Stained Glass Monsters

Chapter Seven

Sunlight. The smell of medicine and recently-laundered linen. A bed, over-firm, though the pillow was nice. She was lying on her back, and her arms ached, and her hands were stiff. Her chest felt like she’d been breathing knives. Rennyn flexed fingers cautiously, and found they were bandaged but seemed to be all there, so she opened her eyes.

There was a Kellian watching her from the doorway. Two Kellian, and a red-haired woman. Rennyn lifted her head to look at them properly, then lay back and laughed. Not dead after all.

Ignoring her audience, she looked around more of the room. Four beds, and Seb on the one beside hers. Pale and lying very still, but he breathed.

"How is he?" she asked the small, elderly woman sitting on the far side of his bed.

"Out of the woods. He’ll be sitting up in a day or two. It will take several weeks of treatment before muscle function is fully restored, though."

Irisian poison paralysed before death. But still, he would recover, and in time. Not much else was going according to plan, but she would at least have her brother.

"Is it still the same day?" she asked, suddenly worried.

"The same." The woman was watching her with an air of entertainment which Rennyn definitely didn’t appreciate. "You’ll be hungry, I expect."

More than. Moving cautiously, Rennyn sat up. She was wearing some kind of shift, and her focus stone was missing. Both of them. The sense of unreality was fading, leaving her feeling less than pleased with herself. Events had spiralled out of her control.

"What is this place? Sentene headquarters?"

A third Kellian had appeared in the doorway, and this one Rennyn recognised. "The infirmary of the Houses of Magic in Villemar Palace," the Kellian mage said. "The Sentene occupy one branch of the Houses. The Grand Magister asks if you feel able to meet with her after lunch."

Time for interrogation. Rennyn supposed there was no escaping that. "Provided my clothes can be found," she said, which proved an effective Sentene-banishing charm. They withdrew to other parts of the infirmary while the old woman produced her clothing, recently laundered, and directed her to a small side-room where she could change and clean up.

Her clothes, but not her other belongings. It would be inconvenient if they tried to keep the focuses. Rennyn took her time dressing, weighing options: how much to tell them, what to keep back, and when to lie. Associating with the Sentene now changed the timing but not the main features of the plan. Since she’d survived the night she would make the assumption that she wasn’t under imminent threat from within their ranks. Besides, after last night she had to shift her priorities, due to both the strength of the incursions, and Seb’s injuries. She couldn’t care for him and go racketing about the country, which left her with absolutely no choice in the matter.

"You’ve some minor frost bite on your hands," said the old woman, when she emerged. "The severe chill was the more serious matter. Exhausted as you were, you’re at a high risk for lung infection. I boosted your defences as best I could, but you’d be well advised to keep warm and take a few days' rest."

That sounded nice. Rennyn put it on her list of things to do, and turned to the tray of food which had been brought in her absence, concentrating on filling the aching pit in her stomach. A cup of spiced tea with half a pot of honey dumped into it raised her spirits enormously.

"Thank you for looking after my brother," she said, when she rose to depart. "I mightn’t be here when he wakes, so can you tell him that before I get back he needs to produce a highly imaginative and original explanation of just what exactly he was doing anywhere near that incursion?"

There was only one Sentene outside the door now, the red-headed woman she’d seen in Finton, who said: "The Grand Magister’s Chambers are upstairs," and led her past a number of empty rooms to curving corridors and then up stairs which wound inside a circular tower. They stopped at a well-lit room dominated by a long table.

The Grand Magister was standing with a group of people on the far side of the table, but turned and nodded her welcome when Rennyn came in. "I am glad to see you recovered, young lady," she said. "Please, sit."

The missing contents of her pockets were lined along one end of the table, so Rennyn sat down before them. Both focuses were there, two innocuous round globes, one less than half the size of the other. The larger was clear, with only a few faint traces to show how it had grown, while her own was pitch black. She fastened it around her neck.

"How many died last night?" she asked, as the others settled around the table.

"We don’t have a final tally," Lady Weston replied, lines momentarily etching themselves between her brows. "It may be days before we uncover all the bodies. The Docks are the worst hit. Households, ships, even an entire street with nothing but dead. Over a thousand."

