The Hidden King

by E G Radcliff

  Áed was gratified when she pulled her hand away, looking disgusted. Her eyes met her brother’s with distaste, and she scowled and crossed her arms. Cynwrig looked hurt, but Boudicca’s gaze did not soften, nor did her brow, which was furiously crinkled. “This is absurd.”

  “It’s anything but.”

  She only crossed her arms more firmly, which completely erased her docile, sweet-looking appearance. Áed had not, in the short time he’d known her, seen her look particularly stubborn or angry, but now she donned acrimony as easily as a favorite dress.

  Cynwrig stilled at her stance. “Careful, Boudie.”

  “Or what?” she challenged, glaring at him from under her pale eyelids. “You’ll arrest me for treason?”

  “I don’t question orders,” Cynwrig maintained, trying to take Boudicca’s hand again. She leaned away and did not deign to make eye contact. “And neither should you.” He glanced at Áed, who glared at him. Cynwrig sat up straighter, his brows coming together. The bottoms of his eyelids rose pensively and changed his eyes’ rounded almond edges to something more angular, where harder lines belied the sentiment behind them. “That’s enough.” In one smooth motion, he placed his palms on the table and stood. He reached the door in two steps, and his men stood at attention. “Ahearn, the young one. Killough, the other.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Áed and Ronan found themselves in the back of a carriage, with the man called Killough in the driver’s seat snapping the reins of a glossy, char-black horse. Boudicca had hugged Áed and Ronan before her brother’s men had stormed into the flat. Áed hoped that she wouldn’t suffer for that, but then she was gone, pulled away as the men had shoved Áed and Ronan through the door.

  Now, they sat on cracked leather, and the carriage’s wheels clattered over the paving stones and bounced on the smallest of irregularities with bone-chattering jolts.

  The journey, though it felt quite timeless, didn’t last long before a monstrous building loomed in the window, and Áed recognized it from the first day in the White City. Flags, embossed with shimmering crests, fluttered at the parapets, and above the banners, towers rose into the sky. Killough pulled the carriage off the street and into an alley that burrowed its way between the walls, and the three were cast into gloom.

  Áed could just make out the dim form of a man accepting the horse’s reins and bringing it to a gentle, clip-clopping halt. Killough jumped smoothly from the driver’s seat, and he beckoned Áed and the tremulous Ronan out of the carriage.

  In the raw morning air, their breath rose in plumes, and Ronan huddled close to Áed. The man who had opened the door for them was shorter than Áed, though not by much, with reddish-black hair and startling golden eyes. He stood to the side with a straight back, and though his face wasn’t unkind, he didn’t make eye contact with either of them as he beckoned them to pass. Áed cast a glance at Killough, but the guard’s face held no expression. A shiver ran down Áed’s spine.

  They followed the golden-eyed man deeper into the alley, where two more guards pulled open a great set of double-doors. Ribbons of chill trailed after them as they stepped inside.

  The hallway into which they’d come bore an unmistakable expression of pride. Gold leaf, resplendent with the light of pure-white candles, crept up the walls to the vaulted ceiling. For half of a breath, Áed forgot why he was there and gaped.

  The building was even more vast on the interior than it appeared from the street. They walked on through corridor after luscious corridor, all draped in tapestries or carved with curling, spiraled designs, before the golden-eyed man stopped short so abruptly that Áed nearly stepped on the backs of his feet. Then he realized that they’d halted before an ornate door, a door winged by two more of the August Guard with swords at their backs, and a thread of something sickening squirmed in Áed’s stomach. In a clear, practiced monotone, their guide spoke. “You are about to enter the presence of King Seisyll, Monarch over Suibhne, Emperor of the Darklands of Smudge.” Áed had to stop himself from letting out a sarcastic whistle, and instead bit his lip as the man continued. “When His Majesty is finished with you, I will deliver you to whatever fate the king chooses, without recourse.”

  When neither Áed nor Ronan responded, the man turned to the door.

  The golden-eyed man stepped in first, leaving Áed and Ronan briefly between the two impassive door-guards. The gleam on their blades was as cold as Cynwrig’s eyes.

