Crown of Crystal Flame

by C. L. Wilson

  She turned back to Shan. “And yes, that’s why. You nearly killed him last week. I thought for a moment, I was free.”

  Like a darrokken springing on its prey, Lord Death exploded from the shadow, crossing the cell in a single leap. His hands curled around the spiked cell bars. Eyes glowing bright, teeth bared and savage, he snarled, “You should have let my mate die. You should have let us die. Why didn’t you, for pity’s sake?” Then, as abruptly as it had come, his fury faded. He slumped against the bars of the cage, and his whole demeanor changed from anger to despair. “What have we ever done to you that you should keep us in such torment? “

  She looked away. Pity was a stranger to her, shame even less familiar. But she felt both now.

  “I couldn’t let you die,” she whispered. “You’re my only hope.” Her voice almost broke then, and she had to stop and clear her throat. Don’t be such a mush-hearted fool, Melliandra. You’ll destroy everything. But she could practically feel his pain as if it were her own. She knew what it was to be caged, to long for freedom that never came.

  She gave herself a mental shake and sat up straight, steeling her resolve. She needed this man to keep his promise, and not just for herself. For Shia’s son, too. Only if the High Mage died could they be free.

  “You’re the only one capable of killing the High Mage. He fears you. Everyone in Boura Fell knows that. The only thing he fears more is a Tairen Soul, and since it’s unlikely a Tairen Soul will make an appearance here anytime soon, that leaves you. I need you to kill him. It’s the only way.”

  “The only way what?”

  “The only way to be free.” A lifetime of caution stopped Melliandra from mentioning Shia’s child. She even tucked away all thought of him in that secret place in her mind where even the Mage could not go. “So long as the High Mage lives, there’s no life, no freedom for me. He owns my soul.”

  “Then how is it possible you are here, asking me to kill him for you? I thought no umagi could plot against his master.”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “If you want my help, you’ll make it my business.”

  She glared at him in stubborn silence.

  His brows rose, and he crossed his arms. “I have nothing but time, little umagi.”

  She huffed a frustrated breath, then dug a small cup from her pocket and thrust it through the cell bars. “Fine. Eat your stew, and I’ll tell you.”

  Shan tilted the serving cup and shook more of the stew into his mouth. It was good. Jaffing good. The best food he’d had in years, possibly even centuries.

  “So there’s a secret place in your mind where you can hide thoughts from the Mages?” he repeated as he chewed the flavorful chunks of meat. The little umagi had told him about how one day she’d discovered that she could keep secrets from the Mage, and how she’d been testing it over the last months. “So where did it come from? How did you create it? “

  “I don’t know. One day it was just there. And I realized that what thoughts I keep there are private. The High Mage can’t see in. It’s like a room protected by privacy weaves, and it gets larger the more thoughts I keep there. That’s how I can have this conversation with you and know he will never learn of it.” She watched him dip his cup into the bowl again, and when he carried it to his mouth, she licked her lips.

  Despite a thousand years of horrendous torture, despite a soul-deep enmity for the Eld, the Fey called Lord Death felt his heart squeeze with pity. Poor child. Those big, hungry eyes of hers had been tracking every move of the serving cup since he’d begun to eat, and even the hand pressed hard against her stomach hadn’t been able to quiet its growls. If her presence was another of Vadim Maur’s twisted games of torment, it was the best attempt of the millennia. Because, gods help him, he had fallen for it.

  “Do all umagi have this secret place?” Shan drained the cup in two mouthfuls.

  “I don’t think so. I think I’m the only one.”

  “The stew is very good. You should have some yourself.” He offered her the serving cup and nudged the half-eaten bowl of stew towards her. “Go on. Every child deserves a treat now and again.”

  Her eyes flashed up, molten silver and full of sudden ire and cynicism. “I’m no child. And treats are just bait to trap the stupid.”

  “No bait here, child. Just a shared cup to seal our…” he started to say “friendship” but realized the little umagi would probably ruffle up some more, so he settled on a different word, “… agreement.” It hurt his Fey heart that any child should be so misused she suspected a trap in even the simplest kindness. “Teska. Please. It’s really quite delicious.”

