The Curse in the Gift (The Last Whisper of the Gods Book 2) (32 page)

Sorial didn’t like the idea, but he knew she was right. For the moment, however, there were other concerns closer to home. Unless this wizards’ library contained a solution to their immediate problems, its esoteric secrets would lie dormant for a little longer.

“Did Ferguson say anything about an Otherverse?”

Alicia nodded. “He talked of little else. He said all of what’s about to happen is merely a prelude to a more dangerous and audacious scheme. He speculated that The Lord of Fire will limit his use of magic in any war because he needs to husband it for some eventual assault on The Otherverse. Ferguson suspects The Lord of Fire’s capabilities may be waning. He’s operated as a wizard for more than twenty years and most wizards in ancient times burned themselves out and died in a shorter period. Sometimes much shorter. That could give us an advantage in a battle if his reserves are almost exhausted while ours are fresh.”

But only if we can learn how to do more than ‘parlor tricks.’

“He knows I’m a wizard. Not just
suspects
. He
knows
.”

“And takes credit for it. You and me both. He sees himself as our creator and believes that gives him some say in how we live and what we do. For all his knowledge, he’s blinded by arrogance and a sense of his own infallibility.”

“He thinks you’re not ruthless enough. He called mercy a weakness that ‘wizards can ill afford to be afflicted with.’“

“No one could ever make that accusation of him. How many people has he killed, or caused to die, without a second thought? People are tools for him, to be used and twisted and manipulated, then thrown away when their purpose is done. He thinks of us in the same way. Bigger and more powerful, but still tools. Once we’ve finished his tasks, he’ll toss us to the side. By then, maybe he’ll have died of old age, although I begin to wonder if he’ll outlive us all.”

“Do you think he’s right, though? That in order to defeat The Lord of Fire, we’ll have to become ruthless? Shed our compassion and start looking at things from a colder, more detached perspective?”

Like Ferguson. Like Rangarak. Both powerful men whose brands of justice were harsh and uncompromising. Sorial had tasted that twice before in himself: once in Havenham when he had dispatched Langashin and once in Ibitsal when he had snuffed out Maraman. Those men had deserved to die for their sins. Ferguson’s approach was to sweep people aside if their continued existence was an inconvenience.

“Maybe that’s the only way to win in a war like this,” he conceded. “War is about destruction and slaughter. Defeating an enemy means killing enough of his men so he can’t attack anymore. It ain’t always the best equipped or bigger army that wins. So there’s a place for ruthlessness in battle. Maybe even a necessity for it. But Ferguson would have us be like him, do to innocent people what he did to Annie. Manipulate them to their deaths like Vagrum and Kara. None of those things were
needed
. That’s what he means by ‘ruthless.’”

Alicia shivered despite the heat. She pressed her body closer to his. “Promise me we’ll never become like that. Promise me we’ll retain our humanity no matter what happens.”

“I promise,” said Sorial. The moment he said the words, he wondered if he might regret them. Was that an oath he could keep or would circumstances demand something different of him, the way they had demanded something different of his sister? Kara’s portrait of Ariel had been of a sweet, devoted, caring child. Those characteristics were gone. Now she was a killer. A ruthless killer. With dominion over earth and with a city to protect, could Sorial afford to be anything less?

Had he just lied to Alicia?

* * *

The stink of failure clung to Ariel like a fetid second skin. Not only did Sorial still walk the earth but her attempts to foment civil war in Vantok hadn’t borne fruit. Yet capricious fate had offered her an opportunity for partial redemption. And, when this task was done, she would devote the entirety of her effort to discovering her brother’s location and accomplishing what she hadn’t been able to achieve on her previous attempt. When she was a little girl, her mother told her that there was nothing ignoble about failure if one learned from it. It was strange that, after all these years, she remembered that lesson.

Now on her second day of watching big men in full armor galloping toward one another on burdened horses, Ariel had developed an active dislike of jousting. It was brutal, cruel, and pointless. It also didn’t go unnoticed by her that at least three-quarters of the audience was male. Men, it appeared, were more enamored of this sort of thing than their wives and daughters. There were no women on the royal dais, where the queen’s empty seat expressed her opinion of a tournament supposedly in her honor. King Azarak was present, but his expression was one of ill-concealed boredom. Sorial was nowhere to be seen; he hadn’t made a public appearance since the failed assassination.

