“You found company, I see.” His breathing was still steady and even despite the run.
“Yes.” Arrow could not keep a smile from her face. Some burden had lifted inside. He was in one piece.
“Kester vo Halsfeld.” He introduced himself impartially to the warriors then bowed slightly to the cadre leader. “You must be Iserat nuin Sovernis.”
“Even so.” Iserat returned the bow. “But you were not born into the Halsfeld House. You have a look of Thomshairaen about you.”
“My uncle,” Kester confirmed, face tightening a moment.
“You are Brea and Estrelis’ son,” Ronath said. “We know them well.”
“Knew,” Kester corrected, face tightening.
The six drew a collective breath. A hundred years in this realm, Arrow thought, and wondered how many more deaths they would have to learn about.
“A sad loss,” Ronath said, voice shaded with sorrow.
“Yes.” Kester’s face closed in with that one word, a mask descending. The sort Erith used every day to hide their true feelings. Brea and Estrelis had been warriors, too, Arrow remembered. Brea had been head of the House, the role falling vacant when she and her vetral were killed on duty, leaving Kester to manage, with Thomshairaen absent and presumed dead. Before Arrow was born, or certainly when she was too young to understand, picking up bits and pieces from others’ gossip. It had not been long after the deaths that Juinis vo Halsfeld had come courting Kester’s sister.
“Did you see Dorian and Juniper?” Arrow asked him. They were nowhere to be seen. It was always possible the humans had set off on their own.
“No. I did try looking for them. Tracking is almost impossible. And they had not left any of the green squares.”
“Are they important to you?” Iserat asked.
Arrow hesitated, not sure how to answer that question. No, was the honest answer. And yet she could not leave them here alone.
“Not as such,” Kester answered. “But they are weak in power and vulnerable. We should look for them if we can.”
“Are we going to talk all day?” Onalla asked. “Only, if we are, we could at least find somewhere more comfortable.”
“There is a high point not far from here,” Ronath said, tilting his chin in the direction.
Arrow looked at the high point and almost groaned aloud. It was indeed high.
Kester had a thoughtful expression as he looked around. “If they are sensible, the humans should head for higher ground. We told them to. If we climb, we may find them on our way.”
Arrow looked at the size of the mountains ahead of them and lifted a brow at him. He shrugged slightly. She had nothing better to offer. Without full access to her magic, and several cadres to search, finding the humans would be more luck than anything else.
“Questions,” Onalla prompted.
“Very well,” Iserat agreed.
And so they walked, and climbed, again.
Arrow was not surprised to find Kester beside her as they walked. His presence was a welcome distraction from her sore legs and feet.
“What happened to you? We were running together and then you were not there. I retraced our steps and for some reason we went in different directions.”
Arrow’s mouth opened to ask him how he had retraced their steps in the barren waste of this realm, decided that question could wait, and answered him.
“More surjusi.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “And someone else. Best discussed within wards.”
“I am glad to find you safe,” he said.
The six were studiously avoiding looking at them, but her face heated nonetheless. A warrior who was not dressed as a warrior. A mage who could not run, or keep track of her companions. She was sure the six would have as many questions about them as about the past hundred years.
~
At length the climbing was done and they were settled at the high point, Arrow coated in a fine film of sweat under her clothes, murmuring a cleansing spell as she settled more comfortably on one of the boulders scattered around the sloping hill top. Erith senses were far sharper than hers and she had no wish to offend them.
“Now, tell us what has happened since we left,” Willan asked.
The six had drawn Arrow and Kester into their circle, all of them placed so that they could see outside the group and be on the watch for danger, even with their battle wards active again. Arrow wondered how they had all managed to stay calm and disciplined all these years. Running. Standing ground. Fighting. Always with the threat of surjusi. They would need a much larger statue when they returned. If they returned. Her mind snagged on how they might manage to return to the first world, pulse picking up pace.
Kester nudged her foot gently with his and she snapped her attention back to the group, and realised they were all watching her, waiting for her to answer Willan’s question. She lifted a brow at Kester, but he waved his hand, letting her do the explaining.
For a moment she was overwhelmed, trying to think how to cover the last hundred or so years, particularly when she had not been alive for most of it. Many years’ reporting complex matters to the Taellan came to her aid.
She told them about the Queen’s plan of the Taellaneth, the building of it. The founding of the Academy, Serran’s grand plan. About the triumvirate of the Preceptor, White Guard Commander and Taellan that ran the business of the Erith at the Queen’s command. About the treaty with the humans and shifkin. About the demon-possessed Erith lord, Evellan’s brother and Seivella’s vestran, who had helped humans bring surjusi into the human world. About the betrayal of the Queen by her Consort and the disarray within the Erith. About the summit with the shifkin and humans and the portal that had dragged her here. And, when she thought she had run out of major events to relay, she remembered that Serran had also disappeared and was assumed dead.
“No, he is not. He is here,” Iserat said baldly.
“Here?” Arrow blinked, startled, and looked around reflexively. Kester seemed equally surprised.
“Well, somewhere in this realm. That snake Saul was after him last I saw.”
