CHAPTER 40 – Her Necessary Intervention

Saphienne had no doubt: she was in trouble.

She sat – now pretending to meditate – in the parlour with the two senior apprentices, thinking through the ramifications of what was unfolding. Almon had been instructed by the Luminary Vale to investigate the clearing where she had freed the apostate spirit. Assuming that the spirits of the woodland had not lied, then one of the High Masters of the Luminary Vale already knew exactly what had happened — including the names of Saphienne and everyone else involved.

Why send Almon? Either the intent was to have Almon discover what his apprentices had been up to, or to confirm that the account delivered by the woodland spirits was authentic. The latter seemed more likely: it would be simpler to tell Almon what his apprentices had done, were that the desired outcome.

The key question was how much Almon already knew. Rydel and Taerelle had no idea where to find the clearing, and had been searching for it throughout the night. They had been told it was veiled by an old and powerful Fascination spell, obscured for at least a millennium. Either Almon hadn’t shared what was inside, or he didn’t know himself… but if Saphienne was right about the circle of salt around the building, he had warded against spirits intruding on the search.

She tried not to show her frown. Protecting against the spirits of the woodland implied that Almon had reason to believe they might either observe or interfere with what he and his students were doing, which suggested he knew the clearing was the work of spirits, and that he or the Luminary Vale had reason to distrust them.

Her conjecture came together: if this was about confirming what the spirits had told the Luminary Vale, Almon would have been given only the information he needed to conduct his investigation. The more he knew, the more his findings would be prejudiced.

Saphienne’s thoughts then strayed to what would follow if he found out about her involvement — or that of Celaena and Iolas. She couldn’t see any scenario in which their master wouldn’t dismiss her and Iolas from apprenticeship… perhaps finding pretext to retain Celaena, on account of who her father was. Even if Almon believed that Saphienne and Celaena had both been manipulated by a spirit, the wizard disliked Saphienne, and Iolas had demonstrated poor judgement in not going directly to him. And as for poor Faylar? His involvement would confirm Almon was right not to teach him.

Her only option was to make sure that–

That was when Saphienne realised she was in two different kinds of trouble.

If she prevented Almon from finding out anything about what had happened, then she would be frustrating whoever had commanded him from the Luminary Vale. She had no idea how they might react to his failure… or what that would mean for her future as his apprentice. And if they responded by sharing the details with Almon? She would have no future in wizardry at all.

But she was assuming she could do something, and that she wouldn’t be caught. As she studied the two apprentices in black robes through her barely-open eyes, Saphienne had the sinking feeling that she was completely out of her depth. She couldn’t cast even the simplest spell, lacked any substantial insight into magic… and she was alone against three highly capable scholars with honed and inquisitive minds. All she had over them was that they didn’t know her involvement, and the chance that they would maybe underestimate her.

Doing nothing was no option. No wizard worth their robes would let a magical mystery lie unexplained — and from what she could tell, both Almon and Taerelle were heavily invested in maintaining their reputations with the Luminary Vale. Whether now or later on, they would find and pull at a loose thread, and unravel the whole nightmare.

She had to act, without being seen to act. Much like Hyacinth had–

Her breath caught.

Hyacinth could help! She would have to help: Saphienne could demand any one service from the spirit. All Saphienne had to do was learn as much as she could about the investigation, and find a way to warn Hyacinth before it progressed to the clearing. Together, they could find a way to keep Saphienne and her friends safe.

Her plan was clear: learn whatever she could, buy as much time as possible for Hyacinth to intervene, warn the spirit, and avoid outing herself in the process.

…Assuming Hyacinth could do something…

There was only one way to find out.

 

* * *

 

Her first step was to sit, watch, and listen.

Rydel was sat on the floor near the window, methodically searching through his maps with obvious frustration. After several minutes she realised that he was referencing them against a large sheet of paper laid out underneath, and when he brushed them aside to lift it she saw that it was another, more abstract map, covered in scribbled shorthand that was thick with questions. He produced a small stick of charcoal from his robes, adding to his notes with the sharpened point.

