by S J Hartland
“I wanted to unsettle you. To punish you for unsettling me,” she had explained that first time they met in the forest. He went to reason with her about Kaell. That’s what he told himself.
Whatever she kept from him, he had secrets too. Deeds stained with shame he locked within. Never to look at.
“Come inside,” she whispered. “I missed you.”
Vraymorg swept her hand to his lips. She wore a different ring. Wrought gold, set with pearl and jade.
He stilled, his lips caught on warm flesh. A deathly, ghastly moon at last poked through clouds. Its wan glitter fell on shadowy trees, gleamed on Rozenn’s perfect skin.
A memory ripped through him like a knife cut. Kaell’s story about the woman who had tried to smother him. The boy remembered her perfume. And glimpsed beneath his blindfold a ring on slender fingers. A ring of gold and pearl and jade.
Slowly Vraymorg lifted his eyes from her hand to her face. Moonlight beat upon bright hair, but the roof’s treacherous shadow hid her expression.
“Ah,” she said. “He did see my ring. Safer to discard it. But my father gave it to me.”
“Kaell remembered your scent. Vanilla and rose. Why didn’t I realise at once?”
“That is unfortunate,” Rozenn said.
No denial. No protests. No look of remorse. Just three useless words.
Anger kindled in his veins, a need to punish her for trying to hurt Kaell.
Rozenn turned and walked inside. Vraymorg stalked after her. “I warned you,” he said. “But you went after him again. Gods, Rozenn. He was so young.”
A floorboard creaked. Candlelight struck metal. Vraymorg groped for his sword.
“Tarvan, no.” Rozenn waved the man back. The bladesman glared at Vraymorg, his fingers restless on the hilt of his raised weapon. Hostility smouldered between them.
“He dares raise his voice at you. He dares threaten you, my Queen.”
“It’s all right.”
Scowling, Tarvan lowered his sword, shoved it into its scabbard and stomped outside.
Vraymorg wheeled on Rozenn, his breath ragged. “We agreed you’d stand down. Kaell was my problem.”
“Yet you did nothing.” Her low voice carved every word with contempt. “Your arrogance astounds even me, your stubborn belief you’re always right. That you can control everything.”
“I don’t kill children because of words in a stupid book. But you do. Just how cold are you? You even knew not to spill his blood. What stopped you smothering him?”
She dropped her gaze, muttered: “My son convinced me of my error.”
“Just like the last error? When you sent your own cousin to a tournament to kill him?”
“And paid for it.” Her slender shoulders shook. She looked younger, vulnerable. The anger blew out of him—as it always did.
“Rozenn—” Before her grief, Vraymorg stood helpless. Unspoken words piled up in him.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wound you. It’s just I’m afraid. Not ready to accept Kaell is dead. No. I must feel nothing. Nothing.
“A mistake, Val. I couldn’t just trust the gods. Not like you.”
He touched a tear on her eyelash. “Don’t cry. I’ve made mistakes, too.”
A branch grated against the shutters. Sparks danced in the hearth as a charred log rolled.
Against the red ember fire, the candles seemed like a tiny oasis of light in the vast night. A silence sat beneath the wind’s moan, beneath the rustling leaves, beneath that incessant, nagging tap, tap, tap against the window.
He rubbed his temples with taut fingers. “I don’t want to fight.”
“Nor do I. Not with you. Not tonight.” Rozenn lifted her hand to his hair. Her touch was tender but his scalp tingled beneath the heat of her fingers.
“I heard about Thom, about Kaell,” she said. “That he’s missing. I know how much you hurt, not knowing what’s happened to him. Whether he’s a prisoner—or—” She dug her teeth into her bottom lip. “Val, let me comfort you.”
The branch tapped and tapped. A grinding in his skull. Stop, he thought. Stop. Just stop.
Vraymorg stumbled to the fire, his legs unsteady. He gripped the hearth’s warm, uneven stones. The heat did not penetrate his body. Cold, everything cold. The emptiness within him, cold. His pushed-back grief, its hollow pit in his belly, cold.
“Nothing seems to matter,” he said. “Not now.”
Rozenn unclasped his cloak. Carefully she laid it over a chair. “I’ve a hot bath ready. I know what you want.”
