“A part of me is Arann, and I know you, Jewel.” He put a hand into the waters below his fingers, cupped it, and drew the fountain’s clarity toward his face. It didn’t matter; it didn’t hide his tears. “I know you, and I expected that you would come, demanding your answers, and plotting some vengeance if the harm I had done your friend was irreparable. It is not.
“I am not sorry that I called him,” he continued, and his face grew more serene. “But I cannot see young Arann, although I know it hurts him more than any wrong he has ever been done. For we are not yet separate, and there is a danger—although at my level of skill, it is a small one—that I could draw him out of his body once more, and hold him in mine. It has been done, but it is wrong, and in the turning, in the Hall of Mandaros, it will be judged so.” He swallowed. “The pain that he feels—it fades with time.”
It was then that she understood that the tears that Alowan had been crying when she’d first seen him were the same tears, measure for measure, that Arann cried. “Why—why do you do this? Why did you agree to serve the The Terafin if she demands that you—that you suffer this way?”
“Why?” He gazed out upon the surface of the water as he lowered his hand to its depths again. “Because she was the first person that I ever called back.”
• • •
Jewel couldn’t stay with Alowan—and it seemed that he did not desire company—but she couldn’t desert Arann, even though understanding his loss only made it more difficult. Alowan was The Terafin’s, and therefore The Terafin’s business.
But Arann was hers.
She thought it would help if she explained what Alowan had told her, and she tried. But Arann turned to her, tears coursing down his cheeks, and said, “Never, never do this to me again. If I’m dying, let me die. Promise me, Jay. Never do this again.”
So she held him, because that’s what she did as a den mother, and after a few minutes, he suffered it, clinging to her as if he could somehow make himself part of Jewel the way he’d been part of Alowan.
I can’t he what he was, she thought, thankful that she didn’t have the choice, but I won’t leave you while you’re like this. I’ll stay until you don’t need me anymore.
She was wrong.
Two hours later, a pale and twitchy Carver came running into the healerie’s bed room, followed by Torvan and an agitated young healer’s assistant.
Jewel unhooked herself from Arann’s sleeping grip—only in sleep did it relax enough that she could get clear of it—and rose to greet Carver. He was bad; she hadn’t seen him this bad since—since yesterday.
“What’s up?” she said, curt and to the point.
“It’s—it’s—”
Torvan gave her a low bow, but his gaze was appraising, perhaps even distant. “What the young man is trying to say,” he told her in a slightly aloof voice, “is that we have good news for you.”
“Good news?” She raised a brow and gave a sidelong glance at her den-kin.
“It appears that your friend, Ararath Handernesse, is not, as you feared, dead.”
“W—what do you mean?”
“He’s in Gabriel ATerafin’s office, waiting for the opportunity to make an appointment to speak with The Terafin.”
“Kalliaris’ Curse,” Jewel whispered. She caught Arann’s hand in a tight grip and then leaned over and kissed his brow. When she stood, her expression was all business. She swallowed once, and then crossed her arms.
“That’s impossible.”
“What’s impossible?”
“Ararath Handernesse isn’t in Gabriel ATerafin’s office.” She forced her arms to relax, but her lips thinned. She knew she was doing it, but she couldn’t quite help it. “It’s not possible.”
Torvan raised a pale brow. “Oh, isn’t it?”
She nodded.
“Jewel—Jay, if you prefer,” he added, as he saw her expression start to shift, “it can’t be impossible. I led him there myself, at Gabriel’s direct request.”
“That’s—that’s not Ararath,” she replied evenly.
“And how do you know this?”
“Because I—I know he’s dead.”
“Interesting. You didn’t mention this in your interview with The Terafin.”
She licked her lips. “No.”
“Jewel, if you’re playing some kind of game, end it now. You weren’t lying there—she would have known it—but I see now that you weren’t telling the whole of the truth.”
Jewel was terrible at trusting people—especially adults. She’d learned that it wasn’t smart on the streets of the twenty-fifth; they’d take you for what they could, or just send you running like the pack of thieves that you were. And she remembered all that Old Rath had told her about her “feelings.” Of course, it had taken her a little while before she’d decided to trust Old Rath, as well.
“Torvan,” she said, and her voice was shaking, “you have to believe me.”
“Make me believe you,” he replied, and the distance gave way to a little bit of anger. “Tell me the truth.”
“All right! But—but you’ve got to get help, and you’ve got to get it now. Call all your guards, get them together, have them ready, please.”
“Why?”
“Because I know Old Rath is dead! No, I didn’t see the body—and I couldn’t tell you where it is—but that creature that looks like Rath and calls himself Rath is what killed him.” And that, that was true. It hit her, hard. She saw his expression stiffen, and she raced onward. “Old Rath—that’s what we called him—he made me promise never to tell.” She swallowed, knowing that she was about to break a promise to the dead, and praying that the dead wouldn’t become restless about it, because it was the living that mattered now. “But I get these—these feelings. And whenever I get them, they’re always right. They’re always true. They’ve always been like that.” She saw his stony expression and started to speak more quickly. She knew she sounded desperate, and she hated it, but she couldn’t keep the fear out of her voice.
