But he was stuck here. He had no options. “I promise, if there is anything you wish me to—“
“Keep your vows to yourself, child. You’re more honest when you’re blaming me.”
“You obviously have a plan. Something to…change things?”
That garnered a snort and a quick sidelong glance from the necromancer. “I don’t plan. I write scripts in my head that no one ever follows. Like you, with your attacking the Emperor.”
“The anger got away from me,” Kelturin muttered, then winced as energy surged into the newest finished sigil. Enkhaelen tsked and swapped his quill for the knife and several hooked needles.
Kelturin grimaced as the necromancer peeled back skin to restitch glassy filaments into proper leg muscles. He was sturdy but pain was pain, and Enkhaelen was being stingy with the numbness today. Perhaps the necromancer was trying to prompt a reaction, but he was too proud to ask for relief. “I need to do something,” he growled through his razor teeth. “I hate him.”
“Yes, and that’s why he thinks it’s fun to torment you,” said Enkhaelen. “I’ve inscribed you with mood-alterants for a reason, Kel. If you keep making it entertaining for him, he’ll add you to the game, and trust me, you don’t want that. You’re far too young and far too obvious, and you think too highly of that ‘Knights of Light’ stuff.”
“Law. Knights of Law,” Kelturin corrected stiffly. “And I’m forty-three.”
“Officially, you’re thirty-two. Try to remember that.”
Grimacing, Kelturin looked down at his twisted body and thought, How could I forget? His first eleven years had been spent under the knife just like this: hidden from the world while Enkhaelen worked on a combination of spells and surgery that would bind him in humanoid form. No birth announcement, no visitors, no mother—only the necromancer and the occasional presence of his shining and distant father, there to view the progress.
To the Empire, and even to the Court, he did not exist until Enkhaelen perfected his 'toddler' form. The Empress had been cloistered for her false pregnancy, and his supposed weaning became their first contact as mother and son. For two years, that suite of hidden rooms was all he knew of the Palace. He still remembered fumbling with his toys, his makeshift limbs awkward, as his mother watched with vague indulgence and Enkhaelen made notes for his bonds' improvement.
Finally, at thirteen but in the form of a two-year-old, he had emerged from seclusion in the arms of his mother to be formally presented to the Court. Life had opened before him like a flower. Even trapped in a child-body, there were joys to be found; the handmaidens doted on him, his tutors called him a prodigy, his mother and father smiled down from their thrones, and the experiments grew less frequent. Though he could see the itch in Enkhaelen's eyes to keep adjusting things—a flesh-artist never quite content with his work—the necromancer restrained himself to orchestrating growth spurts, and the painted bonds became tattoos.
These days, his early life was a blur: a single endless day on the table, seeing the same view he saw right now. Enkhaelen's sharp face, lit with clinical interest; the flicker of tools; the luminous ceiling. He did not know how he had tolerated it then, and it agitated him now.
“Anyway, life would be much easier if you ceased protesting your father’s decisions and just went along with them,” the necromancer said. “Who cares what happens to those slaves you keep? They’re criminals.”
Kelturin gritted his teeth. “They’re my men, not his. I had them enslaved instead of executed, so their lives are mine to do with as I see fit.”
“Were yours, you mean. They’re Rackmar’s now. He’s been sending them in for conversion for the past four days. Some of the freesoldiers too. Not much success in the upper bracket, alas, but we’ll have more than enough material for ahergriin.”
The material of the slab cracked beneath Kelturin’s clawed fingers. In his mind’s eye he saw the Crimson camp and the hundreds of fire-pits, the thousands of tents that made up the slave section. The long rows of barracks that held his freesoldiers. All those lives he had uprooted as much to protect them as to actually use them in war.
“How many?” he rasped.
“I haven’t been counting.”
“How many?”
Enkhaelen blew out an exasperated breath. “I don’t know, Kel. I haven’t been here. You have no idea what I’m juggling right now. Projects, lectures, practicum, office time—I can’t exactly tell the students, ‘Busy stitching your Crown Prince back together, can't listen to you whine about how hard my Energies courses are’. And I certainly haven't been taking a census of your failures.”
