by S J Hartland
Bound, dizzy, Kaell struggled in their grips. A frustrated anger boiled up. He had to return to his lord. “You have no right to hold me,” he growled. “Release me.”
“There’s something familiar about you.” Pairas grasped his chin. He stiffened, then leaned towards Aiden. “I know him. And she called him Kaell. But that’s impossible.”
“Why impossible?”
A pause. Then Pairas said: “That’s the name of that dead warrior from Vraymorg.”
At Aiden’s bewildered splutter, Pairas dragged taut fingers through his hair. “This is a mess. I’ll let our king sort it out. But for now, I must protect my men.”
He drew his sword. Kaell tried to scramble back. The soldiers tightened their grips.
“No,” he said. “No.”
Pairas turned the weapon. The jab from the hilt only hurt Kaell’s head for a moment. Then he fell away into nothing.
Heath
From the edge of the forest, the king’s monster trebuchet fired its unconventional load against Dal-Gorma’s wooden walls. Archers’ volleys blotted the sky like a flock of birds in flight.
Heath listened to the familiar creak of pulleys and ropes, the quiver in the air and thunder through earth. How long until they could take a battering ram to the gates? Then the mayhem started. The fun bit—as he always told Judith.
With idle interest, he watched men load the trebuchet. The Beast, they called it. It took a dozen oxen to drag the terrible thing to Dal-Gorma. All to fire stinking missiles of excrement.
Heath vaguely remembered a story of a Wardorian castle subjected to this same, bizarre assault. Perhaps Cathmor copied that siege commander to show his contempt for the Isles.
The ground rumbled, the air vibrated as the Beast unloaded. Excrement splattered over the walls. Soldiers cheered. Handkerchiefs tied over their noses and mouths, the engineers shovelled more cargo from carts into the bucket.
How did they get the right, hmm, thickness, so it was hard enough to hurl, yet liquid enough to slop in Dal-Gorma? He laughed softly. Hardly the question he expected to ponder on the field of war.
Still smiling, Heath moved away from the rank carts.
In the hollow of rolling hills, Dal-Gorma sprawled before him. The Place of the Brook. Named for the river coursing at its back, a glistening, blue streak. Buds burst upon trees lining its banks. Spring was upon the Isles early with all its blossoms and scents of heat and honey—at least away from The Beast.
Even on this hillside where the king camped, a warm breeze bowed daffodils and leaf-laden boughs. Insects chittered in dew-wet grass beneath a bowling sky so blue it looked nearly purple. The perfect weather for war.
He sighed, almost content.
Today, perhaps tomorrow, this Isles town would fall. Heath knew it. Every one of the king’s soldiers knew it. Even Dal-Gorma’s sentries in watch towers along the timber stockade knew it as they assessed the force set to descend upon them.
He shaded his eyes with a hand. Surprising Dal-Gorma had not already descended into chaos. Someone must still be in charge, commanding bowmen to fire if the enemy got too close. Directing townsfolk to repair breaches with rocks.
Though, once they stood knee-deep in excrement—he chose the polite word—they must surrender. No fiery immolation, no thrilling and dangerously unpredictable battle.
No, the battle began when they fell upon Tide’s End, the real prize, like hungry dogs.
Then what might Cathmor do with Dal-Gorma, a town full of—well, filth?
Heath turned away. The king had summoned him a good half an hour ago. Not like him to avoid confrontation, but Cathmor had questions he didn’t want to answer.
With ponderous steps, he trod to the king’s pavilion at the peak on the hill, well away from the Beast. Guards admitted him at once.
He found Cathmor with his uncle. Cael-Carren thrust a cup of wine upon him. “Where were you? We’re toasting the fall of Dal-Gorma.”
“Cahirean?” Heath sniffed. “How do such savages produce these fine wines?”
“I’m told it is the soil and climate,” Cathmor said. “No merit of the Cahireans.”
Heath took a sip. Just a sip. He needed a clear head and a clever tongue. “Is there any merit in a Cahirean? Didn’t King Dace say: ‘Do not trust a Cahirean, even dead’?”
