Prelude to Fire: Parts 1 and 2 (13 page)

“
C
an
you at least send word to the princess that I’ve stopped?” Lacertin asked Bren.

They stood in a narrow alcove off the main hall of the palace. Bren’s eyes darted everywhere, almost as if refusing to meet Lacertin’s eyes. He held a thick notebook underneath his arm.

“Lacertin—”

“I’m not asking you to do anything else. Send word to her is all.”

“That’s all.” He arched a brow. “I know the history between you, Lacertin. Do you really think it pays to anger the new king so soon after King Ilton’s passing?”

“It’s not Althem I fear angering,” Lacertin said. That wasn’t quite true, though. He didn’t fear Althem, but he also didn’t want to anger him. If Lacertin was still to serve the kingdoms, he needed the king to know that he was willing to do what was needed.

“Ah, yes. Theondar might not be pleased either,” Bren said.

“Just send word to her, will you?”

He glanced past Lacertin and nodded. “I make no promises that she’ll respond.”

Lacertin stepped away from Bren and hurried down the wide stair. He passed the statues with barely a glance and stopped at the rooms he’d once claimed as his. Farther down the hall were Theondar’s rooms. Earth sensing gave him no sign that Theondar was even here. Lacertin was grateful. He didn’t want to see him today and didn’t want to risk Ilianna needing to explain why Lacertin had summoned her.

Inside the rooms, Lacertin looked around at the sparse decorations. A dusty ceramic basin rested in one corner. A trunk pushed against the wall still showed his handprint from the last time he'd reached into it. The bed was carefully made and stacked with pillows, but it had been a long time since he’d slept in it.

The strange obsidian bowl rested on the chest where he’d left it. Lacertin lifted the bowl and ran his finger across the rim, forming a trail in the dust. Runes or letters were etched into the obsidian, and he pressed his finger into them. Knowing what Ilianna had said, the similarities to the plates were there.

“You never made this your home, did you?”

Lacertin turned to see Ilianna standing in the door, watching him with sad eyes.

“This was never my home,” he said.

“Where is your home, then?”

Lacertin didn’t have the heart to tell her that he had no home. Since leaving Nara, he’d never felt comfortable anywhere. As a fire shaper first, he hadn’t been fully accepted at the university at first, leaving him somewhat of an outcast. Then, when he’d proven to be a warrior, his abilities had exceeded almost all of the masters who taught him, setting him apart yet again.

When Ilton came to him, searching for the services of a warrior he could trust, Lacertin had willingly taken the opportunity. He might have been granted a room in the palace, but his assignments had sent him throughout the kingdoms, and occasionally beyond. It had been hard to establish a place that was truly home when he was never in one place for very long.

“Home is the kingdoms,” he said.

“Do you really feel that way?”

Lacertin didn’t know. Other than Nara—and that wasn’t home anymore, either—no place else felt the same to him. “Does it matter?”

Ilianna stepped toward him and took the bowl from his hands. She studied it a moment and then ran a finger much like he had, sliding along the edge of the bowl.

“Incendin has some of the finest obsidian craftsman in the world,” he said.

“It’s not Incendin,” she said without looking up. “Do you see how this pattern shifts, the way these come together?” She pointed into the bowl at two shapes that were familiar but not that he recognized. “They are
Ishthin
, much like the plates. I can understand the way these work,” she started, her voice trailing off.

“The runes are similar,” he agreed reluctantly.

“Similar, almost as if they shared the same intent. What if this can help Father, Lacertin? What if the key to healing him had been here all along?”

Lacertin didn’t know how that was possible. The bowl was nothing more than an item discovered long ago, before he even knew about ancient items of power. The hut that he’d found it in, one that the archivist with him had suggested he search, had been empty for years. Other than this bowl, there had been nothing of interest there. He’d tucked it away, always meaning to ask one of the archivists, but never had taken the time. Ilton always had another task, another journey.

Now there would be no more.

“We should ask the archivists,” Lacertin said. “I can’t get into the restricted section of the archives without them. Even if I can, there are too many texts to search.” And not enough time to find the answer, he didn’t say.

“It focuses shaping, I think,” she said, ignoring his comment. “See the way the runes form? They draw the power here.”

“We should ask—”

She shook her head as she studied the bowl now held between them. The bowl wasn’t large, barely larger than his palm, so when they held it between them, she stood close enough that he could smell her perfume and feel the warmth coming from her body. “We don’t have time to ask.”

“Ilianna,” he started.

She leaned even closer. “If this can focus shaping, what if it can help Father? We don’t know the secret to the plates, so there must be
something
that we can try.”

“I don’t think anything will help your father now. The poisoning,” he said, not yet wanting to reveal that it had to have been Incendin, “is beyond our healing. Let him find comfort. He would want that.”

“You know what my father would want?” she asked.

Lacertin sighed. “In all the years that I’ve served him, the only thing I’ve known that he wanted was peace. Everything he’s asked of me has brought us closer to stopping the war.”

