“I know what you truly want, Errol, what you’ve desired for months. Deas cannot give it to you. He requires your death. But if I refuse to kill you . . . what then? Will you consent to live the rest of your life as my prisoner?
“Look at your men. They are outmatched and overwhelmed, and my allies to the north have yet to take the field. Stop this senseless bloodshed. If you choose, I will allow you to serve me, Errol, without becoming one with us. You may take Adora to some remote part of the kingdom and live your life undisturbed.” Belaaz extended his hand. “Choose peace, Errol.”
Deep in his mind, Errol’s thoughts labored beneath the assault. The fear of dying he’d managed to keep submerged surfaced, rampaged through him, and he panted with the effort of keeping it at bay.
The kernel of his identity struggled to shake the terror of death, but the wind had died, and in the unnatural silence, he couldn’t summon the will to defy the malus.
A weight crashed into him from behind, sent him sprawling. He tumbled, caught a glimpse of Cruk attacking Belaaz with a storm of sword strokes. The watchman conjured blows, striking with his blade, his legs, his fists, blows that never landed.
Belaaz’s laughter sent shards into Errol as the malus slipped each blow with contempt. “Human. You’ve hardly crawled from the mud and you think to challenge me? Come then, see what your folly has brought you.”
Belaaz twisted, wrenching himself from one spot to the next, seemingly without transition, snatching up his sword and sending Cruk’s attacks into empty air. The shirra whistled as the malus whirled it behind his head and sent it screeching in a horizontal arc toward Cruk’s unprotected side. The blade crunched through the chain mail like a knife parting cloth, and blood fountained from the wound. The malus wrenched the sword away, twisting, leaving Cruk to fall backward.
The watchman’s head bounced as he hit the ground, his eyes dimming. Errol knelt, looking into Cruk’s plain face, waiting for some word. The watchman’s arms hung useless as blood soaked the ground, but the captain’s eyes beckoned him.
Errol’s nose came within inches of Cruk’s and he strove to hear, but the captain didn’t speak. As life faded from his eyes he inhaled a wet sucking breath into his lungs, thrust his face forward, and breathed, “It’s just a door, boy.”
The captain’s dying breath, warm and smelling of blood, held nothing in common with the wind, but though it lacked the power to stir his hair, it tore through the temptations of the malus’s spell, rendering it useless. Errol struggled to his feet.
“No.”
Belaaz flung his mirth at the sky. “Do you think your denial will avail you? I will deny Deas your death and break his power over me.” He pointed toward the coruscating flashes in the sky above. “Do you think he will save you? Look around, manling. Your forces are dying. Your watch is gone. I am many, and your kingdom has no king.”
Errol pulled breath into his lungs, willing himself to play his last desperate gamble. Wind swept across the field to accompany his cry of triumph. “But we do. You arrived too late. Liam is king.”
He turned to point to Escarion’s fortress behind him. “You’ve failed. For all your age and knowledge, you have erred, Belaaz. The son of Prince Jaclin is being crowned even now. Do you really believe I came to die? Did you never question why the man who killed one of your council was absent from this fight? It is because he is being crowned king! You and your army will never get there in time to stop it.”
The malus screamed, his mouth stretching, showing twin rows of pointed teeth as he sent his gaze toward the castle. He spun back to face Errol, growing and distorting until he towered over him once more. “You think to surprise me, worm? My brothers are within the castle, on their way to kill that childless heir.” His face stretched into a parody of a smile. “If Deas does not require your sacrifice, I will.”
Errol reeled as if the earth canted under his feet. If the malus managed to kill Liam, Illustra was lost. Rale’s voice crackled in his ears.
“Strike! Belaaz controls them.”
Errol spun his staff, readying himself to attack, leaping for the malus. Sparks danced as the weapons collided.
Scorn filled Belaaz’s twisted face. “You think to touch me, insect? I will take you piece by piece until your ability to fight is gone. Then I will eat your heart.”
