Serpent's Blood (Snakesblood Saga Book 6)

by Beth Alvarez

  Alira wrapped him in a hug, then patted his cheek. “I cannot link with you to show you what to do, but I will explain it to the best of my ability. You’ve done it with your brother a hundred times at least. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Rhyllyn lowered his gaze as she slipped past him and into the parlor to gather her things from the couch. Though a Gate on his own was a lot to ask, he wasn’t worried about whether or not he’d be able to do it.

  It was how much more useful he became with each new thing he learned that worried him.

  “You’ll want to use a doorway to anchor it, I suppose.” Alira beckoned him into the parlor and indicated the doorway as he passed through it. “It will take practice for you to create a free-standing Gate. Even most practiced mages prefer to have the aid of a physical opening to give their power shape.”

  Rhyllyn tried not to groan. “Where are we going?”

  She shrugged. “You’ll need to think of a familiar place inside the Spiral Palace. You have to be able to picture it clearly and accurately to open a Gate to it. Where that place is will be up to you.”

  Turning his attention to the doorway, he tried to think. Rune spent more time in the palace. Most of his Gates opened to the throne room or council chamber, though some opened to the private quarters kept aside for his use during visits and council sessions. Rhyllyn didn’t spend enough time in the palace to be afforded his own rooms. When he did stay, it was in either Rune’s quarters or Alira’s. Neither was a place he was intimately familiar with, as sleeping was all he did in either location.

  “I think I know of somewhere,” he said haltingly. “It’s outdoors, though.”

  “It doesn’t matter, so long as it gets us there.” Alira paced to the doorway and traced the wooden frame with a fingertip. “This is where you’ll focus first. Channel energy into the concept of a passage to another place. Will it to fit the door, both in physicality and in purpose. It is a door, a portal to another place, just like moving from one room to another.”

  She made it sound easy, but anything that required half a dozen mages or more couldn’t be simple. Closing his eyes, Rhyllyn tried to tune himself to the energy in the air around him. It hummed in his senses and stirred when he opened himself to it.

  Lessons with the college mages had always been difficult. They spoke of grasping power and forcing it to shape. When Rhyllyn tried to touch the flows of power that way, there was always a shock and backlash. He could force it, but it was exhausting. Instead he preferred the methods his brother taught him. Magic was warm, comforting, ever-present and ready to answer if he called.

  It answered him now with a pleasant tingle that crawled over his skin like a static charge.

  He’d asked Rune once, in the middle of one of their lessons, if the power they called ‘magic’ was alive. He hadn’t received an answer. With the way it responded to him, questioning and able to obey directions, it was hard to imagine it could be anything other than sentient. But the idea of it being aware was unsettling in its own right. Rhyllyn knew too well that when something was unmade, its power was swallowed by the ebb and flow of reality nearby. Did all life end that way? Absorbed back into the world around it? Or was it only when the threads were pulled apart that the wild power preyed on its source?

  Disturbed, Rhyllyn shuddered, and the energy fled from his touch.

  “What’s the matter?” Alira asked. Had she felt that, or was it only his imagination?

  “Nothing,” he lied. “It’s just... complicated, that’s all.”

  “It is a lot to work with all at once, but you’ll manage. Try again.” She pointed to the doorway again and her finger outlined the shape of the arch. “Call the power there, then we’ll move on to the next step.”

  Rhyllyn stared at the highest point of the arched wood as he asked the power to return. It answered readily, collecting along the edges of the doorway and awaiting his command.

  Despite the prickling sensation of the energy around him and the calm tones of Alira’s voice issuing directions for each step, Rhyllyn found his thoughts drifting again.

  Rune began life as a free mage. A child without parents, pulled by mages from the streams of energy that formed the world and given a broken body to inhabit.

  If magic was alive and Rune was born of it, then what did that make him, really?

  9

  Keeping Appearances

  For the first time Shymin could recall, she pitied Kytenia. The mountain of paperwork on her desk rivaled that which always decorated the Archmage’s office, and the burden never seemed to grow any lighter. She rubbed her eyes, then grimaced and looked at the dark smudges left on her fingers. The eye-marks she’d earned as the Master of Healing were not necessary any longer; if anything, the role of Headmaster of the Grand College had been a substantial promotion, and abandoning the ways of Kirban Temple might have helped endear her to the councilors who remained.

  Yet she couldn’t bring herself to abandon something she’d worked hard to earn. Kirban was a part of her, and while Envesi had left her in charge of the Grand College, she’d said nothing about replacing her as Master of Healing. From that alone, she had assumed her position leading the college was meant to be temporary. Questioning Envesi’s choices was never wise, and so Shymin had opted to accept the title of Archmage and Headmaster of the Grand College without abandoning her previous responsibilities.

  Some of those responsibilities sat in the heap of meaningless busywork on her desk. Her shoulders heaved with her sigh.

