The Crown of Stones: Magic-Price (44 page)

“And my mother?”

“Being King’s Healer and mistress to the Prince, V’loria resided at the castle. She tended me those first few weeks off the
Kayn’l
.”

“So you knew them both.”

“Knew them? We were inseparable—and young. So young and full of mischief,” he said, an unexpected wave of nostalgia softening his voice. “The night we went to see the oracle, it was only for fun. We hit every dice game in every respectable tavern. Then we moved on to the not so respectable ones.” He chuckled briefly. “It was the last time we were content together. After that night, it all changed.”

He had me hooked. “What happened?”

“It was just a dirty roadhouse on the edge of the city. But that woman, whoever she was, was one hell of a seer. We were all shaken after. None of us spoke of our visions. I have no idea what they might have witnessed. But, I saw you.”

“How do you mean?”

“It was disorienting. I was new to magic. I had no idea oracles could take you into lives other than your own. I didn’t know I was seeing the future through my son, not at first. I—we—were in the middle of a battle. There was a quake. You fell. The ground opened and there it was.” He smiled, remembering. “It was beautiful.”

“You saw me find the Crown of Stones?”

“I felt the power when you used it. The rage. It was incredible. They were all dying around you and you didn’t see it. You didn’t even care. And I knew. I recognized you as mine. I saw what you would be capable of. That you could wield the magic needed to rebuild our empire. I just had to wait for you to grow up, to be ready to accept the responsibility and the honor of taking up where Tam Reth left off. To become a son I could be proud of.”

My heart was racing. I ran a helpless hand through my hair and staggered back. “You knew what the crown would do…what I would do…and you let me?” I searched his eyes for some morsel of compassion or remorse, but the nothingness I found turned my stomach. “All those people…all those lives. You let me kill them. The Langorians, the Rellans…Aylagar.” I let go of Kya’s reins and drew the sword across my back. “Do you have any idea what living with that day has done to me?”

“Yes. And it isn’t what I’d hoped.”

“You could have stopped me. Warned me.”

“When I had that vision your mother wasn’t even with child yet. And if I’d come to you later, telling you that you would one day annihilate thousands, you wouldn’t have believed me. You were just a boy, L’tarian.”

“Don’t call me that,” I snarled at him. “That is not my name.”

“You are a child from the Reth line. You carry the blood of the strongest Shinree soldiers to ever live. To hear you deny your birthright pains me.”

“Not nearly enough.”

Reth’s eyes narrowed. “V’loria and Raynan had a plan. By compelling you to devote your life to saving others, they hoped to ensure that you would never know the wonders of the darkness flowing in your veins.”

“I know darkness well enough.”

“But you shrink from it. You don’t use it, don’t embrace it.”

“Most days I’m not that weak.”

“I see it now.” He nodded solemnly to himself. “I’m already too late. You will never come to me willingly.”

“You never wanted me willing. Forcing magic on me…the eldring…the shadows…the dreams—you tried to break me from the beginning.” Recalling all that he had done, my voice came out as a roar. “Who does that to their own fucking child?”

“I was trying to make you obedient. I thought once you knew who I was, once you saw what we could do together, you would understand. But…it was all for nothing. She died for nothing. Nothing,” he said again, raising a hand to massage the discolored skin of his brow. He stood there a moment, wincing and rubbing his forehead like it hurt. Then, abruptly, he rushed up. Agitation quickened his words. “You must understand, L’tarian. I wanted you strong. I needed you confident, focused. I thought it was for the best. She would have stood between us. I couldn’t let that happen. But…I was too late.” Suddenly despondent, his voice fell. “In just those first few years, she destroyed you.”

At the start of his outburst, I assumed he was talking about Aylagar. But there was shame and honesty in my father’s white eyes. There was pain and regret in his words. And it started a chill of foreboding on my skin. “What did you do?”

“I never meant for you to be alone. I went back to get you, but you had already left Kabri. And I had no idea Raynan would know it was me. Or that
he would actually be capable of hunting me down. Drugging me, leaving me at the gates of that Langorian slave camp…he knew what they would do to me. How they abuse their slaves. I misjudged how much he loved her, and what lengths he would go to avenge her death.”

