Eye of Truth

by Lindsay Buroker

  As she ran, words sprang into her mind.

  Grammy Visha said I could ask you about lizards.

  Had the grandmother sent that boy? To pull Wyleria away from danger? Danger she’d known about?

  It seemed impossible that the old woman could have been responsible, fully or partially, but as Zenia clambered up the stairs with rock slabs slamming to the floor all around her, she knew she’d made a huge mistake.

  As Lornysh led the way out of the woods, Jev was relieved when the castle came into sight. He didn’t fear darkness or the night, but this night had been odd so far, and thinking of that eerie silver light glowing onto that cairn made him shiver in the salty sea breeze. Light glowing from an elven structure that had existed two miles from his family’s castle for centuries and that he had somehow never known about.

  But someone had known about it.

  “Glad to see civilization,” Rhi said.

  She rode beside Jev, the horses picking routes over the dark, uneven ground and up toward the road.

  “My father will be pleased you consider his castle an example of such,” Jev said, though the banter was only a reflex. He wasn’t in the mood for it. “I understand my mother called it old and drafty and a relic of a foregone era when she moved in.”

  “She must have loved him a great deal for her to have made such a sacrifice.”

  “It was an arranged marriage, actually.”

  “So, no love?”

  “There might have been eventually. They seemed companionable enough when I was a boy.” His parents had never yelled or argued that he recalled. Admittedly, he couldn’t remember them smooching openly in front of him and Vastiun. Or cuddling. Or rushing up the stairs with arms linked on the way to make passionate love. But then, he’d hardly been looking for such things. Even now, it was hard not to find the idea of his parents having sex anything other than disturbing.

  “Companionable. Let’s hope your future wife gets more from you. A woman wants a man who can make her lady parts thrum and throb.”

  “By the dragon founders,” Jev blurted. He was glad his horse was picking the way up the uneven slope. If he’d been the one walking, he would have pitched over at that comment. It wasn’t that he hadn’t heard about throbbing from time to time among the men in the army, but there was something alarming about a monk of one of the kingdom’s religious orders discussing it.

  “I’m sure they would agree,” Rhi said blandly.

  Lornysh guided his horse onto the road and did not look back at this conversation.

  A boom rang out, startling Jev as much as Rhi’s comment had. For a moment, his mind jumped back in time to the Battle of Terring Pass, and he was out in the snow with cannons blasting from the front line as elven defenders fired arrows from their perches high in the rocks.

  “Are explosions typical in your castle?” Lornysh asked over his shoulder, sounding far calmer than Jev felt.

  “No.” Jev swore and urged his horse to top speed.

  As he galloped over the drawbridge and into the courtyard, the thunks of rocks falling reached his ears. He didn’t see the guards or stablehands or anyone. He slid off his horse, leaving it to stand on the flagstones and drink from the fountain, and raced for one of the back passageways.

  The thuds had stopped, but raised voices made it to his ears, as well as the whinnies of scared horses.

  “What happened?” he yelled as he ran. “Where is everyone?”

  He didn’t know who would answer, and he didn’t care. Though he had no proof, he worried this had to do with Zenia. And with that cairn, the skeleton, and those bullets fresh in his mind, he worried further that it couldn’t be anything good.

  The back courtyard came into view, but the voices to one side drew him into another passageway.

  “Jev?” someone called from the direction of the stables.

  He ran outside, saw the building intact and the hands trying to quiet the horses. Neither appeared injured. A side door that led from the back of the main wing of the castle and to the stables stood open with people gathered around it. Rocks sprawled on the cobblestones at their feet. More rocks—stone from the structure of the castle itself—were piled waist-high inside the doorway.

  Jev pushed people aside in his rush to reach that doorway and figure out what had happened.

  “Zyndar Jev,” someone blurted. “What do we do?”

  They were asking him? As if he knew. “What happened?”

  “There was an explosion,” someone with a young, squeaky voice yelled.

  “It was just a collapse of some of the castle, not an explosion.”

