by Lisa Shearin
“That’d do it. Oh, and speaking of Edythe, if we girls still get to go out tonight, Tarsilia thinks we should invite her.”
Alix stopped pinning and looked up at me in disbelief. “Has Tarsi been sampling some of her own apothecary brews?”
“Yeah, I’d kind of wondered that myself. But I ran into Sora Niabi late yesterday, and she agrees. They think that if Edythe and I could get into more of a relaxed social setting—without Mychael—that she could get to know me better. Hence, going out with us.”
“It doesn’t sound like she’s the social type,” Alix said.
“And I don’t think she’s ever been relaxed.”
“Though she and Brant did manage to make two children,” Alix pointed out.
“You don’t have to be relaxed for that.”
“What do Isibel and Imala think?” Alix asked.
“I haven’t had a chance to ask either one of them.”
“After being locked in the peace talks all day, both of them will need to let their hair down. But I can’t see Isibel doing that with her mother there.”
“I can’t see either one of us doing that.”
“You like Mychael’s dad, right?”
“Definitely.”
“Does he love her?”
“It looks that way. And she loves him—and Mychael.”
“She’s a mother, Raine. She just wants what’s best for her son.”
“And she doesn’t think that I’m it.”
“Has she said that?”
“Not directly.”
“Well, I think you should directly ask her—after the wedding, of course. We don’t want to possibly mess that up. What did Mychael say?”
“That she’ll like me once she gets to know me.”
Alix rolled her eyes. “Doesn’t know that much about women, does he?”
“Knows enough to make me happy.”
“That’s not the kind of knowing I’m talking about.”
“I like it.”
“I’m sure you do. The thing is there’s nothing you can do that you haven’t already done to get her to like you. You’re not the problem; she is. Has Mychael had a chat with her yet?”
“I don’t think so. We’ve been kind of busy.”
“For your happiness—and sanity—I would suggest that he make the time. He loves both of you, both of you are unhappy, and it’s about him. You’ve done everything you can. She’s done everything she’s willing to. It’s time for Mychael to tell his mother exactly how it is and how it’s going to be.”
“And if he doesn’t think that’s necessary?”
Alix gave me a wicked smile. “Then it’ll be up to your bridesmaids.”
Chapter 23
Sending out an order to lock all mirrors and cease all mirror travel had proven beneficial in two ways: people weren’t traveling to their dooms and becoming spider food, and the spiders were becoming hungry.
Very hungry.
According to Tam, once a Rak’kari had fed for the first time, they had to keep eating. After all mirror travel had been suspended, the spiders got hungry, then agitated, then desperately started trying to consume each other. I was surprised how little time it’d taken. Within three days, they were in a frenzy to feed. If anyone in the Seven Kingdoms decided to live dangerously and try to go somewhere in a mirror, they wouldn’t be living for long, dangerously or otherwise. Since Rak’kari need living food with warm blood and liquefiable internal organs, trying to dine on each other wasn’t going well, as Rak’kari had none of those things.
The result was spider monsters that weren’t picky eaters.
Justinius Valerian’s claim that the faculty in the cryptozoology department were creative thinkers had borne fruit. One of the professors, a believer that the more minds put to work on a problem, the more potential solutions you could get, had been particularly successful. She’d told her graduate students the problem, offered them a big chunk of extra credit, stepped back, and watched the magic happen. Literally.
The winning plan was a team effort of an enterprising young couple: the girl was a cryptozoology grad student, her boyfriend was one of Cuinn’s lab assistants.
It was early afternoon, and I was back in Cuinn Aviniel’s laboratory. Me and a lot of other people. Good thing it was a big room.
“Use one monster to kill another,” I noted with approval. “I like it.”
The salvation of the Seven Kingdoms’ mirror travel came in the form of Majafan sandworms. They were the length and width of your forearm, their skin was puncturable, and their blood warm enough for a starving spider.
Blood that was deadly if ingested—at least for normal creatures. We didn’t know if it applied to a Rak’kari, but Cuinn had a plan to find out.
Best of all, the cryptozoology lab had hundreds of sandworms, thousands during their mating season, which apparently was often. The kids in the lower level crypto courses dissected them in a lab course. When sandworms were less than two months old, they were still just as large, but were nonpoisonous, and were fed to Guardian sky dragons like hay.
A plentiful and quickly renewable resource.
There might not be enough sandworms to kill every Rak’kari in the Void, but it would put one heck of a dint in their numbers. The chairman of the cryptozoology department was having more shipped in from a small magic school in Brenir that should be enough to finish off the rest of the Rak’kari.
“They wiggle,” the department chairman was telling us. She was brisk and businesslike with a wry sense of humor and reminded me a lot of Sora Niabi, the chairman of the demonology department. I was sure they knew each other, and were probably friends.
“The spiders should like the wiggling,” she continued. “The sandworms are fat, juicy, and highly poisonous.” She gave us a quick, borderline evil grin. “And if the poison doesn’t kill them, the explosion will.”
I perked up at that. “Explosion?” Now she was talking my family’s language.
“Once the poison’s ingested, it turns to a gas.” She put her hands together, then spread them apart. “Boom.”
