The Wizard King (48 page)

“Durek? Can you still hear me?”

Her brother had always been one to bear physical pain well; once, as a boy, he had dislodged his shoulder after falling from his horse and stoically refused to cry when the castle physician popped the joint back into place with a sickly crunch. Kelwyn had been so proud of his heir’s bravery that he’d neglected to scold him for carelessly forgetting to cinch the saddle before setting his gelding off on a dead gallop.

Durek struggled to be just as courageous now, but he was losing the battle badly. He grabbed onto her for support, crying out in anguish at the effort. “Athaya, do something—” His breath bubbled with fluid. “Tell Cecile…” He gagged on the liquid clogging his throat; another wellspring of blood and spittle gurgled out, staining both his tunic and the front of Athaya’s kirtle. “Tell Cecile and the children that I loved them.”

It was the first time he had ever admitted such sentiment in his life, and Athaya knew then that he was certain of his death.

With the last of his strength, he pulled off his heavy gold signet ring and pressed it into her palm; it was slick with blood but she did not wipe it away, too awed by the import of the gesture. “Take it. You’re the only one who can bring Caithe to peace again. I think… now… that you were the only one who ever could…”

He gazed at her strangely then, thinking it curious perhaps, that of all people he had expected to attend him upon his death, she would most surely be the last. Then, at peace with what he saw, confident that earthly matters were in the proper hands, his eyelids fluttered closed. A final sputtering gasp for life and his body went limp upon the ground.

Athaya brushed her hand across the sparse brown beard tinted with gray. Gently, she wiped away the blood from his lips with the sleeve of her gown.
Good-bye, Durek.

The Sage circled to stand before her, carefully stepping over the deepening puddles of blood so as not to sully his fine white shoes. “He was nothing more than a man,” he said, as if that excused what he had done. “A king must be much more than that.”

Athaya wiped her eyes with hands still sticky with blood, leaving a pair of dark red smears across her cheeks. Slowly, she rose to face her brother’s murderer. “You are less than that, Brandegarth. Less than a man and much less than a king if you strike down an enemy without giving him a chance to defend himself.”

The Sage shrugged indifferently. “How many of our people did he kill thus, he and his Tribunal?”

That doesn’t make it right!
Athaya wanted to scream at him, but knew her fury would descend upon deaf ears. A tide of grief threatened to engulf her, but the pulsing shell of the blood-wards was stark reminder that she had no time to mourn; not here, not now. Not while the Sage could use any lapse in her defenses to cast his killing blow.

But it was not so easy to simply will her anger away; anger and regret for what might have grown between herself and Durek, given time. Her soul shrieked for release from the tumble of emotions churning inside her, like spells trapped too long by a sealing spell. To keep it all caged inside would be another kind of madness, and she feared she might explode if she did not find some channel for the raw violence waxing within her, yearning for salvation from its prison.

And salvation did come; paradoxically, from the source Athaya would have least expected.

“Now, Athaya, shall we finish—”

The Sage broke off midsentence as Archbishop Lukin strode purposefully into the arena, still draped in the formal red and white vestments of the coronation rite. His gaze lighted only briefly on Durek’s lifeless body before scalding her with sublime malice—such malice as she had not seen since her heresy trial, when the sentence of death was read. Lukin carried a strongbox in his arms; a familiar box, Athaya thought. One that she had seen before…

“Oh, dear God—”

Athaya backed away instinctively, but the icy grip upon her heart as she edged too close to the wards was rude reminder of how securely she was bound.
You’ve slithered out of my reach once too often
, Lukin’s eyes spoke to her, glittering with inviolate hatred.
But you cannot escape me now. Your own sorcery entraps you.

The archbishop bowed low to the Sage as he set the box upon the ground. “King Durek is dead,” he said, contorting his visage into a seldom-used guise of submissiveness. “Long live Brandegarth, king of Caithe and lord of the Isle of Sare.”

Unaware of the danger lurking inside the strongbox, the Sage barked out a colorful string of Sarian expletives at yet another interruption in his quest for the crown. “Leave us!” he bellowed, sweeping his arms outward in majestic rage. “This is not yet done!”

“No, but it will be,” Lukin said with subtle spite. “Very shortly.”

