“Son of a bitch.” Grinding the anger down between my teeth, I waved a brisk hand toward the door. “Get him out of here. Before I change my mind.”
Malaq gave Draken a crisp nod and released me. “You made the right call, Ian.”
“Did I?” Watching Draken make his way over with a triumphant smile, I scowled at Malaq. “This is the last goddamn time I stay my hand for you, Prince. Are we clear?”
If Malaq had a reply, he kept it to himself. With me on one side of him and Draken coming to stand on the other, he looked a little stunned. Being stuck in between us wasn’t just a concept anymore. It was a cold, hard fact.
Looking exceptionally satisfied, Draken let loose a gruff, Langorian command in the direction of the stairwell. A moment later, we could hear heavy footfall striking the floorboards above. The sound hit the top of the stairs, and as Draken’s guard descended, I measured him to be much the same as the rest of his ilk: big and meaty with enough dark hair and ugliness that the details weren’t important.
Then his stare fixed on me. It was brimming with a kind of mischievous, almost perverse sense of gratification. Coming closer, the expression turned outright malicious as he lifted the dagger in his hand and held it in front of his face. Immediately, my attention was drawn to the distinctive Shinree runes etched along the glistening-wet blade and the set of brightly colored stones adorning the hilt. The stones were a particular combination, inlaid for one purpose only: the ritual binding of souls.
I started to form an accusation. But all I could think of was, how? How was it that a Nor-Taali blade, an ancient Shinree ceremonial weapon that was never meant to see combat, made its way to a rundown tavern on the edge of Kael? More confounding was how this specific one was here—because it was mine.
When I went to war, I left it (and a handful of other belongings) in a Rellan village, in the care of a friend. I never bothered claiming it after, and I hadn’t meant for Katrine to guard it with her life. But knowing full well the feisty girl would rather die than deal with a Langorian, I knew exactly what the bastard had done to get it from her.
I just needed to hear him say it.
The soldier reached the last step. I pushed off the wall and blocked him. “How did you get that?”
He lowered the dagger from his pockmarked face and grinned. “It was a gift.”
“Katrine wouldn’t give shit to a pig like you. What did you do to her?”
“Nothing the bitch didn’t enjoy.”
“That bitch is my friend.”
“Your friend was a dirty, tavern tramp that begged for more.”
Knuckles clenched, I raised my arm to hit him, and a drop of red slid off the tip of the dagger. Time seemed to slow as it dripped to the floor.
It sped up again as I looked back to the blade and the implication sank in.
The soldier sneered at the look of comprehension on my face. “Your other friend, upstairs, he didn’t beg for more, but I gave it to him anyway.”
I punched him. Not once, or twice. I drove my fists into his unsightly face until it looked like a bowl of meat and his legs buckled. Whimpering, begging for me to stop, I grabbed the bastard’s head and brought my knee up into his throat to make him shut up. Then I hauled him to his feet and hit him some more.
“Troy did as you asked,” Malaq said; his distraught voice in the background. “You said Kane would not be harmed.”
“How nice to have earned your trust so quickly, brother,” Draken chuckled.
Shoving my opponent away, I started up the stairs. I made it up two before pain struck my leg and I went down.
“Ian!” Malaq called out.
But it was Draken’s voice that shook the walls. “FOOL!” he roared. Rushing up to the battered soldier, Draken seized him by the throat and lifted him off the floor. “You were charged with delivering Troy’s property to Reth, not pilfering it! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
His sputtered, raspy reply was unintelligible. But his answer, like the question, had no purpose. It wouldn’t reverse the fact that the man had buried the Nor-Taali dagger deep in my right thigh. That blood was pouring out around the edges of the blade, soaking my breeches and streaming down my leg. Or that it hurt like hell.
Stealing myself, I wrapped a hand around the grip of the weapon. I needed to get it out, but I hadn’t counted on the aura of the stones reacting so promptly to my touch. The second my skin made contact, a rapid surge of magic spread out from the stones beneath my fingers.
