Forsaken Kingdom (The Last Prince Book 1)

by J. R. Rasmussen

  “I’d suggest we speak with the sages as well.” Arun inclined his head to Eldon in a show of deference that Wardin knew to be mostly mocking. “There might be something the healers can come up with, to help break him free of the spell and bring his memories back.”

  “Good,” said Erietta. “That gives us a place to start, at least. Why don’t we—”

  “Assuming I agree,” Wardin interrupted.

  She put her hands on her hips. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said, assuming I agree to stay here and be tested by you. Which I will do, on one condition.”

  Erietta snorted, sending a dart of pain through Wardin’s eye. She did that as a girl.

  “You’re hardly in a position to give conditions,” Bartley said.

  “Perhaps not,” said Wardin. “But I could make things difficult. Why not save yourself the bother, when my condition is a simple one?”

  “He is our prince, after all,” Alaide murmured, and Wardin grinned at her. She was, he sensed, his strongest ally apart from Arun.

  “I’ll hear this condition,” Erietta said with a sigh. “What is it?”

  “When you’re finally satisfied that I’ve been telling the truth all along, I want you to teach me magic.”

  Wardin felt a tight pang in his heart as he looked out at the practice yard. Battlemages knocked opponents back, opened wounds without blades, deflected blows with shields he could not see. Contrivers cast tricks, or cloaked themselves while their fellows tried to find them. Sages sent sticks and leaves circling around one another’s heads like trained doves.

  Three magisters walked among the students, offering advice, giving instruction, or simply trying to rein in the chaos when it went too far. One overly enthusiastic sage set a fire that took several minutes to contain.

  Wardin longed to be out there with them. In the three days since he’d been back at Pendralyn, memories had trickled in only slowly: himself in that same yard, magisters, blackhounds, music and dramas in the keep. Holiday feasts. Hours spent reading by the fire while snow fell and fell, until it threatened to rise higher than the mountains themselves. Arun and Erietta, like bright threads woven through it all.

  They were fleeting glimpses, elusive and infuriatingly fickle, sometimes teasing the edges of his mind so cruelly that they left him more lost and confused than before. But one thing he was certain of, from his heart down to his bones: he was home.

  He thought battlemagic would still suit him well, though he also found himself a bit drawn to sagacity. The latter was a more arcane art, perhaps less useful in combat, but with all sorts of practical applications. Sages could push magic beyond boundaries other magicians could never cross, healing wounds, calling on the elements, controlling nature itself.

  Though he hadn’t seen it personally, Wardin had heard that some sages could even multiply food, turning a single barrel of apples or basket of coppernuts into fifty. He gathered this was part of the reason for the lavish plenty in the keep at mealtimes. It astounded him that the Lancet kings would have denied their people such a boon by outlawing magic.

  Such skills were enviable, but what he wished for most was still a sword in his hand. Watching battles from the window of his third floor room, high above them, separate, did not sit well with him. He wanted to be in the thick of it.

  At least Alaide wasn’t stringent about most of Erietta’s rules. Wardin roamed freely through the labyrinth of common rooms and libraries that was the battlemage hall, usually with only a student or a blackhound keeping an eye on him. He quickly learned that the hounds were the more severe chaperones; they immediately trotted off to the magisters to warn them of any attempt to go where he shouldn’t, although how they knew his limits, he couldn’t say.

  By tacit agreement, Alaide pretended not to know that he’d smuggled a few books back to his room, and he pretended to think her unaware. He read them only furtively, at night; he didn’t want the headmagister to get into trouble. And she wouldn’t go so far as to openly defy the archmagister by allowing Wardin into a classroom or the practice yard.

  Few apart from Erietta had given him the contentious welcome he’d feared during his journey through the mountains. The students, having been told only that he was a visitor from across the sea, paid him little mind. Many of the magisters seemed happy to have him. They hadn’t forgotten their last prince, and they weren’t particularly suspicious of his motives. They’d spent the past seven years assuming he was biding his time, waiting for an opportunity to return, and simply doing what he must to survive until then.

