But this… this was like a window, crystal-clear, so real she felt she could have stepped off of the platform and into the luxurious bedchamber it showed, right next to the huge canopied bed, hung with scarlet curtains…
… and then the image changed, moved, as the magelink at the other end drifted toward the bed, through the curtains.
She found herself looking down at the bed, the effect making her stagger. The guard’s grip tightened on her arms.
Two men in the bed, one very young, her own age or younger, one older, perhaps fifty, lay spooned together in the bed beneath a sheet of pale blue satin. Brenna recognized the older man instantly, from dozens of official portraits, as King Kravon.
The younger man appeared to be feigning sleep. He lifted his head and glanced up toward the magelink, and nodded. Then he carefully disengaged from the King, who slept on unnoticing, and raised himself to a sitting position, the sheet falling from his naked body. He reached to the head of the bed and from somewhere… Brenna couldn’t tell where… drew out a dagger. The image was so clear Brenna could even see his youthful face reflected in the glistening blade. Falk let go of her right arm, though his left kept its ironlike grip, and she heard his own dagger slither from its sheath.
Her heart raced so fast she thought she would faint. She couldn’t take her eyes off the image, even as she felt the guard step back and Falk take his place. The MageLord suddenly let go of her arm and instead wrapped his left arm across her breasts, pinning her and pulling her close, his body pressing as tightly against her as though they were lovers like the men in the image.
Mother Northwind lied, or she’s failed. Brenna’s thoughts came in frightened bursts, like rabbits breaking from cover as hunters closed in, dashing back and forth in a vain attempt to escape the arrows picking them off one by one. The King is going to die. I’m going to die…
The young man leaned forward again, reaching toward the King’s throat. Brenna could hear Falk’s own quick breathing above her, could feel him trembling against her. He ground his hips into her buttocks and, with shuddering disgust, she felt his engorged manhood. Trapped between him and the Cauldron, she could do nothing but watch the King’s death and await her own, as unstoppable, it seemed, as the rivers of lava below her.
But then, just as the knife approached the King’s throat, and Falk’s knife lifted toward her own, the boy stopped moving.
Falk’s arm tightened so much she winced. “Do it,” he whispered. Then, shouting, “Damn you, boy, do it!”
The boy drew the knife back as though about to make the fatal thrust, Falk’s blade kissed her neck, and Brenna thought her heart would stop…
… and then the boy turned the knife and plunged it into his own throat, ripping it from side to side in one quick motion that opened an enormous gaping red mouth in his pale skin.
The King woke screaming as blood fountained across him. He rolled over and screamed again as he saw the boy above him, kneeling, the gush of blood already lessening. The boy’s hands had fallen limp to his sides; the knife had dropped onto the pillows. His head was tilted back… too far back… and his eyes, wide, blue, already glazing over, stared up at the magelink…
… then he pitched forward and fell across the screaming, naked King, who, painted in red, scrambled out of the bed and out of the image coming from the magelink…
… which winked out of existence an instant later.
Falk had frozen in place. Brenna, beneath her horror, felt a surge of hope that she might yet live… if Falk didn’t simply throw her into the Cauldron anyway in a fit of fury.
“No,” Falk moaned. Then, “No!” he screamed, and then he did throw her, not toward the edge, but to the side. She spun away and fell, hitting the ground so hard the breath exploded from her lungs, and lay there, gaping, unable to breathe for a long, agonizing moment. Through her own pain she heard Falk’s wordless howl of fury go on and on.
Mother Northwind, she thought.
Mother Northwind had known who the assassin was. She had twisted that poor boy… made him kill himself instead of the king. And before that he had been twisted by Falk, maybe not through magic, but through blackmail or threats or one of the many other ways a man like Falk could exert pressure on someone young and helpless.
And even though that had been all that had saved her own life, at that moment, as she gasped for air by the Cauldron that was the beating heart of the MageLords’ domain, she hated both of them as much for what they had done to that poor naked boy as for what they had done to her.
CHAPTER 27
Falk bit off his howl of fury. He glared at the place where the magelink had been, willing it back into existence, but saw nothing but flame-tinged clouds and swirling, blood-colored snow. A vast roar filled his ears, and his vision grayed. Twenty years, he thought, the words pushing through the roaring like the rivers of bright yellow rising to the black surface of the caldera below. Twenty years preparing for the moment when I would hold the Heir, the King would die, the spell would be performed, the Keys would come to me… for twenty years I worked and waited, twenty years I plotted and schemed, twenty years…
… and as quickly as one of the rivers of lava plunging out of sight beneath the black, stinking rock below, the moment had come, and gone… and all had failed.
The boy had killed himself, instead of the King. The boy had killed himself. Falk had never imagined such a possibility, never imagined the youngster he had groomed for this task through threats and bribes, seduction and carefully orchestrated rape, would take his own life at the climactic moment.
He had the knife at the King’s throat. He had the knife at the King’s throat!
And now…
Killing the King was no problem. There were a dozen ways Falk could kill the King or have him killed. But killing the King while Falk stood here at the Cauldron with the Heir in his grasp and a mage ready to perform Tagaza’s spell…
How much longer before he could make a second attempt?
That thought snapped him back from the confusion and horror of the moment. So it’s a setback, he snapped at himself. A major one. But it’s not the end. I still have the Heir. I still know the spell. We’ll return to the Palace, I’ll conduct the investigation into the boy’s death…
… and assign a new bodyguard to the King…
He slammed his dagger back into its sheath, then turned and strode toward Brenna, who lay on her back, breathing as though it pained her. “Are you hurt?” he snapped.
“Why do… you care?” she snarled back, like a wounded, cornered animal. “You were… going to kill me. Like you were going
… to kill… the King!” She struggled to a sitting position. “My father!”
Falk started. “ What did you say?”
“King Kravon is my father. I’m the real Heir. That’s why you ‘fostered’ me. That’s why you brought me here. You were planning to kill me and grab the Keys and the power to destroy the Barriers the moment the King died!”
Falk knelt, grabbed Brenna by her shoulders, and hauled her to her feet. “ Who told you this? ” He shook her so hard her teeth clicked together. “ Who? ”
Brenna, with strength that surprised him, pushed his hands away from her. “Don’t touch me! Who do you think? Mother Northwind.”
“What? Why? ” It made no sense. Mother Northwind wanted the Great Barrier lowered as much as he did. Why risk that by telling Brenna her part in it?
“Because Mother Northwind is not your ally!” Brenna shouted. “Who do you think those men on the dogsleds-the men you had murdered!-were taking us to? Who do you think twisted that poor boy’s mind so he slit his own throat instead of killing the King like you’d planned? You thought you were using Mother Northwind all this time, and she’s been the one using you!”