Javieri nodded approval. “And the protection of the Sisterhood—”
“The Sisterhood got us into this in the first place,” Glyndon interrupted. “I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on it now, if I were you.”
Kayl stood still, staring around the circle of faces. She saw sympathy on some, but no support, and she felt her temper rising. Dara was her daughter, her responsibility; how dare these people try to say what she must do? Yet… Glyndon was right. Miles were no protection against magic, but the companionship of wizards might be. Kayl scowled. Barthelmy’s companionship so far could hardly have been called a protection. Kayl knew she would have a hard time forgiving her old friend for what had happened, however harmless the original reasons for the magic lessons had been. But that was past; Kayl could not deny the validity of the argument just because circumstances had worked against it in a single instance.
Still feeling angry and worried, and feeling, as well, as if she were being pushed and bullied into agreeing against her better judgment, Kayl nodded. “All right,” she said. “Mark and Dara stay with the expedition.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
THE NEWS OF THE finding of the crystal chip, and of Barthelmy’s and Dara’s reaction to it, had spread quickly through the expedition. Kayl could almost feel the curious gazes of the Sisters as they traveled. She did her best to ignore them, and walked in silence beside Dara and Glyndon. She had no real reason to stay close to them while they traveled; Glyndon was concentrating on remembering every bit of demon-lore and every protective spell he had ever heard, and Dara was completely absorbed in what Glyndon was telling her. Kayl had very quickly lost track of the conversation, but it made her feel better to be close at hand.
Mark walked with her during the early part of the day, clearly torn between worry about Dara and irritation with her for spoiling their planned surprise. Kayl heard him mutter, “I told her magic was stupid” as they started up a steep incline.
“And why do you think magic is stupid?” Kayl said.
Mark looked up, startled; he had evidently not expected to be overheard. “Nobody does anything with it,” he said, waving toward the Sisters ahead.
“They can’t, Mark,” Kayl reminded him. “That’s why we’re here.”
“Glyndon never does anything either,” Mark said. “Except see things, and he doesn’t do that on purpose.”
“Mark!” Xaya came down the incline, half running, half sliding past the amused Sisters. “Mark, Father says there’s a stream up ahead that’s got the kind of rocks with fish in them, and Mother says we can hunt for some if we want to. If it’s all right with you,” she added, looking at Kayl.
“Rocks don’t have fish in them!” Mark said scornfully.
“They do too!” Xaya retorted. “Sometimes, anyway. Father showed me one once, that the old Prefect was having him make into a scroll-weight. They’re inside, and you have to smash the rocks open to find them.”
On Kayl’s other side, Dara stopped talking to Glyndon to listen to Xaya. “Is that true, Mother?” she asked.
“Yes, it is. I’ve seen the kind of thing Xaya means. They aren’t common, but if Alden says the stream ahead may have some, it probably does.”
“Live fish?” Mark said, still skeptical but willing to be convinced.
“No, silly,” Xaya said. “Bones and things. Like somebody made a clay cast of a fish, only in rock.”
“That’s weird,” Mark said.
“Why would a wizard want to wrap a rock around a fish?” Dara asked Glyndon.
“What makes you think a wizard did it?” Glyndon said.
“Well, how else could it happen? But it doesn’t sound as if it would be any use.”
“Wizards are always doing things that aren’t any use,” Mark said before Glyndon could answer. “When they do anything at all.”
“Why don’t you see if you can find a couple of these rocks?” Kayl said quickly. “Maybe you can figure it out for yourselves.”
“Can I go too, Mother?” Dara asked.
Kayl looked at Glyndon, who nodded. She gave her permission, and the three children scrambled up the hill almost as fast as Xaya had come down it. Kayl watched them go, then turned to Glyndon with an inquiring look.
“She’ll be able to absorb things more quickly if she gets a break now and then,” he said. Then he smiled. “And so will I.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I have to find out how much Dara knows, how she’s been taught,” Glyndon said. “The Sisterhood’s approach to magic is… very unusual.”
