Eolyn (21 page)

The guards gave Eolyn a violent shove and ordered her forward.

C
hapter Twenty-Five

The fortress of Vortingen loomed
unnatural, with massive gates and impervious walls. Ominous shadows clung to its edges. The maze of corridors induced a sense of confinement and anxious disorientation. Weapons hissed and babbled, their metallic tongue unintelligible to Eolyn.

Corey’s grip on her arm tightened as he pulled her close. “Do not let them intimidate you. Their power lies in your apprehension. Whoever instructed you must have given you techniques to control your fear. Put those lessons to use now. Our future depends on it.”

Our future.

This simple expression of unity placed a terrible burden on Eolyn’s heart. For all she knew, Corey might burn with her on the morrow. “Forgive me, Mage Corey. I didn’t think—”

“No, you did not.” Anger colored his tone. “For the moment I will thank you for saving my life, though you may have rendered it forfeit by doing so. There will be time for explanations and apologies, if we live to see the sun.”

They continued in silence. Eolyn could sense Corey sifting through different versions of their history, searching for a story that would explain her actions without sending them both to the pyre. His anxiety unnerved her, then filled her with indignation.

What have I done to deserve this?

As a child, she kept every secret taught by her mother. As a girl, she grew up hiding in the misty heart of the South Woods. Ever since her return to Moisehén, she had concealed the truth of her power and refrained from all overt acts of magic, starving her spirit in the process. Now in a single careless moment, she had used her gift for the presumably noble act of saving a mage’s life.

And this is how they reward me
.

“That’s better,” Mage Corey said.

Eolyn stiffened, unnerved by the impression that he had read her thoughts.

“Now you must calm your anger,” Corey said. “Do not speak to them, Sarah. Focus on subduing your emotions. I will manage the rest.”

They arrived at a small antechamber dominated by two great wooden doors carved with the dragon crest of Vortingen. More guards stepped forward to surround them. The heavy doors swung inward, and they were escorted into the presence of the King.

Eolyn had never seen so much space enclosed in one room. Thick pillars reached up like great stone trunks, their branches dividing in clean arcs high overhead. Tall windows, black against the gathering night, lined the long hall. Thick torches illuminated the polished floor, chasing shadows to the far corners. The magnificence of this place reminded Eolyn, oddly enough, of the South Woods. Taking some comfort in that thought, she drew a breath and straightened her shoulders.

The High Mages were assembled on either side of the King, whose face remained hidden behind the spell of his mask. At the King’s side stood Tzeremond, assaulting Eolyn with the deep cut of his amber gaze. Eolyn hesitated, but Mage Corey placed a strong hand on her shoulder. Together they moved forward until the guards signaled them to stop.

The King studied her, expression unreadable behind the shifting light of his mask. The silence grew long and uncomfortable. Tzeremond’s glance strayed toward the King, as if prompting him to speak, but the regent suffered no distraction in his assessment of Eolyn.

She lifted her chin and held his gaze. Some unspoken question took shape between them, hanging like a loose mist in the flickering light.

“Who will speak for this woman?” The King demanded.

“I will, my Lord King,” Mage Corey replied.

“I will speak for myself,” Eolyn said.

The mages murmured in indignation.

“Please, my Lord King.” Mage Corey said quickly. “Have patience with her. She is but a peasant from Moehn. She knows nothing of the ways of court.”

“Though she knows something of the ways of magic,” the King replied. “What is her name?”

“Sarah,” Eolyn said.

Corey lanced her with his gaze.

“Remove your mask, Maid Sarah,” the King instructed. “I would see your face.”

“I will be pleased to remove my mask when you remove yours,” Eolyn replied.

The torches dimmed at her insolence.

The King sat back in his throne. Disapproval spread from his feet and flowed down the steps like a deadly mist.

“Leave us,” he commanded.

The High Mages bowed and drifted toward the antechamber in a low rustle of robes. Tzeremond remained next to his King, and Corey stood firm beside Eolyn.

“You are dismissed as well, Mage Corey,” the King said.

Corey hesitated, then drew a quiet, decisive breath. “Have mercy, my Lord King. What happened today is not her fault. I assume full responsibility. I taught her tricks no woman should know, out of my own curiosity and pride. She comes from a sheltered background. She knew little of our laws when I met her and lacked that innate fear of magic shared by so many of the women of Moisehén. I wished to test how far she might journey into darkness. But her magic has never been employed outside the Circle or in public until today. It will not happen again. You have my word.”

“Mage Corey, you have heard my command. You will wait in the antechamber until I have finished with this witch.”

Eolyn felt Mage Corey’s spirit hit the floor.

He placed his hand on her shoulder once more, transferring what he could of his strength and magic before departing. She understood the flavor of his resignation.
Corey believes he is saying farewell.

“Master Tzeremond, you too are dismissed,” the King said.

“My Lord King, I thought I could be of some service in questioning this woman.”

“I will call upon your services soon enough. You will wait with the others until summoned.”

With a clipped bow, Tzeremond departed. He swept past Eolyn, searing her senses with the acrid sting of his aura. The doors shut behind him.

An unnatural silence followed, the deep quiet of a mountain fortress; a terrible emptiness uninterrupted by the song of warblers or the chirp of crickets. A cold stillness never penetrated by the rush of a spring river or the soft wind through high firs.

The King drew himself to his feet. “How long have you been with Mage Corey?”

“Just over a year.”

“A year?” He descended from the throne and approached her in measured steps. “That is not much time to learn a trick like the one you did today.”

Eolyn considered her response with care. The blue flame she crafted represented very advanced magic. The King had every reason to question whether Corey could teach an uninitiated woman how to invoke it so quickly. If she answered honestly, she would expose Corey as a liar. Yet out of respect for Ghemena, she could not play accomplice to his story.

