The King of Talbos (The Eastern Slave Series Book 6)

by Victor Poole

  "You can't do this!" the princess shouted. Ajalia saw Thorn begin, very quietly to edge away. Thorn's arm hit the invisible barrier that Delmar had put around him, and Thorn's eyes widened in shock. Ajalia saw Thorn carefully looking about him, trying to see where the barrier was.

  "Have you figured out yet that you are trapped?" the king asked Thorn. The king sounded quite amused. Ajalia saw that the princess's lips were moving furiously without any sound. Delmar, she thought, was keeping the princess and her husband, Lerond, from speaking. Ajalia realized suddenly that it was quieter, and she looked down at the thin man, and saw his lips moving as well, and his fingers clutching at his throat.

  "It seems to me," Thorn said cautiously, "that your heir and his little slave are the ones who practice witchcraft here."

  "That little slave," the old king told Thorn, "has retrieved an interesting collection of magic from inside Fallor. Would you like to tell me what your soul was doing in the heart of my youngest son?"

  Thorn's face turned a little green, and he glanced at Delmar.

  "The old man has begun to go a little crazy," Thorn told Delmar in a genial voice. "You surely don't believe this of me?"

  "I do," Delmar said. Elan appeared, followed closely by Fallor.

  "What is going on?" Elan asked, looking with creased brow at the figures of the princess and Lerond, who were both struggling now against the invisible barriers.

  "Is he clean?" the old king asked Ajalia.

  "I don't know," Ajalia said. "Would you like me to look?"

  "He's clean," Delmar said, without taking his eyes from the other three. Thorn's eyes narrowed, and he looked disdainfully at Delmar.

  "You're on some manner of journey to the bottom," Thorn sneered at Delmar. "First with the Eastern slaves, and now with witches. Your mother would be ashamed."

  "My mother was just like you," Delmar said dispassionately. Delmar turned to Ajalia. "Will you make visible what they are?" he asked her. "I don't want to break my concentration." Ajalia did not know quite what Delmar meant, but she thought she would figure it out.

  "I will try," Ajalia said. "Can you see anything?" she asked Elan. She thought that Elan would not be able to see the lights; he had not seen what Delmar had done earlier, but, she remembered, Delmar had used his strange and invisible lights to corral the black horse, and even she had not been able to see them. Elan was glaring at Ajalia suspiciously.

  "Can I see what?" Elan asked. Ajalia drew up a piece of light from below the rocks in the ground, and held it up in her hand. Elan's eyes widened, and his lips parted a little. Ajalia saw that Elan had part of a white brand; it was slightly gnawed off at once side.

  "He's been chewed on," Ajalia told the old king. "I don't know by whom. Can't you see the white brands?" she asked the king, frowning.

  "I can sense them," the king said. "I have not been trained, as you seem to have been." Ajalia laughed. She took a cord of gold light, and spun it up into the king and Elan. She took a cord of blue light from the sky above, and twisted it through their bodies, until a sheen of white power began to grow in their centers. The old king seemed to expand with breath, and then to sag into himself.

  "Dear me," the old king said, and put a hand against his side. "That is very powerful magic," he said.

  "Do you see this?" Ajalia asked them both. She put a spurt of red light into her palm. Elan was watching her closely with his eyebrows knit together; he nodded at once, and turned to Thorn.

  "Can you see it?" Elan asked Thorn.

  "Is that red light?" the king asked, squinted at Ajalia. Ajalia nodded.

  "It is," she said.

  "Thorn," Elan said. "Can you see it, too?" Thorn was trying to shake his head at Elan, to get Elan to stop talking to him, but Elan clearly could not guess what Thorn wanted. "Has something happened?" Elan asked his father. The old king let out a shout of laughter.

  "Yes, child," the old king said. "Something has most definitely happened."

  "Ajalia," Delmar said. She could hear the barest note of urgency in his voice, and she turned to Thorn first, and drew up a piece of light from within the earth. She looked at Thorn's soul, and chirruped with her lips.

