The Crown of Stones: Magic-Scars

by C. L. Schneider

  I hadn’t meant for any of that to come out. I wasn’t sure I’d even realized I was holding it in. Either way, my confession didn’t have the impact I expected.

  “The only person still surprised by your nature, Troy, is you.”

  “And that means what?”

  “It means; of course you saved me. Your decisions are often illogical. Your emotions tend to leave bodies piled up around your feet. They’re also what make you so formidable, and so loyal.” Neela put a hand on my arm. “Erudite pride themselves on knowledge and ingenuity. But a Shinree soldier is forged with passion and might. They’re fed by their emotions, existing in a perpetual state of conflict between valor and violence.”

  “You sound like Jillyan.”

  “My sister-in-law and I speak on occasion. But those were my father’s words.”

  “Your father? What did Raynan Arcana know about being Shinree?”

  “Nothing. But he knew how to breed them. The point is,” she said as I scowled. “Valor triumphed when you saved me. But more often than not, the violence wins. Particularly in your case, Ian. Your Reth ancestry demands it.”

  “I have a good idea what my ancestry demands, Your Grace. You might want to think long and hard about what yours wants.” Her reply was a look caught somewhere between anger and embarrassment. I skirted around it and went back to the altars. “You need to move to the far wall.” I stared down into the pit. “I’m going to try a spell.”

  “Why? What do you think is down there?”

  “If you get me the rope, I’ll find out.”

  “You are not going into that hole. I forbid it.”

  I tossed her a smile. “Nice try.”

  Her shoulder’s stiffened. “You can’t cast with me down here. It isn’t safe.”

  “There’s plenty around for my spell to feed on. Besides, I didn’t kill you when we left Langor, did I?”

  “No, but was that by design or luck?”

  “I’m Shinree, Neela. I don’t believe in luck.”

  She stood a moment, trying to decide if I’d given her an answer. I hadn’t, but she brought me the rope anyway. “Be careful. If you break your neck I will never get out of here.”

  While Neela trekked over to the far side of the grotto, I located a sturdy stump and tied off one end of the rope. I tossed the rest of the coil into the pit. Winding the slack around one arm, I lowered myself down. The rope was just shy of hitting the bottom. I managed to drop the final, few feet without putting too much stress on my leg, but the mound of bones I hit shattered on contact. I brushed off the discomfort and the dust and surveyed the place. It only took a handful of seconds. There was nothing but more bones.

  I sat down among the pieces of skeleton and took a moment to contemplate the wisdom of what I was about to do. As an erudite, I owned the abilities of an oracle. I could cast visions of a possible future or already-lived moments of the past. But I had zero training in the spells that would get me there and just as much knowledge of how to get back when I was done. Of course, I’d gone through no formal training in doors, either, and I’d been making them just fine. Well, maybe not fine, I thought. But I’d been making them without any catastrophic results. For me, lately, anything that wasn’t a disaster was a success.

  And I was here. I was in the place Liel found, the place where the eldring were born. I was here where the Crown of Stones was used in some strange long-ago ritual. If one of my blood relations was present, I had a chance to glean some real information. I was only going to get one shot though. I could feel the eldring memories fading.

  There was another hitch. I wasn’t sure which stones the spell required. I didn’t know for doors either. I’d found a page in one of Jillyan’s books with specifics, but it had been too faded to read. Basically, I’d been pulling in whatever I had, relying on a full cache and a hell of a lot of intent to make it happen—which it was. It just wasn’t happening correctly. And I had no idea what screwing up an oracle spell would lead to.

  One thing I did know: doubting would only make things worse. So I shoved my misgivings aside and channeled the auras in the stones on my braces. I roused the obsidian in me and channeled the shard’s aura, too. I half expected something unpleasant to happen when I did. Thankfully, the crown remained as dead as it was supposed to be, and my scars stayed scars.

