“Very well. Go with them, Charal. And stay with them,” he added with a disturbing lack of trust.
The sergeant took a torch from the wall and led them through the tunnel into the caverns on the left. The staffs were piled in a careless heap in a room near the entrance. There were another two Defenders posted outside, who stood aside to let them enter. Charal went in first and held the torch high. The flames reflected off the staff heads like myriad tiny jewels. R’shiel and Brak stared at the pile, careful not to get too close.
“Can you pick one up for me?” she asked Charal.
“Captain Grannon didn’t say you weren’t allowed to touch them.”
“We can’t touch them.” Brak explained. “They’re specifically designed to harm anyone with Harshini blood.”
Charal looked sceptical, but he turned to the wall and dropped the torch into a metal bracket before bending down and picking up a staff at random. He thrust it at R’shiel, who took an involuntary step backwards.
“Careful!”
Swallowing a sudden lump of fear, R’shiel stepped closer and studied the hated symbol of Xaphista’s power. The shaft had been treated with something that stained it black and made the metal suck in the light around it. The head of the staff was made of gold; shaped like a five-pointed star and intersected by a lightning bolt crafted of silver. Each point of the star was set with crystal and in the centre of the star was a larger gem of the same stone.
Charal looked at the staff curiously, his eyes alight with greed. “Are they real diamonds, do you think?”
“No,” Brak said. “They’re crystals of some sort.”
“They look like the Seeing Stone.”
Brak stared at her. “What?”
“I said they look like the Seeing Stone. You know, the big crystal they have in the Temple at Greenharbour?”
“I know what the Seeing Stone is. Bring it closer to the light.”
Charal moved the staff until it caught the flames of the torch. R’shiel stepped closer, studied it for a moment, and then tentatively reached out towards the staff head.
“What are you doing?” Brak cried in horror.
“Putting a theory to the test.”
She lightly brushed her fingertip over the centre crystal. No bolt of agony shot through her, not even a whisper of pain.
“How…?” he gasped in astonishment.
“I didn’t touch the staff, just the crystal. Try it yourself.”
Reluctantly, Brak reached out to touch the sparkling jewel, jerking his hand back instinctively in anticipation of the torture he was certain awaited him. When nothing happened, he gingerly laid his finger on the stone and looked at R’shiel in wonder.
“I don’t understand.”
“Watch,” she commanded. He stepped back as she reached for the staff once more, this time with her eyes blackened by the power she drew. She placed her finger on the centre crystal and the room flared with light as every stone in every staff on the floor began to glow in response to her touch. Charal dropped the staff with a cry of alarm. Brak jumped clear of it
as the room was plunged back into relative darkness as soon as her contact with the crystal was severed.
“But how…?” Brak asked, looking at the now quiescent pile of staffs that lay on the floor beside them.
“I think they’re chips off one of the missing Seeing Stones.”
“I hate to admit it, R’shiel, but you may have been right, after all.”
“I can use the staffs to influence the priests, can’t I?”
He glanced at the pile. “That’s what you came to ask me? I suppose. Provided you can access a Seeing Stone to control them.”
“The Citadel’s Seeing Stone is lost,” she reminded him, glancing at the pile of staffs. “But Kalan said it couldn’t be destroyed. It has to be somewhere.”
He didn’t seem to share her optimism. “I suppose, although where you would hide something as large as a Seeing Stone is beyond me. And have you considered the possibility that these crystals might be all that’s left of the Citadel’s Stone?”
“I’m guessing if a Seeing Stone was broken down into smaller stones, it’s the one from Talabar. The Sisterhood would only care about destroying it or hiding it. Only the Fardohnyans would think of selling it.”
Brak nodded thoughtfully. “Which would explain Hablet’s determination to keep the Harshini out of Fardohnya. He wouldn’t want us to realise what had happened to it.”
“And only a god would have the power to break the Stone up. It makes sense, I suppose, although it
must have cost Karien a fortune. I always wondered how Fardohnya got so rich so quickly. But what about Loclon?”
“We’ll look for him, but without help we’re not going to find him.” Her expression hardened. “The new Lord Defender has other priorities.”
Brak studied her determined expression and shrugged. “All right then, that just leaves one rather pertinent question to be answered.”
“What’s that?”
“Where does one hide several tons of magic crystal?”
