by Frank Morin
"She's got my family," Connor admitted. "She'll enslave my entire village if I don't do what she wants."
"She's bluffing," Ivor said after a moment's pause, but his enthusiasm had faded. "She can't risk losing you."
"Want to bet the lives of my family on that?"
"You were willing to bet their lives last night," Ivor pointed out.
Connor paused to think about that. What if he did reveal his curse? That could generate more than enough confusion and strife between the high lord families as they fought over him to orchestrate turning unclaimed. He'd need to act before any of them formally offered patronage, or no one would believe it, but if he timed it right, he could still escape and everyone would accept it.
He still wasn't sure how to free Ilse and her team, but once he freed himself, he could sneak back into the Carraig and break them out. Or even return as a rampager and scatter their guards, releasing the Grandurians as a tragic accident.
He liked the idea of that.
"You're right," he said to Ivor. "I think it's time to flip the whole geall on Shona and turn the Tir-raon on its head."
"How?"
"Do you trust me?"
Ivor hesitated, and Connor wondered how he'd have answered that. Did their friendship trump their duties and responsibilities as Guardians and champions?
After a few long seconds that seemed to take an hour, Ivor finally laughed. "I'm as insane as you!"
"Good," Connor grinned, feeling immensely relieved. "We're going to need a bit of insanity to pull this off. I can't tell you exactly what I have in mind, but I will."
He swore that he'd find the right time to share the truth about unclaimed with Ivor. His friend deserved to know the truth.
"I'll hold you to that," Ivor said. "And in return, I'll make a scene during the assembly and we'll show the world who you really are."
"I appreciate your help," Connor said, and he meant it. "We're going to have some fun with this."
"To freedom," Ivor grinned.
"Geall on."
Chapter 64
As students poured into the huge assembly hall and formed ranks in their assigned armies, Connor climbed the stairs to the dais. Dressed in his mask and battle leathers, he scanned the long rows of people.
Lord Nevan stood near the low rail watching the growing crowds. Shona stood beside him, and instead of battle leathers she wore a blue and silver gown cut to accentuate her full figure. She looked regal, every inch a high lady and heir to a major house. Shona was not attending as a student but as a leader.
Shona gave him a dazzling smile and nodded to the back of the platform where a portable curtain walled off a small section. He stepped around it, and his heart sank.
Ilse and her company sat chained in a row and looking exhausted. They glared at Connor, and he frowned back. With the Fast Rollers keeping a close eye, he couldn't speak with them, couldn't try slipping any power stones to them. Shona had moved more boldly than he'd expected. It was like he was trying to braid rope while Shona was setting the strands on fire before handing them to him.
Shona beckoned and he joined her, grateful the mask helped conceal his expression. "I didn't expect to see them."
"We couldn't waste this opportunity," she said with controlled excitement. "With this victory, we can break out."
Interesting turn of phrase since he was planning to break out of her break-out.
Ivor gave Connor a nod of encouragement when he arrived with Padraigin and Redmund in tow. The other high lord representatives peeked behind the curtain as they arrived, then peppered Shona and Lord Nevan with questions. They promised that everything would become clear very soon.
"I don't like your games," Lord Kane muttered.
Shona gave him a happy smile. "That's because our games have advanced beyond chasing cats with sticks."
No, she wanted to chase entire nations, using Connor as the stick.
As soon as the other champions took their places on the platform, Lord Dail beckoned the hall to silence. "You are all gathered today to celebrate a great victory." He turned. "Lord Nevan will explain."
Connor wondered how much they had paid to get him to relinquish the podium so quickly.
Lord Nevan's Pathfinder not only magnified his voice, but somehow made it sound richer as it echoed across the vast chamber. "Our mock battles are designed to prepare you for the harsh realities of war," he declared. "In the very near future, many of you will depart for the front lines to lead the fight against Grandurian oppression."
That generated a wave of cheering.
"But war is not some future event in distant lands. The threat is at our doors! In fact, last night an attempted assassination of the Lady Shona was thwarted within the castle compound."
He ceded the speaking position to Shona, and everyone hung on her words. Shona took her time, clearly enjoying the attention.
"My friends, as Lord Nevan stated, our community was indeed invaded last night. And by a specially trained strike force of Grandurian assassins!"
While the crowd gasped or shouted angrily, Shona beckoned. Rory and his men prodded Ilse's company to their feet and to the front of the dais. They looked battered, but defiant.
"Kill them!" Students and teachers alike shouted, fists raised, expressions darkened with hatred, screaming for the blood of the hated Grandurians.
Connor was dumbfounded to see his own army, led by his captains, as enraged as anyone else. Little Declan looked ready to climb on the platform and challenge Ilse to single combat, and Fearghas kept clutching his shoulder, as if reaching for the sword that wasn't there. Their hatred was a living, ugly thing, shocking in its intensity.
Then he realized they had been conditioned since birth to fear and hate the Grandurians even more than common linn would. Those students would lead armies against Granadure, so they had been taught to react instantly and without remorse.
He suddenly felt far more afraid for Ilse and her team.
