The Ruin of Kings

by Jenn Lyons

  The woman looked out toward the lake as she rubbed her solar plexus through the doublet. “I thought that dragon had finished me—”

  “Xalome.” He laughed. “That was Xalome. She’s dead. For a while.”

  “And why am I not?”

  He seemed reluctant to answer. “Because I healed you. I healed both of us.”

  “You attacked me,” she continued, frowning. “Then you healed me, and then you left me here for that pack of demons to slaughter, before you rescued me again. Are you always this indecisive?”

  Kihrin sighed. “I suppose that depends on who you ask. I didn’t think they would hurt you.”

  “They’re demons,” she pointed out.

  “So are you.” His expression was haunted.

  She swallowed and looked away, but she did not correct his statement.

  Kihrin pointed to the deeper, darker parts of the woods. “We can’t stay here. That demon that escaped will report back. And sooner or later, probably sooner, they will send a contingent that knows how to fight.”

  “I’m not afraid of them,” she defended.

  “I can see that, but we still shouldn’t stay. Do you know how to reach the Chasm?”

  She tilted her head as a sad smile crossed her lips. “What a strange man you are. You just denounced me as a demon, and yet, you expect that I’ll help you? Would that not be odd behavior for a demon?”

  “Usually,” Kihrin agreed, “but you were trying to help me back there. I didn’t realize it, and I screwed things up because I thought you were with them, but you weren’t hunting me. You were hunting the demons.”

  “Being their enemy does not make me your friend,” she said.

  He bent down on one knee in front of her. “Then what is your pleasure? If it’s in my power to grant it, it’s yours. Tell me your heart’s desire and I will make it real.”

  She drew away from him as if his proximity might burn. “Don’t make such offers. You sound too much like a demon with such pretty words.”

  She put two fingers to her lips and whistled; a few moments later the large fire-horse trotted into the clearing and whinnied to her in greeting. She retrieved some of her armor, making a face at the sorry state of it, and tied it to the saddle before hauling herself up onto the massive horse.

  As hunting horns sounded in the distance, the woman turned to Kihrin and presented her hand, to help him up behind her. “Very well. I still await a good explanation of why I should help you, but I’m willing to take us to shelter first.”

  84: THE D’LORUS DUEL

  With the City on fire, no one noticed when the wall of energy surrounding the Arena fell.

  “This will work?” Darzin asked for the third time, cursing himself. He knew his fear was showing, but he couldn’t stop himself. He’d been in the Arena plenty of times, as a duelist.

  This was different.

  The trio walked inside the Arena with no one to stop them and none to even notice their passing. They didn’t need a Voice of the Council to create a door for them; the man who wore the Crown and wielded the Scepter possessed his own power to take down the barrier of magical energy.

  “Keep your eyes open,” Gadrith said, for it was Gadrith, even if he looked like a plain Marakori man wearing a patchwork sallí cloak. The Stone of Shackles glittered around his neck, for he had taken the time to reclaim it from his old body, as well as Thurvishar’s gaesh. “You and Thurvishar will stand as lookouts while I search the ruins. Neither of you may come inside: you would die.” He smiled. “It appears only the Emperor may enter without suffering a horrible demise.”

  “Is that you, husband? I hardly recognized you without your D’Lorus wardrobe,” Tyentso said as she called out from behind them. The agolé draped around her body was a dark cloud whipped by the wind.

  Gadrith turned and cocked his head as he regarded the woman. It took him a moment to recognize her, but then his eyes widened. “Raverí. What a surprise, but ‘husband’ is not the proper word for our relationship.”

  “Oh, is this where you reveal you’re my father?” She tilted her head. “I’ve known that for years.” She put a hand to her chest. “Phaellen told me before we ever met.”

  “Who’s Phaellen?”

  Tyentso rolled her eyes. “Really, Gadrith? You murdered him.”

  Gadrith gestured for more information. “And . . .?”

  “House D’Erinwa? Your roommate? You lured him into the woods and botched making a tsali stone out of him, leaving his upper soul to haunt the forest as a damned, twisted shade. Does that sound familiar?”

