Shadowborn (48 page)

Neill closed Emeya’s staring eyes and smoothed her dress down over her thin, childish knees. Her circlet of flowers had tumbled from her head and made a pale smudge in the shadows. Neill scooped it up, hesitated, and then bent his head to kiss it. He glanced toward Sebastien, who lay on his side, head propped on outstretched arm, eyes half closed, tears seeping from them, lips trembling. Neill’s face was almost devoid of expression, his eyes dark. He sighed, spilled his handful of wilting flowers onto Emeya’s chest, stood, and came back to Tam, who sat in the entrance, clinging to the sunlight.

“I’ll be going now, I think,” Neill said, conversationally. “I’d rather not wait for that”—he gestured south with a thumb—“to get organized and come looking for me.” A wry, humorless smile. “Emeya wanted him dead from the start, but I could never see bothering about a first-rank mage, even one so adept at killing my creatures. We had bigger threats to worry about.” He glanced over his shoulder at the dead, eight-hundred-year-old child. “She couldn’t have known, any more than I. It was just that she liked my beasts.”

Tam said nothing. He felt hollowed out, too numbed by horrors to feel glad or grateful for his life. He didn’t have the strength to hold Neill, even if he could have found the resolution.

“I won’t take the boy,” Neill said. “If either of his parents survived this, they’ll be looking for him. And if they didn’t, there’s still the uncle. I’d rather not give anyone more reason to come after me. Try to see he’s treated decently, would you?”

“Where will you go?” Tam said. “The Temple—”

“Will . . . ?” prompted Neill, with a lift of an eyebrow, as Tam paused to muster his weary thoughts.

“There are provisions in our laws—”

“The ones that dealt so fairly with you?” said Neill, ironically. “Thank you, but no. I cannot claim to be only a boy. I’ll just be going—my creatures here will follow me. I’ll make no trouble if I’m left alone. I’m no Emeya. Maybe I’ll drop by for a beer, in a century or two.”

“Traitor,”
whispered Sebastien.

Both men looked at him. He levered himself up on his elbow and spat in Neill’s direction. “Traitor,” he said, louder.

“Yes, I am,” Neill said. “And because of that, we’re all still alive. Do you want to come with me?”

The boy did not answer. He was staring at Emeya’s body, his thin chest rising and falling erratically. Neill said, “They’ll be looking for you soon, Ariadne and Lysander. Or you could go to them. I’d suggest, though—”

Sebastien’s head swung like a lodestone findings its pole. His face twisted with hatred.

Neill’s “
Sebastien
, don’t!” was late—how late, Tammorn would never know. The boy’s magic blazed out. Tam recognized in it the annulment of life that he had almost lost Fejelis to, and that his master Lukfer had died while undoing in the ruined tower, driven not at Neill, but into the vortex of unstable strength far removed from them. Tam had known magic that unstable. He had loved the man who possessed it, but he had always known that, were he not himself a mage of considerable potential, he could not have been Lukfer’s friend. Had he ever achieved control, Lukfer would have been eighth rank. Tam had no idea how the tower might rank Ishmael di Studier.

He had time to recognize disaster, time to extend a hand toward Neill, time to draw breath to speak a useless warning, before Ishmael di Studier’s unwilled retribution reached them, his inchoate power finding shape in the form that Sebastien had thrown at him. Neill threw his own strength between it and Sebastien. Tam felt him reaping vitality from the creatures around him. Mayfly lunged past Tam, snarling at a threat he could not see. Neill caught the brindled pelt as he slid to his knees. “Get out,” he gasped to Tam.

It was already too late. Di Studier’s raging magic engulfed him, too.

“It’s over,” Perrin breathed.

Balthasar, leaning against Floria, turned his head to sonn in the direction of the voice. He was still off balance from the flux of magic around him. Perrin was speaking to her brother; the young Lightborn prince was crouched on the platform at Jovance’s side, one hand spread on the floor to steady himself, the other gripping his knee in painful self-containment. Jovance sat cross-legged and unresponsive, her expression one of intense, pained concentration. Despite his obvious concern for her, Fejelis’s face was turned toward the circle of high-ranked mages in the middle of the room. Like Jovance, they were sitting on the floor. Unlike Jovance, they were ringed by a guarding circle of mid-ranked mages and vigilants contracted to the Temple, and who held back any threat from the earthborn around them.