Lost (20 page)

T
he stairway was completely dark. With the door closed, the sounds of fighting were muffled.

I had to hurry. Rowan and the rest were outnumbered, and if Jaggus brought the dread magic to bear on them, they wouldn’t last long.

My bare feet silent on
the stone steps, I raced upward. The stairs twisted ’round and ’round, higher and higher. My legs grew tired and my breath tore at my lungs. Blood from the gash dripped down my arm.

As I climbed, the dread magic grew thicker in the air, pressing down on me. Arhionvar knew I was coming. I took deep breaths and made myself go faster,
step, step, step
through the darkness.

The door at the top of the staircase was open; white-bright light blazed from the doorway. I slowed down, catching my breath, waiting for my eyes to adjust. The air was thick with the dread magic; it made every breath heavy; it made my bones shaky. I’d gotten this far, and now I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Still, I climbed up the last two steps and stood in the doorway.

The room was at the very top of the tower; it was clean and full of sharp-edged shadows, and set in each of the four walls was a tall, wide-silled, open window looking out at darkness. White-bright flames flickered along the edges of the
ceiling and floor, and light blazed from Jaggus’s locus magicalicus, which rested in a dish full of sparking darksilver in the middle of a high table. Three white cats lay on the table around the dish. Jaggus himself sat on a stool, staring into the locus stone, carrying another cat on his shoulders. I wondered what he was looking for.

“Ah, Connwaer,” Jaggus said. “We knew you would come back to us.” He turned slowly to face me. The pupils of his eyes were huge and blank-dark, like the windows.

The dread magic was in his head, clear as clear. Was it looking out at me through his eyes? Did it make his thoughts heavy and numb?

“Are you going to attack us?” Jaggus asked.

I’d forgotten I was holding the sword. Slowly I bent and put it on the floor. As I straightened, drops of blood from the gash in my arm spattered onto the white stone; the blood looked black in the bright light. “I don’t want to fight you, Jaggus,” I said.

And I didn’t. He was right. He and I
were
just alike. We’d both been alone. I wasn’t alone anymore, not with Nevery and Benet and Rowan for friends. But Jaggus was alone except for Arhionvar in his head all the time,
using
him, and his loneliness. Now I understood his true name. No wonder he was broken.

“You did not come to attack us?” Jaggus said.

“No,” I said. “I’m not a guardsman, I’m a thief. I came to steal your locus magicalicus.” On the table, the stone rested in the sparking dish of darksilver. It was darker than before; the poisoned part in its center had grown. It was nothing but rot.

“To steal it?” Jaggus pushed away the cats and picked up the dish, holding it with the tips of his fingers, as if it burned. Darksilver smoked and sizzled all around the locus stone. Even from where I stood, I could see how deeply rotted it was. “You cannot steal my locus magicalicus. If you hold it in your hand, Arhionvar will take you, and you will be ours. Here it is.” He held out the dish.

I took a deep breath and stepped forward.

Slowly I raised my hand and reached into the dish and picked up the sorcerer-king’s locus magicalicus.

Like a thick, black wave, Arhionvar surged through the stone and into me. I gasped for breath as it wrapped around me, prying with fingers like knives into the darkest corners of my head. It was far stronger coming through the stone than it had been when I was alone in my cell.

“You will belong to it, just as I do,” Jaggus whispered. His eyes were wide and dark.

The dread magic howled around me. I struggled, and it squeezed tighter. Pain slashed into me, blazing into my bones. Darkness came with the pain, pressing down on me heavier and heavier with dark dread. Arhionvar had attacked Jaggus the same way once, and Jaggus had let it take him.

With every scrap of strength that I had, I pushed the magic away. “
No!
” I cried out loud.

As I pushed, the darkness all around me became the fluttering of black-feathered wings. It became the black yarn of the sweater Benet had knitted me, and the black silk dress Rowan had been wearing the first time I’d met her. It was Nevery’s black eyes, glaring sternly at me.
Get on with it, boy
, he said.

Right.

I opened my eyes.

Jaggus stood staring at me. “We knew you could not resist. Now you will join us.”

“No,” I said sadly. “You are going to join
me
.”

