“Because the entrances are somehow disappearing.”
“They might’ve done because they knew we’d escaped with that information.”
A dark brow arched as The Terafin looked down. “Jewel, you were valued by Ararath, but the advice that Ararath gave you—to come to me—was sound. Ararath’s enemies did not have much to fear from you. Who would listen to you? And who, in the end, would you have tried to speak with? You did not know who to turn to; you came at his command. His last act.” Her smile was bitter. “Ararath sent you here—and one who was not familiar with Ararath, not familiar with the—with our relationship, would never have made the connection between him and me.
“He repudiated his family and his name. He would not mention our connection to anyone—not even those that he trusted absolutely.”
Jewel was silent. Repudiation of family, even among the people that lived in the city holdings, was almost unthinkable. Family—if it was willing to claim you—was half of what and who you were.
“Do you understand now? The creature that became Ararath knew to come here.”
“He might have followed us.”
“True.” She bowed her head. “But nowhere in the letter that Ararath left for you did he mention his relationship to me. He did not, I am certain, mention it to you—although he gave you the order to come here. No one who knew him as Rath knew it; I would swear by the spirit of the ancestor. Yet this Rath knew. I have a letter, delivered into the hands of my right-kin, that clearly states it.” Her hands shook a moment; she looked down into them as if reading that letter again. Then the trembling stopped and the face tightened; Jewel was certain, seeing that expression, that there would be no trembling and no hesitance again. “If the imposter knew of our connection—knew that Rath was, in fact, Ararath—they must have coerced that information from him, and they must know much, much more. Therefore, any information which he imparted in the letter he left cannot be considered a secret.” She stopped pacing very suddenly and turned to face Jewel, who remained seated.
“But not all of the letter was hidden; I read what he wrote to you. You explored those tunnels without his supervision—and against both his orders and his request—and I don’t believe that you told him what you found, for possible fear of censure.”
Jewel could add, even if what she was adding wasn’t numbers. “Yes,” she answered, her voice soft. “They don’t know what I know. They don’t know that we know the tunnel entrances to other places.” She took a deep breath. “They’ll probably guess that we know all the entrances in the twenty-fifth. If they know what Rath knew, they’d know most of the exits into the basin holdings—but not all. He didn’t know ’em all.”
“Indeed. Are you willing to work with my investigators?”
The big question, now. “And what do I get out of it?”
She did not bat an eyelid. This—although the language was far less formal, the nuance replaced by the subtlety of words poorly wielded—was what she did with much of her time. “For the duration of the investigation, you will need a place to stay; I will allow you to remain here. I will pay you at the same rate that the rest of my people are paid.”
“What’s that?”
“Two solarii a day.”
Through a great effort of will, and the tickle of Old Rath’s admonitions in her ears, Jewel kept her expression completely cool. She’s rich, she told herself. Two solarii might be more than we’ve ever seen for a day’s work—but it’s nothing to her. Hold out for more.
“My den-kin?”
“They’re your responsibility. They can remain with you—provided that you take responsibility for their adventures or misadventures while they are under my roof—or you can put them back where you found them.”
She bristled. “They’re my family. They follow my rules, they take orders from me. I don’t throw ’em out anymore than you throw yours out.”
The Terafin smiled again, and it was almost a smile of equals. “Very well. If you do as I ask, if you support me and show yourself to be worthy of my House, then I will make you—and yours—a part of it in name and in fact.” It was clear from her easy acquiescence and the odd look in her eyes that it was an offer she had already considered—and considered Jewel worthy of.
Jewel could think of nothing at all to say.
“Morretz will see you out now. Consider my offer carefully; I will call for you after the hour of the first meal.”
Morretz appeared like a pale shadow, moving so silently that Jewel was unaware of him until he appeared at her side. She followed him automatically, hardly aware of the carpet beneath her feet, and then a question rose to mind and lips before she could stop it.
“Why?”
“Why would I consider you as a possible member of Terafin?” The Terafin did not seem surprised by the question; indeed, she seemed to expect it.
“Yes.”
“You wonder if it has anything to do with Torvan’s report of your . . . special intuition.”
“Yes.”
“No, Jewel. In the end, it does not. A House is made by more than the ability of its members, and in only a few cases do we sponsor and adopt someone for the sake of his or her ability alone—and in those cases delicate political balances rule. You are not, because of your station in life, one of those cases, although I do confess that, when we have the leisure—and if I have taken your measure correctly—I would like to see your ability trained properly.”
“But—but if not that, then why?”
“First: Because you have information that I desire.”
“You could’ve bought that. I’d’ve given you what I had.” Her eyes were very dark. “You know we need the money.”
“Very good,” The Terafin replied softly. “And if you had proved to be different, that is indeed what I would have offered you. But—” She smiled. “A family is made up of its members, no more, no less. You understand that; you show it to me, to all of us, by the way you lead your den, Jewel. Those children are your responsibility. Not your serfs and not the victims of your brutality; they are yours. I think—and I am not a poor judge of character—that they would die to protect each other. Because of you.
