The Sleeping Life (Eferum Book 2)

by Andrea K Höst

  "Before everyone starts shuffling about," Samarin said, "try to mark the exact direction we were travelling."

  Kendall had no idea, so didn't bother to try, but she was not surprised at all when the Kellian immediately agreed on the same direction, and arranged an arrow using branches. Even as they did so, they were searching the blackness, trying to spot any hint of white, any trace of movement.

  "How far ahead?" Captain Faille asked, and his voice told them all the things his shadowy face did not.

  "I suspect miles. Probably more." Lieutenant Meniar sounded as apologetic as he was frustrated. "That was a major working, the kind of magic thought lost. And I didn't even sense it forming."

  Kendall was staring at the Pest, who had sat up only to curl forward, arms wrapped around his knees, looking straight-out terrified. As if he'd been captured by bandits and they were debating which bit to slice off first.

  "How did you know?" she asked.

  The Pest flinched, and couldn't have looked guiltier if he tried.

  "He knew she was gone," Kendall added, as everyone turned to stare at the Pest. "Shot out of his room squawking about music and ran after Rennyn."

  "Similar to the incident with the thieves," Samarin said. "Are you some kind of dreaming oracle?"

  The Pest's mouth flapped uselessly, and he clutched at his throat.

  "Hells." Lieutenant Meniar thrust a hand into his coat, and brought out his folded slate book. He flipped to a Sigillic already written out and began casting it.

  "What's wrong with him?" Tesin asked, putting a sympathetic hand to the Pest's back.

  "He is under enchantment," Captain Faille said, shifting as if in response to something he could see out in the dark forest. "Something to prevent him speaking on certain subjects—one of which appears to be how he knows what is happening while he sleeps."

  The person who looked most surprised by this was the Pest himself, who stared at Captain Faille, but then looked marginally less despairing, even though he was starting to turn blue. Then Lieutenant Meniar finished casting his Sigillic, and the strangest popping noise came from the Pest's mouth. He gulped a great, heaving breath.

  "Good," Lieutenant Meniar said, smiling his relief. "We're not going to ask how you know, Fallon, not at all. Only tell us what's safe for you to talk about."

  "The music!" the Pest gasped immediately. "The music the Duchess has been hearing. Her eyes were closed. It—"

  He broke off again, hands already at his throat, and looked like he was trying to calm himself down, and not getting very far at all. Lieutenant Meniar, mouth set, began hurriedly writing out the Sigillic again, which didn't do much for the Pest's calm.

  "You don't have to speak," Sukata said. "We will not ask at all."

  But the Pest couldn't seem to believe her, or maybe what he believed made no difference, and it became a race between how quickly Lieutenant Meniar could write out a Sigillic against how fast a boy could turn blue. Until Samarin stepped up behind the Pest, and brought the hilt of his sword down in one quick, sharp blow.

  Fallon crumpled, and Samarin bent over him, joined by Tesin, who said with quiet certainty: "He is breathing now."

  "Whatever this Ban is, it's likely to rely on his own awareness," Samarin explained. "Since he knows that we know he has a secret…"

  He shrugged then glanced out into the darkness, before handing Captain Faille his sword. The Captain, with the briefest of nods, took it and walked away from the glow of Lieutenant Meniar's light. The noises that followed were a reminder that they were in a famously dangerous forest, and obviously no longer the part of it made safe by a clutch of Kellian.

  There wasn't much that Kendall could see of their surroundings, but she had noticed a couple of differences. "The trees are nearly bare," she said. "And it's colder. Is it—how long did we…"

  "This would match the forest many days' travel north," Darian Faille said. "I do not believe it is later in the year."

  Lieutenant Meniar finished writing his Sigillic, then flipped to the other side of the slate and began another. "If it's a true recreation of Nameen's Walk—Fals Nameen, one of the best-known of the Elder Mages—then it is said to allow the traveller to move miles in seconds, but to arrive hours later. So the subjective time of the traveller is very short, and the true travel time hours. I think this is the same night, but I can't tell how much further ahead Her Grace might be."

