The Realm Rift Saga Box Set

by James T Kelly

  He looked up at her. There were bags under her eyes still. “Did you sleep?”

  “For a time.” She shrugged. “I took a watch.”

  She didn’t need to explain why. “Is he well?”

  She cast a glance back and lowered her voice. “He’s in good health.”

  He recognised a carefully phrased answer. “Six suggested he’s been cut out of the decision-making.”

  Brega scowled, but it was clear it was directed at someone else. “He doesn’t know the land like Storrstenn does.”

  “That didn’t stop us.” He gestured towards Gravinn. “She didn’t take charge.”

  They both watched the dwarf for a moment; for once, she wasn’t poring over her maps. They were all rolled up and stored in a corner and she sat alone with her back to them.

  “Do we need to unseat Storrstenn?” Brega asked.

  Tom took a mouthful of bread to delay his answer. His first reaction was to agree. The campaign of terror had been Storrstenn’s idea. But had it? He’d been talking about uprisings. Was that something different? He watched the dwarf try to interrogate Dank, to find out what they had done, why they were back. Dank wore a smirk that was not his own. He, or the fay using him, was toying with Storrstenn.

  The trouble was, Tom wasn’t sure who to trust anymore.

  He swallowed. “It’s not up to me,” he said.

  She nodded. “Do we go back, then?”

  “Back?”

  “To the Between,” she said. “Back to work.”

  “Never.”

  “Why?”

  But he wasn’t about to explain himself twice. So he climbed to his feet and said, “I have something to say.”

  But everyone’s attention had already turned to him as soon as he’d stood. It was a little unnerving, to see attentive, watchful, or suspicious eyes on him.

  “Yes,” Storrstenn said. “I believe we’re owed an explanation.”

  Tom ignored him and spoke to Neirin. “We were heading to Cairnagwyn to break the monoliths. But somehow our path now takes us to Cairnaten, and on the way we’re burning and destroying as much as the Kingdom as we can. We’re sowing mayhem and fear and destruction. It’s wrong and it gets us no closer to Cairnagwyn. I won’t do it anymore.”

  But it was Brega who answered. “This is how we destabilise the Kingdom. That’s what you said.”

  He met her angry gaze, trying to keep his expression calm and clear. “I said that,” he agreed. “But it’s not the right thing to do.”

  “How do we get into Cairnagwyn?” she demanded.

  A foresight came to mind, bubbling up from memory. Six stood amongst tall grass, calling out a name. What was it? “Six knows,” Tom replied,. “He said he knows the palace.” Athra. That was the name. “And I think he knows people who could help us.”

  “Indeed?” Storrstenn said. “And by what manner will our freedom be secured if we withdraw our support of Proctor Renwyr?”

  “I don’t know,” Tom replied. “But your freedom cannot be worth all this pain and suffering.”

  Storrstenn’s fat lips twisted into a leering grin. “Of course it is.”

  But Storrstenn wasn’t the one he needed to convince. “We’ve been arguing since we swam ashore,” he said to Neirin. “I don’t want to argue anymore. If you think this is a good plan, so be it. Let someone else take my place.” Glastyn had once told him that the key to politics was to give something to everyone. So he said, “But remember it isn’t our plan. It’s his.” He pointed to Storrstenn. “We gave him the control here. Let’s take it back, and do what we came to do.” Then he added, with deliberate emphasis, “My lord.”

  Neirin blinked.

  “You asked for my help,” Storrstenn sneered. “Now you spit on me. Is this gratitude?”

  But Tom looked to Brega. Her anger and surprise had disappeared.

  Give something to everyone. And what was it Brega wanted? “But I am not your counsel, Lord Neirin,” he said, keeping his eyes on her.

  Neirin looked at Siomi’s mask in his hand, then at Brega, appraising her, weighing her. Don’t weigh too long, she won’t like that. Her gaze had already fallen on the mask and was beginning to harden.

  But Neirin put it on the ground and stood, faced her, and bared his wrists to her. “What say you, Brega?”

  Tom couldn’t fight a smile. She looked shocked, and pleased, and sceptical. And when she spoke, she did it with her own voice. Not an impression of Siomi. “If the Westerner can get us into Cairnagwyn, then Tom’s right. We don’t need this Proctor.”

