The Crown of Stones: Magic-Price

by C. L. Schneider

  I told myself it was from revulsion that she shut them, and not pleasure.

  After a long, tense moment, Draken lifted his head. Resting his cheek against her small swath of hair, he looked at me through the rotting leg bones of his underlings and licked his lips. “This goes straight through you. Doesn’t it?”

  I was in too much pain to lie. “Yes.”

  “Can you still feel her beneath you?” Draken brushed his lips against her dark skin. “Encasing you? Soft…warm.” His fingers dug into her legs. “Can you still hear her? I can make you hear her.” He pressed harder and Neela gasped.

  “You’re insane,” I said, shaking.

  “I am. But you made me that way. You, and your magic, and your crown.” Draken planted a gentle kiss on Neela’s thigh. Standing, he let her dress fall back into place. “You robbed me of ten years, Troy.” Tugging on the flimsy fabric of her bodice, he covered her breasts. “Ten years,” he said again. Abruptly, he locked fuming eyes on me. “I have to take it out on someone.”

  “Then take it out on me.”

  “Oh, but I am,” Draken laughed heartily. “I most certainly am. And best of all,” he slapped Neela across the face. “You’re wide awake.” He hit her again and she fell.

  This is the last place I should forget what I am, I thought desperately, as Draken kicked her. The last place I should lose control.

  But as Neela’s frightened eyes looked up at me, it was already done.

  FIFTY SEVEN

  The howl that burst from my throat wasn’t in the last bit belonging to a man. Laced with wrath, fueled by aggression, driven by need; the world had become obsolete. There was only my target. The living corpses between us were unimportant. The crushing odds against me were of no consequence. I rushed straight for Draken, into the line of Langorian dead, and I had not a single thought to strategy or safety. No notion of anything but the raw vengeance that traveled down my arms and into my swords.

  But with the familiar weight of steel in my hands, instinct and reflexes kicked in.

  I evaded with intuition, swung with experience and purpose. The instruments of my fury bit smoothly into necks and shoulders. They cut across exposed veins and ruptured bloated, liquefied organs. Slashed through broken rib cages and dangling cords of muscle; chopping off rotting limbs with impudence.

  I struck blow after blow to the scantily skinned frames and delighted in the way their bones fractured on impact. Kneecaps shattered with one kick. Spines snapped with ease. Heads toppled and turned to dust beneath my boots. All around me the dead died again.

  Dying twice wasn’t enough though. Moments after I put them down, whatever was left got right back up.

  The only remedy for their condition (and my situation), was magic.

  But there was a storm in me. If I cast to save myself, or even for the strength to keep fighting, I wasn’t sure I could stop. I could feel it simmering—how badly I wanted to kill, to annihilate anyone that dared oppose me. And without the Crown of Stones or Sienn’s abilities, I couldn’t bring anyone back. Not Neela or the prisoners. I’d wake up as I had ten years before, the lone survivor.

  So I pressed forward. Intent on nothing but gaining ground, I fell swiftly into an unconscious pattern of swinging, dodging, thrusting, and lunging. I barely detected my ears ringing with the constant clash of metal. The trembling ache in my arms was a distant notion as I ducked and rolled, striking out at a sea of legs on my way back up.

  Standing, I turned sagging, toothless jaws to powder. I tore into moldy throats and hollowed out stomachs. As ghastly hands grabbed at me, I hacked away their dead limbs and threw off the pieces. I didn’t flinch at the taste of rot in my mouth or the vile, viscous things running down the blades and onto my hands. And it didn’t have a damn thing to do with bravery or nerve; I didn’t have anything close to a level head. I simply had no chance to notice. No time to acknowledge that each breath brought pain to my lungs or that my overworked muscles quaked with every move. I just kept going. Because there were as many behind me as there were in front.

  I didn’t even know where Neela was anymore.

  I spun around, straining to see through the flood of shields, blades, and bodies, but I couldn’t catch so much as a glimpse of her crimson dress.

  The army seemed to mushroom further; a never-ending flux of mindless cadavers.

  The truth hit me hard: I have no hope of winning. No hope of reaching her.

  If I couldn’t reach her, I couldn’t avenge her.

  Protect me, I thought. That’s what she said. No matter the cost.

