Devlin's Justice (25 page)

The first cut was along Stephen’s left arm, a shallow cut that took long moments before it began to bleed. Arnaud then gave him a matching cut on his left arm, severing the bandage that had covered his wounded forearm.

Sweat sprang up on Stephen’s brow, and he began to pant shallowly.

The next series of cuts was on his chest. They were deeper, and when he was finished Arnaud began to peel back Stephen’s skin.

Stephen moaned.

Devlin struggled against his bonds. For the first time in years he prayed to the Gods.
I will do anything, anything you ask of me
, Devlin promised.
I will embrace the destiny that you laid out for me as Chosen One if you but spare Stephen from this torment
.

He prayed desperately, invoking Kanjti, who had been his patron when Devlin swore the oath as Chosen One. But the Gods had turned their faces from him. They cared not for mortal woes, nor for the man whose breaths now came in half-choked sobs as he writhed under the knife.

Devlin continued straining against his bonds, jerking his arms and legs. “Stop this,” he said.

The Prince looked up from his work. “Have you changed your mind? Will you swear to give me access to your soul?”

Devlin opened his mouth, praying for the strength to lie, but no words would come out.

“I thought not,” Arnaud said. “Think hard on what you value most. I can keep your friend alive for many days like this.”

“Please,” Stephen said.

Devlin forced himself to look at his friend.

“Please,” Stephen repeated.

Was he asking for Devlin to save him? Stephen had always cast Devlin in the light of a mythical hero, but now he was paying for his naïveté.

Devlin should never have allowed him to become his friend. Never should have let another close to him. Hadn’t he learned his lesson with his family? Devlin was tainted, and he brought death to those who loved him.

The Prince set down the skinning knife, and picked up another blade. He pressed it down over Stephen’s right hand, and there was a sharp crack before Stephen screamed.

Arnaud held up Stephen’s severed thumb. “He won’t be a minstrel when I am through with him. Yet say the words and you can still save his life.”

Stephen’s face crumpled and he began sobbing uncontrollably.

Arnaud dropped the severed thumb on the table, as if it were so much trash, then walked around so he stood on the other side. The side closest to Devlin.

Arnaud picked up Stephen’s left hand.

Devlin could endure no more. Arnaud had to be stopped. At any cost. He released the hold on his emotions, letting all of his rage and anger well up within him. Then he surrendered his will to the mindless urgings of the Geas.

The Geas channeled Devlin’s rage into strength beyond that of mortal man. One foot broke free and, still bound to the chair, Devlin managed to half stand.

Arnaud’s back was to him as Devlin lurched forward.

A guard called out a warning, but it was too late, as Devlin rammed into Arnaud. They fell to the floor with an ominous crack.

Arnaud lay still beneath him, crushed beneath Devlin’s weight and that of the heavy chair, which weighed at least as much as a man. If luck were with him, the Prince had fallen upon his knife.

Devlin struggled and managed to pull his right arm free. He found Arnaud’s neck and began to squeeze. His body jerked as the guards tried to move the heavy chair. He could feel Arnaud’s pulse beneath his fingers as he tightened his grip. Nothing else mattered, not the shouts of the guards, nor the sharp pain that stabbed at Devlin’s side. All his will was focused on crushing the life out of his tormentor.

But even as the Prince’s pulse slowed, his prize was ripped from his grasp, and a sharp blow to Devlin’s head sent him reeling into the darkness.

He awoke to the sound of rain falling upon the roof. It was a comforting sound, as it had been since his childhood, when he and his brother would listen to the falling rain from the safety of their bedchamber up under the eaves. He clung to the memory, and to the image of falling rain, feeling strangely reluctant to wake.

But when he opened his eyes, he found himself once again in a horror chamber.

It had not been rain that he heard, but rather the sound of Stephen’s blood dripping onto the floor. Devlin watched the slowly falling drops for a moment, mesmerized by the widening stain. Then he lifted his eyes.

Stephen was dead. His eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling, and his chest was still. No more would he look to Devlin for his salvation.

It was a mercy of sorts. Devlin was too numb to feel anything. Not anger, not despair, just an overwhelming numbness.

“You killed your friend.”

Devlin turned, and saw that the Prince was seated on a chair a short distance to his left. His robe was dusty and blood-speckled, and there were shadows that would soon blossom into bruises around his throat; but he was still very much alive and unharmed.

Devlin had failed.

“Your foolish charge jarred my hand. Instead of merely cutting your friend, I plunged the knife into his chest. He died before the healer could be summoned.”

“He is free from you, at least,” Devlin said. It was a small comfort.

He looked over at Stephen, and for a moment his vision swam and he saw two figures lying there, one imposed over the other. He blinked, and then when he looked again, the image had solidified.

The blow to his head must have addled his wits. Devlin’s right arm began to throb and as he looked down he saw that his wrist was bent at an unnatural angle. He tried to move his fingers, but the swollen digits no longer obeyed.

“I warned you what would happen,” Arnaud said. “That arm is only the beginning of your punishment. I wanted to save the rest for when you would be aware of what was happening to you.”

He had gambled, and he had lost. Arnaud was still alive, and worse, Devlin had not been able to provoke the guards into giving him a mortal wound. He would spend his final days as Arnaud’s prisoner, a helpless cripple unable to influence his fate.

Only death would save him now, but he knew better than to expect that he would be granted that mercy. Not until Arnaud finally unlocked the secrets of the Geas spell.

Until now, he had clung to the belief that somehow he would find a way out of this trap. If he was strong, if he kept his wits about him, if he kept himself ready to act when the opportunity presented itself. But now, with Stephen’s death, Devlin realized that he had been fooling himself. There would be no miraculous escape. No chance to twist the ugliest of defeats into something that resembled victory.

