The Realm Rift Saga Box Set

by James T Kelly

  Sânuoi was still as stone. “Would that you knew the depths of the waters you have stirred.”

  It was an unfair comment but the merrow was hurting. That much was plain. Tom touched the sword. This was not an enemy. No need to fight. So he kept his tone soft as he said only, “We just want to be on our way.”

  “And that will be soon enough.” Then Sânuoi raised his voice so all could hear. “The merrow will not tolerate your presence again,” he said. “And should any other surface dwellers seek to leave our city so easily, I pledge to cast my vote against them.”

  Tom nodded and hoped nobody would rise to the bait. But even Neirin was quiet.

  Unchallenged, Sânuoi took a step towards Tom and hissed, “And your lives will be forfeit should the Setta agree you have been false to your terms. I shall see to that.”

  Tom felt a flare of anger, his body tensed and ready to rise. How dare he threaten them? He should argue. Draw the sword.

  Kill the enemy.

  The thought was so strong it made his fingers twitch, and he started like he was waking. His gaze fell on the cut on Sânuoi’s throat and he couldn’t shake the mental image of splitting that flesh with Caledyr’s edge.

  The chariot slowed to a stop and they were each given another tentacled creature. Tom placed it on his face, so alarmed at his murderous thought that he barely noticed the revolting, sucking flesh against his teeth.

  “Now,” Sânuoi growled at them, “get out.”

  The water was cold and the swim was long. But every stroke took Tom closer to the surface, closer to the light, and closer to a place where he hadn’t sacrificed a friend.

  Chapter 5

  Tom’s first sight of the Western Kingdom was a strip of beautiful white sand. But it could have been dirty, rough and rocky for all he cared. All he wanted was solid ground. The yearning for it gave him a burst of energy and he swam. Slapped at the water, exhausted and feeble. His breathing was ragged and his lungs and throat felt raw. Each stroke felt like it would have to be his last. But each time there had to be another after it. And another. And another.

  Then his toes grazed sand. A few clumsy kicks and he got his feet under him. He staggered into the shallows and fell back, the tide washing around him. He wasn’t comfortable. The sword on his back pushed his spine into an arch and he was cold, teeth chattering already. His breath was a mist that obscured the dark grey sky. But he had to rest. His limbs shook with exhaustion. The shell on his face was cloying, suffocating. He had to get it off. He peeled away the tentacles, the suckers popping off his skin, and he tossed the thing aside as he crawled out of the water.

  Solid ground. He took a handful of sand, working it through his fingers, luxuriating in the soft grains. It would be better if it was soil, honest earth. But it would do. Eirwen’s grace keep him from water. No more seas or lakes or rivers. Never again.

  “Roll in the sand.” Katharine strode out of the shallows, grinning like she’d found Rimestenn’s lost hoard. “It will help us dry so we don’t freeze to death.”

  She began to roll and Tom did likewise. The sand was soft and fine, not scratchy and coarse like he was used to.

  “Put it in your hair too,” she told him, and he took handfuls and rubbed it over his head.

  “Now leave it. It will come off on it’s own.” She was covered in sand head to foot and she gave him the purest grin. He couldn’t help but smile back. Then she remembered herself and looked at Six instead. Disappointment pricked Tom. But it was a start.

  “You look ridiculous.” Six grinned back at her. He began to roll too, as did Dank, and even Brega began to pat herself down with sand. Neirin stood above them all, eyes dark.

  “It will help with the cold,” Katharine told him.

  “I am fine,” he said in a cold, empty voice. He strode up the beach, climbing the grass-peppered dunes. “Tell us where we are, Katharine.”

  She clambered to her feet, covered in wet sand. “I don’t know.”

  “You are our Pathfinder.” Neirin’s words carried no rebuke; it was a simple statement of duties. Yet Katharine flinched and turned away.

  “I don’t know where we are,” she said, hugging herself against more than the cold. Why was she so stung? Why didn’t she find a landmark and consult her maps?

  “Your maps,” Tom realised.

  “My maps.” Her voice was a fragile thing, brittle and liable to break. Her shoulders were hunched as if she expected blows to fall any moment.

