by K. C. May
Kinshield's Redemption
Book four of The Kinshield Saga
by K.C. May
Kinshield's Redemption
Copyright 2013 by K.C. May
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Book 4 of The Kinshield Saga
Dozens have been corrupted by tainted water from the Well of the Damned, including King Gavin Kinshield's beloved wife. He's desperate to reverse the water's effects and restore Feanna to the kind and compassionate woman he married.
And what of his helpless heir growing in her toxic womb? To save his unborn son, Gavin must find a solution before the darkness that’s overtaken Feanna also stamps out the tiny spark within her.
Help seems to appear in the unlikely form of the Guardians, two ghostly figures tethered to the crystal that lies deep within the wellspring. Can Gavin trust them... or will their own agenda take the lives of his wife and son—and bring on the utter destruction of the seven realms?
The Kinshield Saga consists of
The Kinshield Legacy
The Wayfarer King
Well of the Damned
Kinshield's Redemption
Cover art by T.M. Roy (www.teryvisions.com).
Map of Thendylath by Jared Blando (www.theredepic.com)
Chapter 1
Gavin Kinshield took a deep breath to steel himself as two members of his First Royal Guard brought Queen Feanna, barking and snapping at them like a rabid dog, from the lordover’s guesthouse. Every step she took twisted another knot in his already aching muscles.
Her honey-colored hair, normally well kempt, was wild and matted, and she wore the same wrinkled gown she’d thrown unceremoniously on the floor the day before.
Despite his best efforts, Gavin’s mind conjured the scene again: his wife lying naked in the bed and one of his First Royals, just as naked, hiding in the wardrobe. His stomach churned in empty disgust while his heart bled. His love, his life, the one who’d kept him sane while he grappled with the challenges of being king, was lost, probably forever.
“Don’t do that to yourself,” his champion, Daia Saberheart, said softly. Her light-blue eyes were kind and warm, like her touch on his arm. The marks of storms, imprinted on her forearms during the battle the previous day, were still visible but fading.
“Do what?” he asked, examining his own forearms with feigned nonchalance. The marks of storms, like a red tattoo of the lightning that had struck him, were more pronounced on his arms but were fading fast. The ones on his neck and face made people stare, but thanks to the scars, he’d gotten used to that over the years.
Daia pulled one corner of her mouth taut, as if to admonish him for asking a stupid question. “We’ll fix this. In the meantime, she’ll be safe in Tern, and you won’t need to worry about her.”
Wouldn’t he? There was plenty of mischief to get into in Tern, not the least of which was the secret he’d kept from his sister-in-law about his supposed bastard daughter. Gavin had no doubt that Feanna would tell Liera at the first opportunity that the child wasn’t Gavin’s at all but his dead brother’s.
He should have been accompanying her. It was a husband’s duty to keep his family safe and yet, he’d failed most profoundly—again. Images came to mind of his first wife and daughter, murdered in front of him nearly six years earlier. It reminded him of his incompetence in the most basic role as a man: to protect his family. And now he’d done it again. He’d let a malefactor escape and poison his wife, turning her from a cheerful, compassionate woman into this.
The queen’s attendants bustled to and fro with eyes averted, loading cases and crates and whatnot into the wagon.
“Don’t put that there, idiot!” Feanna shouted. “Put it over here. And hurry up, you bindlestiff. The sooner we can get out of this piss-smelling city, the better.”
Until yesterday, Gavin had never known her to call people names or speak unkindly to anyone.
“What are you just standing there for?” she asked him. “You’ve got more brawn than intellect. Make yourself useful for once. Or does the king think he’s so high and mighty that he can’t help his wife pack?”
Gavin began to tremble, overwhelmed with guilt, anxiety, and anger. In recent weeks, he’d tolerate her occasional outbursts because he thought she’d been overly emotional due to her pregnancy. She was different now. Evil.
No, not evil, he reminded himself. Only kho-bent. Everyone possessed the hard, cold nature, but Feanna had more of it than the soft, warm zhi essence because of that damned well water. He turned his head so he wouldn’t have to look at the monster in his wife’s body. It wasn’t her fault.
Beside and slightly behind him stood Cirang Deathsblade, her head bowed in guilty silence. It had been her fault. She knew it, she’d owned up to it, and she would help find a way to fix it if it was the last thing she did. And it might be. He owed her an execution for her past crimes, and her apologies and tears of remorse wouldn’t be enough to stay his hand when the time came.
“Good for nothing,” Feanna muttered before rushing over and slapping one of her attendants across the face. “Didn’t I tell you not to put my books in the wagon?”
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” the attendant said, covering the red hand print on his cheek. “My mistake.”
“You must be as daft as my husband.”
Gavin took Feanna by the arm and pulled her aside. “Listen, take your frustration out on me if you got to, but don’t abuse your attendants. They aren’t paid well enough to put up with that.”
With a seething glare, she yanked her arm out of his grasp and turned her back to him. She continued to holler at the workers, but at least she didn’t strike anyone again.
