"They don't feel it," said the gardening mage. "Just shells, like those you find on a beach. Does it really matter to those who've returned to Lady Moon, what happens to the husk?"
"I'd object to every degree if my 'husk' were not at least in one piece when carried before my grieving parents." He paused, considering the gravity of the occasion. "And decked out in something well-cut in black. With a few of the more presentable of my lovers wailing in the background, and maybe a single great bell tolling in the distance."
Her face went blank at this and she blinked those big eyes, then said: "And perhaps a five-year child of extraordinary beauty following along behind, clutching some particular keepsake of yours against his chest."
Aspen was taken by this idea. "A sword would be perfect; one almost too large for him to hold." The Diamond had a sword with him, and Aspen was longing to see him in action. "I'll have to take it up."
There was a slight noise behind and below them, and they turned in time to see the Saxan guardsman moving away, back stiff. Aspen pulled a face.
"I gather he's in command of the Saxan security escort," the gardening mage said. "His life forfeit if his charges aren't delivered home safely."
"We have a kingdom at stake."
"Do you really think the West will invade?"
"Not really," Aspen admitted. "Not invade. Everyone's convinced The Deeping would take Darest back if it were overrun by another land. And of course Sax couldn't stand Cya gaining territory and vice versa; repeat in endless variation substituting Korm, Ceria and Jutland. But with the Treasury scraped clean and the bare minimum complement for the garrisons, we're ripe pickings for punitive raids.
"There's a time factor as well. With the return of The Deeping's oh-so-reluctant support, it's only going to be a matter of years before we're far less vulnerable. Half the world seems to be on its way to the Spring Festival, and there's opportunity oozing from every doorstep, giving folk reason to stay. I'd bet my best robe that this unlikely little boating party involved more than a bit of half-spoken probing to see what everyone thought about forgetting regional tensions in favour of an all-out sacking of Darest. You notice it's only the heirs? To make it a little less official and obvious. Though, Sun knows, it's an odd gathering, whatever the cause."
"Odd how? I know Sax and Cya will never exactly be friendly – they'll never agree over their borders – but it's been, what?, almost twenty years since they were officially at odds."
"Yes, but Kestia and Jurasel? For that matter, Jurasel and Chenar? With Aloren?"
"What do you mean?"
From the look on her face, Aspen suspected that most of these names meant nothing to the woman. Totally out of touch. Well he always enjoyed playing tutor.
"For a start both Sax and Cya are courting Ceria: pushing for alliances political and personal, particularly in the person of Crown Princess Aloren. She's apparently very good to look at, but completely indolent, and more interested in the latest offering of the playhouses than the running of her country. Naturally this makes her irresistible to Sax and Cya both. They're as anxious to stop each other as to win points themselves, and with Sax hosting this little get-together, Cya's Jurasel is the last person I'd expect on the invitation list."
"Perhaps he gate-crashed?"
"Now that's an idea." Aspen barely resisted patting her approvingly on the head. "That would explain Kestia. You know Cya's laws of succession mean Queen Rithana can declare any of her immediate kin her heir? Well she does. Often. Kestia's the eldest of three daughters and two sons and from all accounts the Queen doesn't really like her, and uses her as a fall-back position to bring the others to heel. They jump through hoops to please her – except for Kestia, who just gets on with whatever she thinks wants doing, never mind buttering up Mama. She handles a lot of business, whether she's in favour or not, and probably would be the one sent to make nice with ambassadors and eye off Darest. Jurasel's the current heir and nothing would solidify his position like winning Aloren. I wonder who was less pleased to see him there – Kestia or Chenar? The entire balance of the West might shift if Aloren could be won."
Gentian looked down at the swirl of flesh and flotsam. "It mightn't be an issue any more."
On that doubtful note, she began picking her way back around the rim of the Cauldron, catching up with the Saxan. Aspen trailed them, trying to gauge the progress of the divinations still underway, eyeing the small clusters of mages. It was no company of friends. Had the heirs been plotting an invasion, all together on Darest's border?