Ariel winced at the memory of that. She had been
certain
he was dead, but she had committed the cardinal sin of not finding out for sure. She hadn’t spoken to Justin since then but she knew how displeased he would have been to learn of her mistake. Hopefully, he hadn’t lost anyone at the portal but she suspected his prized Lord of Earth candidate might have been sacrificed to her error. He wouldn’t easily forgive that mistake.

She didn’t understand how her brother had survived what should have been a fatal shot to the breast. The only thing she could think of was that he had encased himself in an earth-based armor. Or maybe there was something in earth-magic that provided an inherent defense. She knew a great deal about how air worked and, as a result of her long association with Justin, she knew a little about fire, but she was largely ignorant when it came to earth and water. With magic, ignorance was dangerous. In the old days, wizards had shared secrets, but that had been a different era.

For the moment, however, necessity demanded that she put aside her failure with Sorial and concentrate on the task at hand. When next she saw Justin, it would mollify him if she arrived with what he expected from her. And that was why she was here, exposed to the sun and surrounded by people.

She was in disguise, of course, using an image that closely matched how she might have looked if she hadn’t surrendered the better part of her beauty to the portal and allowed magic to eat away at the remaining scraps. She was wearing pure white robes with a crimson sash - garments that marked her as a member of the healers’ guild. No one contested her legitimacy when she shouldered her way to the front so she could be at the ready if her “services” were needed. Thus far, she had “attended” several injured combatants along with the other half-dozen healers at the ready. Of course, not knowing anything about the treatment of wounds, the staunching of blood, or the setting of broken bones, she had made a show of appearing to be useful while doing very little. She didn’t think anyone noticed except perhaps the genuine healers and none of them cared enough to say anything.

King Rangarak was about to meet his second opponent of the day. Ariel had studied him yesterday and this morning and understood his technique well enough to be certain of what was needed to bring him down. She had considered waiting for the final round - that would be the most dramatic time to do it - but she was becoming impatient to leave Vantok and was disinclined to linger for another six hours. From a practical standpoint, there was little to be gained by delaying.

Rangarak’s challenger for this round looked much the same as the ones who had gone up against him in every other round: big men encased in steel. This one, through a stroke of luck beyond his control, would gain the most significant upset of the tournament. Those few who placed bets against the Iron King would find themselves instantly rich. She hoped they would spend their money quickly; it would be worth little once Justin arrived with his army in a season’s time.

As the riders prepared their charge, Ariel readied herself. Little effort was needed - she wasn’t channeling more than a tight burst of air - but the timing demanded precision. For an experienced wizard such as herself, this was little more than a practice exercise. The greater difficulty would be maintaining the integrity of her illusion when she rushed out to tend to the fallen king. Her previous forays onto the field had been casually glimpsed. On this occasion, the scrutiny would be intense: thousands of shocked eyes watching to see if Rangarak would rise.

At opposite ends of the field, the riders turned their steeds to face one another and lifted their lances to the ready position. Rangarak’s horse, probably half again as large as the steed of his opponent, pawed impatiently at the ground. He was a battle-hardened, nasty beast with a coat as black as night. At a signal, it began, with Rangarak attaining full speed more quickly than his rival, guaranteeing they would meet beyond the half-way point. Ariel had anticipated this when positioning herself.

She acted at the instant the opponents clashed. Her attack targeted not Rangarak but his horse. A violent burst of air directed at the animal’s forelegs caused him to stumble. This, in turn, threw Rangarak off-balance, making him vulnerable to his opponent’s lance. The blow was slightly off-target, striking him in the left shoulder rather than squarely in the chest, but it was enough to unseat him. As he tumbled to the ground amidst gasps of shock and dismay, Ariel attacked again. This time, the Iron King was her mark.

She used air as a weapon, timing the strike so it coincided with his impact on the ground. Like a club, her magic shattered his arm beneath the armor. After all, there had to be blood. That was the point of the accident and there was no guarantee that a simple fall would generate any. But a pulverized arm... This time, Ariel was taking no chances.

As was her intention, she was the first “healer” to reach the injured man. She was aware of the mix of excitement, surprise, and anticipation radiating from the huge crowd. Those who had been distracted were now focused on the field where the unthinkable had happened. King Azarak was on his feet as were the two high-ranking men from Obis. The winner of the joust reined in his horse, dipped his lance, and lowered his visor. His expression was one of stupefaction. Even he hadn’t expected to win this round.

