Her rooms were only empty now because she’d sent away the servants and instructed the guards who stood just beyond the door to keep everyone away.
The day was far too blustery cold to walk the dying gardens, too - not to mention that last time she’d gone for a walk, several gossipy, solicitous young Ladies had tried to follow her every move.
Instead, Coren stepped out onto the narrow balcony, doing her best to ignore the guard already positioned there, clad in thick furs. She leaned on the cold iron railing, surveying the landscape. The summer colors had faded into beige and brown, but several of the turrets boasted greenery painted in the vibrant swirls of early autumn colors.
She remembered the day she’d flown to StarsHelm alone and how she’d promised herself the sky would always be open to her. She glared at that sky now, remembering the conflicting promises she’d given to her Generals - that she wouldn’t fly alone, just like she wouldn’t walk alone.
It was for her safety, they said.
But she felt more and more like a bird kept in a cage.
Huffing against the chill air, she smacked her palm against the rail. She didn’t like the cold.
“Has Your Majesty seen the meditation garden?” the guard by the door asked, surprising her. They rarely spoke to her.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Ask one of the hall guards to relieve me, and I’ll take you. It’s on that tower.” He pointed to a distant tower a little lower than her balcony with moss-covered stones and some form of iven spilling out between the crenels. It was pretty, and it seemed abandoned from here. It looked like a wide space where she could walk and see the sky and the grounds, and perhaps even imagine she could see all the way home to Weshen Isle or scent its salty sweetness.
And it was enclosed, so perhaps her guards could be convinced to stay just inside the doors, and she could pretend to be alone. “Yes, thank you. I’d like that,” she said.
Inside, she laced up her boots and donned a thick cloak against the chill wind she knew would be in such a high place, and she did as the guard had suggested.
Coren followed the fur-clad guard silently down the hall. Another guard peeled from the wall to join them as they traveled through several halls and up three grand staircases.
Finally, a door to the outside opened, and Coren breathed in the fresh, cold scent thankfully. “You may wait here,” she told the guards. “There is nowhere for danger to hide here.”
The men glanced at each other, but she repeated her instructions. Soon, they settled against the wall near the door.
Coren strolled the perimeter of the tower, her view of the land around the palace vanishing and reappearing each time she passed one of the crenels. Each stone in the wall was the size of a bathtub, and she wondered what magic had been used to hoist them this far in the air.
In the center of the space was a circular infinity garden. She’d seen them in the larger gardens below but had never wanted to spend the time walking the tiny path of ankle-high plants. Today, though, the idea was acceptable, and Coren broke away from the wall and entered the miniature maze.
It wasn’t a maze, exactly, she realized, as the path never branched. Instead, she was led in circle after circle, spiraling toward the middle, then back out again. She never quite reached the end of the path, and the center teased her with its proximity. She could have stepped over the maze walls easily, but her pride wouldn’t let her cheat.
She glanced back to the guards, and her posture must have asked the question.
“That’s the meditation part, Your Majesty. As you walk the circles, you are to pray or reflect on the circular and endless nature of life.”
She nodded and proceeded through the circles as they spiraled tighter toward the center again. Something about walking a path without need for decision did indeed calm her mind, and she breathed deeply as she moved, feeling that coming here had been a good choice. She’d have to do something nice for that guard.
As she circled inward, turn by turn, she saw something shimmering in the unreachable center, glinting silver in the setting sun. Finally winding close enough, though, Coren found it had vanished, like a mirage on a sun-filled day.
She retreated on the path, and the object reappeared - larger this time. As she approached again, it seemed to grow disproportionately larger.
There was something magical in the air, and it made her nervous. She threw her shifter senses wide, but none of the sources around her seemed odd.
Glancing back to the door, she saw her guards lounging against the wall, relaxed and talking quietly with each other.
But as she turned back to the center of the garden, the magic surged and seized her. She tried to cry out to her guards, but her voice was locked in her throat, and her feet were frozen to the stone. Her arms flattened to her sides, and all she could do was twist her head around, searching for the source of this new magic.
A shape began to shimmer into existence before her, just beyond reach, and gradually the mist collected into a figure Coren had hoped she’d never see again.
“Mara,” she whispered, her stomach dropping.
“Hello, little Queen of Riata,” the woman sneered, making the title sound like something from a child’s pretend games. Coren wrenched at her arms, hoping to reach for her whip she still carried everywhere, but Mara only smiled and clucked her tongue. “You cannot harm me in this form. I’m solid, but I’m not truly here. I’ve been recovering and growing my power, and now, here I am.”
“How are you here?” Coren had so many questions about Mara’s plans, so many fears for her family, and she hated that this was the one question her brain pushed out first.
“Girl, this is my oldest trick. I used it the night I met your fool grandfather, and a thousand other times.
“Are you in Rurok?” Coren managed to ask. All of her muscles felt tingly and heavy, as though her body had fallen asleep without her brain. She twisted her head around, and her guards seemed just as frozen. A dark shape flickered near them, and Coren gasped as Aram’s form came into view, sneaking sideways toward her guards.
“Do not harm them!” she cried.
