Taellaneth Complete Series Box Set

by Vanessa Nelson

“Those didn’t look like any spell we know,” Juniper added. “Where would Brian have learned it?”

  “I would speculate that he did not learn it. Someone else did. Any mage worth the name should be able to memorise their spells,” Willan said, echoing Arrow’s own thoughts.

  “If there were other humans, and they each have a bit of the spell, can Saul recreate the whole spell with the other parts?” Onalla asked, voice urgent.

  “And could he use it?” Iserat added, voice tight. “It is Erith magic.”

  “We are not the only ones who have come here,” Arrow told him, remembering the impressions she had felt in the stones. “There have been Erith and humans before us.” Her mind snagged on that. The impressions she had felt were of the fortress being built, of Erith and humans handling the stones as if they were real. And yet she could see through the stone if needed, something not possible in either the world above or the shadow world. Second sight would allow her to see energy patterns, almost impossible through solid objects. If the stone was not solid, if nothing was real, then how had the Erith and humans made the fortress? And what was she standing on?

  “So, even if he cannot use it himself, he will find tools,” Iserat summarised, voice breaking Arrow’s thoughts. “We need to stop him.”

  “Yes. But-” Arrow began.

  “We need to get out,” Serran contradicted, coming to his feet. Perhaps the first thing he had said that Arrow fully agreed with.

  “We need to warn the others,” Dorian added.

  “Can we find the other humans?” Ronath asked into the short silence.

  “Do you need them to finish the spell?” Iserat asked, question directed impartially to Willan and Arrow.

  “We probably can finish the spell,” Arrow said slowly, “but Onalla has a point. I do not think we should leave the rest of it here if we can help it.”

  “So, we need to find the humans,” Iserat concluded. His jaw was tight.

  “I can find them,” Arrow said. Her voice was too high, throat constricted. She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the coil of surjusi power knotted in her middle, working its way up.

  “Arrow,” Kester began.

  “It is necessary,” she told him, voice choked.

  “A moment,” Iserat held up his hand, asking for a pause. “You were about to say something when Serran interrupted. What?”

  “Nothing here is real,” she started, to disbelieving stares from the others and an outright snort of disdain from Serran. “I mean, this is the surjusi realm. Surjusi are creatures of spirit not substance. Even here. They are clouds.” She waved her hands to illustrate. The disbelief was fading, replaced by intent stares. “So, why is there a fortress here? When I looked into the stones, they were built partly by surjusi but also by Erith and humans trapped here. They seem solid. But I can look through them.”

  “Impossible,” Serran pronounced, stating the final word on the matter. “Looking through solid objects is quite impossible. Do you think I have not tried?”

  “In the world we know. This is not that world. Remember that surjusi are masters of suggestion. They have trapped many Erith before with their lies.”

  “So, the fortress is an illusion?” Pateris said slowly, frowning.

  “Not quite. More like a powerful suggestion. Very powerful. There is magic built into it which means we see it. But if you can use that magic, you can change it.”

  “We hold our bodies because we believe in them,” Kester put in, comprehension sweeping across his face. “We see the fortress, and these walls, and the floor and everything else because the spells built into them tell us they are here at some unconscious level.”

  “Yes.”

  “And we do not tire or grow thirsty because we are spirit,” Iserat concluded, face grim.

  The six understood, she saw. They had lived in this realm for a long time. Serran was glowering, whether because he had worked it out ages ago or just because that was his normal expression or for some other reason, Arrow could not tell. The humans were sceptical.

  Eyes travelling over the group, Arrow searched for a way to demonstrate and spotted Ronath’s almost empty quiver.

  “Ronath, in all the time you have been here, have you ever run out of arrows?”

  “No.” He glanced back for a moment, frown creasing his face. “There was always at least one more arrow when I needed it.”

  “There are as many arrows as you need,” Arrow told him, and turned to Willan. “He knows you.” He trusts you, and not me, was what she meant, relying on Willan to guess her meaning.

