Wandering Lark (54 page)

“Ronan?” the demon said.

Ronan put a finger to his lips. “Do not speak my name,” he said with Alaric’s voice. “The walls might have ears.”

Carefully, he stood up and stretched, moving with his eldritch grace. Like an athlete preparing for contest, he twisted and turned and rolled his shoulders and back. Then he began to strip out of every stitch of his clothing, tossing them onto the bed.

“What are you doing now?” Vagner asked.

“I have a job to do, my friend,” Ronan said. “One that I would prefer not be seen.”

“Oh, well taking off your clothes will certainly make you
invisible,
” the demon said ruefully. “Just what would that job be?”

Ronan smiled with Alaric’s face, though it was not Alaric’s smile. “That is for me to know,” he said softly. “And you to discover.”

He crossed the room to the balcony door. Curious, Vagner followed.

“It’s not good for him, you taking over like this,” Vagner said as Ronan stopped in the opening and peered out at the night. “And if you step out there like that, he’ll catch his death. Humans are not so resilient when it comes to the cold. At least put a cloak on and...”

“Shhhhhh... All is well,” Ronan said. “Lark is in a deep sleep this time, and will not know. And you have no reason to concern yourself that I will let this body come to harm. Not when I need it as I do.”

“Deep sleep?” Vagner frowned.

Ronan looked back at the demon and smiled. “Yes, as you shall be too.”

“But demons do not sleep,” Vagner said.

“Sleep anyway, Youngerkin” Ronan said and as he whispered those words, he invoked the music of Vagner’s True Name.

The demon had no choice but to sink to the floor in slumber.

This has got to be the strangest dream
I have ever had,
Alaric thought. Because why else would he be standing naked on a moonlit balcony watching the pattern of the guards on the walls. Every other man walked up and down twice between two stationary guards. When those walked stopped in the middle, the stationary ones would move. It was all cleverly synchronized in Alaric’s opinion, for it meant that no man stood so still long enough to fall asleep at his post.

It also meant that there would constantly be a pair of eyes on multiple parts of the palace at any given time.

But he did not feel the least bit concerned because for some reason, he felt as though he was invisible.

This is such a strange dream,
he thought. He could feel the wind in his hair and skin, and smell the odors of the night with even greater accuracy than he was used to. Hear the calls of servants and guard alike. And his eyes could see the most minute’ details of the world, that it was uncanny. Mageborn could see in the dark, but this was weird.

He turned and looked back at the palace from which he had emerged. The walls were smooth marble, illustrious white. He wondered briefly where they had been quarried. But then, he walked straight over to the wall and put a hand to it. And his hand became white as the marble was.

Horns,
he thought. That was a new trick. He looked down and realized his entire body—
Just where are my clothes?
he wondered as he tried vainly to will them back into existence—had that same color.

Then, to his amazement, he started to climb the wall as a spider would. His stomach tightened as he though of just how high that wall went yet his body crawled up it with the speed of a lizard. Within moments, he had reached the top and was huddling between the tall merlons, looking around at the height he had attained.

There were guards here as well, and one walked right past him without seeing him. For some reason, that relieved him, but then he knew he was in a land where everyone had mageborn talent, and there was no telling how many of them could see past illusions as Halathor had remarked.

He stayed hunkered in the crenelations for a time, watching the movements of the guards, testing the wind with his senses. Then he crawled onto the walkway and across the flagstones of the roof, staying low like a serpent. On the far side, he reached a wall where there were high thin windows. One quick glance back and forth to assure him that all was well and he began to crawl up the wall again.

The windows were awfully narrow, and a tiny part of him almost panicked when he started to thrust his entire body through the slit.
Too small, too small,
he thought. But his body did not share his opinion.
Well, it is just a dream,
he told himself. He slithered through the gap and into a dark room that was on a higher level than the outer space he had crossed. There he crouched on the floor to make certain he was not seen then slowly, he rose to his height. He felt thinner and taller for some reason, and his body now took on the appearance of shadows as he glanced about the room.

Though there was no light, he could see that he was in a circular chamber, and his eyes picked up the pattern of the floor beneath his feet. He could see glyphs in great abundance, all surrounding a central space wherein a trunk sat. He carefully walked the edge of the markings, noticing that some of them felt hostile even from here.

This is not a place I want to be,
he thought.
I should not be here at all...

But it’s just a dream.
Remember?
Alaric tried not to frown because that last thought he was certain had not been his own. Still, it was just a dream...wasn’t it? He certainly didn’t seem to have any control of what he was doing at the moment.

Like now.

He turned and crawled up the wall.

What am I going to do now?

His head twisted around at what seemed like an impossible angle. Then he glanced upward at the dome of the ceiling where a painting not unlike the one in the great hall decorated the marble. To his amazement, he started to crawl up that dome as he had crawled up the wall.

Why am I not falling?

He reached the very center of the dome, dangling on all fours like a fly, looking down at the chest below. Then he fell and he thought he was going to be hurt when his body flipped over gracefully. He somersaulted and landed on his feet beside the chest.

