Stained Glass Monsters

by Andrea Höst

  Rennyn paused, then said dubiously. "I suppose that's possible. But it doesn't seem to me very likely. I don't believe he has a focus stone. If he was able to open a gate to our world, he would not lack that. But, focus or not, he is a dangerous thing, perhaps more dangerous than Solace. Eferum-Get might have various abilities, but they are not usually mages."

  Lady Weston nodded, then gestured to return the floor to the Councillors conducting the questioning. This time the woman second from the left took charge: a prim blonde brimming with righteousness.

  "What is your opinion of the Kellian, Lady Montjuste-Surclere?"

  Deliberately, Rennyn looked at the collection of Sentene waiting behind the shield. She'd been careful not to glance toward them until now, and couldn't help but wonder what the Kellian thought of her. What did the children of slaves think of the children of the slave-master?

  "Which one?" she asked.

  The answer, or perhaps Rennyn's flat tone, caught the woman off-guard. But after a startled moment she said: "All of them."

  "I haven't met all of them," Rennyn said, reasonably. "Are you asking me to give an assessment of their morals? Or their ability to wave pointy bits of metal about?"

  The man to the woman's left murmured something softly, an instruction. "I am asking whether in your opinion the Kellian pose a potential threat to Tyrland," the woman said briskly.

  "Ah." Rennyn glanced at the Kellian again, waiting so impassively. "Of course they do."

  That produced a nice reaction, a ripple of shock which ran through the room. Rennyn watched the two Councillors thoughtfully, seeing the way the one of woman's hands tightened on the sheet of paper she held, how her eyes brightened. The man was less unrestrained, but he, too, definitely wanted to hear bad things said of the Kellian.

  "It's the speed, primarily," she continued, blithely. "Skill with weapons, strength, and the interesting effects with light are one thing, but the ability to react quicker than anyone else, that truly takes them to a different level. But then–"

  She reached out her hand, touching her fingers to the shield. Tiny shimmers of light gathered, then intensified as she poured raw power into it. The air heated, taking on a distinct odour of stressed metal, and she watched the shield retreat in a perfect circle from around her hand. She held it just long enough for the shield to really strain, then allowed it to snap back, whole once again. She could swear the entire room let out its breath at the same time, the explosion at Darasum House no doubt at the forefront of everyone's minds.

  "It's a relative thing, isn't it?" she said, looking over the table of now very attentive Councillors. "Once you start talking about potential threats. Any weapon you use to defend yourself can be turned upon you. But I have no interest in anything but defeating Solace, and I've seen no sign that the Kellian want to do more than protect and serve this kingdom. Since it seems you do want moral judgments, you'd best ask someone who knows them better. The most I can say is that they seem more inclined to swallow insults than I am."

  The smile she offered the woman was thoroughly unpleasant, and it was probably a good thing that the moment was cut by a dull rumble. Rennyn could feel a vibration even through the thick stone beneath her feet.

  "An attack?" said one of the men in the audience, and there was a small flurry of activity around the doors. Most of the Kellian were on their feet before the vibration had died away, but were waiting before reacting further. Rennyn's senses were currently overwhelmed by the shield, but she closed her eyes to try and feel for worked magic beyond the usual background enchantments of the palace. Nothing major sprang to her attention.

  Captain Illuma, who had remained seated, casting, stood abruptly. "My Lady, there are Eferum-Get loose in the palace. At least five." She didn't pause for a response, leading the Sentene out through the iron-bound door at the rear of the shielded area.

  "Is this one of the Grand Summoning's incursions?" the Queen asked, unshaken but frowning. "I understood their time and location to be already known."

  "It must be a natural breach," Lady Weston said. "They will increase in frequency as the Summoning progresses. But it is an unusually large number of Eferum-Get for a natural–" She looked sharply at Rennyn. "Could the man Helecho have the ability to open breaches?"

  "If he had, I expect Tyrland would already be overrun," Rennyn said. "But recall, I said it was possible Solace has Eferum-Get guards. Any breach or gate within the palace could well be opening among an army's ranks."

