The Hunter's Gambit

by Nicholas McIntire

  Her face lit up, “Hade! Jonas! Gods no, not at all, I assure you. I’ve been so lonely. It’s been horrible. Right now a friendly face is more than welcome. What have you heard?”

  He smiled at her desperate torrent of words, and at her question. Sentimental and fragile she may be, but Ilyana certainly possessed a pragmatic streak that exhibited itself from time to time.

  “They mean to make an example of you.” he said softly. “To warn the others from acting foolishly.”

  She opened her mouth to speak but he forestalled her with a hand, “Ilyana, I’m not condoning their thoughts or their actions, I’m just stating them as fact. As for what we do next, well, that’s another matter entirely.”

  “You’ve spoken with the Queen?” she asked hopefully.

  Jonas nodded, “I have, and she agrees with me. But getting Parliament to see eye to eye with us might be a little more difficult.”

  Her face paled, “How difficult?”

  Jonas took a deep breath. “Ilyana, what you have to understand about Parliament is that they’re not actually angry at you. You’re merely the whipping boy. They’re pouring their fear and loathing, all the things they resent about us, all of the things that make them uncertain, into this whole farce. If not you it would have been Hade, or Aya, or anyone who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “Parliament has no idea what we’re capable of. They fear what they don’t understand, and they’ve never understood us.

  “They think that if they can frighten the other Magi sufficiently with a fate similar to yours, then maybe they can rest a little easier at night knowing that we aren’t going to rise up and seize the realm.”

  Ilyana gasped, “How could they think that? Jonas, how can they possibly believe that any of us could be like that? Our magic doesn’t even work that way. I just don’t understand what they’re afraid of!”

  Tears of frustration poured down her cheeks. Hade hurried to her side and she buried her face in his shoulder.

  “Ilyana, these men didn’t walk around the Voralla and see the gardens and the courtyards where you meditate and decide you were a threat. They’re acting based on the simple fact that you have power, no matter its intended purpose. You have power they do not control, and that makes you dangerous.”

  “And what about you?” she asked softly.

  He frowned, “How do you mean?”

  “You said that they thought I was dangerous. But you didn’t include yourself. Why not?”

  Jonas winced, wishing he’d been thinking clearer. He needed sleep more than he’d thought.

  “Even if Sammul has told them that I can use the Archanium, I’m the Prince of Ilyar and I’ve received no formal training, in accordance with the law. Therefore, I can’t possibly be a threat to them because I am both part of the social machine they believe they control, and because I haven’t been trained the way you and Hade and the others have.”

  “But–”

  “What you know,” Jonas said quietly, his voice dangerous, “you know because of your abilities. Because of your connection to the Archanium. They have no such ability, and so they have no reason to think of me as anything more than a prince who is neither next in line for succession nor necessarily that powerful.

  “Even if I can touch the Archanium, members of the royal family are expressly forbidden from enrolling in the Voralla. And I’m hardly the first to fit that description, as you well know.”

  Ilyana swallowed hard and nodded.

  Jonas glanced around the room, his frown deepening. “Ilyana, where is Marrik?”

  She started to answer, but couldn’t speak past the sobs that assailed her once again.

  Marrik was Ilyana’s Knight. Every Magus in the Voralla had a Knight. Bound together by the magic of the Archanium to work as a team, the Knights ensured that nothing physical harmed the Magi while they conjured their spells.

  But if Ilyana was imprisoned here in the apartments, it was only because of her status as one of the elite. Magi were afforded such deference. Archanium Knights were another matter.

  Jonas didn’t say a word. Instead he came to his feet and walked back to the door. The guards outside were still alert and cautious. He pulled one from the neat arc they’d formed.

  “Highness?” the young man asked uncertainly.

  “Go to the dungeon and fetch the Archanium Knight Marrik. Bring him here. If anyone questions you, you are acting under my orders. Is that clear?”

  The guard nodded, his eyes wide.