  Tom opened his mouth to say more, but what was there to say? Maps were a Pathfinder’s lifeblood. They were used to record journeys, as an aid to memory, to recruit new clients. They were the sum of a Pathfinder’s life and experience. A pension for their old age. Katharine had spent years creating her maps. And they had left them behind. In Cairnalyr. With Proctor Gerwyn.

  She took a deep breath. Was she crying? No, just trying not to. Should he try to comfort her? Embrace her, stroke her hair, hold her hand? Or was she still angry with him? Would that make it worse?

  So he tested the waters and said, “I’m so sorry.”

  She sniffed, cleared her throat, and said, “I’m sure you are.” Her words were flat, cold, a rebuke and a rejection. Sympathy was not what she wanted. Tom could understand that. No words or gestures could make right such an extraordinary loss.

  Neirin, it seemed, didn’t understand that loss. “So you cannot be a Pathfinder without your maps?”

  Katharine let out a little laugh, sniffed again and wiped her eyes. “If you thought that, Lord Neirin, why did you hire me?” She turned to Brega with a watery smile and said, “Can you get a fire going there?” She pointed to a dip in the dunes, protected on all sides from the wind.

  “We cannot risk detection,” Neirin said. He was trying not to shiver.

  “We’ll freeze to death without warmth.”

  “We could shelter there.” Dank was standing higher up the dunes, pointing up the beach. Tom followed his finger and saw a ship on the shore, listing in the sand, mast broken and sails rotting. Looking at it made Tom feel sad, like he was witnessing a terrible tragedy. But Dank was right; it would afford shelter from the wind.

  Katharine shook her head. “If it caught your eye, it will catch others. People might come looking for salvage.”

  “But it’s old,” Tom said. “It’s probably been picked clean already.”

  “Children play in wrecks,” she snapped. She didn’t make eye contact. “Someone is always looking for firewood or treasure.”

  He shouldn’t have questioned her. Not now. And not after the Whispering Woods.

  But he had got them out of Cairnalyr, hadn’t he? Didn’t his opinion count for something?

  “We can’t stay out here,” Six said, voice soft. “We’ll freeze.”

  Katharine whirled on Six and Tom braced for another outburst. But something in his eyes melted her frown and she sighed. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s the best shelter.”

  So Six could question her but he could not?

  “Brega,” she said, “take Lord Neirin and find kindling and firewood.”

  “It’s made of wood.” Brega spoke as if Katharine was dim-witted.

  “All of it likely to be huge planks and hard to break,” she replied. “Six and I will find food and water.”

  “What should I do?” Tom asked as she walked past.

  “Take Dank. Head to the wreck,” she said, without looking at him. “ We’ll find you.”

  Tom watched the others clamber up the dunes. It was hard not to feel rejected. He knew he had hurt her, that he had misled her. He knew she had every right to be angry with him. But a part of him also felt he was being unduly punished. Yes, he had not been honest with her. But he had saved her life. Twice. And she wouldn’t even look at him.

  And when the others looked at him, they called him a killer with their eyes.

  A rush of loneliness made him take a sharp breath. He had been so used to solitude. Now his hand almost ached to hold
Katharine’s. Or to touch Maev.

  He shouldn’t have left Faerie. He should have stayed. What did he care who sat on which throne?

  He reached back, without thought, and touched Caledyr. Just two fingertips on the pommel. But it was enough. Like lighting a lantern in the dark. It wasn’t about the throne. It was about the elfs who killed Siomi. Who put him in a rat pit. Who thought they could do what they willed and no-one would oppose them.

  “They don’t trust us,” Dank said into the quiet.

  Tom looked the boy up and down, dressed in rags, hairless, skin crawling with strange tattoos. His face suggested he’d not yet seen a score of summers, but his expression suggested centuries. He looked unusual in every conceivable way.

  “No,” Tom said. What good was there in avoiding the truth?

  “We have done nothing but help.”

  “Perhaps.” Tom shrugged and tucked his hands into his armpits. The wind was strong and it bit with cold teeth. “But they don’t understand you. You look like a boy and you speak like a fay.”

