by Jenna Glass
His celebratory mood faded when Draimel Rah-Draimir, the grand magus, was shown into his private study. He had never much liked the grand magus, whom he considered a pompous old fool, and he suspected the feeling was mutual. However, Draimel was an ambitious pompous old fool, and though he was already on the royal council, Delnamal felt sure he had hopes of being elevated to the lord chamberlain’s or lord chancellor’s position. His attempts to curry favor were convenient, if overly transparent.
Draimel bowed and waited a beat for Delnamal to offer him a chair. Hoping to keep the grand magus’s report short, Delnamal did not oblige.
Draimel cleared his throat and shifted awkwardly before he spoke. “Your Majesty. I felt it my duty to tell you about some…concerning developments that have come about in the Academy over the course of this past day.”
It had been six months now since the witch’s Curse had changed the appearance of Rho, and Delnamal had been under the impression the Academy had given up their search for a cure, or at the very least given up hopes that their search would bring success. The grand magus had stopped taking up the council’s precious time with reports of no progress, and Delnamal had been just as happy not to have to listen to the depressing news. The last thing he wanted to hear about was concerning developments, especially when he was fresh from the glow of reading the marshal’s report.
“Perhaps you should bring those up at the council meeting tomorrow,” he said peevishly.
“I thought perhaps you might prefer to hear my report yourself first in case you would prefer some aspects not be shared with the whole council.”
Delnamal had to admit to a reluctant stir of curiosity. “Do go on,” he said, debating whether he might want to offer the man a chair, after all. But no, he hadn’t heard enough yet to feel inclined to invite a longer discussion.
Draimel cleared his throat again, and Delnamal’s curiosity was tinged with just a hint of unease. The grand magus was a pompous fool, but he was generally stoic. These outward signs of discomfort warned the report would be worrisome indeed.
“Yesterday morning,” Draimel said, “we received a group of prison volunteers from the dungeon.”
Delnamal had visited the dungeons often enough to understand how prisoners might be desperate for any hope of escape. However, he could not imagine how anyone could be desperate enough to volunteer as a test subject for the Academy in exchange for a commuted sentence. And yet whenever the grand magus requested volunteers, he had no trouble filling his quota. They suffered greatly for their freedom, and for some of them freedom took the form of death, but they volunteered anyway.
“While we were sorting out who to use for what,” Draimel continued, “a couple of apprentices decided to have some sport with one of the prisoners. She was a thief and a whore, and with the Abbey no longer available…” The grand magus’s voice trailed off as Delnamal’s eyes narrowed.
“I’ve heard of at least half a dozen brothels in the Harbor District that have reopened since the floods,” he said in a warning tone. “Surely there are enough whores in half a dozen brothels to keep your men satisfied.”
Draimel shifted. “Yes. Of course.”
“But these men of yours, these apprentices, preferred not to have to pay for it, correct?”
Draimel’s face had lost some of its color, and Delnamal wanted to laugh. If the old fool thought Delnamal would complain about a couple of young bucks enjoying the dubious charms of a whore who’d been locked in a dungeon for who knew how long, then he was an idiot on top of being tedious.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Draimel said, looking braced for a blow.
Delnamal lost patience with the game. “So they fucked her. So what? Surely you don’t feel the need to report to the king every time one of your men feels the need to scratch an itch.”
“No, no, of course not. It’s not that. It’s just that…Well, they planned to share her, you see. And when one of them tore her robe open, she opened her Mindseye and…”
“And what?” Delnamal demanded.
“I didn’t witness this personally, you understand, but the other lad reported what he saw, and I have no reason not to believe him. The woman reached for something in the air while her Mindseye was open, and she touched it to the man who was to have her first. And he dropped dead.”
A lump of dread formed in Delnamal’s stomach as he absorbed the implications of Draimel’s words. He was not a warrior, had never even seen a battle, much less been involved in one, but he was well-versed in magic as befitted a royal son. “That sounds like…”
Draimel nodded. “It sounds like she used Kai.”
“Which, of course, is impossible.” Delnamal finally relented and offered Draimel a seat. The man looked like he needed one.
“So I would have said,” Draimel agreed, sitting with a sigh of relief.
“There has to be some other explanation.”
“I took the liberty of visiting the women’s section of the prison, examining the women with my Mindseye. I saw no sign of Kai anywhere—including on the whore in question.”
And the grand magus was an Adept, so if there had been any Kai to be seen, he would have seen it. Delnamal tried to comfort himself with the thought, but Draimel was obviously not finished.
“I told myself the lad had been mistaken,” Draimel said. “That perhaps his friend had a weak heart or some other defect that could explain his sudden demise. But I wanted to be absolutely sure. The whore had shared a cell with a woman who had been an abigail before her arrest. The abigail admitted under questioning that the whore had been taken against her will while imprisoned, and that something closely resembling a Kai mote appeared afterward. The men could not see it.” His normally ruddy cheeks turned a sickly shade of gray. “I bade her examine all the female prisoners, and found five others with these perverted Kai motes. There was no indication that any of those women was aware of the Kai, but I instructed the warden to quarantine them anyway and to make sure their keepers activate a Kai shield spell before approaching them.”