Taerelle, meanwhile, appeared to be doing very little. She rested in the high-backed chair of their master, metal bowl laid on her lap and necklace in her hand, holding the necklace over the bowl so that the quartz pendant hung, swaying, above it. There was no spell at work that Saphienne could discern, but Taerelle’s eyes were closed and her lips were moving, suggestive of magic in progress.

Returning her attention to Rydel, Saphienne tried to read his scrawl. Although she had the benefit of elven eyesight, seeing what was written from across the room while her eyes were mostly closed was challenging–

“You can watch us,” Rydel said, his gaze not leaving his work. “Just don’t interrupt.”

Saphienne blushed, and flashed a guilty smile; he would never know how sincerely she meant the nod of thanks she gave him.

Unfortunately, his writing was mystifying. Half of it was comprised of symbols she had never seen before and had no idea how to decipher, while the rest was in abbreviations meant only to be understood by their author. Judging by the positions of his annotations, she guessed he was inferring where he and Taerelle might want to search, perhaps eliminating locations that were incompatible with the clearing they were seeking. She felt far from confident she was right.

Taerelle moved the necklace away from the bowl and sighed. “This is pointless. I’ve gone over those resonances five times now: there’s nothing I can sense that we haven’t accounted for.”

“There must be,” Rydel murmured. “The only possibility is that it’s masked by another resonance. If it’s been here as long as our master says, that means there must be a sympathetic connection between it and the surrounding area, which we know has to be an area of magical confluence, which in turns means that the masking resonance–”

“I know!” She flicked her braid in irritation, then began winding it up between her fingers. “But every single candidate you’ve found is clean. No magnification, no distortion, nothing remarkable at all.”

He put down the paper and faced her. “Fine. That means I’ve missed something. Want to check my work again?”

“No,” she sighed again. “Wherever it’s hiding, we’ve both missed it.”

“Then, what do you want to do? We have maybe thirty minutes before our master is ready.” He rubbed his face, coughed into his hand. “I think our method is sound, but it hasn’t worked, so whichever wizard veiled the damn thing must have prepared for our approach. Countermeasures?”

“Intriguing thought.” She dropped her braid, set the bowl aside, and folded her arms as she hunched forward. “How would you stop us? No — how would a master of Fascination stop us?”

“…Well, we’ve already factored in the latent dissuasion of the fascination, and so we’ve been over all the key places that seemed impossible.” He mirrored her posture, hunching forward as he concentrated. “Let’s assume we got that right.”

“The alternative,” Taerelle proposed, “is that there’s another fascination at work…” She looked up, eyebrow raised. “…Maybe attracting us to examine decoy locations, or to consider avenues of investigation that are fruitless?”

They mulled it over.

“…Then, we’d be fucked.” Rydel shook his head. “A triggered fascination of that sophistication would be beyond the Third Degree — maybe even the Fourth Degree. And who would have the presence of mind to set an entirely separate fascination, contingent on your divinations, just in case someone came at it this way?”

“We may be fucked,” Taerelle admitted, “so there’s no point dwelling on what we’re powerless to change. Assuming our method hasn’t been deliberately countered, and that we’ve not made a mistake implementing it, we’re left with the fact it doesn’t work — which means it’s flawed by premise. We’ve made an assumption somewhere, and the oversight–”

“Back to basics.” Rydel stood, stretched, and moved to lean by the window, silhouetted in the morning light. “What do we know?”

“We’re looking for a clearing, contents unknown, veiled by a powerful Fascination spell, put in place by an unidentified wizard or sorcerer.” She sat back and closed her eyes as she spoke. “Logically, to produce a fascination of such potency and resilience, the wizard or sorcerer must have attained at least the Third Degree. They were active over a thousand years ago, may still be active today, and we can infer they had some proficiency in Invocation from our master’s ward.”

Saphienne suppressed her smile: she had been right about the salt.

“Alright,” Rydel agreed. “Have we made an assumption in any of that? Anything we haven’t considered?”

