The River King's Road

by Merciel, Liane

  Albric’s jaw clenched under his hood. “I don’t know that I can find him.”

  “But she can,” Leferic said.

  “She can,” Albric agreed, grudgingly.

  “Set up a meeting. Tomorrow night, after moonrise. We’ll have to renegotiate her services.”

  HIS FATHER’S CHAIR, LEFERIC WAS DISCOVERING, was remarkably uncomfortable.

  The throne of Bulls’ March was a great gnarled chair of red oak, stained dark and worn smooth by time. The troubadours claimed that the chair dated back to the day of Haelgric the Bold, first Lord of Bulls’ March, who’d won his lands and his title at the Second Battle of Seivern Ford. At that battle the King of Oakharn was driven back by Langmyrne armies and, trapped between his enemy and the river, would have died or been captured if not for the reinforcements that Haelgric led across the bridges of Tarne Crossing. Songs said that Haelgric’s last horse was shot beneath him as he fought to take the bridges, but he was so devoted to his duty that he seized a bull from a nearby farmer’s field and rode that beast to save his king. Haelgric’s stubbornness was greater than the bull’s: he forced it into the fray, winning the battle, his title and a legend.

  The horns that crowned the back of the chair were supposedly from that first bull. The truth, Leferic suspected, was a good deal less thrilling. Certainly the throne was.

  Curved horns marched down the sides of the chair’s back and jutted from the armrests, constantly snagging his sleeves. There was no cushion on the seat, so at the end of every audience Leferic was stiff-backed and sore-arsed. He was seriously considering the merits of stitching a hidden pillow into the backside of his ceremonial cloak. Carrying a pillow onto the chair would earn the ridicule of his liegemen, but the misery of going without was becoming too much to bear.

  He wondered how his father had been able to sit on the gods-cursed chair for so long without complaining. Lord Ossaric never looked anything but stoic in his great hall. Perhaps he had passed the secret to Galefrid, but Leferic was the younger son and no one had ever thought to give him anything.

  He was the ruler now, though. Comfortable or not, the throne of Bulls’ March was his to sit, for Lord Ossaric was indefinitely indisposed.

  The last time anyone other than his own privy servants had seen the old lord was at the funeral pyre for Galefrid and his family. Leferic had been shocked to see how badly his father had aged. In the two days between the messenger’s arrival and the hastily arranged sunset ceremony, Lord Ossaric seemed to have endured twenty hard years. He had gone from a gray but strong old bear to a whispering husk of a man with a spirit drowned in sorrow. His father had lacked the voice to lead the prayers or the strength to lift his candle, so in the end it had been Leferic who asked the Bright Lady to guide the dead to her ever-golden lands, and Leferic who touched his candle to the pyre, igniting the stack of oiled herbs and sweetwood beneath the empty coffins.

  That was three days ago. Since then Lord Ossaric had not emerged from his bedchamber, and the governance of Bulls’ March had fallen to his son.

  To everyone’s surprise but his own, Leferic had proved quite adept at it. He had a natural head for figures and a keen ear for detail, which helped him sift truth from exaggeration when sitting as judge. He had plenty of opportunity to practice dealing justice in those first few days; Swordsday always brought an influx of strangers with weapons in one hand and ale horns in the other, and with them came a predictable flood of disputes. Thefts, tavern brawls, dice cheats, a mercenary who knifed one of his father’s soldiers in a fight over a whore … he heard all of it, and did what he thought was fair.

  It did not, however, take the wisdom of Alyeta the Redeemer to pronounce guilt on a poacher caught bloody-handed as he cut arrows from his lord’s deer. Leferic had faced no real challenges, during his very short rule, until today.

  Today he looked down on a murderer.

  The man was stout and middle-aged, with a round ruddy face and a belly that strained at his belt. His wrists were not tied, and the castle guards did not force his forehead to the floor as they had the poacher’s before. He looked like someone’s stolid country uncle, not a killer of children.

  But that, they said, was what he had done.

