The Crown of Stones: Magic-Price

by C. L. Schneider

  In disturbed amazement, I lowered my sword. “What’s happening to you?”

  “What will happen to you…if you let it. What will happen in time to us all.”

  The demonstration over, the color left his eyes. The stains stopped spreading and wherever the crown was, the power went back inside it. But he was still blotched and ugly. Scarred, I thought, inside and out.

  “Maybe there’s a way to reverse this, to make you normal again.” An involuntary streak of compassion ran through me. “Let me help you.”

  “Please, L’tarian,” he scorned. “Don’t try to save me. It demeans us both.”

  My empathy squashed, bitterness took over. “You really are a fucking prick, you know that?”

  “And you are the descendant of the last Ruling House of the Shinree Empire. I want you to act like it.”

  “You don’t get to want anything from me. You’re a murderer. A selfish, heartless, cold-blooded…” I cringed as I saw the truth. “Gods, I’m just like you. We’re all like you. War or healing, it makes no difference. We’re a race of killers.”

  Reth’s muddy features tightened. “I can see you’re in shock. You need time to consider what I mean to you. To understand where you truly belong.”

  Nodding, I wiped the distraught look off my face. “And if I decide where I belong isn’t with you?”

  “That would be a mistake, L’tarian. If you choose to come against me, you will never best me with your magic.”

  “Then I will find another way.” I tugged on Kya’s reins. Reth called after me, I didn’t want to hear anymore. I didn’t even care if he struck me down while my back was turned. At the moment, dying seemed infinitely easier than living with what I was.

  FORTY THREE

  I went right past the fork in the road and kept going.

  I had an excuse. It was flimsy and Jarryd would be pissed. But he was the problem. If I wasn’t ready to admit to myself that Jem Reth was my father, how could I admit it to Jarryd?

  Even so, as I rode up to the edge of town, I knew it wasn’t about being ashamed, or needing time to think. I just wanted a fight. I wanted a strong enemy presence to take it all out on. At the very least, I was hoping for a patrol to scrap with. Even a single scout to beat senseless would have made me feel better for a little while.

  What I got was utter desolation, dark streets, eerie silence, and burned-out, toppled buildings. Ula was deserted. Even the one place that I was sure would be open was quiet as a tomb. And Ansel’s Place was never quiet.

  An inn as lively and rowdy as any other, Ansel’s had the best food and girls outside of Kabri. The linens were clean. The water was hot and the ale was cold. Most importantly, the first room at the top of the stairs and everything in it was mine.

  I hadn’t slept there in years, but if you added my time growing up in Ula before the war, to the brief stretch I lived here after, I’d slept in that room longer than any other in my entire life. I suppose that’s why I paid Ansel to keep it for me when I left. I gave him coin enough to buy the whole damn building for that one room, though I had no real intention of returning. Back then, my lust for magic was still too hard to control and I was tired of worrying over a town full of lives. I just liked knowing the space was there if I needed it. And that the pieces of my past had a home, even if I didn’t.

  Now, as I crouched in the adjacent alley, peering across the dark street, wishing for the slightest sign of life, the reasons I left suddenly felt selfish.

  If I’d been here, I could have protected them. I could have protected Katrine.

  They can’t all be dead. There has to be someone.

  I sprinted across to the porch and up to the front door. Finding it locked, I felt my way along the building. The windows on the first floor were boarded shut, as was the back door. No street lamps were lit and I cursed the lack of light as I stumbled over the rickety, wooden steps that led to the second floor. Not an official entrance, there was only a small ledge and a casement with a curtain. But the regulars knew it was here. A handy escape for wayward husbands looking to dodge their angry wives, the window was left perpetually unlocked.

  As I snuck up the stairs, I was glad to find that much hadn’t changed.

  Parting the flimsy, brown curtain, I peered into pitch-black. I couldn’t see a damn thing as I eased one leg at a time over the sill and climbed inside. I couldn’t hear anything either, but I kept a hand on my sword as I moved down the hall to my room.

