Only the Bane lurked in the darkness, invisible. But that didn't matter—I knew just where it was, even without using my ability to find things. The power of it filled the tent, calling out to me.
Late in the first summer of rebuilding Hurog, shortly after Oreg had returned, we'd come upon a hidden cache buried under a mound of crumbled stone. I'd reached out to touch a wand of wood covered with faded paint that intrigued me. Oreg's hand had clamped down on my wrist.
"Never a good idea," he'd murmured, "to touch a wizard's toy. Especially when it calls to you. I'll teach you a few of the nastier things you can ward your own treasures with."
And that had been the beginning of his lessons to me.
Would Jakoven have left the Bane here unguarded from the rest of his mages? I thought not, and pulled my hand away. I didn't think Jakoven could activate the thing from a distance. It would be safer here until Oreg or I got a chance to look at it—after I found Jakoven.
So I sheathed my knife, drew my sword, and looked for Jakoven. If he felt me, it wouldn't matter; he would know we were there in a matter of moments anyway—as soon as Jakoven's wizards discovered the dragon in their midst. Oreg could kill one wizard silently, but I doubted that he could keep all of them quiet.
I found the high king near the edge of the woods. I cursed to myself as I slid out of the tent and sprinted off through the trees as quickly as I could. Haste was more important than stealth now.
Jakoven was the sentry mage. Axiel must not have recognized him. It wasn't his fault. The night was dark, and who would have thought that the high king would stand watch with his men? Certainly not me.
I hadn't made but five strides before the camp erupted in noise and smoke. Oreg's tent burst into explosive flame, and I got a quick glimpse of dark bodies and sparks as steel met steel before the underbrush obscured the camp.
I kept my link to Jakoven, as much to assure myself he wasn't anywhere near the Bane as because I needed it to find him. One of the mages had lit the campsite, and I could see the glow through the branches I clawed my way past.
I burst through one section of clinging branches and all but ran into one of the sentries who had just released a crossbow bolt into the camp. My sword took his head without my slowing a step, as I tried not to think about where the bolt he'd loosed had hit
There was nothing I could do about my friends until I dealt with Jakoven. I was behind him now. There was a chance he would think any noise I made was his own sentry—the man I'd killed.
Jakoven, for his part, was moving slowly toward the camp—trying, I supposed, to get close enough to tell his men from mine. I was almost upon him when I heard a roar I almost didn't recognize as the king's voice.
"Garranon!" he howled.
Tosten had a song he liked, which I thought silly, about a soldier who finds his wife was a traitor. One of the phrases I'd objected to said something about the man's voice trembling with betrayal and disbelief.
"How," I'd asked, "do betrayal and disbelief sound?"
I heard it now in Jakoven's voice. Felt it in the thunder of power and magic that formed around his person.
I was close enough to have used my sword, but the branches of the trees were too close, hampering my swing, and my sword was not made for thrusting. So I bellowed like a bull moose and charged through the hampering foliage and set my shoulder into Jakoven's stomach before I even saw him with my eyes.
My charge sent us both tumbling down a sharp incline and into the camp's clearing. It also interrupted whatever spell he'd intended for Garranon.
I rolled to my feet and struck in the same motion, but Jakoven's blade met mine and turned it. He let my weapon slide along his blade and replied to my thrust with a series of quick short moves designed to cut rather than maim or kill.
It was an unexpected and effective style. He left several shallow cuts on my arms and a more serious one across my belly. His sword was shorter than mine, which should have been a disadvantage, except that he kept close to me, where my own weapon's length got in my way.
Even so, I was stronger than he. I got one good solid block in and forced him away from me with a rush he couldn't turn. From there I kept him at a distance with the superior reach of sword and arm, making him play my game.
The cuts on my arm bled freely, and I could feel dampness from the slice in my middle all the way to the knees of my trousers. I knew I would have little time to win this before weakness from the loss of blood would seriously hamper me.
Even as the thought registered, Garranon came up behind me calling, "Step back, Ward, I've got him. Bind your wounds before we have to carry you out of here."
