Stained Glass Monsters

Chapter Eight

"This is becoming intolerable."

As soon as she heard the deliberately raised voice of Lydia Norandar, Kendall snapped her book shut and sat up, straightening her stupid student smock. Just in time. The door was jerked open and three girls clattered in, all braids and exaggerated drama.

"Two hours," fumed Lydia to her companions, thrusting her books back on their shelf. Tall and golden, she’d be pretty but for a nose permanently elevated. "Two hours they keep us sitting around, and then sent back without a word of apology. My father will hear of this."

"Does he rank your education above the defence of the realm?" asked Helena Renton, a droopy blonde following the three into the dormitory they shared. "Surely it must have occurred to you that every competent mage in Tyrland has better things to do right now than prepare you for your Summoning."

Since Helena topped Lydia on the social scale that was Lydia’s be-all and end-all, the girl only tossed her head, then glared at the last student to enter the room.

"If they’re so keen on defence, they’re being very lax," she said, with deep meaning. "If they’re really hunting for supporters of the Black Queen, why are they ignoring the obvious?"

The obvious was the last of the students who shared the room, a tall girl with fine but colourless hair and daggers for nails. She didn’t react to the pointed comment, returning her books to their shelf and leaving the room without so much as glancing at the other occupants.

"Truly, she makes my blood run cold," said plump Elsa, Lydia’s chief crony. "Why are we forced to keep company with a creature like that, particularly when the Black Queen threatens us?"

"It shows a disregard for our safety," said Anaret, the second crony. "If you ask me, they should all be locked away, at least until this crisis is over. I mean, you never can be sure."

"Truly an excellent idea," Helena drawled, propping herself on the mound of pillows which had found their way to her bed. "With Tyrland suddenly plagued by the worst nightmares out of the Eferum, we should throw half the Sentene in prison. Because they’re spooky."

"Because the Kellian were created by Queen Solace," Lydia said sharply. "You can’t escape that. It doesn’t matter what they’ve done in the past, how they’ve served the Montjustes. They were made by Solace Montjuste-Surclere. She’s their creator, their god. Now that we know she’s alive, how can we trust them?"

Helena shrugged. "Well, if you think Sukata Illuma is going to attack you in your bed, feel free to go home. Somehow, I don’t think you’re her type."

"I may well do that." Lydia turned her displeasure abruptly toward Kendall. "First the peasant, and now cancelled lessons every day. What kind of–"

Kendall didn’t bother to stay for the rest. She’d heard more than enough about unlettered peasants being allowed into the Arkathan. Things had turned out much as she’d expected. Lady Weston had handed her over to the Head of the Arkathan, the school which was one of the three branches of the Houses of Magic, and had not been back. Kendall didn’t blame her: a stray potential mage was totally unimportant when people were being killed, and there was all this talk about conspiracies to bring back the Black Queen. Besides, Kendall had made her own choice to try magery, and didn’t want the Grand Magister treating Kendall as her business.

The problem was that the Arkathan was the wrong place to start. It was an advanced school, taking snotty nobles and the very cream of other young mages just when they were getting ready to summon their first focus, and grooming them for the Hand, or the Sentene, or to be scholars of the Art – or just too powerful for their own good. It didn’t matter whether Kendall had potential or not; she hadn’t passed any of the stages required to enter the Arkathan. She hadn’t been learning sigils along with her letters, and could barely sense power, let alone understand how to use it. The Head had given her a couple of books and told her to memorise them, found her a uniform and an empty bed, and left her to kick about on her own.

She didn’t fit with the people either, of course. Not all of them were as bad as Lydia, who talked with a built-in flounce, but plenty had made it clear that they didn’t like having a village girl shoved in unasked. Not just because she wasn’t rich or titled like many of them, but because she hadn’t earned the right to be there. Studying at the Arkathan was a privilege, a prize to be won or bought, while Kendall was some girl whose only qualification was that her home had been destroyed by the Grand Summoning. And when Kendall had chosen to feign ignorance of anything beyond that, she’d failed to even be a good source of gossip.

