Forgotten - Kingdom Gone Book 3, page 21
“I know.” It was there in his voice, a note of doubt, but he shook it off like a dog. “But it’s safe down there. They’re doing something, Fari. It may be the only safe place if the elves slip up.”
“You mean if they cannot control what they’ve contained?” Kerrigan snarled and stepped from the wall. Malcolm’s blade swung in his direction. “You mean if the Powers get free.”
“Yes.” He didn’t try to deny it, nor did his weapon waver. They stared at one another and, in the end, it was Kerrigan who wavered.
“He’s right. If the elves loose them now, out there won’t be safe. We can cast a protection around the stone. They won’t be able to touch it if they’re even partially trapped inside.”
“If we go down there…Kerrigan…” Farine felt her breath leave. Her chest tightened at the thought. The defeat of it stung her eyes. She’d been so close, should have run days ago and been free before the evil spawned.
“Keep the band on,” he said. “And stay close to me.”
Malcolm nodded. He lowered the sword, but he didn’t sheath it. Instead, he used it to wave them toward the stairway, the one leading down into the dungeons. They went in a line, like mourners. The goodmother led them, taking the child from Malcolm’s grip only after he’d urged the girl to go. Then Farine followed with Kerrigan in her wake, walking as closely as the band would allow.
Malcolm brought up the rear. He didn’t put the sword away, and Farine wasn’t sure that had anything at all to do with them now. She stepped down each stair with no certainty it wouldn’t crumble under her feet. The elves’ chant surrounded them, swallowed them up the farther they trod into the lower level. Down there, the monolith waited. The Powers waited. Whether they were truly trapped, she couldn’t have said, but the hairs along her arms lifted. She felt the static of magic in opposition, and it weighted her feet like anchors.
Still they went, past the storerooms and down again, down to the dungeon and what she knew, if ever she knew anything at all, would be the worst mistake she’d ever made.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Hadja knelt at the base of the giant stone. Her face was red and streaked with tears, her eyes as dark as the cloud outside. Farine didn’t see the king. The tables in the first dungeon were abandoned, and all the users crowded here, in a ring around the menhir they’d carved. The elves remained at the curtain wall, farther out, as if to seal in the evil they’d spawned.
She could still hear them though. Everyone could hear them— their song was relentless. Why had they done it? Had her father somehow persuaded two Glades to commit this sin knowingly? Or had their arrogance led them to believe in the right of it? Did the elves, in the end, lust for power as much as the mighty king did?
The menhir glowed like a silvery sun, so bright that walking became a chore. Farine stumbled toward it, toward the penitent maid, as Malcolm herded the others into the open space around it. Inside the ring of Users, inside where the Powers had been bound.
She knew it, the moment her eyes beheld the standing stone. Every line of the sigils blazed. The runes pulsed in time to the elves’ song, and behind them, the stone that had been glassy stood as dark as steel. Something had filled that space, and she didn’t need the tension in the air, the snapping of magical lightning visible through the far opening, to know that that something wanted out.
Farine found Mastral first. He came in through the gap where she had once seen fields. Now, the First Mage stepped from the black cloud as if he couldn’t be bothered to fear it. Her father came after, emerged from the lightning shadows scowling and shaking his head.
Miriam and Sariah huddled beside Hadja. Malcolm turned to salute the king and Kerrigan had a moment to flash Farine a look, a short nod that told her he was still there, still looking for their chance to go. Perhaps, that cloud was not so dangerous, even an illusion, if the king could travel through it with success.
Now, however, Leopold shouted at Mastral, raised his voice to a shriek that held more panic than she’d ever seen on him.
“They cannot hold them!” He wailed it, waved his arms to the huge stone. “The elves will falter!”
Mastral gave an answer, but they couldn’t hear it. He kept his words for the king only, but she knew they had to do with her when Leopold’s gaze twisted in her direction. He nodded too, and came on, moving like a king again, waving the Users aside.
