Veria's head spun as she put the pieces of the puzzle together.
“He was lying to you,” Strelzar said. “And you knew it. You sensed it, but you had no idea what was happening and the only way you could explain it was—”
“An earache,” Veria muttered. “I don't remember any of this,” she shook her head.
“Neither do I,” Tanisca admitted, her face full of sadness and apology.
“I am not surprised, Laurelgate Ladies,” Strelzar said. “But whatever was going on, I'm sure he was clearing your memory for your sake.”
“You think it was something bad enough that he was...protecting us?” Veria asked, turning back to Strelzar with her head tilted toward her shoulder. Strelzar nodded.
“I was so shallow, and vain, I just—I always assumed he was sneaking around on me,” Tanisca said, self-consciously. “But from what we have found this week, I'm convinced that he wanted to keep us in the dark for our own safety.”
Strelzar took the journal from Veria's hand and flipped open to a marked page, then set it down on the desk.
“There is one visit, right amongst the middle of several visits to the castle, that was made here. To Longberme. Tanisca has no memory of it, obviously, nor a record of it, as she also had the housekeeper at the time keep a detailed visitor log.”
“This is what you want me to check?” Veria asked.
Strelzar nodded. She brushed her long, golden hair back from her face, behind her shoulders and checked to make sure she had remembered to wear her sapphire talisman, which she had. With one hand clasped around the gem at the end of the necklace and one hand on the open page of the journal, she focused on the energy in both, feeling a rush of emotions take her over.
Fear. Anger.
They must not know he was here.
They cannot remember his face.
I can't keep doing this to them...
Sadness. Love.
Veria faltered as her father's love and sadness filled her, and she fought back against the ache it caused in her throat. Her breath became choppy and her torso tensed. Immediately, Andon's hands were on her shoulders to comfort her.
“Stop,” he murmured. “Take a break.”
As soon as she pulled her hands away from the page, Strelzar launched his inquiry. “What did you find?”
“Fear, anger, pain. He was definitely protecting us,” she answered, and she heard Tanisca whimper softly behind her. “He was thinking something about how we needed to forget someone's face. His face. The person that came to Longberme?”
“It has to be,” Strelzar nodded intently. “Can you see it? The face?”
“I don't see pictures in imprints, just hear thoughts, and feel emotions,” Veria shook her head.
“A picture would be a memory,” Andon muttered, almost to himself, his hands still on her shoulders.
“Exactly,” Veria agreed. And then, once his words fully sunk in, she whipped to the side to face him with widened eyes. “Exactly. A picture would be a memory.”
“Do you think we can...?” he asked, cocking his head at her.
“I don't see why we shouldn't try,” Veria said.
“What? What are you trying?” Tanisca asked.
“They are going to combine powers, she is going to find the energy imprint, and then he is going to look for a memory inside of it,” Strelzar explained. “Really, it wasn't that hard to figure out.”
Tanisca sighed, but then continued her questions as if she hadn't heard his remark. “Does that work? Has anyone ever done it before?”
“Not that I know of, but Veria has done a lot of things that nobody else has done before,” Strelzar answered with pride.
“All of which you were responsible for, I am sure,” Tanisca remarked sarcastically.
“Basically, yes,” he replied with a guileful grin.
Veria and Andon locked eyes and grabbed hands, interlocking their fingers tightly, and she felt his energy pulsing through her, warm and radiating and gently thrumming in her skin. Together, they each placed their unclasped hands on the journal page. Andon closed his eyes, his face went rigid in deep focus, and Veria locked on to the imprint, hearing the words again in her head and feeling the swarm of her father's emotions.
Once she found it, she locked onto the thought they needed—They cannot remember his face—and doubled her focus, replaying it over and over in her head, trying to magnify it, make it more powerful with her energy. Andon's face pulled into a grimace, with his eyes still tightly shut and his brows furrowing with every passing moment, as he slipped farther and farther into concentration...searching for the memory.
“Got it!” he announced. “Let me look for awhile...”
Veria didn't move, keeping their hands locked and her hand on the page, staying locked on his energy and the imprint from her father. After several moments of silence, in which she was certain the other three in the room were holding their breath, Andon opened his eyes and pulled his hand from the journal.
“Who was it?” Strelzar asked urgently.
“I have no idea,” he said. “Nobody I've ever seen before.”
“Well, what did he look like?” Tanisca asked.
“Parchment, and dark chalk,” Andon asked with his hands out. “I can draw him.”
Tanisca rushed around to the opposite side of the desk and rifled through a few drawers before producing a blank square of parchment and a few sticks of sketching chalk. Andon smoothed it out across the desk and started drawing a face, and within a minute or two had produced a fairly good sketch of the person he had seen in the memory.
“You can draw, too,” Veria groaned playfully.
He looked over his shoulder at her and smirked suggestively. “I am a man of many, many...many talents, vina,” he purred, his eyes smoldering at her. She tried to suppress a grin back at him, but couldn't, so settled for forcing her lips into a flirtatious, demure curl.
“Show the adults the drawing so we can solve this investigation and I can move out of this house,” Strelzar drawled in exaggerated frustration and disdain. “I am losing my patience with the endless flirting that goes on at all hours of the day.”
