Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [112]
“What will it do to him?” Arcolin asked.
“Possibly nothing. Possibly—” She stopped, mouth open. Arcolin felt his skin crawl. Stammel had gone rigid; his hand trembled; his fingers twitched toward and then away from the jewel on his palm. Sweat burst from his forehead, ran down his face.
“Not—again—you—bastard!” Stammel said. “Take it, Captain—take it away!”
Arcolin snatched the jewel from his hand and gave it to Dorrin, but Stammel’s taut expression did not ease.
“It’s—he’s—” His body jerked; he tumbled from the chair to the floor.
Dorrin came alight; Arcolin recoiled into his chair, nearly overturning it. Her radiance filled the room, golden as afternoon sunlight, and she had drawn her sword before he could say a word.
“Get OUT!” she said. Oddly, her voice was calm. “Verrakai karakkin tsam! Tsam!”
Stammel, red-faced and sweating, crouched on the floor, his eyes and mouth tight-shut, muscles straining. Dorrin put the sword to his throat, lifted his chin. “Verrakai!! Tsam! Forzam!”
Another light bloomed, this one crackling and spitting like witch-fire, a greener yellow than hers.
“No, you will not,” she said. “I have the full magery; you are a shadow. Begone.” And then more of the words Arcolin did not know.
A throat-tearing shriek from Stammel, and out his mouth came a gobbet of dark blood and a spurt of the green-yellow light. Then the light failed, and he collapsed on the floor. Dorrin’s light slowly faded; Arcolin scrambled forward. “Dammit, Dorrin, what did you do? It’s Stammel, not some monster.”
“It’s Stammel now,” Dorrin said. She knelt beside him, laid her hand on Stammel’s forehead. “It’s gone. He’s safe now. Falk’s blade, he was strong, to have survived the attack at all.”
“He’s damn near dead now.” Stammel breathed, but in rapid grunts; Arcolin glared at her. “If he’d died …”
“Jandelir, there was no time. It knew me; it knew where it was; it knew how to access the patterns of power in this house. If you had seen what I have—children inhabited by ancient mages, men tortured beyond endurance to provide the blood power—bones—this is better for him, I swear to you. He is safe; it is gone forever.”
Stammel’s breathing eased. Arcolin sat back. Dorrin looked tired and worn, much like the comrade he had known so many years and yet not like. “You are different, too,” he said.
“Yes. As I wrote, the Knight-Commander released the magery that had long been bound, and there was … more than any of us anticipated. Yet I am the same, in the eyes of those renegades of my family we have not yet captured: I refuse the blood magery. I am true to Falk. And a loyal vassal of King Mikeli, as I hope you will be.”
Arcolin had forgotten, for the time, about the coming ceremony. He took a long breath, watching Stammel’s breathing, his color. He looked now like someone who might wake soon. “I have to find a tailor,” he said. “Someone who knows about court dress.”
“Ah, that,” Dorrin said. She grinned. “Kieri sent you a present—or rather, he had it sent for you. His court robes. He had his ducal robe with him, of course, but the others were stored in the north, and shipped down here for you. The king’s messenger will tell you which to bring. It will not take much to make his other court clothes fit you: you’re much of a height, and not that different in build. And you said you had something for me to take to him?”
That jogged his memory. “Cal Halveric’s sword,” he said. “We recovered it, found it with other blades being transported illegally. I had it blessed by a Captain of Falk. The scabbard was lost; the Captain had a new one made, to make it easier to carry.”
Stammel opened his eyes. “Where am I this time? And when?”
“It has not even been a half-glass,” Arcolin said. “You’re with me, and you’re in Dorrin Verrakai’s house in Vérella.”
“I need to get up,” Stammel said. Arcolin stood and took his hand. “I thought it was the burning again.”
“It almost was,” Dorrin said. “But my relatives, even the worst, are obedient to one they believe has the right to rule them. Unfortunately, that’s not