Like the Kellian girl, Kendall found it simplest to avoid the other students as much as possible. She shared a room with these five, only saw the rest at the dining hall, and concentrated on memorising ugly, crosswise sigils. With the dormitory no longer quiet, she took her book and headed to the only place she’d found to get any real privacy.

The Houses of Magic were set on a jutting section of Aliace Hill, within the circle of the palace but separate from it. Six buildings, three large and three lesser, stuck out around a thick central tower where the Grand Magister and the library were located. Each main building belonged to a different House, and the smaller ones held shared kitchens, stables and infirmary.

The infirmary was between the Arkathan and Sentene House, and outside that was a not very interesting garden which looked north-east to where the hill fell away. A stone balustrade guarded the drop, and Kendall had found that if you climbed over this there was a useful rock shelf a few feet down. It was sunny in the morning, and out of sight of annoying people. She slid down to it with a sense of relief, only to meet the startled eyes of a boy maybe a year older than herself.

"Guess I’m not the first person to notice this spot after all," the boy said.

Kendall hesitated. Thin, with very black hair and eyes, and wearing a loose set of pyjamas and a blanket, he looked worn and ill, slumping back against the rock as if he couldn’t sit up properly.

"Are you hurt? Do you want me to get someone to help you?"

"Fel, no. I’ve had enough of being peered at." He paused, glancing from her shapeless black and blue smock to her book. "Are you one of the students here?"

Something about the way he tilted his head brought recognition. "Do you – do you have an older sister?"

The boy’s face brightened, then his wary expression came back in force. "You’ve met Rennyn?"

"I don’t know what her name is, though I guess she must be the one everyone is saying is a Montjuste-Surclere, come back to fight the Black Queen. She came to Falk."

His eyes widened, then for some reason he went red. "Are you the shed girl?"

"My name’s Kendall," Kendall said, flatly. Shed girl indeed.

"Ah, um. I’m Sebastian. I guess you have met my sister, then." He shuffled his feet and glowered down at them, adding in a stifled voice: "I owe you an apology."

"You do?" Kendall couldn’t begin to guess why.

He nodded, then met her eyes. "I told Ren she shouldn’t have done it, you see. Saved you. We were supposed to keep everything we did a secret, we weren’t supposed to be noticed at all. But because Ren sent you away, the Sentene found out about us. And I’m – sorry I said that."

Kendall thought about being angry, but he looked so crumpled and unhappy that she decided it was no use yelling at someone who belonged in a sickbed. "Sounds like you should be telling her that, not me."

"I know. She must be furious with me. After saying that to her, what do I do but end up here. They knew Ren existed, yes, but–" He paused, and bit his lip. "Now it seems like everyone knows about us, and that’s my fault."

"How?" When he just chewed on his lip more, she added persuasively: "If it’s things everyone knows, it’s not going to hurt to tell me, is it?"

"Maybe not. I wish I’d had a chance to talk to her before she left, so I knew just what she’d said. What are people saying about us?"

"Well, I hadn’t heard anything about you," Kendall said. "Your sister apparently did something impressive in the middle of the Night Stalker invasion and saved the city. I’m not real clear on what. And she’s going to do what Prince Tiandel did, and stop the Grand Summoning just before it finishes. But she’s vanished, and no-one knows where she is."

"She’s supposed to come back today. Is all that really common gossip? I was hoping it at least wouldn’t go beyond the Sentene and the Hand."

"They had a debate about it in Council. Mainly about the Montjuste-Surclere right to the throne."

That won an incredulous stare. "How stupid."

"So, what was it you did? I’ve not heard you mentioned at all."

"Small mercies. I was – I followed Ren to where the incursion would be. She’s the one that has to take all the danger, you see, while I’m just supposed to keep myself safe and out of the way. I wanted to at least see what she had to face. So I went there and hid myself on a roof, made myself invisible. Then – well, you know that the incursion was huge beyond belief. The Eferum-Get went everywhere, and the Sentene were chasing them. A building near me caught on fire, and some people came out. There were no Sentene near, and they ran straight into some Irisian – they’re like poisonous scaled monkeys. I couldn’t just watch."

