The Wizard King (13 page)

Her reflexes were slow but controlled as she tore her eyes from the crystal, floating upward as if from the bottom of a pool. She discerned the details of her surroundings as clearly as before, but the creek seemed to flow more sluggishly, as if the water was thickened with honey, and the wind curled languidly through the pines, like an endless sigh.

“I can do it,” she said. She articulated each word with infinite care, but they still came out slightly slurred. She lifted her hand—clumsily so, as if she had never used the limb before—and gestured to the leather pouch. “Try another crystal, Kale. One that’s slightly larger.”

She felt her control waver when she spoke, and the crystal’s tiny voice tugged on her mind, growing louder and more insistent. But its urgings were abruptly silenced as Kale wrapped it in wool and tucked it deep inside the pouch.

Athaya did not move except to breathe, wishing to do nothing to shatter her precarious trancelike state. She braced herself for the next crystal, one whose voice would be louder and more demanding, and sent out continual streams of defiant thoughts, ready to aim them at the crystal’s heart.

Kale unwrapped the second stone, but its power was quickly blunted against her psychic shield. Blunted, but not dispelled. It took mere seconds to realize that this would not be so easy a struggle; the crystal assaulted her with more strength than she expected, trying to shatter the walls of her resistance like her sealed magic had once tried to tear its way out of its prison.

Soon, Athaya felt in danger of being swept away in the current of the corbal’s demands.
Pain, pain, pain!
it said in its language without words.
Flee from the danger!
Her brain tingled in response, on the verge of unconscious surrender. The corbal’s influences teemed over her like rainwater, working their way inside the tiny cracks in her resistance and tainting her concentration. She was a scant step away from caving in to its compulsion before her mind seized once more upon its task.

I feel nothing from you. You cannot harm me now. I know your secrets and you have no power over me.

Pain, pain, pain! Flee from the danger!

She focused her glassy gaze on the crystal in Kale’s hand—confronting her enemy face-to-face, staring it down in a contest of wills.
I feel nothing from you…

The pain retreated from her onslaught, but Athaya felt her strength ebbing; she doubted she could sustain the battle much longer. Fat beads of sweat dribbled from her forehead, and she grew light-headed from both the heat and effort.

“I’ve got it… I don’t feel—
ow
!” She flinched at the sharp pinch of pain, as if someone had just driven a thorn between her eyes. She had barely drawn her next breath before Kale stuffed the crystal back into the safety of its dark pouch and laced it tightly closed.

“Are you all right?” Drianna asked, arms poised to catch Athaya should she topple over from exhaustion.

“I think so,” Athaya glared at the pouch holding the crystal, thinking it pathetic that it took such labor to overcome such a tiny enemy. “I just lost my focus there at the end.”

Once confident that she would not faint, Athaya staggered unsteadily to the creek and splashed a handful of cold water on her face to restore herself. Her limbs quivered with fatigue; the struggle had cost her more than she realized at the time.

But the battle could be won, she reminded herself. And that was all that mattered.

It was a success, but an admittedly small step in an arduous journey. The Sage had been perfecting this skill for over twenty years and she for roughly twenty minutes. And by Drianna’s own admission, the Sage could resist more than one crystal at a time—crystals undoubtedly larger than the little fragment she had just engaged in battle.

You always said I was a quick learner, Master Hedric,
she thought, as she scooped up another handful of water and slapped it on her cheeks.
I hope you were right… for all our sakes.

“Give me a minute to catch my breath, Kale,” she said over her shoulder, her determination refreshed as well as her body by the water dripping from her face and hair. She was
not
going to be bested by a tiny chip of purple rock. “And then let’s try again.”

Durek Trelane, King of Caithe and Lord of the Isle of Sare—though most residents of that island would take great amusement at the latter claim—returned the ivory comb and pair of peach-colored ribbons to their place in the queen’s favorite willow basket and fixed an angry glare upon the bruised and battered guardsman standing before him. The interruption itself was bad enough; the reason for it considerably worse.

