Broken Lords: Book Two of the Broken Mirrors Duology

by A. F. Dery

  The rage burning inside of her lent her focus like she’d never known before. The world was carved from crystal, pure and bright, every line, sharp and clear, every moment, certainty.

  She wasn’t sure she could do it, she had never tried such a thing as this before. But her anger burned away the uncertainty until only it remained, hot and clear and locked on the image of her lord, of her love, in chains like an animal.

  She wiped her free arm across her eyes, and again saw the High Lord. She looked him in the eyes. The smile on his face disappeared. “But the right choice isn’t on the table, so I guess I will just have to pick the wrong one that I can live with.”

  He frowned, his eyes narrowing as he suddenly rose once more to his feet. “Remember that if you cause harm to anyone in this room-”

  “I remember.” Kesara allowed herself a small, cold smile. “You never did say what would happen if I harmed everyone, though.”

  And she immediately let the memories wash over her, and out of her, into everything around her. She made no distinctions. In her mind, she relived all the pain of her life as everyone she could reach relived it in their flesh. She was vaguely aware of the guard dropping her arm, knocking her to her knees as he toppled to the floor writhing next to her. So intense was her concentration that she did not waver. The sting of the floor against her knees joined all the rest of the pain, from the mundane to the mortal. Her ears rang with their screams until she could hear nothing else. She sensed new minds joining them, and new minds falling.

  If it entered, it suffered.

  The only break in the darkness was Thane. His mind, bound to hers, remained untouched. Every time her focus started to slip, every moment her concentration began to tremble from her effort, she recalled the image of him chained to the floor, and the fire burned anew, and the pain flooded from her unabated.

  Until there was no one else her mind could reach, and no one else came. She gradually became aware that the room had gone silent. She thought she could hear Thane saying her name, over and over again, through the buzzing in her ears.

  She let herself open her eyes, her focus wavering then slipping away. Her heart was pounding wildly in her chest as she looked around, afraid she’d missed someone.

  She’d missed no one. The room was full of bodies, all unconscious. Including the High Lord, sprawled near Thane, his once-handsome face an ugly rictus of pain even in repose.

  Pain exposed the truth of people, to their core. She’d known that long and well. He looked now as he truly was, his face twisted and repellent.

  Kesara felt exhausted to the very depths of her body, but she forced herself to her feet, on unsteady legs, and stumbled over to Thane. She looked at the chains, but her mind felt like it had gone to mush. She couldn’t even remember the right word to call them, let alone how to release him from them. She collapsed on her knees next to him and threw her shaking arms around him, burying her face against his arm. “I don’t know how to get them off of you.” It came out like a wail. She realized to her horror that she was sobbing like a distraught child, but she was past the point of self restraint.

  “It’s all right, Kes, it’s over now,” he murmured.

  “Don’t worry about the chains, little rabbit. There’s no chain nor lock than can best your old Graunt,” a familiar voice wheezed from somewhere behind them.

  Kesara was too tired to move, but she stiffened in alarm. “Oh no, Graunt, are you all right? I didn’t get you too, did I?”

  “She’s fine, she only sounds like that because she’s happy,” Thane told her.

  “Sounds like what?” Graunt wheezed again. “No, you didn’t get me with your little rabbit fangs. I stopped when I saw people screaming and collapsing, until they had stopped a while. Common sense will take you far, or at least keep the trip from being quite so painful.”

  “Yep, downright cheerful,” Thane muttered. “Kes, are you ok? That can’t be…I mean I can’t even think how you-”

  “My life is over, if they find out…back in Ytar…I don’t know what they’d do…I can’t believe I…”

  “They won’t find out,” he said firmly. Graunt was fumbling somehow with the stake, then the chains. They rattled, then fell to the ground. Thane immediately gathered Kesara into his arms like a child, pressing his mouth briefly against her head.

  “No, I doubt any of the witnesses will be able to coherently report on what happened to anybody, if any of them live, that is,” Graunt said cheerfully.

