The Crown of Stones: Magic-Price (54 page)

Closer to the harbor, the wind picked up. It tugged at the cloud cover. It freed the moon to light my way, and for a second, I thought I wanted that. I thought I wanted to see what Draken had done with my own eyes. Until the rays shone down onto the ruin and my heart dived straight into my stomach.

It was an irrational, reaction. I wasn’t ignorant of the destruction. I knew what the Langorians could do. I came with Jarryd’s memories of the attack in tow. Even if I hadn’t, Reth’s message warned not to put in near the dock because of the damage.

But despite all that, I was shaken. I was infuriated—and not because of Jarryd, or even on his behalf. I felt wronged.

Although I never truly fit in, I’d spent the first eight years of my life in Kabri, and so little remained that I could scarcely put the memories of my childhood back together.

Where I used to dart among a crowd so thick I feared being stepped on, were piles of sopping wet, black rubble. Instead of mouthwatering smells, the air reeked of mold and rot. The pier, where I would sit and watch the tall ships unload, had been reduced to a single black post sticking up out of the water. Strapped to it, one lonely, wrecked vessel bobbed up and down in the dark waves. Empty and gutted, sails shredded, mast cracked, its ashen hull shimmered like a ghostly carcass in the silver light.

I watched for a while, as the sad, half-ship dipped and swayed.

When the clouds came back, I turned away and moved inland over the dunes.

Between the deep sand and the thick patches of waist-high grass, it was slow going at first. But as the terrain leveled, the weeds thinned. Sand gave way to pebbles and scattered boulders, then rocky outcroppings. At the wall of the mountain, a series of long, flat shelves jutted out across the ground. In one section, they went up as well, far beyond the reach of my lantern. I stretched, holding the flame higher, and was still nowhere close to seeing the end of them, or the peak.

I put the lantern down and started climbing.

Scaling a mountain in the dark wasn’t one of my better ideas, but I couldn’t afford to waste a drop of magic. And even without light, I knew the ascent wouldn’t be difficult—it wasn’t my first attempt. Last time, I’d been small. I barely made it up two slabs before I slipped and broke my arm. Now, taller, older, and stronger, the rocks were spaced perfectly for my height. I could stand on one, reach the lip of the next, and pull myself up with ease.

In no time at all, I was at a height that was certain death if I fell. The view was nice though. The elevation lent me a vantage point I didn’t have on the
ground, and as the moon made another appearance, I could distinguish two Langorian warships anchored at a bend in the coast.

They appeared empty. Darkness and distance made it hard to be sure, but there were no unusual sounds on the air. Nothing moved on board but the tiny lights of lanterns swinging back and forth on the breeze.

Resuming my climb, a handful of minutes (and a dozen slabs) later, a halo of torchlight engulfed me from above. As I squinted into the glare, a hand reached down. It was splotched and striped with gray. Magic pricked the air around it.

Impatiently, the hand opened and closed, and I took it. I let my father help me up over the top, but I was glad when he let go. His skin felt peculiar. The contact left my own tingling and I shook the sensation off my fingers as I crawled to my feet, and looked around the large, flat ledge we were standing on.

It was about fifteen paces across and ten deep. Empty air was on my left. On my right was the mountain wall. It continued up flat and steep, but for a single break in the stone about the width of two men. Beyond the gap was a slim corridor. The walls glistened slightly, reflecting the faint glow of a fire from somewhere deeper within.

I turned to my father. I started to speak and he walked right by me. Head buried in his cloak, he didn’t glance. He offered no smug greeting or poorly timed insult. He just took his torch, headed into the slender mouth of the cave, and left me standing alone in the dark. “Asshole,” I muttered.

Following him, I entered the passage. The air was damp and musty. The temperature drop was staggering. I was anxious for the heat of the fire, but paranoia won over comfort and I went slow and cautious. Letting the space between us widen, I eyed the steadily rising ceiling for traps. I ran my hand over the smooth, water-carved walls around me, thinking they might close in.

