And no sea dragon knight had need of armor on his back. The only thing that belonged there was his sword.
John picked up the weapon, running his thumb reverently over the fist-sized pearl set on the end of the pommel. It shone faintly at his touch, recognizing him as its rightful wielder. The strength of ancient knights whispered in his blood, a battle-hymn of honor and glory that shielded his soul as surely as his armor protected his skin.
He drew the sword with the barest whisper of steel. With the excitement of Griff’s mating ceremony—not to mention subsequent events—he had been shockingly lax in his discipline. He had not performed even the most minimal exercises for an entire day.
The blade leaped through the air like a dolphin as he executed the first few strokes of a practice form, switching fluidly from a single to a double grip and back again. He winced at his own poor performance.
I cannot allow my edge to become dulled. I must maintain my discipline, now more than ever.
But given that performing the entire practice sequence would take two hours, it would have to wait. Grimacing, he flipped the sword over his shoulder, sheathing it in the scabbard across his back.
And finally, he was ready.
He walked along the shoreline, heading away from the house. Though it gnawed at his soul to move so far from his mate’s side, he had no choice. He needed space and solitude for this task.
Fortunately, he did not have to go too far before he found what he sought. A hollow in the rocks had caught a fragment of the lake, forming a still, clear pool. John knelt next to it, closing his eyes and clearing his mind.
As he had told Neridia, he only knew the very basic fundamentals of scrying. Poetry was his art form, moving water and wave with words. But he knew the simplest skill of the Seer’s art, that of reaching out to talk to another through a reflecting pool. He was poor at it, especially when forced to use fresh water rather than salt. In these circumstances, he would only be able to contact the two individuals to whom he was the most closely linked.
One of those was his sister. He reached out through the water to find the other one.
His questing mind encountered…nothing. No sense of the mystic currents that linked this small puddle to the great sea surrounding Atlantis.
That is odd.
Frowning, John opened his eyes. He was a poor Seer, but not usually that poor. He should have at least been able to see the psychic flow with his inner eye.
Perhaps there was too much human-wrought iron nearby, interfering with the energies of the water. Scrying was a more delicate art form than poetry, easily disrupted by human influence. Neridia’s house was isolated, but there would still be pipes and wires connecting it to the wider human world.
Moving further away, John tried again, but with no more success. He kept going, becoming increasingly perplexed, until he’d gone so far from Neridia’s house that it was out of sight entirely. The soft sounds of nature enfolded him, without a hint of human presence.
And yet scrying still eluded him. His poetry was completely unaffected—he experimentally sang a few words to the water, and saw the waves stir in response—but his inner eye was blind. It was as if he was surrounded by psychic fog.
He rubbed the back of his neck in thought—and stopped abruptly as his hand touched the thin gold chain. He had forgotten that Neridia’s pearl still rested in the hollow of his throat.
I wonder…?
He unfastened the chain. The instant the pearl left his neck, the mental fog bank lifted. His inner eye cleared, showing him the delicate currents spreading out from the water.
So that is what it does.
He remembered how Chase hadn’t been able to sense Neridia’s presence earlier, when she was wearing the pearl. Evidently it interfered with all forms of locating magic, not just scrying.
The Emperor must have worn it to protect himself from being located by our Seers. And then, later, he passed it on to his daughter… just before he was murdered. Did he know that an enemy was stalking them? Did he choose to protect his daughter rather than himself?
There was no time to ponder the unraveling history further. Now that his inner eye was open, he could see the psychic currents swirling around him, urging him toward the lake.
Someone—a Seer of much greater ability than his own poor talents—was trying to contact him.
Hastily, John knelt next to the lake, peering down into the calm water. He barely caught a glimpse of his own face before the reflection blurred, reforming into a different man.
The other’s helm was far more ornate than his own, crowned with gleaming golden horns and inlaid with pearl. Rainbow-edged reflections glimmered around his hulking shoulders, cast by the thousands of diamonds set into his ceremonial armor in a pattern resembling scales. Two swords were strapped across his back in a cross pattern.
John saluted, fist to heart. “Sir.”
“Knight-Poet. At last.” The Knight-Commander of the First Water let out a long, relieved breath, his knotted shoulders easing down a little. “I have been trying to reach you for an entire day. I was beginning to wonder if you still possessed all your limbs.”
John felt a twinge of shame for having caused his superior concern. “I can only apologize for so shockingly shirking my duty to you, sir. I should have reported sooner. Recent events-”