"Has anyone looked at the floor here?" he asked.
"We looked, but we didn't see anything," the Shin'a'in replied." Why? Have you found something?"
"Perhaps." Master Levy got to his feet. "When I was still studying, I used to earn spending money by designing and helping to build hidden doors and chambers for wealthy or eccentric clients. I think there might be something here."
"Huh." An'desha looked closely at the floor, and had to shake his head. "I'll take your word for it. Do you think you can get it open—if there is anything there?"
"Perhaps," Master Levy repeated. "I'll have to examine it later, when I'm not exhausted. This is all sheer nervous energy, you see, plus a rather stupid wish to seem in better physical shape than old Sejanes, and it's all about to run out. I'm going to get a bowl of that stew I smell, and then I am going to sleep for a day."
An'desha laughed, as Master Levy shrugged ruefully and with self-deprecation. As the Master Artificer drifted in the direction of their little charcoal stove and the bubbling stewpot atop it, he started back toward Karal. But halfway there, he turned, a little surprised, as a soft voice hailed him.
It was one of the few black-clad Kal'enedral, and with him was another wearing dark blue. The one in black he knew; Ter'hala, an old man whose blood-feud would technically never be completed, because the one who murdered his oathbrother had been Mornelithe Falconsbane. It was doubly ironic that An'desha and Ter'hala had become friends over the past few days. Ter'hala knew who and what he had been, of course. An'desha, understandably nervous, had asked him why he continued to wear black; Ter'hala had laughed and said that he was used to the color and too old to change.
"Ter'hala!" An'desha greeted him. "Who is your friend?"
The Kal'enedral sketched a salute of greeting. "This is Che'sera, young friend. He wished to meet you."
An'desha bowed slightly. "I am always honored to meet one of the servants of the Wise One," he said politely, though he could not for the life of him imagine what had brought so many of the reclusive "Scrollsworn"—as he called them, to distinguish them from the true Swordsworn—out of Kata'shin'a'in and their stronghold there. "We are all truly grateful for the hospitality and tolerance you have shown to us."
I wonder if the reason is that we've just added two more meddlers to the group, and one of them is a mage from a completely unknown land, he thought, though he kept his thoughts to himself. Not that I blame them. We're the interlopers here; the Star-Eyed gave them the keeping of this Tower and its secrets, not us.
Che'sera returned his bow. "I am pleased to meet you, An'desha," he replied, his voice so carefully neutral that An'desha could not read any second meaning into the words. "It is not often that one of the Plains who goes to become a mage ever returns again."
"It is not often that the shamans permit him to return," An'desha replied, as calmly and carefully as he could, although he could in no way match the lack of inflection in Che'sera's voice. "Until only recently, mages have been forbidden the Plains, even those of the People."
"Well, and you can certainly see why," Che'sera countered immediately, gesturing at the Tower remains about them. "This would all have been a great temptation. Can you say, had you become a mage of the Tale'edras, that you would not have been tempted to try to use one of these weapons against the one they called Falconsbane?"
An'desha shuddered. He still had far too many of Falconsbane's memories of the life he had led using An'desha's body for comfort—and behind those memories, marched others, a seemingly endless parade of atrocities stretching back into a dim past as ancient as this Tower.
"I would," he admitted slowly. "I would have been tempted by anything that might have brought the monster down. Anything that would have saved others from the horror he wrought."
Che'sera shrugged. "And yet it took how many of you, working together, to simply use the energy of one of these weapons rather than the weapon itself?"
"And yet you permit us here now." An'desha allowed one eyebrow to rise.
"We do, and that is in part why I wished to speak with you," Che'sera told him. "May we speak privately, you and I, for a little while, Shin'a'in to Shin'a'in?"
Now An'desha was considerably more surprised, and not at all certain what Che'sera had in mind. This was the first time in his reckoning that any of the Shin'a'in here had addressed him in such a fashion; most seemed uncomfortable with the concept of a Shin'a'in who was also a mage, and some seemed of the personal opinion that his half-foreign blood made him more alien than Shin'a'in. "Certainly, if that is what you wish." He nodded toward the sleeping chamber. "My friend Karal is asleep in there; he will not hear us, and if we speak quietly, we will not disturb him. I fear that is the most privacy I can offer, as it is in somewhat short supply here despite the vastness of the place."
Che'sera nodded. "That will do," he said, and gestured to An'desha to lead him onward.
An'desha did so, walking with great care past Karal and Altra, although neither stirred, nor in fact gave any indication that they were alive except for their steady breathing. At the moment he was suffering from mixed feelings; he was both curious and apprehensive to hear what Che'sera wanted to say that required privacy.
He gestured at his own pallet, waiting until Che'sera took a seat at the foot before seating himself.
"So," he said, wondering what he was letting himself in for. "What is it you wish of me, Sworn One?"
When Che'sera left him at last, he sat back against the gently-curving stone wall and simply thought of nothing for a while. He felt as if Che'sera had taken his mind, had turned it upside-down and shaken it, examined it, poked and prodded it, turned it inside out, and then, when he was finished, put it all neatly back in place with the ends tucked in.
He had probably been the most skillful interrogator that An'desha or any of Falconsbane's many incarnations had ever encountered. You know, I suspect that at this point he could predict my reaction to virtually any situation, and do so with more accuracy than I could!
Although his questions had covered virtually every subject, Che'sera seemed particularly interested in the Avatars. That was the one thing that hadn't surprised him, since virtually all of the Sworn had wanted to know about Dawnfire and Tre'valen sooner or later. Some of them here had actually been present when Dawnfire, trapped in the body of her bondbird, had been transformed into an Avatar in the first place. It had occurred to An'desha that as far as he was concerned, such a transformation was a poor substitute for returning Dawnfire to her proper human form. But then again, perhaps that had not been possible; granted, the Star-Eyed had been able to undo most of the changes Falconsbane had run on An'desha's own body, but that was in the nature of restoring something to its rightful state, not changing it into something else altogether.
Perhaps all that She would have been able to manage would have been transformation into a tervardi, one of the bird-people, and that might have been a truly cruel "reward" for her, since the tervardi are frail and not very humanlike. At least this way, she is still fundamentally herself and she is anything but frail.
He also sensed that there were other complications to the story that no one had told him about. And there was, of course, the factor that Dawnfire had been mourned for dead, and her human body buried when the bond to it was snapped by Falconsbane. It didn't necessarily do for a deity to resurrect people; the question would inevitably arise: "Why this one and not my father, mother, sibling, lover." Better, on the whole, not to do any such thing. Look at all the effort that the Companions went to in order to preserve the secret of their own nature, and they weren't even returning as humans!