The Apostate Prince (Godswar Chronicles Book 2) Page 10

  “Try to relax. Think about the dragon. Got it?”

  Celia nodded.

  Justin let go of her shoulder. “Good. It was just an illusion, and no illusion is perfect - least of all one of mine. There had to be a moment - an instant - when you doubted it. Now, when was it?”

  Lines formed in Celia’s brow. “When it broke the pillar. I…” Celia took a deep breath, but halted the exhale. “Son of a…” She scoffed and shook her head. “The dust it kicked up - it had no smell.”

  She opened her eyes and Justin smiled at her quick analysis. “But you ignored it in favor of your eyes.”

  Celia cleared her throat and took a step back to the wall again. She did not meet his eyes. “I do not see what that has to do with the High Priest.”

  “Sure, you do. Something the High Priest told you wasn’t right. You noticed a detail that seemed off but ignored it in favor of trust. What was it? When was the first moment of doubt?”

  The dungeon door opened with a loud creak. Boots and torchlights descended the spiral stairs. Only his mother, Deetra, Butch, and stepbrothers had the authority to enter the dungeon. By the sound, they had all come to join him.

  “Justin?” His mother’s voice called.

  He needed more time. Celia was close to agreeing to help him. Their presence would end the exchange. He gave Celia a look that suggested she remain quiet and turned back to retrieve his torch.

  “I’m here,” he yelled back. “I’m on my way up now.”

  She came down the steps first, with Deetra right behind her. Victor and James followed the Empress and the General as they ventured into the dungeon. They all stared at him or behind him, accusations in their countenance.

  His mother beckoned him and Justin obeyed. The others cleared a path for them to the stairs. Justin’s palms slicked with sweat as he followed her between them. No one spoke.

  “Give Victor the torch,” she said, gesturing to his monstrous stepbrother.

  He did. “What’s going on? Something wrong?”

  “Come to the altar with me,” she said, and ascended the first stair.

  Justin looked back. Deetra stood behind him as Victor and James moved over toward Celia. They spread out and surrounded her in a half circle.

  “Wait,” Justin said.

  His mother continued up the stairs and Deetra shoved him from behind.

  “Walk,” she said.

  Justin put his foot on the first step and braced his hand against the smooth round pillar. “What are they going to do? We need her alive.”

  His mother had already reached the top. Deetra pointed up after her. “That’s not your decision. Get moving.”

  Justin climbed. They were all more tense than usual. He had not done anything wrong, aside from disobeying his mother’s order to stay away. Surely, that had not provoked this level of response. The altar would reveal no secrets, nor incriminate him in any way, of that he was certain.

  As soon as he reached the top, Celia screamed from below.

  “Get away from me!”

  Justin turned, but Deetra pushed him through the doorway and the guards locked the gate behind him. Celia screamed again, this time with fury. Justin grabbed his mother by the arm.

  “I asked what they’re doing.”

  Ayla looked down at his hand on her arm, then back up to his eyes. Justin let go. A line appeared in her brow.

  “Saving you from yourself.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Dark Inquisition

  Ayla’s heeled boots clacked on the uneven stone floor as she made her way down the lamplit hall. At the other end, two Red Knights stood on either side of a fifteen-foot stone disk. Behind it, lie the Dark Sanctum. The knights cupped their hands below their chin and prayed. The glyph of the serpent eating its tail lit up, and slithered counter-clockwise. The roar of scraping stone vibrated the hallway, rattling the lanterns that hung from the support pillars. The massive disk rolled to one side, struck the wall, and the floor trembled.

  Through the half-moon crescent opening, a red carpet runner led to the center of a room, dark but for a deep blue glow from five braziers set in a circle. The altar stood in the middle, a block table of pure river-smoothed obsidian. The sight soothed her; a glass of warm wine for her soul.

  Ayla stepped through the doorway, and followed the runner. As she drew closer to the braziers, her rippling scale armor reflected the cobalt flames, throwing shards of light on the pillars spaced throughout the Sanctum. She let her hand trail along the surface of the altar as she circled it in the center of the room. The Goddess’ presence lingered over it; a hint of ambergris and smoke in the air.