  “Oh!” Gadrith looked offended. “I botched nothing. I made an important breakthrough in separating the upper and lower souls.”

  “Oh, so you do remember him?”

  “Yes,” Gadrith said. “He snored.”*

  Tyentso just stared. “I hate you so much.”

  “Whereas I’ve never thought of you much at all,” Gadrith admitted. “Except I found it disappointing when you ran off before we could have you sentenced to Continuance. That was inconvenient. Fortunately, Sandus provided me with a substitute.” He looked down at his borrowed body, then over at Thurvishar. “You know, it occurs to me you really are my son now. Isn’t that interesting?”

  Lightning played over Gadrith’s body. He spasmed from electrocution, before he shrugged off the surge of power, tossing the electrical arc down into the ground.

  “Focus,” Tyentso said. “We’re talking about me here.” She raised her hands in the air, a dueling pose if weapons were words and spells rather than sword and shield. “In case I haven’t made it clear, old man: this one’s to the death.”

  “Let me deal with her,” Thurvishar said.

  Gadrith cut him off. “No. This will be my treat. Keep watch for Milligreest and his coterie of little friends.”

  Thurvishar gnashed his teeth in frustration, but did as he was commanded and turned away. He motioned for Darzin to follow him as they left the center of the Arena to wait along the perimeter.

  Gadrith turned to his daughter and attacked, chanting as he channeled a beam of violet energy at her that should have melted the flesh from her bones.

  She caught it, her expression incredulous.

  Gadrith smiled. “Did you think I would be powerless? That it would take me months to learn how to use Sandus’s body? Sorry to disappoint you, daughter, but I’ve been preparing for this moment for decades. I know how Sandus casts better than he did.”*

  Tyentso straightened. “No matter. I’ve waited thirty years for this. Show me your worst.”

  Dark clouds raced overhead like dogs coming to heel at the sound of a trumpet. The trees loomed, casting shadows against the red glow of the burning city. It was difficult to guess if those clouds were rain clouds or accumulated ash.

  “Really?” Gadrith raised an eyebrow. “Storm magic?”

  “You were always such a snob,” Tyentso said as a thick zigzag of light raced down from a black cloud to strike at her enemy.

  The lightning strike diverted to hit a thick rusted iron spear that Gadrith levitated from the ground. The electricity raced down the metal and exploded into the dirt.

  “There’s no shame in that,” Gadrith said. “But I prefer my violence to be precise.” He pointed a finger at her and chanted.

  Tyentso staggered as her heart jerked in her chest. She felt the blow through her reclaimed talismans, through all her protections, painful as a kick from a warhorse. She had taken the blow as though she were a novice, and tears sprang to her eyes.

  Gadrith smiled, his tone full of patronizing contempt. “And you thought you were a match for me. Don’t forget I’m wearing the Stone of Shackles. How were you going to deal with that?”

  Tyentso made a fist with her left hand to hide the fact it had numbed. Gadrith’s attack had struck too true. “This fight’s not done yet.”

  Gadrith started to say something, but a giant chunk of ice hit him in the shoulder, throwing him forward. More ice fell,
less gentle hail than frozen ragged shards, and Gadrith was forced to throw up a wall of energy over himself to halt the onslaught. As he did, an enormous gust of wind hit his undefended, exposed flank and sent him hurtling into the air, to land outside his magical protection. More hail pelted him while several lightning strikes crashed into the area.

  The smoke and vapor of melted ice obscured Tyentso’s view, and while she stood there, waiting to defend herself, she concentrated on stopping her heart from exploding.

  She wasn’t naïve enough to think she had won.

  “Was that your best, daughter?” Gadrith walked out of the smoke, uninjured. The first glance was wrong. He was singed a little at the edges, his patchwork sallí cloak burning along one side, but he himself wasn’t injured enough for it to have much meaning.

  Tyentso raised her chin. “The best that’s likely to work on—” She paused and studied her father. “So powerful,” she murmured.

  “It’s time to end this,” Gadrith said.