It could not have been more than an hour between the breach and Rennyn’s casting. A thousand dead in an hour. Rennyn stared down at her bandaged hands, and wondered if there was any way she could have prevented this.

"No injunction this time?" she asked, rather than prod that sore.

"My dear child, I’m not altogether sure I would dare," Lady Weston said, with a serious edge beneath the light words. "You are quite the strongest mage I’ve ever encountered. Besides, it was rude of me. Can we begin again, with some introductions? You probably know that I am Honoria Weston. This is Councillor Vargas, High Magister Fennis, Senior Captain Illuma, Senior Captain Faille and Senior Captain Lamprey."

Vargas, an ageing but still handsome blond man, was the Queen’s closest advisor, and the only one looking at Rennyn as if he thought her liable to bite. The Sentene, though they’d unfastened their uniform collars enough for her to see their faces, were expressionless. Magister Fennis, balding and pink-skinned, showed every sign of someone in for a rare treat.

She’d paused overlong without responding, and her reply felt strange in its honesty. "Rennyn Montjuste-Surclere."

"Ah." Her answer hadn’t been a surprise. The Grand Magister had been doing some thinking since their last encounter. "So there was a survivor of that fire. One of Prince Tiandel’s sons?"

Rennyn leaned her chin on one hand. "The whole family, actually, since Tiandel was expecting the assault. Feeling was very high against him, and there’d been other attempts. By then he’d realised that he’d only succeeded in interrupting the Grand Summoning, not halting it permanently, and thought it best to remove himself from sight and prepare for Queen Solace’s return."

Magister Fennis leaned forward, eyes widening to comical effect. "He chose to disappear? But then – Queen Solace’s library? Her researches?"

"Moved to safety well beforehand," Rennyn said. This was a question she’d been expecting. "Yes, most of it still exists. Yes, I have it. Perhaps, if this current mess can be resolved, I’ll present it to the kingdom or something. But not until then."

"But, don’t you understand?" Fennis asked, sounding straightforwardly astonished. "With access to that library, to the original documentation, we may be able to discover a way to break the Grand Summoning."

"Perhaps you could," Rennyn said. "The Montjuste-Surcleres have been researching that very problem for the past three hundred years, but I suppose it’s within the bounds of possibility that you could succeed in the bare month you have before the Summoning is complete. I’ll certainly give that idea some thought, and let you know my decision."

His face stiffened, and he looked so like a disappointed child she had to smile apologetically at him. "I suppose this will go quicker, and I might manage to be marginally less offensive, if I just gave a précis of the situation, rather than go back and forth with questions and answers."

"Please do," said Lady Weston, with a quelling hand touching Fennis' elbow.

Rennyn glanced at Councillor Vargas, least likely to understand. "When a mage enters the Eferum to summon a focus stone, they are limited by their inborn strength, plus the strength of their previous summoned focuses. It’s rare to make the attempt more than three or four times because the risks – exhaustion, cold, and Eferum-Get – increase along with the amount of power summoned.

"The Grand Summoning abandons the normal progression entirely. Queen Solace didn’t even take her younger focuses into the Eferum with her, but commenced the Summoning with her own raw ability. And instead of drawing as much power as she could and immediately compressing it, she is using it to – this is hard to express. If you have a large bowl of water, and swirl a spoon around in the middle, it sets up a current which brushes the edges of the bowl, even though the spoon never passes there. The Grand Summoning uses the caster’s own strength to set up a motion, and then structures that motion so that it continues to increase. When each cycle completes, it begins again, drawing on the power produced in the last cycle. Because the power involved is mainly raw Efera, not the caster’s strength, energy can be diverted to surviving the dangers of the environment, and there is not the problem of exhaustion."

She reached out and picked up the clear focus. "These are Solace Montjuste-Surclere’s younger focuses." Holding it up, she could see the faintest of outlines of three further spheres inside the outer. "She left them with Tiandel both because they worked at a slight cross-purpose to the Summoning she was attempting, and because they offered a solution to a practical difficulty."

"Which was?"

Slipping the focus into her skirt pocket, Rennyn made an expansive gesture. "A focus the size of this room. Focus stones operate when in contact with their owner. It’s a little hard to estimate just how large the result of the Grand Summoning will be, but I’m fairly certain it won’t, well, fit through doors, for a start.