“No.” The blood drained from my face. “You didn’t. You couldn’t have.”

“I wanted to raise you, to make you ready to claim the Crown of Stones and lead our people. It was too important. I couldn’t leave you with V’loria. She would have smothered every part of me that was inside of you. Can’t you see that?”

My throat was burning. I could hardly get the words out. “It was you? You killed her? You killed my mother?”

“You were my son, too L’tarian. My flesh. I couldn’t stand her ruining you.”

“All this time, I…I thought…” burying the grief, I clamped my jaw shut until it hurt; I wanted the pain. It was preferable to the flood of loss and confusion I was drowning in, the feeling that I was a child again, standing over my mother’s corpse, fists balled with rage, believing that I had to hold it all in, that I didn’t deserve to cry.

Because there were times I hated her. There were times I wished her dead.

And then she was.

“My spells,” I said painfully; thinking back. “They were always erratic. I practiced for hours but I had trouble controlling them. I thought I did something wrong, let something slip.” I shook my head. “I thought it was my fault.”

“Really?” He sounded surprised. “I suppose you would have known whether or not you were in control of your magic if your mother had taught you focus or restraint.”

“Maybe she would have—if you hadn’t killed her!”

“The choices I made were for the good of us all. One day you will understand that.” He reached for me and I pulled away. I raised my sword between us and looked at him down the length of it, saying nothing, feeling nothing. I was blank inside. He’d stripped me of everything. Dignity. Pride. Family. He’d molded the course of my life, influenced my thoughts and emotions, and I hadn’t even known he existed.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said then. “But your aim is wrong. I’m on your side. After all, I just let your other, the messenger, leave unharmed. I could have turned him to dust. Although,” he cocked an eyebrow in thought. “Losing him, having his soul ripped from you, could be just what I need to push you over the edge.”

“If you harm him…”

Reth laughed, trivializing my warning as if I were no more than a foolish child.

His child
, I reminded myself and a shiver of revulsion ran through me.

“Rage all you want, son, you can’t stop me. I’m faster than you. Better.” Magic swirled across Reth’s eyes, a gloomy, blended shade that radiated up from his stained skin, and spread right in front of me. The cloudy combination of auras flowed across his face like a mudslide running downhill. It traveled to engulf his jaw and throat, and in its wake his skin took on a gray, leathery appearance, like it was petrified.

In disturbed amazement, I lowered my sword. “What’s happening to you?”

“What will happen to you…if you let it. What will happen in time to us all.”

The demonstration over, the color left his eyes. The stains stopped spreading and wherever the crown was, the power went back inside it. But he was still blotched and ugly.
Scarred
, I thought,
inside and out.

“Maybe there’s a way to reverse this, to make you normal again.” An involuntary streak of compassion ran through me. “Let me help you.”

“Please, L’tarian,” he scorned. “Don’t try to save me. It demeans us both.”

My empathy squashed, bitterness took over. “You really are a fucking prick, you know that?”

“And you are the descendant of the last Ruling House of the Shinree Empire. I want you to act like it.”

“You don’t get to want anything from me. You’re a murderer. A selfish, heartless, cold-blooded…” I cringed as I saw the truth. “Gods, I’m just like you. We’re all like you. War or healing, it makes no difference. We’re a race of killers.”

Reth’s muddy features tightened. “I can see you’re in shock. You need time to consider what I mean to you. To understand where you truly belong.”

Nodding, I wiped the distraught look off my face. “And if I decide where I belong isn’t with you?”

“That would be a mistake, L’tarian. If you choose to come against me, you will never best me with your magic.”

“Then I will find another way.” I tugged on Kya’s reins. Reth called after me, I didn’t want to hear anymore. I didn’t even care if he struck me down while my back was turned. At the moment, dying seemed infinitely easier than living with what I was.

FORTY THREE

I
went right past the fork in the road and kept going.

I had an excuse. It was flimsy and Jarryd would be pissed. But he was the problem. If I wasn’t ready to admit to myself that Jem Reth was my father, how could I admit it to Jarryd?

