by Giles Carwyn
BROPHY HIKED SOUTH through the scrub brush and stunted trees. The clothes in the sack were a little small, but not too bad. His friend on the wall had also included a bowstring and a few iron fishhooks. It would take days to weave fishing line, but he could make a bow. That was as good a beginning place as any.
It was a five-day walk to Physen, the capital of Physendria. He would have to do some hunting along the way. In Physen Brophy could sneak onto a merchant ship headed back to Ohndarien. If he could get past the Sunset Gate, he knew a way to sneak into the Hall of Windows and take the Test of the Stone. He should never have waited. If he had claimed Krellis’s spot on the council weeks ago, this never would have happened.
When Brophy emerged from the Heart with a red diamond glowing in his chest, the people would know the truth. The Heartstone would choose who was the true Brother and who was the traitor.
He walked an hour before finding a good tree. It was a gnarled old cypress growing in the shadow of a huge boulder. Its largest limb was long enough to make a good bow.
Brophy went to work on the cypress branch as if it were Krellis’s neck. What would have taken an axe five minutes took his knife an hour. But he severed the limb from the tree and began whittling it. He took great care to protect the knife. He couldn’t risk breaking it or even chipping it badly. It was his only claw in a land filled with predators.
He tried to keep his anger hot, tried to keep Krellis in his mind, but as he stripped and notched the wood, he felt tired. His fatigue let the anger drift away, and all that remained to him were the tattered scraps of his life.
Tears dripped on Brophy’s handiwork. He clenched his teeth and continued carving, but he couldn’t stop crying. He hacked viciously at the wood, blinking constantly.
Two men stepped from behind a rock twenty feet away. In his grief, Brophy hadn’t heard them coming. The strangers were dressed as Physendrian farmers, but peasants didn’t wear polished short swords. Farmers didn’t carry steel-tipped spears.
His stomach twisted. Were they Physendrian scouts? Exiled Ohndariens? Brigands awaiting travelers?
Brophy stood, his hunting knife in hand. “I was just exiled,” he said. Would they care if he was one of them now?
“We know,” the nearest one said. He was a broad-shouldered man with curly gray hair covering his forearms. His partner was much younger and was missing a front tooth. They crept closer, alert as hunters.
Brophy reached to his left hip for a sword that wasn’t there.
“I have no money. Nothing to steal,” he said, holding out one hand in a pacifying gesture.
The older man grinned. “That’s all right, kid. Your head’s worth more than a bag of gold.”
A rock shifted behind him and Brophy whirled. Two other men came around the edge of the boulder. They were both short and stocky, their arms were covered with the swirling gray tattoos from the Silver Islands. Typical of Silver Islanders, they all had long hair tied back in ponytails.
“I am a Child of the Seasons,” Brophy said, fishing for something that might stay their hand.
“Were a Child of the Seasons,” the older man said.
“We know who you are, kid,” one of the Islanders behind him said.
Brophy kept his back to the rock. They’d closed the net quickly. They were well trained.
A calm came over him. This is no different from four-on-one training in the Autumn Palace, he told himself. He would only have to attack one of them to get free.
“Whoever’s spear comes closest to the heart gets an extra ten coins,” the leader said, chuckling. The four of them stopped, ten paces out, trapping him against the rock. They all hefted their spears, preparing to throw. They weren’t going to give him a chance to use his knife.
“And how many coins shall I get for your heart?” another voice said from above.
Brophy craned his neck. A small man perched above him on the edge of the boulder. He wore loose, dun-colored robes and a simple head wrap with a white cloth over his mouth. His prominent nose hooked like an eagle’s beak, and his dark brown eyes were inscrutable under the bushy black eyebrows. The deep crags of his brow gave his face a terrible intensity.
It was the man from the crowd! The one who had told him to run backward.
“Save yourself, boy,” the man whispered as he leapt over Brophy’s head. A curved sword flashed in the dappled daylight.
