Chapter 4

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Maralt Adaeryn closed the book he was reading, A History of Cobalt, and put it down on the counter that ran beneath the bookshelves covering the wall of the guesthouse study. Looking around the open first floor, the stairs leading up to the second floor that cut through the middle of the house, a sitting room, a dining room adjacent to a smaller parlor, and this, the library, Maralt wondered why Kamien had deigned to stay here instead of in the mansion. There wasn’t much to the place, though it was far larger than any home Maralt had ever lived in. Kamien’s exile was probably at Dain’s insistence, Maralt mused, perusing another book, this one about the First King of Cobalt.

Maralt hefted the tome in his hand, frowning over why he’d chosen this book out the hundred that were available to him. Over the months since the burial services, Maralt fought an intermittent desire to learn as much of Alurn Telaerin and his time as he could find. Of course, finding new material on the man, who at the age of eighteen founded the Cobalt System and the ten years he reigned, was all but impossible. Most people suggested the lack was due to the distance of time and the ravages of a thousand year war. There was another reason, but Maralt couldn’t name it, or even why he felt that way. The knowledge felt more hidden than lost. He didn’t have an explanation for thinking that way either.

He knew his memory had been taken, but he didn’t know how. High Bishop, Gradyn Vall, wasn’t a telepath. Bits and pieces came through at times, followed by an excruciating headache. Maralt fought it, just like Gradyn said he would. Just like Dynan and Dain both fought, though Dynan less than his brother. Maralt remembered what he’d done to them, but not a whole lot else.

The door opened. Kamien came in, pulling off his uniform coat that he threw across a chair back. He moved to the sidebar and started pouring a drink before he noticed he wasn’t alone.

“I didn’t know you were here,” Kamien said when he looked up. He kept pouring. He got another glass, filling it without Maralt asking. “How did you get in? The place is pretty well buttoned up.”

“My name is on a list.” It wasn’t true of course. Or at least it wasn’t on a list that would allow him on the grounds. Really, he was probably on a different list altogether. He remembered some of the last encounter with Ambrose Telaerin up in the mountain temple. It hadn’t gone well with the King. His eldest son though, was more accommodating.

Maralt met Kamien shortly after Dynan’s journey to the temple, by design, though Maralt wasn’t quite sure what that purpose was, or whose. He needed to be near Dynan and Dain, maybe more than Carryn, just not so near that they would end up with a permanent headache, since Maralt couldn’t let them remember him. He’d gotten used to being near them and accustomed to taking in the excess energy they walked around with. He discovered it was an exceedingly unpleasant sensation going without that energy.

“Does your being here have anything to do with your sister being here too?” Kamien handed over the drink. He slugged his back in one gulp. He poured another as he pulled out a comboard, thumbing through something, and then set it on a side table as he sank down into the chair beside it. “And you being at the landing port when a group of lunatics sought to kill my brother the other day? Have anything to do with that?”

Maralt glanced at the IB file playing across the hand-sized screen and saw himself in the crowd while Dynan waved before walking toward the landing port, right until a transfer whisked in. After a moment of confusion, with his guard talking in his ear, Dynan got in it instead. The people didn’t notice or understand the change of plans, but the sudden spike in the tension level in the guards was obvious to Maralt.

“Actually, I didn’t know anything about it, and of course I didn’t have anything to do with it. Neither did Carryn, except to stop it from happening. She’s the reason Dynan didn’t get on that transport. Since when did you care so much anyway?”

“I don’t want him dead.”

“Why, because Dain would be left in charge?”

Kamien swiveled in his seat to look at Maralt, his brows drawn down. “He’s going to be King. Dynan is going to be King. It’s my duty to help protect him.”

“Of course. Even when as King, he’ll have you shipped out of the System. Sent off to a distant outpost, or maybe – if you’re lucky – he’ll make you Ambassador to Suma. A bit of a downgrade from Prince.”

“We don’t get along, yes,” Kamien said. “That’s more because of Dain—”

“Who’ll be Lord Chancellor when Dynan is King. Or after Xavier, depending on how long he’s around.”

