Stained Glass Monsters (3 page)

"Any result, M'Lady?" asked the female
Sentene.

"There's no sign of an origin point in
the near area." The older woman rose stiffly. "Nor does this show
any sign of waning."

"Not what you expected?"

"Far from it. The White Ladies are rare,
but a known phenomenon, occurring only once or twice a century.
They invariably vanish within a day or two of their manifestation.
Nowhere in my records is there an instance of one persisting so
long, or producing an Efera expansion. This is something new. It is
–" She paused. "It may be very serious. I will attempt another
divination shortly."

Turning, she noticed Kendall. "What is
this?"

"The missing resident of that shed.
Captain Faille wanted to interview her."

"Oh?" There was tolerant amusement in
the word. "This is your great disbelief in coincidence at work
again, Faille?"

"It is too convenient," the male Sentene
said, leaving his corner. "You were in the next town?"

Kendall was disappointed. This was all
they wanted with her? "It was just a delivery, a note," she
explained. "The Hosteller will vouch for me."

"I don't doubt that." He was a tall man,
and she saw that his hair was a bleached grey, though his face –
the top half of it at least – didn't look so very old. His eyes
were faded grey too, and uncomfortably direct. "Who sent you?"

"One of the gawkers come to see the
White Lady. It was just some silly woman sending word to her
boyfriend," Kendall explained. "Father didn't approve, that kind of
thing. Nothing strange."

"She couldn't use the post?" the female
Sentene asked, taking a sceptical interest.

"It was urgent." Kendall tried to
picture the woman being involved in some kind of plot. "Supposed to
meet him that night, but her father was dragging her off to Sark
instead. Easiest sennith I've ever made, and she paid for the
night's lodging." Which was...convenient? That woman had saved her
life, whether or not she'd meant to.

"Did she speak of the White Lady at
all?"

"No. Asked me what the weather was like,
when the White Lady first arrived, but didn't seem to care much.
Called her 'this apparition', if that helps."

"The weather?" The older woman leaned
forward, studying Kendall narrowly. "And what was the weather like,
when she arrived? You would have been close."

"Exactly like it is today," Kendall
said. "Sunny and cloudless."

"And what did it smell like?"

Perplexed by this interest in minor
details, Kendall shrugged. "It did smell like it was going to
storm, but nothing came of it."

"Ha." The woman smiled with strange
approval at the one called Captain Faille. "Your instinct, as ever.
I suppose, girl, that it smells like it's going to storm now, as
well?"

"A bit, I guess." Kendall sniffed. "It's
not the same."

"It wouldn't be. And did it smell like
it was going to storm when you were speaking to this woman?"

"...yes."

"Ha."

"What did the note say?" Captain Faille
asked.

Kendall, about to deny reading it,
faltered under the man's steady gaze. She had, of course. It hadn't
been sealed.

"It was addressed to Joshua Goodwin,"
she said slowly. "'I'm sorry. Papa insists we go directly to Sark.
He suspects, I am sure. I have not changed my mind. Please – come
for me.'" If there was some hidden meaning in that, Kendall
couldn't guess it.

"Send Ricaden to see if anyone collected
it," Captain Faille told the other Sentene.

"And bring it back," added the older
woman. "We may be able to use it as a trace."

"Describe her," Captain Faille
commanded.

More interested in why the weather was
so important, Kendall thought back to that brief encounter. "She
was, um, about as tall as this lady here," she said, indicating the
older woman. Higher than average. "Her hair was black, and long,
mostly straight, with just a bit of a curl at the very end. Worn
loose at the back, but the sides were caught up. She was over
twenty, I guess, but not thirty yet. Dark eyes, slim, pretty but
not really beautiful. Sounded like she came from the north, not
Sark. She wore a hat with a couple of black ribbons trailing off
the back. Good clothes, not cheap but not showy. Fitted jacket,
split skirt with riding breeches beneath. Old boots, nice ones. No
jewellery. Clean hands."

"Well observed," said the lady, sounding
approving. "I needn't ask if you would recognise her again."

Kendall nodded, then asked cautiously:
"Why does it matter if it was going to storm?"

