Master of restless shado.., p.11
Master of Restless Shadows Book Two, page 11
part #2 of Master of Restless Shadows Series
A light-headed sensation rushed over him. Spots of light flickered before his eyes and he swayed on his feet. Only his grip on the cool glass of Gachello’s reliquary allowed him to steady himself.
He remembered Oasia had described the disturbing sensations of projecting her spirit beyond her body. Decades of practice and discipline now allowed her to stretch her awareness across miles. But when she did so, it left her body stunned and vulnerable. Even a Bahiim as powerful as Irsea rooted her soul in living bodies—either within her crows or the trees of the sacred grove.
Fedeles felt a hand on his forearm. He glanced down to see that the young acolyte had crept up the step to his side.
“Are you unwell, my lord?” the acolyte asked quietly.
“A little overtired,” Fedeles replied. He met the young man’s nervous gaze and smiled at him, recognizing how much courage it took for him to stand here with him.
“I can stay a few more moments,” the acolyte whispered.
“Thank you.” Fedeles trailed off as a thought struck him. Could this acolyte’s body possibly carry his spirit closer to the royal bishop? Could he take possession of the youth in the way that Bahiim and Labaran witches took over the bodies of their familiars? He remembered the way his shadow had nearly claimed Ciceron’s dead body. It might not be all that difficult, Fedeles realized, but what kind of monster would he be if he ripped the self-determination from this youth simply to spare himself a little pain?
“If you would stand with me a little time, I would be most grateful,” Fedeles said.
The acolyte nodded.
Fedeles braced himself between the reliquary tanks and the acolyte. He took in a deep breath then plunged his senses down into his shadow. Again he raced for the royal litter, skimming over the stone floor and weaving between statues. This time when he felt his heart jerk and his breath catch, he fought against the taut tether. A sharp, deep pain rocked through him, like the sensation of breaking a bone. His body shuddered and something inside him snapped. Fedeles’s senses catapulted from his living flesh. He no longer saw the murky water of the reliquary tanks or felt the acolyte’s sweating hand against his back.
Instead, he flew across the chamber to crouch at the glittering door of the litter. He heard the royal bishop struggle to pray as his voice was racked with sobs. He passed through the door like a breeze slipping through a curtain. Inside the dark confines of the litter, the royal bishop held his dying father against his chest and rocked his body. Two other priests hunched across from the royal bishop, waiting for him to secure his father’s soul before they applied their surgical knives to the king’s already desiccated flesh.
Fedeles felt more than saw the old king’s soul drifting from his head like a halo of faint blue light. The jade ring on the royal bishop’s left hand tugged at the king’s spirit. It would take him in a few moments unless Fedeles could stop it.
He raced ahead of the king’s wan soul, curling around the royal bishop’s hand. Then all at once he was caught in a grip like that of an undertow. The jade stone seemed to loom large before him and the spell within it threw off tiny rays of silver light, which caught at Fedeles like hooks. Only a few at first, but then dozens, hundreds and thousands of them harpooned into his soul. Each tugged more powerfully, dragging Fedeles nearer the jade stone.
And now he could see the delicate matrix of the jade and how the fine crystalline structure had been etched by the spell within it. Sharp green facets parted like the teeth of a gaping mouth.
Too late Fedeles realized what an idiot he’d been. The ring was meant to capture a soul as it left a body, and that was exactly what he’d made himself into. Now it was taking him in King Juleo’s place. He jerked back against the pull of the spell, but it only served to wrench him even closer in toward the jade maw. His every struggle tightened its crushing grip. A sensation like hot breath rolled over him.
Then he remembered a passage he’d read, written in gold on the very walls of this chapel: the words of the Savior before he rode into the amassed armies of the demon lords. Trapped in the jaws of our enemies, we will plunge even deeper in. We will break their teeth and bloody their throats. We will be a poison in their bellies and their hunger will become our triumph.
If he couldn’t break away, then maybe he could break through.
