by David Estes
Which brings me to my next point. I hereby declare myself the King of the North, for as long as I shall live. Already, my uncle’s forces are gathering at Blackstone to attack the west. I have gathered my own army, which I will use to defend Raider’s Pass from the Ironclad’s to the east. Once I am victorious I will march on Castle Hill and take back what is rightfully mine. I repeat: I am the king, and all negotiations between our kingdoms will be conducted with me.
I am not my father, who was a brutal, violent man. Nor am I my uncle, who desires to flood the south with his armies. No, all I wish is to maintain the frozen lands north of the Mournful Mountains, and provide my people with the sense of peace they’ve been starved of for many years. As a new queen yourself, I assume you want the same for the west.
Peace. It’s such a strange word these days, but one that is not unachievable. That is what I believe. That is what I hope.
I am not requesting your help in retaking Castle Hill. I am simply extending a hand across the battlefield—a hand I hope you will take in a show of good faith. The alliance once forged by my grandfather can still be achieved if we want it to.
Your Humble Northern Counterpart,
King Archer Gäric
Northern Kingdom
Slowly, carefully, Rhea folded the parchment in half. “Strange,” she said. “We’ve already received streams that the battle at Raider’s Pass is over, with the northern rebels victorious.”
“Someone must’ve delayed sending this stream, either by mistake or design. And yet this is wonderful news, Your Highness,” Ennis said. “Perhaps the situation isn’t as bleak as we once believed.”
Rhea held the parchment with both hands, and then ripped it in half.
“What are you doing?” Ennis tried to grab at the paper, but the Fury was quick to block him with her arm.
Rhea continued to tear the message apart, until it was naught but scraps of soggy confetti in her hands, which she let fall to her feet, grinding them under her heel.
Ennis stared at her for a moment, confusion stretching across his face, and then said, “Do you remember our history? The north and the west were borne from the same past. It all started with a Gäric, Heinrich, the first Crimean explorer to reach these lands. His son’s son, Verner Gäric, fought against the motherland in the First Independence War.”
“Yes, yes, the War of Roses,” Rhea said tiredly. As a child, she’d loved hearing the story as told by her history tutor. After the final battle, which took place in Knight’s End, it was said the streets were so stained with blood they appeared to be covered in a fine layer of rose petals—hence, the war’s nickname. It was a good story, full of valor—blood, yes, but what was a war without bloodshed?—and victory and heroes and villains. “That was four-hundred years ago. What does it have to do with the present?”
Ennis began nodding emphatically, as if he finally believed he had her attention. “The Lorens fought alongside the Gärics and emerged victorious, don’t you see?”
“Perhaps you are the one forgetting our history, dear cousin,” Rhea said. “A hundred years later there was the Second Independence War, after the reclusive Gärics had already made their home in the north. Who came to help us then? Not the north, but the east! Should we make peace with them, too, our sworn enemies?”
Ennis sighed and Rhea knew she had won a point. Not that she needed one; she was the queen. “Do you know why the Second Independence War was nicknamed the War of Tears?” her cousin stubbornly asked.
Rhea frowned, wracking her memory. She didn’t. “Why should a three-hundred-year-old nickname matter to a queen?” she said instead.
“Because you are Rhea the Righteous,” Ennis explained. “Servant of Wrath and leader of the Holy City of Knight’s End. It was called the War of Tears because after the final battle, in which there were such tremendous casualties on both sides that the dead far outnumbered the living, rain poured from the sky in sheets. The rainfall lasted a fortnight, flooding the land and washing the blood away. Cleansing the earth so we could start anew. It was our ancestor, Queen Mallorhea Loren, who said the rain was Wrath’s Tears falling for our people. She’s the one who gave the war its nickname. You were named after her.”
Rhea frowned. She’d never heard this story. Was he making it up? “I am the first of my name,” she said.
Ennis placed his hand on her arm, but she shook it off. Ever since the Furies had pressed the knife to her face she hated being touched. Ennis took it in stride, continuing. “Exactly. Your parents wanted you to be the first of your name, so they shortened Mallorhea’s name to give you yours. But it doesn’t change the fact that they wanted you to be strong like her—which you are—and righteous like her.”
“I am Rhea the Righteous,” she said. “I wear a sign of my devotion to Wrath on my face, would you deny it?” Rhea could feel the heat flushing her face, the anger needling through her veins.
Ennis remained annoyingly calm, his eyes never leaving hers. “It was Queen Mallorhea who, after the War of Tears, forged an alliance with the north, the same northerners who then helped her drive the easterners back onto their lands when they demanded restitution for the losses incurred during the war. It was Queen Mallorhea who did everything in her power to make peace in the Four Kingdoms for the first time in its long and bloody history, a peace that lasted for a hundred years, long after she’d been embalmed in the crypts.”
Rhea scowled at him, hating that he was so reasonable, so logical, even playing to his knowledge that she regularly visited the crypts. What he didn’t know was that she went there to meet her paramour, not to mourn the dead. It was there, in the cryptlands, that she and Grey first…
She slammed the door shut on the memory. “I will not use history as an excuse to be weak,” she said. “Not when the north has shown time and time again that they cannot be trusted, that they are no better than our enemies to the east and south.”
