Unfettered III

by Shawn Speakman (ed)

  A warrior stood at the doorway, tall and wide, thick with muscle and no visible neck that Rhin could see. His eyes fixed on Rhin.

  “Dow,” Rhin acknowledged her father’s first-sword, greatest warrior in the realm of Cambren. With a grunt and a nod of his head, he opened the door for her but stepped in front of Fallon. Rhin waved a hand at her shieldman, leaving her red-haired warrior in the corridor with the mountain that was Dow.

  I will tell Father of my news, of Gair’s revelations.

  She felt a taste of the satisfaction she knew his pride would give her, discovering she had extracted such secrets from a prisoner who had spent five years in Cambros’s gaol, and one who had long ago been put to the question, yet still kept his secrets.

  “Who is it?” a voice said from deep within the chamber.

  The room was shrouded in darkness, a half-light from dying embers glowing in a firepit that only made the shadows feel darker and deeper. Rhin marched to shuttered windows and cast them open, a shaft of pale spring sunshine piercing the shadows. A cold breeze coiled into the room, stirring the ash in the firepit and causing the embers to flare.

  “There you are,” Rhin said, approaching her father.

  He was sat in a high-backed chair, sunken into it. His face was pale, skin tight and pallid against the arch of his bones, a sheen of sweat covering him.

  “Ah, it’s you,” said Cambros the Bull.

  He did not look much like a bull now, or a King. Rhin felt the breath in her lungs hitch at the sight of her father. She had hardly seen him the last two moons, spending so much of her time with Gair since she had shown the giant her secret parchment. She had learned much.

  But at what cost?

  She had long known that her father was dying, had the wasting disease, but he had gone on for so long with no obvious change that it had almost felt like it was a lie. As if it were something that other people just said, a habit.

  But now he sat before Rhin as if his body had been ravaged by some vast, cruel pestilence, his skin loose, hanging on his frame like a shrivelled old cloak. Where once his shoulders and chest were dense with muscle, now he looked like some desiccated half-corpse. His hair hung lank in sweat-soaked clumps across his face.

  Worry and guilt swept through Rhin in equal measure, all thoughts of her discoveries with Gair falling away as she stared at Cambros.

  “Oh, Father,” Rhin said as she sank to her knees before him, clasping one of his hands between hers.

  “Ah, my Rhin,” Cambros breathed, phlegm rattling in his throat. He reached his other hand out and stroked her cheek, brushed a tear away.

  “Death comes for us all, no escaping it,” he said, mouth twisting in what Rhin realised was an attempt at a smile. “No point hiding from it. Now stand, I’ve wanted to see you, thought you would have come sooner.”

  “I’ve . . .”

  Been busy. The words caught in her throat, none of her discoveries with Gair feeling important now. Just wasted time.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, rising, trying to brush hair from her father’s face. Some of it came away in a clump and she stared at it in revulsion.

  I should have moved quicker, pushed Gair for his information about the Starstone Cup. Maybe I could have saved him.

  “There is something I have to tell you,” Cambros said, his words turning to a wracking cough. He curled over, spraying blood-flecked spittle. He wiped his chin with the back of his hand.

  Rhin stroked his hair, a hiss escaping her lips as more hair came away.

  “Shave it off,” Cambros muttered.

  “What?” Rhin said.

  “Shave it off. I will stand before you and your brothers on the morrow. I would not have them see me like this.”

  “Yes, Father,” Rhin said, moving to find a bowl and fresh water.

  She dabbed his face with a wet cloth, washing the blood and phlegm away.

  “Use my knife,” Cambros said, a hand reaching to his belt.

  “I have my own, Father,” Rhin said, drawing a blade from her belt.

  “Is it sharp enough?” Cambros wheezed.

  “Oh, aye,” Rhin said, knowing it was razor-keen. She sharpened it each day.

  Slowly, methodically, she cut away clumps of her father’s hair, dropping it to pool about her feet. Once she’d sheared it close to his head, she washed the blade and began scraping the stubble from his scalp.

  “I summoned you for a reason,” Cambros said to her as she worked.

  “Uh,” Rhin grunted, focusing on her handiwork.