My suspicions didn’t wane as the corridor opened up and dumped me out into a large chamber. Curving high above like a bowl, most of the roof was lost in gloom. Fissures and cracks fractured the walls and floor. Six were large enough to be tunnels. Two were blocked with debris. The others stood open like black, gaping maws, extending back so far not even the small fire in the center of the room could penetrate their darkness. The flames did radiate enough light that I could see my breath, but they produced no heat. The
blaze wasn’t real, which was disappointing. My father stood in front of it like it was though; back to me, cloak fanned out behind him.

He didn’t move as I approached.

“I came to hear you out,” I said. “But first, I need to know what your plan is. How you’re going to control our people. There’ll be a lot of magic flying around once everyone’s off the
Kayn’l.
Do you have a safe way of feeding it?”

Reth hissed. “I don’t have time for this. Did you come to give me the obsidian, or not?” His tone was almost frantic. “I need it now.”

“Why? What makes this piece so damn important?”

“Because without it, I am incomplete.”

“You? Don’t you mean the crown?” He didn’t reply and a chill went up my spine. I crept closer. “Turn around.”

“Just give me the stone.”

Taking the last few paces between us, I went over and took hold of his arm.

“Wait—” he warned.

I spun him around. Firelight hit my father’s face and I gasped, “Gods,” and stumbled back into the cave wall.

Reth pushed the hood off his head. “You should have waited.” He unhooked the clasp and shrugged the cloak off his shoulders. Shirtless, as the fabric fell away, he turned in a slow circle, so I could get a good, long look. “I wanted to prepare you,” he said, but I didn’t believe him. My father wanted me shocked and afraid. He wanted me intimidated. Impressed.

He got three of the four. I was way too sick to be impressed.

The nine auras, the power that brought such internal beauty to the Crown of Stones, had made him outwardly grotesque. His flesh, stained an ugly, muddy, chaotic blend of color, had the look of variegated clay. Swirled and kneaded haphazardly together, intertwining bands of celestite, sapphire, and magnetite bled into a reddish-purple bruising of ruby and spinel. Twisted splashes of diamond and amber were mottled with topaz. Meandering veins of obsidian streaked strange patterns atop the scars, which looked to afflict his entire body now. Not just in appearance, but in consistency. Perverted and distorted into something still solid, but filmy, like parchment, or the discarded skin of a snake, his flesh was almost transparent. Through it, I could see
the mass of multi-colored auras inside him, all slithering, rolling, coiling and squirming, like a nest of newborn serpents.

Frozen against the wall, horrified by the magic swimming in him, I thought,
Gods, does it really look like that? Does it look like that in me?

I drew a shaky breath and tried not to stutter. “What are you?”

His dappled cheeks rose in an arrogant smile. “I am the future. I am how I must be, to save us.”

“That’s not true. It can’t be.” Running a distraught hand back over my hair, I pushed off the wall and moved closer. “If we can destroy the crown—”

“Impossible. The stones are forever held together, linked by the magic and the souls of countless Shinree.”

“I don’t understand. How could it be linked by souls?”

“The crown isn’t what we believed, L’tarian. It’s not a weapon. And it’s far older than we imagined. Tam Reth wasn’t its creator. He was its caretaker. One of many,” he added. “Tam was simply the one who got tired of hiding what could make him a god.”

“Is that what you think you are? That must be one hell of a book he wrote if it can convince you that this,” I threw a disgusted hand at him, “makes you anything but an abomination.”

“You honestly didn’t read Tam’s journal?”

“You know I can’t. The pages are spelled.”

“They are. But the words are visible to any with Reth blood—which you might have realized if you had bothered to open the book that night at the inn, instead of Sienn’s legs.” He paused to relish in my outrage before he went on. “Tam’s writings were helpful, yes. But to gather what I needed, I had to go back myself.”

“Go back? You mean, like in an oracle spell? Sienn said that was dangerous. That you could—”
alter things
, I thought and my heart sped up. “What did you do? What did you change?”

“Relax son, I was careful. Though, it was hard to leave. Being in the empire, in the body of the great Tam Reth,” he sighed wistfully, “it was a wondrous time. Truly wondrous. And now I’m one step closer to restoring that glory. To returning what was stripped away and making us as we once were.” Passion overcame the nostalgia in his voice. “Resurrecting our past will secure the future. Don’t you see?”

I really didn’t. And that worried me.

