The man near the altar went on: “There’s not even a game trail among the trees back here. Wherever your child may be, he or she is not here. If you want me to bring some men and search the woods around here in daylight, I’ll be happy to lead them, though we would need the duke’s permission since we’d be trespassing.”
“Which is why we’ve been camped down the road and have come alone,” the woman snarled, raising her hand to thrust aside one of the low branches that overhung the platform. “The Duke of Wold won’t know we’re trespassing. Never mind. I’ll have my grubby little spy, Ammalyn, follow the child next time she ventures here.”
The man asked, “Why do you think this thing you want is here at all? Why do you think she ever had it? Or are you really seeking the miraculous device that Huold is said to have left in these lands? Wasn’t that somewhere in Marish, on the other side of the Icefang range?”
The woman said impatiently, “Huold’s device was something else entirely. Everyone has a story about that thing. It is even rumored that Justinian found Huold’s device and gave it to that woman as a betrothal gift, but that’s merely another old tale grafted onto a new occasion. No, the thing I seek is a more recent thing, a powerful device of some kind that was in that woman’s keeping! She must have brought it with her from Tingawa.”
“And you know this how?”
“Because she isn’t dead, Jenger! I would have succeeded in killing her long ago if she did not have some powerful protection! She must have brought it with her!”
Abasio’s arm tightened around Xulai to prevent her moving, for she had trembled in both horror and anger at the woman’s words.
The man said, “But neither her protection nor Huold’s talisman is as old as this shrine.”
“No. These desolation shrines were built by the Forgal people who survived the end of the Before Time, well before Huold was born.”
“Then what made you think the thing you want could be here?”
“Only the rumor of a child sneaking about. I have a man loitering near the castle to learn what’s happening, what’s being said. He knew we were nearby. Ammalyn told him to tell me about this child. It occurred to me the woman might have sent a child to hide something, and the something might be what I’m looking for.”
“It doesn’t sound very likely.”
“The woman I’m killing all too slowly has done many unlikely things, Jenger. Besides, I have a talent. I can smell the heat of power, smell it like the smoke of a distant campfire. Whoever holds it, my nose will find them and they will lead me to it. No matter how many men and how much time it takes.”
“Why does it matter to you?” he said, again soothingly.
Her voice was furious. “Because the Sea King’s ambassador told me the Sea King will buy Huold’s device. The Sea King will buy anything of value to Tingawa. The reward is very great. A very great payment indeed.”
“And what is that?”
She turned to face him, her eyes glinting red, reflecting the glow of the stones, or perhaps, Xulai thought suddenly, they were lit by the same fire that lit the altar stones, ancient evil, heaped like eternal coals, ready to spring into flame if they were fed.
“The Sea People have taken the Edgeworld Isles, Jenger! What they found there is beyond imagination. They found ease machines! Ease machines in vaults below the great library, and books that tell about them and how to use them!”
The tall man’s face betrayed something very like fear. “From the Before Time? How could things like that have stayed hidden?”
“The Sea People’s hearing is different from ours. They hear with echoes. They heard the vault, the hollowness! They knew it was there and needed only to find the way to it. There was much delving, Jenger, much exploration, but they found the vault full of machines!”
“But I thought you already had machines. You said—”
“There are a few little ones at the Old Dark House. Enough to kill that woman of Woldsgard, if used correctly. I confess to a mistake with that one . . .”
“You? I don’t believe that,” he said caressingly.
“Yes. I did. It was decades ago, I was much younger, and I cursed her hastily, badly. However, when I sent the curse, I made copies of the sending, many of them, and eventually they’ll do the job. She can’t go on fighting them forever! Ammalyn tells me she can’t even speak anymore.”
“And that’s the only machine you have?”
“I have three others: one to find people, one to send sounds and sights, one to make speaking mirrors—as you well know—but nothing really powerful.”
“I thought it was your magic that’s killing her.”
She laughed, genuinely amused. “Don’t be silly, Jenger. There’s no such thing as magic. No. My favorite machine makes lovely curses, invisible clouds of very small, powerful killers. I can make the cloud and keep it alive in a special kind of vial. Then, if I get close enough to the person and release the cloud, the cloud will find that person among all the peoples who may be near, no matter where the person is hidden, so long as I release it nearby!”
“Any person?” he said in a choked voice.
“Any person I choose—if I have their code. That’s what the books call it, the code.”
“What code?”
“The code of themselves! The code that makes each of them unique. It’s in their fingernails, in their skin. It’s in their spit on the rim of a wineglass. That’s where I got the code of the princess, while she was at the court of King Gahls. I made my cloud and I carried it here to Woldsgard, near the castle. And once my cloud had settled upon her, she was doomed. The very cells of her body have been slowly, inexorably destroyed by my cloud.”
