The Keys to the Realms (The Dream Stewards) (18 page)

“How would one know if he were born to the calling?” Rhys asked, trying to appear less interested than he clearly was.

“The most obvious indication is sensitivity to mage sign. That burning at the back of your neck, for example.” Thorne was trying to be subtle, but it wasn’t one of his stronger skills. “That comes from having some measure of mage blood in your lineage.”

“So, you are descendants of sorcerers, but not actually sorcerers yourselves.”

“Yes.” Thorne was beginning to feel expectant, which made him uneasy. He would not allow himself to want this too much. “We are born with a connection to the magical realms, but we have no real power over them. What we do have is a natural resistance to the influence of magic, which is what makes it possible for us to defend against or even capture a mage.”

Thorne couldn’t tell if Rhys was simply interested in the information or if he had made the connection to his own potential, so he decided to push just a little. “Often the gifts go unrecognized for what they are and more often than not are mistaken for something more ordinary, like a knack for tracking or a strong intuition. But it is much more than that.”

“I suppose a person would have no way of telling unless he were to come to know someone like you,” Rhys said.

“And it might well not ever happen, such a meeting. The
Ruagaire
is a breed so rare that one might live his entire
life
without
ever encountering another, aside from the rest of the brethren,” said Thorne. “But it is not enough to be born to the calling. There are the virtues, as I mentioned before, and then there is the
training
. The Brotherhood is a lifelong dedication, to faith and to sacrifice. It is a pledge to be taken by only the most worthy of this world, and I would be lucky to come across just one such man in my entire lifetime.”

“Have you?” Rhys asked, screwing up the confidence to meet Thorne’s gaze directly. “Ever found such a man, I mean?”

“It is too soon to be sure,” Thorne said quietly, struggling to contain the swell of gratitude he felt. He was not yet ready to reveal it to Rhys, but Thorne was about as sure as he could be. “But I think so.”

S
EVENTEEN

G
lain’s eyes opened to a warm room and light peeking between the drapery panels drawn over her window casing. She sat up with a start, panicked by the sense of disorientation that came with awaking from a very deep sleep. Was the day waxing or waning? The last thing she recalled was watching Rhys ride away just after dawn. Glain had been up the entire night before, dispatching Alwen’s directives and seeing to the Sovereign’s comfort.

Good Gods
, she thought, throwing off the coverlet to discover she was still fully clothed, except for her shoes. How long had she slept? She had left precise instructions with one of the prefects to rouse her before midday, but it felt as though a good deal more than two or three hours had passed. Glain slid from the bed and threw open the draperies, making a best guess at the time through the cloud cover. It was a good while before noon, maybe just mid-morning, if she were lucky.

Hopping on one foot to shoe the other, Glain thought a moment on whether she should wear the proctor’s mantle. She hated that robe, but circumstances did seem to warrant the
protocol
. Like it or not, the gold-trimmed black camlet called attention to her authority, and Glain had to admit that was an advantage she needed just now.

It wasn’t until she was leaving her room that Glain realized that she had slept without dreaming, for the first time in so many days that she had lost count. If only she knew whether that was a good sign, or bad.

As she approached the Sovereign’s suite, Glain noticed one of the outer doors stood half open. She rapped twice and then entered the receptory, expecting to find one of the prefects tending to Alwen’s comforts. The throne room was empty, but the lamps were lit, and the hearth in the adjacent sitting room well stoked. Perhaps the attendant had been careless upon
leaving.

“Sovereign?” Glain crossed the receptory, peering through the doorway into the shadowy scriptorium, thinking she might find Alwen at the window again. But the window was shuttered and the room empty, which left only the bedchamber.

The door to Alwen’s most private space was closed, but Glain was worried now. As far as she could tell, the Sovereign had yet to rise this morning. Glain knocked hard as she turned the handle and pushed the door in. “Sovereign?”

“I’ve been hoping you’d be along soon.” Alwen sat on the edge of her bed, dressed but not robed. “Help me with the mantle, would you?”

Glain obliged, reluctantly, easing Alwen’s arms into the heavy velvet vestment. The dark blight on her hand did not seem to have worsened overnight, but Alwen did not seem rested. “You needn’t rise at all, you know. What would it matter? No one would dare disturb you, not even the prefects if I so instructed. I can well enough manage the day to day matters on your behalf, and by and by, I can come myself to see to your needs.”