  Jonas turned his glare to the sergeant, silently daring the man to contradict him. The sergeant nodded solemnly, “As you command, Highness.”

  Jonas stepped back into Ilyana’s rooms. “They’re bringing Marrik now.”

  Her face regained some of its former brilliance, “Thank you, Jonas.”

  Jonas nodded absently, lost in his own thoughts. Why hadn’t he seen it sooner? It seemed so obvious now.

  If every Magus was feared because they controlled magic that the Lords of Parliament neither commanded nor understood, then they were doubly feared because each Magus was bound to a Knight.

  There were over three hundred Magi in the Voralla and therefore over three hundred Knights, each part of an efficient military unit, trained to work as a team.

  The Magi of the Voralla might have very few destructive abilities, but swords were swords. And Archanium Knights were no mere foot soldiers. After all, the bond between Knight and Magus worked both ways.

  Did the nobles fear the Knights more than the Magi? Andariana had a small but highly trained army literally camped on her lawn. It mattered little how many soldiers each lord contributed to the Legion if the lords themselves were surrounded day and night by three hundred Archanium Magi and their Knights.

  “Idiots.” he muttered.

  Ilyana frowned and opened her mouth to say something when the door opened and a man stumbled into the room.

  His face was haggard, rough with a week’s growth of beard. His eyes were sallow and tired, but there was a fire that still burned within them that seemed all the brighter for it.

  “Marrik!” she gasped, leaping from her seat next to Hade.

  The Knight embraced her gently, wincing when she squeezed too tightly.

  Jonas glanced at Hade and wasn’t surprised to see traces of an age-old jealousy. Magi and their Knights held certain affections for one another, and that closeness was unavoidable.

  Outsiders who fell in love with Magi were often unable to maintain any real romantic relationship. It simply wasn’t reasonable when someone was so intimately bound to another. The emotional requirements were too high, the price unimaginable.

  Instead, it was far more common that Magi and their Knights formed an intense and interpersonal emotional bond.

  While they weren’t always romantic in nature, the bond inevitably formed the primary relationship in both their lives.

  After all, when the life of one depended solely upon the life of the other, it was difficult to care about people beyond the bond with the same level of ferocity. Loving your Bonded was not too far from loving yourself.

  Hade might love Ilyana, but nothing would ever come of it.

  Yet as Aleksei comes north, I am sharing his bond with another Magus. A Magus I know nothing about, except that he lusts after the same thing I do. Jonas couldn’t help sympathize with Hade in his murk of jealousy.

  Jonas stood to the side watching Ilyana and Marrik. He suddenly recalled yet another reason Parliament had no need to fear him. He had no Knight. He was untrained and lacking an Archanium Knight.

  And for the first time since he’d first reached out to Aleksei, Jonas realized what else had been nagging at him.It was a growing sense of desperation.

  Aleksei stood at the fork of the mighty Ylik Water, a frown etched across his face. Several leagues in the distance he could make out the shadowed prominence of the Seil Wood, its trees towering into th
e sky, some scraping at the clouds.

  He had left Keiv-Alon, but three hours ago.

  By all rights, Aleksei knew that he should have another seven, perhaps eight days of travel ahead of him before he reached the Wood. But at this distance he guessed he would reach it by dusk.

  Something very strange was going on, and he wished to the gods he knew what it was.

  Aleksei pressed his knees into Dash’s sides and rode apprehensively towards the Wood. True, it had once been his home. He had lived in the trees with his parents and had been content. But that had also been a long, long time ago. Would he be welcome among the Ri-Vhan? Would they remember him? Would they care?

  There was only one way to find out.

  The sun was setting by the time he reached the tree-line, but Aleksei didn’t fear the darkness of the forest.

  Though he remembered little of his time spent among the Ri-Vhan, some things still leapt unbidden into his consciousness. And so he spent the last few moments of dusk searching along the banks of the river for a lembak tree, and more importantly for the mushrooms that grew in the hollows of their massive roots.

  Just as the light was fading from the canopy above, Aleksei caught sight of the circular lembak leaves.

