Stained Glass Monsters

Chapter Nine

Rennyn took the time to reassure Seb, then narrowly avoided an audience with the Queen. Another reason to stay away from the palace as much as possible. She’d been neither pleased nor surprised to hear her name on every street of Asentyr, and could only appreciate the magnitude of her failure. Three hundred years of secrecy, smashed to ruins.

The Sentene were keen to reach the next site before sunset, and she found herself being very efficiently bundled into a coach, part of a small cavalcade. The dark, over-quilted interior made her sleepy, so she curled up on the seat and dreamed confusedly of being shaken until she was woken by a light hand on her shoulder. The red-headed Lieutenant, Danress, standing in the doorway of the coach.

"You haven’t really recovered, have you?" the woman said. "Will you be able to do what you need here?"

"It’s nothing difficult," Rennyn replied, running her fingers through her hair, the bandages catching at strands. She’d be able to rid herself of them soon, but it was true that sleep hadn’t balanced the physical toll.

Peering past the Sentene mage, she saw they’d stopped in a well-established encampment. The group she’d been travelling with had joined up with an equal number who’d gone ahead to the rough location she’d named. "How solid is this plan to build a shield to contain the Eferum-Get?"

"With time to prepare a properly constructed circle it seems workable. Just because we usually build them to keep things out rather than in doesn’t mean the principle alters. And we have plans to create something rather special here – it should hold even another Azrenel. The incursion is due at dawn, yes? How long before you’re able to pinpoint the exact location?"

"I’ll do that now."

They were a few hours east of Asentyr, on a road trailing over gorse-studded hills notable only for sheep and a cold wind. It wouldn’t be long before the sun set. Rennyn climbed out of the coach and glanced over the encampment, ignoring the expectant interest directed back at her. Ten pair of Sentene, five members of the Hand, and an impressive number of Ferumguard. Captain Illuma had called this a war, and Rennyn found herself with troops, not quite at her command, but following her lead.

Absurd to resent it. But she recognised that feeling as a gloss over underlying worry. She didn’t want to work with the Sentene, and certainly not the Kellian. Not because she feared they would run her through, but because they seemed so dutiful. Loyal servants of the kingdom, ready to spend their lives for its protection.

Unhappy with her thoughts, Rennyn took one of her bags from the coach and slid the ring attached to Solace’s focus over her finger. Already the pull was there, so she followed it, trailed at a discreet distance by an escort of five. Up the hill, not all the way to the crest, but a long walk. When she stopped she stood on a patch of grass like all the grass about it.

"I can’t predict the width," she said.

"It is enough to have a starting point," said the senior representative of the Hand, a man she vaguely recalled being named Barton or Martin. He stepped forward, gazing eagerly at the ground. "A priceless opportunity, not only for our defence but to study a breach in formation. Katznien, have this space cleared and flattened while it’s still light."

The Ferumguard accompanying him signalled, and the camp below stirred. Battle lines would be drawn.

"They’ll have prepared a meal, if you’re hungry," said Lieutenant Danress, who appeared to have been assigned the particular duty of ushering Rennyn about.

Rennyn shook her head and walked a short way up the hill. "I’ll go in now," she said, finding a jutting rock which was suitable for her purposes. "I’m trying to gauge how much she’s grown in power." She gestured, shearing off the top of the rock so she had a flat surface to work with, then began marking out her circle with swift strokes.

"Can I ask you a question?" Lieutenant Danress asked, when Rennyn had finished and was checking for errors. The woman had opened the front of her cloak so that Rennyn could see her face, and her apologetic smile. "We’ve been instructed not to antagonise you with constant interrogation, to simply observe as much as possible, but I’m too curious not to ask. Ignore me if you don’t want to answer."

"You’d need to ask either way," Rennyn said, amused by the idea of them being ordered not to irritate her.

"Why is your focus black? I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it. And, well, it’s smaller than mine, but I’m nowhere near as…as obscenely powerful as you."

"How many times have you summoned?"

Danress lifted her focus on its chain. "Twice." There was a hint of pride in her voice, understandable because the stone was large for only two summonings. Rennyn drew her own focus free of her collar and considered it. Certainly smaller.

"Two hundred and eighty-five," she said.

There was a clatter from further down the slope. One of the Sentene had dropped an iron bar which was apparently part of the plan for a shield. "Kellian have such sharp hearing," Rennyn murmured wryly. The one called Faille had been sitting outside the infirmary window listening to Seb chat to the girl from Falk. Not that Seb was likely to say anything too revealing. And every one of the Kellian at the breach site had looked up when she’d answered Danress' question.

