A King's Bargain

by J. D. L. Rosell

  But indecision froze him where he was. For one, he didn't have a weapon, not even his belt knife; in the castle, people used the cutlery at the table, not knives they carried around, and only privileged nobles and guards carried weapons. For another, what if he was wrong? What if it wasn't Kaleras, but just the innocent ravings of a madman? And even if it was him, could Garin stab him in the back, killing him in cold blood?

  He found he couldn't move forward, but neither could he retreat. The knowledge of what might be happening to Wren at that very moment pounded through him, prodding him to make a decision. Perhaps it was wiser to check if she was well first. Perhaps… unless she was being tortured to death.

  Forward or back? Forward or back?

  The memory of his previous terror-filled decisions whirled through his mind. At Kaleras' door, didn't he refuse to run away, but instead turned to face the warlock? When the ghouls chased him, didn't he make a stand?

  He took another step forward.

  Something creaked next to him, items shifting against the wall. As Garin froze, he realized what had happened. Loose cloth, snagged beneath his foot, had pulled something leaning against the wall and shifted it.

  Slowly, he turned his gaze back to the hunched figure, reluctant as if by looking, he might make true what he already knew to be real.

  The man was a silhouette no more. His face half cast in shadow, Garin knew him still by the gold turning slowly in his eyes.

  "Falcon?" he said weakly. Relief and apprehension twisted through him a confusing mix. "What are you—?"

  The Court Bard rose swiftly, his face a mask of rage, and Garin stumbled back, tripping again on the props littered across the floor. As he tried to gain his feet, Falcon moved to stand over him.

  "Why are you here?" he hissed, his voice suddenly not his at all. "Are you so strongly hers?"

  Garin's mouth worked, searching for words. "What do you mean, hers?" he managed to say.

  The minstrel leaned down, all his features lost to darkness but for his slowly swirling eyes. But just as Garin started to wonder if he'd taken leave of his senses, Falcon extended a hand out to him.

  Taking it as a sign of forgiveness for his trespass, Garin sighed in relief and took it.

  His ears burst with a torrent of screaming. He found himself crying out as well, but his yell paled to the roaring in his head. His vision blurred, then went black, and he felt himself falling far away.

  "Soon," a voice crooned to him as he drifted into darkness. "Soon, you will awake, Singer's pet. Then we will see how our master makes you dance on your strings."

  One Final Performance

  For a long moment, there was only cold.

  Then heat, sudden and searing, spread across his body.

  Tal gasped as needles pricked along his skin, his limbs, even inside his lungs. He curled in on himself. The darkness receded from his vision, and the dimly lit room came slowly into focus.

  As did the face peering down at him, swirling eyes boring into his soul.

  "Gah!" Tal scrambled feebly away from Aelyn and stared at him, chest heaving. When he had sucked in enough air, he wheezed, "If you're going to kiss me, you should ask first."

  "I save your life, and once again, all I receive is mockery." Aelyn's voice was hoarse, and his eyes shone fever-bright in his pale face. Like Tal, he was sprawled along the floor.

  He crawled to me, he realized. Somehow, it wasn't as amusing as it should have been.

  "Saved me?" The initial wave of pain had receded, and Tal pried at the chair nearest him, trying to rise. When he failed, he pretended like he'd been stretching stiff muscles. "As I recall, I ended up like this by saving you."

  Aelyn put a hand to the book next to him, its old cover looking more decrepit than ever. Noticing Tal's gaze, he smiled wanly. "Perhaps I would thank you more profusely if you hadn't ruined a priceless book in the process."

  "Your life is priceless to me," Tal said with a shaky grin. He tried again to stand and succeeded, righting himself and swaying on his feet.

  The guards watched from the doorway, exchanging silent glances. Tal's smile tugged wider. This was too far outside their routine for most of them to process.

  "Nothing to clean up here, men," Tal said, losing the smile and adopting the tone his long-ago sergeant had once used. "Report to the Master-at-Arms what happened. And make us sound brave and noble while you're at it, and not…" He gestured at them lying on the floor. "…this."

