Sky Breaker (Night Spinner Duology), Addie Thorley [100 books to read in a lifetime txt] 📗

You failed me. You failed Ashkar.

Finally Kartok ambles over and peels back the tapestry. He looks down at me, not even attempting to suppress his peevish grin. “All of this flailing is quite unnecessary. I only want to run a few little tests. You’ll hardly feel a thing.”

“I’d rather skip to the part where you kill me.” I’d been so certain he would execute me as soon as we arrived in Karekemish—make a spectacle of my death for his empress and the throng of bloodthirsty Zemyans. So when it didn’t happen, I was momentarily relieved. But now I see it for the misfortune it is. I don’t want to die. But I want to be Kartok’s test subject even less.

He circles me like the sharks undoubtedly prowling the water surrounding this prison and retrieves a waterskin from the folds of his robe. “I presume you’re familiar with tales of our sacred hot spring?” he asks.

I eye the waterskin swinging like a pendulum from his bony fingers. “If by ‘sacred hot spring’ you mean ‘diabolical pool of unnatural magic,’ yes.”

Kartok doesn’t take the bait. He stands taller and speaks to the ceiling with reverence that borders on fanaticism. “We may not be born with power, but that doesn’t make our abilities any less valid. Quite the opposite. Zemya created our powers through persistence and innovation. Characteristics she passed along to her people—we are hungry and hardworking because we have to be. Instead of hoarding Her power and bestowing it on a select few, Zemya gave each of us equal opportunity to succeed by transferring Her magic into the hot spring and allowing all to drink. We are the masters of our own fate, depending on how hard we are willing to work.”

I snort. “Giving power to all is a recipe for disaster. Clearly.” I wave my hand at the generál.

“Is it? Or are you afraid of what that would mean for you? How it would feel to be as ordinary as the rest of us? There’s no denying the strength that comes from struggle. Tell me, Commander, who is the better warrior: One with natural abilities but a poor work ethic, since they’ve never had to try, or a naturally weaker warrior who throws everything they have into training, who finds ways to counteract their shortcomings, who has to fight, tooth and nail, for every little success? Who would you rather have at your side in battle?”

When I don’t answer, Kartok crouches in front of me. I can smell the dust and sweat of the road on his robes, the overpowering tang of garlic on his breath. I press myself against the wall and turn my head. But that only draws him closer. His face hovers a finger’s breadth from mine.

“All ‘power’ is created by someone or something initially,” he says. “What does it matter if it was born of the Lady and Father or one of Their children? In the end, they are one flesh. Zemya’s power is Their power. She shouldn’t have been condemned and banished.”

I look directly into his unsettling blue eyes. “Zemya got what She deserved. And I don’t see what any of this has to do with me.”

He grabs a fistful of my hair, wrenches my head back, and forces the waterskin into my mouth. The liquid gushes down my throat, thick and warm and sulfuric. Like the sweltering rot that hangs over a battlefield. I cough and heave and spit, suddenly boiling inside my skin. Yet my body twitches and shivers. My tongue is drier than the stale jerky in the disgusting ration sacks reserved for lesser warriors.

Kartok chuckles as I claw at the neckline of my tunic. “Do you feel anything unusual?”

“If your hot-spring water is so precious and powerful,” I finally growl through the pain, “why give it to me? Why bestow me with more power?”

Kartok touches the heel of his palm to the bottom of his chin in a strange religious gesture I’ve seen many times at the war front. “Because I have perfect faith in my goddess. I know that Zemya would never allow Her magic to strengthen you. In fact, I predict it will do the opposite.”

“I thought She wants ‘all people to be equal,’ ” I retort.

Kartok slaps my cheek. “Summon your ice.”

“Now I don’t want to.”

“Summon. Your. Power.”

“I’d rather die.”

The truth is, I don’t know if I could summon the ice even if I wanted to. I was hot and depleted and exhausted before Kartok poisoned me with his goddess’s magic. But I’m not about to give him the satisfaction of thinking he won. And part of me is terrified to know if it worked—if his hot-spring water can actually strip me of my gift. So I focus on the blue vein bulging in the center of Kartok’s forehead, and smirk. I have an insatiable desire to pinch it between my fingers and pop it like a bloated leech.

“You do not want to anger me, Commander,” he warns.

“Oh, but I do.”

His hands fly toward me, and the same wrenching pain that incapacitated me in the prison wagon grips my tongue. Only now I don’t crumple. Because I know it isn’t real. If I don’t believe his lies, they won’t be able to hurt me. Kartok’s invisible grip tightens, but the pain doesn’t increase. It doesn’t lessen, either, but I am slowly gaining ground against the illusion. Learning to fight it.

“Very well.” Kartok whips a long double-edge blade from his robes and throws it at my face. It flies faster than I can react, even if I wasn’t injured and exhausted, and the razor tip sinks deep into my right eye. Pain detonates through my skull, shooting and stabbing. I scream and clutch the wound, certain it’s deep enough to kill me. But blood doesn’t wet my fingers. And there’s no hilt protruding from my skull.

Another illusion. This one ten times more painful than his trick