The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1)

by Ben S. Dobson

  Josen didn’t move, didn’t even flinch. He was too tired and too sore and too confused to do anything but watch dumbly as the crown tumbled through the air, sunlight catching off blue and gold and silver.

  Just before it hit the ground near Josen’s feet, Eroh bent down and caught the crown in one hand. Looking up at Josen with those wide golden eyes, he held it up for him.

  “Here,” he said.

  Such a simple, innocent gesture, and Josen’s mind was hazy with exhaustion; he accepted it without thinking.

  The crowd erupted into cheers.

  “Josen lives!”

  “The last Windwalker chose him! The true king!”

  Josen stared blankly at the circle of blue glass in his hand. God Above, what was I thinking? It couldn’t have been more perfectly staged if Shona had planned it. The last Windwalker, handing him Aryllia’s Crown. I’ll never get rid of it now. His mouth gaping half-open, he looked back to his brother.

  Rudol just shook his head. “Listen to them cheer. They want a hero from a storybook, so that’s what they see. But we both know better, don’t we?”

  “I… suppose we do,” said Josen. He was too tired to deny the truth.

  Shona stepped between them, and took Josen’s arm. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “They need a king, and now they have one. We have to go before this gets uglier than it already is. Cer Falyn, have your men clear us a path to the carriages.” She glanced at Rudol; Josen couldn’t tell whether it was pity or disgust in her eyes. “He comes with us. Treat him gently, but he stays under guard for now.”

  “Remove your hands from the king!” A voice from above. Josen looked up to see Cer Byron Ephred standing at the edge of the dais with sword in hand. “Your Majesty, you can’t mean to just let this happen! We can cut this rabble down in but a moment.” Around the edge of the standing ground the Swords put hands to sword-hilts at their commander’s word, still ready to fight.

  But once more, Rudol stopped them. “Sheathe your sword, Ephred,” he said. “It isn’t your duty to protect me anymore.”

  “You can’t expect us to serve this… swampling lover!” Ephred spat.

  “I expect you to serve the king,” Rudol said flatly. “And there he is.” He gestured clumsily at Josen with one restrained hand. “He needs a path. I suggest you help make it.”

  Ephred opened his mouth and closed it, and then his sword arm fell to his side, and he argued no more. With the slightest flick of his hand, he signalled his men, and the Swords lowered their weapons.

  Morne and her knights led the way up from the ledge, and without further orders, some few Royal Swords even fell in to help clear the path. Shona ushered the swamplings after, drawing Josen along by the arm. He didn’t have the wherewithal to do anything but follow, still staring at the crown clutched in his fist.

  As he neared the bottom of the stairs, it occurred to him to look back. Rudol was letting the Storm Knights lead him to the stairs without a struggle, his head down.

  “Wait.” Josen pulled free of Shona and turned on his heel. Rudol looked up when the men escorting him came to an abrupt halt, his face blank. “What… what happened to us, Rudol?” Josen stepped closer, searching for some kind of answer in his brother’s eyes. “Castar told you I was a traitor, and you believed him. How did it come to that? I know Father put too much on your shoulders when I wasn’t there. I know how much more you’ve done for the Peaks than I have, and how little anyone notices. Whatever admiration these people throw at me, I know you deserve it more. I’m used to being a disappointment. But I didn’t think you hated me so much.”

  Rudol laughed, low and bitter. “You really think that’s all there is to it, don’t you? That I’m just jealous because everybody loves you more than me.” His eyes flickered toward Shona there, just long enough for Josen to notice. “Don’t you remember that there was a time when I loved you that much? You were all I had. You know how Mother was, and Father never cared. Never saw me at all, until you weren’t there. But I had you. My clever, fearless, perfect older brother. Anything you asked of me, I would have done. Anything.”

  “What, then? Please. Tell me what I did, because I don’t understand.”

  “You didn’t ask!” Rudol spat. “You just left. So many times, and you never asked me to come with you. Not once.” He jerked his eyes away, and then, almost too quiet to hear:

  “I would have followed you anywhere, and you left me behind.”

