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Authors: Katya Reimann

Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (27 page)

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles

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Palamar, recognizing the preliminaries of the spell that opened the vault beneath the altar, moved obediently to face her across the stone plinth.

When Dervla had first revealed the chapel’s secret, initiating Palamar to the fellowship of three who guarded the High Priestess’s deepest secrets, the young acolyte had felt thrilled and awed. Now she watched Dervla posture with a sense of growing disdain. Was this power? This prancing, this posing, this elaborate coiling and calling of earth and the gods’ forces?

Whatever it was, it was not power as the Lacontes taught it. Great Marie of old had described the strength of her magic as a burning lance, fit to pierce and destroy her enemies in the Prince’s name.
My power is
a
sword unto my hand
, the old Countess had written, in the scanty archive of neatly preserved scrolls that was all the record Tierce stronghold boasted of her life and accomplishments.
It served me well, as I served Princess Lousielle, and the pledge to which I had so willingly sworn myself.

A rush of cold air, as though the ground had taken a ragged breath, announced the completion of the ritual, as Dervla pierced her finger for the few drops of blood that unsealed the hidden door. Squinting, Palamar glimpsed the shadow of steep steps concealed beneath the altar stone. All that was truly needed here was a drop or two of blood, along with the call to Elianté and Emiera. The rest—the rest made a pretty show of power, but it was no more than posturing.

“Shall I stand and watch the flame?”

“It will keep.” For the spell’s duration, the altar stone was a mere specter, allowing access to the staircase. Dervla’s foot was already on the top step. “Come with me. You will serve witness for me as I read the scrolls.”

Palamar gave Dervla a little bow of acquiescence. Serving witness. The words of a High Priestess to one in training beneath her. In Dervla’s mind, everything concerning the High Priestess’s power was an honor to beg for. It was how Dervla herself had learned from her own mother, who had served as High Priestess before her. She could not see that her own acolyte, lacking the feelings of child to mother, could not accept it in the same wise.

Palamar stepped down through the spectral altar of stone, cold like the passing of a shadow, into the tight coil of steps. She ducked as she passed the brazier, avoiding its substance and heat. Once, this all had seemed a wonder. The widening spiral of the steps had seemed a perfect mirror of the Great Twins’ power, a cord, a corridor, leading her to the past, to ancient wisdom.

With her knowledge now of the travesty that lay beneath, that surety had long since departed.

She descended, calmly, in memorized steps through the blind realm of the staircase. Dervla’s chain clinked, magnified in the small space of the steps to a sound like dropping water. This space was unnaturally dry, parched sere by centuries of magic.

At the spiral’s end, a beautiful green light awaited. Goddess-light, from the spiral vault of the sacral chamber. Palamar stooped to enter the narrow crevice of its door. Dervla was already across the room, hunting in a rack of well-thumbed scrolls. The circular room, lined with beautifully dressed stone cobbles from the center of the floor to the apex of its vault, had been built to a design of masterful simplicity—a simplicity that had long since been obscured by a chaos of scroll racks, of boxes and cases burgeoning with parchment, of paper, bound books, clumsy sheaves of vellum and ill-cured rolls of animal skin.

Marie Laconte had left her heirs a tiny archive of her life, and a forbidding creed of unwritten principles. Delcora, Dervla’s mother, had created something far more terrible and complex.

Palamar, bile rising in her throat, could not make herself look at the high racks, the massive clutter. Dervla had told her once, and proudly, that all this massive accumulation of paper had been brought here by her mother. So familiar was she to the room’s stink of her mother’s rank, stale power, trapped overlong in this mass of paper, that she could not see that this was a matter for shame, not satisfaction.

Of the original Brood Coven, Marie Laconte’s warrior strength had been at the center of her magic; just as it had been artistry for corrupt old Melaudiere; or music for Dame Julie. Delcora’s special ability had been to capture power in words. But something in that talent had turned her mind when she’d begun to set those words to paper. In the morass between record, history, and capture, the old High Priestess had lost her bearings.

