Path of Fate

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  “That’s her! She did it. Look at his arm! She—she grew it back!” Turbid silence fell as the woman pointed at Reisil and the man held up his arm, pulling it free from his shirt to expose the pale, new skin, unblemished by callus or scar. The arm protruded from a shoulder that had been wasted by illness. His face was thin and haggard, his eyes sunken in pits of bruised shadow. But he stood straight, eyes glowing as if lit from within. He came forward, kneeling before Reisil, who colored and shifted back and forth uneasily.

  “Dear lady, how can I ever repay such a gift? All I have is yours. You have only to ask.” Tears slid down his cheeks and his wife sank to the floor beside him, her own thin, sallow face radiant, reminding Reisil of the early sweep of green on a winter-barren field—of life returning. She recognized them now.

  The couple from the decrepit hut on the edge of the plains. She hadn’t thought of it since—hadn’t wanted to. Reisil remembered the unbearable call that drew her into their ramshackle grass dwelling. There she had given him what was demanded, too consumed by the magic to know what she’d done. She looked at his arm in awe.

  “Give gratitude to the Blessed Amiya, for it is her gift and I am merely her messenger,” Reisil said in a low voice, reaching down to urge the couple to their feet. “I deserve nothing.”

  The woman clutched Reisil in an awkward hug, sobbing her broken gratitude. With her husband whole, her family would not starve. In the dark she’d expected death and worse from the riders, and instead there had been light and joy and hope.

  Her husband pulled her away, holding her tightly as she continued to cry. He ducked his head in an awkward bow.

  “I will offer the Blessed Lady my gratitude, but my word still stands. Anything of mine, anything at all—you have only to ask. I am called Reimon and my wife is Clayrie. Anything—anything at all,” he said again, nodding his head and gazing at Reisil until she nodded back reluctant acknowledgment, and then, with a self-conscious bob at the assembly, he retreated, drawing his wife with him.

  “Very touching,” Kvepi Mastone said, eyeing the assembled nobles to gauge their reaction to the scene. Brows were furrowed and there was a growing murmur—not angry this time, but wondering. More than one reached out a hand to touch the couple as they were led away, and then turned marveling eyes on Reisil.

  “Indeed, very touching,” said the Karalis. “And timely. There is now proof of the miracles these ahaladkaaslane can do for Patverseme. And proof of goodwill—that they seek to aid us, rather than kill, as you would have it, Kvepi Mastone. For she performed this miracle with no fee required.”

  “A ruse,” Kvepi Mastone scoffed. “A child’s trick to buy our trust. Smell the burned bodies of the Guild members who died protecting us all!” He pointed imperiously at the darkness. “Their scorched flesh is the real story, not this miraculous healing. She gifts one man an arm, and incinerates a hundred in a single moment. A poor exchange indeed. Do not be deceived. Only one in league with them could assert that such monstrous murder could ever be justified.”

  “Mysane Kosk,” Bethorn muttered beside Reisil, and she started, glancing at Kvepi Mastone. But he had not heard.

  “That is twice that you have suggested We have betrayed Patverseme and Our people,” Karalis Vasalis observed. Still that frozen, uninflected tone and that dreadful formality. He had done nothing, made no moves. Still everything about him resonated with an unspoken, unnamed threat, a horror barely leashed.

  “Once might be overlooked in Our generosity and goodwill—We are nothing if not forgiving, and We understand that emotions may on occasion overwhelm even the best of Our subjects. But Our patience is stretched thin. Unless you can produce the Dure Vadonis and Kvepi Buris, we suggest that you retire. Now.”

  Reisil held her breath again, seeing an angry flush sweep Kvepi Mastone’s face, then leach away into icy whiteness. He opened his mouth, then closed it. The Karalis sat back, turning his attention to Iisand Samir. Having dismissed the wizard, he had no intention of acknowledging him further. Did he know how that would grate? How enraged the wizard would become?

  Yes!

  Kvepi Mastone clenched his fists and straightened, veins standing out on his forehead. He stepped forward. Then he let out a laugh—a hard, gloating, echoing laugh.

  “It is time, Your Grace, that you learned your place.”

  Karalis Vasalis turned back to the wizards, one brow raised.

