by Meg Cowley
Inky blackness seemed to wrap itself around her. Tendrils of his power seeped into her.
“I will not see the words of Erendriel hold sway over my destiny.”
His voice seemed to darken and deepen, crackle with a power the likes of which she could not comprehend, as though it were much greater than what he could contain within his body.
“Get her out of my sight,” he commanded. She realised that he spoke to Dimitrius. “I have more work to do persuading the Indis to join us. I will return to continue this...” She could somehow feel his gaze, even with her eyes closed, as though it pierced into the core of her soul. She cowered before it, curling away from the attention.
Then it passed and Saradon, along with his power, was gone, but Harper had nothing left to give. She faded into the welcome, cool, dark embrace of unconsciousness.
SOOTHING, WET WARMTH bathed her forehead. Gentle hands stroked the pain away, passing the soft cloth across her cheeks and back to her forehead again, moving in a slow, comforting sweep across her brow. Magic chased it, the welcome tingle calming as it banished away the angry pain in her jaw, along with the dull aches and jarring hurt elsewhere in her body.
Hands grasped hers, soft and warm. The wet cloth passed over her fingers and between them, across her palms, as whoever tended to her meticulously cleaned her. Her hand was gently placed back onto her stomach – the cover upon it, she registered a moment later, soft and warm – before the other was picked up and the same treatment administered. Light, gentle and warm, filtered through her closed eyelids. A familiar scent drifted across her, though she could not place from where.
It was too much to open her eyes. She slipped into the darkness once more.
WHEN NEXT SHE CAME to, the same hands once more bathed her forehead. She felt burning hot, the wet cloth cool upon her brow. She moaned a little, turning her face into the cloth. Now she could feel the soft, smooth, woolen coverlet beneath her hands. Her fingers circled lazily upon it, relishing the comfort. The light seemed brighter this time.
Everything still hurt, though the tingle of magic still ran through her, banishing the worst of it. She slowly cracked her eyes open, one at a time, for even the dim light felt oppressively bright after her descent into the dark.
Her lips curled into a faint smile as she slowly turned her head to behold the hands that had tended her. She froze when she saw who they belonged to.
“Hello, Harper,” said Dimitrius evenly. He sat on the bed beside her. His hands lay in his lap, the cloth in his grasp.
“You,” she croaked with as much vehemence as she could inject into her feeble tone.
“Yes, me. I have a name, you know. Call me Dimitri.” He rolled his eyes, but his voice held no bite.
Her hands clutched at the coverlet. “What are you doing? How dare you! Did you... You didn’t...”
He seemed to understand and grinned with a hint of his usual arrogance and cockiness as he leered at her. “Don’t worry. I didn’t peek. I can, though, if you like...” He winked suggestively.
She wished she had the energy to throw something, anything, but she sank back onto the pillow instead. She still hurt too much, and her limbs felt leaden.
“Go away! How dare you!” she croaked indignantly. She hoped he was telling the truth. That he had not removed her dignity as she slept.
“You’re welcome,” he drawled, a hint of a twinkle in his smile. The smile she hated. The one that presumed he could have whatever he wanted.
“I don’t need your help. Begone, vile dragon turd!”
“Oh, good. You’re picking up the native language,” he said, looking at her lazily from under his lashes. His smile widened as he crossed his legs and leaned toward her. “Go on. Try out some more Pelenori insults on me.”
He had lain the cloth on the coverlet. Harper seemed sapped of strength and all will, but she scraped together what she had to pick up the cloth and throw it into his face. It slapped wetly against his cheek and plopped into his lap, wetting the fine anthracite fabric.
He blinked in surprise before recovering his customary swagger. “Feisty. I like it.”
Harper swore at him again. “Get out! And don’t come here again.”
Dimitri pushed himself up from the bed and sauntered out, laughing. “We’ll see.”
