“Shadea is ready,” Traunt Rowan advised him as they reached their destination, and Bek understood it to be a warning that he should be ready, as well.
The cold chamber felt frigid in the wake of the night’s recent departure, the chill of the darkness still present. Bek shivered involuntarily as he entered the room, hunching his shoulders against the sudden change in temperature. Shadea a’Ru stood to one side, looking out the window at the sunrise, her broad shoulders wrapped in a scarlet cloak that fell all the way to the floor. When she turned, he saw that the clasp that fastened it bore the crest of the Druid order, the instantly recognizable emblem of the Eilt Druin. It flashed brightly as the light caught it momentarily, and Bek thought he caught a reflection of that hard brightness in Shadea’s eyes as well.
“We are anxious to begin, Bek,” she said perfunctorily, nodding to Rue, but not speaking to her. “Are you sufficiently rested now?”
“I am,” Bek assured her. “Let’s begin.”
She beckoned him to stand with her at the basin. Bek moved over to peer down into the swirl of deep green waters, seeing fluctuations on their surface that seemed to have no discernible origin. He studied them for a moment, then glanced at Shadea expectantly. As he did so, he caught sight of Gerand Cera, who was standing back and to one side of him in the shadows. He wondered how many more were in hiding somewhere in that room. He wondered if he was going to be able to fool them all.
“You already understand what it is the scrye waters do,” Shadea said. “If you can use your magic to connect with their impulses, you should be able to reach beyond what is visible for a more comprehensive reading. I am hopeful that your reach will extend to the magic that resides in your sister or perhaps your son. Any little trace, any clue revealed by doing so may prove helpful.”
Helpful to whom? he thought. But he said nothing, only nodding in response.
“Would you move back from me a little?” he asked.
All of them, Rue included, stepped away from the basin to give him the space he needed. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes in concentration. He calmed himself, centered himself, and then lost himself in the deep silence that settled over the room. He would have only one chance, and if he wasn’t convincing enough, he would be in the worst trouble of his life. These were Druids, he reminded himself for what must have been the hundredth time. Druids weren’t easily fooled when it came to the use of magic.
On the other hand, none of them possessed or truly understood the magic of the wishsong. That was his edge, if he had any.
He waited until he could hear himself breathing in the stillness, then summoned the magic. He began with a low humming, a sound that mirrored a wind’s whisper as it passed through the branches of the trees, soft and silky. He brought it out of its resting place and let it fill him with warmth. The cold of the room lessened and then disappeared. His concentration was so complete that the people around him disappeared as well. He was alone, lost in himself and in his magic.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw only the basin in front of him. He reached out with his hands and let them hover just above the deep green waters, so close he could almost feel the strange ripples that disturbed the otherwise placid surface. He moved his hands slowly, taking his time, not rushing the flow of the magic from his body. He watched the waters respond as he let the first tendrils stroke their surface. He felt them shudder at the intrusion.
He worked more swiftly then, enveloping the scrye waters in a broad swath intended to detect any obvious sign of Grianne or Pen. The former’s presence would reveal itself immediately, so strong was the connection between them. Shadea had been right about that; their shared use of magic was a powerful link. But nothing showed itself; no sign of his sister surfaced. He kept searching, sending the wishsong’s magic deep into the scrye waters, into the gridwork of the lines of power that crisscrossed the Four Lands, sifting and probing. He moved his hands in a slow, circular motion that took him in all directions, toward all of the possible places she might have gone.
Still nothing.
He was beginning to think that his efforts were a waste of time, a result he did not like to contemplate, when abruptly he touched on something. The surface of the scrye waters rippled in response, and he moved his focus away immediately so Shadea would not see. He continued his search in other areas, taking his time, trying to give an appearance of thoroughness. He must seem to be working hard at making the magic connect; he must not appear duplicitous. But it was harder now, because his instincts were to return to the place on the gridwork where he had found what he was looking for.
