“You think I set him free?”
“No. But I know you killed Asrahn.”
Kyrkenall’s answer was explosive. “The fuck I did!”
“How can you believe that, Belahn?” N’lahr broke in. “You know that Asrahn was the closest thing Kyrkenall ever had to a father.”
Elenai’s eyes strayed to the archer, whose mouth tightened a bit.
N’lahr continued when Belahn made no comment. “Denaven’s obviously misled you. Kyrkenall didn’t kill Asrahn—renegade Altenerai and Mage Auxiliary officers did. And they sought to kill Kyrkenall and Elenai, who suspected. She stands as witness. Question her.”
Belahn merely frowned.
N’lahr persisted. “Were you told I was heading here for revenge? Does that sound right to you?”
“I was informed your years of confinement had driven you mad.”
“Do I seem insane? Denaven trapped me for seven years, Belahn. Seven years of my life were stolen. I’m angry, but I haven’t lost my mind.”
Belahn’s expression was pained. “I didn’t know it would take so long.” He looked weaker, deflated, and confused.
“Look at us Belahn. Do you honestly think we’ve abandoned the code? That oath has been our life. You know that. You were one of the three who named me to the ring, remember?”
“Yes, but—”
“Do you remember what you said?”
“Of course I remember! I was first witness.”
“And how did you begin?”
Belahn swallowed. For a moment Elenai thought he’d stay silent, but he spoke, finally, his voice more formal. She immediately recognized the start to the pledge of the first witness. By ancient decree, a veteran had to declare a squire fit for the ring. “I know his character. I have seen his deeds…” Suddenly Belahn faltered, seemed to grow frustrated. “It’s all just the same thing I’d say at any ring ceremony.”
As if those time-honored words rendered a ring ceremony ordinary. Even in Belahn’s irritation there was something in his manner that belied the insinuation.
“But you believed the words, didn’t you?” N’lahr asked. “You’d not have nominated me if you hadn’t. I heeded your counsel before and after that day. And that’s what I came for. Not to hurt your valley. Wyndyss is a treasure, and I know why the land and people are so important to you. They became important to me, too.”
Belahn said nothing to this. Nor did he move, but that lack of motion betrayed something Elenai couldn’t quite determine. Doubt? Wariness? Dismay?
“Where’s Melysynde?” N’lahr asked. “Have you ‘protected’ her, like these people?”
The shaggy weaver’s bearded mouth opened and closed, but no sound emerged for a long moment. “She died. I wasn’t paying enough attention.”
N’lahr’s tone softened. “I’m sorry, Belahn. Truly.”
Kyrkenall exhaled slowly.
Elenai supposed that Melysynde was the name of Belahn’s wife.
“I resolved then and there I wouldn’t let that happen to anyone else,” Belahn declared with conviction. “No one else on my watch is going to die. I learned a few things from your situation. But I improved it.” Belahn’s voice trembled, almost pleading. “Everything in Wyndyss is precious. Every flower. Every tree. Every person. But it was all decaying. People got injured. Some of them died, no matter my efforts. Never again! I’ve almost finished preserving the valley. Everyone here must remain safe until the Goddess comes, so they’ll all be able to share in her glories.”
“The Goddess?” N’lahr prompted.
Even in his disheveled state, the mage managed a semblance of respectability as he straightened a little. “The true Goddess will return soon. Not her four false servants, but the real Goddess. And when she comes, she’ll reward her faithful.”
“That’s a new bit,” Kyrkenall declared. “You think someone might have mentioned her before.”
Belahn’s voice took on a fervent tone. “The pretenders betrayed her and turned away from her vision. And she left the world of men. But when the altar is ready, she will return, and lead us all to unending peace and bliss.”
“What sort of altar?” N’lahr asked.
“The hearthstones, of course,” he continued. “They’re broken remnants, so imagine when assembled … But then you probably can’t know what they’re like.” His regard shifted to Elenai. “You’ve felt a hearthstone. Imagine all that love, that warmth, surrounding everyone always. The Goddess will watch over and guide and protect all.”