“I don’t understand,” Ennis said. “Archer Gäric wants peace. Surely you will respond.”
“Yes, of course, dear cousin. I will respond immediately. Please send the following reply: There shall be no peace. Not now. Not ever.”
Ennis’s jaw dropped open and he looked like he wanted to speak but no words came out. His mouth closed, opened again, then closed for good. With a small shake of his head, he left the way he’d come, his head hanging.
When he was gone, Rhea said, “Gather what’s left of the furia. I have instructions. There are preparations to make.”
“Preparations for what, my queen?” the Fury asked.
“For war.”
Eleven
The Western Kingdom, The Tangle
Roan Loren
“I think we’re traveling in circles,” Gwendolyn Storm said, stopping. Her silver hair fell across the shoulders of her form-fitting armor.
“How can you tell?” Roan asked.
Her yellow, catlike eyes flashed with frustration. “I’ve seen that tree three times in the last week,” she said, pointing to a gnarled oak with enormous roots protruding from the ground at strange angles.
“All the trees look the same,” Roan said. “Big and old.” He knew he was way out of his element. Being from the hot and dusty south, where you could see the distant mountains and sea on a clear day, he was used to vegetation being sparse. Though he’d grown accustomed to the forest from his time spent riding through Ironwood, the Tangle was a whole different beast. The trees, many of which had poisonous spikes sprouting from their trunks, grew together, like conjoined twins, wrapped in bushes and brambles and vines, all of which seemed determined to block the path of travelers. Occasionally Roan got the eerie feeling that the thorny plants were actually moving to try to stop them, or perhaps steering them in a particular direction. Even the sunlight played tricks on them as its rays fought through the cover of the crisscrossing branches, and they never could tell which way it was moving. At night, the moons and stars were completely hidden and useless for navigational purpose
s.
“Aye. But I marked this one the last time we saw it.” Gwendolyn pointed to a thin cut at the base of the tree.
“You’re certain it’s the same mark?”
“As certain as I can be of anything in this Ore-forsaken forest.”
Roan sighed and slumped onto a rare spot of vacant ground. After fleeing the eastern army’s encampment just east of the Snake River—which divided the eastern and western kingdoms—they’d swum across the cold, turbulent waters, entering the protection of the ancient forest known as the Tangle.
His biggest regret was not saying goodbye to Gareth Ironclad. Not being able to explain why they had to leave. Gods, I don’t even know if he’s still alive, if I did enough to heal him.
He could still feel the warmth of the prince’s lips on his, the one and only time they’d kissed.
Could still see the anger and surprise in the prince’s eyes.
The thought made him sad, which was strange considering the way Gareth—who was now, technically, the King of the Eastern Kingdom—and he had first met, almost as if by fate.
And then, when Roan had saved Gareth from death—the death everyone had expected from him, considering he was born to be the Shield, protecting his brothers from harm—Roan had realized he’d begun to think of Gareth as a friend.
That was a week ago. The first few days they took turns sleeping while the other kept watch, but after three uneventful nights passed, they began sleeping back to back. Each night, Roan had relished the warmth of Gwen’s body against his. He couldn’t deny his attraction to her, nor to the prince, but now wasn’t the time to act on it, especially because the Orian was as likely to stab him as she was to kiss him.
Now Roan could only hope they were further west than before, perhaps even nearing the forest’s western border. But each day that passed left them more concerned that they were decidedly and hopelessly lost.
I’m so close to home, Roan thought. And yet seem further away than ever. For a moment, he wondered whether he would live out the rest of his days in the Tangle, eating bark and sewing together leaves to use as clothing. They could even invent a new language, comprised of bird chirps and gnawing noises.
“Something amusing?” Gwen asked, easing down beside him. Her arrows rattled in the pouch strapped to her back. Though she’d planned to hunt game in the forest, they hadn’t seen so much as an earthworm thus far. She’d brought down several miniscule birds, but they had so little meat on their tiny bones that they almost weren’t worth the effort or the potential loss of arrows it took to bag one. Despite his hunger, Roan still couldn’t bring himself to eat anything that had once had bones, skin, a heart. Maybe in a day or two he’d feel differently, but he wasn’t there yet.
They’d run out of bread two days earlier. The only water they’d had in the last day was gathered from cup-like leaves that had captured rainfall.
Roan hadn’t even realized he’d been smiling. “I was just thinking about the future,” he said.
“And you found that humorous?”
He pushed his blond locks away from his eyes. He needed a haircut, desperately. “As it stands today, aye. Quite humorous. It involves bark salads, leaf-clothes, and gnawing. Lots of gnawing. Oh, and a little chirping.”
Gwen looked at him like he was mad—a look Roan was beginning to get used to—then pulled out a bundle of straight sticks and well-shaped rocks she was fashioning into additional arrows. She began to carve, the sound—chook chook whick!—obliterating the silence.
“I’m beginning to think this is a fool’s mission,” Roan said.
Gwen stopped carving. “Do you want to go back?” There was exasperation in her voice, although less than in the past. She didn’t hate him quite as much as she used to, perhaps because he’d saved Gareth’s life.
