He waited until Andras remounted and guided his horse to ride beside him. They started up the tor’s slope, leaving behind Sinhue and four Quereci men Gaeres designated as guards. Ildiko split her concentration between guiding her horse up the treacherous pitch and listening to both Brishen and the Elsod explain the ritual and its purpose to Andras. Neither spoke of how the power to drive the spell would be obtained and Andras didn’t ask. She glanced at Anhuset whose face and expression were hidden by her hood. Her white-knuckled grip on the reins told Ildiko she dreaded these coming hours as much as Ildiko did. Unlike Ildiko, she would be one of thousands pillaged of her magic.
As they climbed the slope, the horses began to fret, tossing their heads and snorting. After a short slide backwards, Serovek dismounted with a frustrated curse and scowled at the others. “Unless you want to take a tumble with your horse on top of you, I suggest we walk them the rest of the way up.”
By the time they reached the top, Ildiko had forgotten the cold. Her hair clung to her heated nape in damp patches, and her gown hung wet and muddied from hem to knee. Except for the Elsod, the rest of their party didn’t look any worse for the strenuous climb beyond taking a few deep breaths. The old memory warden used a fallen menhir as a bench, and her wrinkled face looked almost green in the weak sunlight. Her masods hovered around her like startled butterflies, patting her hand and asking questions until she shooed them away from her with a sharp slice of her hand through the air.
Ildiko drew a water flask from the pack tied to her saddle and took a drink before passing it to Anhuset. The others did the same, and quiet reigned until everyone had drunk their fill and caught their breath. The horses remained agitated, stamping their hooves in the snow.
“They sense the magic here,” the Elsod said.
Megiddo tilted his head in puzzlement. “I can understand why Serovek’s or the Quereci horses might balk, but not the Kai and not mine. I’m a minor spellworker, and the Kai are born with their magic, are they not? Those horses would be used to the presence of magic.
“True, monk, except this is the work of ancients, of spellcraft woven by the Gullperi. In some ways it’s much like what clings to the galla since they were also made by the Gullperi. Can you not feel its otherness?”
Ildiko didn’t feel anything except a faint vibration in the earth beneath her feet, as if the tor hummed a dirge or a lullaby in a voice heard more by the soul than the ear. “What happens now?” she asked.
“Now we die,” Megiddo said.
That might have been better phrased. Brishen turned to Ildiko. “Are you sure you want to stay for this? I don’t think it will be...pleasant to watch.”
She circled around her horse until she stood in front of him, close enough that only he could hear her words. Her fingers traced the stiff plating of his hauberk. “It will be horrible to watch and even worse to experience. My place is here. If I could, I’d be the Wraith King instead of you.”
His hand was warm at her waist, his lips soft on her forehead. “Not in a thousand lifetimes would I let you do this. I love you too much.”
“You would have let Anhuset do it.”
His mouth curved against her skin. “That’s what she thinks.”
She sighed before pulling away. His face was cool under her hands, his black hair whipped into a wild mane by the wind. “Prince of night, come back and grow old with me.”
His mouth drooped at the corners. He glanced at the Elsod, then back to her. “I can’t if you refuse to remain my wife. Will we not sacrifice enough for duty when this is done, Ildiko?”
He was right. Here on this high place built by a vanished race who had left their magic and their malice behind them, she finally understood something profound. While duty was the price of privilege, duty nobly fulfilled deserved requital. For what her husband was about to do, he had earned the right to keep the wife he wanted.
She cupped his face and pulled him down for a hard kiss. The brass studs on his brigandine pressed into her breasts and stomach as he held her tight and kissed her back, always passionate, always careful. They ended the kiss on a shared gasp. Ildiko stared into his face, once frightening, now beloved.
“It’s more than enough,” she said. “I will challenge anyone, Elsods and Kai matriarchs alike, for the right to remain your wife. Even you, should you change your mind.”
She squeaked when he lifted her off her feet, arms tight around her back, and buried his face in her neck. He said nothing, simply inhaled and exhaled slow, deep breaths while she stroked his hair. He finally put her down, bowed low over her hand and kissed her fingers. “Woman of day, you have made me formidable again,” he said.
