"Xarxius," he said aloud.
"Xarxius?" Elise echoed, looking at him as if he'd gone insane.
"Xarxius," Derian repeated. "Peace told us that he and Xarxius had worked together. I got the feeling they'd been more than business associates, that they'd been friends. Maybe Xarxius could help us."
Mingled hope and worry showed on his companions' faces.
"We could contact him through Ambassador Redbriar," Elise offered somewhat hesitantly. "His post is as liaison with foreign interests. Contact between them must be fairly regular."
"I like it," Firekeeper said decisively. "It is something. Otherwise I must go under the earth again, and without Peace and EdlinùI try to see traps, but I may not."
"Before we run off to Ambassador Redbriar," Doc said, "we should give time for Edlinùand Peaceùto be returned to us."
"Returned?" Firekeeper looked at him with undisguised confusion. "I tell you, Doc. This Idalia woman take them. She very angry. I not think she let them go."
"Maybe so, maybe not," Doc said, unshaken by the disbelief in the wolf-woman's dark eyes. "Haven't you ever caught something bigger than you planned?"
Firekeeper looked about to deny it, but Derian saw her gaze flicker to Blind Seer. The wolf, his fur spiky from his bath, was looking at her, his mouth gaping in what even unenlightened humans recognized as a canine laugh.
"Once," she said. "Twice. What does that matter?"
Wendee, who had been toweling off her charge, now handed Firekeeper undergarments in a pointed if silent command.
"I think," Wendee said, when Firekeeper began dressing, "that what Doc means is that this Idalia may find that capturing Lord Edlin Kestrel, heir to that duchy, has more ramifications than she had originally thought. You said she recognized him."
"She said he was idiot and that she'd heard of him," Firekeeper corrected.
"Interesting," Wendee said. "That may mean she had heard more of Edlin's peculiarities than of his position. Don't make faces at me! I'm not talking in riddles. From how Peace talked about his family, this Idalia is of the same general social class as Derian or myself. She is not involved in tradeùat least Peace never mentioned any of his family in that line.
"That means that Idalia, unlike her brother, unlike Lady Archer, has had no reason to learn the details of our culture and government. To her the relative importance of a 'lord'ùespecially since it's a title used for many low ranking nobles, even those with no inheritance prospects…"
"Like Lady Melina," Firekeeper said, nodding her understanding as she slipped into her vest and twisted the toggles shut, "or Lady Blysse."
"Right," Wendee said, taking out a comb. "Now, this Idalia may not realize that she has caught herself not just any lord but a lord heirùand that idiot or not, Edlin is not to be lightly disposed of."
Derian felt hope for the first time since Firekeeper's return home.
"And Edlin should be taken even less lightly than any other lord heir. His grandmother's lands are directly across the White Water. She controls one of the major trade crossings."
"Xarxius's purview again," said Elise with a wry grin. "Even if for no other reason, he should be involved because of that."
"But I wonder," Firekeeper said, dressed now and strapping her Fang to its accustomed place at her side, "whose side is Xarxius on?"
And no one, of course, had an answer for that.
TO TORIOVICO IT SEEMED as if the entirety of Thendulla Lypella must know what he had learned in his readings the day before. From the moment he awoke and called for his body servant to fetch his dressing gown he felt aware of a suppressed tension in the air.
He knew it was his imagination. No one could have read what he had and, of course, no one could read his own notes. The excitement and trepidation he sensed were his own, no other's.
Thankfully, Melina was not beside him this morning. She had dined with him and gone to bed with him, but in the dark hours of the night he had awakened to an awareness of her departing his side. When he had called after her, she had said that something she had eaten must have disagreed with her, that she would return when she felt better or else rest in her own suite.
Torio had thought he had glimpsed Tipi and wondered if some message the maid had brought was the cause of Melina's going, but he had not pursued the matter. Indeed, he was glad to have Melina gone from him.
The evening meal had been a nightmare. He had feared Melina would see his new knowledge in his eyes, but she had not, perhaps too distracted by her own thoughtsùperhaps believing him so lulled by her powers that she need but give him some small attention.
Still clad only in his dressing gown, hurrying lest Melina return, Toriovico penned a brief note to Columi requesting another private meeting. He knew he was taking a risk accepting the Lapidary into his confidence, but he also knew that someone other than himself must share his knowledge. Sharing was both dangerùfor Columi might betray himùand insurance, for should something happen to him Columi would know enough to act.
This was not an idle dread. Toriovico realized that Melina had gulled him once, even as she still held many of his key counselors in thrall. He had been fortunate that her intense interest in her new discoveries had distracted her from him, fortunate, too, that his dancing had provided its own charm. One or the other might not have been enough to break her hold. Together, both had succeeded.
Lest someone note a difference in his manner, Toriovico forced himself to hold to his usual routine. He ate heartily, though his tongue scarcely tasted the food. He attended several meetings and spoke the ceremonial words required of him with so much intensity that several of the other participants looked at him rather strangely. Though his ears could hardly hear the music for the pounding of his heart, he went to his morning practice and danced the part of the Harvest Lord.
Only after lunch did he excuse himself and head for the museum.