  From within the room, a voice echoed. It was a resonating voice, a voice that sent Ronan’s hands clenching onto Áed’s crumpled fingers. “Cadeyrn,” the voice said, and Áed realized that Seisyll was addressing the golden-eyed guard. “What is this?”

  “Two outlaws, Your Highness, from Smudge.”

  “Bring them in.”

  Bowing deeply, Cadeyrn stepped from the doorway and beckoned Áed and Ronan inside.

  With Cadeyrn out of his way, Áed could see the fullness of the room. Unbidden, his jaw dropped.

  Rose marble, punctuated by a florid mosaic that glittered with color, constituted the impossibly-smooth floor. Where the floor met the wall, marble gracefully transitioned into curved ribs, studded with torches, that sprouted up and soared to pointed arches and a ceiling set with a thousand shades of stained glass. The glass was not arranged into circles or arches, but instead sprawled like a breathtaking stain, scattering sunlight across the throne in a cascade of gemstone glow.

  Only one other figure shared the space with Áed and Ronan, and in a testament to the size of the chamber, Áed could not discern any detail of him from the distance. It was clear only that he wore a night-blue robe, and that atop his head was a crown. Thinking of Boudicca’s description of the king—half-mad—Áed’s heart thrummed nervously. Ronan pressed his body close.

  Their footsteps echoed as they moved toward the silent king. Details materialized: The man was tall, perhaps as tall as Cynwrig. He had sandy-blond hair, only a shade or two lighter than Áed’s, and upon that hair rested a simple crown studded with brilliant white stones.

  Áed and Ronan stopped, still twenty feet away, and Áed took a deep breath. He could feel the light penetrate his lungs.

  The king’s eyes narrowed at them, his gaze caustic. No patience lurked in the depths of his burning, bright-orange irises. “Come closer.”

  Tentatively, they did, and the king’s eyes appeared to focus as he saw them clearly. He examined them from down his nose, hands clasped behind his back, and Áed put a protective arm around Ronan’s shoulders.

  “What,” Seisyll said, clipping the word, “do you call yourselves?”

  “I’m Áed,” said Áed, doing his best not to sound intimidated by the king’s height, his wealth, or the guards at the doors. “This is Ronan.”

  “Do you deny that you come from Smudge?”

  “Would you believe me if I did?”

  The king didn’t answer, merely raised a regal eyebrow, and Áed’s disdain for him rose a few notches.

  “I came to find a better life for Ronan,” Áed hurried to say, “so whatever you do with me, you can’t punish him. It’s not his fault. He didn’t even want to come.”

  Seisyll let his stare fall on Ronan, who stood up straight for a moment before curling toward Áed again. Seisyll made a little hum of disapproval and focused his gaze on Áed. The king cocked his head. “You look familiar to me.” He narrowed his eyes. “There’s something in your face, I’ve seen your features before. Your eyes…” Seisyll frowned and shook his head. “It matters not.” He turned away, cloak trailing behind. “You know your home as ‘the Maze,’ do you not?”

  “We do.”

  Seisyll nodded, unsurprised. “I am very familiar with it. I have travelled there, seen for myself, and I know well its filth and depravity.”

  “M-hm,” Áed said quietly. “I heard.”

  Seisyll faced the two again, and his gaze became only more intense. “What have you heard?” He laughed. “Boy, the inhabitants of my kingdom are my right.” />
  That damned coal in Áed’s chest again was growing hot again, as if Seisyll’s words were blowing on it. “What do you want with us?”

  “Silence,” Seisyll snapped. “I do not tolerate dissent when it comes even from my most trusted of advisors, much less from the nothing that you are.” He took a step toward them, and Áed began to see the instability that Boudicca had spoken of as Seisyll’s facade, cracked by insolence, split away. “You’re a fool if you think I spare you a thought. I have broken Smudge like a horse, I have killed its men and taken my fill of its women, and the worms that remain shall not crawl their wretched way into the kingdom I have created.” With another step, he was in Áed’s face, and Áed pulled Ronan behind him.

  “Don’t come closer,” Áed said, raising his voice automatically.

