“Dearest, wait…”
But Samara had already made her judgment. Standing up, she regarded her husband with a look of utmost disgust.
“You called Risen Ones. You promised me. You promised our son!”
The rain had thickened, flattening Samara’s hair and running down her face in streaks. Anguish twisted her features. Kovax had never felt so small in his life. He was going to lose everything.
“Dearest, wait. I—I had to. You’ll see. I can explain.”
Samara had always been fast—physically as well as mentally—and Kovax was not prepared for what happened next.
She flashed toward one of the soldiers. Kovax heard the slicing sound of a sword being pulled from its scabbard. The blade shimmered in her hand. In that single, brief instant before penetration, Kovax saw up close the expression of rage twisting her face. Then he looked down to see the sword’s hilt sticking from his belly.
“No,” he said.
Samara pulled the sword out of him. It felt like ice coming out.
“Samara.”
He could taste his own blood. She put the blade up to her throat. Lightning flashed, followed by thunder.
“You should have let me go,” she said, pulling the blade across her skin. The lower half of her neck became black in the flashing light as a curtain of blood descended. She gave him a single, sad look before she collapsed.
Kofi grabbed the sides of his head and screamed. “Maaa-maaaa!”
“Damn it,” Kovax said, clenching his teeth as he tried to plug his wound. In his frail condition, it would surely kill him.
The soldiers looked dumbfounded. When they saw the rage on Kovax’s face, they turned and fled. Kovax cursed them under his breath.
He bent over his wife as the life drained out of her.
“I can bring you back,” he said. She let out a gasp and shook a little. A moment later, she was dead. And could he bring her back again? Was it possible?
No. It didn’t matter. She would never love him as she once had.
“Oh, gods,” he said, clasping her hands. “I can fix this. I promise you, I can!”
Kofi was by his side a moment later. The boy’s face was glazed with rain. His water-darkened hair fell in straight sweeps down to his shoulders. His eyes were wide and vulnerable—his mother’s eyes, clearly.
“Can you, Dad? Can you bring her back?”
Kovax wrapped his arms around his son and pressed his face into the boy’s soft neck.
“I can fix everything, Kofi. I just need your help, OK?”
“OK,” the boy said, responding with a mighty hug of his own. “Anything, Papa.”
Kovax grunted in pain. He could feel the blood leaking out of him. He sank to his knees, tightening his embrace on the boy.
“That hurts,” Kofi said.
“I need you to do something, my boy. If you want to help your mother, I need you to be a hero.”
Kofi’s voice came out high and thin. “A hero? But how?”
Kovax knelt in a puddle of rainwater, face to face with his son. He could feel death’s icy grip around his heart.
“The same way everyone becomes a hero. By sacrificing himself.”
“But I don’t want to,” Kofi said, whining now. He stepped away from his father.
“You have to. It’s for the good of the empire, and our family.”
Kovax saw that his son’s eyes were puffy and wet, and that he was sucking his lower lip in and out of his mouth like a blubbering baby, and despite his love for the boy, he found himself growing angry. This was no time for weakness or hesitation.
He had to act fast.
“If you love your mother, boy, you’ll come with me into that tower.”
“But why?”
Kovax was minutes away from death. He could feel it. “You have to step into that tower and await my instructions.”
“And what’s going to happen?”
“You’ll go to sleep.” He led his son by the hand.
“You mean I’ll die?”
“No, no. You’ll go to sleep and then you’ll wake up. And you’ll be with your mother in a peaceful place full of light.”
“Will there be other people? Will you be there?”
“Of course other people will be there. And they’ll love you as they love the Champions—because you weren’t selfish. And someday I’ll be there, too. But not yet.”
Kovax picked up his staff and used it and the boy’s shoulder to make his way toward the tower.
“It’s OK, Papa. I’ve got you.”
Kovax almost cried out. Those words were like another blade piercing his withered heart. He wanted to stop, but it was too late. This was no longer a matter of stopping or continuing, but of ensuring that it would work.