  A few more exchanged glances, then the senior guard nodded and turned sharply out the door.

  When the door had closed, Tal looked to Aelyn. "What in the smoldering depths of the Greatdark was that?"

  The mage, still sprawled over the floor, gestured sharply. "Help me to the bed."

  Tal obliged, grinning at Aelyn's groans as he lifted him from the floor like a child and settled him in the bed. As he stepped back, the mage's eyes promised future vengeance, as if he were purposely humiliating him rather than helping. Tal just gave him a wink.

  Aelyn looked as if he might spit, then thought better of it. "And the book."

  Once he'd retrieved the tome and settled it into the mage's loving embrace, he finally answered Tal's question. "That was a soulshade."

  "Sounds pleasant."

  Aelyn's eyes had fallen to the tome. "Not for anyone involved. They're formed from the caster's soul."

  Tal frowned. "Not through sacrifice? Every other shade I know requires killing someone or something else."

  The mage cast him an irritable look. "Soulshades would be rather impractical for mages to utilize, then, wouldn't they? But because of their origin, they have limited applicability and intelligence. You saw how ours employed a single attack against you, even if it had several variations. It had been given its command, and it carried it out without a shred of inventiveness."

  A grin found Tal's lips again. "Almost killed by it, yet you still find it boring. How frightening it must be inside that head of yours."

  "It appears you won't find out today."

  "But what caused the devil to show up? Were you plumbing the depths of something you ought not to?"

  "You might say that." The bronze in the mage's eyes seemed to dance. "I'm close, Harrenfel. I've almost broken it."

  "The pendant?"

  "What else?" As quickly as a cat, he turned from jubilant to irritated. "It has put up quite the resistance, to be true. I've worn my way through a dozen of my best books. But just as I knew I would, I've very nearly succeeded."

  Tal raised an eyebrow. "Nearly succeeded isn't the same thing as succeeding."

  "One night more!" Aelyn snapped. Then his eyelids fluttered, his exhaustion finally catching up to him. "But after I rest."

  Tal watched as the mage fell asleep, heedless of him standing over him. Truth be told, he felt he could sleep where he stood.

  But the Extinguished still hunted them. He had already sent one creature here to kill Aelyn; if he had the strength, he might send another.

  "Legends never sleep, do they?" Tal muttered.

  After locking and bolting the door, he sat with a groan in one of the chairs by the fire, stared into the flames, and waited for dawn to come.

  Light worked its hard fingers through his eyelids and split open his pounding head.

  Garin groaned. He felt every bit as miserable as the morning after his brothers had tricked him into drinking two full cups of Crazy Ean's swamp whiskey. Only this time, he hadn't been drinking.

  Sitting up, he fought down his rising gorge and rubbed at his temples. What had happened last night was lost to a fog of pain. He thought he'd left his room, but he couldn't for the life of him recall where he'd gone. It had been a dream, and like a dream, it fled upon waking. But still, he had the nagging feeling he was supposed to have gone somewhere and done something…

  But whatever he'd forgotten, Garin knew he couldn't stay abed. Though his usual lessons were canceled, he was far from free. This afternoon, the Sendeshi delegation would arrive,
and later in the evening, the Dancing Feathers would perform Kingmakers and Queenslayers. And Garin would make his debut on the stage as a pageboy.

  After he forced himself to his feet and stuffed his limbs into clothes, he trudged down the hallway, barely able to resist the urge to slide down a wall and never rise again. He felt like a drunkard, the orientation of the World wavering with every step. I wonder how drunkards stick to the World when their feet are always falling away. He snorted a laugh and wondered if Wren would have laughed or scorned him.

  The thought brought him stumbling to a halt. Wren. His sluggish mind turned around the wonderful, exquisite name. Just thinking it made his stomach pitch and turn anew, but not only in the usual way. He was letting her down, he somehow knew; but however he knocked his head around, he couldn't remember how. Was it just that he wanted to see her? Or was he forgetting something else?

  Only one way to know. He tottered his way down the hall.