  Neirin nodded. “And our road would be easier.”

  “And safer,” she added.

  “Can it be done?” Neirin turned to Six who was sat with Katharine.

  He wore a pleased scowl, a reticent smirk. Like someone chewing the lemon they asked for. “It can.”

  “And who are these people?”

  Six turned his gaze on Tom. Hope. Fear. Resignation. He didn’t want to hear Tom answer the question. But he could see no other way. So Tom said, as gently as he could, “Athra will help us, won’t he?”

  Six sighed. “Probably.” He looked at the ground. “Although you might regret asking.”

  “Is it a better option?” Neirin asked.

  “Barely,” Six replied. He gave Tom a baleful glance. “But if anyone knows how to sneak into Cairnagwyn, Athra does.” It seemed to almost hurt him to say it. “He needs to know the secret ways around Tir. He and his people try to burn the Kingdom too.”

  “Can’t we just use a Faerie Circle?” Brega asked. “We could be there in moments.”

  But when eyes turned to Dank, he shook his head. “They will be no help to you.”

  That sounded like a carefully phrased answer. “There are no Circles in Cairnagwyn?” Tom asked.

  Dank turned a glare on him. A Melwas-glare, both angry and amused. “None that will be of service to you.”

  “I can get you in,” Storrstenn said. “My plans will see you in Cairnagwyn in mere weeks. Idris overthrown. A new king on the throne that will set us all free.”

  But Neirin said to Six, “These elfs. Why do they burn the Kingdom?”

  Six grimaced. “They think it will bring back Oen.”

  “You speak of the Goraven?” Storrstenn scoffed. “You think ragtag fanatics will offer you aid superior to my own?” He snorted. “I will not listen to this foolishness any longer.”

  Neirin stilled. “Have a care, master dwarf.” He tapped two fingertips against his own wrist. “Remember to whom you are speaking.”

  “Perhaps you should remember to whom you are speaking,” Storrstenn countered. “The dwarf who has seen you safely through the Kingdom these past months.”

  “You speak to the Shield of the Eastern Angles,” Brega growled. “Keep a civil tongue or lose it.”

  The last thing they needed was another argument. So Tom said to Six, “How do we find Athra?”

  “I don’t know.” He seemed to be regretting this already. “It’s in his interest to remain hidden.”

  Because he was an outlaw. A ragtag fanatic burning the Kingdom. Were they trading one campaign of terror for another?

  But he had seen Six calling for this elf. It would happen, whether Tom willed it or not. And at least it would not be his hand dealing the pain and the suffering. Not his face that children would see in their nightmares. So he said, “The fay can find them.” Looked at Dank and said, “You can take us to the Goraven, can’t you?”

  “Can we, Thomas Rymour?” Was that Dank’s voice? Or someone else’s?

  Tom was tired. He was ashamed. And the memory of that family’s terror was like a raw nerve, sore when it was thought of and thought of because it was sore.

  And the boy lounging opposite had lied to him.

  So when Tom said, “You can,” it wasn’t with care, or diplomacy, or the levity of tone the fay liked so much. It was blunt and plain. “The fay would see these monoliths broken, would they not?”

 
“Perhaps.” His expression didn’t change, his voice was flat.

  “Then help us.”

  “You command us?”

  “You accepted commands when we were attacking the Kingdom,” Tom replied. “You can do so again, or you can leave us to make our own way.”

  Dank’s expression twisted, amusement and anger holding sway in equal measure. “My my, Thomas. How boldly you speak.” And then, in a voice more his own, “We will help you.”

  Tom didn’t need to fake his gratitude. He still needed the fay, even if they were lying to him. “Thank you.”

  “So is this our plan?” Neirin asked. “Find these outlaws. Ask them to help us into Cairnagwyn?”

  “It is, if you wish it to be,” Tom said, then added, as before, “my lord.”

  Neirin seemed to stand a little taller. “I do,” he said, and it was with some of the imperious air he’d once had.

  It was done. Tom allowed himself a small smile of relief.

  “You swore to help me free my people.” Storrstenn was not smiling.