  “Now comes before you Lusian the Fat of Littlewood, who stands accused of murder,” announced Heldric, gesith of Lord Ossaric’s liegemen and most experienced in the ways of court. In most cases Leferic had read subtle cues on the old warrior’s face and from him understood what was expected, but he could read nothing there now. Heldric’s expression betrayed nothing but grim determination, as if he faced an unknown enemy on a treacherous field and was waiting to see what his foe revealed first.

  Seeing no help there, Leferic straightened his back against the uncomfortable chair and recited his part in the ritual proceeding. “Who stands to accuse this man?”

  For a moment there was no answer. The gathered courtiers and armsmen exchanged puzzled or uneasy glances; no other criminal had been called without receiving an immediate accusation. Then the far doors groaned open. A gust of wind laid the torches low and sent the tattered battle-flags flapping on the bare stone walls. A man stepped in, and spoke.

  “I do,” he said gruffly. His voice was heavy with the guttural accents of the north. There was a murmuring among the assembled liegemen, who parted to let the speaker through.

  The man who strode forward was tall, easily a head taller than any other in attendance, and had the fair coloring of the White Seas. When he crossed from sunlight into the hall’s smoky shadows, the light did not seem to leave his hair. It stayed bright, almost white, in the gloom. A deep black mark—one of the northerners’ runes, Leferic guessed—was scarred on his right cheek. He wore a snowy bear’s hide as a cloak, its head intact in the barbarians’ fashion, and his glacial blue eyes were hard with contempt as he looked over the audience. Little of that contempt left him when his gaze fell onto Leferic. “I am Cadarn, called Death’s-Debtor. I accuse this man of murder, and I accuse your court of cowardice and deceit.”

  Leferic held up a hand to quell the outrage that ran through the hall. He raised his voice to be heard over the grumblings of his liegemen. Heldric was watching him now, but the gesith’s expression had not softened. If anything, the old warrior seemed even more intent as he watched the young man on the throne. “Tell me, Cadarn Death’s-Debtor, why you do so accuse.”

  “I was drinking in a tavern in Littlewood when this man came in. He had blood on his shirt and his axe-handle, and he was in a mood to brag. My friend Ulvrar asked what ferocious rabbits had he been fighting, and this man laughed”—Cadarn turned his head and spat into the rushes—“laughed that it had been no rabbits, but Langmyrne that he slew. We thought it strange that this woodchopper should have killed men and taken no wounds himself, so I asked what Langmyrne had he slain. He said that they were children and they were back in the woods.

  “Ulvrar and I, we followed this man’s tracks to where he had been. Two children we found dead in the woods. The older had not yet seen two hands of summer. The younger was a girl. This man, he killed a girl-child and a boy who was a hand or more from being a man, and both unarmed. They were picking mushrooms, these children. We found their basket, and the mushrooms all covered in blood.

  “When we came back to the village no one would help us take this man as a murderer. They tried to stop us. I had to kill one before the rest would let us take him, and for that killing I apologize to you Leferic-lord, but I will pay no bloodprice.”

  At this the blond giant paused, and waited for Leferic to acknowledge his refusal with a nod before he went on. “We brought this man here to face justice. If I had not had a knife, or if my friends were not with me, no one would have come. The villagers did not want us to take him, and your men of the court lied when they said what hour I should come to bear witness. They said to come at dark, and here it is not yet noon, and this man stands before you. For this I accuse your court of lies and cowardice, Leferic-lord.” />
  “Have you anything else to say?” Leferic asked. When Cadarn shook his head, Leferic turned to the round-faced man who stood unbowed before his chair. “You, Lusian of Littlewood. You stand before this court accused of murder. What have you to say?”

  The stout man blinked, seeming surprised to hear himself addressed. “Begging your pardon, lord?”

  “What have you to say?” Leferic repeated, steel in his tone. “Defend yourself if you will. Claim innocence if you can. Otherwise all the court need consider is the word, and the honor, of the man who has named you guilty of a crime.”

