Nothing popped out.
Another screech bellowed from above us. There was no time to waste. “I’ll go first.” I took a step and fell forward, pulled into the dreamscape by a spell we’d not seen or triggered.
Well, fuck.
21
I was still inside the Emperor’s Throne, only now I was in the dreamscape which did me zero good. “Listen, asshole, I’m trying to bring you the flail. Kind of hard to do when I’m in a dreamscape!”
The laughter that answered me at one point would have chilled me, would have scared me down to my bones. But I was beyond that now. All the fucks I had to give were gone, and I was done playing nice.
I thought back to the first time I’d met him in a dreamscape that he’d pulled me into. He’d tried to convince me he was not a monster, that he was a good ruler, that he thought highly of me. He’d given me his name then, and I used it now.
“Shax,” I called out, “you and I made a deal. I am trying to fulfill my end of it. Kinda hard to do that while sleeping.”
“Well, granddaughter . . .” He stepped out of the shadows of the room, both hands tucked behind his back. He was dressed in sand-colored clothes as he had been that first time, his dark brown eyes still the same, even his gray hair was braided off to one side. His skin was as tanned as before, even though I knew he’d not seen the sun for a very long time. “I thought perhaps you and I could talk in private.”
I drew in a deep breath and worked to calm the anger coursing through me. I’d grown and learned a great deal in the time between now and when I’d first seen him. I gave him a nod. “Fine.”
He smiled, the edges of his eyes crinkling up as if he were indeed that kindly old grandfather he’d wanted me to believe. The man my mother had thought loved her still.
“You brought dragons to my doorstep.”
“They want something of mine.” I smiled at him. “You know how it is with dragons, always hoarding jewels.”
His eyes flashed, but I held up a hand to stop him. “I know you told Ishtar you would kill me, but I don’t think you will.”
He stopped moving, and his eyes rested on me. “And why is that?”
It was my turn to smile. “Because you and I both know that if we team up, we have a better chance of stopping not only Ollianna, but Ishtar as well. She can’t gain the remaining stones. If she did that . . .” I shrugged. “Who’s to say she wouldn’t just stick you back in here, and use you as the scapegoat again?” I was guessing, but by the look on his face my guess hit the mark, or at least close enough. I went on. “I have an offer for you, one that I think you’ll have a hard time turning down.”
The Emperor snapped his fingers and two chairs, a small table between them, appeared. He motioned for me to sit as if we had all the time in the world, which we did not. Not by a long shot. I could feel the fear rolling off Lila and Maks. I didn’t know if they were afraid for me, or of the two dragons getting their heads through the upper trapdoor.
“The dragons will not be able to breach even the outer door. You were able to because the spells are tuned to you, thanks to your mother.” He sat and waved again for me to sit.
“My mother did this?”
“Not all of it, no. But she came for a visit before you were born, when she was pregnant, actually.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched his long legs out. “I don’t know what she thought to find, but when she tuned the spells to let her in, you were a part of her. Hence your ability to get through without any effort.”
As fascinating as I found the fact that my mother had made a trip all the way here when she was pregnant, that was not the important part of this discussion.
“Why do you think I won’t kill you?” He tipped his head to one side. “You have seen both sides of me.”
“Yes,” I had seen the split personality he carried with him, “even if that asshole side of you showed up right now, you wouldn’t kill me. Both sides are far too smart to throw away a useful tool.”
The air around him tightened as I thought it would. He shifted his balance forward and there was none of the kindly grandfather left. Instead I stared into the eyes of a power-hungry warlord who would kill any in his path. “You don’t think me capable?”
I waved a hand at him, trying to keep my own fear in check, seeing as my survival instinct finally came back to me, reminding me that while he’d not killed me, there had been a couple of times where it had been close. “I think you capable. I just don’t think you really want to. I think you always considered me as a potential ally.” I smiled at him. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that shit.”
