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Endric leaned over the desk in his room, the roll of parchment smoothed open in front of him, the words difficult to interpret. He had a book of the ancient language spread open next to him, but it had been little help in determining what had been written upon the parchment.
The lantern light in his room flickered, making him wish for one of the strange lanterns they had used within the teralin mines. Those had a steady light and required little oil, burning brightly with minimal smoke. As a ranking Denraen, he had access to the cleanest burning oil the Denraen possessed, but there was still a small haze that came off the lantern.
He sat up, rubbing his eyes.
He was more and more certain that the parchment had not been in Urik’s room the last time he’d been there. Why now? And why was it written in the ancient language, one that only a few would be able to translate?
He suspected that Urik would have been able to understand what it said. Perhaps he should have given the former historian a chance to translate it, though depending on what was written on the page, he might not want Urik to have that opportunity.
There were others he could ask. He could return to the university and ask Elizabeth. He suspected she had some facility with the ancient language, and if she didn’t, she might know someone who would. Doing that might open him up to more questions. And he had the same issues with Elizabeth that he had with Urik. He wasn’t entirely certain where her allegiances lay. After her comment regarding the Deshmahne, and the fact that she believed Urik’s attack had beneficial effects, he didn’t know whether he should trust her.
It left him attempting to sort through it on his own.
The book he’d pulled from the Denraen archives was helpful, but using it to translate the ancient language was slow. The language itself was difficult, not only to read, but to speak, and he found his mind struggling through it.
There was a knock on his door. He looked up.
The door cracked open and Senda poked her head inside. “Are you busy?”
Endric shifted the book on the ancient language so that it covered up the roll of parchment. “I’m not too busy to see you.”
She pushed the door open and stepped inside, closing it behind her. She wore her hair parted in the middle and braided on each side. Her eyes had a certain tension to them and her jaw was set, giving her an almost angry demeanor. He knew better; at least, he had. Endric no longer knew whether Senda was angry or whether this was a mask she had to wear as she led.
She took a seat across the table from him and crossed her hands in her lap. “We haven’t spent much time together since your return.”
Endric smiled. “Between you and Pendin—”
“Pendin. Yes. That’s part of the reason I wanted to find you.”
“I know he’s angry that I was gone. The same way that you’re angry that I was gone.”
She arched a brow. “Is that right? You know this?”
“Pendin was my steward. My leaving placed him into a position of…” Endric wasn’t entirely certain what position his departure had left Pendin in. He would have been allowed to continue to serve in some capacity. His knowledge of the inner workings of the Denraen would have been valuable, and Pendin should have been able to serve as steward to one of the other en’raen, though Endric wasn’t certain who had been promoted. He hadn’t taken the time to look into it.
“Pendin was demoted, Endric.”
“Demoted?”
She frowned at him. “You didn’t know?”
He looked down at his hands for a moment before looking up and meeting her gaze. “How was I to know? He won’t talk to me, and now that you serve as Raen, it seems that you won’t talk to me either.”
“You could ask your father.”
“If I could find him.”
“Dendril has been busy.”
“I imagine that he is. He’s so busy that he can’t even spend time with his son, especially after I was gone as long as I was.”
“Dendril has more concerns than only his son, Endric. I thought you moved past that misconception when you were last in the city. If you haven’t, then let me help you see that you are only a part of the Denraen. The general must lead all of the Denraen, which means that he must find a way to be more than any single soldier.”
It was strange for him to have Senda speaking to him in such a way. It was strange for her to chastise him for selfishness. She had always wanted him to be more than what he was, and always wanted him to be the soldier that she saw in her mind when she looked at him, but she had never chastised him in such a way. It wasn’t that he didn’t deserve it. The gods knew that he deserved every bit of harassment that Senda could provide.
“What happened with Pendin?”
A debate warred across her face. Finally, she sighed. “It should be Pendin who shares this with you.”
“He might have tried.”
“Might have?”
Endric shrugged. “He met me outside of Urik’s quarters, and I had the sense that he wanted to tell me something.”
“Why were you outside of Urik’s quarters?” She shook her head. “Maybe it doesn’t matter. What did you discover?”
“I think he’s still mad at me.”
“Why would Pendin be mad at you?”
“Because I left. Because he wasn’t able to serve as my steward when I was gone. Because he lost the opportunities that I afforded him.”
Senda shook her head. “Oh, Endric. Pendin didn’t lose anything because of you. When you were gone, your father offered him the opportunity to serve as his steward. Dendril had never taken on a steward before, but with Listain’s death”—her voice caught, and he recognized the difficulty that she still had, talking about Listain—“he was willing to use more help. Since Pendin didn’t have you to serve, Dendril offered him the chance to work with him.”
Endric stared at her. If Pendin had been given the chance to work with Dendril, then it wasn’t a demotion at all, but a promotion. “What happened?”
