Sorcerer's Legacy (18 page)

Faisix’s brows rose thoughtfully. “Has he indeed? I shall unravel his mysteries, Mistress, and discover the origins of a certain chestnut-haired man who was once dear to you. Then we shall see who suffers defeat. But such a search will cost me time, and I intend to ruin Darion first. Without him, your fate won’t matter. And since you’ve shown such touching concern for Minksa, I’ve decided the child shall help.”

Horror snapped the threads of Elienne’s composure. “No!” But Faisix simply smiled at her protest as the mutes bundled her and Minksa toward the open door.

Chapter
10

The Path of Damnation

THE STUDY
had
been cleared of the worst wreckage from Faisix’s duel with Taroith, but broken glassware glittered still in the recesses beneath furnishings, and the floor bore the crisscrossed scars of scorch marks and ugly rust-colored stains. Pushed by calloused hands into a wooden chair, Elienne heard Faisix move to the cupboards against the left wall. Beyond the mute’s bulk, she glimpsed the jars that held the reduced remains of Heggen’s corpse. Elienne was grateful Minksa’s back was turned. The girl was young for such a grisly sight.

Faisix selected a flask from the shelf and spoke without leaving his work. “Aisa, please restrain the Lady in a manner which leaves her left hand at liberty. I wish her free to watch her Prince’s demise in the mirrowstone.”

Elienne barely felt the bite of the cords, concerned as she was for Minksa; the girl offered no resistance as Denji turned her over to Faisix. Like a hare trapped in the jaws of a wolf, she seemed suspended in paralysis. When the Regent caught her hand, she followed willingly, and cued by her attitude of submissiveness, Elienne realized the girl was no stranger to the practices of sorcery.

Faisix spoke to the mutes without looking up. “You are both excused. Set the bolt from the outside as you leave.”

The raw clank of weaponry belled in Elienne’s ears as Aisa and Denji departed. Why should the Regent require the door locked from
without?
Elienne licked parched lips, avoiding thoughts of Darion, alone with his men-at-arms, and bereft of Taroith’s guidance. Gripped instead by recall of the scorched and wretched corpses bloating beneath Trathmere’s walls, she experienced an echo of Minksa’s submissive despair. Defeat became a haven of familiarity beside the horror of confronting yet another incomprehensible barrage of sorcery. Her life, surely, had ended with Cinndel’s at the hands of the Khadrach; every action since seemed pallid and futile as that of a ghost.

“Stand here, child.” Faisix indicated a clear space in the center of the room.

Mutely obedient, Minksa followed with dull, uninterested eyes as he delved into a nearby chest and returned, both hands laden with candlestands. As he arrayed them on the floor by the girl’s feet, Elienne noticed the bases were carved of black stone, each one a squat, leering demon. The girl seemed indifferent to the ugliness around her.

Faisix lifted the flask from the table and anointed his left hand. Bloody, dripping fingers traced a line from candlestand to candlestand, enclosing Minksa within a red triangle. The torches cast grotesque, hunched shadows about him as he bent and scribed a wide pentagram, then framed the configuration with runes.

The child stood motionless while Faisix set bluish-white candles into the demon stands and lit them, each with a separate incantation. When he had finished, he stood within the pentagram and spoke a word guttural with consonants. The gory tracings upon the floor sizzled, then burst into flame.

That moment, Minksa cried out, like a sleeper wakened from a nightmare. The sound twisted Elienne’s heart. Pendaire’s Regent was a monster, to shape his snares with a child. Better she lose Cinndel’s son than suffer the rule of such a man.

“Minksa!” Elienne shouted. “Recite Ma’Diere’s Laws! Do you know them?”

The child seemed stunned, as though the rhythmic rise and fall of Faisix’s chant robbed her of hearing.

Elienne drew breath to repeat the Laws herself, but poisonous fumes from the candles choked her throat. A spasm of coughing mangled the words beyond recognition. Half-smothered by the smoke, Elienne blinked watering eyes and, in the sulfurous glare of flamelight, saw Faisix raise his arm.

The darkness of oblivion appeared before him, framing a doorway in the air.

“Come here, Minksa.” His voice was barely above a whisper, yet the child heard. She raised her head and took a slow, tranced step forward. For a moment, Elienne saw her outline blur. Then Minksa crossed the threshold into night.

