With a leap of horrified intuition, Elienne perceived the Regent’s intent. If Faisix merged Minksa’s hapless flesh with the spirit of the Prince’s dead sister, he would create for himself a formidable weapon. Half-crazed with concern for Darion, Elienne wrenched desperately against her bonds. But the knots held.
Sparks flared through shifting billows of smoke. Elienne bit her lip to keep from crying out in frustration.
The Regent bent over Minksa’s possessed body and applied the arts of shape-change. As though aware of his meddling, the girl’s spirit beat like a moth against the sorcery that confined her. Elienne watched in growing apprehension as the girl’s fleshly contours altered under Faisix’s touch. The apparition that finally rose to its feet before him bore little resemblance to the plain child fathered by Jieles. Luridly underlit by guttering candle flames, Elienne beheld a tall young woman with rich, dark hair and a determined jawline. A jeweled pin glittered at her throat, and her slim figure was expensively clad in riding leather of masculine cut.
“Brother, why have you called me back?” she demanded in a clear, imperious voice.
Hearing the words, Elienne realized that Faisix had himself assumed the Prince’s image. When the two were seen together, the likeness to the royal features in the woman’s profile was unmistakable.
“I have summoned you because I am in grave danger, sister.”
The Princess glanced aside, as though to examine the hellish glow of the ciphers that ringed her round, But Faisix recalled her straying attention. “Avelaine! Will you listen? My life is threatened.”
Avelaine faced him with an imperious toss of her coroneted head. Dark hair glanced like raven feathers in the dim, smoky room. “Darion, you have changed much since I saw you last.”
“I haven’t time for idle talk. I am pursued by a man shape-changed to my likeness. Not even Taroith can tell us apart.” Faisix added a gesture of theatrical vehemence. “Bring him down for me, sister. I offer the chance to avenge the death of one dear to us both.”
Avelaine frowned. “Who. I think you lie, your Grace. The brother I knew would never disturb the dead. Not even for his own life’s sake.”
“Ielond lost his life for the sake of the succession. Must I be murdered as you were, or will you help?”
Avelaine’s eyes narrowed. “Faisix!” She said suddenly, “Ma’Diere have mercy, was my death not enough?” and took a sharp step back. The heel of her riding boot knocked inadvertently into a candlestand, and, as though wakened, the carved base came alive.
Elienne gasped. Though fumes scoured her throat, she shouted frantically, “Avelaine, it’s a trap!”
But the woman in the triangle seemed deaf to her warning. The demon shape bloated like a soap bubble. White and foul as a slug, it burst, releasing a writhing coil of vapor that rose and twined malevolently around the Princess’s head. Avelaine gasped.
“You are mine now,” Faisix said softly. “This geas I lay upon you, Avelaine of Pendaire. You shall never rest until your brother lies dead at your hand.”
The Princess stood, reasonless as a beast. Her hands accepted the sword Faisix offered with a dreamer’s incomprehension. No longer wearing Darion’s face, the Regent drew a thin, ceremonial dagger from his belt.
Faisix took the knife and nicked his palm with a swift motion. Blood welled, black against pale skin. He muttered an incantation, then raised his slashed hand and let the wound drip like a libation over the ring. A thunderous blast reft the air. Wind tossed the hair back from Elienne’s face, and the candles streamed like specters gone mad. The pentagram flared, red to violet, and crackled sparks, seeming for a prolonged moment to enclose the blackest pit of Hell.
Within, Elienne saw movement: a glint of scales like smoky quartz edging the arch of a serpentine tail. Then the darkness parted and dispersed like smoke, and she beheld the equine demon Faisix had once ridden over the ice plains of Ceroth. Sparks shot from restless hooves, and, yellow as lamps, its eyes gleamed with a man’s intelligence. Dazed by fumes, and battered beyond mortal reason by the proximity of unnatural forces, Elienne was slow to recognize she viewed the Regent himself, hideously transformed.
She wrenched at her bonds until pain made her dizzy. Through blurred eyes, she saw Avelaine mount. The sword flashed once in the flamelight, severing the five candles at the apexes of the pentagram. Thin wax shafts toppled, trailing ragged flags of smoke, and extinguished with a sheared-off hiss against the floor. The connecting lines flickered out. Elienne swallowed, tasted sweat. A triad of candles burned at the angles of the ward that confined Minksa’s soul. All else lay shrouded in darkness.
