Page 33 of Shroud of Eternity (Sister of Darkness: The Nicci Chronicles 2)

“Not much.” He lowered his voice. “I’ve been there myself once, at night. It’s a bad place.”

“It is a place of great historical significance,” Verna said. “And it is close to my heart.”

“Will you take us?” Amber asked. “Please?”

“Of course.”

Verna primly sat balanced on the flatboat’s single low bench, and Amber struck up a brief conversation as the young fisherman worked his way across the current, finally reaching the shore of Halsband Island. Verna looked across the bleak, rocky surface, seeing nothing … nothing at all. The young man was worried. “Do you want me to drop you off at any particular place?”

“Dear spirits, it doesn’t seem to make much difference,” Verna said, then sighed. “This is fine, right here.”

She kept her balance as she climbed out of the flatboat, while Amber easily sprang onto the shore. “How will we get back?”

“I’ll come for you,” the young man volunteered.

Amber flashed him a flirtatious smile. “You would have our gratitude, but how will we contact you?”

“Just come back here when you’re ready. I can fish up and down the current nearby, and I’ll see you. I’ll keep an eye out.”

“An acceptable solution,” Verna said, climbing up onto the rocks. Amber followed her, waving a quick good-bye to the young man as he pulled away.

Verna set her gaze ahead, trudging forward. Her shoes crunched on the broken rocks. Tears stung her eyes, and she refused to look at Amber, because that might encourage questions from the novice, and Verna didn’t have the heart to answer questions. She didn’t know if she ever would again.

“You are much too young to remember this place. The Palace of the Prophets was one of the grandest buildings in the Old World, constructed by wizards three thousand years ago, before the great war, before the barriers went up. I came here much later, as a novice myself, and eventually I took on my duties of studying, then training. We helped so many gifted young men. Those who didn’t know how to cope with their growing magic suffered terrible headaches, and they died if we didn’t assist them in time.”

“Lord Rahl was one of them, wasn’t he?” Amber asked.

“Yes, yes he was. I spent decades away from the palace searching for him, knowing that he was out there somewhere.” She touched her graying hair, felt the fine wrinkles on her skin. “I lost so much of my life that way, spent so many of the years I was allotted.” She knew that if she had stayed inside the antiaging spell webs of the palace, she would still look young and healthy. “I don’t regret it,” she whispered.

“What did you say, Prelate?”

Startled, Verna looked around herself, saw only the glassy shingle, the flattened remnants of what had once been such a magnificent building. “Nothing. We should keep searching, see if we can find a way underground. Some catacombs may have been protected from the blast.” She drew a deep breath. “I know that another secret library existed beneath the palace, a central site. Nathan and Ann once told me of its existence, but too late. If Emperor Jagang had gotten his hands on that knowledge…” She shook her head. “Maybe it was worth the cost—even this cost.” She let out a shuddering sigh.

They combed the rubble, walking over low rises, slipping as unstable rocks and debris tumbled loose, disturbed for the first time in years. Working together, they lifted slabs with surprisingly smooth edges, where the broken stone had half melted. The debris shifted and pattered, dropping into voids beneath the collapse. Amber slipped, her foot dropping into a gap, but Verna caught her arm as the girl let out a gasp. What could have been a broken ankle turned into a mere scrape, and Amber brushed herself off in relief.

Somehow, miraculously, a small clay figurine of a toad had survived in a tiny gap where two large blocks had fallen against each other. The figurine’s eyes were comically large, its lips smiling, its back glazed green. Verna had never seen it before. She carefully withdrew the object, held it out under the sunlight.

Amber beamed. “It’s adorable! How do you think it survived? A miracle?”

“Coincidence, and good positioning,” Verna said.

“Is it a powerful talisman of some sort? Do you think Prelate Ann kept it?” She leaned closer, but did not take the toad from Verna.

“More likely just a keepsake from one of the Sisters.” She rubbed her thumb over the green-glazed back of the toad. Though the figurine had no real significance, it meant something to her now, because it had survived the destruction of the palace. As she had survived.

