Sworn To Conflict: Courtlight #3 (27 page)

“That’s when I began to suspect her for the traitor she was,” Vana said.

Serena turned pale and the Lord Chamberlain sprang into action, calling forth a staff of hardened minerals from the earth itself. He lunged forward with it, intending to hit Vana mid-chest with the diamond-hard staff. But she was no longer standing where he aimed. She had moved in the blink of an eye and with a disdainful look, she didn’t even bother unsheathing her swords. She simply stepped behind him while he was in mid-motion and took the amulet from his hand in passing.

With a sharp smile she kicked him in the back and sent him flying, not through the woods but through the Aether Realm itself and back into the earthly realm.

Without breaking a sweat, she sniffed and said, “Earthcasters are always such a bore. Now, where were we? Ah, yes, I was just about to kill your mother.”

With that, she unsheathed her two swords.

Ciardis’s heart began to race.

“What did you say?” she whispered.

“I said,” Vana repeated slowly, “I’m about to kill your mother.”

Ciardis’s golden skin took on a pale cast as she slumped down. Blood was rushing to her head and she felt faint.
This cannot be happening
.

She began to laugh hysterically as Vana stalked forward. The leather-clad woman stopped and looked at her curiously with a hint of disdain. Ciardis began to hyperventilate while sitting slumped on the ground, her face in her hands and uncontrollable laughter and hiccups overtaking her.

She felt Serena’s hands on her shoulder and she didn’t flinch or push her away. She smelled like soft lavender—sweet, enticing, like a mother should. It was altogether
wrong
. Shoving her off while hiccupping like crazy, Ciardis stood up, tears streaming down her face, and pointed her shaking finger at Serena, who still knelt on the ground.

“You—you did this me!” she said through hiccups.

Serena eyed her as she would a recalcitrant child.

Vana sighed with irritation from where she stood to Ciardis’s right. “As touching as this is, I have a job to do.”

“And
you
,” Ciardis said, rounding on Vana, “you let her!”

Vana turned an irritated expression on the hysterical girl.

“You knew this whole time! You had to know right after the test.”

Vana rubbed the flat of her blade as she studied Ciardis’s neck. She looked like she was contemplating if a clean slice would take it off or if two would be necessary.

Lady Serena stepped in front of her charge. “You’re here to kill me, Lady Vana Cloudbreaker. But did you ever wonder why? Why those orders were given?”

“It’s not my job to
wonder
, Weathervane. It’s my job to act.”

“Who gave you those orders?” said Ciardis in a halting voice from where she peeked out from behind Serena.

Vana tilted her head to the side. She must have known they had nowhere to go and no way to counter her attack, so she said, “Magistrate of the Imperial Courts, of course.”

“But why?” questioned Serena, her hands spread. “Why kill me on sight instead of bringing me to court for a trial and justice?”

Vana didn’t answer. She stared at her with carefully blank eyes. Neither reproachful nor assuming.

“Because,” said Serena as she gathered her magic. Vana raised up her sword as she sensed it, but she didn’t move forward. The veil around Serena’s form fell. First her hair changed from cascading blonde ringlets to beautifully wavy black hair with an abundance of curls, then the skin of her throat and hands changed from milk-pale to a darker cinnamon color. Ciardis couldn’t see much more because the cloak covered her.

And then Serena turned around. Deliberately putting her back to Lady Cloudbreaker and facing Ciardis.

As she did, Serena gave Ciardis trembling smile and finished her sentence. “I know who really killed the empress of Algardis.”

Ciardis sucked in her breath. She wasn’t paying attention to her words. All she could look at were the endless depths of her eyes. Her
golden
Weathervane eyes.

A connection that she denied with blood and memory came back in a rush, the connection she had felt before long ago—one between mother and child.

The woman smiled. “I am Lillian Weathervane, Ciardis. I am your mother.”

Vana stood still and silent behind them. For a time the only movement in the garden was the tentative motion of Ciardis’s hand as she moved it forward and her mother’s response. They clasped hands and Ciardis felt a rush of power like she had never felt before.

