No one answered. Instead a wave of silence spread out as people noticed my entrance. They scattered from Rory’s path.
He answered my unspoken question, the one I couldn’t force from between my numb lips. “We believe it was the militia. A naga family found the bodies. They’re not sure if they were male or female, but adult and human. Ten of them. There was no sign that anyone accompanied them. They did what they did of their own accord.” He gripped my arms at the elbows, bracing me. “They doused themselves in turpentine and set themselves alight at dawn.”
Sabinka pushed forward.
Sorcha was less abrupt, but she was there, too. Events with the militia were keeping her away from her leatherwork business. “The militia would claim that the ten humans burned themselves alive as a message to us.”
I couldn’t form a response.
“What message?” The anonymous voice came from the crowd. More people than just the magistrate hall staff had congregated at the hall to hear and process the disturbing news. “That they’d prefer to burn than to live in the world we saved for them?”
I shuddered once before regaining control.
“The militia are trying to punish us via our sympathy.”
“Bah. They’re plain crazy.”
Everyone had an opinion.
“Did you note the timing? They killed themselves at dawn, so that their bodies would lie there all day before reclamation at night.”
“Fae King Harold has drafted an edict about that.”
Suddenly, the speaker had everyone’s attention. The elf’s green face flushed emerald. She stuttered. “M-m-my c-cousin works at court.”
“What’s going to change?”
Piros strolled down the ramp from the roof. That dragon had an A-list celebrity’s sense of timing. “The Reclamation Team’s work is scaling back. The major site redevelopment works are complete.” By which he no doubt meant places like Manhattan Island where centuries of human construction had been erased and the land returned to wilderness. “The worst of the toxic dangers have been addressed. We always planned to step back as soon as possible to allow the natural cycle to reassert itself.”
People around me automatically muttered the key Faerene mantra in their circular view of reality. “Life, death, and rebirth.”
Piros yawned, his savage teeth on display.
The crowd retreated an extra step.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “Busy few days. Now, about your local militia. It’s unfortunate that they’ll assume their horrible actions have had this effect, but Fae King Harold is not delaying the edict because of them. Hopefully, their revolting egos puff up and destroy them. From three hours from now, the Reclamation Team will no longer return human corpses to the earth overnight. Once more humans will have to bury their dead. Or whatever they used to do.”
In the circumstances, his reluctance to speak of cremating the dead was understandable.
Piros looked over the crowd. “Rory, if I might have a word? Amy, you’re welcome to join us. Oh, and Nils?”
I jumped as Nils seemed to materialize out of thin air at my side.
“Please, join us,” Piros said.
The Red Drake commanded respect. Everyone waited till he’d passed with us through the kitchen and into the corridor to Istvan’s office before exploding into comment.
Nils closed the doors to Istvan’s office behind us.
Smoke gusted as Piros sighed. He sat heavily.
“Coffee?” I suggested.
“Sleep,” he countered. “But first we have a problem to address, and since part of it is in North America, the Fae Council agreed to punt it to you, Rory.” He yawned, again. “Do you have your watchlist?”
Nils brought up the map of the North American Territory on the wall slate.
“Mount Redoubt, near Anchorage, Alaska,” Piros said. “It’s a volcano. An orc disappeared in its vicinity two weeks ago. He went out on an overnight solo hunting trip. However, one night turned into three and he hadn’t returned. His clan began searching for him after seven nights.”
“So he’s a shaman?” Nils asked.
“The second shaman of the clan. The clan thought a quest might have overtaken him. His wife argued that he’d have sent a dream to her if it had. She began searching for him after three nights.”
Nils added an explanation for my benefit. “Orc shamans go on quests to manage their magic and the magic of their clan lands. The first shaman of the clan chooses the quests for themselves and the two to three shamans who support them. However, quests can descend unexpectedly on a shaman. They traditionally follow a pattern of one night, seven nights or a lunar month in duration.”
