The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1)

by Ben S. Dobson

  Eroh nodded solemnly.

  “The Sky God gave these nine the power to shape and alter the spirits of things, a power called the Highcraft. With it, they could do incredible things. Their bodies did not age, and by shaping the spirit, they could make the world change to match. They could heal wounds and craft impossible artifacts, move the earth and the air, extend their senses over great distances and grant themselves incredible strength. They could ride the currents of the air, which is why we call them Windwalkers. They became leaders and scholars and warriors, each offering great gifts to the Sky God’s people. But first among them was Aryllia the Wise. She was the Sky God’s voice, and led the others against the Deeplings. With their power, they built a great city of crystal spires called the City of Glass, and it became the seat of civilization in the Great Plains, a home where their people could be safe and protected.

  “The Windwalkers kept the Deeplings at bay for centuries, and in that time civilization grew and flourished. Other cities rose, and to help safeguard them, the Sky God sent the true eagles, giant birds a hundred times the size of the ones that remain today.” There, Shona found herself glancing at Goldeyes—the little bird was watching Eian intently, as if listening to the story. “Finally, after hundreds of years and thousands of battles, Dalleon the Golden met the King in the Deep in battle, and bested him. The Windwalkers jailed the King and his Deeplings back beneath the earth.”

  “They won?” Eroh cocked his head. “But there are still Deeplings.”

  “Yes,” said Eian. “Yes, there are. That, sadly, is not the end of the story. The Windwalkers were betrayed. Dalleon was Aryllia’s consort and a great warrior, much beloved during the war and its aftermath. But it was Aryllia the people loved best, and after many years of peace, it was her wisdom and guidance that they celebrated most. Without purpose, Dalleon grew restless. He began to dwell on the possibility that the King in the Deep might someday return, and he begged Aryllia to let him end the threat forever. It was his belief that he could release the Deeplings from their prison only to at last destroy them completely with his power and his army, and in doing so renew his failing glory. But Aryllia refused.

  “So, driven by obsession, Dalleon gathered a cult of loyal followers in secret, and pierced the seal. But the King in the Deep had gathered his strength for more than a hundred years of imprisonment. His corruption was beyond Dalleon’s power to contain, and it poured forth into the world. A dark mist fell over the land, thick enough to blot out the sun, and the earth turned to rot and decay. The Swamp was born, and Deeplings spilled forth into the darkness, stronger than they had ever been in the light of the Sky God’s eye. They besieged the City of Glass without warning. One of our most well-known stories tells of Elica Braveheart fighting alone to give her people time to escape, but by the time the other Windwalkers arrived, she had fallen, and the city with her. The people of the Great Plains were forced to retreat before an army of monsters.

  “The Windwalkers stripped Dalleon of his mark and his power and cast him out, along with his followers. But they could not undo what he’d done. They were able to keep the King in the Deep bound, but not to close the breach in his prison. His power had grown too strong, and it lodged in the opening like a boot in a doorway. Shielded from the Sky God’s eye beneath the mist, that power was enough to corrupt the earth beyond healing. There was no place left for the people of the Plains to flee.

  “But in her great wisdom, Aryllia saw that one final path remained to them. She gathered the remaining Windwalkers together, and they joined their Highcraft as one. From the Swamp, they raised nine mountains whose peaks broke the mist, bearing the greatest remaining cities of the Plains into the sky. The Rising, it came to be called, and the Windwalkers spent nearly all of their power to bring it about. They gathered their people and led them into these mountains, where they forged a new kingdom. Nine cities on nine peaks, each save one governed by a Windwalker. Greenwall, where we are now, was founded by Carris of the Fields; the Plateaus by Aryllia herself, who became the first queen of the Nine Peaks; and so on. And because they were only eight now, they gave the ninth duchy, Goldstone, to their most loyal disciple. A man named Castar.”

  “Like Duke Castar?” Eroh asked.

  “His ancestor, yes. Sometimes given a title like the Windwalkers he served: Castar the Faithful.” Eian’s jaw clenched. “The man you know is hardly worthy to bear his name.”

  Eroh just nodded, accepting that as readily as the rest of the story.

