The Dragonprince's Heir (27 page)

She laughed, long and low. "Honest child on fire for family, you are the bonfire's heart."

"No! This is not a riddle. This is more than words. I
will not
serve the dragonswarm."

"Are you so sure of that?" she asked.

"I am certain of it! All I want is to be free of this, and mother to be free."

She shook her head. "You can't have both. But only part is yours to choose. Your mother willingly went to be the king's assurance. She didn't need my sight to know it had to be."

"It has to be?"

She nodded once. "Without a token in his hand, the king will not relent. He'll burn the kingdom down before he'll see the Dragonprince in power."

"A token in his hand? A hostage?"

She nodded.

"And you think...you see the shape of destiny, and you think Mother's choice is the right one? What is there for me? Should I go back home in secret? Should I renounce my father's name? Should I become a fisherman forgotten by the world?"

Her lips peeled back to show those teeth again. "There are shades of destiny that look like each of those, but none of them would please your little heart."

"Then what?" I couldn't keep the sneer from my voice. "What will please my little heart?"

She sniffed, short and sharp. "Become a kind of king."

"What?"

"Go back to the Tower. Become its lord, and be a noble master. It will not please the king, but he'll be satisfied with Isabelle in hand."

"I thought you meant to stop a war."

She shrugged. "I will live long enough to see it, either way. But you may not. The kingdom's stale order needs an answer. Not a rival, not a war, but a weight to drag it back. A story strong enough to change men's hearts. A memory of what might have been. You might buy a generation."

"And then?"

She laughed. "And then you will be dead. It will not be your destiny to care."

"There has to be another way. I do not want to be a lord. Not like that. I'd rather join her in King Timmon's darkest cells."

She shook her head at that, and it was not with the cold certainty of knowing. It was a frantic gesture. Her narrow eyes darted to the screen of trees, toward the inner bower.

Without looking back to me, she hissed an answer. "You will find no peace in that. By Haven's hope, I cannot stop the fires if you should join her there."

"And who are you?"

"I am bitter woe and the memory of joy. I am a prison and a dream. I am Laelia, last daughter of Elspaur."

I sighed, torn, but I had spoken the truth already. I had no desire to be Lord of the Tower. Not alone. "I will go to the Tower," I said. "But I will not be any kind of challenge to the king. I only mean to hide among the people and keep them focused on their projects."

She bit her bottom lip, sharp teeth drawing tiny beads of crimson blood. She stared at me, nostrils flaring once again. She closed her eyes and spoke as in a dream. "You could learn to love the royal role. It was your father's secret ambition and your mother's certain hope. You were born to rule, and you will make them proud. How many thousand lives might you protect to share your father's legacy?"

The words rolled over me like waves. They tugged at my heart like ebbing tides, and dragged me back toward her. Eyes still closed, she raised her hands and stretched them out of me to take.

But I shook my head, resolute, and said, "I'm sorry. That is not my destiny."

As I walked away, she gasped in shock behind me, and it sounded almost like a sob.

14. Flame and Shadow

The garden's twilight glow was gone now, though I could not recall its fading. Between one moment and the next, it felt like midnight. Stars glittered far above, and the white flaked stone of the gravel path reflected light almost as well as the high wall at my right hand.

But I barely needed light. It was an easy path, and the darkness fit my mood. I felt scoured, wrung out, and battered. I felt alone beneath the stars, with all the weight of worlds above me, pressing down.

The lady's prophecies glowed black and painful as a coal in my memory. My fists and jaw were clenched so hard they ached. My throat felt raw. I forced a calming breath and tried to
think
.

What had she really told me? Nothing
real
. Nothing
true
. It was only the things she guessed and her interpretation. It was her secret vision, her inner fears. And yet...it had the ring of truth. It had echoes of the harsh reality I'd found everywhere outside my father's stronghold.

Mother had to be a prisoner. Father had to leave us all alone. And I...I could do nothing. I could go play at being lord and live in wealth and comfort, but where did that path lead?

