I was about to say we didn’t have time to dine when Ryshad pulled a flatbread stuffed with goat meat out of his bag. “My lady.” He proffered it with the instinctive courtesy drilled into him by years in D’Olbriot’s service.
“I’m no one’s lady now, good sir.” She managed a wry smile around a mouthful of food before bolting the rest with far from ladylike grace. “Just Frala Shernasdir.”
“Get us out,” the grandmother demanded urgently. “If we can touch hands, we can work together!”
Ryshad broke her free and I tripped the locks of a cage that held one of Frala’s sisters. She gripped my hand as I let the door swing open. “You have the lifelong gratitude of Gyslin Shernasdir.” Her fervent words had a formality ill suited to her stained green dress and grimy face.
“You’re entirely welcome.” I moved on to the next sister who was all but rattling her bars in her desperation. Ryshad released the younger girls, both rushing to cling to each other in a shaky embrace.
“Get your wits about you,” their grandmother snapped. “Forget your aches and your bellies and concentrate on what has to be done.”
Of course, I realised belatedly. Olret wasn’t just being a vindictive bastard keeping them in this squalor. He was making certain sufficient physical discomfort hampered their capacity to use Artifice, if not curbed it all together. I dug in my own bag for whatever food ’Gren had cached there and shared it out as best I could between Gyslin, her sister and their daughters.
Ryshad handed the grandmother a battered hunk of sausage and unhooked his water bottle from his belt. “Shiv—”
The wizard cut him short with an impatient hand. “Someone’s coming up the stairs.” He moved behind the door, keeping watch through the crack at the hinges.
The women froze, food forgotten. Ryshad flattened himself on the open side of the door, sword ready. “Shiv, can you bolt it?”
An urgent whistle pierced the tense silence. “No, wait.” I left my last few darts still in my belt pouch. “It’s them.”
Ryshad muttered something under his breath. Shiv didn’t close the door and I risked a quick look around it. Sorgrad and ’Gren came running down the corridor from the opposite stairway, each with a cloth-swathed bundle over one shoulder, swords in hand.
“Here!” I beckoned them in and each dropped their burden with a muffled clatter.
“This is hardly the time to go thieving,” I told Sorgrad forcefully.
Sorgrad raised innocent eyebrows, plainly unrepentant. “Not even for more Kellarin artefacts?” The patterned cloth fell aside to reveal the gleam of old steel and the copper binding of a dagger handle. “Maybe even the last ones you need?”
’Gren was smirking too. ”Whatever Guinalle doesn’t want is ours, remember that.”
“You’ll cut me a share or I’ll know the reason why.” I couldn’t help smiling until I saw the blood on ’Gren’s blade. “Who did you kill to get it?”
“No one,” ’Gren protested, injured. “That’s from the miller. The nurse all but pissed herself and ran like a scolded dog.”
“I guessed he’d hide valuables in that room where his son lies.” Sorgrad answered Ryshad’s unspoken question, daring the swordsman to challenge him.
’Gren had already dismissed the matter, turning to sweep a low bow to the women who were looking at the two of them with lively curiosity. “My ladies, my duty to you.” He winked at me. “We needn’t have worried about finding a bath.”
Ryshad had more important things on his mind. “Shiv, take us out of here now.”
Before the mage could reply, the grandmother choked on her meat. “Olret comes,” she gasped.
Her three daughters instantly joined hands, Frala in the middle.
“Quickly.” Gyslin beckoned urgently to her daughter and niece. The grandmother hobbled to the other end of their line and the little girl hid her face in Frala’s skirts.
“We’ll just have to risk it.” Shiv set his jaw.
“No!”
“Guinalle?” I couldn’t help myself; I actually looked round to see if the demoiselle was there in the room.
“What?” Ryshad and Shiv stared at me as if I’d lost my wits.
“Livak, it’s me.” I heard the noblewoman’s voice again but from the bemused faces all around, I was plainly the only one. “Don’t let Shiv work any magic,” she went on urgently. “Olret will kill him.”