When Torio arrived, Columi was waiting and whisked him away to the private office at the core of his tower.
"There was an urgency to your note, Healed One," he said. "Have you discovered something?"
Toriovico found his tongue resisted talking about any of the secrets from the book, but he forced himself on by reminding himself that the knowledge was available from other sourcesùhadn't Melina learned it?
At least he thought she had…
"I think I have," he said slowly, "but nothing of what I tell you must go beyond we two unless…"
He swallowed hard.
"Unless you have reason to believe that I have taken leave of either my senses or my life."
Columi looked at him with an understanding that was worse than the disbelief Toriovico had inwardly feared.
"Tell me, Honored One."
"It begins," Toriovico said, "in the earliest days of the Founders. They came here from the Old Country and settled more land than is commonly knownùall the way from the shores where Waterland now holds sway to these mountain fastnesses.
"Eventually, others came and wanted that land for themselves. There were terrible battles andùI am ashamed to sayùour ancestors lost. Yet they did not lose entirely. They forfeited the coastal lands, but they held the mountainsùand made a new one."
Columi cleared his throat.
"That was in the days of the wizard Kelvin," he commented almost diffidently. "As the tale is told within our sodality, the mountain range that now bears the name Sword of Kelvin was raised at the end of those wars. Our lore relates how the Founders made the unquiet rock come to life and raised a barrier between the remnants of our people and the invaders."
Toriovico's lips curved in the smallest of smiles.
"That is a tale not often told these days," he said, "for the First Healed One felt that accounts of heroism rather than defeat would keep our kingdom strong after the Burning Times. It is interesting that your sodality still tells it."
"We study rock and how it lives and grows," said the emeritus with a slight shrug. "The tale must stay alive or be re
discovered in some version by every bright young Lapidary. And I notice you do not tell it as if it was new knowledge, so it was not completely lost."
"No," Toriovico said, aware of how many secrets he still kept. "Much of the Healed One's education is in tales and legends that otherwise might be lost."
"How true," Columi said, and there seemed to be a double meaning in his inflection.
Toriovico wondered just what the old man might have learned or guessed in his long life, but decided that this was not the time to ask.
"Tell me," Columi went on, "what this raising of a mountain hundreds of years ago has to do with the actions of a foreign-born sorceress today?"
"Since you know stones," Torio acceded, "you must also know the legends that dragons are creatures of the elements, some say children of the elements."
"I have heard these tales," Columi admitted, "but never in all my delvings beneath the earth, even in volcanoes where I have seen the pumping of the earth's own blood, have I seen a dragon. I have been to the crests of the Eversnow Mountains where the stone blends with ice and the wind screams its secret name and there, too, I have never glimpsed even the claw print of a dragon."
"I am sure that the hero Kelvin felt as you do," Toriovico said, "for if he believed the tales, I doubt he would have done what he did. You see, it seems that when Kelvin raised the Sword Mountains, he also raised a dragon."
Columi leaned forward, his eyes glittering, but he made no sound.
"Some sources insist that Kelvin created the dragon," Torio went on, "with the power he channeled through that unquiet rock. Some say he merely summoned it. Others that the dragon was there already, nascent, a spirit of the place without a bodyùthat the magic gave it a body.
"Whatever the truthùand personally I favor the lastùa dragon surged into being even as the mountains rose. At first our people cheered and laughed for they saw the monster as a new weapon to turn against the invaders. Indeed, so the Waterlanders saw it as well, for they fled and not even their deep and abiding greed has made them attempt to claim as much as an inch of the foothills.
"Yet this was not the case. The dragon seemed to know from where had come the power that had raised it and, rather than being pleased, it was filled with fury. It descended on the sorcerers. Several died. Among these was Kelvin himself, dying, not beneath an onslaught of enemy magic as our tales now tell, but from the result of a magic he himself had caused to be summoned."
Now Columi could be silent no longer.
"I wonder that we have no tales of this!" he exclaimed. "Surely hundreds if not thousands saw the dragon and witnessed these battles."
"But we do," Toriovico replied with a sad smile. "Every child knows the story of the Star Wizard and the Dragon of Despair. It is part of the same tale, separated from its beginning because it holds no shame."
"Truly?"
"Truly," Toriovico assured him. "The Star Wizard was the first among those sorcerers that the hero Kelvin marshaled in order to raise the Sword Mountains. He was a more powerful wizard than Kelvin, but not as great a warrior. Circumstances forced him to become one. The Star Wizard's circle of allies lay broken and bleeding. Kelvin was dead. The cityùnot yet named Dragon's Breathùwas burning from the monster's fire.
"The Star Wizard used a magical mirror, so the tales say, one that magnified the light of the sun until it became a solid beam. Wielding that light as a sword, he drove the Dragon of Despair into the caverns beneath Thendulla Lypella. Then he dissolved it once again into the elements, so successfully that its energy fed the latent volcanic activity.
"Some say that the dragon attempted its revenge once or twice, seeking to store its power and release it all in a rush, but the Star Wizard and those who became his apprentices quieted it until it merely sulked and steamed. Eventually, its consciousness faded and it slept.