Athaya gaped at the archbishop with dreadful respect for his cunning. No wonder he had been so quick to consent to officiate at the coronation! In the act of crowning the Sage—with the Caithan crown of state conveniently exchanged for Faltil’s deadly wreath of corbals, somehow stolen from her camp—Lukin would assure his death… and the death of every wizard who had come to witness the ceremony. What was to be the Sage’s moment of triumph would instead become the archbishop’s; he would make himself the savior of Caithe—God’s greatest servant, delivering the land from the blight of wizardry for now and years to come. For without the Sage and Athaya to lead them, the Lorngeld would be scattered and vulnerable, easy prey for the Tribunal. And once again, as in Faltil’s time, Caithe would no longer be troubled by sorcerers.

“I have brought your crown, Majesty,” Lukin purred, pressing his palms together as if praying for the success of his endeavor. “Here, let me show you.”

The Sage was about to erupt with fury at the archbishop’s continued presence, but a vagrant glance to Athaya effectively silenced him; he read in her face that something was very wrong and glared at the strongbox with refreshed suspicion.

As Lukin knelt to unfasten the leather bindings, Athaya whispered the most urgent appeal of her life that Jaren had likewise recognized the strongbox and was even now dashing headlong to safety. Then, with the cool composure that comes from embracing the inevitable, Athaya prepared herself to face the only choice left open to her.

A feather of concern wafted across her awareness—
You had trouble enough casting a witchlight through a single corbal last night; how can you possibly channel something far more powerful through dozens of them now?
—but the doubt was quickly gone. She was too consumed by purpose, too swollen with a maelstrom of emotion crying for release, utterly focused on the task at hand—the sole remaining duty to be discharged. It would mean her death, of course; if one crystal could drain away her life and leave her helpless to stanch the flow, then Faltil’s crown would feed on her at an alarmingly rapid rate. All she could do was pray that she would not falter in her disciplines before her work was done. After that… well, it didn’t really matter. If the Sage was dead, it would be enough.

Great magic commands a great price.
It was among the first lessons Master Hedric had taught her, and one she had learned the truth of very young and very well.
If this is the price of Caithe’s future, then I will pay it so that none need do so again.

Any remnant fears she had of death evaporated in that one apocalyptic moment. Vitality surged through her flesh; not directionless energy, but fueled to a single purpose and doubly powerful because of it. She relaxed into her mental preparations, bracing her mind against the crown to hold back its mind-breaking pain until such time as she could align with it and turn its massive and terrible potentials back upon itself, and aim them directly at the Sage. A Circle charm of sorts, she reflected—a weapon of last resort that would save the day only by destroying them both.

Athaya almost smiled as the archbishop sprang open the last brass latch; what he assumed would be his own victory would—with luck—be hers instead.
She will obtain aid in her endeavor from an unexpected quarter,
Dameronne’s prophecy had said. And he had been twice correct.

Lukin cracked open the strongbox and reached inside.

I’ll miss you, Jaren
, one last, random thought came.
But I’ll be waiting. Write the last chapter for me; it looks as if you’ll have to now.

Athaya’s mental shield was up and ready, waiting for the enemy to strike; thus, it was with eerie calm that she watched Archbishop Lukin raise the priceless crown from the strongbox, purple gems sparkling softly in the diffuse light within the wards. Lacking bright light, the corbals also lacked full strength, and some idle sliver of Athaya’s mind whispered gratitude that Kale had pried many of the larger stones from the crown’s base months before. But it was still a ruthless weapon; one balk, one break in her focus, would be her death—something she now expected, but not before she took the Sage down with her.

She waited, hoping to hear her enemy’s shrieks of pain pierce the silence, but the Sage had not been taken by surprise; her reaction to the strongbox had convinced him that Lukin was plotting something—and what would a wizard have to fear but corbals? He was ready for the blow when it came, though both wizards reeled backward as the first swells of the crown’s influences crashed over them. Both she and the Sage struggled mightily to oppose the crystals’ power, taut with the knowledge that their psychic shields were fragile as blown glass, and madness and death were but a single misstep away.

“What is the matter, your Grace? Your Highness?” Lukin taunted, inching closer. “Do you not find it beautiful?”