“I want you.” A desperation lay beneath his blurted words. I want you to take away this ache, he could have said. With your lips, your caresses. I want to lose myself in desire, empty or not so empty, to dull every wretched thought with mindless pleasure.
He drew her against him, breathing in not only vanilla and rose, but wood smoke and the lavender candles she burnt when they met. A wonderful ménage of fragrances so rich he could nearly taste them.
“How long do we have?” How long could he hide here?
“Only tonight. It’s dangerous enough. If Cathmor knew we conspired, he’d behead you.”
Conspired. A curious word for seeking comfort in her bed. Beyond the sensual release of their lovemaking, he often wondered if Rozenn, too, desired to escape duty for a few hours in this wood, with a man who’d tell no one.
She didn’t love him. Yet on every journey to Dal-Kanu, she called to him; her rose a signal. I’m waiting, Val. Come to our special place. He wasn’t sure how she slipped away, but no one apart from Ewen questioned his absences. They knew better.
“Only tonight?” Vraymorg kissed her hard. “Are you sure?”
“Your lips are cold. And your hands.” She gestured to a wooden tub. “Be quick. The water won’t stay hot.”
“Curse the water. There’s heat enough in this room as it is.”
Rozenn laughed. She boldly watched him strip off boots, gloves, weapons belt, tunic and pants. Steam reddened his cheeks and neck as he slid into the tub.
“I’m content to look at you.” She brought him a cup of wine then propped her elbows on the tub’s rim. Vraymorg sipped. He leaned back, rose-scented water lapping his throat.
“I see you have one of your women with you. I met her outside.”
“Mmm, Alfreda.” Rozenn drifted a hand through water. She glanced at his discarded sword. Kaell’s lay beside it, wrapped in cloth. “She’s discreet.”
“Who’s your new groomsman? The black-haired boy. He doesn’t look Cahirean.”
“We found him. A Telorian merchant’s son. Varee outlaws attacked Reman and his father in the pass. The boy wandered for days, wounded, weak from blood loss.”
Her smile edged with mischief. “You must deal with these Varee wolf’s heads, my lord. Up the bounty again on their war lord. The one you say is clever. What’s his name?”
“Dannon Bloodtaker, they call him. Fortunate for this Reman you found him.”
“Most fortunate. I tended his wounds.”
“Oh, tended,” he teased, not jealous but glad of the distracting banter. “Is that what you call it in Cahir?”
Rozenn slapped his arm and rocked to her feet. “Healed. He’s loyal, grateful for my care. Useful, too. Filled your bath, cut wood for the fire.”
“Does he, hmm, cut wood as well as I do?”
Rozenn offered that secret smile of hers. “I will not flatter your big head with a reply, my lord.” She made a mock bow. “What shall we do tonight? Perhaps you’ll share more stories of the Quisnaf and how they seek you?”
Vraymorg winced. “I should never have told you about that witch in the forest.”
“It was raw in your mind when we met. You can be forgiven an indiscretion, Val.”
“I want to forget that happened.” It hardly mattered now. Nothing did.
Her throaty laugh always roused his desire. “As you wish—my lord.”
“If only all Cahirean queens proved so obedient.” He sighed
dramatically.
“How dull obedient queens are. I don’t suppose you’ll say what the Quisnaf want of you? Whenever we come here now, I always expect a Quisnaf warrior to jump out at me.”
“I don’t suppose I will.” He reached to smooth her hair streaked golden by candlelight. “Let’s forget the Quisnaf. I know other stories.”
“My favourites are about Roaran.”
“Because he had magic. Like you.”
She splashed water into his face. “Roaran had Quisnaf blood, desert magic. It’s very different to Cahirean magic.”
Different. His brother’s child was that. Karolus had struggled to comfort his young son when strange visions troubled Roaran. What do you say to a child when you don’t understand what they are?
Like Kaell.
Kaell. Oh gods, Kaell. Where was he? What had happened to him? He had to be alive. But what if—No, no, no. Do not even think it.
Vraymorg slipped beneath the water. He held his breath, reluctant to surface from this muffled world. When at last he did, ice pinpricked his damp skin. Rising, he stepped out and dripped water to the fire. Rozenn held a cloth.
