Stained Glass Monsters (25 page)

Kendall didn't answer right away,
because Sukata had stopped looking at the sky, had turned her head
and gone extra still. Then the Kellian girl reached out and gripped
Kendall's arm urgently, so Kendall managed to say: "Don't think
so."

"Alar Anase, the founder of Kole, was a
wandering mage. This was after the days of the Elder Mages, when
the kingdoms were fractured and Eferum-Get had begun to walk the
world. She was exploring north, following the rivers and trying to
penetrate the deeps of the Forest of Semarrak, but was caught in a
storm-flood. She managed to make it to land, but was in a very bad
state, and collapsed on the stony shore."

While she spoke, Sukata had produced the
long knife she kept strapped to one of her legs and was slowly
shifting, moving by inches to a better position in which to spring
up. All the while Kendall strained to discover what it was she was
reacting to. They weren't alone in the camp, and Sukata was staring
toward the tents around the central fire, where a few of the
Ferumguard were working on dinner preparations.

"When Anase woke, she was in a palace,"
Sukata continued, rising to one knee. "Sumptuous in every aspect,
the walls shimmering with colour. Servants of glass dressed her in
robes of gold and conducted her to the palace's lord, who was so
brilliant she could barely look upon him, and yet his eyes were
dark with grief. Anase was not a reverent woman, and she–"

Sukata moved. Moved like a Kellian, the
first time Kendall had seen her do so. In star and firelight
Kendall couldn't even track her until she stopped, and when she
stopped she had clapped one of the big cooking pots over something
on the ground.

"What are–?" began one of the extremely
startled Ferumguard, and broke off just as quickly as a sound like
tortured metal erupted from the pot. Whatever was underneath was
bouncing frantically about, wailing in ear-splitting tones. Then,
just as abruptly, it fell silent.

"Is it a Night Roamer?" Kendall asked,
as three more Ferumguard and a Sentene pair came hurrying up,
weapons at ready. "But–" They were in a circle. Night Roamers
couldn't cross circles and surely someone would have noticed if a
breach had opened in the middle of camp.

"Sukata, move away," said the Kellian
half of the Sentene pair, taking the girl's place in holding the
pot firm.

The woman's mage partner was Captain
Medan, the huge man who had stayed with them inside Rennyn's shield
when the crab-thing was attacking. He unfolded his slate and said
as he began writing: "What did you see?"

"Felt," Sukata replied, replacing her
knife in its sheathe. "Worked magic. I noticed the signature of a
casting – in Lady Rennyn's tent."

Captain Medan grimaced. "Time to do a
little housecleaning, then."

Kendall thought it very good timing that
Rennyn Claire returned to camp just as Captain Medan was holding up
a flimsy little silk undershirt left on her bedroll. Her brows rose
very high indeed, then she said: "I don't think it will fit you,
Captain."

"Not my colour, anyway," Captain Medan
replied, unembarrassed. As Captain Illuma followed Rennyn into the
camp he nodded at the cook-pot, which was now in a circle of its
own, with a rock sitting on top. "Drogan's just headed out with a
message about our visitor – must have missed you. A 'chanted
animal. Sukata caught it coming out of your tent, Lady Rennyn, and
while I can't feel anything that's about to explode, I'm certain
there's something off."

"What kind of enchanted animal?" Rennyn
asked, with a flicker of interest. She took a step toward the
centre of the camp, but Captain Illuma stopped her.

"To walk into a trap now would lose the
advantage gained in discovering it."

For a moment Kendall thought Rennyn
would object, but then she let herself be escorted to the far side
of the camp, where she sat with her chin on her knees watching as
her tent was dissected.

She'd been in a weird mood since dinner
yesterday. Riding through the forest she'd seemed quite happy,
going on about the use of symbols in Sigillic magic while eating
every berry that came into her reach. But she'd come back from a
walk yesterday totally withdrawn and gone straight to bed and then
straight to the Hells the next morning, without saying more than
two sentences the whole time. Now, while the Sentene pulled all her
stuff out of the tent, she just sat and did nothing.