  Tyentso’s eyes widened. She extended a wicked, curved finger toward Gadrith. “You have no protections . . . no talismans. Your old ones don’t work on this new body!” She narrowed her eyes and threw the whole of her will behind one last spell.

  Gadrith hissed as his hand turned to water, dropping away from his body to fall on the soft grass. “No,” Gadrith said. “Why can I still feel my hand . . .?”* He pointed his other hand, still whole, at her and squeezed. “Enough play. Now die!” He sounded desperate as more of his arm dropped away. The effect was spreading to the rest of his body.

  Tyentso stopped her scream with clenched teeth and arched backward, her face ashen from pain. Her chest again felt like her heart was bursting. The blood slowed in her veins even as it pounded in her ears with urgent need. Tyentso was a river piling up against a curve now dammed. She was a road broken, a pathway piled high with debris.

  The spell on Gadrith lessened, then ceased, as Tyentso lost the ability to concentrate. Her eyes rolled back into her head and the lightning struck around them with insane pastel hues.

  Then the lightning stopped. The storm lost its cohesion.

  Tyentso died.

  It had been close. A few seconds more and she would have won. Gadrith concentrated as he looked at the stump of his arm and willed it to regrow. The arm did so, but it was misshapen and uneven, covered with shiny skin like that of a scar. He tucked it under the edge of the patchwork sallí.

  Gadrith paused and looked at Tyentso’s body. Her face looked peaceful for such a painful death, as if this were just a nap after a long, hard day. “Your best was impressive, daughter.”

  He regretted he didn’t have the time to make a tsali of her soul.

  Gadrith walked back to the others.

  85: DEATH’S FRONT

  Kihrin saw the Chasm in the distance and despaired.

  “Have the borders grown so large?” he said. “It will take us days to reach that.”

  The young woman turned her head. “Grown so large? There aren’t many even aware that the border has changed size . . .” She paused. “You’ve been here before?”

  “Everyone’s been here before,” Kihrin said. “Most of us just don’t remember after we’re reborn. I have to find a quicker way to reach the Chasm.”

  “Then I must too. I don’t have days. Soon I’ll waken.”

  The trees cleared around them as they neared a hill, upon which sat a small stone keep that looked to be in a state of disrepair. No soldiers manned its walls and no lights were present through the arrow slits. The only reason Kihrin could tell it was there was the outline it created—against varicolored lightning bolts that cracked the gray sky.

  “What do you mean, you’ll waken?” Kihrin asked her.

  The horse they rode tossed his head and made a snickering sound as she led it up to the keep walls. The woman pulled the spear from Kihrin’s grip. “I mean that I’m asleep. When morning comes, I’ll cross back through the Second Veil and wake up in the living world once more.”

  She touched the tip of the spear to the door and, rather than disintegrate the wood, the great iron-clad door swung open. “This is as safe as we can be until we reach the Chasm,” she told him. “So, you may make your case to me here.”

  “Elana—” he said.

  She frowned at him, nudged the horse into a walk, and rode him inside the fort.

  The place was long abandoned, now a home to spiders, rats, and whatever other creatures of the borderlands sheltered inside its walls. There was dust everywhere but nothing that spoke of large-scale destruction: no demons had breached the walls and looted the contents.

  “What was this place?” Kihrin asked as he slid off the side of the massive horse.

  “You don’t know? You said you were old.”

  “Older than this,” he replied.

  She stared at him. “That would be old indeed.” She gestured with a black hand. “This was a border fort. Once protecting the bridges across the Chasm, but now left behind as the Chasm shifts.” She too swung her leg over the horse and then led the beast over to the side. Kihrin couldn’t escape feeling the horse watched him for any signs of mischief.

  “If the Chasm is moving, that’s—” He shook his head. “That’s not good.”

  “Also, my name is not Elana,” the woman said as she whirled back to face him. “And I dislike the way you look at me. I want to know the price for this healing of yours and how you have accomplished it.” She brushed her hands together and a shower of red flaked off and fell away—demon blood, from those she’d ripped apart.

  “I’m sorry,” Kihrin said. “Elana was the name I knew you by a long time ago.”

  “It’s never been my name,” she insisted.

  He chose not to argue. “Okay. So what is your name then?”