“Why don’t you talk to Barthelmy about it?”
Glyndon blinked. “Because I hadn’t thought of it,” he confessed. “Excuse me.” He scanned the string of Sisters above them in search of Barthelmy, then began to climb more rapidly.
Kayl did not try to follow him. She finished the climb alone, feeling glad he had not stayed and yet wishing he had. She wanted someone to snap at or quarrel with in order to relieve the mounting pressure of her worries about Dara, about the crystal, about the Sisterhood, about the Tower. The realization made her feel ashamed, but it did not lessen her irritability. She set her teeth and tried to empty her mind of everything but climbing.
The technique was only partially successful; the incline was not really steep enough to demand such concentration, and she had nearly reached the top. The descent on the other side was just as frustrating. It required enough attention that she could not ponder her troubles deeply enough to resolve them, but it did not occupy her mind fully enough to allow her a respite from worry. When they stopped for lunch beside the stream at the foot of the mountain, Kayl felt like a bear just out of hibernation—hungry, cross, and ready to tear the arms off anyone who got in her way.
Her first act was to check on the children, whom she found happily smashing fist-sized rocks against larger rocks by the side of the stream. She withdrew without interrupting them and went to collect her ration of cheese and journey-bread. She saw Glyndon and Barthelmy, deep in conversation, and waved at them but did not stop. After a brief search, she found a place a little apart from the rest of the expedition and sat down to eat.
The day was relatively warm, though Kayl could still see snowcaps on the tops of the mountains around them. The sun was high enough for its rays to reach even to the bottom of the canyons between the mountains; the stream sparkled like a flow of diamonds. Kayl stretched her legs out into a patch of sunlight and let her cloak fall open to enjoy the warmth.
“May I join you?” The deep voice was unmistakable.
Kayl turned and found Ferianek Trone standing behind her, looking unusually grave. “If you wish,” she said.
“Thank you.” Ferianek seated himself. Kayl began eating her lunch, wondering what the scholar wanted. After a time, Ferianek said, “I heard about your girl and the crystal.”
“I’m not surprised,” Kayl said, struggling to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “I think everyone knows the story by now.”
“Probably.” Ferianek’s head turned toward the stream, where the sounds of shouting and laughter were still occasionally punctuated by the sharp cracking noise of one rock hitting another. “I think I owe you an apology,” he said.
“For what?” Kayl said. “Don’t tell me you’ve been teaching Dara as well!”
“No,” Ferianek said, smiling. The smile faded and he said seriously, “In a way, that’s the problem.”
“I don’t suppose you could be a little clearer?”
Ferianek sighed. “I feel responsible for what has happened to your daughter, and to your friends as well.”
“You mean Glyndon?”
“And those who died at Glendura’s Tomb, yes.” Ferianek sighed again, and held up a hand to forestall Kayl’s objection. “I know. I know. I wasn’t there. That’s the whole point.”
Kayl stared at him. “Ferianek, if you—”
“No, listen to me. My family have been Watchers of the valley for over
a thousand years; there’s a binding between us and the place you call the Twisted Tower that keeps us here, in these mountains, close to the valley. It serves little purpose, now, for most of the spells we once knew have been lost or forgotten. But the binding goes on.” His voice deepened further, and the bitterness in it was evident. “I am tied to the Windhome Mountains. For more than thirty years I have been searching for a way to break that tie.
“I knew of the Sisterhood’s search for the Tower, so I came to you sixteen years ago and told you how to find it. I hoped that you would destroy it, or at least change somehow the spells that hold me. But I did not tell you all that I could have; I did not speak of the sealed doors or the crystal that powers the Tower’s spells. I could not ask you to harm the Tower, nor help you do so, but I could hope. Unwarned of what lay within, you might have smashed the crystal or abolished the spells on the Tower or taken its power to use for yourselves.”
