I’m told I also set the drapes on fire. And the table.
“Wyrga, ignore your last order! You stupid fool!”
That last part was directed at me.
Then pain spiked through my whole skull and I screamed, folding up into a tight ball. “Help her!” Azhen Kaen ordered Wyrga.
Help is an open-ended command, but Wyrga did something.
Everything turned black, and nothing hurt.
* * *
When I woke, I found myself in a guest room at the top of the pyramid, the sort with beautiful mountainside views. Perhaps most importantly, I could see from both eyes. I checked. Both were present and accounted for, uninjured.
I sat up from the bed, noted I remained dressed, and walked over to the slanted crystal window. I watched the storm-shrouded mountains, noting that someone had put me in a southern-facing room looking out toward Jorat. I couldn’t see my adopted homeland from here, but I knew the direction. And as I watched, I saw Aeyan’arric sporting along a ridgeline, a giant sparkling diamond of white death.
“You’re going to have to learn magic, you know.”
I winced as I turned to face Wyrga—the witch-queen Suless, although for obvious reasons, I couldn’t call her such. She stood at the doorway with her polar bear cub—with Cherthog—tucked under her arm. The flesh around her empty left socket looked puffy and red.
So Kaen hadn’t let her heal the injury. He at least hadn’t let her finish the job either, while I lay unconscious.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think he’d do that.”
The old hag grinned her toothful smile and waddled over in my direction. “Don’t let it bother you any. I barely notice it myself. See?” She raised her hand and I saw she held her other eye. The orb rotated in her fingers, a brown cat’s eye pointing at me.
“Oh Eight.” I tasted bile and turned away, even as she started laughing.
“He told me to pluck my eyes out. He never said anything about not being able to still use them.”
“Of course. What was I thinking?” I swallowed down the awful taste in my mouth and wished for water. A sparkling white flash caught my eye as the ice dragon dove down below the cloud line. She twisted herself around to fill up the snow hollow she used as bedding. At least that’s a beautiful monster, I thought.
But Suless was a monster too. I hadn’t moved to her defense because I thought her a wonderful person, I’d done it because I didn’t think anyone deserved such treatment.
In a way, I was grateful. Suless had given me clarity. Because when Kaen had given her that terrible command, I’d known for certain I could never serve Azhen Kaen, no matter what rewards he offered. I’d been tempted, but a man who used his power as he had with Wyrga could never be trusted.5
What you protect is what you rule. Kaen was thorra—a bully, someone who used his strength to dominate. Any vows I’d made to him melted in my heart and then turned to ash.
“You’re going to have to learn magic if you want to take Aeyan’arric down, you know. Sword skill alone can’t kill a dragon, no matter how good you are; you’ll never be good enough. Magic, on the other hand, might just keep you alive for long enough. Maybe. If you’re lucky.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” My heart hammered drumbeat fast. What questions had the Hon asked Senera? What did they know? How did Wyrga know about my mission? If the Hon realized my goal was to steal the spear Khoreval and use it to slay the dragon he loved sending into Jorat …
It wouldn’t go well for me.
She set her dismembered eye on the nightstand. “I don’t want to lose this. The cub will start chewing on it, and wouldn’t that be awful.” The old woman turned back to me, pointing at me with a skeletal finger. “Veix dedicated you to Suless. That means something. You can’t hide yourself from Suless now. She knows all your secrets.”
I knew why she spoke of herself in the third person. Kaen had likely forbidden her from revealing her identity. Of course, that didn’t change how troubling her words were.
Assuming they were true.
“You know you would be good at magic. Do you think Tya would have a child who didn’t have the gift? She breathed it into you from your birth, stamped it into your bones, set it spiraling into your blood. Yet you’ve done everything but study it. Swordplay? Yes. Strategy? Oh please. Tactics. Yes, tactics. Your father’s gifts. But not your mother’s. You reject those.”6
“Are you so sure?” I said. “I haven’t been here that long.”
“I think all you have to do is ask.” The way she looked at me emphasized her dowager’s hump, her spine’s curve. “And your mother would be only too glad to teach you.” She reached out toward me with a twisted hand and touched my arm with the lightest sweep. “But she isn’t half as good a teacher as I am.”
“Any help you’d offer would come poisoned. I’m not the fool Veixizhau was.”
Wyrga cackled, like the laughter of her hyenas. “Can you blame me? The abused dog snaps at her keepers. You know what it’s like to rebel against your jailer, don’t you? Are you so fond of Xaltorath?”
I winced and looked away. Wyrga knew far too much about me. Maybe what she’d said about being “dedicated” had some truth to it. If so, I had even more reason to curse Veixizhau. She had laid my secrets bare to a monster.
Wyrga grinned once more. “Where was your mother when you needed her?”
“Shut up.”
“That’s why you deny her, why you deny her gifts. She had nothing to give you when you needed her protection, and so now you would deny her the satisfaction of knowing any talent of yours stems from her.”
A shuddering exhale escaped me. The fact Wyrga might be right galled me. My father hadn’t known I existed, but my mother had no such excuses. Worse, in my mother’s eyes, I had been created as nothing more than a tool, not born from love or lust or even accident but purely to fulfill some idiotic prophecy.
Tools can be traded. Tools can be discarded. Tools can be broken.
“I had a daughter once,” Wyrga said. “She felt very much the same about me, but in trying to rebel against me, she became me.7 Isn’t that funny?”
“You’re acting sane today. Please tell me what the duke did to you isn’t responsible for this pleasant change.”
She winked at me. “Don’t worry, dearie. It won’t last.”
I didn’t find that reassuring.
She spider-walked her fingers over the crystal wall. Black lines branched out to cover the glass. Writing, but nothing I knew how to read.
“What does it take,” I said, “to become a god?”
“Oh, it’s not so hard.” The spidery glyphs branched out, flowed into passages. The fact I couldn’t understand them didn’t stop me from feeling like I should. “At least, it wouldn’t be hard for you.”
“I don’t want to be a god,” I said.
“Everyone wants to be a god,” she retorted, her voice hot. “The reason my ‘master’ hasn’t asked is because he doesn’t realize I know how. He didn’t gaesh me. His grandfather didn’t even gaesh me. You know who did? Cherthog.”