  Kesara felt numb at that news, not knowing what to say. “It didn’t kill me when it happened to me, though,” she said finally.

  “It didn’t all happen at once to you either, did it? And I imagine that’s what it took to knock ‘em all out like that,” Graunt said lightly. She made another wheezing sound.

  “Don’t worry about it now,” Thane urged, stroking Kesara’s hair. “Trust me to take care of the rest, all right? Even if someone, anyone, came after you, don’t you think they’d have to get through me to get to you? And you Ytarens are little people. Nothing to worry about.”

  “What if I go mad with power, though,” Kesara yawned, barely able to keep her eyes open. Even under the circumstances…he was so warm. She felt like her bones were melting in her body.

  “Then we rename the world Eladria!” Graunt suggested brightly. Kesara heard another wheeze as the world faded into darkness.

  Thane entrusted Kesara to Graunt’s keeping, then immediately headed out, snatching up a sword from one of the fallen soldiers as he went.

  He had no intention of spending any more time under this roof unarmed. Ever.

  To his immense surprise, he found Malachi once again loitering, this time directly outside of the High Lord’s rooms.

  “Took you long enough,” Malachi muttered when he saw him.

  “How the hell did you get out, old man? Last I saw, you had an arrow in your shoulder.” Thane stared at him as if expecting him to erupt in foul, life-saving sorcery right before his eyes.

  “The High Lord wasn’t exactly willing to leap for me, and you had the guards rather distracted. I managed to get past them in the confusion. I went and found that…aunt…of yours. Or she found me. She is certainly an…interesting…person.” Malachi shook his head, his eyes looking haunted.

  “And she listened to you?” Thane was impressed.

  “Oh yes. Anything to do with her boy and she’d listen, you must know that. I asked her to help me get Maggie and the babe out of this place, and she agreed to hide them until she could get you out. How or where, I still don’t know, so I sincerely hope she is well?” Malachi smiled unpleasantly.

  “Yes, she’s fine. She has Kes.”

  “Where is the High Lord? What happened to the guards?”

  Thane quickly brought him up to speed. Malachi raised his eyebrows, whistling.

  “That is something else, Thane. How could one woman…”

  “I don’t know, but this goes no further. If ever it does, I’ll know who to come for,” Thane said, smiling with all his teeth.

  Malachi nodded curtly. “No need for threats. I would think it would be obvious at this point that we’re on the same side, yes?”

  “Sorry…life hasn’t been going so well lately,” Thane said dryly. A dozen Eladrian soldiers entered the corridor, for all of their usual stoicism appearing visibly relieved to see their Lord.

  “My Lord,” one bowed to him. “The High Lord’s men attacked us and stole your woman from the tower. We subdued them and have been searching for you both.”

  “I found her,” Thane told him. “She’s in there. Graunt is with her. Imprison every man in those rooms who is still living in the dungeon, starting with the High Lord. He has betrayed us all.”

  Thane turned back to Malachi as his men bowed and entered the room behind them. “We need to call an emergency convening of the conclave.”

  “And tell them what, exactly?”

  “Everything…apart from Kes’ involvement. We’ll tell them
about Almryn’s problems with Lyntara, the High Lord’s efforts to cover them up, his intent to kill you and frame me.”

  “Okay, and what do we do when he regains consciousness? Or is he dead?”

  Thane had the grace to blush. “I didn’t check. But if he wakes up, well, we’ll worry about that if it happens. They need to know what’s going on, whether they believe us or not. No one is safe here. Everyone who is able needs to call in reinforcements, and the Western Range needs a new Lord, if only in absentia.”

  “Well, I’ll just gather the toffs, then,” Malachi said. “This should certainly be interesting, none of them like either of us.”

  “And yet all of them are certain to have noticed something in the midst of all this, or heard something, that will be better explained by us than by the High Lord. The truth is on our side, Edmund.” Thane tried to project confidence, but Malachi lifted an eyebrow, undeceived.