  “I did.” Tom pitched his voice low and sombre. Despite what he’d said, he still felt like he was abandoning the dwarfs. “I will uphold that oath in any way I can. But I will not be the monster you want me to be.”

  “Monster?” Storrstenn snorted. “You steal a few grains and burn a few barns and you think you can call yourself monster?”

  He’d rampaged across the Kingdom, dressed like a ghoul, doing his best to frighten and to hurt. “I fear so.”

  “Yet you run from your task like a frightened child,” the dwarf sneered. “And what have you done? Have you birthed dissent? Have you fostered rebellion? Have you sought out misfits and rebels and urged them to wreak hurt on their masters? Hmm?” Storrstenn’s fingers were flexing at the air, like he wanted to strangle someone. “Have you forged death warrants?” he hissed. “Stolen babies? Poisoned elfs? Have you had to hoist your own people onto a scaffold that you might climb over them to greatness?” And then he spat, a bubbled glob popping on the stone floor. “You are a mewling babe. Not a monster. Not even a man.”

  But the insult passed Tom by. Hoisted onto a scaffold. “Maurstenn.” The third dwarf in the wreck. The one Storrstenn had told them stayed behind. “You killed him, didn’t you?”

  Sannvinn took a sharp breath and looked to her leader, eyes wide.

  But if Storrstenn noticed, he gave no sign. “The dwarf who was too afraid to grasp his own freedom?” He bared his teeth. “Such a dwarf does not deserve the world I am making for him.”

  “But you didn’t kill him,” Sannvinn said, shaking her head as if trying to convince him of the right answer.

  “He would have given us up the moment he was questioned.”

  “That’s why you burnt the wreck,” Tom said. “To hide the body.” And because he could say it, it was true.

  “You burned a dwarf?” Whatever significance that had, it was enough to pull Gravinn to her feet and into the conversation.

  “I had no choice,” Storrstenn replied. “My hand was forced. So I did the terrible thing, for a better future.” He nodded at Brega. “Isn’t that how you see it? No price is too high for a noble cause.”

  Brega’s eyes flickered over the dwarfs and landed on Neirin. Tom knew she agreed. But this was a chance to undermine Storrstenn and reinstate Neirin as the head of this group. So she said, “Some prices are too high.”

  Storrstenn waved a hand and made a derisory sound. “Talk to me when your people are enslaved. Tell me then what price is too high for your freedom.”

  “You burned a dwarf,” Gravinn repeated.

  “Yes, I burnt him,” Storrstenn snapped. “I’d do it again if I had to.”

  “You said we would be freeing dwarfs,” Gravinn said, very still, very sad. “All of them. No-one left behind.”

  “It is.”

  “You didn’t say we’d be killing each other.”

  “Had he lived, you would be swinging from a noose by now.”

  Even though the sword was across the garden, far out of reach, Tom felt a thought.

  Push.

  It was a good thought. “Who else would you burn?” he asked. “Would you burn me? Her?” He pointed at Gravinn. Then Sannvinn. “Or her?”

  Storrstenn’s eyes blazed hotter than the fire he’d built around Maurstenn and spit flecked his lips as he hissed, “I’d burn the lot of you if it freed my people.”

  The damage was done. Gravinn’s face was stone. Sannvinn’s eyes were wet. Storrstenn was undone.

  Gravinn turned to Tom and pulled out her golden bell. “Here,” she said.

  Wasn’t this a symbol of her slavery? What did this mean? The tiny bell felt heavy as she placed it in his palm. “You have a mind and a heart,” she said, her words as dull and empty as the look she gave him. “You have my loyalty.”

  “It was I who freed you, you simpering fool.”

  “It was Tom who killed my master,” she replied. “But that isn’t the same thing.” She walked back to her spot in the garden and sat down, back to everyone.

  Storrstenn let out a little huff and turned to Sannvinn. “And you?” he demanded. “Have you the mettle to see this through?”

  But she shuddered under the dwarf’s gaze and looked to Tom.

  “Don’t look at him, look at me!”

  But Tom just shook his head. “Freedom means making your own choices about who to follow.”

  Sannvinn looked between the two of them for a moment before crossing the garden to sit by Gravinn’s side.