  As he slouched through the door to the Smallstage, a figure popped out from nowhere. Garin yelped and nearly fell over.

  Mikael leered over at him, smiling with his sharp, misshapen teeth. "You look terrible!"

  "Can't be as bad as you usually look," Garin muttered.

  The goblin, who was playing the king's traitor in their production, only grinned wider. "A fair point! But I laid off the rum last night just for the company. After all, the Sendeshi delegation arrives today, don't they? We have a performance to put on!"

  "Just what I'd been waiting for." Not wanting to pretend to celebrate the thing that was twisting his stomach into ever more complicated knots, Garin fled to the dressing room.

  He found no relief there, however. Everywhere he turned in the Smallstage, the members of Dancing Feathers were cheerfully going about their work, chattering and smiling like it was a festival day. It was almost as if Jonn's disappearance had been forgotten, grins replacing frowns that had been there just a day before.

  But they haven't forgotten. He saw it in the way the troupers kept glancing at the spots where Jonn had usually occupied: his chair, his corner, his place behind the stage where he would have been tinkering with the set. Good cheer was just the way jesters dealt with their grief, Garin supposed, and however it grated on him, it seemed a good deal better than drowning in sorrow.

  Only Wren seemed immune to the high spirits. When Garin found her mounted high on the frame of the castle setting, fixing some curtains that had torn, she gave him the blackest frown he'd seen from her yet.

  "Believe me, I know," Garin called to her. "This din is like nails in my head this morning."

  She turned away from him.

  His stomach wrenched yet more painfully. "What's wrong? You have a headache, too?"

  Wren turned back and leaned over the set so quickly he feared she would tumble to the floor a dozen feet below, but she clung on as the gold in her eyes spun furiously. "No, I don't have a headache. And if you have to ask, you're an even bigger ass than I already knew!"

  Garin stared at her, pain giving way before his astonishment. "Did I do something?"

  For a moment, he thought she'd spit down on him, the way her mouth screwed up. Then with a furious huff, she pulled herself back up and out of sight.

  "Don't mind her, my boy."

  Garin whirled, heart thumping, the ache in his head returned in full. Falcon Sunstring stood behind him wearing a strained smile. He only saw you kiss his daughter, he tried to placate himself and found it only made his heart race faster.

  The Court Bard was studying him, head cocked to one side, gold-green eyes narrowed despite his smile. "She always gets tense on performance days. Nerves and all that. But I'm sure you don't know anything about that, do you?"

  "Not at all," Garin said weakly.

  Falcon laughed like it was the funniest thing he'd heard all day. "Excellent! First, you play the pageboy; then, who knows what you'll move up to?"

  Garin backed away, trying his best to wear an agreeable smile. "Let's just see if I survive this one."

  The gold in his eyes seemed to stir. "Yes. Let's see."

  Tal jerked around, weary mind sensitive to any movement in the small, stuffy room. But he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw it was merely Aelyn, attempting and failing to sit up in his bed.

  "By the devils, I should be stronger," the mage groused, even his voice weak.

  "After what that soulshade put you through? By all rights, you should be dead."

  He made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a curse as he lay back down. "The pendant. I must continue the work. I'm too close to breaking it."

  "The only thing you'll continue is your rest." Tal rose with a groan, knees clicking, back aching, old wound in his side throbbing. He rolled his head around, trying to relieve the soreness that had crept in overnight, though he knew it would do little good. "We're two old and ailing men now, aren't we?"

  "Speak for yourself, human." Aelyn managed a small sneer. "I have two centuries yet to see — longer, if I can avoid any more of those abominations we faced last night."

  "I'll be surprised if I have a year at this rate." Tal laughed, though even he found little humor in it. "Regardless, there's not a chance in any heaven or hell that you'll be able to finish the job. We're going to need to bring in a new master of the occult arts."

  "Who? You?"

  Tal rolled his shoulders. "I'm flattered you think so highly of me. But no, not me. The only other magician we can trust within easy reach."

  Aelyn's scowl deepened. "I'd hardly say I trust the Warlock of Canturith. Hard to trust a man who abandons his brothers, isn't it?"

