The Wizard King

by Julie Dean Smith

  “Now, Athaya, shall we finish—”

  The Sage broke off midsentence as Archbishop Lukin strode purposefully into the arena, still draped in the formal red and white vestments of the coronation rite. His gaze lighted only briefly on Durek’s lifeless body before scalding her with sublime malice—such malice as she had not seen since her heresy trial, when the sentence of death was read. Lukin carried a strongbox in his arms; a familiar box, Athaya thought. One that she had seen before…

  “Oh, dear God—”

  Athaya backed away instinctively, but the icy grip upon her heart as she edged too close to the wards was rude reminder of how securely she was bound. You’ve slithered out of my reach once too often, Lukin’s eyes spoke to her, glittering with inviolate hatred. But you cannot escape me now. Your own sorcery entraps you.

  The archbishop bowed low to the Sage as he set the box upon the ground. “King Durek is dead,” he said, contorting his visage into a seldom-used guise of submissiveness. “Long live Brandegarth, king of Caithe and lord of the Isle of Sare.”

  Unaware of the danger lurking inside the strongbox, the Sage barked out a colorful string of Sarian expletives at yet another interruption in his quest for the crown. “Leave us!” he bellowed, sweeping his arms outward in majestic rage. “This is not yet done!”

  “No, but it will be,” Lukin said with subtle spite. “Very shortly.”

  Athaya gaped at the archbishop with dreadful respect for his cunning. No wonder he had been so quick to consent to officiate at the coronation! In the act of crowning the Sage—with the Caithan crown of state conveniently exchanged for Faltil’s deadly wreath of corbals, somehow stolen from her camp—Lukin would assure his death… and the death of every wizard who had come to witness the ceremony. What was to be the Sage’s moment of triumph would instead become the archbishop’s; he would make himself the savior of Caithe—God’s greatest servant, delivering the land from the blight of wizardry for now and years to come. For without the Sage and Athaya to lead them, the Lorngeld would be scattered and vulnerable, easy prey for the Tribunal. And once again, as in Faltil’s time, Caithe would no longer be troubled by sorcerers.

  “I have brought your crown, Majesty,” Lukin purred, pressing his palms together as if praying for the success of his endeavor. “Here, let me show you.”

  The Sage was about to erupt with fury at the archbishop’s continued presence, but a vagrant glance to Athaya effectively silenced him; he read in her face that something was very wrong and glared at the strongbox with refreshed suspicion.

  As Lukin knelt to unfasten the leather bindings, Athaya whispered the most urgent appeal of her life that Jaren had likewise recognized the strongbox and was even now dashing headlong to safety. Then, with the cool composure that comes from embracing the inevitable, Athaya prepared herself to face the only choice left open to her.

  A feather of concern wafted across her awareness—You had trouble enough casting a witchlight through a single corbal last night; how can you possibly channel something far more powerful through dozens of them now?—but the doubt was quickly gone. She was too consumed by purpose, too swollen with a maelstrom of emotion crying for release, utterly focused on the task at hand—the sole remaining duty to be discharged. It would mean her death, of course; if one crystal could drain away her life and leave her helpless to stanch the flow, then Faltil’s crown would feed on her at an alarmingly rapid rate. All she could do was pray that she would not falter in her disciplines before her work was done. After that… well, it didn’t really matter. If the Sage was dead, it would be enough.

  Great magic commands a great price. It was among the first lessons Master Hedric had taught her, and one she had learned the truth of very young and very well. If this is the price of Caithe’s future, then I will pay it so that none need do so again.

  Any remnant fears she had of death evaporated in that one apocalyptic moment. Vitality surged through her flesh; not directionless energy, but fueled to a single purpose and doubly powerful because of it. She relaxed into her mental preparations, bracing her mind against the crown to hold back its mind-breaking pain until such time as she could align with it and turn its massive and terrible potentials back upon itself, and aim them directly at the Sage. A Circle charm of sorts, she reflected—a weapon of last resort that would save the day only by destroying them both.

