For the first time, he realized it might not be such an easy vow to keep.
It was frightening to consider, Durek thought suddenly, but was it possible that Athaya wasn’t the worst of his enemies after all?
He poured himself a glass of wine to steady his nerves, but at the first swallow, the liquid soured in his stomach and he promptly coughed it up into a handkerchief. The red wine looked like blood against the snowy white linen and Durek hastily flung the cloth aside in fear and disgust. God, he was more worried than he’d let himself believe.
He turned to leave the solar, gathering up the collection of cloth puppets that Cecile had requested; he would send a courier to Reyka with the dolls this afternoon. As he reached the door, his gaze swept across the fabric faces of his son’s precious toys and the true peril of his situation hit him like a blow to the belly, unsettling his innards more than the soured wine had done. Corbals were his kingdom’s defense… it’s only defense. And without it, the Lorngeld, whether they were of Caithe or Sare, could rob him of his kingdom with less effort than it took to snatch a puppet from a child’s tiny hand.
Chapter 7
“Hide it—quickly!” Athaya cried out, pressing I her palms against her temples as if to keep her head from splitting open and spilling her brains into her lap. The corbal crystal had won the battle handily, and Athaya buckled beneath its greater power as quickly as she would have lost an arm-wrestling match with Ranulf. “God’s blood,” she groaned, eyes squeezed tightly closed against the pain, “I feel as if someone’s hacking at my skull with a white-hot cleaver.”
Kale slipped the acorn-sized corbal back into its leather pouch, his soldier’s face incongruously lined with sympathy. “You’re moving to the larger stones too quickly, my Lady. Shouldn’t you stop for the day?”
“If I had any sense I would,” Athaya grumbled miserably. “But there may not be much time; I have to master this.”
Athaya reclined in a patch of cool clover—a welcome shelter from the heat of early July—and allowed the relaxing murmur of the creek and the silvery shimmer of jewelweed just beneath the surface to lull her into a healing half sleep. Each day for the past week, she and Kale had returned to the small clearing north of the camp, and each day she insisted upon facing a larger crystal than the day before. The grueling routine was beginning to wear on her; today she had been bested by a crystal she had successfully defied two days before.
Later—in her aching mental haze, Athaya wasn’t certain how long—footsteps sounded on the trail behind them, and she cracked open her eyes to see Jaren set a willow basket at her feet. “You forgot this when you left this morning. I brought it quite a while ago, but I had to wait until Kale put that crystal away before I could come any closer. Get away,” he snapped suddenly, swiping at a trio of bees hovering near the lip of the basket. “They seem to be everywhere this summer.” He offered Athaya a much-too-cheerful smile. “So how’s it going?”
Athaya rolled onto her back and glared up at him like a drunkard roused too early in the morning by an annoyingly sober friend. “What the devil are you so happy about?”
Jaren took a step back and raised his arms to forfeit the fight before the first blow could be struck. “Maybe I’ll just share my lunch with the bees,” he suggested. “They’re better company.”
“Oh, don’t mind me,” she replied, sighing deep as she closed her fingers around a fistful of clover. “It’s these crystals. The larger they get, the less control I have over them. If the Sage’s compulsion spell is this powerful,” she added resignedly, “then no wonder Nicolas has lost so much of himself trying to fight it.”
“She’s making herself ill,” Kale said, turning his eyes imploringly to Jaren. “Please tell her to stop—she doesn’t listen to me.”
Jaren let out a trickle of dry laughter. “And you think she’ll listen to me? I may be her husband, but you’ve known her far longer than I have—long enough to know how stubborn she can be about this sort of thing.”
Ignoring Athaya’s baleful stare, Jaren sat down beside her and unpacked the contents of his basket. A boiled egg, two chicken legs, and a wedge of blueberry pie did wonders for her temper, and Athaya felt almost human again after the meal was done.
Athaya?
She started at the urgent voice that sounded close to her ear, like words half heard in a dream that jerked the sleeper rudely out of oblivion. Her first thought was that the corbal crystal had somehow come back to haunt her with its yammerings of pain, but then she recalled that it was safely silenced within Kale’s leather pouch.
