The River King's Road

by Merciel, Liane

  Unlike the castles of Calantyr or Mirhain, which sometimes let their gates rust open, Thistlestone was immaculate. Not a speck of corrosion softened the spikes of its killing gates. Bitharn shivered as she walked beneath them, and afterward kept her eyes straight ahead.

  Past a second nail-studded door, the halls widened and grew smoother. Iron sconces lined the walls; above them, pillars of soot striped the walls. Tiny windows offered glimpses of blue twilight between the torches’ smoky flames.

  The girl turned down one last corridor, knocked on a door, and announced: “Sir Kelland and Bitharn of Cailan, my lord.”

  “Marvelous. Please, come in,” said a voice from inside.

  The girl opened the door, curtsied again, and closed it behind them as the two Celestians entered.

  They found themselves in a solar. Tapestries hung on the walls, depicting scenes of carnage from some battle Bitharn did not know. The bloody images were jarring against the rest of the room, which showed a gentler, more cultivated touch. Glassed windows overlooked the castle’s inner courtyard. Dwarf lemon trees and glossy-leaved peppers grew in ceramic pots, filling the air with subtle fragrance and speaking of a southern touch. Those plants were not native to Langmyr, and likely couldn’t survive its winters. They had to have been imported from the south, and Bitharn thought it spoke well of Lord Inguilar that he was willing to bear the cost of bringing plants from Ardashir to comfort his wife with the scents of her homeland. She wouldn’t have expected a lord living in this castle to be so indulgent.

  A table was set with tea, fruit, bread and cheese near the center of the room. No wine or meat, Bitharn noted approvingly; their hosts knew, and respected, that such things were forbidden to the Blessed.

  Lady Isavela Inguilar and an older man, richly dressed in fine green wool and gray foxfur, sat near the table. The man would be Lord Eduin, she supposed; no one else was likely to be wearing a gold circlet in his castle. He was thin and smooth-faced, carrying himself with a reserved courtesy only partly undercut by the sharpness of his gray-green eyes. There were no servants in the room.

  “Be welcome,” the Lady said, standing and lifting her hands to her guests. “I know you must be hungry.”

  “Thank you,” Kelland said. The Celestians filled their plates and took the empty chairs, and for a while they talked of pleasant and inconsequential things. The Lord and Lady of Thistlestone were gracious hosts, and endlessly interested in the details of the Burnt Knight’s past travels. To Bitharn’s surprise, they seemed as curious about her exploits as his, and their interest was never merely polite. They genuinely wanted to know about everything, and though Bitharn tried to avoid subjects that touched too close to her temple’s interests, she was uneasily certain that she gave away more than she meant to.

  Finally, when the food was eaten and the conversation at a lull, Lord Eduin cleared his throat. “We did not invite you purely out of politeness,” he said, exchanging a glance with his wife. “In fact, I’m about to be very rude. We have a favor to ask of you.”

  “We need your help.” Lady Isavela clasped her jeweled hands in her lap. “This morning we had a bird from the border. One of our villages, Willowfield, has been … extinguished.”

  “Extinguished?” Kelland leaned forward.

  “The village itself stands, if our information is accurate,” Lord Eduin said. “But every man, woman and child who lived there is a corpse. The people of Willowfield were not the only ones to die. Sir Galefrid of Bulls’ March—Lord Ossaric’s heir—and his entire retinue died with them.”

  “How?” Bitharn asked.

  “Some by arrows, but most by sorcery. The same sorcery that killed hundreds at Thelyand Ford and holds King Merovas in terror still.”

  “Thorns.” The word escaped as a hiss through Kelland’s teeth. Bitharn tensed, glancing at him uneasily, but the knight was focused on Lady Isavela’s story and did not notice her look. Brooding, Bitharn sipped her tea.

  She didn’t know much about the Thorns. No one did. They were blessed by Kliasta, the Pale Maiden, as the Sun Knights and Illuminers were blessed by Celestia, and they were an ancient enemy of the faith. But the details of their beliefs, and the magics at their command, had long ago fallen from history into myth. Their religion had been extirpated in the west nearly a thousand years before, and had only recently returned under the protection of Ang’arta’s armies. The new Lord Commander of Ang’arta, the one called the Golden Scourge, had brought the Pale Maiden’s faith back with his wife from the east. Thelyand Ford was the first time in centuries that anyone in this part of the world had seen the Thorns unleashed, and it had been a slaughter.

