Chapter Seven Faith of Selûne #3
“I’ll show you the whole game when we have time and a board,” Jubilee promised.
Saeldian used to encourage him to use his talents when they were partners. It had always felt good to be treated like an expert. Saeldian knew the moves, but Jubilee Righthoof was a lanceboard master.
“I’ve got it.” They turned back to Jubilee. “Sel?ne isn’t on the board, and she’s not on the side with the captured pieces. Neither is her priest. Or…Shar’s knight-errant?”
“Cyric’s,” Jubilee said. “Do you want to guess where they ought to be on the board?”
“You’re determined to teach me this game,” Saeldian grumbled. “Faith of Sel?ne, is it? And we need three pieces on the board in a certain place, and then we move them to finish the game?”
“That’s what those footmen set, I’m sure.”
“Right. Since you called the game Faith of Sel?ne, white wins, even if Shar and her Mother Superior are on this side of the board ready to catch Lathander—”
“Cyric’s knight-errant is in its original place,” Kell interrupted.
“Sel?ne is at Cyric’s priest’s six; her priest is at Shar’s six.
It’s black’s move.” Two sets of disapproving stares.
But Kell didn’t care. “How long until the guards come back? Teach lanceboard later. Who can jump from here to Cyric’s knight’s eight?
Since we’re on the wrong side of the board. ”
Saeldian pointed at the diagram. “That one off to the side. Where Sel?ne would sit once she was taken off the board.”
“Do you want to—”
Saeldian had already stepped out onto the floor. Kell held his breath, but nothing. They leapt over the pressure-plated square with a little jeté, then hopped to Sel?ne’s place on the board.
Nothing happened. But the footmen had jumped together…
Beside him, Lorzok said, “Knight.”
Two puffs of silvery mist settled gently to the ground as Lorzok and Jubilee took their places.
Saeldian waved from their place on the board, and Lorzok waved back. “Black to move? Black knight-errant takes Sel?ne.”
They both leapt—Saeldian to the space where the captured queen would rest; Lorzok landing neatly in the space Saeldian surrendered.
Jubilee smiled at Lorzok in thanks. “Sel?ne’s priest to Cyric’s seven. Checkmate.”
She stepped onto the plate, and the air went a bit slack. The music wafted more clearly into the loft. And further into the gallery, twenty tiny lights flared against the walls and went dark.
“That’s the key trap handled,” Jubilee said. “What do you think they’ve done to the display?”
Saeldian carefully hopped over a square that probably had a pressurized plate. “This is a labyrinth, isn’t it? But does it take avoiding the plates or stepping on them?”
Jubilee took out a folded scrap of paper and a costly pencil that had been used down to a stub and sketched it.
She frowned at it. “Pressure plates surrounding each of the pedestals. But a thief who didn’t know that activating the lanceboard trap was the key would avoid the pressure plates…
if they had managed to case the gallery well enough to know where they were… ”
This was taking too long. “We’re down five minutes by now. Avoid the plates,” Kell said. “It’s obvious.”
“Six minutes,” Saeldian said. “But what if—”
Kell had already moved, ignoring the rich gold-leaf frames resting on deep brown walls to step on a walnut square that hadn’t been marked on Jubilee’s sketch, just as Lorzok put his hands up to cover his peripheral vision and mutter a word, then gasp, “Don’t!”
Just as something under Kell’s feet clicked. In the recesses between the fancy chair rail and the carved oak panels, small blue lights glowed and then dimmed as if they had all blinked simultaneously. Saeldian stage-whispered, “Get down!”
Kell pushed away his annoyance at being ordered around by Saeldian and accepted the wisdom of their command.
He curled to keep himself from touching another pressure-activated plate. Above him, the blue lights blinked again and then dimmed.
“I believe I may have acted unwisely,” Kell said.
Jubilee snorted. Saeldian cut their finger across their lips. Shut it, that annoyed gesture said. They turned to Lorzok. “What do you see?”
“Divination spells. A dozen on each wall, exactly across from each other. And near the ceiling—”
“Transmutation spells,” Saeldian said. “Don’t move, Kell.”
“Not planning on it.”
“Good boy.”
Ass. Kell kept his mouth shut because it wasn’t worth it.
“He’s pressed on the plate, and those divination spells on the chair rail, exactly opposite each other, activated,” Jubilee said.
“So the system is half armed?” Lorzok asked.
“I can’t see the spells near the roof, but I’m assuming they’re ready,” Kell said.
“Shh.” Jubilee cut the noise with a sharp chopping hand. “Tripped the plate, activated the divination spells…are they looking at each other, do you think?”
