The Crown of Stones: Magic-Price

by C. L. Schneider

  With difficulty, I raised my gaze from her overflowing breasts to her sensual eyes. I took the cup from her hand, and a sudden, involuntary shudder of craving raced up my arm. “He’s tall,” I said, tightening my grip. “He was wearing a cloak. I know that doesn’t help much but he came in a while back looking to hire. Met with a woman. Name of Roe.”

  Imma scooted back off the counter to her side of the bar. With that slight distance, the scent of her vanished. Strangely, I found myself missing it.

  “Roe’s been here before,” she replied, thinking, “but not for some time. As far as your Shinree goes…healers don’t come unless enough blood spills to get the magistrate involved. And oracles don’t come unless you pay them—which we don’t. To cite our great and wise owner,” Imma deepened her voice and slowed it to a coarse drawl, “why in hell’s name would I pay for some friggin’ lout to learn his future when he’ll be too drunk to remember it come morning?” Slapping a hand on the jug between us, she lifted it high. “This is all the entertainment these good-for-nothing, tightfisted, lousy, pricks need.” Putting the bottle down, Imma ended her impression with a laugh. “You’re in the Wounded Owl, handsome. If you want oracles, you need to go uptown a bit.”

  “Nah, I think I’m good here.” I tossed back the drink in my hand. It was like liquid fire. I was still trying to breathe when the blacksmith stumbled into me.

  “I heard about you,” he said.

  I didn’t even glance at him. “Don’t suppose any of it was good?”

  “It was shit. Must be shit,” he said, his words running over each other. “Since you look like just another ugly, spooky-eyed witch to me. Cowardly and cock-lovin’ too, I bet.” He shoved his shoulder into mine. “Prove me wrong.”

  “You really don’t want me to do that,” I told him.

  “Let’s say I do. Let’s say I grab your head and slam it,” he smacked his hand on the bar for effect, “until it cracks. What would you do then?”

  “Something you wouldn’t like. Now, if you don’t mind?” I held my cup out to Imma. She re-filled it, but her posture had changed. The lighthearted casualness of before was gone. She looked angry.

  Then she looked scared as the blacksmith shoved me again. This time he pushed me forward, so hard, I bumped into her, dropped my cup, and spilled my drink on us both. She lost her balance and I had to grab her with one hand to keep her from falling, while my other gripped the edge of the counter; fingers digging into the wood as I furiously struggled to re-route my anger.

  “You okay?” I said. She nodded and I let her go. I let go of the bar, too. Shaking the wet off my hand, I turned around, hoping to find a way to get rid of the blacksmith without it turning violent—and he hit me.

  Knocked once more into the bar, I rubbed my jaw as I righted myself. I spit a generous amount of blood on the floor and the bastard scowled at it as if it wasn’t enough. As if I should have been flat on my back, out cold with one hit.

  “Are you Ian Troy?” he said then.

  I had to spit again before I could answer. “Maybe you should have asked that before you hit me.”

  The brute grunted, possibly in agreement, but he was too busy trying to stare me down to elaborate. He couldn’t manage it, of course. My reputation regularly drew in aspiring challengers like flies and I’d spent years perfecting the right amount of unshakable, belligerence it took to warn them off with a glance. Not to mention that too much ale swam in this one’s veins for him to see straight.

  Still, I let him win. I had to. My nerves were jumping like hot embers from a fire and the effort it was taking to not put the bastard down, had spasms running through me, so intense, I picked up the jug and took a long, desperate swig.

  Imma frowned at me. “You don’t look so good.”

  The jug wobbled in my grip as I lowered it. “It’s nothing.”

  “Really?” She put her hand on mine to stop it from shaking. “You should get out of here. Before someone catches what you have.”

  “They can’t.” But she was right. I couldn’t stay. The sickness and disorientation had finally reached that critical point. I had two choices now. Continue to deny my body what it yearned for. Or give in.

