Summerblood (4 page)

“
Are
there any?” Lykkon broke in, genuinely surprised. “I've been keeping a tally—”

Tyrill regarded him keenly, as though torn between praising his foresight and condemning the interruption. “The septchiefs from here, South, Half, and Mid Gorges are all present. The -el chief from North is ill and may predecease Eellon, from what I hear. The subchiefs from all those holds less than an eight-day's ride away are also either here or in transit. Not so much out of curiosity—we know who's older than who— but because powerful people are drawn to the smell of history in process. And there
is
the matter of mental competence. It's one thing to claim that, it's another to display it. Some days I'm not even sure I'm competent myself.”

Avall could think of no reply. Tyrill seemed to need comfort, and he didn't know how to provide it. She'd never needed it before, and he'd never tried. Besides which, she'd always had her own favorite, Eddyn.

Eddyn syn Argen-yr, whose bronze likeness, newly cast by Tyrill herself, now stood in Argen-yr's water court. Eddyn, Tyrill's favorite two-son and protégé, one of the three best smiths of his generation—and a rapist, a murderer, an exile, a hero, and—some said—a self-deluded fool.

Yet Tyrill had lived for him, then through him, and Avall suddenly wondered how much longer she would last, once a successor for Eellon was named.

But he wouldn't think about that now.
Couldn't
think about it. It had been a mistake to come here.

“Do what you think best,” he heard himself telling Tyrill as he started for the door. “When it finally happens and we sit in conclave, you know I'll do everything in my power to be present.”

“But who will you support?” Tyrill shot back, with what almost seemed like glee. “The two eldest claimants are exactly of an age, and one is from -yr, and one from -a. Will you do the right thing, or will politics once more prevail?”

“I will do what seems right to me,” Avall assured her from the door. “As, I'm certain, will you.”

Crim san Myrk, Hold-Warden of Gem-Hold-Winter, patted the topmost volume of the imposing pile on the podium before her and aimed a meaningful stare at the other six people facing her in this, her most private council chamber. The stack would've been knee high had it rested on the floor, and that array of tired old oak-and-leather bindings probably weighed half as much as she did, never mind what it contained, which was priceless.

But Crim, at that moment, would cheerfully have consigned them all to the flames in the forges fifteen levels lower. She could do it, too; she had that much authority—besides which, it wasn't as if other copies didn't exist—in the Lore hall at Gem-Hold-Main, for instance—or Lore-Hold-Main, though
that
copy could only be accessed by Gemcraft's Chief herself, or the Chief of Clan Myrk, that ruled it.

An eyebrow lifted on the lined old face of he who sat nearest: Ayll, Myrk's local Sub-Clan-Chief—which meant he was the oldest member of that clan on the premises. Beside him, Mystel, the Sub-Craft-Chief, dared a confused frown; then again, for all her crafting skill (which was what justified her title), she
wasn't the smartest person Crim knew, and certainly not the quickest. The other four, however—Savayn, the deputy Hold-Warden; Ekaylin, the Mine-Master; and Nyvven and Tynn, the local chiefs of Myrk's two septs, -or and -izz, respectively— leaned forward with anxious, if honest, interest.

“I've read every word in these,” Crim informed them, tapping the books again—which raised a cloud of dust made more visible by the window-wall behind her. “Every word in four hundred years' worth of Hold-Wardens' journals and most of the Mine-Masters' tallies as well—which I intend to complete this summer. And I'm here to tell you that if any reference to gems such as Avall found exists, I didn't find it.”

“And if you didn't find it,” Mystel noted primly, “it's unlikely to be found.”

Crim nodded, a grim smile creasing her smooth, no-nonsense features. “I'm going to continue searching, however, and I'm going to set someone to copying these records—in case that turns up something I missed. But I can now say with reasonable certainty that gems such as Avall found in Argen's vein are something new in the world.”

Nyvven, the younger sept-chief, puffed hollow cheeks, one of which was scarred from a pick handle gone awry in his youth. “There was the stone that Healer woman found—”

“The attraction stone? Actually, we've found a few more of those over the years. They're interesting, but mostly a novelty.”

“Refresh my memory,” Tynn mumbled in turn. “I've forgotten so much …”

Crim had to work to suppress her impatience. Tynn was twice her age and more, and close enough to senile that he often forgot to bathe, with distressing consequences. Still, it was important to provide everyone with equal information, and if that was painstakingly slow—well, so was cutting diamonds. “Briefly,” she began, “they're red, like Avall's gems, but they don't have lights inside them like Avall's evidently do. Their main property of note is that if you break one—which is easy to do, across the long axis—each part points toward the
other like a lodestone, except that these don't seem limited by distance.”

“There's also the stone in the Sword of Air,” Nyvven noted.

Again Crim nodded. “And I wish we had it here to study, or that I could see it there—assuming Avall would let me. Unfortunately, that stone was found so long ago no one from here knows
what
it is, and since it's part of royal regalia, we've no way to find out unless someone from Gem becomes Sovereign.”

“Maybe we should move in that direction,” Ayll mused, a bit too loudly.

Crim silenced him with a glare, though the notion had its merits. “What we need to know, first and foremost,” she continued, “is whether more gems like Avall's remain to be found. As best we can determine, he discovered his in Argen's vein— and then Strynn found one, though she, by rights, shouldn't have
been
in Argen's vein, given that she's Ferr. And then Rann—who isn't Argen, either—somehow got hold of five more.”

“All of which you only know by report,” Savayn, her sharpeyed deputy—and niece—observed.

