Rebel's Cage (Book 4) (65 page)

Would she? Would she betray him again?

And the dream Jenn lifted up her powers and struck him down, splitting the ground, making the air bleed with sorrow.

Robert looked up at the sky, at the clouds and the rain. He knew now what he should have done, what true regret felt like.

It felt just like …

It felt just like anger.

Like the anger he couldn’t afford to feel.

Then he was standing again, facing her, waiting for that moment of betrayal, and then, his breath taken, his fear driving his courage before him, he opened his mouth—

And spoke the Word of Destruction. White-hot light incinerated her right in front of him, turned her to ash in a heartbeat, leaving the ground scorched and smoking, desolate and ruined …

‘NO!’ Robert sat bolt upright in the bed, then scrambled to his feet, heart pounding, blind and deaf, nauseated, doubled over with spasming cramps that ripped through his stomach. No, no, no. Never.

But he had. In his dream. The same dream for eight years now and this was the first time he’d …

Stumbling, he made it to the wash bowl and retched up the remainder of his supper. He grabbed his boots, shoving his feet into them, his hands finding a jacket to wrap around him, shoving the Calyx inside for safety. Action, that was what he needed. Still he couldn’t breathe properly, couldn’t see, or feel, or hear—

A hand on his arm almost made him jump. He turned to find Finnlay beside him, half-asleep, worry filling his eyes, a lit candle in his hand.

‘Robert? Are you all right?’

He couldn’t find words; he could only do what he’d always done.

He ran.

Blood.

Everywhere. Sweet, sweet blood, singing to him. He could smell it in the air, on the walls, on the floor, soaking into the clothing of that bitch and that unholy priest.

‘Get him away from there! Get the mother away from the girl. Take her into the other room and bind her so she can hardly breathe. I’ll deal with her when I’ve finished. Put the orb there. That’s it. Turn the child so the wound can bleed into it. Now, carefully, pull the blade from her heart. Slowly! Damn it, you’ll ruin everything! That’s it. Not too much in one go or the orb won’t be able to take it. You, go and find a bowl, wooden, large. Take what you can of the bedding and try to squeeze as much blood out as you can. Don’t waste a drop!’

He was shaking. Dizzy with the perfume. An elixir, yes. Balm to the aches he could suddenly feel all through him.

She had done this: killed his child so he couldn’t have her blood. DeMassey had hidden them all these years, plotting behind his back to deny him the destiny that was written in his own blood.

Blood, blood. So sweet, still warm, red-black now dripping down, soaking into the porous surface of the orb, glistening, sensuous, seductive and addictive.

‘Get the priest out of here. And get rid of this furniture. I don’t want anything in this room except the bed – and when you’re done bleeding her, get rid of that as well. Burn the corpse. I don’t want anything left of her when you’re done. Heat some water on the stove. I’ll bathe and be ready when you’ve finished.’

So many years. One hundred and thirty-four. This was not the blood that was foretold, but it was blood of his flesh, and it was enough for what he needed. He would regenerate and give himself another century of vivid life. He would have the power
of ten D’Azzir masters. And the energy. Now he could take whatever he wanted.

The Ally would be his – and this time the Enemy would not be able to stop him.

*

Wind pulled at the treetops, tearing the weathered leaves, bending branches towards the ground as though they would weep for the child lost, for the mother in agony, for the priest who had done more than he wanted, and yet still not enough.

Godfrey couldn’t bear to open his eyes. He just let them drag him out of the cottage, let them haul him to a nearby tree and bind him to the trunk, hand and foot, wad of cloth in his mouth. To be attended to later, he knew.

Had Nash realised who he was? Had the man even noticed?

Sick certainty filled him. DeMassey had not lied. But he had died in vain and Godfrey … Godfrey had failed. He should have cut her throat and wrists, or poisoned her. Why hadn’t DeMassey thought of that? He’d been the warrior. But they must have assumed they would have more than a few minutes. And a few minutes more would have been enough. Half an hour would have sealed it.

He had failed by waiting, to question, to be sure, not doubting, in reality, but putting off what had seemed to him so abhorrent. And he could never confess it, never bring to light the depths of his sin, for his was a crime not only of murder, but of wilful prevarication. His first days as Bishop, tainted forever by his failure, both as a man, and as a priest.

