Binding Spell (Tales of the Latter Kingdoms)

by Pope, Christine

  Just as well, for another pulse of magic swirled around me. I sucked in my breath and tried not to fight it, but instead to feel its strength and ride with it, the way the sailors back home would allow the breakers to bring their small boats safely to shore. That did seem to help somewhat; at least I could walk more or less normally to the chair by the window and then sit down without Beranne apparently noticing anything amiss in my movements.

  Outside the sky darkened, as the clouds that had appeared on their way to breaking up somehow coalesced once more. Within the minute heavy rain began to fall, followed by a crack of thunder so loud Beranne exclaimed,

  “That was close!”

  Eyes narrowing, I gazed out the window at the downpour. The small leaded panes were not sealed quite as well as they might be, and I heard shouts from the courtyard below as people bolted for shelter. Lightning flashed, and again the thunder answered.

  It was wrong. I knew this at once, for although I did not possess the gift of weather magic myself, my father had within him the power to summon the storms, or to send the killing fogs back out to sea where they could do no harm. This, though, somehow felt different. My father always said the safest way to perform weather magic was to learn the patterns of the air currents that surrounded oneself, to know instinctively how to work with the wind and the clouds, rather than against them. But as I sat there, my face raised to the livid heavens, I felt the wrongness of the storm, of how the roiling clouds somehow fought against the air’s natural currents.

  Then, as soon as it had come, the cloudburst dissipated, the sky clearing with a speed anyone must know was unnatural. The sun broke out, causing the raindrops on the window to glitter like scattered diamonds.

  “Gone already, is it?”

  I turned to Beranne and nodded slowly. “It would appear so.”

  She smiled and went back to her mending, the quick movements of her needle catching sparks from the candelabrum sitting on the table next to her. I wondered at her placid countenance, but realized of course she hadn’t felt anything wrong about that sudden storm. Just another quirk of the weather, which always was a bit unpredictable at the change of the season.

  Only I knew it had been much more than that. I stood and gazed down into the rain-soaked courtyard as people began to come out from beneath overhangs and doorways and went about their business once more. No harm, really, save for some dampened hems and possibly a few ruined hairstyles for those ladies of the court who hadn’t managed to reach shelter in time.

  Perhaps it had been only an exercise, a flexing of a muscle in need of use. Even mages required practice, after all. But I felt a chill in my bones that had nothing to do with the drafts leaking in around the window frame, and wondered what on earth was to come next.

  * * *

  That night at supper Kadar seemed in high spirits, and I watched him carefully. Was he so lighthearted because he knew he no longer faced any threat from my family, or did he smile and laugh because his mage had demonstrated his powers in a very real and tangible way?

  I could not ask, of course, and so ate what I could, although my appetite seemed to have deserted me, and I smiled at Kadar when the occasion seemed to warrant it. I had no way of knowing whether those smiles reached my eyes, but at least he seemed not to notice anything wrong.

  Some players had come in to entertain the court with their tumbling acts and a few carefully chosen scenes from the comedies that dominated the local houses. I had never been one to find amusement in pratfalls and dancing dogs, but the rest of the court did not share my tastes. Somehow I managed to laugh in the correct places, but in truth I only wished for the evening to be at an end.

  At length the entertainment concluded, and Kadar led me to our suite as he did every evening. By then we were used enough to staying out of one another’s way as we prepared for sleep that we almost unconsciously wove in and out of the other’s steps — he washing his face as I gathered up my bedclothes, I slipping into my warm sleeping chemise as he was occupied with removing his boots and placing his doublet in the wardrobe.

  It was a good thing that Northerners stood on far less ceremony than their counterparts in Sirlende. I knew that even my brother, after years in the Duke’s household, would never have agreed to fold his own clothing. But Kadar, for all his faults, had very little of pretense about him. Truly, the household rubbed along with far fewer servants than I might have imagined a royal court could. The Dowager Empress of Sirlende had, it was rumored, fifty ladies-in-waiting, and my own Queen Carinne a more modest fifteen, but apparently the consort of the Mark was expected to make do with only the one maidservant. Not that I minded, as I found it exhausting enough trying to keep the truth of Kadar’s and my sleeping arrangements from Beranne and the other members of the household staff who kept our apartments clean and brought up our breakfasts.

