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“I’m going to show you now.”
17
Blue mist rose out of him and encircled my hand. Soon the connection was too strong for me to remove my hand, even if I’d wanted to. The glittering water droplets crept up my arm, along with a tingling cold.
In a breath, the mist both consumed me and sank into me. I was no longer standing in front of Ash against the Labyrinth walls. I was facing an elaborate keyhole suspended in space. Silver mist reached from me toward the lock and wove through the small hole, eliciting a faint click.
I was staring at a man wearing a golden crown in a small room with a round table and latticed windows. Two other men stood to the side of the room. My hands were chained in front of me. Cold metal pinched my wrists and ankles.
“You will do this,” the king said. “This will be your prison, built by your own hands, to contain everyone like you—everyone capable of doing what you have done. Every mage who enters your Labyrinth will be one less to threaten our world, and it will be your magic that sustains it. Forever.”
I glanced out the window, anger simmering in my chest. “No one lives forever,” I grumbled.
“But you will.”
I frowned. There was but one way a man could live past the bounds of his natural lifespan. “You claim to hate my magic, yet you bid me use it to stay alive?”
He thrust a finger at me. “You took the minds of so many, giving yourself power, sucking it from those who had no choice but to give it to you.” He leaned forward, pressing his chest against the table. “You will continue to do this. Endlessly. From each mage that dies in the Labyrinth,” he said, jabbing his finger into the table so hard his skin turned white, “you will siphon out a little of their life to extend your own.”
My blood seethed. “When I did that before, it was to save a life.”
The king scoffed.
The face of a woman flashed through my mind. I’d extended the life of the woman I loved, not knowing it would start a war, and yet, after all that happened, after all I tried, her life was only hanging by the most fragile of threads. Now that I was a prisoner, the king could will her death or her life by the flick of a finger.
“You will write this into the magic of the Labyrinth. There will be no escaping it.” The king jerked his head toward the two mages standing by the wall. “What you did to us, we will do to you as you are crafting this prison. We will ensure that it is built exactly to our liking.” The threat in his voice was obvious. The king and his mages were going to invade my mind and use me as a tool.
As I’d done to countless others.
My teeth ground together, but there was little I could do to resist this man. I’d lost. Despite all the power I’d accrued, I had still been overcome.
“Part of your punishment,” the king said, standing, his fists braced on the table, “will be to live forever with the knowledge of what you have done. And even if you seek atonement, it will never come. You will see each mage who enters the prison weaken and die within the walls of your Labyrinth, fed the poison of their own magic. And perhaps over time, as you see each one of those mages as the enemy they truly are, you will begin to feel the weight of what you did. Of who you are. And if it begins to grow heavy on you, it will still never be enough.” Spittle flew from his lips at the last word. “Now go.”
He flung his arm wide and turned toward the window. Instinctively, I reached for his mind, but barbs had been placed around it by the mages standing in the room to prevent me from entering. Even under the magical cage I was in, I still had more power than they knew. But it was less, it was weakened now. They had stripped everything from me.
The king moved toward the door, and I had but one chance to say something before he vanished.
“How are you and I any different?” I asked, voice low.
The king paused at the door, and I might have imagined that his shoulders trembled. “You and I are nothing alike.”
He stormed from the room, leaving me with the two mages.
The memories shifted. I was standing in a forest surrounded by people in dark cloaks. My body couldn’t move. I was no longer chained in iron, but I was more confined than I’d ever been, chained by magic. The magic caging my body forced me to turn toward the man standing behind me. His small crown glittered in the moonlight. Beside him, six other mages stood, should I try anything.
“You will build the prison here,” the king said. “You will make it inescapable. You will build madness into it that will drive even the strongest to their knees. You will strip the ability to think from every meddler who enters my kingdom. And as you build, remember our bargain. She will be healed, but first you must build.”
All I felt was anger as my muscles moved without my consent toward a freestanding blue door waiting in the dark forest ahead. Though I hated this feeling, I walked willingly, seeing the face of a woman—the woman I loved—pale and nearly lifeless. If I completed this task to the king’s liking, she would be spared. After so much death, one life was all I cared about. If she lived, I would wander this world forever, in a maze of my own making.
“You will use your magic under my command this time, and you will use it to save this country from the likes of you,” the king bellowed as I strode toward the door.
And with that, a feeling like a boot in my back sent me through the door. It shut behind me. And though I knew there was nothing magical separating me from the king anymore, not until I built it, I also knew that I was forever alone.
Twenty men and women stood before me. They faced away and their hands were shackled behind them. Some were shaking, others crying. Without hesitation, I pulled their consciousnesses into my own, and they fell to the ground, lifeless. Their heartbeats would return if I finished my task quickly enough. In the last battle, I’d employed five mages to fuel my own magic. With the power of twenty mages, I could tear the foundations of the earth apart.
But despite the immense power at my disposal, the king’s mages were still trapping my desires, and just as he’d planned, I began to build. I called up walls and trees and traps. Then I saw her face, and my concentration wavered. But the king’s mages gripped my mind and shoved it away from thoughts of my love—the woman I’d started and lost a war for.
I had a task to complete, and I knew the king’s mages wouldn’t kill me. Death would have been too easy. The power of all the Guilds whirled in my mind and I directed them as I saw fit, pulling stones from the depths of the earth to do my bidding. Every time my magic surged toward something the king did not desire, the chains on my mind tightened, and I was forced to relent. The king’s mages were always watching, making sure I did as he commanded. Of all the mages in his kingdom, I was the only one capable of building this place he so desperately desired, the only one capable of wielding so many minds at once and locking in place the magic as I went. An odd irony, given that he’d wanted to eliminate me in every battle we’d entered over the past year.