The blackness flickered, suddenly suffused with streaks of dull red. The girl screamed once, high and thin like a wounded rabbit. She swayed, and her legs buckled as her senses left her. Faisix caught her body as it fell through the gate he had fashioned. Her limbs dangled from his arms as he laid her like a corpse at his feet.

Flayed by emotion, Elienne found her free hand clenched fiercely around the mirrowstone. The jewel was drenched with sweat, and her palm ached where the gold setting had gouged her skin.

“The girl is not dead,” said Faisix conversationally. “See for yourself.” The Regent inclined his head toward the triangle, and following his nod, Elienne saw a pale, spectral shape move within. Faisix’s sorcery had separated spirit from flesh. Imprisoned by the red barriers of the warding spell, Minksa’s soul desperately sought escape, to no avail. Elienne shivered, stirred to anger. As Faisix initiated his next invocation, Elienne sought the knotted cords that bound her right wrist behind her back.

The torches streamed and flicked out. Only the ensorceled candles remained alight, flames casting sickly, greenish halos in the dark. Sweat slicked Elienne’s back, and the tendons ached around stressed joints. Strain as she might, the knots stayed just beyond reach. Beyond the perimeter of his pentagram, Faisix had scribed a second triangle, and above it, still another dark gateway. The name he called into the obsidian void was that of Darion’s sister, Avelaine, who had died of a fall from a horse at age fifteen.

With a leap of horrified intuition, Elienne perceived the Regent’s intent. If Faisix merged Minksa’s hapless flesh with the spirit of the Prince’s dead sister, he would create for himself a formidable weapon. Half-crazed with concern for Darion, Elienne wrenched desperately against her bonds. But the knots held.

Sparks flared through shifting billows of smoke. Elienne bit her lip to keep from crying out in frustration.

The Regent bent over Minksa’s possessed body and applied the arts of shape-change. As though aware of his meddling, the girl’s spirit beat like a moth against the sorcery that confined her. Elienne watched in growing apprehension as the girl’s fleshly contours altered under Faisix’s touch. The apparition that finally rose to its feet before him bore little resemblance to the plain child fathered by Jieles. Luridly underlit by guttering candle flames, Elienne beheld a tall young woman with rich, dark hair and a determined jawline. A jeweled pin glittered at her throat, and her slim figure was expensively clad in riding leather of masculine cut.

“Brother, why have you called me back?” she demanded in a clear, imperious voice.

Hearing the words, Elienne realized that Faisix had himself assumed the Prince’s image. When the two were seen together, the likeness to the royal features in the woman’s profile was unmistakable.

“I have summoned you because I am in grave danger, sister.”

The Princess glanced aside, as though to examine the hellish glow of the ciphers that ringed her round, But Faisix recalled her straying attention. “Avelaine! Will you listen? My life is threatened.”

Avelaine faced him with an imperious toss of her coroneted head. Dark hair glanced like raven feathers in the dim, smoky room. “Darion, you have changed much since I saw you last.”

“I haven’t time for idle talk. I am pursued by a man shape-changed to my likeness. Not even Taroith can tell us apart.” Faisix added a gesture of theatrical vehemence. “Bring him down for me, sister. I offer the chance to avenge the death of one dear to us both.”

Avelaine frowned.
“Who.
I think you lie,
your Grace
. The brother I knew would never disturb the dead. Not even for his own life’s sake.”

“Ielond lost his life for the sake of the succession. Must I be murdered as you were, or will you help?”

Avelaine’s eyes narrowed. “Faisix!” She said suddenly, “Ma’Diere have mercy, was my death not enough?” and took a sharp step back. The heel of her riding boot knocked inadvertently into a candlestand, and, as though wakened, the carved base came alive.

Elienne gasped. Though fumes scoured her throat, she shouted frantically, “Avelaine, it’s a trap!”

But the woman in the triangle seemed deaf to her warning. The demon shape bloated like a soap bubble. White and foul as a slug, it burst, releasing a writhing coil of vapor that rose and twined malevolently around the Princess’s head. Avelaine gasped.

“You are mine now,” Faisix said softly. “This geas I lay upon you, Avelaine of Pendaire. You shall never rest until your brother lies dead at your hand.”

The Princess stood, reasonless as a beast. Her hands accepted the sword Faisix offered with a dreamer’s incomprehension. No longer wearing Darion’s face, the Regent drew a thin, ceremonial dagger from his belt.

