They passed through the hall and into the dining area where tables were spread out. This space too was empty, but Melorya continued to walk, dragging her behind.
“She saw the good in elves when there was none. He lied to her, said he was coming alone. His rebels ambushed the castle, and they would have gotten the crystal if you hadn’t been sent away with it.”
“I’m not telling you where it is.” Elayne tried to pull away from her, but Melorya’s grip was firm as they crossed into another hall.
“I don’t want to know.”
“Bullshit,” Elayne finally pulled her arm away from Melorya. “There’s a reason you’re the only one still alive.”
Melorya held up the book, flashing angry eyes at the girl, then she gestured behind her. Elayne looked to see the walls closing in on them. Melorya grabbed her arm again and started off toward the throne room at the hall’s end. “The other caretakers were killed when they would not pledge allegiance to Alaion. He kept me alive because I serve a purpose to him. I provide him with magic he doesn’t have access to otherwise. And I have the unfortunate luck of looking like your mother.”
Elayne glared at her. It was true—her mother never had the veins that Elayne now had, shared with Alaion—Melorya’s face and the portrait were stark reminders.
“I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I have. I know what the nexus wants, it’s been trying to pull me in since Alaion defiled it. I thought that maybe humans needed to be freed of magic, that elves deserved something better, but…I was wrong.”
They were coming up on the doors to the throne room, and Elayne steeled herself to see the skulls once again. “Why are you telling me this?”
“You ask me why I’m still alive. It’s because I sided with him. I was jealous of Cressyda, I was clearly more powerful than her, but she inherited the stewardship. I wanted it for myself, so I thought I could replace her. And I didn’t want anything getting in my way. It’s why I marked you.”
The dagger of her words plunged into Elayne’s back. “It really was you?”
“So you wouldn’t come back. But all the wizardcraft in this damn book I’m bound to couldn’t keep you away. And I see now how wrong I was about everything.”
“Bound?” Elayne tugged at her as they crossed into the throne room, making her slow. “Wizardcraft?”
Melorya looked at her like she should have known, coming to stand still in the room’s center. “Yes. Of course.”
Elayne pulled the parchment from her dress. “Can you do something with this?”
“What on Maw…” Melorya looked over the spell.
“Can you bind Alaion or something?”
“Oh, Elayne,” she whispered, her hands beginning to tremble, then she stuffed the parchment into a pocket and grabbed her niece’s hand. “I have no idea.” She dragged her toward the nexus doors, but when they came out the other side, they were in the hall with the portrait once again.
The krow was again at her side. Elayne opened her mouth, but Melorya’s eyes told her to keep quiet.
Her aunt turned on her heel and strode away.
***
“This time,” Tavaris mumbled to himself, readjusting the pack on his back, “This time is for real.”
The elf tightened the straps of his satchel and strode down a disused corridor of Heulux Castle. Things were old here—well, they were old everywhere—but they were old and untouched here. Forgotten, lost, useless. These things, covered in dust, casting long shadows and having lost their former luster, always gave him a sick sense of foreboding, but despite that heaviness in his gut, he was already feeling better. He would be gone soon.
Tavaris had made it all the way to the market the last time he’d run away. He spent two days there, in fact, renting a room from some nice elves who didn’t even make him pay. He only went back home when he forgot why he’d been mad at his father in the first place. But this time he knew, even as he took the familiar, unwatched path out of the castle, things would be different. If Elly could make it over the border, surely he could too.
Elly.
He stopped just at the edge of the courtyard. The bloomless rose bushes lined the open space before him in the darkness of night. Perpetual clouds left the expanse easy to cross without anyone seeing, but still he hesitated. No one would stop him, and there weren’t even any krows or guards out here anyway—Alaion had them all lining the throne room or standing watch at the doors—but he still glanced up at the castle proper.
After all this waiting he’d wanted so much to meet her. But so did his father. A frown pressed itself onto Tavaris’s face. His father, who hadn’t even bothered to send Melorya after him, rarely let him sulk for more than a day, and now it had been three.
