The Wizard King (28 page)

“Still,” he went on, clearing his throat uneasily, “I think I’ll let her know about this necklace in an offhanded way—maybe pretend I’ve forgotten it’s hers and promise to punish the owner if I ever find out who it is—”

Athaya closed her eyes, barely able to hear what her brother was saying. His words were rapidly blending into a nonsensical drone and she was suddenly far too occupied with keeping herself upright.

“Athaya?” Durek asked, steadying her by the elbow. “Are you ill?”

She couldn’t find the strength to answer. Only minutes before, she was drunk on the heady rush of power that the corbal had given her; now she felt as if every drop of blood had drained from her body, leaving a hollow husk that the slightest wind could blow into fine powder. She hugged the bedpost even harder, fending off a wave of nausea and then saw the room start to spin beneath her feet.

“Catch me…” she choked out, just before the floor came up to meet her.

* * * *

Athaya woke several hours later, comfortably tucked between a feather mattress and a goosedown quilt. Master Hedric sat on a wooden stool at her bedside, while Jaren was fast asleep beside her, his flesh radiating unhealthy warmth from a
kahnil-
induced fever. The sour taste in her mouth betrayed that she’d been sick sometime in the night, but now she felt lucid enough—no worse than she ever had after too many tankards of mediocre ale. Mason and Durek were also still present, pacing about the chamber like worried fathers-to-be. Athaya glanced cautiously to the corner; to her relief, Durek’s guardsmen had disposed of the assassin’s body.

“How is he?” she asked. Her voice cracked from disuse as she reached out to brush a sweat-dampened strand of hair from Jaren’s forehead.

“He’ll be fine,” Hedric assured her. “He drank most of the tea Drianna brought. Now he just needs to sleep.”

Once she was certain her head wasn’t going to start whirling like a spinning wheel again, Athaya tossed back the coverlets and slid her legs over the edge of the bed. Durek frowned disapprovingly at her, but it was a refreshing frown of concern, not of rebuke. “You shouldn’t be getting out of bed yet.”

“I have to.”

“But you’re not—”

“Durek.” Athaya glanced meaningfully to the chamber pot in the corner, after which his Majesty reddened and excused himself.

After a moment to herself, Athaya stuffed her feet into a pair of deerskin slippers and shuffled out to join the others in the outer chamber. Drianna had left them another pot of strong tea and a tray of oatcakes; Athaya plucked up a cake and lathered it with honey before curling into a cushioned chair by a low-burning fire.

“I suppose you’re all wanting to know what happened,” she said dryly, noting the expectant expressions on each of the three faces before her.

“Jaren… told us what he saw,” Mason said tentatively, as if not altogether sure the vision wasn’t a hallucination brought on by the
kahnil
in Jaren’s blood. “It would seem that corbal crystals have more than one type of power.”

Eager for details, he and Hedric both leaned forward in unison, their scholars’ eyes hungry for new knowledge; they gave Athaya all the attention a pair of stray cats would give a man waving a scrap of fish between his fingers. In contrast, Durek’s countenance was markedly apprehensive—and with good reason. The implications of the night’s events would have a different meaning for him; without the security of corbal crystals, he no longer had a weapon he could use against her, should she not prove as loyal an ally as she pledged. And if she could not only defy that weapon, but turn it against him…

Athaya poured herself a shallow cup of tea. “In short, I found out that a corbal does more than simply block our spells. It channels them.” She recounted everything she could remember; the intensely sharpened focus that mortal fear had given her, the voices of the crystals, the abrupt silence of the crystal’s heart, and the startling glimpse of veinlike tunnels where none had been perceived before. “They have paths and a source just like we do and a special kind of magic that tricks us into feeling pain where none exists. It’s… almost as if they’re alive.”

“At least when they’re close to light,” Mason said, absently studying the fire. “That’s the force that kindles their power, whereas simply being alive kindles ours. But they’re not alive in the same sense as we are; you said yourself that the corbal’s source isn’t at all like ours—not a jumble of noise and images, but utter stillness. Logical, when you think of it, since the gem has no ‘thoughts’ or ‘memories’ to clutter up the place.”

