Lady of Mercy (The Sundered, Book 3) (48 page)

The audacity of his entrance took twelve of the thirteen who sat around the long, large table by surprise. The Lesser Cabal of Illan gaped at his black-clad form a moment in silence.

“Your ‘Majesty.’ ” Tiras gave a low, easy bow.

The two men at the doors crumpled, almost unnoticed. As their armored bodies slid partially into the doorframe, Darin could see that they were Swords. The black and red crest on their surcoats buckled and folded, mere cloth without life to give the office strength and fear.

Erin nodded, and together she and Darin stepped into the room to stand just behind Renar.

At the head of the long table, in a chair with a high, velvet-lined back, sat a man with a circlet across his brow. Darin had never seen him before, but knew the trappings of office well: the sceptre and the crown of Maran. Along the sides of the table, robed in black, with the red of the broken circle as crests, sat several men. These, too, Darin knew, although he had never seen them before in his life: they were high priests and priests, none of them Karnari. Seven had come to their feet at the interruption; five remained seated. He looked at those five, saw two women, and wondered which one was Lady Verena. Whichever she was, she showed no sign of recognition.

Along each wall, weapons drawn and readied, stood six Swords. A further six waited behind the king’s chair.

From the high seat at the end of the large, heavy table, Duke Jordan of Illan inclined his head. If there was surprise in his eyes, it was buried in their glittering darkness; his lips turned up in the pale ghost of a smile.

“Tiras. How unexpected and how very disappointing. But at least we will have an end to it; this little subversion has lingered too long.” And he turned his head to glance at his nephew.

“Ah, Uncle, precipitous as always.” Renar stepped further into the room.

“Renar,” he said, his voice a little louder, but no less even. “I was always rather fond of you.”

“A peculiar way to show affection, Uncle.”

“Is it? Marantine was doomed to fall, whether sooner or later, it doesn’t matter. The Empire and the Church were omnipresent
and near omnipotent. What I did preserves Maran much more effectively than any of your father’s plans.”

“Doomed to fall?” Renar spit to the side; his cheeks were flushed, but his face remained near expressionless. “The walls were made by the Lady of Elliath; had
we
endured, they would have.”

“And you believe that? Fool. You are not so perceptive as I once might have hoped.” He raised a hand in a gesture of command. “I saw a new power, Renar; I saw it and realized that it was greater than the old, dying magics.”

Two more of the priests abandoned their chairs.

“Jordan.”

The king turned to face the only priest that had not yet taken to his feet. “And I fear, my dear nephew, that you will come to believe in its strength. As I did. Remember the fires.” His eyes, dark, left his nephew’s. “I would like you to meet Lord Marak of Cossandara.

“Come, do not be petty. We’ve business which needs attention, and mere family squabbles should not interfere.” The man turned to raise an eyebrow at one of the women. “Lady Verena, it appears that your ‘warning’ has come late.” Voice icy, he added, “But we will deal with the question of you as we will deal with
him.”

She bowed her head, her hair a tightly drawn dark mass. When she raised it again, an enigmatic smile hovered at her lips. “Ah, Marak, ever the optimist. My warning, if you had chosen to support me, would have come on time.” Pale, she bowed to her cousin. “Renar of Maran. It’s been years, cousin. Perhaps it would have been wiser had you stayed away.” But her voice held no regret; instead, it trembled with fierceness.

“You!” a pale, dark-haired young man said. “You betrayed us!”

“I?” Verena smiled. She leaned, almost languid, into the tabletop; the edge of her braid skirted its polished reflection as she contemplated its surface. And then her smile hardened, sharpened; it turned from catlike to something inexplicably human and vicious. Fennis of Handerness barely had time to widen his eyes before her dagger found its perfect, quiet mark. “Very well,” she said, as shouting erupted around the table. “I have.”

Renar stared at his cousin in shock as she twisted the dagger before drawing it free. As if aware of his gaze, she turned, and
although other voices drowned out her words, he read her lips clearly.

“I can’t always be upstaged, little cousin. Don’t fail!”

Darin began to call the fire.

If he had thought the sight of priests might upset his concentration, he had been wrong. Each of these black-robed men had held the power of life and death for so many, so long—but they had no hold over him. He was no longer a slave, to stand and fall at their whim; he was patriarch of Culverne; he was free—and he was irrevocably their enemy, in a position of what little strength he could muster.

He had just a few seconds to react when the eyes of the seated priest turned steel gray.

Suddenly, everything was too clear.

Renar leaped out of the way as a pillar of fire erupted through the floor that he’d been standing on.

“Run, nephew, it does no good—this is a special flame; it follows where you go! You weren’t here for the fires, were you? Guards!” The Swords bridled at so common a term, and they hesitated for a moment. “Take the rest!” Only a moment, though. They knew a threat when they saw it and could only stand on formality so long before taking necessary action.

Out of the corner of one eye, Darin caught the raised glow of Erin’s sword. It swept through the air in a pattern familiar to him. He turned to see Tiras standing almost immobile as he stared into the living pillar.

Fire.
The Night of Fires, the two nights, took the old master’s senses as he stared, unnoticed, at the priest. He had his answers at last.

White-fire exploded on the table. Somebody screamed; Darin was not sure who, and didn’t take the time to look. His gate was open; the power willing.

A second pillar of flame burst into being. It moved toward the first, a sluggish column of red. There was life in the room; life to burn, life to extinguish. To meet flame instead was not its goal.

