“Possession,” Taroith said with curt self-reproach. “There must have been an object, last night.” And he swore with acid feeling.
Darion said nothing. He released his grip on the servant and placed all his attention into speed. “Let fate achieve the rest,” Ielond had told him. Bitterly, the Prince wondered whether Cinndel’s child was an intentional sacrifice. He pounded the length of a hallway, haunted by Elienne’s expression of gratitude spoken only hours before. “This child would have died except through the intercession of your Guardian.”
Taroith’s focus crackled to life overhead. Caught in a net of light, Darion wrenched open the latch. Sounds of furious struggle and a woman’s screams battered his ears as he dashed into the suite. The door to Elienne’s room lay ajar. The Prince slammed through without breaking stride.
Minksa thrashed in the grip of the guardsmen, pale arms streaked scarlet. Small as she was, two grown men had difficulty restraining her. Loosened hair whipped her face as she flung against their hold, screaming piteously for her father. Darion passed with barely a pause. The crib lay puddled with blood, empty. Elienne knelt on the floor nearby, a sodden bundle cradled against her breast. Ancinne clutched the bedstead above her, ghost-white.
The Prince brushed the woman aside and stooped beside his Consort, his worst fears confirmed by a glimpse of what she held. Firmly he caught her wrists, felt the slippery warmth of Ielond’s blood. Horror checked his breath. “Elienne.”
She did not look up.
“Elienne!” He shook her gently, and dark hair rumbled like ribbons down her back. “Elienne, give the boy to Taroith. If there’s hope, Ielond must have care at once.”
She raised a blank, stunned face. Eyes darkened with shock locked upon the Prince. Lacerated by her expression, he spoke again.
“Give the boy to Taroith.”
Elienne stirred like a dreamer. Taroith bent quickly and lifted the infant from her loosened arms. Darion caught her bloodstained shoulders and buried her head against his chest. Elienne quivered in his embrace. He covered the shell of her ear with his hand. “Taroith, make her sleep.”
Shadows wheeled as the Sorcerer lowered his soulfocus. The light touched Elienne briefly; Darion felt her trembling slow and stop. She buckled against him, consciousness blanketed by the Sorcerer’s contact. Darion lifted her, and discovered tears on his checks.
“The child is dead,” said Taroith beside him.
“I guessed as much.” Darion swallowed with difficulty. He lowered Elienne’s body gently to the bed. “You!” he said to the maid. “Look after your mistress!”
The room seemed suddenly crowded. Darion left the bedside and saw three League Sorcerers, Emrith among them. The courtier he had passed in the corridor gaped in the doorway. The Prince leaped and slammed the oaken panel shut. When he returned, Taroith had laid the corpse of Elienne’s child in the crib. He covered it with a sheet and straightened, blotting bloodied fingers on his robe.
Emrith raised his voice over Minksa’s cries. “I’ve sent for the Duke of Liend.”
“I forbid him entrance,” Darion said curtly.
“Would you deny the girl the comfort of her own father?” Emrith’s brows rose over cool green eyes. “She’s obviously lost her wits.”
Taroith stepped briskly between. “I called for trained Masters, not relatives. His Grace’s judgment is sound. Jieles has no business here.” The Sorcerer shifted his attention to Darion. “An object definitely controls Minksa’s possession. Allow no one else near enough to touch her. I want no risk of transfer.” To Emrith he added, “You weren’t summoned here. Since you seem to have volunteered your services, you will bring an ingot of iron to this chamber from the smithy by transfer.”
For a League Master, the request was no difficulty, but the task would occupy Emrith wholly for a lengthy span of time. Sobered by Taroith’s adroit diplomacy in the heat of crisis, Darion strove to bridle his own tangle of rage and grief. If trusted hands could be influenced to murder, no one in Pendaire was safe.
Taroith approached Minksa, who struggled still in the grip of her captors; “Hold her firmly,” the Sorcerer instructed as his League colleagues positioned themselves at the guardsmen’s shoulders. “She may turn suicidal.”
Taroith poised his soulfocus over the girl’s tangled head. The metal helms of her wardens mirrored the harsh light, and reflections burnished sweat-sheened features.
Minksa flung herself against their restraint. “Mercy! Let me go to my father!”
