Part 5 (1/2)

The darsteed lowered its head, its red eyes focused on nothing but the child.

StillIstillIstillIstill, Tobeszijian commanded it.

The beast bared its fangs, letting acid drip, hissing, around Faldain. The child stretched up on his toes, unafraid, and patted the darsteed on the end of its snout.

”Horsey, go ride!” Faldain announced.

A sigh of awe pa.s.sed through the onlookers. Tobeszijian pushed his way through the hirelances withThiatereika in his arms. His legs felt like wood, but he forced himself to act the part, calmly walking right up to his son and the beast that wanted Faldain as its prey. Tobeszijian knew he would have to pay a price for this obedience. The darsteed would feed, and very soon now, no matter how much Tobeszijian tried to control it.

”Pet the darsteed, Thiatereika,” the king said lightly.

She reached out and gave the creature's leathery neck a single pat before he whisked her out of reach.

By then he'd gripped Faldain's arm and pulled him off the ground, spinning and kicking almost under the very nose of the darsteed, which hissed and slavered as little shudders ran through its body. Its tail was las.h.i.+ng from side to side in warning.

Tobeszijian could feel its fury building, and knew his control would not last much longer.

”The bridle, stablemaster,” he said quietly.

But the stablemaster had sunk down on the cobbles a safe distance away, blood still streaming from his leg, while some of the other servants tried to tend his wound. The boy who'd helped carry the saddle stepped forward with the simple bridle in his hands. It had no bit, and was merely a headpiece with reins attached.

”Be quick,” Tobeszijian murmured to him.

The boy nodded, his throat apple jerking up and down as he swallowed. Drawing a final breath, he darted toward the darsteed, which flung up its head in alarm. With all the control he still possessed, Tobeszijian pressed harder, and the beast lowered its head. The boy fitted the bridle on, tugging the check strap swiftly into place, and stumbled out of the way.

By then Tobeszijian had both children on the darsteed's back. He mounted in a swift, fluid motion.

Gathering the reins, he let a part of himself flow into and become one with the darsteed.

He wanted to feel it attack.

The darsteed's blood boiled through Tobeszijian's veins. His own fury raged back into the darsteed.

Impatience filled Tobeszijian, an impatience and anger that he no longer tried to govern. With a flick of his hands, he gestured to the stableboys.

”My children,” he said with the last ounce of what remained inside him as a man, ”hold on tight no matter what happens.”

Inside his glove, the Ring burned hot around his finger. Tobeszijian's heart was thudding faster and faster.

The stableboys released the nooses on the throat poles, and Bork stepped forward.

”You ride it and show us your legend,” he said with a sneer. ”Then your games are over, king, and you go to the guardhouse as our prisoner.” Tobeszijian spurred the darsteed and slipped his control from the beast's mind.

FeedIstrikeIgo, he commanded. With a bugle of rage, the darsteed bounded straight at Bork, who had time only to gape in dawning terror before the creature's fangs ripped out his throat, then tore off his head and swallowed it in a gulp.

Tobeszijian spurred it again, and the creature leaped and bellowed and thundered across the stableyard toward the small still-shut gates. Someone shouted behind him, but Tobeszijian did not listen. He was concentrating inside, reaching into the heat of the Ring the way his father had taught him long ago. And when he felt the inner flash of white fire as the Ring drew him into its power, Tobeszijian tightened his arm around his children, and spurred the darsteed harder. With a roar, it bounded into the second world with a speed that made Tobeszijian's sweat-soaked hair blow back from his face. All around him was blinding light and a deafening roar of sound. Chalice, he thought with all his might, forcing himself to concentrate and remain focused. To the Chalice.

And to the astonished onlookers remaining in the stable-yard of Nether Palace, King Tobeszijian and his children vanished on that fearsome beast of h.e.l.l into thin air as though the G.o.ds had s.n.a.t.c.hed them from this world and taken them far away.

Only a fading shower of golden sparks remained behind to glow upon the hoof tracks etched into the paving stones.

For Tobeszijian, the pa.s.sage through the second world was too swift and confusing to evoke fear. In a terrible silence in which his own voice made no sound, Tobeszijian saw only gray swirling mists and the shadows of things he did not understand. All he knew was that he and his children were still galloping through this nonplace on the back of the darsteed. The beast ran with all its strength, its powerful muscles bunching and thrusting, but if it roared those sounds were silenced. If the children cried, Tobeszijian could not hear them. Looking down at them, clamped together within the tight circle of his arm, he saw them only dimly, as though they were shadows. There was no color in this strange, ghostly place that seemed washed in shades of moonlit gray. There was no sense of time. Nothing lived or moved except them. He perceived an emptiness so profound it frightened him.

