An Heir to Thorns and Steel

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  The footsteps on the sand felt as close as kisses, too intimate in my ears. I cringed away from them, face hidden against Amhric’s shoulder, unaware of how long it had been... feeling only that I was cold and damp and the inside of my mouth tasted of bile and my throat burnt raw. I had nothing left in me, not to kill, not even to turn, could not even straighten my crooked back.

  Perhaps it was well, then, that the voice that spoke did not address me.

  “My lord, my liege, my king,” Kemses breathed. “You live and are complete.”

  “E Sadar,” Amhric said, and in the name was a welcome.

  Kemses dropped to his knees before us and said to my turned back, “Morgan Locke.”

  “Don’t,” I croaked past the wreck of my throat. “Don’t congratulate me. I feel the vilest creature on the earth, and like butchered meat besides.”

  “I see the staff stood you in good stead.”

  I choked on a laugh. “One might say.”

  Even without my glasses, even with my face buried in Amhric’s shoulder, I could sense the glance they exchanged, could imagine the somber quality of my brother’s tawny eyes, the confusion and worry in Kemses’s.

  “Don’t,” I said. “Don’t coddle me.” I pushed myself free and lifted my head, and the blur of their faces turned toward me. “This is what we are in for, isn’t it. This is only the beginning of the violence between us and your throne.”

  “Your throne,” Amhric said. “If you wish it. I seek no such thing.”

  I shuddered. “No. I want only the truth. No parentheticals, no rhetorical devices to turn my gaze from what’s before us. They don’t want you to be king because your very existence implies the end of their autonomy. They want to keep their feudal provinces, their petty kingdoms. And they cannot carve them out and hold them without the magic you will draw from them… and with me at your side, they cannot stop you.”

  “Yes.”

  I drew in a long breath. “And this... this is necessity.”

  “Yes.”

  Kemses passed me my spectacles. They were somewhat worse for the wear, but I set them on my nose and looked then at my brother, my king. “Explain. Explain now. Please. Make sense of the blood on my hands.”

  They exchanged another glance. Amhric bowed his head and his shoulders lifted in a sigh I could not hear.

  “It is thus,” said he. “Long, long ago, centuries past, we lived in harmony with humans, and we had but one mission: to drive back demons. Other things we have enjoyed and existed, but where there is magic—” He looked at me, resting his hands on his knees. “There is duty to use it to protect others. These demons seek footholds where there is uncertainty and chaos, and they live to create hollow spaces and dead places, to unmake, to sup on the living and the bright and the beautiful and to leave nothing but waste, wreck and ruin in their wake. So great are their depredations that when too many of them are drawn down, there is almost no banishing them, and their strength is terrifying, for they draw up unnatural armies to do their bidding. Then there is no turning them back, save with the magics, and for this the king needs as much of it as can be gifted, from every soul that has it. For this task do the royal gifts rise, and so perilous is the spell-weaving that the prince came about to protect the king in the wreaking, because otherwise he would fall.

  “Time passed and we grew more practiced at our work, and soon it became rare to see a demon. The task of the king shifted from weapon of last recourse to prevention, and to this end we did our best to tend our gardens and live peaceably among humans, because where there is joy and peace and duty, demons are rare.”

  I cleared my throat. “And now the part of the story where everything goes wrong.”

  Amhric nodded. “Our kin, humanity, had never been comfortable with us, for that we wielded a force against which they had no defense. So long as we stood between them and the dark, they left us in an uneasy peace... but as demons were relegated to the stuff of rumor, they began to associate us with what we fought. ‘Where there are elves, there are demons,’ they said. ‘Perhaps if there were no elves, there would be no demons.’ And into that breach rushed our enemies, seeing that they could turn us against each other.

  “To the humans, they promised to leech our magic from us. ‘You fear them,’ they whispered. ‘We know how to drain them of their power. We know how to make them safe.’“

  “And then the humans betrayed us,” Kemses said. “Who had ever been their guardians. They brought us the poisoned cup and gave it to our king, knowing that what affects the magic of the king affects us all, for we are tied together.”

