Trying not to lock too hard on that hope, tempting though it might be, Dayn shrugged the rucksack higher on his shoulder and set out, rounding the corner and striding out of the cave into the daylight. And stopped dead.
“Damnation.” Another fitting human saying, and one that was unfortunately all too apt.
The sight that greeted him wasn’t anything like what he’d been expecting, and was nothing he’d been prepared for. The forest that stretched out before him wasn’t green and lush, wasn’t chockful of hiding places for the forest creatures. It was brown and thin, with no groundcover and only sparse, yellowed leafy patches that hardly seemed sufficient to sustain life.
Worse, he couldn’t even pretend he was at the edge of one of the southern kingdoms, near a stretch of badlands or desert. Because as his eyes adjusted to the painful sight, he recognized the downslope in front of him, the rise of rocky hill behind him. He even knew the cave now, though he had never before been all the way to its end due to the foulness of the air.
He was in Elden, less than a day’s march to the castle. But gods and the Abyss, what had happened to his land? His forest?
Unfortunately, the answer was an easy one: the Blood Sorcerer had happened. This was what two decades of dark sorcery had done to his once-gorgeous kingdom, two decades of neglect. It had killed the land.
“No.” Heart sinking so hard his stomach hurt, Dayn took two stumbling steps, then went down on his knees beside a waist-high boulder, where there was a tiny scrap of green struggling to grow in the shade. It was an Elden glory—or it should have been. But instead of producing brilliant blue flowers the exact shade of Reda’s eyes, this one had only a single weak bloom in a pale, sad hue.
“I’m sorry.” He didn’t even realize he was crying until a drop hit the dirt. It dried quickly, sucked into the parched earth so suddenly that he might have thought he imagined it, save that he found moisture on his cheeks and felt the tears in his soul.
He didn’t stay there long; he couldn’t. But part of him wanted to.
Any faint hope he might’ve had that this was a localized blight withered as he reached the edge of the forest and saw rolling hills of dusty brown leading to a yellow-hazed horizon, and his last few shreds of optimism died utterly when he hiked himself up into a nearby tree, climbing into the high, swaying branches to get a longer view.
From there, he could see other forests, scattered farms, several villages—though fewer than he remembered—and a dark smudge where he judged Blood Lake to be. And throughout it all, there were patches of brown, green, black, even some furry-looking white and bilious yellow-green, as if the land had died and been taken over by mold and rot.
“Gods help us,” he whispered, soul going hollow at the confirmation that it wasn’t just the forest that was blighted and dying. It was all of Elden.
And although he had already hated the Blood Sorcerer for the attack on the castle, now that rage dug deeper, grew hotter, became even more personal at the realization that the bastard hadn’t just taken power, he had ruined the kingdom, leeching its energy to fuel his dark, twisted magic.
Dayn’s forests, his family’s people, were suffering, and from the looks of it had been for some time, and he had let it happen. If he had known he would have… The thought process ran aground there, because he couldn’t have done anything differently, nothing that would have mattered to Elden. He’d had to wait for the magic to send his guide and bring him home.
Only this wasn’t home. Home didn’t exist anymore. Elden had become a war zone without a real war, a casualty of the royal family’s abandonment, though they hadn’t voluntarily abdicated.
On some level, he wished with all his heart that the spell hadn’t been corrupted; that he and the others could have come together long before this to take their revenge, sparing the kingdom its torture. On another, though, he knew that it was pointless to wish history changed; he needed to deal with the matter at hand.
Right now, it wasn’t about not looking back, wasn’t about moving forward. It was about what happened next, about righting the course of an entire kingdom, gods willing. It wasn’t about him, wasn’t about the things he’d wanted or the people he’d lost.
He shimmied down the tree, feeling its inner rot in the faint slickness of its bark. Then, shouldering his rucksack once more, he hit the road.
