Magic and Mayhem: A Collection of 21 Fantasy Novels

by Jasmine Walt

  “You Norin certainly know how to make life difficult for yourselves.”

  Lynx shoved his arm. “It makes us good people. Unlike you Chenayans.” When he grinned at her, she added seriously, “And what’s more, I’ve already told you, Mott has threatened to kill my family. What about that?”

  Axel took her face in both hands. “If I told you the troops stationed at Tanamre were redeployed moments after our train departed, would that help?”

  A wave of relief flooded her. But then doubts assailed. Could she believe the man who had ordered his guardsmen to attack her tribe? Lynx gnawed her lip, staring into his eyes, trying to read his soul.

  It seemed like a closed book.

  Then again, he had shared the secret of the ice crystals with her, and he’d shown her the images of herself and Uncle Bear on the train. That had to mean something.

  But there were still too many unanswered questions.

  As if reaching out to a wild animal, she touched the ruby next to his eye. He didn’t even blink as her fingers probed the stone. “Tell me what this does.”

  “Absolutely nothing. It denotes rank and looks pretty. That’s all.”

  “No superhuman hearing? No ability to move like lightning?”

  Axel shook his head. “And no loss of a healthy sense of self-preservation, either. We Avanovs are too smart to inflict our own devices upon ourselves.” He took her wrist, pulled her hand up to his face, and kissed each of her fingers, making her squirm with want. “I struggled to hear you and Bear talking on the train. I suspected it was dynamite, though, so I kept the footage until it was translated. The sound came through perfectly.” He gave her a wry smile. “You were sitting right next to a wall sconce.”

  Of course she was. No doubt he’d planned that, too. Still, what he said about his ruby made sense. What didn’t was why she was attracted to him when he supported an empire that used such horrific methods to suppress its subjects.

  Lynx cleared her throat and asked her final question. “So when will someone be installing my ice crystal leash? Or trying to, I should say.”

  “Never. You’re too old. The device must be inserted within the first five years of life, or it tends to malfunction.”

  “And we wouldn’t want that, would we?” Lynx asked, pushing as much sarcasm as possible into her tone. It struck her that she sounded just like Axel. She cleared her throat. “I suppose that’s why the priestesses also work as midwives and nurses?”

  He grinned at her and then said, “To answer your first question—ideally, no. Malfunctions result in the elimination of the subject. And to your second question, yes, that is a primary function of the priestesses. To insert ice crystals into the faces of qualifying toddlers. Their moonstone shockers are there to subdue any mother who might complain.”

  Lynx choked back a gag. “You know what’s the best thing that could happen to this empire, Axel?”

  “Let me guess . . . the Dmitri Curse comes true, and you and your son kick all our arses to hell?”

  “That day can’t come soon enough.” Lynx stood and stalked to the door. “Thank you. It has been a most informative evening. And, as for your offer to be my lover . . . never in a million years.” She opened the door and waved imperiously for him to leave.

  With no sign of offense, Axel laughed as he gathered his things together. When he reached the door, he slipped his arm around her waist and kissed her as if she had been his forever—and would be for an eternity to come.

  “You cocky Avanov,” Lynx gasped, pulling away from him.

  He released her, laughing. “That’s just the start, my Lynxie.”

  27

  Once clear of Lynx and the ballroom, Lukan tore through the gardens until he reached a side door into the palace. Thanks to the ball, few people traversed the passages and hallways tonight. This route led him to another of his favorite hiding places—his observatory in one of the turrets.

  He took the narrow, winding stairs at a rush, arriving at a heavy wooden door at the top. He pressed a knot in the wood, and a tiny reader scanned his thumb. The door opened and then closed behind him. His massive telescope, centered in the expansive space, gleamed in the moonlight. Unable to risk electric lights in this domed observatory, the only other illumination came from candles on sticks he had to light himself; an added benefit was freedom from Felix’s cameras.