The Diamond was talking to the Cyan and the Atlaran, but turned to Gentian as she came up. "You've not attempted divination, Magister?" he asked, with only a whisper of silk. Aristide Couerveur might consider mages who made their living outside Darest something akin to traitors, but he wasn't unwilling to use them while they were on hand.
"No point," was the reply. "It's all been...rubbed over somehow. There's precious little trace of casting here. Nothing not left deliberately."
"There is a trail leading across the pool," said the Atlaran, her Sumican of markedly Cyan dialect, but still understandable. She pointed toward the central rock with the iron-bound staff she was holding. "The faintest of things, but there. You do not consider it a footprint?"
"Oh no." The gardening mage was blithely confident. "It's a lure. It wants us to go over to that big rock and touch it."
"As the barge did." The Atlaran took this revelation without surprise. "And share its fate? Or those of our missing charges?"
"It may well be the only way to learn it," murmured the Cyan.
The Saxan guardsman looked with a gathering frown at Aristide. "It may be precisely what the kidnapper wants us to do."
Aspen particularly enjoyed the Diamond's habit of listening without comment until a group actually turned to him and waited for him to say something. It was a marvellous device, investing whatever he eventually did say with added authority.
When the pause became tangible, the Diamond Couerveur inclined his head the tiniest of fractions, every inch the King he'd never be.
"We will experiment."
ooOoo
After a discussion equal parts caution and a surging desire to crash ahead, it was decided that the search party would split into two: one group to probe this lure directly, the other observing from a short distance. A pause followed, while reports were made and orders given. The Diamond moved out of earshot and sigil-called King Aluster.
Aspen plotted. He was fully aware that he'd given the Diamond Couerveur cause to think him more interested in gossip than service to the kingdom. Perfectly true, of course, but no reason why he shouldn't start being all hard-working and serious now. At least long enough to slip beneath the man's guard. The little gardening mage had already made the assumption that Aspen was the Diamond's apprentice. Maybe, by being helpful at the right moments, he could turn this almost-'prenticeship into a formal arrangement.
He just had to find something useful to do.
The Diamond's relentless self-sufficiency was one of the reasons the man was so deliciously compelling. The ultimate in untouchables. But it did leave a body scratching for a suitable service. Aspen was doubtfully eyeing the neat pile they'd made of their belongings when what should the man do but walk up and layer himself in his bags?
When the gardening mage followed suit, Aspen hastily grabbed up his own collection. If the Diamond thought this lure might whisk them off somewhere, Aspen would be prepared for the event. But could they really expect to be conveniently taken after the missing heirs? Wasn't it more likely that touching that rock would trigger a trap and provide the Cauldron with a few true-mage deaths?
With this consideration in mind, Aspen began casting one of the most reliable of the word-magic shields. His reward was a brief blue-white glance, and the faintest nod of approval. Aspen gloated. One small step taken – and surely not too early to plan the first seduction scene?
Visions of a naked Diamond were a little too distrac
ting, and Aspen had to start his spell again, then hastily re-established his flight spell, aware that most everyone else had finished and a final round of discussion was underway. He'd barely let the last word escape his mouth when they all began launching out over the Cauldron.
Nothing would be worse than to have the Diamond vanish, leaving Aspen behind with this unhappy crowd. He made haste to get himself right up the front of the investigators, floating to within a foot of the scratches left by the impact of the barge, trying to feel what Gentian claimed was there, while ignoring the scars of death. But the so-mysterious rock was dumb, revealing no lure, no trap, no whisper of intent.
Because he would not let his gaze stray to the horrid soup below, Aspen glanced around at the little crowd that had followed the Diamond's lead. The gardening mage was looking, of a sudden, decidedly unenthusiastic. Beside her the Atlaran guardswoman frowned at the heavy staff she carried, concentrating on some divination. A pretty redhead was the Cerian contribution, with Her Bluntness watching from a safe distance. The self-effacing Cyan mage had tidied himself well to the back of the group, closer to the outfall than the rock. And the stolid Easterner made up the last of the experiment, hand gripping the hilt of his sword as if that could make some fraction of difference.
