Bonds of Vengeance: Book 3 of Winds of the Forelands (Winds of the Forelands Tetralogy)

by DAVID B. COE

  Xiv was waiting for him in the corridor outside the chamber, leaning against the stone wall. Seeing Marston, he straightened and fell in step beside him as they walked to the nearest tower.

  “What happened?” the minister asked. “You look as if the king branded you a traitor.”

  “It didn’t go quite that badly. But if Thorald’s standing in the realm turned on my friendship with Kearney, we’d be in a good deal of trouble right now.” He waited to say more until they were out of the stairway and in the castle ward. “The king remains convinced that his archminister can be trusted,” he finally said, squinting in the sunlight, “though from all I hear, she’s behaved erratically for the past several turns.” He glanced at the minister. “Have you learned anything from your conversations with her?”

  “Very little. If she is a traitor, she’s far more clever about hiding it than Enid was. She denies nothing, but neither does she say anything that suggests she’s with the conspiracy. At least not when questioned directly about it.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Xiv raked a hand through his short hair. “There was something strange about our discussion today. We were speaking of the need to find the source of the conspiracy’s gold, and I suggested that we might be well served to have a loyal Qirsi join the movement. I had the impression that she agreed with me, but when the king’s other Qirsi opposed the idea, she seemed to go out of her way to give in to their point of view. She almost seemed relieved when the vote went their way.”

  “As if she feared that your plan would reveal her betrayal?”

  “Perhaps,” the minister said, frowning. “Or else . . .”

  “Or else what?”

  For several moments Xiv just walked, silent and pensive. At last, he shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s probably nothing.”

  “It sounds to me as if she’s hiding something, which merely confirms what I’ve known since we arrived here. This woman is dangerous; I’m certain of it. And the king is too blinded by the love they once shared to see it. It’s up to us, Xiv. We need to do everything in our power to make Kearney see her for what she really is. We have to convince him to banish her from the castle.”

  Xiv nodded, though there was an uneasy look in his yellow eyes that Marston couldn’t quite explain.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Three

  He could see them fighting, both men crouched low, their blades held ready as they circled one another, looking for any opening to attack. It seemed that Tavis bled from a wound on his forearm and another on the side of his neck, but Grinsa couldn’t be certain. The distance was too great, and though he was moving as swiftly as he could, the terrain was difficult. He picked his way across the great boulders with an eye toward the combatants, glancing down only occasionally to check his footing. Twice he nearly fell, for the stone was slick. He could feel sea spray on his face, he could smell brine and a coming storm riding the wind. Gulls cried overhead.

  I’m on the Crown, he thought to himself. He paused, looking around, suddenly more aware of his surroundings than of the battle before him. He could see the dark mass of Enwyl Island in the distance, and to the west of that, the cliffs of Eibithar’s eastern shore. This is the Wethy Crown.

  He heard laughter and looked ahead once more. The two figures before him continued to circle, the other man, dark haired and tall, just as the gleaner remembered from Mertesse, switching his dagger from one hand to the other, the motion so fluid he seemed a dancer rather than a musician. He was smiling now, his confidence written in his expression, his stance, his pale blue eyes. The singer made a feint with his blade hand, and Tavis flinched. The man laughed a second time. Grinsa was nearly close enough now, though for what he couldn’t be certain. He wanted to cry out to Tavis, to warn the young lord away from this man, from this fight, but he kept his silence, fearing that if he distracted Tavis for even a moment, it would mean the boy’s death. He sensed that he was supposed to do something, that Tavis expected him to use magic against the singer, but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to do anything more than watch.