  Willan looked back at her with, expression intent, assessing, before he nodded once.

  “Ronath. Will you trust me for a moment?”

  “After so many years? Of course.” No hesitation from the archer.

  Willan stepped closer to the warrior, amber power bright in his eyes, holding the warrior’s gaze. He murmured a soft spell, targeted only at the warrior, a gentle suggestion to allow him to influence Ronath’s mind. It was not forbidden magic. Even in the surjusi realm, Willan had not abandoned his oaths. It was the sort of spell that allowed a healer to hold a patient still or a parent to calm their child. Ronath’s eyes widened a moment, breathing slowed.

  “You have as many arrows as you need,” Willan said softly. “The quiver is quite full and will never run low.”

  Arrow watched as the suggestion took hold in Ronath’s mind, and heard the gasps from the humans as the quiver at Ronath’s back abruptly changed from one or two fletched endings to dozens more. As many as would comfortably fit in.

  “Look,” Willan suggested, “and remember.”

  Ronath took his eyes from Willan, turned his head to look at the bristling quiver across his shoulder. He did not start or seem surprised.

  Willan stepped back, drawing his power back into him, cancelling the spell.

  “Can you play mind tricks on all of us?” Juniper asked. For once it was not an aggressive challenge, more a genuine question.

  “Ronath trusts me. Clean magic like that suggestion only works on trust. Anything else is forbidden,” Willan answered. Juniper looked like she had a dozen more questions. “Erith mages hold to our oaths. We do not use forbidden magic.”

  “You could have just said no,” Dorian pointed out, jaw set.

  “It would not be true. Both Willan and I understand unclean magic. So, technically, we could influence your mind. We do not do so because of our oaths,” Arrow told him.

  Ronath had slid out of the spell’s influence while they were talking and looked back over his shoulder again.

  “Very nice,” he said, smile pulling his mouth.

  “Now, can we go?” Serran demanded.

  They needed to find the humans. And she was the only one who could. Arrow drew a breath in, stepped away from Kester’s instinctive protest and drew her kri-syang, slicing open her palm with a practised movement before putting her hand on the wall.

  “About time you started working,” Serran said.

  She ignored him. She ignored the voices raised behind her. She ignored the warning pulse of her sword, unhappy at the proximity of its enemies’ signature. She focused into the stone, through the connection of her blood, searching, remembering that there was no fortress, just energy. Only energy. And thousands of surjusi, their numbers far greater than she had sensed before, clustered in a tight knot around a point of nothingness she thought might be Saul. At a distance from the surjusi was a cluster of different energy.

  “That way,” she pointed with her free hand. “Not that far. Perhaps a mile in a straight line.”

  “That’s through a wall,” Dorian commented.

  “We will have to manage,” Arrow told him.

  “Can’t you do something?” She could not see his face, but much like Juniper’s question to Willan, it sounded like a genuine request, not born of bitterness.

  “Not without alerting the surjusi,” she answered, stepping away from the wall.

  “The lo
ng way round, then,” Iserat said. Something in his voice drew her attention. He was staring at her, crease between his brows. She made him uneasy. It was something she was used to among the Erith.

  “Pateris, Yvan,” Iserat commanded. The two moved forward, into the lead of the group.

  ~

  They were noisy, Arrow realised after only a short distance. Neither she nor the humans were good at stealth and Serran was muttering under his breath almost constantly.

  Still, there were no more surjusi in the short journey to where Arrow had sensed the humans. They had to take a slightly oblique route as the corridors did not quite lead in the right direction, Serran’s muttering growing louder with each wrong turn. Iserat said nothing, to Serran or to Arrow, just kept them moving forward.

  Until they came to another arched opening with no apparent door, and a group of humans huddled inside. Another cell, like the one which had held Serran.

  The humans had set up a camping lantern against the dark. Whilst she understood the unease of not being able to see, it was a foolish move in Arrow’s view as it destroyed whatever night vision they had, meaning they panicked when Iserat stepped forward to the edge of the light, more than one of them screaming.

