With an effort-aided by her cane-the Coin Priest pushed herself to her feet. Walking was just so uncomfortable.
Her holy symbol flared and magic rose from the burnt coin in her hand to the one in her face. The light vanished, drunk up hungrily by the goddess’s symbol. In turn, the added strength of the magic flowed into the Coin Priest, easing her step.
Walking more easily now, she crossed to her scrying bowl and dropped her two-faced coin into its limpid depths. It still gleamed with absorbed magic. Perhaps this time …
She repeated the scrying ritual, and again, it abruptly failed. The warding magic was just too strong.
“By the Lady,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
24 KYTHORN (PRE-DAWN)
Rhett stood outside Myrin’s door, trying to figure out what to say. He raised and lowered his hand for the fourth time, his confidence wavering.
“If you want to come in,” Myrin called, “just come in.”
The latch slid open and the door opened a foot of its own accord, allowing a cloud of blue-white mist to escape.
“Huh.” Not particularly reassured, Rhett pushed into the room.
Myrin sat cross-legged on the bed in the center of the room, surrounded by what looked like a dozen floating versions of herself. Each image was sculpted of light and mist, and was about the size of Myrin’s head. Some were smiling and laughing, some looked deathly serious, some fought unseen foes. Myrin studied each, her blue hair drifting.
“Kalen sent you, did he?” Myrin asked.
“Obvious, is it?”
Myrin gave a single nod, then went back to studying her images.
After what had happened between them on the boat-and something had definitely happened-Rhett would have expected Kalen to go talk to Myrin. Instead, he had downed a single tankard of mead in the common room, then gone upstairs with Vindicator and Sithe. Before that, he’d asked Rhett to ask Myrin a question of no small import. Rhett was sure it would anger her.
He groped for a way to avoid asking and settled on her magic. “What, uh-?”
“Ordering my memories.” Myrin glanced over at him. “It’s what I’m doing, which was what you were going to ask.”
“Right.” That didn’t help.
Myrin furrowed her brow over two images. She waved her hand slowly to the left. One of the Myrins moved, dispersing wraithlike around another. This Myrin, clad in a shimmering crimson dress whose color was so vivid it seemed like blood, gave him a mysterious smile. The other image was a statuesque version that bore silent witness, her face completely emotionless.
“Hmm,” Myrin said, indicating the two images. “Would you say I look older in this image … or in that one?”
“Uh,” Rhett said. “What exactly are these?”
“Memories.” Myrin looked at him, uncertain. “I said that, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but-” Rhett gestured with his hand like a bird flying from his head.
“You are so strange,” Myrin said. “These aren’t my memories, of course. I have none of my own from more than a year ago, but sometimes when I touch someone, I absorb any memories they have of me.”
“Really?” Rhett said.
She looked frustrated. “Yes, really. Why would I lie about this?”
“I mean, go on.”
“If I knew the proper order of these memories, they might give me some clue as to myself. How old I am, for example.”
“You don’t know how old you are?”
Myrin looked at him. “Guess.”
Rhett thought about it. “Twenty? Twenty-two?”
“As I said, I don’t know.” Myrin shrugged. “I could as easily be far older. Some wizards use magic to slow their aging.”
“Really?” Rhett had heard of liches-spellcasters who embraced undeath rather than succumb to mortality-but he’d never heard of a lovely young woman lich, let alone one who worked even mightier magic. He found the thought unsettling.
“To account for magic of that sort,” Myrin said, “what I need are memories of me over a period of time, to see myself age. Unfortunately, every memory I’ve acquired thus far seems to be a single moment.”
“Er, right.”
“Some of them teach me spells,” Myrin continued. “If I see myself casting a spell, I remember how to do it. This one, for instance.” Myrin indicated the image of herself in the red dress against a starry night. “This memory taught me my shadow door.”
Rhett examined the image of Myrin offering a cryptic smile with her blue-painted lips. She looked very lovely and considerably more powerful. Again, an uneasy feeling crept into his stomach.
“We’re not seeing through your eyes,” Rhett said.
“No, we aren’t.” Myrin shook her head. “Memories are tainted by all manner of things. Sentiment, time, and the like-see how my lips are so full in this image? Methrammar Aerasume had a fixation with my lips, I think.”
“Methrammar-the lord of Silverymoon?”
“Obviously in the memory, he was very much in love with me,” Myrin said. “See the darkness behind me in this image? That’s the spell.”
“You were in love with the lord of Silverymoon,” Rhett said. “The ancient lord of Silverymoon?”
“Love knows neither age nor death,” Myrin said.
“That’s …” Rhett nodded. “That’s beautiful.”
“It’s poetry-something by Thann, I believe,” she said. “And I said he was in love with me, not the inverse. I have no way of knowing how I felt. This”-she indicated the Myrin with the emotionless face, bound in an aura of blue fire-“I got when Fayne kissed me.”
“Someone kissed you?” he asked. “Someone not Saer Shadowbane?”
Again, Myrin gave him that odd expression, as if considering whether he was mocking her. “Yes,” she said patiently. “An odious creature, but very sad. Broken by tragedy. I never really liked her, but I felt for her.”
“Wait.” Rhett considered. “Her? A lass kissed you.”
“Is that shocking?”
“No,” Rhett said. “I’m merely imagining. One moment.”
“Imagine away.” Myrin turned back to her images. She put a few in a different order, considered them again, then reversed them.
Rhett noticed an image near her right hand: Myrin floating in a dark alley, clad only in fire and thousands of those blue runes that appeared on her skin when she cast magic. “What’s this one?”
“Ah!” Myrin waved her hand and all the images disappeared, replaced by a softly glowing ball of magelight. “That was from a year ago, when I first met Kalen. I don’t remember it, but he does.”
“Did you get those memories from a kiss as well?”
“No,” Myrin said hesitantly. “Well, yes, but-that’s not relevant.”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
They regarded each other, the woman sitting cross-legged on her bed, the man standing at her side. She studied him, quite as though she’d never seen him before. “I want you,” Myrin said.
“Uh. Lady?”
“I want your memories,” Myrin said. “Let me see-”
Closing her eyes, she reached up and pressed her bare fingers to his cheek. Her fingers felt surprisingly warm. They tingled against his skin. He gaped at her, trembling under her touch. “Are you seeing anything?” he asked.
Her brow furrowed. “You’re picturing me without my clothes on.”
“What?” Rhett said. “No, no, I’m not!”
“No.” Myrin smiled and opened her eyes. “But as soon as I said that, you did.”
“Oh, very nice.” Rhett scowled. “You beguiled me!”
Myrin looked amused. “Well, I am the Witch-Queen,” she said. “But alas, if we’ve ever met, you don’t remember me, so you’ve nothing for me to absorb.”
“Oh, I’d remember,” Rhett said. “You’re very distinctive.”
“Am I?”
Myrin was giving him another of those curious, weighing looks, as though trying to read his mind. Could she read his mind? He tried his best to push away the image of Myrin naked and in the heat of passion-or possibly naked and wreathed in arcane fire, like in the image Kalen had apparently seen.