CHAPTER THREE
Damn the Fey! Damn Dorian and that Fey-lover Barrial!
Grief and rage writhed like snakes in Great Lord Dervas Sebourne’s chest. He paced the confines of his study in Dunbarrow on unsteady feet.
Small waves of sea-green Sorrelian quist—a highly intoxicating liquor distilled from a fermented blend of sweet sea grapes and deadly moonshade—sloshed over the rim of the crystal tumbler clenched in one fist.
Dervas lifted his glass and tossed back its contents in a single gulp, barely feeling the fiery burn as the potent liquor slid down his throat.
This wasn’t his first glass of quist tonight, and it wouldn’t be his last. When a man lost his only son and saw the end of his Great House looming on the horizon, his soul craved a stronger balm than pinalle.
Dervas harbored no illusions about his future.
King Dorian would not leave unpunished the Great Lord who had spat defiance and insult, then taken his men and ridden away from the coming battle with Eld.
Sebourne had broken with the king, and Great House Sebourne would soon sink into disfavor and, ultimately, into obscurity.
And with it would go the power he’d meant to pass on to his son.
His only son.
His dead son. The son who’d been murdered, his body so completely destroyed there wasn’t even a corpse over which Dervas could mourn, as a father should. Nothing. Just emptiness where a life had been.
All because of the Fey—and that weak, spineless puppet of a king who sat on the throne of Celieria while the Fading Lands pulled his strings.
Damn them! Damn them all! He hoped the Eld slaughtered them and left their corpses for thistlewolves and lyrant to feast upon.
Renewed fury seized him, amplified by intoxication.
Dervas shot to his feet and hurled his glass of quist into the hearth.
Crystal exploded. Flames leapt with a roar as the potent liquor ignited.
The blast of heat and the sudden change in attitude left him overwarm and swaying on his feet, so he stumbled to the window that looked out over Dunbarrow’s western fortifications and threw open the sash. Cold winter air flooded in. He thrust his head out the window and took a deep breath.
The moons overhead were both three-quarters full, the Mother waning, the Daughter waxing. This week, the brightest nights in the last three months signaled the last hurrah of Light before both moons went new two weeks hence.
Something about that was important. He frowned and rubbed his temple as a band of pain tightened around his skull.
With a groan, he pressed the heels of his palms against his bloodshot eyes and staggered away from the window, only to freeze when he saw a dark shape move in the corner of the room.
Suddenly, the air in Dervas’s lungs grew short.
Each breath became a labored gasp, and his heart beat a rapid tattoo.
Shadow flickered at the edges of his vision, and a strange, sickly sweet smell filled his nose.
For an instant, he wasn’t standing in his study in Dunbarrow, he was back in Old Castle Prison in Celieria City, watching in mute horror as a figure wreathed in icy shadow stepped towards him.
The image of Old Castle faded, but the shadowy figure remained. It stepped into the light. Blue robes gleamed richly in the candlelight, and dark jewels glittered on a silken sash that hung from the intruder’s waist.
Dervas reached for his sword, but his waist was bare, his weapons belt lying useless in his bedchamber. “Who are you?” he demanded. “What are you doing here? What do you want? “
Gloved hands pushed back the robe’s deep cowl, revealing a ghostly-white face and eyes like the blackest pits of the seventh Hell.
“Nerom, umagi,” the creature uttered. “Remember.”
Dervas squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, but invisible floodgates flung open in his mind, pouring out decades of suppressed memories in a wild deluge.
The shadowy figure who’d come to visit him in Old Castle assumed a face—Lord Bolor, a newly invested minor lord who’d recently come to court.
Only Lord Bolor wasn’t a Celierian at all.
He was an Elden Mage masquerading as a Lord to gain access and influence over the Celierian court.
And he’d come to command Dervas, on behalf of the High Mage of Eld, just as other Mages had come to command Dervas in the past.
Just as Mages had commanded every Great Lord Sebourne before him—ever since the minor lord Deridos Sebourne, vassal of the Great House Wellsley, had traded his soul in exchange for power and wealth three hundred years ago.
In return for Deridos’s soul, the Mages had engineered and released the Great Plague that had wiped out the Wellsley family, along with half the inhabitants of northern Celieria.
