A last image flashes across my mind, followed by a jolt of pure terror.
“Ilsevel,” I gasp, and try to pull myself to my feet, despite all my spasming muscles. My feet will not obey me. I stagger and would fall, but Elydark steps forward and extends his neck, giving me something to grab onto. His voice sings inside my mind,Vellar, you must lean on me. You must take strength from my song.
No.I shake my head, my hands gripping Elydark’s mane.No, no, no, please.I sing in protest, in terror, in despair.Tell me it did not happen. Tell me my memory plays me for a fool.
Elydark’s soul shivers. He answers only,Vellar . . .
I feel the meaning in his spirit, even as I turn away from him, unwilling to face it. Instead I round on Kildorath. “Whathappened to her?” I demand, the words ripping through my clenched teeth, bloody, ragged things. “Where is she?”
Kildorath looks solemnly into my eyes. Though there is sorrow in his gaze, he does not flinch. “The Shadow King carried her body into the citadel,” he says and shakes his head slowly. “She is gone,luinar.Dead.”
I stand silently before him. My very soul quiets to a single point of absolute stillness that lasts for an eternity, exquisitely realized, inescapable. I feel I will live and die in this space, again and again, my own personal hell.
Then an animal howl rips from my core. I fall to my knees, crumple onto my face, and even the song of my licorneir cannot reach into the darkness which envelops me.
3
ILSEVEL
I crawl out of unconsciousness now and then, rising to the surface of awareness but not quite able to break through. Every time is such an agony, I can only pray for the grace to sink back into insensibility or—if the gods would only show me that mercy—death.
Death will not claim me, however. I am held at bay from entering its welcome embrace by the dark magic enwrapping my limbs, my soul. I want to rail against it, to scream and fight and protest. But I am numb. Not fully insensible, but rendered helpless, without control over voice or body. No longer gently swayed in a sling between two gliding morleths, I now ride in my father’s arms, held before him across his saddle. He cradles me like a newborn babe, and though he tries to be gentle, I long to beg him to put me down, not to force me to endure anymore ofthis torture. I’m not sure that he would heed me even if I could find the words. My father’s love has always been as hard and cruel as his hate, unconcerned with the wants or needs of others. He has determined that I should live; my own desires in the matter would mean less than nothing to him.
Every now and again, on one of my unwelcome forays back to near consciousness, I become aware of Mage Artoris’s face hovering above me. He murmurs some written spell, channeling dark energy, but I feel that it is less effective with each application and, though I struggle to comprehend the passage of time, I suspect the intervals between spells are shorter as well.
“What more can be done for her?” I hear my father’s voice demanding intensely on one such occasion. “Surely you can do better than this! Look at her face; look how she suffers.”
“I am doing everything I can,” Artoris replies. I can just see the outline of his face through my cracked eyelids, but pain muddles my perceptions. There’s an impression of a clenched jaw, of teeth flashing through a dark beard, and eyes bright with spell-light and mingled rage held only just in check.
“Perhaps I should have my man Wistari step in,” Larongar persists, a looming force of energy standing to one side, indistinct but powerful, “if your efforts are so useless.”
A third voice speaks up from some point beyond my narrowed vision. “I cannot channel from the source young Artoris is manipulating,” this unseen speaker protests. “It is far strongerthan anything to which I have access.”
“Is that so?” my father growls, and the black bulk seems to turn aggressively to address the mage. “Perhaps I need to make young Artoris my senior mage at court then. Is that what you’re saying, Wistari?”
I don’t hear the older mage’s response. Pain drags me back down again, and it’s momentarily a relief to succumb to unconsciousness. I drift in a sea of darkness in which each breath is a lifetime of agony, each heartbeat spun out across years. Occasionally nightmarish flashes burst across my inner-vision with startling clarity. I see a magicked spell-barrier, shimmering with mage-writing, ripped through by licorneir horns. I see troll warriors clad in armor, battling hordes of rabid Noxaurians, scattering their bodies with each stroke of their mighty clubs.
I see Taar. My husband. His chest bare, a band of black warpaint streaked from temple to temple across his eyes.
I see the black bile of virulium spilling from his mouth, through elongated, sharp teeth. A monster. A fiend. How could I have ever loved him?
And yet . . . and yet . . .
Even in those flashes of horror, my heart cries out for him. Did he survive? Did the virulium drag him into its dark maw and devour him, claiming his soul forever? Did my song, however feeble, reach him before he slew me with such remorseless viciousness?
Taar . . .Taar . . .
“I tell you, King, this is my last offer.”
Artoris’s voice cuts through my pain, dragging me up once more into the realm of consciousness. I would scream with pure frustration if my wracked body could only find the breath!
Instead I lie upon my father’s bearskin cloak, and faces gather above me, indistinct and seemingly miles away, though if I could muster the strength, I think I could reach out and touch them.
“Dog,” Larongar snarls, spraying spittle across my face that I cannot wipe free. “I’ll have your hide for your insolence. I almost did it once before—this time, your master isn’t here to stop me. I’ll cut off your manhood and dangle it before your very eyes! Then I’ll rip out your traitorous heart.”
“Make what threats you like,” Artoris replies in tones of dangerous calm. “You’ll not get what you want from me unless the bargain is struck.”
“Damn you to hell.”
