by Karen Miller
“No,” said Holze eventually. Unhappily. “I, too, find Gar’s deepening reliance on Asher... disturbing. Barl gave the Olken into our keeping. They are a simple people, ill-equipped to deal with matters of magic or high government.”
Tasting victory, he crossed to Holze’s side and dropped to one imploring knee. “Then, Efrim, we can stay silent no longer. You are Lur’s most senior cleric. Both of us serve as Privy Councilors. Gar’s fitness as ruler is demonstrably questionable. For the good of the kingdom we must act. We owe Borne’s memory nothing less.”
Holze’s elderly face crumpled. “Conroyd, Conroyd, I fear you’re talking about a second schism.”
“No!” he said, and rested an urgent hand on Holze’s reluctant arm. “I’m talking about saving our people from a compromised king and his questionable Master Magician before it’s too late and our moral cowardice destroys us all.”
Holze turned his face away, distress in every frail line of his body. “How do you suggest we proceed?”
“Then you’re with me? When I take this matter to the General Council, you’ll add your voice to mine?”
“Don’t you mean, will I champion you as Lur’s next king?” Holze said bitterly, his face still averted.
“Only if that is Barl’s will. Perhaps you should ask her, Efrim.”
Holze sighed. “I already have. Change is coming, whether we welcome it or not.”
Heart singing, face grave, he again kissed his holyring. “Then may Barl’s will be done. And thank you for your support.”
“I don’t see I have a choice Conroyd,” Holze whispered. “Even though I fear we’ll break two hearts with this.”
He stood. “Better two hearts than a whole kingdom, Efrim. Remember that when your conscience pricks you.” He adjusted his coat and cravat. “I’ll go now to the infirmary. Speak with Durm and assess his condition. After that we’ll talk further. Agreed?”
Reluctantly, Holze nodded. “Agreed.”
———
Morg floated beneath the surface of awareness like a fly drowning in honey. Damned Nix and his damned potions, thrusting him yet again into helpless impotence. Rage was somewhere. Desperation too. And Durm. Gibbering witlessly now, the force of his personality diminished to a thinness, a shadow, a mere suggestion of his former self. How he longed to let the fat fool die . . . but the risk was too great. Body and soul were still tied, and if the connection were broken there was some small chance the carcass would vomit its unwelcome lodger into the ether, and death.
It wasn’t a chance he was prepared to take.
He heard—felt—the door to his chamber, his prison, open. Footsteps. Voices. The door closed again. He tried to open Durm’s eyes, struggled to impose his weakened will on the drugged flesh that enveloped him tighter than a virgin’s body. The drugged flesh defeated him, again.
“There, my lord. You see?” The pother. Sounding irate. Affronted. “As I told you, the Master Magician is still sleeping. He cannot speak with you!” A wicked man, Nix, overflowing with pestilent herb lore. Interfering, meddlesome. There’d come a day soon when Pother Nix would choke himself to a bloody froth on a banquet of herbs ...
“My apologies, Nix, if I appeared to question your competence, or honesty.” And that was Conroyd Jarralt. Blood called to the memory of blood. Echoes of ancestry. Hope, stirring. The blossoming of a germinated idea . . .
“If it is so important that you confer with him, my lord, perhaps when he wakes I can ask him if—”
“Good pother,” said little lord Jarralt. “May I speak my mind to you? Trusting of course in your absolute discretion?”
“You may, my lord.”
“Your word as a pother on it?”
“Certainly!”
A sighing silence. Then: “It’s no secret, Nix, to those of us whose business it is to know such things that Durm’s injuries were savage.”
“They were.”
“So savage his survival is a miracle?”
“Yes.”
“So savage that to think he might regain his former strength and power undiminished is .. . regrettably ... little more than a daydream?”
A long hesitation. “My lord ...”
“Say no more,” said Jarralt, all sweet sympathy. “Your face answers all.”
“Lord Jarralt—”
“It is a delicate matter. I understand.” Such kindness in that warm molasses voice. “And painful. You answer to a king who perhaps has ... lost perspective.”