  Shymin pushed herself up from her desk and paced to the washbasin at the back of her temporary office. The remaining councilors were still working to empty the former headmaster’s quarters and primary office so she could take over, though they had surrendered his paperwork with little fuss. Given the way Envesi had demanded it, any fuss might have ended with their unmaking. The thought of Arrick’s demise left a foul taste in the back of Shymin’s mouth, but she knew better than to oppose. One did not have to agree with a movement’s leaders to see the value in their work. That had become a mantra, something she’d repeated to herself so often that it ran through her head without needing to be summoned, any time she faced a new difficulty spawned by the woman’s short temper.

  She filled the basin and scooped water into her hands. It was cool and pleasant, but did nothing to refresh her when she splashed it against her face. She sought her eyes with her fingertips and gently scrubbed away what remained of the eye-marks she’d smudged. Councilors came to her door at all hours of the day and night, since she’d taken the space as her living quarters as well. No matter how fatigued her work left her, she refused to be seen with the black ink that rimmed her eyes smudged across her cheeks, as if she’d been crying.

  “They’d love that, wouldn’t they?” she muttered to herself as she finished and patted her face dry. Remnants of ink clung to the roots of her eyelashes when she inspected herself in the mirror, but that didn’t matter. She found the vial of ink and the delicate brush she used with it and returned to the mirror to paint her eyes once more. Purple smudges beneath her eyes betrayed her weariness, but she had no powder with which to hide them. Nor did she suppose she would try, if she had. To remain calm and put-together no matter her level of energy could only help her efforts to bring the college to heel.

  As of yet, those efforts had pushed the limits of her capability.

  The moment that grim thought crossed her mind, a firm knock at the door demanded her attention. Shymin sighed and swept across the room to answer. The sour face that greeted her was the last one she’d wanted to see.

  “Headmaster,” Orneld murmured, as if the title itself hurt to speak. “A messenger bird just arrived with a reply from the councilors in the Royal City.”

  Shymin glanced toward the window of her office-turned-bedroom. The first soft light of morning colored the cloudless sky outside. “I did not expect anyone to be awake yet to receive it.”

  “Someone is always stationed in the dovecotes
,” the dour man said. “A mageling brought the message to me, instead of you.” His mouth took an unpleasant twist.

  She forced herself to smile. The councilors had not been the only ones to snub her leadership. Most of the magelings avoided her presence. This was not the first time one had refused to bring correspondence directly to her. Part of her tried to be reasonable; it had to be difficult to report to a new headmaster, especially someone whom nobody was familiar with. Yet part of her knew Envesi’s manner of seizing power had to be at fault for the way all the magelings and low-ranking Masters looked at her. The woman had torn Arrick’s very being apart and then put Shymin in his place. How was she supposed to overcome that sort of shadow?

  “Well, I appreciate that you took the time to deliver it.” She held out her hand and willed her smile to reach her eyes when he scowled and deposited the small roll of paper in her palm. It bore no seal and was not tied. That it curled loosely against her hand indicated he’d already read it. “When will the councilors arrive?”

  “They won’t,” Orneld said.

  Shymin blinked at him.

  He nodded at the message. “You can read it for yourself, but it’s terse and clear. The members of council stationed in the Royal City have been ordered to remain where they are. In fact, most mages in the Triad have been called to the Royal City. To insist they return for your meeting at this point would be to challenge the king. Vicamros is a bull-headed man. He won’t take opposition lightly.”

  “I am certain he won’t.” She kept her shoulders square, though she felt crestfallen. A surprising number of councilors were stationed abroad. If they would not answer her summons, it did not bode well. Those in the college were not amiable toward her, but at least they were willing to work with her for the good of the college and its occupants. The councilors who were away from the college, however, posed a problem.

  “Do you mean to challenge his authority?” Orneld arched a thick white brow at her, though his mouth pulled farther downward than she thought a man’s face could. It was as if he went out of his way to appear miserable.

  “Of course not. We are not enemies, after all.” Shymin closed her hand around the message and tucked it into the pocket of her robes. She could worry about the contents of the message and the refusal of her request later, when she was alone. “I shall simply move forward in meeting with the councilors who can attend for now. Perhaps one of them will be able to carry transcripts of our meetings to those whose services the king requires.”

  Orneld snorted. “The king’s mages are too deep in his pockets for your transcripts to make any difference.”

  She raised her brows and he seemed to remember himself, for his expression softened.

  “Your eagerness to make peace between Kirban’s new Archmage and the college is admirable,” he added, “but you aren’t likely to win anyone over. As long as that woman is Archmage, the college would prefer to cut ties than build stronger bridges.”

  “The councilors are welcome to feel that way, but perhaps they would be wise to recall that I speak for the college, now.”

  From the soft sound of disapproval he made in his throat, she knew he disagreed.

  Shymin stifled the urge to sigh. “Thank you for this delivery. I need nothing else from you at this time, so you may return to your duties. I expect the former headmaster’s office shall be prepared for me soon?”

  “Of course,” Orneld replied dryly. He did not bow or even so much as nod before he turned to depart.

  As he left, at last, she let her shoulders fall. No matter her determination, her methods of gentle persuasion had yet to bear fruit, and the longer she worked to bring the college to order beneath her lead, the more she was convinced she’d been set up to fail.

