by S J Hartland
“I saw. I knew.”
Anger blunted Vraymorg’s pain. “You did nothing. You betrayed him.” Unable to go on, he spat at Arn. It was vulgar but his disgust was too big to contain.
Arn wiped his cheek. He said: “What can you, a lord of Telor, know about betrayal?”
Vraymorg began to laugh.
Memory threw him back to a cave in hills above Dal-Kanu in the aftermath of battle, to hot blood spouting over his arms as he cut a guard’s throat, then whipped about to gut a second man with his sword.
So easy for a Serravan-trained warrior to kill. It shouldn’t be that easy. Not really. Not for those stakes. For a kingdom.
He had stalked into the darkness to find the boy. Hands bound, helpless, Ryol Caelan watched him approach with a quickening in his eyes. Not fear. Not—fear.
“You let him live?” His queen’s slap stung his cheek. “My rival for the throne? You betrayed me, Val. You, who profess to love me.”
Betrayal. It was that simple. Not so much what you did, but what you didn’t do. Don’t kill an unarmed boy in a cave. Don’t find the courage to say words to comfort a child you raised. A young man who badly needed those words.
“How can you know?” Arn’s voice banished the past, forced him back to that tent where he lay bleeding. “You serve your king. No doubts. But what if someone stripped away all you believed? Every certainty. Leaving only duty.”
“Duty is cold,” Vraymorg muttered as much to himself as the man with the crossbow.
The thick hush rubbed like shrouding sackcloth. Arn’s eyes held that haunted look again. “Yes,” he said softly. “But love is colder.”
“I thought you loved Kaell. You even killed Paulin because the snake hurt him.”
Arn’s knuckles paled on the bow. “Paulin told me to meet him on the tower roof. I went to kill him. But not for Kaell. I pushed Paulin off that roof to shut him up.”
“What?”
“I trained as a soldier with Paulin on the Downs. One night, both of us drunk, I foolishly said I was from Robba, a Varee village. When Paulin saw me again in the Mountains, he realised a Varee man could only be there to watch Kaell.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you, my lord?” Arn’s voice held the hint of a sneer. “So powerful, the king’s man; with such a reputation, yet you know nothing of the world beyond the gorge or the Varee.”
“I know they’re slavers, thieves, killers.”
“So you might say. Archanin calls us his chosen people. We offer our love. Service. Blood even. In return Archanin protects the Varee. There is complete order.”
Horror lashed him. The Varee served Archanin? Let this be a nightmare. Then he could wake and find Arn gone. Not holding a crossbow on him and spitting out a vile confession.
“So you’re not just a coward.” Vraymorg let the other man hear his contempt. “You’re Archanin’s spy. Sent to the Mountains to watch Kaell. To tell your master what?”
“Whether he was the bonded warrior Archanin sought.”
The 19th warrior will lead a path for evil.
Even after all that had happened, he would not kill Kaell because of these words. Prophecies proved two-edged. As if seers laughed at anyone who believed their mysterious mumbo-jumbo.
“You don’t want to talk. You came here to appease your guilt. You disgust me.”
“No.” Arn’s look fell on him hard. “That is not my intent. My guilt is my own and I must live with it. There can be no atonement, no forgiveness. Not for me.”
“Then what do you want?”
“My lord has a message for you. The man I defied Archanin to serve.”
“Who,” Vraymorg said. “Who is this lord?”
A whipped-up wind rippled canvas. Beneath it, a whisper stirred as if the otherworld murmured: The truth will change everything. Everything you believe, the way you see the world. Do not listen to this truth.
Arn released breath in a soft sigh. Sounds from the camp flattened, distorted then fell away to nothing.
“I have served two lords,” Arn said, his face altered by awe. “One a lord of darkness. The other a lord like tarnished silver, a beautiful prince with a heart I fear is just as dark in parts. For his sake, I put aside Archanin, the god of my people.”
“Who?” Vraymorg whispered. “Who?”
