The Wizard King (47 page)

“Father—”

No! Arcaius, lord of the eighth….

For a fleeting instant she remembered it was not real; remembered that all she had to do was look for the flaw in the Sage’s illusion and exploit it. But those thoughts were murdered even as they crossed her consciousness, the truth swept away like a white cloud of dandelion seed in the wind. He was
here.
She could not explain it, but he was. Somehow, for some reason, her father had come back to her.

She took a cautious step toward him. “How can this be? I thought… you were dead.”

“And so I am,” he replied in a voice she knew so well; a voice she had last heard begging for her mercy in the face of death. “But I was permitted to come to you at this critical time, to warn you of the great mistake you are making.”

Athaya felt as if someone had filled her head with honey; it seemed an hour before she could stammer a reply. “Mistake? I don’t understand.”

“You err in trying to win this contest,” he replied, his tone hypnotically soothing and yet touched with severity. “You must not violate Dameronne’s prophecy. The Sage of Sare must be the next ruler of Caithe. He must emerge victorious from this struggle and thus commence the long-awaited golden age of the wizard king. It is Caithe’s best destiny, my daughter, and one you endanger with your continued rebellion.”

“No, that can’t be—”

Kelwyn shook his head, pitying her ignorance. “Ever have you misunderstood me, child. After I accepted the powers Rhodri gave to me, I realized that magic was the key to Caithe’s future; magic would be the cornerstone of a dynasty that could never be broken by civil war such as had plagued our land for centuries. Caithe could be at peace forever—you know as well as I that such was always my vision.”

“Peace, yes, but not—”

Again, he did not let her finish. “You have played out your role in history, Athaya. Your work here is done. You have made way for the Sage as you were meant to do, just as my death made way for you.”

Athaya backed away, utterly bewildered.

“Where I reside now, daughter, I see many truths that are as yet invisible to you. You must not succeed in this Challenge; it is God’s own design that you do not. To disobey me in this is to disobey Him. If you truly wish to do His will, as you have long asserted, then you must not live out this day. Join me, Athaya. Join me in the kingdom that is now my home. There I shall answer your questions and we can come to peace with one another at last.”

Athaya’s heart ached with the desire; a resolution to their years of discord was something she desperately wanted but never dreamed she could attain this side of the veil. Was he truly willing to forgive all that she had done? It was a temptation more enticing than any she had ever known.

“Then what I’ve done… the crusade… it was right?” she asked haltingly, yearning to hear words of approval rarely given while he had lived. “I did what I thought you would have wanted… what you would have done.”

“The task is not quite finished; the most important step yet remains. Come with me now.” He began to walk toward the ward curtain, then turned to offer his hand. “My time here is short, Athaya. Let us leave this place. Follow me through the boundary that separates us. All will be made clear to you on the other side.”

She reached out to take his hand, but other faces crowded into her memory and she dazedly jerked it back, hindered by the links still binding her to the world. “But the others… how can I leave them? Jaren and Durek and—”

“A true leader must make harsh choices at times,” he said sternly. “You must set aside selfish wants to do what is best for all. Your husband has long prepared himself to lose you in the fight for the Lorngeld’s future; he would wish you to obey me, could he understand as I do the benefits Caithe will reap from it. And Durek cannot remain as king. He is my son, but remains unequal to this task—his feelings are still too mixed about the Lorngeld. The time is right for this transition of power. His children are too young to feel any loss for the crowns they might have worn.”

“Wait—what about Mailen?” Athaya’s heart fluttered with hope; perhaps Kelwyn truly did not know. “Mailen has the power—I’ve seen it myself.”

Kelwyn’s spirit flickered wildly like candles dancing in a draft, and Athaya rubbed her eyes, thinking the fault lay there. Oddly, her father did not look as delighted by the news as she would have expected.

“Does he?” her father murmured meaningfully, as if the news further complicated their problem rather than solved it.

“If I can win today,” she persisted, “then in time,
he
will become the wizard king of the prophecy and not the Sage of Sare. So you see? The Sage is not the only choice. The crown passes on as it should—from you to Durek to Mailen—and Dameronne’s words still become true.”

