Taellaneth Complete Series Box Set

by Vanessa Nelson

  Kallish opened her mouth to argue and Arrow remembered that she carried one more item that might be of use. She opened her coat, to Kallish’s protest, and dug out the parchment that the Preceptor had written for her, holding it open in front of her like a weapon.

  “I have orders to pursue enquiries and you are impeding my investigation. Stand aside.”

  To her surprise, it worked. The warrior’s face paled as he read the brief lines scrawled across the parchment and he swiftly stepped aside, drawing his third with him.

  With the doors closed behind them, Elias took the lead, heading for the main part of the Palace.

  “The Queen’s rooms are the other way,” Kallish pointed out.

  “The lady is this way,” Elias countered, and kept walking.

  The Palace was unsettled, the wards restless, making Arrow twitch in response, her wards shimmering for a moment before she reasserted control. The Palace itself was not a threat. But something was. The power that the Palace ward keepers had so carefully crafted and built into the building’s fabric over centuries contained battle magic that was waking in response to a perceived threat. Ancient defences, including finely-crafted constructs of battle magic, hovered at the edges of Arrow’s second sight, ready to be deployed.

  “The Palace is awake,” she told her companions.

  “Too early for most courtiers,” Elias objected.

  “The Palace, not its inhabitants,” she clarified, looking about as they walked. Elias shot a glance at her over his shoulder, brows lowered in a frown.

  “The Palace defences have not woken for centuries.”

  “They are awake now. There is a threat somewhere.”

  “They only respond to threats against the monarch.” Elias quickened his pace as he spoke, his cadre moving with him as one. Arrow stretched her legs to keep up, hoping that they did not start running.

  They rounded a corner and a familiar set of stairs rose over their heads, leading to the open, and unguarded, doors to the Receiving Room where Seggerat’s reception had been held. Elias took the stairs three at a time with his cadre. Undurat simply put an arm around Arrow’s waist and carried her up with the rest of the warriors, setting her down at the top. She thought for a moment that she should be embarrassed, or perhaps annoyed, at being carried, but it meant that she was not out of breath and had arrived at the same time as the others.

  The Receiving Room was much larger than Arrow remembered, no longer crowded with finely dressed Erith. There was a tight knot of Erith at the far end, around the raised dais, Miach and his entire cadre gathered close around the Queen and her ladies. In the middle of the room was a third of warriors, two Erith kneeling before them. Evellan and Seivella. A slender object lay on the floor between the kneeling magicians and the dais. The knife. To Arrow’s surprise there were also several courtiers scattered about the room, perhaps those who had not been to bed yet and were curious as to what was happening.

  “Majesty, they were trying to escape.” The guard’s tone was not one Arrow thought many people used when talking to their monarch, carrying exasperation.

  “Who was?”

  The Queen’s voice, a little slurred, had Arrow whipping her head back from her casual inspection of the room, cursing her inferior eyesight. The lady might be apparently awake, settled on a throne-like chair, but that voice had not belonged to the keen mind that Arrow had met before. From the tension in Miach and his cadre, and the slight intakes of breath Arrow could hear around her, it had taken others by surprise as well.

  Only the lady herself seemed oblivious, blinking slowly as she looked around the room, not focusing on anything in particular.

  Elias brought their group to a halt a short distance behind the guards, too far for Arrow’s eyes but clearly not for the Erith. She checked an impulse to move further forward even as Kallish moved slightly, the warrior shifting her weight towards Arrow, making it clear they were to stay where they were. There must be some protocol in play, Arrow realised.

  “Majesty.” The guard’s tone was perilously close to a snap, a tone no Erith should take with their monarch. Miach took one, measured pace forward and even at the distance, Arrow could see the amber in his eyes. The guard ducked his head, heat rising up his neck, visible between his collar and carefully braided hair.

  “Explain the situation, please.” Miach was drawing attention away from the Queen, Arrow thought, as the Queen’s ladies fluttered around her, bright coloured gowns oddly fitting for the room but jarring against the bound prisoners. One of the ladies offered the Queen a glass of what looked like tea.

