Stained Glass Monsters (18 page)

"It's just such a waste." He dropped his
quill into a stained cup and crossed to the door, smudging a line
on a pattern of chalk symbols already drawn there, then putting
power into it. A muffling spell.

"So what's been happening?" Rennyn asked
when he finished casting.

"Eh, they don't exactly come and report
to me. Nothing else has tried to eat anyone."

"Do you know how many–?"

"Eight, and a few injuries."

Rennyn sighed. "I keep asking how many
people died, but it's just numbers. I feel like I should find out
their names, try and–"

"What? Apologise?" Seb thrust out his
chin. "We're not the ones responsible for this, Ren. We're trying
to fix it, yes, but we're not–" He broke off, grimacing.

"Not as bad? Not the ones killing
people?" Rennyn sighed and sat up, combing fingers through her hair
to sort out the tangles. "Ignore me. I'm still tired, and I don't
like how this is playing out. There's too many things we didn't
plan for."

"How do you think the prince was being
tracked?"

"Hm. Why bother seems more relevant to
me, but I suppose it could simply be a message, a demonstration. To
do it – the link between Solace and the Montjuste bloodline is a
lot weaker than the one she has to us, and the Queen has more than
enough relatives to confuse any casting. Either our Wicked Uncle
has found a way to track a person without any real knowledge or
connection to the target, or someone's stolen the prince's
hairbrush. The Hand are pursuing the theory of a conspiracy
targeting us, of course, but that investigation hasn't been getting
anywhere. Divinations aren't much use for events that happened so
long ago." She glanced at the door, wondering which Kellian was on
duty, and whether Seb's spell was successfully keeping their
conversation private.

Seb followed her gaze. "They're really
keen for you to stay here. Lieutenant Danress asked me if I could
convince you, to stress what might happen if one of those things
attacked when you were too far away for the Sentene to reach
you."

Rennyn snorted. "Fel knows, I would
rather have thrown rocks at the thing than sit behind a shield.
Today's little drama makes me want to move you out of here, not the
other way around."

"I figured. They just want to – do you
know what Kendall said to me this morning?"

"I'm sure you're going to tell me."
Rennyn considered her brother curiously. The girl from Falk seemed
to be figuring very large in his life.

"She shares a room with Sukata Illuma.
She said Sukata behaves differently around me than she does with
anyone else."

"That's hardly surprising, Seb."

"You don't think–?"

"I think it's hardly surprising," Rennyn
repeated firmly. "I haven't been able to work out whether they
actively dislike the fact that we've turned up, but the Kellian
would have to feel very ambivalent about us, at best. Even ignoring
the fact that Solace created them, the purpose, the whole reason
for existence of the originals was to protect the
Montjuste-Surcleres. And Tiandel abandoned them. Wouldn't you
resent us, in their position?"

"They don't." Seb was quite certain.
"You've seen that, haven't you?"

It took time to decide her answer. "It's
rare that they're ever anything but totally correct around me. I
know my refusal to stay here frustrates them. They don't think I'm
being sensible, but it's just as much that they want to...observe
me, and – I don't know."

"How would you feel if the reason for
your existence showed up and wouldn't let you protect her?"

Rennyn pulled a face, then sighed and
hunted about for her boots. "I would be astonished if the Kellian
considered you and I the reason for their existence. More a
hangover from their past which complicates their present. Which
reminds me, if you come through this alone, leave Tyrland – at
least for a while."

"Don't talk like that."

"Hush. The politics surrounding us are
apt to get sticky once we're no longer a critical factor in
Tyrland's survival. So far as I can make out from the farce today,
the Queen doesn't believe the Kellian conspire to anything, or that
I have any legitimate claim to the throne. Yet she allows this
public interrogation, a slap in the face to a group of people
integral to this country's defence. Just to placate some
Councillors who've been making a fuss? I wouldn't have believed her
rule so tenuous."

"How did you end up being called to
Question? I couldn't believe it when I heard."

"I volunteered for it. I was
annoyed."

