The Element of Fire by Martha Wells (top novels TXT) 📕

Dontane led the way through a suite piled with supplies, to where servants with the Alsene badge waited outside two large double doors.

Inside was a long low-ceilinged council room, decorated in blue and gold with a long draw table across the back wall. Three men stood with their backs to Thomas, consulting a map spread out on the table. Dontane went to lean against the wall, watching with folded arms, but the troopers stayed to either side of Thomas. The men wore the heavy velvet brocades of nobles, and two were blond. Alsene lords? he wondered. A couple of servants waited by the other door, with a dark-haired boy-page. Then Thomas saw that the man in the center of the group at the table had his left arm in a sling, and he forgot about Dontane and the others.

Denzil turned to face him, and Thomas said, “Pity I missed.”

“Pity for you,” the Duke of Alsene said, smiling as he came forward. “It was a good shot; it shattered the bone, but our fine sorcerer Grandier healed it.” Thomas must have shown his disbelief because Denzil added, “Yes, I thought it impossible too, but it seems he’s more skilled than most. Quite an advantage for me.”

Quite an advantage. If not for Grandier, Denzil would have died, or lost his arm. One of the other nobles, watching from across the room, grinned and said, “So this is the one who gave you so much trouble, my lord; you didn’t tell us—”

Denzil spun around and snarled, “Shut up!”

The silence became absolute. Thomas noted he was the only man in the room who hadn’t started at the sudden transformation from urbane calm to nearly blind rage. He had always known Denzil was capable of that kind of anger, but that the young Duke had hidden it from his followers came as no surprise.

Denzil turned back to him, again the cool amused young noble. Smiling, he said, “Relatives are a necessary encumbrance.”

“For now,” Thomas agreed. He could see the family resemblance to Denzil in the other two men’s features, the cold blue of their eyes. The one who had spoken looked resentful at being publicly chastened; the other was watching the scene with amusement, as if it were a play put on for his enjoyment. If Denzil succeeded, Thomas wouldn’t have bet copper on the chances of either of them living out the year. He said, “Did you get Roland?”

“No.” Denzil’s eyes were very bright and he was flushed slightly from excitement. Excitement at the power. He was watching Thomas carefully. “Ravenna’s dead.”

“I know,” Thomas said, able to keep his expression neutral and wondering if Grandier had told him first only to spoil his ally’s fun.

Denzil was too good at this to betray even a flash of irritation. He only shook his head in mild regret. “Grandier again? And I was so looking forward to telling you myself.”

At that moment Thomas knew for certain that Denzil had brought him up here to kill him. He had suspected it as soon as he had walked in, but now it was all there to be read in the younger man’s face, the way he carried himself. He said, “You hide your disappointment well.”

“Do you think so?” Denzil drew the main gauche from the sash at his back and touched the point thoughtfully. This wasn’t the deadly toy with the serrated edge and extra rods for breaking blades. It was an elegant weapon with a long utilitarian blade and a gold-chased half-shell guard. Thomas watched Denzil’s opaque eyes and tried to keep his mind blank.

Denzil said, “I don’t suppose you’re surprised by this,” and stabbed him in the stomach.

For the first moment Thomas only felt the force of the blow. It doubled him over, and as the blade pulled free and air reached his sliced flesh, the pain began. A wave of icy cold rose around him, and his legs gave way. He didn’t notice that the troopers had let him go until his knees struck the floor. For a moment he supported himself with one hand braced against the wooden planks, the other pressed to his stomach. The blood felt hot against the chill of his skin, and there was so astonishingly little of it at first. He was distantly aware of noise in the room, voices raised, but then his arm gave way and that was all.

*

Out of the warm darkness of fevered sleep, he heard voices.

Galen Dubell… No, Grandier said, “I don’t have to justify my actions to you.”

“Don’t you? You’re putting me on a throne, and I’m going to help you get your heart’s desire, and you don’t think you owe me a few words of explanation?” Denzil said, his tone soft and reasonable.

“Correct.”

There was silence. Thomas managed to open his eyes. He lay curled on his side on a couch, and a large spot of the heavy damask upholstery was soaked with blood. He knew this because his left hand lay in it. His doublet had been unbuttoned and his shirt pulled aside. It was cold, though not as frigid as the room where he had been imprisoned. His limbs felt too heavy to move, and there was something about the absence of pain that was shocking.

Grandier’s back was to him, and he could see Denzil across the room.

Denzil’s brows had lifted in gentle inquiry, but when Grandier remained politely attentive, he said, “That man is my enemy.”

“That isn’t my concern.”

Denzil was ominously still for a moment, though Grandier’s reply had been in the same mild voice. He said, “Consider that you would do better not to antagonize me.”

