> Peculiarly, though the Crowns took pains to ensure the earthmotes were populated with a dizzying variety of different plants and animals, some species clearly occupy a special place fo favor and were made ubiquitous. These are mostly food staples such as potatoes and rice, or domestic animals such as sheep, cattle and horses. And, for some reason, tea and coffee. —Leothr Hagardsson, The Shape of Worlds
THE CAVES OF HAPTAR GETESH
Prathardesh Earthmote 09.06.03.12.08
Deng-Nah had never been in a cave before. They couldn’t all be like this, could they? This, all by itself, might be a sight worth leaving home for.
Jerl had spoken vaguely of steles and bas-reliefs in these caves that hinted at some ancient mystery of the Crowns and Heralds and the first free humans. Nothing he’d described—-or, to judge from his expression, read—had prepared them for the vista now laid out before them.
The stone…glowed.
Or…or rather, veins in the stone glowed. There were striations of quartz or some other crystal running through the rock, and some magic was still alive within it (Where? How? From what source?) for the veins shed light about as bright as a candle or oil lantern as they ran through the walls and even shone through the thin layer of mineral deposition on the floor. Color flowed through the living rock, now hearth yellow, now as green as copper salts, now bluer than indigo.
The cave’s floor, unsurprisingly, was a shallow pool so entirely still and clear that it should have reflected its environment with mirror perfection. Instead, the light that shone up from underneath to give the water an eerie radiance and cast shifting dappled patterns all about the roof and walls. Here and there, as the cave wended its way back into the mountainside, a crack or fissure admitted some daylight and falling water, and plants clustered around these in reaching thickets that piled atop and battled with each other for a taste of the sun.
But not all the cave was choked with plants or gleaming with magic. To either side of the pool, the wall had been extensively chiseled and polished back to the bare rock and made smooth and flat with unbelievable dilligence and effort. Into this canvas of stone had been carved…
Well. Therein lay the tragedy. Across thousands of years, not even stone was a permanent medium, especially not here where the fume of waterfalls and the humid fog lingered in the air and settled on every surface. What had once been deep, clearly graven, sharp and clear was now blurred to the point of invisibility behind a milky film of deposited minerals that reminded Deng-Nah of candle wax.
Even so, it was one of the most incredibly beautiful things he’d ever laid eyes on.
The centerpiece was a statue, out in the middle of the water. It was the work of ancient sculptors with primitive tools and only whatever art the very beginnings of the craft could yield, and the result was anatomically incorrect in several regards. The face in particular was oddly proportioned, the eyes over-large and angled outwards, the hair a mere craggy blob, the hands tiny and really only suggested at by three parallel scores in the stone at the end of skinny, undetailed arms.
But it was unquestionably the Herald of the Beloved. Raksuul. Rheannach. The Protector of Men. There was no mistaking the love those ancient people had poured into their creation, crude though it was to Deng-Nah’s sensibilities.
Jerl stirred first. He muttered something Deng-Nah only half-caught. “We need to go…” something. Deeper, probably. Or further. Setting deed to word, he drew a magestone from his pouch and tucked it into the clever little mesh-fronted pocket that Deng-Nah had noted many Garanese wore on their outer clothes. A sensible solution that: it let them benefit from the light and still have both hands free. Jerl had a similar pocket on his back, presumably to illuminate all around him in Eclipse.
For his part, Deng-Nah stopped, swept up a loose pebble, and illuminated it before following.
The cave divided as it went back, winding in two directions. Jerl seemed to know the way, and Deng-Nah noted a certain surety of step. This was not the route of a man remembering details he’d previously memorized or read. He sounded more like he was listening to a voice only he could hear.
Premonition. If that was the right word to describe what Mouse had explained. As Nah understood it, Jerl had already seen the many winding roads of the future like a man poring over a map. And he had seen one particular road, or a particular series of roads that must be taken to reach the desired destination. And at times such as these, he remembered.
So. Even though Deng-Nah rapidly lost his way as the cave wound and twisted awkwardly, now up, now down, now left, now right, now so narrow Jerl could barely fit through and then cavernous enough that the Golden River or the Herald of Lore could have occupied them comfortable, they never lost their way.
Soon, it became clear they were in the places where people hade once lived. these were dry, the floor having been carved here so that the water was channelled into a narrow, fast run over smooth stone that made little spray or humidity. They passed ranks of alcoves cut into the walls, each just large enough for one or two to sleep in and keep some personal items. It seemed a cramped and undignified existence to Deng-Nah…but then again, he had never been a slave of the Ordfey. To the escaped humans of those ancient times, perhaps this had been a palace?
Through all its meanderings and strange turns, though, the cave angled ever downwards, through chambers clearly expanded and modified for human use, though the precise functions had long been lost to the years.
“No furniture…”
“What’s that?” Mouse asked.
“I said…there’s no furniture. They had furniture in the Ordfey, I’m sure of it. And of course, the slaves were the ones who made it, so the escaped slaves would know how…so where is it all?”
“It’s been thousands of years. Maybe it just didn’t survive?”
“No hint of it at all? No bowls or cups? No knives or any other tool? Look:” Nah gestured toward a spot along the near wall where a depression had been carved, or some natural hollow enlarged. “That was a surely a hearth, and the air here is still. Even now, after all this time, shouldn’t there be some sign of ashes? What does wood ash become after thousands of years in a cave?”
“I have no idea,” Mouse admitted.
“Nor I, but I imagine it does not evaporate.”
“So…what? Somebody cleaned out the ashes and scrubbed the stone, and there was never another one.”
“That is strangely orderly, don’t you think?”
Jerl chuckled and said something. He was speaking Garanese, yet somehow Nah understood him perfectly: Mouse’s doing, no doubt. “Your people are very Proper,” he pointed out. “Wouldn’t you do the same if you were leaving behind a sacred place that had protected your clan for generations?”
“I…suppose we would,” Deng-Nah conceded.
“Well, that’s what they did. After the Ordfey fell, there was no longer any reason to hide here. This is no place to build a civilization, is it? No trade, no room to expand, little cells to sleep in…better than being raped to death by an elf, but they must have dreamed of the day when they could finally leave this sanctuary behind.”
“So what is it you expect to find here?” Nah asked.
“I don’t know.” Jerl shrugged. “Something.”
“The Lady of Mists told you about the four Heralds who turned away from the Crowns. Do you expect to find more about them here?”
“I don’t know,” Jerl repeated. “Lady Haust didn’t tell me everything. Lady Haust doesn’t know everything, for that matter. I just know that we need to be here. It’s one of the things that has to happen for us to win.”
“…This power of yours seems frustrating.”
