Deborah Hale (22 page)

The woman nodded. Her features were not those of a great beauty, but of a strong ruler who had learned courage and wisdom from the harsh lessons of adversity.

“Come, daughter. You have not much time.” She beckoned Maura to follow her. “And the need must be great if you have risked this search to find me.”

Maura followed the long-dead queen through archways and chambers of a castle she had never seen before, but which looked hauntingly familiar. They descended a steep staircase and made their way down one long, dim hallway, then another. At length, Abrielle opened a hidden door and led Maura through a narrow passage to a cavernous room full of tall straight columns. Or was it a grove of towering trees?

Suddenly, the Staff of Velorken appeared before her. It looked as tall as a man, its shaft of tawny wood carved with ancient symbols like those on Delyon’s scroll. The top of the staff had been carved from ivory, now yellowed with age. The head of a sunhawk had been crafted with such skill Maura half expected its glittering golden eyes to blink and its beak to open with a shrill, piercing cry.

Abrielle held the staff out to Maura. “Make certain it is wielded with care, my daughter. Wishes can be powerful and dangerous things.”

As she reached toward the staff, Maura felt herself borne away, over miles and years and through lives. She heard a voice calling her name.

“Can you hear me, Maura?” Each word grew louder, closer, more distinct. And more anxious. “Have you found anything yet? Maura? Perhaps you had better come back…if you can.”

The packed dirt of the floor felt hard and cool beneath her, and the beat of her heart, faint but steady. She sucked in a deep breath of the cellar’s musty air. Her eyelids fluttered and she glimpsed Delyon’s face, his features clenched with alarm.

She whispered his name.

“Thank the Giver!” Delyon expelled a deep sigh. “You were
so still for so long, I feared you might be… Was it as I said? Did you uncover those buried memories? Did you find out where the staff is hidden?”

“I…think so.” It took a great focus of will to make her mouth form the words. “I saw it. Deep under…the castle. In a grove of…tall trees.”

All the newly wakened memories swirled in Maura’s mind, hampering the proper movement of her thoughts. Her head felt as if it might burst to contain all the new knowledge that flooded her thoughts—the way the melting snow of spring made the waters of the Windle swell and churn.

“Under?”
repeated Delyon. “Are you certain? We have scoured the lower levels of the palace for days now. And what did you mean about tall trees? There are no trees under the ground.”

Maura lurched to her feet, not certain what made her rise or where she intended to go. “I recognized the place…parts of it. At least I thought I did.”

Perhaps if she went out now, while what she’d seen was still fresh in her thoughts, she could find it. She shuffled toward the door and pulled it open. Wandering out into the dim passageway, she searched for anything she had glimpsed in her memory-vision of Queen Abrielle. In a daze she turned this way and that, paying no mind to her direction. Behind her she heard Delyon calling her name in a frantic whisper, but she did not answer.

Meaning to turn, she stumbled into a shallow alcove off one of the passages. As she paused a moment, trying to recover her bearings, a sliver of light caught her eye. It shone through the corner of one sidewall.

Maura reached toward it. But when her hand made contact with the stubbled stone of the wall, it met only the slightest resistance. She pushed. The chink of light widened. Where had she seen a false sidewall like this before? In her vision? Perhaps…

She pushed harder and the false wall swung inward on quiet hinges to reveal a steep stairway. Though they did not look like the stairs down which Abrielle had led her, Maura followed them just the same. Any hidden passage must lead somewhere important.

Hemmed by solid stone walls on each side, the steps led deep into the bowels of the earth beneath the palace. At intervals, small hollows held clear crystals that glowed just brightly enough to light her way. After making two sharp turns, the stairs ended in a chamber that looked to have been hewn out of solid rock.

A giant crystal, which might have been the parent to the ones that lit the stairs, rose from the middle of the floor. Like them, it gave off a pale glow, but not a steady one. Rather it pulsed in an irregular rhythm. A man stood with his back to her, his hands pressed against two facets of the crystal. He wore the black robe and hood of the Echtroi.

Maura’s daze had lifted enough that she knew how dangerous it would be to linger here. Stifling a gasp of dismay, she turned to flee. At least she
tried
to.

Something forced her gaze to linger on the death-mage. A wrenching sense of familiarity haunted her and she could not think why. In the past months she had seen more of his ilk than she would have wanted to in a lifetime. In those dark robes, hoods and masks, one looked much like another. Why did she sense a particular connection with this one?

