Call of Wizardry, page 18
Dominate. Kyros was casting dominate on her. Fear shot through her like lightning, and she fought back against the cotton wool. It surrounded her, stuffed up her ears and her eyes so she saw and heard everything through a gray blur. Wherever she struck, the wool faded only to rise up elsewhere. She racked her memory for a spell that would counter it, but nothing came to mind—literally nothing, as she found herself incapable of even remembering what the spell languages looked like, let alone how to cast a spell. Even the small magics eluded her. Tears welled up, trickled down her cheeks. Kyros ignored them.
“There,” he said. “You’ll find it’s for your safety as well as mine. I don’t want you hurting yourself in your attempts to kill me.” He switched his grip from her face to her arm. “Let’s find you a place to wait while I locate your friend. Is he another wizard, by chance?”
Sienne felt an answer growing inside her. She clenched her lips together, but heard, to her horror, her own voice saying, “They’re not wizards. I’m the only one.”
“’They’? So there’s more than one. How many?”
“Four.”
“Interesting. The last incursion—really, it disturbs me that I can’t remember how long ago that was—was a whole regiment of highly trained knights. They were no match for a squadron of unicorns, of course, but I expected, if someone tried again, it would be an even larger army. I suppose even I can lack imagination.”
Kyros opened the door and pulled Sienne along behind him. The antechamber was empty. “Ellois, throw up a cordon around Barholt,” he said into the medallion. “No one enters or leaves. You’re looking for four strangers—are they all southerners like you?” he asked Sienne. Sienne, hating herself, shook her head. “Some of them may look like Sassaven. Detain anyone you don’t recognize and bring them for questioning.”
He dropped the medallion to hang around his neck and guided Sienne to one of the other doors. Beyond was a hallway that curved to follow the contours of the tower. The walls were of white, unblemished stone, lit by more lamps in wrought-iron sconces. Kyros pulled Sienne to walk beside him. She tried to fight, but the more her mind struggled, the tighter Kyros’s will bound her. She couldn’t even wipe away the hot tears of anger and despair that spilled over her cheeks.
They passed two doors and a window that looked out over, Sienne hoped, Barholt—she wouldn’t be any less trapped if they’d once again traveled a great distance, but it made her feel less off-balance. Kyros opened the third door, which was unlocked, and gestured for Sienne to enter. “Now, stay here until I come for you,” he said, and closed the door on her.
In her dream-like state, Sienne surveyed the room. It was a bedroom, and it looked unused; at least, it lacked any of the personal touches that said a room was inhabited. There was a narrow bed covered with a dark blue blanket, a clothes press, and a chair the twin of the ones in Kyros’s chamber. No art hung on the walls, there were no windows, and it smelled of dust and disuse. Sienne sat on the chair and stared at the door. Deep down, she raged at Kyros and at herself and fought to recall a spell, any spell, that might break free of his compulsion. Fighting made her mind cloud over more, and after a long gray moment she realized she’d passed out and was lying on the floor.
She pushed herself to a sitting position and leaned against the bed, pressing her face against the scratchy blue blanket. Despair washed over her again. This was it. The end. She couldn’t fight dominate, she couldn’t leave the room, she couldn’t warn Alaric and the others… She stopped herself crying again and felt slightly less despairing that she had control in this one small thing. It wasn’t going to be enough.
The door inched open, and Sienne jerked upright, reaching instinctively for the spellbook that wasn’t there. An old woman poked her head through the gap. She regarded Sienne with unexpectedly acute blue eyes, sharp enough that Sienne felt as if the woman could see through her skin. “Did you try to kill him? It wouldn’t have worked.”
Her directness shook Sienne further. “I know,” she said without thinking, “because he keeps his heart elsewhere.”
“How do you know that?” The old woman advanced into the room, shutting the door behind her.
“We…it’s a long story.” Sienne got heavily to her feet, feeling as old as the woman, and sat on the bed. “Are you the housekeeper? Because I can already tell you there’s nothing you can do to make me comfortable. I want to get out of this place.”
