The bank was a few feet away when the goop sloshing about my legs suddenly thickened. It turned stiff and unyielding. It stopped giving way altogether as magic pricked the air and the bog solidified around me. Turning to stone ten feet out in all directions, what clung to me started rising; eclipsing thighs, stomach, and chest in seconds. As the spelled swamp climbed my throat, I reached in for the crown. Pushing out the sapphire’s aura, the hard substance began to soften. I shoved more into the spell, and my father’s would-be prison slid apart. I shoved more, and it liquefied.
I was sweeping the glop off my neck and chin as the blue left my eyes. “You’re going to have to do better than that!” I glanced around the web of vibrant green bordering the bog, searching.
Leaves rustled to my left. I slid a knife from my brace and pitched it. Something squealed as the blade sunk in, but it wasn’t my father. Channeling the topaz, I shoved it into a tracking spell. Before I could cast, a sudden, rapid thirst overcame me. More sensations followed: a roar of noise in my ear, a rush of adrenaline. The smell of the swamp became intensely ripe and pungent, like after a rain—like it would at every moment to an eldring. But my connection to the beast on the battlefield had already waned.
I studied the runes on my right hand. Jem never had the chance to carve his own set. The bear’s rampage had interrupted him.
But if he still has the dagger…
My blood was on the blade.
Now, so is his.
Mud flying, I turned in a circle, calling out, “JEM! You bastard! Binding us together won’t stop me from killing you!”
I climbed onto the bank. It was spongy, peppered with patches of tangled vegetation and water-filled hollows. The trees were too twisted to stand straight, with limbs thrusting at odd angles, reaching for the light of an inattentive sun.
My tracking spell spiked. A limb creaked overhead. I looked up as Jem dropped down. Grabbing him as he fell, I pivoted and threw Jem onto his back. I seized a handful of his ruined surcoat, lifted his head and shoulders off the ground, and started punching. The hide on his face ruptured. My knuckles tore, spattering blood across the gray green moss. I didn’t care. I would have worn my hands down to bone for the satisfaction of inflicting even a quarter of the pain he’d given me.
I tried to pretend our budding link wasn’t making me feel it, too.
I drew back to hit him again and Jem’s lips moved. Too late, I realized he’d cast a shield. My fist hit the barrier. It was like punching rock. Countering it, I gave myself a fast injection of strength and pummeled his spell until it shattered in his face. I got in one more blow before my boot slipped on the uneven ground.
Taking quick advantage, Jem pulled out of my grip and rolled clear. Scrambling to his feet, he forced open his swollen left eye. Caught between the impact of my fist and his own fangs, his gray lips were striped with cuts. Red streaked his angry snarl. “It brings you pleasure to make me bleed, doesn’t it, son? You don’t even care if my pain becomes yours.”
I shook out my aching fists. “It’s worth it.”
“Then, by all means…have a little more.” Jem ripped the Nor-Taali across his own arm. Nerves screamed over the emerging link between us.
“Damn you…” I struggled to stifle a cry.
“Overwhelming isn’t it?” he snickered. “In these initial moments, the littlest sensations from your impending other can be quite shocking.” With a grimace he stabbed the blade into his left leg and ripped it back out. “Shall I continue?”
I didn’t waste my ragged breath to respond. His magnified pain had me struggling to keep upright. Seeking strength from where I could find it—the obsidian shard, the power inside my scars; I concentrated on their vibrations, forcing my mind away from the cold weakness of his blood loss.
When the cloud of agony broke, I went for the amethyst on the cuffs of my shirt. Thrusting their auras out, a burst of lavender colored the air. It settled over my father’s eldring skin, sunk in, and his self-inflicted wounds sealed. I tried to close the runes on his hands, but the skin wouldn’t mend. Neither would mine. Magic was in the marks now. I couldn’t penetrate it.
Jem examined the newly sealed seams with a bloody smile. “Very nice. Inventive.” Muttering to himself, he glanced up. A green aura lifted from Jem’s body, and vines from the branch above me wrapped like a hangman’s noose around my neck.