“Pendin happened.”
“I don’t understand.”
Senda snorted. “You don’t, because you have been gone too long.”
“Help me understand. If there’s anything I can do to help Pendin—”
Senda shook her head. “Pendin needs to help himself. He’s been given every opportunity. If he’s not careful, he may wash out of the Denraen.”
“Wash out? This is Pendin you’re talking about.”
“And I care about him as much as you do.”
Were it anyone else, Endric would challenge them, but he knew Senda did care about Pendin. They had been friends for a long time.
“He’s made mistakes, Endric. He was lucky Dendril didn’t demote him even further.”
“What kind of mistakes?”
“The kind that nearly got men killed.”
Endric took a deep breath. What had he been missing since his return? His friend needed him, and he hadn’t been there. He had been focused on his frustration in finding Urik freed, and his need to understand what happened to Tresten, but he’d neglected the relationships that were important to him. Were it not for Pendin—and for Senda—Endric would have ended up as something else. He would never have managed to find himself the way that he did. His friends had stood by him, and they had supported him.
It was Endric’s turn. Whatever had happened with Pendin, Endric needed to be there, needed to help his friend.
“You’re telling me this because you think there’s something I can do.”
Senda nodded. “I’ve tried getting through to him, but I think it might mean more to him coming from you.”
Endric thought back to the conversation in the hall outside of Urik’s rooms. He wasn’t sure that it would mean more to Pendin, but he was willing to do whatever he could to help his friend.
“Thank you for telling me.”
“If you were more observant, you might not have needed me to.”
Endric sighed. �
��I’m sorry.” He fell silent for a moment, staring down at the book that he had pulled from the archives. Senda looked at it and glanced up at him, a smile on her face. “It’s been hard returning,” he said. “I hadn’t expected that.”
“What did you expect?”
“I expected that I would return to Vasha and I would be allowed to serve as en’raen once more. Instead, it seems that my return has only caused more problems.”
“Your return hasn’t caused the problems, Endric. The problems were there before you returned. You’re only seeing the changes that happened in the time that you’ve been away.”
He sighed. There had been many changes. The Denraen had changed, though maybe that was more about him than it was about the Denraen. After his time with the Antrilii, he had thought it would be a simple matter to return and to resume his place. He had thought that he had to come to terms with who he was as Antrilii, but maybe it was more about coming to terms with who he was as Denraen. That might be the more difficult transition.
“I’ve seen you working with soldiers in the yard,” she said.
“Are you going to harass me about that as well?”
“Who harassed you about it?”
He shook his head. Senda already seemed to have a negative opinion of Pendin. That bothered him. It had been Endric who had been the one to have the negative opinions about him. Pendin had always been the one he wanted to emulate.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I think it’s good that you work with them. Sometimes the new recruits tend to get lost within the Denraen. Having someone with your skill to work with them, to demonstrate what’s possible, is valuable.”
“I’m not sure that I’m the one they should seek to emulate.”
“Why not? You’ve gone from a simple soldier to an officer.”
“I think my connection to the Antrilii gives me an advantage.”
“Why would it?”
Endric met her gaze and realized that Senda didn’t know. He wouldn’t be the one to tell her the secrets of the Antrilii. “Only that I learned from my father, an incredibly skilled swordsman. While I was gone, I studied with the Antrilii.”
She smiled. “That only proves that with hard work, even someone who’s given a place of authority can rise to deserve it.”
Endric laughed. It was nice sitting with her, having this quiet time. There remained something of a wall between them—an uncomfortable sensation—but he doubted that would go away anytime soon. When he’d spoken to his father, he’d left thinking that perhaps Senda had moved on. In a way, she had. She had been promoted and moved out of Listain’s shadow. She had become a competent—and skilled—leader. He had seen the way the other Denraen looked at her, the respect that filled their eyes. He understood it well. Senda was worthy of such respect.
“What are you working on here?”
She grabbed the book and revealed the sheet of parchment beneath it.
Endric tried reaching for it, but she had fast hands and scooped the page off the table. Considering how quickly she reacted, he suspected she had seen it when she’d entered the room.
Senda flipped through the book before setting it back down. She held the parchment out in front of her, studying the page.
Endric was tempted to grab it, but he was in a strange situation. Senda outranked him.
“Where did you find this?”
“It was in Urik’s room.”
“We catalogued everything in Urik’s rooms. There wasn’t anything like this.”
Endric unsheathed his sword and set it on the table. “Even after we catalogued everything, this appeared in his wardrobe before I left.”
The teralin had a slight warmth to it, but less than neutral teralin did.
Senda considered the sword for a moment before her eyes turned back to the parchment. “Do you know what is said here?”
Endric patted the book that rested on his desk. “No. That’s the reason I have this.”
“It speaks of an event, but I can’t translate it well enough to understand.”
