Prelude to Fire: Parts 1 and 2 (14 page)

L
acertin stepped toward the bed
, trying to block Ilianna from view as Theondar surveyed the room. His eyes took in Jayna and then Lacertin before flashing past them both.

“Where is she?”

Lacertin raised his hand. “Listen, Theondar—”

“I know that she’s here, Lacertin. I can sense her. So tell me: Where is she?”

Lacertin readied a shaping, not certain what he would need but not wanting to be caught unprepared. Theondar could be rash and angry at times, but he was a skilled warrior, and one of only a few Lacertin really feared.

He stepped to the side, giving Theondar the chance to see Ilianna lying on his bed. That would hurt him more than he intended, but there was nothing he could do that would change it now.

“Anna?” Theondar said softly as he ran toward her.

His shaping built and swept through her. Theondar used water with more skill than Lacertin, but he still had none of the talent that Jayna managed. When his shaping eased, he looked up to Lacertin. “What happened to her?”

“A shaping.”

“A shaping? You did this to her?”

Lacertin shook his head. “This wasn’t me.”

“Then who? If she was attacked, I would expect you at the least to search for her attacker. I know that you cared about her, Lacertin. And if you no longer care about her, I know that you cared about her father.”

Thankfully, Jayna intervened and took Theondar by the elbow. “Master Theondar,” she said. “The shaping that struck her is nothing like any I’ve ever seen.”

It took Theondar a few moments to register her. He blinked a couple of times and shook his head. “What is this? Who are you?”

To her credit, Jayna straightened her back and met his eyes. “I’m Jayna Elens.”

Elens. That wasn’t a kingdoms’ name.

Theondar glared at Lacertin. “You brought a
student
to help the princess? Do you care so little?”

Lacertin didn’t trust himself to answer.

Theondar took a step toward him. “How many competent water shapers did you pass as you found her, Lacertin? Were you thinking you could feign helping her, claim that you could only find a student, and let her pass?”

“I study under Master Wallyn himself,” Jayna said.

Lacertin waved a hand at her. “Then bring me Wallyn!” he roared.

“Theondar, it’s not as it seems,” Lacertin said.

“It’s
exactly
as it seems.” He turned back to Ilianna and attempted another shaping. This one was a mixture of each of the elements, and stronger than anything that Lacertin had attempted with her. The shaping swept over her and then eased. Theondar staggered back a step.

Jayna was there and caught him. Theondar shook her off and returned to Ilianna. He scooped her off the bed and carried her away from the room, leaving Lacertin staring after her, watching her blond hair trailing over his arm.

“What now?” Jayna asked when he was gone.

“Now you’ll have to go for Wallyn,” Lacertin said.

“Even if—”

Lacertin nodded. There was no choice, not if he wanted to do all that he could to save Ilianna. “I will stay here and see if I can find where Theondar took her.”

“Lacertin… I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve my judgment.”

“I deserved all of it, Jayna, just as you deserve more than this,” he said, sweeping his hand around the room.

She started to say something, but he cut her off with a soft kiss on her forehead.

“Go quickly,” he said.

She squeezed his hand and ran from the room.

Lacertin considered the contents of the room, pausing long enough to smooth the covers on the bed. He needed to help Ilianna, but he couldn’t do that without knowing what she might have done to herself. The shaping she’d used likely had an element of spirit mixed in, and if that was the case, there might not be any way for him to help her. But didn’t he have to try?

How could he do it, though?

Maybe the answer was with the plates. As far as he knew, they were still in her room. He needed to find them, to get whatever help to Theondar that he could, or he risked the kingdoms losing more than the king. They could lose the princess as well.

Lacertin left his room, closing the door with a shaping. He paused near Theondar’s rooms, using a sensing to detect whether Theondar had brought Ilianna there, but didn’t detect anything. Likely he’d brought her to the university for healing, which was what Lacertin probably should have done.

Sensing no one else, he hurried up the stairs. On the first level, he paused for a moment, debating which way to go before bounding up the stairs to Ilianna’s rooms. Thankfully, the hall was empty. When he reached her door, he found it shaped closed. With an effort of shaping, he opened the door and pushed inside.

