“It’s all right, everyone,” Raimie yelled, stepping before Doldimar. “Everything’s under control.”
Fearful eyes flicked between him and their former oppressor. Raimie bid Ele to his hands, broadly displaying them.
“See? I couldn’t call on Ele if he’d caught me in a Vice,” he said. “Doldimar and I simply need to… discuss some things. Go to the beach. Wait for your orders. Jeme, can you hang back?”
The Zrelnach nodded, and gradually, the other students retreated, taking their confusion and uncertainty with them. Raimie pointed at the ground beside the fire.
“Sit. Stay.”
While Doldimar comfortably arranged himself, Raimie grabbed Jeme’s arm and dragged her some distance from the campsite.
“What’s going on, Your Majesty?” she asked. “You’re not under his control, so why isn’t he dead?”
“You’ve such confidence in my ability to kill him,” Raimie muttered.
“Can you not?”
Raimie brushed the question aside. “Doldimar’s surrendered. That’s why he’s not yet dead.”
“Your Majesty…” the Zrelnach said. “You can’t believe his claim.”
“No, of course I don’t, Jeme!” Raimie exclaimed, a short, strained laugh bursting from his lips. “Doldimar is the most manipulative son of a bitch of whom I’ve ever heard tell, but every minute I spend with him, presenting the pretense I do believe, is another in which Auden can prepare.”
Her eyes widened, and Raimie nodded.
“You must send word as quickly as possible. Doldimar’s appearance now can only mean he’s ready to make his move. Have Tejesper shade meld home with the news, but once he’s delivered it, he and the other Daevetch students are to immediately translocate to our fallback position. You saw how they reacted to Doldimar’s presence, a hesitation which is sure to get them killed. I won’t be responsible for sending children to their deaths.”
“Understood, sir,” Jeme murmured. “What about the rest of us?”
“You must find your own way home. My original plan to get you to shore is no longer viable,” Raimie told her. “Return to the capital as soon as you can. Get my wife out, and I’ll join the defense as soon as I’m able.”
If I’m able.
“I’ve some ideas to get us to the mainland,” Jeme said. “Any further orders, sir?”
“Spread the word as fast as you can, Jeme.” Raimie looked toward camp and the solitary figure sprawled beside it. “Doldimar comes.”
“Understood. Good luck, sir.”
“And to you.” By the explosion of light, Raimie knew she’d already gone.
“Keep him delayed. Great plan but we should also try to pry information from him,” Nylion suggested.
Nyl, I know that. You don’t have to share every piece of advice you compose, Raimie silently muttered.
“What else am I supposed to do, trapped in our head as I am?”
Raimie blared irritation across their bond, but he also thought, Keep close watch while we speak. You’re better at detecting subterfuge and manipulation than I.
He trudged into the fire’s vicinity, its light steadily defending against gathering dusk, and retrieved strips of salted pork, a traveler’s standard fare. Tossing some to Doldimar, Raimie settled opposite his enemy.
“How on earth have you persuaded Daevetch primeancers to work with the Ele infected?” the Eselan asked.
Given the lack of preamble, the question must have been restrained since their confrontation with the students.
“With great difficulty.”
Raimie tore a chunk from his dinner and chewed, amused by the flash of frustration across Doldimar’s face. He’d give the Eselan nothing, playing the game as long as he could before his enemy grew bored and moved on to his next tactic.
“How long do you expect us to sit here?” Doldimar growled.
“A boat should return for pickup in the morning,” Raimie muttered around his mouthful. “We can find Kheled once we’re on the mainland, and don’t even think of shade melding. I don’t trust you with the technique. In all honesty, I teeter on the edge of forcibly inducing sleep with Ele. I really should do so, but I won’t. Not unless you provide me sufficient reason.”
“Fair enough.”
To Raimie’s surprise, Doldimar, living embodiment of Daevetch, tore into his share of dinner. Watching the Eselan eat, he could almost believe his companion was an ordinary man, but he’d observed far too much of Doldimar’s devastating handiwork to ever accept the illusion.
“Thank you,” the Eselan said as he finished his meal. “For the food, I mean.”
