Kingdom of Sea and Stone

by Mara Rutherford

  “Nor was right,” he said as he led us to a small room where the guards were being interrogated. “A guard named Dru was approached outside the castle walls last night. The stranger had offered him a bag full of red gems in exchange for Zoi. Dru thought they looked valuable.”

  From the look in Talin’s eyes, he was ready to kill the guard, but Talia got to him first.

  “What did you do?” she screamed at Dru, who was shackled and cowering against the wall. “Who took her?”

  It was unnerving to see Talia, the most composed woman I’d ever met, so rattled. Perhaps she loved her daughter more than I realized.

  “Mother,” Talin said gently, though he took a firm hold of her arms. “Please. Let me handle this.”

  She was trembling with rage, but she let him take her place.

  “What did the man look like?” Talin asked Dru.

  He was a large man, but his voice shook as he answered. “H-he was wearing a cloak, so I didn’t get a good look at him. But he was very pale, with strange eyes like two full moons.”

  Talin and I exchanged a glance. “We need to go,” I said.

  Talin rubbed his jaw between his fingers. “We have no idea where he took her. We need to keep our heads and think about this logically.”

  “Logically, Ceren is the one person who has a reason to harm Zoi,” I murmured. “If your mother was going to surrender for anything, this is it.”

  Talin nodded and squared his shoulders. “We’ll get the hounds on the scent right away. He won’t have gone back to New Castle, not when it has already been occupied by our men.”

  “We should split up,” Osius said. “We can cover more ground that way.”

  Talin issued a few more orders, then turned to his mother. “I know you want to help, but I think you should stay here, in case Zoi comes home.”

  She adamantly shook her head no. “If she manages to get away from Ceren and hears a bunch of strangers calling her name, she could very well stay in hiding.”

  Talin looked doubtful, but he nodded. “Very well. Try not to worry, Mother. We’ll find her.”

  I could only think that Ceren must be more desperate than ever before, to risk coming here and kidnapping Zoi. Still, she was no use to Ceren dead, and without my blood or our bond to strengthen him, we just might be able to catch him.

  We all went to the stables to prepare our horses. In the distance, I could hear dogs baying in anticipation of the search. The guard had admitted to slipping into Talia’s room and taking Zoi as she slept, bundling her in a cloak and somehow sneaking past the others. He estimated it had been about five hours ago.

  Talin divided everyone into groups of three, keeping Talia and me with him. Talia was riding her white mare, and, though she seemed to have calmed down, she looked exhausted.

  “Why would he do this?” she asked as we rode out from Old Castle. “He must see that he’s lost. Harming a child won’t change that.”

  “I believe he did it to get to you,” I replied. “This is his final attempt to claim the throne.”

  Talia’s voice was a disconcerting rasp. “I’ll die before I let that man take my daughter’s throne.”

  I cast a glance at Talin, but we had stopped at a fork in the main road. One went north, toward Galeth. The other went west, to the ocean.

  Where would Ceren go? I wondered. Not north, surely. Galeth wasn’t going to help him, and Pirot had never been loyal to Ceren. Meradin, even less so. South was Talia’s territory, so that seemed even less likely.

  Unconsciously, I found myself reaching for the bond that was no longer there. Like it or not, I knew Ceren better than most, and the only indication he’d given me that he wanted to see anything outside the walls of New Castle was his comment about how he would like to see Varenia again someday.

  If my hunch was wrong, we would end up wasting time. But if it was right and he reached the ocean before we did, he could take Zoi on a ship and be on another continent before we realized he’d left Ilara.

  “I think he’s going to Varenia,” I said.

  Talin turned to look at me in surprise. “What? Why would you think that?”

  “When I was at New Castle, he mentioned he wanted to see it again.”

  Talia fixed me in her narrowed gaze. “I find it strange that Ceren would say something like that to the woman who tried to kill him, of all people. It almost makes me wonder if you didn’t have something to do with this.”