“Speaking of which, do you still have your family’s word vault?”
“Of course.”
“Good….good.”
Deng-Nah frowned. “Do you think…we’re going to learn how to open it, here?”
Jerl shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I see. I suppose there is nothing for it but to continue forward, then.”
Jerl nodded, and dropped to his hands and knees to squeeze himself at a crawl through an opening that was low even by Deng-Nah’s standards
Mouse followed him, and Deng-Nah came last, ducking to fit under the low spot and scooting forward in a low crouch-walk rather than dropping to all fours. “You know what I notice?” he asked as they went.
“What?” Mouse asked, navigating around a bulge in the rock.
“No guano. This place ought to be a prime roost for bats, but there is no sign of them having ever used these caves.”
Mouse paused. Nah felt rather than saw his frown. “That is weird…”
“It’s the magic,” Jerl said.
“True. I suppose a cave that’s never dark wouldn’t attract them…”
“I meant more than that…” Jerl grunted as the passage opened up and allowed him to stand. “Can’t you feel it? There’s something far more than just light down here. Crowns, I wish Amir was a better climber…we’ll have to rig up a ladder for him or something. I want his insight.”
“Or the Duchess,” Mouse pointed out. “I mean…it’s old magic, isn’t it? It’d be more like the Craft than the Art, I bet.”
“Eh, I know Amir and Ellaenie both like to protest their schools of magic are very different, but I have my doubts. I think there’s just magic, you know? It’s like…engines versus sail. Either way, it’s still an airship.”
“I have my doubts about that metaphor,” Nah commented as he followed Mouse out of the crawlspace. Jerl chuckled.
“You can come up with the next one,” he promised. “Uh…huh. I don’t know which way to go from here.”
“Your premonition has ended?”
“No, I…I think we’ve arrived.”
Nah looked around. The chamber they were in as, unlike all the ones before it, unlit. No veins of enchanted crystal thrummed in the walls, so that the only illumination was Jerl’s magestone in the pocket on his breast. Even so, its glow revealed side chambers and passages plunging away into the subterranean darkness.
He shivered, grateful that here, on this high and sun-close earthmote, there was little danger of Shades. Though he had always wondered what it was that caused them to emerge in Eclipse. If it was the shadow cast by the earthmote itself, then might they not haunt the deep underground?
“Now you’ve got me wondering the same thing,” Mouse muttered, fretfully. “Jerl—”
“We’re safe.”
“You’re sure?”
“Anywhere else, we wouldn’t be. But we’re safe here. This place is protected.”
“Protected by what, though?”
“The same magic that lit our way.”
Nah and Mouse traded a glance, wearing identical frowns. Nah thumbed his sword’s handle for comfort, and followed the captain as Jerl raised a second lightstone and led them forward.
“You seem to have all these answers already,” he said. “Why do we even need to be here?”
“I don’t have the answers. I’m…” Jerl sighed, paused, and turned. “We’re talking now. You’re still speaking your tongue, I’m still speaking mine, and yet here we understand each other perfectly thanks to Mouse’s power. How is it we’re managing that now, when we couldn’t back on the ship?”
“I…assumed it was a matter of learning. I heave learned much of Garanese during our voyage. I thought perhaps now I was…close enough, somehow?”
Mouse shook his head, frowning. “No…it’s easier here. Much easier. Your thoughts are clearer to me and easier to translate, as though my Word is more available here, somehow.”
“Exactly.” Jerl turned back toward the middle of ther oom. There was a great stalagmite there, its top cut flat and level as though someone had run a hot knife sideways through the wax pile of a long-extinct candle. “Mine is, too. And Time is…it’s a weird, weird thing. It’s not just ever forwards. There’s backwards too, of course, but there’s also sideways, and up and down. Time is a space all its own…”
“Now I cannot understand you any longer,” said Deng-Nah.
“I’m saying…I’m saying in this place, Time lets me know what I would know if I had walked a completely different path in life. If Jerl Holten wasn’t an airship captain, but a navigator and mage, or a scholar, or even a Crownspouse. There are other versions of me, just…” he waved a hand vaguely. “…Just…a little over thataway. They’re not real, I’m the only real one, this is the only real time. But I can still…glean something from them. But they’re all parallel to me. I can only know what they would already know or have figured out by now. None of them know exactly what we’re about to find…”
Nah blinked, but Mouse nodded. Clearly, somehow, he understood.
Jerl reached out a hand and stroked it across the truncated stalactite’s smooth surface. “It’s like…it’s like the bones of reality are a little closer to the surface here. Crowns, the language doesn’t even exist to describe it. This is…a very special place. I think it’s the work of a Herald.”
“But which one? Rheannach?” asked Mouse.
Jerl looked up. “…I…don’t know. But…it doesn’t seem like her. There are other versions of me who know her well, and…they don’t think so. Ugh…” A pained expression flashed across his face and he took a step back. “It’s too much. I can’t look sideways to the real sequence of events too long or it starts to….” he took a steadying breath, and didn’t finish the thought.
“So why are we here?” Deng-Nah asked.
“Because…because we need to be here. Because this is part of the plan. This is one of the places we need to be and one of the things we have to do, to beat Civorage in the end.”
“What do we have to do?”
Jerl frowned, looked back at him, looked around, looked up and down and around. All about them the walls had been polished smooth, not quite to a mirror shine but still as clean and uniform as an eggshell. Other than that, the table, and the dark passages leading down into the mountains’ roots, there was not a thing to be seen.
“I…don’t know.”
----------------------------------------
> Oracular magic—that is, attempts to glean information about future events through the use of magic—is believed to be possible, though no practitioner has yet achieved a degree of precision, clarity and reproducibility in their results sufficient to satisfy the rigorous demands of scholarship. Whether the problem is one of skill, available energy, or simply the ever-shifting possibilities of the future is a matter of ongoing debate —article in the Navigators’ Observatory quarterly newsletter
THE OASIS
Crownspouse suites, Sayf’s Palace 09.06.03.12.08
Lisze had needed something to occupy her mind for the sake of her own peace, and Ellaenie had found it in little Saoirse. after all, Lisze had been her trusted friend and Lady-in-Waiting, so she could be a trusted minder and governess instead. But there was a less innocent reason, too: the worst of Lisze’s struggles, the one thing that gave her nightmares more than any other.
The fact that she’d been…well. Bred.
The thought filled Ellaenie’s throat with queasy hatred. Her friend, the closest thing she had to a sister, had been used like some barnyard animal. Even now, in freedom, the evidence of it was plain in the way her belly was slowly growing once more.
