The Arkhel Conundrum (The Tears of Artamon Book 4)

by Ash, Sarah

  “Because we represent rebellion and disobedience. Our existence threatens the order they were created to preserve and protect.”

  “And if he returns?”

  “Our only defense is to outrun him until he tires again.”

  That was of little comfort to Gerard who was beginning to suffer from a delayed reaction to the tumultuous events of the day. He didn’t want to reveal how he felt to his great-grandfather, fearing that Linnaius would see it as a sign of weakness. But almost as if he had read his thoughts, Linnaius said, “You must be hungry and thirsty after so long a journey. There’s rye bread and cheese tucked inside that little basket beside you. And a bottle or two of cider; help yourself.”

  Gerard didn’t hesitate; he couldn’t even remember if he’d eaten that morning before hurrying in pursuit of Iarko and the miners. The provisions were wrapped in a red-and-white checked cloth. He unwrapped them and tore off a hunk of Tielen rye bread. It was hard to chew but the taste of caraway was nostalgic; rye bread was not baked that way in Azhkendir or Tourmalise.

  “What about you?” he asked, turning back to Linnaius who shook his head with the faintest hint of a smile softening his austere expression.

  After Gerard had eaten half the loaf and some of the salty cheese, washing it down with dry, cloudy Tielen cider, he felt less shaky.

  “Down there.” Linnaius pointed. Gerard craned his neck and saw the austere but elegant buildings of a palace constructed of light stone: two curved wings on either side of a main building set in a great green park, laid out with white-graveled carriageways radiating outward, the longest of them stretching down to a lake and a fountain supplied by a dark canal. “Swanholm.”

  “Where are the competitors?” Gerard squinted into the sunlight for any sign of flying craft or crowds of spectators. “Has the competition happened already and we’ve missed it?” He could not hide the disappointment in his voice.

  “Horsemen.” Far below a group of gray-uniformed cavalrymen were riding past the fountain, followed by a little carriage, pursued by a lone horseman riding at full gallop. “Dear me; what is the boy doing now?” Linnaius said under his breath with a perplexed little laugh.

  Gerard looked at him questioningly. “You recognize that horseman from this great height?”

  “That is the Emperor. My protégé and student before he succeeded his father. But as to what he’s doing . . .”

  But Gerard’s attention was distracted; on the horizon two faint columns of black smoke were rising into the clear air. Beyond the parkland he could see moorlands stretching into the far distance, flanked by a forest to the west. One column of smoke was rising from the forest; the other was further to the east, above the moors. They could have been woodcutters’ fires, but there was something about the darkness of the smoke that suggested burning oil . . . or fuel. What had Toran written to his father? “The finalists will be using a new fuel especially created by the Emperor’s alchymists.”

  He gripped the rim of the sky-craft with both hands, leaning out perilously far as he tried to ignore the nightmare of burning flyers that had disturbed his sleep.

  “Would a new alchymical fuel make smoke that dark?”

  Linnaius narrowed his eyes as he stared toward the two columns smirching the air.

  “Let’s go and investigate.”

  Chapter 49

  The foul stink of burning engine oil brought Elyot Branville back to semi-consciousness. He could also smell pine sap and his own sweat, rank with fear.

  Burning. Smoke. Danger.

  His dazed mind slowly registered that all these pungent smells were a warning. He tried to move and found, blinking through a haze of eye-stinging smoke, that he was lying across the nose of the Aiglon , still attached by his harness, as the sky-craft dangled from the wide branches of a pine tree.

  “Damn it all to hell.” Must get out . Some basic survival instinct awoke, forcing him to fumble for the sheathed knife in his belt to hack and saw at the straps as the smell of burning grew more pungent.

  Suddenly the severed fibers broke under his weight and he tumbled to the ground, landing clumsily on his back. Black smoke was gusting from the sky-craft; he could see orange flames leaping higher.

  Get clear.

  Only as he righted himself did he remember that he had not been alone.

