Threads of Gold (Tales of the Latter Kingdoms Book 6)

by Christine Pope

  “Burning at the stake,” I whispered. Of course. That terrible punishment would explain his scars. But how had he managed to survive?

  “Precisely,” the king replied. “Only we did not understand the true extent of his powers, and so he was able to make his escape, even as the flames licked at him and almost consumed him. My agents hunted the kingdom for him, and yet there was no trace to be found of this terrible user of magic who had festered at the heart of my realm like a cancer. Now, of course, we know that he went to live a quiet life as a goldsmith, hoping that no one would ever discover who…what…he truly was. The story of the pox was a convenient one, for it came to Bodenskell not long after his burning, and enough were left scarred by it that no one would question his desire to conceal his face.”

  And he had been discovered, because of me. If he had not come to my aid, Tobyn would have remained anonymous, hidden and safe. In that moment, my heart seemed as if it were being squeezed in a vise, so wracked was I with guilt. If I had known what he risked, I would never have allowed him to help me, would never have let matters between us progress as they did.

  But, as my mother once said, eggs cannot be put back into their shells. I had no idea how either of us would ever escape now, not when we were surrounded on all sides by guards and the members of King Elsdon’s court. For the first time, I noticed Lord Edmar, saw how close the Lady Shelenna stood to him.

  Perhaps a little too close. For just the briefest second, I saw him sweep an indulgent glance down at her, and her mouth curved in reply. I guessed that the nondescript-looking but richly dressed man on her other side must be her husband; he watched the goings-on with avid dark eyes, and if he noted anything of the connection between the duke and his wife, he gave no sign of it. Some people truly could not see past the tips of their noses.

  Had the Lord Edmar and Lady Shelenna colluded to expose my relationship with Tobyn? I could not see how they had even begun to guess, but as the king waved peremptorily in the duchess’s direction and said, “Your Grace, if you would step forward,” I had a feeling I would soon find out.

  She moved toward the king and curtseyed with a graceful rustle of her silken skirts. While His Majesty was occupied with looking at her, I risked a glance over at Tobyn. He had not moved, still stood there with his head high, jaw clenched. I could only imagine what it must cost him to stand there and pretend to ignore the stares of the courtiers, the whispering behind fans and handkerchiefs. For the briefest second, his eyes flickered toward mine.

  My lips formed a single word. Go.

  For I knew he could escape now, just as he had escaped the flames some ten years ago. They had removed his gag, so he could speak the words of the spell if he wished to. Indeed, I wondered why he had not.

  The faintest shake of his head. One gloved hand moved up and touched his breast near his heart for a scant second before he let it fall to his side once more. I knew then that he would not escape, even if it was within his power.

  He would not leave me.

  No doubt the king had counted on such loyalty, else he would most assuredly have kept Tobyn gagged. Hatred burned within me, but I knew I could not give in to it. I must keep my head about me, no matter what happened.

  “I would thank you for your service to this realm,” King Elsdon said to Lady Shelenna. She bowed her head, that same secretive smile playing about her lips. And to think I had believed her to be, if not a friend, then at least friendly. That more than anything else showed me how little I knew about life at court, and how its private pathways to power functioned.

  “I only did what anyone else in my position might have done, Your Majesty,” she replied. “Indeed, I am just grateful that my suspicion proved to be correct.”

  “It was quite the insight, all the same,” the king said. He was smiling now as well, secure in his power, gloating over how he had managed to capture the hated user of magic once again. And I doubted that Tobyn would be able to make an escape a second time. Still with that smile on his face, King Elsdon glanced over at me and went on, “You see, Annora, when your lover made you a gift of that pendant, he sealed your doom, for Master Slade’s work is quite distinctive, and Her Grace here recognized it at once. She also realized that my late wife never had such a piece in her collection, and neither had I ever given one to the Lady Ilendra, whose apartments and jewels you first used when you came to the palace. And so she had to wonder, whence came such a thing? She approached me with the question, for she thought that perhaps I had given it to you directly in the last few days, but I had not given it to you, and neither had I ever commissioned such a piece.”