  But something was sparking in Seisyll’s tormented head, and he would not be deterred. “I have seen your eyes before,” he said with a curling smile. “Only then, they were full of fear and fire.” The king pulled back his sleeve and raised his arm like a talisman, raised the rippled scar that crawled up to his elbow, and Áed stepped back, keeping himself between the king and Ronan. “I emerged the victor over a creature of great power. Is this the mark of a weak man?”

  “Get away,” Áed warned, but Seisyll was still advancing. “Stay back!”

  “You don’t give me orders!” Seisyll snarled. “I’ll come if I will, you’ll stay if I bid you. You’ll throw yourself at my feet!”

  Áed’s skin was growing warm. Ronan felt it, he must have, because he let out a little sound and stumbled backward. Seisyll saw it as a sign of weakness and laughed, lunging forward. “Don’t!” Áed shouted, but the king took him by the upper arm, yanking him away from where Ronan retreated, and Áed shoved him off.

  Seisyll let out a cry as the smell of burning fabric slithered into the air, and he released Áed’s arm. Áed clutched his hands to his chest, trying to contain the heat, but beyond him, it was too late: A glowing edge ate a hole in Seisyll’s shirt before flames started licking up the king’s body, and Seisyll roared and smacked uselessly at the growing blaze. Áed stared, shocked at the part of himself that was gleeful at the flames. The king tripped backward and fell; sunlight shone through the fire in a multitude of colors and shivered in the waves of heat that eddied in the air.

  Áed snapped out of it when Seisyll stopped screaming, and he forced his appalled body forward. “Stop this,” he muttered to himself, but he didn’t know how. The fire wasn’t his anymore, so with all the effort he could muster, he rolled the king onto his stomach. The flames, suffocated, dimmed, and then he pressed at them until only a few glowing kernels of fire remained, not burning but shifting at the seared edges of Seisyll’s clothing.

  The king’s skin was blackened, and from his soot-darkened face, his orange eyes blazed at Áed as he knelt beside the fallen man.

  “I’m sorry,” Áed said, but that was all he could say. He hadn’t meant to do that. He hadn’t meant to hurt anyone else. “I’m sorry.”

  If Áed had chosen that moment to inhale, the sound would have drowned the king’s next words.

  “I know you,” King Seisyll breathed, and a hint of a flickering smile alighted his lips so that his expression danced.

  “What?”

  “I know exactly who you are.” He blinked and groaned, and his face tensed with pain. “A festival night,” he murmured, and Áed didn’t think that the king was speaking to him anymore. “A festival night and her eyes like fire. She said I’d be punished—tell me I’m not a foolish man…”

  “You’re mad,” Áed said softly.

  The king’s hand moved as if he intended to reach for Áed, but the man’s fingers stopped short as Seisyll froze with pain. “I feel that I’m dreaming,” the king admitted. He let his hand fall, defeated. “I didn’t realize this would happen. I didn’t realize you would come of it.” He closed his eyes, and his face twitched. “She was beautiful, you know. I liked her best. I always wanted…” He trailed off, hesitating. “Well, not like this. Not like this at all. I wanted this, but not like this at all.” Seisyll’s voice had fallen quiet, and the king mumbled to himself, eyes unfocused. “I always wanted you.”

  Áed shot to his feet as the door at the end of the chamber banged open, and Cadeyrn, followed by the guards at the door, spilled into the room. At the sight of their fallen monarch, they crossed the chamber at a sprint. “Your Highness!” Cadeyrn locked his eyes on Áed. “You! Get back!”

  Obediently at the threat of the guards’ swords, Áed tripped back to where Ronan sat, mute, on the rose-marble floor.

  While the door-guards tended to Seisyll, Cadeyrn strode over to Áed, fury rising like the tide, and gripped him by the collar. “What did you do?” he spat, and gave Áed a vicious shake. “What did you do?”

  “I—I didn’t mean to—”

  Cadeyrn, though shorter than Áed, was much stronger, and he threw Áed to the floor so that all the wind left Áed’s lungs.

  Gasping, Áed pushed himself to his elbows. “I swear it was a mistake, I didn’t know—”

  “Get up,” Cadeyrn seethed, and, without waiting for Áed to move, grabbed him by both shoulders and heaved him to his feet. Cadeyrn gestured with his chin to Ronan. “You too.”