  But not Erietta. She largely ignored him, and persisted, as far as he could tell, in thinking the worst of him. Wardin couldn’t help but wonder why an old friend would regard him with more distrust than strangers.

  Perhaps his errant memories held the answer, but his return to a familiar place was not helping them come more quickly. They came—and sometimes went again—as they pleased, in their own time.

  And that time was not nearly fast enough, as far as Wardin was concerned. He hated feeling so adrift, so powerless. So useless. It had only been a few days, but every hour that passed was another hour that Bramwell had all of Cairdarin looking for him, seeking the reward.

  Jasper’s spell in Avadare had seemed to work, but how could Wardin be sure? What if someone in the village knew he was there? Silver could do a lot to change a man’s loyalty.

  He’d been a fool, rashly proposing that bargain at the meeting. A selfish fool who spoke without weighing his words. And he was being a fool now, watching this place wistfully from behind the glass, as though he might one day be a part of it. However much he might wish it, it was an empty fantasy.

  Wardin knew what he must do: recover the memory of what had happened to him when he was twelve, how he’d been spelled by Falk, and find a way to explain it to the magisters in a way they would understand and accept.

  And then he must leave.

  The need to protect Pendralyn had been instinctual and immediate, a duty he reclaimed without thought. It wasn’t only Eyrdon that the Raths were charged with defending, but magic itself. He knew this as though he’d been lectured on the subject. Perhaps, at one time, he had.

  He turned away from the window at the sound of a soft whine behind him. Hawthorn trotted into the room, and Wardin crouched down to accept the blackhound’s enthusiastic—and sloppy—greeting. They’d become fast friends, since that first night in Erietta’s chambers. Perhaps because Wardin had already learned to keep bits of bread and sausage in his pockets, for any hounds he happened across.

  “Your boss wants to see me, I suppose.”

  Hawthorn batted him with his paw.

  “All right, no point in keeping her waiting. She’s probably in a bad enough mood as it is.” He gave the blackhound one last scratch behind the ear as he rose. “Isn’t she always?”

  A few minutes later, he followed Hawthorn into the archmagister’s chambers, sighing inwardly and bracing himself for an unpleasant conversation. But the tension that had already begun to knot his neck eased when he saw that Erietta wasn’t alone. Arun leaned against the table with his arms crossed, smiling as he spoke to his sister.

  On the table were a pen, a stack of paper, and, to Wardin’s surprise, his inkwell. His greeting died on his lips when he saw it, and he looked at Arun instead. “Did you figure out the enchantment?”

  “I did, and this is no trifle, like the other enchanted inkwells I told you about.” Arun frowned down at the object in question, rubbing his jaw. “We’ve all been assuming it came to Bramwell through your father, but now I wonder. I wouldn’t expect anyone to be careless with a thing like this. More likely it was tucked away at Narinore somewhere, hidden.”

  Wardin listened to this musing with increasing impatience. “Yes, but what does it do?”

  “It’s more what it doesn’t do.” Arun grinned, clearly relishing his moment. “Any ink drawn from this inkwell,” he said with a dramatic gesture at the table, “cannot write
a lie.”

  Wardin blinked at him, then at Erietta, who shrugged, her face impassive.

  “I can intend to write a lie,” Arun went on. “I’ll think I am writing a lie. But when I look down at the paper, I find that I’ve written the truth.”

  A now-familiar pain pierced Wardin’s head, and he recoiled away from the inkwell as though it were a poisonous spider that might leap up and bite him. Arun might not be certain that it had belonged to Draven, but Wardin, suddenly, was.

  Of all Baden Rath’s treasures—including a sword so legendary there were songs dedicated to it—the one that had come to his eldest son, the son he’d disinherited in favor of another, was an inkwell that tempered his ability to deceive.

