Lennarda’s low, unintelligible noises of distress were abruptly cut off as she slumped forward. Even forewarned, Temar still jumped as Lennarda suddenly reared up again. Allin clutched at his arm and he reached for her, grateful for her hand warming his fingers, which felt suddenly chilled to the bone.
“Where am I?” This time Lennarda’s voice was light and wondering. She looked around, hands held to her cheeks in a parody of childishness. “Where am I? It’s all dark. Where am I? Mama?”
As she lifted her eager, searching face to him, Temar felt his heart miss a beat. For an instant Lennarda’s empty eyes shone a vibrant grassy green in the candlelight. “Can you hear me? Mama? Is it all right now?”
After a moment of utter silence, Lennarda began an ugly keening, empty face crumpling, rocking backwards and forwards again but faster this time, with a growing violence. Her hands clawed and she began tearing at her own head.
“Hush, hush.” Maedura tried to gather her child in her arms, fending off the raking nails with difficulty.
“Let’s just go.” Allin tugged at Temar’s arm.
He resisted. “How many questions does that gold buy me?” he demanded roughly.
Maedura’s expression was a turmoil of desperation and self-loathing. “As many as you need to ask, what do you think? But only for tonight.”
“I will be outside,” said Temar with sudden decision. “When you are done with everyone else, we will speak further.” He pulled Allin out of the room so fast she nearly stumbled on top of him.
Ignoring the covert curiosity of the people waiting, Temar strode rapidly into the front room. “Do you have spirits? Strong liquor?” he asked the serving woman curtly.
“White brandy, if you have it,” Allin shoved Temar towards the inglenook by the fire. His knees gave out as he reached the low bench so he waited while Allin brought over a black bottle and two small glasses fetched from the cupboard behind the crone’s chair. She watched the pair of them with considerable interest in her watery old eyes.
“What was that all about?” demanded Allin, handing Temar as large a measure as she could safely pour. “Aetheric magic?”
Temar swallowed the colourless liquor in one breath, gasping as it jolted him out of the shock numbing his wits. “Not being worked in the room,” he said hoarsely. “Neither of them have any notion of enchantments.”
“That girl doesn’t look as if she’s a notion in her head,” commented Allin with pity, sipping cautiously.
“Not unless she catches some echo from some other mind;’ said Temar slowly.
Allin looked confused. “But she didn’t know anything about Chel. I know for a fact he’s alive and well and trading leather from Dalasor to Duryea. I had a letter from his mother at Equinox and you can’t get much further away from the sea than that.”
“What she saw was Kel Ar’Ayen.” Temar leaned forward intently.
“A big river, a wide empty plain? Couldn’t that be, oh, I don’t know, anywhere from Inglis to Bremilayne?” said Allin doubtfully. “And I suppose Chel might have gone travelling.”
“What she saw, what she thought, we all thought the same when we made landfall in Kel Ar’Ayen.” Temar laid his hand on Allin’s in unconscious emphasis. “I remember looking at that river, wondering if the land would be fertile, picking out the best place to build and noting timber we might build with. Believe me, Allin, for Saedrin’s sake!”
“Then how does that unfortunate know?” She extricated her hand, flexing her fingers with a slight grimace. “Could it be something to do with the runes? Isn’t Ryshad’s friend Livak looking for an aetheric tradition hidden in old rune lore in the Great Forest?”
Temar shook his head crossly, regretting it instantly as pain lanced through his temples. “No Artifice is being worked here. I can detect that much with the charms I know.” He looked up at Allin. “I would give all the gold Camarl can spare me to look inside that chest.”
“They’ve got an artefact?” Allin nodded slowly. “And that unfortunate child has somehow become linked with it, like Ryshad and your sword?”
“More than one,” said Temar with rising certainty. “That second voice, that was a girl I saw Guinalle lay beneath the enchantments. I saw the child’s green eyes, eyes from the northern hill country, I saw them reflected in the imbecile’s face.”
Allin frowned. “Where did that woman get a chest full of Kellarin artefacts?”
“Cannot such questions wait?” Temar demanded impatiently. “We must secure that chest!”
“How?” countered Allin. “Fraud or folly, that masquerade’s their only means of earning bread. The woman at least must know the coffer’s vital to the girl’s supposed powers. They’re hardly going to give it up to you.”
Temar chewed at his lower lip. “What if we offered her the weight of the chest in gold?”
A startled laugh escaped Allin. “Are you serious?”
“Entirely.” Temar kept his voice low, face grim. “I would pay that to bring only one back from enchantment. I would pay the same time and again to bring every single sleeper back to themselves.”
Allin sipped her brandy with a faint shudder. “So the rumours of Kellarin gold are true, are they?”
“For now, Camarl can advance me the coin,” Temar said with a confidence he didn’t entirely feel. “There are riches to be had over the ocean in time and we can repay him then. Perhaps I should pursue those claims the Relict Tor Bezaemar mentioned as well,” he added thoughtfully. “That would at least give me means to buy any other artefact we find.”
“First we have to look in that chest and make sure there are artefacts in it.” Allin shifted to look through to the back room and the outbuilding beyond. “Then we have to make some deal with the woman tonight. Otherwise she’ll take to her heels, coffer and all. I would like to know just how this business of linking to an artefact works.”
It was Temar’s turn to laugh. “Do you always have to have the answers?”
“First, I’m Lescari, and secondly, I’m a mage.” Allin smiled a little guiltily. “Both mean you never take a thing on trust. You ask all the questions you can think of and only go on when you’ve all the answers.”
Temar glanced into the far room still full with hopeful suppliants. “What’s it like, being mage-born? No wizard I have met will ever spare time to talk about it.”
“We’re not encouraged to, not once we’ve been to Hadrumal.” Allin coloured slightly. “I told you, there’s a lot of mistrust.”
Temar shook his head. “Granted, it is sorcery of some different nature, but I grew up with aetheric enchantments. All right,” he amended hastily, “perhaps not used every day, but everyone knew Artifice was there, for healing and truth-saying, for sending urgent word across the provinces. So what is it, Allin, to be mage-born?”
“Oh, I don’t know how to explain it.” She blushed pink. “Imagine oil spilled on water but you’re the only one who can see the rainbow when the light strikes it. Imagine hearing some counterpoint to music that everyone else is deaf to. You touch something and you can sense the element within it, like feeling the vibration in a table when a timepiece strikes the chimes. You can sense it, you can feel how it affects things around it. Then you realise you can change it, you can shade that rainbow to light or dark, you can mute that note or make it sound twice as loud.” Allin’s face was animated in a way Temar had never seen before.
The slam of the outer door shattered the calm of the room.
“Where’s this charlatan hiding out?” A thickset man in everyday Tormalin garb marched into the centre of the room. “Seer she calls herself? I’ll teach the bitch to take honest coin off a stupid girl!” He glared at everyone, sharp-featured and furious.