Darkmage

by M. L. Spencer

  As if to torture him, Naia smiled tenderly as she lifted both hands and drew the fabric back from her face. The silken folds parted like a break in the clouds, and he found himself confronted by the unconstrained radiance of her eyes. It was wondrous, mesmerizing. He found himself lost in the light of her eyes, unable to look away. Her eyes held an irresistible solace, an unconditional promise of hope and commitment.

  Naia’s dark eyes promised him everything he had ever wanted and more. He could never have any of it.

  “Put it back,” he whispered hoarsely, forcing himself to look away.

  She obeyed, lowering the veil back into place. As she did, it seemed as if the last light faded quietly from his world. He looked down, squeezing his eyes shut against the pain. Her very presence was torture enough; he should never have allowed this. He couldn’t stand it.

  “I have the potential, don’t I?” her words stirred across the bleakness of his heart.

  It took him a moment to answer her. Finally, he managed but a grated murmur, “I never saw it before.” But it was there, undeniably. He did not even need to test her to be certain; there could be no mistaking it.

  “Perhaps you didn’t want to see it,” Naia said soothingly. “Or perhaps you weren’t looking deep enough.”

  But he already knew why he had never noticed it there before. Her veil obscured the shine of the potential in her eyes. And the scant two times he had seen her face in its absence, his mind had been on other things. Near her, he was blinded to even the blatantly obvious. Her presence befuddled his senses, fouled his edge. Another potent reason why she had to go.

  “This still changes nothing,” Darien maintained.

  “Yes, it does. Kyel is no longer your acolyte. You need someone who can inherit your gift.”

  There, she was wrong. The power within him was a monstrous legacy too potent for any one mage. He would never condemn her to such a fate. It would be too much for her, even as brightly as she burned; it was too much for him. He had known from the beginning that it would eventually destroy him. He could never do that to her, even if he had a choice. Which he didn’t.

  “I’m sorry, Naia, but my gift dies with me.”

  Her face paled, her expression faltering. With a look of desperation, she fiercely shook her head. “I won’t accept that. You always find a way.”

  He whispered, “Not this time.”

  “You’re not even going to try, are you?” she accused him.

  He wasn’t; there was no point.

  “You heard Swain,” Darien snapped, gesturing sharply with his hand. “Mages were never meant to exist Unbound. Look at me; I’m living proof of the reason for the Oath.”

  “There has to be a way,” she insisted. “Can’t you just say the words again?”

  “Once forsaken, the Oath can never be reaffirmed.”

  Naia’s brow creased in frustration, her eyes wet and glistening. “So you’re just giving up?”

  Her grief only served to provoke him. This was exactly why she had to leave. Now. Before the sight of her tears softened his heart. He told her in a tone devoid of mercy, “Now do you understand why you have to go home? We have no chance, you and I, no future. Look at that thing.” He nodded at the thanacryst. “That is my soul, Naia. Do you know how I came by that creature? I killed its former mistress—right after I lay with her.”

  He heard her horrified gasp but ignored it and pressed on relentlessly, “I don’t deserve you, and you sure as all the Hells deserve better than me. Now, take your things and get out. Leave.”

  She was sobbing. Her shoulders were shaking, her hands pressed against her eyes over the sodden fabric of her veil. He watched, unmoved. She could spill every last tear in her body, but it was better this way. Much better.

  Still, she didn’t go.

  In the end, it was he who left the tent, the thanacryst jogging dutifully behind in his wake.

  Kyel was bored. There was nothing to do in the encampment, at least nothing for a mage. The soldiers seemed busy enough, scurrying here and there about their duties. The camp of Faukravar’s army had an entirely different feel to it than Emmery’s. It was easy to tell a Chamsbrey soldier without even looking at his uniform; they all seemed to be going through the motions of their various labors in a daze, their efforts halfhearted. There were far fewer men wearing black and violet uniforms than outfits of blue and white. What Chamsbrey did have was a disproportionate supply of tents. Counting tents, Kyel had figured that Faukravar’s army was now roughly half the size it had once been, before the morning of Black Solstice.