  With the power surging through my veins, I focused on the recollections of the first eldring and his time here. I didn’t delve deep. I stuck to surface memories only. The scenery as it must have looked; with altars and columns intact, more empty space and less foliage. The sharp-boned faces of my ancestors; all white of hair and eyes. I didn’t allow in the creature’s emotions or the wealth of sensations he was experiencing. I wanted only to know how he saw the grotto then, versus how I saw it now.

  The image firmly in place, I let the magic leak slowly out. I pictured myself up there among the crowd, watching. I was with those that gathered around the Crown of Stones, staring proudly and dispassionately toward the hole where my brethren faced the beast we created. Around us, great, round spires of obsidian stretched up toward the sky. Gleaming auras pulsed. The power the spires created bounced back and forth like shiny black snakes leaping swiftly from one column to the next.

  The runes on the walls were fresh. The bodies on the altars were splayed open and still. Their blood was overflowing the bowls, dripping over the sides, striping the gray stone red. It pooled on the ground, moistening the dirt around the edge of the pit and trickling into the hole where, inside, the beast was howling. His long, continuous scream was one of protest and rage.

  It held too much raw pain and feeling to be coming from an animal.

  I shouldered my way through the throng. Ignoring the nasty glares I was getting, I went right up to the edge of the pit. The ground squished under my weight. Red rose up over my shoes and stained the hem of my white robe. Lifting it, I squatted down and looked inside to where men and women were clawing at the dirt walls. They were fighting to get out, to get away from the eldring. Only, it wasn’t an eldring. Not yet.

  Naked, with thick gray skin covering half his body, clumps of dark, blood-matted hair on his head and chest, and legs broken so severely they were bent backwards at the knee, was a man. Or, what was left of one. His jaw, misshapen and broad, protruded from his deformed face. The hair on his body was growing right in front of my eyes. I watched it, thickening and darkening over limbs that looked abnormally long. His fingers were elongated and bent. His nails were gone. The skin on his fingertips was peeling back, exposing black bones that were flattened and tapered like the beginning of claws.

  I looked into his oddly shaped eyes. They were pure white.

  More Shinree in the pit began to change. Some didn’t. As those becoming beasts slipped into their new roles, they fell greedily upon the others. Ripping into flesh with their bare hands, bits of skin and organs spewed from their maws. Blood sprayed like a warm spring shower.

  A drop hit my hand. More sprinkled my face.

  Someone touched my arm and I jumped. There was a Shinree man next to me, tall and muscular with hooded eyes and a rectangular face. He was dressed as I was, in a white robe. “Don’t stand so close, brother,” he warned. “If you fall in, it won’t matter to the creatures which vote you cast. Dinner is dinner.” He gave me a secret, knowing smile and lowered his voice. “I promise this will not stand for long, Reth. We make this concession now, and we will rise again when the time is right.”

  I was too shocked to do anything but nod.

  “You know as well as I who holds the true power,” he went on. “It certainly isn’t those moralistic erudite. Culling our numbers will only grant them a temporary boon.”

  Culling?

  “Our families bowed down when they split the lines. There was at least purpose in that. But this,” his voice lowered. I could barely hear him. “Transforming the dissenters, siphoning off the best parts of us and planting it in these dreadful, inhuman vessels…and they dare cal
l our bloodline brutal?” He stared a moment toward the pit, then shook his head. “The Ruling House and their claim to give all lines a say—it’s bullshit. And not carefully disguised, I might add. Only fools believe the erudite will ever share control. It’s under military rule the empire will thrive. And I say, fuck those that disagree.”

  Recovering my voice, I asked him, “Do you have a plan?”

