The Living God, page 27
Rowe’s stiff form settled in an instant. The light emptied from his eyes, and the storm around them quieted.
That’s right. He’d murdered people. The faces of the dead and those he’d harmed in his devotion to Yarin blurred together until that moment. But now he could pick Joseph out of the thousands of memories he’d buried inside his guilt-ridden quest for redemption. He saw Joseph begging for his life and the lives of his family, and then he saw his own hands, his own sword, cut Joseph down. He’d killed Joseph’s family in this very town. That was why Darshan had led him here to die.
Redemption.
A loud, ragged breath escaped Rowe. His gaze darted to them all, maddened in its realization. He’d spent many years trying to atone for his sins by helping Darshan on his path to the throne. But no matter what he did, it would never be enough payment for those sins.
He’d selfishly sought forgiveness. He’d broken promises. He’d lied. He’d risked his brother’s soul and Saran’s favor just to get to the end of his guilt. He’d worked to get to this moment, this day, and the price of his salvation would not be in Darshan’s crown and Yarin’s death. The price would be his life, and, after all the death and sorrow, it seemed the most fitting solution.
Rowe Blackwell had spent years desperately searching for salvation.
Now he’d found it in the sword of the man whose family he’d slaughtered.
The Lightning Mage settled into the mud. “I accept.”
FORTY-THREE
KELEIR’S LUNGS HURT.
His sides hurt.
He couldn’t breathe.
But he ran.
He ran across the shifting soft sand, struggling against the uneven ground and raging heat. The edge of the forest taunted him, just a few yards away at last. He pushed fiercely, tried to run harder, even as his knees began to give. His joints throbbed, and his lungs filled with fluid. He imagined the horse felt something similar before it died, and he tried to ignore the bubble of shame for murdering the beast in such a brutal fashion.
He counted in groups of ten, telling himself that he could go on for ten more, and followed that with another set and another. He did this until the shade of trees enveloped him. The thriving life of the world washed over his skin the closer he grew to the forest. The gift of that connection came with a dark price, as the Oruke stirred awake inside his mind.
Agonizing pain ripped through his chest, as if the Oruke were bursting out from his sternum. He cried out, his step faulting, and he clutched his chest as he ran.
“Let me do this,” he roared at the creature. “Let me save him!”
The Oruke chuckled, writhing inside him.
“Please!” Keleir begged.
The Fire Mage ran blindly, focusing all his energy into his feet. He burst through the dry brush at the desert’s edge, and as soon as the first foot touched the moist forest floor, he fell into fire.
FORTY-FOUR
JOSEPH STOOD OVER Rowe, the point of his sword pressing against the Lightning Mage’s chest. “This might be the most honorable thing you’ve ever done,” he said and lifted the sword into the air.
The world slowed. Rowe absorbed every detail, even down to the sound of the Joseph’s leather gloves as they tightened over the hilt. It felt cowardly to close his eyes, so he watched, wondering whether or not Saran would ever forgive him.
She’d never willingly marry Darshan, not when she found out the truth, and she’d definitely find out. She was clever. But she was outnumbered and magically handicapped. She wouldn’t live longer than today, and … he didn’t want to live a day beyond hers.
This wasn’t what the Prophetess foretold, but Saran had told him over and over that such things weren’t real. If only he’d believed her. Maybe the deity was a figment of his imagination. Maybe he’d created her to help him atone for what he’d done. It hardly mattered now. At least he could find peace in death. At least he could find freedom from his demons once he returned to the Core.
Rowe focused on the sword as it fell and took a deep, calming breath.
The blade turned red-hot at the point before melting and burning away to tiny embers and ash. The rebel holding it shook, opening his mouth to scream, but fire consumed him from the inside out before he could utter a note. The twelve men burned away to glowing embers and ash before floating to rest on the damp earth around him.
