“Who could be taking the throne in Chwahirsland right now.”
“Perhaps. But he said he was sent, and that was definitely Norsunder magic taking Wan-Edhe away. So we transfer to Chwahirsland, where we’re bound to find Wan-Edhe’s things awaiting his return.” And on Murial’s doubtful look, “Come on. You’re the one who did Queen Lammog’s Back Door with Gwasan.”
Murial nodded slowly. Like Erai-Yanya, she was never able to recollect without sharp regret their wild days as fearless mage students: Murial of Mearsies Heili, Erai-Yanya of Roth Drael, and Gwasan of Chwahirsland. They both knew that the mastery project called Queen Lammog’s Back Door was, like so many mastery projects having to do with penetrating or comprehending dark magic, theoretical.
The time had come to see if it worked.
Murial drew in a deep breath. “For Gwasan,” she said in a hard voice. “Whatever is going on with this quake is beyond us. The girls can be trusted to get the city evacuated. Let’s go to Chwahirsland.”
Long ago, the last great Chwahir queen had foreseen the troubles that had isolated Chwahirsland for the centuries to come. As Lammog Sonscarna was also a powerful mage, she had fashioned a magical trapdoor in the fortress central to Chwahirsland’s capital, Narad. She had given the key to this backdoor to the Sartoran mage guild to be kept as a secret.
In a sense it was still largely a secret, though the trapdoor gradually had become an intricate magical puzzle for the rare magic journeymage interested in Chwahir history to solve before they could advance to mastery. Murial’s friendship with Gwasan had prompted her to take that as her mastery project.
The result was right there in that library. She sprang to fetch the little hand-bound book, and looked down at her girlish handwriting as she repossessed the details.
Then, holding the book out so they both could read it, the two pronounced the transfer words together.
They appeared in another library, the transfer magic worse than either had ever experienced. It took a long time to recover, perhaps the longer because of the atmosphere, a lour of dark magic mixed with stale fug, weightier than the massive stone blocks around them.
Erai-Yanya choked, putting the crook of her elbow over her nose. The stuffy, oppressive air reeked of acrid male sweat.
Murial whispered, “Do you feel them? This place is coated with tracers and traps and wards.”
“The whole thing is a trap,” Erai-Yanya stated, glancing down at the central table. Light distorted, as if the table were farther away than it was. “But look at those books.”
Two magic books lay open on the table, as if recently consulted. Erai-Yanya took a cautious step closer. Murial reached toward one book, fingers spread to sense traps on the table itself. She felt nothing, which made sense as it was a work table, but she wouldn’t put it past that horrible old man to make and remove traps every time he worked on one of his destructive projects.
She pulled a pen from her sleeve, where she always kept one in reach, and extended it to the book, which was written in Chwahir. The pen wavered as it neared the book, its nib glowing greenish in warning. She snatched it back and squinted down at the books, taking care not to let any part of her clothing brush against the table.
She’d had to learn the rudiments of the Chwahir language to do her project; some of it came back, enough for her to say, “These appear to be written in two different languages.”
Erai-Yanya ventured in a circle around the table. Her magical senses wavered, expanded and contracted in a slow, sluggish manner that made her skin crawl and her stomach lurch.
Murial glanced up with her lips crimped as if she were going to be sick. “This is beyond us. Much beyond.”
Erai-Yanya nodded. “Let’s get out of here. I can’t even breathe anymore. I don’t think the air in here has changed for a century.”
Chapter Four
ON the mountaintop, another quake jolted the ground, severe enough to make people clutch at one another or hold out their arms for balance. Windows rattled in the houses.
“Spread the word,” Clair yelled, her light voice barely audible above the grinding of stone. “The city is coming down. Everyone must leave!”
Hibern stopped on the terrace and gazed upward at the spires overhead. The palace was even more amazing when seen from this vantage, the mystery material nacreous in the spring light. Hibern was afraid that if those impossibly tall spires toppled, the entire town would be crushed.