  Putting my ear to the wood, I got nothing. My fingers touched the latch. I turned it halfway. I thought about how the dagger that bound Jarryd and I together had been on the other side of the door; so had Katrine and the Langorian soldier that killed her. And I suddenly couldn’t fathom how walking into a room ransacked and painted with the blood of an old friend would do me any good.

  My bout of wistfulness crushed, I released the latch, backed away and went downstairs.

  The bottom floor, although equally empty and quiet, was not quite as dark. A handful of smoldering embers burned in the hearth. A single candle sat on the bar. Its glow was a small, pale circle on the wood. The light was barely adequate for making out the man standing on the other side of the counter. But I didn’t need light to recognize Ansel. I’d known him over half my life.

  Weathered and gray since the day we met, Ansel was close to double my age. A long-retired soldier, with the reputation of being hard-nosed, feisty and foul-mouthed, the one thing no one dared call the man was old. I wouldn’t have even thought it, until now.

  Fetching a bottle and two mugs, as Ansel brought them over, he walked like it hurt. His once strong body was bent slightly and it made me sad to watch his bony hands shake as he poured. Ansel’s losing battle with age was a slap-in-the-face reminder of just how long I’d been gone.

  He slid a mug in front of me. “Been expecting you,” he said. His gravelly voice was just like I remembered. “Ever since Draken slithered up out of his hole.” Ansel smiled and his wrinkles deepened. “Can’t wait to see you shove him back down.”

  “Me too.” I looked around. “Where is everyone?”

  “Curfew. If you don’t obey, you disappear.” He turned his head and spat on the floor. “Bastards.”

  “That they are.” Saluting him, I drained my mug. I could see Ansel watching me. I could see the questions in his eyes. But he wouldn’t ask them. Having tolerated my youthful indiscretions as a boy (as well as some not-so-youthful ones later on) I knew the man was far more patient than he looked. He would wait for me to explain my absence. And I did owe him that. At the moment though, all I could say was, “Katrine?”

  Grief tightened his mouth in a thin line. “So you heard.”

  “Not the details.”

  “She’s dead, Troy. Knowing how won’t bring her back. Won’t bring none of ‘em back. Sure as hell won’t make you feel any better.”

  “I’m not expecting it will.”

  Refilling my mug, Ansel picked up a rag and started wiping down the bar in wide, furious circles. “You go to any village and you’ll get the same. Langorians took the town and butchered those that fought back. They pilfered the slaves. Burned a few homes. Then they descended upon this place like flies. They liked the food, the girls. Some of them didn’t leave for days.” He paused to toss back his drink. “About a week ago, a new batch wandered in. Started bragging about Kabri, spinning lies about how they’d caught you and strung you up back in Kael. None of us believed a word of it. And you know Katrine…she didn’t believe them a lot louder than the rest of us.”

  A brief, cheerless grin tugged at my lips. “What happened?”

  “There was nothing nobody could do. They took her upstairs and, well…the pigs were knee-deep in drink and the stupid girl couldn’t keep her mouth shut. It was as simple as that.”

  “They still in town?”

  “Leave it alone, Troy. There’s too damn many of them.”

  “I didn’t ask their numbers.”

  He sighed. “I can s
how you the one that killed her. I tried to smash his face in. His captain’s too…ugly, scarred bastard.”

  “Scarred?” My grip tightened on the mug. “Krillos?”

  “Yeah, that’s him, Captain Krillos.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “I hate to admit it, but he weren’t too happy about what happened to Katrine neither. He beat the one that done it real good. Took him to the square and made a real example out of him. If it helps.”

  “It doesn’t.” I slammed a hand down on the bar. “I let them go. I let them go and they come here. They fucking come here.”

  Ansel was quiet a moment. “She might have died anyway. You don’t know.”

  I grabbed the bottle I went to the nearest table and sat down. “I don’t want to know.”

  FORTY FOUR

  Light shone through the boards on the windows. Squinting through it, I didn’t even try to count the embarrassing amount of empty bottles strewn across the table. A few belonged to Ansel, but at some point he’d gotten smart and went to bed. I didn’t.

  Now, it was morning. My mouth felt like I’d spent the night licking sludge off the bottom of my boots and there were enough waves rolling in my belly to sink a ship.