  That was virtually everything Bitharn knew about them, but it was enough. If there was a Thornlord in Langmyr, then Kelland was likely the only person within a hundred leagues who could hope to match him. Steel alone was a poor answer to magic, and there were no other Knights of the Sun closer than Thelyand.

  But why would there be a Thorn in Langmyr?

  Lady Isavela inclined her head to Kelland. “You begin to see our dilemma, and our danger. Sir Galefrid and his retinue were guests on our land. We had hoped, by inviting him, to build a friendship between our lords and thereby strengthen the peace between Oakharn and Langmyr. We believed he shared our goals. But now he is dead, and dead by bloodmagic worked on Langmyrne soil. His wife and infant son are dead with him. Once word escapes, there will be war, and all the little seeds we worked so long to nurture will go up in flame.” She gestured to the tapestries hanging on the walls. “Our world will go back to this.”

  “What would you have us do?”

  “Investigate,” the Lady answered. “Who committed the massacre in Willowfield? Why? The Thorns are the likeliest culprits, I agree, but … why would they bother? We are too far from their territory to be of interest, and Willowfield had no strategic importance. Why would Ang’arta send one of its Thornlords here?”

  “If it was a Thornlord,” Lord Eduin cautioned her. “There are other dark powers in the world. It might have been one of Anvhad’s Blessed, or one of Maol’s trying to sow chaos. They might have spells similar to the Thorns’. Who can say? The immediate danger, regardless of who actually committed the murders, is that Lord Ossaric will seek vengeance before proof. He loved his son dearly, and the babe was his only grandchild.”

  The white shells in Kelland’s hair clicked softly as he nodded. He looked pensive. “Why us? Because of who we are, or what we are?”

  “Both,” Lord Eduin said frankly. “None of our men would be believed. Lord Ossaric would assume they were lying to hide our guilt. He knows that game well; he played it with the Slaver Knight. We need someone whose honesty and neutrality are above dispute. Celestia’s Blessed are famously impartial, and the Burnt Knight is already half a legend in Langmyr. I won’t deny we’re trying to make use of that. But we also want you. You’re clear-sighted, careful, sensible. Your account of your travels showed that—as did your companion’s observations on the archery field.”

  Bitharn squinted at him. “Anslak Bluefire.”

  “Was one of my men, yes,” Lord Eduin admitted. “Sir Taledain is the best archer in Thistlestone. I wanted to see if you were as good as the stories said. He sacrificed his beard to the cause, and used a gaudy cloak and smokepowder arrows to distract anyone who might have known him. He managed to prove that your eyes are very sharp indeed.”

  “Thank you,” Bitharn said, at once flattered and vaguely unsettled. “But why?”

  “For the same reason I watched you in the tavern,” Lady Isavela replied. “The same reason we had another trusted servant shadow Kelland as he tended to sick villagers in the square. We wanted to learn who you were. We’ve learned to be cautious in placing our trust, especially in matters this delicate.”

  “Plan for the best, prepare for the worst,” Bitharn murmured, thinking of Thistlestone’s brutal, layered defenses.

  “Precisely,” Lady Isavela said. “Will you help us?”

&n
bsp; Kelland hesitated. He glanced at Bitharn, who nodded, and then back to the two nobles. “I am truthbound,” he told them. “Whatever I find—whoever it incriminates—must become known, if I do this.”

  “We expect no less,” Lord Eduin said.

  Kelland bowed his head. “Then our answer is yes.”

  4

  They called him Leferic the Mouse. Leferic Weakshanks, Leferic Booklouse. The kindest of their names for him, the one he had taken as his own, was Leferic the Scholar.

  It was not, among the war-loving Oakharne, a compliment.

