The Crown of Stones: Magic-Price

by C. L. Schneider

  No…

  I couldn’t have.

  I traced the raised, white lines with my finger. I went around the circle and over the individual symbols scratched in the center. I followed the entire design, trying to accept that it was real. That it was on my skin—that I’d done it to myself.

  At some point in my life, at a point before the time I was seeing now, I would do as Jem had done with Draken. I would employ the ancient Shinree ritual to bind my soul to another. I would take on this person’s memory and aspects of their personality, and change us both forever. Why?

  I clenched my scarred hand shut, trying to understand. What could drive me to do such a thing, to alter my life so drastically and permanently?

  It wasn’t for certain. The future I was in might never come to pass. But it felt true enough at the moment, especially with the ache coming through the scar.

  From what I knew of the ritual, the discomfort wasn’t being caused by the wound itself. It was an alarm, a warning sign. It was a distress signal to alert me that my ‘other’ was hurt. It was an excruciating, dizzying distress signal that had the room spiraling so violently I had to catch hold of one of the bedposts to keep from falling down.

  I clung tighter, gasping, watching the room blur as I willed the pain away.

  Maybe it worked. As after a few minutes, the whole thing just ended. The pain and the vertigo were both gone.

  I lifted my head, gingerly, and gazed over at the door. I wasn’t so keen on taking it anymore. It was the exit, but it wasn’t the way out. Enduring the vision until the gods were through fucking with me—that was the way out.

  Pushing off the post, I turned toward the bed, and was startled by the sight of a body. With the faint light, I hadn’t noticed until I was up close, but a woman was stretched out, on her side, atop the mound of silk covers. A mass of long, curling, black hair covered her face. Her elegant dress, miles of golden, delicate fabric, was crumpled and torn. The rips revealed glimpses of a small frame and a good measure of dark skin.

  My eyes followed the curves of her body. They were achingly familiar.

  They should be, I thought; I saw them every time I went to sleep.

  Staring harder, I shook my head. I glanced about the room. “No, this isn’t…”

  I looked back at her. It didn’t make any sense.

  “You can’t be here. You... No.” I sunk my hands in my hair and staggered away. “No. No fucking way. You can’t be here. You can’t.”

  I was awake, in the future. I was in my future and the Arullan girl was here.

  That could only mean…

  Heart in my throat, I dropped my hands. Gods, help me. She’s real.

  But it was more than that. I was here with her and the shard was gone.

  Did I do it? Did I give Jem what he wanted in exchange for her?

  She let out a low moan and I jumped. Stirring slightly, the girl rolled onto her back. Her hair slid with the movement, exposing first a single, soft shoulder and a slender neck. Then a soft, round face, full lips, long, thick lashes, and a delicate brow.

  The sight of her was like a current carrying me down river.

  Helpless to withstand the pull, I knelt down beside the bed. With equal amounts of dread and longing both, I pushed a stray ringlet back from her closed eyes.

  She didn’t react. So I got bolder.

  I slid a finger across her cheek, over her lips, and down her chin. I caressed her throat. The modest collar of her gown was lined with white velvet and I traced it from shoulder to shoulder, brushing lightly over her soft skin.

  I tried to stop there. I really did. But desire had replaced the blood in my veins and before I knew it, I was leaning down with my lips touching hers.

  I edged closer. My knee hit something on the floor. A silver goblet, it spun away from the bed, striking the leg of a nearby table and clattering back noisily over the stones. As it came to rest beside me, I held my breath. I watched her, waiting, but she didn’t even twitch. She was just lying there, vulnerable. Unaware. Defenseless.

  What am I doing? Backing away, clenching my hands to keep from touching her, shame hit me like a fist in the face. Disgust drowned my need in one fell swoop and I could suddenly see past the fever on me to the clear fact that her features were slack. Her limbs hung limply. Her lips were pale. The movements of her chest were abnormally slight. As if each breath was considerably less than the last.

  I moved back closer. I looked harder. I put my ear to her chest and was appalled at how slow her heart was beating. Her skin was cool. Her body bore no wounds. There was no outward evidence of anything wrong.

  There had to be though. She was dying.