Elienne seized the mirrowstone, braced for disaster. The stone’s depths shone warmly, lit by an open-air campfire. Darion sat on a gilt-trimmed saddlecloth, with knees drawn up, and his head resting on crossed wrists. Lumped like dark hillocks about him, the men-at-arms slept under damp wool blankets, armored still, she saw, by the light that pricked helms, weapons, and mailed limbs.
Faisix’s apparition had not yet arrived.
The mirrowstone slipped from nervous fingers. If she was to help the Prince, she had little time to act; her only chance lay in the glowing triangle across the room, where Minksa’s imprisoned spirit huddled in abject despair. If, somehow, the child could be freed, Ma’Diere’s Laws might lend advantage enough for her to regain command of her possessed flesh from Avelaine, and so disrupt Faisix’s geas of murder. The chance was slim, and dangerous; Elienne knew her own ignorance of sorcery might precipitate disaster. Yet Ielond had not chosen her for timidity.
The cords could not be loosened; the chair, then, would have to be included in her plans. Elienne grimly bit her lip and shoved against the floor with her feet. With a screech, the legs skated a foot across the tiles. Elienne battled a queasy rush of vertigo. She lowered her head quickly, to prevent herself from fainting outright.
She would have to change tactics. Even if she managed to retain her senses, the noise alone would surely attract the mutes. Urgently, Elienne searched the shadowed room for inspiration.
Her eye fell on the rucked outline of a throw rug piled beneath a book stand. Grasping the chair seat firmly, she yanked upward as she kicked, her intent to lift the chair clear of the floor. But the motion jarred her arms to the shoulders, and pain channeled like molten metal down her nerves. Against all effort of will, she cried out. Sweat dripped like tears down her temples and cheeks.
Elienne drew a shallow, ragged breath. The rug was beyond her means, but any cloth would do as well. She tugged at her skirts and with shaking fingers tore the soft chemise from beneath. Then she tilted the chair and eased the fabric under its legs with her foot. This time the chair slid more smoothly, noise reduced to a muffled rumble, and with clumsy persistence, Elienne propelled herself toward Minksa’s confined spirit. The chair caught once, on an uneven square of tile, but Elienne pressed doggedly forward.
The chair rocked to a halt before the heated line of the triangle. She picked out the thin glimmer of the figure within. The girl bent, tightly crouched, her face buried in the crossed shield of her arms.
“Minksa!” Elienne’s voice seemed slurred, even to her own ears. The spectral shape did not stir. Perhaps the child could hear no spoken word, removed as she was from her flesh. But Elienne refused to abandon hope.
“Minksa, are you listening?”
The child stayed motionless.
“Minksa, you must...” Elienne’s voice cracked, and new tears sprang hotly in her eyes, silvering the faint, phosphorescent image of the imprisoned soul before her. “Minksa, his Grace’s life depends upon us now. I think we can save him, if you will help.”
Within the triangle, the child stirred. Elienne knew a wild surge of hope. The small, translucent hands unclasped, and Minksa raised a face imprinted with misery. “Lady, I cannot.”
Cut to the quick by the need for haste, Elienne’s respo
nse was brisk to the point of brutality. “You can try.”
Anguished, Minksa shook her head.
“Does our friendship mean nothing?” Elienne reached fiercely for the candle at the nearest corner of the triangle, as though to pinch of the greenish flame at the wick.
“No! Lady, I beg you!” Minska flung herself at the barrier. “You’ll come to great harm if you touch that.”
The enclosure flared red as Minksa struck its perimeter. She fell back with a cry of pain, and knelt, weeping, though no tears fell.
Elienne tried to balance urgency with gentleness. “Minksa, Darion could be killed if we don’t act quickly. Then all of Pendaire would suffer. Will you help?”
Minksa sat back on her heels, an expression beyond her years molding her thin face.
“Child, what in the Name of Ma’Diere troubles you?”