He was inside the markings now. Carefully, he walked around the chest, studying the intricate knotwork carvings in the white wood. As far as he could tell, there was no keyhole, no handle, not even a hinge. Yet his hand seemed to know what to do. He reached down and followed one of the patterns with his fingers. Touching certain markings in a particular order caused the lid to rise.

And then he reached into the depths of the chest and drew out a fold of black velvet. Pulling the edges back, his eyes perceived the crystal dagger Talena had almost used on King Culann.

Alaric felt himself smile.

“Now, my revenge will be complete,” he heard himself whisper.

He drew the crystal dagger out of the velvet and laid it at his feet. Then he folded the velvet and returned it to the chest, and touching several of the patterns again, he watched the lid close. He took up the dagger and pressed it flat against his chest. It became like liquid and adhered there as though it were part of him.

Crawling up on top of the chest, he sprang for the ceiling, and to his surprise, as soon as his hands touched it, he was able to hold on and not fall. From there, he crawled back down the dome to the wall and slipped through one of the narrow windows. He waited just long enough for the guards to pass before he slithered across the roof and between the crenelations and down the wall to his own balcony.

Stepping back inside, he crossed over to the bed. There he crawled under the cover. The moisture of the dagger was soaking into him. He could feel its weight inside his chest just under the skin as he lay there looking up at the roof.

Then closing his eyes, he thought,
What a strange dream,
and sank into a deeper sleep.

Talena had walked the chamber
a hundred times seeking a way out, and except for that door and those high windows, there was nothing she could use. She tried willing keys and swords and daggers to appear in her hands. Tried willing the windows to drop to easy reach. She even tried willing herself to clamber up the slick surface of the wall. But no matter how much she tried, all she could do was call food and chamberpots and bedding and chairs. And wine. At least she could conjure a good Synalian wine.

Weary of waiting for that mysterious voice to return, she curled up in her pallet to sleep.

How long she had slept was not something she could figure out, but there was suddenly the awareness of not being along. With a gasp, she reached for a weapon that was not there, and whipped into an upright position.

There was a woman sitting in the chair in the center of the room. She was watching Talena with eyes as pale as crystals.

“I told you I would return when the others were asleep,” she whispered. Her long white hair played about her shoulders like water and wind were capturing it. And there was something of a sparkle to her. Scales?

Talena blinked. “Who are you?”

“I am called She Who Sits at the Center of All Things,” the woman replied.

With a sigh, Talena leaned back against the wall. “What do you want? How did you get in here? Why are you here?”

“So many questions,” the woman said and smiled. “Look for the answers in yourself, child.”

“I’m not a child,” Talena said and sprang to her feet. And realized that this woman was
quite
tall. And that her robes almost resembled the wings of dragons the way they shimmered and shifted in the trails of moonlight seeping down from above. “And I do not like riddles...”

The woman arched one eyebrow. Fine and thin and white it was, like all the rest of her.

“Yet you are a riddle, my child,” she said. “Your two bloods war in you. You hear the heart of Ymir, and you would pretend that you cannot... You would avenge those who brought you into this world, yet you would deny the heritage they left within you.”

Talena sank back down on the pallet. “What do you want?”

“I want you to remember,” the woman said. “For if you remember, then the door will open, and you will be free.”

Talena frowned. “Free from what? Free from this prison? Free from this land...”

“This land is in your blood,” the woman said. “Why deny it?”

“Because where I come from, the Temple Patriarchs will burn you for being from this land,” Talena said. “They will break into your house and steal you away and leave your children to hide in the corners until your husband comes and...”

The white-skinned woman suddenly looked very sad. “Yes, I know what they did to your mother,” she said. “And I know that in your heart, you hate them and want to destroy them all for taking her life, then killing your father when he came to avenge her. But revenge is never the answer. Knowledge is real power. To know. To remember. If you truly wish to help your people, then you must remember first. And you must accept and become what you are. What you have always been.”

“How?” Talena said. “Desura tried to do so, and look what happened to her. They took her and turned her into a monster. Now she finds others like herself and tells the Temple where they are and...”

The woman closed her eyes and drew a circle in the air with one hand. A silvered glass appeared, larger than the one Talena had carried on her person.

“But in her last moments, she remembered,” the woman said.

“Her last moments?” Talena drew off the pallet and crossed the chamber to stand before the suspended circle of the mirror. She saw Desura at her scrying stone...saw her bleeding into the water. “No,” Talena said softly. “What is wrong with her...?”

The white woman did not answer. Instead, her eyes stayed closed as the scene played out. Desura taken to her bed. The Lord Patriarch coming to her side...the fire that consumed him and Desura’s life when she spoke a single word... A word that Talena had given her when she heard Lark use it.

Talena shrank back from the mirror.

The white woman gently brushed the silvered glass circle out of existence. When she opened her pale eyes, a tear was forming on one of her opalescent cheeks.