The lady hadn't said it, but it led me right back here again. This king would die, and in time my mother would, too. She'd die a prisoner far from home, surrounded by strangers and enemies, and still the Tower would represent a threat to some new king. Of course it would.

Then the king would come against me, and I would be prepared, and I would hold the walls until he understood I could not be beaten. Then I would eat my pride and swear an oath, and he would grant us peace for a few years.

I did not want a war. I didn't want to kill the king. But some dark destiny seemed to demand it here. That's what she'd said. The price had to be paid. A righteous man might carry it—might make the sacrifice again and again and again—but in the end, the world would have to burn.

What were my options? The Tower would need a lord. The king would need a hostage. I stopped in place, jaw hanging open, eyes straining wide. Was it as easy as that? I looked back over my shoulder, searching for the lady, but she was gone.

I looked ahead and saw the gateway near at hand. I broke into a run and burst beneath the arch. Uncle Themm still stood just where we had left him. He might not have moved at all. I rushed up to him and caught him by his scrawny shoulders. "I've found a way to save the world!"

For one long moment he said nothing, just stared into my eyes. And then he shook his head as if coming from a daze and laughed, surprised and most amused. It was a very human laugh, and when it broke the night, it left something kinder, something softer in its place.

"I didn't know the world was dying," he said.

"Laelia said so. She promised me the world would burn, and she named my destiny."

"Oh! You met Laelia?"

I frowned. "You brought me to her."

"Ah. Of course."

"She bade me be the Tower's lord. She bade me respect the choice my mother's made, respect her sacrifice, and help to make a better world from my place on Father's throne."

He looked around, nervous. "Tell me this later. Right now we should speak of other—"

"No. Listen. I refused her offer, and I have found another way."

He raised his eyebrows, and I felt him paying more attention than he wished to let me see. "You convinced her of this?"

"No. She was not open to convincing. In the end, she tried...."

"Yes?"

I shrugged. "She tried compelling me with words."

He was holding his breath. I saw it, though I did not understand. "And then?" he asked.

"I turned and walked away. She cried, but she did not object again."

The wizard's face split in a huge grin. "I hoped. I hoped and hoped. For
years
I hoped to find some way around her. And then I read Dellis's note. And it was you. It could have been no other."

I frowned up at him. "What is this then?"

"This is a way to save the world."

"You didn't know the world was dying."

He grinned and waggled a finger at me. "You're clever. But no. I've found a way to counter Laelia."

"It doesn't matter. Let her believe what she will. I've found a different destiny—"

"Not that," he said. "Forget all that. It's nothing more than elven superstition. But
this
...this is magnificent."

"What is?"

He spun a finger in the air between us and wove a wreath of living flame. Before I could react, he stood up on his toes, stretched his hands in pantomime, and dropped the wreath to rest on my shoulders.

It roiled with brilliant light, then died away. My uncle's eyebrows danced as he waited for me to understand.

"I can break your magic," I said. "We already knew this."

"Yes. Yes. But we didn't know it would work on
her
magic."

"Her?" I asked. And then I understood. For just an instant she had woven me a hallucination of perfect peace, but it had dissolved like my uncle's wreath of fire.

"She...she ordered me to return to her," I said to his excited nod. "It caught me for a moment, but then I left. She was trying to compel me? Oh. That is what she did to you."

"Precisely. It is her power. She is a kind of trap. A warden of the soul. She creeps inside men's heads and gains control."

"But she can't control me."

He grinned. "Only for a moment, then it melts away."

"I see. And that's why you called this detour my work to do."

"Well...that is not
all
the reason."

I chewed my thumbnail, thinking. "But how...how did she come here? She said she is a daughter of Elspaur, and that's as far in the north as the Tower is south."

My uncle looked away. "I brought her here."

"You?"

"I brought her here to protect someone. It seemed wise. It was not."

Something hot and angry flared behind my breastbone. "You brought me here for that?"

He raised his hands protectively, "I made a mistake years ago, and only you can correct it."

