Kinshield's Redemption (Book 4) (6 page)

The children were chattering in the family room when Edan arrived. Because Liera was just then coming down the hallway, pale yellow skirts lifted to speed her gait, he waited outside the room for her to join him.

She wore her curly brown hair pulled away from her face, making her blue eyes appear brighter. She had a natural, wholesome beauty undiminished by the freckles on her nose and cheeks or the small, hook-shaped scar beside her left eye.

“Good afternoon, my lady. I hope I haven’t interrupted anything important.”

“Lord Edan. No, I was rather bored, actually.” She chuckled softly. “Life in the palace isn’t as rich as life on a farm. We were never short of chores to do. I can understand now why Feanna spends so much time ministering to orphan children. As well as being her passion, it gives her something to occupy her time. I ought to find a cause of my own to take up. Shall we go in?”

“I’ve a bit of bad news, you see, and I’d like to share it with you first. You have a softer deportment than I. Perhaps you can help me deliver it to the children in a way that won’t be frightening.” He handed her the message. “How is your reading skill?”

“It needs improvement, but I can manage most letters and the like.” Liera took the message and unrolled it. Her gaze crept down the page while her brow pulled taut and her lips parted into an O. “Oh, dear. Do you know anything about this water and what kind of...” She glanced at the children and lowered her voice. “...corruption he writes about?”

He admitted that his understanding was incomplete, but he told her what he knew of the Well of the Enlightened, warning her that he could very well be wrong. “I want to warn the children to keep their distance from Queen Feanna. I know they’ve missed her and will want to greet her, but I don’t think that’s wise. There’s no telling what she would say to them.”

“I agree,” Liera said. “It’s best that we assess her for ourselves before we let the children near.”

Edan thought it best to talk to Feanna alone first to judge her disposition for himself before subjecting her to anyone else. He looked at the children, who’d begun to settle down and were watching them expectantly. “Shall we?” He put a hand gently on Liera’s back to guide her into the room before him.

He hadn’t spent much time there, as it was a special place where the Kinshield family gathered in the evenings after supper. Now Liera and her three sons sat quietly with Feanna’s four adopted children, watching him, waiting for the news he wished he didn’t have to deliver.

“Is Mama coming home?” asked six-year-old Tansa. She and five-year-old Jilly sat together in a chair, holding hands.

“Yes,” Edan said cheerfully. “Yes, she is. She should be home in a few days, but there’s a bit of bad news I must share with you.”

“What happened?”

“What’s wrong?”

“What kind o’bad news?”

“Is she dead?”

The questions came at him all at once. He put his hands up, trying to quiet and calm the children.

“Miss Feanna has fallen ill,” Liera said. “We’ll have a healer look after her, but she’s going to need to be confined to her apartment for a time. You won’t be able to spend time with her until she’s better, I’m afraid.”

“Is she going to die?” the eldest girl, Iriel, asked.

At her question, Jilly began to cry.

“Oh, honey, no,” Liera said, pulling Jilly into her lap. “Hush now. She isn’t going to die.”

“No,” Edan said. “Nobody’s going to die. It’s not that kind of illness, I promise. She’ll be irritable and tired and prefer to be left alone.”

“If King Gavin couldn’t cure her,” Trevick said, “what good is bringing more healers?”

“We don’t know that King Gavin couldn’t cure her,” Edan said. The boy was a step ahead of him, and he had to get in front of this. “He has an urgent matter to attend to and had to send her home where she could be looked after properly. We’ll do everything we can to make her comfortable so she can rest and get well. King Gavin wouldn’t have sent her home if she was too ill to travel, and if King Gavin isn’t worried, then we shouldn’t be either.”

“Can we see her?” Jilly asked in a small voice.

“Of course you can,” Edan answered, “but let’s arrange for you to look out onto the courtyard from the upstairs library window. I’ll direct her to look up, and you can wave to her.”