“Wasn’t it Roaran—” The king unfolded a smile so deliciously sinister Heath was vaguely jealous. “Who said: ‘Do not trust a man of the Ice for it runs in his blood’?”
Heath raised his cup in a salute. “I’ll take that as a compliment, Your Grace. Roaran was an admirable king. A man unafraid to use sorcery to achieve his ends.”
“I admire Roaran also, but for different reasons. The last king to rule all of Telor.”
“That will soon change,” Heath said. “My father believes so.”
Cathmor considered him over the rim of his cup. “So he sends me 5000 warriors to make sure? I am grateful. It’s something my father could never achieve. They talk about him with such awe, about how powerful he was, and yet he could not take the Isles.”
“As you say.”
“I long to know.” Cathmor’s tone disarmed. “What your father wants in return.”
Heath chose a guileless smile. “I like your directness. I am not some fancy courtier who goes around and around.”
“You sell yourself short.”
Really? Everyone accused him of pride. Heath sipped wine. “Delicious. Perhaps I should go to Cahir one day. Or perhaps not. Such wine might make a man forget his duty.”
“Not you. You prattle like a fool, but you don’t deceive me. What does your father want?”
“He believes alliances are best secured through marriage. I have sisters. You are unwed. Or if that is distasteful, then you have all manner of cousins.” Heath shrugged. “I am unwed.”
“You know I’m betrothed to the Isles girl?”
“Who is surely dead. If not, a betrothal to a traitor’s daughter means nothing.”
“As you say. But this simple business could go before my council.”
Heath paused. “There’s another matter.”
“Ah, now we come to it.”
“A trifle really.”
“Will I like this trifle?”
Not at all. “When Tides End falls—and it will fall.”
“I thank you for your confidence,” Cathmor said. “So far I like your words. Continue. When Tides End falls—”
“There is the question of prisoners. One in particular.” He took a breath. Plunged in. “Aric Caelan. I want him.”
Cael-Carren nearly choked on his wine. “You jest, Damadar.”
Cathmor shook his head. “If his brother dies, Aric is his father’s heir. No. If by a stroke of luck we take my cousin alive, I’ll execute him.”
A silence stiffened with tension. Both men watched him, their faces hard. Heath chose his words carefully. “What if I assured you, Your Grace, that my sister Myranthe will most certainly kill Aric Caelan for you? He will not produce any troublesome heirs.”
Cathmor recoiled. “This stinks of sorcery,” he muttered, making no attempt to hide his contempt. “For what purpose do you want Aric?”
“Nothing unnatural, Your Grace.”
“For what purpose?” the king hammered.
“I cannot tell you.”
“Then I will not you give Aric.”
Heath tongued his top lip. Find the right words, sooth their fears. Whatever it took. Even part of the truth.
“We won’t use Aric to claim the Isles. We just want his body. My sister Myranthe—” Heath sighed. No way to avoid the truth. “Intends to restore death riders.”
Cael-Carren again spluttered wine. “Blood magic. I know your family’s reputation, Damadar. There are those in Telor who will have nothing to do with you. Others think we should storm the Icelands and rid this land of your kind.”
“My kind?” Heath echoed indignantly. “I am flesh and blood like you. My family never turn
ed its back on Telor’s past, that’s all. Magic infuses this land, its history.”
“Not your sort of magic,” Cael-Carren said.
“Really? Your ancestor Rainer weaved words into spells. And what of Roaran? So admired, this son of a Quisnaf sorceress. Did he deny his talents? No, he went to Quisnaf to learn to control them.”
“The Quisnaf took Roaran prisoner,” Cathmor corrected tartly. “They wanted to use him because of those very abilities. Roaran was afraid of what he could do.”
“The Ice lords are not afraid,” Heath said. “We want only to serve Ghani-Jai.” He dragged in slow breaths, snatching at calm. He did not intend to lose his temper.
“A foul god,” Cael-Carren said. “Bloodthirsty.”
“In return for Aric.” Heath ignored the insulting words. “My father will keep his army in the field. No matter how long it takes to overwhelm Tide’s End.”
“Which may be months. No one has taken Tide’s End by force,” Cathmor said. “And we can’t invest it unless we hold the sea. Which we don’t.”
