Path of Fate (47 page)

“Greatest Lord! It is we, your faithful servants, who have called you here in great need!” Kvepi Mastone croaked in his overtaxed voice. Claiming his prize, Reisil thought. Stupid. But perhaps the Guild was special to the Dark Lord, as the
ahalad-kaaslane
were to the Blessed Lady. Perhaps, like a child, he wanted a reward for performing a particularly tricky feat.

The massive shadow head of the Dark Lord whipped around like a snake and the silver eyes fixed Kvepi Mastone, a handbreadth away from his face. The wizard choked, turning green as he breathed the fumes.

“You? And
who
are
you
?” His next words shocked Reisil. For all she’d ever heard of the Demonlord, she did not think he valued life. “What soul did you send to me too soon? What right do you claim in stealing away what I have given?”

“Gr . . . Greatest of Lords! I beg humble forgiveness for offending. Kvepi Buris gave his blood willingly so that we might seek your aid.”

Reisil snorted low. Willingly. The injured wizard had merely been unlucky enough to be unconscious and available.

“Speak then, wizard. What do you wish of me?”

Reisil didn’t miss the threat in the unworldly voice. She clenched her fist tighter beneath Saljane’s talons.

Kvepi Mastone bowed his head low, submissive. A ploy, Reisil thought. The wizard was trying to manipulate his own god. Did he think it possible?

She watched the silver eyes in the smoking blackness and was glad that they were not turned on her. She saw in them a mind that was so remote to all she knew that it made her stomach clench in fear. And a knowingness. A testing. A judging. He would let the wizard say and do all that he would, she realized. And then there would be judgment.

Bile rose in her throat as the fear clawed up from her stomach. Then she calmed herself. Whatever the judgment, she would do what the Blessed Lady had given her to do—protect and heal Kodu Riik and its people. Unthinkingly, she took a half step forward, putting herself in front of Bethorn and her companions, and a terrifying half step closer to the Dark Lord.

When Kvepi Mastone spoke again, she heard brittle triumph in his voice, as if he realized the danger, yet still felt himself in control and winning.

“Greatest, we had no alternative but to ask for your aid and guidance. Our enemies have come from Kodu Riik with deceitful words of peace, ensorcelling many of our people, including Karalis Vasalis and Karaliene Pavadone. We of the Wizard Guild, your chosen children, stood against this vermin, but they destroyed fully a hundred of us in a monstrous, unprovoked attack. Alas, we cannot guard against such magic. And now the Karalis plans to sign a treaty, enslaving us to the Kodu Riikian creatures. It will tear the heart right out of us.”

He pointed at the two monarchs, still in a position of abasement on the floor. They neither moved nor made a sound to deny his accusations.

Kvepi Mastone quickly began reciting the tale of Ceriba’s kidnapping, this time laying the plot at the feet of the
ahalad-kaaslane
in collusion with Iisand Samir, aided by the ensorcelled Karalis Vasalis and Karaliene Pavadone. The wizards, he argued, had tried to first guard the ambassadorial party from assault, then to rescue Ceriba before lasting harm had been done. Two wizards had been thus foully murdered and the brave martyr Kvepi Buris dreadfully wounded. How far the corruption of this ensorcellment and treason had gone, he sadly could not tell. But clearly the very leaders of the land had been compromised, as well as many of the nobles.

He spoke confidently, rapping out each detail of his lie with the plausibility of practice, the practiced ease of truth.

Reisil clenched her teeth, feeling for Saljane.

~
The Demonlord can’t be so gullible as to believe that tripe!

~
Patience,
ahalad-kaaslane.
The reckoning is not yet made. Do not suppose the Dark Lord is easily fooled, any more so than the Lady.
There was a cool edge to Saljane’s mindvoice that cut across Reisil’s sudden panic, calming her with its patient strength.

Kvepi Mastone completed his oration. Smothering silence weighted the air as the Dark Lord considered this new information. His silver gaze raked the assembly. “Is this true?”

“No! No, it is not, on my honor, and the honor of House Vadonis.”

Kebonsat struggled out of the supportive hands of the guard to fall to one knee, his raw, blistered forehead bent low. He spoke with a slurred voice, his lips swollen and bleeding.