Her plea ripped Darion’s heart. She was so very young. Taroith lowered his focus slowly toward the girl. Sparks jumped. With a crackle like breaking ice, a halo of scarlet ringed Minksa’s body. She cried out and twisted against the mailed hands that prisoned her. One blood-slick wrist slipped and almost tore free.
Instantly Taroith withdrew his focus. “Hold her.” The sultry glow faded slowly to an after-image. He nodded to his colleagues. To the guardsmen his instructions were terse and verbal. “She is defended by Black Sorcery. We have no choice but to immobilize her through indirect contact. You’ll experience some numbness. Keep steady. The sensation will cause you no harm.”
Grimly silent, the two Sorcerers placed their hands upon the armored shoulders of the men-at-arms. The bunched mass of their shadows splintered into triplicate as they summoned their focuses beside Taroith’s. Outlined in glare, one guard glanced uneasily upward.
“Mind the girl!” Taroith warned. “Any threat to you originates with the force she harbors.”
Minksa wrenched desperately, thin cheeks awash with tears. Light flared above her, dazzling Darion’s view. He squinted, through aching eyes saw the guardsmen stiffen into posed statues. The violence of Minksa’s struggles gradually damped under the combined influence of the Sorcerers. The Prince had observed his Guardian enough to understand something of their method—by channeling their powers through the touch of the men-at-arms, they could breach Minksa’s awareness without rousing the ward inherent in the will that possessed her. But progress was torturously slow.
Minksa’s cries gradually subsided. Porcelain clinked, solitary harpnotes against the stillness, as Ancinne cleared the fragments of the breakfast dishes from the floor at Elienne’s bedside. She worked with feverish concentration, as though she could somehow negate the finality of death by cleaning up the traces. Beyond her fat bulk, Emrith knelt in trance, arms wrapped in an aura of light. The translucent outline of an ingot drifted above his spread fingers, and sweat beaded his forehead.
Minksa hung motionless as a wax figure in the hold of the guards. Taroith walked forward and examined the streaked, bloody fist clenched like stone in the gauntlet of the elder man-at-arms. “I thought so,” he murmured, beckoning Darion nearer.
The Prince entered the flood of brilliance cast by the focuses of three League Masters. He shielded his eyes. Rigid as glass, Minksa remained frozen in a pose of savagery. Her expression dismembered thought. Darion wrenched his gaze away.
“Look here,” said Taroith at his side. “But take care not to touch.”
The Prince bent close. The guardsmen seemed lifelessly immobile as their captive; even their breathing was suspended. Stunned by the scope of energy needed to subdue a mere girl, Darion took a moment to notice the glint of metal on Minksa’s finger. Gummed with clotted blood, a gold ring nestled between her whitened knuckles.
The Prince recognized the form with an ugly shock. “The Demon of Hellsgap? Faisix did this?”
Taroith rubbed his neck with glazed knuckles. “Appearances may be deceptive, but yes, I believe so. Though I cannot begin to guess how he accomplished the feat from a warded cell.”
“He’ll pay with his life.” Darion’s words were clipped by rage.
Taroith made no attempt to dissuade him. Instead he drew the Prince aside. “I’m going to require help. When Emrith completes his transfer, ask him to summon all
but two of the Masters from Faisix’s cell. They’re needed here.”
The Sorcerer returned to Minksa. Darion waited fretfully for Emrith to rouse from trance. Rain snaked watery streaks across a view flat gray with fog. Caught in a dreamlike sense of isolation, the Prince crossed the carpet to Elienne’s bedside. He sat, and tried not to think of the still form beneath the stained sheet in the crib. Beside him, his Lady lay peacefully asleep, long hair caught in her lashes. Darion smoothed the strands aside, dreading the moment she would wake and remember.
“We should never have interfered with you,” he murmured.
Ancinne lifted a tray load of shards from the rug. “Your Grace?”
“Nothing.” Darion stood restlessly.
Across the chamber, Emrith stirred and opened his eyes. He hefted a thick bar of iron, blinked once, and directed an interested glance at Minksa and the guardsmen. Darion rose and delivered Taroith’s instructions promptly, anxious to see the Master gone from the room.