Kendall took her over a plate of pan
bread, greasy with cheese. "You don't seem too worried."

"They're professionals." Rennyn took the
plate, but put it down by her feet.

"I guess there wasn't any great horde of
Night Roamers at the breach?"

"A lone and very surprised Stalker."

"All this fuss and preparation–"

"I'm sure it amuses my Wicked Uncle no
end." Rennyn lifted her head at that, and gazed out into the dark
forest. Searching.

"You think he's out there?" Kendall
asked, realising just why half the Sentene had left the camp
again.

"Not at this moment."

"Eat your dinner."

That won a brief glance, but no other
response. Kendall squinched her eyes in frustration, and was
annoyed at herself for caring. If Rennyn didn't want to eat, let
her starve. If she had circles under her eyes once again, then –
but with a half-dozen Sentene playing with her tent, probably she
had no choice about staying awake. Sukata brought two more plates
and they ate their own meals and watched their teacher brood.

Finally Captain Illuma and Captain Medan
came over and displayed a half-grown and very skinny grey cat,
supposedly disenchanted, and a small lump of damp brown fur,
apparently far from it.

"Underneath one corner of the bedroll,"
Captain Medan said. "The power signature isn't large, but it's a
very elegant piece of casting."

It looked like a half-eaten mouse to
Kendall. She knew by now that a 'signature' was the detectable
trace of magic from a spell or enchantment, and was disappointed to
not feel anything at all from the lump. She was still too weak a
mage.

Rennyn, on the other hand, tilted her
head to one side, narrowed her eyes, then said: "Some kind of
message?"

"We believe that it would cause a
sleeper to dream along a set pattern," Captain Illuma said.

"Ah. Tailor-made nightmares."

"Or possibly an attempt to influence
your waking behaviour. Magister Eldian will continue to attempt to
divine its exact content."

"What are you going to do with the
cat?"

Captain Medan hoisted the scrawny grey
animal doubtfully. "Give it dinner?"

That brought the hint of a smile to
Rennyn's lips, but it was the last real response Kendall saw out of
her that night. It was like she'd decided she didn't want to be
with them any more, was moving away from them even while she sat
among them. Like she was already gone.

"Seb."

"Ren!" Her brother turned from his desk,
then checked and frowned at her. "When did you last sleep?"

Rennyn sat on the bed, dropping her bag
to the floor and unclasping Solace's focus from her wrist. "I
swear, everyone treats me like I'm three years old. You probably
sleep less than I do."

"But I'm only casting small magics." He
didn't press the objection, and certainly knew her well enough to
know that the things most likely to keep her from sleep weren't
avoidable. Glancing past her at the door, at the signal she was
giving by leaving it open, he changed the subject. "Why did you
take Kendall and Sukata with you?"

"Mainly to distract myself. Though I was
curious about the potential you saw in Kendall."

"I was right, wasn't I?"

"She'd make quite a mage if she was
interested. She'll probably still become competent enough. Sukata–"
She paused, then continued carefully: "Sukata might turn into
something special. She has a passion for it." Rennyn put Solace's
focus on the floor, as far from furniture as she could manage, and
felt the faintest tremble as it failed to break through stone. She
walked around the room, checking the tight lines of sigils which
ran along the walls and above the door. "The wards are good. How's
the research going?"

Shrugging, he indicated more than a
dozen books lined along the shelf above the desk. "There's still a
couple of background things I want to mark, but I've found
something similar enough for you to work with. Are you – are we
going ahead?"

"I'll mark out the room today, put up
divinations. I'll rest before activating tomorrow."

"Here?"

"For a while, perhaps. Do you want to
come set up some divinations for me?"

Seb nodded briskly and fidgeted with his
cuff, where a pin was threaded, a match for the one which she
regularly wore. They exchanged glances, then both looked at the
door. This was a conversation they'd rehearsed in part long ago,
and she wondered if it sounded as artificial as it felt. Giving it
up, they went out into the main hall of the Sentene barracks, where
Captain Illuma was waiting, talking to a handful of the mages under
her command. Since her walk in the forest, Faille had not assigned
himself to play bodyguard, keeping busy with other duties. Rennyn
was pretending she was glad of that.