“Why?” Ciardis asked. But there was no mistaking her meaning. Lillian’s hand shook as she grasped Ciardis’s tightly.

“I was being hunted, my dear,” she said, “for a crime I didn’t commit. For a little while I was able to keep you with me. Always planning and scheming to find and reclaim Caemon, as well. But after a while I knew that they would never stop looking. That you would always be in danger while with me.”

“Danger? They wouldn’t hurt a child. I could have stayed with you. Lived with you. Grown up with you!”

Lillian shook her head, tears glimmering in her eyes. “I was to be hunted to my death. Any and all of those surrounding me and helping me would be considered necessary casualties in their efforts to murder me. I couldn’t risk it. Not after I had already lost one of my twins. To lose both would have been heartbreaking.”

Ciardis pulled her hand away. “You lost us both anyway.”

Lillian shook her head, pleading with Ciardis. “But don’t you see? Now I’ve found you both and I’ll never let you go.”

Ciardis thought it out. “And how will you manage that? You’ve still got a kill order on your head.” She gestured at Vana, who stood eyeing them with interest.

Lillian swallowed and turned to Vana once more. “What my daughter says is true. I am hunted. They want me dead before I can speak the truth. I know what I have to say will rock the Imperial Courts to the core and expose the darkness within for what it is: evil.”

Vana didn’t look impressed. “And you’re assuming I’ll let you?”

“I’m assuming that you will follow the rules of your sect,” Lillian replied sharply. “No, I don’t mean the Companions’ Guild, but rather the Mage School that you spent so many long years at. The rules that state that a mage is not to be killed without saving the knowledge of their gifts for future generations and storing their memories for true learning over the years. Not without extenuating circumstances.”

Vana smirked. “I think this would qualify.”

“I think not,” said the Lord Chamberlain as he reappeared in their circle.

Vana narrowed her eyes as she looked at him. “I took your amulet.”

Realm alone. Only when transporting others.”

get back.”

the court I would ask you to consider this: the enormous magical potential of a Weathervane such as Lillian hasn’t been seen in a generation and before her birth not for
three centuries
. What she can do is a necessary lesson for the Weathervanes who come after her and the mages who can learn from her abilities to not only enhance magic but manipulate it.”

“This doesn’t concern me,” said Vana tightly.

“But I know you, Lady Cloudbreaker,” Lillian said with a cold gaze. “You have always been one to study your subjects. The ones you kill. The ones you defeat. Think of me as another competitor. One whom you will soon put to rest.”

Vana uncrossed her swords and laid them to rest on either side of her. Ciardis took that as a good sign.

“And say I agreed to this farce. How do you expect to inform mages from here? You would need to return to the Imperial courts for that.”

“Precisely,” said Lillian Weathervane, with a bright smile that would have done Lady Serena proud.

L
illian Weathervane and Vana Cloudbreaker came to a silent understanding. Their eyes met and Lillian turned around while Vana fully sheathed her swords.

Lillian cupped Ciardis’s face in her hands and looked down at her with pride. “My darling daughter, it’s time for you to return to camp. Time for you to take your place once again by the Prince Heir’s side.”

“No,” said Ciardis, “I’m not leaving you.”

Lillian shook her head. “And I will not leave you. We will only be apart a short while. But for now Sebastian is seeking you, and if he doesn’t find you he will send out search parties. People who cannot be allowed to find me.”

“How do you know he’s looking for me?”

Lillian smiled with wise eyes. “Because I know how long you’ve been gone and I see how he looks at you.”

“Now go, and
remember
—tell no one,” Lillian said with a gentle push of her hands. Before Ciardis could object again the Lord Chamberlain clasped a firm hand on her left shoulder and transported her from the Aether Realm with the amulet he had retrieved from Vana.

She turned around and saw that she was back in the snow-laden field with the horses. Frowning, she turned to the Lord Chamberlain to angrily demand that he return her to the Aether Realm. But before she could he was gone in a blink of an eye, back to Lillian Weathervane’s side, she assumed. Ciardis stamped her foot angrily but there was nothing she could do about it. She no longer had the bracelet that linked her to that realm. And the truthsayer’s body had vanished.

