The Dragonprince's Heir (36 page)

I had guessed right about the ceiling, and the hall now stood open to the sky. The blazing light of dawn dazzled me after the total darkness inside my shell. And in the room two hundred men stood still as statues, pallid gray to match the inch-thick coat of dust that covered everything.

Crossbow bolts lay scattered on the debris, at varying distances all around the room, but every one was pointing at my father. And every one was encased in stone. He'd caught them all out of the air, just as he'd caught the soldiers.

The Green Eagles up against the walls looked so much like statues they were easy to forget, but the Grand Marshall showed the truth of it. He wore obsidian like a second suit of armor, leaving free his head and neck to show the muscles bulging like rope and the face twisted into a rictus of agony. Father had warped the carapace to wrench the Grand Marshall's arms behind him and force his knees down to the dais. Blood seeped along the edges and pooled around his knees.

The king, too, had been twisted. He cowered on the ground before his throne, the mask peeled back from his eyes but otherwise intact. His carapace forced his head back at an awkward angle and held him trapped so he could not look away. He would watch his Grand Marshall's agony.

Mother was still all wrapped up in stone. That surprised me. She had an extra layer, too, something like a cowl draped over her head, and I suspected it was meant to stop her hearing what would happen here. It wouldn't work. She could reason it out. As long as she was in that cage, she had to know what Father was up to.

Kinder to kill him by my own hand. He was still oblivious to me, all his attention on the whimpering old soldier. I raised the sword toward my father's back and watched it tremble in my grasp.

I took one long step forward and pressed its point against the back of his neck. "Stop."

He went as still as any of the statues in the room. "Would you cut me down?"

"I have no wish to. But you must end this brutality."

He turned to face me, unconcerned with the blade that bit into the flesh at his collarbone. I pulled it back enough to let him turn, but still blood swelled along a nasty cut and spilled down to stain his simple tunic.

He said, "You brought me here."

"Not for this."

"You watched this rabid dog attack your mother."

"I protested," I said. "And I will find justice, but this is not it."

He sneered. "There is no justice for men like this."

"Perhaps there is a greater good."

"The greater good would be to see them dead."

"Very well." I brushed past my father and climbed the dais. I held my sword to the back of the king's neck. The carapace dissolved beneath its edge so the sword sank slowly to rest against the king's skin.

I met my father's eyes. "If you want to see a bad king dead, let's have him dead. There's nothing gained from this violence."

"There's vengeance—"

"No!" I roared. "There isn't. The thing you're satisfying is not the man that was injured. My father could have killed this king before. My father could have buried him alive, but
he
decided not to give the world to Chaos. So who are you?"

The monster in my father's skin sneered back at me. "I'm everything your father couldn't be."

"No. You're just some wretched shadow."

He showed me his teeth. "I am the vengeance he
deserved
."

"You are a monster all alone. And you're at war with yourself. I know my father's still in there somewhere, and I know he fights you."

"Don't be a fool. I am your father."

I shook my head. "I know him. He's a hero. You're the sort of thing he kills."

He snarled in answer and threw a spear of crimson fire at me. I dove aside and came up in a roll, sword ready. He was there, across the distance in a flash and swords the gray of ash coalescing even as he swung.

I parried one stroke, our blades ringing like giant gongs through the still hall, then disengaged in time to catch the other on my guard. My father and I locked together for a moment, face-to-face, and he was snarling like an animal.

But his weapons fell to dust.

I didn't strike. I jumped back a pace, and he came at me again, this time with a lash of fire in his left hand and something like a dagger reversed in his right. He struck out in a frenzy, with curling flame and flashing edge, but I answered blow for blow. I dodged the strikes I couldn't turn aside. But wherever I could block or parry, Father's fire melted into soot, and stone dissolved to dust.

He kept coming. Now he had a battle-axe larger than any man could handle. Now he threw a net of braided blades. Now he shot spearheads at me. Now he summoned fire.

