After rummaging through his entire closet, Nicholas discovered the hole. Great. That cat could be anywhere by now.
Rather than search the house for him, Nick went to sit on his son's bed. "Katrel," he told the wall, "Where are you?"
"Talking to yourself won't do either of you any good."
"Shut up Mogget. You didn't do us that much good either."
"I might have had you not strangled me."
"I'm not strangling you now."
"Fine. I suppose it would be best to finally deal with Orannis properly."
"I'm glad you've come around to my way of thinking. Now please get on with how we can save Katrel. We can always finish Orannis later."
"Actually, I believe we'll be killing two birds with one stone. The problem with Katrel is that Orannis has infested and corrupted his mind. The problem with Orannis is that he still exists. The best, and only way to deal with both problems is to simply kill Orannis."
"You make it sound so easy, Mogget."
"Right now it is. I don't know exactly how to destroy him, so I don't have to worry about it."
Lirael slipped through the open door and closed it behind her, effectively cutting off the cat's means of escape. "And what do you know about how to destroy him?"
"Since Liane's spirit is mixed inseparably with his, you'd have to use their own bell to do it. Of course, you'd have to get it off them first."
†††
It was hard to believe a year had passed since they first met. And he was still in the Glacier, one of the few fathers who'd ever stayed with their Clayr partner. And if it wasn't just sweet, fiery Firana who was bearing their child in the next room. A year gone, and he still hadn't completed what he'd set out to do. A year wasted, and the Clayr's Seeing ice still nearly useless. They hadn't even seen the baby coming until Firana's stomach was too large for it to be anything else.
Although, he thought, I do know how to fix it. I'm just to scared to. The last several months he'd been deep in the Great Library, dredging up the most ancient books on the Clayr's Magic. When he'd finally came back to the surface with the single scroll he'd found useful, Sam had been greeted by his seven-months-pregnant wife.
Thinking back on those times, he remembered how shocked he was to see her. But he also remembered what that scroll contained. He'd only enjoyed two full nights of sleep before forcing himself back to his studies, and he hadn't had a good sleep since.
According to the manuscript, the Ice had been created when Mosrael gave a scrap of his power to the women of the north. Later, when they had moved into the Glacier, he'd returned to enchant their Ice.
The whole process had been long and complicated, and the Shiner had had to start over once after melting the ice with the heat of his magic. Mosrael had started it with the floor. It was stone, and couldn't easily be messed up. To any Shiner, it was a fairly simple spell that could easily be duplicated. Sam could even do it, though it would tax his power. But it wasn't the floor that needed fixing. It had actually gotten more powerful. All the Clayr who had gathered on that ground agreed that it made their visions clearer than ever, and they felt more unified. Sam, suspected that had happened as a side effect of the ceiling's demise.
When the heat wave from Orannis' second manifestation had melted the seeing ice, some of the spell had dripped away with the melted water. Over the months, the Ice had slowly rebuilt to its previous amount, but the magic was still washed out. He thought the small touches of magic contained within the droplets had soaked into the floor. When enough of the magic particles built up, he figured it would cause exactly the effects the Clayr had spoken of. That, and they wouldn't be able to project a thing onto the Ice.
But again, it wasn't a problem. That one little scroll had told him exactly how to fix it. And it was so easy. Physically, anyways. Mentally and ethically, it was nearly impossible. What was needed was for each of the Clayr to dip their hands into a particular substance. Then they would have to press their hands against the Ice. After every Awakened Clayr had done so, he would speak a very simple incantation to seal the power in the Ice. And just like that, it would be fixed.
The substance though, would be hard to get. It required three ingredients. Two were water from melted ice gathered at the peak of Sunfall, and the ground tooth of a drillgrub. Dangerous and difficult to get, but that was to be expected. The third, and most important, ingredient was the blood of a Clayr. Being Touchstone's son, Sam knew that powerful blood was often required in instances like this. But for every single Clayr to cover their palm entirely in the mix...whoever gave the blood would die. Not just die, but be killed and have every drop of the precious liquid drained from their body. Appalling, simply appalling. And worse yet, it couldn't be the blood of a Clayr who was so old or sick that they would soon die anyway. No, it had to be from someone who was in the prime of their life. Oddly enough, the donor had to be a true Daughter of the Clayr. Female, not a man or boy. At least it wasn't the other way around. There were few enough male Clayr as it was.
But why, he wondered, does the spell demand "the blood of one who is young, powerful, and in the full blossom of life and beauty?" It was something to sleep on. If I can sleep, that is.
A/N Muahahahaha! Sorry, I'm feeling a bit hyper -and evil- today. Well, well, well. The whole dirty plot comes out. Well, most of it, anyways. I can now safely say that you know the main point of the rest of this story. But with eleven chapters to go, who knows what will happen?