“Have them make their circle, Weredewell.” He faced the stone, eyes reflecting the glow of runes, and also, the darkness behind it. “The enemy is at our walls. Cast the protection!”
“The enemy is inside your walls.” Hadja spoke, softly and still staring at the standing stone. “The enemy is inside your heart, Leopold. Atla’s forces have fled already.”
“Silence, woman! They attack us even now!”
“They do not!” She stood up slowly, reluctant even in the face of what he’d done to her beloved Powers. “This thing, this reeks of your lust for magic.”
The king raised his hand and stepped forward. Farine made an involuntary sound, matched his movement and saw his head swing to her, his eyes register her presence this time. His hand dropped like a stone. He stood tall and smiled again.
“Fari, thank heavens you’re safe.”
“Am I?” When her father stepped toward her, she took a step back, nearly banged into the Users lining up in a ring around the space. “Do you really believe that?”
His royal brow furrowed. The magic reflected in his eyes, flared blue, and the pillar he’d commissioned answered likewise. “You’ll see, Fari, when it’s over.”
“When it’s over? When what is over?”
“There’s no time to explain now.”
“No time for your daughter, for either daughter?”
The king’s eyes darkened. He shook his head, and his lips twisted. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand that my mother was more valuable than hers.”
Leopold the Mighty lunged forward. He staggered to the side when the armband stopped him, and his eyes flew toward the crystal, as if he suspected the stone of thwarting him. He growled at her, but his eyes moved, from the stone, to the maid and, very briefly, to the girl sitting beside her goodmother. His other daughter. “When it’s over,” he snarled.
“Or maybe I won’t survive it,” Farine knew she should have stopped, that this was not the time, but the words tumbled out. The sins of Leopold the Mighty, the things she suspected boiled over from her thoughts and out into her speech. “Then you won’t have to worry about your promise to Malcolm or Yedan.”
He flinched, and for the first time his eyes registered hurt more than anger. It moved her a little, enough to shake the rage brewing in her own veins. She could see Mastral glowering behind her father, but she had his attention now. She had the king’s ear, and her father was not the monster she feared. He couldn’t be.
“Please, Father, stop this. Stop the elves and let the Powers go.”
“Stop?” Leopold the Mighty shook his head sadly. She could almost believe the regret in his voice. Almost, until his dry laughter washed it away. “Stop the elves. I wouldn’t, even if I could. The elves want this more than I do, Fari. Nothing would stop them now.”
“But…” The rumble overhead drowned her protest. The castle’s foundation groaned and twisted, and the king snapped to attention.
“The elves falter!” He screamed it again. “Cast the protection!”
The Users joined hands, made a ring around them, but Kerrigan refused to join it. He stood just inside, watching her, watching her father and Malcolm and the opening at the far end of the room. Fari sidled toward him, and her father’s scowl deepened.
“Cast!” He bellowed and the Users said a word together. The room sparked again, flickered with a different static. Too many magics in one place, too many sigils and too many conflicting purposes. She saw the disaster in it, even as it struck out at her.
A blue bolt arced from the menhir. It touched her on the arm, a fiery finger that sent a shock of pain from her scalp to her toes. The band on her forearm absorbed it, devoured the power and blazed like a coal against her skin. It glowed bluer and brighter by the second, and a voice howled in her brain. No man shall. She screamed, but no sound came out. When her mouth opened, the other voice spoke through her. The band burned as if it meant to sever her arm, and something gigantic broadcast its message through her throat.
“NO MAN SHALL,” it said. “NO MAN SHALL HOLD US!”
It threw her to the ground when the bolt released her. For a moment, all she could do was breathe. The band ached still, but the fire had gone. Her chest hurt, but she was alone in her body. The Users shouted their word again. Farine guessed why. The Powers had left the stone, had used the magic around her arm as a chink to slip through. Now they threw their will against the protective circle, and she knew as well as she remembered that fire, that it would not hold them.
Nothing would.
