Corwin shifted his gaze to Kate, who sat across from him, the flames from the fire dancing between them. She seemed strangely far away and isolated, not just from him but from everyone. With Bonner and Yaron keeping watch, Dal and Signe sat at the fire as well, Signe tucked inside Dal’s arms.
“Did you reach many of the wilders?” Corwin asked her after a time. He couldn’t stand the silence any longer, or the thoughts it was allowing to seep into his mind, of his brother lying dead on the floor of the Hellgate.
Kate glanced at him before dropping her gaze once more. She wrapped the cloak she was wearing tighter around her shoulders. “Some of them, yes. But I don’t know how many will come. They didn’t want to listen to me.”
Corwin sighed, understanding their reaction all too well. After being free of Gavril, the last thing they would want was another invader in their minds. “You did the best you could, under the circumstances.”
Dal snorted. “By circumstances, do you mean abandoning all sense and running in like a fool with a death wish?”
Corwin flushed, his temper igniting in an instant. “You weren’t there. I saw an opportunity and took it. I refuse to regret killing such a man as that.”
Rolling his eyes, Dal snorted again. “Yes, because killing him when we weren’t prepared to rescue the army of enslaved wilders he’s been controlling doesn’t matter at all.”
“To the three hells with you.” Anger burned inside Corwin. So did guilt, but it was almost imperceptible beneath his fury. He pointed at Dal, eyes narrowed. “You don’t get to judge. Not until you’ve endured what I’ve endured, what those wilders have endured at that monster’s hands. You would’ve killed him first chance you had too.”
Dal sat up, the movement forcing Signe to pull away from him, though he didn’t seem to notice. “That’s it, though, Corwin, you’re not just anyone. You are the king now. You need to be smarter than that. You can’t just think about your own vengeance.”
King? The notion brought Corwin up short. With Edwin gone, the crown did fall to him without contest, but the magnitude of what that meant was too much for him to think about now.
“Leave him be, Dal.” Signe placed a hand on Dal’s arm. “Corwin is right. You can’t understand.” For some reason, she cast Kate a sidelong glance as she spoke.
Feeling his emotions slipping out of control, Corwin stood as calmly as he could and walked away from the fire, his skin cooling as well as his anger with each step he took. Reaching the wardstone barrier, he came to a halt and wrapped his arms around his chest, as if he could hold his emotions in by physical force. It wasn’t just anger anymore—Dal was right. Killing Gavril like that was foolish. It should’ve been a planned assassination, accomplished once they’d determined the best way to reach the most wilders, to ensure they would be able to escape—and join them. Instead, he’d killed Gavril on impulse rather than pursue Magnar as he’d originally intended, all of it done to save Edwin. Now the wilders he’d freed could be anywhere, fighting for their lives against Sevan soldiers or magists or drakes. He’d let them down.
And there was despair too, like drowning in black water. Edwin was dead. Corwin had been there, mere feet away, but he hadn’t been able to stop it. He recalled his last few encounters with his brother, the anger and resentment between them. Even hatred. Now that Edwin was gone, there was no chance of healing the rift between them. Corwin hadn’t even realized he’d wanted to until now, when it was too late. The irony of it struck him that such clarity of sight came only at the end. How cruel this life could be. No, not life itself, he thought, but our own actions, those taken and not.
But at least he was free of Gavril, forever.
Corwin closed his eyes. How could he feel such guilt and anguish and relief at the same time?
A hand touched his back, and he tensed. He hadn’t heard Kate approach, but he could tell it was her. He always seemed to know when she was near.
“Are you all right?” she said, letting her hand fall away.
“No, but I will be.”
She stepped up beside him, not touching him again, but close enough she could have, if she wanted to. “Edwin’s death isn’t your fault, Corwin. There was nothing you could’ve done.”
He drew an unsteady breath, the realization of how well she knew him adding to his misery. He tried to answer, but couldn’t for fear that he would cry. There was no time for tears now.