  “Answer my questions first,” she replied. Her hand tightened on the spear, but then she set it aside.

  He exhaled and tugged at his shirt, wincing at the large and obvious hole cut into the fabric. “There’s no price for your healing. Your healing was payment. Your injury was my mistake, one that would never have happened if I’d realized you were not my enemy.”

  “But how? Such an injury—that was a dragon! I should have been destroyed. You’re not a god—if you were you would not be gaeshed, would not be missing your heart.” She paused. “Except you’re not missing it now. I remember what I saw when we first fought, the wound that gaped in your chest. How is it you are healed as well?”

  Kihrin pulled the shirt from his back, wadded it, and tossed it to a chair. It dissolved before it landed, as if to underscore the unsubstantial nature of his current existence. “Since I was missing a heart, I needed a replacement. So I used Xalome’s heart.” He cleared his throat. “I, uh, actually used it on us both.”

  “You—what?”*

  At her stunned look, he elaborated. “This would never work in the living realm, but here reality is malleable. And no, I don’t know what effect it will have. As far as I know, it has never been done before and perhaps could only be done because it was the Dragon of Souls, slain in the realm of Death.” He shrugged. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You split a dragon’s heart between us,” she repeated. “A dragon. A monster of chaos and evil.”

  Kihrin crossed his arms over his chest and nodded. “But as a bonus, it seems to have worked.”

  She blinked several times as if in disbelief and then rubbed her fingers through the stripe of hair on her head. She paced to the far end of the room and turned back. “A dragon’s heart?” Her voice was soft.

  “Okay, we’re past that point. Also, there’s no way to reverse it.” He grinned. “You’re welcome.”

  “You’re welcome?” Her voice cracked. “You arrogant mule.” Her nostrils flared with anger. “I only keep an advantage against my enemies because they do not realize my soul is untethered from my body and roams here while I sleep. But you—” She began sputtering. “You have ruined that. There is no
way the presence of a dragon’s heart will not taint my aura, and once they notice, they will ask questions I do not want answered!”

  Kihrin held up his hands. “Easy there. Try to remember that you would’ve died. Discorporated. Whatever happens to demons or baby demons or whatever you are when they die. How did Xaltorath manage that in your case, anyway?”

  A second later her hand was around Kihrin’s throat, lifting him off the ground as she pressed him into dusty tapestries still hanging from the stone tower wall. **HOW DO YOU KNOW OF XALTORATH?**

  Her hand collapsed on empty air as Kihrin vanished. She snarled and whirled around, but the tower was empty.

  “Show yourself!” she screamed.

  As she looked around the room, her eyes fell on the spear, and she rushed for it. Before her hands could close on Khoreval, it lifted to the far side, and Kihrin turned visible again, this time holding the spear pointed at her. She checked herself, hard, to keep from being impaled.

  “Calm down,” he ordered, no longer smiling. “Because this spear will work on you, and I would never forgive myself.”

  She paused, teeth still ground together, eyeing him like a crazed bull wanting to charge.

  “In this last life, this one I lived most recently—when I was fifteen years old,” Kihrin said, “Xaltorath found me on the streets of the Capital City and raped my mind.”

  The woman sucked in her breath. On her exhale, her anger ebbed.

  “He showed me unpleasant things. Truthfully, I still don’t understand what the point was. Maybe there was no point but torture, but he showed me a woman. A woman I could never hurt.” He kept one hand on the spear while he pointed with the other. “He showed me you.”

  Confusion muffled the rest of her rage. “Me? She showed you me? Why?”

  Kihrin bit his lower lip. “I don’t know. So I would trust you? So I would never trust you? I think he’s trying to fulfill a prophecy, but I don’t know if the point was to bring us together or keep us apart.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I am sick to death of prophecies.”

  “Oh, we’re agreed on that.” He pulled the spear up and walked over to one of the slit windows. “It’s a discussion we should save for another day. Right now? My heart was missing when we first met because it was pulled from my chest to summon Xaltorath, and he’s rampaging through the streets of the Capital City. If I can’t get back to the land of the living . . .”