Farine lifted her head enough to see. The Users held together still, should get their share of credit for that much. The magic they held glowed white, a ring of safety that warbled now. It stretched and pulsed, but didn’t break. Still, she guessed it was no longer the Users that held it. As she watched, the light grew wider and taller, it stretched up, through the stone ceiling and down into the earth. The Users said their word again, but their voice sounded feeble, weak.
The magic spun through them, faster and faster. It grew and sped up until it made a whirlwind of their circle, a tornado of power that whistled to the heavens and back.
The castle could not stand it. The stones flew apart, scattered like blocks of wood on a high wind. Black sky and purple lightning met the white twister, and the palace of Leopold the Mighty folded like a house of cards.
The wind swept it all aside, pushed outward against the elves’ black spell. Only the menhir stood in its eye, and they crowded around it, screamed and clawed their way closer to the stone as if it were an anchor. Farine still lay on her belly. She saw Hadja and Miriam shielding her sister between them. She saw Malcolm, his face ghost white, and Kerrigan, scanning for her, clinging to the pillar and looking for Farine.
It was her father’s voice she heard, however. It was the king who found her first. He sat on his knees a few feet away, and tears traced the line of his cheeks, dripped from his royal jaw. He reached for her, and Fari reached back. She didn’t think that he should not be able to touch her, that he shouldn’t be able to get this close. She didn’t remember the armband at all until their fingers met.
Leopold’s eyes flew wide. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. She saw it though, even without noise. Farine saw his death register, his pain and terror as the band snuffed out his life. He blackened slowly, and still his fingers held her. He crumpled, crushed inward and then blew away into the maelstrom, piece by piece.
She shouted; she knew that much, though her brain dulled the instant her father died. She screamed his name, or no, or something with equally little power to save his life. Leopold the Mighty was no more. The Powers had their vengeance, had their blood, and still the storm raged on.
The Users still stood in a ring, but they were empty shells, soulless now. Their eyes glowed blue even as they stumbled back from the stone. The black cloud receded, exposing the rubble of the castle walls and the ring, farther out, where the elves still, miraculously, stood. They were dead too, or held as fast as the Users were. All of them moved like puppets now, driven by the Powers back and back to the very edge of the place a palace had once stood.
Two full Glades had cast the spell that caught their Powers fast. If they’d done it for their own purposes, as her father said, they’d failed completely. Their greed had killed them as surely as her father’s had. Now they twisted and stretched at their victims’ hand. They grew tall and tight, transformed and twined together by the Powers they’d sought to control. The Users joined them, growing into a ring of forest made of flesh. Bodies became gnarled and trunk-like. Mouths stretched and sprouted branches that wove together, higher and higher. Roots sprang from the cobblestones, grabbed ankles and merged with bone.
The last line of defense. The last magic that protected a king stood forever at his boundaries now, a dense wood of living trees sprouted from the souls of his magical servants.
When the cracking died away, sobbing replaced it. The castle was gone. Farine still lived, but that thought offered no comfort. Hadja, Miriam and Sariah still huddled beside the menhir, though its surface had died, had become only dim, gray stone. Malcolm and Kerrigan both survived, sheltered by the stone’s power, but around them, her whole world was only devastation and death.
Farine stared at the pile of dust, the crown resting in the remains, and felt her mind slipping. She heard them move, shuffle against the stone, but her hands still burned with death’s touch. No man shall. It sang to her like the cursed elves had.
Before she could decide which way to move, another voice whispered. “Is it over?”
The ground shuddered in answer, trembled and shook. Farine watched the ashes of her father dance. She heard Hadja scream again, felt the heat of magic and knew the Powers had not left them.
A shimmer rippled before her eyes. She sat on her heels, kept her back to the rest of them and watched it, a membrane, a bubble surrounding them. Perhaps it would keep them forever, trap them here as they had meant to trap the Powers.
Outside of it, the world began to spin. Trees flew past, trunk after trunk swirled by and the sky grew light and then dark and light again. The stones shifted, cracked and crumbled even further. The skies changed, stars shifting night after night after night. Days and nights passed. Months and years circled them without touching their bubble. She watched it go round and round until her stomach clenched with each circuit. Tighter and tighter, faster and faster.
