The Fanged Crown

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

4 Flamerule, the Year of the Ageless One

(1479 DR)

Kinnard Keep, Tethyr

Hello, Ysabel,” Tresco said as he stepped through the door and into the warm air of the atrium. The glass atrium was on the western side of Kinnard Keep, and Ysabel insisted that the gardeners keep flowers blooming all year round, especially in the cold winter months when the outside gardens were barren and lifeless.

Surrounded by jade plants and hanging baskets, Ysabel sat at a stone table near an ornamental tree blooming with crimson flowers. She wore a light blue dress with white embroidery down the sides, and her hair was pulled back in a loose braid. The leather-bound book on the marble tabletop looked vaguely familiar-probably one from Tresco’s library-but she wasn’t reading when he opened the door. Instead, she’d been staring out at the windswept heath through the condensation on the glass panes.

“Good day, Uncle,” she said politely, her hands resting demurely in her lap. “Are you back from your business so soon?”

“Yes.” Tresco set a leather case on the table in front of her. “I returned yesterday afternoon, but the servants said you had already retired to your quarters, and I didn’t care to trouble you.”

“Is Master Cardew with you?” she asked, glancing at the case and then up at Tresco.

“He is not,” Tresco answered. “Am I to understand that the two of you quarreled?”

“It was merely a trifle, Uncle,” she replied. “Please sit and tell me about your journey.”

“Why do you sit in the atrium? You know it’s the least protected room in the castle. And where are your guards?”

“They are merely out of sight,” Ysabel replied obliquely.

“That is not acceptable,” Tresco fumed. “They have orders to guard you at all times …”

“Won’t you sit?” Ysabel said sharply.

“I do not wish to,” Tresco said irritably. That wasn’t true at all. He had planned on having a leisurely lunch with the girl. It was so unlike Ysabel to be anything but compliant.

“Then leave, Uncle.” She looked away from him and opened the leather cover of her book.

“I’ll remind you that this is my house, and you are my ward,” Tresco said in a firm tone.

For a moment, Ysabel sat frozen and stared down at her hands. But when she looked up at Tresco, there was a placid look on her pretty features. Tresco felt his frustration ease. That was the expression he was accustomed to seeing on Ysabel’s face. Now, they could enjoy a pleasant afternoon. “My apologies, Uncle. My thoughts weigh heavily on my mind.”

“What is wrong?” Tresco asked, pulling out one of the wrought-iron chairs. It scratched across the paving stones with an irritating metallic sound. “Are you upset with Cardew?”

“When I last spoke to him, he told me that you two were going to secure an object of great importance.”

“Did he?” Tresco’s anger reappeared instantly. Declan Cardew had to be one of the dimmest people he’d ever had the misfortune of working with, including the ogres at the Vankila Slab. “Well, Declan shouldn’t have troubled you with such nonsense. It’s none of your concern.”

“Are you angry with him?” Ysabel asked.

Tresco sighed. “Cardew is useful, but not necessarily the brightest man in the realm.”

“Useful how?” Ysabel prompted.

“Like a gilded sign above a merchant’s door,” Tresco replied. He enjoyed his quip although he didn’t expect his ward to understand his private jest. But Ysabel looked at him without confusion.

“A merchant who sells flour sacks filled with sawdust,” she replied.

“What did you say?” Tresco asked in surprise.

Ysabel gave him an accommodating smile. “I have begun to doubt … the quality of Cardew’s character.”

“That’s interesting,” Tresco said, with a sense of relief that her comment had been about Cardew and nothing more substantial. “I have as well.”

“Do you still want me to marry him?”

Tresco pushed back his chair back from the table and paced up and down the flagstone path. Ysabel watched him patiently. It was too warm in the atrium, and there was an unpleasant scent of acrid earth and overripe fruit in the air, but neither guardian nor ward seemed to notice.

“Unfortunately, my plans have changed,” Tresco said finally. “I don’t think he is the right match for you after all.”

“What a surprise.” Ysabel didn’t sound surprised at all.

“Yes, my dear. I have made other arrangements for you.” Tresco stopped his pacing and came to stand beside her chair.

“Before we discuss your plans for my future,” Ysabel said, “let’s talk about what’s in the case.”

“Why should we talk about the case?” Tresco asked.