“No spells, Shiv. Guinalle says no spells.” I struggled to hear her words at the same time as I was trying to explain. “Usara’s scrying for us and Guinalle’s working her Artifice through his spell.”
“How are they working that?” Shiv was intrigued.
“Can’t that wait?” I glared at him. “Just remember you can’t do any magic without Artifice to ward you or Olret will kill you!”
“Swords’ll kill us a cursed sight faster.” Sorgrad was next to the door, ’Gren beside him. “Half a cohort’s on its way.” The tramp of nailed boots echoed ominously up the stone stairwells.
“Shut the door,” Ryshad ordered. “Bolt it, one of you.” He swept his sword at the women.
I heard the bolts slam home as I tried to concentrate on Guinalle’s far-distant voice. “I have to speak to the adepts you’ve found. Join their line.”
I really didn’t want to do that and not only because the girl’s hand closest to me was so filthy, but we were running out of options fast so I grabbed for her.
The room turned dim around me and for one appalling moment I thought I was fainting. Then I realised I was somehow locked in a corner of my own mind with Guinalle’s will controlling my body, my voice, my gestures. I could look out through my own eyes but in a peculiar, cramped fashion, only able to look directly ahead and as if through Ryshad’s spyglass. I did my best to quell the panic rising within me and then realised that it would do me no good to yield to the impulse to scream, to protest, to fight the enchantment. I had no voice to cry for help, no strength to hit back.
“I am Guinalle Tor Priminale, acolyte of Larasion, sworn to the discipline of Ostrin.” She spoke with my lips and raised my hand to the grandmother. “Will you aid me in the name of all that you hold sacred?”
“We will.” The voices of all six Elietimm adepts echoed around me as the grandmother took Guinalle’s hand to complete the inward-looking circle. The room was instantly overlaid with new images; glimpses of Suthyfer and the newly reclaimed landing, Vithrancel and the busy market place, Edisgesset and the no-nonsense realm of the miners. Each place and person within them was as abiding and as ephemeral as the reality I could no longer feel beneath feet that no longer belonged to me. Something froze around me then Guinalle smashed it like someone breaking winter ice to reveal the fast flowing mysteries of the river beneath. My mother had warned me never to play on a frozen river with graphic tales of children carried away beneath the ice and drowned unable reach the light and air above. The fear I’d felt then was nothing to the terror paralysing me now, even as I felt the women of Shernasekke reaching for the aetheric power long denied them with all the desperate thirst of travellers lost in a waterless waste.
I wanted none of it, struggling not to fall into that torrent of mystery and peril, straining to see the world beyond the enchantment trapping me. Ryshad and Shiv were breaking apart the cages as best they could, ’Gren and Sorgrad piling the twisted bars and frames against the door, wedging broken bits of metal under the bottom, into the hinges, under the latch.
All that was less real than Guinalle now standing before me, dressed in the proud elegance of the Old Empire. Rings shone on every finger, a crescent of gold set with diamonds in her hair, more diamonds around her neck brilliant with fire struck by some unseen light shining on the silk of her flame-coloured gown. The soiled faces of the starved women each faded behind some simulacrum of how they wished to be seen. Frala’s hair lightened to the pale gold of sun-bleached straw, piled high on her head with bone pins tipped with blood-red gems. Her full-skirted gown was a maroon rich against her milky skin. Gyslin and the other sister were dressed in the same style, in differing shades of blue, a many stranded rope of curious milky gemstones twisted around Gyslin’s neck. The younger women wore less costly shades of green, dresses cut to display nubile charms instead of matronly modesty. The grandmother wore black made all the more severe by a few silver ornaments. With her thin face and sharp nose, she looked more like a crow than ever. Only the little girl was left in her grubby chemise, still clinging to her mother’s skirts with one filthy hand and her bedraggled animal in the other.