Crown of Gold and Ruin, page 27
“And,” the Lionsbane continued, “demons, despite their hordes, are only won from the Malakim for limited time periods. I only possess those creatures outside for tonight’s massacre. When dawn comes, they will be gone, along with the Scrimtor. But the Erzul, Jaden, are mine forever. If you do not acquiesce to my requests, I can have these monsters hunting you and those you love forever. How easily I can send one even now to the Lionskeep,” his tone dripped, “into the chamber where I have your beautiful sister locked up. She sleeps like a babe in her unconsciousness.”
A cold sweat drenched Jaden, and his vision went red before he yanked it back from the edge. The Erzul turned lifeless red eyes on him as Jaden’s shoulders shook like rattles in the wind.
Durran smiled. “The Erzul are a force of nature, Jaden Blacknett, as am I. Allow us to run free and unhindered and we will. Rein us in and perish. But rein us in with the promise of something in return, something we truly desire, and we become partners in the great game of life and death. And there is nothing more I truly desire right now than to see Flavian’s blood splattering on this pretty blue floor. What is your choice, Crown Prince?” He pressed the dagger firmly back into his hand.
Jaden lunged forward again, but the Blackcloak already had hold of him. Kill one man to save a city of innocents? And your father, well … whispered some dark, ugly voice in his brain. What he has done to you, Jaden Blacknett? He is still my father. The blood running through Jaden’s veins still connected him to Flavian, more so by how much they had both loved Celine.
At the last moment, he realized what mattered were not lies or truths or horrors beyond comprehension, or the gray and brittle choice between them; what mattered was how your emotions became so tangled it now distinguished not right and wrong but do or don’t. What mattered was the moment itself, that teetering fall upon the edge of the chasm, and at the last possible moment, when one makes the stupid choice, that between fool or hero.
Jaden leaped into the chasm. He whipped around, feeling the air scrape past him, whilst wriggling out of the Blackcloak’s surprised grip and leaving a piece of cloth hanging there between iron-covered fingers. The dagger arched down to bury itself into where the soldier’s breastplate split to provide vulnerability. Blood pumped over his fingers as he ripped the blade out, the Lionsbane’s outraged cry rising above the sounds of swords being torn out of scabbards. Then the onslaught was upon him and Jaden knew naught else but the song of battle.
The prince remembered little of the fight afterwards, only that there was a berserker’s scorching rage driving him on, and that after a few minutes, he stood swaying with three Blackcloaks’ corpses around him, the little dagger trembling in his fist covered hilt to blade in dark gore. Jaden felt a momentary surge of pride that was instantly blotted out by Trystan’s scream.
Jaden whipped around, already knowing what was coming, knowing and dreading and fathoming all at once, but when it did come at last, after moments that seemed ages, it was a blow that still left him reeling and dizzied. He turned just in time to see the Lionsbane’s silver sword catching the hollow of Flavian’s chest.
After, things happened very quickly, one rushed, chaotic moment colliding into the next. He dropped the dagger and streaked past the Lionsbane and the Erzul. Never had he imagined a world where Flavian was dead. Certainly, he had imagined worlds where the king did not exist, but never one where he had died; it had just always seemed completely impossible. The King of Gold could not die, like any other ordinary man. Could he?
Jaden’s mind was a blur as he went to his knees beside Flavian’s felled form, Trystan staring from the confines of his chains.
“Father—” Jaden choked. Abandoning words, he gingerly eased open the torn edges of Flavian’s robes to survey the wound, and saw, with a mix of sensation, the red that stole a king’s life.
“Jaden,” Flavian whispered, his hand a light touch upon Jaden’s arm.
Jaden could clearly recall times when that touch had not been light, had been far, far from it.
The king seemed to read his son’s eyes. “I know. I know that I haven’t been the best—of fathers to you and your sister.” His eyes flickered to Trystan, and as Trystan hung his head, turned back with a pained expression. Flavian’s voice was thick and gurgled as blood drowned him. “I wish—”
“Don’t.” Jaden’s voice felt broken to his own ears. “It is of no use now, Father. You have built a life upon lies; do not go to the underworld upon the backs of more.”
