by Kim Wedlock
He had no time to change that; there was too much to do and he had too many responsibilities. Until he had the power to handle them all at once, day dreaming would do little good. He could only do so much.
Only do so much...
A knock came at the door, startling him out of his contemplation and ripping a sharp snarl from his throat. "What?" He snapped, and in stepped an unaffected, plain-faced portian, ready to receive new orders.
He grunted and dropped back behind his desk. For now, he had little choice but to maintain his trust in his subordinates. They were far from incapable, after all, portians above all others.
But there had to be something more he could do...
...Was there really anything keeping him locked in that place?
The answer struck him as he rifled through his paperwork in search of the intel this operative would need for a fully informed mission.
Intel. He couldn't risk being away from the office, away from Arana House, if something vital came in - the location of Doana's strike forces, perhaps even a breakthrough on their motive, or immediate movements of the Order.
Or Karth's notes...
His eyes slighted in thought as ease set in towards his entrapment, and after a swift briefing, allowed his gaze to wander back out of the window as the portian left on silent feet, ignoring the pain that hammered at the sides of his head yet again.
Chapter 43
Over recent days, the pattern of light thump-grunt-scuff had become almost as constant as the sky. It replayed itself every few minutes and was faithfully echoed four times, along with the occasional embellishment which couldn't be repeated in good company. But participation in the enforced ritual was half-hearted. Their feet stumbled and struggled across the hostile ground, over which no step was certain for the rocks and buried scrub which harboured the threat of twisted ankles - a threat that remained even as they doubled back, retracing their very particular steps in the face of sudden and impassable outcrops.
Yet not one of them entertained the desire to trade the treacherous ground for the soft, fluid and ever-shifting surface of the desert.
Eyila had altered their route four days ago after spotting what she claimed were signs of kentauri movement - 'ithili', she'd said, and failed to elaborate - and though it looked to the others as nothing more than oryx tracks, while they remained in that barren land, so too were they at the mercy of her expertise. So they'd followed her onto the dusty, rocky escarpment and its far less direct trade route, while the solid terrain grasped every opportunity to trip them up. But though the going was a fresh kind of difficult, the path trailed close to the mountains whose cooler air returned to their days a more familiar structure, and provided landmarks enough to assure them they were actually making progress.
Not that Anthis or Rathen paid them much heed. While the others slogged along, casting wary looks over their shoulders for figures slinking along the horizon, the two experts desperately redirected their attention.
The historian had become unbearably hostile since leaving the elven ruin. He turned within himself every chance he got, perhaps to spare the others or perhaps to spare himself, but though he was surrounded by an air of animosity even then, it seemed to diminish a little when his nose was buried in his books. Lately - mercifully - it had been nowhere but, and, just as in the dunes, he still managed to stumble over hidden rocks only as frequently as the rest, even while paying a fraction of the attention.
As for Rathen, he absorbed himself in the historian's promised translations, and when his fatigued mind began to wander, he could manage only a mournful smile as Aria enthusiastically presented her innumerable questions about the desert horsemen they sought to avoid. He hadn't yet summoned the courage to share with her a certain recent decision, and he found himself foolishly hoping that, if he didn't give the matter voice, it would eventually just go away and he could keep her beside him. But their arrival at the Ikaheka's village was imminent - late the coming morning, Eyila had said, and in time for the 'Uyu'una' festival or some such - and he felt only increasingly suffocated by procrastination and the desperate, fevered wish for more time against the impending parting.
All of which he kept as tightly behind his lips as he did Aria close to his side.
While the two lost themselves in their distractions, the rest of the company stared with what interest they could muster at the sparse, ruined villages dotted along their path. Built for the nearby running of mountain meltwater and later abandoned as the winds shifted and streams ran dry, they now rose silently from the sand like the petrified reach of a tormented corpse. And yet, despite their eerie, empty presence, they'd spent a reluctant night within one that had loomed out of the darkness just as drowsiness began to set in. Eyila assured them many times that they weren't, in fact, haunted, but few managed to get any sleep.
Though Aria had at least found something to take her mind off of it. She'd noticed Anthis watching Eyila more than usual that night, but unlike the other occasions, this time there had been such a thing as privacy. More times than she could count, she'd found him looking up and across to where Eyila had left the walls to meditate in the sands outside. Every day she seemed of even more interest to him than his work, and Aria felt the point vital enough to raise.
"Daddy," she'd said quietly, sliding up to him as he worked, her eyes lingering contemplatively on the historian, "have you noticed that Anthis isn't acting the same around Eyila as he did around Kienza, or around Petra?" She cocked her head. "He stares at her in the same funny way, without a doubt, but it's...different."
"Oh?" He didn't look up. "In what way?"
"Well, she takes his attention away from what he's doing no matter where she is, but Petra only does it when she's next to him. And he looks like he wants to say lots to her, but actually says almost nothing, which is weird. The only time that changed was in the water ruins and he was looking at the big story wall, but that didn't last..."