  Athaya almost smiled as the archbishop sprang open the last brass latch; what he assumed would be his own victory would—with luck—be hers instead. She will obtain aid in her endeavor from an unexpected quarter, Dameronne’s prophecy had said. And he had been twice correct.

  Lukin cracked open the strongbox and reached inside.

  I’ll miss you, Jaren, one last, random thought came. But I’ll be waiting. Write the last chapter for me; it looks as if you’ll have to now.

  Athaya’s mental shield was up and ready, waiting for the enemy to strike; thus, it was with eerie calm that she watched Archbishop Lukin raise the priceless crown from the strongbox, purple gems sparkling softly in the diffuse light within the wards. Lacking bright light, the corbals also lacked full strength, and some idle sliver of Athaya’s mind whispered gratitude that Kale had pried many of the larger stones from the crown’s base months before. But it was still a ruthless weapon; one balk, one break in her focus, would be her death—something she now expected, but not before she took the Sage down with her.

  She waited, hoping to hear her enemy’s shrieks of pain pierce the silence, but the Sage had not been taken by surprise; her reaction to the strongbox had convinced him that Lukin was plotting something—and what would a wizard have to fear but corbals? He was ready for the blow when it came, though both wizards reeled backward as the first swells of the crown’s influences crashed over them. Both she and the Sage struggled mightily to oppose the crystals’ power, taut with the knowledge that their psychic shields were fragile as blown glass, and madness and death were but a single misstep away.

  “What is the matter, your Grace? Your Highness?” Lukin taunted, inching closer. “Do you not find it beautiful?”

  Each of the corbals wailed with its own voice, and together the crown clamored in keening, deafening discord. But strangely, Athaya found the din to her advantage. Like focusing on a single voice amid a shouting crowd, she targeted one of the larger gems near the crown’s base and directed her well-honed energies onto it, leaving the others to fade into an indistinct blur, their words and meaning lost. Though the other crystals assailed her with a barrage of psychic messages, she calmly elected not to hear them, opening herself only to the gem she had chosen. Pain, pain, pain! it screamed in warning. Flee! it commanded.

  No, Athaya replied, countering the crystal’s admonitions with her own. Your illusion of pain is but a trick to keep away; to keep me from using you; to keep me sane and alive. I thank you for your protection, but I no longer have need of it. I know what I am doing.

  “I was told you have a way of resisting the gems,” Lukin said, dividing his gaze between them. “But so many? And for how long? I have no other engagements today… I can remain as long as it takes.”

  Beside her, the Sage trembled and perspired from the effort, barely able to hold his footing much less retaliate physically against the archbishop. He looked like a man attempting to lift a drawbridge by brute force, knowing that it would fall back and crush him if relief did not come soon. Athaya felt the building strain as well, but fueled by purpose and with nothing left to lose, her concentration was honed as it had never been before—not even when she doggedly fought the ravages of the sealing spell. Her resistance was strong as tempered steel; thoughts of failure died before they reached her awareness and she was possessed by a single-mindedness that she had not known since fleeing Delfarham that night in Tyler’s headless shadow, making promises to whoever might be listening that she would change the evils in the world that had led him to such a fate.

  Then, her focus sharp as a dagger’s edge, she spied the corbal’s sou
rce and plunged her presence into it. And in that place of crystalline silence, her perceptions shifted just so; she slipped into magical rapport with the gem and was suddenly privy to a dazzling array of paths open to whatever form of magic she chose to pump through them.

  Athaya looked to the Sage, mindlessly howling defiance to the crown, and instantly discerned the key to his destruction. It was simple; the Sage’s greatest flaw was that he thought he had no flaws at all. No one on this earth could convince him of anything he did not already believe to be the truth.

  But perhaps, she reasoned, he will heed one he believes to be not of this earth…

  Her own magic tingled inside her, sensing affinity for the corbal and yearning to couple with it. Athaya stretched her arms to the sides as if readying to catch the wind and soar into the clouds, kin to the eagles.

  “Figuram visionibus praesta!”