I went over and stood in front of him. Magic clung to his body like a heavy odor. It churned inside him, and watching it move beneath his skin, made my own feel like it was crawling away. Yet, in spite of that, in spite of everything he had done, I felt sorry for him. I felt sorry for both of us. “You didn’t have to kill her,” I said, “my mother.”

“I told you why.”

“I was a boy growing up without a father. If you’d come to me and told me who you were, if you asked me to go with you…I think I would have gone.”

That seemed to throw him, but he shook his head like it didn’t. “That’s of no consequence now.”

“I heard what you were like. How you tried to help the slaves. Things might have been different if we’d been together. You might have been different.”

Another head shake; more desperate this time. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“You chose your crusade over your own child. Maybe that doesn’t matter to you. But it fucking matters to me.”

At the resentment in my voice, a twitch of pain ran across his blemished face. Uncertainty and sorrow glistened in his eyes, making my father look as devastated as I felt. But I had my doubts his sentiment was genuine, and I hated myself for wanting it to be. For thinking he might contest my accusation. That he might apologize with actual sincerity, or offer me a single word of peace. I wanted him to make me understand.

But that level of kindness just wasn’t in him.

“It won’t work,” I said then. “Draken will never allow so many Shinree to live outside of his control.”

“You’re wrong. We will be an asset to Draken’s new realm.”

“What about the ones whose blood is too diluted? The slaves that have been on
Kayn’l
for so many generations they don’t know what magic is?”

“All are given a chance to prove themselves.”

“Why test them? You already have the records. You know their bloodlines. What are you looking for?”

“The same thing I’m looking for in you, L’tarian….worth.”

I glared at him. “And if they don’t pass? Are they still assets? Or dead weight?” His response was a dismissive, callous shrug that got me thinking.
“Gods, you’re not killing them, are you? Please tell me you aren’t killing our people.”

“Don’t be foolish. I’m not killing them. I’m selling them back.”

“You made them slaves again?’

“Some considerations must be made to maintain society.”

“You son of a bitch.” My voice shook. My chest ached that I had come from such a man. “You freed them and then sent them back. Gave them hope and then took it away.” I sympathized completely. “Leaving them ignorant would have been less cruel.”

“By putting them back on
Kayn’l
, I spared them the humiliation of knowing how truly useless they are.”

“Your compassion is staggering.”

“And yours is?” His tone got ugly. “The fucking gods gave you a chance to stop our suffering. They put the Crown of Stones in your hands and all you did was hide it. You turned your head. Did nothing. Became nothing. You condemn me for leaving you fatherless, but you let our entire race rot. You’re a coward, L’tarian. A disgrace. An embarrassment to our line. Running around with your tail between your legs, bending over at your master’s whim…you, my son, are a castrated dog on the leash of Rella. You’re pitiful. Pathetic. And without me, that is all you’ll ever be.”

Reth turned away. He put his back to me and I stood, staring at it, shaking with how badly I wanted to strike him. He was crazy. Cruel. Despicable. He meant nothing to me. His remarks should mean far less.

They didn’t. My father’s brutally honest lashing stung like hell. His words, sharp, merciless, and heavy with disappointment, rang in my ears. His condemnation twisted in my gut. His refusal to look at me made my chest tighten. But what sapped the anger from me and left me feeling like I’d just been pounded on was the glaring truth of his allegations.

“I can’t deny it,” I said thickly. “When I was young, I paid no attention to the slaves. I didn’t care what happened to them. I was made not to care. Then, after the war, after the Crown of Stones, after…Aylagar, I thought if all Shinree were as dangerous as me, they deserved enslavement. I certainly did. I begged King Raynan to take my freedom away. Begged him,” I said vehemently. “But he wouldn’t. So I convinced myself that it was too easy anyway. That
Kayn’l
was too easy. That living with what I’d done, facing it every
day, was more of a sentence than slavery could ever be.” Sienn’s memories surfaced and my voice fell. “I was wrong. I had no idea what it was truly like. But I do now. And we don’t deserve it. No one deserves it.”

He was quiet a moment. “Wait here.” Retreating into the darkness at the rear of the chamber, my father’s footsteps grew soft, then loud again as he came back. He had the Crown of Stones in his hand. “It’s yours.”