The Complete Rhenwars Saga: An Epic Fantasy Pentalogy

by M. L. Spencer

  It didn’t take him long to discover a rope pull by the door that summoned a liveried servant. A boy arrived with a sharp knock and listened to Kyel’s request for warm water with a bewildered expression on his face. But it was Kyel’s turn to be confused when the boy strode into the room instead of going to fetch a bucket.

  Perplexed, Kyel followed him to the washroom, where the boy leaned over the tub and threw a valve. A gush of water came out of a pipe that he hadn’t even noticed, spilling out of the wall and into the tub. Amazed, Kyel put his fingers in the stream and was surprised to discover it already warm.

  “How?” he gasped.

  “The water comes from hot springs under the palace,” the boy explained. “Don’t drink the warm water. It tastes sort of funny. But the cold water comes from the river, and it’s good to drink.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  The boy went to fetch towels down from a shelf. When he was gone, Kyel found himself neck-deep in the most soothing bath he’d ever experienced in his life. He lay with his head against the sloping back of the tub and scooted down until the water came up to his chin. Then he closed his eyes and relaxed, listening to the muffled thuds of his heartbeat.

  He lay there until the water grew cold, then let some out and drew more fresh. Finding a brush, he scrubbed his body until he felt sure he had most of the grime off. When he was done, he dried off and shaved, then ran a comb through his wet hair.

  He dug into his cloak pocket, bringing out Treatise on the Well, then crawled into the bed. It was the first chance he’d had to open the text since leaving Glen Farquist. He skimmed the first chapter, which was just another description of the creation of the Well. It wasn’t until he got to the third chapter that he finally found something of interest.

  Spread out across two pages was a diagram of the Well, drawn painstakingly in ink. The diagram showed the Well from two different perspectives. Kyel raised the book, flexing the spine back carefully as he studied the drawings. The Well of Tears looked just like any other well he had ever seen, with the singular exception of the odd markings that encircled its rim.

  Turning the page, he saw the same markings expressed in a series, some circled and numbered. Unfortunately, there was no explanation as to what the numbers could mean.

  Intrigued, Kyel flipped forward a few chapters and stopped when his eyes caught a glimpse of a heading that read, SEALING OF THE WELL. He read the entire passage, letting his eyes scan rapidly across the page with a growing uneasiness that increased with every word:

  Resealing the Well requires two mages working in cooperation. The Well itself must be manipulated in its chamber by deactivation of the rune sequence in reverse order. Concurrently, the Well must be sealed on the side of the Netherworld, which requires a Grand Master of no less than the fourth tier to enter the gateway. This is, by definition, a sacrifice, as any person entering the Netherworld would become there entrapped by the collapse of the gateway, condemned body and soul to the Netherworld for all eternity.

  “Merciful gods,” Kyel whispered.

  As soon as he said it, Darien’s words came back to haunt him: the gods have no mercy. Kyel snapped the book shut and set it down. He didn’t understand half of what he’d just read, but he understood enough.

  It would take the two of them working together to seal the Well of Tears, and Kyel knew he wasn’t remotely prepared to put the Soulstone around his neck yet. He might be in for years’ more training before he would be ready to tackle something like the Well.

  And then either Darien or himself would have to enter the gateway to become the sacrifice the Well of Tears demanded. Kyel knew he could never, ever summon enough courage to do that, knowing the repercussions. Sacrificing his life would be bad enough, but condemning his soul to hell on top of it? The very thought was horrendous, unspeakable. But how could he ask Darien to do it for him? The mage had already suffered enough. He deserved an eternity at peace.

  But at least he’d be with Meiran.

  As soon as the thought occurred to him, Kyel wanted to hit himself for even thinking it. He was being selfish, and cowardly on top of it. His mind was just groping for comfort, trying to reason its way out of the guilt he was already feeling. Thoroughly disgusted with himself, Kyel resolved not to think about it again. Maybe there was another way, maybe Darien could figure something out. Perhaps he was just getting himself worked up over nothing.