“It was no trouble,” Raimie automatically responded before wincing.
“Polite too,” Doldimar murmured. “You look at me, and I see no hate. Disgust for my choices but no disdain for me.”
“Kheled’s shared your story.” Raimie shrugged. “I know you’ve little control over your actions, and this cycle, my friend has been long delayed in freeing you. Three hundred years of Daevetch without Ele to counteract it. The world should’ve burned by now. I’d guess we’ve you to thank for our continued existence.”
Doldimar wordlessly stared at him before flinching and snapping his gaze to the side. “No,” he growled. “Not yet.”
“Is that your ‘babysitter’?” Raimie asked. “Which aspect monitors you? A Creation splinter haunts Kheled.”
Again, Doldimar stared, but this unblinking gaze was one of calculating evaluation. “Corruption,” was what he eventually shared.
“Order. Chaos,” Raimie said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the two splinters, “but I call them Bright and Dim. Their actual names are too stuffy for me.”
“You’re a strange man, Raimie, King of Auden,” Doldimar murmured.
“Thank you. I think.”
Fire spat sparks into the air between them, and Raimie watched the glowing embers rise until they cooled to become air and ash.
“Would you like to learn a secret?” Doldimar asked. “It concerns your family.”
Raimie tensed. The Eselan’s tone had changed, gone darker and colder, and he knew they’d reached the tipping point, the reason why Doldimar had ‘surrendered’ in the first place.
“My family has many secrets,” he gravely informed his enemy. “I doubt you could say much on the subject to surprise me, but you’re welcome to try.”
“You were correct before,” Doldimar continued, completely ignoring Raimie’s derision. “Three hundred years is a long time, even for ones as long-lived as E and I, but I vividly remember your ancestor, the king who gave me Auden.
“Did you know he tried to negotiate with me?” He barked a laugh. “That deception kept Daevetch engaged for years. Being Champion is a delicate tightwire to balance. Feeding Daevetch chaos, destruction, and deception is demanding on its own. Sustaining just enough that it’s distracted from unleashing hell upon reality is near impossible, especially on days when my sanity flees me.”
The Eselan fell silent, eyes unfocusing, and Raimie gave him time. Every minute Doldimar remained distracted was another Auden readied. Raimie nearly laughed aloud at the thought, so similar to what his enemy had expressed.
“In any case,” Doldimar eventually continued, “I spoke of Auden’s last king, the one before you. You should know he wasn’t a coward, despite what the history books may say. King Eledis was simply too cautious in his approach for Auden’s defense, and as a result, he, his wife, and his best friend were cursed in their separate ways.”
“Wait, Eledis?” Raimie interrupted. “As in my grandfather, Eledis? I wonder why his parents felt compelled to name their child after such a failure.”
Doldimar flashed his teeth at Raimie. The Eselan’s features had morphed with their latest conversation topic from amused to something else. Something much more threatening.
“Listen quietly to my story, boy, and I may give you a chance to stop what comes,” he snapped, grinning at Raimie’s quickened breath. “
As I was saying, the three were cursed, or blessed depending on your point of view, by the Eselan bitch who foretold of your eventual triumph, Raimie, King of Auden.
“Emri, the King’s Eselan bodyguard and best friend, was forced into a permanent shape change composed of human features. His curse makes a mockery of his sustained reliance on shape change while in the Audish court. He now goes by the name of Marcuset, I believe.
“Illasaya, the King’s wife, was burdened with a memory which wipes itself clean when she sleeps. Her curse makes a mockery of her willful ignorance of her husband’s misdeeds. Her newest name is Kaedesa, Queen of Ada’ir.
“Eledis, he was afflicted with aging, his body to become a plain truth of the years he’d lived. His curse makes a mockery of his disguises, meant to deceive the world into believing he was an Ele primeancer. He never changed his name, moving on with life until his descendant found Shadowsteal. Until you found the sword.
“And in case you haven’t yet realized it, all three were cursed to live until they correct their mistake and rid the world of me.”
Rising to his feet, Doldimar deeply bowed, lifting his eyes to meet Raimie’s.
“Is that enough of a surprise for you?” he asked.