  We bade each other goodnight as we always did. To his credit, Kadar never pressed me, never tried to coax me to make our marriage true in something more than merely name. It appeared he intended to keep his promise not to force me, although I wondered how long his forbearance could possibly last. This state of affairs had gone on for more than a month. I would be a fool if I thought it could continue forever.

  At any rate, I was able to lie down on the divan and pull the covers up to my chin, secure that this had been an evening much like any other. Throughout the day I had found myself worrying at the problem of the mage and the spells he’d apparently cast, but there had been no repetitions of the unnatural storm, and as evening approached I allowed myself to let the matter rest.

  Sleep always came easily to me, and this night was no different. I closed my eyes and let myself slip into the darkness, comforted by the welcome oblivion of slumber.

  But that serene dark tide turned into the harshest of undertows. In my sleep I gasped, fighting for air, somehow knowing it had been stolen from me. Cold washed over my limbs, dragging me down, seeking to drown me forever in a black so bottomless its depths could never be measured. I screamed, and icy water filled my mouth, choking me, crushing my lungs, devouring every bit of life and warmth and —

  “Lark!”

  Strong arms went around me, holding me close. Awakened from my terror, I did not stop to think it was Kadar who held me thus, only that his body was warm and reassuringly real. I clung to him, felt him stroke my hair as I burrowed my face into his shoulder and laid my cheek against the rough linen of his nightshirt.

  “Was it a nightmare?” His voice sounded calm, soothing, so unlike his usual ironic drawl.

  I nodded.

  “Do you want to tell me?”

  Truly I didn’t, as if the mere act of describing the dream to him might somehow give it a life of its own. I said, my tone short, the words muffled by his shoulder, “Drowning. The ocean.”

  “Ah, well, I can guess that would be unpleasant.” He lifted a tangled curl from my brow and added, “But as we are a good three hundred miles from the sea, I believe you have little to worry about.”

  I almost pointed out that while we were very far from the ocean, the lake just outside our window offered ample opportunity for drowning. But I held my tongue and instead wondered at how it could feel so good to have the strength of his shoulder against my cheek, the warmth of his arms around me.

  I told myself it was only because I would have welcomed any human contact at that moment, even Kadar Arkalis’. Although the lingering dregs of my nightmare had begun to fade away, I could not quite dispel that sensation of inexorable, icy death. I shivered.

  “Still cold?”

  “A — a little.” How I wished my voice hadn’t shaken. I added, trying not to sound too piteous, “Perhaps if we stirred up the fire?”

  “I have a better idea than that.”

  And he pulled me closer as he stood, lifting me, blankets and all. He carried me into his bedchamber and pulled back the hangings on the bed before depositing me therein.

  At once I sat up, spluttering a little and kicki
ng my unneeded bedclothes aside. “A transparent ploy, my lord! Surely you do not believe I will stay here!”

  “Yes, I do,” he replied, his expression amused. “Dear wife, this is no attempt to ravage you. Two bodies are warmer than one, and when the hangings are closed, it is quite cozy in here. You have my word I will not touch you — at least, not intentionally. I cannot speak for what I might do in my sleep. Tanira used to complain that I kicked a good deal.”

  The casual mention of his former mistress only served to increase my ire. Did he honestly expect me to sleep in the bed he had shared with that woman? Without bothering to reply, I reached out and prepared to haul myself off the edge of the bed.

  His hand clamped down on my wrist. “You seem quite recovered.”

  “Yes, I am.” I jerked my arm free of his grasp. “Please do me the courtesy of not manhandling me like that. I will do very well to return to the divan.”

