The Vaetra Chronicles: Book 01 - Vaetra Unveiled (20 page)

Sulana's mother had given her the tapestry on her 16th birthday, her Day of Adulthood. She treasured it, knowing that her mother had probably spent the better part of a year's earnings to pay for its well-wrought artwork.

She got out of bed and saw that someone had slipped a note under her door. She brought it over to the lamp and discovered that the note was from Ebnik. He wanted her to meet him in the main library at midmorning. She wasn't sure how late she'd slept, so she quickly got dressed, extinguished her lamp, and walked confidently in the dark around the room's obstacles to her chamber door.

Sulana's room was deep underground, so she had no windows from which to judge the time of day. She needed to go out to one of the exterior rooms or find a suntracker along the way.

As she opened her door, a small illuminator on the opposite wall reacted to her presence and instantly lit the hallway with a bright white glow. Illuminators throughout the Archives were small half-spheres of glass, about two inches in diameter, mounted on a circular brass base with a stem that was embedded into the wall just below the ceiling. The glass focusing device drew vaetra from the stone wall through the metal stem and converted it to light when it detected a person nearby. They were extremely helpful in the dark underground hallways that made up the majority of the castle.

Sulana quietly closed the door behind her. There was something about the utter silence of these subterranean passages that made one speak in a hushed voice and tread lightly. Every sound you made seemed muffled and yet intrusive.

The hallway outside her door connected to a much wider main hallway that led to the front of the castle. She knew she'd find a suntracker on the wall where the halls met. She walked to the end of her hallway past two other doors and looked up at the wall across from her. The suntracker's hand-sized disk was placed just above eye level, and the center-mounted indicator was pointing almost directly to the left. The enchantment that drove the suntracker followed the sun's movement in the sky, turning the pointer around the disk to point straight up at midday and straight down at midnight.

Sulana saw that she had apparently slept longer than she thought. It was well past sunrise, but she still had time to grab something to eat before she had to meet with Ebnik. She turned right and strode down the larger passage.

The large double doors of the dining hall were near the end of the main hallway, and both were swung fully open. The dining hall was one of the few rooms in the castle with an exterior wall and natural lighting. A half dozen robed residents were seated on the benches at various tables around the room. Sulana's stomach growled as she walked along the perimeter of the room toward the aromatic kitchen to see what was available.

After a small but satisfying breakfast, she hurried back into the depths of the castle to the main library on one of the lower levels.

The heavy wooden door to the library swung open smoothly on silent hinges as Sulana entered. She immediately spotted Ebnik seated at a carrel, bent over an open tome. The old man looked up when she walked over, and he closed the book he was reading. "Good morning, Sulana," he said as he got up. He took the book over to one of the library shelves and put it back into the gap where it had come from.

"Good morning, Ebnik. What did you want to see me about?"

He turned to face her, his baritone voice carrying a hint of mischief. "I have a treat for you. We're going to see someone who may be able to help us get the evidence we need to convince the Council to let your team go to Buckwoods."

Sulana tilted her head. "Truly? Who would that be?"

He winked at her. "You'll see. Follow me." Ebnik turned and walked deeper into the library.

Sulana hesitated as he walked away. She had expected Ebnik to leave the library the way she came in, not go the opposite direction. She finally put herself in motion and followed Ebnik's flowing robes between the stacks to an old wooden door at the back wall of the library. The door had a glass sigil embedded into the wood. Ebnik placed his hand on the sigil, and Sulana saw it glow briefly through the gaps between his fingers. With a distinct click, the door unlocked and slipped open a few inches.

She didn't hear him say the trigger word for the implement on the door, but that wasn't a surprise. Ebnik was more than just a sorcerer; he was a wizard, which meant he could cast incantations and activate vaetric implements with thought alone. It was a rare gift, and one that appeared only after many years of casting experience. It was just one of the reasons Sulana had tremendous respect for the old sorcerer.