“He’ll come for Kaell. He must. Please tell me you have the boy’s sword.”
Vraymorg glanced at the blade he took off Kaell in the caves. “That cursed thing. Why is everyone so interested in it? Even Rozenn bid me tell that sword stories of the boy.”
“This is why I’m here. I am not here to justify my actions to a man who could not understand. My lord sent me to tell you we can use what she did. Your stories about Kaell. We can use that sword.”
“Use it? To do what?”
The man’s gaze held something Vraymorg didn’t like. Pity.
Arn said: “Save Kaell.”
Two words. How slowly their meaning leached into him. Vraymorg drove a palm down through coiling smoke to push away hope. False hope hurt more than no hope.
He watched a candle flame jig at the command of every draught. He watched insects no bigger than black spots whir about it. He thought about his father; a man unafraid of battle and unafraid to do what was so much harder—feel.
At last he looked at Arn. He said, “What must I do?”
Vraymorg poked the torch at dry rushes. They caught at once.
As the flames danced, he felt nothing. His gaze whipped across the mob pressed as near as they dared. He even felt nothing for them. Not revulsion. Not hatred. They were just there; morbid spectators to another’s pain, their excited whispers dying away.
The present scene in front of him unbearable, his numbed mind groped ahead. When this ended, when Tide’s End fell—and it must fall—the gods would name the next bonded warrior. Another child …
His breath contorted to a sob. No, no. Blank his thoughts. Do not think of Kaell.
“My lord, step away.” A guardsman confronted him.
Vraymorg blinked like a sleepwalker. “In a moment.” Heat scorched his skin. He was aware of it as he might register a distance sound.
The guard shook his head and drew back towards Cathmor, sprawled in comfort with his noblemen beneath a rolled-up tent. The king leaned to Caelmarsh, patted his arm and laughed.
Laughed.
The fire spat. Wood cracked. Flames reached the edge of the scaffold. At Kaell’s cry of alarm, grief at last pierced Vraymorg’s torpor. He looked up. “Kaell. I’m sorry.”
Through billowing smoke, the boy shrugged. “For what? You taught me to be what the gods asked. When I let Archanin take me captive, I let you and the gods down.”
“Vraymorg,” the king called. “You’re too close.”
“My lord.” Kaell coughed. “He’s right. It’s dangerous.”
The fire leapt higher. A plank on the edge of the platform caught alight. How long, he wondered. How long? Smoke veiled Kaell as though he was already lost to him. Gone.
I should have killed him that night the ghouls attacked. He deserved that, this child I raised. He trusted me to do the right thing. Now he’ll die in the flames.
Flames. The past sprang at him.
Braziers upon the walls at Vraymorg, the smoke twisting into the dusk. Against an endless sky, violet and beautiful, three moons rose.
Kaell tore about the ward, a child of six waving his wooden sword at the nesting plovers, shouting, “Silly pluckers, shut up, shut up, you silly pluckers.”
Vraymorg was about to correct him, call out, “plovers, Kaell,” only to laugh. Pluckers suited the birds just as well. From now on that’s what they would be.
He smiled at the memory; the boy, the sword, the indignant birds with their distinctive cries. The small child taking them on, unafraid.
Vraymorg shivered. How terrified that child who fearlessly ran about the ward must be now. Alone, back to that stake, watching the flames
advance.
He could leap onto that platform and drag that child to safety. Except that meant breaking his vow to a dying queen hundreds of years ago. A vow to serve her ancestors. Like Cathmor. And he had done it. Whatever the cost.
“Gods—which ever gods,” he whispered, “why do you ask this of me? I’ve done my duty, I’ve served the king.”
He served the descendant of his queen, the woman who saved him from unending darkness. Yet a trembling tore through him, a stab of unwanted memories.
Devarsi ordering him to murder a boy. Devarsi with Archanin, heads close, conspirators.
No. No. Devarsi saved him.
