The Crown of Stones: Magic-Scars

by C. L. Schneider

  I still had a residue of the spell I gave to Dolan. It wasn’t much; a day’s protection at most. But I put a hand on Krillos and transferred it to him.

  Liel cut a cloth and tied it over Jarryd’s face. Then he tied Jarryd to the safety rope. Jarryd didn’t fight Liel’s attentions, but the boy looked glad when he was done.

  Krillos took Jarryd out onto the bridge. They started across, and I watched their every step. Crown or no crown, I wasn’t about to let them fall. The boards creaked. Their progress was agonizingly slow. The spelled side of the bridge dipped down as the wind steadily lessened. But Jarryd followed Krillos’ orders and went dutifully along, all the way to the other side.

  It was Liel’s turn. He stepped up to the first plank. Hesitating, the boy looked back at me. And he knew. “You aren’t coming.”

  “I can’t, Liel. I have to go back.”

  “For the crown?”

  “I can feel it.”

  Across the gap Krillos said, “What the hell are you waiting for?”

  Liel ignored him. “How will you get out?”

  “Make a door, I guess.”

  “To where?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I won’t end up there anyway.”

  Liel frowned at me.

  “Come on!” Krillos hollered. “We aren’t out of this yet.”

  Shifting my eyes to him, I raised my voice so there was no mistake. “You are. You and Liel are taking Jarryd back to camp. I’m going upstairs for the crown.”

  Distance didn’t diminish the anger flaring in his eyes. “Goddamn it, Troy!”

  “There’s a change of clothes for Jarryd in the pack I left with the eldring. Give him my coat, too. And take one of their furs. He’s damn thin. He’ll need as much protection from the cold as you can give him.”

  “What he needs,” Krillos said strongly, “is you.”

  “Not right now. Not yet. He won’t even look at me.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Jarryd—”

  “Is shattered, Krillos. He’s empty and shattered and I don’t know what the fuck to do with that. So let me focus on something I do know.” I was angry with myself. I tried not to unleash it on him. “The eldring will help you. They’ll take you to the horses. They’ll give you whatever you need. I know you think I’m crazy, but if you’re patient and calm, they’ll respond.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about. The escape will have been noticed by now. Draken’s men will be on alert.”

  “Draken’s men will be out chasing down the prisoners.”

  Krillos hissed a curse under his breath. “You can’t do this alone.”

  “I have to.”

  “Bullshit. Just hold up. I’ll come back across.”

  “No.” It didn’t matter that Krillos thought retrieving the crown was the wrong move. He would go simply because I believed it was the right one— which was exactly why I couldn’t let him. “I need to finish this, Krillos. I need someone I trust to get Jarryd out.”

  I knew that meant something to him; even if he was still glaring at me. “There’s nothing I can say?”

  “Say you’ll keep him safe. Say you’ll listen this time and leave me. And if this goes wrong, if I don’t come back, say you will never, ever, let him come after me. You either. You owe me a promise anyway.”

  “Yeah. That I do.” Krillos wavered a moment more. Then he shouted at Liel. “Guess it’s you and me, kid. So step it up. I want to get there before those eldring bitches decide to eat our horses for lunch.”

  Liel grabbed the handrail. He was going to leave without saying goodbye. I wasn’t surprised. The way I was ditching them, I’d be pissed at me too.

  “Listen to Krillos,” I said to him. “He’ll get you home.”

  Liel didn’t respond. I picked up my pack and turned to go.

  Hearing something, I glanced back, and Liel’s blade was drawn. He was swinging. The blow was fast and hard. It went through the remaining aged guard rail in one hit, severing the rope. That side of the bridge fell away, and only my wind buoyed the other side. But it was failing, and the unsupported planks (suspended in mid-air) were now hanging near vertically.

  Liel swung again and sliced through the guide rope I’d carried across. It tumbled down to join the already dangling set of lines spinning and flapping around in the conjured gale. There was no way now for him to cross.

  I was speechless. Krillos wasn’t. His profanities bounced off the cavern walls.

  Not paying the Langorian any mind, Liel put his knife away and faced me. “Captain Krillos is right, Troy. You can’t do this alone. You need help.”