  Strength deserted me and I sat down hard on the floor. I leaned back against the bed, head buried in my hands, trying to find some way to come to grips with finding her and losing her in the same moment. The hurt was so strong I felt numb.

  Only it wasn’t just grief I was feeling. There was a conflict in me that was foreign where the Arullan girl was concerned. All I ever wanted in the dreams was to save her. Yet, here in the reality of my own future, I found myself considering what it would serve to let her go.

  Will it change anything? I wondered. Can I forget her if she’s gone?

  Dead has to be easier. There’d be no hope that way.

  The thoughts running through my mind were repulsive. I was horrified, panic-stricken by ideas and perceptions that hadn’t formed yet. Inclinations I might never have.

  Running a shaky hand over my face, I took a deep breath. I took a few more, trying to focus; to remember that I was in the Faernore sitting at a table with Malaq and Jarryd. Nothing I was seeing was actually happening. Odds were it never would.

  But it could. It could all happen…because she’s real.

  She’s out there somewhere. She’s out there right now, I thought, and comprehending that, admitting that my dream girl was flesh and blood and attainable, the impulse to find her was crushing. It was a sudden, consuming urge, so deeply imbedded within me, that as I looked at the girl sprawled out across the bed, for a brief moment, I didn’t see her. I saw the path to my destruction. And I asked myself, what would I give up to have her?

  The answer was obvious. Everything.

  “Son of a bitch!” Snatching up the goblet, I spun and threw it across the room. It hit the wall, dropped, and rolled. Silence followed, and in between my angry, ragged breaths, there was sound.

  It was slight, a faint scrape on the stones.

  I got up off the floor. I came around the end of the bed and there was another body. This one was male, unmoving, and slumped face down below the shattered casement. Broken glass littered his clothes. Rain darkened his brown hair. Blood spread out in a wide pool around his upper body. It ran in channels across the grooves of the floor, and as I tracked its course, I felt odd.

  Another twinge ran through the scars on my palm.

  Shaking it out, I went over and squatted down beside the injured man. I couldn’t see his face, but I didn’t need to. I knew him. We were connected on a level that went beyond memory or any regular sense. We were bound for life. Only for him, that life was nearly at an end.

  I rolled him over carefully. “Nef’taali?” I expected the ancient word to feel odd coming off my lips, but it was strangely comforting. “Nef’taali?” I said again.

  His blue eyes opened. Choking on the swell of blood in his mouth, he coughed out my name, “Ian. I knew you would come.”

  Sitting down, I lifted him gently. I tried to pull him onto my lap without hurting him, but it wasn’t possible. The gash across his stomach had nearly split him in two.

  “Gods…Jarryd.” My eyes roamed over the wound. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault. You told me to stay away.” He tried to smile. “I didn’t listen.”

  “You never do.” I shook my head. Seeing him like this was hard, but the pain it brought my future self was devastating. I could barely separate from it to speak. “How? How did th
is happen?” I asked him, but I wasn’t referring to his injury. My ancestors had performed the ritual binding as a means of protection. Why then would I have used it to tie myself to a young, impetuous fool like Jarryd Kane?

  What could he ever protect me from?

  “I think it was poison,” he said faintly. “You have to help her.”

  “You first.”

  “Not this time, Nef’taali. There’s nothing left of me to heal.”

  “That’s not true. Just lie still.”

  Jarryd gripped my shirt with a bloody hand and pulled me closer. “I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t save her. But you can.” His hand fell away and he shuddered against me. “Help her, Ian, please. Save Neela.”

  I thought I misheard him. “What?”

  “Forgive her. What she did was wrong. So many things went wrong. But if you let her die…” his head rolled to the side.

  “Let who die? Jarryd?” I shook him awake. “Jarryd!”

  “Promise me…you’ll never forgive yourself if you let Neela die.”

  My blood turned to ice. My head snapped around to the bed. All that was visible was her arm and a few strands of hair, and I nearly stood, nearly dropped Jarryd in the ocean of blood covering the floor, just so I could see her face again and be sure.

