Eleri Lanfear's Arc

Chapter 1 of 8

Eleri Lanfear wanted a quiet marriage and children, and a seat at her husband's table that no one begrudged her. She could not have those things while a tear in the sky kept pulling at the world. So she rode toward Rossmore Castle with an ice sorceress chained in the cart behind her. Her brother Jory had married his princess the morning after the battle. He could not settle into that life while the rift spread. Eleri had agreed to close it. That meant bringing the woman who had helped tear it open home with her. Vandoriel Penaluna sat in the cart with her wrists bound. She was the sorceress Mordaunt had used to freeze Jody's flank and kill his best men. Now she was Eleri's prisoner. White hair hung loose over her face. She did not plead or bargain. When the cart jolted, she only looked at Eleri with pale, cold eyes. "You hate him," Eleri said. "The king. I know that. But the rift pulls at everyone. It will swallow your north too." "Then free my hands when the time comes," Vandoriel said. "I cannot cast in irons." Rhydian met them at the gates himself. Eleri's husband came down the steps before the horses had stopped. He took her hand and held it, and she felt the knot in her chest loosen a little. "You're back," he said. "Both of you." "This is Vandoriel," Eleri said. "She froze half my brother's army. She also knows the shape of the spell that tore the sky." Rhydian looked at the sorceress for a long moment. "We have a cell in the north tower," he said. "Clean straw. A door that locks." He said it lightly, but his hand on Eleri's did not loosen. They put Vandoriel in the tower cell. Two guards stood at the door. Eleri turned the key herself. She had spent her whole life keeping a locked tower on the eastern ridge. Now she locked a woman into one, and the weight felt no lighter. That night she spread the memorized pages across Rhydian's table. She had never written them down. She had learned the closing spell from the Murray chronicle, line by line, before it was taken from her. "The spell needs her voice and mine," Eleri said. "Two casters. One to pull the tear shut, one to hold it still. Alone, either of us would be dragged in." "So you'll stand beside the woman who killed Jory’s men," Rhydian said. "Within reach of her hands." "I don't trust her," Eleri said. "I trust that she wants to live." Rhydian studied the pages. Then he nodded. "We ride for Moanroe's Ford at first light. I go with you." They had a plan now, and a sorceress to carry it out. But the plan put Eleri in arm's reach of an enemy, with a spell that could pull her into the sky if the woman beside her let go. The rift would not wait. Neither would the thing it might make of her.