The observers were gathered on the far rim, scattered in pairs and trios. Aspen was quite unable to resist lifting a hand to wave, but never finished the gesture as the charming vista of searchers framed against a cloud-specked sky was blotted out by a sudden obtrusion of wall.
He started, hearing one of the others gasp as they all stared about at the pearly-white corridor that had replaced the mountain and tainted falls. Aristide, Gentian, the Saxan and the Atlaran were with him, but not the Cyan or Cerian. Aspen had felt no arcane surge to warn of or explain the transition, but discovered instead a lingering feeling of absence. Not at all what his training and senses had taught him to expect at such a profligate display of power.
"Well that was a little lacking in drama," he said.
Then his flight spell cut out and the weird sense of absence began to translate into realisation of a thing which was distinctly and monstrously wrong.
"Sun's teeth!" the Easterner gasped, as he also dropped to the floor, stumbling. The others, after the briefest of hesitations, landed just before the castings keeping them aloft imploded into nothing. Their shields went a moment later. Because there was nothing for them to feed on.
Because, wherever they'd been brought, there was no magic.
The Easterner clutched his sword uselessly, white to the lips, and the Atlaran woman said something in the language of her Empire. Unfazed, the Diamond turned his head, surveying the gently curving passage. It narrowed sharply at the ceiling, forming a smooth and unnatural triangle that glowed with milky light.
Then the little gardening mage took a step forward, looked at the Diamond's hand held loosely at his side, and asked: "How long?"
It was possible for blood to congeal in living veins. Aspen stood with his chest fusing solid, staring at Darest's precious Diamond Couerveur as he lifted his right hand and looked down at the swirling twists and spirals of a death sentence.
Enchantments ran out. It was one of the first lessons taught a mage. Free magic was everywhere in the world, there for you to shape directly with your will, or with words, or runes. To last, that casting had to be fed.
You could set it so it endured as long as you directly stoked it with power: that was how flight spells usually worked, limited only by exhaustion. But with most enchantments, those on objects or on other people, it was far more practical to stockpile power at the time of casting, so the enchantment would last until the stockpile ran out. Those castings were ones of long preparation and effort, ones you had to return to and refurbish, or simply let lapse.
For the grand, important spells, the vital ones which had to last indefinitely whether you had time to tend them or not, you created a stockpile with a feeding mechanism. The Rathen Rose, late, unlamented protection for Darest's border, had drawn on every man, woman and child of the Rathen bloodline. It had stockpiled their power drop by drop, tapping living Rathens until at its height it had been a defence beyond compare.
The saecstra with which Aristide Couerveur had proven his loyalty to the new Rathen King worked the same way. It periodically added to a stockpile of magic devoted to sustaining it, using Aristide's true-mage ability to draw power. A very necessary thing, for a saecstra was above all things permanent. The enchantment would kill him if he tried to unmake it.
In this place where free magic inexplicably was not, it would soon find itself starving.
"A day or two?" Those incomparable eyes glittered, and he curled his fingers, then opened them again. "You will know as soon as I."
The reaction was pure Aristide, and Aspen tried to draw confidence from it. If anyone could find an escape from this trap, it would be the Diamond. He had to: Darest would not be the same without Aristide Couerveur, and besides, it was surely against The Rules for anyone that delicious to die before Aspen tumbled him. Worse, Aspen simply couldn't face the thought of telling Soren and her King how inadequate his protection had been.
They all stood there looking at the finely-made fingers which shaded a knot of intertwined lines. Aspen was relieved when, after a measuring survey of Aristide, the Atlaran woman reached out to touch the nearest slab of white.
"These walls must have access to power. Perhaps they draw it all into themselves. I have heard it was possible to create a void such as this, though I never imagined one on such a scale. If we break the walls, we should no longer be blocked."
