Devary Kant slipped into the grounds of Draetre's University of Magic at such an early hour that the sun had not yet risen. After days of travel and only a few hours of sleep, he was tired, but he felt he had little time to waste.
He entered the building with the casual air of a regular visitor - as indeed he had been, once. He wanted to check the library's catalogue; he knew first hand that the university held some unusual texts, because he had helped to build that collection, and not always by entirely above-board methods. But first he had to talk to someone.
He wasn't surprised to find that Professor Indren Druaster was already in her office. She was notoriously dedicated - obsessive, even - and she was always the first person to arrive and the last to leave. Devary wondered sometimes what she did at the university during the lonely hours of the early morning and late night. He knocked on her door and entered.
She looked up with an air of annoyance, but that expression quickly changed to surprise on seeing him.
'Devary, what a pleasure.'
'Professor.' He crossed to her desk, picked up one of her hands and kissed it. As he had hoped, her manner warmed immediately. She had always liked those little gestures. He smiled and took a seat without waiting for an invitation.
'Devary, dear, I can't tell you how glad I am to see you well.' She paused, studying him with narrowed eyes. 'You are recovered, I suppose?'
'Oh, quite. Thank you.' He watched her closely, looking for anything unusual in her manner.
'Ah... good. I had heard that your injuries were severe. I'm relieved to see that report was in error.'
Devary didn't answer. He and Indren had been colleagues and friends for years, but lately he didn't know who at the university he could trust. He had no intention of telling her any more than was necessary for his immediate purposes.
'So, how is that nice little girl you brought with you last time?'
Interesting. Was there a reason she had brought up the topic of Llandry so quickly, or was it a coincidence? 'She is fine, as far as I know.'
Indren made a soft clucking noise of disapproval. 'Poor girl, what a mess she got herself into. Why did you bring her along, anyway?'
'That is not important. Indren, I need to know if you talked to anyone about Llandry.'
The teasing manner she often adopted with him faded into a cool stare. 'With "anyone"? You know I am obliged to report all of the university's doings to my superiors.'
Devary sighed inwardly. 'And who are those people?'
'You know them as well as I do.'
'No. I don't believe I do. I think that you endangered Llandry by speaking of her to your bosses.'
If he expected surprise from her, he was disappointed. What did surprise him, however, was a trace of fear in her eyes.
'This... isn't a good place to discuss these things, Dev.'
He shrugged. 'There's nowhere I can go that I won't be watched, so I'm unconcerned.'
She paled. 'You've been tracered?'
Another shock of surprise. 'Tracered. Yes. So I am told.'
'You've been promoted, then.' She smiled slightly. 'In which case you're in a position to tell me more.'
He blinked. Llandry's attacker had spoken of his being considered for promotion at one time... 'Promoted? I don't think so. But I don't know what you're talking about, Indren.'
She shook her head. 'If you've been tracered, it amounts to the same thing.'
'What?'
Indren stood up. 'Walk with me.' The sun was beginning to rise outside, lightening the grounds to a dull grey. Devary followed Indren out of the building and onto the well-kept grass around the university premises.
'Why are you asking me these questions, Dev?' she began once they were clear of the building.
He related to her the latest attempt to capture Llandry, and how it had ended. He sensed a palpable tension from her when he described the man who had almost taken her.
'I don't know what you did to attract his attention, but you're in trouble,' she said when he had finished.
'Who? Who is he?'
'I don't know much about him,' she said after a moment's pause. 'He's known as Krays. He's not often seen; I think he's a higher-up, doesn't usually dirty his hands with the grunt work. If he's after Llandry in person, then she is in more trouble than ever.'
Divining from this that Indren knew nothing about Krays's purpose in seeking Llandry, Devary's heart sank. He asked her anyway.
'He is not the type to share his motivations,' she said wryly. 'But...' she hesitated. 'Understand, I am not supposed to share this information. You did not get it from me.'
He promised.
'I saw him once, last moon. He came into the office late at night, ordered me to drop all of my current lines of enquiry and take up a new research. Genealogy.'
'...genealogy?'
'I know.' She smirked. 'Not our usual area of expertise. He said he wanted the lineage of all the most powerful magical practitioners traced back as far as possible. Then broadened, to identify any individuals with similar genealogy but who aren't trained. Did I understand that Llandry's an untrained summoner?'
Devary nodded warily. 'A strong one, I think.'
Indren sighed. 'Before you ask me, no, I don't know what all of this is intended to discover. But it seems to me that what we're really looking for is people with similar lineage to Llandry. A lot of powerful sorcerers or summoners in their family trees. We're finding mostly summoners in Glinnery and Irbel and more sorcerers in the Darklands, generally speaking, but of course there's some crossover. And there are more untrained people with the potential to be significant than you might think.'
Devary nodded. He could follow the logic, as far as it went; the sorcerer and summoner training schools would have full records for all of their students, but people like Llandry who had never attended an academy would have passed unnoticed. And it had long been known, or at least suspected, that magical ability was largely hereditary.
He was silent for a few moments as his mind clicked through the possibilities. 'They're looking for people with similar abilities as Llandry,' he concluded. 'But there are many summoners across the Seven, so it isn't her strength as a summoner that's significant about her.'
Indren finished the thought for him. 'Llandry is the only known practitioner who can metamorphose into draykon form. This is staggering to the magical community; until a moon or so ago we weren't even sure that draykons had ever existed, not in the way they were represented in legend. So questions were asked. Is it something all summoners have the potential to do? But Llandry is untrained. The likelihood of her spontaneously discovering that on her own seems small, and we would have expected to see some level of shape-shifting occurring elsewhere before now. So it must be something unique to Llandry that grants her that ability.'