For her part, Ilse didn't seem to share his concern. She surveyed the angry crowd with her usual unflagging calm. Anika and Erich snarled at the students and looked ready to give battle to every taker.
Shona held up her hands for calm. "These assassins were captured just outside Lord Nevan's palace. Some of you may have seen the destruction they caused before being defeated by Captain Rory and our very own General Insanity!"
The crowd erupted into loud cheering and Shona drew Connor to her to wave. She wrapped one arm around his waist, thus reinforcing her claim on him before the entire school. Claiming the Grandurians had come as assassins was a brilliant lie since everyone would assume it, thus offer no awkward questions.
Shona continued, "With this great victory, new responsibilities will unfortunately tear me away from my duties here at the school. The general and I must leave at once to deliver the prisoners to my father for interrogation."
So that was her ultimate goal. Shona hoped to escape the school before the completion of the Tir-raon. She could avoid the irksome negotiations and leave with him in tow.
"I protest," Lord Kane shouted above the din, leading a chorus of similar exclamations from the other high lord representatives. "You are bound by the conditions of the Tir-raon and cannot leave."
"Matters of state trump those concerns," Shona started to argue, but he shouted right over her.
"We have the right to participate in the interrogation," Lady Una cried. "What if there are more assassins?"
Shona tried to reassure them, but she'd lost control of the conversation.
"What are you trying to hide from us?" Lord Kane finally bellowed.
Ivor's voice drowned out the others. "I can answer that." He moved to the front of the platform and raised his voice high. "Lady Shona is keeping secrets." He made an extravagant bow to her, and Connor loved the look of trepidation on her face.
Ivor pointed at Connor. "General Insanity is not who he claims to be."
"You've been smoking pedra dung again," Shona said
dismissively, but her voice carried an edge of fear.
"I want to know why you're trying to conceal the nation's greatest hope, hiding him in plain sight under a mask. You can't hide any longer!"
Time to flip the geall on them all.
With growing eagerness, Connor reached up and removed his leather mask. "Today I share my real name with all of you! I am Connor!"
The high lord representatives looked at each other with confusion. None of them knew him. Lord Dail looked worried, and Lord Nevan flabbergasted.
Lord Kane looked disgusted. "All that pretense with the mask for this?"
Clamors of surprise rippled across the hall as students and professors recognized him.
Connor waved. "You should see your faces."
Shona grabbed Connor's shoulder. "What are you doing?"
He shrugged. "Ivor knows. Better to take the pedra by the jaws than let him control the news."
Many students looked like they couldn't decide whether to be angry, or to laugh at the joke. His army looked stunned, but Aifric raised her fist high and shouted, "Hurray for General Connor!"
That tipped the scales in his favor. Lorcc took up the cry, followed by Declan. Fearghas looked like he wanted to skin a raging torc, but raised his fist in salute. Princess Catriona looked like she'd been kicked in the face by a mule. Then she suddenly grinned and waved so hard, she almost knocked over the girl standing beside her.
Ivor shouted over the din of a new argument between the high lord representatives. "Know this! Connor is not Dawnus."
That got everyone's attention.
"We've seen his powers," Lord Kane argued.
Ivor shook his head. "Not all of them."
Shona took a threatening step toward Ivor, quivering with rage and hissed, "Shut your cursed mouth, linn, or I will see your patronage canceled."
Her towering rage was impressive, but Ivor laughed it off. He held the upper hand, and he knew it.
Ivor shouted to the attentive crowd. "Shona orders me to conceal the truth from all of you, the truth that could win the war and save thousands of lives. What say you?"
Students shifted their anger to Shona, screaming at her. Catriona shouted above the rest, "Ivor is a general. You're nothing, Shona! Tell us, Ivor!"
Students took up the chant of "Tell us Ivor!"
He grinned at Shona. "Still think you can keep the secret?"
"You will pay," she promised him.
"You first."
He raised his hands high and the crowd fell to into an expectant hush, allowing him to speak in a conversational tone. He pointed at Connor. "I'm thrilled to introduce you to the heir of Obrion's greatest glory. Welcome Connor, Blood of the Tallan!"
Shocked silence dropped over the crowd. Shona shed her ineffectual anger and, grinning with pride, took Connor's hand and declared triumphantly. "For once Ivor is correct. Connor is Blood of the Tallan!"
She could shift plans faster than Jean's grandmother could shove a tonic down a person's throat.
"Can it be possible?" Lady Una asked, her voice cracking.
Connor took a step forward and most of the assembled high nobles shuffled back. That was so much fun, he took another step and most of them retreated again.
Lord Kane did not. With fists on hips he glared from Shona to Connor. "Your theatrics are impressive, but we'll need more proof than your word to believe such a ridiculous claim."
Shona shrugged. "Show them, Connor."
Chapter 65
If Connor was going to stand unmasked before the world, he would show them what it meant to be Blood of the Tallan. He had already downed soapstone before leaving his Kilian apartments and slate wafers rested in both boots. So he popped a piece of marble into his mouth and wedged it under his tongue, then slipped a piece of quartzite into his cheek.
Padraigin drew closer, her expression filled with wonder. "Can you really use both of those?"
