'Are you all right, Unknown?' asked the Julatsan.
'Yeah, fine,' said The Unknown but they could all see a distant look in his eye.
Hirad shrugged and walked over to the stream, a smile breaking over his face as his irritation faded. The horses looked relaxed and ready and were grazing contentedly. He patted one on the neck and ran a hand down its foreleg, feeling the fit muscle and bone beneath his fingers.
His smile broadened. They may have been apart for five years but still, when The Unknown spoke, they listened. That fact alone would, he considered, give them the ghost of a chance in the days to come. And it sounded like they might need every ghost they could grasp.
Chapter 15
Selik leaned back in his richly upholstered red and gold chair in a private room of the Lakehome Inn and allowed himself a smile. It still felt like a smile to him though the humour was gone. Another would have seen little more than a grotesque distortion of his face.
He wouldn't have described the feeling as 'happiness' either. A bitter satisfaction, maybe, an easing of the burning hate in the knowledge of its ultimate extinguishing through sweet revenge. But happiness, no. That was an emotion he hadn't experienced since the bitch had frozen him. Lesser men would have died. His strength and breastplate had saved his life when the IceWind had struck him. Nothing so resistant had been protecting his hands and face, though, and he'd borne the stigma for six long years, just waiting his chance.
And now, he was to be presented with it.
It had been good news Gorstan had given him as they'd stood at t he mouth of Arlen Bay and he'd ridden hard for the town to set about hiring ships and crews and buying provisions. But there'd been a nagging anxiety. It was one thing knowing where the bitch and her abomination of a daughter hid. It would have been quite another getting there through the famously treacherous rock and coral straits. Many men would have been lost and he didn't know how many, if any, he could afford to lose.
He'd dismissed the mage who'd bought him the latest, far finer news and now sat alone in front of an open fire, a rug beneath his bare feet, mulled wine steaming on a table in front of him and the other three chairs in the tapestry-hung room empty. He enjoyed the peace, broken only by the crackle of flame.
He relaxed, feeling the anxiety slip away. He was not a keen sea
traveller and the thought of danger he couldn't see lurking beneath the water at Ornouth made him nervous.
Now, though, the answer to his prayers was sailing up the Arlen River. And he would be waiting at the dock to welcome her.
He sipped his mulled wine, then took a long swallow, draining the glass. Gods, but it tasted good.
Denser ceased his probing, released the Communion shape and opened his eyes. The Raven were around him and the concern on their faces told him he'd shown facial expression during his search for Erienne. He felt tired and lost, somehow, and his heart beat hollow in his chest. He moved gingerly to a sitting position and felt for his pipe and weed pouch.
Ilkar laid a hand on his shoulder.
'That didn't look comfortable, Denser. What happened?'
Denser filled his pipe and lit it, suppressing an unwanted smile at Ilkar's choice of words. The Communion hadn't merely been uncomfortable. It had been like searching in a hailstorm. He felt battered and a little confused by what he had encountered in the mana spectrum.
He knew he'd searched the right area and he knew Erienne's signature intimately. She wouldn't attempt to hide from him. But he'd found a sudden impenetrability, like coming across a bank of fog in a sheltered valley. And it had been a painful experience.
He looked up into Ilkar's face and past him at Hirad, who was examining the blade of a dagger, apparendy uninterested.
T couldn't reach her,' he said quiedy. 'Couldn't even feel her. There was something in the way.'
Ilkar frowned. 'How do you mean?'
'Well…' Denser fought for the right words. He scratched his head and took a draw on his pipe, the smoke funnelling pleasantly into his mouth. 'Like there was another power there, occupying the space. I couldn't feel her because there was focused mana in the way, I suppose.'
'What shape was it?'
'That's why it's so confusing, there was no shape. It was a coalescing of mana, like a wall.'
'Produced by another mage, though?' Ilkar frowned.
'Presumably.' Denser shrugged. He sighed. 'I guess it doesn't really matter. The fact is that I can't contact her.'
'Not now, anyway,' said The Unknown. 'Come on, we'd better get away. Try again when we stop this evening.'
Denser nodded. 'Yes. It's unlikely to be a long-lived effect. Or I hope it won't.'
'Unless it's a deliberate obscurement,' said Ilkar.
'Hmm. How, though? It's not a structure I recognised. It wasn't right, though.' He bit his lip, frustrated.
Hirad sheathed his dagger and got to his feet. 'It'll be all right, Denser.'
Denser blew out his cheeks. 'Nothing like a non-mage to give you confidence, is there?'
Erienne leaned over the post and retched again, her muscles convulsing, the taste of bile strong in her throat. Her stomach was long empty but the nausea sweeping through her didn't subside and hadn't for most of the morning.
Ren'erei had stood just far enough away to give her comfort but not too near to crowd her and add to her acute embarrassment. As Erienne straightened and turned to let the wind blow into her face, cooling the sweat on her brow, she walked forwards.
'It isn't seasickness,' she said. 'How can it be after this many days?'
'I know,' managed Erienne, her head thumping, her belly aching and protesting every time she took a breath.
'It must be something you ate,' she said, helping Erienne to sit on one of the net-covered crates on deck.
Erienne shook her head; she didn't have the energy to speak. She knew where the nausea originated but didn't want to have to explain it to Ren'erei. It wasn't food, it wasn't the gentle motion of the Ocean Elm, which was speeding towards Arlen Bay on a stiff and consistent wind. It was nothing that Ren'erei could comprehend even though she was an elf and so inherently magical. She didn't understand what it was that touched and aided her in everything she did. After all, she wasn't a mage.
Erienne was under attack. She didn't know from where or by whom and that scared her almost as much as what she was feeling.
On the mainland, only The Raven knew she was coming, so how she could have been targeted, she didn't know.
It had crossed her mind that she had fallen victim to a mana sickness. There were always claims bouncing around the Colleges that mana within a mage could become somehow infected. Erienne had always dismissed them but in the first flush of her nausea, she had been prepared to believe anything that would provide an explanation.
But as the hours passed and she regained some rationality, she'd ignored the notion in favour of hard fact. Her nausea had come on her like a blow from a hammer, and stirring her head like thick soup so she couldn't focus on her hand in front of her face. It had provoked a reaction in her body that was nothing to do with any physical sickness. And it had gone on long after she'd established in her own mind that there was nothing wrong with her mana capabilities.
So there was no infection, there was no food poisoning and there was no focused drain on her mana stamina.
This was something no textbook had ever covered. It was what happened when someone who knew your signature launched spells at you without knowing exactly where you were. Enemy or friend, Erienne couldn't tell but she could guess. Lyanna. Seeking her mind. But in her innocence she was damaging her mother and until it stopped, the world of magic was closed to Erienne.
The realisation rocked her. It was a powerful weapon. It made her defenceless. Fortunately, she'd be meeting Denser in a couple of days.