The Ruin of Kings

by Jenn Lyons

  Kihrin swallowed and looked past him into the center of the park. The darkness that lingered now was far more threatening than the colored light show had been earlier. “Settle a curiosity for me, would you? I get that you don’t look like Sandus because you’re half-vordreth, but the age thing has been bothering me. I think I’ve got it though: it’s because you’ve spent time in that lighthouse, Shadrag Gor, isn’t it? Time moves slower there, and that’s why everyone thinks you’re too old to be Sandus’s son, even though you are. Truthfully, you’re not any older than I am.”

  “Oh, I am older than you,” Thurvishar corrected, looking impressed, even as he explained the details as much as the gaesh allowed. “I lived those years. I just didn’t live them here.”

  “Kihrin!” Teraeth shouted. “Just run. Run! You can’t take them both.”

  “And I can’t run fast enough either,” Kihrin said, looking past Thurvishar. “He’s already here.”

  As if on command, Gadrith strode out of the darkness.

  87: THE BREAKING OF OATHS

  Gadrith smiled as he walked forward, a look that had been foreign to Dead Man’s face. It was in keeping with Sandus’s sunny air, made more macabre for that false cheer.

  It was like a sick joke, Kihrin thought as he watched him step toward the group. Gadrith, who had pretended to be Thurvishar’s father, now possessing the body of Thurvishar’s real father in an evil mockery of that memory. Kihrin saw the look of unrepentant hate on Thurvishar’s face and knew that, if he had been able to, he would have destroyed Gadrith long ago.

  “I’m curious how you Returned,” Gadrith told Kihrin. “Still, I don’t begrudge you Darzin’s death. You were right back in the tombs: his usefulness came to an end the moment he sacrificed you to Xaltorath.”

  “I assume you killed Tyentso,” Kihrin said, his expression grim.

  Gadrith raised an eyebrow. “You may need to be more specific, young man.”

  “Raverí,” Kihrin corrected. “Your wife.”

  “Ah!” Gadrith smiled again. “Yes. She acquitted herself admirably. I almost regret I had to slay her.”

  “Really?” Thurvishar asked, surprise coloring his voice.

  “No. I was being polite.”

  “What happens now?” Thurvishar asked. “Do you want me to take care of these two while you search the tombs for Urthaenriel?”

  Gadrith cocked his head and gave Thurvishar a look of intense dissatisfaction. “. . . yes.”

  Kihrin walked forward, trying not to stagger. He concentrated on pulling what strength he could from the ground, the trees, the surrounding grass. “Is that what this is all about? Recovering Kandor’s sword, Godslayer?” Kihrin paused, and his eyes narrowed. “I had this wrong, didn’t I? We all had this wrong. You weren’t trying to become Emperor. You could have been Emperor years ago. You could have been Emperor whenever you wanted, but you didn’t care about that crown until you realized it was the only way you could step a foot inside those ruins—without the Empire’s magic blasting you to pieces. This isn’t a coup . . . it’s a . . . it’s. . . .” Kihrin laughed. “This is a burglary.”

  “Yes,” Gadrith agreed in a flat, dry tone. He looked over at his “son.” “He’s smarter than his brother.”

  Thurvishar nodded in agreement.

  Gadrith walked toward the ruins. “Kill him. I have a sword to find and then, many gods to slay. I think I’ll start with Thaena.”

  Thurvishar’s shoulders slumped. His earlier wording, “take care of,” allowed him room to take prisoners. Gadrith’s new orders did not.

  Kihrin could see despair in the man’s eyes as Thurvishar lifted his hands. “I’m sorry,” Thurvishar whispered.

  “You have a choice,” Kihrin told him.

  “I really don’t,” Thurvishar replied.

  “I’ve been where you are. You always have a choice.”

  Thurvishar responded by gesturing, and the Khorveshan sword in Kihrin’s hands turned red hot and slagged into molten metal.

  The sword might have burned him, but Kihrin was good at protecting himself against fire. There was only a slight sting as he found the molten metal pouring down his fingers.

