“Why the great delay?” the Regent goaded. “Don’t you know? You have no choice.”
He thinks to save himself, Elienne thought and, with a horrid flash of perception, realized Taroith’s use of Black Sorcery might jeopardize the integrity so recently and precariously restored him by the Grand Council’s acquittal. Should he fail now, all past actions could become tainted by doubt; a lifetime of honorable service undermined at a stroke. Faced by such betrayal, Pendaire’s fickle court might well turn back to the familiar leadership of Faisix.
And still Taroith seemed torn by doubt. Spent as he was, Elienne wondered whether he realized his present danger. Necessity forced her to control the fear that shackled her against action. Like a hunted animal, she searched for some measure she could engage in her own behalf, should Taroith’s wisdom falter. Her attention caught on the bright, deadly glitter of a glass shard. Cautiously Elienne extended her foot and scuffed the fragment within reach. That moment, Taroith looked up.
White hair lay limp over the damp folds of his hood, bracketing an expression of raw sorrow. “Faisix, there is always choice,” he said softly.
The Regent kicked Heggen’s hand out of his path and stepped forward, triumphant. “Ah, you’re ignorant. Didn’t you know? The Lady Elienne is the sole key to Darion’s succession. Without her, he will certainly face the headsman’s ax.”
Dread chilled Elienne to the marrow. Faisix intended to expose the fact that Darion’s seed was sterile. And if her son by Cinndel was revealed to be other than the royal blood of Halgarid, the vindictive rage of the court would surely destroy them both. Elienne stooped and caught the glass from the floor, her only recourse to end the conflict before Faisix could speak and ruin her.
“Ielond knew.” Faisix prepared to drive home his crowning blow, sure as a cat toying with prey. “The Prince cannot possibly—”
“No!” Elienne’s shrill exclamation sliced through the exchange like a sword blade. Trembling, she extended her arm, the cruel edge of the glass laid against the delicate skin of her wrist. She drew a ragged breath and said, “Taroith. Listen to me. If you use the darklore to save either me or Darion, I will take my life. I’ll not see you damned for my sake.”
“Bleeding can be stanched,” said Faisix conversationally.
“But you would welcome my death, Excellency. Do you think Taroith could subdue you in time enough to save me?” Elienne glanced quickly back to the Sorcerer. “Gifted, don’t.”
Taroith turned his face fully upon her, and with a wrench, Elienne noticed the tears that traced his lined cheeks. “Lady, your wisdom is the blessing of Ma’Diere. You already understand why I must abandon you here, though by so doing, I leave you in great danger. Do not despair, I shall not transgress natural law. I only hesitated because I could think of no gentle means to explain my withdrawal to you.”
Elienne spoke quickly, barely able to maintain her resolve. “Leave with my blessing, Gifted.” She laid the glass fragment aside with hands suddenly too unsteady to grip it with safety.
“Keep your courage up,” said Taroith. “Neither Darion not I shall rest until your freedom is won.”
Unable to bear the sight of the Sorcerer’s departure, Elienne squeezed her eyes shut. By force of will, she held herself from begging the Sorcerer to reconsider.
As though sensing her weakness, Faisix smiled. “You abandon her to a singularly unpleasant fate.”
Taroith responded sharply, “Beware, Defiler. The Sorcerer’s League will act in the Consort’s defense. You’ll be shown no mercy unless you release the Lady to my care now.”
“She is significant only as long as Darion remains alive,” said Faisix.
Through the words, Elienne heard a rustle like velvet rubbed across wool, and a soft breeze chilled her wet checks. She opened her eyes to find Taroith gone. Faisix approached her, madness upon his smoke-grimed features. “Above anything else, you will come to regret your part in Darion’s life, Lady Consort.”
* * *
Though the wide casements were not barred, and no lock secured her door, the bedchamber on the third floor of Torkal Manor became Elienne’s prison during the days that followed.
The hallway without never went unguarded, and the only soul she saw, beside the mutes, was the girl Minksa, who brought her meals, water, and fresh candles. Elienne tried to win the child’s confidence, with little success. Sometimes Minksa lingered over her tasks to listen to her companionable chatter, but the offer of friendship seemed to increase the girl’s apprehension. Discouraged yet again one evening as the child bolted from her chambers, Elienne sighed. She rose and pushed the door closed, shutting out the view of the guardswoman in the hallway beyond.
