370. The Lord of Purity
Wren wasn’t certain how long it had been since Liv had departed, with her entire personal guard and several score culling mages. She found it difficult to look away from the horrible, pulsing cocoon of flesh which remained rooted in the salt-stained surface of Coral Bay’s waystone. Occasionally, she was unable to resist reaching out to touch the fleshy membranes stretched between arcing supports of pale bone, but each time she did, the experience was so unsettling that she drew her hand back immediately, like a child who’s burned herself on a hot iron pan.
There was no skin – at least not anything like human skin. In fact, out of anything Wren had ever encountered, it was closer to the membranes of a bat’s wing – semi translucent, shot through with blood vessels and other structures that Wren could glimpse, but not necessarily name. Now that the sun had risen, the golden light lit up the cocoon, and Wren could dimly glimpse dark shadows and shapes half-concealed within. Ghveris, she thought, and tried to trace the shape of a shoulder, an arm, a head, with her eyes. How long would it take for Ractia’s spell to be done? If someone ripped the quivering flesh open now – was there enough of the man she loved in there to survive?
When she couldn’t stand to watch any longer, when the waiting felt like it would drive her mad, Wren collected all the pieces of Ghveris’s armor in a pile, on the sand off to one side of the waystone. She could never have lifted the metal plates and all the machinery inside if it had still been in one piece, but Ractia’s spell had torn the entire apparatus apart and sent the pieces flying into the darkness. So, she hauled it all, one section at a time, onto the beach in order to clear the waystone. A pauldron, followed by a gauntlet, and then the helm she’d looked at for so many years that she’d almost forgotten it wasn’t actually his face. There were no burning blue flames in the place of eyes, now: only metal and dead enchantments.
Three things, and three things alone, Wren kept on the waystone, and once she’d cleared the rest she sat down and took one of her enchanted knives out, placing Ghveris’s right gauntlet in her lap. The enchanted blade mounted to the underside of the vambrace was attached by a sort of metal bar, like the axle of a wagon, or perhaps a bolt, which pierced through a hole which had been bored right through one end of the blade, so that it could swing out for use, and then swing back for storage. Wren set about trying to remove the weapon, just in case Ghveris might want it when he woke up.
The assembly for the mana stone battery, which she’d ripped out of the broken torso, sat off to one side. Mana stone was too expensive to just throw away a piece that big, even with the mine beneath Bald Peak under Liv’s control. And she had saved the vambrace on the left arm, as well, which held the etched sigils forming a mana-shield enchantment. Sidonie, Wren recalled, had once spoken of copying that enchantment on the armor of the Alliance Army – but there was simply no way to equip hundreds of soldiers with charged mana stones to power such a thing.
Still, the memory was a good distraction while Wren worked, and for half a bell, perhaps, it kept her mind and her gaze off the fleshy-cocoon. If Ractia had told me what was going to happen, Wren complained silently, I would have found a better place to hide him. Taken him back to Bald Peak, where he’d be safe.
Wren could only think that she’d been caught up in the grip of a kind of mania, a near panic or desperation, when she’d dragged Ghveris down here to the beach in the middle of the night. She could already think of half a dozen ways that she could have handled the whole thing better, made less trouble for Liv and the others – but once she’d made the decision, she’d felt an overwhelming urge to follow through immediately, as if the slightest hesitation might give her room to change her mind.
She slipped the back edge of her blade into a gap between the steel of the vambrace, and the bolt, and began trying to work the stubborn thing loose. Dimly, Wren was aware that a crowd was beginning to gather around the waystone once again. She tried to ignore the muttering, and the feeling of eyes upon her, but it was difficult not to hunch her shoulders. Wren had the feeling that there were not a few people in the vicinity who would be happy to put a crossbow bolt in her back.
Chancellor Blackwood, holding Caspian Loredon’s staff in one hand, hurried back through the crowd, pushing his way to the front so that he could get up onto the waystone. He spared one glance for Wren, then turned around to address what very nearly had the feeling of a mob.
“Once again,” the Chancellor shouted, “for those of you who were not here earlier, the Coral Bay waystone has been temporarily closed. If you need to leave the city immediately, I recommend that you visit the docks, where there are several ships currently berthed with enough room to carry a few passengers. Alternatively, you can make your way northwest along the bay by road –”
“We could if we rusting well had horses,” a man wearing the rich doublet of a baron shouted, from the front rank of the crowd. He had two armed men to either side of him, each wearing jack-of-plate in colors that Wren couldn’t put a name to. She knew there were well over a hundred barons in Lucania, each with their own colors and heraldry, but she’d only ever bothered to learn those who’d come in on one side or the other of the war with Whitehill.
