by Melanie Rawn
“Well?” Sarra demanded, black eyes fierce as she went to where Taigan stood gaping at her. “What are you all standing around for? Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“What about Fa?” Taigan said.
“All in good time,” said another voice, and all eyes went to the slim, black-clad figure of the Captal. She strode past Jored in the doorway, nodded politely to Lady Alinar—who, Taigan was by now convinced, was no more a Liwellan than she herself was—and said to Sarra, “I’ve been very well informed by Elomar and the Bekkes—before I ordered them to get the hell out of here by Ladder. You’re right, we don’t have much time. Jored, move away from Josselin.”
“Captal—?”
“Do it.” And a Mage Globe appeared, dark crimson and shot with silver lightning.
Josselin stared at her. Jored backed away toward the writing desk in the corner, gray eyes huge. They glanced at each other, then at the two-foot Globe, then at the Captal.
Taigan saw three things then. First, that allowing for green eyes and certain traits inherited from Collan Rosvenir, she herself was a pretty fair rendering of what the Captal must have looked like at eighteen. Second, that the Captal was not angry, despite the bloody glow of her Mage Globe; sadness was in her eyes, and regret, and a flicker of uncertainty. Third, that Joss had the Captal’s sword buckled around his hips.
The Captal had seen it, too. “I’d like that back now,” she said.
Bewilderment was scrawled all across his face. But he unhooked the fastening and wrapped the leather around the hilt.
“Taigan, if you’d be so kind—?”
She went forward a few paces, but stopped when the Captal spoke again.
“That’s far enough. Slide it across the floor to her, Josselin.”
“Captal, I don’t underst—”
“Taigan. The sword.” Her voice had sharpened.
She did as told, after Josselin crouched and pushed the sword half the distance between them. Lady Alinar was smiling a little. As Joss straightened, he looked surprised for an instant and glanced around the room. Taigan knelt where she was, reaching—half-expecting someone to make a grab for it. But it came into her hands, and she held it in its scabbard, and even through tooled leather it spoke to her magic in fleeting tremors of power.
The Captal sighed quietly.
“Cailet. . . .”
“Not now, Sarra.” The Mage Globe hovered again equidistant between the two young men. “Too clever for me, aren’t you?” she asked them. “The one who had the sword gave it up, the one who didn’t have it didn’t try to take it. I’d hoped—ah, but you are too clever for me, truly told.”
Neither said a word.
“Captal,” asked Lady Alinar, “what is this little exercise intended to prove?”
“Which of them destroyed Mage Hall.”
Taigan caught her breath.
“And which of them, therefore, is Glenin’s son.”
This time she blurted out, “No!”
“Yes, dear, it’s quite true.”
Jored and Josselin spun half around as Glenin came in. Before her eldest sister could speak, the Captal said, “And now we are all here—excepting Mikel, of course. What did you do with him, Glenin?”
“He’s perfectly safe.” She gave the Mage Globe a bored glance and walked around it to stand beside the dressing table. “Yes, now we’re all here.”
“For the first time,” Sarra said conversationally.
Glenin looked surprised. “It is, isn’t it? All three of us in one room. Tell me, Lady Whoever-you-are,” she directed at the old woman by the windows, “as a disinterested observer, is there a family resemblance?”
“Certainly,” replied Lady Alinar at once. “But I assume you don’t need an opinion on which most favors your mother and which your father.”
“You knew them both?” Sarra enquired, still in that calm, everyday tone.
Lady Alinar only smiled.
Glenin smiled back. “There are traits of each in all of us. My son inherited nothing but his grandfather’s height.”
“It happens that way sometimes in families,” said Lady Alinar. “My own progeny resembles me in no particular, and in his children and grandchildren I’ve seen quite a bit of the other side of their breeding lines.”
“Where did you find this wordy old fossil?” Glenin asked Sarra.
Cailet spoke impatiently. “Enough, Glenin. Do what you came to do—if you can.”
