by Lisa Shearin
“Could you open a rift at or near that location?” Mychael asked.
“Uh, yes,” Cuinn replied uneasily, “but I don’t think…”
“I don’t want to do it, either, but we need to get a look through that rift.”
“You said the population of Timurus was wiped out about seven hundred years ago?” I asked Cuinn.
“Seven hundred forty-seven, to be precise.”
“Before we risk taking a look, why don’t we talk to someone who was alive then and traveled—a lot.”
Chapter 21
My father, Eamaliel Anguis, was nine hundred thirty-four years old, and had spent most of those years on the run from the Khrynsani and everyone else who wanted to have the Saghred for their very own. It was simply good logic that if you needed to avoid someone, you needed to know all of the places where they could possibly be. Depending on how long the Khrynsani had used Timurus as their secret hideout, my father might have more than a passing acquaintance with it.
Cuinn Aviniel said that it would take him and two of his colleagues the rest of today and possibly most of tonight to calibrate a rift to open onto Timurus’s Table of Iron. That gave us a little time to figure out how to do this without any unfortunate and deadly consequences.
My father’s soul was presently living in the body of a twenty-year-old Guardian. When Sarad Nukpana had escaped from the Saghred, so had my father. That escape had coincided with the death of a young Guardian named Arlyn Ravide at the hands of the Demon Queen. Arlyn’s death had given my father’s soul a home.
Arlyn Ravide had been a good disguise and one that my father had needed, because apparently there wasn’t a statute of limitations on Saghred-stealing. About nine hundred years ago, he had led the team that had gone to Rheskilia and recovered the Saghred from King Omari Mal’Salin and his chief mage, Rudra Muralin. Once he’d brought the stone back to the Isle of Mid, the survivors of that team and a few of the most magically powerful Guardians tried to destroy the Saghred and failed. It didn’t take long for word of what the Saghred was capable of to spread around the island and through the Conclave. The more powerful the mage, the more they wanted to get their hands on that rock.
To keep it out of the hands of anyone who would abuse its power, Eamaliel fled from Mid, taking the Saghred with him. While he occasionally managed to stop running and live like a normal person, most of those hundreds of years were spent on the run. The Saghred bonded itself to him and, as a result, kept him alive and prevented him from aging. During one of those stops, he’d met my mother, Maranda Benares. They’d fallen in love and I’d been born. They’d remained together during most of my first year. But eventually, as always, the Khrynsani had picked up his trail. Dad had left us, drawing his pursuers with him. But not all of them followed. Mom had been only a marginal sorceress. She didn’t stand a chance against Khrynsani bounty hunters. Garadin Wyne had been my mother’s best friend and had taken me in.
Now that the Saghred’s orb had been destroyed, my father didn’t know whether he would age normally in the young Guardian’s body that his soul was living in or whether the antiaging qualities the Saghred had given him would continue in his new body. Either way, an elven mage and Guardian with nine hundred thirty-four years of experience couldn’t be expected to live the life of a twenty-year-old novice knight. As a result, “Arlyn Ravide” had resigned his commission, and had supposedly returned home.
Eamaliel was presently using a glamour to reassume his own appearance. Those like Carnades Silvanus would have demanded his execution as a traitor, even though his supposed “crime” of taking the Saghred away from the Isle of Mid to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands had been committed nine hundred years ago. Those men and women hadn’t cared about time, only persecution and—if they got their way—execution. They had been the real criminals and traitors. They were gone, either permanently by death, or for long enough by imprisonment.
My father was now the safest he had ever been in his entire long life.
Justinius had provided him with an apartment in the citadel, though Eamaliel was spending most of his time in the Scriptorium. He was a scholar at heart, and had been happily spending his days, and much of his nights, reading and researching.
The peace talks were due to pause for lunch in another few minutes, and Mychael was waiting to tell Justinius, Tam, and Imala about Timurus and determine our next steps.