I raised my voice above his explanation. "My mother is a prisoner of the king, and I am now a fugitive myself. My father's gone, my people are abandoned, and when you find me with my...my strange inheritance, you decide it's time to deal with this problem of yours?"

Themmichus drew himself up tall. "This is not an unconnected matter. I brought her here—"

"I do not care!"

"Listen to me, child! I brought her here to tame your father!"

His words struck like lightning in my mind. My heart hammered and my knees felt weak. I held Themmichus's eyes and whispered, "My father?"

"Indeed. Daven is very much alive."

"My father is in that garden?"

Themmichus nodded, silent now.

"Why?"

"He came to me," Themmichus said. "To my very rooms within the Halls of Justice. Inside the capitol."

"That shouldn't have been possible?" I guessed it from my uncle's tone.

He nodded. "But Daven...he's something different. He wrapped his hands in fire and shadow and tore his way through our defenses like they were spiderwebs."

"But why did you imprison him?"

My uncle shook his head. "I didn't. He begged me to. He'd seen something during his journeys. In the ruins where Three Cities used to be. In the Northlands. Not the dragons' work, but something men had done. Something worse than war. Daven tried to...fix it. To make things right."

"And?"

The wizard looked away. "It drove him mad."

"So for that, you—"

"No. I never passed a judgment, Taryn. But Daven insisted he was dangerous. He called himself a monster. He said the monster had control of all his powers, and it would burn the world to ash."

"Haven's name. He could do that. Laelia said he could."

Themmichus nodded. "I have glimpsed your father's power. I believe it. And he feared so much that he would hurt you or Isabelle. He asked me out of mercy...." He couldn't finish the sentence.

I lost my patience. "What? What did he ask of you?"

Instead of answering me, my uncle went past me to the horses. Anger kindled in my stomach, but just before I shouted at him, he retrieved my sword from one of the saddlebags.

He held it out to me with an almost ceremonial gesture. "You never wondered what a blade like this was made for?"

I didn't take the blade. Instead I chewed my thumbnail, afraid to comprehend. He waited. At last, I said, "I haven't had it long. But tell me. What is it for?"

"Killing the Dragonprince. It is custom made to that very purpose."

"No," I said. "You're wrong. It is beautiful."

"It
is
beautiful. And it has a special magic."

"Put it away," I snapped.

The wizard ignored me. "Lareth and Daven designed it between them for one purpose. It can deconstruct a Chaos binding."

"That means nothing to me, uncle. Put it away."

"That means this sword can dissolve your father's kind of magic, the way your skin dissolves a wizard's. Or an elf's."

"But why would he want to make...." I saw the answer and let my question die.

My uncle answered anyway. "Because he didn't trust himself. And he knew no one strong enough to stand against him. So he made the weapon that could cut him down."

"You didn't use it."

The wizard shook his head. "No. I could not. But he would have gone to the king or to the Master Wizards next."

I nodded. "So you brought him here instead. And Laelia...."

"She wrapped him in a dream," Themmichus said. "He lives a gentle fantasy that keeps him harmless."

"That is almost another kind of death, if she keeps him from returning to the world. This elf of yours is just a pretty crypt?"

"I did not intend her for that role. I wanted her to step inside his mind and soothe the madness, but she cannot change a man. She can only hide him from himself."

"What does that mean? What has truly become of him?"

The wizard chewed his lip for a moment, looking wretched. "I cannot say."

"Why?" I asked, but I answered myself a heartbeat later. "Oh. She won't let you see him. And
you
can't get past her power."

"She came because I told her what could happen at the worst. When she saw him from afar, she believed and was afraid. But when she saw his mind, once she'd spoken with him, she set herself to guarding him most jealously."

"She's that afraid of what he might do?"

My uncle hesitated. I barely caught it. But then he nodded. "Yes. Yes, that must be it. And now she guards Daven more fiercely than I ever intended. She will not let him out. She will not even let me speak with him again. She keeps him trapped within her dream."