His sword was gone. He looked around for it frantically and saw it sticking out of the rubble several yards away. He began to crawl toward it, watching for any sign of his brother. The entire building had collapsed, and there were mounds of broken stone everywhere.
A huge pile of rubble not far off to his left shifted and then seemed to explode outward. Ramael stood up with a bellow of contemptuous rage, whole pieces of armor missing and a wide, bloody gash marring his perfect face. His helm was gone, his breastplate torn away, and one of his axes was lost, buried somewhere deep in the temple’s ruins.
“Nothing can stop me, little brother!” he roared. “And now, it is time to end this.”
The Prince pulled himself with all the strength left to him toward the sword. It was only an arm’s length away now. He reached for it, and his fingers just brushed the wire-wrapped hilt.
“Too late for that,” Ramael said. A double-bladed axe rose high overhead.
A flash of steel shot through the air and sank into the Prince of Oxen’s neck.
He let out a bellow of pain, and the axe went wide, burying itself in the ground next to the Prince. Another dagger streaked through the air, sinking its foot-long blade into Ramael’s back and causing another convulsion that made him fall to the ground.
The Prince pulled himself the last few inches, wrapped his hand around the hilt of the valerium sword, pulled it from the rubble, and with a cry of pain at the effort, sank the blade into his brother’s chest, piercing his heart.
Light exploded in the Prince’s mind as Ramael’s life and memories were added to his own. His mind felt as though it had been exposed to the sun after being kept for seventeen years in the dark: one hundred and forty-two years of memories, crystal clear and visceral, flooded into him.
Someone slapped his face.
“Argh!” he sat upright, holding his head with both of his hands.
“Are you all right?” Leah asked.
“Parchment,” he said through clenched teeth, “and something to write with!”
The memories of the Prince of Oxen were whirling through his mind, more than he had ever absorbed before, and in any other case he was sure his body would have collapsed under the strain. But he felt as if he had an unlimited source of strength that he could draw on, a power like the sun that would never die, and it held him together.
He wasn’t sure when the parchment came, he wasn’t even quite sure how he was able to write legibly, but he was later told that he wrote for the better part of an hour, and never the same sentence twice. Memory by memory, the Prince plumbed the depths of his brother’s mind, doing his best not to think of what he was writing down, just putting it into words. He would deal with it all later—he had no time to judge it now, and he couldn’t keep it in his mind.
The memories were on all topics, but among the most important were details about the layout of the castle of Roarke, the defenses of the Empire, the current state of Empire politics, and the names of various spies planted within the Kindred’s forces.
And then, without warning, the memories from his brother’s mind shifted, and the Prince was remembering another life. The life of a young boy, training with a sword bigger than any the Prince had ever seen.
Tomaz.
The next thing he knew, he was up and running, clutching the sword. He left the ruins of the once great temple and moved in a strange dreamlike trance through the city, memories playing in his mind of the giant who had given his life to save the Kindred.
He moved through the gate to the second tier of the city, passing cheering Kindred, hearing the sound of retreat blown on Imperial horns. But none of that seemed to matter.
He turned a corner, and there he was, lying where the Prince had left him.
Tomaz.
He moved to the big man’s side. He sank to the ground beside the body, feeling the rough stone of the street scrape his knees through his tattered clothing. How could Tomaz be dead? The Prince felt as though at any second the big man would roll over, rise to his feet, and laughingly ask the Prince what he was doing on the ground.
Tomaz.
“I’m sorry,” he said, voice full of emotion. He laid one hand on the gaping wound left by the Prince of Oxen’s axe, and his other hand held the hilt of the valerium sword. He began to sob.
The memories of Tomaz’s life continued to play in his mind… Guardian training, a young woman long ago, hope and laughter and simple things… and then the memories began to fade. In a panic, the Prince tried to hold onto them, to keep them from leaving, but the harder he tried, the more quickly they seemed to fade. He let out a growl of frustration—he wouldn’t let what was left of Tomaz die. He would keep these memories—he would keep Tomaz alive!
Concentrating with all of his might, he sank mental anchors into the memories and began to reel them back toward him. Memories of Guardian Training, the young girl from his youth, the parents he had never known, and a man… a man he’d been forced to kill. The Empress condemning him, the pain he’d felt as his name had been taken from him. And the first sight of the Prince—and the knowledge, the certainty, that he could be redeemed.
But the memories continued to fade, like lines drawn in sand before an advancing tide, and the power of the big man’s life began to fade as well. Dimming… dying.
So he drew on what strength he had, drew as much strength and power and energy as he could find in his body, and threw it into the memories, clinging to Tomaz and sobbing over his body.
A burst of light flung the Prince flat on his back as the memories were sucked away from him in a sudden inexorable force, and then the strength that had kept him going, the strength he’d taken from his brother’s death, was gone as well, and he fell backward into darkness.