“The wizard speaks lies. The Guild sought to prevent the treaty, and thus they worked with rebel
ahaladkaaslane
to kidnap and torture my sister, hoping to provoke an attack. They would see the war continue, and with it, their growing domination of Patverseme.” His voice broke off into a thick, rasping cough.

“Rebel
ahalad-kaaslane
?” The Dark Lord’s voice was both dubious and menacing as he eyed the group of
ahalad-kaaslane
.

Sodur stepped forward, bowing low, though not with the deference he might give the Lady. Lume crouched at his side. The cat kept his shining green eyes fixed on the shadow figure, his lips curled in a snarl. “It is true, great Lord. At least one
ahalad-kaaslane
aided in this treachery. He was . . . mistaken . . . in his conclusions concerning the matter of this treaty. The Blessed Lady has punished him.” The finality of his tone brooked no doubt of Upsakes’s death. “We have come here by the Lady’s wish, to seek peace between Kodu Riik and Patverseme, to heal the wounds of war. The wizard speaks lies.”

The silver eyes contemplated Sodur for a long moment, then skipped to the two monarchs lying facedown, then to Kvepi Mastone. The air in the pavilion grew searingly cold. Reisil’s lungs hurt with every shallow breath—all she could manage, as the cold cut like razors.

The Demonlord reared up and up, a massive black shape blotting out the sparkling stars. They stared up at him as he billowed and swelled, hovering above them like a malignant wraith, his insubstantial body churning like a sandstorm to sweep them all away. Kvepi Mastone spoke, arguing, pleading, but Reisil couldn’t hear his words over the rush of her blood and the crackle of the lightning within. She tensed, feeling the hot, white power flickering in her hand.

“Someone speaks lies. To Me.” The contempt in his voice hummed through the pavilion like a deep-struck note, setting teeth on edge, making the cracked and buckled floorboards shudder. “The
ahalad-kaaslane
are not to be touched. . . .” The silver eyes darted to Reisil. “Foolish is the one who ignores the mark of Amiya.”

A thick smoke hand like a horsesized spider on a boneless, writhing arm stretched out and Reisil shrank from its touch. But it only skimmed the air above her.

“But I
shall
have the truth, and I shall have it
now
.” For a moment, in the shifting maw of the Dark Lord’s mouth, Reisil thought she saw the whiplike shape of a serpent’s tongue rolling between great, curving tusks of teeth.

Then the Dark Lord stretched out two hands, now fingerless, like snakes. So quickly Reisil could hardly see them, they darted out to Kvepi Mastone and Kebonsat. The fingerless hands split their lips apart and drove down their throats. The two men rose up on tiptoe, arching over backward at impossible angles, blood trickling from the corners of their mouths as the Dark Lord wriggled deeper inside. Reisil’s stomach turned and she turned aside, retching.

When she turned back, she cried out. Agony and terror masked Kebonsat’s features, his eyes bugging from his burned face. The lightning danced eagerly in her hand.

The silver eyes flashed at her. “Do not think to interfere,
ahalad-kaaslane
. What is mine is
mine
and I will suffer no interference.”

Reisil pulled the power back unwillingly. He was right. It was not her place, and the Blessed Lady would not protect her from him if she took it upon herself to challenge him. She’d thought Kvepi Mastone arrogant! What would she be if she interfered with the Demonlord’s own justice?

She held herself rigid and unmoving. The two men hung from their mouths in painful, twisted gracelessness and unrelenting silence. Kebonsat’s arms were flung wide, fingers spread and curled like talons as he clawed at the air. His throat was bloated and stretched, screams battling the thrust of the Dark Lord’s probe. Reisil’s heart ached for him and all he’d been through. He had been tortured by Ceriba’s kidnapping, by both Kvepi Buris and Kvepi Mastone, and now again by the Dark Lord. She bit her lips to keep from crying out protest while tears coursed down her cheeks.

Then Kvepi Mastone convulsed, flailing his arms and feet in the air. He grabbed at the impaling arm of the Dark Lord, but his hands passed through the limb as if through smoke. He convulsed again and Reisil gasped as a finger of black smoke screwed its way out his chest. Another sprouted from his back.

Like roots from a tree, the tendrils twisted and curled through his skin as he bucked and jerked in silent agony. More tendrils thrust through, eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Soon there was nothing but a sliding, writhing knot of black snakes, coiling and weaving together in voracious hunger. When there was nothing left, they withdrew, retracting back into the shadowy shape of the Dark Lord.