  Hands pressed to his knees, Lukan paused to slow his galloping heart. Then, he stood and kicked the wall with his boot. It dislodged a chunk of plaster. He kicked it again and again. His jaw still ached from Lynx’s punch and would probably be bruised in the morning. A sign shouting his humiliation to the whole palace. He pulled up short as his toes began to ache, too.

  Didn’t she realize the honor it was to marry him? He was heir to the most powerful empire the world had ever known.

  But then, he reminded himself, Lynx was a Norin, perhaps the woman destined to initiate the destruction of him and his empire. As much as he hated to admit it, her hostility added credence to his vision—and not the part where the lightning defeated her son.

  What to do about it was the fateful question.

  Would he survive his father’s rage if he rejected her? Or would that become moot if he married her, and she gave birth to a traitor?

  His eyes rested on his telescope. Lynx’s angry words came back to him: A Norin will never worship a dragon.

  Hands shaking, he rasped his flint, igniting a taper he used to light a candle. He picked up the holder and walked to a wall-mounted chart of the heavens, drawn in his careful script with ink mixed by his own hand. He had been plotting the constellations on that board for years. This map, an enigma to the few people he’d shown it to, spoke to him in the way charts depicting troop deployments probably did to Axel. Yet again, Lukan lamented that if he wanted his empire to flourish, it was maps of conquests that mattered.

  His hand drifted to the dots representing Nicholas the Light-Bearer, the constellation blazoned on the flag Lynx’s son had unfurled in his vision. It stood to the west of the Dragon and, if his observations and arithmetic did not fail him, inched across the sky to replace that constellation in the northern point.

  A disconcerting notion.

  He sank down onto the floor and rested his head on his knees, desperate for all this to be over. All he wanted was to be free to marry whomever he wanted. Was that too much to ask?

  But he knew that was never going to happen.

  His stomach grumbled, and he remembered his plate of food, forgotten in the reception room. It wasn’t the first time in his life he’d become so engrossed in something he’d neglected a meal, although it was usually a book and not a girl that was to be blamed. He had a remedy on hand.

  His steps echoed on the stone floor as he made his way to a small cupboard next to his desk. He pulled out a battered biscuit tin, stolen from the palace kitchens when he was a child. Once a week, he refilled it with his favorite treat—baked date and walnut balls. A strange combination, he admitted, but they were a reminder of how far across the climatic zones his empire stretched. The empire he longed to rule. He grabbed a handful, dumped them on top of the cupboard, and bent to stow the tin. When he looked up, the confectionary had vanished.

  In their place sat a book, nearly as tall as his hand and as thin as one of his fingers.

  He glanced around the room. The lock on the door remained untouched, and he was alone. Every hair on Lukan’s body stood. So who had put it there? A ghost? Someone like Thurban?

  It had to be.

  Small as the book was, it had an alluring cover, old blue leather with a portrait of an unknown man inlaid in the center. The colors had faded, but the image was still sharp.

  Unable to resist the lure of new knowledge, he lifted it to the candlelight and saw elaborate calligraphy on the title page. The Illustrated Book of Chenaya. An exquisite gold and jewel-colored illumination decorated the parchment.

  He swore as he read the subtitle: The Full History of The Dmi
tri Curse.

  Breathless with shock, he did what he always did when he found a new book: flipped through the pages, scanned the text, picked up a word here, a sentence there.

  Published in the year 20 Post Burning. His eyebrows rose. Lust and greed, he read, prompted Thurban to invade Norin. Nothing new there, so he turned the page. Beautiful Norin princesses will be sent to Chenaya as temptresses to see if Thurban’s posterity, the crown princes, can curb their lust. He winced at that, then rifled through another couple of pages. Not even the threat of a—

  The book slammed shut, squashing his fingers. A hand, gleaming like mother-of-pearl, rested on the cover.

  Lukan’s eyes widened as the hand grew an arm, then a torso and a neck, followed by a man’s head, with the same regal face depicted on the title page. Transfixed, he watched as the rest of the man’s wiry body, clad in a rich sapphire robe, emerged from the ether. He was of medium height, with short-cropped hair, the color of salt and pepper mingled. Intelligent, dark-brown eyes set in a hard, uncompromising face watched Lukan.