Time slipped away. Nothing further revealed itself. He let his hands sweep back to the point of connection, a testing of his previous discovery. Once again, the scrye waters rippled, and he felt the presence of wishsong magic. Moving his hands away, he marked the place in his mind, knowing now where to go and what to look for.
Then, preoccupied with his discovery and ready to break this off, he let his hands settle over the place on the gridwork that marked Paranor’s solitary spires.
Instantly, the scrye waters boiled and steamed, then exploded in a massive geyser. Magic ripped through Bek, breaking down his defenses and his connection with the basin waters. He was caught completely unprepared, and the next thing he knew he was flat on his back on the floor, his clothing steaming and his hair singed.
“Bek!” Rue was at his side, cradling his head in her hands, bent close to his face. He blinked hard, trying to dispel the dizziness that was making the room spin and her voice echo. Had he lost consciousness? How long had he been lying there? ”Look at me!” she said. “Can you see me? Can you hear what I’m saying?”
He nodded wordlessly. Their Druid hosts were gathered around him as well, crouched like vultures, faces a mix of hunger and expectation. He had planned to deceive them by creating a diversion with the wishsong’s magic. He hadn’t planned on it happening this way. His entire body throbbed and his head ached as if he had taken a physical beating.
“What did you see?” Shadea demanded of him, her eyes narrowed. “You must have seen something, felt something.”
He shook his head. His tongue felt thick in his mouth, and his teeth were gritted against the pain. “Nothing,” he mumbled as he worked his jaw muscles, trying to make them relax. “I don’t know what happened. I was working the magic, just a general search. My hands passed over Paranor’s location on the map. Then this.”
He saw recognition in her eyes, a glint of satisfaction and exultation, a response that suggested she had found what she had been looking for and that it was not something she would ever reveal to him.
Then a veiled, guarded look took its place, and she smiled. “You came in contact with the magic that wards the Druid’s Keep, Bek. It was a backlash of the protections we set in place for ourselves. Paranor was defending us. I should have warned you. Are you all right?”
“I’ll need to rest myself a bit before I try again. I’m not done yet with my search.”
“You shall have all the rest you need.” She stood up, glancing at the other two. “He has done well, for his first attempt. He’ll do even better next time. Traunt, take our guests back to their rooms. See that they have everything they need while Bek recovers. Food and drink and fresh clothing, perhaps a walk in the gardens later. On the morrow, Bek, we will try again.”
She was gone from the room so quickly that he had no further chance to question her odd response. Still woozy, he drew himself up into a sitting position and hung his head between his knees.
“That was dramatic,” Rue whispered as she placed his arm over her shoulders and helped him to stand. Traunt Rowan had moved ahead to open the door for them and was looking down the hallway after Shadea and Gerand Cera. “Did you intend to hurt yourself like that?”
“I didn’t intend to hurt myself at all, if things had gone the way they were supposed to,” he whispered back. He saw the look of surprise in her eyes and managed a tired smile. “I
didn’t plan any of that.”
“What happened, then?”
“I don’t know. Something I didn’t expect. But it wasn’t wasted effort, anyway.”
She leaned close. “Penderrin?”
He nodded. “I think I found him.”
He fell asleep almost immediately after reaching their bedchamber, too exhausted even to remove his clothes. He slept soundly until Rue woke him to make him eat something, and then he fell right back asleep. He dreamed, but his dreams were disjointed and strange, a collection of images from his past life and from other lives entirely, all connected in a way that made them surreal and unfathomable. He thought he was aware of Rue speaking to him more than once, but it wasn’t enough to bring him out of the dreams.
When he woke again, the sun was setting. He was alone in the room, a tray of food sitting on the table by his bed. He ate, then washed and moved over to sit by the window and watch the sun disappear and the moon come up. Stars began to appear in the darkening sky north.
It was another half hour before Rue reappeared.
“You’re awake,” she said as she came through the doorway and saw him. “How do you feel?”