"It was an experiment in summoning," she explained. "I was following the debate on what the dark layer separating multiple focuses is. The layer always appears, no matter how much power you succeed in summoning. I decided to build it up by tiny degrees, rather like a pearl. It’s certainly slower, but less dangerous. I would say the result is purer."

"Quality over quantity." Danress looked thoroughly disconcerted. "Have you truly been in the Eferum that many times?"

"Every morning for six months, at one time." Rennyn was still watching the reaction of the Kellian, who were now gazing up at her, openly listening. "My father made me stop summoning more than once a month because it does things to you, the Eferum. Like not being able to go out in the sun, or eat cooked things."

Satisfied that her sigils were correctly drawn, Rennyn moved to the centre of her circle and poured power into the sigils until they took her away from her audience. The chill quickly sapped any annoyance she felt at the transparency of Danress' ingenuous approach, and she turned her attention to her appearance, checking that her presence was properly cloaked.

This very basic precaution had become less of a rote exercise, though she could see no unusual activity nearby. The Eferum was vast and black and very quiet. Not wasting any time, she slipped free one sheet of paper from the small pile she’d brought with her, a casting which would measure the force of any movement of the Efera. Like most paper-wrought castings, the power she put into it burned the sheet to ash.

The shield the Sentene were constructing was very visible, blazing with such power it blotted out the moving motes around it. Rennyn shook her head, and closed her hand around Solace’s focus. Hard to guess how the Eferum-Get would react to that, but if they broke away from the breach then she was at risk, for she would need to drop the cloak during the attunement. Usually not such a dangerous thing, but if such a mass of Eferum-Get were loose in the vicinity, the chance of an encounter was much higher.

Her divination was reacting to changes in the currents about her, so she gripped the focus tightly and, forewarned, only pressed her lips together when a stream of moving shadows rushed toward the breach. No possibility of coincidence: they had to be working with Solace. Wasting no time, she made the attunement at the first possible moment, then immediately stepped back into the world.

It was a cold, wet dawn. The sun was a hint on the horizon, a wan ghost compared to the light coruscating around the shield. Inside was a tangle of claw and wing and dark flanks, all pressed together in a writhing mass. Any touch of the walls confining them produced a burning flash, and outside the fiery glow of the shield were the scorch marks of a larger circle. Slowly, it was compressing.

The stench was stomach-turning. Rennyn stared for a long moment, then began walking at an angle down the hill toward the camp below, keeping well away from that circle of extinction. The faintest tread behind her warned her that she wasn’t alone. One of the Kellian, scarcely visible in the light, and soon joined by Lieutenant Danress. Persistent irritants, though they at least had the sense to keep silent. Few Eferum-Get had more than an animal intelligence, and the vast majority were predators that considered humans an excellent meal. But they were screaming, these monsters. Screaming as they burned.

The northwest of Tyrland climbed into mountains and forests and what was once the Duchy of Surclere. It had a grand and lofty air, and a habit of producing waterfalls unexpectedly around corners. The roads were fantastically bad.

Even with enchantments the jolting made it very hard to read, and impossible to write, so Rennyn spent her time staring out the coach window. It had taken more than a day and a half to travel from the third incursion point to this far into the mountains, and she was weary of the journey. She had long loved this part of Tyrland, but today its isolation just felt inconvenient.

They drew to a halt beside the worn remnants of a wall, barely visible beneath a rampant mass of morning glory. The tracery of a road danced down through a sunlit valley, disappearing before it reached the tumble of stones forming the outline of a building. A pair of spiralling birds were the only sign of movement.

"Surclere Manor," said one of the Ferumguard, as Rennyn climbed out of the coach. Her escort had been reduced to six Ferumguard and the four Sentene whose primary task was keeping her alive: Meniar, Faral, Faille and Danress. "We’ll not be getting the coaches down there. The horses should manage."

"The road’s fallen away completely in a couple of places," Rennyn said, slipping the strap of her smaller bag over her shoulder. "It’s a nearly two hour walk."

"You’ve been here before, then?" Danress asked.

"I summoned my first focus here." She gazed across the valley. "I knew I’d need to know the place."

Lieutenant Faral, a female Kellian of particularly willowy proportions, was examining the ground by the wall. "No sign of recent tracks. But this is only the obvious approach."

Captain Faille nodded, and with a brief hand gesture assigned two of the Ferumguard to remain behind. Rennyn had yet to see him even move without reason, let alone speak unnecessarily. But, like all the Sentene, he got things done quickly. She did not have to wait long while they prepared, and they soon started down the ancient road.