We switched places as if we'd practiced the move a thousand times. I looked around, but I couldn't see the rest of the fighting because the tents were in the way. I stripped off my shirt quickly and wrapped it bandage-tight around my waist, just above my navel, tying the arms together to hold it. Hopefully that would stop the worst of the bleeding.
While I tied the makeshift bandaging, I watched Garranon fight Jakoven. The hiss that left my lips had more to do with the beauty of the swordwork I was watching than the burning pain in my abdomen. They were so well matched, I was awed by the speed and savagery of the fight.
"Traitor," breathed Jakoven. "I saved you. Saved your brother and allowed you to keep your lands when the estates of other men who had smaller roles in the Rebellion than your father were given to those loyal to me."
"You used me," corrected Garranon, all coolness to Jakoven's heat. "And I let you. I knew I could not save my family with my sword, but I could with my body."
"You loved me," said Jakoven.
"Never," replied Garranon. "If I could have taken the breath from your body and not lost all, I would have done so. I paid for spies, and spied myself, feeding the information to Alizon when he broke from your court."
"You lie." Jakoven's voice was confident. "I have never had a more passionate bedmate. Why do you think I kept you all these years?"
"Love is not necessary for sex," replied Garranon composedly. "And that's all it ever was—no matter how good it felt. But weighed against what you have done to my home and to the Five Kingdoms, it is less than nothing."
"You lie," repeated Jakoven, and he missed a block. Garranon's blade slid easily through the simple silk shirt Jakoven wore. The blow was too low to be immediately fatal.
"I loved you," said Jakoven, dropping to his knees, blood dyeing his hands a glistening black. Garranon pulled his weapon free and swung again. The blood-dark blade slid through the high king's throat and the resulting spray of blood covered Garranon, dripping down his face like tears.
I ducked my head, both to examine the worst of the wounds on my forearm and to give Garranon a moment of privacy. There was such grief on his face, I didn't think that he would want anyone else to see it.
"Here," said Garranon. He ripped a strip of cloth from the bottom of his shirt and wound it around my right bicep. I hadn't noticed that one.
"We'd best go see how the rest are faring," he said.
I nodded, but couldn't help but take a last look at Jakoven's still body. I'd been in battle before, and I knew how quickly a man could go from life into death. It only took a single mistake. But it seemed almost anticlimactic to stare at the dead body of the man who'd inflicted so much damage in his life. As if his death wasn't payment enough.
I followed Garranon and caught up to him. We pushed past the tents, and I had just time enough to glimpse Tisala still on her feet when the magelight above us went out.
The hair on the back of my neck rose with the magic that swept over us like a giant wave hitting the surf. I think I even stepped back, because I bumped into Garranon.
"What's that?" he asked.
"Farsonsbane," I said. "Oreg!" I bellowed, turning about as my night vision began to come back to me and shadows turned gradually into more familiar shapes of tents and men.
No one answered me.
Garranon's night sig
ht must have improved faster than mine, because he left my side abruptly to engage one of the shadowy figures before it could complete a strike at someone who was down.
I sprinted toward the tent where the Bane was calling to me, hungry for what I could feed it.
"Oreg?" I called as I ran.
Surely only Oreg could have gotten past Jakoven's safeguards, but he still didn't answer me. I looked for him with my magic and found him so near the Bane, I thought for a moment that the artifact's magic had misled me.
I stumbled over a body, burnt and torn, and I took a few precious seconds to examine the forehead and eye that were left. Fear that it was Oreg almost kept me from seeing Arten, Jakoven's archmage, in the shape of the brow.
A few feet farther on I found another body, unrecognizable, but the fire that still fed on his flesh was full of Oreg's familiar magic—he was one of the high king's wizards.
Jakoven's tent was dark and still, but the entrance flap was open. I tried to feel Oreg's magic, but if he were using any, it was swallowed up by the magic of the Bane.