The two pondered.

Saphienne thought quickly. Surely, Almon had to have been warned that spirits were responsible for the clearing — otherwise, there was the risk that he would ask the local woodland spirits about it. That he hadn’t told his apprentices…

…Almon had once said that teaching moments had to be seized upon when they presented themselves. He was using this as an opportunity to teach Taerelle and Rydel. Perhaps he already knew where the clearing could be found. Even if he didn’t know, he wouldn’t stop if they failed — his search was the one that actually mattered.

Yet Saphienne wasn’t wasting her time with them. Assuming the wizard wasn’t depending on their work, that gave her an opportunity to earn a favour from the students.

 

* * *

 

Saphienne’s second step was to raise her hand.

Rydel shook his head at her. “No interrupting.”

But Taerelle was more tolerant. “Let’s hear her…” She shrugged off Rydel’s scepticism with a laugh. “…It’s not like we’re getting anywhere, is it?”

Lowering her arm, Saphienne tried her best to phrase her prompt as though she were merely curious. “I know this is probably obvious, but… how can you tell when a spell was cast by a wizard or a sorcerer? How do you know who or what fashioned the spell?”

Rydel groaned. “Saphienne, we’re not supposed to teach…”

He trailed off into silence as realisation dawned, and he swung to look at Taerelle, who was smiling at Saphienne as she shared his insight.

“You can’t always tell.” Taerelle’s voice was cheerful. “And in this case, we don’t actually know. The fascination could have been the work of a wizard, or a sorcerer, or…”

Striding with purpose from the window, Rydel snatched up one of the maps. “A spirit! We’re looking for a sacred glade.”

“A hidden sacred glade — so it won’t be on any maps.” Taerelle steepled her fingers. “We had the right idea, but we’ve been looking from the wrong perspective. How would a spirit hide a Fascination spell?”

“They wouldn’t mask it with another resonance.” Dimly visible thanks to the light, Saphienne could make out markings through the paper Rydel held, and saw that he was studying a map of local woodland shrines. “Outside the glades, they don’t have enough enchantments in the woodlands of sufficient magnitude, and their spells’ resonance is too distinctive to hide behind elven magic. Unless they hid a glade within a glade?”

“The glades are mapped,” Taerelle objected. “And there’s simply no way a priest wouldn’t have spotted it after a thousand years. No, we’ve got it backwards: we’re not looking for areas of magical confluence, we’re looking for somewhere that avoids the activities of wizards and priests. But how would they mask the resonance?”

“Maybe they don’t mask it,” he thought aloud, lowering the map to meet her gaze. “What if they obscure it another way?”

“You’ve lost me.”

Well, at least Saphienne wasn’t alone.

Folding the map under his arm, he moved to one of the shelves on the right side of the parlour, skimming over the arcane titles. “We’ve been assuming the resonance would be of significant magnitude,” he said, lifting a thick book with a yellow cover, “and so would need to be masked. But there’s another presentation… and Shanaera wrote about it…”

Taerelle joined him to read over his shoulder. “I don’t recall this one very well… she’s an invoker?”

“With a particular interest,” Rydel confirmed, grinning as he found the right page and held it up to her. “Since invocation is sensitive to interference from resonance, she came up with a theoretical underpinning to explain how complementary resonance could facilitate passage. And she was inspired by her observation that–”

“Ley lines!” Taerelle’s mouth had dropped open, and she took the book from his hands. “Gods, I’d forgotten this. ‘The magnitude of the resonance placed on an intersection is distributed across the number of intersecting ley lines by equal division, and so each ley line gains resonance of magnitude and quality equal to the sum distributed from its intersections–’” She laughed, closing the book. “‘…Attenuated by the distance it traverses.’ Dilution: that’s brilliant. How in the world did you remember?”

“Ley lines affect farming,” he smiled. “One of the questions to ask the local spirits, when expanding cultivation, is whether–”

“Later.” She returned the book to the shelf and hurriedly snatched up her bowl. “We’re looking for an intersection of– no, we’re looking for a remote location that multiple, long ley lines pass through. Lines that are very close to each other, but not touching.”

