Morghiad dipped his head in a very shallow display of politeness, and made sure his gaze remained entirely at face level.
The dark assassin grinned and
whispered something in his queen’s ear, but her subsequent frown indicated that she disapproved of it. She turned to the sergeant. “Thank you for bringing him here. I will see you tonight.” Then she hugged him. How did she manage to engage in those sorts of relationships with so many men? “Well, Master Zennar,” she said as the sergeant left, “I think it is high time you met the man for whom you are so frequently mistaken.”
High time? He’d only been in the city for a day.
“But first I should introduce you to my friend, Tallyn Hunter. He is one
of the most experienced fighters, trackers and kanaala I know.”
“Best you call me The Hunter, lad. There’s far too many Tallyns around here.” He winked.
Morghiad took the assassin’s hand to shake. Their contact resonated with the odd, sliding sensation of kanaala meeting kanaala. At his best guess, The Hunter was probably a grade ten.
“Let’s be off then. Follow me.” The queen swept away, causing her hair to flurry in a plume of fire, and traced the path towards the white of the palace. Her hips swayed
provocatively beneath dark blue satin.
“Eyes up, lad,” The Hunter whispered, before moving after his queen.
They moved swiftly through the soft glow of the building, and into the bright white of the gardens. The pure snow had melted in places, revealing the impossibly green grass beneath. It ought to have been far less vibrant in winter. Another man was pacing near the wall to his left, a sword swung over his shoulder in nonchalance. An overly large, grey wolf trailed him playfully. The man’s hair was as black as his clothing, and there was something very
familiar about him. He looked up at the new arrivals, and Morghiad’s breath caught in his throat.
“Kal,” the queen called, “Why don’t you come and meet our newest cadet?”
The kahr approached them unhurriedly, his smooth strides bearing the mark of a man who knew how to run races and walk across continents. He studied Morghiad with the same, dark brown eyes of his mother. “Good to finally meet you,” Kalad said in quiet tones.
“Likewise.” Morghiad met his handshake. It was a peculiar feeling
when their hands clasped. The kahr was at least a grade higher than he was, which was something he’d never experienced before, but the sensation differed in another way. It was the same feeling of kanaala and yet it felt cleaner somehow... like Morghiad’s father. No one in the world was quite like his father.
“My mother says your skills with the sword are even more appalling than my own. I think it is only fair that, as you insist upon carrying my face around, you ought not to make my reputation any worse than it already is. Care to spar?”
Morghiad laughed at that. “Only if you stop the women from paying me unnecessary attentions.”
“I told you,” the queen hissed at her son, which was a curious admonishment given her own behaviour.
Kalad wore the expression of a man under duress, but it faded back into a smile. “Come on. Show me what you already know.”
Morghiad was quite tempted to show everyone here what he really did know, but the time wasn’t now. Patience, his father had said, patience is essential.
A wind trotted across the lawn, and Artemi accepted a fur-lined cloak from one of the servants. She had foolishly decided to dispense with it upon making preparations for Morghiad’s return, which brought about thoughts that warmed her in several ways. She pulled the cloak tightly around her body while she
watched.
“Baring that much breast will tend to give you a chill,” The Hunter warned as he came to sit next to her.
“Thank you, Tal.”
The two men - boys, really, were fighting with bluster and grit some yards away. Kalad appeared to be weaving easy circles around his father, which was an amusing sight to witness. Their differences were more marked now that they were together. With his extra year, Kalad had grown broader across the shoulders, and the same growth was evident in his musculature. Their facial features did exhibit some
subtle disparities, with Morghiad’s looking slightly harder and fiercer. It was perhaps a reflection of the diverse courses that their lives had followed. “There is almost nothing of me in that boy.”
The Hunter laughed. “Maybe not in his looks, but his spirit is entirely Fireblade.”
“I was never a flirt.”
“Your outfit says otherwise.”
She gave her friend a very sharp elbow to the ribs, which caused him to flinch most satisfactorily. Serious flirting was something she had never dared to do. It would only have ended
in disaster. “His father appears to have forgotten every scrap of discipline he was renowned for.”
The Hunter nodded slowly. “Strange...”
“What?”
His dark features drew into a frown. “I’m not sure. It’s almost as if... something doesn’t smell right.”
Artemi looked back to the young version of her husband. “It is him. There’s no question of it.” No one else had the resonance she felt when she touched him, not even her children.
He shook his head. “It’s not that... it’s the way he moves. There –
did you see that?”
“See what?”
“He pauses. Like a man thinking consciously about his movements. Nineteen is a bit old to do that, don’t you think?”
“He barely knows what a slidecross is. Half his training was probably conducted in brawls and bar fights.”
The Hunter narrowed his eyes. “Exactly. Men do not have time to think in fights like those. That man is thinking too much.”
