There was no sound in the white-marble corridor except for the ever-present screaming of the wind. Even sheltered inside their glass chimneys, the candle flames that had taken the place of mage-lights flickered in icy drafts strong enough to have earned the name of "breeze." But these gusts were no zephyrs, and the blizzard out there wasn't half as powerful as the Storm now breaking over them was likely to make it.
The Emperor was going to be utterly engrossed in his spellcasting; over the past several days, Melles had made a point of going in and out of the Emperor's chambers and the Throne Room on one pretext or another during a Storm, and he knew that Charliss was completely oblivious to everything around him when he was spell-casting.
If the Emperor had put half the effort on holding his crumbling Empire together that he was spending on maintaining his crumbling body, Melles would not have felt so impelled to remove him now.
If he had done so, Melles would not have half the allies he now had either.
He walked boldly into the Emperor's quarters, as he had any number of times over the past few days, as if in search of an official paper or something of the sort. He ignored the unconscious mages sprawled over the furniture in the outer room, taken down either by the Storm itself or the Emperor's ruthless plundering of their energies.
The Emperor would not be here or in his bedroom; Melles already knew that Charliss had ordered his servants to carry him into the empty, cavernous Throne Room and placed him in the Iron Throne itself. He made a tiny hand-sign to the two bodyguards standing on either side of the door, a pair of bodyguards from his own retinue, inserted into the Emperor's personnel with the collusion of the Guard Commander. They acknowledged his presence with a slight nod and stood aside. He opened the door to the Throne Room carefully, a fraction at a time, as he sensed the Storm building to an unheard-of fury and a new and oddly-flavored spell building inside the room in concert with it.
He wasn't certain why the Emperor had taken to casting his magics while in the embrace of the Iron Throne, wearing the Wolf Crown, but it made his own task easier. There would be no witnesses and a dozen entrances through which a murderer could have made his escape, assuming that there were even any murmurs of foul play. He frankly doubted that would be the case. People were far more likely to point to all of the loyal bodyguards on duty, each within eye- and ear-shot of the next pair, and believe the report of suicide.
Despite the roaring fires and a half-dozen charcoal braziers around Charliss' feet, the room was icy, but not still. Charliss could already have been a wizened corpse, hunched over in the cold embrace of the Throne, eyes closed, white, withered hands clenched on the arms. only the yellow gem-eyes of the wolves in the Crown watched him, and he fancied that there was a look of life in those eyes, as they waited to see what he would do. But wolves protected only cubs and territory and they had no interest in protecting individuals once those individuals were detrimental to the welfare of the pack. They would not hinder Melles in what he intended to do.
There was a tightly-woven, furiously rotating spell building up around the Emperor, a spell somehow akin to the Storm outside. Did Charliss think to tap the power of the Storm now to bolster his failing magics? If so, he was mad.
The spell neared its peak. After years of watching Charliss spell-cast, Melles knew the Emperor's rhythms and patterns. If he was going to strike, he had better do so now. He slipped a sharp dagger, pommel ornamented with the Imperial Seal, out of the hem of his heavy, fur-trimmed tunic. He had purloined this very dagger out of the Emperor's personal quarters two days ago; it was well known to be one of Charliss' favorite trophy-pieces and virtually every member of the Court would readily identify it as his and no one else's.
Now. Before Charliss woke from his self-imposed trance, realized his danger, and turned all that terrible energy on him.
As only a trained assassin could, Melles flipped the dagger in his hand until he held only the point between his thumb and forefinger, aimed, and threw.
The dagger flew straight and true, with all the power of Melles' arm and anger behind it. With a wet thud, it buried itself to the hilt in Charliss' left eye. The Emperor was killed instantly, left with a slack-jawed version of his self-absorbed expression.
But the spell he had been about to unleash did not die with him.
For one instant, Melles felt the chill hand of horrified fear clutch his throat, as it had not in decades, and he waited to be pounded to the earth as the rogue spell lashed out at him.