“How is any of that possible?” Delnamal asked in horrified awe.
“I made a few inquiries at the prison, naturally. Many of the prisoners have voluntarily traded sexual favors for special treatment, but the women who had Kai had each attempted to refuse such an agreement.”
“In other words, they’d been raped,” Delnamal snapped, impatient with all Draimel’s careful wording. “Stop being so prissy about it. They’re in the dungeon for a reason, and they deserve anything that happens to them there.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. It appears the Curse has had yet another effect of which we were not aware until now.”
Delnamal frowned in speculation. “That may not be the worst thing ever,” he mused. “I imagine it wouldn’t be overly difficult to induce a prisoner to use that Kai for the greater good.” His heartbeat quickened at the possibilities. Spells triggered by Kai were the most powerful magics in the world, and yet they were so terribly limited in their usage, available only to powerful men on the verge of death. If there was a way to produce Kai in someone who was still alive and who could be coerced into triggering a Kai spell with it…
“I had that same thought,” Draimel said, and his morose tone told Delnamal the news would not be good even before he spoke. “I tried to induce one of those women to use her Kai to trigger a death curse against another inmate. The thought of a renewable source of Kai was too tempting to resist, and I had to try right away. But it didn’t work.”
“What do you mean, it didn’t work?”
“The Kai those women carry—it’s very like men’s Kai, but not exactly the same. The woman made a genuine effort to use her Kai to trigger the spell, but it did not activate. I then had her use the Kai directly on the prisoner, and nothing happened.”
“How do you know she made a genuine effort? You said you couldn’t see
the Kai. Maybe she just pretended she tried to use it.”
“Trust me when I tell you she would have done anything I told her to do by the time I was finished with her. She tried to use the Kai, and she failed. I purchased the remaining women for the Academy, and they are being tested as we speak. The only successful test we have seen thus far occurred when we offered a woman a target she was eager to kill.”
Delnamal raised an eyebrow. “Not one of your own men, I presume?”
“No, no,” Draimel hurried to assure him. “Merely another prisoner with whom the woman had a sordid history. More testing is needed, but my working theory is that the Kai can only be used with the woman’s consent.”
Delnamal cursed as all those tempting possibilities he’d glimpsed withered and died. What he was left with was the thought of women running around with deadly elements available for their use, if only they knew. He swallowed hard. “When you’ve finished testing the prisoners, make sure you use any survivors for…other testing.”
Draimel inclined his head, understanding exactly what Delnamal meant. Those women could never be allowed to live once they knew about Kai.
But how many women knew? It was a comfort to know so few women ever opened their Mindseye—and to know that many who did would not recognize the Kai for what it was. But his mind went instantly to the Abbey of the Unwanted, to that muddy courtyard littered with torn red robes and sobbing females. Those women opened their Mindseye on a regular basis. And those women would know what they were seeing when the Kai appeared.
Suddenly, the flier that had attacked Melcor took on a whole new significance. Although his secretary had never reported any ill effects of the attack, Delnamal had heard rumors that Melcor had stopped visiting the brothels in the Harbor District. It was very unlike him, and when Delnamal had inquired—discreetly and through an intermediary, of course—of those brothels he knew were his secretary’s favorites, he’d learned that ever since that flier’s attack, Melcor had apparently been unable to perform. If those bitches at the new Abbey had figured out a way to harness that Kai and even use it over the long distance that separated them from their attackers in Aalwell…
They would have to be eliminated. Every last one of them.
“Do not tell anyone about what you have found,” Delnamal instructed Draimel. “The fewer people who know about this, the safer we will all be.”
For the first time, Draimel allowed himself a hint of his usual pompous smile. “There was a reason I did not want to discuss this in front of the entire council.”
Some people would find out. There was no avoiding that. And those who had a sentimental attachment to the women in their lives would most likely let those women in on the secret. But it was to the advantage of men everywhere if women were to stay in a state of ignorance, and Delnamal would do all he could to make sure that was the case.
* * *
—
Ellin shut and locked the door to her private study, informing the guards that she was not to be interrupted save for a dire emergency. Then she put the little Aalwood flier on her desk and looked again at the cryptic letter that it carried.
“It would be safest if you’d leave the room and let me activate it by myself,” Lord Semsulin advised as he took a seat across from her.
The letter had urged her to activate the flier’s secondary spell only when she was in complete privacy, but doing so was out of the question. There was no reason to suspect Alysoon Rai-Brynna of meaning her any harm, but having never met the other woman, Ellin had no way of knowing. Their correspondence about Jinnell Rah-Sylnin’s marriage prospects had been cordial and friendly, but hardly enough to give Ellin a feel for this stranger. And she couldn’t imagine what Alysoon’s purpose might be in sending this mysterious flier with its baffling instructions.