  A knock at the door startled him from his thoughts.

  Rising from the bed, Kyel crossed the room, expecting another servant as he cracked open the door. Instead, he was surprised to find himself looking into the face of Nigel Swain. Kyel let the door swing fully open, his heart skipping a beat as he took in a hallway full of blue-cloaked guards.

  “Didn’t anyone ever tell you never threaten a queen?” the captain asked.

  As Swain moved into the room, Kyel found himself wondering why Darien had made it all sound so easy. He’d thought it was going to be just another one of his master’s tests, this one a lesson in diplomacy. Well, if this was a test, then he’d just failed it.

  Swain drew Kyel’s hands behind his back and locked a set of iron chains around his wrists. It was only his second time in Rothscard, and both times he had found himself in chains.

  Damn you, Darien.

  The only thing he’d ever wanted was just to go home. Every day it seemed the chances of that happening were growing more dismal.

  “What are you going to do to me?”

  Swain directed him by the arm out into the hall.

  “The Queen wishes to have a word with you.”

  “She had but to ask,” Kyel grumbled.

  He hadn’t meant it as a jest, but his words inspired a cheerless smile on Swain’s angular face. Guards fell in around them as Kyel was guided forward.

  He was scared. Swain was right. He shouldn’t have threatened Romana. He wondered what the punishment for something like that was. They’d already shipped him off to the Front once and, anyway, Greystone Keep had probably already fallen. The way things were starting to look now, the Front might even be right here in Rothscard in another week or so. Then they wouldn’t have to ship him anywhere.

  The thought almost made him want to laugh, though it would have been a bitter laugh indeed. Instead, he swallowed and tried not to stumble as they guided him down a flight of polished marble stairs. It was hard, walking down the steps with his arms chained behind his back. If he tripped, he wouldn’t be able to bring his hands up to catch himself.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Swain led him to a large white door. The chains on his wrists were starting to chafe, and the small gaps in the links kept pulling at his arm hairs. His shoulders ached from the way they had him trussed.

  Kyel felt ill when he realized he was being taken to the Queen’s formal audience hall. Romana sat on a raised throne at the far end of the room, and there was nothing commonplace about her now. She wore elegant blue layers of silk, embroidered and bejeweled. Her dark hair was arranged in a coif caught up by the Sapphire Crown of Emmery. She held a gold scepter in one hand. Romana was now the very image of a queen. Kyel found himself thinking that if she’d looked that way earlier, he would have never found the courage to say what he had.

  Swain’s grip on his arm forced him down into the bow that Kyel had forgotten to make. He resented the gesture. It was one thing, abasing himself before a pretty girl with a paintbrush in her hand. It was quite another when that same girl had transformed into the image of a glorious but wrathful monarch who had issued the order to have him restrained.

  “Rise.” Her clear soprano voice carried the commanding ring of authority.

  Kyel obeyed, though there was little grace in his movement. The captain’s grip remained painfully firm on his arm. Kyel waited nervously, wondering what sentence the Queen would pronounce. He thought Darien had greatly underestimated the woman’s boldness. He waited, but the Queen said nothing. She seemed to be waiting for him, gazing down
at him from her elevated throne with distaste in her wide blue eyes.

  Not knowing what else to say, Kyel asked her, “Why did you have me placed in chains?”

  Romana’s eyebrows arched, as if she was surprised by his straightforward question. She moved her hand to the arm of her throne, brandishing the scepter as she replied:

  “I had you placed in chains because I wished for you to experience what they feel like.”

  Kyel frowned, almost as disgusted as he was shocked by her answer. “I fear I don’t take your point.”

  Swain’s grip flexed on his arm, sending a shooting pain stabbing into his shoulder. Romana glared down at him, but her tone was even as she pressed, “Tell me, how do they feel?”

  Kyel knew exactly what she was getting at, and he didn’t appreciate it one bit. Shrugging, he told her, “Heavy. They chafe.”