  Wardin did not yet remember his father, not truly, but he knew enough of the facts to know that the man had been a traitor, a liar, a onetime friend of the Harths and Bramwell Lancet. Had Baden’s gift been sincere, perhaps an attempt to help put his son on the right path? Or was it a mark of scorn, meant to mock him?

  Erietta—of course—misinterpreted Wardin’s reaction. “This makes you nervous, I see.”

  He bit back the nasty retort that tempted him, and instead smiled at her. “What would I have to be nervous about? This delights me. Here is my opportunity to prove that things happened exactly as I’ve said they did, and then you can finally stop treating me like a traitor.”

  You can finally stop treating me like my father.

  She lifted her brows, and gestured at the chair closest to the paper. “Sit, then.”

  Though he resented being given orders, Wardin did as he was told. His pulse sped up as he dipped the pen in the inkwell, and he found that he really was delighted, anticipating the look on Erietta’s face when she saw that he’d been telling the truth all along. He wondered if she would have the grace to apologize. “Well, Archmagister? What would you like me to write?”

  “I’ll ask you some questions. You write the answers.”

  “Sounds simple enough. Have you tried this yourself?”

  “I don’t need to. I trust that it does what my brother says it does.”

  “At least you trust somebody,” Wardin said, earning a snicker from Arun.

  Erietta sighed. “Although it may please you to think I enjoy being a shrew, it is my duty to be suspicious. Pendralyn is more important than your delicate feelings.”

  “My feelings are not delicate.”

  She couldn’t quite hide her smile as she gestured at the paper. “What were you doing in Bramwell’s palace?”

  Wardin wrote, I was the palace adept. I tutored the children, gave information to the council, solved problems that required books to solve.

  “How did you come to be the palace adept?”

  I don’t know. I thought I was a ropemaker’s son, brought to the palace because I had a head for figures. Seems I was mistaken.

  “And how did you find out you were mistaken?”

  First because I started having dreams, after Falk died. Then because I found the inkwell, and in so doing brought Bramwell’s wrath down on myself. Then because Arun told me. I trust him. As you do with friends.

  He expected Erietta to say something sharp as she read over his shoulder, but instead he heard a soft laugh.

  “Do you mean us, or Pendralyn, any harm?” she asked.

  NO.

  “Does Bramwell know where you are? Where we are?”

  Wardin frowned. “I don’t know that.”

  “Then write that you don’t.”

  I don’t know that. He paused, dipped the pen again, and added, Ma’am.

  This time she didn’t even bother to try to hide her smile. “One more question, War. Did you truly forget this place? Forget us?”

  Yes, I did. And that is as amazing and inexplicable to me as it is to you.

  Arun, who had remained uncharacteristically silent throughout the test, let out a booming laugh. “Well, I guess that answers that, Etta.”

  Erietta met Wardin’s eyes, her own flat and unreadable.

  He raised his brows at her. “Does it? Are you satisfied?”

  With a crisp nod, she said, “I’m sorry. I was suspicious of you when I had no cause to be, and I’m afraid it’s caused you some discomfort over the past few days.”

  It wasn’t quite as enjoyable as he’d expected. Despite Erietta’s contrite words, the sentiment never really reached her eyes. This apology was coming from the archmagister, not his old friend.

  Still, a victory was a victory. Neither she, nor anyone else, could accuse Wardin of wrongdoing now. He winked at her. “It wasn’t all that uncomfortable. It’s not as though you locked me in a dungeon.”

  Erietta flushed. “You have to understand, I—”

  “I do understand. I don’t blame you for protecting Pendralyn. After all, it seems I went to great lengths to protect it myself, once.”

  Her eyes softened at last. “Yes, you did.”

  But Wardin’s satisfaction dissipated as the reality of his words, and of passing this test, sank in. “And now I’ll have to do so again.” His throat tightened. “I’ll lead Bramwell to this place, same as I would have last time. Now that you trust me, you have to let me leave.”

  Erietta shook her head. “No. That didn’t work very well the last time.”

