brimming with good health. “There might still be a few spells I don’t know.”
She leaned her head against the door of the wardrobe. “You’ll have to kill me,” Khallayne said quietly. Then with growing vehemence, she added, 'I'll die before I’ll ever teach you another thing!”
He shrugged as if it didn’t matter.
And it didn’t. What miserly, little spells could Khallayne teach him when he already knew how to torture someone to death without leaving a single mark on the body? When she glanced at Kaede, standing in the light pouring through the window, her fingers moving lazily over the crystals from Jyr-bian’s collection, she suddenly knew there was one spell to teach. And she knew, even before Kaede gasped, that he would kill her, if necessary, trying to wrest the secret from her.
At that moment, Kaede snatched up the crystal, her mouth open wide in disbelief, holding it up to the light. The clear, round ball was filled with a curling ribbon of smoke. Sunlight streamed through the crystal, creating a dancing rainbow of light.
‘The History!” Kaede gasped, holding it close to her ear. “The History. Jyrbian, how did you get it?”
Jyrbian was as perplexed as Khallayne was horrified.
“What are you talking about?” He held out his hand, but she refused to give him the crystal. He* wrested it from her hand, repeating his question.
“It’s the History. The Song of the Keeper! It’s in there. How did you get it?”
“Are you sure?” He held the sphere up to his ear, then up to the light. “That’s ridiculous! How could that be?”
“I can hear it! Give it to me. It’s mine! Someone stole it from the Keeper. She wasn’t sick. She was murdered!”
He held it higher, out of her reach, pushed away her grasping hands. Before Kaede could stop him, he’d strode to Khallayne, thrust it into her hand.
Round and smooth and cool. Khallayne’s fingers closed around the sphere. She recognized the tingle of life. She carried it, cradled, to the fire and held it up.
“You did this,” Jyrbian said with absolute certainty. “Lyrralt said something the day the Keeper took sick, something cryptic, about singing for his fortune, the same day he was so angry with you. But he alone never had the knowledge to do this, so you must have helped him. How?”
Yes, the Song was still in there. She could feel it, the way Kaede could hear it. “No. I didn’t do it.” She lied. Khallayne handed the crystal back to him. “I don’t feel anything but a piece of glass.”
Jyrbian regarded her for a moment. “Try to remember,” he said sweetly. “Perhaps it’ll come back to you. Before I have to jog your memory, the way I had to jog… someone else’s.” He thrust the crystal back into her hands.
Kaede cried out in protest. “It’s mine! You can’t-”
One glance from Jyrbian silenced her, and she followed him from the room with murderous eyes.
Khallayne carried the sphere to the bed. Propped up on pillows, buried in warm quilts, she placed the crystal in her lap and stared at it, trying to remember the night it all happened, trying to remember the spell and how it had felt and the way it had all worked together.
Then, when she thought she remembered the rib-bony darkness and the flow of the Song from the Old One’s lips, she reached out with her power. In her mind, she tapped the crystal ball.
And the sphere opened. The Song flowed out, around and about her hands, through her fingers, a music beyond description, so bittersweet that tears clouded her vision, a song about a world that would soon vanish forever. A beautiful, glittering world like an apple with a worm of decay in it.
She was lost in the Song, unable to follow the music, when she heard cheers, the uproar of something in the courtyard below. She leapt to her feet and ran to the window.
In the courtyard below, she could see a crowd of troops, all milling about, shouting, crying out greetings and congratulations. She thought she saw Jyrbian, resplendent in dress uniform, marching through the crowd of men and horses. Then she saw the reason for all the noise.
The crowd of troops surrounded a group of prisoners, chained together around a wagon on which a lone prisoner stood, chained and tied: Eadamm, the human leader for whom Jyrbian had been searching like a madman.
Jyrbian forgot everything-the History, Kaede’s angry entreaties, and the tantalizing spell Khallayne would surrender to him, sooner or later.
Hundreds of humans, old and young, had descended into Jyrbian’s dungeons and not returned. They had died, screaming and begging for mercy, or so far gone into insanity that they could not even cry out. As he had destroyed each of them, it had been Eadamm’s likeness he saw on their savage human faces, Eadamm he wished he were killing.
Now he would have that pleasure.
Jyrbian strode through the throng of Ogres and humans who had crowded into the courtyard, pushing them out of his way. He climbed up onto the wagon and faced the human he hated above all else. “What a pity you can die only once,” he told the man, disappointed when the slave maintained his composure.
He searched the crowd for the captain of the troop that had brought the human in, motioning the man forward. “Where did you find him? Was he guarding Igraine’s people, as I thought?”
“No, Lord. As far as I know, the others have not been found. He was captured near Persopholus. We think he was directing the siege of the city.”
“And the battle?”
“We won, Sire.” The captain pulled himself up proudly. “The humans were slaughtered.”
Jyrbian grinned with pleasure and leaned down to clap the Ogre on the shoulder. “And did you find anything valuable on him?” He jerked his head in the direction of Eadamm.
“Yes, Sire, just as you said. My warriors brought it to me.” The captain reached into his tunic and drew out a pile of silver chain attached to a charm, wrapped in silver wire.
From his tunic Jyrbian pulled out another charm just like it. The bloodstone he’d taken from Everlyn’s neck. He held them both up wordlessly for the slave to see.
Eadamm lunged at him, his lips pulled back, teeth exposed like a feral animal. The chains wrapped around his body held as Eadamm strained against them uselessly.
A beatific smile on his face, Jyrbian climbed down from the wagon. He found Kaede in his bedroom. She was barely dressed, her hair long and loose, her perfume heavy and heady, seductive.
“You’ve heard?”
She nodded, proffering a glass of wine. “His death must be spectacular. It must be an example to others.”
A slow, candied smile creased his lips. His mind was already beginning to ferment with ideas, with images. His smile grew wider, eyes wandering over her body. He took a step toward her, saw her answering smile and the heat in her eyes…
Khallayne barely heard the noise of the crowd as she mounted her horse and followed the others out through the courtyard and into the city. The sun was bright on the cobblestones and glinted on the gray stone walls.
She rode behind Jyrbian, fear in her throat. “Only a parade,” he had said, smiling a smile as guileless as a child. “In honor of the capture of the humans. You really shouldn’t miss it.” She had played along, eager to get out of the castle, hopeful of a chance to escape.
Now they traveled slowly, regally, down the curving switchbacks that led into the city streets, and along the wide avenues toward the coliseum. All along the route, Ogres lined the streets, waiting for the entertainment, drinking, buying food from vendors who worked the crowd. Khallayne felt a terrible foreboding about the event for which the whole city had turned out.
The streets outside the coliseum were lined with platforms, viewing stands draped with satin in the colors of all the powerful clans. Jyrbian’s was nearest the center, in the shade of the looming coliseum. Only the Ruling Council’s was better positioned.