It progressed down the blade. It ran hot into the wound.
It hit my open vein and the lights in the tavern grew brighter, the air heavier.
Jolts of pain attacked my chest and the room grew fuzzy and cold.
I yanked the weapon from my leg, but the harm was done. Jarryd’s blood on the blade had mingled with mine. The process to bind our souls was already beginning.
Dazed, I sat where I fell. I looked at Malaq at the bottom of the stairs, gripping the bannister furiously. He wanted to come to my aid, but he knew it would cost him.
I took the choice away and warned him back with a shake of my head.
Draken finished choking his soldier to death and dropped him. As he turned to me, for just a flash, something was on the face of the King of Langor that I never expected: fear. Then the expression shifted. It became more predictably shrewd and pompous, which made sense. Being the first to experience the magic of the Nor-Taali in hundreds of years, Draken alone knew exactly what was going on. And he liked it. He liked knowing more than I did. “Do you feel it?” he said to me then, sly and suggestive. “The pain? The disorientation? The messenger’s injuries are becoming your own. He’s dying, Troy, and you’re going to feel every, excruciating second of it.”
“How?” I winced. “How do I stop it?’
“Complete the ritual. Rewrite your entire life. And his. Or not,” Draken shrugged. “The decision is yours. But be quick about it. From the way you’re looking, I’d say your Rellan friend is running out of time.” He gave Malaq a meaningful, cautionary look. “Don’t be long, brother.”
As I watched Draken leave the inn, I recalled the vision Sienn gave me. Fate is giving me a choice. Let Jarryd die now, or later.
Neither worked for me.
Leaning heavily on the banister, I crawled up the stairs. I reached the second floor, stood awkwardly, and glanced down at Malaq. His face was ripe with indecision.
“Go,” I told him.
Swallowing, he nodded. “Jarryd?”
“I’ll take care of it.” Digging into the front pocket of my breeches, I pulled out his coral ring and tossed it to him.
Malaq looked at it, then at his empty finger. “When did you…?”
“You sleep like the dead, Prince. Maybe this will keep you from ending up dead while you sleep.”
Closing his hand over the spelled ring, Malaq stared up at me. “You’re a good man, Ian. For an outcast,” he grinned. The expression wavered. Sadness crept into it as he backed up. “I know you don’t believe in luck, but I wish it on you all the same.”
I forced a shaky smile. “Goodbye, Nef’areen.” Turning, I limped away down the hall, following the trail of Jarryd’s blood on the floor.
FORTY
My right hand shook as I carved the last of the markings on my left, telling myself for the fifth time that I had to keep going. Jarryd was spilling blood from more wounds than I cared to count. Sienn was nowhere to be found, and I was no healer. All I could do was go on. Finishing the ritual was the only way to keep him alive.
It wasn’t as selfless as it sounded though. With each scrape of the knife, I found myself becoming, not only accepting, but anxious for what Fate had dropped in my lap. I kept recalling that last, brief instant of the vision. That flicker of a moment as I watched Jarryd’s life drain away. I remembered feeling like a part of me was dying too.
The gods knew I didn’t want Jarryd to die at all. Though for my future self to suffer a sense of loss that profound and debilitating, it
had to be over something worth losing, something that surpassed the boundaries of normal friendship. And if tying myself to a Royal Kabrinian Messenger could truly give me that, if I could have something in my life positive enough that merely the idea of not having it was unbearable—contentment, stability, maybe even peace—I wanted a chance at it. I wanted something good that filled the holes in me longer than magic, or a bottle, or a woman.
“So the task is yours, my friend,” I said. “I only hope you want it.”
Completing the final rune on Jarryd’s right hand, our connection deepened, and a host of sensations flowed in. There wasn’t anything I could explain or pinpoint yet. No emotions of his that I could sense. No trace of intention or attitude. Those things would come later when the link between us was truly forged. What I could feel was a presence. An awareness of him that went beyond what my eyes could see or my ears could hear.
