The box and its contents safely in the Lady’s lap, she considered for a moment, then looked up at us. “The Prince of theWestern Gate has formally requested that you help him locate the miscreants who attacked him. Why?”
“Because they used an Anima to do so, and I can see Anima and Aether.”
Disappointment clouded her face, and she gave a woeful sigh—the sigh of a woman weary of being the only intelligent person in the stronghold. “I suppose we ought not be too particular when the prince has requested our assistance for the good of the realm. You’re to meet your escort in the market at dawn. You will be acting as representatives of my manor, and you will act accordingly. Is that understood?”
We nodded.
“You’re dismissed,” she said, and set about inspecting the items in the box once again.
“I need sweetwine,” I said as we walked out. “A lot of it.”
We ate a hurried dinner, mostly to lay the foundation for the jug of sweetwine Nheve had been saving for a special occasion. Thankfully, she decided the look on my face was occasion enough. So we gathered around a small fire at the edge of the courtyard, built with embers from the kitchen fire and dead branches from the pangan tree. We sat close enough to arm ourselves against a breeze that carried the chill of the snows atop Mount Cennet. The Terran god that protected the land was said to reside on the mountain in a hidden palace only true believers could find. Coincidentally, those true believers always seemed to find themselves in stronghold inns, thirsty and willing to share their tales of discovery for a pint or two.
Only a single moon was out tonight, and it was high. The air smelled of new grass and possibility. Spring was a hopeful time,when the world felt different, new, clean. And with the popping fire and sweetwine that was nicer than we could usually afford, I should have been happy and relaxed. But I was thinking about the death and magic—and the people left behind.
The faint glimmer of Aether appeared after Nheve rose and yawned, and set herself for bed. The fire was covered, the sweetwine jar recapped. Wren and I moved toward our building as if intending to turn in, but then we snuck around to the back corner of the manor, where the pangan tree’s arcing branches reached nearly to the ground. We moved into the vaulted hollow beneath the limbs—a space that had served as castle, pirate ship, sanctuary.
Now Luna waited there, with her pale glow and short hair. That her appearance hadn’t changed in all the years we’d known her had been a kind of comfort. The Lady’s moods could shift as fast as Vhranian winds, but Luna remained Luna.
“How goes the hunt?” Wren asked.
“The practitioner is well hidden,” she signed. “The Anima that possessed the human is now gone from this world and mine.”
Gone into Oblivion, she meant.
“I think I know where the practitioner was,” I said, and told her about the day’s events: Innis’s illness, Tommen and the ghosts, the assassin’s death in the woods. By the end of the telling, both her and Wren’s eyes were wide.
“Two more dead because of some asshole practitioner.”
“He is barely a practitioner,” she signed.
“There were marks on Innis’s body,” I said and described what I’d seen.
“Aether is foreign to this world, and his possession was not brief. His body was affected.”
I nodded. “The blacksmith’s body didn’t have those marks,but it did have tiny burns. Maybe the practitioner tried again, but failed?”
“Still trying to possess people,” Wren said.
“Yeah. We were too late to help.” I looked at Luna. “What can we do if it happens again?”
“Aether would be required to reverse the possession.”
“We aren’t bringing any more practitioners into the stronghold,” Wren said. “Absolutely not.”
“There aren’t any to bring, anyway,” I said.
“Injuring the human, as you did in the market, is the only other way. Possession requires a balancing of wills; upset the balance, and the structure falls apart.”
I nodded. “The blacksmith wasn’t the only reason the practitioner was there.” I pulled out the folded bit of paper I’d sketched at the forge and showed it to her. “We think he may have been paid to make a weapon—one that has religious symbols.”
Luna leaned toward it and looked over my charcoal marks. Then she lifted her brows in a very human expression.
“I was in a hurry.” My scrawl was rarely tidy at the best of times. I was too impatient for scribbling things that could be said aloud much faster. “It’s the language of the Enshrined Monks, right?”
She looked down at it again, nodded. “It was originally the Creators’ language from the old times, before the realms were divided. It was passed to the Enshrined Monks to help them commune with the gods.”
“And why would it be on a weapon?” Wren asked.