  Four humans. And a fifth lying very still a short distance from the others. Dead. And not easily. There was a darker pool of blood around the body. Male. Clothes torn, body twisted. Broken bones. Tortured before he died.

  “I might have guessed,” Dorian said, lip curling as he looked over the small group. “Douse the light you idiots.”

  “D-Dorian? H-how did you get here?”

  “Never mind that. Get us out!”

  “He’s going to kill us.”

  “He already killed Stu.”

  “Did you find Brian?”

  The questions pelted one after the other. Dorian folded his arms across his chest and waited them out. Silence fell gradually, the four gathered together under the arch, staring at a familiar face.

  Only after the silence had dragged on for a while did one of them turn and douse the lantern. At least two of the humans murmured in fear as the dark returned.

  “Can you move out of there?” Arrow asked.

  “No. There’s something stopping us.”

  She looked on either side of the arch and found a circular stone like the one at Serran’s cell, then looked back into the archway and sighed. She did not think that the humans would make it out the same way that Serran had. For all his age and apparent weakness, Serran was a powerful mage.

  “Ideas?” she asked impartially.

  “Use your blood,” Serran answered promptly.

  “There must be another way,” Kester said, jaw set. Arrow looked down at the closing wound on her hand and wondered if he was as disgusted with the surjusi power inside her as she was.

  “What’s the problem?” Dorian asked, and listened to Serran’s impatient explanation with a gathering frown. “Can we pull them out? Anyone got rope?”

  Serran spat a curse that Arrow hoped the translation spell would not render, and stalked a few paces away. Dorian frowned at his back.

  “So, that’s a no, then?”

  “Try turning the stone,” Arrow suggested.

  It took both Dorian and Juniper all their effort and strength to turn the stone at the side of the arch until it was in the open position. None of the humans in the cell could move past the barrier.

  Arrow could feel her pulse racing, the sense of time running out. Saul was lord here. She might have injured him. It would only be a matter of time before he healed himself and came looking for his visitors. Visitors who were all now handily gathered together.

  “Could we disrupt the barrier?” One of the humans asked, sounding much less panicked than before.

  Arrow stilled, turning fully towards him. The human’s eyes had travelled towards one of the backpacks in the cell with them.

  “You have something that you think can lower the spell,” she realised. “The same thing that can disable wards. What is it?”

  “Better question, why haven’t you used it before?” Dorian demanded.

  “We didn’t know what it was,” one of the other humans waved a hand at the invisible barrier.

  “And we saw what happened to Stu when he tried to escape,” one of the women said, voice small. Stu must be the corpse, Arrow realised.

  “What do you have?” she asked the human.

  The human lifted his chin, staring back at her in the poor light.

  “Mark, just tell her. She’s probably the only one who can get us out of here,” Juniper ordered, irritation clear.

  “It’s supposed to be a secret.”

  “It stopped being a secret when you and your idiot friend decided to break into my premises. A property owned by the shifkin and protected by Erith wards,” Arrow told him, fury rising up.

  “Mark, get the device now. It might be the only way you get out of there,” Dorian ordered, adding his authority to Juniper’s. Whilst Mark scrabbled in one of the packs, he turned to Arrow. “I didn’t realise they were using the device.”

  Arrow choked down a hasty retort. “Several times,” she told him, voice dry. “You may recall a series of high-profile break-ins?”

  Dorian’s eyes widened. Arrow’s opinion of him rose another fraction. He had not been aware of the Collegia’s actions.

  “Someone disabled your wards?” Willan asked, concerned.

  “Something, I think.” Arrow watched as Mark drew something the size and shape of a human-made book from the pack. The sword woke as soon as the object came out of concealment. The same ghost-pulse that Arrow had sensed at the sites of the break-ins when she and Zachary had been searching in Lix. Something in that box had a trace of surjusi inside it.

