Ruler, Rival, Exile (Of Crowns and Glory—Book 7)

by Morgan Rice

  “I’ve been using this,” she said, “but I suspect you deserve it more than I do, since we found it sticking out of you.”

  Akila took it in its sheath. It was tall enough that he could lean on it in place of one of his crutches.

  “I look forward to giving it back to the First Stone,” Akila said. “Although maybe, once you’ve recovered your strength, it will be a better weapon for you than me.”

  Perhaps it would, but first, Ceres had to get back the powers that she’d lost. Thanos came up to her again, and Ceres thought that they might hold to one another forever, but this was no more than a touch of hands as she looked into his eyes, wishing that this could all be so much easier.

  Ceres pulled back before she could give in to more than that, getting on the boat, fumbling with the knots there because it was hard to see them through the tears. Even so, she managed to untie them through feel, pushing the boat away from the dock and taking hold of the oars to pull it clear.

  Once she was far enough out, she put the small sail up, then took hold of the tiller, looking forward toward the island between life and death because even that was easier than looking back toward the shore. She pulled beyond the limits of the harbor, then fixed her sights on the dark shape of the island in the distance.

  She would go there, get her powers back, and return. Maybe once she did, everything would be simpler for her. Of course, before any of that, she would need to survive the island. That would have been hard enough with her powers intact.

  Now, Ceres felt she was going to her death.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Daskalos had not always been called “Teacher.” He’d worn other names in the long years he’d been alive, earning them and choosing them, putting them on and off again the way another man might have worn cloaks. In the war, they had called him Weapon Shaper rather than Teacher, because of the things he had crafted to bring down the Ancient Ones.

  Now, he would craft a weapon worthy of both names.

  He followed the routes through his home with the ease of long memory, setting aside a defense here, stepping around one there. His space beneath the mountain was more complicated than people thought, reaching out into other spaces in ways that he’d learned from the Ancient Ones, and then built on with knowledge he’d gained for himself. There were doorways beside him that seemed to lead out onto fields, or into spaces within the great cities of the world. Not all of it was an illusion.

  Briefly, he found himself thinking of Stephania as he walked, and the features he wore shifted to those he’d chosen to speak with her.

  It was a pity, in some ways, about her. She would have made a good student if she hadn’t been so flawed. If she’d had the sense to see what he was truly offering when she came to his home, she would have had all the power she wanted. Instead, she let her petty need for revenge get the better of her.

  Daskalos stepped into a plush bedchamber lined in red silk. It was one of many in his home, because he didn’t like to sleep in exactly the same spot twice. The sight of it made him think of Stephania again, and idly, he conjured an illusion of her, stretched out there, waiting. Daskalos dismissed it with a snap of his fingers. It wasn’t the same.

  “Perhaps you should have saved her then,” he told himself. Daskalos considered that with a frown. Why would he have, when she’d already tried to kill him? She’d begged for his help, but in itself, that meant nothing. He knew she would have betrayed him. In their way, people were as ephemeral and impermanent as any illusion.

  In any case, saving her would have spoiled the lesson, and Daskalos couldn’t allow that. So he’d taken his price and left. He’d warned her not to cross him, after all.

  Daskalos passed through the bedchamber to the space beyond. This room was walled in reflecting crystal, and the sorcerer could feel the hum of it as it cut out the interference from the world beyond. A hundred slaves had died digging this place out, and more had followed, their lives fed into the crystal walls because it was the most use they could ever be. Daskalos did not feel remorse at that. He might as well feel remorse for the fish he caught in the stream, or the beetle he stepped on by accident.

  At the heart of the cavern, in a crib made of wicker and bone, Stephania’s baby lay crying. Daskalos went to it, quieting it, using the gentle murmur of his voice to lull the boy into sleep. He was not a cruel man, simply one who did what was needed.

  The tools for what was needed now were already set up, in lines painted on the floor, symbols sketched onto the walls. Some were in gold leaf, some in substances that would poison any who touched them, some in blood and more ephemeral things. The greatest of workings always seemed to require the greatest sacrifices.

  People understood the way magic worked. They thought in terms of waving a hand and the world changing, as if wishing were enough. Oh, there were things that worked that way. Daskalos could craft illusions of such power that the weak-willed would never know the difference. The version of Stephania that he had conjured would have looked, and felt, and even smelled exactly like the real thing.

  Then there were the things that the Ancient Ones had been able to do without even thinking about them. Some of their talents had made them look like gods compared to humanity. It was just part of what had made them so arrogant in their superiority, and what had meant they needed to be destroyed.

  For Daskalos, a great working such as this took more. It took knowledge. It took power, and the true names of things, and all the understanding that had come through years of study. Daskalos was trying to take nature and turn it to his ends through his power. Life resisted that, fighting back at every step.

  He stood by the sleeping form of the child. It looked so sweet, so innocent there, but that had never been something to deter Daskalos from what he needed to do. He started to chant over the child, every inflection perfect, the rhythm of it balanced exactly.