  “And how do you feel, wearing them?”

  “Vulnerable,” he replied honestly. Her questions were becoming tedious. He wished the Queen would just make her point.

  Romana gazed at him intently as she asked, “Can you tell me the purpose of chains?”

  Angry now, Kyel growled, “I can think of several.”

  “Such as?”

  “To constrain someone, to confine. To control.”

  “Exactly,” Romana pronounced as if leveling a death sentence. “The mages of Aerysius chose to live their entire lives shackled to the confines of the Oath of Harmony. Even though the weight was heavy, and it chafed at times. Some of the most powerful men and women the world has ever known spent a lifetime feeling just as vulnerable and constrained as you do at this moment. And yet many sacrificed their lives to preserve that Oath; they felt it was that important.” She paused. “What are your thoughts on this?”

  Kyel could have answered that question the moment he’d walked in the door, without playing her infuriating game.

  He told her in all honesty, “I am aware of its importance. I believe the Oath is a necessity.”

  The Queen of Emmery nodded. “What I require is your word that when you receive the Transference, you will swear the Oath of Harmony and uphold it throughout your entire life.”

  “You have my word.”

  The insult she was dealing him grated to the bone. Who did she think she was, to demand his word on something that should have never been any of her business in the first place? He wished Darien was there. The Sentinel would have been outraged by this little queen’s temerity.

  Romana looked supremely pleased with herself. “Very well. I would like you to know that I have reconsidered your entreaty. I have decided to send my army northward, after all.”

  Kyel was shocked. He hadn’t expected this, not at all.

  “I thank you, Your Highness,” he said in a much calmer voice. He waited, but she said nothing further. “Now would you please take these chains off me?”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, no?” Kyel’s face flushed hot with anger. “Why not?”

  Romana raised her hands expansively. “Because you are my assurance.”

  “Assurance against what?”

  The Queen sighed, setting her scepter down across her lap. “I have spent much time today contemplating a great many things. I have come to realize that, though desperate, this plan is probably the only chance of success we have. If your master wishes to play the part of Orien, then so be it. But he must agree to abide by the rest of Orien’s script, right up to the very end.”

  At first, Kyel didn’t take her meaning. Then, slowly, it dawned on him. She was talking about…

  “No,” he gasped, feeling utterly revolted and enraged. “I won’t do it.”

  “Those are my terms.” Romana leaned forward, gripping the arms of her throne. “If Darien Lauchlin uses the vortex, then he must follow Orien’s example and kneel at your feet when the battle is done. You will keep your word and swear the Oath of Harmony the moment after you receive the Transference from him. Then that will be the end of this ghastly business.”

  “No,” Kyel whispered, shaking his head. “There’s more. He needs to help me close the gateway, seal the Well of Tears. And then there’s Aidan—”

  But Romana wasn’t listening to him. Silencing him with a furious glint of her eyes, she uttered, “That is the purpose of legacy, is it not? When your master falls, you may take up his banner for him. But you will do so Bound.”

  Kyel tried to back away from her, but he was held fast by the steel grip of Swain’s fingers. “You can’t ask that of me. I won’t do it.”

  “Then you will spend the rest of your life with my chains on your wrists.” The Queen of Emmery turned to her captain and ordered, “Take this young man to a cell where he can think over his options carefully.”

  Swain hauled him around by the arm, wrenching Kyel’s shoulder as he did. Stumbling, Kyel careened after him out of the throne room, head reeling in fear and revulsion. A contingent of guards fell in behind them as Kyel was compelled forward down the long halls of the palace and out into a dismal afternoon.

  As he walked, Kyel tried to think of what he could do to get himself out of this. Romana’s threat had scared him. It scared him even more because he thought he knew what Darien would do when he heard of it. Everything seemed to be pointing in one direction, and he could feel the numbers starting to total themselves together in his mind.