  "You are nasty," Ajalia told Thorn, and she twisted the light around Thorn's soul, and drew it out of his body, making it visible to Elan and the king. Ajalia had forgotten that Fallor was standing nearby; when she drew out the mealy green light that was pocked with dead-white shapes like lice, Fallor let out a shout, and backed away until he fell. The old king's eyes were fixed with disgust on Thorn, and his aged face was twisted with rage.

  "You," the old king said.

  "Hang on," Ajalia said, lifting her other hand, and drawing up a second cord of light. "Wait, and let's see them both together." She twisted the second light around Lerond, who was pressing cautiously against the invisible cage, as though he thought he could slip through the barrier that Delmar had made. Lerond's soul, when Ajalia pulled it out of his body, was straight black, and shining, like pitch. Even the princess let out a shudder, and pressed her body away from the now-still form of her husband.

  "What is that?" the princess gasped, looking at the place where Lerond's soul floated, just outside his body. Lerond and Thorn were both still, their faces slack and their eyes unfocused.

  "Do you see?" Ajalia asked the king, who was staring at his second son and his son-in-law with absolute horror and disgust in his eyes.

  "I let you live among my children," the old king spat at the still form of Lerond.

  "Your majesty," Ajalia said. The old king turned, and looked at her with eyes that had filled with tears of anger.

  "What?" the old king asked. Fallor was huddled on a bench some distance away, his face buried in his hands.

  "I can't hold them forever," Delmar said, as though he were remarking on the state of the weather. "Thorn is very strong, and he is learning to fight back. You don't want him to learn how to use the invisible lights," Delmar warned his grandfather. The old king nodded sharply.

  "What is it, young woman?" the king of Talbos asked Ajalia.

  "I want you to look again at the state of Lerond's soul," Ajalia said. She turned her fingers that held the light that spun around Lerond's soul, and several patches of mealy-worm chunks of green became visible. "He is driven by Thorn," Ajalia said. The king's mouth hardened into a deadly scowl, and he crossed to Ajalia.

  "May I borrow your knife, my dear?" the old king asked her politely.

  "You may wish to remove your outer robe," Ajalia suggested, and the king uttered a small "oh!" and did so.

  "Hold this," the king said to Elan, and pulled away the rich robe that he wore over a plain brown garment. Elan took the robe, and watched his father curiously.

  "Take my knife from my back," Ajalia told the king. "I do not want to let them go."

  "Hurry," Delmar said, and his voice was terse. "Thorn first."

  The old king went behind Ajalia, and found the hilt of her knife. He drew it out, and the blade made a quiet schlocking noise against the leather sheath as the old king pulled it forth.

  "I am sorry," the old king said in a dead voice to Thorn, whose face was slack with Ajalia's magic, and then nodded to Delmar. "I am ready," the king said. Delmar raised one hand, and a shimmer fell down around Thorn.

  "Now," Delmar said. Ajalia saw that the barrier around Thorn was gone, and that Delmar's uncle was instead restrained tightly at the wrists and ankles. The old king of Talbos stepped swiftly forward, and cut his second son's throat. A hideous gasp went out of the king when he did it, and a spatter of blood came over his worn features. Ajalia saw tears starting from the king's eyes.

  "Let me finish it quickly," the king said to Delmar, his voice heavy with sorrow, and Delmar closed his fist. Thorn's bloody body fell down heavily to the garden floor. Delmar opened his fist, and Lerond was pulled up to his feet, as if drawn by great strings.

  "Do not kill my husband!" the princess keened, as the old king killed Lerond. Delmar released
his hand, and the son-in-law of the king of Talbos fell in a sloppy heap on the ground.

  "I am sorry that I have bloodied your knife," the old king said wearily to Ajalia, and he knelt down near the body of Lerond, and began, carefully, to wipe the blade clean against his own brown robe.

  "I will clean the knife," Ajalia said, coming and offering to take it from the old king, but the king clutched it to his chest, and shook his head hard.

  "I will wipe away the blood of my son," the king said. "Let me be."

  The princess, who had let out a long and throaty bellow when her husband had been killed, crawled now to the body, and gathered it up into her arms. Ajalia saw that Delmar had removed the barrier of magic that he had formed around his aunt, the princess. After her initial and loud outpouring of grief, the middle-aged princess turned quite pragmatic. She pushed aside the body of her dead husband, and brushed some of the blood from her lap.