  43. Diplomacy

  Shona

  Shona kept forgetting that she was talking to a corpse.

  It wasn’t that Benedern’s behaviour was anything close to normal. Far from it. Everything that defined the man he’d been was gone: his pride, his self-importance, his deep-voiced bluster. That man wouldn’t have suffered this forced captivity quietly—he’d have bellowed his indignation day and night. But he was different now. He said almost nothing, and when one of Shona’s questions earned a response at all, it was short and flat and devoid of useful information. As Castar’s emissary, he’d managed at least a hollow mimicry of his old personality. As a prisoner, he didn’t seem inclined to bother.

  He still looked like himself, in his eagle-feather robe with the Crown of Eyes upon his brow. His body still did all the things it was supposed to do. He ate the meals that were provided for him. His chest moved up and down with every breath, his eyelids blinked open and closed, his pupils narrowed and widened when the light shifted. When night came, he slept, or appeared to. There was a certain smell about him, but it wasn’t the stink of a corpse—just the sour sweat of a man who hadn’t bathed for some time. Shona had even checked his heartbeat. Benedern had only stared silently ahead when she’d placed her fingers against his neck, but the steady pulse of blood spoke for itself.

  It was hard to believe that he was a dead man.

  When he refused to respond to her, or regurgitated some empty rhetoric, it felt like a ploy, a ruse. He was sitting right in front of her, breathing and blinking and occasionally speaking—he had to have the answers she wanted. All it would take to loosen his tongue, she kept convincing herself, was the right application of pain, or deprivation, or bribery.

  And so she’d tried. Or rather, she’d had men trained in such things try. Josen had no stomach for it, but he hadn’t stopped her—he just stayed away while it was happening. But no matter what Shona tried, Benedern wouldn’t break. He wouldn’t give her what she wanted.

  Because he wasn’t in control anymore. He was dead, and someone else was making his body move. It had taken her days to truly come around to believing that, and even now, she had to keep reminding herself.

  Today, she’d decided that it was time to try something different. At her request, Verik had come to examine Benedern.

  The high chastor sat on the edge of his bed, staring back vacantly as Verik looked him over; he hadn’t moved from that spot for some time. The room wasn’t large—one of the Aryllian Keep’s myriad plainly adorned guest chambers—but he didn’t seem bothered by the lack of space. In three days he hadn’t so much as tried the door once. Not that it would have mattered. It was kept locked at all hours, and there were always guards outside. But Shona would have rested easier knowing he’d at least made the effort.

  “Is there anything you can do?” Shona asked, after giving Verik more than enough time—in her estimation—to consider his subject.

  Verik’s hand moved through an unfamiliar sign before he caught himself and said aloud, “Don’t know. Maybe.”

  “I hoped you could… take control somehow? Make Benedern answer my questions. I won’t claim to understand how any of this works, but the old man, Castar’s… Delver”—that sounded too much like something from a story for her to say it with any confidence—“is far away, and you’re not. If that makes it any easier.”

  Verik looked over his shoulder at her; those black swampling eyes made Shona shiver. “To bring back dead… forbidden,” he said. His accent was like Zerill’s, fast with short syllabl
es, but the speed was offset by long pauses when he needed to search for words. He was improving, though. He still formed signs with his fingers whenever he was struggling, but he was improving. “But for taking power after… Makers have no law. Never been done.”

  “Will you try?” Shona didn’t know anything about Makers or their oaths, but the hesitance in his voice was something she could understand. He needed a reason. “We need any advantage we can get right now, and that means knowing whatever Benedern can tell me. Every duchy south of here is already in Castar’s hands. He can marshall a larger force than we can, and faster. Likely he already has. I’ve sent out scouts, but he’s had long enough to prepare that he could be nearly here. If he takes the Plateaus, your people lose as much as mine.”

  A moment’s silence, and then Verik nodded. “Yes. Makers will not like it, but none can say I broke oaths.” A slight grin revealed his teeth. “Still… maybe not tell?”