  “No, you’re wrong. There was a big boom! Someone attacked us. We should be getting guns!”

  “You’re not old enough to get a slingshot.”

  “I’ll keep away invaders with my slingshot. I shot you in the butt once.”

  “Sssh, shh,” a woman said, and one of the boys was slapped on the back of the head.

  Jev barely noticed. He had reached the entrance, but he couldn’t go in. In the doorway, the rock pile only rose to his waist, but just a few steps farther in, it rose to the ceiling. To what had been the ceiling. Jev peered up into darkness, grimacing. The hallway on the floor above had collapsed downward, bringing rugs and furniture and beams down along with the stone.

  How had this happened? Random chance? He highly doubted it. The castle might be centuries old, but it was well-built, and ceilings didn’t collapse at random.

  “Was it just bad luck?” someone next to him whispered, one of the cook’s assistants that had worked in the castle for twenty years. “My prediction for today—for those born under the air dragon’s sign—said fortune doesn’t like to be ignored. Did we… ignore something?”

  “I agree with young Gherrod,” someone said. “This wasn’t an accident. What if that inquisitor sabotaged the castle?”

  “She was asking all those questions, interrogating Jev’s grandmother of all people. That’s what the servants said. What if she didn’t get the answers she wanted and brought down the wrath of the Blue Dragon?”

  Jev spotted soot on some of the rocks near the bottom of the pile. He swiped his finger through it and sniffed.

  “Someone set a charge,” he said. “Deliberately.”

  “It was the inquisitor,” someone said.

  “No, she has no reason to blow up the castle. She—” His gut twisted as a thought sprang to mind. Did someone have a reason to blow her up? He lurched to his feet. “Where is she?” He tried to make his voice calm but panic threatened. Founders, what if she was under this mess?

  He’d just started to like her, damn it. He didn’t want to lose her. He’d lost far too many people he cared about over the years.

  “That’s what I was asking, Zyndar. What if she planted a charge and then ran off? Who’s watching the gate?”

  Someone cursed and sprinted around the building and toward the front gate.

  “Hymar, Min,” Jev said, picking out the names of people he recognized, people who had worked here the last time he’d been home. “Put together a team. I want this rubble cleared out. Is my father back yet?”

  “I saw him ride in,” someone said, “but he’s not here now. I don’t know where he went. He must have heard this.”

  “Clear the rubble. I’ll come back to help after I check the other side.”

  Jev ran around and through another entrance, his heart pounding against his rib cage. How much of the ceiling and level above had collapsed? He hadn’t been able to tell from outside.

  “Jev!” came an alarmed cry, and Wyleria grabbed his arm as he jogged inside. “Your friend, the inquisitor—”

  Jev returned the grip. “She wasn’t under there, was she?”

  Wyleria’s already wide eyes grew wider. “I—I’m afraid she might be. I was guiding her, but then I was pulled to the side and—”

  Jev released her and sprinted through the corridor and up the stairs so he could get to the other set that led down t
o the stable yard—presuming they hadn’t been buried.

  He ran into darkness. Someone hadn’t lit the wall lanterns for the night. Or they had been lit earlier and someone had doused them.

  Cursing, he ran back so he could grab a lit lantern from a wall. He came out on the second-floor landing but lurched to a stop before he’d taken more than two steps. Most of the landing was buried. That meant the stairs and more than thirty feet of corridor had been smothered in the rockfall.

  He held the lantern up, searching the rubble, what he could see of it. Most of the corridor was blocked.

  “Zenia?” he called, but he feared she wouldn’t hear him if she was buried under all that. She wouldn’t ever hear anything again.

  He shook his head. It was too early to give up on her. She might not even be under there.

  Jev glanced at Wyleria, at the way she’d covered her mouth with her hand as she stared at the rocks. Tears filmed her eyes with moisture. She seemed certain Zenia was under there. And dead.

  Jev bit his lip. He wouldn’t condemn her to that fate until he saw her body.

