Shards of Time (50 page)

“If anything happens to Alec, you won’t be able to get to Klia.”

“That’s right. And if that’s the case, I will send for you. But not before.”

“Yes, Master Thero.”

“I need you to make fresh arrows with shafts that haven’t been used,” Thero told Alec that night as they sat by the fire
in the empty library with Seregil and Micum. “Do you have any white fletching?”

“No, only red. But Nysander used white that day, didn’t he?”

“You’re in luck,” said Micum. “I saw a brace of swans hanging in the kitchen. I’ll go get what you need.”

“I’ve got the tack, but I’ll need some fresh shafts,” said Alec, rising to follow him. “I’ll go ask Dorin.”

Thero fought off another crushing wave of fear as he laid out the materials he needed on the table: a blue inkstone, brushes, water, a handful of golden sesters, and the precious silver foil. Not fear of what lay ahead, but that it wouldn’t be enough.

“We’ll get her back,” Seregil said from the chair by the fireplace.

Thero nodded grimly.

“You know how to bespell Alec’s arrows the way Nysander did? How confident are you?”

“I know the spells. I just haven’t had occasion to use them.”

“So you’re saying Alec might go up against our enemy with no advantage? An ordinary arrow won’t stop a dyrmagnos, assuming we manage to lure her out. We know a sword doesn’t. Even if you dismember them, the parts will reunite.”

“I know that! We’re just going to have to hope for the best, and that Illior is on our side again.”

Seregil said quietly, “It isn’t easy, is it, when the one you love most is beyond your reach?”

“How did you stand it, when Alec died?” Thero asked, laying out golden sesters on the table.

“Sebrahn brought him back quickly. Otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

Thero turned to him. “You’d have chosen to die, too, wouldn’t you?”

Seregil nodded.

“What I saw when I held Nhandi’s arm ring. What I felt—” Thero picked up a pair of coins, held them in trembling fingers, set them down again. “I experienced the grief that destroyed Khazireen. I feel a kinship to him. I will be in the
same impossible position he was in, if in the end we have to seal Klia in with that monster. I keep thinking about the skin magic Rhazat is using, and how she must have gotten it …”

“So do I. Klia showed Alec a blade she made of her gorget. It’s sharp and it’s gold, so Rhazat can’t touch it. Klia will use it if she has to.”

“Illior’s Light.” Thero rested his arms on the table and cradled his head in his hands. “What if we can’t do this? What if it doesn’t work?”

“Well, if things go seriously wrong then none of us will have to live with our mistakes, since we’ll all be dead. So that’s taken care of.”

“You’re such a comfort.”

Seregil chuckled darkly. “Alec had a talk with me on the way to the palace, the day you first examined the corridor where he disappeared. He told me in no uncertain terms that I was being overprotective, which he interpreted as my not considering him a capable equal.”

“Yes?”

“Klia survived a war, Thero. She’s as intelligent as you are, and twice as brave as the rest of us put together, not some damsel in distress. She just needs our help.” Seregil paused. “Every time Alec and I go out on a job for you, I have to accept that he might not come back with me. But if he dies a hero’s death, it’s his choice and his right.”

Thero turned to him, pale green eyes hard and angry. “If it was Alec trapped there, would you say the same?”

Seregil met his gaze steadily, grim as death. “No, I’d be the one sitting over there with my head in my hands, and you’d be saying those words to me.”

Micum returned with a handful of swan wing feathers. Alec followed with a bundle of new arrow shafts, his leather tack bag, a glue pot, and a small length of board. He laid out his materials on the floor by the fire and sat down to begin on the arrows. Laying out the swan feathers, he took out a small fletcher’s knife from his tack and began splitting and shaping them on the board.

“Micum, collect the swords,” said Thero. “Here on the table, please.”

Micum laid them there, and Thero worked up some ink using a metal scraper and water on the inkstone. When he had enough, he chose a fine brush and began inscribing the spell on the blade of Micum’s sword, concentrating on the words, seeing them in silver script in his mind’s eye.

