by S J Hartland
Irritated, he hurled a stick into the fire. It caught alight and quickly charred. Like a warrior’s life. A fast burn, bright. Then gone.
“Priestess, I want to trust you. But what do you intend to do?”
The silence lengthened. Kaell’s frustration ripped to anger. He stormed to his feet.
“You promised to heal me. When? Why do we bathe, cook fish, do nothing?”
Aingear only said, “Soon.”
In dreams that night the old Mountains gods, ghost pale, called to him. Come, they whispered, their emerald eyes glittering. Follow us. And he followed them, laughing, into a thick forest.
Deep in the bowing trees, wet grass on his toes, Kaell looked for them. He was alone.
“My lord,” he cried, forgetting the gods, wanting only Vraymorg’s comforting presence. “Where are you? I trusted you to save me.”
A ragged breeze rustled leaves. A bird swooped, its caw the only answer.
Kaell woke sweating. Aingear touched fingertips to his cheek. “Hush, hush. A dream.”
“I couldn’t find my lord.” Kaell blinked away tears. “I couldn’t find the gods.”
“Leave those gods be.” She offered him a cup. “Drink. I prepared wine mixed with blood. It will keep you strong. You must be strong.”
Thirsty, hungry, his thoughts scrambled by nightmares, Kaell drained the cup then curled, listening to wind trailing through grass like gloved hands. The salt scents of a broiling ocean mingled with the aroma of fennel.
The sea’s chill, whipped by the wind that frothed waves, seemed too alive, unlike the sterile cold of the Mountains. As a child, Kaell had slept in a fur-lined bed, a fire in his chamber, but in deepest winter nothing kept him warm.
He remembered wandering barefoot into his lord’s solar one bitter night after a dream tore him from sleep. Vraymorg drank alone by the fire. “Go back to sleep, Kaell,” he said.
“If I sleep the nightmare returns.”
Vraymorg stared into the flames. “I, too, flee from dreams tonight.”
“What’s in your dreams?”
“The past,” his lord said quietly.
He blinked, smiled, bid Kaell sit beside him and told him stories until dawn of warriors of Telor, long dead. Of Dace Caelan, who defeated a sorcerer in the desert city of Seithin, of Rainer who disobeyed the gods and sired a daughter who stole the throne from her cousin.
A wide-eyed Kaell listened to the tale of a jealous sorcerer who destroyed Seithin because the desert city’s beautiful, green-eyed queen loved a Telorian king called Rollo. He liked best the stories of Caelan, the son of a god and a Cahirean princess.
“They called Caelan the gormel slayer,” his lord said. “He must have been a vengeful, driven man for he did not stop until he had killed every gormel.”
“What is a gormel? Is it like a ghoul?”
“Gormels served the demon lord Aziarr.” Vraymorg shifted burning wood with a poker. “When Caelan died, the people feared Aziarr’s wrath. But another hero came. Then another. Until Rainer at last slew Aziarr in far-away Quisnaf.”
And Kaell, falling towards sleep as wind howled across the sea and across an island temple, wondered why his lord had never told him stories about Roaran.
He woke beside a cold fire pit. Alone. A dull ache beat behind his eyes the way it did when the physician allowed him poppy juice for battle wounds.
Yawning, hungry, Kaell rose and stretched.
How long had he slept? Already twilight’s sounds thrummed; an owl’s hoot, the rustle of paws through grass, a chirr of insects. The sun quickly vanished towards a rust horizon.
Through swaying branches, a light blinked from the hill and its forbidding black stone.
A beacon—to him.
As though disembodied by Aingear’s draught, his feet carried him towards the light.
The priestess called that hilltop a place of power because a man died to save his king here. For honour? Duty? Maybe love.
Kaell would die for his lord in a heartbeat, without question. This warrior, Karmarna. He must have loved Roaran Caelan with that same fierce devotion Kaell felt for the man who raised him. How strange to think some Ice lord loved a Caelan king like that.
The night wisped with scents and sounds: Churned earth, mud, orange blossom, a rustle of wind through dead leaves. Early moonlight bathed the grove a silver-grey.
