The Sleeping Life

Chapter Thirty

"Auri!" Fallon shouted, or tried to. He started forward, and was almost hauled off his feet by Tesin catching at his collar.

"Help me!" Auri shouted, sobbing with anger and fear. "You’ve been so slow!"

Had she been like that all this time? Ever since this morning? Had she watched them play hunt-the-focus, and write out all of that enormous Sigillic, calling and calling, and ignored by Fallon along with everyone else?

"We’ll certainly try," Duchess Surclere said, and Fallon turned to look at her sharply, because it surely wasn’t just the Duchess' sore throat that brought that ambiguous note to her voice. She noticed, and gave him an unhappy smile. "Your sister, Fallon?"

He nodded, then started when she made a faint gesture, releasing the silence casting on him. "Auri," he said, tentatively.

"I’m going to leave you free to speak, but to be safe don’t assume that you are able to tell us anything about the miscasting." Duchess Surclere’s attention had already moved from him, and she was frowning now at the person chained to the statue, who looked as if she was unconscious, head sagging forward. Captain Faille moved forward so that he stood only two feet from the outer edge of the doubled circle. Fallon followed, and hoped he only imagined the faint tugging that seemed to try to draw him closer.

"Aurienne," Duchess Surclere said, speaking in a firm, flat tone. "Tell me very quickly and clearly the circumstances of your miscasting, and what has happened to you afterwards."

Though she was frantic, and obviously tired, Auri managed this in a way that could only make Fallon proud. All the things they had spent years trying to find a way to tell, delivered in short, gasping sentences. While she spoke, the woman she clung to shifted in her chains, seeming to properly notice her.

"If you put me to sleep I might be able to pull her out," Fallon suggested, once Auri had told everything he thought important, and was surprised when Auri immediately shook her head.

"You’d just get sucked in, Fal. The Dream’s all wrong here, like it is in my bedroom. Everything sticky."

The chained woman had raised an apparently heavy head to gaze in a vague way in their direction. She didn’t seem to be quite able to see them.

"Are you by any chance Nameen?" Duchess Surclere asked.

The woman moved her head from side to side, not in negation, but as if working to hear more clearly. After an extremely long pause a rustling sound lifted over the distant roar: "Once. A fragment, a remnant. No more."

The words were not audible—her mouth didn’t move. She didn’t even seem to be speaking Tyrian, but Fallon understood her.

Duchess Surclere continued: "Will you tell us the purpose of this casting?"

For several long breaths it seemed the woman would not answer, but perhaps she was only gathering strength, because her answer, when it came, was far more audible, and she looked directly at the Duchess.

"A repair. Necessitated…increased tearing, apertures, after war."

Looking exceedingly puzzled, Duchess Surclere touched her hand to the pocket that held her recovered focus: a gesture that meant she was attempting to increase her sensitivity to worked magic. Then she straightened, almost knocking her head into Lord Surclere’s chin.

"You’re repairing the tears in the walls of the Eferum?"

"Failed," the woman—could she truly be an Elder Mage?—replied. "Flawed premise. Fading…then control lost. Collection process corrupted."

"Is this some form of Eferum-Get?" Dezart Samarin asked, indicating the…thing growing up the woman’s leg. "Can we help you remove it?"

"End me," the non-voice whispered. "End this."

A wave of unspeakable weariness rocked them, as if wind could be exhausted, as if the air longed to be done. Sukata staggered, and Kendall hurried across to slip a supporting arm around the Kellian girl.

"There’s no other way?" Dezart Samarin asked urgently.

"HURRY UP!" Auri had screamed it, her voice harsh, tearing. "I can’t—I can’t hold on much longer!"

"We have to get her out of there before anything else," Fallon insisted. "We don’t know what will happen if you interfere with the casting while she’s trapped like that."

But the sagging figure chained to the statue had shifted her gaze to Auri.

"Child, you too…remnant."

"What?" Fallon said, when everyone else seemed to catch their breath. "What does that mean?"

"Fallon…" Duchess Surclere sounded as tired as the Elder Mage. "The stone you gave me. It’s not a focus. It’s all that remains of your sister’s body."

"Are you saying I’m dead?" Auri asked, voice cracking as it scaled up on the final word. "That’s not true! It’s not!"

"You’re wrong," Fallon said, breathless, sick. "She’s alive in the Dream! She got taller. She aged. She’s not dead."

"You said you would help me!" Auri’s hold slipped, and she shrieked and slid several inches before regaining her grip.

"I said I’d try," the Duchess replied, barely audible, and it did not help that she clearly felt awful, because she still wasn’t doing anything.