  It had to be. In a working such as this, he made himself into the balancing point for forces even his body could never hope to contain. One slip, one missed word, and those forces would tear him or the child apart. Neither was what Daskalos wanted right then.

  He focused on what he did want. There was so much the child needed to know, and learn and grow into. There were a thousand choices and more involved in turning a child like this into what Daskalos needed it to be, and normally, those choices would have been made over the course of many years.

  There was no time for that. The world was at a point where he needed to intervene, not years from now, but now. He needed to do this, even if it meant drawing in energies that normally even he would not have touched.

  Daskalos lit a candle that had taken close to a month to construct, back when he had prepared it. Its wick was taken from the cloth of an Ancient One priest’s robes, its wax rendered down from drake fat and the honey of death mask bees, fed on the tears of weeping mothers. He’d cast spells in its crafting that had left him shivering with the effort, but he still lit it now.

  Its flame rose and flickered, then slowed, then almost stopped. There were dangers now. Stand still too long, and Daskalos could use up all the air around him. Knock over the candle, and he could find himself trapped between moments.

  He lifted the child, holding it in his arms. Once, he would probably have felt something while holding such a small, helpless creature. Back when he had risen with the others against the Ancient Ones, he could even remember that he’d talked about building a better world for children such as this.

  Now, he regarded Stephania’s baby the way a master smith might have regarded a billet of the finest steel.

  This was the perfect vessel. The child had the strongest of human blood in its veins, with a mother whose intelligence and beauty were only matched by her cunning, and a father who was strong and just, with the blood of kings flowing through him. Both Stephania and Thanos had their flaws, but Daskalos could work with their child.

  Especially since Stephania had given the child to him. Daskalos had taken children bef
ore now, but it had never worked as well as he had hoped. They had never been the blank slates he had hoped for. Their names, their parents’ claims on them, the love they had experienced had all placed limits on what he could do. He had been forced to fight past the fact that they were not his to change, and that had stopped him from making them perfect.

  There would be no such limits with this child. Stephania had made her promise. She had given Daskalos her son, body and soul. He belonged to the sorcerer, and that meant that he could be shaped as he should be.

  Daskalos spun with the child in his arms, chanting as he moved. If someone had been able to see him then, and if they had survived more than a few moments of that watching, they might have assumed that he was dancing with the child.

  In a way, he was, but the steps of the dance were as much a part of the spell as any of his words. The movements drew in power and funneled it, sending it into the child a fraction at a time. This was where Daskalos had to be particularly careful, in a balancing act that he was convinced no one else could have managed. Too much power, and he would kill the child before it could grow. Too little, and it wouldn’t grow into anything useful.

  Instead, he built the power, little by little, until the boy practically glowed with it by the kind of sight that only a sorcerer possessed, and the shadows danced around him. The boy woke in that moment, and Daskalos was worried that it might scream, but instead it laughed, reaching out for the strands of power the way another child might have grabbed at its mother’s hair.

  He placed the boy back in his crib. The spells around the boy were strong enough now that Daskalos couldn’t risk holding onto him any longer. He just had to trust that he had done his work well enough for the rest of it to succeed.

  Around the crib, a mist started to rise up, and Daskalos could see the flickers of power running through it like a storm rising up through distant clouds. He’d shaped them as best he could. Now, he merely needed to give them purpose.

  “You will grow to be a weapon,” he told the child. “You will have all the strengths of your parents and none of their weaknesses. You will be loyal, and you will have all the advantages of magic running in your blood. You will be the perfect tool with which to do all that must be done now.”

  The mist closed over the crib, so that Daskalos could no longer see it. The crystals around the cavern pulsed blood red, and the color spread as the mist continued to rise, so that it seemed to Daskalos that he was standing in the midst of a bright red storm.

  He stood there and directed it, crafting illusions and sending them off into the mist, illusions so real he might have been the one who didn’t exist, compared with them. He sent them to the child, watching the mist absorbing them.

  In theory, they would become memories. They would be things so real that the boy would never know he had only experienced them like this. He would have a whole life’s worth of illusions for a past, and that past would shape him, focus him, hone him.

  He would have illusions for teachers, illusions for friends, illusions for lovers. By the time Daskalos was done, he would truly have lived up to his name. He would have taught the boy everything he required, and Stephania’s son would be prepared for the one task he would have in life.

  To kill his father.

  And Ceres.

  And anyone else who stood in his path.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Sartes was supposed to be repairing one of the ramparts on the harbor, working alongside his father and reinforcing the great harbor gates that made Haylon so impregnable. Instead, he spent his time staring at Leyana.

  Sartes couldn’t help it. He’d tried to focus on the repairs they were supposed to be making, but every time he found himself looking up from the stone and the rivets, his eyes found Leyana. She was so beautiful, and funny, and she was working just as hard as anyone there. Whenever they were close, it was like the rest of the world just lit up around her, and—

  Something hit the rock beside Sartes’s hand and he saw a rivet spiraling away down toward the harbor. It hissed as it hit the water.

  “Sartes!” his father shouted, and Sartes could hear the worry there. “That could have killed you. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Sartes assured him.