Though the explanation was entirely logical, he flatly refused to consider it. “No. That is not as it is meant to be.” His words were clipped and terse—almost angry. “Come. My time here is almost done. I must go and you must accompany me. I cannot return again.”

Athaya followed without question, then froze as she neared the boundary of the wards. Something about that pulsing red-veined shell was dangerous, but try as she might, she could not remember precisely what. She only knew that she did not wish to cross it.

She placed a hand upon her chest, conscious of a growing pressure on her heart. “I… can’t.”

Kelwyn’s eyes closed slowly as he drew breath, and Athaya shrank back, well-schooled in the warning signs of rage. “Will you ruin everything? Now, when we are only moments from victory? Always have you been thus,” he accused, his earlier compassion dissolving into hostility. “Defiant and willful and the rest of us be damned. You fought against marrying every suitor I chose for you, and now—insolent girl!—you defy me again even though it means disaster for Caithe’s entire future!

“Oh, could I have but done it all myself,” he groaned, shaking a fist at the unseen sky. “I could have made a treaty with the Sarians and avoided this destructive conflict. But no… you had to take your petty childhood grudges out on me and see that I never lived to do it!”

Athaya’s throat constricted with anguish. His words were more painful than any of the Sage’s magic blows, meant to kill the spirit and not the body. “No, it wasn’t like that! Your magic made you mad—you lashed out at me! I was only trying to defend myself, but I wasn’t trained, and I couldn’t stop in time. I never meant to hurt you. Surely you know that now, don’t you?
Don’t you?
”

His expression did not waver. “Would that you had never been born, Athaya,” he said, cold and unforgiving. “Would that this prophecy could have been fulfilled without you. Caithe would have been better off—
I
would have been better off! Perhaps I would have lived to see my grandchildren grow up… perhaps they would have come to love me as my daughter never did.”

“How
dare
you say that!” Athaya shrieked at him, poised on the fragile edge between fury and hysteria. “I loved you—I
worshiped
you as a child. But every time I tried to talk to you, you pushed me away and told me to be still. The only time you ever spoke to me was to scold me. Nothing I ever did was ever good enough to please you!”

Kelwyn was unmoved by her display, as if enduring yet another pointless childhood tantrum. “Whatever has passed between us can be resolved. But not here—not now. There is no more time. You must follow me. It is the only way and the only chance you will have. Obey me, and all will be forgiven. Defy me, and you will never see my face again.”

His forbidding gaze bored into her, and as she met it, something tightened inside her skull like the last twist of a thumbscrew. The fragile remains of her resistance crumbled to nothingness like dead and brittle leaves. Athaya would obey him. She had to… there was no other choice. Why had she ever thought there was?

“You’re right, Father,” she said, tears of defeat stinging her eyes. “I have always been a trial to you. But I won’t be any longer.”

The look in Kelwyn’s eyes at that moment was unlike anything she remembered dwelling there before—triumph laced with malice; heady victory poisoned with evil.

“Be glad, Athaya,” he murmured through a loveless smile. “The Lorngeld will flourish because of your sacrifice.”

She nodded in miserable silence. It would be difficult to follow him, but she had done difficult things before. The others would understand. It was the price she must pay for what she had done to him, and if Caithe would be the better for it, how could she possibly be so selfish as to refuse? She folded her slender fingers into his hand; the spirit-flesh was cold and unmarked by veins or scars. Slowly, he led her toward the perimeter of the wards; her heart convulsed in terror, thrashing within her chest like a caged bird.

“Only a moment, Athaya,” Kelwyn assured her, the soothing words tainted with a curiously threatening edge. He urged her closer to that threshold from which there was no return. “A moment, and it will all be over.”

Athaya braced herself with a prayer, preparing for her heart to burst in sacrifice as she stepped through the ward curtain and into her father’s realm.

But at the fateful moment of crossing, she was snatched back by a pair of strong hands—warm hands pulsing with blood, unlike Kelwyn’s lifeless spirit-flesh. One of those hands whipped across her face, stinging with reality. “Athaya, snap out of this! It’s a trick, damn it all—a trick!”