  He looped Dash’s reins around a low branch and crouched near the bank of the river, reaching down into the space between the thick, rope-like roots of the tree, rising a moment later, his prize clutched triumphantly in his fist.

  After a few sure strokes of his belt knife, Aleksei paused to admire his torch.

  The fungus began to glow a brilliant blue, casting a circle of light around him. Aleksei smiled.

  The darkness was still too heavy to ride under, so he walked Dash deeper into the Wood, keeping a careful eye on the unkempt path for badger holes and stones.

  Few people dared to tread this deep into the Wood, and with good reason. The Seil Wood was a magical place, and nowhere was that magic more concentrated than in the heart of the forest. Many of the paths in the deep Wood could only be navigated by the Ri-Vhan. He hoped his half-blood would be enough.

  It was painstakingly slow progress, but Aleksei was determined. It was, after all, extremely inadvisable to camp on the forest floor this deep. Fey creatures lived in this part of the Wood, and while they wouldn’t necessarily harm him, he wasn’t sure they’d leave him unmolested either.

  He didn’t worry for Dash. Animals were generally left alone. Men were another matter.

  His heart fluttered with relief when he finally spotted the stunted old willow.

  It was one of the few willows that grew in the Wood, existing in a small pool of moonlight, where a break in the canopy made its survival possible.

  But if that memory served Aleksei correctly, the survival of this particular tree was no accident of nature.

  He circled the tree, his brilliant torch cast aside now that he could see in the clear white moonlight. He knew it was somewhere, but his memories were so hazy. He had been so young….

  There. Aleksei stepped confidently to a branch that curved curiously away from the trunk of the tree, almost level with his waist. In the moonlight, the branch looked almost like the mouth of a horn.

  It had to be the same tree.

  Aleksei knelt next to the branch and pressed his lips against the hollowed end, blowing as hard as he could through the branch and into the tree.

  Gods, he hoped this worked.

  “Are you trying to wake the whole bloody village?” a gruff voice demanded from behind him.

  Aleksei jumped to his feet so suddenly he struck his head on one of the willow’s upper branches and nearly fell to the forest floor.

  He took a moment to regain his footing, then looked at the speaker who had startled him.

  “I was trying to call the Ri-Vhan.”

  The man nodded, “Aye, and you’ve succeeded. Who are you? And how do you know how to use the Hunter’s Horn? Or to carry one of those?” he indicated the phosphorescent fungus lying just outside the pool of moonlight.

  “My name is Aleksei Drago. I used to live among the Ri-Vhan.”

  “I remember the name.” the man said slowly. “So why are you here now?”

  “I’m looking for Roux Devaan.” Aleksei said, trying to sound confident.

  It had been almost a decade since he’d thought of his cousin. Too many painful memories, too many memories of his mother.

  The man frowned for a long moment, as if trying to recall something, then nodded. “Aye, I can take you to him.”

  Aleksei’s pulse thrilled, “You can? Thank the gods! I didn’t know if….”

  The man chuckled, “If what? If you’d be remembered? The Ri-Vhan have long memories, Aleksei Drago, especially for our own.”

  Aleksei smiled at that. “It would appear so.”

  The man offered his hand, “I’m called Gael. It’s a pleasure to welcome back one of our lost.”

  Aleksei’s smile didn’t change, but he wondered at the term.

  “Thank you.” he said instead.

  “Your horse will be fine down here on the floor for the time being. In the morning I’ll come down and check on him, free him of that saddle for a while.”

  Aleksei relaxed a little bit, “I’d appreciate that, thank you.”

  “No thanks needed. You’re Roux’s cousin, lest I’m mistaken.”

  Aleksei frowned, “I am.”

  Gael shrugged, “That’s good enough for me.”

  Aleksei thought about that for a moment before finally deciding that the man must be friends with Roux. Why else would he so willingly offer aid to a complete stranger?

  “Anyhow, if you’ll take hold of my hand we can return to the village.”