Struggling to surface, Morg thrashed feebly against the weight of Nix’s damnable drugs. There was ambition here, he could smell it like a demon scenting birth-blood. Ambition and a ruthless will to win at all costs. Splendid. This Jarralt was strong ... and now more than ever he required strength. Had been kept prisoner by weakness for long enough.
Jarralt was the answer to a prayer.
The pother cleared his poxy throat. “My lord, you know I am constrained—”
“Of course,” soothed his ambitious descendant. “I understand you perfectly. Be not alarmed, Nix. We are cut from the same cloth, you and I. Men of honor sworn to serve this kingdom above all else, even the bonds of personal attachment. Durm is my friend. We’ve served together on the Privy Council for many years and his fall from greatness breaks my heart. Yet despite that, I’ll do what’s necessary to safeguard Lur from harm. As will you, I’m sure. Now I wonder if I might have a little time alone with my friend? Affairs of state have kept me from his side and I would lend him whatever strength he can use.”
“Certainly, my lord,” said the mewling pother. “But I warn you, he’s heavily sedated. If he should wake be good enough to send for me at once.”
Morg heard the chamber door open. Close. Heard footsteps come closer to the bed. Heard Conroyd Jarralt laugh softly. Seductively. A man on the brink of conquest.
“Well Durm. Now it is just we two alone,” he whispered. “And I shall tell you how the story ends...”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It wasn’t the voice of a friend. It echoed with avarice, with deep dislike and ambition long denied. Suddenly Morg realized he was in danger. He thought his mind would twist apart then, so frantically did he try to break the stuporous bonds holding him prisoner. With outraged astonishment he recognized the acid emotion: fear. Fear?
When was the last time he’d felt such a thing? Had he ever felt it? He couldn’t remember. No, no. It wasn’t possible. Morg—the supreme power of the world—afraid?
Never.
Or... never before now. But now he was helpless, trapped, at the mercy of this man who stank of a desire for death. Durm’s death. His death, for so long as he remained in Durm’s body. He’d thought to house himself in Jarralt next. In a day or two, once Durm was finally free of drugs and he could act unhindered.
But here was the vessel now, fattened with plottings of its own and suddenly there was no time...
There came the sound of timber scraping tile as a chair was pulled closer to the bed. A sighing creak of springs, a swish of silk against silk. Cool fingers touching fevered flesh.
“I never liked you, Durm,” said Jarralt. The molasses was melting, revealing the naked blade within. “And you never liked me. Yet we continued to play our silly game of pretend, didn’t we, in order to keep Borne happy. To keep the people happy and insure unadulterated peace. You always thought I loved myself more than this kingdom, but you were wrong. If that had been true I would have challenged Borne’s right to rule long ago.”
With a greater force of will than he’d ever before exerted, Morg calmed his raging spirit. Experienced another unfamiliar emotion: shame, that he could so completely forget himself, if only for a moment. It was a contaminant, this flesh. It polluted the purity of the unfettered mind, shackled it to urges and impulses and infirmity.
He couldn’t wait to leave it behind.
Jarralt was softly laughing. “Notice I’m referring to you in the past tense, old man. Broken man. Defeated man. Your tenure as Master
Magician is over. Soon I will take your place, but not for long. Before the year is out I’ll have the means to bring down brave House Torvig, brick by rotten brick. Then Conroyd will be king. As I should’ve been king twenty-five years ago. What do you think of that, Durm?”
In the depths of his cage, Durm was also struggling. Morg felt some fleeting sympathy. Focusing his will, drawing his weakened powers close about him like a cloak, he saw himself as a lance of fire poised to pierce the veil of Nix’s cloying, thwarting drugs. The flame consumed itself, consumed the remaining strength he’d not used up in his fight to live despite Durm’s mangled body.
“Were I so inclined I could smother you here and now,” crooned Jarralt. “Shall I do it? Do I dare? The way your body’s ruined it might even be a mercy. You were never one for weakness. You’d have smothered Gar if you could. Would Borne have loved you, I wonder, had he known? Had he seen in the depths of your eyes what I saw the day his son’s crippledom was made public?”
Morg felt his spirit shudder. Heard Durm’s sickbed creak as Jarralt leaned upon it. A warm, sweet breath fanned Durm’s flaccid face. Soft, strong hands clasped close the hollowed cheeks. As he struggled to escape Durm’s useless body he heard a gloating whisper.