“Jaden, I know the things I have—I have done are horrible. Unforgivable.” His voice was thickening further, and soon, Jaden knew, the king would speak no more. “And I say that to you with you not even knowing the greater sins I have committed. I thought there would be time to tell you the reasons I have been so cruel, so heartless.” He was gasping for breath, stubbornly rasping out words past the pain and choking. “I hoped there would be time for the secrets to disappear as I revealed them to you. What mattered most to me in the end was—you did not agree to Durran’s bargain, and I do—” he broke off with a thick choke.
Jaden wanted to scream that he had been prepared to agree to the bargain, that Flavian shouldn’t thank him but hate him. Instead he said, “Why? Why did you do it? All those terrible things? Why throw my heart away from you?”
But Father was already gone; the King of Gold had fallen ultimately, like all mortals, to death’s shades. Jaden shuddered violently and pressed Flavian’s eyes closed. His legs, bent beneath him, slipped on the pooled blood and he buckled forward to bury his exhausted face into his father’s chest, the way he never had when a heart still beat inside that chest.
The clap of chains wringing his wrists surprised him not at all, and even the Erzul’s foul breath upon the back of his neck failed to make him shiver.
17
May We Meet Again
Diana gazed at the tattoo branded into the skin of her forearm, a parting gift from the Lionsbane. Perhaps for the dozenth time that horrible night, she hunted inside herself, overturned every uncovered corner, pried and poked and prodded—and there was not a sliver of the inner entity to be found brooding anywhere. It was like it had never been. It was as if she had dreamed up Taliesin, conjured up the memory of flinging the guardsman across the hall and shattering the bronze lock of the Healing Hall. Her breath rasped out of her chest, and she bit her lip until she tasted blood, until the grind of angry pain grounded her, cleared her turbulent thoughts enough to overturn what had happened that night. Again for the dozenth time, she peeled back her memories and examined them methodically, obsessively, rummaging for any way out of the perpetual labyrinth the Lionsbane had tossed her into with his ugly tattoo, his declarations that decimated the very foundations of Diana’s entire existence.
Some hours past, Di had snapped awake from the blackness induced by the drug given her by the demon. She had been in the nest of her own silk-strewn bed, her hair in straggles, her white dress torn and filthy—and Durran Lionsbane was standing next to her, looking down at her as she slept. Smelling of blood, he was incongruous, this huge, black-armored warrior standing in the middle of Di’s childhood bedroom. She had cowered from him, heart flinging against her ribcage, every nerve shrieking with danger, and he had looked at her with wide, wild eyes that glinted with amused self-satisfaction.
“My soon-to-be wife,” were his first words.
Di had spat at him.
“Because of course,” the Lionsbane had gone on, calmly wiping the spittle from his cheek, “as the wise say, history repeats itself. The great general weds the king’s daughter. Was it not the same story with your parents? In this case, however, I have no need to claim a princess for legitimacy to the throne, since I can go sit upon that ridiculously big golden chair right now and no one but ghosts will challenge me.” His voice had grown ponderous. “I feel like I have made this game a bit boring for myself, really, by so quickly erasing the playing field.”
“What are you saying?” Diana had asked in a hoarse voice, her limbs frozen as this slaughterer leaned against her mantle, examining a crystal globe of the world with his tongue caught between his teeth. “My brothers will put a stop to your madness.” She had said it as reassurance; she had to cling to the tendril of hope that either her brothers or Father would soon turn the tide. She just had to give them time enough. Jaden …
“I doubt that,” he had laughed, and Di’s heart had suffused with sickening dread.
Behind Durran, in the shadow of the opened door, she had spied Blackcloaks pacing back and forth. “What do you mean? If you killed them …” she had choked, unable to finish, not knowing what threats would do his cruelty enough justice. She could not even begin to imagine a world without Jaden.
“Do stop gabbling,” he had said lazily, waving a hand through the air. “Your brothers are fine, just locked up in the dungeons to await their judgment.”
“Judgement?” she had demanded. “You are mad, Lionsbane. My father will end your …”
The Lionsbane’s dark eyes had turned serious, his scar standing out palely. “He cannot do anything, as I have killed him, as I’m sure you just realized, princess. The King of Gold is dead,” he had announced, watching the flicker of emotions across her face.