  “Me?” He laughed quietly. “I’m not the soldier assigned to guard the crown. Honestly though, I can’t believe your ancestor volunteered for it. Pinning your family’s blood to that accursed thing for all time, after seeing what it did here today? No thank you,” he shuddered. “But, it was a cunning move, seeing as the crown’s warden and his descendants are exempt from this recent round of magical butchering the erudite have forced upon us. The rest of us get to have our spells lopped off at the knees. We’ll all be castrated bulls. While your family alone will carry the blood of the last, true soldier line. So if anyone will figure out how to undue this mess, brother, it’s bound to be a Reth.” A hand on my elbow, he urged me back into the crowd. “In the meantime, at least these beasts of theirs are entertaining. What do you say we purchase a couple and take them back with us? We could teach them to work. Loan them out to the crew building that new keep in the mountains. Even better, we could put them in my uncle’s arena. They could fight the slaves. They could fight each other.” Enthusiasm tightened his grip. “Think of the coin we’d earn. And they have to be good at it. They’ve got our spirit, eh?” He winked at me, looking happier than was decent as the limp, bloodless bodies were dragged off the altars and thrown into the pit.

  Two more were brought forth to take their place. One was an old man, the other a young girl. She was no more than twelve, but they stretched her out, fastened her to the slab with metal cuffs, and cut her open. I noticed the knife slicing into her skin looked like a Nor-taali—the same style of dagger I used to tie myself to Jarryd. I’d thought the binding ritual was the blade’s only purpose. Clearly, it was significant in this one as well; the runes on the steel and the stones on the handle were glowing beneath the splatters of the girl’s blood.

  The crowd around me was cheering and laughing. I couldn’t watch anymore.

  I moved to go and my ‘brother’ blocked me. “You can’t leave. They won’t allow it. The cost of betraying our own is to bear witness.”

  “I’ve paid enough.” I stepped around him and weaved back through the mob. I went all the way to the far wall. The noise followed me. The cries of the eldring and their victims gored through me. The revelry turned my stomach. Thinking about the creature (stuck between beast and man), the sacrifices, the vote, the splitting of the lines, I tried to sort it out. But I didn’t know what any of it meant.

  Heads were turning my way. People were whispering. They knew something was wrong with me. I had to go.

  Closing the eyes I was borrowing, I imagined the grotto again. I pictured the overgrowth and the chipped, ancient stones. I thought of Neela waiting for me. I wanted to get back to myself, my time. Keeping my desire to return pure, was paramount. But shock was having its way with me. As I left my ancestor’s body, there was this little, nagging fear saying: you won’t make it.

  I struggled to disagree. It fought hard to prove its point. And for a breath or two, it won. I couldn’t go forward. I couldn’t go back. There was no up and no down. No substance or feeling. Having read in Jillyan’s ancient texts about inexperienced casters being lost in an oracle spell for days, even months, I panicked. Apprehension set in. Doubt wrapped around me. Hanging halfway, treading water in an endless, black nothing; even centering on Neela wasn’t working. I couldn’t sense her in the least. All I could sense, as I floated, was magic.

  It was in the past, trailing off me like windswept footprints. It was traveling alongside me in the void; a leftover tendril; aimlessly gliding. But in the present…

  I was made of it.

  I sent out a call. As I knew it would, the obsidian aura swimming in my body at the bottom of the pit answered. It flared to life with a bright burst, and magic became my anchor. It was strong and steadfast, and I embraced it, pulling myself through darkness thick as quicksand.

  The dark thinned. Damp ground was suddenly beneath me. Breath tore through my lungs. My wounded leg pulsed with pain. I was shaking, hungry. I was back.

  I opened my eyes and looked up out of the pit. Shadows weren’t where they were before. The sun had moved considerably across the sky. My back was stiff from too long in one position. My moment of uncertainty had clearly been longer than a moment.

  Sitting up, I grabbed onto one of the many vines growing on the pit wall, and it crumbled at my touch. Every stem, stalk, and leaf in sight was black and brittle. Even the grass surrounding the lip of the pit was dead.

  Worried, I called for her. “Neela!”

  “Finally,” she replied.

  I breathed a sigh of relief at her far away voice. “You okay?”

  The grass rustled as she got louder. “Yes, but I’d like to go now.”

  “We can’t.” Groaning, I gripped the dirt wall to help me stand. Soil tumbled on my head. Vines disintegrated all over me. “Not yet.”