“Lady, I daren’t help your Prince, for my life’s sake.” Minksa turned her face away. “Darion of Pendaire would condemn me to the headsman should I leave my Lord Regent’s protection.”
Elienne felt sick. Was there no end to the intricacy of Pendaire’s court intrigue, that even children were involved?
“I am older than I seem,” said Minksa, startling Elienne with realization she had voiced her thought. Bound by the triangle, Minksa sprang suddenly to her feet, quietude shattered. “Lady, I was there when Faisix bound the Prince to his bane. My own sister died, as sacrifice, and I as witness committed high treason against the crown.”
Elienne forcibly restored herself to a semblance of calm. Minksa was close to panic. Logic alone would win the girl’s complicity in the struggle to aid Darion. Braced with patience she never knew she possessed, Elienne gently urged the child to elaborate her tale. “Darion is a just man, not a vindictive one,” she added. “I can’t believe you acted entirely of your own free will. Do you trust Faisix, who abuses you, more than me?”
Minksa sat, uncertainty evident even in her gesture of denial. In the oppressed, shadowed room, stale with ash and spent smoke, Elienne waited for the girl to sort her allegiance. The candles flickered and spat by her feet, winnowing sparks like the fireflies released each year at the summer festival in Trathmere.
Elienne sighed, and decided impulsively to gamble. “Minksa, listen well. There shall be an heir. I am with child.”
“But Darion is cursed. I saw. He can father no children.”
Elienne drew a steady breath. With the caution of a wolf stalking deer, she knotted lies with half-truths and tried not to examine the enormity of her risk. “That is exactly what Faisix wants you to believe. What if you’re wrong? You must have been very young. The Grand Justice cannot hold you, as a child, accountable for what you saw. You say your sister was murdered, at Faisix’s hand, and that fear of reprisal bound you to secrecy. You are innocent of treason, child, but if you fail to act now, you will not be innocent long. The blood of your Prince and his unborn heir will be upon your hands.”
Minksa shook her head, agonized. “Please. Would you have me act against my own father?”
Patience abandoned, Elienne struck with sharp and remorseless honesty. “Would a loving father ever exchange his own daughter’s life for a crown? Minksa, if the child I bear is not the Prince’s, think why. His Grace might choose not to claim his birthright through murder, though his own life were forfeit. Don’t you realize that such a curse could be reversed in the same manner in which it was cast?”
Distressed by indecision, Minksa buried her face in her hands. Her bowed shoulders quivered, reminding Elienne how cruelly young the girl was for the burden of loyalty and betrayal thrust upon her. Yet lives depended upon her choice. Though pierced to the core with pity, Elienne dragged words past the wretched knot in her chest and weighted the conviction of her cause with all she had left to offer.
“Minksa, I am going to put out the candle.”
“Lady, no.” Hysteria threaded Minksa’s tone. “The wards will defend against interference.”
“I know.” Elienne tried to control the fear inspired by the warning, with poor success. Her resolve to disrupt the ward seemed the action of a fool too dim to comprehend defeat. The carved demon on the candlestand mocked her with an expression of poisonous despite. Should the Prince be condemned to the ax, the plight of a foreigner would rouse little comment at court.
“I beg you, Lady,” said Minksa. “You are my friend. I don’t want you injured.”
Yet Faisix’s mad intent to inflict vengeance was no more tolerable. Elienne clenched her fingers into a fist. “Minska, if you value that friendship, you will help me by setting your will against what confines you here.”
She raised her arm, and caught Minksa’s eyes with her own. “Fight back, and Darion’s supporters will act to defend us.”
Minksa shrank back in terror. “Lady, please!”
“No.” Elienne cursed the quaver in her voice. “If you choose, Taroith can reach through your desire and free you. I doubt very much whether Avelaine can continue to rule your body without your consent. Act against Faisix, if only for your dead sister’s sake.”
“Lady, no!”
But the protest had no effect. Driven by loss, by betrayal, and by her own reckless anger, Elienne smashed the candle from its stand. An aureole of scarlet sparks rinsed the room of shadows. Her skin flamed agony. Someone screamed. The sound seemed to rend the very fabric of sanity, and darkness rushed through the gap. Elienne felt as though her fingers handled magma. The screams, she discovered, were her own. Time hesitated, seconds stretched to span the Eye of Eternity. Then a starburst of blue light shattered her vision.