  “But I never did a crime.” Lusian sounded genuinely bewildered. He rubbed his hands together, more perplexed than nervous. “They killed your brother, milord. His wife, and his little boy. They owe us blood. This big fellow here, talking about how shamed I should be to kill a girl and a boy who ain’t had his first sweetdream—begging pardon for my coarseness, lord—well, their people killed a baby wasn’t out of his swaddling. Where’s their shame? Where’s someone hauling them off for justice? And anyhow they were on our side of the river, and like as not they were spying, so I don’t see how what I done was a crime at all.”

  “The court does not agree.” Leferic raised his voice to be heard over the second wave of muttering that swept his hall, this time with a darker current of discontent. “I loved my brother dearly. I mourn every hour for his death. But the murder of children will not soften that tragedy. Killing will not undo killing. We have no proof that my brother died at Langmyrne hands. We are mindful that they lost a village of their own. Until we have something more than suspicion—until we know that Langmyr spilled Galefrid’s blood—we must believe that their children are only children, and innocent of this sin. This court holds you guilty of murder, Lusian of Littlewood. Make your peace with the gods. In the morning you go to the block.”

  The noise in the great hall swelled to an uproar, and abruptly Leferic could stand it no longer. He stood and stalked off the dais, leaving the pennons on the walls fluttering in his wake. He had no clear idea where he was going, only that it should be somewhere quiet, away from his liegemen’s hatreds and Lusian’s sins and the weapons that hung over the great hall’s torches, marking decades of bloodshed with grim trophies. It was no surprise when his feet turned toward his tower library, following the same unerring instinct that brought pigeons to their dovecotes and silverbacks to their streams. Home.

  He hadn’t visited the library since learning of Galefrid’s death, and he returned to find the room cold and gray. A damp lingered in the air. Leferic struck a spark to the logs laid in the hearth, tending the tiny flame with twigs and dried thistledown until it was strong enough to take.

  Straightening, he looked over the shelves of books that lined his tower walls. They were his oldest friends. Apart from Albric, they were his only friends. Some were ancient relics, crumbling where they stood; they had survived generations of neglectful lords who let mice gnaw their bindings and dust dull their covers until Leferic could hardly read the titles they had once borne so proudly. Others were his personal acquisitions, imported at great expense from Calantyr and Mirhain and, in one or two prized instances, the scriptoriums of the Ardasi Empire.

  Most were bound in leather, dyed red or green and adorned with thin-beaten gold leaf. A few were made of stranger materials: thin-cut vehrwood, dark as bitter tea; pressed and woven leaves that still held a whisper of Nebaioth’s sunny fragrance; one covered in what the merchant had sworn was dragonhide, although Leferic suspected that the scales really came from one of the great golden crocodiles of the Bilewater.

  The books held the collected wisdom of the world. Musings from scholars whose bones were long dust, though their thoughts lived on in the pages; histories from lands no longer to be found on any map outside their own covers; secrets of great religions and smaller, ferociously secretive cults. Leferic owned nearly three hundred books. He knew, without false pride, that a better library was not to be found closer than Craghail. It was his life’s glory. Yet there was nothing in any of them to help him now.

  In all his library there was nothing to guide a usurper who’d murdered his brother and nephew for the throne. Not that it hadn’t been done—the histories were full of that bloody tale, retold across the ages in a dozen lands, a hundred castles—but it hadn’t been admitted. Not by anyone who kept his throne. Only the failures were recorded, properly condemned, and he had already committed those lessons to heart before taking the first step of his plan.

  At that moment he missed Albric sorely. The laconic swordmaster would have listened patiently to Leferic’s doubts and helped him reason his way through the tangle to the right solution. Without him, Leferic was lost.

  He did not want war. He knew that to a certainty.

  War was a sickness in the border holds. From time to time it flared and the fever took all Oakharn and Langmyr, bringing great armies to clash against the river and stain its waters red. But lords further from the Seivern’s banks had the luxury of being able to pull back when their armies were exhausted. They didn’t have to fight on their own fields; they didn’t have to watch their peasants’ homes burn in enemy raids or their granaries empty into the locust mouths of visiting hordes. They could go home, and when they did, they could leave the violence behind.

  They’d leave Bulls’ March with it, burned and trampled and festering with a thousand new wounds. They’d done it time and again, down a long road of years back to Uvarric’s Folly.

