The Never King

by James Abbott

  ‘That has been one of the gaps in my intelligence – so far as I can tell, no foreign king or queen will lend troops to someone like Mardonius. Diplomacy is not his strong suit. He’s no Cedius.’

  Xavir leaned forwards. ‘How many in Stravir City? How many are protecting the king?’

  ‘I think only ten thousand soldiers wait in the city while the rest are engaged elsewhere.’

  ‘As it has always been,’ Valderon said.

  ‘You may as well pull out the heart of this murderous rule directly,’ Xavir said, ‘and strike Stravir City.’

  ‘I hoped you would say that.’ Landril smiled and leaned back.

  ‘So what first?’ Valderon asked.

  ‘To start the legend of Xavir’s return and strike fear into the heart’s of his enemies. We go to those who sent him to Hell’s Keep and give them a taste of retribution.’

  *

  Lupara stood for some time watching Xavir train with the other men in the hazy, mellow sunlight. He was standing at the front of the group alongside Valderon, and the two men proceeded through the motions of various manoeuvres.

  Jedral had requested an axe, not something as fragile as a sword, and one was quickly acquired for him. Harrand, Krund and Grend were of an acceptable quality, managing to defend themselves against some of Xavir’s restrained blows. Harrand was angered by his failures, whereas Krund chuckled at his own inability to match Xavir. Tylos occasionally came forward to demonstrate variants in the more elegant techniques he had learned in Chambrek, but he was mocked in good spirits by the other men for his finesse over brute force.

  ‘I would be more impressive if it was not for your Stravir steel,’ he declared. ‘The quality is poor. In Chambrek, our swords possessed a finer edge and a better balance.’

  ‘Is everything bloody better in Chambrek?’ Jedral grunted.

  Tylos placed a fist upon his hip and gestured towards Jedral with his sword. ‘Everything is an art form, in Chambrek. From the way we make swords to the way we make love, and—’

  ‘To the way you pass wind through your mouth all the time,’ Jedral put in.

  Only now was Lupara accustomed to having Xavir’s presence here. The great warrior, in a remote cabin, teaching former prisoners battle techniques – it felt a world away from the man she had known. But he was here.

  As she walked to her cabin, she recalled Xavir of five years past. Formerly he had been stronger, more muscular. There had been a vigour in his expression, a self-belief that he could shatter kingdoms if he chose to. Loyal to a fault and morally sound, he had been Cedius’s iron fist in the velvet glove, the example of Stravimon’s might in one warrior. He and the Solar Cohort were all the same: boisterous, lively, inspiring company. Their mere presence could haul an army up off the knees of defeat and turn the battle around to victory. They were living legends.

  Today Xavir was perhaps a more dangerous man because he was so much harder to judge. There was bitterness there and a desire for vengeance – who could blame him? But Lupara worried that, whereas previously he would always place the good of the many before his own desires, his anger now would lead him to seek revenge and nothing else would get in the way. At least he had agreed to fight with them.

  Lupara entered her cabin and noticed something glowing in one corner of the room, by her bed. At first she thought it was the reflection of the fire. But the flames had dwindled, and after a second’s thought she realized what it was.

  From under its cloth wrapping she revealed a large, colourless witchstone. It was perfectly smooth and roughly the shape of a teardrop. The heavy end just about fit into her palm. It was a ‘fascinard’. That was that the witches had called it.

  The object was a useful tool to the sisterhood, a gift of communication between those who were separated. Sisters used them to keep in contact with the matriarch and with each other. Lupara was no witch and had no use for it ordinarily but had been given it at the insistence of a group of sisters who she had served alongside in various capacities over the years. These witches had travelled through her domain and enjoyed her hospitality.

  The fascinard pulsed a gentle white light every few heartbeats. It had never done this in all the time she had possessed it.

  Lupara placed it on her mattress and closed the door to the cabin. She moved back to see that the light inside the fascinard had begun to spiral into a vortex and move towards the tip of the object. As she brought it closer to her face, the spiral slowed down.