  In one magnificent surge, her full measure of adept magic spiraled in and through the gem, spilling into those around it, and those around those, until her power ran like an electric river through the disparate stones, growing on itself as it gushed through every path and facet, and swept over the crown in glistening, hoarfrost patterns. Her spell multiplied upon itself a hundredfold, reflections upon reflections like a voice in a chain of caverns, its echo never dying out but passed on and on and on. Faltil’s crown began to glow in response to the energies whirling within it, turning each gem from indigo to pearly white until the crown itself pulsed with inner light. Just as her brother’s blood branched into new rivulets with every incline and shallow in the cobbles on which he lay, so did her power flow into every open crevice in every crystal in the crown, exploiting them to full and deadly advantage.

  When the Sage lifted his face to her, he clutched his heart and staggered backward, green eyes glazed with awe. For he no longer saw Athaya Trelane, but only the apparition she willed him to believe was real—and believe he would, for she had plucked the image directly from his own fantastic dreams. But hers was more than a grand illusion born of mind-magic; like the vestige of life she had once given the fire coils, turning them to snakes to torment Lukin’s hired assassin, she bestowed a breath of reality upon her present conjuration, becoming the vision even as she created it.

  The world shrank down around her. Athaya rose to one, two, three times her height; her black tresses were spun into gold locks shot with moonlight, and her tattered kirtle transformed into a gown of snowy samite with billowed sleeves, belted by a ring of stars; a corona encircled her head, shining golden as the sun; her flesh was translucent as fine porcelain, glowing as if candlelight flowed through her veins instead of blood; and last, a pair of huge feathery wings, delicate as lace, rose up behind her, extending outward as far as the blood-wards would permit. The wings pumped once, whipping the Sage’s hair and garments back in an awesome gust of rose-scented wind.

  “Crede omnino,” she commanded, looking down on his now-puny form. “Crede omnino quae vides, quae audis.” Believe. Believe all that you see and hear…

  The Sage dropped to his knees in terrified homage; his mind was so occupied keeping the impossible pain of the crystals at bay that he had little left with which to fight her deceptions. It was madness and death should he allow the crown’s pain to reach him; he had no strength to question what he saw—no powers of reason to doubt that this was anything other than the divine visitation it seemed. Even Archbishop Lukin, though not the target of her mind-magic, was stupefied by the spectacle before him. His eyes spoke what bloodless, sputtering lips could not: it was not possible to work magic in the presence of God’s holy crystals… could this somehow be real?

  The Sage ventured a glance upward. “W-who… who are you?”

  Athaya studied him silently for a moment before replying, as if needing to translate his clumsy human speech into a more celestial form. “I am a servant of God. Not His greatest,” she added, darkly wry. “None among my kind would dare dub ourselves so.”

  Athaya no longer had to consciously pour power into the spell; the crown took more than she could ever willingly give. Already it was feasting on her, using her magic—and her life—to sustain the fabric of her spell. And how could she prevent it? Resistance was as unthinkable as it was unattainable. She felt the forces of the tides move within her veins; felt the gusts of a stormswept ocean rage inside her lungs—powers too vast for her flesh to repel. All she could do was submit to their awesome beauty and let herself be borne away on a raging river that she could not even begin to comprehend or control and savor this tempting measure of true angelic might.

  “Why have you come?” the Sage asked. He began to rise, but Athaya gestured sharply for him to remain on his knees. Her fingers were as long as tapers, candlelight gently streaming from each tip.

  “I come to remind you of your place. You dare to take that which it was never meant for you to have. You are not worthy to be ruler of this or any land!” Athaya tossed her head in rebuke, masses of golden hair sluggishly tracing the motion as if slowed by water. “Your ambitions shame He who made you.”

  The Sage recoiled as if he had been struck. “No, no… you do not understand! It was my destiny. Dameronne—”

  “Foresaw an age of a great wizard king. Nothing more. He did not speak your name, though you act to all the world as if he had.” Athaya glared at him with pewter-colored eyes. “Are you so certain of your worthiness?”

