Forsaken Kingdom (The Last Prince Book 1)

by J. R. Rasmussen

  She cleared her throat, trying to ease the sudden pressure there. “And is he alone, in this vision of yours?”

  “It’s not a vision,” Arun said. “I can’t see him. I can’t pick which details the bones tell me.”

  “Your best guess, then.”

  “I have the impression he’s alone, yes.”

  “If he was at an inn, then he’s either traveling openly, or he’s a fool.”

  “The Wardin I remember wasn’t a fool.”

  “The Wardin I remember wasn’t a traitor, either. But that Wardin is gone.” Erietta swallowed and stared into the fire. “If he is traveling openly, we have to assume it’s with the king’s blessing. And Bramwell wouldn’t give it unless he had a good reason. This is crown business.”

  “You assume too much.” Arun let out the long-suffering sigh of a man having an argument he’d already had many times. “You always have. You’re too hard on him. We were twelve years old. He was terrified, and with good reason. You can’t judge what a boy does in that situation.”

  Her eyes snapped back to her brother’s. “Oh really? I can’t judge him for abandoning us all to Tobin’s rule? For denouncing his kingdom and renouncing all claims to it? Accepting a manor and a life of ease from the same man who murdered his father in the most horrible, cruel execution in history? Which part of that am I meant to excuse?”

  “The part where he did all of it for his own survival! Would you rather he’d accepted death himself, just to avoid saying a few words and retiring quietly to a nice, gilded prison?” Arun leaned forward, arms on his knees. “Defying Bramwell wouldn’t have done anybody any good. There was no reason for Wardin to martyr himself.”

  Erietta shook her head, her chest heavy with a familiar ache. “He’s not a prisoner. You know he isn’t.”

  When she had heard of Wardin’s proclamation of peace seven years ago, she too believed that he was only trying to protect himself. Trying to protect the Eyrds too, perhaps, from further bloodshed.

  But then one of Bramwell’s prisoners of war, an Eyrd of noble birth, escaped from Witmare. The window in the tower where he’d been kept looked down on the palace courtyard. He’d seen Wardin often.

  When the prisoner made his way back to Pendralyn to reunite with his children, his tale spread nearly instantly: the boy they were calling their last prince was happy, relaxed, well fed. He spent time with other children. He whistled as he walked. He went out riding.

  Wardin was no unwilling participant. He’d accepted his fate—and abandoned Eyrdon to its own.

  “Whatever he is, and whatever he’s done, he didn’t betray us,” Arun said. “He didn’t tell the king about Pendralyn. That should tell you something.”

  Erietta bent her head and rubbed her brows, her chest tightening another degree. “Don’t be a fool, Arun. That’s exactly what he’s just done. What other reason could the king possibly have to send a Rath to Eyrdon? He can hardly want to remind the people that they once had an alternative to Tobin.”

  Prince Tobin was, if anything, more despised than ever. He pillaged the land for its silver, sending children into the mines to burrow where fully grown men couldn’t go, indifferent to the terrible and dangerous conditions he fostered, pushing them to dig too deep, too fast. And when the tunnels inevitably collapsed, he was equally indifferent to their deaths.

  Arun stood and took her empty mug from her. “We don’t know for certain that the king sent him at all. Perhaps he’s not traveling on Bramwell’s orders. Perhaps there’s another explanation.” Hawthorn at his heels, he walked back to the table to pour them both more mead. “Why would he betray the magistery now? After all these years?”

  “How should I know? Perhaps the king got word some other way, and Wardin gave in to his questions because he’s just trying to survive again. Perhaps there’s something he wants, and this was the last thing he had to bargain with. Or perhaps he just woke up one day feeling particularly spiteful for no reason at all.”

  “Wardin isn’t spiteful.”

  “We don’t know what Wardin is. Not anymore.”

  “Yet you’re determined to think the worst of him.”

  “And you’re determined to be a blind fool.”

  “That’s twice you’ve called me a fool in as many minutes.” Arun arched a brow at her as he handed her mug back. “I could cast a spell to seal your mouth shut, you know.”