  “Dalleon swore vengeance on the Windwalkers who had abandoned him, but he lacked the power to fight them. He came to an accord with the King in the Deep: together, they would destroy those in the mountains. The King in the Deep granted him the power of the deepcraft, the ability to command the Deeplings and wield dark magicks. The man once called the Golden became the Deepwalker, though whether he chose that name or his enemies chose it for him, I don’t know. In any case, he shared the knowledge of the deepcraft with his followers. The Convocation preaches that it was that power, the corruption of the King in the Deep, that changed them over the years until they became the swamplings.

  “They and the people of the Peaks waged a neverending war against one another. You’ve seen for yourself that we are still fighting it today.” Sadness clouded Eian’s eyes. “Maybe we always will be, though those who started it are long dead. After the Rising, the Windwalkers were never again capable of the great miracles they had once performed. Their Highcraft began to fade, and Dalleon’s had been stripped from him. Without the Highcraft, they were only mortal men and women. They lived out the rest of their lives, and died as mortals do. Today their blood flows in the veins of only a small few highborn families. But the Word of the Wind claims that another Windwalker will come one day, to take Dalleon’s place and make nine again. Another who bears the Sky God’s mark.” Eian made a fork of his fingers, and pointed them toward Eroh’s eyes.

  “Me.” Eroh bit the corner of his lip and squinted, like he was trying to remember something. “Why? I came from the Swamp. In the story, the swamplings helped Dalleon. They were bad.”

  “Perhaps.” Eian’s brow creased. “That is certainly the… easiest way to look at it. The way I did for a long time. But they were only doing as Dalleon told them, and the Windwalkers had been their champions since the beginning. They were damned for doing what they had been taught to do, in a way.” He let out a long sigh and shook his head. “I don’t know, Eroh. I wish I could say why. Why the god I gave my faith to would let so many of your people die for so long, only to send you to us now. If it is mercy… I wish that it had come sooner.”

  Again, Shona didn’t know what to say, but she placed a hand on Eian’s shoulder, for whatever good it might do. He reached up to clasp it in his own.

  Eroh thought for a moment, and then he asked, “Do you think she knows?”

  Shona didn’t quite follow. “Who? Me?”

  “The woman from the Swamp, like me. Do you think she knows why I’m a swampling and a Windwalker?”

  “I can’t say what she knows, Eroh,” Shona said. “But I would like to find out.”

  “Can I come with you when you see her?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but… you draw attention. Castar’s guards know you’re not meant to wander. They won’t let me by if you’re with me.”

  “I very much doubt they will let either of us by, with or without him,” said Eian, scratching thoughtfully at the white stubble that he’d grown on the road. “I have the key to every door in the Stormhall, but Castar’s men aren’t going to let just anyone see this woman, key or no.”

  “What, then?” Shona asked, as much to herself as to Eian. “A distraction? It would have to be something we can time properly. Castar is questioning her now, and he’ll keep going back until he gets what he wants. We need to get to her when he’s not—”

  Eian held up one finger, and she immediately fell silent. He gestured toward
the door, and a moment later she heard what he had: the patter of footsteps, from the corridor outside. What was that? Is someone listening? She held her breath, her heart pounding.

  A muffled shout carried from outside. “Cer Eian!” A frantic knock at the door. “Cer Eian, have you seen the swamp—the Windwalker boy? Is he with you?”

  Shona exhaled with relief and looked down at Eroh; he stared back with unblinking golden eyes. You could at least look a bit sheepish. “No point staying quiet,” she said. “They won’t stop looking until you’re found. Castar will have every man he can spare searching—” Wait a moment. “Every man he can spare. And none of them will question it.” She looked at Eian. His brow knit for a moment, and then a slow smile spread across his face.

  “Eroh,” Shona said, “I think I might take you to see this woman after all. But I’m going to need your help.”

  30. Judgement

  Rudol

  It was a beautiful day, which only made things worse. Rudol would have preferred for the weather to match his mood.

