Which was true.… and they were safe as long as they remained inside.
Which was not true.
But he would let them have the illusion of safety for a few more hours. Because some games were best played in the dark.
Saetan knocked on the workroom door, then opened it enough to poke his head into the room. "I'm looking for a witchling. Seen any about?"
Turning away from the worktable, Jaenelle gave him a dazzling smile. "Papa! What brings you to the Hall?"
"Nothing in particular," he replied, walking toward the worktable. "I just wanted to see… how… you were… doing." He stared at the rosebush rising up from a bowl on the table. "Mother Night, witch-child. It's beautiful."
Jaenelle looked at the rosebush and grinned. "I'm pleased with it."
Saetan circled the table to get a better look at the illusion she'd created. But he tried to touch one of the roses just to be sure it was an illusion. She'd always been able to create illusion spells that could fool the eye, and it seemed she hadn't lost that ability. But something felt different about this spell.
"Can you show me how you did this?"
She looked at the various jars and small bowls on the table and nodded. "I have enough ingredients to make several more."
So she showed him how to build a rosebush out of powders made from pastel chalks, dried rose petals, thorns, and a few other things. He mentally noted what she did and how much of each ingredient she used, but most of his attention was on Twilight's Dawn.
Whenever he'd seen it before, the Jewel she now wore looked like a Purple Dusk accented by other colors. Now, as she worked through the illusion spell, he watched it change. When she began working on the leaves, the center of the Jewel became dominantly Green, then shifted to Rose with a strong touch of Red while she created the flowers.
He didn't know why it was changing like that, didn't know how it could change like that.
It played havoc with his ability to measure her strength against his own because hers kept sliding. One moment he would have sworn the woman beside him was a Rose-Jeweled witch. The next moment, her power resonated with his Birthright Red. It was as if she were dancing on webs of power, and the threads she plucked shone the brightest.
Webs of power. Lorn had created webs of power to help prevent Witch, the living myth, from plunging back into the Darkness after Jaenelle unleashed her Ebony power to save Kaeleer. And Lorn had given Ladvarian the Jewel that was called Twilight's Dawn.
Fingers snapping in front of his face startled a snarl out of him.
"Hell's fire, witch-child."
"Well, you haven't heard anything I've said for the past minute or so," Jaenelle said. "I didn't want you to come back from wherever your mind had wandered and find me gone."
"Gone?" His heart leaped as memories of webs of power shattering in the abyss filled his mind. "Where are you going?"
We can't lose her now. We can't. She is everything. She is still everything.
Jaenelle studied him for a long moment, her sapphire eyes seeing too much. But she gave him a daughter's tolerant smile. "First I'm going to wash up. Then I'm going to join the others for the midday meal. Which I already told you."
"My apologies, witch-child. You're right. My mind was elsewhere."
"I noticed. Are you going to join us? Khary and Morghann are here, as well as Lucivar and Marian."
"No, I'd like to stay here and play around with your powders if you don't mind."
Jaenelle kissed his cheek. "Please yourself."
"What about you, witch-child?" He looked into her eyes. Still beautiful, still ancient. But he couldn't shake the feeling that he had disappointed her in some way. "Are you pleased?" She knew him well enough to know he wasn't asking about the illusion spell.
"I lost nothing I regret losing," Witch said softly. "I am what I want to be."
He watched her walk out of the room. There was a message under her words, something she wanted him to understand but didn't want to tell him outright.
Turning back to the worktable, he set her rosebushes to one side. Maybe figuring out one puzzle would help him figure out the other.
"Am I interrupting? I could come back later."
An hour of frustration hadn't made him cheerful, but he forced himself to smile at Marian, who hesitated in the workroom's doorway. "Yes, you're interrupting, and I'm grateful."
Marian walked over to the worktable. "Oh, dear. Is it that bad?" She looked at the dark, twisted, misshapen lump that rose out of the bowl and winced. "I guess it is that bad." She hesitated. "Jaenelle did that?"
"No, Jaenelle created those." Saetan pointed at the rosebushes.
Marian's mouth fell open. She hurried around the table to get a better look. "Oh, these are lovely. If you rubbed some rose oil on the rim of the bowl for scent, you wouldn't know for sure these aren't real until you tried to touch them." She studied the rosebushes. "I wonder how long the spells last."
"Why?"
"Well, if the spells lasted a while, people could decorate a room with one of these illusions and have a potted rosebush in a room that wouldn't support a real plant…or even have roses in a climate that wouldn't be suitable for real ones."
He smiled with real warmth and fatherly affection. Jaenelle, the living myth, could create such an illusion, but Marian, the practical hearth witch, could think of a way to use it.
Marian walked around the table to stand beside him. "So what is that?"
They looked at the misshapen lump in the bowl.
Saetan sighed. "My attempt to reproduce the illusion." Then he studied Marian, an idea springing up. "Is there something you need to do right now?"
"No," she said cautiously.
"Would you be willing to help with an experiment? We'll need Morghann, too."
"All right. I'll call her."
He set aside his failed spell, called in another bowl, then made sure the two witches would have everything they needed. By the time Morghann hurried into the workroom, he was ready.
"But we don't know how Jaenelle created that illusion spell," Morghann said after he'd explained what he wanted them to do.
"I know how she did it," Saetan said. "I'll talk you through the steps, but I want the two of you to do the actual spell."
They didn't understand, but Morghann and Marian followed his instructions, Morghann using her Green Jewel and Marian alternating between her Birthright Rose and her Purple Dusk Jewels.
When the last ingredient was added and the last part of the spell invoked, the two women laughed in delight as the rosebush rose out of the bowl. The illusion wasn't as big as the ones Jaenelle created, and it didn't fool the eye quite as well, but the spell had worked. He wasn't sure if that pleased him or chilled him. "So just what was it you were trying to find out, Uncle Saetan?" Morghann asked.
"The two of you can reproduce the illusion spell Jaenelle created," he said quietly. "I can't."
Marian frowned. "But… you're stronger than either of us. Why can't you do it?"
"Because I wear the Black, and the Red is my Birthright Jewel." He studied their illusion. "Power can't be diluted. It's not just that I have a deeper well of power than someone who wears a Jewel lighter than mine, my power is also more potent."
Morghann nodded. "Something you could do with one drop of Red power I could do with three or four drops of Green…and Marian could do using more of her Purple Dusk strength. But that's how it is. Three people doing the same spell will create the same thing, but how much power they have to use and the potency of the spell will depend on their Jewel strength."
"But not in this case." Saetan tipped his head to indicate the rosebush. "I couldn't reproduce the spell using an equivalent amount of power that should have matched the Rose, Purple Dusk, and Green that Jaenelle used. You two could reproduce it because your power has the right potency."