Sevra sprang into motion as if released from some compulsion, her sword coming for Adora in a vast cut. A shower of sparks glittered in her vision as Weir’s daughter snapped her smaller blade in half. Rokha dove, slicing into Sevra’s calf and rolling away. Sevra spun, her shirra whistling in the air in a wild swing that plowed a furrow across Rokha’s shoulder. Ru’s daughter stumbled back, too far away now to engage. Sevra spun, looming over Adora, her mouth stretched in a rictus of hate and glee.
“Now, strumpet, you will die.”
Half a dozen paces away, Rokha fought to her feet, blood soaking her left arm, her lips stark against her pale face. She stabbed her sword into the ground, using it as a crutch to force herself to her feet, fighting to reach Adora in time. She was only half a dozen paces away, but it might as well have been a hundred.
Adora struggled to get her feet beneath her as Sevra lifted the long blade with the finality of an executioner. Adora’s feet scrabbled against the wet ground, refusing to find purchase. Thrusting against the turf with her hands, she came to her knees.
Rokha slipped to one knee, her eyes searching Adora’s, eyes filled with apology and sorrow. With a cry of rage, Ru’s daughter pulled her sword from the ground to grip the blade with one hand just in front of the pommel and threw.
The sword came for Sevra’s unprotected back like a spear. In the space between heartbeats Adora watched its flight, finding impossible hope. Sevra, seeing her eyes, ducked and wheeled, swinging her sword blindly against the threat she sensed behind her.
Three inches of steel buried itself in her chest before her riposte found its mark, and Rokha’s sword fell to the grass, out of reach, useless.
Sevra brought her free hand up to touch the wound, smiling at the blood on her hands as she raised her sword once more. Her eyes vibrated with insane delight. “So close, strumpet, but not enough.”
She watched Sevra slowly raise her sword, savoring her victim’s helplessness. When it began its descent, Adora refused to close her eyes. She looked through the malus, willing her last memory to be of Errol.
Belaaz leapt toward Errol, his shirra blurring and then disappearing. Errol leapt, throwing himself from its path. He should have died in that moment, but the massive sword found only air. The stroke missed, impossibly anticipated. Wind swirled around them and Errol found himself moving before each attack, laboring to get close enough to the giant to strike.
Again and again he twisted, jumped, and rolled, flowing with each strike, the deadly shirra missing him by the barest margin. The sounds of battle faded to stillness until only the roll of thunder sounded. Errol’s mind split, and he watched himself moving with the attacks. He gathered his legs as Belaaz attacked his mind once more. The two-pronged assault threw him off balance, and the shirra sliced through the meat of his shoulder. Again the weapon whistled toward him, changed direction at the last instant to furrow a gouge through his thigh. Errol faltered, slowing despite the urging of the wind. Blood oozed down his arm, betraying his grip. More flowed down his leg to wet the ground beneath his feet.
Belaaz struck again, and Errol threw himself to one side, his feet slipping. He rolled by instinct, bringing his staff up in a desperate parry as he struggled once more to stand. Blows from Belaaz’s shirra came like a storm of strokes. Spots danced in his vision, and his sight narrowed to a tunnel filled by the malus’s laughter as he sent his blade in a whistling stroke toward Errol’s neck.
A breeze, so soft he couldn’t be sure of it, caressed his face, and in the whisper of its passing Errol heard a single word.
“Now.”
The wind stopped, halted as if hitting a wall. Belaaz screamed, swingi
ng as Errol gathered himself, leaping as his hair lifted, standing on end. He swung his staff as he passed over the sword, striking the malus.
The sounds of fighting erupted in the hallway.
“Martin,” Luis screamed. “Now.”
He pushed, striving to place the crown on Liam’s head, but his arms refused to move. The door to the makeshift throne room burst, throwing splinters and chunks of wood into the hall. Men, hideously large and swollen, spilled into the hall, pushing Waterson and the last of Escarion’s defenders before them.
Lightning, white hot and savage, flashed beyond the window, the sharp sound of thunder deafening. Martin gasped as the pressure on his arms changed. He thrust the crown onto Liam’s head. The malus dropped, twitching, to the floor, lifeless before the echoes of thunder faded.
Liam ran from the room, the crown falling from him as he drew his sword, gathering men as he went. Martin moved to follow, not hurrying, his heart strangely empty.
