The Wizard King (10 page)

Athaya’s face darkened. “If they’ve readied a house for him, then the Sage must be about to make his move.”

Ranulf cast his eyes down, reluctant to pass on the Sage’s message. “He told me to say that he’ll be in Caithe by the time I reach your camp. And since I did a little spying in Eriston and took a detour through Kilfarnan, I’d guess he’s been on the mainland for a few days now.”

“There’s one way to confirm that.” Turning away from the others, Athaya summoned her vision sphere into her palms, willing the misty orb to form between her fingertips, suspended there like a drop of dew on morning grass. She had tried to seek the Sage in her sphere some months past, hoping to learn what had become of Ranulf, but the island palace was thickly veiled by wards to turn aside such wizardly prying and her globe had shown her nothing but smoky darkness. The Sage would have no need to shield himself now that he was in Caithe; not after he had gone to such pains to inform the populace that he was on his way.

Athaya called from her memory the Sage’s face—rugged and handsome, but marred by heartless, laughing eyes—and willed it to appear before her. The vision was slow to come, but shortly she began to glimpse colored pieces of a picture, like bits of broken stained glass slowly swirling back into a whole. The fragments gradually formed into an image of a bustling port at twilight, each ship’s mast, church spire, and townhouse window reflecting the dying orange light. The Sage of Sare stood on the jutting balcony of a large and luxurious residence—the mayor of Eriston’s house, no doubt—elegantly clad in a soft gray mantle adorned with a collar of sun-limned silver links. He spoke to the people gathered in the street below, and though Athaya could not discern his words, his eyes blazed with holy rapture at the glory of them. Townsfolk waved their arms in reply, cheering with varying degrees of willingness, and from time to time the Sage would reward their adulation with some showy bit of magic—a reddish witchlight or a diverting illusion of a dove—much to the delight of the children in the throng. But Athaya could not hold the vision for more than a few moments, and the sphere quickly clouded over, revealing nothing but grayish roils of mist.

Athaya dispersed the globe and wiped the sticky residue on her kirtle. “I couldn’t get much, but I saw enough to know that he’s in Eriston… and making a spectacle of himself already.” She let her breath out slowly. “It’s a relief in a sense. If the only reason he put off his arrival this long was to stretch my nerves to the limit, then it worked remarkably well.”

“That wasn’t the reason.” Ranulf brooded into his tankard, absently swirling his beer until it slopped over one side and sopped his breeches. “Brandegarth’s been trying to catch up to you, Athaya. He’s been under a sealing spell all this time.” The silence that his words provoked was deafening, a strange counterpoint to the blissful strains of a flute and drum in the clearing. “An’ if the shielding spell he used on me is any indication, his magic is a hell of a lot stronger than it was before. And much as I hate to say it,” Ranulf finished, casting a remorseful glance to Athaya, “he’s even stronger than you are now.”

Athaya, Jaren, and Tonia stared at him in wordless unison, temporarily bereft of speech. It was the obvious answer, but one that had never occurred to any of them. The sealing spell was extremely risky and had killed enough curious wizards in years past to incite the Circle to forbid its use to anyone but those to whom they gave permission. Granted, the Sage and his cult held nothing but contempt for the Circle’s strictures, but what wizard would willingly put his life at such terrible risk?

Only one as greedy for power as Rhodri had ever been, Athaya answered herself, and one who had recently uncovered a way of obtaining more of it. Until Athaya had inadvertently discovered them, no one had known of the power-extending qualities of the seal. And now, she fervently wished that the discovery, however extraordinary, had never been made.

“I should have known,” she said after a time, rising to her feet to pace anxiously around the chapel. “The timing… it makes perfect sense. But—”

She and Jaren realized the disastrous implications at the same instant and exchanged a look of muted dread. Ranulf’s news was worse than he knew.

“The effects of the seal are only temporary, Ranulf. Since you’ve been gone, my level of power has completely faded back to what it was over a year ago.” Briefly, Athaya told him of the dizziness and loss of strength she had suffered after her last attempt at translocation. Then she sighed heavily and leaned her weight against the back of the spartanly adorned alter. “At least we know
his
powers will fade, too. Eventually.”