“Will that do it?” Mychael asked Tam.
“I don’t see why not. Given enough pressure buildup, even an armored Rak’kari should explode.”
“Which brings up your students’ next project,” I said. “How to clean up that mess?”
“Would the Void be damaged by any of this?” Mychael asked Cuinn.
The elf mage thought. “Theoretically, it shouldn’t.” He sounded fairly confident, then he flashed a boyish grin. “But then no one’s ever blown up Rak’kari inside the Void using Majafan sandworms before. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see this.”
*
Taking a peek through a rift and getting visual confirmation of the Khrynsani on Timurus was important. Knowing where they were was the first step to finishing what was started that night in the Khrynsani temple. Tam, in particular, couldn’t wait to get started on that project.
But exterminating the Rak’kari infesting the Void took precedence. If the Khrynsani had anything up their collective black sleeves, getting mirror travel reestablished was critical. Tam had said the Khrynsani didn’t waste resources. They wouldn’t have conjured hundreds of Rak’kari simply to inconvenience mirror travel in Seven Kingdoms. They had cut us off from each other for a reason, and with the Khrynsani, that reason would never be good.
Cuinn Aviniel put calibrating a rift to Timurus aside in favor of doing what he had told me and Mychael that a mirror mage would have to be insane to try—opening an unlinked mirror.
To get the Majafan sandworms into the Void, we couldn’t link two mirrors. That would form a tunnel, and that would deny the vast majority of the Rak’kari the feast we’d prepared for them. I hadn’t known many mirror mages, but those whom I had known and heard about would have been too arrogant to accept help opening a mirror, linked or unlinked. Thankfully, Cuinn wasn’t most mirror mages; he had half a dozen colleagues in his lab to hel
p with the heavy lifting, or in this case, the heavy holding. Cuinn wouldn’t be merely opening an unlinked mirror; he had to ward it to prevent any Rak’kari from coming through, or any sandworms from coming back. Both outcomes would be extremely undesirable.
As to how we were going to see the results of our hopefully successful experiment, we couldn’t simply open a mirror or a rift and look inside. You had to step through to see through. Tam had done that once; neither he nor anyone else was doing that again. And we couldn’t simply strap a spy gem to a sandworm. We needed to be able to get the spy gem back, and we really wanted to do it without a starving Rak’kari attached.
We were going with the cable method, a double-strength one this time. Instead of Tam attached to the end, Cuinn had rigged up a sturdy mount for the spy gem, kind of like a steel frame with the gem inside. That way, the gem could record from all directions, and give us a good look at the Rak’kari hopefully enjoying their meal. The vortex that would be formed when the unlinked mirror was opened would take care of sucking the cable and spy gem inside. Getting it out could be a challenge, but that was one of the reasons why we had plenty of armored-gloved Guardians standing by.
As a test, half a dozen sandworms were tossed into the Void along with a spy gem attached to a cable to record what happened. The results were intensely gratifying. The Rak’kari raced to get to the sandworms, they drank their insides, and then those that had consumed the tasty morsels went boom.
After the successful test run, some cryptozoology faculty and grad students delivered six large, shoulder-high crates. I could see through the wooden slats what was squirming inside, and thought about offering to help ward that mirror. We did not want any of those things coming back through that mirror once they were dumped inside.
While I wasn’t keen to be around while any of the above was happening, my newly discovered special skill set required me to be. Since much of my new power was unknown, I didn’t know how I’d be able to help, but if the situation suddenly went to the Lower Hells in a handbasket—which had been the only direction situations had gone lately—I strongly suspected my magic would be there when or if I needed it. While I didn’t like where the magic was probably coming from, I had to admit I was glad it was there if needed. I mean, how bad could something be that kept you alive?
One thing definitely made me feel better—twenty things, actually. Mychael, Vegard, and eighteen other Guardians. The boys would have my back. Though at the moment, I had theirs. Mychael didn’t want me anywhere near that mirror when Cuinn opened it, so my view was presently through the space between Mychael and Vegard’s broad shoulders. That didn’t bother me. Should the situation go to crap, I had no doubt of my ability to shove them out of my way, especially if anything, be it spider or worm, attacked either one of them.
Tam and Imala were at the talks and couldn’t be here, but I’d promised to tell them all the gory details of Rak’kari death and destruction later.
Cuinn and company had the largest mirror in his lab warmed up and in stand-by mode, meaning it was glowing and pulsing at a speed that was disturbingly similar to a heartbeat. At least the color wasn’t red, more of a pale blue light.
I’d had enough of red glows to last me a lifetime—a normal one, not what my father had endured.
Four Guardians pushed the first crate up to the mirror, stopping less than a foot from the pulsing surface. Two backed away, and the other two stood to the side of the crate, but outside of the mirror’s frame, ready to slide open the crate’s wooden door.
Cuinn looked to Mychael. “Are we ready?”
“Whenever you are.”
The elf mage turned to face the mirror, about to do what he’d said a mirror mage would have to be nuts to attempt. His next words were for his four colleagues. “Ladies and gentlemen, you know what to do.”