“You think Ishtar is my enemy?”
“I think you hate her for helping them trap you in here. I think she believes your lies of love and wanting to be with her. I think I’m one of the few people to see you for who you really are.” I put both my hands on the table, palms down. “I think that neither Ishtar nor Ollianna would ever believe that I would join forces with you.”
“And you would trust me?”
I stared at him. “I think my mother trusted you.”
He blinked a few times. “You think she trusted me?”
I nodded. “Yes. I have her journal. You weren’t trying to kill her. Marsum neither. It was Ishtar. Ishtar knew my mother had the ability to stop her and free you. So she had her killed, and me taken so I could be raised under her hand. So that Ishtar could try and warp me, make me what she believed I should be. To turn on you.” I blew out a breath. “You are dangerous, and there may come a point where we will stand on either side of a battlefield, but . . . I don’t think that time is now.”
The Emperor’s eyes were unreadable, and his face was no better, but I thought that maybe, just maybe, there was a softening there. “I loved my daughter very much. Her mother was brought to me as a special gift, as a young girl.” His eyes went distant. “She was both a shifter and a Jinn, and she’d been . . . imported.” He grinned. “I didn’t love her, but she gave me my best child before she ran away to her homeland, claiming she never had wanted to leave.”
I had to work to keep the look off my face that said I’d seen how much he cared for at least one of his daughters, giving Ollianna the child she wanted. But I needed him to side with me. I needed him to believe me above anything else. Even if there was much of what he’d done that I thought was deplorable.
“And my mother loved me,” I said, keeping it simple, not engaging with the rest of his little monologue.
He looked away from me. “What do you have in mind? Ishtar will want proof of your death.”
I touched the flail on my back. “I will free you from this prison, you will take the flail, I will do what I can to convince it not to kill you when you use it. That will help prove to her I’m gone.”
The Emperor drummed his fingers on the table. “And you?”
“I think I know where one of the two remaining stones is, and I have a lead on the third.”
His hands gripped the table. “And?”
“We need them to stop Ishtar,” I said. “And maybe to stop the falak. I don’t know about that.”
He kept drumming his fingers on the table and I watched and waited. “You go for the two remaining stones, and I will prepare to face Ollianna. I will convince Ishtar that you are dead so you will have no one chasing you. I don’t know for how long, but . . . it will buy you time. Granddaughter,” he reached over and put a hand on mine, and it took all I had in me not to flinch, “you look very much like your mother.”
I nodded. “I’ve heard that a time or two.”
His hand tightened around mine. “Then it is agreed. We will work together to remove Ollianna and Ishtar. You will find the stones, and I—”
I slapped my hand on top of his. “I will hold the stones. They don’t drive me mad like they seem to do everyone else.” He tried to pull away and I held him tightly. “We have the best chance at surviving this together.”
“Agreed.” He gave a low growl. “I
will wake you, and you will free me.”
I didn’t let him go. “One more thing. Maybe two.”
His eyebrows rose. “Demanding much, yes?”
I smiled. “I have a novel idea. It’s about those two asshole dragons up there waiting for us.”
“You want me to kill them?”
I shook my head. “No, I want to kill them. But I need a little help.”
As I explained my idea to him, he began to laugh. “Oh, you are a devious thing. I see much of your mother in your mind as well as your looks. It will be done, but you will owe me something.”
I didn’t like that, but seeing as I wasn’t sure I’d survive all of this, I agreed.
“And the other?” he asked.
That one was simpler and owed to me. The Emperor grunted. “Fine, agreed. I will lift your curse once and for all. You shall have all the power and abilities that have been kept from you from here on out.”
And with the two deals struck, he released me from the dreamscape.
22
I snapped out of the dreamscape with a gasp and the sound of tiny rocks hitting all around my face, the smell of old dust and musty stale air filling my nose and Lila yelling in my ear while she all but pierced the edge of it with her tiny claws.
