“You keep telling yourself that, Phane. Alexander will defeat you, of that I have no doubt.”
“Your confidence in him is touching. One day, I hope you’ll hold me in such high regard.”
“Now I know you’re delusional.”
“Don’t be so certain, Isabel. Over the course of my life, I’ve turned many people away from the empty promises of the light. Once people get a taste for the raw power offered by the netherworld, they tend to embrace it with a kind of commitment bordering on fanaticism. I expect you will be no different.”
“I’ll die before I’ll serve the darkness.”
“I know you believe that now, but that’s exactly why you’ll become not just a servant of the darkness, but its champion. At present, your commitment to the light is nearly perfect, so when you fall, your own faith in the light and in yourself will be so shattered that you’ll embrace the darkness completely and without reservation because you’ll believe that you deserve it, you’ll believe that the only punishment sufficient for your crimes is the forfeiture of your soul to the netherworld. And there you will find solace, acceptance, and understanding.”
“You have some grand plans, I’ll give you that,” Isabel said. “The trouble is, I don’t see how you plan to get from here to there.”
“I’m so glad you asked,” Phane said with an unabashed smile. “Issa, go see if the child is finished with her bath. If so, bring her here.”
Issa bowed and then vanished, wisps of black smoke dissipating quickly.
“What are you doing, Phane?”
“You didn’t think I went to all the trouble of bringing her here just to use as leverage against you in an interrogation, did you? No, I have much bigger plans for her … and there she is,” Phane said, extending his open hand to Wren as she descended the stairs.
“Come here, child.”
Wren walked to the corner of the table and stood between Isabel and Phane. “Yes sir?”
“So vulnerable, so young,” Phane said softly, motioning to one of the guards. The big, armored man stopped precisely, coming to attention a few steps away.
“What are you doing, Phane?” Isabel said, fear and rage flashing in her eyes.
He ignored her, looking up at the soldier. “Strike the girl across the face with an open hand, hard.”
The soldier didn’t hesitate, didn’t question the order. He hit Wren so hard that she fell sprawling across the floor.
Isabel bolted to her side, rolling her gently over and cradling her head in her lap. “Oh Wren, are you all right?”
She didn’t answer, her eyes unfocused, her face red and bleeding from a cut along her cheekbone. Isabel started muttering under her breath, letting Wren’s pain fuel her rage. A moment later, she unleashed a light-lance at the soldier, burning a hole through his chest and through the walls of the house until daylight streamed in. The man fell dead without a word.
Phane started clapping slowly, smiling triumphantly. “Well done, Isabel. You’ve just taken your first step toward the darkness. How did it feel? Did it make you feel powerful?” He leaned forward intently, scrutinizing her while she deliberately let the rage drain away.
“He was just following orders-he was innocent,” Phane said. “And you killed him in cold blood.”
“No! He wasn’t innocent,” Isabel shouted. “Any full-grown man who would brutalize a child just because someone told him to isn’t innocent. And maybe his violation of the Old Law in this instance didn’t warrant death, but his service to you absolutely does. In fact, I’d have no problem killing any of your soldiers-you are the enemy of the Old Law and by extension, so are they. Alexander has already sentenced all of you to death … you just haven’t died yet.”
Phane tipped his head back and laughed. “Fair enough, I suppose that one can rationalize almost anything-almost.” He locked eyes with her, triumph dancing in his golden irises. “You see, the real reason I brought the child here was because I expect you to kill her.”
“What!”
“She’s the perfect candidate,” Phane said with a shrug.
“What are you talking about?” Isabel said, cold seeping into her bones.
“You love her. She’s innocent, vulnerable, and completely defenseless in the face of your power. Once you kill her, your spirit will break. You’ll no longer be able to look into the light, and if you do, all you will see is condemnation. And in that condemnation, you’ll discover the truth of the light … its empty promises will be revealed and you will come to understand that all the light has to offer is judgment.
“You’ll struggle against it, but in the end, you’ll turn to the darkness and all of your guilt and shame will be washed away. The darkness will never judge you, it will never condemn you. Only then will you truly be free.”
“You’re insane. I will never hurt Wren, and there’s nothing you can do to make me.”
“I wouldn’t be so certain of that,” Phane said smugly. “Azugorath is tenacious. Eventually, she will succeed and you will kill your young friend.”
“If your pet demon manages to take control of me, I’ll just be the weapon, not the murderer.”
“You miss the point. The memory of her murder at your hands will live in your mind. You will, no doubt, relive it over and over again until you see it in your sleep. The real question is: Will you ever be able to forgive yourself?
“Ah, it looks like she’s waking up. Dierdra, attend to her injuries,” Phane said, standing up. He motioned to the dead soldier and his fellow guard carried him from the room.
Dierdra knelt next to Wren and gently inspected her face.
“It doesn’t look broken, dear, but you’re going to have a nasty bruise. Let’s get you over to the couch so I can attend to this properly.”
Phane stopped at the door. “Everyone in this fortress belongs to you, Isabel, except me, of course. If anyone displeases you for any reason, feel free to kill them.” He left laughing.