  “We’re not the strangest thing about this group,” he said, suddenly just a boy, his body gangly with youth and his eyes young and hurt. “A pair of Easterners, a human seer, a female Pathfinder and a Western exile?”

  Pity prompted Tom to offer the boy a smile. “Give them time. Everything is a little strange right now.”

  “But what about you, Tom?” Dank’s voice changed. “You, who claim to love us.” Something in the way he said it made Tom feel awkward.

  “I am a friend to the fay,” he said.

  Dank narrowed his eyes. The wind grew colder. “But you don’t trust us.”

  “I have a lot of unanswered questions,” he admitted.

  “Our queen likes secrets.”

  Why had she sent Glastyn to Cairnagan?

  Why did the fay want to break the monoliths?

  “It is a monarch’s prerogative to keep secrets, Tom,” Dank said. But it was with Mab’s voice. “We will reveal them to you in time, we promise you.” The boy reached up and cupped Tom’s face. Tom didn’t know what to do with himself. “You must put your trust in us, Tom.”

  “I will try.” What choice did he have?

  Dank smiled and caressed his cheek with a thumb. It was not comforting. “You will do better than that,” he told Tom with a lover’s voice. “We demand it.”

  The walk to the wreck was long and cold. Tom had tried to make conversation, asking Dank what the fay knew of events in Cairnagan or the Harbour. But the boy said little, and so their conversation had stilted, wilted and died. Only the waves had broken the silence, and Tom had tried not to remember the tide cells in Cairnalyr.

  The ship was surrounded by worthless detritus. Pieces of the ship, broken cargo, snatches of half-buried sail or rope. Tom thought he spied bleached bones peering through the sand and looked away. The wreck itself was a monstrous shadow in the fading light, creaking in the wind. It wasn’t fully beached, the fore lancing up into the sky and the aft still keeping its toes in the water, rotting into the sea. It had been there a long time, the keel buried in the sand and canting drunkenly toward them. Tom tried not to think of it tipping over and crushing them.

  “A little light,” Dank said, and then grunted as his tattoos began to writhe. Tom couldn’t help but watch as the boy’s neck began to glow from within. A tiny hand reached out without causing cut or injury, then the rest of the sprite clambered out and onto Dank’s shoulder. It shook itself and flapped its wings, its light so bright Tom could barely make out its figure.

  Dank panted and wiped at his forehead.

  “It hurts every time?” Tom asked.

  He nodded as the sprite took off, hovering in the air just ahead of them. He followed the sprite and Tom followed the boy.

  “Why did you do it?” Tom asked him.

  The sprite drifted over the hull, exploring it. It was broken and rotten in a dozen places, the jagged planks forming fanged maws in the side of the ship.

  “Bind ourself to a fay?” Dank said.

  Bind himself. Like a dragon was bound by Western magic? “Yes.”

  The sprite flew into the wreck and Dank stopped, watching the glow strengthen and fade as it moved within the ship. “What makes you think it was our choice?” Tom felt his stomach clench. Had the fay forced this onto the boy? But he turned and gave Tom a grin. “Don’t worry, Tom. It was.”

  Tom shook his head. Sometimes the fay weren’t as funny as they thought.

  Windows, doorways and breaches glowed in turn as the sprite explored.

  “What’s it looking for?” Tom asked.

  “We don’t know,” Dank replied. “We can’t share thoughts with her when we’re apart.”

  The light faded before disappearing entirely. Night was nearly settled too, and thick clouds left everything a shadow against darkness.

  “What’s it like?” Tom asked, though he wished he hadn’t. The idea of the fay being inside his head made him itch.

  “Incredible.” The smile was audible in his voice. “The fay are ancient. And everywhere. They know so much.”

  “And that’s why you did it?” Tom asked. “To share that knowledge?”

  “When they came to us, they told us they could show us worlds we couldn’t imagine. Histories forgotten, truths that no mortal had ever fathomed. And they have shown us so much more.”