  “Just in case, I hope there’s some fresh straw in the dungeons,” he said tartly, and he went off to assemble the conclave.

  Thane assisted his men in taking the new prisoners into the dungeon. Some had died, and these he had carried away for burial. Their loss saddened him. They should have been allies, and they had surely not been knowingly complicit in their Lord’s plans. Just the same, they would have killed him and Kesara both on that man’s word if she had not consented to the slavery he had proposed, and that knowledge kept Thane’s sympathy in check.

  The High Lord was not among the dead, and he regained consciousness just as Thane was depositing the last prisoner in a cell.

  Thane knew at once because he heard the other man start screaming incoherently. He approached the cell warily, watching him, unsure of what to expect, but the High Lord did not react to his presence, or to anything else. He screamed himself hoarse, then collapsed rocking onto the cell’s floor.

  Thane shook his head. This man was a pale husk of the proud, arrogant creature who had sat over him in chains. Nothing remained of his former beauty, grandeur, and arrogance.

  “The pain that drove you mad, all of that, Kes has been put through, just because of what she is,” Thane said quietly, more to himself than to the man in the cell. “And you would have called that down on Lyntara.”

  He realized in that moment that he could not, would not, ever ask such a thing of Kesara. He had thought at one time, if it were strategically prudent, that he might have, even though he never would have forced her or tried to order her. But the fate he saw before him was not one befitting for a person. It had been necessary, in this instance; he knew Kesara had felt like she’d had no other choice, and she herself had not known what the effects would end up being, apart from the obvious. But this was not what the outcome of battle was meant to be.

  It would have been more merciful if he’d been run through, or properly decapitated, Thane thought with a twinge of sadness. In spite of all he’d been through, in spite of all the High Lord had done, this had been a man he had once respected, a man who he had looked up to as having all the integrity that his own father had lacked.

  Perhaps he had been wrong. Perhaps the High Lord had simply changed when he saw his grasp on his own authority slipping in the face of Lyntaran defiance. Thane supposed now that he would never know.

  Now it was too late for him. There was no honor in executing the weak. But then, it was the choice of the conclave what to do with him, not Thane alone. He was suddenly glad for that. I would not want the kind of power this man amassed. Who knows, perhaps it would have corrupted me in the end as well. Kes is wiser than she knows for not using all she’s been given. She sensed the true danger all along.

  “Lord Eladria!”

  Thane heard an unfamiliar voice call out uncertainly. He turned to see a servant coming up to him, until the man looked past, his eyes falling on the occupant of the cell before him.

  The man’s mouth dropped open in shock, his face going white.

  “Yes?” Thane asked.

  The servant looked back at him, eyes huge.

  “Did you have something to tell me?” Thane prompted, being careful to speak very clearly.

  “Um…L-lord Malachi…h-he said that the conclave will be m-meeting in an hour,” the servant stammered. His eyes flickered again to the High Lord’s cell.

  “Thank you,” Thane said, then he motioned over one of his men to escort the servant from the dungeon. He gave one last look to the ghost of a man in the cell and, shaking his head, continued on his way.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Malachi stood before the assembled conclave, in the place that the High Lord once claimed. Thane sat at his right, one of the last to arrive. He had cleaned up somewhat, but the exhaustion was clear on his face. Malachi looked to him and saw him nod encouragingly. All the leaders of the Union were gathered around a large, oblong table, and the moment they saw him stand, they fell silent.

  The silence felt unnerving, after the constant hum of confusion that had filled the air ever since they’d been summoned. All seemed perplexed at the High Lord’s absence, and at Malachi being the one to call together the meeting. While technically any of them could have called an emergency convening, none of them could ever recall it actually being done.

  “What is this about, Edmund?” None other than Lady Ossian demanded impatiently. “Where is the High Lord? You know that by the rules of the concord, he must be invited as well.”

