Obsidian Ridge (The Citadels) by Jess Lebow

Author:Jess Lebow [Lebow, Jess]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780786963706
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2012-08-07T00:00:00+00:00

chapter nineteen

Everything shook. Only slightly, but it shook all the same. The walls hummed with power. The floor swayed like the deck of a ship on a gentle sea. The chandeliers, decorative reminders of a time long past, swayed gently, constantly.

Resting his bone-thin arm on the chiseled obsidian throne, Arch Magus Xeries twirled the stem of his wine goblet between his fingers. He watched the red liquid inside swirl. Its surface trembled, never smooth, shifting like everything else.

On the dais in front of him, an image fluttered—Erlkazar, the plains of Llorbauth. His pets gathered below, waiting. And they would continue to wait, just as he would.

He had not been patient as a younger man. He had, in fact, hated waiting for anything. In truth, he didn’t much like it now. But as an immortal, waiting had become a simple fact of life.

He had grown better at it, through practice. He had had a lot of practice waiting, though he wasn’t as rash and reactive as he had been long ago. There was a limit to all of his learned patience.

Xeries was approaching that limit now.

“Do you remember our first ride through the countryside here?” he asked, not taking his eyes off of his wine.

“I’ve … never been here before,” replied a weak, shaky woman’s voice.

Xeries turned his attention to his left, where his wife, his queen, sat. Their thrones were carved from the same piece of obsidian, chiseled from the same huge piece of stone as the floor itself. They were attached to each other and to the floor. And when Xeries and his queen sat in their thrones, they could feel the vibrations of the entire citadel, amplified above all other places.

“I know you haven’t,” he said to his wife, his voice echoing as it always did. “I wasn’t speaking to you.”

“Oh,” she said. She wore a long, black veil that covered her face and shoulders. When seated, its hem collected in her lap.

“This was my home, long ago,” he said, looking down on the image at his feet. “Well, a piece of it anyway. As a young man.”

“Is that why we are here?” she asked. She wheezed a little as she spoke these words.

“In part,” he said. “I need something they have. Something to help me.”

His wife’s voice grew cold. “Something to maintain your immortality, you mean.”

Xeries stood, his knees popping and creaking as he did. He shuffled down from the dais. His body was bent from age, and he sported the wicked marks and deformations of a man who had dabbled with powers well beyond his control.

“Have you not lived a good life?” he asked. “Have you not been given everything your heart desires?”

“You have shown me places and given me baubles,” she replied. “But you have taken more than your fair share in return.”

“I have loved you more than I have loved any of my other wives. Does that not please you?”

“That is not true.” She spoke these words so forcefully that it caused her to cough.

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