Durek had ventured to her Majesty’s solar earlier that morning to find his son’s favorite playthings—Cecile had written that Mailen missed the cloth puppets and would his Majesty kindly send them?—and had somehow lingered until midday, brooding in solitude as he poked through Cecile’s abandoned ribbons and beads and scraps of half-finished needlework. He savored the fading scent of rosewater that clung to the queen’s possessions—as it had to the lady herself—like a delicate mist. The south-facing chamber was shrouded in gloom due to a soaking summer rain, making Durek peevish enough without the further aggravation of his captain’s news.

When the mayor of Eriston had arrived a fortnight before, spinning a wild and disjointed tale of a house seized by wizards and begging for men to expunge them, Durek presumed the man either drunk or a lunatic. Parr’s report, however, confirmed that the mayor was neither.

“Are you trying to tell me,” Durek said, his eyes narrowing a fraction more with every syllable, “that of the full squadron of well-armed and well-trained men I sent to expel those foul wizards from that man’s foul house, only
three
came back alive?” He slammed his palm down on the enameled surface of the queen’s table so hard that a ball of yellow twine toppled from the willow basket, rapidly unraveling as it rolled across the carpeted floor. “What sort of men are you training, Captain, that find it so difficult to lift a corbal crystal to the sun and watch these magicians fall prostrate to the ground?”

Captain Parr shifted his injured arm in its sling and tried to suppress his anger, but could not hide the crimson flush that crept from the base of his neck to the tips of his ears. “The mayor is waiting in the corridor, sire, if you wish to confirm my report. And it wasn’t my men’s fault,” he added, with as much overt indignation as he dared display. “As I said, their crystals were all but useless.” The captain’s harshly sculpted features settled into a mystified frown—an expression he rarely had cause to exhibit.

Beside him, the newly invested Archbishop of Delfarham was likewise mystified. He knew the captain bore bad news when he met him at the gates and accompanied him to the solar, but
this
? Jon Lukin was not a man to allow himself to be surprised by anything—and would never admit it even if he were—but Parr’s news clearly troubled him. His normally scornful eyes betrayed a rare measure of uncertainty, and he pulled absently at the collar of his cassock as if it had suddenly grown too stiff and chafed his throat.

“The six Justices that accompanied your men—they had corbal crystals as well. Gems ritually blessed and sanctified for such work.”

“Useless as well, your Grace. And the men just as dead.”

Lukin blinked rapidly—as blatant a sign of shock as he permitted himself to reveal. To his own surprise, as well as that of his king, he could think of nothing at all to say.

Durek fixed an unblinking stare upon his captain. “Tell me.”

Parr’s owl-like eyes went dark with shame as he recounted the unpleasantly one-sided battle. “We thought to eliminate the wizards’ leader first, so we surrounded the mayor’s house early one morning and began to move in. But we didn’t surprise anyone,” he added bitterly. “They knew we were coming. Somehow.”

“No doubt they were spying on you with those cursed globes of theirs,” Lukin supplied, his upper lip curling with disdain.

The captain agreed with an eager nod, quick to accept the explanation. But even knowing the fight had been unfair, his face burned with humiliation at how thoroughly his men had been defeated. “They jumped us from behind, sire. I held up my dagger to one of them—it had a corbal in the hilt. There was plenty of light, but… the man just laughed at me. He
laughed
!” Parr winced, still mortified at the memory.

“It was the same with all of us,” he went on. He labored to swallow, as if trying to force a poorly chewed piece of meat down his throat. “The wizards took advantage of our surprise to rob us of our weapons and then routed us with magic. They set traps for us, trying to force us all into one room—blocking one hall and then another with images of fire and demons and dogs with foaming mouths. I didn’t realize it was all a trick at first, but then I remembered how real those angels were in Kaiburn that day—the ones Father Aldus created to frighten us so that he could rescue Princess Athaya. I tried to get my men to follow me through the illusions, but most of them were too afraid. In the end, only three of us made it to safety. A few of the wizards chased us for a while… they could have killed us, but seemed content enough with this.” The captain’s eyes skimmed over his fractured arm, the soiled bandage wrapped tight about one thigh, and the vicious burns striping his throat and hands. Burns, Durek reflected, much like those that had scarred his father’s body after Athaya’s sorcerous assault. “They probably let us escape so we could tell you what had happened.”

