Mother of All

by Jenna Glass

  She was close enough to him now that if he made a sudden move in the wrong direction, he might well bump into her. It took every ounce of her will and self-control to reach out toward the spell in his ring.

  Please hold still, she mentally begged him, for his hands were moving restlessly as he continued trying to convince Delnamal not to kill him. If he kept moving like that, the chances of her plucking the Rho out of the spell to deactivate it without his feeling her touch were distressingly slim.

  “Is it my imagination?” Delnamal asked, “or do you have fewer doubles right now than you did a moment ago? I think your spell might be starting to wear off.”

  Kailee shuddered. It was possible Delnamal was just saying that to torment his frightened victim, but she dared not take that chance. How much did it really matter if she revealed her presence? Even with his considerable power, it would take a moment for Delnamal to trigger the spell that had knocked down Alys’s Trapper spell so that he could see her and kill her. And whether Draios felt her touch or not, it was best she make her strike the moment his shield was deactivated. She had thought about this far too long already.

  Swallowing a sob, she reached for the motes of Rho that fueled Draios’s shield spell.

  She expected to be plucking the motes out of a ring, but it turned out they were contained not by a ring but by a gauntlet that was otherwise invisible to her Mindseye. Her fingertips clanged against the metal, causing Draios to bleat and swat at her blindly.

  He hit her arm, but not before she had closed her fingers over the motes of Rho. She lost hold of them when he made contact, but his shield spell was already deactivated.

  “What’s the matter?” Delnamal asked, the question so absurd that Kailee almost betrayed herself again with a burst of hysterical laughter.

  Draios was batting at the air around him as if under attack from a swarm of insects, but Kailee had dodged out of his reach.

  Giving herself no time to think, Kailee gripped the heavy sword with both hands, aiming its edge toward Draios’s neck, where there should be little to no armor. It took every last scrap of her will to swing that sword, and she knew she had to put all her strength into it. There was some kind of spell still active in the sword, but she didn’t know its exact purpose, didn’t know if it would lend her the strength she needed to end Draios’s life with one swift blow.

  A heartbeat later, she learned the spell’s nature, for the sword’s impact against Draios’s neck barely registered in her arms. Having expected a great deal of resistance, Kailee lost both her balance and her grip on the sword when it sliced cleanly and easily through Draios’s neck.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The healing spell was far from finished with its work, but Alys had regained enough strength to roll over onto her side and reach for the crossbow bolt that lay tantalizingly out of reach. The effort left her panting with pain and exhaustion, and she feared herself on the edge of losing consciousness once more.

  Holding still and breathing deeply, thankful that neither Delnamal nor Draios had noticed her movement, she continued to watch and wait. As disconcerting as it was to see a score of identical men dodging and weaving and stepping around one another in a dizzying, confusing dance, Alys willed the spell to stay active just a little longer. She had to regain more of her strength before she had any chance of stopping Delnamal.

  A strange metallic clang echoed through the cavern, followed by a high-pitched yelp of alarm. The sound had risen from the throat of each of the images of Draios that filled the chamber, but she saw one of them suddenly batting wildly at the air around him.

  “What’s the matter?” Delnamal asked, his voice losing the edge of smugness he’d been carrying since he’d entered the Well chamber.

  Alys stared at the image of Draios that was still swinging his arms about wildly, realizing—as surely Delnamal must—that it was the true one. She wanted to yell at the idiot to stop making such an obvious spectacle of himself. She didn’t know what was wrong with him, but she did know she was rapidly running out of time.

  Heedless of the danger, she pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, crawling toward the crossbow bolt that she hoped would allow her to perform her sacrifice, all the while keeping a wary eye on both Delnamal and Draios.

  Her fingers had just brushed the bolt when suddenly Draios’s head bent sideways at an impossible angle. Blood fountained from his neck, and all his doubles instantly vanished. Alys watched, unable to comprehend at first exactly what she was seeing, as Draios collapsed to the cavern floor.

  It was only when his head rolled free of his body that she realized that somehow—impossibly—he had just been killed.

  Delnamal roared, the sound so full of unearthly fury that Alys could not help but cringe, even as her eyes remained glued to the boy-king’s head. She remained frozen in place, the cavern all but disappearing as her mind flashed back to the terrible, soul-destroying sight of her daughter’s head rolling in the dust at her feet. Her chest seized as though her ribs were caving in, her lungs suddenly so tight she could not draw breath. A small, rational part of her screamed that she didn’t have time for this, that she should be using this moment of shock and disbelief to grab hold of the bolt and slash her wrists with it. But the horror, the terror, the pain of that memory refused to be shoved back down so easily.

  “Who dares?” she heard Delnamal howl, and it was followed by a woman’s soft sound of distress.

  Alys blinked fiercely to clear her vision and was shocked to see Kailee, standing right beside Draios’s body with a bloody sword clasped in her hands.

  The poor girl was pale and shaking, covered in blood, her mouth hanging open as she stood there as if paralyzed. Delnamal began striding toward her, and Kailee didn’t even look up or make any sign that she was preparing to defend herself.

