The Shape of Dark Magicks (9)

I could feel Father's corpse on the floor behind me, and I turned to face it.

Go back to the INDEX.

I arrived in Agali, and my ears popped, painfully adjusting to the local air pressure.

Stone walls, the hue of lavender. Exquisite cabinetry. A marble figurine of a woman with too many arms. I could feel Father's corpse on the floor behind me, and I turned to face it. 

If not for the awkward angle of the limbs, he might've been sleeping. His face was placid. I'd never seen him like that. 

I could tell that his bowels had loosened. I could feel no spark of lingering spirit about him. Just an inert mass, with only relict electrical signals. 

I explored the body with the subtlest of my arts and the most delicate of my workings. A vessel had broken in the brain. A stroke? It seemed entirely natural. Unprovoked. And yet there was another obvious echo, which reminded me ...

"You don't need to keep hiding, Mother."

"Hiding?" She sounded wounded as she stepped into view from the sun-drenched balcony. I was merely allowing you an opportunity to grieve." She smirked.

"Did you do this?" Several emotions danced inside me, and I endeavored to keep them all in their place. 

"You tell me. Haven't you already discovered there are absolutely no signs of poisons, or of dark magicks? No evidence at all that anything but a ruptured blood vessel killed him?"

"Did you do it?"

"You truly wound me."

"You could've done it. It's easy enough to hide your tracks."

"And I taught you the same magick."

"You're accusing me?"

"Of course not. I’m simply stating that we share many of the same skills. You could have erased the evidence of the murder, and replaced it, overlaid it, with an innocent investigation, just as I could have."

"Is that what you did?" I had felt those innocent investigations of hers within the corpse. Were they truly innocent? 

"You're here, implicated, just as much as I am."

"And the Lanstone guided me here, as you well know."

"And the Trace I had on your father guided me here. Or near here. We're even."

"This isn't a game. He's dead, and Father would never have allowed himself to simply die. He was killed. I know it. You know it."

"And yet there is no evidence. If I didn't do it, and you didn't do it, then ...?"

It made no sense. Did he have enemies here in Agali? "Have you ..." I waved my hand around. 

"Searched the room? Of course. More thoroughly than you, I imagine. Anyway, enough of this insidious talk: how are you? How is your brother?"

I wanted time for such things, but they'd just have to wait. "You were here with him for some time, weren't you?"

"Oh. I see it's too soon for pleasantries. In that case, perhaps you'd better take your father home before the authorities get here. If you go now, you can still make it. I can explain everything to them."

"What?"

"You've just crossed their national, regional, municipal, and diplomatic Boundaries with an unauthorized and unorthodox farsending. That’s certainly enough to draw their curiosity. They'll find you here, and ..." She glanced over at Father's corpse. "He's a complication."

"What about you?"

"Me? I entered the city days ago, through normal channels. With your father. I thought you were paying attention. I can tell them all that I know, with a clear conscience."

"Can you? You have more motive to kill him than I do. I hated him, but he was my father. Isn't hatred a natural response to him? And, now he's dead, I'm second in line to the lanarchy, instead of third? I suppose I have designs on my brother too? To usurp him and take his place?"

"Don't you?"

I stammered. This thought had never crossed my mind before. My full and true liberation could only ever come at my brother's expense. And this wasn't the time to think it through rigorously. "You're his estranged wife. He had you exiled. Surely you wanted vengeance for the years of torment he put you through?"

Mother seemed to consider that idea. "Perhaps I did when I was under his control. But in all these years I've barely given him any thought. I thought only of you. And your brother, I suppose."

"So why were you here? I doubt the two of you were making peace. It's not who he WAS."

"Actually—" Mother began.

And it was too late. Six robed men appeared, their skin the color of ebony, their features long, their eyes like polished jet. Before I could react, I felt their Interdiction surrounding the room. No amount of will, imagination, or direction could get me out of there, not even the pull of my Lanstone, or my yearning for the safety of home.

Continue reading with Part 10 - The Chamber of Death.