Rory frowned. “This isn’t news, Piros. Urwin followed up on the Frost Nomad Clan’s report. He had the bunkers scan for the lost shaman and for any trace of magic use in the area.”
“There wasn’t any,” Piros said. “Apart from the shaman’s faded spellwork, which was that of an ordinary assaying spell.”
Rory’s frown deepened. “I’m sorry for the clan and for the shaman’s wife, but without a magical issue involved, the shaman’s disappearance isn’t a magisterial problem. If the clan’s first shaman can’t find the lost one’s body, then the Frost Nomad Clan needs to employ an outside magician.”
“Body?” Were we searching for a dead man, a dead orc? Was that why Piros had requested Nils’s presence? Nils had found Sean. But my father was alive. Did that make a difference? “Why do you think the lost shaman is dead?”
Piros chose to answer me. “A shaman has a strong magical signature. Since the scientists in the bunkers can’t find it in the area, then the logical conclusion is as Rory said. The shaman is dead.”
“Or he opened a portal to somewhere else,” I suggested.
Rory rubbed my arm. “Shamans don’t have enough magic to do that.”
“Why hasn’t anyone found the body?” Nils seemed to be asking the question of the map on the wall slate. He zoomed in on Mount Redoubt.
I peered at the map. “I hadn’t realized it’s so close to Anchorage.”
Piros coughed. “Which once hosted an army base. Many of the military and their families survived the apocalypse.”
Rory, Nils and I turned to stare at him.
“What are you suggesting?” Rory asked coldly.
For the first time I considered the worrying fact that Piros had sought out Rory and not Istvan, who was his friend and the magistrate for the North American Territory. I’d foolishly assumed that Piros had brought the problem directly to Rory because my husband was head of the guard unit and investigated magic-related issues in the territory.
I hadn’t even begun to consider the complexity of Faerene politics.
“The orc shaman isn’t the first Faerene to go missing in the Migration. Four vanished during the first half year while the priority was to seal the Rift. One miscalculated her magic use in Earth conditions and obliterated herself.”
I reached for Rory. “Magic can destroy a magician?”
“It’s rare. Very, very rare. The woman was a vampire. Her seethe master misrepresented her stability so as to include her in the Migration. He regrets his decision.”
Yep. Dragons had lots of teeth.
Rory wrapped me up tight, his chest to my back.
“The other three were the victims of similar misadventures, though not magic-based, that could have been cover for suicides,” Piros said.
“A migration is traumatic,” Nils said quietly. “We were warned of the psychic cost of adjusting to a new world, and to permanent exile.”
Istvan had opened up about that sense of exile from Elysium once.
Perhaps in choosing group suicide as a weapon against the Faerene the militia had been more percipient than I’d given them credit.
“After the Rift sealed, the deaths ended. Until now.” Piros scratched at his left wing with a claw. “In the last three weeks five Faerene have gone missing, including the shaman. The scientists cannot detec
t their magical signatures. It would be easy for a rumor to grow that humans are killing Faerene when they come upon one alone.”
Fear and horror gripped me. “Are they?”
Piros shook his head. Given his great size, it was a substantial gesture of refutation. “There have been two recorded attacks by humans on lone Faerene and both victims got away with minor injuries. In general, we are good at avoiding humans, even those Faerene who have little magic. But rumors do not need truth to grow, so the Fae Council is concerned.”
He was a member of the Council. It was interesting how he spoke of it, setting it a distance from himself.
“The Council is primarily concerned with discovering how these five Faerene were killed. None of the bodies have been recovered, and while one might be a mistake by the Reclamation Team, five is not.” Piros paused. “There is one common element in the five disappearances. Each was broadly in the vicinity of a volcano. The disappearance of a member of the Silver Forest Pack—”
Rory tensed against me. “That is Koos’s pack. Tineke’s friend.”
I remembered the werewolf from the human familiar trials. “He wasn’t as powerful a magician as you.”
