There was supposed to be a member of the Order with the woman, but there was no sign of him. Whatever Solène had done to him meant that he hadn’t given chase, which made Ysabeau curious. Had this one developed a taste for killing? Ysabeau knew she needed to be careful, whether her guess was right or not.
She did her best to make herself comfortable, hidden by a tree, but in a position that gave her a clear view of where Solène had made camp. As she created some magical heat to keep warm, she wondered if Solène had done the same. It was tricky magic to create heat without also generating light. If everything Ysabeau had been told about the all-powerful Solène was true, she certainly had the potential, but Ysabeau had always thought that the people with the most potential were the least attracted to hard work.
A lifetime of shaping strong magic with mediocre power allowed Ysabeau to do far more than many who had a greater affinity to the Fount and far more raw material to play with. This had always frustrated her, and was why her tenure at the Order had been so short. Dal Drezony had pushed her out and the Prince Bishop had done little to stop her. It seemed he had more interest in the skills his daughter had picked up living on the streets of Mirabay, rather than her potential as a mage. Over time, she had made her peace with that, but where she came from, you didn’t let a score go unsettled, and that’s what the blade in dal Drezony’s heart had done.
Still, Ysabeau’s satisfaction at having killed the seneschal was tempered by a less enjoyable feeling. Guilt? Doubt? Whatever it was, she put it from her mind.
It was curious to think that both she and her quarry had nearly suffered the same fate. Pulled from the flames by different saviours, both had ended up, for a time at least, as protégées of the Prince Bishop.
She reckoned everyone was born with a certain amount of luck. You could only rely on it for so long before it ran out. Her magic had carried her a little farther than most, but she was under no illusion that one day, in the not so distant future, she would take the job that ended her. Completing this one meant she wouldn’t need to take another.
Solène woke with a start. She was stiff as a board from the cold, but otherwise refreshed and feeling positive. Just as she had before falling asleep, she reached out for the Fount, and there it was, like the ripples on a pond after a stone had been thrown in. She could see her way to the centre of the disturbance as though it was signposted. She packed her things as quickly as she could, then mounted her horse, grimacing in discomfort. She had never done much riding, and it was telling on her now. She urged the animal on, wincing as the movement made itself known to her tender backside and thighs.
Her excitement at the prospect of finding what she was looking for made the discomfort somewhat easier to bear. She had to remind herself that she might not have found the temple, but if what she sensed was a node, and her theory that the temple would have been built on one was correct, then it was a possibility. Even if she came up short it meant she was now able to sense nodes, and therefore would be able to find others.
Her excitement at this prospect drowned out the quandary of what to do when she did. The waves grew stronger as the day progressed and she kept guiding her horse into their centre, knowing that was the way to the node. At times she felt dizzy, and had to hang on to the saddle’s pommel to keep herself on the horse. Even in the city she had never felt that much energy. It was terrifying and intoxicating at the same time.
Any magic she used now would be far more powerful than anything she had done before, and if the Fount continued to grow as she got closer to the node, then her potential would be virtually limitless. For the first time, she thought she understood how the Imperial mages had been able to do what they had done. If they had been able to tap into reservoirs as strong as this, the stories that she had heard of their feats were modest in the extreme.
Her excitement grew ever greater as she neared the centre of the ripple in the Fount. Her head swam in the raw energy, which felt as though it was trying to both pass through her and make her one with it. She was overcome with a terrifying sense of losing control. Part of her wanted to join with it and allow her mind to run free with virtually limitless power. Instinct told her to resist, that letting go of control would destroy her. Stopping her horse, she fought for control of her mind, to shut out the raging tempest of energy. This was what made magic so much more dangerous in the days before the mage wars drained the Fount to exhaustion. Mages would have had to be so much more careful to avoid killing someone or destroying everything around them. She could understand why it had taken Amatus and his time with the enlightened to bring people to the point where they could shape it safely.
Once her mind steadied, she continued riding, wondering why the Fount was drawn to this place—whether the nodes gave rise to the Fount or the Fount gave rise to the nodes. Considering what she knew, she decided it was likelier that the Fount was drawn to these places for some reason—one she was unlikely to ever understand.
When the intensity of the energy faded a little, and started to pulse again, Solène realised that she had passed through the node. She pulled her horse up and looked around. There was nothing out of the ordinary in the surrounding landscape, a plain grassland. A person with no affinity to the Fount could walk right through without ever knowing there was anything unusual about the place. There wasn’t even a variation in the colour of the grass to mark the place.
She had entertained romantic notions of an ancient tree, or a stone plinth left behind by the enlightened, to signify the power that dwelled here. This landscape was so innocuous that she questioned whether she was imagining things—it had been a very cold night and she hadn’t slept properly in some time. She shook her head. No, that was unlikely. She never got sick, something she realised now was likely one of the benefits of her natural affinity with the Fount.
She dismounted and led her horse back to the centre of the ripples. Now that she had disciplined her mind against the rush of energy, it didn’t feel nearly so overwhelming. It was like the difference between standing outside in a furious storm, or being tucked up safely inside while it raged against the walls. Her disappointment grew as she wandered around the edge of the node, looking inward for any sign of something unusual. Could this really be all there was to it? Was the temple here, or did she need to look elsewhere? She wondered how many nodes there might be. Surely such an intense concentration of magical energy had to be a rare thing.
Her horse let out a whicker of surprise and surged against the reins. She struggled to bring the animal under control, speaking to it in a soothing voice and trying to calm it. Thanks to her limited experience with horses, she had no idea what the correct approach was. It occurred to her to try using magic to soothe it—she didn’t want to be stuck out there with no horse—but thankfully, it settled quickly. When she looked for what had spooked it, she saw that one of its hooves had broken through the surface of the ground somehow. She walked over for a closer look.
Beneath a layer of grass and soil, Solène spotted what looked like wooden planking. It was old, blackened, and rotting, but she could see the hard edges that indicated that the wood had been worked at some point.
She got down on her knees, then started pulling away soil and grass until she’d cleared a panel of boards. Finding a gap, she tugged at one board until she was able to pull it free, snapping it in half as she did, the ages-old timber giving way. Panting from her efforts, Solène found herself staring down into a dark chamber. Just enough light got in to let her see the gloomy cut-stone edges of its walls. She had found it.