When she’d inherited her mother’s High Priestess’s chain, Dervla had done nothing to clean house. Steeped and stewed in Delcora’s histories, she insisted that every word her mother had written was truth akin to prophecy.

By now, Palamar had read enough of Delcora’s bitter ravings that she no longer believed this was possible. The old High Priestess had recorded countless visions along with her histories and interpretations of worship, court, her enemies and her friends.

But even if she did not believe in Delcora’s strength of prophecy, it could not be denied that there was power in what the old woman had committed to paper. The words, whether read or spoken aloud, held a
curious, augmenting power. To read them enhanced one’s own strength with a certain thick, curdled energy. Palamar did not care for the feeling herself, but she could understand why it drew Dervla here so often. Sometimes the power the High Priestess received from the scrolls was so strong, it gave her a nimbus of pale green goddess-light.

Old Delcora’s writings had power, that was certain, but whether they held truth—that was a different question.

Across the room, Dervla scrambled to her feet, completely blind to her acolyte’s secret musings. She clutched a half-unrolled scroll of parchment, the dun color of the sheets on which her mother had recorded her most treasured foreseeings. Impatient, she swept a lectern clear of its cluttered paper and weighted the scroll open with a pair of velvet sandbags.

“It is Andion’s Moon,”
Dervla read aloud, her voice low, incantatory.

It is Andion’s Moon, and the Great Twins came and danced in my dreams. Fair Emiera, with a gown of stars and moonbeam. Elianté, the huntress lady, clothed only in her ragged hair. They laughed unto me, and set a mirror in my hand.

—Why come to me this night?—I asked them, all despairing. —Corinne is dead, her son unfit to rule. Why come to me?—

Their laughter burned me. In the mirror, I saw a blaze of light, a new sun rising, the hope of Kingship reborn. My heart burst, for I saw then that Roualt-the-fool would not live long as Tielmark’s Prince. Another, not yet born, would arise in his place, rise and fulfill the prophecy to which old Lousielle bound us.

I dreamed this in the richness of a summer that has brought us Corinne’s last child and our sweet Princess’s death. But I see a future, a summer, when all I have seen this night shall come to pass. Midsummer and the Sword God’s moon will pass away with a great betrayal of trust and faith. Only then, under the God-King’s Moon, Tielmark’s Prince will wax to King.

All this I did foresee, as the Goddess Twins moved within me, beyond my poor mortal strength.

Dervla’s voice trailed away.

“A betrayal,” she said grimly, still standing at the lectern. “Foreseen for the very night of the passing of the Sword-god’s moon.” She closed the scroll with an abrupt gesture.

“Benet must have made a pact to protect the assassin-boy.” As always,
Dervla had a ready interpretation for her mother’s vaguest promises—however often her prior interpretations had come to nothing. “I insisted that he not offer the boy Tielmark’s protection, and he has betrayed that trust. The gods watch closely now—perhaps the Goddess-Twins drove Siànne against him as a warning.”

Palamar remained silent. If the High Priestess could imagine no other betrayals had gone forward this night, it was not for a lowly acolyte to correct her.

The High Priestess loosed a melancholy sigh. “If only this were not a necessary passage, a fall through which our dear Prince must pass, learning to humble himself before his blood becomes one with the land as King. If only he would listen! Instead, all must be done secretly to prepare him.”

She turned to Palamar. “We have come at last to Andion God-King’s Moon, and it is time to share my mother’s deepest secret.”

Palamar held herself very still, startled.

Dervla crossed to the center of the room. She levered up the center cobble, revealing a secret cache that Palamar had not known existed. The High Priestess called a spell, and the object within levitated to her like a falcon to its master’s fist.