  "Well," the princess said, standing up. "I'll be going to my room now."

  "No," the old king said in a hoarse voice. "No," he repeated, and his voice was stronger. "You will stay and hear."

  "I do not wish to stay," the princess said.

  "You will stay and hear what I will say, if you wish to live in the palace still," the king said in an ice-cold voice.

  "Where else would I go?" the princess asked shrilly.

  "I do not know," the king said. "Perhaps your cousins will give you a home." The princess let out a cynical snort, and sat down on a bench, far away from everyone else. Ajalia wanted to ask Delmar if he was all right, but she knew that he would not want to appear weak before his relatives.

  She imagined the rocks that ran deep under the earth, and found a vein of hot golden light. She pushed it up against Delmar's shins, and he gave a start, and looked around at her. She raised her eyebrows at him, and hoped that he would remember what she had told him, about it being better to borrow light from the earth, rather than taking out his own soul. Delmar's lips creased a little in displeasure, but Ajalia folded her arms, and raised her eyebrows another notch. She could almost hear Delmar growl with irritation, but then she saw him take into himself the cord of hot gold, and the blood rushed up into his cheeks. Ajalia saw Delmar's chest and ribs expand with breath; he no longer looked as though he was going to faint.

  The old king had finished cleaning the blood from Ajalia's blade. The old man stood up, and brought it to her.

  "I thank you," the old king said. He met Ajalia's eyes briefly, and then looked away. Elan came and stood near his father, and though the old king looked with irritation at his third son, he did not try to get away from Elan. "Now, children," the old king said, looking at the remains of his family. "I have removed the succession from your sister, and placed it back where it belongs, on the head of my eldest son's eldest son."

  "I thought Wall was to be the new Thief Lord," the princess put in.

  "Wall is locked up right now," Ajalia told her.

  "Locked up for what?" the princess asked, a bitter challenge in her eyes.

  "Espionage and insurrection, among other things," Delmar said mildly.

  "Well, what about Coren?" the princess demanded.

  "What is your name, princess?" Ajalia asked. She remembered what Delmar had said, about his aunt's name being horrifyingly embarrassing.

  "Coren is dead," Delmar said. The princess's eyes went to the bodies of Thorn and her husband, and Ajalia saw that Delmar's aunt was making a picture of a bloody Coren as well. "My mother compromised Coren's soul with witchcraft," Delmar said. "He died when we got the last of the shadow children."

  His aunt's eyes widened in shock.

  "No," she said.

  "Yes," Ajalia said. "What is your name?"

  "Her name is Corintha," the old king said wearily. "Do you boys have any objections?" the king demanded, turning to Elan and Fallor.

  "No," Elan said. Fallor, who still looked pale and wan, shook his head.

  "We'll have the coronation tonight," the old king said. "Elan, Fallor, gather the important people. Corintha, go and fetch your cousins. And you," the king said, turning his eye on Delmar, "you will come and be married."

  "I hope you understand that I am marrying Ajalia," Delmar said clearly. The old king met Ajalia's eyes for a moment, and she saw a flicker of interest in the king's face; she saw that he wanted to talk Delmar into someone else who was clearly in his mind. Ajalia felt the trace of a smile on her mouth, and the king seemed to think better of this argument.

  "Of course you will marry Ajalia," the old king said smoothly. "Who else is there?"

  "Who else indeed?" Ajalia asked. She smiled at the old king, and Delmar's grandfather laughed.

  "You are quick as thought," the old king told her. "Come, children. We have work to do." The old king patted Corintha on the head. "I am sorry that your spouse was a rotten man," the old king said to his daughter. "I hear that Ajalia excels as a matchmaker. Perhaps you will have better luck next time. Have someone clear this mess up," the old man shouted at his children, and then he waved at Delmar to follow him, and went across to an archway that led into the dark palace. Ajalia came along behind Delmar.

  "You must call me Fernos," the old king told Ajalia, when the garden was behind the three of them. "I will be your family now."

  "Why did you pretend to be old for so long?" Ajalia asked. Fernos shrugged; in the darkness, his shoulders were barely visible, and his cloud of white hair made a gentle halo around his head.