  Erietta gamely tried for a smile. “You wouldn’t dare. I’m the archmagister. You count on me for your wages. How would you buy female company in Avadare if I withheld them?”

  Arun scoffed. “Buy female company. Really. That’s the meanest thing you’ve said to me all night.” He took his seat again and sighed. “If Wardin had betrayed Pendralyn, why wouldn’t Tobin be here with soldiers right now? Why send one man from all the way up north, instead?”

  “Perhaps Wardin doesn’t remember the exact location, and needs to come first, to reacquaint himself. Or perhaps he’s meeting with Tobin’s forces in Eyrdon somewhere.”

  “You say the word perhaps even more than you say the word fool. I’ve lost count of them all.”

  “I don’t know the answers, Arun, but we should assume this is a threat to us.” Erietta ran her finger around the lip of her mug, but did not drink. Her stomach was growing queasy. “Wardin chose his side a long time ago.”

  Despite their being the same shape and color, Arun’s eyes were very different from hers. They were always moving, for one thing. Always lively, always ready. But now they were still and serious as he held her gaze. It was like looking in a mirror.

  Finally, he leaned forward and set his mead down on the little stool between them. “Why do you hold him in such contempt, Etta?”

  “Because I let him go!” She flushed, surprised by the unbidden words, and found herself wishing Arun hadn’t stoked the fire quite so well. They’d discussed Wardin often over the years, but she’d never acknowledged her own shame.

  “You know what I did that night.” She swallowed. “I didn’t tell the magisters. I didn’t even tell you. Instead I helped him leave. Who knows if he even would have gotten away without me! And how did he repay me for that help?”

  Erietta waved an arm, nearly hitting poor Hawthorn, who’d sensed her agitation and come to her side. “By abandoning me to this.”

  Arun’s voice was uncharacteristically quiet. “Abandoning you?”

  “All of us. Eyrdon. To be a barony of Harth, to suffer the things Tobin does.” She drew a serrated breath. “How could he not know? How could he not care? He was our prince.”

  “Perhaps he still is. You’re making assumptions—”

  “Educated assumptions. Very probable assumptions.”

  “Be that as it may. The truth is, we don’t know what he’s doing, or why. Perhaps he isn’t betraying us at all. Perhaps he needs our help.” Arun spread his hands. “Or perhaps he really is bringing Tobin here. But I think we’d best stop speaking in nothing but perhaps before we decide what to do about it, don’t you?”

  “So what are you suggesting? You want to travel into Harth—where, in case you’ve forgotten, you would be summarily and painfully killed if you were caught doing magic—to intercept him and ask nicely what his intentions are?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” His usual grin returned. “You’re the contriver. I want you to travel into Harth to intercept him and ask nicely what his intentions are. Although I’ll admit, I’m a bit concerned about whether you can manage the nicely part.”

  She shook her head. “You’re the one who has bones to tell you where to find him.”

  “And you’re the one who can track and trap.”

  “I can’t go. We can’t tell the other magisters.” Between her youth and her affinity, Erietta was already on uncertain ground much of the time. The vote that had made her archmagister only last winter was a very close one. She knew she’d won on the strength of two things: her exceptional skill, and her old connection with the last prince.

 
The name of Rath still carried weight at Pendralyn. Most people regarded Wardin as Arun did; they didn’t blame him for saving himself. Some even hoped he was only biding his time until he could rise against Bramwell again.

  She couldn’t tell them about this, not until she knew where Wardin stood. And what they might have to do about him. It would be better to send Arun quietly, and tell them her brother had gone on one of his frequent trips into the mountains, to search for some rare plant or insect.

  “True enough. We should keep this between us for the time being.” Arun gave her another keen look as he scratched his whiskers. “But is that the only reason? Or are you afraid of what you might find, if you go?”

  “I’m more afraid of what you might find if you go. What if you discover that he’s betraying us again? Suppose he’s coming to lead Tobin’s soldiers here. Without Wardin, they couldn’t find us. What then?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Are you asking if I can do what needs to be done?”