  “I won’t if you won’t,” she said, and couldn’t help but smile back.

  Despite those eyes, there was something about Verik that put her at ease. She didn’t fully understand it—his power should have made him more frightening than the other swamplings, if anything—but he lacked the intensity that made Zerill so intimidating, and even Azra, young as she was. Where they were firm, Verik was gentle. Especially with Josen. And this wasn’t the first time she’d seen that hint of mischief play over his lips. It comforted her to know that a swampling could find humor in the world after living for so long in the dark. It made them seem less distant, less strange.

  “Our secret.” Verik gave Benedern a wry look. “Or not. Nothing to hide if nothing works.”

  “Can I help? Do you need anything?”

  “Ask something. Need to see what happens.” Verik knelt at Benedern’s side and placed a hand against his cheek; Benedern just stared back placidly.

  Shona stepped closer. Benedern’s eyes followed her as she drew near, but he said nothing. “How does Castar plan to take the Plateaus?” A question she’d asked a hundred times already, but among the more pressing ones she had. “Your master must have some way to pass the walls.”

  Benedern didn’t so much as twitch an eyebrow. “Duke Castar is a loyal servant of the king,” he said, without a hint of emotion.

  Shona threw up her hands in frustration. “You see? He just repeats someone else’s words, when he bothers to say anything at all.”

  Verik nodded slowly. “I feel a…”—his fingers moved as he sought the word—“tether? Stronger when he spoke.”

  A tether. Shona swallowed and suppressed a shudder. “God Above, that’s… frightening. Ulman Benedern, dancing on a string like some sort of festival puppet. If he could remember who he used to be, he’d never forgive the humiliation.”

  “I remember.”

  Benedern’s voice.

  Shona stiffened, looked back at the high chastor. He was staring at her, but now the slight hint of a frown tugged at the corners of his mouth. Like she’d offended him, or some ghost of who he’d been.

  He spoke again before she could. “You think you would be stronger, but he would control you the same. Memories are not enough.” There was no inflection to Benedern’s voice, and even that faint frown quickly faded. A moment after the words left his mouth, there was no sign that he’d said anything at all—he lapsed quickly back to blank-faced silence. But there is something of him still in there. Something that remembers he was proud, once. And there’s nothing he can do about it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He didn’t answer.

  She hadn’t expected him to, but she’d meant it. She was sorry for what had been done to him—and for what she was about to have Verik do. It was a terrible thing to strip a man of his will, his self, but if there was even a chance that Benedern had the information she needed, she couldn’t let it pass.

  “Is that enough, Verik?” she asked. “Do you have… whatever it is you need?”

  “Can… pull the tether. No promises.” Verik looked at Benedern with what could have been pity in his dark eyes. “If I fail… even brought back, body works same. Can die again. No Delver to give life here.”

  She understood what he was saying, but she didn’t know if she could afford that kind of mercy. Even Benedern doesn’t deserve this, but… Eian was right. We can’t have the high chastor’s death laid at Josen’s feet just now. “I’ll… think about it when we’re done. For now, just try to make him talk. ”

  Verik drew a knife from his belt, and glanced at Shona sidelong, almost shyly. “Look away? Not… pleasant.”

  “I have a strong stomach.” Shona knew what the knife was for, what was in those two stained skins at Verik’s side. Josen had explained it to her. What she didn’t know was whether her stomach was as strong as she claimed. When she imagined Verik doing that to himself, everything inside her clenched. But if she had to ask it of him, she wasn’t going to turn away.

  Watching was the least she could do.

  With a quick stroke, Verik sliced open his palm. Blood flowed freely down his wrist. He sheathed his knife and pulled free the rounder of the two skins at his hip—the other hung limp, likely empty. With his thumb, he flipped the stopper open and turned the skin up over his palm. Slowly, a drop of thick black fluid oozed out of the neck and onto his bleeding hand. Shona shivered at the sight. She’d been told since she was a child that it took only a single drop of a Deepling’s blood to drive a man mad, and he was pouring it willingly over an open wound.

