Tarkhind frowned as he stopped fiddling with his cup and leaned back in his chair with his fingers steepled in front of him. For a moment beyond simple discomfort, he studied the guard commander with his fingers resting against his pursed lips.
“Hmmm, perhaps not,” he said at last and his eyes narrowed as he watched Guuhal. “Manipulation then? You get me to commiserate and feel safe so I’ll spill everything to you? Then what—you blackmail me or simply turn me over to Hasriim?”
The prince hadn't moved from his seat but Guuhal rocked back as though fleeing a blow.
“My prince, n-no,” the Hazarbed stammered, his mind reeling as he tried to comprehend the seriousness of the accusations being leveled against him. “I-I only…why would you… You can’t possibly believe—”
“You wish to prove your loyalty, then?” Tarkhind asked, his tone still that of a man unimpressed but unperturbed. “Then please stop wasting my time and tell me who is getting in the way of things.”
He tightened his hand on his staff until his knuckles whitened and noticed that it had never felt quite so heavy in his hand.
“As you wish, my prince,” he said and his head lowered toward his chest. “But I would have you know that these are good people, not—”
“Hazarbed,” Tarkhind said with a longsuffering breath. “Names.”
Guuhal, his stomach and heart almost rebelling in disgust, let the names fall from his mouth like drops of lead.
“Argbed Alborz. Vahrem Kal’Stru. A possible Wain Dwarf clan chief connected with Kal’Stru.”
The prince nodded slowly and his gaze slid from the beaten guard commander to resume his admiration of the trees.
“What is the problem and how do we know about it?”
The Hazarbed took a steadying breath and wished he had something strong to wash the foul taste from his mouth.
“Our associate took someone of significance to the Kal’Stru and the dwarves. They went to the Argbed for help, and he seems to have agreed at least in part because he shares in the merchant’s deviant religious beliefs. I learned this from an informant I keep in Argbed’s command, a guard who was there when Kal’Stru arrived looking for help.”
The prince’s eyes narrowed as he kept scrutinizing the trees.
“How much have they learned?”
“They know about our associate,” the guard commander said. “They made an effort to get him to tip his hand—a soft infiltration ruse, it seems—but he wasn’t drawn in. He informed me about it and that is why I came to you, my prince.”
Guuhal drew in a shuddering breath and wished he could convince himself that he hadn’t sold out good men or that it was out of loyalty and not fear. In time, maybe he would find more convincing arguments but at the moment, he only felt sick and cold.
“I’ll need a means of contacting your informant,” Tarkhind said after a thoughtful pause. “Please arrange it.”
“Yes, my prince,” the guard commander nodded and leaned on his staff like an old man.
“That will be all, Hazarbed. You are dismissed.”
Guuhal opened his mouth, although whether to blather about his innocence or beg for the lives of the men he’d exposed he wasn’t sure. In the end, nothing rose from his dry throat and with his head shaking wearily, he closed his mouth and shuffled toward the garden gate.
He would make the necessary arrangements, of course, and then he would find as much liquor as it took to convince himself he wasn’t a coward.
That was unworthy of one of the Line.
“Then maybe the Line should have done a better job,” Tarkhind grumbled. He sat alone in the garden and nursed the cup of tea. “Or perhaps we should blame you, oh mighty guardian.”
The voice that was not a voice responded with a low, sad sigh.
“Either way, I wouldn’t be here, feeding that creature in the dark,” he continued and tried to stop his hands from shaking when talking about Him. “Maybe I’d even be able to throw off Hasriim’s yoke.”
Hasriim was the judgment upon your father and his father, the voice intoned like a patient tutor having to repeat instruction for a belligerently disinterested pupil. You will never escape this doom as long as you continue to make others pay for your choices.
“What am I supposed to do, eh?” the prince demanded and took comfort in the defiance in his voice, even though he knew the voice was not convinced. “You know what he wants.”
I know, the voice said, practically sepulchral in resignation. And you know there is only one choice in the end.
He felt the voice seeking to press a vision and a memory into his mind. A huge door opened upon itself and from the widening gap, there streamed a pale light of an unnatural hue. The colored light was not something his mind could accept and as the image entrenched itself, he felt the most brittle parts of him giving way like mooring lines parting with a snap. A manic shriek welled and he shoved the vision from his mind with such force that the cup flew from his hands as he curled forward and his hands grasped his head.
I will not remember what waits down in the dark. That is not my fate.
With a frantic will born of something furious with terror, he forced his brain to recall trivial facts and figures until the image fractured in his memory. Further scattering and seething thoughts formed a dissolving pool to dismiss the troublesome trauma, and he felt the voice give another sigh as it withdrew.
You know that you cannot keep this up much longer, it warned. Eventually, you will either seek the Door or you will lose everything you are fighting so very desperately to keep.
“Go away.” Tarkhind sobbed and his fingers raked through his graying hair and came away with half a fistful of it. “See, you are killing me!”
The voice’s breath fell over his soul and he felt a cooling breeze across his fevered mind. He knew he should have felt grateful for the relief, but he was incapable in that moment.
