The Complete Rhenwars Saga: An Epic Fantasy Pentalogy

by M. L. Spencer

  “Perhaps it is,” Darien said, staring at the thing.

  “It doesn’t seem to like Kyel either. Every time he comes here to look in on you, that creature stares at him and growls dreadfully.”

  Darien frowned as the meaning of her words slowly sank in.

  The priestess continued, “I found myself starting to wonder, isn’t it odd that the beast ignores the presence of every other person, with the exception of Kyel and myself? And then I began wondering, what in the world could Kyel and I possibly share in common?”

  Any feeling Darien had left was drained away by the time she had finished speaking. He stared at her, his mind and heart utterly bereft. It was impossible. And yet … it also made sense.

  “Look at me,” he commanded.

  Naia did. Her dark eyes were wide and clear through the fabric of her veil, those eyes that before had consumed his dreams, his hopes and desires. He must believe they held nothing for him now. Naia’s eyes were perfect in every way, wide and glinting with the fierce spark of intelligence he found so compelling. Compassion was there too. Her gaze was suffused with it, along with a caring tenderness that made him ache. But if there was anything else in her eyes, the translucent fabric that hung between them obscured it from his sight.

  “Without the veil,” he commanded.

  What he asked was tantamount to ordering Naia to strip naked there in front of him. Before, it had been a wondrous gift she had shared with him willingly. Now, with all that had transpired, asking her to remove her veil felt like a transgression.

  As if to torture him, Naia smiled tenderly as she lifted both hands and drew the fabric back from her face. He found himself confronted by the unconstrained radiance of her gaze, unable to look away. It was wondrous, mesmerizing. Her face held an irresistible solace, an unconditional promise of hope and commitment.

  Naia’s dark eyes promised him everything he’d ever wanted and more. He could never have any of it.

  “Put it back,” he whispered.

  She obeyed, lowering the veil back into place. As she did, it seemed as if the last light faded quietly from his world. He looked down, squeezing his eyes shut against the pain. Her presence was torture enough. He never should have allowed this. He couldn’t stand it.

  “I have the potential, don’t I?” Her words stirred across the bleakness of his heart.

  It took him a moment to answer her. “I never saw it before.”

  But it was there, undeniably. He didn’t even need to test her to be certain. There could be no mistaking it.

  “Perhaps you didn’t want to see it,” Naia said. “Or perhaps you weren’t looking deep enough.”

  But he already knew why he’d never noticed it there before. Her veil obscured the shine of the potential in her eyes. And the two times he had seen her face in its absence, his mind had been on other things. Near her, he was blinded to even the blatantly obvious. Her presence befuddled his senses, fouled his edge. Another potent reason why she had to go.

  “This changes nothing,” he said.

  “Yes, it does. Kyel is no longer your acolyte. You need someone who can inherit your gift.”

  There, she was wrong. The power within him was a monstrous legacy too potent for any one mage. He would never condemn her to such a fate. It would be too much for her, even as brightly as she burned. He could never do that to her, even if he had a choice. Which he didn’t.

  “I’m sorry, Naia, but my gift dies with me.”

  Her face paled, her expression faltering. With a look of desperation, she fiercely shook her head. “I won’t accept that. You always find a way.”

  He whispered, “Not this time.”

  “You’re not even going to try, are you?”.

  He wasn’t. There was no point. “You heard Swain. Mages were never meant to exist Unbound. Look at me. I’m living proof of the reason for the Oath.”

  “There has to be a way,” she insisted. “Can’t you just say the words again?”

  “Once forsaken, the Oath can never be reaffirmed.”

  Naia’s brow creased in frustration, her eyes wet and glistening. “So you’re just giving up?”

  Her grief only served to provoke him. This was exactly why she had to leave. Now. Before the sight of her tears softened his heart. He told her in a tone devoid of mercy:

  “Now do you understand why you have to go? We have no chance, you and me. No future. Look at that thing.” He nodded at the thanacryst. “That is my soul, Naia. Do you know how I came by that creature? I killed its former mistress—right after I lay with her.”