“Because that case holds the culmination of your life’s work,” she explained. “Work that was never yours to begin with. Evonne discovered something miraculous, and when you found her manuscript, her research propelled you to things far beyond your comprehension. She was the giant, and you just used her to become what you are.”

Tresco narrowed his eyes. “Did Cardew tell you that? In some aspects, you are correct. Based on your mother’s notes, I discovered the existence of a powerful artifact.”

“That’s what you brought back from the jungle-the artifact?” Ysabel asked, resting her fingertips against the old leather of the case. “And it’s in here?”

“No,” he replied with a self-satisfied smile. “It’s around my neck.” He adjusted the collar of his tunic to show Ysabel the twist of tarnished metal around his throat.

“What a pity,” she mused.

“Why?” He was perplexed and unnerved by her manner. She seemed different. Her spine was as straight as an arrow, and her voice sounded deeper than the little-girl’s voice he was accustomed to hearing from her.

“Why?” he demanded again.

“Look, Uncle.” She pointed over his shoulder at the glass-paned door that led out of the atrium and into the inner courtyard of Kinnard Keep. “We have visitors.”

“I’m not expecting anyone,” Tresco said. He turned abruptly to see who would be fool enough to traipse across the moor in such nasty weather.

“Visitors who have come to save me, I imagine,” Ysabel said in a pleased tone.

“Save you?” Tresco turned back to Ysabel in confusion.

“Those must be Avalor’s mercenaries,” she told him. “I can only hope that they are more clever than you. Perhaps they unearthed something more interesting than a broken chain.”

Tresco wheeled around as the glass door crashed open, its panes shattering. Still covered in mud and blood from the jungle, Harp crossed the threshold with a sword in his hand. Tresco could see Cardew’s elvish wife and the dark-haired boy directly behind him. Under the layers of grime, the sight of Harp’s unblemished skin annoyed Tresco. So did the sight of the red-haired elf, who should have been long dead.

“Cardew failed again?” Tresco asked.

“Cardew’s dead,” Liel said.

“It’s just the three of you?” Tresco scoffed. “You should have brought your father and his army. I would have enjoyed making Avalor the Great grovel under my boot.”

Liel put her hand on Harp’s shoulder as if to hold him back. “Tresco is wearing the Torque. We’re too late.”

“We can’t leave Ysabel.” Harp said. But he took a step backward like the coward he was.

“How foolish you are,” Tresco said, jerking his hand through the air as if he were shaking off unwanted drops of water. “You know you can’t hurt me while I have the Torque. Why did you even try?”

Liel, Harp, and Kitto moved to run, but Tresco’s spell caught them before they could escape to the courtyard. Their breath curdled in their mouth, and they clutched their throats as the spell strangled them. Coughing and pawing at their throats as their lungs burned, Harp and Kitto fell to their knees, while Liel pressed herself against the wall to stay upright. But she couldn’t find enough strength to overcome the overwhelming force of the Torque.

“Do you see the power it grants me?” Tresco asked as he turned to Ysabel. She had stood up from the table to watch the intruders struggle on the ground as they slowly suffocated. “I shall be unstoppable.”

“And what about me?” Ysabel said. The casualness of her inquiry struck Tresco as very odd. It sounded as if she hadn’t noticed there were people dying on the floor. Hadn’t she just witnessed Tresco’s newfound power and dominance? Tresco sighed. Suddenly, he was very tired of Ysabel’s company.

“I had a marvelous plan to marry you, the Rightful Queen, to Cardew, the Hero of the Realm. You would have captured the imaginations of all of Tethyr while I ran the kingdom. But with Cardew dead …”

“You had already given up on your plan of marrying me to Cardew,” Ysabel reminded him.

“So I had,” Tresco said smugly.

“What do you plan to do?” Ysabel inquired again. She had to speak louder to be heard over the gasps of the people writhing on the floor. Tresco wondered if Ysabel was familiar with the effects of the spell. In a few moments, the intruders would lose consciousness, if they hadn’t already. And then they would slip gracefully into death, unaware of what had transpired around them.

“You have turned into quite a fetching girl,” Tresco told her. “I envision a great funeral procession. Your coffin will be drawn by white horses down the grand boulevard in Darromar with me leading the way.”

“You’ll kill me, then,” Ysabel said without emotion.

“I’m sorry, my dear. But beautiful girls make good martyrs,” Tresco said regretfully.