  Tom wondered what it would be like to know so much. Tir was full of mysteries and puzzles. To have them revealed, unlocked, to understand its deepest secrets? The idea had a pull to it.

  But what could a man do with that knowledge once he’d slaved himself to the fay?

  The thought surprised him and he looked at Dank, no more than a black cipher in the dark. Did Tom think of him as a slave? He didn’t seem to chafe under any bondage. If anything he seemed happy with his lot in life, contented and serene. Not unlike Siomi.

  Would Dank die for the fay?

  The darkness bloomed into light, and Tom saw a stone chamber. He had Dank pinned against a wall, against cold, black stone that felt like iron. Dank thrashed, struggled, clawed at Tom and pushed against the stone with all his might.

  “We will see you die for this.” Dank’s fury was young and petulant but with traces of an older, darker malice.

  Tom said nothing. He ignored the pain Dank inflicted, and the pain that would be brought by the consequences of what he did.

  The foresight faded and left Tom blinking in sudden darkness.

  “What did you see?” Dank’s voice asked.

  He thought of Ambrose’s voice. Don’t tell him, Tom.

  “The two of us,” he said. “Fighting.”

  “Over what?” His tone was mere curiosity; he seemed indifferent to the news that they would come to blows.

  “I don’t know.” Dank, or perhaps the fay, had been angry. But he hadn’t felt anger in himself. Just cold, hard resolve. And a terrible sadness he was trying not to feel.

  “It will be interesting to see what brings us to conflict.”

  ‘Interesting’ wasn’t the word Tom would have picked. An attack on Dank would be an attack on fay. And Tom couldn’t think of a person, place or ideal big enough to risk the wrath of the fay. The idea that there could exist something that big frightened him a little.

  He cleared his throat. “Hopefully it will be a misunderstanding.”

  Dank grunted. He didn’t sound convinced. Nor was Tom. But he didn’t like to leave Dank, or the fay, to ponder this inevitable assault. So he offered, “Your sprite has been gone a while.”

  But all Dank said was, “Yes.” And the air became thick and awkward. The wind was picking up, sending a chill breeze through Tom’s thin clothes. He hugged himself and rubbed his chest. At least he had his boots; Dank was barefoot.

  “Has it forgotten about us?” Tom asked.

  “It’s not likely.”

  As if summoned by Dank’s words, the glow from the sprite became visible from an opening near the ground and it drifted
out, a little point of light in the night air. Without a word, Dank trudged towards it and Tom followed in similar silence.

  As they grew closer, though, Tom felt the urge to say something. The sprite illuminated an opening that looked like all the others, but low enough that it could almost be reached from the ground. That alone was no reason for concern, but the wooden crates stacked underneath were.

  Someone had climbed into the wreck.

  Dank had noticed too. “That’s lucky,” he said, and then to the sprite, “Thank you.” He was already climbing crates stacked to make a staircase to the opening.

  “Aren’t you worried?” Tom asked.

  “About what?”

  “About who might be inside?”

  “What makes you think there’s anyone inside?”

  Tom tapped the crates with a finger and Dank shrugged. “Probably children or salvagers, when the ship first wrecked. That would explain why there’s no cargo on the beach.” Without waiting to see if Tom was convinced, he resumed his climb and disappeared into the wreck.

  Tom looked at the opening for a moment. They needed to avoid discovery. If there was anyone inside, they would be found out. But it was cold, freezing in fact. And if there was danger, the sprite would have warned them. So he climbed too. But when he got to the top he noticed someone had fixed iron handles to the hull. Someone had worked hard to make entry easier. Someone who meant to return often enough to make the effort worthwhile.

  The deck was slanted, creating a climb from the opening. The sprite illuminated broken crates and barrels that had fallen against the wall they entered through. The other walls were too far away to be seen. All Tom could see was a greedy dark, ready to swallow whatever stepped into it. Tom felt his senses sharpen at the childish fear of it.

  The wind whistled around the ship and Tom said, “We should wait for the others.”

  Dank was just a haloed shadow; his sprite had landed in his hair, casting a glow around his head. Tom could just make out a sound, high-pitched and too small to make out; it was speaking to him.