“Corey is a gifted mage,” she said.

The King nodded. An amused smile touched his lips. “That he is, but he did not train you.”

He stood a couple paces in front of her now. Eolyn’s instinct registered a disturbing familiarity in his stance. He reminded her of Lynx in the moment just before she pounced. But the appetite was different. Darker, deeper.

Still, Eolyn did not fear. She had shape shifted into both sides of the predator-prey game often enough to know the prey almost always won. She sent the roots of her spirit deep into the earth and kept her gaze steady on his.

“There was another act of magic today,” he continued, “a subtle but powerful spell invoked during the Fire Ceremony. Did you do that as well?”

The question caught Eolyn by surprise. She drew an uncertain breath, fighting back the slight tremor that invaded her hands. The decision to save a mage’s life was defensible, worthy of the King’s mercy, but the vision she had invoked during the Fire Ceremony was treason.

“I did not induce our people to sing,” she said. “That impulse arose of its own accord.”

“I do not refer to the song, but to the image our people were given during the rite. A vision of the Magas of Old. It was very well done. Exquisite. Almost imperceptible.”

Eolyn’s blood ran cold. His words were snaking around her like a tether, cutting off escape routes, pulling her toward condemnation. The pleasure he drew from seeing her cornered was palpable.

“It is said there are many ways to subdue a witch.” The King paced a slow circle around her. Eolyn forced her heart to steady as he approached from behind. “How would you have me tame you?”

“I would not be tamed, sir.”

“Indeed.” He removed her hood and began to undo the lacings of her mask.

The touch paralyzed Eolyn. She wanted to run, to take the form of Night Hawk and escape through the high windows. But her feet clung stubbornly to the ground. The power of shape shifting eluded her.

He lifted the mask away, exposing her face to the stone-chilled air.

Then he stepped very close, so near she could feel his heat reverberate against her back. His powerful hands found the base of her throat. Her nose tingled with the pricks of tiny needles. A bitter metallic taste filled her mouth.

Eolyn recognized the signs of
Ahmad-melan
, the curse mages used to induce frightening hallucinations in their victims. She carried none of the known remedies with her, except the ability to control her fear, and an invocation in the tongue of Dragon.

The King’s hands closed around her neck.

Ehekaht, faeom,
Eolyn prayed.
Ehekaht naemu.

His grip became unbearably painful, as if he were trapping a rock inside her throat. Eolyn’s lungs, instantly aware of the crisis, convulsed.

Veham-mehta. Ehekaht.

She closed her eyes, bade her lungs to be still, her heart to remain calm. Her body could not panic. She could not let it panic.

Ehekaht, faeom. Ehekaht naemu. Veham-mehta. Ehekaht.

The vision faded. The bruising pressure disappeared. Eolyn gasped as air rushed fresh and cold back into her lungs.

“Well done,” he said. “Very well done, indeed.”

The admiration in his voice sparked her anger, but she subdued the impulse to strike back. She understood this game. Losing control of her emotions would only make her more vulnerable.

Pulling the folds of Eolyn’s cloak off her shoulders, the King traced the line of her arm until he found the place where Achim’s armband rested beneath her sleeve. At his touch, the metal recoiled and hissed.

Startled, Eolyn jumped, but the King trapped the bracelet against her skin, his grip sending a sharp shaft of pain through her arm. Eolyn went still as a rabbit in the jaws of a wolf.

He knew the bracelet would be there.

The Mage King caressed her ear with his breath. “What you did today was reckless,
Eolyn
.”

The invocation of her true name hit hard. Eolyn’s eyes stung with the impact. A mist of fear rose about her feet.

He knows my name. He knows of Achim’s gift to me.

What then did he not know?

And what had they done to Achim?

“I do not recognize that name, my Lord.” But Eolyn’s voice shook and her throat had gone dry.

The King inhaled the scent of her hair and withdrew.

“Then perhaps you will recognize me.” He completed his circle to face her and allowed his mask to dissolve.

Eolyn did not at first recognize him. Not because his countenance had changed, but because nothing had prepared her to connect the boy she befriended in the South Woods with the feared and hated King of Vortingen.

“It’s not possible,” she whispered.

She stepped forward and lifted her hand to his face, searching for some hint of an illusion, some spell invoked to trick her, though she knew of no magic that would allow one mage to shape shift into another. He responded to her touch, but the press of his lips against her palm felt perverse, and she withdrew her hand as if it had been seared.

“Where is Achim?” Her question was directed not so much to the King as to the extraordinary powers that had brought the boy into her life, only to let him become lost inside this stranger.

Eolyn stepped backwards, her dreams of the past crumbling into the void of her future. The boy she had trusted, the name upon which she built her hopes, was nothing but a cruel illusion crafted by the man who stood at the very center of the system that would see her destroyed.

“To what twisted end did you cultivate my affection?” she said, bewildered.

An intense pain ignited inside her head. The walls spun, the very foundations of the castle seemed to shift. A tremor shook the hall, sending the King stumbling away.

Eolyn sank to the floor. Spreading her hands upon its polished surface, she drew deep and ragged breaths. At last the world became still again, but her head still ached and her spirit had been drained away. She felt like a cup emptied of the wine that had once given it meaning. When she spoke, her voice was broken and subdued.

“Have mercy, my Lord King. I have tried to respect the laws of this land. I departed the forest a year ago because my guardian passed into the Afterlife. I returned to Moisehèn to find…” Her heart stalled.
To find you.
“Mage Corey took me in. He gave me haven, an income, a new family. But he knew nothing of my ability, for I did not practice any magic at all. When I saw the fire go out of control and the red flame bearing down upon him, I had to intervene. I could not let him perish, knowing it was in my power to save him. It will not happen again.”