  “I—” The Sage shuddered violently; unlike her, he still waged constant war against the crown. But while he was able to block out much of the pain, his resistance was fast growing threadbare; tendrils of the crown’s painful influences seeped past his guards to poison his mind. His eyes went glassy as he tried even harder to oppose them, but the tighter he clung to his sanity the more deeply he was mired in her bindings.

  Crede omnino. Believe that all is as it seems…

  “I seek only to establish His kingdom here,” he said, turning his palms upward in supplication.

  “Your desires have ever been for your own selfish purposes—not His. Never has it been His will for any of His children to use their gifts to dominate others.”

  The Sage balled his hands into tight fists. “No, that cannot be! You lie!”

  “LIE? Impudence!” she shouted, beating her wings with magnificent force. “I cannot lie. It is not my nature.” She moved closer to him, shedding radiance with every step. “You dare to reveal His secrets by seeking out who amongst you are Lorngeld before their time; and you further plot to mold my Master’s will to your own purposes and scatter seeds where you choose instead of where He has planted them. Do you seek to be a godling? Do you presume yourself God’s peer? Your judgment will be harsh, indeed,” she warned with narrowed eyes, “unless you prove your worth.”

  “Prove…? But I have already—” The Sage shook his head in wild denial. “No, no… I cannot be so wrong! Let me see Him. Let me—”

  “See Him?” Athaya’s illusory body rippled with silent laughter. “No one sees Him until their life is done and they come before Him to be judged. Until that time you must be satisfied dealing with me.”

  The Sage’s brows wrinkled inward; he was dissatisfied with her answer. “What do you want of me?”

  Athaya struggled to hold back a tideswell of exhaustion; the spell was draining her badly. Her limbs felt taut as bowstrings stretched to impossible new lengths; her heart fluttered wildly; her knees began to quiver, threatening to buckle under her. But a few more minutes was all she required… a few minutes in which to entrap him utterly.

  “I offer you one chance to prove that you are indeed as worthy as you claim.” She slowly extended a finger to point to the glowing crown in Lukin’s trembling hands. “These are truly God’s crystals, little Sage—in that alone, the archbishop is indeed correct. But my Master has not shared with you the full extent of their secrets, and only His most favored can discern it.”

  “Then I shall be able to do so.” The Sage’s mouth formed a stubborn line of resolve. �
��What must I do?”

  “Merge with them,” she said simply. “There is peace amid their pain. You think the gems an enemy, but they are also a hidden ally. They are a source of great power; far greater than any you have ever known—far greater than the paltry tricks the sealing spell has granted you.” As she expected, the Sage’s eyes flashed greedily at that. “If you can discover the key to that power, then I will relent; I will accede you the homage that you seek. You will become king of Caithe and the most powerful magician in all the world, and you will have my blessings on you always.”

  “But… the corbals are deadly. They bring agony and madness—”

  Athaya shrugged gracefully. “So did your mekahn,” she reminded him. “And yet that you survived. This is but another time of trial.” Her eyes took on a subtly mocking cast. “Will you brave it, then? Or will you forfeit the Challenge?”

  Athaya waited while the Sage mulled his answer. In his frazzled state of mind, she sincerely doubted the Sage’s ability to scry the secret of the corbal’s heart. The crown pressed down upon him cruelly; it was only a matter of time before his shield collapsed beneath its weight and, like Father Aldus, he would be so tortured by the crown’s terrible pain that he would take his own life to escape it. It would save Athaya the grisly task of taking that life herself.

  And if, by some chance, he won? If he learned to do as she had done? Then he would grasp at what was offered him like a greedy child snatching at a sweet, and send his adept powers spiraling through the corbals, working great magic in a glorious and unwitting suicide. Either way, he would be dead. Athaya only hoped that she would live long enough to see it and know her work was done.

  “You wanted a crown so badly,” she told him, when he still did not answer, “and here is one before you. Take it. But take all of it, in all its many aspects. A crown is more than a mere emblem of power and wealth; it demands responsibility and risk… and death, if need be,” she added with a meaningful glance to Durek’s lifeless form. “If you cannot embrace it utterly, in all its many facets, then you are unworthy to hold it.”