Tavaris whistled sharply, and a shadow streaked across the sky, passing him over completely before disappearing. He snorted quietly and whistled again. Again, the shadow came into view overhead, hovered, then began to fall, erratic as it dipped. Tavaris threw out his arms and dove, sliding just under Wren before he smashed into the ground.
The elf cradled the dragon in the center of the courtyard, taking a deep breath. “You okay, buddy?”
Wren snuffled at his face and licked him.
“We gotta work on those landings.” He stood and propped the beast up over his shoulder. “If only you were a little bigger you could just fly us both out of here. But I guess if you were bigger Dad might respect you more…and me too.” Wren flapped his deformed wing to stay steady and leaned his head against the elf. Tavaris suddenly felt much braver.
Across the courtyard, the rampart wall was solid save for a small nook. Tavaris had found it years ago, and he’d used it to escape each time he’d had enough of the place, but no one else knew. Except, of course, that elf he’d met at the tavern, Layna, the one with the rosy-colored hair who had shown him the special magic the Trizians did with portraits. She was nice, he thought, and he had so easily confided everything on her; maybe he could find her again.
It was a tight fit, but Tavaris ducked down onto his hands and knees, and Wren held onto his neck with his little claws. Inside it was pitch dark, but the other end wasn’t far, the opening hidden behind a statue. It would only be moments, and he would be free. And then his head knocked into something hard.
Tavaris fell back, smacking his head again on the roof of the tunnel. Wren screeched in his ear, and there was another voice that cried out too.
“Who’s there!” Tavaris demanded, throwing a hand out and bumping into something soft and smooth like skin, and his fingers catching onto something else metallic. He pulled back, his hand still wrapped around the object.
“Hey!” the voice squeaked out, “I can’t see!”
“No shit,” said another voice, gruff and cranky. “It’s darker than a goat’s arsehole in here.”
“No, my glasses,” said the little voice. “And there’s somebody…”
Tavaris felt around for a stick on the ground, finally finding one with his free hand and holding it up to where he last heard Wren’s screech. “A little light?”
The dragon hacked, and a spark shot out onto the stick, lighting it. It was only for an instant that the tunnel glowed brightly, and in that instant Tavaris was face-to-face with a child, green of skin and long of snout, nothing like any elven or even human child he’d ever seen. Its big, watery eyes stared back at him, mouth agape, and simultaneously the two gasped, tried to jump away from one another, once again banging into the tunnel walls. The light went out.
“Who is it?” asked the gruff voice.
“I don’t know!” the smaller voice answered. “An elven guard, I think!”
“I’m not a guard,” Tavaris was quick to say. “I’m trying to get out!”
The tunnel fell silent.
The little voice broke into the dark. “Um, you’re sneaking out?”
“Maybe.” Tavaris cleared his throat. “And you’re sneaking in?”
The voice chuckled, “Lucky us, huh?”
“You don’t want to go in there,” Tavaris said, motioning over his shoulder despite that no one could see. “They aren’t very nice to…whatever you are.”
“Well, we don’t expect that,” the gruff voice responded.
Tavaris wiggled the stick before Wren, and a little cough set it ablaze once again. This time the glow stayed, dim, but enough to illuminate the tiny space between them. He studied the face before him. “Oh,”—he cocked his head—“You’re a kobold. I didn’t think there were any in Heulux.”
“Uh, well, it’s a long story,” he said.
“And we don’t have time to tell it,” said the other voice.
“Who?” Tavaris held the glowing stick up but could make out no other forms farther back.
“That’s Gramps,” said the kobold. “He’s an elven essence who’s been trapped in a pipe with a cork. I’ve got him in my rucksack. That’s another long story. I’m Bix.”
Tavaris looked down at the hand the kobold had extended, and then at his own, still holding what he realized now were the kobold’s glasses. He handed them over. “Sorry about that.”
Bix took the glasses and cleaned them on his tunic. “No problem, I—whoa.” He blinked, his eyes even bigger behind the lenses. “Is that a…a dragon?”