Bile washed into his mouth. Devarsi laughing as the Isles burned; laughing, just like Cathmor laughed. Devarsi ordering her soldiers to execute every captured warrior.
“Vraymorg, I order you to step back,” the king said.
His knees hit dirt. He beat the ground to force back memories. They hammered and hammered. Tears slid down his cheeks, salty on his lips.
His debt, whatever debt, was long paid. His duty was not to unworthy queens. Nor kings who asked this of him. It was to this boy he loved.
Loved. Oh gods, that was it. Such a simple word.
It was that look on his father’s face when Val fell on the training field; that mix of pride and pain. It was his father’s calloused hand helping him rise, his arms holding him close as though to immure him from the world.
He wanted that for Kaell. To hold him like his father held him. Protect him from kings, from ghouls and gods. From every hurt.
“I’ve done as you asked,” he called to the king. “Release me from my bond.”
“What are you talking about?” Cathmor was on his feet. “The only bond you owe me is that of a lord to his king.”
“The other bond.”
“There is no other bond.”
Vraymorg trembled. Cathmor did not acknowledge the vow. Then surely, surely, that released him. He staggered up, drew Kaell’s sword and limped to the platform.
“What’s he doing?” The king’s voice rose in shock. “Someone stop him.”
The heat from the wooden steps scorched through his boots to his soles. Flames writhed. Vraymorg laughed, unafraid of their physical threat.
Fire could burn him, hurt him but not kill him. Its pain nothing compared to the terror of letting go, of admitting he loved this child he raised.
A Telorian king, his cousin, once braved fire beyond the Enarae to prove his worth as a Serravan warrior. He needed to prove so much more—his worth as a man. As a father.
What had Arn said? Love is colder than duty? For the coward, maybe. For a man love must never be that. It must be warm, bright, unafraid and vulnerable.
With one slash, he freed Kaell. The young man fell against him, coughing. “My lord, what you doing?”
Vraymorg hugged him hard. “Forgive me.”
“For what, my lord?”
It hurt to breathe. It hurt the way it did every time he sat by Kaell’s bed while the boy tossed in pain or fever; never admitting to himself why he was there.
“I always knew what you wanted to hear,” he said. “But I was afraid. Because if I cared and something hurt you, I’d shatter. Now I understand I must shatter. And shatter again. If that’s what it takes.”
Kaell said nothing, only stared.
Vraymorg clasped the young man’s face between his palms. Only two things he could do for Kaell.
The first … He drew in a long breath.
“Once, on a terrible night when the Lost walked, you asked what you were to me. I could not admit it to myself. Not then. But I’ll say it now.” He paused, fighting a flicker of panic. “You never disappointed me, Kaell. I love you as I might love my son.”
A tear wet Kaell’s eyelashes. He did not swipe it away.
The second.
“You can save him,” Arn’s voice echoed, his words terrible and wonderful. “The priestess bound them together. Kaell and Azenor. Your stories bound Kaell to that sword. My lord planned this. Every step. It will take only a little blood.”
Vraymorg pressed his lips to Kaell’s brow. “They’ll stop me if I try to get you away. Arrest us both. So I have to believe what the traitor told me. If there’s a chance this magic works, I must take it.”
He shuddered at the enormity of what he was about to do. Destroy a girl’s life, perhaps. Tarnish his name, his spirit. “I’m told Azenor will never wake. It will be a mercy.”
“My lord, I don’t understand.”
Vraymorg lifted the sword. Flames lashed his back with heat. “I can do this for you, at least. I can save you.”
He could not hesitate. He took just one dizzying breath and stabbed.
Kaell collapsed to his knees, his lord’s arms still about him. “It hurts,” Kaell whispered. “I didn’t think it would hurt like this. But it won’t kill me. Please, if you love me, you know what you must do.”
Vraymorg could no longer speak. He could only swing. Seithin steel. A single stroke.
Flames beat like red wings. Smoke stung his eyes. Shapes ran to and fro, a chaos of outrage and confusion that meant nothing.