  “Can you?”

  “Of course I can. Just because I’m not burning with hatred like you are—”

  “I am not burning with hatred. I have a perfectly reasonable caution of—”

  “—doesn’t mean I’d set his life above my duty. I haven’t seen him in seven years. We’re men now.”

  Erietta scoffed. “Men. You’re nineteen.”

  “We’re more than three years done with our schooling, and we are officially of age. That makes us men. Or are you planning to tell the others that you have to resign as archmagister, because you’ve suddenly realized you’re not a woman, after all? Some of them will be very happy to hear it.”

  “All right, I take your point. Somehow I have trouble picturing Wardin as a man, that’s all.”

  “That is my point. We’re practically strangers. I don’t know Wardin as a man, and he doesn’t know me. We have no loyalty to one another.”

  The ache returned to Erietta’s chest. “He has no loyalty to anything.”

  “That remains to be seen. But I am loyal to Pendralyn, and you should know that without asking.”

  He sounded genuinely hurt. Perhaps she was being too harsh. Perhaps she was always too harsh. “I do know it. I’m sorry.”

  Arun nodded and raised his mug to her, but he didn’t speak. For several moments there was no sound but the riotous crackling of the fire.

  “All right,” Erietta said at last. “We’ll investigate. But it has to be you. Apart from the stir it would cause if I left, you’re the only one who can interpret the bones, and an inn isn’t exactly a precise description of his whereabouts. There’s no point in sending a tracker if we don’t even know where to start. And you’re more than capable of handling yourself if you run into any trouble.” She smirked at him. “With some of the spells you’ve come up with, you might have been a contriver yourself.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Arun’s mouth fell open as he pressed a palm to his chest. “I deal in thoughts, not imagination. There’s a difference between tricking a person and causing them, shall we say, mental difficulties.”

  She laughed. “That’s a fine line you tread.”

  “Well, we are twins.” He dropped his pretense of indignation and winked at her. “But truth be told, I’m happy to be the one to go. I’d like to see Wardin for myself.”

  “Judge him for yourself, you mean.”

  He raised a brow. “Or spare him your judgement.”

  Arun left a short while later, with a promise to depart in the morning and be careful along the way. He also promised to do whatever was necessary to protect Pendralyn. But Erietta wondered, as she undressed and washed, if he could.

  Despite her warnings, despite his own claims of neutrality, she knew her brother was hoping to meet his old friend on the Old South Road. He thought there was at least some chance that this journey was to help Wardin. As if Wardin were the one who needed help, instead of Eyrdon, instead of Pendralyn.

  Hawthorn was already snoring at the foot of the bed by the time Erietta curled up beneath her blankets of soft Eyrdish wool. She closed her eyes and tried to remember Wardin’s face, his voice. What would he be like now?

  A traitor, and that’s all you need to know. This is no time to get sentimental. Not when Arun is already sentimental enough for the both of us.

  She didn’t have the slightest doubt that her brother had meant what he said. He would put his duty first. Or at least he would try.

  But if it came to it, if he had to, would he really be able to execute that duty?

  Would he be able to kill Wardin Rath?

  9

  Wardin

  “Barley soup and rabbit pie, or salt pork, if you’d rather.” The sallow innkeeper looked Wardin up and down through irritable, deep-socketed eyes. “And ale. There’s no wine.”

  “The pie, and ale will be fine.” Wardin gave the man a coin and added his thanks, then wondered whether that had been a mistake. Manners might make him conspicuous here. This part of Harth was hard country, and he hadn’t seen a single smile or friendly face since he’d crossed into it.

  He found a secluded table near the fireplace, away from the open windows that were attracting the scant handful of other patrons on such a warm day. Nobody paid him any mind.

  Almost nobody. A lone dark-haired man, also sitting apart from the others, flicked his eyes in Wardin’s direction more than once.