He concentrated on the shining spell at the very heart of the jade and then hurled himself at it. The hooks and harpoons sped him deeper and faster through clouds of green minerals and glinting crystals. As the shining spell reached out to him, Fedeles poured his strength into it, infusing its shining form with the darkness of his shadow and filling it with his own desire for escape. As it enfolded him, Fedeles reshaped the spell’s form and purpose around him. The hooks and harpoons dissipated. Its clutching neediness washed away. What had been Seize transformed into the joyous bursting geyser of Freedom.
The matrix of stone holding him shattered. Fedeles was hurled through the roof of the litter and up into the rafters of the chapel. Freedom, gleaming like obsidian, winged in circles around him and then melted back into him like a breath of fragrant, fresh air.
Fedeles heard the royal bishop cry out and sensed him clutching his hand as his ring fell away in smoldering pieces. Then he saw Prince Sevanyo as well as a multitude of priests rush to the royal litter. Outraged and astonished shouts filled the air and echoed through the vaulted ceiling.
The Hallowed Kings lifted their heads as King Juleo’s spirit rose slowly past Fedeles. For an instant Fedeles felt the man’s relief wash over him. Then the king’s soul dissipated like smoke.
Had he slipped from the living realm into paradise? The journey across the Sorrowlands didn’t appear to hold any fear for him.
A hard tug from deep in his chest drew Fedeles’s attention. Looking down, he experienced a kind of vertigo and he realized that he gazed at his own bowed head. His body swayed. The acolyte beside him dug his hands into Fedeles’s back. He looked terrified.
Immediately, Fedeles gave in to the desperate pull of his physical body. He dropped like a stone back into his own flesh. He gasped and the light flooding his eyes seemed to flare before him. He swayed, nearly toppled, then reclaimed his sense of balance.
“Are you—is it done?” the acolyte asked in a whisper.
“Yes. I’m fine now. Thank you,” Fedeles assured him. In truth he felt as if he’d just sprinted miles. Fatigue clouded his thoughts and made his limbs feel like dead weights.
The youth nodded, then scurried back down to join his plump, elderly companion. No one else seemed to have noticed his absence. The chaos surrounding the king’s litter held everyone rapt.
In a rare moment of unity Nugalo and Sevanyo both lifted the soulless body of their emaciated father from his litter. Sevanyo wept while Nugalo looked shocked as a man dealt a mortal wound. Blood trickled down his left hand, but he appeared completely unaware of his own injury. Instead he stared desperately at his father’s waxy, blank face. The king’s attendant priests rushed around them, while gathered nobles whispered and wondered at what had happened inside the golden litter.
Fedeles caught Oasia’s gaze and she offered him the briefest of smiles. He didn’t know what she’d witnessed of his struggle, but she seemed to accept that his actions had been justified. Perhaps she too had heard Gachello’s entreaties.
He wasn’t certain why Lliro Vediya stood at her side, but he so resembled Atreau that Fedeles couldn’t help but find the pairing amusing. Or maybe his exhaustion edged him near delirium.
Also among Fedeles’s allies was Timoteo, looking wild-haired and energetic. Fortunately, he could be depended upon to make peace and offer comfort. Now he gently parted the priests standing before him and knelt beside Sevanyo and Nugalo. He felt for the king’s pulse at his throat and then shook his head.
For the first time Fedeles noticed the massive bandage swathing the dead king’s forearm. He had no idea what to make of that.
Timoteo reached out, taking both Nugalo’s hand and Prince Sevanyo’s. He drew them up to their feet. Both of them moved like lost, exhausted children. The king’s attendant priests surged past them to tidy the king’s somewhat bedraggled corpse and then wrapped him in a shroud. As one, they carried his remains out to be washed and made ready for burial. Nobles, guards and other priests parted before them.
A strange, bewildered kind of silence settled over the entire chapel. Few of the people gathered had ever known of a time without King Juleo. Certainly neither Sevanyo nor Nugalo had.
Fedeles thought of all those romantic tales wherein some warrior commented upon the quiet before a storm. He’d always thought such a sensation was something of a poetic license.
But everyone gathered here seemed united in shock and loss. It couldn’t last. Who would want to live in such a peace, so deprived of hope or joy? And yet none of them broke the quiet. Fedeles wondered how many of those gathered understood that from this point on all of Cadeleon was at stake. No earthly authority remained to restrain Nugalo or Sevanyo.