There had been a hard conversation on that subject. A lot of soul-searching by Lisze, questions about what the pregnancy meant for her in light of the nonconsensual nature of how it came to be, whether the child would be a joy or a constant reminder of her enslavement…and a question about what the refined oils of common rue, hellebore and scammony, pennyroyal could do. What women had used them for since time immemorial when faced with a…difficult pregnancy.
It was certainly within Ellaenie’s power and ability to brew up such a potion. But she had never done so, didn’t want to, and was glad when Lisze decided against it.
“It’s not the little one’s fault,” she had said, touching her bump with a sad expression. “Why should we punish him? He can be the one good thing that comes out of it…”
Ellaenie had nodded, but she’d known Lisze was only voicing half the reason. Somewhere out there were seven more children, presumably being raised by a Circle somewhere. Lisze hadn’t felt their loss while trapped in the permanent happy fugue state of the Encircled, but now that she was confronting real motherhood, her thoughts kept turning to the babies she’d birthed but never known.
Ellaenie had hoped that time with Saoirse would help, but the arrangement had worked more perfectly than she dared believe. Lisze and Saoirse adored each other, almost from the very first, and to a witch’s Sight even a mere glance was enough to see that the black, hollow coldness that still lurked in Lisze’s heart was kindled to a warm glow just by Saoirse’s presence.
Saoirse, for her part, was delighted by the idea of having a cousin.
Being able to leave the two of them in each others’ expert care had been exactly what Ellaenie needed, granting her the time to plan, research, train and strategize. The situation on Garanhir remained bleak, especially with the curfew and lockdowns in Auldenheigh. The reports coming through Gilber Drevin and his Blackdrake Network suggested much public unease and dissatisfaction, but not mucin the way of actual fighting back. Not yet, at least.
An update from Adrey contained a glimmer of hope, though. She’d found no potential allies at the salon, but had a possible in-roads to getting close with the free collaborators. That was good work, even though it put a knot of terrible anxiety in Ellaenie’s gut at the thought of her friend taking on such risk…
She signed what was required, wrote some notes and letters, then settled in and tinkered with her potions for a bit. Alchemy was not an easy discipline, and she considered herself far from being a master of it, yet…Though her Word was making an increasing difference in that regard.
The trick to it was that while magic couldn’t be permanently fixed into a brew, thanks to the Law of Refinement, it could be used in the process of extracting oils, brewing tinctures, blending, mixing, infusing, lixiviation, centrifugal separation and titration to yield results that were far more than the mere physical acts alone could produce.
The theory behind it was deep, rich, complex, arcane and frustratingly incomplete, and so far as Ellaenie could tell the best treatise anyone had ever written on the subject was Lerrimer’s “Alchemy: The Third Magic.” Which began with the admission that the author had no idea why it worked, only that it did work.
Thanks to her Word, Ellaenie was beginning to think she might be able to write a book of her own on the subject, one day.
She was interrupted in her work, however, by a knock on her study door.
Lisze gave her an apologetic smile. “You got a minute?”
“Always. What do you need?”
“Oh, I don’t need…it’s…you should come and look at your daughter for a minute.”
There was nothing concerning in Lisze’s request, as such, but it piqed Ellaenie’s concern all the same. She followed Lisze through into the parlor, where at first glance there was nothing unusual going on. The glass doors were open allowing in the scents and sounds of the Oasis, a warm breeze, the cry of peacocks, the aroma of blooms and fruit trees. Idyllic, really.
Saoirse was playing with her dolls in the middle of the floor. Nothing unusual there, either. The girl’s high little voice crooned and muttered musically as she tromped the dolls around herself and across some of the furniture. Unburdened of any need to actually communicate clearly with adults, she wasn’t bothering to concentrate on proper enunciation, so the result was just a sort of wholesome background noise that Ellaenie had long since stopped paying particularly close attention to.
It was an adorable sight, one to bring a smile to her lips and a swell of maternal love to her heart, but not significant enough for Lisze to come and fetch her, surely?
Lisze saw the question in her look, and mouthed the words “listen closely,” raising a hand to her ear for emphasis. Ellaenie frowned at her, then did so, tuning in to the childish babble.
It…turned out to not be so childish.
In fact, Saoirse was doing three voices. One was high and keen, the other lower and more mellow, and one wasn’t even speaking Garanese at all. As Ellaenie listened she spoke three syllables in…what was that, Yunei?
“Mo shiashu…” she muttered, softly, then louder in the high voice: “What’s that?”
This was followed by a longer string of Yunei, then: “It’s been thousands of years. Maybe it just didn’t survive?”
A very long string of Yunei know, ending in a questioning uptick. “I have no idea— W’iye moyo, da wo ya bo i zhoufa?’ — ‘So…what? Somebody cleaned out the ashes and scrubbed the stone, and there was never another one’ — ‘Bu juje mi, qan lilua he jo shu.’ — ‘Your people are very Proper. Wouldn’t you do the same if you were leaving behind a sacred place that had protected your clan for generations?”
Ellaenie blinked. Somehow, in her high, childish voice, Saoirse was doing an amazing job of imitating Mouse and Jerl. It wasn’t just her voice, though: to the Sight, she almost saw the flickers of their caged demons and deep personalities coming and going, like clouds scudding across the sky. Jerl’s was sloth, the kind of golden retriever-like laziness of wanting nothing more than an easy, untroubled life where he could sleep in the sun and fly around on his ship and make a comfortable living. Mouse’s was anxious self-discomfort, the feeling of not sitting quite right in his skin and being half-glad that nobody could see him unless he allowed it. And this third voice, the unknown Yunei, his demon was a new and young one, newly caged: homesickness and the terrible nagging fear that he’d made a mistake.
To see such things in a six year old girl playing with her dolls was truly unsettling.
“…Hey, Pickle.” She crossed the room and sat down next to her daughter. “What are you playing?”
“I’m not playin’…” Saoirse explained, seriously. “I’m listenin’.”
“Listening, darling?”
“Yeah! To Mister Jerl an’ Mister Mouse an’ Mister Deng-Nah.” She waggled each of the dolls in turn. Jerl, apparently, was a fluffy and floppy-eared dog, Mouse was, appropriately enough, a patchwork mouse, and the third man, this Deng-Nah, was the smallest of the three, a bear. “They found a special place in a cave.”
Ellaenie listened to the explanation with some confusion. Saoirse was exhibiting some powerful magic indeed, and not for the first time. That whole business with her dreams alerting her to Lisze’s suicide attempt had been an eye-opener, but this was…what? Accurate scrying over an arbitrary distance?
Unprecedented magical talent didn’t compensate for a tiny child’s limited faculties of both understanding and explanation, of course. But what she could convey was enough to have Ellaenie quite intrigued.
