“How long did it last for them?” Amara frowned. If Ruudde was to be believed, Nolan had the least control of any traveler he knew, and he’d stayed in her body for years without even wanting to.
“The shortest took only minutes. Others, for weeks or even months at a time. Sometimes they left in the middle of conversations. The spirits are, shall we say, fickle.”
“And those possessions stopped after the coup?” Amara’s signs came slowly.
“As far as I know, yes. We talked to other mages about it, and I’m sure they’d have let us know if they encountered new vessels, but of course …” She went off on another tangent, this time about how mages kept in touch, and how often, and the internal politics of it. Throughout, Amara sat numbly in her chair, her fingers hooked in her teacup. Her eyes were on Edo’s orange wall drapes.
Before the coup, travelers stuck around for anywhere between minutes and months, sometimes leaving unceremoniously. Why would any traveler leave in the middle of a conversation?
They’d had no control. They came and went randomly.
They couldn’t have chosen which body they used, either, because Ruudde—Naddi—had talked of this world and its magic with fire in his eyes. He’d said he’d always wanted to try a mage body.
So why hadn’t he found one sooner?
Before the coup: no control.
After the coup: control. The possessions stopped. The travelers chose mage bodies and stayed in them for years.
Something had happened around the time of the coup. Something had changed, giving the travelers control. Something … unnatural. Naddi had gone randomly from host to host, and the second he’d landed in Ruudde’s mage body, he’d made himself and the others stay in their new bodies, using his newfound magic to anchor them to his world …
Anchor.
He’d created an anchor.
They enchanted someone to be a tracking anchor, letting the travelers continually find their preferred bodies in this world—or a more literal anchor, keeping them rooted to the same place—
Amara didn’t even hear the mage’s voice anymore. She still stared at Edo’s drapes, at images of a volcano erupting and swirling, steaming seas, until her eyes felt so dry she had to remind herself to blink. Nolan was right. Cilla did have two spells on her. That was why she was so special. That was how Ruudde could track her. That was why the ministers needed her safe at all costs. The second she died, the extra spell would end and snap them free from their borrowed bodies.
The spell must’ve affected Nolan, too. A traveler so weak shouldn’t be able to stick around so long. Without Cilla’s spell, Nolan might never have traveled here in the first place.
Amara discarded the theories that didn’t fit, probed at the ones that might. Of course Ilanne and the other mages would want to kill Cilla, eliminate the anchor. They’d hate travelers more than anything. Controlling their kin, abusing their magic, invading their world.
So the ministers had needed to protect Cilla. They found a palace mage loyal to them, Jorn, and sent him out with the anchor and a pair of servants, armed with lies of princesses and vengeful ministers …
Amara sipped her tea. It scalded her tongue and tasted of red carrots and kalisse or fennel. She ordered her thoughts, going slowly.
Why would Jorn help the ministers? He couldn’t be a traveler himself. He didn’t heal, and, as Nolan had pointed out, travelers were in the Dunelands for money, power, magic. They wouldn’t want to spend their lives running around the Dune-lands babysitting a fake princess and disciplining her servants.
The ministers might’ve threatened Jorn’s family just like Nolan’s. Jorn had an easy way out, though. Letting Cilla die would’ve gotten rid of the travelers in a second. Perhaps … Amara didn’t know.
She did know, now more than ever, that she needed to talk to the mages who’d cursed Cilla. If those mages wanted the travelers gone, then they and Amara were on the same side.
“Thank you,” Amara said. When Edo and the Dit mage stared at her blankly, she realized she must’ve interrupted them. Servants were never supposed to interrupt their betters.
She pretended not to notice.
“I need to speak to Ilanne. You said she was in Bedam. Can she meet me near the Bedam palace as soon as possible?”
“The Drudo palace, you mean?” the mage mocked. Then she laughed. “I’ll send a message.”
39
Drudo.
Naddi and Drudo.
Nolan had spent the night looking through the last of his journals, passing on whatever info he found to Amara. It wasn’t much, and nothing like the info she’d passed him. Nolan’s mind spun with the thought of Cilla being the only thing keeping him and the other travelers in the Dunelands. If Cilla died, the problem was solved—but that wasn’t an option.
Ilanne and Amara would have to find another way.
And they’d have to find it before his pills ran out. He’d decided to lower his doses, stretch the effects for as long as he could, but he already felt odd, warm and restless.
He flicked on an extra light in his room and Googled “Natalie Drudo” coma.
No hits. Nothing without the coma part, either.
Nolan tried Nadir, Nadia, Nadeem, Natalia, Natanie, Nat, Natal, Nate, Nathaniel, Nathan, Natasha, Nadine, going back pages and pages for each search before realizing—of course. The Dit language didn’t use separate d and t letters at all. It just used the d everywhere and pronounced it more sharply when it came at the end of a word, like Maart. The people of the Dunelands might be mispronouncing the palace’s name en masse based on the spelling.
“Nadir Trudo” coma.
“Nadine Druto” coma.
“Nathan Truto” coma. Then: “Nadia Trudo” coma
Google returned a question. Did you mean: “Nadia Trudeau” coma
The first page to come up when Nolan clicked the link almost made him spit out his third can of imitation Coke.
TRUDEAU CHARITY FUND
Help us keep Nadi alive!
The text accompanied a photo of a twentysomething couple, the man cradling a baby. The woman smiled excitedly at the camera. The photo looked old. Something about the colors made Nolan think it was a scan of a paper photo, not a digital one.
Over ten years ago, our beloved daughter, sister, and mother, Nadia Trudeau, fell into a deep coma in her house in Cape Town. Her brain remains active to this day; doctors all across SA could find no cause or brain damage and say she might wake up at any moment.
They told us not to get our hopes up.
How can we not?
Another photo, a portrait, came next. Nadia looked sternly into the camera. She had dark skin, a tall forehead, a mole on one cheek. Wrinkles around her mouth. She looked average, like one of Nolan’s teachers or a classmate’s mom.