Stubborn? Perhaps, but his reticence was more due to a reluctance to give up what little control he still had over his own mind and body, even for a few minutes. He couldn't be angry with her, though. Not for something as beneficial as this.
He slowly raised his hand and brushed his thumb across her cheek, then her lips. “I trust you. You can do this to me again when I need it. I don't like it, but it's better than letting these headaches peak.”
Marita kissed his hand. “Thank you.”
The green mist evaporated but the effervescence remained. He could deal with that. The aura was more interesting than painful, just a prelude to the hours of torture he'd have experienced if the headache had been allowed to progress.
Shan closed his eyes and smiled. “I should be thanking you. Thank you. You read me so well now. I think I've known you forever.”
The door opened and closed. Slippered feet scuffed the floor. Shan kept his eyes closed. The intruder didn't deserve to be acknowledged.
“Not now. Please.” Marita's voice was a strident plea, a jarring contrast to the gentleness she had whispered only moments before. “Please.”
“I have considered your request and I am granting it. You will be moved to a balcony suite before I return him to you.”
No. No, no, no, not again. Go away, Nylian. Shan's breath caught in his throat as the small muscles between his ribs tightened. He wouldn't go. He wouldn't open his eyes. Maybe Nylian would leave if he thought Shan was asleep.
“Please don't take him today. Please.”
“Marita, I understand you have recently experienced a loss. I am sorry. I understand how difficult it is to lose a child. Unfortunately, Shannon has reached the stage of this process where timing is essential, so I must take him from you again. I will return him in two days. Astrea will keep you company until then, and she will help you settle in your new suite. Feel free to modify the décor and garden as you wish.”
Shan forced shallow breaths as Nylian's deceptively soft-spoken demeanor invaded his senses. The High King practiced measured kindness toward those he loved and cared about, but Shan wasn't one of those fortunate souls. He was little more than a reminder of a mistake Nylian once made, a mistake that conceived Shan's paternal grandmother, and Shan was only made valuable by the misfortune of his innate gift for warlock magic.
Shuffling feet approached. Nylian's gait was strange, and listening to him walk made Shan uneasy. “Shannon, I can see that you are not asleep. Stand and come with me.”
Marita's fingers combed through Shan's shaggy hair. “No, he's not asleep. I worked a spell on him not ten minutes ago. He's relaxed, and numbed so the warning sensations he had won't intensify into another of those explosive headaches. Well they might now, if you insist upon stealing him from me.”
“I insist, but I always return him.”
“Maimed and broken. What you do to him makes him suicidal. I hope you know that.” Marita's voice was acidic grit spat through a clenched jaw.
“That is not my intent. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. I will be more careful with his mind, and I will place a ward on the balcony edge to keep him from being tempted by it. He is too important for his life to remain at risk.”
“He's your kin, your descendant, and the only care you have for him is what he can do. You're just as cruel to him as your bastard daughter was. You have no love for him beyond his power.”
“You are wrong,” Nylian whispered, his voice crackling like brittle autumn leaves. He stepped closer, then bent to touch Shan's shoulder. “Come with me, Shannon. I wish to teach you something new while I work on your left foot. This lesson will not hurt beyond the needle. Accept this lesson and I will allow you free movement to the library next to your new suite. I believe you'll find the contents quite inspiring.”
Marita grabbed Shan's hand and squeezed. “Please don't take him.”
Shan opened his eyes to meet her teary green irises. He stroked her jawline with his free hand as he tried not to let his own tears form. He had no real choices aside from how he reacted to what Nylian compelled him to do. He didn't have the fortitude today to fight the inevitable. “It's all right. I'll be back with you soon.”
Shan eased himself upright, and then to his feet. Mild vertigo threatened his balance and his head still tingled, but he felt no pain. Marita's spell had numbed his body and he hoped the effect would last through this round of mutilation.
Nylian stood before him, a slender hand on his red-robed hip and his pointed ears twitching through his waist-length wheaten hair. He touched a finger to the delicate gold scaling that ran down the sides of his face and neck as his turquoise eyes bored into Shan. Shan had the same eyes, not only the color but also the shape and intensity.
