Savil, Savil, I'm so sorry - and sorry isn't enough. Sorry won't bring you back.
Tears escaped from under his closed eyelids, and etched their way down his cheeks. He couldn't swallow; he could hardly breathe.
A hand touched his shoulder. He looked up, slowly, through eyes that burned and vision that wavered with tears.
“Van?” Tantras said quietly. “I know you're in no shape to do anything, but you're the only Herald-Mage left, and we can't check all the magical locks she had to see if they were violated.”
He blinked, then reckoned up in his head ail the deaths over the last couple of years.
Oh, gods - I'm not just the only Herald-Mage they have left here, I'm the very last Herald-Mage. There aren't any more but me.
He wiped the back of his hand across his eyes and rose slowly to his feet. “Clear everyone out,” he said in a low, and deadly calm voice, as a coldness settled in his heart and icy anger steadied his thoughts. “I'll need some room to work.”
The wards weren't violated. Van stood in the middle of the room and scanned every inch of it with Mage-Sight. The wards were fading now that Savil was dead, but they were still strong enough to read. She had warded all four directions, above and below, weaving protection atop protection, and all glowed with the bright blue that meant no strand and no connection had been broken, and the only hole was the one he himself had made when he broke down the door.
The wards weren't violated. The locks and locking-spells are all intact. Whatever it was came in before she set the wards.
What was the damned thing, anyway?
There was still a trace of the greenish ichor left; more than enough to identify the creature if it was something Vanyel had encountered before this. But it wasn't; it wasn't even close to anything he knew, and the magical signature it had left behind when it broke the spell that gave it its disguise was entirely new.
It's intelligent, he decided. It has to be. And it's not Abyssal, or I'd at least recognize that much of its signature, which only leaves one possibility. It's created, or it's from the Pelagirs. Or both -
His only option now was to try alone what he and Savil and the two Tayledras had done together; try to See into the immediate past. He wouldn't have tried it if he hadn't seen it done by an expert; and if the time he wanted to See hadn't been so recent, he wouldn't have been able to do it alone.
The longer he waited, the fainter the traces would be. His best chance at discovering anything would be to cast the spell now, this instant.
You son of a bitch, whoever, whatever you are, you're not getting away! I'm going to hunt you down if it takes me the rest of my life-
He sat down on the cold, bare floor, next to where Savil had been found, and tapped recklessly into the node far below Haven. His need, anger, and sorrow drove him deeper into it than he had ever been or dared to go before; he grasped the raw power with unflinching “hands,” manipulating it like soft, half-molten iron. He forged it into the spell on the anvil of his will and tuned it to himself through the medium of his mage-focus. Then he cast it loose.
When he opened his eyes, the room was as he had left it when he'd last seen Savil alive. He was sitting just beside Savil's big chair; it was early evening by the thin light coming in the windows, and she didn't seem to be in the room.
This must be just after I met Stef, he thought, and guilt ate at him, acid in his wounds of loss. The wards were not up. And there was nothing in the room that did not belong there.
Vanyel froze the moment and searched everywhere, even behind and underneath the furniture. Nothing. Everything was entirely as it should be.
He gritted his teeth and let time proceed again, waiting as the twilight deepened and became true night; as one of the servants came in, lighting the lamps and leaving fresh candles in the sconces. Another brought in a heavy load of wood, and fueled the fire. Nothing at all out of the ordinary -
Wait a moment!
He froze the time-stream again, and examined the candles, minutely, with Mage-Sight.
Nothing at all odd about the candles - but when he turned his Sight on the wood, the entire pile glowed an evil green, and when he dug deeper at it, the wood gave him the same signature as the ichor.
But it wasn't enough; not quite. He needed to see how the thing had looked when it dropped its disguise, and where it had gone afterward.
He forced himself to let the time-stream start up again; his heart lurched when he saw Savil enter the room. No, not now, he told himself, forcing himself to be cold and unemotional. It's not the time for that - not while I'm tapping a node. I can't afford to give up concentration for emotion.
He regained control over himself, just as his aunt turned away from him and put up her wards.
Even though he was watching the woodpile, he didn't see it actually change; the creature was that fast. He froze time again; catching it in mid-leap and Savil in mid-turn.
Well, at least I'm not slipping,, he thought, still locked in that icy detachment. That creature isn't anything I've ever encountered before. It was mostly like a raven, but with toothed beak, evil red eyes, and powerful legs that ended in feet bearing knife-sharp, hand-sized talons.
Not even the Tayledras knew all of the creatures that roamed the Pelagirs, but somehow this bird-thing didn't have the feeling of anything natural - if that word could ever be applied to a beast from that magic-haunted area. Still, the bird looked wrong; the teeth were too long for it to be able to actually eat with them, and those claws were no good for anything except rending. Certainly it couldn't perch on anything like a tree limb with those talons. And how would it feed young?
Vanyel could not leave his own position, but he could let the beast continue its leap, little by little, until he could see all of it. He did so, steadfastly ignoring the look of fear on his aunt's face, the panic as she realized she could not ready a blast of mage-energy before it reached her. It was thumb-lengths away from her when he stopped the thing again, and close examination of the rear proved what he had suspected. It had no genital slit; in fact, it had nothing at all, not even a vent. It was as featureless behind as a feather-covered egg.
It was a construct, a one-of-a-kind, probably created specifically for this task out of a real raven. The only way it could obtain nourishment would be magically; it was utterly dependent on the mage that created it, and there would be no young that might escape the mage's control. That meant that the mage who had targeted Savil was at the least more ruthless than Vanyel, and very likely more powerful as well.
Power doesn't count for everything, Vanyel thought, clenching his jaw on a rising tide of anger. There's skill, and there's how much you're willing to pay for what you want. I want this bastard, and I don't intend to lose him.