  “She’s right.” Arun made a sweeping gesture with his arm. “Look at us, seven years later, right back in the same situation.”

  “And we’ll make no rash, ill-considered moves to get out of it.” Erietta arched a brow at Wardin. “You are to do nothing until we make some calculated plans, Wardin Rath. Am I clear?”

  He nodded, but only to placate them. His chest felt hollow. They couldn’t offer to let him stay, and even if they did, he wouldn’t accept. The only magic he was going to learn was whatever scraps they could toss his way as he left.

  “War,” Arun said, “how did Bramwell come to possess this inkwell?”

  “What?” Wardin frowned, taken aback by the abrupt change of subject. “I don’t know. Perhaps my father hid it at Narinore, like you suggested, and Tobin—”

  “No, no, no. Write it down.”

  “But I’ve just told you, I don’t know.”

  Arun pointed at the paper, and repeated his sister’s words from a few minutes before. “Then write that you don’t.”

  With a shrug, Wardin dipped the pen in the inkwell and wrote I don’t know that.

  Or at least, that was what he meant to write. What he thought he was writing, as he slid the pen across the paper. But when he looked down to read it, it was much longer than four words.

  My father gave it up, when he gave himself up. So they’d have an enchanted object to show the king as proof that they’d burned a magistery. I suppose they must have told Bramwell that my grandfather bequeathed it to the magisters, rather than to one of his sons.

  Wardin’s mouth dropped open. “I just wrote all that?”

  “You did,” said Arun. “Does your head hurt?”

  “No.” He blinked at his friend. “As a matter of fact, it doesn’t.”

  Arun grinned and clapped him on the back. “There’s the answer to your memory problem.”

  Wardin’s skin tingled as he looked down at the paper again. “But how can it do that? I didn’t know the answer.”

  “You did know it,” said Arun. “You just didn’t remember it. There’s a difference. Somewhere in there, you knew, and the enchantment was able to connect with that part of your mind.”

  “Well, isn’t that useful,” said Erietta with a laugh. “And here I was thinking your father got the wrong end of the deal, War, getting an inkwell when your uncle got the sword. But this is far more useful than I’d imagined.”

  Arun gestured at the inkwell. “This can tell you all the things you’ve forgotten. You only have to know the right questions.”

  Later that same evening, Wardin paced around his room in the battlemage hall. He should have been happy. He’d won. He was home. And he could claim that home f
or real now, if he chose; Erietta had gone so far as to order him not to leave.

  But even at the age of twelve, he’d known that claiming it would endanger it. He was a plague. Just like his father before him. No matter what kind things the magisters told him about Draven Rath’s last days, one single, undeniable memory refused to be swayed: Wardin was supposed to be ashamed of him.

  And it would be equally shameful to stay. He should never have agreed to Erietta’s demand that he wait to take action. What was there to discuss? He should go, right this moment. He should—

  “I know that look. Considering repeating history, are you?”

  Erietta stood in his open doorway, regarding him with a tilted head and narrowed eyes. She was flanked by Hawthorn and a second blackhound Wardin didn’t recognize.

  He bent down and clapped his thigh. Both dogs came forward, tails wagging. “If you’ve come to ask about Falk’s trick, I’m afraid I don’t have any answers. I spent an hour with that blasted inkwell, asking myself how he did it. It seems I really don’t know.”

  “No, that’s not why I’m here. The smaller one is Rowena. She’ll be keeping you company for a while.”

  Wardin straightened up, frowning. “As a guard?”

  “As a familiar. Students don’t normally get them, but as you’ve got four missed years of schooling to catch up on, I think you need every advantage I can give you.”

  “I’m not your student. I can’t—”

  “I beg your pardon?” Erietta crossed her arms. “I’m a woman of my word. You submitted to our restrictions and to my test without complaint. In return, you’re to begin lessons tomorrow. We think it might be a bit distracting for you to train with the children, so Magister Alaide is going to instruct you personally. Honestly, she’s always been soft-hearted where you’re concerned.”