Despair washed over him.

The door opened, and the female ensign entered, bearing a long slender object wrapped in leather. Prince Arnaud rose to his feet and accepted the object from her.

Devlin could feel it calling to him, tugging at him. Even before Arnaud unwrapped his prize, Devlin knew what it was. The Sword of Light. The weapon of the Chosen Ones, said to have been crafted by a descendant of the Forge God Egil. For centuries, it had been borne by men and women whose names were legends to the people of Jorsk.

The sword that had been lost during the Siege of Ynnis, when Devlin’s people had been conquered by the armies of Jorsk. But not before they had killed the Chosen One Saemund, and his sword had vanished. Lost for forty years, its power had lain dormant until the day that Devlin had first beheld it. Since then his destiny had been tied to the sword. Unwittingly it had led him to his doom, shaping the path that forced him to become Chosen One and later leading him back to Duncaer to reclaim this Jorskian treasure.

At great cost Devlin had brought the sword back to Kingsholm. And now, like himself, it had been handed over to the Kingdom’s greatest enemy.

With this sword King Olafur could have named a new Chosen One, found a figure to rally his people in their own defense. But the King had relinquished this advantage, just as he had discarded Devlin himself. He had thrown away the very things that might have preserved his throne.

“It knows you,” Arnaud said.

Indeed, the stone set in the pommel of the sword now glowed with a dull red fire, matching the glow within Devlin’s ring. The fingers of Devlin’s left hand scrabbled helplessly at the arm of his chair. Legend held that the sword would come when the Chosen One called it, but though Devlin bent all his will upon summoning the sword, it moved not a fraction.

Stephen had been wrong. He would have to tell him—

Grief rose up within him, as he recalled himself to the present. There would be no chance to gently chide his friend for believing in the most improbable of tales. No chance to remind him that Devlin was living flesh and not one of his pretty ballads brought to life.

No chance to make amends.

“Since you have proven immune to all other forms of persuasion, there is one more spell to try,” Arnaud said. “It may leave you witless, but in your situation that would be a kindness.”

Arnaud removed the sword from its scabbard and laid it flat on the end of the table, at the foot of Stephen’s lifeless body. Dipping his fingers in Stephen’s blood, he wrote runes along the length of the sword and upon the pommel. Then he turned it over and did the same on the other side. Coated with Stephen’s blood, the glowing jewel gave off a ghastly light, pulsing like a beating heart.

Arnaud dipped his fingers in the pooled blood a final time, and then came over to Devlin. Devlin spat on the floor, but Arnaud ignored him as he marked Devlin’s forehead and both cheeks. Lastly, he ripped open Devlin’s tunic, and applied a final rune over his heart.

The two guards who had stood passively at attention while Stephen’s flesh was cut from his body now looked distinctly uneasy. Their revulsion was matched by Devlin’s own. Blood magic was a custom of his own people, but the ritual bloodletting was tied to the remembrance of the dead and sacrifices of atonement. And then it was only your own blood that you shed. Using the blood of another to fuel your ritual was an unthinkable abomination.

Returning to the sword, Arnaud placed both of his hands over the glowing stone. He closed his eyes and began a chant in his foreign tongue.

Devlin’s head felt as if it were being squeezed in a vise. As Arnaud pressed down on the sword, it felt as if the weight of a thousand men bore down upon Devlin’s mind. Arnaud’s arms trembled with the strain and his voice shook, but still he continued his obscene rite. The pressure grew within Devlin until he knew that something must give way.

The stone in the sword brightened, its dull red glow giving way to bright red, then yellow, and finally a white light. The light filled the room, blinding Devlin until he could see nothing else.

His senses fled him. He no longer knew who he was or what was happening around him. All of his thoughts were consumed by the brilliant light that devoured him from within.

He heard a clap of thunder, then was plunged into darkness.

Sight returned to him, slowly, as did the knowledge of who he was. He was Devlin of Duncaer, the Chosen One. He blinked, and the room swam into focus around him.

Arnaud lay slumped over the table, his eyes wide and unseeing. The two guards had crumpled to the floor, their weapons beside them.

The spell must have gone wrong, somehow. Arnaud was dead or unconscious, while Devlin was still breathing. And in possession of his wits.

He would never get a better chance for escape. He flexed his hands, wondering if it was possible to free himself. His left hand was still trapped but his right . . .

He looked down. His right arm, which had been crushed, was now whole, and the three fingers of his hand were wrapped around the hilt of the Sword of Light. Burned clean of its obscene markings, the steel blade shone, while the stone in its pommel glowed, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.

It was the work of an instant to free himself. Crossing over to the fallen guards, he slit their throats in turn, ensuring they would raise no alarm.

Then he moved back to the Prince. He dragged Arnaud off the table and secured him to the wooden torture chair, using the same ropes that had once held him. He tore a strip off his tunic and used it to fashion a gag.

The sentries outside were apparently well used to the sound of a man screaming in agony, but should they hear their master’s voice, they might feel compelled to investigate.

Returning to the table, Devlin examined the body of his friend. Stephen’s face was oddly peaceful, showing no sign of his final torment.

Faint sounds alerted him that Arnaud had awakened.

Devlin turned to face his captive. A wise man would use the opportunity to flee. At any moment one of Arnaud’s minions could step through the door and Devlin would be taken prisoner again. Logic urged him to kill the Prince swiftly and make his escape. It was his duty as the Chosen One.

He set aside the Sword of Light and picked up the skinning knife, which was still stained with Stephen’s blood. Then he turned back to face his captive.

Arnaud blinked as Devlin stroked the side of the Prince’s face, deliberating echoing how the Prince had treated him.

“I promised to kill you slowly,” Devlin said. “And as Stephen told you, I always keep my promises.”

Seventeen