Читать книгу Starborn - Katie MacAlister - Страница 11

Chapter 3

Deosin Langton was bored almost to the point of insensibility. Racin’s yammering didn’t help matters.

“Your death will mean nothing to me. Nothing to my queen. It will be completely trivial.”

Not a man who was at all comfortable with inactivity, Deo yawned, and idly scratched a spot on his left pectoral. He wondered if something had bitten him under the silver harness that crossed his torso, tried to remember if he had seen signs of fleas on the rat that rode on the shoulder of the guard who delivered his meals, but decided that of the two, the rat was likely the cleaner.

“I grow tired of asking you questions. Give me one reason why I should not gut you where you stand. Er…lie.”

Now there was an itch on his back. He shifted a little on the cot, making a mental note to ask the woman who brought him water and took out his chamber pot to arrange for his bedding to be washed. No doubt the guard was the one with fleas.

“You think your silence will save you, but it will not!” The man who stood at the door raised his voice until it echoed around the stone cell in which Deo had lived for almost an entire year. Deo paused at that thought, distracted, and glanced over to the opposite wall, where he’d used a sharp piece of flint to scratch out a tally of weeks spent imprisoned. He counted. “Kiriah blast it, I forgot last week!”

“Nothing can save you, not your silence, not my queen’s pleas, not even your beloved twin goddesses,” ranted Racin, the captain of the Harborym, watching him with black eyes that were now tinted red, a color that almost perfectly matched his skin. “You will die as surely as the rest of your kind.”

Deo made a neat mark next to a row that closed out that month and decided that his boredom warranted a little reward. He turned and gave Racin a long look. Nothing had changed about Racin in the last almost-year. He stood a good two heads taller than Deo; his body bound by leather and steel, his face twisted with anger. Long black hair slithered across shoulders bulging with muscles that were grotesque, a parody of mankind. Deo knew well how the use of chaos magic changed the body—he, himself, showed the signs of consuming chaos—but the changes wrought to Racin were extreme to the point of making him an abomination.

He certainly had the personality of a body louse. Deo opted for a raised eyebrow to express his disdain. “Ah. Was that you speaking? I wasn’t paying attention.”

Racin’s lips drew back in a snarl, giving Deo much satisfaction. There were few things he liked more than baiting Racin, although his mother had begged him to cease doing so after the last time.

The last time was delicious. And look what it got you! A new domicile, new attendants, and the respect of the Speaker.

Deo frowned to himself even as Racin ranted in front of him.

Speaker? What did that mean? It was on the tip of his tongue to ask the chaos magic that spoke in his mind just what it meant, but in time he remembered his promise to Dasa. There would be no more deaths of innocents. Not at his hands, anyway.

He eyed Racin, who was now gesticulating with one hand, little flecks of spittle flying as the monstrous man heaped verbal abuse upon Deo’s head. “Who is the Speaker?” he asked.

“—just as soon as I learn how it is you have mastered that which eludes me—what?” For the time it took to count to six Racin stared at Deo, his eyes glowing hot with ire as he narrowed them. “I am the Speaker!”

“Of what?” Deo thought for a moment; then, aware of the scars on his back from numerous whippings made by countless tutors who believed the only way to teach was to beat facts into him, he made a face and corrected himself. “Rather, to whom?”

Racin seemed to swell. His chest puffed out until Deo was concerned the leather bands crossing it might snap, sending the steel rivets ricocheting around his small cell. “I am the Speaker of the Unseen Shadow, the Master of the Dark.”

“I have not heard of this,” Deo said, frowning. He disliked it when people had knowledge that they withheld from him. “Who is this master?”

Nezu, the chaos magic whispered in his mind.

The name told him nothing. He was about to ask Racin who Nezu was when the captain did something he hadn’t done since the last time Deo had taunted him. He stepped into the cell. Just one foot crossed the threshold, but it was enough.

The magic roared to life within Deo; the runes etched into the harness across his chest and bound on silver bands around his wrists and ankles lit up with a pale golden light. Rage boiled inside him that quickly narrowed into one bright, glittering intention: destruction of all things.

Kill, the magic said, and with that one word, power flowed through his blood, making him burn from the inside. Kill the Speaker. Kill them all. Destroy this place, and become stronger, become what you are meant to be.