"It mattered because that scent, scents
like lightning, or dust driven by oncoming rain, that is given off
by raw Efera, by unshaped power or loosely worked magic. This
person was a mage, and she had just been casting. I imagine you
looked at the sky, reacted to the scent. She saw that, and asked if
you had smelled anything when the White Lady arrived."

"You can smell magic?" Kendall asked,
astonished.

"
You
can smell magic," the lady
replied, with gentle emphasis, then turned away as the other
Sentene returned. "Lieutenant, this girl needs some basic
instruction in magecraft. We will take her with us."

"Yes, M'Lady," said the Sentene, as if
this was the most natural thing in the world. "Are we to leave
soon?"

"That will depend on the result of my
next divination," the woman replied. "I fear we may have little
choice on the matter."

The Lieutenant bowed, then came sit
beside Kendall.

"So what's your name?" she asked,
unfastening the collar of her coat so that it flopped down. She had
a round face, spattered with orange freckles to match her
tightly-braided hair. Not scary at all.

"Kendall Stockton."

"I'm Jolien Danress. That's the Grand
Magister, Lady Weston, who has charge of the Sentene. And my
Captain, Illidian Faille."

Kendall supposed her eyes had gone very
round. The Grand Magister, here in Falk. It hardly seemed possible.
She stared at the woman settling back onto the floor of Micajah's
taproom.
"Why–?" She paused, wondering what to say.

"Why are we here, or why are we taking
you with us?" The corners of Lieutenant Danress' light blue eyes
crinkled with sympathy. "You because you're our only link to a
woman we've reason to trace. You're the only one who can positively
identify her. And, well, you're a homeless orphan able to sense
magic, and Lady Weston would no more leave a potential mage
undeveloped than pass up a chance to investigate interesting
magical phenomena, which is the reason we came here. We weren't
expecting this morning's drama." She frowned, then shrugged. "It
could still come to nothing."

"I'm a mage?"

"You could become one. Not such a bad
thing to be. I've always liked it, anyway, and I would have killed
to have Lady Weston taking an interest in me when I started
out."

Taking her over. Kendall stared from
Lieutenant Danress' face to the woman kneeling on the floor. Taking
her over, just like Ma Lippon had been itching to do for years. And
a damn sight harder to escape from.

Could she say no, and leave? And did she
want to? Magister Kendall Stockton. That sounded strange, unlikely.
But it meant money, the one thing that had been so central since
the fire had taken Gran away. Mages were important, even shoddy
ones, so long as they could manage a shield circle. Every
farmhouse, every village and town, they all needed circles to keep
Night Roamers like Life Stealers out. If she could just learn to do
that, she'd be set.

Anyway, she needed somewhere to go, now
that the shed had been destroyed. She'd probably get to see the
capital. And Lady Weston was surely a busy person, who'd get caught
up in other matters once this thing with the mystery woman was
cleared up. Nor could she make Kendall stay, or try to hold some
kind of debt over her. Kendall was the one who decided what
happened to Kendall. No-one else.

She'd just settled this to her
satisfaction when she noticed that Lady Weston had opened her eyes
again. Her mouth, usually full and generous, was set in a thin
line.

"Faille," she said, her voice lacking
any note of humour. "Send to Sark for troops. We need to evacuate
this village."

Even the grim Captain straightened in
surprise at that. "M'Lady–?"

"It's worse than I thought. Unless I'm
sorely mistaken, some fool is trying to repeat the madness of Queen
Solace."

"What?" Lieutenant Danress shot to her
feet, face incredulous. "The Black Queen's Summoning? It's not
possible."

"So we thought." Lady Weston brushed
dust from the skirts of her dress. "All the same, I cannot see any
other explanation. The apparition out there is the first expression
of a Grand Summoning, and this village will shortly be
destroyed."

Rennyn found Sebastian sleeping on the
window-seat in the Map Room. There were black circles under his
eyes, ink smudges on face and fingers, and his hair stood out in
spikes where he'd pulled on it. She touched his forehead, which was
damp but not feverish, then stroked his cheek gently.

"You didn't have to do them all," she
murmured. He'd make himself sick, if she didn't watch him. "You're
just like I was, little brother. And Father not here to teach you
when to stop to take a breath." She'd been Seb's only family for
five years now, and found it hard to be glad he was as consumed by
their task as she'd ever been.