“There’s a shadow falling over you, Dunn. Do you feel it? It’s the shadow of House Janalt, plunging you deep into an endless dark ...”
The hands, resting against Durm’s face tightened. Thumbs hot as coals pressed hard against his eyeballs, burning through tissue-paper lids. Morg felt his spirit spasm, felt a great leap of power to power, like to like, a song of lust and greed and unslaked thirsts. From far away he heard Durm’s dreadful wail of anguish.
“Look at me, you drug-soaked carcass!” hissed Janalt. “Look at me and see how I have won!”
Blinding brightness, as Janalt’s thumbs forced open Durm’s pain-sunken eyes. Morg gloried in it, reveled in it, felt the final surging flare of his strength and will break through the barrier between himself and the wider world.
The clammy bonds of failing flesh snapped at last and he was free of Durm’s broken body, free of that terrible prison, free to pour himself into a new host, a perfect host, a vital, vigorous, voracious host.
Jarralt opened his mouth to scream—and Morg poured into him. Rowed through arteries and veins, soaked skin and sinew, suffused Jarralt’s muscle and bone and brain until no single cell remained that was not himself. Left Durm behind and dying, his tongue tied tight against utterances of Morg.
Pulling away from abandoned Durm like a man who has unwittingly handled offal, Morg strutted the confines of the infirmary chamber and reveled in the glory of his new host: a man in his prime, fit and lithe and fabulously handsome. At last, flesh worthy of his spirit! Captive deep inside himself Jarralt shrieked and scrabbled and clawed.
In the bed, propped up by pillows, Durm breathed slowly, heavily, dragging air into his lungs with reluctance.
Morg smiled. “Fat fool. A pity you’ll not be here to see my final triumph.” The sound of his words wrapped in Jarralt’s exquisite voice was a shock. He’d grown used to Durm’s unromantic graveling. Reaching, he touched a slender finger to the ruined man’s flabby, sallow cheek. Prepared to extinguish his sputtering life.
The chamber door swung open and Nix cleared his throat. “My lord, forgive me, but Durm is in need of further physicking. You may return tomorrow, if that’s your desire.”
Morg straightened. “I would like that, Nix. Affairs of state permitting.”
“Of course, sir,” said the pother. “I hope you derived some comfort from your visit, my lord?”
He gave Durm’s pillows a hearty pat, as though he were concerned with the care and comfort of the patient, and swung about to smile at the pother.
“Comfort? Dear Pother Nix,” he said, in that magical, musical voice, “you have no idea.”
———
Feeling perverse, not even waiting for his palace replacement Ganfel to arrive, Matt packed up his small hoard of belongings, cleared out of his stable yard accommodation while the lads were busy elsewhere, and took a room at Verry’s Hostelry. He needed time alone to absorb what had happened that morning and decide how best to go on from here.
Asher had dismissed him. And Dathne had stood by, letting it happen. Hadn’t lifted so much as a finger to save him...
The pain of that calamitous confrontation was savage. Jervale save him, could he have handled matters any worse? He was a fool. He should’ve waited. Should’ve tackled Dathne somewhere, anywhere else. Should’ve given himself time to calm down. Think things through. “She’s a racehorse, not a brood mare.” That’s what he’d told Asher. And then, forgetting all his own sage advice, like the clumsiest clot-head apprentice stable lad he’d tried to ride roughshod over her. Knowing full well she was mad in love with Asher. Seeing with his own two eyes that she was newly risen from a night in his arms, all aglow with passion and in no mood for sober chiding.
And you wonder why sometimes she doubts your wisdom?
Well, the milk was all spilled now and the jug smashed to pieces for good measure. She’d made her decision quite clear.
“Go away, Matt. You’re not wanted any more.”
Well, he might not be wanted but he’d damn well be needed. Forget Asher’s high-handed decree. He couldn’t bury himself down in the Dingles, it was too distant. Trouble was, he couldn’t stay here in Dorana either. He needed somewhere else, somewhere safe, where he could watch over Dathne and her Innocent Mage without fear of discovery.