  He gave me a careful, measuring look. “What are you so afraid of, Lark?”

  “Afraid?” I repeated, my blood boiling anew at the question. “I am afraid of nothing!”

  “Are you? Because it seems to me your behavior would suggest otherwise. I have already given you my word that I shall not touch you. Do you believe that counts for nothing? Or is it that you do not trust yourself?”

  Oh, he was impossible. To suggest I would fling myself at him, merely because we shared the same bed? “You flatter yourself, my lord.”

  “Perhaps I do. It is true that I have a good deal of experience with women throwing themselves at me. Perhaps I do you a disservice by expecting the same of you.”

  “More than a disservice,” I replied. “At any rate, I’m not sure there would be room for me in this bed, as you and your vanity seem to take up a good deal of space.”

  He laughed then. The dim candlelight seemed to twinkle in his gold-colored eyes. “You may have a point. But look — do you not feel better? Tell me I have at least distracted you.”

  That was true enough. The heat of anger had done excellent work in dispelling the last shivers of my nightmare. “Perhaps.”

  “Then do me the service of staying. It could be that it is I who will next need comforting after a bad dream.”

  I fought to keep my lips from quirking. It would not do to show that he had come very close to making me laugh. “The Mark of Eredor admits to having bad dreams?”

  “On occasion, and particularly if I have had cheese too close to bedtime.”

  I heaved an exaggerated sigh, and, without immediately replying, drew the covers on my side of the bed back and slid beneath them. “I will stay — although I did not see you eat any cheese at all tonight.”

  “I thank you for your solicitude.” He, too, climbed beneath the sheets and blankets, then leaned over and blew out the candles on his bedside table before drawing the hangings closed.

  It was very dark then, but, as Kadar had promised, I was warmer in the bed’s confines than I had been on the divan, even positioned as it was in front of the hearth. I lay on my back and closed my eyes, trying to ignore the movements of the bed as he shifted his weight, or the way the heat of his body seemed to flow out from him, surrounding me in its warmth. Several hand-spans separated us, and yet he seemed so very close.

  “Goodnight, Lark,” he said.

  “Goodnight, Kadar,” I replied.

  I closed my eyes and willed myself to sleep. What else could I do? Surely it was a kind of madness which had led me to think, only a second or two before he spoke, that I would have liked to reach out and twine my fingers in his, feeling the comfort of his touch as a shield against the darkness.

  Kadar’s touch, comforting? Perhaps my brother was right in thinking I had taken leave of my senses…

  * * *

  The Mark was gone when I awoke, which was strange, both because I was not normally such a heavy sleeper that I would slumber uninterrupted while someone got ready for the day in the same chamber, and also because we usually, with a few notable exceptions, shared the morning meal before he left to go about his duties.

  Feeling unaccountably nettled, I clambered out of the tall, unfamiliar bed and drew on a dressing gown. My irritation grew when I emerged into the main chamber of our suite and saw the remnants of a hurried breakfast on Kadar’s work table.

  At least he had left me some tea. I poured its lukewarm remnants into the unused mug on the tray and sipped at the liquid, trying to tell myself it was of little concern to me what Kadar did with his time. Surely he was under no obligation to break his fast with me. After all, sleeping as chastely next to one another as a brother and sister might did not exactly signal a sea change in our relationship.

  Why, then, did I feel betrayed?

  Luckily, Beranne appeared soon afterward with my bath, and the preparations for the day helped take my mind away from that curious sense of desolation, as if I had lost something I only realized I possessed after it was already gone.

  It was a day of audiences in the Hall of Grievances. No matter where Kadar had taken himself to, he must surely appear for that. I wore a gown of dark crimson he had once commented particularly upon, and garnets glinted from my neck and ears. Usually I did not worry overmuch as to what I wore; Beranne took very good care of my wardrobe, and of course my feminine vanity was pleased to have such lovely things at my disposal, but one gown seemed to me good as another. Today, however, I found I wanted to make a particularly good impression, as if by thus arraying myself I could force Kadar to take notice of me.