  “Mother!” Talin wheeled Xander around to face her. “Nor would never dream of hurting Zoi. You’re frightened and overwhelmed, understandably. But if you can’t learn to differentiate your friends from your enemies, you’ll never be able to help Zoi. Not just now, but when she becomes queen.”

  I was grateful to Talin for defending me, but this wasn’t just about the fact that I would never hurt a child. “I spent quite a bit of time connected to Ceren,” I said to Talia, “through no choice of my own. I do know him, whether I want to or not. And I also know that we don’t have time to waste on petty accusations when every moment, Ceren is getting farther away from us.”

  I doubted Talia was capable of looking chastened, but she pressed her heels into her mare’s sides and took off down the road toward the ocean. Talin and I followed at a reasonable canter. I didn’t want to wear Titania out when we had a lot of ground to cover.

  “I know you’re frustrated,” Talin said to me after a long time had passed in silence. “But I wish you could be more understanding with my mother. She’s been through a great deal.”

  “We all have. And I have supported your cause because I believe you wouldn’t do anything corrupt or selfish. But I can’t say I have those same convictions when it comes to your mother.”

  Despite my anger, I was afraid I’d gone too far and Talin wouldn’t answer. But finally, he looked at me. “I know she isn’t perfect, Nor. I know she’s made mistakes and her methods for building an army were questionable at best. But I still believe in her cause. I still believe Zoi belongs on the throne and Ilara will be far better off under a female ruler. We’ve all seen how well things have gone with men running the kingdom for hundreds of years.”

  He wasn’t wrong, and someday Zoi might make an excellent ruler. But in the meantime, I wasn’t sure Talia was all that different from Ceren. Would a woman who had been prepared to endanger the lives of all Varenians really see to it that they had somewhere safe to live? Would the united, stable Ilara so many had dreamed of really become a reality?

  When we reached the River Ilara, I was hopeful we’d find some sign that Ceren and Zoi had come this way. While we dismounted to let the horses drink and rest, Talin went in search of information from the soldier at the nearest bridge.

  “Go on, girl,” I said to Titania, releasing the reins so she could drink. I estimated we were farther north than when I had first gone to Ilara, but whether we were as far north as Riaga was impossible to guess.

  “No one fitting Ceren’s description has crossed the bridge today,” Talin said when he returned. “But the soldier thinks it’s entirely possible Ceren crossed the river during the night. There are places where crossing is relatively easy on horseback.”

  Talia mounted her mare and started toward the bridge. “Come on, then. We’re wasting time.”

  We crossed without incident and followed the road through Pirot, where we were soon surrounded by pine forest. There were plenty of fresh hoofprints in the soil, but that meant little, with such an oft-used road. It was late afternoon, and the sun was already beginning to set. I was starting to worry that my guess had been wrong after all.

  Suddenly, Titania tensed, her ears pricking forward in alarm. I raised a hand, signaling for Talia and Talin to stop.

  “The sun will be down soon,” a voice said in the distance. “We should stop for a few hours, get some rest.”

  The man who answered was clea
rly in charge. “We’ll ride until we reach Old Castle,” he said. “We can water the horses at the river.”

  I recognized the stubborn tone immediately. Without explaining myself, I urged Titania forward through the trees.

  “Someone’s coming,” a female voice said. “Arm yourselves.”

  “It’s me! It’s Nor!” I came around a bend in the road to find a dozen crossbows trained on me, but I was too happy to see who was holding them to worry.

  “Nor?” Roan leaped from Kosmos’s back and hurried toward me. “What in the world are you doing here?”

  “It’s good to see you, too, Roan.” I pulled him into a hug, grateful for this reunion.

  When I finally released him, his eyes searched mine. “I mean it, Nor. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at Old Castle?”

  “Shouldn’t you be in Galeth, enjoying your independence?” I raised my eyebrows pointedly, still a little hurt that he had left when we needed him, although I was no longer angry. He had been right to question Talia’s motives.