  Orin’s Rest was only a day past, and though spring wasn’t quite done, the beginning of Berian had brought the warmth of summer with it. Beyond the cliff, the sky was clear and blue all the way to the Wolfshead, a distant silhouette on the northwest horizon in the vague shape of a howling wolf. The afternoon sun was high and bright overhead, and the newly returned wind blew in a pleasant breeze from the south, toward the edge of Cliffside’s sheer precipice. Despite the temperate wind and the shade of the pavilion, though, Rudol’s tunic stuck to his skin with sweat. And it had little to do with the heat.

  He was here to watch a man die.

  He’d killed people before, in combat. A few turns before, he could have said it was only swamplings, but no more—his own people had died at his hand now, men of the Peaks. Still, he could live with that. When it was his life or theirs, he could live with it.

  He wasn’t fighting for his life now. He’d sentenced Cadill to die, but not by the sword. Rudol didn’t like how that felt. Everything about it was wrong: the eager crowd gathered around the Cliffside standing ground; the drawn-out show of it all, so different than the swift necessity of battle. This was a sacred trial once, and now we gather to watch this man fall as if it were some piece of festival mummery. Should the Lord of Eagles be judging him, or us?

  The standing ground was a half-circular recess carved into the cliff, nine feet deep and some forty in circumference where it met the sheer drop at Cliffside’s edge. A flat, empty shelf of rock cut into the mountainside, it was starkly bare of ornamentation—of anything that could be used as a handhold. The high iron fence that ran all along the edge of the precipice in Cliffside followed the upper lip of the recess, leaving the ledge below open and unprotected. A second fenced enclosure surrounded the stairway down to the ledge, containing the judges’ pavilion on a high dais at its center and covered seating for the lesser highborn to the left and right, as well as space behind for coaches and wagons. Around the outside of the fence on either side of the enclosure were wooden benches stacked in tiers, enough seating for several hundred—and already full beyond their capacity.

  For lesser trials, a trio of chastors would have overseen the proceedings, but matters of treason were the purview of the king. Or, when the king was indisposed, his son. Rudol sat in the pavilion’s centermost chair, raised slightly above the others, with Carissa to his left and Ren Mulley to his right—it wasn’t law, but by long tradition the royal chastor sat in judgement with the king to help interpret signs from Above. The noble’s seating on either side of the dais was only half full of whatever counts and countesses had been curious enough to come, but outside the fence, a teeming crowd overflowed their wooden benches, standing in the aisles and wherever else they could find space, jostling and shouting and jeering. They stretched all the way back into the narrow Cliffside streets, save for a small aisle the Swords were keeping clear for the delivery of the prisoner.

  But do they want to watch a traitor die, or do they hope to see the Lord of Eagles spare him? Josen’s voice in his head. He is my champion, after all, and they do love me so. Rudol clenched his jaw and ignored it as best he could.

  “Why has no king ever thought to build a standing ground in the Countsbluff?” he muttered, sweeping his glare over the crowd. “We wouldn’t see half this rabble.” He knew why, though. The drop in the Countsbluff wasn’t nearly sheer enough; it would damage the solemnity of the trial to watch the accused bouncing off rocks all the way down the mountain. Ceremony over practicality, as usual. He wiped his brow and shook away the sweat that clung to his fingers.

  Carissa squeezed his hand, and if its clamminess bothered her, she didn’t show it. “You needn’t worry about them, dear. The Swords will see that nothing goes wrong.”

  “I’m sure they will. I expect the trial will go much as they always do. The heat is getting to me, that’s all.” It wasn’t, but he didn’t want to worry her. The last time a mob decided to challenge the Swords, it was a near thing. And there’s a bigger crowd here than when we were attacked.

  His advisors—his father’s advisors, rather—all told him that this was the right thing, and Duke Castar had said the same. But even so, a sense of inevitability had been creeping up from the pit of Rudol’s stomach since he’d awoken. He could feel it on his tongue, prodding at his lips. He had a very strong desire to give a voice to his fear, to call an end to the trial before whatever was going to go wrong could. He fought the urge. Such feelings were superstitious nonsense, and he was not a superstitious man.

  “I only wish we could deal with all traitors so easily,” Carissa said. She didn’t have to mention a name for Rudol to know what she meant.