Alone for the night, she settled herself on the chilly cushions of the window seat and gazed out at the gardens beneath a half-moon. The forest spread dark beneath sooty streamers of cloud. For the thousandth time, Elienne wondered what form of trauma had disturbed Minksa. Such reserve was unnatural for a girl of her years. As always when she was troubled, Elienne reached for the mirrowstone that hung from the chain at her neck. Even Faisix’s barrier of Black Sorcery could not prevent sight of the Prince through Ielond’s interface, though communication was still impossible.
Within the stone, moonlight struck through a canopy of foliage. Horses moved in thick shadow. Cloaked against the cold, Darion hunched in his saddle, his face a pale blur in the darkness. Daylight would have revealed angular hollows at check and temple, and eyes set deep in circled sockets. The Prince paced when weariness forced his men to make camp. Restlessness robbed him of all but the lightest of sleep, and Elienne had observed him in the throes of nightmare more than once. Had Taroith been present, he might perhaps have reassured the Prince. But the Sorcerer had not returned to Darion’s side since the conclusion of the duel with Faisix. Elienne tried to recall how long ago that had been; hours ran together into days, and since nothing other then weather differentiated one from another she lost track. Had it been seven nights, or eight, since the duel with Faisix?
Elienne leaned her shoulder against the windowframe, and closed her eyes. She could not guess how far the Prince’s retinue was from Torkal. And though Faisix had left her entirely alone, she doubted he had forgotten her. Often Elienne smelled the acrid fumes of Black Sorcery.
Permitted no diversion, Elienne exhausted herself battling the despair that threatened hourly to overwhelm her. Accustomcd lifelong to activity, she fretted in confinement. Sleep tormented her with visions of freedom, and her waking thoughts strayed too often into nightmare.
Curled in the windowseat over the mirrowstone, Elienne finally drowsed. Snared by an uneasy dream, she beheld a meadow whitened like snowdrifts with the blossoms of starflowers, but the rare and peaceful beauty of the place was marred by the pathetic sounds of an infant’s cries. Elienne searched, but found no child.
“Forgive me,” Ielond said from behind. She stopped and turned, but saw no trace of him. The voice resumed, implacably. “Tragedy linked each of the choices I placed before you in Trathmere....”
And close by, the infant continued to wail.
* * *
“Mistress!” Someone shook her.
Elienne woke with a start. Minksa gripped her elbow urgently.
“Mistress, I’m frightened.” The girl’s small hands were damp with sweat, and even by wan moonlight, Elienne saw her eyes were widened in terror.
Though empty of confidence herself, Elienne gathered the child’s trembling body close. “I’m your friend. Can you tell me what has upset you?”
For a long time, Minksa clung, speechless. Then a sob wrenched the thin shoulders in Elienne’s arms, and she felt the child’s fingers grope and lock among her skirts.
Minksa drew an unsteady breath. “Mistress, it’s Faisix,” she began, and twisted her face toward the door.
Moonlight burnished her pale forehead like bone, a
nd the shadowed eyesockets beneath seemed momentarily vacant as a skeleton’s. Elienne shivered. Then her ears caught the ring of footsteps in the hallway beyond.
Minksa gasped. “He comes here, Mistress.”
Firmly Elienne gathered her ragged composure. “Who comes? Faisix?”
Minksa nodded, tears silvering her cheeks.
“My friends don’t call me ‘Mistress,’” Elienne said quickly, glad the wait had ended at last. “Why don’t you hide behind the bedhangings? The Regent need not know you came.”
Minksa swallowed and tilted her small sprite’s face up at Elienne. “Mistress, Lady, he is not angry with me. You are the one who has displeased him, though he will beat me if he finds I have warned you.”
“I won’t tell him.” Elienne squeezed the girl’s hand reassuringly. “Hide yourself quickly.”
But Minksa failed to move. The steps drew closer, paired by the dissonant jingle of mail and weaponry.