  "How convenient for the Kellian," said the man on the left of the examiner's table, flushing. "Before their activities can be properly investigated, they are handed a dramatic opportunity to prove themselves. Are we supposed to believe this is a coincidence?"

  "Do you propose I should recall them, and allow the palace guard to deal with this?" Lady Weston asked, and turned away. "You had best move to a safer location, Your Majesty."

  The Queen stood unhurriedly. "Continue your questions at a later time, Baron Ridehalt. I fail to see how this will change the answers you will receive." She nodded at Rennyn. "Thank you for your candour, Lady Montjuste-Surclere."

  Wondering if that was meant to be ironic, Rennyn turned expectantly to the official controlling the shield, and stepped down as soon as he dropped it. She crossed to Lady Weston, who had paused to cast a divination.

  "Don't deal with it as an ordinary breach," she advised tersely. "If there is real organisation among the Eferum-Get, then this lot very likely have targets. To which point, I'm going to stand over my brother."

  She looked for the nearest shadow and twisted it around herself, taking herself back to Seb's room. It wasn't a safe method of travel when moving out of line of sight, but she was worried, and more so when she arrived to find Seb gone. Given the bonds cast between them, it was easy enough to divine his direction, and she strode swiftly through the Sentene's barracks, crossing to the Arkathan.

  Ignoring a bothersome woman who wanted to know her business, Rennyn quickly found her way to the second floor, and a small room with a matched pair of Sentene and royal guardsmen standing outside it. She hadn't encountered this particular pair of Sentene before, but since they appeared to be bodyguarding, not responding to the breach, she paused a moment to let them know what was going on.

  "Do you have any information about the type?" asked the Sentene mage, a barrel-chested man so wide his uniform turned him into a Phoenix-embossed wall.

  "None. I'm going to put a shield up around this room. Stay in or out as suits you."

  Rennyn opened the door to find a classroom where her brother appeared to be playing teacher to a half-dozen youths around his age. He broke off when he saw her. "What's happening?"

  "Small outbreak of Eferum-Get," Rennyn said, studying the diagram her brother had been busy creating. "Why are you inflicting your theories about Eferum distortion on defenceless minds?"

  "Eh, well, Kendall wanted an explanation of why the Eferum runs at a different pace. Sukata found us an empty room. Everyone else just poked their noses in."

  Rennyn considered the diagram again, then smiled at the girl from Falk. "Seb's the last person I'd ask to explain the Eferum. He thinks he understands it."

  "Does he?" the girl asked, with extreme doubt. Seb's explanation had obviously reached the convoluted stage.

  "More than most. I'm going to shield this room, so if anyone wants to go elsewhere, do it soon." Leaving the door open, she moved to the nearest corner and began to chalk a line of sigils down the wall.

  "You think one might stray all the way out to the Houses?" asked one blond youth, presumably Crown Prince Justin since the decorative guardsmen had hurried to stand on either side of him.

  "Depends on what they're hunting." Rennyn made a correction to one of the sigils and moved to a different corner.

  "Is your sister in the building, Highness?" Seb asked abruptly.

  "She shouldn't be," Prince Justin said. "I told her to go back to the palace." He turned to one of his bodyguards. "Rid
geway, go check the dining hall. Bring her back here if you see her."

  The guardsman went off at a run, and nervous conversation broke out, which Rennyn ignored, concentrating on chalking the long series of sigils in each corner and at the halfway points of the walls. If the shield was necessary at all, there was likely little time left to finish it.

  The Sentene, being charged with the protection of more than just Rennyn's brother, herded the occupants of neighbouring rooms in to fill most of the seats. This produced an annoying babble, rising when the guardsman returned with a small blonde girl and her own set of attendants. Rennyn climbed on one of the desks and scribbled on the ceiling.

  "But it's daytime!" the girl protested, though she was plainly enjoying the drama. "The walkway between the Houses and the main bit of the palace is all open and sunny. Night Roamers couldn't come here."

