When the last sword was finally pulled out, Arileez’ bloody body collapsed to the floor, silent and still. Everyone looked upon it with breathlessness and racing hearts, unable to comprehend what being they had just encountered. The wizard’s body and clothing turned a sickening shade of gray before bursting into flames, causing everyone to step back in surprise. The fire burned briefly before the flames died and the charred body dissolved into a pile of white ash in the pallid light of dawn.
King Justin and his guard stood up and looked upon the wizard’s remains in stunned silence. The guard thanked the monarch for his bravery, but the King merely smiled as if it were nothing.
“You would have done the same for me,” he replied, holding a hand against the wound on his upper right arm. King Justin was unaware that he was doing so and felt no pain amid the excitement. Megan ran to his side to examine the wound.
“Are you all right, Grandfather?” she asked, removing his hand to get a better look at the injury.
“Of course,” he replied matter-of-factly, only now beginning to feel some discomfort as he looked at the bloodstain upon his fingers and shirt sleeve. “It’s probably just a scratch.”
“It’s worse than that,” Megan said. “But we’ll let your physician have the final word.” She hugged him, too happy to scold the man for putting his life in danger. “Who or what was that?”
“I’m guessing the very same creature that took the life of Prince Brendan,” he replied, embracing Megan while staring over her shoulder at the pile of ashes. “But he’ll never bother anyone again.” He looked into his granddaughter’s eyes and smiled, so happy to have her at his side. “Now you won’t think me foolish for having tried to protect you by sending you away from here in these troubled times.”
Megan smiled. “But trouble followed me anyway.”
“Indeed it did,” he replied with a sigh, kissing her on the forehead. His eyes widened in fear as the excitement of the moment subsided. “Leo! Where is he? What happened to the key?”
Megan’s heart raced as she explained how they were separated shortly after the attack on the Citadel. “Leo should be on his way to the upper room if he’s not there already, unless…”
King Justin instantly read Megan’s thoughts by the frightened look upon her face. “Unless the enemy is after him.”
CHAPTER 73
Key Developments
Leo’s heart pounded. He drew a deep breath, realizing the significance of what he was about to do. He hurried down the corridor to the last door on the left with his guard who unlocked it with one of the two keys on the ring. Inside was a spiral stone staircase leading up to a small turret on the back side of the Citadel. There the Spirit Box had been stored ever since Mayor Otto Nibbs gave it to King Justin for safekeeping many years ago. The light from the oil lamps along the quiet corridor splashed upon the first few steps of the staircase within. All above was cloaked in darkness.
“There’s a candle in the recess to your right,” the guard told Leo while he kept a vigilant eye up and down the hallway. Leo stepped inside and found a candlestick encased in a glass globe. He lit it from one of the oil lamps. The guard handed him the key ring. “The other key opens the door at the top.”
“Aren’t you coming with me?” Leo asked.
“I’ll keep watch down here just in case. Now hurry!”
“Wish me luck.”
Leo raised the flickering candle and ascended the staircase in smothering darkness. Shadows danced wildly upon the curved walls. The bottom doorway was soon out of sight as he circled up and around, the air cold and stale. He wondered how long it had been since someone was last up here, guessing that King Justin probably sent one of his aides to check on the Spirit Box from time to time. He paused a moment, thinking he had heard a noise below, perhaps a cough or a sneeze that was amplified in the tight enclosure.
“Did you say something?” he called down to the guard. But when getting no reply Leo continued on, assuming that he was hearing things. He thought he was near the top and picked up his pace, eager to complete the task. He wished that Nicholas were here since he had played an equal part in getting the key remade. But he guessed that his friend was on another adventure somewhere, hoping that he and Ivy were both together, safe and in good health.
A dull patter of footsteps sounded below. Leo assumed that the guard was heading up either out of boredom or to warn him of approaching danger. He was about to call down into the darkness when he noted a small landing and a door just a few steps above. He hurried to the top and placed the second key into the lock and turned it, pushing the door wide open. Waves of cold shadows washed over him. Leo detected a faint hint of gray outside a trio of windows within the room, knowing that daybreak was fast approaching. The sound of footsteps caught his attention again, now much closer. Instead of stepping into the room, he turned around to wait for the guard, holding up the candlestick to light his way.