If the Mearsieans hadn’t caused the quake, and the Chwahir hadn’t, then who? Who was watching them, and to what purpose? The back of her neck prickled with warning.
She shook off the dread and looked around. The last of the Chwahir were disappearing in one direction, while the Mearsieans dashed back to their houses, yelling at family, friends, and neighbors. Many ran back inside to grab belongings, but here and there people paused, touching bracelets or necklaces, and vanished.
“I’ll go tell the staff,” CJ offered, hopping anxiously from one bare foot to the other.
“Do. Then go to the Junky.” Clair named the girls’ underground hideout. “Meet you there.”
As CJ ran off, Clair turned to Hibern, her face almost as pale as her hair. “Did you see where my aunt went?”
“No. But Erai-Yanya seems to be with her.”
“They must have gone to the cave. Trying magical protections.”
“Cave?”
Clair pointed at their feet. “Below us. In the mountain. Above what we call the magic lake. There are beings in the water. One of the girls is actually from there, wearing human form.”
Hibern stared at Clair in astonishment, wondering if this ‘cave’ was the Toaran Selenseh Redian, one of the mysterious caves full of what looked like, but were not, crystals that shed their own light. Some of the strongest indigenous magic pooled in those caves. As far as she knew there was only one on each continent.
This little kingdom, so small and isolated, tucked up in the right-hand corner of Toar, seemed to be full of mysteries. And the rest of the world appeared to be completely unaware. But then, the indigenous beings, whose magic was far more powerful than anything humans had achieved, had so far demonstrated no interest whatever in human conflicts, governments, or affairs. Except when they were angered by human excess.
Or so Hibern had been taught.
Clair said urgently, “We’d better get people safely away.”
“I’ll help,” Hibern said as they raced together across the terrace, past the fountain, and into the first street of houses.
* * *
—
The rest of the day was spent covering the city street by street, sometimes dodging falling flowerpots on window sills, or decorative bric-a-brac along eaves. The quakes were frequent, but never strong enough to knock the girls down as they ran along, flushing people from their homes.
Some were witless with fright, and needed someone telling them to move. Twice they caught thieves lurking on the verge of looting. One look at Clair sent both running off into the gathering darkness.
When the girls reached the last street, they looked back, shocked to see that the palace and its terrace lay far above their heads, broken pavement sliding slowly down raw-looking gouges in the side of the mountain. The palace still stood undamaged, glowing faintly as if the strange material absorbed the emerging starlight. As quakes shook and rumbled, the spires rang glassily above.
Finally Hibern and Clair seemed to be the last ones left. The streets had emptied, and doors stood gaping open in houses, no one inside.
Another quake jolted through, cracking windows. The girls’ stomachs dropped as their hands reached wide in instinctive balance.
“The ground is starting to slant,” Hibern said shakily, arms out wide.
Clair shouted, “I need to check that the girls got safely to the Junky!” She clutched a medallion on a necklace, and
held out her free hand.
Hibern closed her fingers around that small, square hand, hoping whatever transfer magic lay on that medallion was strong enough for two.
One last vicious transfer-jolt, and they fell heavily to the floor. Hibern blinked away the vertigo, to discover herself lying in the center of a brightly woven rug in what appeared to be a cave carved out of soil, with tree rootlets working in and out of the rounded ceiling overhead.
The light from glowglobes fell on furnishings set against the equally rough, curved walls. On these walls pictures had been affixed, obviously drawn by the girls themselves. At either end of the round room tunnels led off, one upward, one downward.
Hibern sat up, her head panging, and saw most of Clair’s gang surrounding a figure lying on the smoothed dirt floor near the downward-leading tunnel. This was a lanky teenage boy with limp black hair and the pasty complexion of the Chwahir. He stirred, groaned, then subsided. A lump distorted the side of his head.
“Ugh!” CJ exclaimed as Hibern approached.
