Fortress Draconis (26 page)

“I recall.” Alyx’s eyes tightened. Tatyana often retreated into a chamber deep in the bowels of Fortress Gryps and remained there for days at a time. Servants kept it filled with incense smoke and hot air—Alyx had heard it said that sitting in a smokehouse with hams would be more hospitable—so her great-grandaunt could be transported to a place where she saw visions. Her visions, when not concerned with the conduct of Okrans exiles, always touted the liberation of Okrannel, with Alyx at the head of a multinational army that would sweep through the nation and into Aurolan itself, to destroy Chytrine.

The problem for Alyx was not the enormity of that crusade. Given sufficient forces, support, and some luck, she knew such a campaign could be won. Tatyana’s visions always included some climactic battle in which the back of the Aurolan army would be broken. Alyx realized it would take a much longer campaign using entirely different tactics, but when she returned from her dream raid with Misha, she said her dream mirrored the visions of Tatyana.

Alyx’s lie had kindled great hope among the Okrans exiles. Word of her victories in the east and west, modest though they were, must have again enflamed the exiles. With her entrance into Yslin in the company of King Augustus, clearly the Crown Circle anticipated the day of Okrannel’s liberation looming.

Alyx again shivered.And the Vorquelves have waited five times as long as we have for their homeland to be freed.

Tatyana raised a finger—one of those Alyx had bitten— and let her smile flatten. “The time has come, child, for you to fulfill the destiny your father chose for you. He died so you could live. Your duty is to free Okrannel. You areour champion.”

Another voice, strong and male, filled the chamber from back near the doorway. “I trust, Grand Duchess, I would be included in your statement.”

Alyx turned as quickly as her gown and uncle would allow, pleased to let Tatyana’s venomous glare speed past her.

Through the incense fog came King Augustus. Where Okrans exiles wore gold, he chose silver. He had donned a black tabard, with the winged horse rampant on it, but the silver gorget hanging from around his neck above it displayed a half fish, half horse that he had chosen as the ensign of his reign.

Walking beside him, in gold and black, though more of the former than the latter, came Queen Yelena. A robust woman who matched her husband in height, her brown hair displayed only a few strands of grey. Her brown eyes sparked fiercely. Tatyana did not shrink from the queen’s glare, but neither did she escalate the war of expression.

Alyx found herself smiling despite the tension in the air. The stories of how King Augustus had rescued Yelena from an overrun Okrannel while destroying Chytrine’s army of ravagers had been retold in endless variations. As a little girl, Alyx had delighted in them all. She took great pride in being distantly related to Yelena, and the queen had been Alyx’s hero. More than one of the songs sung had told of Yelena and Augustus fighting back to back, saving each other—and in the often savage and always martial Gyrkyme society, nothing could have been more romantic.

Tatyana’s voice came in a hiss. “Okrannel’s debt to you, King Augustus, can never be repaid. Through Alexia we will find a way to free ourselves and burden you no more.”

“Burden me?” Augustus lifted the queen’s hand to his mouth and kissed it. “You are of the blood that sustains my wife and my heirs. How could you be a burden to me? And this, your granddaughter, Majesty, you know how well she has served me and my people. This debt of which you speak has already been repaid. It is the other debt that needs repaying.”

King Stefin croaked something. Tatyana’s eyes became icy slits. “Other debt?”

“When first we set off for Okrannel, its liberation was our goal. That was a quarter century ago. We owe you liberation, and you will have it.”

The mystic let a smile slash the lower half of her face. “You have given us the means. Alexia has been trained well.”

“True, quite true. At the head of an army, she could free Okrannel. For a while.”

Alyx had begun to nod as Augustus spoke, but her head froze with his last three words. His voice had sunk into serious tones.

He glanced at her. “Not to belittle your skills, General, for they are formidable, but we all know that if you take Okrannel back from Chytrine, you will be granted no peace to build fortifications. You will have no chance to hold your land against another invasion.”

She nodded. “I cannot gainsay your vision of the future, Highness.”

Augustus looked at Tatyana. “I know I am here on sufferance, for I am but married into Okrans society. Some of you view me as a brother or a son; though most see me as a landlord who has, as yet, been lenient in asking for rent. You fear the bill coming due, and you know it will soon. You have heard of Chytrine’s forays into Alcida, and you know she is sending a fleet against Vilwan. So, yes, I will make a demand of you. Do not think Alexia, no matter how brilliant, can save your homeland alone.

