Taliesin Ascendant (The Children and the Blood) (4 page)

She wondered what she’d say when she saw the council. They’d driven Carter out eight years before, ignoring his warnings about the Blood and writing him off as insane. As far as she knew, nothing had changed since, and the night Carter died, Cornelius had still dismissed everything he’d said as just fantasy.

But Carter had believed she could change their minds. As a wizard, and as someone whose family had died in an attack by the Blood, he seemed to have thought they’d listen to her where they never had to him.

And they could protect her. He’d said that too. Right before he called her his queen.

She grimaced, pushing the memory back into the morass of emotion and nightmare she was desperately trying to ignore. He’d been dying. In all the chaos, she’d probably just misunderstood that part.

Or something.

Exhaling, she forced her attention to the highway. Traffic was growing heavier, though the area around the sedan was still relatively clear. Overpasses swept by, bearing signs for roads whose abbreviations she couldn’t understand, and concrete barriers closed in, obscuring all but the peaked rooftops of the houses behind them.

She looked ahead. Skyscrapers amassed like giants on the horizon, their spires turned misty blue by the smog. The concrete walls around the road vanished, giving way to an enormous steel bridge, and beyond the railing, the murky water blurred with the gray sky.

At an exit like any other, the two cars left the interstate. Houses clustered around them almost immediately, each building identical in shape with only the faded colors changed. In chain-link fenced yards, children played, while on street corners, teenagers watched the world go by.

They didn’t seem to notice the sedans sliding past.

Neighborhoods surrendered to fast food restaurants and check cashing stores, and all the people on the sidewalks looked human, though she knew that didn’t mean anything. Minutes passed, and gradually, the stores dwindled until, at a weathered road by a lonely gas station, the driver turned. Rolling hills swallowed the last vestiges of the city, and in only a few moments, the landscape returned to countryside.

Miles crept by and then the driver slowed to turn again at a gravel track nearly swallowed by weeds. The road climbed, and her eyes narrowed as they came over the rise.

In the distance, a warehouse complex sprawled across the landscape, with an enormous factory towering up at its heart. She shifted on the seat, trying to get a better view. A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire protected the property, and behind the barrier, a field of scrub grass stretched for almost half a mile to a hodgepodge of concrete and aluminum-sided buildings. A pair of decaying security booths huddled by the fence, one inside the property and one out, and weathered signs flanked the gate, declaring in sun-bleached letters that the buildings beyond were condemned.

The cars pulled to a stop, and a wizard climbed from the first sedan to walk over to the security booth. At a small keypad mounted on the wall, he punched in a code and sent a small burst of magic into the device, and then headed back to the car as the gate rolled aside.

Ashe’s brow drew down in alarm. For the barest blink of an eye, the air seemed to shiver and, though she hadn’t noticed any fog, the view ahead suddenly became infinitesimally less hazy than before.

As though detecting her confusion, Cornelius glanced back with a cautioning look. Frustration rose in her and, as if seeing that too, his expression took on an edge of insistent request.

She looked away.

The cars pulled through the opening and rumbled down the path. Warehouses closed in around them, each gaping doorway revealing only shadows. At the end of the gravel track, the monolith of the factory waited, its white-painted walls chipping with age.

On the warehouse rooftops, wizards stepped into view, their gazes tracking the sedans.

Ashe glanced to Cornelius, but the man simply ignored them and then twitched his fingers to the automatic window controls when several more wizards emerged from behind the buildings to block the road. Weaponless, the men still managed to appear threatening as they walked toward the cars. Looking briefly into the first vehicle, they continued to the second, and then stopped when they spotted her in the back.

“Who–”

“You will let us pass,” Cornelius interrupted calmly.

Snapping his mouth shut, the man’s gaze went to Cornelius, and then he jerked his head in a stiff bow. Stepping back, he waved a hand and immediately, the wizards cleared the road.

Cornelius rolled up the window. “Go,” he said to the driver.

His eyes locked on the path, the driver did as he was told.