  “I know my place, wizard. Do you know yours?” For the first time Reisil heard a hint of emotion in his voice as he discontinued the royal plural pronoun. But rather than fear or concern, as might be expected in a show-down with such a powerful force as the Wizard Guild, it was something else. Something more akin to the gloating anticipation she heard in Kvepi Mastone’s voice. Reisil glanced at the other ahalad-kaaslane, wondering what to do, but all were riveted on the unfolding scene.

  ~Be ready, she told Saljane and herself both.

  “I will show you what I know,” Kvepi Mastone replied.

  His two black-robed companions stepped forward as if this moment had been rehearsed. One had pale, almost translucent skin, with threadings of blue veins tracing across his cheeks and forehead. The other was younger than Kvepi Mastone by a handful of years. He stood tall and stiff, more like a military man than a wizard. Together they formed a triangle, with Kvepi Mastone at its point.

  Kvepi Mastone muttered a few words under his breath and gestured in a wide circle, smirking. The pavilion went eerily silent—no more rustling of rich fabrics, no more voices or the clank of guard armor. “That will leave us undisturbed by the rabble.”

  The crowd appeared frozen like sculptures in a tableau, but infinitely more horrible. Reisil’s stomach curdled. It was like a wax display, funereal in its stillness. People were caught arguing, a man there lifting a cup to his mouth, another with his arm cocked back as if to scratch his head. One woman clutched the arm of another, her mouth open as she bent close to the older woman’s ear. The swing and lift of the clothing remained caught in time, like paint on a canvas.

  Reisil’s eyes flicked back to the wizards and she found Kvepi Mastone staring at her, waiting to see what she would do. He smiled, his parchment-colored teeth glistening. The tip of his tongue emerged slowly to moisten his lips.

  “Do not fear on their account, demon slut. You have yourself to worry about.”

  He glanced at the other ahalad-kaaslane, then at Iisand Samir and Mesilasema Tanis, who clung weakly to her husband’s arm, her pale face drawn. None of them had been caught in his spell, though Reisil did not know if that had been his intent, or the hand of the Lady.

  The wizard deliberately turned his back on Reisil, showing how little he feared her. Reisil’s heart pounded. Should she do something? Now, while his back was turned and he was vulnerable? But her power did not spark to life, and the hand that had driven her to heal Reimon and to strike down the wizard circle did not materialize to give her guidance. She searched within herself, but could not find the key to turn the lock on her power.

  “Let us obey your royal command,” Kvepi Mastone said to the Karalis and Karaliene.

  He snapped a quick order to his two companions. With practiced symmetry, they widened the triangle, each of the three stepping three paces outward. Kvepi Mastone held his hands out over the open space between them, muttering.

  Suddenly, in the space between two heartbeats, a body appeared on the floor at the center of the triangle.

  It was Kvepi Buris.

  He still wore the bloodstained crimson robes he’d worn earlier in the day. The blood had dried on the fabric in black patches, and his face remained as it had after Saljane’s attack. Skin curled in ragged, moist shreds at the edges of the terrible wound, and blood bubbled from the ragged hole where his nose had been. He was unconscious. Each breath rattled loudly in the silence of the pavilion.

  No one spoke or moved as the Kvepi Mastone removed the twisted triangle-shaped pin on his collar. He reached out to take the pins of the other
two wizards and fit them together like a pyramid. He bent down, dabbing the wires with blood from Kvepi Buris’s wound. When he was satisfied that they were sufficiently coated, he jabbed the sharp prongs of the base into the flesh of the unconscious wizard’s ruined forehead. As he did, Reisil’s stomach lurched and she swallowed hard against the nausea.

  Then, with a nod to the other two, the three wizards began to chant, loudly this time, but in no language Reisil understood. The hair on her arms and scalp prickled and a wave of cold fear washed her skin. The air clogged in her throat as if it had grown too thick to breathe.

  Still the chanting went on, growing louder, then fainter, higher pitched, then lower, faster, then slower—a discordant harmony of syncopation, music and noise.

  Reisil struggled to fill her lungs as the air heated and filled with a gray haze of sulfur and smoke. Soon she could no longer see the injured wizard’s body at the center of the triangle. The three conjuring wizards and the rest of her companions were no more than ghostly shapes in the smoke. She touched Saljane, clinging to the anchoring power of her ahalad-kaaslane’s clean, sharp mind. It touched her own like a north wind, sweeping it clean of the mesmerizing effects of the smoke, sulfur and hypnotic spell-casting. But it did nothing for her fear.