I would make you invincible if I could, she wanted to say. Instead, she smiled and bowed in return.
During their conversation, the others had moved away to give them privacy. Even the Elsod had left her seat on the menhir. She drew closer now and motioned for Serovek, Megiddo, Gaeres, and Andras to join her. “Lay the blades you will carry into battle on that stone.” She pointed to the menhir she’d sat on earlier.
They did as she instructed and donned what armor they’d left off until now. Fully harnessed except for his helmet, Brishen bent to the Elsod when she crooked a finger at him. “I give you the knowledge of the spells. The one to make you Wraith Kings and the one to raise and command the dead. I won’t be here to reunite your body to your spirit. That is your task, to do for yourself and the others.”
Brishen nodded and held still, eye closed, as she touched a fingertip to his forehead. He jerked once as a tiny arc of lightning flared from her finger and lit his face. His hand spasmed, opening and closing in repetitive clenches, and he swayed on his feet. Ildiko cried out and Anhuset leapt toward him, arms outstretched to catch him if he fell.
He kept his feet, shaking his head to clear it when the Elsod lowered her hand. “Do you know it now?” she asked.
He blinked at her slowly. “Yes. Though I don’t know if I can shape the words when it’s time.”
“You will,” she assured him.
She began the ritual in earnest after that. Ildiko gathered with Anhuset and the pair of Quereci warriors who accompanied their party to the edge of the menhir circle. The future kings grouped in the center with their horses.
The two masods shadowed the memory warden as she approached the horses. Each held two bowls while the Elsod held one. She pulled a knife from her belt as she approached Andras’s mount first. He lunged to stop her but was jerked still by Serovek. “It isn’t sacrifice. Wait and see.”
The Elsod nicked the neck of each mount, letting the blood trickle until it made shallow puddles in each bowl—one for the horse each king would ride. She then cut hair from their manes and added it to the blood.
Her blade glistened red in the sun when she turned to the five men. “Your horses won’t let you near them once you change, nor will they abide the company of the dead. So you will ride vuhana, their blood shadows.” She gestured to Brishen. “I need your blood as well.”
He nodded, removed a vambrace and shoved up his mail sleeve and gambeson to his elbow. Ildiko hissed when the Elsod cut a crimson line across his forearm. He turned it and let the blood flow into the bowl contain his mount’s blood and mane. The other four men followed his lead.
“Thank the gods you aren’t sacrificing the horses for this ritual. I might have abandoned you over that,” Andras said as he watched the scarlet stream slide down his arm to fall into the bowl reserved for his horse.
When it was done, the masods scraped up earth from the tor, tossed it into each bowl and mixed until a dark sludge formed. The Elsod ordered the Quereci to take all the horses out of the stone circle. None of them moved until Gaeres gave a quick nod. Despite knowing the warden’s command served to keep the horses from panicking during the ritual, Ildiko liked the fact that the Quereci didn’t jump to do her bidding until they received confirmation from the one they considered their leader.
The bowls were set aside
, and the Elsod looked to Brishen. “It’s time,” she said simply, and the bottom dropped out of Ildiko’s stomach. Beside her, Anhuset growled low in her throat.
Brishen faced his cousin, his expression shattered. “Forgive me. I would have chosen otherwise.” He turned his back, disregarding Serovek’s puzzlement at the apology. His next words were neither of Common nor bast-Kai, but of a language neither spoken nor heard for centuries beyond count. Ancient and arcane, they summoned recondite power, pulling it from the air, from the trilling ground and from all the Kai who stood within the circle. All except Brishen, their wielder.
Anhuset gasped, and her eyes rounded. She clutched her belly and bent as if to hold in something doing its best to burst free. She snarled at Serovek who leapt toward her. “Stay away from me, human!” He halted, staring at her as she straightened and dropped her hand. His gaze touched on the masods and the Elsod, all three holding each other tight, as if loosening their grip would cause each one of them to collapse.
“Do not stop this,” the Elsod warned the Beladine. “You’ll kill us all if you do.”
Brishen chanted on, oblivious to the flurry behind him. He passed a hand over the five swords laid out on the fallen menhir. Blue light, shot with bolts of silver, cascaded from his palm in luminescent waterfalls. It spiraled toward the swords, gliding along pommels and grips, tangs and guards until it slid up the blades like blood through veins.