He did the same with Alec’s sword and Seregil’s. It took several hours to get it right. When he finished he looked around and found Seregil and Micum snoring softly in their chairs. Alec, however, had been busy. A considerable number of freshly fletched arrows lay on the floor in front of him.

“These just have to cure. Should I do more?” Alec asked.

“How many do you have?”

Alec counted them. “Sixteen.” He looked up at Thero. “I wasn’t really counting as I worked, but that’s four times four.”

“Yes, that does seem like an auspicious sign. Leave it at that, Alec. If I know you, you’ll only need one to do the job anyway. In the heart, remember?”

“I remember.”

“You should sleep now. It will take me some time to put the magic on them.”

When the others woke at dawn, Thero was still painting symbols on a white-fletched arrow. The table was piled with others, most of the shafts covered in the same intricate symbols. They’d all been fitted with arrowheads made of gold.

Alec picked one up and inspected it more closely. The barbed arrowhead was covered in a fine tracery of silver symbols, and the edges were razor-sharp. “Did you make this, Thero?”

“Yes, using coin gold. If these don’t stop her, then I don’t know what will.”

Seregil went to one of the tall windows and looked out over the sea, where whitecaps were rolling across the grey-green water under a lowering sky. “Looks like a perfect day to go kill a dyrmagnos, eh? How shall we go about it?”

“It all depends on me getting to Klia,” said Alec. “We have to be ready for when she breaks the seal.”

“Hold on,” said Seregil. He left the room, returning quickly
with parchment, pen, and ink. “We need to know exactly how things are laid out in the caves, Alec.”

Alec took pen in hand and sketched out the large cave on the other plane, the spot where the seal was, and the tunnel that led outside. “It’s about thirty or so feet from the opening.”

“You’ll have to be inside the tunnel to see what’s at the end of it, with the light behind you.”

“Which means he’ll be visible,” said Thero.

“Not if I’m on my belly until the last minute,” said Alec. “Besides, the dyrmagnos will probably be too occupied with Klia and the seal to notice me.”

“You can’t count on that,” Thero warned. Taking the pen, he drew the third cave just touching the one Alec had drawn. “Assuming that they are joined, as they were in my vision, then we should be nose-to-nose with Rhazat and Klia when the seal is broken and our plane opens to the other. And our cave here …” He drew in the narrow tunnel that connected the third cave to the second. “The only ways out are back through this bottleneck, or forward, charging her.”

“Or rather, driving her,” said Seregil. “Alec is our first line of attack. Until he weakens her with the arrows, we may not be much good against her.”

“If I manage to hit her heart, that should be pretty much the end of her,” said Alec.

“It didn’t work that way last time,” Micum reminded them. “We still had to hack Irtuk Beshar to pieces. That’s a rotten business and if you don’t remember, I’ll show you the scars on my leg.”

“I’ll aim for her heart,” Alec assured him. “I’ve got sixteen arrows and if I can, I’ll put every damn one of them into that bitch.”

“We’re still assuming that Klia will agree to break the seal,” Micum reminded them. “Who’s to say she won’t order us to leave her there and reseal the plane?”

“I’ll just have to convince her,” said Alec.

“You might need help doing that.” Seregil turned to Thero. “Perhaps a letter from you?”

“I composed one last night.” He took a wax-sealed letter from his coat pocket and gave it to Alec. “Whatever happens, she must have this.”

Alec tucked it away in his coat. “The only problem is, I can’t guarantee when I’ll find her again. She said she’d go to the cave every day, but who knows if she’ll be able to or not?”

“That means we’ll have to be ready and waiting, no matter what,” said Micum. “Once we’re in place, we’ll stay there until you and Klia come through. Only problem is, I don’t fit down the tunnel to the painted cave.”

“That’s easily fixed,” said Thero.

“Yes, but then what?” asked Alec. “We’re assuming that the magic on the arrows won’t work until the other plane is breached—”

“And I sincerely hope we’re right about that,” said Seregil.

