by K K Ness
The shifters observed him in solemn contemplation. Danil fought the urge to shift on his cushion.
Hafryn cleared his throat. “Well, I’m glad you’re no longer walking the deadlands, fala. Even if the circumstances aren’t ideal.”
Danil smiled faintly. “Has much happened here? I didn’t expect to sleep so long,” he admitted.
“Little enough, all things considered,” Hafryn said. “Katril’s crows scour the ruins, but there’s plenty of hiding places. Magus Ronan is staying out of sight for now.”
Danil glanced at Elania and Blutark. The enchanters made a show of appearing unconcerned, but Danil noted the lines about their eyes. “Could I farseek Ronan the way I do Magus Brianna?”
Blutark quirked an eyebrow at him, surprised. “In light of your latent abilities, it would be most difficult to attempt it on anyone other than Magus Brianna. The chances of being discovered are high.”
“But you could teach me?” he pressed.
The bear looked curious. “Amasian enchanters can’t perform farseekings, but the inner paths necessary to create enchantments is the same for humans and Amasians. It’s possible to teach you how to quiet your mind.”
Danil sat back in contemplation.
Hafryn frowned. “I know what you’re thinking, Danil, and I don’t like it.”
Blutark didn’t seem so quick to dismiss the idea. “We would benefit from Magus Ronan’s capture, wolf. I for one prefer to hunt than be harried in my own lands.”
Hafryn glowered at his friend.
“I’m with Hafryn on this,” Elania said with a shake of her head. “If Magus Ronan discovers you, Danil, he may trap you within the enchantment. We’ll have no way of freeing you.”
It was a risk he was willing to take if it meant capturing the mage.
Hafryn’s scowl deepened. “Besides, wouldn’t Danil need a personal item of the mage’s to perform the farseeking?” he asked Elania and Blutark.
The snow leopard nodded.
Danil folded his arms. “There’s the talon sheaths that cut up Ronan’s face.”
Elania looked startled. “There is…” she allowed. “Blood holds the most potent magic.”
“No.”
Danil scowled at Hafryn.
“We’ve underestimated the magi enough,” Hafryn said. “It’s only by chance we have a modicum of safety now.”
“But we still don’t know what they’re are up to,” Danil argued. “If there’s a chance to find out, we should take it.”
Hafryn opened his mouth to argue.
“His thinking is sound, Hafryn, as is his courage,” Blutark said. “You wouldn’t attempt to sway an Amasian from such a gamble,” he added, chiding gently.
The wolf swore under his breath. He glanced guiltily at Danil. “I don’t doubt your courage or resolve, fala. But whatever their plan, the magi need you, too. Putting you at risk seems unwise.”
Danil opened his mouth to protest.
“But—” Hafryn raised his hand. “So, too, is sitting around with our thumbs up our asses.” He glanced at Blutark. “If you think it’s doable, then we should try.”
“Elania and I will draw up protective wards,” Blutark promised.
Hafryn didn’t look particularly happy, but he nodded his approval.
“Very well,” Elania said, setting aside her plate. “Let’s get started.”
Blutark scratched out a clear space in the dirt beneath the elkhorn and motioned for Danil to stand in the center. “This is how we teach our younglings,” he said.
Danil watched with trepidation as Elania inscribed a set of lines in a circle about him. Blutark joined her, scrawling more symbols into the ground. A faint hum filled the air, and then a single, large glyph made of spikes and whorls came into being. It slowly rotated in front of Danil.
Hafryn watched silently, arms folded and green eyes hooded.
Blutark settled before him.
“What do I do?” Danil asked.
“Concentrate on the glyph,” Blutark commanded.
It wasn’t as much guidance as he’d hoped. The glyph glowed with flecks of yellow and silver. Danil followed one fleck with his eyes. It drifted like a leaf travelling along the surface of a stream, ducking and weaving in a current. The fleck brightened. For a moment, Danil heard a remote sound that reminded him of wind rushing through deadland tunnels.