  He pulled his hand away. “Duke Castar pledged his loyalty to my father in front of his duchy. I trust him.”

  She pursed her lips. “Are you… certain that you can? He’s been strengthening trade with Sunhome and Orimscourt, and now he’s in Greenwall doing Lord of Eagles only knows what with Shona Falloway. He is preparing for something, Rudol, and he is practically at our gates.”

  “He means to repair the Greenwall and strengthen its defenses. That takes resources.” Rudol scowled. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “I’m sorry, dear.” Carissa reached for his hand again, and he let her take it. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Perhaps you’re right. You know the man better than I do. But even if he is loyal, you can’t deny that he and this Windwalker boy have… agitated the lowborn. We must do something.”

  “We are.” Rudol gestured toward the standing ground.

  “This is a beginning, but it won’t reach beyond the Plateaus. I mean something more. Something decisive.”

  Ren Mulley leaned over, his interest piqued. “If I may, Highness, I still think meeting with the Windwalker boy might—”

  “My father is still king. He will deal with the boy when he wakes.” Rudol heard the rumble of wagon wheels and looked over his shoulder; the gaoler’s wagon was approaching through the crowd. As much as he was dreading the trial, he found himself glad of the distraction. “Enough of this. I tire of repeating the same arguments.”

  The driver guided his ponies slowly through the space the Royal Swords had cleared from the press of the crowd. Two Swords in ceremonial tabards—blue with gold cord at the shoulders and waist—clung to each side of the wagon, perched on narrow footboards that ran beneath the doors.

  The wagon stopped before the outer enclosure, and the four Swords stepped down from the footboards to join the two already standing guard there. Together they shoved aside whatever rabble crowded too near and opened the gate; the wagon passed through, followed by the four Swords who had come with it. When they were locked safely inside, the driver maneuvered the vehicle into place with the other coaches and carriages, then climbed down from his seat to unlock the door of the wagon. A fifth man in blue and gold stepped out, leading the prisoner. Carissa’s grip tightened on Rudol’s hand as Cadill stumbled, blinking,
into the sunlight.

  Near two turns in the dungeons hadn’t improved the man’s appearance. If anything, he looked more like a wild boar than he had before. His dirty beard and thinning hair were matted into bristle-like locks, and his upturned nose was smeared with filth as if he’d been snuffling in the mud. He flinched visibly as he stepped into the daylight, and moved to cover his eyes, but his bound hands couldn’t reach.

  One of the Swords shoved Cadill forward; the other four followed them down into the standing ground, where four more guardsmen were already waiting. Watching Cadill walk toward death, Rudol found himself rubbing his bandaged arm—somehow it hurt more than it had just a few moments before.

  When the Swords had filed onto the standing ground and locked the gate behind them, the man leading Cadill unbound his hands and pushed him roughly to his knees at the edge of the cliff. All nine Swords took positions in a half circle around the kneeling prisoner, drew their swords, and stood at attention.

  Which meant it was time to begin.

  Rudol had no interest in prolonging the spectacle. He stood, and nodded to the herald at the side of the dais; the man sounded the customary fanfare on his horn.

  When the crowd had quieted down—as much as so many people ever would—Rudol said, “This man, named Cadill, stands accused of treason and sedition against the throne. The Sky God will decide his guilt or innocence. Cadill, step forward and stand the cliff.” There was no point in saying more; everyone knew why they were here. Rudol motioned for the Swords in the standing ground to begin, and sat down.

  The Swords advanced with blades outstretched, forcing Cadill to the edge of the precipice. They halted only when the man’s toes extended over empty air.

  Now we wait. There was little to standing the cliff but waiting. The accused stood at the edge of the cliff until he fell—meaning the Sky God had found him guilty—or until the three judges agreed that some sign or another sent from the Above indicated innocence. Most lasted no more than a few hours before wind and vertigo and exhaustion conspired to send them over the edge; some few stood for longer, a full day or more on rare occasions. Just as many were overcome by fear and tried to back away or run, but nine armed and armored men stood between them and escape, and death on the sword of a guardsman meant guilt as surely as falling did, with the added shame of cowardice.