He watched the lights twinkling below, wishing he could be anyone else in the entire world.
The crack of a twig snapping made him turn. She was standing not a foot away from him, her gaze intent upon his face. Darien squeezed his eyes shut against the torture of her presence.
As she moved into his arms, he grimaced against the anguish of knowing he was doing her a terrible wrong. At the same time, he felt such a thrill of exhilaration that everything else in the world seemed remote and trivial.
He drew her against him, pressing his face into the silken softness of her veil. Her hands slid behind his back, stroking his hair as he closed his eyes and immersed himself in the tender compassion of her touch.
When she finally drew back, he found himself staring into her eyes, overwhelmed. His hand rose to the sleek transparency of her veil. With reverence, he lifted the fabric and drew it from her head. He let his arm fall to his side, still holding Naia’s veil as he traced a finger over her cheek. When he felt her lips press against his, he could almost imagine what it felt like to be alive.
Godfrey Faukravar was the rightful King of Chamsbrey. But the man known infamously as the Vile Prince had earned his epithet long before the crown was ever placed upon his head. Faukravar was notorious for his brutal handling of the Crofter Rebellion, which had ended in the cold-blooded massacre of over three hundred commoners: men, women and children, alike. Another feather in Faukravar’s cap was the War of Five Days, when he had used the combined might of both his armies to squash the small but embittered province of Glaster that had risen up against him. Godfrey Faukravar was renowned for both his cunning political intrigues and his ruthless nature, a potent combination.
Darien was not looking forward to meeting the man. In his opinion, the King of Chamsbrey was undeserving of the title. If he could be assured his action wouldn’t spark a civil war, Darien would have considered removing the man bodily from the throne. But there were simply too many hounds lurking under the King’s table, waiting to snap up the scraps their monarch threw at them from time to time. If a vacuity of power ever existed on the throne of Chamsbrey, every dog of the pack would fight tooth and claw over it.
Within, Darien heard the herald announce them:
“The First Daughter Naia Seleni, Priestess of Isap … and her escort.”
Darien had not provided his name. He hadn’t seen the necessity; the white cloak of the Prime Warden that fell down his back would be enough for Faukravar to identify him. If not, then the threat of his sword ought to give the man pause. Darien had donned a pair of leather gloves just for the occasion, to cover the glaring absence of the chains on his wrists.
He stepped forward, following the sweep of Naia’s gown through the door to the throne room. His eyes moved over the priestess’ slender figure as she walked before him. Naia seemed very much in her element. Having been on the receiving end of her political graces, Darien appreciated having her there. He watched as she dropped into an elegant curtsey before the throne.
Darien lifted his eyes to regard the King. He made no move to kneel. By rights, Faukravar should be the one on his knees. The white cloak worn by Darien outshone the splendor of any crown.
But the man on the throne appeared not to notice it. If he did, then he was certainly not ready to acknowledge the emblem of the Prime Warden that had inserted itself unannounced into his throne room.
The King of Chamsbrey was older than Darien had expected, a man somewhere in his late fifties. His silver hair was streaked with strands of faded brown, worn in perfect, shoulder-length curls under the golden circlet of the crown on his head. He was dressed in opulent layers of black and violet robes, with an ermine-trimmed cape covering the whole affair.
Faukravar stared unblinking into his eyes. When it became clear Darien had no intention of kneeling, the King’s lips compressed to a narrow line. One of four men who surrounded the throne stepped forward, a hand resting on the pommel of the sword at his side.
“One is expected to bend knee in the presence of a King.”
Darien kept his eyes trained on Faukravar. Behind him, he heard soft rustling sounds as the guards by the door tried to figure out what to do. A soft ringing noise scraped down his nerves as a blade was slowly bared. An uneasy tension spread through the room, growing as long moments dragged by. Darien simply waited and did nothing, while Naia remained frozen in the depths of her curtsey.
On the throne, the Vile Prince blinked.
“An interesting companionship,” he said finally, leaning back and raising a hand to finger his wiry goatee. “A white-cloaked mage, by all appearances, and a priestess of Death. Tell me, First Daughter, how might we be of service to the temple?”
Naia rose to glide forward with a swirl of her gown. “Thank you for the favor of this audience, Your Grace,” she said in a clear and ringing voice. “But I am not here at the bequest of my temple. Instead, I have come to present to you the new Prime Warden, Darien Lauchlin.”
The King glanced back at Darien, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “Another Lauchlin?” He sounded bored. “My, but that name does seem to be coming up rather often of late, and not always mentioned in the best of contexts. We are intrigued. But we are also mystified. By what right do you claim the office of Prime Warden?”
“I elected myself,” Darien responded dryly.
Naia elaborated, “Darien Lauchlin is the son of Prime Warden Emelda.”
The King’s lips twitched into a smirk. “Aidan Lauchlin is also her son. Does that make him Prime Warden, as well?”
The silence that followed was broken by the sound of nervous chuckles. Darien waited.
At his side, Naia gestured expansively. “If I may, Your Grace? Aidan Lauchlin destroyed the Hall of the Watchers and ordered his own mother slain. Is that the kind of Prime Warden you would wish to replace her?”