  "Only the weakest and the strongest Night Roamers are killed by sunlight, Highness," said the wall-like Sentene, coming into the room. "All dislike it and many are hurt by it, but there's more than a few which can venture out into it."

  As Rennyn climbed off the desk, she glimpsed another Sentene pair out in the hallway. Reinforcements. She knelt and rapidly began chalking the last set of sigils in the centre of the floor. They wouldn't have sent reinforcements if the incursion had been defeated already.

  "Five Escaton-types have been located in the palace," the Sentene mage continued, dropping his voice a little, though the room had immediately fallen to a fascinated hush. "It won't be long before they're dealt with, but Captain Illuma's divinations show curious results, and there's been reports and signs of something large moving which we can't isolate. Almost as if it's shielded."

  Food for thought. One thing Eferum-Get didn't usually do was cast shields on themselves.

  "Could it be him?" Seb asked, leaping to the same conclusion.

  Rennyn finished the last of the sigils first, and stood up. "I doubt it. His personal shielding was perfect. But I wouldn't put it past him to cast shields on Eferum-Get."

  "And send them after me?"

  "He may not even know you exist, Seb. But as wicked uncles go, I think this one would take great delight in getting something to eat you in front of me."

  "Should we move, Your Highness?" one of the guardsmen asked Prince Justin. "There is a well fortified room in the Houses' central tower."

  The prince glanced at the Sentene in the doorway, then shook his head. "We would need to take some of this room's defenders with us. And–" He offered Rennyn a little bow. "I've heard enough about Lady Montjuste-Surclere's strength to suspect this might be the safest place on Aliace Hill."

  Rennyn just started casting. Safety would only come when the shield was complete.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Kendall was entirely envious of Sebastian's sister's ability to ignore people. She acted like she couldn't even see the twenty Arkathan students sitting at and on the desks around her, let alone hear their whispered comments. Turning away from Prince Justin, she gave the sigils on the floor a sharp look and began pumping power into them.

  It really was becoming clearer. Not just people casting, but already existing enchantments. Kendall could even tell when she'd crossed an active circle. None of it made much sense yet, but it was a far more positive sign than the long days of failing to do more than make pebbles jump unpredictably.

  The sigils began to glow as Rennyn Montjuste-Surclere spoke softly beneath her breath, bluish light working from the top to bottom of each row at the same time. Kendall couldn't see the shield which was being created, but felt like she was being boxed in. There was a moment when the final sigil flared and, even though the door was still open, Kendall knew she wouldn't be able to walk through it. It was like the room itself was telling her so.

  "Sealed for air as well?" asked the gigantic Sentene mage, his rumbling voice more curious than concerned. Unlike the royal guardsmen, the Sentene just looked alert and interested.

  "You think this will take so long we'd have to worry?" asked Rennyn, then shrugged and followed her brother as he moved back to where Kendall and Sukata were sitting by the windows closest to the chalk-board.

  Kendall seized the opportunity. "Can I ask something?"

  "Why not? It's my day for answering questions."

  "Your brother was trying to explain how everything goes slower in the Eferum. That an hour there is like two days or more in the real world. But if that's so, then wouldn't the Black Queen have only been in the Eferum for a year or two?"

  "Not far from that. The distortion is variable, and we don't know anything of what it's like when you move away from this world. But I doubt more than two or three years would have passed for her."

  "Then, if it's – if what everyone's been saying about her having a second son, one born in the Hells, is true – why isn't he still a baby?"

  "Mmph. Have you heard any of the theories on the origins of the Eferum-Get?"

  "Not really." They were monsters. They lived in the Hells. They ate people. What more was there to say?

  "A common idea is that the Eferum-Get are the nightmares of this world, conjured into existence by our fears. I can't be sure exactly how my Wicked Uncle came to be, but I'd be surprised if Solace went through any form of pregnancy. Maybe he sprang fully-formed from her forehead."

  Kendall checked the expressions of those around her, not certain if she was misunderstanding an attempt at humour. "You mean she just thought him up?"