“Changed your mind?” Leo asked as the shadow of a figure appeared around the last curve in the stairwell, slowly ascending. But before he could utter another word, the face of a stranger gazed up and startled him–a short, slightly stocky man with thinning black hair and a goatee who appeared pale, tired and oddly familiar in the eerie glow of the candlelight. The stranger’s sea gray eyes harbored a cold, dead quality that made Leo shudder inside. His jaw dropped when he noticed a splattering of fresh blood on the stranger’s hands. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Where’s the guard?”
“He won’t be joining us,” Mune replied, out of breath and visibly shaken. He had left his dagger lodged in the dead man’s back after he had stealthily run up to the guard from behind while he was pacing the corridor. Mune was too shocked and dazed by what he had done and ran off and up the staircase, not remembering to retrieve his weapon. “Now give me the key before my associates arrive,” he demanded in a low, hard voice. “They won’t be as patient with you as I am.”
“What key?” Leo asked, wondering how this man could possibly know of its existence. Suddenly he recognized the face as one of the two individuals he had spotted at the grasslands who had kidnapped Ivy, not letting on to the fact.
“You know what key.” Mune’s voice rose in exasperation. “Hand it over. Now!”
Leo reached toward the open door and pulled the key ring out of the lock, tossing it to the man. Mune caught it, glancing at the pair of keys with disgust before throwing them down the stairs in a fit of ire. “Not those keys, you fool! The one to the Spirit Box.”
Leo nodded. “Oh, that one,” he said, lowering the candle so that Mune’s face was fully illuminated, his eyes filled with impatience and insatiable greed. “I’ll show it to you,” he said, his free hand rising toward the leather cord around his neck. Mune climbed up one more stair, his gaze fixed upon Leo’s face, his hand reaching out.
But as Mune inched forward in anticipation of obtaining the key, Leo slammed a boot squarely into his chest and sent him flying backward. The man grunted in agonizing pain and tumbled down several steps, his cries ricocheting in the stone stairwell. Leo wasted no time and ran inside the turret and slammed the door shut, though he now had no key to lock himself in. He looked around the tiny room. It was bare expect for a small oak cabinet below the middle of three windows evenly spaced along a curved wall that faced the back grounds of the Citadel. Dull gray light seeped through the glass panes, though the room was still strewn with shadows as thick as cobwebs. He quickly lit two oil lamps on opposite sides of the wall, setting the room ablaze in yellow light. Immediately his heart sank. The top of the cabinet was empty.
“It must be inside,” he whispered, keeping his nerves steady.
He placed the candle on a windowsill and then knelt in front of the cabinet, opening a set of doors below the surface with a tiny brass handle affixed to each. He flashed a smile upon seeing a small iron box with a locked lid inside, a nondescript piece of metalwork created twenty years ago by a local blacksmith in Kanesbury. He carefully removed
the Spirit Box and stood up, setting the object almost reverently upon the top, wondering about the strength and destructive powers of the spirit within. He wondered if Frist’s entity had survived and grown over all these years, knowing he would soon find out. Leo reached for the key hidden beneath his shirt, ready to perform his appointed task.
The door flew open behind him. Leo spun around, his heart racing. Mune stood framed against the blackened entrance, his face bruised and his clothes disheveled. A few drops of blood trickled down his forehead. He immediately eyed the Spirit Box on top of the cabinet and glanced at Leo, gritting his teeth.
“Give me the key and the box,” he muttered. “I won’t ask a second time.”
“Good. I’m sick of hearing your voice,” Leo shot back, locking gazes with Mune.