It was weak and diminishing quickly, but the spell wouldn’t take long. Now that blood was shared and the runes were carved, all I had to do was call the first four of the seven stones in the correct order. It sounded simple. Yet there were few Shinree alive who could do it. I wouldn’t be able to do if not for my mother. Being both nostalgic and a taskmaster, V’loria Troy had required me to memorize the most minor details of anything she deemed important. The dagger, a memento passed down through her family line, had been one of those things.
Sapphire first, I thought, as I drew it in. Meant to calm the mind and ready it for the intrusion that was to come, the blue stone created a higher level of awareness. It was a place where the initial transference would occur, and where later, the regular, more routine, exchanges would flow between us.
Next was opal. Amplifying our traits and skills, it would enhance our memories and experiences, and sharpen everything that was to be shared. Then, diamond to intensify and stabilize the link. Lastly, I drew in the hiddenite to make everything permanent.
Holding all their magic in me, I trapped the hilt of the dagger between our bleeding palms and absorbed the remaining three, minor stones. I actually couldn’t remember their roles, but as their auras blended flawlessly with the other four, they created a perfect harmony of power inside me.
Vibrating and crackling, it traveled to where our hands met. It swarmed over our fingers. Swirling. Encircling. Tightening. In seconds, we were swathed up to our elbows, held fast by a single, unbreakable force.
Abruptly, a portion split off. It merged again with what enveloped us. Sweeping up my arm to my chest, it plunged into me (into both of us), tore out and split again.
Repeatedly, the glowing, pulsing, white energy infiltrated our bodies, divided, re-joined, and infiltrated again. And I screamed every time.
Unconscious, Jarryd didn’t react at all. But I could feel the force burrowing though me. Collecting bits and pieces, plucking them out and replacing them with something foreign, it was tearing me apart and rebuilding me from the inside out.
In less than a breath I lost the ability to grasp my own existence. In three more, I couldn’t find a single notion of individuality. Not even a memory of it.
The spell pulled, shredded, emptied and filled me, over and over, faster and faster, until it was done. Then it tore out of me, with half my soul in tow.
The cracked boards of the ceiling above me faded in and out. I watched them, but I had no clue why they were blurry. I couldn’t remember why I was lying on the floor beside the bed instead of on it. Or why my head felt like a vice was clamped to it. I put a hand up, to make sure there wasn’t one attached to my skull, but it didn’t make the pain any better. It didn’t make me care if the indistinct light in the room meant the sun was rising or setting. All I wanted, as I focused on the tangle of gray covers hanging off the edge of the bed, was to pull them down over my head and go back to sleep.
If only the blankets weren’t coated in blood.
Tentatively, I reached up. My intention was to examine the stains, but there was a strange scar on my left hand. I wasn’t sure how the lines got there, but they were deep and fresh, and in no way random or accidental. The skin of my palm had been carved into a well-defined pattern of complex, Shinree runes.
I read one aloud. “Nef’taali.” And with a force that would have knocked me to the floor if I weren’t there already, I knew why the lines were on my hand and whose blood was on the bed. I knew what I’d done. I also knew that I wasn’t alone.
I lifted my head off the floor and saw him, in the gloom, sitting in a chair near the window. Long, brown hair unbound and expression intense, Jarryd was quiet and still. He wasn’t looking at me. His fierce, blue eyes were fixed on the ceremonial blade gripped in his scarred hand. A crazy amount of blood darkened his flesh and streaked his breeches. Multiple, overlapping, vertical white seams divided his bare chest and stomach, and I gazed at them in shock. Hours before, they had been gaping wounds. Now, they looked months, perhaps even years, old.
Sitting up, I tried to think. Vaguely, I recalled pushing my strength into him. I remembered praying I could give Jarryd enough to keep his body working until I could get him to a healer. Somehow though, between the spell and my commitment to repair him, I must have transferred over a substantial amount of my own energy. So much, that I mended Jarryd’s body completely, and weakened myself beyond good sense.
