Usharna snorted her satisfaction and allowed Olio and Lynan to come forward and each kiss a cheek. “Well, it’s nice to see you at home, however late,” she said to Lynan, looking disapprovingly at his bloody dress. Without waiting for a reply, she went to Ager and peered at him closely. “This is the one?” The question was directed to Kumul.
“Yes, your Majesty.”
“Where is my physician?” she called out, and Trion seemed to appear from thin air. Lynan caught a glimpse of the crowd waiting in the corridor; it looked as if the queen’s entire entourage had followed her down.
“Your assessment?” she asked Trion.
“He is seriously wounded, your Majesty. If he survives the night, he may live, but I do not think he will see another dawn.”
The queen stood deep in thought for a long time. Lynan had never seen her looking so frail. He wanted to go to her and hold her arm, take some of her burden on himself, but he stayed where he was, made immobile by her aloofness. Always so far from me, Lynan thought.
“I wish to be alone with this man,” she said at last, but Lynan thought her expression suggested she would rather be anywhere else than alone with Ager.
Dejanus looked as if he was about to object, but Usharna raised one hand and he bowed deferentially. Everyone filed out obediently, Dejanus shutting the door behind him and standing guard over it. Lynan, squeezed between Kumul and a courtier whose violet scent made him feel queasy, wondered why Usharna should worry about a cripple injured in a street fight—he looked at Kumul out of the corner of his eye—unless someone was indiscreet enough to let on about the night’s events and their role in them.
Was she going to wake up the poor man and interrogate him? The hair on the nape of his neck started to rise and he tried to ignore it. Trion was saying something to one of his aides, an attractive young woman dressed in the latest fashion of fine linen layered with strips of colored felt. She was only recently attached to the court from one of the outlying realms, and her dark golden skin told Lynan she was either a Chett or an Amanite. Probably the latter; by all accounts the Chetts did not take well to lots of clothing. The thought made him smile. The woman saw it and thought he was smiling at her. Appealingly, she returned the favor. Lynan’s heart skipped a beat. Most of Usharna’s courtiers, while making some show of bowing to him if cornered, would not look at him sideways under normal circumstances. They haven’t gotten to her yet, he decided, and the thought saddened him.
He was aware that the hairs on his arms were starting to rise, and the skin on his face seemed tight and irritated. He saw the blond hairs on Kumul’s massive forearms beginning to stand as well, and realized that whatever was affecting him was affecting everybody in the corridor. Some of the courtiers were starting to look distressed.
“What’s going on?” he asked Kumul in a hushed voice. Kumul refused to answer him, his blue eyes locked forward and his body rigid as a board.
One of the courtiers fainted. Lynan recognized the very round Edaytor Fanhow, Kendra’s magicker prelate, his ceremonial robes folding around him like the wings of a giant moth. Someone knelt down to make sure he was all right. Lynan felt sorry for the prelate, then decided his time would be better spent feeling sorry for himself. His stomach had started roiling, and he was afraid he would pass out as well. And then it occurred to him that the prelate was by no means the largest or oldest in Usharna’s entourage. So why did he pass out so quickly?
The answer shook him. He stiffened, his breathing became shallow, and a cold wave passed through his body despite the close, hot confines. Edaytor fainted because among those present he was the most sensitive to magic. Usharna was using one of the Keys of Power. It must be the Key of the Heart, the one sometimes called the Healing Key. He had never, in all his years, seen Usharna employ the power inherent in the royal symbols. He had been told stories about their strength, but he had cynically believed they were nothing but legends created to give the throne more authority through their possession, just like King Thebald’s Sword of State, an overly ornate and utterly impractical weapon held by new monarchs during their crowning. It was not that he doubted the existence of magic—he had seen members of the five Theurgia employ it—but the fact that his own mother could wield it disturbed him greatly. And to wield magic of such strength!
Lynan’s chest was tightening; he let out his breath in a long hiss, but it did not seem to ease the pressure at all. Now other people started to pass out. First, an old dame who was lucky enough to be caught by her son, and then—of all people!—Trion. Just when Lynan thought he could no longer hold on, and that he, too, would faint, he found himself taking in air in great, heavy gasps. The pressure around his chest had simply disappeared as if it had never been, and so had the queasiness in his stomach.
“It’s over?” he asked Kumul, his own voice sounding distant to him.
Kumul, himself as pale as a sheet, nodded once and immediately approached the door. Dejanus, still recovering himself, made a vague effort to block his way.
“The queen has finished whatever she was doing,” Kumul told him. “Let me in.”
“Not until she opens the door herself,” the Life Guard wheezed.
Kumul lowered his mouth to the guard’s ear. Lynan heard him say, “And what if she is unconscious? You felt the energy emanating from that room. You know better than anyone how frail she is.”
Dejanus still hesitated. Lynan did not know what made him step up at that moment, but the same concern, the same sudden anger, must have struck Olio as well. They stood on either side of Kumul and together ordered the door be opened, Olio even managing not to stutter. Against the commands of two princes, and with no sign from Usharna, even Dejanus had to give way.
They rushed into the room, but the sight that greeted them stopped them in their tracks. The room’s sandstone walls seemed to be aglow; even the fire in the hearth seemed dim in comparison. Shimmering blue threads coruscated in the air and then died, leaving behind trails of ash that hung suspended before slowly drifting to the floor. By the bed, standing more erect than anyone had seen her for years, was Usharna, arms wide, surrounded by a soft halo of white energy that pulsed with her rapid breathing. More people crowded into the room, their mouths open in surprise. Trion and Edaytor, the latter flushed and moist with perspiration, came up beside Lynan.
“I never imagined…” Edaytor began, but ran out of words to describe his astonishment.
Even as they watched, the energy in the room dissipated like mist burned away by the morning sun, and the halo around Usharna faded away into nothing. The fire flared once, brilliantly, and then settled down to produce a steady, warming flame. Usharna looked at her court, the merest hint of a smile on her face, then slumped forward.
Kumul and Dejanus were there before she reached the hard floor and together supported her weight.
Trion hurried over and quickly checked her pulse and breathing. “She is all right. Her heart still beats strongly.” He turned to the crowd. “She is exhausted, nothing more.” The collective sigh of relief sounded like a prayer.
Kumul helped Dejanus scoop up the queen into his arms. Then the Life Guard hurried out of the room to take her to her own chambers, Trion and most of the courtiers following close behind. Kumul closed the door and went to Ager.
Edaytor Fanhow joined him, moving like a supplicant approaching a holy relic, his hands held out before him.
“There is a great deal of magic residue,” he said, more to himself than the others. He touched one of the walls, gingerly at first, but then placed his palm flat against a single sandstone block. “Still warm,” he muttered. “Utterly incredible.”
“It was certainly a p-p-performance,” Olio said in a hushed tone.