“I know that there are a small number of mounts for sale around the town,” Chancellor Blackwood said, clearly attempting to pacify the aristocrat. “We also maintain a few owned by the college, at our stable just up the bluff. I would be willing to offer those up for sale, to those in true need of immediate departure.”
“A half dozen horses and four or five cabins spread across a few merchant ships is hardly enough for everyone here,” a woman said, allowing her guards to clear a way through the crowd for her. “We came to this funeral by waystone, with the expectation that would be able to leave by waystone. Now I’m told that the foreign queen has barred passage in or out. On what authority? This is Lucania, not the north. What right does she have to trap us here?” The last, Wren saw, was uttered with her face and body turned to address the crowd, rather than Chancellor Blackwood, and a rumble of audible approval swelled forth.
Blackwood stepped off the waystone, grabbed a nearby mage by the arm, and leaned close to his ear. “Find the king. Bring him here.” The mage dashed away, kicking up sand beneath the heels of his boots.
The words were loud enough, pitched to be heard over the noise of the crowd, that Wren could hear them as well. Moving slowly and carefully, she set the too-well-secured enchanted blade aside, along with the arm it was attached to, and pulled the mana stone and the vambrace etched with a shielding enchantment over.
“Archmagia Livara holds the highest rank recognized by the Guild of Watchful Magim,” Blackwood shouted over the crowd. “She is an expert on waystones, having broken one in Ashford, and repaired another at Bald Peak. I tell you truthfully that I simply could not have sealed this stone in the way that she has. Out of respect for her expertise, if she tells me that this waystone must not be used right now, I take her words as fact.”
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“And what’s that thing there behind you?” A man in a butcher’s apron shouted, to the nods of those around him and a chorus of ‘ayes.’ “Looks like something I’d scrape off the floor of my shop and throw to the hogs. And then there’s that fire in the sky! No disrespect, your lordship, but what in the name of the Trinity is going on?”
Liv had taken nearly half the culling mages, Wren saw, and those who’d remained behind were the least experienced. They’d accepted her words and her commands, even those who’d been forced to remain behind, with a minimum of grumbling. Even now, half a dozen had drifted back up the beach from their encampment, roughly-dressed men and women making their way to stand behind Chancellor Blackwood.
But the common people of the town, and even most of the visiting nobles – those who hadn’t come down to the beach with their young king – hadn’t heard Liv speak. Some of them, like that surly looking butcher, might not have even been awake yet by the time Wren’s friends departed Coral Bay.
“I have sent for His Majesty, King Lucan,” Chancellor Blackwood shouted. “He will explain everything to you. In the meanwhile, I ask that everyone take three steps back away from the stone itself. There are a lot of people here, and I don’t want anyone to accidentally get hurt.”
“I think that master butcher had a good question,” the nobleman who’d spoken earlier called out. “What is that horror on the stone? Is that why it isn’t safe to use? Some sort of disease, or infection?”
“Burn it,” the butcher suggested, with a firm nod. “Cleanse the stone.”
Wren felt a knife of panic stab through her heart, and she knew in that moment that if any of these men or women – whether they might be a butcher, or an aristocrat – tried to set Ghveris on fire, she would kill them without hesitation.
“The Mages Guild has the stone under control,” Blackwood shouted. “When Archmagus Livara decrees it safe, use of the waystone will be permitted once again. Until that time, there is nothing to be accomplished here – unless you think you know better than those who’ve spent their entire lives studying magic.”
“Of course we do not,” King Lucan called, from the back of the crowd. Wren recognized his voice, and a moment later the ranks of people had parted enough for him to step forward and stand beside Chancellor Blackwood. “All of Lucania acknowledges the learning and wisdom of our Mages Guild. Did we not all gather here to pay our respects at the passing of my great-uncle?”
The cadence of the words was practiced, and the young man’s posture spoke of only confidence. His eyes swept over the crowd, meeting the gaze of one discontent after another, and holding them until they looked down. He’d clearly been taught oratory – But Lucan was still only eighteen years old, hardly a man grown. There was a very slight quaver that escaped his control, into a word here or there, which Wren might not have recognized if she had not spent years at Liv’s side while her friend grew into the position of monarch. And when confronted by a pack of wolves, showering even the slightest bit of fear marked a man as prey.
“Now,” Lucan continued. The royal guards at his back must have sensed weakness, as well, because they grasped the hilts of their swords in one hand, prepared to draw at the slightest provocation. “I’ve just come from meeting with a dozen local fishermen. Good men, all, and they’ve agreed to take on passengers, rather than haul in a catch today. We will get everyone home, that I assure you. It may take a little longer than any of us had planned, but no one will be stranded here at Coral Bay.”