  “That’s…” I licked my dry lips and tried again. “That’s Neela Arcana, on the bed? She’s… No,” I snarled, “you’re wrong. It can’t be her. That isn’t Aylagar’s daughter. I wouldn’t…I couldn’t possibly—” my voice seized. The resemblance I’d noticed the first time I dreamt of her suddenly made such perfect sense, I could almost hear Jem’s trap swinging shut in my head.

  Why didn’t I see it before now? Why didn’t I recognize her?

  He didn’t want me to. Not until it was too late.

  It was despicable, what he’d had done to me, but it was cunning. By fixating me on an actual woman, forcing me to repeatedly watch Draken rape, torture, and murder her, Jem had turned Rella’s new Queen into a very real, very unobtainable obsession.

  An obsession, I thought soberly, that Draken intended to take for his wife.

  A wet gasp left Jarryd’s body. He stiffened and squeezed my arm. “If you can’t find your own cause to save Neela, then do it for me. Do me this one, last favor.”

  My throat ached. I pulled him closer. “She never loved you.”

  “I know.” He gave me an unsteady, crooked grin. “Nor you.”

  Jarryd’s eyes fell closed. I felt the life draining out of him like it was mine. I no longer cared about Neela. I couldn’t bear the hole his absence would make in my life, in my very soul. The idea was too painful to live with.

  “Nef’taali, wait” I said, and then it was gone. All of it; his life, the room, the bodies, the blood; all my unlived memories started sliding out of view. Future happenings scattered.

  In less than the blink of an eye, all that remained was moving walls, a bending, undulating floor and everything shifting out of focus.

  When it shifted back, I was in the present. Sienn was still perched on my lap in Imma’s form. Malaq was across from me enjoying his drink. Jarryd was beside me, alive.

  Mere moments had passed. Nothing had changed for them.

  Everything had changed for me.

  THIRTY SEVEN

  With a yank, I pulled Imma off the table and dragged her to the darkened stairwell at the back of the room. I pushed her up the stairs in front of me. “I don’t like being ambushed.”

  Her worried, blue eyes glanced back. “Where did you go? What did you see?”

  I pushed her faster. “Stop playing me, Sienn. I know oracles go along for the ride.”

  “I couldn’t, not wearing this form.”

  We reached the shadowy light of the upstairs hall and the masquerade of the winegirl dropped away. Bruises darkened the outline of Sienn’s jaw. Finger marks discolored her forearms and my anger subsided. “Are you all right?”

  “Are you?” She lifted my right arm, inspecting the splint on my wrist and the heavy bandage wrapped around my hand.

  I pulled away. “I asked first.”

  “I fell,” she replied briskly.

  “So did I.”

  Sienn uttered an irritated sound. Pulling a key out from inside her cloak, she unlocked a door at the end of the hall and went inside. On my guard, I waited for her to light the lanterns and the fire before I followed her in.

  It was a small room. In one glance I took in the low, lumpy bed, the dusty, old trunk, and the small stand with a cracked basin and a pitcher of water, and knew we were alone. I closed the door then and confronted her. “What are you doing here?”

  “I spoke to Jem.” Sienn pulled the tattered, threadbare curtains over the window. “He denied your accusations. He was angry. Defensive. Cruel.” She turned to me. Her eyes, clean of magic, reminded me of shiny pearls. “He questioned my loyalty, my faith. He said I failed him, that I didn’t try hard enough to win you to our cause. I tried to explain your views, to make him see reason.”

  “Reason has little to do with the choices your friend is making right now.” I hesitated, but there was no good time for what I had to say. “Jem shared souls with Draken of Langor, Sienn. They’re bound together, as nef’taali. It’s how Draken shed the madness, how he regained what I took from him with the Crown of Stones.”

  Shock sent a hand to her mouth, but she argued with me. Strained and defiant, she said, “He wouldn’t do that.”

  “Whatever Jem gave up in the exchange, it balanced out Draken’s insanity. And the pieces of Draken that Jem got in return…there’s madness in him. I’ve seen it.”