So Nash would get the blood he needed. Godfrey would weep for Lusara until this Dark Angel took his life. And then Lusara would weep forever.

With his eyes shut tight against the light he’d once craved, he didn’t see the man move behind him, felt only the sharp blade at his wrists. He relaxed into it, willing the end to come, but the blade moved away and his hands were freed, the cloth plucked from his mouth.

‘Come on, Godfrey, open your eyes! I guess I have less than a minute to get you away before they notice.’

Stunned, Godfrey saw the frowning, gruff face of a man he’d once dared call friend. ‘Osbert? But what …’

‘No time. Answers later. Quickly, I’ve got your horse.’ With that, the ropes around his feet were cut and he was pulled away from the cottage, between thick trees and down a slope until there was nothing left of the house but the smear of smoke torn from the chimney by an angry wind.

He would have stumbled, but Osbert put an arm around him, steadying him, half-carrying him. Godfrey could find no words until they reached the horses, but when Osbert moved to help him mount, Godfrey stopped him.

‘Wait! Lady Valena! I can’t leave without her …’

‘Godfrey, if you go back in there, they’ll kill you without blinking! They’re sorcerers, damn it! Nash’s men. We
must
go now, while they’re still busy. If we can get back to court, find a way to cover your absence, Nash might just forget it was you, or perhaps he didn’t notice your face or …’

Godfrey put a hand on Osbert’s chest, feeling the pounding beat beneath it, the terror that was filling his friend. From nowhere, a smile emerged on his face and new tears appeared in his eyes – but not of grief this time.

‘You came out here … for me?’

Osbert swallowed, lifted his chin and nodded. Just once. ‘But if he catches both of us, my brave gesture will have been for nothing, so please, Godfrey can we go now?’

Swinging up into the saddle, Godfrey looked up the hill, but he could see nothing of the house now. Then all he could do was turn and follow his friend, through the trees, deeper into the forest, taking a route around and around, keeping them clear and safe.

*

The first wave hit him hard, harder than ever before. He thought he groaned, but he couldn’t tell. It was too dark, too quiet in the room. Just him, the orb and the bare floor beneath him. Naked, he lay curled on his side, hugging the orb to him, panting a little, not wanting to feel it too much just yet.

Then the second wave hit him and he did cry out. The agony was sharp, like the knife wound that had captured him so
much blood. Good blood, this. His own. Valena’s. The child conceived while he was still enormously strong – and Valena too had power, unpredictable, yet potent. That’s why he’d chosen her in the first place, not just because of her beauty.

And she had been beautiful, still was: the kind of beauty that stayed with a man, long after he’d killed her.

He’d always known she would end up betraying him, but for the last eight years, he’d barely thought about her, believing her to have returned to Karakham to be with DeMassey.

Only DeMassey spent just as much time in Lusara.

It would have been easy for them to keep the child from him, with him so handicapped by his injuries. And although he’d chosen Valena in case he failed to capture and subdue the Ally, he’d not really counted Valena as too great a contribution – but already he could feel how wrong he’d been. A child born of Ally and Angel would have guaranteed him immortality, but this blood was—

He gasped as another wave slammed into him, turning his muscles to jelly, leaving him deaf and blind.

Three days it would take to absorb this.

Three more days, then, and he would be virtually invincible. Such pain was a small price to pay.

*

He breathed in time to the pulse that shuddered through him from the burning thing held in his arms against his chest. One pulse, drumming in his ears. Then another. And another. Buzzing, vibrating inside his bones.

Tiny, invisible strings stretched out from his body, beyond the places where the walls had been, for they were no longer there, and further, into the night, into the forest where trees stood watch over him, anchored in the moist earth.

He was tied to them, to the trees, the earth, to water and fire. Each pulse, each shuddering, buzzing peal of this empty bell sent vibrations along the strings, into the trees and the earth and the water and fire.

Connected to all things.

Dizzy. Drunk. Heady. He rolled about on the floor, on wooden boards supporting his weight, dreaming of nothing,
feeling so much, letting the fire spread through his body, a fever of power and lust and ambition and success.

He glowed with it, in a night that didn’t exist. He couldn’t control it, couldn’t feed it, couldn’t deny it. It went on and on and on.

