by Frank Morin
“I swear it will be done,” Harley promised.
“Do so, or remove his head and bring it to me.”
Harley nodded and made more of a bow than a curtsy.
Only then did Queen Dreokt look at Shona. “You have much to learn, child. Harley will serve as your guide as much as you will serve as hers. Attend her words carefully and she can help accelerate your learning.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” Shona wasn’t sure what else to say, wasn’t sure what type of learning the queen intended.
Harley considered Shona more closely, pursing her lips in thought. “It’s been a long time since I took an apprentice under my wing. What is your tertiary, girl?”
“I don’t have one yet,” Shona admitted, dropping her gaze in embarrassment.
Harley barked a laugh and turned an incredulous look on the queen. “This is what you consider a promising student?”
“She has the potential, if prepared properly,” Queen Dreokt said simply, and her words sparked a ray of new hope in Shona’s heart. Could she really gain an tertiary affinity?
“We shall see. What do you call yourself, girl?”
“I am Shona, daughter of High Lord Dougal,” Shona declared, feeling a bit more confident.
“Well, we’ll see if we can make something useful out of you. Come on, then.”
The ground rumbled beneath their feet and Shona tensed. A pair of narrow earthen seats rose from the stones. They were strikingly similar to the unique chair Evander liked to use.
Queen Dreokt shook her head slowly. “Still afraid of heights?”
Harley scowled. “I prefer the stability of earth, that’s all.”
“You and your soft ride,” the queen chided gently, a little smile on her lips. “Fine. Be off with you.”
Harley swung a leg over one narrow seat, straddling it, and leaned back against the backrest, propped her feet onto the stirrups, and grasped the handles that extended out in front, then gestured Shona to do the same. The strange seat looked uncomfortable and Shona resigned herself to a difficult journey. She was surprised to find the position actually felt remarkably good.
The two seats accelerated across the solid stone of the quarry, straight toward the northern cliff. Without slowing, they angled back sharply and ascended. Shona grinned at the wonder of it. These powerful, ancient Petralists might be deadly dangerous, but they weren’t boring.
She wasn’t sure what that cryptic conversation between Dreokt and Harley meant, but she hoped it suggested they planned to teach her more of the ancient secrets, and perhaps help her unlock a coveted tertiary affinity.
If they did, Shona would owe allegiance out of loyalty and gratitude more than fear. Did the queen understand how much more powerfully she’d own Shona at that point?
Was she willing to commit so wholeheartedly to the queen’s service?
Did she have a choice?
The queen called after them. “Today our home lies in ruin. They call the place the Carraig now.”
Shona’s smile evaporated and she barely stifled a gasp. Her hands shook on the handles as she realized what Harley intended. The magnitude of the looming confrontation paralyzed Shona with terror.
She meant to challenge Evander.
30
When the Solution Might Just Be Worse Than the Problem
Verena still slept.
Connor went straight to her room when they reached Altkalen after a quick flight up from the border on the courier windrider. She looked unchanged, but just sitting beside her and holding her hand cheered him. He told her about everything he had experienced with Ivor and Student Eighteen in the past days.
He spoke freely of how much Aifric’s death impacted him, of his feelings of sorrow, and guilt that he couldn’t save her. Worse, he had invited her to join them, so her death was at least partially his fault. Speaking of it to the silent, unmoving Verena still helped a lot. As he related the misadventure, he realized it was a miracle that any of them had survived. He still didn’t remember the last bit of what the queen had said to him, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that he had no idea how to deal with her. The challenge seemed impossible.
After double-checking that they were really alone and no one was eavesdropping, Connor told her about the struggles he was having with porphyry. He wished she could hear and understand him. One smile from her, one word of love and encouragement would strengthen him more than anything else he could imagine. When he related Tresta’s words, he paused to consider them again.
She was right. She had to be. If he admitted there was nothing he could do, it was only a matter of time before he crawled back to Craigroy. He’d have no other option than to lick the man’s feet, swear fealty to a life of slavery, and seal his fate.
Connor took Verena’s warm little hand in both of his and made his choice.
“Verena, I swear on my love for you that I will stay strong. I will not give in, no matter how much it hurts. I will find a way to overcome this thing.” He paused for a moment, simply looking at her, wishing for the millionth time that her eyes would flutter open and she would give him that special smile she reserved for him alone.
“If this addiction kills me, know that I refused to give in. If I surrender to it, I could hurt you, and I refuse to do that. Verena, know that . . .” his voice trailed off. He could not bring himself to speak aloud the fear that he would never get to speak with her again.
Instead, he reached for his little piece of chert. Very little remained, but hopefully it would be enough. Connor took a deep, slow breath, focusing on the little stone. Thankfully, the affinity came quickly.
He focused on Verena. He wanted desperately to feel some confirmation from her that that she was in there, just waiting to awaken. He paused for a moment, though, afraid that he mind find her an empty shell, stripped of her mind by the accident the way Alyth was stripped away by the queen’s brutal mind-wiping.
“Stop being a grout-for-brains,” he chided himself. He couldn’t let fear control him. He had to know.