Sevra’s sword began its descent as light and sound filled the sky. Incandescence flashed into the middle of battle accompanied by deafening cracks of sound that rolled over them, booming over and over again as lightning flickered back and forth between the ground and the cloud bank.
Weir’s daughter collapsed, the cords of her unnatural life severed at last. Deprived of strength, her sword fell against Adora’s side, but without the force to wound.
Adora forced her feet to serve her at last, racing toward the blackened circle of earth, fighting to see past the afterimages of the strike. When her vision cleared, a circle of dead surrounded the charred, smoking remains of Belaaz. Men in black raced toward the castle, marshaling forces to pursue a fleeing enemy.
She didn’t see him. Sobs choked her as she hopped over Belaaz’s twisted and blackened form, the metal staff lodged in his chest. A few paces away she found him, lying in the grass as if he’d been discarded. Kneeling, she pulled Errol’s head into her lap, his skin so very pale, hardly more than the face of a boy. Men and horses thundered past her, heading south.
Martin walked—there would be no point to running now—down the hill toward the river. Luis followed, the rest of the Judica and the conclave coming with him. The dead lay everywhere. They would say the panikhida later, after they found him. Liam and the remnant of their forces disappeared into the distance as they chased down the Merakhi army. Only men fled. Every malus and spawn lay dead on the field, with or without wounds, lifeless. The barrier was restored.
“He might have survived,” Luis said. “Perhaps you crowned Liam in time.”
Oh, how he wanted to believe that was true. “No. He died. Deas took the last measure of sacrifice from him.”
“He will be a legend, Martin. Before a year has gone by, he will be seven feet tall and the mightiest man who ever lived.”
Martin stopped, his feet skidding a little on grass slickened by water and blood as he grabbed Luis’s sleeve. “We must ensure that doesn’t happen. I will not permit his sacrifice to be diminished in such a way.”
He saw Rokha first, then Adora a few paces away with Errol’s head on her lap. He held out a hand to pull Luis to a stop. They stood for a moment, silent, and then he turned to Luis. “Come, friend, let us return. She will see to him.”
Rokha sat cross-legged on the ground holding vigil with her, but removed enough to provide some impression of privacy. Adora bent over him, hovering as grief emptied her of the ability to speak, weep, or breathe. She searched him for injuries, her fingers brushing first the skin of his face, now his hair, and then the lips that had kissed hers. She found the cuts, serious but hardly fatal, before noting the burns on the palms of his hands.
Bending low, she held him close, the skin of his face already cold against hers. A wordless cry of loss and longing built somewhere within her, a prayer of pleading sorrow. She stayed, her tears bathing his face, unwilling to move, the passage of time noted only by the growing quiet as the fields of Escarion emptied of the living. The sun touched the horizon to the west, casting ruddy light across Errol’s pale face.
She pressed her head to his, fresh anguish tearing through her at the touch of his face against hers. “Deas, is this all there is for him, to have everything taken? Where are you?”
A breeze from the west broke the stillness, swirled around her to lift a strand of hair and send it fluttering behind her before it gathered, growing. A gust from the south joined it moments later, ruffling the grass where she sat as it combined with the west wind. When a push of air from the north, the direction of Escarion’s fortress, came to merge with its brothers, the winds became visible, lifting water and blood from the blanket of grass to sparkle in the dying light.
Adora gasped, her lungs struggling for air, as if the winds had stolen her breath. The glittering swirl of air covered Errol, but no color or animation showed in his flesh. Some instinct or intuition drew her gaze east. In the last light of day, the grass flattened before the racing approach of a column of air. It swept the others into its embrace, and her vision of the world shrank to the swirling column of luminous dew that enveloped the two of them.
The whorl of light, wind, and water tightened, growing in intensity even as it shrank, until it covered Adora and Errol like a shroud. It remained so while the last of the sun drifted below the horizon to the west. But as the final crimson rays fled the fields of Escarion, the whirlwind shrank to cover only Errol, leaving Adora gasping, watching in wonder as the coruscation melded with his flesh, disappearing.