"Tiandel’s role was to attune the younger focus to the Grand Summoning. He could do this by touching the edges of the power she was summoning, using the breaches the power was causing. This would allow her to use the new focus even at a distance. Unfortunately for Solace, it also gave Tiandel the perfect tool. Just as the casting completed the final phase, but before the compressing power could solidify into a focus, he used the power to push his mother deep into the Eferum."

Rennyn began collecting the other items lined up on the table: the half-empty box of chalk, her apartment key, a small purse of money, the paintbrush. She left the note.

"Solace did not die, but it was ten years before she returned, and as soon as she reached the correct point in the Eferum, the Grand Summoning commenced again. Probably she would be drawn back to that point no matter what her wishes, for she is trapped in the spell, still constrained by the Sigillic casting she established in the Hall of Summoning here."

Rennyn had to repress a shudder. Her family pushed Solace back for good reason, but it was a cruel task. The whole conversation was trying her nerves, but she went on as dispassionately as she was able. These people had not grown up reading Solace’s working diaries, appreciating the mind if not the person, and wouldn’t share any sympathy at all for the Black Queen.

"The White Ladies are a side-effect, a manifestation of the uncompressed power the spell generates. They have just enough substance, just enough connection to the actual person, that she can be touched through them, and pushed back at the beginning of the Summoning rather than at its conclusion. Each time since, it has taken slightly longer for her to return, and each time a Montjuste-Surclere has used the attuned focus to push her back into the Eferum almost as soon as the spell began to manifest."

"Until Loise."

It was the Kellian called Faille who had spoken: the singularly humourless-looking man who had been so quick with his sword.

"Yes. Until Loise, when someone killed my great-grandfather just as Solace was pushed back. The – part of the attunement was in a structure built around the focus, and that was shattered. I don’t know if this was deliberate, but it means that we now merely have her younger focuses, not attuned to the Grand Summoning. This time when she manifested there was nothing we could do to push her back. So I’m reconstructing Tiandel’s steps, attuning the focus again so that she can be stopped at the final moment rather than the first."

Councillor Vargas cleared his throat. His colour had risen, turning him an interesting plummy shade, though he showed no other sign of what she guessed to be highly outraged indignation. "Would it not have been more responsible – indeed, was it not your duty – to bring this to Council, to turn over this focus and allow the matter to be properly dealt with? How many died last night because we were not prepared?"

Rennyn blinked, but answered the first point without rancour. "I wasn’t clear. Tiandel could attune the younger focus because he had a blood link to Queen Solace. Because he was a Montjuste-Surclere, because he was her direct heir. Currently, there are two Montjuste-Surcleres, one of whom is lying in your infirmary after suffering a fit of heroics. And sixty years ago, someone killed my great-grandfather.

"Hard as it is to credit the idea of a kind of counterpart to my family, working toward Queen Solace’s return, I have to anticipate the same kind of attack. If Sebastian – my brother – and I are killed, then the younger focuses cannot be attuned, let alone used against Solace."

She picked up the note she had so carefully prepared yesterday. "My task is set: to repeat Tiandel’s steps. It’s not a difficult thing, but requires being in certain places at certain times, and to not have someone kill me. The best chance for success is to avoid notice, not allow people to know where I am, and not involve myself in anything else. I only warned of the incursion in Asentyr because it was inside the city’s protective circles, and I may not have done that if the Sentene had not already become aware of my existence. I was weighing up what additional harm there would be in providing a list of the incursion locations, given that it is basically a map of where I’ll be going." She put the piece of paper down. "Last night changed everything."

"That is something of an understatement." Lady Weston rubbed her eyes, and Rennyn realised the woman probably hadn’t slept. "You were in the Eferum during the incursion?"

"Yes. It’s the only way to continue the attunement. During the first incursion, I noticed that the breach was very large and stayed open for a longer period than those recorded by Tiandel. Last night – the breach was a similar size and duration to the first, but the Eferum-Get – I could not tell if they had been swept together by the force of the Summoning, or if they had deliberately gathered to wait for it. Neither possibility is pleasant."