She sat and listened for a while as Saoirse continued to play out what the three men were up to, then kissed her daughter on the head, stood up, thanked Lisze, and went to find her husband.
Sayf was holding court, in the dark and smoke-filled dome chamber where supplicants came from all over the Nested Worlds to see him and perform for him. Right now, he was watching a dance troupe while reclining among his pillows, sipping wine and conversing with a visitor. Ellaenie smiled and made small talk to welcome the other guests as she weaved among the hanging fabrics, pillows and lounges, and waited patiently. He knew she was there, he knew she wanted to speak with him, but it wasn’t immediately important. He’d excuse himself as soon as politely possible.
Sure enough, after perhaps five minutes (during which time Ellaenie succumbed to temptation and ate two pastries chased down by a small wine of her own, and traded small-talk with a couple of refugees from Cantre) Sayf extracted himself from his hospitality obligations, and they sat down together in a more private corner of the chamber, their solitude secured as much by his power as by the heavy curtains and dividers around this little enclave.
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“Something the matter?”
“Something…no, I don’t think there’s anything the matter as such. But Saoirse’s powers are definitely growing.”
He smiled, and poured wine for them both. “I know. She’s incredible.”
“What is she?” Ellaenie asked, taking the cup.
“A crownchild, and the daughter of a witch even more talented and powerful than her namesake,” Sayf replied.
“I’m really not—”
“Darling, when have I ever exaggerated to you?”
Ellaenie paused, and thought of Saoirse Crow-Sight with a pang of grief and loss that eight years had not so much dulled as rendered less frequent. “I don’t…much like the idea of being more talented and powerful than her,” she said.
“Well you are. Come on, do you think old Saoirse would have taken anything less for her last and most beloved student? Trust me, if you live as long as she did, you’ll surpass her by an earthmote’s breadth, and she would want you to. And of course, you also have the Word…” He shrugged and sipped. “How is it going with that, by the way? I can feel when you’re practicing, but—”
Ellaenie shrugged, concentrated, and held a hand out in thin air. Tiny particles of grit began to form, assembling themselves into a fine dust cloud around her fingers which grew, shrunk, condensed, formed, compressed, annealed, solidified…
She exhaled, and poured her wine from the glass in her right hand into the new goblet in her left hand. Sayf arched an eyebrow at it. “…That’s…diamond.”
“The carbon from the air.”
He laughed, delighted, and took it from her to study it. “You’re amazing, you know that?”
“Oh, it’s…pretty crude. I mean look, it’s all lumpen and wonky. I still can’t quite visualize the shape clearly enough in my head.”
Sayf snorted. “She just created a—” he paused to weigh the goblet thoughtfully “—seven hundred and fifty carat diamond from thin air in the shape of a wine goblet, and she still nitpicks herself.”
Put that way, Ellaenie saw the humor in her own ridiculous perfectionism, and giggled. “Okay…I suppose it’s a little impressive,” she admitted. “Though…using the Word feels like cheating.”
“The Words themselves are…a mystery even we Four still don’t understand, but they require will and skill to use properly, Ellie. What you just did is something incredible for one so young.” He returned the goblet to her, and settled back. “Pickle got a lot of power from me, all my children do. But I’m fundamentally just a human who’s lived a long time and who knows a lot. I think the bigger jolt of her talent comes from you, in fact.”
“Truly?”
“Truly. What that power will become as she grows up…” Sayf frowned thoughtfully at nothing for a second. “I don’t want to say.”
“Why not?”
“Because…because I’m worried that what I hope for is as fragile as a soap bubble, and if I speak too loudly about it, if I look too hard into the possible futures in search of it, I’ll destroy it.” He gave her a shockingly vulnerable smile. “I’m speaking in riddles, I know.”
“Yes, but I like to think I know you well enough to pick some of them apart,” Ellaenie said. “What if I say it?”
He sat back, and gestured for her to go ahead. Ellaenie nodded, drained her wine, and set the diamond goblet aside.
“You said it yourself. You’re just a human who’s lived a long time and knows a lot. You were…long, long back in the World Before, you weren’t even called Sayf, were you? You had a different name.”
“I’ve had millions of names, over the long years.” He chuckled, “Or perhaps, I’ve been called many things. Names are tricky, and they have great power.”
“All the more reason to know! Surely one was first, so what was it?”
“…Tricky. Like asking which tributary is the beginning of the river.…”
“But there was still a man, once upon a time, who became Sayf. What if…” she paused, then decided to stop thinking aloud and just ask. “Is she going to be a Crown?”
He swirled his cup. “It’s possible.”
“Possible?”
“I can’t say yes or no. The thing is, beloved…things like Crowns are powerful enough that we resonate through time in strange ways. Our presence weighs on the tapestry of causality, stretching both across its weft and along its warp. We’re so potent, in fact, that even the possible futures where she ascends to become one of us have a profound influence.”
“How can something that never actually comes to pass have a real influence on what does come to pass?”
“Oh, it happens all the time!” Sayf exclaimed. “It’s the root of sentience! ‘I don’t want to have a hangover, so I’d better stop drinking now.’ Thus, the hangover never comes to pass, but its potential influenced the present.”
Ellaenie frowned. “That seems like a trivial example."
Sayf chuckled. “It is, in one sense, because you’re used to it. But from a different point of view, a purely materialistic one, It’s a miracle! Think about it! A sack of water, salt and strange molecules somehow has the capacity to defy causality! The effect not only precedes the cause, but it can in fact prevent the cause from ever happening!” He laughed and shook his head while Ellaenie grinned at his sudden animation. Sayf was at his most charming, and she loved him most, when he was waving his hands and eagerly expounding on some point of philosophy like this.
And he knew it of course, and never failed to throw in a well-timed touch of flirtation. “You, my love, achieve even greater miracles as a matter of course. But don’t discount that one. Can you imagine a river pebble doing such a thing?”
“Well, no, obviously.”
“Right. But you of all people, with your Word and powers of transmutation, know that this—” he patted the flesh of his belly “—is not so removed as all that from the material of a river pebble. The ability to see possible futures and act on it, though? That’s life. And some futures? They inspire the efforts of thousands, millions, billions of people to see them brought about, or to avoid them.”
“…And the ascension of a new Crown would be a very important future indeed,” Ellaenie mused.
“Mhm. But now you start to know why I’m scared to get my hopes up and talk about it too openly or too eagerly. Important it might be, but it’s still just one small range of unrealized possibility among a…well, not an infinity, technically, but only because I’m still a pedantic mathematician deep in my soul.”