Nylian's golden wings raised slightly, then flattened against his shoulders. The wings were a gift from one of his nine dragons, a bind that had left him physically changed. He was as much feral dragon as he was noble elf, and Shan found his odd appearance simultaneously repulsive and captivating.
Shan pursed his lips and whistled. “Lumin. Come.”
“Chirp?” The dragon's luminescent tail bulb became visible beneath the bed, but the rest of his body remained hidden behind Marita's collection of yarn crates.
“I know, I don't want to either. Let's do it this time without a fuss so we'll be able to go outside whenever we choose.”
“Chirp.” Lumin flattened his serpentine body and wiggled out from under the bed. He shook his head free of a cobweb strand and trotted to Shan's side.
Shan reached down to pet Lumin between his golden horns. Nylian's eyes were still fixed upon him. The elf was unusually tall, just a fingerbreadth taller than half-elven Shan, and Shan was tempted to stand nose to nose with him to see how long it would take before he became uncomfortable. It would likely be a wasted effort. Nylian was perpetually imperturbable when it came to Shan's insolence.
“Don't go,” Marita whispered as she threw her arms around Shan. She squeezed him tightly, too tightly, and his ribs creaked.
Shan nudged her chin up so he could kiss her. “I'm sorry. My life isn't my own.” Lumin rubbed his head against Shan's leg. “I'm sorry.”
Marita nodded and released him. She said nothing else, but instead turned away and disappeared into the washroom. Shan thought he saw her offer Nylian an obscene gesture before she closed the door.
“Come, Shannon.” Nylian shuffled to the door. He paused for a moment before turning the handle. “We must travel to a remote section of The Halls, and I do not wish for her spell to wear off before I'm finished with the painful part of this ritual. I would like for her to work the same spell on you before each of our sessions. Pain is necessary to the process, but it distresses me to hear you scream.”
“Then how about you stop torturing me? I intend to scream for you whether or not I can feel what you're doing to me.” Shan passed him and stepped into the hallway, which ran in a circle around a thirty story atrium. The white stone floor was cold beneath his bare feet. He had been offered shoes when he was given new clothes, but he declined. Clothing was enough of a nuisance and he didn't' see the point of bothering with shoes when he wasn't allowed to go outside.
“I cannot stop. You are too close to finished. You will be the first completed Spellkeeper in three hundred years. The others are incomplete and will remain as such until I find them.”
“Others? Well, I hope for their sake they're better at hiding than I was.”
“They are.”
Nylian said nothing further as he led Shan down the slope of the nearest bridge. Stairs were the shorter route to the foyer eight floors below Shan's suite, but Nylian never took them. Shan suspected he'd catch his wings on the steps and fall on his face. Shan wouldn't mind seeing that, but alas, the High King insisted upon using the bridges.
As always, the route was quiet and lonely. Shan was only allowed contact with a small number of palace staff and residents. Those few were consistently uneasy around of him,
and a splinter embedded itself in his heart every time one of them chose to shy away rather than have a simple conversation. He was by nature a social person and being starved of friendly contact was just as agonizing as what was being done to his body. It was by design, of course. He was fully aware that Nylian's intent was to grate away at Shan's spirit until he was reduced to nothing but a subservient core. Once the intangible substance that was Shan was gone, Nylian would build him into something new, something powerful and frightening. Shan would never allow him to get that far.
They reached the empty foyer and Nylian paused at the center of the five-pointed star mosaic inlay on the floor. His left ear twitched as he spun toward Shan. His lips pursed and his eyebrow raised as he asked, “Do you remember how to descend from this point?”
Shan snorted. “I don't remember shit. Whatever you do to me takes more of my memories than it leaves. I don't know what month it is. Hell, I don't know the year. I'm not sure how old I am anymore.”
“You are nineteen. The year is 3893. The month does not matter. I apologize for removing some of your memory, but sometimes it is better to forget.” Nylian's wings ruffled as his shoulders pinched into a shudder. “We repeat this conversation every time we reach this foyer.”