  That’s what they were calling it now. He had heard the words bandied often throughout both camps. It seemed apt; black for the clouds that had darkened the sky, black for the charred earth beneath Orien’s summit. Black for the lives that had been so cruelly taken out of life, both friend and Enemy alike. And black for the atrocious means used to attain such a one-sided victory.

  He knew what to call it now, the awesome and horrendous undertaking Darien had performed alone on the summit of the crag. Naia had told him, although he still failed to understand where she got half her information. According to the priestess, Darien had created a Grand Resonance, something conceived of in theory but never before employed. Not even Orien himself had worked such appalling devastation. Darien’s desperate act on the summit had far surpassed even the most notorious feat of Aerysius’s most infamous mage. Orien couldn’t have even accomplished it; he had been only Fifth Tier.

  Only.

  The sound of raised voices ahead startled Kyel out of his thoughts, and he hurried forward out of curiosity. As he moved past rows of tents, men noticed his cloak and stepped back away from him with looks of fear. The Chamsbrey soldiers had that reaction to the sight of him. Kyel didn’t blame them. What they had seen on Black Solstice had given them more than enough reason to fear the sight of a mage.

  Rounding a group of tents, Kyel saw the cause of the commotion. To his surprise, he recognized Nigel Swain standing beside the stock-still form of General Blandford, enmeshed in what looked like a heated argument with the Black Prince. Perplexed, Kyel sauntered closer, trying to get an idea of what could possibly have driven the captain to publicly confront a king. Especially a king with Faukravar’s reputation.

  The king was seething, face red and eyes scalding. His white-gloved hand was fingering the pommel of the jewel-encrusted sword he wore strapped to his hip, the other twisting one of the duel points of his goatee. Swain seemed to be acting completely in character which, needless to say, wasn’t going over well with the king.

  “Who do you think you are, to presume to gainsay me?” Kyel could hear Faukravar seethe.

  Swain adopted what looked like a fighting stance, one leg in front of the other with knees slightly bent, his body at an angle to the king. It was easy to imagine a sword in his hand as he sneered at Faukravar:

  “There’s another army headed this way, and I’m not about to let you just pack up your toys and leave.”

  Kyel frowned, walking closer. Swain’s words shocked him, the vehemence in them nearly as outrageous as the news of another army. If the captain was not careful, he was going to wind up with his head on a block. Kyel felt pressed, thinking he should do something to intervene.

  “How dare you,” spat Faukravar, face turning an even deeper shade of red. “General Blandford, I want this man scourged!”

  Blandford just looked at the king dully, lifting one of his long-whiskered eyebrows. In an almost sullen voice he droned, “I’m sorry, Your Grace, but my Lady Queen would be most put out if I consented to scourge her fiancé.”

  Kyel stopped in his tracks. Looking at Nigel Swain, he felt like hitting himself over the head for not seeing it before. Romana had all but deferred to the captain, back at the palace in Rothscard. And Swain had been passionate in his devotion to her.

  Kyel wasn’t the only one taken aback. Faukravar’s face melted through several shades of red into pasty white. “What?”

&nb
sp; “That’s right,” Swain confirmed with his crooked sneer, looking only too pleased with himself for having unbalanced the king.

  Faukravar’s gloved hand dropped from his goatee as he struggled to compose himself, at last stating, “It would seem that Romana has even worse taste in men than she does in wine.”

  Swain shook his head, grinning wryly. “My fiancé has excellent taste in wine,” he contradicted. “She just has better sense than to waste a good vintage on a coward like you.”

  Gasps issued from the small crowd of onlookers as Faukravar’s face turned glaringly purple. Tugging the glove from his hand, he threw it down in the snow between them, visibly trembling in outrage. Swain stared down at the white glove, eyes coolly considering.

  It was time to intervene, Kyel decided. Surging forward, he bent down and retrieved the king’s glove, holding it up and offering it back to him. Faukravar’s eyes took in the glove then moved to linger on Kyel’s black cloak. His face looked ready to burst from the amount of blood that had been sucked into his cheeks.

