Lacking the skills to direct it as he wished, he sighed and sent a spell into the creature’s mind that had it lumbering back towards the city at a jostling trot.
Small clusters of guards came to harass him and, one by one, Samuel put them all to sleep, rather than waste his time in battle or argument. He had no wish for senseless violence, but he needed the men out of his way as quickly as possible. There were too many guards surrounding the palace and continuing such a tactic would only slow him down, so Samuelleaptup from his saddle and sprang up over the walls with a single bound. Another leap had him landing on a balcony that was very near the Paatin Queen’s chambers and,from there,it was a simple matter to gain access to her room.
Wizards and warriors lined the long room and they stepped back as he neared, holding their weapons bravely, but shivering in fear. It seemed he was expected.
Upon her dais, Alahativa waited with her arms folded as Samuel strode towards her. He was thinking of blasting her before she could speak a word, but,as he neared, his heart fell, for he saw the Emperor, Canyon and the Koian woman standing at her side with swords to their throats.
‘So you have returned,’ she said to him, ‘and intent on my murder. I am horrified it has come to this.’
Samuel halted at the base of her platform.
‘What has happened?’ he asked of the others and Edmond Calais answered.
‘After you left, there was a great battle throughout the palace. A magician was fighting, but we did not see him, for the Queen’s guards had gathered us up and brought us here. We thought it may have been you.’
‘It was Lomar,’ Samuel revealed. ‘It’s unfortunate he could nothelpyouescape. It would have made things much simpler. Do you know what happened to him?’
‘He did not die, if that is what you are asking,’ the Desert Queen responded, observing their conversation. ‘But neither did he escape unscathed. I have heard much of that Kabushy wizard. It is a shame I could not catch him. I wonder if he knows what happened to his kin?’
‘What do you mean?’ Samuel asked her, eyeing her suspiciously.
‘Have you not heard? My scouts brought word from the south only recently. There is no one left living in Kabush. Every soul has been murdered-slain by magic. Every village and hut and home has been wiped from the earth.’
‘Why would you do such a thing?’ he asked her with detestation.
‘Oh, it was nothing to do with me, I assure you. I had no interest in the marsh people. They were primitive and peaceful folk, but of no value to me. Still, if it serves to upset you and your friend, then I am thankful to whomever completed the deed.’
‘You are a cold-hearted woman,’ Samuel told her.
‘Yes. When it so pleases me-I am. You see, I am very unhappy about what you have done at Yi’sit. My remaining wizards have been arriving all night, telling tales of your terrible wrath. You have destroyed years of work, but at least you have shown your true powers in the end, Samuel. What a shame I was not there to witness it. I’m sure it would have been wonderful to behold. Tell me, did the woman and her child survive?’
‘They did,’ Samuel said. ‘They are safe and well.’
At that, the Emperor almost cried aloud with relief.
‘Then I must assume you also dispatched Om-rah for me. At least in that, Samuel, you have been obedient.’ Her customary reclining chair had been removed and a small square table had replaced it, with a straight-backed wooden chair at each end. The tablewas finely carved and inlaid with metal plates and braces, delicate filigree and fine stones. ‘I doubt I can stop my stolen prizes from returning to theWest. My army of wizards has been decimated and you have the help of that demon Cang. I’m sure they will be making for his valley, and it would be pointless for me to send my forces there. I will grant you victory in this, Samuel, but the rest of your plan has met its end. I will not die easily and,if you attempt any such foolishness, these four will be the first to perish.’
Samuel looked at the hostages, with curved swordsat their necks andwizardsby their sides,and with Utik’cah standing back behind them all, looking at Samuel flatly. It would be very difficult to save them all. He was not so fond of Canyon, but he could not risk letting the Emperor or the Koian woman be harmed. He damned himself for letting it come to this.
Then, something Alahativa had just said came back to him. ‘Three,’ he corrected her. ‘I see only three captives standing before you.’
At that, she again gave her most wonderfully satisfied smile. ‘Four, Samuel: the Koian man called Canyon, the one beside him that we shall call your Emperor, the nameless Koian female…and her child.’
