The Wizard King (46 page)

Beware the Sage’s mind-magic.
Tullis had done well to warn her. The illusion had been masterful, capturing the very essence of Jaren’s eyes, the line of his chin, the sweep of unruly hair. Athaya had not doubted the truth of what she saw for an instant.

And that lack of doubt would kill her if she was not meticulously careful from now on.

Remember your disciplines. Don’t let him muddle your thinking.
Her harried senses began to relax as she repeated a few lines of the litany that Hedric had taught her:
Credony, lord of the first Circle, twenty-six years; Sidra, lord of the second
…. Athaya regarded her enemy with newfound wariness.
He’s brandished his best weapon
, she reflected, sobered by how easily she had been duped.
Now he’s playing to win.

It was more difficult than she had ever anticipated to deliberately try to kill him. She didn’t care to witness another bloody explosion of flesh like Rhodri’s, a horror that haunted her nightmares to this day, but feared that only something so violent and powerful would destroy him. She cast a spell of sickness on his heart, commanding it to still its beating, but the Sage unraveled her spellwork as easily as a time-rotted tapestry. Then she tried to pierce his innards, to drain him of blood from inside so that she would not have to see her gruesome work, but again, after an initial grunt of pain, he turned her spell aside.

Worse, she grappled with the knowledge that she was not casting the most potent spell in her arsenal. She knew the crackling green fire coils could kill him, but balked at loosing them. Every time she drew herself up to strike with deadly force, she saw Kelwyn’s phantom rise up before her, writhing in agony and begging for mercy, his final screams echoing for all eternity in her ears. Logically, she knew such fears should not hinder her—unlike Kelwyn in his last hours, the man she now faced was sane and more than able to defend himself—but logic alone gave her scant solace.

Think of what he’s done
, she reminded herself, trying to stoke the fires of revenge.
Think of all the lies he’s told, the lands he’s stolen, the priests he’s murdered.

Dear God, think of Nicolas!

But pure hatred—the steady, burning flame of loathing required to kill without pause—was alien to her. And worse, she sensed that the Sage knew it also and was emboldened by it.

Nevertheless, she had to try something—and soon.

The solution flitted across her mind and settled there. Why not use her opponent’s expectations against him? Why not use the Sage’s own strategy and let the enemy defeat himself?

She backed away from him with averted eyes, putting on her most convincing mask of humility even as she sent out probing tendrils of mind-magic. It was a technique she had seldom used before; the closest she had ever come to actual mind-magic was lulling an inconvenient guardsman to sleep—an extremely mild form of the spell and one generally deemed acceptable in times of self-endangerment—but the general principles were the same, just applied with far more force. This time, Athaya took care to err on the side of subtlety; too much force and the Sage would sense her hostile presence in his thoughts and unravel her spell before it could take hold.
But it shouldn’t take much power,
she told herself.
And he’s arrogant enough. It shouldn’t be too hard to convince him….

“I’ve made a horrible mistake. I know it’s too late now, but—” She allowed her lower lip to tremble for effect. “I can see now that you are a far better wizard than I. I was a fool to have Challenged you.”

Crede omnino,
came the potent undercurrent of her words, left to echo in the deepest chasms of his mind.
Crede omnino quae audis.
Believe. Believe everything you hear….

“I only wish,” she added with a delicate touch of melodrama, “that I had agreed to marry you before. It could have been so different.” She sniffled miserably. “So wonderful.”

His self-assured smile told her that he believed her—or more accurately, that it did not occur to him to doubt what he was being told. His eyes were slightly glazed, his words vaguely stilted. “Would that you had. But we are irrevocably bound here; only one of us will ever leave the wards.”

Athaya sniffled again even as she cautiously increased the power of her subconscious persuasions. “All my life I’ve realized important things too late. But if I have to die, then… might I have a simple kiss? A small taste of what I might have had in greater measure?”

The Sage moved toward her with desire in his eyes, and Athaya fought the urge to shrink back in disgust.
At least I’ve already lost my breakfast,
she mused, stealing a glance at the puddle of sour-smelling bile near her feet.

She wrapped her arms around his waist even as she wrapped her spell more snugly around his mind. “I do desire you,” she murmured. “What woman would not?” But just as their lips were about to touch, Athaya thrust her next spell through the breach in his awareness like a sword.

