Kinshield's Redemption (Book 4)

by K. C. May

  “Does your chosen wife bear no children?”

  “Oh, yes, she does, but there are no requirements for her children. She can bear sons or daughters as she chooses. It is a great responsibility to have a brood wife, for she is expected to bear at least five sons before she is allowed a daughter.”

  Edan raised his eyebrows. “How do you ensure a baby is born male?”

  “Before the fifth son, any females are culled, and she is properly impregnated immediately afterwards.”

  “Culled?” Edan asked, appalled. The notion of killing babies because they were female was abhorrent.

  “Females cannot become warriors,” Kaoque explained. “They are too weak of body, mind, and spirit.”

  Edan glanced at the four First Royals standing guard near the door. Taria rolled her eyes, but none of them made any comment. “Perhaps that’s true of your women,” he said, “but here in Thendylath, women can choose to take up arms.”

  “We have noticed that women here are more manly than womanly. Our women are not permitted to dress or act as men.”

  “I see,” Edan said. He didn’t want to insult his guest, but he found the strict gender roles old-fashioned. “In these modern times, our women have more freedom to choose their own paths than they once had. Some prefer to guard and battle and have trained many years to do so.”

  “How do they engage their enemies when their bellies are swollen with child?” Kaoque asked. He looked genuinely perplexed. “Do they carry their suckling infants into battle?”

  “They typically don’t marry. Like their male counterparts, they dedicate their lives to their roles as battlers.”

  “But they are weak!” Kaoque argued.

  “Perhaps they can become stronger than you realize.” A year ago, Edan would never have thought he would find himself arguing on behalf of women battlers.

  For years, he’d harbored resentment that the woman betrothed to him had fled, preferring to take up arms and fight malefactors and beyonders than to live as his wife. His resentment stemmed not because he felt women should submit to the wishes of men but because he’d been smitten with the woman his father had chosen for him, and he’d thought she liked him too. All those years, he’d questioned himself, wondered whether all women found him so objectionable or just her. It was Gavin Kinshield who’d convinced him that the Lordover Tern’s daughter had simply pursued her own dream rather than submit herself to living someone else’s, and Edan had made peace with her choice. How ironic that her choice later brought her into his life at Gavin’s side. He could almost believe they were meant to be together, if not as husband and wife then at least as friends.

  Kaoque shook his head. “I cannot imagine a woman besting one of our warriors. Tokpah would gladly enter a contest of strength against any such woman, should one find the courage to challenge him.”

  Tokpah stood resolutely silent. Edan assumed he didn’t understand their language, for Kaoque usually addressed him in a foreign tongue.

  “I would challenge him,” said Galiveth in a seething tone.

  “As would I,” Taria said.

  “And I,” Brawna and Norna said together.

  Kaoque startled, seeming to notice for the first time that the four guards were all women. How could he not? Edan wondered. True, they wore tunics and mail that obscured their breasts, and some men kept their faces neatly shaven and wore their hair long, as most of the women battlers did, but their faces, hardened by discipline though they were, still looked feminine to Edan’s eye. Perhaps Kaoque’s unfamiliarity with the women of Thendylath explained it.

  “I meant no disrespect,” Kaoque said. “Forgive my manners, Lord Dawnpiper. I did not mean to come as a guest to your home and challenge your warriors into battle. I am at fault for creating a misunderstanding.”

  “Misunderstandings between two such different cultures are bound to happen,” Edan said. “Your apology is accepted. Isn’t that right, First Royals?”

  “Yes, Lord Dawnpiper,” they all said in obedient, apathetic tones.

  “Speaking of misunderstandings, Emissary Kaoque, how do your people remember the war with Thendylath starting?”

  A wary expression crossed Kaoque’s face. “We remember it exactly as it happened. The story has been passed from generation to generation.”

  “Forgive me,” Edan said. “Our history has been lost these many centuries. I’ve read conflicting stories about how the war started. I was hoping your perspective would shed light on the matter.”