I was knocking on my father’s apartment door, hoping he was at home and not in the Scriptorium. After my run-in with Chief Librarian Lucan Kalta soon after I’d arrived on the island, I knew I wouldn’t be welcome on his turf ever again.
“Come in, Raine,” Eamaliel said.
I didn’t know how he knew it was me, but he’d done it often enough that I chalked it up to nine hundred years of experience on the run.
I opened the door and froze.
Eamaliel Anguis’s original body had been that of a silver-haired, gray-eyed, pure-blooded high elf. That’s what he looked like right now…
…sitting across the table across from my godfather, Garadin Wyne.
The smile stayed plastered on my face as I just stood there in the doorway looking from one to the other.
Eamaliel was my biological father, and my mother had been the love of his life. To save her and me, he’d led the Khrynsani away from us. I’d heard that story from him and Sarad Nukpana. For my father, it was a source of shame; for Nukpana, a source of gloating. I accepted it as truth.
I didn’t know what Garadin believed.
All he knew as fact was that my mother had been murdered and I’d been left behind. Did Garadin believe that Eamaliel had left to draw his enemies away, or that he had run to save his own skin?
That the two of them were sitting there alive, fully conscious, and without apparent injuries implied that they’d smoothed over any awkwardness and uncertainties, and had moved on like two mature—and in my father’s case, very mature—adults would do.
As to who would be walking me down the aisle, I wanted both of them to, but I hadn’t actually asked either one of them yet.
Yes, I was a coward.
“I see you two have met,” I eventually said.
“The way you’re running around here,” Garadin said, “if we waited for the three of us to be in the same room together, it’d be in the middle of your wedding.” My godfather smiled, an actual, real, and honest smile. “We’re big boys, Raine. We can do this ourselves.”
“This” covered a lot of ground—from taking care of their own introductions, to mending any misconceptions, and unless my instincts deceived me, becoming friends. Then I noticed a glass in front of each of them and a bottle of Brenirian whisky in between.
Friends and drinking buddies.
I blew out a double-lungful of air and let my shoulders sag in relief.
“Let’s hear it for good news,” I told them both. “I sure can use some.”
They exchanged a conspiratorial glance.
“Should we tell her?” my father asked Garadin.
“You heard the girl. She wants good news. She’ll like this.” My godfather’s blue eyes were bright with mischief. “At least I think she will.”
Eamaliel spoke. “Justinius asked me and Garadin if we would serve on the Seat of Twelve.”
“Tarsilia, too,” Garadin added.
I took a deep breath. “And?”
“And we all accepted,” Eamaliel said.
“Yes!” Tears welled up in my eyes. I brushed them away and hugged them both. Hard. “There are three more spots. Do you know who else he’s asking? And yes, I understand this is top secret.”
“Well, I imagine you could tell Mychael,” my father said.
“Good, because I would be.”
“There have never been goblins on the Seat of Twelve. Justinius wants to change that. He’ll be asking A’Zahra Nuru and Kesyn Badru.”
I clapped my hands and squealed like a little girl.
“We didn’t get that
reaction,” Garadin noted.
“She cried when we told her,” Eamaliel said.
I ignored them both and reached between them for the bottle. “Do you have another glass, or can I just toast this news out of the bottle?”
Eamaliel stood. “I think I can find you one.”
“Good, because after the toasting, I need another drink for fortification.”
“That bad?” Garadin asked.
“And getting worse. Though we’re hoping you’ll be able to help.”
I told them everything, beginning with Markus’s attack, and ending with Cuinn’s findings.
Garadin’s response was a long whistle.
“Thoughts?” I asked.
“Besides we’re going to need another bottle?” my father asked.
“That doesn’t sound optimistic. I take it you’ve been to Timurus?”
“I have.”
“And?”
“I went there soon after leaving Mid with the Saghred. I had a friend on the east coast of Brenir who was a dark mage and a good man. Mirror travel didn’t exist then, but the Passages did. He knew of a stable entrance to the Passages, and the location there of a rift that would take me to a little, out-of-the-way world where I should be safe for a while.”
