We tested all my senses; he had me taste Maevan-inspired food, run my fingers through bolts of northern wool, listen to Maevan music, smell pine and clove and lavender. But I failed to manifest a new memory.
He eventually sat me at the table in the library and unrolled a bolt of maroon linen, a red so dark it almost looked black. In the center there was a white diamond, and in the diamond was the emblem of a stag leaping through a ring of laurels.
“What is this?” Luc asked me.
I stared at it but eventually conceded to shrug. “I don’t know.”
“You’ve never seen this?”
“No. What is it?”
He yanked his fingers through his hair, finally displaying a measure of worry. “These are the colors and the coat of arms for the House of Allenach.”
I studied it again, but I sighed. “I’m sorry. There is nothing.”
He pushed the banner to the side and then unrolled a large map of Maevana; it depicted the cities and landmarks as well as the boundaries of the fourteen territories.
“Here are the forests,” he said. “To the northwest, we have Nuala Woods. Then to the far northeast, the Osheen Forest.” He pointed to each. My eyes followed his fingertip. “Then we have the slender strip of coastal Roiswood, on the southwestern side. And last, the Mairenna Forest, in the southern heart of the land. This is the one where I think your ancestor has buried the stone, since it sprawls through the northern half of Allenach’s territory.”
I had never seen a map of Maevana divided into her fourteen territories. My gaze touched each of them before coming to rest on the land of Allenach, which claimed a vast southern territory of Maevana. It was Allenach’s land that came closest to touching Valenia; the Berach Channel was the only thing separating the two countries. But I didn’t need to be looking at the water. I shifted my eyes to the Mairenna Forest, which spread as a dark green crown over the land of my father’s birth.
“I . . . I don’t know. I don’t see anything,” I all but moaned, burying my face in my hands.
“It’s all right, Amadine,” Luc was quick to say. “Don’t worry. We’ll come up with something.” But he eased himself into a chair, as if his bones had turned to lead. And we sat at the table in the dying light of the afternoon, the map spread between us as butter, one week already gone.
There had to be an explanation for the memories I had been given. If the Allenach armorial banner had struck nothing within my mind—and my ancestor had undoubtedly looked upon that sigil countless times during his life—then there had to be a reason why I had inherited some memories but not others.
I thought back to the three shifts I had experienced—the library, the summit, and the burial beneath the oak. The library and the burial were both clearly centered on the stone. But the view from the summit . . .
I traced back through it, the weakest of the shifts, and remembered how I had felt a weight about my neck, just over my heart. How I had been searching for a place to hide . . .
My ancestor must have stood on that summit with the stone hanging about his neck, seeking the location where he would eventually bury it.
So the memories I had inherited centered only on the Stone of Eventide.
My gaze strayed to the map, taken with the path of the river Aoife, which wound through southern Maevana as an artery, and it made me think of the Cavaret River, just beyond Jourdain’s back door.
“Luc?”
“Hmm.”
“What if we found a river rock, one the size of the Stone of Eventide? Maybe holding it would manifest something. . . .”
That perked him up. “It’s worth a try.”
We rose from the table, and I followed him out into the street. I didn’t want to tell him that I was beginning to feel like a prisoner in that library, in that house; I had not walked outside since I had arrived, and I slowed my pace, tipping my head back to the sun.
It was the middle of August, a month bloated on heat and stale air. Yet I drank in the sunlight, the slight breeze that smelled of fish and wine. A part of me missed the clean meadow air of Magnalia, and I realized only then how much I had taken that place for granted.
“Are you coming, Amadine?”
I opened my eyes to see Luc waiting for me a few yards away, an amused smile on his face. I fell into stride beside him as we wound our way through the street, taking the road that led to the riverbank. We passed by the market, which was teeming with life and smells, but I didn’t give myself the luxury to be distracted. And Luc set a hardy pace; he led me to where the Cavaret River ran wide and shallow, where the currents danced over the backs of rocks.
He pulled off his shoes and rolled up his breeches, wading to the center of the rapids while I was content to search along the banks. A rock the size of a fist, I had told him. And as I continued to meander down the shore, stopping here and there to scrutinize a few rocks, I wondered if this was going to be another futile attempt. . . .
“Lady?”
I glanced up, startled to see a man watching me. He was only two arm lengths away, leaning against the trunk of a river birch. He was middle-aged with shoulder-length dark hair; his face was wrinkled and weathered, his clothes ratty and filthy, but his eyes were as two coals that had just felt breath upon them. They gleamed at the sight of me.
I halted, unsure what to do, and he pushed off the tree and took one step closer, the shade dappling his shoulders and face. He meekly extended a hand, his dirty fingers trembling.
“Lady, what is the name of the man who you live with?”
I took a step back, jarring my ankle in a deep eddy of the river. The stranger was speaking Middle Chantal—the language of Valenia—but his voice held an obvious accent, a betraying brogue. He was Maevan.
Saints, I thought, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. Was he one of Lannon’s spies?
“Please, tell me his name,” the man whispered, his voice going hoarse.
That was when I heard the splashing. Luc had finally seen him, and I cast a half glance over my shoulder to see my brother come crashing toward us, his breeches fully drenched, a dagger in his hand. So he was more like his father than I’d realized, sprouting steel and blades like weeds.
“Get away from her,” he growled, stepping between me and the stranger.
But the bedraggled man held his ground, his eyes gone wide as he stared at Luc.
“Go on! Away with you!” Luc impatiently flicked the dagger toward him.
“Lucas?” the stranger whispered.
I felt the air change, the wind pull back as if she were fleeing. Luc’s back stiffened, and a cloud stole the sunlight as the three of us stood, unmoving, uncertain.
“Lucas? Lucas Ma—”
Luc was on the stranger, snapping from his web of shock. He took the man by the collar and shook him, holding the tip of the steel to the man’s grubby neck.
“Do not dare speak such a name,” my brother ordered, so low I could hardly catch the words.
“Luc? Luc, please,” I cried, moving closer.
But Luc hardly heard me. He was staring at the man; the man stared right back, although tears were lining his eyes, dripping down his bearded cheeks.