Faukravar dismissed her argument with a wave of his hand. “It doesn’t matter what we wish. The title itself is empty. Aerysius is fallen. A king without a nation is not a king. And the last soldier left standing is not a general.”
Darien watched him a moment longer, then slowly shook his head. He’d known better than to let the man maneuver him into a corner, which was exactly what Faukravar was attempting to do. If he hadn’t, in fact, already succeeded. Taking a step forward, he addressed the King in a carefully controlled voice:
“I’ll not be questioned over my right to my title. Whether you like it or not, I’m the last mage left alive who hasn’t sold his soul to Xerys.”
By the look on Faukravar’s face, the King couldn’t have cared less if he had. “Then why are you here?”
“I came to ask you to lend me your northern army,” Darien said, infusing all the confidence he could muster into his tone. “As we speak, two great Enemy hosts are swarming down from the Black Lands. They’ll be close enough to threaten your walls in one month’s time. If I hope to stand a chance of turning them back, I’ll have need of your northern forces.”
This time, the laughter that filled the chamber was much louder. Even Faukravar allowed himself a grin. “You expect me to just give you one of my armies? How incredibly impetuous.”
Darien waited as the cold wash of anger drained slowly out of him, until there was only emptiness remaining in its place. Dredged up from the depths of the emotional void that consumed him, his tone was frigid.
“I need your army, Your Grace, and I’ll not be leaving Chamsbrey without it. I thought to ask first, out of courtesy. You have until sunset tomorrow to make your decision.”
“And should I refuse?” the King baited.
“Then I’ll take it from you outright.”
Gasps of indignation filled the chamber. All around the room, Darien could hear the shiver of a forest of steel being bared, the sounds of footsteps as the guards distanced themselves from the walls, preparing for a fight. He could have removed his gloves. That would have given them something to think about. But he didn’t.
Instead, Darien tur
ned and walked calmly toward the door, pausing only as two guards with swords bared stepped forward to block him.
He gazed at both men with the slightest dare of a smile on his lips, waiting for them to decide whether they were ready to die for their King.
It was Faukravar who decided for them, sparing their lives.
“Let him go.”
“Well, he’s certainly arrogant enough to be a Lauchlin.”
Faukravar glanced sideways at Chadwick Cummings as the rest of his ministers snickered at the man’s comment. The King himself sat clenching the arms of his throne, gripped in a cold rage provoked by the man who had just insulted his honor and his sovereignty. He couldn’t recall ever being treated with such cavalier insolence.
“He’s the very image of Emelda, in face as well as temperament,” Clement Landry pronounced.
The King nodded, for once in full agreement with his Minister of State. He had met with the late Prime Warden on enough occasions to have recognized her looks glaring out at him from the face of her impudent son. It seemed the man had inherited a full measure of Emelda’s overconfidence without a grain of her subtlety.
“Opinions?”
Cummings spoke first, his voice raised above the drone of the others. “His threat is empty, Sire. Even if he truly is a mage, he is Bound by the Oath of Harmony.”
But Faukravar remained skeptical. There was something about the man that made him wonder. “Did any of you note the emblem of the chains?”
To his disappointment, all four of his ministers stood shaking their heads. He was furious at them, almost as furious as he was with himself for not thinking of the chains when the man was in front of him. He had allowed Lauchlin to unbalance him.
Lance Treaton, his Minister of the Treasury, bowed his head sadly. “I tried to mark them, my liege, but he was wearing gloves.”
“I abhor riddles,” the King grumbled.
“What of this Enemy host?” asked Landry. “Is there a reason to suspect it might actually exist?”
Cummings spoke up. “In his last letter, Garret Proctor mentioned he was facing a serious threat with a critical shortage of men and supplies.”
“Proctor whines more than a tavern wench, and louder,” proclaimed Treaton.
But the King was not troubled by Lauchlin’s mention of the Enemy. It was the man’s other threats, especially the veiled ones, that worried him more. “That doesn’t concern me. To reach Auberdale, any force would have to cut all the way through Emmery and lay siege to Rothscard along the way. Let Romana deal with them, if such a host exists.”
“What should we do about Lauchlin?”
“Nothing, until we know more about him.” The King tapped his fingers on the armrest of his throne, frowning in thought. After a moment, he beckoned his guard captain forward.
As the man crossed the floor, Faukravar commanded him, “Find out where he’s staying. I want men positioned around him at all times, watching every move he makes. I want to know whether or not he wears the marks of the chains. And find out more about that sword he carries, what significance it implies. Also, I want to know the nature of his relationship to that priestess.”
“Maybe he’s just fucking her,” said Landry.
“Perhaps. If so, find out.”
Cummings moved forward. “Your Grace, I must urge you to treat this mage with the utmost caution. He is, after all, the brother of the very man who brought Aerysius to its knees. It is conceivable they’re in league. How else did this Darien manage to survive when all else fell?”
The King raised an eyebrow. “An interesting notion. Find out about that too.”
Another Lauchlin. He was already sick to death of the name.
