Charmed Destinies

by Catherine Asaro

  “And you only now reveal this?” Muller demanded. “Better to protect your own, eh?”

  Stone’s gaze never wavered. “Aye.”

  “Nay,” Iris murmured, using the cell to help her focus on Stone. “You did it for Jarid. You remained silent to protect him.”

  Stone blinked. “Jarid?”

  “My husband. The King.”

  Stone’s weathered face gentled as he turned to his former ward. “You have married this lovely young lady?” When Jarid nodded, Stone said, “It is a good thing.” He hesitated, regret in his expression. “Jarid is your name?”

  “It is,” Jarid said softly.

  “I am sorry. I never knew.”

  Jarid touched his arm. “Do not be sorry.”

  “What does she mean, you remained silent about this Murk to protect Jarid?” Muller asked. “What lies have you told my cousin?”

  “Told?” Stone answered quietly. “I have told him nothing and everything. I spoke to him for fourteen years, Gracious Lord, and he heard nothing. What did I tell him? That the boy punished himself for something not his fault? Yes, I told him. He never heard.”

  Jarid spoke in a rasp. “I am no boy.”

  “Enough,” Brant said. “Where is this Murk?”

  “Gone,” Jarid grated.

  “Gone?” Muller’s forehead furrowed. “Where?”

  Jarid didn’t answer. Instead he walked to the window and gazed past its bars to the meadows below. Iris wanted to go to him, to offer succor for his grief over his parents. But his need for separation surrounded him like a shield; to approach now would be an intrusion.

  “I cannot take you to Murk,” Stone told them. “I am sorry.”

  Muller’s jaw worked. “You will tell us where your partner has hidden.”

  “I cannot.”

  Brant spoke, his voice like the wind that scoured the land in winter. “We have been patient with you, highwayman. But that is done now. You will talk.”

  Stone’s face paled, but still he said nothing.

  Brant motioned to the soldiers. “Take him to the interrogation room.”

  “No!” Jarid spun around from the window, unsettling in his intensity. “You will not.”

  “Why?” Muller asked. “Why, Cousin?”

  “You know the legend of indigo mages?” Jarid’s voice had jagged edges.

  Muller blinked. “Of course.”

  Brant was studying Jarid closely. “No indigo mage has ever been known.”

  “My mother,” Jarid said.

  “That cannot be,” Brant said. “We have no records of such.”

  A voice came from behind them. “No. But I recognized signs of her ability.”

  Iris swung around. Della stood in the doorway, her gray hair disarrayed around her face, her cheeks red as if she had run here through the wind.

  “It is the legend of the indigo mages,” Della said, coming forward. “A mage’s power is limited by the strength of her life. She can soothe, yes, but no more than she could soothe herself. She can heal only injuries she could recover from herself and feel only emotions she can recognize and endure.” Quietly she added, “An indigo mage would have the greatest power of all.”

  “The power of a life,” Jarid said, his gaze hooded.

  Iris was beginning to understand. “An indigo mage can save a life. But only one, for she has only one life.”

  Della’s voice softened as she addressed Jarid. “Your mother saved your life in the crash, yes?”

  His voice rasped. “She died so I could live.”

  “Nay, Jarid, it is’n your fault,” Iris said.

  “You must not punish yourself for their deaths,” Della said.

  “You should have brought him home,” Muller told Stone, his voice edged with anger. “How could you keep him in that hovel?”

  “He didn’t know who I was,” Jarid said.

  Iris watched her husband uneasily. There was more to this than his grief over his parents. But what?

  Brant narrowed his gaze at Stone. “You could have made inquiries. You chose instead to protect yourself.”

  “Yes.” Stone met his gaze. “I did.”

  “Liar.” Pain etched lines in Jarid’s face. “Liar.”

  “Son, don’t,” Stone said. “Let it go.”

  “Why?” Jarid’s voice grated as if it could tear his throat. “They should know the truth.”

  “What truth?” Muller asked.

  “About Murk,” Jarid said. “About me.”

  “Dani, stop,” Stone whispered.

  “Whatever you’re hiding,” Brant told Stone, “we will discover it.”

  “Stop.” Jarid was facing them, tall and imposing, his body dark against the patch of light made by the barred window at his back. He lifted his arms from his sides until his hands were at waist level, his palms cupped upward.

  Then it began.

  Light filled his hands, as if he held a glowing red orb in each. He had a haunted expression, his face stark, lit from below by the orbs. The rest of the cell darkened about him.

  Della moved next to Iris. “A red mage?” she murmured.

  Iris swallowed. “I think more. Much more.”