  I didn’t want to even consider the latter. But as long as another was in charge of my spells, it was futile to suffer through the pain of abstinence. Whatever gains I might make would be undone at his whim. Not to mention that, physically, I would be a mess. From here on, there was only one way to stay sharp. I had to alleviate my symptoms as they came on. I had to cast regularly and willingly, and I had to live with it. I had to let go of the years I’d spent honing my self-control and fall back into old patterns; using secluded places to gorge myself; learning to get by on small bursts to avoid draining innocents. I had to accept that once more my life would be measured by how long I could last between spells.

  I hated being that weak. Yet I saw no way around it.

  “Fucking, witch,” the blacksmith slurred, breathing his hot, stale-wine breath in my face. “Your kind drinks from the trough outside. Let me show you.” He put a hand on my arm and Imma gave me a grim look. She knew I was on the verge of doing very nasty things to him.

  “Go,” she urged me. But I didn’t want to anymore. Just the idea of relief being a wish away had my heart racing and my mind shuffling through potential spells.

  If I can lure him outside, some place deserted, no one else has to get hurt.

  Something fast and easy…

  I just need a little.

  No one would miss him, at least not until morning, and I’ll be gone by then.

  Spittle hit my face as the man thundered, “The trough witch! NOW!”

  And with that, my patience was done. Suddenly, my urges felt justified. The path ahead of me was clear.

  Prepared to cast, I spun and faced my tormenter full on. I threw off his hold. I glared deep into his soot-ringed eyes and found them narrow and hard, full of an ignorant, all-consuming pride that sickened me. They were alive with nothing but hatred and cruelty. But they were still alive. When I was done, they would be glazed, empty and accusing. His corpse would be curled up on the filthy cobblestones, gray and parched, dinner for the rats and the crows. Empty. Dead.

  Like Aylagar.

  I tried to let it go, to shake off the memories. I tried not to see the countless bodies reflected in the blacksmith’s harsh stare. Or Rella’s former Queen splayed out on the barren ground. But they wouldn’t go away. She wouldn’t go away. And the weight of what I was about to do—choosing a sacrifice, willfully planning a murder—nearly toppled me to the floor. Gods, what’s happening to me?

  Next to me, Imma ran her hand up my arm. I’d been so self-absorbed I hadn’t even seen her come out from behind the bar.

  Her touch moved to my face. She mouthed one word, “Come.” And I wanted to, badly. Her stare was chocked full of so much desire, it promised the kind of night I hadn’t seen in a long time. “This way,” she urged. She stepped toward the door. The coaxing in her stare deepened. I felt a pull to follow her, so intense, that as Imma extended a hand to beckon me, an uncomfortable tightness pinched my chest.

  The longer I hesitated, the worse it got.

  In no way, was it natural.

  Damn. I’d been cast on. Or, she had. Either way, magic was inclining me toward the pretty barmaid. The question was why? What was my new friend from the swamps up to now?

  Disappointed, I almost went with her anyway, to see where she might take me. But the blacksmith shuffled in between us. “Move, girl,” he grunted. “You soil yourself standing so close to the garbage.”

  I cringed as Imma laughed. “Am I supposed to soil myself with you instead? Let you stick your fat, grungy, soot-infested cock inside me? I don’t think so.”

  Jaw hard, the man raked his eyes over her. “Rumor says that Prince Guidon has the teeth pulled from the mouths of all his whores. I wonder what he’d pay if I did the job for him. And maybe remove that wicked tongue of yours too, eh?”
He reached for her skirt.

  I clamped a restraining hand on his arm. “I’m giving you one chance to leave. I suggest you take it.”

  Sluggishly, his drink-addled gaze slid to mine. “I’m going to paint the walls with your blood, Shinree. And when I’m done, I’m going to teach her the difference between a man and a witch. Might take a while though. Hours,” he smirked. “Days even.”

  Balling his stained shirt in my hands, I jerked the man closer. “I tried hard not to kill you. I really did.” I gave him a shove. He tumbled backwards and his considerable weight pulled him down fast, along with a few chairs. I tossed one out of my way and straddled his chest. “You’re right,” I said, pressing a knee under his chin. “Teaching the difference between us could take a while.” I drew back and punched him in the mouth. “Days, even.” I punched him again.

  “Goddamn witch!” he howled. “I’ll lock those fucking chains around your neck myself!”

