Calming myself, I grew still and listened instead. For a breath. For a rustle of clothing. For the tread of a foot. But there was nothing, the voice echoing strangely, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
I turned. Someone watched me, was judging me, and I struggled not to slip beneath the river as I would have done on the Dredge, because I could feel the throne watching as well, circling patiently.
“What’s the matter, Varis?” the woman’s voice said smoothly, mockingly. “Can’t you see me? Can’t you find me?”
I clenched my jaw in anger, tightened my grip on my dagger.
Another chuckle, again soft and throaty, cut off sharply as the woman barked, “Perhaps you aren’t using the right Sight!”
I halted my slow, careful spin and the voice laughed again, this time the sound draining down into choked sobs.
Enough, I thought.
Standing straight, I chose a random spot between two pillars on one side of the room and stared at it resolutely, my breath tight and angry.
The sobbing ended and the air in the room shifted from confrontational to curious. I felt the shift like a wind across my back and shivered.
“Not going to play, are we?” A different voice, aged but still strong. The voice harrumphed, like an old woman. “We’ll see about that!”
I jumped, startled, my hand raising the dagger defensively. The last statement had come sharp and close, as if the old woman were standing right beside me. But before I could even catch my breath I saw movement at the base of one of the pillars, heard the rustle of cloth.
A woman uncurled from a hunched-over posture, the folds of her dress falling to her sides. She was clothed in white, with long hair as black as pitch, the simple dress stitched with smooth, curved lines of gold at the throat and at the hem, the lines curling upward like fire, as if she were surrounded in the vague outlines of flames. Her skin was smooth, not aged with wrinkles as the voice suggested, and her cheekbones were high.
But it was her eyes that held me. A depthless brown. The darkest features of her narrow face somehow, even against the ebony hair. They captured me, didn’t allow me to look away. They commanded me, ordered me to obey even before she spoke.
“You’ve come to kill me,” she said, her voice neither the child’s voice, nor the singer’s, nor the old woman’s, but a strange mixture of all three, resonating with even more voices underneath. “So do it.”
The muscles on my shoulders crawled, an unsettled feeling trailing down my back. I’d walked right past her when I’d searched the room, close enough she could have reached out and touched me . . . killed me. I hadn’t seen her, hadn’t even felt her. My back stiffened and I suddenly felt vulnerable, exposed.
And angry. She was toying with me, batting me about like a cat with a rat.
“Why couldn’t I see you?” I asked, voice harsh. But inside I was reeling, trying to figure out what she wanted, what she needed. Was she insane? Or was she simply having a little fun?
Her brow creased a moment, but then she smiled. “Because you chose not to see me. You’ve come to kill me, but you don’t want to. So much easier not to kill when you can’t find the mark, isn’t it, Varis?” Her head lowered, her eyes narrowed. “But you see me now. And you haven’t got much time, Varis. I can occupy the guards only so long. They can’t be held at bay forever. Even Baill.”
As if she’d called them into existence, guards pounded on one of the side entrances to the throne room, voices muffled by the door. The door began to rattle as they tried to force it. The sounds echoed loudly in the room.
The Mistress didn’t move. “Kill me now, Varis. They’ll find their way in eventually.”
But I didn’t move. I didn’t trust her. The image of the cat and the rat was too vivid in my mind.
The rattle at the side door stopped. Shouts rang out. Someone called for Baill, someone else for Avrell.
“You have to kill me,” the Mistress said, her tone soft and reasonable. “You have to kill me or the city will crumble. It’s already started. You’ve seen it. On the Dredge, on the wharf, even here at the palace.” She raised her head, held herself imperious and still. “And I want to die, Varis,” her voice still calm. “I want you to kill me.”
Cold shock ran through me, from my neck down to my toes. The dagger felt suddenly heavy in my hand, weighted, my body somehow light.
“Why?” I asked, my voice sounding distant, removed.