“And just who will tend to your duties while you tend to mine, hmm?” Alwen’s smile was strained, but she pulled herself up to a fairly solid stand. “I am not as frail as I might appear.

Glain resisted the urge to assist Alwen as she walked from her bedchamber toward the scriptorium. “Do you have pain?”

“Yes,” Alwen said honestly, stopping midway as though she were reconsidering her destination. “Only needles and pins though, thanks to Cerrigwen, and only in my hand, but I must say the hand doesn’t trouble me nearly as much as the fumble-mindedness. It tends to settle over me later in the day, when I begin to tire, and always when I most want a clear head.”

“She is a bit off, don’t you think?” Glain thought she might be speaking out of place, but she was curious. “Different than she was before, to be sure.”

“Cerrigwen?” Alwen turned toward the sitting room and walked with careful steps to the divan. “She has been altered by her ordeals, that much is plain. And she seems genuinely plagued by regret. Certainly she is afraid for her daughter. Whether any or all of that is change enough to warrant my trust, well, that I am still deciding.”

Alwen settled herself on the divan with obvious effort. “You, on the other hand, seem to need less convincing.”

“What I said yesterday was that I believe she can be trusted within limits.” Glain was surprised to hear herself sound so assertive, but it felt unexpectedly natural. “Do you want me to pour the aleberry, or would you rather I called for tea?”

“The aleberry, please,” said Alwen. “You think Cerrigwen can be controlled through her concern for her daughter.”

“Not necessarily controlled.” Glain handed Alwen a cup full to the brim. “But I am absolutely certain she will do anything to protect Ffion, and nothing whatsoever to endanger her. As long as Hywel and Odwain keep this in mind, they will know what to expect from her.”

“And how to use her, I suppose.” Alwen gestured toward the seat next to her. “Sit. Tell me the state of things. Did Hywel agree to leave enough men to continue the excavation?”

Glain gathered her robe and skirts and sat next to Alwen. “He has taken only a handful of his soldiers, a dozen I think. The rest were conscripted to Emrys, with instructions that the work in the tunnel should not be interrupted. I understand they have made remarkable progress.”

“Let me know when they reach the cave,” Alwen requested. “Rhys and the mage hunter are well on their way, I presume?”

“Yes.” Glain did not want to speak of Rhys. It had been an
awkward
farewell, and she’d felt a sense of finality that she
preferred
to ignore. “Do you think when they find where the
Cythraul
have gone, they will also find Machreth?”

“I would be surprised if they didn’t. He is at the root of every treachery that befalls us, I am certain of that, just as I am certain he has help.” If Alwen noticed Glain’s discomfort with the subject, she gave no indication. “I presume the search for the scroll
continues
.”

Glain was suddenly reminded of Ynyr. “Yes, though I haven’t had time yet this morning to speak with Ynyr or the others. I shall make a point of doing just that, as soon as I am sure you have everything you need. Shall I have a morning tray brought?”

Alwen waved the idea away. “Just bring the scrying stone, will you? I heard whispers in my dreams last night.”

“The dream-speak?” Glain went into the receptory to retrieve it from the obelisk next to Alwen’s ritual altar.

“The stirrings of it, I believe. I have been visited by these whispers before, but I could make next to no sense of them. This time, I have an inkling of something, a message, maybe. I am hoping the scrying stone will help me see it more clearly.”

Glain brought the crystal orb from its resting place, wrapped in its protective velvet cloth, and placed it in Alwen’s lap. She could not imagine how the scrying stone could be used to amplify the voices from the beyond. The orb neither possessed nor controlled the power of the dream-speak, and it seemed to Glain that Alwen was clutching at straws. But then again, there were many things Alwen knew that she did not, and this was not the time to question such things. “If there is nothing else, I’ll go and find Ynyr.”

“Yes, do.” Alwen, already distracted by the orb, was slipping into her thoughts. “Come to me again later, when you have news.”

Glain left Alwen to her scrying, pledging to return soon, news or not. She had her doubts that Alwen was faring as well as she
wanted
Glain to think. Still, it was eating at her that she had
neither
seen nor heard from Ynyr since the day before. Nor had anyone else, she soon discovered. One of the prefects found Ynyr’s room cold and quiet, as if he had not even slept there. The last place he was known to have been was with Glain, after Alwen’s infamous audience. When he’d left Glain, his plan had been to investigate a second-floor storeroom.

