We all stared at her, waiting.
“Apparently it isn’t.” She rolled her eyes. “You need to challenge the Scholar.”
“Why in the name of Ledenaether would I do that?” I sighed back, falling into one of the armchairs.
Herra claimed the chaise opposite Frey and Bjern, while Sig leaned against the glass window, facing us.
“You have five battles to prove that you have ultimate power in each of the sectors, but there are five people already claiming to have ultimate power in the sectors … the first of those five, you defeated to win your first battle.”
I grimaced, seeing the sense in her theory, but disliking it all the same.
“What am I supposed to challenge him for?” I asked, my boot bouncing against the ground in agitation.
“Well, I had an idea about that too.” She looked almost sheepish, her eyes cutting to Bjern. “But it requires a lot of legwork. And a little bit of stealing.”
“What of mine are you stealing?” Bjern asked warily.
“Not yours; your father’s. I need the fryktille.”
“That beetle he used to sort the Sentinel recruits?” I sat up straighter, my curiosity piqued.
“Sinn magic is layered into it,” Frey said with a precise nod. “The fryktille has been altered to exploit fear—that’s the Vold magic working on it—but without the Vold magic, it’s just a tool to project an image for many people to see.”
“We’re not following,” Herra said, on behalf of us all.
Bjern laughed, his hand shifting on the back of the couch, his fingers stretching out, lightly brushing Frey’s shoulder. She moved away, frowning at him.
“If Ven can repurpose the fryktille, we can use it to project what she sees to the rest of Fyrio.”
“Hold up.” I raised a hand, feeling the embarrassed red rash spreading up my neck. “That doesn’t sound—”
“We need to turn you into the final Fjorn,” Frey spoke over me, ignoring my interruption. “And we need to make a spectacle of it.”
“I’m already the final Fjorn,” I pointed out.
She smiled, the way you smile at a particularly stupid child. “You’re a possibility. We need to make you an assurance. I suggest we print your prophecy onto flyers and have them sent to every corner of the world—not just here in Fyrio.”
“Actually…” Sig stared at Frey in surprise. “That’s brilliant. If we spread the word that she must defeat each of the great masters to win the five battles, and that the battle of shivering mountain was the first of them, the great masters won’t be able to deny her. If they do, they’ll have a civil war on their hands. I don’t know about the other continents, but the Fyrians are a dangerously superstitious bunch.”
“Can we just go back?” I hedged, my boot bouncing faster and faster.
“Yes,” Frey sighed. “The beetle. I knew you’d have trouble with that part. We need people to see every moment of your struggle, to be invested in it, to know that you’re fighting for them. That way each of your interactions with the great masters will be under scrutiny.”
“So the fryktille will project my thoughts?”
“It depends on how we’re able to alter it.” Frey looked annoyed—which meant she didn’t have a concrete answer. “I’m hoping you can twist the intention of the magic to simply see, and to project what it sees. You could wear it, like a brooch.”
“And how would it project to everyone? Wouldn’t it just project to the people around it?”
This time, Frey grinned, and I felt my apprehension triple. She was somewhat frightening, in a brilliant sort of way.
“I’ve worked out an incantation for that,” she said proudly. “If your Sinn magic is strong enough, you should be able to project it to all mirrors in Fyrio.”
“Mirrors?” I blinked.
“Raem minn oynene, til dinn oynene,” she muttered, the words echoing around the room in such a confusing wave of sound that I wasn’t able to hear them properly.
It was as though she had uttered a single, garbled word, though my ears couldn’t recall it. A shiver of power whipped around us, cool and precise, chasing after the words.
“Aethen,” she explained, referring to the language of power. “It means from my eyes to your eyes.”
“That could work.” Herra looked impressed. “It’s a solid incantation, but it completely depends on Ven.”
“It’s a good plan,” Sig agreed, shaking his head in slight awe. “If anyone can do it, it’s Ven.”
“Actually,” I countered. “If anyone can do it, it’s the Scholar.”
Bjern waved a hand, dismissing my statement, and we set about planning our two missions. We didn’t leave the tower for the rest of the day, though we explored the many rooms and levels. There was an empty library on the lowest level, housing a single, wing-backed armchair. It had gold panelled sides, carved gold edges, and blue and yellow patterned cushioning. There was a matching foot stool, but nothing else. The shelves were empty, the panelled walls stripped. The floorboards were faded around the edges of where rugs had laid. The whole room had been dusted clean. The single, patterned glass window looked out onto a courtyard far below; too far for the library to be on the ground level … and yet, the tower ended there. There was only a single door leading back up the way we had entered.
Other than the library, there were a collection of other rooms on the lower levels, as well as a kitchen, food store, and laundry room complete with a balcony to hang clothes out to dry. The rooms were neatly made up, with heavy wooden furniture, though there were no personal effects lying around.
We were alone in the tower.
I found my own rooms below the sitting room on the top level, the walls an exact replica of the tiled stone patterns from the entrance to the tower. The steps leading down were narrow but covered in the same patterned stone—probably so they could be traversed safely in the dark, as there was a heavy wooden door at either end of the staircase, blocking out any light.
Sig and Herra were still exploring the other levels, so it was only Frey and Bjern that heard my quiet curse as I stepped into the light-filled bedroom. They both rushed in after me, Bjern with a dagger half-drawn from his belt. He might have been a Sjel, but he had been raised by a Vold, and some habits were hard to break.
The evening sunlight spilled over us as we slowly stepped forward, the golden glow heating my skin. There was a balcony stretching all the way around the eastern side, looking out to sea. There were no windows, but heavy wooden shutters on tracks, currently pulled back to the walls, leaving slight gossamer curtains to ripple in with the breeze.
We all stopped before the thing built into the centre of the room, too shocked to speak. It was a bed, of sorts, sunken several steps into the ground. Oil lanterns burned at the four corners, mounted on golden stands with figures carved around the base. I inched forward, peering at the sculptures. They depicted lovers tangled in erotic poses, and I quickly jerked back, my eyes wide.
Bjern chuckled. “They bounced back quickly.”
“They did this in five days?” Frey was on the edge of the giant sunken bed, staring down with her head cocked.