It wasn’t a question of right or wrong, either. Kovax had given up on morality when he had started summoning Risen Ones again. It was more a question of the boy’s potential. He was a Savant sorcerer like Iolus, like Milo Banks, but unlike those two, Kofi had damaged a part of his brain when he was young by casting a spell too powerful for someone of his maturity level. The damage had been severe enough to slow the boy’s cognitive functions and make spellcasting impossible. It also cursed Kovax with a dim-witted son that had always brought him shame.
But still—the boy gathered luminether automatically into his body, like Iolus, like Milo Banks. He would serve as a battery if nothing else. A fountain of blood ether.
“You’ll make your family proud,” Kovax said.
He opened the metal door in the side of the tower and ushered the boy forward. Kofi, after seeing the all-encompassing darkness inside—a darkness so thick it was like an enormous creature with its back turned to them—squealed and backed away.
“Don’t be a ninny, Kofi. Get in there.”
The boy hid his face behind his hands. “But I don’t want to.”
“I love you. If you love me back, you’ll do it.”
Kofi looked up at his father, eyes wide and swollen. “Can you hold my hand, Papa?”
The rain thrashed against the courtyard. Thunder boomed in the distance, the voice of the gods urging Kovax forward. He was sure of it. What he was about to do would change Astros forever.
“Your mother would want you to go inside. Remember that talk she had with you? She said that you were a Savant, which means you can cast powerful magical spells. And remember what else she said? ‘With the power of a god comes…’”
Kofi lifted his chin and spoke into the darkness. “‘…the responsibility of a saint.’”
Another clash of thunder. Kofi shuddered but kept his eyes on the darkness before him.
“She was right, Kofi. Make her proud.”
The boy marched into the darkness. He stopped only once to look back at his father. Kovax nodded at his son and used a vile human gesture—the thumbs-up—to reassure him.
A realization flashed in Kovax’s mind. His face and eyes had changed after he had begun summoning Risen Ones again, and yet despite his monstrous appearance—the telltale sign of a low mage who works closely with blood ether—Kofi had not shown a single sign of fear or disgust, as his mother had done. The boy had accepted his father’s physical corruption like it was nothing. He truly loved his father.
But that was no reason to stop. This had to be done. The end always justifies the means.
Kovax gave his son a solemn nod.
Kofi smiled back, and his last words were lost in a boom of thunder. What could he have possibly wanted to say?
Minutes later, atop the lonely tower, the low mage known as Kovax Leonaryx tapped into a power he had never tasted. He became something more than Godkin—something so powerful that only one of the ancient gods would have understood the feeling.
It wouldn’t last. As the blood ether swirled around his body and collected inside Duo, he felt his son’s life force drain out of him. Kovax directed every last bit of energy into the blood crystal on his staff, and then he cast a difficult spell that
directed that energy harmlessly into his brain. New systems of nerves grew like vines, and old ones were reinforced; a billion tiny lightning storms as synapses fired faster than ever. His memory, his cognition, his intuitive and sensory capabilities—it was like upgrading a mosquito into a levathon.
Pure ecstasy. He rose into the sky, holding Duo with both hands, a black shape against the white-flashing expanse. He rose until he was hovering above the castle, and then he directed his body toward the courtyard, where he landed harmlessly, accompanied by a burst of luminether mist, on the hard stone floor.
He looked back at the tower.
“I’m sorry, Kofi. I’ll make it up to you someday.”
Then he closed his eyes and cast a teleportation spell he’d never been able to pull off. He knew exactly where he had to go, and what he needed to do.
He had an emperor to kill, a new world order to create.
Chapter 61
Emma awoke to an unknown day.
Sunlight poured in through her window, silhouetting a half-dozen figures around her bed. She blinked to clear the gumminess out of her eyes. Strangely, she wasn’t on her bed but suspended over someone else’s in a room she had never visited before, one much bigger than her own.
