The Crown of Stones: Magic-Borne

by C. L. Schneider

  “They’re runes.” I glanced at the design on the top of my hand. “The symbols are distorted by a spell that condenses and disguises them.”

  Her nose scrunched in the way it used to before her transformation. “Can I see?”

  “Sure,” I smiled. “I need the practice.”

  Lirih pointed at the swirl up the left side of my neck. “What does this say?”

  I fixed my thoughts on the scars, making them glow. “Let’s find out.”

  “I’m sorry. It was a minor spell. I thought the rabbits would be enough.” Kneeling beside her, I gestured at the small cage I’d brought in from the next room at Lirih’s request. Its inhabitants were dried and curled. On the floor, beside the cage, were the desiccated bodies of two female eldring. “It’s your first healing spell. You’ll learn to use less, to restrict the stream of auras and lower the price. Practice will help.”

  Grief stripped her voice to a whisper. “Let us hope.”

  “I’ll give you a minute.” Water dripped from my clothes as I stood. Unsure what hornblende might be lurking nearby, I hadn’t wanted to gamble with her healing spell. Neither had I been ready to risk accessing Lirih’s blood for protection. As a result, she’d performed the spell with us both sitting in a vat of eldring bathing water. It was surprisingly clean. I still didn’t want to wear it.

  I stepped back. The pack closed around her. I grabbed my boots and the rest of my belongings and retreated to the corridor outside. Stripping off my wet clothes, I changed into the leather garments I’d brought with me from Kabri. The breeches were supple. The shirt was padded and reinforced for added protection. A wide variety of tiny stones were sewn into the cuffs of the shirt. The lace-up sleeves with sheaths stitched into the underside of both wrists were a nice touch. I gave silent thanks to Malaq as I slipped my knives in. They fit perfectly. It all did.

  I was buckling on weapons when Lirih exited the den. With the stones in my sleeves I wasn’t in need of the braces. I held them up. “These can help you shred my father’s spell. Might be easier than carrying the bag I brought for you.” I gestured at her simple covering. “You don’t have any pockets.”

  Lirih held out her arms. I slid my stone-laden braces over her hands and onto her wrists. She watched me buckle them. “I was careless. I won’t put them at risk again.”

  “There has to be a livestock pen in the city. Find one and cast there. Just like I told you.” I retrieved my cloak from the ground and shoved it into her hands. “Cover up. We can’t risk you getting noticed.”

  “And you? Where do you go?”

  “You said Jem keeps his prisoners down here?”

  “He does, but…who are you looking for?”

  “Krillos and Jillyan.”

  “Ian,” distress softened her husky voice, “if they are down here, then you do not wish to find them.”

  Her words sunk like iron in my stomach. “Can you point the way?”

  “I will show you. There are stairs to the street nearby.”

  My eyes went to the open door of the pen “Shouldn’t you lock them in?”

  Lirih turned to stare at the beasts gathered behind the bars; watching us. “They will stay. Fleeing the den without leave is not something they wish to risk.”

  “You have a way with them.”

  “We are the same.”

  “No, you’re not. You can talk and cast magic. You can reason beyond what they’re capable of. There is enough Shinree still in your body that I’ll be able to turn you back. I can weed out the parts of them in you.”

  “Weed out?” Lirih whipped back around. Her chin jutted in defiance. “You act as if being eldring is wrong. Like I should be ashamed to be as they are.”

  “Not at all. The eldring are amazing, but…” I reached out and took her hand. The boniness of Lirih’s claws disturbed me to the core. It robbed me of what I would say; my vow to protect her, my wish that her life be free of the pain that touched mine. My hope she would know freedom in ways I never had, that she would become the erudite I never was. And never would be. In the end all I managed was a poignant, “You’re my daughter, Lirih. We’re family.”

  “Yes.” Throwing on my cloak, she glanced back at the den. “And so are they.”

  Stale mustiness and the omnipresent scent of waste wafted from the pipes. Their discharge wet the ground, forming rivers of sludge that stretched across the dank passage. I wasn’t happy how the mud left signs of our presence. I cared even less for the thick pockets of encroaching darkness. It meant my night vision was weakening.