Andon rolled his eyes so only Veria could see, and she snorted through her nose softly as he stood and showed the sketch the other three. Turqa and Tanisca did not register any recognition. In fact, Tanisca shrugged immediately and shook her head.
“I recognize him,” Strelzar said.
“You do?” Andon asked.
“Of course I do,” Strelzar snapped. “Did he have orange hair? About the color of sweet root, or a caro? The rocks and buildings of Jorriza?”
“Yes,” Andon nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly that color. Who is it?”
“Cadit Ohren.”
Everyone gasped in unison, and Veria's hand flew to her mouth of its own accord.
“What was he doing here?” Tanisca asked.
“I had to dig pretty deep to find just his face,” Andon said. “The imprint is too short.”
“He's right,” Veria said. “If we wanted a longer memory, we'd have to find something with a longer, more significant imprint. These dates, and pages—he could only have a limited amount of thoughts and feelings and energy imprinted in the time it took him to jot down a day and a symbol.”
“I can keep looking around the house, but...” Tanisca started and shrugged.
“We need to assume we are not going to get that luxury,” Strelzar said firmly. “We may be stuck in traditional investigating on this one if we can't.”
“So what do we know?” Andon said. “There was something being regularly discussed at the castle, and occasionally here, at least once with the man who forged his suicide letter, and that it was bad enough Gordon had to wipe Veria and Tanisca's memories to protect them.”
“The only way it would be bad enough that he'd have to protect them...” Turqa started.
“Is if it went to the top,” Strelzar finished his thought.
“You think
the King was directly involved?” Tanisca asked.
“In what capacity did Gordon advise King Browan?” Andon asked urgently.
“Trade,” Tanisca and Strelzar answered in unison, then exchanged a troubled glance.
“Wait a minute,” Andon said, waving a hand in front of him, “and you said Cadit Ohren was the leader of the Separatist unit that he made you destroy at the border, in secret?”
“Yes,” Veria and Strelzar replied.
“Did Cadit turn on him, because of whatever he knew, whatever Lord Gordon was probably killed for knowing, and start the Separatist Movement?” Andon posited.
“That sounds highly plausible,” Strelzar said, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall, his face deep in thought. “But what did they know?”
“We can only assume it was related to trade,” Turqa thought aloud, stroking his short trimmed beard in contemplation.
“I can have my spies in the castle try to take a look at trade documents and agreements from that time,” Strelzar shrugged. “If they can find anything recorded on a date that matches up with one of these meetings that Gordon attended, they can leave a forgery in its place and bring the real one here, and maybe you two can pull something out of it. But it will take time.”
“Until then?” Andon asked.
“Until then, I think we can take shifts together doing what we have been doing,” Strelzar answered. “Continue searching the house for any other records or items and cross reference everything. And I think it's safe to say that all of us need to assume that the King was directly responsible for Lord Gordon's death, whether by his own hand or a hired one, and we all should consider him a threat. A very large threat.”
“What do you mean?” Tanisca asked.
“I mean, Veria and I are already looking over our shoulders and ready to protect ourselves,” he replied. “The rest of you should be doing the same.”
“You mean...?” Tanisca started and trailed off as she realized what he meant.
“Yes, Mother,” Veria said. “Fighting. We will have to train you to fight.”
“Feels a bit like being Commander again, doesn't it, Birdie?” Strelzar grinned at her from his casual perch by the window.
Veria groaned in her throat. That was a word she would love to never be called again. Though she did have to admit, every time Andon playfully called her 'Master Veria', she knew exactly why Strelzar liked to be called that word.
“Alright,” Tanisca sighed uncomfortably, “but do I have to wear...pants?”
-XIII-
One month of rigorous battle training followed their revelations about Lord Gordon's death, and the real possibility that King Browan was behind it. As Strelzar had suggested, and ended up coordinating, everyone rotated through shifts of eating, sleeping, researching and investigating, training with a Master, practicing on their own, and caring for the children.
Strelzar focused most of his training efforts on Tanisca, and Veria on Andon, as it was much easier for them to train hard elementals and strategy for their own elements. Andon was almost as quick an apprentice as Veria had been. When she realized he had not yet made a talisman, they found one of Gordon's old diamond cufflinks in Tanisca's jewelry box and went through the ritual together, infusing it with his energy and setting it into a thin, discreet wrist cuff of gold and copper. Veria had tried to talk him into a ring so she wouldn't have to smelt a copper spoon and one of her older gold necklaces to make the cuff, but Andon insisted that the only band he intended to put on any of his fingers was the one that would represent their marriage.
Once he had the increase in energy from his talisman, he was as skilled as she in moving large objects, and his natural state could practically knock a person out cold at full strength, rendering them completely useless in battle. He had started to work himself up to full strength natural state on three of them at a time, whenever they all managed to find a window to practice together, and they were finding that proximity was key in the level of strength and number of people he could affect. None of them had found any way to stop it as of yet, except to try to take him out before he could get close enough to enact the full strength natural state to incapacitate them.
