slowly.
Silar continued, “He wanted to cause Artemi the greatest pain imaginable, and so he told you lies about her relationship to you – lies to make you distrust her and hurt her.”
Morghiad’s head turned toward the water, and he rose to stand, but his father caught his arm. “The general is the liar! They killed the woman you called mother!”
The boy king shook his head. “They are the ones who do not want me to kill an innocent man, and that man does not deserve to lose his mother. No one deserves that.” With
that Morghiad shrugged himself free, pulled off his coat and made a start on removing his boots.
“You were not always Morghiad Shantar!” the Kusuru leader began. And that was enough for Silar. He launched himself through the air, and was pleasantly surprised to see one of Selieni’s fireballs accompanying him as he rushed toward the target. The other assassins would be no help here, but he knew that they would not stand in his way. Silar had an army of chaos at his back, and that had to be enough to defeat this creature.
As the water swirled through his clothing and over his skin, Morghiad realised that he had become insensitive to its low temperature. It was nothing in comparison to the ice of travelling through a fold in space. That was a coldness beyond anything. His strokes through the water were slowing, becoming harder to complete. He was tiring already, and he needed air. His
father had frequently said that breathholding was an unnecessary skill to master in the short time they had available, but blazes, did he need it now!
Morghiad kicked hard to propel himself toward the cistern’s ceiling, ever hopeful of finding the smallest pocket of air. He located one, inhaled its entirety, and then sank back into the water once more. He took his next few strokes more slowly, and used the columns as launchers whenever he passed one. It was not long before he needed to breathe again. He swam to the top and searched for air, but could
not find any. His lungs hurt, but the only way now was forward. He had asked his father to leave her alive, and yet the request had been utterly ignored. This woman should not die; he knew that as surely as he knew he did not like swimming.
Calm. He had to remain calm. His muscles burned with a sensation that was almost warm, and he swam on through the murk. This distance was his own, blasted fault! It was some time before he re-located the woman he had quenched and bound. Disembodied segments of her hair swirled throughout the nearby water,
looking like short bursts of flame that caught and ignited any available light. They had been cut from her head somehow, but there was no time to ponder that sequence of events. He allowed himself to plummet to the bottom beside her body, and extracted the key to her bonds from his pocket. It was a fiddly thing to make the mechanism work underwater, but eventually he managed it. The arms were free. Lady D’Avrohan still did not move.
Morghiad swam down to her feet and eventually succeeded in releasing them, but their owner did not
respond to that either. He checked her stream amidst the others, and it was still there, nestled amongst the web of Blaze that marked out all of the wielders in the world. It always surprised him that a quenched woman would still be marked out in this vision, as if the removal of her power was a dam at the end of the river rather than a stopper at its source.
He took her in one arm and began to swim once more. Blazes, but this was just like that disaster of a mine! Only with less air to breathe! Every muscle and sinew in his body was now screaming for something that
was not water to inhale. He searched desperately for more bubbles that might have become trapped at the ceiling, but could not see any. His victim was slowing him down. Morghiad now had a choice: temporarily leave her to find the air he needed, or risk passing out on the way back. He dragged her upward and pulled the stray fibres of hair away so that he could see her face. There was just enough light seeping from the walls to illuminate her skin, and she did not look well at all.
She could not be left behind; Morghiad propelled himself through the water with greater vigour, and greater
desperation. The end was growing closer now. He could almost see the light of the entrance room, but he could feel himself becoming weaker. His kicks were less effective, and his vision was darkening. He began counting in his mind. One, two, three, four– kick – five, six, seven, eight– kick. The rhythm kept him aware, and the slowness of it kept his failing limbs from giving out altogether. And then, like the opening of heavy clouds to release golden rays of light, the illumination of the exit swallowed them both in its glowing embrace. Morghiad thrust himself into the atmosphere, and
took the deepest breath of it he could manage. It made him dizzy with new energy, but strong enough to step forward. Before he knew what was happening, hands were hauling him out of the cistern and carrying him to the hard ground beyond. He could dimly see that his mistress had been dragged to the other side of the room, but he could not hear her fighting for her breath as he was.
His father no longer appeared to be present, and the two men who wore the red scarf of The Dedicated seemed to be crouching fearfully against a wall. Morghiad was one of them now; they
had to accept him. He shifted onto his side and finally gained control of his lungs. A woman with sun hair and a feline smile leaned in to check over him. “Selieni,” he wheezed, “I tied up Toryn D’Avrohan. You’d better send someone to find him.”
She blinked in surprise, and then turned to call for the general.
Lord Forllan looked really quite exhausted by the day’s trials, and his shirt had been slashed in several places. “You did WHAT?”