If either prince willed it, the kingdom could readily descend into war.
Still the silence stretched. Then Timoteo leaned close to Nugalo and whispered something to him. The royal bishop drew in a sharp breath and nodded. Timoteo straightened, though he still resolutely held both prince’s hands.
“King Juleo is dead.” Timoteo’s voice rang like a deep bell. He shot a quick glance to Fedeles.
“Long live King Sevanyo!” Fedeles shouted out in response.
At once, Sevanyo’s supporters echoed the words, making them boom like thunder through the chapel. Or, Fedeles thought, as he took in the smoldering anger spreading through Nugalo’s expression, the words rang like the first volley of cannon fire.
The battle had begun.
Chapter Seven
At the sight of Hierro Fueres, Narsi froze, gripping Dommian’s charm-book. Fear coursed through him like ice water, turning his muscles rigid. A cold sweat rose across the back of his neck.
Hierro Fueres strode past ornate sunvine topiaries and bountiful rose bowers, closing the distance between them.
This was the man who had burned the Brand of Obedience into Dommian and whose cruel commands had tortured the dead guard’s every waking moment—the same man who controlled Master Ariz with magic that Narsi’s medicines fought every day. At last, Narsi saw the face of his opponent.
With his dark eyes, lean figure and proud features, he bore more than a passing resemblance to both Prince Sevanyo and Lord Quemanor. The golden tones of his resplendent clothes combined with the gold dust adorning his cheekbones and brow to lend him the appearance of a gilded statue brought to life. His spurs chimed with each of his long steps.
He was handsome, but Narsi couldn’t appreciate it. He could only think of Master Ariz—bound in ropes, blood pouring from his chest, and welcoming his own death as his only hope of release from Hierro.
This assured, elegant man had pleasured in branding and then mutilating Master Ariz. He’d burned torturous servitude into the flesh of a fourteen-year-old boy placed in his care. He’d ordered the assassinations of complete strangers and plotted the murders of his own son, daughter and nephew. He’d enslaved, abused and degraded the man whose journal Narsi now held in his hands. All that cruelty only represented the people Narsi had encountered personally in less than two months. Hardly drops in a sea when compared to the nobleman’s grasp over so very many lives.
Killing Narsi would be nothing to him.
According to Atreau and Countess Radulf, Hierro held a small—but growing—army of the capital’s people captive in his sadistic thrall. It could hardly be a coincidence that the man was here when an enthralled physician-priest attempted to take the king’s life, could it?
Hierro’s eyes narrowed as he closed the distance between them.
Narsi’s heart hammered in his chest as his fear intensified to the edge of panic. Forget murdering him. That was the least harm that this man was capable of inflicting upon him. Narsi almost expected to see green leaves wither and flowers die as the man walked past the cascading rose bowers. Instead a cherrylark flitted over his head and then alighted on the shoulder of the slender woman trailing behind him.
Narsi blinked.
He’d been so terrified and angered by the sight of Hierro that he hadn’t even noticed the woman. Her sedate gait and gray mourning dress allowed her to nearly melt into the garden shadows. The cherrylark lingered on her shoulder for a moment, as if it had mistaken her for one of the arbors decorating the grounds. Then it flitted away and the woman lifted her wan face to watch it fly. She looked so much like Lady Quemanor that Narsi felt certain that this willowy young woman must be Oasia and Hierro’s younger sister, the recently widowed Clara Odalis.
Hierro came to a halt hardly five feet from where Narsi sat.
“What is it you want, Remes?” he demanded.
The man who had shouted Hierro’s name marched into Narsi’s view as well. He wore a priest’s robes and cassock, but the astounding quantity of gold thread decorating his black-and-violet raiment indicated high rank. As Remes approached, Clara Odalis dropped down nearly to the cobblestones in a reverent curtsy. “My prince.”
Prince Remes, Narsi thought. The royal bishop’s heir and a conspirator in Hierro’s plan to usurp the throne, if Master Ariz’s disjointed confessions were accurate. Narsi silently willed all three of them to keep walking.