Belatedly he remembered he must keep his destination clear in his mind, or else they would be lost here in the second world forever, prey to its many dangers. Chalice, he thought.

With a great pop of sound, they leaped back into reality, with its noise, smells, and overwhelming kaleidoscope of colors. Disoriented and shaken, Tobeszijian reeled in his saddle, while his children wailed and the darsteed reared and lunged at something moving before it.

Just in time, Tobeszijian regained his senses and realized the moving object was a woman, gowned in vivid blue with a purple girdle and a crimson-lined cloak. Screaming as she backed away from the attacking darsteed, she tripped on the hem of her long skirts and fell. The darsteed lunged at her, its pointed teeth snapping. Cringing and screaming, the woman brought up her hands helplessly to s.h.i.+eld herself.

Tobeszijian hit the darsteed with his mind: StandIstandIstandIstand. The darsteed's head whipped back and around. Its eyes glowed red madness at Tobeszijian. For an instant he thought he could not withstand the hot, molten fury raging inside the beast, but with all his will he held firm. Kicking, the darsteed bugled its frustration and lashed its barbed tail from side to side. But it obeyed him and stood as he commanded.

Sobbing, the woman scrambled away, and others in the crowd helped pull her to safety.

Tobeszijian saw that he was in a stone church, filled with an ethereal glow of dusty sunlight streaming inthrough tall, slitted windows. Scaffolding in places showed the place to be still under construction. The air smelled of plaster dust and fresh paint pigments. On the left side, a single tapestry hung between two windows, but empty hooks showed where other tapestries would soon hang. Tobeszijian recognized the new Belrad Cathedral.

Netheran n.o.bles in their finery filled the long, rectangular nave. Tobeszijian recognized many faces, faces which either stared at him in flat defiance or reddened and turned away. For here were gathered his missing courtiers, those who had abandoned his palace and his queen while she lay dying. A fresh burst of grief and accompanying rage shook him. His hands clenched white-knuckled around his reins, and he could feel his pulse throbbing hard in his throat.

There stood Count Lazky with his wife and grown daughters. There stood Prince Askirzikan. There stood Fortinac, the burly knight exiled from Mandria who had found acceptance here. On her stool, surrounded by frightened attendants, sat the Countess Renylkin, her aged face set like stone, her k.n.o.bby hands clutching a book of Writ tightly in her lap. Only her eyes gave her away, eyes that stared at him with fear and a trace of wonder.

Tobeszijian could not believe that this countess had turned against him, yet here she was with all the others. She met his gaze proudly, never faltering, although her cheeks turned pink. She had been chief lady-in-waiting to the queen, and her desertion of Nereisse made Tobeszijian wonder in despair how he'd misjudged her character so completely. Indeed, how could he have been so wrong about so many?

In that moment of stunned silence as he faced them, still glowing from a golden light which streamed down his body from the delicate circlet of eldin gold on his brow to the rowels of his silver spurs, Tobeszijian looked every inch a king and more. Even now, travel-stained and drawn with grief, holding his big-eyed children clamped against him like refugees, Tobeszijian eclipsed every other man present.

The golden light made the jewels in his sword and dagger hilts glitter even more brightly. His skin shone with the radiance of it, as though he'd pa.s.sed through the breath of the G.o.ds. His ice-blue eyes, clear evidence of his eldin blood, glared with a ferocity that stilled the breath in many throats. His courtiers had run away like wicked children, but Tobeszijian had found them, bursting upon them with a great clap of sound and the acrid smell of magic. Even now, the remnants of whatever spell he'd commanded still flowed from him, the golden light of it dripping to the floor and puddling in a pool of radiance at the s.h.i.+fting feet of the darsteed.

Somewhere in the staring crowd there came a rustle of movement accompanied by a faint clanking sound. A man knelt, bowing his head. Another did the same. And another. The Countess Renylkin moved ponderously off her stool, and with the help of her attendants knelt on the stones before her king.

Only then did the abundant folds of her skirts fall, allowing him to see the chain that shackled her ankles.

”My heart to the king!” cried a deep voice that Tobeszijian recognized as Prince Spirin's.

Looking in that direction, Tobeszijian saw the tall, lean prince struggling with someone who was trying to keep him from kneeling. Spirin's fur-cuffed sleeve fell back from his wrist, and Tobeszijian saw that he too was manacled with iron.

”To the king!” shouted someone else.

”To the king!”

