The Monster War: A Tale of the Kings' Blades

by Dave Duncan

  They went inside with their arms around each other, babbling the nonsense that is evoked on such occasions: “By the spirits, you’re not the boy I remember.” “You haven’t changed a bit.” “It’s been a lifetime!”…The joy became unbearable, Badger-Bevan’s eyes flooded and his voice cracked.

  Owen released him abruptly, mood changing like a whip crack. “What’s wrong? Why are you here?” He had never approved of unmanly displays of emotion, even from a small boy. Tears had always provoked him to harsher punishment.

  Badger drew one shuddering, deep breath and had himself under control again. “Sorry. My…seeing you…home…”

  The elementary had been built entirely of vertical oak timbers, from an uneven stone floor to a too-high roof, whose rafters were home to bats and birds. It could never have been a comfortable place. Smoke would have filled it whenever the open hearth was lit, and the windows admitted little light, being mere slots through the massive walls. The small room at the back had perhaps been the master’s sleeping quarters, but it had been a later addition, of inferior timber. The minstrel gallery along one side was probably even more recent, but it listed badly.

  The Fellowship had made some effort to clean it up. The eight-pointed star of the octogram was more obvious. Walls, which had no doubt once borne displays of weapons, battle honors, and hunting trophies, were now hung with cabalistic inscriptions on long scrolls. Since a lesson had just ended, the novices in their white gowns stood clustered around adepts, hearing of their failings and successes. They all had their hoods up, so only varying heights suggested which were men and which women—black and white, like pieces in some gigantic board game.

  Yes, Owen had wrought changes, but bring back a roasting ox and a hundred drunken warriors swilling mead and the elementary would again be barbarically impressive. Badger had seen it like that once, the night Ceri raised the banner of rebellion, proclaiming Nythian independence to the cheers of his patriot zealots. Ceri was twelve years dead and the child who had hidden up in that minstrel gallery that momentous night was a grown man now. Yet he felt himself quail under Owen’s terrible stare, and was amazed to discover that Owen could still terrify him. Owen was quite capable of sending him back to Ironhall to die.

  “I came to warn you that you’re under investigation. The Privy Council is after you.”

  “The Council? Not just the Old Blades?”

  “The Council.”

  The Prior’s eye gleamed. “Why?”

  “For the murder of Lord Dig—”

  “It worked?” Owen shouted. “He did die? How? How do you know?” He grabbed his brother’s shoulders as if to crush them. Four years of scholarship had not weakened the demonic grip he had earned in a lifetime of weapons training.

  Badger winced and squirmed loose. “You don’t know this? He dropped dead in the middle of a state reception, in full view of the entire court, practically at the King’s toes.”

  Owen closed his eyes in ecstasy. “I did not know. We were still waiting to hear. And a court reception…We did not plan that! How wonderful are these tidings!”

  “You did it from here? Across the whole width of Chivial?”

  The Prior smiled like a well-fed wolf. “Oh, we have some greatly devious sorcerers in the Fellowship, believe me.” Abruptly his mood changed again, and he impaled his brother with a dark and deadly stare. “But how do you know, mm? Ironhall hears the news and you leave your post?” They who plot treason must be ever on guard against treachery, and a naked sword would have been no greater threat than his suspicion. “Come and let us talk, brother!” he said softly.

  “Of course, brother.” He is going to send me back, Badger thought, and the terror rose again like fire in his throat.

  The Prior’s office in the residence had once been the Baron’s office. Here, too, ancient clutter had been replaced by new. The brothers sat on opposite sides of a table heaped high with papers, while Badger told the story of how he came to be there, back home at Smealey Hole. Owen did not offer food and drink, as one should to a guest who has traveled far. He just sat, still as a corpse, staring at his brother as if watching the words emerge from his lips.