“I don’t know how,” she said, swallowing. “But Old Rath is dead. And if we don’t stop whatever it is that’s pretending to be Rath, The Terafin—and the rest of us—will die as well.”
“Feelings? What do you mean? Instinct? Hunch?”
“No—stronger than that. I know when something’s true, but I can’t control the knowledge. I can’t listen to you and tell you when you’re lying or telling the truth—it’s not some sort of market trick. It’s just—just feeling.” She realized how stupid she sounded, how very, very lame. And then a thought occurred to her; she paled. “Did you—did you tell him we were here?”
Torvan looked down at her for a very long time before answering. Then, almost reluctantly, he said, “No.”
Relief made her knees weak; fear shored her up again. “No? Why not?”
“Instinct.” And for the first time, the crust of distance broke, and he gave her a very small half-smile.
“Can I say something?” Carver broke in.
“What?” They both turned to face him, speaking in unison.
Carver addressed only his leader. “You might want to point out that this Old Rath jumped off a three-story building and left a hole in the cobblestones, and then chased us down the streets and kept pace with a set of two horses at a gallop.”
“You might want to say that indeed,” Torvan replied, turning to Carver, anger replaced by a quiet fierceness that made him look, for the first time, dangerous. “What else can you tell me? Be quick about it—we don’t have much time.”
“No,” Jewel said softly, with a faraway look in her eyes. “We don’t.”
• • •
They told him everything they knew, which wasn’t much; Jewel kept it as brief and to the point as possible. Her early fear had guttered; she knew that Torvan believed her, although she didn’t k
now why. She’d question it—or him—later.
“Why is he here?” Torvan said softly. “What does he want?”
Carver shrugged.
“To kill The Terafin if she knows too much,” Jewel said. No one was as surprised as she was.
“Too much about what?” Torvan caught both of her arms; she shook her head frantically as Carver reached for his dagger. She’d forgotten, as he had, that he’d left it at the door, some guarantee of his behavior in the peace of an old man’s rooms.
“I don’t know—but I think it has to do with the papers that we took from Rath’s.”
“Mother’s blood,” he said, releasing her. “Come. Quickly.” He left the healerie, turning at the door to make sure that Carver and Jewel were at his back. “Jewel, I want your opinion on something. I want you to clear your mind, and listen to what I tell you. Give me the first answer that comes to you.”
She nodded. Swallowed. “Go ahead.”
“If I gather the guards and we enter The Terafin’s chambers, will she survive?”
“I don’t know.”
He closed his eyes a moment, and then nodded. “If we come in through the windows, or if we have archers prepared, can we save her?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Will the imposter be using magic?”
“Yes.”
“Is he using it now?”
“Yes.”
Carver stared, openmouthed, at his den leader. He ran his fingers through his hair, pulling it back from his eyes—both of them—to stare at her more clearly.
“If we can get a mage here, will she survive it?”
“I—I don’t know.” She opened her eyes. “You don’t have time to run someone to the Order of Knowledge and back!”
“Stop thinking!”
She swallowed. “Are we—are we finished?”
“Not yet,” he said, lowering his voice. “I apologize for being harsh, Jewel. But The Terafin’s life may hang in the balance. Please. Close your eyes.
“Is The Terafin in danger at this moment?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is the imposter still within Gabriel’s quarters?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is the imposter a mage?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is the imposter human?”
“No.”
“Jay?”
Jewel’s eyes snapped open as Carver called her. She felt queasy. “What?”
“How do you know he’s not human?”
“How do I know what?”
Torvan looked down at them both. “It’s as I thought,” he said softly. He did not ask for her trust; he had it, and knew it by the answers she had given him, even if she did not. “But we’ve no time for it now. Come, both of you. If we’re to save The Terafin, we have to enter the chambers of the Chosen.”
• • •
The chambers of the Chosen were a series of three rooms that looked well-used, under-cleaned, and over-weaponed. There were swords on the walls, unstrung bows, quarrels and arrows and shields; there were helms and gauntlets and boots as well as metal-jointed leather armor. There was a great tapestry that depicted the Chosen at war, and three paintings, each lit by a source Jewel couldn’t identify, that were larger than life on the otherwise empty wall they adorned.
“Later,” Torvan told her, as she paused in front of a stern-faced young woman. “Follow me now.”
Carver had his dagger readied, and Torvan did not demur. He did stop to ask if either of them knew how to wield a proper weapon, but didn’t seem disappointed at the answer. They passed from the outer room to the inner room, and there they found six guards; two women and four men.
“Torvan?”
Torvan snapped a salute.
“What is it? What brings you here?”
“We have a hostile mage on the grounds. In Gabriel ATerafin’s office.”
Jewel looked up; she felt very, very cold as he spoke. “Torvan?” she said, and her voice was quavery.
“What?”
“He’s—he’s with her.”