  He ignored her sharp gasp and pressed on. “I don’t deserve you, and you sure as hell deserve better than me. Now, take your things and get out. Leave.”

  She was sobbing. Her shoulders were shaking, her hands pressed against her face over the fabric of her veil. Darien watched, unmoved. She could spill every last tear in her body, but it was better this way. Much better.

  Still, she didn’t go.

  In the end, it was he who left the tent, the thanacryst jogging dutifully behind in his wake.

  Kyel was bored. There was nothing to do in the encampment, at least nothing for a mage. The soldiers seemed busy enough, scurrying here and there about their duties. The camp of Faukravar’s army had an entirely different feel to it than Emmery’s. It was easy to tell a Chamsbrey soldier without looking at the uniform. They all seemed to be going through the motions of their various labors in a daze, their efforts halfhearted. There were far fewer men wearing black and violet uniforms than blue and white. What Chamsbrey did have was a disproportionate supply of tents. Counting tents, Kyel had figured that Faukravar’s army was now roughly half the size it had been before the morning of Black Solstice.

  That’s what they were calling it now. He’d heard the words often throughout both camps. It seemed apt. Black for the clouds that had darkened the sky, black for the charred earth beneath Orien’s summit. Black for the lives that had been so cruelly ripped out of life, both friend and Enemy alike. And black for the atrocious means used to attain such a one-sided victory.

  He knew what to call it now, the awesome and horrendous undertaking Darien had performed alone on the summit of the crag. According to the priestess, Darien had created a grand resonance, something conceived of in theory but never before employed. Not even Orien himself had worked such appalling devastation. Darien’s desperate act on the summit had far surpassed even the most notorious feat of Aerysius’ most infamous Grand Master. Orien couldn’t have even accomplished such an act; he’d been only fifth tier.

  Only.

  The sound of raised voices startled Kyel out of his thoughts, and he hurried forward out of curiosity. As he moved past rows of tents, men noticed his cloak and stepped away from him with looks of fear. Kyel didn’t blame them. What they had seen on Black Solstice had given them more than enough reason to fear the sight of a mage.

  Rounding a group of tents, Kyel saw the cause of the commotion. To his surprise, he recognized Nigel Swain standing beside General Blandford in what looked like a heated argument with the King of Chamsbrey.

  The King was seething, face red and eyes scalding. One white-gloved hand was fingering the pommel of the sword he wore at his hip, the other twisting one of the points of his goatee.

  “Who do you think you are, to presume to gainsay me?” the King growled.

  Swain stood in a fighting stance, his body at an angle to the King. He said, “There’s another army headed this way, and I’m not about to let you just pack up your toys and leave.”

  Kyel frowned, walking closer. Swain’s words shocked him, the vehemence in them nearly as outrageous as the news of another army. If the captain wasn’t careful, he was going to wind up with his head on a block.

  “How dare you,” spat Faukravar, face turning an even deeper shade of red. “General Blandford, I want this man scourged!”

  Blandford looked at the King dully, lifting one of his long-whiskered eyebrows. “I’m sorry, Your Gra
ce, but my Lady Queen would be most put out if I consented to scourge her fiancé.”

  Kyel stopped in his tracks. Looking at Nigel Swain, he felt like hitting himself over the head for not seeing it before. Romana had all but deferred to the captain, back at the palace in Rothscard. And Swain had been passionate in his devotion to her.

  Faukravar’s face melted through several shades of red into pasty white. “What?”

  “That’s right.” Swain grinned smugly.

  Faukravar’s gloved hand dropped from his goatee as he struggled to compose himself. He said, “It would seem that Romana has even worse taste in men than she does in wine.”

  Swain shook his head. “My Queen has excellent taste in wine. She just has better sense than to waste a good vintage on a coward like you.”

  Gasps issued from the small crowd of onlookers as Faukravar’s face turned a glaring purple. Tugging the glove from his hand, he threw it down in the snow between them, visibly trembling in outrage. Swain stared down at the white glove, eyes coolly considering.