A low hum joined the cant of ancient words and the vibration of the tor, the song of steel made alive and aware. Ildiko jumped when Brishen went suddenly silent. The air within the circle crackled and sparked, and she wondered if they might all ignite if they moved.
No one burst into flame when Brishen faced them once more. He looked the same, scarred and yellow-eyed with tired shadows dusting the skin below his eye sockets. But there was something different. She took an involuntary step back, noting that everyone else did the same.
Ildiko didn’t possess a drop of magery. She couldn’t summon it, control it, nor, until now, sense it. But the power that emanated from Brishen might have been a beacon from a lighthouse and all of them ships in the dark. He practically pulsed with it.
Serovek’s gaze darted between the drooping Anhuset and the equally languishing memory wardens. “What have you done, Brishen?” he asked, abandoning titles and formality.
“The unthinkable; the unforgivable,” the other said, and Ildiko’s eyes went blurry with tears at the anguish in his voice.
The Elsod shook off her masods and shuffled to Brishen, her gait slow as if she’d aged a score of years since he started the ritual. “You must go on, Brishen Khaskem.”
He nodded, slipped on his gauntlet and reached for the first sword—his. Ildiko swallowed down the moan rising into her throat.
“I’ll do it,” Anhuset said, slipping on her own gauntlet. The deadness in her voice sent chills down Ildiko’s arms.
“No.” Serovek blocked her path. “I will.” He held up a hand when Anhuset made to push him out of the way. “Do you really want this memory between you?”
Brishen joined Serovek. “He’s right, cousin.” His eye flared bright yellow. “Unless you seek vengeance—and if so, I stand before you, arms wide—then let him do it.”
The same confused look passed over Serovek’s features at Brishen’s remark. Neither Kai enlightened him, and Ildiko held her tongue. Only six people knew the one element of the ritual guaranteed to see Brishen overthrown as king of the Kai, and each had sworn to die with the secret. Only his knowledge of it might survive, and only if he allowed his mortem light to be reaped by the generation unaffected by the spell.
“There is no vengeance, Brishen, and no forgiveness,” Anhuset said softly. “Because there is no wrongdoing.”
He closed his eye for a moment and bent his head. “Thank you, cousin.” He straightened and clapped Serovek on the shoulder. “All that trouble to save me from raiders and now you get to skewer me,” he said with false levity.
Willing to play the game, Serovek gave a disdainful sniff at the sword Brishen held. “Don’t you usually fight with an axe?”
Ildiko locked her knees to remain standing and shook her head to wipe free the gruesome image of Serovek using Brishen’s axe on him.
“I do,” Brishen replied. “But it seems there are rules about weaponry in ritual magic.” He handed the sword to Serovek who gripped it in a gloved hand. “Are you ready?”
Serovek raised a brow. “Are you?”
He nodded. His features were less haunted though no less weary when he faced Ildiko. He reached for her. “Ildiko…”
She screamed when, quick as a striking viper, Serovek pivoted behind Brishen, wrapped an arm around his neck and impaled him on the sword. At such close range, the blade punched through armor and mail, piercing Brishen through the back until it emerged, blood-smeared, below his heart.
To Ildiko’s horrified eyes, it happened in slow increments. The sound of Brishen’s surprised grunt when Serovek struck, the exhalation of air from his mouth, the bulge of his eye as his back arched from the force of the stabbing. Ildiko’s wail was a whisper in her own ears, competing with the hard thunder of her heartbeat.
“Brishen!” She lunged for him, only to be lifted off her feet and slammed back against Anhuset. Serovek jerked away, yanking the sword out of Brishen’s contorted body. He caught him as he crumpled, and they sank to the ground together.
Ildiko twisted in Anhuset’s grip. “Let me go!” She scratched at her captor’s arms, wishing she possessed Kai claws to slice her way to freedom.
Serovek’s face was washed clean of color as he held Brishen. He looked up, his gaze anguished. “Let her go, Anhuset,” he ordered in a voice no longer strong or confident.