Pressure enfolded my throat. I reached up, yanking at the tightening vines. The fibers only constricted harder. They lifted me off the ground, even as roots shot up to encircle my ankles and pull me back down. Their opposing forces, bolstered by magic, crushed and stretched my body with equal power.
My mind couldn’t favor one pain over the other.
Losing breath, muscles and tendons straining; with a thought I isolated the water in the vines and the roots. Collecting it, I extracted the moisture from the stalks until they wilted and snapped and fell harmlessly off me.
“What’s this?” Jem gawked as I picked myself up. The scars were glowing through my clothes, repairing the bruises and burns the vines left behind on my skin. He absorbed the pulse as it bounced across our newborn connection. “I’ve never felt that resonance before. What is it?” Intrigued, he stepped closer. “What are those scars?”
I panted out my response with a gruff laugh. “Fate.”
Eagerness lit his eyes. Greed twisted his beastly features. “I must feel more…”
The scars hadn’t quite finished healing me. A few nasty cuts yet remained. But based on the avarice in Jem’s eyes, I didn’t have time to wait for them to close. I shut the magic down fast, and it bent to my insistence. The glow faded. The underlying hum quieted. But it was still perceptible. It was a part of me now. “Don’t get your hopes up,” I told him. “This isn’t for you.”
Jem howled from low in his throat at my refusal. “It’s all for me!”
I held ready with the crown’s magic, awaiting his next spell.
He went another way.
With a flick of his wrist Jem hurled the Nor-Taali. The blade, fed by magic, was a blur as it pierced my padded leather shirt and slid into my chest. I should have felt the impact. I didn’t even feel the steel. Instead, I felt what was slathered on it: his blood. It mingled with a glut of mine and our shared sensations spiked.
My father’s excitement, his brutal satisfaction, the darkness in him—deeper and more savage than I ever realized—sent me to my knees.
I had the entire knowledge of the Shinree at my disposal, but I couldn’t find it in me to breathe as Jem walked up, yanked the dagger from my chest, and clasped it between our carved hands. Pulsing color swept up off the stones. It locked us together, and the spell dipped down, reaching for my soul.
FIFTY FIVE
My father’s life unfolded in fragments; splintered images that drifted like wisps of summer seed on the wind. His monotonous, drugged childhood in the Menagerie below Arcana castle, his love for my mother, his friendship with Raynan Arcana—admiration and affection that time had morphed into something dark and ugly. Years of slaving in a Langorian mine overlapped his weaning off the drug and his binding with Draken. His manipulation and emotional abuse of Sienn, his rape of Neela, his torture of me; he derived no real pleasure from those events. They were means to an end, a way to gain the upper hand. A reaction to the threat I posed.
It was so clear.
My father didn’t despise me. He was afraid of me.
The fear had been there from the moment I was born. Taking Draken as nef’taali and stealing the crown were desperate moves to prove his superiority. It was an anxiety he and Draken shared: not being good enough. They were unworthy for the roles they coveted and the people they cared for. So they hurt them. They hurt everyone. Binding souls had magnified the anxiety for them both, increasing their obsession to quell it, and thereby decreasing whatever scruples or restraint either of them had left.
>
His never-ending arrogance was a shield. He clung to it as a bolster for his self-doubt, as food for his delusions of grandeur. It pressed on me like a heavy weight, wanting me to be like him, to believe it was acceptable to manipulate. There was no wrong in strapping the citizens to his will, his was more important. It was reasonable to compel an army to fight to the death—to his death, because his life was more valuable than theirs.
Gods, I thought. There it is…
Jem’s soldiers weren’t forced to do his bidding until the last drop of blood left their bodies. They would comply until the last drop of his was gone.
It’s been that simple all along.
There was no more guesswork. No more dragging things out in hopes of learning the source of his spell. When Jem died, his followers would wake, and the war would end.
But I couldn’t move to kill him. I couldn’t strategize when his thoughts were infecting mine. His wants were overshadowing my own, making his justifications sound. His plans had facets I couldn’t grasp before. How sensible it was to use Elek and his machines to expand the empire, clearing land to create roads and new cities. Joining with Malaq was a genius move, too. Malaq was more stable than his brother and would bring many positive attributes to the table. Even Sienn would come to accept her role. Though, I felt the truth in his heart. Jem had only ever loved one woman: my mother.