“We need him alive, Lacertin,” she said. “If this bowl can focus shapings, do you not owe it to him to attempt to use it? If you won’t try it, then I will…”

She created a shaping that pressed through the bowl that Lacertin couldn’t fully follow. Whatever she’d done built quickly, pouring into the bowl with more strength than Lacertin had expected of her, and then surged into the blackness.

Something happened as it did. The shaping seemed to roll along the lip of the bowl and then rebounded, bouncing back and striking her.

Ilianna’s eyes went wide and she dropped her hands away from the bowl, staggering a step back. “Oh,” she said.

“Ilianna?” he asked.

Lacertin shoved the bowl into his pocket and stepped toward her as she began to swoon. Her feet got tangled and she dropped toward the ground. He swept his hands beneath her, managing to keep her from hitting the ground. She stared blankly at him.

“Ilianna?” he said again.

She didn’t answer.

Lacertin used a shaping of water and let it sweep through her, searching for any injuries, but he couldn’t find anything. Her heart beat strongly within her chest, her breathing was regular, and the blood pumped through her veins as it should, but there was the distinct sense of something
wrong
within her. He wasn’t skilled enough to find out what had happened.

She needed help, but not from him. And it mattered
who
he asked for help, because she hadn’t wanted anyone to know that she could shape.

Lacertin stood frozen for a moment, unable to decide what he should do. Did he risk disrupting the line of succession and reveal that she’d shaped herself so that he could get her the help that she needed, or did he protect that and risk her not getting well?

Forcing himself to get moving, he carefully placed her on his bed and hurried from his room. He made a point of shaping the door closed, sealing it so that only he could open it again, and ran through the palace and toward the university.

Ilianna needed help, and he might be able to both protect her secret and get her the help that she needed, but would Jayna help him?

H
e found
her working with Veran, the steady shaping washing over him as if searching for whatever Lacertin might have done to him. When he entered the healing room, she gave him a dark frown and continued with her shaping. He waited for a moment, but when she continued shaping, he took her wrist and pulled her hand away.

“He’s healed,” Lacertin said more abruptly than he intended. He needed Jayna’s help. If he trusted Wallyn more, he might go to him, but Wallyn would feel compelled to ask questions that Lacertin wasn’t ready to answer. Hopefully he wouldn’t
have
to answer them.

“Just because you say so doesn’t mean that he truly
is
healed.”

“Do you sense any of the poisoning remaining in his blood?” Lacertin asked. He used a shaping of fire and water and sent it sweeping through the sleeping warrior. He found nothing remaining that indicated that Veran was sick. His body was tired, but that needed sleep and time, not shaping.

Jayna jerked her arm away and stepped to the side, putting distance between them. “Why have you come here, Lacertin? I thought…”

She didn’t finish, but Lacertin didn’t need her to finish. There had been a connection between them from the very beginning. He wasn’t so dense that he hadn’t felt it as well, but it was a connection that he didn’t dare let himself fully experience. Not with a student, and not when he didn’t know what would happen to him once Ilton passed.

“I know what you thought,” he said as gently as he could. “I once would have thought the same,” he said. Saying it aloud was harder than he had expected and she deserved the truth, but he was Lacertin. Serving Ilton did not give him time for romance, or even friendship.

“Why not?”

He pulled in a quick breath. “Jayna, I just… I can’t. I’m sorry.”

She nodded. “That’s not why you came back.”

“I need your help.”

She furrowed her brow. “Why
my
help?”

“Because you’re a better healer than me.”

He grabbed her arm and this time, she didn’t resist and went with him. They hurried out of the university, taking the back halls to reach the outside. He didn’t want to chance running into Wallyn or one of the other water shapers and have to answer questions about why he was taking Jayna with him. As they reached the street, he thought he saw Wallyn coming from the other direction, but he hurried forward and slipped into the shadows.

“Where are we going?” Jayna asked.

Lacertin felt like they’d had this conversation before. The last time, he’d sent her back to the university, but this time, he needed her to come with him into the palace. Without her help, Lacertin would be forced to reveal what had really happened to Ilianna and would have to explain her sudden ability to shape.

He nodded toward the palace lit up against the night. “There.”

Jayna pulled on his hand. “Why? What’s there that you need my help?”

“Please,” he started, “I need you to trust me.”

She considered him a moment, but went along with him. As they neared the palace, with Lacertin using a shaping of wind to carry them over the wall and through the garden, she spoke again. “Who do you need me to heal?” Her eyes took in the steady light of the shapers lanterns glowing in the windows. “That’s why you wanted me to come, isn’t it? It’s not me, but what I can do?”

He pushed open the door to the palace and hurried along the halls, not bothering to give the two shapers standing guard a second glance. He recognized only one of them, a young wind shaper named Alan he’d met about a year ago. He’d been friendly, but not overly so, and only nodded as Lacertin passed.

Her eyes lingered on the stairs leading to Ilton’s chambers. “You’ve been here before,” Lacertin said.

“Master Wallyn has had me along when he’s attempted healing the king,” she said. “Nothing he did ever worked.”