“Then leave.”
“I can’t. He cast dominate on me.”
The old woman closed her eyes and swore softly. “Then you’re no good to me.”
“I’m sorry—what on earth could I possibly do for you?”
The old woman’s eyes met Sienne’s. “Kill me,” she said.
“I’m not—” Sienne’s shocked exclamation cut off mid-word. “Wait. Are you…you’re not Genneva, are you?”
“How do you know my name?” the old woman exclaimed. “Who are you?”
“I’m Sienne. I’m with your brother Alaric—”
“Alaric? He’s alive?” Genneva grabbed Sienne’s shoulder. Her grip was much too strong for the old woman she appeared to be.
“He’s alive. We came to rescue you and destroy the wizard and free the Sassaven.” It was impossible that this was Genneva; she ought to be younger than Sienne, but she looked in her eighties. But the eyes…Sienne had heard somewhere that eyes never changed no matter how old someone got, and the family resemblance to Alaric around the eyes was striking.
Genneva raised her eyebrows. “You plan to do all that? Ambitious.”
“Not really.” Genneva looked at her even more skeptically, and Sienne’s cheeks warmed. “All right, I suppose if you put all that together, it’s a lot. But we did have a plan!”
“A plan that required you to be captured and put under a spell?”
Sienne blushed harder. “That was an accident.”
Genneva shook her head, her lips pursed in thought. “You can’t save me. I’m lost. But maybe there’s still a chance.” She flicked the blanket free of the end of the bed and began picking at the hem. “Maybe if you can tear this, you can strangle me.”
“I’m not going to strangle you!” Sienne stood and took a few steps away, holding out her hands in a warding gesture. “I probably couldn’t even if I wanted to.”
Genneva sighed and dropped the blanket. “And I’d have to fight you if you tried. It wouldn’t matter. I think it has to be a knife through the heart. I hold his heart—but it sounds like you know that.”
“Yes. But you don’t understand. I can’t. He’s linked himself to the Sassaven somehow. If he dies, all the Sassaven bound to him die too.”
“That can’t be true.”
“I don’t think he was lying. And it’s not something I want to risk, do you?”
Genneva blanched whiter than she already was and sank onto the bed, her hands fumbling as if she’d gone blind. “I almost succeeded,” she whispered. “I almost found a way around his compulsion just three weeks ago. I would have…” She covered her mouth with a hand. “I can’t believe it.”
Sienne sat next to her. “There has to be a way. Alaric is not going to let you die.”
Genneva laughed, a short, bitter sound like the bark of a dog. “It’s not up to him. I don’t care what he thinks, the only way to kill the wizard is to destroy his heart, and that means killing me. And that’s a price I don’t mind paying.”
“Don’t give up. We’ve gone through so much to get to this point. Figuring out the real coming of age ritual, learning how to break the binding—we can free the Sassaven, I promise. And Alaric won’t kill the wizard until you’re safe.”
“Right now you can’t even free yourself. Forgive me if I’m not filled with confidence in your plan.” Her words were as bitter as her laugh.
“They’ll come for me. But I want to be free before they do.”
“There’s no way to break that spell. I’ve seen him work it a dozen times since he took my heart. The victims are lucky if they figure out how to kill themselves to get free.”
“I’ve done a lot of impossible things in the last fourteen months. This is just one more of them.” Sienne stood and paced between the bed and the door. Brave words. She’d never heard of anything that would break dominate. She put her hand on the doorknob, and her vision clouded again, tunneling away to nothing. She sank to her knees and focused on breathing slowly until the lightheadedness passed. She couldn’t even leave the damn room.
Gradually she became aware that Genneva was crouched next to her, saying, “Are you well?”
“I’m fine,” Sienne lied. “I just…can’t leave.” Her heart ached too much for tears; she felt numb, and her skin was too tight, and the gray cotton wool hovered at the edges of her perception, ready to swallow her if she thought the wrong thing.
“Well, I can,” Genneva said. “Do you know where Alaric is?”
