“Greed?” Teraeth had an eyebrow raised and an incredulous look on his face.
“No.” Tyentso scowled. “Revenge.” Then she chuckled. “Funny thing is, it wasn’t even my revenge. I’d found this ghost who was willing to teach me magic. I wanted vengeance against the Academy dean who’d ordered my mother executed as a witch, and he wanted justice for his murder by Gadrith D’Lorus. We struck a bargain. Call it a trade of revenges. Anyway, my plan went off without a flaw, but then I found I was stuck with this ghost until I’d fulfilled my end of the deal and punished his murderer too.”
I made a sympathetic noise. I knew firsthand that being possessed by a ghost was not what I considered a good time. Being stuck with one for years?
“Still, Ty—marriage?” Doc seemed amused. “You humans frown on that sort of thing, last I checked.”
“Oh please. I tell you I’ve murdered someone and you don’t care, but incest? Oh no! What will the children think?” She rolled her eyes. “You have to understand: I couldn’t get close enough to Gadrith to kill him. He never left his library except to go to the summoning chambers. Most of his servants were animated corpses. I thought his father the High Lord might welcome me in as an Ogenra, and that would give me a way past the guards and the wards.” She exhaled. “I never expected the bastard Cedric to order me to marry his son, and saying no would have—” She coughed. “—let’s just say refusal wasn’t an option.”
Tyentso waved a hand. “The point is: I have studied Gadrith. His witch gift—the very first spell he ever figured out—was how to rip someone’s entire upper and lower soul out of their body and turn it into a tsali stone.”
Teraeth whistled.
My eyes widened. “Wait. I’ve seen him do that!”
“I can’t imagine it would be a huge leap,” Tyentso continued, “from rock collecting using people, to stealing just the lower soul and absorbing it. When he murdered Emperor Gendal, he didn’t just kill the poor bastard. Gadrith stole the man’s magical power and added it to his own. He made a habit of that, and I can remember—” She paused to wet her throat. “—I can remember Gadrith boasting that the same ability would let him live forever, fool Thaena herself. I thought he was just bragging, but what if he was right?”
“Impossible,” Doc said.
“No,” Tyentso disagreed. “He was good at manipulating souls. What if he’d prepared for his own death? What if he planned it all out, so when you killed him, he’d already tucked most of his upper soul away somewhere safe? He could have sent a sliver of his soul—something like a gaesh—and all his lower soul to the Afterlife. Thaena might well think—at least for a little while—that he’d died. If Thaena thought it, it stands to reason Therin would too.”
I raised a hand. “Wouldn’t he have actually died? You can’t live without your lower soul—” I stopped myself.
I was reasonably certain a healthy chunk of MY lower soul was currently living inside an imprisoned demon king in the middle of Kharas Gulgoth.
“You can if you know a way to keep stealing and feeding on the lower soul of others,” Tyentso said. “And if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll note Gadrith does.”
“Damn,” Teraeth said. “That … would work.”
“What about his corpse?” Doc snapped.
Tyentso shrugged. “What about it? He’s Lord Heir to House D’Lorus. Thrones to diamonds his body was neatly preserved and handed over to his father, High Lord Cedric, for a proper burial in the family crypts. All Gadrith had to do was possess his own body, and he was back in business. Miserable, sure, because if we’re right he’s trapped in a halfway state between living and dead, but the point is, he still exists.”
“Taja!” I set down my cup and grabbed at the blue stone around my neck. “Don’t you see? That’s it! That’s why he’s been chasing after the Stone of Shackles. If he gets his hands on this, he can just goad some fool into killing him and wham … he’ll have their body, just as if it had always been his own. No more existing inside an animated corpse. That’s why he wants it.”
I was elated. Not even the remnants of that hangover could dampen my mood. To finally have some answers, to finally feel that just maybe I understood what the hell was going on, felt amazing. I beamed at the others.
Naturally, Teraeth had to ruin that.
“No good,” he said. “If that were true, Gadrith would have known how to steal the necklace from you. The fact that you’re still here, alive and in the body you were born in, means he doesn’t understand how the necklace really works.”
“Not necessarily,” Doc said. “Gadrith could easily know the necklace makes its wearer switch bodies with their murderer, but I’d be very surprised if he understood that the Stone of Shackles stays with the original body when the switch happens. After all, when Therin showed up with Khaeriel, she still wore the necklace, even though she was now trapped inside the body of the woman who had murdered her, Miya. Gadrith must think the necklace transfers along with the soul.”
My throat tightened. “What did you just say?”
“Khaeriel?” Tyentso raised an eyebrow. “Queen Khaeriel? The vané queen? She’s been dead for decades.”
“Well, you’re not entirely wrong,” Doc said, grinning as he tossed her phrase back to her. “Khaeriel’s body died, sure, but her soul never made it to the Afterlife.”
I kept staring at Doc. “My mother—” I inhaled. “Are you certain?”
“As Death. Don’t tell me you never suspected.”
“I just didn’t want to believe—” Like so many things, I’d known, but hadn’t wanted to take that final step of admitting the truth to myself. Of course, Miya was my mother. However— “Wait. Khaeriel? You’re saying that Miya is Queen Khaeriel?”
Doc sighed. “Use that brain. I know it hurts, but try.”
Teraeth snickered.
I scowled. “I hate you both. Just give me a straight answer.”
“You know Miya owned the Stone of Shackles—and gave it to you when she tried to have you smuggled out of Quur. How do you think she got it?”
I leaned back against the chair. A long time ago, when I had first run into Gadrith and Darzin, Dead Man and Pretty Boy, they had been asking those very same questions, hadn’t they? About the Stone of Shackles. Her serving girl ran off with it, Gadrith had said.
No one’s seen Miyathreall in years.
Miya.
“Miya was Queen Khaeriel’s handmaiden,” I said. “Except that’s not what she really was, was she? She was Queen Khaeriel’s assassin.”
Doc beamed. “Exactly. But, since Khaeriel was wearing the Stone of Shackles, Khaeriel was transferred into Miya’s body. Same thing that happened to me, history repeating itself.”
Teraeth set his elbows on the table, cup in hand. “She would have been extremely vulnerable just after the transfer. Magic is physical as much as spiritual. A new body means you have to learn spells all over again.”
Doc gave him a nasty grin. “You would know.”