“Then stop making me have it.”
“It will end, but not until you are who you are meant to be. I am sorry, but what you are experiencing is necessary.” Nylian turned away and shuffled toward a red marble archway.
“Shitswilling asshole,” Shan muttered before following him.
“Chi-rup?” Lumin dashed in front of Shan, his tail whipping side to side. The dragon was clearly more enthused about the impending torture than Shan was.
“Just because you're out of the room doesn't mean you're going somewhere exciting.”
“Chirp?” Lumin shook his shoulders, then slowed to match Shan's pace.
Shan rested his hand on top of the dragon's head. “It's okay. This time, it's okay. I'll take it if it means we get to go outside. Let's just get it over with.”
Two royal guards flanked a silver door directly ahead. Shan had no memory of passing through this door before, but he did recognize the guards. The one on the left was particularly enchanting, a dark-haired young elf with a mischievous smirk and friendly gray eyes. Shan winked at him as the right guard opened the door. The young guard tried to restrain a smile. Shan might have pursued that guard if he hadn't already been married to Marita. Maybe someday he'd learn the name attached to that pretty face, but for now he was no more than an anonymous infatuation.
Shan brushed against the gray-eyed elf's elbow as he passed into the threshold. The guard remained at attention, stoic aside from the smirk on his full lips. Marita knew about Shan's propensity for flirting with the guards, but she claimed it didn't bother her. She knew he was devoted to her and her alone, but she didn't see a problem with him distracting himself with little crushes here and there. It was harmless, and as close to a friendly, non-familial social exchange as he was allowed.
A second set of silver doors opened and Shan found himself in a tiny square room, no more than two yards on a side. An irritating-looking dwarf sat on a stool in the corner, his hands on a complicated system of levers and pulleys. Shan jumped as the door closed behind him. He couldn't remember this room or the elderly dwarf, but his instincts told him neither were anything to fear.
“Your Majesty . . . Spellkeeper Goldtree . . . where would you like to go now?” the dwarf asked with a sniff and a nod of his head. His nose twitched, but he didn't release his grip on the levers to relieve the itch.
“To the bottom, Bromdir. Thank you,” Nylian said. He faced the door, his wings draped close to his body as if they were a golden cloak. Lumin sat next to him, his tail tightly coiled around his haunches. “Mind the walls, Shannon.”
Shan stepped closer to Nylian as the floor jerked, then lowered. He vaguely remembered this device, a moving platform that allowed riders to easily ascend and descend the levels below the residency atrium. Shan had never seen those seventy levels himself but Marita had told him they were made up of offices and public halls, museums and armories, larders and libraries, chapels and undercrofts. The Halls of Anthora was a city in itself, almost a separate entity from the city of Anthora beyond its walls. It would take years for Marita to explore it all, but Shan was barely allowed a glimpse.
Down, down, down they went as the white stone walls rushed by. The platform was an open cage and to reach for a wall would have meant losing a hand.
Shan hummed to himself during the descent. He hoped the sound was an annoyance to Nylian, but the High King showed no outward sign of irritation.
The dwarf released the levers and the platform came to rest. The walls were dark gray here, a marked contrast to the white stone of the rest of The Halls.
The door creaked open and Nylian stepped out. The dwarf huffed and returned his hands to the levers. He tapped his foot against his stool as he glared at Shan.
Shan smirked as he walked backward off the platform. “Sorry I inconvenienced you. Feel free to return to your brooding now.”
The dwarf snarled and the door slammed shut. Lumin growled, then slunk away from the door. Shan startled into Nylian, whose balance remained as steady as his mood.
“Bromdir has operated the lift since my mother was a child,” Nylian murmured. He stepped forward, forcing Shan to correct his own balance. “He keeps a basket of notebooks next to his stool and writes books when his services aren't in use. They're vulgar, indecent stories, which I suppose is why he publishes them under aliases. I've heard they're quite popular in the bookshops of the red alleys and Bromdir makes enough off them to live comfortably, so he continues to work for me because he chooses to and not because he needs the salary.”