Three of the brigands hesitated, but the leader with the curly gray forearms let his spear fly. Brophy threw himself to the side. It clacked against the rock behind him and he stumbled to his knees.
He looked up in time to see the leader vomit blood and collapse face forward. A great red line sprouted from his neck to his armpit. The dark-eyed stranger spun around, dodging inside the spear of the gap-toothed brigand. A dagger flashed, and the brigand screamed.
“Look out!” Brophy yelled, as an Islander threw his spear.
The stranger spun as though in a dance. The spear missed his head by inches and plunged into the chest of the gap-toothed screamer. The man’s shriek gurgled into silence as he dropped to his knees, bubbles of blood on his lips.
Brophy scrambled to his feet as one of the Islanders attacked the stranger. The Islander swung overhand, but the stranger danced back. His curved sword flashed again, and the two weapons clanged together.
The stranger shifted aside, blocked a thrust. His blade shimmered like a piece of silver string that he waved in beautiful patterns. He made the deadly game look effortless, and the brigand’s every strike clanged fruitlessly against his curved sword.
“The other, Brophy,” the man said. His accented voice seemed somehow familiar. “Get him.”
Brophy spun around in time to see the other Islander running away. He snatched up a spear and sprinted after the man. Scampering to the top of a rock, he cocked back and let fly.
Brophy’s spear caught the runner in the hip and spun him around. The man stumbled into a boulder, and his head bounced off the stone with a brutal crack.
Brophy drew his knife and ran up to the moaning Islander. The man rolled on the ground, holding his head, but his eyes were not open.
Brophy hesitated, clutching his knife. He looked at the man’s bloody hip where the spear had slashed his skin open to the bone.
“Finish him,” said a voice from behind.
Brophy whirled around to see the Kherish stranger only a few feet away. The man’s sword still dripped blood.
The boy backed up so he could see both men at once. “He is beaten,” Brophy said. “There is no need to kill him.”
The stranger walked up to the wounded man and slipped the tip of his curved sword underneath the brigand’s chin, bringing his head up.
The man’s eyes fluttered open. “No, please,” he whispered.
In a blur of bloody steel, the stranger whipped his sword out from underneath the chin, spun around in a complete circle, and chopped through the Islander’s neck.
His head rolled across the ground and stopped faceup, staring at the brutal sun.
“But that would not stop him from killing you if he had the chance,” the stranger said, turning to face Brophy, who stared at the brutal handiwork with an open mouth. Feeling light-headed, he grabbed a rock to steady himself.
The stranger knelt and cleaned his curved blade on the dead man’s clothes with two quick swipes.
“Why did you kill him?” Brophy asked. “We could have tied him up, asked who sent him.”
The stranger stood. “I know who sent him. And I killed him so I never have to fight him again. Next time, he may have the advantage.”
Brophy stared at the severed head, leaking blood on the ground. He sat on the rock and hung his head between his knees.
“Who are you?”
“You can call me Scythe. I am an old friend of your aunt Baelandra.”
Brophy’s head was still spinning. “And them?”
“They are old friends of your uncle Krellis.”
Brophy looked up.
&nb
sp; Scythe walked up to Brophy, dark eyes boring into him. Brophy rose to his feet. He stood half a foot taller, but he couldn’t match the smaller man’s stare.
“I…” Brophy inclined his head. “Thank you.”
The little man made a bow. “You deserve nothing less.” He sheathed his sword with a flourish. Scythe looked up at the sky, let out a deep breath and relaxed his shoulders. “What are your plans?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your childhood is over, Brophy. It’s time for you to grow up. Now.” Scythe’s eyes narrowed. “Was that an empty threat, that you spoke earlier?”
“What threat?”
“The one you shouted at the entire city. ‘Tell Krellis to sleep lightly,’ I think you said. You are coming back for him. The Heart of Ohndarien protects her own. Something like that.”
Brophy didn’t know what to say. He looked at the dead body next to him.
