Chapter 143 – The Ennecus Guild

With her amulet now bound to her, Mirian spent the last two days of the cycle learning about the other artifacts they’d recovered. As the eruptions intensified, none of the delvers could bring themselves to hold to their original exclusivity agreement. There just was no point.

It turned out, her divination devices were fairly useful for discerning glyphs they couldn’t see in the tri-bonded glyph constructions. This let them figure out how the triplicate bonds worked, though it didn’t give them the slightest idea of what those glyphs did.

The other liquids they’d found in the Vault were equally as mysterious. One of them was a powerful acid, but no one was sure what its actual function was. Another that glowed with golden light seemed to be able to absorb vast quantities of heat to no effect. Elsadorra placed a sample over a fire for an hour, and the substance didn’t so much as move.

The tools they’d found were equally unfathomable. No combination of channeling or energy inputs seemed to stimulate them.

Near the end, Aelius fell into a deep depression. He’d spent so much of his life in the Vaults, but now that they’d actually made it to the end of one, the world would end before he could understand its mysteries. And, as Beatrice explained the situation with the other time travelers that Mirian had conveyed to her, he realized he couldn’t even share his triumph with the world.

He took to his bed, and stopped coming out even for meals. When it was Mirian’s turn to deliver one to him, the only thing he said from the depths of the shadows in his room was, “It’s not fair.”

She could only agree.

Mirian spent the rest of her last hours madly conducting experiments with the artifacts they’d recovered, making a mess in Elsadorra’s shop that nearly got her kicked out, end of the world be damned.

And that was all they had time for. A great wind began to howl across the frostlands, sounding like the world screaming, and then Divir came crashing down again.

***

The first thing Mirian did when she woke was manifest her new amulet. Since it included a celestial focus, with focused meditation, she could tap into it just enough as it orbited her soul and use that to summon the whole thing. When it coalesced around her neck, she elated. She looked over at Lily, and wanted to tell her—but dreaded having to explain why it was exciting. Also, it would create what General Hanaran would have called an ‘operational risk.’ It was imperative that Troytin didn’t see what was coming, didn’t even see what was possible, until it was too late.

She conducted her usual sabotage operations in Torrviol, and confirmed that the celestial focus material from the shrine in the underground was indeed gone. Then Mirian made her way back up to Frostland’s Gate and battled through the Labyrinth again with the Torrviol and Ennecus groups, purely to take a single measurement. This time, they sent the second group back so they’d be at the Vault entrance when Mirian’s group was opening the final door.

When they got to the end, she confirmed what she’d suspected: relicarium use, like the binding of Eclipse, was permanent. The amount she’d found was finite. With no end to the cycles in sight, she decided she’d take all the time her next project needed. Troytin was still making no moves into Palendurio beyond intelligence gathering, and even in that he seemed to be focused on finance and politics. Ibrahim was still smashing his armies into Alkazaria. For all she knew, the relicarium she’d found would be the last she’d find. She didn’t want to settle for making a spellbook that was merely functional. She needed as much magical power at her disposal as she could manage. For that, she had a plan.

They made little progress on the other artifacts from the end of the Vault, even with Mirian’s aid. There was something critical to be learned with those things, she was sure, but she would come back to it.

She said her goodbyes to Beatrice, not sure how long it would take until she was back north to visit her.

The moon came crashing down.

***

The next cycle, she headed to Cairnmouth with Mayor Wolden’s fake Florinian ingots. While heading south, she resumed her disguise as Micael. After depositing the ingots and withdrawing a nice pile of gold, she checked in with Lecne so Troytin would see disruptions in the city. Once she’d done that, she took another train out east to the town of Second Cairn.

Second Cairn was significantly larger than Torrviol, but still much smaller than any of the port cities. Half of it was carved into an old quarry that had given so much stone to Cairnmouth. Once the spellwards had gone up, the city had expanded out from its fortifications, so the second half of the city was atop the cliffs, overlooking the buildings that were set into the quarry. The town had experienced regular spring floods for decades before modern spell engines and tunnel engineering had been added to bring those to an end.

The quarry itself had been closed not because it ran out of stone, but because it ran into an entrance to the Labyrinth. Unlike the Frostland’s Gate section, no Vault had been found, even with expeditions that had bravely probed down into the fourth level. Instead, they’d found numerous abundant econodes, complete with valuable flora and fauna. Myrvite hunters regularly went in, coming out with rare magichemicals and myrvite parts.

Beyond the town, but still within the spellward, ranchers kept pens of myrvites. Most of them were low-threat creatures, but several dangerous kinds were kept as well, locked behind their own spellwards.

Mirian’s conversations with Calisto and Aelius had given her a decent idea of what to expect. The Ennecus Guildhall wasn’t exactly hard to find; it was made of the local marble and decorated with banners showing the old coat of arms of the family. The stripped knighthood is a really sore subject for them, she noted. There was a cursory guard at the wrought-iron gate, wearing the kind of regalia one might expect of a knight. Between the gate and the guildhall was a nice looking garden.

“Hi. I’d like to arrange a meeting with Cain Ennecus,” she said.

The guard looked at her with that sort of tired contempt that guards were so fond of looking at her with.

“Can I see a secretary, or…?”

“No visits without an appointment,” the guard said.

“Ah, excellent. And how does one get an appointment?” Neither Calisto nor Aelius could tell her that, since it was one of those things they didn’t need to pay attention to. They had both suggested talking to the secretary, but the secretary was in the guildhall.

“You don’t,” the guard said, bored. “Move along or I’ll call the city guard.”

Why are people like this? Mirian bemoaned. “I have information I’m assured he’s quite interested in. I was working with Torrviol Academy, and happened to make the acquaintance of Calisto. She told me—”

“We get plenty of people who have ‘interesting information.’ And learning his daughter’s name isn’t particularly difficult. Last warning,” the man said.

Mirian made a face. Cediri was really good at intuiting whether or not a person would take bribes. Despite all she’d been through, she had no idea how you were supposed to go about it. So she just asked, “Do you take bribes?”

Apparently that wasn’t the way to go about it. The guard pulled out a signal wand.

“Fine, I’m leaving,” she said. She rounded the corner, got out her wand of levitation, and when no one was watching, quickly moved herself over the wall. One day, levitation won’t solve my problems, but not today! she thought.

She made her way through the garden along the side paths so she wasn’t in view of the gate, then up to the front door. It was daytime, so the spell engine security system was off, and the door unlocked. She walked inside. The entrance hall was fancy enough, with a semicircular second floor balcony overlooking the large foyer. Underneath that balcony was a large mahogany desk and a woman going over paperwork.

“Oh!” the secretary said. “We don’t have any appointments scheduled today.” She gave Mirian a quizzical look.

“I’d like to get one on the books,” Mirian said. “Long story short, I’ve heard Cain Ennecus is looking for information on Elder titans. I happen to have information on them, and was hoping we could collaborate.”

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The secretary blinked. Apparently ‘Elder titan’ meant nothing to her.

“Anyways, the Academy has given me a bit of coin for a research grant, so I think he’d find that collaboration quite beneficial.”

“Wonderful,” said the secretary. “I can inquire. If he is interested in a meeting, I can send a message your way. What inn are you staying at…?”