by T L Drew
‘They will all be dead now,’ Andor uttered with shame and certainty, Kodran’s cruel tales of the Great War returning to his exhausted mind like a plague – anyone who supported the Lienhart family were butchered, like their king was, and others faced a worse fate. Kodran had bragged cruelly at the horrors he had inflicted upon the cursed men and all who supported them, many men, women and children tortured and beheaded in the sands for their loyalty. Andor also knew that many of Kodran and Reidar’s men had died here, at North Rock, at Jorgen Black’s hand, not that many knew. Jorgen had killed any man that might speak of what had happened, all those he did not trust, all those who fought for the usurper, who came to North Rock to butcher Ragnar’s children. Jorgen had only confided in Andor Grey some years ago.
The king had difficulty swallowing saliva as the heat and dehydration caused his throat to feel like splintered wood. He brushed the sweat off of his forehead as he gazed out of the still ship and saw that the dead surrounded them. Endless piles of yellowing bones lined the harbour. North Rock had seen no human – or cursed – life since Ragnar Lienhart’s children had escaped the Grey’s justice with Jorgen Black’s aid, and the slaughter at the palace had been brutal and unjust in the Grey’s search for the remainders of Ragnar Lienhart’s children. Andor was quick to remember that if not for Jorgen Black, there would be more butchered cursed-bloods lying among the dead. Andor knew he had had much to thank Jorgen for.
The anchor had been lowered by Andor’s loyal soldiers and the rough wooden walkway had been thrown down to the sandy docks. The king took a deep breath, spun on his heel with his hand upon his long sword, and his eyes found the icy gaze of his beloved cousin. ‘You’ll stay here, on the Thorn Maiden. Many men will stay behind with you,’ Andor ordered, his eyes dancing over Thorbjorn’s broken body as soldiers holstered their weapons and prepared themselves for whatever they might face. Andor was just as prepared, if not more, his long sword Snow on his hip and Winterthorn on a sheath hidden below his trouser leg, on his only leg. He was clad in the finest armour crafted by the finest blacksmith in all of Askavold, despite the heat it caused his body, despite the desert. Although Andor knew that if the cursed queen were to attack, they would have little chance at survival, but they were going to do all they could to give her a good fight – not that Andor intended on her death, or even his own. Andor Grey was proving to be braver than the world thought he was.
‘I’m the commander of the king’s guard; I belong at your side, to protect you.’ Thorbjorn insisted as Andor limped on his metal leg towards the splintering walkway. Thorbjorn’s voice was desperate; he wanted to make amends for his mistakes upon Solitude Island, but the knight was still recovering. His body was still beaten and broken, black with bruises and lased with bloody unhealed lesions. He had grown thin for such a tall man after days of drifting endlessly on the frozen ocean, and unable to keep food in his stomach once he had been rescued. Andor stopped in his tracks and turned his blue eyes towards his cousin with a sympathetic smile.
‘That may be so, but you’re still weak; if we’re walking into a trap, then I don’t want you in there when you cannot defend yourself.’
‘I can. Let me protect you.’
Andor smiled lovingly at his cousin and placed his hand upon his shoulder. ‘I’ll be back before you know it.’
‘It’s a trap.’ Thorbjorn’s voice was worried. He fretted it would be the last time he would see his king. If Andor was to die, Thorbjorn wanted to die trying to protect him, but Andor wouldn’t let it happen.
‘That it may be, but when she hears what I have to say, when she sees me...perhaps she’ll change her mind.’
Thorbjorn almost choked on his words. ‘Perhaps she won’t even grant you an opportunity to speak, before she kills you.’
‘Look after Abigail,’ Andor commanded his beloved cousin, his eyes glossing over to the young woman, her eyes wet with un-burst tears, his voice growing gentle. ‘She needs you more than I do right now.’
‘Come back to us,’ the young woman ordered, fire in her eyes. ‘You can’t leave us, not like this.’
‘I’ll be back,’ he promised, even though he didn’t even believe his own words.