  “I’d take it, if I were you,” Kyel urged him calmly, indicating the glove in his outstretched hand. “Unless you have a champion eager to duel a Guild blademaster.”

  Faukravar stared at the glove, stared at Swain, then glared at Kyel. His lips curled, revealing a set of chipped and yellowed teeth that had the look of worn daggers. Outrage fumed from his countenance in almost visible waves as he snatched the glove out of Kyel’s hand and stalked off. He was followed by a small group of lackeys, muttering something about “contemptible mages” under his breath. When he was gone, Kyel turned back to face a still-grinning Nigel Swain.

  “What’s this about another army?” he demanded.

  The grin disappeared immediately from the captain’s face. “Thirty thousand, coming from the Gap of Amberlie. They’ll be here by this afternoon.” He sighed, blowing a greasy lock of hair back from the corner of his mouth. “It seems that Darien was right, after all. They’ll just keep coming.”

  “Rider approaching!”

  Kyel turned at the sound of the outcry, glancing out across the blackened terrain to the north. He saw the exhausted horse before he saw the rider, recognizing the man from the color of his cloak. A gray cloak. It was the first gray cloak he had seen south of the Pass of Lor-Gamorth. The rider was a soldier from Greystone Keep and, by the looks of it, he was badly injured.

  Kyel ran out toward him across the blackened ground. Swain followed at his heels as he captured the spent horse by its bridle. The soldier was already sliding out of his saddle when the captain caught him up in his arms, easing the man to the ground. Kyel leaned over him, placing a hand on his chest and desperately trying to probe the man with his mind, the way he had seen Darien do before. An image came back to him, fleeting and unintelligible. But his eyes saw enough to tell that the man was dying. His face already wore a pale mask of death, the shirt beneath his mail vest saturated with blood.

  “Archer?” the soldier muttered weekly, looking vaguely perplexed.

  Kyel frowned, staring down at the man, trying to see under the caked blood and grime that splattered his face. He thought he might recognize him, but couldn’t be certain. It didn’t matter, anyway; his own name was the last word the soldier would ever utter.

  Kyel grimaced as Swain bent down to close the dead man’s sightless eyes. If only he knew enough of his gift to do something useful with it, he might have been able to save him. Darien could have done it. But Darien wasn’t here. Grimly, Kyel vowed to pick up the pace of his training while he still had a chance to learn something.

  “What’s this?” he heard Swain whisper softly.

  Looking down, Kyel saw what the captain was referring to. The dead man’s hand was clasped around a piece of rolled parchment that was stained brown with dried blood. Swain had to fight the man’s deathgrip to retrieve it. Unrolling the scroll, he scanned the page harshly before shaking his head and crushing it into Kyel’s fist.

  “Here,” he grunted. “I can’t read.”

  Kyel found himself staring at the captain in mute disbelief. If he was going to be a royal consort, Kyel figured the man had better learn how to read. Turning to the wadded scroll, he uncrumpled it, smoothing it against the palm of his hand. Letting his eyes trace over the neat, embellished script, he felt his heart lurch to a halt in his chest. He had to start reading the note all over again, taking it from the top. The last line he scanned at least five times before he finally believed it.

  “Well?” Swain pressed. “What does it say?”

  Kyel felt too stunned to even speak. His hand clenched violently around the parchment, wadding it up into a tight ball in his fist.

  “It’s a summons,” he said finally. “Darien’s presence is requested at a parley tonight under flag of truce. It’s signed ‘Zavier Renquist’.”

  Darien backed silently away from the crowd of onlookers that yet lingered over the body of Wade Tarpen, a soldier from Greystone Keep he had known from the two years he had lived there. He had arrived too late to save the man. Intent on the corpse on the ground, no one paid him any mind. No one noticed as he quickly bent to retrieve a wadded ball of parchment off the ground and then silently slipped away. Without his cloak he was harder to recognize, and few people did. They were used to marking him by the white emblem of the Prime Warden. But it was gone now; after the transgression he had committed on its fabric, he hadn’t been able to put the cloak back on. Instead, he had used it as a shroud to wrap around Arden’s body. The cloak had been cremated in the resonance, sent over the cliff with her vile remains.