Morghiad appeared inexperienced, dogged and clumsy. If he was thinking about his fighting, was
that necessarily a terrible thing? The queen released a sigh through her nose. She needed to spend as much time with this young cadet as possible, if not just to find out more about his past, and possibly seduce him. Not that she wanted to seduce a man younger even than Kalad. Not yet, anyway. Artemi attempted to force out the slew of subsequent thoughts that insisted upon drenching her mind.
The doubles’ fight was fast sinking into a repetitive cycle of movements, which the queen felt obliged to disrupt. She summoned enough of the fires into her body to
blow up a small house, and launched The Energy at the two men. This time Morghiad’s reaction was one controlled only by reflex. He twisted suddenly, knocking Kalad’s blade into the sky, and caught Artemi’s forms. Except, instead of deconstructing them, he crushed them. He forced them into nothingness.
Their son paused, open-mouthed and blinking. The queen and The Hunter had risen from the bench at Morghiad’s action, breathless and utterly silent. It ought to have been unachievable. Blaze could be crushed with more fire; it could be dissolved by
Crux power, but Morghiad had used neither. Somehow he had made it... implode. The Hunter lost little time in making his reaction known to the queen, grabbing one of her arms roughly with a dark hand. His glare could have cut through the very fabric of the palace.
“What did you do?” Kalad breathed. He did not seem to notice that he had lost his sword.
For an instant there was anger inside the green of Morghiad’s eyes, but it was gone almost as soon as Artemi recognised it. She could feel the monster stirring in the depths of her
mind. Could it recognise the moods of its previous owner? Did it see through her eyes? But why else would it have woken up now, after spending so many years lying dormant? She certainly did not feel any sadness; only concern. “Would you care to answer my son, Master Zennar?”
“I’m not sure, your –ah – highnesses. I think... I think it was a fluke.”
The queen nodded slowly, though her thoughts on the subjects differed somewhat from her outward agreement. “And have you done anything like that before?”
“No, my lady.” His young voice still carried the curious force of the king he had once been, the power to convince anyone of anything he desired them to believe.
“And where did you learn your skills as kanaala?”
Morghiad sheathed his weapon slowly. “From my father.”
“What is his name?”
“Rey Zennar.” A name she did not recognise, of course; possibly another fabrication.
“I see.” Two figures, visible only at the periphery of her vision, were moving rapidly towards their group, but she did not have to gaze directly at them to know who they were. Few people could sprint like her children. Medea and Tallyn both reached the gardens in a breathless pairing, neither one able to outrun the other.
“Hello,” they said in unison, wearing equally broad grins and failing in equal measure to suppress them. Both sets of emerald eyes settled on the new cadet.
Artemi could not help but smile herself. “Morghiad Zennar, allow me to introduce you to my two eldest children: Tallyn and Medea.”
This time Morghiad openly
blinked at the sight of them, and she immediately knew what it was that had taken him so aback this time. Not only did they share some of his looks, but also his eyes. Very few people in the world had eyes like his, which made Artemi wonder: what sort of parentage could possibly have had the potential to produce him in this life?
“Their father...” he began.
“Perhaps you are related to him in some way.” She allowed herself an arched eyebrow with her words, and prayed that he had not yet been told about vanha-sielu. Most youngsters would, quite reasonably, be kept
ignorant of the phenomenon or told that Chronicles of the Warrior was make-believe, though her children were an obvious exception. Artemi had never heard of vanha-sielu producing vanhasielu offspring. That would have been very odd indeed. Then again, what would he think if he believed she was knowingly pursuing a lookalike of her dead husband? Bloody light... she should have simply sent him away until he reclaimed his memories! Only, that would have upset their family immeasurably.
She pushed her mental disquiet aside and resumed her smile. “I’m sure
my children will keep you entertained for the rest of the day,” she said, turning away from his increasingly furrowed brow and narrowing eyes. Perhaps he was experiencing one of those headaches that so plagued vanhasielu when they contemplated their own existence. “Hunter, come with me.”
“Confusing, isn’t it?” the Calbeni said as they walked back through rows of winter lilies that poked their noses through the snow.
“What is?”
“Well, now you know how it feels – to care for someone who does not remember you.”
She emitted a brief chuckle, though the smile it brought faded rapidly. “That young man lied to me just now. I am sure of it. When he said he had not... done that with Blaze before, he was lying. And the way he reacted – no hesitation at all.” True, in the past Morghiad had hidden truths from her very well indeed, but this time she had seen something. It was as if he had been caught with his guard down, which would mean that he had made a mistake in revealing that particular skill.
The Hunter scoffed, “He is hiding something, alright. And what he did made my blood stop in my veins,
Tem. Would you like me to do a little of what I’m best at?”