  “The mages Evellan and Seivella were under watch,” the guard began, checking as Miach subtly moved his weight forward, amber still prominent in his eyes. He cleared his throat and improved his tone to something approaching a subordinate reporting to his superior before continuing. “By order of Her Majesty, waiting for further orders. There was a disturbance in the night and when we went to investigate we found the mages out of their cells and a poisoned knife on the ground.”

  “The mages were still cuffed when you found them?” Miach asked.

  “Yes, svegraen.”

  “And the cell wards were intact?”

  “Yes, svegraen.”

  “Then how did the mages get out of the cells? And where did the knife come from? Surely they were searched when they were put into the cells?” The icy tone reminded Arrow forcibly of Seggerat, carrying the same weight of authority and expectation of response.

  “I cannot explain it,” the guard sounded like he was speaking through gritted teeth, “but the knife was there and the mages were out of their cells.”

  “Did I order them imprisoned?” The Queen’s voice was still blurred. She was resting against the back of her chair, head slightly to one side as though it were too heavy for her neck. She was holding the glass of tea, untouched, in front of her.

  “Our orders came from you, majesty.” The guard made a sorry attempt at a bow, so evidently lacking respect that several warriors around Arrow tensed again and Miach’s jaw twitched.

  Arrow did not have much attention to spare for the warriors, eyes keen on the Erith’s monarch as she, finally, seemed to remember that she held a drink. Second sight did not reveal any unclean magic around the Queen. There was next to no magic around her, in fact. The slightest shade of a personal defensive ward, and nothing more. Arrow frowned, focusing her sight further. The Queen was a powerful mage in her own right, and her personal wards should be blazing in second sight, like the haze around Miach.

  She came back to the first world at the slight, unchecked, murmur of sound that rippled around the room.

  The Queen had finished her tea and was transformed by it. She sat up perfectly straight, spots of high colour rising in her face. Fury or embarrassment. Arrow could not tell from this distance.

  “What is the meaning of this?” she hissed. Anger, then. On the dais, Arrow saw the lady who had handed the drink to the Queen start, eyes widening in surprise. A few other ladies also twitched. Arrow took careful note of the one who did not.

  “Majesty?” The guard did not bow, drawing a sharp, amber-flecked glare from his Queen.

  “Why are Evellan and Seivella here, and in such a condition?”

  “You ordered their imprisonment, majesty. They were plotting to kill you.”

  “Ridiculous. I did no such thing, and nor did they,” she contradicted flatly. “Release them at once.”

  “Majesty,” the guard began his protest.

  “At once, I said. Miach.” The Queen merely tilted her head to him and he stepped off the dais, striding forward with purpose, the rest of his cadre staying in place.

  With the Queen’s first guard coming towards him, face set, the guard decided to comply, rapidly moving to take the cuffs from Evellan and Seivella. Neither magician rose to their feet, the way they were huddled close to the ground making Arrow think they were both badly injured. They were also still surrounded by the guards from the dung
eons, Miach pausing in his forward momentum as the magicians were released.

  Elias finally moved forward, his cadre fanning out around him until they surrounded the dungeon guards and the magicians. As they moved, Miach made a hand gesture to one of his cadre, who slipped out the back of the room. Going for healers, Arrow would guess.

  “Elias, what brings you here?” the Queen asked, voice sharp.

  “The Palace is awake, my lady,” he told her.

  Like Elias earlier, the Queen did not understand, issuing a short laugh with no humour in it. “Nonsense. None of the layabouts will be up this early.” She frowned, then, taking in the handful of courtiers around the room, eyes lingering on the faces turned towards her.

  Miach had understood, though, and stepped back to the Queen’s side, battle wards rising from his cadre at his command. The Queen shot an irritated glare at the head of her guard.

  “I have been woken up with fantastical stories of assassination plots, and now battle magic in my Hall. What is going on, Miach?”

  “Nothing good, my lady. We should get you to safety.”

  “This is my home, Miach. All of it.”