"The Eferum-Get organising to exploit the breaches, or Queen Solace deliberately thrusting them into Tyrland." The Kellian mage, Illuma, was as expressionless as ever, but had curled her hands into fists. She seemed to realise it, and opened them, palm-up. She’d trimmed the dagger-points of her nails on one hand, but the other palm was lightly cut. "Either way, a war."

"Do you really believe that?" Councillor Vargas asked, looking from Illuma to Lady Weston to Rennyn. "That the Black Queen would go so far?"

"She has been in the Eferum an unbearably long time," Lady Weston replied. "She may be mad, she may be vengeful: we can do no more than speculate. Enough that we could face the same number of Eferum-Get, or more, during the coming breaches. You will work with us in combating this?"

Rennyn nodded. "The locations I presume you read. The younger focuses can be used to identify the exact point of an upcoming breach."

"And that makes a very large difference indeed," Lady Weston said. "To know exactly when and where an incursion will occur makes it possible to contain it. We will trap the Eferum-Get even as they emerge. Am I right in believing that there will be an increase in natural breaches during the Summoning?"

"Yes. The effect of the casting is much like a storm in the Eferum – it places strain on the boundaries between the worlds."

"We must divide our resources. Lamprey, you will have charge of the second and third squads, deployed to the Sentene’s regular duties. Illuma, Faille, the Hand will support your squads in dealing with the major incursions and ensuring the safety of the Montjuste-Surcleres. Fennis, I want you to revisit the Loise investigation, and more generally try to uncover any hint of who was behind the attack. Is there more you can tell us there, Lady Montjuste-Surclere?"

"We abandoned the title. As for Loise – my great-grandparents travelled there together, and arrived late in the night. My great-grandmother had stayed with the horses, and heard a cry, then the sound of someone running. She found her husband and the focus' vessel in pieces. And yet, the focus was still there. The locals camped near the site were attracted by the light she conjured, and so she had to leave him. She became…very determined to find a way to stop the Grand Summoning after that." Rennyn looked down at her bandaged hands, and thought of all the chances she’d had last night to die. "You see where the strategy of keeping ourselves invisible comes from? If we can be found, we can be killed. And the first expression was a place we were certain to be."

"You will be well-guarded here," Lady Weston began, but Rennyn shook her head.

"Guard my brother, by all means. I’ll limit my exposure to the actual periods of the incursions."

For the first time Lady Weston showed a hint of frustration. "That may not be the wisest course," she said.

"But it is the one I will take."

"Having demonstrated how capable you are of hiding yourself," said Captain Faille.

This made Rennyn smile. "A fair point. Still, it makes more sense for Seb and I not to be handily in the same place."

"You don’t trust us." The third of the Sentene captains, Lamprey, was a human man with dark skin. Outrage had broken through the professional mask. "You’re not concerned about our ability to protect you, but our opportunity to attack you."

She hadn’t realised she’d shown that, and said carefully: "I’m tolerably certain that I wouldn’t have survived the night if I’d come close to anyone who wanted to kill me. In this, it is simply as I said: staying here makes me too easy to find. It’s almost a moot point, since I’ll be spending so much time roaming about the countryside. And on that subject – the next incursion is in three days, and not far from Asentyr, but there is a stage of the attunement I must perform immediately after that. The vessel for the focus needs to be constructed, and to do that I must also visit the places Queen Solace summoned her younger focuses. These– " She frowned. "These should not be incursion points. No breach was recorded in the previous iteration, but like the first expression, they are known places that I must visit."

"A place to expect attacks? Where are they?"

"The first is her home. Surclere Manor, or what little remains of it. The second is the palace’s Hall of Summoning, which at least is conveniently close." Rennyn stood up. "I presume you want to establish at the next incursion site well beforehand. I’ll return the day after tomorrow, near midday."

They let her go. She had wondered if they’d consider stopping her, but though they didn’t like it there were no further protests. An escort took her back down to check on Seb, and then showed her the way out of the palace. Rennyn wasted a few minutes losing the person set to follow her, and removing the subtle little traces which had been 'chanted into her clothes, then spent the remainder of the day ensuring there was nothing in the apartment which would reveal too much. If they were persistent, they would find the place eventually.

Then she took the old lady’s advice and slept.