Di’s body had felt as if it had been ripped raw, and her heart felt heavier than lead. More than anything, she had wanted to fling herself at Durran Lionsbane and claw his eyes out, then sink a knife into his heart. But the candelabra she had grabbed off her nightstand as a useless attempt at a weapon had already dropped to the floor, sliding from slippery fingers.
But that wasn’t her only weapon. And she had concentrated on every piece of furniture in the chamber, intent on using the inner entity to pick them up and fling them at his head until he lay dead and broken as he deserved. In the silence that ensued, Lionsbane had picked up Jaden’s pet cat from where the furry white tabby had meandered across his path, the kitten licking the enemy’s neck of the blood spattered there. He had seemed not to even notice Di as he stared out her window at the smoldering palace, and idly stroked the cat’s fur, as if taking a moment of respite from the carnage he had unleashed outside, respite from his duties as conqueror of Elenon.
Diana had stared at him, and fixated on killing him, either by picking up her vanity and hurling it at him, or on reducing him to bloody bits as she had reduced the Asclepius tower to rubble—but nothing happened. Not even the tiniest shrivel of the energy, as Taliesin had called it, answered her frantic summons.
Durran had turned then, chuckling. “Did you really think I would allow you to preserve that ridiculously powerful mage-spirit in your veins? I have dissolved its power.” He had pointed at her forearm. “You need to find a very skilled spell-weaver to remove a mage-blight, and I doubt you will be greeted by much luck on that front if you remain here under my protection.”
Protection? Hate had dripped from her bones.
He, finished with his quiet gloating, had strode to her chamber door, and then paused, considering, the cat still purring in his arms. “Of course, in due time, I myself will hire a spell-weaver to remove it, so we can put that gift of yours into good use. But, for now, sweetling …” he’d shrugged, and had made to leave the chamber, but she had flown at him in a fit of lunatic wrath purer than anything she had felt before, nails raised to gouge his eyes out.
The Lionsbane had just calmly shoved the door in her face, chuckling infuriatingly all the while. She had quivered like a lone brown leaf in merciless winter winds, as his footsteps dwindled outside.
She had bolted to the door and found the brass key crushed to bits on the carpet as if someone had trampled upon it while she slept; she couldn’t escape out the window as the drop to the ground was huge enough to be a ridiculous risk and the wall outside was too smooth to maintain footholds to allow climbing. It was hopeless.
After that bleak, gross realization, the hours had passed.
She glanced again at the scroll sitting open in front of her, an old, crumbling tome on magic she had found in the royal library a few days ago and spirited away to her chamber where she could delve into it as deeply as she wished without the gray-skinned librarian giving her suspicious stares. Within these pages, she had found what exactly a mage-blight was. The elegantly curved black marking on the inside of her arm, with whorls and dots of ink making a weaving pattern—it was one of the greatest curses ever invented. She read:
“Conceived by the Frenalin rulers of yore to suppress and control the brimming new power that arose over the millennia as mages across the world multiplied from Coronia to Aeltar, the mage-blight is a spell crafted of ancient magic. It completely diminishes a mage’s gods-gifted abilities to bend and twist existence to their will and was administered in staggering numbers during the wars of the Age of Souls, when the Rhean continent was just a wasteland of rock and snow ruled by the vicious, immortal Frenalin Kings”
The Lionsbane is certainly very thorough. How did he even know that I possessed the energy? Taliesin probably knew how to break this curse that had been shoved upon her like a vise. Di now curled on her soft carpet, hugging her arms around herself as a vast, vacant pit gaped inside her. She studied the carvings on her chamber door, wishing she could disappear into its wooded depths and emerge back into her life, intact and beautiful, her brother by her side. The prancing, proud lions with their spiky manes seemed to laugh at her with their wide maws, and taunt her as she lay there, helpless, useless, like something beached upon a dusty, desolate shoreline.
I should have learned to control and wield the inner entity better so I stood more of a chance. And now it has been stolen from me, and our very world has powdered to dust like that gargoyle on the Lionskeep, all those years past.