  Lirih was just ahead. I whispered to her. “Do these tunnels go all the way to the palace?”

  “Not quite. But your walk up top will not be far.”

  “Have you seen Jem since I left?”

  “My grandfather often requests my company.”

  “Yet he still keeps you behind bars.”

  “He knows my loyalty does not lie with him.”

  “That doesn’t stop him from trying to twist it.”

  “He cannot. But I see how he might persuade those with less cause to resist. The passion with which he speaks…if his soul were not tainted—”

  “It is,” I broke in, refusing to let her invite the idea. “Jem can’t be saved.”

  We walked a while longer. The shadows increased. A moldering stench polluted the air, and the ground graduated to a perpetual sloppy mess. I didn’t want to think what slid beneath my boots, but I had a good idea. The air was sharp with death and decay.

  At the next junction, Lirih stopped. She gestured left. “This will take you to the stairs when you are ready to leave. The door you seek is ahead.” Lirih peered forward into the gloom. “I pray they are not behind it.” Her face was wrapped in shadow, but I sensed the concern on her before she voiced it. “Is it your intention to fight my grandfather until one of you is dead?”

  “If I don’t kill him, this will never be over.”

  “Then I must warn you. Do not be fooled, Ian. Jem Reth is stronger than he lets on. He continues to siphon magic from others, and with his eldring constitution, he can cast for some time without weakening. The initial moments of his spell are formidable as well. However, the eldring blood has compromised his magical stamina, making his command of the auras fragile.”

  “Fragile how?”

  “His will over them, his wishes. They fade and dissolve without warning. The more he casts in succession, the more rapidly his spells fail. Endure what Jem throws at you. Outlast him. You will find a window to strike.”

  “Sounds like old times.” I grinned, and she relented to a subdued smile. “I didn’t realize you had an eye for strategy.”

  “Neither did I. Perhaps I inherited more than your attitude after all.” Lirih placed a kiss on my cheek. As she withdrew, sympathy twisted her eldring features. “Brace yourself, Father. And do not linger. Such a place as you enter now is not good for the soul.”

  FIFTY

  They were two or three deep, in some places more. The haphazard piles of naked corpses in various states of decay covered nearly the entire room. I walked among them, squeezing through as I had once before amid a barren field of the dead. Only this time it wouldn’t be the desiccated, ashen husks of my victims I brushed against, but the moist, waxy sallow skin and bloated limbs of my father’s.

  How? I thought. How can he sleep with this below him? How can he live under the weight of such atrocities?

  I couldn’t comprehend it. I’d never desecrated or despoiled simply because I could. I’d never taken lightly the lives that fed my spells or colored my blades. What my father had done was nothing less than criminal. The broken, discarded bodies had been dumped with no thought or care, thrown away like the soured contents of last night’s chamber pot. Most were face down, hands tied behind their backs, ankles bound. Old trails of leaked fluids ringed the bottom of the piles. Thos
e on top had suffered all manner of injuries. Skin was split. Bones were exposed. Bugs gathered in the cavities of cracked skulls. The fetid smell burned my eyes. I breathed their rot into my lungs and tasted it on my tongue.

  This was Death’s playground.

  I wasn’t ready to step foot in it.

  I turned away to the adjacent shadowy alcoves where limp bodies hung shackled to the wall. Naked, sore-ridden and motionless, the piss and bloodstains on the floor beneath their dangling feet were still wet. The smell stemming from their cleaved open bowels was fresh. None had the shapes I was looking for.

  More rooms lie beyond the alcoves, long and barred like the eldring den. At least a hundred people were inside, chained to the floor. Beaten and tortured, evidence of lash marks and burns glistened through the filth. Some lacked limbs or fingers, others strips of flesh. I was amazed how many were still breathing.

  I walked the length of the bars. I recognized no one. But that gave me no relief, no peace. Because among these remnants of people, were someone else’s friend and lover, someone’s mother and daughter and son.