As Mason spoke, Athaya recalled her only direct encounter with the center of her self; she had touched upon her source on the night Rhodri had stolen her power and she sought a way to regain it. It was an experience whose vividness would never fade. Standing in that blinding abyss of light that formed the heart of her being, her life played out before her in colorful and clamorous panorama; everything she was or would be danced around her in a timeless jumble of motion, swirling past too quickly to regard any one moment apart from any other.

“The nature of the crystals is fascinating, of course,” Hedric interrupted, “but at the moment I’m far more concerned with why you passed out not long after using them.” The Master’s bushy white brows were tightly knitted with worry. “Tell me, Athaya… when you were channeling your magic through the corbal, did it feel the same as casting your other spells or was it different somehow?”

“Different?” Athaya whistled under her breath. “That doesn’t do it justice, Master Hedric. It felt like I had unimaginable resources at my command; there was no limit to what I could do. It was intoxicating—more so than any spellwork I’ve ever done in my life. I’m not surprised that I passed out,” she added with a shrug. “I feel dizzy enough after translocation, and that’s the strongest spell I know. But this…” She shook her head in awesome reverence, recalling the unspeakable
Power
that had been at her command, if only briefly. “This was far more potent.”

Absently, Mason poured a drop of honey into his tea. “You probably would have collapsed a lot sooner if you hadn’t just fought off an attempt on your life. Once the shock of the attack wore off, the drain from your spell hit you with full force.”

“It was more than just exhaustion, I suspect,” Hedric murmured, brows still linked together in a frown. “Jaren said you couldn’t counter the spell once you had cast it.”

Athaya returned his frown; she’d thought nothing of it at the time, but yes, Jaren
had
said something along those lines, just before covering the corbals with the quilts.
It started to use you,
he had told her.
And you didn’t even realize.

“I’m… not sure if I could have stopped it or not,” Athaya told him, shivering from a sudden chill. “It didn’t occur to me to try. If I was ‘trapped’ somehow, I wasn’t aware of it. I do remember getting awfully tired at one point—as if the crystal was pulling power from me faster than I could give it—but I was too enthralled by my spellwork to care.”

Hedric steepled his fingers, tapping them thoughtfully against his lips. “I think we’re talking about something more serious than we realize,” he said gravely. “It’s my guess that you were siphoning power directly from your source… ‘bleeding’ magic, as it were, rather like opening a vein. You see, when casting inborn spells with your paths, there is a finite amount of power available to you; when you’ve drained it all, you simply can’t work any more magic—such as after translocation, when you can’t even cast a simple witchlight. The rest of your strength—the force that keeps you alive—isn’t affected. But channeling power through the corbal lets you overextend yourself… quite possibly to the point of death. It taps into not only your magic power, but your life force as well.”

Hedric, Mason, and Athaya exchanged deeply pensive glances, while Durek looked from wizard to wizard, utterly baffled. The discussion had clearly grown too esoteric for his taste.

“It was fortunate that Jaren applied the proper ‘tourniquet’ by covering those crystals when he did,” Hedric continued. “If he hadn’t, you might well have bled to death—magically speaking, that is. If, as you said, you were oblivious to the danger you were in, then who knows what might have happened if your spell had gone on much longer or if there had been even more crystals present to drain the power from you? You might not have been able to stop before it was too late. And like bleeding to death, there would have been no pain to warn you—just a gradual fading away into unconsciousness.”

Athaya hadn’t thought of it quite that way before and her oatcake suddenly turned to sawdust in her mouth.

‘That’s probably why the corbals induce pain in the first place—and do so only in wizards,” Mason offered, setting his teacup aside. “Pain of any kind is a warning—a signal that the body is being endangered somehow. People without magic can’t harm themselves with the corbals, so they feel nothing; the pain—the warning—is meant specifically for us. It keeps us from discovering just what the corbal can be used for, and therefore keeps us from harming ourselves. If we ignore the warning and use the crystals to cast spells, we could kill ourselves. The gems may be tools of great power,” he concluded, “but the price of using them is dangerously high.”

Hedric concurred with a solemn nod. “Like a Circle charm,” he murmured. Unfocused eyes stared blindly into the distance as if reliving an unpleasant memory or scrying an equally unpleasant future.

Athaya turned to him quizzically; in all her months of study at his side, he had never mentioned such a thing before. “A what?”