Samuel looked at the Koian god-womaninconfusion and she turned her gaze aside.
‘That’s right, Samuel,’ Alahativa continued. ‘She has your child in her belly.’
‘You lie, Witch,’ he told her, not even tempted to believe her story.
‘So it’s witch now, is it? You would never have called me such things in my bed. How terribleit iswhen lovers turn to quarrelling.’ Her voice was full of unsubtle sarcasm. ‘I am sure it is true, Samuel. The woman has your child in her. It is true beyond a doubt.’
‘Impossible!’ he said, growing irritated.
‘So you say. Yet, it has happened. Tell him, woman.’ But the Koian girl would not raise her eyes from the floor. ‘You see? She knows it is so. Will you risk harming your unborn child, Samuel? It does seem quite remarkable that such a thing could happen. I am disappointed that you would not give me a child, yet you would resort to impregnating this…girl. Still, you are a magician so this may be the only chanceyou haveto bear young. I tell you, there must be something in the water these days. First, your Emperor receives a son when he could only have daughters and now you, a magician, grant a child to a witch, when the idea of eitherof youbearing young is simply imponderable. The scholars will certainly be waggling their tongues over this.’
‘What do you mean,“to a witch”?’ he asked her, perturbed.
‘She is not quite a god, but she does have powers, Samuel-or have you still not discovered that? Her skills are subtle, but she does have the potential to cast magic, somewhere deep inside her. You seem to have missed a great deal.’
‘Stop your prattling!’ he shouted at her and her painted eyes opened wide. He realised he was in an impossible position and the realisation that all was lost was almost too much to bear. With great difficulty, he forced his next words out as calmly as he could. ‘Tell me,then, what will you have me do?’
‘Very well,’ she said quite calmly, and she pulled back one of the chairs at her table and sat, sitting sideways to face him and crossing her legs at the ankles with her hands clasped on her lap. ‘I will tell you what will happen. You have won, Samuel. Take your woman and go. Take your Emperor, too. Whatever past we once shared, he has forsaken me. The other, Canyon, can do as he pleases. I will withdraw my armies from your lands and they shall return to the desert for all time. I am sorry this has not gone well, Samuel. My heart has been broken on all fronts and we Paatin shall reside here and accept whatever fate may come. I will tell my people that this is not Ajaspah-that the stars have been misread. We will await our fate quietly and face it as proudly as we can.’
Samuel eyedher courtierssuspiciously, but they gave no hint as to the Paatin Queen’s intentions. ‘Why would you do all this?’ he asked her. ‘You have already won. Why give up your victory?’
‘As I have said, Samuel, I have lost the will for vengeance. What point is there to continue onin the face ofall this bloodshed? I know you are powerful, more powerful than even I could have believed, for who else could destroy an army of my wizards and bring rain and snow to the desert. I have no wish to anger you further. Only more blood would be spilt and what good would it accomplish? I know I am not as noble a woman as I purport to be, but neither am I the monster you imagine. Come, I have prepared a treaty for you totake backto your people, as proof of my decision. Sit, sign it and I will send you home. My war is ov
er.’
Samuel turned to the Emperor questioningly. ‘He would not sign it,’ Alahativa stated. ‘For whatever reason, he does not want his presence known to his people. You can make your mark in his stead. I’m sure your people will accept it, being the Saviour that you are.’
‘Is it true?’ Samuel asked and,with a nod from the Queen,the sword was moved ever so slightly from the Emperor’s throat.
‘I don’t know if her motivations are true, Samuel, but I would not sign it, as she said. Do so if you wish. I don’t know what value it holds, except to please the bureaucrats of Cintar. They do enjoy such things and it would do well to allay their fears of further invasion.’
‘Come,’ the Paatin Queen implored him and Samuel took three tentative steps up to the table and stood beside her.
A letter and a writing set were neatly laid out opposite her. Still, Samuel eyed the woman suspiciously. He kept his shields in place and his power at the ready.
‘Read it,’ she said. ‘They are merely words, but you will find no more powerful symbol of my sincerity.’
