Feast of Souls (61 page)

“But there is no life up there, no sustenance for them… how can they have survived?”

“I don’t know the answers to that, Mother. I only bring you what I have been told.” He hesitated. “The only other possibility is that Danton himself is assisting them—”

“No,” she said sharply. “He would never do that.”

“Are you so sure?”

“Of that? Yes. Yes, I am.” Her husband might be acting erratically these days, but he was not so mad as to embrace the Souleaters’ cause.

Which meant that it had to be Kostas.

Andovan knelt down before her. It was an act that mirrored Rurick’s earlier plea to her, which had gone so terribly wrong. She could not meet his eyes because of it.

“What do you want of me?” she said. “That I kill Kostas? That I help set up someone else to do so?” She wrung her hands in her lap as she spoke. “It’s not like I haven’t thought of it, Andovan. He is twisting my husband’s soul against me; there is nothing I would not do to remove him from my life. But it is as he said, he knows every move even as I plan it. One night I dreamed of poisoning him—a mere dream!—and the next night I found a vial of poison in my room, by the bed. He was daring me to try!” Shaking, she drew in a breath. “If he is even within my dreams, watching my every thought, how can I move against him? The moment I begin to plan his murder, he will know every detail. You cannot kill a Magister like that.”

“Then Father must be convinced to sever their contract. It is the only way.”

She shut her eyes. A shudder ran through her body. “Please tell me you are not going to ask me to talk him into that. Please.”

He said nothing.

“Even in the old days that would have stressed our relationship to the breaking point. Now… I dare not think what he would do if I told him he should send his new Magister Royal away. He will see me as an enemy of his ambition—”

“You are the only one who can even try,” he said quietly. “Ramirus is gone now. I cannot go to him, you know that.”

“No,” she whispered. “You cannot.” Maybe in the old days they could have found a way to tell Danton that his son was alive, but this new king, never more than a hair’s breadth away from a killing rage, would not welcome the news. He would hang Andovan’s head from the front gate as a warning to any other member of his family that thought they might play him for a fool, and maybe Gwynofar’s as well, for encouraging him. And Kostas would laugh at both of them as he plotted his next atrocity.

Danton loved me once
, she told herself.
Surely some part of him loves me still. If I can reach out to that part, perhaps he will listen to me
.

“If it is the only thing that can be done, if there truly is no other way…” She drew in a deep breath, trembling. “I will speak to him. But whether he will listen to me at all is in the hands of the gods. And they have not been obliging of late.”

“Hie fate of one man is a small thing in their eyes,” Andovan told her. “But surely the fate of the whole world is a different matter. If the Magisters are right, if their reports are true, that is what we are talking about.” He took her hands in his own and squeezed them, tightly. “No one but you can do this, Mother.”

Rurick said the same words to me, once. That meeting is what brought me to Kostas’ attention, so that now he watches my every move. Where will this one lead?

“I will talk to him,” she promised.

She did not think she would be able to convince Danton to send Kostas away, but if she could even seed doubts in his mind about the man’s counsel, that might be enough. The Magister’s lies would then lose some power over him, and he might come to his senses. Perhaps in time Danton could even be told the truth about Andovan without flying into a homicidal rage. And then her son could come home again. And they could try to rebuild the lives that Colivar had shattered, and set the High Kingdom on a stable course once more.

Dreams
, she thought,
these are only dreams
. But dreams were all she had right now, so she savored them.

As for the Souleaters… that possibility was too terrible to contemplate. But if Andovan was right—if the M agisters were right—then there was a greater threat facing them than any living man could remember. And the Protectors like herself would be front and center in dealing with it.

One thing at a time
, she told herself. And she embraced her beloved son anew, and held him tightly, trying to forget for one single moment just how great the odds against all of them were.

Alone in her chamber, Siderea Aminestas ran finely manicured fingers along the edges of her secret strongbox. The cover was already unlocked. The Magister’s tokens lay inside. It would take little effort to pull them out, and little witchery to use them for what she intended. The cost would be so small that she would hardly notice it. Five minutes of life, perhaps. Maybe less.

Sometimes the price must be paid
, she told herself.

Still she hesitated. In the old days she could have been certain that sooner or later a Magister would show up to visit, who could then be convinced to tell her what she needed to know. These days she was not so sure of that. Ever since she had received the visitor from Corialanus things had been different, somehow. Colivar had given her a report of the slaughter up north, as he’d promised to, but she’d sensed he was leaving out important details. Fadir suddenly had business too pressing to allow him to stay overnight, thus robbing her of the venue in which she was most likely to get a Magister to divulge his secrets. Since then, she’d had no visitors of that ilk at all. Was it just coincidence? Or was there something going on that required all their attention?

If so, she needed to know what it was. They were not the only ones directing the fate of the human kingdoms. She might not be their equal in sorcery, but few men were her equal in politics. She would not allow anyone to keep her in the dark—and that included Magisters.

Opening the lid of the chest, she ran her fingertips lightly over the folded bits of paper within it. Such simple tokens. So very powerful. All it would take was a moment of true witchery to allow her to read their owners like a book. She was willing to bet not a single one had put up safeguards against such an effort. Why should they? She had never taken advantage of their offerings before. They would probably not know it if she did so now.