  “It sounds like quite the investigation,” I remarked past the dryness in my throat. As much as I wanted to look over at Tobyn and somehow communicate to him that it was all right, that I did not blame him for giving himself away when he had only wished to give me something beautiful, I knew I dared not.

  “Quite.” The king approached me and then paused to pull something from the inner pocket of his doublet. Dangling from his fingers was the pendant Tobyn had made, the ruby winking at me like a baleful crimson eye. “It is beautiful work, I will grant you that. And something that could only have come from the hand of Master Slade, the goldsmith all the ladies of my court rave about. Such a secretive man, it turns out, who goes about in a cloak and hood at all times, no matter what the weather. He claims to stay hidden because of his pox scars, but even the worst-scarred folk show their faces now and then, especially when the weather is warm. So why should Master Slade be any different?”

  I remained silent. My soul rebelled at looking into the king’s gloating face, and so I made myself stare stonily past him, to the dais where Prince Harlin still sat, his wife at his shoulder. To my surprise, I saw no condemnation on the prince’s face, no echo of his father’s poorly hidden triumph. If anything, Prince Harlin appeared almost sad, as if he took no pleasure in Tobyn’s humiliation, or my anguish. Unfortunately, I knew that the prince’s feelings counted for very little with the king.

  My continued silence seemed to discomfit him not at all. He puffed out his chest and continued, still in the same loud, carrying tone, “Even more curious, it turned out that this Master Slade was the one who retained a certain lawyer to sue the High Court to let Mistress Kelsden free. Master Jamsden had provided his services to Master Slade on more than one occasion, but he had no connection to Mistress Kelsden here…until Master Slade hired him to defend this poor innocent girl, this young woman who had committed no crime, save having a profligate father. But it turns out you were not quite so innocent, were you, Annora?”

  Again I said nothing. We might have been in his court, but it most certainly was not a court of law. Nothing I said or did now would make one whit of difference. But the king must put on his show, and so it seemed my best policy now was to greet all of his utterances with stony silence.

  If he was nonplussed by my lack of response, he gave no sign of it. This time he did not even bother to look at me, but stepped forward so he might directly address the courtiers surrounding us. They seemed to be listening, entranced, for I had no doubt they hadn’t had gossip this juicy to devour for many a month…if ever.

  “And so it turns out that this Master Slade has known Mistress Kelsden for some time. In exchange for her favors, he produced the gold that kept her gambling father solvent, for if it were not for this sorcerer’s intervention, the entire family would have been on the street many months ago.”

  “That is a lie!” Tobyn burst out, at last breaking his silence.

  “You dare to call the king a liar?” Lord Edmar demanded. He stepped forward, grey eyes glinting like steel.

  “I call things what they are,” Tobyn said. His own eyes blazed green fire, and I had no doubt he wished in that moment his magical skills were of a more martial nature than simply conjuring gold and gems from the very air itself, or making himself disappear and appear at will. “And he does lie in this. He lies most damnably. I had never even met Mistre
ss Kelsden before this last seven-day.”

  The duke raised an eyebrow, and a mocking smile touched his lips. “You expect us to believe that, when it is only your gold that would have kept her family solvent?”

  “It was not Master Slade’s gold,” I broke in, “but rather my father raiding the dowry which should have been mine and my sister’s. That is what kept food on our table and clothes on our backs. I know you are determined to believe the very worst, but I speak the truth in this. Just as I will say now that Master Slade came to my aid expecting nothing in return, his only thought to protect me from a king so blinded by his lust for gold that he would overlook all decency, all law and notions of what is right and wrong, just so he could fill his miserable coffers!”

  At this outburst, the king began to splutter — no doubt attempting to find his voice so he could protest his innocence — but Lord Edmar still only smiled.