Harper glared after him, noting the quiet click of the door as it shut and the snap of a lock. She was determined to stay awake, to make sure he did not return, but exhaustion assailed her again, and the blackness called to her. It was as though some of Saradon’s magic lingered, pulling her down into the darkness, filling her limbs and mind with heavy sluggishness.
THE NEXT TIME SHE AWOKE, he sat beside her again, holding the cloth and a warm, fragranced bowl of water. Harper considered tipping the water over, but was too tired to berate him. Questions assailed her instead.
“What happened?”
“You’ve been drifting in and out of consciousness for a day or so now.” Dimitri’s swagger faded, and his smile seemed tired.
His familiar scent of him – sharp, sweet – teased her. It was you caring for me all this time? she realised. Why?
“You haven’t been lucid much, mind. Incoherent mumbles at best.”
“Where am I?”
“In Saradon’s own quarters.” His voice was quiet. Dimitri looked around the room, as though he feared others listened.
Harper took a moment to examine it. Much like their quarters at the königshalle in Keldheim, it was practical but comfortable.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“I promised I would see us both through this. I don’t know how, I wish I did, but the least I can do is ensure you are not wholly at his mercy.” Dimitri twisted the cloth in his hands in agitation.
“Thank you,” she said softly, looking away. “Where is...he?” She did not want to say Saradon’s name.
“Away.” Dimitri’s tone was hard. “He seeks alliances wherever he can find them. At present, he’s with the Indis peoples.”
“The warrior nomad women?” Erika’s people?!
“Yes.” Dimitri looked at her sharply with a frown, then nodded. “Of course. The elf’s companion. You would know. There are few enough of them left, but they are a fearsome peoples. He hopes to leverage their anger about half a millennia of persecution in his name against those who hunt them.”
“Erika would never fight with him.” Harper was utterly certain.
“Then let us hope the remainder of her kin feel likewise, but I fear it will do little good. He will enslave them regardless.” Dimitri’s shoulders slumped. “This is madness. I see the chaos approaching, yet I feel powerless to do anything. This great storm shall devour us all.”
His voice was devoid of hope, of strength, in a way she had not heard before. “You stay because you have nowhere else to go, yet you feel bound to try, don’t you?”
He nodded, but did not speak.
Erendriel’s pale form hovered in Harper’s mind.
“Perhaps I can give you a reason to hope.” She reached out to grasp his hand, laced her fingers through his, and pushed Erendriel’s vision to him.
His face slackened and he grasped Harper’s hand until his knuckles whitened. Only when the vision faded did his grip ease.
“What was that?” he breathed.
“Perhaps our only hope. I can’t decide whether it’s madness.”
Dimitri laughed breathlessly. “All has turned to madness, Harper.” He looked at her with an uncharacteristic lightness and ferocity in his gaze. “If that vision be true, higher powers than us are at work.
“Valxiron and Erendriel... Legends indeed. It makes sense now. How the half-elf with no magic now has power beyond measure...and darkness within. It is so much worse than I could ever have feared, yet if Erendriel herself speaks, acts, through you...if you are the light against the dark...I have more hope than yet I have found that perhaps the prophecy holds true. Perhaps there is a way to somehow unmake all of this by the m
agic of the Dragonhearts.”
“I don’t know how to make it come to pass, though,” she admitted, shivering at the recollection of the dark place within the vision that was scorched and dead.
“I would trust to Erendriel’s words. ‘If thou standest true and with faith unwavering, thou shalt triumph over Valxiron’s servant.’ Let that be your guide, whatever is to come.”
“What do you think she meant when she said ‘beware the Tainted Star, and heed the Shadow’?”
Dimitri just shook his head, looking at the stone walls all around them. “You must hope that becomes clearer, too,” he said, to her disappointment.
“Can we not leave whilst he is gone?” she asked, struck by sudden inspiration. She struggled to sit up, propping herself up on shaking arms, but Dimitri tsked and pressed her, gently but firmly, down onto the mattress once more.