But that wasn’t the light that drew him. That light flamed. It flickered through dripping branches, dimming stars.
An otherworldly web folded about him as Kaell moved like a ghost towards the flames. Two rows of blazing torches lit a path to the stone.
And beside the stone, hair streaming like silken midnight, her skin pale perfection in the silvery light, stood Azenor.
Kaell’s heart lurched, then sang, as he stumbled through dew-wet grass.
The dream. That kiss in the tunnel as water trickled.
Azenor turned her head. Her beauty was unearthly. “Kaell?”
“I’m here.”
With shaking fingers she released a clasp. Her cloak fluttered down. Her nakedness stole his breath, whipped up heat in his blood and loins. Not like the dream at all.
He struggled from his pants, heart unsteady against caging ribs, aching for her urgently.
“Kaell,” Azenor held out her arms.
Azenor
His sighs were like a song’s low notes. Did he dream? Sweet, sweet dreams of torches burning low. Of soft touches, murmurs. Of desire.
Azenor slid a lock of Kaell’s hair between her fingers, imagining its pale colour. She traced his face; the curved jaw and angled cheekbones, the shape of a brow. Lips.
She remembered his kiss, the vulnerability, the wonder in it, how his tongue teased, how he drew her down, whispering she must tell him if he hurt her.
“You will never hurt me,” she said, stroking, circling, rubbing until she found the rhythm that most excited him.
His groans, his hands hot on her skin, flamed a frantic need to fall into his embrace, into that moment and banish everything else. Duty and guilt done with.
Except when she licked his neck, his sweat and the sea’s salt was the taste of her betrayal. Betrayal shouldn’t taste so good.
Kaell stirred in sleep. Huddled against him, Azenor touched his scarred breast. How those muscles had strained beneath her hands such a short time ago. How he had moaned with pleasure as she shifted, gripping his hips to take him deeper.
When his thrusts came faster, when he cried out, a beat resounded through the earth, primal, exciting, then an ethereal sigh as though the gods watched with pleasure.
She had become their instrument. Like Roaran.
Bile curdled in her throat. You ask too much, Roaran, she whispered to the darkness. I thought I could do your will. Except you didn’t say I’d care.
Kaell woke with a soft release of breath. Murmuring her name, his mouth sought hers, lips parting. His kiss was uncomplicated. Hers was not. It was despairing, lost. She crushed against him, wanting to force the world away with all-consuming desire.
“Your scar,” he murmured. “It’s right above your heart. Just like in my dream.”
“Yes. Like your dream.”
“It’s time,” Aingear touched Azenor’s shoulder. “You know what to do.”
Kaell tensed. “Time?”
“Dress quickly. Then I’ll explain.” About betrayal.
“If this were a fairy tale.” He laughed. “I’d wake to find the magical maiden gone.”
If only this were a fairy tale.
Kaell moved a distance away, humming. The high priestess thrust a robe into her arms. As she threw it over her head, Azenor begged, “Tell me how he looks.”
“You must forget him,” Aingear said sharply. “You know what happens now.”
She knew. Oh how she knew. “Please. Before I—before it happens.”
“Child, such words can only make you blush.”
Blush? After months as Archanin’s prisoner? Sob more likely. Or even laugh
, a twisted sound that shocked the high priestess.
With a heavy sigh, Aingear relented. “He moves with an easy grace.”
“He has many scars. I touched them.”
“A warrior’s scars and his god’s frightening signs.”
All warriors bore scars. She’d traced Roaran’s often enough, though his deepest wounds inflamed within. He thought he hid them. But in his sleep he begged another woman for forgiveness.
Aingear closed Azenor’s fingers around a knife. “The gods will help you,” she said.
Steel in her hand. Cold. Only now did this seem real. She never imagined the churning in her gut, the hot, dizzy nausea throbbing up. The guilt. Was it too late to stop this? Hurl away the knife. Tell Roaran to find another way.