  “The cup—” I said, and then I halted, trembling. You make immortality sound artificial—it is. “—was an enchantment. To make you immortal.”

  “To bind up the magic in our blood, to tie it to the task of keeping us alive,” Amhric said. “Depriving us forever of our ability to give our lives for the cause to which we were dedicated. Some of us remain powers after Dissipation... after aging begins and the enchantment draws from us to undo all the damage wrought by years and abuse. But most of us it leaves barely enough to light a candle or summon a breeze.”

  “And then,” Kemses said, “And then, when we were at our weakest and most confused, the demons came and brought the dead to serve as their scythes. We lost the entirety of the north to them. And as humanity screamed for us to save them, we died horribly, slowly, ripped asunder, devoured, set aflame... helpless and bewildered, screaming.”

  Something in his eyes... I looked at him. “You saw it.”

  He turned his face from mine.

  Amhric said softly, “There we would have died, and all humanity with us… save that in our darkest hour, we were saved by an angel, an angel as from legend, as those who gave us speech and our mission. With that divine aid, the demons were banished and their revenant armies put down, and for our reward...”

  “For your reward you were exiled,” I said. “By humanity.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And we came here, where you now see what becomes of a people deprived of purpose and the meaning of death.”

  “And the humans here,” I said, remembering my conversation with Kelu and Almond on the drake as we headed for Erevar. “Somehow you learned how to extract the magic from other living beings and use it to augment what the enchantment has stolen.”

  “This ability came to us with the enchantment that bound us,” Kemses said. “I am convinced as a way to further our downfall. What good can come of such a power?”

  So cold, I had become so cold, so suddenly. “The demons. This is too much. This will open the way for them.”

  “If it has not already,” Amhric said, slowly. “Yes. The depravity and anger and resentment… these are the things upon which demons thrive, the ladder by which they travel to reach the world. Given enough power, they can bring back the dead and threaten us again.”

  “How can they let it continue?” I cried, angry. Angry at the elves, for their recklessness. At me for the blood on my hands. At this situation which had made it inevitable. “The elves know what they court! You live forever! Did you just forget?”

  “Those of us who’ve been alive since the exile are very rare,” Kemses said. “Our people have been victims of internecine conflicts provoked by the council and by warring families in order to win larger estates on these islands. And those of us who were born afterwards, there are not so many of them either. The past for them is the past: all that matters is eking out a life now... one good enough to live forever.”

  I looked at Amhric. “Are you one of those youths?”

  He shook his head slowly. “I was a child when we were exiled, but I remember the angel. I remember the war. And I remember the human king who sent us away.”

  “And you have been king all this time?” I asked.

  The two of them looked at one another. Amhric said, “No. But... I think the gifts rose in people without the power to express them past Dissipation. I don’t know how many have died since
Marne and Sihret, but these gifts came to me only a decade ago.”

  “And you fell into your enemy’s hands,” I said. “To Suleris. Because I was missing.”

  They looked at me.

  “How long?” I asked. The visions that had assaulted me coursed shivers down my spine: Red Prince, Red Prince, we will come again. “How long do we have? How long before they come again?”

  “I don’t know,” Amhric said. “But...” He closed his eyes and I felt something in him gathering the air and the starlight and the darkness. “There is a piercing beauty and fragility to everything around us. It may already be too late.”

  Kemses was watching him. “I didn’t know, my lord. I thought we were done with demons.”

  Amhric said, “We will never be done with demons. It is the way of the world. Where there is light, there will be the shadow.”

  “Then you must be king,” I said.

  “Yes,” Amhric said heavily. “But by nature I cannot rule without the consent of my people.”

  “But I can compel them,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “But not without power.” He reached for me, touched my chest, and set his palm flat there, over my racing heart. “You are twisted into a knot of blood and thorns, Morgan. Until we free you, what little power you can muster will be insufficient to our need.”