Emrith stood. He offered the ingot, black hair shadowless as night against the glare of his soulfocus. “My condolences upon the death of your heir, your Grace.”
“Do you equate murder with death?” Darion’s hand closed forcibly over metal still warm from transfer. “Save your pity for those tragedies without malice.”
The Sorcerer bowed and moved silently to the door. He let himself out without looking back.
Though Darion knew he had spoken rashly, concern for Elienne left no space for regret. With her loved one’s baby murdered by the only friend she possessed in Pendaire, mistrust might well drive her to solitary despair. He vowed he would prevent that, though he forfeit his own peace. Whether Elienne hated him permanently for interference, he would not abandon her to grief.
A crackle of sound and a blast of wind ripped the air at his back. Darion left the doorway and saw the League Sorcerers Emrith had summoned arrive by direct transfer from Faisix’s cell. Three moved at once to Taroith’s aid.
The fourth, a vigorous old man with a scarred cheek, strode over and lifted the iron from the Prince’s numbed grasp. “Your Grace, you have my deepest sympathy. Should you or your Consort require anything, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
The Prince twisted the seal ring on his finger, eyes shadowed by a fallen wing of hair. “Spare the girl, Master Duaire. She was a tool ruthlessly used.”
“Your Grace, we shall try.” Duaire hesitated, as though he might add more. But after an uncomfortable interval, he quietly joined his colleagues, his face a mask of determination.
Darion settled wearily into a chair. Sounds of voices and footsteps filtered through the suite. A guard captain shouted for order. The Prince cringed inwardly. Already a crowd of courtiers had gathered beyond his door, curious and hungry for details. Let the steward handle them, he thought viciously, in no mood to confront the inquisitive pity of the household. Their loss was only symbolic.
Sorcery brightened the far side of the chamber. Darion glanced around, dazzled by a raw pulse of power. The League Sorcerers stood in a circle, stark as silhouettes against the glare. The Prince shielded his eyes, saw the crimson arc of the ring’s ward snap back into existence. Minksa cried out, netted by a blaze of energy. The fist containing the ring was obscured by the stellar incandescence of League forces.
Presently the effect relented. Darion beheld the image of the Demon of Hellsgap outlined in fire above Minksa’s head. The girl hung limp as death in the grasp of the guards.
Taroith suddenly stepped aside from the Sorcerers who ringed her still body. His robed form gleamed orange as metal under a smith’s hammer in the sultry glare of the demon-form.
“Khavillein,” he called boldly, naming the creature in the Loremaster’s tongue. “Who has sanctioned your presence here?”
The demon-form writhed, sinuous amid smudged billows of smoke. It spoke like the scrape of stones. “Faisix, Torkal’s master.”
Darion felt perspiration chill between his shoulderblades.
“Khavillein,” said Taroith again, his voice a peal of command. “By natural law, that is impossible.”
Laughter filled the chamber and echoed cruel and impersonal against the walls. Darion felt his flesh prickle.
Taroith moved. Sudden light snapped from his hand. Wind fanned his robe. The demon-form dissolved into a roil of scarlet. Its laughter changed pitch, and the inflections that answered were familiar.
“Ielond spliced Time to grant Prince Darion his succession,” said Faisix in the same crisp tones that he had once used to address Pendaire’s Grand Council. “I could do no less to achieve his ruin. But unlike my predecessor, I utilized means to accomplish simultaneous existence in the same locus. This extension of my will is the result.” Torpid as grease, the smoke coiled in the air, dimly reassuming the serpentine outline of the demon. The voice resumed, triumphant. “Your Royal Grace, your heir is dead. Mourn him. Avenge him. You shall sire no other.”
Darion tensed in his chair. Rage entered him like fire.
Taroith turned suddenly from the image of Faisix’s summoning and shouted, “Your Grace, stand clear!”
Darion slammed his chair back and strode forward.
Taroith intercepted, caught the royal wrists in a grip like shackles. “Your Grace!” Sweat slicked his white hair. “Your Grace, if you loved your Guardian, stay clear! What you see is a projection.”
With more calm, Taroith elaborated. “This evil can be immobilized if iron is thrust through its center. But when that is done, all existing connections must end. Faisix’s flesh will perish. The properties of the iron shall prison his spirit, since that metal conducts no resonance of Black Sorcery. Do you, as mortal sovereign, dare sentence a man’s soul to eternal confinement?”
