Threads of Amarion

by Todd Fahnestock

  Mershayn walked around the table and put a hand on her shoulder. As always, he forced himself not to recoil at the coldness of her skin, at the...revulsion that touching her sent through him. “To bed I go. Are you to see me to the threshold?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Lady Bands give you orders to knock me unconscious?”

  “She told me to be creative if I needed to be.”

  “I tell you what,” Mershayn said. “Let’s pretend I’m not the king. Let’s pretend I am the once carefree bastard of Bendeller. Let’s pretend you are a Belshran princess who has come to me for the sole purpose of sating her lust.”

  Her pale lips curved upward at the corners.

  A second smile! Mershayn considered that a win.

  “To bed, Your Majesty,” Silasa said, and the smile vanished.

  “I love it when you’re forceful—”

  A knock sounded at the door. Silasa’s brow wrinkled in annoyance.

  “It would be rude not to answer,” Mershayn said, slipping gracefully past her and opening the door. He stopped, stunned.

  Lady Ari’cyiane stood in the hallway, her blue eyes glinting like ice.

  “I would have a word with you, Your Majesty,” she said.

  6

  Mershayn

  Mershayn had avoided Ari’cyiane this past week, and the last place he’d expected to see her was at sundown in his rooms. He hesitated, then opened the door wide for her.

  “My lady,” he said, bowing and standing to the side.

  She entered the room, dressed as if for court in a light blue gown strung with pearls. A white shawl covered her shoulders, a creamy cloud against the blue dress, her stylish concession to the chill weather. Two locks of her strawberry blond hair had been braided and pulled back from her temples to hold back her artful mass of curls in a kind of crown. She appeared recovered from her ordeal, at least physically. The color was back in her cheeks, and she was as lovely as ever. She stood, poised, but her eyes flashed with something feral.

  Silasa stepped back silently, arms at her sides, her white eyes watching impassively.

  “You can go, Silasa,” Mershayn said. “Lady Vullieth and I should...speak alone.”

  Silasa gaze flicked over Ari’cyiane, and the vampire didn’t move. “Your Majesty, she has a knife.”

  Mershayn was surprised by that, but he tried to keep the surprise from his face. He looked where Silasa was looking, but couldn’t see the knife. How did Silasa know?

  “I’m not in danger of assassination from Ari’cyiane,” he said.

  Ari’cyiane’s gaze smoldered, and she didn’t confirm Mershayn’s words.

  “I would rather stay, Your Majesty,” Silasa pressed.

  Mershayn held the door open for her.

  Silasa glanced at Ari’cyiane once more, then left. Mershayn closed the door.

  With everything swimming in his head, Ari’cyiane was the one person he had not thought about over the past few days. He had done the right thing with Sym, but Mershayn felt he had betrayed her by not killing the Lord of Buir’tishree. One look at her told him she felt the same. He held her gaze without speaking, waiting. He knew that whatever words he might use would be the wrong words.

  She finally broke the silence. “I waited for you to come see me.”

  “I apologize, my lady,” he said. There were days in this last week when he had dreamed about losing himself in her arms as he once had. But everything had changed now. He was not the same and neither was she. “There have been more demands on my time than I could have imagined. I would have come if I could.”

  “You didn’t want to see me. I understand.”

  “How is Lord Vullieth?” He turned the conversation.

  “He mends,” she said as though they were just talking about the weather. “He will fully recover in time. It was only his body they broke.”

  “I am glad to hear it.”

  “Lar’eth is a good man. He is...” Her voice caught in her throat, and she stopped speaking. After a pause, she continued as though nothing happened. “Despite all he knows about what went on between us, he supports you as king.”

  “I am gladder still to hear that.”

  She glared at him.

  “What happened with you...in the throne room...” He could find no delicate way to ask the question. “He knows?”

  “Of course he knows, Mershayn. Everyone in the kingdom knows. Every single person who wanted to see me naked and helpless needed only attend Sym’s court.”

  He bowed his head.

