The Eighth Warden Bk. 03 Ch. 29-30

Chapter 29

The visions from the staff had repeated themselves several times before Shavala realized they were gradually being stretched out over longer periods. Now, after carrying it for hours, a scene that had once been just a brief glimpse might last for over a minute, without showing anything more than it had the first time.

The things she was seeing had to be elder magic, and likely druidic, but the visions didn't give her any indication of their purpose. The arms she occasionally saw holding the staff were usually slender, like an elf's, but the visions always came from the bearers' eyes, so she never saw the bearers themselves.

And then, suddenly, there was a new vision she hadn't seen before. The staff, still green wood, stood upright in the center of a clearing ahead of her. It balanced on its own without any support, only the narrow end touching the ground.

As she—or the her that was in the vision—approached, an eagle passed overhead, crying out as it flew off into the distance. A raven fluttered down from the sky, landing on a nearby branch and cocking its head to the side as she walked by. A black-tailed stag, like the one she'd seen near the Bancyra Mountains, bounded down the trail toward her, then veered away into the forest at the last second.

Just as she got to the clearing, a flash of red fur, low to the ground, disappeared into the brush. A brown bear and a gray wolf remained, sitting on their haunches on opposite sides of the staff and eyeing her closely. A great tufted owl with mottled brown feathers watched from across the clearing.

She reached out and grasped the staff, but it wasn't her. This arm, though still elven, was a man's. As he cradled the staff in his palms, the bear huffed and then rose to its feet before lumbering away. The owl took flight, leaving only the wolf, who waited as if wondering what would happen next. The man bowed to him, then turned and walked back the way he'd come.

The vision ended.

"Shavala!" The voice was Treya's. "What are you doing?"

Shavala shook off the visions and forced herself back into the real world. She stood and set the staff aside. "I'm sorry; my mind was wandering."

"You've been acting like Ariadne," Treya said. The Ancient woman was still sitting against the wall, not responding to anyone. "Is something wrong?"

"No, I was just thinking."

"Well, we need to leave." Treya raised her voice. "Marco, we have to get going. We can't keep waiting for the others to get back; it'll take too long."

"I need something to carry that lamp. I ran out of room in the sacks."

Shavala didn't have any other bags with her, so she set her quiver near the staff and shrugged off her coat, handing it to him. "Here, use this."

He nodded. "I'll be back."

"Wait," Treya said. "Where's Bobo?"

"I don't know."

"He went to look at the rooms on the western side that we haven't gotten to yet," Razai said.

"We don't have time for that. Will you go find him?"

Razai stared at her for a moment, as if deciding whether to agree to her request, but then gave a curt nod and left the room.

Treya turned back to the Ancient woman. "Ariadne, we need to go," she said gently. "Can you hear me?"

The girl continued staring ahead at nothing.

"Shavala, get her other hand. If we can get her to stand, hopefully we can convince her to come along."

"Is something wrong with her?"

"Not physically, but her mind isn't completely with us. I don't want to think about what she's going through right now."

They were able to tug Ariadne to her feet. Fortunately, she stood up when they tried. There was no way Shavala and Treya could have actually lifted her—still wearing her armor—up off the floor. She had no expression on her face, but she stood waiting with them rather than slumping down again.

Marco made it back first, with Shavala's coat wrapped around the old lamp. He set it down next to the other things he'd brought out of the room they'd found.

"We're bringing her with us?" he asked when he saw Ariadne on her feet.

"We have to," Treya said. "We can't leave her here by herself."

"What are we going to do about that necklace she took?"

"The necklace is what's letting her talk to us. I don't think you're getting it back. And I'm not sure what she's going to think about everything else you've got there."

Marco frowned and looked down at his pile of enchanted items. "What are you talking about? These things aren't hers."

"We found them with her."

"She wasn't there!"

"You know what I mean, Marco."

Before he could argue, Razai returned with Bobo.

"I found another locked door!" he said. "We need to get Corec down to open it."

"It'll have to wait until tomorrow," Treya said. "Where is it?"

