Fire of the Soul (34 page)

Mallory didn’t wait for a reply, but pounded
on the door. A serving maid promptly opened it. She looked so
startled at seeing Mallory that he stepped inside before she could
slam the door against his entrance. Dyfrig looked as if he wanted
to protest Mallory’s rude intrusion, but after a moment he meekly
followed.

“King Dyfrig demands to see Queen Laisren,”
Mallory announced to the maid.

“Here I am, my lord king.” Ignoring Mallory
as if he were the lowest servant in the palace, Laisren entered the
room through an inner doorway. “What do you want of me?”

Her curtsy to Dyfrig was deep and respectful.
Even Mallory, who loathed the woman, could find nothing to object
to in her manner.

“My dear friend Mallory tells me that the
Great Emerald of the East has come into your possession,” Dyfrig
said in his fretful way. “You have neglected to inform me of this
recent, momentous event.”

“My lord, I do not have the Emerald,” Laisren
responded with a sweet smile.

“You are lying,” Mallory stated boldly. With
his fists planted on his hips, he glared at her. If he’d looked at
Fenella in the same way, his wife would have begun quivering and
shaking where she stood. Laisren merely gazed back at him, a
thoughtful expression replacing her smile.

“My lord king,” Laisren said, “will you allow
this person to insult me in your presence?”

“Really, Mallory, you ought to speak to your
queen with more respect,” Dyfrig gently admonished his friend. “If
Laisren has the Emerald, I feel quite certain we can persuade her
to confess it, and to tell us where it is.”

“I have already said that I do not have it.”
Laisren’s voice took on a challenging edge that Mallory did not
like at all. His annoyance with her rose.

“And I have already said that you are lying.”
Mallory looked around. “Where is it?”

“The Emerald is not here.” Laisren spoke with
cutting crispness.

“I haven’t seen this piece before today.”
Mallory moved to a table where a box carved from pale stone rested.
“Is it new?”

“Don’t touch that!” Laisren cried. “It was a
gift from my father. I treasure it.”

“You mean, you treasure what’s inside it.”
Mallory picked up the box and began to shake it.

“The box is empty,” Laisren told him. Turning
to the king, she asked, “Dyfrig, what is the meaning of this
treatment? I am your wife, yet you allow this rude person to barge
into my private chambers and speak to me as if I were a thief.”

“Well, Laisren, he says you have the
Emerald.” Dyfrig’s voice faltered a bit and he looked to Mallory as
if for direction..

“And I say I do not have it.” Laisren’s blue
gaze glittered with outrage. Her lustrous hair shone with angry
color, the tip of each strand changing from its natural shade of
brown to gold, to orange, and then to a brilliant, glowing red. “Do
you believe your wife, or this upstart creature who presumes to
order you about as if you were his servant, instead of his
king?”

“This box won’t open,” Mallory said to
Dyfrig. “When I first touched it, the stone was cool. Now it is
warming. Laisren is using her Power to hide what’s inside the box
from me. And from you,” he added hastily, seeing a gleam of
irritation in Dyfrig’s pale eyes.

“Nothing is inside it,” Laisren cried. “Put
it down at once.”

By now the box was beginning to burn
Mallory’s fingers. Unfortunately, he was still depleted of his
Power after destroying Hulme and he did not want to squander what
little Power remained to him. So he chose a simpler, more direct
method of learning what he wanted to know. He smashed the box to
the marble floor. The stone shattered with a loud, explosive sound
that hurt his ears and convinced him that whatever was inside was
magical. Or the box was. It had come from Ultan, after all.

“I told you it was empty,” Laisren said, her
mouth drawn tight with displeasure.

“Liar!” Mallory grabbed her upper arms and
began to shake her. “Where is the Emerald? What have you done with
it?”

Laisren’s eyes widened. Mallory was certain
that no one had ever dared to touch her so roughly, and he took
pleasure in seeing what he took to be fear in the usually
self-possessed woman. He saw the evidence of her new emotion in the
way the formerly vibrant colors of her hair faded to a drab shade
of brown.

“Mallory, please don’t hurt her,” Dyfrig
cried.

“Hurt her? I’ll kill her if she doesn’t
confess.” Beside himself with frustration and with a seething,
nearly ungovernable rage, Mallory shook Laisren again, harder this
time.