What if she did? But what if that meant the future unfolded as Roaran warned? A bleak, terrible future where ghouls ruled Tide’s End, their god’s temple rising up taller than the walls. Where dull-eyed men, women, girls, boys, trembled on their knees before their blood-thirsty masters.
The Three help her. Strengthen her resolve. She could not let that happen. No matter who she hurt.
At the sound of Kaell’s steps, Azenor nearly shouted, “run.” But a princess of the Isles knew about duty, more than any swaggering warrior with a sword.
Kaell pulled her into his arms. She was starkly aware of him, of every breath, of the press of their thighs, of skin, of lips. Of the life in him.
The knife almost slid from her quivering fingers. One life to save her people. Just one. She dared not pause or think, for if she did, she could not do this. Even for Roaran. Even for the Isles.
Kaell held her so close Azenor had to pull back a little. With a swift breath in, she tore the knife down his belly. A shallow gash.
Kaell gasped, slumped against her. Hoarse with shock, he muttered, “Azenor.”
“Take him,” the high priestess commanded.
The stillness exploded with a flurry of voices and movement. Booted steps. Kaell’s protests. Azenor imagined rough hands hurling him up, holding his shoulders.
“Azenor. I don’t understand. I thought—”
“That I cared?” She banished compassion, caged her heart as any dutiful swaggering dancer might. His blood wet her palms. Wipe it off and that was an end to it.
“I did my duty. The high priestess prepared you; bid you wash in sacred waters. You drank the sacred wine. Our joining binds you to an Isles princess and through me to our gods.”
Kaell must have struggled then for she heard scuffling and a thud.
“Bring him,” Aingear said.
“You’re so cold,” Kaell whispered. “I don’t understand.”
“You had warning enough, Kaell.” Her bitterness surprised her—as if she blamed him for trusting her. “Your dreams. A warning, you said. Yet you never wondered about that kiss.”
Aric
Aric traced words in a book, its embossed pages yellowed by age. Sweat ran down his neck. A beeswax candle spluttered, its flame upright in steamy air faintly perfumed of jasmine and frangipani.
“A son born today to the Duke of Avanti,” he read. “I shall name him Val Arques.”
He leaned back. A few lines in the long-dead duke’s diary, its vellum thinned and the writing faded. So little when he had so many questions.
A tap at the door broke into his thoughts. At his call of “come,” a squire rushed inside, breathing hard.
Aric surged to his feet. “What’s happened?”
The young man held out rolled-up parchment. “A man said to give you this,” he stammered. “A lord. Yes, a lord. Or a prince.”
“What lord?”
The squire dragged his tongue over his lips. “He did not give a name. He said only to tell you these exact words at this very hour, not a moment before or a moment later. To say you must stop the high priestess. You must repay your debt.”
Val Arques
The woman stole away from the feast. Vraymorg knew she wanted him to follow.
He drained his cup, wondering at her game.
When Judith Damadar and her brother joined the king at his table, voices hushed, only picking up when servants brought more wine.
As an hour passed, then another, glances again and again fell upon her.
But Judith locked her eyes only with his. Every tilt of that lovely head, every beguiling smile, every glimpse of ample breasts, became an offer; that last look before she slipped outside a promise.
Vraymorg gestured to a servant to refill his cup. He could drink and forget her. Or play her game. Why not? Only his empty bed, a drawn-out night and suffocating dawn, lay ahead.
He sipped. Why not? Because her brother was a sharp-witted Ice lord.
Vraymorg put down the cup and rose.
Heath leaned towards the king, hand to lips as though sharing dangerous secrets. From Cathmor’s smirk, probably a bawdy story.
Two men at a lower table discussed the spoils when Tide’s End fell.
Vraymorg remembered Aric’s stillness when he delivered the king’s demands. The Isles commander wasn’t afraid. Nor was he about to give in. What was that expression? They counted coins not minted. Only stupid men thought of gain before winning the battle.
A drunken Nate Caelmarsh waved a knife at a man called Sherrin Cross, his voice strident. He’d likely use that knife, or his fists, before the night grew much older.
Safer outside with the scheming daughter of the Icelands.
