Wedding Bells, Magic Spells (22 page)

“Here as in Mid or our world?”

“Our world.” He gave me a rueful smile. “I’d heard Mylora was lovely in the spring.”

I hesitated. “Cuinn said that all of the people were either killed or taken about seven hundred years ago.”

My father’s eyes grew haunted. “A little less than two hundred years after my first visit, I went there again. I had been traveling around the Seven Kingdoms, and reasoned that the Khrynsani and other rogue mages who wanted the Saghred would believe that I was still there. I went to Timurus again. Astava was under siege, surrounded by one of the largest armies I’d ever seen or heard of. They had battle dragons, huge brutes. I’d lived on Timurus for fifty-two years. I’m a scholar at heart, and make it a point to learn about the places I’ve traveled. There were no dragons of any kind on Timurus.”

“An off-world invader,” Garadin said quietly.

Eamaliel’s short laugh was humorless. “Like myself, except I came in peace. The people of Timurus had mages and magic, not to our level, but impressive in its own way. The magic I felt from that besieging army was different from anything I’d ever felt before. Needless to say, I left immediately. I did go back five years later to look. What Astava looked like then is what this Cuinn Aviniel says it looks like now—no human life. His description of ‘wiped out’ is entirely too accurate.”

I took a breath and blew it out. “I really hate to ask this, but we’re since going to need to get a look through that rift on the Table of Iron, by any chance did you hang on to that Passages map to Timurus?” I hesitated. “Just in case we need to have a backdoor way in?”

My father and godfather looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

I completely agreed with them both.

Mychael knew where I was going next. He could reach me i
f
anything worse happened, but I really hoped for at least one or two uneventful hours. I was going to a place I wanted to be, to be pampered and happy for a little while, and not have to worry about the Khrynsani, their motives, their monster spiders, or my mother-in-law.

I was having my final wedding gown fitting.

Alixine Toril was a friend, a sorceress, one of the finest mage robe designers in the Seven Kingdoms, and in two days, she would be my maid of honor.

Alix was using the shop of a fellow robe designer here on the Isle of Mid. The proprietor was a friend of Alix’s, and had given her the full use of his shop, workroom, and staff. She’d offered to come to the citadel for my fittings, but I’d turned her down. And now I was especially glad that I had. During times like these, a girl just needs to get out of the fortress.

When I’d told Alix that Mychael and I were getting married, Alix had been thrilled for two reasons. One, her best friend had landed herself a seriously hot catch. Two, that seriously hot catch was the paladin of the Conclave Guardians, sacred protector of the archmagus and the Seat of Twelve, and the top lawman in the Seven Kingdoms, meaning that my wedding—and my gown—would be the talk of said Seven Kingdoms.

I had hated to disappoint her, but the ceremony was going to be small—okay, smallish. Last month, I’d worn a white gown and been pushed down the aisle of a massive temple toward a sacrificial altar. Been there, experienced that, had the trauma. A big wedding was out of the question, though not only for the aforementioned reason. Mychael and I simply weren’t “big wedding” people. The most important thing about our wedding would be the two of us being married. In our minds, it wasn’t about anything else.

Mychael would be wearing his formal uniform for our wedding. Normally, I hated wearing gowns, not because I didn’t like them, but because I liked being able to fight for and preserve my life more. This was the one time when I actually wanted to wear one. However, just in case there was a possibility that I’d need to fight for my life—and lately that’d been most of the time—I had insisted on something light, not a brocaded, encrusted edifice that weighed more than I did.

As always, Alix had come through for me. Having experienced firsthand the kind of trouble I’d attracted during the time we’d known each other, she knew I was serious about needing a wedding dress that wouldn’t get me killed. The resulting confection had a skirt consisting of three layers of the lightest Pengorian silk. The bodice was of matching Pengorian silk, and both had a gossamer overlay painstakingly stitched with crystal beading and dainty pearls.

I loved it, and I loved Alix for making it for me.

I was admiring the gown by looking down at it, not by seeing my reflection in a full-length mirror.