  He couldn’t decide whether to run screaming from the room or stand his ground to learn more. The fact that his feet seemed to have melted into the floor decided matters. He was going nowhere.

  The stranger spoke, his voice measured but firm. It was the same voice Lukan had heard during his vision. “It pleases me you wish to read the words of my cursing, Crown Prince.”

  Skin crawling with a combination of fear and fascination, he stuttered, “Y-your cursing? Does that mean you’re . . . Dmitri?”

  “Aye.” Dmitri extracted the book from Lukan’s hand and tucked it under his arm, all the while studying Lukan.

  Mouth opening and closing in panic, Lukan eyed him back. Then, deciding this meeting would be better served if he were sitting, he lowered himself into a chair. He even propped his feet on the desk, feigning nonchalance in the hope of hiding his fearful trembling. “Can this day get any stranger?” When Dmitri didn’t reply, Lukan added, “So, you are a ghost?”

  Lukan shook his head, marveling at how wrong Felix’s insubstantial holograms of the Dreaded were. Dmitri’s form—solid, radiating warmth—looked and felt nothing like a generated image. Felix had a lot to learn if this was a real resurrected person.

  Dmitri frowned. “Don’t insult me. I am no fabrication.”

  Lukan crossed his arms, hugging himself tight. Then, suspecting his body language conveyed more fear than confidence, he cocked his head toward the book. “I was reading that.”

  His visitor opened the manuscript, holding up a page illustrated with a man identical in appearance to Lukan, even down to the diamond next to his eye and the black-and-silver clothing. He carried the now familiar sapphire-blue banner, spangled with golden stars.

  “The old Norin flag,” Dmitri said. “Nicholas the Light-Bearer was their symbol of knowledge and freedom. It flew on the pinnacle of every Norin university before the invasion. Inspiring, isn’t it?”

  Lukan swallowed hard. It was beautiful. It didn’t take much imagination to plot the lines between the stars to see Nicholas’s powerful body or the flaming torch he held.

  Dmitri pointed to a comet sweeping into the sky behind the man’s head. “The Pathfinder. You have heard of it?”

  Lukan nodded. He had worked out that the comet always appeared some years before Nicholas the Light-Bearer took the northern point of the skies.

  “Good. Then you will know when you see it that my curse is on the brink of being fulfilled.”

  Lukan swallowed again. Secretly thrilled to be immortalized, he asked, “Why’s my image in a book written almost four hundred years ago?”

  “You would have to read it to find the answer. My followers wrote this after my brother executed me. It’s the truest record in existence of my curse.”

  Lukan licked his lips—they were desert dry—and kept his eyes fixed on the picture. “It seems like my day for seeing myself in strange places. I saw a—a hologram, or I think that is what it was, about—”

  “Aye, you heard my voice. Not hard to fathom that I showed you the vision,” Dmitri interrupted. “And trust me, it was as real as we, standing here now.” Dmitri leaned forward. His breath brushed Lukan’s face, adding veracity to the man’s words. He fixed Lukan with a penetrating stare. “Your uncle manipulates you all with his diabolical creations, but it is up to you to decide what is real or programmed.”

  Lukan chewed his lip, still unable to believe he was actually having this conversation. It seemed the words he’d read in Maksim’s journal were indeed true. The dead still walked and talked. “So, if you showed me the vision, why do I hear Thurban’s voice in my head?”

  Dmitri took a moment to reply. “Crown Prince, you support Felix’s efforts to create a world where truth is a lie and lies are the truth. So, what are your thoughts on all that deception?”

  “I always thought I knew my views, but now . . . it’s all so confusing.” Lukan probed the buttons on his waistcoat, deriving comfort from the familiar silver knobs.

  “Aye, that it is. You understand better than most what happens in your uncle’s lair and in his secret laboratories and factories. Consider your future subjects’ terror when the Dreaded torment them. Some may say the voices in your head are fair payback for what you have permitted Felix to do to others.”