Loclon jerked back to consciousness with a start, and for a long time could not decide where he was. His mind was filled with so many images, so much pain, that he could not gather his thoughts into anything remotely resembling coherent thought. He stared at the strange room, at the heavy drapes over the bed and the softly glowing walls, trying to recall how he came to be there. His head was weighted down with pain and he could not move his limbs. He could not even remember who he was.
It came to him, after a time, although how long was impossible to judge. He gradually remembered being Joyhinia Tenragan. He remembered the power he had wielded in her name. He remembered R’shiel standing over him, demanding that he live.
And he remembered dying.
The feeling stayed with him like a shadow looming over his soul. The pain seemed almost irrelevant when compared with the overwhelming terror he experienced when he recalled throwing himself on some nameless Defender’s sword in the First Sister’s office to escape the fury in R’shiel’s eyes.
In hindsight, it was the most courageous thing he’d ever done—perhaps the
only
courageous thing he’d ever done.
He didn’t lament the death of Joyhinia, and his grief was inspired more by annoyance than guilt. He had lost the only true taste of power he was ever likely to have. Now he was nothing more than a fugitive.
As that thought occurred to him, he experienced a moment of blind panic. A fugitive was exactly what he was and he knew that R’shiel wouldn’t rest until he had been found. He had to get out of here, out of this room, out of the Citadel.
Loclon tried lifting his head and was appalled to find the task almost beyond him. His body had lain dormant for months and the muscles had wasted almost to the point of atrophy. He had no strength, no control, not even the ability to push himself off the bed.
It had never occurred to Loclon that his body might be wasting away in his absence. He knew it was alive—and as long as his body lived, so did he. Mathen had assured him the priests were taking care of it, but he had never been permitted to view the body himself, the priests claiming such a confrontation would undo whatever magic they had worked to transfer his mind into Joyhinia’s body. To awaken, in this thin, emaciated body, with barely enough strength to lift his head from the pillow, seemed the ultimate irony.
R’shiel could not have planned it better if she tried.
A sense of urgency overwhelmed him, for a moment swamping even his despair at finding his
body so useless. R’shiel was looking for him. She would not rest until she had him in her power.
Anger warred with fear as he thought of R’shiel. She had no right to come back, he decided, even though, as Joyhinia, he had done everything in his power to ensure that she would. If the Kariens had done as they promised she would have been dead by now—burned at the stake in Yarnarrow for the Harshini sorcerer she was. But not even the Karien god could hold her, and Loclon was not so foolish as to think that if she possessed the strength of purpose to face down a god that he could escape her wrath.
That thought finally spurred him to action. With a panic-driven burst of strength, he threw himself off the bed, landing heavily on the floor. He lay panting, exhausted by even that small effort. He could see the door, a mere five paces from where he had fallen. The distance stretched before him like a vast canyon.
For a long time, he simply lay there, gathering what little strength he had to cross the gap. He did not think of anything but the urgency of his mission. He had died once already today. He did not intend to let it happen again.
Loclon pushed himself up onto his elbows and began the painstaking task of dragging his useless body towards the door. He had barely moved a pace across the floor when he heard footsteps in the hall outside. Terror lent him another burst of strength. He slithered painfully over the polished floorboards, filled with an unnamed dread. His arm slipped out from under him and he banged his chin, making black lights dance before his eyes. The door loomed in the distance, seemingly no closer, despite his
desperate efforts. The footsteps drew closer, louder. Sweat beaded his brow and left clammy handprints on the floor as he clawed his way painstakingly forward.
He collapsed in exhaustion, his breathing ragged. Tears of fear and frustration blurred his vision. The door might as well be on the other side of Medalon. He would never make it. Any moment now it would open and R’shiel would be standing there, ready to even the score for every insult, real or imagined, that he had inflicted on her. He sobbed with terror and stared at the panelled door; watched it open with a feeling akin to having hot lead poured into his stomach. The door slammed against the wall. Loclon let out an unintelligible cry for mercy; tasted the acrid smell of urine as his bladder let go.
“Oh, for the gods’ sake, stop blubbering!” Mistress Heaner declared impatiently. “Pick him up, Lork.”
The old woman looked down on him, staring at the spreading stain on the front of his loincloth in disgust. As usual, she was dressed in black, clutching an expensive cape around her shoulders. Her small eyes set amid the folds of her thin, leathery face were filled with distaste. Lork stepped forward and scooped Loclon up from the floor. Even he screwed up his nose.