  Leferic thought about that as he leaned out the narrow window of his turret and watched the castle guards carry his brother’s coffin across the courtyard to the shrine in the south tower. The work took fewer men than he’d expected: two for his brother’s coffin, two for his wife’s, and only one for the small, ornate casket that represented his little nephew Wistan.

  Of course, there were no bodies inside. That did tend to lighten the load.

  Leferic expected that, eventually, a messenger would arrive with the cleaned bones of his kin. Lord Eduin Inguilar was not said to be a complete barbarian, and the dead were highborn, so in a month or two some passing merchant or dignitary heading south to Seawatch or east to Calantyr would likely be given the grisly gift to deposit in Bulls’ March on the way. It would not be one of Lord Inguilar’s own men who brought Galefrid’s bones home, unless Eduin did not intend to get the man back.

  In the meantime there were ceremonies to be observed and platitudes to be mouthed, and since Leferic’s lord father had taken to his bed immediately after hearing of his elder son’s death, that burden now fell to him. Leferic the Mouse.

  He knew his father’s men did not love him. They had much preferred his elder brother, who could ride with the ease of a centaur and best any two of them in a fight. Galefrid’s choice of a pious wife out of Seawatch had seemed a strange one to them—marriages here, as elsewhere in Oakharn, were about alliances between houses, not hearts—but she was rich and pretty and, most importantly, had borne him a strong son within a year of the wedding, so they were prepared to accept Galefrid’s foreign wife for his sake.

  That Galefrid was a free-spending fool who threw money away like grain to chickens did not seem to trouble the liegemen of Bulls’ March. That he had no skill in diplomacy and no grasp of war was likewise of little concern. It was enough that Galefrid could drink with them all night in the great hall and then go hunting in the morning and still hit his mark; in the minds of their men, no more was required of a lord.

  Leferic disagreed. That was why he’d had his brother killed.

  He wondered, as he watched the coffins disappear into the dark chapel door, whether he should feel guilt over that. There was a little, for the wife and child, but even that was distant, as if he were expressing regret over the death of a stranger in a far-off land. Which was precisely what they were, now that he thought on it: people he barely knew who had died in another country. Not gasping before him, not at his own hand. He had given the order and that had been the end of it.

  For his brother he felt nothing. Perhaps he was numb because of the newness of the tidings. Or perhaps there was simply nothing to feel.

  An interesting puzzle. He would think on it later.

  Leferic drew up his fur-lined mantle to ward off the late autumn chill and went down the stairs to the chapel, following the coffins’ path. The charcoal and ash of mourning colors made him look sallow, but then he always looked that way.

  Guards and servants averted their faces as he went by. Leferic was mildly surprised to note that many of them had reddened eyes and wet noses. Had they loved his brother that much? Or were they simply afraid, now that the succession of a border hold had fallen to a younger son who loved books more than horses?

  Another puzzle. An easier solution to this one, though.

  He ducked his head as he entered the shrine and paused to let his eyes adjust to its gloom. Candles were an expensive indulgence, and the chapel’s would not be lit until it was time to send the dead to Celestia’s ever-golden lands. In the meantime, the only light that entered the shrine was the cloudy gray sunshine that filtered through the chapel’s stained-glass sunbursts.

  The shrine was cold, dim, and deserted. Men did not like to be alone with the dead, even when the dead were present only in effigy.

  Leferic bowed over his brother’s coffin, pretending to pray over the empty wood. He stayed there until his knees began to ache and his fingers had gone stiff with cold inside their fine kidskin gloves. The light through the windows darkened and brightened as clouds passed over the sun.

  Just as he was beginning to give up hope that the meeting would be kept, a large man muffled in a gray mourning robe shuffled over to the coffin beside him. The robed man was a few inches shorter than Leferic, who was unusually tall for the Oakharne, but his shoulders were a full two handspans wider and his arms were thick as young trees. A scabbard clanked against a mailed thigh beneath the gray wool of his robe.

  By bowing his head still lower and casting his eyes to the side, Leferic could get a glimpse into the hood of the man beside him. He saw a long grizzled jaw marred by a scar that cut a second pale cleft in his chin, and caught a gleam of amusement in a deep-set gray eye. He knew that scar, and he knew that look.