“You think the spell is malicious?” she asked.
Semsulin frowned. “I don’t know. But it seems to me unwise for you to take a risk.”
She met her chancellor’s eyes across the breadth of the table. “My entire reign is a risk.” She hadn’t told anyone about Graesan’s attack on Zarsha, nor had she told anyone about Tamzin’s part in it. But she didn’t need her council of advisers or even Zarsha’s outsider’s perspective to know that she was playing a dangerous game. She continued to refuse to talk with her council about a marriage arrangement, and it seemed clear Lord Tamzin no longer believed the rumor he had once so gladly embraced.
Lady Alysoon’s letter promised she would find the secondary spell in the flier a valuable gift, and she was not in a position to refuse valuable gifts.
“Besides,” she said, “Lady Alysoon was very clear in her instructions that I was to activate the spell myself.”
Semsulin sniffed with distaste, his lip curling as if he smelled something rotten. “That in itself is reason enough for you to throw the cursed thing in the fire.”
She gave the old man a droll look. Months of working closely with him had not exactly endeared him to her, but Ellin had to admit there were hidden depths to the man. He was also an excellent adviser, and far more open-minded than she ever would have guessed. “You are not that much of a prude, my lord.”
“I am a proper gentleman!” he snapped, scowling at her fiercely.
“Then avert your eyes.”
His scowl deepened. Ellin hoped she wasn’t making a big mistake by activating the spell in his presence, but though her instincts told her the flier posed no danger, she’d had visions of following its instructions and activating it in private only to face some terrible spell that would destroy her with no witnesses to the crime. It was at least remotely possible that Tamzin’s efforts to weaken her had spread to other kingdoms, that he’d reached out to Alysoon with promises to make her daughter the Queen of Rhozinolm.
Ducking her head slightly to hide her eyes from Semsulin, Ellin opened her Mindseye and fed a mote of Rho to the little flier on her desk. It made a chirping sound as her eyes cleared, but at first that seemed to be the only effect. Then the air in front of it shimmered, and a strange, translucent image appeared.
The image was of a middle-aged woman beautifully dressed in a black silk gown. A black velvet band held salt-and-pepper hair back from a narrow, almost ascetic-looking face, but what caught Ellin’s eye most was the huge faceted sapphire pinned on the dress’s high collar. A gem of that size was fit for royalty, and a non-royal woman would be considered pretentious in the extreme to wear such a thing, even if she could afford it.
Ellin gasped and nearly jumped out of her chair when the image blinked. Across the desk, Semsulin looked both puzzled and concerned.
The woman in the image smiled, and amusement danced in eyes that for all the world seemed to be focused on Ellin’s face. And then the image spoke.
“I did tell you it was a valuable gift, did I not, Your Majesty?”
Ellin met Semsulin’s wide, shocked eyes over the desk. She wasn’t sure if he could see the image as clearly as she could, but he had certainly heard that voice.
“Forgive me for startling you,” the voice continued. “I did not want to explain what the spell did in writing, in case the correspondence was intercepted. Until now, there were only three people in the entire world who knew this spell existed.”
Ellin continued to gape stupidly at the image, her mind hardly able to encompass what she was seeing. Clearly, she was no expert in magic, but she’d never heard of any spell even remotely like whatever it was this little flier carried.
“Perhaps I should start over with a formal introduction. My name is Alysoon Rah-Aaltyn.”
There had been no doubt in her mind that the image was Lady Alysoon. However…“Rah-Aaltyn?” Ellin murmured to herself. The letter the flier had delivered was signed only with a first name, but Lady Alysoon had signed her previous correspondence as Alysoon Rai-Brynna, which was to all appearances the correct appellation
.
“Rah-Aaltyn,” Lady Alysoon confirmed. “My father and my mother were lawfully married when I was born. He declared me and my brother illegitimate for the sake of a political alliance with Khalpar. Now that he is gone, I see no reason to continue the charade.”
Ellin glanced again at Semsulin, whose face was pale and who was clearly speechless for the first time in his career. He held up his hands in a helpless gesture and shook his head. Word had reached Rhozinolm two weeks ago of King Aaltyn’s death. Ellin’s council had not seemed overly enamored of the new king, but there had been no talk of anything but a smooth and ordinary succession.
“My condolences on your loss,” Ellin said, her own chest squeezing with sympathetic pain that six months of mourning had done little to alleviate.
There was a brief freezing of Alysoon’s expression as she absorbed the grief then shunted it aside. Ellin felt almost as if she were looking into a mirror, sure she had made that exact same face time and time again since her parents had died.
“Thank you. It was quite the shock, as I’d never known him to be anything but healthy. But you, unfortunately, know all too well what it feels like to lose a father.”
Ellin nodded. She wondered if Alysoon was aware of Semsulin, sitting out of her line of sight—presuming Ellin understood how the spell was working, which was perhaps not the safest assumption. She resolved to stop sending so many nervous glances Semsulin’s way, not wanting Alysoon to know she was not alone as suggested.