  “I don’t want to kill you,” Thurvishar said, “but I really don’t see how my death will allow you to kill Gadrith. It would be different if you were a trained wizard. I even think you have the talent, but you don’t have the years of training you’d need to defeat a sorcerer of his caliber. Even if you did, he’s wearing the Crown and Scepter and the Stone of Shackles. He’ll overpower you—and if you kill him, you still lose.”

  “Just give me a chance—”

  Thurvishar shook his head. “You know how this works. I can’t.” He raised a hand.

  As Kihrin backed up, he tripped over an old rusted sword—straight, narrow, and archaic in style. It wouldn’t help him. The blade was dull and pitted; it looked like it would break after a single good swing. But Kihrin was a swordsman. He had the irrational urge to die with a blade in his hand this time, if it was to be his fate to die twice in one day.

  He wrapped his hand around the hilt and pulled the sword free of the dark, wormy ground.

  Thurvishar threw lightning at him, but Kihrin barely noticed. He batted the spell out of the air, so it crashed into the Arena forest. It lit a red fire, snuffed by the odd magical distortions of the mutated trees. His whole attention was focused on the sword, now an elegant and shimmering bar of silver white metal.

  The blade was singing in his mind.

  The harmonies of the sword were so beautiful that he felt tears at the corners of his eyes; the sweet, rapturous raising of a single voice that seemed to hold within it the promise of joy and a glimpse at Heaven. There was a danger, holding that sword, that it would consume him. It might be all he could hear or focus on, forever lost in the harmony of that perfect sound. There was something so familiar about the blade too. Kihrin was reminded of when he’d concentrated on the necklace that had contained his gaesh. He was holding something to which he was connected—something that was once part of him, once whole and now separate.

  “You unbelievably lucky bastard,” Thurvishar told him, his voice tinged with awe.

  Kihrin focused enough through the singing to respond. “Yes,” he told the wizard. “So I am. Call for Gadrith, please.”

  Thurvishar conjured a ball of fire and tossed it at Kihrin, mostly to buy himself and his gaesh-given order more time. Kihrin shoved the fire aside without it affecting him.

  “Gadrith!” Thurvishar screamed. “I need you. I need you out here right now.”

  Kihrin’s strength returned to him. He felt as though he could run races, swim the Senlay, perform any feat. He crossed over to the unconscious Teraeth. He didn’t think that the tree branches that were holding the assassin trapped were technically magical anymore, but here in this place he suspected everything was just a bit magical. He tried sliding his vision past the Veil to check but found it impossible: he couldn’t concentrate through the sound of the sword’s singing.

  “What is it?” Gadrith snapped as he passed through the doorway of one of the ruined towers. He paused and frowned as he saw that Kihrin was still alive. “I told you to kill him.”

  “I can’t,” Thurvishar admitted through gritted teeth, doubling over through the pain.

  Kihrin knew the signs well enough. Gaesh feedback would kill the man if Kihrin didn’t act.

  “Can’t? Why—” Gadrith’s words cut off though, as he saw Kihrin advancing toward him, and the sword Kihrin held in his hand.

  “It wasn’t inside the buildings?” Gadrith was astonished. “All this time, and it was never inside the buildings at all?” He looked as though his whole world had just been upended. Perhaps it had.

  “Yeah, kick in the crotch, isn’t it? You’ve spent thirty years chasing something that anyone could have picked up,” Kihrin agreed, “at any duel fought in the Arena. It was tangled in some roots, out in the open, lying in plain sight.” Kihrin smiled in a
wicked way. “You have enough toys. You don’t get to keep this one.”

  “Impossible,” Gadrith said. “I am the Thief of Souls. I am the King of Demons. I killed the Emperor. I will free the demons. It’s my destiny to destroy the Empire, to remake the world. ME. NOT KAEN. NOT RELOS VAR. ME!” He growled and stretched his hands toward Kihrin, but whatever his intention, Kihrin intercepted the spell with the sword, and it died in the air.

  How to deal with Gadrith? Kihrin couldn’t just kill him. If he did, he’d only switch places with the man’s soul, thus giving the necromancer exactly what he had truly desired from the beginning: Urthaenriel. Gadrith was upset and unsettled now, but if Kihrin gave the man time, the sorcerer might well come to the conclusions Tyentso had years before. Even someone immune to magic needed air to breathe and solid ground under their feet.

