The sound of her slippered footsteps moved away from him across the floor. Then hands were upon him, compelling him forward. Thoroughly broken, Braden allowed himself to be guided by his guards out of the cell.
The despair that gripped him dulled his senses. It was as though he were moving through a dim and murky haze, the world around him distant and strangely muted. They led him up long flights of stairs, the dance of magelight that churned at their feet only serving to confound his senses all the more.
Braden gazed ahead with bleary eyes at the woman who strode before him. She glided in a sway of blue silks, platinum curls spiraling to her waist. She moved with an easy grace, every motion poised, every step a deliberate, calculated seduction. Arden Hannah was just as alluring as she was vile. It was a powerful and frightening dichotomy. She gazed back at him and smiled, her wide eyes glistening in the magelight.
He dropped his stare back to the floor.
They reached the ground floor of the Lyceum. There, his guards wrenched back on his arms, forcing him to a halt. Three loud knocks resounded throughout the hall, the sound of a staff rapping thrice upon wood. There was a pause. Then the knocks were answered in kind, echoing from the other side of the barred doorway.
The bars were thrown, the enormous double doors cast open, shuddering on their hinges with a throaty groan. Braden avoided Arden’s eyes as his guards forced him forward. He could see very little, only shadowy silhouettes of people gathered above in the galleries. Within, the room was completely dark, lit only by a single sphere of brilliant light in the exact center of the hall. It was toward that orb of light that he was made to walk.
Braden forced himself to hold his head up despite the chill fingers of dread that caressed his bare skin. Nervous sweat trickled down his brow. He couldn’t help trembling as he stepped within that sphere of light. There he stood, hands bound behind him, completely blinded by the white intensity of the glare. That was the purpose of the light: to protect the anonymity of those gathered above in the galleries.
The doors shivered against their hinges, sealing the chamber shut with a resounding thud. As they did, the room was stricken with an awful, gaping silence. The silence lingered, long moments stretching on and on. Braden continued to stand, blinking against the glare, eyes groping desperately for the sight of just one face he could recognize. But he could make out nothing; the thick wall of light was dense and unyielding.
A deep and resonant voice addressed him:
“Braden Reis, you have been convicted, attainted, and condemned of High Treason committed against the State of Caladorn and the Lyceum of Bryn Calazar. A sentence of death has been pronounced against you. May the gods have mercy on your soul.”
Braden bowed his head under the sheer weight of the words. A paralyzing numbness overcame him. He stood there trembling, withered by the miserable knowledge that he had failed so utterly in his purpose.
He was forced roughly to his knees in the circle of light as ropes of energy twined around about him, restraining him completely. He fought to draw breath, but succeeded only in producing a strangled wheeze.
It was Zavier Renquist himself who stepped forward into the wash of light to carry out his death sentence. Panic seized him at the sight of the object displayed in the Prime Warden’s raised hands: a stone of many facets, lifeless, dull and black. It hung from the bands of a silver collar that shone like satin in the light.
The sight of the Soulstone was ghastly, terrifying.
Braden Reis might have screamed, but even the breath for that was denied him.
Darkmage Page 63
