Sworn to Sovereignty

by Terah Edun

  She was beginning to wonder if the emperor intended for them to starve to death in this pit. She wondered if the others were languishing in a similar horror of a prison or worse.

  Meres did say theirs is called hell, she thought. I just hope we all live to see the outside of these pits.

  A few hours later Ciardis was fed up. Of starving and wasting away. They needed a plan.

  “How do we get out of here?” Ciardis said flatly. Her tone brooked no argument. It said they had better have a plan, because she was not about to watch her brother die in a pit in the darkness.

  28

  The sound of a rock scraping against metal was her answer.

  Ciardis looked up at the hole in the ceiling quickly and saw that it was as she suspected. Someone was here to set them free.

  Or murder us, she thought.

  As the grate moved away and a thick rope fell into the bottom of the pit with a thump, she had hope.

  Hope that soon died as Seven poked his head into the circle of light and said, “Grab on, Ciardis Weathervane. Someone desperately wants to see you.”

  Ciardis backed away from the rope with a few steps and called up with a shout, “I’m not going anywhere with you Seven. How do I know I’ll be alive the second I go through that hole?”

  Seven snickered. “If I had permission to kill you, trust me, Weathervane, you’d already be dead. Alas I do not.”

  Ciardis smiled. “Glad to know someone is looking out for me.”

  She said it in jest, but Seven responded with petulance. “Not to worry, the emperor just wants to kill you himself.”

  Ciardis flinched.

  “Now grab the rope, little girl,” said Seven as he waved a glass bottle down into the hole. “Or I will throw this canister filled with gas and all of you will be dead within minutes.”

  Vana called forth sarcastically from whatever spot she’d elected to sit on next to the wall, “That rather defeats your threat, little one. You need the Weathervane alive, your emperor demands it. So you can’t toss in that bit of poison at all.”

  Seven hissed in anger.

  Then he responded in a cold tone that sent chills down Ciardis’s spine. “You’d be right about that. But I might be just crazy enough to risk the emperor’s displeasure. Besides…he won’t be angry for long, since he hates the girl more than his brat heir.”

  Ciardis stirred. “Sebastian? Sebastian’s there…with the emperor?”

  Seven paused and then he said, “Come up and see, Weathervane. I promise to keep you alive until you’re in your prince heir’s presence. Come and see what your beloved emperor wants.”

  Ciardis couldn’t wait any longer. If there was a chance of getting out of this hole, a chance of righting these wrongs, she would do it.

  As she stepped forward, Meres caught a hold of her arm with a desperate grip.

  “Be careful, Ciardis,” Lord Kinsight whispered desperately. “The emperor is fickle and vain. Appeal to his sense of family and his desire for power. He will forgive all if he can retain an even tighter control over these lands with your support.”

  Ciardis frowned. “I know.”

  Meres sighed and said, “Good. I know it’ll be hard, but you can survive this. Just come back and get us, eh?”

  “Ten hours,” Ciardis said suddenly.

  “Ten hours what?” said Vana, hobbling over.

  Ciardis pitched her voice so that both Vana and Meres could hear her. “Ten hours or less and you’ll be out of this cell. You have my word.”

  Vana was noncommittal, but Meres clasped her shoulder in thanks and then pushed her away.

  As Ciardis went to the rope and took a tight hold, she looked back over her shoulder with her face bathed in light. “And Meres?”

  Lord Kinsight quickly hurried over.

  Ciardis looked him dead in the eye and said, “I have no intentions of pleading with the emperor.”

  Meres blanched but whispered hesitantly and said, “Then what? Bargaining?”

  Ciardis gave him a dark smile. “He’ll be dead before tonight’s end. Just keep Caemon alive until I can get back.”

  Before Meres could protest, Ciardis yanked on the rope and yelled up at Seven, “Pull me up!”

  He did. Ciardis rose from her dungeon cell into the darkness of the palace beyond, patient like a snake and ready to strike.