“I found Jilo lying on the floor in Kwenz’s magic chamber,” Puddlenose said. “The other Chwahir had abandoned him. Or maybe they didn’t know he was there. I think a bookcase fell on him during one of the quakes. There were books all over the floor, and smashed wood.”
“You shoulda . . .” CJ glanced at Clair, halted, and crossed her arms, scowling. “Well, what are we going to do with him?”
Clair shut her eyes. “I don’t know.”
Puddlenose said cheerily, “Until you do, I’ll tie him up and stash him somewhere. Got a handy closet down here?”
“Use my room,” offered a tall, soft-spoken girl.
Clair sighed. “I’ll think about Jilo later. If only I knew where my—”
Transfer magic buffeted them, forcing them back. Murial, then Erai-Yanya, appeared in the middle of the multi-colored rag rug. Hibern, Clair, and her friends stilled as the greenish-gray complexions of the women mottled. Erai-Yanya swallowed convulsively, and Murial leaned down, hands on her knees as her breath shuddered.
“Aunt Murial!” Clair said, voice high with relief. “Where have you been all this time? Were you in the cave?”
The woman leaned against the archway decorated with clumsily drawn patterns of leaves and four-fold flowers, echoing the time-blurred carvings Hibern had noticed in the archways of that amazing palace on the mountain.
“No,” Murial said hoarsely, wiped her shaking hand over her eyes. She cleared her throat, and began again. “Erai-Yanya and I were in Chwahirsland. Then transferred back to the palace before coming here. I would swear we were in Chwahirsland scarcely a turn of the finger glass, but night has fallen.”
“Chwahirsland?” Clair repeated, her face blanched nearly as pale as her hair. “Why?”
“We thought to discover something of use, even if only a map indicating Wan-Edhe’s plans. But all the books are written in the language of dark magic, and worse, the wards are lethal, far more layered than either of us have experience with.”
Clair let her breath out in a long sigh. “Puddlenose told us a long time ago that you need magical protections to survive walking those halls.”
Everybody looked at each other, then at Jilo, who was in the process of being dragged away by Puddlenose.
Clair pointed to Jilo’s loose hands bumping over the ground before they vanished downward around the corner. She said slowly, “Jilo wears an onyx ring. That must be his protection.”
Murial said, “Queen Lammog’s spell only gains us access. I’m not the least surprised that moving about requires protection. Just standing there was as much as I could bear.”
“I’m going back to Bereth Ferian to report everything we saw to the northern mages,” Erai-Yanya said. And to search the records for explanation of that palace on a cloud. “As soon as I can stand another long transfer.”
Murial was still thumbing her eyes, then dropped her hands. “And I had better see to replacing the border protections that Wan-Edhe destroyed.”
They all knew that ‘protections’ in light magic were really not much better than tracers, warning spells when dark magic has been done. But warning was better than ignorance.
One of Clair’s friends brought the two women cups of listerblossom steep.
They drank, exchanged looks, braced themselves in a way that ignited a visceral reaction in the others familiar with magic transfer, then with soft pops of air, they vanished.
Hibern said to Clair, “I don’t know how much help this would be, but Senrid knows dark magic.”
Senrid’s name usually brought either blank looks, or grimaces of distrust.
To Hibern’s surprise, Clair’s demeanor brightened. “Senrid! Of course! He was a great help against Siamis. Sartora told us how he helped keep her out of Siamis’s clutches.”
CJ crossed her arms, scowling. “I still don’t trust him,” she muttered, and while Hibern knew it was a rational response, she couldn’t prevent a pulse of resentment.
Clair turned to Hibern. “You know Senrid, don’t you? Aren’t you from his country? Should we ask him for help?”
Nothing was going as expected, but that didn’t mean Hibern couldn’t think ahead. Senrid expressed as much contempt for light magic workers as they did for him; he wouldn’t be taught by any of them. Though Hibern wouldn’t be a full mage for years, he’d asked her to tutor him. “You’ll teach me what I need to know without all the blabber about high-mindedness and oh-we-are-so-pure,” he’d said, his expression caustic.