Something held her in place over the mattress by her shoulders, abdomen, and legs—straps, by the feel of it. They had hung her like a sheet out to dry.
“Wha…” she said, struggling to move her lips.
“You’re OK,” a voice said. It was Ascher, though her vision was so blurred she could barely see him. “You’re safe. You feel drowsy and numb because of the pain medicine.”
Slowly, like vapor lifting off a pane of glass, her vision sharpened. Blurry lines became more definite, more human.
Ascher stood by the side of her bed, his face glossy and pink as if he had just run here. Sevarin, Lily, Coral, and a tired, scruffy-looking soldier each occupied different positions against the walls. Oscar sat to her left in a wooden chair, his tail snaking out from under him. He was biting his lower lip and looking at her. She wondered if it hurt to sit on one’s tail.
“Emma,” Sevarin said, stepping forward with his arms crossed. He gave her a gentle look and his arms dropped to his sides.
“Careful, Sev.” Ascher reached out to hold him back. “There’ll be time later.”
Sevarin, looking a little hurt and not as tough as usual, drew back. He didn’t look away from Emma’s eyes. She sensed that he was deeply worried about her. He also probably felt a little guilty, since Emma had fallen during his watch.
“Sis,” Lily said, coming forward to stand by the corner of the bed. “I’m glad you’re OK.”
She took Emma’s left hand, which hung suspended by the wrist, and kissed it. Then Coral pulled her back, saying, “The pain will pass. It happens to all Acolytes.” Her voice trembled with an emotion Emma couldn’t name. “Golden wings—I’ve never seen such a beautiful thing.”
Then it was Ascher who spoke. “It might be difficult to understand, Emma, but we have you strapped like this because at the moment your wings are very fragile. The bones haven’t hardened yet and can easily break if you’re not careful. It’s going to hurt for a few days, but like Coral said, the pain will pass sooner than you think.
“And there’s more. Your wings”—he gazed at them, mystified—“your wings aren’t white. They’re—they’re golden. I’m not sure what that means. Many Acolytes dye their wings gold—or blue or green, for that matter—but yours are naturally that way. According to Acolyte legend, that makes you very special.”
Coral made a tsk sound at her husband. “Shouldn’t we let her rest?”
“You’re right,” Ascher said, “Of course.”
“Wait.” Emma looked around the room. She saw Lily, Oscar, and Sevarin—and Barrel, Gunner, and Owen were probably nearby—but there was one person missing, and his absence was like a gaping hole in her heart.
“Where’s Milo? I want to see him.”
Ascher put a big, warm hand over hers.
“You have to be calm, Emma. No one has seen him in several hours, but you know how he likes to slip away sometimes to be alone, no matter how often I warn him against it. I have about twenty men scouring the ranch and the surrounding forest in search of him. I’m sure he’s all right.”
Emma looked out the window at the morning sky. “I hope so.”
“Are you comfortable?”
She nodded, and it was true; the straps weren’t very tight, and they supported just the right parts of her body to keep her from feeling suffocated.
“I must look terrible,” she said.
Lily said, “You look fine, sis.” She was smiling in that girlish way that made her eyes light up. She was barefoot, as usual, and for some reason her feet and knees were dirty. She saw Emma looking at the soiled patches. “Oh, that,” she said. “I was practicing those dance moves you showed me.”
“Did you fall?”
Lily nodded, then covered her mouth and giggled. Sevarin came forward.
“I have to watch over you,” he told Emma. “I—I mean, you can sleep if you want. Me and Oscar—we’ll watch over you and protect you.”
“Yes,” Oscar said, standing by the side of the bed and nodding. “We will stand to guard.”
“Hold your levies,” Ascher said, motioning to the soldier standing against the wall. “That’s what he’s for.” The soldier looked at Emma, gave a single officious nod, and returned his gaze to the opposite wall.
“I want to do it,” Sevarin said. “I’m the only Sargonaut here. Isn’t protection what we were made for? And Oscar has the eyes of a hawk and the ears of a cat…”
“A baby one,” Oscar added.