"The northwest corner of the palace—I think it's got to be the royal quarters. There's a big bed frame there, and a lot of dust and dirt. Judging from what's left, there must have been plenty of wooden furniture and clothing at one time, and what I think were some tapestries hanging from the walls. Oh, and I found some small ceramic figurines of those animal statues, but five of them fell and were smashed to pieces. Only two are still whole, the fox and the owl."

That reminded Shavala of the animals she'd seen in her vision. Was it a coincidence that so many of them mirrored the animal statues? What did the vision mean?

"We'll ask Corec to look at it tomorrow," Treya said. "It's too late tonight, and if they've already moved the camp, it'll take us over two hours to reach them as it is. Shavala, could you help me?" She'd taken Ariadne's arm to lead her.

Shavala strapped her unstrung bow to her quiver to free up one of her hands, then picked up the staff and took hold of Ariadne's other arm.

The group gathered their things and left the palace, continuing into the tunnel that would lead them to the southern junction, and from there to the central junction and the western colonnade.

"What do you suppose will happen if the mage lights go out while we're down here without Corec or Ellerie?" Bobo asked while they walked. They hadn't figured out how Ariadne had turned on the lights in the throne room, and she hadn't responded to any of their questions about it.

Marco, in the lead, stopped and whirled around. "Could they?" he asked, shocked.

"They last for a while, but we've been down here all day," Treya said, her voice hesitant. "I didn't notice if Ellerie replaced the lights in the lanterns before she left. Shavala, you can see in the dark, can't you?"

"Only movement, but I can manage well enough with my elder senses if I have to." She could carry a flame in her hand, too, but not for long enough to lead everyone out of the mountain. She decided not to mention it.

"There, see?" Treya said. "And we've got the rope. We'll get by." Only Shavala was close enough to see the anxiety in her eyes.

"Let's hurry up," Marco said. "I don't want to put that to the test."

"Relax, will you?" Razai said. "I can see just fine in the dark." She gave him an evil grin. "I can tie you all up in a row and tug you along."

Marco muttered and set off at a faster pace, but then had to stop and wait for the rest of them to catch up. Shavala and Treya were bringing up the rear with Ariadne, and she wasn't moving any faster than before.

The mage lights didn't go out, and an hour and a half later, they made it to the final tunnel leading out of the mountain. Ariadne had drawn in a ragged breath when they reached the colonnade room, but otherwise she showed no reaction to their surroundings.

Outside, they found Corec, Ellerie, and Leena in the empty campsite, lit up by fewer mage lights than normal.

"I was just heading in to find you," Corec told them.

"You could have sent Leena," Treya said.

"No, I wanted to check on—" His eyes landed on Ariadne. "She's awake?"

"This is Ariadne. Ariadne, this is Corec, Ellerie, and Leena."

The Ancient girl didn't show any sign that she'd heard the introductions, or even noticed the new people.

"What's going on?" Ellerie asked.

"She's one of the Chosar!" Bobo said in a rush. "Or at least she claims to be. That necklace she's wearing lets her talk to us, but, uhh, she stopped talking a while back."

Treya said, "We tried to explain what happened, but she didn't take it very well. She says she and the others were put in those metal caskets to protect them from some magical ritual, but that's the last thing she remembers. She doesn't know what happened to everyone else."

"Can she hear us?" Corec asked.

"I think so, but she's not responding to anything. I've only worked with physical injuries before. I'm not sure how to help her."

"Where's her sword and helmet?"

"I left them back ... well, you know. We can get them for her when she's feeling better."

"Corec, I found another locked door," Bobo said. "We need you to open it tomorrow."

"Maybe. We'll see. We've got some visitors headed our way. We need to get a closer look at them."

"What sort of visitors?" Razai asked.

"They might be the same people who attacked us before," Leena said. "I saw armed men and villagers. There's a wizard, I think, and one of my people. I couldn't get close enough to see more."

Corec said, "They're a couple of days out so it gives us some time to get ready. Razai, those disguises of yours—can you be anyone you want?"

She grinned, showing her fangs. "You want me to spy on them?"

"If you don't mind. Mostly to see if they have those daggers with the snake etchings on the hilts."

"I'll head out tomorrow."

"Thank you."

She just smirked at him.

"What's that you're carrying?" Ellerie asked, staring at the bundles that Marco, Razai, and Bobo held in their arms.

"The things from that room with the enchantments," Marco said.