“I happen to like your pedantic mathematician side,” Ellaenie told him, and he smiled. “But you do want it to happen.”
“Beloved…Ellie…” he rose from his lounge, knelt before her and took her hands to squeeze them between his. “It’s why we built this whole universe from the ashes of the old. If our daughter is….the One-To-Be…then it vindicates the very existence of the Nested Worlds and achieves our grand design far, far earlier than we ever dreamed possible.”
Ellaenie squeezed his hands back. “And…and if she isn’t?”
“Then she’s still my daughter, and I love her like every daughter deserves to be loved.”
A knot of unthought, unrealized tension that Ellaenie hadn’t even known was inside her relaxed and unraveled. She sighed, feeling warm and grateful and loving him just as much as ever, and leaned forward to kiss him.
He smiled into her lips, drew her close, and held her for a time. After the moment, which might have been seconds or half an hour, he murmured in her ear. “Why not set your work aside for the day and come hold court with me. I don’t get to show you off enough.”
She laughed, nodded, and let him lead her by the hand out into the wider space where guests were waiting to entertain them with everything from their craftsmanship to their poetry, their dance, their baking, their wine and their song, their art and all the endless manner of beautiful things that human ingenuity could create.
And for a time, she set aside her troubles and forgot them entirely.
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> To make potatos in the Chamberfield style — rub inside of a casserole dish with garlic and butter. Take potatos and scrub them of their hide, then slice them to the thickness of a coin and layer them in the dish with pepper, nutmeg, and small squares of fatty bacon. Once the dish is well filled, pour in good cream, decorate the top with thin slices of garlic, and bake for an hour and a half. It should emerge with a good brown crust, but you can improve a weak crust with the use of a salamander. —Mrs. Jeniver Rill, The New Kitchen
GETTING OFF THE TRAM
Porterlands, Auldenheigh, Enerlend 09.06.03.12.08
A team of men were putting up new wanted posters opposite the Washer’s Lane tram stop near Well Street and Hatpin safehouse, right where travelers would see them as they disembarked.
Adrey almost sighed in displeasure. Once, the boards near tram stops had been fully of the city’s lively commerce, advertising theatrical productions, hair salons, tonics, products, services and opportunities. They had been colorful, lively, and spoken of a life of ease and freedom that none of the people who’d enjoyed it had properly appreciated.
Now, the boards were covered in official notices in the same uniform black-on-white print. Reminders about curfew, and the limitations on how large public gatherings could be. Warnings to beware of sedition and treason, and various other documents all headed in block capitals with the words “BY ORDER OF THE DUKESMOOT.”
She was used to generic notices offering a hefty reward for information about spies, but this was something different.
> BY ORDER OF THE DUKESMOOT
A reward of ONE HUNDRED SILVER GUILDMARKS is offered for information leading to the arrest of ADREY MOSSJOY, formerly the Countess of Whitcairn.
For the crimes of ESPIONAGE, TREASON AND MURDER, and abetting of the same.
Believed to be at large in the city. If sighted, DO NOT APPROACH as she is known to be armed and skilled in the use of arms. Report any possible sightings to INSPECTOR-LIEUTENANT GAFFELD at Auldwall Row Constabulary Office.
A whole hundred? Adrey almost gave a low whistle of appreciation at being worth so much, though the feeling warred with a degree of indignation. Espionage? Sure. Murder? Technically, she supposed. Those two men who’d tried to intercept her at the Hunting Hounds would count, though to her thinking it was a clear case of self-defence. But treason?
Well, of course the puppet Duke would call it treason to remain loyal to the legitimate duchess.
But what amused her most was the printed likeness of her face. Somebody had clearly made the print plate by copying one of her old portraits, and the one they’d chosen had always been something of a joke. The artist had fallen out of favor rather quickly for his tendency to “improve” his models’ features to the point of being almost unrecognizable. In Adrey’s case, he’d clearly felt that her high-cheeked and straight-jawed face was unfashionably sharp for a woman of such noble rank (who of course ought not possibly be anything other than a delicate and inoffensive creature) and so had, uh, softened her somewhat. And made her face more symmetrical than it truly was.
The result was assuredly beautiful, a perfect pretty ‘golden ratio’ face ideal for flattering the vanity of insecure noblewomen. But as the material for a wanted poster, it was hopeless: it lacked any of the distinctive, defining features that could have actually identified her.
It was deeply reassuring, though even reassurance sounded a note of warning in her head. Never underestimate the enemy. Bad wanted posters might only be bad wanted posters, or they might be a ploy to lull her into false comfort.
The notice next to the wanted posters was certainly trouble no matter what, though. She sighed at it, glanced up at the Roil to check the time, then turned down Well Street and went home.
She arrived and shrugged off her coat to the sounds of laughter from the kitchen, and someone called out “Is that you, Addie?”
“It’s me!” she agreed, poking her head around the door while commencing the involved process of unpinning and removing her hat. Sadie Peason beamed at her and gave a little wave: she was in the middle of scrubbing some potatos clean in anticipation of dinner. It was a funny thing—technically, all of Miss Brooknetter’s lodgers were wealthy middle-class women or petty gentry, all certainly sufficiently well-to-do to hire servants and cooks, but the curfew had put paid to that: there was nowhere in the house for hired help to sleep overnight, and so the lodgers had been compelled to take up their own cooking.
It was actually becoming something of a highlight of living there. It felt…independent, somehow. but today’s meal seemed smallish.
“Are w-we only cooking for fuh-four today?” Adrey asked, slipping easily into the shy, stammering Adelia Rubb persona as she hung up the hat and unpinned her shawl.
“Larnie’s down with one of her migraines, and Jemma sent word that she’s staying at her employers’ house tonight,” Sadie explained. “Come on, scrub up and pitch in. You’re home early!”
“Didn’t you he-hear?”
“Hear what, love?” Mellie asked. She was in the middle of preparing a sauce, if Adrey was any judge. It smelled incredible, but Mellie was the one out of all of them with the most passion and talent for cooking.
“The-they’re tightening the c-curfew again…” Adelia explained. She hung the shawl and went to wash her hands, knowing she’d be called on to slice the potatos. It wasn’t that all her training with Skinner and the others had directly translated into skill at wielding a kitchen knife, but…well. She was still comfortable with a blade in a way that the others weren’t.
“Again?” Sadie plunked her half-scrubbed potato down in the bowl and gave her an exasperated look. “In Talvi’s name, what for? When is it now?”
“Nightfall ‘til dawn,” Adelia explained with a helpless shrug. “B-but the sign at the tr…the tram stop said yyyyou could get a, a two hour p-pass if you can show c-cause.”