  “I don’t want your help in this, Liel. I don’t need it.”

  “Is that lie for me or for yourself? Because I saw how you were after Kael. I saw what happened when you healed that eldring and before, in the water when you channeled. I heard you tell that Rellan man your name was Reth. I don’t know if it’s what Guidon did to you, what happened in prison, or something to do with those scars you got in Kael, but…” Liel stepped right up into my face. His young jaw hardened and he looked years older. “I was there, Ian. I was in Kabri, in the castle, when Prince Malaq told you Jarryd had been captured. I know how distraught you were. I know what you gave up when you tried to bargain for his release. And now he’s right over there,” Liel said, gesturing across the Gullet, “and you’re choosing the Crown of Stones over him. Does that seem right to you?”

  It didn’t. It seemed completely wrong. But I wasn’t sure I had a choice. “I have to do this, Liel. I know you can’t understand. You can’t feel it. But it’s calling me. It’s connecting to the obsidian inside me. I don’t think I can leave without it.”

  “Then neither can I. I swore a vow to you in Kabri, Troy. Maybe you didn’t take it serious, but I did. And I’m not letting you waltz into Draken’s bedroom without someone to keep you on track.” Liel stared at me, eyes eager, almost daring me to argue. I didn’t even try. I was too honored by the depth of the boy’s loyalty and his willingness to put himself in jeopardy for me. More, I was proud of him.

  I just didn’t want it to go to his head.

  “So,” I smiled. “Draken keeps the Crown of Stones in his bedroom?”

  Liel tried not to grin. “I caught a glimpse of it a few months back when the Prince sent me to deliver a message. Draken was on his balcony. He was holding the crown. Petting it like…” Liel’s face scrunched. “A woman,” he finished, as if the memory disturbed him. “Draken bid me turn around when he put it away. But I saw him open a compartment in the wall above his bed. We have a spy on the King’s staff. She says he still keeps it there.”

  “Malaq knows of this?” Liel nodded and my jaw went hard. “Since the day I woke up on that damn ship all the man wanted was my hands on the crown. Why didn’t he tell me it was here? Why didn’t he ask me to go after it?”

  “He thought reconnecting with Jarryd might help you control things when you finally channeled the crown. And the way you’ve been acting, I think he’s right.”

  “You crazy, lunatic bastards!” Krillos shouted. “What the hell am I supposed to tell Malaq?”

  I started to answer when Jarryd, mute until now, suddenly said, “Ian?”

  We all turned and looked.

  “Nef’taali.” I took the cloth off my face so he could hear me better. “Go with Krillos. I’ll join you when I can.”

  Like my words meant nothing, he said, “Is Elayna here?” There was a sense of disconnect to Jarryd’s voice. It worsened as he called out. “Elayna! Elayna!”

  “Jarryd, stop,” I shouted. “Who are you looking for?”

  “Elayna. Neela’s sister.” Hope leapt into his voice. “Is she here?”

  My head fell. Son of a bitch. So much had happened since I’d last heard the name Elayna Arcana. Even more since the night Draken declared Rella’s true heir wasn’t dead as everyone believed, but a prisoner of Darkhorne. He’d offered Elayna to me that same night. He’d tried to barter her life for the stone t
hat was currently stuffed in Liel’s right hip pocket. Elayna’s freedom was part of the reason Neela agreed to marry Draken—an arrangement he’d apparently reneged on if Jarryd’s ramblings were worth anything.

  Even so, she was free now.

  “Elayna’s gone, Nef’taali. All the prisoners are gone,” I assured him. “We set them free. Just like you.”

  He shook his head. “She’s upstairs. They took her and never brought her back.”

  “Upstairs? You mean the keep? When? Today?”

  “Not today. It was…it…” Struggling, Jarryd scratched at his arm with one of his bent hands as he tried to think. “I can’t remember. I want to remember. But I can’t.”

  “It’s okay,” I told him. “I’ve had that problem myself lately.”