“I don’t know if they’re looking, exactly, but I was thinking something like that,” Lorzok said. “And if one spell ‘eye’ can’t see the other one, it will set off an alarm, or perhaps the spells next to the ceiling.”
Kell stopped himself from raising his hand. “I have a guess.”
Their silence waited for him to continue.
“I think those transmutation spells are going to spew some kind of gas, or fire arrows,” Kell said. “Something that will stop thieves without hurting the art.”
“Gas would be conjuration or evocation. I think it’s arrows. Why not? I could complain that arrows are a cliché, but we don’t need this to be more complicated,” Saeldian huffed. “I shouldn’t have dropped that illusion. Of all the foolish, short-sighted, hapless things to do—”
Uh oh. “Don’t be like that, Sheld. You couldn’t have—”
Lorzok got there first, laying one hand on Saeldian’s fashionably bared shoulder. “You couldn’t have known you would still need it.”
“I should have prepared for the possibility.”
Saeldian would tear themself apart over this mistake anyone could have made, and Kell’s mistake was way worse than dropping a spell that probably wasn’t needed.
Kell had to stop this. “Hey. I’m the one who screwed up.
You have to get me out of this mess I put us in.
What did you want to use your illusion spell for? ”
“If I put mirrors in front of the eyes—”
“They will keep seeing what they expect,” Kell said. “You always were the best.”
Saeldian brightened at the praise before remembering to scowl.
“Could you use a cantrip?” Jubilee said.
“Lorzok’s too big for it,” Saeldian said. “But also, moving the cantrip to cover us might mess up the angle and trip whatever the divination spells do if they can’t ‘see’ each other, and then we’re pincushions.”
“I trust your judgment,” Lorzok said.
Saeldian grabbed another pinch of wool. They closed their eyes and unfurled their hands in a bit of showiness.
A moment later, a thin floating mirror appeared, hovering just in front of the eye spells.
Saeldian held up one hand to ask for a moment and then relaxed.
“I was worried I’d set them at the wrong angle. ”
“Can I get up?”
“How will I know if it worked if you don’t?”
“Great.”
Saeldian beckoned. “It’s fine. It would have triggered the trap by now.”
They had a point, but Kell watched Saeldian tense as he stood up. Nothing happened. Jubilee and Lorzok both sighed.
“There we go,” Saeldian said. “We’re down seven minutes. Nothing else can go wrong. I don’t have any major spells left.”
They picked out a path on the ordinary squares, coming closer to the Kiss of Enduring Love. “We don’t have much time. Tell me why this fabulously valuable spell gem isn’t in a glass case.”
Kell wasn’t Saeldian’s junior partner anymore. He didn’t need managing! “Because it wouldn’t catch the light nearly as well if there were a layer of glass in the way, even if the light was inside the case.”
“So is it just hanging there, unprotected?”
“Absolutely not,” Kell said. “Let’s take a closer look.”
Neither of them took the chance to test if the squares with pressure plates were deactivated.
They swerved and sidestepped until Kell and Saeldian stood before the pillar holding the gem.
Kell peered at it, looking for more traps.
No odd gaps in the plinth. Those carved dots could hide poisoned needles?
Expel a gas? Kell moved closer. A single facet flared brilliantly as a star, catching Kell’s attention.
What color was this gem? How could it be the same color of a sweetheart rose and also the lush green of its stem and leaves?
How could it also look like the silvery beads of dew resting on velvety petals?
It wasn’t any one of those things, or a swirl of those things, or one after the other in a blur; it was…
“Down eight minutes. Focus.”
Kell had no name for it. Kell could write a hundred songs and never capture it. It reminded him of a hedge of blooming moonrose in the soft cool dawn, of mist on spiderwebs, of singing from just over there, bare feet wet with dew. How could it smell like moonrose?
Don’t, something in his mind whispered, just as Saeldian said, “Kell, stop.”
He heard stop at the same instant he touched the Kiss of Enduring Love, and then the room went strange and distant.
He was across the room from himself. He was out there, as if Kell were dreaming of being someone else, and the Kell that he could see held the Kiss in his hand and stared into its depths—so pretty, but the light shining on it looked different now.
It flared bright in thin lines over its facets, and the lines were brilliant and strong where they met, like a fishing net or a spider’s web.
The Kell he could see smiled at Saeldian. He moved closer. He offered the gem to them.
Kell tried to rush to them, but he bumped into something, as if he were looking through a window. “Don’t touch it!”
No one could hear him. No one could see him. The Kell he could see took Saeldian’s hand, smiling. He raised the stone to drop in theirs—
“No!”
No sound. The Kell he could see smiled as he clasped the gem in Saeldian’s hand. Saeldian flinched.
Then Saeldian smiled.
“Shit!”