Durek studied his captain intensely. Parr had a mature grittiness about him that far exceeded his twenty-four years, and his injuries only added to the aura. He had learned much since inheriting the captaincy from Tyler Graylen, but he still hadn’t mastered the art of hiding his emotions; Durek could tell that he was deeply shaken by the attack.

The king’s continued silence prompted the captain to continue. “Once the wizards stopped chasing us, I circled around the gardens in back of the house and watched the rest through a small window.” Parr shook his head, still reeling from what he had witnessed days before. “The leader didn’t even touch the men he had captured. He just told them that their heartbeats were slowing and at the count of ten would stop completely. The men all looked bewitched, sire—as if in a waking sleep. And when he reached the count of ten, the men clutched their chests and fell. Dead. It was like he told them it would happen and because they believed it… it did.”

Deeply disturbed, Durek tightened his jaw and glanced to his archbishop, silently requesting his counsel.

“It seems your sister has gone beyond simple heresy,” Lukin observed, less disturbed by the loss of the king’s men than by the loss of Eriston itself. “After denying it for years, she now reveals her true desire—to take Caithe for herself, and in time, your place on the throne.”

“The wizards who attacked us claimed not to be among her followers, sire,” Parr pointed out. Disbelief was clear upon his face, but it was his sworn duty to report all that he had seen and heard. “One cannot trust the words of a wizard, of course, but these men called the princess a traitor to their kind.”

“A—?” The king’s brows shot up as he flirted with laughter. “At least we share an opinion on that, if nothing else,” he replied. Curtly, he motioned his captain toward the door. “Fetch in this wretched mayor of yours… what’s his name again?”

“Lafert, sire. Joseph Lafert.”

At the captain’s summons, a harried-looking old man scurried into the solar. White hair sprouted from his skull in bewildered clumps and his nose twitched like a squirrel who has just spied a hoard of acorns. He favored his king with a low and wholly ungraceful bow. “Thank you for allowing me into your presence once again, your Majesty,” the mayor of Eriston said, feverishly wringing a pair of blue-veined hands. “These are dire days indeed, and it is heartening to know that your Majesty takes such an active interest in the troubles of his—”

“What’s all this about corbal crystals not working?” Durek replied, squelching the man’s flow of flattery before it curdled his mood even further. He patently believed Parr’s tale, but wished to hear the mayor’s version of it nonetheless.

The old man’s nose twitched again. “Y-yes, sire. The captain has the right of it. These eyes may not see what they used to, but I saw
that
well enough. Not even God’s holy gems could stand against them, your Grace. They’re the Devil’s own brood, that much is sure.”

At Durek’s bidding, Lafert recounted how the wizards had appropriated his house several weeks before, and how, despite the best efforts of both the town’s militia and the soldiers summoned from the neighboring shire of Nadiera, nothing would dislodge them.

“How many of these wizards are there in Eriston?” Durek asked his captain.

“I saw roughly a dozen at the house itself,” Parr replied grudgingly, furious that his squadron had been bested by so few, “but there are rumors of over a thousand men camped in the fields to the east. I passed near the area on my way out of Eriston, but saw nothing.”

Durek’s face turned as bleak as the rainclouds hanging low in the sky above them. “None of us has ever seen one of Athaya’s camps, either, but we all know they exist. Her people hide themselves with spells and trickery.” He flicked a hasty glance of dismissal to the mayor. “If there’s nothing else, then you may go.”

Lafert cleared his throat, politely informing his sovereign that there was indeed something else, and the wringing of his hands became even more frenzied. “Actually, sire, if I could… I was hoping that…”

“Yes, yes,” Durek growled impatiently, whirling his hand in a circular motion to speed along the man’s request. “Spit it out.”

“I beg you to send more men, sire. My home must be liberated from these sorcerers!”

“More men?” The king arched his brows. “After losing nine of my best soldiers already? I doubt your town house is worth such a price, sir.”

“But the citizens of Eriston are terrified, sire… the ones that haven’t already been seduced to the enemy’s side. And the Sage’s men are everywhere—”