“Timurus.”
Dad nodded. “I came out of the rift near a fairly large city. Being noticed was the last thing I needed, so I always tried to stay in cities. A new face in a village is gossip for a year. I glamoured my ears and fit right in. The Saghred and I stayed there for…let’s see, about fifty-two years. Long enough to realize that I wasn’t aging, and whose fault it was.”
“What was the name of the city?”
“Phirai.”
“That wouldn’t happen to be near Astava, would it?”
Eamaliel raised one of his perfect eyebrows. “Just to the south. Why?”
“That’s where Cuinn Aviniel thinks the Rak’kari came from, a plateau that overlooks Astava.”
My father swore. I’d never heard him do that before, at least not that word.
“The Table of Iron, the locals called it. It overlooked everything within a hundred miles. I had to leave Timurus because the Khrynsani had found it. I don’t know if they had been there before, or simply tracked me there. I sensed them as soon as they arrived—through a rift on the Table of Iron.”
“Crap. Well, that confirms Cuinn’s theories.”
“They had seekers with them, good ones. When we were in Rheskilia getting the Saghred back, our camp was attacked one night. We survived, but we couldn’t go back to retrieve our gear. As a result, there was a possibility that the Khrynsani obtained some of my personal possessions, magical implements that I used that would hold traces of me and my magic indefinitely. If that were the case, they could find me. Phirai was only ten miles south of Astava. The goblins knew what questions to ask, and the time period that I had arrived there. Between that and the seekers, I knew it’d only be a matter of time until they found me. My Brenirian friend had given me a map he’d made of the Passages. I knew how to open a rift. I left the same day I’d sensed the Khrynsani and returned here.”
“Here as in Mid or our world?”
“Our world.” He gave me a rueful smile. “I’d heard Mylora was lovely in the spring.”
I hesitated. “Cuinn said that all of the people were either killed or taken about seven hundred years ago.”
My father’s eyes grew haunted. “A little less than two hundred years after my first visit, I went there again. I had been traveling around the Seven Kingdoms, and reasoned that the Khrynsani and other rogue mages who wanted the Saghred would believe that I was still there. I went to Timurus again. Astava was under siege, surrounded by one of the largest armies I’d ever seen or heard of. They had battle dragons, huge brutes. I’d lived on Timurus for fifty-two years. I’m a scholar at heart, and make it a point to learn about the places I’ve traveled. There were no dragons of any kind on Timurus.”
“An off-world invader,” Garadin said quietly.
Eamaliel’s short laugh was humorless. “Like myself, except I came in peace. The people of Timurus had mages and magic, not to our level, but impressive in its own way. The magic I felt from that besieging army was different from anything I’d ever felt before. Needless to say, I left immediately. I did go back five years later to look. What Astava looked like then is what this Cuinn Aviniel says it looks like now—no human life. His description of ‘wiped out’ is entirely too accurate.”
I took a breath and blew it out. “I really hate to ask this, but we’re since going to need to get a look through that rift on the Table of Iron, by any chance did you hang on to that Passages map to Timurus?” I hesitated. “Just in case we need to have a backdoor way in?”
My father and godfather looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
I completely agreed with them both.
Chapter 22
Mychael knew where I was going next. He could reach me if anything worse happened, but I really hoped for at least one or two uneventful hours. I was going to a place I wanted to be, to be pampered and happy for a little while, and not have to worry about the Khrynsani, their motives, their monster spiders, or my mother-in-law.
I was having my final wedding gown fitting.
Alixine Toril was a friend, a sorceress, one of the finest mage robe designers in the Seven Kingdoms, and in two days, she would be my maid of honor.
Alix was using the shop of a fellow robe designer here on the Isle of Mid. The proprietor was a friend of Alix’s, and had given her the full use of his shop, workroom, and staff. She’d offered to come to the citadel for my fittings, but I’d turned her down. And now I was especially glad that I had. During times like these, a girl just needs to get out of the fortress.