"Anyone can pop a few stones in their mouth," Lord Kane said.
Connor ignored him and tapped slate. For a moment he worried he was too far removed from the earth, standing as he was on that raised wooden platform in the huge assembly hall with Tallan only knew how many levels of building between them and the earth. With what he knew of the warren of the undercity, it was challenging to find a solid connection to earth anywhere in the inner city.
He actually felt a vague, distant sense that something might be out there, like peering through a heavy fog while standing on Lookout Rock above Alasdair. There had to be a way. He could not imagine generations of lords standing on that stage, cut off from their most powerful battle stone.
Pulsing out his earth senses in every direction, he felt Redmund and Padraigin, like torches shining bright in a moonless night. At the gentle touch of his will on hers, Padraigin started, eyes wide with wonder. Redmund just scowled, looking like he took that touch as a personal insult.
Then Connor found the secret he'd hoped for. Slender strips of granite ran between the wooden planks of the platform. They were colored the same as the wood and were so well blended he hadn't noticed them before.
Gregor the Sentry had explained that one could not walk their earth senses through stone unless it was an igneous power stone and the Sentry possessed that affinity and was tapping it. Connor had absorbed a little granite prior to leaving his suite, so he tapped it, just a little, relishing that familiar itch of his lifelong curse.
Immediately, his earth senses slid across the platform along the inlaid granite, then connected to concealed pillars of granite that plunged through the floor and the basements below, all the way down to the earth.
The granite was old. It triggered the faint but sharp taste of very aged cheese. The ground far below felt tired, as if exhausted by generations of half-trained Petralists walking through it. Even so, the indomitable strength of the earth flowed up through the connection, reviving him and enlivening his mind.
"Well?" Lord Kane asked, even though only a few seconds had passed.
Connor gave him a confident smile. "Just building suspense."
One more secret of the Carraig had opened to him, like a delicate petal of an immense rose whose heart could never truly be revealed. He decided what he needed to do.
The crowd was pressing closer, some looking on with expectant wonder, others with contemptuous doubt. Connor seized the earth far below and drove it up through hollow tubes that drilled down through the walls of the undercity, no doubt expressly for that purpose. The platform began to vibrate, then Connor grasped the main supports with fingers of earth, tearing them free and lifting the entire platform on columns of earth.
Many of the high lord representatives cried out in surprise, but Connor kept the platform level, rising at a stately pace a dozen feet above the awestruck crowd. Then he drew more earth over the top of the platform, flowing toward him like thick-bodied serpents. Even as the platform continued rising, Connor rose high above it on a Sentry tower, complete with little crenellations.
The crowd began cheering and shouting his name, recognizing that the use of slate proved he was more than Dawnus. Connor laughed, then lifted his arms to draw their attention.
He wasn't finished yet.
Holding firm in his mind the image of slate as a sunken pit, lined with stone, he added the two gateways of soapstone and marble like doors on opposite sides of the pit, facing outward, and reached for those powers.
In his private training, he'd managed to work with all three elements only a little. He could not afford failure. So he started with marble, sucking on the little stone under his tongue until his mouth burned and the fierceness of elemental fire tinged his slate strength with a wild flavor.
Flames crept up his tower, spiraling around in multi-hued colors. While the flames grew, he embraced soapstone. Water was his strongest element, and it answered his call, despite the distraction of the other elements. Water erupted from a tank behind the platform, and Connor added spirals of bubbling liquid to the tower, intermingling it wi
th the existing flames.
The clapping grew louder. Riding the wave of exultation pouring from the crowd, Connor tapped quartzite and extended fingers of thought into the air, imagining the gateway like a stained-glass roof over the others.
The air seemed to like the idea of lording over the others and did not immediately rebel. Connor planned to form a gentle breeze, but the stale air in the assembly hall didn't seem to want to move. So he reached farther and found a strong breeze slipping along the outer wall. He grabbed it by the horns and pulled.
A window high up the wall burst open and a howling wind tore into the room. Connor drew it close, encircling the tower with a whirlwind that absorbed the flames and water, whipping the other elements around him in a beautiful, multi-colored spiral.
"Blood of the Tallan!" Lord Nevan shouted, triggering a round of applause.
Connor glanced down, peering through the elemental display at Shona, whose initial triumphant smile was fading to a worried frown.
He shouted with joy, his cry merging in with the thunderous applause from the hall. He was really doing it! He was controlling all four elements.
Then quartzite seemed to realize it was actually playing nice with the others, and it bucked against his control. The whirlwind became wilder, threatening to spray the other elements across the room. Connor tried to hold on, but riding multiple elements required a loose touch, and at his reflexive tightening of control, the other elements began fighting him too.
His tower swayed, with fire and water spraying high into the air. The applause faded as the crowd realized he was losing control.
Then Ivor seized the flames. Connor gratefully relinquished control to him, and the fires coalesced into the form of a giant bird that glided gracefully across the hall and out that open window before exploding into glittering bits of light.
Padraigin connected a second later, her will reinforcing his over the winds. Connor released them to her, and the whirlwind faded away in a loud fanfare of invisible trumpets, followed by a triumphant marching beat from heavy drums.