The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1)

by Ben S. Dobson

  Rudol smiled uncertainly, but didn’t answer. Duke Castar’s praise was not unwelcome, but he didn’t want to speak until his father did. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing and break the spell. What kind of king are you going to make? Josen whispered in his thoughts. I didn’t want the crown, but at least I wasn’t afraid to open my mouth.

  Gerod laid a finger against his jaw. “A fair argument, but I am not convinced. Anointing Rudol so soon will only remind the lowborn of what he had to gain from Josen’s death. Hardly a matter I want them dwelling on.”

  “The coronation will be above reproach,” said Duke Castar. “During Aryll’s Rest, the Lord of Eagles supposedly alights upon the Godspire to watch over his children, yes? An heir anointed with the Sky God himself standing witness can hardly be questioned. The people will respond to that. Perhaps not all of them, but enough. It’s what they’ll need, now that their old idol has fallen. Remember, they were betrayed by Josen too; it is a simple enough thing to turn the affection they had for him into affection for the son who remained true. And with the lowborn, affection is the best currency.”

  Gerod sat silently for a long while, one finger tapping against his throne. Finally, he nodded. “It may be the best of poor options, but what you say has merit. Josen is gone, and there is no purpose in trying to preserve his reputation now. Let the lowborn have their rumors. We will hold this public coronation, and soon they will devote their attention to the new heir rather than the old.”

  Castar smiled. “I’m glad I could be of service, Your Majesty.”

  “You aren’t finished yet. We have more to discuss.” King Gerod glanced at Rudol, and waved him away with a flick of his hand. “Rudol, you may go.”

  Rudol creased his brow. He’d expected… something else. Duke Castar’s words had carried him away, to a place where he’d almost believed he could be as loved as Josen had been. A pillar of devotion. Maybe they’ll finally see that I’ve been the one doing his duty all this time. “I thought… Shouldn’t I be here, if I am to be part of this?”

  Gerod raised an eyebrow. “Why? Do you have anything to add?”

  Rudol opened his mouth, but he couldn’t think of a reply that wouldn’t make him look like an idiot. A glance at Duke Castar elicited a sympathetic frown, but nothing more. And what more should I expect? His father was right—there was little he could offer here. He shook his head. “No. Nothing.”

  “Then I will tell you what I need from you when we are done here,” said Gerod. “Go, speak with your wife. She will have to stand with you during the coronation. The people will want to see their future queen. I imagine her excitement will be boundless.”

  “Yes, Father.” Rudol got to his feet. The wind howled around him like laughter.

  Gerod looked him up and down as he stood. “My heir. Well, at least you do as you’re told better than your brother ever did.” He waved his hand in dismissal and turned his attention back to Duke Castar and his councillors.

  Keeping his head low to avoid the eyes of the Windwalkers, Rudol began the long walk down the stairs alone.

  15. Forward or Nothing

  Lenoden

  Lenoden tapped his foot impatiently as the aviator pulled at various ropes that hung from the balloon above, guiding their basket down onto the Goldstone cliffs.

  The descent always seemed to take longer when he had important matters to attend, as if the full day and night’s flight from the Queensmount hadn’t been long enough already. Sleep had been nigh-impossible—no surprise, in a wicker basket rocked by icy winds, with what might as well have been a second moon floating directly overhead. The few times he’d blocked out the glow of the lightworm-silk balloon enough to drift off, some shudder or sway had startled him awake again, until the morning sun had risen over the horizon and he’d finally given up trying. They’d been near enough to the Rusted Peak by then that he could see the iron-rich slopes glinting red in the sunlight; the landing would only have roused him anyway.

  Leaning over the edge of the basket, he looked down at the basket-launch. He was high enough still that the workers were little more than toy figurines scuttling around in preparation beneath a large banner displaying his family colors, a golden peak on red. His eyes shifted past the edge of the cliff to the dark mist that obscured the Swamp, thousands of feet below. He knew it was irrational, but the sight always made him uneasy. Not the distance down—few in the Nine Peaks had any fear of heights—but the ignorance of what lay beyond. An army could be passing below me right now and I would never know it. He didn’t much like not knowing.