Rowe’s body registered what happened long before his mind did, taking in a deep, sharp breath. He bolted up and turned to the dark figure standing in his peripheral vision. Keleir, pale and clutching his chest, stood just a few yards away. Sweat beaded his forehead and soaked his clothes. He looked like a man who had run for his life. Keleir’s eyes found Rowe. The Lightning Mage saw fondness and love in those demon red eyes, and he knew then that Keleir was not lost to him yet.
For just a second, Rowe spotted Saran, a rippling mirage between them, waving desperately at Keleir and begging to be seen. The moment Rowe thought he saw her, she disappeared. The Lightning Mage knew it to be his imagination, his desperate need to have them both safe.
Keleir took a step forward and winced, dropping to his knees. The ashes of the dead littering the ground fluttered and lifted and swirled up into a dark cloud. Rowe ran through it, bursting from the center to fall before his brother.
“Why did you do that?” he called to Keleir.
Keleir looked up to him, falling forward to rest against the hard grip the Lightning Mage had on his shoulders. The Fire Mage’s eyes were wide with pain, and black seeped in from their edges. He’d fought the Oruke, but something worse came for him now.
“I saved you,” Keleir whispered, relief bringing tears to his eyes. “I made it in time.”
Rowe roared, shaking his brother. “Gods be damned, you are a fool! Do you know what will happen now?”
Keleir nodded, turning his gaze to the swirling ash behind his brother. “The Core will claim the price, a life for a life.” Keleir had met this curse before, when he’d killed his father with magic as a child. The Core had claimed the price, but all it had done was give the Oruke control. Perhaps this time, he’d finally die.
Rowe shook his head, his fingers knotting in Keleir’s tunic. “No …”
“It’s too late,” the Fire Mage murmured. “I feel it already. I feel them. I feel their pain.”
“No!” Rowe wrapped his arms around his brother’s waist and hauled him to his feet. “We’ll outrun it.”
“That’s impossible.”
“We’ll outrun it, damn it!”
“No one can outrun death.”
“Then we’ll go to Saran. She can fix this. She fixed you before.”
Keleir’s legs barely held him. He sagged, heavy against his brother’s side. He focused on forming words, speaking through gritted teeth. “You know she can’t.”
“We will try! Damn you, why did you do this, Keleir? Why did you do this? I was prepared to die! I’d accepted it. I chose it! Why did you do this?”
Keleir met his brother’s angry gaze. “Because I love you. No matter our faults or fears, no matter your doubts … I have always, even in the blindness of rage, loved you. And if my last memory on this world has to be something, I want it to be that I saved you.”
Rowe clenched his jaw so tightly it hurt. He held Keleir up, supporting Keleir’s weight as the Fire Mage had supported him in everything else. How could he have doubted? How could he have ever doubted? His brother never lost faith in him, no matter how many times Rowe questioned him. He never stopped loving him. “You did. You saved me.” In more ways than one. “Now let me save you.”
As if all the thousands that the Oruke killed came to claim his soul, the swirling cloud of ash and death grew far larger than the ashes of twelve men. The ash swirled until it formed a face. The mouth opened in a great wailing motion, exerting a silent scream. It swooped up and down and opened wide to gobble them up, but Rowe took his brother away in a shower of sparks before the curse could claim him.
FORTY-FIVE
YEARS OF MUD and disuse had cemented the heavy iron grate above Saran and Odan’s heads to the courtyard floor. She couldn’t remember a single day when anyone bothered to show the courtyard an ounce of interest, least of all to clean from the stone the mud tracked in by horses. She beat her hands against the metal and mud rained down on her head in heavy wet globs.
Saran pushed with all her might, and beneath her, the Ice Mage pushed with all of his, his arms wrapped so tightly around her waist that under any normal circumstances she probably would have flayed him. But given their current predicament, she welcomed the help.
“Put your back into it, Princess,” Odan muttered through gritted teeth as he strained to hold her and keep his balance.
“Shall I give you a boost and you try it?”
Saran shifted and did as he instructed, placing her back against the grate and standing with all her strength. The grate lifted away too quickly for it to be of her own doing. Hard hands dragged her from the hole and to her feet. Saran jerked from their grasp and whirled to take in her surroundings.