Kamien stared down into his glass, swirling the liquid. “It’ll be different then. They’ll be older and far more mature than they are now.”

“Will they?”

Kamien shook his head. “What exactly do you suggest I do about it if they aren’t?”

“Nothing. I’m not suggesting you do anything, Your Highness, just telling you what will be. Whatever life you have here, the moment they’re in power that life will be over. How much stake do you want to put into something that could change at any moment?”

Kamien didn’t answer, but drank the rest of his drink instead, using more force than was usual to set the glass down on the tabletop. It rang loudly. He stood and started for the door. “I’m turning in for the night. Don’t go out wandering around the grounds. I don’t want to be disturbed.”

“Good night then, Your Highness.” Maralt tilted his head to him, but Kamien was already out the door.

When he’d gone and the house was utterly still again, Maralt reached in the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the talon Dynan found, the harbinger of a disaster barely averted. It radiated evil and Maralt wondered how much of a role it played in the sabotage of Dynan’s ship by otherwise upstanding citizens of Cobalt. For reasons unexplained, those citizens had on that day, gone mad enough to want to kill. Was it because of the talon’s proximity to Dynan, therefore exposing those people around him to the talisman’s evil influences? Would being with them at Beren cause some other kind of calamity?

“Maralt?”

He whirled around and found Carryn projected into the room with him, reaching inside his mind to come to him. Her bedchamber inside the mansion stood out behind her for a moment. Her gaze dropped to the talon still in his hands.

“What are you doing here?”

He regarded her for a moment, carefully tucking the claw away. “It’s good to see you too, Carryn.”

She rolled her eyes at his tone. “You’re here with Kamien? I don’t understand. You said yourself you shouldn’t be around them.”

“Am I around them? Besides, if I hadn’t been here to alter Dain’s memory, again, he would have recognized you. So I don’t know why you think it’s any better that you’re here.”

“I can distract Dain from thinking too much about things he shouldn’t,” Carryn said, with some heat in her voice. “It’s almost as effective and far less damaging. You can’t just come here—”

“Do you think I want to be here? Skulking in the shadows? I’m here because I have to be. I’m as much a part of this as you are.”

“You have the talon,” she said. “You know what will happen if they’re around it.”

“I shielded it. As much as I’d love to get rid of it, my choices there are ... limited.”

Carryn shook her head at him. “You could put it in the Room of Orbs.”

“The imbalance would be too great to counter if I leave it there.” Maralt went back to looking at the books. He wondered what would happen if he took one. These books probably had trackers in them. “He was sick again.”

She looked up at that and then away, realizing he meant Gradyn. Maralt could feel the strain on her conscience. It was a blow to the old man to lose her. “How do you know?”

“I went back. He’s afraid it’s too soon. He asked me to warn you. That’s why I’m here.”

“Why did you go back?” The thought came in a softer tone, without accusation this time. She was worried. About them both.

“I tried to give him the talon.” Maralt regretted saying so and wished he hadn’t told her. It made him seem weak. “He told me I picked it up and it was my problem.”

“He did not say that to you.”

Maralt snorted. “He used the usual ambiguous terms, warning of dire consequences should I fail to make the right decision. Yes, he did. It’s difficult, Carryn. Everything annoys me to the point I want to extinguish the irritant. But Gradyn is right. This is my problem. I have to find a way to deal with it. I will. I have so far. Dynan is really the only one, but then, the risks there are far larger if he were to take it, than the risks of me holding it.”

“You have to be careful, Maralt, with what you can do. The High Bishop is right. You’ve taken memories that you shouldn’t have. Even from me. If that thing—”

Maralt stared at her. “What are you talking about? Are you even listening to what I’m telling you?”

Carryn didn’t back down. “You took one of my visions for no reason. I was in the King’s office and I saw it, Ambrose telling me I would teach his sons, but I don’t remember the real vision, only the repeat.”