  That was the root of the hatred. It had flowered in a hundred different branches since then, each one bearing noxious fruit, but all the enmity between Oakharn and Langmyr came back to Uvarric’s Folly. Power, and the lust for power. The same greed Leferic had … but Uvarric had never committed so grievous a sin as fratricide for his, and had paid a far higher price than Leferic meant to suffer.

  Over a century ago, redspider plague swept through the Sunfallen Kingdoms, decimating its people. Noble and peasant alike fell to the disease, their deaths written in broken veins webbed red across their skin. Some said it was a scourge of the gods, sent down to punish sinners, but few really believed that. Redspider killed without distinction between young and old, innocent and murderer.

  It had no respect for high birth, either. In a single season, the plague wiped out one of the largest and richest noble families in Langmyr. House Tallaine was second only to the High King’s line for wealth and power; the Tallaine had married into the palace so many times that their own blood was half-royal. Yet the disease carried them away just the same. Not a single heir was spared.

  Two cousins were left with claims on Stonegate Castle, the ancestral home of the Tallaine. One, a ward of the High King in Craghail, was scarcely more than a child. The other was Uvarric Penarring, a powerful Oakharne lord whose claim came through his Langmyrne wife, a daughter of the Tallaine cadet line. Though two hundred leagues and the Seivern River stood between Uvarric and his wife’s inheritance, he was determined to have what he considered rightfully his.

  Uvarric’s claim was much the stronger of the two, not only by law but by force. The Oakharne lord was a close friend of his king’s, was rich in steel and horses, and commanded a considerable army. The rival claimant to the Tallaine lands was a child with no knights of his own. The plague had hit Langmyr harder than Oakharn, too, leaving that kingdom as a whole weaker. It was clear to everyone which way the matter had to be settled, and the High King of Langmyr saw that plainly. He accepted Uvarric’s claim. But not without conditions.

  The people of Langmyr, the High King explained, did not want a foreigner as their lord. They knew and loved his wife well, but they did not know this Oakharne lord. If Uvarric was to rule in Stonegate, he would have to live there with his family and his retinue. Once he agreed to that, and swore oaths of fealty to Craghail, the keys to the castle would be his.

  Uvarric agreed. He swore the oaths, kissed the High King’s sword, and took up residence in his new castle. A few hundred armsme
n came with him, but most of his knights and lords stayed in their own lands. Some of Uvarric’s liegemen wedded Langmyrne wives from lesser families to seal their houses, and some took Langmyrne children as hostage wards, but after their lord was properly ensconced in Stonegate, they went home. Uvarric’s two eldest sons went with them, taking their father’s old lands to rule.

  And when Uvarric was alone in his castle, and felt safe enough to drop his guard, the Langmyrne killed him as he slept. They speared his younger children to their beds and hacked his grandchildren to pieces so cruelly that the nursery walls ran red. Even the children’s lapdogs died.

  Lady Penarring survived, only to be given “refuge” in a lonely tower of the High King’s castle where she could look down on the world but never touch it, nor be touched by it, again. Within a few years, grief and solitude did for her what the knives had for her husband, and she joined him on the pyres.

  No one knew exactly who committed the murders. Most rumors put the blame on Lord Asoril Veltaine, who had close ties to the rival child-heir, but there was never any proof. What was swiftly proven, and what set the two kingdoms afire, was that the killers had the support of the Langmyrne throne.

  The High King wasted scarcely a day before installing the child claimant on Stonegate’s throne and investing him with the Tallaine lands, with Lord Veltaine as guardian during his minority. Uvarric’s sons swore vengeance, most of the Langmyrne hostages died terribly, and the Oakharne gathered their swords to avenge the treachery in Stonegate. On the other side of the Seivern, the Langmyrne waited to meet them.

  That first war raged for a decade. The Oakharne swiftly seized Seivern Ford and both sides of Tarne Crossing, then poured their armies through those two points to cut a bloody swath across Langmyr. They took a dozen castles and burned a hundred towns, and in every battle the two sides traded atrocities, each uglier than the last.