Gloved hands pushed back the robe’s deep cowl, revealing a ghostly-white face and eyes like the blackest pits of the seventh Hell.
“Nerom, umagi,”the creature uttered. “Remember.”
Dervas squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, but invisible floodgates flung open in his mind, pouring out decades of suppressed memories in a wild deluge.
The shadowy figure who’d come to visit him in Old Castle assumed a face—Lord Bolor, a newly invested minor lord who’d recently come to court. Only Lord Bolor wasn’t a Celierian at all. He was an Elden Mage masquerading as a Lord to gain access and influence over the Celierian court. And he’d come to command Dervas, on behalf of the High Mage of Eld, just as other Mages had come to command Dervas in the past.
Just as Mages had commanded every Great Lord Sebourne before him—ever since the minor lord Deridos Sebourne, vassal of the Great House Wellsley, had traded his soul in exchange for power and wealth three hundred years ago.
In return for Deridos’s soul, the Mages had engineered and released the Great Plague that had wiped out the Wellsley family, along with half the inhabitants of northern Celieria. When, in the resulting fear and chaos, Deridos not only successfully defended Moreland from an Eld attack but also “discovered” the cure for the Great Plague, a grateful King Dorian VI had raised House Sebourne to Greatness and granted to it the vital border estates previously entailed to Great House Wellsley.
The Eld had been using Sebourne land as their Celierian base ever since. Over time, every inhabitant of Sebourne land, from infant to elder, peasant to Great Lord, had been bound to the Mages of Eld. Dervas had surrendered his own infant son to the Mages when they came calling, as had every Great Lord since Deridos. Those who married into Great House Sebourne surrendered their souls as well—some willingly, others less so.
Dervas shuddered as his Mage induced “memory” of his wife dying in childbirth along with their second son was replaced with a clear vision of his wife weeping, arms clasped protectively around the small mound of their unborn child, as she stood on the battlements of Moreland Castle. The day was Colum’s first birthday, and the Mages had come to claim him and his mother, Great Lady Sebourne.
“You call yourself a Great Lord?” she cried. “You’re nothing but a slave to an evil master. Worse, you’ve damned our son to the same enslavement! Well, at least this child will be free! And so will I!” And with that, she leapt to her death rather than accept a Mage Mark for herself or her second child.
Now, standing here, stunned into sobriety by those memories, he realized she’d been right. He wasn’t a Great Lord. He wasn’t any sort of lord at all. He was aslave.A witless, unsuspecting puppet of the Mages.
Oh gods.
The Primage smiled. “Oh god,” he corrected in lightly accented Celierian. “Seledorn, to be precise, the mighty Dark Lord, God of Shadows. And, yes, I hear your thoughts. There is no part of your mind I cannot enter. No thought or action I cannot control. I am the Mage who claimed you, and all that you are is mine.”
Sebourne’s stomach clenched in a tight knot, and the blood rushed from his face. With a choked cry, he spun to one side and retched into the waste bin by his desk until nothing remained in his belly but bitter gall.
“Clean yourself up,umagi,and come kneel before me.”
Dervas didn’t give his body the command, but his hands wiped a cloth across his face and his feet began walking. He tried to fight it, tried to make himself stop, but it was as if he were merely an observer trapped in some other person’s form. He circled the desk and crossed the room, then dropped to his knees before the Mage.
“You see?” The Primage shook his head. “Still you wish to rebel. You always do.” He sighed. “Very well. Go to the hearth—no, on your hands and knees. You are my dog,umagi,and I am your master.”
Weeping, but unable to refuse, Dervas crawled.
“Your right hand offends me,” the Mage said when he reached the stone hearth. “Put it in the fire.”
“No, please!” But his hand was already reaching for the flames. “Please!” Then, because now he remembered all the times before, the prices he’d paid for his attempted but never-successful rebellions over the years, he cried, “Please, master! Please, master, forgive your worthlessumagi.”
His hand stopped moving towards the fire, but he was still close enough he could feel the heat licking at his skin. Unless the Mage released him, his hand would slow roast. And the Mage would make sure Dervas felt every torturous moment.
“Will you serve me,umagi,of your own volition, or must I force your obedience as I am doing now?”
“I will serve! Please, I will serve!”
“Then speak your vow, Dervas, son of Gunvar, and speak it with conviction.”
Dervas closed his eyes and spoke the mantra of surrender and obedience he’d been taught so long ago. “Thisumagiserves you willingly, master. Whatever your command, he obeys without hesitation. This life and this body are yours to use or destroy.”
“You may rise.”
Dervas dragged in a sobbing breath of relief and rose on shaking legs. “What is it you require of thisumagi,master?”
The Primage smiled. “It is time for you to fulfill your purpose.”
Celieria ~ Kreppes
27th day of Verados
The hooves of a thousand horses thundered in the night. An army of men, outfitted for war, rode across the fields and woods of northern Celieria, Great Lord Dervas Sebourne at the lead. The army moved swiftly, covering the miles between Dunbarrow and Kreppes without stopping.
