"The street completely devoured by the Azrenel."
She took the unprompted comment as a sign of increasing curiosity. Walking down here had been an impulse sparked by her empty stomach, and the challenge of tracking a guised creature to which she had no powerful connection. Magic was both greatly limited by distance and tremendously dangerous when asked to perform a vague or imprecise action. To find a familiar thing nearby was easy. To find an unknown at a distance was very near to impossible. The map-based divination which allowed her family to pinpoint the first expression of the Grand Summoning was one of the most complex pieces of magic she knew, and only worked because her family had both exacting knowledge of the spell, and a real and tangible link to the caster.
Rennyn reached back and pulled free the long black ribbon she used to hold her hair away from her face. Knotting it into a large loop, she threaded her fingers through and then clasped her hands together. She needed a link.
"Unaet," she said. "Temaru. Arlaeth." Dark. Cold. Hungry.
Turning, she walked back down the street, repeating the names of three sigils over and over. Unaet. Temaru. Arlaeth. Dark. Cold. Hungry. Here, to this place the Azrenel had come. Here it had feasted, drawing out life after life, but for an Azrenel it would never be enough. Hungry.
Her stomach was a pit, echoing, and her breath puffed out in clouds. As she reached the head of the street and turned toward the river, she brought the night with her, streaming behind like a cloak, dripping from her hands. Dark. Cold. Hungry.
Ahead was the broad, flat expanse of the Murian River, stinking liquid black, but before that was the band of inscribed paving stones which marked Asentyr’s circle. All circles were literally that, as perfectly round as they could be made. It was Symbolic magic, a thing many didn’t realise, though they understood well enough that circles couldn’t cross each other. Circles within circles were acceptable, such as the circle around the crown of Aliace Hill, but to cross a circle with another was to weaken both. The city of Asentyr had dozens of circles clustered about the edges of the main, like the two immediately ahead: one large enough to encompass a tavern and several houses to the right, and another filled by a lone warehouse. Little islands of protection, with darkness between.
When Rennyn crossed Asentyr’s circle, it shuddered. Reinforced countless times, the circle’s entire purpose was to keep Eferum-Get out, to protect the city from creatures which would feed on the living. When she crossed the circle, she was remembering a time when cooked food made her ill, and she was hungry all the time but nothing seemed to satisfy. That craving filled her as she stopped in the empty, unprotected point between the three nearest circles and looked back into the light of the city.
Just before her were several people. Captain Faille, a sword in one hand, and three others she couldn’t spare thought to recognise. Between them was the thick border of the circle, and trailing streamers of night trapped in the shield. Mist curled around her, lifting from the ground, and she gazed upward as something drifted down from the sky, an insubstantial thing drawn to her, attracted by the memory of an Azrenel’s feasting just as it would be to a sleeping and undefended human.
"Life Stealer!" exclaimed one of the people, and drew power. But that wasn’t needed.
Unclasping her hands as she lifted them, Rennyn held up a cat’s cradle made of black ribbon, criss-crossing lines trailing darkness. The Life Stealer, no more than a wisping grey shape, was tangled, trapped, and Rennyn held it out toward the shield as it writhed impotently.
"Unaet," she said again, pushing the creature into a shield specifically designed to keep it out. Light bloomed where it touched, a delicate purple haze. "Temaru. Arlaeth."
Power poured through her and into Asentyr’s shield. The light spread, dancing in gem hues, racing along the boundary of the circle, lifting into the sky. The shield shimmered into visibility, shifting slowly from dome to a pillar of colour rising straight from the ground all through the area it protected. Swathes of green and red, orange and purple, thickened the air. Around the palace and various other minor circles the colour flared into brighter points of white, but these did not impede the flow of her casting.
"Senyatel," Rennyn said, when all the city blazed with a peacock aurora. "Senyatel." Revealed. Revealed.
The Life Stealer burned into nothing and Rennyn staggered and fell forward through a shield which no longer resisted her. Faille managed to get an arm between her and the ground and set her easily back on her feet as the light display faded abruptly away, leaving only two colourful motes on Aliace Hill. Raindrop beacons spearing the sky.
"What did you do?" asked one of her audience, and she recognised Lieutenant Meniar, the Sentene mage who was part of the detail to accompany her to Surclere.
"Spectacular, but–?" asked the woman. A member of the Hand. Rennyn wondered how many others had followed her from the palace.
"That was some kind of divination, wasn’t it?" said the last, a well-dressed young boy Rennyn didn’t recognise, his red hair dimmed by eyes brimming with amazement.
"Like calls to like," Rennyn explained. "The only thing I could think of to counter guised Eferum-Get roaming inside a circle."
Captain Faille’s attention had been on the two remaining motes of colour, but he looked back as Rennyn went and sat heavily on a nearby crate. "Meniar, get a message to Captain Illuma," he ordered. "Have squads investigate the target of those lights. And give Lady Montjuste-Surclere your coat."
"Yessir." Meniar wasn’t in uniform either, but his coat was still large and warm and a welcome relief. He gave her shoulders a little squeeze as he put it around her, then retreated and began the difficult task of sending a message by magic.
"Do you suppose that tavern serves anything edible?" Rennyn asked, tucking her hands in her armpits in the hope of unfreezing them. Her already healthy appetite had become an urgent need to replace lost energy.
"I’ll go look," said the boy, and after a moment’s hesitation the Hand mage followed him, for it was not the kind of place noble youths could walk into safely.
"Will your brother be able to complete the attunement if you cannot?" Captain Faille asked.
"Yes. Though I would prefer that he didn’t have to." Rennyn considered the man, who wasn’t quite criticising her, but who obviously thought she’d taken an unnecessary risk casting such a massive spell. And might well feel that permission should be gained before altering the city’s main protection. "If my Wicked Uncle comes into this city, I want to know it. If anything comes near my brother, I want more warning than we had today."
"How long will the divination last?"
"Anywhere between a few weeks and a few centuries." She shrugged, and gazed at the lights of the city. "Long enough."
Her stomach hurt. Too convinced by her spell that she, like the Eferum-Get, was a bottomless void, an emptiness that even a thousand lives could not fill. "What prompted the Kellian’s departure from the Forest of Semarrak?" she asked, hoping to distract herself.
"Tyrland is our home."
"That’s the answer to a different question," Rennyn pointed out, looking up at him. "Had the last of the originals died?"
During the silence which followed she could hear Lieutenant Meniar sounding out each sigil he activated, and a gust of laughter from the tavern. It was the first time she’d asked something that it seemed Faille might not answer and she studied his profile as best she could when he blended so well into the night. Despite obliging with answers, this man was as far from the obedient ciphers of the originals as it was possible to be. Grim courtesy could not mask a sheerly incisive mind, and a tendency not to express his opinions did not leave her in any doubt that he had them. He weighed every word she spoke, and judged whether she deserved any response.