“My—!“
“Face it, Kelturin, you’ve acted like a child. You might well be immortal but that doesn’t mean you can stretch your adolescence out as long as you like. Women, weapons, armies, you’ve used them like toys—hoarded them, played little make-believe games with them, but never committed to their proper use. Your father isn’t wrong to take the Crimson Claw from you. What good have you done with it?”
“I took all of Illane,” Kelturin growled. “I mounted the Jernizan campaign and drove them into the west, even if we couldn't hold the territory. I solidified our hold on Averogne and Kerrindryr and forged our working alliance with Gejara. I am hammering at the door to Padras while keeping Illane quiet with minimal troops and no reinforcements, and all without piking converting everyone. Our old tactics won't work here, so I am trying to innovate—you know I am! You advised me! How is trying to make us better ‘childish’?”
Enkhaelen smiled knowingly. “You’re soft. You reserve all of your toy soldiers behind walls, putting off the process that would make them more than the sum of their lives just because they might die. They are mortal men, Kel. It is impossible to safeguard them from their fate, and trying to do so will only see your ambition wrecked, your command taken. Oh wait, it already has.”
“Soft.” Kelturin inhaled through his teeth, feeling the peace sigil burn on his back. “Yes, I am soft,” he said tightly. “Because I do not throw men uselessly at enemies they can not harm. I do not murder nine to make the tenth superior. I do not destroy every living thing in sight just to keep my identity a secret!”
“Oh, you noticed the Riftwatch towers,” said Enkhaelen mildly.
“It sounded like you.”
“I’m flattered.”
Kelturin closed his eyes and forced his anger into the background. It had never worked against Enkhaelen—nor was it needed. The necromancer’s words might cut, but that did not make them untrue, and over the years Kelturin had learned to listen to the details more than the enraging tone.
At least, he tried to.
Opening his eyes, he wedged himself up to watch Enkhaelen tug another strand of muscle into place, the arcane tools shimmering faintly in his hands. His eyes were distant, as if seeing through the flesh to some underlying structure, and Kelturin had to wonder if he saw the world like that. If he was so willing to throw away lives because he was observing some kind of pattern beyond them.
“What ‘game’ are you playing with my father?” he said quietly.
Enkhaelen slanted him a look, pale eyes snapping into focus. “You don’t want to know.”
“Are you winning?”
“It’s not that sort of game.”
“Then what is it? What are the two of you doing behind our backs that would cause all this chaos because one of your little game-pieces escaped?”
Enkhaelen slid the hooked needles from the tangled cordage of muscle and straightened, frowning. “You really want that dissertation right now?”
“You owe it to me.”
“I owe you nothing, Kelturin. If anything…” The necromancer gestured with the needles, his motion encompassing Kelturin’s half-reformed body and the room itself. “You and yours owe me an unpayable debt. But I like you. I consider you the idiot son I never had. So if you ask nicely—“
“No. No insults, no taunts, no manipulation. Just tell me the truth, Sh
aidaxi. I trust you.”
Enkhaelen stared at him, then shook his head. “If you’re foolish enough to admit that weakness, I suppose nothing I say can harm you further. Very well. You remember the assault from Krovichanka six years ago? The ogres and the snowfolk tribes?”
Kelturin nodded slightly. “When the wetlands froze. I heard they nearly reached the walls before the Sapphire and Flame turned them back.”
“You mean ‘massacred them’, but close enough. Well, that was your father’s turn.” Enkhaelen twiddled the pair of hooked needles between his fingers as he spoke. “We’ve been trading off, back and forth, since before you were born. You know how bored your father gets. It serves to distract him.”
Kelturin’s frown deepened. “Are you telling me that my father incited the ogres to attack us?”
“More specifically, to attack me. I was on the Throne for that turn. It used to be me as the rebel-rouser each time, but your father grew tired of always defending, so now we trade off. I like to think that I held the Palace ably against his forces.”