  Unease prickling across his skin, Wardin tried to take stock of him with equally surreptitious glances. The man wore his hair long, in the Eyrdish style. Just one more thing, among many of late, that whispered Eyrdon in Wardin’s mind. His throat tightened.

  Between that wild hair and the way the man spent most of his time with his tankard raised to his face, it was difficult to make out his features. Still, there was something familiar about him, something Wardin couldn’t place. The set of his chin, or perhaps his shoulders.

  He was shorter and slighter than Wardin. But if he was any good with a weapon, that might not matter.

  Wardin cursed himself for being foolish enough to risk a meal at an inn yet again. It was the third time since he’d left Witmare. But it had been days since he’d caught anything to eat, and he would be no good at fleeing—or fighting—if he let himself get too weak.

  He looked back at the Eyrd, who did not return his gaze. Wardin hesitated, trying to differentiate between useful instinct and mere anxiety. He might have decided it was too risky and left, but a woman brought his pie and ale just at that moment. The smell of it was enough to keep him in his seat. If the man did turn out to be trouble, Wardin might as well face it on a full stomach.

  While he ate (the pie seemed to be more turnip than rabbit), he unrolled the sole map he’d been able to tuck into his small pack before he left Witmare. It showed all of Cairdarin and the Old Roads, and Wardin had made liberal use of it, moving hither and yon, trying to throw off the king’s pursuit.

  He had started off going southeast, and it was on the Old East Road that he made his first stop at an inn. That one was calculated; if his presence was remembered there, let Bramwell’s men think he was heading toward Tarnarven, looking to escape across the sea.

  But he turned south before he came to the Tar border, cutting across the countryside until he found his way to the Old South Road. It was Eyrdon he was aiming for, thanks to the inkwell and the dragon symbol engraved on its lid.

  He didn’t know what he expected to do once he crossed the border. He could hardly start showing strangers the inkwell and asking whether they happened to know whose it might be. But Eyrdon was the source of the mystery that had landed him in this mess, and it was as good a place to disappear to as any. Perhaps better than most. It might be easy to get lost in that highland wilderness.

  Not that he knew the terrain firsthand. He’d never been to Eyrdon.

  Not as far as I know. But my dreams might know better.

  Those dreams had only intensified since he’d fled the palace, but they were beginning to seep into his c
onsciousness too, now. Every step he took away from Witmare felt like waking up a little more. Images came back to him, although back from where, he could not say. He only knew that they were memories. A book with a blue cover. A bed in a room with many other beds, but finer than a barracks. A castle, not the one at Witmare, but somewhere greener, higher.

  He saw the dark-haired children most of all. Talking, laughing, eating with him. The boy always told him to come home.

  Two days before, when he had first seen mountains in the distance, the sight took his breath away, and he got so dizzy he was almost afraid he might faint. The mountains were Eyrdon. Everything pointed to Eyrdon.

  But he didn’t know why.

  He put the map away and resumed his study of the room and the inn’s patrons. The Eyrd was intent on his soup, and didn’t look Wardin’s way again. But the innkeeper was a different matter. When he’d studied Wardin earlier, Wardin assumed the man was taking in his ragged clothes, perhaps skeptical of this traveler’s ability to pay for his meal. But perhaps there was more to it. A broad, meaty man approached the bar, and as they lowered their heads to talk, the innkeeper nodded in Wardin’s direction.

  Heart hammering, Wardin stuffed the crust of his pie into his pocket, and got up to leave.

  The innkeeper’s friend stepped in front of him before he could get to the door. He was heavier and more muscular than Wardin, but Wardin had a few inches on him, and so far, he saw no weapon. Perhaps the dagger at his own belt would give him some advantage, if an advantage was called for. But he had no experience at fighting with it.

  “What’s your hurry?” the man asked.

  “Who says I’m in one?”

  The man nodded toward the table Wardin had just vacated. “Ate your food awfully fast.”

  “Yes, well, it was delicious.” Even the innkeeper laughed at that.

  The big man pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and held it out to Wardin. “See, because I thought it might have something to do with this.”