It did not matter. She must get away. The Staff of Velorken was not here. Not in this chamber. Not anywhere in this palace. The certainty of it jolted Maura.

Then a hand settled on her shoulder.

She screamed and ran from whatever had crept up behind her.

A shudder went through the death-mage and his hands parted from the crystal as if they had been pushed away. He spun about and his gaze locked on her.

He could see her! Maura did not need to glance down at her
self to know the invisibility spell must be fading, exposing the first ghostly view of her to enemy eyes.

Even as she fumbled to reach the pocket of her sash that held the last of her
genow
scales, Maura feared it would do no good.

She was trapped in this small space with someone who had seen her. If he set his mind to catch her, she would not be able to evade him for long. Especially if he called for aid.

But the death-mage did not.

Instead, the gaunt features visible below his mask contorted in a look that might have been fear.

“Dareth?” The word retched out of him as he took a stumbling step toward Maura. “Why do you haunt me?”

W
hich staggered her more? Hearing her mother’s name from the mouth of a death-mage…or realizing that he had spoken in Hanish, yet she could understand his words?

Marshaling her wits from the shock, Maura pulled a tiny pinch of powered scale from her sash and concentrated on recalling the incantation. If the death-mage tried to capture her, she would not make it easy for him.

She knew the instant she disappeared again. Not because she felt any different, but by the way the death-mage staggered back, his pale eyes widened with alarm that even his sinister cowl could not disguise. Just to be certain, she took a step to the side. But his gaze did not waver from the spot where she’d been standing before.

His hands began to tremble and he sank to his knees. “I am not going mad. I am
not
going mad!”

He seemed to cling to those words, as if they were a slippery rope suspended high above Raynor’s Rift.

But how could she understand them, Maura wondered, when he had spoken in Hanish? Did she truly grasp his mean
ing or was
her
mind playing tricks on her? One thing she knew without doubt, though it puzzled her as much as any uncertainty—the death-mage had called her by her mother’s name. Why?

Her deeply ingrained sense of caution told her to fly while she had the chance. Remembering the hand she’d felt on her shoulder, she glanced toward the stairs with fresh alarm. But no one was there. Had she only imagined it?

With no obvious threat, curiosity got the better of her wariness.

“What is Dareth to you?” she whispered, amazed and mildly disgusted to hear her words come out in Hanish. “What did you do to her that she should haunt you?”

Killed the father of her child? Tortured him to death before her eyes? Broken her spirit and her will?

When the death-mage lifted his head to gaze in the direction of her voice, Maura moved again—nearer the stairs this time, in case she needed to make a fast escape.

“What did
I
do to
her
?” The death-mage staggered to his feet. “Ask what she did to
me.
Bewitched me, then betrayed me!”

Betrayed? Maura shook her head. Perhaps she did not understand Hanish after all.

“Fool that I was to be taken in by her lowling wiles.” His gaze swept the room. “I
am
going mad. First seeing Dareth, now hearing voices. Worse yet, answering their cursed questions!”

He turned and fled up the stairs as if chased by something more terrifying than Maura could imagine. Half against her will, she followed. The death-mage’s answer had not satisfied her curiosity—only roused it more. With the image of her mother so fresh in her mind from her vision, she could not let it go until she had found out more…somehow.

Halfway up the stairs she slammed into something solid and warm. Before she could cry out, Delyon’s voice calmed her, though he sounded anything but calm himself. “We must stop the Echtroi before he tells anyone what he saw! I tried, just now,
but he pushed me away. You go back and fetch the staff. I will follow him.”

“There is no staff here.” Maura shook off Delyon’s hand and continued up the stairs. “Not in this chamber. Not in the whole palace. I doubt the death-mage will tell anyone what he saw. He thinks he’s going mad.”

“How do you know?” Delyon’s voice followed her. “What did you say to him? I thought you could not speak Hanish.”

“I couldn’t until you put me in that trance.”

At the top of the steps, the false wall hung agape. At the end of the cellar passage, Maura spotted the death-mage scrambling up from his knees. He must have tripped and fallen in his haste.

“If the staff is not here,” whispered Delyon behind her, “then where is it?”

“I think I know,” Maura called as she raced down the passage. “Go back to the storeroom. I will join you shortly and explain everything. But there is something I must do first.”

