The Crown of Stones: Magic-Price (62 page)

“Consider it a wedding present.”

“Ha!” he laughed. “I have a present for you as well.” Draken tossed something small through the air. Catching it, I folded my hand closed over a jade archer’s ring. “It might be a bit bloody,” he grimaced apologetically. “My men tend to get overzealous.”

“It’s fine.” I reached behind me and slipped the ring down inside one of the packs on my saddle. “You can scrub it clean…after you let Jarryd go.”

Snickering, Draken tugged Neela closer. “I can see why you like this Shinree, my love. He’s so confident.” His tone darkened. “It’s a shame it won’t last.”

“Threats. Intimidation. Abduction.” I forced a thin smile. “You have all the foundations of a happy marriage, Draken. I wish you luck.”

“How thoughtful—considering Shinree don’t believe in luck.”

“You’ll need something if you don’t want to end up with a blade in your chest like your father did.”

“To the contrary, Troy. My wife is most accommodating. She knows exactly what’s required to safeguard the lives of her people.” Gently, Draken placed a hand on Neela’s stomach. “Already there could be a child growing inside her. And when he is born, there shall be another. One for Langor’s throne. One for Rella’s. Both of them mine. None of them yours.” He stared down his long nose at me. “Don’t worry. Our union was very unlike the dreams. There was no blood, no forcing of any kind. Neela’s screams were those of pure pleasure. Isn’t that right, my love?” Grinning, Draken eyed her with a lewd sneer. “Shall we show him? Here? Now?”

Faintly, Neela answered. “If you wish, My Lord.”

“Oh, I do.” Draken slid his hands unceremoniously inside the bodice of her dress. Glancing at me with mocking eyes, he pushed the material aside, putting her on display. “Beautiful, isn’t she?”

I grabbed the sword at my hip. “She’s your wife. Show some fucking respect.”

“Or you’ll what? You’re powerless here, Troy. Impotent. I, however, am nothing of the kind.” To prove his advantage, a dozen decomposing soldiers edged up behind me. “I have dominion over this land.” Kneeling down, Draken took the divided hem of Neela’s dress in his hands. He parted the fabric up to her knees. “And over her.”

My hand clutched the sword tighter. “Let her go.”

He raised the dress higher, to her thighs, and I squeezed the grip so hard my hand ached.

Higher still, and the muscles burned up my arm.

There was no doubt about it. The sight and smell of the dead, with bits of mud and flesh hanging off their bones, disturbed me far less than Neela’s quiet allowance of Draken’s touch. Her indifference, her submission, was killing me. Standing, exposed, in a camp full of leering men, she was calm and poised, not moving or protesting, letting Draken do as he pleased to her—while I was screaming inside.

Draken pulled Neela close. He tossed me a sly grin, and buried his face between her legs.

“Goddamn you!” I drew both swords and the dead closed in around me. The living guards pulled their weapons, aiming them at Neela’s back. She was unaware of the danger. As Draken continued to devour her, Neela’s eyes had fallen closed.

I told myself it was from revulsion that she shut them, and not pleasure.

After a long, tense moment, Draken lifted his head. Resting his cheek against her small swath of hair, he looked at me through the rotting leg bones of his underlings and licked his lips. “This goes straight through you. Doesn’t it?”

I was in too much pain to lie. “Yes.”

“Can you still feel her beneath you?” Draken brushed his lips against her dark skin. “Encasing you? Soft…warm.” His fingers dug into her legs. “Can
you still hear her? I can make you hear her.” He pressed harder and Neela gasped.

“You’re insane,” I said, shaking.

“I am. But you made me that way. You, and your magic, and your crown.” Draken planted a gentle kiss on Neela’s thigh. Standing, he let her dress fall back into place. “You robbed me of ten years, Troy.” Tugging on the flimsy fabric of her bodice, he covered her breasts. “Ten years,” he said again. Abruptly, he locked fuming eyes on me. “I have to take it out on someone.”

“Then take it out on me.”

“Oh, but I am,” Draken laughed heartily. “I most certainly am. And best of all,” he slapped Neela across the face. “You’re wide awake.” He hit her again and she fell.

This is the last place I should forget what I am
, I thought desperately, as Draken kicked her.
The last place I should lose control.

But as Neela’s frightened eyes looked up at me, it was already done.