The tattered rags of the wizard’s silver and black robe dropped to the floor and Reisil found herself holding Saljane against her chest, a protective arm around her
ahalad-kaaslane
’s feathered body, panting as if she’d been running.

The Dark Lord set Kebonsat back down on his feet, retracting the probing tentacle of his hand. As he let go, Kebonsat collapsed to his hands and knees and retched over and over with a wrenching, raw sound.

Reisil twitched, wanting to go to him, heal him, but the Dark Lord stopped her with a searing silver glance.

“Mine,
ahalad-kaaslane,
” he said softly, like a gust of hot, desert air, buzzing with the razor-edged teeth of driven sand. Reisil recoiled. “Mine.”

He turned back to contemplate Kebonsat’s battered form, coughing and retching with convulsive force, chest heaving as he sought for cleansing breath. The Demonlord stretched out his hand again.

Kebonsat saw it coming and clenched his fists, digging his nails into the splintered wood floor. He neither flinched from nor evaded the Dark Lord’s touch, but gritted his teeth and held himself still, every muscle rigid with effort. Reisil felt a rush of fury for the Demonlord, and pride in Kebonsat’s pride. The hand brushed across Kebonsat’s tense face, and beneath his touch, the blistered, bruised and burned skin turned whole and unbroken, ruddy with health.

“Mine,” the Dark Lord repeated. “Of this one I have great pride. A warrior true, brave, devoted and strong. In this one I have found the truth.” He turned to Karalis Vasalis and Karaliene Pavadone.

“Rise and answer.” The two monarchs stood with alacrity, facing the Dark Lord without reserve. “You are my hands in Patverseme. You have the power of my name, and it is no small matter. Yet you permitted these wizards to summon me when you could take my name from their lips, smooth it from their minds forever.”

Karalis Vasalis answered with the same swiftness with which he had obeyed the Dark Lord’s command to rise. “Yes, Greatest Lord. It is so. We allowed the wizards to make their summons and knew that our own lives would be forfeit—for
we
pay the blood price for calling your name and no other.”

A knife was suddenly in the Karalis’s hand. He set its point against the bare pulse at the base of his neck. A tendril of smoke reached out and leisurely coiled around his wrist, squeezing so that the blood drained from the Karalis’s face. Reisil heard bones cracking. The knife clattered to the floor.

“There will be time enough for blood later. Explain. Did you not know I would be angered?”

“We did, Greatest Lord.” The Karaliene’s voice rang out, unsubdued. She took the Karalis’s free hand in her own and held it, for his comfort, not hers, Reisil realized, admiring her strength and courage. “In the last century, the Guild has become evil, corrupted by its love of power alone, with no sense of its proper purpose—serving Patverseme. In recent years, they have excluded altogether the order of the Whieche, the bright sun of the waning year.”

She paused, choosing her words. “For many years they have selected only those who would blindly follow, murdering those who would stand apart or follow the path of the Whieche. But long has the Guild claimed independence from us, following your secret teachings. We did not know what tasks you had set them and feared to meddle in your concerns.”

She paused again, a crease between her black brows. She took a slow, careful breath and continued. “Still we worried they had managed to hide their corruption from you, for your trust is vast in those who have pledged themselves to you. So we chose to allow them to summon you, that you might say what must be done. We did so, knowing the price. For the safety of Patverseme, we will gladly pay it.”

Her words revealed no fear, no reticence, no accusation or challenge. They rang with the serenity of truth. The Dark Lord did not respond for long moments and Reisil felt the hair on her arms rise. Karalis Vasalis’s breath wheezed between his lips as his hand withered and curled into a shrunken, white claw.

“It is true that the Guild has stepped from the path. It may be that I have granted too much power to those chosen souls. Even Amiya has been betrayed by her own.”

He glanced at the
ahalad-kaaslane,
still standing in a loose chain before Iisand Samir and a pale, shaking Mesilasema Tanis.

“Yet she still has faith, to bring forth one as powerful as you, to invest you with so much of her own essence. Such cannot be withdrawn again. The damage you could do . . .” he mused aloud, skewering Reisil on the blade of his silver gaze. Her mouth was dry, her tongue felt thick and unwieldy, but she felt compelled to answer, as indeed he seemed to be waiting for one, something to prove her worth.