  “One thing at a time,” she murmured to herself as she closed the door. Mages being called to the Royal City and held beyond her grasp, however, was something she’d have to grapple with soon.

  Without thought, she rubbed her eyes.

  “You know, I can’t recall ever thinking this before, but I wish Cam had scheduled some kind of event for me.” Rune straightened his sleeve and gave the mirror beside him a fleeting glance before he tossed a towel over it. He never looked long anymore. Over the years, his reflection had grown more and more unfriendly.

  Garam chuckled. “You know what they say. First time for everything.”

  “Which may be, but you have to agree a little direction would be nice.”

  “You’d have plenty of direction if you’d taken the time to read any of those papers I brought you yesterday,” Garam said.

  Rune fought the urge to roll his eyes. “You know I don’t have time for that right now. I don’t have time for this right now.” Considering everything that had happened across the past week, venturing out into the city for the sole purpose of being seen was one of the last things on his list of priorities. But Vicamros had made things clear; if he expected assistance befitting his station as councilor, he had to live up to the role. An uncomfortable amount of serving the Triad revolved around petty politics.

  “And I didn’t have the time to go get those reports for you, but I managed to fit it in, didn’t I?” Garam leaned forward in his chair and rubbed his knee. His cane hung from the edge of the table, where the stacks of paper he’d brought still rested, untouched. He gave them a wistful look.

  “You shouldn’t have had access to those reports to begin with,” Rune protested as he finished buttoning the cuff of his other sleeve. Tight-fitting cuffs and loose sleeves had always been common on Elenhiise, along with the high-collared coats he preferred, but they were unusual in the north. Given the nature of the day’s expedition, he wanted to do anything he could to stand out. “You haven’t been Captain of the Royal City Guard in how long?”

  A wry smile twisted the old man’s mouth. “Not long enough, according to my wife.”

  “She’s right.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell her you took her side. Again.”

  Rune couldn’t resist a smirk. “Ready?”

  “No, and I don’t want to be part of this, but you aren’t the only one with expectations heaped on you.” Garam dragged himself from his chair with a sigh. “I collected those reports while I advised the guard on how best to defend the city. As a result, I have a loose understanding of most of them. I’ll summarize while we walk.”

  “Why expect me to read all that, then?” Rune waved a clawed hand at the papers before he took his sword from his bed and cut toward the door. When he opened it, a pair of guards blinked at him. He scowled back.

  One of the two guards had the sense to duck his head and turn away. “Begging your pardon, Councilor. We were just on our way to deliver a message for Lord Kaith.”

  Garam grunted and hobbled to the doorway to join them. “Good timing. Or bad, depending on what the message is.”

  “A fight,” the guard answered. “Just outside the academy. It was just reported a moment ago.”

  “A fight,” Rune repeated, his brow furrowed.

  Garam sighed. “Very well. First stop, the academy. Let’s get going, shall we?”

  Rune strapped his sword to his side and motioned for his companion to lead the way. The guards departed the moment they set foot in the hall, leaving the two of them to descend the Spiral Palace alone. As they walked, Garam rubbed the back of his neck and turned his eyes toward the ceiling. Scuffles around the city were hardly Garam’s responsibility anymore, but from the way his eyes tightened at the corners, he still felt it was his burden to bear. Rune didn’t envy his commitment.

  “You think they came to you because they want me to do something about it?” Rune asked.

  “That’s as good a guess as any. For some reason, most people seem to think you listen to me.” A hint of humor touched the older man’s voice, but it was short lived. He went on. “But we were talking about the reports. From my understanding, everything started to fall apart after word got out you were to be found and delivered to the crown.�
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  “That’s a polite way of saying arrested and sent for execution,” Rune said dryly. He harbored no grudges over the difficult choices Vicamros had been forced to make, but the fact those choices were so readily swept aside with vague pleasantries reminded him of everything he hated about his station.

  Garam shrugged. “At least it’s being said. You know the way the council operates.”

  Unimpressed, Rune grunted in response.

  “When Vicamros gave the order, there was a definite change in mood around the city. Groups at the palace gates protesting the decision, people refusing to attend the arena fights, a lot of anger. Brant knows why anyone likes you, but they do.”

  “Yourself included,” Rune said.

  The hard set of Garam’s mouth indicated otherwise, but Rune still laughed.

  The old man went on. “After that, relations with some groups became strained. The nobles were pleased, but you’re more of a folk hero than I think any of us realized.”

  “People like the idea of a nobody being able to rise to glory. The problem with that assumption is I was never nobody.”

  “I don’t think any of us realized how true that was until all this started.” Garam gave his head a shake, a rueful smile on his lips. “You were made for great things.”

  The choice of words sent a cold chill of displeasure down Rune’s spine and he fought back a shudder. He knew what Garam meant, but the nature of his own existence had only become more haunting after seeing what Envesi had done to herself.

  Garam didn’t seem to notice his discomfort. “The biggest issue has been with the Iron Children. After everything you did to sway the mages to start cooperating with them, the Children have decided you’re indispensable.”