“The Harvest Festival is but a few weeks off, with contingents arriving constantly.” Augustus raised his voice so everyone in the hall could hear him. “Together, with Okrannel as a brother nation, we will unite to drive Chytrine from our lands, to cleanse them—Okrannel, too, of course. Alexia will be key in this. I beg you, in your haste for your own freedom, do not squander the person best suited to winning freedom for all of us.”

The mystic crone let his words echo into silence, then slowly nodded. “His Highness says Okrannel is ever prepared to be the razored edge of the spear thrust into Chytrine’s guts. We only demand that we not be wasted, and that our desires are given proper weight. If this is permitted, then Okrannel’s role in the coming war with Aurolan will be obvious, clear, and will lead to total victory.”

Augustus smiled. “As it should.” Tatyana nodded. “As it has been foreseen.” The murmurs of those in the room suggested they took great heart in Tatyana’s words, but Alyx did not. It was less what she said, or how she said it, that left her unsettled. What unnerved her was the glance her grandfather gave her as the mystic spoke. As his dark gaze brushed past her eyes, cold cut at her spine.

She read fear in his gaze, terrible fear. Not of death, not of dying. He knew he would pass only after his homeland had been freed. No, King Stefin was terrified that he would, in fact, live forever.

Even having the shutters closed and the heavy drapes drawn tight across them could not keep the sunlight out of hisarcanorium. Seated there in the utter darkness, Kerrigan knew novisible light could touch him, but he still felt the sun’s heat.If light is what one sees, then heat is the sun’s breath.

He couldn’t wait for the sun to hide its face because, as had so many others, it had witnessed his utter and complete humiliation. The Vorquelf had seen what he was doing and deliberately threw the sack of flour at him. Fifty pounds had flown through the air easily and unerringly, with no warning shouted, no whistle, hiss, or rustle to alert him. Had he not opened his eyes at the last minute, he wouldn’t have had a clue as to what was happening.

Fury flared through him, and the hair on the backs of his hands rose as energy tingled and sparked from his fingertips. The memories of ridicule crashed over him in successive waves. They crushed him down, battering him, making his spirit ache the way his back and ribs and head did. He wanted to hug his knees to his chest, but it hurt.

He could have cast the healing spell that had dealt so well with his knee, but he didn’t. Kerrigan told himself it was because he could not cast it without supervision, but he knew that wasn’t really it. Being granted permission to cast it would mean someone agreed it was wrong for him to feel hurt. He knew it wasn’t wrong—he had been grossly wrong, so being hurt was a fit punishment for his mistake.

Ultimately, though, the healing spell didn’t matter, since it would never get rid of the derisive laughter that remained locked in his skull. He wasn’t stupid. He knew the Vorquelf couldn’t really have known what he was doing— none of the other Apprentices and Adepts were using mag-ick. Hewas physically large, so he might well have been able to catch the sack were he used to doing such things. He wasn’t, however, nor had he been set to catch it.

What pained him the most, and sprouted thorny vines that took root in his heart, was that now he knew what the others thought of him on Vilwan. Many were Apprentices who, at his age, were decades away from becoming Adepts. To them he was a curiosity, or a thing to fear. He’d heard rumors that some of the youngest Apprentices began their schooling with warnings to be good, or they would end up like Kerrigan, trapped in a tower, with Magisters for keepers.

Adepts, with whom he shared rank, viewed him with suspicion. Some clearly did not believe he could be worthy to be ranked with them. Others who had overseen tests he had performed suspected that he should have been granted Magister rank. One Adept had even mentioned in hushed whispers that the reason he’d not been so exalted was because he did so many things so well, no single one of the schools of magick could lay a clean claim to him.

And the Magisters, when they came to teach him, they always seemed to have contempt for him. Some clearly wished nothing to do with him. A few, the ambitious ones, cultivated him until he showed, with sulks and balkiness, that he would not support them and their plans—whatever they were. Orla, who did her best to thwart his desires concerning work and schedules and indulgences, did not eye him with awe.