Slowly, Ysabel raised her arm that had been hidden behind the table. On her fist she wore a massive, spiked gauntlet made of bronze. Emblazoned with intricate designs, it covered her skin up to her elbow and looked so heavy that it would have been difficult for someone twice Ysabel’s size to maneuver it.

“What is that wretched thing?” Tresco asked, so startled by its sudden appearance on her slender arm that he forgot about the spell he was preparing to cast.

“It is the manner of your death,” she replied as she rammed the gauntlet into his belly with surprising strength and speed. As the spikes shredded his insides, she twisted the metal glove. He howled as the pain engulfed him.

“But the Torque!” he cried.

“The Torque only grants a ward against magic,” she said. “You stupid, stupid man.”

“Ysabel!” He wanted to plead for mercy, but her name was the only word he could manage to speak.

“Where is the Captive’s elixir?” she hissed.

Tresco had no idea what she was talking about. Blood was filling his mouth and nose.

“The manuscript I left you had all the information you needed to find the elixir,” Ysabel hissed as Tresco’s blood ran down her arm. “I spelled it out for you in small, simple words. Yet you come back with a … Torque? Such an inferior artifact? It has merely a fraction of the power in the vial. Is there anyone more miserable than you?”

Tresco’s hands grasped futilely at the air around him as if he could steady himself with the ether itself. The pain was so incomprehensible that it felt as if it must be afflicting someone else. Tresco had inflicted so much suffering during his experiments at the Vankila Slab. For the first time, the words of his victims rattled through his mind as his consciousness blinked on and off like a torch about to burn itself out. And what words they had been: words of mercy, of remembrance, of forgiveness. His victims had pleaded for those they loved and those they had wronged. Their regrets consumed them and then flew from them like startled birds. Tresco had felt nothing but contempt for their unexpected compassion. He found no joy or hope to draw from within himself, and now he envied them. And he loathed the void of a life that he had lived.

“Hopefully, my so-called rescuers can lead me to the elixir,” Ysabel said, glaring at the bodies on the floor. “Then it all won’t have been in vain.”

Reaching out with her free hand, Ysabel yanked the Torque off Tresco’s neck and inspected the unpolished metal. Then she slipped it on her own neck, where it was hidden under the high collar of her dress. As soon as the Torque left Tresco’s body, Harp, Liel, and Kitto stopped struggling as the invisible grip on their throats dispersed and air flowed to their lungs again. But none of them yet moved off the floor. Ysabel leaned close to Tresco so her lips were against his ear.

“You have kept me prisoner for a decade,” she hissed. “You have kept me from my magic, forcing me to squeeze blood from a stone for every drop of knowledge and power that I possess. I should have been reborn with all that I had in my previous body, but no, I was forced to play the simpering girl to sniveling idiots.”

Tresco could barely keep his head from falling to his chest. He shifted slightly for one last look at the statuesque profile of the girl who had been his ward.

“Evonne?” Tresco gasped with his last breath.

“You always were slow, Tresco. I have been there from the moment the lights went out in the Winter Palace the night of the massacre. I’ve been with you-locked in this useless body of a child. I should have been powerful despite the youthful vessel. I should’ve had all my magic at my disposal. But instead I was weak, forced to claw my way back to what I was. No thanks to you.”

She twisted the gauntlet again. “And now I have returned to the pinnacle of my power,” she said viciously. “Not you nor anyone else will keep me from my rightful place on the throne.”

She yanked her hand out of the gauntlet, let Tresco’s lifeless body fall on top of it, and turned around as the other three stirred.

“What happened?” Harp asked, as he stood up shakily and saw Tresco slumped on the ground and blood seeped into the cracks between the paving stones.

“He tried to cast a spell, I think.” Ysabel’s voice quivered. “His chest caved in … Blood was everywhere.”

“The Torque did that?” Harp asked Liel. “Could it have killed him?”

“I don’t know,” Liel replied. “Maybe there was an enchantment on it?”

“Do you know where the Torque is?” Harp asked Ysabel.

“He said there was an artifact in here,” she replied, picking up the case and holding it against her chest. “My guards have deserted me. Will you take me to Queen Anais? I have so much to show her.”

“Of course,” Harp assured her. “We have horses outside. We can go immediately.”

“Thank you,” Ysabel said appreciatively. “And on the way, you must tell me everything that happened in the jungle.”