“Perhaps. But I have already antagonized you, it seems, so I see no point in not continuing on my chosen course.”

“Very well. It means nothing then, but…” Denzil shrugged gracefully, only a slight tremor revealing his rage. “Do be more careful in the future.”

Thomas closed his eyes, feeling darkness sweep up over him in a moment of dizziness, but he heard Denzil’s steps cross the room and a door close.

He opened his eyes again and saw Grandier shake his head and turn around. The sorcerer smiled when he saw him awake and said, “Really, the man is driven mad by anyone who fails to succumb to his particular charm. But then, you are aware of this.”

“Intimately.” The sarcasm was automatic, and Thomas’s voice slow and rusty. He winced at the sound of it.

Grandier turned away, and Thomas managed to lift himself a little on one elbow. Pain seized him for one sporadic moment, doubled him up, and let him go, leaving him breathless. His fingers found the small web of tight white scar tissue about five inches below his heart. That was all that was left of the puncture wound where the blade had entered, but his body remembered its presence all too well.

When he looked up, Grandier was watching him with a puzzled frown. “You are fortunate,” Grandier said. “He could have injured you in a way less easily remedied.”

Thomas took a deep breath, but the pain didn’t return. The stab wound in his arm had stopped its insistent ache as well. He said, “You don’t think he knew that?”

Grandier shook his head. “He was angry because I did not allow you to die.”

“He was angry because you were so calm about it. Before he did it he was very careful to tell me how you healed his arm after I shot him.”

Grandier hesitated a moment, eyes thoughtful, then he said, “A valuable insight.”

He sent Dontane to contact Denzil for him, Thomas thought. That had undoubtedly gone well for Denzil. Might as well send sheep to bargain with wolves. Grandier had crossed the room to a round table that held a number of jars and bottles, probably apothecary powders. He was tightening the stoppers and putting them back into a leather case. Thomas wanted to ask why Grandier wanted him alive, but he suspected he would find that out anyway in a moment or two. He wished the damned Bisran priest who had heard Grandier’s confession in prison had asked for more specifics about the shape-changing magic. How a potential victim could escape it, for example. But there was one thing he wanted to know regardless of what happened to him next, and he asked, “How did Ravenna die?”

Grandier paused, without turning, and said, “Evadne and a band of fay had trapped her in the tower at Bel Garde, and attempted to exchange her for Roland. She fired a powder magazine Denzil had hidden there, killing Evadne and the others. A few fay who had clung to the outside of the tower survived; I had the story from them.”

Firing a powder magazine. God, woman, did you think about what you were doing to yourself? No, probably not, even if she could have considered it as anything other than a means to an end. She would have given her own life the same weight as anyone else’s, done her best, and then proceeded on her course with style. Oh, but the bastards must have been surprised.

When he looked back, Grandier was watching him thoughtfully. “You wondered why I felt the need to show you the Dark Host.”

“Yes.”

“It was not intended as a threat. It was a test.”

A test I failed, Thomas thought suddenly.

“There was no light in that cellar,” Grandier continued. “Or no light visible to mortal eyes. The men with us heard strange cries and laughter, and caught brief glimpses of foul things darting out of a wall of darkness. I could see the Host, as could Dontane, because we have been touched by their power. How was it that you saw them?”

Coming out of a wall of darkness, like the attack in the Old Hall. Wary, Thomas answered, “If you knew enough to perform the test, then you must already have a theory.”

“She took you to Knockma, didn’t she?”

Thomas watched him, saying nothing. Kade’s Fayre kingdom had been like an island of calm reality in the midst of a nightmare. It had been easy to forget that the pact he had made with her there would have an effect in the violent whirlwind of the present.

Grandier said, “The change is noticeable, to those who know what to look for. Perhaps even to those who don’t. But she did more than take you there, I think. She has opened the Otherworld to you.”

“And what does that mean to you?”

“I could use your help. With the Duke of Alsene, for one example. As you have pointed out, my understanding of the way his mind works is woefully incomplete.” Grandier closed the leather case and leaned back against the table. “Ravenna is gone, and Roland is alone. Even if you could free yourself and reach him, he wouldn’t listen to you, not about Denzil’s involvement. Those who might have organized resistance to the Duke’s bid for power are either dead, scattered, or will not learn of it in time.” He shrugged. “I agree with you. Denzil is dangerous, unamenable to my influence, and too clever to control. It will be a battle to make him carry out my wishes, at least until I no longer need him. You could help me win that battle.”

Thomas’s first impulse was to play for time. He knew what a flat refusal to cooperate might get him, and he wasn’t willing to give up yet. He asked, “What about Kade?”

“She can no longer enter the palace, as I have turned the wards against her, but I spoke to her some time ago