"We just need a battering ram and a few dozen strong shoulders." Aspen could see nothing but wall in either direction. The far distance was hidden by the gradual curve, but he was fairly certain that the corridor was going to go on for absolutely ever and that there would be no battering rams. Just a long long walk, with every step taking them closer to the unthinkable. Wholly pointless guilt clutched at his stomach, and he had to turn so he could no longer see that figure in black.
"Perhaps we should follow this?"
The Easterner, stolidly indifferent to impending disaster, pointed to a few strips of cloth practically under Aspen's feet. They were roughly formed into an arrow.
"Ah!" Shifting instantly from repose to action, the Atlaran woman stooped and lifted one fragment of light yellow. "Those who were lost must have left this marker. It is well." She nodded in evident satisfaction, and replaced the strip of cloth, tidying the arrow into cleaner lines as she did so. "We will go after them."
"Shortly." The Diamond was gazing down the corridor, but turned and made a formal gesture of greeting to the Atlaran. "Introductions are in order first."
"Of course." The Atlaran woman's full lips curved with just a suggestion of quizzical amusement as she looked down at the Diamond's slender figure. "I am Rua Ketu, Second Se of the Hapt of Dest. Hapt lo Dest and First Se Manetat were with the Ambassador at the time of the taking, and I assumed command of the Hapt in their absence."
The Easterner let go his sword and executed one of the clipped little bows popular in the lands beyond the sprawl of The Deeping. He looked six days short of sleep, scruffy, uninviting and exhausted. More guard dog than mage, he must barely have had the strength to make the flight to the Cauldron.
"Leton Djol, Captain in the Saxan Royal Bodyguard. I would appreciate knowing your opinion of our situation. Is this a place suspected to be in the Skorese Mountains? Are we even in Darest?"
"Yes."
Both the Diamond and the gardening mage had answered, and they glanced at each other. With his particular, pointed courtesy the Diamond inclined his head to her before looking back at the Easterner.
"This is Magister Gentian Calder. And Maistrice Aspen Choraide. We have not left Darest, though this place is not known to me even by rumour. As to our situation: we will find that answer the sooner we look for it." This last contained an edge of reproof, for the Diamon
d was not overfond of flinging about guesses.
"Then shall we start?" the Atlaran woman suggested easily. "Leave the arrow for any who come after us." She nodded at Gentian, adding: "I have seen the valley you created for the Ambassador, Magister Calder. It is a fell place."
Aspen, glancing at the gardening mage, discovered her eyes wide and disconcerted.
"Do you mean to say that the Arachol has made Aurak Bes one of his ambassadors?" she asked. "I would never have believed it."
"The Aurak expressed a desire to see the North."
"He could have had better timing." The little gardening mage threw a glance at Aristide, frowning. "You comprehend that situation, I presume? What the Arachol will do?"
The Diamond responded with the smallest of nods, looking surprisingly austere. Aspen stared from one to the other in confusion. "What will the Arachol do?" he asked.
"Retrieve him." It was Rua Ketu who answered, relaxed but grave. "The Aurak is ajudica, and revered among our people. To the Arachol he is both guide and mentor. There is no cost to weigh against his recovery."
For once Aspen could find nothing to say. The others started off, and he followed, mind busy with an image of an army of Atlarans pulling the Skorese down stone by stone.
ooOoo
After what seemed an eternity of walking and was probably at least an hour, Aspen decided everyone had had enough time to dwell on less than palatable thoughts. True, they were trapped in some unknown part of Darest, denied the resources of magic and racing time to prevent the Diamond Couerveur's death and an invasion by either the West or the entire Atlaran Empire. That was no reason to march along as if they'd taken a vow of silence.
"So why didn't the other two come with us?" he asked, glancing around.
"Perhaps they were not close enough?" Rua Ketu answered. Aspen was liking her. She was a comfortable, genial creature, stretched tall as most Atlarans were, but attractively muscular. Her hair was twisted into tufty little knots and her skin was on the darker end of the range of black. It was a pity she'd learned her Sumican from a Cyan, but Aspen would forgive her the accent if they happened across somewhere a little more private.
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