by Natalie Grey
Chapter Twenty-Five
Philip, to his credit, did not smile. He lifted his chin slightly to survey Taliesen. What he was thinking, I had no idea.
Which was part of the problem.
“I’m a sorcerer,” he said finally. It was his courtier voice, too smooth, always leading to a cruel joke. “What was it you said about us? That we were freaks? Mutants?”
Taliesen smiled. “You would forgive that, I think, to be a part of the world I would build.”
Danger thrilled along every nerve, and before I could stop myself, I shot a glance at Bronach. Her eyes were narrowed, her hands clenched around the fabric of her cloak.
“Does this unsettle you, Nicola Beaumont?” Taliesen had seen the look. Now there was a laugh in his voice as he spoke to me. “Do you not want me to speak to this man of a world he need not fear? A world where his own kind would be safe?”
I said nothing.
He leaned forward. “And it’s more than that, isn’t it? You wish I had asked you. Your blood still sings to you of a world you could rule, no matter how you try to tell yourself that it’s wrong to want it. You never forgot what you truly were, even over all those years.”
I struggled to breath.
“But you never had the vision for this,” Taliesen said. He nodded to Philip. “This one, though … he did. He understood what you never did.”
“And what is that?” I asked quietly. I knew I didn’t want to hear the answer.
I also knew he wasn’t going to let us out of here until we played his little game.
Taliesen settled back in his chair with a smile. “He knew that the best way to rule, is not to let your subjects know you rule them. Let them know that someone is above them, pulling the strings, and they will always want a taste of the power. They will revolt for it, they will foment rebellion after tiring rebellion, until the throne is shaky. Better to rule them without them even knowing it.”
It was so tempting to be drawn into the vision. I could see it easily, all of us hidden away and watching the world turn like a little machine to our bidding. Once, I had wanted raw power—blood-drenched and cruel. I wanted humanity to suffer for what it had done to me and my kind. But this … watching them run like hamsters on wheels, never even seeing the chains that bound them….
It was a more seductive vision than I liked.
I shoved the thought away and filled my head with nothing but contempt for Taliesen.
“Is this some illuminati thing?” I raised an eyebrow. “Because, if so, I have bad news for you about conspiracy theories you read on the internet.”
He smiled over my head at Philip. “I saw the truth of it at the Conclave. I saw the futility in all of your kind. The sorcerers wanted to rule over the magical world, they could not grasp the idea of something more. I saw you at her side—” he gave a smug nod at me “—and knew you hadn’t seen the truth yet. I knew that if the Monarchists won, you would spark a war like nothing humanity had ever seen before. There was a chance, of course, that you could have won it. But not a good one.”
“So you went and made your own plan,” Philip drawled. He strolled to one of the benches and sat, booted feet propped against one another. He leaned back on an elbow and studied Taliesen. “You’re not a Unitarian, clearly. One might be forgiven for thinking of you as a Separatist.”
“That was how I voted, yes.” Taliesen lifted his shoulders. “And I held my tongue while the sorcerers looked down on all the druids. I knew that every single one of your plans was destined to fail. I only wanted it to be the plan that left both humanity and the druidic council relatively unscathed.”
“You knew the Separatists would fail?” Now Philip sounded deeply skeptical. “You want me to believe that you predicted the plague. You predicted Terric assassinating Nicola and rising to power, only to fall centuries later?”
Yes, I wanted to shout. Keep asking questions, don’t trust him!
The last thing this day needed was Philip coming up with a new plan to take over the world.
“Of course not.” Taliesen almost rolled his eyes. “One need not predict the future exactly to know the shape of what will come. It was clear from the start that there was too much resentment for any of the factions to back down.” His smile was poisonous. “So I made my inroads with the Unitarians. I convinced them to lay the groundwork for their movement very, very slowly—and in the meantime, I waited for the Separatists and the Monarchists to destroy one another. I knew they would, somehow.”
He stood up and began to make his way slowly, very slowly, down the stairs.
“I couldn’t let humanity be destroyed, of course. You see, they’re clever—they’re very clever.”
“Clever like vermin,” Philip shot back. “Untrustworthy, envious of power, eager to rip anyone down who has more than they do.”
Oh, no. This was not going the right direction. And yet, what could I say? All the words that came to my mind were the same arguments I had once laughed at myself: everyone has a right to live, it is not our right to take their lives, protecting ourselves need not mean hurting them.
Taliesen laughed. “Of course. Even druids are the same way. And humans are numerous—Heaven forbid they find a common enemy, yes? So it was imperative that their anger and their scorn be directed at one another, not at us.”
“Why leave them alive at all?” Philip snarled.
“Because of what they can create,” Taliesen said smoothly. His voice was like silk.
To my surprise, I saw Philip go still.
“Ah.” There was a wealth of satisfaction in that one word. “You already know, don’t you? You realized the same thing. They’re such clever little things, aren’t they? Denied magic, they make weapons of such power that even a druid could not fight them easily. Despite their puny little lifespans, they build the most incredible things.”
