I pulled the stench of death and decay into my lungs and lifted my voice. “Release my daughter.”
Cesla threw back his head and laughed his scorn until the canopy of leaves above him fluttered. “But of course, Boclar. Here.” He flourished a bow and motioned Erendella forward.
She took a few tottering steps, unsure, suspecting treachery, but Cesla made no move to interfere, and his men raised no weapons against her.
“That’s it?” I asked. “You’ve taken her simply to release her to me?”
He lifted one hand, tapping his chin with his forefinger. “What would you have me do, old friend?”
A hint of sound came from behind us. Woruld turned and I heard him sigh. “Your Majesty.”
I nodded. “We’re surrounded.” And we were. Cesla’s men were arrayed in a broad arc that I and Woruld with all his gifts could never hope to defeat. “What do you want?”
Cesla cocked his head, a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. “Erendella’s mind is her own, though she has spent a week here in the forest. Am I not merciful?” He paused to give a theatric shrug. “Even the liturgy says that Aer’s mercy has its price. Mine is no different. Your daughter and your man may go with my blessing.” His face contorted into a parody as he made the sign of the intersecting arcs in the air in front of him. He stopped just short of completing the gesture. “But I think I would enjoy the pleasure of your company for a time.”
“Sire,” Woruld said, “you cannot stay here.”
I turned to my faithful guard, my friend. “Take her.”
“Yes,” Cesla said, “by all means. I assure you, your sovereign will be only a day behind you, though it’s a pity you only brought the one fire.”
Woruld shifted. If need be, the brazier holding the fire could float for a time. I heard movement behind us.
“If you make any move to threaten the king or his daughter,” Cesla said. “I will kill you where you stand.”
My last hope died. “Take her Woruld. Protect her as you have me.”
“Father.” Erendella threw her arms around me to whisper in my ear. “Kill me, then yourself. We must not leave here.”
“What has he done to you?” I asked.
“Please, Father,” she begged. “I cannot.”
Her hands fumbled in the inside of my cloak, but when she touched the hilt of my dagger she jerked as if burned.
“Please,” she sobbed.
I pulled my head up from the wealth of my child’s hair. “Woruld, take her and the light and go.”
My friend and my heart, both of them, walked away, heading south until the light of solas powder vanished and I was left in darkness. “Ah, Boclar,” Cesla crooned my name. “Do you know what you have done?”
I tried to laugh my defiance at him, but it died in my throat. “My soldiers will not surrender the field because you hold me, Cesla. You and yours will die here in the forest, cut off from light and love.”
Cesla’s laughter succeeded where mine failed, held genuine mirth. “I have lived uncounted centuries, Boclar.”
The canopy of leaves overhead blotted out the light from the moon and stars, but splashing sounds came to me, near and far across the lake. The sound of shovels hitting earth and water accompanied grunts of effort, and I strained to see.
“My purposes are myriad, Boclar, and I give you the honor of being a part of them. Centuries from now your descendants—if I allow you any—will mark this as hallowed ground, and I will have them worship me here.”
“Worship? You’re insane.”
“Do you know the problem with your world, Boclar? It’s not a lack of faith—it’s the lack of will to create the singularity of it. Even before the Merum split from the southern church, your leaders allowed people their doubt, their moments of disbelief. There is a new faith coming, Boclar, one that will unify the world, because I will place it in every mind.”
I knew the reference from the liturgy. “And every heart?” I asked. The nearest of Cesla’s men were at least three paces from me. Escape from the Darkwater was impossible, but I clutched my dagger and contemplated freedom of a different sort.
“No, I will allow them to keep their hearts, just as I will allow you to keep yours. Why kill a man when you can torture him? Behold!” From the throat of every man and woman around me, there arose a low moan of infinite despair that grew in intensity until the forest shook with the wail of countless damned souls. Cesla laughed his counterpoint.