“As if I’ve been thrown off a cliff. But better than I felt earlier. The dizziness is gone; the aching isn’t so bad. I expect I’ll live. Where were you?”
“Traunt Rowan took me for a walk in the Druid gardens.” She smiled. “They really are beautiful, and I would have loved to see more of them. But the walk turned into an inquisition. I spent most of my time fending off questions about Pen. The Druids don’t know much about our son, but they seem awfully eager to learn. Too eager.”
She kept her voice low, moving over to sit beside him on the bench. “On the other hand, I got a good look around. I have a better idea of how to get around than I did before. I thought we might want to know where all the doors and windows are, in case we end up having to get out of here quickly.”
She put her arm around him. “You scared me this morning. Are you sure you’re all right?”
He leaned over and kissed her, then put his lips against her ear. “I’ve been thinking while you were out,” he whispered. “Thinking about this morning and what happened in the cold chamber. I have some ideas that might be worth considering.”
“Tell me about Penderrin first,” she insisted, putting her arms around him and drawing him close, her voice a whisper as well. “I’ve been waiting all day for you to be coherent enough to talk to me. You said you found him?”
He nodded into her shoulder. “In the Charnal Mountains. It happened too quickly for me to be sure exactly where he is; I couldn’t take the time to find out without giving away what I was doing. But it was definitely him.”
“Why would he be all the way up there?”
“I don’t know.” He took a deep breath. “Here’s what I do know. I was doing a general search through the scrye waters for any sign of Pen or Grianne. I found Pen in the Charnals, like I said, but I moved away from the contact before Shadea or one of the others could tell what I was doing. Maybe they wouldn’t have known anyway, but I didn’t want to chance it. I purposely didn’t search Paranor on the grid; after all, that was where Grianne was supposed to have disappeared. What was the point?”
“A question you might have answered differently if you had stopped to think about it,” she said quietly.
He nodded. “True enough. Anyway, I worked my way back to Pen to make certain he was in the Charnals, that I hadn’t made a mistake. Then I moved my hands away again, trying to decide what to do next. I let my concentration lapse, and my hands drifted back down over Paranor. That was when the scrye waters exploded and threw me away from the basin. Shadea claimed that Paranor’s warding magic responded to my intrusion, defending the Keep. But I wasn’t trying to intrude. I wasn’t doing anything threatening. What I was doing was searching for Pen and Grianne, and I think the magic that wards Paranor reacted to that. I think it reacted because I found something it was trying to hide.”
She was silent a moment. “But it wasn’t Penderrin because he is somewhere in the Charnals. So it has to be Grianne.”
“I think so. When she disappeared, Tagwen left Paranor without confiding in any of the Druids who might have helped him. I think the key to discovering what happened to my sister lies here, and that these Druids who claim to be her friends are covering it up.”
“But you were brought here to find her. Why would they do that if they are trying to hide where she is?”
“I think we were brought here to find Pen and found Grianne by accident. Did you see Shadea’s face when I explained what I was doing when the magic threw me back from the scrye waters? She was elated! I think it confirmed something she already knew about Grianne. It’s Pen she’s looking for, but she had to tell me to look for my sister, too, because it would have seemed odd not to.”
Bek felt her shake her head slowly against his own. “I still don’t understand what Penderrin has to do with all this. I still don’t see why he’s up in the Charnal Mountains, miles from everything.”
He didn’t make an immediate response. He didn’t have the answers to those questions. His instincts told him that Pen was running away, that he had fled Patch Run to avoid capture, perhaps from these Druids, perhaps from someone else. What troubled him was that Pen would have come looking for them if he had been able to do so. He wouldn’t have run off blindly, and he certainly wouldn’t have gone into the Charnals without a very good reason.
He stared off into the growing dark. Pen was levelheaded and capable, but that didn’t stop Bek from being frightened for his son. Pen was just a boy, and he lacked the life experience necessary to deal with this sort of danger. If he was being chased, there was always the possibility that he would panic.
