“Yes. Well. I would think so,” she said, nearly choking on the words. Nirka was watching her, a jagged, lashing green light at her heart.
“My first attempts,” Adolican Rhand went on, “were focused only on those traces. It works well enough to gather some, but then I end up with too many false identifications, clogging up my experiments.”
Blue lights appeared into the empty space over his head, one after another. They grew and bled together, even as more popped into being. Farideh winced and she could hardly hear Rhand now, saying, “You can imagine the mess. It works but it’s no good for the rest of them, waiting.”
The lights once more took shape, becoming a tiefling woman trailing tattered robes. She shifted and flickered, like light cast across the surface of water, and the movement made the image of her peel away and build back up, showing skin, then muscle and viscera, bare bone, black shadow and back again-all drifting back and forth at different times, different speeds. As the light drew smooth skin over her face, the woman smiled at Farideh, and laid a bony finger to her lips.
Farideh leaped out of her seat and the ghost vanished.
“Eager indeed!” Rhand crowed. He stood as well. “Come, I’ll show you my arrangement, then we can see how you fare. Garek, Sharit, go get a group ready. Come,” he said again, holding out an arm for Farideh to take. Farideh steeled herself and took his arm, uncomfortably aware of the similarities to the last time he’d offered-the sick feeling in her stomach, her unsteady gait, the strange visions she couldn’t control.
But the lights had come on twice before she ever put a morsel in her mouth. The lights had to be something else. . some symptom or side effect. . some clue. .
She had just worked up the courage to excuse herself, to try and get back to her room where she might have a modicum of privacy to sort things out, when they reached a pair of doors flanked by two more shadar-kai. Rhand eased her in ahead of him, releasing her arm.
Equipment cluttered the room-glass retorts, shelves full of components in jars and pouches and envelopes, shelves of scrolls. Another brazier, burning hot and fragrant with dried herbs. Two large tomes lay open on lecterns at either end, and between them sat three vessels of water the size of shields, magic bristling around their edges. Windows lined one wall of the room, and the guards pushed the shutters open to let in more light. Two younger men in wizards’ robes hunched over open scrolls. They stood straighter as Rhand entered, but he didn’t acknowledge them.
“This tenday’s draw,” Rhand explained gesturing at the basins. “It has to be distilled carefully, with much of the ordinary water removed. A score of buckets full, and this is what’s left.”
Farideh peered at the water. It swirled gently in its confines, looking thick and cold and gleaming with an oily opalescence in the light that streamed through the wall of windows. “And what is it?”
He was silent so long that Farideh wondered if perhaps he’d already said, and now she’d exposed her inattention. When she looked up, though, he had a faraway expression as he gazed at the basins. He looked at her and smiled.
“They are what remains of the fabled Fountains of Memory.”
Dahl crept back down the hillside as dawn broke over the mountains. Late, he thought. Which meant he was farther north than he’d guessed. The dozens of buildings he’d seen multiplied to scores-no, hundreds in the gray light. He slipped in between them, down alleyways, past dark doorways, past closed windows. . past gardens with the last weedy tops of carrots and parsnips gone to seed. Past laundry lines, a hobbyhorse carved from a gnarled branch. Dahl frowned.
Lord of Secrets, he thought, ducking into the open door of an empty hut at the corner of two larger pathways. Don’t let me have sent such a dire message over a village.
But a village should have had more than just huts-there were no smiths or markets or farmlands to be seen. No pigs in the streets, no dogs. No horses or carts. No taverns, he thought, all too aware of the faint headache he’d woken with. He had his flask still-a sip here and there would keep it from getting worse.
He took another before he nudged the shutters open and watched, crouched in the shadows as people started coming out into the streets. With each one, his suspicions were confirmed: the “villagers” didn’t belong, all mixed together, by the shores of the icy lake.
Dahl counted men, women, and children. Skins of every hue. Humans, elves, a dwarf, a pair of half-orcs. A full orc walking alone and cutting his eyes back and forth across the street. If it were a village, he thought, everyone in the North would have heard of it.
Not enough to warrant using the second sending. There was no doubting this wasn’t a village. There was no being sure-not yet-what exactly it was.
Dahl peered closer at the group of humans standing outside, at the villagers who passed by in the meantime. Not one person wore a weapon of any sort, not even the fishing knives you’d expect to see in a lakeside village.
Except for the shadar-kai. Dahl heard the gang of three jangling up the street before he saw them. The villagers heard as well, and quickly got out of sight. A woman, her auburn hair gathered under a black kerchief, leaped in the door of Dahl’s hiding place.
Dahl froze. The woman stepped behind the wall between the door and the window, watching past the doorjamb as the shadar-kai, dripping chains and blades and sneering laughter, passed by. The woman cursed softly and rested her head against the wall.
Not villagers, Dahl thought. But not Netherese soldiers either.
“I’m going to ask you to be quiet,” Dahl said, low and quick, “and tell me if you can see any of those guards from where you stand.”
To her credit, the woman didn’t jump at the sound of Dahl’s voice. She stood a little straighter, and without looking over at Dahl swept her gaze over the street. “No.” She turned and looked Dahl over, not a little fear tensing her frame. She wore the same faded, mended clothes the rest of the villagers wore-as if she had only the one set. All the buttons were missing from her padded jacket and she’d tied a string around her chest, to keep it shut.
“What are you doing out of the fortress?”
Dahl held up his hands. “I’m not with the guards.”
The woman’s eyes flicked over Dahl’s stolen uniform. “Is that a fact?”
“Tharra!” a child’s voice shouted from outside. “You can come out!”
“Go on without me,” the woman called back, eyes on Dahl. “Tell Oota I’ll be there shortly. So whoever you are, keep that in mind,” she said more softly to Dahl. “Obould’s shieldmaiden’ll care if I disappear. Is your scheme worth that?” She shifted back from Dahl, making her jacket gape. Out of the corner of his eye, Dahl registered the edge of something rounded and metal that dragged on the fabric of the woman’s shirt.
“I don’t know what that means,” Dahl said, coming nearer, hands spread. “And I don’t have a scheme.”
It was the wrong move, and Dahl should have known it, he’d realize later. Not a sign he trusted Tharra so much as giving the woman the opportunity to strike out, punching Dahl hard enough to make the Harper see stars and fall back onto the cot. When he sat up, Tharra had fled.
Idiot, he thought, pressing gently on his nose and wincing at the blood his fingers came away with. Even a stranger would rather hit you than help you. At least Tharra hadn’t pulled that weapon in her coat-
He frowned to himself, looking up at the reed roof. Not a weapon. A pin. The edge of metal under her jacket had had the same shape, the same curve as the old Harper pin Dahl had worn for a time. Watching Gods-he rolled to his feet and went to stand in the doorway of the hut. There was no sign of the woman, no sign of the child who’d called to him. Only the strange villagers passing this way and that, bundled in their thin cloaks and worn jackets.