They waited while the potential servants departed, taking the cart of treasure with them. The sultan nodded in their direction. "There will be more time for you to consider that, but let us turn to more pressing affairs." He folded his hands and gave a subtle nod that his own people understood clearly.
A scroll was brought forward, rolled around a gold-tipped rod. A table was hurried over just in time for the scroll to be unfurled onto it, revealing a map of the city. An uneven circle of red was already laid upon it, and he waved his right hand at the small red posts with equally red bits that ran between them. "This is where the attack struck. They were aiming for the castle, clearly."
He thrust down a pointer finger on the palace, fairly clearly in the center of the area. "Your wife was caught right in the center of it. I am sorry for that. She did not go alone." He pressed a few other fingers to the same spot and slowly spread. "The further from the center you go, the less devastating it was for those unlucky enough to be caught in it. Some caught in the periphery reported little more than an intense bout of nausea or vertigo."
His eyes fixed on Silver. "Only the jackals were affected."
Silver felt his teeth setting. "As we expected..."
"Quite." He sat back, upright against his chair. "This is, in its own way, quite troubling. To know they have such precision. How more precise could it be, should they wish it to be? Could it slay a specific family? Could it be like a great bolt from the heavens, seeking a particular single creature?" He trailed his claw towards where the circle was less than perfect, divoting inwards. "Here is where you made your strike. Your interference was clearly felt."
There was a clear demarkation, where the circle should have been, but that area was clean and untouched. Silver's eyes wandered over the area, putting a hoof down on a building there. The hospital nearby had been spared... Perhaps their jackal doctor had been spared? He shook the thought free. "We need the source."
"In this we agree entirely." The sultan clapped his hands. "If one assumes the source to be the center, this worries me, but this need not be the case. If it is, well..." He sprang a claw free. "That puts it within these very walls."
Silver cringed even as he choked back a bitter laugh. 'We traced the call, the caller's inside your house!' echoed in his mind from old human horror. "We should check."
"Are checking," he corrected. "My men are scouring the grounds quite thoroughly." His eyes flicked to Sheba. "How familiar are you with their workings?"
"I've guarded them." She gestured at Silver. "Just as I guard him. I confess, I understand either about as well, though one I plan to improve."
Silver's ears perked with the rest of his head. "The raids. Did you find them?"
"We did." He gestured broadly over the city. "They are many, but we are finding them, with your timely assistance, friend. They do not contain the source. Each links to others around it in turn, which only makes me more certain that it is where it should not be. We will dismantle this machine with swift justice, but that leaves the foul heart to take root elsewhere, or even here, again, should we let it."
Silver's expressive ears pinned against his head. "Imagine... if they blanketed the world in this... death. They could truly end entire species on a whim, if they wanted. If it's here, I'll find it." He turned and began walking, his magic expanding in all directions as he went.
The sultan glanced towards Sheba. "Walking away without a parting word would offend terribly in most situations."
Sheba flashed a bright and sharp smile, easily matched by him. "I would imagine, but we both know he seeks what you want, so perhaps he can be forgiven?"
"Just this once." He waved after Silver. "You'd best keep at his side, guard. He may have need for one, but all things considered, perhaps whoever bothers him may have greater need for one."
Sheba's laugh was all that remained of her, vanishing with the speed only a few had mastered.
Silver stalked through the halls, ignoring their opulence. His concentration was entirely on his magic. Not just the silver haze that suffused the air, but the feel of the stone and the soft echoes he felt from the earth pony magic he encouraged to life. Deep beneath him, he could feel streaks of plant-life, struggling against the crushing presence of the palace.
So long as it remained, no plants had a hope of doing much, outside of the smallest mosses, and those were cleaned by fastidious servants.
So why did he feel such a large collection? He slowed in his walking, looking straight down at where there seemed to be an entirely unreasonable amount of green life beneath him.
"Find something?" Sheba was standing next to him, watching him curiously. "You look like you've found something."
"There is something down there." He pointed, his silver magic withdrawing into his body and horn, collecting it back up safely. "But I can't tell how large the space is, only where it is..."
"Well, how far is it?" She arched a brow. "If it's close, there are other ways."
Close? "As if we were that lucky." He hoofed at the ground like the agitated equine he was. An idea sprang to his mind and he smiled wickedly. "There is one way..." He felt through his hooves. "Yes.. I can be sure there's a little space, very little. There may be more, or not. We won't know until we're already there."
"This is going to be strange and possibly alarming." She crossed her arms. "Get on with it. I'm not letting you out of my sight."