"I told you not to touch them yet!"

"We didn't. We wrapped them up before taking them out."

"That's not what I meant and you know it!"

Bobo gave Ellerie an apologetic grimace, but Marco's expression didn't change. "You brought out the weapons," he pointed out.

"Weapons are meant to be held! We don't know about these things!"

"What else could you have learned by staring at them longer?" he asked.

"I'm trying to learn that lore spell!" she said, glaring at him. "We'll talk about this later. Right now, we should catch up to the others."

#

"Did you have any luck?" Bobo asked.

"No," Ellerie said, sitting down with a sigh. "She still won't talk." After getting everyone settled in at the new campsite, she'd tried to get Ariadne to answer some questions, but the woman had seemed almost catatonic. "Treya thinks it would be better to leave her alone for now."

"Just imagine what she knows. She actually lived in Tir Yadar."

Ellerie was still having a hard time believing that. "You talked to her earlier," she said. "Do you really think she's one of the Ancients? The Chosar?"

"She wasn't faking her distress," Bobo said. "She was honestly disturbed to see us, and to learn her people were missing. As for the rest of it, you know I don't like to use the term Ancients, and I'm not entirely sure who the Chosar were. I'd always thought they were just one tribe, and probably one of the first peoples, but she certainly seems to believe the city belonged to the Chosar. She wasn't happy to find humans and elves there."

Ellerie nodded. "That matches what Hildra told Corec, that the Tirs were Chosar cities. Maybe the first peoples and the Ancients aren't the same thing after all. Ancients could refer to the Chosar specifically. First peoples could mean the Chosar, plus the elves, the humans, and any others who lived nearby. Maybe the stoneborn? They live as close as the Skotinos Mountains."

"This is why I don't like imprecise words," Bobo said. "Ancients doesn't mean anything. No one has ever called themselves that." Then he snorted. "I suppose I'm being pedantic. Nobody ever called themselves the first peoples, either. Both terms came into use much later, referring to cultures we never really knew much about. So, what do we know now?"

"The Chosar ruled over the Tirs," Ellerie said. "They aren't elven or human, but, from what you told me, Ariadne recognized both. She wasn't surprised to see you, but only by your presence in ... what did she call it?"

"The fortress. She also mentioned something about Corec not having a badge of rank, which suggests humans could serve in their military."

"And Shavala found arrows that were sized for elven bows. Or, at least, something smaller than a modern human longbow."

"So elves may have served with them as well."

Ellerie nodded, then thought back to what Bobo and Treya had told her about the conversation. "Everything comes back to that ritual," she said. "That must be what caused the Burning."

"You're making assumptions again," Bobo said. "Though, I admit, it had to be something big for the people to abandon the city."

"Especially while leaving her and the others behind, and some of the things we've found. Did she say anything else about the ritual?"

"She said they were trying to combine the four sources of magic."

That made Ellerie sit up straight. "What? How? That shouldn't be possible!"

"I don't know. What does it mean?"

"The sources are separate, distinct—elder, arcane, divine, demonic. My arcane sight and Shavala's elder senses and Treya's healing senses all see the world very differently, because they work in completely different ways. There was a theory for a while among my people that if you could combine two magics, they could do things that neither could do on its own. But we tried it. It doesn't work."

"You tried?" Bobo asked. "How?"

"The nilvasta lean more toward arcane magic, but we're still elves. Elder magic is in our blood, and when it chooses someone, it shows itself whether that person has trained it or not. Every once in a while, the elder magic will appear in someone who also has the gift for wizardry. It's very rare—it hasn't happened in my lifetime, but some of my teachers knew mages who could wield both."

"I thought you said it didn't work."

"Combining the two into a single spell doesn't work. They could cast an arcane spell and they could cast an elder spell, and, if they were lucky, they could learn spells that would complement each other. But they couldn't cast a spell that used both, and they tended to be weaker in both magics than a mage who only learned one or the other. There are always limits on a mage's strength. Unless ..." Ellerie paused, thinking.

"Unless what?"

"Any mage can only progress so far until they hit the limit of their potential. But Yelena said the warden bond increases your potential. If they were able to remove those limits ... Are you sure she said the intent of the ritual was to combine the magics? Limits or not, that still shouldn't be possible."

