“I am fine, Mother,” Pentandra assured her, breaking the embrace impatiently. “It was a just few undead. We took care of it,” she said, casually, as she continued packing what she thought she might need.
“Just . . . a few . . . undead?” Amendra asked, her eyes wide and her mouth falling open. “Goddess protect us! Pentandra, in all the years your father has practiced, he’s never run into an undead anything!”
That’s not what I heard, regarding your marital life, Pentandra suppressed herself from saying.
“I’m not a Resident Adept, Mother, I’m a Ducal Court Wizard. I don’t have clients, I have a liege. And I don’t deal with challenging cases, I protect and serve the entire duchy with my magic,” she said, hurriedly. “Even against evil undead. Sometimes that means beating down undead assassins in the middle of the night. Sometimes it means placating an irritating goddess. Mostly it means a mountain of parchment that needs my attention six months ago.
“But today,” she said, exchanging her second-best mantle for her best traveling cloak, “today it means I go plunging off into oblivion by myself in search of my apprentice . . . and that has become the most pressing need at the moment.”
“Doesn’t the Duke have people to deal with sort of thing?” her mother demanded.
“I am the Duke’s ‘people’ when it comes to this sort of thing!” Pentandra replied, crossly. “This is what I do, Mother!”
“Well, can’t he send someone more . . . experienced?” she asked, fretfully, as she struggled for the right words.
Pentandra really did have no idea where Alurra had gone, and every moment that passed made it increasingly unlikely that Pentandra would find her even if she did employ magic.
“There is no one more experienced in these matters, Mother,” Pentandra assured her, as she grabbed a few things out of her office press she thought might prove useful. “No one else has gone up against undead, particularly not undead like this. And no one is more qualified to contend with the magical effects of the Penumbra than I,” she added as she hurriedly packed a bag – not with clothes and shoes, but with magical supplies.
Her mother did not find satisfaction with her answer. “All of these knights and soldiers, all of these guardsmen, and they have to send you?”
“She’s my bloody apprentice, Mother!” Pentandra exploded. “She’s my responsibility! I’m the one that sent her to goddess-alone-knows-where in the middle of the battle, and it will be me who finds out where she was sent and when and how she’s getting back!”
Amendra stared at her daughter critically. “It’s not as if she’s your child,” she said, reprovingly and with exaggerated patience. While she was speaking, Pentandra noted the shambling appearance of Sister Saltia, who had hurriedly slipped on her habit before seeking out the ruckus which awakened her.
“Are you going somewhere, Pen?” she asked, sleepily.
“Yes,” Pentandra said, “and no, I don’t know where.”
“Just into oblivion, to find someone who’s probably dead already. That apprentice of hers.”
“Alurra?” asked the nun, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”
“Pentandra threw her into the Void,” answered Amendra, critically. “Who are you?”
Sister Saltia ignored the older woman. “What are you going to do?”
“Follow her,” Pentandra shrugged. “I don’t really have a choice!”
“Wait!” Saltia insisted, then closed her eyes and prayed over Pentandra, asking the blessing of Fortune on her task. Once she traced an infinity sign over Pentandra’s forehead, she nodded.
“Can you please go find that wayward urchin, now?” complained Amendra.
“She’s a blind girl who has literally disappeared to gods-don’t-know-where, who happens to be hunted by the undead minions of a dark lord and the only person in the world who can possibly find her right now is me!” she fumed, as she finished packing her satchel.
Most of the things she would need were already in pockets in Everkeen, thanks to Minalan’s foresight or desire to show off, depending on your perspective. “I have to do this because there is simply no one else who possibly can,” she continued, in a lower tone of voice - she knew that look on Mother’s face. “I am the only one who can use Everkeen,” she reasoned, “and I’m the one who sent her away. It’s my job to get her back. She’s not my child, but she is my responsibility,” she repeated.
“You’ll find her,” Saltia assured, enthusiastically, though the way she bit her lip lessened her confidence and credibility.
“She’s a good girl,” her mother finally pronounced after a moment’s intense concentration. “You do what you have to do, my dear. I see there is no way to stop you--”
“Mother, if you could -- for just one moment -- quit trying to second-guess everything I do in my life and appreciate what it is I do in my life, perhaps you would see me differently!” Pentandra snarled, suddenly sick of her mother’s pointless posturing. This was a crisis. There was no time for her manipulations. Amendra simply did not understand what the stakes were, and years of frustration with her dismissive attitude to her and her father’s work erupted in her tone.
To her shock, Amendra closed her mouth, stilling a rebuke on her tongue. Instead she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and we she opened them she seemed to have found a different perspective - or at least a different manner.
“What do you need me to do?”
The offer was as startling in its simplicity as it was its unexpectedness. But there was no time to react to the emotional meaning behind it. Every moment she delayed Alurra could be sliding deeper toward an unknown danger. She didn’t even have her pet raven to act as her eyes, Pentandra remembered with a guilty wince. But if her mother was offering to help, there was something she could help with.
