“I’ve always found it difficult to get my bearings after a tumble like that. Actually, it’s difficult to simply stand up… especially with that ringing in your ears and the world spinning round and round.” She made a little twirling motion with her index finger.
The fake Daena staggered to her feet, swaying and catching herself against the wall. She careened from one wall to the next, bracing against the vertical surfaces like a sodden drunk.
“She has a strong will,” Euriel remarked.
“If she is an agent of some kind, isn’t there some concern she might kill herself?” Ziedra asked.
“Kalindinai is closing in,” Bannor reported. “I can feel her.”
“Then we simply need to keep her focused on other concerns,” Vanidaar rumbled. He made a twisting motion with his outstretched hand, clenching his fingers into a fist.
The staggering woman stumbled to stop and clutched her chest. Bannor couldn’t hear it, but he could see and sense her gasps for breath. As she twisted in the window of the mirror her eyes were wide with fear.
It was one thing to steel yourself against a suicide of your own doing, and another to have death take you unexpectedly. The woman threw off the robe, tearing at the fabric of her blouse and whatever she must have felt was burrowing in her chest. There was no sound, but her expression and the perspiration pouring down her face indicated the pain she must be in.
“Father…” Wren said. “Are you…”
The mage stayed focused. “Daughter, it is painful. Leave us not forget this is a murderer—a person here with the intent to kill any who gets in her way.”
“Aie.” Corim mumbled from the back. “Remind me never to make enemies amongst you.”
A sudden flash lit up the view, a bright nimbus of light knocking the woman down, streamers of sparks whirling around her twitching arms and legs. A moment later, a swarm of bodies blotted out the view.
“There’s Kalindinai,” Bannor said.
Euriel let out a breath and shook a fist in triumph. “Objective achieved. Good job, Bannor!” She clapped him on the shoulder.
Vanidaar relaxed whatever magic he had been performing and the mirror became a simple reflection in silvered glass again. “Well done everyone.” He glanced back to Ryelle. “I hope we are redeemed in your eyes, Istar’Arminwen.”
The first princess drew herself up and nodded. “It was satisfactory. Do not call this a success yet. Mother may still sense our hand in this and call us to task.”
“There will be many questions to answer,” Sarai mused. “How did she get in the citadel? How long has she been masquerading as Daena? Who else has she impersonated? She obviously had exceptional knowledge of Kul’Amaron.”
“Leave that all to Mother,” Janai said. “I’m just glad she’s caught.”
“It’s not over,” Daena growled. “What if she had accomplices?”
“Be calm,” Senalloy said. “Queen Kalindinai seems quite thorough, I’m certain all the right questions will be asked.”
“It’s easy for you to be calm—” Daena snapped back. “You weren’t the target!”
“I don’t know,” Bannor said. “Didn’t you say it was getting boring around here?”
The auburn-haired savant glared at him. “I didn’t mean like this.”
Ziedra still floating in the air above the group sighed. “What intrigues me most are the possible motives. Why Daena? She’s relatively new, correct?”
“Not much over six score-days,” Janai answered. “Prodigals are favored but there is no engendered nobility, no line of succession. I doubt there’s any political motivation, at least from here in Malan anyway.”
“Perhaps because she’s close to Bannor?” Wren said glancing at him. “He’s about to become Prince Conjugal.”
The blonde savant’s mention of his name made a sharp prick of unease go through him. Could it really have been some elaborate contrivance to get at him? Then there was the strange happening with Sarai’s uncle—the one who hated humans. Perhaps the marriage plans had upset the nobility more than anyone imagined.
Sarai stepped over and rubbed his arm. “I’m sure Bannor’s lack of family ties and the absence of information regarding his past have probably made a few houses desperate for some kind of leverage,” She reached up and touched his face, glowing violet eyes finding his. “But to go this far?”
“It is all speculation,” Ryelle said. “I for one would prefer to entertain more productive discourse. Mother will inform us of her findings in due time, and we can pursue matters when there is sufficient information,” she looked around with stern amber eyes. “And officially sanctioned leave to investigate.”
Senalloy folded her arms. “I am curious, Istar’Arminwen, what would be a productive discourse?”
Ryelle raised an eyebrow. “Why afternoon repast of course. We have been standing around staring at a piece of glass for bells.”
“I can’t find fault with that,” Euriel said. “All that magic has made me hungry.”
The two Draconians who had been silent throughout the proceeding made rumbling sounds deep in their throats, fang-toothed grins spreading across their shiny green faces.
Sarai nodded and called to the servants to begin fetching a meal for everyone.
Bannor turned his attention from Tymoril and Kegari to the sitting circle where he noticed the Kriar lady Dulcere had sat down. The gold-skinned woman had the fingers of both hands pressed together, her tight expression with its furrowed brow and narrowed eyes reflected great discomfort.
He squeezed Sarai’s shoulder and stepped toward the ancient creature. “What troubles you now, Lady Dulcere?”