Gods, I thought, my mind playing out various scenarios as I slowed to sneak up on the tent. Oreg got through the traps set by Jakoven and tried to break the spell that held the Bane and failed. Or he was tired and was caught by a trap Jakoven set.
I ducked beneath the flap and magelight flared in the tent. There had been so many bodies on the ground, it had never occurred to me that anyone but Oreg would be in the tent with the Bane. But Jade Eyes smiled his beautiful smile at me.
For a moment all I could see was him. My body, remembering what he'd done to it while wearing that smile, broke into a cold sweat. Then I saw Oreg's limp body on the tent floor.
Ignoring Jade Eyes, I took two steps forward and felt Oreg's neck for a pulse—sighing in relief when I felt it. I didn't like the knot that was rising on the back of his head, though. Stala always said that if you hit a man in the head hard enough to knock him out, you had a good chance of killing him.
"Welcome, Ward," whispered Jade Eyes. "I've been waiting for my opportunity to claim the Bane since I first saw it. It is appropriate that you should be here, just as you were when it first called to me."
Crouched beside Oreg, I looked up at Jade Eyes and recognized the madness in his eyes. I wondered if, like my mother, he tasted his own potions or if he was simply crazy. Either way, the slender staff topped with a dragon holding a glowing ruby in its mouth scared me sick.
The Bane's angry red magic blew my hair away from my face and came back to bit me in the shoulder. The blow was as hard as any I've taken, and it was completely unexpected, because there was no change in Jade Eyes's face or body that told me what he intended. It knocked me forward onto my arms, and one of the cuts that had closed reopened. I felt that breeze come back to taste my blood.
"Oh," he breathed. "They like you. Can you hear them? They called me and called me. I visited them every night, but I couldn't break Jakoven's protections. I came in tonight and found your wizard had done all the work for me."
"Who?" asked a voice in my head, breathy and soft I almost couldn't hear it over Jade Eye's words. "Who are you?"
Hurog, I thought.
"We know you." This time the voice was several and much stronger. I saw three dragons, though my eyes were closed. "Know us, too."
" … been working on a spell to release them," continued Jade Eyes, apparently unaware of the other conversation I found myself a part of. "Dragons are immortal. If I can release them from some of the restrictions that Farson placed upon them, they can be dragons again in truth. They will serve me as dragons served the Emperor. Alizon is right," he said intensely. "Jakoven should not be high king."
The blackness began to flow under the violent red of the gem, just as it had the first time I saw it. I realized that this part of the Bane's magic seemed black to me, not because it was evil, but because it was so dense. It slid down the staff in a slow, heavy flow and began pooling on the floor of the tent, covering my hands and lapping over Oreg's body.
This was different, separate from the red magic, and it became more different all the time. It tasted like dragon, though I hadn't realized that dragon magic had a feel to it—a commonality between the magic of Oreg, Hurog, and the Bane.
"It's almost drained now," said Jade Eyes, incorrectly, I thought.
Farsonsbane was hiding its power from him. I shivered when I realized that I understood the Bane because of the connection Jakoven had forged between us with my blood and tears. The magic I saw as red was the power controlled by the mage wielding the Bane. I knew because the Bane told me so. The dark magic was power hoarded by the Bane itself, held in check by the binding Farson had imposed upon it so long ago.
"Jakoven used most of the magic on Buril—after making certain that Garranon wasn't there," continued Jade Eyes, unaware of the secondary communication between the Bane and me. "Peculiar of him, don't you think? I thought he was finished with Garranon. He hasn't taken Garranon since he found me last year. But I know something that Jakoven didn't."
"What's that?" I asked, watching the blackness touch Jade Eyes's feet and wash back like the sea hitting the sand.
"That it is your tears the dragons need—they told me so. Hurog means dragon, he said. But he didn't go far enough. I looked it up. Did you know that Hurogmeten means Guardian of Dragons?" He crouched, unaware of the blackness that flowed around the tent. "Your tears will give my immortal dragons back their lives and they will serve me."
He was wrong. The Bane contained the revenants of dragons, and dead things could not be given anything but the semblance of life.
