Legacy of Kings

by C. S. Friedman

  When she had finished her recitation, Colivar was silent for a moment, digesting all the information she had given him. “Clearly they’re using the city as a staging ground of sorts,” he said finally. “But for what? Tefilat is out in the middle of nowhere. It’s too far from any potential target to be of use in morati affairs, and distance has little meaning to a sorcerer, so there’d be no point in going out there.”

  “There’s a point,” Kamala said.

  Colivar raised an eyebrow.

  “You said it yourself,” she told him. “Sorcery isn’t reliable there. Magisters don’t like to go to places where they can’t trust their power. Like with the Wrath. Remember? Nyuku took shelter right by it, because he knew no Magister was likely to come calling.” It seemed to her that Colivar stiffened slightly when she mentioned Nyuku’s name, but she couldn’t be sure. “And any spell that detected his presence would have been taken with a grain of salt, because sorcery couldn’t be relied upon there.”

  It had been a brilliant plan, she thought. If Ethanus had not suggested she go there herself to escape the other Magisters, Rhys would likely have died in that secret prison, and the invasion of the Souleaters might never have been detected. Until it was too late.

  Colivar walked over to the small table where the wine glasses sat and picked one up. “It’s not impossible,” he muttered. The crimson wine glowed like fresh blood in the torchlight.

  “But Tefilat isn’t the Wrath,” she said. “I didn’t sense any disruption on that scale. There’s no reason a Magister couldn’t function there, if he was careful enough.”

  “No,” he agreed. His expression was thoughtful. “I visited there when I first became Farah’s Magister Royal. It’s an eerie place, and sorcery doesn’t always work quite right, but it’s not a major threat to anyone.” He nodded. “But you’re right. Magisters generally avoid such locations. If I wanted to hide something from sorcerers, I would definitely seek a place like that to do it in.”

  He took a deep drink from the glass. A slow drink. She could see the muscles in his throat ripple as he swallowed. Then he lowered the glass, gazing thoughtfully into its depths. “Whoever your Master was,” he said, “he taught you well.”

  A flush rose to her cheeks. Did he really think that, or was he just trying to ferret out some clue about her origins? Knowing his great age and the breadth of his experience, even the second question was a compliment.

  “Clearly we need to learn what’s out there,” he said, when she did not respond to him. Then he chuckled softly. “We. What a strange concept that is! I suppose now I must deliver this information to my allies. How the world has changed.” He sighed melodramatically, then sipped from the glass once more.

  She drew in a deep breath, gathering her courage. “And what about me?”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m part of this now, Colivar. You know that. So how long do you think you can hide me from the others without someone catching on? Sooner or later the others will ask where your information is coming from. If they haven’t already. They know that a man’s sorcery can’t find Siderea. So if you don’t tell them about me, they may start asking questions about you.” She thought she saw a muscle twitch along the line of his jaw. “Is that what you want?” she pressed.

  The dark eyes were unreadable, as always. “Kamala . . . you know the risk.”

  “I passed for a witch in Kierdwyn.”

  “By the skin of your teeth, my dear. I guessed the truth.”

  ”But you’re not like the others,” she dared.

  He turned away from her so that she could not see the expression on his face.

  “The gift of the female Souleater is obfuscation,” she persisted. “If she doesn’t want to be found, then the males of the species can’t find her. Yes?” She walked up behind him, close enough that he could feel the heat of her body radiating against his own. As she could feel his. “What if I possess that same gift?” she whispered. “What if that’s the reason that no one but you has ever asked the right questions about me? What if the others can’t focus their suspicions on me the way they normally would because of that gift? Because instinctively I know how to turn their attention aside, without even being aware I’m doing it?”

  He said nothing. The tension in his body was palpable. She had to hold herself back from placing her hand on his arm, knowing what a shock it would be to him. How much power it would give her over him.

  “Is it possible?” she pressed.

  He was silent for a moment. And then nodded. “Aye. If you are what I said you might be, that day on the mountain . . . it’s possible.”

  He turned back to her. The expression in his eyes was strangely haunted; looking into them made her breath catch in her throat. “You’re playing a dangerous game,” he whispered.

  She whispered back, “Is there any other game worth playing?”

  He almost reached out to touch her. His body didn’t actually move, but she could sense the movement within him, muscles balanced on the knife edge of commitment. She held her breath, waiting.

  And then the moment passed.

  He chuckled softly. “Whoever your Master was, do give him my regards.”

  “Does that mean ‘yes,’ Colivar?”

  “There’s a lot to think about, my dear. Let me talk to the others. See where things stand. The moment for this must be perfectly right.”

  “I could meet with them on my own,” she said. A faint note of defiance entering her voice.

  He smiled slightly. “No, Kamala. You won’t do that. Because I know these men well enough to guide you along that road with some hope of safety, whereas without me you would not know where to begin. Trust me on that.”

  “Is that what you mean to do?” The words left her lips before she could stop them. “Guide me to safety?”