FIFTY SEVEN

T
he howl that burst from my throat wasn’t in the last bit belonging to a man. Laced with wrath, fueled by aggression, driven by need; the world had become obsolete. There was only my target. The living corpses between us were unimportant. The crushing odds against me were of no consequence. I rushed straight for Draken, into the line of Langorian dead, and I had not a single thought to strategy or safety. No notion of anything but the raw vengeance that traveled down my arms and into my swords.

But with the familiar weight of steel in my hands, instinct and reflexes kicked in.

I evaded with intuition, swung with experience and purpose. The instruments of my fury bit smoothly into necks and shoulders. They cut across exposed veins and ruptured bloated, liquefied organs. Slashed through broken rib cages and dangling cords of muscle; chopping off rotting limbs with impudence.

I struck blow after blow to the scantily skinned frames and delighted in the way their bones fractured on impact. Kneecaps shattered with one kick. Spines snapped with ease. Heads toppled and turned to dust beneath my boots. All around me the dead died again.

Dying twice wasn’t enough though. Moments after I put them down, whatever was left got right back up.

The only remedy for their condition (and my situation), was magic.

But there was a storm in me. If I cast to save myself, or even for the strength to keep fighting, I wasn’t sure I could stop. I could feel it simmering—how badly I wanted to kill, to annihilate anyone that dared oppose me. And without the Crown of Stones or Sienn’s abilities, I couldn’t bring anyone back. Not Neela or the prisoners. I’d wake up as I had ten years before, the lone survivor.

So I pressed forward. Intent on nothing but gaining ground, I fell swiftly into an unconscious pattern of swinging, dodging, thrusting, and lunging. I barely detected my ears ringing with the constant clash of metal. The trembling ache in my arms was a distant notion as I ducked and rolled, striking out at a sea of legs on my way back up.

Standing, I turned sagging, toothless jaws to powder. I tore into moldy throats and hollowed out stomachs. As ghastly hands grabbed at me, I hacked away their dead limbs and threw off the pieces. I didn’t flinch at the taste of rot in my mouth or the vile, viscous things running down the blades and onto my hands. And it didn’t have a damn thing to do with bravery or nerve; I didn’t have anything close to a level head. I simply had no chance to notice. No time to acknowledge that each breath brought pain to my lungs or that my overworked muscles quaked with every move. I just kept going. Because there were as many behind me as there were in front.

I didn’t even know where Neela was anymore.

I spun around, straining to see through the flood of shields, blades, and bodies, but I couldn’t catch so much as a glimpse of her crimson dress.

The army seemed to mushroom further; a never-ending flux of mindless cadavers.

The truth hit me hard:
I have no hope of winning
.
No hope of reaching her.

If I couldn’t reach her, I couldn’t avenge her.

Protect me,
I thought.
That’s what she said. No matter the cost.

A part of me knew her words weren’t real, that this Neela never said them. But the thought of letting her down, of failing her—of watching her die again—unhinged me. I couldn’t avoid it anymore. I opened the gates, and embraced the obsidian the crown left behind inside me. I soaked up the auras at my wrist; every drop of every stone. Then I reached further, taking what was sprinkled about the camp, embedded in goblets, saddles, and swords,
adorning trinkets and garments. I felt more, buried deep, under miles of rock and dirt, unseen and untouched for centuries, and I invited it in. I absorbed until I couldn’t breathe. Until swirling, bright auras were bursting from my hands and shooting off the ends of my swords in great, colorful streams that rendered all who stood in its current to dust.

Magic surged like everlasting lightening through my veins. And I gladly turned it on my enemies.

They bore down on me in groups, and died as such. A glancing blow sheared torsos in half. At full force, whole bodies exploded into fragments of bone and ash.

I slayed whatever was in my path, without thought or design, and in minutes, a heavy cloud of remains hung thick and gray in the air around me.

Entrenched in it, I didn’t see the soldier until his sword edge ripped across my back. In that first instant, there was no pain. Then, deep and burning, it spread like a lava flow running downhill; spilling over my shoulders, emptying into my arms.

It sunk lower, into my veins, coursing through them, setting my blood afire.

Crying out, I lost my grip on the magic. It stopped coming out of me, and the horde piled in. Their oncoming blows were vicious and nonstop. The pain was constant. I struggled to block my opponent’s attacks, but the shock of impact was adding up faster than I could recoup.

A soldier knocked a weapon from my hand and I was down to one.

There were too many. They were in too tight.

A blade cut into my right leg.

Another split open my left side.

Invisible flames licked both wounds, and I went down.

