The Living God, page 18
Her green eyes fixated on the old king. “Superstitions will get you nowhere, Father. How sad will you be when you realize all your silly dreaming was nothing but a terrible nursery rhyme, whispered by a diseased mind. I’m not the Equitas. I’m just a woman, a normal—albeit gifted with magic—woman.” She appraised him and his fixed face, like someone had taken his aged wrinkled skin and smashed it into an eerie smile and spackled it with varnish. The implication in his eyes was enough. He did not stop smiling, because he had accepted what she refused: that it was all true and there was no escaping it.
Yarin shifted out of his statuesque smile. “Alikons usually don’t last very long, at least not five years’ worth.”
Saran scoffed. “Keleir isn’t an Alikon. We’ve both seen elemental Alikons before, Father, and he isn’t misshapen or monstrous. He’s human, much to your dismay. The only thing I did was build a wall around the Oruke and his consciousness. I gave Keleir back his body, that is all.”
“When do you recharge the link to your Alikon?” her father went on. “While he sleeps? When you make love?”
Saran jolted at his words. Heat burned her cheeks, and she growled, bolting out of her chair. “I should have known not to expect serious conversation from you.”
“What you did to him is undone by your lack of connection to him. It matters little what terminology you want to use, lovely child. The Bind will remain until he transitions back into his true self.” Yarin fixed his cold and unfeeling gaze, a look far removed from that of a loving father. She was, as she’d always been, a means to an end, just as her mother had been before her.
Saran had wanted a loving father. As a child she’d clung desperately to the hope that he would give her love to fill the absence of a lost mother. He had, in his own demented way, loved her. She suspected that it was the sort of love one bestowed upon their favorite plow, an instrument of fortune and future, but nothing that deserved true fondness.
“Why not kill me?” she asked him, hating the crack her voice made as she acknowledged his indifference to her life.
“Keleir must be king, and in order for him to do so, he must be tied to the land by your union. It is the only way the Core will accept him as a legitimate king. While you are married, the bond between you as husband and wife has not been fulfilled because of the Bind. But I cannot remove the Bind until the Keleir you know has gone away—”
“Why does he need to be king?”
Yarin settled back in his chair, the wood groaning as it accepted his full weight. “Do you think I did what I did to be king for my own selfish reasons?”
“Yes,” Saran snapped.
“I loved your grandfather. King Dante Vanguard was my friend. My mentor. But he did not believe in the voice that I heard. He did not believe the truth. The Vel d’Ekaru came to me, just as the Prophetess comes to her chosen champions, and showed me what I needed to do.” A gleam entered Yarin’s eye, the sort of light that forms when a father meets his newborn child. “I made myself king. I married Vanguard’s daughter so our child would have the blood of the Vanguard lineage, so that they would be a true heir, bound to the land and accepted by the Core. The Book of Kings will only open for a true king.”
Saran’s head swam with his words. She pressed her fingers to her temples in the hope it would help her focus. “What if you’d had a boy?”
“I wouldn’t have.”
“How do you know?”
Yarin grinned. “Fate, dear child. Our paths were already forged before we were born. You know as well as anyone how time works. All of this has come to pass before … in some shape or form.”
Saran’s throat went dry. She stared aghast at him until the words crawled up and out of her mouth. “W-Why tell me this?”
The first show of sympathy appeared in Yarin’s eyes, the briefest of emotions before something else crushed it. “There is nothing you can do to stop it.”
She absorbed his words, let them charge maddening through her mind. The princess stood, straightening her spine. “I do not believe in destiny. We have choices, Father. You chose the path the voice told you to tread, and thus it led you to the desired outcome. A self-fulfilling prophecy, the only ones that truly exist. If you had chosen a different path, it would have led to a different outcome. You might have chosen this one, but it doesn’t mean I have to follow.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
HER HEART POUNDED angrily in her chest as she left Yarin’s chambers. She slammed the heavy wooden door behind her and stomped down the corridor. The fever of rage turned the world into a blur of monochrome and faceless humanoid shapes. The princess wandered aimlessly through the castle with no real purpose or destination while her boiling blood tempered.
