“Rubbish,” I said.
“Excuse me, Vlad?” said Sethra, who I imagine wasn’t used to being addressed that way.
I repeated my remark, then amplified. “I don’t care if they consider it a place, or a state of mind, or, well, or whatever they consider it. They are real beings. They have bodies. They have places those bodies are.”
“What is your point, Vlad?” said Sethra, who seemed to be doing me the courtesy of taking me seriously.
“You don’t sit a bunch of prisoners down in front of a powerful object, even concealed, unless either you want them to find it, or ...”
I stopped, considering what I had been about to say.
“Yes, Vlad?” said Morrolan. “Or?”
“Or unless you have no choice.”
Sethra said, “How could ... oh. I see. Yes, that makes sense.”
Morrolan and Aliera were already there. Morrolan said, “It was the trellanstone that was holding us in place, that was keeping that gate shut. Yes, I can almost see that.”
“Almost?”
“Well, it needs something to work with.”
“You don’t think there is enough amorphia on that world’” I said.
“Oh, right,” said Morrolan.
Sethra looked at us. “Amorphia? How could there be amorphia there? It only occurs on our world. They cannot duplicate the conditions that gave rise to it without, in all probability, destroying their entire world.”
I said, “I don’t suppose there is a quick explanation for that remark, is there Sethra?”
Morrolan and Aliera looked impatient, but Sethra said, “The Catastrophe that created the Great Sea in the first place resulted from several fluke occurrences, as well as some nasty scheming and plotting on the part of Verra and others with her. But the fact that it failed to entirely consume the world is the biggest fluke of all. Amorphia is not something that is containable, by its very nature. To create it is to end everything.”
“But Adron’s Disaster—”
“Very nearly destroyed the world again,” said Sethra, “but the one advantage the gods had in containing it was the existence of the Great Sea. Had the Great Sea not been there, the Lesser Sea might well have destroyed all life in the world.” She shook her head. “I simply cannot conceive of the Jenoine finding a way to produce amorphia.”
“Well, they did,” I said. “Or else found another way to get it, because they’ve got it.”
Morrolan and Aliera told her about the river of amorphia we had found, Teldra and I making the occasional murmur of agreement. When they had finished, Sethra said, “I didn’t think they could do that. I still don’t understand how they can do that,” which was followed by an unpleasant silence, during which we all, I suspect, contemplated the powers of the Jenoine.
“Are they gods?” said Morrolan suddenly.
Sethra shook her head. “I do not believe so. Teldra?”
“Not in any meaningful way, at least as far as how they see themselves.”
“Well, that’s something,” said Morrolan, which was much like what I was thinking. “So, then, how do we approach them? How do we defend ourselves against them, beyond that we’ve en doing for thousands of years?”
“Don’t forget the weapons,” I pointed out.
“Weapons?” said Sethra.
“They had whole racks of weapons. Mundane weapons, the sort of thing I think of as weapons. Things that cut, and stab, make nasty gouges. If those bastards are so bloody magical, what do they need with weapons?”
“Good question,” said Morrolan. “He’s right, they had quite a collection of them. What are they for?”
“That,” said Sethra, “I think I can answer. I believe that, after establishing themselves here, they intend to subvert a portion of our citizens and use them as a mundane army.”
“How can they subvert them?” said Aliera.
“If they can, indeed, attack the Orb, then they can, at least potentially, gain access to the minds of those who are linked to it.”
That thought made me shudder. For one thing, I was linked to the Orb myself.
“Well, let’s see,” said Aliera. “Consider what we know about them. They are after my mother, and perhaps others of the gods as well. It is the gods who are protecting our world—I think I now understand a little how they are doing it. But what the Jenoine want is full access to our world. What prevents them from having it are the Lords of Judgment, the Orb, the power of Dzur Mountain. They attacked Dzur Mountain once before, and failed to take it.”
“Barely,” said Sethra under her breath.
“Therefore, our defense of these things—”
“Defense,” said Morrolan like it was something foul. “Why not attack them instead? I’ve always preferred attacking to defending.”
“I know,” said Sethra. “But you are still young, and may yet learn.”
He glared at her. She ignored it and said, “Go on, Aliera.”
Aliera continued, “Our defense of these things has to happen on several levels at once. We require the assistance of the Lords of Judgment, in the first place, and I should think we really ought to consult the Necromancer after all.”
“Yes,” said Sethra; “But whatever we’re going to do, we ought to do it quickly. We don’t know how much time they’re going to give us. And worse, we don’t know where they’re going to attack.”
“Yes, we do,” said Morrolan suddenly, sitting upright, and staring off into space.
We all looked at him.
“Trellanstone,” he said. “It all revolves around the trellanstone, or kyrancteur, in the language of the Serioli. They managed to find some, and they are using it. They wanted Aliera and me out of the way to—”
Sethra figured it out first. “Oh,” she said. “Yes. I should have seen it at once.”
Then Aliera got it, and nodded slowly. “Foolish of me. One of them was able to stop a simultaneous attack from two Great Weapons. It should never have been capable of stopping even one of them. I was so annoyed, I didn’t stop to wonder how it managed it. Yes. There is only one way it could have done that. How annoying.”
Of course, I could have sat there for the rest of my life and never figured it out, but Sethra realized I was confused and took pity on me.
“Trellanstone,” she said. “It is useful for manipulating amorphia—raw chaos. So far as I know, there are two places in the universe where one can find amorphia, and both of them are on this world. The Great Sea of Amorphia is protected by the Orb, which is protected by the Empress, who is protected by the Lords of Judgment, by Dzur Mountain, and by the Orb.”
“Ah,” I said. “And so now we know, I’m sure, where they got the amorphia from in the first place.”
“Yes,” said Sethra. “We used the power of the Greater Sea to protect the Orb, and used the Orb to protect the Greater Sea. It never occurred to me that they might tap into the Lesser Sea, because it isn’t connected to the Orb. But they have somehow tapped into it. They have been draining it, and learning to control it with the trellanstone, and that could give them what they need to attack the Orb.”
“The Lesser Sea,” I said. “Well. Can’t we just cut it off from them?”
Sethra nodded. “Yes. And we will. I can do so myself. But then what?”
“Then,” said Morrolan, “they will use their trellanstone to attempt a permanent link with it, much as the Orb is linked to the Great Sea. If they achieve that, they will, in effect, have the seeds of their own Empire on our world.”
I nodded. “Yes. And after that things could get all kinds of difficult, couldn’t they?”
“They could indeed,” said Sethra. “We must act at once. Every moment that passes, they draw more energy, and become stronger, and it will make it harder to resist them. We must cut off their flow, and then be prepared to make certain they cannot re-establish it. That means facing them down right there, at the Lesser Sea of Chaos.”