“
Laqueum spinosum mihi fac!
” she cried, swiftly encasing his throat in an invisible noose of nettles; the spell with which Kelwyn had attacked her that fateful night. She knew what the Sage endured as he crumpled to his knees on the cobbles—the world going black, lungs shrieking for air, the fuzzy sensation of melting consciousness as the unseen necklace of thorns ripped holes in tender flesh. She only hoped that he would not strike back with the deadly green fire coils as she had done, killing her as she had killed Kelwyn and providing a morbidly fitting finish to her life.

She fed as much magic as she could into the rope of thorns, pulling them as tight as her adept power would allow, but it was not enough. With a bestial grunt, the Sage tore the invisible bindings from his throat as if freeing himself from a slave’s iron collar. A backlash of pain sliced through Athaya’s skull as the rope of thorns was severed and destroyed.

The Sage glared at her as he choked down mouthfuls of air; he was not pleased at being made a fool, his dignity insulted by falling victim to her seductive devices.

“You will not deceive me again.”

In the back of her mind, Athaya continued to recite the Succession of Circles, fighting to maintain her concentration and not be duped by what would surely be another attempt at mind-magic.
Malcon, lord of the third Circle, seven years; Kyria, lord of the fourth, one year…

Then she felt a hand upon her shoulder—or did she?—and when she turned to look, though somehow knowing she should not, she drew in her breath and held it, too shocked to let it out again.

No, it can’t be!

And it isn’t,
she caught herself, shielding her eyes from the illusion.
Sacret, lord of the fifth
…. But her mind was already snared, entangled in the silky skein of mind-magic. She tried to peel the fabric back, but the layers of deception mounted too quickly, smothering her struggles. Defiance was soon forgotten as the blanket of the Sage’s magic extinguished her thoughts and replaced them with those of his choosing.

The man’s boots were strangely silent on the cobbles as he circled around to face her. Boots—the kind worn by Durek’s guardsmen. It couldn’t be… but it
was.
She was certain of it now.

“Tyler?”

He was garbed in crimson livery, just as she had seen him last, but without the captain’s collar of rank that had for so long graced his shoulders. His once-blond hair was tarnished with gray, and green eyes that had in life gazed upon her with warmth and affection now burned her with wrath. Athaya reached out to him but he pushed her hand aside; his skin felt cold and dead to the touch.

Without a word, he opened the high collar of his shirt to reveal a puffed and swollen red streak around his throat—the place where the ax had struck, an impossible scar from a mortal blow. “After all I did for you, this was my reward,” he said bitterly, skinning her with his gaze. “Don’t ever let them say it doesn’t hurt, Athaya. That’s just a lie they tell so they won’t feel so guilty about doing it.” Leaving the collar open, he pointed an accusing finger at her. “You spoke love for me, yet all you wanted was someone to protect you from your brother’s soldiers so that you could escape and marry someone else!”

The words lanced through her heart like a heated blade. “You know that isn’t true—”

“Then prove it,” he challenged. “Let the Sage win this petty contest. Join me in the world that I now inhabit; we can be together as you always claimed you wished. If you ever loved me, you must do as I ask. I died for you once, to prove my love. Now it is your turn.”

Athaya’s thoughts spun drunkenly inside her head, crashing into one another like birds against a pane of glass.
No, this is wrong!
came a shriek from the abyss of her soul.
Tyler would never say such a thing. He would say….

I want you to live and be what you were born to be.
She heard the words as clearly as when he had spoken them the night of Kelwyn’s death. She had never doubted the truth of those words then.

And she would not be duped into doubting them now.

The Sage’s spell snapped its hold on her in that moment of epiphany, but so immersed was he in sustaining his illusion that he did not yet realize it.
No, your Grace, you got it wrong. Tyler and I parted at peace. He gave his life for me willingly; his death gave me strength, not frailty and guilt.
And if the Sage assumed she had married Jaren simply to stanch a sense of loss, then she would do her best to make it a fatal miscalculation.

“I never meant it to happen!” she wailed at the phantom, grabbing fistfuls of hair and hoping the gesture was not overly theatrical. Summoning tears, she fell to her knees in bitter remorse. “I did love you, truly I did. Please, Tyler, you must believe me!”