  The offer was too much temptation to refuse. She snatched the cup from his hand, dipped it in the bowl, and poured the still-warm stew into her mouth. Her eyes closed in bliss. Judging by the look on her face, she’d probably never tasted anything so good in her life. That realization hurt, too. His heart wept for her—almost as much as it wept for the daughter of his own blood whom he’d never seen, never held.

  “In the Fading Lands, kaidina, you would have been cherished and pampered every day of your life. Not a chime would go by that you did not know how greatly you were loved. Your father would have carried you so proudly in his arms, and sung young songs from ages past to make you smile, and rocked you to sleep spinning Fey-tale weaves of beautiful shei’dalin maidens and their brave shei’tans, while fairy flies sparkled in the gardens outside your window. And every warrior of the Fey would willingly lay down his life to save you from the slightest harm.”

  Rather than growing misty-eyed by his maudlin confession of fatherly dreams, the little umagi took umbrage. “I am Eld. Your warriors would have killed me on the spot and left my bones for the rats.” She handed his serving cup back through the bars. “So will you kill the Mage, or won’t you?”

  Shan understood. She was an Elden umagi, brutalized since birth, suspicious of the slightest kindness. She did not need or want his useless dreams of a Fey-tale childhood. She did not need or want his friendship. Very well. He would not let his Fey heart be softened by the vulnerable appeal of too-big eyes in a too-thin face.

  “I need my sorreisu kiyr,” he said. “My Soul Quest crystal. I tried to kill your Mage without it and failed. If you want me to kill him, you need to get me that crystal.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Celieria ~ Dunbarrow Manor

  27th day of Verados

  Damn the Fey! Damn Dorian and that Fey-lover Barrial!

  Grief and rage writhed like snakes in Great Lord Dervas Sebourne’s chest. He paced the confines of his study in Dunbarrow on unsteady feet. Small waves of sea-green Sorrelian quist—a highly intoxicating liquor distilled from a fermented blend of sweet sea grapes and deadly moonshade—sloshed over the rim of the crystal tumbler clenched in one fist.

  Dervas lifted his glass and tossed back its contents in a single gulp, barely feeling the fiery burn as the potent liquor slid down his throat. This wasn’t his first glass of quist tonight, and it wouldn’t be his last. When a man lost his only son and saw the end of his Great House looming on the horizon, his soul craved a stronger balm than pinalle.

  Dervas harbored no illusions about his future. King Dorian would not leave unpunished the Great Lord who had spat defiance and insult, then taken his men and ridden away from the coming battle with Eld. Sebourne had broken with the king, and Great House Sebourne would soon sink into disfavor and, ultimately, into obscurity.

  And with it would go the power he’d meant to pass on to his son.

  His only son.

  His dead son. The son who’d been murdered, his body so completely destroyed there wasn’t even a corpse over which Dervas could mourn, as a father should. Nothing. Just emptiness where a life had been.

  All because of the Fey—and that weak, spineless puppet of a king who sat on the throne of Celieria while the Fading Lands pulled his strings.

  Damn them! Damn them all! He hoped the Eld slaughtered them and left th
eir corpses for thistlewolves and lyrant to feast upon. Renewed fury seized him, amplified by intoxication. Dervas shot to his feet and hurled his glass of quist into the hearth. Crystal exploded. Flames leapt with a roar as the potent liquor ignited.

  The blast of heat and the sudden change in attitude left him overwarm and swaying on his feet, so he stumbled to the window that looked out over Dunbarrow’s western fortifications and threw open the sash. Cold winter air flooded in. He thrust his head out the window and took a deep breath.

  The moons overhead were both three-quarters full, the Mother waning, the Daughter waxing. This week, the brightest nights in the last three months signaled the last hurrah of Light before both moons went new two weeks hence.

  Something about that was important. He frowned and rubbed his temple as a band of pain tightened around his skull. With a groan, he pressed the heels of his palms against his bloodshot eyes and staggered away from the window, only to freeze when he saw a dark shape move in the corner of the room. Suddenly, the air in Dervas’s lungs grew short. Each breath became a labored gasp, and his heart beat a rapid tattoo. Shadow flickered at the edges of his vision, and a strange, sickly sweet smell filled his nose. For an instant, he wasn’t standing in his study in Dunbarrow, he was back in Old Castle Prison in Celieria City, watching in mute horror as a figure wreathed in icy shadow stepped towards him.