Hitching up her skirts, she sprinted after the death-mage. Perhaps he heard her footsteps behind him, for he kept turning to glance back.

On he ran and Maura followed, gradually gaining ground. When a young night guard issued a challenge and barred the death-mage’s way, she almost barreled into them both, but managed to curb her headlong rush at the last moment.

“Out of my way, fool!” barked the death-mage. “I…have urgent news for the High Governor.”

“Your pardon, great one—” the guard stepped aside “—but the High Governor’s quarters are that way.” He pointed in the opposite direction.

As Maura caught her breath, trying to be quiet about it, she marveled at being able to comprehend the two men’s exchange in Hanish. Their tones and gestures matched so perfectly with what she supposed they were saying, she could no longer doubt her sudden baffling ability.

Casting a glance behind him, the death-mage collected his icy composure. “I would not dream of rousing His Excellency at this hour.”

“But you said it was urgent…”

“Urgent for me to prepare the report I will deliver as soon as he rises.” Fixing the young soldier with a glare, the death-mage stalked off down the gallery with long, hurried strides.

Where was he headed? Somewhere to prepare a report, he’d told the guard. But Maura had become familiar enough with the palace to know this way led to the women’s quarters.

She raced after him, catching up just as he halted before one of the doors and began hammering upon it with his fist. “Mother. Let me in. Hurry!”

Did death-mages have mothers? Though Maura knew they must, the notion taxed her imagination.

After a moment, she heard the sound of a lock turning and the door swung inward. She managed to slip in on the death-mage’s heels before it was closed again by an old woman wrapped in a fine robe, her thinning white hair pulled back in a tight braid.

She scowled at the death-mage and spoke in a tone so sharp Maura doubted any other Han but the High Governor would dare use it to a member of the feared Echtroi. “What brings you here at this hour, pounding on my door? Are you being sent over the mountains? A good thing it would be. We do not want one of your rivals to steal all the credit for crushing this rebellion.”

The death-mage shook his head. “That is the least of our worries. My mind is beginning to break. Soon I will be a babbling simpleton!”

He sank onto an ornately wrought chair. His shoulders slumped and his pale hands began to tremble.

“That cannot be!” With stiff movements, the old woman dropped to her knees beside him and clutched one of his hands tightly in both of hers. “You are young still, and you have always been strong-minded, even as a child.”

The death-mage refused to take heart. “Remember Tharled.
He was younger than I when he became a raving madman and had to be locked away!”

“Tharled was always too high-strung for his own good.” The woman’s sharp features twisted into a sneer. “He should never have been allowed to join the order, let alone rise so high so fast. But he had the House of Zardisvon behind him—the scavengers! There have been others like Tharled who lacked the strength to control the power they wield. But I have known many who kept their wits to a great age and died at the height of their powers.”

Huddled in a shadowed corner, Maura listened with a sense of grim justice. So death-mages did not escape unscathed from the pain and terror they inflicted. Even the ones who did not go mad lived in fear that they might. Now she understood why her sudden appearance and disappearance had struck terror into this one.

For a moment the old woman’s hand hovered above her son’s shoulder, as if she wanted to offer comfort but did not know how.

Instead, she struggled up from the floor and took a seat opposite him, speaking in a brisk tone. “You seem to have all your wits about you now. Perhaps you only dreamed whatever has unnerved you.”

The death-mage’s head snapped up. “What
is
madness but dreaming when I am awake? I saw her, I tell you! Dareth—down in the low chamber.”

Maura watched the old woman stiffen and stare at the mention of her mother’s name. “Perhaps she is here. One of your rivals might have found the little wretch and brought her here to discredit you at a crucial moment.”

How could her mother discredit him? Maura wondered. Because she had escaped from him all those years ago?

“You do not understand.” The death-mage rose from his chair and began to pace behind his mother’s. “Dareth did not enter the chamber…or leave it. She just…appeared. But I could see through her like a reflection in a window. She did not look to have aged a day since I saw her last. And when I called her
name, she disappeared again and a voice asked what I had done to her that she should haunt me.”

With each word he became more agitated. “What
I
did to
her
? Protected her. Hid her.”

His voice broke, but not before Maura heard him keen the impossible words, “Loved her!”

She jammed her hands over her ears, but it was too late. Like one small stone rolling down from a mountaintop to cause an avalanche, the death-mage’s admission triggered a hail of memories in Maura’s mind.