“You…”
“This time, obviously, it’s my turn to be the aggressor. I might have to forfeit though. That boy Cobrin is proving difficult to manage.”
For a long moment, Kelturin just stared. Enkhaelen spoke so easily, so flippantly, yet because of his meddling, Kelturin had lost his grip on his army and the whole of Crimson-controlled territory. Now the reins were in Rackmar’s hands, and that bastard would call in his personal forces, requisition all the troops and mages Kelturin had never been allowed, break the siege and raze Kanrodi, then roll onward into Padras, igniting a full war with the Serpent Empire.
It would tear the region apart.
He closed his eyes, seeing the Gejarans and Kroviks in the north, the Jernizen in the west, the pirates along the coast, the Shadow Folk and Trifolders in the cities, the wraiths in the Mist Forest fringe, the monsters in Varaku and the dragons in the endless deserts. He had stretched the Crimson Claw thin just to keep Illane under control. Despite the muscle Rackmar could gather, the line would break if it was pushed further. There were simply not enough men to hold the western front against all comers.
And that was if Rackmar upheld Kelturin’s deals with the Illanic governors. If not, the situation could spiral out of control without an inch of territory gained.
“What happens if you win?” he said, trying hard to stay calm.
Enkhaelen shrugged. “Thus far, the defender has always won. And I’ve had a rough time of it in my last few aggressor rounds. Lost the boy’s father before he could even mobilize my side—never got them out of Kerrindryr. Your father mocked me for a solid month.”
“But what if it happens anyway?”
The necromancer tilted his head, scarred brow arched. “Do you really think that anyone on this shadowed little world can stand before the full force of your father and not be burned away? This is not a revolution. Think of it more like…a very dangerous game of tag. If my man gets to the Throne before the Throne eats him, I win. Then we swap places and your father sees if he can best me. Though I suppose I have to stop intervening directly. Actually follow the rules.”
Kelturin took a deep breath, fighting to keep himself under control, but it was difficult. Through all these years, he had clung to a certain idea about his pseudo-uncle: that even though Enkhaelen was unpredictable and often indifferent, he still cared more than the Emperor did. He made abominations yet showed some fatherly sentiment toward them, berated Kelturin yet sometimes came to his rescue. He was not entirely callous.
Now Kelturin knew that they were the same. They both made toys for the sheer joy of smashing them.
“You’re a monster,” he snarled.
“Ah, but look who’s talking.”
The peace sigil lit up on Kelturin’s back. Normally he would have clung to its influence to push his temper down, but now he abhorred it as just another way these madmen controlled him. The tentacles and feelers that made up his lower limbs clutched at the slab hard enough to crack it. “You made me this,” he said. “It’s your power that can’t hold against my father’s, your magic that can’t drive his essence out of me. Your spells that snap any time he deigns to snap them. If I’m a monster, it’s because you don't have the strength to stand up to him. Not for me, not for the world, not for anything. Is there nothing you would not fling to him to save your own skin?”
“Watch your tongue,” Enkhaelen said coolly. “Your father does not require me to finish your legs, nor your genitalia.”
“As if I care. I’m a prisoner here, and I’ll not give my father any such entertainment.”
“If he can’t find it one way, he’ll find it another.”
“Isn’t that your job? To keep him entertained with your little game?”
“More than you know.”
His lack of tone checked Kelturin’s rage. Eyeing the necromancer, still infuriated but not quite wanting to fight, he said, “I know my father well enough. His moods, his whims, his delight when I balk at his suggestions or when you scream at the Lord Chancellor. His pleasure in watching those lunatic pilgrims. I know he would have been disgustingly proud of me if I had been the one to burn the Jernizen plains, or if I’d razed Savinnor, or Bahlaer, or Fellen. Now that I’m not ‘fun’ anymore, he’s happily turned my army over to someone who will sow havoc for him.
“But I don’t understand why you indulge him. Why any of us do. He can’t leave the Palace. We could… We could just go. He can’t command us if we refuse to be commanded.”