“You’ve been singularly inept at anticipating me so far—what can you possibly know about what I came here to do?”
“Get Taigan, of course, to complete your matched set of Ambrais.”
“You’re learning!” She turned to Taigan. “Tell me, dear, how does it feel to know who you really are?”
With a great effort at casual calm, she replied, “I’m still not clear on exactly why it matters so much. I’m the same person I was yesterday.”
“It matters,” Glenin said flatly.
“To you,” she shot back.
“Yes. And to my son—whom I would never allow to father Mageborns on any but the finest lineage.”
Glenin was too late to shock and horrify, but Taigan had to struggle to keep loathing from her face. She shrugged one shoulder and tried to look bored. She didn’t dare look at either Jored or Josselin.
“Oh, now, what girl wouldn’t want to bed so charming and handsome a young man?” Glenin asked playfully. “After all, you’ve already shown a decided preference for him.”
Him.
Jored.
Smiling at her, ignoring the Mage Globe as he went to stand beside his mother. Jored. Who at Mage Hall had shown himself the true grandson of the Butcher of Ambrai.
In the next instant he spoke her name, and a darkness so vast she physically staggered swept over her. She fought it off wildly, unable even now to believe it came from him. Instinct flung up Wards—Wards his darkness stormed through as if they had not existed. Family. He was family. He could get through any Ward she used.
And all at once she understood what her mother had tried to tell her. His shadows called to a facet of her being she hadn’t known existed. The beauty of Jored’s face and body were as nothing compared to the seduction, the sweet allure, the power that filled her mind and heart and made her want nothing else than to be with him, be one with him in the darkness.
She knew then what had happened to Auvry Feiran, how it had happened. She was his granddaughter. With his grandson, she formed a unity of strength and magic, body and will, to make them invincible. And for the space of a heartbeat, a lifetime, she joyously agreed.
“Taigan!”
Cailet’s voice. Jored, still smiling, conjured visions in the darkness—of the Captal as a bloodless ruin, of Taigan’s mother, father, brother dead. She could escape the carnage by joining with him. Only by joining with him.
Taigan drew the sword at the same instant Cailet struck. Hate exploded in her simultaneously with the Mage Globe’s explosion of righteous fury and terrible fear. Taigan heard her mother scream, and briefly wondered why Lady Alinar didn’t, nor Josselin. Not that she could be bothered to care about any of them; she wanted Jored’s throat. She wanted it hewn, severed, gushing blood. She wanted his death, and the sword knew it.
She put the whole weight of her body behind the blow that would strike him down. But the blade crashed into another Mage Globe—so darkly red it was nearly black, crawling with black lightning. It erupted as the sword slashed through it. Taigan reeled but did not fall.
“Careful, Mother,” said Jored, as if cautioning her against a rain-slick step. “She’s uneducated as yet, but stronger than she knows.”
“As strong as you or I? Don’t make me laugh. This is serious work. We have to take care of them all, right now. And don’t forget that senile wreckage by the windows.”
Another Globe—this one the Captal’s
, intended for Jored. And another, Glenin’s, intended for Sarra. And yet another, hurtling toward her from Jored’s magic.
“Don’t make me hurt you,” he said as she sheared into it with the sword. “I care for you, Taisha, but not enough to let you get anywhere near me with that thing.”
She’d been wrong; the Captal’s Globe was not meant to attack Jored. It was meant to protect him from her sword. It hovered in the magic-charged air between them, guarding him.
Why? Why would she prevent Taigan from doing what had to be done?
“Taigan!”
She turned her head and saw her mother, clinging to a bedpost for support, gasping. Glenin’s magic was dissipating all around her, malicious but strangely inadequate.
“Why can’t I kill you?” Glenin said irritably. “There’s no Ward, no spell to prevent me—”
“Mother!” Jored had fallen back with two Mage Globes—one his, one the Captal’s—casting blackened crimson light on his face, turning his gray eyes to red coals. Glenin turned to defend her son. Taigan ran to her mother, putting the sword between her and any more magic—but the sword knew what she wanted. It crooned and chanted, and when seduction failed it began to shriek for Jored’s throat.