  An image was presented, an upward-looking perspective of a woman’s face. It was silhouetted against the sky but before long it became clearer.

  The woman’s mouth was opening and closing, but no sound came. Suddenly the voice could be heard directly in Lupara’s head.

  ‘Your royal grace, queen of Dacianara.’

  Birgitta? Lupara thought. It’s been a long time.

  ‘Too long, my lady.’

  Are you in trouble? Lupara thought.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Birgitta said, still in Lupara’s mind. ‘I have been forced to leave Jarratox. I do not have the time to go into the complexities of the matter. But you should know that King Mardonius has brought the sisterhood under his control, bribed by the gift of a new vein of witchstones.’

  This troubles you enough to leave?

  ‘It troubles me greatly. Especially with everything else going on in the world.’

  Lupara nodded grimly. The sisterhood joining forces with Mardonius is a fell blow indeed. But I’m pursuing my own plans to put a stop to his murderous acts.

  ‘This is fortunate indeed!’ Birgitta exclaimed. ‘By the source, if it is not too late, may I suggest a union?’

  We only have plans to travel north, but we have no time in mind. We are at a very early stage of our planning. Where is your location?

  ‘We are currently walking towards Dweldor, a village in Brintassa.’

  Do you know of the ruins in Burgassia, Lupara thought, the watchtower on the shores of the Silent Lake?

  The image in the fascinard paused for a moment, the sound in Lupara’s head slightly out of kilter with the movement of Birgitta’s mouth. ‘I do.’

  Let us convene there. If you reach it first, set up a camp. No one will be present. We will do likewise. And one more thing, Lupara thought. You mentioned ‘we’. Who else is with you?

  ‘Myself and a reliable young sister – she has studied under me for the past five years since I returned from your service. May I ask who else is in your party?’

  I have some men, a former warrior of the First Legion, a good spymaster and . . . you remember Baradium Falls very well, I take it.

  ‘It is hard to forget such a tragedy.’

  I have Xavir Argentum with me.

  ‘He’s free?’

  He is. In a manner of speaking. We set him free.

  ‘Oh.’

  This concerns you? Lupara thought.

  ‘No. But it is most unexpected . . . Most unexpected. I suppose it had to happen sooner or later, though . . . I will explain when we meet, for that will be the best time. Till the watchtower on the Silent Lake, my lady.’

  With that, the fascinard relinquished the light and became a colourless witchstone once again. Lupara wrapped it up, stored it away beside her mattress and walked to the door.

  Opening it, she called for the spymaster. Landril presently came hurrying through the grass towards her, tiptoeing between her three sleeping wolves who were lying by the entrance to her cabin.

  ‘My lady?’ He stood before her, his fingers writhing nervously.

  ‘We have an addition to our plans.’

  ‘In what way?’ Landril asked, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘We needed magic, is that correct?’

  ‘It would be a necessary evil, certainly. Needless to say whoever we fight against, they will likely have witches.’

  ‘Then we must leave tomorrow morning, for I believe I have located us two sisters to join our cause.’

  ‘And where are we hea
ded?’

  ‘Burgassia, and the Silent Lake.’

  For a moment Landril furrowed his brow in thought, before nodding. ‘Close enough. I shall notify the others.’

  The Silent Lake

  Burgassia was known as the kingless realm. There was no governance here, and yet its pockets of tribespeople and agricultural communes still managed to organize their lives without much fuss.

