Lindon intentionally didn’t look at one particular destination floating in the air. He didn’t even think about it. Dross whistled casually in his head.
Even just having it up there skirted the edge of their oath, but they could justify including the assignment in their list. They hadn’t picked it, after all. And they weren’t encouraging Yerin in any way to pick it.
Yerin scanned them with her spiritual perception, and each image contained a message from Dross highlighting the location, the prize, and the probable defenses.
Her eyes glittered, and she gave a low whistle. “Can I take all of them?”
“We’re going to try,” Lindon said with feeling. “But the fewer remaining choices we have, the easier it will be to identify us. Start with three apiece.”
Yerin clicked her tongue in disappointment and began to look through the possibilities more closely.
Lindon ignored the one Everwood assignment and scanned through. He was familiar with the targets, but he had intentionally stopped himself from thinking about them until this moment so his will didn’t touch Fate.
A jeweled castle sealed in ice at the north of the Ninecloud continent contained the plague that had been used as a weapon to strike the previous Ninecloud Monarch dead. While it had Monarch-grade defenses, they were unmanned.
The shifting desert vault of the Dragon Monarch, which hadn’t yet been plundered by Malice. The ancient Herald of the green dragons had made his home there, but it was certain to contain a dragon’s hoard.
A museum in Rosegold, defended by a Herald from House Shen, contained relics from Reigan Shen’s first collection. A low-level Abidan artifact was rumored to be among them.
Lindon coveted them all, but he had criteria beyond raw materials.
Above all, they needed two things: borrowed authority and time.
Granting power was easy, but granting stable power quickly was difficult. It had taken multiple Monarchs combining their authority to stabilize Yerin’s spirit after merging with Ruby. She may have been able to become a true Herald without it, but then her progress would have ground to a halt. She wouldn’t have been able to attempt Monarch for centuries, if ever.
Lindon understood better now why that had taken several Monarchs in concert. It wasn’t a question of power, but of compatibility. Some Icons could do things others couldn’t.
Now, Lindon had his own Void Icon, which was useful for removing obstacles and hiding things. He had the script of the Rune Queen, which manipulated time, but only in one specific way. He had the Remnant of the Blood Sage, which would be extremely useful if he could get it to cooperate.
Living will could be flexible in the exercise of authority, but items were set in their function. It wasn’t enough to just have an artifact made by a Sage; it had to be made for the purpose he needed.
So, as Yerin plucked memories from the air like fruit, Lindon skimmed his until he found the three he needed.
He kept his perception away from Yerin so he didn’t sense her assignments, and blinded himself to keep from seeing whether she was looking at the Everwood assignment.
[There are other assignments in Everwood,] Dross pointed out. [But there’s only one the Everwood assignment. Which I’m not thinking about. And neither should you! Stop listening to me!]
Lindon blocked him out and turned to Yerin. She folded her arms and grinned. She was ready.
“Let’s go,” Lindon said.
Together, they strode into the labyrinth.
Little Blue rang out like a bell, wishing them good luck.
21
Within the labyrinth, Lindon let his sense of himself fade away to nothing, as though he were drifting into endless space.
That was when he felt closest to the Void Icon.
In the quiet, he could feel the world thinning. And the vast, inscrutable flows of order that kept everything working, like a skeleton beneath reality.
The Way Between Worlds, Eithan called it in his memories. Or, as Suriel referred to it, simply the Way.
There were different types of structures back there, and he could hardly tell the difference between them. This was a field of study to which he was a new student. But a certain cluster spread out into the future, forking off into a million branches that faded to nothing.
Lindon could sense this only dimly, but he’d learned enough. This was Fate.
There was no way he could hide all the possibilities in the future, especially not from Monarchs that had far more experience reading the future than he had veiling it. But Emriss had given instructions, and Dross drew Lindon’s attention to a certain cluster.
He couldn’t read them. When he focused on one such group of lines, he could see motion but not detail, like he was watching mice scuttle under a sheet.