  Again the singer pretended to lunge, and when Tavis moved to protect himself—a desperate, clumsy movement with his blade hand—the singer launched himself at the boy. They struggled briefly, a tangle of arms and legs and flashing steel. Then they fell to the stone, rolling to the side. Tavis cried out the gleaner’s name, then shouted something else. Grinsa couldn’t make out what he said, and in the next instant the two figures rolled again, reaching the crest of the boulder on which they fought and dropping out of view. Grinsa hurried toward them, calling to the young lord even as he stumbled again. To his left a wave crashed, sending a towering fountain of foam and spray over the huge rocks. Lightning carved across the purple sky, seeming to plunge into the Gulf of Kreanna like a dagger into flesh. Thunder followed a moment later, the clap so sudden and fierce that it staggered him, as if a blow. In an instant it was raining. But this was not the soft rain that presages a storm during the growing turns, building gradually as the storm grows near. Rather, this rain came like a hail of arrows during a siege. Abrupt and merciless, and so thick he could barely see what was before him. He cried out for Tavis, but the torrent drowned out his voice and swallowed the light. Thunder crashed again, and a voice beside him made the gleaner jump.

  “It’s raining.”

  Grinsa opened his eyes. Lightning flickered like a flame in the narrow window near his bed. He could hear rain slapping against the stone walls of Audun’s Castle.

  Tavis was sitting up in his bed, gazing toward the window as well. Grinsa rubbed a hand over his face, trying to clear his mind. They were in Audun’s Castle still; they weren’t in Wethyrn at all. It had been several days since the arrival of Marston of Shanstead and the discussion among the Qirsi to which he had been party. Little had happened in the intervening days, though the dukes of Heneagh and Labruinn had reached the castle the previous morning.

  “You called out my name,” Tavis said after some time. “Were you dreaming?”

  Grinsa nodded. Then, when the boy didn’t look his way, he managed to say, “Yes,” in a hoarse voice.

  “What about?”

  He didn’t want to say. This hadn’t been just another dream. He felt drained, weak, as if he had been healing wounds for the better part of a day, just as he always felt after a vision. As much as he would have liked to believe otherwise, the gleaner knew that what he had seen would happen someday, probably soon. Tavis and the singer would meet on the Wethy Crown. They would fight their next battle—perhaps their last battle—in that storm Grinsa had seen. And, it seemed, Grinsa would be unable to stop them or, for that matter, to do anything more than watch helpless and useless. How was he to explain any of this to Tavis?

  “It’s hard to say,” he answered. “I need a chance to sort through what I saw.”

  “It was a vision, then.”

  The boy was too damn clever. “Yes,” he admitted. “It was a vision.”

  “Of me?”

  “Give me some time, Tavis.”

  The young lord gave a nod, staring at him another moment before turning back to the window and the storm.

  “It’s early for a storm like this,” the boy said quietly, as lightning brightened the window again.

  “Osya’s turn will be over in another two days. It’s not that early.”

  “In Curgh, this would be early. Maybe it’s not down here. I’m not used to spending the planting away from the north coast.”

  “You could probably go home now if you wanted. The king believes in your innocence, and though others might not, you no longer need Glyndwr’s protection.”

  “I’m not ready to go home.”

  I still have to kill the singer. He didn’t have to say it. If by some chance Grinsa thought that Cresenne’s confession had made the young lord any less determined to avenge Brienne, his vision would have been enough to dispel the notion.

  “Perhaps you should anyway,” Grinsa
said, his voice barely carrying over a rumble of thunder.

  “What did you see, gleaner?”

  Tavis had turned to face him again, forcing Grinsa to look away.

  “Nothing.” He lay back down. “Go to sleep.”

  For several moments Tavis continued to sit there, saying nothing. Then he lowered himself to his pillow, pulling his blankets up around his neck.

  It seemed that Grinsa fell asleep immediately, for when he awoke once more, the silver light of day lit the chamber and Tavis’s bed was empty. Several turns ago he might have been concerned for the boy’s safety, even with Aindreas of Kentigern and his soldiers fifty leagues away. He had learned during their travels, however, that Tavis could take care of himself. Usually, he amended, recalling his vision.

  He dressed and started toward the prison tower. No doubt Cresenne would be weary and ready for sleep.