  "It's entirely possible, though it's equally possible she went through some form of ritual or...activity with a thing which could be called his father. Certainly the dominant school of thought is that Eferum-Get 'come into being', rather than do anything so mundane as breeding – that they only become capable of doing so when they reach this world and begin to adapt to its nature. In either case, it wouldn't make this Helecho any less her son."

  "The Eferum operates on an entirely different set of rules from this world," Sebastian put in, because he always would try and explain anything and everything, no matter how much Kendall discouraged him. "There's no physical surfaces, no air. You float in Efera, raw magic moving all around and through you, without any need to eat or breathe. It's very easy to lose your sense of self. A weak-willed person venturing into the Eferum is more likely to forget to come back than be attacked. A strong-willed person, someone able to hold back the tide of magic, blazes with a sense of Self which can leak through the best shielding. It's a place of the mind, of emotion, and most importantly of will."

  "Have you summoned a focus already?" asked Princess Sera, playing the wide-eyed and innocent card again. "You don't look nineteen."

  "Unregistered mages are so bad about keeping all sorts of rules," Rennyn Montjuste-Surclere said before her brother had to answer, studying the young princess as if she were deciding whether to step on her. She obviously hadn't missed the mischief behind the question.

  "Summoning my focus was the most daunting thing I've ever done," Prince Justin said, taking Princess Sera's hand and settling with her at the desk just across the aisle. "How you can bear to venture there frequently I can't guess, Lady Montjuste-Surclere."

  Kendall would bet Sebastian and his sister found it harder to bear all this fascinated attention. Scary and dangerous as the Hells sounded, it was the source of all the magic in the world, and to this pair probably bunches more fun than being in a room with gossip-hungry strangers. If it wasn't for them acting so much like they were in charge, it would look like they'd been backed into this corner and trapped there.

  Feeling a little cornered herself, Kendall turned to look out the window, down at the Reading Garden, the grassy patch between the Arkathan and the dining hall which had little tables and seats scattered about it for the students to use. When this was over, the tittle-seekers wouldn't accept any more excuses of having only met Sebastian looking for the dining hall. Once she was out of this box she'd either have to do some fast talking, or make herself scarce.

  Out
side it was warm and sunny. Except for the glowing sigils, she couldn't see the shield at all, though it did make the grass seem all wavery – in a weird, moving patch. Concerned, Kendall nudged Sukata and pointed at the tree that looked like it was under water.

  "Guise shield haze!"

  Sukata was abruptly on her feet and holding a long knife she'd pulled from somewhere. The huge Sentene mage cursed and moved to look outside while his partner slid one of those overlong Kellian swords from the sheathe on her back. Everyone else moved forward or away depending on how brave or stupid they were, but Kendall was still by far the closest when the room's four tall windows smashed apart.

  There was – it was – only a few inches away from her face was a wet white tube. It was thicker than her leg, pulsing and twisting as it jabbed at her again and again. Over all the noise, all the breaking glass, scraping furniture and screaming, the noise it made as it pounded at the shield trying to get at her was the loudest thing Kendall could hear.

  Then Sukata was there, a hand on Kendall's arm as she drew her away, got between her and That. Moving back only gave Kendall a chance to see it properly, to understand the pale background blocking out the sky, surrounding that horrid, fleshy...mouth? As tall as the room, it looked like an upturned crab, but between hard-shelled and spindly legs there were thick tentacles, the blue-tinted suckers ranging from coin to saucer-size.

  More pieces of wall and window broke away as the tentacles searched for a better grip on the side of the building. Little stalks with eyes poked from ridges at the front of the shell, then withdrew as it climbed upward. A leg, tipped like a spear, jabbed downward. Sukata's long knife looked pitiful before it – even the Sentene's four-foot sword was nothing to this thing as it began to rip the roof off trying to get in with them. One of the royal guards fired his pistol, filling the air with stinging smoke, but the shot stopped dead and dropped to the ground.

  "For pity's sake man, no need to tax the shield any further," growled the Sentene mage, pulling down the arm of another guardsman. "And be quiet, the rest of you!" he shouted. "Calm down. It's not getting in here with us and squealing like stuck pigs isn't helping."