Revealed: The Taellaneth - Book 2

by Vanessa Nelson

  “Show me,” the youngest lady of House Falsen commanded.

  “No,” Arrow contradicted flatly, not giving way at the spark of amber that appeared in the lady’s eyes. Vailla had limited magic, but the entire force of her House behind her. “I am not reporting to the Taellan in this matter, but to the Prime.” Vailla paled a little, swallowing.

  “I want to find him, Arrow.”

  “Then perhaps you will tell me what you did not mention earlier,” Arrow prompted. Vailla swallowed again.

  “How did you know?”

  “You are a truly terrible liar, my lady. It was very clear that you knew a lot more than you had disclosed.”

  “Not much more,” she conceded, fussing with the sash at her waist.

  “But?”

  “There was a portrait in his study, by the big clock. A family group. Evellan’s family. It was there the first time I visited, but not the last time. When I asked him about it …” Tears stood out in Vailla’s eyes, spilling over. “What would make him so angry and so fearful of his family? That was the first time the shadows got really bad.”

  “His family?” Arrow’s attention was fully caught. “Do you recall the people shown?”

  “An older couple, with silvering hair, and three younger. Two males and a female.” Vailla paused, breath catching. “Now that I think of it, the lady looked a lot like Seivella, only much, much younger.”

  “They are both older than they appear,” Arrow said absently.

  “So my aunt reminds me,” Vailla said, the acerbic tone making Arrow smile. Very few people realised the extent of steel at this lady’s core, seeing only the undeniable beauty and gentle manners her House insisted upon.

  “The males?”

  “Evellan. Younger. The older man and the other man looked a little like him.” Vailla tilted her head to one side, tears drying as she thought.

  “An odd family, to include Lady Seivella,” Arrow said, “for she is in no way related to Lord Evellan.”

  “I could try and find the portrait,” Vailla offered, brightening. “I know the place reasonably well.”

  “The wards are active,” Arrow shook her head, “and there was at least one construct roaming.”

  “Surely they would not attack me.”

  “Did Lord Evellan give you permission to enter the residence without him?” Arrow asked, partly curious but partly because she knew Vailla. An outright “no” would simply set the lady on her own course. The sag of Vailla’s shoulders told their own tale. “The Preceptor values his privacy and the residence is guarded by combat magic that even a war mage would hesitate to approach,” she said gently. “Lord Evellan would be distraught if you were injured by his magic.”

  “That is true.” Vailla stood in silence for a moment, hands folded at her waist. She looked calm, but Arrow was not fooled. The lady had a streak of mischief in her, and that calm face had fooled more than one Teaching Master or Mistress into thinking her obedient.

  “My lady, I am charged with finding the truth of several matters. In order to do so I need to find Lord Evellan. Will you trust me to pursue him and charge him to come back to you?”

  “Arrow,” Vailla began, calm expression vanishing into a soft smile and, to Arrow’s dismay, further tears. She swept forward before Arrow could guess her intent and wrapped Arrow in a fierce hug, enveloping Arrow in floral perfume and full skirts. After a startled moment, Arrow patted her back with one hand. “Oh, Arrow,” Vailla said when she stepped back, a quite different smile on her face, “you have hardly changed in so many ways.”

  “Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you,” Arrow said without thinking, surprising a laugh out of Vailla.

  “It has been too long. You were the only one before Evellan who accepted me without question for who I am. I missed that.”

  “My lady,” Arrow began, not sure what she could or would say in response. A bare moment’s thought and she found she was not surprised. Vailla was made of contradictions, treated as a lady by her House, caught up in the elaborate manners high-ranking Erith insisted on even as she wanted more. No one in her House valued her intelligence. Arrow found a smile on her face, thinking that Evellan would most likely value Vailla for her intelligence above her beauty. A good match.

  “You should go,” Vailla was looking past Arrow’s shoulder, a smile tilting her mouth, “there is an entire cadre, a very excited looking young magician and a handsome warrior waiting for you.”

