He pushed her away gruffly. “Don't get too excited, R'shiel. I'm doing this to prove you wrong.”
“I'm not wrong. I know this will work.”
He picked up his cloak from the back of the chair where he had discarded it earlier and looked at her sceptically. “A few more burns from touching those staffs might convince you otherwise, demon child.”
Two determined-looking Defenders barred the entrance into the tunnel that led into the caverns under the amphitheatre. R'shiel demanded entry to no avail, but the ruckus brought out the officer in charge to see what all the fuss was about. He recognised R'shiel and frowned. Shorter than the average Defender and prematurely grey, he was renowned for his organisational abilities, rather than his fighting skills. He was also an old friend of Tarja's.
“You can't see the prisoners, R'shiel.”
“We don't want to see the Kariens, Captain Grannon. We just want to have a look at the staffs you took from the priests.”
He frowned, but could see no harm in her request. As far as Grannon was concerned, the staffs were just useless, if rather valuable, religious frippery.
“Very well. Go with them, Charal. And stay with them,” he added with a disturbing lack of trust.
The sergeant took a torch from the wall and led them through the tunnel into the caverns on the left. The staffs were piled in a careless heap in a room near the entrance. There were another two Defenders posted outside, who stood aside to let them enter. Charal went in first and held the torch high. The flames reflected off the staff heads like myriad tiny jewels. R'shiel and Brak stared at the pile, careful not to get too close.
“Can you pick one up for me?” she asked Charal.
“Captain Grannon didn't say you weren't allowed to touch them.”
“We can't touch them.” Brak explained. “They're specifically designed to harm anyone with Harshini blood.”
Charal looked sceptical, but he turned to the wall and dropped the torch into a metal bracket before bending down and picking up a staff at random. He thrust it at R'shiel, who took an involuntary step backwards.
“Careful!”
Swallowing a sudden lump of fear, R'shiel stepped closer and studied the hated symbol of Xaphista's power. The shaft had been treated with something that stained it black and made the metal suck in the light around it. The head of the staff was made of gold; shaped like a five-pointed star and intersected by a lightning bolt crafted of silver. Each point of the star was set with crystal and in the centre of the star was a larger gem of the same stone.
Charal looked at the staff curiously, his eyes alight with greed. “Are they real diamonds, do you think?”
“No,” Brak said. “They're crystals of some sort.”
“They look like the Seeing Stone.”
Brak stared at her. “What?”
“I said they look like the Seeing Stone. You know, the big crystal they have in the Temple at Greenharbour?”
“I know what the Seeing Stone is. Bring it closer to the light.”
Charal moved the staff until it caught the flames of the torch. R'shiel stepped closer, studied it for a moment, and then tentatively reached out towards the staff head.
“What are you doing?” Brak cried in horror.
“Putting a theory to the test.”
She lightly brushed her fingertip over the centre crystal. No bolt of agony shot through her, not even a whisper of pain.
“How... ?” he gasped in astonishment.
“I didn't touch the staff, just the crystal. Try it yourself.”
Reluctantly, Brak reached out to touch the sparkling jewel, jerking his hand back instinctively in anticipation of the torture he was certain awaited him. When nothing happened, he gingerly laid his finger on the stone and looked at R'shiel in wonder.
“I don't understand.”
“Watch,” she commanded. He stepped back as she reached for the staff once more, this time with her eyes blackened by the power she drew. She placed her finger on the centre crystal and the room flared with light as every stone in every staff on the floor began to glow in response to her touch. Charal dropped the staff with a cry of alarm. Brak jumped clear of it as the room was plunged back into relative darkness as soon as her contact with the crystal was severed.
“But how... ?” Brak asked, looking at the now quiescent pile of staffs that lay on the floor beside them.
“I think they're chips off one of the missing Seeing Stones.”
“I hate to admit it, R'shiel, but you may have been right, after all.”
“I can use the staffs to influence the priests, can't I?”
He glanced at the pile. “That's what you came to ask me? I suppose. Provided you can access a Seeing Stone to control them.”
“The Citadel's Seeing Stone is lost,” she reminded him, glancing at the pile of staffs. “But Kalan said it couldn't be destroyed. It has to be somewhere.”
He did not seem to share her optimism. “I suppose, although where you would hide something as large as a Seeing Stone is beyond me. And have you considered the possibility that these crystals might be all that's left of the Citadel's Stone?”
“I'm guessing if a Seeing Stone was broken down into smaller stones, it's the one from Talabar. The Sisterhood would only care about destroying it or hiding it. Only the Fardohnyans would think of selling it.”
Brak nodded thoughtfully. “Which would explain Hablet's determination to keep the Harshini out of Fardohnya. He wouldn't want us to realise what had happened to it.”
“And only a god would have the power to break the Stone up. It makes sense, I suppose, although it must have cost Karien a fortune. I always wondered how Fardohnya got so rich so quickly. But what about Loclon?”
“We'll look for him, but without help we're not going to find him.” Her expression hardened. “The new Lord Defender has other priorities.”
Brak studied her determined expression and shrugged. “All right then, that just leaves one rather pertinent question to be answered.”
“What's that?”
“Where does one hide several tons of magic crystal?”
CHAPTER 44
Loclon jerked back to consciousness with a start, and for a long time could not decide where he was. His mind was filled with so many images, so much pain, that he could not gather his thoughts into anything remotely resembling coherent thought. He stared at the strange room, at the heavy drapes over the bed and the softly glowing walls, trying to recall how he came to be there. His head was weighted down with pain and he could not move his limbs. He could not even remember who he was.
It came to him, after a time, although how long was impossible to judge. He gradually remembered being Joyhinia Tenragan. He remembered the power he had wielded in her name. He remembered R'shiel standing over him, demanding that he live.
And he remembered dying.
The feeling stayed with him like a shadow looming over his soul. The pain seemed almost irrelevant when compared with the overwhelming terror he experienced when he recalled throwing himself on some nameless