Beads of sweat formed on Darin’s forehead as he struggled to control what he had summoned forth.

Fire touched fire, molding itself into one entity. Darin bit back a cry of shock as his arms began to tingle. The pillar moved
toward him now, Renar forgotten. He tried to force it back, focusing the strength of his will upon it. It slowed perceptibly. It didn’t stop moving.

Shaken, he took a step back toward the doorway. He tried again to control the fire. He tried to separate what he had called from what it had joined. The flames inched steadily closer.

No!
He bit his lip on the word, trying to force it to become reality.

A whisper of laughter, distant and dry as the rustle of leaves, echoed clearly over the din of the noise in the room.

He looked up then; his vision misted. He had never really tried to see out of power-touched eyes before this. He had always had eyes for the fire alone; the fire that glowed so brilliantly and warmly.

Everything was blurred, the edges of forms, both living and inanimate, tinged in a faint haze. He could make out bodies, see faces and weapons, as if from a great distance. Only one thing other than the fire was completely clear: the priest seated at the end of the table closest to him. He was younger than Trethar. His hair was white with shocks of dark black in both beard and brows. And his eyes were silvered glowing orbs.

Etched into the hard, cold lines of the man’s mouth was a frosty smile. “I don’t know where you learned this, boy.”

The fire moved again, cutting inches away from the distance between Darin and death.

“It appears I won’t have the chance to find out.”

Again the fire slithered forward.

It ended this way. Darin felt bitterness forming a knot at the base of his throat.
We’ve
lost.

The city was already the domain of the Church. The people, killed or cowed, would offer less and less resistance. The men that had come at Renar’s behest would be slaughtered. And the last of the lines, Elliath and Culverne, would meet their end and give truth to the lie of the broken red circle that glittered in mockery along the front of the priest’s robes.

No! Shutting his eyes, he threw his hands out in a gesture of denial and anger.

The fire stopped.

The priest stood, his unpleasant frown a relief from the darkness of his smile. The frown grew.

Darin widened the gate in his mind, and the single column flared, its light intensifying as its height did. And then he began to
push
.

The fire started to slide an inch above the stone floor toward the priest.

The column burned more brightly again, if it was possible, and came to a lurching halt.

The older man’s brow was now etched with the deep furrows of effort. He gestured, a grand, sweeping motion. The pillar of flame touched the high, arched ceiling. But even when it began to move toward Darin again, the priest showed no satisfaction. His face glistened with sweat.

Darin had never seen a priest sweat before, certainly not like this. And he knew why the man did. He had never before seen so large a fire summoned forth—the cost of controlling it would be far too large a risk.

He bit his lip, felt his teeth breach skin, and tasted the salty tang of his own blood.

The fire crackled, looming larger before him. Larger and closer.

What choice did he have?

He caught the edges of his own gate in a wild mental grip and tore.

CRACK
.

Power surged through him. Fire boiled along his veins, the warmth too sudden and too sharp.

He could not see the face of the priest, the widening of eyes, or the way he scrambled up on the tabletop. And he was glad of it.

“No!”
A voice, thin and tinny, but loud.
“He’s mine!”

But fire surged forward, unstoppable now, unshakable.

The priest had the time for one loud cry before the fire scorched the flesh from his throat.

The resistance was gone. The fire belonged only to Darin. And he was very, very tired.

Initiate
!

There was another scream, shorter this time. The smell of burned flesh clogged his nostrils.

 

“They’ve gotten this far.” There was evident relief in both the voice and the face of General Lorrence. Sweat ran down the
lines of a perpetual frown, and blood crusted his cheek where the line of his helmet had been struck, hard.

Trethar took advantage of the momentary halt to examine the fallen bodies. Three men lay dead of sword wounds—efficient, single strokes. The fourth had been cut twice. The Lady’s work, then. He smiled softly.

Two corpses had been charred and blackened.

Darin had also survived this far.

The men took a deep breath and began to move forward, more caution evident now than during the rest of their struggle.

Close to the bend of the large hall lay several more of the palace guards. They were dead, three apparently unmarked. Nowhere was there a sign of Renar or Tiras.

“This is it,” Lorrence said softly, halting his men once again before they turned down the final hall. He surveyed the number that remained; the ferocity of the fight had taken its toll. Twenty—twenty, the prime of the royal guard were left. “Protect your king.”

There were grim nods, silent ones. No need to give such a command here—for this purpose had they fought so viciously and fiercely. Perhaps, should any survive this, they would have time to consider just how ferociously they had fought—and how unfairly they had killed. But not now.

Lorrence, being untrue to his rank, took the bend first.

“Bright Heart!” he shouted.

The rest of the men rushed forward, with Trethar very close to the lead. The doors to the governing council’s chambers had been flung open. This they expected.

Nothing prepared them for the flaming pillar that seemed to stretch from the ground to the ceiling itself.

Trethar sagged against a wall. Outlined by the ugly glare of heat and fire, he recognized the tight, still form of his pupil.

“God curse you, boy,” he murmured almost dispassionately. “I am spent.” He was angry, but there was no point in showing his anger at having come so far in his plans, just to have them cut so surely from beneath him by one of his own!

The leader took a deep breath and raised his sword. “Follow,” he said. His voice was shaky, but command was there nonetheless. And his followers, every last one of them, were—truly, if the prince was still alive—royal guards. They obeyed.