DAS WARTEN
German, "the waiting"

As a sleuth you are poor. You couldn't detect a bass-drum in a telephone-booth. -- P. G. Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet

In all of their lifetimes the two of them had gone practically everywhere on this side of the planet. Diarnlan had seen more foreign countries than she had any use for, and Karandren seemed to be attracted to Miavain as if it was a magnet and he was a piece of scrap metal. Therefore it came as quite a shock when she realised she had seen virtually nothing of Avallot's capital city.

She had vague memories of dying there at the very start of this nightmare. But she'd died in so many places that this hardly made it special. All she could remember of it was seeing the eagle flare in the sky above the tower, the flare that had summoned her to duel Karandren at the end of that first lifetime. Or had it been the second?

Anyway, there was no chance of that being repeated. The flares were meant to summon the Great Mages, and Diarnlan hadn't been one for many lifetimes. Nor did she particularly want to be one again. All she really wanted right now was for the skrýszel to stay away and for everyone to leave her alone. And that, unfortunately, was the least likely thing to happen.

The capital city was built on the slopes of a large hill. At the very top was the military garrison with its watchtower. A little lower was the royal palace with its tower. Lower again, and on the level ground around the hill, was the rest of the city. There was one good thing about its architecture: Diarnlan could see immediately that the city was intact.

She could also see that there was no way in hell she and Karandren alone could create a ward around the entire city. No one could, not even the most powerful of the Great Mages.

Diarnlan looked over at Karandren. He was staring intently at the city gates. She suddenly knew what he was going to say before he said it.

"I bet I could turn those into another dragon statue."

She was right.

"Don't you think that would draw just a little bit of unwanted attention?" she asked dryly.

"So will the skrýszel. And anyway, do you really think we're going to live long enough to have to worry about what anyone says?"

With their luck, he'd probably jinxed it and this would be the first lifetime where they had to deal with the consequences of their actions with other people's property. And unlike when they went to Miavian, not even Karandren could take over Avallot and dodge the consequences that way.

"All right," she said, "but you have to take down the gates single-handedly and answer the guards' questions alone. I'll have no part in it."

Karandren considered this as they continued walking. At last he said, "I suppose the gates wouldn't make a good statue anyway."

Diarnlan sighed in relief.

~~~~

The obvious place to go was the tower at the very top of the hill. From there they could get a clear view of the entire city and everything around it. The only problem was, to get there they had to shove their way through the crowds blocking the streets.

"Why are there so many people?" Karandren complained. "Is it a party?"

The people around them spoke with many different dialects and accents. Diarnlan recognised most of them: they were spoken around the coast. From that it was easy to deduce who these people were. She grabbed Karandren's arm so they wouldn't get separated and pulled him into a mercifully-empty doorway.

"They're the people who have been evacuated from the coast," she said once she caught her breath. "My teacher has sent them all here for safety."

"Is that a good idea?" Karandren asked dubiously. "I mean, the monsters have attacked here before. It might be like putting all of the potential victims directly in harm's way."

"Since when do you care about victims?" Diarnlan snapped, mainly to distract herself from the sinking dread that filled her chest at his words.

"Unlike in Miavain, I have nothing to gain from these people dying. And they'll just get in the way when we try to kill the monster. Most of them are Spiritless and won't be the slightest use."

He had a point. Diarnlan gritted her teeth and forced back the instinctive anger at someone else thinking of something she hadn't. "Have you ever heard of anchored spells?"

Karandren's blank expression showed that he hadn't. Diarnlan couldn't help feeling smugly superior about this.

"It's simple. You cast a spell but instead of controlling it yourself you anchor it to something like a mountain or a lake -- or a building. Then it can't be broken unless you break it yourself or the anchor is destroyed. And you can give it multiple anchors so it covers a large area. The only downside is, those spells are never as powerful as non-anchored ones. We could use the tower as the anchor for a defensive spell that won't physically stop the skrýszel but will give them a painful shock if they run into it."

Karandren nodded. "I know the general idea. In Miavain I did something similar by using corpses to power spells. Of course," he added as an afterthought, "that was when I studied dark magic."

"We are not using corpses."

~~~~

The palace tower was open to tourists three days of the week. This, unfortunately, was one of the days it was closed. Diarnlan stopped beside the gate and pretended to retie her shoelace while Karandren peered through the bars.

"I don't see anyone."

He cast an unlocking spell. The gate swung open noiselessly.

Diarnlan straightened up and strode in, doing her best impression of Teivain-ríkhorn-hrair en route to stop a student blowing themselves up with a botched potion. If she looked like she had every right to be there -- and more importantly, had an urgent task to complete and wouldn't take kindly to being delayed -- no one was likely to stop her. Karandren trailed behind her. A few guards and cleaners milled around the castle's lower floors. None of them gave the pair a second glance.

Through the arched doorway, up the spiral staircase, round and round the tower. Diarnlan tried to keep walking as fast as she had before. But eventually she had to concede to physical limitations. The tower was simply too high, and she was simply too tired. She stopped to catch her breath. Karandren caught up with her, puffing and panting. He gave her a look that suggested he would happily throw her off the tower's top if she didn't slow down.