The Malakim had at some point invaded her chamber. It shimmered dully in beloved childhood corners, darting out at her playfully, knowingly, purple and vile. When Di glanced outside, beyond the white drapes, at the red dawn sun shafting through the heavy black smoke across the sky, the Malakim cavorted there too. It was more fluid now, faster in the coils and twists of vapor, as if the fast encroaching daylight had fed it lifeblood. Or perhaps it was just glutting on the sheer pain and death that entrenched Elenon.
She hunted within herself one last time, a final shred of desperation that quickly transmuted to bitter hollowness.
When the noises came from beyond the shut door, her eyes had begun to flutter closed of their own volition. Perhaps when Di awakened, all this would be revealed as a simple nightmare, terrible, but ultimately built on dust. Yes, that was it. Just another dream, a nightmare of the kind Jaden often had. She didn’t blame him for his terror of them; they truly were nerve-wrenching. But they were just dust and the stuff of night, and night always gave way to the dawn.
She smiled softly and closed her eyes, pillowing her head on her arm. Nothing was wrong, not really, it was just a nightmare. This thought lulled her into a sweet nest of exhaustion and she had just begun to succumb to the darkness, when the outraged roar jolted her out of sleep and her stupid, stupid illusions.
The cry of anger had been male and rather close-by, reminding Di just how many Blackcloaks must be prowling the corridors outside forming a protective ring around the Lionsbane’s future wife. The thought made her shiver uncontrollably, and she promised herself, even as another furious shout tinged with fear resounded, that she would never, never surrender to the monster. She rushed to the door, a dull thud making her catch her breath as she pressed her ear into the door; it was the noise bodies made when they fell. An angry grunt preceded the sound, and now there were footsteps approaching. The cobwebs shaken loose from her mind, Di was taut as she heard someone gasping, distinctly male, then once again the dull thud of another fallen body. Then the jingle of keys, and someone leaned heavily against the outside of Di’s door, panting as though very tired. Again the clatter of keys as they were fitted into the lock and now Di snapped to her senses. She rushed to where she had dropped the candelabra when the Lionsbane had told her Flavian was dead, and scooping it up, dashed to hide in the shadows behind the door.
A moment of fumbling, and the person outside cursed, his voice masculine yet muffled. Then the door swung open in a spill of mellow torchlight that made Diana blink as she streaked forward swinging the candelabra.
The man’s shadow was slim, familiar, and though he saw the candelabra racing at him, he was too slow in dodging its blow. He slid to the side just as the candelabra glanced ringing off his head.
He yelled, and Di cupped a hand to her mouth as she realized, finally, who it was.
“Jaime!” she screamed, and then hesitated as he came forward.
The last time she had seen him, they had been hovering together over a bleeding Drast before the Healing Hall had exploded above them. And sure enough, he was bleeding in several places, most profusely from a wound in his stomach; he was hunched over as if in great pain, and his face sheened with sweat. Clutched in his hand was a blue Saturnalia lantern that sent strange shadows running up his face and into his tangled brown hair. When he looked at her though, his dark eyes shone.
“When rescuing damsels in distress,” Jaime said, “no savior expects to be hit over the head with a candelabrum by said damsel in such a display of ingratitude.”
And Diana threw herself at him, her arms tangling around his neck, burying her face into his chest; his heartbeat was so steady that she almost forgot that outside his encircling arms, tragedy reigned.
His breath was warm in her ear when he whispered, “Don’t worry, don’t worry. We’ll survive this. Together.”
The blue lantern pressed between their bodies sent rays of light and waves of shadow flaring up between them, and Di could see reflected patterns of soft color where her half-closed eyes swam with tears.
When they left her chamber, Di having wrapped a heavy traveling cloak over her gown, she was startled to find five dead Blackcloaks lying around the torch-lined hallway. Jaime quickly set about dragging them, one by one, into Di’s chamber, leaving streaks of black blood on the walls as he piled the bodies on her carpet, and then swung the door shut softly; the hallway now looked as if nothing of the sort had ever occurred in it, and was as calm and empty as always in its silent splendor.