  “Arkhel!” he yelled over the growing roar of the flames. “ Toran !” His voice cracked as he strained to make himself heard. There was no answering shout. “Damn it, Toran, where are you?” Had he fallen clear before the craft hit the tree? He could be lying injured, unconscious nearby . . . or worse, he might still be trapped in the flaming wreckage overhead.

  A sharp, crushing pain suddenly flared in Branville’s chest as he staggered from beneath the burning wreck of their craft. He gasped aloud, clutching at his side. Had he cracked some ribs in the crash? There wasn’t time to pay attention to the pain. For all he knew, the burning fuel in the Aiglon might explode at any moment. The black, billowing smoke was making it hard to breathe, let alone see.

  And then he tripped over a body lying sprawled on the ground.

  “Toran?”

  He must have been thrown clear at the moment of impact. But was he still breathing? Heart thudding, he knelt down and turned him over. To his relief, he heard Toran let out a low groan.

  He slung Toran’s left arm over his shoulder and staggered away across the mossy clearing, dragging the barely conscious young man one slow step at a time.

  ***

  Toran gradually became aware that he was being hauled over bumpy ground. His head throbbed with every movement and the air was filled with the noxious stink of smoke. Through half-open lids he saw that his rescuer was Elyot Branville. And there was something oddly reassuring in being supported against the older cadet’s broad shoulders.

  “S’you, Branville?” he heard himself saying, slurring his words drunkenly.

  “There’s a hut up ahead. We can rest there.”

  Tucked in beneath the trees stood a little stone hut with a shingled roof; as they stumbled closer, Toran saw that the place had a distinctly neglected air.

  “Hallo!” Branville called. Toran heard desperation as his strong voice cracked. “Anyone at home?” He thumped the warped wooden door with his free hand. There was no response. He kicked it and it creaked inward; the darkness beyond smelled of damp and cold ashes.

  “Must be a shepherd’s hut. Or whatever they herd this far north in Tielen. Reindeer?”

  Propping Toran up against the outer wall, he ducked beneath the low lintel and went inside. “Earth floor, fireplace, pretty basic but shelter,” he called back.

  Toran didn’t care; he just wanted to lie down. His head was still spinning and his breathing and heartbeat refused to slow to a more regular rhythm. I must be in shock. He felt ashamed to show weakness in front of Branville, of all people. Later, he knew he would be subjected to merciless ribbing for being so weak. If there is a “later” for us.

  “No one’s been here for a while.” Branville reappeared. “But there’s firewood. We can light a fire.”

  ***

  “Sabotage.” Toran looked wearily up at Branville. He was so tired he could barely enunciate the word.

  “You think someone interfered with the engine?” Branville’s dark eyes caught the firelight, gleaming through the smears of oil and smoke streaking his face.

  Toran nodded. “That or the fuel. Someone who didn’t care if we lived or died. Someone who wanted to win so desperately that they were prepared to risk everything in making it look like an accident.”

  “By God, when we get back, there’s going to be hell to pay.” Branville clenched one fist, holding it up to the firelight. “I’m not going to stay silent about this.”

  “It’ll be almost impossible to prove.” Toran could not stop shivering. “We have no evidence—just our narrow escape and a burned-out wreck.”

  “But if Maulevrier’s craft won, we know who to suspect.” Branv
ille took a swig from his silver hip flask and passed it to Toran. “This’ll warm you up.”

  Toran automatically took a mouthful and wheezed as the fiery brandy inside scalded his mouth. Trust Branville to carry neat spirits.

  “Perhaps there’s a farm nearby where we can ask for help in the morning. Maybe someone saw the flames or heard the crash . . .”

  “Or maybe we’re too far from anywhere. Surely anyone who saw the flames would have come to investigate by now.”

  In spite of the fire and the brandy, Toran’s teeth began to chatter. He pulled his tattered coat closer to himself, tucking his knees beneath his chin. Earlier he had not felt anything but now his bruises had begun to hurt. Must be the shock of the crash. I thought I was made of stronger stuff. He didn’t want Branville to see him in such a weakened and demoralized state.

  “Are you all right, Arkhel?”