Ekaylin cleared his throat and folded muscular arms across his brawny chest. “Maybe so, but I will swear any oath you like that Rann syn Eemon was never in Argen's vein. Once Avall and Eddyn disappeared, that vein was always watched, and every entrance and exit recorded—your orders, Lady Warden. As to any being found elsewhere, there's no way to know for certain without subjecting everyone who's ever been here to interrogation under imphor wood, which is impossible. Not that we can afford to offend every chief in Eron, anyway,” he added.

“We're actually in a fairly precarious position,” Crim agreed. “We control the source of what may be the most powerful substance in Eron, yet cannot—ourselves—our clan—lay claim to any of it without risking civil war.” She tapped the books again. “Much as I hate to say it, it seems very possible that whatever
Avall found is peculiar to Argen's vein and legally beyond our control.”

“So are you saying we should ally ourselves with Argen, just in case?” Tynn inquired archly.

A shrug. “I'm saying we should ally ourselves with the King, who happens to
be
Argen. Besides which—”

“Besides which,” Savayn broke in, “we're effectively allied to him anyway, given that his mother was Clay, which was one of our septs until they split off; and that his bond-brother is Stone, which would still rule us if we hadn't asserted ourselves after we took control of this place.”

“Which still doesn't tell us what these gems are,” Nyvven huffed. “Nor whether they're unique to Argen's vein, nor whether someone else has also found some and is simply not telling anyone, nor what their nature is.”

“Nor how they relate to the Wells,” Ekaylin interjected. “We do know that vein is somewhat damper than most, and we know that the gems seem to confer abilities similar to those conferred by the Wells—”

“Which, beyond the common element of water, is stretching a point, I think,” Crim replied. “Never mind that to pursue that line would require the cooperation of Priest-Clan, and I don't trust the Priests in this hold as far as I can throw them. Certainly not Nyss, who I
know
is carrying around enough secrets to strangle a geen.”

“
How
do you know?” Mystel wondered.

“Because she disappears too easily,” Savayn supplied, drumming her nails impatiently.

Crim suppressed a knowing smirk. “I've noticed that, too. She enters her suite, but then she's not seen for days. She summons no food to her room, yet has no way to cook there—but makes no claim to be fasting. The conclusion is that she's eating somewhere else that's accessible only from her suite. And given what an unmapped warren this place is …” She paused for a reply that didn't come. “Unfortunately, I dare not
confront her. That could alienate Priest, and we're worse off alienating them than our other potential enemies.”

Mystel looked puzzled. “How so?”

Crim spared her a tolerant scowl. “Because, Mystel, they control the weather-witch, and we are, let me remind you, a winter hold. We can do without witchings in the summer. Winter is another matter. We need the warnings the witches provide. And before you reply that anything that hurts us, hurts them, remember what I just said: that they've clearly got a mechanism in place to look after their own. I don't know how much you've heard about those people who attacked Avall, but they were almost certainly allied with Priest, if not actually part of it, and the only way they could've learned about that gem of his is if they had agents here, which, along with her disappearances, implicates Nyss.”

“You could request a replacement,” Savayn suggested.

“But I'd need better reasons than I could officially give. The real reason and the overt reason would be two separate things, and that's always dangerous.”

“But …”

Crim slapped the books with an open palm, and rose. “Enough! It's clear that I know nothing about what I should know a great deal about, and that you know even less. It's equally clear that this situation has to change. I want each of you to take one of these books away with you and read it—and note anything that smacks of aberrant finds in the mines. I also want you to look for anything we don't already know that might cast doubt on Argen's claim to that particular vein, in case … Well, just in case.”

And with that, she turned and swept from the room.

She did
not
, however, return to her quarters, as she usually did this time of day, to review the assignment lists and supply reports. Rather, she bent her steps by the straightest route to one of the eight principal stairways that spiraled directly down to the mines. What she hoped to find, she had no more notion
than she'd had the last dozen times she'd been there. Still, it was always good to observe firsthand that over which her role as Hold-Warden gave her sovereignty.

Levels twisted past as she continued down, their walls changing mode of decoration as she descended—now fresco, now mosaic, now tapestry, now bas-relief—yet nowhere was the transition jarring. One day, she reckoned, she might even take time to stop and look at them.

But not today, not even when her legs began to protest. Which she chose to consider less a sign of age than of inaction born of responsibilities that kept her ever more confined to her suite or the adjoining office. Restocking the hold with sufficient provisions to see a thousand-odd inhabitants through the Dark Season was daunting at best. Never mind the recent war, which had played havoc with supply and production alike.

Down and down and down.

She'd chosen a route that terminated in the mines' “official” entrance, though there were other stairs that ended in the vaulted corridor that encircled it, and a few that gave onto the offices, storerooms, and vesting rooms beyond. The chamber itself was octagonal and roughly ten spans across, rising to a dome easily that high. Archways opened off it at regular intervals, most leading to the surrounding corridor, while eight major piers of stone ran up the walls to the center of the dome, all carved from the living rock of the mountain. It was through these piers the principal staircases ran, issuing from archways in their bases. The local stone being somewhat dark, all surfaces between the piers were whitewashed and void of ornament. Color came from the floor, where, beneath a slab of glass two fingers thick, a map of Eron and environs had been worked in gems and rare metals, the entirety framed by roundels bearing the sigils of all twenty-four clans and crafts. It was one of the wonders of craftsmanship in that part of the world, for each gem was faceted, so that even the smallest stream glittered with emerald fire.

Crim strode straight across it—as many people, she'd discovered, were loath to do—and entered the corridor beyond, which opened, in turn, on a much smaller, though still impressive chamber, the far door of which was bracketed by the assay desks of the Mine-Master and his deputies. Iron gates were set in slots above all major entrances here and elsewhere, including the room she'd just vacated, but beyond their yearly inspection and cleaning, they hadn't been lowered since the Hold's foundation.