  Then Kihrin remembered: he wielded a sword that could break the magic of gods.

  So Gadrith was not his target.

  The Stone of Shackles glittered on Gadrith’s chest, a bouncing goal that shimmered with malice. Kihrin aimed for the gem and drove his sword forward. Gadrith moved to block the blow. He probably used a spell, but Urthaenriel paid no heed to spells. Time moved slowly as Urthaenriel first shattered the Stone of Shackles into tiny blue shards and then dove forward, slicing into Gadrith’s chest and impaling his heart.

  The dark mage gave Kihrin one look of terrific surprise. Then the circlet vanished from Gadrith’s head, the wand from his grip. The men watching had exactly that long to appreciate what had just occurred before they felt a tremendous pressure that lifted them, ripped up the roots binding Teraeth, and pushed them all outside the boundaries of the Arena. They landed on the soft, wet grass just outside the Culling Fields inn.

  The body Gadrith had stolen, still impaled on Kihrin’s sword, came with them.

  The rainbow soap-bubble force field that protected the Arena flickered back into existence. It reverted to its default state when waiting for the contest that would decide its new owner.

  Gadrith the Twisted, briefly Emperor of Quur, was dead.

  88: MIYA’S GIFT

  The City burned.

  Little demons, large demons, fat demons, demons of every shape, color, and description imaginable destroyed and savaged whatever and whoever they could find. They basked in the warmth of the spreading City fires. They maliciously killed thousands and just as inexplicably left as many survivors unmolested to witnesses and remember their atrocities. They feasted on fear and dined well.

  Even though Xaltorath had now been banished, it would still take months, if not years, to undo the damage he left behind.

  “Is everyone here?” Therin asked Galen, as he walked up with Lady Miya at his side. The High Lord and his seneschal were both singed and dirty, with slashes and burns on their clothing that spoke of injuries received in the fighting.

  “I’ve gathered everyone I could find,” Galen said, “but a few people are still in the City overseeing the Blue Houses.” The number of family brought together in the great hall seemed small, compared to the number of D’Mons who had existed just a day prior. It was too painful to contemplate some of those missing . . .

  Galen clenched his teeth and refused to think about his father.

  “Good,” Therin said. “I’m sending you, your wife, and a small contingent of healers to the summer palace in Kirpis. Your job is to stay safe, do you understand?”

  “What about—” Galen swallowed the question.

  Therin’s face was without expression. Someone who didn’t know the D’Mons might make the mistake of interpreting it as without emotion. Galen knew better.

  “Finish the question,” Therin ordered.

  He wanted to ask about Kihrin. He wanted to, but he didn’t. Galen was flustered and upset. Not so long ago he had not only watched family members die, but remembered that Kihrin hadn’t been willing to die for him. Kihrin had been willing to die for Lady Miya, had in fact died for Lady Miya, but not for Galen.

  So, Galen asked, “What about my father?”

  “Your father is a dead man or will be soon,” Therin stated. “He will be forgotten, and his name will never be mentioned in this House again. I have disowned him. I can only pray it’s enough to satisfy the gods.”

  He might not be dead yet, Galen thought, but he knew better than to say it out loud.

  Behind Lord Therin, Lady Miya made a small noise.

  “Do you understand me, Lord Heir?”

  The title didn’t register right away. Galen almost looked for his father. Even as Therin continued to frown at Galen, he still couldn’t make himself believe the implications. “My lord?”

  “You were his firstborn son. That makes you Lord Heir now. That is why you and Sheloran must leave. The House will have a very difficult road ahead of it. I need to make sure you are protected.”

  Galen could only blink. So, he hadn’t heard wrong in the temple, when Therin had claimed Kihrin was his son. Not Darzin’s son at all. Not Darzin’s son, and not Galen’s brother.

  Galen’s uncle.

  “Yes, my lord. I understand.”

  “Good. Now—”

  “Therin—” Lady Miya’s voice was at once both shocked and jubilant. “Therin, the gaesh is gone.”

  “What?” The man blinked at her as if he hadn’t really understood the statement or its context. Therin raised his hand to examine the thin, tarnished silver chain looped several times around his wrist, a small pendant of a tree dangling at the end.

  The pendant crumbled to ash and drifted away on the air.

