Casket of Souls (65 page)

“Atre!” Surprised, Brader loosened his hold on Seregil just enough for him to elbow the man in the ribs and slip free.

As Atre thrashed in pain, his free foot hit the bottle,
sending it spinning toward the edge of the stage between two footlights.

Seregil lunged after it and caught it one-handed just as it tipped over the edge. At the same instant two large hands clapped around his and Seregil found himself fetched up painfully against one of the footlights, looking down at Micum Cavish’s pale face.

“You take her,” Seregil gasped, releasing the bottle very carefully into his friend’s hands. Micum pressed it to his lips with a gasp of relief. It held Illia’s ring.

Seregil got to his feet clutching his wounded shoulder and looked back at Brader, expecting an attack. But the man was on his back in a pool of blood, one of Alec’s arrows protruding from his heaving chest. Seregil scanned the theater and Alec waved to him from one of the boxes—the one they’d been sitting in with Kylith a few short months ago—and started down for the front of the theater. The front doors stood open now, explaining how Alec and Micum had gotten in while he and the others had been distracted.

Grimacing in pain and feeling a little dizzy from blood loss, Seregil picked up his poniard with his left hand and stood over Atre. The man coughed out a spray of bloody spittle; it reminded Seregil of the black poisoned blood running down Thero’s cheek, and he resisted the urge to kick the remaining life out of Atre.

Instead he knelt beside the dying actor, placing the needle-sharp point of the poniard to his throat. “How do we restore Illia’s soul? Tell me!”

Atre let out a wheezing laugh. “Or what? You’ll kill me?”

“Slowly.”

“Too late for that, I’m afraid. Unless you let me drink.”

“Those are swallowtail arrowheads,” Alec informed him as he climbed onto the stage to join them. “They have to be cut out, and even then you probably won’t live.”

“Let me drink,” Atre rasped again. “If you do, then I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

“I’ll get it,” Micum said.

“You’re not serious!” Alec gasped.

Micum regarded him stonily. “It’s my girl’s life. And you know the ones in the bottles with the completed seals are already dead.” With that, he climbed onto the stage and disappeared behind the scrim.

“He’s right,” said Seregil.

Alec picked up the fallen chain and examined Elani’s jewels. “Seregil, there’s a stone missing from the brooch.”

“My pocket,” Atre gasped. “Take it. I haven’t hurt her.”

Seregil searched him none too gently and found the loose stone. It fit the mounting on the brooch. “All right. Is Brader still alive, Alec?”

Alec bent over the other man. “Yes.”

Brader raised a bloody hand, motioning him closer. Alec went to one knee and bent over him. “What is it?”

“The company—” The way Brader’s voice gurgled in his throat spoke of a punctured lung, or worse. “Merina and the others. They know nothing about any of this. They had no part. I’ve no right to ask, I know, but please, I beg you, spare them! I swear to you, they had no part—”

“Do you know how to restore Illia’s soul?”

“The necklace.” Brader waved weakly in Atre’s direction. “Use it! Use—necklace. He always did. Will you swear? Please! My children—”

“Unlike you, we don’t kill the innocent,” Seregil growled. “And if they are innocent, we’ll see that no harm comes to them.”

Brader looked up at Alec, eyes growing dim. “I’m so sorry—for all of them.”

As they watched, Brader let out a racking, bloody cough, shuddered, and went still.

“Saved us the trouble,” Seregil sneered, then broke off as Brader began to change before his eyes. The long, bloodless face crumpled in on itself as the skin went brown and leathery. In moments the corpse was wizened to the bone, shrunken limbs like old sticks wrapped in rags, fingers curled like leathery claws, the skin brown and dull as an old boot. Only his hair remained as it has been, coppery red against the crimson blood pooling under his head.

“Looks like you and Thero were right about what they were doing with those souls,” said Alec. “How old do you think they really were?”

Seregil looked down at Atre and snorted. “Far too old.”