  Aleksei shuddered. He’d forgotten.

  He clutched Gael’s hand and closed his eyes as the world gave a sickening lurch around him. He felt like he was swimming in honey, and he knew that if he opened his eyes he would see nothing but smoky gray and white forms, moving far too fast to make out with any accuracy, yet unquestionably disconcerting.

  And then everything snapped back into place and Aleksei opened his eyes.

  He stood on one of the great central platforms, the heavy wooden beams under his feet supported by thousands of years of ancient vine and interwoven branch. And beneath that, the incredible drop to the forest floor far, far below.

  He had returned to the Ri-Vhan.

  Gael was watching him curiously, “Darting not sit well with you?”

  “Pardon?”

  Gael shrugged, “You seemed to have a hard time Darting up here.”

  Aleksei closed his eyes as he remembered.

  His mother was gone. It had been so sudden, so unexpected, yet no one was truly surprised. He didn’t understand. And then his father had gathered him up in his arms and carried him out of their small home, out onto the great platform.

  A man, Aleksei’s uncle, had placed a hand on his shoulder and then everything changed. The world moved around him as Aleksei and his father were taken down to the forest floor. Taken down for the last time.

  “I don’t have too many fond memories of it.” Aleksei said after a long pause.

  Gael laughed ruefully, “Not many do. No, sir. Mostly just the young.”

  Aleksei nodded mechanically and Gael seemed to catch his apprehension. “Well, anyhow, I need to be taking you to Roux’s place.”

  Aleksei allowed himself to be led through the sleeping village proper, his eyes drinking in the familiar landscape, his ears reveling in the once-loved sounds of the night.

  He could hear the forest breathing. It was in the sigh of the cicadas and the hooting of the great horned owls, the wind cresting and crashing above him, as though he was under an ocean of leaves.

  Aleksei walked down familiar lanes, past identical huts, each constructed in the same organic style, heavy vines growing up and around their supports until the circular walls took shape, the roofs thatched in riv
er reeds and long-stemmed fern. They looked so alien after his fifteen years in the farmhouse, yet he remembered when he’d been comfortable here.

  As they passed the huts, Aleksei realized that they were approaching the only home in the entire village that could be called a house. It was grown out of the front of one of the giant oaks that towered so unnaturally high, great branches leafing out to form the roof of the house before the trunk ascended higher still and dissolved into the confusion of the canopy. The walls were branches fused together by hundreds of thousands of tiny flowering creeper vines, the door woven from reeds and dead wood. It was the home of the leader of the Ri-Vhan.

  The House of the Ri-Hnon.

  The reed door opened to reveal a man, only a few summers older than Aleksei. His face was vibrant and alive, his golden eyes wild and excited. His hair was a mess of tangles and curls that reflected so much of the forest undergrowth.

  Gael bowed low, “Ri-Hnon, this man has asked to see you.”

  Aleksei was speechless. He could only stare at the man before him in wide-eyed wonder. Stare at the leader of his people.

  At this fey, feral child of the Wood.

  When he finally managed to find words, they seemed hopelessly inadequate. “Hello, Roux.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Marked

  ALEKSEI BREATHED A heavy sigh of relief when his cousin broke into a grin and stepped forward, hugging him tightly. “Gods, but it’s been a long time!”

  Aleksei managed a nod, hardly able to draw a breath wrapped as he was in Roux’s oaken embrace, “Fifteen years, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Roux stepped back and shook his head in wonder, “And yet look at you! You were a boy when you left, barely more than a babe in your father’s arms and now….”

  Aleksei grinned at that. It was all well and good for Roux to call him a boy, but Aleksei didn’t remember his cousin as being very many summers his senior.

  “I was wondering if I could stay with you for a night or two.” Aleksei said, now somewhat hesitant.

  Roux’s smile brightened, “I was going to insist on it. But if you’re a willing victim then you are welcome to remain as long as you like. Whatever claims of ownership those plains dwellers might have, we are your people and I am your kin.”