Deep down, Andor believed it was a trap, and still he moved his body from the ship and followed his guards onto the silent sandy harbour, refusing to look back at the cousin and the lover he was leaving behind. He followed his soldiers with his hand firmly upon the white fox-carved handle of his long sword, Snow. The sound of the squawking gulls became deafening and sand blew in his eyes, but he urged himself forward, dragging his metal leg heavily behind him, until Andor and his soldiers neared the end of the docks.
A deep voice came without summon. The king’s eyes found a young, dark haired man with eyes the colour of mud. His skin had turned golden in the heat of the desert and he wore little more than thin black silk around his hips and sandals upon his feet. There was a silver pin of a dragon, curled like a crescent moon, pinned to the ebony fabric on his hips. He was scarred and tall, but his face was young. Andor supposed the young man was no older than he was, and the man brandished a rusted scythe in his cut hands. ‘You are not welcome at North Rock, strangers. Leave now, or die.’
Andor took a deep breath and faced the young man. ‘I was summoned by your queen.’
‘Doubtful.’ The young man said, his eyes glossing Andor Grey up and down, taking in the king’s dark brown hair, his icy blue eyes and shining silver armour, branded with a fox upon his breastplate. Andor Grey clutched the handle of his long sword with a gloveless hand tighter, and his soldiers stepped in front of him protectively, swords drawn.
‘There will be no need of that,’ Andor instructed his soldiers, forcing them to lower their blades. Bravely – or stupidly – the king brushed beyond his protective soldiers and outstretched his hand, handing the young man the letter he had received from Caeda Lienhart. He rolled out the rough parchment in his bronze hands and saw his queen’s writing with his brown eyes. ‘I was summoned here.’ Andor said again, watching as the young man’s face changed. Andor wondered whether he was cursed or merely a tribesman. Something told him that the young man was cursed, but not with the blood of the wolf, merely from the deeper colour of his skin. Those who had been born in the southern lands usually bore the curse of the wolf. Those who had been born further north in the hot deserts bore another kind of curse.
The young soldier with golden skin narrowed his eyes further at the King of Askavold. ‘I see foxes upon your sails, but I see no Kodran Grey. He will be an older man now. I heard he’s grown fat. He was the man who was summoned to North Rock, not you. Our queen wishes to speak with the king.’
‘I am the King of Askavold.’ Andor stated boldly, narrowing his icy eyes at the young man. ‘A dead man cannot come to her call. I come instead, before she rides to my lands to take the head of a man who is already without one.’
The young man glossed his eyes over the southern king. He scrutinised his every feature before his dry lips parted. ‘Very well; you may leave your men behind and walk with me.’
‘I won’t go alone,’ Andor assured, gazing over his shoulder at the ships that had sailed with him to North Rock. ‘Most of my men will stay with my ships. A small number will come with me.’
The young man pondered for a moment. His eyes glossed over the king’s small army who had left the safety of the ships.
‘Very well – follow me, and be swift.’ The young man hesitantly agreed and spun on his sandaled heel, twisting on the sandy harbour towards the giant palace of North Rock. Andor Grey followed him, allowing one last look towards the Thorn Maiden; he could see Thorbjorn standing worriedly upon the finely crafted ship beside his red-headed lover, watching as Andor began to disappear from their desperate sight. Andor knew that it took every fibre in Thorbjorn’s body to keep himself upon the ship, not to run to Andor’s side – he silently thanked Thorbjorn for staying upon the ship. The gods forbid they took Thorbjorn from him, his dearest
friend in the entire world, the only man who knew all of his secrets and still remained at his side. Then Andor turned his head back towards the young man and followed him from the harbour. At the base of the harbour were endless sandy steps leading up towards the mountainside palace. The path winded upwards, twisting across the mountain.
‘What’s your name?’ Andor Grey asked as he followed the young, dark haired man up winding steps with difficulty as the king struggled to carry his metal leg behind him. A small group of soldiers followed Andor, and two kept between the king and the young man at all times. ‘You’re not from here.’ Andor noticed as he received a better look at the young man he followed; although he had skin the colour of the northerners, a deep golden shine to his skin and hair as black as midnight, the young man resembled Nazir closer than the northerners – Nazir had come from across the sea, from the Isles of Mór, closer to the uncharted cursed lands where man dared not to tread, where there were cursed people in their thousands. The young man had a tattoo upon his back of a curled dragon between his shoulder blades, enough for Andor to know.