He pushed aside the tent flaps, passing bland guards.
The encampment blazed with cook fires, hundreds of them. Aric could count them from his battlements and know how many men stood against him. But the young Isles commander would not yield. Not him.
Across welling darkness, torches flamed on Tide’s End’s ancient walls and towers. Which light came from the room where Aric hunched over a table, searching his books for a man called Val Arques? A man who no longer existed.
A man who died aged nineteen, sobbing in a sunlit tower room.
Heat closed in on him; its thick taste in his mouth, its damp touch on his arms; sultry air, aromatic with wormwood. The tide throbbed beneath murmuring voices, laughter and footfall. A trebuchet’s counterweight bucket gently creaked.
The scents, the sounds took him back to childhood, to nights lying beneath the window in his room at Tide’s End, barely a feather of wind whispering across moist skin as he dreamed of honour and glory and other such nonsense.
The stiff heat, the tide’s hum, lightning splitting a velvet sky, these Isles fragrances of blossoms, salt and pungent mud after rain, brought back the past like nothing else. He wasn’t sure he wanted it back.
At the sight of the woman waiting at the top of a rise, he hesitated. Judith turned and smiled. Pulse unsteady, he joined her. Her perfume was so gentle he caught only an intriguing hint. The air stirred with a heady mix of heat, desire and anticipation.
“I hoped it would be you,” she said.
“If I hadn’t come, what would you have done?”
“But you did.”
Vraymorg laughed. Men always behaved as she expected. Yet what would she have when her waist thickened and her glorious hair thinned? Her wits? Perhaps they mirrored her brother’s.
“I know who you are,” he said. “Every man in that pavilion tonight sought your name. Did your brother tell you to seduce me? What does he want of me, Judith Damadar?”
Judith did not bother with denials. “My brother finds you enigmatic.” She giggled, a surprisingly innocent sound. “He even told me he is a little afraid of you.”
Vraymorg pressed his tongue into the roof of his mouth. Heath blazed with the arrogance of a man confident of not only his status but his intelligence and skill. A man like that feared very few. No, something else played out here.
“I am also a little afraid of you.” Judith touched his arm. “I like that feeling. Forget my brother and his games. Ask instead what I want of you.”
Her eyes were hot, unlike the coo
l hand she boldly slid beneath his tunic. Her fingers roamed without haste over bare skin. His breath caught.
The whisper of fingertips, the scent of her hair, the perfume of lust and need, awoke a ménage of sensations. Vraymorg heard the stories about who trained her, knew the delights a night with this woman promised.
He remembered then another night when the wind whispered through torn stonework and a woman came to his room. How he took her in his arms because she was beautiful and he was just as lonely as he was tonight.
“Is this what you want of me?” He drew Judith into an embrace and kissed her savagely.
“Come to our tent.” Her voice thickened. “My brother won’t return for hours.”
Judith did not look back as she walked away.
Beyond the camp a light flared in the middle of the sea. Then more lights bobbed. Did something unfold on the Isle of the Gods?
Shrugging, he put it out of his mind and followed her.
Aric
Aric crawled through bushes at the edge of the moon-frosted knoll. As he dropped to his belly, flames from a pit spat at warm air. A spark flew into grass. He swatted it, ears strained for his men moving into place around him.
Beneath a curlew’s mournful song, a chant rose and fell, distorted by the wind into an eerie moan. Figures emerged from the trees, their hooded silhouettes grotesque against the writhing flames. They carried burning torches to a large, flat stone.
Aric knew this place, that stone. As a child he traced the words in the grave marker, thinking about Roaran Caelan. About sacrifice.
Sacrifice. The word beat uneasily in his head. None of what he’d just seen made sense.
Azenor had stabbed Kaell. Then Aingear ordered robed figures to drag him off. And who was this stranger who sent a squire to tell him to stop this? A lord, the frightened boy said.
The figures thrust the torches into soft earth, their voices a low monotone. Others dragged a struggling Kaell towards the stone. He broke free only to stumble a step and slip to his hands and knees. His captors fell on him.