Stained Glass Monsters (32 page)

"Fires?" Lady Weston looked briefly
puzzled, then said: "Of course. A city asleep where it stands.
There are bound to have been injuries and accidents. Muster what
you can and bring in the fire crews from outside the main circle.
But set a small force to locating Helecho Montjuste-Surclere."

"Yes, My Lady." Lieutenant Faral
saluted, and added a tidy little bow in the Queen's direction
before sending the other two Kellian speeding back out of the room.
She made a second, more thorough survey of the room, lingering for
a moment on Kendall, who had propped Sukata on her lap in an effort
to try and work out if she was alive. And then Rennyn, all bloody
and broken.

Swiftly, she crossed to the two Claires
and knelt on the other side from Sebastian. Taking hold of both his
wrists, she said: "Stop panicking."

This at least made Sebastian look at
her, though his eyes were so full of impending loss that Kendall
wasn't sure he understood what she'd said.

"Your sister needs a healing mage,
Sebastian," Lieutenant Faral said, thin voice very clear and
steady. "And quickly. You need to wake one up." She let go of his
wrists and pressed lightly on the bloody coat. "I'll look after
Lady Rennyn. You help Lady Weston with a healer."

Sebastian stared at her, then nodded
jerkily. "Yes. Of course." He took a deep breath and pulled himself
together, turning to Lady Weston.

With that settled, Kendall shifted her
attention back to Sukata, who wasn't burned and felt properly warm
and alive, but didn't wake even when Kendall pinched the skin on
the back of her hand. Her chest did seem to be moving, but it
wasn't something as simple as sleep, or surely she'd react a
little. Kendall stared from Captain Faille's body to Rennyn. This
was what she'd been hiding? The price of killing the Black
Queen?

Lieutenant Faral had finished checking
over Rennyn's injuries, and stopped to smooth strands of hair off
her face. The movement was very tender, like a mother with a new
baby, not revealing any anger underneath. But probably she didn't
know what Rennyn had done. Used the Kellian to win.

Painfully unhappy, Kendall focused on
picking bits of crystal out of Sukata and her own skin. Everyone in
the room had been peppered, but most of the pieces were small and
at least no-one seemed to have been hit in the eye.

It didn't take long for Sebastian to
find a way to wake people up, though he could only do it one by
one. But once he'd woken a couple of mages who didn't have
bracelets, and shown them what to do, things really started moving.
The room grew confusing and Kendall lost sight of Sebastian until
he showed up trailing a tall, thin woman with a long neck who took
over Rennyn, freezing Lieutenant Faral out with a cold stare.

"Let me look after her now," said a deep
voice, and Kendall looked up at Captain Medan.

"She won't wake," Kendall explained,
closing her fingers tighter around Sukata.

"I know." Captain Medan looked calm, but
Kendall could see he was upset underneath. "But she's not going to
get better lying here on the floor."

That was hard to argue with, so Kendall
let her fingers relax. The big Sentene mage lifted Sukata easily,
nodded, then carried her away.

Kendall almost followed them, but then
she saw Sebastian walking after Lady Weston and changed direction.
She needed to hear what he knew, needed to know if using the
Kellian was what he and Rennyn had planned all along.

"Lediage Sorathar is the Queen's own
healer," Lady Weston was saying, leading Sebastian deeper into the
palace. "Your sister could not be in better hands."

"I'd still rather stay with her,"
Sebastian said, but in the resigned tone of someone who knows he's
lost an argument.

"Soon enough. You know very well this
explanation cannot wait."

The Queen had lost patience with the
Claires carrying out their plans without telling her anything,
Kendall bet. From a room ahead Kendall heard Princess Sera's voice
in very definite, determined tones. It sounded like she didn't
intend to miss the explanations either. Kendall shook her head. She
mightn't like the princess, but no-one could say she didn't bounce
back quick from being scared half out of her mind. Or that she
didn't know how to get her way.