‘I am William of the Isles of Mór, the queen’s advisor, and dearest friend.’ The young man with the dragon tattoo spoke.
‘No last name?’ Andor questioned.
‘Gallus,’ he said hesitantly. ‘William Gallus.’
Andor needn’t say anymore words. The young man’s name told him all he needed to know; Gallus was a cursed name, the dragon’s curse. His tattoo finally made sense. The king found himself involuntarily slowing his pace, the distance between him and the young dragon growing. He wondered how many dragons were left upon the world – there could not be many, when there were few to begin with. He was a special, feared breed.
The sun was hot over the palace by the time that Andor Grey and his men had reached the top of the twisting steps. The palace doors were giant, forbidding and crafted from a lightly coloured stone, etched with carvings of giant wolves on their hind legs, sandy coloured dragons and golden griffins. Sand caught in Andor’s eyes and mouth and stuck in his short beard as Caeda Lienhart’s guards pulled the stone ajar, the sounds of the stone doors scrapping deafeningly across the sandy floor. Andor stared into the palace and saw darkness, death and destruction.
Their footsteps clattered over the stone as William Gallus led them inside of the palace. It was colder inside than the harsh heat of the desert. It was ridden with cobwebs, dust and sand. Caeda Lienhart had been the first person to enter the aging palace for over a decade – she had been the last to leave before Jorgen, and the first to return.
‘This way,’ William urged, guiding the men deeper into the dark palace through wide and spacious corridors, passing by abandoned rooms and dead cursed skeletons. It was nothing of what the North Rock palace once was. William Gallus led them to the throne room; they reached a large pair of light stone doors, soldiers stood on each side with giant spears in their grasp, wearing the same black silk around their hips as William wore. At the sight of William, the men pried the doors open, leading Andor and his men wearily inside of the throne room, sick with apprehension. Silently, Andor followed William inside.
Piles of bones lay on all sides of the palace throne room; the bones of the dead cursed guards who had tried to protect Ragnar Lienhart’s home, coupled with the bones of mankind who had been slain by Jorgen’s hand. The southern king assumed that Caeda had not returned to her home for long. The throne room was larger than Andor’s in the Stone Keep. The windows were stained, sandy and weathered. It was light in the North Rock throne room, lighter than the rest of the palace.
A woman sat upon a dust throne. It was a simple chair, a sandy coloured throne built from sand stone. Caeda Lienhart’s skin was like her father’s skin had been, icy like the south, despite living in the North Rock palace until her fourteenth birthday. Her hair was a deep brown, tightly curled to her hips and braided tightly down half of her head, and she had her father’s eerie blue eyes, stained with freckles of gold. Her nose was small on her face and she looked vastly younger than her twenty-four years. The woman was small and thin, but shapely like a bottle of wine. Her long sleek dress was the colour of ink. She looked like her father.
Andor’s heart sank in his chest as he gazed upon her – he tried to show bravery, but for the first time in his life, he failed to show it. He had waited for this moment for the longest of times. He had dreamed of it, coming face to face with a child of the old king whom he loved so dearly, to see her face, to hear her voice. She was truly here, alive and well. Andor knelt before her with difficulty, his knee that held his metal leg finding the sands. His men did as their king did, before Andor rose at the command of her dainty hand. William bowed his head and moved swiftly to his queen’s side next to her sandy throne.
The King of Askavold quickly noticed movement from behind Caeda’s throne; a small boy, his hair black like William’s, but his eyes gazing at Andor Grey from behind Caeda were like black marbles, dark and haunting, eyes he had seen before. The boys skin was icy, like the southern snow. Andor watched as one of Caeda’s soldiers took the small boy by the arm and led him away from the throne room, out of sight, but not out of mind.
‘My father used to rule Askavold from this throne,’ the woman spoke confidently, running her fingertips over the stone. Her voice was quiet and sweet, but there was a fierceness to it, one he had expected. ‘I used to wonder why he didn’t build something a little more comfortable.’