  “I am dying, as you can well see,” Cambros said. “It will not be long now.” Rhin began to say something, but he silenced her with a grunt and a flick of his hand. “I will announce the heir to my throne on the morrow,” Cambros said, “to you and your brothers.”

  Rhin’s methodical scraping paused, a flutter of excitement in her belly rearing for a fleeting moment over the nausea she felt at finding her father in this condition. With an act of will, she resumed shaving her father’s head.

  “I will name Cadlas my heir,” Cambros said.

  A hitched breath as Rhin froze, a trickle of blood running down her father’s scalp where her hands had twitched and she’d cut him.

  “Cadlas,” Rhin said, hearing her own voice as if through someone else’s ears.

  I was to be your heir. How can you name Cadlas, the sweaty oaf?

  “Aye, your brother,” Cambros said.

  “You have always told me that I would be your heir. That Cambren would be mine to rule,” Rhin said.

  Cambros remained silent.

  “Why?” Rhin whispered.

  Cambros took a rattling, indrawn breath.

  “He is my firstborn, oldest and most battle-hardened. And he is used to ruling, has done well with his fledgling kingdom of Narvon.”

  “Narvon,” Rhin sneered. “He did not even name his kingdom after himself, but instead called it after his sow of a wife. How can you respect or trust such a fool?”

  “He has done well, Narvon is thriving, and that sow of his is with child,” Cambros said, a spark of his old self in his voice, though he trailed off, bent over coughing. Blood was on the back of his hand when he finished. He twisted in his chair to look up at Rhin. “Cadlas will have an heir, whereas you will not even consider a husband.”

  “They are all idiots,” Rhin said, thinking of the many suitors that had called upon her.

  “To secure a Kingdom, to establish a dynasty, you must have heirs. I thought I had taught you, prepared you, Rhin, but you stumble at the first stone. When you rule, you do not wed for love or passion. You wed for power, for the continuation of your name.”

  I do not need a husband, Rhin thought, some foul-breathed, sweaty-handed half-wit who would expect me to bear him children and sit meekly by while he runs my kingdom his way.

  No. I will rule, my way.

  “It should be me,” Rhin said. A silence, only broken by the crackling embers on the fire. “I will take a husband, if that is what is required of me,” she added, trying to keep the sullenness from her voice.

  “It is . . . too late,” Cambros said. “I do not have long left, I can feel death’s cold breath on my neck.”

  “Father, please—”

  “No,” Cambros snapped. “You have failed at the first. . . . It cannot be you now. There is not enough time, and I must be sure of my Kingdom’s fate. Cadlas will rule.”

  Rhin felt a cold anger filling her belly, coiling through her veins. She looked down at her father, a sad, pitiful figure where not so long ago he had been so strong and powerful. Her knife hovered over his head, Cambros’s hair and blood on the blade from where she’d nicked his scalp. Options ran through her mind, the consequences snaking out in different directions like the threads on a spider’s web.

  Her knuckles tightened on the hilt of her knife.

  “I am sorry, my precious Rhin,” Cambros wheezed. “It is for the greater good of Cambren.”

  A long, sucked-in brea
th, Rhin’s hand and blade trembling, and then she turned and walked away, her knife still clutched in her hand, not even bothering to clean the blade.

  Rhin entered her father’s chamber, her shieldman Fallon at her back. It was much changed from the day before. Bright spring sunshine filled the room, and there were a number of people milling around Cambros; her two brothers, Cadlas and Ard, both with a small retinue around them. Narva, Cadlas’s wife, stood with Rhin’s brother, her belly swollen with child. Narva smiled warmly at Rhin as she entered the chamber, nodding a greeting.

  Rhin looked away from Narva, resisting the urge to curl her lip. She saw that her father was still sat in his chair, though he, too, looked different from the day before. He had been washed and was dressed in clean, fine clothing, wearing a green wool tunic braided at neck and sleeves, a bull embroidered upon one side of his chest, a broken branch upon the other, reminder of how he had slain Ruad, King of the Giants, to win his kingdom.

  Though now I know that Ruad was no king, just the Lord of this fortress and the lands round about.

  But no one else need know that. Knowledge is power, and I will hoard it like gold.

