"The Grand Summoning abandons the normal progression entirely. Queen Solace didn’t even take her younger focuses into the Eferum with her, but commenced the Summoning with her own raw ability. And instead of drawing as much power as she could and immediately compressing it, she is using it to – this is hard to express. If you have a large bowl of water, and swirl a spoon around in the middle, it sets up a current which brushes the edges of the bowl, even though the spoon never passes there. The Grand Summoning uses the caster’s own strength to set up a motion, and then structures that motion so that it continues to increase. When each cycle completes, it begins again, drawing on the power produced in the last cycle. Because the power involved is mainly raw Efera, not the caster’s strength, energy can be diverted to surviving the dangers of the environment, and there is not the problem of exhaustion."
She reached out and picked up the clear focus. "These are Solace Montjuste-Surclere’s younger focuses." Holding it up, she could see the faintest of outlines of three further spheres inside the outer. "She left them with Tiandel both because they worked at a slight cross-purpose to the Summoning she was attempting, and because they offered a solution to a practical difficulty."
"Which was?"
Slipping the focus into her skirt pocket, Rennyn made an expansive gesture. "A focus the size of this room. Focus stones operate when in contact with their owner. It’s a little hard to estimate just how large the result of the Grand Summoning will be, but I’m fairly certain it won’t, well, fit through doors, for a start.
"Tiandel’s role was to attune the younger focus to the Grand Summoning. He could do this by touching the edges of the power she was summoning, using the breaches the power was causing. This would allow her to use the new focus even at a distance. Unfortunately for Solace, it also gave Tiandel the perfect tool. Just as the casting completed the final phase, but before the compressing power could solidify into a focus, he used the power to push his mother deep into the Eferum."
Rennyn began collecting the other items lined up on the table: the half-empty box of chalk, her apartment key, a small purse of money, the paintbrush. She left the note.
"Solace did not die, but it was ten years before she returned, and as soon as she reached the correct point in the Eferum, the Grand Summoning commenced again. Probably she would be drawn back to that point no matter what her wishes, for she is trapped in the spell, still constrained by the Sigillic casting she established in the Hall of Summoning here."
Rennyn had to repress a shudder. Her family pushed Solace back for good reason, but it was a cruel task. The whole conversation was trying her nerves, but she went on as dispassionately as she was able. These people had not grown up reading Solace’s working diaries, appreciating the mind if not the person, and wouldn’t share any sympathy at all for the Black Queen.
"The White Ladies are a side-effect, a manifestation of the uncompressed power the spell generates. They have just enough substance, just enough connection to the actual person, that she can be touched through them, and pushed back at the beginning of the Summoning rather than at its conclusion. Each time since, it has taken slightly longer for her to return, and each time a Montjuste-Surclere has used the attuned focus to push her back into the Eferum almost as soon as the spell began to manifest."
"Until Loise."
It was the Kellian called Faille who had spoken: the singularly humourless-looking man who had been so quick with his sword.
"Yes. Until Loise, when someone killed my great-grandfather just as Solace was pushed back. The – part of the attunement was in a structure built around the focus, and that was shattered. I don’t know if this was deliberate, but it means that we now merely have her younger focuses, not attuned to the Grand Summoning. This time when she manifested there was nothing we could do to push her back. So I’m reconstructing Tiandel’s steps, attuning the focus again so that she can be stopped at the final moment rather than the first."
Councillor Vargas cleared his throat. His colour had risen, turning him an interesting plummy shade, though he showed no other sign of what she guessed to be highly outraged indignation. "Would it not have been more responsible – indeed, was it not your duty – to bring this to Council, to turn over this focus and allow the matter to be properly dealt with? How many died last night because we were not prepared?"
Rennyn blinked, but answered the first point without rancour. "I wasn’t clear. Tiandel could attune the younger focus because he had a blood link to Queen Solace. Because he was a Montjuste-Surclere, because he was her direct heir. Currently, there are two Montjuste-Surcleres, one of whom is lying in your infirmary after suffering a fit of heroics. And sixty years ago, someone killed my great-grandfather.
"Hard as it is to credit the idea of a kind of counterpart to my family, working toward Queen Solace’s return, I have to anticipate the same kind of attack. If Sebastian – my brother – and I are killed, then the younger focuses cannot be attuned, let alone used against Solace."
She picked up the note she had so carefully prepared yesterday. "My task is set: to repeat Tiandel’s steps. It’s not a difficult thing, but requires being in certain places at certain times, and to not have someone kill me. The best chance for success is to avoid notice, not allow people to know where I am, and not involve myself in anything else. I only warned of the incursion in Asentyr because it was inside the city’s protective circles, and I may not have done that if the Sentene had not already become aware of my existence. I was weighing up what additional harm there would be in providing a list of the incursion locations, given that it is basically a map of where I’ll be going." She put the piece of paper down. "Last night changed everything."
"That is something of an understatement." Lady Weston rubbed her eyes, and Rennyn realised the woman probably hadn’t slept. "You were in the Eferum during the incursion?"
"Yes. It’s the only way to continue the attunement. During the first incursion, I noticed that the breach was very large and stayed open for a longer period than those recorded by Tiandel. Last night – the breach was a similar size and duration to the first, but the Eferum-Get – I could not tell if they had been swept together by the force of the Summoning, or if they had deliberately gathered to wait for it. Neither possibility is pleasant."
"The Eferum-Get organising to exploit the breaches, or Queen Solace deliberately thrusting them into Tyrland." The Kellian mage, Illuma, was as expressionless as ever, but had curled her hands into fists. She seemed to realise it, and opened them, palm-up. She’d trimmed the dagger-points of her nails on one hand, but the other palm was lightly cut. "Either way, a war."
"Do you really believe that?" Councillor Vargas asked, looking from Illuma to Lady Weston to Rennyn. "That the Black Queen would go so far?"
"She has been in the Eferum an unbearably long time," Lady Weston replied. "She may be mad, she may be vengefuclass="underline" we can do no more than speculate. Enough that we could face the same number of Eferum-Get, or more, during the coming breaches. You will work with us in combating this?"
Rennyn nodded. "The locations I presume you read. The younger focuses can be used to identify the exact point of an upcoming breach."
"And that makes a very large difference indeed," Lady Weston said. "To know exactly when and where an incursion will occur makes it possible to contain it. We will trap the Eferum-Get even as they emerge. Am I right in believing that there will be an increase in natural breaches during the Summoning?"