It was wonderfully quiet. Wind, and the occasional call of birds. The loudest thing was the crunch of their boots. This area had never been precisely populous, but it had withered after Surclere Manor had burned. The village further into the mountains had faded altogether, and the one they’d passed on the way had been less than prosperous. But the people owned a remote pride, and had watched with heads held high as the Sentene passed.

The walk helped clear her mind. There were times when Rennyn found the plan too much, when her certainty faltered and she doubted her resolution to end this. The screaming of the Eferum-Get had unsettled her. They were monsters, and they ate people. Their existence in Tyrland was an obvious wrong. But they still felt pain.

Her greatest issue was the effectiveness of the cage. If she had chosen to work with the Sentene from the start, the disaster in Asentyr might have been completely contained. Over a thousand people. She had always known that people would very likely die, but with every passing day she wanted a new solution, one which was safe, sure, and without cost.

All she could do was remember what she’d said to Seb. If she could prevent someone’s death she would. It was a simple pledge, but she murmured it to herself as she led the Sentene along one side of the manor’s remains toward the summoning circle.

"Wait."

Startled, Rennyn turned to Captain Faille. He was gazing at the circle through narrowed eyes, then reached slowly over his head and drew the sword he had strapped to his back. The other Sentene and Ferumguard followed his lead, though Rennyn doubted they could see whatever had made him suspicious. She certainly couldn’t, and there was no sense of casting.

But – tilting her head to one side, she tried to puzzle it out. Not casting, not the sense of Efera being worked, but there was a kind of current, a thing she was more used to feeling in the Eferum. A distortion.

The Sentene split into pairs and spread to either side, with the Ferumguard forming a loose semi-circle behind them. Both Danress and Meniar had their slates out. Rennyn scanned the area. The summoning circle had been in a separate, smaller building near the main house, and sat a little lower on the hill’s slope. With the walls gone, and dirt creeping past the edges of tumbled stone, the exposed floor looked like a white pool. Trees had grown around it, but she couldn’t see anyone hiding in the dappled shade.

Then one of the shadows laughed. Rennyn glimpsed a shape, the line of a shoulder, of a man sitting with his back against one of the larger blocks of stone.

"A Montjuste-Surclere with a Kellian bodyguard. I do like irony."

The words dragged and echoed unnaturally. The figure shifted again, and through him Rennyn could see moss-covered stone, and a fragment of fern.

"It’s – some kind of illusion, Captain," said Meniar.

"Truly, the blood has weakened. Following that traitor’s course without deviation. So predictable, so unoriginal."

Dropping the makings of a Thought-shield she’d instinctively drawn, Rennyn walked forward and stared at the man in the shadows. Black hair, black eyes. A heart-shaped face, delicately made. She could feel the distortion more clearly as she came closer, but there was none of the stamp and scent of worked Efera. He turned his head to study her, the motion oddly too quick and too slow, the black eyes full of mockery and malice.

"A projection," she said, scarcely believing her own words. "It’s a projection out of the Eferum."

"Not entirely dull-witted, then. Come closer, little cousin. I want to look at you."

She wanted to look at him too, but she only circled a short way to her right to get a better angle.

"You will not object, I hope, if I name you cousin? A few too many greats to describe the proper relationship."

Rennyn narrowed her eyes. "You look like your brother," she said, and was rewarded with a sudden flash of fury. He moved incautiously, and the entire projection flickered out of existence for several moments, then returned.

Back in control, he reassumed his air of pleasant malice. "Different enough," he said. "Far less dead, at any rate. The shield was unsporting, little cousin. Did your friends not feel equal to the hunt?"

"Have you anything of interest to say, or are you merely here to talk at me?"

His mouth curved up, wider than it should. "I’m going to enjoy you." He leaned forward, almost as if he meant to approach her, adding: "Shall I tell you something useful? Change your tactics."

Before Rennyn had to think of a response he was gone, the sense of distortion fading to nothing. A bird called, and the drone of insects rose as if to underline their previous absence. Rennyn stared at an innocuous rocky stone, then sighed and found a different one to serve as a seat.

"Well, that was unexpected."

"I – you have a gift for understatement," Lieutenant Danress' voice wavered, then she shook her head and allowed the spell she’d been holding back to dissipate. "The brother you were talking about–?"

"Tiandel." Rennyn felt light-headed, and worked to adjust. "We have a portrait of him."

