Chapter 6

Corec followed as Treya led the group up the wide stone steps that stood before the ducal palace. It was just him and the four women. They’d left Bobo and Boktar behind, but had decided that everyone who was affected by the runes should be present.

The main entrance to the duke’s palace was to the left of the ceremonial entrance, but was actually the larger of the two. There were three sets of double doors open to accommodate all the people going in and out.

The guards who were standing there stopped them. “Your name and your business?” one asked.

“I’m Sister Treya of the Three Orders. We’re here to see Sister Kirla of the Three Orders, concubine to Seneschal Ollis. She’s expecting us.”

“You may enter,” said a minor functionary who was standing just inside. He dipped a pen into an ink bottle, then made a mark in a large book that was open before him on a lectern. “I’ll send a page for Mistress Kirla.”

The guards stepped aside to let them pass. The men guarding the other doors just waved most of the visitors through, apparently recognizing the people who had regular business at the palace. The functionary pointed to a boy in a uniform, who took off running.

“Please clear the doorway,” the functionary said in a bored voice. “You can wait in the sitting room, straight ahead.”

They took his suggestion.

“I’ve never watched the palace during the day before,” Katrin said. “Who were all those people?”

“They have something to do with running the city,” Treya replied. “All the work is coordinated from here, or so I’m told. That’s why it’s larger than the king’s palace.”

There was a surprising amount of wealth on display considering this was the administrative side of the building. Paintings hung throughout the corridors and the sitting room, and there were ornate windows on all the external walls. The vaulted ceilings were fifteen feet tall. Corec wasn’t a stranger to money, but his family’s manor house was more utilitarian and much less ostentatious. He’d never been inside a palace before, even on his brief visits to Telfort as a knight trainee, and what he saw in this place was much different than he was accustomed to.

A young woman in an ornate gown entered the sitting room. “Treya!”

The two exchanged greetings, and Treya introduced everyone to her friend.

“Come this way,” Kirla said, then continued speaking as they walked. “I can’t believe Yelena actually agreed to see you. She doesn’t usually take an audience unless she’s the one who requested it. Or if Duke Voss asks her to, of course.”

“How well do you know her?” Treya asked.

“Not well. For formal meals, she sits at the great table, and Ollis’s position puts us farther down. Plus, I don’t really spend much time at court, except during ceremonies or when the bards are playing. The Sisters who sit at the great table would know her better.”

“Yes, but I don’t know them,” Treya pointed out. “I do know you.”

“Oh, true. Anyway, here’s her study.” Kirla knocked and poked her head in. “Miss Yelena, they’re here.”

“Send them in, please.”

Kirla ushered them through the door into the study, which appeared to be a converted library. The walls to the left and right were lined with full bookshelves. The far well held a series of tall windows overlooking a garden.

Three desks were arranged around the room, but only one was in use. It stood at the back of the room, near the windows, but was facing the entrance. The woman behind it rose when they entered. She was short, with long, straight black hair, and was much younger than Corec had expected—somewhere near his own age. Was this really Yelena? Kirla had addressed her as such, but how had she become the duke’s wizard so young?

She was wearing a long dress of a startling bright red. It had simple lines compared to the fancier gowns they’d seen on Kirla and the other women in the palace, yet still looked elegant and expensive. The dress was sleeveless, but she had a matching red shawl over her shoulders.

There were two men in the room as well. One was tall, wearing a long leather coat and a wide-brimmed hat. He stood to the woman’s right, but was leaning back against the far wall, his arms crossed in front of him as he watched them enter.

The other man was Bishop Lastal, who was on the woman’s left. Treya drew in a sharp breath when she saw him.

“Come in,” the woman said, keeping her face expressionless. “Kirla, would you mind closing the door on your way out?”

“Oh, yes, miss.” The door closed behind them.

The woman spoke again. “I suppose introductions are in order. I am Yelena.”

“My name is Corec.” He continued down the row, introducing his companions.

“I believe you know Bishop Lastal,” Yelena said, “and this is my husband, Sarlo.”

“I remember you!” Katrin said. “That day in the Tailors’ Quarter!”

Sarlo grinned. “Yes. As I recall, you ran right into me and almost fell over.”

“You had a rune!”

Yelena cleared her throat. “Shall we get this out of the way?” She moved around to the front of her desk and slipped the shawl off her shoulders. Six glowing red runes appeared on her upper arms, three on each. A red triangle appeared on Sarlo’s forehead, and a red square, rotated to look like a diamond, showed on Lastal’s.

“There, that’s better,” Yelena continued, as Corec exchanged shocked glances with his friends. “It’s been a long time since I met another warden in person.”

“A warden?” Treya asked. “What’s a warden?”

“He is,” Yelena said, pointing at Corec. “According to Lastal, anyway.”

Corec rolled up his sleeves to display his own runes while he tried to think of what to say. Bobo had thought the word warden might somehow be related to their runes at one point, but they’d never found any further information on the topic and had given up looking for it.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t know what a warden is either. Are you like the First?”

Yelena laughed. “I hope not. He’s a rather crotchety old man.”

The First had appeared young in the dream, but Corec could understand Yelena’s description. The man acted old, regardless of his apparent youth.

“But you know him. You’re one of the others.”

“I am.”

“And you’re called wardens?”

“We are wardens,” she said, pointing back and forth between herself and him. “You should already know that, from your choosing.”

“What choosing? I tried to tell the First, I don’t know anything about what’s going on, or how to stop it.”

She frowned. “You don’t remember your choosing?”

“I don’t even know what a choosing is!”

“For me, it was something like a wordless dream full of images. Not like the First’s dream world—it was something else entirely. When I woke up, I knew how to create the bond, and I knew I was something called a warden, though I’d never heard the term before. Unfortunately, the choosing doesn’t tell us much about what it means.”