Verica and Euday were inquiring discreetly throughout the temple and the grounds as they went about their daily business, while Glain retraced Ynyr’s steps. Ariane had not been included—not just yet—mostly because Glain wanted to avoid her questions. Besides, Ariane had no love for Ynyr.

A large storage closet was located at the end of the west annex hallway on each of the second and third floors, across from the service stairs leading to the kitchens. They were catchalls for things that had fallen out of use and big enough for at least two persons to move about and rummage through. Her first stop would be the second-floor room to see if Ynyr had actually gone there in the first place.

As small as the membership had become, it was unusual for anyone to go missing for more than a few hours. One could make themselves scarce in a castle so sprawling and so replete with secret spaces, but Ynyr normally went out of his way to let his presence be known. He was a watchdog by nature, and a leader through his own example. Glain’s most urgent concern was that he had next gone searching somewhere even more obscure than the storeroom and become trapped or injured.

Two of the four spell rooms on this hall were in use by small groups of apprentices testing their skills. The others were open, but empty. Beyond the spell rooms was a matching pair of
simple
guest quarters just big enough to hold a cot, a chair, and a
washbasin
and stand, one directly across the hall from the other.

Odwain’s brother was convalescing in the south-facing room, attended by a young male apprentice named Ilan, who nodded as she paused at the entrance. Pedr was resting well under the care of the young apprentice, who already had the skills of an
accomplished
physician and was uncommonly dedicated to the healing arts. Such a pity that Cerrigwen had lost her way; she would have found an eager student in Ilan.

Glain glanced down the hall. On the north side, beyond the unoccupied guest room was the storage closet. The door to the closet was ajar. A sudden wash of relief eased her anxiety. Ynyr had been here.

“Were you sitting with your patient last evening, Ilan?” Glain asked. “Did you happen to see Ynyr pass this way?”

“Not that I noticed,” Ilan said. “But I excused myself while Odwain was here visiting for an hour or so. Ynyr might have come then.”

Glain crossed the hall and pulled the storeroom door open wide to investigate. “Good Gods. What happened in here?”

Ilan was quick to her aid, oil lamp in hand. “Stay where you are. Don’t go in just yet. Let’s have a good look first.”

He stood on the threshold and extended the lamp into the shadowy space. The closet was in a shambles. What should have been an orderly arrangement of unneeded implements and household goods was a mess of upended crates and broken pottery. The top of an old trunk was caved in where something heavy had landed upon it, hard. And the thick layer of grime that had once covered it all had yet to settle again. It coated the air with its tacky silt and the stale, fusty odor of disuse. Glain was aghast at Ynyr’s carelessness.

“Well,” she huffed. “I hope he found what he came for.”

“Come now.” Ilan scowled, disbelieving. “You don’t really think Ynyr would do this, do you?”

“No.” Glain realized right away how unlikely it sounded and regretted that her first thought had been accusing. “He wouldn’t.”

“Looks to me as though there was a struggle,” Ilan speculated. “Though I don’t know how that makes any more sense.”

He stepped back into the hall and glanced around, searching. “What is that
smell
?”

At first Glain thought he meant the cloud of dust that had escaped the closet, but then she caught the waft of a second, even less pleasant scent. Faint, but distinctly familiar. Her heart seized. Glain recognized this sickly sweet stench.

“Ilan,” she said evenly, drawing her wand from its sling at her waist. “Can you tell the source of the smell?”

Ilan squatted to set the oil lamp on the stone floor and, now steely-eyed and tensed, drew his own wand. He stood again and turned full circle, slowly, tracing the source of the scent. “I can’t be certain, but it seems to be strongest right here. What is it, Glain?”

Glain could barely utter the word. “Cythraul.”

She admired the look of indignation that settled over Ilan’s face, even took courage from it, though she knew he did not understand the horror they might be facing. Still, she was grateful she was not alone.

“Stand ready,” Glain said, indicating the vacant chamber across from the sickroom with a jut of her chin. It was the only other place to hide. “Do what you must to keep Pedr safe.”

Without questioning, Ilan positioned himself behind her in the middle of the hall, which emboldened Glain just enough to confront the closed door. Logic informed her skittered mind that the scent they were encountering was only a remnant of danger already passed. She could not be certain, though, until they had seen for themselves.

Glain reached for the handle. She could see her hand shaking but could not make it stop. The last time she had fought the soul-stealers, she had not been strong enough on her own to overcome them. She had needed Ynyr and Nerys. Brave as Ilan showed himself to be, he would be of little help were they facing even one wraith now.