Beyond the warehouses, an ocean of a parking lot surrounded the immense factory. Heavily overgrown and cracking, the concrete nevertheless showed faint remnants of orange lines where the parking spaces had once been. In spots halfway across the sprawl, the sedans came to a stop. Cornelius climbed from the vehicle and then turned, pulling her door open.

He glanced to the driver as Ashe got out of the car. “Go make certain the council is ready,” he ordered.

The man’s eyes flicked from Cornelius to her and back again. Without a trace of expression, he nodded and then turned, striding toward the factory and motioning for the other wizards to accompany him.

Cornelius watched them go, waiting till they’d entered the massive building before glancing down at her. “Remember,” he said, his voice barely breaking the stillness of the parking lot. “No sign. No reaction to anything.” He paused. “Please.”

Her brow drew down warily, but she gave a tiny nod.

Echoing the motion more firmly, he started for the building.

Spanning the width of several city blocks, at its heart the factory easily stood ten stories high. Smoke stacks towered from its core, dwarfing the shorter buildings edging the complex. Broken windows stared blindly from the entire height of the building, while the surviving glass reflected the gray sky. Weathered railings bordered the slope to a handicapped entrance, and at the metal door, Cornelius paused, glancing back again. Briefly, he studied her face, and then without a word, he pulled the door open and then held it so she could precede him inside.

Heavily, the door swung shut behind them, cutting off the dull sunlight. Deep shadows filled the hallway, broken only by hints of illumination from up ahead. Tarnished door handles glinted in the gloom, suggesting abandoned offices or storage areas lining the hall.

But unlike the parking lot, the corridor was anything but silent. A din of voices carried from deeper in the building, the noise distorted as it reverberated on the walls. Growing steadily warier, she followed Cornelius through the turns of the hallway, emerging finally at the factory floor.

Despite his request, she balked.

People were everywhere. Cots crammed the enormous concrete floor, divided one from another by curtains stretched across metal frames. Walkways encircled the expanse beneath a ceiling at least sixty feet high. Grimy skylights filtered light down onto the sea of humanity, all of whom seemed to be talking or crying or yelling at once.

And each of them was a wizard.

Unable to breathe, she forced her feet to keep moving as Cornelius didn’t slow. Her gaze darted across the crowds, landing on faces and then flitting away, as she trailed him along the narrow path between the cots and curtains.

They were all Merlin.

She fought to take a breath. Of course they were all Merlin. What’d she expect? But the sheer scope of them all in one place was overwhelming.

People looked over as she passed and, in a slow wave, the din began to fade. Countless faces tracked her, their expressions ranging from nonexistent to fearful, and she saw some mothers turn their children away.

She struggled not to wince, realizing what she must look like, covered in bloodstains.

Striding to the far end of the massive room, Cornelius came to a halt at the base of a metal stairway. By the railing, the driver from the sedan stood, his eyes on the middle distance and his face like stone.

“Are they assembled?” Cornelius asked, glancing to the doors lining the walkway.

Staring straight ahead, the large man nodded.

Cornelius started up the stairs.

As she followed, the driver’s gaze flicked down to her. With Cornelius gone, the man’s impassive expression vanished, transforming into an almost predatory distrust. Quivering at the threat in his eyes, she watched him cautiously as she climbed after Cornelius up the metal steps and onto the walkway.

At a door several yards from the stairs, Cornelius stopped. He cast a glance to her again, as though confirming something she couldn’t hope to understand, and then he headed inside.

Around the long conference table dominating the center of the room, a dozen wizards looked up, their conversation coming to a halt. With a motion somewhere between a nod and a bow, Cornelius stepped to one side, affording them a view of Ashe standing beyond the doorway.

To a person, they went still.

Her heart began pounding harder. With a glance to Cornelius, she walked into the room, turning slightly as he shut the door behind her. A small thread of his magic raced around the frame, silencing the noise from the factory floor.

None of the wizards said a word.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Cornelius said, turning back to face the room. “May I present Patrick’s daughter, Ashley. Though,” he amended, “she prefers to be called Ashe.”