He stepped around to the other side of the table, keeping one eye on the Paatin Queen as he went, with his spells burning with readiness. She only turned and put her legs under the table, resting her hands gently upon the tabletop.
He did not sit as requested, but leaned over the chair to read. The note seemed genuine. Another glance to the Emperor had the man shrugging his shoulders. The Koian woman stood emotionlessly, eyes still to the floor, and Canyon was looking on with unrestrained expectation.
‘I will also give you something of a parting gift, Samuel. I know you want it, and perhaps it can serve to remind you of the tenderness we once shared.’ And with that, almost beyond belief, she wriggled her ring from her finger and set it down gently upon the table. ‘Here, take it. It is yours. Take whatever power it can give you and enjoy whatever happiness it may bring,’ and she slid it across to the middle of the table.
Samuel’s pulse raced and he had to hold himself from snatching the thing up. He weighed up the situation, for it seemed remarkable that his total loss had somehow become a victory.
He leaned forward expectantly and placed his finger on the second Argum Stone. He felt its cold surface throbbing with power against his skin and,at the same time,he noted a smile teetering on the edge of Alahativa’s lips. He did not trust her, but it was too late for her to change her mind. It really was the second relic beneath his finger and victory was now his. She was powerless and he now had everything.
At that thought, something brilliant flashed through the air between him and the ring and, with a mechanical clang, a long arm of steel slammed into place beside the table. Samuel staggered back, disoriented and in shock as he was suddenly cut off from his magic. There was a gasp from the Emperor and a shrill cry from the Koian woman, but,as Samuel looked towards them dumbly, Canyon seemed quite satisfied.
Looking back to the table, Alahativa had already snatched back her own magical ring and had slipped it back upon her finger. She was now prying a matching relic from a severed hand that lay limply upon the table, spilling blood from its elbow across the polished surface. A long,sharpened blade, slick with blood, lay exposed beside the table, sticking out from the wood where it had come to rest. A dark recess ran across the middle of the tabletop and it seemed it was from this that the device had exploded. Seeing the blade and the blood and the arm, Samuel slowly managed to put the meaning of the scene together, as his mind fumbled to make sense of things. He had been distracted in that final instant as the Queen had given him her ring, and his magic had waned enough for the blade to do its work. The Queen had judged him well.
Samuel staggered again and grabbed hold of the nearby chair, still trying to convince himself that the arm on the table belonged to him. He struggled to pick the thing up, then he realised that all he was achieving was waving around the stump of his right arm and spraying more blood.
‘How could you?’ the Emperor cried out, struggling against the guards that held him tight.
‘Take him,’ the Paatin Queen called and a team of her mengrabbedSamuel with rough hands.
Samuel was still looking about dumbly, when a white-hot spray of wild magic spat out and turned the men around him to ashes with a screaming flash. The Koian woman was free, her own guards erased from existence.
‘You cannot do this!’ she screamed,and again she lashed out, throwing her crudely cast spells blindly across the room and a wizard and more guards vanished with a hellish shriek. ‘Run! Run, you idiot!’ she called to Samuel and he lurched intoactionand began staggering down the stairs.
The Emperor and Canyon flailed to be away from the woman beside them as her spells shot out in all directions, blasting stone and chair and curtain, evaporating Paatin left and right as they tried to evade her wrath.
‘Kill him! Kill him!’ Canyon blurted out, pointing to Samuel. ‘Don’t let him get away!’
No sooner had he bellowed the words than the Koian woman had spun and locked her wild eyes upon him. ‘It was you!’ she said. ‘You told her everything!’ Untamed magic still poured from her in blazing, flailing tentacles, keeping the guards fleeing and the Paatin Queen ducked out of sight behind the table and a veil of protective spells. It seemed only luck that Samuel and the Emperor had not been blasted bythe Koian woman’suntempered fury.
Canyon realised his mistake and horror drained his face white. ‘No. No, I did nothing.’ he stammered, backing away, but the raging woman put her palms to his face and he screamed like a girl. ‘Please! Don’t!’