  “It was all I could do to convince Lar’eth not to challenge Sym,” she continued. “Even healthy, Lar’eth wouldn’t last a minute against Sym. That snake is one of the best swordsmen in the city.”

  “Yes,” Mershayn said, his heart thundering.

  “But he’s not better than you.” The accusation was deadly soft. Her nostrils flared, and he felt her contempt. “Why didn’t you kill him, Mershayn?”

  “Ari’cyiane...”

  “No one would blame you. The court would applaud you. I would have sung your praises. Instead...” Her voice caught, and she stopped speaking again. She held his gaze, tears in her eyes as she waited for her voice to steady. “Instead, I find myself wondering if I ever really knew you. Where is the passionate man who would give his life for what he loves?”

  “There are more important things than my desire just now. I have to rule—”

  “He killed your brother. He...” Her face reddened, and this time, she pushed through the catch in her throat and whispered, “He humiliated me, Mershayn. He chained me like an animal, ripped the clothes from my body, and you...” She let out a sob, then turned her head away. She put a hand against the window sill.

  Mershayn gently put his arms on her shoulders—

  She spun, clawing his face. A stinging pain fired into his cheek, and her nails came away with blood. He staggered back.

  “Don’t touch me!” she said. “I do not crave your pity or your hands on me. There is only one thing you can do for me.”

  “Ari’cyiane—”

  “Kill him.”

  “I cannot.”

  “You are king.” Her voice was as unbending as iron. “You can.”

  He swallowed hard. “Then...I will not.”

  “I despise you,” she hissed.

  He felt a trickle of blood slide down his jaw. He was overwhelmed, struggling to succeed in this impossible role he’d been given, saddled with the knowledge of a dragon invasion. He craved her approval. He wanted her love. He wanted it to be easy again, to casually lay in her bed as they whispered to each other, full of their own passion and cleverness.

  Ari’cyiane had loved him when he was only a wry bastard. She’d loved him because of it. And he had lost her forever.

  The irony of the situation hurt, because if he was in her place, he would feel exactly as she did. He would demand justice.

  “I do not expect you to understand,” he said.

  Her lips pressed into a hard line. “Do not expect anything else of me, either. Sym is a traitor and a murderer. Do you know what a real king would call that? A criminal. Criminals must be punished.”

  “He is being punished. Justice must be—”

  “Your justice is a sham. If a fisherman murdered another man, you would execute that fisherman. But you fear what others of the Buir’tishree line will do to you if you kill Sym. You fear for your own position.” She shook her head. “I believed you were brave, Mershayn. And at this test of tests, I see now that you are a coward.”

  A dot of blood fell on the flagstones between them.

  “I must have all the nobles behind me, even the Buir’tishree line,” he said hoarsely. “Do you think I could manage that if I killed their lord?”

  “Sym will never be your ally,” she hissed, and now he saw the dagger clenched in her trembling fist. “He will scheme. He will plot, and when your back is turned, he will stick a knife in it. Sparing him has not made him love yo
u. It only makes you weak!”

  He wondered if he would stop her if she chose to plunge that dagger into his chest, or if he just would let it happen.

  She flung the dagger to the floor at his feet. It clanged against the stone and spun past his foot.

  She strode to the door and flung it open, but she stopped. Her profile was outlined by the lamplight in the hall. “Think over this decision well, Your Majesty. You will have no friend in me until Sym is dead.”

  She slammed the door.

  He let out his breath, then raised his hand to touch his cheek.

  Blood and tears.

  All hail the king.

  7

  Medophae

  Medophae blinked.

  Mirolah...

  The conflagration in the throne room rushed back to him. Zilok had killed her. He had taken Stavark’s mind and made the quicksilver stab Mirolah over and over. Medophae had flown into a rage, and Oedandus exploded within him. He’d shot golden fire at Zilok, then suddenly black fire had mixed with the gold... And then there was only pain.

  Somehow, Zilok had turned the tables on him, using that crown artifact to turn Medophae’s attack back on him.