The door opened into a passageway that was too roughly hewn to merit the term hallway. It went straight back, deeper into the mountain than any place she'd been before. No illuminators came to life as they entered. Ebnik picked up a lantern that was resting on an old stool on the other side of the door, and lit it with a brief but intense stare. He gestured for Sulana to close the door behind them, and holding the lantern in front of him, he led the way down the passage.

They didn't have to walk very far. The passage turned to the left about thirty paces down and then went another ten paces or so before they came to a pair of doors. One was at the end of the passage and the other was in the left wall.

The end door opened as they approached, and a shaggy-haired, middle-aged man wearing a simple long brown robe stood framed at its threshold. He nodded his head when he recognized Ebnik and stepped back to let them enter. "Welcome Ebnik. It's been a while." He motioned for them to take a seat on a long padded bench near the door, while he sat in a nearby chair.

"Greetings, Arinot. I hope things are well with you." Ebnik sat the lantern down on a small table near the door. It added significantly to the light on that side of the room.

Sulana looked around and realized the room was lit entirely by candles and one other lantern, which sat atop a dark, wooden desk that was piled with books and papers. She didn't see a single illuminator.

"I'm as well as ever. Who have you brought to see me?" Arinot asked, looking over at Sulana curiously.

Ebnik held both hands out toward Sulana. "May I present Archives Agent Sulana Delano, battle-hardened Sword Sorceress and Trollbane."

Sulana blushed and scowled at Ebnik, then turned apologetically to Arinot. "He's mocking me. I'm a 'Sword Sorceress' with one mission into the mundane world under my belt, and yes,
my team
encountered a troll on the return journey."

Ebnik shook his head insistently and leaned toward Arinot, his voice dropping to a dramatic rumble. "She's being too modest. Right when her most experienced warrior, himself a Trollbane, was about to be gobbled up by a troll of legendary size and power, Sulana slew the creature and saved the warrior's life with one mighty spell."

Arinot's green eyes twinkled as he watched Sulana squirm in her seat at Ebnik's rendition of her story.

When Ebnik finished, Sulana's frown turned to a smile and she laughed. "Ebnik, I think you missed your calling. You should have been a bard."

Ebnik looked down with a sad expression. "Alas, I fear my voice and playing would chase away the crowds before they could hear my stories."

Arinot chuckled. "Well met, Sulana Trollbane. How may I be of service?"

"I brought Sulana with me to see if we might ask a favor of you," Ebnik answered for her.

Arinot's expression grew serious as he looked into Ebnik's eyes. "You have need of...my particular talent?" He looked quickly aside at Sulana.

Ebnik nodded. "I have permission from the Council to let Sulana observe, so you may speak freely."

Sulana looked back and forth between Ebnik and Arinot. "What's this about? Does Arinot have unique implements or incantations we can use?"

Arinot chuckled and shook his head. "No incantations or implements, I'm afraid. I'm no sorcerer."

Sulana's confusion grew and she wasn't sure what to say. Ebnik rescued her from her discomfort.

"Arinot is a Sensitive. Actually, there should be a different word for Arinot's sensitivity, as it is so far beyond anything we normally equate with the term."

"What do you mean?" Sulana asked.

Arinot answered her. "I can hear vaetric manifestations from as far away as the Imperial Capital."

Sulana gasped. "How is that possible? With that kind of range, anything that happened close by would be..."

"Deafening," Arinot finished for her with a nod. He raised his hands, palms up, and looked around the room. "That's why I'm down here in this cave. The thick stone blocks out most manifestation sounds and gives me a measure of peace."

Sulana looked at Arinot for a moment, absorbing the implications of his words. "So, you're a sound Sensitive, just like...someone else I met recently." He nodded again. "Wouldn't you be more comfortable somewhere farther away from the Archives? This place has to be the source of a lot of manifestation noise."

He nodded. "You'd think so, but this really is the best place for me. This hole in the ground protects me well enough, and I have an arrangement with the archives that gives me a comfortable living."

Ebnik spoke up. "Arinot is also a scholar and scribe. He understands more about vaetra than many sorcerers."

Ebnik stood. "But that's not why we're here either. We've come to find out what Arinot can hear for us, not what knowledge he can share." Arinot and Sulana rose to their feet as well.

