The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (17 page)

“Piking—  Blinded another one,” he heard Enkhaelen mutter under his breath.  “I'm getting tired of this.  Brace yourself, Iskaen, this will hurt.”

Geraad did as he was told, and the pain came: a lancing sensation in first one eye then the other, and a scraping along the inside of each orb that sent visceral shocks all the way to his toes.  His eyes throbbed in their sockets, and he whimpered and clutched at Enkhaelen's unseen wrists until the necromancer made a sound of annoyance and paralyzed him.

There followed more pain, more unspeakable sensations.  Then finally specks of color began to bloom in the null of his vision, and the pressure of Enkhaelen's fingers left his eyes.  He blinked as the pieces of his sight cohered like a puzzle to reveal the necromancer examining him from close range.  Though his face was stark, his eyes like chips of glacier ice, there was concern in the line of his mouth.  It evaporated as Geraad focused.

“Good,” he said, then rose and turned without another word, black robe sweeping away.

A gauntleted hand gripped Geraad by the arm and hauled him up, and he worked to brace his feet under himself, still weak in the knees.  Another gauntlet gripped his shoulder, and he looked up into the stern face of the Crown Prince.

From this vantage, the prince's exhaustion was obvious—not only in the darkness beneath his eyes but from the methodical clench of his jaw, the glassiness of his stare.  Geraad sensed the mentalists' light hooks in him, and if he had any defense against them, it did not show.  The teardrop-shaped pendant at his throat radiated a subtle suggestion but was apparently not meant to make him look pristine.

“Green robe.  You're not a military mage,” he said in a low voice.  He overtopped Geraad by more than a hand-span, shoulders half again as broad, and in the bulky white enameled armor he looked like he could crush Geraad as an afterthought.  His eyes were hard.  “No Inquisition insignia either.  Civilian?”

“I—  Yes.  Yes, Your Highness,” Geraad stammered.  He was still rebuilding his shields—the work almost automatic now that the mentalists had ceased probing him—but could feel the threat radiating from this man.  The serious consideration of snapping his neck.

“And you serve Enkhaelen by choice?”

“It's...a...complicated arrangement.”

“Is it.”

I should have run when I had the chance
, he thought, cringing as the Crown Prince's grip tightened.  Politics in the court of Count Varen had not trained him for entanglement with a mad necromancer, a pissed-off prince, scads of hostile mentalists and an Emperor who might not be human.

Might not?
a little voice yammered in his head. 
He holds suns in his eyes.  He stripped you to the soul.

The Crown Prince's eyes narrowed.  Geraad found himself wishing Enkhaelen would intervene again, and felt sick.  Trying to explicate their arrangement without sounding callous or foolish was beyond his capabilities—beyond sanity, really.

For a moment they stood like that, Geraad speechless, the Crown Prince growing ever more thunderous.  Then abruptly the prince relaxed his clench and just steadied Geraad as he swayed.  “He is like a spider,” he said in an undertone, anger replaced by something sadder.  “Pulls you into his web, binds you up and lets you hang there, waiting for the fatal bite.  It always comes, mage.  Don't get comfortable.”

With that, he released Geraad entirely.

Still lightheaded, Geraad braced his feet and straightened his robe.  He was more than ready for this to be over.  The Crown Prince seemed to feel the same, and they both looked toward Enkhaelen, who was crouched now between the remaining women.  They were lashed to the floor by white fibers, paralyzed, their minds beating inside them like frantic moths, and as he watched the necromancer pierce and knit at them with the long blue needles of his magic, Geraad felt his stomach turn.

Nearby, watching with frightened eyes, were the boy and the girl: her arms around him from behind, his hands gripping her wrists.  It was not difficult to see the family resemblance between them and the women.  The bear-man and the priestess were already gone, the tiles smooth and pristine where they had been.

'Come here,'
he sent to the girl, meaning her brother too.  Enkhaelen had said this wouldn't work on children, so surely...

She shot him a glare and stayed put.

