Shadows Return - Lynn Flewelling [99]
Seregil didn’t hear so much as a whisper of a footstep, but when he heard several pairs of heavy feet pass by a moment later without incident, he knew she was gone.
He went back to bed with his heart racing. It was too soon to get his hopes up, but this was the start he’d hoped for. He whispered a blessing aloud across his left palm, “Marös Aura Elustri chyptir! Hang on, talí. I’ll be with you soon!”
CHAPTER 29
Cross Purposes
KORATHAN APPEARED AT Thero’s door without warning one morning as the wizard was sitting down to breakfast. He rose, intending to invite him to share his humble meal, but the look on the prince’s face killed the pleasantries, unspoken.
“You’ve had news.”
“Of the worst sort. The khirnari of Gedre has sent word. It appears that our friends and their escort were ambushed less than two days out of Gedre. The escort was killed. Seregil and Alec are missing.”
“When did he learn this?”
“Only recently. The bodies had been hidden, and no one in Bôkthersa knew to look for them until some trader stumbled across them. Zengati arrows were found with the bodies.”
“I see. What does the queen say?”
“She is upset, of course, and means to send a second delegation.”
“That’s it? What about Seregil and Alec?”
“My guess is that they were taken by slavers. I was hoping that you could be of assistance and look with that wizard eye spell of yours.”
Thero had to take a quick breath to calm himself; why was it that everyone thought wizards could just snap their fingers and do anything that was needed in a heartbeat?
“With all due respect, your Highness, they could be halfway to Khouimir by now. Or in any of the hundreds of Zengati slave markets between there and the border.” He sat down, overwhelmed by the enormity of the task. “Or in Plenimar, for that matter. I have no firsthand knowledge of either place, aside from a bit of the western coast of Plenimar.”
But his mind was already racing. “But if it is Plenimar, then they’d most likely be taken to Benshâl or Riga first, from what I’ve heard. But again, there’s no way to know which direction they were taken, or to what land. Such a search would take a hundred wizards months, if not years, to accomplish. I’m sorry, Highness, but it’s virtually impossible that way, like looking for a couple of lentils in a crib of corn.”
“What would you suggest, then?”
“If it were anyone else we were looking for, I’d say to send Seregil and Alec,” Thero replied grimly. “Or Micum Cavish.”
“We still have him. I suggest you send for him at once.”
Thero sent off a message sphere to Watermead, and had word back in an instant that Micum was on his way.
Breakfast forgotten, he locked his tower door and went into the casting room. He chalked the proper circle, then knelt in the center and paused, considering his next move. He suspected that Phoria would consider what he was about to do disobedience at the very least, but that was why the windowless casting room was protected from prying eyes of all sorts by more than walls and locks.
A message spell was too limited, and a translocation to Bôkthersa, while certainly possible, was far too risky for now, and would involve Magyana, the only wizard left proficient at the powerful spell. Instead, he had dusted off one of the oldest tomes in Nysander’s library and found a spell created by his master’s master, Arkoniel. It was a precursor to the translocation magic, based on something so unlike traditional Orëska magic that Thero had always suspected it was from some other source. Nysander had hinted as much the one time he’d shown Thero how it worked.
He’d called it a “window spell,” and that was the simplest way of imagining it. Cast correctly, it opened a portal through distance, allowing a wizard to look through to where another person was, no matter how far, and speak with him. Useful as that might be, Nysander had disliked it, and cautioned Thero against using it because it was crude, and dangerous both to the caster and the one who was sought through it. To illustrate this