  “Kailee!” Alys shouted, no longer caring that she would draw Delnamal’s attention, wanting only for her sister-in-law to be safe, or at least to run away from the approaching danger. But Kailee stood immobile, shaking her head.

  Delnamal reached out a hand as he walked, and Kailee gasped, the sword falling from her hands and her head dropping backward. Her mouth opened in a silent scream.

  Alys didn’t know exactly what Delnamal was doing to her, but after all the stories she’d heard about his powers, she had the frightening suspicion that Kailee was about to die.

  She shouted Delnamal’s name, hoping to distract him, to delay him just a little, but he ignored her as if she didn’t exist. She grasped the bolt, tearing her eyes away from Kailee just long enough to determine that the damn thing was not sharp enough for her purposes. By the time Alys had access to her sacrificial Kai and triggered the spell, Kailee would be dead.

  Acting on a combination of instinct and desperation, Alys reached for the ring that held her purgative spell. She didn’t have access to the sacrificial Kai that she believed was the only way to trigger the spell; however, there was that whole aura of masculine Kai motes hovering around Delnamal. Conventional wisdom held that no one could use a man’s Kai but himself, but then none of the Kai that surrounded Delnamal came from him.

  Kailee’s knees gave out, her body going limp, although her eyes were still open and Alys could still hear her rasping, desperate gasps. There was no time to think, no time to plan, no time to doubt.

  Using every scrap of strength she could muster from her barely healed body, Alys threw the ring at Delnamal, willing the Kai in his aura to activate the spell.

  There was absolutely no precedent to suggest that such a thing could work, and the instant the ring left Alys’s hand she was already cursing herself for her knee-jerk decision. She cared for—maybe even loved—her sister-in-law, but no one person’s life was important enough to risk letting Delnamal win. The responsible thing for Alys to do was to let Kailee fend for herself while she performed her sacrifice and waited for her
own sacrificial Kai to appear. It was what Leethan’s dream had led her to expect had to happen for Delnamal to be defeated, and though she had admitted it to no one but herself, she had been more than prepared to leave the troubles and worries and pains of life behind.

  The ring sailed through the air—Alys could see it even with her Mindseye open because of the wealth of elements it contained. She watched with regret and hopelessness and terror as it hit the aura of Kai that surrounded her half-brother, and she saw his frantic attempt to throw himself out of the way—just a little too late.

  To her shock, when the ring sailed through Delnamal’s aura, the motes of Kai it passed through were sucked into it. And then, Delnamal screamed.

  * * *

  —

  When Draios’s head mysteriously separated from his body, Delnamal felt a fury so bright and pure it seemed to fill all the hollow places in his soul. He had planned every aspect of this day with careful precision, and had been anticipating with great pleasure the moment he delivered a dying Draios to the Well. It would have been such an unequivocal victory, and he had experienced far too few of those during his life.

  Reeling from the intensity of his rage, Delnamal grabbed the mote of Rhokai from the chest of the young woman who had appeared out of nowhere when he’d dispelled her Trapper spell. He didn’t know—and didn’t care—who she was, but clearly she deserved to die for robbing him as she had.

  For the briefest of moments, the rage—the raw intensity of it—felt surprisingly good, but acknowledging that pleasure opened the door a crack, letting out all the other emotions that plagued him during his sleep and when he first awoke in the mornings. It all flooded back, and the horror of what he’d almost done staggered him.

  On the heels of that flood of anguish came the realization that the plan was not foiled, merely postponed. Surely there would be other men sent to this chamber to stop him, and one of them would function for the purpose just as well as Draios. Even the young woman would likely meet his needs, for he knew a mote of Kai would be released if he broke her Rhokai as he’d planned to break Draios’s. There was no reason to believe that her Kai would behave any differently than a man’s, and even if it did, someone else would surely come along eventually.

  Delnamal seized onto the emotions that had escaped their cage, clinging to them no matter how much they hurt, desperate to remain himself long enough to eliminate the threat posed by the malevolence that had taken possession of his body. He had to end this, immediately. He closed his Mindseye, letting go of the mote of Rhokai he’d grabbed and groping for the dagger that was belted at his waist, the dagger he’d intended to use to kill Draios.

  But just as his fingers closed around the hilt, the flood of emotions—the real Delnamal, who despite everything felt the desperate need to protect Aaltah—ebbed. He managed to draw the blade halfway out, but then he laughed and shook his head at his own weakness. It had been careless of him to allow the craven weakling that resided in his core a glimpse of sunlight, and he shored up his emotional armor to make sure it didn’t happen again.

  The young woman had not moved when he’d released her, though strangely, her Mindseye was open, and had been from the moment she’d first lost her Trapper spell. Delnamal wondered what she was trying to do, and why there were tear tracks in the blood that spattered her face. But none of that mattered. He opened his Mindseye once more and took hold of her Rhokai to keep her from fleeing.

  Even with his Mindseye open, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Still holding on to the Rhokai mote to keep his victim from escaping, he turned his head toward the movement. He had thought sure Draios’s bolt had killed Alysoon, but the bright moving aura of Rho could belong to no one but her.