“No. I mean, we were upriver, and I was knocked into it and swept downstream where they captured me. He could be anywhere now.” If he was looking for her, he could be going into terrible danger. She didn’t know what to pray for—that he was, or that he wasn’t.
“I have to find him.” Genneva stood. “He has to understand that freeing our people is the only important thing.”
“He won’t listen. Genneva, he did all of this for you.”
“He was supposed to do it for our people. I’m the least important Sassaven in the world right now.” Genneva let herself out, shutting the door with a barely audible click.
Sienne looked at the doorknob. If she could open the door—if she could do one thing to counter the wizard’s command—dominate would be broken. She closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing, in through the nose, out through the mouth, until her whole body resonated with the sound. Slowly, she reached out, feeling for the knob. Its cool metal surface brushed her fingers—
—and dizziness swept over her, making her knees tremble before they stopped supporting her entirely. She smacked her elbow on the door as she fell, but even that sharp pain didn’t dispel the gray wool filling her mind. Sienne pressed her face against the rough grain of the door and finally wept.
Eventually the hard floor pressing against her knees forced her to rise and return to the bed, where she sat and tried to think of ways in which this wasn’t a total disaster. She wasn’t in the central chamber, wherever in the world it actually was; if Perrin scryed her out and learned she wasn’t in the valley, who knew what her friends would think? So at least Perrin would know she was in the tower. She wasn’t dead, that was good. Probably. If the others came charging to the rescue and were killed because of her…all right, she would do the same for any of them, but it felt like such a waste. She searched for a third positive thing and came up empty. Helpless captivity made it difficult to maintain optimism.
The door opened, not tentatively as Genneva had done, but as if the opener expected to be preceded by a fanfare. “Still here? I apologize, that was unworthy of me,” Kyros said. “You’ve already failed—I shouldn’t taunt you.”
“You’re evil,” Sienne said, but it came out weakly, with no force behind it.
Kyros gave her the kind of smile indulgent rich women give their lapdogs. “Come with me.”
Sienne rose and followed Kyros from the room. She didn’t bother fighting; it was pointless, but she also wanted to know what he had in mind.
He led her back along the curving white corridor to the antechamber filled with grotesque masks. No Niskanen waited there. “We’re quite alone, I assure you,” Kyros said as he held the door to his central room open. “The Niskanen aren’t necessary at this stage.”
“Stage of what?” Sienne asked, and hated how pathetically happy she was at being able to speak.
“This drama that’s playing out with you and your friends.” Kyros shut the door behind them and waved Sienne to a seat on one of the ladderback chairs. He paced to one of the windows and looked out. “What a marvelous day. Don’t you love these translocated rooms? This one is tied to a place twelve hours offset from my valley, so I can have sunlight almost twenty-four hours a day if I want.”
“We don’t have anything like that,” Sienne said.
Kyros’s brow wrinkled. “What do you mean? There must be a hundred of these places scattered throughout the continent.”
“Not anymore. Not since the wars.”
She suddenly had his full attention. Kyros grabbed a chair and dragged it around to face her, his eyes never leaving hers. “What wars?”
Could he really be so isolated? On the other hand, who would have told him? “Over four hundred years ago,” she said. “Countries fought with magic and with steel, and civilization was nearly destroyed. All the world you remember is gone.”
Kyros’s jaw hung slack. He blinked several times like someone emerging from deep water. “All gone,” he said, his voice faint. “Senegyra? Papaleire? Strusk?”
“I don’t even know what those words are.” They sounded like Ginatic names, but she didn’t feel compelled to tell him that, and so long as she wasn’t compelled, she wasn’t going to give up what little freedom she had.
“But—” Kyros sounded like a child denied a treat. “But—this was for them! To show them what was possible! How can they be gone?”
“It’s been five hundred years. Even if there hadn’t been war, wouldn’t they be dead anyway? Unless they’re like you, siphoning the life from innocent creatures—”
The slap came out of nowhere, cracking Sienne across the face and knocking her head back. “You understand nothing,” Kyros snarled. “The lives of a few Sassaven over the years are a small price to pay for knowledge.”