  And there was the mischief Arrow remembered so well, bittersweet hurt cutting through her for a moment. When Vailla had left the Academy, returning to the heartland, no one among the Erith had laughed with her, or found her worth spending time with. She had missed her friend. She bowed slightly, glad no response was expected. Vailla laughed, a light, happy sound that twisted the hurt before the lady turned on her heel, leaving without a backward glance. Arrow watched her back for long moments until a footstep beside her drew her attention.

  “Come on.” Orlis was nearly glowing with impatience, amber bright in his eyes. “There is much to tell and Kallish will not let me speak until we are all gathered.”

  ˜

  The refectory was large enough to host the students all together, and rarely did, students coming and going at different times of day. The great room with its scarred wooden tables and plain wooden benches was barely occupied. The White Guard secured them a corner of the room and relative privacy by simply walking up to the long tables and benches they wanted to occupy and standing silently for a few moments until the few students who had already been settled at the tables decided that it was an excellent idea to be elsewhere.

  Arrow settled herself on a bench opposite Kester and Kallish, Orlis sliding in beside her, and watched with equal amusement and dismay as the junior third of the White Guard cadre procured food for everyone from the long serving tables at the side of the room, perpetually warm with housekeeping spells, and kept stocked by the Academy’s hard-working kitchen staff. With Kallish occupied, the rest of the cadre then set up a light confusion spell around the group to disguise their conversation, the warriors taking turns to eat and keep watch. Arrow wondered for moment if she should tell them about the Preceptor’s standing rule that, apart from the Academy’s kitchen staff, no magic should be worked in the refectory. A moment’s thought and she decided to stay quiet. It was because of Evellan’s conduct that they were here, after all.

  “The Preceptor borrowed one of Neith vo Sena’s horses,” Kallish began without warning. Arrow choked on the mouthful she had just taken.

  “Borrowed?” she managed to say, wheezing, before taking a long drink of water. Neith vo Sena was famous for both his magnificent, highly-trained horses and his attachment to them. No one simply borrowed a horse from him.

  “Indeed.” Kallish seemed to feel her reaction was entirely appropriate.

  “That old fox would never just lend one of his precious horses. He likes them better than his own children,” Kester said. Arrow nearly choked again at the casual description of one of the most respected members of the Taellan. And one who had been absent from the group that greeted the Prime earlier. She picked at her food, mind turning.

  “Indeed,” Kallish said again, mouth twitching.

  “He has a tracking spell,” Orlis confirmed, flushing as the group’s attention rested on him, “Gilean and I borrowed his horses once. He had a task he wanted to Gilean to complete, and the loan of the horses was part payment.”

  “What were they like?” Arrow asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

  “Marvellous.” The one word seemed all Orlis could manage, but the beatific smile and sparkling eyes told the rest.

  “A tracking spell?” Kallish prompted.

  “Yes. His House will have the key.”

  “The Preceptor would have known about the tracking spell,” Arrow surmised, dismayed to find her bowl was empty. A full one was put in front of her without a word and she nodded her thanks to the young warrior carr
ying the empty one away.

  “Still, we need to find where he has gone.” Kallish lifted a brow at Kester. “The request of a Taellan would be most helpful.” By the slight smile on Kester’s face, he had no objection to being made useful.

  “I should visit the Archives,” Arrow said. The hollow in her stomach was filling nicely, no longer distracting her from the buzzing in her mind as she tried to make sense of everything that had happened. A period of quiet in the Archives, with the papers the Preceptor had left, and the new knowledge in her head, would be welcome.

  “The Archivists asked me to tell you that there is nothing new,” Orlis told her. “They are still working on the runes. Apparently the book they were looking for has definitely vanished and they cannot find anything else about shadow-walkers. They were most annoyed.”

  “Indeed?” Arrow hoped her face was not red, keeping her eyes down on her bowl. The slim volume seemed to burn in her bag.