“—so what’s the problem?”
Emma was surprised by what she saw next. Ascher smiled at Sevarin and gave him a warm pat on the back.
“If that’s what Emma wants.” He motioned at the guard. “Take post at the foot of the stairs, Olin. Much appreciated.”
The soldier steepled his fingers, brought the tip to his forehead, and nodded. “Light guide your step,” he told Emma before marching out of the room.
“OK,” Emma said, trying her best to nod. She was so tired all of a sudden. The world kept tilting. “They can stay…”
Again, she drifted into the dark.
Chapter 62
“I want to stay another year. I have to.”
Milo’s voice came out steady and calm as he sat facing the pond. They were in the Eternal Gardens, where Emmanuel had walked in on Milo meditating, a ball of fire, like a flaming basketball, hovering above the pond’s surface. It hovered between a misty, spinning ball of water and another made of ice resembling a frosted moon. All three of the globes shone brightly, scaring the fish beneath.
Emmanuel had to admit he was proud of what they had accomplished together. He wasn’t such a bad teacher, even after all these years away from the academy. And Milo—the boy was something else entirely. He had his mother’s heart and his father’s courage, but his brain had come straight from Kenatos, god-creator of the Savants. He had memorized nearly all of Emmanuel’s books on spellcasting in just a year.
“I told you,” Emmanuel said, adjusting his glasses. “The time-dilation engines are slowing down. I would have to start dipping into our energy reserves.”
“Then do it,” Milo said. “I’m sorry, Uncle Manny. I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that I’ve done the calculations myself. We have enough fuel to power the time-dilation engines for another year without using up more than fifteen percent of our reserves. And then it would only take a few weeks on the outside to charge them back up to capacity.”
Emmanuel peered at Milo from above his glasses. “Fifteen is more than you think. Besides, once the engines let up, we won’t have a few weeks. Iolus and his men are looking for Ascher’s ranch. And they’re getting closer.”
The floating fireball blinked out of existence with a puff of gray smoke. The ball of water slipped back int
o the pond. The ball of ice fell with a splash. Milo looked away at a colorful striped bird with a sloping orange beak that had landed on a branch.
Emmanuel took the opportunity to examine his nephew’s health.
The boy had grown taller—two inches, to be exact, and his face had lost that quality of softness that had made him look childish and timid before. He would grow a few more inches, though he would never be taller than average height. He would, however, be broad of shoulder and chin—strong-looking for a Savant.
“What are you thinking?” Emmanuel said, taking a seat on the grass. He wore a white, collared shirt tucked into gray slacks, with a black belt and black leather shoes. He liked to dress this way even when he didn’t have to. It reminded him of being an academy professor again, which was a nice thought. He was so tired of war.
The grass would stain the seat of his pants, but it didn’t matter. He felt tired all of a sudden. As much as he enjoyed training Milo and spending time with him, he felt that another year of intense training sessions would trim his lifespan significantly.
And what about the time-dilation engines?
Another year down in the vault would mean Milo would not get back to the ranch until late evening of the day after he’d last been seen. Sure, it was only an extra day back on the surface, but Emmanuel had sensed dark magic overhead on the afternoon when he had seen Milo and the other orphans ice-skating on the pond. Kovax’s low mages had flown over the ranch, and it was difficult to tell if they had been able to see through the cloaking spell.
If that was the case, he had less than a day (on the surface, of course; away from the time-dilation engines) to get back to the ranch and get everyone out of there.
“I’m thinking,” Milo said, “that another year would be an even trade-off. It’s another twenty or so hours back on the surface, but it’s a whole year of training for me. I know it’s a big investment for you, too, Uncle Manny, but if what you say is true—if my goal is to prepare myself so I can face Kovax and Iolus and destroy their towers—then I need all the training I can get. Besides, Ascher has men guarding the ranch. They could hold out for half a day, at least, if someone were to attack.”
Savant (The Luminether Series) Page 35