The Prince covered his face with his hands and stood motionless for an extended interval, shadow pooled like ink about his feet in the steady blaze of the wards. He answered at last in the gritty tones of exhaustion. “Yes.” He unveiled an expression like etched stone. “Let it be done.”
Abruptly Taroith released his hold. “Your Grace, let the responsibility be mine alone.” And before Darion could reply, he caught the iron bar from Duaire.
Taroith’s soulfocus flared into view, curtaining him in a white corona. The iron brightened, molten silver in his hands, and lengthened into a rod a slender yard in length. The Sorcerer raised the object like a weapon, whirled, and thrust it upward through the hazy coils of the monster that drifted above Minksa’s bent head.
Light exploded upon contact. The bar heated to incandescence, bright and sudden as lightning. Taroith released it as though burnt. The metal tumbled, end over end, the chime of impact as it struck the floor overlaid by a scream from Minksa.
“Elienne!” The cry reflected restored intelligence.
Minksa called out again, her tone roughened by horror-ridden recognition. “Elienne! Elienne!”
The guardsmen released her. Anguished by memory, Minksa raised marked fingers to rake her face. Duaire stooped and caught her before she could inflict injury. His own focus flashed, flat as a mirror overhead. The girl fell limp in his arms.
She lay like a shot animal against his maroon robe. Duaire straightened, his features heavy with sorrow. “Ma’Diere’s infinite mercy, what are we going to do with her?”
He glanced at the Prince. But Darion seemed mesmerized by the rod, which had come to rest at his feet, a cool blue-gray against the soft pastels of the carpet. The demon ring was imbedded deeply in the smooth sheen of the metal’s surface.
Taroith answered, finally, blistered fingers poised against his forearms. “By law, she must be confined. But for her sanity’s sake, not alone. Will you stay with her?”
Duaire strode at once for the door. But his departure was hampered by the arrival of yet another League Sorcerer.
The newcomer crossed the chamber and stopped before Taroith. “Mast
er, Faisix has gone into a coma.”
“I expected as much.” Taroith bent and gingerly retrieved the iron rod. “He’ll not recover.”
With a short gasp of dismay, his colleague removed the object from his wounded grasp. Taroith murmured brief thanks and addressed the Prince. “Your Grace, the Grand Council must be called into session. As Regent, I can officiate, if you wish to be absent.”
Darion stirred as though roused from deep sleep. “Your hands ...”
“... are no impediment, your Grace.” Taroith’s features softened. “I’d hardly be worthy of League status if I could not mend damage to my own person.”
A guardsman’s boot scraped uneasily against the floor. Darion fingered the creased cloth of his shirt and looked up, finally, hazel eyes darkly troubled. “I won’t leave my Consort, at least until she wakens.”
“That won’t happen before nightfall,” said Taroith. “But the Council has no need of your presence. Stay by her if you wish.”
Darion crossed woodenly to the bed where Elienne lay. Oblivious to Ancinne’s protests, he tossed off the blankets, lifted his Consort’s slight body in his arms, and started for the door to his own chamber with the Lady-in-waiting at his heels. He lifted the latch. Ancinne tried to follow and found herself rudely excused. Darion crossed the threshold alone and kicked the oaken panel shut with untempered violence.
“Why, the nerve!” Ancinne braced plump fists upon her hips. “The very last thing Lady Elienne needs is a man’s company.”
Taroith’s brow furrowed into a frown. “Madam, on that you’re most assuredly wrong. Let them be, or I shall roast your silly tongue to a cinder.”
By his uncharacteristic curtness, the League Sorcerers present realized just how greatly their Prince had been taxed by the morning’s events. With unceremonial efficiency, they acted to relieve the responsibility from his shoulders.
* * *
Rain pattered steadily against the casements of the royal apartment when Elienne returned to awareness. Eyes closed, in utter stillness, she listened between the soft drip of water from the eaves for the thin cry of an infant. No sound answered. No sound ever would. Ielond was dead. His absence left a hollow of silence in which thought drowned, without echo. Someone’s arms tightened gently around her, though she had made no move to indicate that she was awake.