  She wasn’t surprised to see four guards waiting for her as soon as she got out of the hole.

  What she was surprised to see was not a glass bottle gripped in Seven’s hands, but a glowing band of dark red magic. It pulsed and writhed. Like a king’s coronet, it was made of a thin wire-like substance that looped around in an infinite pattern. But it wasn’t solid and it wasn’t whole. It thrummed and throbbed, constantly expanding in Seven’s tight grip.

  As soon as Seven saw the fear on her face he smiled and then he lunged.

  “No!” Ciardis screamed. But just like before, she hadn’t anticipated Seven’s attack, and what’s more, she couldn’t counteract it either. The dampening magic of the cell was still in full force in this slightly larger, more open holding ring.

  He pushed the collar directly into and through the base of her throat.

  It was like being touched by live fire and realizing with horror that the fire was cutting through your skin, then through your muscles and all the way through your neck before the ring came out the other side again.

  Ciardis gasped and fought for air.

  She couldn’t breathe as the magical collar passed through her flesh, burning and branding.

  When it finally emerged on the other side of her neck, she was slumped on the floor at Seven’s feet trying hard to breathe and not pass out from the pain.

  She managed to do both, but only barely.

  She was, however, in no condition to fight. Seven snickered and snapped his fingers.

  Two guards came forward and each grabbed an arm.

  “Bring her,” commanded Seven. Together they dragged Ciardis’s limp and shuddering form from the out of the holding cell and into the castle proper.

  Behind her she heard Meres and Caemon, even Vana, screaming her name.

  She didn’t see much of anything as she went.

  Instead she tried to breathe as little as possible to keep the fiery torment in her neck at bay and shuddered at the thought of what was to come. They dragged her further and further into the depths of the palace. Places she’d never seen. Places she never wanted to see again.

  Darkness clouded her vision.

  Dampness settled in her bones.

  The one time she protested that Seven had promised to take her to the emperor, he had chortled, “All in good time, my dear. All in good time. First you must see your prince heir. You must. You must.”

  None of his words were a comfort. Then again, she didn’t suppose they were meant to be.

  They went up stairs and down stairs, across long silent hallways and through crowded corridors where servant after servant studiously avoided meeting her eyes. Ciardis supposed that was only normal. To the victor went the spoils and she and Sebastian had lost the fight before it had even begun.

  With one final jerk of the air in front of her face that seemed to act like a rope tied to the blazing red collar about her neck, Seven said cheerfully, “We’re here.”

  Ciardis stumbled into an upright position with a wince.

  Until she’d now she’d been following while hunched over, desperately trying to ease both the pain and the burning sensation in her neck. Nothing worked.

  When they stopped, she looked up at a massive door.

  The same door from before. She recognized its color and the symbols carved majestically into the midnight blue wood.

  “The Chamber of Imperial Astronomy,” she whispered hoarsely, confused as to why she was here.

  “Yes,” exclaimed Seven in an excited voice. “You recognize it?”

  “I’ve been here before,” Ciardis said. Her eyes studied the pattern on the door and
she wondered what surprises were in store for her this time.

  “Oh well, that’s not what I expected,” said Seven with a pout. “But I guess you’ll enjoy this even more now that you’re familiar with the peculiarness that it’ll bring.”

  Ciardis frowned and tried not to aggravate her throat even more as she exclaimed, “Wait, what?”

  Seven chuckled and then sharply yanked down on the air in front of her. With that yank Ciardis was forced to her hands and knees. She fell to the floor in front of him desperately trying to catch herself before she landed flat on her face.

  Seven didn’t give her time to recuperate before the doors were flung open and he literally kicked her in the behind.

  As soon as Ciardis crashed forward into the room she whirled around with fury on her face and her fists up to attack. She may not have been able to use her magic, but he would regret the day he had ever put his hands on her.