And, as his feet carried him down the dusty track, he knew two things for certain. One, he would do whatever he could to set things right in the kingdom, even if that meant giving his life for it. And two, it was for the best that things had happened as they did in the wolfyn realm, because he never would have forgiven himself for dragging Reda into this horror, not just because there was no beauty or magic in his homeland anymore, but because there was no way he could be with her and be what he needed to be.
He couldn’t be Dayn the man when Elden needed a prince so badly.
MORAGH’S NEW GNOME, Destin, tapped on the door frame of the seedy room she had rented at a grubby inn on the shore of Blood Lake, preferring to not yet be under the sorcerer’s roof given that she hadn’t yet told him about the possibilities of realm travel, instead keeping that gem to herself as both an exit strategy and a bargaining chip.
“Mistress?” he inquired softly.
“Yes?” she asked without moving, without even opening her eyes. It had taken her nearly an hour of careful preparation to get this far, and she didn’t want to have to start over.
“I have spread the word. If the prince returns—”
“He’s already here. I can feel him.” The spell had reactivated an hour earlier, warning that the wolfyn hadn’t managed to take care of business. She hadn’t really expected them to, though, not once she learned what Dayn had become, and saw how the archaic wolfyn society worked. They were hidebound, hampered by their own foolish traditions. She had used that to her advantage, though, coercing the pack into slowing down her prey, buying her the time to come back through the stones, recover the Book of Ilth and start making plans for his return.
And the plan she had was a damn good one. It wouldn’t just take care of the prince, it would announce her new prowess far and wide. The scholars who had once laughed at her would bow in awe, and the sorcerer…well, the delicious images made her smile and wet her lips with her tongue.
“Shall I send to the castle and have the beast master ready your ettins?”
“No. I’m not going out after him. I’m going to let him come to me.” The ugly rumors and hints of a bounty she’d had Destin spread through his network of thieves and cutthroats might take care of the prince for her, but if not, it would slow him down long enough that she would be ready for him.
“Will that be all for now, mistress?”
“Yes. No, wait.” She drew satisfaction from his hiss of indrawn breath and the sudden tension in his stillness. But lately his struggles had diminished all too quickly, his revulsion dulling to a placid acceptance that flattened her pleasure to a mere glow. She had been planning an exciting new game to play with him, but now wasn’t the time—she needed raw blood energy and didn’t want to have to work for it. “Send to the dungeons for a prisoner, one that nobody will miss.”
He exhaled softly. “Yes, mistress.”
When he was gone and the door closed, shutting out the stupidity prevalent in the corridors and common areas of any village inn, Moragh cleared her mind and cast about herself, checking the positions of the candles and lines drawn around her with a variety of powders and unguents. Then, satisfied that she was protected, she opened the Book of Ilth, turning past all the realmtravel spells to the final section, to a title page that bore a single word.
Feiynd.
DAYN REACHED THE VILLAGE of Einharr late in an afternoon grown gray from an incoming storm. The warm air was charged with thunder, heavy with moisture and felt strange on his skin after so long in the relatively dry and cold wolfyn realm. Or maybe the strangeness came from the land’s sickness; he didn’t know.
All
he knew was that as he walked through the open gates of the heavy wooden palisade surrounding the village, his skin felt slick and oily, and his gut churned with the deep sorrow that had only grown through the day.
He had walked past roadside ditches filled with bones, most from livestock, but some human, and of the human skulls, a too-high proportion had worn secondary canines. He had been assuming his inability to connect to anyone through mindspeak meant that the wolfyn magic he’d had thrust upon him had fouled some of his purely Elden powers. But the sight of the skull piles had made him consider that he might be the only mindspeaker in range. And that was a damned depressing thought.
He’d passed deserted farms, some burned, others just sitting there, rife with signs of a hasty exit; he wanted to believe that the farming families had fled to other kingdoms, but didn’t hold much hope of it. And as he’d gotten in closer to the village proper, he’d passed clusters of small houses and seen signs of habitation, but such poor signs—a few weedy chickens scratching listlessly in the dirt, a thin dog slinking in the shadows, head down, ears flat to its skull—that his heart had hurt anew.