Faisix took the knife and nicked his palm with a swift motion. Blood welled, black against pale skin. He muttered an incantation, then raised his slashed hand and let the wound drip like a libation over the ring. A thunderous blast reft the air. Wind tossed the hair back from Elienne’s face, and the candles streamed like specters gone mad. The pentagram flared, red to violet, and crackled sparks, seeming for a prolonged moment to enclose the blackest pit of Hell.

Within, Elienne saw movement: a glint of scales like smoky quartz edging the arch of a serpentine tail. Then the darkness parted and dispersed like smoke, and she beheld the equine demon Faisix had once ridden over the ice plains of Ceroth. Sparks shot from restless hooves, and, yellow as lamps, its eyes gleamed with a man’s intelligence. Dazed by fumes, and battered beyond mortal reason by the proximity of unnatural forces, Elienne was slow to recognize she viewed the Regent himself, hideously transformed.

She wrenched at her bonds until pain made her dizzy. Through blurred eyes, she saw Avelaine mount. The sword flashed once in the flamelight, severing the five candles at the apexes of the pentagram. Thin wax shafts toppled, trailing ragged flags of smoke, and extinguished with a sheared-off hiss against the floor. The connecting lines flickered out. Elienne swallowed, tasted sweat. A triad of candles burned at the angles of the ward that confined Minksa’s soul. All else lay shrouded in darkness.

Elienne seized the mirrowstone, braced for disaster. The stone’s depths shone warmly, lit by an open-air campfire. Darion sat on a gilt-trimmed saddlecloth, with knees drawn up, and his head resting on crossed wrists. Lumped like dark hillocks about him, the men-at-arms slept under damp wool blankets, armored still, she saw, by the light that pricked helms, weapons, and mailed limbs.

Faisix’s apparition had not yet arrived.

The mirrowstone slipped from nervous fingers. If she was to help the Prince, she had little time to act; her only chance lay in the glowing triangle across the room, where Minksa’s imprisoned spirit huddled in abject despair. If, somehow, the child could be freed, Ma’Diere’s Laws might lend advantage enough for her to regain command of her possessed flesh from Avelaine, and so disrupt Faisix’s geas of murder. The chance was slim, and dangerous; Elienne knew her own ignorance of sorcery might precipitate disaster. Yet Ielond had not chosen her for timidity.

The cords could not be loosened; the chair, then, would have to be included in her plans. Elienne grimly bit her lip and shoved against the floor with her feet. With a screech, the legs skated a foot across the tiles. Elienne battled a queasy rush of vertigo. She lowered her head quickly, to prevent herself from fainting outright.

She would have to change tactics. Even if she managed to retain her senses, the noise alone would surely attract the mutes. Urgently, Elienne searched the shadowed room for inspiration.

Her eye fell on the rucked outline of a throw rug piled beneath a book stand. Grasping the chair seat firmly, she yanked upward as she kicked, her intent to lift the chair clear of the floor. But the motion jarred her arms to the shoulders, and pain channeled like molten metal down her nerves. Against all effort of will, she cried out. Sweat dripped like tears down her temples and cheeks.

Elienne drew a shallow, ragged breath. The rug was beyond her means, but any cloth would do as well. She tugged at her skirts and with shaking fingers tore the soft chemise from beneath. Then she tilted the chair and eased the fabric under its legs with her foot. This time the chair slid more smoothly, noise reduced to a muffled rumble, and with clumsy persistence, Elienne propelled herself toward Minksa’s confined spirit. The chair caught once, on an uneven square of tile, but Elienne pressed doggedly forward.

The chair rocked to a halt before the heated line of the triangle. She picked out the thin glimmer of the figure within. The girl bent, tightly crouched, her face buried in the crossed shield of her arms.

“Minksa!” Elienne’s voice seemed slurred, even to her own ears. The spectral shape did not stir. Perhaps the child could hear no spoken word, removed as she was from her flesh. But Elienne refused to abandon hope.

“Minksa, are you listening?”

The child stayed motionless.

“Minksa, you must...” Elienne’s voice cracked, and new tears sprang hotly in her eyes, silvering the faint, phosphorescent image of the imprisoned soul before her. “Minksa, his Grace’s life depends upon us now. I think we can save him, if you will help.”