to control sudden nerves. His most logical course was to become a better mage so he could tackle their problem himself, but Auri was convinced Duchess Surclere would know she was there—would immediately see, and understand, and be able to fix them. Fallon really wanted the Duchess to be that brilliant as well, but he refused to let hope override common sense.

  The room's mageglows had been covered and Duchess Surclere was curled up in one of the seats before the many-paned windows, looking out at a heavy moon striping the horizon. Auri marched straight up to her, leaning in close to peer into her face, her own expression very set and un-Auri-like.

  "Help. Me."

  Furious words, near to spat into the oblivious woman's face.

  "Auri—"

  "She doesn't know I'm here."

  "No." Duchess Surclere hadn't even blinked.

  "She's not going to be any use at all, is she?"

  "I'm going to be of use," Fallon said firmly, stifling any hint of his own disappointment. "Duchess Surclere might have lost her strength, but she has the Surclere knowledge, and she's going to teach me. There's not a person in the whole of the world more expert on the Eferum. You just need to be—"

  "Patient? What else have I been? She was supposed to see!"

  Auri spun and would have run out of the room except that Lord Surclere had just come into it, and the moonlight set him alight, his hair glowing pale mist and eyes silver circles. Auri stopped dead, then stepped hastily out of the way as he reached Duchess Surclere.

  "A great deal more comfortable than coaches," Duchess Surclere said, glancing back. "I have to admit it was very helpful."

  "The Queen is a practical woman," Lord Surclere said, which didn't quite sound like a compliment. "She may be practical about Sebastian."

  "He thought of that, too, but fortunately the girl's rather young and tying him to second-in-line really not a good idea. But he plans to be exasperatingly vague and bookish on the off-chance." She gazed back out the window and added unconvincingly: "He's well able to take care of himself."

  Lord Surclere reached out and undid the thin black bow that held back Duchess Surclere's hair. Pulling it free, he wound it around his wrist.

  "Are you going to appropriate all my ribbons?" Duchess Surclere asked, smiling up at him.

  "Yes."

  He slid one finger under a long lock of hair that had fallen over her cheek, letting it wind and slip. Duchess Surclere went pink, the change of colour visible even in the stark moonlight.

  "Let's get out of here," Fallon said, alight with mortification. He grabbed Auri's hand, but she pulled free, and then both of them froze because Duchess Surclere had stopped looking pleased and shy, turning her head sharply toward them.

  "What?" Lord Surclere pivoted on his heel.

  "Some kind of scry," Duchess Surclere said. "Very finely done, but definitely an observation. Tch—it will have to be someone on the ship, given the distance and the wards."

  Lord Surclere stood just a little straighter, and what could be made out of his expression in the vivid moon-glow did not change at all. And Fallon had never wanted more to be anywhere but where he was.

  "Let's get out of here!" he said, pulling at his sister's arm as Lord Surclere turned and walked out of the room—not hurrying, but not slow either.

  "Don't quail, Fal," Auri said. "If they find out the truth they're hardly going to be angry."

  "All they'd find is that I'm spying on them," Fallon said. "I won't be able to explain more, and—"

  "He'll only see that you're asleep," Auri pointed out. "No-one else has been able to tell you're in the Dream. And she can barely tell we're here. Calm down."

  "Easy for you to say."

  "Do you think we should push something over? Were you feeling well enough this morning?"

  "Nothing out of the way," Fallon said. "I suppose she'd stop thinking we were a scry if we did. But—"

  "But, but—you only ever think of objections, Fal."

  "But what if she thought we were some sort of attack? She might try to dispel us."

  "Where's her slate? We could write 'Help' on it."

  "That—" Fallon shook his head. "You know what that will do to me." One or two quick actions, like triggering the page-turner or pushing something, would tire Fallon. Anything sustained, even only long enough to write a word, and he'd sleep half the next day.

  "This time it might be worth it."

  "So that they can question me when I wake up?"

  "At least if you pass out they'll start investigating."

  "You don't know what it's like, Auri. I can't—"

  "I know what this is like!" Auri yelled. "Never touching, never eating, never doing! You don't care! Don't you want her to fix me?"

  "I don't want her to kill us," Fallon said.

  Duchess Surclere turned her head as if trying to hear them better, then looked to the door as Lieutenant Meniar strode in.

  "Scries, eh?" he said, just a little round about the eyes, as if startled. "Probably one of the ship's mages being curious. Captain Faille told me to put an extra ward on the room."

  "I suppose that's the simplest solution," Duchess Surclere said. "It's rare they'd find me doing anything but sleeping, but it's still annoying."

  Fallon left, knowing Auri would follow rather than be trapped in the room by a ward. They'd encountered wards only occasionally since the Dream started, and they were painful and impossible to cross, no matter whether they were trying to exclude Eferum-Get or magical intrusions. At least the ship's wards formed a bubble over the masts, so Auri would be able to enjoy the view from the deck.