  It was time to intervene, Kyel decided. Surging forward, he bent down and retrieved the King’s glove, holding it up and offering it back to him. Faukravar’s eyes took in the glove then moved to linger on Kyel’s black cloak. His face looked ready to burst from the amount of blood that engorged it.

  “I’d take it, if I were you,” Kyel urged him, indicating the glove in his outstretched hand. “Unless you have a champion eager to duel a Guild blademaster.”

  Faukravar stared at the glove, stared at Swain, then glared at Kyel. His lips curled, revealing a set of chipped and yellowed teeth that had the look of worn daggers. He snatched the glove out of Kyel’s hand and stalked off, followed by a small group of lackeys, muttering something about “contemptible mages” under his breath. When he was gone, Kyel turned back to face a still-grinning Nigel Swain.

  “What’s this about another army?” he demanded.

  The grin disappeared from the captain’s face. “Thirty thousand, coming from the Gap of Amberlie. They’ll be here by evening.” He sighed, blowing a greasy lock of hair back from his mouth. “It seems Darien was right, after all. They’ll just keep coming.”

  “Rider approaching!”

  Kyel turned at the sound of the outcry, glancing across the blackened terrain. He saw the exhausted horse before he saw the rider, recognizing the man from the color of his cloak. It was the first gray cloak he had seen south of the Pass of Lor-Gamorth. The rider was from Greystone Keep, and by the looks of it, badly injured.

  Kyel ran toward him, Swain following at his heels as he captured the spent horse by its bridle. The soldier was already sliding out of his saddle when the captain caught him up in his arms, easing the man to the ground.

  Kyel leaned over him, placing a hand on his chest and desperately trying to probe the man with his mind, the way he had seen Darien do before. An image came to him, fleeting and unintelligible. But his eyes saw enough to tell that the man was dying. His face already wore a pale mask of death, the shirt beneath his mail vest saturated with blood.

  “Archer?” the soldier muttered weakly, looking perplexed.

  Kyel frowned, staring down at the man, trying to see under the caked blood and grime that splattered his face. He thought he might recognize him but couldn’t be certain. It didn’t matter anyway. His own name was the last word the soldier would ever utter.

  Kyel grimaced as Swain bent down to close the dead man’s eyes. If only he knew enough of his gift to do something useful with it, he might have been able to save him. Darien could have done it. But Darien wasn’t there.

  “What’s this?” Swain whispered.

  Looking down, Kyel saw what the captain referred to. The dead man’s hand clasped a piece of rolled parchment that was stained brown with dried blood. Swain had to fight the man’s death grip to retrieve it. Unrolling the scroll, he scanned the page harshly before shaking his head and crushing it into Kyel’s fist.

  “Here,” he grunted. “I can’t read.”

  Kyel found himself staring at the captain in mute disbelief. If he was going to be a royal consort, Kyel figured the man had better learn how to read. Turning to the wadded scroll, he uncrumpled it, smoothing it against the palm of his hand. Letting his eyes trace over the neat, embellished script, he felt his heart lurch to a halt in his chest. He had to start reading the note all over again, taking it from the top. The last line he scanned at least five times before he finally believed it.

  “Well?” Swain pressed. “What does it say?”

  Kyel felt too stunned to speak. His hand violently clenched the parchment, wadding it up into a ball in his fist.

  “It’s a summons,” he said finally. “Darien’s presence is requested at a parley tonight under flag of truce. It’s signed ‘Zavier Renquist.’”

  Darien backed away from the crowd of onlookers that lingered over the body of Wade Tarpen, a soldier from Greystone Keep he’d known from the two years he’d spent there. He had arrived too late to save the man. Intent on the corpse, no one paid him any mind. No one noticed as he quickly bent to retrieve a wadded ball of parchment off the ground and then silently slip away.

  Without his cloak, he was harder to recognize, and few people did. They were used to marking him by the white emblem of the Prime Warden. But the cloak was gone now. After the transgression he had committed on its fabric, he hadn’t been able to put that cloak back on. Instead he had wrapped it around Arden’s body and sent it over the cliff with her vile remains.