She recalled something Langbard had said before going on to tell her that she was the Destined Queen. The shock of his revelation had chased it from her mind. Now it came back to her.

When she’d asked about the identity of her father, Langbard said her mother had kept that secret from him, even during her passing ritual. Just as she had kept Maura from seeing the face of her lover during her memory vision. Why keep such a secret unless it was a source of regret and shame?

Maura’s skin crawled and her gorge rose. She wanted to weep or vomit or smash something, but she dared not do any of those things.

The Hanish woman—her grandmother?—sprang from her chair with surprising energy for her years and gave the death-mage a hard slap on the cheek. “You were mad
back then
—bewitched! Seeing and hearing things is nothing compared with the folly of what that creature compelled you to do.”

That creature?
Maura longed to fly at the pair of them and give them a haunting they would never forget!

The old woman gentled her tone. “You came to your senses before and you will not take leave of them now. Go get some sleep and try not to tax your powers for a few days. It will be well. You will see.”

This mixture of harshness and concern seemed to work on her son, for he grew calmer. “Perhaps you are right. I have not slept well since that incident at the Beastmount Mine. It may
be that all this recent unrest among the Umbrians has stirred up old memories.”

As he headed for the door, the pair spoke about matters and people that meant nothing to Maura, even if she had been able to concentrate on what they were saying. But she could not.

The notion that she might have Hanish blood threw her mind and heart into paralysing turmoil. She had feared and loathed the Han for as long as she could remember. Any kinship with them would be like a vile parasite invading her body. How could she be the Destined Queen of Umbria if she were tainted with the blood of their most hated foes?

The death-mage pulled open the door but stood a moment taking leave of his mother. Not able to stand being near either of them for a moment longer, Maura risked slipping past them. Once she reached the corridor, she fled back to the cellar as fast as her legs would carry her.

But that was not swiftly enough to evade a question that dogged her thoughts. Was
this
what Rath had learned about her from the Oracle of Margyle? Had it poisoned his trust in her and his love for her?

He would make the Hanish scum sorry for what they’d done to those miners! Righteous rage seethed within Rath as he stood in the secret room of the tannery and tipped the growth potion to his lips. He would make them sorry they’d ever set foot in his kingdom!

Out on the streets of Prum, everything should be ready. Rath had left it up to Idrygon to execute that part of his plan, and Idrygon had proven himself a master of execution.

For once he swallowed the foul-tasting potion with something like eagerness. Perhaps every wrench of pain it inflicted on him might be one less the townfolk of Prum would have to suffer. He kept reminding himself of that as the spell went to work. The thought helped him bear it better than usual.

The pain was beginning to ebb and his head brushed the
ceiling when someone tapped softly on the hidden door. Rath did not call out in case it might be Hanish soldiers searching the building. With quiet movements he drew his sword and raised it.

The door swung inward on well-oiled hinges.

“Giver’s mercy!” The tanner shrank back, clutching his chest when he glimpsed Rath’s hulking form.

“Your pardon!” cried Rath. “I feared it might be…”

“Of course, Highness.” The tanner mustered his composure and sank into a deep bow. “I came to tell you the time is at hand and all is as you ordered.”

“The womenfolk, elders and children are off the streets?”

“Aye, Highness. Word has gone round that some cowherders from the north steppes are spoiling for a fight with those from the south. Folk with any sense will be keeping off the streets. Lots do, anyway, at fair time.”

Rath nodded his approval. “Then we had better get a move on. I cannot stand to think of Prum under Hanish rule a moment longer.”

“Nor I, sire.” Boyd Tanner held the door wide for Rath to lumber through, hunched to keep from hitting his head on the ceiling beams. “Right handsome suit of armor ye got there, if ye don’t mind my saying—fine work.”

“And yours.” Rath had become so used to seeing men in armor, he had not noticed the tanner’s sturdy jerkin. “Make it yourself?”

“Aye.” The tanner chuckled as they descended the stairs. “I’ve put on a pound or two around the middle since then, though. It’s a mite snug.”

Rath chuckled. “Let us hope you will soon be able to hang it up and never worry about wearing it again.”

They paused at the bottom of the stairs. “Tell me, Highness, if it ain’t too bold for me to ask, what became of the lass who was here with you that night—the one Exilda was looking to come. Did she find what she was looking for?”