  Albric Urdaring, once the swordmaster of Bulls’ March, was Leferic’s one real friend in the world. Neither his father nor his elder brother had much time to spare for him, so when Leferic was a boy he had been given over to Albric’s care to learn reading and swordcraft. Leferic had little talent in the practice yard, and Albric had still less in the library, but they’d muddled through. It was Albric who’d helped him master his first warhorse, who had taken him hawking and given the boy his own pheasants so that Leferic would not be shamed by returning empty-handed from the hunt. Over the years each had learned the measure of the other, and there was no man in Oakharn that Leferic trusted more.

  There was an irony in that, he knew. Albric was not from Bulls’ March, and some of his father’s liegemen distrusted him because of it. Albric had been captain of the honor guard that accompanied the Lady Indoiya, Leferic’s late mother, when she came to Bulls’ March to marry Lord Ossaric. To honor her arrival, Lord Ossaric appointed her captain as swordmaster, but after Lady Indoiya’s death Albric was demoted to a mere household knight and the post was given back to a native-born Bulls’ March man. Leferic had been a child then, not yet ten, but the injustice of it still rankled him. If it galled Albric, however, he could not tell. The knight never mentioned it. All his life Albric had served loyally, uncomplaining; he accepted reward or demotion with equal calm, striving simply to honor his lords’ trust.

  It was Albric whom he had sent to ensure his brother’s death.

  “Dedicated of you to pray over an empty casket,” the hooded man said.

  “I pray for success in all my endeavors,” Leferic replied.

  “You should.”

  “Why is that?” Leferic asked, keeping his tone light and his voice hushed even as a prickle of apprehension ran down his spine. It was over Albric’s objections that he had hired a Thornlady to aid the assassinations. Though Albric had been adamantly against involving one of the Maimed Witches of Ang’arta, Leferic believed magic was necessary to seal their success, and had quietly made the arrangements. Since then he’d often wondered if he would have been wiser to heed the swordmaster. “Did she—”

  Albric shook his hooded head curtly. “She has been . . . efficient. If bloody-minded. But the work may not be done.”

  “How?”

  Albric made the sign of the sun, superstitiously: thumbs and forefingers circled opposite one another, fingers fanned out as rays. He lowered his voice until Leferic, standing a scant two steps away, could barely make out the words. “Some lived.”

  The prickle of anxiety that Leferic felt grew into a cold wave of fear. For an instant he felt that the floor had dropped away under his feet
. The ghostly taste of metal tingled on his tongue. He put out a hand to steady himself against his brother’s coffin, and was reassured by its solidity. “Who?”

  “Some of the villagers. A runaway horse crashed into the gate, and some fled through the gap it made. One rider. He might have been one of Gal—one of the targeted men. Hard to say. I couldn’t tell who all the dead were, not after she was done, so I can’t say for a certainty who’s missing. But I thought I knew the face as he went by.” Albric paused. It was a tiny hesitation, hardly long enough to blink, but from him that heartbeat of silence spoke volumes. “And the child.”

  Leferic closed his eyes. His hand tightened on the coffin’s lid, curling halfway into a fist and flattening out as if he could draw strength from the wood. “Where is he now?”

  “We aren’t sure. We ran down most of the villagers who escaped. The child was not with them.”

  “He must be found.” He had to be. Had to be. Leferic was not unduly worried about the other survivors; none of the killers, save Albric, could easily be traced back to him, and Albric had been masked behind a full helm that day. No one who had seen the massacre and survived would be able to put the deaths on him.

  But if Wistan lived …

  The troubadours’ songs were filled with orphaned princes who grew up in secret and returned to reclaim their birthrights from tyranny. The histories were littered with the bloody wreckage of those who had tried it in fact.

  If Wistan lived, he became a direct threat to Leferic’s rule, even if no one ever learned the truth of his parents’ death. The child would be an obstacle to the succession, a rallying point for his brother’s loyalists, even a cause for civil war. Kingdoms had shattered over less. His father’s liegemen would accept Leferic as their rightful lord, if no other heir came forward, but he had no illusions about his popularity or how long their loyalty would last if an alternative appeared.