Kylar stepped back and the floor opened like a coffin lid. There was a woman inside. Her hair was long and blonde, carefully arrayed in small braids and curls. Her long-lashed eyes were closed, her cheeks flushed, full lips pink, skin flawless alabaster. For some reason, to Kylar’s eyes, the girl was a collection of details that refused to coalesce into a woman: a familiar dimple here, the sweep of her neck. Her dress was white silk, slim cut to her figure, backless, more daring or more scandalous than anything Elene would have worn. Elene. Kylar staggered back. “Elene!”
Her lips curved into a smile. She drew a breath. Lovely brown eyes opened. Kylar’s knees went weak. She reached out a regal hand, and when he took it, she rose almost magically to her feet. Every move spoke perfect grace.
“You—you don’t have any scars,” Kylar said.
“I can’t stand ugliness. I want to be beautiful for you,” Elene said, and she smiled, and every part of her was beauty. “Kylar,” she said gently, “I need Curoch.”
He looked into her smiling face and was lost. Through the ka’kari, Elene looked like an archmage. Magic swirled thickly around her. Elene wasn’t Talented, but this was Elene.
His heart froze.
Distantly, he heard the main doors of the hall bang open. His knees hit the floor.
“Kylar! No!” Vi shouted. Numbly, Kylar watched the doors open wide. Following Vi was Logan, one arm glowing green; Solon, Logan’s old adviser, wearing a crown; the mountainous Feir Cousat; four magae, all greatly Talented; Dorian the prophet; Lord General Agon Brant; and Captain Kaldrosa Wyn with fifty of Agon’s Dogs.
The scent of Elene filled Kylar’s nostrils as she stepped close. What had she done?
His eyes snapped open as Elene snatched Curoch from his limp fingers. The look in Elene’s eyes was foreign. She looked intoxicated as she gazed at the blade. She laughed and twirled.
“Trace, that’s enough,” Durzo said suddenly.
She stopped abruptly and stared at Durzo, disbelieving. “Acaelus? No, it can’t be.”
“Hand it over, Trace. And the white ka’kari, too. Release that girl’s body.”
Elene’s eyes narrowed. “It is you.”
“What happened to you, Trace? You were one of the Champions. Jorsin trusted you. We all did. What have you become?” Durzo asked.
“I am Khali.” At the word, the Vürdmeisters dropped to their faces. She laughed again. “Look at my pets, so humble, and every one of them scheming even now.” She looked around the Hall of Winds. She gestured with Curoch, and every crack in the dome was sealed, the scene unified: a spring day, mountains purple in the distance, flowers everywhere. “Do you remember this, Acaelus? We were supposed to be married here.” Her white dress shifted like liquid metal, shimmering into a high-necked full green gown with thousands of crystals sewn into it.
“You were beautiful.”
“I was a hag!” she shot back. “Bad teeth, bad skin, crooked back. Then Ezra gave me the white ka’kari. I heard you quarreling with him. You betrayed me first, Acaelus. You left me here in my wedding gown, shamed me in front of everyone. I waited hours. I was finally beautiful, and all you were was jealous.”
Durzo’s face was gray, and bits and pieces that Kylar had heard over the years fell into place. To save the black ka’kari and keep its incredible power secret, Jorsin had given it to “The Betrayer” Acaelus. Acaelus hadn’t even been able to tell his fiancée that he had it, and knowing that he would soon have to act the betrayer, Acaelus had fled rather than marry. All without a word of explanation. Kylar remembered Durzo snarling at him when he was a child: “I will not allow you to ruin yourself over a girl.” Momma K had said women had always been Durzo’s downfall. The Wolf had said Durzo had once done something worse than take money for a death. Kylar had guessed it was suicide, but it was worse than that. Knowing the price of immortality was that someone he loved died in his place, Durzo had killed himself, hoping to kill Trace.
But Trace, an archmage in her own right and the smartest of the Champions, had figured out a way around the black ka’kari’s death sentence. ~Acaelus and I always knew there was something strange about that death. We knew she fought the magic for months, but then her body died. We tried never to think of her again.~
“Jealous?” Durzo said. “I had the black ka’kari, the most powerful of them all. Ezra and I quarreled because he gave you a ka’kari that confirmed a lie you believed. You weren’t ugly then, Trace; you’re ugly now. Look what you’ve done. For seven centuries the north has labored under your darkness. This is what Trace Arvagulania turned her mind to? This is what you created? Why?”
~For immortality,~ the ka’kari breathed to Kylar. Kylar could tell it was understanding for the first time. ~The white ka’kari can create a glamour so powerful it can be used for compulsion. She tried to turn her ka’kari into a dark imitation of me, using it to compel worship, and then trying to steal life from her “willing” worshipers. But it didn’t work because the soul of my magic is love—and love cannot be compelled. Trace has been disembodied until she could find someone who loves in a way that is totally foreign to what she has become. Someone willing—without compulsion—to let Trace have her body.~
Now she’d found that person at long last: Elene.
“Why? I do it because I wish it. I am Khali. I am goddess. Someone has to pay the price for immortality. Tell me, Acaelus, who’s paid for yours?”
Durzo paled. “Too many people. Come, Trace. Our time is done.”
“My time has just begun.” Curoch became a slender staff in her hand, and she raised it. A black cloud exploded in every direction, then disappeared. The walls of the Hall of Winds became clear as glass, showing the dark battlefield to every side. “Do you remember when Jorsin faced the grand armies of the Fallen?” Khali asked. “He could have stopped them, if he’d listened to me. He didn’t have to fight them. He could have controlled them. He was a greater mage than Roygaris. These armies could have been Jorsin’s, he could have simply taken them from Roygaris. We could have won.”
As she spoke, it slowly became clear that the sudden darkness on the battlefield was moving, standing up. The black blanket was countless thousands of krul corpses rising from seven centuries of death, standing, healing, and moving into ranks. Earlier in the day, even with a hundred and fifty thousand men and krul fighting, all the armies together had occupied only a wedge of the plain south of the Hall of Winds. At Khali’s gesture with Curoch, krul rose in a writhing black ocean north, south, east, and west as far as the eye could see. Kylar saw the Titan he’d killed get back to its feet. Dozens more like it stood around the battlefield. Beasts that dwarfed even Harani bulls rose. Birds great and small rose in clouds. Fire ants by the thousands. Flying beasts. Beautiful, fanged children. Brute wolves. Great cats. Horses with bone-scythes extending from each shoulder. Ferali by the hundreds. Kylar’s mind couldn’t take it all in. Jorsin had faced this?
The allied armies had reached the Hall, and now they turned outward, back to back, guarding the hilltop in a circle dwarfed by the numbers of krul they were about to face.
“I can banish them,” Khali said. “All of them. But I need Iures to banish the Strangers. What do you say, Acaelus? Will you watch everyone you love die a second time?”