“Crowns and Heralds!” Sadie grumbled, and took up her scrubbing brush again. “I swear, this city’s becoming a nightmare…”
Adrey could only nod meekly. Somewhere outside and above she could hear the drone of an airship’s engines as it circled low over Porterlands, periodically blasting the district with an amplified voice to remind the citizens of the exact same edicts and decrees that were pasted on every vertical surface around them.
She couldn’t regret the raid on the Circle to rescue Lisze, of course not. But it did seem to have handed the enemy the excuse they needed to tighten their grip.
“I don’t even know why it’s happening,” Mellie said, her usual sunny mood noticeably darkened by the news.
“I’ll tell you why it’s happening, my girl,” Miss Brooknetter interjected, bustling in from the scullery with a bottle of cream. “Ah! Mrs. Rubb. Would you be a dear and slice the spuds thin? We’re having Chamberfield Potatoes.”
“Of c-course, Miss Brooknetter.”
“Why’s it happening?” Mellie asked.
“Keep stirring that sauce, Miss Corroy! It’ll burn!” Brooknetter set the cream down on the kitchen table then sat down to Hold Forth, a pastime she greatly enjoyed. ‘Adelia’ and Sadie traded a secret smile at their landlady’s quirks, but let her carry on. After all, in Adrey’s experience, the old woman was a decent barometer for the mood of the general public.
Esme Brooknetter didn’t disappoint. She settled at the table, wiggled and adjusted her cushion a couple of times, smoothed her skirts and hair, then lifted her chin in the classic posture that said she had an Opinion and soon any remotely sensible person within earshot would share it. “It’s happening, my dears, because the Dukesmoot isn’t run by the dukes at all, by this point.”
“No?” Mellie asked.
“No, of course not! After all, the unrest started well before Duchess Ellaenie was forced out. Before her late father died, even.”
Adrey nodded, listening closely. Thus far, to her mild surprise, the old girl was right in every particular.
“Really? There was unrest before?”
“Oh, my dear girl, there was always unrest. There’s always been, pardon my bluntness, envious cretins lurking on the edges of society who blame the good people with wealth and influence for their own lack of both.” She shook her head at the obvious folly and ineptitude of the poor working class. “But up until eight years ago, they never got organized you see.”
“And they have now?” Sadie asked.
“Organized and united, yes. But duped, too.” Miss Brooknetter sat forward, warming to her subject. “You see…I can only guess of course, looking at it from the outside, but I think what happened is the Clear Skies guild got so big and so rich that the people in charge of it—whoever they are—decided it didn’t make any sense to them why they should answer to dukes and duchesses. So they recruited a lot of the more astute political activists and malcontents and set them to start whipping up the populace, while they themselves went after the nobility. I think Duchess Ellaenie was onto them and they went after her first, but she managed to escape.”
“So..y-you don’t think shuh…she’s a witch?” ‘Adelia’ asked.
“Oh, of course she’s a witch, girl.” Miss Brooknetter sniffed. “She had one of those Craenen thaighns for a friend and mentor, and she was a witch, so of course the duchess is one too! But you know what? If being a witch means getting down on your knees in the dirt and healing people hurt by riot and fire, then I saw we need more witches! And look where she is now! Crownspouse! What more endorsement do you need?”
“I s-suppose…” ‘Adelia’ admitted.
“You suppose? Well, my girl, let me tell you something. Everything changed the night she was forced out. All the Dukesmoot was in Auldenheigh that night, and I think the revolutionaries got to them and gave them an ultimatum. They could either fall in line and do what they were told, or they could die.”
“Goodness!” Sadie commented.
“But where does the Church of the One” come in? Mellie asked. She’d taken the sauce off the stove and was listening now, clearly taken by the landlady’s logic.
“Why, they’re the other half of it, aren’t they? The Dukesmoot to grant the seeming of legitimacy and respectibility, the Church to unite the common folk. But they’re just the surface, my dears. Mark my words, there are conspirators and revolutionaries behind it all. And now they are in charge…but because they’ve never been in charge of anything before, they think they have to be in control. Of everything! They don’t understand that you can’t control everything, so every week it’s another decree, another poster, another notice…”
She shook her head. “Mark my words, girls. It will get far uglier before it gets better. That’s…” she shot ‘Adelia’ a contrite look. “…That’s why I worry so, for all of you. This is a vulnerable time, but especially so for women.”
Adrey accepted the contrition with a nod, but inside she was actually quite impressed. Considering she didn’t know half of what was going on, Miss Brooknetter was not far at all from the truth. In fact, she—
There was a sturdy banging at the door, loud enough to almost drown out the male voice behind it: “Constabulary!”
“…Upstairs, girls,” Brooknetter ordered, rising from her seat with a scowl while Adrey’s heart lurched in her chest. Was she compromised? Was she—
“Addey, come on!” Sadie took her hand and pulled her toward the stairs, jolting Adrey back into action. Her knives were still hidden about her person, as was her little holdout pistol. And she had an escape route planned out of her bedroom window and up over the rooftops, to the spot where a disguise was stashed among the chimneys over on Heighwater Street.
The knock at the door sounded again, louder and more demanding. Miss Brooknetter shouted sternly, “I’m coming, I’m coming!” before opening the door just as Sadie bustled Adrey around the corner at the top of the stairs. Mellie disappeared into the room she shared with Larnie, and could be heard desperately waking her lover, who mewled in protest at being reawoken to the migraine that had forced her into bed in the first place.
‘Adelia’ and Sadie lurked together against the wall at the top of the stairs, listening to the click of the door opening, and the sound of a man doffing his helmet.
“Missus Esmerelda Brooknetter?”
“Mistress Esmerelda Brooknetter, yes.” The old woman’s indignant gathering herself to her full height was almost audible.
“Sergeant Davenpatrick, ma’am. Understand you run a lodging house for young ladies.”
Adrey could almost hear Miss Brooknetter stiffening indignantly. “What of it?”
“There’s a warrant out for the arrest o’ one of your lodgers, ma’am.”
Shit. Adrey tensed, mentally trying to guess how large a force they must have sent for her, what her escape route would be, how in all that was good she was going to get out of this mess…
Miss Brooknetter’s tone was icy. “Is there. Produce it, please.”
“Right ‘ere, ma’am. Warrant of arrest for Mrs. Jemma Gower. Signed by the magistrate this afternoon.”
Adrey blinked. She couldn’t have heard that right…could she? Jemma? Quiet, widowed Jemma?
There was a long pause, and the rustle of paper. It would be just like Miss Brooknetter to read the warrant thoroughly. In the midst of it, Sadie and Adrey stared at each other in mutual astonishment.