  At the steep stair at the end of the passage Fallon concentrated on going up without slipping through, then headed toward the front of the ship. He hadn't quite reached it before experiencing that curious, stretchy sensation that told him he was at the limit of the distance he could go from his body, but almost all of the deck was within range.

  "I'll take an afternoon nap tomorrow," he told Auri, when she finally joined him. "You definitely want to see what the sunset is like."

  Subdued now, Auri eyed the nearest sailor fretfully. "Do you think Mrs Pardons will look after Father properly?"

  "As she said, she's managed him well enough when I've been at school. What worries me is if Uncle decides to get back at him for letting me go off with Duchess Surclere, but Mrs Pardons said she just wouldn't let Uncle in if he gets too bad. She had all these plans for pretending the household had come down with Shaky Fever."

  Auri didn't respond, just stood shoulder to shoulder with him and watched the moon inch higher. Her way of apologising. Fallon doubted he would be able to handle the long isolation much better, but the chance of Auri letting her temper ride her to disaster was another worry to add to Uncle and Father and spells gone wrong and a seriously angry Lord Surclere.

  He was so tire
d.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Rennyn glanced out the window at grey, damp sky, then back to the warm cabin that had been home for the past two weeks. "Can you hear music?"

  The range of expressions in return for her question clearly told her 'no', and were also a nice illustration of the different personalities before her. Sukata concentrated, even though Kellian hearing meant she would ordinarily have caught any sound before Rennyn. Fallon was analytical, searching for a double meaning to the question, while Aven Meniar's light smile gave way to a quick, professional survey, on the off-chance that she'd suddenly developed a fever. And Kendall was just suspicious, convinced as ever that half Rennyn's actions were for her own quixotic amusement.

  "Guess not. Sorry for interrupting." She gestured for Meniar to continue, though the impression of notes too distant to be truly audible hadn't gone.

  "For bone-work, caulding isn't a replacement for a splint," Meniar said, with a shrug. "For all kinds of reasons, you don't want to rely solely on magic to keep fractures in position. With a clean break, once the bone is set you don't truly need caulding at all after the splint is in place, but where the bones have been shattered, where there are many fragments, caulding might be the only thing to save a limb. And to cauld a bone you need to see the bone, which is what this casting is all about."

  The Sigillic was straightforward, but Rennyn had found the lecture interesting for the new words that stood for all the different layers of people. She'd only ever learned the most basic of healing magics, because the study of how living creatures worked required many more years than she could devote. This trip had become a good opportunity to explore new avenues, and she and her students had enjoyed a round dozen of these lectures from Meniar and the other Sentene mages, as well as the specialist ship mages.

  This Sigillic had been written in a circle around a flat bowl filled with water, and as Meniar began to activate, the liquid took on a silvery sheen while a faint glow appeared around his left hand.

  "There are many variations of this casting, depending on just what it is you wish to look at," Meniar said, touching his left hand to the back of his right. "Term substitution is possible, but only useful for issues that can be diagnosed simply by looking."

  Rennyn leaned so she could see the bowl more clearly, watching a collection of bones flex in time with Meniar's hand. It was an eerie sight.

  "This isn't the spell everyone uses when they look at my ribs," she commented. "At least, not illusions in bowls."

  "This version's mainly for when trying to set the bones," Meniar said. "When it's necessary to see the movement. Sukata, you give it a try."

  The Kellian girl was a confident caster. Her Sigillics were always precisely written, and she didn't rush or hesitate, but had a nice surety. Rennyn enjoyed watching her, especially the pleasure in her eyes, for Sukata straightforwardly enjoyed magic. Fallon had said he liked it too much, but though he cast without effort she felt as always an underlying lack of certainty. Kendall usually pretended to be bored during Sigillic lessons, since she wasn't yet permitted to use them, but this was far too intriguing for her not to crane forward wide-eyed.

  "Do you feel up to casting?" Meniar asked Rennyn.

  She considered how much or little she wanted to peer through the faint mist of rain in hopes of an early glimpse of Port Avecna. They'd followed a cup-like course south, west, then north, making port frequently to take on supplies and trade cargo, and finally to part ways with most of the Sentene. It always seemed they would reach land while Rennyn was sleeping, and she'd been looking forward to Avecna, but knew she was more curious to see the ribs that had given her so much trouble.

  Not bothering with the sigils, she touched one hand to her side and the other to the bowl, and considered the image in the water. Finding this too small to be satisfying, she lifted the illusion to the air before her and expanded it to cover all of her from the waist up. Much easier to examine.

  "Is this blurring the calluses?" she asked, frowning at the faint dark cracks interrupting smooth bone.

  "The part of them that has transmuted to bone," Meniar said, shaking his head at her variation of the spell. "Take a couple of deep breaths, will you?"

  Wrinkling her nose, Rennyn obeyed. She'd had to do lots of breathing exercises the last couple of months, which she was told would stave off chest infections and help her lung not collapse again. It still hurt, but nothing like the knife of the first month.