  A part of me knew her words weren’t real, that this Neela never said them. But the thought of letting her down, of failing her—of watching her die again—unhinged me. I couldn’t avoid it anymore. I opened the gates, and embraced the obsidian the crown left behind inside me. I soaked up the auras at my wrist; every drop of every stone. Then I reached further, taking what was sprinkled about the camp, embedded in goblets, saddles, and swords, adorning trinkets and garments. I felt more, buried deep, under miles of rock and dirt, unseen and untouched for centuries, and I invited it in. I absorbed until I couldn’t breathe. Until swirling, bright auras were bursting from my hands and shooting off the ends of my swords in great, colorful streams that rendered all who stood in its current to dust.

  Magic surged like everlasting lightening through my veins. And I gladly turned it on my enemies.

  They bore down on me in groups, and died as such. A glancing blow sheared torsos in half. At full force, whole bodies exploded into fragments of bone and ash.

  I slayed whatever was in my path, without thought or design, and in minutes, a heavy cloud of remains hung thick and gray in the air around me.

  Entrenched in it, I didn’t see the soldier until his sword edge ripped across my back. In that first instant, there was no pain. Then, deep and burning, it spread like a lava flow running downhill; spilling over my shoulders, emptying into my arms.

  It sunk lower, into my veins, coursing through them, setting my blood afire.

  Crying out, I lost my grip on the magic. It stopped coming out of me, and the horde piled in. Their oncoming blows were vicious and nonstop. The pain was constant. I struggled to block my opponent’s attacks, but the shock of impact was adding up faster than I could recoup.

  A soldier knocked a weapon from my hand and I was down to one.

  There were too many. They were in too tight.

  A blade cut into my right leg.

  Another split open my left side.

  Invisible flames licked both wounds, and I went down.

  On one knee, leaning heavily on my sword, covered in gore, and laboring to slow my breathing into something that didn’t hurt, I tried to reach the stones. I told myself to get up, to keep swinging, to push through the pain and keep fighting. But an inferno was raging inside me. My wild, desperate strikes had no hope of hitting anything. My magic, if any was left in me, wasn’t responding. Neither were my limbs.

  It’s over, I thought. I’ve come full circle. Fate was delivering me into Death’s hands. Bringing me back to where I should have died all along.

  I wasn’t that surprised. Ansel used to say you can only outrun a debt for so long before it bit you in the ass. Mine, crawled out of its grave and kicked me in the teeth.

  Done, I collapsed. Taking it for surrender, the resurrected soldiers turned and walked away. As they went back to their posts, Draken’s laughter penetrated the echo of battle in my head. As usual, the irritating sound pissed me off. Yet, knowing what he’d done, he had a right to it.

  “My Lord,” I said, raspy and trembling. “You are a tricky bastard.”

  Draken walked through the scattering crowd. “Was that a compliment?”

  “You earned it. You and my father. Resurrecting the dead, scores of innocent prisoners to keep me from casting—tainting your soldier’s weapons with Kayn’l.”

  “Ah, so you know what’s been done to you. I trust it’s working well?”


  “Certainly hurts like hell.” I flinched as the scalding pain dug further inside. “Must be kind of a hollow victory though. Seeing as you had to cheat to beat me.”

  Draken drew back and punched me so hard I tumbled over backwards. “Now I can beat you whenever I please.” He waited for me to pick my face up out of the sand. Then asked, amiably, as if we were having a pleasant chat over a mug of ale, “Do you know what Kayn’l does to a normal man?”

  Splayed out in the dirt, I glared at him. “Am I supposed to?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “It does nothing.”

  “Thank the gods,” I breathed in exaggerated relief. “Now I can die in peace.”

  Draken’s grin didn’t bode well. “Not quite,” he said. “What about a normal man bound to a Shinree? What do you think it would do to him?” He tapped me with his boot. “Focus, Troy.”

  I couldn’t. All of a sudden his voice was bouncing and the sand was undulating in waves. Everything had this sort of rolling glow around it. “You better talk a lot faster,” I said, rubbing at the shadows moving across my eyes. “Or I’m going to pass out before you spit out anything close to important.”