"Will you permit observers, my Lady?"
Captain Illuma asked.

Rennyn nodded, unsurprised. "You might
find the construction of a few of the divinations interesting."

"To look into the Eferum from this
world," said Captain Medan. "You have us all quite excited."

"Hardly interesting visually. But I'm
hoping to take a few useful readings."

The Hall of Summoning was a square,
grandly columned room in the Old Palace, very large. Guards had
been set on it weeks ago, posted outside both ornate doors in
anticipation of waves of Eferum-Get, though they'd only had curious
courtiers to deal with.

Rennyn had deliberately stayed away from
the room until now, and was surprised by it. The vaulted ceiling
was a glorious, graceful meld of curves, and the tall windows of
smoky glass kept it glowing with soft light without being open to
outside eyes. A beautiful and calming place, unexpectedly
soothing.

It was also very bare. Nothing but
walls, columns, ceiling and the empty expanse of floor. Milky-white
stone with a dark square between the columns: a dusky marble
version of a slate, waiting to be covered with sigils. She gazed at
the large central expanse, trying to estimate how much of it might
be filled by a focus created by the Grand Summoning.

"This attunement stage is simply a
further progression of what I did at Surclere," Rennyn explained,
carefully creating the circle of sigils where she would tomorrow
place the focus. "It's primarily related to the container rather
than the focus itself."

"Why is this vessel necessary at all?"
asked a sunburned woman she'd not spoken to before. There was a
fading scrape on one side of the woman's face: remnant of battle or
perhaps the explosion of Darasum House.

"Physically handling the younger
focuses, or even having them bound in wire as a pendant, would
interfere with the attunement. The vessel attempts to simulate the
Eferum, to prepare for the final alignment between the old and the
new." She glanced at the reflection of filtered sunlight on the
floor. "We'll write out all the divinations before we power them,
since they won't take kindly to people walking among them once
they're activated."

"She is right before us." Lieutenant
Danress had come in late, freckled face solemn. "On the far side of
the veil, but right before us."

Not particularly wanting to think about
such things, Rennyn pushed on. Working with Seb, she prepared a
series of divinations, answering the occasional question about the
Sigillic construction, but for the most part ignoring her audience.
Not completely, for she knew very well that Captain Illuma's
attention was on her, not on the interesting magic she was
preparing.

Rennyn was painfully aware of the damage
she had wrought by allowing her guard to drop with the Kellian.
After her behaviour the last few days, there would be none among
them unaware that she was dreading tomorrow. And they were puzzled
and concerned and worried
for
her. She mattered to them.
She'd tried to convince herself that they were simply being
superlative bodyguards, but that day in the forest she'd looked
into Faille's eyes and seen that he hated that she wouldn't trust
him. Tomorrow would always have been bad, but–

How would she deal with their reaction?
She should have kept her distance, alienated them from the start as
she'd initially thought to do. But it had proven too difficult to
offer them the cold discourtesies served to them by an ungrateful
kingdom. Now their instinct toward her was strongly protective, and
they would feel so betrayed.

Walking about in an oppressive cloud of
misery had been distracting everyone around her, and she suppressed
it as best she could, allowing herself to be drawn into the
complexities of setting the divinations, patiently explaining how
each operated as she activated them. Concentrating on work was
better than thinking about tomorrow. Seb was useful, preening a
little as the Sentene mages realised they'd underestimated his
knowledge, and handily distracting them often enough that she was
sure none could have noticed when she pricked her finger and
pressed a tiny droplet of blood on one corner of the black marble.
She and Seb would be coming back here tonight, and that would be
the beginning of the end.

-oOo-

Kendall didn't think much of being
returned to the Arkathan to sit doing nothing, so just after lunch
the next day she used a half-forgotten promise of a book as an
excuse to go see Sebastian. The Sentene barracks were a lot busier
than usual, with everyone gathering for a big meeting later that
afternoon, and Kendall bet Sebastian Claire would know just what
was going to be said. The challenge would be convincing him to tell
her.