It wasn’t just her father that had driven her rage, though he held most of the blame. She felt angry at Keleir for sending such an impersonal letter. She knew his reasons, and yet she couldn’t help but feel the cold finality of those words.
Let me rest.
Saran stood with her back to the stone, staring at the gritty cobbled floor, too lost in her thoughts to notice the rush of servants flooding the hall toward the edge of the west tower steps. Their horrified gasps tore her from her thoughts.
She pushed through the crowd gathered around two soldiers carrying a body wrapped in dingy canvas. The servants whispered among themselves, and she would have bothered to listen had she not noticed the pigeon feathers stuck to the wrap.
“They say he hanged himself,” Odan’s familiar voice muttered next to her. She felt the cold of his magic against her arm, and her green eyes lifted to his sunken face.
His cheeks, always sharp and high, now had deep dark shadows under them. His eyes were sunken into his head and black with sleeplessness, but his cyan-blue irises still glittered with frost and ice. While his form was depleted, his magic remained as strong as ever.
“Who?” she asked him, careful with her tone. He stood too peacefully next to her, lacking the usual radiant loathing that prickled off him in her presence. Perhaps he had no energy for it.
“The messenger,” he replied, tilting his head down to her. “I suppose it gets lonely waiting in that tower for birds, with birds being your only companion. I don’t blame him for leaving his miserable life. I would, too, in his position.”
Saran glowered at him, but couldn’t form the words for a retort. A sick feeling curled in the pit of her stomach.
“Looking green, Princess,” Odan muttered. “I figured you weren’t so affected by death with how swiftly you tried to kill me.”
“Some are more deserving of death than others,” she replied. Saran’s green eyes narrowed. She curled her fists at her sides and turned away from him. Odan stepped in her path, sickly and feeble. He felt like a ghost before her, paper-thin and translucent. She ducked around him. “Excuse me.”
Again he stepped in her path. “I almost died. In fact, the healers almost let me die once I told them who stabbed me. They are devoted to you, aren’t they?”
“They believe in the Grand Feminine, a woman of power and influence. I am their future queen, so of course they are devoted to me. How did you convince them to let you live?”
Odan frowned at the floor before he held out his slender hand. “By making a Life Debt.” He turned his palm up to her and rolled back the sleeve of his tunic, revealing a black scar running up his forearm. “Madam Ophelia made me swear a Blood Oath on the Life Debt that I would never bring you harm. The debt expires on her death. Unfortunately it comes with the stipulation that I must physically make a truce with you or I’ll just keep degenerating.”
Saran appraised him. “You look like shit because you’ve avoided being nice to me?”
“Yes,” Odan replied with the slightest hint of amusement. “So shall we shake as quickly as possible?”
“You must really want to live.” She held out her hand but did not touch him. “If I don’t do this, if I don’t agree to the truce, does that mean you die a slow agonizing death?”
“Potentially,” he murmured through gritted teeth. “Or maybe it just counts that I try.”
Saran slipped her hand into his frigid grip. “You are lucky, Lord Marki, that I am honorable enough to forgive your insanity so that you do not suffer.” She shook his hand quickly and drew away. “I accept your truce. Tell Madam Ophelia to find me if she doesn’t believe it.” She pushed Odan aside gently. “I really need to leave now.”
Saran found Rowe in his chambers and at his desk, hovering over one of twenty books scattered across the top. He didn’t bother looking up as she closed the door behind her. Only Saran or Keleir would come into his rooms without knocking.
“Did you do it?” she snapped at him, slamming her hands against the desk and bending down to obstruct his field of vision. “Did you?”
Rowe’s blue eyes glinted in the dark room, and he settled back in his chair with a heavy sigh. “I made it quick. He didn’t feel anything; he only went to sleep.”