  “So the magician expected nothing, even from a young woman as beautiful as you? What, pray, was he doing in your bedchamber last night, if all he wanted was the noble feeling of having helped someone in need?”

  Oh, they would twist this any way they wanted, no matter what Tobyn or I said. And I would not speak of how we had come to love one another, not in front of this crowd of greedy, unsympathetic faces.

  As I wracked my brains for a reply that would be both suitably biting and yet reveal nothing, Lady Shelenna spoke up.

  “What is this talk of gold?” she inquired. “I must confess that I do not quite understand the connection. Yes, this Master Slade must have gold to create the jewels he fashions for the ladies of the court, but I do not think that is what you meant.”

  The king’s lips compressed. I could see that even now, with his captured sorcerer on display like a prized buck he had just hunted down, he did not wish to divulge the true secret of Tobyn’s powers.

  “Yes, tell her, Your Majesty,” I said, with a curl of my lip and lift of my eyebrow that would have done Lord Edmar proud.

  Not that he appeared particularly proud in that moment. He frowned, and cast an uneasy glance at the king. It seemed our good duke had no more desire to reveal the source of the gold I had mentioned than the king himself did.

  “He speaks of this gold,” Tobyn said loudly. A negligent flick of his hand, and a pile of gold coins appeared at Lady Shelenna’s feet.

  “Gods!” she exclaimed. Quite abandoning her dignity, she stooped down and gathered up several of the coins, then turned them over in her hand, inspecting them closely. “But — but these are real. Or is this some sort of terrible illusion?”

  “No illusion at all, my lady,” he replied. “You could spend those coins anywhere in Purth, and fear no repercussions.”

  The crowd murmured again, the sound taking on a restless edge I did not like. Surely Tobyn had known what he was doing when he revealed that particular facet of his gift, and yet….

  Lady Shelenna’s amber eyes glowed. Great duchess she might be, but it seemed that even she was not immune to the lure of wealth so easily produced. Although she did not lose control so much that she bent to gather of the rest of the coins Tobyn had produced from thin air, she did place the ones she currently held in the reticule which hung from her waist.

  He went on, scarred face still as a mask, “Just as you could take the golden thread Mistress Kelsden and I spun each night, Your Majesty, and melt it down into ingots or crowns or whatever else pleased you. That gold did not disappear. That gold was intended to buy her freedom, not make her your slave.”

  “Ah, but it is you who should have been the slave, is it not?” the king replied, his pale eyes taking on that greedy glint I knew too well. “You should have spoken up the first time you were caught, and bought your own life with the gold you could create. But you would not have been a slave, not at all. You would have been given an honored place in my court, just as I wanted to make Annora my queen.”

  Tobyn appeared singularly unmoved by this argument. “A cage is still a cage, whether its bars are made of gold or no. I would rather have a life as a free man, scarred as I am, than be your puppet. Especially since you have proven over and over again that nothing is enough for you. You can never be satisfied, because the hole you seek to fill is within you.”

  “Silence!” King Elsdon thundered. I shrank, even though the command had not been directed at me. Veins bulged on his brow, and his breast rose and fell as he pulled in short, angry breaths. “I had thought to burn you a second time, and make sure the deed was done properly, but now I know you will serve me far better as a living man.”

  “I will never serve you,” Tobyn said calmly. “My gift is mine to use as it pleases me. I rule it, and not the other way around.”

  The king’s hand descended on me, gripping painfully as his fingers bit into my upper arm. “Oh, yes, you will, Master Slade. For if you do not, I will use your lady love as I please. And I do not think you will care for that at all.”

  I tasted bile at the back of my throat. For of course I knew that Tobyn would never allow such a thing, would rather spend all his days producing such riches that King Elsdon would be as wealthy as the fabled rulers of old, whose very castles themselves had been built of gold.