  She felt power swirling, gathering tighter as if in the heart of a whirlpool. It felt as though it would split her skin with its force, but still the wizards chanted, faster and faster, louder now. Whatever they were doing, they demonstrated no fear of the two royal couples, no fear of the ahalad-kaaslane. Why should they? she asked herself. After Mysane Kosk—who could stand in their way?

  ~We can, ahalad-kaaslane.

  And into Reisil’s mind came the image of a red-eyed Saljane flying to her as she stepped into the wizards’ barrier circle. The thundering eruption of power as Saljane clutched her fist and together they struck the wizards down.

  She felt a sudden surge of heat in her feet; then power ignited inside her like a shaft of lightning, crackling and untamed, burning her up in its cleansing white brilliance. This time no thundering blast of sound accompanied the surge of volcanic energy—it had come before only when she stepped into the wizards’ circle and struck her might against theirs. But the power of the lightning roared into Reisil and, fearing her ability to control it, she reached for Saljane.

  Her ahalad-kaaslane’s strength flowed into her and they wrestled the sizzling energy to containment. Unlike her attack against the wizards of the circle, what came next could not be a swift, righteous strike. She must wait to find out what the wizards conjured. Only then would she know what must be done.

  The thought made her heart flutter. Would she know? So many lives hung in the balance. She sent a prayer to the Lady for guidance, then focused on the wizards.

  They were shouting the final words of the spell in hoarse voices, the thick, acrid air tearing at their lungs and throats as they reached their crescendo.

  Silence, but for the rattling of Kvepi Buris’s breath and the heavy panting of the three wizards. The smoky yellow haze swirled and then began to settle, like a heavy mist into the cupping hands of the swampy lowlands. The magic they had summoned screwed tighter, pressing inward like the coils of a strangling snake.

  Reisil felt herself twitching as the power flowing inside her demanded release. But she held still, waiting. Saljane’s eyes glowed red and her beak flashed gold. Reisil knew that her own eyes had also turned red and that the vining on her face and neck glowed gold to match her ahalad-kaaslane.

  Tighter. Tighter. Tighter still.

  “Can you do something?” Bethorn murmured, his voice sounding breathless.

  Before she could respond, the tension broke.

  A deep, guttural, stomach-twisting sound rose up as if from the bowels of the earth—a grating, churning sound like a dam breaking, like the wash of floodwaters spewing white waves through a boulder-toothed gorge. The pavilion trembled, and then shook in earnest. The floorboards convulsed, cracking apart until Reisil though the entire structure would collapse.

  Still no one moved. The wizards stood as still as the ensorcelled nobility, facing one another across the triangular space, arms raised in supplication, heads thrown back, eyes wide. Sweat rolled down their faces.

  A blackness swirled between them, concealing Kvepi Buris’s prone body. It grew dense, then . . . solid. A shape formed itself from the amorphous mass. Slowly limbs elongated, a bulb on the top for a head, a trunk for the body. It was out of proportion—the arms too long, the legs uneven, the head long and twisted. It had no ears, no clothing. Just an enormous wraith of solid darkness. A creature from the Void.

  It opened eyes—silver teardrops slashed by a knife blade of ebony. Reisil’s heart jumped and she gasped.

  “Who calls me forth?” There was no mouth, only a disturbance where the mouth should be, like black sands drifting with the wind. The eyes lashed the room, ignoring the wizards, and fixing themselves on the Karalis and Karaliene. To Reisil’s shock, the two monarchs had dropped to the floor, bellies and foreheads touching the floor.

  “Praise the Lord of the Dark who births the light, who dies each year and is born again new, waxing dark, waning light until he burns up in the bright sun and the dark sun rises again. Praise Pahe Kurjus, Lord of the Dark, Lord of Demons, Lord of Death, Lord of Life.”

  The words shocked Reisil, rocked her to the soles of her feet. That they worshiped the Dark Lord, that the wizards had summoned him forth. Summoned him! The Demonlord himself. Their master.

  The unspeakable arrogance of such boldness stole her breath. One prayed to gods. One did not demand their service. What did they expect in return? To be served by the Dark Lord? She shook her head, unaware of the action.