  “Shadow-walkers?” Kester asked.

  “So the Preceptor suspected,” Kallish confirmed, settling more comfortably on the bench, dark eyes watching Arrow with uncomfortable intensity, “and so we have seen.”

  Arrow abandoned her food, sitting up and meeting Kallish’s gaze, lifting a brow. Silver rose in her eyes, flickered and dimmed as she reasserted her control. This place was not safe.

  “We did learn something else,” Orlis continued, seemingly unaware of the tension, unable to wait longer to deliver his news. “Apparently the Lady Seivella had an admirer.”

  “Who?” Arrow asked, turning her attention to the journeyman.

  “No one knows,” Orlis said with unnecessary drama. “A mystery male.”

  “No one has seen him?” Arrow was sceptical.

  “Well, it seems that a shadow has been seen around the lady’s residence from time to time. A male shadow,” Orlis said, with emphasis, eyes sparking with interest.

  “Nothing more?”

  “The lady’s mood was changeable for a while before she left,” Orlis offered. Arrow could not help but wonder how he had managed to get so much information in such a short space of time.

  “Yes,” she agreed, “the lady was usually reasonably even-tempered, but had raised her voice on more than one occasion and refused aid to a student.”

  “That was unusual?” Kallish asked.

  “Unheard of.” Orlis chipped in. “She was one of the best loved teachers.”

  “You suspect she has had contact with the rogue magician? Within the Academy?” Kallish asked bluntly, eyes on Arrow, concern drawing a sharp line between her brows.

  “I do not know what to think.” Arrow avoided contact with that perceptive gaze, staring into middle-distance. “The Lady Vailla recalls there was a portrait in the Preceptor’s private study, a family group, she thought. Lord Evellan, an older Erith couple, another male and a female who appeared similar to Lady Seivella.”

  “The lady and lord are not related,” Kallish objected.

  “No,” Arrow agreed.

  “And the Preceptor has no family.” Kester pointed out. “Well,” he corrected himself after a moment’s thought, “no close family. His House was destroyed at the last incursion, with his only living relative remaining a distant cousin. Who is vetrai to Neith vo Sena’s son.”

  “That would explain why Lord Neith would lend a horse.” Kallish nodded.

  “Are we sure the Preceptor has no living family?” Arrow asked, an odd instinct prompting the question.

  “The House suffered a full incursion. Everyone was tainted. The House was sealed and burned.”

  “A terrible event.” Kallish’s voice was soft, weighted with too much knowledge.

  Arrow shivered lightly, all too easily able to imagine that. The Erith had not been able to deal with all surjusi in the past. Where there were no mages available to perform a banishment, the Erith contained the matter instead, setting up seals and burning everything inside, denying the surjusi their fuel and sending them back to their own realm. It was savage. And efficient. The ground remained sealed until mages could properly cleanse it.

  “Lord Evellan survived only because he was at Court, with Gilean vo Presien,” Kester added. He turned to Arrow, “Why?”

  “I do not know,” Arrow shook her head, the odd impulse fading along with her irritation at Evellan. There had been no rumours or hint of such a past for the Preceptor in all her years at the Academy. “It seems there is little we can do until we can track Lord Evellan. He left me papers to review which may be of use.”

  “They looked random.” Kester was not objecting, just observing.

  Arrow shrugged one shoulder, a very human gesture, agreeing with him. The collection might look random, but Evellan had gathered them together and left them for her. There was nothing random about his choices.

  A sliver of ice worked down her spine as she looked around the refectory. The Academy was the Preceptor’s great passion, a place of learning for all Erith, where anyone with the slightest amount of magical ability was offered a place to learn their skills. He insisted upon the highest standards from his teaching staff and the students. It was his aim, stated publicly more than once, to be a place of safety and learning. It was not a place that should have been linked to a rogue magician, or which should have seen its deputy use lethal combat magic against another mage.