  “My lady.” He turned to her and made a low speech, mostly too quiet for Arrow’s blunt hearing to catch, apart from a few words here and there, including Gilean. When he was done, the Queen sat back in her chair, chin lifted, holding his eyes. Judging him.

  “Let Gilean speak for himself,” she answered, voice carrying.

  “Gilean is not here, majesty,” Miach said quietly.

  “Nonsense.” The Queen spoke with the same certainty as she had refuted the charge that she had ordered Evellan and Seivella imprisoned. Arrow’s attention sharpened, wondering if the Queen had seen Gilean more recently than anyone else. Or what the Queen might know. From the way she was looking around the room, it seemed possible that the Queen believed that Gilean was in the room. Arrow sucked in a breath, finally thinking to use her second sight on the rest of the room. A few of the Erith inside were wearing camouflage spells, thick enough that she could not trace their true shape. One of them might be Gilean. Or he might not be here at all.

  After some further conversation on the dais, the Queen rose, steady and sure, and came down the dais steps, moving towards Evellan and Seivella with single-minded purpose, her ladies and warriors around her.

  “Do you mean me harm, old friends?” she asked bluntly.

  “No, majesty.” They answered in chorus, voices both weaker than Arrow had ever heard them.

  “See that they are taken to their usual rooms and tended by healers.” The Queen’s orders were directed to Elias, who bowed at once, acknowledging the command. Miach’s face was grim, snagging Arrow’s attention away from the Queen. Perhaps the Queen’s first guard had believed in the plot, perhaps he did not think that Evellan and Seivella, so recently implicated in a critical threat to all Erith, should be allowed to roam free or, perhaps, with the Palace waking in response to a threat against the monarch, Miach simply did not want to lose any of his resources, Elias’ cadre as valuable as Miach’s own. Whatever the reason, Miach did not contradict his lady.

  Evellan and Seivella were taken into the care of Elias’ cadre and left the room far less violently than they had entered, Arrow was sure. The Queen was staring at the dungeon guard, eyes partly unfocused, the same unfocused look that mages had when staring into the second world, but when she spoke it was apparently unrelated.

  “Arrow, have you made progress?”

  “Very little, your majesty.”

  The Queen’s gaze, now sharp, fell on Arrow’s face, mouth tightening in displeasure.

  “There is too much mystery here,” she said, eyes flickering with amber. Not as strongly as they should, Arrow thought, dismayed. Whatever had been in the tea had revived the Erith’s monarch, but not enough. She was still ill under the stimulant, the pallor of her skin imperfectly disguised by cosmetics, even this early in the day, and despite her inferior eyesight, Arrow could see fine lines fanning out around the Queen’s eyes and mouth that Arrow did not think had been there before.

  “Majesty.” Arrow took a step forward and made a small bow, Erith Court gesture familiar to all around her. “You have given me a task. Will you trust me to see to it? It is early still and there is a long day ahead.”

  “Work fast,” the Queen commanded and swept from the room in the midst of her ladies and guards. The last Arrow could hear was a sharp-toned comment, directed at Miach. “Stop hovering like an old woman. I can manage perfectly well.”

  Even with the audience around them, Arrow could not help the frown that gathered on her brow. The wards of the Palace shifted, visible even in first sight. There was something very wrong, the Palace’s magic sensing a growing threat, not a lessening one. She turned to her companions to find similarly grim expressions on their faces and was glad that Noverian and Orlis were safely within the annex.

  “We should go,” she murmured, seeing the interested gazes from the courtiers around the room.

  Kallish agreed with a sharp jerk of her chin and the group closed in, ready to move.

  The courtiers were leaving the room, too, the air filled with quiet whispering as they talked about what they had just seen, more than one casting a quick, apprehensive, glance back to the empty dais. The Queen had been monarch for a long time, even as Erith measured time. Everyone knew that her reign would come to an end at some point, but Erith were long-lived and she had seemed, until now, healthy in public.

  ~

  “The lady is not well,” Kallish murmured in Arrow’s ear as they left the room.