“And killing Gavril was the right decision as well,” Kate went on. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you must seize the chance when it arrives and never hesitate. You might not get a second one.” She stared out at the darkness beyond the barrier, a brittle sort of sadness on her face. One he guessed had little to do with Edwin or any of these recent events.
“I never had the chance to tell you how sorry I am . . . about Kiran.”
Kate’s spine went rigid. Not looking at him, she managed a quick nod.
Feeling her pain as sharply as his own, Corwin drew a deep breath and let it out again. He longed to reach for her, but he didn’t know how. He didn’t know if she would allow it, or if she would turn away from him in disgust like she had the day she’d entered his mind and seen Eravis. Then he considered what she’d just said, about seizing chances. He turned, meaning to reach for her, then changed his mind as he saw how rigidly she stood, how guarded her stance was, with her arms wrapped around her sides.
If she noticed his indecision, she didn’t comment, asking instead, “Is the uror now over, with Edwin’s death?”
He hated even considering the question. Was it over? Am I truly king now? He examined the uror mark on his palm, remembering the way his grandfather had described winning the uror, how the brand had warmed until it almost burned. How it had glowed like the sun. Then all of Norgard knew as I did, his grandfather had written, that I was to be the next king. Nothing like that was happening for Corwin. The mark felt like scarred, dead flesh, nothing more. “I don’t—” he began, then broke off at the sound of pounding hooves in the distance.
“Someone’s coming.” Kate reached for the sword at her side.
Corwin drew his as well, and shouted for the others to arm themselves. Signe and Dal joined them a moment later, both with bows in their hands, arrows nocked.
They waited, tensed and ready, as the sound of hooves grew louder. A moment later, several horses burst into the clearing, Valora riding at the front with Harue, Wen, and Xia just behind her. Corwin gaped in surprise, lowering his weapon as they charged into the barrier.
“Harue,” Kate said, sheathing her sword with a violent thrust. “We feared you were all dead or captured. Where have you been?”
“And how did you find us?” Yaron eyed Harue askance.
With a childlike grin on her face, Harue dismounted. “I didn’t. Valora did. She knew a way to track Corwin’s uror mark with a spell.”
Corwin frowned, uncertain what to make of this revelation. When Valora had confessed the priesthood’s possession of secret magical knowledge, he hadn’t known it would have such practical applications. He pressed his fingers against the uror brand on his palm, again sensing nothing but dead flesh. Still, there had to be something there if what Harue said was true.
Kate’s expression hardened into anger. “Where did you go?”
Harue’s grin faltered as, for once, she had enough social awareness to sense the menace in Kate’s tone. Before she could answer, Valora stepped forward, holding out the object in her hand wrapped in a blue velvet cloth. “To get this from the temple of Noralah.”
Corwin arched a brow. “You made it into Norgard and out again without being caught?” The city wasn’t far from the Wandering Woods, but the road was open—and surely guarded.
“We used a deflection spell I know to hide us from onlookers,” Harue said, handing her reins to Wen. “And Raith’s mage door still hasn’t been discovered. It seemed easier to get what we needed now without waiting for permission.”
“Because you kne
w we never would’ve allowed it,” Kate said, nostrils flaring.
“Yes, that too,” Harue replied.
Valora shook her head, and in a placating tone said, “That is not how it happened. We didn’t plan to go. I hadn’t even realized how important it was until . . .” She trailed off, as if afraid of saying anything more.
“Until what?” Corwin pressed.
For some reason, the priestess turned her gaze onto Kate. “When we were in the Wandering Woods, I experienced a vision. From the goddess.”
The words seemed to hang in the air, drawing the others into shocked silence. Their meaning stirred strange feelings inside Corwin. Was it possible? Valora was the high priestess no longer, cast out by her order, but did that mean the goddess had forsaken her in return? Perhaps Noralah does what she chooses. Corwin couldn’t presume to know.
Yaron broke the silence first, nudging his chin toward the object in Valora’s hands. “What was so valuable to be worth taking that risk?”
Harue grinned again. “A book.”