  There was nothing she could think of that would cause the Preceptor to abandon his principles, and to abandon the Academy when his students needed him. With the revelations of the past days she was forced to admit that she did not know the Preceptor as well as she had thought and remembered his note. I am not the only one with secrets. The history of his family explained a great deal about his reaction to the incursion in Hallveran and his deep horror at the underground being so close to the Taellaneth.

  “There is little more we can do today,” Kallish said. “We should get some rest.”

  “Yes, of course, svegraen. Shall we meet at the gates tomorrow?”

  “We are assigned to you.” Kallish’s face stiffened. “We will accompany you.”

  Assigned to Kester, Arrow was about to reply, then remembered the arrangements that Kallish and Kester had been making in the Receiving Hall.

  “Of course.” Arrow had an odd impulse, quickly checked, to get up and run, to see how far she could get. The cadre would catch her before she made it to the door. She stayed where she was.

  “Do you have somewhere to stay?” Kester asked.

  “Yes, a courtesy of the shifkin nation.”

  “We will take you there,” Kallish said, turning to Xeveran, who had appeared at her shoulder, and requesting that he ready the vehicles.

  “I will come, too,” Kester announced. Arrow closed her mouth with a snap.

  “Of course, my lord.” She managed a polite tone.

  A full cadre, a Taellan, and an over-curious journeyman. The property would be full to brimming. She sighed, wondering how she would find peace to think.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The next day Kallish wanted Arrow to accompany the cadre, Kester and Orlis back the Taellaneth to continue the investigation, stubbornly prepared to argue the point until Arrow pointed out that she had completed all the enquiries that she could, with the Preceptor gone, and, as an exile, would, in fact, be safer remaining where she was. The warrior relented on condition that a third remained at the shifkin building, a compromise Arrow accepted with no good grace.

  With the door closed behind the group bound for the Taellaneth, she made a small, instinctive bow to the warriors remaining. Their expressions gave nothing away, but they were likely as displeased to be here as she was to have them. She told them that she would be working for some hours then retreated to the workspace, leaving the door open at their request, setting wards at the open doorway instead to give her some quiet.

  She made preparations for potion making, debating her course of action as she gathered ingredients and set the burner to light, its flame low and safely contained. Heal
ing potions were always useful and simple enough that making them would allow her time to think.

  The pages of the book were fluttering inside her, edges tickling, making her restless. They had woken her more than once during the night, a new piece of knowledge curling open in her mind. More pages were trying to open, demanding her attention. A dangerous distraction. And potentially useful information that she could use.

  There would be no potion making today. Checking that the sword was settled, fresh chalk in her pockets, she stood in a clear space of floor and shut down her first sight, sliding into the second world.

  Standing among the flat world of power lines and spells she stilled her mind, set aside all the frustrations, her irrational anger at having a cadre watching her every move, the joy at having a comfortable place to call hers, even for a little while. Everything let go, her mind calm, she looked for a disturbance, a way into the realm beyond.

  Even calm, it took a while to find it, the not-there flicker of something that caught and held her attention. As soon as she saw it, another page unfurled, smooth and warm, and an unfamiliar word formed on her lips.

  “Gehthras.” Open. Ancient Erith. Old enough that no Erith alive had used it as their first language.

  The not-there sliver widened, forming a doorway. Without pausing to think, she stepped through into the world of shadows.

  Spinning around, quickly enough to make her dizzy, she made sure that she was alone this time. No cloaked figures bearing down on her brandishing a weapon. No other soul in sight on this plane.

  Satisfied that she was alone, she spread her hands, seeing the spark of silver in her veins under parchment pale skin, the inky blue and purple shadows at her feet. Her dark clothing, unremarkable in the first world, shimmered with the silver of her wards, cloth reflecting brilliant blue, green and red. All colours reflected everywhere. Even the faded shade of her skin rippled with facets of crimson and forest green.