Maralt tried to fathom how she could be saying these things, as if he’d done something to her intentionally.

“You did,” she said in response.

“For what reason?”

“I don’t know what reason.” There was the accusatorial tone again.

“Carryn, taking a memory isn’t an exact process.” It angered him that he felt the need to defend himself to her. “I couldn’t take the memory of this conversation even, without removing a large portion of your thought process that brought you here in the first place and maybe as far back as your meeting with Dain. I can’t control where all the threads lead, but if I leave them, you could go mad from it. You had that vision in the middle of others you begged me to take.”

She didn’t believe him. He saw it in her eyes and in her thoughts as easily as if she’d said it out loud. “Is it that simple, Maralt?”

He didn’t answer, stunned that she didn’t trust him in this or maybe at all, trying to figure out when she stopped believing in him and why. He couldn’t articulate what it meant to him either. He felt a sudden and unwelcome reciprocation. If she didn’t believe in him, didn’t trust him, might even be afraid of him, he could extend the same to her.

“I didn’t take that vision to keep you from coming here. We’ve both known one day you would, so that doesn’t make much sense, does it? I’m going to do whatever I have to do to uphold my vow. I suggest you do the same. You should go. I’m tired. I’m going to turn in.”

That wasn’t true.

Carryn nodded and without another thought, her image faded and then disappeared.

Maralt fought down the expanding wave of anger, knowing if he didn’t control himself, he would lash out at her and possibly hurt her. For a second, there was a vision of it, of Carryn writhing in pain, appeasing the sense of betrayal that wound through his mind.

It was gone the next moment and left him gasping and horrified. He pulled the talon out again, setting it down on the table beside Kamien’s empty glass. Maralt walked across the library, into the nearest corner as if getting into it would somehow protect him, or stop what was happening.

He knew what would stop it, or at least abate the feeling of losing control. Lately, only one thing had helped.

Before the thought was hardly formed, he’d transported himself into the mansion, straight to Dain Telaerin...

...who was not alone.

Maralt repressed a groan. There were enough of those already filling the room. He’d seen Dain in the act before, though that instance had been on purpose, when he was with Bronwyn Esrel, prior to her removal to another part of the planet to get her out of Dain’s life. Even at sixteen, Dain had been devoted to her and for a time at least, remained faithful just to her. Maralt had inserted himself into more than a few of their trysts.

This girl wasn’t like Bronwyn. Maralt knew her for what she was, though Dain no longer seemed to distinguish between a whore and any other kind of girl. He treated them all the same, as if he were in love with each and every one of them. Her name was Richelle and she was an especially talented and dedicated regular client to the point she might have been exclusive. Margen Ulldy was known to provide her customers with any possible desire, though at the moment, Dain was the one preoccupied with making Richelle one exquisitely happy lady.

It had been a while for Maralt. Watching wasn’t what he wanted. He opted not to stay, though the blazing light around Dain was as enticing as ever. Maralt pulled in a deep breath, watching the swirling currents eddy toward him. It was starting to not be enough anymore.

He thought to find Dynan next, who more than likely wouldn’t be in bed with a woman. Despite the hour, Maralt found him in the barn that stood off at the foot of a slight hill away from the mansion where about twelve horses stood dozing in their stalls. The Prince was leaned up against a beam, his arms full of Lady Liselle, his mouth covering hers and thinking only about how much he wanted to take, no rip, all her clothes off.

Maralt swore.

The lady reciprocated both action and thought, though her desires were less base, jumbled with calculation. She wanted more than just a bedding with this young man. She wanted many. Maralt listened for a moment and then retreated, having heard enough plotting and planning. She started tugging at Dynan’s jacket and he relinquished it. His hands went into her hair and one journeyed along the curve of her neck, downward. The Lady pressed herself into him.

“So much for that vow.”

Dynan jumped as if struck and whirled around. Maralt shrank back into the small corner space between the beam and the stall door, thinking about wood grain and shadows.

“Who’s there?”