A sharp resounding crack echoed off the stone walls, and Rowe’s head snapped to the left. Her palm burned angrily, as hot as the fire scalding her veins. Her voice quivered with rage. “You’re a bastard! You didn’t have to kill him.”
Rowe righted himself, reaching a hand up to rub the sting from his cheek. “He heard too much, Saran. Keleir would have done the same.”
“No, he wouldn’t have.”
“Yes, he would’ve, and you know it.”
Her chest heaved angry breaths into her lungs and she stepped away from his desk. “He was innocent. Just some old man who had the unfortunate luck of being in the same room as my panicked ramblings. He didn’t deserve what you did. He wasn’t evil! His only crime was listening to what he couldn’t avoid hearing. You could have paid—”
“There is not enough money to keep a man silent in this poor dissolving country. Money doesn’t do anyone a bit of good here. You’re a princess, but are you wealthy? You wear no jewelry, you have no crown, and your castle is falling down around you. The money that once belonged to your family was lost in war. The only thing that keeps this country afloat is fear and title, and Yarin would have gotten the information from him through fear alone. Whatever threats I could’ve made would not have kept him silent. I did what was necessary, and I will not apologize for it. You can hate me if you want, but I did it to protect us both.”
Saran shook her head, a woeful sadness stealing the light in her eyes. “No,” she whispered to him, backing toward the door. “You did it to preserve your soul-saving mission. You did it for yourself.”
Rowe frowned. “We’re all selfish. Even Keleir. Even you. But I’m not lying, and I took no joy in it.” Rowe stood and stepped around his desk. He sat atop it, his shoulders slumping. “She spoke to me, for the first time in so very long. She warned me, Saran. We’ve been betrayed, whatever that means. In order for the Equitas to exist, the Living God must rise. Keleir cannot return from Mavahan, Saran. If he does, then we’ve lost him. But if he doesn’t, I’ve lost you.”
Saran glowered at him fiercely, jabbing his chest with her finger hard enough to snap the bone. She pointed harshly at him. “Not you too. Not you!”
“Saran …”
“No,” she spat. “No!” He reached for her and she slapped his hand away. “I am not going to lose him! I’m not going to quit. I’ll chop this fucking thing from my wrist before that happens. I do not believe in prophecies. They’re riddles. They’re lies! There is no such thing as fate or destiny. We choose our paths, Rowe.”
“I desperately wish that were true.”
“It is true.”
Rowe folded his arms, dawning a sad, sympathetic stare. She knew by his expression that he chose not to argue with her because he felt it useless. Her stubborn heart would never be swayed, and she would never believe the words of an invisible woman who chose only to speak in one man’s dreams.
“Regardless of what we believe, it matters very little now. For whatever reason, Keleir isn’t coming back.” He waited, letting the finality of that sink in. He read the panic in her eyes, and he imagined the soul behind them bashing against the walls, wanting desperately to shatter free and go where she pleased. “I leave for Salara at the end of the month, and I will attempt to finish our mission alone. I’ve agreed to supply Darshan with the aid he needs in exchange for his word that Yarin will not be harmed. However, since I trust Darshan’s men about as much as Yarin, I want you to try to overpower your father or at least lock him away before someone gets the itch to kill him out of vengeance.”
The stiffness in Saran’s shoulders melted. The fluttering wildness of her eyes eased into sorrow. “Time has passed quickly.”
Rowe nodded. “It has. I was hoping … I’d hoped Keleir would come back. If something should go wrong, it would be nice to see him one last time. I want to apologize to him for what happened before he left. It was fear and selfishness talking—I didn’t mean any of it.” His eyes glossed with tears.
Saran reached out to him, despite her anger, and held him tight. She stared out his window to the balcony, which looked so much like his brother’s room. Her thoughts drifted back to the night Keleir flung himself from the railing to escape his monster, to protect them all from it.
She thought about the terrible thing that Rowe had done to keep their secret. She thought about her own deceit and lies. What monsters they had become in the shadows of Yarin D’mor … and she feared what they would turn into if they continued to stay.