As he gazed at Verena’s peacefully slumbering face, his skin did not turn warm or cool, and he felt no distant whispers suggesting she was thinking. Fighting back the rising worry, Connor again took her hand and embraced chert, trying to reach that state of mental linking he had with Student Eighteen.
For a long moment, he felt nothing while his fears grew and tears threatened to flow freely.
There! He felt something.
Connor scooted closer, leaning over the bed to press his face to Verena’s hand as he sought for that distant whisper. Hope sang in his heart and he found it hard to breath as he desperately tried to connect with Verena’s mind.
A breathless moment later, he felt it again. Distant and weak, more an echo of a whisper than a real sound. Still, it was something!
Focusing on that weak, distant whisper, Connor tapped sandstone. Verena, if you can hear me, know that I love you. I’m here, and I know you can wake up. Please, Verena. Come back.
As he cast the words across the feeble link to Verena, he poured a flood of healing power down the conduit. He wasn’t sure exactly how he did it, or why he even attempted such a thing, but it felt like somehow he was sending healing directly into her thoughts.
His pendant was looking decidedly worn. Maybe he should save its unrivaled power for the looming battles with the queen and her armies. No, Connor would face a thousand battles with no sandstone if by using it he could help Verena.
He felt no response from her, and that tenuous connection to her distant thoughts faded a moment later. As Connor sat back and released her hand, he couldn’t help grinning with foolish, exultant joy. He’d felt something. She was in there, still alive, still recovering. She would wake up. He had to believe that, and he hoped that his visit had somehow helped.
Eventually he stood, trying to fix every aspect of that moment in his mind. He would use that image as a shield against the difficult times that would surely come.
But if he hoped to win against the insidious addiction of porphyry, he needed more than that. So he went looking for Kilian.
It took a while, but he finally tracked Kilian down in a huge, comfortably appointed apartment high up one of the citadel’s many towers. A servant ushered him into the large sitting room, with panoramic views across the citadel and out over the river and the city beyond. Kilian sat sprawled in an overstuffed chair, reading a long scroll. He gestured Connor to sit and ordered some drinks and food. Then he rolled the scroll with an abrupt flip of his wrist and gave Connor a long, hard look.
“You really are an idiotic child.”
He spoke the sentence as a simple statement of fact. The declaration stung Connor deeply. He wanted to argue, wanted to share all the justifications for the risks they took, but he suspected Kilian had already debriefed Ivor.
“Is Ivor a prisoner again?”
“He should be. He acted as foolishly as you, but his ideas about spreading the revolution in Obrion are right on the mark. I think he learned an important lesson, and we need him.”
He did not ask if Connor had learned a similar lesson, or if he ever would, but the question hung in the air between them.
“I need help,” Connor said. Admitting that out loud to Kilian was extremely hard, but he was immediately grateful that he had.
“Perhaps there might be hope for you yet.”
Connor chuckled. “That’s just what your mother said.”
Kilian shook his head in disbelief. “You have no comprehension even after what you saw of her how miraculous it is that she let you go.”
“I know. I think she hit me pretty hard because I don’t really remember what she said before she left. Something about collecting us later.”
“You’re lucky she’s so overconfident. When Student Eighteen gets her chert affinity stabilized, I plan to have her scan you thoroughly.”
That surprised Connor. “She didn’t say she was having problems with chert.”
“She didn’t want to worry you. Besides, she’s not thinking as clearly as she usually does. Aifric’s death has destabilized the delicate balance she maintained in that unique mind of hers. I don’t think she understood how extensive the trauma to the rest of her was until she arrived here.”
“Will she be all right?” Connor asked, full of new worry. The thought that she might suffer lingering problems added another layer to the guilt he was already struggling with.
“I hope so. She’s the only one who can scan your mind. It’s possible my mother might have tampered with you.”
Connor had not considered such a horrible possibility. “Could she do that?”
“You saw her wipe minds. That’s a very heavy-handed technique, but heavy-handed has always been her default approach to problems. From all the reports I received, she’s only gotten worse. So I’m hopeful she actually left your mind intact. Otherwise I would have to take steps to protect us against you.”
That did not sound good. He spoke matter-of-factly and Connor did not doubt that if he decided that Connor was more of a threat than an ally, he would not hesitate to strike him down.
Some days he wished for simpler friends.
Kilian added in a grave tone, “But if you remember anything else, anything at all, about your interaction with her, you must tell me immediately. Dealing with my mother is deadly. We cannot hold secrets from each other.”
He did not activate fire or water in his eyes, but his gaze still seemed to burn. Connor quickly nodded agreement, but was tempted to ask Kilian to share all of his other secrets, just to start out even. That might take a month though, and Connor doubted they had that much time or that Kilian would share so much so quickly. Connor had learned enough from Kilian to know that he shared what he felt they needed to know, and no more.
He toyed with the idea of tapping chert, but decided trying to pry into Kilian’s mind would be singularly stupid, even for him.
“Did Ivor tell you about Craigroy and the porphyry?” Connor asked instead.