  “Well, I’m not going to pay Sedetnet his blood price to free me,” I said. “Surely there’s some other way to undo this.”

  Kemses shook his head. “Such enchantments are rare among us now. What few are still in use exist only because of books from before the exile that describe their creation... but the grimoires that detail something as complex as this....” He made as if to touch my knee but didn’t. “Those are lost with the manuscripts at the athenaeum.”

  “The... what?” I whispered.

  “The athenaeum,” Kemses repeated. “When we still lived with humans, we maintained a great library—”

  “—at Vigil!” I whispered. “My God! The sealed athenaeum at Vigil!” I looked up at them, wild-eyed. “But that city was ruined!”

  “By the demons’ armies, yes,” Kemses said, staring at me intently. “Did you say... sealed? There are sealed chambers?”

  “Yes!” I said. “They have only just now begun to open the catacombs!”

  “There, then is our hope,” Amhric said, soft. “Not just for you... but for all of us.” I glanced at him and he met my eyes. “If we can unbind a blood-working of the magnitude that claims you,” he said, pressing lightly against my breastbone, “why not then the one that trammels our power?”

  “To become mortal,” Kemses said, voice gone taut with longing, falling to a whisper. “God! To die at last!”

  “Then we will sail for home,” I said. “And seek our salvation in the ruins.”

  “We?” Amhric asked.

  “You would have me leave you here?” I asked. “Among your enemies, and you without defense?” I clasped the narrow wrist over my heart. “You must be mad.”

  “You must both go,” Kemses said. “There is no question. And I can charter your voyage. But I must stay, or I will not be the master of Erevar when I return. Someone must hold the line so you have a foothold in the madness when you return.”

  I closed my eyes. “Then we go home.”

  “Yes,” Amhric said.

  “Come,” Kemses said, rising. “The ship awaits.”

  “The genets...!”

  He laughed. “Waiting for you. They didn’t wander far.”

  I sighed. “I suppose they’re mine to care-take now.”

  “Property of the royal blood-flag,” Kemses said with a hint of humor in his voice. “All four of them.”

  “Four!” I exclaimed. And then covered my eyes. “Ah, not the Black Pearls also.”

  “They seem concerned for your welfare,” Kemses said.

  “I’m sure they’d be much happier in your possession, allowed to loiter in luxury in a quiet and stable household. Much happier than they would be tramping in our wake through the cold wreckage of broken and dangerous cities on a madcap quest!”

  He shook his head. “Oh, no... no, I think not. You’ll see.” He grinned. “We’ll be waiting for you by the ship’s boat.”

  I glanced out to sea, saw the black silhouette of Kemses’s sleek vessel bobbing on the waters. “Kemses, how did you come to be so close, anyway?”

  “I have been making these voyages since you left for Kesína. I thought...” He paused, then smiled a wry smile. “I felt uncomfortable knowing you were here alone.”

  I gave free rein to the sincerity of my feeling, and while it did not shine in my voice as it would have had it been an elf’s, still it was something. “Thank you.”

  He shook his head. “It’s nothing.”

  I grinned, then, remembering his reprimand in the stable at Erevar. “You might consider developing a touch more graciousness in accepting the gratitude of your liegelord, vassal mine. We do take offense if we are rebuffed.”

  He started and then laughed and bowed, his silvered hair falling over a shoulder to sweep the sand. “My apologies, my lord. I will work on my polish.”

  “Apology accepted,” I said. And smiled. “E Sadar.”

  “Master Locke,” he said with a laugh in his eyes, and left me with the king.

  I studied him, searching for any sign that they’d hurt him and finding nothing... only his imperturbable calm. He sat cross-legged, small hands folded in his lap, and the rents in his clothes and the scratches and travel stains dulling his skin were meaningless. I had not thought that the stars would be kind to skin as honey-warm as his, to hair so autumnal, but the silver only seemed to emphasize the gold and copper limning his edges... as if it were teasing at the lips of a light that would be visible if he shifted out of its way.