  Toran swore; Branville had noticed. “J-just cold. And tired.” He curled up before the blaze on the earth floor, feeling the fire’s warmth on his face—but the shivering didn’t stop. “I need sleep. It’s been a long day. Too long.”

  Branville leaned forward and put another branch on the blaze, setting off a fizz of blue sparks. Toran heard him draw in his breath as he did so; he must be feeling his bruises too.

  “Come here,” Branville said. “You’re shivering. Your teeth are chattering.”

  Toran saw him pat the floor beside him. He shook his head.

  “I said: come here.”

  “I’m fine where I am.”

  “Then I’ll come to you.”

  Branville lurched a little, sliding down, back against the stone wall, right next to Toran.

  “You’re not in your right mind. You must have taken a bump to the head when we crashed.” The words came babbling out, but to Toran’s annoyance the chattering of his teeth made them sound pathetically unconvincing.

  “Why?” Branville said. “Why won’t you look at me, Toran Arkhel? Why do you ignore me? Why can’t you see me for who I really am?”

  “How much brandy have you drunk?” Toran tried to inch away but Branville reached out and pulled him close, holding him against his own body, his arms crossed over his chest so he couldn’t wriggle free.

  “We should have died. We’re too young to die. There’s so many regrets.”

  “Regrets?”

  “I’ll be twenty next week. I’d like at least to have had the Emperor award us the gold medal and shake us by the hand for winning his contest fair and square. To recognize the craft and the skill and all the damned hard work.”

  Branville’s voice had grown softer; it might be the brandy that had loosened his tongue but Toran was surprised to hear him speaking so candidly. The heat of Branville’s body had begun to seep into his own, calming the involuntary juddering. The tightly restraining arms felt strangely reassuring. Toran’s head began to droop against Branville’s shoulder. It was too much of an effort to keep alert and on the defensive. Branville was still talking, half to himself, and his breath was warm on the back of Toran’s neck.

  Have I misread his moodiness and that infuriating bloody-minded attitude of his?

  Have I misjudged him?

  Chapter 50

  Karl Lorens—Oskar Alvborg, bastard son of Prince Karl the Navigator of Tielen and unacknowledged exiled younger half-brother of the Emperor Eugene—lay on the stony ground, stunned, staring up at the sky. He wasn’t quite certain how he had survived the crash. Kazimir’s alchymical fuel had sent both of the competing sky-craft much further than the length of the grand parterre. The flight had been crazily, heart-stoppingly exhilarating. Until it ended in the engine puttering, then cutting out, sending the craft spiraling down, nose-first, out of the sky.

  Just when he thought his time was up and he would crash into oblivion, shattering bone and flesh as the craft hit the ground, a rent appeared in the sky overhead and a bolt of fiery light pierced the clouds.

  Something broke his headlong descent.

  And I flew again.

  He hadn’t realized how much he had missed the sensation, the freedom, the sheer elation of skimming through the sky. Nothing in his life—not even being pleasured by the most celebrated courtesan of the Tielen court—had ever come anywhere near. Even if it had been bought at a terrible price: sharing his body, his mind with the daemon Drakhaoul Sahariel.

  But Sahariel had abandoned him, leaving the mortal world, passing into a far and distant dimension. And then Eugene banished him—his own half-brother—for the many crimes the daemon had forced him to commit. An unjust banishment. How could he have resisted Sahariel’s forceful will? Eugene knew, better than anyone, how hard it was to defy a Drakhaoul once they got inside your consciousness.

  And I was so close to winning your damned competition, brother.

  He had often fantasized about stepping up to receive the gold medal from the unsuspecting Emperor and at the moment their heads came close as Eugene bent down to place the ribbon around his neck, sliding a concealed blade into his grip and plunging it deep into his brother’s throat. Bathed in a warm fountain of his blood as the horrified courtiers stared, too shocked to do anything to help their dying Emperor, gasping his last, gargling breath at his feet . . .

  A breathless laugh escaped Oskar’s throat—cut short as the pain from innumerable lacerations and bruises shot through him.