“It’s… a sort of talisman,” he replied, recalling himself to the conversation with a series of rapid blinks. “A weapon of last resort—rarely used. I don’t think anyone has used one since… oh, my great-grandfather’s day. And that was quite a few years back, I assure you,” he added, brushing the subject aside with a dismissive chuckle.

Durek shifted forward in his chair and made a decorous coughing noise to remind the others that he was still present. “So, the gist of what you’ve been saying is that Athaya can use these crystals to work magic, but she can’t stop it once she starts?”

“That’s the essence of it,” Hedric said. “But if your sister remains true to form, she’ll soon find a way around such an obstacle. My prize pupil never ceases to amaze me.” He regarded her with unabashed pride for a moment, then cracked a wry smile. “I trust, Athaya, that you will find this experience of significant enough import to include in your journal.”

Athaya averted her eyes. “I think so, Master Hedric.” In truth, it was the journal that had saved her life; if Jaren had not roused himself from fitful sleep to work on it, it was likely that neither of them would have been alerted to the assassin’s presence until it was too late.

“Are you well enough to travel?” Durek asked, abruptly getting to his feet. Unable to comprehend much of what they’d been discussing for the past quarter-hour, he was eager to shift the conversation to more mundane matters—ones that he had the power to control. “I hate to delay our journey to Kaiburn, but if you’re not up to it yet—”

Athaya drained the rest of her now-lukewarm tea. “I’ll be fine—just give me an hour or two to get ready. The Sage’s army is moving too quickly; we can’t afford to put this off even for a day.”

“This could be a more dramatic conflict than the Sage is counting on if you can use corbal crystals against him,” Mason observed, plucking another oatcake from the tray and shaking off loose crumbs.

“Only if I can find a way to avoid killing myself in the process,” Athaya replied. “I don’t want things to get quite
that
dramatic.”

* * * *

Once she had bathed and changed, Athaya made a brief stop at Nicolas’ apartments to see how he was faring before leaving for Kaiburn. Someone had arrived before her, however; as she entered the outer sitting chamber, she could hear low voices coming from the adjoining bedroom. That one of the voices was Hedric’s did not surprise her—as Nicolas’ tutor and caretaker, he rarely left the prince’s side—but to her surprise, the other voice belonged to Durek, who was apparently in intimate conversation with him.

“So as High Wizard,” Durek was asking, “you advise Osfonin on matters relevant to the Lorngeld’s welfare?”

“Exactly.”

“Then what purpose does this Circle have? I’ve heard you mention it before—”

“It is a governing body within the Lorngeld themselves, no matter what their nation of origin,” Hedric replied, in the same tireless tone of voice he used with his novice magic students. “The Circle does not involve itself in the politics of the world, but only in the practice of magic.”

Durek paused. “I still don’t see why they weren’t helping Athaya all along. They obviously support what she’s trying to do.”

“As I said, that would have been an overtly political act, since magic is not yet legal here. The Circle has some considerable influence in lands where magic is accepted and allowed to flourish, but we do not presume to interfere in those lands where it is not. When magic once again returns to Caithe, be assured that you will feel our presence here.”

“When it returns,” Durek echoed. His voice was dry but not angry, with only the slightest edge of defensiveness. “You sound rather certain that I’ll permit that.”

“With respect, your Majesty, I think that you have already decided to do so, whether you know it yet or not.”

Athaya braced herself, expecting her brother to lash out at him for such a presumption, but instead of taking offense at the Master’s observation, he lapsed into a spell of studied silence. “I… you puzzle me, sir. You’re nothing like Rhodri was.”

Athaya didn’t need her eyes to see the clouds that crossed Master Hedric’s face just then. “No,” she heard him reply. She wondered if he would tell Durek just who had trained Rhodri in his art, but he did not, perhaps deciding that such knowledge would do nothing to further relations between himself and the king of Caithe. “But then, most wizards are not like him. Your sister is not. Athaya is a highly skilled magician—I should know, as I trained her myself.” Athaya heard him loose a thoughtful sigh. “She cares deeply for the future of her people, your Majesty… more so, perhaps, than she will ever admit to you. And she has never in my presence spoken hatred for you. Resentment, perhaps,” he conceded. “Disappointment. But never hatred.”