Lacertin didn’t want to risk waiting too much longer. He made his way through the outer room and pushed open the door to her inner chambers, stopping at the desk. The gold plates had been stacked underneath some papers on the edge of her desk when he’d been here last. Now they were gone.

He ran over to the shelf where she’d kept the books and began pulling them out. Had he bothered to learn
Ishthin,
he might have some way of searching, but he didn’t know the ancient language, not enough to find the answers Ilianna needed. He considered going to Jax. As one of the archivists, he would have learned
Ishthin
, but how long would it take him to search for answers? Longer than Ilianna might have. Longer than he was willing to risk.

That meant he needed to find someone already familiar with these texts and see what he could learn. Who? Althem might know, but that wasn’t guaranteed.

All he could think of was Ilton, but reaching Ilton meant disturbing him again and somehow coming up with a way to wake him. Fire had helped twice before, but how many times would that last? What happened when that failed?

When would Ilton truly be dead?

For Ilianna, Ilton would understand.

Pocketing the books, Lacertin hurried to the section of the wall with the hidden doorway. With a shaping that mixed fire and earth, he pulled the doorway open and stepped into the passageway. Lacertin hurried through the dark, using a shaping of fire to guide his way. At the wall leading into Ilton’s chambers, he paused. If he were caught, most would think that he had violated Ilton’s death chamber. The punishment for that was severe.

To save Ilianna, he had to risk it.

The shaping opened the zigzagging crack for the door. Lacertin pushed through and into Ilton’s room.

The smell struck him immediately, powerful and overwhelming. If Ilton was not already dead, he would be soon. The sheets covering the king were soiled, stained with urine and feces. Had Ilianna really planned for this deception? If any discovered Ilton in this shape, they would know the king hadn’t died when announced. Maybe Ilianna had intended to clean her father once he truly passed, or maybe she really expected him to survive.

Lacertin leaned over his king, ignoring the stench as much as he could. Ilton took slow, shallow breaths. His face had sunken even more than the last time that Lacertin had seen him, and his cheeks looked waxy and drawn. Surprisingly, the poisoning didn’t distort his features.

In the wardrobe across from the bed, he found a stack of clean linens and a fresh robe.

Lacertin stopped by the basin next to the bed and took a sponge and dampened it with water. Taking this, he ran it over Ilton’s forehead, wiping away the sweat and grime of his illness. Lacertin carefully peeled the sheet back and folded it in the corner of the room. Taking a fresh sheet, he rolled the king and placed a new sheet beneath him, placing the soiled sheet atop the other in the corner of the room. Then he slipped the funeral gown off Ilton and replaced it with the fresh robe, covering him once more with a clean sheet.

His king would not die in filth.

Lacertin paused by the pile of linens and used a shaping of controlled fire to burn through them. The shapers on the other side of the wall might notice, but Lacertin made certain to tightly control the shaping, hopefully muting it enough that he wouldn’t be caught. Once done, he turned back to Ilton.

The king looked so small and frail, almost impossibly so considering how hale and vibrant he had been in life. Lacertin never knew him to be a shaper, but now he wondered. With Ilianna demonstrating abilities, had Ilton shared that secret, or had it come from her mother? Lacertin hadn’t known her well, but the queen was said to have been a quiet woman and had traveled often before her death.

Lacertin needed more than Ilton now. He needed the king.

Using water and fire, he sent a shaping through Ilton. The fever burning in his blood raged even hotter than before. Lacertin tried pulling it away, and for a moment, it seemed as if he would be able to do so, but then the shaping failed.

Water sensing told him that the fire burning through him was too potent for even his fire shaping. Were he a stronger shaper… but then, were he a stronger shaper, Ilton might never have been poisoned.

Lacertin tried again. This time, he ignored water, focusing solely on fire. That was the key to defeating the hounds’ poison. If he could only draw it away, he might be able to reach Ilton. Fire had always burned brightest of the elements, and was the one he grasped at first. He was a true child of Nara in that way.

The shaping built and built, drawing on the fire burning through Ilton. Lacertin pulled, dragging away the fire that he sensed within his king. With every ounce of strength he had remaining, he pulled on the shaping, dragging the heat out of Ilton.