“Are you ready to be the Heart of Ohndarien?” Scythe asked. “Are you ready to protect your own?”
2
KRELLIS STOOD AT the prow of the longboat, torch in hand. Light from the stars danced on the rippling water. Trent’s funeral ship was a black shadow in the center of the bay. Twenty men rowed Krellis toward his son’s body. All the lights in the city had been extinguished for the ceremony. The boy was wrapped in linen and surrounded by kindling. When the ship was lit, the flames would reach forty feet into the air and take hours to burn.
Burning the boy at sea was Victeris’s idea. The Children of the Seasons were entombed somewhere in the catacombs of the Heart. Krellis refused to bury his son like a dog’s discarded bone. That tradition, that way of life, was over.
The Physendrians left their dead in the desert for the animals to eat, but Trent was no Physendrian, either. His mother, Maigery, was a Silver Islander and Trent would go to his afterlife as she had.
As the ship grew closer, Krellis could see Trent’s body seated upon a throne as befitted royalty. The boy would have been king of both Ohndarien and Physendria one day if things had gone differently. Would he have been a strong king? Would he have been wise and just or petty and cruel like so many Physendrian kings before him?
With perfect clarity, Krellis remembered back to that day in Physen when he had almost become king. How could he forget the bloody dagger in his hand? His father’s body at his feet? The empty throne before him?
He took that throne, but he never sat in it. One moment he was a king, the next a slave of his brother as surely as he’d been a slave of his father.
Krellis’s eyes unfocused, and he let the memory come.
KRELLIS SET HIS hand upon the golden arm of the throne built for King Phy I. No longer would he watch his father flick commands from this chair. Krellis’s words would rule now. Victeris stood beside him, smiling and nodding.
“Sit, my brother. You have earned it. You have done what the rest of us could not.”
“I will sit when I am ready.” He traced a finger along the delicate carvings on the arm, so subtle, as a ruler must be.
“As you say.”
The great doors of the throne room burst open. Fifty swordsmen jogged into the room, forming ranks on either side of the door, creating an aisle for Phandir. These were no ordinary soldiers; each man’s right arm was covered with the hairy pelt of a gorilla. These were the incorruptible Apes, the king’s elite guard. Krellis’s smiling older brother strode in, regal in his breastplate of gold, his feathered cloak the color of flames.
How had that smiling fool won over the royal guard?
“Arrest him,” Phandir commanded, pointing to Victeris. “That vile creature murdered the king.”
Krellis had not seen Victeris look surprised since they were boys. The eldest brother flicked a look to Krellis that conveyed all.
We have failed, he seemed to say.
And it was over. All of it, in an instant.
Victeris ran for a side door. Three Apes chased him down and threw him to the floor. He did not resist. Even as children, Victeris had always cringed from physical violence. One of the swordsmen kicked him viciously, and Krellis heard a rib snap. Victeris groaned and rolled to his back.
Krellis stood his ground, the bloody dagger still in his hand. He could have gone to help his eldest brother. He could have died trying to save him. He could have waved the bloodstained dagger in Phandir’s face and roared that it was he who had killed their father. He could have. But he didn’t.
Phandir marched past the Apes as they hauled Victeris to his feet and dragged him from the room. The middle brother stepped gracefully up on the dais, smiling like the fool he seemed, like the fool he was not.
The two brothers faced one another, Krellis standing higher than Phandir for that last, sweet moment. His grip tightened on the dagger. One quick slice would cut the man’s throat. One quick slice would bring fifty men down on his head in an unstoppable wave.
“You surprised me, little brother. You had the courage to do what I did not. I hated that man as much as you.” He tapped his father’s corpse with his toe. “I thank you for silencing him forever, but I am still the older brother. You owe me your allegiance.”
Krellis hesitated.
“Will you bend the knee?” Phandir asked, his smile fading for a rare moment.
“What about Victeris?”
Phandir grinned. “Surely you must know what kind of man our brother is. With his death, the madness in our family will be gone forever.”