  He wanted to rise and slash about himself, raging at yet another failure, at yet another loved one lost. But if he knew Zilok Morth, the vengeful spirit would be close by. He would linger to gloat. Medophae might be alive, but the fight wasn’t over.

  Cautiously, he opened his eyes.

  The blurry room came into view, dark and gray. Moonlight shone in through the windows on either side of him. The air was warm, and there was no snowstorm. This wasn’t Teni’sia. Zilok had transported him elsewhere.

  He was in a hut with a flagstone floor. The walls were clean and made of what looked like slender trees. The logs were blond in color, hollowed out in the center, and vertical. There was a cot in the corner, a well-crafted wooden frame with a mesh of fine fabric strung across it. Above it hung two waterskins and a cloak with a fur collar. On the opposite wall was an iron stove. One pot and one pan hung on the wall above it. There was also a waist-high, square basin built into the wall across from him, with mortared tile. A groove for draining water trailed from the basin to the edge of the door and underneath—a waterbox. It was for keeping fresh water inside the house, for cooking and drinking and washing inside the room. It was fed by a natural spring that had been diverted to feed clean water to this hut. But people on Amarion didn’t use those. The only place Medophae had ever seen waterboxes was on his home island of Dandere.

  He rolled over onto his side, and the pain of it made him gasp. His muscles were feeble, mortal. Oedandus was gone. His mind was quiet, his god’s dark voice gone. There was no unearthly fire raging in his belly. For fourteen hundred years, he’d been practically invulnerable. Now, in less than a month, he’d been stripped of Oedandus twice.

  He sat up, and his skin prickled as he sensed another in the room. He looked behind himself.

  Zilok sat in a chair in a corner of the room. He wore the black clothes he had preferred in life: a blousy black shirt beneath a black vest, black breeches, and black leather boots. His blue eyes glowed. On his head rested that enormous crown adorned with spikes of uneven crystals that he’d worn in the Teni’sian throne room. The crystals were quiescent now, but Zilok’s smile was assured.

  Medophae sat up, crossed his legs as though preparing for a civilized conversation, and straightened his back. He tried to cover his stiffness and pain. He was thirsty and hungry, and he wondered how long he’d been unconscious.

  “I thought you were going to kill me,” he said.

  Zilok studied Medophae with those unnaturally blue eyes. In reality, the only substance the spirit really had was those blue eyes. His real form, so far as Medophae could tell, was just a pair of floating blue fires the size of eyeballs. He conjured the body, Medophae supposed, because it made him feel more real. The illusion was convincing, but just one look at those glowing blue eyes, and anyone could tell they were in the presence of a supernatural creature.

  “I was going to kill you,” Zilok said with that cultured accent his parents had drummed into him when he was alive.

  Medophae reached deep inside himself, tried to feel Oedandus. If this was the same spell Zilok had cast on Medophae before, then Oedandus was still around, somewhere, but Zilok had created a barrier between Medophae and his god. Barriers could be broken. If Medophae could find it, bash through it, maybe he could even the odds of this confrontation.

  But he couldn’t find anything. Everything in his body felt staggeringly normal.

  “The idea of slaying you while you slept didn’t appeal,” Zilok continued. “I want you looking at me when you die, just as I looked at you when you killed me.”

  “I’m looking at you now,” Medophae said.

  “Are you in such a rush to die?”

  “Being near you makes me ill,” Medophae said.

  “Charming, as ever,” Zilok said. “I think you’re searching inside yourself, looking for Oedandus. I think you’re wondering how I did it. How I took him away from you a second time.”

  Zilok always could read him. They had been best friends for so long, back when Medophae was young, back when Medophae’s soul was fresh, and having a best friend meant everything. How sour it had turned in the end. Medophae had found his calling, and Zilok became more and more twisted until finally, he had become this aberration, this thing bent on manipulation and death.

  Zilok shook his head. “You won’t figure it out. You’re a twig floating on the ocean. You have no concept of why the waves move or how. You never have because you never cared enough to know.”