“I’m going to give you an enchantment, Mother,” Pentandra said, searching the room for something useful and portable. Her eyes fell on a pair of straight weirwood hairpins Carmella had sent her as a wedding present. They had a simple spell that would keep them in place perfectly, even in the midst of a tempest. An extravagance – weirwood was too valuable, ordinarily, to waste on such frivolities. But as pretty as the pieces were, they were low-quality weirwood.
She picked up both pins and shoved one into her belt. The other she quickly used Everkeen to strip the original enchantment out of it, and replace it with a location and tracking spell. The paraclete obligingly built just the spell she needed, with refinements she hadn’t thought about. The result was far better than her expectation, from a technical perspective. She turned and handed it to her mother.
“When Arborn returns, give him this. He can use it to track me, if he suspends it mid-point from a string. The tip will always point toward Everkeen. If I have not made contact in a few days, have him follow me.”
Amendra took the stick solemnly and cupped it in both hands. “It shall be done. Pentandra, I know you have to do this,” she admitted, a trace of matronly guilt in her voice. “Do be careful.”
Pentandra was overcome - not by what her mother said, but the volumes she’d chosen not to say under the circumstances. She quickly embraced her, amused that she was a few inches taller than her, now, and indulged in a few moments of blissful maternal affection.
And then it was over. “Go,” she commanded. “Go find your girl. I’ll make sure my son-in-law gets this,” she pledged. “You just go be . . . Court Wizard. And don’t get yourself killed. Your father would be vexed.”
“Wouldn’t want that,” Pentandra agreed with a quick smile. “Love you!” she said, before she instructed Everkeen to locate where it had sent Alurra, and then take her there.
A snippet of Alkan song went through her mind, and then she was torn out of existence.
Chapter Forty-Three
The Grotto of Antimei
Pentandra was ejected from the Ways in the middle of a meadow in mid-morning. The feeling of disorientation and confusion she always felt after such trips manifest
ed in a hearty fountain of vomit before her head began to clear enough to get her bearings.
Before she even picked up Everkeen off of the ground, where she had cast it while retching, she knew she was in the Alshari highlands, the rolling hills and foothills north of Tudry. But that still encompassed several thousand square miles of territory. She might not have been a ranger, but her experiences with the Kasari had demanded she become familiar with the flora and fauna of the land, and she recognized the region by the trees and plants, much to her surprise. Only when she managed to activate her baculus did she discover precisely where she was.
As coincidence would have it, she had been near to this place only last year, during the great Kasari March, nearly half-way through the course of that historic journey. She found the trees surrounding the meadow obscured the horizon too much to see for herself, but according to Everkeen they were, roughly, fifty-four miles east of the trail they’d followed. A wild, sparsely-settled region even before the goblin invasion in the west, and virtually deserted today.
So why did Everkeen send Alurra here? she wondered as she prepared her next spell. True, it was deserted, wild and remote, but surely there had to be more to it than that.
Pentandra commanded Everkeen to track any recent activity, and after she’d filtered out the various woodland creatures the thing reported, she was able to determine which way Alurra exited the meadow. The glowing footsteps it indicated were Alurra’s size, and they followed a barely-perceptible path that seemed to go nowhere.
Before she followed, she paused to reach out to Terleman and report on her status. She didn’t want to worry anyone – Arborn and her mother, in particular – and if she needed help she knew that the new Marshal of Alshar would be happy to ride to her rescue in the absence of her husband.
Terleman was interested in the result of her tracking spell, but he had other news to report. The undead had slaughtered no less than twenty-six people during their raid on Salis Tower, which was plenty to enrage the duke. Terleman was coordinating a retributive strike on the strongholds of the Penumbra, as Anguin had ordered him, but Father Amus was trying to talk him out of such a violent course of action.
Pentandra didn’t care. The war was resurging, whether the old priest liked it or not – and the gurvani did, indeed, understand power and force. They’d already eliminated Lady Mask’s stronghold last year. Taking two more castles away from the enemy was good strategy, even if it was lousy diplomacy. Father Amus would have to accept that – and Terleman agreed.
Of course, he was also eager to unleash the full power of Warmaster on a fortification, so his opinion was understandably biased. When she contacted him with her approximate location, he made note of it and promised to prepare a rescue party, if needed. And tell her husband. He wished her Ifnia’s luck before he signed off . . . and left her alone, in the wilderness, at night.
Once she’d notified someone of where she was, she began following Alurra in earnest.
She had to admit, this part of the Wilderlands was breathtakingly beautiful. Not the intimate beauty of the massive redwoods of the Bransei region, or the wild nature of the rocky river vales she had come to associate with the Wilderlands. These hills here were gentle, for the most part, forested in patches and displaying a lot of exposed rock under the quilt of earth and vegetation. The air was clean and cool, fragrant with grasses and wildflowers in the high summer. There was no hint of predators or danger, nor of anything to disturb her personal wards.