These people seemed to have very odd priorities. Their youngest kahr had been tortured at his hands and was
lucky not to have been murdered, he had admitted that he had wanted the general dead, had very nearly killed a woman whom he believed was his mother, but somehow tying up her father was a crime worthy of greater surprise and anger. Morghiad tried to calm the blond man. “I didn’t hurt him. He’s just tied up. You’ll find him in an empty guest room near Seffe’s.”
The general shook his head. “You can afford to make many enemies here and get away with it, but Toryn is not one of them. Blazes, this is bad.” He turned to Captain Njeri. “Rahake, get your men and women to
find him, and most importantly, make sure that he does not come near Morghiad’s cell. In fact, don’t even tell him where to find it. And do the same for The Daisain.”
Imprisonment. He ought to have expected as much. He watched quietly as the captain and a large cohort of soldiers disappeared into the blue gloom.
“Yes, you’re going into a cell for this. Whether you thought you had been wronged or not, you have done some very... damaging things, which are most definitely crimes. Besides, you’ll have so many people baying for
your blood it’s probably the safest place for you.”
Morghiad craned his neck to see Lady D’Avrohan. She seemed to be moving a little now. He knew then, right to the very depths of his soul, that she could not possibly be his mother. But the realisation only served to make him even more confused. “Will you tell her I am sorry?”
General Forllan nodded. “I will.” And with that he ordered two of the burliest guards to haul Morghiad into the darkest depths of the palace, and the blue glow of the white walls soon faded into blackness once more.
“I am fine!” Artemi shouted at the fourteenth man to minister to her non-existent injuries. “Get off!” She thrust herself from the ground and reached to grab for her hair to pull across her shoulders, but found it sadly absent. The back of her neck was cold. “Follocks!” It would take an age to grow back! Blazes, how easy it was to
be angry at The Daisain in his absence, and terrified of him in his presence. Burn him! And blast him for his pronouncement! Was a woman to be hailed as a warrior when she was unable to bed a man, and yet deemed a failure once she married? She had just become a little tamed, that was all. Easily fixable!
Someone had dried
her clothing upon her body already, which was something of a relief. But other worries soon surfaced in her thoughts. “Where is Kalad?”
A row of blank and answerless faces greeted her question. Beetan was
lingering nearest to her. He was usually the sort of man who appeared laid-back in the toughest of situations, but for once he appeared rather shaken. Jarynd was staring at the floor, and Demeta was muttering to herself with soundless movements of her lips.
“Is my son alright?”
Demeta’s soundless speaking broke, and she formed a weak smile. “He left when the fight started. I am sure he is fine. But that man...”
“The Daisain is now imprisoned,” Silar interjected. “He will be locked in a room where he cannot see anyone and they cannot see him. I
know how his mind works, and if he sees a way to manipulate someone using suggestion with a single word, he will be sprung from his prison in a second. But complete isolation, total quenching and no communication should do well to keep him powerless.”
“But he could wield!” Demeta whined. “What is he?”
Artemi sighed. “Not all men and women are easy to define as such.” And The Daisain had been something more than a combination of the two. “You think he is like you, Si?”
The general pulled a facial expression that could only indicate
discomfort. “I am most definitely a man, thank you. But his prediction skills are infinitely more developed, Temi. He can see far more than I can about the world.”
“Then why did he walk into this if he could see that he would be captured”
“Well, either he did see it and his ultimate plan is something entirely different... or he has the same weakness I have. He cannot predict Morghiad, and that uncertainty blurs many things around it. Other than that, it was luck – luck that Morghiad chose to side with us.”
Artemi very nearly laughed. “That was not luck, general. My husband always chooses to do what he thinks is right. Now, I’ll assume you have locked him up, and I know that Tal and Med are safe. But where is my youngest son?”
Silar’s forehead creased with worry. “You’ll find him in an alleyway behind the city’s forges.”
“Is he hurt?”
The general compressed his lips. “Not physically. You’d better go to him.”
She hesitated no further, and raced upon weary legs skywards and
into the starry evening that coated the castle gardens. And as she pelted through these dark green oases she began to recall the things she had seen as the waters of the cistern had risen about her eyes. At first she had tried to limit her thoughts to those of calm rivers and summer skies, but slowly her memories of the Era of Floods had begun to invade. Those had been strange years, when moving from one place to another invariably involved a great deal of swimming, or when a river could swell overnight and cause a house’s occupants to awake entirely submerged. She recalled the haze of
bodies that she had so often seen floating across the countries she had loved. She remembered watching as thousands of irreplaceable books and ancient objects of incalculable value were washed to oblivion. And she recollected the way she had very nearly embraced life as a fish. Strange as it seemed, she had grown to enjoy a life of quiet beneath the water, and living with the floods had required a great deal of waiting. A night spent meditating beneath the surface had become a great deal more pleasurable than a fully aware day above it.
