Wedding Bells, Magic Spells

by Lisa Shearin

  The Myloran delegation had just arrived. There were only three of them, but they were huge. Two rough-looking men and one seriously imposing woman, all of them taller than Vegard. They wore furs and leather, and if any of the delegates were going to get in trouble, get arrested, and get thrown in jail, chances were good it’d be these people. For them it wouldn’t be breaking the law, it’d be a night on the town.

  I rather liked them.

  Vegard definitely liked them. My Myloran bodyguard was grinning.

  “You know any of them?”

  “By reputation only.”

  “What kind of reputation?”

  “It ain’t for their diplomacy.”

  “I got that impression.”

  “With my people, what you see is what you get. We prefer blunt talk to diplomacy.”

  My family was much the same way. Phaelan’s idea of diplomacy involved firing cannon shot across your bow rather than through your waterline.

  “From the looks of this group, their idea of blunt talk includes blunt force trauma. Good thing weapons aren’t allowed in here.”

  Vegard chuckled. “Only if who they’re negotiating with likes hearing themselves talk and takes too long getting to the point.”

  I thought of the Nebian ambassador. Imala had told me that “weasel” was about the best thing Aeron Corantine could be called, and that was being exceedingly generous. One weasel versus three massive Mylorans with no patience for oily maneuvering and evasive talk. This was gonna get real ugly, real fast. Though at least it meant it wouldn’t be boring.

  “Do you know who’s been assigned to babysit them?” I asked.

  “Herrick, Arman, Drud, and Jarvis.”

  “Those names sound familiar.”

  “They’re the Guardians who were assigned to babysit Piaras when Sarad Nukpana was trying to take over his mind.”

  “Big guys, magic heavyweights, don’t take any crap.”

  “That would be them.”

  “Wait, I thought it was one Guardian per delegate.”

  Vegard grinned. “The paladin thought it’d be prudent to give the Myloran delegation an extra.”

  “Good idea.”

  “They know when to stand back, and when to step in. They’ll let the Mylorans enjoy themselves while minimizing the bloodshed.”

  “What section of town would be their idea of fun?”

  “They usually stay close to the waterfront. We’re a sea-faring people.”

  I winced. “That’s what I thought. I’d better warn Phaelan to keep his boys on a short leash. Their idea of fun involves bloodshed, too.”

  Vegard glanced around at the new décor. “At least they’ve taken out the thrones.”

  “I see I’m not the only one who thought that’s what they looked like.”

  “That’s one more thing I’m going to change,” came Justinius Valerian’s voice from behind us. “Plain, comfortable chairs. Not too comfortable, though. Decisiveness and quick action need to be taken in this room, not naps—and certainly not self-glorification.”

  I went and stood next to him. “Has anyone told you today that they love you?”

  The old man grinned impishly. “Not a one.”

  I leaned over and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Well, I love you.”

  Unless my eyes deceived me—and they didn’t—Justinius Valerian blushed just ever so slightly.

  Mychael came over. He’d heard the exchange. “Sir, are you trying to steal my fiancée?”

  The old man shrugged. “I’m cursed with too much charm for one man.”

  “He’s magnetic,” I said. “Irresistible. If only someone would have warned me before it was too late.”

  “If I can trust you two alone with each other, I need to go down to the communications room. I’ve just gotten word that there are responses coming in to the queries I sent out.”

  I was confused. “Queries?”

  Mychael turned his back to the delegates, who were beginning to take their seats around the table, to prevent anyone from reading his lips. As an added precaution, he also lowered his voice. “I sent messages to people I trust with access to both government and private mirrors. We need to know if what happened here is isolated or not. Meanwhile, Cuinn is down in our mirror room working on how a Rak’kari was able to get inside the elven mirror.”

  “Here’s hoping for isolated.” I glanced around the room full of diplomats. “Seeing that this is the last place where I belong, I’ll go with you.”

  “Let me know as soon as you hear,” Justinius told us. He sighed. “I’ll be right here getting these children started on their classwork.”

