“The Thalamahns,” Aidan said, catching on. He had known that Gairdens learned many secrets once they inherited the sword. The fact that Dimitri and Luria Thalamahn’s souls were hidden across Crotaria was likely the biggest.
Another thought slammed into him. “Where is she? Where is my mother?”
Charles’s mouth quivered slightly. “Aidan...”
“Mother should be here. With us. With you.”
Charles started to speak, then stopped. He looked up at the clouds streaming fast and slow. The midsummer-blue sky grew sickly, becoming gray. Snow-capped trees surrounded them, bordering Lake Carrean and the cabin where he and his parents had enjoyed one another’s company away from the palace. Tyrnen, his face dark and terrible, towered over them like a human inspecting ants crawling along the ground.
Aidan fought the urge to shrink away. “What is this?”
“Recall,” Charles said. “It’s a spell that saves a memory for future examination. You can then go through it step by step, experiencing every moment, analyzing every nuance, at your leisure.” Charles smiled sadly. “Your mother used it once, though she’d had no knowledge of it before asking me to pass her the spell through the sword, as I passed you magic for—”
“The fire in the cave,” Aidan finished.
Charles nodded. “Your mother used recall to solve a theft, I believe, a case in which two parties accused each other of the same crime.” His smile faded. “Before she died, Annalyn extracted the memory of what happened to her at Lake Carrean, and of what befell your father.”
Charles raised a hand and slowly lowered it. Tyrnen began to move toward Annalyn’s broken, bleeding form, though sluggishly, as if wading through waist-high snow. With his other hand Charles made a gesture as if he were pushing aside a curtain. To Aidan’s amazement the view rotated. Charles let his hands drop, showing them a close view of an object clutched in Tyrnen’s hand.
“Look,” Charles said, pointing.
Aidan looked. It was a glass orb. A large, storm-gray cloud sat stationary within it. Charles gestured at the orb, and the cloud began to roil.
“What is it?” Aidan asked.
Charles took several moments to answer. “A spirit stone. It holds souls. Whoever holds the stone controls the souls within. Souls can be placed within bodies, and those bodies can be reanimated and reshaped—new faces, statures, colors, but all the memories and abilities of the soul locked within the flesh.”
He looked at Aidan. Tears leaked from eyes that had gone stony. “He took your mother’s soul, boy. He took my daughter.”
“But a Gairden’s soul comes to Sanctuary upon death,” Aidan said.
Swallowing, Charles shook his head. “Ordinarily, but Tyrnen took her soul with the stone before she died. She is lost to us. As is your father. A Gairden’s mate passes on into Sanctuary so that they may remain together always rather than be separated.” He paused. “Edmund did not come to us.”
Nausea swept through Aidan, making him swoon. Then his grandfather’s words took on a different meaning.
“You said my father isn’t here. Maybe Tyrnen didn’t take his soul. Maybe he’s still alive!”
Charles was shaking his head. “No, boy. I’m sorry.” He raised a hand and Sanctuary changed again, melting into the image of the vagrants, piles of dead surrounding Edmund, and the Edmund impostor. The impostor stared down at them, face frozen in a sneer. Aidan realized he was looking at the world through Edmund’s eyes. A gauntleted hand appeared—Edmund’s— reaching, straining toward Annalyn. Then it went limp, and blackness descended. Clouds on blue sky returned a moment later, some speeding by while others swam lazily across the expanse.
“That is where your father’s memory ends,” Charles said.
“They’re gone, boy. Tyrnen took them both.”
Aidan closed his eyes as more tears spilled down his cheeks.
“I’m truly sorry you had to find out this way, Aidan,” Charles said. “I’ve been watching you since your birthday. I wanted to talk to you, to tell you all that had happened, but the Prophet told us that you needed to find out this way in order to—”
“And you thought that was necessary?”
“Because you had to grow up. Her words, boy, not mine, so you can wipe that look off your face. You weren’t ready. That’s what she said, and she was right, and you
know
she was right. You had to accept all of this on your own: Heritage, your parents’ fate. You had to learn to make your own choices, to act. I didn’t agree at first, but the Rite of Heritage is different for every Gairden. There are similarities, of course. We all learn about the Thalamahns and how they cheated death. But for you, the Rite of Heritage was about surviving.
“The Crown of the North and sword-bearer must be strong, and a Champion of Peace even more so. Harsh as it sounds, continuing to go along with Tyrnen’s manipulations, or succumbing to the challenges you faced on the road, would have proven your inability to overcome the greater obstacles ahead.”