Athaya? the voice called again, louder this time. It was Ranulf, summoning her through his vision sphere. Can you hear me?
Athaya winced, hands going instinctively to her temples. “Do you have to shout?” she admonished him, scowling at the empty air above her in lieu of Ranulf himself. “My head hurts bad enough as it is.”
Sorry, Ranulf sent back. The voice was softer now, but the urgency in it still remained. Mason’s opened a panel to us from Kilfarnan—I’m in the chapel with him now. And judging from the puckered look on his face, I’ll wager all the whiskey in Sare that none of us is going to like what he’s got to say.
Athaya thought she heard a more distant voice muttering something under its breath—probably Mason voicing his opinion of looking ‘puckered’—as she wiped the last vestige of blueberry juice from her chin and scrambled to her feet. Mason’s news must be important indeed for Ranulf to summon her home from her corbal work rather than wait another few hours for her to return of her own accord.
“We’ll be right there.”
They reached the forest chapel in less than a quarter hour, finding Ranulf slouched pensively into the first pew like a man sitting vigil on the eve of battle. An open panel was positioned to one side of the altar—a shimmering window to another part of the world—and framed within it like a living portrait was the gray-robed figure of Dom Mason DePere, sole regent of Athaya’s offshoot magic school in Kilfarnan. Somehow, the dom had been able to maintain his cultured and academic air despite a year’s estrangement from the comforts of his native Reyka; the folds of his robes were freshly pressed and a wealth of dark hair was shorn to a precise curl at his shoulders. But clues to his distress were evident, though subtle; Mason’s hands smoothed down nonexistent wrinkles in his robe in silent agitation and the normally flawless fingernails had been recently bitten to the quick.
“It’s good to see you again, Mason,” Athaya said, receiving a courtly bow of greeting in return. She dispensed with further pleasantries; Ranulf’s summons was proof enough that this was far more than one of the dom’s routine status calls. “Ranulf tells me your news isn’t good.”
Mason shook his head solemnly; the dom had skirmished with the Tribunal before, and the strain he exhibited today convinced Athaya that his current troubles sprang from a far different source. And that, she knew, could only mean one thing.
“After Ranulf stopped in Kilfarnan last month and told me about the Sage of Sare, I sent a few people north to scout the Sage’s camps. Apparently the Sage isn’t satisfied at taking over a small port town like Eriston.” The dom paused, searching for an easy way to impart his news and ultimately realizing there was none. “Now he claims the whole of Nadiera.”
“Nadiera,” Athaya echoed, lowering herself into the pew beside Ranulf. “Lord Gessinger’s lands… and one of the largest shires in Caithe.” Athaya was certain that the shire’s size and wealth were not the only reasons the Sage had targeted Nadiera. Lord Gessinger was a known ally of hers, and as such the Sage would consider him an enemy, his lands forfeit.
“The Sage and his men seized the manor house last week. The king sent men to repel him, but word has it that he’s slaughtered close to three squadrons already—one from Delfarham last month and two more from Gorah. I just heard about it this morning, so I doubt the news has reached Delfarham yet.”
Athaya felt the throbbing in her skull return—an ache that had nothing
whatsoever to do with corbal crystals. The Sage’s threat had grown too serious to delay acting any longer… but what form should that action take?
“And there’s one more thing,” Mason added, dipping his head apologetically.
Athaya squeezed her eyes shut and nodded; she might as well hear all of it.
“I’m picking up some troubling rumors about you from the Sarians—I don’t put any credence in them, of course, but you should be forewarned. Many of the Sage’s adherents say that you have the power to tell who is a wizard and who is not before the mekahn. They also say that you refuse to use this power, in order to force the people of Caithe to come to you for help instead of giving them enough warning so they can flee the country if they so choose. It’s absurd, I know,” he appended graciously. “It’s common knowledge that no one can discern such a thing before—”
“Mason.” The besieged tone of her voice stopped him cold, and his eyes slowly widened as he began to realize why she had cut him off. “Some of what they’re saying is true. The sealing spell did give me the ability to see people’s future in that sense, but Tonia and I discussed it and decided that it wasn’t right for me to have that kind of knowledge. I’ve kept the talent a secret—or at least I’ve tried to,” she added dryly, “and resolved not to use it again. But we can’t let the Sage’s version of things take root. Make sure your people know my side of the story; I’ll do the same here. It may be moot at this point, though—I’m not sure I have the talent anymore. Most of the heightened power that the sealing spell gave me has faded away.”