  Her stare wandered. A kind of resigned sorrow contorted her features and Sienn fell back against the wall. “The gloves. He started wearing them, and,” she glanced at me, “I thought…I just thought…” Shaking her head, she swallowed. “He was hiding the runes on his hand.” Abruptly, Sienn crossed the room. Removing her cloak, she dropped it on the trunk and bent down beside the bed. “I knew he’d changed.” Reaching into a muddy traveling bag on the floor, she pulled out a large book and held it against her chest. Thick and old, the tome was bound in a wide strip of cracked leather that looked as if it might crumble to dust if she squeezed it any harder. “I took this from him.”

  “What is it?”

  Sienn took a timid step. “There’s something I didn’t tell you.”

  “I’m guessing there’s lots of somethings you didn’t tell me.”

  “Ian…” She bit her lip. Anxiety was wafting off her. “Jem was born of a soldier line, but I’ve trained him to be much more than that. And now, linked to Draken, and with the crown, he…” she took a breath. “Ian, Jem is a Reth.”

  My brows shot up. My voice followed. “A Reth?”

  “Not just any Reth. He’s a direct descendant of Emperor Tam Reth. If he were Rellan or Langorian, if he were born of any other race but ours, Jem would be our legitimate ruler. He would bear the title of King of the Shinree.”

  “King.” The word sunk like rocks in my stomach. “And now he has a crown.”

  “No matter how you feel about him, Jem Reth has the birthright to establish and govern a new nation for the Shinree.”

  Along with the power, I thought angrily. “God damn you, Sienn. That night in the bathhouse, when I asked you about Jem, don’t you think that his blood ties to the creator of the Crown of Stones should have been the first thing out of your mouth instead of your tongue?”

  “I didn’t believe you. And I don’t condemn people for their heritage.”

  “No, you teach them.” Swiftly, I closed the distance between us. “You taught a man with the most powerful warrior line in Shinree history, how to better wield the most powerful weapon in Shinree history. So he can wipe out anyone that stands in his way.”

  “I didn’t know—”

  “You showed him how to access other lines, how to cast without losing strength.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “He won’t
pass out after he casts. He’ll have access to spells I don’t. How the fuck am I supposed to fight him? I ran a hand back over my hair; unable to believe how fast the situation had gone from bleak to hopeless. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

  “He asked me not to.”

  That would have put me over the edge, if not for the complete absence of deceit on her, and my first-hand knowledge of Jem Reth’s fondness for manipulation. With his clear lack of scruples it was only natural he would use his skills of persuasion on his own people to keep them in line. He didn’t free them. He just gave them a new master.

  “He trained you,” I said with disgust. “He trained all of you. You follow him around, do his bidding. Like dogs.”

  Emotion flushed her face. Short, rapid breaths of anger made her small chest heave and her nostrils flare. Sienn’s icy stare put me in mind of a fierce, winter storm, and as she found her voice and seethed out a breathless, “I am no one’s dog,” I couldn’t decide if the urge building in me was to hit her, or kiss her. “If you knew him you would understand. All Jem wants is a place for our people.”

  “No, he wants an empire Sienn, an empire that he’s building with blood. And he’s making no apologies for it.”

  “Jem doesn’t second guess. He doesn’t regret. That’s who he is.”

  “Yeah, I got that. He takes no responsibility for the lives he’s taken.”

  “You mean he doesn’t drown himself in guilt? Jem is stronger than that.” She eyed me critically. “Stronger than you, perhaps.”

  “I got that too. Now, you brought that book to me for a reason. So let’s hear it.”

  Sienn sat down hard on the bed. “Jem came to us a little over two years ago.”

  “He’s been free that long?”

  “A few months before me,” she nodded. “He was, apparently, quiet about where he’d come from. He just showed up in camp with these grand plans. He was committed, knowledgeable. No one remembers how he came to be in charge, he just did. When he discovered the mistake with my name, he came personally to rescue me. There was an excitement, an eagerness about him. Jem had secrets, but his decisiveness, his passion for our cause, for life...” A smile wanted to come but she forced it away. “Then, he disappeared for over a week. When he came back he was different. He was distant and demanding. Impatient. Harsh. I thought it was the weight of responsibility.” Sadness shrunk her voice. “It all makes sense now. That week he was gone, Jem must have been in Langor, being bound to Draken.”