The gathered energies, with no direction, and no controls, whirled in a vortex of light around the Emperor's body for a moment, obscuring him. Rays of light shot upward, punching holes through the darkness, leaving scorched spots in the ceiling. Other sparks jumped and careened, arcing back to the sword points arrayed in ominous fans behind and around the Iron Throne. The crackling sparks disappeared with a flash and a soft sizzle. Then suddenly, the vortex stilled, and a moment later, the gathered energy invested itself in the Iron Throne, leaving it glowing for a moment before returning—apparently—to its original state.
Melles let out his breath in a hiss, walked tentatively over to Charliss, and reached for the Wolf Crown. He touched it for just a moment, and he could have sworn that the pack-leader on the front of the crown grinned at him.
Then he removed the dagger from the dead man's eye; a thin trickle of blood followed the removal of the blade, but it took less force to pull it out of the skull than Melles had feared. The corpse of the former Emperor was already falling to pieces. He examined the wound; it could be made to look less serious. He made a few more facial wounds with quick stabs, as if Charliss had cut himself about the face in a mad frenzy. Then he placed the dagger in Charliss's hands, clenched both the flaccid hands around the hilt, pressed the point to the Emperor's breast, and shoved, piercing the heart.
He checked to make certain that he had not gotten any blood on himself, more as a reflex than anything else; he had been a professional for too long to have made so foolish a mistake.
Then he strolled casually out the door, nodding to the guards as he passed. In a few more moments, they would go in, find Charliss, and report that the Emperor, distraught and deranged by his failing magic and crumbling health, had committed suicide.
And long live the new Emperor, may he reign a hundred years.
Karal was on his knees. Altra was beside him, a glowing cat-image under his groping hand. Florian stood braced between him and the Pit, a horse-shape of Fire against the darkness. To his right, looming out of the swirling, fluctuating energies, Firesong still stood like a blinding statue of a warrior with upraised sword—a high keening sound that somehow penetrated the roar in Karal's ears came from Need, as if the sword had somehow acquired a voice. To his left, there was no sign of An'desha, but two bird-human shapes with feathers of flame wove a restless web all about a shadowed core. He couldn't see Sejanes at all across the Pit.
He sensed the energies around them were winning. They couldn't feed the Pit fast enough, and their protectors were burning out.
And yet, he was no longer afraid. Even if they didn't survive, they had fed enough of the terrible power into the Pit to prevent a second Cataclysm. As he gazed on the burning image of Florian, great peace descended on his heart, and he faced the terrible, glorious, mystical fire without flinching. Once again, he stood in the heart of the Sun and knew he was welcome there. He opened himself up to it fully, and lost himself there, past fear, past pain, past everything but the Light.
And then his awareness of self evaporated, and there was nothing more.
The light was gone; the Light was gone. There was nothing but darkness, yet Florian's image still continued to bum against that dark.
He was lying on his back. His groping hands encountered rough blankets over him, then warm fur.
"I think he's awake," said Lo'isha in a low voice.
He coughed, cleared his throat, and replied, "I am awake. How is everyone? Did the light fail?"
His q
uestion was answered with the kind of heavy silence that only occurs when someone has unwittingly asked a question that has an answer that will make him very unhappy.
"Firesong has been... hurt," Silverfox said gently. "An'desha and Sejanes are quite all right, only tired."
He tried to sit up, and felt hands on his chest holding him down. "How badly hurt is Firesong?" he asked urgently. "Can I see him? Where's Florian? Haven't you got any lights going yet?"
Again, that awkward silence, and then the answer came to him, to his last question at least, as Lo'isha asked, very softly, "What can you see?"
"Nothing," he whispered, stunned. "Only—Florian—"
"It seems that those whose guardians were entirely spirit fared the best," said Lyam in that dry way of his.