  He will send me back! Badger had sworn an oath. He wondered if he would hold Owen to his word, were their positions reversed. They were very much alike, so alike that he had always assumed they shared the same mother. He did not know that and never could. Although the Baron had collected several luscious beauties during his life and flaunted each in turn as his wife, there had in fact been only one true Baroness. Anwen had been an extraordinary woman, tough as iron and ugly as a plowman’s boot. Rumor, those terrible stories that sprouted like weeds around the House of Smealey, insisted that she had disposed of her rivals, one after another, by way of the river. She had certainly reared all of Modred’s sons, but how many had been hers she had somehow kept a secret, even from them. Perhaps none, because none had looked in the least like her. They had all been handsome: Ceri, Aneirin, Edryd, Kendrick, Lloyd, and Owen. Then Bevan, nine years later. Owen and Bevan, the last two born, the last two still living, two too much alike.

  Outside the tiny window, the light was fading fast. Only when Badger ended his story did Owen speak.

  “So you have delivered your warning. What do you do now?”

  With dry mouth, Badger said, “Whatever you wish. I can catch the morning ferry and ride to Grandon. If asked to explain the delay, I can claim my horse went lame. But the Old Blades will be here within two days, I promise you. Did you buy off the Sheriff of Waterby, or just frighten him away?”

  Owen sneered contempt. “None of my doing. The cold shadow of death has shriveled his manhood.” He clasped his thick hands, as he did when he was thinking. “Where do you stand in Ironhall?”

  “I am Prime.” There was the agony.

  “Already?”

  Four years ago he had sworn his oath. He would claim to be only fifteen, he had said. Get him enrolled, he had promised Owen, and he would work his heart out every day for the next five years. He would be one of the best. The best went into the Guard, bound by the King himself. Bevan Smealey had been no stranger to a sword, even then, although what Owen had been teaching him was Isilondian technique, quite different from Ironhall style; in some ways it had been a hindrance. But he had done well and won praise. Ironically, his success had hardly mattered. Every live body went into the Guard now, to make up the losses of the Monster War. He had been granted only four years, not five.

  “Already. Leader told me they would have bound more of us last time except the Guard cannot strip Ironhall of all its seniors. They need us to coach the kids.” Two months, no more, Bandit had said, and that had been two weeks ago. “But you, brother? What of your oath?”

  Owen’s eyes shone wolflike in the gloom. “Close, very close! I did what I promised, I collected the finest team of enchanters ever brought together. Digby was our final test. We have learned how to slay at a distance—any distance. If the tyrant flees to the ends of the earth, he cannot escape me!”

  He is going to send me back. They had sworn to slay King Ambrose. They had shaken hands on it, that the oath would bind both until one succeeded. They had agreed that Owen would set up the school of magic he planned and Bevan would enroll in Ironhall. When King Ambrose tried to bind Candidate Badger, Badger would kill him, but then he must die as well, cut down by the Guard. No more than six weeks left—was it so surprising that he slept poorly now?

  “How soon can you do this?” He was ashamed to hear a tremor in his voice. He did not want to die.

  Owen sighed. “As soon as I can find the link I need, and that is a matter of chance. As when Digby came here last week. He recognized me—not me personally, but this.” The Prior’s fingers touched the silver streak in his hair. “Ceri and Kendrick had it also, remember? Anwen told me once that the Baron had it in his youth, but he lost his hair early. Digby was Ambrose’s Master of Horse in the Nythia campaign. The day Lloyd and Kendrick and the others ambushed the
King outside Waterby, he saw the bodies after Durendal had finished with them. He probably saw Ceri the following year when they cut his head off, if not before.” Owen bared his teeth. “And then he saw this badge of ours again, right here in Smealey Hole. He knew the Privy Council would not rejoice to hear that a Smealey was running a school of magic in the traitors’ nest.”

  “He wanted the Sheriff to bring his Yeomanry against you.”

  Owen shrugged. “I gambled that the decrepit Florian would not heed his bluster.”

  “It’s amazing he did not send a letter to Snake.”

  “He did send a letter. The boy taking it to the ferry was very happy to exchange it for a handful of gold. We used Lord Digby as a test of our new sorcery, and it worked. It worked!” He licked his lips. “Wonderful news!”