“Even if it’s instant, the portal between her plane and ours will be open before I can get off a shot, leaving the three of you to face her unprotected.”

“I took that into consideration.” Thero took up the pen again and drew a wavering line between the two caves, and another at the mouth of the tunnel leading up from the painted cave to the second. “Here, and here, I plan to lay down a defensive magic she shouldn’t be able to cross, or at least not without expending a significant amount of her strength. If she recognizes what it is, she’s more likely to turn and run toward you, Alec.”

“Making her a better target,” he replied with a dark grin.

“Timing is everything in love and war,” said Seregil. “Either you stop her or she’ll fly straight for her tower. The last thing I want to do is have to hunt her in there, on her own ground. Not to mention the fact that if she gets that far, Alec will most likely be dead.”

“What do we do with the parts of her?” asked Micum.

“We must contain the head and hands. I’ll bring containers for them. The rest I’ll try to burn,” Thero replied.

“Ah, you and fire,” Seregil said with a chuckle.

Thero smiled. “You get ready. I need a few hours to prepare and sleep, then we’ll go.”

Seregil sat on the bed, watching as Alec unlocked the ferrule in the handgrip of the Radly and pulled the two halves apart. He wrapped them with a well-waxed bowstring, then laid them and his quiver in the center of a small blanket and rolled them up into what appeared to be a traveler’s bundle secured with twine. Dressed in his rags again, Alec wrapped his sword belt around his slim hips, put on a cloak to hide the blade, and slung the bundle over his shoulder.

“Do I look sufficiently harmless?” he asked, striking a stooped pose.

Seregil smiled. “The real question, I suppose, is do you look sufficiently ghostly?”

“I must. No one has bothered me there except for the occasional dra’gorgos since that first night.”

“Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

“A little,” Alec admitted. “I don’t think the ghosts really notice me.”

“It just makes me wonder how much control the dyrmagnos has over her realm. Or is it you? Can’t she see you?”

“Why wouldn’t she be able to? She saw Mika well enough.”

“Yes, but he didn’t die completely the way you did.” Alec raised a brow. “He didn’t die enough?”

“You know what I mean. There’s something not right about this.”

“What choice do we have, though?”

“Not one I dislike any less than this.”

Micum and Thero were waiting for them downstairs, dressed like Seregil in plain clothing borrowed from among the other ’faie living at Mirror Moon. A laden cart stood outside the front door, and Alec climbed in and took the reins. The others mounted their horses, and together they set off for the oracle’s cave.

They stopped outside the sacred grove. Alec went ahead to make sure they were alone.

“I’ll go see to the tunnel while you bring the supplies up,” said Thero.

By the time the others had emptied the wagon of a week’s
worth of food and other supplies and carried them to the first cave, Thero had widened the tunnel for Micum and there was a considerable pile of new sand in the painted cave. Alec helped move the supplies down there, then bid them farewell. Seregil followed him up to the outer cave, wrapped his arms around him, and held him tight.

“Take care, talí.”

Alec hugged him back, breathing in the clean smell of his lover as he committed that and the feeling of their bodies pressed together to memory. There was no way of telling when they would be together again.

Or if.

That possibility hung unspoken around them as they shared a kiss.

Seregil stepped back, holding Alec by the shoulders for a moment. “Shoot straight, talí.”

A shiver went up Alec’s spine. Seregil had said those same words to him the first time they’d fought a dyrmagnos. “I will.”

“Luck in the shadows, Alec.”

“And in the Light.”

Alec’s heart ached as he shouldered his heavy pack of food and set off for the palace. He didn’t let himself look back.

Mika couldn’t sleep the night Master Thero went away with the others. He hadn’t wanted to stay alone in the big room without Master Thero, so the housekeeper let him sleep with Vhadä in his little room upstairs. Vhadä wanted to talk and joke around, but Mika’s heart wasn’t in it.

“Why are you so worried about your master and his friends?” asked Vhadä. “They’re just up there exploring the caves, right?”