Enkhaelen smiled faintly and shook his head. “It’s not that easy.”
“You’ve never tried.”
The necromancer did not respond, just watched him with that sliver of a smile, those depthless pale eyes. A weird sensation went up Kelturin’s back. A knowledge, a suspicion…
“Enkhaelen,” he started, then amended it. “Shaidaxi. Please. If there’s a reason you won’t fight back, then—“
“Will you rescue me, fair prince?” The necromancer’s smile flattened. “We should never have let the handmaidens read you those knightly tales. They put ridiculous ideas in your head and now you’re paying for them. You have no idea how spoiled you are.”
“Spoiled? After all I’ve—“
The necromancer shoved his hand into the tangle of tendrils and claws, and cold fire lanced up Kelturin’s nerves, stopping the words on his lips as his jaw involuntarily clenched. Too lightly, Enkhaelen said, “After all you’ve suffered? And what has that been, Kelturin? A bit of frustration, a few punctured ideals? Bruises to your ego and slights to your sensibilities? Oh, how terrible, my fair prince. You have been wounded so deeply. However shall you recover?”
Kelturin grunted, incapable of more.
“Such oppression, to have been given life and limb,” the necromancer continued. “To have been brought up in such loose care, held back by such a long, long tether. Why, you are bereft of will, of freedom, of friendship! All that you know is suffering! You must lash out against it, for it is Wrong!”
“Why are you mocking me?” Kelturin managed through his teeth.
Enkhaelen smiled “Because it is the only answer I have. In the end, child, we have done so little of what we could have done to harm you. We gave you everything—companionship, protection, identity, morality, education, training and support. And if you have failed us, it is not because we did not try. It is because we have our own limits. All else is up to you. You were the Crimson General and you are the Crown Prince, and it was your own words and actions that led you back here.”
Kelturin opened his mouth to protest, then saw the court as it once had been. The handmaidens, his tutors, his lovers and friends, all in the shadow of the Throne. Slowly, he said, “You don’t mean my father when you say ‘we’.”
Enkhaelen smirked and retracted his hand, and the paralysis that had gripped Kelturin’s body released. The necromancer picked up his tools again. “If your father had managed to teach you anything, we
would not be having this conversation.”
For a long moment, Kelturin just watched as the necromancer resumed his work, tools moving almost effortlessly to reshape the chaotic flesh. Never before had Enkhaelen spoken to him so plainly.
Just as he was formulating new questions to excavate more from this sudden honesty, the necromancer frowned and brushed his sleeve back from his wrist. A metal band set with cabochon stones clung there, the colors standard for the scryers’ network: white for the Palace, yellow for the Gold Army, blue for the Sapphire, red for the Crimson, black for the Citadel at Valent.
Right now, a sixth stone was lit up. Bright silver.
Enkhaelen regarded it expressionlessly, then set his tools down. “I apologize, Kel, but it seems I have an appointment. I’ll have to finish this later.”
“An appointment?”
Without answer, Enkhaelen turned from the slab and strode toward the entry, the wall irising open at his approach. It closed behind him just as neatly, and he was gone.
Kelturin looked to the scattered tools, the half-inked sigils, the nondescript room with its veiny walls, and reluctantly lay back down on the slab to collect his thoughts.
He had nowhere else to go.
Chapter 23 – Nightmare Study
Dasira mounted the last step and squinted through the mist of snow. There was a path underfoot, barely visible: grey flagstones under a dusting of white. She could see nothing in any direction, no form or shape, no twist of a tree-branch or suggestion of a structure.
“Cob?” she called, but her voice flattened against the mist and went nowhere.
She exhaled nervously. She knew she should stop, should duck her face into her scarf and just wait for this to clear. If it were normal weather, she would have done so. But her companions had vanished utterly even though she was certain this was not the Grey.
Only Cob’s hoof-prints remained, leading onward. She doubted they were really his; more like a lure, a trick by whatever had raised this mist. Something that wanted the group separated. Something that had already succeeded.
The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) Page 66