“There,” said Enkhaelen, rising.  “Both adjusted accordingly.  I'm not sure if the elder will convert—she's already frail—but the rest should succeed.  I need to talk to Rackmar about his expectations, though.  Whatever he was trying to do here, he's shit at it.”

The Emperor chuckled.  “And the boy?”

Geraad saw the girl bare her teeth at Enkhaelen as the necromancer turned toward them. 
'Come here now,'
he projected, but she did not budge.  Unconcerned, Enkhaelen stepped over the body of the mother and leaned in to peer at the boy's frightened face.

“What about him?” he said.  “I told you we can only handle mature specimens.  Even pubescent ones are problematic—all those chemicals asurge.  Throw him back into the human sea for a while, then reel him in once he's grown.”

“He has seen too much.”

“Then mindwash him.  What do you have all these mentalists for, anyway?”

“You.”

“I'm flattered, but I don't need that much attention.”

“Supervision.  No.  You will convert him.”

Enkhaelen scoffed, then said, “Wait—are you serious?  You would risk losing the whole batch just because Rackmar wants a new toy?”

“He is my proxy, Shaidaxi.  In this final game, his needs are mine.  If your work can be wrecked by so little a thing, then perhaps it is time that it be re-wrought.”

“But I've put so much into this!  I've nearly—“

“Recreated my people?”

“...No.  No, but—“

“Cease your whining.”

Enkhaelen's hands fisted.  Then he crammed them into his robe-coat pockets like a stubborn child and said, “Understand this, Aradys: It.  Won't.  Work.”

Up on the throne, the Emperor leaned forward slightly.  Geraad dared not look at him directly but it seemed that the light from his eyes had intensified, their radiance burning into his peripheral vision.  “You dare dictate to me?” he said, and there was no warmth in him now.

Such was the rage flowing from the necromancer that Geraad expected him to pull a blade from his pocket.  But his hands came free still clenched on nothing, then slowly opened.

“I know you're the master,” said Enkhaelen, “but just...let me control this much.”

“No.  Do as you are told.”

And that was it.  The resistance left him; he nodded and touched the boy's face with a stiff hand.  Something glinted between his fingers.  The boy trembled briefly then went still, eyes sagging shut, and his mind vanished from Geraad's perception like an escaping bird.

“What—  Aedin! 
What did you do?
” shrieked the girl, hands coming off the boy's shoulders to claw at Enkhaelen's face.  They hit blue wards and the necromancer reached through them to jab her in the throat, quick, precise.  Her fear flared bright as she froze in place—muscles locked like before, not just her legs but everything.  She fell backward as stiff as a board, and Geraad winced as she hit the floor.

“You may keep that one,” said the Emperor.  “She suits you.”

“Thank you, Majesty.”

“Now go.  I weary of your presence.”

“Yes, Majesty.”

With another diagramming thought and a spider-like gesture, Enkhaelen had the girl on her feet and moving jerkily.  Her mind still shrieked inside its cage, and it took all Geraad's strength not to reach out and silence her.  Instead, as the floor beneath the frightened women and the husk of a boy began to unfurl, he closed himself in enough mental armor to go numb.

Still, the psychic uproar battered at him like heavy rain against castle walls, furious in its distance.  When a gloved hand took his arm, he let it pull him away—across the pulsing tiles, to the harder floor of the corridor, back the way they had come.  Toward safety.

“That wasn't what I called you here to do,” the Crown Prince growled at their side.

“Perhaps you should have specified,” said Enkhaelen coldly.  “I'm not omniscient.”

“I told you they were Rackmar's plan.  I thought you could—“

“Save them?  Don't be a fool, Kel.  The girl only lives because she's a proto-mentalist, and if not for Iskaen I would neither know nor care.”

“I thought you were better than this.”

“I don't know why.  I've been doing this longer than you've been alive.”

“That's not an excuse!  You taught me—“

“You were a child then.  Children need simple, stark concepts like good and evil because they can't yet comprehend reality.  Don't mistake a bit of kindness for evidence that I care.”