“Wren?” Tavaris raised up his shoulder, and the dragon bounced. “Yeah. He’s my best friend.”
The kobold squinted. “So why are you sneaking out of there?”
Tavaris swallowed. “I’m going to Hallowmarch.”
“Hallowmarch?” Bix sat back and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his snout. “What do you mean?”
The elf twisted up his face, looking down and away. He felt embarrassed. “I mean, I’m sort of running away.”
“No, I understand that, it’s just Hallowmarch doesn’t exist. Not anymore anyway.”
“Hallowmarch,” repeated Tavaris. “The place father sent my old teacher and the crossbloods when they get too tired and Maysie…”
Bix pulled his satchel around to his lap and rummaged inside. “The only Hallowmarch I know was destroyed years ago.” He pulled out a book and flipped to a page inside with a map of Yavarid and Apos’phia. Hallowmarch was marked, like Tavaris’s significantly older books, but the legend showed that it was a ruin and no longer a city. “There’s nothing there now but an empty castle and a graveyard.”
The words hung in the air between them like an executioner’s axe, heavy and bloodstained, with the rust of decades eroding the steel. Tavaris’s hand shook as he took the book and started flipping through the pages. The whole tome was about Hallowmarch’s history and its current state of nonexistence.
He closed the book and passed it back to the kobold. “You’re from outside the border.”
Bix nodded.
“And you’re here to help that girl, Elly, aren’t you?” He didn’t have to say anything, Tavaris already knew. Inside the kobold’s pack there was a shimmer, a gem that had a cord wrapped around it. He eyed it a moment, then swallowed. “I should stop you,” he said more to himself than to Bix, then he glanced at Wren, “but I have a better idea.”
CHAPTER 35
Elayne walked bleary-eyed through the silent corridors of Heulux Castle. After giving Melorya the parchment, she’d been able to fall into a restless sleep for the first time since she’d arrived at Heulux only to be snatched from her bed at dawn by a krow with no explanation and dragged downstairs to the main hall.
Alaion was waiting outside the throne room. “Tell me,” he said, striding up to her immediately. “What is your decision?”
“My what?” She blinked at him. “For breakfast?”
The elf’s face went whiter. A strand of hair had fallen from his loosening topknot, and circles had formed under his eyes. “Will you serve your people or no?”
Elayne glowered. She pulled her arm free from the krow who stepped away, instantly relieved to no longer be touching it. She straightened, smoothing the simple shift dress she’d slept in. Why was he demanding of her so suddenly? And in the hall of all places?
When she didn’t answer, Alaion swung around and threw open the door to the throne room. Inside, the krows were still looming around the edges of the room, darkening the walls, but amongst them were new forms, and Elayne’s heart leapt into her throat.
Neoma, Rosalind, Frederick, each restrained by a set of krows. Frederick looked like he would have bolted were he not being held back, and Rosalind actually smiled and waved at her, but Neoma would have likely been on the ground if not for the krows gripping her arms. Elayne wanted to run to them but turned back to Alaion. He had not lied—they were safe-ish—but she didn’t trust this at all.
The elf swept across the room and stood before the dais where Forsyth was perched on the back of the skull-covered throne. “Time has worn thin,” he told her. “Your friends have seen to that.”
Elayne instinctively glanced at Rosalind, but she only shrugged. Then she saw Melorya be walked out from behind the throne by a set of krows, and her stomach dropped.
“I would have hoped to give you more of an opportunity to make up your mind. Gods know I have the time.” Alaion ran a hand over his head to push the loosened hairs away, but they fell into his face again. He held up a familiar sheet of parchment. “Yet you insist on being petulant. And human. Between you and the boy, I don’t know who is worse, but Melorya,”—he walked to her, her head already lolling as if she had put up, and lost, a fight—“I expected so much more from you.” Then he took her by the neck.