The Sage let out a low roll of laughter, certain of his power over her. The illusion blurred a bit as he grew careless at his work; Tyler’s image was clouded now, as if seen through dirty glass. In that unguarded moment, Athaya gathered all her power for one massive and final blow. She hadn’t the leisure of squeamishness; it was time for the fatal strike. And she knew which spell would do it.

She ripped a gaping hole in the fabric of his illusion, sending Tyler’s ghost shearing off into pieces like a tattered piece of cloth. Then she sent her killing spell hurtling through the void—”
Ignis confestim sit!
“—the Sage too startled to stop her.

The coils of fire sprang to life at her fingertips, angry green flames crackling with deadly rage. They closed around the Sage like hissing snakes, searing clothes and flesh alike as they drove him to his knees and squeezed the life from his lungs. As he grappled with the coils, Athaya scanned the exposed niches of his mind for past regrets and fears—anything that could be used as a weapon to dilute his strength from inside and thus make her assault more powerful.

To her dismay, she found surprisingly little. This was clearly a man who believed that everything he had done in his life was right—or at the very least, totally justifiable under the circumstances of the time. If the friends of his youth now despised him, it was because they were jealous of his position and power; if a lover complained he neglected her, it was because she demanded too much of a very busy man. He did not even bear the smallest scrap of regret for all those wizards he had killed in past Challenges—Athaya even picked up traces of contempt for some, supremely comfortable with the notion that they had simply gotten what they deserved for daring to supplant him.

Only one incident seemed to disturb him more than the rest—his last Challenge with the wizard Bressel, which he’d come dangerously close to losing. Pouncing on the opportunity, Athaya flooded his mind with memories of that day, relentless in her attack.
Bressel almost killed you and he was not as powerful as I!
She willed him to feel the terror of that day—to remember how close he had come to death and know that he was in graver danger now.
It is hopeless,
she persisted, dismantling the walls of his resistance brick by brick.
Do not bother to struggle. You are bested now.

“But he lost to me,” she heard him growl, deep from the throat, “and I am stronger than I was…”

Although flat on his back, laboring for breath and in undeniable pain, the Sage nonetheless fought back. Disregarding the stench of burned flesh, his hands clamped down hard on the crackling ropes of fire, the skin of his palms seared off by the heat of the power Athaya was pumping through them; he pulled the coils from his body with a piercing war cry, then flung them to the ground at his side. The fire coils writhed awkwardly on the cobbles for a moment, like fish hurled onto the shore, then quickly sputtered and died, leaving nothing but an errant afterglow behind.

He had not destroyed them gracefully, but with raw strength alone. As he scrambled quickly to his feet, unwilling to leave himself open to a second attack, Athaya met his gaze and tried to hide the growing terror in her heart.

The Sage was tired, burned, and bloodied, but he was alive. Alive, despite her best effort to destroy him. He let out a breathy laugh, weak but triumphant. “The spell that killed your father,” he observed with a nebulous air of respect. “The deadliest one you know. And yet… here I am.” He winced as he extended his arms, unable to conceal all the injury she had done him. “But enough of this. I grow weary and wish to see this done. Farewell, Athaya Trelane,” he said, offering her a hastily sketched salute. “We shall not meet again.”

She felt the grip of his mind-magic again, this time no seductive shroud of silk but an iron vise around her skull; trying to repel it was like trying to hold back the king’s army with a slingshot.
No! Fione, lord of the sixth Circle, eighteen years,
she rambled, desperate to maintain dominion over her wits.
Beviste, lord of the seventh.
… But with the full brunt of his skills behind him, the Sage overwhelmed her with brutal efficiency, raping her defenses until there was nothing left of them.

She no longer knew what compelled her to turn around just then, but turn she did—and was struck immobile by the sight before her. He stood not ten feet away, vital and alive, just as she remembered him before his final descent into madness. His powerful body was swathed in a mantle of royal purple and his head crowned with a glittering circlet of gold, the white-fletched hair beneath it curling neatly inward at his chin. As they had done in life, his piercing eyes locked onto hers, demanding attention and obedience.