Glad he had finished his flatbread snack, Alonnen pointed back at the table they had used, and the dirty dishes still sitting on the age-worn surface. “Just for that, you can take care of my cup and plate. Since it’ll get me upstairs faster.”
Ignoring the dirty look his younger sibling sent him, Alonnen headed for the stairs. It didn’t take long to reach the top. Debating a moment, he touched the doorknob, chanted a brief set of spells to change the illusions cloaking his office, then stepped inside. What should have been a room with four or five people in it, examining the images captured by the spying roaches, had turned into an empty chamber with a single mirror on the wall.
Alonnen didn’t understand how it worked; his magical education wasn’t up to the task and wouldn’t be for a long, long time even if he had a competent teacher who did understand. But he knew that he wasn’t going to run over someone turned invisible, but not intangible, by some spell. The way Millanei had described it, this whole floor acted more like his office formed a giant ring around the heart of the Vortex, and he had simply spun the floor like a cogwheel, accessing a gear-tooth version that had no one currently in it. Or perhaps it was the others he had shifted out of his office into an alternate version somewhere around the ring.
Donning cap and scarf to augment his green-tinted, identity-hiding lenses, he touched the frame, shifting it from a pulsing blue field to a set of squares filled with faces. Given the number of Guardians assembled, this was to be a very important meeting. He recognized nearly every face, but two of the mirror-windows were different. Both Pelai and Tipa’thia occupied the same scrying frame, one with her tattoos creased and crinkled into near-illegibility by her age-lined face, the other with her smooth-inked features framed by dark hair instead of white. In the other frame, not one, not two, but five faces peered at the others.
In the center, in a window that occupied the span of four of the others, Guardian Kerric nodded a greeting for their newest conference member. “I’m very glad you could join us, Guardian Alonnen, because we have come up with a solution for your problem.”
“A temporary solution,” Guardian Tipa’thia interjected firmly. “The spells will only last about two years, then they won’t be able to be reapplied for ten years. Keep that in mind, Guardians.”
Amber eyes rolled, and a suntanned hand tugged on a pale blonde braid. Alonnen quirked a brow at Serina’s image. She looked like she was not at all happy with whatever solution Kerric and Tipa’thia had in mind—irritated with it, even—but she didn’t say anything. She just stood there next to Guardian Dominor, her husband. Witch-Knight Orana Niel stood to Serina’s right, looking as calm and patient as ever.
To the left of Dominor stood some young man with ash-blond hair and aquamarine eyes. He was a bit thinner than Dominor but had the look of a kinsman to the dark-haired mage. To his left stood a woman with hair just a few shades lighter than Alonnen’s own and a curious look in her eyes; those eyes were the same shade as the young man’s, but other than that, the two had nothing in common regarding their looks. Certainly she didn’t have the slightly slanted, almond-shaped eyes of a Katani. What she lacked in ethnic nationality, Alonnen realized was made up in the crown she wore: delicate-looking, it had been fashioned out of slender gold wires bent and joined together to look almost like a set of mountain peaks.
Given the location of the Fountain which Dominor guarded, Alonnen could guess who the crown wearer might be. “I take it you, milady, are the new ruler of Nightfall? If so, congratulations.”
“Queen Kelly of Nightfall, hi there. Forgive me for barging into this, but after reading the prophecies in question, I realized I might be of some help, even if I’m no mage,” she stated bluntly. “I also figured, given how secretive you Guardian types are of your magical whatsit-wells, it might help for you to have a front man, so to speak. You know, someone whom everyone could point to and say, ‘She ordered it!’ and thus send the stampede of questioners and complainers my way, to distract everyone from the truth and keep them from interrupting or interfering with your work.”
Her blunt forthrightness made some of the others blink. For a moment, Alonnen couldn’t think of why; her forthrightness simply reminded him of several other Guild Masters . . . and that was the reason why. For a queen, this Kelly woman did not act at all how the tales of outkingdom queens were reported to act. She even looked like a fellow ex-Mekhanan . . . like a Guildaran, given her buttoned shirt. Alonnen liked her immediately based on that. He suspected from Ilaiea’s impatient look and Keleseth’s frown that not everyone did.
“I think that’s a good idea,” he stated, before anyone else could speak. He might not know nearly as many spells as the other men and women in this scrycast conference, but Alonnen was not stupid. He had given all the information gathered over the last few months a lot of thought. “Given the prophecies in question seem to suggest the Convocation is somehow involved, the queen of its host nation would indeed make a logical ‘target’ for all inquiring outsiders. And the ‘Synod Gone’ prophecy by the, uh . . . Seer Howpunay?”
“Howpanayah,” the ash-blond man pronounced. “Only the Seer Haupanea goes by ‘Hope’ now . . . and she’ll be joining us as soon as she gets out of the refreshing room.”
“Uh . . . right,” Alonnen said, thrown off-balance a little by the other man’s assertion that a centuries-old Seer would be joining them in a few moments. He dragged the conversation back to the point he wanted to make. “That prophecy does say, ‘Gone, all gone, the synod gone, brought back by exiled might; By second try, the fiends must die, uncovered by the blight.’ If the Synod is indeed the restored Convocation, as we suspect, then whatever is required to end the impending demonic invasion will happen within the kingdom of Nightfall, or at the very least, at the same time as your second Convocation ceremony, Guild Master Kelly . . . uh, sorry, is it Highness? I’m not used to addressing royalty.”
“Just call me Kelly,” the redhead soothed. “I don’t stand on formality when it’s not a formal occasion. I don’t even sit on formality, unless there’s an extra cushion or two,” she added, as the men and women sharing Guardian Dominor’s frame with her smiled in humor. So did some of the others, Sheren, Migel, Kelezam, Pelai, even the two stuffy Guardians of the Fountains in Fortuna. “And you had the very same thought I did, reading those two lines. Whatever happens, it will involve the Convocation in some way.
“The more I know right away on what your plans are, the more I can ensure that they get incorporated into my own plans for hosting the next Convocation. Which will be in four years, since that seems to be the long-standing tradition, and I won’t object to the wait, since we still have a long way to go before Nightfall is fully functional as a kingdom and a hosting site. But enough about me; I’ll just listen in and take notes while you get on with the solution you found. Serina?”
“Ughh,” the younger of the two pale blonde women in view groaned, tugging again on her braid. “I don’t like this . . .”
“Stop whining, love, and get it over with,” Guardian Dominor told his wife.
“Fine. Okay, as many of you know, I’ve been working on the problem of the old mass Portals that used to span both continents and oceans, and how the Shattering of Aiar not only destroyed the heart of the old Empire up north and ended the last set of Convocations of Gods and Man, but it also shattered the aether, allowing said Portals to span the world. Well, between my efforts with the Fountain which Mother Naima has been sharing Guardianship of with me and the efforts of Priestess Saleria”—Serina nodded to the blonde priestess with the almond-shaped eyes and golden curls, who dipped her head in return—“we’ve managed to quell a strip of aether running from the center of Western Katan and the Fountain of the Grove all the way up to a stretch of kingdoms to the east of your, well, ex-kingdom and the region governed by Guardian Callaia.”