The peach-colored blur slowly focused into a face. She blinked at it stupidly. “Durek?” Another moment’s confusion, and then she twisted away from him, realizing his intent. “No, don’t try to stop me. I have to go. Please… it’s best for everyone.” She looked to Kelwyn’s image, now flickering and fading like sheet lightning. “It’s the only way he’ll ever forgive me. Please, let go… he’s leaving without me—”

Durek shook her hard by the shoulders, then spat out a curse and slapped her again; his signet ring bit her cheek, drawing a trickle of blood. “Athaya, listen to me! Listen to me now, even if you never do so again.” She gazed drunkenly into his eyes and mused how much they resembled Kelwyn’s at that moment; alike, but not so murderous. “What happened to Father wasn’t your fault. Do you hear me? It was an accident. A terrible, awful accident. You couldn’t help it—your power was just too strong, and you didn’t know how to control it.” The words spewed out like a ruptured boil, expelling their poison so that the flesh beneath could finally start to heal. “Tyler tried to tell me that you were only defending yourself but I didn’t want to listen to him. I was sure… even when I knew Father was going crazy, I was so damned sure of myself. I never bothered to give you benefit of the doubt.”

Athaya stared at him, uncomprehending.
No, this is trickery; this can’t be Durek talking…

“Let him go, Athaya,” her brother implored. “Stop idolizing him—don’t give his memory that kind of power over you! He was a good man but he wasn’t a god. He never saw you for what you were but only for what you were not—and couldn’t possibly be.”

“But what I did—”

“No, Athaya!” he shouted in staunch denial. His face was mere inches from hers, his breath hot upon her cheeks. “
What happened to Kelwyn he did to himself!
”

The Sage’s enchantment shattered in a epiphanous instant; Kelwyn’s ghost guttered out and died, the foundation on which it had been built now irreparably cracked. Athaya’s senses came flooding back to her in a dizzying rush like magic freed from a sealing spell, painful in its intensity but blessedly welcome all the same. But there was no time for words of gratitude; no time to tell him what a priceless gift he had given her. She looked at her brother, then at the wards, and realized—as he did not—the dire peril he was in.
Or maybe he
did
know,
she considered.
Maybe he thought it was a price worth paying.

Robbed of his near victory, the Sage glowered at the king of Caithe like a fallen angel ousted from paradise. “Foolish man,” he snarled, every syllable a malediction. “Didn’t I say that crossing the wards was dangerous?” He lifted his right hand, offering benediction.

“You will not interfere again.”

King or no, Athaya roughly shoved her brother away. “Durek, go—get out
now!
”

Satisfied that she was free of the Sage’s thrall, Durek started back—safety was but a few yards away. But he had only taken a single step when he doubled over as if kicked by a horse, clutching his abdomen and gasping savagely for breath.

“Intus sanguinet!”
the Sage spoke again, and when Durek opened his mouth to cry out, Athaya saw that it was full of blood, staining both teeth and tongue a vivid and deadly red.

“Stop it! This isn’t his fight. Leave him alone!”

The Sage’s voice was devoid of compassion, his lips barely moving as he spoke. “He is already a dead man. He knew that the moment he entered the arena.”

Durek’s stomach turned over, spraying a sickly mixture of blood and spittle on the cobbles at his feet. Despite the horror gnawing at her innards, Athaya took care to keep her defenses up. It would be a fine time for the Sage to strike her down—if far from an honorable one—but curiously he chose not to, content to watch her brother suffer. She tried to push Durek to safety, but the blow he’d taken was too great; he crumpled to the ground in torment, unable to rise. His face had gone a hideous shade of gray, and he spewed up another mouthful of blood—royal blood—that ran in tiny rivers between the cobblestones.

“Durek, why?” she beseeched him, bracing his shoulders against the convulsions wracking his body. “This was my battle. Why did you interfere?”

His words came in short and ragged scraps. “I had to. I didn’t think… I just couldn’t—” His body shuddered with another violent seizure. “I couldn’t bear for you to lose that way. Not that way.”

Athaya knelt beside him, extending her senses to try to heal his wounds. It took only the briefest of probes to learn that the damage inflicted by the Sage’s spell was irreparable; the blow—like a sword through the belly—had ripped through vital organs, bleeding out his life from the inside.
God, no… not him, too. Not now, when we’ve only just become friends.