"But you got hurt?"

"I didn’t get the fourth one quickly enough. So now I’m stuck here, and Ren’s in more danger because it sounds like the entire Kingdom knows exactly what she’s doing."

"Wouldn’t she have helped against the monsters anyway? Even if you weren’t there?"

"Maybe. But me getting clawed by an Irisian left her with little choice about how to deal with the aftermath." He fidgeted restlessly, still slumped against the rocks. "You joined the Arkathan? Can I see what you’re studying?"

Kendall handed over her boring book, noting how much trouble he had keeping hold of it. He flipped through the pages clumsily, then shook his head. "You’ve no background, right? What have they given you except this dictionary?"

"There’s another one, but it’s just more of these squiggles."

"What exercises have they given you?"

"Exercises? I’ve got to memorise all that first. I get tested on how well I know the sigils, and then they start to tell me how to make them work."

"You’re reading a Sigillic dictionary? End to end? No exercises at all?"

"Don’t I need to know the sigils to cast?" Kendall asked warily. "Like knowing the alphabet before I can write?"

"Since sigils are words, not letters, you’d only need to know the words that you’re going to use, not the entire book. This doesn’t even explain how sigils are structured. And you don’t use words for Thought magic – that’s the entire point. It’s just raw will and power. Try moving that pebble."

"What? But–"

"Did they really just give you that book and tell you to teach yourself how to be a mage? What a stupid school this must be. Look – you can sense casting, right?"

"I can smell it."

"Do you ever feel anything when that happens?"

"My nose itches."

"So, look at that pebble. And concentrate on the smell. That’s a bit like, um, if you’re baking bread. When you’re cooking, you can smell it. But the bread, the dough, smelled like something before that, just not as strong. So try and imagine what it smelled like before."

Uncooked thunderstorm? Kendall shook her head helplessly. "That doesn’t make sense to me."

"Efera’s everywhere, all around us, leaking into this world from the Eferum. Mages just happen to be able to tell that it’s there, know when it’s being worked. And have a kind of muscle that allows them to do things with it. So all the time you’re smelling raw Efera, and you’re only noticing it properly when someone does something to it." Sebastian lifted a hand and a fist-sized rock rose from the hillside. "Do you feel the change?"

"Maybe," Kendall said, doubtfully. She hadn’t even known you could cast without using sigils.

"Making the link between sensing power and actually doing anything with it is the biggest and maybe the hardest step. When you start casting Sigillic, you’ll push the power into the path charted by the sigils. Thought magic is more basic: there’s a rock and you want it to move. You know it’s surrounded by Efera, so you push the Efera at the rock, wanting it to move."

"But – push it with what?"

He grinned, and flipped her book open again. "That’s the hard bit. You know that there’s Efera here. You know that you’ve got a muscle that can work it, a muscle that you can use by wanting. So move the pebble."

"You’re not a very good teacher."

"And you didn’t even try." He turned his head toward the rock still hovering in the air and this time Kendall knew a moment beforehand as the stone broke into dozens of little pieces. "Thought magic exercises. Both for precision for when you need to Thought cast, and for strength that you’ll eventually be able to push into Sigillic casting. Sigillic casting is for complex, more permanent things, but don’t neglect Thought." He turned a page, not even watching the stones spiralling above his head.

"And a show-off," Kendall muttered, but glowered obediently at the pebble, trying to picture herself surrounded by mysterious forces which she could reach out with an invisible arm and poke. Nothing happened, of course, and she began to suspect he’d been playing games with her.

"So why the shed?" he asked, after she’d been glaring at the pebble a while.

"What?"

"Why were you living in a shed?" He flushed at her expression, but continued: "We’ve lived in a few places, and the hardest thing was getting people to leave us alone. Always expecting us to help out with something, or trying to arrange things for us, and gossiping endlessly. I can’t imagine getting away with living in a shed. The Holier-than-the-Dawnbringer types would have kicked up the hugest fuss."