I looked back and forth between them. I didn’t know where this was going, but I was pretty sure it was nowhere good.
And I wanted them to stop before the old me, the ice-cold, megalomaniacal bitch, broke free and started to agree with him. We were already far too close to that happening.
“You’ve noticed their ingenuity,” Taliesen said to Philip. “I can tell.”
“Of course I have.” Philip sounded almost sulky. “But it’s an accident. It’s only luck.”
“On the contrary: give them a fear of death, a need for their works to live on after them, and deprive them of magic … and they will never stop creating incredible things.” Taliesen’s eyes were wide and mad now. “You wanted something of theirs, did you not?”
Philip sighed. He looked at me, then back at Taliesen. I could see him deciding whether or not to give the truth.
“Their satellites,” he said finally. “Missile silos and satellites.”
You want to get in good with their kings, I had accused him. And then you can spread disease.
He was right—I hadn’t understood at all.
Philip stood. He rolled his head around and smoothed his hair, and then he strolled toward me.
“They have the power,” he explained to me, “to target any place on Earth and destroy it utterly. They have aircraft that no living being is in, guided from chairs thousands of kilometers away. I couldn’t work those things on my own, of course … yet. But I had spies working their way up through each agency. Someday, every one of those satellites would have been mine.”
“Philip….” I couldn’t tell if it was despair in my voice, or some sort of envy. Don’t do this, don’t be this person.
I can only hold out for so long. My fingertips itched at the mere mention of those drones, those toys.
I wished Daiman were here to steady me, to tell me that I could choose a different path. I wanted him to tell me that over time, it would get easier to do the right thing.
But Daiman was gone.
“Help me build a world full of clever minions, and every technology you want shall be yours,” Taliesen promised him. “They will make more
things, better things. And we will harvest those, to use against any foolish sorcerers or druids that would stop us. Join me, be my champion, and you will sit at my right hand.”
“Don’t do it,” I said urgently. It wasn’t my most eloquent moment.
“You walked away from all of that,” Philip told me. “You undid my plans, you tried to kill me, you imprisoned me in another world—you kept me in a cage. Tell me why I shouldn’t take his offer, Nicola.”
I had no answer to that. None at all. I closed my eyes against the sound of Taliesen’s laughter.
At least, I thought, Philip and I would finally have it out. Hadn’t I always known this confrontation was coming?
Best to get it over with, one way or another.
And then I opened my eyes, and saw the look in his.
Druids could speak to one another mind to mind, Daiman had told me. It was a difficult trick to learn, and not often used. To touch the mind of another human was a level of intimacy few were comfortable with.
I didn’t need to touch his mind, though, to know what he was thinking. I could see it in his eyes plain as day. He kept his lips in a light sneer, aware of Taliesen’s avid gaze on the two of us, but his blue eyes told a different story:
Now that you know the plan … be part of it with me. I don’t want to rule the world with him, I want to rule it with you. Join me.
I looked back at Daiman’s still form. He was gone, I told myself. He was gone, and he was never coming back. I had to say goodbye to the life I had planned with him.
I couldn’t ask myself what he’d want me to do anymore. I had to choose for myself.
I looked back at Philip, and gave a tiny nod.
Yes.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Philip moved first. He flung a casual arm out sideways and his power leapt from one lich, to another and another. They screamed while the electricity coursed through them, and there was the smell of burning flesh.
I winced, but he didn’t even pause. He turned, more power bursting from his fingertips, and I knew there wasn’t much time before Taliesen realized what was happening.
The life within Taliesen’s lich, such as it was, made me sick. It was neither life nor death, but a perversion of both. It was part of his soul in another body. I could feel them, like one angry horde, their eyesight dim. Their minds were long gone.
They needed to stay dead. I sucked the false life from them and flung it away from myself with a curse. I didn’t want it to touch me.
“What?” Bronach and Taliesen spoke at the same time.
Neither Philip nor I listened. First the minions, then other enemies. I could smell the ozone in the air as we circled one another. Each of us had the other’s back. Each of us exulted in the power in our blood.
How many fights had been like this? I remembered some of them, Philip’s power skittering over plate mail and swords, mine sucking the life from our enemies. We had learned to fight together, he and I.
We were good at it. Lich burst into flames or into tiny piles of ash—I was well able to speed up the process of decomposition to a single instant. I could feel Philip smiling, and I couldn’t help doing the same. It felt good to use my power. How long had it been since I had set myself loose like this?
Too long. This was what I was.
When the lich were gone, we turned as one. Taliesen was gazing around the hall in desperation. He’d been relying on his army, on the sheer horror of reanimated bodies.
He hadn’t, after all, completed the spell to make himself like a god.
But he was still on the dais. Even in his fear, he had a desperate sneer.
“You can’t touch me,” he spat. “These wards have stood for thousands of years, you cannot break them.”
“Oh, I think we can.” I began to leech the power from them, my eyes drifting half-closed, and I almost purred with the power. “You never fought sorcerers, did you? You made all these wards for druids: for the way they thought, the way they cast magic. You didn’t think about someone like me.”