She smiled, and at the edges of her eyes I saw the insanity I’d heard in the laughing child’s voice, in the song, in the old woman’s voice. I’d seen it enough on the Dredge, recognized it as easily as I recognized the feel and weight of my dagger, cold and deadly and familiar. I recognized it now, staring up into her face, and realized that she held the insanity at bay. Somehow the real Mistress had found herself amid the madness, and she was clinging to herself with a cold, granite desperation that was steadily slipping away from her. If I didn’t act soon, she would lose control completely.
“I’m destroying Amenkor, Varis,” she said, her voice strong but wavering. “The Fire did something to me and I can no longer control the throne. It’s begun to take over, to consume me. You need to kill me before it takes over completely.”
I hesitated, still uncertain, and her face suddenly hardened into a frown.
“Do it,” she barked, her voice filling the room, the command clear in her voice, in her stance. “Please.”
It was the tremble in the last word that convinced me, the way her lips pursed at the end, her muscles rigid with effort. I still didn’t trust her, the cat and the rat image still too real, but I had to try. It was an opportunity.
I gripped my dagger firmly, stepped forward, up the tiered stairs, watched her warily as I moved to her side. She drew in a deep breath and as I shifted in behind her, I realized sweat lined her forehead, stained her dress with fear and the effort to control herself. She lifted her head, exposed her pale neck, her stance taut, breath coming in gasps through her nose, and closed her eyes.
I drew up close behind her, but halted.
She was too tall, at least a foot taller than me. I couldn’t reach her neck.
I shifted my stance, changed tactics, adjusted so I could slide the dagger into her back, low and quick, but she must have realized my problem. She sighed and grabbed her dress in two fists, kneeling in front of me. Tossing her head back to clear her hair, back straight, she exposed her neck again.
“Do it now,” she said, and the strain in her voice was clear, made worse when the main entrance doors began to thud.
The guards were at two of the entrances now, were trying to break through with what sounded like a battering ram.
“Quickly!” the Mistress spat.
I reached forward, around her head, one hand on her shoulder to steady her, the edge of the dagger against her throat. I felt her heat through the cloth of the dress, felt the embroidery. Her pulse shivered up the blade of the dagger into my hand.
I drew a short breath, tensed the muscles in my arm, but hesitated.
It felt wrong. Too deliberate. Too manipulated.
It felt like the eyes of a cat, watching coldly, body perfectly still, as the rat began to twitch, to gather its muscles for a darting escape.
It felt like entering the alley while following Alendor. An ambush.
Fear suddenly spiked through me and I tensed, muscles contracting, ready to slip the dagger across her throat in one smooth motion—
But I was too late, too slow. The cat pounced.
A hand clamped down hard on my wrist, locked so strongly I felt my forearm go numb. At the same moment, the Mistress shuddered beneath my other hand, her muscles pulling taut.
I had a fleeting moment to think, Trap!, a fleeting moment to feel terror cascading down through my muscles like ice—
And then the Mistress wrenched the arm holding the dagger out and away, snapped it around with enough force to pull me off-balance. I lurched forward into her b
ack with a gasp, lost my hold on my dagger. It clattered to the floor, down the three tiers of steps to the walkway.
Terror slid into panic. I froze.
The Mistress reached around her own shoulder with her free hand and grabbed my shoulder. The shuddering thud of the battering ram echoed through the room. Wood splintered, groaned. Metal shrieked. The Mistress jerked me around in front of her, my arm twisting. She shifted her grip on my wrist, pulled it up sharply behind my back, and drew me in close, our foreheads touching. Her sweat dripped onto my cheek, her wavy black hair tickling my neck. She smelled of wine and cheese.
“Not quite yet, little hunter,” she gasped in the throaty voice. “Not unless we have to. There’s another way now that we’ve gotten rid of your dagger.”
And I looked into her eyes, body still in shock, muscles still frozen in panic.
She hadn’t lost control. The real Mistress still held the insanity at bay.
A sharp grinding pop filled the hall and the Mistress pulled back as something heavy and metallic hit the floor. The noise from outside in the corridor grew suddenly louder: shouts of triumph, a bark of command.