“There will always be room in my House for people who can instill that, and be worthy of it. You are worthy of your den, and if I am not mistaken you will be, in time, worth more.”
“And if you are?”
“Then there will be no place in Terafin for you. It will not be the first time it has happened.”
• • •
When Morretz escorted Meralonne into The Terafin’s presence, it seemed for a moment an odd processional, where the master, white-haired, fair-skinned and richly attired, led the initiate.
The Terafin blinked and the image vanished; she was left with Meralonne APhaniel, looking slightly haggard and somewhat harried, as was his wont. He was a mage of the Order, and more besides, and she trusted him more than she trusted any other mage, which was little better than half.
He walked into the library without stopping to stare at the multiple shelves, the second story of which had been shadowed by the coming evening. He did not glance upward at the oval window, as Jewel Markess had done; he was an older man, and one used to power and finery.
Neither ever impressed him.
“Terafin,” Meralonne said, bowing low.
“Master APhaniel.” She gestured, and he took a seat quietly, rummaging in his sleeves a moment before looking up.
“Do you mind?”
“Not at all.” It was a lie, of course; she hated the particularly acrid smell of pipe smoke. But she liked the look of the light in front of his lips when he gestured and the leaves, curled and dried, became slow-burning embers. And she liked the way that smoke, in a thin, gray-blue line, contoured his face and made of it an almost ethereal vision.
“I have taken the liberty of sp
eaking with Morretz,” Meralonne said. “Or rather,” he added wryly, “Morretz has taken the liberty of speaking to me.”
She smiled, but Morretz did not.
“As you suspected, the creature did not use illusion. He literally wore Ararath’s flesh.”
She nodded, and the smile was gone, consumed in flames darker and hotter than that which consumed the tobacco.
“Let me call it possession. I have done what research I can—and that research is severely limited for reasons which I will explain in a moment—and the most that I can tell you is this: Ararath was possessed and consumed by something that we know as demon.”
She did not flinch, did not even feel the desire to do so. These were answers, and answers were all that was left. “How do you know this?”
“Because he was affected by a primitive branch of magic that is hardly practiced now. Historically, such a magic was used against the Allasakari and their allies.”
Allasakari. The Terafin did not flinch, but she felt a chill wind take the room and make it a colder place. There were no priests of the Dark God in Averalaan, but history’s lessons were dearly remembered by all who lived on the Holy Isle. “I see.”
“Demon,” he added, “is an old pre-Weston word; it means kin of darkness. Weston usage often called them ‘the Kin’ or ‘demon-kin,’ the latter of which is, as you can see, inaccurate.”
This is why she usually stayed away from members of the Order. Bored lesson masters were less prone to odd—and inappropriate—conversational drifts than half of the Order’s members. “It is quite clear that this creature was not a natural one. Very well, call it demon. What can you tell me of it?”
“Very little, I’m afraid. The knowledge and study of the kin, and their summoning, was lost centuries past in the great cataclysm. Research into this branch—and a few of the other branches—of magic is strictly forbidden to the Order’s members, and the council of the magi also keep watch for the mage-born unbeholden to the Order who might stumble across its usage. You can understand why.”
“Yes,” The Terafin replied tersely.
“With that caveat, let me tell you what little I have been able to glean. The demons have their own phyla, and within those, a range of abilities. But from the old texts it is clear that there were a very few who were able to—absorb, I think, is the word we want here—the memories or thoughts of their victims.
“From Morretz’s terse debriefing, I believe that that is the case here.”
“You think he knew everything that Ararath knew?”
“Not everything, no. But much. Those memories that were long and grim, formative if you will, would be the easiest to reach.” He stopped speaking for a moment, and then looked up. “I am sorry,” he added softly, “for your loss.”
“Don’t be. He was lost to my family long before today.” Her face was an ice queen’s face; she rose and turned her back to him. “But you have answered my questions for the moment, and I wish to retire. I will call upon you tomorrow.”
He left, led by Morretz, and she remained.
Chapter Seven
22nd Scaral, 410 A.A.
Free Towns
SHE WAS KILLING HIM, of course.
Evayne had sent Stephen, unprotected, into the darkness of High Winter. That darkness was the shadow of her soul, given strength and freedom. What it sought was the sacrifice that, invoked, it had been promised.
Once before—once before, when she had walked the Winter road unknowing, she had paid that price. The darkness gloried, and the brightness cowered, still.
You will not have again what I granted once. You will not have him.
But it was a struggle to contain the hunger. Darkness masked her vision; pain tried to cripple her. It grew worse as the time passed, and she could think of only one thing that would assuage it.
Not that, she thought, but felt herself sliding.
Stephen was screaming in the darkness of Winter, and only she could hear his voice.
• • •
“Lady,” Zareth Kahn said, his voice the only sound to break the dark, pale chill of winter stillness, “where are we?” The Ariani and the demon-kin were gone, but the red of elemental fire was seared into the vision, held as it was in the hands of two who ruled in darkness. Although he had spent his entire life enshrouded in the study of ancient mysteries, he never expected to see them walk, who were so powerful and so cold they were truly beyond his understanding.