  And Katrine’s still dead. And I’m still a Reth.

  “Shit.” Pushing all ten fingers into my throbbing temple I stood up—too fast, and the edges of the room tilted. Stumbling, my coat caught on the back of my chair. It tipped over and hit the floor with a bang. The sound hit my head like a bucket of rocks.

  Gripping the edge of the table, I rode out the echo. As it faded, a moment of clarity hit me. “Jarryd,” I groaned. I tried to open the link, to let him know I was okay; no doubt worry had put him on the path of doing something unwise hours ago. But I couldn’t find him. Then I remembered the Kayn’l. “Damn.”

  Detaching my hands from the sticky tabletop, I headed for the kitchen to clean myself up. Heat rushed into my face as I walked. A familiar, internal quaking had my limbs weak. Though the drug was preventing anything magical, I hadn’t ingested enough to dull the rest of my senses. I could feel both the cravings and the hangover splendidly.

  The wrongness of that might have been amusing, if not for one small problem.

  Getting past the Langorians in broad daylight without magic was going to earn me the fight I was looking for last night. Only now, I didn’t want it.

  It was reckless of me to come here. Stupid of me to drink.

  Pushing open the door to the kitchen, there was no sign of Ansel, or much else. The bare shelves were layered in dust. The hearth was gray and cold. Most of the counters and worktables were overturned, leaving pots, bowls, buckets, sacks, and their contents, to litter the floor.

  Spotting a ladle among the debris, I brought it with me to a grouping of casks in the corner and started popping off lids. Some were empty. Some held wine; something I definitely didn’t want. When I found one with water, I spent the next few minutes drinking away the drought in my throat. It took a few more of dunking my head in the barrel before I felt awake. More before the cobwebs cleared.

  Shaking the wet hair from my eyes, I stole a cloth off the table behind me and uncovered a nice-sized loaf of bread hidden underneath. I stared at it as I dried my face, trying to remember when I last ate. I wasn’t particularly hungry. Still, I needed something to sop up the abundance of liquid in my stomach.

  I tossed the towel and picked up the bread. It was a little like eating tree bark. All the same, I’d had worse and it certainly helped calm the waves. “Better,” I muttered, leaning back against the table. I gobbled up a few more mouthfuls and a couple extra scoops of water, and my head stopped pounding.

  In the absence of pain, I began picking up on stray noises outside.

  Going over to the window, I tried to look out, but what glass showed between the boards was too dirty to see through. There were definitely people outside though.

  A lot of people, I thought, as I strained to listen.

  The voices started shouting. When they started screaming, I ran from the kitchen and through the main room. The front door was unlocked. I burst out onto the porch, and what I saw was such a complete contrast to the night before that it brought me to an abrupt, startled halt.

  The volume of townspeople filling the streets was staggering. I had no idea so many were still alive. Barely, I thought, surveying their thin, bedraggled appearance. Heads and eyes down, most spoke in hushed, frightened tones, cowering like mice as the Langorians herded them back. Only a handful resisted. Throwing insults and cries of encouragement, they pushed forward, straining to see past a ring of hulking, enemy foot soldiers that were blocking their view of the road.

  Standing on the raised porch, I could see fine. I had a nice, clear shot of what everyone was gathering around. I just wasn’t as excited as they were. While they saw an opportunity for one of their own to draw Langorian blood, watching Ansel crossing swords with Captain Krillos sunk a really bad feeling into my gut.

  All eyes were on him. There was no way to pull him out unnoticed. Not that he would go if I could, as Ansel was doing rather well against a man that was younger and stronger than he was. At least, it appeared that way.

  Ansel’s strikes were definitely well placed. However, I could clearly see that his Langorian opponent’s sloppy parries and last-moment evasions were carefully timed ploys, and his returning thrusts were purposely weak. Krillos was toying with him and Ansel knew it; frustration was all over his aged face. Desperation was making his movements rushed. A building rage showed in every trembling swing. So did exhaustion. When his strength was all but gone, Ansel would go for the kill, and give Krillos the excuse he was waiting for.

