“Or both houses,” Jadren agreed, narrowing his eyes at the hound.
“Or both.Ultimately House Tadkiel took them on and used them as tools for retrieving and punishing recalcitrant familiars.They’ve been quiet throughout all this jockeying, battling, and espionage.”
“Yes, they have.”Jadren stood and looked at her.“So, why is this here, at El-Adrel?”
Selly hated to direct his attention back to the espaliered trees, but… “These trees have been distorted from their natural shape, to force them into behaving in ways no normal peach tree would.”
“You think El-Adrel had something to do with creating the hunters?”
“Maybe?Or something to do with whatever it is that the enemies of House Phel—which included El-Adrel, we know—wanted to have or to conceal so badly that they destroyed an entire house and generations of Phel wizards.”
“Until you and Gabriel popped up out of nowhere.Generations of magical duds and then the two of you, immensely powerful, a wizard and a familiar.”
“We’ve wondered why now, what changed.”Selly nearly whispered it.Maybe this lesson from the house wasn’t entirely for Jadren after all.Could the house be talking to her also?
“Also, why now, why today?”Jadren asked reflectively, the mystery helping to dispel the dregs of the horror that had been shadowing him.
“You banished two wizards,” Selly reminded him.“Both heavily involved in what happened in those labs.”
“I banished one of them,” Jadren corrected, holding up a finger.“The house happily… consumed the other.”
Selly turned in a circle.The four walls hadn’t changed.Whatever the house wanted them to do, they hadn’t done it yet.“We need to know what Alise and Cillian found in those hidden archives.”
“Oh, you mean those archives that one of our contenders for Evil High House of the Year, Hanneil, tried so very hard to prevent them from accessing?”
“The very ones.This is all tied together,” she said, eyeing the peach trees.“You know, even though the manse at House Phel isn’t sentient like El-Adrel, I’ve still thought she knows what was going on with the resurrection of that manse.That the great houses are connected somehow.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he commented drily.“Besides, you and I are connected to this house and you’re connected to that one.”
“All kinds of connections from here to House Phel.”
“Where youdohave peach trees.”
“Yes, and it occurs to me that you were ranting about—”
“Ineverrant,” he interrupted.
“Ranting extensively,” she continued in a placid tone, “about Alise and what we didn’t do to stop her from going to House Elal to be…” She trailed off, unwilling to say it, rather horrified by the conclusion she’d reached.
“Espaliered,” Jadren finished grimly.
There wasn’t a sound exactly, but more of a sense of the air changing, a pressure releasing.In one of the walls, a gate appeared.Made of fanciful wrought iron in the shape of a fruit tree—never let it be said the house didn’t have a sense of humor—the gate revealed the green world outside.“Guess we solved the riddle and are allowed to leave now,” Selly noted.
“Did you notice that the exit provided by the house leads outside and not in?”Jadren cast his gaze around the silent walls.“Can we at least pack some stuff to take on the journey?Please.”
“Journey?”Selly echoed.Somehow she’d lagged behind on that step.“Where are we going?”
“You can choose,” Jadren said with expansive generosity and a little bow to her.“Elal, Harahel, or Convocation archives.Come on,” he added, taking her hand and pointing to the wall where an opening to the hallway had appeared.“You can decide while we pack.”
~7~
Alise kicked herselffor her overconfidence.Which seemed to be a regular occurrence recently.She’d been so pleased with herself for altering the properties of the barrier to stop the wizards in their tracks that she forgot about the aspects that allowed animals to pass the Elal borders.
And that the hunters, magically conglomerated monsters or not, were essentially animals.
Vicious ones, coming straight for them.
“Faster would be good,” Cillian advised.