'But it might not be unique, merely very rare.'
She nodded. 'It was suggested that there may be some form of mutation in her biology that allows for it. That makes me concerned for Llandry. If what you say is true, that Krays himself is after her, then the consequences of capture will be severe.'
Devary frowned. 'A mutation? But what of the other draykon?'
'Precisely. We currently have two live draykons on our hands: one is Llandry, and the other, as I understand it, is the creature whose bones were spread over the Seven and subsequently reunited and restored. I heard a whisper that somebody from this department was involved in that, but I haven't been able to confirm it.'
To hear Indren talking like an agent was disconcerting. She had never been part of that side of the faculty; people like Devary brought the information to her, and she analysed it. Things had clearly changed.
'It has been posited that Llandry may have effectively created the form herself out of her own imagination, based on the old stories. But the existence of the second draykon refutes this notion. What we appear to have here is a so far inexplicable link between an ancient, extinct species and a human girl of twenty.'
'That is another question,' Devary remarked. 'I have never previously heard of an extinct species being resurrected, not until the last couple of moons. Then suddenly we were seeing it happening repeatedly.'
Indren nodded enthusiastically. 'Yes. There have been a lot of reports - most confirmed - of previously extinct species coming through the rogue gates from Lowers and Uppers both. We might have been mistaken in some cases; perhaps they were merely rare, not extinct. But it seems unlikely that this explanation applies to all of them: some fifteen species at least. And for them to appear all at once? It has not been accomplished by any known ability. However...' She stopped walking, her eyes travelling up Devary's form to his face. 'I've never heard of a man, near death, being well enough to travel alone less than a moon later either.'
Devary took her hand. 'Indren, we've been friends for years. Can I trust you?'
'I won't willingly betray you to Krays, if that is what you're asking.' She was affronted at the idea, but Devary ignored that.
'Krays healed me. He took me somewhere, I don't know where, but some deathly silent place where I didn't see a soul except him, once. I don't know what happened. I woke up, whole and healthy.' He told her about his escape from Krays's unknown infirmary.
'You escaped from Krays.' Indren's voice was heavy with disbelief.
'No,' he said quietly. 'I think not, in the end. He was using me as bait; he guessed I would go straight to Llandry, or that she would come to me. I imagine I was permitted to escape.'
Indren pondered that. 'Dev, you should know something about Krays. We've never been ordered to study the draykon bone or Llandry's transformation; all of our resources have been diverted into the genealogy project. I get the impression that Krays knows exactly what is going on, and that suggests that Llandry's peculiarities have more to do with her genealogy than anything else.'
Devary nodded. 'Are there others?'
'Like Krays? Yes. I don't usually deal with him. There's a woman too, or there was; she hasn't been seen in a while. I knew her as Ana. She was usually the person who gave me my orders for the department.'
That name struck a chord somewhere in Devary's memory. Ynara had spoken of a woman with that name; she was the white-haired summoner who had brought back the draykon. Could it be the same person?
'Describe her?'
'She's a white-hair. Like Krays, only more colour about her. Arrogant manner.'
Devary couldn't help smiling inwardly at this. He knew that many people found Indren herself insufferably superior. 'Thank you, Indren,' he said seriously. 'I appreciate it. And please, don't share anything with Krays that you don't have to. Llandry's safety may depend on it - and others, if your project is successful.'
Indren bit her lip. 'I fear it must be, in time. I don't like it, but what can I do? You can't say no to Krays.'
No; one couldn't refuse Krays anything. 'Just drag it out as long as you can. And, if you can without endangering yourself, get word to me about anything else you discover. I'll keep you informed as well.'
'Oh? What is it that you're up to next? If you're tracered you won't get far.'
'Tracered. What exactly do you mean by that? And what did you mean by "promoted"? The way you said it, it didn't sound like a good thing.'
She gave a bitter little laugh. 'It isn't. I'm a promoted official. I was thrilled until I realised that I'd become fiercely entangled with the likes of Krays. Suddenly I couldn't avoid the white-hairs; they always found me, wherever I was. They would appear without notice at any time. Eventually I learned about the tracers. It's a device of some kind, embedded somewhere in the body. I don't know any more about it than that, but once you're tracered you're marked forever. I suppose it's a compliment, in a twisted way. They must have found me useful.'
Devary was silent. He knew why he was useful: he was a direct link to Llandry. This tracer device must have been installed while he lay unconscious in Krays's world.
'There's no way to remove it?'
'Not that I've ever heard about. I don't even know where it is.' She looked down at her own body as she spoke, as if hoping to spot it.
Devary resisted the impulse to mimic her gesture. His skin crawled at the notion that his own body harboured a little traitor that reported his whereabouts to his enemy.
'To answer your earlier question,' he said instead, 'I've got to find a way to help Llan. I need to know who Ana and Krays are - more importantly, what they are. And I need to know why they want Llandry.'
Indren was about to reply, but her mouth closed as they rounded a corner and almost bumped into another walker. An elderly man was strolling placidly across the grass, his hands clasped behind his back. He nodded politely to Indren and Devary and smiled. His pale blue eyes were friendly.
'Morning,' he said in a gentle tone. Devary tipped his hat in response, but Indren made no reply at all.
'It's time to get back to my desk,' she said to Devary. She grabbed his arm and hustled him inside, leaving the old man alone in the garden.