  Lukan’s skin prickled, but he didn’t want to acknowledge what torture their technology must be to the unlearned. Having borne Thurban’s voice in his head, he had some inkling of how they felt. “How am I supposed to stop my uncle? My father gave him his mandate. I have no control over what happens in the lair, or elsewhere.”

  Dmitri eyed him, making Lukan even more uncomfortable.

  Lukan changed the subject. “Your vision showed two outcomes. I am interested in the part where the lightning destroys Lynx’s son. Is it possible she won’t create the traitor who overthrows my empire?”

  “‘Traitor’? That’s such a pejorative word.” Dmitri gestured to a chair leaning against the wall. “Mind if I sit?”

  “Surprised you even asked.”

  “I will always ask, Crown Prince. Human choice is inviolate. I was born, lived, and died to guard its sanctity.”

  Dmitri flicked a finger, and the chair slid across the floor, stopping next to Lukan. He tried to hide his astonishment, but still his mouth gaped. Dmitri sat but didn’t relinquish the book.

  “To answer your question, Crown Prince, you appear in the record because you are mentioned in my curse—in its antidote, to be more precise.”

  Delight at being singled out trilled through Lukan. At last, someone recognized his worth. Then, it struck him that other crown princes could have a mention. It doused his excitement. “What makes me so special?”

  “I was inspired to utter three names in my cursing: yours, Lynx’s, and Nicholas’s.”

  Lukan’s first thought was that he was talking about the constellation known as Nicholas the Light-Bearer. Then another thought struck. Could Nicholas be the name of his and Lynx’s son—if they ever got so far as to have him? So tantalized by that tidbit, his fingers itched to snatch the book away so he could read it himself.

  Dmitri pulled the tome closer to his chest.

  This impasse wasn’t helping, so Lukan asked, “Why me?”

  “Your love of learning—not for power’s sake, but for the thrill of knowing—sets you apart from every Avanov ever born, myself included.” Dmitri shook his head ruefully. “I was a terrible scholar in my day. Playing truant with Thurban was far more appealing than attending my lessons.”

  As impossible as it was to imagine this man of legend as a naughty boy following his brother into mischief, Dmitri suddenly seemed more relatable.

  It prompted Lukan to say, “That’s why I didn’t go into the military. I thought it a waste of time when I wanted to do more productive things.”

  He didn’t add the other reason—the major one—was that he refused to train next to Axel. He didn’t need the public confirma
tion that his cousin was a better soldier than he. Now it was just a matter of speculation. Not that it mattered to his father. In the old man’s mind, Axel would always be the hero and Lukan the failure.

  “How did you know about me—and Lynx—four hundred years before my birth?”

  “Like mine, your spirit is immortal. It existed before your birth and will exist after you die.” Face expressionless, Dmitri added, “We knew each other before either of our births.”

  Lukan snorted his disbelief even as the truth in the seer’s words resonated in his chest.

  “Regardless of your father’s view, you’re no failure, Lukan. But now it’s time to take your rebellious streak to its logical conclusion.”

  Sweat prickled on the back of Lukan’s neck. “That sounds—seditious.”

  “Aye.”

  28

  Lukan waited for something more, an explanation perhaps of what Dmitri meant by ‘sedition.’ Dmitri merely eyed him with a penetrating gaze.

  Finally, Lukan said, “I’ve just told you, I’m not a soldier.”

  “It is not a soldier the world needs. This conflict started with a war for knowledge. Let knowledge end it.”

  “Riddles were never my thing.” Lukan pointed at the book in Dmitri’s arms. “Why don’t you leave that with me? Once I’ve read it, I’ll know what I need to do.”

  “Crown Prince, this book cannot be stolen or taken by force.” Dmitri patted the leather the way a mother would soothe a baby’s back. “You have to earn the right to read about your part in the history waiting to unfold.”

  “And how would I do that?” Lukan asked warily.

  Dmitri raised his hand and gestured to the shelves of tomes around them. “You have a great library here in your observatory and in the palace archive, filled with thousands of books that belong to the world. But only you, your immediate family, and your handpicked scientists are able to read them.”