It was a knife. A short, narrow blade, inscribed with runes. The metal was dull colored and dingy, as though it had been intended for use centuries past, but missed its purpose, lingering on into this age, full of thwarted, darkening power.

“What is that?”

“It is the
Ein Raku,
the Kingmaker blade. My mother bested the goat-herder for this weapon,” Dervla said, holding up the blade, her eyes alight, eager. “With that victory, she earned the right and duty to play Kingmaker herself, a right she passed to me, for the closing of all Tielmark’s cycles.”

Palamar recognized the blade from family stories, though the Laconte version had run a little differently. It had been Marie who had seized the blade from the goat-herder’s hand, not Delcora.

“What are you going to do?”

“Use it to complete what is foretold: Under the God-King’s Moon, I will use it to make Benet King.”

A coldness touched Palamar’s neck. A shadow of apprehension swept her. For a moment, she almost believed in Delcora’s prophecy.

“But what does that mean?” she asked. “What are you going to do?”

“The Bissanty Envoy had a meeting with the Prince today—just before Benet met with Gaultry. I was present when he shared the news: Sciuttarus has confirmed the rumors. It’s official now. The killer-boy has been raised to Bissanty’s Tielmaran throne.”

“Confirmed the rumors?” Palamar had heard no rumors.

“Why else have we been chasing him?” Dervla said impatiently. “Do you attend to
nothing
that I share with you? Why else have I been so pleased with Gaultry Blas’s return, so set upon bringing her boy in?”

Dervla had told Palamar only that the Brood would be best protected with the boy in her secret custody. She seemed to have forgotten that in this rush to a new plan.

“You were going to kill him?” Palamar said, fever heat coursing through her. If so, all her secret planning had been for nothing. If she had just known, she would have put the weight of her magic behind Dervla’s plan’s
success.
“You were going to strike him through the heart with the Kingmaker blade?”

“At the appropriate time and hour.” Dervla nodded. “But it won’t happen that way now. Not with Benet having sworn him Tielmark’s protection.” She flourished the
Ein Raku.
“But while we have this knife, and the boy remains close by, all is not lost. We only need to find some way to get around Benet’s pledge without dishonoring it.”

Palamar stared at the
Ein Raku,
fascinated by its promise of power. Small wonder the metal looked old and tired: The power trapped within that blade screamed strong enough to call the gods’ attention. She found herself thinking of the prophecy:
The Path of the Prince of Tielmark will run red with the blood of the Common Brood.
The Brood-prophecy Marie had sworn to set her heirs on the path to make the Prince a King, or die trying. This was the blade that could complete that prophecy.

She watched as Dervla flashed the blade, focused only on herself, holding it possessively to her. The woman was blind if she imagined Palamar would let the chance slip past for vengeance and Tielmark’s Kingship both.

But then, Palamar already knew she was blind.

Dervla had stood helplessly, watching the old Duchess slip away, her heart’s-blood-energy syphoning into the unborn Princeling’s cradle. “Gabrielle, Gabrielle!” she had cried. “You must not go so far! The protections for the child are strong enough already! Keep something for yourself!” The High Priestess had never suspected that it was her own charm on the old Melaudiere’s neck that forced the old sorceress to push beyond
her strength’s limits, had no idea she was witnessing the righteous punishment of Elsbet Laconte’s murderer. Palamar’s secret thread of power within the High Priestess’s charm had spent itself completely undetected, breaking the old woman’s vigor, sending her to her death completely in secret.

A public hanging would have been preferable, but Palamar had accepted that she would never get that. She had a pragmatic turn of mind; as the warrior-countess Marie’s granddaughter, she had been trained to live within the limits of her strength and influence.

The young heir to great Marie Laconte stared at her mistress, and willed herself to be patient.

She would have the
Ein Raku,
and the killer-boy, and she would be the Kingmaker who completed the Brood-prophecy. Nothing, she would let nothing get in her way.

They all thought she was weak.

She would prove them wrong.

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles

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