  Chapter 13

  Yesterday I’d been in a room for permanently dead bodies. It was early afternoon, and I was back in the place where Markus Sevelien had become one temporarily. Though I’d hardly call the citadel’s mirror room an improvement on the creepy scale. If I had to pick something to attack me, I’d take a reanimated corpse over a heart-stopping, black-webbed, Khrynsani-spawned spider monster any day.

  Professor Cuinn Aviniel, the Conclave’s expert in the science behind mirror travel, had sent word that he knew how a Rak’kari had been able to ambush Markus Sevelien in the seconds between Silvanlar and the Isle of Mid, and he wanted to tell me and Mychael all about it.

  In the mirror room.

  I really hoped there weren’t going to be any demonstrations.

  Tam and Imala were here with us. For obvious reasons, they were interested in having their education broadened about what the Khrynsani might now be capable of, too. When the delegates had taken a lunch break, Tam and Imala had joined us here. Goblin ambassador Dakarai Enric had assured them that he had the negotiations well in hand, and that getting to the bottom of this was just as important as a peace treaty.

  As much as I wanted to know how someone—and evidence was emphatically pointing at the Khrynsani—sent a Rak’kari to assassinate the director of elven intelligence, I’d really hoped it’d been a one-time crime, impossible to be replicated.

  The moment I saw Cuinn, I knew that the mirror magic professor was way too excited to have run across a mere anomaly. He’d made a major, world-changing discovery, which probably meant what had happened to Markus could happen again. To anyone.

  The only mirror mage I’d ever known had been Carnades Silvanus. You could say we’d been on a first-name basis, though we preferred more descriptive epithets to call each other.

  It helped that Cuinn Aviniel didn’t look a thing like Carnades. For one, he was younger than I was. He was a little taller, red-haired, freckle-faced, with big blue eyes. He was an elf, so he had upswept ears. There were freckles on those, too. Cuinn was just about as cute as he could be.

  Carnades had considered himself the pinnacle of elven aristocratic breeding. From what I was learning of his family, he was the result of elven aristocratic inbreeding. There were only four families the Silvanuses would marry into. Those four families had been going round and round for the past hundred years or so. It was no wonder Carnades had been nuts.

  One of those families had the last name Balmorlan.

  Like I said, the height of elven inbreeding.

  According to Mychael, Cuinn had been a child prodigy who had quickly become the top expert on mirror magic and the science behind why they could do what they did. He’d been offered the job of department chair of what was actually called dimensional studies, but he’d turned it down because he didn’t want to run a department; he wanted to teach and do research.

  Mychael introduced him to us. “Chancellor Nathrach and Director Kalis have a vested interest in hearing any information you may have found to explain what happened here.”

  “Sheer genius was what happened here,” Cuinn said with unabashed admiration. “Unspeakably evil and scary genius, but still genius.” His words then came in an eager torrent. “There have been theories floating around the intra-dim research community for years that Void manipulation could actually confirm the existen
ce of an extra—”

  I raised my hand. “Professor Aviniel?”

  His face lit with a boyishly enthusiastic grin. “Cuinn, please.”

  I couldn’t help but smile back. This kid couldn’t have been more different from Carnades. Wherever his rotten soul had ended up, he had to be clenching his ghostly patrician jaw at the thought of his position as reigning mirror expert being usurped by someone this perpetually cheerful.

  “Cuinn. Some of us…okay, probably just me, didn’t understand a thing you just started to say. I’m just a mirror user, and only then if you throw me through the thing. Most of the interactions I’ve had with mirrors have been bad, as in near-fatal bad. I need the remedial explanation.”

  That made him stop and think—probably how to dumb it down far enough.

  “Actually, in all likelihood, you’ve experienced precisely what I’m about to explain.” He gave an apologetic wince and smile. “Though the comparison could be even more unpleasant than your mirror experiences.”

  “Just say it.”