I saw the power pool in the crystal on his staff, and I threw myself sideways as the magic radiated out. Philip and I went down, arms entwined, circled together against the rays of the spell. They hit the far walls with a thunk and the creak of a protesting building, and I shivered at the idea of what they would have done to flesh.
They would have severed my head from my body.
I had to get up. I could feel Philip’s frantic heartbeat against mine, and the momentary pressure of his arms: thank God he didn’t hit you.
I squeezed my arms back, just for a moment, and hauled him up. Power was gathering in the staff again, and I redoubled my efforts into draining the wards. Philip’s power was dancing over it, a lightning storm such as I had never seen.
It was slow, but we were making a dent—and with the power I took from the wards on my own, all we needed was patience. I darted sideways again and rolled over charred wood. Patience and agility.
“You can’t kill me, you know!” Taliesen shouted. His last projectile had laid a scorched line onto the wooden floor. “You think treachery is enough, and raw power, but you have never built anything close to my spells.”
He threw his arm up to point at Bronach.
“Yeah?” I met her eyes for only a moment before looking away. I couldn’t stand the betrayal I saw there. “What about her?”
“Ha.” Taliesen’s laugh was a bark, as much vengeance as anything else. “She’s bound to me. Long ago—long ago—I nearly killed her. All these years, I regretted not finishing the job. She was canny, she hid from me.”
Bronach stared at him, her eyes filled with fury.
“She thought she won,” Taliesen said quietly. “When she ran, she thought she was buying more time. But the spell kept us tied to one another. It’s a bond that will keep us both alive even if the whole world burns.” He bared his teeth at her. “You never thought you’d be the one to save me, did you? And no magic to curse me with, either. I have your power … and with your life force, I will never die.”
Her fingers made claws, as if she would scratch his eyes out, but there was nothing she could do. I could feel her rage and despair, radiating across the room and beating against me like waves.
Philip had drawn close to me. “What could you do with a whole human life?” he whispered to me. “Could you take the wards down?”
“Of course.” To take a bit of someone’s blood energy was intoxicating enough, but the whole of a life was so much power that it would hardly fit in my own skin. If one knew how to use death magic—and I really, really did—a full life was enough to do almost anything with.
“He says the bond keeps them alive,” Philip murmured. His breath stirred my hair, and the heat of him, the smell of him, filled all my senses. “But with a life, you could break the bond and the wards all at once, couldn’t you?”
I looked at him, at his bright blue eyes. I knew what he meant, but I wanted him to say it.
“She’s useless,” he whispered to me. He threw a glance to where Taliesen was still taunting Bronach. “She brought you here, she taught you to see time, but she has no more to give. She has no power of her own, and she gives power to our enemy. You know what you have to do—the balance has to shift, or we won’t win this fight.”
“I know.” I looked at Bronach, at the strangeness of her form, shifting almost like the trees in the heart of the world, and then back to Philip. I reached up to touch his cheek. “And I want you to know … part of me never stopped loving you. Part of me would follow you anywhere.”
He caught my hand in his, and I saw the fierce joy there. “And I would follow you anywhere,” he promised back. “Nicola, I built you a world beyond your wildest dreams. Let me show it to you.”
I took a moment, his eyes on mine. I looked over his perfect face, over the hard pleasure in every line of him. Right now, it was all I could do not to cry.
“No,” I said simply.
I did it too fast for h
im to protest. He had dropped his guard, he had no magic ready for me. I pulled the life from him in one swift movement and threw it with all my might so that it twisted around the bond between Bronach and Taliesen.
Because I could see it now—heavy chains pulling away her power, siphoning it so that she never had the chance to use it.
It was with her power, then, that Taliesen had laid the groundwork for his sacrifice. It was with her power, I would be willing to bet, that he had influenced the minds of the druids so that he held power for centuries. It was when she showed me her memories in the heart of the world that he felt me, my presence on the lifeline between them.
And it was with her power that he was immortal twice over, from his own power and the strength of her life.
And so he had grown sloppy. He had become so sure that he could never be killed, that he hadn’t ever thought to protect himself.
Philip’s body fell heavily to the ground behind me and I heard something that sounded very much like a sob as I severed the chain between them. Bronach stumbled, a hand pressed over her heart, and Taliesen screamed.
But I tore the wards down as well, in one smooth stroke. I was humming with power, and even when the ancient force of them, as solid as stone, drained the rest of Philip’s life and more from my blood, it felt better to be exhausted than to carry so much within myself.
It would have burned me alive if I had held onto it.
A life—a whole life—was a great deal of power.
I looked up at Bronach. I was wheezing, still light-headed with power and pain and the absence of both.
“Do it,” I whispered.
She took pleasure in it. It was uncomfortable to watch, someone enjoying the act of taking a life, but I understood. After all these years, after having been banished, after watching Taliesen lie and manipulate and use her magic to kill and make himself a god, I could very well understand the savage joy she took in ending his life.
He didn’t put up much of a fight. If he’d ever learned finesse with his magic, or efficiency, both were long gone after years of believing himself invulnerable.