***
“I don’t understand why he hit me,” Wren said.
“Phane’s using you to get to me,” Isabel said, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. After she and Wren had returned to her bedroom, she’d dismissed her servants and sat down next to Wren on the edge of the bed.
“But why? I don’t understand any of this,” she said, struggling to keep from crying again. “I’m so scared,” she whispered, closing her eyes, squeezing tears from each.
“I know, I’m scared, too.”
“Really? You didn’t act scared. I remember thinking how brave you were standing up to Prince Phane like that.”
“Courage doesn’t mean you don’t feel fear, it just means you choose a rational course of action in the face of it. Wren, I need you to be brave and I need you to grow up much faster than I would like.”
She opened her deep blue eyes and nodded. “I’ll do whatever you tell me to.”
Isabel shook her head sadly. “No, Wren, I need you to do more than that. I need you to think for yourself. That’s the first step. You need to be aware that you’re in danger here and you need to be willing and able to make difficult decisions even when you’re afraid … especially when you’re afraid.”
Wren blinked, then swallowed, nodding timidly.
“I wish I could shield you from all of this, but the truth is, you’re the only ally I have here and I need your help. There’s so much more at stake than just you and me.”
“What can I do?”
“First, you need to understand the situation we’re in, so listen carefully. Phane has a very powerful demon, probably buried under that black tower in the center of town, and that demon is trying to get into my mind, trying to control me-and she’s winning. She almost made me kill Alexander. That’s why I left him and came here, so I wouldn’t be a threat to anyone I love, and that’s why Phane brought you here. He wants me to kill you.”
“Why would you do that?” Wren asked, more tears slipping from her eyes.
“I wouldn’t,” Isabe
l said, wiping a tear from her own cheek. “But if I lose control, this demon will make me hurt you.”
“But why does Prince Phane care about me?”
“He doesn’t,” Isabel said. “He wants me to turn against everything I believe in and join him. He thinks I’ll do that if he can make me do something so horrible that I would never be able to forgive myself, and he might be right. I don’t know how I could live with myself if I killed you.”
Wren sniffed back her tears and frowned. “I don’t think I really understood what you’ve been fighting for until right now. I’ve always thought of evil as something you hear about in stories-make-believe. But it’s not, is it? It’s real.”
Isabel nodded sadly, another tear slipping down her cheek. “This is part of growing up that I didn’t want you to have to do, but I’m proud of you. Some people can stare into the face of evil all their lives and never really understand what they’re looking at.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“I came here to kill Phane. I got a knife into his belly, just not deeply enough. I have a plan to finish the job but I can’t do it alone, so I’m trying to call for help. Failing that, we need to escape, and that means we need to find a way out. Since the guards will be watching me carefully, I need you to explore the city for me.”
“But won’t the guards stop me?”
“No, Phane wants me to kill you; it’s an important part of his plan, so he’s ordered his men to leave you alone.”
“Except when he’s ordering them to hit me,” she said, touching her cheek tenderly.
“He did that to provoke me, and it worked,” Isabel said, shaking her head. “I have to be more careful, I can’t let him force my hand like that.”
“If you say they won’t hurt me, then I believe you, but I’m still afraid of them.”
“Good, that fear will keep your mind alert and help you spot danger before it gets too close. I want you to avoid Phane whenever you can, but I need you to explore this place and find a way out of here if there is one. Also, if you can find a knife or two, it would be good to have a weapon.”
Wren nodded.
“Tomorrow, we’ll go out and look around a bit, both of us. After that, I’ll start sending you on errands to get you out of this house and onto the streets.”
She nodded again.
“This next thing is going to be hard,” Isabel said. “If I don’t seem like myself, you need to run away from me and hide until I can regain control. In fact, that’s something else I want you to look for, hiding places, both in the house and out in the city.”
Wren nodded again.
“You get some rest now. We’ll talk more later,” she said, offering Wren a reassuring smile.
Isabel went to the balcony and reached out to Slyder. He was perched atop a tree watching the Karth encampment. She sent him into the air, circling higher and wider in an effort to pick up the trail, but the jungle was too thick and the skills of Karth’s soldiers were too good to find any trace of their passage. After an hour of searching, she told Slyder to remain in the area, then she returned to her body.
She was sitting on the balcony thinking through her options when Wren joined her.
“I’m not that tired and my face hurts just as much when I lie down as it does when I sit. What’re you doing?”
“I was trying to send a message with Slyder, but I can’t find my friends.”
“When I was in the boat, Lord Reishi came to me and told me he was sending help. Was that just a dream?”
“No, that was him,” Isabel said, smiling to mask the lump suddenly welling up in her throat.
“Then why doesn’t he come to you now?”
“I don’t know,” Isabel whispered. “I’m terrified that something horrible has happened.”
“Isabel,” Wren said, squeezing her hand, “he’s Lord Reishi. He’s probably just really busy.”
Isabel nodded, struggling to keep from crying because she knew that something was wrong. He would have come to her if he could have. The thought of losing him was something she fled from within her own mind. Despair capable of claiming her sanity accompanied that thought-yet another pathway to victory for Azugorath.