He cast her a subtle glance. "What do you make of it?" He looked up a moment later when she didn't reply, and found her smiling sadly. He breathed a laugh and embraced her. "Little one, listen to me: when you like someone, and I mean really like them, make sure you tell them. People can't read minds. ...Actually, on second thoughts, tell me first."
"Why?"
"Because your happiness is the most important thing in the world to me."
She looked up at him and smiled happily, still squeezing his waist. "And you want to know if someone makes me happy?"
"...Sure. That's it."
That evening, however, Eyila, who had been moving across the dusty, jagged rocks with a certain careful urgency for the past half hour, suddenly adjusted their route to avoid the most recent village to emerge from the growing darkness, and worse still ordered Rathen to extinguish his conjured lights.
"Why?" He asked with a dubious waver as the world around them blackened into the moonlit glow of distant, snow-capped peaks.
"Thieta," she replied simply.
"Bandits?" Rathen frowned, surprised. "Out here?"
"This road is just busy enough to sustain them."
Garon immediately dismissed their concern as they moved from the stone to tread back through the sand. "We continue until we find cover." He turned, then, to Anthis. "We reach the tribe tomorrow. Have you uncovered anything useful?"
The young man looked back to him from the derelict village with eyes as hard and cold as ice. Garon didn't react to their darkness. "The artefact against the gods," he began, clearly mindful of his tone which could, apparently, have been even sharper, "is often mentioned close to the Zi'veyn. And it doesn't seem theoretical anymore."
"Anthis, we want the Zi'vey--"
"I am aware of that, thank you. If you'd let me finish, I would've gone on to say that twice I've read that it's hidden 'where the gods will never find it'. Which 'it' that refers to, I don't know, but I'd be willing to bet that they were both kept together. Neither a weapon against elven kind nor against the gods wo
uld be left within easy reach of just anyone, and if something has been hidden where gods can't find it, elves certainly couldn't find it either."
"Will you by chance then go on to say where such a place might be?"
Against possibility, Anthis's glare blackened. "The 'place of magic'," he managed not to spit, "is mentioned again. It seems its existence was known to few, its location to even less, and even those who were so privileged couldn't freely come or go from it."
"A refuge for the very highest status, then?" Petra suggested.
"Or a securely restricted area. Context."
"That's not all that helpful, Anthis."
"I'm trying!"
Garon raised his chin as the historian growled a colourful curse, but though the inquisitor said nothing to it, a musical voice dared to rise from the lead. "You're doing fine, Anthis."
Everyone looked up, surprised, to find Eyila smiling around at him. Heat rushed immediately to his cheeks as a childish discomfort leapt upon his back, and it seemed he'd suddenly lost his tongue. Aria narrowed her eyes in intrigue.
But Eyila didn't seem to notice. She nodded encouragement. "Go on."
"Yes, do go on."
The petulance flooded back into his eyes as they flicked towards the inquisitor. "This," Anthis snapped, though not as sharply, brandishing the notebook he'd been forced to stop reading at the disappearance of the cold, blue-white light, "is the richest cache of information anyone has ever found, and the first substantial mention of this 'place of magic'. It's no coincidence that all of these topics have been grouped together - whoever scattered it all still preserved the information itself; they didn't want it or the artefacts to be lost. It's all connected. The Zi'veyn has to be there."
"But where is 'there'?"
"Is it possible," Rathen mused slowly, ignoring the leaded atmosphere, "that that's where the elves have also gone?"
Anthis looked back at him flatly. "What?"
"Well they all vanished, didn't they? They couldn't have actually been eradicated by Zikhon, so what if that's where they've all gone? Upped and teleported away, leaving no direct mention of the place or event so no one could find them? If that's the case, and we do happen to find it, we could be waltzing uninvited into the home of immensely powerful mages..."
Anthis turned his head away in what appeared to be absolute dismissal.
"That does sound quite outlandish, Rathen," Petra agreed.
"The elves were the definition of 'outlandish'..."
They looked back at the young man's suddenly pondering tone.
"They achieved great things with their magic, after all... They didn't even physically touch anything in the end - except each other - and any handmade goods were created by humans under verbal instruction... In fact, that's how we were able to stand on our own when the elves vanished, because we'd been taught how to do things with our hands that they refused to without magic..."
"But they could do just about anything with magic, couldn't they?" Aria asked carefully, encouraged by the glimpse of Anthis's usual self, "things we can't even with our hands or with magic?"
"Mm...certainly things we'd consider impossible..."
Rathen stifled a hopeless sigh.
"It doesn't sound like this helps us at all," Garon remarked flatly.
"Then you're wrong. What a surprise." His foul air returned just as suddenly, and many shoulders instinctively tensed under its presence as he looked sharply back towards the inquisitor. "The elves were perfectly made for magic, and magic for them. That's why they were so good at it. They didn't have the same limits human mages do."
"I don't see the help."
"It's simple: don't think like a human, think like an elf."
A perplexed silence fell.
"Well in that case this 'place of magic' could be literally anywhere. So why, of all places, would it be Enhala?"
