She’d indulged in the fantasy. He would marry her, take her away from all the horrors she wanted so desperately to leave behind. She hadn’t had that many noble clients, yet. It was possible, wasn’t it?
The night of their first kiss, a noble had referred to her as the sweetest harlot he’d ever had. Brant overheard it, instantly challenged the man to a duel, and killed him. Gwinvere had fled. The next day, Brant had learned the truth. He enlisted and tried to get himself honorably killed fighting on the Ceuran border.
But Brant Agon had been too capable to die. Eventually, despite how he despised bootlicking and politicking, his merit had pulled him through the ranks. He married a plain woman from a merchant family. By all accounts, it was a happy marriage.
“How long will it take to get everything ready?” she asked. She would hope Brant’s infatuation had died. She would help him dodge the truth. She was good at that, at least.
“Gwin.”
She turned and looked him in the eye, her mask in place, eyes cool. “Yes?”
He blew out a great breath. “I loved you for years, Gwin, even after …”
“My betrayal?”
“Your indiscretion. You were what? Sixteen, seventeen? You deceived yourself first, and I think you suffered for it more than I did.”
She snorted.
“Regardless,” he said. “I bear you no ill will. You are a beautiful woman, Gwin. More beautiful than my Liza ever was. You are so brilliant that I feel I have to sprint just to keep up with you jogging. I felt quite the opposite with Liza. You …affect me profoundly.”
“But,” she said.
“Yes. But,” he said. “I love Liza, and she has loved me through a thousand trials, and she deserves all that I have to give. Whether or not you have tender feelings for me, while I have hope that my Liza lives, I would ask—beg—that you would help me remain true to her.”
“You’ve chosen a hard road,” she said.
“Not a road, a battle. Sometimes life is our battlefield. We must do what we know to do, not what we want to do.”
Gwinvere sighed, and yet somehow felt lighter. Dodging Brant’s attraction could have so easily turned into dodging his presence, and she needed to work closely with him now. Is honesty so easy? Could I have just said, “Durzo, I love you, but I fear you’ll destroy me”? Brant had just offered her his vulnerability, confessed her effect on him, and yet seemed not weaker but stronger for it. How was that? Is truth so powerful?
She swore then, in her own heart, that she would not tempt this man for her own vanity. Not in her voice, not in accidental touches, not in her dress, she would lay down every weapon in her arsenal. The resolution made her feel oddly …decent. “Thank you,” she said. She smiled companionably. “How long till they’re ready?”
“Three days,” Brant said.
“Then let us make the night run red.”
34
Solon dropped the two leather five-hundred-weight bags he carried and grabbed Dorian as the prophet tottered. At first, he didn’t understand what Dorian had said.
“What are you talking about?”
Dorian pushed Solon’s steadying arm away. He put on his cloak and sword belt and picked up two pairs of manacles. “This way,” he said, grabbing one of the bags from Solon and heading down the open road away from the wall.
The land leading to the wall was rocky, barren ground. It had been cleared of trees out to a hundred and fifty yards, and though the road was broad enough for twenty men abreast, it was rutted and pitted from the wear of many feet and wagons over ground that alternated between soil and solid rock.
“Khali is coming,” Dorian said before Solon could ask what was happening again. “I gave up my prophetic gift in case she captures me.”
Solon couldn’t even answer.
Dorian stopped beneath a black oak that grew on a rocky outcropping that hung over the road. “She’s here. Not a half a league away.” Dorian didn’t even take his eyes off the tree. “It’ll have to do. Make sure you only step on rock. If they see tracks, they’ll find me.”
Solon didn’t move. Dorian had finally gone crazy. The other times it had been obvious: he’d simply been catatonic. But now, he seemed so rational. “Come on, Dorian,” Solon said. “Let’s go back to the wall. We can talk about this in the morning.”
“The wall won’t be there in the morning. Khali will strike at the wytching hour. That gives you five hours to get the men out of there.” Dorian hoisted himself up on the ledge. “Throw the bags up to me.”
“Khali, Dorian? She’s a myth. You’re trying to tell me that a goddess is half a league from here?”
“Not a goddess. Perhaps one of the rebel angels expelled from heaven and given leave to walk the earth until the end of days.”
“Right. I suppose she’s brought a dragon? We can talk about—”
“Dragons avoid angels,” Dorian said. Disappointment etched his features. “Are you going to abandon me now when I need you? Have I ever lied to you? You thought Curoch was a myth too, before we found it. I need you. When Khali comes through the wall, I’ll go out of my mind. You’ve seen me when I thought I could use the vir for good. That was like one part wine and ten parts water; this is pure liquor. I will be lost. Her very presence brings out the worst. The worst fears, the worst memories, the worst sins. My hubris will come out. I might try to fight her, and I’ll lose. Or my lust for power will break me and I’ll join her. She knows me. She will break me.”
Solon couldn’t take the look in Dorian’s eyes. “What if you’re wrong? What if it is the madness you’ve warned about for so long?”
“If the wall stands at dawn, you’ll know.”
Solon threw the bags up to Dorian and then climbed carefully up the rock, making sure he didn’t leave so much as a footprint.
“What are you doing?” he asked as Dorian smiled at him and poured the gold onto the ground. Next Dorian pulled on the manacles and the iron chains holding them together tore apart as if they were made of paper. He dropped a manacle onto the pile of coins and it fell into the coins as if they were liquid. The other three manacles followed and the piles of coins shrank each time. Dorian reached through the gold and pulled out each of the manacles, now sheathed in gold, and placed one on each of his wrists. He stretched the iron of the second pair and locked those manacles around his thighs just above the knee.
It was amazing. Dorian had always said that his power with the vir had dwarfed his Talent, yet here he was, molding gold and iron artfully and effortlessly.
In another moment, Dorian had shaped the rest of the coins into four narrow spikes and what looked like a bowl. He stopped, and now he concentrated. Solon could feel the brush of spells flowing past him, sinking into the metal. After two minutes, Dorian stopped and spoke under his breath to the black oak.
“There will be a contingent with her, the Soulsworn,” Dorian said. “They’ve given up much of what it is to be human to serve Khali. But they aren’t the danger. She is. Solon, I don’t think you can defeat her. I think you should take the men away from here. Take them somewhere where their deaths might accomplish something. But …if she makes it to Cenaria, Garoth Ursuul’s sons will make two ferali. They will use them on the resistance. This I have seen.”