  “I am not here to insult your people or your leaders, only to deliver the message from my Lord Ruler to your king.”

  “I assure you, I won’t be offended. I only wish to understand what happened. The accounts we have are unreliable.”

  Kaoque seemed to consider this for a moment. “Very well,” he said. He stood and began to pace. “Our Seventh Lord Ruler, Suchyf, invited King Beresfard to attend the Feast of Zuhlys Fahn, a most prestigious honor. When it came time for the Ritual of Purity, the king—”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, but what is the Ritual of Purity?” Edan asked. This story was vastly different than the account he’d pieced together from the history texts.

  “A young woman gives herself to Zuhlys Fahn. She is cleansed and presented to the god. If He accepts her, He takes her as his wife. She receives a mark, sewn into her skin with a special ink, and the ritual of separation begins. Zuhlys Fahn reaches through the fabric of time and space, and we are given a glimpse of his holy power as he consumes her spirit.”

  Edan raised his eyebrows. “So she’s slain as part of the ritual?”

  “Yes, of course. First, her essence is extracted and cleansed, for Zuhlys Fahn only accepts the purest of mates. That is why the virgin is used.”

  A virgin, Edan thought with a mental roll of his eyes. Of course. “I see. Please continue.”

  “King Beresfard disrupted the ceremony by abducting the offering and slaying our Lord Orator in front of everyone!” Kaoque seemed to relive the outrage as he spoke, his body tense and a vein bulging in his neck. “To protect our Lord Ruler, our warriors surrounded the king. With hundreds as witness, it was clear that he was guilty of this horrible crime and would be put to death. The king’s battlers drew their weapons and the first blood of war was spilled.”

  Considering Samuar Beresfard was only sixteen at the time of his death, Edan understood an idealistic king making a mistake like that, but to slay the Cyprindian high priest in front of so many witnesses was not only rash, it was unconscionable. If that was truly what happened, Edan could see why Nathem Engtury had declared Samuar mad. “Yes, Samuar Beresfard was a young king, probably too immature and unwise to rule, but he’d inherited the throne by rights. How did King Beresfard manage to return home? He was surrounded by Cyprindian warriors.”

  “Yes!” Kaoque said, turning and pointing at Edan. “Exactly so. He was surrounded, and so he resorted to evil magic to make his escape. He summoned a being so terrible, there are no words to describe it. It was darkness itself in living flesh, and it slew our fiercest warriors with barely a thought and devoured their souls. These bravest, most honorable of our warriors would never return to the hearth of Zuhlys Fahn as their reward, and all because of the King of Thendylath.”

  Hell’s teeth! So it was more than just the murder of the Lord Orator. The Cyprindians believed that the souls of hundreds of their warriors were lost forever, devoured by a summoned demon. His description sounded an awful lot like Ritol. Edan picked up the pitcher of water and refilled his glass and Kaoque’s, and then took a long draw to soothe his parched mouth. Could Ritol truly be four hundred years old? Or was it one of many others of its kind?

  “The king fled, leaving the demon behind to slay thousands of our people indiscriminately. Our warriors tried to fight it, but it was unstoppable. It wasn’t until the king had set sail that the demon vanished.”

  “I see,” Edan said. “You’re here because your people seek recompense for this?”

&nb
sp; Kaoque’s eyes darkened. “There is no compensation for the destruction of thousands of souls, only retaliation. I am here to deliver a message. Nothing more.”

  Chapter 9

  Gaol cells spilled over with snarling, vicious beyonders shaped like humans. They escaped into the streets of Ambryce, tipping over carts and setting fire to homes and clawing to death the citizens who were trying to protect their families. He watched helplessly, unable to move. People yelled at him to do something, and they all became Feanna, holding his screaming infant son. She looked like Talisha. A red stain appeared on the front of her dress and spread, and then blood streamed across the baby’s skin. “Change me,” she cried, “before it’s too late.”

