Forsaken Kingdom (The Last Prince Book 1)

by J. R. Rasmussen

  I wish I knew. Can you help me find out? Wardin swallowed hard, to trap the words before they could escape his throat. He wasn’t ready to admit his weakness, despite the growing sense of familiarity—brotherhood, even—he felt in Arun’s presence. His instinct was to trust the Eyrd.

  But instincts could be wrong, and he was being hunted. He must be cautious. Rather than answer, he responded with a question of his own. “What do you want with me?”

  “I want to know why Bramwell has put a bounty on you.”

  “I’m not prepared to tell you that.”

  Arun snorted. “Of course not. Because you’ve got so many allies at the moment, you can afford to irritate some of them. How about telling me what you’re doing out here, then? Where are you going?”

  “South. To Eyrdon.”

  “Why?”

  “To hide.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the king wants me dead, obviously.”

  “Which brings us back to what you did to make him want you dead, after seven years of peace.”

  “Seven years?” Wardin closed his eyes and pressed his hands to his temples, as if he could fend off the resurgent pain in his head. “Seven years,” he muttered. “What happened seven years ago?”

  “You left Eyrdon as Bramwell’s prisoner,” Arun said promptly, definitively. “On purpose, mind you, because you’re a goat’s ass.”

  Wardin shivered, his skin clammy with chilled sweat. He knows me. We know each other. Even if I don’t remember it.

  He can tell me who I am.

  There was no doubt in his mind that this Eyrd could answer his questions. If only he could bring himself to ask them.

  And surely he could, at least some of them? Arun had been at the inn, after all; he knew the king was offering a reward for Wardin’s capture. Nothing Wardin could tell him would be more damaging than that. And the man was right: Wardin didn’t exactly have a host of allies to choose from.

  But he would leave the inkwell out of it, for now. He didn’t want to risk Arun trying to steal it from him, especially since he wasn’t at all sure that his dagger could be any match for a magician.

  “The king wants me dead because I came across something he didn’t want me to know. Although I don’t understand what that something is. He thinks I know more than I do.” Wardin cleared his throat. “Actually, it seems you know more than I do. Perhaps you can fill in some of the dark spots for me.”

  The candlelight distorted Arun’s smile, making him look as much like a gargoyle as a man. “Perhaps I can. But you have to answer my questions, too.”

  Despite the prickling at his nape, Wardin nodded. “Fair enough.”

  “All right. Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

  “I’m not exactly sure where the beginning is. I’m the palace adept. Was the palace adept. But then—”

  “An adept? You, a scholar?” Arun’s bark of laughter seemed to die in the air, devoured by the dense fog around them.

  At the sound of it, Wardin’s heartbeat seemed to slow. The world went out of focus, replaced by a different hillside. A different fog.

  But the same laugh.

  He winced as another wave of pain coursed through his skull, strong enough to turn his stomach. “You’re the boy,” he whispered.

  Arun put a hand on Wardin’s shoulder. “Are you all right? I haven’t got much in the way of healing herbs with me, but—”

  “You’re the boy,” Wardin repeated, his voice stronger this time. “The one who keeps telling me to come home. The one who’s always laughing at me.”

  Arun tilted his head to one side. “Well, I can’t deny laughing at you plenty. Though I’m not laughing now. You sound like you’re about to faint.”

  “I will not faint.” Please don’t faint. “We knew each other, as boys, didn’t we?”

  “We did.”

  “Who am I?” Wardin hadn’t meant to ask the question so bluntly, but it came out in a rush. He couldn’t hold it back, not when he knew Arun had the answer.

  And Arun didn’t hesitate to give it. “You’re Wardin Rath. You’re our last prince. The last Prince of Eyrdon.”

  Eager as Wardin had been to begin piecing together his shattered memories, they’d been able to talk no more that night. The pain in his head had overwhelmed him at the words Prince of Eyrdon, and for several minutes he’d lain wheezing and groaning, unable to see or hear, barely conscious. After that, Arun had insisted he get some rest, and refused to say any more.