It was only when Pentandra made her way out of the little copse of wood that she realized where she was. Above her loomed the impressive expanse of rock that could only be The Anvil.
She knew of this place, though she had never seen it. This was where Carmella proposed building the citadel and city that would someday blunt the hammer of the goblins.
The mountain was half a mile away from its nearest neighbor, a remnant of a spur of some ancient range that had persisted into the present age. The lower slopes of the huge mound were forested, but about two hundred feet up the slope the earth fell away exposing the rock underneath. From there up -- another six or seven hundred feet, from her estimation -- the mountain was naked light gray stone with only pockets of soil and vegetation clinging here and there to its face.
It did look somewhat like an anvil, Pentandra decided. An anvil thrice the size of Vorone.
But she could see why Carmella coveted the site. The place was full of defensible positions upon which to build fortifications.
The massive rock above would have been an unconquerable location, alone, once properly constructed. Here and there around the steep sides there were pockets that seemed ideal for building towers or turrets. The long back side of the mountain began on the wide shoulder and gently tapered a mile and a half to the east, creating a long, gentle ramp of earth and rock easily capable of sustaining a town of some size. And the overhanging cliffs to the west – the “horn” of the anvil – had at some point in its ancient history deposited two giant boulders at its feet. Boulders the size of castles, with a litter of house-sized stones around them.
The overhang cast the grotto underneath in perpetual shadow. Pentandra could see that the site only got direct sun in the late afternoon, if at all. But the rocks surrounding it seemed ready-made to defend the area. Pentandra didn’t have any trouble imagining a stout stone wall and picket towers warding the inner recesses of a settlement there.
As she followed Alurra’s magically-augmented trail, Pentandra realized that her apprentice must have recognized the place the moment she arrived. Her footsteps did not wander, but were set purposefully on a particular path. She knew where she was going . . .
. . . and since the only place her apprentice had that level of familiarity with was her home, Pentandra expected to find the hedgewitch Old Antimei at the end of this trail.
But why didn’t Alurra ever mention she grew up in the shadow of a whopping big mountain? The thing dominated the landscape in every direction.
Then Pentandra realized that the blind girl would have taken no more notice of the Anvil overhead than she would have the clouds in the sky. To Alurra, there was no landscape beyond the tips of her fingers and the toes of her feet. She may have been aware of the thing, from her crow’s perspective, perhaps, but somehow Pentandra figured that the mountain would not have the same effect on a raven that it did a human. From the tiny bird’s perspective, it was just another hill full of trees.
To a human’s eye, there was no way you could ignore the thing.
Pentandra began to develop a new appreciation for this Old Antimei. She was clever. Even if Alurra was taken by the enemy, as she had foreseen would be tried, asking the girl how to get back home without visual landmarks would have been profoundly frustrating, if possible at all. Indeed, without guidance it was doubtful she could have found her way back at all. So she made the ideal messenger, for security’s sake.
Pentandra strode more confidently, as she followed the trail under the great overhanging cliff, into the grotto itself. It was wide enough for a town and a couple of small villages, with vegetation suited to a damp environment (she passed at least three springs and a stream) without much sun. There were mosses and lichens all over the floor of the grotto. Alurra’s path led unerringly between the boulders and around the scrubby little evergreen trees, disturbing a cloud of insects and a flock of wrens along the way. At the far end of the grotto - slightly more than a mile from its entrance -- the trail took a sharp turn northeast, up the wooded shoulder of the mountain, across a small stream-fed pool.
That’s when Pentandra started to see some signs of human habitation – namely a wooden bucket near to the stream bank. She confidently strode across the stones in her path and ascended a tricky trail that disappeared into the woods. It proved to lead to a small landing, obscured from the path below, and ultimately a small wooden door in the side of the mountain.
“I do hope she’s home,” Pentandra muttered to herself as she knocked on the d
oor with the tip of Everkeen.
It took a few moments, and Pentandra was considering knocking a second time, but the sound of the latch being drawn and the squeak of the door opening on its ancient leather hinges let her know that someone was inside.
“You must be Old Antimei,” she began to the wizened old face that peeked out of the door. “I am Lady Pentandra, Court Wizard to Duke Anguin of Alshar.”
The old woman looked her up and down. “I expected you to be taller,” she grunted. “Come on in, Alurra is out gathering roots, but will be back anon. The kettle is already on.”
Pentandra was surprised by both the coziness of the croft and its spaciousness. Antimei had long ago covered a shallow depression between boulders and mountain with beams, overlaid by a natural-looking turf roof that, from as little as twenty feet away, was indistinguishable from the rest of the mountain. Only the small door and the lightly-trodden path to the place gave any indication that there was a home there.
Court Wizard: Book Eight Of The Spellmonger Series Page 88