"It isn't," Anthis snarled resentfully, "but the cultural capital could give us more clues - information overlooked by everyone else because they hadn't any idea what to do with it. The ravein'okh was undoubtedly held in high regard by those who knew about it, and the words they've used in its context suggest a cultural wonder, even if most of those who knew of it were never allowed to see it for themselves..." He nodded decisively. "There must be something in Enhala, if it's anywhere - a deep, dark archive somewhere, or a single document. It would be there. It has to be there..."
No one dared to question the thread of hope he clung to for fear it might unravel their own, even as one single concern echoed clearly in each of their minds: what if they uncovered the location but it took elven magic to actually get there? After all, by Anthis's own words, the elves had been capable of things even human mages considered impossible...
Not even Garon was willing to pursue his desperation. Instead, he turned to Rathen. "And you?"
For once, the mage didn't fear the question, though he spoke carefully. "From Anthis's notes, it looks like the spell did touch magic directly; it was more advanced than simply affecting the heart or biochemistry, and with the loose grasp I'm getting over their perception of magic, I'm beginning to get an idea on how they could theoretically have managed it. Unfortunately, any information regarding the spell's actual construction or structure, even ideas or early thoughts, is vague at best. Worse still, the translations aren't complete--"
"Not every one of those damned words can be translated."
"I'm not talking about the spell chains," Rathen snapped, managing to restrain the imaginative insult that still threatened to break through his teeth. "I undoubtedly have a better grasp on those words than you do, anyway. No, what I meant was that there are portions of the text missing - ruined, if even among the papers to begin with. And while what I do have does help, it doesn't go as far as I'd hoped it would."
"What more is it you need?" Garon asked.
"Detail," he sighed, "and if not technical, then the frame of mind of the spell's creator. If I can understand what drove him to create the spell in the first place, I should be able to work out his approach and get a starting point."
Petra frowned. "I thought you weren't trying to copy the spell..."
"I'm not, but at this stage, I'll take every bit of help I can get. By all rights, it's still an impossible task."
"You still sound hopeless - you affected that magic, Rathen," she reminded him, "even if you still can't work out how, you did do it. And you can work this spell out, too."
He smiled uneasily, and fortunately didn't notice Anthis's most recent sarcastic remark.
"But in any case, the Zi'veyn was created as a show of power, right? Then it was to discourage something - an impending attack, since it's been called a 'weapon'. If the elves were so snotty as to refuse to do anything with their own hands, I doubt they'd have been keen to risk getting even just a little bit dirty in a conflict. And, as I understand it, magic was all they had in the end, so the threat of something that could remove their magic and render them helpless would be a pretty good deterrent. And they'd know that, should it be used, they'd be a simple matter to kill, too. One who relies upon a single weapon is defeated long before disarmed."
"There was no trace of any war," Anthis informed her with a restrained tone of frustration, "active or impending. But you're not wrong about them not wanting to get involved in such a messy business. Long post-magic conflicts between elves rarely went beyond passive aggressive comments, and whenever they did, whomever had been responsible for beginning it - on the opposing side, of course - was assassinated."
"By elves?"
"Obviously," he drawled. "And they were rewarded for it. It took great magic to complete such a task unnoticed and even greater magic to defend against it. By becoming an imperial assassin, an individual's skill was acknowledged at the highest level.
"But regardless," he said dismissively, "the Zi'veyn was only sold as a show of power. Someone came up with the idea and offered it to the qu'ulas for one reason or another. Probably as an excuse to make it
without drawing undue attention to himself. I'd imagine it would be difficult to hide that kind of work from people who can sense magic."
"But why would someone want to make such a thing if they weren't at risk of anything?"
"Ulterior motive, perhaps?" Garon suggested. "Maybe he wanted to use it himself and claim dominion over everyone else."
"But why?" Rathen stressed. "That's a villainous plan, certainly, but it's not a drive. Anyone can daydream about something like that, but I need to know what encouraged him to make it a reality where others shrugged it off. Then I can work out from what angle he targeted the magic."
Petra thought for a moment. "The elves were indulgent. We know this. So they probably weren't above spite. Perhaps he suffered a personal loss, or the threat of one - loss of life or maybe something more material like status or wealth. And maybe, in that case, he wanted to maintain his superiority in a more obvious, iconic way. With a power like that, even kings would be at his mercy..."
"If he was making it to use himself," Rathen frowned thoughtfully, "why would he stop there? That kind of person would want to humiliate kings, not just overthrow them... If the spell was created to interact directly with the magic, it's possible that he could have found a way to turn their magic against them, put it to use in their veins rather than just holding it still - heat the blood and relive the sensation of magic's awakening, maybe intensify it and burn them from the inside--"
"Vokaad, save me," Anthis growled quietly from ahead. He raised his voice and called back drily, once again without the honour of even a glance through the darkness. "You realise how much trouble you're having with the spell, don't you? The elves were indulgent, they were whimsical, ergo they wouldn't have put the time or concentration into building a spell like that if they were distracted by spite or delusions of grandeur. Immediate satisfaction, that's all they'd have wanted, and the time and trouble such a spell would have taken was beyond their patience." He shook his head. "It's far more complicated than that."