Flight Into Darkness (26 page)

“Maistre?” Frantic knocking jolted him completely awake. “It's the king!”

“I'll be right there.” Ruaud hurried to the king's cabin in his nightshirt.

Enguerrand turned to greet him with an ecstatic smile; Fragan, his valet, hovered anxiously behind him. “There's nothing to worry about; I'm feeling well. Exceptionally well, in fact.”

“I found his majesty lying unconscious on the floor of the cabin,” said Fragan.

“Sire?” Ruaud said, inwardly praying that this was not a return of the red sand fever. He gazed intently at the king, trying to see if there was any outward sign of illness.

“Fragan, will you leave us?” Enguerrand's eyes seemed unusually bright but he spoke lucidly enough. The instant they were alone, he said, “I had the most wonderful dream, Ruaud. In fact, even now, I'm
not certain if it was a dream. My guardian angel came to me. He said I had been chosen. Chosen to be Saint Sergius's successor.”

Oskar Alvborg stared bitterly up at the portrait of his dead mother, Countess Ulla.

“Why am I left kicking my heels here, with only my father's title and gambling debts as legacy?” His footfall echoed through the empty mansion as he limped from room to room. Ignominiously discharged from the Tielen army after a disastrous battle with the Drakhaoul of Azhkendir, he had been eking out a miserable existence on his father's estate ever since. “Damn you, Eugene. Why did you have to treat me so shabbily? Was it my fault the Drakhaoul wiped out my regiment?”

A fiery shadow flickered through his mind. He stopped, aware that something was approaching him, something that felt like the terrifying aura of the Drakhaoul… yet was strikingly different.

The room suddenly shimmered with flame. Terrified, Oskar saw scarlet eyes staring at him from the darkness.

“The blood of Artamon runs in your veins, Oskar Alvborg,”
whispered a dry voice.
“Let me heal your injuries. Become one with me and I will make your dreams come true.”

“Who are you?” Oskar demanded.

“You think yourself Gunnar Alvborg's son… but you are Prince Karl's illegitimate child, Eugene's unacknowledged brother. You have as equal a right to the throne of Tielen as Eugene.”

“How can you know such a thing? Show me proof.” Oskar was skeptical, although the thought of being Karl of Tielen's son inflamed his ambitions.

“Hidden behind the canvas of your mother's portrait is a letter from the prince to your mother,”
whispered the voice.
“What more proof could you want?”
Oskar turned—and in that moment the shadow struck, enwrapping him in its fiery coils. He cried out in agony—and then, as it melted into him, he began to see clearly again.

“Who are you?” he gasped. “Are you a Drakhaoul?”

“My name is Sahariel,”
said the voice within him,
“and I have come to help you fulfill your destiny, Oskar.
”

“The old man is still asleep.” Jagu said to Celestine as he emerged from Linnaius's prison cell. He lowered his voice. “You need a story
to cover yourself for the Inquisitors. They'll ask. You know they'll ask.”

Celestine tossed her head impatiently. Since they had arrived at the Commanderie Forteresse to deliver their prisoner, Jagu had become increasingly jittery. And in their working partnership, she had always relied on him to be the levelheaded one.

“All I did was use his own magic to subdue him. A little sleepdust; what possible harm could there be in that?”

Men's voices could be heard farther along the dark stone passage. Jagu took hold of her arm and hurried her away in the other direction.

“Only you know what happened aboard ship. If I hadn't stopped him, we'd all have drowned.”

“They won't see it that way.” They stopped beneath the uncertain light of a guttering lantern. “Take off the spell you placed on him, Celestine. Before they guess who is responsible and put you on trial too.”

“If your vow is so important to you, Jagu, why don't you tell them yourself?”

He gripped hold of her by both arms. “How can he be tried in the Inquisition Court if he's in a coma?”

She hesitated, her anger dissipating a little. Was the spell she had used affecting her judgment?

He relaxed his grip. “I'll invent some excuse to keep Visant's men at bay. That'll give you the time to undo what you've done.”

“Guerrier de Joyeuse.” Celestine showed her papers to the guard outside Linnaius's cell. “I've come to interrogate the prisoner.”

He scratched his head. “Interrogate an unconscious man?”