The fire in his veins grew until it felt as if he was going to explode into a million white-hot embers.

Embrace it. Use it. Kill the Speaker. Kill the unworthy. Cleanse the world and take your rightful place as master of it all.

With a snarl of pain, Deo fought to control the urge that almost maddened him…and that threatened to consume him body and soul.

The stone walls around him began to smoke and tremble, and Deo, desperate to avoid a repetition of the destruction of twenty-seven innocent Shadowborn, spun around and allowed the chaos power to burst out of him, blowing out the wall of the cell with a percussive blast that momentarily deafened him.

The power in him rejoiced, flooding every iota of his being with a delirious sense of invincibility.

As the noise of the crumbled wall and cries of people outside the wall faded, the air shifted behind him, and before Deo could leash the magic that claimed him, he was at the door, Racin’s throat in his hand. His fingers dug deep into the red flesh, but he felt no satisfaction. Rather than showing fear, Racin laughed, and slammed a red wave of pain into Deo, sending him flying backward into the rubble of what had once been a foot-thick wall.

“Do you think to try your puny powers on me, savior of the Fourth Age?” Racin asked, his voice as rough as the sharp mortar and stone that pierced Deo’s back. “I am the Speaker of the Unseen. I walk in shadows, with death at my side. There is nothing you can do to me, as by now I would have thought you would know. This attempt proves once again that you are an insignificant insect, as worthless as the dirt beneath my feet.”

Deo snarled an oath. He hated it when people referred to him by the savior title. Moving with care in order to determine how badly he was injured, he got to his feet, his movements slowed by the tendrils of red chaos power that all but shackled his arms and legs.

End this now, the power said to him, filling him again with the heat of a thousand suns.

“I will,” he ground out, but rather than directing the power outward, he lifted his head and held Racin’s gaze while he allowed the power to slip just enough to encase him in a pale golden-red glow. It burned through the chaos bonds, then faded, the murderous rage once again controlled by the runes bound upon him. He made a mental note to add a few more, since he hadn’t liked how close he’d come to giving in to the voice in his mind.

Always you fight me. And we could be so successful together…

The smirk that curled Racin’s lips slipped as he beheld Deo marching toward him, free of the bondage of red chaos. He went so far as to step back, wariness tinging his black eyes when Deo brushed past him, heading to the cell across the narrow passageway.

Deo looked around the cell. It had a view that looked out onto a valley in the distance. He nodded twice and said in a voice filled with the arrogance natural to him, “This will do. Have a servant fetch my things.”

Racin spat out an invective, and before Deo registered that the larger man had moved, was confronted by his captor, chaos snapping in waves down Racin’s body. “You think to dictate to me?” he roared, making Deo’s ears ring.

Pain laced his body, flaying him as no whip ever could, the magic that Racin poured over Deo cutting through flesh and muscle until it threatened to break his very bones.

His own version of that magic, sensing the threat, came to life a second time, and gratefully, Deo pulled on it to buffer him from the worst of the assault.

One corner of his mind absently wondered how and why his chaos had changed into something unique, but Deo had little patience for pondering the unknown, preferring instead to deal with whatever was in front of him.

He ignored the chanting voice in his head urging him to do the most heinous acts, added another prayer to Kiriah and Bellias that his mastery over the power wouldn’t fade in the face of Racin’s attack, and gritted his teeth, bowing his head as he focused.

Dimly he heard a voice calling his name; then Racin and the waves of red, pulsing pain were gone.

“Stop! You will bring the whole temple down upon us. Already the rocks at the base of the temple are cracking. Deo, control yourself. My lord Racin, there are surely more important matters claiming your time than chastising my son.” Dasa’s words, spoken with a lightness that was belied by the anger in her eyes, did their work nonetheless, for Racin gave in to the restraining hand on his arm, and took a step back.

“Your whelp thought to challenge me,” Racin snarled, his eyes narrowing on her. “Again.”

“He does it simply because he knows it bothers you,” Dasa told him, her gaze locked on the monster.

Deo, who once again had control of himself, felt his lip curl with disgust. The fact that his mother, the greatest warrior of the third age, and queen of the Starborn, could consort with such an abomination as Racin turned his stomach.

“He goes too far.” Racin all but spat the words at Dasa.