  Gavin awoke with a gasp, sitting up and reaching reflexively for Aldras Gar. All was quiet, though the sun had touched the eastern sky with a pale purple glow. He probably had an hour left before daylight, but he couldn’t sleep with the remnants of that dream fresh in his mind.

  Autumn was finally coming, and the temperature had dropped overnight to the coolest it had been in months. Daia lay quietly under her leather rain cloak, but Cirang’s teeth chattered as she lay, curled in a ball, with her hands tucked into her armpits. Gavin felt the chill on the air, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. He stood and draped his cloak over her.

  Though he wasn’t going to get anymore sleep that night, he had time to spare before his companions would wake. He spent a few minutes gathering firewood and magically pulling the remaining moisture from it, and then built a cookfire in the cinders that remained from the evening before. He sat on his bedroll, staring into the fire’s flame as he went over the dream in his mind.

  “Guardians?” he whispered. “Are you there?”

  The Guardians faded into view in the fire. “We are always here. You have questions, Emtor.”

  “Yeh,” he whispered. “Tell me how and why your essence came to be trapped in a crystal.”

  “In our realm, kho and zhi are balanced perfectly by the birth of two ensouled individuals. These individuals are complements, and they grow up tempering one another through their thoughts. One of them is kho-bent, the other is zhi-bent. They’re bound together through their lifetimes.”

  “Yeh, I’ve been to your realm. I understand that part. Who were you?”

  “We were Poin and Poinna. Poin was the kho-bent, and Poinna was the zhi-bent. Long ago, when the Wayfarer was still a zhi-pure being named Carthis, she traveled to the midrealm and spoke to our village. She believed that by merging the kho and zhi, we could temper the darkness with light, the chaos with order. Doing so across all realms would reunite them as the world was in the years before The Sacrifice.”

  Gavin had known of the Runes of Carthis. He used them to travel to times gone by and to summon Ritol back to its own realm. He’d always thought Carthis was a place, not a person.

  “She came to the midrealm frequently,” the Guardians continued, “because there she could interact with those of pure kho without endangering her life.”

  “Because the zhi-bent tempered them.”

  “Yes. Inspired by the Wayfarer, we decided to try it. Our goal was to transfer our kho and zhi essences into a single crystal and then extract the combined essence so that we would be balanced as individuals, much like your people are.”

  Gavin felt a slight chill and got up to pace. “What went wrong?”

  “The body can survive only moments without the essence. Once decay begins, the body cannot be resurrected. The shaman combined our essences within the Nal Disi but could not extract them from the crystal, for our bodies had begun to decay.”

  The notion of removing the essence temporarily to combine it with another excited Gavin. Could the key to fixing Feanna be found in that process? “So your essence was trapped in the crystal. How did it get into the wellspring?”

  “The shaman who performed the ritual was banished and his complement along with him. He brought the Nal Disi into the mountains in the hopes that he could break our essence free from its prison. After many years, the shaman died, and his complement, unable to survive without him, threw the crystal into the spring before she, too, perished.”

  Gavin shook his head in disbelief. “But all that happened in the midrealm. How did the crystal get here?”

  “The crystal isn’t living matter, and therefore it exists in all realms, like the mountains and oceans.”

  “Are you saying that your essence infused the water of all seven realms at once?”

  “Yes, the water exists in all realms. Over the centuries the Nal Disi was submerged in the spring, beings of all realms have been affected by it, though we did our best to frighten them away.”

  Daia stirred. Gavin waited to see if she would rise, but her breathing deepened once more into the steady rhythm of sleep.

  “So Carthis was a Wayfarer,” he said, mostly to himself.

  “One of the zhi-pure from the realm of violet.”

  “How did humans become Wayfarer?”

  “Carthis was said to have visited all the realms, including those of the pure kho and the kho-dominant—red, orange, and yellow. Carthis was killed in one of those realms, and the being of a strong kho nature became Wayfarer. This began a time of chaos throughout the realms as the new Wayfarer traveled and wreaked havoc wherever he went. It was King Landon Beresfard from your realm who slew the kho-bent Wayfarer and inherited the power. It has been passed down to your people ever since.”

