The face before him wavered, Luap’s unstable will as obvious as a flame in a gust of wind. Then Paks spoke, and Luap’s expression changed again, this time to awe. Kieri waited, watching that conversation and glancing beyond her to notice again the two, man and woman, who stood near Luap. One, the woman, gave him the same feeling Paks gave him. She met his gaze as frankly, then turned hers to Paks. The man looked at Luap and then directly at Kieri and gave a little nod.
“Don’t worry,” Paks said. Kieri focused on her words again. “Gird will help you.”
Luap flinched. “Not me,” he said. The words seemed dragged out of him. “I erred. Stupidly.” He said more, but sounds seemed to blur; Kieri poured more of his own power into the connection. “I could read, you see. I was smarter,” came through clearly. Luap blinked and looked down.
“Smart enough to cut yourself with your own sword?” Kieri felt compassion for the broken man for the first time. “I did that, too.” From the corner of his eye he saw that Paks was looking at him. “We kings’ sons have much to learn from peasants, Luap.”
Luap’s laugh was harsh, followed by a rush of tears. “So Gird said. And Rahi.”
Kieri quirked an eyebrow. Who was Rahi, and why was he or she important in this crisis?
“Gird’s daughter.”
“You knew his daughter?” Paks said, shooting a worried look at Kieri. “I thought all his children died young.” She looked back at Luap. “You’re afraid. What is it?”
“Iynisin,” Luap said, and then, as if capable of a final burst of resolution, even honesty, he told the tale in a hurried monotone, from moving the mageborn to the canyon to actions that made Kieri’s blood freeze. Stealing life from a mageborn healer? How could anyone—? “We will die,” Luap said at last. “All of us—”
And they had all died. That much was clear from what the expeditions from Fintha had found. No sign of mageborn life in that wild land, only things left behind in the stronghold under the mountain. Far too like the elfane taig his grandmother had created and in which she had been trapped for a time.
“Can you help us escape?”
“No.” Not this way, not this man, not even the two who seemed to glow with a power similar to Paks’s. He could not, because he had not, because they were out there now, enchanted. But how could he tell Luap that? He had to try, and he began, thinking it out as he went.
Paks interrupted, eyes bright with an idea. He let her talk, let her push past Luap’s objections, instead concentrating on what they might do—how they might do it. Then his ear snagged on something Luap said, and he interrupted. “You? Oathbreaker? You seized command against your oath to Gird?”
Another rush of excuses followed, layer after layer of them, onionlike, explaining what he had thought and why breaking his oath was right. Kieri’s brief sympathy waned. At last, Luap fell silent and the silence lengthened. “I was wrong,” Luap said. “I thought I would be better than my ancestors.”
Kieri thought of Dorrin, working so hard to be better than hers when she had been better from the beginning.
Luap gulped and went on. “I was worse. And I don’t know what to do. Aris and Seri—” He glanced at the two Kieri had noted. “—told me to pray, and when I prayed, I saw you.”
So the gods—or a god—were in this with him? Had they sent Gird to help? For the first time Kieri felt certain this impossible situation, magery worked across time, had a real purpose, that he was meant to be part of it. In fact, he knew what he had to do: just what he had done so often as commander, as duke, and now as king. Take command from someone who was incapable and straighten things out.
Luap had power, though without character or strength of will. So little was left of the Luap Gird had known and loved, so much alien in the dark hollow of his core.
“Yield to me,” Kieri said, heart to that feeble heart. “Let me do what can be done.” Little as it was, and deep as his own grief at it.
“Please,” Luap said.
Kieri reached into that dark center of Luap’s self, that hollow some evil had eaten out and nestled in. He plucked out the thing—he had no word for it but the elven banast, “cursed”—and squeezed it, feeling something like hands around his own will, helping him, until it was nothing, a spot of slime that vanished.
Luap looked different—but weaker, not stronger as Kieri had hoped. He would, Kieri realized, waste precious time wallowing in guilt if allowed, but Kieri had no intention of letting him indulge himself in anything, not if any could be saved. He pressed deeper into Luap’s self, taking over his mouth to give the orders that—to a man of his experience—were so obvious. His meaning came out in Luap’s words—words his ears could not quite understand. The woman beside Luap nodded, her intelligent face showing determination now more than anger, and she turned to others. The man behind Luap, the healer-mage, frowned, then nodded and turned away; the woman protested, by her expression, but finally followed the man. All three moved into the crowd; it quieted; he could see clumps appearing that fit his orders—children and parents, adults bearing arms—until all had chosen a group.