by Ronie Kendig
Haegan’s heart lurched. Even as he brought his horse around, his father spread wide his arms. Free. And leapt.
“No!” Haegan jolted upright, gulping frantic breaths. His heart faltered as he skated a look around. The dark tapestries. Musty, pervasive smell. Damp room. Where am I?
Ironhall.
Right. He’d bedded down shortly after the full rise of the twin moons in a room far removed from his father’s. Thanks to his nightmares, Haegan was too familiar with his father’s haunting screams, so he did not want the real ones crawling through walls.
He heard hurried steps in the hall.
Haegan glanced at the dance of torchlight on the floor, approaching his chamber. Not just one or two come to ascertain his well-being. There were a lot of guards. Too many for this late hour. He tossed back the coverlet and slid from the bed. Tunic sticking to his chest from the perspiration of the dream, he went to the door. Tugged it open.
Guards Faris and Gannel snapped to attention. “Sire.”
Haegan drew open the door farther.
Four Pathfinders sprinted down the main hall, giving no heed or attention to his presence.
He frowned. “What is the roar over?”
Gannel straightened. “The Fire King, sire. He’s missing from his room.”
Alarm lanced through Haegan. “Why has nobody wakened me?”
“The Steward—”
Haegan ran after the Pathfinders, ignoring his guard’s shouts as he raced up a spiraling staircase. He hurried, his heart anxious and thoughts burdened by the dream. Going up . . .
Nay, nay. It could not be.
Hand tracing the stones, he faltered when the stones gave way to a gaping hole. He jerked back. The missing wall tore at his thoughts—what if his father . . .
Haegan peered out and saw naught but scant torchlight. Immediately below was pitch dark.
“Here!”
“By all the Flames!”
“Call the accelerants!”
At the shouts from above, Haegan threw himself up the last dozen steps and broke out onto a flat, open terrace. Darkness hung its heavy blanket over the still-warm stone and land below.
Pathfinders twitched, surprised at his presence. “Prince Haegan—”
He gained a step. “My father—where?”
One pointed. And only then did he see his dream come to life. His father stood on a ledge of the turret.
Haegan flashed out both hands, encircling his father with a halo. While he could exert enough to keep his father in place, he found it next to impossible to draw him back to safe ground. Why? Was he too weak? Too inexperienced?
“Something . . .” He gritted his teeth, unwilling to lose his father due to lack of focus or training. Never again would he abandon his father, leave him, as he had at Fieri Keep.
Not for the first time, he wished for Drracien. That he had his friend here. “I need help,” Haegan cried out. “Get Gwogh.”
“My prince!” A guard lurched forward.
Haegan wavered as his father took a step and now stood suspended over nothing but wakes of heat. Arms trembling, Haegan clawed his fingers into the wielding. Holding with one hand. Drawing back with another. But it was like trying to pry ironstone from its bed with naught but fingernails. “I. Need. Help!”
“They’re coming,” shouted someone from behind.
“Father,” Haegan growled, hoping to call to what was left of the man who raised him, the remnant of the Fire King. “Father, come in out of the cold.” It was a bald-faced lie. A vain, raw hope that his father’s mind would accept what was spoken.
Unbelievably, blue eyes, pale and bright, met his. “Haegan?” A flicker of confused hope. “Son?”
Haegan’s heart beat faster. “Aye,” he managed around a tight focus and quavering muscles. “Mother asks—” His throat caught but he cleared it. “She asks for you.”
His father turned toward him, still cocooned in the halo.
One wrong thought, one wrong twitch, and his father would plummet.
Whispers of dread skated across the night as Pathfinders watched helplessly. In his periphery, Haegan noted Laerian slipping along the wall, crouched and hidden in shadows as he hurried to reach his king. From the other side, Graem did the same.
“Adrroania?” The tenderness with which his father spoke her name, gutted Haegan—that and the expression of joy, of hope that lit his eyes, bringing a familiarity and strength that brightened his bearded face, made the effort more painful. But then a hitch of doubt furrowed the blond brow. “She’s . . . gone,” he whispered, his voice hollow. “Dead. She’s dead!”
