“Jelena, I’m so sorry, but I’ve just remembered something that I need to do. I must go.”
Jelena looked confused. “Now?”
Sonoe realized the abruptness of her departure would seem strange to the girl, but it couldn’t be helped. She needed to get away from Jelena, and quickly. The closeness she felt for Keizo’s daughter threatened to overwhelm her resolve.
“Yes. There’s a very important errand I need to run. Society business. If I leave now, perhaps I won’t get into too much trouble.” Jelena nodded in understanding. “Stay here as long as you like,” Sonoe added. “I’ll have more tea sent up for you.” She grabbed a light cloak, for where she must go would be chilly. “I’ll see you at dinner.”
She left Jelena and the maids to fuss over the new little princess, blissfully unaware of the coming storm that would soon alter all of their lives forever.
Sonoe paused in the hallway outside her sitting room door and cast a quick spell of concealment upon herself-a simple glamour, nothing more. She had no time for a true invisibility spell. Still, anyone who happened to glance her way would not recall seeing her.
Quickly, she made her way along deserted back hallways to the castle library. The place normally stood empty at this time of day, and today proved no exception. The mellow smells of polished wood and leather permeated the air. The library consisted of three interconnected rooms, each with its own collection of chairs and tables. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, each one containing many hundreds of scrolls, folios, and bound books. Narrow windows, glazed with expensive glass, pierced the wall space between the shelves, allowing in abundant natural light. Dust motes danced in sunbeams slanting to the mat-covered floor.
Keizo, never much of a scholar, rarely came here. His father, Keizo the Elder, had assembled most of the fine collection which now graced the shelves of Sendai Castle’s library-a collection that included many of the most important texts ever written about the magical arts. Chief among them were copies of the writings of the greatest elven mage to have ever lived, Iku Azarasha, head of the Kirian Society during the reign of Queen Syukoe Onjara, over a thousand years ago.
In one of these books, Sonoe had found the last information she desperately needed.
To be precise, the information she had been diligently seeking had not actually been in any of the texts themselves. While pouring over yet another volume of Master Iku’s meticulous accounts of the Kirian Society’s business, Sonoe had discovered-scribbled in the margin beside a description of the proper activation spell for a teleportal-the words “see Commentaries of Akan.”
After a long stretch of frantic searching, she had located the Commentaries -a tiny, fragile volume bound in crumbling green leather. In it, an obscure scholar named Akan had recorded his opinions on the writings of Azarasha.
The bone-dry analyses of some long-dead academic held no interest for Sonoe, and she almost returned the little book to its dusty perch high up on a neglected shelf, but something caught her eye-what proved to be a fold-out drawing at the book’s midpoint. Her eyes beheld a rendering of Sendai Castle as it must have appeared approximately two hundred years ago, when Akan wrote his Commentaries.
Sonoe had crowed in triumph when she realized what she had found. Only her discovery, several weeks earlier, of Master Iku’s personal account of the defeat of the Nameless One, had been greater.
The drawing of the castle had been marked in two places with Xs within circles. Across the bottom of the page, Akan had written Location of Sendai Portals in his blunt, inelegant hand. One of the portals was located in a room just off the Great Hall, the other in the library itself. It made perfect sense to Sonoe that the Kirians would choose to place one of their portals in Sendai’s library. They were scholars, after all.
The hardest part had been finding the library portal. It had taken her three days; the Kirians had hidden it well. When she finally did break through all of the wards and masking spells, the energy she dissipated in the process felt too fresh. She realized someone had been maintaining the magic. Only one other person in Sendai had the skill to do this, and since Sonoe hadn’t known of the portal’s existence until three days ago…
Damn you, Taya! What other secrets are you keeping from me?
No matter. If all went according to plan, that twisted, malevolent spirit of a long-dead king would be hers to command, not the other way around. At the proper time, armed with the most precious of weapons, Sonoe would finally turn on her master. Once she had accomplished that task, then her real work would begin.
After a quick mental scan of the rooms to assure that no amateur scholar sat studying in a cubbyhole somewhere out of view, Sonoe traversed the first two rooms on silent feet to the rearmost chamber. There, she entered an alcove lined with dozens of scrolls and reached up to the top shelf. Her questing fingers found a scroll that felt heavier than the others. She pulled down on it and the back wall of the alcove swung smoothly inward on well-oiled hinges-more proof that someone…no, Taya!-maintained this portal.
Sonoe slipped through the opening, pushed the secret door closed and plunged herself into total darkness. A whispered incantation conjured a silvery globe of magelight. The shimmering orb rose from her palm and floated overhead to cast its light down a stone staircase spiraling away into the earth.
Sonoe shivered and pulled her light wrap close about her shoulders. The temperature in these subterranean vaults never climbed much above the chill of an early spring night, even in the heat of summer. With the magelight bobbing along in front of her to illuminate the way, Sonoe descended. After exactly fifty three steps, she reached a landing. Stretching before her, a rough-cut corridor curved away into the gloom.
The flame-haired sorceress paused and breathed in the musty air, tasting the residue of past magic.
You tried to erase your trail Taya, but I know your signature too well!
Taya Onjara had despised her ever since their days at the Kan Onji School, when Sonoe had been an impoverished student, obliged to spread her legs to all comers in order to earn enough for tuition, and Taya had reigned as the wife of the king’s brother.
They soon became rivals. Both possessed Talent to a very high degree and the arrogance to flaunt it-Taya, by virtue of her exalted rank, and Sonoe, because of her burning ambition. It was inevitable that they should one day vie against each other for supremacy.
That day came when the school’s regents announced a contest of magic, open to all the senior students, to be held on the first day of the new year. The winner would receive free tuition for the upcoming term-important to be sure-but Sonoe really craved the respect and prestige a victory would bring. She felt sick and tired of noble-borns like Taya skewering her with their snobbery.
Sonoe bested Taya, but just barely; nonetheless, her triumph had been sweet. She indulged in a smug little smile as she savored the memory.
Soon thereafter, she came to the attention of Keizo, newly installed on his throne and searching for a suitable woman with whom he could enter into a contract. Sonoe’s common-born status made her ineligible for a royal marriage, but if she accepted his proposal, she would have certain legal rights as his official Companion, including the expectation of lifelong support, even though the king must one day put her aside to marry. Keizo’s choice to take a Companion instead of a wife had confused many in the court, but Sonoe didn’t question his reasons. She had a chance to rise higher than she’d ever hoped, and she had accepted with no regrets.