Mason took a moment to digest this new information. “So after a while,” he deduced, “the Sage won’t be able to do it either?”
“Probably not. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to wait him out.” Athaya shifted uneasily in the pew, trying not to think about what Drianna had confided to her the week before. According to the Sage’s steward Tullis, he and two assistants had released the Sage from his seal in a far more controlled manner than Tonia and Jaren had freed Athaya from her own. With the little that was known about sealing spells, Athaya was forced to face the possibility that his power might fade more slowly than hers had. Or worst of all, it might not fade at all. Even if they had the time to wait him out, it wasn’t a risk she—or Caithe—could possibly take.
“Is there anything I can do from here?” Mason asked, again smoothing invisible wrinkles from his sleeves.
“No, not yet. I think the next move should be mine.” Athaya let out a burdensome sigh, shoulders slumping under the weight of the task that lay ahead. “Just be careful. The Sage is closer to your people than mine.” For now, anyway, she added sullenly. “And he’ll likely consider all of us just as much his enemies as Durek or the Tribunal.”
The dom nodded grimly and then touched his fingertips to the rim of his panel. The window clouded over with smoky darkness, and after Ranulf held a ward key to the panel’s frame it ebbed out of sight like a mirage.
Athaya slumped deeper into the pew with a muttered curse, while Jaren gazed down on her knowingly. “Is this ‘next move’ you mentioned what I think it is?” he asked.
“I have to go talk to him, Jaren. It’s probably futile, I know, but if there’s even the slightest chance of convincing the Sage to stop this invasion and go back to Sare, I’ve got to take it.”
Ranulf jerked upright, horrified at her suggestion. “What, are ye daft? I spent four months tryin’ to think up a way to escape that self-deluded demigod and you’re just going to dance right into his outstretched arms? Trust me, my girl—I’ve been his prisoner and I can promise that you won’t much care for it. I wasn’t mistreated o’ course, being a wizard and all, but the stench of arrogance was enough to choke on.”
“Ranulf is right,” Jaren agreed with a nod. “The Sage is at war with us already whether he’s formally declared one or not. If you walk right into his stronghold, he’ll likely see to it that you’re his first prisoner. What better way to dash your people’s hopes than to see their leader be taken?”
“I know it’s risky, but… I can’t quite explain why, but I have a feeling that the Sage won’t consider me much of a menace anymore in light of his heightened powers. And if he harmed or captured me, he’d be little better than Durek or the Tribunal. That certainly wouldn’t help rally support from the multitudes of people still sitting fences and waiting to choose sides in this conflict—not if he’s setting himself up as the Lorngeld’s messiah. And I still have the spell of translocation,” she reminded them. “As far as I know, the Sage can’t stop me from using it.
“And besides,” she added, averting her eyes, “I want to ask him to release Nicolas from his compulsion. I don’t want to wait for the Sage’s death to see my brother whole again, and if the man is as swollen with himself as Drianna says he is, he may just grant my request to prove how trifling a threat the rest of us are to him now.”
Ranulf was ready to launch into another round of reasoning when Jaren waved him off, knowing full well that Athaya would go to the Sage whether they advised her against it or not. “Maybe you should hold off until you have more practice turning aside the corbals,” he suggested, hoping that if he could not prevent this confrontation he might at least stall it for a while. “The Sage is obviously a master at it and might use the crystals against you.”
His hopes were painfully short-lived. “I don’t have time for that,” Athaya said, steadfast. “None of us do. The Sage’s adherents or mine… we’re all one and the same to Durek and the Tribunal. We have to try and stop the Sage’s incursions before Durek and Lukin start taking their vengeance for this invasion out on us.”