  “It’s laughable, you talking about caring.”

  “I won’t make you strain your mind.” Zilok ignored the insult. “You’re on Dandere, where you were born.”

  So the construction of this hut wasn’t a coincidence. There would be many huts like this on Dandere, and it explained why Medophae couldn’t feel any barrier between him and his god.

  Zilok hadn’t ripped Oedandus away from Medophae; he’d ripped Medophae away from Oedandus.

  Oedandus’s power didn’t extend past the continent of Amarion. It was part of how he’d been nearly destroyed. Long ago, Oedandus had been ambushed by three other gods. He’d been defeated, and his life force had been stretched thinly across the continent of Amarion, reducing his sentience to an animalistic level and nearly ending him. The only way he could form even rudimentary thoughts and feelings was to push his life force into a living creature with Oedandus’s own blood: Medophae. Medophae became a lightning rod for the god’s power, and Oedandus filled him up. It made Medophae almost impervious to the workings of threadweavers, but Zilok’s new crown had somehow circumvented that invulnerability.

  Medophae’s mind whirled with questions. “So now I’m on your little prison island,” he said.

  “My island?” Zilok said. “You’re home. You should thank me.”

  “I should have killed you.”

  “You did,” Zilok said with icy calm.

  Medophae paused. This was going to end in his death. There was no point in dancing around it. Zilok finally had Medophae at his mercy. Medophae had to think, to figure out a way around the inevitable.

  Medophae shook his head. “You could have been remembered as a great man, Zilok. Chapters in history books would have been written about you and all the good you did for humankind. But instead, you chose to become...this.” He gestured at Zilok’s illusory body.

  The blue fire in Zilok’s eyes flickered, and he was silent for a moment before answering. “Remembered in history books? Like you, you mean? Those so-called histories are stories. They’re sweet, gossamer lies, told by puffed-up dullards. These histories linger because they are cherished by those who have no interest in truth, only in what they wish to see. You were beautiful and immortal, on the arm of a beautiful and immortal woman. You were what they wanted to see, so when you murdered, they wrote their stories an
d called you a hero. When I murdered, they called me a monster.”

  “I didn’t murder.”

  “Your body count speaks otherwise.”

  “We are not the same—”

  “No. We are not. I am honest. You are a deluded child who bumbles about, defecating on those he pretends to care about.”

  Medophae raised his chin.

  “Tyndiria... Mirolah...” Zilok continued. “Bands... Seldon Tyflor... Vlacar...”

  Medophae’s fists tightened. But his anger was impotent, and Zilok knew it. What was Medophae going to do? Knock the crown off Zilok’s head? Swing through his insubstantial body? The only weapon Medophae had ever possessed against Zilok was the power of Oedandus.

  “Shall I continue? There are so many others. Malacye Gorros... Vitrio... Cuinn... You brought them all into danger,” Zilok said. “You brought them under the knife, and then you walked away. Shall I go on?”

  “Talk until you’re blue for all I care.”

  “How about Zilok...? How about that one?”

  “Your death wasn’t an accident.”

  Zilok went silent, and he was completely still except for those glowing eyes, which flickered now like they were on fire within.

  “I’ve been thinking about killing you for more than a day now,” Zilok said. “Just waiting here, watching you sleep, thinking about it.”

  “You’ve taken all the people I loved....” Medophae choked on the words. “Why not just end it? You can. I can’t fight you.”

  “I...” Zilok leaned his head forward, eyes glowing, “...took from you?”

  “Mirolah did nothing to you. Tyndiria only wanted what was best for her people. And you tore them apart to hurt me.” He put his arms out to his sides as though Zilok had an arrow trained on his chest. “Finish what you started. There are no innocents to block your way now. No gods. Do it.”

  “I...took from you?” Zilok repeated, his voice vibrating with incredulity. “I loved you like a brother. I followed you into a chasm of nightmare to do the impossible. I saved your life. It was because of me that you could kill Dervon the Diseased. I gave you everything.”