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  "That's why I had to live with Nevon all these years since she left?" Fay heard the rising anger in Tavis' voice and moved her hand up to his shoulder. He reached his own hand over, placed it on hers with a gentle squeeze and removed her hand. "You left me with that bastard because you couldn't be bothered to check whether I was still there? Because you just assumed she took me with her?"

  Eliar hung his head and said, "It didn't occur to me that she would leave you behind for any reason. I may not have spoken to her since before you were born, but I knew how much she would love you, how much you would mean to her. She's always been a woman of deep caring, and you are her only child. That she would even let you out of her sight seemed unthinkable, let alone abandoning you."

  Tavis stood up, toppling the chair over behind him and walked over to the door, fists clenched. Fay rose from her own chair, righted his and went over to him. She raised a hand, then paused, remembering how he had removed it only moments earlier, before laying it on his broad back. It seemed so small a gesture to her, but she couldn't think of anything to say. His hands relaxed and she could feel the tension in his back lessen, though he continued to stand there, staring out of the small window in the door.

  Behind her, Eliar asked, with surprising timidity, "Faylanna, please tell me. It wasn't just you acting out there against the vygazza, was it?" The name he gave the creature they had fought sent shivers of fear and awe down her spine. "He has to be-"

  Eliar couldn't seem to finish, but he didn't need to. She turned, her hand still on Tavis' back. "Yes, he's a Magicia, like his mother. Untrained, but strong. I was planning to help him get into the Rianza Academy after I was done here. They can't deny him. They won't."

  Eliar's face lit up. Tavis spoke without turning, his voice still hard and angry. "Right now, the only thing I want is to find my mother. I need to talk to her before I can do anything else."

  Eliar nodded. "Of course. We'll leave tomorrow. I'll probably need to go into Rianza anyway, to research the dark cloud in Fay's story."

  Tavis turned around, his eyes wary. "I thought you said you didn't know where she was."

  "I only said I hadn't been in touch with her. She's an advisor to the Crown Prince. Has been for a year and a half now." Fay could hear the pride in his voice over what his favorite granddaughter had become. She also heard a thread of worry that she didn't understand. "We'll travel there together. I still know people at court, for all that I've been retired. I should be able to get you in to see her, especially if she knows it's not me she's meeting with."

  Tavis nodded and went over to his rucksack. He started rummaging through it, though Fay didn't think he was looking for anything in particular. Eliar looked between the two of them, then said to her, "You know, I think the two of you should stick together if you can. It might be good for both of you. I thought you worked well together out there."

  She frowned at the remark, hearing the push to choose a partner in it. Wanting to change the subject, she said, "You called that thing a vygazza. Are you sure about that?"

  Eliar nodded. "I've studied the ancient lore, and it fit the description exactly, though I believe this is the first time one has been seen in living memory, if ever."

  "But they're supposed to be trapped behind the Flame Veil. How can a such a thing be in our world?"

  He pursed his lips for a moment. "That I'm not certain of and it's not something I'd care to speculate on. Be assured, it will be part of my research when we get to Rianza. My own book collection here is nothing compared to either the Imperial or Academy libraries, let alone the Council's archives. I miss them all. They were like old friends. It will be good to see them again."

  Fay smiled at the familiar phrase. This man had truly left his mark on Ganson, who frequently referred to libraries he had consulted often as his old friends. Eliar raised his voice a little and said "Now, let's have some food and go to bed. We have a journey to start in the morning."

  After they had eaten, Eliar offered Fay his bed, arguing that he didn't sleep much at his advanced age and had books to check as well. Tavis curled up on the floor not far from the bed, next to the fireplace, as it was the only clear spot large enough for him in the small cabin. Fay didn't think she could sleep with all the things going in circles in her mind, but then Eliar began to hum and she drifted away.

  Chapter 7

  When Fay opened her eyes, she realized almost immediately that something was different about the dream. She wasn't sure if it was wrong though. The blond man was standing on the edge of the pool of light that had no source and he was smiling at her as always, but it looked a little forced and uncertain to her. His eyes darted to something behind her. She turned and gasped. Tavis was there. Except she realized that he wasn't. Unlike the man with the blond curls, he didn't move, and everything about him was faint and ghostly. But what was even so faded an image of him doing in this dream, she wondered.

  As she pondered this, she heard the man behind her, now only steps away. "Come away from him, Faylanna. He can't understand. He's not like us."

  She didn't turn though. She wanted to figure out what was going on. She took a step toward Tavis' image. Behind her, the blond man said more urgently, "Don't do that. I need you, my sweet, I told you. It should be you and I. It must be. Come to me."

  Fay looked over her shoulder at his pleading face and the hand that was extended to her. "But, I don't understand. Why is he here?"

  He tilted his head. "You really don't, do you? They did their work better than I expected it seems. Perhaps I don't need to worry."

  "Who did what work?" she asked, confused. Did he ever speak plainly, she wondered with a touch of exasperation. Turning back, she looked at the image of Tavis again, the way he seemed to watch her. She was about to take another step closer when she felt a deep frustration from the man behind her. Startled to sense an emotion from him at all, she turned but the scene had changed.