Coming from anyone else, Shan would have assumed the story was a joke, but he'd never known Nylian to be anything but serious. He held a hand to his mouth to hide a smile and asked, “What are the aliases?”
“Ask him. He will proudly tell you, but only if you refrain from being so rude to him.”
“I don't think I can do that, Nylian.”
Nylian pursed his lips and closed his eyes. “No, you can't, can you? You have far too much Goldtree in your blood.”
Shan shrugged and looked past Nylian. They were on a landing lit by a single sconce. He couldn't see what was in the darkness beyond the edge, but the hollowness of their voices alone was enough to carve a pit in his gut and throw a shiver up his spine. “I'm proudly a Goldtree and a Sylleth. I'd rather not claim any of the rest of my lineage. Nightshadow. Lightborn. I can't find anything to be proud of in either line.”
Silence, aside from the rising pulse beating in Shan's ears. Nylian tilted his head slightly to the right, but his eyes did not narrow and his jaw muscles remained relaxed. “No, I imagine you cannot. Not at this moment. Continue following me.” He turned away and shuffled across landing. A second sconce lit the edge, revealing a gentle downward slope.
There must be something I can do to anger this man, Shan thought. The faint hope that Nylian would toss him off the landing was gone now, and Shan resigned himself to the darkness. The shadows undulated and whispered, but he couldn't understand what they were saying. They wanted something from him. No, not something. Everything. They wanted to extinguish what little light he still possessed and replace it with endless shadow. That was the curse of the warlock, the constant battle between light and darkness, both internal and external. Balance between the two was the most difficult state for the warlock to achieve, but prior to becoming Spellkeeper it was Shan's goal. Now his sole struggle was to avoid falling completely into the abyss.
“What is this place?” Shan asked. His balance was unsteady as he followed Nylian downward. Marita's spell had left him feeling slightly inebriated. “Have I been here before?”
One by one the sconces lit, then one by one they extinguished as Shan left them behind. This was Nylian's magic, lightbinder witch magic, and Shan sus
pected the lights would only turn on in the High King's presence.
“You have not. We are far beneath The Halls of Anthora, nearing the heart of the mountain itself.” Nylian snapped his fingers. Every sconce lit at once, revealing a spiraling ramp around a deep, black-walled cavern. They were near the bottom, but a cluster of massive stalagmites obscured whatever sat beyond the terminal twist of the slope.
The sound of distant running water rose to meet Shan's ears as his hands and feet grew cold. “You brought me to a gods-damned cave.”
“I know your feelings about caverns, Shannon, and I would like to reassure you that this experience will be fleeting. You will not be left alone or in the dark. This is not Ranalae's labyrinth.”
“It's a sarding gods-damned cave. You brought me to a cave.” Shan's hands trembled as his knees threatened to give way. Marita's spell chilled his panic, but it wasn't enough. Fear surged through every muscle, every nerve, then settled deep in his joints and screamed at him to run. Run. Run you fool. You'll die here. Shan gulped and clutched his resilience pendant. It amplified Marita's spell, offering further numbness, but no relief.
Shan's knees failed and he sank to the ramp. The stone was cold, but the fingers he could still feel were colder. He no longer possessed blood, for nothing but dark ice ran through his collapsing veins. Gray spots swarmed his vision. He rocked to the side as he embraced his knees. Maybe if he closed his eyes, it would go away. Maybe if he held his breath he would wake up with Marita and wouldn't remember any of this.
He dropped his forehead to his knees and gasped. Infernal lungs wouldn't allow him to faint. No, they demanded, no, you must feel every bit of this hell. You must remember the caves and the darkness, the mutilation and torture. Remember all of it. Feel all of it. Now. Right now.
Lumin nosed Shan's elbow, gently the first time, then forcefully the second. Go away, little beast. You remind me of the darkness.
“Shannon, you cannot sit here. I have a place for you to rest. Follow me a little bit further.”
Spellkeeper Page 6