  Struggling to seem calmer than he felt, Badger asked, “What is this link you need to slay Ambrose?” And to free me from my oath.

  “A gift,” his brother said. “The subject must be linked to another person by the giving or receiving of a gift. The link does not last long, as you may guess, just a few days. Like gratitude. We need the gift itself and the other person. Digby’s guide here was a forester named Rhys. He gave him a gratuity, of course, as expected.”

  “A hunting horn. I heard of it. I don’t understand how that—”

  “It is just the way the sorcery works,” Owen said dismissively. “It strengthens the spiritual link between them, making it so strong that when we kill one, the other dies also. We needed a few days to lure Rhys within our reach, but we got him, and the sorcery worked. I ran Rhys through with a sword myself, and you tell me that Digby fell dead in front of the King! Wonderful! But it may take a long time to locate someone linked that way to the tyrant, and then snare him while the link is still effective.”

  A wild surge of excitement made Badger stutter. “G-g-gift? Someone the King’s given a gift to recently?”

  Owen’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “A physical object, not just a title or a word of praise. And it must be freely given.”

  Badger chuckled. The chuckle became a snigger, then laughter. Tears came to his eyes as all his pent-up terror was released in helpless bellows of mirth.

  “Stop it!” his brother roared, rising. “What’s the matter with you! Pull yourself together!”

  Badger pulled himself together. He gasped, choked, and then wiped his eyes. “I have exactly what you need, Prior Owen, and the man you want is undoubtedly snooping around the valley at this very moment. He was coming in by the canyon road. The King hung this on him just the night before last.” He tossed out on the table a diamond-studded brooch in the form of a star.

  15

  Unwelcome Discovery

  It was a small miracle that Sir Stalwart, companion in the Loyal and Ancient Order of the King’s Blades, did not topple off the rock and perform a graceful seal dive into the black water racing right under his head. He hauled himself up with the aid of the rope and wriggled backward until more of him was supported. He felt giddy—from being upside down, or the shock, or both.

  He had first seen Digby more than two years ago, droning on about honor and service on Durendal Night. He had seen him again in the palace. Although they had not been close on either occasion, he was absolutely certain that the man in the water was Digby—and Digby clad in the remains of a forester’s green. This was madness! No one could have spirited that corpse from Grandon all the way here. And for what purpose? Just to flush it down Smealey Hole?

  The body in the water must be the real Lord Digby, and the man who had died in Nocare had been an imposter. Just because no one had ever heard of an enchantment that would make one man look exactly like another did not mean that one could not be invented. The switch had been made when he’d visited Smealey Hall, and the phony had been sent back with Rhys….

  There were maggots in that theory. Why had none of Digby’s retainers detected the change? Or the King, his friend? Why had the White Sisters not sensed the magic on him when he entered the hall…? And the wrong man had died anyway! Why? How? Had the fake Lord Digby intended to kill the King and somehow turned the sorcery on himself? And why had the White Sisters not detected that piece of magic when he brought it in? Why had the imposter not made his move the previous evening, when he’d supped with the King?

  Shivering on the rough slab with his head and shoulders still overhanging the river, Stalwart realized that no one would believe his story without evidence. He edged forward and downward again and took another look at the corpse. The only part of it that he could possibly hope to catch with a noose was the head, but that was resting on the rock below, with only the face out of water. It wouldn’t work.

  He had to try at least once. He stretched the noose wide, then lowered it into the water. The current swept it away, twirling the rope like a spinner’s yarn. He hauled it in and tried again, this time casting it upstream in the hope it would have time to sink before it was washed down to the body. That worked no better. What he needed was a pole with a hook. Not having one, he must just come back in the morning with helpers and hope the body was still there.

  Wearily he began to clamber up the rocks. Shock and disappointment lay on him like a wagonload of tiles. Two nights without—no, really three nights without enough sleep. Plus two long rides—Valglorious to Grandon, then Grandon to Waterby. He needed a soft, warm bed more than anything.