“She doesn’t have the Emerald.” Dyfrig
sounded desperate. “She told us several times that she doesn’t have
it. I believe her. Please, Mallory, let her go.”

“Never believe a woman!” The king’s plea had
added the final spark to Mallory’s fury until he could barely
control himself. All of his impatience with the weak man who
hesitated to use his kingly influence to rule with stern vigor, all
of his indignation over the lands and titles he had been denied by
Dyfrig overflowed at last. The words he had repressed for so long
tumbled from his lips. “Your wife has made a fool of you. You don’t
even know what’s happening in your own kingdom. You don’t deserve
to rule.”

Mallory released Laisren so unexpectedly that
she staggered backward. Then he fisted one hand and landed a hard
punch on Dyfrig’s chin. The king was flattened to the floor by the
unexpected blow, his head striking the polished marble with a
sickening thud that delighted Mallory’s corrupt soul.

In the next instant Mallory felt himself
captured by a Power so immense and so potent that he had no
recourse against it. Even if his own Power had been at its full
strength he knew he’d have been helpless in the fierce grip that
Laisren was exerting upon him. Only now did he comprehend that she
hadn’t been afraid of him at all. The alteration in her hair color
meant she had been drawing in upon herself in preparation for the
full employment of her Power.

“Until this moment, out of respect for
Dyfrig,” Laisren said, “I have restrained myself in regard to you.
But you have no right to raise your hand against your king. You
swore fealty to Dyfrig, yet you have just committed treason against
him. I am thus free to use my Power to protect him. I tell you
again for the last time, the Great Emerald is not here.”

“But it was here.” Mallory bared his teeth,
which was all the defiance he was capable of exhibiting against the
woman who continued to hold his body immobilized while she allowed
his mind to remain active. That was one of the great joys that
Mallory always found in using his own, corrupt Power. His victims
knew what was happening to them and could not fight back. He
couldn’t be sure what Laisren intended for him; he caught only a
faint hint of her plans before she blocked her mind against him.
That hint was enough.

“Now, I understand,” he told the queen. “I
should have guessed before this. If I am a traitor to Dyfrig, so
are you. You think to send the Emerald to your father, and you plan
to use Calia to transport it. Calia will not succeed. She possesses
no Power at all.”

“Perhaps that is why I chose her,” Laisren
said with surprising mildness. “Now, go away.”

Though he did not will himself to do so,
Mallory suddenly discovered that his legs were moving. In a moment
he was standing outside the main door of the queen’s apartment, in
an empty corridor.

“Leave the palace and do not return,” Laisren
commanded.

“I will return when I am ready,” Mallory
said, and added a vile slur upon Laisren’s virtue. The words were
scarcely uttered before his mind went blank. When he awakened the
sun was near to setting and he lay sprawled upon a heap of garbage
in a narrow street in the worst part of Kerun City.

“Dyfrig, speak to me,” Laisren begged,
kneeling beside him.

The only answer she received was a moan, but
it was enough to reassure her that the king still lived. That was
comforting knowledge, since she wasn’t accustomed to dealing with
the aftereffects of physical force.

“My lord Dyfrig? My dear lady?”

Laisren looked up at the sound of that
familiar voice. Relief left her weak as she glimpsed Euric in the
king’s chamber. He looked through the open doorway, then rushed
into the queen’s room to kneel next to her.

“What’s wrong with Dyfrig?”

“Mallory attacked him,” Laisren said. “And
me. Where are Calia and the others?”

“They should be at the docks by now,” Euric
answered, bending to raise the king in his arms. “Calia insisted on
seeing Lady Elgida safely aboard ship before she would leave the
city. She is remarkably loyal. You have chosen your messenger well,
my lady.”

“I must go to the docks. I will be needed
there.” Laisren didn’t move at once. Instead, for a long moment she
looked at Dyfrig’s pale face. “Care for him, Euric.”

“I will, my lady. You may depend on me.”

“Yes, I know.” With her gaze still on Dyfrig,
Laisren stood, balancing herself with one hand on Euric’s stout
arm. “Mallory may have harmed him permanently, though I prevented
him from employing his full Power on Dyfrig. Our king may not
recover from the blow of Mallory’s fist.”