The weight of all that had happened over the last few months slowly crushed him. His muscles ached, his mind slowed, and he longed to ride off into the wilderness alone and hide in a cave for the rest of his life. He didn’t want to be king. He didn’t want any of this, yet there he was, expected to find the solutions to all the country’s problems. Except that they were problems he had ultimately caused.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. All he could do was steel his resolve and forge on. The invisible crown atop his head was more like a yoke across his shoulders. Now he knew what a plow ox felt like, slogging through a muddy field.
“Did you send the letter?” he asked, turning his attention back to Daia.
“Yes, and I have another.” Daia squatted on her haunches, rummaged through her satchel, and pulled out a folded paper s
ealed with blue wax. “I thought we should send a copy with Tennara, in case the bird doesn’t reach Tern. We’ve got to be sure Edan knows what to expect when Queen Feanna arrives.”
“Good thinking.” The letter, dictated by Gavin and penned by Daia in her fancy handwriting, summarized the events of the last few days. In it, he cautioned his adviser, Edan Dawnpiper, to remove all glass and sharp objects from the king and queen’s bed chamber and lock Feanna inside. She should receive all the food and drink she needed, and have her personal needs met according to her station, but the staff was not to take orders from her, let her wander the palace without a guard, spend time with the children, nor leave her alone with any man.
Even with the warning, Gavin wasn’t sure Edan would be properly prepared for what he would encounter when she arrived. None of them would.
When the wagon was loaded, Feanna approached to bid Gavin farewell. The mystical, hazy bubble around her swirled like a storm cloud, black and foreboding. It reminded Gavin of the monsters that had invaded Thendylath for so many years. Though her haze wasn’t pure kho like theirs had been, what little zhi remained was difficult to see or feel. The closer she came, the more his skin crawled. When she put her arms around his neck, he recoiled, turning his face away.
“Kiss your wife good-bye, Gavin,” she said. “And I want the tongue.” He was much too tall for her to kiss on the mouth without his cooperation. She tried to pull his head down towards her, but he resisted her efforts.
One of the many things he used to appreciate about Feanna was her ravenous hunger for lovemaking. She’d always been willing, no matter the time of day or her mood or plans, and she’d become pregnant almost immediately after they were wedded. Now, however, his mind filled with unwanted images of her writhing in pleasure beneath Adro Fiendsbane, the man he’d once branded for crimes of seduction and debauchery. The man he believed had turned into a decent buck. The man he’d trusted to protect his wife.
Feanna’s rounded belly pressed against him, and he wondered again if the baby growing there was his. Adro had met her before Gavin had, kissed her while accompanying her from Saliria to Tern, and claimed to have bedded her before she and Gavin were married.
He took her by the waist and moved her away. A fortnight earlier, he’d seen the tiny haze and determined that the baby was a boy. He’d even felt his son reach for him. Now, it took greater effort to see through Feanna’s ugly haze to the tiny bubble buried within. The baby’s haze seemed smaller than it had earlier, as if it were cowering in her womb. Was it recoiling from Gavin or from the ugly haze that engulfed it?
Vile loathing overtook him, so intense that his stomach lurched. For that moment, he despised that baby more than he’d ever despised anything, even a beyonder. Gavin snatched his hands back, breaking his contact with Feanna. The feeling left as suddenly as it had come.
He gripped her by the throat and shoved her against the carriage, wishing he could choke the kho out of her. “Don’t ever do that again,” he growled through clenched teeth. He glared down into Feanna’s laughing gray eyes. She thought it amusing to use her empathic gift to push that hatred into him, but it had to have been her emotion to begin with. Did she hate him or the baby? Was that why his son’s haze was cowering? Gavin’s heart shattered to think of his son developing in the toxic womb of a mother who hated him.
“You won’t hurt me,” she said. “Not as long as I’m carrying your precious heir.”
She was right. He released her, disgusted with his own weakness. Despite what she was inside, Feanna was still the queen. “You’d better hope that baby in your belly is my son,” he told her. “If there’s a way to find out through magic, I’ll learn it. If he’s not mine, I’ll put you out so fast, you won’t know what happened.” He would divorce her. It was a shameful thing, divorce, but better by far than raising his disloyal queen’s bastard. “In the meantime, I suggest you begin treating me with more respect.”
“Or else what?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Or else you’ll suffer a punishment unbecoming a queen.”
A sly smile curved her lips. “Will you spank me? I might enjoy that.”
“Don’t test me.” He pulled her back to let the footman open the carriage door and assist her aboard.
“This baby is yours, Gavin,” she said through the open window as she settled onto the seat. “I suggest you begin treating me with more respect. All it takes is a nasty tumble for your treasured prince to be born with some terrible affliction.”
