Richard Byers - The Reaver

“No,” Anton said, “not if you know where the Towers of Enlightenment are. There can’t be that many of them, can there, or prisoners shut away inside them?”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“Then let’s collect the boy and get out.”

One of the limitations of invisibility was that while people couldn’t see a mage who shrouded herself in such an enchantment, they certainly would notice a door that opened seemingly of its own accord. Thus, Umara had come prepared to neutralize the two sentries watching over the rear entrance to the House of the Sun and was surprised to discover that someone had performed the task before her.

That surely meant somebody had invaded the temple to retrieve the boy prophet ahead of her. Curse it, anyway! But at least there was no indication that the rival hunters had accidentally roused the sunlords. Despite their head start, Umara might still be able to find the boy first. It was a big temple, and she had magic to facilitate her search.

So use it , said Kymas, speaking mind to mind.

I was just about to , she replied.

She slipped through the door into the quiet gloom beyond. It was a relief to escape the pounding storm and even pleasanter to feel that she was suddenly alone in her head. The sanctity of even the mundane work areas of the temple had proved sufficient to break her psychic link to the vampire.

She let out a long sigh but knew she mustn’t stand idly savoring the sensation. She skulked to the halo of light shed by the nearest oil lamp, willed her veil of invisibility to fall away, took the scroll Kymas had given her from under her cloak, and read the trigger phrase. The words that followed glowed red and vanished in quick succession as the spell they composed cast itself.

A shimmer danced through the air and silvery floating orbs, each the size of a human eyeball, appeared before her. They lacked pupils or any other external feature to suggest they were peering in a particular direction or capable of perception at all, but because she’d created them, Umara could feel them watching her expectantly.

“There’s a little blond-haired boy somewhere in this temple,” she whispered. “Find him, then return to me.”

The orbs flew away in a swarm that dispersed rapidly as one seeker after another veered off to investigate what lay beyond a particular doorway. Meanwhile, Umara shrouded herself in invisibility once more.

Unfortunately, that protection didn’t extend to the orbs. But they were small and darted around quickly. That should make them difficult to spot. And while Umara knew almost nothing about the inner workings of the Church of the Yellow Sun, she doubted that many of Amaunator’s servants were up and about conducting observances in the dead of night.

Still, as time dragged by, she had to resist an old nervous habit of biting her nails. Because if some resident of the temple did notice one of the flying eyes, or worse, if her competitors had already spirited her prize away, life would become a good deal more difficult.

Finally, one of the orbs hurtled back into view. It oriented on its maker despite her invisibility, and when she held out her hand, it settled into her palm and started dissolving. A cool tingling ran up her arm as the searcher’s memories unfolded before her inner eye.

Umara blinked in surprise to see that the boy prophet must actually be a prisoner, not the honored guest that she’d supposed. But it was good. She could use that.

The final image presented itself, and the orb faded out of existence. Umara headed deeper into the temple, where sculleries and pantries gave way to spaces that smelled of frankincense and where rows of columns with golden capitals supported vaulted ceilings. Images of the Keeper of the Yellow Sun gazed down with placid indifference, as though even he couldn’t see her, but she didn’t encounter anyone mortal.

Though the orb had looped back and forth and up and down in the course of its wanderings, its memories had still provided Umara with a fairly clear notion of where the prisoner was and how best to reach him. She proceeded to the east side of the temple, and when a staircase provided the opportunity to ascend to a higher level, she took advantage of it.

Eventually, her prowling brought her to a place where a bored-looking temple guard armed with a mace and garbed in blue and yellow stood beside one in a row of little doorways. On the other side, a cramped little staircase corkscrewed upward.

Umara whispered an incantation and flicked out the fingers of her left hand. Shafts of blue light streaked from her fingertips and plunged into the sentry’s chest. He grunted and pitched forward with a thump that echoed off the nearby stonework.

Umara didn’t think the noise was loud or distinctive enough to rouse any of the sleepers in this cavernous place. She was more concerned by the fact that she’d just popped back into view of anyone who might happen to be looking. It was another limitation of invisibility that casting combat magic generally ripped the mask asunder.

She scurried to the fallen guard, and, teeth gritted, dragged the body bumping far enough up the spiral stairs that no one who simply wandered by on the landing below would see it. Then she pulled the iron key from the warrior’s belt and climbed onward.

At the top was a locked grille of a door, and on the other side of that, a little chamber occupying the top of a stubby tower rising from the temple roof. Umara could tell it was a tower because the walls and even the ceiling were mostly clear crystal window. Perhaps the original idea had been to place priests in need of correction in an optimal setting to contemplate the glories of the sun. And if the cell became oppressively bright and hot, that too might encourage the occupant to mend his ways.

Of course, no one incarcerated here since the start of the Great Rain had needed to worry about glare or heatstroke. Still, even asleep on his side on the floor, the boy looked miserable enough with his hands and feet tied and a gag in his mouth.

He looked ordinary, too, and perhaps before Umara went to the trouble to steal him from the temple, she should double-check that he truly was what she sought. She reached into her pocket, gripped the carved onyx talisman, braced herself, and breathed the word of activation.

As before, she felt a twinge of headache as her perceptions altered. But after that, the experience was different.

Seen for what he truly was, Evendur Highcastle had been like a stone so heavy its mere existence threatened to grind her into nothingness. Whereas the boy felt like a vista of endless sky that pierced a person with its beauty and inspired both exultation and calm in equal measure.

And despite the looming, crushing spiritual bulk of him, the Chosen of Umberlee had simultaneously possessed a sickening quality of absence, as though, even if he failed to realize it himself, he was no more than a hole in the fabric of the world through which the Queen of the Depths could work her will. The child remained entirely a person, individual and free-willed, yet also shining with the promise of joy and resounding in the mind like a trumpet call to some heroic endeavor.

It was that call that soured the momentary bliss of revelation when it came home to Umara that, in relation to her life at least, the spirit of optimism the boy embodied was fundamentally a lie. The undead ruled her homeland and always would. In the years to come, she would either grovel, scheme, and kill her way into their pestilent ranks or remain forever subservient, and neither future seemed all that joyful or heroic.

With a scowl, she released the onyx disk, and her perceptions reverted to normal. As a gust of wind clattered rain against the tower, she unlocked the grille with the key she’d found, kneeled down beside the boy, and touched him on the shoulder. He woke with a gasp and, squirming, tried to recoil from her.