Darshan waited at the top of the staircase, standing between the castle’s open doors. His men stood at the foot of the entry stairs, between the two great fire pits that topped the short pillars at either side of the stairs. A mess of haggard faces, as dirty as the muddied earth around them, filled the courtyard. For them, time stopped when they allowed Darshan into the city, and it wouldn’t start again until they knew for certain who would take the throne.
Even the stableboy, who always greeted her when she arrived home, watched hopefully from his usual spot near the fire pits, along with his soldier friend who occasionally fed the flames out of boredom. The hatchet he used to whack small logs into kindling lay propped against the pillars. Saran eyed the tool, fiddling with the Bind around her wrist.
“I used that same route, you know, to escape your father the night your mother died,” Darshan said as he sauntered down the steps.
Saran smeared the mud from her face. “It has seen better days, I’m sure.”
Darshan eyed the hole darkly. “Tell the others to come out.”
“Come out,” Saran called down. The Ice Mage wiggled his spindle-thin body from the drain.
Darshan drew his sword. “And the king.”
The king. Her father. Saran shifted involuntarily, as if he’d struck her, looking back to the black hole in the earth. Her father deserved no sentimentalism from her, and yet she couldn’t stop the part of her from feeling sorrow at the lost chance to redeem him. Saran knew what he was, knew how she hated him, and yet some small childlike part of her loved him anyway. “The king is dead.”
The courtyard hushed, the crackle of the fire pits growing like a roar in her ears.
“And you live?”
“He died a natural death, so I live.”
Darshan’s ocean gaze settled on Saran, and he sheathed his sword. “Then it’s over. We have no cause to quarrel. The king is dead. Long live the queen.”
No cheers followed his proclamation. The men and women around her glanced between themselves and murmured, but no one fell to a knee or shared in Darshan’s enthusiasm. Perhaps they were in shock.
Saran spotted Madam Ophelia leaning out of an open window. The woman sported a deeper frown than usual, and Saran had to guess that she couldn’t be pleased with how things were turning out. Her hopes of a Grand Feminine were lost if Darshan seized power through her.
Darshan whirled on his men. “I said, long live the queen!”
“Long live the queen!” they returned in one rattling voice that echoed off the bastion walls and rickety towers stretching to the sky. Saran stared at Darshan, burning her gaze through him and reading every part of him. He possessed great intelligence, a truly gifted manipulator who could rival Yarin in his coldness. He’d befriended her, befriended Rowe, and he’d used them. Knowing that every step she’d taken since joining his cause had been to get him to this very moment made her ill.
Saran knew that his men outnumbered hers. She knew that they were loyal to him. She knew that, if she did not go along with his ruse, he could whisper a word, and she’d be just as helpless and damned as her mother had been to Yarin. She couldn’t fight him, not without magic. She couldn’t fight him, not without numbers. She stood alone against him, and her only saving grace would be that she carried the courage of a Vanguard and the devious, conniving nature of a D’mor. Together, those traits had been what her father had hated and admired most about her. She understood that now.
Saran needed Darshan in order to earn the trust of the people, just as he needed her in order to earn the legitimacy of the throne.
She stepped away from Odan, waltzing languorously to where Darshan stood. The rebels parted for her. The princess stole a glance at Madam Ophelia, finding it hard to tell the woman her plan in such a fleeting manner. There wasn’t enough clarity or emotion in the brief meeting of their eyes to put Madam Ophelia at ease for what would happen soon. Saran couldn’t afford to have a vengeful healer with knowledge of poison on her hands—or, perhaps, she needed just that. A dark idea began to worm its way into her brain.
Saran turned her gaze back to Darshan and raised her muddied face high. “Long live the king.”
The courtyard roared.
The cheers thundered through her chest. Just as quickly as they’d begun, they fell away to whispers. The clear sky turned dark at an unnatural pace. The courtyard, forgetting the proclamations of king and queen, turned their heads to the black cloud gathering in the distance. Blacker than any storm Saran had ever seen, it sped toward them like the angry rush of an exploding volcano.