“I have reason to believe that he's been fooling us all. Give me a quarter hour or so …”

“Good luck to you, then, Guerrier.” He unlocked the cell door.

As soon as the cell door clanged shut, Celestine went straight over to the narrow bed where the Magus lay insensible and knelt beside him.

“Sever,”
she whispered, holding her hands over the invisible bonds with which she had confined him. She heard him let out a faint, groaning sigh.

“Where… is this?”

“You're in the Forteresse in Lutèce,” she said, sitting back on her heels to observe him.

“Klervie,” he said in a whisper.

“Don't call me that!”

“I'm the only one alive who really knew your father. There's so much I could tell you about him.”

“You'll have to do better than that, Magus.” She had known he would try to win her sympathy with subtle words. And yet wasn't that the real reason she had come?

“Hervé was such a promising student. From the moment he first arrived at the college, I knew he would go far.” Linnaius's eyes were closed and his voice drifted toward her, as if he were talking in his sleep. “I can see him now… an eager-eyed boy with a shock of untidy hair. So absentminded. When he was intent on his studies, he would forget everything else, especially his laboratory chores.”

His words were working their spell; she knew she should leave, yet she stayed, entranced by the portrait he was painting of her father.

“If you liked and respected my father so much, why did you steal his invention?”

“Who told you that?”

“He
did! Just before they dragged him onto the pyre in the Place du Trahoir.”

A look of puzzlement crossed the Magus's pallid face. “But why would Hervé believe such a thing?”

“Because it was true!”

“I was not in Karantec when the Inquisition came because I was far away in Khitari. When I heard what happened to the college, I knew I could never return to Francia. So I stayed in the north and sought protection from Prince Karl of Tielen.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Have you never asked yourself if anyone else was responsible? My apprentice, Rieuk Mordiern, was the one who made the Vox Aethyria work, though it pains me to admit it. And he ran away to join the secret sect of the Magi of Ondhessar: the ones who practice the Forbidden Art of soul-stealing.”

“Ondhessar?” Celestine had been well schooled by Ruaud de Lanvaux in the bloodstained history of Azilis's Holy Shrine. “The soul-stealers?” All of a sudden she felt a chill drench her. “Rieuk Mordiern became a soul-stealer?”

“Rieuk was a stubborn and willful boy.” Linnaius let out a faint sigh. “He was also a powerful crystal magus. He was the one who energized the aethyr crystals in the Vox and established a sympathetic resonance between them.”

“Was? Is he dead?” Doubts crept into her mind; the magus who had put his mark on Jagu was a soul-stealer, as was the one who took Henri's life. “But you also know how to steal souls!” She rounded on him. “That wretched girl we found in your rooms. You used her soul, and then left her for dead.”

“But that was not a true soul-stealing. She was a Spirit Singer. Didn't you see her zither?”

A Spirit Singer. His story almost sounded convincing—and yet she could not bring herself to believe it.

“I employed her to search for a soul in the Ways Beyond… and she couldn't find her way back. That was when she fell into that trancelike state—”

“I don't want to hear your excuses.”

“Why don't you listen to what I'm telling you, Celestine? Rieuk may still be alive. I saw him in Enhirre a year after the fall of the college. And he was the one who released the aethyrial spirit from the crystal.
The spirit that your father bound in his book.
” The Faie. She could feel his eyes boring into her, two silver shafts of light.

“Rieuk Mordiern did that?” Celestine took a step back.

“That crystal was stolen from the Shrine of Azilis. I happen to know, because I stole it.” Linnaius let out a little self-satisfied chuckle. “I needed it for our Vox Aethyria. We'd tried every other kind of crystal. I knew that the shrine crystal was unique; I just didn't know quite how unique…” Were these just the ramblings of a senile old man? Could she trust anything he said?

A strange radiance flickers like silver firelight burning in a tray on Papa's desk. The light sharply outlines in shadow-silhouette two men bending over the tray.

She had been just five years old. She had woken to hear a faint, desolate cry coming from her father's study, a cry that drew her from her bed to see what was the matter.

Fading in and out of clarity like a reflection in a wind-rippled lake, she glimpses a face, its features twisted into an expression of such agony that it pains her to look at it. And as she gazes, it fixes her with its anguish-riven eyes.