“He did not want to stay with us. Wanted to be doing his own thing,” Willan put in, shaking his head. “Would not believe that there are some things even he could not deal with alone.”
“How did he come to be here?” Arrow asked. There had been no major incursions since the six had closed the last one. And even the Erith’s favourite mage would not open a portal on a whim.
“He did not say.” Onalla shrugged one shoulder.
“There are always idiots playing with portal spells. And some places where the barrier is thin. Who knows why Serran is here, but I think he came through a thin point, thinking he would just step back,” Willan said. Arrow recognised frustration in his voice. “If it was that easy, we would have left a long time ago.”
That seemed entirely consistent with what little she knew of her grandfather. He had, after all, created many of the spells that the Erith used day-to-day. He likely believed he would be able to create a counter-spell or a way back quite easily. Or, if not easily, then at least with a little effort. Then her attention snagged on something else.
“You said Saul. Human-looking creature?”
“Ah. You have met him.” Iserat did not seem surprised.
“Once. When we were separated,” Arrow told Kester. He frowned, but stayed silent, listening. “He was odd. Looked human,” she said to Iserat, “but not.”
“Not to be trusted,” Ronath warned her.
“He seems to know what goes on in this realm. Likes to welcome newcomers. Did he offer you a deal?” Willan asked.
“Not precisely.”
“Well, do not accept anything from him. He is a power here,” Willan said, “knows far too much.”
“What is he, exactly?” Arrow asked.
“We do not know.” Onalla’s face reflected her distaste. “Seems human, as you say. Took us a while to work out he was no such thing.”
“We have not dealt with many humans,” Willan added.
“Serran would not believe he was dangerous,” Pateris put in. He shrugged. “Too confident by far. The Erith’s beloved mage.” It was the first negative thought Arrow had heard expressed about Serran and it caught her attention. She wanted to ask more, distracted by Iserat.
“Serran can be an idiot, but he is a clever one. He thought there might be a way out. Went to look for it.”
“A way out,” Arrow echoed, straightening. “Where? How?” It was the biggest obstacle she could see ahead of them. If Serran had an answer, perhaps they could all use it.
“There is a concentration of surjusi in these mountains,” Iserat answered, “too many to be coincidence.”
“We cannot speak their language, but we believe they gather here as there is a weakness, a place where it may be possible to get to our world,” Willan continued. It sounded like something they had discussed many times before.
“There is also a large structure of some kind on the far side of this range.” Ronath tilted his head to show the direction. Arrow looked and saw giant peaks of mountain rising as far as she could see.
“Serran went there to look for this weakness?” Arrow asked.
“Indeed. He promised to send word. How, we asked him, and he just said he would work it out.” Iserat’s jaw tightened a fraction. Not believing Serran, or worried about him. Arrow could not tell.
“We have been discussing going after him,” Willan added, turning amber-bright eyes to Arrow. “That is why we are here.”
“We do not normally camp so near to surjusi,” Onalla said, wrinkling her nose slightly. “We may not need food and drink, but constant attacks are exhausting.”
“It is much harder for us to kill them,” Willan told Arrow. “Even though we do not feel death as strongly.”
The sword on Arrow’s back abruptly seemed to weigh more, pinning her to the ground. It was true that the sword cleaved through demons with ease. It was also true that the thought of more death made her stomach churn.
“Serran thought the answers were in that structure. And went in alone,” Kester summarised, shaking his head slightly. “It fits.”
“We should go find him, and see if he has learned how to leave here,” she said. It sounded so simple put like that.
“Serran is known for grand ideas,” Kester cautioned. “Not all of them work.”
“We need a back-up plan,” Iserat agreed. “Willan had some ideas about how to open a portal from here.”
“We can discuss those as we walk,” Willan suggested.
“Do you require more rest?” Iserat asked. It was a simple query, no impatience in it. Arrow’s face flamed. She should be used to her weaknesses now. She lacked the Erith’s grace, superior senses and their stamina.
“Never mind rest. You said you had needles?” Pateris asked, eyes keen. “It would be nice to tidy up a bit.”
“You are such an old woman sometimes,” Onalla told him, affection in her voice belying her words.
Arrow hunted through her bag and found needles and several lengths of thread, enough for all of them.
“Rest,” Kester suggested, eyes keen on the horizon. “It may be a while before we get another chance.”
Arrow watched him for a moment, his attention elsewhere, and felt a knot seize her stomach. Whatever it was between them was still new to her, full of possibilities she had barely dared to dream of. A life companion. A partner. Someone who would accept her for who and what she was. The knot tightened, a slice of cold cutting through her, remembering his anger at discovering Thomas was alive. Whatever it was they were building, it could still be broken.
Kester turned and met her gaze, amber points in the dark of his eyes so different to the silver in her own.
“Rest,” he said again. “I will keep watch.”
It was the sensible thing to do. And there were six pairs of listening ears around, for all that the others were apparently engaged on their own tasks and with their own comments to each other. She lay back, using her bag as a pillow, intending to pretend to sleep whilst the six worked. They were making quick, efficient repairs. Despite their protests that they were in disarray, the warriors were still a credit to their uniforms.