The mood of the crowd shifted, growing quieter. Here was their king, after all, come to speak to them directly. The young man’s earnestness was obvious, and he was clearly working to help them. For a moment, Wren almost believed that it would be enough to head off a disaster.
“Your words do you credit, Your Majesty,” a powerful voice, a singer’s voice, broke out of the crowd. Men and women shuffled aside to make way for a dark-haired man of modest height. He had a kind face and a well-trimmed beard, and a body broad enough to show that he’d never missed a meal out of poverty or misfortune. The man wore the white robes of a priest of Arvatis, belted with a chain of silver.
“Surely all of Lucania is blessed that rule has passed to a young man of such great heart and potential,” the priest continued, and raised one hand to indicate the king. “A king to redeem the sins of the last generation, and bring a new beginning to our land. A beacon of virtue.”
“Thank you, Father Clement,” King Lucan said, with a broad smile. “I shall try to live up to such praise. Now, my people, you’ve heard not only Chancellor Blackwood, but myself as well, and even the priest of Coral Bay’s temple. Believe us that there is nothing to fear here, and return to your homes, your places of business, or your lodgings."
“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” Clement said. “But I was not finished speaking.”
Lucan hesitated, then, when he should have taken control. Wren could feel it so viscerally that she might as well have been watching the young man lose his grip on a promontory of stone, and fall from the face of a cliff. But there was no way for her to catch him.
“It is natural to put our trust and our faith in the Order of Watchful Magim, and in the Crown, within each of their respective spheres of influence,” Clement said, his voice booming masterfully. “No doubt Chancellor Blackwood speaks true about the waystone, and no doubt our King will bend his every device toward helping all those who have been stranded here in Coral Bay, through no fault of their own. But when we are faced with corruption, with wickedness, with filth, it is to the Lord of Purity we must turn. For some things are beyond the learning of mages, and above the word of kings. That,” the priest declared, pointing directly at the cocoon of flesh, blood and bone, “is a thing of the old gods. It is a foul sorcery, no doubt the work of the Lady of Blood. Another black miracle, like that day so many of us remember more than twenty years passed, when her servants stalked all of our lands, killing. And like any other of her dark works, it must be cleansed.”
“That is enough!” Chancellor Blackwood shouted, raising his staff. “This crowd will disperse, now! You have been commanded by your king! This matter is under the control of the Mages Guild, and you will not interfere!”
“Heed the scriptures of Arvatis, Lord of the Dawn!” Father Clement said, turning to the crowd and speaking over the old mage. “Where flesh has grown foul and putrid, what must we do for healing to begin?”
“Cut it out!” a woman shouted from the crowd.
“And does the body grow hale from eating meat that has begun to rot, or milk that has soured and curdled?”
“No!” Half a dozen voices called back.
Lucan looked to Blackwood, as if waiting for the mage to intervene. Wren doubted that the boy had ever been put before a crowd which wasn’t already come to cheer at the very sight of him. He had the training, and with a bit more experience and confidence, he might have fought back with his own words, might have turned things about. But Father Clement had clearly been preaching to his flock from the altar at the temple for years, and he knew exactly what he was about.
“And when we see corruption, there is nothing to do but to burn it out!” Clement shouted, his face flushing red with passion. “This is what is pleasing to Arvatis! To cleanse, to wash away, to make clean all that is foul in the world! In the name of the Trinity – I ask you to protect yourselves! To protect your city! To protect your children!”
The crowd surged forward like a breaking wave, all at once. One of the royal guards caught young King Lucan by the shoulder and yanked him backward, so that he was behind them, while the rest all drew their swords. The mages behind Chancellor Blackwood had their wands in hand, but it was the old man himself who raised his staff and shouted an incantation. A translucent bubble of blue mana, shot through with threads of gold, snapped into existence around the entire group who were clustered around the cocoon, surrounding them on all sides, halting only where the curved edge met the white rock of the dormant waystone.
Bodies slammed into the mana shield, hands and fists raised to pound against the barrier, mouths open to shout and rage, eyes wide with violence. They pressed in upon all sides, moving to surround the sphere of coherent mana when they could not find a way through it.
Wren, for her part, backed up against the cocoon, an enchanted knife in each hand, ready to fight. “They can’t have him,” she shouted, the words out before she even knew that her mouth was moving.
Blackwood rounded on her. “How long?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” Wren admitted, shaking her head. “As long as it takes.”
“Then you’d better hope that spell is measured in hours, not days or weeks,” Blackwood exclaimed. “Because I cannot hold these people back forever. And when my shield comes down, it’s going to be all we can do to keep ourselves safe from the mob.”