Chapter 7
Lacy was miserable. Her hand was healing wrong, leaving it useless and a source of constant pain. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept through the night. Every time she moved, the pain would wake her and it would be an hour before she could drift back into welcome oblivion. And then there were her dreams. For weeks she’d had visions of her father beseeching her to go to Ithilian, warning her that she was going the wrong way. But nobody would listen to her when she asked to go to Ithilian. Drogan and Commander Arnd had both told her repeatedly that such a voyage was far too dangerous. They assured her that she would be safe on Karth under the protection of Prince Phane and the Regency.
She wasn’t so sure. The Regency sailors and now the Regency soldiers had a way of looking at her that made her feel uncomfortable, not the way young men look at young women, but the way the soldiers outside the walls had looked at her the day they’d come to her home and destroyed her quiet little life. At least these soldiers all looked away when Drogan caught them leering at her, but that didn’t change what was in their hearts.
The ship had docked at a city on the southwest tip of Karth. Commander Arnd said they would be safer traveling from there to the Regency headquarters fortress. Lacy wanted to ask “Safer from what?” But she knew she wouldn’t get an answer, so she held her tongue and waited.
From the looks of the place, the little sea town had recently been converted into a shipyard. The people were busy building more than a dozen warships, and the Regency soldiers seemed intent on pushing the workers to the breaking point. Seeing the working conditions, Lacy began to wonder anew if she was making a terrible mistake by coming here. But then, when she tried to imagine the course she might have taken, she couldn’t pick a point in her journey where she would have chosen differently. It was just that so many of her decisions had been made for her, all of them bringing her one step closer to where she stood this very moment.
The journey from the port town took nearly a week. A hundred soldiers rode escort and her covered carriage was armored and well manned. Drogan spent most of the journey with her but he wasn’t interested in conversation-not that Drogan was much of a talker in the first place. Lacy passed the time looking out the window at the staggering variety of foliage in the lush jungle.
When they neared their destination, she couldn’t see the fortress wall because the carriage didn’t offer a forward view, but she did see the heavy stone gates and the array of defensive apertures cut into the hundred-foot tunnel leading through the wall. When the carriage slipped back into the light of day, it turned sharply before coming to a stop. A moment later, a soldier opened the door to the sound of trumpets in the distance.
The soldier offered his hand with a smile and a deferential bow. Unlike the other soldiers, he was wearing a clean and well-pressed uniform with a number of medals prominently displayed on his chest, and was armed with only a bejeweled short sword dangling from his hip.
She took his hand and stepped onto a carpet leading from her carriage to a small white gazebo that was terribly out of place in the austere stone square. Over a dozen high-ranking soldiers awaited her, each accompanied by a woman wearing expensive-looking dresses and jewels. Standing in the center of them all was a very handsome man wearing a dark brown robe that matched the color of his wavy, shoulder-length hair.
“I am Captain Erato,” the soldier said, offering her his arm once she’d stepped from the carriage. “Welcome to the Regency headquarters fortress. Please, come with me.” He spoke with charm, elegance, and practiced ease. His confidence in such a suddenly formal setting only served to undermine Lacy’s.
He walked her to the gazebo, stopping directly in front of the man in the robe. “Prince Phane, Generals and Ladies, it is my honor and privilege to presen
t Princess Lacy Fellenden.” With that, Erato stepped back, bowing low and taking a place just outside the gazebo as if standing a ceremonial guard post.
The man in the robe smiled with such pure, innocent joy that Lacy felt a little flutter in her stomach. “I am Phane Reishi. Welcome, Princess Lacy. You are safe. Zuhl and his brutes can’t hurt you anymore.”
Lacy looked around, a bit bewildered. “Thank you, Prince Phane …”
“Ah, please call me Phane. It would be so refreshing to dispose of titles and formalities. May I call you Lacy?”
She blinked, looking around at the formality of her welcome and feeling even more unsure of herself. “Of course. I’m grateful for your hospitality, but I’ve been entrusted with a task by my father and this journey has brought me very far off course.”
“Lacy, please,” Phane interrupted, “there will be plenty of time to discuss such matters. Let’s get you settled in first.”
“But,” she started to say, emphasizing her frustration with both hands and wincing in pain before she could finish her protest.
“Oh, Lacy, what’s happened to your hand? You must be in such agony.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Lacy said. “There’s something very dark pursuing me. You and your people aren’t safe with me here.”
Phane smiled like the sunrise, extending his open hand to the wall behind her. “I assure you, there are few who could breach these walls. We are all quite safe here.”
Lacy turned and saw the wall for the first time, a hundred feet tall and as sheer as a cliff. From the light at the other end of the tunnel, she could only guess that it was a hundred feet thick as well. She turned completely away from the greeting committee and stared in wonder at the massive fortification. Phane silently stepped up beside her, smiling in feigned wonder.
“How?”
“In truth, I don’t really know,” Phane said. “These walls were built long ago, though I suspect magic played a role.”
“If we’d had walls like these, my people would have survived Zuhl’s barbarity.”
“Lacy, let me take a look at your hand.”
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