And everything he brought, I answered. I cut it from the air or carved it into dust. He was panting now, his shoulders heaving and his brow a fearsome scowl. He screamed in feral fury, "How can you defy me?"

"You lack imagination, and Caleb taught me well."

He roared in rage and raised his hands, and a cloud of dust billowed up before me. I slashed the sword into the heart of it, and Father slammed his hands together with a thunderclap. A wall of solid rock congealed around the blade. The construct instantly began to decay, but before I could pull the weapon free a stone larger than a fist slammed into my shoulder.

It knocked me back and ripped the sword from my grasp. I tried to spin in place and grab with my left hand, but another rock crushed into my midsection. The air rushed from my lungs. I staggered, fighting for breath, and a staff of living air struck my chest and knocked me from my feet.

Then Father came to stand over me. He held both hands outstretched, and grains of dust poured up between them, gathering into a perfect sphere larger than my head. I groaned and tried to rise, tried to roll away, but the floor itself reached up to catch my clothes in fingers of elemental earth. I lay trapped while the stone grew into a boulder above me.

I fell back, gasping. Pain deep and twisting worried at my gut, and a numbness hot and flowing washed across my shoulder. Fear hissed through it all, a screaming terror way in the back of my mind, but it couldn't seem to find purchase anywhere. It melted where it touched my skin, and left me feeling...far away. Drifting. Calm.

"Father, please," I said. "For me. For Mother. Find control."

He shuddered like a leaf in a gale, and his cloak of shadows writhed.

I held his gaze. "You do not want to kill me. I'm your son."

He raised the boulder higher, ready to smash it down and crush my skull. I wouldn't even feel it.

I said, "I missed you. All those years. But you were saving lives."

"No. I was hiding."

"You were fighting this fury. You don't want to hurt me."

He snarled at me in the monster's voice. "Oh, but I
do
."

"You don't. Not the Dragonprince. Not the chief defender against the dragonswarm. Mother said you could teach Caleb lessons in self-restraint. You're strong enough to lay your weapons down."

My father screamed in wild rage. I closed my eyes and took one slow, cool breath. Then I looked again, and the stone between his hands exploded into dust.

So did the fingers gripping me. So did the wall around my sword, and the shells he'd made to trap his enemies.

But my attention was on Father, now fallen to his knees beside me. He sobbed in grief and pain. It was an empty sound, helpless and alone. "I am not...strong enough...to save you."

"You are. You just proved it."

He shook his head feebly. "No. There are other...dangers. And I can't...save you...all. Not without the dragons' power."

Around the edges of the room, two hundred military men were recovering from their shock. I heard their voices raised—in relief or fear or anger. I heard weapons
whump
into the bed of dust or rattle as they were made ready.

I tried to put them from my mind for now. I focused on my father. "You have done your part," I said. "You brought us through rebellion and the dragonswarm. You have shown us what a hero looks like. Now it's up to us to fight."

Finally he met my eyes. He was at the edge of consciousness, exhausted by the psychic battle he had barely won. But for a moment he focused on me, and he looked puzzled. "Who is this brave young man?"

My spirits sank. Had he forgotten me again? "I'm Taryn—"

He grinned. "All grown up. It seems like only yesterday you were a child."

I smiled into his eyes and watched them close. Then motion caught my eye as Seriphenes moved, shoving past the king still on his knees. The wizard raised both hands with vengeance in his eyes.

Though every muscle ached and though I hadn't slept in days, I found the strength for one last burst. I threw myself up off the ground and lunged toward my father. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, pressed my face against his hair, and felt the searing burst of heat against my spine an instant before I heard the thunder.

For a moment I was paralyzed, too stunned to even think. Then I caught a breath like a diver surfacing, sucked deep the air, and I felt the power of the lightning strike suffuse across my back. It was warm like sunshine. It buzzed beneath my skin.

In my mind's eye, I clearly saw the room around me. I saw my sword, fallen two paces away, and the wizard standing proud and exposed three paces behind me. I conceived it in an instant and sprang to action. With lightning in my veins, I felt like one of Father's constructs, living fire dancing to human will. I spun and leaped and caught the sword on fingertips. The motion carried me around, my arm outstretched, my whole body chasing the deadly weapon through its arc.