The fur draped over his legs moved. :Florian is gone, Karal,: Altra said, in the gentlest tones that Karal had ever heard him use. :I am the only one of the protectors to survive the experience. I am sorry.:
Karal moved his head, and still saw nothing but darkness and the fiery image of Florian in reverse silhouette against it. He swallowed, as the full impact of realization hit him, and felt hot tears burning their way down his face. Florian—gone? Protecting him? He blinked, but nothing changed in what he saw—or rather, what he didn't see.
"You see nothing, Karal?" Lo'isha persisted. He shook his head dumbly.
"What about Firesong?" he asked, around a cold lump in his gut and a second lump in his throat. "Is he—like me?"
"No, but—the sword, Need—she exploded in a mist of molten metal in his hands. His face and hands are badly burned." That was Lyam. "I just sent Silverfox back to him."
Although tears of mourning continued to trickle down Karal's face, he nodded. "Good," he managed. "I don't really need a Healer..." He let his voice trail off, making a kind of question out of it.
"No, Karal," Lo'isha said, with a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I'm afraid a Healer won't do you any good right now."
"Then, just leave me with Altra for a bit, would you?" he asked, and after a while, he heard them get up and move away. He felt Altra settle on his chest and legs, and began gently scratching the Firecat's ears. Tears slid down his cheeks, and Altra continued to rasp them away.
:Karal?: Altra asked, after a long silence. He answered the Firecat with a fierce hug.
"Just stay with me," he whispered.
:I'll never leave you, Karal,: Altra promised. :Never. Not for as long as you live.:
Firesong remembered the exact moment when Need lost her battle to shield him, which was right after Yfandes had evaporated into motes of energy. She had screamed—a warning, he thought—and he had let her go and flung one arm over his eyes to protect them. All he remembered after that was pain.
He hadn't ever lost consciousness, and right now, loss of all awareness would have been a blessing. Silverfox had given him something that turned the terrible agony into bearable agony, but he still hurt. Almost as bad was the knowledge of what had happened to him. He knew what he looked like—and worse, he knew what he was going to look like. No Healer would be able to keep scar tissue from forming, and his face—
He struggled to keep back tears, tears of pain, tears of loss. Yes he had been vain, and why not? His face had won him all the lovers he had ever wanted, and now no one would ever give him a second glance.
A touch on his arm made him start and open his tightly-closed eyes. "Ashke, I am here," said Silverfox, his face full of concern. "Are you in pain?"
"Better to ask, what doesn't hurt," he replied, trying to make a feeble joke of it. "I am trying not to scream; it is very impolite, and would frighten An'desha."
"We have sent the Kal'enedral out for stronger pain drugs," Silverfox told him tenderly, resting one hand on the part of his arm that was not burned. "They should be back soon. The blizzard stopped, and the snow is melting, and in a little we will have gryphons or horses here to take you to k'Leshya. Kaled'a'in Healers are very good." He hesitated, then added, "It is a pity they are not good enough to help Karal."
That snapped him out of the slough of self-pity he was wallowing in. "What about Karal?" he asked sharply.
"I think—he has lost his sight." Silverfox looked away for a moment.
Lost his sight? For one bitter moment, Firesong actually envied him. Better to lose his sight than to go through life, scorned and pitied, to have people look away from you because they could not bear the sight of you—
But even as he thought that, he rejected the thought with anger at himself. You fool, he told himself scornfully. You vain, self-important fool! You are alive with all your senses; you are neither crippled nor incapacitated, and you still have Aya.
As if to underscore that last, the firebird trilled a little from his perch beside Firesong's pallet.
Poor Karal, came the thought at last. "Poor lad," he sighed, "Florian, and this—" then involuntarily whimpered as the movement sent pain lacing through the burns on his face. He felt tears start up, and soak into his bandages.
Silverfox cupped his hands at Firesong's temples, and started into his eyes with fierce concentration. As Firesong looked into his eyes, some of the pain began to recede, and he almost wept again, this time with relief. "I will be glad—" he gasped, "—when those pain drugs arrive."