Piros tapped the tip of his tail against a leg of Istvan’s desk. A room that was comfortably large for most people, including a griffin of Istvan’s size, was barely adequate with the red dragon included. In the confined space, his every movement had impact. “Now, that is a very important point. The five victims were all mid-level magic users. Their communities considered them powerful, but not by comparison to us.” He meant himself, Rory and Nils. “Still, they used magic frequently.”
“Hang on.” Rory let me go to cross to the slate. He switched to a different map. “Silver Forest is in Eastern Europe. Where are the volcanos there?”
Piros responded instantly. “Ciomadul. It’s not immediately visible as a volcano. Certainly not active. But it has magma beneath it. It’s in the Carpathian Mountains, northern Romania. The other sites are in Indonesia, Japan and at Mount Nyiragongo in the Virunga Mountains, Africa.”
“So, not all orcs,” Nils said. Orcs preferred cold climates. They wouldn’t have settled in Indonesia or Africa.
“The orc shaman, the werewolf, two elves and a nymph. A dryad to be precise. She was in Indonesia. Rainforests. Even if the scientists can’t detect magic, it has to be involved. Silver Forest acted faster than the Frost Nomads. When they felt the loss of their packmate they followed his tracks. Where his tracks ended, there was nothing. No blood, no magic, no prints. Unfortunately, it had rained. Some of the pack group reported smelling a fading scent of ash, but others disputed it.”
Piros sighed. “Tempers were strained. They could have tried as soon as he died to lock into his location if they’d employed a magician. However, he wasn’t a well-liked pack member and they assumed that he’d died naturally, so no one rushed. It was nearly a day before they reached the end of his tracks on Ciomadul.”
Rory pursued a different issue. “Are you asking magisterial guards in the other territories to investigate?”
“They will cooperate with your investigation,” Piros said. “You can invoke the authority of the Fae Council. We believe that you and Nils are an effective pairing. He is sensitive to magic and magical attacks, and you have brute force.”
At the human familiar trials I’d learned that on Elysium prejudice against werewolves was strong. They were considered the people among the Faerene most likely to go feral.
I hadn’t expected Piros to demonstrate bigotry.
Istvan treated Rory as an equal.
My husband stared up at the dragon and Fae Council member. “You’ve also guaranteed my motivation, haven’t you? Find the truth or humans will be blamed. And you made sure that Amy was here to hear it.”
“Don’t agree because of me!”
“I can’t refuse an order from the Fae Council,” Rory spat. “Piros, in his scheming, is providing extra motivation.” He glared at the dragon. “I would do my job, regardless.”
I glared, too. I accepted, at least intellectually, that Rory’s job entailed risk. But did Piros have to send him into danger, now, on our honeymoon? Why not someone else? Hadn’t we endured enough? We had problems here at home: the militia, my father, I had to learn magic; and then, there was the orb.
“You may use as much magic as you require,” Piros said levelly. Part of the role of the scientists in the bunkers scattered around the world was to monitor magic use and levels. A system of rationing attempted to manage Earth’s least utilized resource: magic. According to Faerene theory, it’s low usage helped to limit the strain on our world’s shield and keep the Rift sealed.
Rory addressed Nils. “We’ll leave in two hours.”
Nils accepted the implicit dismissal and stalked out.
When the door closed behind him, Rory turned to Piros. “A word of warning. You might consider me beneath you, but the next time you use Amy as a pawn in your games consider Istvan’s loyalties. He counts you as his friend. But Amy is his familiar partner.”
“Don’t be rude,” Piros retorted. “I have not abused you or Amy.”
Rory’s mouth compressed.
“Rory—”
“I have to prepare for the mission. Excuse us, councilor.” Rory’s hand at my lower back urged me out.
I let him direct me, aware that we swam in complex political currents. “Bye, Piros.”
“Damn and blast.”
Rory hurried me up to our room. Its wards, even more than the doors, guarded our privacy.