Aidan swallowed and closed his eyes. Tyrnen. Friend, mentor, almost as much a grandfather as Charles. Family, certainly. Tyrnen had murdered his father and his mother. Why? Why had he—
A pair of footsteps interrupted his thoughts. Aidan looked over his grandfather’s shoulder and recognized the man and woman crossing the platform. He had seen their visages etched within the first two stained-glass inside the sword chamber countless times. The man was tall, though still a few inches shorter than Aidan. His long dark hair hung loose, but the histories said he tied it into a ponytail for battle. The woman walking beside him, one arm linked through his, was two heads shorter, but her hair was just as long. An indigo gown flowed along behind her, and she smelled of freshly cut flowers.
They halted before him and fell to one knee.
“Well met, Champion,” Ambrose and Anastasia Gairden said.
Chapter 27
The Family Gathering
A
IDAN
’
S MOUTH WORKED SOUNDLESSLY
. Admiring portraits of Ambrose and Anastasia, the star-crossed lovers who had come together to overthrow King Dimitri Thalamahn and the might of his corrupted army of Sallnerians, was one thing. Standing before them, in the flesh—or however that sort of thing worked in Sanctuary; Aidan was not quite sure—was another.
“You’ll have to forgive my grandson,” Charles said. “I’m afraid your presence has rendered him speechless—for the first time ever, actually.”
Aidan managed to wet his tongue. “You,” he said to Anastasia.
“You passed me the healing spell that saved my friend’s life.” She inclined her head.
“Thank you,” Aidan said. He gaped between them, overwhelmed. “It is an honor.”
“The honor is ours, Aidan.” Ambrose’s amused smile disappeared. “That is all the time we have to get acquainted, unfortunately. As you saw, your former mentor has planted seeds of deceit and corruption all across Crotaria.”
“Yes,” Aidan said slowly. “Tyrnen is using some sort of creatures to impersonate my parents. In my mother’s memory, he called them harbingers.”
“They are like vagrants, but infinitely more dangerous,” Anastasia said. “Harbingers hold the souls of Touched—Cinders, usually—that Tyrnen bested in combat.”
“And how is it that they look like my mother and father?” he asked, voice tight.
“A forbidden dark magic known as transfiguration,” Anastasia said. “It violates the Lady’s edict that no living beast should ever alter its form, as they are created exactly how She intended them to be. Transfiguration is commonly used to mold the undead for purposes of deception. The pain of restructuring flesh and bone is too great for the living to bear. The dead, however, are as clay in the hands of an artisan, able to be reshaped whenever needed.”
Aidan digested the information. He thought of the harbinger that looked like his mother that he’d killed before fleeing Sunfall. “So all Tyrnen had to do was transfigure bodies to resemble Mother and Father—”
“—and give them new life via souls stored in his spirit stone, through which he dictates their every action.” Ambrose finished. “That was just the start of Tyrnen’s deception, however. He had to dress them appropriately, alter their voices...”
“She entered the sword chamber,” Aidan interrupted, thinking back to the night the impostors had returned from their retreat with Tyrnen.
“One of those monsters has your mother’s soul, boy,” Charles said grimly. “With Annalyn’s soul, that monstrosity
is
Annalyn. The soul has her memories and abilities. But the harbinger cannot pry secrets from Heritage, nor control the blade—thus far, at least.”
“I killed it,” Aidan said. “I cut its head off before fleeing Sunfall.”
“Destroying a corporal form does not free a soul held by a spirit stone,” Anastasia said. “The soul simply returns to the stone.” She smiled bleakly. “We watched Tyrnen infuse Annalyn’s soul in new vessels time and time again, trying in vain to control Heritage. We took pleasure in destroying those rotten vessels. A pity the old man never tried himself.”
“Be careful, Aidan,” Charles said. “Because the harbingers, and the vagrants, besides, are undead, their flesh is nothing more than a costume. They are the puppets. With the spirit stone, Tyrnen pulls their strings. Your enemies could be anyone—or anything.”
Aidan recalled the vagrant that had peeled away its face the night he had fled Calewind and stifled a shudder. Wardsmen, farmers, innkeepers—anyone could be an enemy.
“Do you remember the nightmare that plagued your sleep several weeks back?” Charles asked suddenly.
Aidan tensed. “How do you know about that?”