Mara laughed, satisfaction booming from deep in her throat. “That depends on you, Corentine. And no, I am not in Rurok. I am much farther south than that, searching for the incredible twin power I know is hidden here.” Her smile told Coren all she needed to know.
“You stay away from my family!” Her voice rang out on the stones, the echoes bouncing back mockingly.
Mara shrugged and began a slow circle around Coren, her dark skirts swishing at her ankles. Her booted feet strayed from the mosaic path, and they should have crushed the delicate plants. But instead, they passed through them the way Ferula passed through furniture and walls.
“Are you a spirit?” Coren asked, unable to hide the hope in her voice.
In an instant, Mara was upon her, eye to eye. They were almost exactly the same size, and Mara’s eyes bore into Coren with a ferocity that sent a primal fear snaking around Coren’s heart.
“I am as real as you, and not so simple to kill,” Mara snarled, her breath warm on Coren’s cheek. Her hands closed around Coren’s wrist, ten pricks of real pain coming from the iron grip. “Now, silence your questions as I tell you what I want, and how you will help me get it.”
Coren tried to open her mouth to retort, but one of her guards cried out in pain. Glancing back, she could see Aram had run the man through with his own sword. He slumped forward, his feet still planted to the stone like hers, and the sword sliced gruesomely higher. Sickness washed through Coren as she turned away from the gutted and dying man.
She nodded to Mara, hating every movement of submission.
“You will come to Sulit. You’re probably planning it even now, and you may even bring the armies if you wish. Attack the Brujok. I don’t care. But you will come for me, for I am coming for your siblings. They have power I need, perhaps even more power than you. When you arrive, you will help
me. You see, I seek the heart of Sulit, and you will help me find it. Your family will help me gain its power because your entire family owes me everything.”
“How? Why?” Coren whispered, glancing back at the door. Aram stood poised next to the other guard, but he had not struck.
Mara considered. “I suppose it is time for the story to be told. I’ve kept it long enough. Your family, dear Corentine, is my family. And they destroyed me.”
Coren shook her head, not understanding. She was related to Zorander, not Mara.
“Lorental,” Mara spat, as though the name were poison on her lips. “A sister that was like no sister should ever be. A sister even worse than the brother you have now.” Mara smiled cruelly, and Coren struggled to sort through the woman’s words.
As understanding began to reach her, Coren reeled back as hard as if she’d been knocked by a wave. Only the strange magic kept her feet on the ground, and her body swerved oddly before coming back to a shaky balance.
“Your sister was Lorental? My grandmother? But how? They never...”
“Never spoke of me?” Mara laughed, her lips twisting into a sneer. “No, I wouldn’t imagine they did. But Lorental was not just a sister. She was my twin sister.”
Mara began to stroll the edges of the tower, peering idly between the crenels. Coren struggled harder against her locked legs, but it did no good. She hated the helpless feeling Mara’s spells always gave her. She wondered now how Mara was so strong in Sulit magic, if she claimed to be Weshen.
“The Shonen family had been blessed with twins each generation, until Lorental’s filthy affair with Zorander Graeme. That weak man’s seed resulted in nothing but your pitiful mother, and the Magi cursed my womb as barren as the winter ground for her mistakes.”
“But you had her killed. How could you have your own twin killed?” Coren knew the story too well - how a young Sorenta and her mother had tried to escape the palace and been found. She felt bile rising in her throat at the insidious parallels between her and Jyesh. Would he have her killed, if he could? Would she do it first, if he threatened her or those she loved?
“I didn’t have her killed,” Mara said, her smile opening to a gruesome slant. “I did it myself.” Reaching to her back, she brandished the half-moon blades Coren had seen her use once Graeme was dead, the ones that had soaked up his blood like they were made of cloth and not polished metal.
“I have her power with me all the time now, in my beautiful Kitsuun blades.”
The full weight of her statement hit Coren, and she slumped into herself, her muscles refusing to bear the impossible weight of it all.
To slice the throat of someone whose soul was so joined with your own...
If Mara had seemed evil before, Coren had no word left for how she viewed the woman before her.
“Why?” she whispered around the ball of fear in her throat.
“You think me evil, and I’ll accept that if it makes you sleep better. I’ve done many things to earn such a title. But you know little of what made me this way.”
“You chose this path.” Coren said, even as she wondered how anything in the world could turn a good person into this. Mara must have been born with shadows in her heart.
“Yes, I chose it. But not until someone pushed me from the path I was born onto. Lorental was the one who never accepted me as her twin. We nearly tore our mother apart, trying to be first from the womb, and the competition never waned. Yet, it was always Lorental who issued the challenge. I merely accepted. Each time was different. Some seemed just in fun. Others were matters of respect done before an audience. Many were brutal, solely for the satisfaction of proving she was better.”
Mara leaned casually against a crenel, eying Coren. Coren waited, knowing there must be more, but unable to form a coherent question.
“But the breaking point was when she assumed me dead. When she failed to pity me, rescue me, find me. She failed to do anything a twin should do. And that was when I knew she was the one who should be dead and forgotten, not me.”
“You were banished?” Coren asked, seeing the lines of similarity Mara was drawing for her. But Coren had been only eight when Jyesh was banished. What could she possibly have done to save him?