Then it was gone. The fleck fizzled out.
Danil blinked.
Elania tilted her head. “Something happened.”
Danil shrugged helplessly, feeling a little foolish. “I don’t think so.” An obscure sound wasn’t going to somehow lead him to farseeking Magus Ronan.
“Again, Danil,” Blutark ordered.
With a slow breath, he picked out another fleck of slivery-yellow light. This one wheeled between the curves and sharp edges of the glyph itself. Its lazy path brought only quiet. He watched, scarcely daring to blink, until his eyes burned. It faded like the first, and so Danil picked out a new fleck.
An interminable amount of time passed as he chased flecks with his eyes.
Eventually, the glyph itself lost form and dissolved.
Danil slowly returned to himself. He startled to see the sky tinged with pink, the first evening stars already brightening. Hafryn sat with Blutark outside the circle, the wolf with his sword and whetstone. He sharpened the blade with practiced efficiency under the glow of a magelight.
“Any luck?” the wolf asked.
Danil mutely shook his head.
“Few succeed when first learning to ride the glyphs,” Blutark said. He waved his hand and the circle broke apart in a small puff of dust. “We’ll try again soon. But you must learn to quieten your mind.”
Danil nodded, disappointment a knot in this throat.
16
The following morning, Hafryn judged it safe for Danil to leave the hanging gardens for a time. New shifters had arrived at dawn, with Danil waking to the animal sounds of snarls, roars and ear-piercing shrieks. Blutark had gone out to join them, his bear Trueform unleashing a roar that made Danil’s skin pebble.
“War cries,” Hafryn said, green eyes dancing. “To let our enemies know we are coming for them.”
Danil imagined it enough to turn a soldier’s bowels to liquid. The cacophony swelled about them, echoing off the walls of the hanging gardens.
After the morning meal, they headed out to the courtyard. Elania proposed they try an alternative setting than the hanging gardens for Danil’s training, wondering if perhaps the strange herbs and succulents affected his ability to focus on the glyph.
A cool breeze sent leaves and detritus skipping across the pale flagstones. Elania marked out a spot in a relatively quiet corner, away from the gathering places and workstations. Curious looks met them, and Danil felt particularly exposed.
“Concentrate, Danil,” Elania said as she brought the training glyph into being.
With a slow breath, Danil settled his attention on the slowly spinning glyph. The flecks appeared more vivid and solid in the daylight.
An unusual level of activity drew him out sometime later. The sun had scarcely moved more than a handspan. Elania extinguished the glyph with a distracted wave, her attention skyward.
A pair of eagles swooped down and transformed into two women. They joined a group of around thirty shifters gathered near the archway leading out into the ruins. A sense of urgency filled the air as another party emerged from an outbuilding, all heavily loaded with weapons.
Danil and Elania hurried across to where Hafryn stood in conversation with the crow commander.
“Has something happened?” Elania asked.
“There’s been sightings of a mage in the old merchant quarter,” Katril said. She handed a missive to a shifter standing behind her. The man shimmered into a sparrow and took flight, the parchment gripped in his clawed feet.
“Is it Magus Ronan?” Danil asked.
Katril shook her head. “A woman, dark hair with a white
streak down the middle.”
“Brianna?” Danil gaped. He turned to Hafryn. “She was still in Farin in my last vision.”
“You’ve missed more than a full day, Danil, what with sleep and training and being hidden from her prying eyes,” the wolf pointed out. “Easy enough for the magus to transport herself into Altonas unnoticed.”
Movement caught Danil’s eye as another figure stepped out of the armory. The young man looked vaguely familiar, with wavy dark hair and a pointed chin. Strangely, he wore a leather jerkin similar to Danil’s, along with matching breeches.
Their eyes met, and the young man politely inclined his head before joining another party of shifters.
Danil started. “He looks like—”
“You?” Katril signaled the party. The young man pulled up the hood of his cloak as the shifters filed out of the courtyard. “It’s a fair approximation. He should prove sufficient to draw the Roldaerians out.”