His horn glowed brightly, both of them becoming encompassed in a field. "This shouldn't hurt." She peered skeptically, but he was focused on the magic, shuffling things around and playing the spell carefully, his book floating before his eyes for reference. No one said he had memorized that spell.
With the final note, the world grew dramatically around them both. "It worked!" he squeaked in a tiny voice, for they were both breezies. "There should be room for us now, hopefully more."
Sheba blinked at him. "What are you?" she asked with an equally squeaky voice. She looked down at herself and back over herself. "What am I?! Damnable sorcerer, let's see this small space of yours. It had better have what we're looking for."
"No promises." He fluttered to her side and put a leg over her small withers. "Let's go!"
They vanished, leaving the hall empty. His magic carried them both deep beneath the castle, to where the moss grew thickest. They appeared in a fit of silver sparkles, half-wedged into soft moss that served as a very respectable cushion. It was entirely dark when the magic faded, leaving them with nothing but the feeling of soft moss beneath them.
Sheba sprang to her little hooves. "We are here, wherever here might be. Make some light, my foolish but potentially insightful employer." She reached up and batted at her dangling antennae. "These feel weird. I would like them to be gone, and to have my hands back."
Silver remembered dimly the idea of hands. With fingers, he typed with them, and grabbed things and moved things around. Hands were nice to have. He had magic. Magic could do all those things...
He shook his head free of the wool gathering and willed magic to flow into his dangling dealie-bobbers that began to glow softly. "I wasn't sure that'd work." He fluttered, raising gently from the moss, only to bump into stone. "Not a lot of room." He felt along the rock, moving through the tiny tunnel. "Glad we didn't try to come down here at full size. Can you imagine?"
"I should think I would not be imagining much." She followed after him at a sedate drift. "This little body is so slow. Is this really the fastest they can fly?"
"This is it. But they're small." He ducked into a narrow crack, pulling himself forward. "There's moss here, so there must be moisture nearby, I think. Let's find that? It can't be that far or how would the moss get at it?"
"If you insist," she agreed without conviction.
As one, they flew, wriggled, and struggled to make their slow progress through the pathetically tiny cracks. Silver was quietly thankful that little breezies didn't need much oxygen, as he imagined there was very little on offer there, entombed in the earth.
Light. It wasn't his. It flickered softly through the cracks up ahead. Silver pulled back his magic, ceasing his own glow. Both agreed without words to progress as quietly as they could, creeping closer to the light. Silver pulled through one last crack into what seemed to be a great cavern. There was a torch nearby that gave off the light and put out a dangerous amount of wind that he had to brace against.
"What are you..." Sheba emerged and felt the same wind. She was blown away, grabbing onto Silver at the last moment, hugging him tightly around his midsection. "Make us full size! This little body has served its purpose."
Silver could think of no speedy argument as Sheba's weight threatened to pull him free of his perch. He severed the spell that held them and suddenly both were on the floor in an ungainly pile. The pathetic breeze that the torch put out was no longer a threat to them.
Sheba sprang to her feet first, patting herself down. "Mmm, and you brought my things with me. A fine job, my spellcasting employer."
Silver climbed up to his hooves and shook off. "Where are we, and is anyone else here?"
"Both fine questions. Let me scout." She vanished promptly. In the space only occupied by things that could move as quickly as she, she rushed through the cavern. It had torches spaced fairly evenly. It also had some people. Three felines, a bear, and a turkey all stood there, each in thick robes. They were speaking to one another.
None of them seemed to notice her as she circled around them, eavesdropping. Their voices changed in octaves rapidly due to the doppler effect, going high and low steadily as she kept her motion up.
"The test was successful," noted the turkey, clapping his wing-arms in a paff. "We should get out now. We can set up in a more careful way--"
"--You've repeated that several times now," gruffly snorted the bear. "We've all heard it. Why did you let that pony prince get a map?" He was looking at one of the cats, the diplomat that Silver hat met.
The diplomat lifted his shoulders. "Are we not reasonable creatures? I would not harm one who meant me no harm in kind. He wanted what I wanted, to share words, and we did. I bear him no ill will. Would that more were ready to exchange ideas, instead of blows."
One of the other cats hissed softly. "That does not excuse you! You could have destroyed the map without harming the prince, if that is so antithetical to your methods. Our hand has been exposed. This puts things in motion, things we were not yet ready to deal with."
The last cat pulled a dagger free of her robe and set it on the ground between them all. "You have failed us. Would you care to handle this yourself with some honor, or must we clean this last mess of yours for you?"
Sheba considered dashing back to Silver, but that could mean too much time spent. He would arrive only to find more blood. No. She would serve him best by being there, and taking action. He would want that diplomat alive, she felt certain. They were two cats of the same litter.