“It is not so simple. We are bound now. I gave my word to him, and you cannot defy his will. My blood and magic are his to command. We could probably walk through the very gates, but if he commanded it, I would have no choice but to return with you, no matter how much we tried to resist.” He scowled. “For now, we must remain wherever he commands us.”
Harper closed her eyes in frustration. “There must be a way.”
“There may be,” Dimitri acknowledged, but his reply was half-hearted. She knew if there were a way, a loophole, he would have already tried his very best to find it.
“It may present itself in time.”
“Do not lose hope, Harper.” He rested his palm atop her hand with surprising softness before standing and turning away, though he did not leave.
“Rest now. Soon, he will return and you will be summoned. You have said you will not obey him, yet I do not think you will have any choice in what happens next. I will protect you when I can, but neither of us can defy him.”
The ever-present trepidation squirmed around her stomach at his words, but she was too sapped of energy to pay much heed to it. The strange darkness of Saradon’s magic still drained her, coiling in and around every limb, filling her mind with fog.
As Dimitri left her, she wondered what would pass when she was next brought before Saradon, but quickly pushed the thought from her mind. The fear of it was as bad as the event itself. It would not do to dwell on it. Instead, she gave in to the haze and drifted off once more.
THE MOMENT THE DOOR shut, Dimitri leaned heavily on it.
Valxiron.
It was true. His worst fear, the one he had not yet dared to acknowledge.
Dimitri’s eyes slipped shut for a moment.
Saradon was Valxiron’s own disciple, servant, mouth even. He studied with the Order of Valxiron then to learn how to travel so...just as I did.
Yet it seemed that Saradon had subscribed to the ideology of their long-forgotten master, not sought to escape it, as Dimitri had when he had at last realised the destructiveness of what he supported. The cruelty of the masters. Their joyful vindictiveness. The malice that sought to rise unchecked once more.
Yet, in the end, he had still let it free, albeit unwittingly. Once more, he berated himself. What have you done?
It was too late to turn back. Pelenor had fallen. Saradon had risen – and with him, Valxiron, the darkest power in all the lands.
I have to stop him.
Forty-Seven
Harper did not know how she awoke in the jarlshalle, but as she blinked through the haziness, the hall was unmistakable. The cool air rose goose pimples across her skin. It took her a moment to realise she sat in a chair, no longer wearing her shirt and breeches.
An armless dress draped across her shoulders, falling down her seated form to the floor, where the fine, thin fabric pooled around her slippered feet. Her hair had been pulled back and fell down her back in waves, and her silver charm perched on her wrist, but now it sat upon a fine silver bangle, her old, tatty, leather thong nowhere to be seen.
Shivers crawled down her spine. Her eyes flicked to the dark form standing just to the side of her – and below her, she realised, for she was upon the dais.
Dimitri... Did he do this?
Horrified, she looked at him, but he gazed ahead impassively. She hoped he had not been the one to change her. A blush of embarrassment and fury, mingled with the thought of being touched by a stranger, rose on her cheeks.
She felt woozy and dazed, as though she had drunk herself into a stupor – the likes of which she had not done since her time with Alric in the woods. There was a reason she no longer drank without restraint. Had she been addled? Saradon’s poisonous magic still seemed to cling to her, as if it slowed the very life through her veins. Yet when he spoke, his deep voice rang clear.
“I bid thee welcome, daughter, on this most auspicious day.” He sounded malevolently gleeful, adding to the chills wrapping around her. “Eat! We have much to be thankful for.”
She glanced to one side of her chair and noticed the small table piled high with fine foods the likes of which did not belong in spoiled halls overrun by goblins, but she did not have the mental capacity to wonder at it for more than a moment.
Could it be poisoned? Her stomach grumbled, tight and empty, and she fell upon the offerings without a further worry of any taint upon the food.
“Good, good,” Saradon said approvingly as he settled on the throne to her other side and picked at his own private pile of food. Dimitri stood still, like a sculpture.
“How goes Pelenor, Lord Ellarian?”