"Apparently it wasn't. Ariadne seemed to think the ritual had failed. She said she still felt two sources of magic."

Ellerie's eyes went wide. The Chosar woman could wield two magics? "What?" she exclaimed. "Why didn't you tell me that earlier?"

"I didn't realize what she meant until you explained it," Bobo said.

"Is she a warden? Or bonded by one?"

"She didn't mention wardens. She didn't really say who was conducting the ritual, just that she and the others were put in those caskets to keep them safe. Safe from the ritual, I suppose, though she didn't specify."

Ellerie pressed her fingers to her temples. "There's so much I need to ask her."

"Maybe she'll talk tomorrow. And don't forget, there's still that other door. We may find more information there."

#

As the sun rose, Ariadne sat on the roof of the currency exchange building in Old Town, her legs dangling over the side.

At least, she thought it was the currency exchange building. Everything looked different now, just raw stone. Old Town hadn't been built with shaped stone, which was easier to manipulate, but with simple blocks of yellow sandstone. Without shaping magic, the builders had used columns, arches, and other tricks of engineering to allow the roof to be constructed of the same material.

Ariadne had stayed awake all night wondering when the bad dream would end, barely cognizant of the intruders checking on her. The dream hadn't ended, though, and at the first hint of dawn, she'd snuck out of the structure in which the group had set up their camp, blinking through the outer wall so they wouldn't see her leaving the room they'd stuck her in.

What she saw outside was worse than her earlier nightmares.

Was this really Tir Yadar? Where was the rest of the outer city? What had happened to the prairies to the south and west? Or the tershaya forests to the east and north? The land was dead for as far as the eye could see. The mountain itself was bare, denuded of all life, making it unrecognizable. The intruders had mentioned taking their animals to a river to drink. Was it the same one she'd known growing up? She should have been able to catch a glimpse of it from here, but she couldn't. Lake Van Kir was gone too—not just the water, but the dam and even the basin itself. Where the deep lake had once been, the land was now flat.

There was a commotion behind her, from the direction of the building in which the intruders had set up camp. Ariadne drew her feet back from the ledge and scrambled to the center of the roof, far enough that someone walking down the street below wouldn't be able to see her. She couldn't avoid them forever, not while she was still in this nightmare, but a little longer would be nice. She couldn't think when they were around. They were too ... wrong.

Were stasis dreams different than sleeping dreams? This one seemed so real, but she'd never been in stasis before. The pods were normally only used to hold injured soldiers when the surgeons and healing wizards were overwhelmed with wounded. They hadn't been needed at all in the weeks since the war had ended.

A woman with golden-brown skin and black hair suddenly appeared out of nowhere, carrying a plate. She said something incomprehensible.

"I can't understand you," Ariadne said. "Speak the same language as the others."

The woman gave her an apologetic look. "Talk Eastern not good."

Apparently the nightmare intended to offer more torture. Ariadne took the plate—it held dried fruit, dried meat, and some things she didn't recognize—and set it aside, then grasped the woman's wrist. The pain came immediately, almost overwhelming in its intensity, but she didn't let go until it was over. The woman stared at her, startled, but if the stories Ariadne had heard were true, the target wasn't affected as badly as the wearer.

"Can you understand me now?" she asked.

The woman's eyes grew wide. "You speak the language of my people?"

Ariadne fingered the copper chain around her neck. "The Necklace of Tongues. When I touched you, it gave me your language. But only one at a time."

"I understand, I think. My name is Leena. I brought food, but the others are looking for you—I must tell them where you are." While she was speaking, a blue light flickered on the woman's brow, resolving into a glowing sigil in a geometric shape.

Ariadne felt a sudden wave of relief. Had the wardens sent someone to rescue her? "I apologize, bondmate," she said. "I didn't recognize you. Did you come for me, or did these humans take you, too?"

"Recognize me?" The woman seemed confused.

"I didn't realize any of the wardens had bonded a human of the Vestathi tribes. We rarely see your people in these lands."

Leena covered her forehead with her palm, as if she hadn't known her sigil was showing. "Vestathi? Vestath is to the south of the Gilded Sea. I am of the Zidari clan of the Sanvari people."