And the seeress—the magi—in her robes of midnight blue was the only bridge between the world he understood and the world, or worlds, he could not.
Evayne, bent and circled with thin wreaths of darkness, looked up, as if seeing the landscape—the exterior world—for the first time. The Winter held her, and held fast, but by the thin twist of her lips, by the shaking curl of fingers and fists, Zareth Kahn could see that she was fighting its hold. Possibly winning. She opened her mouth soundlessly.
Gilliam pushed Zareth Kahn aside. “Never mind that,” he said, his voice cold but shaky. “Where in the Hells is Stephen?”
Espere, had she been a dog in fact and not just spirit, would have been running in anxious circles at his feet; as it was, she tried to butt his chest with her head while she uttered her soft keening whine. He pushed her aside, but unlike Zareth Kahn, she was unwise enough to return.
“Evayne, I asked you a question. Where is Stephen?”
But Evayne covered her mouth with her hands and turned away. Gilliam reached out to grab her shoulders, and Espere was there, in his way. It was too much.
Get back! His mental voice was a furious shout. Get-out-of-my-way.
Espere recoiled, and then, growling every inch of the way, she began to obey him. Her lips came up off her teeth as she met his eyes. She backed away, and he followed her with the force of his command.
How dare she interfere with his search for his huntbrother? How dare she try to stop him when Stephen needed him—must need him?
Stephen . . .
Gilliam stopped his sending; Espere lunged forward, free more quickly and more completely than either expected. She ran in circles around him, frenzied, as he covered his eyes with his hands. He stood because he was not a man to kneel to any but his leige.
He knew how Stephen would have felt had he seen Espere forced back so. He was not certain that he did not feel a trace of revulsion himself.
“Do you trust her?” he asked aloud. Espere quieted, hearing more than just the tone of his voice. “Then I will wait.” But gnawing at his determination was the emptiness that seemed to be growing. He understood William of Valentin now—and he wished to understand no more.
Evayne seemed unaware of his struggle. She raised her head and looked beyond him to where Zareth Kahn stood in silence. “A hundred yards from here, no more, is a cabin that was once used as a way station for messengers from a lord who no longer rules. He had it crafted—as were all the stations, by Artisans of the maker’s guild.”
“By Artisans? It must have beggared him!”
Her smile was weak. “Indeed, it nearly did. But his wife was the daughter of the Artisan who ruled the guild at that time.” She grimaced; a wave of pain—or something near it—transformed her features. “He was amenable to some of the Lord’s plans. In the end, the stations were built before the beginning of the Baronial Wars. This one, and three others like it, survive unnoticed. The others have been destroyed, or have became, over time, inns or homes of particular note.” She began to walk, and stumbled. Zareth Kahn stepped forward to offer her aid, and she shook her head. “Come no closer.” The darkness made of her voice a cool and sensual threat.
“Why have you brought us here?” Zareth Kahn asked, as Evayne righted herself. “Why not deliver us to Averalaan? Why not Breodanir?”
“Because,” she said softly, “this is where the road has taken us. Would you have walk
ed another step in the Winter?” Her answer silenced him. It would not have, had he a better understanding of High Winter.
• • •
The title of Artisan was granted to very few of the maker-born. There were no Artisans in Breodanir, nor, in Gilliam’s living memory, had there ever been. But according to Zareth Kahn, an Artisan ruled the maker’s guild in the city of Averalaan. He was a rich and powerful man, and given to the odd comings and goings of one steeped in mystery or The Mysteries.
Gilliam shrugged. Stephen would have been impressed, but Stephen was not here.
“There,” Evayne said. “Between the hillocks. It is not easily found, but once found, not easily lost. Come.”
They followed her, Zareth Kahn with open curiosity, and Gilliam with growing unease. The snow was knee-deep except where the ground beneath made an unexpected rise or dip. Twice, Zareth Kahn had to be pulled up and dusted off. Gilliam and Espere had an uncanny ability to keep their feet. Evayne did not seem to need it; weightless, she brushed the snow’s surface with the edge of her robes.
When at last she stopped it was in front of a modestly sized, wooden cottage. There was a door, and as she lifted a hand to knock at it, it swung open.
No normal building, without the care and attention of generations of owners, would have survived in this wilderness. But the Artisans made no normal things when called upon to use their craft.
“Come,” Evayne said. “Here, we may shelter.” She paused. “There are no rules save two: Enemies of the Baron may not shelter here and those who seek shelter may not raise a hand in violence against each other. The Baron is long dead, but the second rule is enforced in a particularly unpleasant fashion. Do not breach it.”
They crossed the threshold, stepping into history. Above their heads, the ceiling was high and beamed in several places. The beams were stained, the ceiling around them a pale blue. There was a fire burning in the fireplace along the opposite wall; before it, in blues and browns that matched the ceiling, was a large oval carpet and four large chairs. Upon the carpet stood a squat, thick table, and upon it, glasses filled with amber liquid that reflected the flames.
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