“My captains assure me it will fall quickly. You have beasts of siege engines. No walls can withstand a day-in, day-out pounding. Let me say again, just to allay your concerns. We want only Aric’s body. No Caelan descendants will challenge you for the throne.”
Cael-Carren spun to his king. “You cannot consider this, nephew. Death riders!”
With deliberate care, Cathmor put his goblet on the table. “Let me think on it. After all, I cannot pretend to care if your sister murders Aric.”
Heath knew his smile did not reach his eyes. “Then I will be content with that, Your Grace.”
Content? Not at all. If Cathmor didn’t give him Aric, he had another plan the king would choke on. It involved all he excelled at. Betrayal. Manipulation. Bloodshed.
Good times.
Aingear
Shoulders hunched, her steps brisk, Aingear paced the hall.
Dust danced in fading sunlight dappling two columns of fluted pillars. They stretched from brass doors to the king’s throne on a platform. Their shadows licked at the mosaicked floor but a warm tang lingered in the air, the tide’s hum a drowsy monotone.
She tapped her foot. Where was Gendrick? He promised to take her below—to him.
Aingear passed a hand over her eyes. Kaell was here. Right below her. Unconscious when guards carried him into the keep, but alive. Within her reach.
As if unseen eyes watched her, her scalp prickled. She turned fast.
No one. The chamber empty except for a painted Rainer Caelan staring from a mural.
Though centuries of glaring sunlight had muted its vibrant colours, the fresco with its tale of carnage dominated the hall, its two central figures bigger than her and brilliantly, eerily real.
Such a strange scene for a palace wall in Tide’s End. A scene from distant Quisnaf, of Rainer battling the demon god Aziarr, a wounded Roaran at his side.
In contrast to the morbid tale, the Telorian warriors wore sky-blue tunics, their cloaks scarlet. Their niello-encrusted sword hilts gleamed. The blood soaking Roaran’s tunic looked wet. Their faces seemed impossibly lifelike as if the artist had imprisoned them in the work.
Aingear often imagined Rainer’s eyes following her. They were dark, those eyes. Very dark and very serene, even though he was about to die. His smooth, shoulder-length hair was black, his face unlined. He had been barely twenty-two when he killed Aziarr.
As a girl, Aingear was a little in love with him. She’d steal into the hall to trace his lips and sigh at the heroism of this young god-king who glimpsed his death in visions yet deliberately chose a path to that fate.
The words of a tutor, his beard the grey of an angry sea, stole back. “The enigma that is Rainer. Tell me why, novice?”
“Because he weaved words into magic,” a solemn Aingear said. A spell maker needing no potions, or aids. Only the power of his rhymes. A rare gift.
As she grew older, though, the warrior at Rainer’s side also drew her gaze.
Such a compelling man, Roaran, with the strong, straight lines of his face and cheekbones that would not appear so stark except in contrast to that full, decadent mouth.
His raven hair curled; boyish for a man already a Serravan captain, his eyes depicted as dark as his cousin Rainer’s. But according to legend they were blue, a strange blue, like a turgid sea stripped of light by storm clouds.
Despite his beauty, she could not look upon Roaran without anger.
These foolish cultists. Such dangerous nonsense. For all the stories about this man, about his magic, Roaran was dead. Dead.
With a deliberate release of breath, Aingear opened her clenched hands and let them dangle at her side. Even more deliberately, she tried to turn from the mural and the past.
But after the desecration in the secret tower tomb, the scenes of that fated battle in distant Quisnaf seemed a portent of evil, of nightmares still to come.
Beneath the tide’s murmur, a drift of voices, low and indistinct, carried down the hall. Gendrick. At last. Aingear lifted her gown and hurried through the stone monoliths.
In an alcove below a glass window, two figures talked softly, their heads close like conspirators. With the same shade of ebony hair, a symmetry to their gestures, even a stranger might pick them as brother and sister.
Aric as always looked every bit a prince, his black hair a striking contrast to the blue of his linen shirt. Azenor, though, had not changed the ripped, dirty gown she wore when soldiers returned her to the castle a matter of hours ago.