Darien gazed down at Auberdale through the paned-glass window of the room he had taken at an inn. The size of the city never ceased to amaze him. It sprawled along the banks of the River Nerium, a mottled collection of disparate structures and haphazard streets ambling off in every direction. The dark towers of Glassenburgh Castle rose over the slow waters of the Nerium, the sharp teeth of its fortifications visible even at a distance.
Turning from the window, his gaze traveled across the floor to where Naia lay spread out across the covers of the room’s only bed. He wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed with her and drown his troubles in her arms. But he couldn’t do that.
Last night, it had taken every ounce of will he possessed to restrain himself when she’d crawled under his blanket. He’d fallen asleep with Naia in his arms, trying to ignore the desperate ache inspired by her closeness.
She looked up at him and smiled, her face unobscured by the fabric of her veil. Darien moved away from the window and sat down beside her on the bed. As he did, Naia touched the back of his hand, stroking his skin with her fingertips.
“You were magnificent today,” she said. “I must admit, I had a few doubts.”
He’d had more than just a few, going in. “No.” He shook his head. “You’re the one who was magnificent. You must have been a courtier before you ever became a priestess.”
She batted her hand at him with a look of feigned outrage. Darien tried to get up, but she caught him by the arm and drew him back down beside her.
He closed his eyes as her lips wandered over his cheek, trailing upward to his forehead. Again, he was filled with longing as he let his mouth explore the graceful curve of her neck. When he felt Naia’s hands slip under his shirt, he wanted to groan.
But instead, he took her hands in his own and, removing them gently but firmly, rolled away from her onto his back. He stared up at the beams of the ceiling, fighting against a raging desire that made his breath ragged in his throat.
He wanted her, wanted all of her, with a need that was almost savage. The game they were playing was just too dangerous. Every time they touched, he found himself facing a losing battle. He felt besieged, his walls quickly caving in. Eventually, the struggle inside was going to defeat him. And when it did, Naia would be the one to suffer.
“What is it?”
She frowned down at him as she propped herself up with an elbow on the bed. Her auburn hair burned almost scarlet in the light streaming in from the window. It draped down to spread across the covers beside his face.
Darien shook his head. “I can’t do this. It’s not fair to you.”
His words seemed to infuriate her. She rolled off the bed and wrenched herself up, stalking away from him as he watched in confusion.
“Perhaps you should have thought about that last night.”
“I did, but…”
“But?” she spat, plucking her veil off the floor. “But then you led me to believe you have feelings for me, when it’s obvious you don’t.”
Darien sat up and looked at her in amazement. “What would you have of me?”
Naia flung the veil at his face, but it only fluttered down to land softly beside him on the bed. “I want you to make up your mind, Darien. Do you really care for me as you say you do? Or are you just infatuated with the idea of me? You need to think about it. I can be your lover, or I can be a priestess, but I can’t be both. You decide.”
With that, she grabbed up her veil and stormed to where her gown lay folded on a chair, pulling it on over her shift.
And then she was gone, the door slamming shut in her wake.
24
The Pursuit of Wisdom
The vaults of Om’s temple were not what Kyel had expected. He’d thought they would be like the libraries of Aerysius his father had often spoken of, well-lit rooms with shelf upon polished shelf of ordered manuscripts and well-tended documents. But the vaults of Wisdom were nothing like a library. They reminded Kyel more of Death’s Catacombs.
The chambers where Om’s clerics stored their vast accumulation of knowledge were a warren of man-made caves existing well below the level of the high priest’s chambers. Indeed, they were so far beneath the earth Kyel could almost feel the weight of the soil overhead crushing down on him.
A
fter three days of research, he still couldn’t pretend to understand the system used by the clerics to catalog it all. Had he not managed to secure himself an assistant to help search for the references he needed, Kyel figured he could have spent years down there in the bowels of the earth without finding anything remotely related to his topic.
As it was, progress was tediously slow. The silent cleric assigned to him had found him a small table with an oil lamp as its sole adornment. Since then, the cleric simply came and went at long intervals, depositing odd assortments of manuscripts, maps, codices, and scrolls of parchment. By the third day, Kyel found himself encased by stacks of books he hadn’t even had a chance to thumb through yet.
He had no idea how the man did it, but the brown-robed cleric was much quicker at locating information in the maze of vaults than Kyel was at searching through the man’s findings. He was starting to grow desperate. As he stared down at the piles around him, he wondered if the priests weren’t trying to throw him off his search by overwhelming him with information.
Most of which was completely useless. Kyel stared down at a dusty leather tome in dismay before carefully closing the ancient cover. After three days, it seemed he was no closer than when he’d first begun. Oh, he’d learned a lot of interesting facts he hadn’t known before, but scarcely any of it pertained to the elusive subject of the Well of Tears. Kyel was beginning to consider himself an expert on the history and traditions of Aerysius and was even growing confident in other, darker, areas as well.
His hand moved to a copy of The Mysteries of Aerysius, which had been one of the first treasures the cleric had unearthed for him. Before now, that text had been his only source of written knowledge on the subject, and he had refused his assistant when the man had come to take it away. But Cromm’s work, like almost everything else, yielded nothing pertinent.
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