The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1)

by Ben S. Dobson

  “Your Highness, this is—” Benedern began.

  At the same moment, Carissa said, “She’s just trying to—”

  “Quiet!” Rudol barked, and his fingers clenched around the arms of his chair. His eyes didn’t stray from Shona’s face. “What is this proof?”

  “The boy,” said Shona. “Eroh.”

  “Where?”

  “The Stormhall,” she said. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll take you to him.”

  Josen

  “He’s asleep. The swamplings are in there with him—the boy says he insisted on climbing without help most of the way. Nearly killed himself doing it. He could barely stand when we found him.”

  Josen recognized Falyn Morne’s voice through the door, and he wished she’d been right. He lay in bed with his eyes closed, and his awareness waxed and waned, but he wasn’t asleep. The pain wouldn’t allow him that mercy. Every muscle in his body was stiff and sore, and all of them together were still less painful than the agony of his ruined side. He couldn’t move his left arm beyond slight twitches of his fingers; somewhere near the top of the cliffs, it had simply stopped, gone so limp that he couldn’t close his fist. For the last few rises, Iktin had been forced to carry him in the harness again. He remembered little after leaving Tez and Iktin at the top of the cliffs, just vague images of the back of a supply wagon. He supposed that was how they’d gotten from the flats to the Stormhall, but he’d hardly been conscious by then.

  But they’d made it before sunrise, and they hadn’t been seen. That was all that mattered.

  “I’d let him sleep if I could, but we need him. His brother is outside.” That was unmistakably Shona. “I’ll wake him. You make sure that Knight-Commander Farrel and his men are ready. Come fetch us when Rudol is in the assembly hall.”

  No point in trying to rest, then. Josen opened his eyes. He didn’t clearly remember getting there, but he was in a room very like the one he’d been given at the Stormhall in Greenwall. Most of the knights slept on cots in a communal barracks when they were on duty, but a few more comfortable chambers were kept for visiting highborn and the like. It was sparsely furnished beyond two beds and bedside tables, a lit fireplace surrounded in a few chairs, and an oaken wardrobe, but still vastly more luxurious than the Swamp. He hadn’t slept in a real bed in a real room for well over a full wind-cycle now. I wish I was in a better state to enjoy it.

  The swamplings were so quiet and still that he hardly noticed them at first, though he’d heard Morne say they were there. Verik leaned against the wall near the fireplace, his brow slightly furrowed, and he kept glancing nervously toward the door. Azra sat with Eroh in the chairs before the fire; she was peering at the masonry with apparent interest. She held Eroh’s hand, and he’d pushed his chair close to hers, leaning against her side with Goldeyes on his shoulder. They might have been siblings, the older sister looking after her little brother. It made Josen think of Rudol, of the timid boy that had so idolized him once. And now I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t kill me on sight. He was rather clear about that promise.

  Azra and Eroh were facing the fire, so they didn’t see him stir, but Verik noticed instantly. He stood up straight at the first sign of motion; in two quick strides he was at Josen’s bedside, like a physician who had been waiting for his patient to wake.

  At the same time, the door creaked open and Shona poked her head inside. “Josen?” she said, in a near-whisper.

  Abruptly, it occurred to Josen that he was shirtless. Someone undressed me. There wasn’t much time to wonder who had done it—he just prayed that it hadn’t been Shona. If she hadn’t seen the ruin of his body yet, there was no reason for her to see it now. He hurriedly pulled his blanket up to hide his chest and arm.

  “I’m awake,” he said, or tried to—it came out as little more than a croak. He hadn’t realized just how thirsty he was until that moment, and suddenly he couldn’t concentrate on anything else.

  The table by the bed held a pitcher of water and a metal cup. Without a word, Verik filled the cup and held it to Josen’s lips, helping to prop his head up with a gentle hand. Josen gulped down the cool water clumsily, streams of it running down his chin, and motioned for another, and then a third. While he drank, Shona slipped into the room; the moment she entered, Azra stood, pulling Eroh with her, and moved to stand over Josen on the far side of his bed, across from Verik and the door.