  I opened the cell doors. They weren’t locked. Neither were the shackles. I freed them. I tried to help. I tried to catch their desolate stares. But all were plagued with the same eerie expression as Jarryd when I first saw him in prison, and none responded to my presence or my voice. The simply lay there, staring and rotting; too dead inside to remember they were alive.

  Repulsed, I headed back into the first room and stared at the mountain of corpses. I wanted to leave. Disturbing didn’t even come close to describing the place. I still had Sienn’s safety to consider and my father’s life to end. But I owed too much to Jillyan and Krillos. If their bodies were here, I had to know.

  There was clear space just inside the door. I dropped my bag and dug inside for the climbing gloves and my damp shirt. Ripping off a sleeve, I used it to cover my face against the stench. The gesture reminded me of when Liel, Krillos, and I crossed the Gullet to reach Darkhorne. Mostly, it reminded me of how brave the boy had been that day. Liel hadn’t thought twice about standing up to Krillos, or me.

  I’d lost so many. I couldn’t lose anyone else.

  Returning to the heap of bodies, I stepped up to the front of the pile. I sifted through, trying to be gentle. I rolled them off each other. Their flesh, as it slapped together, sounded like a barrel of fish tipping out onto the ground. I told myself it didn’t matter. These weren’t people anymore. I couldn’t let their slack, lifeless features register. Their age and race was inconsequential. Death had long since taken their souls. They were empty shells.

  They were nothing.

  My detachment didn’t last five minutes.

  Squatting amongst their silence, my stomach climbed into my throat. Each time the gelatinous film squeezed out from beneath my boots, my imagination spiked. I thought I felt their cold skin through my gloves. I swore I heard breathing, though my own quickening breath had become far too loud to catch much else. More than once I fled the tight maze, returning to my pack for a swig of water or a gulp of slightly less rancid air. I poured it over my gloves, rinsing away the build-up of things I didn’t want to think about.

  My night vision was gone. Their complexion in the dim light was a sickening pasty hue. Those near the top possessed more color. They were the recently deceased, with limbs that still had a bit of flop and dark blood that oozed from moist wounds as I shifted their weight. The ones farther down were in worse shape. Atrophied and infested, feasting worms and maggots slipped in and out of sores and orifices, devouring their finds like they’d stumbled into caves full of treasure. Thinking I might prove equally tasty, they skittered across my boots and up my legs. Flies buzzed mercilessly. I cursed as I swatted them away.

  I was near to quitting my search when I found him. He was at the far wall, buried halfway down the pile. Lying on his stomach, his black, curly hair was matted stiff with whatever had dribbled out of the corpse on top of him. Aside from a few bruises, there were no injuries to his back. Just the multitude of old scars from his years in Darkhorne. They crisscrossed in gruesome fashion; lash marks overlapping knife wounds, on top of rutted, burned skin. No one had bothered tying his wrists. The act was more trouble than it was worth, considering he only had one hand.

  An abrupt deep weariness came over me. My legs caved, and I slid down the wall to sit beside him. I was using time I didn’t have. But the city, and what waited for me up there, seemed vague and far away. The gummy floor and the multitude of naked bodies were irrelevant. There was only now with my dead friend lying beside me and all the things he’d done—all the times he’d put himself on the line, all the bad jokes he’d made and the mugs we’d shared—playing over and over in my mind. There was just me, trying to forget, to not to give a damn. To convince myself Krillos was just another Langorian, a stupid brute, an enemy.

  Except he was never that.

  I couldn’t bring myself to turn him over. I didn’t want to know what wound had killed him. I didn’t want to stare at his festering, worm-filled body, or see his laughing eyes made vacant. His marred face would be devoid of the mischief and half-hearted petulance I was used to. There would be instead, pain and fear. There would be evidence of the agony and humiliation he’d endured. Proof of the torment he’d braved because of me.

  No, I thought. Not because of me.

  For me.

  “A Langorian risking his life for a Shinree…you were ahead of the times, my friend. You were—” My throat closed as grief cinched it tight. “Gods, but you didn’t deserve this.”