"Trying to take you over," she said, understanding. "I lived there because it was mine. When Gran’s house burned down, a lot of them wanted to take me in. Some of them wouldn’t have been so bad, but it wouldn’t be mine, not a place I belonged. And they would have thought it gave them the right to tell me what to do."

"Don’t people do that anyway?"

"I suppose." Kendall sighed. "I bet no-one tells your sister what to do."

Sebastian laughed. "All the time. But she doesn’t often listen."

"I’d like that kind of power. To be able to do what I want, not what other people want me to."

He looked at her, then slowly closed the book and handed it back to her. "She does that sometimes, I guess."

The rock shelf had moved into the shade, and no longer felt so comfortable. Kendall frowned, fingering the worn cover of the book. "Is there really a conspiracy to kill you?"

"A conspiracy?" The glance he gave her was wary. "I don’t know. Queen Solace is definitely returning, and I’m sure she doesn’t want us to stop her. And someone did kill our great-grandfather, so we have to assume that there’s someone willing to help her, and avoid giving them the chance."

"Do you think you’re safe here?"

"No. Yes and no. There’s an awful lot of people who pass through these buildings. The Sentene guard the door to the infirmary, but – can they really be sure of everyone? I’ve been testing my food for poison."

"You don’t believe what they say about the Kellian, then? That because the Kellian were created by the Black Queen, they consider her their god, and are secretly loyal to her?"

Sebastian ran a hand through his tangled hair, shifting uncomfortably. "We thought of it, of course," he said, after a moment. "It would be stupid not to at least consider the question of their loyalties, and it’s one of the reasons we were planning to avoid the Sentene. But – a Kellian killed the Irisian that was attacking me. And they’ve had plenty of chances to kill me since. My father used to say that the Kellian are the last people who would want the Black Queen to return."

"Really? Why?"

"Why would the children of slaves want the slave-master to return?" asked a light voice, and Kendall looked up to see Sebastian’s sister leaning on the balustrade gazing down at them. Worse still, she was flanked by two tall figures in the black uniform of Sentene.

"Ren!" Sebastian, face alight, floated abruptly upward. "Are you all right?"

"Better than you’ll be if I find you’ve been levitating yourself out of any more windows."

"You wouldn’t have stood a single day of it, Ren. Being gawked at like a bear in a menagerie."

"I’m sure. But still, you won’t recover properly unless you work your body against the effects of the poison. You can use a cane, but not magic, in any further escape attempts."

Sebastian ducked his head, then looked sideways at his sister’s escort. Not wholly oblivious after all. Hauling herself over the balcony less showily, Kendall hoped the climb would excuse her burning face. She was glad to see one of the Sentene was Lieutenant Danress, but the other was Captain Faille.

"Hello again," said Rennyn, smiling at Kendall. "I was wondering where you’d ended up." To Kendall’s dismay she then turned to the silent figure on her left. "And do the Kellian regard Queen Solace as a god, Captain? That’s not a theory I’ve heard before."

With half his face hidden by the uniform, and the midday sun transforming his eyes to gold disks, Kendall couldn’t decipher any kind of reaction in the grim Captain. "The Kellian were created without voices," he said, just when Kendall had decided he wasn’t going to respond. "Their purpose was to be tools in the hands of their Master, no more. A hammer does not worship the smith."

Rennyn Montjuste-Surclere stared up at him, then inclined her head, as if he’d done her a courtesy. "And it is the Phoenix who wields you now. Well enough." She turned back to her brother. "I brought you clothes and a fresh journal, Seb. Given the library here, I think you’ll be well supplied with study material. Now, can you walk if I help you?"

Balancing with help of the balustrade, Sebastian made a doubtful movement and began to teeter, recovering with another surge of magic. His sister gave a gesture of permission, and he steadied and began floating again. The little group headed off, Sebastian glancing back and waving at Kendall when his sister did.

Kendall watched them go, then bent to pick up a pebble.