The Ambassador’s Mission: Book One of the Traitor Spy Trilogy by Trudi Canavan Read Free Book Online

about what the glyphs suggest magic was used for.” Dannyl took out the sketches Tayend had made when they had visited the Tombs over twenty years before. He pointed out the glyph of a man kneeling before a woman, who was touching his upraised palms. “This glyph means ‘high magic’.”
    “Black magic?”
    “Perhaps. But it might be Healing magic. It may be only coincidence that our predecessors called black magic ‘higher magic’.” Dannyl leafed through the pile and another sketch, this time of a crescent moon and hand, flipped into view.
    “What is that?” Lorkin asked.
    “A symbol we found in the ruined city of Armje. It was a symbol that represented the royal family of that city like an incal symbolises a Kyralian House. Armje is thought to have been abandoned over two thousand years ago.”
    “What was the symbol written on?”
    “It was carved above house lintels, and we saw it once on what I suspect was a blood ring.” Dannyl smiled as he remembered Dem Ladeiri, the eccentric noble and collector he and Tayend had stayed with in an old castle in the Elyne mountains, near Armje. Then he felt his smile fade as he remembered the underground chamber he’d found in the ruins, called the “Cavern of Ultimate Punishment.” Strange crystalline walls had attacked him with magic and would have killed him if Tayend hadn’t dragged him out just as his shield had failed.
    The former High Lord, Akkarin, had asked Dannyl to keep the Cavern a secret to prevent other magicians stumbling inside to their death. After the Ichani Invasion, Dannyl had told the new High Lord, Balkan, of the Cavern, and the Guild leader had ordered him to record what he knew, but also to keep it secret. When the book was finished, Balkan would reconsider whether to allow others to know of the place.
    Has Balkan sent anyone there to investigate? I can’t imagine the Warrior would be able to resist trying to find out how the Cavern works. Especially as it has so much potential as a defensive weapon.
    “So they knew how to make blood rings two thousand years ago?”
    Dannyl looked up at Lorkin, then nodded. “And who knows what else? But that knowledge was lost.” He pointed to the second, smaller pile. “This is all I have relating to the time before the Sachakan Empire conquered Kyralia and Elyne, over a thousand years ago. The few records that we have only survived from that time because they are copies, and they suggest that there were only two or three magicians, and that those had limited skills and power.”
    “So if the people who knew how to make blood rings, and whatever high magic was, died without passing that knowledge on …”
    “… whether because they didn’t trust anyone enough to teach them, or they never found anyone gifted enough to teach.”
    Lorkin looked thoughtful – and definitely not bored, Dannyl noted with relief. The young magician’s attention moved to the third pile.
    “Three centuries of Sachakan rule,” Dannyl told him. “I’ve more than doubled the information we have from that time, though that wasn’t hard because there was so little to begin with.”
    “A time when Kyralians were slaves,” Lorkin said, his expression grim.
    “And slave owners,” Dannyl reminded him. “I believe that the Sachakans brought higher magic to Kyralia.”
    Lorkin stared at him in disbelief. “Surely they wouldn’t have taught their enemy black magic!”
    “Why not? After Kyralia had been conquered it became part of the Empire. The Sachakans didn’t kill every noble, only those who would not swear allegiance to the Empire. There would have been intermarriage, and mixed blood heirs. Three hundred years is a long time. Kyralians would have been citizens of Sachaka.”
    “But they still fought to regain their land, and to get rid of slavery.”
    “Yes.” Dannyl patted the top of the pile. “And that is clearly recorded in documents and letters leading up to and following the emperor’s decision to grant