The rest was left unspoken, but all of their faces reflected her next thought back to her.
But it took almost a year for my powers to fade… and Caithe doesn’t have that kind of time.

“At least you’re no weaker than you were before the seal,” Jaren pointed out, trying to salvage a measure of hope from the situation. “And being an adept is nothing to be ashamed of.”

“No. But it’s clear that the Sage has the advantage of me now.”

Ranulf swallowed the last of his beer in one gulp. “More n’ you know,” he said ominously, swiftly drawing the attention of three pairs of eyes. “One other tidbit I picked up during my holiday in Sare was that the Sage isn’t affected by corbal crystals. Aw, quit lookin’ at me like that—I
saw
it. It was incredible… he held the damned thing up right in front of me and didn’t bat an eye. Not one eye. And that was before the sealing.”

Despite his admonishment, Athaya continued to gape at him stupidly, unable to believe what she had heard. All at once, and at the worst possible time, the rules of the game she had taken so long to master were suddenly changed. A wizard unaffected by a corbal crystal? This was a blow indeed; a weapon she never dreamed the Sage would have at his command. At that moment, she felt like a general whose men had marched into battle armed with spears and slingshots, only to find that the enemy was equipped with cannons and siege engines… and vastly outnumbered them in the bargain.

“How is that possible?” Tonia said, the first to regain the use of her tongue.

Ranulf offered Athaya a crooked grin, forcing a bit of levity to lift the oppressive gloom. “Kind of comforting to know that even the Circle of Masters don’t know everything, ain’t it?”

Tonia snorted indelicately as she jammed a wayward strand of steel-gray hair back inside her peasant scarf. “I never claimed we did. Lord, if we’d had any inkling this was possible, why on earth would we have let Athaya learn about the sealing spell in the first place? It’s caused nothing but trouble since, but it was the only way we knew that she could shield herself from the corbal’s pain.”

“Looks as if the Sage knows another way—and so do a few of his followers. I’m not sure how they do it. On the night Nicolas and I were taken, I remember the Sage saying something about the crystal simply tricking me into feeling pain—try telling my guts that it was only a trick!—and that all you need to do is learn the trick and it doesn’t hurt anymore. Nicolas figured out that the Sage couldn’t work magic at the same time… or at least I think that’s what he said—I wasn’t feeling too well at the time. Damn it to hell,” he spat out, violently yanking a twig from his hair, “if it wasn’t for that crystal, I might have been able to get Nicolas away from him before—”

“Don’t berate yourself, Ranulf,” Athaya said, knowing how deeply he must blame himself for her brother’s fate. “How were you supposed to know about the corbals, if even the Circle of Masters didn’t?” Like her ability to see the seeds of power—if indeed she could still do such a thing—withstanding the pain of a corbal crystal was a thing never conceived before… at least not by those of Reykan training.

Athaya indulged in an admittedly childish scowl. It had been much more pleasant when it was she who was forever coming up with unexpected talents; now that her enemy was doing the same thing, she found it annoying in the extreme.

“I suppose he’s gained the ability to translocate, too?” she asked dryly, unsure that she really wanted an answer.

Ranulf’s eyes bulged at the notion and he swept his gaze across the chapel as if expecting the Sage to drop in on them at any moment. “I don’t know. He may have. He never said.” Ranulf set his empty tankard aside. “But there is one more thing…”

“Not
more
bad news?” Suddenly, Athaya wanted nothing more than to flee to her room in the dormitory and crawl under several thick blankets. How many more unpleasant revelations could she take in one night?

“No. Well, maybe. Depends on how you look at it.”

To her surprise, he got up and sauntered out of the chapel, motioning the rest of them to wait. He returned a few minutes later with a slender figure draped in a hooded cloak. Like a gown ornamented with seed pearls, the hem of the embroidered cloak was richly studded with brambles and delicate hands bore a wide selection of nasty scratches, fingertips dotted with tiny beads of blood like those of an incompetent needlewoman.

“Come on in now, she ain’t gonna eat ye,” he said, tugging his reluctant companion over the threshold. “I promised, didn’t I?”

The figure inched closer, then lifted apprehensive hands to turn back her hood. A river of auburn hair spilled out across her shoulders as Drianna glanced timidly from one wizard to the other, imagining what horrible spells they might unleash on her in a unified fit of vengeance.