“Never say so, my lady. Dyfrig must recover.
I am sworn to protect and serve him and I will do so unto death, if
need be. I do not covet the position that will fall to me if Dyfrig
can no longer rule.”

“I know you do not. That is why I trust you.”
Laisren hurried toward the door.

“Aye, I got yer message. Leavin’ port in
haste is fast becomin’ a habit with ye, Garit, me lad.” From the
deck of
The Kantian Queen,
Captain Pyrsig surveyed the group
assembled at the foot of the gangplank. “Children? And more women?
There’s not enough room on me ship.”

“Yes, there is,” Calia told him. “Garit,
Durand, Anders, and I will not be sailing with you. Lady Sundaria
may use the berth that was previously mine, and the men’s former
cabin will be free for Lady Fenella and her children. You have only
to load the horses and the baggage before you cast off the
lines.”

“Here is the queen’s order,” Garit said,
handing over a document that was embellished with a blue wax seal
and a dangling green ribbon. He added a purse that clinked
enticingly. “You know that in addition to this purse, you will be
paid well when you deliver your passengers to Port Moren.”

“Aye, but in the meantime,” the captain
objected, “me and me crew will have to deal with brats climbin’
into the rigging and females bein’ seasick.”

“Please, captain.” Fenella held out her hands
in supplication. Displaying no sign of fear that she might fall
into the water she stepped onto the narrow, rickety gangplank. “I
must escape from a man who means me harm. You can see what he has
already done to my face. I am helpless against him and only you can
save me, dear captain.”

As Fenella drew nearer, Captain Pyrsig looked
more closely at her and frowned. “‘Tis a pity that any man would so
hurt a beautiful woman.”

“Do you think I am beautiful?” Fenella asked
in a soft, trembling voice.

“Aye, and twinin’ yerself about me heart even
now,” the captain said. “Yer a dangerous woman, that’s what ye are.
Did someone tell ye that I never ignore a lady who’s in a desperate
situation?”

“Oh, Captain Pyrsig,” Fenella whispered,
“please, help me, for I dare not remain in Kantia even another day
longer. I fear for my very life.”

“As for me,” Lady Elgida interrupted
Fenella’s pleas in her usual brisk way, “though their mother seems
to have forgotten them,
I
am determined to see my grandsons
removed from Kantia before their stepfather can kill them. I know
you well enough, captain, to be certain that you will not want the
lives of two little boys on your conscience when you could have
saved them.” She waved a hand toward the dock, where Belai and
Kinen stood waiting with Durand guarding them. Somehow, for a few
moments the boys contrived to appear both innocent and
pathetic.

“Ah, well.” Captain Pyrsig heaved a great
sigh. “I never could resist a sharp-witted female, and now I’ve got
two of them workin’ on me heart. Come aboard, then. You,
men-at-arms there on the dock! Get yer horses into the hold as fast
as ye can. If this sailin’ is as urgent as all of ye claim, we
won’t want to miss the ebb tide.”

“Thank you, captain.” Calia sent a bright
smile in his direction, but Pyrsig didn’t see it. He was too busy
helping Fenella off the gangplank and onto the deck to pay
attention to anyone else.

“I cannot imagine why she was worried about
her future,” Sundaria said wryly.

“She was right to be worried,” Calia
responded. “She’d never be able to charm Mallory the way she’s
charming Captain Pyrsig. He has a heart and a conscience; Mallory
has neither.”

“Garit, lend me your arm as far as the deck,”
Lady Elgida directed. “Now, I expect you to keep Calia safe until
you return her to Saumar Manor.”

Calia kissed Lady Elgida on the cheek, gave
Sundaria and Mairne each a hug, and then warned Belai and Kinen to
behave. She didn’t think the boys heard her. They were too excited
about their first sea voyage to pay any attention to her
instructions. She comforted herself with the certain knowledge that
Lady Elgida would be providing a flood of constant instructions and
advice to her grandsons.

“Let us be off,” Garit said to her as he
reached the dock again.

“Not yet.” Calia looked toward the city
streets, searching for a sign of her brother. “First, we have to be
certain that Mallory won’t attack the ship. If he sees us on the
dock while
The Kantian Queen
heads out of the harbor, he
will most likely let the others sail away and concentrate on trying
to stop us.”