“I’m awake. I’m awake!” I yelled as I sat up. I pushed to my feet and looked down the long narrow walkway. “Follow me, we have a deal with the Emperor.”
That didn’t mean it was going to be easy to get to him. Just because he’d agreed not to kill us didn’t mean the prison made to hold him wouldn’t try.
I took the torch in one hand, and Maks’s hand in the other. “Stick close.”
“Wasn’t planning on leaving you,” he said. “Ever.”
“Thought maybe you’d want to go chat with Trick and Corvalis,” I said, a half-grin on my lips. Lila was going to shit herself when she saw what the Emperor had agreed to do. Temporary, sure, but it was going to be worth the cost he’d asked of me. Whatever and whenever that would be.
Maks tightened his hand over mine. “We’ve been through worse.”
“Don’t get sappy on me, you two,” Lila grumbled.
“Don’t worry, we’re going to handle Trick and your asshole father,” I said.
She leaned out from her perch on my shoulder, so she could look me in the eye. “How is that going to happen? Is the Emperor going to kill them?”
I shook my head. “Just you wait and see, Lila. Just you wait and see.”
At the far end of the narrow hallway, I pushed the next door open. We worked our way through the underground building, going deeper and deeper, until there was no sound but our breathing, and there was no feeling of the world at all, as if we’d stepped into a new realm, not unlike the dreamscape.
We set off a few more traps, avoided them all, but I was moving on some sort of weird autopilot I couldn’t escape. The closer we got to the Emperor’s prison, the faster I went until I was running, flat out, my hands working the traps with magic I didn’t understand.
Lila and Maks were shouting, their voices distant, as they tried to slow me down. As they tried to keep me safe.
The thing was, ahead of me was a ghostly image that I couldn’t unsee. My mother, heavily pregnant and leading the way through the maze of the prison, showing me where I needed to be, what traps to set, how to avoid others.
A set of stairs straight down into the earth opened ahead of me, and I flexed my hand, palm up, and wiggled my fingers, drawing the magic to me, seeing it for Merlin’s work like so many of the traps had been, and dispersing it as if it were nothing but spiderwebs on the wind.
The stairs beckoned and I was moving down them, lighting the way with my own magic, the power of it coursing through me hot and ready to be used. This was what my curse had held from me.
This is what Ishtar had kept me from.
“She was the one to curse my mother,” I whispered, stopping partway down the stairs. I looked back at Maks who was right behind me. “Ishtar was the one to curse my mother, not the Jinn, wasn’t she?”
He closed his eyes and then slowly nodded. “Yes and no. She made the Jinn curse her, forcing their hands. It’s why it didn’t all come off you, even when Marsum removed the curse from you; some of it was her magic holding you back. Fuck, it would have been nice to know this!” He growled and shook his head, his frustration written all over his face. I took his hand again, the urgency to hurry leaving me.
The stone walls were tight around us, but the air was cool and moved as if a breeze blew through from some unknown place deep in the belly of the world.
I drew in a breath, but found nothing nasty, no scent of death or blood, just . . . nothing.
“You really going to do this?” Lila asked as if I could change my mind now.
“Yeah. It will be okay, Lila.” I hoped anyway. I was gambling all our lives on an agreement with someone who had a split personality.
Okay, so putting it in those terms it didn’t sound like such a good idea.
The bottom of the stairs spread out, leading from the narrow hall to a room that was sunken down a solid foot below the rim of the room. Like an indoor pool, that depression was filled with water. Completely unmoving black water that gave off no reflection.
I grimaced, thinking about just how we—strike that, I—was going to get the Emperor out of that unmoving blackness.
“You think he’s under there?” Lila leaned forward. “It doesn’t look or smell like water.”
“It’s a blanket of magic made with the stones.” Maks reached out and pulled her back. “Don’t touch it. Trust me on this. And don’t swing the flail, just lower it to the surface.”