Even if Roan did want to go back, he didn’t know if they could figure out east from west. Anyway, Roan didn’t want to go back, that was certain. For the first time in his life he was moving forwards, not sideways or backways, and it felt good. He didn’t know what would happen in the future, but he felt comfortable with it. He didn’t know whether his tattooya—the three-leaf marking on his chest, known as the lifemark—really made him the Peacemaker that the mysterious Western Oracle had prophesied would come to do battle with Kings’ Bane, but again, it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that he was doing more good than harm.
Step by step, he was moving toward a destiny that was his and his alone.
“I take your silence for a rejection,” Gwen said. “Or have you gone mute?”
Roan huffed out a laugh. Strangely, despite the fact that the Orian known as Gwendolyn Storm had shot an arrow at him, punched him numerous times, and stabbed him in the gut, he was actually enjoying her company. They might have different views on the world, but they were connected by their skinmarks. Somehow. He remembered what she’d told him about the name her father said they used to use for the marks. Fatemarks. Is this my fate? he wondered.
“I was thinking about how I’m happy for the first time,” Roan said.
Gwen’s knife slid clumsily off the edge of the arrow shaft. “Happy? So you have gone mad then. Fan-bloody-tastic.”
“I’m serious.”
“We’re stuck in the middle of the most horrible forest in all of the Four Kingdoms and you’re happy?”
“You’re a forest dweller, shouldn’t you be at home in the woods?”
Gwen laughed without humor and went back to carving. “Not in these woods. My home is Ironwood. I feel connected to the trees there. These ones all seem to scowl at me.”
Roan understood what she meant. More than once he swore the trees were giving him dirty looks. “I’ve heard legends about the Tangle. Are they true?”
“What legends?”
“About strange creatures made from shadow and light, sometimes as small as a pinhole and other times as large as the tallest trees.”
“They’re not legends,” Gwen said, not too happily.
“So they exist?” Roan glanced about himself, half-expecting to be assaulted by one of the trees.
“The stories exaggerate, they always do. But these woods are inhabited by powerful creatures—at least they were. Nymphs and warlocks and sprites. Though that was a long time ago. The forest has grown thick, so nothing is certain anymore.”
Roan didn’t like the sound of any of those creatures, though at the same time he felt a strange desire to see one of them. “And that’s why you don’t feel comfortable here?”
Gwen nodded. “Home isn’t always one place, but I know it’s not this place.”
Roan got that. “I was never happy in Calypso. Not truly. Sometimes I wondered about why I’d been born.”
Gwen threw down her knife and it stuck in the ground. “You act as if the entire world conspires against you.”
“Doesn’t it?” Abandoned by his own parents, tormented by his Southron guardian who claimed to be trying to keep him safe, afflicted by the plague, attacked by dragons, captured by Gareth Ironclad, and then marched into battle. How am I still alive? Roan wondered. If not for his lifemark, he knew he wouldn’t be. He’d be dead ten times over. Roan crinkled his brow. Then he remembered back in Ironwood when Gwen had shown him her treehouse. He remembered the poem carved into the gate.
Gwen said nothing, staring into the woods.
“Tell me about your bondmate, the one who wrote the words on your gate back in Ironwood,” Roan said.
Gwen stiffened. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Those words mattered to you. They matter to you.” He reached over and touched the back of her hand. For a moment, they both stared at their fingers. “I’m your friend, you can tell me.”
And then Gwen pulled away and said, “I don’t talk about this for a reason. Just because we are on the same path now doesn’t mean we’ll be on the same path forever. It doesn’t mean we’re friends. So let’s just get through it, agreed?”
Roan felt a little stung by her words
, but he said, “Agreed.”
The Orian grabbed her knife and went back to shaping her arrows. Chook chook whick!
Suddenly, there was another sound. Gwen stopped carving, her head cocked to the side. Listening. Roan opened his mouth to say something like What in the name of the ore monkeys of Ironwood was that? but Gwen stopped him with a finger to her lips. Don’t move, she mouthed. She mimed putting something in her mouth—food, Roan thought she meant—and then chewing it. She went from carver to hunter in an instant, silently regaining her feet, as graceful and lithe as an orecat, but far faster. Impossibly fast. Sometimes the way she moved—slow, purposeful—made Roan think of spilled ink dripping from a tabletop, while other times she was more like a lightning strike, but without the flash of light.
The sound came again, a rustle of leaves, the scrape of something picking its way through the undergrowth. Whatever it was, Roan hoped it was large enough to feed Gwen for a few days. With their luck, it was probably a tiny brown mouse.
Roan watched as she stole through the forest, her silver hair disappearing behind the old oak she’d marked with her knife a day earlier. A moment passed without a sound, and then another.
“Yah!” Roan heard her cry and then there was a shout. It wasn’t Gwen’s shout, and Roan had never heard an animal make a noise like that before. He leapt to his feet and rushed around the oak, crashing through the brambles with a complete lack of grace, especially compared to the smoothness and silence with which Gwen had just achieved the same path.
When he emerged into a small empty space, he skidded to a stop. “Gwen?” he said. “Who’s that?”