Chapter 16
LYRA
One of the most basic tenets of my training was clearing the mind.
Ensuring it rested not on past failures, or successes.
Not on future possibilities or anything but the present since naught else mattered.
Allow the body to rely on training and instinct, remain focused on the mission, and the rest would follow.
It had been years since I had any problem following these tenets. There had been some difficult missions, of course, but I’d never had this much difficulty as a fully trained Shadow Diplomat remaining focused.
We were about to face at least two well-trained Gyorian guards who, if I didn’t perform the Sovaen Whisper correctly, could ruin the most important mission of my lifetime.
Voren vel’kora.
How could I possibly clear my mind with near-constant thoughts of our exchange, and those words I’d pretended not to understand ringing in my ears?
I’d panicked, not knowing how to respond, and feigned ignorance instead.
But since Shadow Diplomats were trained with knowledge before they ever began to learn advanced magic, even ancient Gyorian was familiar to me.
When the clans split, they’d each begun to form their own language.
But the Treaty of Vel’Thara marked a fragile peace and the beginning of Elydor’s Unification Era which lasted for many years.
With it, common Elydorian was encouraged, the clan’s separate languages relegated to text alone and, eventually, ceasing to exist altogether.
Learning them had been a part of my training.
Unsurprisingly, Terran never answered my question. He likely didn’t know why my life meant anything to him, or even why he’d uttered Voren vel’kora. We were both in unchartered territory, the lines between my mission goal and feelings for Terran blurring.
He was becoming more as Kael had described him than the stoic and ruthless Gyorian prince I’d come to know over the years. Kael insisted his brother was not simply their father’s puppet.
“Are you ready?”
I wasn’t.
My parents would be mortified.
“Nearly,” I said, closing my eyes and flexing my fingers once, then twice, a habit from early training. The pulse points at my wrists throbbed with a quiet, rhythmic energy. I pressed my thumbs there… pressure, breath, release. Repeat.
I closed my eyes. A single breath.
I let the echo of his voice – Voren vel’kora – fade. Not because it meant nothing, but because it meant too much.
I opened my eyes. He was watching me.
“Aye.”
Opening the door slowly, Terran peered out, looking right, then left. He pushed it open, and we both stepped into the corridor. I turned back to watch as he closed the door, set within the stonework, as its seam disappeared.
An incredible feat of architecture and concealment.
Beyond lay a narrow corridor carved from the same obsidian-hued stone as the inner palace walls.
The floor beneath our feet was smoother, less worn, and the air felt cooler, untouched by the bustle of the main halls.
Occasional torch brackets dotted the passage, though most sat unlit, casting deep shadows along the floor.
At the end of the corridor, we stopped. Terran pointed to the right, indicating the first guard lay just beyond that wall.
I nodded and stepped in front of him, blocking out his presence.
My target couldn’t see me first. If he did, there was little purpose in putting him to sleep.
Peering around the corner, I watched as he scanned back and forth, ensuring none entered the throne room.
We stood there for some time, Terran never uttering a word.
I expected him to become impatient, asking why I waited.
Instead, he trusted me to my skills.
Finally, the guard turned away from us. Without hesitating, I inched out as far as I dared and breathed in slowly, feeling the air around us, muttering, sova enai with a twist of my fingers.
Drawing intention from the elemental current around us, pairing it with the ancient Aetherian phrase more superstitious than practical, I held my breath, waiting.
The guard dropped to the floor.
We were clear.
I turned to my companion.
“You seem surprised,” I whispered.
“Hearing of it and seeing the Sovaen Whisper performed are two very different things. Come.”
Stepping out, he walked past the guard skeptically though I knew he would not wake for some time. Once inside the throne room, we moved quickly, through it and beyond a door at the back of the chamber. Another corridor, this one more well-used.
Terran pressed his finger to his lips. Passing door after door of mostly storage, according to Terran, we came to one last turn.
Beyond it would be the second guard. Inclined to agree with Terran that it was an exceedingly odd place to post a guard if something important were not within these walls, I followed his lead and peered around the corner.
This time, there was less space for the guard to move. He stood like a statue, not moving, staring straight ahead. I could perform the rite from where we stood but would have preferred to be a bit closer as he was quite a way down the corridor from us. But there was no help for it.
I looked at Terran, conveying my concern without words.
He understood, and did something extraordinary.
Terran smiled.
It wasn’t mocking, or jesting, or like any other of the smiles he’d given me thus far. This one was genuine and encouraging. The kind of smile a friend would give you.
Not one of an enemy.
As before, I cleared my mind and performed the rite, praying to Zephra it would work at this distance. But just as before, the guard slumped to the floor.
It wasn’t until we stepped over him—Terran grabbing a wall torch since he’d abandoned his other one in the throne room—and pushed in what looked exactly like a wall beyond where the guard stood, another entranceway revealed, that either of us spoke.
“Well done,” he said, holding the light to the side of us.
“Thank you.”
So many other words went unspoken as he turned and said, “The stone staircase is long and narrow. Watch where you step. I will do my best to light the way.”
He’d not been jesting.
We walked down, and down, and down, the air becoming cooler and damper, as we descended. If either of the guards woke… if any above were somehow alerted to our presence… there would be nowhere to escape. Terran and I would be well and properly caught.
“If we are somehow discovered, what will you say?” I asked, finally too curious not to know his plan.
I’d executed my part, and the rest depended on him.
Had I been foolish to lay my life at the feet of a Gyorian prince?
That there had been little choice didn’t make my racing heart slow, despite the methods I’d been taught to slow it in situations such as these.
Slow breath in, Lyra. Hold it, remind yourself there is no past, no future, and that at present, you are alive and breathing, and another slow breath out.
“That you forced my hand.”
I froze. Terran turned up to me, smiling once again.
“Or that I was gathering intelligence. Technically true.” He shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet.”
Humor. From Terran of Gyoria.
Fascinating.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, though had likely been just minutes, we arrived at the bottom. The stone-carved chamber was small, and bare, except for a single stone chest lying on a stone pillar.
“You Gyorians do love your stone.”
He huffed a quiet laugh. “It endures.”
The chest was carved from obsidian-veined granite, its surface etched with ancient runes that shimmered faintly in the torchlight, which he handed to me.
Without pause, Terran stepped forward and pressed his palm to the lid. With a low, grinding sound, the runes pulsed once… and then it opened.
I rushed forward and peered inside.