Each of the corbals wailed with its own voice, and together the crown clamored in keening, deafening discord. But strangely, Athaya found the din to her advantage. Like focusing on a single voice amid a shouting crowd, she targeted one of the larger gems near the crown’s base and directed her well-honed energies onto it, leaving the others to fade into an indistinct blur, their words and meaning lost. Though the other crystals assailed her with a barrage of psychic messages, she calmly elected not to hear them, opening herself only to the gem she had chosen.
Pain, pain, pain!
it screamed in warning.
Flee!
it commanded.

No,
Athaya replied, countering the crystal’s admonitions with her own.
Your illusion of pain is but a trick to keep away; to keep me from using you; to keep me sane and alive. I thank you for your protection, but I no longer have need of it. I know what I am doing.

“I was told you have a way of resisting the gems,” Lukin said, dividing his gaze between them. “But so many? And for how long? I have no other engagements today… I can remain as long as it takes.”

Beside her, the Sage trembled and perspired from the effort, barely able to hold his footing much less retaliate physically against the archbishop. He looked like a man attempting to lift a drawbridge by brute force, knowing that it would fall back and crush him if relief did not come soon. Athaya felt the building strain as well, but fueled by purpose and with nothing left to lose, her concentration was honed as it had never been before—not even when she doggedly fought the ravages of the sealing spell. Her resistance was strong as tempered steel; thoughts of failure died before they reached her awareness and she was possessed by a single-mindedness that she had not known since fleeing Delfarham that night in Tyler’s headless shadow, making promises to whoever might be listening that she would change the evils in the world that had led him to such a fate.

Then, her focus sharp as a dagger’s edge, she spied the corbal’s source and plunged her presence into it. And in that place of crystalline silence, her perceptions shifted just
so
; she slipped into magical rapport with the gem and was suddenly privy to a dazzling array of paths open to whatever form of magic she chose to pump through them.

Athaya looked to the Sage, mindlessly howling defiance to the crown, and instantly discerned the key to his destruction. It was simple; the Sage’s greatest flaw was that he thought he had no flaws at all. No one on this earth could convince him of anything he did not already believe to be the truth.

But perhaps
, she reasoned,
he will heed one he believes to be
not
of this earth…

Her own magic tingled inside her, sensing affinity for the corbal and yearning to couple with it. Athaya stretched her arms to the sides as if readying to catch the wind and soar into the clouds, kin to the eagles.

“Figuram visionibus praesta!”

In one magnificent surge, her full measure of adept magic spiraled in and through the gem, spilling into those around it, and those around those, until her power ran like an electric river through the disparate stones, growing on itself as it gushed through every path and facet, and swept over the crown in glistening, hoarfrost patterns. Her spell multiplied upon itself a hundredfold, reflections upon reflections like a voice in a chain of caverns, its echo never dying out but passed on and on and on. Faltil’s crown began to glow in response to the energies whirling within it, turning each gem from indigo to pearly white until the crown itself pulsed with inner light. Just as her brother’s blood branched into new rivulets with every incline and shallow in the cobbles on which he lay, so did her power flow into every open crevice in every crystal in the crown, exploiting them to full and deadly advantage.

When the Sage lifted his face to her, he clutched his heart and staggered backward, green eyes glazed with awe. For he no longer saw Athaya Trelane, but only the apparition she willed him to believe was real—and believe he would, for she had plucked the image directly from his own fantastic dreams. But hers was more than a grand illusion born of mind-magic; like the vestige of life she had once given the fire coils, turning them to snakes to torment Lukin’s hired assassin, she bestowed a breath of reality upon her present conjuration, becoming the vision even as she created it.

The world shrank down around her. Athaya rose to one, two, three times her height; her black tresses were spun into gold locks shot with moonlight, and her tattered kirtle transformed into a gown of snowy samite with billowed sleeves, belted by a ring of stars; a corona encircled her head, shining golden as the sun; her flesh was translucent as fine porcelain, glowing as if candlelight flowed through her veins instead of blood; and last, a pair of huge feathery wings, delicate as lace, rose up behind her, extending outward as far as the blood-wards would permit. The wings pumped once, whipping the Sage’s hair and garments back in an awesome gust of rose-scented wind.