Ildiko burst free from the woman’s loosened grip and slid on her knees in the snow to where Brishen lay. Blood covered his torso and hands, staining the ground beneath him in a growing patch of crimson. “Brishen,” she sobbed. “Oh gods. Oh gods. Brishen.” She placed her hands over Serovek’s in a futile attempt to halt the font of blood that seeped through his fingers from her husband’s wound. Brishen’s face was a sickly shade of old ash. Blood stained his lips, and he mouthed her name around a spill of gore.
Behind her, Anhuset’s voice rang sharp and venomous. “If you enjoyed any part of that, I will rip out your liver with my bare hands and eat it in front of you.”
Serovek’s blue eyes, brilliant in his bloodless face, burned hot. “Don’t insult me, Anhuset,” he snapped.
The Elsod’s voice rose above the rest. “Move away from him. The change has started.”
He was changing. An iciness under her hands, not of cold, but of death. “Brishen…” She shrugged away Anhuset’s tug on her shoulder.
His lips moved, and she bent closer to hear him. When he spoke, his voice was only an echo of a whisper. “Go, love. Changing. Can feel it.”
She stared at him as the hideous cold froze her palms where she touched him.
“Now, Ildiko,” Anhuset ordered and pulled her none too gently away from Brishen.
The same coruscating blue luminescence that spilled along the sword blade and illuminated Brishen’s blood in its light now spilled from the wound Serovek inflicted. It spread across his body, purling back and forth until he was completely suffused. The light began to pulse, mimicking the beat of a heart, and its color deepened from azure crackled with silver to cobalt, to indigo and finally to black.
Ildiko’s lungs threatened to burst with the need to scream, but she held silent, watching as light, which had become darkness, swallowed her husband whole. It spasmed and stretched before collapsing in on itself, only to extend once more as if struggling to break free of a shackle.
“That is how galla look.” Megiddo’s words dropped like boulders into the sea of quiet.
Ildiko whined softly before casting the Elsod a murderous look. If the old crone had turned Brishen into a demon, she’d carve her into pieces and feed her to him.
&n
bsp; The shroud of black light suddenly heaved upward with an audible snap. Everyone leapt back, and Anhuset shoved Ildiko behind her. Ildiko would have none of it and tried to dart to the side, only to be efficiently blocked by her guard. “Let me pass, Anhuset!”
“No.”
Brishen’s body lay in the snow, unmoving, bloody. His face was no longer the dolphin-gray with its undertones of pink and blue, but ashy-white with jagged black lines that stretched from his neck into his scalp. Ildiko was almost knocked flat on her back when she reached for him only to run straight into Anhuset’s outstretched arm.
The dark light, now a separate entity, continued its heartbeat pulse. It began to lighten, reversing in color to what it was before—black to indigo, to cobalt and finally azure. Its edges solidified, taking on hard angles and lines, a macabre butterfly emerging from its cocoon.
The luminescence dulled and lost its incorporeal quality, thickening from cloudy light to a true, solid form—one dressed in lamellar armor with long black hair and a single eye that glowed a preternatural blue, as if someone had dropped a torch into a vat of Dragon Fire and let it ignite.
“Wraith King.” Gaeres’s voice held both wonder and horror.
The Elsod edged forward and froze when the king’s incandescent gaze landed on her. “What do you see, Your Majesty?”
“The soul of the Kai,” he said in a hollow voice devoid of any warmth, any life. “Age beyond age.”
Ildiko recoiled as bile threatened to surge from her stomach to her throat. Whatever this eidolon was, it wasn’t the Brishen she knew.
The eidolon crouched next to the still body at his feet and reached out a hand.
“Stop!” Ildiko cried. She battled Anhuset’s confining grip again and lost.
The eidolon paused. Ildiko shuddered as its cold gaze caressed her. “Peace, sweet wife. I mean no harm.”
She was torn between rejoicing and vomiting at the sound of such an endearment spilling from his lips. He reached out once more and flattened his hand on the still body, covering the bloody wound. More of the blue light flashed and pulsed. When he withdrew his hand, the wound was gone, the only marker of its presence, blood stains darkening the brigandine and surrounding snow. His skin was still ashy, but the ugly black lines were gone. Ildiko gasped when the body emitted a slow exhalation and began to breathe.