  The next morning, Wardin woke to the smell of woodsmoke and burning moss. Arun was roasting some sort of meat over a small fire for their breakfast.

  “The smoke will draw eyes,” Wardin said.

  “Eyes we can’t escape, if you’re too weak to run. You’re ill. You need food.” Arun tossed a waterskin at him. “And water.” He watched Wardin take a long drink, then nodded. “There’s nobody around, anyway. We’ve cut miles west of the road, and southwest of the inn. I’ve run all over this area. It’s barren. Lucky I even found this grouse.”

  “You’ve been running again? How long have you been awake?”

  “Long enough to get back in balance. But after everything I was obliged to do to save your foolish hide yesterday, not to mention what it took to find you before that, it would be nice if I could get through today without doing any magic.”

  “Balance. Magic.” Wardin shook his head, although the motion brought more nausea than clarity. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  Arun laughed. “No, I can see that. You’re lucky you’ve never been a good liar, or I might have killed you by now, just under the general assumption that you’re up to no good, pretending not to know who you are. Or who I am. Or what magic is.” He sighed heavily as he handed Wardin a half-charred chunk of meat, speared at the end of a stick. “I can’t believe what’s happened to you.”

  “What has happened to me?”

  “You tell me. Then perhaps I can tell you.”

  So he told Arun about Falk’s death, and the dreams that had started haunting him that very day. And the things that were more than dreams, the things that felt like memories.

  He still kept the inkwell out of it, but he made vague mention of poking around, asking questions, behaving oddly, until Bramwell became suspicious—although Wardin did not know what the king was suspicious of. Nor, he told Arun, did he need to know; one nearly successful attempt on his life was sufficient to make him flee, regardless of how clear he was on the king’s reasons for wanting him dead.

  When he finished, Arun sat quietly, nibbling meat from a bone. Finally he said, “You say this Falk was the master scout?”

  “Yes, at one time. He retired a few years ago.”

  “And he was a madman.”

  “I can tell you that for certain.”

  “His balance,” Arun muttered.

  “What is this balance you keep talking about?”

  “Each magical affinity—you know what those are, right?”

  “Battlemagic, and the thing you said you are. A sage, right?”

  “Yes, those are two of them. There are three, including contrivance. Each one relies on a different aspect of your humanity—the body, the mind, and the imagination. Call that last one the spirit if you think it sounds grander, some do. Battlemagic, for example, is physical magic. It affects the physical, draws on the physical. You understand?”

  Wardin nodded, thinking this all sounded familiar.

  “When you practice physical magic, you’re building that aspect up, making it stronger,” Arun went on. “That brings it out of balance with the other two. You have to reestablish that balance by exercising its opposite, working with your mind. Usually through academic study. Doing sums in your head can work in a pinch.”

  “And sage magic, like you used last night, is mind magic. You essentially invaded those men’s minds with your own.”

  “That’s a good way to put it.”

  “Which meant you had to balance it wit
h physical work. That’s why you kept running.”

  “Exactly. You have to keep yourself in balance.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “There are all sorts of reactions and consequences, but most of them boil down to madness.”

  Wardin drew a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “So Falk was practicing magic all along.”

  “A lot of magic, and too powerful to be balanced.” Arun tossed the last of his bones to the ground, and pushed some dirt over it with his foot. “If, for example, Falk was casting a trick every day, an illusion powerful enough to make you think you were someone else … well, I can’t even imagine what that would have cost him. I’ve never heard of anything like it. But I’m guessing that’s exactly what happened. And he paid the price for stretching the bounds of his magic so far.”

  “All my memories, everything I knew about myself, my life. It was all a trick.” Wardin felt ill, flushed and queasy, but he refused to show it. He didn’t want Arun calling a halt to the conversation again.

  “Yes. But now the spell is cracking, without him to reinforce it, and you’re starting to remember.”

  “Not enough. I can’t make sense of anything.” Wardin swallowed the bile that had risen in his throat. All those years, stolen. By magic.

