From there they turned into the central palace, and before long Kyrkenall had arrived at the entrance to the queen’s private office. He threw open the door without knocking, startling one of the redheaded twin exalts—M’vai, Elenai saw, from the mole above her lip. Like Elenai, the exalt had divested herself of her khalat; she’d clothed her slim body in a white blouse and dark pants, and donned light slippers. Beside her, Thelar still wore the red-piped uniform coat of the Mage Auxiliary that had for so long siphoned resources and manpower from the Altenerai Corps. He stood entranced by a fist-sized blue stone he held in one hand and showed no reaction to their entrance.
Glass-fronted bookcases filled two of the office walls. A wide, elegant desk backed by a red-cushioned chair stood at one end of the room, fronted by twin chairs. Four more sat at a round conference table. A second doorway opened onto another room in which M’vai’s twin sister, Meria, knelt on the floor beside some squires and office staff, sorting papers into piles.
In Elenai’s experience, Kyrkenall was often cordial in his introductions, especially when dealing with pretty women. Tonight, though, he was gruff with M’vai. “Which gem was next to the ring?”
“The ring?” M’vai repeated in puzzlement.
“The ring.” Kyrkenall raised his own alten’s ring of office for extra emphasis. “Kalandra’s ring.”
M’vai looked blankly back.
Thelar blinked and Elenai sensed him letting go of the inner world. Dark-eyed, hook-nosed, striking in a severe way, Thelar retained an air of composure and dignity even in his obvious confusion. They had risked their lives together and overcome incredible hazards by relying upon one another, which had engendered a fondness for him no matter the brief nature of their relationship.
“Is something wrong?” Thelar asked.
“Which gemstone was next to Kalandra’s ring?” Kyrkenall demanded.
“We didn’t see any rings,” Thelar answered. “I’m holding one of the queen’s gemstones. The others are right there.” He pointed to a shelf within the bookcase, and Kyrkenall stepped around him.
Elenai saw a diamond and an emerald over the archer’s shoulder. His dark eyes swung back accusingly, and he pointed at the stone Thelar cupped in his left hand. “Was there anything interesting about that one?”
“It contains memories left by Kantahl.” Thelar sounded as if he didn’t expect to be believed.
Kyrkenall looked unimpressed, no matter that the exalt had just revealed he’d been looking upon the thoughts of a god.
“Maybe you should slow down, Kyrkenall,” Elenai suggested. “We’re all exhausted here.”
He looked at Thelar again. “Rylin said there was a stone next to an alten’s ring.”
The exalt paused for a moment to reflect. “Rylin took all the rings he could find,” he said. “To fight the queen. I suppose there could have been a ring next to one of these stones.”
Kyrkenall frowned and he paced a couple of turns before grabbing the emerald and lifting it. “This one. Kalandra used an emerald to record her thoughts back in the shifts. Remember?” He looked to Elenai.
She nodded.
He held it out to her. “Open it.”
But she didn’t take it. Tired as she was, she didn’t dare attempt anything magical. “I’m spent, Kyrkenall.”
The archer’s attention shifted to Thelar. Kyrkenall thrust the gem toward him, but the exalt made no move to accept it.
“That one has wards on it, Alten,” he explained.
“Wards?”
“It’s going to be tricky to open,” M’vai explained. “I can see the threads that close it off, like knots. And we’re a little tired tonight, as Elenai said. We shouldn’t take any chances until we’re better rested.”
Kyrkenall’s expression clouded. Elenai recognized something she’d rarely seen from him: he was actually fighting to master his anger.
“Why are you so interested in it?” Thelar asked.
“There’s a chance Kalandra’s trapped inside.”
Thelar’s thick eyebrows rose; he exhaled sharply and pushed back dark hair, already mussed. “You mean a memory she left?”
“I mean her.” Kyrkenall seemed to understand further explanation was necessary, adding: “That’s what we’ve been told.” His tone sharpened, “But I won’t know until someone opens it.”
Thelar’s gaze shifted to the gem, the other seeming forgotten in his grasp.