  A strange, unnamed emotion flickered in the depths of his eyes. He put his glass down on the table and moved closer to her. Tension shivered in the air between them, a strange admixture of desire and defiance. Of all the ways this moment might end, she did not know what resolution she wanted.

  And then he stepped away from her.

  “When we’re done with Tefilat,” he said quietly, “we’ll talk about it.”

  He walked to the western boundary of the room, not looking back at her. A breeze lifted the gauze curtains out of his way. For a moment he paused at the head of the staircase, and then he stepped over the edge. His flesh transformed so quickly, so perfectly, that his wings captured the breeze before that first step was completed. White wings. Framed by the white marble archway, curtains rippling to both sides of him, he set off into the night sky, moonlight gleaming along his feathers.

  Not until he was out of sight did Kamala begin to breathe steadily again.

  Chapter 19

  E

  THANUS WAS working on deciphering a Bursan codex when the knock came on his door. At first he didn’t hear it. Daylight was fading, and the effort it took to make out the figures on the well-worn parchment required all his concentration. He could have used his power to refresh them, of course, drawing upon the memory inherent in the ancient fragments to restore them to their original condition. But where was the challenge in that? And so he didn’t hear the knocking at first. Only when it was repeated with increasing volume did he realize that that it was a signal meant for him, and not just the rapping of a hungry woodpecker in the forest outside.

  Carefully putting his work aside, brushing a bit of dust from his woolen gown, he headed toward the door, wondering who on earth would be bothering him at this hour. Or at any hour. He doubted that more than one person even knew where he lived, and she would surely have better sense than to come here. The Law was not a thing to be taken lightly.

  But when he opened the door, he saw that she was indeed standing there. The dying sun backlit her bright red hair, lending it a fiery aura, like that of an angel. Or a demon.

  Or both, he thought.

  “You fled m
y custody,” he admonished her. Not because he was really angry, but because dealing with the murderer of a Magister had certain requirements. “It was my duty to see that you were punished for your crime. Failing to do that, I’ve been dishonored in the eyes of all sorcerers. And now you’ve come back? For what purpose? To compromise me further? What possible reason would I have to welcome you into my home?”

  “Your desire to learn the true history of the Magisters,” she said. Green eyes burning with a quiet defiance that was achingly familiar. “The name of the secret darkness that lurks within our blood. The reason that we must play a role in the war to come, or watch the entire world go up in flames. The part you must play in that war, in order for us to be successful.”

  For a moment he just stared at her. Digesting her words, as though they were some foreign and unfamiliar food. Finally he decided he had done it long enough to satisfy propriety . . . or at least his own conscience.

  “That’ll do it,” he said at last, nodding gruffly as he stepped aside to let her enter. “Come in.”

  Night had fallen by the time Kamala came to the end of her report, but Ethanus had not yet lit the lamps. Darkness licked at the single candle flame he had set on the table between them, as if struggling to consume its light.

  When she was finally done, Ethanus was silent for a long while. The candle sputtered, drowning in its own wax.

  “Colivar told you all this?” he asked at last.

  “He told Ramirus, Fadir, and Sulah. And invited me to overhear.”

  “Did they know you were there?”

  “No,” she said, tipping over the candle to drain off some of its excess wax. She felt strangely tired, as if she had just undergone some great physical exertion. “Not that I know of, anyway.”

  The Magisters were really Souleaters. Or if not Souleaters themselves, then something that was not wholly human either. For some reason the revelation had seemed more reasonable to Kamala on the frozen, wind-scoured mountaintop than it did here, in these quiet surroundings. She could see her former teacher struggling to absorb it all. Finally he asked, “This information comes from . . . where?”

  “Colivar said that the first Magisters used to share memories with their students, and that his teacher had given him these. I guess they originally came from the traitor who first crossed the Wrath.”

  His brow furrowed. “That seems . . . odd.”

  He rose from his seat, taking up what was left of the candle, and began to walk around the room, lighting the lamps. “You know that I am old,” he told her. “Not as old as Colivar, perhaps, but old enough to have heard tales of the early days from my own teacher. Stories of the days before the Law. And he never mentioned anything like that. Memory sharing? We trusted each other even less in the early days than we do now.” He shook his head. “Colivar has always been an odd one, and his relationship with his mentor may well have differed from the norm. But even so.”

  ”You don’t act like the part about our being Souleaters surprises you.”

  He sighed heavily, then blew out the candle and put it aside. “The first Magisters believed that there was more to First Transition than learning how to steal the life-essence of others. My own teacher hinted at us being something other than human. I discounted that as part of his madness. The earliest generations of our kind were all quite mad, you know. Though in some it was more evident than in others.” He reclaimed his seat and stared down at his hands thoughtfully, as if some kind of answer could be found there. “That madness is what I came here to escape, Kamala. The madness that I saw in the eyes of my fellow Magisters when they hung over me like vultures, my final night in Ulran. It wasn’t that I feared the insanity in them, you understand, but I didn’t want to surrender to it myself. Though I never guessed what lay at the heart of it . . . .”