  Once upon a time, his hatred of his half-sister would have sent him into a fit of rage, and he would have dropped everything to finish her off. But now, he mused instead that she could be useful to him if she survived. Her knowledge of women’s magic—especially of the magic of Women’s Well—might prove invaluable to him as he tried to re-create whatever it was Mairahsol had done that had allowed him to absorb the Rhokai from Aaltah’s Well.

  For the time being, he dismissed her from his mind. He was overflowing with strength and free Kai motes from his trip up the cliffs, and she could stab or shoot him a hundred times over and not do him any lasting harm. He would deal with her when he was finished with the little murderess who had tried to thwart his plans. His hand reached for his dagger once more, and he took a step toward his helpless captive.

  The Rho-shrouded form on the floor pulled back an arm and flung something in his direction. Something that based on the dense concentration of elements that clung to it was a magic item. Still, he was not alarmed. If a physical weapon couldn’t kill him, then he believed a spell couldn’t, either.

  But as the object neared him, it had to pass through the aura of Kai motes that surrounded him, and something…unexpected happened.

  Ordinarily, spells were created in an incomplete form and were activated when the caster added the missing elements to complete the spell. But the casting of a spell required an act of will, the purposeful addition of the missing elements—or else spells would be going off all the time when they happened to encounter the missing elements in the air.

  And yet when the mysterious magic item passed through Delnamal’s aura, several of the Kai motes that were in its path seemed to be drawn into it.

  By the time it happened, it was far too late for Delnamal to get out of the way, but that didn’t stop him from trying. He let go of the Rhokai mote and threw himself blindly to the side. He didn’t feel any impact from whatever Alysoon had thrown, and as he fell, he had the momentary hope that he had somehow succeeded in dodging the magic.

  He hit the cavern floor hard, knocking the wind out of himself and sliding along the smooth stone. He slapped his hands down, trying to slow the slide, but something punched him in the chest so hard he could not suppress a scream.

  His body bowed in agony, the pain sharper and more overwhelming than anything he had ever experienced. It felt as if a giant had thrust his hand into Delnamal’s chest and was even now pulling out his beating heart.

  His Mindseye still open, Delnamal saw a tremendous cloud of Rhokai motes fountaining up out of his chest. The black, faceted spheres were tightly packed together, dense and dark as the night sky, though there was an occasional flash of color from somewhere deep within. The cloud gathered above him, its edges bulging and undulating as if there were some living creature in its center, struggling to fight its way free. Then the cloud hurtled toward the Well and plunged downward.

  The pain let up suddenly at the same time a flood of emotions—terror, horror, grief, pain—whited out his rational mind. His body jerked as he tried to curl up in a tight protective ball. He was not rational enough to realize that he was teetering on the lip of the Well.

  The movement sent him tumbling over the edge.

  A stubborn desire to live fought its way past every other emotion, and his hands scrabbled wildly at the edge as he tried to catch himself. But it seemed all the strength of his body had left him with that cloud of Rhokai, and his ruined fingers could not find a grip.

  The moment he fell seemed to last a lifetime, and his thoughts and emotions solidified into one.

  For the first time in months, his mind was his own and likely to stay that way for more than a handful of seconds. His Mindseye was still open, and he could clearly see that although he had lost the Rhokai that had fueled his unnatural life, the fragments of stolen Kai remained in his aura.

  Moments ago, Delnamal had been calmly and coldly planning the destruction of this Well. His entire purpose in coming here had been to poison it with a single mote of Kai. And now that he no longer wanted any such thing—now that he was desperate to save the Well and the kingdom that he’d been charged to protect when he’d accepted the crown—
it was he himself who would destroy it.

  Delnamal flailed with his weakened limbs as he fell, trying in vain to find something to grab onto. One arm bumped against the side of the Well, and he dug his fingers into the rock, his nails breaking and tearing down to the quick.

  And then he hit something else with his back. He had peered down into the Well many times over the course of his life, and was aware that there were several narrow ledges and small outcroppings that peppered the otherwise smooth sides.

  Using every ounce of his remaining strength, he grabbed the ledge he was even now in the process of tipping off of. Thanks to the damage he’d taken long ago, he could not voluntarily bend most of his fingers, but several of them were permanently frozen in a hooklike position and caught on a crack. His lower half went over the edge, but he had just enough of a grip to hold himself while he swung one leg up. He halted there for a moment, panting with exertion and fear, then somehow found another tiny scrap of strength—just enough to get most of his weight supported on the narrow ledge.

  His Mindseye now closed, Delnamal could see that his perch was precarious, to say the least, and it was abundantly clear that he could not hold himself up indefinitely. Maybe if he were able-bodied, he’d be able to reach the lip of the Well and pull himself up if he got his feet under him. But he wasn’t able-bodied, not by a long shot. Much of his strength had left him in that cloud of Rhokai, and he knew that death would soon come for him. There was so little flesh on his bones that he was mildly surprised he hadn’t perished the moment the Rhokai had left him.

  Guilt and horror threatened to rise up and strangle him, but he had become good at pushing through them. He could not lock them away as he had when the Rhokai had fueled him, could not completely ignore them, but he could think through them.