The Wizard King (42 page)

Durek spread out a tattered brown blanket near the fire, and she settled cross-legged onto it and began to breathe deeply. The night was still and serene, and here, miles from the nearest village, the turmoil in Delfarham seemed unreal—as distant as that long-age summer afternoon when she and Nicolas had watched the clouds sail over Nadiera.

When the worst of the day’s tensions had receded and her mind was free of distractions, Athaya reached into the leather pouch and drew out a small corbal crystal, cupping it gingerly in her palm. She refused to listen to the gem’s messages of pain, instead sending out her own stream of defiances as she focused on its center—the source of the corbal’s voice. She examined the crystal’s sharply angled facets, spied its inner flaws, and admired its subtle shades of indigo, reaching out to it as she would to another wizard, touching its mind—more certain than ever that it indeed possessed one—in search of its most hidden secrets.

The fragrant pines around her, the bright campfire, and even Durek’s silent presence all melted into shadow; she knew only the crystal—all else was irrelevant. Then, some time later, she touched upon the corbal’s heart and her perception shifted just
so
; as if a veil had been lifted from her eyes, she passed beyond the pain and beheld within the gem its glittering paths of power—not simple facets in a purple stone, but an array of channels through which her magic could be cast.

With the crystal cupped in one hand, she willed a simple witchlight to appear in the other. The globe came to life in an instant and blinding flash. Athaya had forgotten how drastically the crystal augmented a wizard’s power, and instead of a palm-sized lamp, she found herself bearing a fiery red orb nearly ten times that size. It was magnificent, burning with rare intensity as it drew power out of her to feed itself. The corbal crystal gave off a pearly white glow in her left hand, but its gentle, starry radiance was all but engulfed by the vibrant swell of reddish fire in her right.

“Athaya, that’s long enough,” she heard a man’s voice say from somewhere very far away, but the swollen witchlight was far too mesmerizing to pay the voice any mind. She felt her limbs begin to tingle with exhaustion, but could not bear to disperse her spell just yet—could not bear to still the enthralling rush of power gushing through her veins and spurting through the corbal’s facets, making the witchlight ten times as strong and giving her the powers of the angels…

“Athaya!”

The voice was more distant now, receding into the distance like sunset. Then, abrupt as a slap in the face, the crystal was wrested from her hand; the heady flow of power was squelched, her communion with the crystal severed. Her trance shattered like fine glass and the witchlight likewise blew apart in a dazzling explosion of orange, its fragments showering down around her feet like a thousand falling stars. The sparks bobbed on the earth for a time like beads of grease on a hot griddle until eventually they burned out one by one with gentle hissing sounds, leaving only the steady glow of the campfire behind.

The pounding inside her skull started almost immediately, blurring her vision with the pain. It took only a quick glance to Durek—who had stuffed the crystal safely back inside the pouch—to tell her what had happened. Athaya slouched down with her face tucked between her palms, exhausted, sore, and hopelessly discouraged.

“What’s the matter?” Durek asked her, genuinely puzzled. “It was rough going towards the end, but you did it. You sent your magic through the crystal.”

“Yes… but only after concentrating a great deal more than the Sage will ever give me time to do in a formal Challenge,” she pointed out. “And I couldn’t control the spell once I cast it. The coils of fire I used against Lukin’s hired assassin were one thing… that’s a difficult spell, so I’m not surprised that I had trouble controlling them under a corbal’s influence—especially that of three corbals at once. But a
witchlight
? Durek, it’s one of the simplest spells there is and I still couldn’t control it. The corbal’s influence is just too strong. It’s like being swept away in a river… you can dive in easily enough, but the river has more power in the end; it takes you along whether you want to continue or not. An exhilarating ride,” she finished wryly, “until you eventually get tired and drown.”

Durek frowned worriedly at her. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that if I don’t use this talent, the Sage will likely kill me, but if I do, I’ll most certainly kill myself. How’s that for a mixed blessing?” Mouthing a curse, she picked up a stone and hurled it deep into the moonlit woods. “And they say God doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

“Don’t give up yet,” Durek said, leaning in closer to her. “You only tried it the one time; you can master it. All you need is some more practice… and maybe a little confidence.”