Reeling, Raimie desperately tried to cling to something, anything, stable. First, the revelation years ago his family had stolen Nylion from him and now, this. Was there anything genuine and true in his family? How false were the men with whom he’d spent his childhood?
“We have another family, Raimie. We have Ren. Do not let the deceptions of the one which spawned us make you lose your focus,” Nylion said. “Doldimar plays with us.”
His other half might as well have talked to thin air. Raimie didn’t hear, his thoughts churning through what Doldimar had exposed.
What rocked him about the revelation was how obvious it was, concerning Eledis at least. So many of the man’s inexplicabilities made perfect sense in the context of him as exiled King of Auden. His grandfather- ancestor’s eagerness to accept the quest to liberate Auden, the friendship between him and Uncle Marcuset, his frustrations with Raimie as king, the average Audish citizens’ intensely hateful reactions to him, the initial hostility between him and Auntie Kaedesa…
Kaedesa. Raimie had almost married her. Alouin, he’d be sick!
Scrambling away from the fire, he coughed up dried meat chunks while Doldimar’s snickering gave chase. When his body returned control once more, Raimie marched on the Eselan and bound the Ele in his body to the ground’s. Doldimar dropped with an oomph, and Raimie planted a foot on his chest, Silverblade at his neck.
“What do you have planned?” he demanded answers. “I’ve spent years preparing for your return, knowing it would never be enough. So, tell me what will happen to my kingdom, and I might not hurt you before I send you to sleep.”
Doldimar laughed, great gasps sending Raimie’s planted foot up and down as if it stood in the midst of an earthquake. “Your threats mean nothing, boy. You can do nothing to me I haven’t experienced a thousand times before.”
The gray eyes above Doldimar’s manic grin screamed his assertion’s truth, and Raimie shrank inside. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath.
“We truly were devising a solution to break you from the cycle, you know,” he murmured.
He induced sleep in his enemy.
What a mess. Raimie wished Kheled had left a note, a message, some indication of his intended destination. If his friend had completed that one small task… If he knew where Kheled was, Raimie could retrieve his friend and bring him here. As it was, Doldimar would be free to enact his plan as soon as the Ele in his body dissipated, and Raimie couldn’t stay to refresh it. He needed to fly home and rally the troops. If only he could keep his enemy pinned…
“Why not try Lighteater?” Nylion asked. “It is not the best solution, but it might work.”
You think that’s a good idea with how heavily he earlier baited us to hold the sword?
“I cannot think of another solution. Can you?”
Raimie’s gaze drifted to Doldimar’s weapons belt, discarded by the fire. Lighteater. It was the mirror of Shadowsteal. He’d watched Teron use it to obliterate Bright. If it could destroy a splinter, could it pin the Champion of Daevetch in place?
Hesitantly approaching, he leaned over the blade, his fingers shaking as they paused. Did he want to do this? The sensations Shadowsteal imposed upon him were bad enough. Did he want to discover what its opposite would inflict?
The alternative was to leave immensely powerful Doldimar lying here, to be freed at an unspecified time. Better to try a shaky plan than to do nothing at all.
Raimie drew Lighteater.
The moment his palm contacted the grip, a surge of power lazily flowed up his arm, swelling his muscles and pushing them against skin so insistently it was only a matter of time before the pale canvas split. At the discomforting oddity, Raimie would have immediately dropped the weapon if his surroundings hadn’t so thoroughly distracted him.
Shades of black painted the world. Dim appeared his normal, unassuming self at Raimie’s side, to his relief. For the rest of the world had skewed. In this view, the fire darkened rather than glowed, deeper in hue than the grass or trees, and its gay liveliness had taken on a violent tone, flame tongues hungrily reaching for him. Anything that contained life had twisted and contorted into grim distortions, becoming sickly and wan.
Two total abnormalities also occupied Raimie’s immediate vicinity. The deep-within-the-caverns-of-the-earth, far-from-the-sun darkness must be Doldimar, and the rigid glass fixture beside him must be Bright. In his hand, Lighteater twitched toward that fixture, and Raimie willed it still. No time to recompose a splinter today.