Rangarak was struggling to rise; a difficult task considering how badly injured he was. With his visor down, Ariel couldn’t read his features, but she could tell by the stream of profanity emerging from beneath the helmet that he was furious and in great pain. Absently, she wondered if he had ever experienced humiliation to rival this.

“Lie still, Your Majesty. If you move before the arm is immobilized, you may lose it.” She said the words loudly enough to be heard by the victim over the din of the crowd. She had no idea whether they were true or not. In her non-expert estimation, the arm was too badly damaged to be kept, but she would let others make that determination. Not that it would matter.

It would be easy enough to kill him now. No one would be the wiser. But that wasn’t her mission and it would further anger Justin if she did that. She understood why he wanted Rangarak’s death to occur according to his prescription. The purpose wasn’t merely to destabilize Obis’ rulership but to create a frenzy of supernatural terror. Slaying him now, as he lay helpless on the tournament field, would accomplish only one of those aims.

Getting the blood was easy enough. It was oozing out of rips in the armor. She filled a small glass vial with it, stoppered it with a piece of cork, and slipped it into a pocket of her cloak. Legitimate healers began arriving at that moment. As the small army of them swarmed around the fallen king, Ariel retreated, heading for the anonymity of the crowd. No one noticed her departure. In less than a quarter hour, she had put the tumult of the tournament behind her, shed her disguise, and was on her way back to The Forbidden Lands.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: EVERYTHING CHANGES

The injury to King Rangarak had more significant implications than impacting who won the tournament. Unfit to travel, he would be confined to a sick bed in Vantok’s palace for at least several weeks - not a pleasant situation for Azarak, who was impatient to rid himself and his city of the huge contingent of soldiers camping just outside his borders. Now, the current situation was likely to continue well into Planting, and it raised concerns about how effectively Vantok could prepare for war with such an uncertain situation closer to home. The healers were unable to provide an estimate of when Rangarak might be sufficiently recovered to sustain the long trip home. His arm was shattered, the injury far more extensive than one might expect from a fall from a horse.

Rangarak refused to consent to the arm’s amputation - a procedure suggested by every healer to see him. Their verdict was unanimous: if he kept the limb, the best case would for it to be a twisted, useless appendage. The worst would be for it to begin to rot and poison his blood. He retorted that it was their function as healers to make sure the worst didn’t happen and, if the arm killed him, he’d make sure they joined him going to an early grave.

Large doses of opium kept Rangarak docile. Under its influence, he dozed most of the time. Occasionally, he would rouse himself to hold a brief conversation with a visitor, although access to him was limited to his son, his daughter, Azarak, and the most loyal of his elite corps of personal guards. His mind wasn’t clear enough for him to speak about matters of substance and on at least one occasion he expressed a desire for the healing process to be expedited so he wouldn’t miss the end of the tournament.

The manner of Rangarak’s fall concerned Azarak. Although everyone else, including Grushik, accepted it as one of the vagaries of the sport, the king of Vantok wasn’t convinced. Perhaps it was paranoia, but he sensed the influence of a wizard in the accident. At the time of the fall, he had been watching carefully and it seemed something unnatural had caused the horse to stumble. With Sorial and Alicia away from the city, that suggested another visit from the air-wizard. What perplexed him was why Rangarak was still alive. Surely she could have finished him off? That left Azarak with an uneasy sensation in the pit of his stomach and a host of unanswered questions.

“At least you don’t have to worry about Grushik being on your advisory council for a while,” said Myselene, sitting behind him on the bed and kneading the knots in his shoulders. She was a reassuring presence, having made it apparent during the past few days that she had cast her lot with her husband. “Not that the council has much meaning these days.” In fact, it had been weeks since Azarak last convened a meeting of the half-empty body.

“Small consolation. I hoped your father would be gone within a week. As long as he remains, even while abed and drugged, he undermines my authority - him and his two-thousand troops. I’ve never felt so powerless.”

Myselene sniffed. “You have two wizards. We’ve seen what they’re capable of. I don’t think two-thousand soldiers represent as much of a threat as you worry. My father brought this upon himself. Participating in a tournament at his age...he’s lucky he didn’t crack open his skull.”

“Do you think Alicia can heal him?”