Elienne gave Minksa a small push. “Go, child.”
Yet, surprisingly, the girl resisted. “Lady, he already knows I am here.”
Elienne tried to hide her uncertainty. “Then we’ll face him together.” She blotted a tear from Minksa’s cheek, just as the door crashed back.
Light sliced the chamber, darkened almost at once by Faisix’s slim height. He wore mail and a black surcoat trimmed elegantly in gold, which Elienne found oddly, disquietingly familiar. At his back, a hand-held torch flung heated reflections of Aisa’s armored and weaponed shoulders. Minksa shrank against Elienne’s knees as the Regent and the mute stepped into the room. Denji entered behind them both, fingering the haft of her battle-ax. The Regent checked by the bed, startled to find the gold-sewn coverlet smooth and unmussed.
“I’m over here,” said Elienne coldly. “Your hospitality doesn’t encourage sleep.”
Faisix spun and faced the window seat, abandoned utterly to fury. “Woman, count on it. I’ll make your existence a living Damnation. You’ll wish for death.”
Pushed past her fear by a blaze of sudden anger, Elienne tried to provoke him. “How sporting of you! I see Darion has not yet fallen prey to your schemes. Tell me, does frustration always make you strike unarmed men and women?”
Faisix’s jaw tightened. He took a sharp, thoughtless step forward.
“And children,” Elienne said scornfully. “Ma’Diere knows you’ve used this girl. Your methods, certainly, are gutlessly crass.” If he could be angered enough to strike her, she might once again disrupt his sphere of influence and summon Taroith.
But her hope misfired. Faisix jerked his head at the mutes. “Bind her,” he said, “and the girl too.”
He accepted the torch from Aisa, and watched coldly while the guardswomen dragged Minksa and Elienne roughly from the window seat. “I am lately returned from a most irregular paradox. You might recall a time when you were not such a staunch ally of the Prince. Once you resisted Ielond’s will and summoned me to the ice plains of Ceroth. I think you recall the unpleasantness that occurred there quite well.” He paused.
Elienne’s breath stuck in her throat. The paradox of Ielond’s Timesplice had only now caught up with her. The meeting on the ice plain must have just occurred, for the Regent.
“I see you remember.” A fierce gleam lit Faisix’s eyes, and his voice thickened. “I spoke with Ielond, yet Ielond is dead. And you are with child, surely, by a man other than Darion. Whatever tricks your Prince’s Guardian has played with the natural laws of progression, I assure you, his efforts will come to nothing.”
“You bluster like the wind,” said Elienne hotly. Her heart labored against her breast, and her mouth went dry, but she continued. “Ielond has already defeated you.”
Faisix’s brows rose thoughtfully. “Has he indeed? I shall unravel his mysteries, Mistress, and discover the origins of a certain chestnut-haired man who was once dear to you. Then we shall see who suffers defeat. But such a search will cost me time, and I intend to ruin Darion first. Without him, your fate won’t matter. And since you’ve shown such touching concern for Minksa, I’ve decided the child shall help.”
Horror snapped the threads of Elienne’s composure. “No!” But Faisix simply smiled at her protest as the mutes bundled her and Minksa toward the open door.
Chapter 10
The Path of Damnation
THE STUDY had been cleared of the worst wreckage from Faisix’s duel with Taroith, but broken glassware glittered still in the recesses beneath furnishings, and the floor bore the crisscrossed scars of scorch marks and ugly rust-colored stains. Pushed by calloused hands into a wooden chair, Elienne heard Faisix move to the cupboards against the left wall. Beyond the mute’s bulk, she glimpsed the jars that held the reduced remains of Heggen’s corpse. Elienne was grateful Minksa’s back was turned. The girl was young for such a grisly sight.
Faisix selected a flask from the shelf and spoke without leaving his work. “Aisa, please restrain the Lady in a manner which leaves her left hand at liberty. I wish her free to watch her Prince’s demise in the mirrowstone.”
Elienne barely felt the bite of the cords, concerned as she was for Minksa; the girl offered no resistance as Denji turned her over to Faisix. Like a hare trapped in the jaws of a wolf, she seemed suspended in paralysis. When the Regent caught her hand, she followed willingly, and cued by her attitude of submissiveness, Elienne realized the girl was no stranger to the practices of sorcery.