* * * *
The first thing Athaya sensed when the dizziness passed was the crisp scent of saltwater laced with the stench of rotting fish. From farther away came the calming rush of waves lazily rolling onto the beach just outside the cove’s mouth.
Jaren squatted in the dry sand at her side and scried her eyes for signs of illness. “How do you feel?”
Athaya glanced up at him wryly. “A whole lot better than the last time I was here.”
Shifting to a comfortable position on the sand, Athaya brushed her gaze over the tiny grotto near the convent of Saint Gillian’s, spying telltale signs of her last sojourn here. It had been close to a year ago when Tonia and Jaren had released her from the bonds of the sealing spell, but vestiges of those anguished weeks remained. To her left, the cavern walls bore blackened scars etched by a wayward fire-spell, and to her right were piles of rubble and ash that had been fist-sized stones before her spells had blown them into powder.
“Can you walk?”
“I think so,” she said, wobbling a little as she rose to her feet, “but I won’t be casting any spells for a while.” If she suspected it before, the woolly feeling in her head now proved it for a fact: the extra measure of magic she had obtained from the sealing spell was completely gone. She was returned to what she had been in the beginning; a powerful adept, but nothing more.
Once Jaren was sure she could walk without stumbling, he led her out of the cove and into the blinding glare of a cloudless morning. “How far is the manor from here?”
“At a guess, I’d say twenty miles. Once we get into the shire itself, things should start looking familiar. My family often spent the summers in Nadiera after Father and Dagara were married. We can make it most of the way today and plan to arrive at the manor tomorrow morning.”
Athaya wasn’t delighted with the thought of such a long trek, but she and Jaren had both agreed that it was their safest course of action. They could hardly pop into view on the manor grounds themselves without being noticed, and Jaren was adamant that they scout the surrounding area in advance—and give Athaya the chance to recover from the strain of the spell—before making their presence known. And other than the manor itself, the cove was one of the few places in northwest Caithe that Athaya could envision accurately enough for translocation.
At least, she mused, a day’s delay wi
ll give me some time to think what on earth I’m going to say to the man when I see him.
The day was fine for walking—this close to the sea, the oppressive heat of July was blown to the south by strong breezes—and instead of seeking an inn, Athaya and Jaren camped that night in a grove of oaks, the bulk of their journey behind them. Late the next morning, they came upon the village of Coakley, less than two miles from the manor itself.
Rather than avoiding the village, Athaya and Jaren decided to pass through it, learning what they could about the Sage’s grip on the shire before confronting him directly. In their drab and threadbare peasant clothes, she and Jaren looked like any other villagers going about the day’s errands; if they were careful, no one would give them a second look.
It had been several years since Athaya had been to Coakley, but the change in the sleepy hamlet was obvious. Coakley was now an occupied town and temporary home to many members of the Sage’s advancing army. Armed men in silver-edged black livery dotted the dusty streets, and villagers went about their business giving them a wide and wary berth. Magic was displayed openly here—even flaunted, as witchlights burned like lanterns in every window despite the glare of the sun. Near the river, a squad of soldiers drilled their battle spells with one another, one row casting out in unison with white-hot arcs of fire while the other methodically turned the flames aside with an unbroken line of shielding spells.
“Look there,” Jaren murmured. “What’s that up ahead?”
In the center of the village green, beside an unused set of stocks, a fair-haired man was trapped inside a cell; a cell with walls of shimmering air, like living glass. Athaya had not seen its like before, but guessed it to be a type of binding spell. The sheer walls of the man’s prison pulsed in time with his rapid heartbeat and when he dared to touch it the rhythm grew erratic and sparks shot out to sear his flesh. Outside of the boundary, a crowd of children harried the prisoner, shouting insults and tossing overripe tomatoes, delighted that their missiles could pierce the boundary while the man inside could not. A handful of adults joined in as well, although with less fervor, as if they needed to torment the prisoner for fear of reprisal by the Sage’s men and not because they thought he deserved such treatment. One woman, however, cursed him louder than any of the children, her plump face crimson with rage.
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