  But my lover shook his head, saying, “I would be very careful if I were you, Your Majesty. For I do not think you understand how close you are to your own doom.”

  The king laughed. “You speak fine words, Master Slade, but I see the truth of it now. Your magic is useful, true, but if you possessed the means to blast me from this earth, as it is said the mages of old could do, then you would have done so already. Your threats mean nothing.”

  “Ah, but they do. It is just that you do not have the wit to understand those threats.” Tobyn paused then, and, to my surprise, he did not look at me, but rather up at the dais, where Prince Harlin sat and his princess stood behind him, both of them tense, pale. “I regret this, my prince. Believe that.”

  Harlin rose. “Master Slade — ”

  But Tobyn had already turned back toward the king. “There is no room in your heart for anything but gold. And so gold it shall be.” He made a curious gesture with one hand, as if cupping his hand around an object the size of an apple.

  Or a heart.

  My hand flew to my mouth, even as King Elsdon’s eyes began to bulge. He made a choking noise, one hand reaching for his chest, and then he slumped onto the polished stone floor of the audience chamber, pale eyes staring unblinking at the painted and gilded ceiling overhead.

  Prince Harlin was on his feet at once, rushing to kneel at his father’s side. “What have you done?”

  “What needed to be done,” Tobyn replied. Curiously, there was no triumph in his scarred face, only a sort of resignation. “I hope you are ready to be king, Your Highness.”

  And then Lord Edmar was striding toward Tobyn, countenance twisted with rage. His hand rested on the hilt of the long dagger he wore at his hip, the only weapon allowed at court.

  “I would not,” Tobyn said. “For do not think I cannot do to you what I did to the king.” He shifted so he faced the crowd of courtiers, all of them this time apparently shocked into silence. “Or to any of you, if you seek to stop me.”

  Moving almost as one, they stepped backward, and a grim smile touched his lopsided mouth. “That is what I thought.” Then he paused and looked over at me. In those green eyes there was hope, but also worry, as if he feared I would be so shocked by what he had done that I would turn on him as well.

  I knew I would not. He would not have killed the king if he had been allowed any other option. How could I reject him, when King Elsdon had, as Tobyn warned, brought his doom upon himself?

  “Shall we go, my love?” Tobyn asked, and I went and put my hand in his.

  “Yes,” I said. “We should go.”

  Chapter 17

  Despite my fears, the crowd did let us through. Perhaps if all the guards and those of the men who were armed had rushed us all at once, they might have prevailed
, since I had no clear idea of precisely how this strange and deadly facet of Tobyn’s gift even worked. But since it seemed clear enough to me that none of them wished to be the first to bear his assault, we were able to walk through the throng and out the doors of the audience chamber, through the corridors of the palace and the curiously empty courtyard before it, and from thence to the very streets of Bodenskell itself.

  A fresh breeze blew off the river, and I marveled at the scent of water and earth and damp leaves on the wind after so many days spent inside. We moved quickly, putting as much distance between us and the palace as possible. Yes, we had been allowed to leave unmolested, but what if Prince Harlin overcame his shock and sent his guards after us?

  Tobyn held my hand, fingers tight around mine. I understood why, for this was his first sojourn out of doors without the protection of his cloak. I caught furtive glances sent in our direction, and murmurs from some of the street vendors as they watched from their stalls, but no one said anything to us directly.

  “Where now?” I asked quietly. “To your home?”

  “Yes, but only to gather up a few things and then be gone. I do not think we need to fear pursuit from the prince, but neither do I think we should linger.”

  “Why do you think he will not seek us out? Surely he must do something to find justice for his father, if only to make it clear that he did not collude with you in this thing.”

  Tobyn guided me down a side street, one that arced away from the palace and wound gently uphill. “Because he will not risk his men against such a dangerous one as myself…or at least, that is the story he will tell. And who will argue against that, when most people these days only know of mages as terrible bogeymen, fearsome enemies who could kill you with a single glance?”