“Dynan, what?” Liselle said, her voice annoyed and pleading at the same time. “There’s no one here.”

“I heard something.” He would have started toward the sound, but the barn door slid open.

Two guards came in, talking about some amusement or other that Maralt didn’t care to find out about. The one, Ralion Blaise, Maralt had nearly cooked his brains during the mad dash to get Dain to the temple, seemed none the worse for wear and didn’t see Maralt at all this time. It was easier to hide as a thought figment. The other guard, Frazier Cordon, had been around before too, out doing guard things when the Prince was about in public.

“Lady Hendel is looking for you,” Ralion said to Liselle as if he didn’t know what he was interrupting. Dynan threw his head back for a second. Internally, he was swearing pretty loudly. “It’s time to go in for the night.”

“No, really, it’s not,” Dynan said, but just to himself, getting angrier by the moment that this interminable wait was going to be longer still. The thought of what he was missing, the secret that waited between the fair lady’s legs, occupied the whole of his mind. It probably didn’t help him much that Dain was over in the house, banging away.

Liselle went to Dynan, whispering in his ear, and finally made him nod and smile. Promises were made. More plotting. For such a pretty girl, there was a lot of deviousness behind her blue eyes.

She kissed his cheek and then allowed herself to be escorted away. Frazier took on that duty and closed the barn door behind them. Dynan waited, head bowed, though he wasn’t praying, fists planted into either side, silent. He reached down and picked up a wood bucket, slinging it as hard as he could into the opposite wall. It exploded into pieces of metal banding and slats.

Maralt breathed, drawn closer before he could stop himself. It was almost like having sex with the air around him, maybe even more enticing than a beautiful woman, consuming his mind and filling every sense. Anger produced an aura more satisfying than anything he’d encountered. Maralt attached himself to it, breathing as if he’d been suffocating, taking in long gulps, drinking in the currents. His fingers were covered in yellow-gold from fanning the substance toward his mouth. He sucked them dry, lapping the non-liquid up like a dog.

It wasn’t enough.

Maralt wondered, briefly, how much he could take before the well ran dry and the soul ceased to exist. Having that power for himself would make him the savior instead of this half-man, this boy-child, simple and incapable of the task ahead.

The noise of the barn door opening jarred him from a place he didn’t recognize and the realization came that Carryn was coming through. Maralt knew she would see him if he stayed. Worse, she could discover why he was there.

In a flash that was painful, he willed himself back to the guesthouse library. It was a kind of rending flesh experience that left him gasping and confused. He felt bloodied, when there hadn’t been a battle.

Slowly, afraid all the troubles he now faced were caused by it, Maralt moved to the table where he’d set the talon. He concentrated and put another shield around it, visualizing a barrier of adamant, with the strength of acrylon that could resist the void of space. Maybe it would work against other voids and worse places. He picked it up, examining the long ridges that ran on either side of it, how the black seemed to absorb the light, and the smudges along the underside edge that could have been blood. Probably Dynan’s blood. Maralt put the talon in his pocket, tucking it away once again, vowing to fend off its influence and protect the world around it from succumbing. That last part was a more difficult task. He felt like he was being poisoned, a slow, excruciating toxic infiltration of his being the more he tried to contain it.

He was alone too, cut off from his sister who didn’t agree with what he was doing to an extent he didn’t understand. There was a wall there, around her, as palpable as the shield he built around the talon.

He was out of the good graces of the High Bishop, though the old man still deigned to give him orders. There were more unnecessary secrets to be kept, like not telling Carryn that Gradyn had sent him to Alse’s region to watch over Dynan and then to Beren to do the same thing. Gradyn had feared her close proximity to Dynan and Dain would trigger their memories and it nearly had. Maralt doubted Carryn would believe it if he told her.

In the end, he couldn’t stay away, returning to Dain and found him still in the throes of lovemaking. Maralt stood back in the shadows of thought, no longer trying to ignore the small grunts and the noise of the bed shifting, unconcerned with it, aroused only by the blazing flame that lit the room.