The room was some kind of sitting-room,
all brocaded chairs and glittery ornaments. Princess Sera, having
won her argument, was enthroned on a couch all to herself being
fussed over by a lady in a long white apron. Prince Justin was
picking some more crystal out of his hand. The Queen's dress was
blood-specked, but she looked a lot tidier and more regal now. Two
of the nobles who'd been in the room, the man called Tassin and a
sleepy-looking woman, shared another couch and even though this
made it a lot of people, Kendall abruptly realised that it was
probably far less than usual for an audience with the Queen. They
were all still wearing the horrid bracelets, and there weren't any
guards or servants other than the nurse. Most of those who had been
woken couldn't be spared from trying to fix the mess caused by an
entire city sleeping all at once. Fires. People who'd been standing
at the tops of flights of stairs. Holding babies. People on horses
or driving carts. Had the animals fallen asleep as well? Would
birds have just dropped out of the sky? Kendall hadn't even begun
to think through the implications.

"Have there been any sightings of the
one called Helecho?" the Queen asked Lady Weston, making a sweeping
gesture to sit down. Sebastian bowed first, and Kendall bobbed a
belated curtsey, remembering that she was from a village and this
was Tyrland's Queen. The only one.

"Not yet, Your Majesty," Lady Weston
said, her movements stiff as she sat down. "The indicator Lady
Rennyn placed on the city's circle was reacting to him in the Hall,
but it hasn't been sighted since Queen Solace's focus shattered.
Most likely he teleported."

"What level of threat does he pose?"

Lady Weston hesitated, then looked at
Sebastian. "He was able to command the Kellian when Rennyn could
not, Sebastian."

"Solace probably ordered them to obey
him while the distortion kept her from giving them more than
general commands." Sebastian was acting more like himself, but he
didn't manage to sound so detached when he added: "But he'd be heir
after me. If Ren and I die, he'll inherit control."

Inherit. The word made them less
somehow. Kendall saw the two nobles exchange glances, and wished
she could tell what the Queen was thinking. What if she decided it
would be simplest to get rid of the Kellian?

"Regardless, an Eferum-Get of that
calibre who is also a mage is a considerable threat, Your Majesty,"
Lady Weston said. "Unique. A creature who can bypass the circles,
who can command other Eferum-Get. If he chose, he could raise an
army of the creatures, could kill with impunity."

"But he didn't." This was Prince Justin,
strained but unflagging. "He could have killed us easily, and he
didn't. He didn't even seem that interested in stopping whatever it
was you did which killed his mother."

"Perhaps he wanted to be free of her,"
Sebastian said, with the faintest of shrugs. "Ren thought he might
be under an injunction. Once Solace was dead, he just – left."

"Once she was dead," the Queen repeated.
"And that has been your intention all along? Despite this
performance with Queen Solace's focus?"

"That was – oh, not just a distraction,
but a backup plan as well." If Sebastian had noticed the Queen's
flat tone he pretended not to.

"For what, exactly?" Lady Weston asked.
"I saw it, felt it, but I have little idea of what actually
happened. It almost seemed that the Kellian were casting."

"Almost." Sebastian looked down, and
noticed for the first time that his trousers were soaked with blood
where he'd been kneeling. He went perfectly white, and jerked in
his seat, but then began speaking rapidly: "The Kellian, the
originals, were part of Queen Solace. She sacrificed a piece of one
of her fingers making them, and they were true extensions of her
will until she went away. The Kellian descendents aren't quite the
same, but the spell which makes them Kellian means they had no
barriers against Solace. Her will overrode them totally.

"When our great-grandfather was killed,
and our family guessed at who was responsible, my great-grandmother
realised that the Kellian's weakness to Solace might be true in
reverse. They can't protect against her at all, but she can't stop
being linked to them either. That was something new. For years,
centuries, we've been trying to find a way to stop the cycle of the
Grand Summoning's return. Mostly we tried to find ways to move in
the Eferum, to be able to reach her before the Summoning began so
we could kill her before the power levels became too dangerous. But
we've never succeeded, and when we realised the possibilities of
the Kellian descendents, we hit upon a different approach.