  “No, you don’t understand. The days, the nights…I tried, but I kept losing them. One became two, became five. I couldn’t hold onto the numbers. And there’s no sun. There’s no sun here…ever. Just the shadows. They grow darker. They grow and stretch. They slip away like ghosts passing through a wall.” Jarryd stared across the hole, scratching harder at his arm. He was looking right at me. But he wasn’t seeing me. “I tried to count them. I tried for so long,” he said, his voice angry and forlorn behind the cloth. “But they stopped existing. Nothing exists in here. We’re all just ghosts trying to slip through the walls.”

  I blew out a breath and turned to Liel. “Any idea where Elayna is?”

  “Not here.” At my frown, Liel grimaced. “It’s complicated, Ian.”

  “Gods, boy, you’ve been hanging around Malaq too long. Just tell me she’s safe.”

  “She’s safe.”

  I looked back to tell Jarryd the news but his gaze had drifted and dulled. He no longer seemed to care about Elayna Arcana, or me. The floor had his interest now.

  Taking hold of Jarryd’s arm, Krillos took one last shot. “The Prince is going to lose it when I come back without you. But if you recover the crown, maybe someday he’ll speak to one of us again. So don’t fuck this up.” With that, he herded Jarryd from the room. I thought about calling after him. A wish for the luck Krillos so readily believed in would have been appropriate. Even a goodbye might have diffused the man’s anger some. I just couldn’t think that fast.

  Jarryd’s fleeting clarity, his innocent, incoherent remarks about Elayna Arcana, had set my mind to racing like a spring thaw running downhill.

  They were all rushing to the same place. Somewhere I didn’t want them to go.

  The Crown of Stones wasn’t the only thing of beauty Draken had spent the last two years caressing in his bedchamber.

  THIRTY SIX

  Liel sprinted across the hall to me. He tossed his head to the right and I nodded for him to go ahead. He knew the layout; I didn’t. I only knew that as we left the prison, navigating back through the forge and up into the keep, that the artifact had softened its approach. Instead of painful insistence, it was simply a presence. I was taking that as a good sign, that our heading was true. Unfortunately, it was going to take longer to reach our destination than I thought. The inmates I turned loose hadn’t fled the keep. They’d turned Draken’s home into a war zone.

  The attack on their oppressors, while no doubt rewarding, had left us winding our way through a massacre. Langorian soldiers were filing in, flooding the halls, struggling to hold back the wild-eyed prisoners who were intent on butchering anything in uniform.

  “Look out!” I pulled Liel to the floor as a Langorian axe buried itself in the painting above his head.

  The weapon’s owner came running to retrieve it. I stood to intercept, but ten paces away he was tackled to the floor by a group of men dressed in rags. Their screams were pure triumph as they kicked and beat the Langorian into the floor.

  An inmate rushed up. We eyed each other warily. Knowing what he wanted, I stepped aside and the man ripped the axe out of the wall. As he ran gleefully down the corridor, Liel and I slinked away.

  Knives whizzed by, clanging swords met disturbingly close. A few well-placed punches made contact, but we managed to cut across the expansive main entryway and arrive at the staircase mostly unscathed. I hesitated a moment before going up. It was an amazing piece of artwork. Crafted out of stone and old twisted metal, the stair post was a crimson-eyed snake with a head bigger than mine. Trailing off the snake’s neck was an elaborate railing constructed of multiple serpent bodies swirled around each other. The broad, winding steps were a slick, shiny black. They weren’t obsidian. It wasn’t onyx or hematite, or black sapphire, or tourmaline. I sensed zero magic coming off them, which sitting on top of an old Shinree mine, was odd. Unless…

  Hornblende, I thought. The whole damn staircase was made of it. Probably, other things were as well.

  Hearing a strangled cry on the next floor, I glanced at Liel. “Keep behind me.”

  “You were right,” he said. “Nothing is easy in Langor.”

  “Their fight is with each other. Stay out of the way and you’ll be fine.”

  “If I don’t make it back—”

  “You’ll make it.” The short sword Krillos had given me was in my left hand. I pressed it in Liel’s. “Just keep your eyes open.”

  I started forward and Liel grabbed my arm. “There’s this girl at the castle, in Kabri. Her name is Bethanee. She’s just this short, little chambermaid, but, she’s funny and pretty, and kind.” He paused, watching two men beating each other to death a few feet away. He looked back at me. “I think I love her. Would you tell her that for me?”