Kyrkenall spoke with biting rancor: “There’s no rush. It’s not like she’s been missing for seven years, or might have insight into the hearthstones and the queen.”
Elenai winced at his sarcasm in front of their newly acquired allies. “Never rush a mage, Kyrkenall. Thelar and M’vai are just as tired as I am.”
His gaze, and his ire, shifted to her. Out of long practice, she ignored it and interrupted before he could start something more unpleasant. “Mistakes happen when mages are tired,” she said. “And magical mistakes are dangerous. It will be safer for all of us—and Kalandra, if she’s really in there—if we wait until tomorrow.”
Kyrkenall’s lips twitched; he said nothing, but his hand clenched around the gem so tightly the dusky skin of his knuckles whitened.
“I’ll take a look,” Thelar said.
“Are you sure that’s wise?” Elenai asked.
“I’ll just make a quick try of it.” Thelar extended his hand
Kyrkenall transferred the emerald into the exalt’s outstretched fingers with an impatient delicacy. Thelar passed the blue stone to M’vai.
Candlelight flared in the emerald’s facets as Thelar turned it.
“Where did you hear about Kalandra being in the stone?” Elik spoke at her shoulder. Though his voice was soft, the question might as well have been shouted, so quiet were those in the office.
“From Rialla,” Elenai said. “I know it sounds impossible, but she’s been conveying key information to me for weeks.”
Elik made an astute guess. “Through a hearthstone?”
“I think so.”
Thelar looked up from his examination. “Alten Rialla, who’s been dead for a decade?”
“Yes.” Kyrkenall answered with barely contained exasperation. “We’ve both seen her, and she’s the one who got us back to Darassus in time for the battle. She also gave advice that saved my life. And no, I don’t know how she’s doing it, but she’s been right every time.” He paused before barreling on. “She said Kalandra was in a stone on a shelf. And here are these gems, on the shelf, and one was next to an Altenerai ring.”
Thelar checked with Elenai, as if attempting to gauge the truth of these outrageous claims. She offered an affirming nod.
“I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose,” Thelar said. The lines in his face were deep with fatigue. “Though I’ve been in this room, and I don’t ever remember seeing a ring.”
“This isn’t a risk you need to take now,” Elenai cautioned. She looked over to Kyrkenall as she was speaking. “No matter how much pressure you feel.”
“I’ll use a hearthstone shard to bolster my energies,” he assured her. “And I’ll just look lightly.”
Elenai knew he studied the stone through the inner world. She felt a wave of energy the moment he activated his shard. She’d grown as sensitive to hearthstones as she was to the change in atmosphere before an oncoming storm. Instantly she knew the shard rested in a leather pouch on the table near the bookcases.
Thelar’s face was lit eerily from below as the emerald brightened from within. Elik tensed beside her, and Kyrkenall’s lips opened in anticipation.
A slash of green lightning burst from the gem. Thelar fell backward, his limbs rigid. The glowing emerald popped from his hand, bounced off a table leg, and tumbled into a corner.
Kyrkenall scrambled after it. Elenai and M’vai crouched by Thelar, who writhed on the floor, his eyes rolled back into his head. Only the whites showed.
“Thelar!” M’vai seized his shoulders. The exalt continued to shake.
/>
Elenai opened her sight to the inner world and threw threads toward Thelar’s shard, trying not to be excited to access its power. The artifact’s sharp kick of energy was entirely different from the spikelike whip of power that held Thelar’s aura to the outer facets of the emerald. “Get that damned thing as far away from him as you can,” Elenai ordered M’vai. “Don’t touch it magically!”
M’vai’s reluctance to leave her friend was evident on her face, but she snatched the emerald from Kyrkenall and hurried into the hall.
Elenai had once assisted her aunts untangling trailing ends of yarn that had come off their spindles, and this process was somewhat similar, except that each contact with the glowing green spellthreads delivered another charge. She gritted her teeth and ignored the stinging pain. Each time she managed to get a line free of Thelar the intrusive thread snapped back into the retreating gem. His single touch had completely ensnared him.