O Abiassa, preserve me and my father!
Panic thrummed. “Nay,” Haegan lied. “She waits in your chambers.”
The Fire King stood, confusion tumbling through him like the crashing of waves. “And you . . .”
Oh no. Haegan knew. Knew his father’s moment of clarity would destroy this effort.
“. . . you’re crippled.”
“Father,” Haegan huffed around the wielding, “please come down.”
“Down?”
Haegan cursed his mistake. Saw the collapse of the ruse. “Come inside, Father.” He felt as much as saw the lessening of the halo, the static crackling. His father wobbling. He growled, straining to hold it in place.
His father canted.
Rumbles of fear ripped through the Pathfinders. Graem and Laerian were nearly there, working hard not to draw the Fire King’s attention. But ’twould not be soon enough.
The wielding waned. Strength faltered. “Augh!”
A white-hot blanket wrapped him, then extended to his father. Drew the king forward, as if someone had shoved him. Haegan’s halo collapsed.
His father dropped—onto the wide wall—and tumbled onto the terrace, his feet unsteady.
Graem shot up and caught him. His task made easier when Laerian ensnared the king’s legs and hauled him back to safety.
Seeing their arms around his father, Haegan went to a knee, heaving breaths. Even his knees did not want to hold him.
Pao’chk rushed forward and slid a needle into his father’s arm, delivering what Haegan hoped was a powerful sedative. Pathfinders converged. Secured the railing Fire King and herded him below. As the sedative took hold, his father’s shouts and complaints died before they were even out of sight.
With a howl of rage and fury, Haegan stalked up to the wall and shoved all his anger and frustration outward. A blinding white blanket drifted across the night, the wake glittering and crackling beneath the light of the twin moons. The last of his strength gone, Haegan collapsed against the wall his father had just walked. In the distance came a yelp, startling Haegan.
“Did you know?”
Haegan turned to Gwogh, both surprised and angered to see him there. “Where were you! He nearly died.”
“But he did not.”
Haegan palmed the cool stones and stared down. Naught but jagged rocks. His stomach churned. ’Twould have been certain death.
“You did well.”
He spun. “Well? I couldn’t even pull him back. He almost fell to his death!”
“Again, he did not,” Gwogh said, a kindly smile tugging at his bearded face. “And you saved him.”
“No, I nearly killed him. I couldn’t hold the halo!”
“Because there was no anger.”
“What?”
“Halos are most effective when the one held is embroiled in anger. Your father had no anger because he was not—”
“In his right mind?”
Thick brows bunched. “—standing on the wall in his thoughts. He was elsewhere.” Gwogh inclined his head. “There is no need to challenge me, Haegan.”
“Isn’t there?”
“We have enemies aplenty without creating our own.”
“You poisoned me.”
Gwogh stared into night. “Can you feel it, Haegan?”
Frustrated, annoyed, exhausted, Haegan shoved his hands through his
hair. But there was no hair. Only stubbly scalp. And again, it somehow freed him. Helped him loose the anger.
“Did you hear the scream in the distance?”
Haegan turned a wary look to his old tutor.
“You threw out the wake.”
Guilt chugged through his veins as he scanned the trees just beyond the reach of the keep. “I was angry, scared.”
“Righteous anger that found an unrighteous.”
Haegan jerked his gaze there, remembering the scream he’d heard. “What are you saying?”
“You could not bring your father from the ledge because one out there”—he pointed to the trees—“wielded against you, inflamed your father’s thoughts again, convincing him he was in no danger. Then when you stepped in, the one out there fought your attempt to save the king.”
Haegan’s stomach clenched. Only then did he notice the Tahscan standing by the door. Had he detected the inflaming? “Why did you not summon me?”
Vaqar cocked his head. “Your guards refused me entrance. So I searched for the steward, but could not find him.”
“I will speak with them—you are to have unfettered access to me.”