I recognized the voice. It was Baill’s.
“Not much time at all,” the Mistress murmured to herself, then turned back to me. With a thin smile she flung me down the tiered steps to the walkway, in the direction of the throne, away from my dagger.
I landed hard, unable to control the fall. But as I hit the flagstone, the panic that had seized my muscles released, replaced with anger.
She’d tricked me. And now I had no weapon.
I snarled, twisted out of the sprawl into a crouch, and caught the Mistress descending the tiered steps slowly, almost languidly. Behind her, my dagger lay on the floor, and farther down the hall a glittering hinge from the large doors. The base of one of the doors was skewed into the hall, wood splintered.
The door shuddered again, bucking inward. The men outside bellowed.
I focused on the Mistress. Her face had turned solemn, grim. “It’s time, Varis.”
My gaze flicked to my dagger, so far out of reach, then back to her face. Desperation clawed at my arms, at my chest. My breath came ragged and torn through my nose, my jaw clenched, anger a hot lump in my throat.
The Mistress halted between me and the door. The Skewed Throne stood behind me.
“It’s time,” she said again, with a hint of sorrow, and then she raised her hand.
I reacted without thought, not certain what she intended, what she could do, only knowing that without the dagger I had only one defense: the river.
I dove beneath its surface, pulled the Fire around me as closely as possible as I felt the currents envelop me, smother me, the world graying, drowning. I dove deeper, and deeper still, using the force of my anger, my fear, noting the details in the stone, in the door, in the floor, in the light, as they shifted and clarified. The sounds of the battering ram, of the men in the hall outside the two doors, of the guttering flames in the sconces and on the candelabra, collapsed into the vibrant background wind I’d known since I’d almost drowned in Cobbler’s Fountain.
For a moment, the river held me as it had always held me, warm and comforting, like my mother’s embrace.
But then the other pressure—the throne—pounced down upon me, a surging, growling ocean of sound and sensation. I screamed, the sound reverberating around the room, and drew the White Fire up as a shield against the onslaught. But the pressure, so vast, so dark, so like the ocean, smothered me, crushed me flat against the flagstone of the hall. Granite cut into my back, each minute crack in the time-worn flagstone like a chasm, each grain of dirt and grit like a boulder. I screamed again as the pressure built, but the scream faltered as the breath was pressed from my chest.
And then I realized that the Fire still held, that it formed a thin shield between me and the howling pressure of this other presence on the river. Trying to draw breath, strange spots already forming on my vision, I pushed the shield of Fire upward with all my strength, pushed it away a hair’s breadth, another, then an inch. I gasped through clenched teeth, desperately sucked in air, and pushed harder, straining at the forces, at the eddies and currents that wove around me in a mad frenzy. I shoved the Fire upward until I could finally draw myself up and settle back onto my heels.
Breathing hard, I glanced up at the Mistress, my anger unleashed, coiling and spitting inside me. I intended to kill her now, no hesitations, no doubts.
She’d halted a few steps in front of me. Behind her, the door shuddered again, but the noise was relegated to the background, so muffled by the raging voices I held outside the Fire it almost couldn’t be heard.
The Mistress frowned, her hands at her sides.
I didn’t give her a chance to think, to respond. As I’d done with the bearded man on the street, I pulled as much of the river as I could as tightly to my chest as possible, compacted it down, and punched it toward the Mistress’ chest, my eyes dark with intent.
She raised one hand casually, palm flat, facing toward me.
The hard ball I’d thrown at her hit an unseen wall a foot from her hand and stopped. A backlash of force surged toward me, hit me hard in the chest. I gasped, in surprise and in pain, landed hard on my ass, coming up sharp against the first step in the dais to the throne.
A cold wave of real fear coursed through me, cutting through the anger like a scythe.
The Mistress knew of the river, could use it as I could.