  “How do you know that? You’ve been stuck in a rock for hundreds of years.”

  “Though our souls are bound to the essence, we are free to travel across the dimensions of time and space. We have witnessed these events ourselves.”

  Whoa. Gavin gaped at their ghostly form a moment. “Can you go forwards in time and see how this all plays out?”

  “No, Emtor. The future isn’t written. Your choices, and those of every other being, have not yet been made.”

  “So you’re saying there’s no such thing as destiny?”

  “Precisely so.”

  “Hah!” Gavin looked at Daia’s sleeping form, wishing she could hear this. Even after all that had happened in the last few months, perhaps because of it, she still believed in fate. “So you could go backwards in time or to anyplace in the present and get information for me?”

  “We can witness events, as you wish.”

  Gavin gestured to the sleeping forms of Daia and Cirang. “You used their fears to scare them away from the wellspring. How’d you know what they were afraid of?”

  “Hopes, fears, and other emotions are communicated through the essence. It is how your mate can sense the feelings of others, though her ability to perceive the essence without physical contact is undeveloped.”

  “So you could scare off my enemies,” he said hopefully, imagining being able to quell an enemy attack without bloodshed.

  “We can frighten your enemies or inspire your allies if the Nal Disi is present, but we cannot travel across the sea to do so.”

  “Oh, I see now.” Gavin felt an excitement he hadn’t felt in some time. This was possibly the most valuable, powerful tool a king could ever have. “Can I return the power of Wayfarer to one of Carthis’s people?”

  “One would have to be present at your death to inherit the power. Unless you traveled to the violet realm moments before your death, the power of Wayfarer will remain among your people until the world ends or someone in another realm slays the Wayfarer and takes it. It is for this reason that we implore you to exercise caution when traveling to the lower realms. They’ll try to take your power, for that is the nature of the kho-bent.”

  He nodded. Ritol had tried to kill King Arek for it, and later Gavin, hoping to become Wayfarer. With the Guardians’ ability to get information from any realm at any time in the past, Gavin had little need to do the traveling himself.

  “You have my thanks,” he said. “Your information’s been helpful.”

  “We owe you a great debt for returning our essence to
the Nal Disi, Emtor.”

  Daia opened her eyes and settled her gaze upon Gavin. “How long have you been awake?”

  An orange glow lit the eastern horizon. “Not long. Been talking to my new friends. Oh, one more thing. You said that drinking the essence-infused water only affected someone’s essence once. Is there another way to reverse the water’s effect?”

  “We cannot guide you in this, Emtor. We have learned from our past mistake.”

  What the hell does that mean?

  “It is best to leave the essence as it is,” they said.

  “I can’t do that. My wife was affected, and she’s carrying...” He hoped it was his son she was carrying. It had to be. She’d conceived in the early days of their marriage. Even if she’d been having an affair with Adro, Gavin had requested her presence in his bed far too often for the baby to have been Adro’s.

  “The kho-bent man lied to you, Emtor. He couldn’t have fathered a child with your mate.”

  Gavin straightened, excited. “Are you sure?”

  “What is it?” Daia asked, straightening.

  “Rest assured, Emtor. The child is of your mating.”

  “Feanna’s baby is mine,” he said. “That takes a lot off my mind.”

  Cirang awoke and blinked the sleep from her eyes. “Is something wrong?” When she sat up, she pulled the cloak draped over her tighter.

  “You’re awake,” he said. “Good. Let’s pack up and get on the road.”

  “Where are we going first?” Daia asked, rising to her feet. “Do you need to go to that midrealm place?”

  Gavin shook the dirt from his bedroll and began to roll it up. “Yeh, but first to Ambryce. I want to talk to Jennalia.”

  Cirang handed him the cloak. “My thanks, King Gavin,” she said in a sincere tone.

  “You’re too kind to her,” Daia said. “She can freeze to death for all I care. It’d be a slow, painful death that would give her time to reflect on all the evil she’s done.”