  He was still there, but further away now, in a separate pool of light. He was on his knees, sobbing over something clutched in his arms. She tried to walk to the closest edge of her own sphere of light, but never got closer to either the edge or the kneeling man.

  Around him, the ground was stained red, and she realized that it was an unmoving woman he clutched to his chest. Fay's stomach turned when she realized it was the woman's blood everywhere, soaking his clothes, still leaking out of her torn body. As she watched, he held the dead woman tighter and cried out in grief. She wanted to reach out and comfort him, but the distance between them never diminished.

  As he continued to sob in anguish, several figures, indistinct in cloaks draped to cover every part of them appeared out of the shadows. They descended upon the blond man and grabbed his head, his shoulders, arms, legs, and dragged him away from the body. They carried him backward as he fought to free himself from their grip, but Fay wasn't sure if they were really moving, even though the body was gone. The scene she witnessed remained the same distance from her, though she had stopped trying to reach the other light pool. The man's struggles caused him to look over his shoulder and he cried out again, in fear this time. They were dragging him toward a large golden frame with silver symbols shining across the top. His struggles grew frenzied and he finally managed to free one arm from his captors, but then it was too late for escape. They were pressing him through the frame, and a rippling substance that she knew should be but couldn't be glass formed around him as he disappeared through the golden rectangle.

  The other light went out, the scene vanishing with it. His voice drifted out of the darkness, wrapping around her. You see, Faylanna? I understand loss. I can grasp the pain you feel over the death of someone you loved. I know what it is to be pursued, to fear discovery by others. Can he ever understand you as I do, my sweet? Be mine, wait for me. It will be time soon enough, then I will show you how we were meant to be together.

  Fay woke up with a start, confusion at his final words warring with horror from the scene he had shown her. How do
es he shape the dream like that, she wondered, trying to calm her racing heart. She was just starting to get herself back under control when a hand was laid lightly on her upper arm and she strangled a scream, flinching away from the hand and thinking of cloaked figures and golden frames. The movement brought her around to face Eliar, who looked shocked and contrite, his hand frozen in place. She let her breath out slowly as her heart again began to calm down.

  "I'm sorry, didn't mean to startle you," he whispered.

  She nodded and they both relaxed a little. He pulled his hand back, but remained crouched by the side of the alcove where the little bed sat. Fay looked and was grateful to see Tavis, who was sprawled out in his corner of the room, still asleep. She drew her knees up under her chin and wrapped her arms around them. She knew that sleep would be a long time returning this night, if it came at all.

  "Do you often have nightmares like that?" Eliar asked her, his eyes still intent on her.

  She shook her head and then felt a bit guilty. She clarified, "Never like that one, no. It was..."

  She shuddered as she trailed off and he put his hand back on her upper arm. "Do you want to talk about it?"

  She stared at him and after a moment he dropped his hand. "Can I ask you a question first? You hate my father." She waited for him to nod before going on. "Why? What's he done that's so awful? Ganson said in his message that my father was involved in some plan, but he didn't say what. In fact, that night in the study, he- He was going to tell me something, but didn't get a chance to. I want to understand what's going on, since it clearly affects me."

  Eliar frowned. "There has been bad blood between your father and I, but I shouldn't have been so harsh with you. Calder isn't your fault. I know enough of you to be sure that you aren't like him."

  "You don't know me at all."

  He smiled faintly. "But I do. Samell and I kept up a correspondence over the years since I was his mentor, as best we could at least. He has written of you in his letters to me several times since you went to Voleno." Eliar sighed. "He thought quite highly of you, and I imagine he would be... well, more than disappointed with the reception I gave you."

  Fay suddenly remembered the bundle of letters she had been given. She slipped out of the bed and dug them out of her bag, handing them to Eliar before getting back under the covers. He looked at her, frowning again. "He left me a caeldar, that was how I knew to come to you. He said you could help me, but he also left these for me, he said 'in case age and bitterness overcome his good sense.' I- I'm not trying to make you feel bad," she said quickly as his face fell while he looked down at the stack of folded parchment. "But I'm guessing they're your letters to him, and I think you should have them. In any case, I guess I thought that if I just got here- I didn't expect that creature- None of this is how I thought my life would go after I graduated."

  She heard the frustration in her own voice and pulled her knees tighter to her chest, pressing her face into them. His voice, more gentle than she had heard him yet, said, "I will help if I can. If you'll let me. I am truly sorry, Faylanna, to have ignored everything Ganson said about your relationship with your father. If I had listened to him more carefully... Ah well, regrets are part of living to this great an age."

  Lifting her head, she stared into his eyes. There was very little light in the room with only a single candle burning, and his face was shadowed, light gracing only the edges, but she could still see real remorse there. She told him about the blond man being there, about the vision of him with the dead woman, but not what he had said to her both before and after the vision. A part of her thought she should explain that as well, but those parts, like the other dreams, had seemed private, somehow just between herself and the blond man, so she kept them to herself. She also didn't mention the image of Tavis, too confused by that to know how to explain it or the feelings it had caused. She wasn't sure that his own great-grandfather was the right person to talk to about him either.