  Knocking my head back against the wall, I struck it twice more; wanting it to hurt, needing the physical pain. It was preferable to what I was feeling as I struggled to slow my breathing, to not gag on the stench and the anger. Both were assaulting me with equal measure, wringing the energy from my limbs and the thoughts from my head. The depth of my father’s depravity knotted and soured in my stomach. Loss turned my mind strangely numb. Yet in the background, it was screaming: Enough!

  My gaze wandered. It settled on the only pile of bodies I hadn’t checked. It was obvious none were women.

  I blew out a breath and got up. Putting my hands on his shoulders, I rolled Krillos onto his back. His eyes were closed. The torment I expected on his scarred face wasn’t there. The expression buried beneath the beating he’d taken was strangely peaceful. I could almost overlook the blood in his beard and the dryness of his swollen mouth. His arms were slashed. His chest and stomach were bruised. But none of the wounds were fatal. No marks ringed his neck. He hadn’t been hung. Suffocation was a possibility. Or a spell.

  Not that it mattered. As another dead friend once said, knowing how won’t bring him back.

  “Goddamn it. Couldn’t you have stayed in Kabri? Course not,” I answered myself. “You were never happy unless you were knocking swords. I bet you laughed at them, didn’t you? Right up until the end. Spit in their faces… The gods know you didn’t make it easy for them. Stupid bastard. You never knew when to shut up. Maybe if you had…” Thinking about Krillos holding his tongue, a laugh burst out of me. “What am I saying?”

  You were always headed here.

  His ignorance and carelessness—and my inability to do a damn thing about it—taunted me. His faithful dedication hit me like a fist. It ripped a hole right through my grief, and my rage suddenly had an escape route.

  It tore out of me like thunder.

  “What the hell were you doing? Sneaking in, trying to outwit my father. Did you really believe you had a chance? Did you think yourself invincible? Is that it? Well fucking look at you now! They threw you away to rot like you were nothing. Like you weren’t a soldier, like you weren’t even a man, like you weren’t…” My friend.

  My need to be discreet no longer a thought in my mind, I let out a rage-darkened cry.

  It wasn’t enough. So I hauled off and kicked h
im. My boot sunk into the mess of bruises on his side; once, twice. “Idiot!”

  I kicked him again.

  I screamed at him again. “You fucking fool!”

  Unable to stop, I rammed my boot into Krillos’ body a fourth time—and his mouth shot open. A raspy gasp of pain escaped his throat, and I stumbled back, tripping over the bodies behind me. Their cold, less-than fragrant bulk cushioned me. Something thick squished beneath my gloved hand as I quickly picked myself up. Wiping it off onto my breeches, I looked back at Krillos’ naked form; once more still and static.

  Blinking, I rubbed my eyes. I was seeing things. It wasn’t real.

  Unless…

  He couldn’t have.

  Jem’s abilities were compromised. He wasn’t in possession of the crown’s power.

  He can’t have the magic to resurrect.

  Krillos coughed. His flaccid body shook. Breath fled his lungs with a rattle. Dark blood sprayed across his gray flesh. I drew my sword and waited.

  Pulse pounding, eyes darting, I watched the other bodies for signs of movement. If Jem had brought one back, he could have brought them all.

  Was this it? Was this his trap?

  I stretched my sword out. As I pressed the point to Krillos’ throat, I saw the friends that had died at my hand: Liel, Neela—the Malaq in my vision. I wasn’t sure I could do it again.

  Krillos stirred. His hand jerked. His tongue drifted out to lick blue, cracked lips. His jaw moved as if to speak, and I pushed my sword tip into his flesh.

  His words pushed weakly out. “Please do…I’d rather be dead than hear you go on crying like a baby.”

  I jerked the sword away. “You’re…alive?”

  “Of course I’m fucking alive.” His dark eyes fluttered open. “Would I be talking if I wasn’t?” Mumbling about my lack of wits, Krillos tried to sit up, but his limbs had no strength and the naked bodies kept shifting beneath him.