The six stood at once. “He’s with The Terafin?”
She swallowed. “Yes.”
“Let me pass, Primus Alayra,” Torvan said to the oldest of the guards—a woman with graying hair and a deep, pale scar down the left side of her forehead.
“And what will you do?”
“I’m going to summon the mage.”
“On your head, then,” she replied, but the tone was one of ritual, not of disgust or abdication of responsibility.
“On my head alone.” Then, belying the words, he caught Jewel’s hand and dragged her past the guards in the chamber through another set of doors. These opened into a window-less room. A brazier burned at its heart, and lamps, one on each of four walls, flickered, alleviating what would otherwise have been complete darkness. There were no carpets here, no paintings, no tapestries or mirrors; in fact, there was nothing at all in the room save the fire and the lamps.
But as she looked at the stone walls, she noticed that each had an arch, carved in slight relief, that stood out. The arches were the height of a very large man, but no more; they were not grand, and had they been real, would merely have been functional.
Torvan walked three times around the brazier, and at the end of the third precise circle, he raised his hand and cut it. Blood sizzled as it struck the flames and sputtered there before becoming a dark, black smoke.
“In the name of The Terafin, we, her Chosen, summon you to fulfill your word and your bond.” He raised his slightly bloodied hand and pressed it firmly against the wall, in the center of the western arch.
The wall came to life.
Stone became mist, and the mist swirled and eddied as if caught in a storm, although the room remained quiet and calm.
Too quiet, Jewel thought. Transfixed, she gazed upon her first true magic. The mist grew thin, and thinner still, as if layers of it were slowly being burned off by the thing that waited behind. And then the last wisps were gone; the arch was no longer stone relief. A door, fully formed and perfectly made, opened into the silent study of a tall, gray-eyed man with flowing white hair, a long, thin face, and a stern expression.
Angel, she thought, would have liked him on sight.
He did not wear the uniform of the Mysterium—the order within the Order that occasionally cooperated with the Magisterium—nor, in fact, any robe at all, save for a pale green bathrobe which had seen better days. His feet were sandaled, not booted, and his hands were in the middle of setting aside a quill and ruined parchment.
“What now?” he said, without looking up from his desk. “I’m a busy man, and I don’t have time for insignificant interruptions. I’ve students, patricians, and merchants clamoring for attention; you’d best set yourself apart from them very quickly.”
For the first time, Jewel Markess heard the voice of Meralonne of the Magi. “We need your help,” she replied, although until she heard his voice, she had no intention of making herself known at all. “The Terafin is about to be—”
“We call upon you,” Torvan broke in, motioning her to silence, “to fulfill your bond. I am Torvan of the Chosen, and I summon you to The Terafin’s side.”
The mage’s expression changed subtly; his eyes were still narrowed and his lips thin, but the focus of his mood had shifted. He closed his eyes—those slate-gray, perfect eyes—and spoke three sharp syllables. Jewel had never heard a language so crisp or so definite; the syllables hung in her ears, teasing her memory, tempting her to repeat them.
“Torvan, what is the danger that you perceive?”
Torvan turned to Jewel, but Jewel was staring at Meralonne. The bathrobes were gone, and in their place was a gray material that seemed to shimmer in the poor light of the room he stood in; his s
andals had been replaced by brown leather boots. He wore gloves that glinted with the same light his robes reflected. “Jewel,” Torvan said.
She started and then swallowed. “My lord,” she said, although she rarely granted that title to anyone, “we—I—there is an—an assassin on the grounds. He looks like a friend, but he—but he’s not human.”
“Not human?” The mage raised a platinum brow. “What is he?”
“I don’t know,” she said, meeting his gaze because there was no way she could look away. “But he—he jumped off the top of a three-story building and made a hole in the road.”
“I see. I take it he then continued to move?”
She nodded.
He spoke again, and light flared at his fingers and around the rims of his eyes. Jewel opened her mouth to cry out, but only a soundless huff escaped. “You will wait until our business is done,” he told her coldly. “For I wish to speak with you further.”
She nodded, again because she could do little else, and then he looked back to Torvan. “I will come,” he said. “Step back.”
Torvan obeyed the mage’s command, and pulled a near-paralyzed Jewel out of the way. The mage walked through the arch, and as the last inch of his robe cleared it, it shuddered and cracked. Where the mage’s room had been, there was now ruined stone wall; a fine layer of dust covered the floor just in front of it.
Torvan called out two sets of orders and the six guards in the room just outside joined them, standing two abreast. They were tense; she could hear it in their breathing, see it in the way they held their drawn and readied weapons.
“You’d better be right about this,” Alayra said softly.
“I know.”
Meralonne gave them only this much time for chatter before he interrupted them. “Where is your intruder?”
“We believe,” Torvan replied gravely, “that he is either with, or on his way to, The Terafin.”
“Then let us repair to her quarters in haste.” So saying, he walked toward the opposite wall, rather than the door.
“What is he doing?” Jewel whispered to Torvan.
The Sacred Hunt Duology Page 56