“…She’s not ‘ome,” Brooknetter declared shortly, her accent slipping a bit which was a sure sign of fluster.
“I’ll need to confirm that for meself and search the premises, ma’am. I should warn you, if you or any of your lodgers are found to be harborin’ a fugitive—”
“She is not home, to my knowledge,” Miss Brooknetter replied, primly wrenching her more proper diction back into place. “And we have nothing to hide.”
Like fuck we don’t. Adrey gritted her teeth, then pushed passed Sadie and into her bedroom. She had seconds, maybe. Thank goodness all her most incriminating things were stowed in a small trunk atop her wardrobe that no human could ever contort themselves into, but there was still the fact of herself, tall and strong and distinctive.
Well, her height could be downplayed by sitting. Her well-built physique could be downplayed with a shawl. And her face? No time for anything fancy. Reading glasses would have to do.
A minute or two later, a constable poked his head into her room. He gave Adrey a quick look up and down, grunted, opened her wardrobe, grunted again, crossed to the window to look out and around, grunted a third time, and left the room.
A minute or two after that, the squad was gone with a predictable parting shot about the consequences should Jemma Gower show up and the lodgers fail to report it. They left behind a sense of disturbance and insecurity. For several minutes, the house was silent save for the sound of Miss Brooknetter pacing downstairs and muttering to herself.
Then there was a soft knock. Rather than waiting for an invitation, Sadie slipped in through the door, closed it behind her, and gave ‘Adelia’ a wary look. One which Adrey knew she was mirroring. The two women watched each other for several long beats, before Sadie crossed the room and sat next to her on the bed.
“You thought they were here for you,” she accused.
“I j-just…I g-get…I…” The Adelia persona’s stammer came in harder than ever, to try and sell stress and anxiety.
“No, no, Addie. There’s reasonable nerves at the constables poking around, and then there’s rushing into your room and putting on a disguise. You thought they were here for you.”
Adrey took a deep breath, and tried to calculate her way out of this. Was there a future in which she got to stay at this safehouse?
Maybe.
She didn’t answer, though that was answer enough in its way. For a stretched moment, the room was all but silent. The clock ticked, and from outside and above came the window-rattling sound of engines and an amplified voice beginning yet another announcement. ’By order of the Dukesmoot—’
But between Sadie and Addie, there was no sound at all, until Sadie put her hand on Adrey’s arm.
“I’m not going to turn you in, Addie,” she whispered. “You can trust me.”
“Trust you with what?”
“I’m not…” Sadie looked around, then out the window, then let out a shaky nervous breath and scooted up on the bed a little more. “Crowns’ sake, Addie, the world’s going crazy out there. Can’t you hear that airship? It’s a nightmare! And I’ve got this horrible feeling Miss Brooknetter doesn’t know the half of it! I can’t keep on like this, under this…this weight. I feel like my neck’s already in the lunette and I’m just waiting for the blade to drop!”
Adrey blinked at her, but still said nothing. Give nothing away, she told herself. This could all be a trap.
Sadie saw her restraint and sighed miserably. “Is this what we’ve come to? Is this what the times have made us Aren’t we friends? Can’t there be any trust between us?”
Adrey let out a heartfelt breath of her own, cleared her throat, and looked her in the eye. “I’d…like it if there could be,” she said. “But we are friends, Sadie. Whatever that means nowadays.”
She meant it, too. Her gut said that Sadie could be trusted. But her sense and her training both screamed for caution, and she heeded them.
Sadie smiled and nodded. “Well…keep your secrets. I mean it, whoever you really are, whatever it is you’re mixed up in…I won’t give you up. I’d like to help, actually.”
Adrey didn’t answer. But she did make eye contact. For whatever that was worth, she tried to convey her thoughts without doing anything so incriminating as actually saying anything. Sadie hesitated, then licked her lips, nodded sharply, and rose.
“Come on,” she said. “Supper won’t cook itself.”
Adrey smiled at that, nodded, and stood. “After you,” she said.
After all…this might be her last meal at Hatpin safehouse.
But she hoped and prayed against all reason that it would not be. That Sadie might be a new ally in the fight.
After all…they needed all the friends they could get.
----------------------------------------
> “It is not sufficient to say ‘magic holds the worlds together.’ The statement is true, of course, but how exactly? What is the mechanism? What equations and forms can we find to accurately describe the magic that holds the earthmotes in their place, turning about the sun? Magic is not a dismissal of the natural order, but a component of it, and can be explored just as completely as the sciences.” —Betran Calien, speaking at a symposium at Whitcairn University
BACK AT THE CAVE ENTRANCE
The Caves of Haptar Getesh, Prathardesh Earthmote 09.06.03.12.08
Deng-Nah had to admit, he could see why they had left Amir the navigator behind for their first exploration. The man was clever, learned and skilled at mathematics and the Art alike, but he was also skinny and unpracticed in the physical arts. He came up the rope ladder with many a shake and sway and more than a few cries of alarm as the cords flexed and shifted under his weight. There was no way he could ever have made the unassisted free-climb up the waterfall and cliff.
His first sight of the caves was amusing to watch. Rarely had Deng-Nah seen a man betray such whole-body emotion. Amir lost control of his jaw, his mouth hung open and his entire body seemed to become partially untied as he gaped at the cave’s wonders. Total, unrestrained and unfiltered awe shone in his eyes.
“Merciful Heralrds,” he muttered at last. “And I thought the Word Vaults were something incredible.”
“How does it glow? Do you know?” Nah asked. Amir gave him a startled look, glanced at Mouse, then cleared his throat and collected himself somewhat.
“Ah, well…that is…uh…a very…very good question.” He cleared his throat lamely. “Unless there’s a small team of mages buried in the walls somewhere around here shoveling gravy and cheese into their faces as fast as they can and basking their feet in a forge for good measure, I can’t imagine how this much stone could be induced to glow for more than, oh…minutes?”
“Jerl said there’s something called a ‘Calien’s Lodehead’ further down?” Mouse added.
“…Jerl said that?”
“Yes.”
“Our Jerl?”
“No, a completely different Jerl Holten.”
Nah laughed, not merely at Mouse’s deadpan sarcasm but at the way the statement was, if he understood Jerl’s explanation of his powers in this special place, entirely literal. Amir shot him a somewhat unsteady look, then looked around them.
“Yngmir’s Tree. So Lodeheads are real? Well, that…that does explain…well, no it doesn’t, in fact it opens an awful number of new questions. Goodness, the entire Observatory could move here and spend the rest of their lives researching it…”
Mouse and Deng-Nah shrugged. Neither of them had asked Jerl what, in point of fact, a Calien’s Lodehead was supposed to be. Mouse had got the distinct impression Jerl didn’t have the faintest idea himself.