  When he finished his third cup of water, Josen cleared his throat. “That’s enough.”

  Verik returned the cup to the bedside table, and Josen lay back against his pillow. He tilted his head toward Shona; she was still standing just inside the door, a concerned frown on her lips.

  “Don’t worry,” said Josen. “You didn’t wake me. It hurts too much to sleep.” His voice was still hoarse, but at least it was audible.

  “Rudol is here,” Shona said. “We need you.” She approached slowly, glancing nervously at Azra; the swampling girl was watching from across the bed with fierce dark eyes.

  “That’s unfortunate, because I’m not sure I can stand,” said Josen. He sat halfway up, and then grunted in pain and fell back.

  “Let me.” Shona reached out one hand.

  “No!” Josen gripped his blanket tight and tried to pull back, but he was still weak, and there wasn’t far to go within the confines of his bed.

  Before Shona could reach him, Verik stepped between them and grabbed her wrist. He knows I don’t want her to see, Josen realized. Of course he does. He did this to me. But even so, he felt a swell of gratitude.

  Shona pulled her hand free and stepped back, glaring at Verik. “Josen, what—”

  “I don’t need help,” said Josen. He tried to sit up again, forced his way through the pain, and made it all the way this time. Still clutching his blanket to his chest, he resettled himself with his back against the headboard, and sat there a moment to let the cold fire in his side abate. “Just get me my clothes.”

  Shona looked from Josen to Verik, and her eyes narrowed, but she went to the wardrobe and looked inside. “I don’t see them. Someone must have taken them for cleaning. Or thrown them out. There wasn’t much worth saving.” She pulled out a neatly folded stack of storm-grey cloth and a pair of black boots. “They left you something, though. Here.” She placed the boots on the floor and tossed the clothing onto the bed.

  Before Josen could move, there was a knock from outside. “It’s me,” came Cer Falyn’s voice, muffled by thick oak.

  Shona pulled open the door. “Rudol is ready for us?”

  “He and his party are in the assembly hall,” said Morne.

  “Give us a moment,” said Shona. “There’s… something I need to talk to Josen about.”

  Morne nodded. “Don’t take long. Prince Rudol has never seemed to me a very patient man.” She moved to stand sentry outside the door, and Shona pushed it shut behind her.

  Josen glanced pointedly at the clothes lying on his bed. “Maybe the rest of you could wait with her for a moment?”

  “After,” said Shona. “This will be short, and Cer Falyn is right: we don’t want to be longer than we have to.”

  He gestured impatiently. “Talk, then.”

  “Here’s where we stand: I’ve told Rudol about Castar’s many and varied lies, and he’s expecting to see Eroh. The only thing he doesn’t know yet is that you’re here—I didn’t want to give him a chance to refuse to see you. He won’t react well to the surprise, so be ready for that. I suspect he’ll feel the need to raise his voice.”

  “You don’t say.” Josen smiled weakly, more out of reflex than anything. He wasn’t looking forward to this.

  “Just… tell him your story, what Castar did to you, what you saw. Don’t relent until he listens.”

  Because I’m excellent at making Rudol listen to me. But what he said was, “I’ll try.”

  “There’s something else,” she said. “Benedern is with them.”

  “What?” Josen sat straight up, and immediately regret
ted it. With a groan, he collapsed back against the headboard. He’d seen the high chastor’s body—it wasn’t remotely possible that Benedern had survived the loss of all that blood. But it wasn’t the impossibility of it that bothered him most. “God Above, Shona, you sent Eian away because he was supposed to be the man who killed the high chastor!”

  “Do you think that hadn’t occurred to me?” Shona hung her head. “If I’d known, maybe…”

  “Maybe? He’s going to die for something he didn’t do! I tried to tell him… to tell you—”

  “I didn’t ask him to go!” she cut in, sharper than Josen had expected. Sharper than she’d expected, by the look on her face. She took a breath and unballed her fists. “It was his choice, and it was about more than just Benedern. You know it was. We had to make some kind of bargain, or the swamplings wouldn’t have let us go. Eian saw that. And he… he felt like he had something to atone for. I don’t think it would have made a difference if he’d known Benedern was alive.”