I turned to run, but his hand caught my bare arm with the strength of a vise. Frantic, I reached for my dagger, desperate to open the arteries in my wrist or throat.
“Try,” Cesla said, releasing me.
My hand stopped as it touched the hilt, powerless.
“What have you done to me?”
“Night has fallen on you in the Darkwater, Boclar,” he said. “And you are here at the center of my power. Now I have a disciple and more. You will be the instrument of my release.” He put his hands on my head in a parody of blessing. “Sleep now, my blessed one.”
Chapter 54
The stream of Boclar’s memories skipped to a vision of leaving the forest at dawn, the thread changing color from the black of despair to a bright green of hope without transition. Beneath the stream lay a vault, a scroll of deepest night. I drew closer to examine it, searching for some clue of what the writing meant.
A thread of black, thick and sluggish, snaked away from the scroll, suspended in the depths of Boclar’s mind—then it came for me.
I jerked, breaking contact, and my eyes found the king’s as I struggled to breathe. Shaking, I put my hand on the sleeve of his arm, my skin no longer touching his, but ready. It would take me no more than an instant, the barest touch, to break Boclar’s vault and destroy his mind, but my training as a priest had given me the conviction that a man should be allowed to confess before he died.
“You brought Cesla’s plague back with you from the forest, Your Majesty.” I waited for him to speak. Even kings were granted the rite of confession.
He nodded. “The morning I came out of the forest I dared to hope that I might have escaped its evil. I was alive and by the grace of Aer so was Erendella. I regained the safety of our lines and men. Even after night fell, nothing untoward happened. I didn’t rave. No madness descended upon me. I slept like any other man, exhausted from my ordeal.”
“But the second evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, I gathered my captains, declared that my journey into the forest and my escape had revealed the enemy’s weakness.” Boclar looked at me and shouldered the burden of his guilt. “I told them I’d seen a talisman in the forest, large beyond comprehension, that must be destroyed at all costs.”
My heart stopped, and I gaped. “Aer in heaven,” I whispered. “What have you done?”
“You don’t know?” Boclar demanded. “Is your gift nothing more than pretense?”
“I saw you in the forest with Cesla. I released the gift because there’s a vault in your mind,” I rasped. “My last memory is you leaving the forest at dawn because the evil in your mind sensed my presence and came for me, Your Majesty!”
He flinched and his guards advanced.
“Stop,” I said. Of a wonder they obeyed me. “Tell me what you’ve done,” I repeated. “I will make no attempt to cure you until you do.”
His eyes held threats, but with a sigh he relented. “Seemingly in my own mind I ordered my men to return to the forest with me. We stopped at the nearest village, and they equipped themselves with the ironmongers art to return and destroy Cesla’s talisman.”
“It’s no talisman, King—it’s a prison.”
Boclar shot me a withering glance. “I surmised as much.” He turned to his daughter. “Something in my manner must have alerted Erendella. When night fell at the next city on our journey south, I began to repeat those same orders, only this time I commanded the aid of every alchemist in Vadras. Erendella, suspicious, lit a brazier of solas powder.” He licked
his lips. “I felt it, Lord Dura, the evil you saw. I felt it withdraw, sensed its frustration.”
“You’ve kept your vault from opening ever since by lighting your nights with solas powder,” I said. “What of the men you sent to the forest?”
Boclar shook his head. “By the time I realized what I had done, they’d passed through our lines.”
“If they open the prison, Your Majesty, the world is theirs.”
Boclar nodded. “We have time yet. The prison is vast and the tools from the village were crude.” He pushed himself back in his chair. “Now, Lord Dura, you know everything. You will cure me of this vault. I am out of solas powder.”
Powder or not, I had no wish to have the king’s death on my hands. “Your Majesty, I—”
“Now, Lord Dura.”
The guards closed in. “Very well, Your Majesty. Take your daughter’s hand. I will perform the same healing on you as I did on Regent Cailin.”
Boclar gave a satisfied nod. “Proceed, Lord Dura.”
