Taellaneth Complete Series Box Set

by Vanessa Nelson

  “No.” She ducked her eyes from the flare of amber in his. “The essence is not complete.” The short silence between them was weighted with the knowledge that the one person who could have read the essence, from either the small scrap of cloth or the blood pool, had been killed here. “This other person would have needed urgent care, though. How many healers are in the Palace?”

  “A dozen. Twenty, perhaps,” Miach’s eyes flickered as he considered that. “Enquiries will be made. What sort of wound?”

  “I cannot tell. A lot of blood. There is no trace of blood elsewhere on the bookshelf so a separate blow. Possibly a bladed weapon.”

  “Miach!”

  The cry from across the room drew their immediate attention, Miach striding away, Arrow pausing to gather the bit of cloth in one of her gloves, tucking into a pocket, before following.

  The rest of his cadre were gathered about one of the servants’ doors to the library, the door standing ajar, wooden panels dented, lock twisted.

  “Nothing else here but this,” the leader of the second third reported.

  “The exit for our wounded?” Miach speculated.

  Arrow doubted it. The door had been forcibly ripped open, although curiously the wards remained inert and intact, as though they had not recognised a threat. That required both physical and magical strength. Very few Erith could maintain that kind of focus while wounded.

  But there had been two people present at the lady’s death. The one who had gripped her arm. Perhaps the one who was wounded, and left the scrap of cloth behind. And the unknown mage who had killed her with a heavy blow to her skull, then used mage fire to sever some of the library’s levitation spells, trying to disguise murder as an accident. It was possible the two had been working together, and the unknown mage had helped his conspirator out of the room.

  She listened as the cadre debated among themselves, coming to the same conclusion she had. Her input was not sought, or needed, the cadre clearly used to working together and piecing together incomplete information.

  One part of her mind following the conversation, which contained a series of names and terms she did not know, she could not help glancing around the library again, feeling a guilty thrill. She was in the library of Niasseren, however grim the circumstances. A place where anyone was free to learn. Perhaps even exiled, mixed-blood mages, now that she was here.

  The lazy, seemingly random course of the bookshelves above caught her attention again. There must be a design, for the Erith would not tolerate anything else. Even if the design only came to pass once in a hundred years, there would still be a design. She wondered if there was a pattern visible from the centre of the room, if someone lay on their back, staring up. Tipping her head back she could see only meaningless gaps between the shelves, the wooden structures themselves not forming any pattern she knew.

  There was the faintest trace of amber at the edge of her vision, some event in the second world powerful enough that it was visible, however briefly, in the first world. Turning, she saw one of the great bookshelves change its course, sweeping down from the heights towards her, a dark mass gaining speed as it fell.

  A cry of warning, a wordless sound. Wards flared, silver blinding, no time to flee. A bare moment to think and she poured power into her wards, raising all her defences.

  The mass of shelf struck her wards with a force that had her sliding back on the polished floor, wooden shelves splintering, parchment and books spilling out, the tangled weave of the bookcase’s spells fragmenting against her wards, scraping against her senses.

  Arrow’s wards dimmed a fraction, reaction to the impact, before flaring again.

  The book case fell with a thump that shook the floor.

  The sheen of Erith magic, deep amber of a group of powerful magicians, overlay her silver, less than a heartbeat after the shelf hit the ground, Miach’s cadre reacting with admirable speed to the attack. Too slow, if she had not been there and seen the danger.

  “Are you alright?” Miach asked. He sounded calm.

  “Perfectly fine, thank you.”

  “Someone just tried to kill us.” His voice was edged and she glanced across, finding him watching her with a lifted brow, disbelieving.

  “Not the first time.” She released the full force of her wards, silver dying in the first world, and stepped forward to the fallen bookcase. “Much more crude,” she noted, second sight engaged. “Someone simply cut the spells and gave it a shove towards us. A powerful shove.”

