Sil sat silently at her control panel, finding some scrap of comfort in the repetitive checking of the coloured
lights. Avin was dozing on the floor by the door. Riani sat crossed legged, Mat’s short sword across her knees,
thinking. One of them was dead. They were besieged. She had tried to send gratitude to the she wolf that had sent
warning, but had been unable to make contact. She hoped that no harm had come to the first friend that she had made here.
Both Avin and Sil had in their own ways made attempts to contact the two remaining residents of the Keep,
Avin with low level magic, trying not to alert anyone detecting for it, and Sil with her technology, to warn them to come
back now, or not at all. They would wait until morning for a response. After that Sil would collapse the tunnels
and they would use a portal in her room to transport to…somewhere. None of the events of the last few hours were
making sense to Riani. This whole business could not possibly have been all about her. She could see that clearly
now. Yet the whole subterfuge of her coming here was connected in some way, she was certain of it.
What did she know?
Someone back home had caused her exile.
Someone in her Order, maybe plural someones, knew about it.
Avin had lived here untroubled for decades until she had arrived.
Sil’s arrival may or may not have been significant.
The Elite wanted her, Avin, Sil or any combination of all three.
She touched the sword with respect, and you, Mat, all I had time to find out about you was that you were charming,
brave, courteous, principled, had a bad sense of timing and a worse sense of strategy. If only he had been able to
warn them and not fought alone. The four of them could have taken them on together, and won using no magic.
If only…
Then she realised that there was another factor.
Sil had been the only person she had ever come across with knowledge of “technology”.
She had found it “in the worlds”. Not in the world that Riani knew, for certain.
Some other world? Sil had said the she had learned of the Elite “in the worlds”.
Again Riani was caused to wonder “what world?”. How had she obtained the knowledge, and what else did she know?
Riani felt dwarfed , reaching for dangling threads from conspiracies high above where she could fathom.
Something was happening, she was enmeshed in it now, but she could see no pattern that made any sense.
Sil had absorbed Avin’s ward apparently with no guilt. That may have been acceptable within a family in their
Order, she didn‘t know what Order they belonged to. It would not have been so in her own. She needed to know more.
Her thoughts turned to Gerard. At least she felt a little less worried about him.
The injustice done to her had not been aimed towards him. Someone wanted her here, and afraid enough seek sanctuary to risk drowning.
Had she been tracked here somehow?
Her room was next door but one to Sil’s. She got up quietly and returned there to get her pack and picked up her
bedding also and took it back to Sil’s room. Wrapping herself in it she started to completely empty her pack,
sensing for anything unusual. Everything was emptied out and all just being what it was, a comb, some soap, her
gloves, …still she felt something about the pack. She ran her hands over it gently trying to feel the tingle of
magic. Something was there. And then she had it. Tucked into the seam, just a glint of its metal wingtip visible.
The symbol of her Order. A dove in flight. Once she managed to extract it from the lining the feeling was more
obvious, This had been enchanted. She turned to wake Avin, but he was already standing over her.
“What is it?” he said bending down to examine the trinket. “Riani I think that this is ...”
“Its tracking me Avin.” she said resignedly.
“Its tracking me either to help me, my brother may have organised it, or to catch me, goodness knows who might have
done it, or..”
“to find the location of a place they know exists but can’t find.” he finished the sentence for her.
“Poor Riani, I am starting to think that far from any of this being laid at your door, your situation is merely a
plan someone had to find me. At least you wont be whining on about it all being your fault anymore. It was starting
to bore me,“ He smiled his naughty boy smile and she returned it with a genuine one of her own.
“Or me” said Sil. She too had sensed the object once it had been brought into the open.
“Or both of you” Riani added. “We have to deactivate it. somehow.”
“Oh I think we can do much better than that” Avin took the tiny dove from her hand and with a showman’s flourish
and an actor’s voice boomed “Fly free little bird” , and it was gone.
Sil laughed quietly, Avin smiled.
“Where did you send it” Riani asked.
“Only onto a ledge of crag on a mountain” said Avin innocently
“on Rintar, a volcanic world that can be accessed via portal” continued Sil.
“It may not stop them searching here, but it will be a most unpleasant trek for the Mage they send to check it out.
The place has sulphur for air and hell’s heat for a climate.”
She paused to yawn,
“ I think I may risk sleeping myself now. The machine will do the checks on its own, I just needed something to do for a while.”
Riani watched Sil lie on the bed that she had used earlier for Mat’s funeral ceremony.
She thought she understood why she hadn’t chosen to sleep anywhere else. She wanted to be with him a little longer.
Sil hadn’t been able to say goodbye properly while he had lived, yes, there would be some comfort, and also a lot
of pain for her. Still, who could know how there would not be pain at the death of a son?
Riani stood up to leave and go to her own room. “We should all stay together” Sil muttered.
“Correct. “ thought Riani, “I’m not leaving his side, he’s not going to be the next man to die for me,” and dragged
her bedding over to where Avin was slouched.
She sat down next to him, offering no explanation for him to make any witty comment upon, and covered them both
with her blankets, and lay down, both sword and dagger at her side. She fell asleep within minutes, grateful to be
able to trust at least two people in the worlds, if only for tonight.