  “It disrupts energy,” he told them sulkily, bringing it towards the invisible barrier.

  It did far more than that, Arrow knew. And was not wholly human, either. Now was not the time for questions or argument.

  “Get your things and get ready to leave,” Dorian told the others, “you might not have long to get out if this works.” They hastily gathered their packs.

  Mark put the device on the floor and pushed it forward gently with his foot. It moved a little, and then stuck against the invisible wall. He knelt beside it and pressed something on the side.

  An unpleasant hum rose, making Arrow want to cover her ears. The sword woke further, the presence of its enemy stronger. Not wholly surjusi. Enough of a trace to alert the sword. Arrow frowned at the box. The humming deepened, grating her skull, as the device began to glow.

  “Try now,” Dorian suggested.

  The humans moved forward into the space the barrier had been. They slowed, not as dramatically as Serran had, and kept moving forward.

  “Hurry,” Juniper told them, eyes on the device which was turning bright red.

  The humans were almost out when the device exploded, sending shards of metal in all directions. Juniper and Dorian grabbed the nearest arms to them and pulled, their combined weight dragging one human and then another out until everyone was gathered on the outside of the cell.

  “We left Stu,” one of the women said, looking back at the body in the cell.

  “He’s dead,” Dorian answered, voice frosty. “You can go keep him company if you like.”

  “No.” She ducked her head away from his glare.

  “What in hells do you think you were doing?” he demanded. He had his arms folded across his chest again, reminding Arrow in a way of an angry Matthias. Seeking answers as though it was his right to get them.

  “The Erith have taken everything from us,” one of the humans muttered.

  Arrow saw the puzzled frowns on the six’ faces and realised that the new humans were not covered by Willan’s interpretation spell. She was glad.

  “We …” Another glanced up, saw the Erith standing around, swallowed, and looked down again.

  “Let me guess,” Juniper suggested, artificially bright tone cu
ing everyone as to how angry she was. “You bought into the nonsense that the Erith owe us. You decided to do something about it. One of you idiots, or someone else, knew about surjusi. You decided that the enemy of my enemy is my friend and you tried to make a deal. With surjusi. Except that didn’t quite work out, did it?” The bite in her voice by the end of her speech made a few of them wince. Arrow hid a grin. Her opinion of Juniper rose.

  “He killed Stu,” the woman said again.

  “No kidding,” Juniper’s voice still had a vicious edge. “And Brian, too, I take it?” A few nods confirmed her guess.

  “He wanted the spell. The one to get us home.”

  “But we didn’t have all of it. Brian had the rest.”

  “And we wouldn’t do it without reassurances.”

  “But then … Poor Stu.”

  “Idiots,” Willan muttered.

  “Indeed. Are all humans so foolish?” Iserat asked Arrow.

  “No.” She bit the inside of her lip against a smile.

  “We need the spell,” Dorian told the others. “Give it up. Now.”

  Even faced with a third of fully armed Erith warriors, and a war mage, the humans hesitated before handing over the pages. Only a threatening step forward from Dorian made them move.

  Willan and Arrow took the pages and spread them across the floor, following the symbol pattern to form necessary runes.

  “This requires a great deal of power,” Willan noted, eyes tracing the spell one final time. They had left a gap where Brian’s runes would go.

  “Yes.” Arrow sighed, tilting her head back to the humans. “Do you think they realised that at least two of them would be sacrificed for this?”

  “What?” one of the women shrieked. Dorian had translated for them.

  “There is one of the sacrifices,” Willan commented, then turned back to Arrow. “We need an anchor point. Do you have one in mind?”

  Arrow thought about the grand ballroom at the Crossings Abbey, the space in the middle of the room full of herbs and the translation spell. “Definitely.”

  “You draw the anchor, then.”

  “Quiet.” The single word from Iserat was weighted. Despite the language barrier, all the humans obeyed.

  The six exchanged grim glances with Kester moments before Arrow felt it. The slight vibration on the floor. Then heard the steady thump of feet.