  “They didn’t hurt you,” I said.

  He met my gaze. “Not as much as they have hurt you.”

  I wanted to deny it, but I could not. Not to the man who’d held me while I retched my horror over having killed a man onto the sand. I had hated Thameis, I had wanted him dead, I had even in my worst fevers wanted to be the one who killed him... but there was no clean way to kill an elf. I suppressed a shiver. “It will pass.”

  “The sickness will pass,” he said. “But for all the deaths you will mete out on my behalf in the future... I apologize.”

  Slowly, slowly I shook my head. “No.” I drew in a breath. “No.” Lifting my head then and meeting his eyes, unblinking, “If it were to be the executioner for a king who sought power over others solely for the sake of power, you would find me gone the moment I could board a ship and leave. But we are here by...” I trailed off and laughed, because it was preposterous and it was true. “By accident of birth, and because there is a need that only we can fulfill. A duty. I would not do this for you alone. But for us all... then yes. If the elves were meant as our bulwarks against evil, then to save them from themselves is imperative.”

  “Were I more... “

  “No,” I said, stopping him before he could follow that trail and find the guilt at its end. “You can’t be. Any more than I could do what you do. You said it yourself: we are not meant to be parted.”

  “No,” he said quietly. “But I know... I know that it is a great faith, to believe it on the strength of a story from a man you don’t know.”

  “Don’t I?” I asked, smiling.

  He hesitated.

  I said, “There are enough enemies to fight without fighting my kin. You are my brother.” And saying it, I realized I believed it. I laughed. “God above, what a strange world it is.” And then, even harder, imagining the expression on Eyre’s face when I presented him with a real elf: “Oh, but wait until my master professor meets you!”

  “A shock?” Amhric asked, perplexed but smiling.

  “An understatement,” I said, and let him help me to my feet. He bent to retrieve my staff from the sand; it was clean, as if the magic I’d poured through it had burnt
the gore from its incised channels. Only the stained tassels and darkened suede hinted at its baptism in blood. With a somber grace, he turned to me, and though he did not kneel there was something of humility in the way he bowed his shining head and held it out. He asked me to renew my pledge... no, to make it in full understanding of what I was, what we were and what we were about to do. So many deaths between ourselves and success, and all of them would be mine to mete out or command. I hardly felt capable.

  But what could I do? I was named, bound in the circles of duty as surely as the blood-gifts that flowed in my body. Morgan Locke, historian and folklorist, student, scholar, son of Evertrue... prince of elves, defender of kings, wielder of magic. I set my hand on the staff between his and curled my fingers around it; with a long breath I met his gaze and lifted the staff from his hands. He closed his eyes and I knew then how much this wore on him. To command death is a wound to the spirit, but to be its cause... I could not fathom it, nor did I wish to. The blood had been wise to prick the prince-gifts from me after all.

  The offer of his arm I found far easier to accept, and I hobbled toward the ship’s boat with his aid. And there, God help me, I was mobbed by genets.

  “Master! You’re safe! We were so worried!”

  Black and white arms around me, little noses tickling with their damp leather, the twitch of ears—I looked over their heads at Kemses, who was grinning. I sighed and looped my arms around all their shoulders as Kelu watched from a prickly distance. “Well, I’m here now.”

  “All yours,” Kemses observed as we boarded the boat.

  “I suppose at that,” I said and sighed, watching the two Black Pearls curl up with Almond. “I’m going to have to give those two proper names.”

  “You’ll think of something,” Kemses said.

  “You are finding this far too amusing, vassal mine.”

  “I do believe you’ve already accused me of impertinence,” Kemses said. “Far be it from me to contradict.”

  At my expression, Kelu said, “You earned it.”

  “I should know better than to expect sympathy from you.”

  “Yes,” she said. And then, after a pause, “All the same, I’m glad you’re not dead.”