  “Tell her yourself.” Blocking the Langorian lunging for me, I shoved the man back, spun, and pushed my sword through his side. Yanking it out, I lifted the hand axe from his slackened grip and took off up the stairs. As Liel directed me from behind, I cut a path for us down the corridor. Engaging the escapees when I had to, I avoided them when I could. They were a wonder to watch. The way they plowed through their Langorian oppressors without slowing down. Not that they had to slow down. I’d made them invincible.

  I gave them three days and this is what they did with it.

  We ran down more hallways and up more stairs, heading deeper into the keep. The place had an ancient, almost sacred feel to it. It was massive, too, and extravagant, though I didn’t consider it gaudy. At least, not in the garish way the Kaelish were inclined to. There was a dark elegance to how the unlit vaulted ceilings hung over us like night. And clear beauty in the statues of make-believe creatures (hewn in bronze, marble, basalt, and granite) that stood stoically at attention. Carved archways resembled gaping blunt-toothed mouths. Windows made of colored glass were rounded to give a distinct, eye-like appearance. Others were fashioned in the shape of wildly-plumed birds and lizards with brightly colored scales.

  I had to hand it to my ancestors. Great skill had gone into the construction of Darkhorne. Yet I could have done without the maze-like design. Even with the Crown of Stones tugging at me, I would have never found my way without Liel.

  Finally, he pointed out a lone oaken door at the end of a long hall. “That’s it.”

  Darting inside, I found Draken’s bedchamber no different than the rest of his home: grand, with a touch of sinister. Decorated in rich greens and deep, cherry reds, lush velvet curtains embroidered with gold covered the windows. None of the lanterns were lit and the multiple hearths were all cold. It left the room on the dim side, with only a wide spill of daylight streaming through the glass balcony doors. Wardrobes, couches, and a hot-stone tub filled the gilded dressing area. I was slightly bewildered by the bookshelves lining one wall. I hadn’t taken Draken for a reader. I did think him a narcissist, however, so the opulence of his bed was no surprise.

  Canopied, with a domed roof and smooth, glossy archways, the four round columns at the corners were the size of tree trunks. The over-sized tiled headboard sat above a plump mattress. The footboard was an ornate bench that overlooked a beautiful fern-bordered, oblong pool. Gliding peacefully across the surface of the water was a single
, white swan. It craned its long neck in our direction and blinked at us.

  “Over here.” Liel raced across the room. He rounded the pool and approached the bed from the other side. The carved tiles of the headboard fit seamlessly together to form a galloping herd of Langorian warhorses in serpent-embossed battle armor. Shrugging out of his pack, Liel took the dagger from his boot. He pried at the edges of the tiles. “The latch is somewhere behind here.”

  “Work on it. I’ll check the door.” I went back to where we came in and peered out. The corridor was empty and quiet. Unable to hear a whiff of the fighting, I had hopes Dolan and his fellow prisoners were starting to move on. The quicker they fled Darkhorne, the better chance they had of escaping the realm before my spell died.

  There were three other doors. One was a water closet. Another opened to a set of servant stairs. The last led to a slender dark hall with an adjoining room at the end.

  There weren’t many people a King would allow access to his bedchamber.

  I stared at the closed door. It has to be her, I thought.

  There was no light coming from underneath. No sound. With the pandemonium in the keep, the Queen had likely been whisked away to safety.

  She could be anywhere.

  I was going to leave Langor without seeing Neela.

  I wasn’t sure if I was upset by that, or relieved.

  Liel was still busy with the tiles. I left him to work and went to have a look off the balcony. Five floors up, perched on the side of a mountain, I opened the double doors, stepped out, and got a face full of crisp air and wind-blown snow. It was only a squall. More was coming from the north though, where the dark edge of an approaching storm front loomed over the neighboring mountains. Closer, to the left, a square courtyard outlined in giant firepots was alive with hundreds of miniature figures dancing in combat. Their shadows stretched across the ice-dotted moat that butted up against one side of the courtyard. The bulk of the stale, greenish water ran beneath the King’s chamber. It was a good defensive design, considering the wall up to the balcony was flat and windowless. Scaling it would be like scaling glass.