“Except you aren’t paying the price, they are,” Sienne shot back.
“They wouldn’t even exist without me. They owe me far more than they can ever repay.”
“They’re independent, thinking beings! Maybe they owe you—though I don’t think they owe you any more than any child owes a parent—but that doesn’t mean you can take lives in payment.”
Kyros shoved the chair back as he stood. “You’re too young to understand what’s at stake. Powerful, maybe, but immature and self-centered as all young people are. You probably think you owe society to use your magic on its behalf, too. Let me tell you something, young Sienne.” He grabbed her chin again and forced her to look at him. “Everything we do is for the sake of magic. Society—my society; who knows how yours is different—society depends on magic to run smoothly, but magic doesn’t need society for anything except perhaps a foundation to draw wizards from. That is why it matters so much that all humans are wizards. Only then can magic truly fulfil the measure of its purpose.”
Sienne made herself stare fearlessly back at the madman. “We know your people used magic for everything,” she said, fighting the grip of his hand. “We don’t live like that. And nobody seems to mind.”
“Then you’re all fools,” Kyros said, thrusting her chin away from him. “I’ve changed my mind. I was going to talk to your friends, maybe learn why they care so much about freeing the Sassaven, but now I think that would be a waste of my time.” He grabbed Sienne’s arm and hauled her up. “Stand here.”
“Why?” Sienne asked. He’d positioned her directly in front of the door, so she would be the first thing anyone entering would see.
“Because you’re going to kill them,” Kyros said.
His matter-of-fact tone, as if he were again commenting on the weather, made his words incomprehensible. “I’m what?”
His smile curled up at the corners, lighting his eyes with unholy mirth. “It will be so beautifully tragic. Our brave adventurers, racing to the rescue, cut down by their own companion…do you think they’ll have time to realize what’s happened? How fast are you?”
“Fast,” Sienne said without thinking. Then his meaning sank in, and she sucked in a horrified breath. “I won’t—you can’t—” Make me hung at the tip of her tongue, scalding her lips.
“Oh, I can,” Kyros said, his smile broadening. “Let’s see. You said four, yes? That seems an even fight, four against two. I’ll let you attack first. Jenogla would be excellent—I assume you know that one? Burn all of them at once, soften them up for individual attacks. Or zamphogla, if you’d prefer.”
“I won’t,” Sienne cried. She fought his control, but this time she welcomed the gray wool choking her vision and her mind. Desperate, she tried to bring to mind any spell, not because she intended to cast it but because she hoped for blessed unconsciousness.
She swayed, and Kyros caught her. “Oh, none of that,” he said. “Stop resisting my control.”
His words dragged her back from the brink, another slap to the face, but this one an intangible frozen hand that jerked her into consciousness. She felt herself stand up straight and face the door as if someone else were moving her limbs. “No,” she sobbed. “Please. Don’t make me do this.”
“You forget, I’m evil,” Kyros said. “Your tears only make this sweeter. Now. I’ve made some suggestions, but I think this will work better if I simply command you to attack as if these people were your worst enemies. You seem clever, and you’re certainly confident enough. And when they’re dead, well, we’ll just see what else I can make you do. Now, stop crying. It’s an embarrassment.”
Sienne wrapped her arms around herself, trying to control her sobs. How had Alaric been able to live with himself after enduring this spell? She felt, not humiliated, but thoroughly abased, dirty and used and helpless. She managed to calm her breathing, but tears still flowed from her eyes. She clung to that small thing as a reminder that not all of her was under his control. It didn’t help.
Kyros held up a finger in a “wait there” gesture and raised his medallion to his lips. “Give them a fight, but not too much of a fight,” he said. “We want them to think they’re winning. And signal me when they reach the walkstone.” He smiled at Sienne again, a friendly expression that made her want to gouge his eyes out. “You’ll attack the moment that door opens, and make it your most powerful attack. Don’t stop fighting until all of them are dead.”