“I have his sword. Kaell’s. I don’t know why I brought it.” He lifted his shoulders, then let them drop. “It’s like I expect him to come for it, to find me. Or he’s somehow closer when I feel its weight against my hip.”
She blinked, astonished. “Wasn’t the sword with him?”
Vraymorg did not trust himself to speak. The fire crackled. Rain pattered. A new wind swooped, high pitched and sibilant.
As a child, he stood on the cliffs at Tide’s End as the wind whipped across lathered waves with the scents of other lands and promised adventure. He let it pass through him, unafraid. What had happened to that boy who turned his face to the wind?
“How, Val?”
“The ghouls sent it back.” Abruptly he crossed his arms. To hold in the pain. To hold himself upright. He was so dreadfully tired. Exhausted by the burden of gossamer-thin hope, the act of will it took to believe Kaell lived.
Rozenn removed the sword from its covering. As she might his skin, she stroked its gleaming metal. “It’s a memory sword.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
Rozenn glanced up sharply. “You’re shaking. Are you cold?”
He turned to hide his expression. “Yes, cold.”
“Val.” She slid her hands about his waist. “You’re thinking of Kaell. I’m sorry. What can I do? I didn’t realise how much you love him.”
“No.” Vraymorg broke away. “I don’t. I’m afraid for him, so afraid for this boy I raised. But not love. Never that. Love is a vicious master, Rozenn.”
“Val—”
“I’m fond of him.” Vraymorg nodded to himself. “Very fond. How couldn’t I be?”
“Fond,” she said.
The muscles in his back contracted hard. “Rozenn. Please. I can’t think about him. Tell me about this sword. What is a memory sword?”
She watched him in silence. Then with an almost imperceptible shrug, she returned to the weapon. Closing her eyes, she said, “It hums.”
Kaell had said that. Vraymorg thought the boy too imaginative. Yet he, too, had sensed the blade’s power fester for centuries.
“It’s Seithin steel,” he said distantly. “But why a memory sword?”
Few Seithin blades survived the desert city’s immolation. Aric Caelan carried the infamous The Cup. A ridiculous name. Cup of sorrow? Cup of blood?
Perhaps Aric knew the meaning. He didn’t really care. He couldn’t care about much right now. At least beyond drinking and finding pleasure in her bed.
Rozenn traced etched symbols near the hilt. “I don’t know this sword’s story. Not really. I only know how the magic within might work.”
“It has magic?”
She did not answer at once. Carefully, lovingly, she touched the iron. “I didn’t expect you to have the sword, Val. That changes everything.”
“I don’t understand.”
Reflected in the blade’s glimmering steel, her face distorted with excitement. “This sword can do so much. It can even take away your pain.”
“How?”
“You need only tell it stories.”
Cold air stabbed at the base of his spine. Vraymorg wrapped cloth tight about his hips. Is that what he wanted? To be done with pain? Why else shield his heart? Why else shape his world so he need not love, or remember, or feel too much? So he need not break.
“I am afraid.”
“Of this blade? No. I know you too well, Val Arques. You fear the past.”
Vraymorg lay on cushions before the fire, naked beneath his cloak. Lavender-scented candles ringed with yellow light. His goblet spilled near his hand. Whatever Rozenn added to the wine tingled in his blood.
I should care, he thought. But I can’t. With a curious detachment, he wondered if it even mattered if she drove a blade into his heart.
A temporary release, death. Better than sleep that brought only nightmares. If he shut his eyes, his worst fears played out; chains on Kaell’s wrists, the boy’s scream as a ghoul bit into a vein in his captive’s neck.
Vraymorg rocked his head to shake the images away. Just a dream. It didn’t happen. It couldn’t. But the ghouls had Kaell’s blade. Did they hold Kaell too?
Rozenn knelt and brushed damp hair from his eyes, her touch tender.
“You put something in the wine,” he muttered. “I can trust you, Rozenn, can’t I?” He laughed mirthlessly. “What am I saying? A Mountains lord knows you can’t trust a Cahirean of royal blood. Yet I can’t see how it benefits you to hurt me.”
“Hush. The wine will calm you. We embark on a strange journey.” She laid Kaell’s sword against his bare breast, its cool steel oddly clammy.