He lunged at the carriage and tried to reach inside to grab her, to haul her face close to his own and threaten her with his wrath, but she leaned away from his groping hand. “If I even suspect you’ve hurt my son—”
“You’ll do what?” Feanna laughed. “You can’t intimidate me, Gavin Kinshield. I know what you are beneath the invisible crown atop your head: a stupid ’ranter. I’m far more clever than you are. I’m Thendylath’s beloved queen, trudging through alleys in the pouring rain to save wet, dirty, orphaned children while the aloof king sits warm and comfortable in the palace and hands out mere morsels to people who line up to beg.”
That had a ring of truth to it, he realized. Did people see him as aloof, lazy, or stingy? No, she was goading him, trying to elicit kho-like behavior from him. That was what the kho-bent did. He stepped back and gripped his will so as not to succumb to her taunts again, no matter how tempting.
Tennara approached and bowed to him. “I’ll make sure she reaches Tern safely, my liege, and I’ll keep an eye on her once we’ve arrived.” Daia handed her the letter addressed to Edan, and she put it into her knapsack.
“You’ve got my leave to handle her as you see fit during the journey,” Gavin told her. “Do you have the shackles?” At the battler’s nod, he said, “Use them if you must. And if you need to gag her for a moment’s peace, then do it.”
Daia withdrew a wooden gargoyle carving from her satchel and offered it to Tennara. The two black onyxes set into its eye sockets contained magic that turned the gargoyle into a protector for whatever wooden object its owner set it upon. “If you need to lock her into the carriage, use this.”
“My thanks,” Tennara said.
Lilalian approached, leading her horse by the reins. Her short, blond hair had been combed straight back from her face, but the breeze blew a few strands out of position. “Don’t worry about us, my liege. We’ll manage.”
Feanna had traveled to Ambryce with six guards, but Adro, Anya, Hennah, and Mirrah had been corrupted by the well water. They were in gaol and wouldn’t be returning to Tern until Gavin had time to arrange for their secure travel. “Your job won’t be pleasant or easy,” he said. “There’ll be a bonus for you when I get back.”
Brawna came to him, leading her own horse. “Are you sure you won’t need me with you, King Gavin?”
As much as he’d have liked to keep Brawna and Calinor with him to assist with his task, he needed them to get his wife safely to Tern. Though the beyonders were gone, brigands had become bolder, attacking and robbing travelers unguarded by a warrant knight. They were generally in teams of two or three, but occasionally a pack of four or five hid in wait for the unwary. Two guards for his queen were insufficient, and the lordover needed every one of his armsmen to maintain peace in Ambryce and arrest the now kho-bent citizens who’d also taken the sacrament, as Feanna had. It was only a matter of time before they would start brawling or stealing or, worse, killing.
With Daia’s mystical conduit, his enchanted sword, and his own magic, Gavin was completely safe from any dangers a contingent of guards would shield him from. It was the supernatural hazards of what lay ahead that concerned him.
Gavin watched his wife’s caravan depart for Tern, glad he wouldn’t have to suffer her company for a few days and ashamed of being glad. He loosed the shudder he’d reined in, letting the memory of Feanna’s vileness ripple down his arms and spine. Shooting Cirang a resentful glare, he told her to bring the horses. He burned his g
aze into her as she hurried to the stable. Because of her, his wife was gone and his unborn son was either lost along with her or suffering the horror of being imprisoned within a monster.
And still, everything sat upon his own shoulders.
The Lordover Ambryce, Efre Nasiri, a young man impeccably dressed in fashionably tight breeches and high-heeled shoes, hurried over. “Oh, dear. I’ve missed her. I meant to thank the queen for her visit to our fair city and wish her a pleasant journey home.”
Gavin smirked, certain the lordover had timed his arrival so that he wouldn’t have to suffer Feanna’s foul manners again. “Sorry about last evening,” he said.
The lordover had insisted on dining with the king and queen the previous night, despite Gavin explaining about the contaminated water in the temple and the effect it had on the dozens who’d drunk it. Efre witnessed that effect clearly for himself when Feanna threw a handful of buttered turnips in his face, asking how dare he feed such a foul vegetable to the queen. Gavin had spent the rest of the evening apologizing for her behavior, but he had tried to politely decline. Now the lordover knew why he’d wanted to shut the queen away until he bustled her out of town.
“Oh, Your Majesty, please don’t give it another thought. I should have asked her preferences before my cooks began preparing. The fault is my own.”
He thanked the Lordover Ambryce for his generous hospitality and for the water in their skins and the food in their satchels.
“I’m sorry to see you go so soon, my lord king,” the lordover said, “but I understand the urgency of the task before you. Can I offer any assistance? A mason to help repair the leak? Perhaps a guard or two?”
Gavin shook his head. “I appreciate the offer, but your mason gave me a mix of sand and other crap to make a putty. I just got to add water when we get there. If it doesn’t work, I might need to send for him, but he’s done what he can for now.” He hadn’t seen the need to bring the mason along because, according to Cirang, the leak was too high and the mountain face too sheer for anyone to reach without ropes and scaffolds. Gavin would have to use magic to push the putty into it, so he only needed a mason to mix the right mortar. If that didn’t work, he’d return with an entire construction team and figure it out.