  Meniar circled the table for a better look, and nodded, pleased. "There's definite progression. Another month or so and it should be well knit."

  "That's supposed to be encouraging, is it?" Rennyn asked, then laughed at the way the fleshless skull flapped its jaw. "This would be very interesting cast on a dancer. Or perhaps to use for a Death Day March." She wondered if Seb would be more interested in such pranks, now that they no longer had the pressure of the Black Queen's return hanging over them, and pushed away the immediate pang. She'd known she'd miss Seb. There was no point dwelling on his absence.

  "Do you think you could translate whatever it is you're doing into a Sigillic?" Meniar asked. "It would be a valuable variation."

  "I expect so," Rennyn said, and glanced at her three students. "As a first step to that, each of you can draft your suggestion for how the Sigillic should read. You can have three days. No peer consultation or actual casting attempts, please."

  The door opened as she said this, and she smiled at Illidian, who had been on deck training with Keste Faral. He was thoroughly damp, since he didn't consider misting rain anything more than a useful extra challenge to a sparring session. Usually he returned from practice lightly energised, but Rennyn caught a hint of a frown before the sight of a moving skeleton in the middle of the table distracted him.

  "The headland has been sighted," was all he said, wiping one of his duelling swords with a cloth before sliding it into its sheathe.

  That was a signal to pack up. Rennyn dismissed the divination, and her small class cleared the table and moved it away from the window seat to where it could be bolted in place. They followed Illidian back through the door, and Rennyn glanced out the window again, but wasn't tempted to get wet and cold. For her, each day had two halves, and this was the end of the first.

  "Your Grace."

  Everyone except Kendall and Illidian was still very formal with her, and Rennyn had long since given up reminding her companions her name was Rennyn. Fallon, just like Kendall, was splendidly intractable. But while Kendall was a prickly ball of resistance, Fallon obliged on all but a few points.

  "Questions?" she said, easing off her shoes.

  "I would like a...an unsparing opinion on whether it is possible for any of us to reach your level of Thought Magic."

  Rennyn considered the question then said: "Why would it be impossible?"

  "It's obvious from your approach with Kendall that you feel it necessary to ground her in Thought before moving on to Sigillic. Centuries of mages who started with Sigillic never accomplished more than basic lifting with Thought, before it was abandoned altogether. Have we destroyed our chances of fully embracing Thought because we muddied the waters with Sigillic? Or…is it a Surclere trait? No-one outside your family is known to have achieved this."

  "Given the reputation of the Elder Mages, I wouldn't say that's true."

  "Your family and some near-mythic mages who are long dead, then."

  Rennyn considered her family's past. "The Surcleres possess natural strength, but I don't believe the line is distinctive in other ways," she said. "There have been those in my family who never stepped beyond basic Thought manipulation, and I would put that down simply to it being difficult.

  "Starting with Sigillic increases the probability of you inadvertently killing yourself, since you have more power to do damage, but it doesn't make it harder to gain control. I can't guarantee or guess as to how far you'll be able to progress, or whether any of you have the combination of discipline and...intuition that allows a ma
ge to reliably Thought-cast. Both Sukata and Kendall are progressing well in physical manipulation, but it will be a long time before I ask them to do anything abstract."

  "Will I be permitted to begin the exercises, once we leave the ship?"

  She nodded. "The delay was only because of the danger to the ship. You'll make the very early attempts in a clear area so you're away from others, and if you achieve some measure of control will follow the same series of exercises as Sukata and Kendall. Increasingly complex physical manipulation. You will not attempt anything outside the exercises until I consider you ready."

  "Do you—" He stopped, apparently changing his mind about the question. "Thank you, Your Grace." He gave her a slight, formal bow and left, passing Illidian, who had been waiting in the doorway.

  Rennyn stripped off her thick woollen socks and wriggled her toes while her husband closed the door. He was even damper than before—he'd doused himself as a makeshift post-practice bath—and she watched him dry and dress himself with the spare efficiency that was so characteristic of him.

  "Was that the first time you cast complex Thought Magic before DeVries?" he asked, tidying away his discarded clothing.

  "Must be." During the trip, Rennyn had made a point of casting every day, but usually the most minor of things. "I hadn't seen anything like the reaction you noticed before now."

  "He kept it from his face, but the intensity is palpable."

  Rennyn nodded. Illidian had told her that Fallon had come close to fainting when she'd first agreed to speak to him. She'd only seen a boy with a clever stratagem to catch her interest, but hadn't doubted Illidian's ability to gauge reactions, and had taken the boy as a student at his request. Today she too had glimpsed an overmastering need behind Fallon's questions about Thought Magic. Desperation. She or Illidian would puzzle out the reason eventually, and hopefully be able to help him. Or stop him, if it was all some complex stratagem of his Uncle's, as a few had hinted.

  "He does truly love magic, but he's frightened of it as well, which isn't surprising given the family history. At least that seems to have pushed him away from trying to work Thought out himself. Too many won't be so cautious, now they know what's possible."