But that time was over, and
slipping into semi-consciousness in order to preserve her life without air had not been easy this time. Her heart had raced with anxiety over her family, and her body had been weakened by the damage wrought upon it through her near-execution. Artemi had been lucky to survive, and was grateful to whoever had saved her at precisely the right moment.
She slowed her pace once she reached the crimson smoulder of the forges. Their furnaces burned like a row of fierce, red eyes, locked within the white and polished skulls of the city’s buildings. All around was the
sharp tang of freshly quenched steel and charcoal smoke, and the sounds of hammer against anvil ricocheted between the walls. Kalad had to be somewhere beyond.
She trotted into the darkest and narrowest street she could find, and soon discovered that it narrowed further as the crystal flares of Cruxwrought walls drew closer together. A dark figure was silhouetted at the end; Artemi ran to him. “Kal...” She broke off as she noticed the form before him. The dim pins of light that reached through the alley were enough to pick out some soft, grey fur that wavered
gently in the breeze.
“He killed my wolf,” her son whispered. The pain in his voice was clear. “He killed Danner.”
Not for the first time that day, Artemi felt her heart fray at the edges. She embraced her son as tightly as she was able, a tricky feat given that he now towered above her. “He didn’t know, Kal. He was manipulated in a terrible way.” She tried very hard not to cry. Danner had long been her wolf in the years before.
“You said he was good. My entire life, you have told me how perfect my father was – how just and
heroic and... you made him something I could never be! But he is... he’s...” The kahr made a noise of pure disgust.
“This life has been hard for him. He does not have his memories.”
Kalad pushed her away. “Really? Or perhaps he enjoyed stabbing me in the leg because he knows I am a disappointment! He did not choose Tallyn or Med. He planned this. It was not chance. He chose me to die.”
How was she ever to set this right? Had she done the wrong thing, told the wrong stories to him? She had only wanted to inspire her son. “Your
father loves you. He was the first to hold you when I was too afraid, and he used to grin with such pride each time he looked at you. He just... he has been forcibly made to think otherwise. He was used to hurt us. But he knows now. He will pay his price and set things right. You’ll see. We all do the wrong thing sometimes, but what is more important is how we fix it.”
“I don’t see him bringing Danner back to life.”
“Danner will be reborn.”
“He couldn’t have known that.”
“No, but we do. It’s not the end.”
Kalad shook his head and lifted the cold, hard body of the wolf in his arms. “You think too well of my father.” And with that he strode back into the night.
Some time passed before she was able to summon the strength and will to walk back to the palace once more. Perhaps her son had been correct. Perhaps she had thought too highly of Morghiad to consider the slightest possibility that someone else would succeed in driving him to do hurtful things. All of this was her fault: her fault for her naivety, and her fault for failing The Daisain. Even if her
master was a morally corrupt and perverse individual, he was still her master.
After a battling through a fractured sleep and a nauseous mix of emotions that ranged from relief to fury, Artemi dressed herself in something that was decidedly unassassin-like, and looked at the reflection that met her in the mirror. As usual, she encountered a face that displeased her utterly: a face that seemed really quite dissatisfied with the world. There was not very much that was attractive about it or proportioned in quite the right way, but it was what
she had lived with for millennia. It had remained unchanged from one day to the next, quite unlike her hair. Longer strands now dangled limply at the front, while the back had been chopped at an odd angle by The Daisain’s single swipe.
She grabbed her nearest knife and cut at the longer strands. There was no avoiding the fact that she would look ridiculous no matter what she did, but she could at least make it all the same length. Once finished with her styling, Artemi made her way toward the king’s offices. The soldiers she passed and the skies she strode through drifted by like distant dreams. She did not feel as if she was connected to much at all, let alone the floors she appeared to walk upon.
Tallyn, Medea and Silar were already there, and had c
learly stopped speaking the moment she strode in. There were others present in the room also: Lord Righteous Cayvil, Caala and their infant. Quite unsurprisingly, the child lay in Caala’s arms rather than its father’s. He did not seem the sort of man to hold a baby, even his own. Blazes, but that thought reminded her again of Morghiad! He had made an excellent father in the short time that he was one; she was sure she had not deluded herself about that.
“I assume that you have come to a decision on what to do with him.” From their grey faces, Artemi had the distinct feeling that she would not like the pronouncement.
Lord Cayvil nodded. “He has already been sentenced once for his actions against you, although... there are allowances to be made for the fact that you are no longer queen and he is no longer... whom he once was. And we must not forget how he harmed your son, even if he was persuaded by influential persons. I have yet to clear
this with the councils but, following discussion with the king and LordGeneral Forllan, I think a period of banishment is most likely.”
Banishment? “How long?”
“Three years is the minimum.”
The Fireblade Array: 4-Book Bundle Page 143