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I guess that interpretation will serve my purpose as well as the one I was suggesting. I raise my voice again, without the slightest twinge of guilt when I think about all the children Ster. Torstem has manipulated into carving themselves up for his gain. “We have to destroy him!”
Rumbles of agreement reach me from all sides. The gathered conspirators surge toward Torstem, swaying but intent on their goal.
The law professor holds up his hands, his eyes that look like King Konram’s sweeping from side to side. He must be wondering who’s responsible for this magic, calculating his odds of survival.
I doubt he’s got enough humility to consider that the gods might actually be sending him a divine message.
“This is a trick,” he calls out, projecting his voice over the warble of the fire and the increasingly aggressive muttering of his followers. “Our enemies are trying to deceive you.”
“Our enemies aren’there,” the fox-masked man in front of me retorts. “This is a secret meeting. It has to be a sign from the gods. If it wasn’t, why haven’t they shown us they don’t agree?”
Another shout careens across the hilltop. “Throw him into the fire!”
Torstem backs away, but the conspirators are closing in on him from all around. With the fire only a few paces behind him, there’s nowhere for him to go.
“Look at him, trying to escape the fate he’s owed,” I holler for good measure. “Not much of a leader now, is he?”
Torstem’s gaze veers in my direction, peering through the hazy light. Has he recognized my voice, realized that the supposed Ivy of Nikodi must have played a part in this charade?
It doesn’t matter. There’s no easy escape for him.
He has to use his magic on the crowd. Persuade them that the sight of the king shouldn’t anger them, that our ruler can have a calming presence.
Contradict everything he’s spent the last however many years brainwashing them into believing.
The raven-like figure nearest Torstem snatches at his arm, but Torstem yanks it away. His voice has frayed. “It’s still me. You know me. You’ve trusted me—trust me now. This isn’t what it seems.”
“What else could it be?” a woman beside him demands. “You have the face of the man who’s forced all of us under his wretched rule.”
Another man smacks his hands together. “Itisthe king. He’s lying through his teeth like always!”
I risk one more shout of my own. “The gods have given us a sign! We have to show we’ve listened.”
A harsh cheer goes up. “Throw him in the fucking fire!”
This is the moment when Torstem needs to act. I brace myself for the calm to wash over me along with the rest of the crowd, with all the power of his sacrificial accomplice magnifying it.
I can only imagine the confusion that will follow.
He can try to inflame their rage against King Konram again afterward, but it’ll never quite be the same. Their certainty will always have been shaken—they’ll never be as confident as they were before.
He’ll have destroyed the essence of his conspiracy before I had to lay a finger on him.
But as the small crowd converges on the law professor in his kingly illusion, a strange shift comes over his body. His shoulders tense, and he lifts his head higher with a look of resolve I’d think will only infuriate his followers more.
He raises one hand as if for our attention. “The king must die. The royal family must fall. Let me continue to show you the way.”
Then he leaps straight into the fire.
A cry escapes my throat before I can catch it. A couple of the closer followers grope after their leader and jerk their hands back with yelps of pain at the burn.
In the fire, Torstem’s figure and the illusion wrapped around it crumple amid the flames. A hiss-like whine of pain penetrates the roar of heat, and his body convulses. I don’t know how he holds back a scream.
“The king is burning!” someone shouts, and the scourge sorcerers erupt into ragged cheers.
They whirl around, resuming their revels even wilder than before. An elbow bangs my shoulder, and I duck farther into the shadows at the edge of the hill, horror clamping around my gut.
How could Torstem have done that? He sacrificed himself… so his followers didn’t have to sacrifice the beliefs he cultivated?
