Page 42 of Triadic

"Ulbrecht loves you," Igor added from the doorway, his tone serious. "You are the most important person in our kingdom, after Evelyn and the kids. Even if you were just a man and not the monk tasked with the lanterns. If one day you change your mind and don't want to love him, or fall for someone else, we will still protect you forever. I can see how loving you makes Ulbrecht strong. Just as my Awariye makes me strong."

That earned him a big kiss, with Awariye jumping into his arms. That was also when I noticed Marit and Corbi headed my way, Marit especially looking like he was about to toss me over his shoulder and haul me off somewhere.

"Alright," said Ceridor. "Enough tears and confessions. Bring it in, everyone. Hug me."

I laughed and made it to Ceridor first, my partners and Wren close behind.

Chapter Twenty-One: Marit

Corbi ran Igor through his rehabilitative exercises, then we all sat together at the head of the table and shared our food, Bello begging for scraps. Wren poured the first cup of wine and set it on the table for the gods, assuming they would preside over us. Then after we finished eating, he took down the cup and drank the first sip, allowing anyone else who wanted to also take a drink to do so. Awariye took a sip, and I noticed the bright lights in his eyes flash when he blinked. We passed it around and I too took a drink, my senses honed on the sensation of the wine mixed with alpine herbs.

Wren took the cup from me, all of us moving deliberately and with respect. I closed my eyes and tried to sense anything. If the gods had blessed the wine, then this could be my introduction to them. As the wine warmed me from within, I mentally showed them my training atthe monastery, all the work I'd put in over the years. In my imagination, I showed them our past relationship as triadic partners, then our present one, and offered them my services if they so chose.

Something occurred to me, and I opened my eyes with a gasp. "Peter—did you bring that chain from the river nymph?"

Peter got up from where he'd been petting Bello and rustled in his bag. Wrapped around his little white stuffed dog was the beaded chain. He held it out to me, and I took it, freezing as a sensation immediately swept over me.

I could sense more from it than before. Maybe it was being up here, surrounded by nature, though the greenery was dampened by the snow. But the cause of my heightened senses was likely more obvious.

As the lantern light flickered, sending shadows up the walls, I held the chain aloft and tried to categorize what I was feeling, place it in either images or words so that I could better catalog them in my memory. Upon touching the chain, I felt water running over my hand, the greens and browns of a creek burbling through a forest away from the river, though eventually joining it later on. Dunu must have been a creek nymph. Her creek didn't get much sunlight, shallow and slight enough that only little fish whisked through. For the most part she was filled with algae and slippery moss, leaves and pine needles and vines that the trees leaning over her and blacking out the canopy might drop.

"What is it?" Peter asked with trepidation, drawing closer to me.

I set the chain on the table. The instant it made contact, Wren yelped and jumped as if he'd been shocked.

Wren, Awariye, and Ceridor came over but none of them touched the chain.

"Something from the river?" Awariye asked.

So he could sense that too. Peter explained the strange circumstances under which he'd been given the beaded chain, and also how I'd pulled him back from the Otherworld and into the material planes.

"They can hold candles," I explained, fanning the chain out to show the areas between the series of beads, seven in all. "We haven't lit any, just ran it through cold water, then put it in the window in case some winter sunlight could cleanse it. Peter has not done anything specific with it, and I wanted you to see it first."

Wren still did not touch it, though clearly he'd somehow felt it when I'd placed it this close to the lanterns.

Ceridor piped up, crossing his arms. "Lighting devotional candles in a talismanic object received from a river nymph could set off a chain of events we know nothing about and aren't prepared for. She'd—Dunu was her name, right Peter?—she'd given the chain to Peter, knowing it would be carried inside the protective barrier of the monastery."

No wonder Ceridor had been more than a little worried about things lately. I took his line of reasoning and ran with it. "If we had lit them, it would be another symboliclight like these lanterns, but lit inside of a magically protected place, and on Helvetican territory, across the border."

"It could be another object through which the power could come," said Wren, "and surrounded by monks trained and gifted enough to bring it through."

He was selling himself short—Wren had been the one tasked with the lanterns for good reason—but his overall point held. Maybe Wren was the most gifted at it, but if there was a place to find those next in line, the monastery would be it.

"That's my concern," said Ceridor, nodding at his protégé. "If a bardic mage can also funnel the power, albeit to a lesser extent, that means those with less theurgic training are now candidates. The pool of contenders just got much wider than a theurgic mage and a deceased mountain mystic. And if this power indeed watches over whomever protects that land, then it is something worth stealing."

"Igniting it across political borders could strengthen allies or instigate rivals," I surmised.

And all of this would put a target on Wren's back.

"What do they want," asked Peter, "and why is everyone here serving them when we know so little about them?"

"They protect us in battle," said Igor from the doorway, apparently done with his physiotherapy as Corbi returned to us. "Ulbrecht and I can feel them watching us when we fight, though I've only been able to tangibly feel it after bonding with Awariye. Before, it was something Ulbrecht had told us about. The strength of his belief—and oursuccess in battle—was not something we could readily ignore."

"The elements seem to match," Peter threw in, perking up with his idea. "The lanterns are Fire, which cleanses and, well, out with the old and in with the new kind of thing. The power that comes down is better absorbed by the forest and the soil, so that's Earth. This chain was given to me by the river, so that's Water. And Wren's little Birdie is made of Air!"

Bless him. I beamed with pride, so pleased that Peter was this excited about his training.

"Well done," said Ceridor, slipping into his mentor mode. Those two had spent a lot of time together over the last couple of months, whenever I was working in the library and could not oversee Peter's training.