“What Ivar Devorast created, and what he subsequently destroyed,” Pristoleph went on, “was a work that could only be imagined by one man. He destroyed it because you proved yourselves unworthy of it. You proved Innarlith unworthy of it. You are servants. You are slaves.”
“That’s an outrage!” Meykhati shouted. “An outrage!”
Wenefir’s knees quivered, and his breath came in shallow gasps. The huge chamber seemed to press in on him from all sides, stifling, suffocating. The priest turned and almost fell. His head spun and his mouth went dry.
“Be silent, fool,” Pristoleph said. “You’ll get what you want. You’ll be ransar. And you’ll stay ransar only long enough for the Thayana man we should have killed the moment he stepped on Innarlan soilto choose your successor. Be the lead sheep, if you like. The herd will be happy with you until they’re told not to be.”
“Get out!” Meykhati shrieked. “Get out of here before I have you arrested. Get out of here before I kill you myself!”
Wenefir glanced back to see Pristoleph and Meykhati seem to teeter for the blink of an eye, then move toward each other as one. Candles flared into great plumes of white-hot flame and one of the chandeliers that hung from the high ceiling began to quiver. The senators stood, and someone shouted, but Wenefir ignored it all, brushing aside a page who was fleeing the room.
Wenefir burst into the outer chamber and ran. His legs burned and he breathed in gasps. He would be blamed. He would be blamed for all of it. Pristoleph had destroyed himself when he defied the order, the arrangement, and he’d taken Wenefir with him.
The priest burst through the doors, startling the pair of black firedrakes that stood guard. They almost stopped him, but stepped aside when they recognized the priest. Outside, there was a short colonnade. Rain fell and mixed with the sweat that had soaked into his robe. He stepped aside to avoid someone who was just as startled as he, and he slipped. Mud splattered, he stood and started to run again, losing his way and ending up in the gardens that surrounded the imposing edifice of the Chamber of Law and Civility.
“Wenefir,” a voice boomed amid the patter of rain. The sound of it stopped the priest cold.
“Marek” Wenefir gasped. “Pristoleph”
“Come here, Wenefir,” Marek Rymiit said, beckoning him to a narrow path that led into a copse of trees. “It will be all right. Pristoleph’s fate is sealed.”
Wenefir followed the wizard because he wasn’t sure what else to do.
“He lied,” Wenefir mumbled. “It’s degenerated into a brawl.”
“I know,” said the Thayan.
“What do we do?”
“We?” the Red Wizard asked.
“Yes, I-“
Wenefir might have finished that thought had a bolt of lightning not crashed down from the roiling gray clouds to hold him for an agonizing moment in its death grip.
He fell to the ground afire, smelling his own flesh burning, choking on the smoke and heat that blistered his lungs.
“We shall do nothing, priest,” Marek said, his voice almost lost to Wenefir amid the crackling of flames.
Marek Rymiit laughed while Wenefir burned to death.
70
10 Kythorn, the Yearof Lightning Storms (1374 DR) The Canal Site
There was just enough left of Willem Korvan’s mind to make his undead body quiver at the sight of Ivar Devorast.
The man that had been his friend, became his enemy, then ended as his prey, stood straight and tall against the driving rain. A piercing blast of lightning split the sky and illuminated the devastated remains of the canal. Devorast stood in silhouette against the jumble of broken stone and shattered wood. Willem opened his mouth, ignoring the rain that pelted his face. He shivered, but not because the rain was cold. His body moved in response to fell magica curse, reallythat had saturated his desiccated form with the semblance of life. Sometimes that magic tipped out of balance and he shook. Sometimes his mouth fell open. Sometimes he gurgled. Sometimes he lost control of his eyes. And sometimes he screamed.
The loud rumble of thunder masked the scream at first, but when the thunder echoed away, the hoarse cry remained.
Devorast spun, blinking his wet hair from his eyes, and Willem leaped.
He’d crawled up on Devorast from behind and was poised on all fours on a tilted block of stone that seemed to have been tossed up by the hand of some enormous giant from where it had once served as part of the canal’s wall. The stone was at once rough and slick. Willem ignoreddidn’t even register, reallythe pain of scraping several layers of skin from his knee, hip, and palms when he leaped. The skin, all of it, was dead anyway.
Devorast grunted, not in panic or fear, but from simple exertion, as he jumped to the side to avoid Willem. The undead creature didn’t try to turn in the air. He didn’t have that degree of control over his own body, and in the primal part of his mind that Marek Rymiit had made most dominant, Willem knew he didn’t have to.
They were alone. No living soul within miles would hear Devorast’s last wordsif Willem allowed him any. No one was there to help. No one would stand in Willem’s way at the last moment. And any ability to change his mind, to decide for himself simply not to kill the man who once shared his roof and his dreams, had been drained from Willem Korvan once and for all.
“Who are you?” Devorast shouted into the pounding rain.
Willem fetched up on the muddy ground in a crouch and grimaced at his prey. Another of his teeth fell out to clatter against his tongue, which sat in his lower jaw like a stone. Devorast’s eyes narrowed and he stepped back.
“What are?” he started, but then shook his head. “Willem?”
Willem lunged, his hands out in front of him. He meant to grab Devorast by his filthy red hair and drag him down to the mud. He meant to rip the man’s head off. He wanted to taste Devorast’s blood, to gouge out his eyes, to rip his spleen from his still-warm guts.
But something stopped him in mid-air with the force of a battering ram. He’d only barely registered a glow in the air like some sort of phosphorescent mist.
If he’d had any air in his lungs it would have been driven from him by the impact of his chest, but instead he simply flew backward through the air, whirling in the driving rain. He hit the ground in a rolling confusion of limbs and scattered stones, but was quickly back on his feet.
He screeched a hollow, atonal battle-cry across the dark distance between him and Devorast, but the human didn’t stand and fight. Instead, he turned and jumped. It was a jump no human should have been capable ofboth too high and too far. He landed with uncertain footing on a tall pile of broken stone blocks, and turned to look back at Willem.
Willem began to close the distance between them in whatever rough approximation of running he was capable of. His feet slipped in the mud and he staggered and grunted. Devorast stood high on the mound, watching him.
“Willem, is that you?” the human shouted over the rumble of thunder and the drumming of the rain. “Willem? What’s happened to you? What have you become?”
“What do you care?” Willem coughed out, then repeated it in a feral, shrieking wail. He hadn’t willed himself to speak, and when he tried again his brain wouldn’t send words to his mouth. He lumbered toward Devorast, toward the man he was created to kill.
“Willem,” Devorast called. “Do you understand me?”
But Willem Korvan staggered on, his mouth open, his eyes rolling in his skull. The cold and the pain and every hideous sensation that came from his withering, deteriorating, rotting body tore through him. But instead of stopping him or slowing him even, it was the pain and the misery that drove him on.