  They were nearly down, now, floating a half-dozen yards above the little plateau. The aviator tossed several ropes over the sides, and the men on the ground took hold and started heaving. Lenoden didn’t wait for them to finish anchoring the basket; as soon as it was low enough, he vaulted over the side and dropped the last eight feet or so. He landed in a crouch and braced one hand against the ground as the shock of impact ran through his flight-numb legs. Not a debilitating pain, but enough to wake him up after a long night aboard the basket.

  A pair of fine leather boots stepped into view before his downturned eyes. “I am quite certain that you will break your legs if you keep doing that, Your Grace.” The nasal tone of Marcas Tammen’s voice was unmistakable.

  Lenoden looked up at his steward’s familiar face—thin and pinched, with an expression that suggested he had smelled something unpleasant. “You say that every time, Marcas. You worry too much.”

  “That is what makes me so useful to you, Your Grace.” Tammen waved down the nearest basket worker. “You, fetch the duke’s things. Have them loaded in the carriage.” The man bowed, and scuttled off to do as he’d been told.

  Lenoden rose to his feet and dusted his hands off on his breeches. “Did my guests arrive safely?”

  Tammen’s expression didn’t change. It rarely did. “Several days ago, Your Grace. I arranged accomodations for them in town.”

  “Excellent. I will see them immediately.”

  Tammen nodded and gestured toward a waiting carriage drawn by two stout Wolfshead ponies. “After you, Your Grace.”

  The basket launch sat above the rest of the duchy to give the aviators better access to the higher wind currents, and the trail down was long and winding. Through the carriage window, Lenoden watched as the city slowly revealed itself. It didn’t happen all at once; Goldstone didn’t spread out before the eye the way the Plateaus did. The Rusted Peak lacked such vast shelves of land. Instead, much of the city was inside the mountain itself, large districts hollowed into the stone. Fitting, Lenoden had always thought, in a duchy known for its deep mines—the bulk of it was beneath the surface, hidden behind the huge exterior facades that marked each of Goldstone’s three districts.

  The facades were the only sign of the districts that lay beneath the mountainside, and they were impossible to ignore. Each boasted stonework arches and pillars, huge braziers that blazed night and day, engravings inlaid with precious gems and metals—whatever ornament the district could afford. The mines had made Goldstone the richest duchy in the Nine Peaks, and his people were not subtle about it. Even the Copper District, where the miners and laborers dwelled, had built up an impressive exterior over the years. They still lived in relative squalor, of course, but even the peasants took pride in presenting a respectable front.

  And wealth was pride in Goldstone, or at least the appearance of wealth. Other duchies had their Windwalkers, the history and legends of Orim the Scholar or Luthas the Bright or Aryllia herself, but Goldstone had never been governed by a Windwalker. The Deepwalker’s duchy, some called it—the mountain that could have been Dalleon’s, except that there would be no mountains if not for his betrayal. So Lenoden’s duchy had no Eagle banners, no stories of some legendary founder; instead, it had gold and silver and copper, marble and gemstones and iron. And it had its facades.

  There were proper buildings outside the districts as well, on whatever meager flat spaces presen
ted themselves. The Goldfort—his family home—and the nine-tiered eyrie sat on a plateau above the Gold District in the east, and a smaller flat between the Silver and Copper Districts in the west held the shops and stalls of the marketplace. Windmills jutted out of the mountain here and there, pumping water up from aquifers far below. Connecting it all, wide roads curled back and forth across the cliffs like snakes, tunnelling into the mountain wherever the slopes became too steep.

  And those roads were always busy. Through the window, Lenoden watched men and women dart aside to allow the carriage to pass. People had been trampled in the streets before, and for most citizens of Goldstone, the sound of wheels on the road prompted a hasty dodge to one side or the other.

  “How was your time in the Plateaus, Your Grace?” Tammen asked over the low rumbling of the carriage. “Shall I send some gesture of condolence to King Gerod in your name?” Lenoden heard the second meaning behind the question: shall I send any new instructions to my spies in the Plateaus? His steward was a cautious man, and the driver might have been listening.