"How does this effect your plans?" asked Captain Faille, not one to waste time exclaiming.

"It’s always been the differences between the first iteration of the Grand Summoning and the current which have posed the greatest risk. I can’t say any of my family ever predicted that Solace would bear a child to – whatever it is she’s allied herself with. This confirms, at least, that the size of these incursions is no coincidence. In terms of attuning the younger focus – if their purpose is to stop me, it means they know every step, and are no doubt able to calculate the locations as we did."

"If?" asked Lieutenant Danress sharply.

"Her need for the attunement wouldn’t have changed. The question is whether she is willing to risk me being able to use it, or if she thinks she can take it from me. There’s over a day between the final attunement and the conclusion of the Grand Summoning, and I expect that to be a challenge to survive. Tiandel’s attack on Solace was successful primarily because she did not expect it. Still, she may not choose to risk a second attunement, and instead find another way to deal with the size of the new focus. To that point, I suppose I need to try and discover whether this second son has done anything clever here."

She spent some time divining, trying to imagine any way a person in the Eferum could interfere with this stage of the attunement. The problem was, she was still struggling to believe the projection was possible. Even casting an image out into this world, let alone one that could react, that could hold a conversation–! The distortion was an incredible obstacle to overcome, and that projection told her that this second son was an extraordinary mage.

In any case, she could not find sign of a trap, so she turned to preparation. The Sentene and Ferumguard alternated scanning the horizons for enemies with watching Rennyn as she marked a circle and set out the components. She wondered if they’d really been ordered not to bother her with questions, or if that had been Danress' invention. They certainly obediently shut up whenever she showed a lack of interest in talking, and she was sure it frustrated them immensely. She wished she’d decided to come here alone.

The vessel for the younger focus marked a major stage of the attunement. The pieces had been prepared by her great-grandmother – two halves of a hollow crystal sphere which could be bound together with bronze and copper bands. Rennyn pulled Solace’s younger focus from its wire loops and placed it within the sphere, then carefully worked the bands into position. Placing it in the centre of the circle of sigils, she stepped outside to cast.

This was the most technically complex thing Rennyn had to do, and she set all her concentration to the task, eyes not wavering from the sigils as each illuminated. Casting of this level was not simply a matter of thrusting power through the shapes of sigils, but of taking an absolute view of their meaning, requiring an understanding of every nuance of intent. And since the overarching spell, the attunement, was more Symbolic than Sigillic, she faced the risk of the spell becoming rather more than she asked for.

On the far side of the veil, a mass of power was being worked into a thing which would become an extension of Solace Montjuste-Surclere. Rennyn had three times allowed the younger focuses to taste the edges of that power. Solace’s power. Because they were a part of Her, they were also a part of It. They were in two different places, yes, but then that place was the origin of the younger focuses as well.

The air before Rennyn grew heavy, and the overhanging branches sagged, leaves and twigs falling and being whirled away before they could land within the circle. Everything seemed taller, with the Sentene and the trees and the mountains all looming above a sucking well, pulling at them, trying to drag them through the veil to a vast blackness.

The vessel made a tiny clicking sound and settled fractionally. Done. As the distortion faded, Rennyn straightened and took a few deep breaths, then flexed her fingers. She tended to clench her fists during this kind of casting, and the skin had not fully recovered from their burns.

Lieutenant Meniar, who was a brown, slim man with an attractive smile, appeared at her elbow and offered a flask of water. "It worked, then?"

"Try to pick it up," Rennyn said, taking the flask.

Meniar was quick to step forward, but his hand slipped off the sphere when it didn’t lift as he expected. He shot her a quick, surprised glance, then wrapped both hands around the outer bands, shoulders bulging with an effort which brought no reward. He stepped back, face flushed. "Keste," he said, "You try."

Lieutenant Faral looked first to Captain Faille for permission, then approached the vessel at a slight tangent, as if it was a horse she thought might startle. Rennyn wondered briefly if the attunement would treat a Kellian differently, but Faral was no more successful than her partner.

"It’s a link to both the Grand Summoning and the bloodline," she explained, picking up the bound spheres, now the size of two fists. It was a solid weight, but as yet no heavier than it appeared. "It will reject anyone who isn’t a Montjuste-Surclere."

"Of which there are now four," Danress said.

Rennyn nodded, and looked restlessly at a particular moss-covered block. "He didn’t come through the previous breaches, and we’ve blocked that passage now. And he can’t complete the attunement within the Eferum. But–"

Change your tactics. Rennyn looked over her bodyguards and worried about what that meant.