The Traitor Queen

uncut.”

“And otherwise unnatural?” Regin looked down at the hole it had come out of. “What sort of gemstone is it?”

“Gemstone!” Sonea exclaimed. She sucked in a breath and looked up at Regin, then climbed to her feet. “One of the Traitors’ magical gemstones, most likely. I doubt the Duna come this far south, and if the Ichani know about them they’d have used them on us twenty years ago.” She considered the way it had drawn in her magic, and her blood went cold again. She looked at Regin and held back the words. Could she tell him her suspicions? What if his mind was read? What if he told somebody? What if...?

When – if – the Traitors arrived, she would need to have already considered all the implications of her discovery. She might not need to tell Regin, to seek his opinion, but she wanted to.

Regin was staring back at her, bemused and worried. She drew in a deep breath.

“It is, I suspect, a black magic gemstone,” she said, keeping her voice low in case someone, somehow, was watching and listening to them.

He drew in a sharp breath and stared at her in horror. Then he looked down at the stone and his eyes narrowed.

“So that’s why the wasteland never recovered.”

She shivered despite the growing heat and looked around them. It makes sense. If they can make one stone like this they can make hundreds. Thousands. Strewn across the land, they must slowly but relentlessly suck away life. The soil becomes too infertile for plants. Larger, more sophisticated living things like animals starve or move away.

Which meant the Traitors had been deliberately keeping the wasteland a wasteland.

For centuries.

“All this time it was thought the Guild created this to keep Sachaka weak. Instead it was the Traitors.”

Regin frowned. “Well... we can’t be sure of that. They may have just put the stone here to keep the water clean.”

She looked up at him. “I reckon I could find more stones, if any are about.”

His gaze sharpened. “Give it a try.”

Handing him the stone, which he took gingerly, she walked a few steps away and looked at the ground sloping downward toward the dunes. She closed her eyes and expanded the natural barrier around her skin until it was a globe. Where it overlapped with the rock beneath her feet, she weakened it so that magic began to seep out. Then she began to walk forward slowly.

She had only taken fifty or so paces when she felt the faintest pull. It was an illusion – the sense of no resistance where everywhere else there was one. Stopping, she turned and, after losing the sense a few times, managed to narrow down the area the pull was coming from to a few paces in diameter: a stone-filled crack between two sheets of stone.

Regin joined her as she poked around inside the crack. She began sweeping her barrier down the length of the gap, but before she had gone far Regin gave a little crow of triumph and held something up.

Another dark, glossy crystal. Taking it from him she tested it. The magic she sent toward it was drawn into the stone.

“Twice is coincidence,” Regin said. “Thrice is...”

Nodding, she set off in another direction. This time she found a stone easily, buried in a sand-filled depression. All in sheltered positions where water might collect or flow through. Nooks and cracks where life might take root. They returned to the meeting place. She had undone her diversion of the spring, and the pool was full again. Dipping her hand in the water, she confirmed that it was now full of tiny specks of energy.

She looked up at Regin.

“Osen needs to know about this.”

He smiled crookedly. “Oh, he most certainly does.”

And Lorkin, she thought. Though he may know already. Ah. If he’s not supposed to know, I may endanger his life by telling him. It may not be wise to let the Traitors know we’ve discovered their dirty little secret, either.

Still, once the Guild knew, the Traitors would gain nothing from killing her and Regin. Taking Osen’s ring from her pocket, she sat down, leaned against a boulder and slipped it on her finger.

—Osen.

—Sonea!

—Do you have a moment? You won’t want to believe what I’ve just discovered.

PART TWO

Chapter 16 Plans and Negotiations

Cery sighed. “Let’s run through this again.”

“We arrange for Skellin to learn we’re living under the Guild,” Gol said. “Not being protected by magicians.”

“Even if he knows the Guild isn’t aware that we’re down here, he’ll suspect Lilia does,” Anyi continued. “We have to make Skellin think Lilia isn’t always with us, and let him find out her routine so he’ll know when she’s not protecting us.”

“He’ll send others first, to check whether it’s true, or to capture me,” Cery repeated. “So we’ve got to set things up so that only a magician can get through to us. Like a magical barrier created by Lilia.”

“But won’t that make him suspect Lilia is down here?” Anyi asked.

“He’s a magician,” Cery answered. “He knows a magician can set up a barrier, then go somewhere else.”

“Still, it might put him off going any further,” Anyi pointed out.

“We put the barrier close enough to us so he can hear us, or see light ahead, making him think he only has to go a little further to find us.”

“Him or Lorandra,” Gol said. “If he sends Lorandra we spring the trap anyway. At least the Guild will catch one of them, and they could use her as bait in another trap.”

“Yes, if they don’t let her escape again.” Cery smiled wryly.

“Once he breaks through the barrier he’ll want to act fast,” Anyi continued, “because Lilia will know her barrier has been broken. If he’s close enough to see or hear us, we won’t have much warning.”

“We could put a lamp around the next corner, so it looks like we’re close, but we’re actually further away,” Gol suggested. “And a few more lamps, so it looks like we put them there for our own use.”

“Which means getting more lamps and more oil. More stuff for Lilia to bring.” Anyi sighed.

“What if Skellin brings others with him?” Gol asked.

Cery considered. “So long as they stick together, they don’t matter.”

Gol frowned. “But will they? If I were Skellin, I’d send them ahead to look for traps once I got past the barrier.”

“Let them find us.” Cery shrugged. “They’ll either go back to tell Skellin, or wait for him to catch up and give them orders.”

“Then, when he does, we spring our trap,” Gol said.

Cery nodded. He and Gol hadn’t told Anyi their plans to reveal Skellin to the Guild using non-magical means.