She only turned when Kerrigan screamed.
Farine dragged herself around, still prone and not caring that her fingers scuffed against the stones, that her belly still clamped against the spinning. Kerrigan’s head was thrown back. His mouth had fallen open, but the scream stopped, and words that were not his voice erupted from his throat.
She knew exactly how that felt.
“A HUNDRED YEARS TO OWN THEIR SINS, A HUNDRED YEARS TO WAIT.” He inhaled, one long ragged gasp for air. The voice continued, sucked whatever he had managed to gather away again. “AND WHEN THE TOWERS RISE AGAIN,” it said. “A GOBELIN ARMY AT THE GATE!”
It traded hosts then, transferred its attention to the goodmother. Miriam’s lips moved, and the same voice continued. “THE GUARDIAN OF LIVING STONE WILL FETCH THE HORDE SO WILD, AND SEND THE BEARER FAR FROM SHORE TO FIND A ROYAL CHILD.”
Miriam gasped and the voice moved again. Hadja finished for it, howled the final, prophetic words. “THE HEIR SHALL MAKE THE SACRIFICE, THE POWERS THAT BE AWAKEN. WHEN ROYAL BLOOD HAS PAID ITS PRICE, RESTORE WHAT TIME HAS TAKEN.”
In the silence after, Farine heard only her sister’s sobbing. No one moved, as if a gesture might begin the terror all over again. Outside the shimmering wall, the world slowed its spinning. The trees passed less frequently, and eventually stilled. The sky was black, but stars twinkled there now.
“A hundred years?” Hadja’s voice whispered it, gave the idea merit.
“Two hundred?” Miram answered.
The stones had weathered. The trees that had been elves or Users flourished, thickened, and guarded the place without comment. Time had thrown them aside just as the Powers had tossed the castle. They didn’t matter to it, to the world outside or the one that had been before.
Only they remained unchanged. The pile of dust still held her father’s crown and the band of silver on her forearm still reeked of death. No Man Shall!
She’d killed the king, her father, with her bare hands. Her fingers had stricken him down, destroyed him. She stood up slowly. Her legs wobbled and her stomach tightened violently. The world still spun, but now it was inside the bubble that whirled. It pushed her away, flung her outward in a fit of dizziness. She reached for the shimmer and tore through it, stumbled forward and into a place that was dull and gray.
The stones were still here. The trees still stood, but all the color had drained away. Was this her punishment, then, a world without light? She took another step. Her legs steadied, but when she turned back to look, to call out even, there was no one behind her. Only an empty courtyard and a dull gray stone waited there. The shimmer still rippled, but she couldn’t see inside it.
She’d lost them too, and good thing. What was she now that any of them would recognize? She was no longer princess, no longer Farine. She was death and pain only.
The ripple flashed again, and Kerrigan Slate stepped out of thin air. He blurred through her tears, smiled and stepped forward.
“NO MAN SHALL!” She screamed the words, watched him stagger back, eyes wide and full of the memory of her father’s death. Her touch would not kill Kerrigan. She wouldn’t let him near enough. “Please,” The word caught in her throat. Her tears fell freely. “Please, Kerrigan.”
She held her hands out, showed him the evil and shook her head.
“Farine.”
But it wouldn’t take the others long. They’d find their way out as well, and she had no desire to see them, to see their faces reflect her curse as she saw his do now. “Do it, Kerrigan. Please.”
He nodded. His eyes gleamed and sparkled with tears. His hands lifted the crystal around his neck, pointed the trap at her while his lips said the word that would trigger the spell.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
She woke beside the menhir. A waning moon lit the rough surface. Its sigils had grown dim again, released her, now their memory had finished its tale. Her tale. Princess Farine, daughter of Leopold the Mighty, his killer and the heir to a Kingdom that was no more. But not the Heir. Of that much, Payne was certain. It was not her, and now was definitely not time.