  He reached the top, where he had tied the rope. He pulled his shoulders over the edge and was about to grab a handy branch of driftwood to pull himself farther when he realized that the branch was, in fact, one of a pair of boots. Emerald! He had given her strict orders not to come back to help.

  Yelling over the roar of the falls: “I thought I told you—”

  Those boots were far too large to be hers. And there were more of them. Eight in all. Balanced on one foot and the toes of another, gripping rocks with bloody, frozen hands, he felt himself freeze in a rush of despair. He had failed.

  He had left Sleight with Emerald.

  But that hardly mattered, because a sword now advanced until its point was right between his eyes.

  “You must be Wart,” said an unfamiliar voice. “Do you want to die now or later?”

  16

  Meanwhile, His Sword

  Emerald had ridden to the top of the cliff with Mervyn, but there she reined in. “I’m going to wait here for Wart—I mean Sir Stalwart. Do you want to go on?”

  The old man chuckled. “No, er…Master Luke. My eyes aren’t what they were, but I can find the path in the dark and doubt you could. Nor yon stripling Blade neither.”

  “You were right earlier, Master Mervyn, when you called me ‘lass.’ I’m no Luke.” She had decided that she could trust him, unlike his enchanted master, the Sheriff.

  He cackled. “Your legs are wrong shape for a boy’s, miss, but very fine indeed for girl’s.”

  “Um…thank you.” That was the first time a man had ever told her that. Of course until yesterday she had never displayed them in hose. So what if he was two hundred years old? It was a start.

  “’Course a forester’s trained to see what he’s looking at, unlike most folk.”

  “Er, yes. My real name is Sister Emerald.”

  He coughed an oof! of surprise. “My lady! I did not dream—”

  “That’s all right. You could not know. That was how I found that body. It has magic on it. I am sorry, Forester, but I greatly fear it will prove to be your grandson.”

  He sighed. “Aye.” And there was silence.

  She dismounted and sat on a rock to wait. The old forester hobbled the horses and removed their bridles so they could graze. He perched on another boulder and time seemed to freeze.

  Night fell. Wart did not come. She could see nothing down in the canyon shadows where the angry waters roared. She kept telling herself that he was an air person, nimble as a squirrel when it came to climbing.

  Mother Superior had called him, “dangerously overconfi
dent.”

  At last she said, “He should be here by now.”

  “Reckon so, my lady.”

  “I greatly fear that treason and black magic both are plotted in Smealey Hole these days.”

  “Aye, milady. Evil is a common crop there.”

  “Outsiders must visit it sometimes, though? Tinkers who mend pots?” That had been Badger’s suggestion and she still had a painful distrust of that dismal man.

  “Not many. Milady, Sheriff told us to stay away from the Hole. Got no cause to vex the conjurers, he says. But if they’re behind Rhys going missing, and if they harm yon boy, then I know the lads will rally to my horn. Dozen of us, an’ I can find half as many again, given a day.”

  Another day would be far too late. If the intruder had been spotted and those mysterious swordsmen had gone to investigate, Wart might be dead already. She was horribly conscious of the awkward weight of his sword at her side and his commission with the royal seal tucked away in her jerkin. His only hope was to be taken in for questioning, and that would provide only a brief and highly unpleasant delay before the same watery ending. He carried nothing to prove that he was anything more than a common poacher. What happened to petty poachers in Smealey country, anyway? No court could summon evidence from the bottom of the Hole.

  When the stars came out, she knew that she could not go back to Waterby without finding out what had happened to Wart.

  “Forester, Sir Stalwart has been delayed.”

  “Aye, milady.”

  “Detained, likely.”

  “Aye, milady.”

  “That’s a breach of the King’s peace, because he’s an officer of the Crown. Will you please go back to Waterby and bring a posse? I leave it up to you whether you tell the Sheriff or just round up a bunch of your friends. Meet me here at sunup. If I’m not here, then I have been detained also. Come and rescue us.”