  “You better make peace with whatever gods you worship first, asshole, because if I don’t kill you, Raynan Arcana will have your head on a pike.”

  A muted smile curled his bloody lips and his voice got real quiet. “What do I care of a dead, Rellan King?”

  “Dead?”

  “That’s right. You can’t hide behind King Raynan’s protection anymore. It died with him.”

  My heart sped up a little. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Oh, he’s dead all right, Shinree. He’s dead...like you.” Laughing, the blacksmith’s eyes flicked off mine. His head tilted forward in the barest traces of a nod.

  I had enough time to think, ambush, before a chorus of ringing metal erupted behind me.

  EIGHT

  The Wounded Owl had seen its share of scuffles. Typically, the patrons offered a disinterested glance to the parties involved and took their drinks to the other side of the room. Today, the hush that fell over the tavern was impressive. Meaning, I was in real trouble.

  Heavy footsteps came at me from the rear. Getting rid of one problem, I snapped the blacksmith’s neck and shoved to my feet. I stepped away from the body then, and a long, wide shadow stretched over mine. It shifted, circling me.

  An anxious, wet breath wheezed out of the man it belonged to. “Ian Troy?”

  His heavy, distinctive accent startled me. As he came to a stop, I looked up past his substantial girth to his scraggly bearded face. The nostrils of his bulbous nose flared at my inspection. His deep-set gaze narrowed. But I kept going, all the way up to his head of long, unkempt hair.

  Wild, wavy, and matted, the thick, shoulder-length strands were just as I suspected. They weren’t brown or black, or even something in between. They were profoundly dark. Like a bottomless pit or a fetid cell when the lights were turned out. They were dark like the color of Death himself.

  During the war we called it Langorian Black, and I had seen the shade up close so often there was no mistaking it. But I hadn’t seen it for a long while. After I used the Crown of Stones to slaughter an entire army of the black-haired fiends, the whole of the realm shut itself off. It was rare when one even crossed the border, and none had been spotted this side of the Kaelish Mountains in years.

  Behind him was an armed mob of about twenty Kaelishmen. A few were big and rough looking. The rest were your basic desperate city-dwellers out to earn a fat purse. Some were taking their job seriously, positioning themselves at the door and the stairs. Six of them were really ambitious. They ripped hostages out of the crowd, leaving the remaining customers and tavern workers to huddle together in a corner whimpering and praying for their lives. Imma wasn’t among them.

  As I turned to look for her, a bottle hit me in the side of the head and exploded. I spun around, and met another one in the chest.

  A third hit my right shoulder.

  “Son of a bitch!” I pulled the sword off my back. Blood and wine streaked down out of my hair. More streamed off my forehead and slid down the back of my collar. By the time I wiped it from my eyes, one of the hostages was dead on the floor.

  “Toss it,” the Langorian ordered. “Both of them. Or…” pausing, he made a show of adjusting his grip on the axe in his hand. Its long, sharp head was substantially bigger than the one on his shoulders. “You can watch them all die.”

  I gave up both my weapons and slid them across the floor.

  The Langorian shifted the axe to his other shoulder. “Answer the question, worm. Are you Ian Troy?”

  Dabbing at the cut on my head, I snarled at him. “You know exactly who I am.”

  “I want you to say it. Say what you are. Murderer. Butcher. Slayer of Kings.” His meaty cheeks puffed with a smile. “War criminal.”

  I froze. “Did you just say…?” He nodded and everything in me constricted. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Your crimes against my kind are well known, Shinree.”

  “My crimes? Your fucking kinsmen were a plague on the land for years. They were a disease, an infestation that deserved to be wiped out.” Temper overriding caution, my voice spiked. “The torture. The rape. The beheadings. Entire villages burned to the ground. Children gutted. I should have ripped their goddamn insides out one piece at a time.”

  “Careful, you might give me ideas.” His fleshy lips curved upward. “My name is Danyon. Remember it when you beg for your life.”