Blue light flashed at the corners of her eyes, and two figures tumbled out of a crackling electric portal, one half dragging the other. Her heart seized in her chest.
“Rowe! Keleir!”
Rowe’s eyes lifted, his gaze alive with his element and the static so thick in the air around him that she imagined, if she touched him without the bind, her heart would stop as easily as if he’d crushed it in his hand. He guarded his brother with a wall of current to keep out anyone willing to do them harm. He lumbered toward them, pulling Keleir’s lifeless form with him until he dropped the Fire Mage in the mud at her feet. The field of power sparking around him fell away just as quickly.
She fell into the mud next to them, hugging and kissing them without worry for those who watched. Tears of relief and joy washed freely down her cheeks. Not until she saw Rowe’s grave expression did she pause long enough to really see them. She turned her eyes to Keleir, who lay heavy against the earth. She hadn’t realized it before, how his legs hadn’t helped Rowe carry him, how he hadn’t responded to her kisses and her words of love. He lay pale. Still. Like death.
“No …” She shook her head and patted his face harshly, trying to wake him. “No!” She reared back to strike him, and Rowe grabbed her hand. Saran struggled to look away from Keleir and meet his eyes.
“He’s not dead. Not yet. He killed with magic to save me, Saran. It comes for him.” Rowe pointed to the distance, to the great black cloud of ash that rolled across the sky and fell around them like rain. A hideous face appeared, a monster bearing down on them. “He sacrificed himself to save my life.” Rowe’s wide blue eyes pleaded with her, an unspoken request she read all too easily. He wanted her to save Keleir.
Saran looked down at the Bind around her wrist and then to the black cloud swirling above them. It hovered, moments away from devouring Keleir.
She’d promised to save him from the Oruke. She’d vowed to set him free.
Saran pressed a kiss to Keleir’s lips. She loved him, he who called to her soul, he who fed it with fire. She would not lose him. “Hold Keleir. Keep him awake. Slap him. Punch him. I don’t care what you have to do; don’t let him accept this fate.”
“What are you going to do?”
Saran scurried to her feet and looked deep into Rowe’s worried eyes. “I’m going to get the key. I understand where it is now.”
Rowe nodded feverishly, drawing his brother into his arms and slapping at his face to wake him. He slapped him hard enough to snap the Fire Mage’s eyes open. Keleir gasped, struggling to breathe, as if he’d died and been brought back to life by his brother’s raging need for him to exist. He searched the cloud above them. A sea of black threatened to steal the whites of his eyes. The ash that rained down on them disappeared beneath the Fire Mage’s skin, each drop absorbed by him, each one taking him closer to death.
“Saran’s here. She’s gone to get the key. She’s going to save you,” Rowe promised.
Keleir shook. “No. Stop her.” He struggled to sit up, struggled to push his brother away.
“Why?”
“There is no key!”
Rowe blinked and spotted Saran as she fell to her knees near the woodpile and grabbed the hatchet from the rubbish. She pressed her arm against the stone stairs and lifted the hatchet into the air. In one unflinching strike, she partially severed her hand from her wrist. She didn’t scream, but Rowe did. Everyone did.
Saran didn’t hear them over the roar of pain in her skull. She lifted the bloody hatchet again and brought it down a final time, severing the hand completely. She made a terrible sound, not quite a scream, and pushed to her feet. The Bind slipped off into the mud, and her eyes lit with white light. The Princess of Adrid cradled her bleeding wrist to her chest and turned to face the black ash cloud, lifting her glowing eyes to the heavens. The ash-formed face grew lower and larger over them. It opened its mouth and snapped ravenously at the air.
Darshan’s men fled but he stayed, along with Odan. Madam Ophelia watched from the window with triumph in her eyes as the Time Mage, the Grand Feminine she’d made, lifted a shaking hand to the sky.
“I understand your anger,” Saran told the storm, her voice quivering with pain. “I understand you want vengeance … but I can save you. I can turn back time. I can make you live again. All of you. Let me give you life. Let me forgive his debt.”