Both men remained still as the first hint of dawn pressed against the frosty windows, neither man willing to give any ground. But Leo knew he had to act soon since Prince Gregory and his troops were ready to commence their counterattack in Montavia, if they hadn’t done so already. While still eyeing Mune, he slowly reached for the leather cord around his neck. Mune understood what Leo was about to do, knowing he had to stop him. He shifted his focus from Leo to the Spirit Box and back again, his face contorting in the process. He leaned back slightly, shifting his weight upon his legs, and then sprang across the room. But Leo had sensed Mune’s tactic. He quickly turned and grabbed the box just as Mune jumped on his back and tried to pull him over.
“Get off me!” he shouted as Mune wrapped an arm tightly around Leo’s throat, choking him while reaching for the cord around his neck with his free hand. With a surge of anger, Leo pushed off the cabinet with all his might and lunged backward as fast as he could to the opposite wall, slamming Mune against the stone while clutching the box.
Mune groaned in excruciating agony as his back smashed into solid granite. Air burst from his lungs but he hardly loosened his grip on Leo’s throat. Suddenly, a deafening shriek from somewhere inside the Citadel rose up the stairwell and pierced the morning stillness, but neither man gave it a thought in the midst of their struggle. Leo, on the verge of collapse and struggling for air, trudged another few steps forward and repeated the maneuver, plowing backward into the wall as hard as he could with Mune’s body in between. This time Mune released his grip, crying in pain when his head hit solid stone. He fell to the ground in a dazed heap, temporarily immobile. Leo, tired and gasping for breath, sprang toward the cabinet, his face sweaty and hot as he ripped the leather cord from around his neck and placed the Spirit Box back on top of the cabinet. With trembling hands and a racing heart, he grasped the key in his right fingers, setting his other hand on the edge of the cabinet to steady himself. He shakily placed the key inside the lock.
“It’s all up to you now, Frist,” he whispered, raising his eyes to the growing gray light outside the window.
Leo turned the key. The metal lid immediately flew open as an invisible force burst forth into the room like a wind gust. Leo was flung backward onto the floor and hit his head. The lights in the room flickered madly and the door slammed shut. He tried to raise his head but felt a suffocating pressure upon his chest. He could barely breath, feeling as if he were about to die. The room was silent yet his mind was a wild swirl of ferocious winds and crackling thunder that filled his entire body with searing pain. Leo tried to call out Megan’s name, fearing he would never see her again, but his voice couldn’t form the words. Pressure continued to build over him. He felt paralyzed, helpless and on the verge of death. Just before he closed his eyes for what he thought would be the last time, the three windows exploded outward. Showers of glass flecks spilled to the ground or were carried away on a cold winter breeze.
Leo could breathe again. His lungs filled with cold, clean air as the pressure in the room returned to normal. He slowly raised his head as the chaos in his mind dispersed. He gazed up at the Spirit Box to confirm that he had indeed opened it and wasn’t dreaming. When he saw the lid still raised upon its hinges, he smiled with relief and then rested his head upon the floor, feeling exhausted as if he had hiked the entire stretch of the Dunn Hills. Leo closed his eyes as sleep overwhelmed him and a cool breeze filtered into the room through the three gaping holes in the wall.
Several moments later, Mune opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. His head throbbed and his back burned with pain. He rubbed his hands over his face, for a moment unaware of his location or the time of day. When he turned his head and saw Leo’s unconscious body sprawled upon the floor, he sat up through his pain, wondering what had happened. He crawled to Leo, but seeing that he was no longer a threat, he stood up on his wobbly legs, his memory returning. Mune glanced at the cabinet and froze, gasping at the sight of the open Spirit Box. He gulped a lungful of icy air.
“No…” Mune shook his head and stepped toward the cabinet, gazing at the box in utter disbelief. “No…!” he repeated, swallowing hard, unable to move until his mind accepted what he was seeing. “It can’t be. It just can’t…” He grabbed the hair on the sides of his skull, his face contorting in spasms of shock and despair. He was nearly on the verge of tears, shaking his head and feeling as if the world had just ended.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen!” he mumbled, his face as pale as snow, his eyes wide with terror. “What will Madeline say?” Mune’s hands began to shake. “What will Madeline do?” An even more horrifying thought struck him as the pit of his stomach grew cold. “What will Vellan do?”