She heard it. Obeyed it. Broke free of her mother’s clutching hands. Started for Jored. His back was against a wall, gray eyes with their subtle hints of green darting in real terror from the Captal to the two Globes to Glenin.
She would have his blood. The sword agreed, and of its lengthy experience even told her how to do it.
19
MIKEL got it right at the same time friends came to rescue him.
Glenin’s Wards must be to keep others out, because she knew they couldn’t keep him in. Family. But he couldn’t just walk out. He had to provide a diversion for the Domburs. He needed to cast a Ward of his own. He’d made Joss teach him the Kyyos in the Bushes that had so startled him back at Mage Hall; reviewing in his mind the configuration of the room beyond for a good place to put it, he decided on the gold-and-marble table by the windows. “Stone, silk, and pure metal—these hold a Warding most strongly,” the Captal had told them.
The Captal. Auntie Caisha.
Hard work it was, visualizing in detail a table glimpsed in passing. It was big, gaudy, meant to attract attention, and he wouldn’t have noticed it but for the huge crystal vase of white flameflowers atop it. Mikel knew his history; sigil of the Renne Name, the flower had been the symbol of the Rising. The bouquet was either an innocent tribute to the Dombur color, or a not-so-innocent visual message that a new Rising to rectify the excess of the old was now to begin, and it would be led by the Malerrisi. Or maybe, he suddenly thought, it was a mockery meant for Cailet, whose Name Saint’s flower it was.
His first effort yielded not a sound from beyond the door. His second—with eyes squeezed shut and tongue bitten between teeth—was no more successful. Then he remembered what Taigan had said about magic: that when she tried, it didn’t work very well, but when she just let it happen. . . .
So he just let it happen.
The big, brawny Domburs screeched. Mikel kicked open the door, smashing the lock with his bootheel, in time to see their fleeing backs. He left the Ward where it was—ugly piece of furniture, it deserved to be thrown out. He was out in the hall in a trice.
Telomir Renne, Ollia and Sirron Bekke, and Sevy Banian were there, flattened to a wall to avoid the stampede.
“Sorry we’re late,” Telo said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Mikel replied. “I was just about to start wondering where to escape to.”
“Thought so,” Ollia told him, nodding her satisfaction. “Our timing was perfect.”
“Brilliant,” he agreed. “Since you know where we’re going, can we please go there now?”
20
CAILET knew what was coming. Glenin conjured a third sphere, flinging it toward the hovering pair; all three collided in a shower of sparks and the dressing-table mirror shattered. Cailet lurched against a table, overturning it, stumbling to keep her balance. Josselin moved to hold her up, and she cast him a single mute glance of apology before righting herself and shaking free of his grip.
“I can’t Work,” he said rapidly. “I’m Warded—and it’s not my doing! But I can’t help you, Cailet, I can’t!”
She shook her head, meaning it didn’t matter, but wondered just the same where those Wards had come from. They surrounded him, let him move and touch her but allowed no magic in or out. Excellently done, the work of an expert. But she couldn’t worry about that now.
Glenin hurled another flashing black sphere. Cailet fought it off—this time more easily, without the backlash that had nearly felled her before. The mother’s magic weaker than the son’s? No—the difference was Jored’s lethal intent. Glenin’s spells were not killing spells—and Glenin’s knew it. Her eyes bled confusion and the beginnings of panic. Cailet wanted badly to laugh at her, to unbalance her further, but she was too busy repelling another assault by Jored.
Glenin turned, looking for Sarra. But Taigan was between them—intent on one thing only. It was in her blazing green eyes, the sword’s insidious spells working with her deepest desires. She would kill him if she could—and with that sword, she most definitely could.