  With a smile that said he was looking forward to their next confrontation Seven backed away as the midnight blue door swung shut in her face.

  Ciardis was left furiously pounding on the closed door in anger, which is why it took a few seconds to realize that with the disappearance of Seven so went her collar.

  She was free!

  She gasped in delight as she could finally take an easy breath. Turning around towards the center of the room, Ciardis half-expected the Emperor of Algardis to be standing there with a cold expression on his face.

  But as she settled down and walked forward she could see that the room was empty.

  She walked over to the spot in which Caemon had last lain. The marble floor was clear of blood. No gore splattered the walls. No screams rent the air. It was as silent as a mausoleum and Ciardis couldn’t help but shudder in the chill.

  She tried to find the door that the emperor’s pet healer had gone through that night, but to no avail.

  When she walked back to the center of the room and glared, waiting for the reason that she was here, she thought bitterly to herself, And when I get my hands on that no good healer, he’ll wish he’d never take his oath of office. How dare he abandon Caemon like that?

  She didn’t have long to wait, however.

  A noise behind her caught her ear. She whirled around to a see a form decked in the wealth of the empire step forward out of the gloom.

  Ciardis took an uneasy step back, wondering what was going on.

  Sebastian stood before her. Whole. Healthy. Dressed to kill in the whites and golds that marked a prince of the realm. The jewelry on his suit shined, his hair was perfectly pressed in line, and the smile that graced his face would have driven crowds mad.

  He was both the perfect depiction of a prince of the realm, and the exact opposite of the prince heir she knew. His eyes were dead. His emotions closed off.

  Like a mannequin, he walked forward in perfect step. When he stopped, it was with the stillness of something inhuman.

  “Sebastian?” she asked uneasily.

  The prince heir smiled. “I’ve been waiting for this day.”

  She replied calmly, hoping he would clue her in, “And what day is that?”

  Or at the very least, she hoped that some concern would show on his face. A question would cross his lips as to why her dress was covered in blood and she herself with burns and bruises. If not for her, then for their friends, for Meres and Vana and Terris and Thanar and Caemon and whoever else the emperor had seen fit to lock up in his dungeon like the madman he was.

  But he didn’t. He stayed right where he was, watching her like a spectator watched an animal in a cage.

  “The day that my father finally gave me permission to kill the infamous Ciardis Weathervane,” Sebastian said softly as he unsheathed a sharp blade from his waist.

  Then he went on the attack and he never stopped.

  No matter how she pleaded, she knew she couldn’t get through to whatever state he was in. So Ciardis Weathervane did the only thing she could do. She went on the offensive. But his strength matched hers. His magic was only enhanced by her strife. His health was a beacon against the darkness of her blight.

  She felt her power draining and she couldn’t tell where it was going.

  Not into Sebastian, she thought as she deflected another blow and tried to do some offensive magic of her own.

  But each time she tried, his wards grew stronger and hers depleted.

  Finally Ciardis called out, “This isn’t a fair fight, Sebastian Algardis! If you had one thing left of you in the man I knew…it was honor. What happened to that?”

  Sebastian looked at her with wide dark green eyes, then he smiled. “Honor is for the weak. But since you insist, I’ll give you an honorable death. I’ll let you die by my blade instead of by magic.”

  Then he sped up his attack and even doubled down. She barely had time to think.

  Before long, Ciardis was so weary that she was really beginning to think he was going to kill her.

  Ciardis shook her head and backed away. “Sebastian, you’re scaring me. Tell me what this is. What’s your plan?”

  “Plan,” chuckled Sebastian softly as he stalked her across the marble floor. “My plan is to cut you from chin to sternum like I’ve wanted to do for months. My plan is to kill the treasonous village twit who thought she could upend the empire and my father’s reign.”

  “Father?” she scoffed as she backpedaled furiously to stay out of range of his blade. “Listen to yourself Sebastian! You know that’s not true! You know what Maradian is! A liar who murdered his own brother to take the throne.”

