Page 46 of Sanctifier

“You’re the Destroyer. I should hate you for that alone, but I can’t. I can’t, or I’d hate myself, and… there’s a part of me that doesn’t. That part of me is just angry.” She swallowed, shaking her head. “Actually, no.Allof me is angry. I’m angry at the regent, Lord D’Luc, Lady Bellenet,you… but especially myself.” She couldn’t help the anguish in her voice. “But how could I have known? I didn’t mean to kill anyone.”

His chest rose and fell. “I know you didn’t.”

The moon was rising, and blue-white light angled through gaps in velvet curtains, in contrast to the orange firelight.

“What happened, Taryel? At the Destruction.” Ru exhaled shakily. “Tell me that. Everything else you’ve done, I can wrap my head around. I don’t like it, but I understand it. But theDestruction…I need to know.”

He nodded, ran a thumb along the back of her hand, then let her go.

“It was nearly a thousand years ago,” he said slowly. “But I remember as if it was yesterday. It was early morning in Ordellun-by-the-Sea.”

CHAPTER 15

Firelight danced against the night’s shadows, limning the room in warmth. It should have been cozy, but Taryel’s dark form, edged in a fiery glow, only made Ru uneasy. She reached thoughtlessly for her tea, a small comfort in that breathless evening.

“The tale as it’s told now,” he said, in the cadence of a man lost in the memory of a story, “the Destruction, the Shattered City… it’s mostly true. I was King Alaric II’s sorcerer. He called me his advisor, but everyone at court knew what I was. My magic was a badly-kept secret, but I was too powerful to touch, the right hand of the king.”

He sighed and shook his head slightly. “I joined him to change the world for the better. He was a monarch who ruled with cold rationality, a man who spared few thoughts for his own people. He wasn’t quite a monster, but he was… lacking. And I believed that with compassion and my powers, I could mold him into a better king.”

“Ambitious,” said Ru, sipping her tea.

“More like self-centered,” Taryel said, running a hand through his hair. “Naive. Wildly foolish, take your pick of descriptors. When I revealed to Alaric that I had magic, he wasonly too happy to bring me into the fold. He appointed me to the post of advisor by the time I was barely twenty-five. I was impulsive and emotional, quick to act and far slower to think. I made a mistake in putting my faith in him.”

Ru listened so intently she hardly dared breathe, as if she might startle him into silence if she made any sudden movements. How many people other than Taryel knew the truth? A first-hand account of the Destruction, the moments leading up to it… she knew she couldn't afford to forget a single word.

“I was wrong about King Alaric II,” Taryel said, and a darkness passed over his face, like a cloud passing over stars. “He wasn’t a bad king. He was so much worse. A blind fanatic. A man who sought power above all else, for the sake of salvation. There were thousands of devotees in the city, so many. And they followed him religiously. He was their god incarnate.”

Ru stared, teacup held halfway to her mouth. “Devotees? Of Festra, you mean?”

He stared at his hands, folding and unfolding in his lap. “Yes.”

A god-king, a city’s salvation, an impending destruction. Ru could see the faintest pieces beginning to fall into place, a pattern slowly emerging.

Reluctant, almost shy, Taryel looked up to meet her gaze. There was pain in his eyes that she couldn’t begin to calculate, a depthless hurt that spanned centuries.

“I came to believe,” he said, voice low. “I fell for the grandiose speeches, the promise of an eternity of light. Everything you heard in the throne room, the chants, the promises… King Alaric delivered the same rhetoric. And somehow, despite myself, I fell under his spell. I was a young man of sound mind, sensible, never before taken in by the concept of religion. But after only afew months with Alaric, I became devoted, a fanatic in my own right. I carried out his wishes in the name of his god.”

Ru frowned, thinking. “You fell under his spell. Could King Alaric have wielded the same power as Lady Bellenet? There’s clearly more to this than honest faith.”

“Maybe,” Taryel said, sounding unconvinced. “More likely I was weak, eager to please. Isolated, lonely. King Alaric offered me somewhere to belong, and… a lonely, desperate mind is easy to mold. It’s easy to turn a blind eye when you want something that badly.”

“But you wanted a compassionate king. Festra is in opposition to that,” Ru insisted. “You weren’t as weak as you want me to believe.”

“I don’twantto be weak,” Taryel said, bristling. “I would have done anything… He used me, Ru. Coerced me. Convinced me that I would be the one tosavethe kingdom, to open the gates to paradise. I would be the one to cleanse the world in fire. You have to understand, the more time I spent with Alaric, the more I learned about my powers. I became intoxicated by it. Because I couldn’t just travel, Ru. I could destroy.”

Ru leaned forward, her tea and cookies utterly forgotten. Had anyone heard the full story before, in the history of Navenie?

Taryel, so wrapped up in the memory that he no longer seemed aware of Ru, stared into the past as he spoke. “I practiced this new power on remote beaches, in empty fields, even on boats on the water. Wherever I could reasonably avoid harming someone other than myself. But one day, Althea followed me. She’d been worried. I’d been avoiding her, caring only for my king and my god. I was blind to her. And when I realized she had followed me, that she was there with me in the woods… it was too late.”

He looked up at Ru, his eyes red-rimmed, the expression of a ruined man. “I killed her. She called my name as I cast the spell, and when I turned to look… she was gone. Everything was gone: trees, ferns, every living thing. And in its place, a perfect circle of destruction lay around me. I nearly drew a dagger across my own throat that day. The only thing that stopped me was my hatred of King Alaric. He had pushed me to develop my talents for destruction.Hemade me Althea’s murderer. And if I died, he would only find some other magician tocleanse the world.”

He spoke those last words through gritted teeth.

Ru leaned toward Taryel, an instinctive movement. She stopped herself just before her thumb touched his cheek. There was too much pain between them, still. Too little trust.

“After that, I played along,” he continued, pain permeating his words. “I planned to do everything King Alaric asked of me, up until the moment I was expected to destroy the world. I meant to kill him, Ru. I meant to killonlyhim. My powers were powerful but volatile, and in my naivete, I was utterly convinced of my self-discipline. I was so sure that Alaric and I would be swallowed up in darkness, and that would be the end of it.

“Instead, I lost control. My own power was too much for me, and my rage was so great…” he hung his head, running shaky fingers through black hair. “I destroyed the city.Mycity.”

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