“And blow her kisses,” Tansa said.

“Yes,” Liera said, “and blow her kisses. Well, thank you, Lord Edan, for letting us know. We’ll pray for her speedy recovery. Let’s get back to our lessons, children.” She stood, prompting the children to stand as well.

“When’s Uncle Gavin coming home?” GJ asked.

Edan smiled and put a hand on the blond boy’s shoulder. GJ had always shared a special bond with his namesake, Gavin. “He didn’t say, but I’m sure he’ll be back as soon as he can.”

He watched them file out, somber and quiet. If he knew more about her affliction, he could properly prepare for Feanna’s arrival and perhaps reassure the children that it wasn’t permanent. At least, he hoped it wasn’t permanent. “My lady, I think I should assess the queen myself. Alone. I’ll report to you immediately what I observe of her mood.”

“Why?” Liera asked. “She and I have been close friends for almost seven years.”

“Yes,” he said, “that is precisely why I implore you to keep your distance from her and let me assess her first. An unkind word from her would be much more devastating to you than to me. I’ve only known her for the four months since Gavin vanquished Ritol. Nothing she says will hurt my feelings.”

“She wouldn’t be unkind to me. We’ve never disagreed about anything.”

Edan had to convince her. Gavin had told Feanna of Rogan’s bastard daughter, and if she was intent on making mischief, it was a likely place to start. “It’s impossible to know what’s in her heart or what lies she could dream up to strike at yours. She makes no secret of the fact that she was very fond of Rogan. Perhaps she’ll claim there was more to her relationship with him than you knew. Let me be the one to take the first blow. If she’s her usual pleasant self, I’ll let you know, and then you can approach her more comfortably and confidently.”

Liera eyed him thoughtfully. “All right, Lord Edan. I suppose that will do.”

Chapter 7

Gavin approached the water’s edge, hoping to hell this would work. Fixing the wellspring would prevent the people of Ambryce—and the residents of towns and cities downstream—from becoming like Feanna. Removing the crystal would also avoid any potential obsession like the one that drove Sevae to commit the atrocities he had. Once this task was done, he could focus his efforts on fixing his wife and the people who’d drunk the wellspring water.

“Show me the crystal again,” he told the Guardians. Again, the image of Nal Disi appeared in his mind.

“It is lodged between two rocks on the west side of the wellspring,” they said. “It must be pulled from directly above.”

“How far down?”

“Roughly seventeen meters.”

That figure meant nothing to Gavin. He’d never heard of a meter. “Can you say in feet?”

“Using the average length of your stride, that is approximately nineteen paces.”

Briefly, Gavin wondered how they knew that. He identified a rock at his feet, measured off twenty paces and judged the distance from his starting point. “Awright, I got it.” He went around the wellspring’s perimeter to the western edge and climbed carefully onto the rocks. On his right was a long drop to the rubble below. Ahead was the eagle-shaped boulder he’d spotted on the way up, and on the right, the cloudy, blue-green water.

“Gavin, no,” Daia said. “What are you doing? Can’t you pull it from this side?”

“It’s trapped between two rocks over here. I got to get above it and pull it straight up.”

“Be careful!” Daia said, holding her arms out instinctively as if she could steady him from where she was standing.

“Don’t worry. I’m not much for falling.” He stepped carefully from one boulder to the next, neither wanting to plummet to his death nor get a soaking, though if he lost his balance, getting wet would be his preference. He reached the eagle rock and braced his arse against it, his feet spread wide. He leaned his torso over the water and stretched one hand out. “About here?”

“That is near enough,” the Guardians answered.

Daia’s blue-white, egg-shaped haze hovered nearby with its unique, orange tendril in the center, a conduit with which he could access his full potential for power. He reached for it with his own haze, and she grasped it and fed his magic.