  “You never told me all that,” she said quietly.

  He shrugged “There are some things a man prefers not to speak of.”

  “Isolation can no longer protect you,” she said.

  He did not respond.

  “If what Colivar says is true, the return of the Souleaters may awaken the monster in each of us. Distance may not matter.”

  “So you’ve become a crusader now.” He chuckled darkly. “That’s quite a transformation, from what you were before.”

  She could feel a flush come to her face. A half dozen edged retorts rose to her lips . . . and remained unvoiced. Was it so unreasonable for her to fear these creatures? To fear what the earth might become if they returned in force? Surely that was enough to legitimately frighten anyone.

  She remembered Rhys’ funeral and the strange sense of longing she had felt, gazing down at her lover’s still form. She had never known the kind of purpose that drove him and his people, that might drive a man to risk his life for a cause. But she had felt its power at that moment, and she envied him such passion.

  “Be wary in your crusade,” Ethanus warned her. “A Magister can choose to play the odds if it amuses him—even risk his life if the prize is great enough—but he doesn’t have the power to sacrifice it outright. Mortal men can cast themselves onto a funeral pyre for the sake of a greater cause, but we cannot. The moment we accept certain death, we extinguish that supernatural spark that makes it possible for us to steal the lives of others.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked. A hint of defiance in her voice.

  It was rare to see him startled. Rarer still that she was the one who startled him.

  “Has that ever actually happened?” she pressed, leaning forward on the table. “Or is it just something we all assume is true? Like we once assumed that no woman could ever become a Magister. Do we really know that the willingness to sacrifice one’s life for a cause would sever the link with one’s consort, or are we only guessing that?”

  For a moment the room was silent. So silent. You could hear the crickets chirping outside.

  “No,” he said solemnly. “I know of no case where that has ever been confirmed. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened, mind you. But there is no record of it that I know of.”

  “So it might not even be true.”

  “Yes.” He licked his lips briefly, as if tasting the strange thought. “It might not even be true. But do you want to take that chance?”

  She did not answer him. A pair of pewter cups were standing on the mantle, and she summoned them to the table with a short gesture, conjuring brandy to fill them. Ethanus stared at the one in front of him for a long moment, then raised it to his lips and took a deep drink. And another. Not until the cup was empty did he put it down.

  “I suppose I should be afraid of what part you’re going to ask me to play in all this,” he said.

  She smiled slightly. “Nothing overtly sacrificial.”

  He refilled the cup with his own sorcery. It was an uncharacteristic gesture, and an eloquent statement of just how much the night’s revelations had disconcerted him. “Speak, then.”

  “I need your assistance as a scholar.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “I remember you had a penchant for religious codices. Yes?”

  “I have an interest in mankind’s ancient religions. And in some of the modern ones, insofar as they evolved from ancient roots. Why? Are you planning to join some god’s priesthood?”

  “No. But I’ve been having strange visions, and I’m hoping you can help me interpret them. The first time was when I tried to find the Souleater queen for Colivar. And then it happened again when I searched Tefilat for him. They also come to me at night sometimes, just when I’m falling asleep. I thought that if any man alive could help me interpret them, it would be you.”

  “Religious visions?”

  She nodded. “I see gods. Many gods. A vast circle of them, surrounding me. I can’t see them all clearly enough to try to count them—the ones in the outer ranks are hazy, as if in fog—but the last time there were dozens that I could pick out clearly. Perhaps several hundred, all told.”

  His
eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “What are they doing in these visions?”

  “Watching me. I get the sense they’re actively interested in what I’m doing, that it matters to them what choices I make. They never make any indication of that, mind you, but I just seem to know it, as certainly as I know my own name.” She shook her head. “They never say a word to me. Or move. It’s like they are . . . statues. All around me. A circle of statues, channeling some sort of spiritual energy.” She blinked. “I don’t know what to make of it. I thought you might.”

  “Show me,” he said quietly.

  Closing her eyes for a moment, she summoned up sufficient power to craft a vision for him. He moved their cups out of the way as it took shape over the table.

  One by one her gods appeared. Tall gods. Short gods. Gods of rock, gods of wood, gods of wax with feathers stuck in them. She had never seen them this clearly in her visions, but the act of conjuring their images for Ethanus seemed to bring them into sharper focus. Fascinated, she studied them even as he did.

  What a strange amalgamation of deities! She had never been a religious creature and had paid no more than token homage to the gods of Gansang. Nevertheless, she recognized just how odd some of these figures were, not only in design but in substance. The air about them seemed to resonate with all kinds of discordant power; she wondered if Ethanus could feel it.

  In the end she was able to conjure images of nearly a hundred of them, with misty images crowding behind them and bleeding into the shadows of the room. Ethanus studied them for a while, then got up and began to walk around the table. She pushed her chair back to get out of his way while he walked a full circuit of her vision. He used his own power on several occasions to bring some feature into finer focus.

  “Do you know what they are?” she asked him.