And he killed her.
If he killed the woman he loved, what would he do to Sienn?
I knew the answer, but it kept slipping away. V’loria’s death made sense now that I’d felt how Jem’s desire was twisted by jealousy and fear.
But I didn’t want it to make sense.
I wanted to keep hating him for killing my mother. I wanted to despise the way he used people like pawns, the way he fouled the ancient binding rite with Draken for his own ambition—the way he hurt my daughter, the way he left me.
His memories would change that.
Absorbing them would change me. It already is.
No… My jaw clenched painfully as I tried to push his memories out. Somehow, I had to stop him from taking mine. I couldn’t let him get near what Fate had given me. Jem would use the ancient knowledge to doom our future. How could I allow him to destroy what I had tried so hard to fix?
From my first touch of the Crown of Stones—ending the war, bringing peace, healing Mirra’kelan—putting things right was all I ever wanted. Not this. Not his memories.
Not his future.
I don’t want it.
I don’t want it.
Clarity and rage bellowed up through the miasma. “I DON’T WANT IT!” And I beat him with my free hand. I pounded Jem brutally as he knelt beside me, his hide awash in the glow of the auras tying our hands and souls.
“I understand now,” he grinned, as if not even feeling my assault. “I see what lives in the scars. I always knew my son would do great things, but this...” Jem’s eyes misted with pride. “I feared my dream would never come to pass, but seeing what you carry has struck all doubt from my heart. You, L’tarian, will forever be known as the turning point in my empire. Your library: the cornerstone of Shinree preeminence.”
“I won’t help you take this land. I won’t help you ruin it!”
“Oh, but you will. Once my soul is nestled alongside yours, your protests will wither and fade. Once we’re bound, all of Mirra’kelan will tremble at the Reth name. It won’t be long now.”
He was right. Soon, the process would intensify. Neither of us would withstand the onslaught. We’d pass out, and I’d wake with my father’s madness inside me.
I only knew one way to stop it.
There is no binding if one of us is dead.
But my fists alone weren’t enough.
Fumbling, reaching, I searched for a rock, a log, anything I could use. The sword at my hip was wedged. I’d emptied the sheath in my left sleeve. The knife in my right was constrained by the auras. All that remained was magic.
My shaking hand found the shard at my neck. I tried like hell to coax something out. But no other magic was possible in the grip of the binding spell. And Jem knew it.
Laughing, he breathed in the power sweeping over us. “You will see the world anew. Embrace the heritage you rejected. Flaunt the blood you tried to deny. You’ll delight in being called the emperor’s son, the Dark Lord, the Prince of Mirra’kelan. Pride will well when they shout the name of L’tarian Reth—the name I gave you.”
“It’s just a name,” I muttered. “People will call me what they will. They’ll remember me as they like. It doesn’t matter anymore.” Fighting against the binding, I clenched the obsidian harder. Blood ran from between my fingers. The cord around my neck snapped from the strain. “It doesn’t matter what they brand me or what you, or anyone else, thinks is inside me.” Staring at the sharp edged stone in my grip, Dolan’s words rushed back. “What matters is what I do with it.”
With a fast upward thrust, I drove the shard into the side of his neck. Jem’s pain and panic rang through our burgeoning link as the obsidian tore through his flesh. I swallowed both with ease as I twisted my weapon, shoving it in deeper, widening the hole, turning the black stone red—making sure this time.
Jem slapped at me in a feeble attempt to grapple for the shard. He tried to talk, to catch my eyes. I didn’t acknowledge him. I didn’t care what shock gripped his mutated face, or what anger or sadness might have taken his eyes. My only concern, as my father’s life emptied all over me, was the binding spell. It was loosening its hold. His memories were fading.
My sense of him was dissolving, along with his pain.
As the glow of auras slunk back off our trapped hands, I ripped the shard out. Blood spurted freely. The magic receded back into the stones on the blade, and the separation of our skin was like a much needed exhale.