“Would you like to see it?” Deng-Nah offered.
Amir’s eyes widened, he nodded, and gestured hurriedly into the back of the cave, having apparently quite forgotten about the beautiful sights and fascinating relics of ancient years all about them. “Lead on!”
They followed the route back, which they’d marked with magestones. Amir gave the various halls, living spaces and other ancestral features a longing glance, but didn’t swerve aside to investigate anything. He complained a little about having to crawl on hard, bare stone through the narrow squeeze into the chamber, but his complaints vanished as he straightened on the far side and gasped.
“Oh…Crowns and Heralds!”
Jerl had sat himself on the table in the middle of the room, and appeared to be meditating. He opened his eyes and grinend at Amir’s reaction. “You feel that, right?”
“Surely you all do, as well?” Amir flexed his fingers, and sparks danced between them, crackling bright enough to briefly illuminate the walls. He hissed and sucked his fingers. “Ow!”
“Careful,” Jerl chuckled.
“This is amazing! Jerl, this is…this is worth a king’s ransom, to the right people. These things were only theoretical before now!”
“Okay, what exactly is a Lodehead?” Mouse asked.
“It’s….okay. So you know how everything in the world falls away from the sun, yes?”
“Yes…?”
“But Earthmotes don’t.”
“Also true.”
“But they’re just made of rock. They should fall away from the sun. But they don’t. And they should eventually slow to a halt thanks to air resistance, but they don’t. And they should sometimes bump into each other, but they don’t.”
“Okay?”
”Betran Calien was a theoretical mage-scholar whose calculations first suggested that the earthmotes are maintained by focal nodes of magical power, wells of arcane energy deep inside their fabric which hold them fast in their orbit, ward them away from each other and generally…well, generally explain how the worlds turn. He named them Lodeheads. Of course…how do you study something that is by definition deep underground? And which may or may not break and cause the earthmote to crumble and fall if interfered with?”
“Well…apparently the ancient escaped slaves found this one.” Jerl shrugged. “And my premonition tells me we needed to come here and find it too. I just don’t know why.”
Amir blinked at him. “Well…what does one do with an unlimited source of magical energy? Assuming, that is, you do not do the eminently sensible thing and leave it alone…”
“You siphon off some of the energy and use it for something,” Jerl ventured. “Which is what the old dwellers did with the quartz veins in the caves outside, I bet.”
“Madness. Ignorance.” Amir shook his head in wonder. “If they had known what they were really dealing with, they would not have dared, surely?”
Jerl shrugged.
“They had a Herald,” Deng-Nah pointed out. “The Beloved Lady was their protector and guide. Maybe she taught them how to do it safely?”
“I…have very little experience of Lady Rheannach,” Amir admitted. “But if she is at all like Lord Yngmir, I doubt she would counsel her people to do such a thing. This is…this is King Eärrach’s work made manifest. This is the place where his will that the world be thus flows in and becomes reality. I rather doubt his own wife would instruct her people in how to misuse it.”
“Assuming it is a misuse,” Deng-Nah pointed out, though he had to agree on that point. It felt…Improper, somehow.
“How could it not be? This is the very power that holds the earthmotes together. Without their stabilizing influence, the very ground we walk on would just become gravel, falling away into the infinite void, forever.”
Jerl had his arms folded and a frown on his face. He drummed the fingers of his right hand on his left bicep, then looked up at Nah. “You said you have your vault on you?”
“Yes?”
Jerl hopped up from his seat on the stalagmite-table and gestured to it. “Pop it down there, would you?”
“Jerl, what—?” Amir began, but Mouse grinned suddenly.
“Of course! We can’t use the lodehead to charge it!”
“Exactly.” Jerl grinned back at him, then turned to explain to Nah. *“*Without a big jolt of magic, the vaults remain locked. Mind was unlocked by an unwary mage having his very life-force and soul torn out of him. Time was unlocked by the hag elves’ ritual in the Cronewood. Both times, it involved death, unwitting or sacrificial. But the Lodehead…”
Nah nodded, and fumbled in his bag for the vault. “So, this is why we are here,” he said. “Because we don’t win unless we open this vault and speak the Word it contains.”
“Seems so.”
“It surely cannot be that simple,” Amir objected. “We are talking about incredible power here. It could destroy us just as easily as….as blundering into the Queen’s engines when they are at full throttle!”
“Much, much more easily than that,” Jerl said.
Amir balked. “Ah…well. Yes!”
“What do you advise instead?”
“I…suppose…we could always use the existing siphon? Tap the magic that lights the cave? But Jerl, this is a matter I know nothing of, I will need weeks to study and prepare, at minimum.”
“May I, then, suggest a simple experiment?” Deng-Nah ventured.
“What do you have in mind?” Amir asked him.
“Before we interfere with the source of fathomless magic power, let us first determine whether or not we in fact need to…” Deng-Nah approached the table, holding the vault in his hand. “Why not simply place the vault on here and see what happens?”
“Because that might be all that needs to happen. We might all be destroyed.”
“And if it weren’t for the Word, I’d heed that warning mate, I promise you,” Jerl smiled at him. “But we won’t. It’s safe.”
“Indeed?” Amir glanced at him and received a confident, calm nod. “Premonition? Well…then you may as well, I suppose.”
Deng-Nah nodded. He turned the box over a few times, considering the polished wood and near-seamless construction. Then he tossed it lightly onto the table.
The result was instantaneous, and far more than he had even guessed at. The vault didn’t even land on the stone, but stopped in mid-air, tumbling and spinning as it rose until it was at the exact geometric center of the cavern. They all flinched away as brilliant blue-green light seeped out of the very walls to crawl up the stalagmite and down the stalactite above it, arcing and pouring into it like lightning and water blended into something that was not quite either, and not quite both. Runes lit and blazed across its surface, curious runes he had no idea how to read…
But more than that, from each rune a beam of light shot out to play across the walls. Where they swept across the eyes there were blinding, painful, dazzling enough to leave purple smudges. But where they touched the stone…
The four of them turned and looked about them, each one with his mouth open, and stared at the familiar shapes. Around them, a complete and accurate armillary map of the Nested Worlds revolved slowly, far grander and more intricate even than Amir’s descriptions of the Grand Orrery of the Navigators. But that wasn’t the bit that stunned them all into silence.
Here and there across the earthmotes, picked out in red so that they could not be mistaken, a set of locations were marked by clear and vivid points of light.
And one of them was very, very close nearby.