*

The heavens burned, flames climbing high, streaking across his vision, pouring down the walls of his face and soaking into his flesh with inch-long talons. He was burning now, burning alive. His skin was bubbling, blackening, crisping, drying, flaking away, flames licking into his mouth, tasting him, suffocating him, making him swallow, choking him, flooding up to his eyeballs, bursting them, tearing his ears from his head, incinerating his bones, leaving them white dust to be blown away by the conflagration.

A convulsion hit him. And another. Hands grasped around his throat, cutting off the air. Another convulsion twisted him off the floor, until, with a crack, he fell down again, to gasp, live, survive until the next.

Each step, each moment taking him closer and closer.

Stronger.

*

Structure formed itself, building walls around him, a roof over him, fending off elements that had no influence over him.

The orb stung his skin, prickled, scratched, bit into him, like the fangs of an adder, filled with poison, leaching the strength from his bones.

She’d done this to him: she’d poisoned her own child so he couldn’t use her blood. Yes, just as DeMassey had done so his blood wouldn’t be used against …

His body melted, the fire leaking into his marrow, easing him out on the floor, filling him with contentment.

So beautiful, this.

*

He’d seen the look on his father’s face, seen the features, familiar and hated, the scars that had never quite vanished because his father had balked at using Malachi to regenerate. Year after year, he’d watched that man, helping, learning,
sucking the information out of him. Flattered, amused, entertained, his father never once imagined that the boy he had gone such lengths to sire would, in the end, be the one to cut his throat and take away the blood he had spent so many years enhancing.

Surprise had never looked so pathetic.

Nor had failure. His father had harboured ambition, as had his father before him, and his father – and so too had his great-great-grandfather, Bayazit of Yedicale, the man who had created the Word of Destruction, whose son had helped form the Key and who was then killed by that son.

An honoured tradition, passed from one generation to another, parent murdered by child – until parent murders child first.

A line of men, passing ambition on, one to the other, though so few of them possessed the skills required to achieve that goal. Bayazit had the ideas, but it had come to his great-great-grandson Carlan to fulfil a destiny his line had been born to.

Prophecy had a purpose. It had taught him many things: that fear factored in nothing but the actions of his enemies, that his ability could only ever be matched by his imagination, that history was nothing more than the path already travelled.

Above all, it had taught him to be ruthless.

*

He twitched, one bit of him after another, flinching against the next. And his skin itched, but his hands were useless for scratching. He had no fingers. The fire had burned them all away. He pulled his arms tight and felt the orb against him, itching and scratching the scorched skin on his chest, crushing him.

And then it stopped.

His feet went numb. His legs, knees, fingers, arms, shoulders, all going numb, dying before him, until the only part of him that could feel anything at all was the place on his chest where the orb still lay, destroying him, remaking him and destroying him again.

And then he could feel. Slowly, all over, then more and more; he soared with it, flying higher than ever before, stretching
his muscles, popping joints, springing sinews ready to move, to begin, to succeed.

Nothing could stop him now. Not the Enemy, not the Ally, not even the child they might have conceived between them if they had Bonded. The Prophecy had been wrong. He could take all he wanted.

He lay still and listened to the orb. Lying beneath it, looking up into the faces of his father and grandfather and all those beyond, history was simply the path already travelled; none of them had ever got this far.

And now here he was, whole, renewed. Alive.

Full of power.

Nash opened his eyes.

He ran, just like in his nightmare. He ran through the winding, tortured passages of the Enclave, where everyone was asleep but him. The shadow of Nash chased him, no, it wasn’t Nash, it was, it was the demon, yes, the demon, but the demon was leaking out of his eyes now, his fingertips, his breath coming out in flames, scorching the air, sucking the life from him and there was nowhere safe from this evil because he’d brought it with him. It had been born here, yes, the Key had done this to him, created the demon, that’s what she’d said, he’d created the demon when the Key had given him the Prophecy and he couldn’t hold it in any more, couldn’t be what it wanted and what he wanted at the same time, it was never going to happen, should never have tried in the first place because he just kept failing and people kept dying, she’d said it was killing him and he’d believed her and trusted her and by the gods, she was right, it was killing him, it was, it was—