The Kriar looked up obviously surprised to be caught in whatever emotion she was experiencing. She pressed her lips together.
He turned his head. “The magic?”
She nodded.
Bannor rubbed the back of his neck, not really understanding. “It can’t be you don’t believe in magic. I mean it’s happening all around you.” He glanced up to the hovering Ziedra.
The Kriar frowned.
Now, Bannor was totally confused. “Better than what?”
Dulcere pulled an elongated black box off her belt and held it up.
Bannor raised an eyebrow. “But not you?”
The gold woman pursed her lips and shook her head.
Behind him, Bannor heard Senalloy chuckle. “You mean you’ve come to respect it?”
Dulcere frowned.
“Indeed,” Senalloy responded. “If the Kriar of Karanganoi Homeworld had respected magic more, they wouldn’t have fallen to the Baronians. If the Baronians had respected Kriar determination and ingenuity more they wouldn’t still be fighting with them five millennia later.”
“Well,” Ziedra said hovering over them. “As someone who is magic, I can say that there is no clear better between the two. Magic is stronger on the individual level, but artifices can work on such vast scopes…” She shook her head. “What we saw at the way-point was…impressive.”
“This way-point,” Sarai chimed in. “Bannor alluded to your trip there but was a bit vague about the details.”
“I too am curious,” Ryelle added. “This place my sister and her ward disappeared to yesterday.”
“Do you want to see?” Ziedra asked. “I can show you.”
“Indeed,” Euriel added. “I would like that. My daughter has spared precious little in the way of details concerning her little excursion.”
Ziedra turned in the air and glanced at Wren. The blonde savant shrugged. The dark-haired savant settled to the floor, moved to one of the couches in the sitting circle and seemed to compose herself. She closed her eyes. “I think the place where we entered was perhaps the most impressive.” She reached to a long silver chain around her neck and pulled out a ring festooned with black jewels and slid it onto her finger. She bowed her head and brought the jeweled object to her temple. “Don’t be startled, the image will be large and directly in the center of the circle.”
Bannor wasn’t quite certain what to expect, but he did see threads of reality begin to spin and dip around Ziedra. At the same time, threads began to whirl around a spot about a pace off the floor in the center of the conference circle. It started as a sparking black dot then rapidly grew into a translucent sphere more than two paces across. Though warned, it still made him lurch back a step. The contents of the sphere were foggy for a few moments then resolved into clarity. At the same time he heard a strange hum and detected the faintly metallic smell that he remembered from the way-point. He noticed that he along with the others were pictured standing in the same place on the platform. The view was not from Ziedra’s eyes but from a point somewhere above. Somehow, this was not a memory… but something else…
“Oooh,” Sarai made a sound next to him, as the view resolved into crystal clarity revealing the giant chasm that had greeted them upon their arrival at the way-point.
“This is the first thing we saw at the way-point,” Ziedra narrated. “My husband tells me he has seen far grander vistas on Kriar Homeworld. Not having been there I found this to be enough of a shock.”
“It’s gigantic,” Euriel breathed.
“It seems big from above. From the bottom, it looks even bigger,” Wren remarked.
“What are those constructs?” Vanidaar asked. “They are not buildings.”
“Void-ships,” Senalloy informed with a nod.
“The entire citadel is barely the size of one of those things,” Ryelle gasped. “Truly, a thing so large can be made to move?”
“Not only move, but carry people between stars,” Corim said. “I never imagined such things could exist until I picked up a Shaladen.”
As they spoke, Bannor heard his own words and that of the others repeated in the same faint echoes off metal walls. Ziedra’s vision was like peering back in time to witness and sense things exactly as they happened.
Those that had not gone on the trip to the way-point watched with rapt fascination as Ziedra’s globe played out the investigation moment to moment as it happened; every word said, every motion and tick. For some strange reason, he found watching himself fascinating. Remembering his thoughts, what he had seen through the Garmtur at those moments. Events played out, periods of long examination without anything new to add, Ziedra skipped over, reopening the view slightly later in their adventure. Eyes widened and the viewers flinched as the squabble with Quasar was shown.
Then the part that Bannor was hoping she wouldn’t show. The capture of the Baronian spies. As the vicious encounter with the Baronians increased in pitch and fury, Bannor felt Sarai’s fingernails pressing into his flesh. “My One,” she hissed in his ear. “You never mentioned…”
Bannor turned and kissed her. Sarai returned the kiss with narrowed glowing eyes that seemed ready to shoot sparks.
“I’m okay. See?” He waved his fingers.
She poked him in the stomach. “It’s not funny.” She growled in low whisper. “You’re a father now—and soon to be my husband—behave.”
He put a hand to his chest and gave her his best “wounded” and “bewildered” expression. “It was a normal investigation… that wasn’t supposed to happen.”
She gritted her teeth. “It wasn’t normal. That place wasn’t normal. Nothing you do is ever normal.”
“It’s not my fault,” he demurred.