“Not yet. Silar’s dogsbody already has team of his special guards trailing our former king everywhere he goes. Morghiad will not like being hounded any more than he is, and he doesn’t tend to react well when cornered...” Blazes, why was she talking this way about the man who had fathered her children? “Let’s just... observe for now.” Perhaps they were being overly suspicious. Morghiad always fought for good, and his desire to protect the innocent had never wavered. There was the small
exception of the Mirel confusion incident, of course, but clearly he had not been subjected to those sorts of horrors in this life. No, he would have a good reason for keeping whatever secrets he had, and somehow she would have to earn his trust in order to mine them.
Chapter 11
The horse trotted with light feet and too much excitement as it made its way through the old, familiar woodland of Cadra. After spending some considerable time trawling through some very poorly made maps, Silar had finally located the position of Pryandar. It was barely a dot on the most recent map he had, likely no larger than a hamlet of forester cottages. The roads here were overly wide things that had once served the great city, but had since fallen into some considerable disrepair. It was no great loss.
Something of the oppression of the former capital still seemed to linger in the air here, and it resonated with Silar’s mood. He couldn’t help but feel a hint of disappointment at Morghiad’s return. Yes, he had missed his closest friend and, yes, he was happy for Artemi’s sake. But it heralded the end of his time as her closest confident and stand-in father to her children. Tallyn Hunter had always been there of course, though he was never a threat in that sense. The Hunter was almost entirely bluff and bluster, with very little in the way of execution when it came to women. Silar had almost
grown to tolerate the Calbeni fool.
The thing that upset him, however - the bitterest water of the well - was the complete evaporation of a vision he’d had several years earlier. It had been a pathetic, weak and fuzzy thing, with such tiny possibilities of ever coming to pass that he had half thought it a dream rather than a vision. In it, he lived with Artemi, former queen of Calidell and his handsome wife of ten years. And also in the vision was their little girl, a blonde mischiefmaker with a smile that could break anyone’s heart. The foretelling had come to him whenever he had desired
to see it, but now it refused to appear, no matter how hard he tried to summon the images. He had imagined a name for his almost-daughter, and had carved it into a tree below Talia’s. Artemi could never know about the child that had only lived in his mind, especially now that there was nothing to be done about it.
At least he could finally do something more for Talia than carve her name in bark, and he was going to make very sure that her killers met their justice. Silar kicked his horse forward with a little more zeal, and together they cantered noisily over the old road.
The approach of night soon made the woodland ominously quiet, and made the narrow paths stripes of black amongst near-black. He knew he was close to Pryandar now, but no lamp or firelight seemed evident amongst the trees. Then his horse stumbled upon something, and Silar was flung headlong into the icy, prickly undergrowth. It took a moment for him to find his feet and regain his breath, and when he stood he felt a sharp pain tug at his left side. He’d fallen on something cold, hard and sharp. He went to attend to his horse before
dealing with his latest injury, however, and found the animal to be quite recovered from his fall. The chestnut gelding seemed to be almost grinning at his master’s misfortune.
“Yes, thanks very much, Cardan-saro.” The name still gave Silar no end of amusement; it meant smug hunter idiot in a little-known Tegran dialect. Really, he knew he ought to be above that level of humour at his age, but the private joke did give him such pleasure with every kick and rein. He turned to look down at his wound, which was now starting to sting. A long, thin object projected out from it.
The general gave it a tug, but it did not budge. He tried again. Still no movement. He cursed loudly, sending a flock of clumsy winged birds clattering into the night sky. Blast the damn thing! It would have to stay there until there was more light for him to see what he was doing.
He led his horse back to the area where they had tripped, and scanned the surface for signs of anything that could have caused it. His boot butted the edge of something, and he bent down to examine it by touch. It felt damp, rotten and very much like old wood. Another post jutted out of the
ground next to it, and another beyond that... and more besides. An old building perhaps? Bloody night! How dare it have the temerity to arrive so quickly!?
Silar decided to camp in that spot for the evening. It was cold, devoid of firewood and far too damp, but he could not risk losing whatever he had accidentally found. Not when every single clue and piece of discarded rubbish might help him in some way. The general hitched his horse, loosened the animal’s girths and curled up beneath a leafless tree. The dreams that his mind subsequently wandered into were peculiar, confusing visions. At the
end of them was that same, horrific one he often saw. He was walking forever in light: a cold, empty wood where there was no time and no escape. He thought he had a purpose – something to do with Talia – but he had been there for so long that he could no longer recall the details. He feared he would die in that place.
When Silar awoke he found that the ache of his injury had spread along the entirety of his body. Every sinew, muscle and bone felt stiffened from the thin sleep he had endured, and the world around him appeared drained of all colour. He flopped onto his knees,
and very nearly fell over in his attempts to stand. Another feeble tug at the rusted addition to his body produced no movement of the object, and he consigned himself to a new, uncomfortable and unwanted relationship.
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