“We’ll find out tomorrow when she returns. Probably not to the point where he’ll regain full use of his arm but it should expedite his departure. Then he can take his toy soldiers and go home.” Myselene spoke the last sentence with disdain.

“With Gorton and without Grushik.”

“Things have changed. I spoke to Gorton shortly after my father suffered his fall. He’s willing to defect if we can make it seem like he’s disappeared. He’s concerned about his longevity if he returns to Obis. In fact, he’s not sure he’ll make it home. He’s become a victim of whatever politics my father and brother are playing.”

“I thought your father removed him from his post because he was too valuable to lose.”

“Not exactly. Gorton was demoted to keep him from becoming a citizen of Vantok. He knows too much about the inner workings of Obis’ spy network and many of the operatives are personally loyal to him. They might transfer their allegiance from Obis to Vantok if Gorton built a similar network here. My father now views Gorton as a liability and he removes liabilities by making them go away. The freak tournament injury has provided Gorton with an opportunity to escape. He asked if we’re still interested in acquiring his services and I took the liberty of telling him that we are.”

“He’ll need a new identity?”

Myselene nodded. “At least until the problem of Grushik has been... solved. For now, Rangarak will assume he’s become aware of his mortality and run off. Later, Gorton will use his operatives to spread the report of his death in the North.”

“Who am I to refuse such a generous offer?”

“There’s something else you need to know. Grushik has been spreading rumors that Father’s accident was caused by Sorial. His pea-brain has connected the shaking of the dining hall with the stumbling of the king’s horse. He isn’t making the accusations openly, because that would demand he acknowledge the existence of magic and wizards, but he’s behind the stories being repeated by the city’s most notorious gossip-mongers.”

“If Sorial was in the city, I might have suspected the same thing. As it is, the air-wizard is the most likely candidate.”

“You think the accident was caused by magic?” Myselene assumed it had been just a matter of her father’s incredible tournament luck running out.

“Perhaps. The argument would be more convincing if he died. But if she was behind the attack on Toranim and the murder of Duke Bantok in addition to the attempted assassination of Sorial, it fits a pattern of sowing chaos and suspicion.”

“Maybe she was back to try again with Sorial and, not finding him, chose another target.”

“That’s too convenient to believe. As for a secondary target, why not me? I was in full view of the crowd for the better part of two days. And why injure Rangarak instead of killing him? I have the ugly feeling we’re going to learn the answers too late. I suspect your father was a planned target not a choice of opportunity. There’s something we’re not seeing and, by the time it comes into view, the best we’ll be able to do is react.”

He rose from the bed, defeating her efforts to relax his muscles. “I need to run this by Toranim. Damn it, but I wish Sorial was here. He knows his sister better than any of us.”

“That didn’t prevent him from nearly dying as a result of one of her attacks. I doubt he’ll be of much help in decoding her actions, if these are her actions. We need to be careful about chasing ghosts. This could be an accident. My father is old and arrogant and had no place riding against younger, stronger men.”

“Horses stumble and men fall, but they don’t shatter their arms the way he did. Broken in at least twenty places. Someone did that do him. Either we figure out why or something very bad is going to happen.”

* * *

“Time to go back.” Sorial gazed landward toward the rising sun; they were expected in Vantok before day’s end. If necessary, they could travel rapidly, but the leisurely walk they had planned would take most of the morning and part of the afternoon.

“I hate wearing clothing,” said Alicia, smoothing down the front of her loose-fitting traveling blouse. Along with baggy breeches and open-toed shoes, it represented a component of her informal wardrobe for the return journey. After spending the better part of the last two days naked, the garments felt restrictive. Sorial remembered having experienced much the same sensation after emerging from his period of protracted isolation. But concessions had to be made to modesty.

The trip had been productive. Alicia showed growing confidence in her ability to control her element. The uncertain steps of a toddler, to be sure, but steps nonetheless. She had replicated her initial success with waves, forming one that built to a height of nearly double her first attempt. She had created several powerful waterspouts - geysers that exploded hundreds of feet into the air. She had also shown aptitude in summoning sea creatures - everything from small fish and crustaceans (several of which became meals) to giant sea serpents that were aquatic analogs to rock wyrms. It had been as successful an excursion as Sorial could have anticipated for his wife at this stage of her learning. Unfortunately she, like him, was unable to move beyond what Ferguson termed “surface magic.”