I took Boclar’s hand in mine.
The river of memories lay before me once more, comprising all the loves and losses of the king, but the threads were no more brightly colored than they would be for a common laborer. I dove beneath the flowing stream to the vault beneath them. Wary. The evil had become aware of me.
The lure of the king’s memories dropped away. I turned, warned by some instinct. A thread came out of the dark for me, but it oozed, sluggish. I retreated to the far side of the black scroll that had birthed it and watched as it tried to reverse direction. Another thread lifted from the scroll like a worm freeing itself from the soil and came toward me, writhing as it followed my scent. I swallowed my revulsion and tried to think.
I moved through Boclar’s mind, edging toward the vault. I caught sight of the myriad threads that sprung from it, linking the vault to every part of his mind. Experimentally, I slashed at one with my gift, hoping.
But the memory attached to it flared and died, taking a small portion of the king’s mind with it. I wanted to rage at Boclar, but he wasn’t there. In his ignorance he’d asked for something beyond my ability. Only the Fayit, through the grace of Aer’s power, had kept my vault from destroying me. Only his intervention had kept Cailin’s mind intact when I destroyed her vault.
And Ealdor was dead. If Boclar was to live, it would only be through the will of Aer.
Pressure. I felt pressure on my leg.
In horror, I looked down to see a thick tentacle of black wrapped around my thigh. Gagging in panic and revulsion, I reached out with my mind to throw it from me, slashing with my thoughts. More of them came for me, but under the influence of phos-fire they were too slow.
I paused, standing there in the dark of the king’s mind to say the antidon for Boclar. His vault was nothing more than parchment. My merest thoughts tore it, destroying the withering snakes that tried to reach out. With every stroke of domere, more of Boclar died. I slashed over and again with my gift until nothing remained, not even dust.
It was finished.
I stood in the empty ruin of his mind, the vault gone, the river gone. With a last act of will, I envisioned myself letting go of Boclar’s hand in the real world.
Light from torches surrounded me as the last of the solas powder flared and winked out. Boclar stared, his mouth gaping. Next to him, Erendella stood, her gaze trying to find purchase, now looking at me, now at her father, now at her hands. Before she could refuse or react, I brushed my fingers along the back of her hand, just long enough to confirm her mind was her own. No sign of a vault existed beneath her memories.
Then I stepped back, knowing my danger. I’d reduced Boclar to idiocy, his mind ruined by the vault he’d kept at bay, but ruined nonetheless. Erendella—queen now—would be grief-stricken beyond reckoning and angry enough to kill the man responsible.
But the rage I expected never came. Instead, she ordered the guards to escort me back. Bolt, Gael and the rest were waiting for me, but the king’s death had used me up. Explanations could wait. I groped my way to bed.
Sunlight, warm and yellow, came through the nearest window to show luxurious furnishings that still managed functionality. Figures stirred, but the first person I noted in my vision wasn’t Gael—it was Mirren. Only then did I look down and notice she held my arm.
“Boclar is dead,” I said. My voice cracked with disuse.
“We managed to figure that out,” Bolt said from somewhere behind me. “Pellin’s going to want to have a long conversation with you about the way you use your gift. You’re picking up some bad habits.”
“He had a vault. Doesn’t that fall under our authority?”
I still couldn’t see him, but I heard him snort. “You understand people, Dura, but you have no idea how to deal with them. How is that possible?”
My body felt fine, but my mind still screamed with fatigue. Even this limited conversation tired me. “How long have I been asleep?”
“A day and a half,” Mirren said.
“We have to leave for the forest.”
“We’re leaving this morning,” Bolt said. “Mirren arranged it.”
He came into view and gave my apprentice—the thought struck me oddly—an inscrutable look.
She nodded. “The rest of the monarchs are on their way as well.”
I managed enough strength to look around the room. “Where are Gael and Rory?”
“Rory’s guarding the door,” Bolt said. “Gael is probably with Erendella.”
