Beyond the altar, to the left, was the Red Door.
A slow quake of fear ran through Kir’s stomach at the sight of it. Most people kept their eyes averted from that part of the hall. No one ever came within ten feet of it willingly.
Kir crossed the hall, ducking between windows to be sure and not cast a shadow that could be seen outside, and approached the Door feeling a little bit weak in the knees.
Assuming he got out of this alive, Sethen was going to kill him.
Kir eased the Door open as he had the other, and peeked in, presented only with a darkened hallway with several corridors branching from it.
No one, not even the High Priestess, lived in the Temple, so the whole place should be empty, yet he crept along the hallway terrified to make a sound. He half expected the doors to be locked, but it was a testament to the hubris of the Council that they apparently didn’t believe anyone would be stupid enough to do what Kir was doing…or, perhaps, it was simply a testament to Kir’s stupidity.
He bit his lip. Which door?
He chose one at random and looked inside.
At first, he was confused; there appeared to be nothing there. But then his eyes picked out what was hanging from the wall: shackles.
More details came into view. The floor was stained, and there was a drain in the center. There was a shelf fitted into the wall adjacent to the door that held a locked box whose contents he didn’t even want to speculate upon.
He looked closer at the floor and was nearly sick.
Blood. The whole floor was stained with blood.
Kir sagged back into the doorframe, and it was as though for a split second his perspective shifted, dragging him around to the far wall, as if he were chained there, screaming, his entire body torn with the scarlet rawness of broken fingers and seared flesh…
He shoved himself backwards out of the room, and the vision faded.
Almost blind with panic, he shut the door and stumbled to the next one, afraid it would be more of the same; but the second room was spotlessly clean, and looked like an examination room of some kind. There was a long table—fitted with restraints—in the center, and several other tables and shelves holding books and what looked like magical implements of some kind.
Kir ventured into the room, not feeling the residual agony of the first chamber. This one felt like a blank slate, like whatever happened in here had been erased.
He noticed there were magical diagrams painted on the floor around the table, but they made no sense to him. Healers didn’t use incantations and formulas; their work was intuitive. Whatever went on in here was far more specific, even scientific. Clinical.
There was a shelf set apart from the others draped in a piece of black velvet, and he stared at it, uncomprehending. Arrayed over the cloth were several dozen plain quartz crystals of various sizes, each one polished and sparkling. A box nearby was full of what looked like pendant settings intricately carved from silver.
The third room was a jail; there were three cells, each with solid iron bars, black and oily looking in the darkness. His stomach turned over again. Elves didn’t use iron. They had a mild allergy to it, though it was not dangerous. Cast iron like this would cause rashes and burning of the skin wherever it touched. Whoever had built these cells wanted those kept within them to stay back and stay cowed. This must be where they kept those who were arrested…before they were tortured into confession and repentance.
Dreading what he would find in the last room, Kir opened the door, gripping the handle tightly in hands that had gone uncooperative with fear and disgust.
The last room was also nearly empty, with no furniture of any sort, but instead of chains hanging from the wall, there was…jewelry?
Kir went closer, frowning. The entire wall was hung with small hooks, each one holding a single crystal pendant.
The crystals glowed softly with a bluish white light. They were different sizes, but all appeared to be single-terminated points, set in the silver findings he’d seen in the other room.
Above each hook was a small label: a name.
Kir read them all, recognizing most of them. Healers, Guardians, Gardeners, Bards…everyone in the Clan was here…except the Council. They were arranged by profession, so it didn’t take him long to find the one designated as his own.
He stared at it for a long time before lifting his hand to touch it.
He gasped as images assailed his mind the second his fingers met the cool stone: he could see himself, and other Elves he didn’t recognize…a forest with trees that were not the same as the ones surrounding the village…dark green robes…a woman’s face…his heart seized on the image, familiarity and pain crushing him, each picture so close to the surface of his mind, yet seeming a thousand years away…
He jerked his hand back as if it had been burned.
Kir knew what he was seeing. He knew.
Memories. All of his memories—his real identity, his past, everything he had been before coming here—were bound up in that crystal somehow. They must be using them to store what they stole from the Clan, locking it away in stone.
“You bastards,” he whispered. “You absolute bastards.”
Determination snaking its way through his veins, he reached out and plucked the crystal from its hook, shoving it in his pocket without touching it bare-skinned. Then, he scanned the names again, looking for Sethen’s.
It wasn’t among the Guardians. That was odd. In fact, he went over the entire wall twice and couldn’t find it.
Then his eyes fell on the single crystal that hung by itself on the far wall, isolated from all the rest. The stone itself was slightly larger, and he saw that it wasn’t as clear as the others; it almost appeared to be filled with smoke.