He glanced to her. “The Merlin council.”

The wizards stared, and with everything she had, she suddenly tried to follow Cornelius’ request to not show any reaction. From the aristocratic woman with gold wireframe glasses, to the suit-clad man with oiled black hair, each of them studied her silently.

She felt like a lab specimen pinned to the wall.

At the head of the table, one of the wizards pushed to his feet, breaking the stillness. Though he was easily over seventy years old, his face was commanding beneath his silver hair and he carried his tall frame with a quiet authority that made Cornelius’ pale in comparison. His eyes went to Cornelius briefly as he approached, and with a slight bow, Cornelius stepped farther aside.

Ashe’s heart wanted to climb out of her chest.

The man’s gaze flicked over her face and clothes, as though in a single heartbeat, he could take in everything about her, both inside and out. Barely breathing, she drove down the urge to let the magic around her become stronger as a defense.

He seemed to see the impulse anyway.

“You have nothing to fear from us,” he said softly. “My name is Darius Greyson. It is an honor to finally meet you.” He paused. “Queen Ashe.”

Her breathing stopped.

A hint of sympathy touched the imperial cast of his face. “Come have a seat,” he offered, stepping back and motioning to a chair at the end of the table.

Feeling paralyzed, she hesitated, but the only other option was to stand stupidly in front of a bunch of wizards who had yet to stop staring. Fighting to keep her face impassive, and barely succeeding, she crossed to the aging desk chair and lowered herself onto it carefully.

Circling the long table, Darius returned to his seat, with Cornelius taking the chair to his left. A sudden sense of isolation welled up in her, and she struggled to ignore it as she locked her eyes on the old man at the other end of the wooden expanse.

“I understand if you have questions,” Darius said. “We do as well. But let me begin by apologizing for taking so long to find you. I cannot imagine what you must have endured this past month until now.”

Cornelius’ gaze dropped to the table, though no other reaction touched his face. Resisting the urge to shift in her chair, Ashe kept her eyes on Darius, uncertain what to say.

“You do not know us,” Darius continued. “And, to a large degree, we do not know you. But each person in this room worked alongside the king for many years, trying to end the war.”

He paused. “Did your father have the opportunity to tell you anything before he died? About Merlin or Taliesin, or the war in which we are currently engaged?”

She swallowed. “No,” she said, her voice choked. “But the cripples did.”

His brow twitched fractionally downward, while at his side, the suit-clad man with black hair gave her a look that nearly amounted to surprise.

“And did they tell you about your role in this?” Darius asked.

The sight of Carter dying returned, and ruthlessly, she shoved the memory away. “A bit,” she managed.

He studied her face for a moment. “You are a direct descendant of Merlin,” he said. “And with your father’s death, you and your sister have become the last of the Merlin’s Children, the sole survivors of a family that has ruled our people for five hundred years.”

Ashe stared at him, and from deep inside, gibbering words rose like bees buzzing in her mind. Carter. He’d said… Carter’d known… he…

“As beneficiaries of this heritage,” Darius continued. “You hold the key to ending the war. Unlike anyone short of the Taliesin king, you can take magic from your fellow wizards and use it, or bind it away from their use, as you choose. And thus, you possess the ability to reestablish the spell that bound all of Taliesin and kept our people safe for half a millennium.

“And this was why King Patrick was killed.”

Barely breathing, she crushed down the shivers rippling from her core.

“By removing your father, and nearly removing you and your sister, Taliesin came close to securing sole possession of this ability, a situation which would have left our people in dire jeopardy. So far, the paradoxical saving grace of this war has been the fact that, while your father was unsuccessful in recreating the spell, the Taliesin king has been as well. But had Taliesin succeeded in killing you and your sister as they did your father, their king would have had time to rediscover the spell at his leisure, with no chance we could ever do the same. And the moment he finally did so, every man, woman and child of our people would have been stripped of the magical ability that protects them and makes us who we are.

“The council has spent the past month contending with this possibility. And so, if you will forgive the melodrama, with your survival, we now have hope for our own restored.”