  "We have a direction," Darian Faille said.

  "Yes. Nameen's Walk was said to be entirely straightforward in that respect. But…" Lieutenant Meniar turned to Captain Faille as he walked back into the dim light. "If we are too far behind, then the slightest deviation of our own path would mean missing the destination entirely. And we have no way of knowing if we're even past the halfway point."

  "She was walking and we were running," Kendall said, before anyone could think to suggest they do anything but follow Rennyn as soon as possible, even though Kendall personally felt as if a thousand rocks were tied to her, dragging her down.

  "Even halfway toward my primary mission is progress for me," Samarin added lightly, but had enough sense not to sound as if he was enjoying himself half as much as usual.

  "I'll set a ward," Lieutenant Meniar said, still writing. "And try to remember a directional Sigillic I read once, so we can keep to our course. Sukata, can you arrange a fire that won't set the entire forest floor alight?"

  Darian Faille, very indistinct at the edge of Lieutenant Meniar's light, seemed to be breaking off part of a fallen branch to create a rough staff. "We will secure the area," she said, and led Captain Faille off.

  Kendall sighed, took off her jacket and folded it into a pad to stick under the Pest's head. She wouldn't want to be out in a forest in her night-clothes, without even shoes. At least the week had been dry, though there was damp enough if you dug down into these layers of leaves.

  "Won't he just wake up and choke again?" she asked, turning to help Sukata and Tesin find rocks for a camp fire.

  "Probably," Lieutenant Meniar said, tersely. "I'll put a Sleep casting on him, for now. Her Grace and I have been trying to divine the enchantment for days now, but I don't yet understand it well enough to try to unpick it."

  And didn't want to try without Rennyn, he did not add, any more than any of them were talking about Rennyn, who was also in her nightclothes somewhere, and all too probably with a monster who had made very clear what he wanted to do with her.

  They'd gone and delivered her right to him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  "Wake up, cousin."

  Rennyn jerked violently, and found herself upright, arms spread to either side. Her skin stung as she struggled against restraint, as if the tiny hairs on her arms, shoulders and back were being pulled out. Sunlight stabbed at her eyes as she tried to gain some sense of her situation, twisting in the bindings, but she saw only greenery, and the occasional flash of orange.

  Tumbling forward, Rennyn realised that she'd been roped quite loosely to a wall only as she fell from it, and then there was nothing but the knives in her feet.

  She might have shrieked. She heard the sound as if it had come from someone else, rising above the jolt of white fire lancing up through her. She crumpled onto a soft, uneven surface, curling in on herself in an excess of hurt, and then forcing herself past the haze of pain to urgent examination of bare feet, finding blood and…glass? Blue-green glass among crusted cuts. One thick shard had been driven so deeply into her instep it was almost lost to view among the sudden flood of bright blood welling around it.

  Lieutenant Meniar's lessons had given her some useful medical techniques, but Rennyn had not spent a great deal of time on the structure of feet. It was a simple matter to block the pain, and removing the glass a mere flicker of Thought, but beyond that came less obvious territory. Not certain of her options, she clamped down on the flow of blood so she could spare another look for the room.

  A ruin. Dazzling shafts of light descended from a stone grid o
f ceiling. The air was thick and warm, and everything festooned with vine, but there was no sign of movement, of any immediate threat. Besides, this much daylight would be protection enough against any Eferum-Get. That voice had been just another nightmare then, combined with the shock of whatever this place was, and however she had reached it.

  Not in the least reassured, Rennyn turned back to the dilemma of her feet. Accelerated healing would sap her physical strength disastrously, and she could not afford to pass out. So, small repairs, using the least amount of power possible. A tiny divination, to identify what was leaking so much blood and then fusing together the largest vein. For the moment the rest of the damage would simply have to be held closed with a variation of a caulding. On top of this she added one of the infection-preventatives, though Lieutenant Meniar would surely shake his head at her failure to properly clean the wounds first. The pain suppression would make it possible to walk, at least until she had some idea of where and how and what next.