At first the emerald’s distance seemed to make no difference, but as M’vai drew farther and farther off the threads grew less substantial and Elenai found each stung a little less as she touched it. More importantly, Thelar’s convulsions lessened.
She grew conscious that someone else had entered the room but she dared not divert her attention to learn their identity. She winced at another jolt, and continued work.
Finally, as she undid a particularly troublesome knot, the attack against Thelar subsided. He stopped shaking, and breathed normally, if rapidly. She turned to where Elik had been and found him vanished, along with Kyrkenall. N’lahr and Rylin stood in their place. The commander’s gaunt features were strained and tired, and a day’s growth of dark stubble stood out on his long, sharp-planed face. Dark circles showed beneath his deep-set eyes. Rylin looked more like his usual handsome self, now that he’d shaved, although there was a serious look in his eyes where there used to be a merry spark. Elenai wondered if that was a permanent change, and whether her own manner communicated the same sober sense of loss.
“Rylin,” she said, “Find M’vai. Ask her if the gem’s energy’s off yet.”
Rylin hurried after the exalt. N’lahr bent beside Thelar.
He blinked up at them.
“How do you feel?” Elenai asked.
“Better.” Thelar’s voice was weak. “I’m not sure how much more of that I could have taken.” She put fingers to his neck, staying him with a hand as he made to rise. His heart sped as though he’d been running laps.
“What do you think?” he asked.
She smiled. “I think you’ll live.”
His dark eyes met her own, and he spoke with soft sincerity. “Thank you.”
“We’ve gotten into the habit of helping each other.” She offered him a hand and he sat up. Elenai studied him for a moment more, making sure he was steady.
“Is everything under control here?” N’lahr asked.
“I think so,” Elenai replied. “Where did Elik go?”
“I had a job for him.”
“Tell me that the emerald’s open, at least,” Thelar said.
Elenai shook her head. “Not that I could tell.” With her aid, Thelar climbed dizzily to his feet and promptly sank into the nearest chair.
N’lahr stood. “How is he?”
“I don’t think there’s permanent damage.” With an inward sigh, Elenai released her magical hold of the hearthstone shard.
“Were you trying to access a memory stone?” N’lahr asked.
“There’s no way to know what the emerald is,” Thelar answered. “We couldn’t get it open.”
“I had to send it out of the room,” Elenai explained. “To lessen the effect of its protective ward.”
Kyrkenall returned, a few steps in front of Rylin and M’vai, who started to come to attention at sight of the commander.
“Belay that,” N’lahr said.
“What’s happened?” Elenai asked M’vai.
“The stone’s stopped glowing.” M’vai couldn’t seem to decide if she should speak to Elenai or N’lahr, and kept looking from one to the other. “But I don’t think it’s drained. I think it would react the same way if we poked at it again.”
“Where is it?” Elenai asked.
“I’ve got it.” Kyrkenall spoke as Rylin pointed at him.
“You brought it back here? Near Thelar?” Elenai asked in disbelief.
“I couldn’t very well just leave it in the hallway. How’s Thelar doing?”
“I think he’ll be fine,” Elenai said.
Kyrkenall spoke softly to Thelar. “Sorry about that.”
“You couldn’t have known what would happen,” the exalt replied weakly.
“Do you think you’ll be able to get it open later?” Kyrkenall asked.
“No,” N’lahr said firmly. “We’re not going to risk opening it again until it’s studied carefully.”
“Well, yes, of course,” Kyrkenall said.
N’lahr looked away from him and off to the open doorway, where Meria watched in pained interest. Elenai wondered how long she’d been standing there.
“Exalts,” N’lahr said, “have you learned where the queen went?”
“No,” Thelar answered.
“We’re still sorting the queen’s papers, sir,” Meria said from the doorway. “There are some interesting things here, but there’s no large scale transport spell. We don’t know how she vanished herself, dozens of others, and a huge statue from the arena, much less where they went.”