Athaya glowered at him bitterly. “Now I know you’re getting desperate—that was the first time in living memory that you’ve ever encouraged me to have confidence in myself.” She picked up another stone, but balked before throwing it. “I didn’t mean that. It’s just… I’ve got a beastly headache and I’m—” She threw up her hands; why bother to hide what both of them already knew? “Frankly, I’m scared to death. Everyone is depending on me and now my secret weapon is proving to be worthless.”

“But you almost got it,” he persisted.

“ ‘Almost’ isn’t going to win the Challenge, Durek.” She sighed heavily as she sought the counsel of the stars twinkling serenely overhead. “I hate to say this, but maybe my luck is finally starting to run out. After surviving my
mekahn
, six months of exile, arrest, imprisonment, and a heresy trial, maybe I’ve used it all up.”

Durek didn’t answer right away, as if afraid she had just brought up a very valid point. Neither of them bothered to observe that Caithe’s king had been the cause of all those trials but one. When he next spoke, Durek’s voice was barely above a whisper. “You can win, can’t you… I mean, even without the crystals?”

A strained silence fell over the encampment, broken only by the tranquil crackling of the campfire.

“I don’t know, Durek. Honestly, I just don’t know.” She tossed a twig into the fire and watched the flames devour it hungrily, like corbals feeding on a wizard’s power. “Just for argument’s sake, let’s assume that by some miracle, I did figure out how to channel my spells through a corbal—and learn to stop them—by noon tomorrow. I could take the Sage by surprise, but unless I got in a killing blow right away, who’s to say he won’t figure out what I’m doing and pick up the technique as quickly as I did? And if he channels
his
power though the corbals, enhanced as it’s been by the seal, then I don’t have a chance in heaven of beating him. Granted, he’d end up dead if he couldn’t manage to break free of the crystal’s grip, but that doesn’t make me feel a whole lot better since I’d already be dead myself by then.”

A chill breeze swirled about them, making her shiver, and Durek unclasped his cloak and handed it to her. She settled it over her shoulders with a silent nod of thanks at the unexpected gallantry. “If anything good has come out of this whole mess,” she observed, offering him a beleaguered half smile, “I suppose it’s that the two of us have finally learned how to have a conversation that didn’t turn into a fight.”

Durek met her gaze for a moment, then awkwardly looked away. He squinted into the woods, clearly hoping Jaren would choose that moment to emerge from them and eliminate the need for him to reply, then turned back to face her when he realized that no such salvation was imminent.

“We never have liked each other much, have we?”

Under any other circumstances, Athaya would have laughed aloud at this exquisite measure of understatement. As it was, she merely shrugged and pulled the thin cloak tighter around her shoulders. “No, I don’t think we have. But I’ve never hated you, Durek,” she hastened to add, feeling an urgent need that the words be said—now, while there was still time. “I’ve thought you were a pigheaded ass about some things,” she confessed, “but I’ve never hated you.”

To her surprise, Durek simply cracked an absent smile and nodded. “Hedric told me that once. Strange how I believed him without even questioning it.”

“He had that effect on people.” Then, emboldened by his show of trust, Athaya reached out and clasped her brother’s hand. He regarded her curiously, old impulses quick to suspect her motives, but he did not pull away. “We’re just too different, you and I,” she said through a sigh. “Or maybe we’re too much alike. Stubborn and temperamental, neither one wanting to back down from a fight. It’s a wonder Nicolas can stand either one of us.” With her free hand, she picked up a twig and prodded the dwindling campfire to stir it back to life. “He’s never going to believe any of this when he recovers, you know. He can sense something’s not right between us—or rather that something
is.
I think he’d be confused by this alliance even if he didn’t have the Sage’s spell cluttering up his brain.”

“No doubt,” Durek said. “It confuses me enough as it is.” He stamped out a wandering ember with his boot. “Nicholas’ part in all this surprised me, that I will admit. His willingness to risk everything to join you…” Durek shook his head in profound disbelief. “I never dreamed he had that kind of mettle.”