  "You might want to move."

  Rennyn flung herself backward, landing directly in the nearest beam of sunlight. But her Wicked Uncle didn't appear. There was nothing moving, nothing but a room covered in vines.

  "This is truly gratifying. Have I haunted your dreams, little cousin?"

  She stared, orienting on the voice. The furthest wall, shadowed but still exposed to far more light than the Eferum-Get prince should be able to tolerate, was as covered in vines as all the rest, and dotted with a handful of orange flowers. But a fixed gaze revealed a figure beneath the vine's heart-shaped leaves.

  "You do not find me at my best, I fear."

  Understatement. A creature of rags, of sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. Helecho Montjuste-Surclere, monster, blood-drinker, cause of so many of her ills, strung up like some kind of fleshy trellis, with a brilliant orange-gold flower tucked over one ear. Rennyn's galloping heart slowed, and she pushed nausea away with all the other dismay and upset she could not deal with just now.

  "Shouldn't you be shrivelling into a blackened lump or something?"

  "Master your disappointment."

  Rennyn straightened, not quite ready to trust even as she wondered whether he had been placed on a north-facing wall to prevent direct exposure to sunlight. Placed…

  There were other people-shaped lumps. Picking her way on numb feet across the uneven ground, Rennyn approached the nearest. A woman, one with dark curling hair and a vivid scattering of freckles. Pressing fingers to a bare patch of neck, Rennyn found a slow but steady beat. The woman did not seem to be in nearly so bad a condition as Prince Helecho. The vines themselves…they thrummed with power, but she could not feel intent from them.

  A room with four people suspended on the walls, and Rennyn to make a fifth. Dezart Samarin's missing mages, without a doubt. There would be almost twenty others.

  "Don't stand in one place for too long, little cousin, or you'll be useless to me."

  Looking down, Rennyn saw tiny filaments of white reaching from the vines nearest to her feet. She stepped away, snapping one strand that had reached her ankle and attached itself firmly. No, dug its way in, she realised, stooping to pluck it out. Remembering stinging pain, she swept her hands over her arms and shoulders, dislodging a little shower of hair-fine tendrils. Roots? They had gone straight through the thin cloth of her lounging suit.

  "Remarkable that you imagine I have any interest in being of use to you," she said, as calmly as she could manage.

  "Few lack self-interest."

  Still not looking back at him, Rennyn continued her examination of the sleeper. Beneath every vine the white filaments dug into the woman's skin, but did not appear to penetrate deeply. Not wanting to spend more energy than strictly necessary, Rennyn did not leap to a divination, and instead shifted the woman minutely forward, craning to see…yes, two larger tendrils, thick as fingers, positioned just below the shoulder blades.

  Rennyn turned from the woman to her prison. Solid walls, grey with the faintest traces of old paint. A door of heavy stone that did not respond to a tentative push. Nothing she could not cut, though it would be easier, perhaps, to break through the ceiling. She only need levitate a short way and she would be on the roof of wherever this was. She narrowed her eyes, concentrating on the 'feel' of the place. All around her, a background hum pricked at her senses. That was possibly the vine, which undoubtedly was more than an ordinary plant, even if she still could not detect intent.

  Throughout her investigation, her Wicked Uncle remained a silent audience, making no more comments. Perhaps he truly was as powerless as he seemed, and she had been given a great gift of chance. An opportunity to deal with him without any difficulty at all, and finally weaken the miscasting that robbed her of her physical strength.

  All she had to do was kill a hateful, horrible, and completely helpless man.

  "How long have you been here?" she asked at last, because there was no point ignoring a source of information just because he gave her the shudders.

  "A month or so. There are periods of unconsciousness, so I can't be more exact."

  "Have you met whoever is behind this? Or remember how you arrived here?"