"Dragons aren't immortal," I said, touching my dragon's neck again, because I couldn't see him breathe underneath the layer of blackness that Jade Eyes couldn't perceive: He was not a Hurog. Against my fingers, Oreg's pulse beat steadily. "Dragons live a long time, longer than the dwarves. But they aren't immortal."
His smile broadened. "You don't know much," he said, and tilted the staff just a little.
Pain coursed through me and I lost control of my muscles, falling limply to the floor, unable even to turn my face aside and avoid the painful contact of noise and hard-packed earth.
"Always so quiet, my Ward," whispered Jade Eyes, and he turned my head away from the ground, tsking when he saw the blood flowing from my nose. "I liked that about you. Some people like the screaming, but I enjoy your pain, not noise." He touched his fingers to my upper lip and held his hand up for me to see the dampness of my tears coating his fingertips. "I'm sorry you have to die. But I think that you might be able to take them from me, if I don't kill you before I release them."
"A dragon is no man's slave," I managed to say around the pain. "Nor should he ever be. I think that you'll be like my father and find that it is more than you can safely hold."
"Your father had a dragon?" he asked, and the pain ebbed into memory. "They say that there is a dragon at Hurog now. Jakoven said it was illusion."
I took a deep breath. "Listen to me, Jade Eyes. The dragons died to make that gem. You can't bring them back to life. The first rule of magic is not to tamper with the natural order of things. If you break Farson's bindings, you'll only unleash death."
"Yes," said the red tide of magic, "let me destroy."
But it didn't have the same living feeling as the black magic that coated me and drank my tears from my cheeks. It was just destructive magic, cold and powerful.
Jade Eyes drew back.
"Did you hear that?" I asked. "There will be no new Empire to rule if you free them."
His face changed abruptly to a hate-filled snarl and he jumped to his feet. "You think you know everything."
He slammed the end of the staff into my diaphragm and I curled up, gasping for breath that wouldn't come. Darkness hovered in front of my eyes, but I remembered my aunt's voice in my ear "Straighten out, boy. Give your lungs room to work." And I forced my legs straight and drew in a small breath of air. The next breath was larger.
> I opened my eyes in time to see him touch the gem with his tear-covered fingers. The black mist of magic grew very still, as if it were waiting.
Jade Eyes snapped his fingers impatiently. "It must need blood, too," he said.
He rolled me flat on my back and drew his knife. He bent and cut the stained bandage from my waist, ripping the fabric off and setting the wound bleeding again. He took the staff and shoved the Bane into my wound.
I felt the icy touch of the gem, felt it feed on me. It sent slivers of agony arcing through my bones, and warm writhing pleasure through my muscles until I couldn't tell which was which.
"Up, Ward, damn it. If you lay like a lump because you've taken a bruise, you'll end up with a slit throat." The memory of my aunt's voice seemed tied into the mist feathering my cheeks with an icy touch that brought some clearness to my head.
With the force of will that had been toughened by my father and my aunt for different purposes, I reached up and gripped the staff with both hands and ripped it out of Jade Eyes's hands.
He must have been using magic on the Bane as well as my blood, because his body convulsed when he lost contact with the staff. He fell, momentarily unconscious, half on top of Oreg.
I pulled the Bane from my flesh, and it was harder than it should have been to do that. Using the staff to aid me, I struggled to my feet, my head hitting the pole that held that section of the tent roof rigid. Then I realized that Jade Eyes must have set a command upon the staff before releasing it.
He'd wanted me dead so no other would have a claim upon the Bane, and the red tide of magic, bloated from my blood, flooded my body in an attempt to carry out Jade Eyes's directive.
I knew the form of several binding spells. Oreg had taught most of them to me.
"If you don't know them," he'd said, "you can't break them."
I could see the bindings on the gem when I focused on it. The ties that held the Bane to follow Jade Eyes's command faded under my thrust of magic but not quickly enough. A red tide of pain sliced through me and breathing became difficult.
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