“Show me what you’ve found,” N’lahr said. Meria stepped out of the doorway so he could stride through. Elenai, Rylin, and M’vai followed. Kyrkenall crouched down beside Thelar.
All the furniture in the large sitting room beyond had been pushed to the edges, leaving space for papers to be arranged across the surface of the parquet floor. They’d been sorted into a variety of stacks, each one beside a paper upon which someone had scrawled a label in large, square handwriting. The first Elenai saw read: “speech.” Another said: “prayers.”
Meria walked past these piles, her booted stride quick and crisp, and turned up the nearest wall lantern so that its glow blazed bright. “The queen was making notes about the realms and the relative strengths of their borders and magical resonances and other things I don’t really follow.”
N’lahr paced with her past five more piles, stopping beside one where a sketch of what looked like a mountain range lay. “What’s this?”
Meria looked back from where she was adjusting the nearest lantern. “Things we can’t identify. A lot of them are maps, but most are fanciful.”
“What do you mean?” N’lahr asked.
“They’re full of features that don’t tend to occur together. Like lakes atop mountains.” She pointed to one he was holding. “Waterfalls amid sand dunes. Or huge crystal formations in forested areas. Some of them look like the queen’s sketched the same place, but … they’re like something a child would design, just a lot more complicated and skillfully drawn.”
N’lahr took a knee and searched through the papers.
As the commander shuffled through them, Elenai caught glimpses of the artwork. Some parchments held a few lines of writing or a handful of images, often scribbled over, and others were decorated with full-page sketches. Some depicted plants she’d never seen, but most were weird landscapes. None of the pictures struck a familiar chord.
N’lahr stopped at last at a detailed rendering that ran to the edges of the paper. He’d picked a topological, colored map of a land ringed by hills on nearly every side. Orchards and streams ran abundantly through it in symmetrical patterns, and it was favored by small lakes in each quadrant, as well as low tree-topped hills. The rendering was more crude than many of the others.
“It’s larger than a Fragment,” N’lahr murmured.
Rylin had drawn up beside the commander and looked over his shoulder. “It’s hard to tell the scale,” he said. “But if those are individual hills, this looks roughly the size of Ekhem.”
�
�It was near the bottom of the stack of papers on the queen’s desk,” Meria said. “I think that means she drew it when she was at her most frantic.”
“Frantic?” Elenai asked.
“I guess that’s the best way to describe it,” Meria answered thoughtfully. “A few weeks back she started working day and night.”
“It was right after the keystone disappeared,” M’vai added. “She was trying to remember what she’d seen on it, and used spells to aid her recollection.”
“Then she was trying to remember a place that doesn’t exist,” Rylin said. “There’s no land like this, anywhere. Some of the Naor realms are just as large, but none have so many rivers, or any gardens.”
“This is where she’s taken the hearthstones,” N’lahr said, and rose.
Kyrkenall, now in the doorway, scoffed. “What makes you say that?”
“This is Paradise, Kyrkenall. The first realm. That’s what the queen has sketched here. Flowing rivers. Vast orchards. Abundant fields. Lakes. ‘A land of plenty, where soft rains fall and trees are ever heavy with the sweetest fruit.’”
Elenai had never heard the commander quote anything before, much less a sacred text.
Kyrkenall swore in astonishment, which sounded even more coarse than usual, following scripture as it did. “Figures I never found it.”
As Kyrkenall walked into the room, N’lahr passed the paper to him, then turned to Rylin. “Varama discussed the keystone in passing. Did you look into it?”
“No, sir.”
“Doesn’t she have it?” Meria asked. “You two took it. I don’t mean to be accusatory, but—”
“We took it,” Rylin said. “But Cerai stole it. That stone was more important to her than Alantris. What did the queen want with it?”
“We don’t really know,” Meria said. Elenai was learning she was the more talkative of the two sisters. Meria continued: “She was furious when it disappeared. She said she had to have it to fulfill the vision of the Goddess.”
“I believe that it had a record of the realms, in their perfect, original state,” Thelar suggested from behind.
When the Goddess Wakes Page 2