Trust was more powerful than any sorcery.

Slowly, thoughtfully, she leafed through the collection of tokens. If she only used one or two of them then she would only be able to read their owners, and she needed more than that. She needed to establish a connection to the entire community of Magisters, so that the secrets they shared with one another would take on a magical substance of their own. Only then would she be able to know what information the Magisters were refusing to share with her.

Because she had their tokens, willingly offered, that would take very little effort. Though the gods themselves could not save her if they ever found out what she had done.

She remembered the sense of urgency about Colivar when he had reported to her, the edgy distraction of Fadir and Sulah, and thought: I
have to know
.

It was impossible to determine which Magisters would know more of these matters than any other, save for the three who had investigated the matter in Corialanus, and two of those tokens had already been burned. Riffling through the ones which remained, she chose a dozen papers at random. It was half of her collection—a priceless store of power—but the kind of knowledge she was after required that level of sacrifice.

And of course, a more visceral sacrifice was required as well… but that was what being a witch was all about.

When the half-emptied chest was hidden away once more, she settled herself before her brazier and prepared herself for the task ahead. She found it strangely hard to focus. Frowning, she stroked the tokens her lovers had given her, closed her eyes, and tried to settle her soul to the task. But it was as if her spirit did not wish to settle down to witchery, and her attention kept flitting away to other things.

Strange, very strange.

Her father had taught her many tricks for taming one’s soulfire, and after an hour of focused exercises she felt she was finally ready to begin. The dry papers caught fire quickly, and aromatic smoke rose from the brazier. Wafting it toward herself, she breathed the essence of the Magisters into herself and—

—
black whirlpool empty screaming darkness
—

Choking, she opened her eyes. The room was spinning. The smoke in her lungs was making it hard to breathe. The power that should have been surging through her veins was—

Absent.

Coughing, she put the cover on the brazier to smother the flames. It was a terrible waste of magical material, but that couldn’t be helped. Whatever was wrong with her, it was clear she was not going to be weaving any spells today.

She suddenly remembered the difficulty she’d had the last time she had tried to raise the power, when the Magisters were visiting, and a cold shiver ran up her spine.

Something is wrong.

She knew what it might be. But she refused to name it. Surely, surely, it had to be something else. Anything else!

Trembling, she gathered herself for introspection, and used her supernatural senses to look within her own soul. Deep, deep within, to where the fires that fueled her life should have burned brightly. She had gazed at her own soulfire dozens of times in her youth; it was an exercise her father had taught her, when he was showing her how to focus her power. If there was something so wrong with her that her own athra would no longer respond to her, it would show there first.

Only this time there was no blazing fire within her. This time the sheer heat of her vital essence did not sear her senses. Instead there was only a dim glow of soul-fire, that flickered weakly like a dying candle. The essence surrounding it was cold and dark.

NO!!!!!!!!!!

She screamed. That set off another fit of coughing, and for a short while it was all she could do to keep breathing. A servant heard the commotion and came running into the room; seeing her choking for air, she tried to help Siderea the only way she knew how, by pounding her on the back.

“Get out of here!” she screamed. Gasping for breath between the words. “Leave me alone!”

Terrified, the girl backed out of the room. Siderea could hear other servants by the door, drawn by her screaming, but apparently they were now having second thoughts about entering the room. Then she heard the door close again, leaving her alone with the smoke and the fear—

And the truth.

Stunned, she struggled to her feet. The room swirled dizzily around her as she tried to regain her focus. But she managed it, at last. A small victory. Her life was not over yet.

She shouldn’t have been surprised by this, she told herself numbly. She had known all along her life would end like this. The Magisters were able to keep her young and beautiful, but that was only a stopgap measure to make her mortal days more comfortable. They could not extend the span of her life by so much as a day, unless she became one of them.

There would be no more witchery for her now, unless she wished to extinguish her life in the act. There would be very few days left at all. The soulfire she had seen had been almost completely exhausted. Soon there would no heat left to sustain her life, and not even sorcery could save her then.

They knew
, she realized suddenly.

It was the final blow, realizing that that the Magisters must surely know of her condition and had not told her. Why else would they be keeping their distance now? Her face flushed hot with shame… and then the shame became anger. After a lifetime of using her, of taking for granted her efforts to support their paranoid society, this was how they meant to let her end her days? Leaving her to discover the truth herself, to face it alone, to begin her descent into darkness without a single helping hand to steady her way?

With a cry of rage she took up a vase from a nearby table and hurled it with all her might; it hit the far wall and shattered into a thousand fragments. The brazier followed, scattering smoking ashes across the stone floor as it flew. She could hear the servants whispering outside the door, too afraid to come inside as they heard object after object fly across the room. Fools! What did they know of rage? What did they know of shame? They had never had men of power eating out of their hand one day, and abandoning them the next day like some nameless orphan to face their death alone.

Shaking, she lowered herself slowly to the floor. The smoke in the room had dissipated somewhat, but breathing was no easier. The scraps of paper strewn across the floor were charred black, unmarked and meaningless. Only in the hands of a witch would they have any power, and she was no longer that. She was only a morati woman well past her prime who had gazed upon the face of Death.

Overcome by rage and sorrow, the Witch-Queen wept.