  “I would be, if we hadn’t run into one of Ceren’s patrols on our way home.” Roan pulled a waterskin off his saddle and took a long drink. “They had Landrey. Ceren’s soldiers must have captured her at some point, probably when she was in Riaga. She had one of those bloodstones on her neck. We tried to convince her to come back with us, but she didn’t even recognize us. Then the other soldiers attacked, and we fled.”

  I felt relief for Landrey and Roan, as well as a tiny bit of disappointment that Titania’s rider would likely be asking for her back. “Where is she?”

  He shook his head. “We don’t know.”

  “Why didn’t you go to Galeth after that? Staying in Ilara couldn’t have been the safest decision.”

  “Of course not. This place is crawling with men who work for Talia or Ceren, and none are happy to see a Galethian this far south. But after witnessing what those bloodstones did to one of our own...” He shuddered at the memory. “We’ll never acknowledge Talia as a monarch, Nor, but you were right. This affects all of us.”

  “I managed to break the blood bond with Ceren before the fighting got too bad,” I explained. “The bloodstones don’t work anymore. There’s a very good chance that Landrey is safe.”

  I relayed everything as fast as I could, ending with the fact that we were pursuing Ceren. Or that we hoped we were, anyway.

  “We haven’t crossed paths with him,” Roan said when I’d finished. “But we’ll help you look. Won’t we?” he asked the others.

  The Galethians nodded their assent, and I turned to where Talin and Talia waited from a distance, waving them forward.

  “Talia,” Roan said with a tight nod. “We’ve offered to assist in the search for your daughter, if you’ll accept our help.”

  She surprised me by bowing her head in response. “We will do so gratefully. I’ll repay you however I can. I just want to get my daughter back.”

  32

  We stopped for the night when it grew too dark to see the road, the moonlight diminished by a thick veil of clouds. The Galethians camped with their horses, and I did the same, grateful to have Titania as long as I could. If Landrey came to claim her, keeping her might not be a matter of choice. Roan had said a horse would never forsake its First Rider, and that was something I could never be for Titania.

  I was tired from so many hours in the saddle, but it was a relief to have the Galethians with us and to know that Roan and I were on solid footing once again. I left the others talking as they settled down for the night and went to refill my waterskin at a small creek meandering through the woods.

  A branch snapped somewhere close by, and the skin on my arms prickled as I straightened and looked around. Ceren could still have men patrolling these woods. As quietly as possible, I headed toward the firelight and safety of camp.

  A figure emerged on the trail ahead of me, nearly causing me to drop the waterskin. In the darkness, it was difficult to make anything out, but as my eyes adjusted, I realized they were wearing skirts, unlike all the other members of our party.

  “What do you want, Talia?” I asked, resuming my walk back to camp as if she hadn’t just scared the wits out of me.

  “I wanted to talk to you alone,” she said.

  I snorted. “The last time we talked alone, you asked me not to pursue my relationship with Talin and held the safety of my family over my head. I think we both know how that worked out.”

  She fell in step with me, not making a sound on the fallen leaves on the trail. That broken branch I heard must have been deliberate. I wondered what the last four years had been like for her, raising a small child in exile. Somehow, despite starting a new life with nothing but the clothing on her back, she had grown a network of followers who were willing to risk their lives for her. True, not all her troops were loyal, but there were many who had joined her cause of their own volition. They must have seen something in her that inspired enough confidence to risk the consequences of an uprising that was by no means guaranteed to succeed.

  “I do,” she admitted. “And I’m grateful you chose not to tell Talin. You were right, of course. He never would have stood for it, not if it wasn’t coming from you.” She cleared her throat, looking uncharacteristically discomfited. “The truth is, I have seen very little of genuine love in my life. My parents’ marriage was not a happy one. And though I cared for my late husband, it was not the kind of love you and Talin have for each other. I was wrong about you, Nor.”