Micum returned with a sealed bottle.

“Quickly!” gasped Atre.

Seregil took the phial, broke the seal, and held it tantalizingly close to Atre’s lips without actually giving it to him.

“Tell me.”

“Drink—first. Or I take it to the grave.”

Micum looked ready to do murder. But instead he softly implored, “Seregil, please.”

Gritting his teeth, Seregil tipped the contents of the phial into Atre’s mouth. The actor swallowed convulsively, half choking, then shuddered violently. Seregil was afraid it had killed him, but instead color flooded into Atre’s cheeks and his eyes went vague and glassy. In spite of the arrows embedded in his body, he looked as strikingly handsome as he ever had onstage.

“Ah, that’s better!” he sighed.

“Now tell me how to save my daughter, damn you!” Micum demanded.

Atre laughed. “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t. I only take the essences. I don’t put them back.”

Micum grabbed him by the throat, his face a mask of rage. “Liar! Tell me!”

But Atre let out a strangled laugh and rasped, “Can’t.”

“Then you’re of no further use to anyone.”

Seregil handed Micum his poniard. The big man gazed down at Atre for a moment, then stabbed him through the heart again and again, until his own face and tunic were covered in blood.

At last Alec grabbed his arm. “Enough, Micum. He’s dead. Look.”

Atre’s body was shriveling and going leathery and brown, as Brader’s had, but more slowly. That handsome face gradually transformed to a horrid mask as the flesh darkened and shrank on the bones, eyes wizening like raisins. When it was
over, his exposed white teeth and auburn hair were the only recognizable remnants of the man who’d been the toast of Rhíminee.

Seregil handed Micum his handkerchief. “You’re covered in blood.”

“So are you. How’s the shoulder?”

“It hurts,” Seregil admitted. And it was worse now that the excitement was over.

Micum helped Seregil out of his bloodstained tunic while Alec tore strips from his own shirt for bandages. When they had made the best job they could of binding the wound, Alec looked back at the corpses. “What do we do with them?”

“Leave them,” said Seregil. “We’ll lock the place up again, until Thero can figure out what to do with all those bottles downstairs.”

Alec gave him a worried look. “
If
he’s still alive.”

“If he’s not, what do we do?” asked Micum. “Atre was no use, but Thero did get Mika’s soul restored, even if it was only by chance.”

Neither Seregil nor Alec had an answer for that.

After taking the bone necklace, several phials, and labeled bits of jewelry to show as proof to Korathan, they hid the door to Atre’s workroom behind piled crates again, to keep the rest of Atre’s cache safe until Thero—or some other wizard—could decide what to do with it. The bodies they left for Korathan to deal with. Locking the theater securely behind them, they began the long walk back for their horses.

“What in Bilairy’s name took you two so long?” asked Seregil.

“We nearly got arrested,” Alec told him. “The neighbors thought we were attacking Brader and called in the bluecoats. Brader ran, and I got away a moment later.”

“How did you not get arrested?” Seregil asked Micum.

“Told them Brader had gotten my daughter in trouble, and that I and her brother Alec were after him for it. That, and a little gold, worked a charm.”

“I got here first and got the front door open and managed
to get up in the box for a shot while you were all distracted.” Alec shook his head. “You three up onstage like that? It looked like a scene from one of Atre’s plays.”

Seregil sighed. “I hate to admit it, but I am going to miss those.”

T
HE
city woke to the sound of gongs and herald’s cries: “The queen is dead. Long live Queen Elani!” and “Princess Klia has led Skala to victory in the north!”

Seregil and the others strode among knots and crowds, stunned as any of the citizens.

“This must be what Klia sent that message to Thero for,” said Alec.

All around them, householders and servants were already hanging black swags over front doors in acknowledgment of the royal mourning. Public mourning lasted a week, but for the royal family and court it would go on for much longer.

“No more parties with Elani,” Seregil murmured. “I doubt we’ll see much of her for a while.”