Corwin shook his head in dismay. That explained Harue’s involvement then, if not the others’.
“Not just any book,” Valora said, her solemn attitude in stark contrast to Harue’s excitement. “This is the Invocarium: The Goddess Codex.” She pulled back the cloth to reveal a portion of the cover, soft black leather engraved in strange silver markings. A language, Corwin realized, but one he didn’t know.
“It’s the most sacred of all the books in the priesthood’s archives,” Valora continued. “I alone knew where it was kept. When Rendborne replaced me, I never had the chance to tell the new high priestess where it was. Not that I would have. Rendborne can’t be allowed to get his hands on it.”
“Why, what secrets does it contain?” Corwin said.
Valora pulled the book close to her chest. “No one living has ever read it. Few would even dare. But it’s said to hold the knowledge of how to summon the power of the goddess herself, known as the Paragon spell.”
The power of a god, Corwin thought. Just what Magnar and Rendborne both wanted. “You were right to get it then. But it was sheer luck that you didn’t all die in the attempt.” Unless maybe it wasn’t. Not if the vision was true.
“Luck?” Harue said with a perplexed look. “But there’s no such thing, your highness.”
“Prince Corwin,” Xia said, stepping forward. “When Valora told us what the book could do, we thought it best to retrieve it in case we failed to get the Hellsteel. Did we find it?”
“We did,” Corwin said.
Kate folded her arms over her chest. “Yes, but I’m not sure we should use it.”
“What do you mean?” Valora cocked her head.
“Magnar used it to kill my brother,” Corwin said. “When he did, this smoke and shadow thing came out of the Hellsteel. Same as it did when I killed Gavril. Magnar was afraid of it, though. It did something to him.” He looked at Kate, remembering her fear of it. “What was it?”
She hugged her arms tighter around her body, suppressing a shudder. “I don’t know. It just felt wrong. Like death itself. I sensed it with my magic.”
At Valora’s urging, Corwin recounted the events in the Hellgate, the other listening raptly.
When Corwin finished, Dal said, “It seems that Rendborne exposed Magnar to it on purpose. I bet he’d been planning it all along.”
Corwin nodded. “I agree. All this time he’d been promising Magnar he would restore magic to Seva using the Hellsteel, but given what we know about Rendborne, that doesn’t fit his motivations at all.”
Kate turned a grim expression toward the others. “That explains the bowls set around the platform. Some sort of spell. It must’ve been meant to contain the smoke. That would explain why Rendborne fled the moment Corwin disturbed the spell.”
“But what did the smoke do?” Corwin said. “Does anyone have a guess?”
“Sounds like a chemical reaction to me,” Harue said, seeming more like she was talking to herself than answering a question. “Something about its unique characteristics must react to the blood. Or maybe it’s the release of energy at the time of impalement. Or—”
“I know what it does,” Bonner said, cutting Harue off before she could really get going.
Corwin stared at him, aware for the first time how diminished he appeared, like a man suffering from a long illness. “You touched the shadow when you picked up the Hellsteel.”
It wasn’t a question, but Bonner nodded as if it were, his gaze fixed on the ground.
“What happened?”
After several long moments, Bonner raised his head, meeting their gazes at last. “My magic . . . it’s gone. That smoke thing took it.”
24
Corwin
THE LOSS OF BONNER’S MAGIC was only the beginning.
In the days that followed their escape from the Hellgate, many of the wilders freed by Gavril’s death made their way to the dragon caves—far more than Corwin would’ve guessed given their odds of survival, but it seemed none of them had run into nightdrakes. That should’ve been impossible given the creatures’ ferocity, but it was true. Another sign from the goddess? Corwin wondered, hearing report after report. Or perhaps it was due to the Ruin, as they’d come to call the smoke and shadow thing, that had kept the nightdrakes away.
The name grew out of the stories the escaped wilders told upon their arrival. A few of them had been touched by it, the smoke having swelled and spread through the Hellgate like ground fog on a chill night. Same as Bonner, their powers were gone, taken by whatever magic was released from the Hellsteel when it was used to kill.