I pulled my hand away, and he fell over.
I sat and waited for the stream exiting Jem’s throat to lessen. The moss turned dark and moist. His gray hide became pale as mist. When his body stopped twitching, I leaned over and checked for a pulse. Finding none brought me no relief. I felt no joy or grief at Jem’s passing. I was too damn tired. All I could manage was a sense of completion as the spell on his citizens, and his army, snapped with a pop, and a deep rumble swept out across the land.
The threat to Darkhorne was neutralized.
Malaq, Sienn, and Lirih were safe. Mirra’kelan was safe.
My vision was proven wrong.
The future, how it played out, was never in Fate’s hand. It was in mine.
I retrieved Jem’s dagger and slid it down inside my boot. A groan escaped as I pushed to my feet. I straightened slowly, like an old man who’d gone too long without moving. And there it was. Lying at the edge of the bog, half buried in a puddle. One rounded edge protruded. Sensing my attention, the crown glowed, enticing me as it had so many years ago. “Still batting eyes at me, huh? I thought we were past that.”
I started forward across the unstable ground. My steps were wobbly. My hand, torn and bloody, throbbed from beating him. My fierce hold on the shard had its edges embedded in my skin. Loosening my death grip, I pried the rock free from my ruined palm. Red speckled the swamp grass. A wisp of magic trailed behind.
Stopping beside the circlet, I squatted down. I removed the broken cord from the shard and eyed the empty spot on the crown where Raynan Arcana had chipped the piece away. With all the terrible events that had unfolded since that day, I wondered. Had his act proved to be the solution he believed, or the catalyst?
I grasped the Crown of Stones, and a little spark jumped through me. The moment was comfortably familiar as I freed the circlet and wiped away the green scum. I didn’t doubt it would work this time. The power would go back. The crown had been the anchor, its magic a tether, winding me into the grip of a spell so old she became a god. But I didn’t need to be lured
anymore. I’d found Fate and accepted her gift. Once I put the shard back in place and expelled the magic, the crown would be whole. All that was left then was to destroy it. Reversing the spell that created the artifact and freeing what was trapped inside would end the Shinree addiction. And me.
It was the only real magic-price worth paying.
I pressed the obsidian in place. Reth blood had bound the crown together. Reth blood had guarded it for centuries. Now, I offered what was on my hands; mine and my fathers. It seeped gratefully into the cracks, dripping onto the other stones, making them glow. As the blood merged with the artifact, the air around me tightened. The entire crown warmed in my grip. The stones shimmered a moment. Then the black shard fused back into place.
Physically, the crown was whole. Magically, we weren’t quite done.
Wisps were floating around my boots. “Go home, all of you. Go home.”
After a short delay, I felt an internal snap, as if something had come loose inside me. The crown’s magic, set free, began traveling through veins and under skin. Auras reached into my eyes. Others pooled in my hands. My entire body shone radiant beneath my ruined clothes as the magic moved to the surface, searching for ways out. It had plenty to choose from. My skin was sliced and cut. The colored snake-like bits of magic were happy to hitch a ride with my dripping blood. Yet, their full departure required more.
Lifting out of me like a rising fog, the vibrant, coiling auras passed through flesh as if the edges of my body no longer existed. It wasn’t simply an exodus. The reunification of the magic and the crown was a spell of its own. Its energy undulated across the swamp. Multiplying in a flash, tightening around my body, the spell’s invisible grip seized hold, and beneath the bog, my boots lost contact with the ground.
Gripping me with its might, lifting me, holding me immobile, a host of auras crackled and spun in the space around me. They slid over my skin. Their colors slipped down through flesh and into veins. They sidled up next to the magic inside me. And the spell, as it pulled at the auras in my body, was like a long, slow, exhilarating caress. Each aura, as it slithered from my veins, was akin to the first deep breath after having none. The two sensations—a relentless rush of stimulation and relief, agitation and pleasure—overlapped with near synchronicity. Pain and weakness lie just beyond, but they were distant, trapped on the other side of now as I shed the magic, and the swamp withered and died slowly around me.
The Crown of Stones: Magic-Borne Page 46