It was a sound theory, given how lousy I felt. But it was worth it. Saving Jarryd had been a much-needed victory. I just wasn’t sure he felt the same way. His posture rigid, his face pale and pinched with unease, he hadn’t even reacted to the fact that I was awake. I should say something, I thought. Yet I didn’t know how to justify stealing pieces of a man’s soul without asking. He has to understand I had no choice. I couldn’t sit back and let him die. The gods worked too hard to put us together.
There is reason in this. There has to be.
But the longer he sat, saying nothing, the more uncertainty wormed its way into my mind. Apprehension tightened my chest and I was suddenly skeptical of the choice I made. A choice I had no right to make for him.
Gripping the blankets for leverage I heaved myself up to sit on the edge of the bed. Elbows on knees, I leaned forward and dug the heels of my hands into my aching forehead and thought, what have I done?
Quietly, Jarryd said, “The time for doubt is past, don’t you think?”
“I’m sorry,” was all I could come up with.
“Save it. The Langorian left you few options.”
I stared; wishing he would look at me. “Are you saying you’re okay with this?”
“I’m saying it’s done.”
“So you’re just going to accept it, without argument, or comment?”
“What do you want me to do? Shout? Scream? Slam your head into the wall?
“If that’s what you want.”
“Will it change anything?”
“No.”
“Then what good is it?”
I had no answer for that. I was too startled by the minimal effort it was taking Jarryd to hold in his anger. Already he was different. “How do you feel?”
“You don’t know? You can’t sense me? I thought that was the point.”
“All I can sense is my head.” I shook it, and got a surge of pain in return. Groaning, I flopped back on the bed. I closed my eyes and groaned some more.
Footsteps moved across the floor. A moment later a small weight hit the bed. “Here,” he said. “I figured you’d want this back.” I opened my eyes and the dagger was next to me. I had absolutely no desire to touch it.
Gingerly, I sat back up. “Do you understand what I’ve done?”
Jarryd took a long, slow breath. He went back to the window. His eyes burned through the drawn, moth-eaten curtains for a long time. He gazed like he could see something of interest through the holes. He couldn’t, of course. Until we reached the border with Rella, for miles in all directions there was only forest.
Still, he went on staring and the anxious feeling inside of me grew worse.
“I didn’t at first,” he said, finally. “I should have been dead. I was confused, weak. Then…” absently touching the scars on his chest, he swallowed. “There was this presence. Like something had climbed inside me.” Dropping his hand, Jarryd drew a shaky breath. “These things,” he pivoted around, “these parts of you…are they in me now for good? Can I ever go back to who I was?”
“Everything that makes you who you are is still there. But who I am is in you too, permanently. Experiences, skills, memories, behavior, personality traits, likes and dislikes—the spell copied those things from me and gave them to you.”
“All of them?”
“Probably not. It was up to Fate to decide what each of us needed from the other. We may not know the full extent of what he gave us for a long time. It could be days, weeks, maybe even months, for all aspects of the spell to manifest.”
“You mean change us?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean it will be drastic.”
“How could it not be? How could taking in parts of your life not affect mine?”
“It will. But with time and practice, you can sort through my memories and experiences like pages in a book, absorbing what you want, scanning and storing the rest.” Anxiety was getting the best of me and I cut my explanation short. “Jarryd, I knew the consequences. You didn’t. And for that I am truly sorry.”
He turned away again. I would have felt better knowing exactly what he was thinking. But Jarryd was seeing life through my eyes. He was sharing in the horrors of my past and the mess I’d made of the present, so I had a good idea. Myself, I was more than a little self-conscious. Granting Jarryd access to everything I kept hidden hadn’t been a concern when I was saving his life. Now, it was painfully embarrassing. All my private, intimate moments weren’t intimate anymore. He would know my childhood fears and blunders. He would grasp the extent of my love for Aylagar. How I’d fallen for a woman I’d known full well had only two uses for me: war and sex. He would understand how close her death had come to ruining me. How defective I was and brutal I could be, and how deep my lust for magic really was.
The Crown of Stones: Magic-Price Page 32