But the few voices of acclaim were defiant and isolated. They provoked no general cheering. And although many now knelt, others did not. Rigid with anger at the insult, Tobeszijian saw more and moreglances being cast toward the front of the church. He swept his own gaze in that direction, seeking his enemy.

At the front of the church, high above the altar, a wide window of stained gla.s.s depicting the Circle surrounded by the crests of the holy orders-created by men, not by the G.o.ds-cast an eerie scarlet glow over Tobeszijian's half-brother, Prince Muncel. Wearing an ermine cloak and a tall, pointed crown glittering with jewels, Muncel sat on a gold throne with black velvet cus.h.i.+ons, a beyarskin rug separating his embroidered velvet shoes from the cold stone floor. Balanced across his knees lay the sheathed triangular sword of black iron, the antiquated sword that Solder First had carried into battle before he met the G.o.ds and was given the kingdom, the Ring, the Chalice, and later Mirengard. Cardinal Pernal and another ecclesiastical figure sat on either side of Muncel, richly attired in long robes of crimson and purple. They were there for support and confirmation, or perhaps as guards. Gazing at his half-brother in cold speculation, Tobeszijian wondered how much of this evil plot had spun from Muncel's greedy heart.

Or was he just a puppet of the church? Across the distance, Tobeszijian and Muncel locked eyes, pale eyes to dark. The astonishment and growing fury in Muncel were so strong that Tobeszijian felt them.

Although he could not reach into the minds of men the way he could those of animals, he knew that his half-brother hated him more than ever and intended to wrest the very kingdom from his hands. This religious ceremony here in the Belrad Cathedral was one more trap among many. Muncel could not strike Tobeszijian openly in the royal palace, but by stealing the Chalice and bringing the courtiers to Belrad, he had lured Tobeszijian onto his own property. If Tobeszijian attacked him here, Muncel could claim he was merely defending himself.

Such legal trickery and cowardice sparked new anger in Tobeszijian. He thought of Nereisse, who had never harmed a living soul, now dead and abandoned in an empty palace, dead by Muncel's order. Grief and rage burned Tobeszijian's throat, and he struck at Muncel with all the strength of his mind. The prince's face turned gray. He cried out sharply, and fell back in his chair.

The gaudy Crown of Runtha slipped forward over his brow and fell into his lap. Cardinal Pernal was a plump, jowled man with the countenance of a kindly uncle beneath his fringe of white hair, and the rapacious heart of a vulture. At Muncel's collapse, Pernal jumped to his feet. While the other churchmen bent over the swooning Muncel, grabbing the crown before it could roll to the floor, Pernal raised the jeweled circle that hung on a gold chain around his fat neck and cried out in a voice that rang through the church: ”Go back, creature of the darkness, to whence you came!” The darsteed screamed and reared beneath Tobeszijian, striking out with its deadly hooves, so that people shouted in fear and crowded even farther away from it.

”Go back!” Pernal shouted. ”By the power of the Chalice, I command you to go.” Tobeszijian glared at him and spurred his darsteed forward to the altar. Tall and broad-shouldered, with the golden light burnis.h.i.+ng his mail and breastplate and his burgundy cloak flowing from his shoulders over the scaled rump of his unworldly mount, the king rode through the nave like a G.o.d himself. His blue eyes held the light of battle and righteousness. Pernal's words of repudiation were only sound, lacking power, for he did not command the Chalice, nor did he have true belief. His words were for show, to impress the terrified people watching and drawing shaky circles on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s for protection. Cutting across Pernal's chanting, Tobeszijian said loudly, ”I am your king! The only darkness here lies within the hearts of the traitors before me.” His voice rang off the stones and echoed in the corners. As he spoke he stripped off his gauntlets, and the Ring of Solder glowed brightly on his finger, casting its own nimbus of power about his hand. ”Let the people of Nether hear my accusations. Muncel, you have defiled the holy first circle. You have stolen the Chalice for your own gain. You have murdered one who was innocent-” Muncel roused himself from his swoon and thrust himself to his feet, wild-eyed andred-faced. ”Who? Your eldin wh.o.r.e?” he shouted, half-hysterically. ”Your pagan ways have cost you, Tobeszijian. The people want to follow the Reformed Church. They want to follow me. See? Here they are. Your rule is over.” ”I am king!” Tobeszijian said, his deep voice twice as powerful as Muncel's reedy tones. ”And all here know it. I wear the true crown, the crown of the First. I wear the Ring, given to the First by the G.o.ds. I carry Mirengard, which cannot be touched save by the hand of the true-”