"They cannot arrive soon enough for me," Silverfox muttered, then managed something of a wan smile. "You are being much braver than I would. I cannot bear pain."
"It is not too bad, except when I am alone," Firesong said, still gazing into those warmly compassionate eyes.
And somehow, those eyes softened further. "In that case, ashke, I will never leave you." the handsome kestra'chern said softly. "If you think you can bear to have me here."
And for a moment, Firesong forgot any pain at all.
An'desha lay curled up with his face to the wall, and Karal could tell by his shaking shoulders that he was weeping silently. The view through Altra's eyes was rather disconcerting, given that Altra's head was about at knee-height, and he had to look up to see peoples' faces when they stood. But at least now, with Altra glued to his leg and lending him the view, he wasn't bumping into things, nor tripping over them.
Karal knelt down beside An'desha's pallet, and put a hand on his shoulder. "If you keep this up much longer," he said, trying not to dissolve into tears himself and make things worse, "you're going to be sick."
An'desha only shook his head violently, and Karal tried to remember exactly what it was that Lo'isha had told him.
"An'desha blames himself for the loss of the others, especially the Avatars," the Kaled'a'in had said. "You must persuade him to walk the Moonpaths, or—or it will be bad for his soul, his heart. I have not been able to persuade him."
The older man had left it at that, but there was no doubt in Karal's mind that he knew how An'desha had managed to help him through his own crisis of conscience. Altra had seconded the Shin'a'in's request as soon as Lo'isha was off tending to some other urgent problem. After that, how could Karal have possibly refused?
"There wasn't anything you did or didn't do that would have made a difference for the better," Karal persisted. "How could there have been? We tried to do more than Urtho could, and it still came out better than we had any reason to expect!"
"I should have known about those other weapons," An'desha said, his voice muffled by his sleeve. "I should have known what they'd do when they started to fail."
"How?" Karal asked acerbically. "Those were Urtho's weapons, not Ma'ar's! How could you have known what they were going to do? Foresight? When not even the Foreseers were able to give us decent advice?"
One red eye emerged from the shelter of An'desha's sleeve. "But—" he began.
"But, nothing," Karal said with great firmness. "You aren't a Foreseer, and you don't have Urtho's memories, you have Ma'ar's. And if you'd go walk the Moonpaths, you'd find out from the leshy'a that I'm right."
An'desha winced, blanching, which looked quite interesting though
Altra's eyes. "I can't—" he began.
Karal fixed him with what he hoped was a stem gaze, even though he couldn't feel his eyes responding the way they should. "That sounds exactly like what someone who's been thrown says," he replied. "What do you do when a horse throws you?"
"You get back on," An'desha said faintly, "but—"
"You've already used 'but' too many times." Karal patted his elbow. "Try saying, 'all right," instead."
"All right," An'desha replied obediently, then realized he'd been tricked. Karal wasn't about to let him off.
"Go," he said, and got unsteadily to his feet again. Instead of looking down, he sensed that his head was in a position of looking out, echoing Altra's head-posture. "Go walk the Moonpaths. I want you to, Lo'isha wants you to. That ought to be reason enough, right there."
Having finished what he had to say, and having partly tricked An'desha into agreement, he left and returned to his own pallet, far from the others, where he sank down onto it, exhausted by holding back his own emotions, and cried himself to sleep.
"Karal."
He looked around, startled. He wasn't in his bed in the Tower anymore; he was standing in the middle of—of nowhere he recognized. There was opalescent mist all around him, and a path of softly glowing silver sand beneath his feet. Not only that, but it was his own eyes that he was looking out of, not Altra's.
Where was he? This wasn't like any dream he had ever had before. In fact, it was rather like the descriptions that An'desha had given him of the Moonpaths. But that was a place that only Shin'a'in could reach, wasn't it?
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