  When she was done, Eliar sat down on the floor near her, his back leaning against a nearby chair from the table. By this time, she was sitting on the edge of the bed with one leg folded under her and the other trailing over the edge. He was quiet for several minutes. "Let me tell you a story in return, because this nightmare of yours sounds very much like it. A long time ago, when Ganson was a young man just graduated and I was still working on my first century, a terrible crime happened in Rianza. A young woman was killed, and her partner was accused of the murder, and something worse. The facts of the case were uncertain, as there were no witnesses and the accused was pronounced unfit after her death, but he was found alone with her body, in a scene described almost exactly as you saw it in your dream." He paused. "I find it odd that you could describe it so accurately. I saw only the aftermath, what was left after they took him away, though they did not imprison him in one of the Mirrors of Bershan immediately as your dream suggests."

  "What's a Mirror of Bershan?"

  "It's a special type of prison, really, or at least that's what we've been using them for. I'm not surprised you haven't heard of them. It's a very esoteric subject, especially now that all of them are in use. And I guess that your question answers mine as to whether you had ever studied the case. If you had, you'd already know about the Mirrors. There are nine of them, and they were found, as you might surmise, very near Bershan. You can lock a person in them and they aren't able to free themselves. Magic doesn't seem to work in them, though I never discovered why that is. I studied the last empty one for a time in my youth, before they used it to imprison Marcius."

  "The man my dream reminded you of?"

  Eliar fixed her with a steady gaze for a moment before nodding. "They did hold a trial, but I thought it was mostly for show. There was no one else to accuse and they couldn't let such things go unpunished. Landra, his partner, was loved by many. She was a delightful girl."

  Fay stared at him for a while. "You weren't convinced he did it."

  It wasn't a question and he didn't bother to treat it as one. "It didn't matter. He was definitely damaged by her death, and maybe that accounts for what he did afterward. He was dangerous, needed to be restrained. But no, I thought her death was far too conveniently timed to be an act of passion as they tried to present it at the trial."

  "I don't understand."

  "Landra was an Investigator, just as Dal Brinds was. She was a friend of my own partner, and told Evala that she was on the verge of something important, vital to the safety of the Empire. It was in a letter that came to Evala just days after Landra's death, but she didn't tell us what she was investigating, and none of it was mentioned at Marcius' trial. We couldn't mention it, because we had nothing concrete to point to. She never even suggested what she suspected."

  Fay was thinking aloud more than speaking as she said, "So Marcius might be innocent..."

  "Of the murder of his partner? Possibly, but Faylanna, he was not sane afterward, and a Magicia of questionable sanity cannot be allowed to roam free. Beyond that. what he did afterward, just before they found him, well, that only made him more dangerous."

  "I don't understand," she repeated.

  "Don't ask. I won't tell you. Some things should be allowed to lie buried." His tone was too final for her to argue. Neither of them said anything for a while, until Eliar asked, "Faylanna, tell me, why have you never chosen a partner? You must have had offers. Samell was certain that there had been, though he said you never talked about it. He said that you were refusing to choose. He never wanted to press you about it, but I have to ask. Why?"

  She played with the sleeve of her tunic for a little while before answering, still not looking up at him. She thought about how much she wanted to share with him of her final conversation with her mentor and settled on only part of it. "He was right. There were offers. More than a few, actually, both in Rianza and Voleno. I- I turned them down, kindly I think, but I couldn't accept. I guess I'm not surprised that Professor Ganson knew about it long before I ever mentioned it
to him."

  "Why turn it down though? Almost every student I ever knew at any academy jumped at a chance to bond with a partner. I can think of very few who refused an offer and not one single person who did so more than once. I think the fear of being left behind dogged those who had done it once. So why have you, by your own admission, refused to accept any offer, courting that very fate?"

  Again, she took a while to answer, trying to find words to express the thoughts she wanted to share without exposing those she didn't yet trust this man with. "You can't stand my father, I understand that and I'm sure you have your own reasons, but you don’t know what it's like being his daughter. You've never heard him rail about needing a partner. I am and I have. And I hated every minute of it. From almost the beginning of my schooling in magic, he would tell me to find the strongest partner I could, not to settle for anyone weak, but that I needed a partner. I got so sick of hearing it. It was a relief, really, when the Council chose to transfer me to Voleno. I didn't have to see him so often and even his letters were less frequent." She paused to get her rising anger under control. "I'm not sure if he'd be furious or thrilled at my refusal of the offers I've had. He always says I have to have a partner , but that they must be as strong as I am, and all of the offers were from others whose talents were not- well, not as strong." She found her eyes drawn to Tavis' sleeping shadow in the near-darkness. "I guess I want to prove my father wrong. I want to prove them all wrong, show them that I'm strong enough on my own. Because they all feel like my father does, everyone. No one talks about it as bluntly as he does, but they all think that a Magicia needs a partner to be capable. Even you."