So now, as his boots scuffed the dirt track through the center of the village, raising no dust in the heavy air, he wasn’t entirely surprised to see that Einharr, once a thriving community well known for its singing halls and honey beer, was a squalid and run-down version of its former self. Hollow-eyed children peered at him from behind doorways and around corners, flinching away when he made eye contact, and older men and women skulked in windows or on overhung porches, watching him with dull, uninterested eyes.
Twenty years ago, when last he had ridden through here as part of his parents’ retinue, the villagers had packed the main street, cheering and jostling to touch the horses and carriages. Now, as he made for the third block in, where the tavern district began—or used to begin, at any rate—his presence seemed to have gone entirely unnoticed. Seemed was the operative word, though, because as he continued onward, his nape prickled and his instincts said someone was watching him, that he needed to be careful. Which was a no-brainer, but he needed information, and there was no place better to get it than at the local watering hole.
Picking the one with the most worn-looking steps, as had been his habit when investigating as a Forestal, he stepped up onto the slatted porch, his boots ringing hollowly as he crossed to the heavy, windowless door.
Movement blurred in his peripheral vision; he spun in a crouch, lifting his short sword, but it was just a kid, a skinny, gray-eyed boy wearing ragged homespun and grime behind his ears where he had missed washing.
He didn’t duck away like the others, but rather stopped dead, eyes widening in shock and fright.
For a second, when the boy did the deer-in-headlights freeze, Dayn flashed on wide blue eyes and similar moments of fear. A searing bolt of grief rocketed through him, warning that he might have submerged his thoughts of Reda, but they weren’t gone. Not even close.
Then the kid broke from his paralysis, drew breath and screamed at the top of his lungs, “Wolfyn!” He spun and bolted, screeching, “Mama, Papa! The wolfyn’s here!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
DOORS SLAMMED OPEN on both sides of the road and club-wielding men hurtled out from the buildings and flew from around corners, boiling into the street, shouting things like “Get him!” “Cut him off!” “The money’s mine!” and “Don’t let him get away!”
Cursing, Dayn dodged one club swing, took another on his shoulder and leaped into the road, swinging his sword in a wide arc that was more intended to drive his attackers back rather than hurt them. His mind raced, jammed with thoughts of Damn that witch, and Now what? He was horrifically outnumbered, but he didn’t want to kill the villagers. He was trying to save them, damn it!
Looking around frantically while he batted off club swings with the flat of his sword, he searched for a thin spot, an exit, and found—
“Now!” a voice shouted.
Too late, he looked up to see a heavily weighted net flying down at him, flinging open as it came.
“Son of a—” He spun to bolt, but it caught him hard and knocked him down.
Roaring, he lunged back to his feet, staggering as he fought the tangling lines. He got his sword arm free and slashed out, heard a cry of pain and saw the villagers shrink back for a second. But that didn’t last long; they closed in just as he freed himself from the net, leaping away and flailing with his sword. He slapped for his crossbow, but it was gone.
He was surrounded, but the villagers didn’t come at him, instead hesitating, keeping their clubs raised as they shouted, egging one another. For a second, their hesitation didn’t make any sense. Then he realized: they were afraid he was going to change, didn’t know that he’d only succumbed twice in his life and didn’t intend to do it again. Not when part of his promise to his father had been to remember his true self, which wasn’t wolfyn.
Heart rocketing, he went for his bloodline magic, sending his secondary canines spearing through his gums. Then he bared his teeth and roared at the nearest villager, doing his best impression of Keely on a bad-fur day.
The man shouted and fell back, stumbling into the guy behind him. They both went down and three others shied away as Dayn lunged through the small opening and raced for the open area beyond. For a second he thought he was going to make it, but then the guys at the outer edge of the crowd saw him coming and started closing ranks.
Zzzt. Thwack! An arrow whizzed past the men and sank itself in the building opposite. They shouted and fell back as a second missile followed the first, coming even closer to them before nailing a rain barrel.