  He was clothed only in his black breeches and a shirt that he’d borrowed from one of the empty tents, his baldric tossed over it. The shirt was part of an officer’s uniform, with the insignia of Chamsbrey embroidered on the breast, bars of rank stitched onto the shoulders. The fabric wasn’t nearly warm enough. He shivered as he strode toward the place where he had bid the thanacryst wait. It was still there, stationed in the exact spot he’d left it in front of an abandoned tent. The beast loped over to him immediately when it caught sight of him, froths of spittle flying from its jowls. Its green eyes glinted banefully as it stared up at him, looking patiently expectant.

  “Ceise,” Darien whispered, spreading his fingers at his side.

  The thanacryst obeyed, falling in to heel beside him as together they walked toward the margin of the camp. With the beast there at his side, Darien no longer had the luxury of anonymity. Men stared, first at the thanacryst and then at him, with expressions of fear and repugnance. The mood of the men toward him had altogether changed. It was easy to see why; Chamsbrey’s army had been decimated. From what he could judge, there were perhaps a little over half the number of soldiers as had left with him from Tol-Ranier. Still, it was better than he had expected. Wellingford had heeded him well, and had managed to keep a good number of his men out of the eye of the vortex. The boy was turning out to be a decent commander, after all.

  He trudged by a group of soldiers lingering around a fire. Darien felt their eyes upon him, heard the quiet, whispered words uttered behind his back. He could almost smell their hatred and fear. They blamed him. They were lucky to be alive to blame him; if he had held back even a fraction, they would all be dead by now. He almost felt like turning to confront them, their reproach kindling a cold, simmering fury. As if sensing his mood, the thanacryst growled. Darien dropped his hand to steady it, feeling the beast’s wet and slobbery tongue licking the tips of his fingers. As he moved out of earshot of the group, he heard one of soldiers muttering the word “darkmage” under his breath.

  So, that’s what they thought of him, did they? Darien felt his bile rising as his temper cooled to an arctic chill. He groped for the solace of the magic field, tugging at it sharply with the full force of his mind. He took in too much, too quickly; the excess energy bled off his body in crackling blue tongues that drew stares from everyone nearby. Soldiers gaped at him, backing away. Darien paid them no heed, suffu
sed with the soothing ecstasy of the field.

  He turned and stared out into the wasted blackness that spread out before him. The amount of devastation was overwhelming, beyond anything he had expected. Everything within the eye of the vortex had been reduced to char and ashes; the very land itself seemed tortured. Orien’s Finger was blackened. The stone had a glassy, molten appearance. The summit looked dangerously detached, shoved to the side and leaning precariously atop its dark pedestal. He had been lucky it hadn’t given way completely.

  His eyes wandered downward, scanning somberly over the wasteland of his own creation. There were no remains. No scavengers. No wounded. It didn’t have the feel of a battlefield. Rather, there was a different presence lingering over the site, the sobering feel of apocalypse. The earth itself seemed to be crying out in muted, anguished grief, hating him with every soil, every grain, every scorched stone, for the insult that had been delivered it. In his desire to protect his homeland, he had inflicted it, instead. The earth surrounding Orien’s finger had been violated. Not so much as a seed would germinate in that tormented soil for years. His own ego had shattered it, warping it into the very image of the destiny he had been trying to protect it from. All of the malevolent power of the Netherworld couldn’t have despoiled his homeland as thoroughly as he had done so himself.

  The crunch of boots on the scorched sand told him Wellingford was approaching. Darien had the distinctive sound of the boy’s footsteps memorized by now. He was vaguely surprised that anyone who had looked upon the atrocity he had committed would have the temerity to seek him out. He pretended not to notice the young man’s approach, letting his general draw up to stand at his side unacknowledged.

  “Prime Warden.” Wellingford’s voice was hesitant. “I didn’t know you were recovered. Are you sure you’re well enough to be about?”