Instead Clara glanced in his direction. Narsi guessed that the flash of sunlight across his shoe might have caught her attention. Or maybe the glittering pebbles flecked with mica drew her eyes. Whatever it was, Narsi felt thankful that it held her focus on the ground at his feet, when she could so very easily have lifted her gaze and spotted him in the shadows.
He tried to assure himself that none of them would recognize him, much less suspect him to be a danger to them. He could pretend to be absorbed in his reading. Maybe they’d ignore him. Except he’d seen no other Haldiim people—or even Labarans—in this place. For that reason alone, he was unlikely to be overlooked.
Clara frowned and narrowed her eyes, in nearly the same way that Hierro had moments before. But where Hierro had lost interest instantly, Clara appeared to concentrate. She stared hard, her dark gaze seeming almost ferocious. Then Narsi noticed faint blue glints of light flickering around the simple null sign that he’d traced through the pebbles and dirt.
However, the longer Clara stared at it, the more it seemed to shine with the radiance of a real spell. The edges took on a sharp definition and flared up across an expanse of stones as well as Narsi’s foot. He suppressed the reflex to jerk back from the light. He didn’t dare move a muscle.
As he sat rigid, Narsi found that his own gaze now slipped off the null symbol. Even his own feet and legs seemed difficult to focus upon. Something like vertigo washed through Narsi when he tried to pick out the details of his bootlaces.
Was Clara’s gaze so potent that it could imbue a simple sign with magic? Or had it been that first glower Hierro had shot at the symbol? Narsi didn’t quite know how it had occurred, but obviously the null sign he’d sketched had become a spell. It seemed to avert his and presumably everyone else’s vision. He had no idea how long it would last or what other parameters the spell could have, so Narsi sat still and silent, hoping it would continue to shield him.
“Please do rise, my dear.” Prince Remes extended his hand to catch Clara’s wrist. Her attention snapped to the prince and she straightened at once.
“Forgive me, my prince, I thought I saw . . .” Her gaze slid sidelong toward Narsi again, but then the null sign flared and she shook her head. “How goes your father’s vigil? There would appear to be some disturbance.”
“More than a disturbance,” Prince Remes snapped. His expression turned accusatory as he looked back to Hierro. “Someone enthralled one of my grandfather’s physician-priests and commanded the man to slash the king’s wrist.”
“What?” Hierro appeared genuinely taken aback. “Was the assassin stopped in time?”
“You really don’t know?” Prince Remes demanded in a whisper.
Hierro arched his brows. He leaned closer to the prince and responded in a low growl.
“How could it possibly profit our plans to have the king die before his appointed time? We are not yet prepared.” Hierro scowled down at the stables as two carriages and half a dozen riders thundered out, racing for the city streets. He turned back to Prince Remes. “Does the king live?”
Prince Remes considered Hierro, and something about Hierro’s agitated expression must have convinced him, because the suspicion faded from the prince’s face.
“Some Haldiim physician caught the assassin before he could complete his work,” Prince Remes stated. “But even so, grandfather is in a very bad way. They don’t know if he’ll even survive the ride to the Shard of Heaven.”
Narsi scowled. Had he been given any say in the matter, he would not have allowed an injured, shocked elder to be shaken and bounced across uneven roads. The rough treatment was likely to tear the stitches from his fragile skin and start him bleeding again. What the king needed were liquids and natural sleep.
“He damn well better survive,” Hierro snapped. The muscles of his jaw clenched so tightly that Narsi could see them flex. And the authenticity of aggrieved rage in Hierro’s voice surprised Narsi.
Could it be that Hierro wasn’t the man building an enthralled army? Or at least not the only one casting thralls over the people around him? Might there be two different witches at work? Both of them using the same sadistic brand? Narsi and Lord Vediya had discussed the possibility of such a thing, but Lord Vediya had argued very convincingly against it. Now, however, Narsi felt his doubt returning.
“If it wasn’t you . . .” Prince Remes again lowered his voice to a whisper, then stole a glance around him. Narsi held his breath, expecting the prince to pick him out in an instant. However, the prince’s eyes seemed to slide past the entire bower. He returned his attention to Hierro. “Who is responsible for this? You don’t think Fedeles . . .”