  His father looked at him for several seconds. “I’m not sure that ‘fine’ is the word. Love-struck and not paying attention. Go on. Go to her. It has to be safer than having you here staring.”

  A part of Sartes wanted to argue that everything was fine, and that he could keep going, but the truth was that it was just the part of him that didn’t want to let his father down. The rest of him wanted to run to be near Leyana, and he did, hurrying across to where she was helping to fill buckets with the crumbling rocks taken from the ramparts that needed to be repaired, stacking them in brackets ready to rain down on anyone who tried to climb. She was also putting buckets of tar and oil in place, again ready to throw.

  Sartes started to help her to carry them up to where they were needed, and he was glad that his father had sent him over. He would rather be there with Leyana than anywhere else.

  “What are you thinking?” Leyana asked.

  “That there’s nowhere I would rather be,” Sartes replied.

  “On an island that’s about to be besieged?” Leyana asked with a laugh that made Sartes all too aware of just how close she was to him in that moment.

  “With you,” Sartes replied.

  They stole a kiss over their respective buckets, and it was a miracle that they managed not to spill tar over themselves.

  “It’s good that we’re not on the boat anymore,” Leyana whispered. “It means that there aren’t people on every side of us, looking on. On an island, we could go for walks out into the countryside, maybe not come back until morning. Just the two of us.”

  Just the two of them. Sartes could barely imagine a time when it might just be the two of them, but he could hope. On the road, it had been him, Leyana, and all the conscripts. After that, they’d been surrounded by the others on the boat. Now, they might finally have some time alone together.

  Sartes found himself wanting more than that. He’d been thinking about this ever since he heard what happened between Thanos and Ceres. The details had come through the island’s rumor mill, and Sartes hadn’t believed them when he first heard them, but they fit.

  “Did you hear about Thanos and Ceres?” he asked Leyana.

  She shook her head. “I know that she went off. I would have liked to say goodbye. Your sister seems like a good person.”

  “She is,” Sartes agreed. He thought for a moment. “I think that’s the problem, sometimes.”

  Because it meant that she ended up doing things that a normal person wouldn’t have tried, simply because it seemed to be right. She put herself in danger when anyone else would have decided that there was nothing more that could be done.

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a good person,” Leyana said, taking his hand.

  “There is if it means you’re always in danger,” Sartes said.

  He heard Leyana laugh at that and looked over at her just in time for her to kiss him again.

  “You always talk as if you’re some kind of coldly practical coward,” Leyana said. “But you’re not, Sartes. You’re as brave as anyone I’ve met, and you spend just as much time trying to do the right thing as your sister. It’s just one of the things I like about you.”

  “Just one of them?” Sartes asked. “What are the others?”

  Leyana smiled at that. “Perhaps I’ll tell you later. You were going to tell me about Thanos and Ceres.”

  Sartes groaned inwardly at having to pull back from the brink of it all, but then, he had started it by bringing up the rumors in the first place.

  “They’re saying that Thanos proposed to Ceres before she left. And she said no.”

  He saw Leyana frown slightly. “Why would she do that?”

  Sartes couldn’t help a sigh. “Things are always so complicat
ed between the two of them. It’s as though they want to be together, but they keep finding ways to make it more difficult.”

  “Well,” Leyana said, bringing his hand up to her lips, “I can promise you this: when it comes to you proposing to me, I won’t be saying no.”

  That caught Sartes a little by surprise, but if he’d learned one thing from the way things had gone between Thanos and his sister, it was that you took your chances in love where they could be found.

  “That,” he said, pulling her close, “is good to hear.”

  ***

  Thanos was with Iakos, wishing all the time that he wasn’t. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with Akila’s deputy, but Thanos wanted to be in the boat with Ceres, actually able to help her for once; able to prove to her that he was serious about wanting her, and wanting to marry her.

  “It’s just down here,” Iakos said, guiding Thanos to one of the open spaces of the city.

  Instead of being with Ceres, Thanos was having to do this, helping to prepare the city for the attack they all knew was coming. He was trying to help, trying to keep busy, but thoughts of Ceres intruded at every step. He hoped that she would be safe.

  Right now, though, there were other things to focus on, like what seemed to be half a regiment of the Empire’s soldiers standing in one of Haylon’s squares in front of him. They didn’t have the pristine neatness that they’d had when they’d left the docks. Instead, they looked closer to the way Haylon’s warriors did: worn by fighting, their armor dulled to blend in with the mountains.

  Thanos saw Akila standing in front of them with a small group of Haylon’s soldiers. The island’s leader leaned on Irrien’s sword in place of a crutch, and seemed to be looking at the Empire soldiers as though expecting them to attack at any moment. Another, older, man stood nearby.

  “General Haven!” Thanos said. “You’re alive.”

  “I am, your highness,” the old man said. He didn’t sound quite as bumbling or pompous here as he had back in Delos. He didn’t look the same, either, having gone from overweight to thin in the course of his fighting on the island. “When I received your messages, I wasn’t sure at first if you were really here, but my scouts were able to confirm that you had arrived, and… we started to hear some more of what happened back in Delos.”