Stained Glass Monsters

Chapter Fifteen

Rennyn lay watching Seb making notes as he read. He never remembered he was holding a quill, and had managed to draw a delicate squiggle from the corner of his mouth down past his chin. Each year he grew more like their father: as soon as he was caught up in something he found it hard to focus on anything else. The shadows under his eyes had already told her that he was burying himself far too deeply in the Houses of Magic’s library, but it was hard to lecture him when she’d had to borrow his bed for a few hours to balance a night without sleep and some unexpected shield-casting.

"So why the lessons?"

Seb started, then smiled over at her, shrugging. "Kendall. I wanted to see how much she took in. And I’m trying to make her see what she’s missing."

"How do you mean?"

"She went from nothing to the beginnings of using Thought in a few days. Her memory’s almost as good as yours – she really is memorising those dictionaries they gave her, without any context. She has enough willpower for two, and the questions she asks are sharp, well-observed. But she never sees magic as anything but a means to an end. Can she really have that much potential, and absolutely no feel for it?"

"The world’s full of rote mages, Seb."

"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.

Just before her were several people. Captain Faille, a sword in one hand, and three others she couldn’t spare thought to recognise. Between them was the thick border of the circle, and trailing streamers of night trapped in the shield. Mist curled around her, lifting from the ground, and she gazed upward as something drifted down from the sky, an insubstantial thing drawn to her, attracted by the memory of an Azrenel’s feasting just as it would be to a sleeping and undefended human.

"Life Stealer!" exclaimed one of the people, and drew power. But that wasn’t needed.

Unclasping her hands as she lifted them, Rennyn held up a cat’s cradle made of black ribbon, criss-crossing lines trailing darkness. The Life Stealer, no more than a wisping grey shape, was tangled, trapped, and Rennyn held it out toward the shield as it writhed impotently.

"Unaet," she said again, pushing the creature into a shield specifically designed to keep it out. Light bloomed where it touched, a delicate purple haze. "Temaru. Arlaeth."

Power poured through her and into Asentyr’s shield. The light spread, dancing in gem hues, racing along the boundary of the circle, lifting into the sky. The shield shimmered into visibility, shifting slowly from dome to a pillar of colour rising straight from the ground all through the area it protected. Swathes of green and red, orange and purple, thickened the air. Around the palace and various other minor circles the colour flared into brighter points of white, but these did not impede the flow of her casting.

"Senyatel," Rennyn said, when all the city blazed with a peacock aurora. "Senyatel." Revealed. Revealed.

The Life Stealer burned into nothing and Rennyn staggered and fell forward through a shield which no longer resisted her. Faille managed to get an arm between her and the ground and set her easily back on her feet as the light display faded abruptly away, leaving only two colourful motes on Aliace Hill. Raindrop beacons spearing the sky.

"What did you do?" asked one of her audience, and she recognised Lieutenant Meniar, the Sentene mage who was part of the detail to accompany her to Surclere.

"Spectacular, but–?" asked the woman. A member of the Hand. Rennyn wondered how many others had followed her from the palace.

"That was some kind of divination, wasn’t it?" said the last, a well-dressed young boy Rennyn didn’t recognise, his red hair dimmed by eyes brimming with amazement.

"Like calls to like," Rennyn explained. "The only thing I could think of to counter guised Eferum-Get roaming inside a circle."

Captain Faille’s attention had been on the two remaining motes of colour, but he looked back as Rennyn went and sat heavily on a nearby crate. "Meniar, get a message to Captain Illuma," he ordered. "Have squads investigate the target of those lights. And give Lady Montjuste-Surclere your coat."

"Yessir." Meniar wasn’t in uniform either, but his coat was still large and warm and a welcome relief. He gave her shoulders a little squeeze as he put it around her, then retreated and began the difficult task of sending a message by magic.

"Do you suppose that tavern serves anything edible?" Rennyn asked, tucking her hands in her armpits in the hope of unfreezing them. Her already healthy appetite had become an urgent need to replace lost energy.

"I’ll go look," said the boy, and after a moment’s hesitation the Hand mage followed him, for it was not the kind of place noble youths could walk into safely.

"Will your brother be able to complete the attunement if you cannot?" Captain Faille asked.

"Yes. Though I would prefer that he didn’t have to." Rennyn considered the man, who wasn’t quite criticising her, but who obviously thought she’d taken an unnecessary risk casting such a massive spell. And might well feel that permission should be gained before altering the city’s main protection. "If my Wicked Uncle comes into this city, I want to know it. If anything comes near my brother, I want more warning than we had today."

"How long will the divination last?"

"Anywhere between a few weeks and a few centuries." She shrugged, and gazed at the lights of the city. "Long enough."

Her stomach hurt. Too convinced by her spell that she, like the Eferum-Get, was a bottomless void, an emptiness that even a thousand lives could not fill. "What prompted the Kellian’s departure from the Forest of Semarrak?" she asked, hoping to distract herself.

"Tyrland is our home."

"That’s the answer to a different question," Rennyn pointed out, looking up at him. "Had the last of the originals died?"

During the silence which followed she could hear Lieutenant Meniar sounding out each sigil he activated, and a gust of laughter from the tavern. It was the first time she’d asked something that it seemed Faille might not answer and she studied his profile as best she could when he blended so well into the night. Despite obliging with answers, this man was as far from the obedient ciphers of the originals as it was possible to be. Grim courtesy could not mask a sheerly incisive mind, and a tendency not to express his opinions did not leave her in any doubt that he had them. He weighed every word she spoke, and judged whether she deserved any response.

"Nine of the Ten remain."

Remain? He meant they were still alive? Rennyn stared at him. The original golems would have been long-lived, true, but she would not have expected their life-span to be more than one hundred and fifty or perhaps two hundred years.

"One was killed in battle," Captain Faille continued. "The rest…grew weary. To wake, to move, to do more than subsist, became beyond their strength. But they do not die."

Words failed her, and she shook her head in futile denial. Still alive? Unable to die? But she saw what was behind this. She understood the rules which bound the Kellian golems' existence, and could see a reason. Unless they were killed through violence they would not die.

They hadn’t been given permission.