  “Pretty words,” the shadowy giant jeered at the two groveling monarchs. “Do I tear my name from your faces? Do I rip it from your bones where I wrote it in the ancient language, so that you could speak it at great need? And yet you have not spoken it; you have done this other thing. This summoning. You sacrifice the blood of another, when I gave you my name and set the price: your blood—only your blood. Only it may be spilled to balance the exchange, to show your commitment. Tell me, what has made you do this thing? What do you call the need that calls me thus, but refuses to speak my own name?

  The words burned like acid, softly spoken, flaying in intensity. The wizards said nothing and Reisil could feel their consternation. They had not known that the tattoos on their monarchs’ faces were anything but ceremonial, affectation. They had not known that there was a bond to the Dark Lord. They had believed themselves to be favorites, alone blessed. They had set themselves above the Karalis and Karaliene.

  “We obey Pahe Kurjus in all things,” Karalis Vasalis said in a surprisingly strong voice. “He holds us in the warmth of his hands, gifts us blessed night and births the precious day, he who guards our souls from evil. We would not disobey his commands. We worship at his feet and we rejoice in his presence. But we did not draw him here.”

  The Dark Lord was silent, surveying again the group gathered before him. His gaze rested on Reisil and she shook with the pressure of it. Still she stood, feeling the lightning within her snapping back, refusing to be crushed. There was a gusty sound like a sigh. It whined through the pavilion with the strength of a winter wind off the high ice, bleak, desolate and bitter.

  “Speak then. Whose insolence calls me thus? And why have you allowed it?” The condemnation in his voice was unmistakable. A rime of frost formed on the floor and turned the black thrones white. Reisil felt it coat her skin and hair. Moments later the lightning within her flared and the frost on her evaporated.

  “Greatest Lord! It is we, your faithful servants, who have called you here in great need!” Kvepi Mastone croaked in his overtaxed voice. Claiming his prize, Reisil thought. Stupid. But perhaps the Guild was special to the Dark Lord, as the ahalad-kaaslane were to the Blessed Lady. Perhaps, like a child, he wanted a reward for performing a particularly tricky feat.r />
  The massive shadow head of the Dark Lord whipped around like a snake and the silver eyes fixed Kvepi Mastone, a handbreadth away from his face. The wizard choked, turning green as he breathed the fumes.

  “You? And who are you?” His next words shocked Reisil. For all she’d ever heard of the Demonlord, she did not think he valued life. “What soul did you send to me too soon? What right do you claim in stealing away what I have given?”

  “Gr . . . Greatest of Lords! I beg humble forgiveness for offending. Kvepi Buris gave his blood willingly so that we might seek your aid.”

  Reisil snorted low. Willingly. The injured wizard had merely been unlucky enough to be unconscious and available.

  “Speak then, wizard. What do you wish of me?”

  Reisil didn’t miss the threat in the unworldly voice. She clenched her fist tighter beneath Saljane’s talons.

  Kvepi Mastone bowed his head low, submissive. A ploy, Reisil thought. The wizard was trying to manipulate his own god. Did he think it possible?

  She watched the silver eyes in the smoking blackness and was glad that they were not turned on her. She saw in them a mind that was so remote to all she knew that it made her stomach clench in fear. And a knowingness. A testing. A judging. He would let the wizard say and do all that he would, she realized. And then there would be judgment.

  Bile rose in her throat as the fear clawed up from her stomach. Then she calmed herself. Whatever the judgment, she would do what the Blessed Lady had given her to do—protect and heal Kodu Riik and its people. Unthinkingly, she took a half step forward, putting herself in front of Bethorn and her companions, and a terrifying half step closer to the Dark Lord.

  When Kvepi Mastone spoke again, she heard brittle triumph in his voice, as if he realized the danger, yet still felt himself in control and winning.

  “Greatest, we had no alternative but to ask for your aid and guidance. Our enemies have come from Kodu Riik with deceitful words of peace, ensorcelling many of our people, including Karalis Vasalis and Karaliene Pavadone. We of the Wizard Guild, your chosen children, stood against this vermin, but they destroyed fully a hundred of us in a monstrous, unprovoked attack. Alas, we cannot guard against such magic. And now the Karalis plans to sign a treaty, enslaving us to the Kodu Riikian creatures. It will tear the heart right out of us.”