I licked at something warm at the edge of my mouth, tasted blood. Ignoring it, I narrowed my gaze, concentrated through the pain in my chest and the taste of blood, and focused on the area in front of the Mistress’ hand.
Faintly, I could see lines of force, almost nonexistent, woven so elegantly and so tightly they seemed to merge with the raw energies of the river around her. The energies formed a solid wall.
The gathered ball of energy I’d flung at her seemed suddenly childish and frayed.
“What is that?” the Mistress asked quietly, advancing forward. Her tone was hard, demanding. “What is that around you? It tastes familiar. . . .”
I scuttled up the steps of the tier, to the base of the last step, but the Mistress continued her advance, the subtle wall protecting her moving with her. I could feel the Skewed Throne at my back. It was a vortex of energies, white and blazing, the focus of the prowling pressure that had tried to overwhelm me and still beat at the shield of White Fire that protected me.
The Mistress halted, the wall of force she held before her inches in front of me. I couldn’t back up any more. The throne blocked my way.
The Mistress’ frown grew deeper and then she locked eyes with me. “What is it?” she demanded again, voice as hard as stone.
I didn’t answer. My eyes were hooded, the anger back. My gaze flicked toward my dagger, so clear beneath the river, too distant to retrieve, then returned to hers.
Neither one of us moved for a long moment, our breath the only real sound. Somewhere in the background, another grinding pop reverberated through the room, followed by a much heavier clatter. Ripples of force shuddered through the flagstone up the hall to the dais and the throne as one of the main doors pulled free of its last hinge and struck the floor. Men shouted, surged into the room. I could taste the steel of their blades, the tincture of their armor. I breathed in their sweat and fear and confusion as they halted, taking in the Mistress and me on the dais. I felt the air shift as they moved aside, letting Baill and Avrell move to the front of the room. But it was all muted, flattened somehow.
The only thing that mattered was the Mistress. Her eyes, her will, her intent.
She watched me silently.
Then her mouth tightened. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
And she reached forward, her flat palm changing into a clawed grip. The wall she’d used to protect herself released and she grasped the front of my shirt, lifted me up, and thrust me back onto the throne.
For a moment, the room
held, the Mistress taking one step back. No one else moved. The throne beneath me twisted and shifted, the sensation sending a feverish heat through my skin, making it crawl and shudder, prickle with sweat. The river held unchanged as well, the energies roiling.
Then the river exploded.
The Fire flared, rising to consume everything in sight as the swirl of gray energy that had once been the river blackened, charred, became a frenzy of pure motion that refused to resolve into images, into sight. The throne room fell away, and the voices that had plagued me since I’d entered the palace surged forward. As I cowered behind the Fire, I realized that was exactly what they were: voices. A thousand voices, more, all screaming to be heard, all hammering at the shield of Fire, demanding my attention, howling for it. It created a maelstrom of vicious wind, a hurricane force that threatened to overwhelm the Fire, to overwhelm me. And I knew with sudden certainty that it would have crushed me if not for the Fire.
I strained against its force, held the Fire rigid and impenetrable, and after a while realized the Fire would hold.
I relaxed, eased back within the confines of the shield. It still took effort, but not as much as I’d thought. I couldn’t hold it forever, but for now. . . .
I drew a deep breath, let it out in a slow sigh.
Varis.
In the white of the shield, the voice was barely a whisper, a rasp of dead leaves blown against cobbles.
Varis.
I shifted toward the voice. The throne raged around me, the voices angry. Some spat curses, others howled, others whined. A group joined forces and surged against the Fire and I was forced to fight them back, tasting sweat against my lips, tasting blood. They retreated.
Varis.
I found the voice. A woman’s voice, deep and throaty. A voice I recognized. It was the woman who had sung earlier. Not the child, nor the old woman. And not an amalgamation of many voices. A distinct voice, soft and calm, but tinged with fear.
Varis, there isn’t much time.
I’m here, I thought, pausing at the edge of the Fire. The woman’s voice came from the far side, among the whorl of the other voices.
The Skewed Throne Page 29