“You were willing to wager all our lives on the hope that we would accidentally set you free?” Kayl said incredulously.
“I was desperate. And I did not know there was danger in the Tower beyond the spells that guarded it. I did not know the black creature was there, and alive! I thought all you had to fear was magic, and the Sisterhood has a good reputation for that. So I let you and your friends find a way inside, without telling you what you might find. And from that error, the rest has followed.”
“And the second expedition the Sisterhood sent?” Kayl asked. “Did you know about it, too?”
Ferianek nodded. “I knew, and again I did nothing. I shirked my duty as Watcher of the Tomb and let them come; I betrayed my oath as a follower of the Way of the Third Moon and let them die. And all because I wanted to be free of the obligations that hold me here.”
“And now you are trying to redeem yourself by helping us?”
“I wish I could say yes,” Ferianek said, speaking with more bitterness than Kayl had ever heard in his voice before. “But this time there are Magicseekers on the road to the Tower. Their reputation is as bad as the Sisterhood’s is good; I have no choice but to try to find some way of stopping them. So, again, I use you for my own purposes.”
“I see.” Kayl was surprised to find that she did see. Ferianek was a scholar at heart, not a man of action. His desire to leave the duties he had never wanted was easy to understand; so was the desperation that had led him to clutch at the unlikely possibility that the Sisterhood’s first venture to the Tower might, somehow, free him. His guilt over the consequences of his inaction was almost too familiar. But how much would really have happened differently if they had heard Ferianek’s tales before they entered the Tower that first time? Kevran would not have broken the crystal, true, but they would surely have tried to take it with them. And if Glyndon was right, and the black thing was guarding the crystal, the results might well have been the same.
“It’s easy to blame yourself for might-haves and might-not-haves,” Kayl said at last. “It’s easy, and it’s human. It’s also stupid.”
Ferianek looked at her in surprise, then laughed. “You sound like Adept who taught me the Way of the Third Moon.”
“He must have had children.”
“She did,” Ferianek said, smiling.
They ate in silence for a moment, then Kayl asked, “What would you do if you could leave the Windhome Mountains?”
“I’d go to Kith Alunel,” Ferianek said promptly. His eyes lit with longing for a dream long denied, and his voice was eager. “There are scrolls in the Queen’s Library.… I could spend years there.”
“You’d spend the rest of your life in a library?”
Ferianek laughed sheepishly. “Not all of it, I hope. I’d like to visit the Waywalker settlement on the Island of the Moon, too.”
“Is that the colony you told Bryn and Alden about?”
Ferianek nodded. “I would like to have a hand in building it. From here, I can only send others to help.” He smiled. “My daughter and my eldest son are already there.”
Kayl realized with a slight shock that this was the first time, in over two weeks of traveling together, that she had heard Ferianek speak of anything personal. She was about to question him further, when a shout echoed through the trees.
Ferianek looked up. “Time to go.”
Kayl pushed herself to her feet with a groan. “I thought I’d gotten back into shape after ten months of traveling.”
“Climbing mountains uses different muscles from ordinary walking,” Ferianek pointed out. “The tops of the thighs, for instance.”
“I know, I know,” Kayl said. “But knowing doesn’t make them any less sore.”
Ferianek laughed and went off to collect his pack. Kayl shook the crumbs out of her cloak and started down the hill toward the stream.
The three children accosted her excitedly as soon as she came in sight, and proudly displayed their finds. Mark had found a smallish rock which, when broken open, revealed a star-shaped skeleton. He also had two larger rocks, one containing the impression of a twisted leaf, the other showing the skeleton of a fish’s tail. Dara had found the pattern of a delicate, fernlike leaf, and Xaya had a large rock which had split perfectly in half, showing a complete fish on either side.
“Very impressive,” Kayl said. “Have you eaten? Good; leave the rocks and go get your packs. It’s time to go now.”
“Leave them!” Mark said indignantly. “I’m not going to leave them.”