There was that word “protect” again. Did he imagine that the Goddess would do as he had done? Was he blind to the horror of his actions?
“How do you know that’s what she’ll do?” N’lahr asked, drawing Belahn’s attention back to himself. Elenai wasn’t certain what spells Belahn could bring to bear or how they could be countered, but N’lahr was clearly trying to prevent bloodshed. And it was fascinating to watch the famous general work to avoid battle.
“The queen showed me her vision. And I was all but weeping with joy at the sight of the Goddess and the touch of her benevolence. If only Queen Leonara could share this revelation with all her people, the whole nation would toil to achieve her dream.”
“So the queen’s acting to bring back an all-powerful goddess without telling people.”
“Yes. All will be revealed in time, and then everyone will rejoice.”
“You know this sounds crazy, right?” Kyrkenall asked.
Belahn frowned.
N’lahr ignored Kyrkenall’s interruption and proceeded with his somehow-compelling inquiries. “Did you tell your people in Wyndyss what you’d do to protect them?”
“None of them yet know about the Goddess, or her coming. I had to act before any more could die.”
N’lahr pressed in a philosophical tone. “Belahn, you’ve taught dozens how to use magic—not just effectively, but rightly. Isn’t the first rule that you must never perform magic without permission on any but enemies?”
The older man’s eyes narrowed, as if he’d caught onto a trick. “I must protect those who cannot protect themselves. I have to do what’s best for them.”
“The guardian monster in its barrier outside is dead,” N’lahr said. “Were you aware of that?”
Belahn’s expression soured. “I should have guessed you’d remain shrewd regardless of how far you fell, but that lie reveals you, N’lahr. I conjured food for the guardian only two days ago.”
“It’s been dead at least a week,” N’lahr insisted. “And its been starving for far longer. Check.”
Belahn stared at him, suddenly uncertain. He extended searching threads of magic, and his eyes widened in shock for a moment before casting about as if lost. He sounded a little frantic and spoke as if to himself. “Well, I’ve almost got the gap closed. I suppose it’s not needed anymore.”
“It needed sustenance. Just like you.” N’lahr’s arm still hadn’t wavered. “You’re dropping important details because you’re carrying too many, aren’t you? Have you looked in a mirror? You’re wasting away, just like it did. When’s the last time you ate—or bathed, for that matter?”
“That’s all irrelevant.”
“It doesn’t smell irrelevant,” Kyrkenall remarked softly.
“Your physical reality is hardly irrelevant. How can you protect your charges when your health is failing?”
“I’m fine.” His voice betrayed further uncertainty, as if even he were aware he deceived himself.
“You need help,” N’lahr said. “You’ve spent too much time in the company of that thing.” He nodded at the hearthstone shining in his comrade’s hand.
Belahn’s grip on the glowing object tightened, as if he could embrace it even more closely. “Denaven warned me you’d be clever about trying to take it away.”
“I don’t want to take it away. I won’t touch it. I came here for your help, but I think we can help each other.”
Belahn hesitated for a long moment before continuing in
a soft voice. “I’m just not sure I can trust you.”
“I’ll put up my sword if you disengage from the hearthstone.”
“I can’t do that.” A panicky note crept into his voice. “I have to monitor everything.”
“I know you want to trust me, Belahn. I can see it in your eyes. You want me to trust you, too, don’t you?”
The answer was obvious, but Belahn had to struggle to get it out. “Yes. But I don’t think you can.” This last was added with quiet despair.
“I can. The first step is for you to turn off the stone.”
After a long period of silence, during which Elenai scarcely breathed, the ragged mage sighed. “I suppose … I suppose a rest would be nice. You’ll help me watch my people?”
“Of course. I swear it by my ring.”
Little by little, the lines in his brow eased. He sounded very tired when he spoke again. “Very well. But only for a short time.”
Belahn studied the stone in his arms. Elenai peered through the inner world to watch, but didn’t dare reach out. She had no intention of startling him.