A short time earlier, a gentle fall of snow flurries sizzled and died upon the burning torch that Carmella held aloft. She gazed suspiciously at Madeline who stood beneath the barren tree and shook her head with disappointment.
“You’ll never change, Liney,” she sadly said. “You threw in your lot with the wrong people twenty years ago and now plow a path of destruction throughout Laparia. How could you take the side of scoundrels?”
Madeline smirked as hints of gray morning deepened in the east. “And you, dear cousin, are still as naïve as I remember from childhood. And look how far it’s gotten you,” she said with contempt, pointing toward the river. “You still travel around in that dilapidated cart with your mangy horses and in the company of–” She glanced at Jagga dressed in his floppy brown hat and rumpled, overly-large coat, thinking he was an acquaintance of her cousin or a stranger Carmella had picked up on the road. When she caught a glimpse of Jagga’s face in the firelight as he tilted his head up, she gasped, her eyes swirling with disbelief.
“You recognize my friend,” Carmella replied with satisfaction. “You aren’t the only one who has connections to Vellan.”
“You do not have connections to Vellan!” Madeline snapped. She recalled when Caldurian told her that her cousin had befriended the Enâri creature named Jagga and thus came into possession of the medallion. Madeline hated believing it then, yet here Jagga stood in the flesh, or at least in the rock and soil from which he was created. “Vellan would not want you in his presence!” she continued, her words dripping with bitterness. “But how is it possible that one of Vellan’s own is in your company? Perhaps by some spell you created, though I don’t see how as you apparently couldn’t lift the skin-coloring charm I had placed on your gloved hands.”
“I choose to be here,” Jagga uttered in a gravelly voice before Carmella could answer. “That is how.”
Madeline glared at the Enâr, not the least bit intimidated by his roughhewn features or menacing countenance. “Then you are not only a traitor, Jagga, you are a fool as well by tying your fortunes to my sorry excuse of a cousin.”
“I am no traitor!” he said. “How do you know my name?”
“I know all about the traitorous Enâr who murdered a man in Kanesbury and stole the key to the Spirit Box from him,” she said smugly. “And I also know that you had the key melted down and formed into a medallion which you gave to my cousin as a gift.” She noted Carmella’s growing discomfort. “But that is not all. I also know the fate
of the medallion after she–”
“You talk too much!” Carmella said, fearing her cousin had learned that she handed the medallion over to King Justin so it could be remade into the key. The last thing she wanted was for Jagga to know, no doubt a treacherous act from his point of view. “You do not know of our business, Liney. It is impossible.”
Madeline smirked. “Not impossible if one has a spy in King Justin’s rafters. I know all about your secret meeting and oath.”
Carmella’s mouth was agape, guessing that Madeline and her associates had attacked the Citadel to steal both the key and the Spirit Box. Despite their oath and subsequent precautions, the group of ten conspirators had been foiled right from the start.
“What else do you know?” she grudgingly asked.
“Nearly everything. I know where the medallion was being taken to and what King Justin planned to do with it.”
A fire of distrust ignited in Jagga’s eyes. “You know where the medallion is? My friend said she lost that gift from me.” He stepped toward Madeline in the growing milky light as a dusting of snow fell. “Did you steal it from her? Is that why I can’t find it?”
She glared at Jagga. “Quite the contrary. You see, Carmella didn’t lose your lovely medallion because she–”
“Liney, I said you do not know our business!” Carmella cried. “So I would advise you to keep quiet about matters that don’t concern you.”
“And just how are you going to stop me?”
“Don’t think that I can’t. I’ve trained much since we last saw each other, albeit on my own for the most part. But I am still a formidable opponent. Don’t try me.”
Madeline walked in a slow, lazy circle around Carmella and Jagga, keeping an eye on them all the while. Though she didn’t believe her cousin could triumph in a battle of spells against her, she was still weary and weakened by the spell she had cast to blast open the entrance to the Citadel. She knew she would be at a disadvantage right now in a clash of magical skills.
Nicholas Raven and the Wizards' Web (The Complete Epic Fantasy) Page 118