I was a wizard with no locus magicalicus. And Jaggus would be, too. I held up the red jewel stone. I could see the soft, slimy rot at its center. I didn’t need to be a wizard to do this. I closed my hand and squeezed as hard as I could. With a muffled
pop
, the locus stone burst apart like an overripe plum, then turned to dust in my hand.

Jaggus stared at me, his mouth wide, then stared at the dust falling to the white floor. The
black windows in his eyes snapped shut, he blinked, and his eyes turned blue. The cat leaped from his shoulder and dropped to the floor. “No,” he whispered.

He fell onto his knees and, using his hands, started sweeping up the dust that had been his locus stone. “
No, no, no, no,
” he said. He scrabbled up two hands full of dust. It leaked out between his fingers.

He looked up at me. His braids had loosened and hung in his face like white cat tails; his blue eyes were wide and streaked with blood. “Arhionvar!” he screamed.

The words echoed against the white walls. The magic couldn’t hear him, not without a locus stone. I knew how he felt; I’d lost a locus stone once, too.

“Don’t leave me,” Jaggus moaned. He climbed to his feet.

Then he whirled and staggered across the room to one of the tall windows and stepped
up onto its wide sill.

I knew what he was going to do, to prove his tie to the magic. But Jaggus was nothing to Arhionvar now.

“No!” I shouted, starting after him.

“Arhionvar!” Jaggus shouted, and he stepped out of the window.

I flung myself after him, flat down on the sill, reaching down with my hand.

I caught him. His hand was like a claw. “Hold on!” I gasped.

He stared up at me, his eyes wide. Blood from my arm dripped down onto his face.

“Don’t let go,” I said.

“Let me go,” he whispered. “Arhionvar will not let me fall.” He jerked himself upward and dragged his fingernails along the gash in my arm. His hand slipped out of mine.

Jaggus hung in the air for a moment; he stared up at me, and his laugh was a high, scared sound. Arhionvar held him, and then it
let him go. Jaggus’s laugh turned into a scream. Down he fell, turning over and over like a leaf in the wind, until the blackness swallowed him up. He was gone.

Rowan Forestal

Argent and I fought the remaining fortress guards and the Shadows to a standstill, and then we raced up the winding stairs of the tower to the room at the top. We found Conn there, hanging half out of one of the room’s windows.

I feared that he was dead, he was so still and pale.

We wrapped him in a blanket, and Argent carried him out of the fortress. We found Nimble, Kerrn brought up the rest of the guards, and we fled across the desert.

I looked back at the fortress. The desert sand blew around it, and I saw Jaggus’s guards fleeing it, on horseback and on foot. The wind whirled, sucking up sand until the fortress was hidden by a huge, swirling vortex of sand and wind and black clouds.

We didn’t stay to watch any further.

When we arrived at the crossroads, I had Nimble take a look at Conn, who was still unconscious.
Soon after, Conn woke up long enough to drink a little water and mutter something about
Arhionvar
, and then he fell asleep.

He slept in the wagon until we reached the posting inn. When he awoke, I asked him how he had defeated the sorcerer-king. He looked unhappy and said,
I didn’t. He defeated himself
. He refused to say any more about it. Then he asked for something to eat. I assume this means he will be all right.

A
t the posting inn, I woke up long enough to eat and to write a long letter, which I sent off with a connwaer.

Dear Nevery,

We’re all well
.
I’ve figured out what’s going on
.

Our magic knew all along that the trouble came from Desh
.
Nevery, I really didn’t use that much explosive material when I blew up Heartsease
.
The magic was trying to tell me, and I didn’t listen
.

Our Wellmet magic is afraid, and it can’t do anything but wait
.
It trusts us to help it
.
Our magic knows about the dread magic because the dread magic helped Pettivox and Crowe with the prisoning device, and it sent the Shadows as spies to see if our magic had gotten weaker and as attackers to make the Wellmet people weaker, and more afraid
.
I don’t know what it wants to do
.
Maybe kill our magic, but I don’t know why
.

The dread magic is terrible, Nevery. Its name is Arhionvar
.
We have to stop it
.

I am coming home soon
.
Please tell Benet that if he makes biscuits, I will eat every last one
.

—Conn