Even though I’d told Alix that I loved the gown, she knew that I couldn’t get the full effect without a mirror. She didn’t like that I couldn’t see it properly, and quite frankly, neither did I. A final wedding gown fitting was something I was only going to experience once, and I wanted the full treatment.

“Any good news on the mirror front?” she asked around a mouthful of pins. While nowhere near Justinius Valerian’s league when it came to mindreading, Alix had a smidgen of that particular gift, plus she knew me only too well.

I told her what happened last night at the Myloran embassy, this morning with Mychael’s parents, and an hour ago with Cuinn Aviniel. Alix had come by the citadel yesterday with my shoes, and knew that my wedding week wasn’t quite shaping up as I’d hoped or planned, which really hadn’t been a shock to either one of us.

“You can’t worry about what Mychael’s mother thinks or doesn’t think of you.”

“You’re right.”

“Of course, I am.”

“I’m letting my feelings get in the way.”

“Yes, you are. Unfounded and paranoid feelings.”

“Huh?”

Alix spit out the last two pins, and sat back on her heels. “Raine, I’ve seen the way Mychael looks at you. That poor man’s got it bad. And from everything you told me about what happened with the Saghred, that man put himself through hell—and taking on the Queen of Demons nearly makes that one literal—and risked everything, including his life, for little ol’ you. That’s love. Pure, unconditional, and permanent. That’s the kind of man who doesn’t care what his mother thinks about the woman he loves and has decided to spend the rest of his life with.”

My shoulders sagged in relief and realization that my best friend was right, I was wrong, and Edythe Eiliesor was going to be however she’d decided to be. I couldn’t change it, and it didn’t make any difference to the man who loved me more than his own life.

“Yes, I’m right again,” Alix said, getting back to work. “Now stand up straight.”

I did. “Sorry. How did I get so crazy?”

“Let’s see…impending wedding, peace talks where peace is the last thing they’re talking about, Khrynsani spider monsters shutting down all mirror travel in the Seven Kingdoms, the Khrynsani wanting who knows what, all that business with your new magic, and your future mother-in-law doesn’t like you. Maybe.”

“That’d do it. Oh, and speaking of Edythe, if we girls still get to go out tonight, Tarsilia thinks we should invite her.”

Alix stopped pinning and looked up at me in disbelief. “Has Tarsi been sampling some of her own apothecary brews?”

“Yeah, I’d kind of wondered that myself. But I ran into Sora Niabi late yesterday, and she agrees. They think that if Edythe and I could get into more of a relaxed social setting—without Mychael—that she could get to know me better. Hence, going out with us.”

“It doesn’t sound like she’s the social type,” Alix said.

“And I don’t think she’s ever been relaxed.”

“Though she and Brant did manage to make two children,” Alix pointed out.

“You don’t have to be relaxed for that.”

“What do Isibel and Imala think?” Alix asked.

“I haven’t had a chance to ask either one of them.”

“After being locked in the peace talks all day, both of them will need to let their hair down. But I can’t see Isibel doing that with her mother there.”

“I can’t see either one of us doing that.”

“You like Mychael’s dad, right?”

“Definitely.”

“Does he love her?”

“It looks that way. And she loves him—and Mychael.”

“She’s a mother, Raine. She just wants what’s best for her son.”

“And she doesn’t think that I’m it.”

“Has she said that?”

“Not directly.”

“Well, I think you should directly ask her—after the wedding, of course. We don’t want to possibly mess
that
up. What did Mychael say?”

“That she’ll like me once she gets to know me.”

Alix rolled her eyes. “Doesn’t know that much about women, does he?”

“Knows enough to make me happy.”

“That’s not the kind of knowing I’m talking about.”

“I like it.”

“I’m sure you do. The thing is there’s nothing you can do that you haven’t already done to get her to like you. You’re not the problem; she is. Has Mychael had a chat with her yet?”

“I don’t think so. We’ve been kind of busy.”

“For your happiness—and sanity—I would suggest that he make the time. He loves both of you, both of you are unhappy, and it’s about him. You’ve done everything you can. She’s done everything she’s willing to. It’s time for Mychael to tell his mother exactly how it is and how it’s going to be.”

“And if he doesn’t think that’s necessary?”