  “Father said you’d say that,” Sebastian said calmly. “These past few weeks, months even, have been enlightening. I thought I could make you and your rebellion see the light. I pleaded with Father to show you mercy, but now I see that he was right all along. You were never loyal to the empire.”

  He punctuated his last words with a quick overhand stab at her neck.

  She ducked and rolled fast enough to scramble to the other side of the room.

  Sebastian chuckled maniacally as he followed her.

  “I am loyal to the empire,” Ciardis said as she kept close to the wall and skittered to the side, keeping out of reach as much as she could.

  “I don’t believe a word that comes out of your pretty lips,” Sebastian snarled as he lunged towards her.

  This time Ciardis didn’t run. Instead she ducked under the reach of his arm and swiftly kicked him in the side of his stomach.

  He fell to the ground in a controlled move and she flipped so that she was back in the center of the room.

  Spitting at him from afar, Ciardis cried, “I am loyal to the empire, just not to your megalomaniac of an emperor!”

  “Are those your final words?” Sebastian asked in a taunt as he got to his feet and stalked forward.

  Ciardis smiled. “I suppose for now they’d better be.”

  She desperately wanted to know what was going on. She wanted to know why he was here and dressed like that. She wanted to know what had happened to the Sebastian she knew.

  But she was quite clear on one thing now—this wasn’t the Sebastian she knew. Whether illusion or imitation, she had to believe that he was a false representation. A skilled mimicry that even she couldn’t reason with. She could only break him.

  He didn’t make a sound after that.

  No more words were exchanged.

  Just battle.

  A fight to the death.

  A fight that she was desperately losing.

  29

  Before long, she was flagging from weariness, and that was before he managed to stab her in the shoulder, then grin with delight as he danced away.

  They had long since passed the ‘I don’t believe you’re doing this stage’ and gone directly to the ‘I want to get close enough so I can stab my fingers directly into your neck and do us all a favor’ stage.

  Ciardis felt herself tiring and she still wondered in a small part of her mind if this was just a dream. Another
of Vana’s vivid memories. A part of the emperor’s mind games. But the blood pouring from the open wound on her shoulder said this was very real and at least to Sebastian—the only reality he could see.

  I’m going to die in this room, she thought as she made a desperate dive to the side and shoved off a wall before his punch could land.

  She backed away and he backed away with her. Both breathing hard. But only one of them was severely dehydrated, close to malnourished, and rapidly losing blood.

  As Ciardis began to see spots in her eyes, she thought this would be a peaceful way to die. Falling unconscious and not feeling the stab wound.

  If she had to guess, he’d cut her throat and be done with it.

  Unlike when they’d begun a half-hour past, he no longer looked like the spring chicken eager to hack and sack away at her abdomen from neck to groin in a grotesque display of power.

  No, this was a man as tired as she was.

  “Don’t you wonder?” Ciardis asked, breathing heavily.

  Sebastian was silent. He just continued stalking her with a mad gleam in his eye.

  That was all right. She could talk enough for both of them.

  “Don’t you ever wonder whether it’ll work?” she asked while starting up again.

  He didn’t say anything. Just stabbed.

  She dodged as smoothly as if they were dancing in the formal ballroom. Except sweat like raindrops was pouring down her back and all down her face.

  Still, Ciardis kept up the dialogue as if they were in conversation. “I mean, we’ve been saying that the seeleverbindung enforces a life-and-death bond on the participants…but do we really know? I’m not so sure I’m ready to find out, are you?”

  Sebastian stopped in the center of the room. He continued his silence, but she knew she had him.

  Not content to rest as he contemplated her words, she paced around him like a shark in water.

  “Because you told me that the bond of Viv and Dirk foretold their death,” she continued, still breathing heavily, Ciardis was trying to keep him pre-occupied. To both give herself a break and to set his mind whirling. Either would give her an advantage.