  But as he crossed the ward he saw two men dueling on the grass, the sharp crack of wood echoing off the castle walls as their swords met. Training weapons rather than steel. It took him a moment to recognize one of the men as Tavis. Hagan MarCullet stood nearby, and Grinsa soon realized that the man fighting Tavis was the swordmaster’s son, Xaver. He hesitated a moment, glancing toward Cresenne’s tower. Then he walked over to Hagan, who was shouting encouragement to both lord and liege man.

  “Are you to be training the king’s men as well, swordmaster?” he asked.

  Hagan regarded him briefly, then gave a short laugh. “Trasker would never allow that, and you know it.” He nodded his head toward the two young men. “Actually it was the boy’s idea.”

  “Tavis’s?”

  He nodded a second time. “Sword up, Tavis! You can’t defend yourself with the tip held too low!

  “His footwork has gotten a bit careless,” he went on a moment later, lowering his voice once more. “And his attacks aren’t quite as precise as I remember. But he still wields a quick blade. He’s nearly a match for his father.” He glanced at the gleaner. “Have you been working him?”

  “Not at all. I don’t know much about swordplay.”

  “I guess some are just born to it. Was you that healed him though, wasn’t it? After Kentigern?”

  Grinsa had long denied this, fearing that if he revealed his ability to heal, some might begin to question what other powers he possessed. But most in the castle knew by now that he had healed Cresenne’s injuries, and though he felt certain that the king would not betray his secret, he sensed that it wouldn’t be long before others learned that he was a Weaver.

  “Yes,” he said. “It was me.”

  “You did well. Xaver tells me the boy was in a bad way when last he saw him in the dungeon.”

  “Thank you.”

  Grinsa and Hagan watched them fight for another few moments, before the swordmaster called to them, “That’s enough for now, lads!”

  The two boys stopped, stepped back from one another, and bowed, first to each other, and then to Hagan. Their faces were as red as Sanbiri wine and their hair was damp with sweat. But both of them were grinning, Tavis looking happier than Grinsa had ever seen him. Whatever his reason for requesting the training, clearly it had done him some good.

  Seeing the gleaner, Tavis’s smile began to fade.

  “Has something happened?” he asked, wiping the sweat from his face with his sleeve.

  “No. I was on my way to the prison tower and saw you here. I just stopped to watch.” He faltered. After all this time, he still found it hard to pay the boy compliments. “You’re very good,” he made himself say.

  Tavis shrugged, looked off to the side. “I used to be.”

  “You still are,” Xaver said.

  “As are you, Master MarCullet.”

  An uneasy silence fell over them, until Grinsa cleared his throat, forcing a smile. “Well, as I say, I was on my way to the tower. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “Not at all,” the swordmaster said. “I shouldn’t work him too hard if he hasn’t been training.”

  But Tavis didn’t say a word. It seemed he was eager for Grinsa to leave.

  “If you need me, I’ll be with Cresenne,” he told the boy.

  Tavis nodded once, his lips pressed thin.

  Grinsa tipped his head to Xaver and Hagan in turn, then walked away, making his way to Cresenne’s chamber, all the while wondering if he should insist that Tavis return to Curgh. Javan and the duchess would support him, he knew. They wished only for their son’s safety; neither of them cared anything for revenge. And Grinsa wasn’t convinced that Tavis’s thirst for the assassin’s blood was something to be encouraged. If his vision the previous night was to be believed, it might be the death of the boy.

  For his part, Grinsa would have been glad to end their journeying here, in the City of Kings. He had come to like Tavis despite the boy’s many faults. But Cresenne and Bryntelle needed him, and though he had resisted it for a time, he could no longer keep himself from thinking of them as his family. He still loved Cresenne, even after all she had done, and while he couldn’t be certain that she would ever love him, he wasn’t certain that mattered. Because of him, the Weaver wanted her dead. How could he leave her, knowing the danger she faced every time she closed her eyes to sleep? How could he leave Bryntelle?

  More to the point, there was a war to be fought, and though few of the Eandi realized it now, it would fall to Grinsa to lead them, whether to victory or defeat. He had to remain here, so that when the time came, he would be ready to fight the Weaver. Certainly that’s what Keziah would have told him, and Cresenne, too, and perhaps the king himself.