“I was pushed from a cliff and left to drown in the water.”
Mara’s quiet words sunk in slowly.
“Lorental did that?” Coren managed, disbelieving. She shook her head. She’d pieced together a very different picture of her grandmother during her time here in StarsHelm. Lorental had been a respected Commander. A fierce combatant, certainly, but not cruel with her peers. The staff had enjoyed her company much the same way they did with Dain.
And Zorander’s journals had painted a scene of a young man very much in love with an impossible reality.
“Lorental did much more than that. We had been racing that morning. Another competition. But that time I had beat her, and she was in a rage. She challenged me to a swimming race, knowing my fear of the water. When I refused, she taunted me and backed me to the edge of a cliff on Weshen Isle. I stumbled and fell, crashing beneath the waves. When I surfaced, flailing my arms and shouting for help, Lorental was simply standing on the cliff. She watched me in silence, never once moving to help.”
Coren remembered diving from such a cliff during the hunts many weeks ago. She tried to imagine falling from such a height instead of diving on purpose. She tried to imagine someone who was supposed to care for her, watching as she panicked in the waves far below.
But she failed. Nothing in her life had prepared for such a betrayal.
No wonder Resh had said her own family had single-handedly ruined Weshen. He’d heard nothing but murmurs of rumors. If he ever found out about this story, would he still be able to look at her in awe? Or would he fear and loathe her like he did the witches?
A different sort of fear began to creep into Coren’s heart. If Resh no longer accepted her, no longer wanted her... if he learned to fear her... she didn’t think she could take such a reversal.
Not after Jyesh.
And then she realized why she had yet to show her heart to Resh. Because she had feared this, deep in a dark place of her soul. She feared she would become something he did not want.
The memory of his kneeling form in the grass outside of EvenFall slammed back into her mind. He’d pulled the trigger of his bow sword. He’d shot to kill.
Would he grow to feel the need for that again? But if she turned into someone like Mara, she would want him to take the shot. She could never allow herself to turn as dark as Jyesh or Mara.
Mara turned and approached Coren again, the movement shaking her from her thoughts.
“How did you survive?” Coren asked, because she needed to know the end of the story. She didn’t want to feel pity for Mara. The woman was a monster. She could be lying, fabricating this entire story.
“I didn’t.”
Coren snapped her attention to Mara. The woman had stopped with her back to the setting sun, and silhouetted against the fire-orange of the sky, her entire form was nothing but shadows.
“I drowned that day, my young grand-niece. Lorental never regretted her action. Never came, and I sank beneath the waves until they filled my lungs with saltwater. I remember my body hitting the bottom of the MagiSea, and then I remember little else.”
“Impossible,” Coren muttered. Now she knew Mara was telling stories.
“No, not impossible.” Something in the simple tone of Mara’s voice drew Coren back into belief. “The MagiSea is home to more magic than any of our people even dream. The line between life and death becomes blurred in its depths and vast expanses. In death, I was surrounded by that magic and swallowed whole by the Hungry River. When I awoke, it was to behold Shadow.”
Coren stood up straighter. “Shadow?”
Mara nodded, turning and advancing toward Coren. The closer she got, the more Coren realized the shadows covering her were not the result of being backlit by the sun. Instead, the
shadows were like a mist, emanating from her very skin. Footsteps approached from the side, and Aram came into view, his stolen sword dragging the stone with an unnerving scritch.
“Shadow offered me back my life. I took the bargain, as you can see.”
“What did you bargain?” Coren noticed the pattern of this magic seemed familiar. It was too similar to the sort of magic that had bound Graeme in life, and Sy after his death.
“Something I’ve never regretted,” Mara answered, a twist of smile on her lips.
Coren wondered if it was her soul, since she seemed desperate to find the SoulShifter. She had always assumed Mara wanted the power to control the world, but perhaps she just wanted her own soul returned to her.
But could a person live without a soul? Coren didn’t believe that possible. She’d sooner believe Mara’s story about Shadow bringing her back from the dead than believe in life without a soul.
Coren raised an eyebrow as a thought occured. “How does Aram fit into all of this? How is he your twin, if Lorental was?”
Mara smiled in Aram’s direction. “Aram came to me later. He is not a twin in the sense that Lorental was. But we are each half of the same whole. Magic is limitless, pretty little Queen. Queen of Nothing,” she taunted, hinting that she knew Coren had found the spellbook, too.
Coren began to struggle against the binding magic again, knowing Mara was done giving straight answers. “What do you want from me? The SoulShifter ability?” she asked. This was the only way to move forward. Determine what Mara’s next move was, so she could figure how to make a counter-move.
“Yes, but more than that. I want your power, of course. And I want the twins’ power. It’s just as I said a few minutes ago. You will come to Sulit, and you will help me find the heart of Sulit. There’s nothing in it for you except hope. That most dangerous and deadly emotion.”
Mara’s form began to flicker and drift away as though smoke on the wind. Aram’s did the same, and just as the two were nearly gone, soft laughter began to echo around the tower garden.
Dream of Darkness and Dominion Page 25