  “Same person who killed the lady?”

  “Possible.” She was not convinced, enhancing her sight to examine the broken spell threads. “Certainly the same person who broke the door. Not the same person who was wounded.”

  “Two conspirators.” Miach’s voice was deep, rich with emotion she could not follow.

  “When was the last time there was an unexplained death inside the Palace?”

  “Almost a decade.” His back was to her, the tightly woven spells of his personal wards clear in second sight. Looking at something else. She dimmed her second sight and rose to stand beside him.

  Above them, the rest of the library’s bookshelves spun slowly in their predetermined courses, the pattern still invisible to her.

  “They all need to come down,” he said, still in that heavy voice. “A watch set until that is done, and the library closed until further notice.”

  “It will be done.” The leader of the second third acknowledged, and padded silently away across the room, her third a close cluster amid the growing chaos.

  “The library has never been closed?” Arrow asked, cued by the feeling in Miach’s voice. A tone normally reserved for disasters.

  “Not once in the seven hundred years of its existence.”

  “It is a favourite of our lady’s,” one of Miach’s third offered.

  Arrow drew a sharp breath. Teresea, a favourite of the Queen’s, killed in a room that was also a favourite. A room that was now closed. Even from her place outside the intrigue of Erith politics, Arrow knew that the Queen was vulnerable to opposition. Having the library closed was a potent symbol that the lady could not protect her own House, a serious weakness among the Erith.

  “Can you track the conspirators?”

  “Sorry. No. There are too many other traces. Too much active magic.” That was an understatement. The library was alive with spellwork. It would require a highly skilled tracker, or a reader, to follow the lead.

  Miach absorbed that in silence. Arrow tried not to squirm, wishing she had more to offer, and knowing that her day was not yet done. She had not been sent here to investigate Teresea’s death but Gilean’s disappearance.

  “We should take you to Orlis. There are rooms for you there.” Miach moved, reluctance clear in his clipped strides across the floor. Arrow, following in his wake, took one final glance up at the Folly of Niasseren, perhaps the last time the bookshelves would be airborne.

  CHAPTER 7

  Miach handed her to his junior third, who accepted their charge with the same competence they had shown in the library, forming a loose escort around her and guiding her through the Palace. Arrow was lost in moments, the vast complex of the Palace buildings swallowing her up, the fizz of the heartland’s magic against her skin unsettling. Everything was new. Nothing was familiar. She did not belong here. But she was used to not belonging and knew that she would eventually get used to the abundance of magic.

  Passing through yet another heavily scented garden, Arrow glanced up at the nearest windows and saw a few faces looking out, openly curious. And worried. She wondered what kinds of stories were travelling about this place, a city-sized set of buildings.

  Eventually, when the sky was darkening to night, her feet were aching and her stomach was reminding her it had been hours since she had eaten, they arrived at the entrance to a large building which reminded her strongly of the Academy dormitories. Plainly built, several storeys high, it resonated with magic.

  “Quarters for vi
siting magicians,” the senior warrior said, stopping a few paces from the door. “The warriors’ quarters are over there.” He nodded to a relatively close building, which even at this distance Arrow could see was decorated with stylised weapons. “If you have need of us, they will know where to find us. Good hunting, mage.”

  “Good hunting, svegraen.” Arrow made a small bow as the third left, only realising when they had gone that she had never asked for any of their names. Too late, for now.

  Turning, she stepped across the threshold, the wards of the building prickling across her skin, testing her. Apparently the keepers of this building were quite serious in only allowing magically-trained Erith inside. It seemed juvenile. She bore the scrutiny with a slight shrug, confident in her wards.

