by D. P. Prior
“The Wyvern of Necras,” Imtep Khopeth said, fist on heart.
The Lakelings still standing all dropped to one knee. Behind them, a wave of motion passed through the Hélumites as they did the same. The dozen or so warlocks pushing through to the front genuflected, before rising to stand around the Legate.
Out to sea, the galleons were blurry outlines amid the squall. Lightning forked behind them, and for an instant their decks were flash-lit with argent. They were bustling with activity, like ants’ mounds that had been stepped on.
“Who gave you this?” Imtep Khopeth said. “Theurig Locanter?”
Every muscle in Snaith’s body was knotted with defiance. A fine tremor shook him like a coward, but in truth it was suppressed rage. He said nothing. And no one was going to make him say another word.
“What was he up to?” Imtep Khopeth asked. A rhetorical question. “Whatever it was, you should thank him. He has extended the span of your life. For now. And as for you”—he pivoted his helm to face Tey—“where did you learn such sorcery?” He stepped in. Slit her dress down to the waist with his sword. The crimson glare of his eye-slit gave a roseate tint to her scars. “Where did you come by this pattern?”
“Like on the altars of blood!” a warlock said.
Imtep Khopeth silenced him with a raised hand.
“These patterns are known to me,” Imtep Khopeth said to Tey. “To all warlocks of Hélum. But to none of your charlatan sorcerers.” He leaned in for a closer look, and the reflected glow of his eye-slit on Tey’s skin bloomed into a glaze of blood. “But something is missing. Here—” He indicated a cluster of scars to the edge of the pattern. “And here.” Grumbles of agreement from the other warlocks. “Links and buffers, awaiting completion. These markings gouged into your flesh are but one part of a whole.”
Tey stood before the Legate with a coy submissiveness Snaith at first mistook for her childlike state, the persona he’d once thought she showed only to him. But it wasn’t the same. This was tinged with goading. And the way she stood: breasts exposed, the remnants of her dress clinging to her arms and legs. Shameless. A harlot. On her wrist, a strange black band, a crystal at its center. Even as Snaith noticed, she tugged down her sleeve to cover it. Then she hitched up the skirts of her dress to reveal the scales and talons of her ruined leg.
All but Imtep Khopeth took a step back.
“What is that?” one warlock asked.
“A contagion?” another suggested.
“No, I don’t think so,” Imtep Khopeth said. He waved two warlocks forward. They came reluctantly. “Remove their bags.”
Snaith immediately clutched his, cursed at the man trying to take it from him. Received a blow to the temple from an iron gauntlet that brought stinging tears to his eyes. The warlock snatched the satchel from his shoulder. His mother’s satchel. His father’s book on fighting. Cawdor’s history. The pouch of Hélumite coins Theurig had given him at the Wakeful Isle.
Tey let hers go with no resistance. A sardonic smile curled her lips.
Imtep Khopeth returned his greatsword to its scabbard. “I must speak with the Seven.”
A warlock stepped forward and passed him a brass box, which fit into the palm of his hand.
The legate opened its hinged lid, revealing the top of a faceted crystal within a cage of copper wire. Score marks in the crystal began to glow as he turned away and stooped over it. The light within the box pulsed erratically for a while. When he’d finished, Imtep Khopeth closed the lid and passed it back to the warlock.
“As I thought,” the Legate said. “The Seven want to see you. Both of you. Captain Daakin!”
A burly man stepped from behind Snaith. “Legate!”
“You are to return to Hélum with them at once.”
“As you command, Legate.” Daakin issued quick orders, and men moved forward to manacle Snaith’s hands behind his back. Tey seemed almost gleeful as they did the same to her.
“Don’t worry,” she mouthed to Snaith. She went cross-eyed for a moment then spoke again, this time aloud, lyrical and sonorous, the voice of a crazy prophetess. “All is as it must be.”
As the captain and a score of soldiers led them away toward the longboats farther down the beach, Snaith saw High King Drulk Skanfok hoisted to his feet, still covered in a web of goo. A soldier on either side, he was marched in the opposite direction, up the incline, toward the piled-up rubble of the ancient town.
Snaith tripped and stumbled over the pebbles. Overhead, lightning sheeted, setting the swollen black clouds ablaze. Rain pelted down, drenching his cloak, leaving a glistening sheen on Tey’s exposed skin. Her hair was spattered across her face.
Soldiers pushed one of the longboats into the water, forced Snaith to wade out to it. To the right, assailed by surging waves, the lone tower on its thrust of rock. The windows beneath its copper hood flashed with reflected lightning.
The soldiers bundled Snaith on board, and Tey after him. Left them sitting in the inch of freezing water flooding the hull. Climbed in themselves, taking their places on benches, unshipping oars.
“Where we cannot win,” Tey said in a rasping whisper, “we learn. And then we come back.”
It didn’t sound like her—the voice or the words. She could have been quoting, for all Snaith knew. Either that, or she’d changed so completely he didn’t know her anymore. She was as lost to him as everything else. As he was to himself.
“When a warrior loses,” he hissed back at her, “he dies. Simple as that.”
“Is that still what you are?” Tey said, eyes wide and innocent. “A warrior?”
“Silence!” Captain Daakin barked. “Not another word out of you.”
Oh, I’m still a warrior, don’t you doubt it.
But Theurig had set him on another path as well. With the pendant, he’d seen a glimpse of what was possible. But there were secrets that eluded him. That had eluded even Theurig. Secrets these warlocks held.
And Tey… How much did she already know? More importantly, how much could she teach him?
Paddles struck the water, battling against the incoming tide. Daakin started to beat his sword against his shield, and the men heaved on the oars in time.
Tey focused her gaze up ahead, on the swaying hulks of the galleons. She looked unnaturally calm, unfazed by their captivity. By the enforced trip to the heart of the Hélum Empire.
And in watching her, Snaith remembered that he was supposed to be a thinker. A planner. The man who lost his head in the circles literally lost it in a real fight. That’s what he’d always believed. That’s what he’d read in his father’s book. And yet he’d needed a crazy witch like Tey to remind him. Observation was the path to victory. Learn from an opponent’s every move.
He could do that. He could go along with his captors. Meet the fabled Seven. Tell them what they wanted to know.
He was already playing out the scenes in his head in sharp and gritty detail. Formulating what he was going to say. Visualizing every move. Rejecting each permutation of defeat and death and twisting them into triumph.
When the time came, when he’d learned all that the Empire could teach, he’d find his way back home.
He’d unite the clans, a hybrid Archmage and High King.
And with a violence not visited upon them before, he would drive the Hélumites from Branikdür.
Lightning forked overhead. A huge wave crashed into the bow. Brine stung his eyes. Icy water drenched him, seeped into his bones.
And then he saw the Hand of Vilchus in his mind’s eye, scuttling through the air toward him. Pointing, as it had in the burial chamber. Singling him out.
Choosing.
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