I will never leave. I will never forsake.
“Because I’m the firstborn of the Line, I know!” he snapped through gritted teeth before his gaze looked upon the graceful willow he loved so much. “I didn’t ask for this. I never wanted any of it.”
I know you never wanted me, the voice said and there was the tell-tale ruffle of great wings. But if I had not been with you, think what might have happened when your workers finally breached the chamber? Won’t you at least consider this?
The sound of stone scraping upon metal seemed to sound around him and the blasphemous light pierced through his mind. In an instant, the sun was blotted from the sky and he was plunged below the earth to sit upon his garden seat before the Door. He heard the breath of a hundred thousand demonic pipes calling him to dance.
“No, I won’t!” the prince wailed and threw himself from his chair, his hands still wrapped around his head as he beat it against the soft grass of the garden. He had to do something to get the memory out.
“I won’t! I won’t! I won’t!”
The wings beat their silent tattoo but his battle was no longer with the voice. The skin across his brow had begun to break open as he pounded and ground his face against the earth repeatedly
“My prince!”
“I won’t!”
There was some commotion beside him and it was not one of those blowing the pipes.
“My prince!”
A hand seized his shoulder and he feared to look into the face of whatever had taken hold of him.
“I won’t!”
He tried to tear free from the hand but its grasp was unrelenting.
“My prince, please,” the human voice cried and another commotion began at his other side. “Damn it, Gabr, help me before he hurts himself.”
“It’s poison, mark my words,” another human voice declared sagely before a strong hand took hold of his other side. “It was probably slipped into his tea.”
“I won’t!” Tarkhind roared but the world had already lost its frantic energy. “I won’t.”
They dragged him—no, carr
ied him—to his chair. He tried to focus and realized that it was his chair in the garden in his palace. The pipes had already begun to fall silent as the night-dark room around the Door crumbled into the sunny world of his garden.
Before his swollen eyes were his favorite willows and their branches drifted lazily in a light breeze.
“Steady now,” the first voice soothed and he looked into the face of a royal guard who stood over him. He knew he should know the man’s name but in the moment, it didn’t seem to matter.
Remembering the other grasp on his opposite arm, he looked into the face of another royal guard he should know.
Shame and anger swept over him like ice water upon his simmering imaginings and he remembered that he was Tarkhind the Prince of Jehadim, Keeper of the Keys to the East. With a snarl, he yanked his arms out of their grip.
“Let go of me,” he demanded and made a haphazard attempt to rearrange his clothing and clean the smarting wounds opened across his brow.
“My prince, you are not well,” the first guard ventured, the younger and more eager of the two.
“Perhaps it is the heat,” the other guard suggested and cast a suspicious glare skyward.
Their innocent and thoughtful ministrations enflamed his anger and shame all the more.
“Return to your posts,” he all but snarled as he forced himself to stand and resisted the urge to check that it was springy grass underfoot and not bare stone. “I will not be here much longer.”
Both men drew back but they paused before they turned away. Each seemed afraid to speak what they both clearly thought.
“My prince, you are not well,” the younger guard repeated. “Perhaps we should seek a physician? I can run and fe—”
“Return to your post,” Tarkhind instructed in a cold, imperious tone “Now.”
Both royal guards shared a moment of uncomfortable silence but quailed before their liege’s fury and moved quickly to the gate.
He stood in the garden, alone again, but he didn’t dare to look in any place where shadows might crest and draw his mind to that deep place somewhere beneath his feet.
Instead, he looked skyward to the blueness there and glared until his eyes burned.
Somewhere in a place he would never admit existed, he wished to hear the throb of great feathery wings again.
Chapter Twenty
She was bleeding and it wouldn’t stop.
“And it won’t stop until you get this right,” Mother repeated and an edge of impatience frosted her words. “Now please hurry. We are visiting the Eztali’s later and you will need to change.”
Her need to change was an understatement.
The deep laceration Mother had opened on her upraised hand had sent rivulets of blood streaming down her arm to stain the wide sleeves of her dress. When she’d clutched the wound, her fingers had naturally been covered, and when her mother swatted the other hand away, she’d unintentionally rested the blood-wetted fingers in her lap and befouled the linen garment even more.
“I hate the Eztali’s.” She’d groaned as she tried to press the throbbing awareness of the wound from her mind. “Especially cousin Lamachwen. He’s never clean and worse, he always stares at me.”
Mother snapped and pointed at the scroll open upon the table.
“Get to work before you make more of a mess.”
She buried a growl of protest in the back of her throat and lowered her gaze to the spidery script woven in concentric circles around a central glyph. As she worked around the rings, she recited the words in her head and felt the power building there as an atonal buzzing. She continued through the circles and shifted to tighter assemblies of syllables while the buzzing rose in intensity and frequency until her head ached and her ears rang.
With considerable effort, she ignored the discomfort and took up the silken napkin she would press into the wound.
Like riding the momentum of a flooding river, she felt her mental recitation drawn along with greater speed as the sorcery took on a life of its own. The sigil would be upon her in moments and she knew what would happen.