  Jarid continued to stare at Brant. The cell was growing hot, as if he held flames rather than light.

  The spheres of light changed.

  They turned gold—the aches and pains in Iris’s body from her night in the forest vanished. When the spheres turned yellow, her grief for having never known her birth parents eased. The orbs turned green—and Iris knew, with a devastating clarity, the self-loathing that filled Jarid. But why. Why? The orbs kept changing, sky-blue now, and the scratches on her arms faded.

  The spheres turned indigo.

  Tears welled in Iris’s eyes as she realized what he had achieved. Incredibly, Jarid had within him the power to cure even grief, at least that of people other than himself. Yet for all its beauty, she resisted his healing spell. She wanted to overcome her sorrows herself, not through spells.

  The spheres turned even darker.

  Violet.

  “Saints above,” Della whispered.

  “The power of a life,” Jarid rasped. “The power to give—or to take away.” He extended his arm toward Brant, his hand filled with violet light. “I took Murk.”

  Brant stared at him. “I don’t understand.”

  Jarid’s words dropped into the air like stones. “That night when he murdered my parents, I reached out with my mind—and I killed him.”

  8

  Prince of Sun and Shadow

  Della lit the candles in her cottage, one for each mage power: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo. Iris sat at the circular table and touched the indigo candle. “In a rainbow, violet comes after indigo.”

 
“So it does.” Della wearily settled in a chair across from her. She seemed subdued, as if she had yet to absorb what had happened in Stone’s cell today.

  Iris spoke quietly. “Only a violet mage could have killed Murk. And Jarid was only six. ”

  “Yes.” Sorrow came from Della’s mind. “His mother’s spell on the glass ball probably helped him focus.”

  “I’ve never even heard legends of violet mages.” Iris found it hard to comprehend such power.

  Della shuddered. “It frightens me.”

  “He wouldna use it for evil.” Iris wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince Della or herself.

  “All mage powers have their dark aspects. One who can heal can also cause injury.”

  “But it never happens.”

  “It happens, Iris.” Della rubbed her eyes. “Shape-mages rarely abuse their gifts because it hurts the mage just as much as the other person. A healer who deliberately injures someone also experiences the pain herself. It is a powerful deterrent. But at the age of six, Jarid understood too little about his gifts—and the consequences of misusing them.”

  “He knows now,” Iris said murmured.

  “I’m surprised the spell didn’t kill him, too.”

  “It came close, I think.”

  Della nodded sadly. “If he had truly wanted to use his power for ill, he could have done so long ago, instead of locking his mind away.”

  “Locking his mind?”

  “He made himself blind, deaf and mute as punishment.”

  The thought threatened to break Iris’s heart, all the more so because she knew Della was right.

  Watching her, Della said, “With you, he has begun to heal.”

  “I canna do enough. We are shadows to his brilliance.” Iris thought of the wedding gift he had given her, the invisible sphere, a spell of good will she had taken into herself. “I donna think he even needs actual shapes to focus. He imagines them. Real shapes help, but he can use those he sees only in his mind.”

  “And yet he hides from his own power.”

  Iris could see, in her mind, the tormented young king, his palms filled with violet light, his gaze haunted as he confessed to murder. “If only he would let me go to him.”

  “Is he still secluded in the tower?”

  “Aye. He refuses to let anyone near.” She grimaced. “Muller hasna been much better.”

  “I don’t understand Muller. He practically begged Jarid to take the crown when he thought his cousin was incapable of ruling.” Della shook her head. “Why is he horrified now that Jarid might actually rule?”

  “Jarid killed a man with his mage power.”

  “Muller didn’t know that until this morning.”

  Iris sifted through her impressions of the golden lord. “I think Muller sent us to find Jarid because he genuinely believed his cousin would make a better king. I donna know why.”

  “It makes no sense. Muller has spent years learning to govern. He had to know he was better prepared than Jarid.” Della’s face creased with lines that had deepened over the past few days. “You would think he would have fought for the title.”

  “He didna want it.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  Iris exhaled. Neither was she.

  Prince of Sunbeams, Iris thought. Muller stood at the top of a hill, facing away from her, gazing out over Crofts Vale in the valley below. Dressed in impeccable white trousers, gold boots and a gilded tunic, he glowed. The sun turned him radiant. Wind blew his hair back from his face, showing his regal profile, his features so perfect he never seemed fully real to Iris.

  When she came up to him, he turned with a start, then relaxed when he saw her. He bowed deeply. “Good morn, Your Majesty.”

  This change of status between them unsettled Iris. Only a few days ago, she had bowed to him.