And Hibern remembered that the Mearsieans had sheltered his younger cousin, refusing to send her back even after Senrid defeated his uncle.
Hibern blinked, and turned to Clair. “First. About Senrid’s cousin Ndand . . .”
* * *
—
“. . . and so that’s it,” Hibern finished relating to Senrid.
Senrid had listened in silence, his fingers pressed against his eyes, one of which was now completely closed. “I guess I could help. Clair isn’t so bad. I talked to her a little up north, when we were running from Siamis. She was a whole lot less annoying than the rest of those magic school mages.” He looked up, his puffy, bruised face making his expression difficult to read. “But she never sent my cousin home.”
“That’s next.” Hibern flicked her fingers open, showing Senrid an open palm. “I asked about that, last thing. Your cousin Ndand isn’t even in Mearsies Heili. She left. Went somewhere else, to study music.”
Senrid struggled painfully up on one elbow. “Where? I can—”
Hibern said, “Ndand made Clair promise not to tell . . . anyone where she was going.”
“Nobody besides me would ask,” Senrid retorted, collapsing back again. In spite of the nasal plumminess of his voice, he still retained enough wit for that. “Tell who?”
“You,” Hibern said, hating the conversation. But she and Senrid had always promised the truth to one another. Both had dealt with far too many lies. She hastened on. “Clair wanted you to know this, though. You aren’t the problem. It’s Ndand’s father, your uncle. She’s afraid he’ll reappear from Norsunder. That you can’t hold the kingdom against him. I’m sorry, Senrid.”
He said with an attempt at briskness that didn’t fool either of them, “At least I know Ndand’s still alive. All right. As soon as I sleep off this kinthus. Right now I don’t think I could walk across a room, much less smash my way past dark magic wards. But I’ll go to Chwahirsland. You if anyone would know why.”
Hibern grimaced. Her own father had been an associate of this wretched King of the Chwahir, through whom he’d obtained the experimental mind control spells that the former regent had asked for. If Senrid could get into a citadel that no one had broached for at least a century. Hibern made a mental note to ask the details of Queen Lammog’s Back Door, and make certain Senrid knew them.
�
�Come back tomorrow,” Senrid said. “It might already be too late, but . . .” He made a weary movement, flicking his fingers.
“Tomorrow,” Hibern repeated, and left.
Outside Senrid’s room, she drew in a deep breath. Her head panged. Three long transfers in one very long day, and two more ahead. But she’d promised. This was to be her future, if she wanted to be a mage. She had to get used to it.
Anyway, she was just as glad to get away from the hurt that Senrid had tried to hide about his cousin.
Clair had given Hibern her medallion-necklace, bespelled to transfer one directly back to the girls’ underground hideout.
When she recovered, Hibern blinked away the tiny stars at the edge of her vision, a warning that she’d been using too much transfer magic. One more, she thought. One more. “Senrid is going to go with me tomorrow.” She held out the necklace.
“We got Jilo’s ring,” Clair said, taking the medallion back from Hibern, then pointing to where a glinting black circle lay on top of a small bookcase.
“I’ll return tomorrow, then,” Hibern said.
And transferred back to Roth Drael, where she found Erai-Yanya had arrived ahead of her. The senior mage was in the midst of slicing bread and cheese.
“There you are,” Erai-Yanya said cheerfully, using the knife handle to brush back an unruly lock of brown hair from her tumbling bun. “I knew those girls wouldn’t stay up north in safety. Clair is just like her aunt. Murial was always dashing off home when we were mage students, mostly to rescue her appalling siblings.”
Hibern suspected the cheerful talk was meant to distract her from thinking about Marloven Hess. Every mention of home or family hurt, and she suspected would always hurt.
Erai-Yanya pushed a plate of sliced fruit and fresh bread toward Hibern, saying, “For now Wan-Edhe is gone, though if Norsunder has him, he will no doubt be sent back at the worst time.”
A Sword Named Truth Page 5