  “It wouldn’t have.” The fight went out of Josen as quickly as it had come. There was too much truth in what she was saying, and he was too tired to keep trying to shout over it. When he really thought about it, he knew who was to blame, and it wasn’t Shona. “Of course it wouldn’t have. He didn’t do it for you, or for Benedern. He did it for me. Nothing would have changed his mind.”

  “It wasn’t your fault either, Josen,” Shona said gently. “I think he did it for them as much as anything else.” She tipped her head toward Azra and Eroh. “You’ve been gone for a long time. You didn’t see what it did to him when he learned that Eroh came out of the Swamp. He wanted to do this. I think he had to.”

  Josen wished he could believe her, but it still felt like a sacrifice made in his name. Too many people were doing that already, and he wasn’t even wearing a crown yet. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter why,” he said. “It’s done. Benedern being here doesn’t change that. We just have to make sure it means something. That’s what Eian would want.” Lord of Eagles, please let all of this mean something. He rubbed at his eyes, and swallowed the pain. “So. How is Benedern still walking? The last I saw, he didn’t look much like he had a second wind in him.”

  “I don’t know. I… I saw his throat cut. He should be dead.” Shona turned to Verik. “Can your… power… whatever it is, can it heal a wound like that? Zerill said that Eroh’s grandfather was something called a Delver, and I thought…”

  “Which?” Verik asked with a frown. “Dead or wounded? Not same.”

  “I would have sworn he was dead,” said Shona. “He claims it didn’t go deep, but the way he was bleeding… it was everywhere.”

  The furrows on Verik’s brow grew deeper. “Is he… wrong? Here?” He gestured at his own neck and lower jaw.

  “What do you mean, wrong?” Shona asked. “He has a scab on his neck, and he acted strangely, but that’s all.”

  “Not healed then,” said Verik. “Maybe worse.”

  Shona frowned. “Worse how?”

  Azra shook her head at Verik and went through a flurry of signs. Josen didn’t know much of their language, but he’d learned some travelling with Zerill. He recognized “quiet” in particular. She didn’t want Verik to say more. Josen wasn’t sure that he did either. The more Shona knew about this kind of healing, the closer she was to learning what had been done to him—and he very much didn’t want to talk about that.

  Verik signed something back; Azra scowled, and then nodded, apparently convinced, or at least unwilling to argue further. Verik looked at Shona once more. “There are… stories,” he said. “Never seen, just heard.”

  Shona raised an eyebrow. “What kind of stories?”

  Verik hesitated briefly, and then, “Of… dead. Brought back.”

  “Can you do that?” Josen had known Verik could heal—after a fashion—but raising the dead was an entirely different kind of power. The idea of it sent birdflesh prickling down his back. “I thought… the Word says only the Windwalkers could.”

  “Makers, no,” said Verik with a shake of his head. “For us, forbidden. Delvers… maybe.”

  “What is a Delver exactly?” Shona looked at Josen instead of Verik—hoping for an explanation that was more than a few terse words, he guessed. “Zerill never told me, just that the old man was one.”

  “I told you they call Verik a Maker?” Josen asked. She nodded. “The way I understand it, Makers have rules on how they can use their power for the good of their people. A lot of rules. A Delver is what they call a Maker who is banished for breaking them.”

  Shona nodded slowly. “And one of these Delvers could have… brought Benedern back? God Above, I can’t believe I’m asking that out loud.”

  “If stories are true,” said Verik. “But not like Windwalkers. Can’t bring back spirit. Just make dead move. Move, speak, remember, but… no spirit. No…” He took a moment to find the word. “No will. Can only obey.”

  “But how do you know he wasn’t just healed?” Shona demanded. “Maybe they just… got to him in time. If you could save Josen from near death, why not Benedern?”

  “Healing alive… hurts,” Verik said. “Twists flesh. Would have seen it, here.” He gestured again at his throat and jaw. “Dead is different. No soul to fight.”