"Other tales relate how rival wizards sought to awaken the dragon, promising it freedom in return for its power in their fights. The Star Wizard balked them, for the spells by which he had bound the monster were so potent that only the most horrible magical rites would set it free. And so the Dragon of Despair was bound and so it remains bound to this day."
Columi had been listening, nodding almost like a child listening to a familiar tale. Now, as Toriovico stopped speaking and poured himself a cup from the pitcher that rested between them, the old man's smile faded.
"Good tales, old tales, but surely you do not think that Consolor Melina believes them?"
"You believe the story of how the Sword of Kelvin Mountains were raised, O wise Lapidary," said Toriovico. "That is why I began thereùwith the origin of the dragon. I think that not only does my wife believe the tale, she believes that she can achieve what even the great wizards of the Founders' time did net dare to do. She plans to awaken the Dragon of Despair and make it her weapon against her enemies."
Columi gasped.
"And I am not entirely certain," Toriovico concluded, "that she will not succeed."
Although Toriovico succeeded in convincing Columi of the validity of his theory, showing him various sections from old books and scrolls and even quoting him portions of the Restorer's journal, he could not convince the Lapidary that he knew enough.
"You need to know precisely where Melina is going when she ventures on one of these subterranean jaunts," Columi said stubbornly. "As I see it, there are two ways in which we can manage this. She can be physically trackedùpreferably by some agent other than yourselfùor you can continue to trace her through books and records."
Torio nodded, though he liked neither option. The one meant more people entering into his secret. The other was slow and tedious. It might also attract unwanted attention, especially if Melina had allies among the Illuminators who provided librarians for Thendulla Lypella.
He shared his concern with Columi, who nodded and looked distinctly unhappy.
"I, too, had considered those problems," he said, "but I feel it is essential that you know more precisely what she has discovered before you act against her. What if Melina has found someone who could do the rite in her stead? Restricting her actions might precipitate disaster rather than preventing it."
The image that arose then was so horrible Torio put it from his mind immediately, but he did not disregard his counselor's words.
"Very well. We shall pursue both courses of action," he said. "You shall be my agent among the books. I will have a parcel delivered to you here."
Columi looked both alarmed and gratified.
"My vision, Healed One," he said hesitantly, "is not what it was…"
"You have spectacles," Toriovico replied brusquely. "Use them. If our concerns are correct, this is no time for one who has aroused Melina's ire to be careful with his vision. You might lack life soon enough."
Columi realized the truth in this and offered no protest.
"And as to tracking Melina?" he asked cautiously, as if he feared that task would be put on him as well.
"Your words about regarding what allies Melina may have gave me an idea," Toriovico said. "One of her closest confidants is her maid, Tipi. I shall convince her to be my informant."
Columi looked dubious, but offered no objection.
"If that does not work," Torio went on, "I shall speak to someone on my staff of watchers. Surely not all of them have been suborned."
Columi nodded.
"You will not trail her yourself?" he asked, clearly wishing reassurance.
"I did not promise that," Torio said, a trace bitterly, "only that I shall not go alone."
With that, Columi had to be content.
KICKS AND BLOWS herded Grateful Peace and Edlin from the sewer tunnels, up and into rougher tubes of fire-melted stone. From the change in the surrounding construction, Peace deduced that he and Edlin were being taken into the little-used natural caverns beneath the northern edge of Thendulla Lypella.
The odor of sulphur and the rough, jagged basalt that tore boots and clothing alike made these regions supremely
unpleasant. Indeed, Peace doubted that any but advanced members of the Sodality of Lapidaries ever descended to these regionsùany but they and a thoroughly inquisitive Dragon's Eye, and none of them had dared penetrate too deeply.
Idalia stalked ahead of her prisoners, seemingly unaware of their harsh treatment by her servants, yet Peace didn't doubt that she was aware of every kick, every blow, and that in some perverse way she gloried in each one.
He had never realized how much his sister hated him, and her hatred bruised and battered his soul. Had Idalia always hated him or had Kistlio's death been what pushed her from resentmentùhe had been aware of her resentmentùinto hatred?
Peace wanted to ask, but feared that his words would emerge in the piping voice of the little brother rather than the sardonic inquiry of the man. With his mind fragmented through the dozens of throbbing hurts upon his exhausted frame, he believed in the possibility of that transformation. The terror that somehow he could be forced into that younger self kept him mute.
Beside Peace, Edlin staggered forward, head bent, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. Once the crossbows had been lowered, he had made some effort to fight free. Edlin's valor or idiocyùPeace was really not certain whichùhad resulted in his being beaten nearly unconscious. Only later, when Idalia delegated some of her servants to go out and bring Firekeeper back, did Peace wonder if Edlin had once again sacrificed himself to gain his adopted sister time to escape.
Yet for all his greater injuries, Edlin did not labor under such strain as did his companion. The pride the young man felt in having helped Firekeeper escape was visible even in his bowed shoulders. Yet neither this nor Edlin's immunity to Idalia's particular scorn were his greatest protection.
Ignorance was Edlin's armor and shield while knowledge blew into Peace's face as might a high wind. With every step, the onetime Illuminator must struggle against what he knewùand what he feared.
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