Andor tried to hide the smile from his lips, like he was dreaming, his heart beating wildly in his chest as he gazed upon her, how inhuman she looked. ‘It’s a beautiful throne, Your Grace.’ Andor said respectfully, even though she was not a queen by right at all. If the Lienhart family remained upon the throne of Askavold, it would have been her brother, Rob, who would have ruled after Ragnar’s fall.
‘And what should I call you?’ Caeda Lienhart asked, her blue eyes with freckles of gold falling upon Andor Grey with recognition. ‘You are not the King Kodran that I sent for. You’re too young and you’re smaller, from what I hear.’
‘Only around the middle,’ Andor insisted, remembering the way his father had become so fat on wine and lavish feasts that by the end of his life the old king could barely walk. ‘Kodran is dead; I sit upon the throne now. I am King Andor Grey of Askavold.’
‘Dead? Well that complicates matters.’ Caeda uttered, almost as though she was speaking to herself. There was disappointment in her inhuman eyes. ‘I hoped to see the man who murdered my father, and possibly my brothers, and my sisters, and my mother…’
‘You were truly asking him here to kill him, were you not?’ Andor asked, his lips turning into a smile he could no longer hide. His thoughts returned to the night he had killed Kodran Grey, a memory that still plagued him with no guilt, a justice served for all those Kodran had wronged.
Caeda’s lips tilted into a smile. ‘Perhaps I was. Perhaps I should kill his son instead for his father’s crimes.’
‘King Kodran already paid for his crimes with his life. His death was not without suffering, I can assure you.’ Andor said, remembering the feeling of Winterthorn dragging across Kodran’s throat, his blood soaking his white furs.
‘That’s good to hear.’ The Cursed Queen said with a satisfied smile, rising from the uncomfortable chair and moving to her advisor’s side. Andor had quickly decided that Caeda and Will were lovers. He was certain as he saw them stood together. William watched her with awe. ‘However, I came a very long way to see him die.’
‘He is dead now, and with his death, you have no more reason to threaten my reign, or my lands.’
‘How did he die?’ Caeda asked, fixated, her fingers tied together in front of her stomach. ‘Did you see it?’
‘I cut his throat myself.’ Andor said boldly.
‘Not many men would admit to such a thing.’
‘I am not most men.’
‘I can see that.’ Caeda Lienhart said surely, gazing at Andor’s strong face, trying to registe
r where she had seen him before. Of course, they had seen each other growing up, before the Great War, but Andor was nothing of what he once was as a child – he looked different now, a man, a man she recognised. ‘You are young for a king. You’re confident. I cannot yet tell if you’re brave or stupid to be here. Most men would run the other way after receiving a letter from my hand, and yet you coming running in the opposite direction. Why are you here, King Andor of Askavold?’
‘I don’t know, not truly.’ Andor lied, the truth locked away behind his full lips. ‘I can see anger in your eyes. My father’s death wasn’t enough for you.’
‘I still want Askavold.’ The young woman said boldly. Caeda had been given a taste of power, and Andor supposed she wanted more after a decade of hiding and raising an army to fight for her. She wanted revenge for her father. She wanted to take back the kingdom that was stolen from Ragnar Lienhart.
Andor’s body grew tense, spying the concerning look in her eyes. ‘Askavold is mine. I’m a good king, and I care about my people.’
‘You’re the son of Kodran Grey; your words are no more welcomed than horse shit.’
‘I’m not Kodran Grey, and he was no father of mine.’ Andor said angrily. ‘I don’t want to fight. There are enough wars to coming to my lands and without allies...’
‘You want my help? Is that why you have come?’ Caeda asked with surprise, her body still as she stood next to William Gallus.
‘From what I hear, your army is small, but I know the cursed bloods are the most powerful beings to walk the face of the realm.’ Andor said, thinking back to a time when they ruled, when they thrived. ‘My older brother is coming with an army. He is more like my father than any man in my family. He will take Askavold by whatever means necessary, no matter who dies in the process, and as for my city…it has been stolen from me while I come here to speak with you. You could have taken the six kingdoms by now, if it pleased you, but I can see it in your eyes that you don’t want to be the reason that so many people have to die. Goran Grey is our common enemy. My uncle Hakon Grey, and my damn wife Margot Rose, are our common enemies. You and I don’t have to fight; we could be powerful allies and together–’