When, in the resulting fear and chaos, Deridos not only successfully defended Moreland from an Eld attack but also “discovered” the cure for the Great Plague, a grateful King Dorian VI had raised House Sebourne to Greatness and granted to it the vital border estates previously entailed to Great House Wellsley.
The Eld had been using Sebourne land as their Celierian base ever since.
Over time, every inhabitant of Sebourne land, from infant to elder, peasant to Great Lord, had been bound to the Mages of Eld.
Dervas had surrendered his own infant son to the Mages when they came calling, as had every Great Lord since Deridos.
Those who married into Great House Sebourne surrendered their souls as well—some willingly, others less so.
Dervas shuddered as his Mage induced “memory” of his wife dying in childbirth along with their second son was replaced with a clear vision of his wife weeping, arms clasped protectively around the small mound of their unborn child, as she stood on the battlements of Moreland Castle.
The day was Colum’s first birthday, and the Mages had come to claim him and his mother, Great Lady Sebourne.
“You call yourself a Great Lord?” she cried.
“You’re nothing but a slave to an evil master.
Worse, you’ve damned our son to the same enslavement!
Well, at least this child will be free! And so will I!
” And with that, she leapt to her death rather than accept a Mage Mark for herself or her second child.
Now, standing here, stunned into sobriety by those memories, he realized she’d been right. He wasn’t a Great Lord. He wasn’t any sort of lord at all. He was a slave. A witless, unsuspecting puppet of the Mages.
Oh gods.
The Primage smiled. “Oh god,” he corrected in lightly accented Celierian.
“Seledorn, to be precise, the mighty Dark Lord, God of Shadows. And, yes, I hear your thoughts. There is no part of your mind I cannot enter. No thought or action I cannot control. I am the Mage who claimed you, and all that you are is mine.”
Sebourne’s stomach clenched in a tight knot, and the blood rushed from his face. With a choked cry, he spun to one side and retched into the waste bin by his desk until nothing remained in his belly but bitter gall.
“Clean yourself up, umagi, and come kneel before me.”
Dervas didn’t give his body the command, but his hands wiped a cloth across his face and his feet began walking.
He tried to fight it, tried to make himself stop, but it was as if he were merely an observer trapped in some other person’s form.
He circled the desk and crossed the room, then dropped to his knees before the Mage.
“You see?” The Primage shook his head. “Still you wish to rebel. You always do.” He sighed. “Very well. Go to the hearth—no, on your hands and knees. You are my dog, umagi, and I am your master.”
Weeping, but unable to refuse, Dervas crawled.
“Your right hand offends me,” the Mage said when he reached the stone hearth. “Put it in the fire.”
“No, please!” But his hand was already reaching for the flames. “Please!” Then, because now he remembered all the times before, the prices he’d paid for his attempted but never-successful rebellions over the years, he cried, “Please, master! Please, master, forgive your worthless umagi.”
His hand stopped moving towards the fire, but he was still close enough he could feel the heat licking at his skin. Unless the Mage released him, his hand would slow roast. And the Mage would make sure Dervas felt every torturous moment.
“Will you serve me, umagi, of your own volition, or must I force your obedience as I am doing now?”
“I will serve! Please, I will serve!”
“Then speak your vow, Dervas, son of Gunvar, and speak it with conviction.”
Dervas closed his eyes and spoke the mantra of surrender and obedience he’d been taught so long ago. “This umagi serves you willingly, master. Whatever your command, he obeys without hesitation. This life and this body are yours to use or destroy.”
“You may rise.”
Dervas dragged in a sobbing breath of relief and rose on shaking legs. “What is it you require of this umagi, master?”
The Primage smiled. “It is time for you to fulfill your purpose.”
Celieria ~ Kreppes
27th day of Verados
The hooves of a thousand horses thundered in the night. An army of men, outfitted for war, rode across the fields and woods of northern Celieria, Great Lord Dervas Sebourne at the lead. The army moved swiftly, covering the miles between Dunbarrow and Kreppes without stopping.
You will ride to Kreppes with your army.
You will beg an audience with the king and throw yourself on his mercy, pleading with him to forgive your anger on the day your son died.
Grief and your distrust of the Fey drove you mad, you will say.
Remind him of his own son and how he would feel should Prince Dorian perish.
But you have had time for that first rage to pass. You are a Celierian, and loyal to your king. You request the honor of fighting by his side. Above all, you beg to be near because you do not trust the Fey.