  Astonishment added to my anger, and I laughed. “Gods, you fucking Langorians are all the same, with your balls bigger than your brains. Tell me, Danyon, how did you manage to make so many friends?” I nodded at his henchmen. “You’ve got about as much personality as the mud on the bottom of my boots. And let’s face it…there’s no love between the Langorian and the Kaelish.”

  “There’s love between the Kaelish and their coin. And it didn’t take much to sway them to the truth.”

  “Which is?”

  “That you are evil and they are trespassers.”

  “Trespassers?”

  “Are my words not plain, witch? Kael’s claim to this region is unjust. A thousand years ago all of this,” he opened his plump arms wide, “Kael, Rella, everything from sea to sea, all the Restless Lands, belonged to us.”

  “Guess you should have done a better job claiming it then, asshole, because Mirra’kelan is an ancient Shinree word, not Langorian. Besides, don’t you think a thousand years is a little long to hold a grudge?”

  “We were a peaceful people, simple farmers and hunters. The Shinree were the disease, emerging like insects from their mines below the ground, spreading from shore to shore, overrunning us, conquering us, forcing us into the mines—enslaving us with magic.” Danyon’s ample jowls tightened. “We lived like animals. We lost our history, our identity.” He looked at me long and hard. Air rattled in his throat as his breath picked up speed. “Do you dare deny that?”

  “You know I can’t. But that way of life, what my ancestors did to create and sustain their empire…they paid for it.”

  “Yes. The gods saw the wickedness of your kind. They saw our persecution. They reached down, grabbed the land of the Shinree and shook it. They opened the mountains and pulled your entire domain down under the ground where it belonged. You fell. And we rose!” he exclaimed, thumping a hand to his chest. “We survived. We grew strong while the Shinree, without their precious rocks, became weak, slobbering fools. They became the slaves.” He shifted his axe again. “Kael has not yet paid. Rella has not yet paid.”

  “And what exactly do they owe you?”

  “The ground they live on. We want it back.”

  The depth of his stupidity made me smile. “You’re a fool, Danyon. The centuries of fighting between Rella and Langor, the war, was never about land. The original treaty that was signed—signed and then broken by Draken’s father, King Taiven—had nothing to do with territory. It was broken over a woman.”

  “King Taiven made a legitimate offer of marriage to that Rellan wench. What happened when she turned it down was her doing.”

  “That Rellan Princess,
” I said, emphasizing her title, “was already betrothed. Your King should have respected that. Instead, he sent men into Rella to drag her to Langor. Then he wasn’t even man enough to marry her. He threw her into his dungeon and let her starve to death.” Brazenly, I stepped forward. “The only property that Rella and Langor fought over for twenty-five years was the battered body of a dead Princess.”

  He sniffed. “You know nothing, Shinree.”

  “I know I didn’t slay your damn King. Either of them. Some other, fortunate soul ran Taiven through long before I saw my first battle. And his son, Draken, he was certainly worthy of a painful end, but we both know I didn’t give him one.”

  “No, you did far worse. King Draken was a good man before your magic fouled him. He was noble. Decent.”

  “Draken? Decent?” I rushed closer. Nose to nose, I snarled at him, “What decent man orders a child stolen from her bed?”

  “Elayna Arcana was old enough to be Draken’s Queen…if she had survived.”

  “But she didn’t. Did she? Draken only fancied a Rellan bride because he wanted to succeed where his father failed. But ordering that poor girl brought across the Langorian Mountains in the middle of winter…your noble King might as well have murdered Aylagar’s daughter with his bare hands.”

  “She had another. The bitch should have been grateful we didn’t take them both.”

  Rage sped through me as I remembered all too well the day Aylagar learned of her eldest daughter’s death. It was the only time I’d ever seen her cry.

  “How the hell are you even alive?” I asked him. “You weren’t on the battlefield that day, or you’d be dead. Were you a deserter? Is that it? Where’ve you been for the last ten years, Danyon? Sitting around some stinking, Langorian drink-house, working up your courage and saving your coin, so you could recruit enough village idiots to come against me?”

  “You will regret that.”

  “I regret a lot of things.”

  Another man’s voice filtered down from upstairs. “That is good to know. I would be displeased to learn that you live without shame.”