Turning to the map of Tyrland, she
studied the scattering of thumbtacks Seb had added, each carefully
numbered and bound to the spindle which marked Falk by a long
strand of black hair. Most of them were close to the capital, as
expected, but she had to shake her head at the location of the tack
painted with a minute white '1'.

"Almost all the way back along the road
just travelled," she murmured. "I think I'll take a carriage this
time." She'd more than enough chafing from the first trip.

Seb had chalked rows of sigils on the
wall, the core structure of the spell they'd been training all
their life to cast, unchanged since their Great Grandmother had
devised it. Rennyn reviewed the transcription for accuracy, then
left to wander about Little Mutching cancelling milk and meat
deliveries, selling her horse, arranging for a carriage and a cart,
for boxes, for people to lift them. She stopped for spiced tea at
Miss Cavendish's shop and made sure the biggest gossips in the town
heard all about how the two they knew as Taren and Severian Justane
were off to stay with their Aunt Letitia in Braidford.

Only then did she return to check the
map location calculations, which took her well into the afternoon.
At least it was easier to confirm the math than it was to work it
out in the first place. Seb woke while she was carefully dabbing
every tack with a drop of her blood, and drawing her finger along
each taut hair. She worked in reverse order, finishing with the
spindle, then looked at her gloomily silent brother across the wide
expanse of the map.

"Ready?"

He pulled a face. "As I'll ever be."

Rennyn smiled, and stood still as he
pricked his own finger and pressed it between her brows. She didn't
watch the sigils light with power, but instead closed her eyes and
thought of a white-haired woman lying in grass. A beautiful
face.

Around her the air grew heavy, and she
lifted her eyelids enough to watch each thumbtack sink heavily into
the map. The spindle followed suit, descending with a crushing
weight improbable for such a small object, until the model of
Tyrland buckled and cracked all around it.

One of the tacks competing for space in
Asentyr began to glow, the light spreading through the fine black
web to each of the surrounding points. In response, Rennyn's hair
gently lifted away from her head, each strand surrounded by a
blue-white nimbus. The ground seemed far away and uncertain, and
she had to steady herself with the table edge and concentrate on
breathing, proud of Seb because he was not looking at her, was
glowering at the wall with a fixity of purpose, with the
determination he needed to finish the casting cleanly.

Then it was over, the thumbtacks just
bits of metal with a few melted wisps attached, the weight gone.
The spindle had been driven so deeply into the map and the table
beneath that only its tip remained visible. Seb dropped to the
ground beside her, panting and white.

"Well done."

"Was it?" His eyes were dark. "Why was
it leaking on to you?"

"I think that might be inevitable. To be
a conduit for this thing, and expect no physical side-effect, is
asking too much."

"But this is it in small scale, Ren.
What happens to you when the whole weight of the Grand Summoning is
behind it?"

Rennyn stood looking down at him, then
reached out to haul him to his feet. "When that happens,
side-effects will probably be the least of my worries." She
switched determinedly to practicalities. It was so much simpler to
just do the things they had to do. "Can you feel any residue?"

"N-no."

"Good. That's two steps taken. Let's go
have something to eat and get started. We've a lot of packing to
do. I've booked us on the mail carriage in the morning, and we need
the luggage for the cart ready before then. Worry about that
now."

-oOo-

Falk was home to one hundred and
thirty-seven people, too many fowl, dogs, goats, five horses,
several cows and somewhere in the order of fifty dozen cats. A
troop of militia from Sark had been given charge of removing
everything that could possibly be moved and transporting it to
neighbouring villages, or back to Sark. And that was only the
beginning, for Lady Weston had spoken of evacuating other
villages.

A lot of people simply didn't believe.
Even the Troop Captain didn't act like he really believed it,
though that hadn't stopped him from emptying Falk in less than a
day. Only a few had resisted, most not willing to say boo to the
Queen's troops. Some had refused to go further than the cordon
which had been set up well beyond Falk's circle, even though the
sun was setting and they'd be unprotected from Night Roamers. In
such numbers they'd probably not be at risk unless they slept, but
the ban against being outside a circle after dark was so strong
that even the presence of two Sentene and the Grand Magister
couldn't stop Kendall from watching the slowly bleaching horizon as
much as the silent village.