Which Cailet could not allow. Jored’s blood on Taigan’s hands would blight her whole life. She knew it as surely as she knew that had her father not tried to protect her from Glenin twenty years ago, his Wraith would have been pent in the Dead White Forest, condemned for eternity—and Anniyas would have devoured him along with all the rest, and that extra strength might have been just enough for her to kill and kill and kill as she wished.
Auvry Feiran’s had been an act of will to do. Taigan’s must be an act of will to stop.
Cailet thought all this in a single heartbeat. Josselin suddenly stepped between her and Jored—and a Mage Globe black as a fragment of unmitigated evil slammed into Joss’s strange, inexplicable Wards.
Jored’s sphere ruptured. Magic spewed out. Cailet recoiled from its backlash, knowing that if it had hit her or even one of her own Globes she might very well be dead. Josselin moaned, falling to his knees. And that peculiar old woman collapsed on the carpet, a thousand jewel-toned shards of window glass raining down onto her silvery head.
“Jored!” Glenin cried. “I can’t kill them—any of them! It’s gone!”
Cailet stood only because she could lean both hands on Josselin’s broad shoulders where he knelt before her. His head was bent and his breath came in heavy gasps. The Wards around him were gone. Cailet, too, fought for air, for sight of Jored and Glenin and Sarra—
“He took it from me!” Glenin cried frantically. “He took all the killing out of me and used it to kill himself!”
But she saw only Taigan, like St. Delilah with Her Sword come to life. Cailet had to stop her or the shadow that was Jored would darken the rest of her life. She pushed herself away from Josselin, who staggered to his feet. Before she could conjure another Globe, he strode straight to Taigan—unWarded, unarmed—and closed both strong hands around the sword. Blood dripped down the blade from his sliced palms and fingers.
“No.” Very quietly. “Give it to me, Taigan. Let it go.”
She snarled at him, and struggled, and even though he was nearly three times her slender size he could not wrest it from her. The blade cut more deeply into his hands, and he grimaced, but he would not let go.
Yet another of Jored’s murderous Globes flew toward them. Cailet countered it, but this time could not make it explode; it was pushed back, but try as she might, she could not use her own Globe to shatter it.
And if she had, she realized suddenly, with all the force of fatal magic inside it, everyone in this room might die.
21
MIKEL ran with the others for his mother’s suite, trusting to the two Warrior Mages for safety. Ollia Bekke was ahead of him, swo
rd in one hand and throwing knife in the other, ready to cut down anyone who got in their way; Sirron Bekke followed behind, casting defensive Wards at each intersection so no one would or could come after them. The only resistance they met was in the tall, lean form of Chava Allard, standing guard outside Sarra’s chambers.
“Out of the way,” snapped Ollia.
“I’m very sorry,” he said politely, “but I’m afraid you can’t go in there right now. My Lady and her son are rather busy, and do not wish to be disturbed.”
Telomir Renne seemed in the grip of some powerful emotion. He stared at the younger man for a moment, as if looking past the bearded face and hazel eyes to something inside Allard’s very soul, then said very quietly, “You know I can get past your Wardings.”
Mikel gaped, briefly stunned out of his fury. Telomir Renne, the world’s oldest Prentice Mage, could get by a Malerrisi?
Allard blinked, then smiled and unwittingly provided Mikel with the answer. “You know, I believe you could. There’s little I’d put past a son of Gorynel Desse.”
Ollia caught her breath; so did Sevy. Sirron had no reaction at all.
“Will you stand aside?” Telomir asked.
The Malerrisi shook his head. “I sincerely regret, Domni Renne, that I must decline. Orders, you know.”
It was a silent battle, and invisible but for the strain on both faces. Mikel looked at Ollia and Sirron and Sevy, seeing that they felt what he felt: exactly nothing. The intensity of the struggle was so finely directed between these two that not a hint of magic spilled over. If Mikel hadn’t been so frantic, he might have been impressed.
Chava Allard gave a little sigh, and without warning his long body folded to the floor, unconscious. Telo sagged against Sevy Banian, squinting as if even the gentle light of the hallway lamps pained his eyes.