  Rhin’s brothers Cadlas and Ard saw her enter, Cadlas waving an arm in the air.

  “Finally,” Cadlas said. “Now we can continue. Rhin is here, Father,” he said, reaching down to squeeze Cambros’s arm.

  “Ah, good,” Cambros said. He smiled weakly at Rhin, who returned a smile with as much warmth as she could muster.

  “You know why I have summoned you here,” Cambros said. “I am dying, will soon make my walk across the Bridge of Swords, and so I must know that Cambren, my legacy, is left in safe hands. We fought hard to earn these lands, and I would know that our family will rule them long after I am gone.”

  “We conquered the west together, Father,” Cadlas said, “and now we rule the west together. United we cannot be defeated. Besides, there is no one left to challenge us. Cambren will be in safe hands.”

  Does he already know? Has father already told him?

  “No matter who you choose to sit on Cambren’s throne when . . .” Cadlas’s words stuttered, and Rhin was surprised to see what resembled genuine emotion twist his features and choke his voice.

  “When I am gone,” Cambros said the difficult words for his son. “Go on.”

  “Whether you choose Ard, Rhin, or myself, know that Cambren will be safe.”

  He does not know, then, or he is a better liar than I give him credit for.

  Cambros patted his son’s hand.

  “So, I will say this now, before the plague that ravages my body addles my mind,” Cambros said. “I will choose one of you, my children, to rule in Cambren when I am gone. You are all worthy, but the one I have chosen I deem best equipped for the task.” A cough rattled in Cambros’s throat, but it passed and the dying King sat straighter. He looked at his three children, holding each one in turn in his gaze. “There will be no challenging my decision, either while I still draw breath, or after. My word on this is binding, and you will swear an oath before me and these other witnesses to honour it.”

  Cadlas and Ard nodded.

  “I swear it,” Cadlas said.

  “And I too,” Ard said.

  They all looked at Rhin.

  “My daughter,” Cambros said, his eyes, still bright with intelligence, bore into her.

  “I swear it, Father,” she said.

  “Huh, good,” Cambros grunted and nodded to himself.

  “Then know this, my kin; the one I would choose to rule in my place . . .” He paused, ran a hand across his shaven scalp and picked at the scab that marked where Rhin’s grip had wavered as she’d been shaving her father’s head.

  Rhin’s hand slipped inside her cloak, her fingers finding what she was looking for, cold clay, something wiry wound within it.

  “Fola m’athair, gruaig as a chuid feoil, fonn mo ordú,” she whispered.

  Blood of my father, hair from his flesh, heed my command.

  Her fist closed tighter around the clay effigy, the hair and blood of her father that she’d taken from her knife blade bound within it.

  “Is é Rhin mo oidhre, suífidh ar mo ríchathaoir,” she breathed, quieter than a sigh.

  Rhin shall be my heir, shall sit upon my throne.

  Cambros’s lips twisted and he blinked, a shocked expression flitting across his face, quickly gone. His jaw worked, no sound coming from his throat.

  Rhin muttered under her breath, her brother Ard’s eyes narrowing as he looked from Cambros to Rhin.

  “Rhin shall be my heir, shall sit upon my throne,” Cambros said, the words escaping his mouth in a flurry.

  Gasps around the room, Cadlas frowning, the broad smile upon Narva’s face withering.

  “Thank you, Father,” Rhin said, stepping forward. “I am honoured by your faith in me.” She stood before Cambros, who stared up at her. Again, his jaw worked, but no words came from his mouth.

  She bent down to him and kissed his cheek.

  “Cease your struggling, Father, it is for the greater good,” she whispered in his ear. She felt the muscles in Cambros’s throat working but knew that nothing could now come from his mouth that contradicted her will.

  “My father, Cambros the Bull, has spoken,” Rhin said as she straightened and faced her brothers. Cadlas was distracted by Narva hissing in his ear, but Ard was staring at her, frowning.

  “We swore an oath to abide by his word. His will,” Rhin said, meeting her brothers’ eyes, daring either of them to oppose her. She knew Fallon was close behind her, could almost sense the trembling in his muscles as the possibility of violence reared in his blood.

  “Are your oaths worth anything?” she challenged her brothers.