“Victeris may be mad, but he is loyal.”
Victeris’s unexpected kindness over the past year had been something Krellis had never experienced before. Yet Krellis repaid him with silence as Phandir’s guards dragged him away.
“And are you?” Phandir asked. “Loyal?”
Krellis felt the weight of the moment. He could lose everything, even his life, in the next few seconds.
“There is nothing but madness in our family,” Krellis said, “Even death will not purge it.”
Phandir laughed. He had always laughed too much.
“Victeris’s lovely disciple has changed you, my brother. You never used to be so bold.”
Krellis took a quick breath at the mention of Maigery. How did Phandir know about her?
“I would not harm her, if I were you,” he barely whispered, his voice trembling. He gripped the dagger as if he would crush it.
Phandir waved a hand. “You worry too much, little brother. You always did. Maigery is safe, as is her babe. Yours, I must assume?” He grinned, showing the big, white teeth he was so proud of. “My most trusted men are looking after her. We live in a dangerous world, you know. One cannot be too careful about his family.”
Krellis tossed the bloody dagger on the seat of the throne. Red droplets splattered across the gold.
“On that, at least, we agree,” he said.
“What shall it be, little brother? The knee or the sword?” The fiendish fool smiled again. “Please let it be the knee, you are the only one in this family I actually like.”
The muscles corded in Krellis’s neck, and he clenched his teeth as he knelt. “All hail Phandir, King.”
KRELLIS GRIPPED THE torch as if it were that dagger from years ago. His men shipped their oars, and his boat drew up alongside Trent’s floating pyre. The boy’s face was covered with white linen, but Krellis could imagine it under there—sulky, prideful, devious. Trent had looked a bit like Phandir when he smiled.
Krellis threw his torch into the boy’s lap. The dry straw of the pyre burst into flame. The fire spread quickly, and he could feel the heat upon his face.
“I knelt for you,” he whispered to the fiery corpse. “I bowed to him to save your life.”
Krellis flexed his fingers as the flames grew taller. The blaze became so hot he had to fight to keep his eyes open, staring at the burning throne within the pyre.
“All hail Phandir, King,” he breathed, tasting the hate on every word.
3
BROPHY LOOKED BACK. The barren P
hysendrian hills extended into the distance until they became hazy and indistinct in the heat of the sun. He caught a glimpse of white cloth half a mile back—Scythe, still following him.
With a frown, Brophy licked his lips. The sun blazed overhead. He probably should have rested during the four hours of “high sun,” as Physendrians called it, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. Stopping didn’t seem to help, anyway. At least walking he got a small breeze on his sweating face. He had used his heat-tolerance training more in the last day and a half than he had in his entire life. He would have been badly sunburned without it.
No, it was better to keep going, even though the horizon swam every now and then. Mirages rippled the edges of the badlands. Brophy had never seen that before, but he’d never been this far south. Trent would have loved it.
His parched lips resisted the bitter smile that tried to come. Trent would have packed a full bottle of Siren’s Blood and happily tottered to the other side of the world. Of course he would probably also have molested a local sheep and found some way to blame Brophy for getting her pregnant.
Brophy shook his head. He’d been traveling south and west for a day and a half, dogged by his white shadow.
Their conversation had been short. After everything that had happened, Brophy wanted to be alone. He didn’t know who to trust anymore, and he needed some time to plan his next moves. Scythe claimed to be his aunt’s friend, but Brophy had never seen him before. It was too convenient the way he showed up the moment Brophy needed help.
So he thanked the ruthless little man for saving his life, and they parted company. Scythe had not tried to stop him. He only said one thing as Brophy walked away.
“If you’re not sure who to trust, listen to the man who tells you what you don’t want to hear.”
That last bit of arrogance still needled Brophy. What was worse, Scythe did not leave him alone, but followed him like a hunter tracking a wounded deer. Brophy kept his original plan and headed for the Physendrian capital. He was determined to lose the little man tonight under the cover of darkness.