  The knights rolled the door back, but unlike the hall, the roaring stone did not make the Dark Sanctum tremble. The altar had kept itself hidden for two hundred years before Ayla rediscovered it. It thinned the veil between this world and the next. More than once, Ayla had come in to find it gone.

  Deetra and Justin stood just inside, between two support pillars that disappeared into the darkness above. Deetra motioned for Justin to precede her to the altar. Justin acquiesced, but with a look of contempt at Deetra that challenged Ayla’s self-control.

  Justin approached and stood on the other side of the altar, his best stoic wizard-face on display. His smug half-frown hid nothing from Ayla. He wore a variation of that same expression every time she questioned him as a child. Deetra stayed at the front of the room. Her involvement would only make Justin more resistant.

  He had inherited Ayla’s white-blue eyes and they sparkled in the light of the braziers. If he lied, the braziers would turn red. She looked at one of them, then to him, reminding him of the Truth Circle.

  “Why did you return to the dungeon?”

  Justin waited a moment before answering. Familiar with the Truth Circle, her son would measure his every word. He kept his hands together in front of him, hidden by the flared sleeves of his brocade robe.

  “To question the prisoner.”

  “Was there another reason?”

  Another pause: “I had a theory. I wanted to investigate it.”

  The braziers burned a steady blue - truth.

  “What theory?” Ayla asked.

  “The attack might not have been sanctioned by her King, but by her High Priest.”

  Ayla eyed him. “Why does that matter?”

  “Because we can make the High Priest of Light’s own people put him to the stake.”

  Deetra stood at rigid attention at the entrance, visor up, her disinterest in politics written into her scowl. She took a step forward. Ayla nodded her permission to ask a question. Deetra cut straight to the point.

  “Do you have feelings for that Guardian?”

  Justin laughed, but the smile didn't reach his eyes. “Of course, I have feelings for her,” he said, and the braziers remained blue. “Pity, Deetra, is a feeling.”

  Deetra tensed, and flexed her hands. In one fell swoop, he dodged the question and took a stab at Deetra’s self-control. He had heard Ayla complain of Deetra’s lack of empathy and ability to express herself. Justin had aimed for a sore spot.

  Deetra took off her helm; Ayla’s wife ran hot when she got angry. “Answer the question.”

  “I already did.”

  Deetra threw her armored arms in the air and let them drop, helmet clanking on her thigh. She stared at Ayla, her tone took on a note of accusation.

  “He’s impossible. He just stands there with that smug look on his face and refuses to answer a simple question.”

  Ayla beckoned Deetra with one hand and shook her head at Justin. The walk up to the altar would give Deetra a moment to compose herself, and time to consider her words. Deetra’s foot touched the boundary of the Truth Circle, and Justin spoke again, a deliberate attempt to catch his stepmother off guard.

  “What are you accusing me of?”

  Ayla put her hands on the altar and lowered her tone, switching from mother and wife to High Priestess.

  “It is believed t
hat you have more than simple pity for this girl, Justin. Is that true?” Before he could answer, Ayla added, “Deetra will remain silent.”

  “No, it’s not more than pity.”

  The flame whooshed and turned red. He looked at the fires, brow furrowed, then laughed. “Alright, she’s very attractive.” The flames changed to cobalt-blue. “But I went down there to find a way to stop this from becoming a war.”

  Ayla nodded. Justin wanted her to dismiss his feelings for the girl as pity and move onto more important matters. But, as Ayla had learned in the past eighteen years as High Priestess, the Light needed only a crack in the stone to corrupt the darkness. That’s where she and her son differed, because Ayla did not fear war. The horrors of war could not compare to what could happen if the God of Light put them all back in chains. In the old days, the Freemen had called the God of Light, the “God of Toil.”

  “Do you love her?” Ayla said.

  Justin let out a half-hearted laugh and shook his head. “No.”

