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“Can we go back to Erevale now?” Tarany asked after Xaila and Aerdin returned from their assessment of the new interdimension. “I want to find someone Minki can stay with, and my bakery is a disaster I need to clean up.”
“I recommend you stay here for now,” Xaila replied. “It’s dangerous and, unless you have skills like ours…well, I’d rather learn more about the conditions before anyone uses this route for now.”
“I don’t have anything with me,” Tarany objected. “No money. Only these clothes. Nothing else. Minki’s still in her nightgown. How are we supposed to stay here?”
Naryna stepped forward. “Tarany, I have plenty of room at my house, and I’m certain we can scrounge up some things for you to wear.”
“Thank you,” said Tarany. “But don’t you think it would be easier if we could go back…”
“Tarany,” Xaila said with compassionate firmness. “We already have two people we can’t find. It won’t help if two more end up missing. Please accept my Aunt Naryna’s offer for now. I promise we will work it out as soon as we can.”
“Okay, I understand. I appreciate your hospitality, Narya.”
“Good,” Naryna said. “Let’s collect Minki from Lettis and Tweed’s shop and I’ll settle you in at the house.”
Xaila stopped Naryna for a moment. “I need to convene the Table later. Maybe mom or Jenyki can come over for a while to help with your guests so you can join?”
“Of course, dear. I’ll sort it all out. Let me know what time.”
“I will,” Xaila said, giving her aunt a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for opening your hotel. I’m going to peek in at my studio, then I’ll let everyone know when to come.”
Xaila walked over to the front entrance to Heartbeat where an organized bustle of customers and staff filled the lobby. Mani-pedis, cosmetic and color consultations, and appointment bookings were ongoing. Jenyki flashed a smile from behind the front desk acknowledging Xaila’s entrance, then turned back to the customer making her payment for her services. All appeared to be running smoothly.
As soon as the paying customer left, Xaila stepped up to talk to Jenyki.
“May I help you?” Jenyki asked her.
“I was going to ask if I could help you,” Xaila answered.
“No, everything’s going great this morning. All under control. How is the situation in the Plaza? From out the window, I thought it looked kind of chaotic.”
Xaila rolled her eyes. “Worse than it looks from the outside, I’m afraid. I might need you to take over earlier than expected.”
Jenyki laughed. “I’ll be here anyway. You go do what only you can do. I can handle anything that comes up in the studio.”
Xaila looked around at the busy but orderly activity throughout the shop. As Tyszynda buffed a client’s nails, she tilted her head and gave Xaila a wink. Everything was under control here.
“Okay, Jenyki,” Xaila said, “I have to run into the chaos. Give me a call if you need me, though.”
“Sure. But don’t expect me to leave a message. We’re in good shape.”
Gathering at Wraithdale House, the seven members of the Table of Enchantresses sat in their chairs, arranged in a circle within the Table Chamber. There was no physical table inside the Chamber. The Archidimentrists themselves constitute the Table. Xaila’s chair was at the end of the room opposite the doors, and mounted on the wall behind it, an Enchantress’s Pike – a combination walking staff and spear.
Xaila and Aerdin described their findings from their first exploration within the new interdimension to their colleagues. As they listened to the situation, palpable concern grew among them.
Aerdin concluded his observations to the group. “The lighting within the hyperdimensional spaces was like nothing I’d ever encountered before. It’s as though something…is leaking in from somewhere else.”
“Odd lighting,” Vyrsyri said in her eldritch voice. “Very interesting.”
Behalla nodded in agreement. “That is odd. So, Xaila, what do you believe we are facing here?”
“As I mentioned, there are a lot of similarities to what I saw Heryn do a couple years ago,” Xaila said, then paused for a moment to speak from a less emotional place. “But objectively, we have a complex of structures and dynamic forces arranged to be almost balanced, yet continue to self-propagate within and between dimensions. The stresses are arranged to make it difficult to mitigate one source without causing the other control factors to move the system toward failure.”
“So, you believe this system was deliberately constructed?” Qadel asked. “Not a natural anomaly, perhaps prompted out of some inadvisable tampering?”
