“I hope we won’t be here long,” the queen said. “I don’t care for underground places. Not enough room for flight.” Her soldiers looked skittish as well. How much of their battle strategy depended on the use of their wings to evade their opponents?
“This way,” Galen said, pointing out an old set of railway tracks where there were a few wooden carts covered in cobwebs, the spokes of the metal wheels rusted from disuse. The air grew danker and sweeter, as if something foreign were being pumped into the mine shaft. Was Master Keeper drugging his own people in an attempt to keep them compliant? Clearly he had an affinity for poison. Dread warred with my desire to reveal this miscreant once and for all, to confirm my suspicions as to who the culprit was behind the mask, but I must be smart if I hoped to outmaneuver him.
We followed Galen through a series of winding passageways, using the railway tracks as our guide. The regular sound of a hammer became audible and I shot Galen a curious look.
“The bladesmith,” he said. “Elvish steel to guide our hands, piety and virtue to guide our hearts. Also part of the prophecy.”
I grunted. Prophecies were easy to make when you were the one orchestrating another's demise. The hammering grew louder until at last we were at the entrance to a large, open cavern. I sensed Prince Cedrych was close, but there was another energy I recognized. His presence echoed with familiarity, andyet it had twisted and warped since I last saw him, like an untreated wound left to fester.
And then my eye caught on my beloved prince. Cedrych was pacing the length of his cell, much as he paced my bedchamber and study. Lost in thought, he didn’t notice our entourage approaching. He looked a little disheveled and a lot furious, but he didn’t appear to be injured, thank the Goddess.
“My son,” the queen whispered and I laid one hand on her arm. We’d surely lost the element of surprise, but I didn’t wish for our presence to be announced just yet.
I was inspecting every dark corner for the Master Keeper’s presence when a robed figure finally emerged from the shadows. Cloaked in elvish blue–adding further insult–and wearing the gold mask of an Awelon Falcon, his presence struck me with the strength of that hammer. Even masked, I knew him. Had toiled under him, had admired and wanted to be him, had regarded him with fear and respect in equal measure.
And now I stood before my former mentor, the man who I thought had perished along with my parents, the devil behind my many years of anguish.
“Bethel Kane,” I said, compelled to confirm this betrayal with my own eyes.
“MasterKane,” the man corrected and slowly removed his mask. “Hello, Mercier, it’s been a long time.”
“Such simple methodsshow a lack of talent and imagination.”
Those were Bethel Kane’s first words to me so many years ago, after I’d given a demonstration of my burgeoning skill as a metal sorcerer. I’d been nine years old at the time, and thealready renowned elemental sorcerer had swiftly and effectively put me in my place while setting the tone for what was to be a five-years long tutelage. He’d called me a nitwit and an imbecile, and never seemed to really enjoy his role as my mentor. Only when he was flush with power and giving a demonstration did his countenance come alive.
A decade my senior, Bethel Kane had seemed impossibly tall in my youth but now stood at about my height. He was lean and sinewy, his skin as pale as parchment paper and striated with scars from practicing with his own blades. His face was sharp-boned, eyes a ghostly silver and rimmed with coal-dark lashes. His hair, once raven-dark, was now threaded with gray and hung in oily strands, matted with dirt from the mines and streaked with dust and ash. There had been a cold beauty about him in our youth, but much of that had been lost to whatever madness had overtaken him. He had not aged in our years apart as much as he had corroded.
All around us figures garbed in dull gray robes emerged from the gloom, their garments tattered and thread-bare. Their faces, those who I could see, spoke to a similar starvation that had plagued Galen. These people had been physically weakened, their spirits broken, and their minds filled with this heretic’s lies. I sensed their discontent and sorrow along with their hatred, which Kane had sharpened like a spear and was now aimed in my direction.
Some portion of their ire was due, for as their sovereign, I had failed them, had allowed this malefactor to work in the shadows these past ten years. No more of that. But did they truly believe their lives would be improved with Bethel Kane at the helm? He couldn’t even properly care for the people in his cult. Goddess forbid what atrocities he might inflict on an entire realm.
“I’ve been waiting for this moment for many, many years,” Kane said. His voice echoed like a howling wind that sent a chill up my spine. Had he always sounded so sinister?
“I thought you were dead,” I responded, still in shock over the revelation that my former mentor was alive and plotting against me. Had he been trying to kill me since my youth? More importantly… “Are you the one who poisoned my parents?”
He smiled, but the expression didn’t touch his dull, deadened eyes. “Poisons were always a specialty of mine. The harder to trace, the better.”
Apothecary had been a passion of his. He’d told me he was making medicines and healing salves, but I was never allowed in his laboratory. I should have asked why he kept everything behind locked doors. I should have alerted my parents to his questionable behavior.
“Was it in their wine?” I asked, for the chemist's report had come back inconclusive.
“It was in the air they breathed. A powder I blew into their faces along with my parting words to them. Would you like to know what they were?”
I braced myself, knowing this was a losing game, but curiosity got the better of me and I nodded.
“I told them, ‘I promise to take care of your beloved son.’”
Kane smiled again, and it was as if a blade had carved his face with cruelty. Had he always been this way? Mocking, yes, condescending, always. But malicious? I was forced to recall every memory of him through this new lens, wondering if I’d been played for a fool all along.
“So, why didn’t you kill me at the ball?” I asked.
“I couldn’t find you. You were in the gardens showing off your sorcery to the fae prince, the other one,” he said snappishly. “Paralysis was already overtaking your parents. They were on their last few breaths. I didn’t wish to face the inquisition thatwould follow, so I gave myself just enough poison to make it look as if I had died. A day later, I awoke from my death-like slumber, retrieved a corpse to replace mine, and escaped to the mines.”
“Why not come back and kill me then?” I asked.
“You were too protected. I thought the realm would fall into chaos, allowing the Keepers to take control. My grandfather was Master Keeper, then. His was a much smaller operation.” Kane said it with arrogance. Clearly he was proud of what he’d accomplished here in the mines, the subjugation and control of so many people, their slow starvation, the kidnapping of fae children, and turning innocents like Galen into assassins. Despicable.
“Was that the plan when you became my mentor?” I asked. He’d sold us a lie, just as he was doing to these people, and with such nonchalance. No guilt or shame whatsoever.