"They're not quite Montjuste-Surcleres.
Ren did wonder if they counted as a kind of cousin, but Lieutenant
Faral couldn't pick up the attuned focus, so I guess the spell
excludes them in some way. But they are – were – part of Queen
Solace, and gave us access to her, the opportunity to cast a spell
which ordinarily she would see and spot easily. Symbolic magic,
strengthening the ties between Solace and us through the Kellian.
Ren's the direct heir and so her blood made the strongest link. She
marked Solace with it – the expression of Solace at Falk – and ever
since then we've marked every Kellian we met with a drop of mine or
Ren's blood. And then cast a small start to a very large spell." He
glanced at his knees again, but only for a moment. "I missed four,
ones who were never called to the city, but we'd attached a link to
the rest, a tiny casting so we could use them to make
Solace
cast a spell. So that's what happened. We prepared the room that
night after Ren put up all those divinations, and set the trigger
of both spells there. Then it only needed the Kellian and Queen
Solace to be in the Hall of Summoning, and one of us to trigger it.
After that, her own magic would end it, whether she killed us or
not." He stopped and took a deep breath, looking a lot like he
wanted to cry.

"So, you held the trigger?" Prince
Justin asked, looking puzzled. "Where were you? How did you escape
the sleep spell?"

"No. I would only have needed to trigger
the spell if Ren couldn't. I was in the Eferum."

"But why?" managed Lady Weston, in a
tone which said 'impossible!'. "More to the point, how? The risk of
being discovered–"

"Small," Sebastian said. "In the Eferum,
it's your thoughts and feelings which make you exist. Ren made me
sleep – more than sleep – before she put me in there. Unless I was
conscious, thinking and feeling, I didn't fully exist there."

Going to the Hells asleep. Even the
Queen looked disbelieving. But still angry. The Claires had lied to
her, had meant all along for the Grand Summoning to be completed.
Had done things their way without telling anyone.

"How many Kellian were needed to trigger
this spell?" Prince Justin asked abruptly.

"Two," Sebastian said. "Well, one, but
with just one Queen Solace would have been able to cast in the
early stage of the spell."

"But there were three Kellian here, the
entire time. Yet your sister stood there baiting the Black
Queen."

Sebastian looked down at his knees
again. "It would have killed them," he explained, his voice hardly
loud enough to hear. "Channelling power like that, it's not true
casting. And for that spell, the amount of Efera involved would be
– like a flood ripping away the banks of a river. Three Kellian
would have been destroyed. Even – how many were there? Eight?"

"Nine," Lady Weston murmured.

"How deadly is a ninth of a lightning
bolt? There was no way to test how much they could bear. The most
we could do was arrange for as many Kellian to be present as
possible, but this sleep spell took control out of Ren's hands.
With so few in the room when the Grand Summoning completed, Ren
wouldn't have – Ren would have held the trigger till she had no
choice."

Sebastian's voice broke on the last word
and he jerked to his feet. "I'm sorry we didn't tell you, but we
couldn't," he said, the words so fast they fell over each other.
"Any hint that we wanted the Kellian present was too much to risk.
It's what we had to do, we had to stop her, and that was the only
way we could find. I – please, can I go back? She could be – I want
to be there."

The Queen still looked less than happy,
but maybe she was softened by the tears running down Sebastian's
face. "Very well," she said. "Go."

Going was one thing, seeing another.
Rennyn had been taken to a bedroom not too far from the Hall of
Summoning, but the healer had woken assistants to crowd every
corner, all murmuring and bustling and fetching things in and out.
Sebastian hadn't been allowed more than a glimpse, and they'd ended
up sitting on an ugly couch listening to snatches of conversation
from the next room. They would, Kendall supposed, at least
hear
if Rennyn died.

"Sukata was there."

So he'd noticed. "Mm."

Sebastian picked at his trousers above
the drying patches of blood. He'd ignored suggestions he go change,
just kept worrying at the cloth. There was probably some way to
magic it clean, but Kendall doubted he was in any state to
cast.

"Tell me what happened."

That took a while. Kendall wasn't sure
how much he listened, attention only partially on her,
straightening at every change of tone in the next room. Finally she
said: "What was she trying to cast? All that did was make the Black
Queen beat her up."

"Probably just a distraction." Sebastian
shrugged. "The trigger wasn't linked to her casting."