  Arrow did not answer, attention caught by one of the courtiers who had moved a little way along the corridor, on his own, and now turned back, tipping his head at Arrow in a familiar gesture, flare of amber in his eyes too strong for a simple courtier. Without thinking, Arrow set off down the corridor, her companions close around her.

  “What?” Kester asked, voice tense.

  “I think that may be Gilean,” she told him, mentally reviewing her defences and checking her coat was fastened. “Or a trap,” she added.

  Kallish made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a choked laugh.

  Before Arrow had time to glare at the warrior, they had arrived at a turn in the corridor. The courtier was standing around the corner, in a seeming dead end to the corridor, with a large painting hanging on the wall behind him. The painting was a pastoral scene with cows in the foreground. Cows.

  “Red spotted cows,” Arrow said, anger flaring. “Curse it, Gilean, what is going on?”

  “You are not very respectful of your elders,” the courtier answered, camouflage spell sliding away to reveal Gilean, hollow-cheeked, hair lank around his head.

  “I find very few of my elders deserving of respect,” she snapped back, temper still high.

  “Indeed.” The mage’s voice was full of laughter. He gestured to one of the walls. “Shall we?”

  “Indeed.” She clenched her jaw and followed him as he drew a quick spell on the wall’s surface, lifting the camouflage spell on it to reveal a plain, wooden door bristling with wards. The wards peeled back at his touch, allowing them through.

  The room inside was windowless but not airless, low-ceilinged enough that Undurat’s head nearly brushed the bare plaster, lit with a few glimmerlights that brightened as Gilean entered.

  A mage’s workroom, Arrow saw, with a simple cot bed in one corner and a long workbench covered in bits of parchment, chalk, a burner, pots for stirring spells, a scattering of herbs and all manner of other items that she knew were used in spell making.

  “You have been busy, mage,” Kallish commented, eyes taking in everything around her, including the fact that there was only one door. Undurat moved at Kallish’s gesture to stand with his back to the door.

  Gilean laughed, a bitter sound that Arrow thought could easily have come from her own mouth.

  “Not busy enough. The Queen is still dying, and Noverian is missing.�
�

  “Dying?” Kester picked up the word.

  “Yes.” Gilean sighed, body slumping against the workbench. He lifted a hand to move a pot out of the way of his elbow, fingers trembling.

  “Do we have tea, svegraen, and perhaps some food?” Arrow asked. She recognised the signs of over-use of magic and not enough food. In disguise and probably wary of discovery, Gilean had been burning through his resources.

  Kallish shot Arrow a hard look, but her cadre provided a flask of tea and a few paper-wrapped packets of food for the war mage. Gilean took the supplies gratefully, biting into the food, finishing it all in quick bites, the hollows of his face filling out as he ate.

  “The Queen is dying,” Kester prompted once the food was gone.

  “Yes.” Gilean closed his eyes a moment, and they were full of amber and the unashamed sheen of tears when he opened them again. “Someone is managing to poison her.”

  “She is protected,” Kallish objected.

  “Even so. She is being poisoned.”

  “We saw,” Arrow said softly, remembering the hazy confusion the Queen had shown before her tea was provided, the fine lines on her face. “I thought she was taking mercat,” she added and saw Gilean’s face tighten. “You knew.”

  “I recommended it. Small doses, just enough to help with … well, none of us are getting younger.” He was furious as well as grieving, Arrow saw.

  “What poison?” Arrow asked, glancing at the scattered items on the workbench.

  “I do not know. I have been trying to find out.”

  “What works badly with mercat?” Arrow asked, a long-ago lesson from the Potions Master calling for her attention.

  “Not much.” Gilean dragged a hand through his tangled hair. “I have tried them all. None of them fit.”

  “What if she was taking far more mercat than is good for her. And something else, something very simple,” Arrow suggested, mind working in quick spirals.

  “She would not take more,” Gilean objected.

  Kallish made a rude sound, expressing her disbelief, drawing a scowl from the war mage. The warrior was unimpressed.