  “I understand that you’ve been inside the Saghred.”

  “Unfortunately, more than once.”

  “Rumors spread pretty quickly around here.”

  “Take anything you heard from Carnades Silvanus with a grain of salt, a boulder-sized one.”

  All signs of perky instantly vanished. “I always did. Not to speak ill of the dead, but I was really glad to hear Carnades wasn’t coming back.” He paused, his freckled brow creased in concern. “Though is it true that his body was never recovered?”

  Looked like I wasn’t the only one who believed that if a body wasn’t found, the person might not be dead.

  “Sarad Nukpana stabbed and killed Carnades Silvanus,” I assured him. “I was standing right next to him when it happened, and I saw him die. I’ve seen dead bodies before, and I know dead when I see it. That being said, I didn’t see what happened to his body afterward, but more than one highly reliable source in the goblin court said they saw a sea dragon eat him.”

  “Oh, good.” Cuinn winced. “That didn’t come out right.”

  “I think it came out perfectly. In fact, I couldn’t agree more.”

  “Unofficially,” Imala chimed in, “Chancellor Nathrach and I couldn’t have been more thrilled.”

  Mychael didn’t say a word. His expression was carefully neutral, but his eyes were smiling.

  Yeah, we’d all been happy there hadn’t been enough left of Carnades Silvanus to bring back home with us.

  Still, Cuinn lowered his voice. I guess when you lived and worked in a place where secrets were merely rumors that hadn’t been spread yet, old habits died hard. “I overheard Carnades telling another member of the Seat of Twelve what he had seen when he touched you with that questing spell. A detestable act, by the way, well deserving of being eaten by a sea dragon. Until that time, I didn’t think I could have had less respect for Carnades, or disliked him any more than I already did. I don’t make a habit of eavesdropping, but when one’s professional survival is at stake, you do what you have to do. For some reason known only to him, Carnades wanted me gone.”

  “Then you’re lucky to still be alive,” Tam muttered.

  “Hmm, let’s see,” I mused. “You were half his age, and probably double his talent.”

  Cuinn blushed. “I don’t think I’d go that far, but I do believe he felt threatened by my being in the department. Regardless, any information that would give me an advantage or future ammunition…Well, I’m not ashamed to have done what was necessary to protect myself and my department.”

  “I take it that working conditions have improved?” Mychael asked.

  The smile was back. “Paladin, I think we’re the happiest department in the entire college. And we’re not the only ones in the college who look forward to coming to work every day. The next time you see Archmagus Valerian, thank him for us. Yes, we have to do more work with fewer people, but those who are left are here for the right reasons. We want to teach the next generation, not play political one-upmanship.”

  “I’ll be sure to let him know.”

  “We appreciate what he’s done for us, and for the students. Whatever political fallout happens from all this, tell him the faculty—at least I can speak for my department—will stand with him no matter what.”

  “He’ll be really glad to hear that his efforts are appreciated,” I told him. “The Saghred is far from my favorite topic, but if it’ll help us understand what happened to Markus, feel free to use it as an example.”

  “When viewed from the outside, the Saghred was small enough to hold in your hand.”

  I swallowed, more of a gulp actually. That cued the flashback to the Khrynsani temple, of Sarad Nukpana forcing my hand down onto the Saghred’s surface, and the stone essentially fusing my skin to it.

  “Uh-huh, you could hold it in your hand.” I hoped my voice didn’t sound as reedy as it felt. I don’t think Cuinn noticed.

  “What is a contained and finite space when viewed from the outside is much larger on the inside, infinite even when viewed by those inside. The area where mirror travels occurs is a seemingly empty space, which is why it’s called the Void. When two mirrors are linked, a tunnel of sorts forms, providing safe—well, previously safe—travel from one destination to another. Nothing lives in the Void, and certainly not a creature that doesn’t exist without being conjured. From what I understand from Chancellor Nathrach, the tips of a Rak’kari’s legs are sharp, but mirror tunnels cannot be punctured. It was deliberately placed there. And considering who was traveling through that tunnel, and his importance to the elven peace talk delegation, I believe that Director Sevelien was the intended victim.”