When I’d told Alix that Mychael and I were getting married, Alix had been thrilled for two reasons. One, her best friend had landed herself a seriously hot catch. Two, that seriously hot catch was the paladin of the Conclave Guardians, sacred protector of the archmagus and the Seat of Twelve, and the top lawman in the Seven Kingdoms, meaning that my wedding—and my gown—would be the talk of said Seven Kingdoms.
I had hated to disappoint her, but the ceremony was going to be small—okay, smallish. Last month, I’d worn a white gown and been pushed down the aisle of a massive temple toward a sacrificial altar. Been there, experienced that, had the trauma. A big wedding was out of the question, though not only for the aforementioned reason. Mychael and I simply weren’t “big wedding” people. The most important thing about our wedding would be the two of us being married. In our minds, it wasn’t about anything else.
Mychael would be wearing his formal uniform for our wedding. Normally, I hated wearing gowns, not because I didn’t like them, but because I liked being able to fight for and preserve my life more. This was the one time when I actually wanted to wear one. However, just in case there was a possibility that I’d need to fight for my life—and lately that’d been most of the time—I had insisted on something light, not a brocaded, encrusted edifice that weighed more than I did.
As always, Alix had come through for me. Having experienced firsthand the kind of trouble I’d attracted during the time we’d known each other, she knew I was serious about needing a wedding dress that wouldn’t get me killed. The resulting confection had a skirt consisting of three layers of the lightest Pengorian silk. The bodice was of matching Pengorian silk, and both had a gossamer overlay painstakingly stitched with crystal beading and dainty pearls.
I loved it, and I loved Alix for making it for me.
I was admiring the gown by looking down at it, not by seeing my reflection in a full-length mirror.
Even though I’d told Alix that I loved the gown, she knew that I couldn’t get the full effect without a mirror. She didn’t like that I couldn’t see it properly, and quite frankly, neither did I. A final wedding gown fitting was something I was only going to experience once, and I wanted the full treatment.
/> “Any good news on the mirror front?” she asked around a mouthful of pins. While nowhere near Justinius Valerian’s league when it came to mindreading, Alix had a smidgen of that particular gift, plus she knew me only too well.
I told her what happened last night at the Myloran embassy, this morning with Mychael’s parents, and an hour ago with Cuinn Aviniel. Alix had come by the citadel yesterday with my shoes, and knew that my wedding week wasn’t quite shaping up as I’d hoped or planned, which really hadn’t been a shock to either one of us.
“You can’t worry about what Mychael’s mother thinks or doesn’t think of you.”
“You’re right.”
“Of course, I am.”
“I’m letting my feelings get in the way.”
“Yes, you are. Unfounded and paranoid feelings.”
“Huh?”
Alix spit out the last two pins, and sat back on her heels. “Raine, I’ve seen the way Mychael looks at you. That poor man’s got it bad. And from everything you told me about what happened with the Saghred, that man put himself through hell—and taking on the Queen of Demons nearly makes that one literal—and risked everything, including his life, for little ol’ you. That’s love. Pure, unconditional, and permanent. That’s the kind of man who doesn’t care what his mother thinks about the woman he loves and has decided to spend the rest of his life with.”
My shoulders sagged in relief and realization that my best friend was right, I was wrong, and Edythe Eiliesor was going to be however she’d decided to be. I couldn’t change it, and it didn’t make any difference to the man who loved me more than his own life.
“Yes, I’m right again,” Alix said, getting back to work. “Now stand up straight.”
I did. “Sorry. How did I get so crazy?”
“Let’s see…impending wedding, peace talks where peace is the last thing they’re talking about, Khrynsani spider monsters shutting down all mirror travel in the Seven Kingdoms, the Khrynsani wanting who knows what, all that business with your new magic, and your future mother-in-law doesn’t like you. Maybe.”