  The flames said otherwise with a whoosh and crackle back to crimson. Justin eyes went from the braziers to her and back again. Ayla did not know which was worse, the ache in her chest from the betrayal, or the smug look on Deetra’s face. Justin opened his mouth and then closed it, two, three times - but said nothing. The ache in Ayla’s chest made the transition to rage.

  “Where’s your loyalty?” she hissed, struggling to maintain her composure in the Sanctum while her heart beat behind her eyes.

  Justin held up the gold-trimmed collar of his robe. “Do you know what this means?”

  Ayla did, but waited for him to explain.

  “It means I renounce both the Gods of Light and Darkness. My loyalty is to truth, peace, and justice.”

  The red flames receded, and Ayla’s navy scale mail cast its shards of light on the pillars and altar. His answer, as always, answered the literal question, but not her intent. For him to care for that girl at all offended Ayla to her core. For him to love her betrayed the Empire, Ayla, Deetra - everything and everyone.

  “Peace,” Ayla scoffed. “We had peace for two hundred years. Peace kept us slaves. If not for the war the Night Goddess brought, you’d have been born a minotaur. I would’ve died, and the Empire would still be in chains.”

  “Sometimes war is needed, I don't deny that. But we don't need to go looking for problems with other Kingdoms when have enough to worry about at home.”

  “Such as?”

  “I've seen starving people sacrificed for stealing bread, or their family torn apart by them leaving for the army. People live in fear of the temple. They are no better off now than they were under the minotaurs.”

  Ayla stared at the braziers, willing them to turn, but they did not. He said it with a casual air; a fact for accounting on a ledger. Never mind that minotaurs had raped, murdered, and enslaved the Empire for two hundred years. They used women for breeding stock. Justin knew all of it. She had raised him with the truth. Her heart, throat, and eyes fought to decide between fury and tears. Her voice came out husky and weak.

  “At least now, they’re free.”

  “No. They just have a new Master.”

  More times than Ayla could count, Deetra had called her son weak and tenderhearted. Ayla disagreed. A lump rose in her throat. She swallowed, but it stayed put.

  Justin shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mother. After two hundred years, the Empire is behind. The people need a court of laws. They need trade. That’s how freedom works.”

  Ayla would not debate this again with him. She had told him until it became a mantra; deciding right and wrong, or guilt and innocence was a job for priests, not lawyers. Written laws had no soul, no conscience.

  Justin spread his arms, palms up, offering her the room. He lifted his voice, grandstanding in the Goddess’ most holy of places. Ayla let him. His hole was dug.

  “The Temple is the Crown and the court. It’s the military. It’s everything.” He put one finger on the Altar, poking the heart of the temple - accusing it. “Cross a priest in any city in the Empire, and you’ll be on an altar by nightfall. That’s not freedom. Morality and fairness need standards. Without laws, it’s fear that rules, not -”

  Ayla lifted one hand, silencing him. He said enough, and nothing he had not said before. He closed his mouth, but kept his chin up, defiant and sure of himself. Justin’s resistance to the Dark Queen came long before the Guardian, or his schooling. It had made him the odd man out with his brothers since the days they played with sticks in the Children’s Garden.

  The first time Ayla brought him into this room, he had cried and screamed. Deetra had to carry him in. His fear of the Dark Queen was inborn. His love at first sight for the Guardian only served to illustrate that innate corruption. He no longer screamed and kicked when they entered the sanctum, but the look on his face told her how much he still hated it. His recent education just provided him with rational arguments to justify it.

  Ayla stared into Justin’s wintery eyes, so much like her own, waiting for him to lower his chin. He did not. Ayla shook her head. She had not brought him to the Dark Sanctum for this. He was to prove his innocence, and return to normal life. But the time for hard truths had come. The soft wavering light of the brazier next to her hypnotized her. It was time for her son to make a choice.

