Intrigued, Kyel flipped forward a few chapters and stopped when his eyes caught a glimpse of a heading that read, SEALING OF THE WELL. He read the entire section under the heading, letting his eyes scan rapidly across the page with a growing feeling of uneasiness that increased with almost every word:
The reasealing of Well of Tears, if partially opened, requires a preresonant acceleration of the field, which can be effected only with the amplification provided by the Circle of Convergence employed by a Grand Master of the Forth Tier or higher. Conversely, should the Well be fully open, no such straightforward solution exists. If this be the case, resealing of the Well requires two Masters working in conjunction. The Well itself must be manipulated in its chamber by deactivation of the rune sequence in reverse order. Concurrently, the Well must be sealed on the side of the Netherworld, which requires a Grand Master of no less than the Forth Tier to enter the Gateway. This is by definition a sacrifice, as any person entering the Netherworld would become there entrapped by the collapse of the Gateway, condemned body and soul to the Six Hells for all eternity.
“Merciful gods,” Kyel whispered.
As soon as he said it, Darien’s grated words came back to haunt him: the gods have no mercy. Appalled, Kyel snapped the book shut and placed it down on the bed. He didn’t understand half of what he’d just read, but he understood enough to know that they were both in well over their heads. It would take the two of them working together to seal the Well of Tears, and Kyel knew he wasn’t remotely prepared yet to put the Soulstone around his neck. His complete ignorance of most of the magical references the book alluded to only confirmed what he had already suspected, that working with the field was much more complicated than just having the ability and the desire to do it. He might even be in for years’ more training before he would be ready to tackle something like the Well.
And then either Darien or himself would have to enter the Gateway to become the sacrifice the Well demanded. Kyel knew he could never, ever summon enough courage to do something like that, knowing the repercussions. Sacrificing his life would be bad enough, but condemning his soul to Hell on top of it? The very thought was horrendous, unspeakable. But how could he ask Darien to do it for him? After all the mage had already suffered through, he deserved an eternity at peace.
But at least he would be with Meiran.
As soon as the thought occurred to him, Kyel wanted to hit himself for even thinking it. He was being selfish, and cowardly on top of it. His mind was just groping for comfort, trying to reason its way out of the guilt he was already feeling. Thoroughly disgusted with himself, Kyel resolved not to think about it anymore. Maybe there was another way, maybe Darien could figure something out. Perhaps he was just getting himself all worked up over nothing.
Nevertheless, he found himself fingering the Soulstone in his pocket. He hadn’t even realized he was doing it. Drawing out the medallion, Kyel held it up and considered the red, scintillating glow of the stone that contained his destiny within its facets. Stroking a finger over it, he noted the polished smoothness of the stone, saw the pale moving lights that dappled the skin of his hand. Sighing, he let it slip back into his pocket along with the book, feeling comforted by their now-familiar weight.
An insistent knock at the door startled him.
Rising from the bed, Kyel crossed the room to the door, expecting another servant as he cracked it open. Instead, he was surprised to find himself looking into the face of Nigel Swain. Kyel frowned, not liking the look in the captain’s eyes, a confident smirk that at the same time seemed mixed with a touch of regret. Kyel let the door swing fully open, his heart skipping a beat as he took in a hallway full of blue-cloaked guardsmen.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you never threaten a queen?” the captain asked, shaking his head sadly.
Kyel lowered his eyes, knowing that he was defeated. As Swain moved into the room, Kyel found himself wondering why Darien had made it all sound so easy. He’d thought it was going to be just another one of his master’s tests, this one a lesson in diplomacy. Well, if this was a test, then he had just failed it. Kyel winced as Swain drew his hands behind his back and locked a set of iron chains around his wrists. It was only his second time in Rothscard, and both times he had found himself in chains. Damn you, Darien. The only thing he’d ever wanted was to just go home. And yet, every day it seemed the chances of that ever happening were growing more and more dismal.
“What are you going to do to me?” he wondered sullenly as Swain directed him by the arm out into the hall.
“The queen wishes to have a word with you,” the grisly captain informed him.
“She had but to ask.”
Kyel hadn’t meant it as a jest, but nevertheless his words inspired a cheerless smile on Swain’s angular face. Guards fell in around them as Kyel was compelled to walk forward down the hall, keeping his eyes trained on the floor. He was scared. He knew he had every right to be; Swain was correct. He should never have threatened Romana. He wondered what the punishment for something like that would be. They had already shipped him off to the front once and, anyway, Greystone Keep probably wasn’t even there anymore. The way things were starting to look now, the front might even be right here in Rothscard in another week or so. Then they wouldn’t even have to ship him anywhere.
The thought almost made him want to laugh, though it would have been a bitter laugh, indeed. Instead, he swallowed heavily and tried not to stumble as they guided him down a flight of polished marble stairs. It was hard, walking down the steps with his arms chained behind his back. If he tripped, he wouldn’t be able bring his hands up to catch himself.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, he felt a small feeling of relief. Swain led him down another hall to a set of white double doors that were standing open. By that time, the chains on his wrists were starting to chafe and the small gaps in the links kept pulling at his arm hairs. His shoulders were starting to ache from the way they had him trussed.