As he did, he realized he was drawing the life out of him, too. Fire was life. Without it, one could not survive. He
needed
the water shaping to complement what he did with fire.

If only Jayna were with him.

Lacertin couldn’t think like that. Had he brought her with him, she would be complicit in violating the king’s quarters, regardless of the fact that Ilton had not died.

He needed to shape, but he needed a focus.

His eyes swept around Ilton’s room. If only he still had his sword. A warrior sword, and the runes placed upon it, helped focus a shaper’s energy. He still hadn’t managed to recover his sword after returning to Ethea with Veran. The healers had set his sword aside and he’d been too preoccupied to think of where they’d taken it.

But the king had a sword. It was part of his traditional dress. Would Ilton’s sword remain in his room, or had someone claimed it?

Lacertin went back to the wardrobe and pulled it open, sorting through drawers and finding nothing. Long robes hung from hooks within, and he searched these but again found nothing. He closed the door to the wardrobe and turned back to Ilton.

There, hanging on a hook by the wall, he saw Ilton’s sword.

Where Lacertin’s sword had a broad sweep to the blade, the king’s had only the slightest of curve. The sheath was made of thick leather, and runes were placed along the leather in a series. As Lacertin grabbed the sword, he wondered if the series of runes on the sheath mattered.

Right now, all that mattered was the sword.

He didn’t even unsheathe it as he stepped next to Ilton. Placing a hand on Ilton’s forehead and a hand on the hilt of the sword, he shaped. First fire. Using the runes in the blade to augment his shaping and focus it, he pulled on the fire burning within Ilton. As he did, he added a shaping of water. Lacertin wasn’t skilled enough to do more than use it for stabilization, but with this shaping, he didn’t think that he’d need anything more than that.

A blush of color came to Ilton’s cheeks and he took a quick breath.

Lacertin almost lost control of the shaping as he did.

“Ilton,” he whispered.

The king didn’t answer, so he pulled on the shaping with even more force, drawing on fire with as much strength as he’d ever used. Lacertin stabilized it with water, but he feared losing control. If he did, there was no way that Ilton would survive.

Gritting his teeth, he pulled tightly on the shaping. He would
not
be the reason his king died.

The shaping took hold. Ilton took another breath, gasping softly, and then opened his eyes. To Lacertin, it felt as if he were raising the dead.

Could he hold this? With the sword for focus, could he maintain it long enough to see Ilton fully healed?

For a moment, he thought that he could. Using a warrior sword, focusing a shaping through the runes, he could draw much more strength than he could on his own. The shaping burned within him brightly enough that he wondered if he glowed. In that moment, he thought that he could pull all the fire from the poison from Ilton’s blood, much like he’d pulled the fire from Veran’s blood when he’d healed him.

Then the shaping began to slip. Even this much strength wouldn’t be enough. Maybe there wasn’t a shaping strong enough to save the king.

But he could still save Ilianna.

“Ilton,” he said again, this time more urgently.

The king rolled his head toward him and opened his eyes. His eyes caught on the sword in Lacertin’s hand and he smiled. “Lacertin. Still fighting for me, I see.”

Lacertin nodded. “As I vowed I would do. I’m only sorry I failed you so often near the end.”

“Failed? You have never failed me, my friend.”

He started to cough and Lacertin leaned over him to cover the cough, suddenly realizing that drawing this much power—especially in the king’s quarters—would be detected. How much longer until someone attempted to discover why a such a shaping happened here?

“I couldn’t find all the pieces you asked,” Lacertin said when the coughing eased. “I couldn’t stop the poison that burned through you. I understood it too late.”

“Understand?” he asked.

Lacertin nodded. “It’s hound poison.”

Ilton’s eyes brightened for a moment, even as Lacertin’s control of the shaping slipped even more. “Are you certain?”

“I’ve seen it. Veran was attacked by hounds near the barrier. He nearly died.”

Ilton coughed again. “But you saved him, didn’t you?”

“I saw what happened to him,” Lacertin said. “I was able to pull the fire away.”