  “If, for instance,” he said impatiently, “I were to take Kayn’l, it would render my connection to Reth inactive. Once the drug was purged from my body, the link would mend itself. But, if I remained on it indefinitely, his absence would begin to feel permanent. As if he was dead. As if half my soul had died inside me.” Draken ran a thoughtful hand over his chin. “Of course the ensuing, mental injury is only a rumor. No one knows what the loss of a joined soul would do. The type of bonding we’ve taken part in hasn’t been done in centuries. Still, such prolonged isolation would undoubtedly have a profound effect. Not true insanity like I knew, but an internal blackness. A pain so acute it would change a person. Harden them. Burrow emptiness in so deep it might never go away.” Draken made a concerned face. “Slightly tragic, don’t you think?”

  I struggled to sit up. “You’re giving Jarryd Kayn’l.”

  “Glad to see you’re following along. Though, as a prisoner of war, that drug is the least of his worries. Unless…you can think of a way to secure his release. Something you could offer me, perhaps?”

  My reply was a pain-filled, angry laugh. It wasn’t for Draken. It was more of a self-directed hostility for how I’d stupidly followed every step my father laid out for me. I did exactly as he predicted, right from the beginning.

  Almost.

  With an unsteady hand, I reached for the stone around my neck. I gave it a sharp tug, and the cord broke. I hesitated briefly. Then I flung the black shard down in the sand between us.

  Draken stared at it. “No clever comment?” he said, eyes lifting. “No crude jest?”

  “I’m all out. But if you come a little closer I’ll shove it up your ass.”

  Grinning, his eyes dropped back to the shard. I half expected a spot of drool to form in the corner of his mouth. If he were Shinree he’d look a little less excited, I thought. But being nothing but a greedy man, Draken had no clue the stone he was coveting was the wrong one. The piece of the crown he wanted so badly was in Kabri. By now, it was at the bottom of the sea, or smashed into a thousand pieces. My instructions for Liel were to destroy it if he could, keep it safe if he couldn’t. I didn’t really care what he did with it, as long as no other living soul knew where it was.

  It was a decent plan. At least, it had been. If I’d kept my cool instead of losing it over Neela, I might have managed to strike a deal with Draken. Now that I’d fucked everything up, all I could hope was that I’d bleed out before my father found out what I’d done.

  “Let them go,” I said. It was futile at this point, but I still tried. “Release Neela and Jarryd, and you can have me and the piece that completes the crown.”

  “I already have you. And them.” Draken scooped up the obsidian so fast sand sprayed us both. “And now I have the stone.” He clenched it tight in his grip. “I hope you enjoy pain, Troy, because I have waited a very long time to personally cut that flip tongue from your mouth.”

  “Yet you don’t. You hole up in Darkhorne, hiding under Reth’s skirt.”

  “And you hide behind the truth,” he snarled. “Your soul is as black as those streaks in your hair. Just like your father.”

  Bent, weak and trembling, I shouted at him, “I am not my father! If I could drain Jem Reth’s blood out of me, I would do so right now.”

  “What a lovely idea. But it’s not really your father’s blood that concerns me.”

  I opened my mouth to reply, and toppled over.

  Suddenly, the sun was too bright. My eyes were too heavy.

  “Fetch our guest a drink,” Draken said, glancing over his shoulder. “Until recently, Troy,” he looked back at me, “I had no idea you were such a prize. The gods themselves must have guided Jem’s seed the night he lay down with V’loria. Or, your people’s loins are simply more finicky than we thought.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Blood, I believe.”

  Neela interrupted. Coming over with a metal jug in her hand, she sat down and lifted my head onto her lap. The sour wine she offered turned my stomach, but I was so parched, as she put the jug to my mouth, I pulled in great gulps.

  Gently, her hand smoothed the hair off my forehead. “Forgive me,” she said.

  There was way too much guilt in her voice.

  Swallowing, I looked at her. It was on her face too.

  I pushed the wine away. “You wanted me to follow you. You led me here,” I said, louder as it started to make sense. “You led me to him.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “Like hell you didn’t.”