“What does it mean?” Ellerie asked.

“It’s difficult to get any information out of the First, so I’ve had to study it on my own,” Yelena said, leaning back against the edge of her desk. “As best as I’ve been able to figure out, some ancient civilization managed a rather incredible ritual spell that created a group of mage-guardians to protect their people. Somehow, the spell kept going even after their civilization came to an end. My guess is that the citizens all knew what a warden was, so the choosing didn’t need to convey any more information than it does.”

“I never experienced any choosing,” Corec said, “and I don’t know how to use the binding spell. How do I stop it from happening?”

She pursed her lips. “The old man told me you bonded people without asking them. As a wizard, you should know how wrong that is. Didn’t your teachers cover binding spells?”

“I’m not a wizard, and I didn’t have any teachers. I’d never have cast the spell if I knew how to avoid it.”

She stared through him for a moment, her eyes going out of focus, then blinked and looked at him normally again.

“Perhaps that’s true,” she said, “so I’ll tell you that it’s considered a great crime. The rules go back to the earliest binding spells, some of which were truly evil. The warden’s bond is hardly one of those, but you’re still lucky that Lastal spoke to me about your problem before the First did. If I’d thought you were doing it on purpose, Sarlo would have tracked you down before now so I could kill you.”

Corec swallowed as he realized who he was speaking to. “You’re Six, aren’t you?”

“I’m Yelena. The First just doesn’t bother to learn anyone’s names. But yes, I’m the sixth warden, just as you’re the eighth. That’s simply how they track seniority—when someone ahead of you dies, you’ll be the seventh. Personally, I don’t see much point to it. We don’t interact with each other enough for seniority to matter.”

“How many of you are there?” Ellerie asked. “I’m a wizard, and I’ve never heard of wardens before.”

“I keep the wardens a secret, even from my fellow wizards. Some of the others are more open about their abilities, but they don’t go around discussing what we truly are. As for how many, there are just the eight of us, and even that seems like a lot. It’s rare that a new one would come so soon. Seven—I don’t know his name—was chosen just four years ago, and before that, there were only six.”

“How do we undo the binding spell?” Treya asked.

“Lastal told me you’d ask that,” Yelena said. “I don’t think it’s possible. Other binding spells can be banished, but this one is ... more complicated. It was meant to be permanent. If you can’t stand each other’s company, simply go your separate ways. You may feel a faint pull drawing you toward the others, but you can ignore it.”

Corec said, “The First said there was a way. He said Three had done it.”

“Three? I suppose it’s possible—I’ve never met her.”

“Where can we find her?” Ellerie asked.

“Somewhere across the sea ... but I don’t know which sea.”

“East,” Sarlo said. “East and south. I couldn’t tell you more without going myself.”

“There,” Yelena said. “Sarlo’s a Seeker. When I need to locate something, I send him. That’s the true strength of a warden—your bondmates. They augment your strengths and compensate for your weaknesses. I’m a scholar myself, not a warrior, so I depend on Sarlo and my wife, Venni, to act as my hands. The others each have their own roles. Your friend Bishop Lastal provides eyes and ears into the inner workings of the city’s temples, in exchange for the benefits he receives as a warden’s bondmate.”

Corec had never heard of a Seeker before, much less someone having both a husband and a wife, but he had too many other questions to ask about either. “Benefits?”

Yelena sighed. “You really don’t know anything about this, do you? Very well, then—what does it mean to be a warden? First, you can only bond mages, but it works with any type of mage. You live longer, both you and your bondmates. Until Seven, I was the youngest of us, and I’m two hundred seventy years old.”

Katrin and Treya both glanced Corec’s way, stunned looks on their faces. He’d forgotten what the First had said about Yelena’s age. He’d assumed that Six was an elf, but she was clearly human.

“Two hundred seventy-four,” Sarlo reminded her with a wink.

“Seventy-four? Already?” She thought about that for a moment. “I suppose you’re right. Anyway, beyond the longer lifespan, the bond also strengthens your magic.”

“How?” Ellerie asked. “That shouldn’t be possible.”

“Perhaps strengthens is the wrong word. I might say, instead, that it increases your potential, and makes it easier to achieve that potential.”

Ellerie said, “But you’re claiming that if we don’t undo the binding spell, my magic will be stronger?”

“You’ll have the potential to become stronger, at least.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s an easy experiment. Find Three, end the binding spell, and let us know what happens. I’m curious about the results myself.”

Ellerie glared at her.

“Is there anything else we should know?” Corec asked, hoping to forestall an argument.

“I should think that’s quite enough,” Yelena replied. “You already know that you can track your bondmates’ locations, and they yours, I trust?”

“Yes.”

“That works over any distance, but it only gives you a general indication of the direction. It’s something like Sarlo’s seeking magic, I gather, but with less detail. I assume it’s got something to do with how we feel pulled together.”

“How can I stop from casting the binding spell again?”

“I don’t know how you ever managed to cast it unintentionally at all. Perhaps we can discuss that privately—one of my areas of study is arcane mages who cast spells without wizardry. The topic may lead us to a solution regarding your binding spells.”

“I would appreciate that. I’ve tried to be careful, but so far, I haven’t had any luck.”

“You should be careful. Bonding four in so short a time, you’re certain to run into problems. It takes a special kind of personality to work with the same people for decades or centuries, and still continue to get along with them. I’ve spent over two hundred fifty years choosing my bondmates. Lastal here is the most recent, just a few years ago, but I knew him for ten years before that. I had to be sure I could trust him with my secrets.”

Lastal nodded. “I apologize for my earlier deception, but at the time, I had no idea who you were or what I should say. I wasn’t aware there was a new warden, and Yelena likes to keep our identities quiet. I’m somewhat new to this life myself, you see.”