Hafryn wrinkled his nose. “I prefer your eyes, fala. Such a pretty grey. Like the moon on solstice night.”
Danil bit the inside of his cheek.
“Indeed,” Katril said. She studied them both with a new light.
“When are we heading out as well?” Danil asked.
Hafryn grimaced. “I was hoping you’d opt to stay in the hanging gardens.”
Danil gave him a flat look. “I’m more likely to draw either Magus Brianna or Ronan into a trap than anyone else.”
“Agreed,” Hafryn said, surprising Danil. “There’s nothing I want more than to see that smug bastard Ronan’s face when his schemes all tumble about him, but if things go wrong—” He shook his head. “We still have little inkling as to why they seek you.”
Danil recalled how unfazed Ronan had been in their last fight. Whatever his plan with Magus Brianna, they had long moved past the distraction of losing the journal. The mage had seemed almost smug.
“If we don’t stop them,” Danil said. “I think something terrible will happen. Something worse than war between our kingdoms.”
Katril winged a dark eyebrow, willing to wait out Hafryn’s response.
The wolf scrubbed his face. “Katril, have you a squadron of crows to accompany us?”
“I do.”
Danil looked at him in hope.
“Myself, Elania and Blutark will join Danil on the ground, but I want the crows out of sight and ready the moment we draw either mage out.”
The commander saluted and stepped away.
Elania cleared her throat. “If there’s an opportunity, Blutark and I will continue Danil’s training. I prefer that we capture both mages.”
Hafryn nodded. “The sooner we cleanse Altonas, the better.”
They set out later that afternoon, following the path of a little stream. Hafryn consulted a rolled up scrap of parchment as he led them past spring-fed pools and cascades that wended their way between the remnants of squat buildings and interconnected structures whose former uses were beyond Danil’s ability to imagine. The citadel must have once been home to thousands of shifters.
Ducking under a blossoming vine, Danil stumbled on freshly turned earth. The undergrowth was stripped bare, with detritus strewn about and a trench cutting deep into the banks of a small pool. Tiny specks of kiandrite glittered in variegated colors in the dark soil.
Hafryn crouched beside the trench and pulled out his parchment. He scratched a marking onto it, eyebrows quizzical.
A large crystal almost fully buried in the mud caught Danil’s attention. Digging it free, he wiped off the dirt, marveling at the barrel-like shape of the kiandrite crystal. It warmed in his palm.
“This is a small leyline,” Blutark muttered, looking about at the trees that grew thick and high around the pool. “Scarcely worth the effort for such a poor kiandrite yield.”
Danil had grown up on tales of mages battling to the death over pebbles of kiandrite. The crystal in his hand was priceless. It was astonishing that soldiers had missed it.
Elania eyed the destruction with dismay. “The larger leylines are more heavily patrolled,” she murmured. “At least Danil found the lodestone.”
He glanced up in surprise, unfamiliar with the term.
Blutark walked over to set his large hand over Danil’s as if to feel the energy of the crystal. “A lodestone forms when a leyline intersects a place of high natural energy, like this pool,” he said. “It’s most unusual for a human to find one.”
“You make it sound like lodestones purposefully hide from humans,” Danil said with a chuckle.
Blutark didn’t argue against it. The changing colors of the crystal streamed up between his fingers to reflect across his face.
Elania stepped closer as if drawn to the lodestone as well.
Hafryn swept some dirt off the parchment. “It looks like the soldiers have concentrated their digging around lodestones.” He tapped a lower part of the parchment. “There’s a few trenches that make little sense, but for the most part we should be able to predict where they’ll hit next.”
“Perhaps we should make ourselves known at such a place,” Blutark muttered. “The combined draw of the lodestone and Danil might prove too tempting for the two mages to pass up.”
Hafryn nodded and gazed up into the lush branches overhead. “Let Katril know, eh?” he called out.
With a flap of black wings, a crow took flight. Danil hadn’t even noticed they had company.