  “Good morn.” She gestured at the rolling green hills. “A lovely view.”

  “Like our royal family.” Bitterness edged his voice. “Beautiful on the outside, rotted from within.”

  She responded gently. “That is’n true, Muller.”

  “Isn’t it?” His fist clenched. “You heard Jarid. A shape-mage who can kill.”

  “He had provocation.”

  “And if he feels he has provocation again?”

  “Saints, Muller, look what it did to him. It was’n his mother’s broken spell that left him unable to speak, hear or see. It was him. ” She searched for words that would do justice to what she had sensed in Jarid. “He felt Murk die. How could a six-year-old live with that? And he knew, even then, that killing opposed everything it meant to be a shape-mage. What if we hadna found him? Would he have spent the rest of his life atoning for being a terrified little boy who defended himself from the monster who murdered his parents and meant to kill him? He’s suffered enough.”

  Muller answered in a low voice. “Before we knew anything about him, I had been so certain it would be best if I stepped aside. Then we discovered he was completely unfit to rule. Even that was all right for Aronsdale—you would do well in his place. But then he began to recover and suddenly we had a king who would rule, but imperfectly.”

  “Surely a flawed king is better than none at all.”

  His voice cracked. “Even then I didn’t know the worst. He is an abomination. A mage who kills.”

  Iris couldn’t sort his tangled emotions; she had no shapes to focus her power. She tried to draw on the sun, but it was too distant, too abstract. She felt as if she were using untrained muscles. She strained to concentrate—and then she had a sense of going over a barrier. Her spell blossomed and she felt Muller’s deep-seated dread at the prospect of Jarid ruling Aronsdale. Even knowing how much perfection meant to Muller, Iris didn’t understand the depth of his reaction, nor could she delve deeply enough to discover what caused his fear.

  She spoke softly, “We are all flawed, Muller. Just look at me.”

  He lifted his hands, then dropped them, moving with the unconscious grace he never seemed to want rather than the warrior’s power he longed to command. “Iris, it may not seem so now, but you will come into your own as a mage, at least a sapphire, maybe an indigo, greater than Della, greater than Chime, perhaps even greater than Jarid’s mother.”

  She wondered why he hadn’t answered her question. “In the past, Della said emerald was my limit.”

  “She was wrong. I told her so.”

  Iris felt as if he had just punched her in the gut. “You believed I had such power and you never told me?”

  “Della didn’t want me interfering. Besides, she thinks I have no mage power.” He shrugged, trying for a nonchalance he obviously didn’t feel. “She wouldn’t listen.”

  “You should have told me.” Suddenly Iris understood. “Except then you and I would have had to wed. And you want Chime.”

  He said, simply, “Yes.”

  “If I really am that strong a mage, surely you knew it would come out.”

  “Once Chime and I were married,
it wouldn’t have mattered. We couldn’t undo the union.” He looked toward the castle, high on its bluff. “And then you found Jarid.”

  Iris exhaled. “That is why you sent me to get him.”

  “In part.” He swept his arm out as if to include the entire country. “But what I said before is true. Aronsdale needs you. I would only bring sorrow to our people.”

  “How could you give up so easily?”

  Muller gave a bitter laugh. “You think I gave up?” Bending down, he dug up a chunk of rock. Then he showed her. “What shape is this?”

  “An oval, sort of.” A broken oval; the end had cracked off, leaving a jagged edge.

  “An imperfect shape.”

  “Very.”

  “Can you use it for spells?”

  Iris tried to concentrate on the rock, but instead of focusing her power, it dispersed her spell like a jagged seashore breaking up waves.

  “Nay, Muller.” She gave him back the rock. “It ruins the spell.”

  “As it would for any normal shape-mage.” He concentrated on the rock, his forehead creasing.

  “Muller?” Iris wondered at his intense focus. It was exactly the way Della looked before she did a spell.

  Suddenly a spark jumped up from the rock, which turned red like a hot coal. With a grunt, Muller dropped the stone. It hit the ground and the grass sizzled.

  Iris gaped at him. “What did you do?” The glow in the rock was only now fading.

  “That,” he said harshly, “is my mage power.”

  “But…but you have no—”

  “No power? Aye, so Della believes. Why? Because she can’t feel a ‘gift’ as imperfect as mine. I can only use flawed shapes.” He kicked the scorched rock at their feet. “You want me to create light? That was the best I could do. My spells always come out twisted. Wrong. But I have the Dawnfield mage strength, green at least, maybe blue. It would devastate Aronsdale to have me at its helm.”