Endric frowned. “An event?”
She looked from the parchment over to Endric and nodded. “That’s about the only part of it that I can translate.”
It was more than he had managed. He had struggled through the language, able to capture a word here or there, but not enough to make sense of what was written there, not with any real context.
“It’s odd, don’t you think?” she asked.
“That it’s written in the ancient language? Yes, that is odd.”
“That’s not it. In Vasha, there’s much that’s written in the ancient language. Listain wanted me to learn it, but he continued to assign the other responsibilities that detracted from time needed to understand it.”
“What’s odd, then?”
“The fact that you discovered it in Urik’s room. Why would it be there, of all places?”
“You think it’s a message to Urik?”
“Only if someone thought that he might be there. Otherwise, why would there be a message in his quarters?”
“We could ask him,” Endric said.
Senda arched a brow at him. “Is that wise?”
“I don’t know what is wise when it comes to him. If it were up to me, I would never have granted him such freedom throughout the barracks. My father obviously feels differently.”
“Because your father had no real choice.”
“There’s always a choice, Senda.”
She stared at him. “Yes. There is.”
An uncomfortable silence hung between them. Endric shook it off. “What happened with the teralin? Why did my father need Urik?”
Senda stared at him unblinkingly. Endric wondered if she might not answer, but she took a deep breath and rested her hands on the armrests of the chair. “The teralin became unstable.”
“Unstable?”
She nodded. “In the mines. There was… an accident. I don’t know much more about it than that, only that several miners died.”
Elizabeth hadn’t shared that with him. He suspected she knew the answers to both and had not shared either because she wanted him to discover on his own or because she was angry with them. If she was so angry, she wouldn’t have met with him. That meant there might be another reason.
“Teralin doesn’t get unstable like that.”
“Are you sure?”
Endric took his sword and ran his finger along the edge, feeling the heat. There was a sense to the teralin that he couldn’t explain, much as he couldn’t explain how he was aware of the negatively charged teralin when he was around it. “I can change the polarity of teralin.”
“So I’ve heard,” she said.
Endric didn’t remember telling her directly, which made it likely that she’d heard from Listain. Or his father. “Having that connection to teralin allows me to understand it. I feel it, almost as if it’s alive.” He held his hand on the hilt of his sword, the connection to the teralin filling him. “Urik says that wars were fought over teralin. He claims men thought it was a metal given to them by the gods, a part of creation.”
That explanation of teralin made the most sense. Teralin did have strange characteristics, and it was strange that it could be both positively and negatively charged. Why would that be? Why would a metal like that exist, one that seemed as if it cared not who held it or who used it?
It made him wonder what purpose the gods had for teralin. Why had they placed it throughout the mountains beneath Vasha?
“I’ve never known teralin to be unstable. It’s either neutral or it’s charged.”
Senda shrugged. “Something changed. The metal became unstable. One of the mines collapsed.”
“What did Pendin say about it?”
She shook her head. “Pendin had been demoted by that time. Your father wasn’t willing to involve him.”
“And Tresten had been gone by then?”
Senda nodded. “It happened several weeks after Tresten fell.�
��
Endric stared at his desk. “Did anyone ever find Tresten’s body?”
“His body? What kind of question is that?”
“Only that you’ve met Tresten. You know that he’s uniquely gifted.”
“He was observed falling.”
Endric frowned. “Observed? By who?”
“By me.”
Endric stared at Senda. If she had seen Tresten fall, then there could be no question that he had. “Where was he? Where did he fall from?”
Senda watched him for a moment. “Does it matter? All that matters is that he fell, that he’s gone.”
Endric resisted the urge to say that Tresten was simply missing, rather than gone. Hearing Senda’s description made him believe even more what Elizabeth had shared with him. Maybe Tresten hadn’t died. If any Mage could find a way to conceal their disappearance, he could see Tresten doing it. And what better way than to have Senda be the one to witness it.
“We need to get this page translated.”
Endric nodded. “I suppose we could go to the university. Elizabeth would probably help.”
That was not where he wanted to go with the parchment, but it was the place that made the most sense.
“I doubt your father would be too eager to utilize the resources of the university.”
“Why? Elizabeth would help.”
“Possibly. Even if she were to help, I’m not sure that we should accept her help.”
“She was involved in your training.”
“Which is why I know that she can’t be entirely trusted.”
“Senda—”
She shook her head. “I know that she’s Pendin’s mother. More than anyone else, I understand the difficulty that we have with not trusting her. I want to be able to trust her. I want to be able to use those connections that I once possessed. Especially now. I think that those connections would be valuable. But… I can’t.”
Endric watched her for a moment. “Then what?”
“You’re not going to like what I’m going to say.”
He shook his head. “If you mean Urik, I’ve already thought about it and decided that it wouldn’t make any sense. If he was the recipient of a message, how can we trust him?”
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