He glanced again at the lodestone. It emitted a strange, whispery hum. “Did Kaul use lodestones in his experiments?”
Blutark stepped back to allow Elania access to the crystal. “He did.”
Elania’s eyes seemed to brighten as she thumbed the lodestone. “He would drain their energy into glass orbs to use as he willed.” She glanced up. “If Kaul wrote of orbs in the journal, Magus Brianna might know how to do it.”
Danil thought of the conversation he’d overhead so many days prior, and how eager Brianna had been to reach Altonas. “There’s a big lodestone somewhere in Altonas, isn’t there?”
Blutark shook his head. “Kaul drained it centuries ago.”
Then why was Brianna so set on the citadel? She’d looked enlivened when she spoke of it in Farin.
Hafryn appeared to share a similar thought. “We’re missing something,” he muttered.
“The goal might not entirely be the acquisition of kiandrite,” Blutark said in agreement.
Elania transformed into her leopard form and padded to the far side of the pool. Her head tilted up as if scenting the air. She shimmered back. “The soldiers are still close.”
Hafryn consulted his map. “There’s a waterfall overlapping this leyline only half a mile from here. We might be able to get ahead of the soldiers and see what they’re about.”
The wolf motioned for them to head out. A pair of crows dropped out of the branches to wing between the trees. There had to be at least another dozen crows overhead, but they stayed out of sight.
Before following, Danil approached the pool and dropped the lodestone into the clear water. It flashed pink and blue and sank into the depths.
Blutark clapped his shoulder in approval.
Their boots made little sound on the leaf-littered forest floor. A lichen-stained sculpture of an otter sat perched on a rock beside the stream. Scuff marks on slime marked where the soldiers had crossed to the other bank.
They followed the trail. New ruins rose up amidst the trees and undergrowth. Voices echoed in the shadows, muffled by the rush of tumbling water.
Hafryn waved at them to stay low.
Danil eased through the straggly branches of a flowering bush, careful of his steps amidst the twigs. Elania was once again a snow leopard, her dappled coat blending as she stalked between two crumbling pillars of stone.
Snippets of conversation drifted between the trees. Danil recognized the Roldaerian borderland brogue, startled by its strangeness after having spent so much time with Amasians.
Peering cautiously around t
he edge of a crumbling platform, he spied two soldiers standing a little apart from their companions who were already at work pulling up stained flagstones beside a small cataract. The plunging water muffled the sound of the flagstones being flung into the stream below the waterfall.
“Lieutenant’s gonna pay with her flesh if we don’t give Blondie something pretty,” one of the soldiers muttered.
His companion made a warding sign. “Don’t call him that!”
“What—Blondie?” The soldier snorted. “No mage is going to bother spying on us folk. Besides, Blondie’s still fuming over losing the traitor.”
Danil grew still. A thundering filled his ears. They had to be talking about him.
He hadn’t given much thought to how his own people would view his actions. But stealing from a mage and giving it to their sworn enemy—it was indeed traitorous.
“Do you want to feed Magus Ronan’s whip?” the second soldier hissed. He looked ready to back away from his companion. “Don’t speak ill of the magi.”
“Indeed, not,” a newcomer muttered, stepping out from a path between the trees. The man pulled back his hood to reveal grey hair and a comely face lined with age.
The two soldiers hastily bowed.
“Magus,” the second soldier effused, bowing deeper.
Danil threw Hafryn an alarmed look. When had this newcomer arrived in Altonas? Surely if Katril and her squadrons had known, they would have given warning.
“You’re lax in your duties,” the mage observed, expression severe. “Expect Magus Brianna to hear of your carelessness and disregard.”
Both soldiers stiffened.
“Yes, magus.”
“At your service, magus.”
The mage gestured sharply. “Get to work. I wish to understand why you have all so gravely failed us in attaining our mage-crystals. I fear I have already seen enough.”
The soldiers grimaced but hurried to join their companions still busily clearing a space beside the short waterfall.