“You should be grateful, Captain. They’re turning the Citadel inside out looking for you.”
Loclon didn’t reply. He was too relieved by his rescue and too frightened by its source. Owing Mistress Heaner anything was dangerous in the extreme. She demanded a finger for an unpaid
gambling debt. Loclon was afraid to think of what she would charge for his life.
Bathed and fed, Loclon began to feel better now he knew he was safely within the walls of Mistress Heaner’s house. His only care was to hide until he could escape the Citadel.
Later that evening, Mistress Heaner came to his room. When she opened the door Loclon noted, with some alarm, that Lork was on guard outside, standing there with that implacable, witless expression that seemed to respond only to Mistress Heaner. There was a boy of about twelve with her, with sandy hair and a sly, but beautifully innocent face. Loclon remembered him as one of Mistress Heaner’s more exotic playthings. Lork closed the door behind them and the boy carried the tray he was holding to the small table beside the bed. The tempting smell of roasted meat escaped from under the domed cover on the plate.
“The Defenders have control of the Citadel,” she told him as she lit the lamp. “They’ve imposed a curfew until tomorrow at sunrise. You can go now, Alladan.”
“Who’s the new First Sister?” he asked with a twinge of professional jealousy as the boy slipped silently from the room.
“There isn’t one,” the old woman shrugged. “Nor will there be, if you believe the rumours.”
“You mean the Defenders have taken over the Citadel? Without the Sisterhood?”
“So it would seem. I hear Garet Warner masterminded the whole thing. That’s not surprising.
He’s a slimy little bastard. Jenga’s dead though,” she added, with no more emotion than she might tell him of a change in the weather.
Loclon felt no remorse over the loss of the Lord Defender. “So Warner’s in charge?”
“He’ll probably name himself Lord Defender in the morning.”
“I have to get out of the Citadel.”
Mistress Heaner nodded. “Squire Mathen left instructions in case something like this happened. You’re to be taken to Karien.”
Loclon’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why?”
“Because you were the First Sister. You have information the Kariens will need to take back the Citadel.”
“There’s a hundred thousand men outside the walls. They don’t need me.”
“The Defenders are holding all the dukes hostage. There is an army out there, certainly, but no one to lead them.”
She spoke matter-of-factly; as if she were repeating some idle gossip about a neighbour, not telling him that his entire world was falling apart.
“Then she’s still here?”
“Who? R’shiel? Oh yes, she’s still in the Citadel.”
“She wants to kill me.”
“So would every Defender in the Corps, if he knew what you’d done,” Mistress Heaner pointed out with infuriating smugness. “Fortunately for you, your brothers-in-arms don’t believe in magic, therefore they’re not likely to seek vengeance for an act they cannot conceive.”
“Can you get me out of here?”
She smiled. It was a cold, calculating smile. It made him shudder.
“For a price.”
“How much?”
“It’s bad manners to discuss such things over a meal,” she replied, glancing around to ensure everything was to her satisfaction. She had put him in the Blue Room. The hint was not lost on Loclon. This was where he had killed that whore…what was her name? Peny? This was the room where Mistress Heaner found the leverage she needed to turn him into a traitor. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“How am I going to get out of the Citadel?” he asked, lifting the cover off the platter and nodding appreciatively. He was starving.
“Through the gate, how else?”
“But isn’t it closed against the Kariens?”
“For the moment. They’re opening it in the morning to let the Kariens go.”
Loclon looked up from the plate with astonishment. “
They’re letting them go
?”
“They seem to think we’re going to be under siege for quite some time,” Mistress Heaner shrugged. “They’ve told the Kariens they can leave and anyone else who would prefer to go with them. I doubt they’re planning on releasing the dukes, but they want to be rid of the rest of the Kariens. Clever thing to do, actually. A lot less mouths to feed.”
“R’shiel will be there,” Loclon predicted with dread certainty.
“Probably.”
“She’ll recognise me.”
“Don’t worry, Captain, we’ll give the demon child something else to think about.” She walked back to the door and knocked on it twice. Lork opened it with a key. He was a prisoner, he realised with despair, but a prisoner with some value at least.
The question was: how much was Mistress Heaner going to charge?