Kyel looked up as he was led into the room and felt remotely sickened when he realized that he was in the queen’s formal audience hall. Romana herself was seated on a raised throne at the far end, and there was nothing commonplace about her now. She was wrapped in elegant blue layers of silk, each layer embroidered and bejeweled. Her long, dark hair was arranged in a tall coif piled atop her head, the intricate weave of her hair caught up by the Sapphire Crown of Emmery. Across her lap was an elegant gold scepter, which she clutched in her fine, pale hand. Romana was now the very image of a queen. Kyel found himself thinking that if she had looked that way earlier, he never would have had the courage to say what he had.
Swain’s painful grip on his arm forced him downward into the bow that Kyel had forgotten to make. He liked the gesture of obeisance even less than he had liked it that morning. It was one thing, abasing himself before a pretty young girl with a paintbrush in her hand. It was quite another when that same young girl had transformed into the image of a glorious but wrathful monarch who had issued the order to have him restrained.
“Arise.” Her clear soprano voice carried the commanding ring of authority.
Kyel obeyed, though there was little grace in his movement. The captain’s grip remained painfully firm on his arm. Kyel waited nervously, wondering what sentence the queen would pronounce for him. He rather thought Darien had greatly underestimated the woman’s boldness. He waited, but the queen said nothing. She seemed to be waiting for him, gazing down at him from her elevated throne with distaste in her wide blue eyes.
Not knowing what else to say, Kyel decided that bluntness was the best policy as he asked her, “Why did you have me placed in chains?”
Romana’s eyebrows arched, as if she were surprised by his straightforward question. She moved her hand to the arm of her throne, brandishing the scepter as she replied, “I had you placed in chains because I wished for you to experience what they feel like.”
Kyel frowned, almost as disgusted as he was shocked by her answ
er. Feeling a swell of ire, he told her tightly, “I fear I don’t take your point.”
Swain’s grip flexed on his arm, sending a shooting pain stabbing up into his shoulder. Romana glared down at him, but her tone was even as she pressed, “Tell me, how do they feel?”
Kyel knew exactly what she was getting at, and he didn’t appreciate it one bit. Shrugging, he told her, “Heavy. They chafe.”
“And how do you feel, wearing them?”
“Vulnerable,” he replied honestly. The roteness of her questions was becoming tedious. He wished the queen would just make her point.
Cocking her head, Romana gazed at him intently as she asked, “Can you tell me the purpose of chains?”
Angry now, Kyel growled at her, “I can think of several.”
“Such as?”
“To constrain someone, to confine. To control.”
“Exactly,” Romana pronounced as if leveling a death sentence. “The mages of Aerysius chose to live their entire lives shackled to the confines of the Oath of Harmony. Even though the weight was heavy, and it chafed at times. Some of the most powerful men and women the world has ever known spent a lifetime feeling just as vulnerable and constrained as you do at this moment. And yet many sacrificed their lives to preserve that Oath; they felt it was that important.” She paused, the threat of a warning in her eyes. “What are your thoughts on this?”
Kyel could have answered that question the moment he’d walked in the door, without playing her infuriating game. He told her in all honesty, “I am aware of its importance. I believe that the Oath is a crucial necessity.”
The Queen of Emmery nodded regally. “What I require is your word that when you receive the Transference, you will swear the Oath of Harmony and uphold it throughout your entire life.”
“You have my word,” Kyel told her, his tone full of acerbity. The insult she was dealing him grated to the bone. Who did she think she was, to demand his word on something that should have never been any of her business in the first place? He almost wished Darien were there; the Sentinel would have been outraged by this little queen’s temerity.
Romana looked supremely pleased with herself as she informed him, “Very well. I would like you to know that I have reconsidered your entreaty. I have decided to send my army northward, after all.”
Kyel was shocked. He had not expected this, not at all. “I thank you, Your Highness,” he said in a much calmer voice. He waited, but when she said nothing further, he found himself wondering, “Now would you pray take these chains off me?”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?” Kyel’s face flushed hot with anger. “Whyever not?”
Romana raised her hands expansively. “Because you are my assurance.”
“Assurance against what?”
The queen sighed, setting her scepter back down across her lap. “I have spent much time today contemplating a great many things. I have come to realize that, though desperate, this plan is probably the only chance of success we have. If your master wishes to play the part of Orien, then so be it. But he must agree to abide by the rest of Orien’s script, right up to the very end.”
At first, Kyel didn’t take her meaning. Then, slowly, it dawned on him. She was talking about....
“No,” he gasped, feeling utterly revolted and incensed. “I won’t do it.”
“Those are my terms,” Romana told him sternly, leaning forward and gripping the arms of her throne passionately. “If Darien Lauchlin uses the vortex, then he must follow Orien’s example and kneel at your feet when the battle is done. You will keep your word and swear the Oath of Harmony the moment after you receive the Transference from him. Then that will be the end of this ghastly business.”