“And Klia led the army to victory!”

“As the last royal left on the field, it was her right to take command.”

“Beka always said the army loved Phoria. If they thought Klia had any hand in it, they wouldn’t have followed her. So that’s the end of the cabals?”

Seregil shrugged.

Some people they passed were now quietly celebrating the victory or mourning the fallen queen. Others were grumbling that the death and the mourning period put off the time for the public victory feast the queen would give for the city, and had shut down theaters, brothels, taverns, and the like.

The house in Gannet Lane was still shuttered when they
arrived there to collect their horses, which fortunately were still where they’d left them.

“Do you think Korathan arrested all of them?” Alec wondered.

“I imagine so,” Seregil replied with a twinge of regret. Merina and Brader had seemed like a devoted couple, and there had been no mistaking how much the man loved his children, even to his dying breath.

“I hope he was telling the truth about the others not being involved,” said Alec, as if reading his thoughts.

“So do I,” said Micum. “I don’t regret the killing of either of them, but the thought of those fatherless children …” He kept the rest of his thoughts to himself.

They parted ways at the Temple Precinct, Micum and Alec going back to the inn with Illia’s phial and good news, and Seregil heading for the Dalnan temple to ascertain Thero’s condition.

“What have you done to yourself now?” Valerius asked when he saw Seregil’s sad condition.

“Never mind that. Is Thero all right?”

“See for yourself,” the drysian told him, leading him to a guest room off the library.

To Seregil’s considerable surprise and great relief, he found the wizard sitting up in bed. He was pale as bleached linen, except for the angry red weal on his neck where the needle had struck him, but his eyes were clear and alert as he rasped out, “Illia? Did you get the phial?”

“Yes. Micum has it at the inn. By the Light!” Seregil pulled up another chair and clasped hands with him. “I didn’t know what to expect here.”

Thero gave a rusty chuckle. “Wizards are hard to kill. How else do you think we live to be so old? I’d managed to expel most of the poison from my body by the time Micum brought me here.”

“That nasty-looking black stuff you were coughing up?”

Thero nodded. “Not a pleasant process, but it saved my life. Valerius has been working to restore my strength.”

“With considerable success, I might add,” said Valerius.

“How soon until you’re strong enough for magic? We need you to restore Illia.”

“Fortunately, the ring of protection takes very little effort,” Thero replied. “The symbols do most of the work. I only hope we didn’t just get lucky with Mika because he’s wizard-born.”

“Don’t say that in front of the Cavishes. They’re scared enough as it is. And this might help.” Seregil took Atre’s bone necklace from his tunic and gave it to Thero. “Brader told us Atre always used it to work his magic.”

Thero held it gingerly between two fingers and wrinkled his nose.

“Those are human bones,” said Valerius.

“I thought so,” replied Seregil.

“And strung on human skin.” Thero dropped it onto the coverlet with a look of disgust. “How this whole business didn’t reek of necromancy I can’t imagine. As for that thing—” He gestured at the necklace, clearly loath to touch it again. “It isn’t magic.”

Seregil’s heart sank. “What? But Brader said Atre always used it!”

“He may have, but his magic didn’t come from it. It’s a nasty relic, very old, and clearly a ritual piece, but the only power it might have had was if Atre believed it was magic. If so, it was nothing but his own superstition at work. The power lay in him.”

“That would explain why you didn’t find it with your magic, unless he carried it with him.”

“I suppose so.”

Seregil let out a frustrated growl. “So it won’t help you at all?”

“If anything, the foul aura of the thing would hinder me. From what little I felt from it, it’s been used by hundreds of evil people over a very long period of time.”

Seregil told them what had happened to the bodies after Brader and Atre died.

“Abominations!” the drysian rumbled. “Are the corpses still there?”

“Yes, we locked them in.”

“I’ll deal with them.”

“Can you tell from the necklace where they were from, Thero?” asked Seregil.