  The image of Old Castle faded, but the shadowy figure remained. It stepped into the light. Blue robes gleamed richly in the candlelight, and dark jewels glittered on a silken sash that hung from the intruder’s waist.

  Dervas reached for his sword, but his waist was bare, his weapons belt lying useless in his bedchamber. “Who are you?” he demanded. “What are you doing here? What do you want? “

  Gloved hands pushed back the robe’s deep cowl, revealing a ghostly-white face and eyes like the blackest pits of the seventh Hell.

  “Nerom, umagi,” the creature uttered. “Remember.”

  Dervas squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, but invisible floodgates flung open in his mind, pouring out decades of suppressed memories in a wild deluge.

  The shadowy figure who’d come to visit him in Old Castle assumed a face—Lord Bolor, a newly invested minor lord who’d recently come to court. Only Lord Bolor wasn’t a Celierian at all. He was an Elden Mage masquerading as a Lord to gain access and influence over the Celierian court. And he’d come to command Dervas, on behalf of the High Mage of Eld, just as other Mages had come to command Dervas in the past.

  Just as Mages had commanded every Great Lord Sebourne before him—ever since the minor lord Deridos Sebourne, vassal of the Great House Wellsley, had traded his soul in exchange for power and wealth three hundred years ago.

  In return for Deridos’s soul, the Mages had engineered and released the Great Plague that had wiped out the Wellsley family, along with half the inhabitants of northern Celieria. When, in the resulting fear and chaos, Deridos not only successfully defended Moreland from an Eld attack but also “discovered” the cure for the Great Plague, a grateful King Dorian VI had raised House Sebourne to Greatness and granted to it the vital border estates previously entailed to Great House Wellsley.

  The Eld had been using Sebourne land as their Celierian base ever since. Over time, every inhabitant of Sebourne land, from infant to elder, peasant to Great Lord, had been bound to the Mages of Eld. Dervas had surrendered his own infant son to the Mages when they came calling, as had every Great Lord since Deridos. Those who married into Great House Sebourne surrendered their souls as well—some willingly, others less so.

  Dervas shuddered as his Mage induced “memory” of his wife dying in childbirth along with their second son was replaced with a clear vision of his wife weeping, arms clasped protectively around the small mound of their unborn child, as she stood on the battlements of Moreland Castle. The day was Colum’s first birthday, and the Mages had come to claim him and his mother, Great Lady Sebourne.

  “You call yourself a Great Lord?” she cried. “You’re nothing but a slave to an evil master. Worse, you’ve damned our son to the same enslavement! Well, at least this child will be free! And so will I!” And with that, she leapt to her death rather than accept a Mage Mark for herself or her second child.

  Now, standing here, stunned into sobriety by those memories, he realized she’d been right. He wasn’t a Great Lord. He wasn’t any sort of lord at all. He was a slave. A witless, unsuspecting puppet of the Mages.

  Oh gods.

  The Primage smiled. “Oh god,” he corrected in lightly accented Celierian. “Seledorn, to be precise, the mighty Dark Lord, God of Shadows. And, yes, I hear your thoughts. There is no part of your mind I cannot enter. No thought or action I cannot control. I am the Mage who claimed you, and all that you are is mine.”

  Sebourne’s stomach clenched in a tight knot, and the blood rushed from his face. With a choked cry, he spun to one side and retched into the waste bin by his desk until nothing remained in his belly but bitter gall.

  “Clean yourself up, umagi, and come kneel before me.”

  Dervas didn’t give his body the command, but his hands wiped a cloth across his face and his feet began walking. He tried to fight it, tried to make himself stop, but it was as if he were merely an observer trapped in some other person’s form. He circled the desk and crossed the room, then dropped to his knees before the Mage.

  “You see?” The Primage shook his head. “Still you wish to rebel. You always do.” He sighed. “Very well. Go to the hearth—no, on your hands and knees. You are my dog, umagi, and I am your master.”

  Weeping, but unable to refuse, Dervas crawled.

  “Your right hand offends me,” the Mage said when he reached the stone hearth. “Put it in the fire.”