‘Why couldn’t you let me live! Why did you do this to me!’ she cried, and Canyon vanished with a rising wail. His fleshwas incineratedand his clothes fell empty to the floor. In his place was a knot of life energy that only Samuel could see and she called it into herself, pulling it in with her will. Her hair whipped about her as she swallowed his essence and the intensity of her magic doubled, surging about her like a storm of sparks and shattered embers. She turned back to Samuel with rage still in her eyes, but when she saw him still standing there,as if struckdumb, she shoutedindisbelief.
‘Go!’ she implored him.
Remembering himself, Samuel wobbled to be away, but fell on the final step, slipping in his own blood, for his vital fluidhad been pouringdown his legs all the while. Instinctively, he tried to take the fall with both hands, but with one entirely gone, he crashed roughly onto the floor.
Alahativa’s magic then bloomed behind him and the Koian woman’s magic ceased. Rough hands took hold of him andhauledhim back to his feet. As they dragged him away, he could see that the Koian woman was lying still on the floor and the Paatin Queen was standing over her, surrounded by a blaze of her own intense power.
‘Let him suffer!’ the Paatin Queen called after him. ‘A slow death for him! Nothing terrible should be spared!’
Everything after that was shades of grey, flashes of light and dark, and moments of silence and screaming. He felt his body being skewered by agony and he did his best to remove himself from all sensation. Heat and cold washed over his skin, fire drilled into his skull and ice into his bones, crushing pressure filled his joints until they felt fit to burst and his breath felt like molten lead in his lungs. His right arm was not wracked by torturous pain-amazingly-which made less sense than anything,for that was the very arm he had seen quivering on the Paatin Queen’s table.
He remembered being dragged and he remembered the smells of the catacombs. Rough hands pushed and shoved him and then he felt himself beingshovedinto a narrow hole. There was a moment of peace, and then a flash of lightning.
He felt the coldness of death enveloping him, forcing itself into his veins but,as his vision cleared, Samuel found himself lying in a stone courtyard, amidst a wild scuffle. He could see Turians fighting Paatin, but it seemed to make no sense. His arm had returned and he could see his fingers wriggling and flexing at the tip of his hand. Strangely, he could feel warm blood seeping from a wound in his chest, yet
the pain of that wound was too distant to bother him.
Some of the Paatin that fought nearby had wings protruding from under their capes, and the Turians that faced them wore the colours of the Ghant defenders. Captain Ravenshood and Grand Master Tudor were there, struggling against their foe, and the battle seemed to begoingin the Paatin’s favour.
Only then did he realise that this was some kind of dream or memory from his past. ‘This has all happened before,’ Samuel thought to himself, ‘but why can’t I remember it?’ He tried to move, but found he was only an observer within his own dream. He had no way to affect what was going on,and so he resigned himself to the fact, sitting back within his own memory and letting it unfold around him.
Darkness crept in around his vision once more as the blood continued to drain from his middle, until he was blind and the sounds of the battle felt like echoes from far away. He knew the men were still tussling around him, for Turian and Paatin alike were visible to his magician’s senses, even though his eyes had lost their ability to focus. They moved like luminous ghosts cavorting all around, dancing around his dying form.
Grand Master Tudor, brighter than the others, seemed like a god amongst his followers, and the bolts of magic that bloomed out from him twirled in the air like ink in water, swirling and curling all around. Many others already lay dead around the courtyard, and Samuel could see their life energies creeping out around the courtyard like cautious tendrils trying to escape from the scene.
It was these he clasped onto, for the energy felt akin to his own-warm and inviting in the bleak coldness all around. He remembered when Master Glim had died and he remembered the thrill of life he had felt when he had absorbed that tiny mote of his teacher’s energy. So he grasped the dying embers of energy in the room and began calling them towards himself.
As they reached him, he swallowed them into his own presence and they became part of him. It was exciting, rejuvenating. He could taste the very nature of the peoplewhohad died here,feel their final terrified thoughts,see their final blood-curdling visions. It was frightening, yet somehow irresistible, for his only desperate thought was that of his own survival.
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