  Foolish, of course. A few weeks ago I would have given anything to avoid the Mark’s notice, and now I sought to draw it to me?

  I did not have the time to ponder the imponderable, for he appeared just as I approached the Hall. As was his habit for these audiences, he had taken some care with his own appearance, and was impeccable in a dark green doublet with the familiar silver circlet holding his hair back from his forehead.

  But even as we seated ourselves I saw a certain restlessness in his manner, a distance most unlike him. Hitherto he had always treated these audiences with the utmost gravity and attention, and I had followed his example. Today, though, his judgments seemed peremptory, as if his thoughts were very far away. Luckily he made no ruling that I disagreed with, or I would have felt compelled to speak, but still, it was most unlike him. And afterward he dismissed himself almost at once, leaving me to make the ritual closing comments.

  If we had been more intimate, perhaps when I saw him later at dinner I would have commented on his behavior, or at least attempted to divine why he acted in such a way. We were man and wife in name only, though, and I occupied a precarious enough position as it was. I said nothing during the meal save the commonplaces all people exchange during such occasions.

  I had sensed no workings of magic that day, which told me little enough. Kadar’s preoccupation could have everything to do with the mage hidden somewhere in the castle — or it could be due to something completely different. I certainly did not confide in him; I could not expect him to share his secrets with me.

  When we retired for the night, I halfway expected him to make some protest as I gathered up my bedclothes and proceeded to arrange them on the divan as usual. But he said nothing, although I thought I glimpsed a quick twist of his mouth before he turned his attention back to removing his boots.

  Some weak part of me wanted to return to the green-hung bed, to its confining warmth and the dubious comfort of Kadar’s presence. Logically, I knew that was more than a little dangerous. I did not wish to give him any encouragement.

  …or did I?

  I took care to make sure the fire was well stoked before I lay down and drew the covers up to my chin. While my nightmare could have been caused by something else entirely, I thought it wise to ensure I would not take a chill this evening. Through the open door to the bedchamber, I heard Kadar moving about for a few more moments before the ropes supporting the mattress creaked slightly as he climbed into bed. The candlelight that gleamed
through the doorway disappeared a few seconds later.

  It was not full dark where I lay; the fire kept the worst of the shadows at bay. Curiously, I did not feel weary at all, though the day had been full enough. I did not close my eyes, but instead stared up at the ceiling, at the way the flickering firelight caught in the carvings there and made them seem to dance and move.

  Then I felt it once more, that enormous magical tide, sweeping over me in one long, rushing wave. This time, however, it seemed to seek not to drown me, but to lift me up and bear me away on its swell.

  I realized I stood, though I had no recollection of rising from the divan. My dressing gown lay, as always, draped over the back of a chair near the fire. I gathered up the garment and drew it on, following the insistent flood of magic. At the door I hesitated — after all, I knew four guards waited outside — but the power filled me suddenly, and I knew they were no threat.

  The words were the same, the syllables and the shape of the spell. The power, though, was very different, rising from someplace outside me. Indeed, it seemed almost as though I had little agency in working the charm, but served only as a channel for a power that emanated from someplace far away. Perhaps later I would realize this more clearly and learn fear, but at the time I only reveled in my unexpected strength as I opened the door and walked calmly past the guards, whose blank stares told me they would remember nothing of my passing.

  Dreamlike, the castle’s corridors slid past me, dim and candlelit. I saw no one, although even at that late hour there should have still been guards and the occasional servant about. Somehow I knew to take the west branch of the main corridor, to a little-used hallway ending in a flight of stairs that led downward.

  Below me was utter blackness; apparently the servants did not expect anyone to pass this way, for none of the sconces had been lit. I spoke the words under my breath, and a ball of blue light danced off the tip of my finger and positioned itself about a foot above my head. With my way thus illuminated, I began the descent.