“Why?”
“Because the guards were ordered to alert her the moment you woke.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” I said.
“That’s because it’s not.”
The door opened before I could think of anything clever to say. Outside, Erendella stood, flanked by Gael and six guards who carried enough meat on their frames to pass for livestock. Nobody looked happy to see me.
“Willet Dura,” Queen Erendella said. “Time, as your apprentice keeps telling me, weighs heavily upon us. You will ride with me today and offer such defense as you may for the death of my father. We will leave within the hour.”
Relief flooded through me, but I’d learned to be distrustful of good news in any guise. “Why the change of mind, Your Majesty?”
Erendella gave me a look accompanied by a slow blink of annoyance. She’d been queen for all of a day and a half, but that was enough for her to don her royal demeanor. She wasn’t happy to have her orders questioned. “Your apprentice showed me the memories you were given from Ealdor.”
“I don’t understand.”
Erendella sighed. “Obviously not. Suffice it to say, Lord Dura, that you could not have contrived those memories. They were filled with wonders for which you have no reference or imagination.”
It took me a moment to figure out that the queen had just called me stupid. She gave me a thin smile. “I mean no offense.” She shrugged. “Or very little of it. My point is that no one could have created those memories. They are too far removed from our existence.”
Chapter 55
Well after the sun had burned off the morning mist, Toria felt as much as heard Pellin calling her through the scrying stone she carried. With a nod to Fess, they made for a nearby copse of trees that would shield them from observation. Lelwin remained silent on her horse, her eyes uncovered, her head bowed. Fess positioned her in a pool of light, despite the fact that the shade of the trees was weak. Then they held their stones before them.
“Hear me, Toria Deel,” Pellin called from the stone, but his voice wavered, becoming louder and then indistinct through the call.
“I hear you, Eldest, but your voice is—”
“There was an accident,” he said. “My stone was damaged. Praise Aer I can reach you at all.”
“I am here as well,” Brid Teorian’s voice announced. “Where have you been, Eldest? I have half the Servants on the continent searching for you.”
“Then it should come as no surprise that
I’ve been on the southern continent,” Pellin said. “We’re about to land in Cynestol.”
A stream of invectives poured from the stone, and Fess’s brows rose in appreciation. “I haven’t heard some of those insults since I left the urchins. The Chief has a very ecumenical vocabulary.”
“Are you finished?” Pellin asked when the Chief paused to take a breath.
“Temporarily, Eldest,” she snapped, “but this isn’t over. You have a responsibility to safeguard the forest, and I fail to see how that duty entails going to the southern continent.”
“You will.” Pellin’s voice held notes of confidence Toria had seldom heard before. “With the help of the Honored One, we’ve learned how to cure Lord Dura of his vault.”
Toria’s heart leapt at the announcement as she caught his phrasing. “Cure, Eldest? Not break?”
“That’s impossible,” the Chief said.
“I’m surprised to hear you say that,” Pellin said. “Don’t we say that with Aer all things are possible?”
Toria’s heart struggled to find its rhythm. “But that means that it was always possible. Oh, Aer, what have we done? How many thousands have we broken and thrown away? We could have saved them.”
Either Pellin had already worked through his grief and culpability, or he’d shouldered enough guilt in his long life that more hardly mattered. Regardless, his voice came through the stone, weak with damage and distance, but commanding.
“Grieve later, Toria Deel,” he said. “Ealdor told me to find what was inside Lord Dura’s vault. We now have the means to do so. I need you to get word to him in Cynestol.”
The Chief of Servants muttered imprecations but managed to curtail herself a moment later. “That’s just the point, Eldest. Lord Dura is no longer in Cynestol. He’s on his way to meet Rymark and the rest of the monarchs. He claims he’s found the means to summon the Fayits’ help in fighting Cesla. He’s managed to convince them that the gift of kings creates a perfect circle. Desperate people will believe anything, it seems.”
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