  Storrstenn threw his hands in the air. “Then I am rid of you,” he said. “I have no need for weakness. When you are freed, you will thank me, and I will scorn you for the weaklings you are.”

  “Will you help us?” Tom asked, as calmly as he could.

  “To break your supposed magics?” he scoffed. “I will do what I have set out to do: Proctor Renwyr will free us.”

  “Then you travel alone.”

  He laughed. “And you will spend what little remains of your life in a Western cell.” His smug grin was grotesque. “No-one crosses me.”

  Tom just looked to Neirin, who wore the expression he had once used solely for Six. “A threat to him is a threat to me,” the elf said.

  “I care not.”

  “I am the Shield of the Eastern Angles.”

  “You could be the Primary Elect for all I care.”

  “I cannot let you interfere with our journey.” He nodded to Brega. “I’m sure we can find a use for you.”

  The dwarf kicked and struggled, but Brega was taller and stronger and more skilled; she had him gagged and bound in moments. Sannvinn looked pained to see him glaring up from the ground. But she said nothing. No-one did. Tom met Storrstenn’s glare without flinching. He knew he had sworn to help the dwarf. But how could he stand by his oath when he knew what Storrstenn was capable of and, in knowing, fearing what he would do next?

  But Tom still felt like a liar and a disappointment. He looked at Gravinn, who looked at no-one and blinked away tears. She had seen her dream disappear in a matter of minutes.

  Six stepped into the silence and said, “No more attacks on the people.”

  “No more,” Neirin said.

  “No more attempts to destabilise the Kingdom.”

  “No.”

  “We break the monoliths. That is all.”

  “Agreed.”

  Six nodded. “Then take me to Athra,” he said to Tom. “Let’s finish this.”

  Chapter 16

  The wind was high and cold and the maiden moon was no more than a shadow in the sky. They stood on a hill looking over an expanse of impossibly tall, wild grass.

  “You’ll find them in there.” Dank’s smile was too big, his demeanour too friendly. “Though they might not like that you did.”

  “We’ll see,” was all Tom said. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about being lied to.

  But before they could set off, Neirin raised his hand. “A moment,�
�� he said. “I need to do this.” He was holding up Siomi’s mask and looking at Tom, waiting for opposition.

  But Tom just nodded. He had usurped the tradition of that mask. And he had a new appreciation for Siomi’s way of thinking. The end justified the means. Brega thought the end was her death, the means her journey to it. But perhaps Siomi had seen it differently. Her end had been her goal, the same goal she’d had all her life: the protection of her charge.

  Tom watched Neirin gaze into the mask and run a thumb over the cheek. Siomi’s ends justified her means. But her people confused her means with her end, and so they would dishonour her. But she would not care. She would not have been ashamed of her death, and she would not have apologised for it.

  So they had gathered in a circle and Brega knelt and began to scoop a hole in the ground with her gloved hands. But Neirin knelt too and placed his hands over hers. “Please,” he said. Then he released her and began to dig while she watched, eyes wide. Tom didn’t need to wonder if Neirin had ever had dirt under his nails in his life. But that made the gesture powerful.

  When the hole was just large enough and just deep enough for the mask, he stood and dropped it in. It stared up at them all. The skull behind the face of Siomi’s grandmother.

  “Siomi was my protector. My counsel. My friend,” Neirin said. “I wish I didn’t have to do this.” He stared back at the mask for a moment, then he took a deep, shaky breath and nodded to Brega. “In the human tongue,” he said. “For them.”

  Brega frowned but nodded. “Why are we here?” she asked.

  “To bury our shame,” Neirin replied.

  “Whose shame?”

  “Siomi, who was our sister, but was weak in her moment of meeting Angau.”

  “What must we do?”

  “We must,” he said, and stopped. Closed his eyes. Took a breath. “We must forget her. We must purge her from our memories, that her example not lead us to our own weakness.”

  “Her line has failed her.”

  “And we must silence its poison.” Neirin knelt again and picked up a rock he had found nearby. He lifted it in the air and held it, poised, ready. Unwilling. Tom began to wonder if Neirin was having second thoughts. He waited for Neirin to cast the stone aside, sweep the skull back up to his chest and admit that Tom had been right, that they shouldn’t do this.