“Right,” she snorted. “Neither was a god exploding on that battlefield, or the dragons falling in love, or any of the other things that just accidentally happen to you.”
He rubbed the back of his head, not really having an answer to that. His whole life since that fateful day in Blackwater had been one calamity after the next, most of them unexplained or unintentional twists of fate and magic.
Bannor noticed that Sarai wasn’t the only person agitated by the fierce battle. Wren’s parents were frowning at the blonde savant who could only shrug in response.
“Hey,” Ziedra said. “Don’t blame them. We’re all savants. Crazy stuff happens around us. It doesn’t matter where we are or what we do—if you wait long enough something bizarre will happen whether you want it to or not.”
“It seems to get worse when you’re all together,” Euriel said, voice crackling with a hint of irritation. She glanced over at Ziedra. “I thought I could trust you to keep Wren out of trouble.”
Ziedra’s mouth dropped open and her hands dropped to her side. “Aie. Wren has been hiding from me. It was the first I’d seen her in moons.”
The blonde immortal folded her arms. “Is that supposed to pass for some kind of excuse?”
“Excuse? I’m not Wren’s keeper. You know that.”
Euriel raised an eyebrow.
A pained expression clouded the face of Ziedra’s husband Radian, he leaned away with a wince.
Ziedra’s face flushed scarlet and so did Wren’s.
Ever the diplomat, Ryelle dipped in pushing an errant tuft of pale hair off her forehead. “Euriel, I am certain this was really an unintended happenstance. Unlike the others, I do not think Lady Dulcere is prone to the kind of accidents our kin are. She no doubt made assurances that it was safe.”
Euriel glanced at Dulcere. The Kriar looked pained as well.
“What about this Quasar woman?” Vanidaar asked. “Will she be a problem?”
“If she can be,” Bannor said. “She has a great deal of emotional investment tied up in this.”
Sarai frowned at him. “And how do you know that?”
Daena laughed. “Same way he does everything else. He just looked at her with that weird nola of his and knew.”
“It’s not weird,” he responded. “The Baronians and this Genemar they are after will be a concern for everyone sooner—” He noticed the direct stare Sarai was focusing on him. “Or later.”
“Much later if I have anything to say about it,” she growled. “We have had enough trouble for ten lifetimes—elven lifetimes. I can’t believe you’d want to get mixed up in something else!”
“I don’t want to be mixed up,” he responded. “I just am.” He paused and rubbed the back of his head. “That didn’t come out right.”
“Worked perfectly for me,” Wren laughed.
Sarai glanced at Dulcere and stared at Bannor.
He frowned. “Star, it’s not like I’m helpless—tracking is something I’ve always been good at.”
“Well, we’ve already had enough excitement. If you hadn’t noticed we have things happening here.”
“What if they’re related?”
“These Baronians?” Sarai scoffed. “Related to what?”
He drew a breath. He turned his gaze to Janai and then Daena. “To what happened with Kell, to this genemar which I was told is ‘creation run amok’.”
Sarai put hands on hips. “You lost me, Bannor. How do those things tie together?”
“I’m not sure,” he answered. “I have a strong feeling that this genemar thing the Baronians are after has something to do with savants.”
“What?” Wren chimed in. “When did you c
ome up with that?”
“Well,” he dipped his head. “It’s a kind of instinct—a feeling—it’s just the words—creation, annihilation, perpetuity—you know me, I’m not jumpy. This thing—this sense of something terrible ready to happen just makes me queasy. The vision that accompanies them—it’s not like something that just affects our family—it’s like—” He paused, knowing he was rambling in fragments. “It’s like the whole cosmos will be affected.” He shook his head. “The last time I sensed it, it damn near turned me inside out.”
“You’re scaring me,” Wren said. “Is this the same thing you were talking about before, the thing about life forces?”
He nodded.
“Say this really is a threat, Bannor?” Sarai demanded. “What do you want to do? Do you want to turn our lives upside down again? You have an obligation here. I’d be a fool to deny your instincts are potent, but you can’t drop everything to pursue this ‘feeling’ without something a bit more substantial.”
Bannor captured her hands in his. “I don’t want anything to interfere with our lives—not again. I have to be realistic though, we can’t live our lives if we have no world to live on.”
“You’re being melodramatic.”
He shook his head. “This thing the Baronians and others are after is big. I think it is the power of creation itself—the power that made eternity.”
“Bannor, Gaea made Eternity,” Wren said.
“No,” Corim corrected. “Gaea made the living things that reside in Eternity. That’s a very different thing.”
Wren frowned at the warrior.
“Your own words, Bannor,” Euriel said. “Creation, annihilation, perpetuity—a riddle?”
“A cycle,” Vanidaar said. “Alpha and omega, what’s between is perpetuity.”
“What made the cosmos?” Bannor asked.
They looked at him with incredulous expressions. “It wasn’t made—it just is… or always has been.”
“What if something made it?”
“Don’t you mean someone?”
Reality's Plaything 3: Eternal's Agenda Page 29