  “Unfortunately, he will not be joining us. I know of no delicate way of phrasing this, but the High Lord has lost his mind,” Malachi said bluntly. Over their collective gasp and sudden shocked murmurings, he raised his voice and continued, “Lord Eladria and I have recently learned a great deal that should be of concern to each of us. We believe the extreme stress of the circumstances we are about to relate to you is what drove him out of his mind, and that we are all in danger if we do not address these circumstances immediately. Hence this meeting.”

  Immediately the members of the conclave began to shout questions and demand answers. Malachi tried, unsuccessfully, to resume his explanation, but they talked over him, in a panic over the news that the High Lord had gone mad.

  Thane stood and raised his arms, then bellowed for all his lungs were worth, “Silence.”

  They froze as one and looked to him. He cleared his throat and said very carefully, “Everything will be explained. But you will get no answers if you don’t shut up and listen.” Then he motioned again to Malachi and sat back down.

  It took hours for the explanation to unfold. The interruptions and the questions were nearly constant. It was late into the night before all had been explained to the satisfaction of those present.

  It came as revelation when Ossian admitted that she indeed had a hand in the “rogues” who had crossed Malachi’s borders.

  “Please understand, Edmund, that I was under direct orders by the High Lord,” she said quickly as Malachi grew thunderous. “He said your loyalty needed to be tested and that he feared some violation of the concord had taken place already. He would not tell me more, but I had no cause to question him.”

  On the heels of Ossian’s confirmation came others. Apparently Malachi and Eladria weren’t the only ones who had had suspicion sown between them. It appeared that in recent months, the High Lord had done all in his power to make himself indispensable to every land in the Union, casting himself as the only one who could be trusted as well as he could. The lands nearest to Almryn had indeed heard the murmurs of discord from their neighbor up north, but the explanations they had been given for the things they had heard varied just enough that there could be no doubt that they’d been strung along.

  Most present were aghast that they had so readily swallowed what the High Lord had told them, but as Thane pointed out, they had all trusted him, most of them for their entire rules. There had been no reason to doubt or question him. They had all simply taken his integrity for granted.

  “He’s the one who brought the Union together,” Ossian murmured sadly. “To think,
it could have gone so differently if only he’d been willing to seek help from his allies. We wouldn’t have cast him aside as our High Lord just for needing our help.”

  “Pride can be a bitch,” Malachi agreed serenely. Thane gave him a look of disbelief that was truly gruesome, which Malachi determinedly ignored. “What I want to know is how the hell none of you saw Raiders invading my country.”

  Lord Jarel cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable. “There weren’t exactly Raiders in your country, Malachi. The High Lord sent some of his own men through my country, on the way to you. Word came to me that they were seen with the attire of Raiders, but I dismissed it as gossip. Given everything we’ve heard today-”

  Malachi swore, long and loud.

  “I didn’t know what they were up to, I swear,” Jarel added hastily when he began to subside. “The High Lord’s men are allowed to go where they will, you know that. There was no reason to believe something so…so…preposterous.”

  “There really were Raiders spotted over my own borders,” Kitarin interjected quietly. “They must have bled over from Almryn. The High Lord told me that they were fraudulent, and promised an explanation before the conclave ended. He also insisted I not discuss them with anyone else, lest it cause what he called ‘needless panic.’” The country of Kitarin was directly adjacent to Almryn. Malachi couldn’t imagine what sort of “explanation” the High Lord would have ended up giving. Probably he would have blamed one of Kitarin’s neighbors, he thought. What better way to keep us all distrusting everyone but him?

  As the discussion wore down, it was quickly agreed that all would send for the necessary reinforcements to fortify Almryn from Lyntara, but the truly shocking moment came when they agreed just as quickly that Thane would lead the conclave until a new High Lord could be elected.

  He immediately refused, but they just talked over him. Malachi smirked at him. This has got to be irritating the hell out of him, Malachi thought happily. None of them can stand him, but if it will save their rears, ok, let’s hire the barbarian after all.