"Was it Âthkyensmyotnes?" Chuillyon demanded.
At that strange word, Reine closed on them. It sounded like something in Elvish.
"Who are you talking about?" she asked.
Bulwark shifted uncomfortably, exposing clenched teeth. Balsam glanced between her two elders, apparently as lost as Reine.
"It is old," Cinder-Shard answered grudgingly. "Very old."
"You did not deny my suspicion," Chuillyon challenged. "So, what else did you sense?"
Cinder-Shard grunted. "What did you sense, as you blocked its flames?"
"Nothing … and that frightens me."
"Someone answer me!" Reine demanded.
Cinder-Shard flexed his free hand, stared at it, then looked to the cavern wall near the main entrance. No one answered her.
"Apparently, I cannot entomb it," Cinder-Shard muttered. "What other way is there to kill what is already dead?"
Reine stared at him in astonishment. Surely he didn't believe Wynn's insane notions.
"We need to bind it … in, not out," he said to Chuillyon. "And your ways, though effective against manipulations outside of itself, will not halt it from acting directly."
Reine grabbed Chuillyon's sleeve. "You cannot bring that murderer back here, not so near Frey!"
He looked down upon her, saddening for less than a blink before his mouth set in a hard line.
"We will not have to bring Âthkyensmyotnes," he answered coldly. "It will come when ready."
Reine could don a regal air at a whim. She could match any monarch, noble, or commoner stare for stare with an outward ease of detachment. But she wavered under Chuillyon's icy gaze.
"Who are you talking about?" she asked again. "I don't know that name. Is that the man in the black robes?"
"Not who … but what," Chuillyon corrected, "though it may have been a man … once."
"Enough dramatics," Cinder-Shard grumbled. "Needlessly frightening her accomplishes nothing."
"Yes, it does," Chuillyon countered. "If I—if we—are correct about what that thing is."
Again, "thing" and "it," as if the black mage were …
"You cannot believe the sage's prattle," Reine returned. "Walking dead … spirits … whatever?"
The sages believed an old enemy might rise again, one connected to the end of known history in a great forgotten war. Many people—most people—thought that war was only an overblown myth. Once, she had thought so herself—until she married Frey and became tangled in the secret of the Âreskynna bloodline. Only until she had spent too much time dealing with sages.
Like the premins, Reine's new family believed the world wasn't ready to know the truth about an Ancient Enemy—and a forgotten war. In silence, the Âreskynna and even her own uncle, King Jacqui Amornon Faunier, and all of their ancestors, had been waiting and watching through generations.
She'd never known … until Frey.
But this nonsense from Chuillyon, the family's oldest advisor, as well as from the master of the Stonewalkers, was too much. War was fought by the living, not the dead, whether it was one of the past or one yet to come.
Still Chuillyon watched her, as if waiting to see something in her face.
Amaranth rested her fists upon her hips. "Someone please tell me what has … will happen."
Balsam opened her mouth, but Bulwark cut in.
"Soon," he rumbled, and turned indignantly to Cinder-Shard. "You want to trap it here, among our honored dead?"
Reine's attention shifted from one to the next, her exasperation growing. Had Master Bulwark succumbed to the sage's nonsense as well? Chuillyon's eyes brightened as he looked away from her, but he shook his head.
"That would require permanence."
"No," Cinder-Shard countered, "only long enough to hold it … to finish it."
"Can you?"
Cinder Shard took a deep, slow breath full of doubt. "I was taught the way, as was my master before me. But I fear trapping this malignant thing may take time—and the focus of all my order. This will be … difficult."
Chuillyon frowned. "Very well, I can think of nothing better … for now."
Before anyone else spoke, a booming voice echoed across the cavern: "We have other matters first!"
Thorn-in-Wine strode toward them, phosphorescent light catching upon each polished steel tip of his hauberk's scales. Unlike the other Stonewalkers, he kept his dirt-brown hair cropped. A few curling strands looped around his ears and upon his brow to match his short beard.
"The constabularies in the access tunnel are dead!" he declared. "But the portal thänæ saw no one come through."
Cinder-Shard shook his head. "It evaded the warrior guard."
Reine peered toward the entrance to the main passage. She didn't need Chuillyon's cryptic babble to frighten her. The sage-killer may have followed Wynn Hygeorht to the seatt, but if the guards above had been killed, then the mage had followed someone else into the underworld.
The murderer had followed her.
"I must warn the conclaves," Thorn-in-Wine said, "and learn whether anything has happened in the settlements."
Cinder-Shard released the staff, letting it topple into Chuillyon's waiting hand.
"My lady," Cinder-Shard addressed Reine. "Thorn-in-Wine has need of your captain, at least until more guards are placed in the tunnel. Tristan has experience with pragmatic strategy that we do not."
"Of course," she answered, waving Tristan on.
But the captain remained planted. "My duty is to the life and blood of the royal line—above all else."
"You can best protect the prince by securing the underworld," she returned. "Chuillyon can ward against this mage's skills, and as to any mundane assault …"
She settled a hand on her saber's hilt.
Tristan's expression didn't change, and he didn't move. Lifting one knee, Reine pulled a narrow-bladed dagger from her boot and slipped it at the ready into her belt.
"That wasn't a request, Captain," she said.
He reluctantly nodded and turned away, following Thorn-in-Wine toward the main passage. But Chuillyon headed off in another direction.
"Where are you going?" Reine asked.
He paused without turning. "To speak with the sage."
"Why? She's done nothing but lie and connive. What could we possibly gain from her that we could trust?"
"Confirmation," he answered.
Reine quick-stepped to grab his sleeve. "You are a royal counselor, not my keeper, so answer me! What are you and Cinder-Shard hiding? What is this Ath … Athkin … ?"
Chuillyon whipped around.
"Âthkyensmyotnes," he hissed, and Reine shrank back.
"The sovereign of spirits," he went on, "another forgotten word, like the sage's ‘wraith.' I searched it out in little-known Numan folktales, once I heard things concerning the murderer in Calm Seatt. By the time I found anything, Wynn Hygeorht and her associates had taken matters into their own hands."
Reine just stared at him.
Chuillyon's branch lay too far south in Lhoin'na lands, and she'd never gone more than two days without seeing him. If he'd gone to the Calm Seatt guild, she would've heard mention from High-Tower or Sykion. How and where had he learned this?
Or was it all some excuse? Had he learned that odd name some other way?
"There is no time for your disbelief," he warned. "Your husband's safety matters more than your own—more than the texts—and that thing cannot learn of him."
Chuillyon jerked his sleeve from her grip.
"My counsel, Highness, is that you keep that foremost in your thoughts." He looked to Cinder-Shard. "Are you coming? I assume you wish to hear the sage for yourself."