  He was clothed only in his black breeches and a shirt that he’d borrowed from one of the empty tents, his baldric tossed over it. The shirt was part of an officer’s uniform, the insignia of Chamsbrey embroidered on the breast, bars of rank stitched onto the shoulders. The fabric wasn’t nearly warm enough. He shivered as he strode toward the place where he’d bid the thanacryst wait.

  The creature was still there, stationed in the exact spot he’d left it in front of an abandoned tent. The beast loped over to him, froths of spittle flying from its jowls. Its green eyes glinted banefully as it stared up at him, looking expectant.

  “Ceise,” Darien whispered, spreading his fingers at his side.

  The thanacryst obeyed, falling in to heel beside him as he walked toward the margin of the camp. With the beast at his side, Darien no longer had the luxury of anonymity. Men stared, first at the thanacryst and then at him, with expressions of fear and repugnance.

  The mood of the men toward him had altogether changed. It was easy to see why; Chamsbrey’s army had been decimated. From what he could judge, there were perhaps a little over half the number of soldiers as had left with him from Tol-Ranier. Still, it was better than he had anticipated. Wellingford had heeded him well and had managed to keep a good number of his men out of the eye of the vortex. The boy had turned out to be a decent commander.

  He trudged by a group of soldiers lingering around a fire. Darien felt their eyes upon him, heard the quiet, whispered words uttered behind his back. He could almost smell their hatred and fear. They blamed him. They were lucky to be alive to blame him. If he’d held back even a fraction, they would all be dead. He almost felt like turning to confront them, their reproach kindling a simmering fury.

  As if sensing his mood, the thanacryst growled. Darien dropped his hand to steady it, feeling the beast’s wet tongue licking the tips of his fingers. As he moved out of earshot of the group, he heard one of the soldiers mutter the word “darkmage” under his breath.

  So that’s what they thought of him, did they? Darien felt his bile rising as his temper cooled to an arctic chill. He groped for the solace of the magic field, tugging at it sharply with the full force of his mind. He took in too much, too quickly. The excess energy bled off his body in crackling blue tongues that drew stares from everyone nearby. Soldiers gaped at him, backing away. Darien paid them no heed, suffused with the soothing ecstasy of the field.

  Comforted, he released it slowly.

  He turned and
stared out into the blackened ground that spread before him. The amount of devastation was overwhelming, beyond anything he had expected. Everything within the eye of the vortex had been reduced to char and ashes. The land itself seemed tortured.

  Orien’s Finger was blackened. The stone had a glassy, molten appearance. The summit looked dangerously detached, shoved to the side and leaning precariously atop its dark pedestal. He had been lucky that it hadn’t given way completely.

  The crunch of boots told him Wellingford was approaching. Darien had the distinctive sound of the boy’s footsteps memorized. He was vaguely surprised that anyone would have the temerity to seek him out. He pretended not to notice the young man’s approach, letting his general come to stand at his side unacknowledged.

  “Prime Warden.” Wellingford’s voice was hesitant. “I didn’t know you were recovered. Are you sure you’re well enough to be about?”

  Darien felt a mild stir of resentment that anyone would care about his health. Hadn’t the boy looked out on the devastation that surrounded him? Hadn’t he seen with his own eyes the injury that had been dealt here? And the dead; could he not hear the silent screams of the tortured dead that lingered in the air? So much horror could never occur in a place without leaving a lasting imprint behind. A thousand years from now, the grief of those who had died here might still be heard, a telltale whisper on the wind.

  “How many total casualties?” Darien asked, wanting a number he could use to scourge his soul.

  “Estimates are over a hundred thousand,” Wellingford replied after a moment’s hesitation. “Six thousand of our own.”

  Darien stared out across the blackened land, searing the numbers into his mind. “Have there been any survivors from Greystone Keep?”

  “Only three, Prime Warden. All infantrymen.”

  Darin bowed his head, overcome. Devlin Craig had been the staunchest, most loyal friend he’d ever known. And though he still held some resentment toward Garret Proctor, Darien understood him better now. Neither man had deserved so cruel an end. Craig especially; the captain had risked his own life to save him from Arden’s fire, only to be immolated by his own.