He laughed. "Enjoy yourself?"

"Not really. Some meaningless
posturing." She finished tugging at the laces of her boots and
stood up, glancing at Solace's focus but leaving it on Seb's desk.
"Do you want to stay here? Or go back to the apartment?"

"Don't you think that maybe, after all,
it might be an idea for you to stay?"

"I'd just have to leave again. But I
guess that means you're staying, so you can do some research for
me." She explained the kind of spell she was aiming for, and
shrugged at his expression. "This uncle of ours is worse than
revolting, and I don't want to find myself under another of his
injunctions with no way out. I do want you to put some proper wards
up on this room. I'll be back in two days."

"Take care."

It was early evening, and the Sentene's
barracks were quiet. Rennyn glanced around and with some difficulty
spotted Captain Faille sitting on the bottom step of a nearby
stairwell, a small book balanced on his knee. Something to speed
the time while waiting outside the rooms of sleeping mages. It must
be fantastically boring for a Senior Captain to play bodyguard, and
she wondered if he ever regretted the instincts which made him the
safest person to use.

Faille disposed of the book somewhere
between Seb's room and the entrance of the barracks, and Rennyn
found herself disappointed to have not caught a glimpse of the
title. She didn't look back again until she was out of the palace
gates, to check that he was trailing her as she had been previously
followed. Without the Sentene cloak it always took a moment for her
eyes to resolve him, even with the bright street lighting of the
Palace District. She continued down Aliace Hill and was nearing
Crossways when she looked for him a third time.

"May I ask you a question, Captain?"

His answer was the lengthen his stride
until he walked at her side instead of ten steps behind.

"What happened to the original Kellian
after Tiandel ordered them out of Tyrland?"

He didn't appear perturbed by the
question. "For several years they lived directly over the border,
among the wilder mountains of Vandaluse. Eventually the
Vandalusians noticed their existence and hunted them, as invaders
or mistaking them as Eferum-Get. Rather than fight, they crossed
the Sands of Denara."

The noise and bustle of Crossways
overwhelmed his thin voice and he stopped speaking as they walked
into an evening reaching its highest pitch, with crowds lining up
outside the playhouses, and taverns and food stalls doing a roaring
trade. Rennyn ignored the strident demands of a stomach neglected
since tea with the Grand Magister, and only gazed at the excited
press. A remembrance ceremony had been held only that morning, and
already the Black Night, as people were calling the incursion in
Asentyr, might never have happened.

"On the borders of Verisia they
encountered a runaway bondswoman," Captain Faille continued, as
they started along the main road of the Temple District toward the
Docks. "Aurai Falcy. This woman became their Voice, and taught them
to write. In her company they roamed for many years, and finally
settled in the fringes of the Forest of Semarrak."

Even Rennyn, whose geography outside of
Tyrland was vague on account of being irrelevant, had heard of the
Forest of Semarrak. It was inhabited by creatures which may once
have been Eferum-Get, but were now far more complicated. The
Kellian would probably pass as unremarkable there.

The Temple of the Devourer loomed ahead,
and Rennyn paused to look up into the shadows of its portico, then
moved slowly on toward the Docks. It had been a very sparse
account, the barest of facts. The attenuated voice had been
detached but his attention, she was sure, had been divided between
watching for attacks and keenly observing her reaction. She might
not be able to guess how the Kellian felt about the reappearance of
the Montjuste-Surclere family, but whenever she was with them there
was this sense of observation that went beyond the business of
bodyguards. In their place she'd be both resentful and wildly
curious, and expected the Kellian were not so very different as to
not feel those things.

"Why did they have children?"

The question bordered on rudeness, along
with sounding very strange. Yet Rennyn knew in great detail how the
original Kellian were devised, and how they had functioned before
their exile. It was difficult to imagine them deciding to take
lovers and raise families.

"The first was a child of rape," Faille
told her. "Those who dwell in Semarrak, the inhabitants older than
the Kellian, are considered creatures of great good fortune, to be
captured and used as talismans. A man of ambition mistook his
prey."