Feeling like a traitor he rummaged through his hastily packed belongings and unearthed the chip of crystal he’d never before had to use. Never imagined he’d need to use. That he’d never told Dathne he possessed.
Veira answered almost immediately. Her surprise was shot through with sudden alarm. Matthias? Is that you?
“Yes, Veira. It’s me.” And was surprised himself to feel the pricking of unexpected tears.
She sensed them, and her manner gentled. What’s happened, child?
Quickly, stumbling a lhtle with nerves and emotion, he told her.
I should have suspected it, Veira replied slowly. I knew she loved him and of late she’s been .. . evasive. Wound tight as tight, with Prophecy’s slow progress. Can you not speak with her? Find your way back to understanding?
“No. She’s got the bit between her teeth, Veira. The only voice she hears right now is Asher’s. If I stay, if I try and force a reconciliation, I fear I’ll just drive her further away. And she needs me still, I know it.”
As do I, child, and all our precious Circle. So you must come to me and together we’ll wait for Prophecy’s wheel to turn again. Don’t despair, Matt. Jervale will not abandon us now.
Relief was so great it was almost like pain. He wasn’t alone. He had somewhere to go. A job still to do. “All right, Veira,” he said. “I’ll make arrangements and leave at first light.”
———
On a cherry blossom day in the Royal Gardens, Gar chases his giggling sister between and around the cultivated pansy beds, the rows of quiet peters, brilliantly blue, the sapling trunks of youthful flowering pim-pim trees. He chases, but not too closely. Her baby legs are chubby, her unshod baby feet stomp the grass with delight, but unsurely. In the radiant sunshine her hair is a crown of gold thistledown, suggesting another crown yet to come.
“Can’t catch me, Gar! Can’t catch me!”
He’s not even trying, but she doesn’t know that. He pretends to be winded and pants at her, “You’re too fast for me, Fane!”
Somewhere close by, just out of sight, their parents are watching. He knows they worry about him. Worry he might not love his little sister for having in abundance the magic he was born without. They needn’t, but he can’t tell them that. They think he doesn’t know why shadows lurk behind their smiles.
They’re his parents, Lur’s king and queen, but still, they are mistaken. He knows.
Up ahead, his sister stumbles. Her baby
legs buckle and she tumbles headlong to the ground. Grass stains smear her pretty pink frock, her petal-soft skin. There is a moment of shocked silence and then she begins to cry.
He swoops. Gathers her up in his big strong nine-year-old arms. Cuddles her to his green and bronze weskit, brand new, a present from Mama. For why? Just because.
Because he is different.. . less... and not supposed to know it, or feel less loved.
Fane sobs against his chest in rage as much as fright. Her rosebud hands make small knobby fists and she beats them against the air. She’s a feisty one, his little sister. She’ll have the world her way or not at all. Two years of age just gone, she is, and everyone who knows her knows that.
“It’s all right, Faney, please don’t cry,” he begs her, rocking and jigging to lull her to laughter. “I’m here. I’ve got you. You don’t have to cry.”
She hiccups. Swallows furious grief. Tips back her small head, looks into his face and smiles... and smiles. . . and smiles . ..
“Fane,” said Gar, and opened his eyes. His face was wet with tears.
Behind his bedchamber’s heavy velvet curtains, a glow of mid-morning sun. A new day, beset with old problems.
Durm again was deeply stuporous.
Telling him yesterday evening, Nix had been nearly incoherent with despair and disbelief. He couldn’t understand it. The Master Magician had been fine all morning. Had accepted, grudgingly, the need for more rest in the afternoon. Had swallowed his medicine and gone straight to sleep. Not even Lord Jarralt’s brief visit had disturbed him. Everything about him appeared as it should ... And yet he would not wake.
Most like would never wake now. It was time to accept the unacceptable: Lur’s Master Magician would not recover.
Nix blamed himself, of course, but it wasn’t anyone’s fault. People died, whether you wanted them to or not.
Swaddled in a cocoon of blankets, Gar brooded at the pale green ceiling. If he could swallow that bitter pill he could swallow another one, too. Had to swallow it, because that’s what kings did. They faced unpalatable truths.