I reached for the flail and pulled it from my back, glad that I didn’t have to go for a swim in that black water. The handle of the flail was warm and shivered against my palm. “We can do this,” I said. Speaking to a weapon, I really had cracked under the pressure.
I hope you are right, otherwise this could truly be goodbye.
There was no turning back, though. The deals had been struck, and I would hold to my word. “Just in case, thanks. And try not to kill him,” I whispered. Just stick to the plan, Marsum. That was all I could think. He answered as though he could read my mind, but no doubt was just remembering.
It’s not a great plan. You know that?
I shrugged. Great or not, it was literally all I had.
I held the flail out over the black reflective and oh-so-still liquid, then slowly lowered it until I was dipping the twin spiked balls into the inky darkness.
“Suck down the magic,” I said. “Free the Emperor.” And in my heart, I was already apologizing to the weapon, to Marsum, for giving it up. Because if I was wrong, we were all so very screwed.
My heart hammered like crazy, and the smell of my own fear mingled with Maks’s and Lila’s, clogging my throat. If I was wrong, we were all dead, and we all knew it.
The black mirror shimmered as the spikes slid through it, and then a groan rumbled through the mirror, and the air, deepening in sound, seemed to tighten around the flail and the black mirror suddenly let out a shriek of protest. Lines shot out in every direction from where the flail touched, like a massive spiderweb. The flail was yanked from me by an unseen force and pulled to the center of the room, the center of the black mirror. Then it began to sink. I held up a hand, almost reaching for it, because the weapon was mine.
I bit my lower lip, feeling stupidly . . . at a loss. Like a part of me was sinking into the mirror.
The cracks deepened as the last of the flail disappeared and a low laugh began to rumble through the space.
I stepped in front of Maks.
I suddenly wasn’t so sure that the Emperor would hold to his word, despite my having made the deal with him in good faith. “Be ready to run,” I whispered.
Maks sounded like I was strangling him. “What?”
I flashed him a grimace. “Just in case?”
He closed his eyes. “You�
�re lucky I trust you.”
“Samesies,” Lila whispered.
My eyes were drawn back to the black mirror as the cracks deepened and flowed until there was no part that wasn’t split into slivers. The laughter rose in volume and the shards began to tremble.
“Get down!” I yelled, and we flattened ourselves to the ground as the mirror exploded upward. Lila dropped and I shifted to four legs, flattening my belly to the ground. Eyes closed, I could only hope Maks had done the same.
The sound of tinkling glass as it fell to the ground twisted my head around. I pushed quickly to my feet, and then stepped through the doorway in my mind back to two legs. Lila flew to my shoulder and Maks stood, though he was favoring one leg.
A quick look showed a shard of black mirror sticking out of his thigh. I put a hand around it, without thinking, pulled it out and covered the wound with my palm. That other doorway in my mind, the one that held my magic, was gone.
The magic was just there, all around me.
The curse was truly lifted.
Yet, when I’d shifted, I’d been a house cat, not the black jungle cat.
I took my hand from his leg, smeared a finger over the blood still there, but there was no wound. I’d healed it with barely a thought.
Maks pulled my hand to his lips and kissed the back of it.
Lila curled her tail around my neck as if she were going to strangle me. I turned slowly, already knowing what I’d see.
The Emperor, my grandfather, stood on a dais that slowly rose out of the pit that the black mirror had covered. Those same sandy-colored clothes, deep tan across his skin, brown eyes and white hair in a braid, as if he’d stepped out of the dreamscape and into reality. Which I supposed he had.
“Granddaughter. You held to your word.”
“Shax, never doubt my fucking word. When I give it, I hold true.”
He startled as if he’d forgotten that he’d given me his true name. If nothing else, he seemed more stable when I used it, and for that reason I would continue to do so. Even if he didn’t want people knowing.
Emperor’s Throne: Desert Cursed Series, Book 6 Page 16