Kayl studied him for a moment. “All right, if you want to walk around with a pack full of rocks, you can. But if you take them, you’ll have to carry them until we camp tonight, and I don’t want to hear any complaints about how heavy they are, either.”
“I won’t,” Mark promised, and immediately began gathering up his three pieces. Dara looked thoughtfully at her own find, as though wishing it were smaller, but finally she picked it up. Xaya had already fitted both halves of her fish-rock back together and was cradling them protectively in her arms.
Kayl went with Mark and Dara to help them find room for the rocks in the bundles they carried. She was reasonably sure that the rocks, however interesting, would not be carried past the first rest stop, so she made sure that they were easily accessible. By the time they finished, Ferianek had started out along the bank of the stream, with the first of the Sisters just behind him, and Kayl had to hurry to catch up.
The afternoon’s march provided Kayl with even more time to think than had the morning’s journey. She had more than enough to think about; her conversation with Ferianek had shaken her. She could not help seeing parallels between his situation and her own, but it was the differences that disturbed her most. She had been trapped by circumstances into coming on this expedition, and she resented it fiercely. But Ferianek, who was bound to this task far more surely than she, and with less consent, did not seem to feel resentment or anger toward anyone. Kayl had been laying her troubles at the door of the Sisterhood, blaming them for their interference in her life. Ferianek blamed no one but himself.
Kayl was quiet and thoughtful for the rest of the day and into the evening, but she came to no conclusions and found no way around her worries. Finally she forced herself to let her tired body sleep, but even her dreams were troubled. Next morning she felt almost as tired as she had when she lay down. She tried to suppress her irritability during the day’s travel, with only partial success.
So absorbed was Kayl in her thoughts that she did not at first realize that the late-afternoon rest halt had become the end of the day’s journey. When the various activities of setting up camp finally registered on her mind, she went looking for Javieri.
“Ferianek says that we are less than an hour’s walk from the valley,” Javieri said in response to Kayl’s question. “I am sending the scouts to make certain the Magicseekers have not reached it ahead of us. Besides, after what you and Barthelmy have told us, I have no desire to spend a night in that place. We will go on in the morning.”
Kayl looked up at t
he mountains and shivered.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
DEMMA JOL, BRYN AND Alden returned to the camp before dark with word that the valley around the Twisted Tower was deserted. Javieri nodded and summoned those most immediately involved to her tent for a final conference. Kayl followed Glyndon in. Barthelmy and Corrana were already present; so, to Kayl’s surprise, were Ferianek Trone and the Wyrds. Kayl sat down on the ground just inside the door of the tent. Glyndon followed suit, and Javieri began.
“Tomorrow we will reach the Twisted Tower,” the Elder Mother said. “I have decided that the entire expedition will accompany us to the valley.”
Barthelmy made a surprised noise. “All of us? I thought—”
“According to Ferianek, there are twenty Magicseekers somewhere between the edge of the Windhome Mountains and the valley of the Twisted Tower,” Javieri said patiently. “We know they have not yet reached the valley; we have no guarantee that they will not arrive while we are there. If they do, we will need every sword we have. And every spell, no matter how feeble.”
“If it really is the Tower that is interfering with your magic, do you think it wise to use even weak spells so close to it?” Glyndon asked.
“Perhaps not,” Corrana put in dryly. “But I, for one, think it better than being killed by Magicseekers.”
“The scouts will, of course, check once again to be sure that the Magicseekers have not arrived before we enter the valley,” Javieri said. “Bryn and Alden have proven matchless at finding traces in the woods. They will cover the forest on the slopes around the valley. Demma, Jol and Forrin will—”
“No,” said Kayl.
Javieri looked at her with narrowed eyes. “What?”
“She means you should have asked us before you made all these plans,” Bryn said. “We aren’t members of your Sisterhood, remember?”
“I beg your pardon.” Javieri had the grace to look uncomfortable. “You have been so helpful I had forgotten.”