  The region had seen many battles across the eras, and it was littered with ruined settlements that had once promised something much grander. Old palaces lay crumbled. Castles were mostly dismantled, smothered by moss and lichen, and their stone reclaimed for building elsewhere. For some time only the Belgossa lived here, a strange, squat race that had vanished by the end of the Sixth Era, and for centuries afterwards the place was steeped in superstition and visions of their ghosts. It did not help that it was a place of regular sightings of stranger beings, although these days it seemed such sightings were more commonplace elsewhere. After a botched attempt at conquest in the Seventh Era, no king or queen had shown an inclination to lay claim to the region. Birgitta had heard that Mardonius had attempted to push the Second Legion through these inhospitable lands – but the terrain here was . . . problematic, to say the least. Swamps appeared where there had previously been none, drowning an entire cohort. Poisonous animals would swarm among the grasses and bring down half the men in unimaginable pain. Senior commanders issued written statements about ghost warriors slaughtering their scouting units. Burgassia itself seemed to conspire against any military attempts to conquer the place. It was not without good reason that many a king decided that ruling Burgassia was not worth the effort.

  Birgitta explained all this to Elysia as they continued on their journey along the green lanes. Many days had passed since they had left the village. They travelled on the back of a tradesman’s boat for the first part of their trip, making good speed up the river from the village before they needed to disembark and continue by foot. Four days’ travel had been saved by doing so, and Birgitta ensured the owner of the boat was amply rewarded.

  *

  ‘Is this the region where the Akero live?’ Elysia asked.

  They were walking on a woodland track, passing through towering larch trees as dawn brightened, bringing a yellow sky. Every few steps for the past mile had been over some form of ruined stone, as if the ancient cultures were trying to claw their way from beneath to the present.

  ‘We may well see them soon enough,’ Birgitta replied.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I think they’re here most of the year. Rumours are that they fly south like birds, but I don’t believe such nonsense. People make all sorts of claims about them: that they are celestial beings; that they have come from the seven heavens; that they watch over people.’

  ‘They’re none of those things?’

  ‘It’s all ridiculous nonsense,’ Birgitta said, banging her staff on old stone. ‘By the source, they are simply people who try and scrape by in a world that thinks them strange. And they’ve been here just as long as the rest of us, let me tell you. They’ve had their own troubles over the centuries, within their own kind and with everyone else. I’ve read old accounts of their great battles in the sky. Now they dwindle to just a few communities scattered about the continent. Thankfully they’re left to themselves, for the most part.’

  The path opened out suddenly and they paused.

  ‘Ah, Burgassia,’ Birgitta sighed.

  ‘It’s a place of great beauty,’ Elysia added.

  Perhaps half a mile ahead of them, a river ran along the bottom of a gentle slope. Lush grassland surrounded it, rising up gently for some considerable distance towards angular hills. The skies seemed clearer here, with long streaks of cloud dividing half the sky into shades of blue, and the other into greys. On the ground and scattered about the plains were just a few old dwellings, which looked rundown and uninhabited.

  ‘Oh look! There’s one of your Akero now.’ Birgitta pointed towards the left. There, in the middle of the grassland, was a conical hill with several cave-like entrances at various levels. There was a winged statue upon the eastern slope that Elysia first mistook for one of the Akero, but when she glanced up above the hill she could see one of them for real.

  The figure began to drift towards them.

  A male with long, brown hair arced through the sky. His wings stretched out several feet either side of him; great feathered constructs that looked much like those of an eagle. He wore brown breeches, but no overshirt, exposing his tightly muscled torso, and he carried a spear in his right hand.

  Elysia had forgotten to breathe at the sight of him. He swooped up towards where the sisters had begun to descend from the forest. Banking above them, he scrutinized these travellers, then retreated swiftly to the conical hill.

  ‘I shall never forget the sight,’ Elysia said.

  Birgitta chuckled. ‘He was a handsome one as well. They’re not all like that.’

  ‘You’ve met them before?’ Elysia asked.

  ‘Oh I’ve seen a fair bit of the world, little sister. I’ve met all sorts. But we mustn’t hang about with our jaws hanging down. We’ve much ground to cross.’

  *

  The sisters continued down into the grassland and away from the strange home of the Akero, down towards a wooden bridge that crossed the river and ahead past lifeless old farm buildings. It took longer than Elysia thought to get across the plains. They ate a late lunch of cheese and salted meats acquired in Dweldor, marvelling at the flashes of orchids among the swaying grass. What clouds there had been in the morning vanished, leaving an ocean of blue above.