Generally, they had been practicing closer range and non-hard elemental skills in the garden behind Longberme Estate. But for dueling and hard elemental skills, they went into remote sections of Bermedge Forest. A majority of the duels had been done without the help of dragonskin, though Strelzar had managed to smuggle half a dozen vials out when they had left the castle. He insisted they save at least two for emergencies—if they were attacked, they could each take a sip and get about an hour of protection—until they could get more. Only duels with one of the two Fire Magers warranted protection, and the opponent would only drink a few drops from a dropper, giving them about fifteen minutes of protection.
Andon and Veria were instructed to purposefully miss in their duels, but if the attack could have landed accurately and defeated the opponent, it counted as a win. Veria had, on more than one occasion, pulled a massive tree down to the ground, crashing it inches behind her opponent and showering them with the dusting of snow and shards of ice that had clung to its branches. The only person besides Andon, who could stop her from using trees, especially when they were covered in snow and ice, was Turqa, as he could connect with any moisture on or in the tree and stop it.
The duels against Turqa were the worst, in Veria's opinion. Even though she had managed to defeat him almost every time, they haunted her for hours afterward, sometimes well into her sleep and dreams. He could latch onto the fluid in anyone's body and change its temperature. Changing it very much at all one way or the other could kill a person rather quickly. He did it as minimally as possible, to show them what they should be afraid of and prepared for, and it was awful.
When he heated the blood and the fluid, it felt a bit like when Strelzar had planted the thoughts in her head during their duel that she was on fire—a form of madness that she could certainly handle—but coupled with feeling like the worst fever of her life, complete with sweating, dizziness and nausea. She'd had many nightmares about actually being burned to death from the inside since coming into contact with the skill.
When he made her colder, she couldn't move, feeling like her muscles and lungs were frozen blocks of ice. She would shiver so violently it ached, and her vision would go dark and blurry, and usually, if she couldn't get an attack off quickly, she'd fall to the ground, feeling as if she were dying slowly. She couldn't even imagine how it would feel if he did it more than that level. And she could definitely imagine that if Pascha and Raken came after them, that's exactly what would happen.
He also spoke of how it was common torture practice to move fluid, either internal or external if it was available, in and out of the lungs to give the sensation of drowning. Or, if one wanted the victim dead, the fluid was left in the lungs and the victim drowned. Veria shuddered every time she thought of it, and wondered if that was the 'interrogation' technique Raken had used on her mother, a thought that always compelled her into a silent vow that she would kill him if she ever had the chance.
Strelzar was certainly right when he had told her that there were a lot of ways a Water Mager could kill someone...
On top of all that, Turqa could send any accumulations of water, ice or snow blasting toward his opponent with enough force to knock them to the ground, or completely out. The ice was particularly painful, and Veria had a few tiny cuts on her hands from trying to block some small chunks that had been rather sharp.
They had all spent the past few days engaged in a series of one-on-one duels that Strelzar was keeping notes on so they could pinpoint strengths and weaknesses. And, she was sure, because he was competitive and was looking for an excuse to brag. However, he was beaten by both Veria and Andon, easily, somehow allowing Andon to get close enough to incapacitate him with natural state, and falling victim to a 'near miss' to his head from a three foot spear-like wooden splint
er of a tree trunk from Veria after she had melted and solidified a large rock around his feet so he couldn't move.
Now, it was Veria and Andon, both undefeated, standing on opposite sides of the section of Bermedge forest they had all been using as their training area, preparing to duel. Veria's heart pounded. She was honestly afraid she could not beat him with how easily he seemed to be putting his natural state on everyone. She knew she had only one option. Most of them had been focused on hard elementals in their duels. If he was going to win without them, she would have to play that game, as well.
Strelzar's words from the training chamber at Plazic Peak echoed in her ears as Andon yelled “Ready?” and she pressed her back against a large tree to hide.
No duel is ever strictly a hard elemental duel...
“Ready!” Veria called out.
“You can't hide, vina...” Andon taunted as his voice moved closer to her.
She connected to the Fire energy in her bronze bracelet and searched for his desires, and found the one she needed easily. They hadn't made love since Barril, a year ago. A year's worth of desire for her that he had refrained from acting on for various reasons: pregnancy, then the healing from delivery, and most recently because he was trying to be a gentleman and wait until their marriage, or at least engagement, and they had all been terribly busy and generally exhausted.
It was already a substantial amount of desire, and it wouldn't be hard for her to amplify it just enough to keep him from focusing, hopefully keeping him distracted from using natural state. But, she would have to be careful—if she went too far, he could go insane with desire, and lose any control over his actions. Keeping that in mind, she latched onto it, and added some of her energy to it...slowly, in control, just a small amount.
“Vina...” a hungry growl broke from his lips, and she could pinpoint his location in the middle of the clearing they had all created in their month of practice. “Do we need to postpone this duel?” he suggested, his tone seductive, but urgent and forceful.
Good, she thought, keep talking. She could tell where he was from his voice if he did, and he was moving toward her location, but still in the clearing. The previous day, Veria had pulled several large trees down into the clearing, and she latched onto them quickly, moving their trunks into a wall in front of him.
Daughter of the Diamond: Book IV of the Elementals Series Page 12