But that wasn’t even the worst of it. Some of the freed wilders had seen the Ruin reach a cluster of everweeps. It had spread over them, seeping into them—and the flowers had withered and died moments later, as if struck by a blight. And it didn’t stop there. The damage had traveled far beyond the boundaries of the Wandering Woods, or so the wilders had claimed. Given the quickly growing knowledge of the everweeps as the source of Rime’s magic, an air of panic was steadily rising, magist and wilder alike afraid of what would happen if the Ruin didn’t stop.
Despite the risks, Corwin rode out to witness the breadth of the destruction for himself. Tira and Kate went with him. The everweeps scattered throughout the base of the mountains remained in bloom, but the moment they reached the valley leading toward Norgard, the path of the Ruin became clear. Ahead, the fields of everweeps had turned to black, transforming the color and brilliance of Rime into a shadow scrawled over the land itself. The blight followed a clear line—on one side the everweeps had wilted and turned to black, on the other the flowers remained untouched. The sight reminded Corwin of the uror sign, half black, half white.
“My gods.” Tira covered her mouth with a hand. Hardly anything seemed to daunt her.
“It’s like the end of all things,” Kate said, gaze fixed on the Ruin ahead.
“And the waters turned to dust, and the earth to rust,” Tira murmured.
“Is that poetry?” Corwin asked.
Tira shook her head. “A nursery rhyme. It’s called ‘Here in the End That Was the Beginning.’ It always made me sad as a kid, even though I’d never imagined anything that could compare to it. But this . . .”
They were simple words, but they said everything. Corwin swallowed the grief rising up his throat. It was as if Rime itself was dying, the heart and soul of it succumbing to a plague.
Desperate to break the swell of emotion, he smiled grimly. “I must say, Tira, it’s no wonder you grew up to be a mercenary.”
Tira snorted, although the sound seemed more obligatory than truly amused. “The poem isn’t supposed to be sad, actually. It’s about the Ascension of the Godking and Seva’s rebirth.”
“Well, that’s a cheerful way for your people to—” Corwin broke off, suddenly remembering what Valora had said about the godtears of Seva, and how its disappearance was the gods’ punishment against humankind for killing o
ne of their own.
“What are you thinking, Corwin?” Kate asked, eyes steely.
Corwin half-consciously raised a hand to the crystal vial around his neck, running his fingers against the smooth edge. “Valora said the gods punished the people of Seva when Fanen killed Sevan. But what if it wasn’t the gods that caused the magic to vanish but the use of the Hellsteel itself?”
Heavy silence greeted him.
Then Kate shook her head. “I hope you’re wrong. The Ruin seems to have stopped for now, but if Rime were to lose all its magic . . .” She trailed off, afraid to speak the words.
Corwin’s fear was lit anew as well. Without magic they wouldn’t be able to defend themselves against nightdrakes for long. The walls would fail, the people overrun by the nightmarish beasts.
Tira dismounted and walked toward the line of blackened everweeps. Kneeling down at the border, she pulled one of the healthy plants from the ground. “If what’s happening here now is the same as what happened in Seva, why does the Ruin stop here? All of Seva was affected by the death of Sevan. The stories say our magic once ran from sea to sea, across the entire continent.” She walked back to Corwin and handed him the flower. “But there’s no sign of the Ruin on this plant, and it was right next to the blighted ones.”
Corwin frowned, too cautious to be optimistic, although he was as concerned as Tira was.
“Perhaps it’s the death itself,” Kate said, her gaze unfocused, as if her mind were drifting far afield.
“What?” Corwin and Tira asked in unison.
“Magic releases at death.” She nodded, her gaze coming into focus once more. “Remember what happened with the trident? Perhaps the Hellsteel does something to the victim’s magic, changes it somehow. A chemical process, Harue would call it. A reaction.”
“You mean Gavril’s power is somehow responsible for this?” Corwin waved toward the blackened swaths of everweeps.
Shadow & Flame Page 29