Vraymorg flung the blade away, reeled off the platform and knelt. Coughing, spluttering, his body aching. Knees drawn up, he let himself remember a small child who followed him about with endless questions, a boy who snuggled against him to listen to stories by the fire.
He remembered how Kaell, no older than five, wrapped his arms about his leg when he left to fight.
He remembered Kaell bursting into the hall the first time he killed a ghoul; the story tumbling out, his gestures wild as he recounted the thrust and cut of the fight. How the words fell away before Vraymorg’s silence and he looked to his lord, waiting.
Waiting for praise. A nod, a smile. Anything.
Then, as Vraymorg touched his hair and said, “You’ve done well,” how his face blazed with elation.
Not knowing Vraymorg didn’t care about the dead ghoul, only that Kaell was alive, unhurt. Not knowing to raise a child meant pain; even in the joy of it, beneath the shared moments of achievement or happiness. Because there was always fear.
The fire slapped air, its whip a heartbeat. Perhaps there were voices, commotion. He didn’t care about the world beyond that space of ground where he sat, arms clasped about his knees, rocking. Minutes surely passed. He didn’t care about that, either.
Guards seized his arms, a violent intrusion into his grief.
Cathmor stood over him. “By what right did you defy me to give him a quick death?” he said. “This time your insolence will cost your life.”
Vraymorg shrugged. “I am not as fond of this life as you may think.”
“You fool.” At the king’s side, Cael-Carren shook his head. “I always knew your arrogance would be the death of you. Beg my nephew’s forgiveness. Ask for mercy. Admit to a moment of weakness because of your grief over the boy. Tell your king you’re sorry.”
“I’m not sorry. Your nephew is cruel and repellent. Not worthy to be a king.”
Hands drawn down to fists, Cathmor bellowed, “find my executioner!”
Guards bound Vraymorg’s wrists at his back and found a log to use as a block. Another spectacle for the swelling mob. Their murmurs rippled at his back; their callous, bloodthirsty anticipation as tangible as the fire’s heat.
“Nothing to say?” Cathmor said. “Nothing? Come, my lord, you disappoint me. Such an arrogant tongue and it falls silent when you are about to die.”
“I will say this, then.” He raised his voice. “I am Vraymorg, Lord of the Pass. With me, men of the Mountains. To me!”
“Shut him up!” the king screamed.
“This king is false. He does not deserve our loyalty. To me!”
A fist knocked him flat. Groping hands dragged him forward, forced his head down. A sword screeched from a scabbard.
A man cried, “I stand with my lord, with Vraymorg.”
“I, too, stand with Vraymorg,�
�� a second yelled. Then another and another, until voices rolled into each other in a riot of shouts, an eruption of shrieking blades and thudding feet.
In vain, Cathmor shouted for silence. Yet above the din, one voice carried.
“I am Damadar. I stand with Vraymorg. To me, men of the Ice.”
Guards reeled back. Heath freed Vraymorg’s hands, pulled him up and shoved a sword at him.
“Isn’t this fun?” The young Ice lord grinned. “Mayhem, betrayal, the prospect of battle and—even better—we’re outnumbered. Can you fight? I need every warrior who can stand.”
Vraymorg grasped the unfamiliar sword, stunned at this bewildering turn. Amid the turmoil of his spinning thoughts, his weariness and sorrow, he wondered why he’d disliked this man.
“I can fight.” That was all he could do.
Letting rage possess him, Vraymorg plunged into the chaos of pealing, clanking metal; ready to deliver death with a coldness mirroring the intent in his heart.
A grim resolve to bring down a king.
If you love Kaell, Val, Heath and co …
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Thank you!
And watch out for the second book (temporary cover below) in the series, coming out in May, 2019.
Feel free to drop me a line on Facebook or at my website www.sjhartland.com. There’s nothing better than talking characters!
Warm regards, Susan.
Copyright © 2018 by S. J. Hartland
Dark Blade Publishing
52 Walker St, Townsville
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Acknowledgments