  The Deepling ichor moved of its own accord, burrowing into Verik’s palm like a wood-tick; the skin sealed behind, smooth and unblemished. Shona’s stomach heaved violently as the dark lump moved beneath his skin, travelling up his arm. Verik’s eyes rolled back in his head so far that she could see a hint of white at the bottom—which surprised her. Until that moment, she’d assumed swampling eyes were black all the way around.

  And then it was over. With a shake of his head and a shuddering breath, Verik came back to himself. When he saw that she was still watching, he quickly looked away, and hooked the skin back in place at his hip.

  “Should hold him,” he said without meeting her eyes. “Might not… be still.”

  Shona rapped a knuckle against the door, and ushered the guards inside. Both wore Storm Knight grey—Shona had asked Cer Falyn to select a number of dependable men to fill the role of royal guardsmen, while the loyalty of the Royal Swords was still in question.

  “Restrain him,” she said, and tipped her head toward Benedern. Each man grabbed an arm, and together they pulled the high chastor to his feet, holding him fast. Benedern didn’t resist.

  Silently, Verik placed a hand on either side of Benedern’s face, and closed his eyes. His brow furrowed, and his jaw clenched.

  Benedern made no sound, but Shona could see the muscles in his neck tense. He thrashed his head in Verik’s hands, but Verik held tight, fingers pressing into the loose flesh of Benedern’s cheeks. The high chastor strained against the guards holding him, pulled back against their grip; his bulk was enough that one of the knights lost his footing and staggered a half-step before finding his balance again.

  Then, all at once, something seemed to pass through Benedern, and his body stiffened.

  Verik’s eyes snapped open. He cried out in shock, or pain, and stumbled back as if he’d been shoved.

  “Verik!” Shona was at his side in an instant. He sagged against her; she gripped his arm and held him upright. “What was that?”

  Verik didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on Benedern.

  The high chastor turned his head with unnatural slowness, first left, then right, taking in the room. “I wondered when you would try that,” he said, and there was a detached amusement in his voice that hadn’t been there before. His gaze wandered to Verik, and lingered there. “You’re wasting your time, Maker. You aren’t strong enough to take poor Ulman away from me. Not that it would matter a great deal if you did.”

  Shona felt
a sharp, cold fear in her heart, an icicle plunged into her chest. “You… you aren’t him. You’re the old man. Eroh’s grandfather.”

  “Very good.” Benedern’s lips curled into a smirk. “Such a keen mind, Lady Shona. I can see how you’ve caused my… patron such trouble.”

  Shona ignored that—she didn’t much care what he thought of her, and something else he’d said was more important. “You say it wouldn’t matter if we took Benedern from you. Why?”

  “Because,” the old man said in Benedern’s voice. “It is already too late.”

  With that, he went limp in the arms of the guards, and said no more.

  No one spoke for a long moment. Shona and Verik stood together, staring at Benedern; the Storm Knights held the high chastor upright, watching Shona with fear in their eyes.

  Finally, Shona managed, through a dry throat, to say, “Is he… alive?”

  Benedern straightened his legs, lifted his head, and looked at her with empty eyes. It was all the answer she needed. He was alive, if that was the word for it, and the old man was no longer speaking through him, but there was no purpose in asking more questions. Whatever shadow was left of the high chastor, his tongue was still bound by a power Shona couldn’t fathom.

  It’s already too late. Those words echoed in her head, over and over. And worse still, she believed them. The way the old man had looked at her, she couldn’t imagine that he would bother to lie. Like I was an animal doing tricks for his amusement. Why lie to someone too stupid to understand the truth?

  When the knock came a moment later, she was hardly surprised. It felt almost predestined, like the old man’s words had been a kind of prophecy. The door swung open; Josen stood on the other side. His face was drawn, and his eyes darted nervously back and forth before finding hers. He pushed a hand through his hair, opened his mouth as if to speak, and then closed it again.

  It didn’t matter. Shona already knew what he was going to say.

  “It’s Castar,” Josen said at last. “He’s here.”