It made him angry to speak of it. Not at
her, but at a long-dead beast who had seen a Kellian, perhaps in
strong sunlight or moonlight when they were at their most exotic,
and somehow managed to force himself on her. Rennyn wasn't entirely
certain how she knew the Captain was angry – in the dimmer light of
the Docks she had no hope of gauging his expression, and his voice
hadn't changed. Perhaps because he suddenly seemed ten times as
dangerous.

"The child was a daughter. They named
her Faille, which is a Verisian word meaning 'incalculable'."

She'd certainly blundered straight onto
sensitive ground. There were no good responses, so Rennyn swallowed
the awkwardness and guessed: "Experiencing that child prompted them
to seek more?"

"I believe she gave them some purpose
beyond existing."

That matched Rennyn's understanding of
the golems Solace had created. Raising and protecting their
children would fill the void Tiandel had left. Wondering what the
runaway bondswoman had been like, she turned off the main road into
the back streets of the Dock District, where great hulking
warehouses were interspersed with tight, cramped housing. It wasn't
a pleasant smelling area.

"We are being followed."

"I don't expect to leave the palace and
not be followed," Rennyn said, amused given that he'd trailed her
out as well. "And, frankly, unless it's a small army, I would only
feel sorry for them if they were stupid enough to attack."

He'd warned her because the area she was
heading into was increasingly secluded. The noise of the
magelight-studded main road died away, and as she found her
destination there were only her own footsteps and not a single
light except that of the stars.

"The street completely devoured by the
Azrenel."

She took the unprompted comment as a
sign of increasing curiosity. Walking down here had been an impulse
sparked by her empty stomach, and the challenge of tracking a
guised creature to which she had no powerful connection. Magic was
both greatly limited by distance and tremendously dangerous when
asked to perform a vague or imprecise action. To find a familiar
thing nearby was easy. To find an unknown at a distance was very
near to impossible. The map-based divination which allowed her
family to pinpoint the first expression of the Grand Summoning was
one of the most complex pieces of magic she knew, and only worked
because her family had both exacting knowledge of the spell, and a
real and tangible link to the caster.

Rennyn reached back and pulled free the
long black ribbon she used to hold her hair away from her face.
Knotting it into a large loop, she threaded her fingers through and
then clasped her hands together. She needed a link.

"
Unaet
," she said. "
Temaru.
Arlaeth
." Dark. Cold. Hungry.

Turning, she walked back down the
street, repeating the names of three sigils over and over.
Unaet. Temaru. Arlaeth.
Dark. Cold. Hungry. Here, to this
place the Azrenel had come. Here it had feasted, drawing out life
after life, but for an Azrenel it would never be enough.
Hungry.

Her stomach was a pit, echoing, and her
breath puffed out in clouds. As she reached the head of the street
and turned toward the river, she brought the night with her,
streaming behind like a cloak, dripping from her hands. Dark. Cold.
Hungry.

Ahead was the broad, flat expanse of the
Murian River, stinking liquid black, but before that was the band
of inscribed paving stones which marked Asentyr's circle. All
circles were literally that, as perfectly round as they could be
made. It was Symbolic magic, a thing many didn't realise, though
they understood well enough that circles couldn't cross each other.
Circles within circles were acceptable, such as the circle around
the crown of Aliace Hill, but to cross a circle with another was to
weaken both. The city of Asentyr had dozens of circles clustered
about the edges of the main, like the two immediately ahead: one
large enough to encompass a tavern and several houses to the right,
and another filled by a lone warehouse. Little islands of
protection, with darkness between.

When Rennyn crossed Asentyr's circle, it
shuddered. Reinforced countless times, the circle's entire purpose
was to keep Eferum-Get out, to protect the city from creatures
which would feed on the living. When she crossed the circle, she
was remembering a time when cooked food made her ill, and she was
hungry all the time but nothing seemed to satisfy. That craving
filled her as she stopped in the empty, unprotected point between
the three nearest circles and looked back into the light of the
city.