The label above it said “Rowan.”
Something in Kir’s heart clamored at him not to touch it, told him that touching that crystal would be the end of everything, the storm breaking, the tide rushing in to drown all in its path.
Yet he knew, deep down, that he had no choice.
Slowly, hypnotized, he closed his fingers around the stone.
*****
Sethen woke to a cold bed, alone, with early morning sunlight across his face and a strange sense of warm contentment that lasted as long as it took his mind to register the fact that Kir was not with him.
He rolled over, groping after the last few remnants of his dreams, but they fluttered away from his grasp before he could name them. He had no idea why the last few days had been so different, but every morning he woke sure he had dreamed something wonderful, and the early part of the day passed almost in a blur of what he might go so far as to call serenity.
He stretched and climbed out of bed, wondering if Kir was up and putting breakfast together already; among his many skills, the Healer was an excellent cook. Sethen had never had much of an appetite, but this morning for some reason he was craving fruit, and he knew that there were berries of some sort in the kitchen.
Once he’d dressed he made his way out of the bedroom and into the living room…
…and froze.
“Kir?”
The Healer was sitting on the couch, staring at the floor, his hands gripping his knees so hard his knuckles were white. His face was ashen, expression haunted, and he didn’t look like he’d slept at all.
He was staring at something on the tiles—what looked like a tiny pile of ground-up glass.
Sethen went to him and knelt at his side, squeezing one of his hands to try and get his attention, but it took almost a full minute for Kir to lift his wide, tear-filled eyes to Sethen’s.
Kir gazed into his eyes, searching, tears leaving silvery tracks down his face. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
“What’s going on? What happened to you?”
“Don’t be angry with me…I didn’t know. I had to see, but…”
“Kir, what—“
“No,” Kir said suddenly, shaking his head. “No. You have to und
erstand. They’re coming for me, and you have to know the truth.” He put his hands over his eyes, then moved them back over his ears, then over to Sethen’s shoulders. “Listen to me. Listen.’
Sethen’s stomach and heart were both ice-cold, as cold as Kir’s hands. “Come on,” he said. “You’re not well. You need a Healer.”
Kir laughed humorlessly. “I am a Healer. I am…I was…the senior Healer of Clan Cedar. They lied to me. They told me I’m only sixty years old, but I’m 337. I was too powerful for them—anyone with too much strength is a threat to them. Like you. Goddess, you…if you had any idea…listen to me…”
Sethen stood up, moving away from him, afraid. “What are you talking about?”
Kir pointed at the broken glass on the ground. “Crystals. They steal our memories and keep them in crystals. They can change anything they want—all they have to do is cast a spell on the crystals and our memories alter. That’s why everyone thinks you’ve been here a year. They remember you—only they don’t. They remember someone who doesn’t exist.”
He looked up at Sethen again, this time taking something from his pocket and holding it up where it dangled, catching the sunlight. “This is yours.”
Sethen gaped at him, aghast. “Kir…what have you done?”
The Healer shook his head. “Kellan.”
“What?”
There was a pounding on the door.
Kir smiled, almost sweetly, and stood, saying, “It’s all right.” He walked over to Sethen and slipped the crystal into the empty ammo pouch on the Guardian’s belt.
Then, he kissed Sethen on the lips and touched his face with tentative, wondering fingers.
As the door sailed open and the Guardians poured in, he said softly, “Your name is Rowan.”
Part Nine
The rain followed them from Austin, and Sara watched it out the window of the van as the sun began to set and the forest around the road grew thicker and thicker. By the time they'd reached the farthest point that could be traveled to by motor vehicle, it was dark, and the rain had lightened from a downpour to a steady patter.
Frog was glued to his laptop the whole trip; Agent 16 pulled the van off the road next to the other three Agency trucks, and Frog checked the weather report, informing them that the rain wasn't scheduled to cease until midnight or later.
"Will that affect the spell?" Sara asked.
He shook his head. "We'll set up the shelter and do it in there. My main concern is the maps getting wet."
Sara knocked lightly on the door that separated the front half of the van from the windowless, vampire-safe back half, to let Beck and Jason know they'd arrived.
"I hope this works," Sara muttered. Outside their van the rest of the team was disembarking and unloading equipment and supplies. They'd set up camp for the night near the ruins, which were a half-mile walk from the end of the road, and depending on the results of Frog's plan, they'd know what was next in a few hours.
Frog smiled and turned his computer around so she could see the line graph on display. "See this? These are the readings I took from SA-7. That peak right there is when he was thinking about Rowan most strongly."