Kilian nodded. “He saved your life. Craigroy is a devious man, the head of High Lord Dougal’s spy network. We’ll have to deal with him eventually.”
“Next time I’ll be better prepared,” Connor promised. When Kilian raised his eyebrow in question, Connor told him what Tresta had said and the oath he swore to Verena.
“That’s a good start,” Kilian acknowledged. “Taking responsibility for your condition is an important step, but I’ve found that more active measures are sometimes required.”
“Like killing Craigroy?”
“Eventually.”
It pained Connor to admit he couldn’t beat this on his own, but the risks were too great not to. “Is there something else we can do? I need help.”
Kilian gave Connor an encouraging smile. “I’m glad you asked. Knowing you have support will help bolster your courage. And yes, I know a way to help you deal with those addiction cravings when they grow severe. I think your need outweighs the very real risks.”
Kilian loved talking about risks, and those conversations always ended up proving most interesting.
“I’m willing to try just about anything,” Connor admitted. He wished the solution included throwing Mattias out windows. He would happily make that part of his daily routine.
Kilian smiled that roguish smile of his and rose. “Come with me then. I’m going to teach you how to use diorite.”
31
Swallow the Snake
Kilian led Connor on a fracked basalt run southwest. Snow lay heavy on the land there, masking the unstable landscape with a docile, pretty blanket. Kilian, Anton, Saskia, had led a team of powerful Petralists to carefully soothe the elements and direct their energies away from the city, but Connor wondered if that would really work.
Kilian finally stopped in an area that did not look so calm. A bowl-shaped depression, about a hundred yards across, had sunk into the plain. The ground there was a patchwork of snowdrifts and open fissure oozing slow streams of molten lava. The scent of superheated rocks hung heavy in the air, along with whiffs of the rotten-egg stench of sulfur. Luckily the wind was blowing most of the stench away to the south.
“Do you think it’s wise to train with diorite in an area like this?” Connor asked.
“This is the perfect place. You can’t hurt anything here, and the subterranean vent that runs under this area needs to be collapsed anyway.”
“Oh. In that case, I hope you brought a lot of diorite.”
“First, you need to understand the danger. Most Petralists who’ve tried to establish affinity with diorite ended up blowing themselves to pieces.”
Connor had felt the explosive, lightning-like power of diorite when he had wielded his father’s hammer. Diorite represented a unique and terrifying danger, so naturally he couldn’t wait to give it a try.
“That’s where blind coal comes in, right?” Connor asked.
Kilian nodded and extracted a worn, ornate little box out of his jacket pocket. The ebony coloring seemed faded from years of use. The brightly painted scene on the lid looked like a cityscape, but time had worn it down to little more than a shadowy hint of its previous luster.
Kilian opened the box and extracted a couple pieces of blind coal. Connor recognized the metallic-looking rock. Kilian handed him a piece, and Connor ran his hands over its smooth, slippery surface. It did not dirty his fingers, and its near-metallic sheen had a brownish tint.
“Blind coal is the key. We don’t have a lot of it, and it expires very quickly. Keep that in mind when you use it. Blind coal and diorite are a combination reserved only for desperate situations.”
Connor was liking the lesson more and more already. Verena had told him of the time Kilian had used that deadly combination in his fight against the rampagers, and he wished that he had seen that. She had also used it to plunge herself and Hamish right through a giant boulder falling on them from when Anton brought down that mountain. He still did not understand how they somehow
slipped right through the boulder, but she had shared her terror of that moment and how the blind coal had nearly run out before they had escaped the far side.
“This is a sedimentary stone, so establishing affinity is done by simply holding it,” Kilian said.
Connor focused on the stone, savoring its slippery feel, and willing a connection. Limestone had given him some trouble, but he’d managed chert pretty well. He hoped that meant that now that he was ascended it would prove even easier to establish new affinities.
It took a few minutes of silent concentration but suddenly he felt it. A prickling feeling crawled up his skin, almost as if an invisible snake was slithering just above the hairs of his skin, close enough that he could feel something, but not quite touching.
He loved it.
“I feel it!”
Connor willed the feeling to spread, and it slithered up his arms and spread across his torso. He grinned.
Instead of answering, Kilian lunged and threw a fast punch at Connor’s face. The blow caught Connor completely by surprise, but instead of plastering his nose to his cheekbone, Kilian’s fist somehow missed. It slipped close by, sliding along the back of that invisible snake wrapping Connor in its protective coils.
Connor laughed. “That’s amazing.”
Kilian grinned but said, “Release it, or you’ll burn through that entire stone before we get to practice with diorite.”
Reluctantly, Connor broke the connection and let the invisible snake fade away. He wondered if Shona was afraid of snakes. A lot of girls were. If only he could wrap her in those invisible, slithering coils. He’d love to hear her shriek.
In that brief moment of use, the little stone in his hand had shrunk by almost a third. He knew that blind coal exhausted itself quickly, but that still surprised him. “I see what you mean. You’d have to carry a piece as big as a house on your back to use it much in battle.”
“Use your other stones in battle. This stone you use only at the uttermost need.”