  "If you can trust a man with as colorful of a past as me, you can trust him." Finishing his stretches, Tal made for the door. "Now, if you can survive for a few hours, I've been holding in a leak that won't stay any longer. That, and our warlock needs fetching."

  "I'm sure I'll manage."

  Tal flashed him one last mocking smile, then slipped from the room.

  Soon after, he stood before the door to the east tower and knocked. A few minutes passed, then the door cracked open. A dark eye peered through the gap.

  "You're still alive," Kaleras noted.

  As usual, a tumult of conflicting emotions flooded him upon seeing the old warlock, but Tal hid them behind a crooked smile. His eyes wandered to the chain that kept the door from fully opening. "Expecting trouble?"

  "Preventing it. Your protege and that minstrel girl have been too inquisitive for their own good." The warlock smiled thinly. "Time was when I'd have let them find out what it means to intrude upon a wizard. I must be growing soft in my old age."

  "Soft as a stone, I'd wager."

  Kaleras raised an eyebrow. "Much as I'd love to exchange pleasantries, I'm rather busy at the moment. Farewell."

  As the warlock began to close the door, Tal jammed his boot in the gap. "Wait a moment. I need to ask something of you."

  The warlock's one visible eye narrowed. "Fishing for more ways to insult me, I trust?"

  "If asking a favor is an insult. But I think you'll be more than willing to grant me this."

  "I'll be the judge of that."

  Tal glanced up and down the hall. This far out on the periphery of the Coral Castle, the corridor was deserted, but he still spoke in a whisper. "Aelyn Cloudtouched has been attempting to crack open a pendant. A pendant belonging to a certain adversary we share."

  "The Extinguished." He said it calmly as if he'd known all along. And perhaps he has. Maybe that's why he returned to Halenhol in the first place.

  "If the elf had completed the trace," Tal said, "we'd have located the Soulstealer within the castle."

  The warlock raised an eyebrow. "Would have?"

  "He was attacked last night."

  "Attacked?" Kaleras frowned. "I felt and heard nothing."

  "I suspect that's because of the nature of the fiend. A soulshade, Aelyn called it."

  "A soulshade?" The warlock's eye narrowed as it wandered to the floor. "No
release of energy. Done skillfully, that might have escaped my attention."

  Tal rolled his stiff shoulders. "It felt pretty damned skillful. But we managed to banish it in the end. All that to say, now we need you. Will you help?"

  Kaleras met his gaze, then nodded sharply. "Give me a moment."

  "Take as long as you need," Tal called softly after him as the warlock closed the door. "It's not as if all our souls are lined up for the gallows."

  He waited for a moment, listening. But hearing no laugh and doubting that any would be forthcoming, he leaned against the wall and waited.

  "You wound me, My Liege!" Mikael cried in high drama from the stage, his voice only slightly dampened by the curtains hanging between him and Garin. "You accuse me of disloyalty, of treachery — as if my heart wouldn't break at the barest hint of such filth!"

  A few spare laughs echoed from beyond the stage, but they stirred nothing in Garin. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the frame. He'd heard every line before, a hundred times, a thousand — or near enough. His speaking line was only a couple pages away when he brought in the missive that overturned the scene, mistakenly exonerating the wheedling duke, whom Mikael was playing, of treachery and accusing the king's own queen — to great tragedy, of course. Have to give the audience what they came for, he mused. Can't name a play Kingmakers and Queenslayers and expect every monarch to escape alive.

  He cracked open his eyes and observed Wren standing further back behind the stage, barely visible from where he leaned. After her outburst, she'd hardly spoken two words in his vicinity and refused to even look at him, aside from glares cast across the room when she thought he wasn't looking. What he had done to offend her, he still couldn't say. He'd tried to grope his way past the fog that had settled over his thoughts, like a fisherman casting his line out into a mist-wreathed lake even as his hook came up empty every time. It didn't help matters that his headache had only recently eased, and that he'd had to hold his tongue to keep from snapping at others all day.