“No,” Kyel whispered, shaking his head. “There’s more. He needs to help me close the Gateway, seal the Well of Tears. And then there’s Aidan—”
But Romana wasn’t listening to him. Silencing him with a furious glint of her eyes, she uttered, “That is the purpose of legacy, is it not? When your master falls, you may take up his banner for him. But you will do so Bound.”
Kyel tried to back away from her, but he was held fast by the steel grip of Swain’s fingers on his arm. “You can’t ask that of me. I won’t do it.”
“Then you will spend the rest of your life with my chains on your wrists,” the Queen of Emmery pronounced. Turning to her captain, she ordered, “Take this young man to a cell where he can think over his options carefully.”
Swain hauled him around by the arm, wrenching Kyel’s shoulder as he did. Stumbling, Kyel careened after him as he was dragged out of the throne room, head reeling in fear and revulsion. A contingent of guards fell in behind them as Kyel was compelled forward down the long halls of the palace and out into a dismal afternoon.
As he walked, Kyel tried to think of what he could do, anything, to get himself out of this. Romana’s threat had scared him. It scared him even more because he thought he knew what Darien would do when he heard of it. Everything seemed to be pointing in one direction, and he could feel the numbers starting to total themselves together again in his mind. Darien would make Romana a counteroffer. He would insist on surviving long enough to reach Aidan and the Gateway. With one decisive stroke he could fulfill his Bloodquest, seal the Well of Tears, and follow the example set by Orien that Romana was demanding. And then, when it was over, all parties involved would be satisfied.
It was sick. And it was also perfect.
Just like the rest of Darien’s plans. As he heard the door of the cell slam shut behind him, Kyel realized with a gut-twisting wrench that this must have been his master’s intent all along.
Sleep was impossible. And yet there was nothing else to do, so Kyel tried his hardest. But with his arms chained behind his back, there was no position that he could find that was comfortable. The hours dragged by as guards came and went, sometimes with prisoners and sometimes not. Sometimes they glared at him or whispered taunts. Sometimes they raked their swords along the metal bars of his cage as they strode by, a jarring sound that rattled his nerves. He began to wince every time he heard the prison door screech open on its rusted hinges. He lay on his side, shifting every which way to get comfortable, trying to sift through the jumbled thoughts that kept slipping through his mind like the falling grains of sand in an hourglass. It seemed that every time he tried to pursue a train of thought, it simply slid away beyond his reach.
It was hours before he finally had a visitor. And then, it wasn’t who he’d been expecting. Appalled, Kyel watched as a blue-cloaked guard sifted through his iron ring of keys, throwing back the bolt of his cell door to admit a brawny but bald man with the smell of the forge on his clothes. The man was a blacksmith. In his hand he carried a forger’s hammer, wielding it upright like a club. An apprentice trailed behind him, lugging a small but heavy anvil into the cell, which he all but dumped down on the floor with a resounding crash.
Kyel stared at the anvil with a feeling of dread. Romana was carrying her point much too far if she was willing to drive it home with a blacksmith’s hammer. To his disgust, three more guards flooded into the cell in the wake of the forger’s apprentice. Two came forward to restrain him while the third swung around behind him and unlocked the chains on his wrists. Kyel’s shoulders spasmed with relief the moment they were off. But the relief did not have long to last.
The guards wrenched him forward and down, one catching his head in a lock while another seized his arm and forced it down on top of the anvil, pinning it there with the full weight of his body. Kyel tried to struggle as he saw the blacksmith lifting his hammer over a fresh length of iron chain. But the guard who had him by the neck tightened his hold until there was nothing he could do but watch and desperately pray that the blacksmith didn’t miss his mark.
The hammer rose and fell with a sharp ring that made Kyel flinch. There was no pain, at least; the blacksmith’s aim was true. In moments, the vile work was done. As the guards released him, Kyel held
his hands up before his face, staring down in revulsion at the lengths of chain wrapped around his wrists like a matching set of crude iron bracelets. The woman had gone too far. Much too far. He didn’t care if she was a queen; Romana had no right.
As he left, the blacksmith looked back over his shoulder with sympathy in his eyes. Kyel sank slowly down on the cot, staring at the queen’s chains. There had to be something he could do; she couldn’t get away with this. It was an insult, not just to him personally, but to every Master who had ever lived and died by the Mage’s Oath. If Aerysius still existed, Emmery’s queen would be bent over her knees for this, he felt certain. But Aerysius didn’t exist anymore. And the man currently calling himself Prime Warden was nowhere around to help him, even if he had the inclination to do so. Anymore, Kyel wasn’t so sure.
There was only one thing to be done about it; there was simply no other choice. He was fed up, and not just with Romana. Darien had known damned well from the beginning what he would be facing here. Yet the mage had sent him anyway. This was all another one of his schemes, like one of his twisted lessons. Perhaps he hadn’t foreseen the chains, but Darien must have known how Romana would react. He had planned for it all along. It was just another stepping stone on his path to Aidan and the Well, to surrendering himself to Orien’s fate.
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