  “No, not at the moment. I spoke to him personally. It went… very well.” Better than he’d expected, really. Gerod had agreed to everything Lenoden had needed him to, and even argued where expected—the king’s feud with the high chastor would lead the Convocation right into Lenoden’s open arms. The only dark spot had been Shona’s outburst, and even that was not a surprise. The girl had always been inexplicably fond of Josen. But her suspicions were just that, and she didn’t have to like Lenoden to wed him. Greenwall would be his one way or another. “Keep to your duties as usual, Marcas. I will let you know if I need anything.”

  “Very well, Your Grace.”

  Tammen directed the driver to the Gold District in the east of the city, closest to the baskets, where the wealthiest traders and counts kept their homes. Beyond the ornate entryway, a great man-made cavern burrowed deep into the mountain, lit by countless gas-lamps all along the western wall.

  The homes were all on the east side, to allow daylight through windows in the cliffs there. Manor-fronts passed by one by one as the carriage rolled along, looking very much like smaller replicas of the massive facade outside, complete with pillars and braziers and unnecessary gilding. There were other carriages here too, passing by on the road or waiting in front of manors. Walking the steep paths of Goldstone unaided was for the peasants of the Copper District, not the wealthy merchants and counts of the Gold.

  “The Gold District? Really, Marcas?” Lenoden raised an eyebrow. He’d wanted the swamplings’ presence kept discreet.

  Tammen inclined his head in a slight nod. “Trust me, Your Grace. We are simply paying a visit to one Calen Haphart, a respected trader. I thought you would want to thank him personally. He has lent us the use of several dozen wagons to transport stone for the repairs in Greenwall. I can’t imagine anyone would find anything out of the ordinary in that.”

  “One of your arrangements. I should have known.” Lenoden never arranged such things himself—Tammen was far more skilled than he at the misdirection required. When a secret meeting was necessary, the skinny, bookish steward transformed into quite a clever rogue. “I assume the man hasn’t met my new guests?”

  “He hasn’t had the pleasure. He was away when they arrived.”

  “Very well.” He leaned forward, scrutinizing Tammen’s narrow face. “And what of you, Marcas? I hope you did nothing to bother them.”

  “I respected their privacy, as instructed, Your Grace. Speaking of which…” Tammen fished something out of the coinpurse at his belt and held it out in his open palm. “Your ring.”

  Lenoden took the signet ring and slid it onto his finger. “Good man.” He believed Tammen without further question. His steward was a practical man; he knew the rewards for performing his duties to the letter, and the consequences for failure. That understanding made him trustworthy. And given that Lenoden spent turns at a time in Greenwall to pursue his ambitions with the Knights of the Storm—and with Grantley Falloway’s daughter—a trustworthy steward was a necessity. Someone had to oversee the everyday concerns of the duchy in his absence.

  Tammen knocked on the side of the carriage as they drew even with the next manor, and the wheels rattled to a stop. “Here, Your Grace.”

  The dwelling looked much like the rest of them. Two tall pillars encircled with golden ivy loomed on either side of the entryway, and a door knocker hung from the gilded beak of some bird of prey—an eagle would have had the chastors claiming sacrilege, so a certain measure of vagueness tended to be used in such sculpture. Tammen took the ring in hand and beat a careful pattern of taps against the door, then produced a key and unlocked it himself. He gestured for Lenoden to follow him inside.

  If there was anyone else in the house, they stayed out of sight. Tammen led the way to a basement wine cellar, and then strode to the corner of the room and wrestled a waist-high cask aside—clearly empty, if those scrawny arms could move it. A wooden hatch lay beneath.

  Tammen pulled the little door open, and nodded toward a lantern and tinderbox sitting on the floor at the foot of a nearby wine rack. “You’ll need that, Your Grace. This passage will take you to your guests. I will wait here.”

  Lenoden picked up the lantern and lit it, then held it over the dark opening and peered in. A stone staircase descended into shadows beyond the reach of his light; he couldn’t tell where it led. “God Above, Marcas, you needn’t have gone this far. When did you have this made? Where does it go?”