A series of small windows cut into the stone allowed them to see what was happening in the city. Diarnlan peered through each one as she passed. No skrýszel, no jǫtnar, no Vanadel. She could almost be fooled into letting her guard down and assuming they weren't going to attack after all. Almost. From her brief interaction with Vanadel she suspected he wouldn't give up so easily.

Finally they reached the top. Diarnlan knelt down beside the wall, took out her penknife, and began to scratch a rune into the brick. Karandren wandered around, staring down at the city and keeping up a running commentary that she didn't listen to. Judging by the few words that she understood against her will, he was talking about absolutely everything that came into his head, no matter how inane. Including comments on the stained glass windows in the cathedral. And some sort of traffic jam down in the main street.

Sometimes she wondered how someone so idiotic was able to be so dangerous.

It took her the better part of an hour to set up the spell. The result wouldn't stop anything from entering the city, but it was set to give a nasty electric shock to anything more than seven foot tall. It would be more effective if she could have drawn the same runes on the buildings on the city's outskirts, but this would have to do.

"Now what?" Karandren asked.

Good question. Diarnlan didn't know the answer.

Without waiting for one, he continued, "I'm hungry. I'm going to find a restaurant."

"Is this really the time to think about food?" Diarnlan grumbled.

"Have you got a better suggestion?"

~~~~

In the end they adopted Karandren's suggestion and went to the nearest restaurant. By the time they finished their meal it was heading for evening and there was still no sign of a skrýszel. The people who had been evacuated to the city were beginning to complain volubly. Many had already left. The others thought they'd all been the victim of a ridiculous practical joke and threatened to sue whoever was responsible.

Diarnlan also felt like the victim of a joke. And she knew exactly who the perpetrator was.

"That damn Vanadel is up to something."

"I still say we should--"

"No."

"But we could find out what's happening!" Karandren sounded absurdly like a child whining because he didn't get his way.

"And if we go through the Veil we'll end up in Vanadel's hands. He'll kill us again. Or maybe he'll use us as lab rats."

"I bet I could kill him."

"You're fourteen."

"Only for now!"

~~~~

One day turned to two, to three, to a week. The spell anchored in the tower stayed undisturbed. The evacuees went home, grumbling and furious. Diarnlan and Karandren went on an increasingly desperate search through all of the city's libraries for information on the skrýszel. It was useless. No one had ever bothered to study the habits of skrýszel or their owners. There were no guidelines for how to tell when otherworldly beings had decided to call off their version of a day at the races.

"I think we should go to Miavain," Karandren said.

Diarnlan groaned. "You and Miavain! What is it about that place?"

"I like it. And remember those magic books? All the spells forgotten since the Bone-Worshippers took over? Besides, you know the monsters usually follow us there. Maybe we'll draw them out."

"Absolutely not. I don't care what you do, but I won't set foot in Miavain, not if you give me the entire royal treasury."

~~~~

Diarnlan glared up at the High Priest's palace. Well, it was once again Karandren's palace now. "I had hoped I would never see this place again."

Karandren, damn him, was in an obnoxiously cheerful mood. He stationed his dragon statue -- was it the same one or had he made another? Diarnlan couldn't keep track of his inventions -- at the gate, then grabbed her wrist and dragged her into the palace.

"You look in the cellars over there and I'll look over here. The magic books are behind a false wall. The cement's crumbling and a lot of bricks will fall out if you knock on the wall."

"Why bother searching? Just go to where you found them the last time."

He shrugged. "I can't remember where that was. It's somewhere in the cellars. Can't be that hard to find."

Diarnlan grumbled to herself the whole way down the stairs.

~~~~

The magic books lay on the study table. (Until a few hours ago it had been a dining table belonging to one of the High Priest's advisers, but its former owner was now one of the corpses outside the gate and Karandren had decided to turn his rooms into an impromptu study.) Diarnlan and Karandren stared at them as if they hoped to learn their contents without the bother of opening them.

Unsurprisingly, it didn't work.

"Where do we start?" Diarnlan asked.

There were over fifty books, and that was just the ones in the first walled-up room. She wouldn't be surprised if there were dozens of other rooms hidden throughout the cellars.

Karandren shrugged. "With the shortest, I suppose."

All of the books were several hundred pages long. It was hard to tell which was the shortest. Karandren picked one at random and checked its table of contents. "Listen to this!"

"If it isn't a spell to prevent monster attacks, I'm not interested."

He continued in spite of her words. "Spell to enhance food's flavour. Spell to prepare a fish for cooking. Spell to make an oven turn itself off."

"None of which is useful to us. We're not going to cook the skrýszel." Diarnlan picked up another book and opened it to a random page. "'Mercenaries hoping to be protected from evil must consecrate the tools of their trade in a temple of Loumai during the day when the constellation of Enan is in the sky.' What idiot wrote this? Constellations aren't visible during the day."

Karandren tried another book. "Do you know where to get a sheep?"

Diarnlan's eyebrows shot up. "Correct me if I'm going astray here, but I suspect the best person to ask might be a sheep farmer."

"It says here that to break Fate's control over your life you have to burn a sheep's liver at high noon. Think that'd be any help?"

Diarnlan swatted him with one of the books.