  Then why did Oirsar send the vision?

  He faltered in midstride, as if suddenly stricken by some unseen pain. The vision. It was a warning. It had to be. Tavis should stay far from the Wethy Crown. He should break off this pointless and perilous pursuit of the assassin. That’s what it had to be saying. Except that visions didn’t always work that way. Long ago, before he left Cresenne to go to Kentigern, before he’d even met Tavis in the Revel gleaning tent in Curgh city, he had a vision of himself journeying with the boy, fighting beside him against the conspiracy. And though it seemed that what he had glimpsed in that vision had already come to pass, he couldn’t be certain that his path didn’t still lie with the boy. He had yet to have that moment of recognition, the one that came a turn or a year or ten years after a vision, when he realized that he was living the prophecy. He couldn’t be certain that he ever would—with some visions it never came. This didn’t mean the vision wasn’t true; it most cases it meant nothing. In this case, because of his dream the night before, it meant everything.

  If that vision from so long ago had yet to be realized, then perhaps Tavis had nothing to fear from the singer. If, on the other hand, that moment had passed . . .

  Except that visions didn’t always work that way, either.

  Grinsa spat a curse.

  Of all his powers, gleaning was the one he liked least. The glimpses it offered of the future carried burdens he didn’t wish to bear and uncertainties that often left him frustrated and fearful. Even this latest dream, the meaning of which seemed so clear at first, had become muddied in his mind over the past few hours. If he chose to remain with Cresenne and Bryntelle, would it make a difference? Tavis might resume his pursuit of the assassin without him. Certainly the boy was stubborn enough to do so. And though the gleaner had seen the events on the Wethy shore as if he were there, Tavis and the assassin had paid him no heed. Even when he called out to the young lord, Tavis didn’t appear to hear him. Had his voice been overwhelmed by the sea and the storm? Or was it that he wasn’t even there? Had Qirsar, the god of the Qirsi, merely offered a glimpse of what awaited the boy if Grinsa did not accompany him on his coming journey eastward? The god had done such things before, many times.

  Yes, it was a warning. But of what? If you go with the boy to the Wethy Crown, he may die; if you don’t go with the boy, he may die. Either was possible. Keeping Tavis in Eibithar see
med the only way to ensure his safety. And so long as the young lord didn’t learn that the assassin had gone east, Grinsa thought he could do that much.

  He continued on across the ward, reaching the base of the prison tower a few moments later. He climbed the stairs quickly and upon emerging into the corridor outside Cresenne’s chamber, heard Bryntelle cry out. Hurrying to the chamber door, the gleaner saw Cresenne sitting on her bed, with the baby lying in her lap.

  “Is she all right?” he asked.

  Cresenne looked up, a brilliant smile lighting her face. “She laughed!”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Come and see.”

  One of the guards opened the door for him, and he stepped quickly to the bed to sit beside them.

  “Watch.” Cresenne lowered her face to the baby’s belly and kissed it loudly, shaking her head as she did. Bryntelle let out a delighted squeal, her mouth opening in a wide, toothless grin. Cresenne did it a second time, drawing the same response.

  “You see?” she said, straightening. “You try it.”

  Grinsa smiled, but shook his head. “I don’t think she’s ready to laugh for me.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  He shrugged, staring at his daughter, unwilling at that moment to risk a look at the woman beside him.

  “At least take her. She’s in a wonderful mood.”

  “All right.”

  He allowed Cresenne to place Bryntelle in his arms, grinning when the child continued to smile and coo. Cresenne laid her hand gently on his arm, leaning closer so that she could look at the baby as well. It almost seemed that his skin was aflame where she was touching him.

  “You see?” she said, glancing at him.

  He merely nodded, still not looking at her.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. I’m just enjoying her.” Both of you, really.

  “Something’s troubling you. I can tell.”

  As quickly as it had begun, the moment passed. Briefly, as they sat there together, they truly had been a family. But this was a prison, and even as they spoke, the land moved inexorably toward war.