  "I never liked Corintha's husband," Fernos explained. "I got a funny feeling about him. I wanted to see how he would act, if I seemed closer to death."

  "And how did that work out for you?" Ajalia asked. Fernos laughed at the tone in her voice.

  "You judge me, but I was without you then, slave girl."

  "And now that you think you have me, what is different?" Ajalia asked.

  "I shall have someone to talk to," Fernos said, as though that explained everything. "You'll share your little wife with me, won't you Delmar?" Fernos asked good-naturedly.

  "No," Delmar said. Fernos laughed.

  "Of course you will, grandson," Fernos said. "You do not understand how these things are arranged."

  Delmar reached out and grabbed Ajalia's hand; she smoothed his fingers reassuringly, and she heard Delmar take a deep breath. She told herself that Fernos had gotten a little too comfortable with being the king; he did not treat her with as much courtesy as she had expected, now that the succession was arranged. Ajalia told herself that Fernos was going to kick and scream a little, when he learned that he would not be guiding Delmar along the path of kinghood at all, and she smiled.

  "Where are we going now?" Ajalia asked.

  "The priests are kept locked up," Fernos said. "We keep a few of them here, for weddings and funerals." Ajalia felt a bounce of doom in her heart. She thought this sounded both barbaric and dangerous.

  "Can no one else perform marriages in Talbos?" she asked. "Who does marriages in Slavithe?" she asked Delmar.

  "Not the priests," Delmar told her in a murmur. Fernos laughed, and interrupted.

  "Your little slave girl does not know as much as she seems to," the old king observed. "Our priests are not as unpleasant as the priests are in Slavithe," Fernos told Ajalia. "Ours are much nicer, but we do not let them roam free."

  "Oh," Ajalia said. She opened her mouth to ask him why this was so, but a warning tickle at the bottom of her gut made her hold her tongue. She thought that something was at the bottom of this priest business, and she wanted to see for herself, before she exposed her questions, and listened to what she was sure would be lies from Fernos.

  Fernos was turning into a puzzle for Ajalia. She had thought, when she first saw the king of Talbos, that he was a kindly old man surrounded by predators and parasites, but then, as the meeting had gone on, he had seemed first to be a sorrowful old father, and then a cunning leader who trades with his eyes wide open.

  Ajalia was accustomed this this type of canny
old negotiator, and was not shocked at all by Fernos's attempts to create slippery loopholes in their agreement. What she could not yet fathom was how the old king could be both sensible and irresponsibly rude, almost from one moment to the next. When the old king had been able to look her in the eyes, and to know what she meant when she fought with him for Delmar to be king, she thought that she had found a peer. But when the old king had treated his grown children with such abrupt callousness in the garden, after he had executed Thorn and Lerond, she had wavered in her opinion of the old king, and now that Fernos was saying crude things to herself and Delmar, she asked herself if the old king was acting out of character from great sorrow, or if Fernos had a dark streak of cruelty running through his own heart.

  She reserved judgment on the king, and kept close to Delmar. She was grateful that Delmar, for now, held his peace. She trusted Delmar's sense, particularly as it came to bear upon his own relatives, but she was used to making up her own mind about things, and she thought that if Delmar precipitated an argument with Fernos, the old king would escalate too quickly into rage for Ajalia to talk him out of it.

  She wanted time to think. She wanted to meet these imprisoned priests, and to form an idea for herself of their need to be imprisoned. She thought of Rosk, the man she had met in the mountains near Talbos, who had worn the shining silver armor, and she told herself that Rosk was most likely a priest. She had liked Rosk very much. Ajalia told herself that if the king's imprisoned priests were at all like Rosk, she would stage a rescue, and overturn the king's authority in the palace in the name of liberating the priests, and restoring them to power in Talbos.

  Ajalia remembered the priests of Slavithe, and how dark and sneaking their eyes had been. Even the younger men who had been priests had had, to her, an unpleasant floating energy. They had seemed to walk on cushions of air. When she had seen the priests' souls, and how thin and dark their colors had become, and moreover, when she had seen them burst into white shards of light, she had thought that the Slavithe priests seemed like paper men, floating gently along the white streets, and bursting at once into flame when they met a single spark of bright fire.