“Bek, I just thought of something,” Rue whispered. She moved so that they could see each other, her face so close to his that they were almost touching. “If Shadea knows the wishsong’s magic exposed Grianne, she will expect it to expose Penderrin as well. You won’t be able to pretend otherwise for long.”
He nodded. “I thought of that.”
“We can’t allow that to happen. How are we going to prevent it?”
He leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth. “While they’re sleeping, we’re going to use the scrye waters and find him ourselves.”
NINE
Night had fallen across the Four Lands, and Arishaig was bright with the light of torches and candles when Sen Dunsidan made his way back from dinner to his sleeping chambers. The day had been productive. An address before the Coalition Council had produced a standing ovation following his carefully worded promise that he had found a way to resolve the war on the Prekkendorran quickly and favorably. Even those who would have liked to see his role in the Federation government diminished congratulated him afterwards for his courage and commitment. They were counting on him to fail, of course, but he was confident that he wouldn’t.
This was due in part to an earlier visit to Etan Orek, who had completed all work on the first of what he was now calling his ”fire launchers.” He had mounted it on a swivel that allowed it to swing left and right at a ninety-degree firing angle and was equipped with a sighting system and recoil springs to keep it from disrupting the flight of an airship, once it was in place and operating. It was also equipped with controls to manipulate the amount of energy fed through the crystals and released from the mouth of the firing tube.
When Sen Dunsidan had tested it this time, the scope of its destructive capabilities had left him breathless with anticipation.
His excitement was only marginally diminished by news that no other weapons were yet complete. But after long hours of experimentation using different combinations of crystals, Orek was close to duplicating his first effort and expected to complete a second launcher before the week was out.
At the construction site for Federation airships, mercenary Rover designers and builders were at work on a huge new flagship, the Dechtera, which w
ould carry Sen Dunsidan’s secret weapon into battle when she was completed. He inspected their work and was satisfied with their progress. For the first time in a very long time, he could imagine a world dominated by the Federation.
His bedchamber was lit with candles, but deeply shadowed in its corners and alcoves when he entered, and he might not have seen her at all had she not immediately moved out into the light to greet him. His heart went directly to his throat in that instant, freezing his muscles and his voice so that he was rendered completely helpless. Then he recognized her, and he gave a quick, sharp sigh.
“Iridia,” he said. He straightened himself, his composure recovered and his irritation fanned. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.”
Iridia Eleri stepped forward, her slender body and white skin giving her an almost ethereal look. She was wrapped in a lightweight traveling cloak that hung open to the floor, and her dark hair fell in loose waves about her shoulders. He was captivated, as always, by her impossible beauty. He had not seen her in weeks, not since she had given him the liquid night that he, in turn, had given to Shadea a’Ru to eliminate Grianne Ohmsford and seize control of Paranor. She had been his spy within the Druid’s Keep for some time, but it was not until she had provided the potion that she had proved her real value.
“Waiting for me for what reason?” he demanded. “It was our agreement that you would remain at Paranor and monitor the activities of our new Ard Rhys, so that I might have eyes and ears inside the Keep. It was our agreement that you would never come here.”
The Elven sorceress shrugged. “The agreement has been changed.”
He had never trusted her, never felt comfortable with what she was doing for him. He was more than willing to accept her offer of help and make use of her services as a spy. But she had been close to Shadea for too long for him to feel comfortable with the idea that she was ready to switch loyalties to him. It was one thing to betray Grianne Ohmsford, whom they all hated. It was another to betray a friend. Not that someone like Iridia would ever be bound too closely by friendship. But her machinations confused him. She would not tell him where she had gotten the liquid night. She would not tell him why she had chosen to pass it to Shadea through him rather than to give it to her friend directly. She would not explain her need for secrecy in working with him. Try as he might, he could not figure out what she would gain from all this. That sort of thing tended to bother a man whose life was built around understanding the nature of manipulations.