44
The Wedding and the Feast
ADORA MOVED THROUGH THE CASTLE, drifting on the tide of humanity that had come to witness the wedding of their king. It seemed as though Erinon had recovered its populace overnight. The streets close to the royal compound were filled with bustling merchants and churchmen, but she knew better. Much of the outlying city waited for shopkeepers or tradesmen or guards who would never return.
And the provinces were no different.
Adora slipped from room to room, avoiding contact when she could, acknowledging the endless offers of commiseration when circumstance required.
A touch on her arm surprised her, and she turned to find light-blue eyes—no longer stoic—regarding her. On his right, one arm looped through his, stood Rokha. Merodach’s left hand gripped a cane. The harsh clench of the fingers holding it testified to its necessity.
He bowed to her, held it longer than her position or bereavement required. “Your Highness, how may I serve you?”
His regard threatened her resolve. With a sharp intake of breath she steeled herself. “You are too kind, Captain.” She reached out to finger the rich blue of his robe. “Or should I say, Tremus?”
Rokha didn’t laugh, but her face glowed and the look she gave her husband held all the fierce pride Adora remembered. “Luis claimed him for the conclave, despite his marital status. He is a man of many talents.” Now the laughter came, and the former watchman’s face heated, making him appear boyish.
Adora nodded, her heart filled with longing at the acute emptiness of her arms. “New things come. Would you accompany me to the throne room?” she asked. “I’m hoping your presence will keep others from offering condolences.”
“Is it bad?” Rokha asked.
She nodded once, pausing to consider her words in case they were overheard. “Yes, but I think time and distance may help somewhat. Avenia is remote. Few there have ever been to Erinon, and fewer know what I look like. With care, I can move about at need, unknown and unremarked.”
Merodach’s slow pace served to provide a measure of privacy as they traversed the royal palace to Liam’s throne room. The three of them slipped in through a side entrance and took their place at the front as befitted the last princess and the tremus of the conclave.
Moments passed as the hall filled, nobles, churchmen, and functionaries jockeying for seats on either side of the promenade beneath banners of purple, red, or royal blue.
The immense chamber hushed, and a fanfare a
nnounced Liam’s presence. He approached the dais from the right, resplendent in white, Magnus’s crown catching the wealth of his hair.
“He looks as perfect and untouchable as ever,” Rokha said.
Adora couldn’t deny it, but her mind drifted home, aching for something less divine, and a stab of longing threatened her.
Rale, Waterson, and Reynald came to stand by him, austere in the black of the watch, standing as his seconds if anyone dared challenge. The trumpets voiced a different call, and Martin approached down the center aisle, the crimson train of his archbenefice’s cloak trailing behind like a victory banner. Luis followed in the cerulean robes of the primus, only slightly less grand.
They took their place on top of the dais, above Liam and the captains, and the hall quieted as everyone held their collective breath.
“The conclave chose his wife,” Rokha said. “Martin ordered the cast in stone, but I’ve heard rumors that it only confirmed the girl he said Aurae had already named for our king.”
Merodach nodded. “It’s true. Some in the conclave think the archbenefice is a sorcerer.” One side of his mouth pulled up in a smirk. “The knowledge of Aurae will take some getting used to.”
Adora digested this last remark, but it did not lessen her discomfort. She wanted nothing more than to escape the gaze of people who looked upon her as the embodiment of Illustra’s loss. “Who did they choose?”
Rokha smiled and pointed. “Here she comes now.”
The trumpets blew a slow march, and a woman of an age with Adora appeared, tall and raven-haired, draped in shimmering folds of blue silk. Her breath exploded from her, and she clamped her teeth against the noise. “Liselle?” she asked. “She’s going to be queen?”
Rokha nodded, her raven hair bouncing with mirth. “You should have seen it, Your Highness. Every time she came into Liam’s presence, she looked at him with a gaze that could have set rocks afire, and he stuttered and stumbled over his words like a schoolboy.” Her laugh made it plain she supported Liselle’s approach. “I think she’ll be good for him. Every man should know a little doubt and uncertainty.”
A Draw of Kings Page 44