The wizard yelped and threw some spell against me. A wall of solid air slammed up in my path and broke the graceful strike, but it only stopped me for a moment. I gripped the hilt more tightly, ground my jaw, and walked through the resistance. Seriphenes licked his lips, then threw a conniving glare past me, to the spot where my father lay unconscious.

I struck the wizard backhand with the flat of the wide blade. It sent him sprawling, and I followed after. I growled, "Don't you dare."

He lay still. Five paces away, Mother seized the chance to tear herself from the Grand Marshall's side and rushed to comfort Father. For his part, the Grand Marshall was still struggling to rise. His fine armor was torn in a thousand places and dripping with blood. His face was pale and his eyes were veiled, but still he fought to gain his feet. Still he clasped the dagger.

And behind him, the king finally scrambled to his feet. He looked old and used up. He was as broken as the Grand Marshall. But now the king raised his chin at me and called defiantly, "Green Eagles! Find your marks!"

Some obeyed. Some already had crossbows raised. Some had long fled the hall.

It didn't matter. It would take but one clean shot to strike me down. They didn't even have to hit my body. One lucky shot at my unconscious father, an errant bolt in Mother. It didn't matter. There were a thousand ways that I could die in this moment, even if I lived ten thousand days more.

Father had been in this place before. In his own stronghold where the king had taken refuge. He'd had the choice that I had now. Not just one decision, between good and evil, but a choice between a thousand ways to die.

This was what Laelia had tried to tell me. This conflict was my family's destiny. No matter how we struck at him, this king would not back down. And even if he did, he'd have an heir. I could start a civil war right now, or wait five years for him to die and have it then.

And Father...in his power, my father could defy two hundred Guards and get us out of here alive. He might have been strong enough to carry us all home. But what would we have gained?

The king would come for us. Armies would come for us. The king had left us alone while the dragons still flew, but now...now he needed to rebuild his kingdom. He didn't need a defender anymore. He needed loyal kingsmen.

We'd have to fight, just as Laelia had said. A war was coming either way. The only hope had been to postpone it for a while. Perhaps a human lifetime. But the kingdom had to have its king. It had to have some power preserving order, even if it was the twisted order of this petty tyrant.

My mind raced, and for a moment I imagined I could see the shady destinies spread out the way the elf maiden had described. For a moment, I imagined a dozen lives I might have lived. If Father had killed the king. If the Grand Marshall had killed Mother. If I had killed the wizard.

If I killed the king.

I thought of stories. I thought of heroes. I thought of sacrifices. And then I thought of a way to save the world. In fact, I'd spotted it in Laelia's garden. The king needed a token in his hand, a hostage. Mother needed Father, and Father needed to be home. The fates of nations and the destinies of men twisted in a knot around my heart.

The moment broke against the edge of the strange blond blade, and I stepped over the cowering wizard to stand before the king.

King Timmon tried to sneer disdainfully, but he was shaking now.

I met his eyes. I flung aside my sword. I swallowed hard and bowed my head. "Your Majesty. Accept me to your service. I place myself completely in your power."

Once upon a time, the greatest hero in the world bent knee to a petty little king so that men might fight the dragonswarm instead of other men. That was his legacy. My father had the chance to reign in blood, but he chose peace. He swore an empty oath, and it bought him a reprieve. But that was all.

I knew that story. I had known it all my life, but I never knew its depths until I stood before a king who owed me everything and watched him spit defiance. I faced the same choice my father had faced, and I saw my father's folly. But I was blessed. I had the benefit of a lifetime of training toward that very moment.

Father had set me an example. Mother, too. Caleb had drilled me on it almost every day. I'd heard it from the Lord of Cara's lips, and from Captain Tanner's. I'd seen it firsthand, when the Dragonprince refused to be a monster. Sometimes the greatest strength was shown by laying weapons down.