“What would happen if we didn’t go back, if we just vanished? Remember how we fantasized about running away together to an isolated part of the world and living out the rest of our lives in peace?”

Sorial’s recollection was that such ideas had been born more out of desperation than as fantasies. At the time, they had considered an exile into obscurity as a last resort when the barriers of class and wealth had made it unlikely they could be together in Vantok’s society. Things had changed since then. Certainly, if they decided to disappear, no one could stop them. But that didn’t mean they had freedom. Few ties bound more strongly than those of honor and obligation. Sorial had pledged his service to Vantok and he wasn’t an oathbreaker, even in an era when the gods were no longer around to punish those who committed such a violation.

“A part of me wishes we could, but The Lord of Fire won’t let us. And if Ferguson’s right, damn him, there ain’t no safe place for us. We’d have more freedom as the spoiled noble girl and the filthy stableboy we used to be. Look at it this way: at least there are things we can do now, as the people we’ve become, than we could then.”

“Like fuck when and where we want to.”

“Like fuck,” agreed Sorial with a smile.

They strolled in companionable silence for a while, walking side-by-side, letting the roar of the ocean fade away to a distant drone. Their feet found a path that led east northeast. After a few miles, it would merge with a more widely traveled road and they would likely encounter other travelers.

“Everything changes,” sighed Alicia. “After you left on your journey to the portal, did you think you’d see me again?”

“The thought of seeing you again kept me going. There were some tough times, especially during my imprisonment, when the only thing for me to cling to was getting back to you. After the portal, it took all my willpower not to rush back immediately.”

“If I was being honest, I thought our final meeting in the temple was the last time we’d see each other. That’s why I was so hostile. I didn’t believe in wizards, or at least that you could be one, and I felt sure you’d die either trying to reach the portal or going through it. Now look at us.”

“Seems unlikely till you think ’bout how fully Ferguson controlled things, even choosing our parents. How am I supposed to feel about a man like that?” Sorial wondered if he would ever be able to resolve his conflicted feelings about the prelate, or Warburm for that matter.

“Grateful? Angry? Resentful? I don’t know. It would be easier to be more kindly disposed toward him if he wasn’t such a condescending prick.”

“When you think of Annie and Vagrum and Kara and Lamanar and even Maraman, it’s hard to think of him as anything other than a monster. Maybe I should have demanded that Azarak execute him. I wonder if he’d think that was ‘ruthless’ enough.”

“He’s too valuable to kill.”

“So he says. Sometimes I wonder if we’d be better off without knowing all the things trapped in his mind.”
Secrets he parcels out like candy to children.

“You don’t believe that.”

“No, I suppose I don’t. I wouldn’t have let him live if I did.”

“Do you think you could kill him in cold blood? If it came down to it?”

Sorial didn’t like to think about it, but some part of him feared he might eventually learn the answer to that question. Ultimately, he wondered whether he should be more concerned about The Lord of Fire and his unwashed minions or The Prelate of Vantok and the knowledge locked inside his head.

* * *

“You cost me a good man. One might say an irreplaceable man. Now when we kill your brother, which we still must do, we have no candidate to replace him with. It’ll be a race with Ferguson to see which of us can come up with the new Lord of Earth. And, knowing the man of old, he probably has someone hidden behind a curtain. Ferguson has a contingency for
everything
.”

Justin’s anger wasn’t as sharp or blistering as Ariel had anticipated, but the moment she entered his tent, she knew he wasn’t his usual self. He was exhausted and in obvious pain. The skin on his forearms and the backs of his hands was blistered and burned - unthinkable wounds to have been suffered by The Lord of Fire.

“You faced the efreet,” she surmised. It was the only explanation.

He nodded wearily. “You have an excellent grasp of the obvious, my dear. I did it as soon as I returned from the portal. I knew I couldn’t rely on Sorial dying at your hands, so I made sure to strengthen my position. The efreet is a formidable foe. He commands elements in ways I never imagined possible. His fire
burned
me. For this first time since I was a lad and fell into the still-hot coals of a cook-fire, my skin smoked and charred. But I’m no callow novice to be intimidated by an unexpected setback. Eventually, I beat him down, pummeling him with magic he didn’t expect, using my fire to cage and throttle him until he yielded, screaming in anguish. I savored his cries even as my own wounds nearly reduced me to unconsciousness. In subjugating him, I used far more energy than I planned and find myself wondering if I’ll have enough to go the distance.”