“We met up in the port on Sare,” Ranulf explained, absently picking a bramble from Drianna’s hood. “She had her bag all packed and was beggin’ to come back here with me. I wasn’t going to let her, but… aw, damn it all, she started to cry. I did a quick truth test on her and it proved she wasn’t faking.” Ranulf glanced to Drianna with a touch of resentment, reluctant to concede that his soldier’s heart had given way to a spate of female tears. “It was her as told me all about the sealing spell and where the Sage’s army was holed up. I never would have known otherwise.”

Unable to bear their guarded stares any longer, Drianna hastened forward and hurled herself to her knees at Athaya’s feet. “I know I don’t deserve any kindness from you after what I’ve done, and you can tell me to get out if you want to, but I simply had to come. I didn’t know where else to go. I… Brand—” She sniffled delicately, and her lower lip quivered in despair. “He’s put me aside. He said I wasn’t good enough for him anymore. He… he told me to go work in the
kitchens
!”

“This ain’t another of your stories, is it?” Tonia asked, her gaze purposefully hard and unforgiving. If Drianna wanted to work her way back into their good graces, Tonia was determined that she not do so too easily. “Like the one about your poor brother in Kilfarnan, or the husband you never had, or—”

“No, no… it’s not a lie—not this time. I know you have no reason to believe me, but I swear it’s all true. You can test me if you like,” she offered eagerly. “Ranulf did it that one time, and I didn’t mind.”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Jaren said quietly, blinking rapidly as if he’d just been roused from a nap. He shifted his gaze to Athaya. “She’s telling the truth. The truth as she believes it to be, anyway.”

Athaya took a seat in the first pew and motioned Drianna to get up from the floor and sit beside her. Against reason, Athaya could not help feeling sorry for her. “Tell me, why did the Sage put you aside?”

Drianna curled her hands into tiny fists to keep from crying again. “H-he… searched my mind and said I wasn’t ever going to be a wizard. He told me that because of it, I wasn’t worthy to be his wife… that he could never marry beneath him like that.”

Athaya gripped her firmly by the shoulder; her shock at seeing Drianna again had just been rudely eclipsed. Drianna did not know it, but she had just delivered worse news in that one brief sentence than Ranulf had conveyed in the past hour. “He said
what
?”

Stammering, Drianna told her about the seed that Brandegarth had discovered in a kitchen girl named Peg; the germ of dormant magic waiting until its proper time to bloom. To Athaya’s dismay, Drianna’s description of what the Sage had seen was virtually identical to what she had experienced herself.

“At first I wanted to believe he was lying just to get rid of me,” Drianna went on, “but deep down I knew it wasn’t true. I know him too well.” She took a steadying breath and hung her head in abject misery. “I never should have told him. But once, last winter, I overheard you and Jaren talking about being able to tell who was a wizard before the
mekahn
, and since I wanted to know for myself so badly… oh, I never should have told him. It’s the only reason he wanted to be sealed at all…”

Athaya slouched to one side with her head cradled in her hands. Her mind reeled as she pictured the havoc the Sage could wreak in Caithe with this power. An army, even one peppered with men who could somehow resist the painful influences of a corbal crystal, was no threat at all compared to this errant gift, should the Sage choose to employ it. And Athaya had little doubt what his choice would be. Hordes of young people would flock to his side like hungry birds to an open sack of grain, offering their loyalty in exchange for a glimpse into their future.

And has that talent faded from you as well?
she asked herself. Not that it truly mattered—after detecting the seed in a village girl named Emma, Athaya had sworn not to seek such knowledge again. In a land where being a wizard invited nothing but persecution and death, the chance to find out one’s fate in advance would ignite an upheaval such as Caithe had not seen in centuries. And, as Tonia had theorized, scrying such a thing in advance would be circumventing God’s will—or worse, twisting it to one’s own purposes. For what else was the
mekahn
but His way of calling to His chosen? It had only been by accident that Athaya discovered Durek’s son, Mailen, carried the seed, and that volatile secret she had shared with none but Jaren. But if the Sage could spy the seeds as well, what good would her secrecy be? And how long would the heir to Caithe be safe from the Sage’s ambitions?