  He kept fading in and out of consciousness. The impact—which had flung him clear and into a clump of cloudberry bushes—had left him miraculously alive but horribly scratched by the thorns.

  Some way off, the sky-craft still burned, a black column of foul-smelling smoke smirching the clear air. Eventually, he reckoned dully, it would eventually attract a rescue party to these bleak moorlands. Or so he hoped.

  “So this is one of them.” A deep voice . . . but why did he have the strange sensation that it was resonating within his mind?

  “Help me . . .” Oskar forced his eyes open to see if rescue had arrived but the effort was too great and they closed again.

  “It doesn’t work, Nuriel.” So there were two. “I’ve tried. Our bodies can’t adapt to the air of this world.”

  Each word set off little ripples of color in Oskar’s head: flame-red, fading through copper to orange.

  “If we are to carry out our assignment in the mortal world, there’s no other way but to copy what Khezef and his kin did.”

  Khezef? He must be hallucinating.

  “The Drakhaouls made free use of the mortal bodies of Artamon’s descendants. They adapted them to host their aethyrial forms. We will do the same.”

  “And this is one of them. This is Sahariel’s host.”

  “But he’s injured. Broken.”

  “All the easier for us to take control of him and bend him to our will.”

  Oskar had the unsettling feeling that the unseen speakers were hovering right above him. Did they realize he could hear them discussing him? Or did they just not care?

  “But that means we commit the same sin for which we punished Nagazdiel.”

  “His sin—which brought shame on our kind—was to forget his true nature. To become one of them. Even to lie with a mortal woman. I would never stoop so low.”

  Oskar could not help but smile. At any moment, he would come back to his senses and find that he was alone on the lonely scrubland, the martial voices just a figment conjured by his confused and injured brain.

  “But if you possess this one, can you gain control of him in time to carry out Prince Galizur’s mission? You failed twice before. Such failure is very costly—to you and your aethyrial powers.”

  “The two magi are close at hand. I won’t fail a third time.”

  “Then . . .” and the one called Nuriel paused as though considering what was being proposed. “I place my trust in you. Do what needs to be done and return.”

  A golden, fiery warmth enveloped Oskar. For one panicked moment he was certain that the flames from the burning flyer had spread through t
he heather and he was about to be consumed. Death by fire. But the panic melted away as the gilded heat overwhelmed him in a soothing cloud. Like sinking into the healing waters of a steamy hot spring . The gnawing pain in his bruised and broken limbs ebbed away. The sensation was so pleasurable after the brutal reality of the crash that he felt tears welling up—a singularly unfamiliar sensation.

  Distracted by his own confused feelings, he did not at first notice the slow, subtle infiltration until a voice murmured from within his mind, “ Don’t be afraid, mortal. I have healed your wounds. Now I need to use your body to fulfill my mission.”

  “Wait a—” Oskar began and then realized that the healing fiery warmth was coursing through his veins, energizing his body until he was pulsing with strength. For some reason he could not quite yet grasp he had been chosen to host this powerful being. “Who are you?”

  “We cannot stay here.” The being ignored his question. Next moment, Oskar felt himself rising—shakily—to his feet, propelled by the other’s volition, not his own.

  “Wait!” While he still had some control over his own body, he knew he must resist until he understood more of the being’s purpose. “What is your mission? Why do you need me to help you?”

  “Brace yourself, mortal.”

  “I have a name! Oskar Alvborg. Count of—” A sudden convulsive spasm pitched him off his feet and onto the dry heather again, face first. “What the hell?”

  “It seems I have not quite understood how a mortal body works yet . . .” Not so much a reply as a puzzled musing, failing to include him in the conversation. “Time to make a modification or two.”

  Before Oskar could protest any further, he felt an extraordinary build-up of pressure in his back. Something seemed to have infiltrated itself beneath his skin and was trying to force its way out. This was not the way it had been with Sahariel. An involuntary cry of pain broke from Oskar’s mouth, incoherent and raw. He sensed the being within him react as well, mirroring his own pain with surprise and confusion.