He nodded as he once again returned to pick through the maps. “You’re right: better to simulate an intersection between them using a spell, and keep the source of their resonance disguised. Clever.”

“Parallel ley lines.” She sat back on the chair, suspending pendant above bowl. “Just give me a starting point at a shrine, and I’ll do the rest.”

“You have the sympathetic connections?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Rydel, obviously. If people gather there, I’ve maintained a connection. What kind of diviner do you take me for?”

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He ignored her irritation as he found the map he was looking for, unfolding it to scan carefully across the network of lines it depicted. Comparing it to the map under his arm, he double-checked, then stood. “East-southeast, the shrine to Our Lord of the Endless Hunt. There’s a ley line running north that ends up paralleled by–”

“I’ll see.”

Taerelle whispered, and the quiet, clipped syllables crept eerily throughout the room, stirring a scintillating white light in the quartz pendant she held, light which sparkled eerily where it reflected on the rim of the bowl. Unmoved by her hand, the necklace began to sway back and forth like a pendulum, changing direction erratically, until it suddenly snapped into line with the glimmering on the bowl’s edge.

“I have the shrine,” Taerelle murmured.

As the sparkles on the rim intensified, they began to slowly circle it, and after a slight delay the pendant followed, tracked them as they wound sunwise, and then widdershins, then to and fro in smaller arcs of the circumference.

Trying her luck, Saphienne crept to her feet and approached where Taerelle was seated, careful not to make a sound. Rydel caught her shoulder, and raised his finger against his lips in warning as he spread out his annotated map on the floor before the chair.

“I’m on the ley line,” Taerelle confirmed, the glittering below the pendant now moving in fast, sunwise circles. “The resonance… I can’t feel anything unusual yet…”

By degrees, the sparkles left the edge of the bowl and began to spiral inward, dragging the quartz in a tightening gyre. The tension grew as the circles narrowed, the necklace moving faster with each revolution, until at last it hung vertically, the light beneath it pooled in the bottom of the bowl.

“…I think I have it.” Taerelle opened her eyes. “It’s hard to hold on to.”

“Can you divine its location?” Rydel asked, his breathing shallow.

“Let’s find out.” She dipped the pendant into the bowl, causing the pool to evaporate — and the glowing pendant to brighten. As she rose, she thrust the now-empty bowl into Saphienne’s hands – who nearly dropped it in fumbling surprise – and stood astride the map laid out on the floor, gradually lowering the magically-imbued necklace as she intoned a new spell, gesturing with her other hand in precise, curt flicks that reminded Saphienne of pushing the beads on an abacus.

As the senior apprentice crouched, the necklace she held trembled over the sheet… and then swung toward its eastern edge.

“Two to four miles due east of the village,” Taerelle announced, grinning. “There’s a strong Fascination spell veiling something out there.”

Rydel inhaled, then slowly breathed out. “Can’t be any more precise?”

“I don’t have good sympathy to the exact location.” She let go of the necklace as she straightened up; the pendant hung in place for a moment, then slowly floated down to the map as the magic faded away. “We’re going to have to search for candidate locations, then send Peacock.”

“I’ll lay out a grid,” Rydel agreed, and went to gather up more detailed maps.

Beneath the thrill of watching them work, Saphienne was quietly amused: they were so focused on their discovery, neither of them had bothered to thank her. She suspected they had forgotten her help.

Of course, she said nothing. Being overlooked suited her purpose.

 

* * *

 

Unfortunately for Taerelle and Rydel, they immediately encountered a problem: the maps they had of the forest to the east were flawed.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Rydel complained, staring from the sheets he still held to the gap between those on the floor.

Taerelle was unsympathetic as she took the maps from his unresisting hands. “You lined them up the wrong way. Starting from the top… left…” She frowned as she shuffled through the sheaf in her hands, looking back and forth between her pages and the space before her. “…Are we missing a few areas? No, they’re all labelled…”