There was something between them, Vidanric realized. Almost the same moment Flauvic flicked a glance his way, and then, with grace and subtle meaning, offered her freedom. “Your ignorance is refreshing.” He raked her length with slow insolence. ”Your passions amusing.”
Meliara stiffened on the word passions: so there had indeed been something.
The smooth voice, the allusion to shared experience threatened for one single heartbeat to mire Vidanric in doubt. Flauvic insinuated that Meliara was playing the deepest game of all.
“For a time,” he finished, “we could keep each other company.”
Her breathing was audible—not passion, or even pain, but anger. Affront. A person with divided allegiance might waver, would probably not be able to resist a furtive look to gauge reactions. Meliara did none of these things. There was no game for Meliara, there never had been, and here Flauvic had made a crucial error of paradigm. Vidanric sustained a lightning-flare of fury not at doubt—he’d had no doubt—but at Flauvic for attempting to use her to cast doubt.
Meliara crossed her arms, thump. Thump. “Unfortunately, I find you boring.”
His chin came up: the hit direct. She had gone in five words from idle amusement to enemy.
Flauvic sent Vidanric another considering gaze. Now he had it. Flauvic’s blade was wit, and his intent poisoned the tip of it. Now Flauvic would use that wit to strike Meliara to the heart.
Pay attention! “ . . .which means you must be the one to convince them of the exchange of kings.”
Meliara sniffed, long and loud.
She wiped tears away, her fingers trembling.
Vidanric hardly dared to breathe. He would have sworn she would die before showing Flauvic weakness, but then she went on in a faltering voice—one that sounded so false and forced to Vidanric’s ears—”What will happen to us?”
Did Flauvic hear that note of falsity? No, he was too busy gloating for that. He wanted her personal surrender before he took the kingdom, just because it would hurt more. “ . . .That depends.”
Meliara bleated something else, sounding so unlike herself Vidanric turned a quick look her way. It’s a ruse, he realized, stepping back. She had some plan of her own—and he would not interfere.
So focused was he on Meliara he missed Flauvic’s next words; no, he could not hear them because the rustling, rushing noise he’d vaguely been aware of had increased to such an extent he had difficulty making out speech, for there were whispered words pleaching the unseen leaves.
Then Meliara’s voice rang through the susurration. “Look outside.”
The high windows glimmered with light filtered through a lacery of leaves.
Through the open doorway the morning light spangled on bark, branch and leaf, all in motion, green shafts of muted sun dappling the flagstones.
A flash of black and gold—
Black and gold. The Deis, Matthias Lirendi, who rode out conquering wearing the black and gold of Adamas Dei—Merindar—Dei—Flauvic held Meliara in a death grip, the knife under her chin.
A surge of anger, the need to act, tightened Vidanric, but he did not move.
He could not move. He had frozen as still as poor Grumareth, now scattered like broken ice across the floor.
Flauvic spoke. Meliara spoke—from her expression, desperate as it was, she was urging opposition to whatever Flauvic said, but Vidanric could not make out the words.
Hot wind soughed through the tossing foliage, a rushing roar. Vidanric’s eyes closed as the light shifted: through the hissing rustle whispered voices.
Distinct voices, echoes from the palace—most of them fearful, questioning, minds imprisoned inside stone-spelled bodies.
Later on he was never certain he had heard those things, or if in his exhaustion and exhilaration, the necessity to function outstripping his physical limitations, he imagined them: it was years before he could bring himself to talk about the experience, so weird it was.
Paramount above the desperate voices of those enchanted in Flauvic’s spell was Flauvic’s own anger, his anguish. I am the Golden Dei! I am, I am!
And older, older, his mother’s whisper, cold as the bitter wind of winter, You are the Golden Dei. You can be a king, an emperor. Here is an assassin, who will train you to strike down Bartal of Sles Adran. Begin your empire there, and I will join you when the time is right . . .
And again, when Flauvic was twelve, and could not bring himself to strike down Bartal, despite his training: You disappoint me, you foolish, weak boy. Do not mouth out such idiocy! Morals! There is no morality, no right or wrong. Just expedience: the side who wins rewrites the records to represent right. The other side is wrong. We adjust our motivations to suit the audience.
And after Galdran’s death: He’s gone, which makes hiding assassinations more tricky—what? What family plans? Stupid boy. When I die, the garden is gone, the world ends. There is nothing else but me. Nothing Remember that, my children: I retain enough fondness for you to wish you to succeed, but if you ever cross me, you will be pruned along with the other weeds choking the garden of my will.
The voices receded, the roar diminished. The spell released Vidanric back into himself: Meliara had landed on the marble floor, bright drops of blood trickling down her neck. He reached her in three steps, and they clung together, caught in a vortex of relief, of terror, and of desire, as Flauvic stood above them, head thrown back, mouth open in a scream only heard in the world of the spirit.
His long hands attenuated, the flesh molding into the smooth bark of a tree, the knuckles and nails bursting with twig and leaf. Even as he attempted a killing spell the magic he gathered rolled harmlessly over the two crouched on the floor together, the scintillation spreading to feed the upswell of great magic.
Flauvic raised his arms, the growing, twisting branches punching through to the sky, then bursting into summer foliage. As bits of glass and marble rained down slowly, the rustle diminished to a ringing silence, leaving the two staring up at a goldenwood tree, silent and beautiful, in the shattered throne room.
Sherwood Smith, Crown Duel
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