She didn’t react. Deo had to give her credit for that, although it bespoke a familiarity that did nothing to calm his unhappy belly. He wondered for a moment what his father would do when he heard of the queen’s perfidy and decided that he wanted to be there when Israel Langton was told.

“I will speak to him,” Dasa said, her voice weary with exasperation. She urged Racin from the cell. “My time will not be wasted as yours would be should you wish to lesson him. Again.”

Deo smiled. The only other time Racin had thought to teach him his place in Eris, Deo had destroyed not just the citadel within which he’d been imprisoned, but half the mountaintop city as well.

With that act came the deaths of innocents, though. His smiled faded at that memory.

The magic within him stirred, but remained quiet.

Racin continued protesting, throwing threats at Deo, but at last the queen had him out of the temple and on his way back to Skystead. Deo stood gazing out of the small window, his eyes on the valley spread out below him.

“Did you have to do that?”

Deo stiffened at the censure in his mother’s voice, then forced himself to relax. “As a matter of fact, I kept myself from killing him. Do you not wish to thank me for that?”

“Thank you?” Dasa strode into the small cell, grabbed his arm and spun him around to confront her ire. “For almost ruining everything we’ve worked for? I ought to smite you where you stand. It would cause me considerably less aggravation than trying to teach you to heed the common sense that you were evidently born without.”

“You would know,” he said, allowing an ironic little smile to play about his lips.

She looked as if she wanted to strike him, but managed to get her temper under control. “The issue of your upbringing under your father’s care aside, what did you hope to gain by challenging Racin? You know full well you can’t destroy him on your own. Are you as mad as the priests say you are?”

He was distracted by that thought. “I haven’t been mad since I left the Isle of Enoch. Not truly mad.”

“The priests report that you speak when no one is in your cell. You draw runes in the air that glow with the light of Kiriah Sunbringer, something no one has seen since the coming of the Harborym. They say you pace the cell endlessly for days, casting spells and summoning minions of death.”

“If I had the ability to summon minions, do you think I’d be here now?”

“What I think is that you have frightened the priests of this temple until there are only a handful remaining. Should those leave, Racin will be forced to take action.”

Deo rolled his eyes. “He could imprison me in Skystead again.”

“After what you did to the keep?” Dasa glared at him. “Deo, I know this inactivity is hard on you. Bellias knows I find it almost unendurable to have to pretend interest in a thousand mundane activities when I would much rather fetch a sword and smite our enemies, but your father and I had long ago determined that we could not let Racin follow the path of destruction he started upon, or all of Alba would be enslaved, crying out helplessly under his yoke. You agreed to our plan. So why do you now cast all that aside in order to satisfy your need for revenge?”

Deo sighed. He wanted to be angry with his mother, but he couldn’t. “It wasn’t me. It was the magic.”

She eyed the runes on his harness, touching one of them with the tip of a finger, immediately snatching her hand back and shaking it. “Blessed Bellias, how can you bear such heat?”

He shrugged. “It is part of me. Just as the maddening urge to kill Racin is also in me.”

“Well, tell that part to be quiet,” Dasa snapped.

“Do you bring me any news?” he asked, changing the subject. He knew from experience of the last eleven months that arguing with his mother would only leave them irritated and annoyed to the point where one or both of them might be driven to violence.

“No.” Dasa breathed heavily for a minute, then laid her hand on Deo’s chest, on a spot not covered by the harness. To his surprise, she tipped her head back and smiled up at him. “You enrage me with your wild ways, Deo, but there is pleasure in the knowledge that my blood clearly rules you. You are indeed a fitting warrior of my house, and a fine reflection of your Starborn ancestors.”

He was momentarily silenced by the words of praise, having seldom heard them. He felt an unwelcome desire to preen in front of her and stifled it immediately. Although she might think he took after her, he had too much of his father’s sagacity to believe he was anything but what he was—a man tormented, one who had sacrificed much in order to fulfill the role to which he had been born. “Your words are pleasant, but they would be pleasanter still if you had something to tell me of Racin’s studies.”

She sighed and made a face before turning to the window. “The people dragged before him are subjected to his…studies…as you call them. The lucky ones die instantly. Those who survive the transformation usually die within days, most by their own hands, but some go berserk and attack the others.”

Deo was silent considering this. “I don’t understand.”

“Why he is decimating the population of Eris?” Dasa asked.