“No, it would only delay it,” Lacertin agreed, “because Wallyn can’t shape fire.”

They stopped at Lacertin’s door, and he shaped it open. Earth sensing told him that Ilianna was still inside, but not more than that. She lived, but he wondered how much longer that would be the case. He prayed that he was overreacting, that she had only stunned herself with the shaping, but he didn’t think that to be true.

“You’re saying the king was poisoned the same way as Master Veran?” Jayna asked.

“Not the same,” Lacertin said.

She smiled. “You want me to believe the king was fighting Incendin hounds?”

“Ilton never fought the hounds, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t poisoned by them.”

He pushed the door open, and Jayna caught his arm and kept him from pulling her into the room with him.

“What you’re saying, it’s…”

“It’s not impossible. Why else couldn’t the best healers in the kingdoms help him? Don’t you think that Wallyn would have been able to heal anything else?”

“Lacertin, it’s not like that. Not every injury can be healed!”

He knew that to be true. He’d seen it too often over years spent fighting Incendin. Had there been a way to heal every wound, they wouldn’t have lost so many shapers, men and women who had sacrificed everything to keep the kingdoms safe.

“This one could have been,” he said. Had he only been stronger, or had he only known, but then he would have changed many things that had happened over the years. How different would his life had been had he made different choices? Had he not accepted Ilton’s call, and ultimately become his First Warrior? Had he not been sent from Ethea when Ilianna had been willing to listen to his courtship? Had he managed to keep his brother from making the crossing?

“You don’t know that,” she said. “The king has been sick for a long time.”

“Poisoned,” Lacertin said. “Not sick.”

But what she said was true. Ilton
had
been sick for a long time, and in spite of multiple attempts to heal him. Could the person responsible still be within the palace, or had Ilton been poisoned only once?

There was no question that Incendin was to blame, but who had been the one to administer the poison?

He pulled Jayna into the room and pushed his door closed. When she saw the princess lying on his bed, her eyes widened and then a hurt expression crept into them.

She ran over to Ilianna and placed her hands on either side of her head. Her shaping built quickly. “What happened to her?”

Lacertin stood next to her and felt Jayna tense. “A shaping,” he said.

Jayna’s eyes closed as she shaped. “Heart is strong. She breathes regularly. No fever. Nothing broken.” She opened her eyes. “I can’t find anything wrong.”

Lacertin moved Jayna’s hand to touch Ilianna’s chest above her heart. “Something is wrong,” he said. “The shaping hit her, and then she went like this.”

Jayna looked up at him. “This was your shaping?”

This was the moment he’d feared, but the reason that he’d gone for Jayna. He needed to trust her. Everything he’d seen from her told him that he
could
trust her.

“Not my shaping.”

She stared at the princess a moment as if debating whether to say anything. Then Jayna tried a different shaping of water, adding layers to it that were beyond what Lacertin could understand. She continued for long moments, building the shaping, stacking one atop the other, and each time it surged over Ilianna, the corners of Jayna’s mouth twitched. Sweat beaded on her brow as she worked.

Then she stepped back and shook her head. “I can’t find what it is.” She looked over to Lacertin. “You’re right. Something is off with her, but I’m not skilled enough to discover what it is.”

“If you’re not, then no one is,” Lacertin said.

“Master Wallyn—”

“I couldn’t go to Wallyn,” Lacertin said.

“Why? You care about her. Don’t tell me that you don’t. I saw it in your face the first time you mentioned her name. Don’t you want her to get the best help that she can?”

“I couldn’t go to Wallyn because he’d ask too many questions,” Lacertin said.

Jayna took a step back. “And the ignorant student wouldn’t think to ask the same questions? You think I don’t wonder why you won’t tell me who shaped her, or what the shaping used on her was? Those are important details, Lacertin. The shaping can guide the healing.”

“I don’t know what shaping was used on her,” he said.

“You’re a warrior, the greatest in the kingdoms. You expect me to believe that you don’t know what shaping is used around you?”

“Not this shaping,” he said softly.

Her eyes narrowed. “From what I’ve seen from you, that’s not possible.”

Jayna looked down to Ilianna and tried a different shaping. Lacertin had never seen a shaping like it, but it washed through Ilianna, starting at her mind and circling her heart. When the shaping completed, she looked up at Lacertin. “
She
was the shaper, wasn’t she?”

“You understand why I couldn’t go to Wallyn.”

“Actually, no. What does it matter if the princess can shape? Most would be pleased to know!”

“Not when it affects succession.”

Jayna sucked in a breath. “Althem can’t shape,” she said.

“Only he knows the answer to that. He’s trained at the university, but none of the masters he worked with ever thought he had any real potential. And since his younger sister couldn’t shape, it didn’t matter.”

“Lacertin,” she started, saying his name with a concerned edge, “I don’t know how to help her. If this was a shaping like you said, there might not be a way to help her.”

Lacertin prepared to say something but felt the sharp buildup of a shaping coming from behind him. He turned in time to see the door to his room slam open.

Theondar stood on the other side.