“Ciardis, what are you doing?” said a confused voice to her left.

She whirled around to see Kane leaning against the fence with a puzzled look on his face.

“I was...well...talking to someone.”

“To whom?” he asked, looking at the empty field. There was no one else around and no tracks in the snow that would indicate there had been.

She almost told him about Lillian and Vana and the Lord Chamberlain but then she remembered Lillian’s admonition, her fight for survival, and the fact that this whole northern campaign might be a secret plot led by the Imperial courts. She closed her mouth with a
click
.

“No one,” she said, looking at Kane wistfully. “Just myself.” Wishing she could tell him.

“Well,” he said with amusement, “if you’re done, then Sebastian is in a fine fit looking for you, not to mention the fact that you have a meeting with the commander of this army.”

She nodded and traipsed across the snow.

“The general is supposedly on the outskirts of camp. We’ll have to ride there,” he explained.

She was glad they hadn’t confronted General Barnaren right away, but they also hadn’t had time to plan what she and Sebastian were going to tell him about the sanctuary and the Daemoni tales. But she knew that now Sebastian wouldn’t wait. He was in a fury. On one hand she could understand it; Barnaren had been keeping secrets upon secrets from him since the beginning. If either course were true, it wouldn’t negate that fact. As the Prince Heir it was Sebastian who should have been planning the campaign, Sebastian who should have been leading the war. But the general went over his head time and again with messages to his father and secret meetings with his men.

She and Kane joined an irritated-looking Sebastian in the northernmost corner of the camp. Once he spotted her, Sebastian said, “The general is in one of the side camps, but I’m not yet sure which one.”

She nodded while Sebastian tersely questioned a regiment commander about the whereabouts of the general from atop his black stallion. Once told, they raced straight there.  Sebastian didn’t stop at the request of the general’s guard to halt outside of the perimeter. He rode straight toward the four men and through them when they hastily jumped aside to avoid being trampled by his spirited stallion. Ciardis almost felt sorry for them—almost. They were too well trained not to question the presence of anyone who came into the general’s vicinity but no doubt knew they could be executed for putting a hand on the Prince Heir. It put them in a quandary.

When the general heard the commotion outside of the tent he strode outside in full battle armor with a thunderous expression on his face. An anger that didn’t lessen when he saw who had interrupted his strategic session with the commanders of the army, who spilled out of the tent behind him.

With narrowed eyes, the general said, “Prince Heir, when you said we would continue our session later I confess I hadn’t expected such an explosion of an entrance.”

Sebastian didn’t bother with pleasantries. Uncharacteristic of a Prince Heir known for his respect for every person in his presence.

Sebastian tossed his horse’s reins to a soldier and leapt down without assistance. The general didn’t blink an eye at the display. He did, however, pale when the very ground they stood on shook, darkened clouds sprang up in the sky where white clouds had reigned before, and a cloudy form began to appear in their midst.

“Sire,” said the general with a warning tone in his voice.

“Do not caution me, General,” said Sebastian. “Remember who the imperial heir here is and who serves.”

Sebastian waited a moment. Clearly expecting something.

The general glared at him and then slowly he lowered himself to one knee, head bowed. His men quickly followed suit. The sky continued to darken with ominous dark gray clouds as the winds picked up fiercely, and Ciardis saw flashes of lightning in the distance. She knew it was Sebastian doing all of these things, and she felt visceral fear at their approach. For the first time Ciardis—and, she suddenly realized, the men surrounding her—truly felt respect for the Prince Heir. Sebastian had done more with his powers in a blink of an eye than any of those that surrounded him could do: He called the land, the sky, and the ethereal to his bidding.

Out of the misty form a voice that she had last heard in the Ameles Forest emerged. “Welcome, Prince Heir, I serve.” The Land Wight had joined the festivities. A distinct
crack
of lightning marked the Land Wight’s entrance, descending down in the middle of the group, inches from Prince Sebastian, lighting his face in an impressive display.