Elayne screamed but was held to the spot by cold hands in the center of the throne room, her bare feet sliding on the marble floor as she tried fruitlessly to get to her aunt. Vulras stalked out from the shadows, a jar dwarfed by his size in hand. Elayne’s heart slammed against her chest to escape, and her body flooded with heat, but the aether inside her was uncontrollable, and the krows holding her in place were sapping up the excess.
Alaion held Melorya aloft with a hand around her throat and stretched the long fingers of his other hand over her face. The throne room rumbled as he began to chant archaic, elven words, the seeing stones embedded in the walls going dim, the aether in the room quivering. Elayne could feel it, the dark energy of the nexus, being called up and out of the basin, and her skin began to crawl. Alaion’s face darkened, but the veins brightened. His eyes were fixed on Melorya, lids peeled back, and in one swift motion he drew a knife across her throat, and her elven essence poured out of her.
Vulras held out the jar, and Alaion deposited the glittering aether inside. Quickly, Vulras contained it, and Alaion released what was left of Melorya. The body fell in a heap, head snapping back, her lifeless, lavender eyes looking right through Elayne and on into nothingness.
A dry sob heaved through Elayne as she tried to call out to her, straining against the krows that held her back. Maybe, she thought, she could return the essence to her body before it disappeared: elves were healers, weren’t they? But smooth, black tendrils appeared along the floor from behind the throne and began to slither toward Melorya’s body, and instead of evaporating, her form was enveloped in a thick, dark mass and lifted to hover above the ground.
Where Melorya had been, a new body was placed down onto the floor. A krow. It had some of her features, a smaller face and frame, but its skin was stretched taut over sharp bones and had gone the deep blue-black of midnight. The new Melorya fell in line with the other krows, and if not for the amethyst dress, Elayne would have lost her completely amongst them.
“There.” Alaion was breathing hard. “Now you see what will become of your friends if you do not comply. At least, what will happen to the elf. With the humans, I do not know, but am excited to find out.”
“No!” Elayne screamed at him across the throne room. She pulled against the krow, surprised when he let her go. She fell forward then scrambled up to her feet again.
“No?” Alaion gestured to the krows in the corner, and they dragged a kicking Frederick over t
o him. “I think we should start with this one, the most offensive.”
“Leave him alone!” Elayne shouted, sprinting the length of the room, but Alaion placed his hand over the knight’s face, and she was stopped short. “Don’t!”
Alaion pressed Frederick toward the ground, a krow holding him still by each arm, but he halted. “Then you’ve changed your mind, Duchess?”
Elayne swallowed.
A smile broke over his face. “You will command the nexus to grow, to restore our people to their true glory. Strip the humans of their magic and bring back the beasts of old.”
Elayne touched her chest where the thaumat stone would have been. Alaion could do it without her if he had that, and she selfishly wished it would just fall from the sky and make the decision for her. Without it, she was afraid she wasn’t strong enough to overcome the pull of the nexus—her last encounter had taught her that. It took over so quickly, she didn’t know how she could cleanse it of Alaion’s corruption without doing exactly what he wanted. But her friends, held captive and on the verge of death, they needed her now, and her only choice was to comply. She nodded.
The throne room vibrated as if it knew she’d come to a decision.
“The nexus,” Alaion whispered, throwing Frederick back toward the krows. “She’s breathing.”
The elf turned toward the throne, looking past it and to the closed doors of the hallowed room. It was humming with strange, dark lights emanating through the cracks, and like the rising and falling chest of a living creature, the doors pulsed. Alaion pushed Frederick back, and the krows took away his struggling form.
“Elly, don’t!” he yelled at her.
She turned her eyes to him. Did he even realize what he was telling her? He would forfeit his life if she listened.
She opened her mouth to tell him she was sorry, but Alaion was suddenly there, grabbing her by the wrist and jerking her toward the throne. Before he could drag her across the rest of the room, a creaking sound made him stop. The doors were straining under their own lock as they pulsed now, and the stone holding the hinges began to crack. Elayne’s eyes grew wide at the fissure running across the wall, stepping back, tugging on a transfixed Alaion.
She's All Thaumaturgy Page 29