Faisix spoke to the mutes without looking up. “You are both excused. Set the bolt from the outside as you leave.”
The raw clank of weaponry belled in Elienne’s ears as Aisa and Denji departed. Why should the Regent require the door locked from without? Elienne licked parched lips, avoiding thoughts of Darion, alone with his men-at-arms, and bereft of Taroith’s guidance. Gripped instead by recall of the scorched and wretched corpses bloating beneath Trathmere’s walls, she experienced an echo of Minksa’s submissive despair. Defeat became a haven of familiarity beside the horror of confronting yet another incomprehensible barrage of sorcery. Her life, surely, had ended with Cinndel’s at the hands of the Khadrach; every action since seemed pallid and futile as that of a ghost.
“Stand here, child.” Faisix indicated a clear space in the center of the room.
Mutely obedient, Minksa followed with dull, uninterested eyes as he delved into a nearby chest and returned, both hands laden with candlestands. As he arrayed them on the floor by the girl’s feet, Elienne noticed the bases were carved of black stone, each one a squat, leering demon. The girl seemed indifferent to the ugliness around her.
Faisix lifted the flask from the table and anointed his left hand. Bloody, dripping fingers traced a line from candlestand to candlestand, enclosing Minksa within a red triangle. The torches cast grotesque, hunched shadows about him as he bent and scribed a wide pentagram, then framed the configuration with runes.
The child stood motionless while Faisix set bluish-white candles into the demon stands and lit them, each with a separate incantation. When he had finished, he stood within the pentagram and spoke a word guttural with consonants. The gory tracings upon the floor sizzled, then burst into flame.
That moment, Minksa cried out, like a sleeper wakened from a nightmare. The sound twisted Elienne’s heart. Pendaire’s Regent was a monster, to shape his snares with a child. Better she lose Cinndel’s son than suffer the rule of such a man.
“Minksa!” Elienne shouted. “Recite Ma’Diere’s Laws! Do you know them?”
The child seemed stunned, as though the rhythmic rise and fall of Faisix’s chant robbed her of hearing.
Elienne drew breath to repeat the Laws herself, but poisonous fumes from the candles choked her throat. A spasm of coughing mangled the words beyond recognition. Half-smothered by the smoke, Elienne blinked watering eyes and, in the sulfurous glare of flamelight, saw Faisix raise his arm.
Th
e darkness of oblivion appeared before him, framing a doorway in the air.
“Come here, Minksa.” His voice was barely above a whisper, yet the child heard. She raised her head and took a slow, tranced step forward. For a moment, Elienne saw her outline blur. Then Minksa crossed the threshold into night.
The blackness flickered, suddenly suffused with streaks of dull red. The girl screamed once, high and thin like a wounded rabbit. She swayed, and her legs buckled as her senses left her. Faisix caught her body as it fell through the gate he had fashioned. Her limbs dangled from his arms as he laid her like a corpse at his feet.
Flayed by emotion, Elienne found her free hand clenched fiercely around the mirrowstone. The jewel was drenched with sweat, and her palm ached where the gold setting had gouged her skin.
“The girl is not dead,” said Faisix conversationally. “See for yourself.” The Regent inclined his head toward the triangle, and following his nod, Elienne saw a pale, spectral shape move within. Faisix’s sorcery had separated spirit from flesh. Imprisoned by the red barriers of the warding spell, Minksa’s soul desperately sought escape, to no avail. Elienne shivered, stirred to anger. As Faisix initiated his next invocation, Elienne sought the knotted cords that bound her right wrist behind her back.
The torches streamed and flicked out. Only the ensorceled candles remained alight, flames casting sickly, greenish halos in the dark. Sweat slicked Elienne’s back, and the tendons ached around stressed joints. Strain as she might, the knots stayed just beyond reach. Beyond the perimeter of his pentagram, Faisix had scribed a second triangle, and above it, still another dark gateway. The name he called into the obsidian void was that of Darion’s sister, Avelaine, who had died of a fall from a horse at age fifteen.