Golden warmth swoops through his core, before his vision flies up from his body. Vara carries him through a web of enchantments—not breaking them, but flowing through the gaps. The traps and wards and warnings are all different colors, different sensations. The bright yellow heat of the sisters’ divine flame magic. The mellow blue-green of Dansa’s healing energy. Orderly arrays of quiet silver. Dangerous pockets of deep, demonic red.
The dancing cyan of Ronan’s magic tingles through Karis’s soul..
Once out of the manor, he has only the briefest moment to see his surroundings before his vision winks to Stazie’s location. But he recognizes what he sees, and if he was fully in his body, he’d laugh his head off.
The red and brown rooftops, the pale stone streets. The white walls circling and circling through different neighborhoods. The first great landmark of the city is the royal palace, more pale gray and white stone wreathed in green and yellow banners, towers like spears piercing the sky.
The second landmark is almost as large as the palace. The white angles of the roof are edged in gold, almost blinding at high noon. Stretches of glass that look dark from the outside, but from the inside, they paint the light in brightest gold.
The Bright Cathedral in Ostaris. Karis has been ten minutes from home this entire time.
He doesn’t have time to dwell on that now. His stomach jerks, and he’s overlooking a forested path a day’s journey north. A half-dozen men and women ride southwards, with a familiar supply cart rolling behind him. Two paladins in white and four squires in blue. Recognizing people from overhead is difficult, but his sight is centered on Stazie from the start. She’s on her bay mare, and her ponytail swishes as she turns her head periodically.
Divine sunlight buzzes under his skin. He doesn’t have much control over the vision. He tries to peer closer, change angles, see her expression. But the power gets away from him, and everything breaks like a cold splash of water. His eyes fly open, and he’s back on the floor in Ronan’s bedroom—in Ostaris.
“Your friends are pretty good at laying low,” he twists around to tell Alice. “I’ll give them that.”
Alice doesn’t move from her sprawled-out pose, taking up most of Ronan’s bed with her splayed paws.
Karis knows people who feel hungover after spellcasting, and scrying is definitely a major spell. He feels fine, though, and he thinks he can get a few more glances in before he wears out. Settling back onto the floor, he decides his next target. He looked for Stazie mostly because he just wanted to see how she was doing, and he didn’t glean a lot of information from the scry. Time to check out the opposite end of the chain of command. On his next exhalation, his eyes flutter closed.Show me Archpriest Neradt.
Vara’s presence stirs slightly.This should be interesting.
What do you mean?Karis asks.
Vara’s answer is another lurching journey out of the warded manor. This time, Karis’s vision stays in Ostaris, but they don’t head towards the Bright Cathedral like he expects. His consciousness arcs to a stout fortress just outside the city, past dizzying layers of walls and wards, into a wide, well-lit meeting room. The room is dominated by a massive table, covered in maps and notes, surrounded by chairs. All of the chairs are empty, and only three people stand at the head of the table, conferring over a spread-out map.
Karis recognizes Neradt, with his long silver hair and golden robes. His wrinkled face holds none of its usual welcoming smile, and he looks both colder and more genuine without it. Nobody can be that cheerful all the time. Karis also recognizes the portly man in midnight blue robes, with a plain silver circlet squeezed around his balding head. The archpriest of the Church of Sephine.
The third man is taller than either of the archpriests, with short brown hair and a precisely trimmed beard. His face is stern, and a dark gray military uniform stretches over his broad shoulders. Pinned to his left breast is a gleaming silver brooch—the snarling face of a wolf. Ka Dravos, the god of war, doesn’t have a separate church anymore. His followers were absorbed into the Charaini military nearly two hundred years ago.
“It’s not like you to ask the military for help,” the Dravan soldier says. “What’s the point of your paladins if they can’t handle something so simple?”
The Sephinian archpriest crosses his arms, his brow puckering under his tight circlet. “This is why we should at least tell the captains. They’re operating blind.”
“Impossible.” Neradt sighs. “Too many of them are true believers. General, you must know—”
He says another sentence, but the image blurs and the sound cuts out. By the time Karis regains control of the vision, the Dravan is saying, “Between the borders and relics, I can’t spare soldiers for your personnel issues. We’re still finding vaidkos too far south. You’ll have to find the squire yourself.”
Anger flashes in Neradt’s usually calm eyes, and he opens his mouth. But this time, when the vision fractures, Karis can’t restore it. He blinks into awareness on the floor, staring at the scratched wooden floor, the faded rug.
The squire. That must be him.
Karis has a healthy—all right, some would argue unhealthy—sense of his own importance. He still never would have expected two archpriests and a Dravan general to be discussing his kidnapping. He isn’t sure whether to be flattered or worried.
Do you know what any of that was about?he asks Vara.
The pause in his mind is heavy, and the room seems to dim. Karis thinks all he’ll get from his god is another helping of silence. Then the room brightens, as if a cloud has passed, and Vara answers,I can’t say.
And that’s far more worrying than silence.
?
CHAPTER TEN
RONAN
Ronan has been leaning against the alley wall for over an hour by the time Evain shows up. He doesn’t mind the delay, and a look-away spell keeps the neighbor’s prying eyes off him. As much as he spent the last few weeks longing to return to the base, right now it’s a relief being outside. That’s one hour of breathing fresh air, watching passerby, clearing his head of the bratty, persistent hostage he can’t seem to avoid.