  “It’s not his fault, he’s just a boy—”

  Cadeyrn cut Áed off again, this time with an elbow to the gut. “You’re through talking. Come with me.”

  Twisting in the guard’s grasp, Áed cast desperately over his shoulder to where one of the guards was pushing Ronan away toward the opposite door. “Ronan hasn’t done anything! Let him go!” He kicked out, but Cadeyrn only wrenched him backward so that he lost his balance and almost fell. “Ronan!”

  “Áed!” Ronan screamed.

  “Please,” Áed begged. “Please, don’t hurt him. He has eight years, that’s all, he’s never hurt anybody. It’s me, all me, I swear.”

  “I know it’s you,” Cadeyrn growled. “So shut up and stop trying to kick me.” He fixed Áed with his golden glare. “You attacked my king. You will be punished for that.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The path to the dungeon twisted and turned. For a short while, they followed the halls of the palace, but then Cadeyrn opened a door in the gilded wall, and the men holding Áed pushed him into a passageway. The illusion of candlelit splendor fell away like a husk to reveal sweating stone walls.

  They proceeded down long, narrow staircases until Áed knew they had descended stories deep beneath the earth. The earthy darkness made him panicky, especially since beside the path, bottomless chasms yawned in the gloom. Hundreds of cells passed behind them, each alike, though some revealed ghoulish faces crowned with wild hair, long beards, or bloody scratches peering through the iron bars. Surely, Áed realized, some of these people were his kin: invaders, outlaws from the Maze. Fear prickled at his heart as the eyes of the damned observed him pitilessly.

  It occurred to him horribly that even if he managed to escape a cell, he might wander endlessly through the labyrinth of passageways, searching for the way out. The thought made him nauseous. And where was Ronan? Was he to be dragged here as well? The boy would be terrified and alone, paralyzed in the dark. Áed threw himself desperately against the guard’s grip, which resulted in a blow on the back of the head from Cadeyrn that made bright spots swirl before his eyes.

  After descending more stairs than Áed had ever imagined to exist, Cadeyrn stopped. An empty cell waited in the darkness, gaping like a maw, and Áed’s protests fell on deaf ears as Cadeyrn pushed him forward so he fell to his hands and knees on the cold stone floor. They’d long ago passed the last torch in the wall, and Áed knew as soon as the man left, the blackness would be complete.

  Cadeyrn stepped back and slammed closed the iron-barred door, and Áed heard the lock clamp into place. Cadeyrn threw his weight into it to ensure that it didn’t yield.

  It didn’t.

  “Someone will bring you water in two
days’ time,” the guard said. Anger still simmered beneath his words. “And a meal five days after that. If you try to escape, you’ll fall to your death before you even encounter a guard.”

  Áed did his best to square his shoulders, but the fear was overwhelming. The dungeon was freezing, and he trembled despite Cynwrig’s thick gray sweater. “Where is Ronan?” he asked, wrapping his arms around himself as much for comfort as warmth and peering through the bars at Cadeyrn’s stony face.

  Cadeyrn blinked slowly and turned to go back the way he came, and Áed pressed himself against the cold iron of the bars to follow the receding light. Cadeyrn’s voice echoed coldly down the dismal passage with the finality of a death knell. “You will never see another sunrise.”

  “Wait!” Áed shouted after him as the hallway plunged into darkness. “Where is Ronan?” He elbowed the bars, and they clanged with a harsh, empty echo. “Where is he?!”

  He received no reply.

  For the first few hours after the last footsteps had faded away, after the torch had withdrawn its last beam of light, Áed lay on the rotting cot, facing the wall and hugging himself. After a few minutes spent on tears, he’d realized he was wasting not only energy, but water.

  He tried, for a time, to consider his predicament. He was stuck in a cell in the pitch-darkness, and for all he knew, Ronan was as well. Or the boy was in an orphanage, or he was being thrown to the streets, or returned to the Maze—that thought stopped Áed cold, and bile rose in his throat. What if they returned Ronan to the Maze? Alone, there were so many ways he would die. And the things that would happen before that… Áed pressed his hands to either side of his head and curled forward, breathing too quickly.

  Then, harnessing the panic, he forced himself to his feet, gritted his teeth, and wrapped his mutilated fingers around the bars.