  "No. I've watched these others be brought in, however, including yourself. Around every five days or so. I broke free, the first time I woke, before the…infestation was complete. From that I can tell you that too much damage to the vines will bring the guards, and the guards are extremely magic-resistant, though not quite so fast as I was then. I made it all the way to the front entrance that time, and bounced most impressively off the shield about this place. The vines themselves draw off Efera, and I presume keep humans unconscious, since these others haven't woken. That doesn't quite work on me."

  "Guards?"

  "Some kind of glasswork construct. Numerous. Difficult to kill."

  Rennyn glanced at the blue-green shards she'd pulled from her feet, and then finally, inevitably, she turned back to the monster pinned to the wall.

  The family resemblance was strong. The same colouring, the same mild curl to his hair as her father and brother, and a similar shape to his face. Even at such an extreme, he seemed to be enjoying her predicament. She met his gaze, refusing to flinch away from it again. He had mishandled her, captured her, tried to chain her soul, had put his teeth in her throat, and then nearly killed her. But she had survived it all.

  "You're being very obliging," she said at last. "But if you imagine I'll release you, prepare for disappointment."

  "No?" Prince Helecho didn't look perturbed, perhaps simply didn't believe her. "And yet I heard you were liable to collapse after even a little casting. Do you think you can bring the shield about this place down? I had trouble even detecting the pattern of the thing, at first, though I've had plenty of time to make a study of it since. What will you do when the need to rest overwhelms you? Even now you've stood in place for too long."

  Rennyn moved, not bothering to glance down to see the cause of the faint tension and release, though noting that the roots did not hurt until you pulled them away. She looked instead at the ceiling. Was there a shield there? There was certainly something, but it was hard to distinguish it from the hum of the vines. And then she shook her head, not denying her Wicked Uncle's point, but emphasising the only decision she could make.

  "You're a killer. A true monster. I won't exchange my life for the lives of however many people you might attack in the future. By any measure of common good sense, I should cut your throat now."

  He laughed. It was a tired sound, but held a note of genuine amusement. "You won't do that."

  "No," she agreed. "Not being a killer—at least not of someone so defenceless. But nor am I going to release you."

  "Giving up? How dull."

  Rennyn had expected desperate anger, even pleading, but he seemed almost unmoved, studying her flatly. She felt that his gaze dwelt on her throat, on the scar he had left there, but she refused to allow herself to hide it.

  "Here is a question for you,
then," he said at last. "What is the goal of this place? Are all these humans in the walls still people, or just hanging sacks of meat? How many more will it take? And who might join you, beneath the leaves?"

  The strongest of mages. Would Sebastian's distance protect him? And what of the Sentene mages, certainly within reach at Aurai's Rest? Sukata and Sarana, Lieutenant Meniar: were any of them as strong as those already taken?

  But that did not alter the simple fact that exchanging one threat for another was not a solution. Whatever she did, it could not involve leaving her Wicked Uncle free to kill.

  Without his help, however, escape was unlikely if there really was a shield about the whole of the building. She did not currently have the strength to overcome one by sheer force, and even if she could, she would almost certainly collapse immediately after bringing it down.

  "Do you still have my focus?"

  "Feel free to search me."

  Rennyn chose not to notice the smirk, answering her own question by seeking the echo that would betray the near presence of her focus. Nothing. But it could be in the building, reachable without needing to pass through this supposed shield. Once she had it…well, she could be truly destructive, perhaps enough to at least ensure that this place could steal no more mages. That would mean sacrificing the current captives...would it be better to attempt rescue? Pulling one of them off the wall without killing them—without alerting the guards—might be the larger challenge.

  Her other option was to learn as much as she could before she was pinned to a wall, and then hope that she could somehow be found, and that whatever those vines were doing to the captive mages really could be reversed. Illidian would not spare a moment in searching, of course, and she could not let herself think about how he would be feeling now, about the poor timing of their last conversation.