  “You sent very little information, Your Grace. I thought it best to be as cautious as possible, in the absence of more detailed instructions. As for the passage itself, it is quite old—not my doing. The product of some illicit liason long ago, I imagine. I’d had dealings with Haphart before he purchased the manor; when he discovered the hatch, he thought I would find it interesting. It leads to a dwelling in the Copper District, where your guests await.”

  “Your talent for these things never disappoints, my friend.” Lenoden chuckled. “I don’t know how long this will take. Haphart and his people will keep themselves out of sight as long as necessary, I trust?”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “Very well. I will return as soon as I am able.” Holding the lantern in front of him, Lenoden started down the stairway.

  * * *

  It was a long while before Lenoden came to the end of the passage; the Copper District was considerably lower on the mountain than the Gold. He emerged from another wooden hatch, pushed aside the tattered rug that lay atop it, and found himself inside a small miner’s dwelling. What might charitably have been called the kitchen—a fireplace with a spit over it—sat against the back wall, and a pair of beds occupied one corner. There didn’t appear to be any other rooms; the only door was the main entryway, across from the fire.

  A table and a few chairs filled the center of the dwelling, and in two of those chairs sat Auren and the boy. Neither wore their hoods. Two pale white faces turned toward Lenoden; two golden eagle’s eyes and two empty sockets stared at him as he climbed out of the hidden stairway. For a moment, he felt strangely naked, vulnerable; a shiver passed through him, but he shrugged it away. Don’t show your unease. They must understand who is in control.

  Lenoden pulled out a chair. “I apologize for these… modest quarters,” he said as he sat down. “You will not be here long, if you do as I ask.”

  “I thought we were going to see a castle,” Eroh said in a small voice, his eyes downcast. In the light he looked even more fragile than he had in the Swamp, all impossibly slender limbs and near-translucent skin.

  “Hush, Eroh,” said Auren. “We have been very comfortable here—more so than we would be in the Swamp, at least. You should thank Duke Castar.”

  Here in the light, Lenoden noted that the older man wasn’t quite as pale as Eroh was—still white, almost impossibly so, but there was the slightest hint of color in his cheeks. His tangled mane of hair wasn’t the same milk-white as the
boy’s, either, but rather a coarse grey. And though his empty sockets were unnerving, they were much less so than the obsidian eyes of the swamplings. Still, there was a strange feel to him, hard to define but unmistakable. Almost like the sensation of being watched by someone unseen.

  He didn’t care for it.

  At his grandfather’s command, Eroh looked up and quietly said, “Thank you.” He’d certainly inherited the old man’s off-putting presence: those golden eyes made Lenoden feel like some ancient eagle was sizing him up as prey. It was a striking contrast, a child’s soft voice coming from behind eyes that looked as old as the mountains. Like something from a dream, Lenoden thought—the sort where nothing was what it seemed, and anything could shift all at once into something else entirely. How can anyone who grew up in the Swamp seem so… sheltered?

  Nonetheless, he smiled at the boy. “You will see my castle soon, Eroh. But first, your grandfather and I must talk.” From his coin purse, he produced the toy eagle figurine he’d bought before leaving the Plateaus and slid it across the table. “Here. I brought you something.”

  Eroh picked up the toy and turned it over in small white hands, studying it with a predator’s intensity. His timidity lifted for a moment, and he looked at Lenoden with slightly widened eyes. “This is for me? What is it?”

  Of course. Birds don’t go below the mist. The toy had seemed appropriate when he’d seen it in the market, but he’d been thinking of Eroh as a child of the Peaks, not the Swamp. “We call it an eagle. They are… a sort of flying creature that you might see in the skies here. The real ones are much larger.”

  “Oh, I know about eagles. Our eyes are the same, Grandfather says.” Eroh held the toy close to his face to examine the painted eyes, and nodded in apparent satisfaction. “I’ve never seen one, though.” With one hand, he made the little bird swoop and dive in front of him. “I hope I do someday.”

  Maybe it was not such a mistake after all. Lenoden smiled to himself. “I will take you to the eyrie, one day soon,” he said. “They have eagles there, and many other birds besides.” The birdkeeper wouldn’t want a child poking at his eagles, or bothering the messenger falcons, but he wouldn’t deny a request from his duke. That would come later, though—right now, he couldn’t risk anyone seeing those eyes.