  I shouted from the porch, “Krillos, hold!” The silence was immediate. Heads craned in my direction. Soldiers raised their weapons. Krillos turned slightly toward me.

  And Ansel took his shot.

  I cried out to stop him. A tall, well-muscled Langorian beat me to it. He brought Ansel down hard and the crowd went crazy.

  Naturally, the Langorian soldiers spared nothing beating them back.

  Krillos, giving the disturbance a brief, curious glance, shook his mane of thick, black hair into place. He slid his weapon away—a long graceful piece that was definitely not standard issue or even Langorian made. Neither was the showy, expensive scabbard at his waist or the new, crimson coat he was tugging into position.

  “Shinree,” he called out warmly. “I see Fate has brought us together again.” He smiled on approach. “I should thank him for that.”

  “I think you’re confused, Krillos. Fate is one of my gods. Not yours.”

  “Yes, and look what your devotion has gotten you.” Krillos stopped just inside the ring of soldiers. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone if you spend more time cursing the old bastard than praying to him. I have my doubts he listens either way.”

  I gestured out at the town. “I see you’ve moved on from dogging the Kaelish.”

  “On, yes. But, not up, I’m afraid. Though, I suppose there are worse assignments than holding this wretched village.” He shrugged and pointed at me. “I see you have come to defend Rella’s southern cities with a half-eaten loaf of bread.”

  Biting off the end, I waved the rest at him. “Actually, Captain, I thought I might stuff it down your throat. Choking on a hunk of stale bread isn’t the most glamorous of deaths, but…dead is dead.”

  “You know,” Krillos grinned, “I once heard that a man’s choice of weapons says a lot about his character. So I’m wondering, Troy, what exactly does brandishing day-old tavern fare say about you?”

  “It says I don’t like you.” I tossed the bread on the porch. “Let Ansel go.”

  With authority, he said, “Lieutenant Lork,” and straightaway the big soldier got up. Wrapping an arm around Ansel’s neck, Lork hauled the older man to his feet and pressed a knife against his bloody, wrinkled face.

  I glared at Krillos. “I didn’t say let him up, I said let
him go.”

  “I can’t do that, Troy. He attacked me. He’s a prisoner of Langor now.”

  “He’s an old man.”

  “This old man,” Krillos said emphatically, “has been stirring up trouble for weeks. He refuses to obey the curfew. He won’t pay taxes to his King—”

  “His King is dead.”

  “This is Langorian territory now. We all bow down to Draken. Like it or not.”

  “Draken doesn’t deserve to be King any more than I do.”

  “No argument from me on that,” he chuckled. “But I wasn’t exactly in a position to refute his claim to the throne, or his offer. Eighteen hours a day in the mines for the rest of my life, versus a conditional pardon on Draken’s leash…it wasn’t a hard choice.”

  “How about I give you another?” I jumped down off the porch. As my boots hit the road I pulled the sword at my back. The sound rang out above the whispers of the crowd and the soldiers in the front row shifted uncomfortably. “Let Ansel go. Take your unsightly friends and leave…or stay here and die.”

  “Give me that,” Krillos said, indicating the shard, “and you can have the whole fucking town for all I care.”

  My teeth gnashing, I hesitated. “Back in the mountains you said something about shoving my face in the dirt?”

  “I believe I said grind, but…go on.”

  “Now’s your chance.”

  Unconcealed interest sparkled in his eyes. “I’m not supposed to kill you.”

  “You won’t.”

  “Is that confidence talking, or wine?”

  “A little of both. But you strike me as a man who likes games of chance, Captain. A man who wouldn’t be afraid to wager my blurry wits against his skill with a blade.” My eyes shifted to his weapon. “A stolen blade by the looks of it.”

  “It’ll be your blade I’m stealing shortly, Troy.”

  “I don’t know,” I said doubtfully. “All those years you spent starving in prison, your mind wasting away, reflexes going dull…nerves shot from fear and torture. I’m thinking that living in a cold, dark cell didn’t exactly keep you sharp.” I smiled with mock sympathy. “But I’m sure it’s all come back to you by now.”