Her throat grew dry, but she forced the thought aloud anyway. “We should have gone away, like he wanted.”
The Lightning Mage nodded, burrowing his face against her warm neck. “I know.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
THE BELLY OF the ziggurat prison sat several floors deep beneath the earth, protected from the harsh desert sun. The interior was lit only by torches and a single beam of sunlight filtering down an impossibly long shaft that ran through the center of the structure. It allowed just enough light in to crush the soul of any man thinking it a hint to freedom.
For weeks Keleir watched men attempt to reach the square four-by-four shaft, only to see them end up as broken piles on the sandy prison floor. Those strong enough to reach the shaft were no longer strong enough to press their weight against the sides and shinny up. They always ended up like the rest.
He did not understand Mavish, but he guessed enough from the jesting of those around him that the ones who had been inside the prison the longest found those sad attempts entertaining. They even, by his guess, goaded a few into it just for the primitive entertainment it provided.
The Alar did not offer Keleir the luxury of his own cell, separated from the superstitious Mavahan people. They left him in the common hold, a large cavernous sandy pit at the bottom of the prison. Some—more violent—men sat chained to the walls, but the rest wandered aimlessly with boredom. Those whose sanity had been driven away spent most of the day staring at the beam of golden sun, muttering to themselves.
When he first arrived, they’d shunned him as an Ipaba, and in all honesty, he couldn’t have been happier. He didn’t understand their language, and he wanted them to fear him. Fear would keep one of them from starting something Keleir wasn’t too sure he could finish. In all his training, he was far better at magic than combat. Most of the men in prison were working slaves, built like giant stone pillars, and dropped in the pit until needed again.
He recognized one of them but made no move to speak to him. He knew the man from the day he arrived, from the room in which they trapped him. He delivered the luggage that Keleir now suspected belonged to some vagabond on the street. Not that it contained anything valuable to him.
The tall slave possessed deep, dark skin the color of rich chocolate, a color in sharp contrast to the bronze collar hanging around his neck and the tan rags around his waist. Despite the rags, his owner kept himself well. He wore a crown of long, tight braids tipped with bronze clasps, the cluster of which were bound together at the back of his head with a leather cord. He held a different rank than the rest, given his clean-shaven appearance—perhaps he was the reason some kept their distance from Keleir.
Those who didn’t shy away from the man called him Xalen Okara.
Keleir spent the first week curiously watching the Droven man, for it seemed a much better use of his time than watching men plummet to their death. At first the latter had been interesting enough, but after the sixth one, he grew too disgusted with the lack of intelligence in those that followed.
Xalen paraded around the room with the pride of a king. Perhaps he’d worn the crown of a Droven king but now wore the rags of prisoner. Even if that were not the case, Keleir imagined it so. It made his dull confinement all the more interesting.
His curiosity in the Droven man couldn’t save Keleir from his own thoughts, and as a week passed into another, he lost himself in staring at the sunlit shaft with the other prisoners who thought they might escape up it.
The Fire Mage snapped away from his thoughts when the guards brought Luke to speak to him, and it was the first Keleir had heard his own language in weeks.
“They sent a message to Adrid. They forced me to write it—I’m sorry, Ahriman.” He bowed to Keleir, but the prince would have none of it. He grabbed the boy’s shoulders and held him upright.
“You do what you must to survive. Do not worry. The situation is far from hopeless. I didn’t come here expecting a warm welcome. I planned for a lot of scenarios, though not for a massive, impossible cavernous pit to escape from.” Keleir’s fingers tightened on Luke’s shoulders. “Tell me how to get out of here. Tell me whatever deal I must make with them. I will give it.”
Sir Canin shook his head with a mournful expression. “They will have nothing, Ahriman, not even your life.”
The shoulders of the prince slumped ever so slightly until he caught sight of the woman standing just behind Luke. A tall woman, built with muscle, she wore the attire of a lady of the house, down to the bronze collar around her neck. He nodded to her. “Why is she here?”