Dimitri stirred. “Events progress apace, Lord Ravakian. I have not attended court in some days, to make sure things here are...managed. The court continues to crumble. The king is primed to withdraw, and the general of the Winged Kingsguard to assume temporary regency to maintain order. The curse spreads through the court as planned. My allies are poised and waiting, though scared, to shore up control of the court.”
Harper did not have enough wit to truly take in his words and the level of deception and scheming Dimitri was involved in – and the master of.
“Excellent. I thank you for the food, by the way, Lord Ellarian. Much nicer fare than the carrion amongst these halls.”
Dimitri bowed and murmured his welcome.
“Now, daughter, this day is for you. I want to use all my time to become familiar with you.” Saradon smiled, and Harper’s heart sank. She dropped her gaze, not wanting to meet his piercing violet eyes.
Must...escape..., she thought woozily. Don’t say anything...
“Tell me of your life, daughter.” His voice was silky smooth, inviting. The magic in her blood, his magic, coaxed her.
Tell him. Oh, wouldn’t it be so nice to tell him?
She shook her head. “N-No,” she stuttered, forcing her will to shove against his. “You already saw it.” Why did he need to hear it from her?
“But, daughter, I wish to hear tales from your own lips, hear your voice. You have the sound of my own dear mother, may she rest in peace. In you, I hear the timbre of her voice. I miss it so.”
An aching sadness filled her at his loss and grief, eliciting sympathy and a desire to comfort him.
He’s controlling you, she told herself doggedly. Don’t give in.
“You must give him something,” Dimitri said into her mind. “Else he will shatter your mind and take what he will. Then you will be good to nobody and nothing.”
A lazy, slow apprehension reared at his words. “I don’t know what you want,” she said dully, her tongue feeling large and clumsy, sticking in her mouth, as though she truly were a drunkard.
A warm rush of magic stroked over her – a gift from Dimitri. It banished some of the fuzziness within her mind and her limbs seemed to lighten. She sat up straighter. “I am a nobody. My life has been boring. Meaningless.” And it’s none of your damn business.
“And yet you are hardly meaningless, are you, daughter? The bearer of Erendriel’s own edict.” He spoke with honey in his voice, but she could not miss the spark of venom at Erendriel’s name.
/> “I don’t claim to bear anything,” she said guardedly.
“I saw the vision. Erendriel, for all her faults, does not lie.” He seemed to watch her out of the corner of his eye.
What did he want her to say? Does he want me to admit that I am some prophetic chosen one? I don’t even know what her words meant.
“Then you know more than I.” Harper lifted her chin. “I’ve been nothing but a pauper, scrounging from the land. I’ve spent more years starving than I have full, and never more than a couple of coppers away from destitution. There’s nothing gifted in that.”
“Those who made it so will pay for the crime, do not worry, daughter. I will see them suffer several times over that you did not have the life you were entitled to as my heir.” Saradon’s voice was dark once more, and his displeasure crackled through the halls.
Harper’s skin crawled. She knew who had killed her mother. She knew who he would make suffer. Raedon. Will he punish Aedon for Raedon’s crimes? She pushed the thought from her mind as quickly as it arrived, though she was certain Saradon already knew. She sent a desperate plea to the heavens that Aedon would not be punished in Raedon’s place.
The doors swung open and a band of writhing goblins dragged in two bedraggled figures. Saradon clapped his hands together, the sound booming around the hall. “Ah! Excellent. Our entertainment arrives.”
Harper’s shoulders sagged with relief that his attention had diverted from her, then suddenly straightened again when she noticed who their “entertainment” was.
“No!” she cried out involuntarily, jumping up.
Forty-Eight
Saradon frowned and motioned for the goblins to bring Brand and Erika forward, even as he froze Harper. “Sit!”
Brand and Erika whipped around at her exclamation and his command. Their eyes widened when they saw Harper sitting next to Saradon. She knew they would be wondering at her presence – and her place beside their captor.