  “Wyleria, go get some men to help me clear rocks from this side. And assign some of the women to search the castle for Zenia. She might not have—you didn’t actually see the rocks crush her, right?” His voice cracked at the word crush, and he grimaced at himself.

  “No, but she was going that way, and the time… there hadn’t been enough time for her to get out and to the stables.”

  “All right, we’ll clear out the rocks. Go get people.” He hated giving his cousin orders but hoped she would understand his need right now. “Oh, and go see if there’s an elf standing in the courtyard somewhere. Or outside. He was on horseback and might be lurking. He can sense magic, so he’ll be able to tell if Zenia’s dragon tear is under here. Or isn’t.” He hoped it wasn’t. How far could Lornysh sense magic? He’d felt that meeting stone from who knew how far away.

  “Lornysh?” Wyleria blurted. “If your father sees him—”

  “I’ll deal with him. Just go, please.” Jev grabbed the first rock and hurled it into an empty spot on the landing.

  “All right.”

  As she retreated, he threw another stone. Some of them were too large for one man to move, and even if they hadn’t been, he realized this would take hours. He despaired of finding her before it was too late.

  “No, I will find you,” he vowed and hurled another stone away. “And I’ll find whoever did this too.”

  He gritted his teeth, imagining pummeling someone into the ground, then grabbing a pistol and shooting that person. That anger fueled him as he poured his energy into moving the rubble.

  18

  Dazed and aching, Zenia crawled up the dark stairs. She didn’t think she had any broken bones, but she hurt all over. She’d lost track of how many stones had fallen, pounding her in the back and shoulders. Somehow, she’d managed to keep her arms over her head and keep from taking any blows to it. She needed her head. Not that it took a lot of brain matter to figure out that she’d been duped by that old lady.

  Why hadn’t Zenia asserted her inquisitor authority and demanded to search that crafts room? Out of some notion that she should be respectful and polite because this was Jev’s home? She’d sensed magic. She shouldn’t have hesitated to investigate it.

  Well, she wouldn’t hesitate now.

  Shouts floated up from the floors below, but the thick stone walls made the words impossible to understand. The rocks had stopped falling, their thunderous thuds no longer echoing in her skull. That didn’t keep her from glancing into the darkness overhead often, afraid that more of the castle might come down atop her. She’d barely made it across that landing before the entire ceiling had collapsed, and she wanted nothing more than to find an exit and sprint outside.

  Not that she could sprint anywhere now. Zenia grimaced as she continued resolutely upward, crawling more than walking, using her hands to guide her and also for support.

  She rounded a bend, and a light came into view. A lantern on a landing. She’d reached the third floor. From here, she could go around the exterior of the main wing and back down to Visha’s suite. She hoped Visha was down there by the rockfall, making sure her dastardly work had been done, instead of sitting in her crafts room weaving a tapestry.

  Not that Zenia would pause if she was. No matter how injured she was, she could handle an eighty-year-old woman. She would search that crafts room.

  When she reached the balcony with the garden and heard voices in the courtyard below, she crouched low so she could cross without being seen. She thought she caught Wyleria’s voice, a frantic note to it, and almost rose up to wave at her and let her know she had survived, but the grandmother could be down there too. And whoever the grandmother’s ally was. Someone with a pistol, perhaps. Zenia doubted the old lady had been the one to set the charge that had brought down the ceiling.

  The door to the suite wasn’t locked.

  “Finally, some luck.”

  Zenia opened it, slipped inside, and forced herself to stand upright. A swelling bruise on her spine protested mightily, and she planted a hand on the wall for support.

  “We’ll find a healer later,” she whispered to her wounds.

  As she crossed the sitting room, limping on a swollen knee, she tried not to think about how finding a healer would mean riding all the way back to the temple in the city. Maybe she could convince Jev to carry her. She snorted, imagining what Sazshen would say if she rode into the temple square in some man’s arms. Especially the arms of a man she’d been sent to arrest two days earlier.