Arinot grimaced. "To the tower, then?"

"Indeed. To the tower," Ebnik confirmed.

Sulana wasn't sure what they were talking about, but the Archives had only one tower, and she assumed that was where they were headed. Arinot grabbed a lantern and left the room through the door she and Ebnik had entered. He turned to the other door she'd seen at the end of his hallway and opened it to reveal another dark passageway. Arinot led the way, his swaying lantern pushing back the darkness as they moved forward.

This passage was similar to the one that had taken her from the library to Arinot's chamber; it was rough-hewn and possessed no illuminators. Sulana wasn't sure of their direction, but she suspected that this route would allow them to bypass most of the castle's main corridors on their way to the tower.

A short distance down the corridor, they came to steps leading upward. They climbed the stairs to a closed door, where Arinot hesitated. "I hate this part," Sulana heard him murmur, and he handed the lantern to Ebnik before he opened the door.

The doorway opened up into one of the hallways of the main castle, so as Arinot stepped over the threshold, an illuminator came on a little farther down the hall. Arinot clapped his hands to his ears and whimpered before charging down the hallway toward a door at the far end. He pressed his shoulder into his right ear to free that hand, quickly opened and stepped through the door.

Ebnik and Sulana hurried down the hall after him. Arinot stared balefully at them with his hands still over his ears as they joined him. Sulana slammed the door closed, and Arinot lowered his hands and let go of the breath he'd been holding once the hallway illuminator extinguished itself.

Sulana had never considered the illuminators a menace. To her, they had always been a welcome convenience. Seeing Arinot's distress made her sorry they couldn't disable or remove the illuminator in the hallway that connected to the tower, but she supposed it didn't make much sense to inconvenience everyone for the sake of one man whose existence was a secret.

They stood on a landing inside the castle tower. Steps spiraled both upward and downward from the landing. The treads connected from the outside wall to a central stone column, with cool air cascading steadily down the stairwell into the depths of the castle. Muted natural light seeped down from above.

The tower was actually part of the castle's heating system, which used vaetric heaters to warm the outside air that flowed down the tower stairwell. The warmed air rose up through the rooms and halls of the castle's interior through ventilation shafts between each level.

Arinot shivered and started up the stairs. "Let's get out of this beastly draft."

Everyone was panting by the time they reached the top landing. Ebnik rested his hand against the wall and hung his head while he caught his breath. "Those stairs get longer every year," he grumbled between breaths.

Above them, large slots in the exterior wall admitted a steady flow of fresh mountain air. She could see the underside of the pointed tower roof that protected the openings from weather.

Arinot smiled, gave Ebnik an affectionate pat on the back, and then opened the door that led out to the tower's maintenance walkway.

As a child, Sulana had loved coming up here. The tower rose high above the Archives castle and the hillside into which the castle was built. From the walkway that encircled the top of the tower, one could see for multiple days' travel in almost every direction. Only one nearby mountain peak obscured the view to the southwest, but that peak was itself a magnificent vision of rocky slopes and stunted trees. In every other direction, the tree-spiked landscape rose up to snow-capped peaks and fell down into bright green valleys.

Ebnik followed them out onto the walkway, and everyone simultaneously took a deep breath of the fresh morning air.

Arinot looked eagerly around at the view and went right up to the waist-high wall that protected observers on the walkway. "Beautiful. I don't get up here often enough," he said with a wistful expression.

"What do we do now?" Sulana asked.

"We let Arinot adjust to the noise level, and then we find out what our brethren are up to out there in the world," Ebnik said.

"What are we listening for?" Arinot asked.

"I'd rather not say just yet. Let's see what you can tell me first," Ebnik answered.

Arinot gave one curt nod and started walking slowly around the tower walkway. Sulana followed him a couple of paces behind, enjoying the view and leaning over to look down at the Archives personnel moving around on the ground far below. She could hear the breeze whisper through the treetops and caught snatches of conversation. The clouds were high and thin in the sky, which was a welcome relief from the fog of clouds that frequently cloaked the mountain.