“What do I do?” he whispered. “Can this blade really stop the nightmares?”
“The sword feeds upon stories.” Rozenn smoothed his brow with a thumb. “Tell it about Kaell.”
“Where do I start?”
“Your first memory of him. Where you found him. Start there.”
Vraymorg fidgeted. “I can’t talk about that.”
“If you think I can’t guess—” Rozenn shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what memories you share as long as they’re strong.”
His head fell back. A heady mix of scents swirled: vanilla, wood smoke, wine, lavender. “The strongest memory then.”
That meant Paulin. And the girl.
Nate Caelmarsh rode into the castle as imperious and ridiculous as a dressed-up toad.
As the Downs lord and his soldiers threaded through the gatehouse into the ward, Kaell bristled with excitement at Vraymorg’s side on the guard walk.
At sixteen, he stood as tall as his lord. A belt slung around hips accentuated his long legs. His cape billowed grey and black, Vraymorg’s colours. A tunic of white silk draped black pants.
Vraymorg had instructed servants to ready these garments. With polished boots and groomed hair, the boy looked more courtier than warrior, but Caelmarsh must understand Kaell’s worth. A bonded warrior served gods, not lords or even kings.
“That’s Caelmarsh’s captain.” Vraymorg stabbed the air. “Paulin the Pious men call him—behind his back. Say it to his face and he’ll poke a knife in your ribs.”
“Why pious?”
“Studied to be a priest. The story goes he attacked a fellow student who bored him. Not Paulin’s calling, the priesthood. He makes a better soldier as long as you watch your back. Next to him—” He pointed. “Caelmarsh. The greasy-haired mutt in the green doublet.”
Kaell shot him a shocked look. “I guessed as much, my lord. But who’s that girl?”
Vraymorg squinted through the afternoon glare at a young woman riding beside Caelmarsh. He remembered Annatise as a long-legged, awkward child with freckles. Now, even from the wall walk, he glimpsed the hint of sweet curves beneath her gown.
“His daughter, Annatise.” It meant Brile flower�
�a delicate orange and pink autumn blossom that wilted in winter’s frosts. Its bright petals hid poisonous sap. A warning in that?
“She’s pretty.” Kaell’s voice sounded breathy.
“Keep away from that one, Kaell. Caelmarsh aims high there.” The Downs Lord hoped Annatise might catch the king’s eye. Poor child.
Kaell tossed his head like a riled stallion. “You mean I’m too lowly born for the lady.”
“No one’s high born enough for Nate Caelmarsh.” The grand constable’s sense of his own worth equalled only the king’s ego. If they fell out, gods help this land.
He squeezed Kaell’s shoulder. “No need to court trouble, Kaell. Plenty of pretty girls.”
“Not in Vraymorg,” the boy replied sullenly. “Not since Alyssa wed.”
The cook’s niece. So that wound still seeped. He hoped Annatise did not open another.
“A sensible girl, Alyssa.” Sharp words, but true. Alyssa recognised childhood friendship for just that, marrying a young forester called Will.
Kaell glowered. “And we must all be sensible, mustn’t we, my lord.” He gave an exaggerated bow and turned to the stairs.
Vraymorg followed, grinning. The boy prickled these days, strained against his lord’s authority. He considered Kaell’s stiff back, his adolescent swagger. All very well, but he still expected obedience.
The last riders plodded into the ward between villagers and farmers seeking protection behind high walls ahead of a three-moon night.
Groomsmen rushed to help the Downs newcomers. Servants waited to be useful. Vraymorg counted the soldiers, then greeted Caelmarsh.
“Caelmarsh. A safe journey, I trust. And, of course, you are welcome.” As long as he didn’t linger too long.
“Vraymorg.” The man’s cold, slate eyes settled like a shroud. Lank hair brushed stooped shoulders; his pinched face at odds with flushed red lips.
The girl’s full lips sat far better on her, complimenting fawn-like brown eyes and milky skin. “My lady.” He allowed an admiring glance.
Caelmarsh grunted. “My daughter, Annatise.” He swept his arm towards the villagers. “Why is this rabble here?”
“The three-moon night,” Vraymorg said. “It’s safest behind these walls.”