“No.” Absently, he rubbed his thumb along the line of runes on the wrist band of his other hand. “Why, he has so little control over his magic. Once I had mastered the magic, it took me a relatively short time to find a dosage that my Banes of Eris could take without killing—or consuming them, and yet he’s been attempting to do the same since we drove him back to Eris. Why?”

Dasa shrugged, turning back toward him, leaning against the wall. “It’s magic. It is unstable.”

Deo mused that his magic was unstable…but the chaos magic that he had first used was not. Powerful, yes, at times fighting for control, but it was only since he’d traveled to Eris that his magic had become unstable and uncontrolled. “It makes little sense. He seeks to duplicate the creation of my Banes, and yet he has an army of Harborym at his disposal.”

“Made up of soldiers who are easily defeated by you,” Dasa said smoothly, moving to stand next to him. “He fears you, my son. He doesn’t want to admit it even to himself, but he knows that you have done something to his magic that leaves him vulnerable. You pose a threat to him that he can’t tolerate, one that drives him to experiment upon the Shadowborn to find out just what you have done, so that he can find a way to best it…or unmake it completely. That fear drives him to the point where soon there will be no Shadowborn left untainted in all of Eris.”

“Since when do you have a fondness for the Shadowborn?” Deo asked, momentarily amused by her apparent concern. He was under no illusion that his mother put her people’s welfare first and foremost in her life…even above that of her son.

“I have never condoned the slaughter of innocents,” she murmured.

He glanced at her, the words echoing with his own oath. “So I must continue to fester here?” He made an aborted gesture of frustration, wanting to vent his anger and impatience, but knew it would stir the chaos within him. “I remain an impotent prisoner, unable even to defend myself against the monster’s attacks?”

“You defended yourself to the point where you almost brought the temple down upon your head,” Dasa replied acidly, giving his arm a pat as she moved past him to the door. Outside it, the Priests of the Blood Hand stood at silent attention, their pale flesh and luminous, large eyes reminding Deo of frightened rabbits. Dangerous frightened rabbits. “Have patience, Deo. The moment Racin reveals a weakness that we can exploit, we will destroy him, and make all of Alba safe.”

“That could take decades,” Deo growled, his hands fisted. “Or centuries. I will go mad if I have to stay captive here.”

“Then return to Aryia,” Dasa said in a similar growl, clearly having had enough of Deo’s attitude. “I did not ask you to come here.”

“But you knew it was inevitable,” he stated, rounding on her.

She was silent a moment, her gaze on his face before it dropped to her hands. “No. I thought someone else—oh, it matters not. Do nothing that will endanger my plans, Deo, or I will have you removed to Aryia myself.”

She strode out of the cell before Deo could respond that he’d like to see her try that, but the mocking laughter that filled his head did little to soothe his frustration.

“My lord, if you please…” The soft voice came from one of the serving women who attended to the temple and its priests…and prisoners. This one had coppery red hair, and the bronzed skin that told Deo she had been born since the coming of the Harborym. The woman placed fresh bedding on the cot that sat in the corner of the cell before bringing in a jug of water, and a small, cracked bowl. She hesitated, her gaze moving from Deo to the door. Two priests stood outside, their heads together as they spoke so softly Deo could not hear them.

“My lord, you will forgive me, but I must speak. I can stand your suffering no longer.”

Deo, who was deep in abstracted thought about ways to force Racin to show his weaknesses—assuming he had them—frowned at the woman who plucked at his arm.

“What is it?” he asked, unable to keep the irritation from his voice.

She turned so that her back was to the door and smoothed out the bedlinens. “Today is a holy day for the priests. They will hold a great feast tonight to celebrate. There will only be one guard, and with my help, you can escape—”

“Why would I do that?” he asked, his frown deepening.

The woman—he remembered her name was Mayam—looked momentarily startled, her dark eyes flashing confusion at him before her gaze dropped to the floor. “You must—you are a prisoner here.”

“So?”

Irritation flickered across her expression. “You are a great warrior. The priests say you defeated the Speaker and his Harborym. Such a man as you cannot wish to stay here, trapped in a small cell.”

Deo smiled a grim smile, one that he felt said it all. But just in case the maidservant didn’t appreciate the grimness of his gesture, he said, as he gently pushed her out the door, “You have no idea what sort of a man I really am.”