“Help me,” gasps Rieuk Mordiern. “I can't control it…”

The soul-stealing magus with the hawk familiar had demanded that she give him back the Faie. He had called her Klervie. And he had described the Faie as an “aethyrial spirit,” just as Linnaius had done. Why was Linnaius telling her that Rieuk Mordiern was the one who had set the spirit free from the crystal?

“Haven't you been pursuing the wrong man? Shouldn't you be seeking to take revenge on the man who condemned your father to the stake: Alois Visant?”

She looked at him, angry and bewildered. “You're just trying to confuse me!”

His hands parted in a gesture of denial and she noticed that they trembled, as if palsied. “What have I to gain from that? I'm your prisoner and certain to be condemned to death.”

His words came like a dash of cold water, clearing her mind. “And you deserve to die for your crimes against Francia.” She drew herself up, remembering that she was an agent of the Francian Commanderie. “Your alchymical weapons have killed countless Francian sailors. The storms you've created have drowned countless more—Muscobites as well as Francians.”

Another little shrug. “I was merely serving my good friend and patron, Karl of Tielen. He made me a citizen of Tielen. In war, one fights to defend one's own country.”

This was going nowhere. She made to leave, but one hand snaked out and gripped her by the wrist. “Be careful, Celestine.” His pale eyes stared piercingly into hers. “The aethyrial spirit you are harboring is both dangerous and powerful.”

She tried to pull away, but his grip was unexpectedly strong.

“How long do you think you can deceive the Inquisition?”

“What?”

“I can see the changes that she's wrought in you already. Take a good look at your eyes next time you pass a mirror.”

What was he babbling about? Was he losing his wits? She snatched her hand back and retreated, glaring at him. “She's my guardian. She would never do anything to harm me.”

But as soon as she had regained her room, she found herself snatching glances at her reflection every time she passed the little mirror propped up on her desk. Eventually she seized it and critically examined her reflection.

“Changes?” Her eyes glinted, but they were bright with anger that the wily old man had almost succeeded in undermining her confidence, manipulating her emotions through her precious memories of her father. “I won't let him get to me again.”

Ruaud de Lanvaux retired to his study to go over the transcript of the day's proceedings at Linnaius's trial.

When Celestine was called forward to be interrogated by Visant, he had felt a sudden inexplicable sense of unease. She had looked serene and had answered the Inquisitor's probing questions without showing the slightest hesitation or nervousness. So why did he still feel so troubled? Was it the line of questioning that Visant had employed? Or was it a disturbing rumor he had been informed of earlier that day? Two of the crewmen had gone to Kilian Guyomard, claiming that they had seen her, at the height of the storm, bending over the Magus, murmuring a magical incantation—after which the storm had suddenly, dramatically, died down.

“Sailors are superstitious at the best of times,” Kilian had said, laughing it off, “but I thought you should know, in case Inquisitor Visant chooses to use the allegation in his questioning.”

And then there was the alchymical machine Jagu and Celestine had removed from the Magus's laboratory. What in Sergius's name was it? It stood on his desk, sparkling in the candlelight, an elaborate mechanical construction of metal and crystal. Perhaps Celestine had been mistaken as to its alchymical function and it was merely a new type of clock, not yet seen in Francia.

Yet the perfection of the clear crystal, fashioned in the shape of a flower with its petals open, reminded him of something he had seen long ago.

“The lotus crystal in the shrine,” he murmured. Kaspar Linnaius had stolen the sacred treasure and he, young and stupidly eager, had tried to stop him, earning a broken collarbone for his pains. On damp days like today, the old injury still ached. “Is it possible Linnaius used the crystal he stole to make this machine? And if so, why?”

A gentle tap on the door interrupted his musing.

“You wanted to speak with me, Maistre?” Celestine stood on the threshold.

He looked up, smiling, genuinely pleased to see her. “Come in. I'm sorry to summon you here so late.”

“Just me, and not Jagu?”

Had she guessed the reason he had summoned her? He forced himself to keep smiling, wanting to put her at her ease.

“I wanted to have the opportunity to chat together, just as we used to, Celestine. I've been so busy that I was afraid you must have been thinking that I was neglecting you.” Even though he had devoted his life to serving God, he had always cared for her as if she were his adopted daughter.