//------------------------------//
// 17. Lies 
// Story: The Name of Our Mistakes 
// by ObabScribbler 
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Clover read through the scrolls he had been given, gathering details and slotting them together in his mind. It seemed that whoever had taken the Elements of Harmony possessed some form of fire spell. That was worrying, since not even he had been able to master dragon magic and that was the only kind that could produce flames out of thin air. There had been no sign the thief had used any kindling, nor was there any flammable potion splashed on the door or corridor, but the scorch marks he had seen when he inspected the chamber were clear. A concussive blast of fire had broken down the door and, presumably, shattered the protective wards placed on it. 

Even more than the fire, the breaking of these wards worried him. Celestia and Luna had cast those wards. The idea that there was someone else powerful enough to break a spell cast by two alicorns was terrifying. The only creature Clover could think of was Discord and he was now a stone statue in the gardens of Castle Everfree . Even the master of chaos magic had not been able to stand against the princesses’ combined powers when they possessed the Elements of Harmony. 

He came to Princess Luna’s account. Her writing was elegant, if a little wobbly in places. He wondered whether she had written this with magic or by hoof. Either way, to a trained eye such as his the evidence of her growing weakness was clear. He had dined with Celestia after sunset yesterday and she had voiced her own concerns over her sister’s health.

“I believe her search for the Elements hath weakened her even more than the sickness from which she suffers.”

“Sickness?” Clover had asked curiously.

“Ever since we returned from the Crystal Empire, she hath grown frailer and frailer, though our most proficient healers can find no reason for it. I confess,” Celestia had said, voice dropping to a hushed murmur, “I worry that she … that she may not recover. We did think ourselves immortal but the sole way to be disabused of this notion would be for one of us to …” Unable to finish her sentence, she had stared at her plate for a long time until Clover broke protocol and laid his hoof over hers.

“I will find the Elements of Harmony, Princess,” he had promised. “I will return them to Everfree and then I will turn my attention to Princess Luna’s health. Mayhap some magical malady affects her, rather than a medical ailment.”

Celestia had stared at him, as if this had not even occurred to her. “Thinkest thou this may be truth?” Guilt had filled her words as she considered that she might have missed this.

“’Tis a possibility, Princess.”

“Wouldst thou be able to cure her of it?”

“’Tis also a possibility. In any event, I shall try. Wouldst thy mind be eased if I did thus before my efforts to locate the Elements?”

Celestia had bitten her lip and stared out of the window at the low-hanging moon. “I shall discuss it with her first. She grows tired of being poked and prodded by physicians for so many months. I would not force her to do anything she doth not wish to do.”

“Then I shall concentrate on the Elements until her agreement be forthcoming,” Clover had said.

And so here he was, poring over papers in a burned out, empty chamber, wondering whether this time even he might be stumped. The guards who had been on duty that night all told the same story. Nopony was set to watch over the Elements’ chamber because of the wards, so nopony had seen the intruder in the act. Luna’s guards wrote that they had been outside her chambers while she stood on the balcony to raise the moon and set a new constellation in the sky that she had been designing for some time. Celestia’s guards had been outside her chamber as she slept. Neither set of guards had heard any explosion, since the Elements’ chamber was so far away from the royal rooms. It was Luna who had raised the alarm, bursting from her room with the news that she no longer sensed the Elements. It was, she had written, as if her connection with them was suddenly broken or impeded in some way. She had led her guards down to see the wreckage before dispatching a messenger to rouse the captain of Celestia’s personal guards.

Luna’s account also detailed the searches she had conducted outside the castle in the weeks following the theft. Having nothing to go on but her own connection with the Elements, she was reduced to flying or walking around on hoof, hoping she would sense them while Celestia drew up treaties to keep Equestria safe in the meantime. Already, shipments of cloth and precious gems were heading over the border into Gryphona in exchange for their agreement not to start another war. A treaty of appeasement rarely worked but what other choice did they have?

Clover finally tore his eyes from the writing and surveyed the chamber. He had inspected every corner and touched the walls to check for hidden passages, though the castle plans told of none. There were no windows and no other door than the one that had been destroyed. The thief had to have left the same way he or she entered. Clover breathed out a heavy sigh as he came back to the spell he had thought of at the beginning of this undertaking.

“Psychometry,” he murmured to himself. “Yet no psychometrist born am I.” 

Psychometry was a difficult field of magic for those not born with natural talent. The ability to ‘read’ a place or object and see its immediate past was rare, though Starswirl the Bearded had spent some years working on an enchantment to allow ordinary spellcasters to mimic the gift. Unfortunately Clover’s problems now were twofold: he had never cast Starswirl’s enchantment and had no guarantee it would work for him; and so much time had passed, with so many ponies coming and going in and out of the Elements’ chamber, he could have to read every layer of happenings before he went back far enough to see that night of the theft. And that was only if he could stand the strain of the magic long enough to go that far back. For the first time, he began to regret offering his services.

“Clover?” Celestia stepped through the doorway behind him. Two white stallions, a unicorn and a pegasus, flanked the door. “Oh, I had thought somepony else might be with thee. I did hear thee speak.”

“To myself only, Princess,” Clover sighed. “This conundrum be a thorny one indeed.”

“Our gratitude that thou attempt it at all,” Celestia replied. “The moon hath waxed and waned several times since the Elements were taken. We should understand greatly if they efforts do not reap the rewards thou doth hope. We are only grateful that wherever they have fled, their thief hath not the wherewithal to use them. Only my sister and I were chosen to wield the Elements of Harmony and so only we two may cast their magic forth. For those who be not chosen, they are but shiny trinkets, nothing more.”

“A relief indeed.” Rather than give him permission to fail with his honour intact, Clover took from her words the extra impetus he needed to succeed. “’Tis too early to consider me failed yet, Princess. I have a spell I shall undertake. However, its complexity vexes even me. I will require certain conditions for its casting.”

“Anything!” Celestia exclaimed. “Simply name they request and it shalt be thine!”

Clover smiled, summoned the ingredients of Starswirl’s enchantment from his encyclopaedic memory, and began to list them off.