  It should have been impossible, preposterous. Yet he realized that he’d accepted Arun’s explanation the instant he’d heard it. He could feel the truth of it. Had felt it since the day Falk died.

  He thought of Jervis, the last time he’d seen him, how nervous the old man had been. He knew. All the time he was teaching me, all the time I lived with him, he knew.

  But it was no good holding a grudge. Jervis had almost certainly paid for his betrayal with his life.

  He looked back at Arun. “Tell me everything you know about me.”

  But Arun shook his head as he got to his feet. “I don’t think that would be wise. We’ve seen what happens to you when a memory hits you too hard. Trying to force it could be dangerous. I can’t drag you back to Eyrdon if you get too sick to walk on your own.”

  Wardin set his jaw. “I won’t.”

  “You don’t know that. And we’re crossing open land with a bounty on your head. We can’t exactly afford to risk it.”

  Wardin clenched his fists around his pack, but made no move to stand or ready himself for walking. Surely this Eyrd, who had the power to answer every question that had been plaguing him, didn’t mean to withhold those answers. “Well, I’m not following you blindly with no idea of where you’re taking me or why, so what do you suggest?”

  If Arun could read the violence in Wardin’s face, he wasn’t intimidated by it. He only chuckled. “I suggest that you trust me. What choice do you have? You want to go to Eyrdon. I can help you get there. Any other traveling companions you’re likely to meet are going to take you in the opposite direction, and you know it.”

  He did know it, which only made him glower all the harder.

  Arun sighed, hands on his hips. “For now, I’ll tell you this: you are … who I told you you are, last night. Try not to think about that part very much. It doesn’t seem to sit well with you. And as you know, you and I knew each other as boys. We lived at the same place.”

  Finally, Wardin rose, the anger loosening in his chest, pushed out by a surge of … what was that? Longing. Yearning. “It was a magistery, wasn’t it? This place?”

  “It was.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “It wasn’t destroyed during the dissolution, because the Harths never knew it was there. Pendralyn was a secret even back then, open only to Eyrds of particular bloodlines or exceptional ability. Until it became the last one standing. Then its gate was opened to carefully chosen others, but it stayed hidden. You sacrificed yourself, in fact, to keep it hidden from Bramwell. Like I said, you’re a goat’s ass.”

  Wardin’s grin was reflexive, almost habitual. He understood that he was falling into a pattern that had once been familiar. “Sounds heroic of me.”

  “It was stupid.” Arun shrugged and rolled his eyes. “But I suppose it was also a little bit heroic.”

  “If I was at a magistery, then I must know some magic.”

  “A bit. You were only twelve when you left, but you weren’t a bad student.”

  “Is that also where I learned to fight with a dagger so well?”

  Arun scoffed. “I wouldn’t call it so well. Well enough to temporarily fend off an innkeeper and a farmer, perhaps. But I wouldn’t try to take on the king’s men just yet.”

  Wardin turned away from his (friend) companion, toward the mountains to the south, and ran his fingers through his unruly beard. “If there’s still a real magistery in Cairdarin, then that’s where I need to go. Someone or something there might be able to help me break this trick for good.”

  “Yes, I was coming to that.” Arun stood shoulder to shoulder at his side, looking to the mountains himself. “I’m taking you there. Once you’re hidden and safe, then we can work out what to do next.”

  Wardin snickered. “And you expect me to just trust the likes of you. Follow you blindly into a foreign land—”

  “Your land.”

  “—where I’ll be lost, and hope you are who you say you are, and you’ll do what you say you’ll do.”

  Arun elbowed him in the ribs. “What alternatives do you see?”

  Wardin cocked his head. “None, as it happens.”

  “Well then, it’s settled.” Arun nodded ahead. “South is that way. Let’s get on with it.”

  11

  Wardin

  “You should be flattered.” Arun sat down in the shade of the pine copse where Wardin had been lingering since noon. “The quality of the bounty hunters is improving. The one I just ran into on the road had quite a well-made sword.”

