Betrayal after betrayal after betrayal. I would have fallen to my knees from shock even had the tolling of the Rorgoth Throne not already toppled me with its force. The Usurper’s … Aemillian’s death had been quick, but brutal. Thick black blood – was it still blood, or had it become ichor, like Derrek’s? – poured out of the wound in his guts, and pooled around him and his murderer, executioner, former lover. The mortal stench of his death redoubled. Its miasma darkened the room even further.
I reeled from the shock of it all, barely able to register the events of the next minutes. The Solirium soldiers who had come up behind us. That we lived only by the tolling of the Rorgoth Throne and the terrible command in Derrek’s voice. The soldiers who carried off the dead usurper’s body, and the dead and dying guards. The soldiers who loomed, still, after those departed.
Out from under his dead lover’s corpse, Derrek rose to his feet like a badly handled puppet. He was soaked in gore from the waist down, and from above his left elbow to the tips of his fingers, the regicidal knife still clutched tight in his fist. His face was slack with horror. His eyes were no longer cold; they were empty.
I watched him as the soldiers milled around us. Watched as he drew his finger along the length that blood-soaked blade, still holding the golden crown of Vencar. Watched as the corona of light that always surrounded him pulsed bright gold and solidified.
In my shock and stupor, I couldn’t guess what he had done until a matching light erupted around my own body, then Elana’s, then Rennin’s. An aegis, like the one the Usurper had worn. Protection that he could have offered at any time. Protection that might have saved Orland’s life, or protected Veralar when she interrupted his scrying at the Eastern Veil. Protection that would have saved Rennin the pain of the scorpion’s sting, and saved me from the pain of the wyvern’s venom.
“Derrek Rowan,” Elana said, her voice thick with a half-dozen kinds of confusion and hurt.
“Please be patient, Elana,” he said, distantly. “There are things broken, here, that only I can fix.”
I looked back up at Derrek in time to see him turn and mount the throne, that sao`ashan knife slipping from his bloody fingers. He didn’t seem to notice. Neither did Elana, nor Rennin.
The Rorgoth Throne hummed to life as he sat in it. Its rune-encrusted facets flashed and gleamed, but – I realized, suddenly – revealed no characters that I could see through the enchantments of my Black Mask, even when that gleaming grew into a bright golden glow that filled the room. That glow did not immediately banish the pooling oily miasma that had accumulated during Aemillian’s rule, there was too much. But it did banish the thinner shadows cast by his presence and his power, and it made the liquid-like miasma ripple back from where it pooled around the throne, like water driven by a strong wind.
Elana and Rennin had found their feet, by now, and retrieved their weapons. They walked past me on their way to the new Usurper on Elana’s throne, stopping only a moment to check that I was uninjured – it was beyond consideration that I might be “well”. I pressed the face of my mask the knuckles of the hand Elana briefly laid on my shoulder as she walked by.
It took me longer than I would have liked, but I rallied, rose, and followed – and scooped Derrek’s knife from the pool of blood where it had fallen. None seemed to notice that, either.
By the time I joined them at the foot of the throne, Rennin was futilely pressing the point of Blade of Xadaer against Derrek’s ribs. He was not thrown off, as he had been when he’d struck Aemillian, but neither did it find purchase. I was awestruck, but unsurprised. The key to this aegis was almost certainly the same as to the first.
What did surprise me was that, as angry and hurt as I was, I had no desire to kill or even injure Derrek Rowan. There were too many questions to answer before I could even consider such action. So I crossed my arms carefully, concealing the bloody blade in the folds of my himation even as I wrapped myself tighter within its protective enchantments.
Derrek, himself, seemed to be deeply entranced by the throne. Elana cursed his name and his gods. She slapped him, back-handed, across his face. Neither assault disturbed him any more than Rennin and the Blade of Xadaer.
“Khanaarre,” Elana turned to me, desperate and confused, “what is happening?”
Even so close, my Black Mask revealed almost nothing of the Rorgoth Throne. I could see the characters engraved on its material surface, the light of its power that filled the room. I could see that the Throne, itself, was stained by the shadows of the Usurper’s magic. I could see that the light of the Holy Lands, pouring through Derrek, was ever so slowly driving those shadows away.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “The Throne is … hiding itself from me? Even with my Mask, I can see little that I cannot see with my mortal eyes. Clearly he is using it for something he believes cannot wait even for an explanation, but I cannot begin to guess at what.”
I wished, for the thousandth time, that I had made better use of our time together – on the road through the White Steppes and the Lightning Plains; in the house of Vol Mak Khan; alone in the mountains at the foot of the Great Ice Wall. That I had asked him any of the countless questions I’d had about his work and his ambitions. What did he know of the Rorgoth Throne? What did Aemillian Solirius want, really, beyond power for power’s sake? What experiments did Derrek hope to pursue, when he got his tower at the edge of the world?
I hadn’t even known where to begin. I had feared ruining what time we’d had. It seemed that I had wasted it, instead.
“What are we going to do, my liege?”
Rennin’s question, couched in stiff formality, cut to the heart of it.
Elana spat on the floor.
“I guess that depends on what he says and does whenever … whatever this is … is over.”
We could hear a growing commotion outside the doors of the throne room. Whatever Derrek had done to close the door had sealed it, as well. I hoped it would hold until we could summon allies to our side. I feared it would not open without his personal intervention.
Derrek was not entranced with the Rorgoth Throne for very long, all things considered. No more than an hour, very likely half that. Not so long that we could bring ourselves to do anything but stand, staring at him, and wait. Long enough to drive much the shadowy miasma from the throne, itself, and to thin the pool at our feet. Long enough for us to grow deeply restless. Long enough for a loud and restless crowd to grow outside the doors; long enough for fighting to start, and stop, and start, and stop, again. More than long enough for Elana to compose a speech of some kind – I caught her murmuring phrases to herself, and knew the face she made as he was winding up.
Then the throne began to hum, a vibration we could feel first coming up through the floor and then in every bone of our bodies. As the hum grew into a pure tone, the throne began to glow. First the characters came to light. Then the facets began to wink and flash. Then the whole throne erupted into light so bright we had to turn away.
When the light and sound faded, we turned back to see Derrek’s eyes snap open, glowing as bright and gold as the eyes of the sao`ashan. But he blinked, twice, and they faded to … mostly mortal, with pupils and whites and irises, however brightly shining.
In that moment of stunned silence, he seemed to take in our faces. He did not give Elana time to even begin her speech. Our prince barely had time to draw breath before he extended the crown to her with a shaking hand.
“I abdicate my rule to Elana Traiana IV,” he said in a clear, firm voice, “the true heir to the Rorgoth Throne.”
Elana took the crown. She wiped it clean of blood – there was surprisingly little, it was his other hand that was stained – on her cloak. Then, with both hands, she placed it on her own head.
The Rorgoth Throne tolled again, shaking me to my core. Derrek stood, trembling. Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell forward, limp as a rag doll, directly toward the prince.
Elana was too surprised to dodge or catch him. Rennin leapt to brace her. I leapt to catch Derrek, and to pull him out of Rennin’s reach before realizing that, somehow, his aegis and ours were still intact. We could still not harm Derrek even if we wanted to.
“Your master was Maris Pello,” Rennin said. It was a statement, not a question. “Did you study his Labyrinth? Will it contain him?”
“Yes, he was,” I said, stunned and horrified both at the prospect and that that course of action had not occurred to me. “Yes, I did, a little. Yes, I think it will.”
“Then call the Order of Truth-Seekers,” Elana said. “Throw him in the Labyrinth.”
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