Last time she’d felt the play of energies swirl around her as the hearthstone’s power cycled shut. This time she saw him manipulate the threads from a more comfortable vantage. He moved his hands almost like a child does when creating a whirlpool in a tub, moving the magical energies so that they twisted in upon themselves, diminished. The hearthstone’s glow faded. Where before the hearthstone’s sorcery had been like unto a raging thunderstorm, now, deactivated, it was a tiny drip.
Belahn breathed raggedly, and staggered as N’lahr sheathed his sword. Elenai discovered herself in control of her own body when she found she could rush forward to catch Belahn when he sagged. Gods but he reeked. The mage hugged the stone tight to his body, as if to protect it. He sucked in a dry, shaking breath.
“Belahn!” Kyrkenall cried. He and N’lahr were there in a heartbeat.
N’lahr took the mage’s shoulders and helped ease him to the ground. “Don’t die on me, Belahn,” he growled.
Die? Elenai had thought the mage was merely weak. Was that noise she’d heard the infamous death rattle?
N’lahr’s look was desperate as he looked over the withered alten. He shouted into his face. “Stay with me!”
The mage’s limbs shook as his lips moved. N’lahr bent close, and then Belahn slumped in his arms.
“Damnit!” N’lahr shook him again. His voice held a pained, urgent quality that she’d never heard in him before. The commander’s eyes were like points of flame as he shifted attention to her. “Can you turn the hearthstone on?”
“I don’t know how,” she said. “Wait. Maybe.”
“Do it!”
She’d seen it done, after all. So why not? She put a hand to Belahn’s stone as she knelt. In a moment she was in the inner world and staring at the artifact, so similar to the one she’d been wielding. First she sent her own magical energies at it in a counterclockwise pattern. Then she realized her stupidity and reversed the motion. The other direction, she thought. But that didn’t work either.
N’lahr pressed his ear to the filthy robe draping Belahn’s chest.
Kyrkenall was feeling his neck. “He’s got no pulse,” he reported fretfully.
Perhaps there was some kind of entry point for the energy? Elenai struggled to remember where Belahn had centered his own sorceries, then looked more closely at the stone. He’d been staring down at it, there. She felt no obvious weak point, but—
She willed all the sorcerous energy she had left and sent it in a slow spiral toward the nub where Belahn had been looking.
The magic of the hearthstone opened to her like a flower. A web of energy sparkled into existence, connecting the mage’s body to the stone. “Come on, Alten,” she whispered.
“Is it working?” N’lahr asked.
The mage didn’t rouse.
The commander all but shouted at her. “Can you heal him?”
She had no practice whatsoever with healing energies. Yet she’d watched that done, too, over the years, so she examined the body more carefully, only to find it an empty vessel. The embers in the fire were still warm, but the flame itself had burned away. Distressed, she cast about the room. She wasn’t sure what she’d hoped to find. A spirit to reattach?
“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “He’s not here anymore.”
Kyrkenall startled her by kicking a metal pail across the room and cursing loudly.
The commander just stared at the dirty, emaciated body beneath him. His gaze was bleak, and Elenai understood that the man’s ordinary distance had nothing to do with lack of feeling. He kept himself remote lest he be seared once more by some loss that had already scarred him badly. Seeing the pain writ so starkly on his face she had the sense that N’lahr had been alone for a very, very long time. The imprisonment of such a man was an entirely different kind of betrayal than she’d ever conceived.
His voice was a whisper now. “Shut it down.”
“Yes, sir.” She didn’t want to, and that frightened her. This stone was different from hers, and she wanted to examine it. Somehow it seemed ripe with possibilities and potential, as if ideas lay within just waiting to be unwrapped.
Yet she fought the temptation, frightened now that she might end up like the dead man below her. If she continued to wield these stones, would she be so tied to the things that stepping away would kill her?
In moments, Belahn’s hearthstone was as dulled as her own.
Heart slamming in her chest, she forced herself to rise.