  Chapter Twelve

  No Middle Ground

  Justin waited for his mother to speak as she stared into the cobalt flames in the Dark Sanctum. “Even though I knew the curse was broken, I had nightmares about your birth. I didn’t think I could ever love a daily reminder of that beast. I only kept you because the Dark Queen said we would need you. But then you opened your eyes and I saw myself in them.”

  Justin’s eyes flooded and his vision blurred as his mother continued. She never spoke about her pregnancy but Justin had learned about the horrors women faced during the Age of Toil. Priests all over the Empire told the tale every year on this day. His mother spoke of it at temple gatherings on occasion, to impress one lesson upon her congregation or another, but never like this. A wan smile touched her lips.

  “I loved you from that moment, because that’s when I knew that you were mine. You couldn’t ever look like the beast that fathered you.” She shook her head and her lips formed a straight line. “But now, with your chin held high, condemning everything I believe, you look just like him.”

  The cold glow of the braziers stayed blue.

  Her words put a fine point on the despair and rejection he suffered his entire life, and the feelings welled up within him now until his eyes ached for cathartic tears. He set his jaw and kept his chin up.

  His mother lived with blinders on, keeping her on a straight path toward her Goddess. She could not know the depth of his love or his loyalty, because he was not on the same path, joining hands with her and the others as they marched toward the Abyss.

  Deetra stepped forward and grabbed him by the arm. Justin’s temper flared, his pulse beating behind his eyes. He yanked his arm free and she stumbled back.

  “Let go of me,” he snapped.

  Deetra’s mouth twisted with contempt and she marched back toward him. She caught an orderin the look from his mother, and stopped. His mother shook her head and lowered her chin. She covered her face with both hands, took a deep breath, and lifted her head once more.

  “Open it!” she yelled.

  The door grated open, an expanding crescent of light from the hall beyond lighting the Sanctum. Justin walked for the door but Deetra stepped into his path.

  “We’re not done here.”

  “Maybe you’re not.” Justin said, and kept walking. “But I’ve heard enough truth for one day. And if you touch me again-”

  “There’s one more thing we need to discuss,” Ayla said as the door finished opening.

  Victor had Celia under one arm, dragging her unconscious body down the hall toward the Sanctum. She was stripped her of her armor, leaving her in a linen tunic and bloomers. Justin catalogue
d her new injuries; dark fingerprint bruises on her shoulder, blood trickling over her ear from a torn patch of hair, and a swollen lip. Rage bloomed in his chest but he pushed it down. To let it show was to give his mother and Deetra the leverage they sought.

  Justin walked back toward the altar and his mother, purpose in his steps. Celia awoke and screamed from the hall. Justin put his hands on the shining obsidian.

  “Don’t do this, Mother. She’s just a pawn - not the real enemy. Her High Priest used her to start a war. Sacrificing her will-’

  “Will be up to you,” his mother finished for him.

  Celia shrieked again and Justin whirled around. She kicked and fought and spit in Victor’s face. Victor punched her in the stomach and she doubled over. The struggling stopped as she gasped for breath. Justin’s teeth clenched as he stared daggers at Victor. Justin’s soul cried out for him to do something - to stop this - but he had to play it smart.

  His mother spoke from the altar behind him: “I don't believe your corruption began with this Guardian, but your feelings for her is evidence of it.”

  “What corruption?” Justin asked, stepping aside as Victor passed him.

  Celia saw the altar and renewed her struggle but Victor lifted her shrieking, flailing body onto the altar with ease. He attached her chains to the eye hooks in the floor, pinning her on top of the ancient stone. Victor forced a rag into her mouth, muffling her screams but not stopping them. Celia pulled both sets of chains taught and thrashed at him. Finished, he took his place behind Justin.

  His mother gave Victor a nod of approval then drew her obsidian dagger from her belt sheath. She put it to Celia’s throat. Celia’s cries and struggling ceased.

  “You were born human Justin, but not without the corruption of the Light. I always knew, even if I denied it to myself back then. I might have agreed to let this Guardian return to Alfua as a witness to her King. But your feelings for this girl makes all of us doubt your motives.”