  “So what would it take to make a hole in a mirror tunnel?” Mychael asked.

  Cuinn looked perplexed. “Perhaps I misspoke, Paladin Eiliesor. I don’t believe the structural integrity of the tunnel was compromised.” He indicated the now-empty frame of Markus’s shattered mirror. “When the tunnel formed around the mirror, it was already inside, waiting for Director Sevelien to arrive.”

  We all looked to the nearly two dozen mirrors down the long length of the room’s wall—ending at the mirror linked to the Mal’Salin palace in Regor.

  I had to resist a strong urge to take a step back.

  “If all the Khrynsani wanted to do was kill Director Sevelien, they would have booby-trapped only that mirror. If they’d wanted Primaru Nathrach and Director Kalis as well, they would have set a Rak’kari on the mirror from Regor. Or if they wanted to kill Director Sevelien and make the Guardians look bad, nothing would have stopped them from booby-trapping every single mirror in this room—or beyond.”

  My body involuntarily swayed a little in the direction of the door, my feet threatening to follow.

  “What did you hear from your queries?” I asked Mychael.

  “I got five responses. Four had no problems.” He paused. “One traveler, a Caesolian merchant, didn’t arrive at his destination. However, both of those mirrors were older and didn’t have a signaling pad.”

  “So…He could have missed the boat, so to speak.”

  “So to speak.”

  “You don’t sound too confident.”

  “No, I’m not. There could easily be other victims. Those that responded are but a small fraction of the operational mirrors in the Seven Kingdoms.” He turned to Cuinn. “If there had been a Rak’kari on the other side of our mirror, our mages would have known it.”

  Tam swore.

  “What?”

  “A containment box.”

  Yet another unwanted comparison to the Saghred. The rock had had one. The box had done a crappy job of containing it, but the Saghred had come into my life complete with its own Carrying Case of Evil.

  “Though a better comparison would be a cage,” Tam continued. “The Rak’kari is inside. The lock is deactivated when a predetermined action takes place, such as the intended victim entering the room it’s concealed in. Such b
oxes are often hidden by a veiling spell to make them blend with a wall, or even look like a mundane object in the room. It’s an entirely plausible explanation, considering that Rak’kari are killing machines. To get one to stay put, it’d have to be confined.”

  “So either Markus stepping through that mirror in Silvanlar triggered the Rak’kari’s release,” Mychael said, “or it happened when our mirror mage activated the mirror on this end.”

  “Or when Brina Daesage sent the message back to Silvanlar that the coast was clear for Markus to come through.” That earned me a look from my betrothed. “I’m not saying she’s involved.”

  Cuinn spoke. “It is protocol for a senior official’s guard to come through a mirror first and signal that it’s safe.”

  “And whoever planted that thing could’ve easily known that,” I said.

  “While we obviously need to know who’s behind this,” Tam said, “equally important is how it was done. A Rak’kari can live anywhere, including the Void, but nothing else can. So how did a Khrynsani put a containment box—if that theory is correct—on the other side of that mirror frame?”

  “Mirrors are not the only way to travel through the Void,” Cuinn reminded us. “And ours is not the only dimension.”

  While we all knew that, none of us wanted to hear it—or think about what it could imply. Tam’s mom was a mortekal. The fact that she’d lost the trail of her prey was unheard of.

  Unless Sandrina Ghalfari wasn’t in our dimension any longer.

  Her son had been carried into the Lower Hells by a horned demon—and all of her evil hopes and dreams had been taken away along with him.

  I glanced at Tam. He looked like he was having similar thoughts.

  “Think Sandrina and some Khrynsani went to Hell after Sarad Nukpana?” I asked.

  “Worse things have happened.”

  I blinked. “They have?”

  Tam seemed to be having second thoughts. “Probably not.”