  “Bounty hunters, here?”

  “Of course. Did you think they would just stop at the border?”

  Wardin supposed a part of him had thought just that. He’d been so focused on getting to Eyrdon that it had come to represent safety for him. As if once he crossed the line, he would become untouchable. But of course that was foolish. He wasn’t safe anywhere.

  It had been eight days since he’d met Arun at the inn in Harth. The journey into Eyrdon should have taken half that time, but they’d done a great deal of backtracking and walking in circles to throw off anyone who might be tracking them.

  And it was slow going. They hid during the brightest parts of the day, leaving them to cross the moors and foothills by poor light. To make it worse, they chose the most treacherous parts of the land to travel through, terrain they were counting on other, more sensible (or less desperate) people to avoid.

  When their supplies ran low, Arun went hunting and gathering alone, leaving Wardin to skulk in thick woods or small caves. He hated hiding, depending on Arun to bring him food as if he were a pup. But he tried not to be ungrateful to his new (old) friend.

  It was all necessary; the few times they’d ventured close enough to the Old Road to spy on it, they’d seen soldiers or other armed travelers. Occasionally, Arun would venture out alone to speak to them, as he’d done today, pretending to be a bounty hunter himself. Word of Wardin’s escape into the southern moorlands had spread.

  “Had a nice talk with this one,” Arun said. “He joked that he’d kill me if I found you first, but he didn’t have a joking look about him. Not surprising, given the price you’re fetching.” Indeed, he sounded neither surprised nor troubled. He winked at Wardin. “Like I said, you should be flattered.”

  “You’re awfully cheerful about it. Here, let’s see that bite. I found some more crowliac while you were gone.”

  The wound in Arun’s arm had proved to be nastier than they’d originally thought, and had grown swollen and red within a day. Wardin had been applying poultices to it whenever he could forage for helpful plants.

  Arun seemed to find these ministrations shocking and amusing, in equal measure. According to him, h
ealing was the province of sages, and Wardin’s affinity had been battlemagic, once upon a time.

  “Why shouldn’t I be cheerful?” he asked as he dutifully held out his arm for Wardin’s inspection. “We haven’t been caught, have we?”

  “Not yet. This looks much better today. I think the danger of it festering is past.”

  “As are most of the other dangers.” Arun nodded between the trees, at the rocky slope that loomed ahead of them. Beyond it, the peaks rose ever higher. “We’re home now. The worst is behind us.”

  Wardin pressed his lips together. “For you, it may be. I still don’t know what will happen to me when we arrive.”

  It had been concerning him more and more, as they neared their destination, that all of Eyrdon believed him to be intimate friends with his cousin the king.

  All of Eyrdon. My kingdom. Or so he was told. The thought made Wardin’s stomach burn. He still couldn’t conceive of himself as a prince. But he’d taken Arun’s advice, and tried not to dwell on it too much during their travels. For the moment, just getting to a safe place—a magistery, no less—was enough to think about.

  “It’ll be fine,” Arun said with a shrug. “We’ll get your memories sorted out. Now that we know you haven’t betrayed us, I can promise you a warm welcome.”

  Wardin cleared his throat, and voiced a nagging fear for the first time. “I might have betrayed you, for all I know. We don’t know what I did before this spell.”

  “That’s ridiculous. If you’d betrayed us, Bramwell wouldn’t have had to trick you into thinking you were someone else to make you compliant.”

  Wardin nodded, and hoped Arun was right. The word traitor sat uneasily with him, smoldering in his mind for reasons he couldn’t understand. He continued to be frustrated by dreams, and waking memories lurking just out of view, vanishing the moment he tried to shine a light on them.

  But it was getting easier. Since they’d crossed into Eyrdon the day before, he’d felt he was coming into himself. Not in fact, perhaps—he still felt no connection to the name of Rath—but in spirit. His mood lifted as they came to the mountains, and a sense of peace settled over him. No damp, stifling air here, as there had always been at Witmare. Despite the altitude, he could breathe easily for perhaps the first time in his life.