"A muting spell?" Lieutenant Meniar looked from the slate to Fallon’s body. "This won’t necessarily stop whatever chokes him from activating."
"In which case you can knock him out again," Dezart Samarin said. "But if that casting interacts with his awareness of not being permitted to speak on certain matters, preventing speech—and keeping him away from slates and the like—may be enough to prevent the choke from triggering."
"This one’s clever," Auri commented. "Think it will work?"
Fallon didn’t reply, watching tensely as Lieutenant Meniar decided to go ahead with the experiment, and cast the mute before lifting the sleep spell that had sat on Fallon’s head the entire day.
"Bet I miss all the interesting stuff again," Auri grumbled, as Fallon settled cautiously down where his body sat, and he lifted his head to respond, but was out of the Dream, sitting surrounded by people.
He tried to speak, lifting a hand cautiously to his throat, and waiting tensely for that familiar tightening. Nothing happened. He let out his breath in relief, reassured that he couldn’t possibly explain a problem as complex as Auri without words.
"Looking good," Lieutenant Meniar said, pleased. "I expect you’ll be wanting something to eat."
Fallon did. He also wanted to do something about his bladder, but fortunately Lieutenant Meniar seemed to understand that without Fallon needing to attempt any embarrassing pantomime. By the time the two Failles returned, Fallon was feeling almost cheerful, munching on nuts while Lieutenant Meniar wrote out a Sigillic that would make his heavy bed socks think they were waterproof.
"Not exactly what this waterproofing casting was intended for," the Lieutenant said, after explaining the two Sigillics to the Failles. "But it should serve in the short term. Sukata, will you cast it?"
As Sukata obeyed, Darian Faille took off her jacket and, ignoring Fallon’s silent protest, dropped it around his shoulders.
"Do you believe this proof against further attacks?" she asked. "Or should we avoid addressing any kind of question or speculation to him?"
"Hard to say whether yes/no questions would trigger it, but it’s better not to take the risk. In the short term, I don’t think he knows much more about the Duchess' disappearance than he’s already told us." When Fallon tried to shrug in a way that expressed agreement, the Lieutenant patted his head, then turned to Lord Surclere. "Next water source we get near, we’d better think about camp."
Lord Surclere nodded, then paused when Fallon—remembering those two glowing road markers—straightened and peered off to the east, trying to spot the second one. All the Kellian immediately shifted into alert defensive postures.
"Not a threat," Lord Surclere murmured, after a moment. "Something you saw in your dreams?"
Fallon nodded and, finding that his throat gave no sign of tightening, jumped to his feet and took a few steps in what he hoped was the right direction, beckoning.
"Wait here," Lord Surclere told Lieutenant Meniar, "but mark our current heading." Then he followed Fallon until they had, with only a little difficulty, located a stone almost as tall as Fallon, worn and unreadable, but definitely not a natural rock. There was a road, too, or the remains of one, almost entirely buried. It stretched off to the north, then hooked to the right.
Fallon thought at first that Lord Surclere simply couldn’t decide what to do. He stared down the curve of the road for an uncomfortably long time, not moving at all, while Fallon gazed up into a face that had always looked grim to him, but now seemed chipped from ice, locked into harsh, unyielding lines. But then Lord Surclere turned, and gestured for the others to come join them.
"A structure ahead," he said, when they arrived. "We will scout."
He and Darian Faille took Sukata with them, which surprised Fallon until he realised that they would be thinking of wards and magical defences: all the things they could not detect. But it was not long at all before Sukata came trotting back.
"Old, ruined and empty," she said. "But there is water, so we will camp either here or just outside it."
The road had been a false trail, then. Fallon tried not to sag as they continued forward and it became clear that this was no likely lair for whoever had stolen Duchess Surclere. Remnants of buildings, few with any intact walls, let alone roofs or an appearance of being habitable. They were dotted among the trees at the edge of a lake, and on a number of small, flat islands joined by bridges. A row of impressively large statues were evenly spaced along the lake’s edge, all of women facing out over the lake. Twenty-one statues, several of them broken and tumbled, and the rest so worn that Fallon couldn’t guess if they were meant to be the same person.
"Deserted, perhaps, but no less confusing," Dezart Samarin murmured. "I am learning a great deal about Semarrak this week."
"Nothing in the secret Imperial records?" Lieutenant Meniar asked lightly.
"Not that I’ve encountered." The Kolan man circled the square base of the nearest statue: a massive block of stone supporting a statue nearly thirty feet in height. "No markings, or distinctive style. Palace or temple complex would be my guess. I think, in other circumstances, I would like to follow that road back, to see what it connects to."
"Somewhere less windy, it’s to be hoped," Lieutenant Meniar said, turning as the two Failles joined him. "I can’t sense anything obvious, but the place feels odd. I’d like to go over the complex just briefly, before the sun sets. Do you have a preference for where we camp?"
"Better away from the water’s edge," Darian Faille said
Lord Surclere surveyed the high banks of the western reach of the lake—back toward where their path would have taken them without Fallon’s detour—then said: "In the lea of that rise."
They started along the bank, but Fallon noticed Tesin Asaka lagging behind, peering at the leaf-littered ground. She started walking in the opposite direction, and Fallon naturally followed her, wondering what she was looking at. Then he saw it: a red-brown crescent curving across two leaves.
"Blood," Fallon said, or tried to, but his throat made no noise and so he just hurried to catch Tesin, spotting another crescent and another as he did so.
Fallon had no sooner guessed that they were following the outline of a heel when he saw a patchy mosaic of splotches that made a whole footprint: a string of them, left and right foot both, curving around the base of one of the less intact statues. Faintly, a trickle of power, of intent, touched his senses, and he started running as Tesin circled the rubble around the statue.
Too slow. Fallon hurled himself frantically forward, and if she had not been a Kellian he would have knocked the slender girl into the lake. As it was, she dodged backward, and then caught his arm to arrest his headlong dive.
"What is it?" she asked, setting him aside.
"A ward! A ward!" Fallon tried to shout, and when her puzzlement did not keep her from taking another step, he snatched up a handful of leaves and tossed them over the ring of bloody footprints, even as he got his first good look at the neat hollow that had been scooped out of the statue’s base, leaving a domelike rock sitting on the ground, partially hiding a neat little person-sized space. Occupied.
The leaves flared to flame and ash, which promptly blew back into their faces, accompanied by the most transitory surge of power from the woman curled into a tight ball beneath the statue. Duchess Surclere. Against all odds, they had found her.
"Ward?" Lieutenant Meniar asked, hurrying up, and then stopping and letting out all his breath, though whether in relief or dismay Fallon couldn’t guess. With only the curve of her back and her draggling braid presented toward them, it was impossible to fully assess her condition, but the bloody handprint on the leg of her pants could hardly be a good sign, and the skin visible between waistband and shirt was blotched red and purple.