The sigil, the final expression of the incantation, would tear out of her in a rush of blood and profane energy.
Fearing the force of the unnatural expression that she could already feel coursing through her mind, she tore her eyes away from the scroll. Somewhere between beginning to read and her attempt to break away, she’d forgotten what would happen when she disrupted the energies with such a violent halt.
“You fool!” Mother snarled her irritation as the magic curdled in the air but it was too late.
She screamed as the energies twisted upon themselves within her and threw her to the floor and her chair tumbled back. Her body knotted around itself in spasms so powerful that her joints gave grinding pops. As she thrashed, blood ran freely from her eyes, nose, and ears, while her jaws jerked open with a violent expulsion of bile. Here and there, she saw flashes of sorcerous fire licking off her trembling limbs in eye-stabbing tongues of black, blue, and purple.
Vaguely, she wondered if the magical backlash would be strong enough to kill her and in the back of her mind, she wondered if that was a bad thing.
But despite her wishes, she did not die and moment by agonizing moment, she felt the energies discharge into the floor and release her from their hold.
“Get up!” Mother ordered, her voice high and cold above her.
The paralyzing spasms eased and she strained to climb to her hands and knees.
“Why do you keep doing this?” The woman groaned but didn’t bother to pause for an answer. “Are you determined to shame me with your failures? A Xhulth without sorcery is like a lion with no mane. The others will see your weakness and rip you apart.”
“It hurts.” She sniffed and failed to keep the tears from beading at the corners of her eyes. “I get scared.”
Mother snatched the front of her dress with her steely fingers and drew her nose to nose.
“Life is pain,” she stated, her voice like a chorus of serpents. “As the daughter of Xhulth, you can drink that cup or drown in it but by the hells, you will never escape it.”
It was that moment, perhaps, when she became determined to prove her wrong.
“What’s this now?” Father boomed as he strode into the room, huge and barbarically magnificent in his armor. “My womenfolk at odds?”
Mother threw her on the floor, where she tried to catch herself with her injured hand and another pained scream was dragged out of her.
“Your daughter is being stubborn,” the woman declared and one long finger pointed condemningly to her daughter, who sprawled on the floor. “And seems determined to be a coward.”
He leaned on his spear and squinted at her as she cowered and cradled her wounded hand in her lap.
“Stubborn, certainly, but coward?” he asked. “That doesn’t sound like my little War-Crow.”
She looked up and saw him wink and for a second, she stopped shivering.
“Do you want this house to fall around us or do you want to do your duty as her father?” Mother asked with a disgusted snort.
Father frowned and straightened with a low sigh.
“Yes, dear,” He grunted and drove his spear through her chest.
It didn’t happen this way, she thought in a voice that was not that of the eleven-year-old who kneeled, impaled, upon the vomit and blood-smeared tiles.
“I wish it had,” her mother said and looked at her with cold, coppery eyes. “It would have been better this way.”
“We would have been spared much,” Father agreed, his hand firm upon the haft of the spear. “The House of Xhulth endures what it must but your disgrace was too much.”
Her hands, Mother’s in miniature, wrapped around the spear haft.
“It’s too late to turn back now,” she declared in the voice of a grown woman and drew herself up on the spear so it bit deeply into her heart.
Blood, as brilliant as forge flames, spewed from her mouth in
an exultant spray.
She awoke with a hacking cough. Her mouth tasted awful and every part of her was aching and cold.
“Janus’ scrot!” cried a voice that seemed too small for such language. “You’re alive.”
Ax-Wed lay on the floor while her mind tried to organize itself after the disorientation and displacement of the dream. She remembered where she was and the events which led to her laying naked from the waist up on the cold stone. When she raised her head to survey her wounded side, the effort proved too much and she let her head sink again.
Yes, she was alive but in that moment, it did not feel like a victory.
The soft rustling of garments intruded and the girl’s face—cleaner than she remembered—appeared above her.
“For a while there I wasn’t sure,” she said, her stormy eyes inscrutable. “I wanted to try to find something to cover you but I was scared you’d wake up and need me.”
The taste on Ax-Wed’s tongue was gaggingly foul and somehow even that organ seemed swollen and sore, but she forced herself to turn and smile.
“Good girl,” she managed to say with a rasp before she coughed again.
Something she hadn’t realized was lodged in the back of her throat rose in a jellied mass. With a heave that set her back and made her ribs pop in a crackling chorus, she rolled to one side and let the partially congealed lump of blood slide out of her mouth. It landed on the floor with a wet slap and she grimaced.
Wheezing, Ax-Wed rocked back and let gravity draw her against the stone, where she lay with her eyes half-lidded.
“Don’t you go back to sleep,” the girl said with equal notes of warning and concern in her voice. “I won’t keep playing nursemaid for someone whose name I don’t even know.”
The Thulian raised a shaky hand and ran it across her clammy face, although the effort of the gesture was concerningly taxing.
“A nursemaid would have covered me,” she said with a shiver and a small smile.
Circle In The Deep (The Outcast Royal Book 1) Page 16