Alix gave me a wicked smile. “Then it’ll be up to your bridesmaids.”

Sending out an order to lock all mirrors and cease all mirror
travel had proven beneficial in two ways: people weren’t traveling to their dooms and becoming spider food, and the spiders were becoming hungry.

Very hungry.

According to Tam, once a Rak’kari had fed for the first time, they had to keep eating. After all mirror travel had been suspended, the spiders got hungry, then agitated, then desperately started trying to consume each other. I was surprised how little time it’d taken. Within three days, they were in a frenzy to feed. If anyone in the Seven Kingdoms decided to live dangerously and try to go somewhere in a mirror, they wouldn’t be living for long, dangerously or otherwise. Since Rak’kari need living food with warm blood and liquefiable internal organs, trying to dine on each other wasn’t going well, as Rak’kari had none of those things.

The result was spider monsters that weren’t picky eaters.

Justinius Valerian’s claim that the faculty in the cryptozoology department were creative thinkers had borne fruit. One of the professors, a believer that the more minds put to work on a problem, the more potential solutions you could get, had been particularly successful. She’d told her graduate students the problem, offered them a big chunk of extra credit, stepped back, and watched the magic happen. Literally.

The winning plan was a team effort of an enterprising young couple: the girl was a cryptozoology grad student, her boyfriend was one of Cuinn’s lab assistants.

It was early afternoon, and I was back in Cuinn Aviniel’s laboratory. Me and a lot of other people. Good thing it was a big room.

“Use one monster to kill another,” I noted with approval. “I like it.”

The salvation of the Seven Kingdoms’ mirror travel came in the form of Majafan sandworms. They were the length and width of your forearm, their skin was puncturable, and their blood warm enough for a starving spider.

Blood that was deadly if ingested—at least for normal creatures. We didn’t know if it applied to a Rak’kari, but Cuinn had a plan to find out.

Best of all, the cryptozoology lab had hundreds of sandworms, thousands during their mating season, which apparently was often. The kids in the lower level crypto courses dissected them in a lab course. When sandworms were less than two months old, they were still just as large, but were nonpoisonous, and were fed to Guardian sky dragons like hay.

A plentiful and quickly renewable resource.

There might not be enough sandworms to kill every Rak’kari in the Void, but it would put one heck of a dint in their numbers. The chairman of the cryptozoology department was having more shipped in from a small magic school in Brenir that should be enough to finish off the rest of the Rak’kari.

“They wiggle,” the department chairman was telling us. She was brisk and businesslike with a wry sense of humor and reminded me a lot of Sora Niabi, the chairman of the demonology department. I was sure they knew each other, and were probably friends.

“The spiders should like the wiggling,” she continued. “The sandworms are fat, juicy, and highly poisonous.” She gave us a quick, borderline evil grin. “And if the poison doesn’t kill them, the explosion will.”

I perked up at that. “Explosion?” Now she was talking my family’s language.

“Once the poison’s ingested, it turns to a gas.” She put her hands together, then spread them apart. “Boom.”

“Will that do it?” Mychael asked Tam.

“I don’t see why not. Given enough pressure buildup, even an armored Rak’kari should explode.”

“Which brings up your students’ next project,” I said. “How to clean up
that
mess?”

“Would the Void be damaged by any of this?” Mychael asked Cuinn.

The elf mage thought. “Theoretically, it shouldn’t.” He sounded fairly confident, then he flashed a boyish grin. “But then no one’s ever blown up Rak’kari inside the Void using Majafan sandworms before. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see this.”

*

Taking a peek through a rift and getting visual confirmation
of the Khrynsani on Timurus was important. Knowing where they were was the first step to finishing what was started that night in the Khrynsani temple. Tam, in particular, couldn’t wait to get started on that project.

But exterminating the Rak’kari infesting the Void took precedence. If the Khrynsani had anything up their collective black sleeves, getting mirror travel reestablished was critical. Tam had said the Khrynsani didn’t waste resources. They wouldn’t have conjured hundreds of Rak’kari simply to inconvenience mirror travel in Seven Kingdoms. They had cut us off from each other for a reason, and with the Khrynsani, that reason would never be good.