N’lahr handed the hearthstone up to her, and to keep it away she set it on the mantel, paying it no heed but utterly aware it remained at the corner of her vision, as if she were smitten and pretending not to notice the man she fancied at the table beside her.
The swordsman straightened Belahn’s limbs. Kyrkenall bent to help him.
She wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m sorry about your friend.”
“I’m sorry you saw him like that,” N’lahr said quietly. “I knew the hearthstones were alluring, but I never thought Belahn would drown in one.”
Elenai spoke softly. “Didn’t you say Kalandra was studying them? Do you think she’ll be all right?” Clearly that idea hadn’t occurred to Kyrkenall yet, for his expression blanked.
N’lahr’s eyes, though, were haunted, and she realized he’d already been wondering the same thing. “I hope so.” He stood.
Kyrkenall looked to the door as if he wanted to fly out of it. “You think she’s off somewhere playing god in the deeps?”
“No. Not her,” N’lahr said.
“Not Belahn either, though, right? The kindest of us? The most normal? The one who turned his entire village into a knickknack shelf?”
“I don’t know what’s happened to her,” N’lahr said. “And it’s pointless to worry at the moment.” He changed the subject and his tone as he shifted attention to her. “Elenai. Can you undo his spell on the villagers?”
She should have guessed he’d ask that. An ordinary spell would have been expected to fade when its caster died, but this one hadn’t. The nearby people were still motionless. “It looks really complicated. I can try, but I think it will take a while.”
“We don’t have a while,” Kyrkenall said.
“Try,” N’lahr said simply. He considered the dead man beneath him. “We’ll see to Belahn.”
The two of them searched through the home and found a simple patchwork blanket. To Elenai, it was the most comfortable looking thing she’d seen in days. They carried the body of their old friend, wrapped in that blanket, out the door while she struggled in vain to find a way to alter the spell enveloping the happy, frozen family.
“We should leave a note,” Kyrkenall said on their return, “so the Altenerai can find him.”
“Any progress?” N’lahr asked her.
She shook her head, noting the pained look hadn’t left his eyes.
Kyrkenall groused, “This isn�
�t the welcome we deserve. One more comrade lost. No fresh horses. No willing beds or warm women, or even the reverse.”
Elenai was so very weary. She said nothing, but the commander must have guessed what she was thinking.
“I’m afraid we won’t even get the comfort of a cold, dusty bed this night. We’ll cover our tracks and ride for a few more hours, then rest. They’ll have to waste some time picking up our trail in the morning.”
Kyrkenall just sighed. “Let’s find some paper. I have an idea.”
15
The Forging
Denaven sat brooding on the porch of the empty house in the empty village as the sun rose. The home Ortala had found for him at least contained none of the eerie, immobile living people. He’d managed sleep in the narrow bed, but he was hardly refreshed, for instead of the resolution he’d expected he was left with more complications. Kyrkenall left them in his wake like a weaving drunkard dropping bottles.
Somehow Belahn had failed him. Somehow Elenai had killed him, for there wasn’t a mark on his body. It defied reasoning that such a newcomer could defeat someone so skilled with the stones. Maybe he’d just been too weakened to combat her. He looked like he should have died weeks ago.
Finally there were the notes, stabbed into one of the gate doors courtesy of kitchen knives. The more alarming of them had been terse and direct for all the precise elegance of the hand that had written it:
We observed a Naor troop that is likely in advance of a larger force. Send warning to all Allied Realms. Mobilize defenses.
Summon mages to release the trapped here in Wyndyss.
Belahn’s body lies within his home. See to his funeral. We lacked time to inter him properly.
N’lahr, Altenerai Commander
If not for Denaven’s spell of influence, that one note would have shattered the fragile shield of lies he’d forged. He’d had to apply a great deal of careful pressure through the links to both Decrin and Tretton, reminding them that Kyrkenall might easily mimic the look of N’lahr’s orders. Fortunately, sight of Belahn’s remains had eased their building skepticism, for it certainly appeared as though Kyrkenall had been responsible for the death of another alten.
For the Killing of Kings Page 27