Kerrigan had no doubt that awe was in order because he knew how special he had become. He’d harbored the secret desire to see awe on faces, hence his willingness to display his power there at the docks. He had been ready to reap the adulation he felt he’d been denied, but he had harvested nothing but ridicule.

I should have known better.He’d been foolish in thinking outsiders would understand how much in awe of him they should have been. They knew nothing, could not work magick, and, therefore, should have been of no consequence. His experience withdulls had come only through his teachers and readings, but his humiliation only confirmed what he knew deep down.

The fact thatdulls had been invited in to help defend Vilwan meant nothing. Kerrigan felt certain that in a straight duel of wizards, the Magisters of Vilwan could destroy Chytrine, but she had allied herself with Vionna and her Wruonin pirates. With their own renegade wizards and vylaens, the invading forces would have counterspells to ward off Vilwanese magicks, allowing raiders to land on the island.

Troops who would be best opposed by other dull troops.Dogs snarling while their betters fight.

Even as that thought formed itself in his mind, Kerrigan knew it was wrong. As angry as he was—and as much as he wanted to hate the dulls coming to Vilwan—he recognized the peril they were in. That the Magisters even thought to bring them in meant there would be a lot of dull blood anointing the island. Deep in his heart he knew that his pain was minimal compared to what they would feel as they fought to defend an island that was not even their home.

The trapdoor over the stairwell rose, allowing a thin, grey light to define the opening. Orla appeared, from waist up, more of a grey ghost than normal. “If you are finished pitying yourself, we have to go.”

“Go without me.”

“You mistake me. I don’t want to go at all, but you are too precious to leave here.” Her voice softened just a bit. “I’ve gathered up all you’ll need to take with you.”

More out of curiosity to see what she had gathered than anything else, Kerrigan rocked himself back and forth to build up momentum, then finally came to his feet. He staggered a bit, then lurched toward the stairway and descended to his rooms. There, in the middle of the floor, lay a little leather rucksack stuffed to bulging, with a blanket rolled tight and tied to the bottom of it.

“That’s it?” He looked at the tiny parcel at his feet and shivered.Everything I am can be reduced to that? “I need books. I need my other things, my supplies.”

Orla cut him off from the steps back up to thearcanorium. “Right now we just want to get you off the island. We are not worried about supplies. Those we can find anywhere.”

“But… my things, I need them.”

Her voice gained an edge. “I like this no more than you, Adept Reese. I don’t want the Aurolani or Wruonin going through my chambers, taking my treasures, touching everything, smashing most things, defiling others. I don’t want it, but it is not my place to complain at the moment.”

She twisted, showing him the rucksack on her back, which looked to be the same size as his, but filled not nearly as full. “When we return, our things will be restored to us. But for now, anything else you want you will have to carry and, frankly, Kerrigan, I don’t think you can carry much more than that.”

The youth stooped and picked up the rucksack. He lifted it with no difficulty, but had trouble slipping his right arm through the strap. Orla helped him get it in place. It hung heavily on his back and the straps chafed under his armpits, but he decided not to complain. He shifted his shoulders a bit to settle the load, then nodded to her.

Orla crossed to the open door and picked up a long ebon staff nearly as tall as she was. “Let’s go.”

Kerrigan took one last look at his room. He wanted to take a book with him. At first he thought of his favorite, the Vilwanese history, but he knew it was too heavy for him to carry. He then looked for any book, but realized they would all be too heavy.

His head hung low in defeat, he sighed and followed Orla from the tower and Vilwan. Kerrigan thought about taking one last look at his home, but he refrained. Somehow he knew that if he ever returned, he would not see it the same way he had, so the time and energy needed to burn it into his memory seemed nothing but a waste.

Following Orla, he returned to the docks and the scene of his humiliation. Though barely six hours had passed since the incident, no one made mention of it. As the sun began to sink in the west, Orla and Kerrigan came aboard a twenty-five-foot-long fishing boat, with a single sail and a grizzled tillerman. Two people crewed the ship, looking enough like each other and the captain to suggest they were all of a family, and busied themselves casting off lines and trimming the sails. Other refugees, Apprentices mostly in their early teens, huddled beneath blankets, not realizing that the trembling of fear cannot be warmed away.