Adele had brought her mother's leather-bound journal. As she read she was reminded that her mother's theoretical, almost whimsical approach to geomancy was at odds with Mamoru's very strict concrete science. His red corrective marks were scattered liberally throughout the notebook. This amused Adele because Mamoru's harsh scrawls were always overwritten with Pareesa's bored doodles in the margins.
One note in particular Adele found herself reading over and over. It had to do with the concept of pathfinding using ley lines. Her mother's charming little sketches of spiders in their webs stretched and draped over the page. Mamoru had tapped this particular skill when he tracked Adele to the Mountains of the Moon last year, after she had set off a geomantic event equivalent to the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. The sheer size of that event sent shockwaves through the ley lines, and Mamoru had felt the shivers in the web of the Earth as he waited passively on a rift in the Sahara.
Pareesa also strained orthodoxy with her thoughts on pathfinding, surmising that perhaps such a skill could be reversed. If one could receive information, one could also seek information. She theorized that one could use geomancy to move through the webs and seek out other spiders. Mamoru marked the section heavily with comments like “Please stay on topic!” Pareesa's ideas were definitely a different slant on geomancy compared to the teachings of Mamoru, which centered on summoning the Earth's energy through a rift and channeling it in the most destructive way possible.
The temptation of reaching out and tracking Mamoru was devilishly appealing, just to see if it was possible. However, if Adele succeeded, he'd only be angry that she had tried something so unconventional without his supervision. Still, the thought that she could sense others like herself was alluring.
Adele's mind was still swirling with the concept when she noted the time. Simon was late. The boy's head was always in the clouds, and something had most likely distracted him. Usually she wouldn't have been so vexed, but today they were honoring those who had fought and died in Operation Bengal, named for Simon, and he should be there. In a palace this large there was no telling where he was, and Simon was not the sort to tell anyone what mischief he was up to.
“Captain Shirazi!” she called out.
The soldier appeared as if by magic. “Majesty?”
“Prince Simon is tardy. Please send someone to locate him, if at all possible.”
As Shirazi went to see to the duty, Adele had a wicked thought. Her brother wore a crystal talisman. Adele had given it to him last year right before her disastrous wedding. She wondered if she could find him by tracking the crystal. Her mother had thought it possible.
Adele would perform just a small test. It was no more destructive or harmful than holding a stone in her hand and determining its point of creation. A parlor trick really. It wasn't the type of activity that weakened her. In fact, the smaller exercises actually renewed her. Plus, Gareth was nowhere close by; such a small event wouldn't affect him, and would leave little residue in her for long.
She covered her own talisman with her hand. Smells and colors danced before her, singing with quiescent power. Adele felt the urge to wade into the energies, but refrained, not sensing the need to go so deep. She could find what she wanted on the surface with little guidance. Just as in Grenoble, the ley lines flared into life around her. Breathing slowly and deliberately, she began to apprehend patterns within a background cacophony of sounds and smells. She plumbed it for a familiar resonance.
The talisman Simon wore had once been hers, so she knew it well. It was from the far north, a land of ice and snow, so she searched the swirling sensations for something similar. Then she smelled it exactly as she remembered the day Mamoru had given it to her. She tasted a chill from a note of frost embellishing one of the many fibrous lines she could see around her.
Adele grasped that line. The ley shivered like a taut silken string in her hand. It stretched eastward toward the wing where Simon had his quarters.
Perhaps he wasn't going to be that hard to find after all.
Adele realized Captain Shirazi had returned and stood next to her with a look of confusion on his face so she regarded him cheerfully. “I'm off to collect my brother.”
“Where is His Highness?”
“Let's find out,” she replied with an almost girlish glee as they departed through the garden gate.
Adele hurried along the tiled corridors of the palace. She stopped outside the archway leading to Simon's second-floor quarters. Shirazi started to continue, but realized the empress had paused. She took a deep breath and stroked the crystal with her thumb. Again the unique taste of Simon's talisman caressed her tongue and drifted up into her nose, leading her away from such an obvious location.