  Once the prickle of magic faded she found herself in a large entrance hall, a wide, wooden staircase ahead of her leading up to the building’s upper stories, a dimly lit corridor to one side leading deeper into the building and an open doorway to the other side showing a large room that seemed to be a refectory, full of long tables, plain chairs and benches, a number of Erith sitting in small clusters, idly talking or playing dice. She imagined that the warriors’ refectory held a similar sight, only with more weapons and a more uniform dress code. A few of the magicians glanced at the door, attention snagging on her presence, and the slight sheen of silver to her wards which would be vivid in the second world if any cared to look. They were mostly dressed in rich fabrics as befitted Palace courtiers, a couple in well-worn travel clothes similar to Orlis. Wondering if any of the magicians would know where the journeyman was, she moved towards the refectory, pausing as she heard footsteps above.

  Orlis was scrambling down the stairs, hair even more tangled than earlier, face pale, eyes sparking amber.

  “There you are. You have been ages.”

  “There was much to do. What have you learned?”

  “Come.” He turned and ran up the stairs to the first landing, hopping impatiently from one foot to another until Arrow joined him before striding along the corridor to the door at the end where a third of White Guard were on duty, the amber sheen of their wards rippling uneasily against the building’s defences.

  Stepping past the warriors with a quiet greeting, Arrow stopped inside the door. She had been expecting a single room, a combined bedroom and study, similar to the Academy’s dormitories, and instead found a suite. The door from the corridor opened onto a small, comfortable room with soft chairs and a fireplace, with another two doors on one side, both open. One showed a study, the other a bedroom. Orlis was hovering in the doorway to the bedroom, eyes flickering around the sitting area and study.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  Arrow thought that the Academy’s dormitories might have been built in the style of this place, but she was certain that the Academy’s students were not given quarters quite this fine. Used to the finery of the Taellaneth and the occasional glimpses of the Taellan’s residences, she looked past the elegant furnishing and craftsmanship, engaging her second sight as she took a careful walk through the rooms. It did not take long to realise that although these might be designated as Gilean’s rooms, Orlis was here as often as Gilean, and neither of them were here often. The rooms bore little deep impression of either mage.

  “There was a struggle,” she said at last. “Two or three people came in through the door. Gilean was at his desk in the study. It seems that he was overpowered and taken.” Although how any intruder managed to get through the first room and into Gilean’s study before he had time to raise a defence was a mystery. Gilean was a war mage and, more than that, experienced in dealing with danger. He and Orlis would be dead several times over if he did not have good instincts and quick reactions.

  “That is what I thought, too.” Orlis sank onto one of the chairs in the first room, tension drained out of him.

  “What was he working on?”

  “A letter to Evellan.”

  “Is it still here? No, stay there, I will go.”

  The half-written letter was on the desk, ink smudged where the pen had been dragged across the page, falling on the rug, ink stain spreading. Arrow leant over, noticing that the mage’s writing was much better when he was settled at a desk compared to his usual scrawl to the Preceptor.

  “Do they have a code?” she asked Orlis, frowning over the odd phrasing.

  “Not that I know of.” He was at her shoulder, leaning over with her. “Why?”

  “I have read a number of Gilean’s letters to the Preceptor over the years. Lord Evellan claims he cannot read the writing. But this is odd.”

  Orlis’ mouth tightened, pulse beating rapidly in his throat.

  “We will find him,” Arrow said, putting as much conviction as she could into her voice.

  “Yes.”

  They re-read the unfinished letter together. Gilean had apparently been to visit a farmer a day’s ride from the Palace, commenting that the flowers were in full bloom. There was something about a cows’ milk spoiling. The letter also referenced an unusual weather pattern, the design of a lady’s shoe and a flock of geese the mage had seen several days before.

  “It is odd,” Orlis agreed.

  “Gilean seemed troubled when he was at the Taellaneth. You said he did not tell you, but can you guess why?”

  “No. The only thing is he wanted to speak to Evellan but never got the chance. Evellan was too sick and under guard for days. Then Gilean left, told me to stay and assist Evellan.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “No. No letter for Evellan, no message for him or Seivella.” Orlis went back to the sitting area and sank into a chair again, dragging his hand through his hair. “He has never left me like that before. He would always tell me.”