Geraad heard the Crown Prince choke.  Nearby emotions pressed in on him but he couldn't pick them out from the still-dense background of the throne room.

They jerked to a halt suddenly, Enkhaelen's hand leaving Geraad's arm.  “Don't touch me!” the necromancer snapped, and Geraad looked up to see the Crown Prince gripping the much smaller man by the shoulders, glaring as if he could crush him with his mind.

“Let.  Go.  Now,” said Enkhaelen through his teeth.  At his sides, his gloved hands made fists, threads of blue-black energy gathering around them.

“You would strike me down?” said the Crown Prince, face hard.  “Then do it.  You've dragged me this low, you might as well finish me off.”

“Oh, pike your self-pity,” the necromancer sneered.  “You think this is low?  You started on a mountain; falling off a few cliffs won't even get you close to the rest of the world.  Go back to slutting around the court.  It's what you're good at.”

“There is no court!  Everyone here is his plaything—“

“Just like you.”

The Crown Prince shoved Enkhaelen away in fury, and Geraad barely managed to step aside.  As Enkhaelen bounced off the corridor wall, Geraad saw tiny threads unweave from it as if to pursue him, only to smooth away as he took his distance.

Straightening his robe with brisk tugs, Enkhaelen said, “We don't require an escort to the portal room.  Return to your duties.”

The Crown Prince's illusion wavered beneath a surge of rage.  Geraad caught a glimpse of changed eyes, sharp teeth, zigzag seams—  Then the prince turned and stormed past the paralyzed girl, down the hall and away.

The rest of the trip passed in silence.  As they crossed the portal back into the laboratory, the heaviness lifted from Geraad's shields, and he let them drop in relief.  The girl still radiated a miasma of bad feelings, but he could handle that.  He could help one person.

The thin thread of Enkhaelen's thoughts snapped as the portal closed.

Geraad turned to stare at the necromancer, who lingered by the portal-frame.  He could not deny what he had seen and heard, and as a mentalist he could suppress it but he would never forget it.  This man had shown him true monstrosity—had killed a child in front of him—had pulled back the curtain of the Palace itself and told him,
Listen
.

“Why?” he hissed.  “Why are you a part of this?  Don't you know how wrong it is?  How—“  Enkhaelen's hand fell from the frame, but he did not answer, so the words kept coming.  “How monstrous, inhuman...  It doesn't matter if the people here came to you on purpose, because you're doing awful things to them too, and you—  That thing in the Palace, it's your work?  I don't understand.  You have feelings, a conscience, I sensed it—do you just ignore it?  How can you—“

Enkhaelen did not turn; he simply made a backhanding gesture, and an invisible force tore Geraad off his feet and flung him across an empty slab.  Stunned and in pain, Geraad tried to slide off but Enkhaelen spread his fingers wide, spreading Geraad's limbs the same until they pinned themselves to the corners of the slab.

“I'll be with you in a moment,” said the necromancer.

“What?  No, no—“

“Keep your mouth shut or I'll shut it for you.”

Geraad swallowed a scream with effort.  Every inch of him was in a cold sweat, and he wanted to struggle but nothing obeyed him.  Only his head could move, and as he looked, he saw the portal-frame fill with a new scene.

No arrival room.  No arcane space.  Just a painted wagon on a dusty road with tall dry grass extending into the distance and a man climbing down from the driver's bench to approach.  He was older, white-haired and bearded and dressed in rough workman's garb, and when he stopped at the edge of the portal he clearly overtopped the waiting necromancer by a head.

“You don't often call,” he said.  He had a deep voice, resonant, grandfatherly—the kind that laughed from the gut and shook the rafters.  He kept it low, though, and his gaze skimmed the laboratory over Enkhaelen's shoulder, fixing first on the girl and then Geraad.  The creases of his face deepened.  “What trouble is this?”

“The usual.  Some information first.  Are you missing a Mother Matriarch?  From Turo?”

“Damiel.  She and her husband were taken by the White Flame.”

“To the Palace.  After sheltering that idiot, apparently.”