  Cadlas looked away first, gave a sharp nod.

  Ard remained silent.

  “Brother,” Rhin prompted him.

  “I gave my oath,” Ard eventually said, “I will keep it.”

  “Good,” Rhin said and turned her back on her brothers, marching from the room. Fallon’s footsteps followed her. In the corridor outside, another three hard-eyed men waited, mail-clad with swords at their hips, men she trusted, ready in case Cadlas and Ard had made different choices.

  I hope for the best, and prepare for the worst, Rhin thought, allowing herself a smile as she strode down the corridor, Fallon and the others falling in behind her.

  She led them deeper into the fortress, through wide, high-arched corridors, deeper into the rock-hewn belly of Dun Vaner, down spiralled stairs until water dripped from cracks in the wall and smoke from guttering torches was thick in the air. Eventually Rhin stopped before a wide, iron-banded door.

  “Keys,” Rhin said. Fallon paused a moment, looking into Rhin’s eyes.

  “Are you sure, my Queen?” he said.

  My Queen. I like the sound of that.

  “It is the only way,” she said to her shieldman. “Do it.”

  Fallon unlocked the door before her, swinging it open.

  Gair the giant sat in the gaol before her, shackled to the wall by wrist and ankle.

  Rhin strode in, her cloak swirling around her like mist, and stood before the giant.

  “Are you my friend?” Rhin said to Gair.

  He stared at her a long, timeless moment.

  “Aye, Rhin fresh-flower. I am your friend.” A half-smile cracked the lines of his face.

  Rhin gave an almost imperceptible nod and then she walked to the far side of the room and reached her hand into a small alcove, fumbled a moment, then felt the mechanism and pulled on it. With a hiss and a puff of dust, the outline of a door appeared. She pushed it, revealing a dark tunnel.

  “What are you doing?” Gair said, eyes wide.

  “I made you a promise,” Rhin said.

  “When you are Queen,” Gair breathed.

  “Just so,” Rhin replied, unable to keep the smile from her face. She gestured to Fallon, who unlocked the giant’s shackles from the wall. Her other guards f
illed the chamber, tense and alert, hands on the hilts of their swords.

  With a scrape of iron on stone, Gair stood on unsteady legs and stepped away from the wall he had been shackled to for five long years. His ankles and wrists were still bound, but this small step towards freedom was like an elixir to Gair. He stood straighter, his shoulders seeming wider, muscles flexing.

  One of Rhin’s guards tied a length of rope to the chain hanging between the iron collars that bound Gair’s wrists and gave it a tug to check it was secure.

  “Are you ready?” Rhin asked him.

  “For what?” the giant breathed, unbelieving.

  “To see the sky again,” Rhin answered.

  Gair’s lips trembled.

  “Aye,” he rumbled.

  “Torch,” Rhin snapped, and Fallon took a lit torch from a wall sconce, the shieldman leading the way into the tunnel. Rhin followed, her guards wrapping around Gair and leading him by the rope, and then they were all marching through the encroaching darkness. The torch-light flickered before and behind, revealing rough-hewn walls slick with water, sounds both muted and echoing.

  Fallon led them unerringly through a labyrinth of tunnels, wide-carved stairs winding downward, deep into the heart of the mountain slope that Dun Vaner was built upon, and then slowly they began to rise. Fallon had explored these tunnels with Rhin and knew where she wished to go.

  The tunnel came to an abrupt end, a wall of stone before them. Rhin stepped past Fallon and found the hidden alcove, releasing the mechanism, and with a hiss of dust the outline of a door stood before them. Rhin pushed and daylight flooded the tunnel, making her blink.

  She stepped out into a sheltered glade, wind-blasted hawthorns about them. Through the leafless branches Rhin glimpsed Dun Vaner’s dark walls and tower, a sheer-blue sky beyond.

  Rhin glanced back to see the bulk of Gair following, looming head and shoulders over the three warriors guarding him. His eyes watered as he stepped out into the daylight, but regardless of the discomfort, he looked up at the sky, a smile splitting his face. He stood still, closed his eyes a long moment, a cold breeze from the mountains stirring his black hair.

  “Ach, but that is better than silver,” he rumbled, opening his eyes to look about the glade.