Dayn didn’t stop to wonder who or how; he put his head down and hauled ass for the nearest village gate.
“Close the gate!” The shout went up behind him, and up ahead, two men scrambled from a rickety guard shack and moved to comply, pushing a heavy door that slid sideways on ponderous rollers.
He wasn’t going to make it.
Sudden hoofbeats pounded behind him and a familiar voice called, “Dayn!”
And his heart. Stopped. Dead.
His body might have kept running as he looked back over his shoulder, but the rest of him froze at the sight of Reda galloping toward him on a bald-faced bay horse with white-ringed eyes. She was wearing a mix of the clothing he’d last seen her in along with a few Elden-style pieces, including the close-fitting pants and boots typically worn by the members of the cavalry or elite guard. They were old, but the royal colors of his own house still shone clearly.
“Reda,” he whispered through a throat gone suddenly dry with mingled joy and dismay. “Sweet gods.”
The villagers scattered like blown leaves as she bore down on him. Then she was steering with her knees and weight as she knocked an arrow in a sleek compound bow and let fly, burying the missile in the village gate no more than a handspan from one of the guys who were fighting to get it shut. The two men shouted, took one look at her and dove for cover, leaving the gate half-open and unattended.
“Grab on!” She pulled even with Dayn, offered a hand and, when he locked his wrist to hers, used the bay’s momentum to pull him up behind her.
It was a familiar move, one he’d done a hundred times with Nicolai, sometimes even with his father. But the bay squealed and spooked at the move, swerving and then flattening out its haunches as it accelerated to a flat-out panicked bolt that left him sprawled awkwardly on the animal’s haunches, being jolted loose with every stride.
“Whoa!” Reda started to haul on the reins, but then glanced back at the villagers, thought better of it and yelled, “Hang on!”
Dayn did his best, getting a good grip on the empty bedroll straps at the back of the age-cracked cavalry saddle as Reda rode the bolt, steering the white-eyed bay through the village gate and out onto the main road, where they thundered for nearly a mile before the animal began to tire, slowing to a bumpy canter, then to a tooth-jarring trot.
Still, though, the horse was re
stive and upset, refusing to settle, to the point that it was all Reda could do to spin the creature in a circle as Dayn slid down. The brute kicked out and scooted away, but she hauled it back around in a few snorting, prancing whirls, and then it finally started to calm down, blowing elephant-bugle snorts at Dayn.
Who just stood there in the road, staring.
She didn’t say anything, either, just met his eyes with a cool expression that didn’t tell him a thing. After a moment, she lifted her chin as if to say, Well?
“You can ride,” he said, which was dead stupid because that was far from the most important thing. But the sight of her astride the wall-eyed bay, carrying a weapon from her own realm and wearing clothes mixed from the other two, shifted his perceptions, jarring him and replacing his image of wide, scared blue eyes.
“I did Pony Club for a bit, played polo now and then in college.” She paused. “That and the archery were the closest I could get to living out the fairy tales. Until now.”
He had told himself he didn’t want her here in this wreck of a kingdom, that he didn’t have it in him to protect her and do his duty both. But now that she was here, really here, he wanted to fall to his knees and thank the gods and the magic, wanted to kiss her booted toe and work his way up from there, and wanted, somehow, to make things right between them. Because she was here.
The kingdom was a wasteland, Moragh had turned the villagers against him and put a bounty on his head, his siblings were nowhere to be seen and, given how much had been drained from the land, the Blood Sorcerer’s powers must be immense.
But sudden, illogical joy wrapped itself around his heart as he stood there staring up at a woman who looked like something from the stories of his own childhood—a goddess of the hunt, perhaps, or a patr oness of the king’s elite cavalry. Yet at the same time she was the Reda he had known in the wolfyn realm, the one he had made love to, cared for, wanted beyond all reason.
Lord of the Wolfyn / Twin Targets Page 15