One of the men laughed nervously. “Piss my robes?”
“You can do whatever you want after we serve lunch.” Cuinn fully extended his arms, fingers spread wide and glowing with what started as blue, then intensified as a white so bright I couldn’t look directly at it. “Now.”
That was it. No shouted commands, just one word. And at that one word, the three men and two women opened an unlinked mirror, something that simply wasn’t done because of the danger. For us, right here and right now, the danger was greater if we didn’t do it.
The two Guardians pulled the first crate’s wooden sliding door aside, and the vortex created with the formation of the unlinked mirror did the rest, sucking the contents of a shoulder-high crate full of Majafan sandworms into the Void, then taking the empty crate along with it.
I wasn’t sure they meant for that to happen, but no one was opposed to a flying crate smashing a spider or three.
Crate after crate was pushed into position, opened, and the contents sucked into the Void. Cuinn and his mirror mage colleagues held that huge mirror under perfect control the entire time. Brows were sweating, arm and hand muscles tensing, and breathing was growing harsh, but the men and women of the dimensional studies department held their own.
Between the first and second crates, the spy gem secured to a steel cable was thrown in. When the last crate had been emptied, Cuinn and his friends held the mirror open for another minute while the Guardians reeled in the cable with the spy gem attached—and a Rak’kari thankfully not attached. Their work done, Cuinn and company closed the mirror, secured it, and promptly collapsed into the closest chairs.
We had a large crystal ball in place and ready for viewing. When the spy gem was hooked up…I could describe what I saw, but suffice it to say that the sandworms performed as promised. The Rak’kari found them irresistible, scuttling and surging over one another in their eagerness to reach the bounty first. After the first couple of dozen spiders exploded in splats of black blood and viscera. Mychael said he’d need to look back in later; but for now, we’d let the Rak’kari dine in peace—and then explode into pieces.
Chapter 24
Mychael wasn’t anywhere near ready to declare the Void clear of Rak’kari and safe for travel. That would have to wait until the sandworms had done their work, and after we’d looked into the Void again and didn’t find it full of a new Rak’kari infestation. Tam had said that what we’d seen in the Void had been the result of years of Khrynsani work. Now we could only hope that they hadn’t been overachievers and held a couple of hundred Rak’kari back just in case their first infestation hadn’t gone as planned.
The peace talks were on a brief break. From what I could see, they needed it. I imagined that most of the delegates weren’t exactly used to seeing hundreds of giant spiders and the people they’d consumed. That experience was a first time for me as well, but during the past few months I’d seen many things that I’d never seen before and really hoped to never see again. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen any of those things again; I was getting a dose of new horrors.
I was standing just outside of the two massive doors leading into the Seat of Twelve’s place of judgment. Even though Justinius had done a fine job cleaning the traitors out of the Seat of Twelve and had succeeded in talking Garadin, Tarsilia, and my father into serving as three of the new Twelve, I still had no desire to set foot in there again. Still, with a new Twelve being assembled, including the goblins possibly being represented by A’Zahra Nuru and Kesyn Badru, I’d have to change the way I thought about this place. Instead of a place of judgment, it’d be more like the Hall of Happiness and Rational Thought.
Isibel saw me and came out into the hall. From her expression, I’d better hold off on that renaming. She wasn’t happy, and chances were good that there hadn’t been any kind of rational thought going on during the past few hours. No rational speech, either.
“Are we still going out tonight?” she asked.
“That’s the plan.”
“Good.”
“Need it?”
“Desperately.”
Sorry, Tarsilia and Sora, I thought. I would not be asking Ed
ythe to go with us. Isibel did not need that. If they asked why, I’d tell them it was for the good of peace in the Seven Kingdoms. Isibel was the elven ambassador, and the elven ambassador needed to unwind. She couldn’t do that under the disapproving looks of her mother.
“Anything good happening?” I asked.
“The only two delegations getting along are the elves and goblins. Most of the other delegations get along with us, but not each other.”
I glanced past her into the chamber. Aeron Corantine looked even less happy than he had last time it’d been my misfortune to see him. Plus, he was one of those people who perpetually looked to be up to no good. Every person who had ever given me that impression had proven me right.
“Has anyone punched Aeron Corantine yet?”
“No, but during the last break, the Myloran ambassador was expressing a most fervent desire to toss him in the harbor.”
“I’ve heard he can’t swim.”
“I believe that was the point.” Isibel blew out her breath in an exasperated sigh. “Markus wants to join the talks tomorrow. At least for a while.”
“What does Dalis have to say about that?”
“She said that she’ll be coming with him, and she defies anyone to attempt to prevent her.”
Cuinn had wanted to see Rak’kari eat sandworms and explode. Isibel looked like she wanted to see Aeron Corantine try to have Dalis tossed out of the talks. Her delicate jaw was clenched, and so were the dainty fists by her side. The Nebian ambassador didn’t know it yet, but he would rather be tossed in the harbor by the Mylorans than get what Dalis would be dishing out if he tried to separate her from her patient.
“Mago and I have been meeting with Markus every evening,” Isibel was saying while glaring at the Nebian, “and he has been giving us invaluable advice, but…”