Dezart Samarin took off his mask. Fallon would not have even noticed if the movement had not been accompanied by a swirl of highly complex worked magic. Handing the mask to the Duchess, he said: "Do you think you can reproduce that?"

Duchess Surclere stared at him, then at the mask she gripped awkwardly through the eyeholes. "Are you…" She stopped, then nodded. "Yes, I see the mechanism. How are you still able to function?"

"I leave a small part of myself behind with each transfer. A fragment of a fragment, but over time that makes for a very large cost, and is the reason there aren’t dozens of me." The Dezart glanced at his highly confused audience. "I’ll need rope, string, even a shirt. Something I can reach her with."

"What are you going to do?" Fallon demanded, as Darian Faille offered the Dezart’s own sword.

"The construct only lasts five or so months," the Dezart added as he shook his head at the sword and accepted a length of coiled vine from Tesin. "Bring her to me, and we’ll see about a more permanent solution."

"I’ll send the mask ahead, so you know to expect us," Duchess Surclere replied, on an oddly dry note.

"Do that," the Dezart said, and for a moment resumed the entertained expression that was his usual attitude. "Though in the interest of making that meeting sooner, and more certain, don’t you think that crushing Prince Helecho’s focus would hold a certain symmetry?"

The Duchess blinked, stared at nothing for a moment, and then laughed. "It may at that. I will try it. Thank you very much indeed for deciding on direct collaboration."

"Thank you for your future restraint," he said, and turned back to Auri. "Don’t let go of your grip there," he ordered. "This is just a symbol of connection."

"I don’t understand," Auri said.

Whipping the end of the vine in a small circle, he tossed it so that it arced across the swirling vortex. As the end of the vine touched Auri, Duchess Surclere cast, but whatever she did broke Auri’s grip, so that as the vine fell away it pulled Auri with it.

"Auri!" Fallon cried out, and thought she turned to look directly at him.

Then the vortex caught the sagging middle of the vine, and Dezart Samarin dropped the end he’d been holding. Both vine and Auri disappeared in a moment, leaving only the Kolan man, alone and empty-handed.

The Imperial Smugness was staring at his hands as if he couldn’t believe he’d dropped his end of the vine. Kendall had no idea what he thought he’d been doing, but was glad when Rennyn finally remembered what this little show was doing to Sukata, and told the Kellian girl she was free to drop the divination.

Feeling Sukata’s hesitation, Kendall said firmly: "Do it. Nothing will be helped if you collapse."

With a soft exhalation, Sukata obeyed, and much of the visible weirdness went away, though the endless pulsing that was giving Kendall such a headache still filled the otherwise quiet courtyard. Sukata sagged. She really had been near her limit, and would probably have just kept casting and then what would have happened?

"It’s not true," the Pest was muttering. "She can’t be…I did this. I brought her here. Auri."

"Fel," Samarin said. He ran his fingers over his face, then did it again. Then he spun around and told the Pest. "You didn’t do anything, idiot."

"This is going to get confusing," Lieutenant Meniar said, while the Pest gaped. "Ah, Aurienne, is it? Or…it is just Aurienne in there, yes? It’s not both, is it? That would be…"

"Just me," Samarin said. "I think." He turned back to the Pest, and suddenly hugged him, lifting him a few inches off the ground. "Don’t you see? She put me in him." He dropped the goggling Pest and turned to shoot a narrow look at Rennyn. "Though you weren’t going to help me, were you? You were going to stand there and watch me get sucked up by that thing."

"Yes, I had no idea what to do," Rennyn said, calmly. "This is very much not my area of expertise. Perhaps we should all sit down for a while? I’d like to look over the Sigillic Corusar proposed for the captive mages, and I think we need some recovery time."

"So he was the Emperor?" Kendall said, blankly. "But…" She shared a glance with Sukata, and found the same combination of astonishment and horror. "He…died?"

"No," Captain Faille said, and Kendall had a strong feeling he was upset, though as usual it was hard to be sure. He moved to a spot as far as possible from any ivy, and carefully folded himself down cross-legged, settling Rennyn at his side.

Slowly, they joined him, with the exception of Darian Faille, who remained on guard—not by the entrance, but between them and the statue. Remembering the thing of barbs and teeth, Kendall thought that a smart choice. She tried not to stare at Samarin—Aurienne—who was holding the Pest by one elbow and frowning at him. The Pest was sheet white and wobbling worse than Sukata.

"Is the miscasting still drawing on him?" Aurienne asked.

"With this amount of background wash, I can’t tell," Rennyn said. "But I think this is as much the shock he’s had, on top of the growing exhaustion. To be safe, we’d best assume that distance will continue to increase draw on him, and that the Ban is still active. We apparently have a few months to investigate further."