  ‘What do you think of it?’ Birgitta asked Elysia.

  ‘The food?’

  ‘No, this.’ She gestured to everything around them.

  ‘It’s a wonderful place.’

  ‘No, I mean life on the road. Travelling out to places like this.’

  Elysia gave no deep thought to the matter. ‘It’s the most natural I’ve ever felt.’

  Birgitta scrutinized the response. ‘You are a wild creature at heart.’

  Elysia laughed. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘You are not the only student in the past few years whom I have shown the wider world away from the sisterhood. But they were not at home away from home. Not in the same manner as you.’

  ‘The world fascinates me. I must have made it clear that I’ve never liked Jarratox that much. I had no friends there, not that it bothered me. The older sisters must have found it frustrating that I wasn’t good at what they tried to teach me.’

  ‘It’s because they never realized the correct manner of teaching. We all acquire knowledge in different ways, little sister. Listening to old women lecture is not the best method, I must admit. Tell me, how did you feel in the village when we trapped that figure in the forest. Scared?’

  Elysia took a bite of the tangy cheese and contemplated what it was she had felt that night. ‘If I am honest, I felt very little. I was curious. Then when I saw what it had done to the child . . .’

  ‘Go on . . .’

  ‘I just wanted the thing stopped.’

  ‘Stopped. Do you think it should have been killed?’

  ‘That’s not my place to say.’

  ‘When I gave the order you had no hesitation.’

  ‘None at all. Human or animal, it made no difference at the point where I released the arrow.’

  ‘If indeed it was a human,’ Birgitta muttered. ‘But your answer is of great interest.’

  ‘Everything is of great interest to you.’

  Birgitta smiled. ‘Of course it is! Now, I wonder if on our journey you had to kill another person. Could you do that so easily?’

  Elysia shrugged. ‘I won’t know until I try.’

  ‘You think you will treat it with the neutrality that you have learned so far.’

  ‘It’s habit now, isn’t it? Emotions come later. You look worried, though.’

  �
�There is always something to worry about, little sister.’

  ‘Is it my willingness to kill another human?’

  ‘Perhaps. Or the lack of hesitation. Your hunting skills may transfer easily, but I always prefer non-violence to settle a matter. I hope you can remember that.’

  ‘I will.’ Elysia wondered what exactly the old sister was thinking of when she mentioned killing other people, but there seemed all the time in the world right now and answers would come soon enough. She found herself thinking at a more sedate pace out here. Even though it had only been a matter of days away from the routines and the formal structures of the sisterhood, she was more relaxed, happier. There were no petty arguments, no posturing and politics, no silly rituals and no one fussing over what so-and-so had said.

  Suddenly Birgitta looked about. ‘Can you hear that?’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘A noise. Like someone in pain.’ Birgitta rose up and peered through the swaying grass. She closed her eyes briefly in concentration, hitched up her skirt and strode to find something. Elysia followed.

  A few moments later they discovered an injured Akero sprawled upon the ground. The figure, a female, was unconscious, but breathing; her brown-feathered wing had been broken and her muscled torso was covered in blood.

  ‘Quick, pass me the red stone,’ Birgitta snapped, ‘the healing orb.’

  Elysia rummaged in Birgitta’s bag whilst the woman crouched down to tend to the figure. Once she located the round witchstone she passed it over and watched as Birgitta began to warm it in her hands. The older sister moved it across where the blood was coming from, and the open wound, which was about two inches long, began to close up.

  ‘Can you find me a stick – about as long as an arm, no wider than two fingers?’

  ‘There’s nothing around. But two of my arrows might do?’

  ‘Very good. Choose ones without witchstones.’

  Elysia did as instructed and, knowing what Birgitta was doing, plucked individual strands of grass from the surrounding field. She began to tie the arrows together until they were firmer. She helped Birgitta bind the broken wing to the arrows, which provided support. Once again Birgitta worked the red orb across the injury.