Arrow lay with her eyes closed, slowing her breathing to a meditative state, a quick resting technique the Academy taught its senior students, her wards damped down around her.
The six were aware she was not sleeping, she thought, drawing Kester into a rambling conversation on non-controversial topics and idle speculation over who might be the next Erith monarch, their choices often followed by another of their number adding “assuming they are still alive” which was a serious comment at the beginning of their discussion, and provoked snorts of laughter by the end. They were the most unusual Erith Arrow had ever encountered.
Somewhere in the midst of their idle conversation, she truly fell asleep, sliding into warm, welcome dark.
She woke from dreamless black to Kester’s voice, and his hand on her shoulder. She sat up to find the warriors checking over their weapons, Willan sitting cross-legged on the ground, palms on his knees. Meditating, she thought.
Everyone was ready by the time she had got to her feet, body stiff and sore. There had been a time when she could sleep on the ground without ill effect. The basic comforts of the workspace, an actual mattress and warm blankets, had spoiled her, she realised.
CHAPTER 16
The structure on the mountain turned out to be a fortress. Bigger by far than the Taellaneth main building, or even the Erith Palace’s main building, it stretched the entire length of a mountain top, the base of it carved into the solid rock, the walls above ground built from giant, smooth-sided stones. Oddly, there seemed to be numerous exits and entrances, with no doors on any of them. The entrances mostly led to pathways, built of stone, that snaked down the mountain. A few opened onto stone walkways built to cross gaps to the next mountain peak.
Perhaps the demons did not think they needed doors, Arrow thought sourly, as they were in their own realm and surely the strongest surjusi were confident in their own powers.
The group were settled on the nearest mountain peak, huddled down against its side, tucked behind a series of boulders, keeping watch on the comings and goings in front of them.
The six, for all their eccentricities, were cautious and experienced hunters. They had slowed to a near crawl when approaching this structure and spent what to Arrow seemed like days creeping around it, staying far enough away that they hoped to avoid detection. They appeared to have assigned Kester the role of her bodyguard as he did not help with the path finding, letting the others take the lead. There had been no battle wards set up, a pair of the six on watch for danger at all times whilst the others scouted the fortress.
From that they had put together a detailed, intricate map of the exits and entrances, drawn on paper from Arrow’s bag, and speculated endlessly about where to look for Serran. The most popular opinion was that the mage was likely in a dungeon somewhere, which the six thought should be on one of the lower levels, even if the six could not agree whether the demon’s architecture inside might follow the same pattern as Erith or even human buildings.
Arrow listened to the debates and found she had little to add. Kester put in a question here and there, usually drawing a thoughtful stare from one of the six. He had been a high-ranked warrior before he became a Taellan, Arrow remembered. Between them, the warriors and war mage seemed, to Arrow at least, to have covered every possibility.
Outside the building, in the sky above, there was a faint thinning in the sky. Not enough to be called brightness, and Arrow might have missed it if she had not spent days trailing through this realm. Both she and Willan had tried to make sense of it, each ending up with a thumping headache and no further information. It might be the thinning between realms. Or it might just be that they were high enough in the mountains that the sky was thinner. Assuming that such things worked the same
way here as they did in the first world.
“Keep your wards muted. Stay close to me and Yvan,” Pateris murmured in her ear. “We do not want to draw any attention as we cross.”
“Understood.” It was not the first time they had discussed this. Kester was bringing up the rear of the party with Onalla, the six having factored his skills into their plans. Her wards were already damped down to be invisible, the sword at her back likewise darkened. The warriors and mage had suppressed their own wards, too, so there was no sheen of amber or silver about them to draw attention.
Just eight people walking into a demon fortress, Arrow thought, following Yvan. They had descended from the peak to approach the fortress from its widest path, a surprisingly gentle slope upward, the route wide enough for an entire cadre to walk abreast. Walking on two legs, when the demons generally travelled as the nightmare creatures, a mass of pitch-dark and gaping mouths. Even without their wards showing, the group would draw attention.
There was no way of avoiding it, though. There was no day or night here, so no darkening of the skies to provide them with cover. And they needed to be inside the fortress to search for Serran. They could not create and hold the illusion of the demons long enough to get them inside. Both Arrow and Willan had tried. And ended up with more headaches. Something about this realm did not allow for second sight to work properly or for illusion to function. Arrow was sure that there was a fascinating reason that academics would find compelling and interesting. She simply found it annoying.
To Arrow’s surprise, they made it to the shadows of the fortress walls without incident. Every sense she possessed was telling her she was walking into danger and that running the other way was a very, very good idea. She was sure her pulse must be visible to the others. A quick glance around showed them all tense and determined, absolutely focused on their tasks.
Unsurprisingly, the six had not given her any specific tasks on their way into the fortress. She was sure that if they were attacked, her job would be to kill the demons. Until then, she tried to stay in the place she had been assigned and keep up with them as they slipped under the door-less archway into the fortress.
Taellaneth Complete Series Box Set Page 102