“That’s impossible.” Aric drove his hand through air. “He lied to you.”
Azenor tugged at his sleeve. “I know how it sounds. I do. But I’m telling you the truth. His position in the Mountains is a disguise. He’s an Isles man who can’t be killed.”
Can’t be killed? Aingear pressed a palm to a pillar, startled. She edged nearer.
Azenor turned her head. “Aric, someone’s there.”
Cloth rustled, then rapid steps moved towards her.
“Oh, it’s you, priestess.” Aric’s fingers fell away from his sword hilt.
“I did not mean to disturb you.” She looked for Azenor. The girl had disappeared. Given she saw only blurred shapes and colours she moved fast. “The lady Azenor?”
“Gone to berate Father again for locking Kaell up like a brigand or murderer.”
Aingear snatched at his arm. “About that boy, Kaell—”
“Below.” Aric smoothed his hair, the gesture weary. “Gendrick thinks he’s dangerous.”
“Priestess?” Gendrick stomped into the hall. “I ask you to reconsider. The prisons are no place for any woman.”
Aingear pulled her cloak tight. “I need to see the boy.”
“The beast, you mean.” Gendrick’s laugh held a sneer. “This way.”
She turned to follow. For a moment her gaze lingered on the mural. Rainer’s painted eyes still bore into hers, warning her to turn back. Too late, she thought. Too late.
Aingear groped down narrow steps cut from rock to the prison beneath the hall. Behind slimy walls, the sea rumbled. Fetid air stank of damp and brine and hopelessness. Darkness quickly swallowed Gendrick’s torchlight.
“This is a foul place,” Aric muttered. “Better the axe or the sword than this.”
Gendrick jeered. “Worried you’ll wet your dainty feet? No one asked you to come.”
“Where you go, brother, etc, etc.”
Gendrick halted. Half turning, he lifted the torch to Aric’s face.
“My path is truly set, Aric,” he said, an odd undercurrent in his voice. “No one can follow. Especially you.”
“I have no clue what you’re on about.”
“Of course you don’t.” Gendrick swung the torch ahead. His boots clipped stone, their echo melting into the fading murmur of waves and wind.
The steps ended in a low-roofed passage. Water dripped down walls and pooled on a rough-hewn floor. Rust flaked off iron do
ors.
Gendrick stopped before a door to one dreadful cell, turned a key. Metal clanked as if someone within moved.
“Azenor.” A voice floated from the blackness. “Is that you? You shouldn’t have come.”
Gendrick shoved his torch into a bracket inside the cramped, windowless cell. A single prisoner shackled to the grime-crusted walls threw up an arm to shield his eyes.
“She didn’t,” Gendrick said. “She’s sobbing in Father’s chambers as he stares helplessly at her, wondering why his beloved daughter pleads for a monster.”
“Why are you here?” Thick chains jangled as the prisoner shifted. Kaell appeared leaner than in Aingear’s visions, harder too, with a grim wariness. Though not as tall as Aric, he could not stand in this forsaken hole without bending.
“Well?” Beneath her scrutiny he bristled. “What do you see? What do you want?” He passed his eyes over her robes. “Priestess.”
“I want to know if you can bend your knee to our gods,” Aingear said. “If you do, then I can rid you of this monster’s blood.”
“What?” Aric turned to frown. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s dangerous, uncertain magic. It may not work. Not unless he’s willing.”
Kaell leaned a shoulder against a wall. “Who are you?”
“I am Aingear, High Priestess of The Three. My gods have shown me a way to save you.”
“Save?” His laugh was bitter. “Nothing but death can save me.”
Aingear couldn’t look away. She thought him dead in an ambush, lost to her. Now he was within reach; tantalisingly familiar with that pale hair and Khir’s sigils scarring muscular arms. Except he also looked unreal as someone from a dream often did, as though he belonged only to her visions and could never be flesh and blood.
“If I cannot save you. I will end your misery.”
Kaell pushed off the wall. “Will you swear to it?”
“No.” Aric burst forward. “I won’t let you kill him. Azenor and I owe him our lives. And to repay him, we chained him up like an animal.”