  Lady Miya put a hand to her neck. “I can breathe,” she said. “After so long, I can draw breath.”

  “How is this possible?” Therin asked.

  “I do not know,” Lady Miya answered. “I cannot imagine, and yet, Therin, I can feel that it is gone.”

  All conversation in the great hall ceased.

  “Lady Miya—” Galen crossed over to her, planning to offer her whatever support he could.

  Galen’s movement must have caught her attention, because she turned her stare back to him. That stare made him pause because there was nothing friendly about it. Miya didn’t look at him with the blank indifference he expected from the House seneschal. No, this stare held malice.

  “That is not my name,” she corrected.

  Galen felt himself lifted. A bar of invisible air, hard as steel, tightened around his neck. He choked, gasping, his sight darkening as he tried to draw in breath and failed.

  Something gave way in his neck with a loud, hard snap.

  Galen D’Mon fell to the ground, dead.

  For a few eternal seconds, no one moved. Plenty in the room had never known a time when Lady Miya had not served the House and protected its members. Even then, watching her kill the new Lord Heir, witnesses wondered if she’d somehow been replaced by that mimic, or if someone had taken control of her mind.

  Then they screamed and ran, but the large doors to the great hall slammed shut the moment anyone approached. For the second time in a day, they were prisoners to a sorcerer in their own home.

  “You’re not Lady Miya,” Therin said, eyes wide. “You can’t be.”

  She didn’t smile at him. No hate or outrage shone from her eyes. She tilted her head as if to acknowledge a truth. “To be honest, I have never been Miya. The real Miya died before you and I ever met.” The tiniest bitter smile graced the corners of her lips as she stepped over Galen’s body. “I could not tell you who I really am. The gaesh prevented it.”

  “So, who are you?” Therin glanced down at Galen’s body, then back at Miya. His experience as a former priest of Thaena told him Galen’s condition was not necessarily permanent and so there was not yet reason to panic.

  “Khaeriel.” She smiled as Therin’s eyes widened. “Khaeriel, queen of all the vané, daughter of Khaevatz, queen of the Manol vané, daughter of Khaemezra, of the Eight Guardians.”*

  Therin closed his eyes. “Let them go. It’s me you w
ant. Let them go.”

  “You are half-correct. It is you I want, but not for a reason so petty as revenge. However, I am also not going to let your family go. They are the tethers that shackle you to this House and this title as surely as that gaesh once chained me.” She gestured again. On the far side of the room, where Galen’s new widow banged against the door, Sheloran jerked as her neck snapped. She collapsed into an untidy heap on the floor.

  Therin shook himself from his shock and attacked Khaeriel.

  Khaeriel brushed aside whatever spell he attempted to cast—likely some enchantment meant to stun and incapacitate—before narrowing her eyes at Therin.

  He flew backward against the wall, arms and legs spread like a pinned butterfly.

  Therin grit his teeth together and tore himself free. He dropped to the ground, catching himself at the last moment before he stumbled. Therin gestured and said something under his breath.

  The air around Khaeriel turned thick and choking.

  The clouds ripped away from her, scattering into wispy tatters.

  “A sound strategy,” she said. “No talismans would protect me from breathing in poisonous vapors, but you chose the medium poorly, for air is mine. You should try enfolding my clothes in flame, turning the ground underneath me to acid, collapsing the roof on top of me. Mayhap you would have better luck.”

  “I will stop you,” Therin hissed.

  “No,” Khaeriel said, “and truth be told, your heart does not want you to. Do you know that you are the grandson of usurped King Terindel, of the Kirpis vané? It is true. Your father Pedron’s—”

  “He was not my father . . .”

  She dismissed his protest with a wave. “Yes, he was. We both know it. Your vané blood betrays your lineage. For Pedron’s mother was Princess Valrashar, King Terindel’s daughter. She was gaeshed and sold to the D’Mons by my father, King Kelindel. My father usurped the Kirpis vané crown. So your father Pedron—and your aunt Tishar—were by all rights the true rulers of the Kirpis vané. Since both are dead now . . . that leaves you. You are now heir to a throne that seemed so distant, that no one could have imagined you would claim it. Leave behind your human shackles, Therin. Shed them and join me.”