  Arrow settled on the edge of a chair nearby, turning the information over in her mind, distracted by her hollow middle. It had been a long, difficult, day. Tea with Evellan and the Archivists were a distant memory.

  “Is there anyone Gilean would confide in?”

  The sour look Orlis sent her made her bite back a smile, despite the circumstances.

  “Besides you and Evellan, I mean. Anyone in the Palace? Anyone who might have seen him or know what was bothering him?”

  “No.” Orlis looked thoughtful. “He is very private. But he is also well known.”

  “So it should be possible to trace his movements?” Arrow lifted a brow at Orlis. He sat up straighter, expression darkening.

  “Why did I not think of that?”

  Arrow thought that was an excellent question, with an obvious answer. “You are very pale. When did you last eat?”

  “Eat? Arrow, Gilean is missing.”

  “Yes. And you are not thinking clearly,” Arrow told him, more bluntly than she had intended. He glared up at her, jaw set in a stubborn line. “I assume the refectory has food?”

  Orlis said nothing, white lines bracketing his mouth. Arrow waited a moment. He looked like he would sit there all night.

  She smothered a sigh. She was out of place here in the heartland, more so than the Taellaneth which at least had become familiar, and worn out from all the changes and revelations of the day. They both needed a pause.

  “I am hungry, too, and it would be nice to have a familiar face for company,” she said quietly. His resistance melted, glitter in his eyes fading and he rose silently, leading her out of the room, past the warriors, and down the stairs to the refectory.

  The food was excellent, among the best Arrow had ever tasted, perhaps influenced by the magic that saturated the land, and there was a seeming never ending supply, the kitchens here clearly accustomed to the demands of magicians.

  Orlis and Arrow had settled at a vacant table near one of the windows but were not alone for long. As with the Academy, people seemed to gravitate towards Orlis and their meal was interrupted by a series of well-wishers, expressing concern about Gilean’s absence, and wanting to know any news from the Academy. Orlis revived a little under t
he attention and the food, Arrow quietly observing the various conversations, the whole set up reminding her more and more of the Academy. Very little stayed secret at the Academy for long, and it seemed the same was true here.

  Arrow herself received almost no attention, a few sideways glances but no overt stares or questions. Perhaps they already knew who she was. Or perhaps, she thought, an echo of her earlier realisation, they did not know who she was and it did not matter to them. The idea was still a new one, turning over in the back of her mind, and one she still did not have time to explore, the many unanswered questions from the lady’s death and Gilean’s disappearance needing her attention first.

  It was late before they got to bed, Arrow allocated a more modest room on the floor above Gilean’s. She did not mind. The bed was comfortable and, more importantly, there were strong wards to guard her sleep.

  CHAPTER 8

  Miach was waiting in the magician’s refectory the next morning, settled on one of the wooden chairs, drinking tea as though he was not isolated amid a gathering of glaring magicians, most eyes reflecting amber in the light that streamed through the tall, slender windows. Arrow could not help thinking that if it had been Kallish there, the warrior would have had her knives out on the table before her, sharpening each one with close attention. Miach simply sat, unchallenged.

  “Good morning, svegraen.” Arrow stopped on the opposite side of the table, lips twitching as the magicians turned their hostile gazes to her. They might not appear to care who she was, but they did care about the violation of their space by a warrior, it seemed.

  “Good morning, mage. I trust you slept well?”

  “Well enough.”

  Miach waved a hand to the chair opposite and she settled, unsurprised when one of the refectory staff appeared with a large mug of Erith tea and plate of breakfast for her. As with the Academy refectory, diners were expected to gather their own food, but the Queen’s first guard had a way of getting people to do what he wanted.

  “Is there news?” Her eyebrows lifted slightly as she sipped the tea. The mix was slightly different here, the citrus accents stronger.