  “The cost of harboring you was a hundred Rellan lives a day. I couldn’t.…” her voice cracking, Neela shrugged regretfully. “After the cave, when I woke up in the castle, there was a dispatch from Draken insisting on your confinement. He made the consequences quite clear. I wanted them to take you when you were still unconscious. It would have been easier that way. But Draken maintained you must give up the stone freely. He said we had to find your,” her lips trembled, “breaking point.” Neela tried to shake off her distress. “In any case, I had to get you out of Kabri. Malaq would never have let me turn you over.”

  Relief dulled the pain. “Malaq isn’t part of this?”

  “My cousin truly believed he could keep you safe in Kabri. But I’ve felt what’s inside you, Ian. I knew you couldn’t let me go.” Neela dipped her head down to rest against mine. “Life will be different for you now. But Draken has promised you will be well cared for.” I choked on my amusement and she sat up. “My husband will honor our agreement, Ian. He signed an accord.”

  I full out laughed then, until the pain was such that I couldn’t breathe.

  Dismayed, Neela said again, adamantly, “He signed an accord.”

  “Great,” I said, gasping. “Then I have nothing to worry about.”

  As doubt clouded her eyes, Draken reached down and yanked Neela to her feet. “Hands off the new slave, love.” He removed the crown from his head and gave it to her. “Go,” he said, shoving her away. “Take this inside and wait for me.”

  Neela didn’t argue. She walked off and didn’t look back, and I found a kind of twisted comfort in the ignorance that was coming. At least I won’t know. Draken can do what he likes with her. He can destroy the world and I won’t have to know. I won’t have to care what he does.

  Or what I’ve done.

  “They kept the truth from you,” Draken said, hovering. “It’s what they do. Raynan, Aylagar, my wife. They were all terrified of what knowledge would make you become. Of what would happen if you found out how long and deep the betrayal ran. But there’s no harm now. What anger you can manage will fade with the Kayn’l.” Studying me, his eyes flashed. “Do you know what your mother’s greatest flaw was?”

  I winced through a shrug. “Bad taste in men?”

  “Trust,�
� he sneered. “V’loria believed every lie the Rellans told her. She thought she was a simple village girl with a family. She believed herself a healer because she was raised by a healer. She was trained as one. Told her name designated her as one. The poor woman never sought to be anything more.”

  “My mother was…she…” my thoughts flew away. I tried to gather them back. “She had a sister.” The details escaped me. My awareness kept pausing and starting.

  “Your mother had no siblings. V’loria was given to that family to bring up as their own. I have no doubt they were well compensated. Seeing as they were caring for an erudite.”

  “What? No…” I struggled to speak, to keep up, but I was like grains of sand on a beach, helpless to fight the waves as they swept up and out, carrying pieces of me away.

  “When your father found the records of V’loria’s birth and discovered her true lineage, how the Rellans had covered it up, the lies they spun…it all made sense then. The uproar her pregnancy created, the reason the Arcana’s let you live—your correlation to the crown. But it was quite a blow. All that power he wasted when he killed her. Then he realized what it meant for you. He realized what you are.”

  “I’m…” I couldn’t say it. “I can’t be.”

  “Oh, but you are,” Draken smiled hungrily. “An erudite line trumps all others, so breeding with them only ends one way. Yet, it appears, the few, erudite babes born since the empire fell, were all female. A male child, such as you, is rare and valuable indeed.”

  “No. I carry a soldier’s blood,” I said, shoving the words out. “That’s what I am. That’s all I am.”

  “The crown is turning your father into something quite frightening, Troy, but not you. An erudite was its creator. It recognizes that distinction in you. That’s why Reth sent his pretty, pale witch to you in Kael. He whipped up an allurement spell, gave Sienn a false vision that you two were fated. He was hoping nature would take its course.”

  “Why?”

  “Why would Reth care if you fucked her?” Draken bent down and cuffed me in the head. “Pay attention! He was hoping to create that which hadn’t existed in over five hundred years. A child with limitless magical potential. A child of two erudite. Your child, Troy,” he said, hitting me again. “Yours and Sienn’s.” He backed off. “But you couldn’t even do that right.” Draken dangled the obsidian shard in my face. “You’re going to tell your father how to fix the Crown of Stones. And I wouldn’t disappoint him. He’s not too happy with you right now.” With a jerk of his head, he said, “Take him. Before he passes out and pisses himself on my doorstep.”