The Tahscan nodded.
“I fear it is too dangerous and open here,” Gwogh said, taking in the fields and woods.
“We should go inside,” Haegan agreed, but the flickering campfires caught his eye. The people are tired. I am tired. “How much longer until it is over?”
“I fear that the time is nigh upon us, Fierian.”
“There is a prophecy—” a female voice began.
Gwogh snapped up a hand, silencing the woman who had come up behind him.
Haegan glanced to Kedulcya, then to his former tutor. “I know that look,” he said. “What knowledge do you keep from me this time?”
Gwogh glowered at the councilwoman. “There is word about this place, what some”—his gaze hit Kedulcya—“call a curse. Ironhall is said to be a devourer of kings and rulers.”
More prophecy. More doom. Could there not be a good word, a blessing rather than a curse? Palms again on the stones, he stared up at the twin moons. “Then it is all the better that I stay, because I am no king or ruler. Only a destroyer.”
36
Straddling the middle of a large, empty receiving hall on the second level of the fortress, a dual-sided fireplace seemed to fight the vines digging through its mortar. Vaqar traced the vine to a crack in the outer wall, where the plant had forced its way between the stones. Much as they had done these last weeks, marching northward. The plant, it turned out, was hennidrile, a heavily fragrant flowering vine. His people had made quick work of cutting the vine and draping it over the doorways to shield them from the scents plaguing this ancient place.
Most of his people were stretched on pallets of blankets to catch the warmth. Faces uncovered, they enjoyed a reprieve, thanks to the hennidrile.
Perched in a window of the third-level balcony overlooking the hall, Vaqar noted that while Jadrile snored, his sister slipped out. Haandra was a fine fighter, but she had taken to the sword far too young. Why had she, alone of her warrior sisters, been cursed with the reek?
With a sigh, he turned back to the land, peering down on a brown swath. It must have at one time been a creek or small river that had wound through fields and trees.
A raucous noise below drew his gaze to a crowd in the bailey arguing with some of Grinda’s men. The encounter grew lively, shouts and fists raised. The crowd then shifted, quieting, and broke apart as someone approached.
The steward joined them, resting a hand on the shoulder of the nearest angry local and nodded to the soldiers. Then he lifted a child into his arms.
A loud bark snatched his attention. ’Twas only laughter from his men.
In the bailey, the steward set down the child, so he could clasp arms with the man, then both went their way. Whatever the confrontation had been about, the steward had smoothed it. How blessed to be able to walk and enjoy the crowds, the people. Vaqar had been that man in Tahsca, before . . .
Now, he was homeless, a man who could no more endure the stench of crowds and their agitating emotions than a dog could endure being submerged in an ocean.
Why? Why had he been forced onto this path? Why had any of them? To serve a prince who was prone to allowing the enemy in his head? To watch a Northlands prince win the hearts of the people, priming them for a very effective coup of the lower kingdoms? Was that his intent? To steal the Nine?
With a grunt, Vaqar hopped down, since it did no good to sit and bemoan what he could not change, or see uprisings where none existed. Would he be useful or would he be dead? Because if he did not harness what had been forced upon him, then he would surely die. If not from the reek, then from the Dark One.
Remember what you lost.
Hustling down the grand staircase, he chose to make himself useful with one who already sought his help. He strode across the marble floor, keeping his steps quiet but not stealthy. When he slipped through the double doors, he was blasted with an unexpected scent. Almost immediately, shadows shifted. Quiet words carried.
Vaqar hesitated, drew back, remembering the last time he’d smelled that scent it had been with the steward and the assassin. But she was gone. So, who . . . ?
A giggle sailed out.
Surprise struck him to find Haandra in the shadows. With whom?
Boots scritched as the man adjusted his stance. Leaned in, the barest light tracing their faces as he bent to kiss Haandra. It was the young Pathfinder—Tokar, they called him. Indignation coiled through Vaqar. His hand went to his hilt.
