“Try,” Cesla said, releasing me.
My hand stopped as it touched the hilt, powerless.
“What have you done to me?”
“Night has fallen on you in the Darkwater, Boclar,” he said. “And you are here at the center of my power. Now I have a disciple and more. You will be the instrument of my release.” He put his hands on my head in a parody of blessing. “Sleep now, my blessed one.”
Chapter 54
The stream of Boclar’s memories skipped to a vision of leaving the forest at dawn, the thread changing color from the black of despair to a bright green of hope without transition. Beneath the stream lay a vault, a scroll of deepest night. I drew closer to examine it, searching for some clue of what the writing meant.
A thread of black, thick and sluggish, snaked away from the scroll, suspended in the depths of Boclar’s mind—then it came for me.
I jerked, breaking contact, and my eyes found the king’s as I struggled to breathe. Shaking, I put my hand on the sleeve of his arm, my skin no longer touching his, but ready. It would take me no more than an instant, the barest touch, to break Boclar’s vault and destroy his mind, but my training as a priest had given me the conviction that a man should be allowed to confess before he died.
“You brought Cesla’s plague back with you from the forest, Your Majesty.” I waited for him to speak. Even kings were granted the rite of confession.
He nodded. “The morning I came out of the forest I dared to hope that I might have escaped its evil. I was alive and by the grace of Aer so was Erendella. I regained the safety of our lines and men. Even after night fell, nothing untoward happened. I didn’t rave. No madness descended upon me. I slept like any other man, exhausted from my ordeal.”
“But the second evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, I gathered my captains, declared that my journey into the forest and my escape had revealed the enemy’s weakness.” Boclar looked at me and shouldered the burden of his guilt. “I told them I’d seen a talisman in the forest, large beyond comprehension, that must be destroyed at all costs.”
My heart stopped, and I gaped. “Aer in heaven,” I whispered. “What have you done?”
“You don’t know?” Boclar demanded. “Is your gift nothing more than pretense?”
“I saw you in the forest with Cesla. I released the gift because there’s a vault in your mind,” I rasped. “My last memory is you leaving the forest at dawn because the evil in your mind sensed my presence and came for me, Your Majesty!”
He flinched and his guards advanced.
“Stop,” I said. Of a wonder they obeyed me. “Tell me what you’ve done,” I repeated. “I will make no attempt to cure you until you do.”
His eyes held threats, but with a sigh he relented. “Seemingly in my own mind I ordered my men to return to the forest with me. We stopped at the nearest village, and they equipped themselves with the ironmongers art to return and destroy Cesla’s talisman.”
“It’s no talisman, King—it’s a prison.”
Boclar shot me a withering glance. “I surmised as much.” He turned to his daughter. “Something in my manner must have alerted Erendella. When night fell at the next city on our journey south, I began to repeat those same orders, only this time I commanded the aid of every alchemist in Vadras. Erendella, suspicious, lit a brazier of solas powder.” He licked his lips. “I felt it, Lord Dura, the evil you saw. I felt it withdraw, sensed its frustration.”
“You’ve kept your vault from opening ever since by lighting your nights with solas powder,” I said. “What of the men you sent to the forest?”
Boclar shook his head. “By the time I realized what I had done, they’d passed through our lines.”
“If they open the prison, Your Majesty, the world is theirs.”
Boclar nodded. “We have time yet. The prison is vast and the tools from the village were crude.” He pushed himself back in his chair. “Now, Lord Dura, you know everything. You will cure me of this vault. I am out of solas powder.”
Powder or not, I had no wish to have the king’s death on my hands. “Your Majesty, I—”
“Now, Lord Dura.”
The guards closed in. “Very well, Your Majesty. Take your daughter’s hand. I will perform the same healing on you as I did on Regent Cailin.”
Boclar gave a satisfied nod. “Proceed, Lord Dura.”
I took Boclar’s hand in mine.
The river of memories lay before me once more, comprising all the loves and losses of the king, but the threads were no more brightly colored than they would be for a common laborer. I dove beneath the flowing stream to the vault beneath them. Wary. The evil had become aware of me.
The lure of the king’s memories dropped away. I turned, warned by some instinct. A thread came out of the dark for me, but it oozed, sluggish. I retreated to the far side of the black scroll that had birthed it and watched as it tried to reverse direction. Another thread lifted from the scroll like a worm freeing itself from the soil and came toward me, writhing as it followed my scent. I swallowed my revulsion and tried to think.
I moved through Boclar’s mind, edging toward the vault. I caught sight of the myriad threads that sprung from it, linking the vault to every part of his mind. Experimentally, I slashed at one with my gift, hoping.
But the memory attached to it flared and died, taking a small portion of the king’s mind with it. I wanted to rage at Boclar, but he wasn’t there. In his ignorance he’d asked for something beyond my ability. Only the Fayit, through the grace of Aer’s power, had kept my vault from destroying me. Only his intervention had kept