“We felt the Prophet soothe you through Heritage.”
Now Aidan did shudder. He remembered the whispers that almost suffocated him. Worse were the looks his parents had given him, and the terrible things they said.
“I remember,” he said at last.
“Luria Thalamahn was the one who learned how to implant souls in new flesh,” Anastasia said. “But her chief weapon was a spell called Night Terror. No one but she knew how to cast it, for it was she who created it. Night Terror transfers a victim’s consciousness into a nightmare as real as the waking world, much like how your consciousness resides in Heritage presently, apart from your body. One can die in a Night Terror just as one can perish in reality. You could fall asleep and never awaken, and who could be blamed? Unless the death was a violent one—any wounds received are reflected on the body in the waking world—no one would have reason to suspect foul play.”
Aidan swallowed. “And that’s what happened to me?”
Ambrose nodded. “You were. The Prophet broke through the spell and intervened.”
Aidan sent a prayer of thanks to the Lady for the Prophet’s intervention. Then he frowned. “You said Luria created the Night Terror spell, correct?”
“Yes,” Anastasia said.
“How does Tyrnen know how to use it?” Then icy shock washed over him as he remembered the golden scepter Tyrnen had held in his mother’s memory. “Tyrnen is Luria Thalamahn,” he whispered.
“Not quite, it appears,” Anastasia said, frowning as she glanced at Ambrose and Charles.
Aidan looked between them. “The Prophet told me that a Thalamahn’s soul seizes the body of any who touch their weapons. I saw Tyrnen holding Terror’s Hand. Luria must have command of his body.”
“We thought so too, at first,” Ambrose said. His visage darkened. “Then we saw Tyrnen pay a visit to the Prophet after your consciousness entered Heritage. She too thought Tyrnen had been subverted by Luria, but she was mistaken.”
“It is clear that Luria does have some control over Tyrnen, however,” Anastasia said. “Tyrnen’s will must have been too great to break completely, yet even though he is still in possession of his soul, he is utterly loyal to Luria.”
Aidan held up a hand. “Wait. How did Tyrnen even come to possess Terror’s Hand? The Prophet told me that you,” he gestured to Anastasia, “and the Disciples of Peace shielded the weapons’ compulsion to prevent the Thalamahns from attracting hosts.”
“We did,” Anastasia said. “As the Prophet explained, the weapons were masked and taken far away to a destination known only by the Prophet, who carried the Serpent’s Fang, and Mathias Emerson, who carried Terror’s Hand. Less than a year after Mathias and the Prophet went their separate ways, we felt Luria reach out to the world from deep within Sallner.
“It would appear Mathias thought to hide the weapon in the abandoned kingdom. That was poor judgment on his part. Sallner is where Dimitri and Luria practiced their dark craft; as such, their influence was strongest there. We do not know exactly what befell Mathias, but it is obvious that he somehow removed the mask from the weapon and touched it. By the time we came to where Luria had called from, we found only Mathias’s body. The scepter was gone.”
“Our family has spent the last eight hundred years standing watch for Luria,” Charles said. “It was not until Mathias ambushed your parents and tempted Annalyn with Terror’s Hand that we realized what had become of it, and of Luria and Mathias.”
Aidan raised a hand, confused. “Hold on. You just said he was dead.”
The other three shared a look. Anastasia spoke. “Aidan, when Tyrnen entered the cabin and the Prophet saw that the Queen of Terror had not possessed his body, she called him Mathias.”
Aidan stared blankly. “Tyrnen and Mathias are one and the same? That would make him over eight hundred years old!”
Anastasia raised a finger. “His
soul
is still alive. We suspect Mathias shed his body because we would have recognized him instantly, whether during our time on Crotaria or from here, within Heritage. My mother knew of a ritual, a dark magic known as sacrifice, that allows the living to inject his or her soul into another living body, whose soul is then terminated.”
“The same magic used on the Thalamahns’ weapons,” Aidan said.
“Correct,” Anastasia said. “For eight centuries, Mathias has assumed new bodies and identities, effectively evading the eye of every Gairden who would know him instantly.”
“Tyrnen Symorne is Mathias’s latest guise,” Ambrose said, “one he used to infiltrate Sunfall itself. We presume he did so in order to manipulate Heritage. Using the blade in tandem with artifacts as powerful as the Serpent’s Fang and Terror’s Hand would make him unstoppable. Of course, to control Heritage, Mathias needed a sword-bearer.”