  Zenia limped into the dark crafts room, grabbing a lantern from the wall by the fireplace. She pulled her dragon tear out from under her robe and gripped it, feeling its gentle warmth against her palm. She used its magic to guide her past looms and easels toward the far wall of the room. Three huge tapestries hung there, all featuring dragons. One red, one white, and one blue.

  “No love for the earth dragon?” she whispered, looking toward the walls, thinking a tapestry holding a green dragon might be elsewhere, but she didn’t see it.

  Maybe Visha had been born under the air sign and didn’t get along with those from the Earth Order.

  Zenia’s gem guided her to the center of the Air Dragon’s tapestry. Wishing it had been the Water Dragon, which surely would have signaled success for her, Zenia pushed aside the heavy drapery. Nothing but bare stone lay beneath it. It looked like all the other stone on the walls.

  More shouts sounded in the courtyard. Zenia wagered the castle inhabitants would start a search soon. How long did she have to snoop before someone found her?

  She slid her hand over the stone wall, specifically the large rectangular stone the dragon tear’s magic was guiding her toward. A vault or even a secret room had to be back there, but how could she access it? And should she barge right in if she could? It could be booby-trapped.

  Something stabbed her finger, and she jerked back, the tapestry falling back into place. She almost dropped the lantern but managed to keep a hold on it, to use it to examine the blood welling from a precise prick of her fingertip.

  Stone ground, and she stepped back farther. The tapestry stirred on the wall, and she expected a door of some kind to open. Instead, golden light glowed from the stones.

  She stepped farther back, her butt smacking against a loom. Maybe this hadn’t been a good idea. But she couldn’t give up now. She wiped the blood from her finger and stared resolutely at the wall.

  Mist swirled in the golden light, and a figure coalesced in front of the tapestry. Zenia’s heartbeat pounded in her ears. This could only be dwarven or elven magic.

  “You have been tested,” the figure rumbled, the words seeming to sound inside Zenia’s head instead of coming through her ears. It—he—pushed back a cowl to reveal a man’s angular face, a neatly trimmed beard emphasizing the jawline. He reminded her of Jev. Some ancestor of his? “You are not of the Dharrow bloodline. Nor were you appo
inted as the current guardian. You may not enter the safe.”

  A shiver went up Zenia’s spine as the apparition stared straight at her.

  “Would any Dharrow be able to open it?” she asked, though she doubted the entity had been created to answer questions or have sentient thought. It probably delivered this message and nothing more.

  “You are not of the Dharrow bloodline,” it repeated. “You may not enter the safe.”

  “Right, I got that.” Zenia rubbed her finger. She feared she would have to wait for Jev and hope the person or people with inimical intentions toward her didn’t chance upon her first. “Though maybe…” She looked toward the sitting room. Jev’s grandmother on his mother’s side wouldn’t have Dharrow blood, but if she’d been appointed as the current guardian, then her blood must open the safe too. Right?

  “Wait here,” she told the apparition.

  Doubting it would listen, she gripped her lantern and hustled around the clutter and into the other room, hoping Visha hadn’t put away her sewing project. More specifically, Zenia hoped the needle was still on the table. Ah yes, there it was. The woman must have hurried off to arrange that rockfall without tidying up. Or had it already been arranged? Had someone guessed Zenia would head that specific way toward the stable? It seemed hard to imagine, given all the entrances, exits, and hallways in the various wings of the castle. But she had made it clear she wanted to talk to Jev’s father, and someone might have assumed he would go to the stable when he returned.

  “Questions for later,” Zenia muttered, picking up the needle.

  She held the tip to her lantern, squinting. A hint of blood seemed to darken it, but it was hard to tell in the dim lighting. Even if it was stained, would dried blood work on that test?

  When she returned to the crafts room, the apparition had faded, the glow disappearing. She pushed aside the tapestry again, careful not to touch the stone this time. The lantern clanked and scraped as she held it as close to the wall, to that particular stone, as she could. She spotted a hole, a hole so tiny it could have been mistaken for a pore in the stone. But she was certain that was where the needle or whatever had pricked her had originated.