On one knee, leaning heavily on my sword, covered in gore, and laboring to slow my breathing into something that didn’t hurt, I tried to reach the stones. I told myself to get up, to keep swinging, to push through the pain and keep fighting. But an inferno was raging inside me. My wild, desperate strikes had no hope of hitting anything. My magic, if any was left in me, wasn’t responding. Neither were my limbs.

It’s over,
I thought.
I’ve come full circle.
Fate was delivering me into Death’s hands. Bringing me back to where I should have died all along.

I wasn’t that surprised. Ansel used to say you can only outrun a debt for so long before it bit you in the ass. Mine, crawled out of its grave and kicked me in the teeth.

Done, I collapsed. Taking it for surrender, the resurrected soldiers turned and walked away. As they went back to their posts, Draken’s laughter penetrated the echo of battle in my head. As usual, the irritating sound pissed me off. Yet, knowing what he’d done, he had a right to it.

“My Lord,” I said, raspy and trembling. “You are a tricky bastard.”

Draken walked through the scattering crowd. “Was that a compliment?”

“You earned it. You and my father. Resurrecting the dead, scores of innocent prisoners to keep me from casting
—
tainting your soldier’s weapons with
Kayn’l
.”

“Ah, so you know what’s been done to you. I trust it’s working well?”

“Certainly hurts like hell.” I flinched as the scalding pain dug further inside. “Must be kind of a hollow victory though. Seeing as you had to cheat to beat me.”

Draken drew back and punched me so hard I tumbled over backwards. “Now I can beat you whenever I please.” He waited for me to pick my face up out of the sand. Then asked, amiably, as if we were having a pleasant chat over a mug of ale, “Do you know what
Kayn’l
does to a normal man?”

Splayed out in the dirt, I glared at him. “Am I supposed to?”

“Nothing,” he said. “It does nothing.”

“Thank the gods,” I breathed in exaggerated relief. “Now I can die in peace.”

Draken’s grin didn’t bode well. “Not quite,” he said. “What about a normal man bound to a Shinree? What do you think it would do to him?” He tapped me with his boot. “Focus, Troy.”

I couldn’t. All of a sudden his voice was bouncing and the sand was undulating in waves. Everything had this sort of rolling glow around it. “You better talk a lot faster,” I said, rubbing at the shadows moving across my eyes. “Or I’m going to pass out before you spit out anything close to important.”

“If, for instance,” he said impatiently, “I were to take
Kayn’l
, it would render my connection to Reth inactive. Once the drug was purged from my body, the link would mend itself. But, if I remained on it indefinitely, his absence would
begin to feel permanent. As if he was dead. As if half my soul had died inside me.” Draken ran a thoughtful hand over his chin. “Of course the ensuing, mental injury is only a rumor. No one knows what the loss of a joined soul would do. The type of bonding we’ve taken part in hasn’t been done in centuries. Still, such prolonged isolation would undoubtedly have a profound effect. Not true insanity like I knew, but an internal blackness. A pain so acute it would change a person. Harden them. Burrow emptiness in so deep it might never go away.” Draken made a concerned face. “Slightly tragic, don’t you think?”

I struggled to sit up. “You’re giving Jarryd
Kayn’l
.”

“Glad to see you’re following along. Though, as a prisoner of war, that drug is the least of his worries. Unless…you can think of a way to secure his release. Something you could offer me, perhaps?”

My reply was a pain-filled, angry laugh. It wasn’t for Draken. It was more of a self-directed hostility for how I’d stupidly followed every step my father laid out for me. I did exactly as he predicted, right from the beginning.

Almost.

With an unsteady hand, I reached for the stone around my neck. I gave it a sharp tug, and the cord broke. I hesitated briefly. Then I flung the black shard down in the sand between us.

Draken stared at it. “No clever comment?” he said, eyes lifting. “No crude jest?”

“I’m all out. But if you come a little closer I’ll shove it up your ass.”

Grinning, his eyes dropped back to the shard. I half expected a spot of drool to form in the corner of his mouth.
If he were Shinree he’d look a little less excited,
I thought. But being nothing but a greedy man, Draken had no clue the stone he was coveting was the wrong one. The piece of the crown he wanted so badly was in Kabri. By now, it was at the bottom of the sea, or smashed into a thousand pieces. My instructions for Liel were to destroy it if he could, keep it safe if he couldn’t. I didn’t really care what he did with it, as long as no other living soul knew where it was.