Even so, as I rode up to the edge of town, I knew it wasn’t about being ashamed, or needing time to think. I just wanted a fight. I wanted a strong enemy presence to take it all out on. At the very least, I was hoping for a patrol to scrap with. Even a single scout to beat senseless would have made me feel better for a little while.

What I got was utter desolation, dark streets, eerie silence, and burned-out, toppled buildings. Ula was deserted. Even the one place that I was sure would be open was quiet as a tomb. And Ansel’s Place was never quiet.

An inn as lively and rowdy as any other, Ansel’s had the best food and girls outside of Kabri. The linens were clean. The water was hot and the ale was cold. Most importantly, the first room at the top of the stairs and everything in it was mine.

I hadn’t slept there in years, but if you added my time growing up in Ula before the war, to the brief stretch I lived here after, I’d slept in that room longer than any other in my entire life. I suppose that’s why I paid Ansel to keep it for me when I left. I gave him coin enough to buy the whole damn building for that one room, though I had no real intention of returning. Back then, my lust for magic was still too hard to control and I was tired of
worrying over a town full of lives. I just liked knowing the space was there if I needed it. And that the pieces of my past had a home, even if I didn’t.

Now, as I crouched in the adjacent alley, peering across the dark street, wishing for the slightest sign of life, the reasons I left suddenly felt selfish.

If I’d been here, I could have protected them. I could have protected Katrine.

They can’t all be dead. There has to be someone.

I sprinted across to the porch and up to the front door. Finding it locked, I felt my way along the building. The windows on the first floor were boarded shut, as was the back door. No street lamps were lit and I cursed the lack of light as I stumbled over the rickety, wooden steps that led to the second floor. Not an official entrance, there was only a small ledge and a casement with a curtain. But the regulars knew it was here. A handy escape for wayward husbands looking to dodge their angry wives, the window was left perpetually unlocked.

As I snuck up the stairs, I was glad to find that much hadn’t changed.

Parting the flimsy, brown curtain, I peered into pitch-black. I couldn’t see a damn thing as I eased one leg at a time over the sill and climbed inside. I couldn’t hear anything either, but I kept a hand on my sword as I moved down the hall to my room.

Putting my ear to the wood, I got nothing. My fingers touched the latch. I turned it halfway. I thought about how the dagger that bound Jarryd and I together had been on the other side of the door; so had Katrine and the Langorian soldier that killed her. And I suddenly couldn’t fathom how walking into a room ransacked and painted with the blood of an old friend would do me any good.

My bout of wistfulness crushed, I released the latch, backed away and went downstairs.

The bottom floor, although equally empty and quiet, was not quite as dark. A handful of smoldering embers burned in the hearth. A single candle sat on the bar. Its glow was a small, pale circle on the wood. The light was barely adequate for making out the man standing on the other side of the counter. But I didn’t need light to recognize Ansel. I’d known him over half my life.

Weathered and gray since the day we met, Ansel was close to double my age. A long-retired soldier, with the reputation of being hard-nosed,
feisty and foul-mouthed, the one thing no one dared call the man was old. I wouldn’t have even thought it, until now.

Fetching a bottle and two mugs, as Ansel brought them over, he walked like it hurt. His once strong body was bent slightly and it made me sad to watch his bony hands shake as he poured. Ansel’s losing battle with age was a slap-in-the-face reminder of just how long I’d been gone.

He slid a mug in front of me. “Been expecting you,” he said. His gravelly voice was just like I remembered. “Ever since Draken slithered up out of his hole.” Ansel smiled and his wrinkles deepened. “Can’t wait to see you shove him back down.”

“Me too.” I looked around. “Where is everyone?”

“Curfew. If you don’t obey, you disappear.” He turned his head and spat on the floor. “Bastards.”

“That they are.” Saluting him, I drained my mug. I could see Ansel watching me. I could see the questions in his eyes. But he wouldn’t ask them. Having tolerated my youthful indiscretions as a boy (as well as some not-so-youthful ones later on) I knew the man was far more patient than he looked. He would wait for me to explain my absence. And I did owe him that. At the moment though, all I could say was, “Katrine?”

Grief tightened his mouth in a thin line. “So you heard.”