"How do you know it's more than just emotional energy?"
"Each peak produced a corresponding spike in energetic output equal to what was causing the Ear static. It's at a frequency that we can't identify with our standard equipment, but it's the same frequency as before. He's sending out signals, Sara, and they're going somewhere."
"I know, you told us in the briefing, I just…it seems like a skinny straw to grasp at."
"We're talking about death, here. All the straws are skinny. Worst comes to worst nothing happens and we know it's a fluke of SA-7's aura."
Frog's crew had found two pertinent texts in the library of occult and metaphysical references. The first described almost exactly the same phenomenon among amori-bound Elves that they'd observed with Jason. That text, an anecdotal account from an Elven SA several decades back, led to a volume of thousand-year-old Elven rituals that, by some quirk of chance, existed only in one place: the Austin Agency archives. Sara had seen the book—it was yellowed and faded with age, and only sophisticated preservation techniques had held it together after its discovery.
Translating the text had fallen to Ardeth, who was actually with them tonight, in the second van; he had offered to perform the spell, grimly determined to find Rowan's killers…and to take revenge on Clan Yew if he could. Sara had seen emotion in his eyes that she hadn't believed Elves ever harbored, and noticed that he was traveling more heavily armed than she'd ever seen him.
A moment later, the adjoining door opened and Beck stuck her head out cautiously. "How’s the weather?”
"Full dark, and raining," Sara replied. "We're waiting for the recon team to let us know the trail is passable before we follow them."
"Cool."
Sara inclined her head toward the door. "How is he doing?"
Beck shrugged. "Hell if I know. He hardly said two words the whole trip."
Everyone had been giving Jason a wide berth since Tuesday, when apparently he’d walked into Ness’s office, closed the door, and informed her quite calmly that unless he was brought fully up to speed on everything surrounding his partner’s death, immediately, he was going to walk out the door and they could all fuck off, only presumably with much stronger language. Ness had emerged from the meeting pale as a ghost and instructed Frog to dump copies of all of his research into Jason’s server. According to Dru she’d then taken several Xanax and gone to bed.
Jason’s eyes had stayed silver for hours afterward; since then he hadn’t really spoken to anyone, only showed up at the garage at the appointed hour ready for the mission, his expression dangerously close to the border between rage and murderous rage.
Half an hour later the rain had let up, and they were all picking their way carefully along the path that wound among the trees, slowly sloping downhill toward the remains of the village. Sara kept pace with Frog and Ardeth, a ways behind the twins, but there wasn't much conversation—they were all too intent on not breaking their necks navigating the slippery mud patches that dotted the trail wherever the sky broke through the canopy.
She would never forget the sight of SA-7's face when he saw the devastation that lay beyond the edge of the woods. He'd been there that night, of course, but so traumatized that she doubted he'd taken it all in; now, standing where she had stood only nights before, he stared out over the hillside, eyes black in the reflected shine of the floodlights the team was setting up.
Around him, Agency personnel erected shelters, stacked surveillance equipment and computers, and unpacked the necessary components for the spell, but Sara could sense that for Jason time had stopped, and all he could see was a single marker flag.
Beck was watching him too, and Sara caught her eye for a moment. The vampire let out a visible sigh and went to help the others.
Sara knew it was probably a bad idea, but she approached Jason anyway, and stood next to him for a long silent minute. At first he didn't acknowledge her presence; when he took in a slow breath as if to speak, she was afraid he was going to chastise her for intruding, but he only said, barely audibly, "I miss him."
She nodded, blinking back tears. "Me too."
She thought about the last year of her life, all in the space of a few seconds—from her first meeting with SA-7 on the floor of her old apartment, terrified for her life, up until this precise spark in time…whatever her own talents and abilities, it was Rowan who had brought her here, brought her to stand in the wreck of an Elven village next to a vampire with a gaping hole in his heart that was the same general shape as the one in her own. If Rowan hadn't recommended her for her job she would still be a file clerk somewhere, just her and Pywacket in her crummy apartment, with no idea just how vast and remarkable the world—or she—really was.
Sara shut her eyes and sent up a prayer of gratitude that she had known him, even for a little while.
Someone cleared his throat behind them, and Sara turned to Frog.
"We're all set," he said.
Sara put a hand on Jason's arm. "Ready?"
He exhaled slowly. "No. Let's get it over with."
As they made their way up to the large Army green shelter that the Agents had set up, the rain seemed to remember it had a mission as well, and resumed its freefall. Most of the others had gathered in the field tents, leaving Sara, Jason, Beck, Frog, and Ardeth in the open-sided shelter.
The Agency, Volume II Page 28
