This was a polite way of saying at once, Leilis knew.
“And a similar message to one of the King’s Own mages, please,” Jeres added. “Preferably Mage Periannes, if he can spare a moment. Thank you.” He returned his calm gaze to Leilis, who was still holding the ruined set of pipes. Then he turned to Lord Taudde. “Lord Chontas,” he said after a moment. “May I ask you to examine this set of pipes and identify them as the set you originally gave Prince Tepres? And perhaps you would describe for me the process by which they came into your possession?”
Lord Taudde turned his head, and his eyes met Leilis’s. His expression was remote, thoughtful—not worried in the least. Was it a mask such as keiso learned, Leilis wondered, or was he truly so calm? And if his coolness was a mask, where had he learned to wear it?
The Kalchesene sorcerer reached out his hand to take the ruined ivory pipes from Leilis. Unusually for a man who had once touched her, he made no effort to avoid brushing her fingers, but for a moment held both the pipes and Leilis’s hand.
And at that moment, the shadows in the room all rose up and choked the light. The world tilted and swung, and suddenly all the air in the room seemed to press inward with tremendous pressure. Leilis bit back a cry and clung tightly to Taudde’s hand; indeed, that hold dragged her hard toward him and after him, and she thought, Oh, he’s doing this, he’s taking us both elsewhere. To Kalches, she guessed. But then Leilis saw that his eyes—almost the only things she could still see—had widened, and she realized that he, too, was surprised and alarmed, and that was bad, because if the expanding darkness were not his doing, then—then—
And then they both fell into the darkness, thought and awareness vanishing along with light and air and everything familiar.
CHAPTER 14
Nemienne wondered whether anybody else realized that there had been no real earthquake. Everyone did realize, at least, that nothing had been damaged and no one had been hurt, and so the candlelight district was already settling back to its customary calm pleasure in the coming night. But such calm had never been further from Nemienne’s grasp. She seized Karah’s hands, demanding urgently, “You love Prince Tepres, don’t you?”
Karah stared at her, shocked.
“Don’t you?” repeated Nemienne, with some urgency. “Because the only reason I found you in the dark was because I love you! I don’t think I could find the prince, not if he follows the wrong path into the dark. But you might—if you love him.”
“What in the world do you mean?” Karah asked, bewildered.
Nemienne hardly knew how to explain anything. She said rapidly, “That wasn’t a real earthquake, was it? And Leilis is missing, and those pipes—and the foreign sorcerer came here this morning, but he didn’t find her, or you, or the pipes, did he? And Mage Ankennes gave me the evening off—and the prince is heir to the Dragon, which means he’s a similar thing to the real dragon. Karah, do you love him? Because if you do, I think we haven’t much time left—”
Karah still looked confused, but she didn’t argue, just nodded, scooped up her kitten, and followed her sister. Nemienne caught her hand and dragged her, nearly at a run, up the stairs and down the fourth-floor gallery to the last bedchamber: Leilis’s room.
The room was just as Nemienne had remembered: small, austere, and dominated by the large fireplace with the cracked stones in its hearth. But this time, Nemienne recognized the jagged patterns of the cracks. They were clear kin to the sharp, angular patterns carved on the music room door in Ankennes’s house. She only wondered how she could have failed to recognize that relationship before.
“Leilis isn’t here,” Karah began.
“I know. The foreigner from Kalches went after her because she had his pipes, I expect,” Nemienne explained quickly. “What I don’t know is whether the foreigner is working with Mage Ankennes or against him. I’m sure Mage Ankennes knew about the pipes, but what I don’t know—oh, everything is so confusing! I don’t know who’s on whose side—only if you’re in love with Prince Tepres, it can’t be right to make him a sacrifice—” She was conscious of Karah’s intake of breath, and stopped. But whatever exclamation or question her sister might have thought of asking, Karah closed her mouth again and was silent.
Nemienne was grateful. She needed to find a way into the mountain—she was almost sure she could find a way—the fireplace was a door into and out of the darkness. She crossed the room and knelt down by the fireplace, tracing the crack in one of its hearthstones with the tip of her finger. It was a rune, she knew, or a letter in some strange angular alphabet. Whoever had long ago set these stones in place, these runes brought Cloisonné House under the shadow of Kerre Maraddras. One house of shadows should do as well as the other to find the way… Nemienne closed her eyes and recalled the spell Mage Ankennes had taught her, the one to let you read a language you had never learned. She lifted the spiky cracks from the hearthstones into her mind and let them rest there, illuminated by remembered light.