* * *
A log settled, and an upsurge of flame tossed a flurry of sparks adrift in the dark. Darion shifted position, weary of the wait, and worn by the forest silence, which pressed his ears until they ached. At sundown, Taroith had sent word that the Regent’s counterstroke was imminent, and the trap to take him prisoner set in readiness. Yet the night was better than half-spent, and nothing had marred the stillness but wind. Darion avoided thoughts of Elienne. He was never a patient man, and a fortnight of concern had frayed his nerves until even the stamp of a restless horse made him start. The flames snapped and hissed at his back as he scanned the black, shadowed forms on their tethers.
A high, whistling snort cut the night, and maned necks lifted, tautly arched. Something had alarmed the horses. Darion caught the dew-soaked leather of his scabbard with sweaty fingers and rose quickly. His booted foot disturbed a bridle, and something struck a buckle with a clink. One of the men stirred and sighed in his sleep. But above the nearby sounds of the camp, Darion heard what the animals’ keener senses had detected ahead of him. A horse approached, driven through the wood at a hard gallop.
Certain the animal would have a rider, Darion called softly to his captain, “Waken your men.” And steel glanced blood red by the flamelight as he lifted his sword.
Around him, the men rose and armed themselves. A less experienced company might have protested that such measures were excessive against what obviously was nothing more than a single horseman—but where Black Sorcery was involved, one foe could easily be the match of twenty. Darion rode to the center of the shield wall that ringed the camp. He would not meet Faisix in the open, alone and vulnerable.
The captain paused at the Prince’s side. “I should think he has reached the League’s ward circle by now.” He folded his arms across his huge chest and scraped an itch on his jaw with a gloved knuckle.
Darion frowned. “Not yet.”
That moment, a horse screamed. The captain started violently. Darion’s hand froze on his sword hilt, as every animal on the picket line erupted into frenzied panic. A tree branch splintered, and dirt clods thrown up by shod hooves rattled among the bracken.
“Cut them loose!” shouted the Prince. “Quickly. They’ll injure themselves.”
A man put aside his pik
e and ran, dagger drawn. He slashed the halter ropes. One after another, the freed horses wheeled and plunged at a crazed gallop into the brush. The snap and crash of sticks soon obscured all sound of the approaching rider. Cold sweat threaded Darion’s temples. Faisix surely was aware of the net of sorcery that the League had set about the camp. He would come prepared, and probably in a form no right-thinking man would sanction.
Suddenly light flared. Shadows leaped, stark as spearshafts from the tree trunks, as with a gusty rush of sound a Sorcerer’s ward girdled the shield wall and camp it defended within a sheet of blue-white illumination.
“He’s crossed the League’s boundary!” shouted the captain, exultant. “We have him prisoner.”
“Only if we can subdue him.” Grimly Darion squinted, tried to see between silhouetted trees, convoluted and black as blown ink against the dazzle of the ward. His knuckles tightened on the swordgrip. The extraordinary brilliance of the League’s defense was itself a warning that Faisix’s sending was no trifle. By Taroith’s estimate, the man’s ambitious cunning had developed beyond reason into madness. “The Regent has forgotten restraint,” he had said, following his attempt to rescue Elienne. “He is a killer whose actions hold no thought of morality. Any who intervene do so at great peril.”
Yet whatever he had told his colleagues had moved the entire League of Sorcerers to uncharacteristic aggression. Consumed with concern for Elienne, the Prince resisted the impulse to rub his aching eyes.
The approaching hoofbeats stopped. The forest was eerily still. Expectancy gripped the entire company. A pikeman shifted his weight, outlined in light, and the man next to him swore aloud.
“Maintain your guard, soldier!” snapped the captain. But a scream of rending foliage made his reprimand unnecessary. The attack was upon them, from behind.
Darion spun around, saw two men hurled bodily into the air. The watery gleam of a scaled beast reared beyond, equine, deadly, and straight out of legend. Hooves raked the shield wall like hammers. A man screamed, horribly, drowning the thump as his comrades struck earth, limp as rags.