When he gazed at the water, the first thing he saw was a glittering mix of all the colors moving through it like fireflies. Then he saw that the Guardians had no separate haze. In fact, they
were
their haze. A thread as thin as spider silk stretched from each of their torsos to a spot in the water below Gavin, perhaps a few inches to the right of his right foot. As he followed the threads below the surface, he found himself holding his breath and chuckled. Using his hidden eye was still so unnatural and new that he had to remind himself that its sight was not limited by his physical body.

Soon, he spotted the radiance of the crystal, almost pulsing with the combined essences tethered to it. With his hidden eye marking its location, he gripped Daia’s orange tendril of power more firmly and began to pull the crystal using the same power he’d used to move the putty. It shifted on its perch and then began to rise. It seemed heavier than it should have been, especially considering the natural buoyancy of water. When at last he’d brought it up to the surface, it felt suddenly lighter rather than heavier. The force of his pulling slammed the crystal into his waiting hands and knocked him off balance. He flailed, dropping the gem to the rocks at his feet in order to catch himself.

“Gavin!” Daia cried.

One boot slipped off the boulder and into the water, wetting his leg to the knee. He went to the other knee and clutched the eagle boulder to steady himself. “I’m fine,” he called as he rose. “Just slipped.”

He used magic to pull most of the water out of his trouser leg and boot before picking up the Nal Disi. About the size of a bread loaf, it was a translucent grayish white crystal, its once-hard angles smoothed from the water’s eroding power over the years. Holding it in his hands felt like holding a beating heart. He felt a connection with it that made him want to laugh with joy. It made him feel stronger in both mind and body, like connecting with Daia’s gift a hundred times. With this one gem, he felt as if he could pull the sun right out of the sky with the power of his will.

“Don’t pull our essence from the crystal, Wayfarer. You must resist it.” The Guardians’ voices snapped his attention back to the present. Daia and Cirang were cheering. The muscles in his legs quivered, and his knees had begun to ache.

Resist. Right. But, oh, the allure was powerful.

He made his way around the wellspring to join his companions standing on the opposite bank. “What do you think?” he asked, turning the crystal over in his hands for them to inspect.

Both women reached to touch it, and both snapped their hands back as if they’d received a shock.

“It’s beautiful,” Cirang said, “though it apparently doesn’t want anyone but you to touch it.”

“So this is the source of all Thendylath’s troubles,” Daia said. “I’m no gemsmith, but it looks rather like calcite.”

“Not all,” Gavin said, feeling oddly defensive of the Nal Disi.

“Well, maybe not all. It’s probably not to blame for the war with Cyprindia, but it’s at the heart of everything else we’ve had to contend with.”

Perhaps that was true, but she didn’t have to come out and say so.

Gavin shrugged. “Could be.” He wasn’t learned like she was. He’d heard mention of a war with Cyprindia, and Edan had cautioned him that old scores hadn’t yet been settled. His curiosity was strong, but he had more important matters to address at the moment. He turned the Nal Disi in his hands, judging its weight. “It’s not as heavy as it looks, maybe five stones or so. What’s strange is that it felt heavier under water than it does now.”

“That is odd. Must be its magical influence. So what happens next?” Daia asked.

“I got to purify the wellspring by pulling the Guardians’ essence into the crystal. I don’t know how long it’ll take.”

The Guardians who’d once hovered over the wellspring now stood beside him, though their figures were still glassy. This close, he saw the finest detail of what used to be the smooth golden fur that covered their bodies. “That is correct, Emtor.”

They used the respectful form of address that the Elyle Bahn had used when Gavin had visited the midrealm. “You still look like Elyle,” he said.

“Though both our essences were transferred to this vessel and combined into one, it retains the memory of our living form.”

He saw the crystal’s threads connecting the ghostly images of the Guardians to the grayish essence within the gem, but he couldn’t discern any separation between them. “How did two separate essences get in here?”

“That is a long story, Emtor. We will tell you, but now is not the time. Our essence continues to spill onto the earth.”