But Haandra pulled away, as she should. ’Twas not the Tahscan way to so easily surrender modesty. The boy should be glad she saved him a painful lesson, for Vaqar would have surely delivered it had she not distanced herself.
Should he leave them, or make his presence known? Would Tokar press his desire on her? Surely naught more than a kiss would happen here in the open hall. And there had been much grief in their paths of late. Perhaps a kiss was not so egregious.
Air stirred behind him.
Vaqar tensed.
“What are you—” Jadrile sucked in a breath, too quickly sighting his sister and the Pathfinder. “Why I—”
“Leave them,” Vaqar hissed.
“How can you say that?”
“We are too short on pleasures and laughter.”
“But he’s tasting her virtue.”
“He’s testing his curiosity. And she hers. Leave them.” Vaqar patted his shoulder. “But later, feel free to deliver him a warning.”
A gleam filled Jadrile’s eyes. “With pleasure.”
Vaqar started in the other direction, hearing the thump of doors. The severing of the attraction scent, and a quick gasp. Hasty footsteps quickly followed, the two parting ways it seemed. Probably best. Too long in shadows and they could become them.
He gained the main staircase, nodding to the Pathfinders who stood guard. As he turned for the third flight, he heard steps ahead and glanced up.
“Perfect.” The steward stopped his descent. “The Fierian would speak with ye.”
“Is something amiss?”
“Besides the Dark One scorching the Nine, his father nearly killing himself, and his blue wake of death?”
“There is that.”
Tili chuckled as they hit the landing, but then faced him. “Do not mistake his youth and inexperience for lack of ability or desire.”
“I would make no such mistake. He proved quite capable when he delivered us of the Infantessa, and for that, I owe him a life debt.”
Tili nodded, eying him.
The inspection concerned him, so Vaqar braced before he allowed the scents to flood his senses. He took them in. Sorted them. Though he wasn’t sure what to expect from the steward, he was surprised at what he detected: concern and the most peculiar—jealousy.
“This way,” Tili said, motioning toward the double doors carved with the emblem of the ho
use that had dwelt here. “He and the Council are waiting.”
Vaqar slowed. “Council?”
Tili smirked. “Nervous?”
Holding the steward’s gaze, Vaqar lifted his cloth and secured it to his left ear, grateful he’d washed and re-oiled it with hennidrile. “I have endured too many councils in the Tahscan court.” Endured their logical but impractical decisions. Until Anithraenia exiled and murdered their families.
Doors clapped open beneath the guidance of sentries. A long table spread before him, where a half-dozen robed accelerants occupied the seats, along with a handful of men in suits that mirrored their wealth—noblemen.
“Vaqar,” Prince Haegan greeted him with a smile that bespoke his relief. Candelabras threw light over the plain circlet sitting on his shaved head as he waved Vaqar to the table. ’Twas an odd sight to see a prince bald, but it fit. Fit who he had become. “Please, join me.”
Clenching his teeth did not alleviate the strain his body took to protect his senses from the reek. Stiffly, he planted himself in the chair.
“Gwogh is explaining why we should advance north before our haggard little contingent encounters Poired again,” Haegan said, nodding to the gray-haired man at the other end. “And Agremar has been sent on behalf of the Duke of Molian.”
Vaqar inclined his head to the copper-skinned man.
“But strategically,” Tili put in, joining the table, “Ironhall is the best position from which to defend. If we advance into Vid, we not only limit our options, we endanger the people.”
“And then,” Haegan continued, “you have Councilor Griese there, who would petition us to seek the safety of Vid’s citadel.”
Surprised, Vaqar noted the amusement coating Haegan.
A nobleman in a blue jerkin lifted his chin. “Next to Hetaera, Vid’s citadel is the largest and most advanced—”
“Did it not take significant damage when Poired attacked eighteen months ago?” Major Laerian asked—no, challenged.
“It has been repaired.” Griese sighed. “In earnest, Prince Haegan, you have no legitimate cause to remain here in the open. The Council has decided it is best to relocate you and the Fire King there where we can protect you.”