  Shona’s glanced at Josen, and then down his left side. “Twists,” she said. “What do you mean by that exactly? I can’t be sure I didn’t see it on Benedern if I don’t know what it is.” She said the high chastor’s name, but her eyes asked a different question; there was a glimmer of understanding there that made Josen flinch.

  There’s no stopping her now. Just a word or two more from Verik, and then she’d know. Know what had been done to him, know what he was now.

  She would know that he was broken.

  Verik moved his hands, clearly looking for the words to explain. Josen didn’t give him a chance. If she has to know, it’s going to come from me, at least.

  “You never were… very good at giving up,” he said. His voice broke once, but he made himself go on. “I suppose you would always have found out somehow.” He dropped his blanket, let it fall to his waist. “This is what their healing does.”

  Shona’s eyes widened as she took in the ruined landscape of his body, all knotted rises and unnatural hollows. She took a step backward. That hurt. He’d expected it, and he couldn’t blame her, but it hurt.

  “Josen, I… I didn’t know—”

  “I didn’t want you to know. But here we are.” He tried to keep his eyes on her, tried not to look down at himself, but he couldn’t help a glance. It was worse than he remembered. The mottled grey lumps down his torso, the way his withered left arm hung limp in its socket—somehow letting her see felt like seeing all of it again for the first time. He winced, and the knots swelled and contracted in a way that made his stomach heave. Fighting nausea, he fumbled the blanket back into place so he didn’t have to look anymore. “You would have noticed if Benedern had been healed like this, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I… I suppose I would have.”

  She was still staring at his side, as though she could see his injuries through the blanket. After what felt like forever, she looked up at his face, and there was pity in her eyes. Maybe it would have been better if she’d been a stranger, if she had never seen him the way he’d been before. But she had. Only once, but she’d seen his body when it was whole. He could see the memory of it in the way she looked at him now—comparing him to what she remembered from that night in Cliffside. That was more than Josen could take. He turned his head away.

  The silence stretched on, and then, finally, she asked, “Why? I don’t understand. Why did healing do this to you and not Benedern?”

  Josen shrugged his good shoulder. “I don’t know much more than Verik told you.” He kept his eyes down, but he could tell that she was still looking. He wished she would stop. All he wanted now was for her to forget what she’d seen, or at least pretend she had. “It’s som
ething to do with the… the spirit resisting. The way he explained it to me, the souls of living things fight the deepcraft. But I suppose a corpse isn’t much different than rocks and wood.”

  “So the high chastor is… what? Some soulless thing? The tool of a… a Delver?” She pursed her lips, and to Josen’s relief she turned to face Verik. “Does that mean Eroh’s grandfather can communicate with Benedern somehow? Give him orders, receive messages?”

  “Don’t know,” said Verik. “No Maker ever tried.”

  Shona rubbed the heel of her hand against her forehead. “Then… better to plan for the worst. We have to assume he can. Even if not, Benedern has easy access to the aviary. He can send a bird. Which means Castar will know for certain that we made it here. He’ll be marching for the Plateaus soon, if he wasn’t already. If Rudol takes more than a few days to make up his mind, we’ll be out of time to prepare. We either have to convince him very quickly, or… take another path.” She looked pointedly at Josen.

  He took her meaning, and he didn’t like it. “Then let’s make it quick. He’s waiting, and we’re wasting time.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed, and then paused to look at the others. “Do you mind?”

  Shona ushered the swamplings out of the room so Josen could dress himself—a painful process without help. Some movement had returned to his left arm, but he still had to use his right to maneuver it into the sleeve. Bending down to pull on his boots was no easy thing, either. Still, he wasn’t going to call Shona back in. She’d seen enough.

  When he was fully clad in a tunic and trousers of stormcloud grey, he staggered to the door and pulled it open. Walking even that far was exhausting; he had to brace himself against the doorframe to keep from tipping over.

  Shona was kneeling in front of Eroh. She didn’t look up when Josen stepped through the door. “It will only take a short while, Eroh,” she said, and reached for the boy’s shoulder.

  “I want Azra to come,” Eroh said. “Zerill said she would look after me.” He clung tighter to Azra’s arm, and Goldeyes ruffled his feathers and snapped his beak at Shona.