Xaila leaned forward in her chair. “Have any of us seen hyperdimensional structures behave in this way? To generate new paradoxes, two and three orders deep? Not to settle into equilibrium but move the next dimension to an unbalanced state? And arrange it into a complex so the system collapses if any single variable is brought into stability?”
The chamber was quiet for a few minutes as they all considered Xaila’s questions and weighed the certainty she expressed in them.
“You seem confident that this is Heryn’s doing, Xaila?” Behalla spoke up at last.
“I’m trying to reserve judgment, Behalla. But if it wasn’t because of Heryn, there’s another, very skilled metadimentrix we need to stop.”
“Is there any possibility of such a thing happening without the intervention of Dimentricy?” asked Lettis.
“This could not fall into place at random,” Xaila replied. “It’s exactly the kind of trap I would design to take control of the hyperdimensional realm of Turquoise Sky. I mean, if was inclined to be so devious.”
Behalla smiled. “None of us would think that of you for a second, dear.”
“Well, what do we know about Heryn’s background and training?” Aerdin asked. “Would she be capable of this sophistication?”
Vyrsyri had delved into Heryn’s background the last time she caused trouble for the Table. “From the notes we found, left by her mentor, she did have an aptitude for advanced calculus. She appeared to be brilliant in, well, almost everything.”
“Heryn had many qualities that would have made her a great Archidimentrix,” Behalla said.
“Her mentor, Pryafyl as much as stated that,” Vyrsyri said in a solemn tone. “It was all outweighed by her flawed character.”
Naryna had taken her time before speaking. As Xaila’s aunt and mentor, she was used to listening to Xaila carefully before giving feedback to her perceptive niece. “The one thing that troubles me is that Heryn has been without any abilities of Dimentricy for many months. Locked in an institution as well. Could she have any way to sustain this kind of trap?”
Xaila thought over Naryna’s question. “What if we looked at it in terms of Jenyki’s childhood? From the time Jenyki was abducted as a newborn to the day she was reunited with her parents, Heryn had eighteen years to plan and execute this. But I understand the doubts. Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore if it was Heryn.”
“She’s not getting out of the prison hospital,” Naryna reminded her. “If she ever did, she doesn’t have abilities to do any of this again.”
“Let’s not forget the little girl’s parents are still missing,” Lettis pointed out.
“You’re right, Lettis,” Qadel said. “But time is not the critical concern in this instance. If, unfortunately, the parents were caught in the chaos, it will not matter how soon we locate them. If they landed in a boundary space, they are probably in a secure enough location for now.”
“The immediate concern is to fix this problem so we can locate Minki’s parents,” Xaila acknowledged. “Of course, we can’t start by making the problem worse. We have to discover the root cause, whether deliberate or natural.”
“I think we agree with you that this is most likely the intentional work of someone,” Behalla said. “We won’t find out for certain sitting in here.”
“I think I’ll talk to Fyrmyl tomorrow,” Xaila said. “He might remember something about his sister’s knowledge base since they studied together with Pryafyl.”
The Table disbanded, and Xaila returned home to catch up on details for the wedding. As she examined her notes, Xaila kept being distracted by questions popping into her head. What techniques in Dimentricy let you turn the dials on three control factors simultaneously? Could three Archidimentrists coordinate with sufficient precision for each to take a control factor in the system? Xaila thought more about Tarany’s story of the huge “earthquake” when the new interdimension emerged in Erevale. Why hadn’t a similar tremor in Turquoise Sky happened when the other end appeared in the Plaza?
It had been a long, exhausting day since she went to Santa Fe, shook out all her emotional stress, and came back to Turquoise Sky to the new crisis. Now she was falling behind on the wedding. Xaila fell asleep fully dressed, with files and her calendar next to her on the bed.
Ancient Light is the sequel to my earlier book Enchantress of Turquoise Sky. You can read and enjoy this new story whether or not you have read the previous book, but if you would like additional backstory on the characters and the world of Turquoise Sky, please check out Enchantress of Turquoise Sky via the link above. Thank you for joining me on this creative journey and I look forward to your comments about Ancient Light!