She looked down at the mask she held, grimaced minutely, and set it on her knee.

"He transferred himself to that?" Captain Faille asked.

"In a way, Samarin was the mask all along. A—a kind of shared occupation between body and mask." Rennyn glanced up at Captain Faille, and Kendall guessed the mighty Duchess Surclere was just a little unsure how he’d be feeling. "His memory constantly copied back to it, and at the last he transferred the fragment of motive will residing in the body. When we return this, the Emperor will experience everything that Samarin did."

"Can he hear us?" Kendall asked.

"No. Or, I don’t think so. If the mask was all that was required, it would cost him far less in energy to produce than a functioning living construct." She eyed Samarin-Aurienne thoughtfully. "As it is, the construct is a short-lived one. I doubt he could produce a—a long-lived golem without starving the casting that maintains his life on that throne. Mask and golem combined allows him to personally investigate important issues, while overcoming the no doubt not-infrequent tendency for people to decide to murder his Dezarts."

"This could explain why he has retained some semblance of humanity," Captain Faille said.

"While at the same time costing him fragments of self?" Rennyn touched the mask again, then sighed. "At any rate, this is a rather large secret that he chose to confirm in order to save you, Aurienne. You will need to keep up a pretence of being Samarin, even at Aurai’s Rest. To which point, since your coat has a pocket for it, I’ll return this mask to you on the condition of your absolute word that you will never try to put it on."

"I’m not that silly," Aurienne said, with a spurt of heat. She seemed to be bouncing back quickly for someone who had been crying and screaming only a minute ago.

"You are that silly," said the Pest, who had revived only a little. "And she can’t pretend to be Samarin. Her Kolan is terrible."

"Then she will be a very reserved and quiet Samarin who has caught my cold," Rennyn replied, promptly. "Your word, Aurienne?"

"I absolutely promise not to put on a mask that has a spell on it that will kill…wait, why would it kill me? This me is allowed to wear it."

"I suspect it’s a little more complex than that," Rennyn said, and handed the mask to Sukata.

Aurienne sniffed, and it was so strange to see Samarin’s face with such a clearly different personality behind it that Kendall felt the need to move matters along.

"Are we still in a rush?" she asked. "Do we try to get the mages out of this place today, or should we rest and come back tomorrow?"

"Today," Rennyn said immediately. "We don’t know how much that Eferum-Get understood, or even if it was aware of us…"

"It was," Darian Faille put in. "There has been a shift, an increase in the sense of threat in this room."

"Possibly it’s hindered by the time distortion of the Eferum. That casting…" Rennyn paused, held out her hand for Lieutenant Meniar’s slate, and read it over quickly.

"If we follow that concept, we can’t risk interfering with Nameen or that Eferum-Get until we’ve freed the mages," Lieutenant Meniar said unhappily.

"I agree." Rennyn briefly pressed the base of her palms to her eyes. "As best I understand it, when the wall to the Eferum was torn during the war of the Elder Mages, Nameen created this place in an attempt to heal the breaches. Its heart is a Grand Working set over a tear: a casting so large that it requires far more power than even one of the Elder Mages could supply. So she created this vine, which draws ambient magic and channels it into the Working—along with fuelling the protection shield and the glass maintenance golems. Nameen must have been fatally wounded at some point after this, and bound a fragment of herself here in order to ensure the spell would eventually be completed."

"But that spiky thing came along and stopped her?" Kendall asked.

Rennyn shook her head. "That’s far more recent—possibly even a result of the surges in the Eferum during Solace’s Grand Summoning. The repair…well, I wish I could risk a prolonged and extensive study, since I would be very glad to know what she was trying to do. Whatever it was, it failed, and the part of her that she bound to the casting’s completion has been trapped here, unable to end or progress the casting. And then that…I haven’t heard of an Eferum-Get of that type before."

Rennyn glanced up at Captain Faille, who shook his head.

"It seems to be projecting out of the Eferum, and drawing off the Efera," she continued. "I think it was able to interfere with the constructs, just enough to include mages in their duties, and to activate Nameen’s Walk, since the structure of the spell is already here, though finding—" She paused, lifting her head. "Oh, that’s what feels strange. I can hear that music again. Perhaps it’s—"

Everyone except Rennyn clambered to their feet, looking panicked. She blinked up at them, then nodded. "Yes, we’d best get started. Lieutenant Meniar, if you will do what’s necessary to prepare to, ah, ripen the mages, I’ll think over a way to end Nameen’s last Great Working."