As with Shadowsteal, motes coalesced around Raimie, but these were solid, black shadows rather than orbs of white. The motes sped at him, but he didn’t flinch. He knew these Daevetch fragments wouldn’t harm him, much like those of Ele never had.
Or so he thought. After several dozen had absorbed into his skin, a high-pitched whine assaulted Raimie’s ears, and the black world shimmered and cracked. From the cracks, formless, sightless monsters of oozing shadow slithered, advancing on him at an even pace. Alarm shot through him, and Raimie took a step back. As if prompted by his retreat, the whispers started. How he could hear them over that ear-splitting eeeeeeeee he didn’t know, but the half-whispers, unfinished threats and promises drifted alongside the maddening noise, and Raimie clenched his temples with his fists, trying to block it out.
“I see you’ve claimed my sword.”
At first, Raimie thought the voice another whisper, but the statement it uttered wasn’t a half-completed thought. He raised his eyes toward its source with difficulty, brain almost immediately going into overload due to his surroundings’ insanity.
Doldimar’s pitch-black form stood a pace away, head cocked. Raimie could imagine the fascination which contorted his features above that faceless black.
“Finally!” he continued. “Catch me if you can, Raimie, King of Auden.”
And Doldimar disappeared.
“It is a trap, heart of my heart!”
A thread of warning mingled with the whispers, barely registered before it was discounted. Instead, Raimie’s rattled brain slogged toward a conclusion which should have been instantaneous, and when it hit, he shade melded after his enemy.
When he skimmed among the shadows this time, Raimie miraculously retained his sense of self. Or perhaps not so miraculously. On this trip, something new, something incredibly dangerous, accompanied him.
He considered abandoning Lighteater beneath the world’s skin, but a hiss negated that option. He didn’t understand how or why, but Raimie knew the formless monsters which had crawled through reality’s cracks had joined him in the shadows. They prepared to chase him to the ends of the earth.
Panicking, he fumbled for a remnant of his enemy. When he brushed against a cloyingly sweet taint, he latched on and zoomed alo
ng its trail. The journey seemed to last forever, a prolonged struggle to cling to Doldimar’s remnants and burn through them as quickly as he could. Behind him, the hisses never failed to pursue, and Raimie could almost feel the glee in their hunt.
He knew he neared the end when the shadows’ core changed from one of acceptance to one of distaste. Soon enough, they wouldn’t tolerate him anymore, and he’d be spewed from their embrace. He was forced to blindly trust Doldimar wouldn’t dump them at the bottom of the ocean or the middle of a volcano. The destination snapshots which usually accompanied his shade melding failed to flash before his eyes, so when he stepped from the shadows and breathed clean air sans charring skin, his body shook with relief, long clenched muscles relaxing.
Daevetch slammed into him. The impact wasn’t a steady stream of motes gently absorbed into his body. It was a carriage running him over, an outpouring of shadows from the glowing halo opposite him, and the black river eagerly stampeded over him to gather around the sword he held. Raimie flew for a split second before smashing into something cold and hard. Pinned there, he listened to the dissonant song of Bright and Dim shrieking, all while peeling his fingers from metal.
Lighteater dropped from his hand, and he fell to all fours, gasping and coughing. A shuffle indicated Doldimar’s approach, but before Raimie could rise to confront his enemy, a boot tip connected with his chin, snapping his head back. He fell sideways, and a crack and rumble gave him an instant’s warning before the stone above him came crashing down.
When the thunder and roar ceased, Raimie unclenched, amazed he lived. His eyelids brushed stone as he opened them, and he froze. Carefully, oh so carefully, he traced the perimeter of his dimly lit prison.
Prison wasn’t the right word. A cell gave the prisoner room in which to move. This was a coffin.
The air seemed thin. Raimie could see, which meant a hole in the coffin allowed light and fresh air inside, but that knowledge didn’t change the fact that he couldn’t breathe. Stone caressed him, and he tried to pull away from it, only to touch more. The fidgeting left abrasions on exposed skin, blood welling to the surface with each increasingly frantic twitch. A scream built in his chest, but before he could unleash it, a voice interrupted.
A King's Caution (The Eternal War Book 2) Page 63