They kept walking over the blasted landscape, hoping to find more, but they had very little idea where to look. Verna couldn’t even discern the outline of the original towers, the foundations of the main walls. No yawning holes revealed catacombs beneath, just collapsed gullies of settled rubble. Halsband Island had been flattened. Everything this place had been, all the secrets it had held, were simply crushed in the disintegration.

Although Verna had her answer soon after their arrival, they stayed for several hours. She realized that all the countless books hidden for millennia beneath the palace were obsolete studies and explanations of a world that was now irrevocably changed. The pristinely ungifted had departed from the world when Richard gave them a new universe to occupy, and that had solidified the foundations of magic, but now the star shift had changed everything again. While gifted were still prevalent, many of the magical rules were altered in unknown ways, some stronger, some weaker, or perhaps just different and unpredictable.

“I fear we’ll have to discover our knowledge all over again,” Verna said. “Everything we knew…”

Amber gave a surprising smile. “Then that means the Sisters of the Light have a strong purpose after all, doesn’t it, Prelate?”

Verna paused, considering, and felt a weight lift from her chest. The air smelled a bit fresher as she inhaled. “You may be right, dear girl.”

Together, they walked through the rubble and back to the shore, where the young man was not far away in his flatboat. “Tonight we will all have catfish for dinner,” Verna said.

CHAPTER 24

High Captain Avery looked shaken as he sought out Sovrena Thora the following morning, marching like an executioner’s apprentice into the main chamber of the ruling tower.

Nicci had decided to watch the wizards’ aloof political discussions while she waited for Nathan to finish his consultations with Andre. She felt she might find an opportunity to comment on ways they could better serve their own people, though she doubted they would listen. The ruling council seemed to have no real business to conduct, and their conversation served little purpose. Among the duma members, only Renn and Quentin were in attendance this time, apparently because they had nothing else to do in the city; the seats reserved for Andre, Ivan, Elsa, and Damon remained empty.

The sovrena sat in her ruling chair, bored, tapping laquered fingernails on the carved wooden arm. Maxim sat watching a large fly buzz in the air arou

nd him; he traced its path with his finger, and then, with a quick grin, he released his gift, and the fly turned to stone, dropping like a small pebble to clink on the blue marble floor. No one paid attention to Nicci.

Then Avery and another guard rushed in with a clatter of metal-shod boots, the lapped scales of fine armor jingling on their chests. Their faces were ashen. Avery placed a fist against his heart and took a knee on the blue marble tiles before the two rulers. “Sovrena, Wizard Commander! There has been a murder.”

Nicci became instantly alert, her blue eyes intense. Renn and Quentin sat up, forgetting their aimless discussion about repairs needed in the city’s largest tannery, or the choice of color for roof tiles on one of the silkworm hatcheries.

“A murder?” Maxim sounded intrigued rather than horrified. “Tell us.”

Avery regained his feet and looked at Thora rather than the wizard commander. “One of my guards on evening patrol last night was assaulted in a midlevel square, the one with the fountain of the dancing fishes.”

“That’s a nice fountain,” Maxim said.

“Silence, husband!” Thora snapped. “How was he killed?”

“Butchered,” said Avery.

The second guard said in a quavering voice, “Blood everywhere. Lieutenant Kerry was stabbed multiple times. His throat was cut and…” He couldn’t seem to find the words.

Avery answered for him. “The wounds were made with jagged glass shards.”

“How do you know this?” Thora asked. “Cuts could have been made with knives.”

“Because when they were done, the assassins thrust the shards into Kerry’s eyes and left them there.” Avery nodded to the sickened-looking guard next to him. “Captain Trevor here found the body.”

“It was full daylight by the time anyone sent word,” Trevor said. He had a round face, and his pale skin flushed easily. He removed his helmet so that his light brown hair stuck out. “The dead body had been there for hours. Even though people were up and about, no one reported it. Someone should have seen him. There were people—craftsmen, merchants, slaves—going about their morning business. And Kerry was just there, dead in the fountain … blood all over the place.” He swallowed hard. “And those glass shards in his eyes.”

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