  The best I could offer her was a tight nod of acknowledgment. I wasn’t about to thank her.

  “And the truth is, I owe you a debt for ending this war,” she continued. “We might have won without you, but at the cost of many more lives.”

  I stopped and turned to face her. “I didn’t do it for you, Talia. I did it for my parents, the Varenians, and all the innocent Ilareans who would have died if you’d had your way. I did it for the good of the kingdom.”

  “I understand,” she said, annoyingly unflappable.

  “Besides, I’m not even sure if the war really is over. Ceren asked me what it was you loved so much about Varenia and why you wanted to go back. And I honestly couldn’t answer him. I don’t know what you want, Talia. Is it to see your daughter on the throne because you think she’ll be a wise and fair ruler? Or is it simply because you’re as blinded by power as every other royal?”

  She sighed and looked away, but not before I saw her brow furrow like Talin’s, a timely reminder that he was her son, no matter her flaws. And while her cold detachment and ruthless pursuit of power hadn’t been passed on to her son, I knew that the things I loved most about him—his loyalty, his selflessness, his compassion—had come from her.

  “I don’t know what you want to hear, Nor. Ruling is a messy business. Peace, as you seem to envision it, isn’t real.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was agree with her, but what if she was right? What did I know about ruling? I had seen several different ways of governing of late, and any system that put few people in control of many was going to have flaws. I could acknowledge that there were others with far more wisdom and experience who could make these sorts of decisions, but did I really want to spend my life with someone so close to all this? If I married Talin, I would never be able to escape the drama and danger of court politics.

  “What will you do when we find Zoi?” I asked finally. “What if Ceren demands the crown in return?”

  She shook her head. “I would think you would understand better than anyone, Nor. I have spent my life obeying the commands of men. First to leave Varenia, then to marry Xyrus, then to bear his children, and then to sit by while my stepson rose to the throne, even though it wasn’t his by right. Why should I give up anything else? Why shouldn’t I have everything a man has?”

  “Of course I understand all that. But that’s not a good enough reason to rule
a kingdom or to force people to follow a cause they may not even believe in.”

  She placed her hand on my arm. “At the end of this, Nor, someone will be responsible for Ilara and all the people in it. You need to ask yourself who that someone should be. And if you don’t believe in me, at least try to believe in my children.”

  “I’ll try,” I said, then returned to the camp alone.

  * * *

  We rose before the sun to resume our chase. Several of the Galethians had searched the woods through the night, their surefooted horses capable of navigating the road in the dark. But they circled back by midday, having seen nothing. When the road wound north, toward Riaga, Talin brought our party to a stop.

  “Would he go into the city?” Roan asked Talin, his hand shading his dark eyes from the sun. “Seems to me he’d be far too conspicuous there.”

  Talin said something in response, but I barely heard him. Something was calling me forward, off the road and toward the horizon. I rode ahead silently, as if I was being reeled in by an invisible thread. Titania was more alert as well, her nostrils flaring as she breathed heavily, but I wasn’t sure if that had to do with me or whatever I was sensing.

  The horizon blurred, and suddenly I was no longer looking at land but a wide strip of blue. Just the sight of the ocean released something inside of me, and I breathed in until my ribs ached, letting the salt air fill my lungs. We had come to the edge of a cliff overlooking the Alathian Sea, stretched out in all its glory as far as the eye could see. There was no sign of Ceren, and it seemed unlikely he could have commandeered a ship. We were still miles from the port.

  “Don’t move, or I’ll kill her.”

  Titania pivoted on her hind legs before the words registered. Somehow, Ceren had managed to come up behind me on foot. I froze the moment I saw the bundle in his arms.

  Talin and the rest of our party were on the other side of Ceren. “Put her down,” Talin demanded. The Galethians had their crossbows trained on Ceren, but Talin hadn’t drawn a weapon. I wondered how he thought he’d convince his brother to do anything in his current state.