  “No, please!” But his hand was already reaching for the flames. “Please!” Then, because now he remembered all the times before, the prices he’d paid for his attempted but never-successful rebellions over the years, he cried, “Please, master! Please, master, forgive your worthless umagi.”

  His hand stopped moving towards the fire, but he was still close enough he could feel the heat licking at his skin. Unless the Mage released him, his hand would slow roast. And the Mage would make sure Dervas felt every torturous moment.

  “Will you serve me, umagi, of your own volition, or must I force your obedience as I am doing now?”

  “I will serve! Please, I will serve!”

  “Then speak your vow, Dervas, son of Gunvar, and speak it with conviction.”

  Dervas closed his eyes and spoke the mantra of surrender and obedience he’d been taught so long ago. “This umagi serves you willingly, master. Whatever your command, he obeys without hesitation. This life and this body are yours to use or destroy.”

  “You may rise.”

  Dervas dragged in a sobbing breath of relief and rose on shaking legs. “What is it you require of this umagi, master?”

  The Primage smiled. “It is time for you to fulfill your purpose.”

  Celieria ~ Kreppes

  27th day of Verados

  The hooves of a thousand horses thundered in the night. An army of men, outfitted for war, rode across the fields and woods of northern Celieria, Great Lord Dervas Sebourne at the lead. The army moved swiftly, covering the miles between Dunbarrow and Kreppes without stopping.

  You will ride to Kreppes with your army. You will beg an audience with the king and throw yourself on his mercy, pleading with him to forgive your anger on the day your son died. Grief and your distrust of the Fey drove you mad, you will say. Remind him of his own son and how he would feel should Prince Dorian perish.

  But you have had time for that first rage to pass. You are a Celierian, and loyal to your king. You request the honor of fighting by his side. Above all, you beg to be near because you do not trust the Fey.

  Remind him of how they lied to him, how they manipulated him into believing what they wanted him to believe. Are those the actions of a loyal race? Trust
ed allies? No, they are not. Lord Barrial may trust the Fey implicitly, but would it not be better for the king to keep at least one advisor by his side who is not so blind to the possibility of Fey duplicity?

  Lord Sebourne’s army reached the perimeter encampments around Kreppes before the tower watch struck nine silver bells. Campfires burned across the fields around the fortress, illuminating the rows of neatly ordered tents, both Celierian and Fey. Amongst the Celierian tents, pennants from the King’s Army fluttered alongside those of the Border Lords who’d sent troops in answer to their king’s call, Great Lord Barrial, the new Great Lord Darramon, all of the lesser lords from hundreds of miles around.

  Dervas noted the familiar crests as he left the bulk of his army waiting at arrow point on the outskirts of the encampments while he and a personal guard of six men rode, under escort, towards the city gates.

  And if the king does not grant me an audience?

  You’d better hope he does, umagi. Else you will cause such as scene you will get thrown in the castle jail. One way or another, I want you inside that fortress where you are supposed to be. Where you would be had you not ridden off in a fit of pique after the Fey killed your son. Yes, master.

  Good. Now, Primage Nour gave you a necklace when he visited you in Old Castle Prison, did he not? Fetch it.

  Torches burned on the sides of Kreppes’s great gates. Bowmen stood at attention on the tower, their arrows nocked and aimed at Dervas as the gatekeeper and his companions approached.

  “I am come to see the king,” Dervas informed the gatekeeper with cold command. “Tell him Great Lord Sebourne requests an audience.”

  The guards at the gate made him wait. Two pikemen blocked the way while a runner went for permission to admit Great Lord Sebourne and his entourage into the castle.

  Dervas sat tall and proud in the saddle, staring down his nose at the king’s men. He had come garbed for war, but that did not stop him from looking as resplendent as a Great Lord ought. His armor gleamed to a mirror polish. A thickly furred cape attached to his epaulets, flowing back in regal splendor over the scale-armored rump of his mount. A thick gold chain circled his neck, the heavy, jeweled links carved with symbols of protection, each link growing larger and more elaborate as it neared the jewel’s set piece—two gleaming white stones, one round and a smaller, crescent shape to symbolize the Mother and Daughter moons, set above a sparkling amber crystal surrounded by a ring of stylized waves suggesting the radiance of the Great Sun’s corona.