I managed to hold in my questions till we reached our haven. “Why do you suddenly not trust Piros? I know why I don’t. To me he’s the Red Drake who announced the apocalypse on television.”
“I trust him to do his best for the Faerene.” Rory pulled out a satchel and began filling it with a change of clothes. “But if a mystery isn’t solved, scared people blame the authority investigating it.”
Which Piros had just shifted from the Fae Council and the scientists in the bunkers to Rory’s shoulders, after he’d used the threat that humans would be blamed to compel a human’s new husband into action.
I swore.
Rory laughed, and relaxed. “Creative.” He pulled me into a hug that toppled us onto the bed as we kissed. “Piros isn’t so bad, even with his seat on the Fae Council. I’m grumpy because I’m being forced to leave you, and because neither Istvan nor I are political players. The thought that some council directive could blindside us…”
Me, he meant. I was his vulnerability. “Maybe Dorotta could look into things.” I swatted him when he raised a dubious eyebrow. “Not because she’s a dragon like Piros.” I muttered a side comment. “No one’s like Piros.” Rory grinned and nipped the silencing finger I’d placed against his mouth. “Dorotta is the definition of curious. She’ll dive into the secrets of the Fae Council, given a chance.”
“A scary thought.” He sat us up. “But you’re right about her grasp of politics and her loyalty.”
It was rare for a dragon to join a werewolf pack. Having Dorotta in the Hope Fang Pack was one of the many things that made us weird. And perhaps, made us powerful. I watched Rory strip and don clothes suited to an Alaskan winter. “Does your wolf grow in a coat suited to weather conditions?”
“Yup.”
“Good.” At least I wouldn’t have to worry about him surviving the cold. “It could be our pack that has the Fae Council worried. They didn’t expect anything this unusual, did they?”
He gave me a serious look that meant he shared my suspicions and concern. “I’ll talk to Istvan. There’ll need to be some reassignment of guards to cover Nils’s and my absence, and Dorotta’s covert council investigation, if Istvan approves it. That is a good idea.”
He swung his satchel over a shoulder. “We’ll be gone three days, maximum, and we’ll stay in contact. Your father will be safe in the guard quarters till my return.”
“I’m not worried about him.”
“Uh huh. Walk me to the kitchen.”
I jumped off our bed. “I’m more worried about you. Be safe!”
Chapter 8
The evening following Rory’s departure to Alaska, Istvan translocated in and gave me a lesson in magic before dinner. It was a multi-purpose visit. He was checking in on how I was holding together, teaching me as promised, and demonstrating for anyone who was interested—and had somehow missed his previous indulgent care—that he was invested in my well-being. His clerks also had verbal reports for him and he requested a meeting with Bataar.
But first, my magic lesson.
Mage lamps lit his office as he began. “Magic is the collective ‘What if…?’ of all the unused possibilities in the universe.” He held up a glossy black paw. “Which I know sounds like gibberish, but consider gravity. You don’t need to understand how gravity works for you to remain safely on the ground and not float away. Magic is the same. You don’t need to understand the theory of it to use it, not in the beginning.”
“All right.”
Once he had my agreement, he continued. “People with a small amount of magic mostly expend it instinctively to reinforce a shield around themselves. This is similar to the shield around worlds. It reinforces who a person—or a world—is. It bars outside influences from reshaping the person.”
“You can do that? You can turn someone into a toad?”
He clacked his beak, disgusted. “Why would anyone want to do that?”
“I don’t know. It’s what witches did in the old human fairy tales.”
He shook out his wings. “Technically, it is possible. There is a spectrum for how people can change, from different thoughts to different emotions, and finally, to different bodies. A person’s shield tends to be strongest over the mind and heart.”
“So, it’s like an aura?”
“My understanding is that the human idea of an aura is an inwardly generated outward sign of their state of being.”
“Ye-es? I never believed in hocus pocus things before the apocalypse.”
Istvan nodded. “Forget auras. The important—”
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