“We all have it, I think,” she told him quietly. “If we let it out. Most people never do.”

In the silence that followed, Athaya could sense Durek grasping for words, mentally framing them, judging them, and casting them aside. He had never been a man given to intimate conversation, but Athaya could see him attempting it now, struggling to express things left unsaid for too long.

“I’ve learned from you,” he said at last, shifting nervously as he spoke. He drew his hand away, as if physical contact made his words that much more difficult to say. “Things I probably should have learned from Father but never did. For one, you don’t just lead people by ordering them about—you inspire them… and then they follow on their own.”

It was the finest compliment he had ever given her—not that there were a great many to choose from, but she cherished it nonetheless. “You’re doing better than you think, Durek. I won’t sing praises for everything you’ve done, God knows, but you had the courage to approach my people and ask for help without offering up a host of hollow promises you never intended to keep. Caithe has had more than enough kings who would sooner die—and take the rest of us down with them—than suffer such a perceived blow to their precious pride. Faltil was certainly one of them.”

“It was hard; I’ll admit it. You were—and still are—asking me to turn my whole world upside-down, to accept things I’ve always believed are wrong—and still do, to an extent. I don’t know if I can change that,” he confessed, turning his palms upward, “or even if I should.” He turned his face to the sky, asking a boon of the stars. “I just want Caithe to be at peace—total peace, without wizards going about doing unexpected and inexplicable things all the time.”

Athaya smiled wryly at him. “You want your world to be controlled and predictable… but life just isn’t like that. It’s messy—”

“I know! But magic just makes it worse.”

‘The weather is unpredictable, too,” Athaya observed, “but do you plot to get rid of it because you can’t live without knowing whether the morrow will bring sun or rain? No. You take what you get. What else can you do?”

Durek glanced to her dubiously, but did not protest her reasoning. “At least you’re questioning your beliefs instead of blindly accepting what someone else taught you to think,” she went on. “That’s not an easy thing to do. It certainly wasn’t easy for me. I wasn’t sure I believed in the sanctity of magic myself until Tyler managed to convince me of it. He said that magic couldn’t possibly be evil if it was a part of me. And he was right. It wasn’t my choice. It’s just what I was.”

Durek stiffened as she spoke, awaiting a bitter diatribe on the subject of Captain Graylen’s fate; his muscles relaxed when he realized he wasn’t going to get one. “I thought I was doing the right thing at the time, Athaya. Now I’m… not so sure. I’m not sure about anything anymore. But you are…”

He lanced her to the soul with a penetrating stare. “You really believe in this crusade of yours, don’t you? It’s not just some rebellious game you’ve been playing simply to annoy me?” The words came out with a gruff edge, but behind the facade Athaya could discern her brother’s genuine desire to
know.

“I’ve never believed in much of anything, Durek—you know that. But my work… it’s my whole life. Haven’t you ever wanted anything so passionately that it didn’t matter what stood in your way?”

Durek took a long time to answer—long enough for Athaya to realize that he was truly struggling with the question. “Not many things stand in the way of what a king wants,” he said at last. “But I never bothered to think about what I wanted for myself. Why should I? It was all decided before I was ever born; the king’s eldest son doesn’t get those sorts of choices. You’re fortunate in that, even if you don’t realize it. Whether or not I happen to agree with them, at least you’ve been able to make your own choices in life.”

“Have I?” she replied with a mild arch to her brows, slow to believe that she had heard such words from the mouth of her ever-dutiful brother. “I was informed over supper one night that I was to marry Felgin of Reyka. I don’t recall Father ever asking my opinion about it. The only reason the marriage never took place is that my magic came to me—and I didn’t have much choice about that, either. So you see, Durek? We’ve both been fitted into our respective slots quite snugly, without either of us having much to say in the matter.”

Athaya continued to poke absently at the fire while Durek stared intently into it, as if seeing visions of the past amid the dancing tongues of flame. “I knew what my future would be from the time I was old enough to speak—and I accepted it willingly enough. But somehow… I always thought it would be easier; Father made it all look so effortless. It’s hard when everyone is looking to you, expecting you to have all the answers and never make mistakes.”