  Darien would make Romana a counteroffer. He would insist on surviving long enough to reach Aidan and the gateway. With one decisive stroke he could fulfill his Bloodquest, seal the Well of Tears, and follow the example set by Orien that Romana demanded. And then, when it was over, all parties involved would be satisfied.

  It was sick. It was also perfect.

  Just like the rest of Darien’s plans. As the cell door slammed shut behind him, Kyel realized with a gut-twisting wrench that this must have been his master’s intent all along.

  Sleep was impossible. And yet there was nothing else to do, so Kyel tried his hardest. But with his arms chained behind his back, there was no position that he could find that was comfortable. The hours dragged by as guards came and went, sometimes with prisoners and sometimes not. Sometimes they glared at him or whispered taunts. Often, they raked their swords along the metal bars of his cage as they strode by, a jarring sound that rattled his nerves.

  It was hours before he finally had a visitor. And then, it wasn’t who he’d been expecting. Appalled, Kyel watched as a blue-cloaked guard sifted through his iron ring of keys, throwing back the bolt of his cell door to admit a brawny, bald old man with the smell of the forge on his clothes. In his hand he carried a forger’s hammer, wielding it upright like a club. An apprentice trailed behind him, lugging a small but heavy anvil into the cell, which he all but dumped down on the floor with a resounding thud.

  Kyel stared at the anvil with a feeling of dread. Romana was carrying her point much too far if she was willing to drive it home with a blacksmith’s hammer. To his disgust, three more guards surged into the cell in the wake of the forger’s apprentice. Two came forward to restrain him while the third edged behind him and unlocked the chains on his wrists. Kyel’s shoulders spasmed with relief the moment they were off. But the relief did not last long.

  The guards wrenched him forward and down, one catching his head in a lock while another seized his arm and forced it down on top of the anvil, pinning it there with the full weight of his body. Kyel tried to struggle as he saw the blacksmith lifting his hammer over a fresh length of chain. But the guard who had him by the neck tightened his hold until there was nothing Kyel could do but watch and desperately pray that the blacksmith didn’t miss his mark.

  The hammer rose and fell with a sharp ring that made Kyel flinch. There was no pain, at least; the blacksmith’s aim was true. In moments, the vile work was done.

  As the guards released him, Kyel held his hands up before his face, staring down in revulsion at the lengths of chain wrapped around his wrists like a matching set of crude iron bracelets.
The woman had gone too far. Much too far. He didn’t care if she was a queen; Romana had no right.

  The blacksmith looked back over his shoulder with sympathy in his eyes as he left. Kyel sank down on the cot, staring at the Queen’s chains. There had to be something he could do. She couldn’t get away with this. It was an insult, not just to him personally, but to every Master who had ever lived and died by the Mage’s Oath.

  If Aerysius still existed, Emmery’s Queen would be bent over her knees for this, he felt certain. But Aerysius didn’t exist anymore. And the man currently calling himself Prime Warden was not there to help him, even if he had the inclination to do so.

  There was only one thing to be done about it—there simply was no other choice. He was fed up, and not just with Romana. Darien had known damned well from the beginning what he would be facing. Yet the mage had sent him anyway. This was all another one of his schemes, one of his twisted lessons. Perhaps he hadn’t foreseen the chains, but Darien must have known how Romana would react. He had planned for it all along. It was just another stepping stone on his path to Aidan and the Well, to surrendering himself to Orien’s fate.

  Kyel had no intention of letting him go through with it. He was afraid of Darien’s wrath, but someone had to save the man from himself.

  Reaching into his pocket, Kyel pulled out the Soulstone and gazed deeply into its glimmering facets. It was terrible. And terrifying. The strange red light flickered and throbbed, pulsing like a living heartbeat. Knowing that he had no idea what he was getting into, Kyel spread open the silver bands of the collar and held the medallion up against his chest. It felt sinisterly cold.

  His hands trembled as he brought the bands up around his neck, fumbling at the clasp with his fingers. At first, he didn’t think it was going to work. The clasp seemed stiff and frozen. But then he heard a faint, metallic click.