  “I need to get back to Darkhorne.”

  I looked at her, standing above me; bedraggled and cross. She had no idea what I’d gone through. But something told me it wouldn’t matter if she did. “Sorry to put off your evening bath, Your Grace, but I don’t have the strength for more magic right now.”

  “Then we climb.”

  I frowned at her bare toes hanging over the edge of the pit. “I don’t think so.”

  “We have no food, no water. The sun will be going down soon.” Neela’s hands went to her hips. “What are we going to do then?”

  “Sleep,” I said, grabbing the rope. “A lot.”

  “In here? On the ground? Queens are not inclined to deliberately lie in the dirt, Shinree.”

  I gave her a small grin. “You could sleep standing up. Kya seems fond of it. Or try one of the altars. Just mind the old blood.”

  Outrage flashed in Neela’s eyes and she stormed off. As her disgruntled mutterings continued to echo back at me, I let go of the rope and sat down. If spending the night listening to her sulk was what awaited me up top, I was fine right where I was.

  THIRTY NINE

  I had Jarryd’s impeccable aim with a weapon. Not so with magic. For the last four and a half days we’d trudged through the mire, searching for the camp, eating snake for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and waking up with leeches in all the wrong places.

  The first day I wasted on tracking spells. Thanks to Sienn’s confusion magic, they all sent us in circles. Day two, I reverted to the basics, looking for footprints, broken weeds, and disturbed patches of vegetation. It would have been nice if my eldring connection had lasted. Krillos and his men were adept at erasing all traces of their comings and goings, and a primal boost to my senses would have come in handy. I was better at detecting the discrepancies than your average Kaelish soldier, though, and eventually I found a trail worth following. Traceable, however, didn’t mean effortless.

  The ground was the usual tangled web of mud-filled dips and murky streams. The stagnant, steamy air of the swamp was nothing like the cool mountain winds of Langor that Neela was used to, making her beg to stop more often than I liked. She stopped liking it too as the slower pace gave the clouds of bugs time to land and nibble on our skin. She complained that the pair of rope sandals I fashioned to protect her feet were uncomfortable. Most of what I caught she refused to eat. I tried to be understanding. She was a young Queen far outside the comforts of her castle and completely unprepared for the rigors of hiking through the Border Lands. Understanding, though, hadn’t gotten my point across. What did; was a fed-up, earsplitting assurance that complaining wasn’t going to get her anything but left behind.

  It wouldn’t have been hard. Even limping, I moved faster. But without me, Neela would have been lost in ten minutes
and gator fare in half that. For all the Arullan blood in her veins, the woman had no survival skills and no care for stealth. Her approach, as we drew near the perimeter of the camp, was so loud, the Arullan sentries leapt out and held at us sword point. Neela was livid, but I knew we wouldn’t be detained long. A runner was sent back to camp to fetch Krillos, and here, not fifteen minutes later, he was already darting out of the brush, barking at the guards to put their weapons away.

  “I should fucking kill you,” he said, walking up and throwing his arms around me. The man could give a crushing hug for only having one hand. “Damn, Shinree, you reek.” Letting me go, Krillos turned his head and shouted, “Get some water over here!” Spying Neela behind me, he bowed and smoothed out his voice. “My Queen.”

  “Captain,” she nodded.

  Krillos pulled me away from her. I almost toppled over, but he was too incensed to notice. “Son of a bitch, Troy. What the hell were you thinking bringing her here? The Queen has no idea about us.” He paused to yell at the guards again. “Didn’t I say water?”

  An Arullan man pushed a skin in my hand. I mumbled my thanks and drank the whole thing. “Draken was going to kill her,” I said, breathless, as I wiped a hand across my mouth. “He walked in on us.”

  Impressed, Krillos raised a brow. “You two were…?”

  “Not that kind of walked in on us. Draken was more worried about me having his crown than his wife. But he made his intentions clear. I couldn’t leave her.”