Forsaken Kingdom (The Last Prince Book 1)

by J. R. Rasmussen

  “It was, Majesty. We did as he commanded. For him, and for Eyrdon.” Yates bowed his head, trying to moisten his cracked lips with what looked to be an equally dry tongue. “And yes, all right. For ourselves, too. Draven told us that you would have mercy on anyone who helped you capture him. Said you hated him that much. Which I guess was true, considering how you killed him.”

  “Am I to understand,” Bramwell asked softly, in a voice that made Guy, who knew him well, step back rapidly from his king, “that Draven Rath came to me of his own free will?”

  Yates swallowed, then wheezed for a moment before he could speak. “He did. He knew it was over. The war, I mean. Said you’d never rest until you saw him dead. He thought if he could protect the last magistery, then he’d at least have done something right.”

  He bested me. He won. And I didn’t even know it.

  He made me a fool.

  In an instant, the boiling rage that Bramwell had been keeping so tightly controlled was gone. The pretense of calm became unnecessary. His blood turned to ice. His ears hummed, but his pounding heart steadied, then slowed. And his mind was utterly, mercilessly still.

  He strolled over to where Yates’s family sat, and stared down at their trembling faces and downcast eyes for several moments before turning back to his prisoner. “And? What does all of this have to do with the boy?”

  “His son was at that magistery,” Yates said with a feeble attempt at a bow. “So it was familiar. A place he’d have thought of as safe. And now, well, nobody would think to look in a place they didn’t know was there, would they? If I were Draven’s son, and I wanted a place to hide, but I couldn’t get passage over the sea? That’s where I would go.”

  Bramwell considered the man. He might have told any part of this story, without betraying the whole thing. Might have said that he’d later heard the magistery was moved, or reformed, and kept his original ruse intact. Whatever Guy had done to him, it had broken Yates thoroughly. So thoroughly, in fact, that a few moments ago he’d felt compelled to confess that he’d followed Draven’s orders partly out of self interest, even though his motives had not been questioned.

  Which meant he was telling the truth—all of it.

  Bramwell stepped closer to Yates, close enough to smell the sweat and fear. “Where is this magistery?”

  “I don’t know, Majesty. I swear by Hart, I don’t. I never had a family while I lived in Eyrdon, no children to be educated, even if I had been of a class to send them to a magistery, I—”

  “Roughly where is this magistery?”

  “I don’t know, Majesty.” Yates began to whimper, then to weep in earnest. “Please, Majesty. Please don’t hurt my children. I swear I don’t know. It would be in the mountains, I can tell you that much. Best place to hide it.”

  “Mountains. That hardly narrows it down, does it? All of Eyrdon is mountains.”

  “But much of it is also silver country. They wouldn’t have the magistery near any mines. Too much bustle in those regions. It’ll be somewhere out of the way, where there’s nothing but sheep and shepherds.”

  “Ah. You have now narrowed it down to half of Eyrdon, then.”

  “I swear, Majesty, I’ve told you everything I know. I held nothing back.” Yates shook his head so vigorously, Bramwell was mildly curious to see whether the man would make himself vomit. “The full truth, hold nothing back.” He jerked his thumb at Guy. “That’s what he said, and that’s what I did. Please don’t hurt my children.”

  “Hm.” Bramwell nodded slowly. “I promised you a reward, didn’t I? If you told me anything useful?”

  “You did, Majesty,” Yates whispered.

  “Well, let it never be said that I don’t keep my promises. As a reward for your assistance, you may die with the hope that I will kill only one of your children.”

  Unblinking, unmoved, Bramwell drew his dagger and sank it into Yates’s belly.

  15

  Wardin

  Odger raised his hand in front of his face, watching intently as a drop of Wardin’s blood slid down his finger. “What do you think blood tastes like?” he asked slowly. He moved his finger toward his lips.

  Before he got the chance to discover the answer to his question, Rowena barked and jumped at the boy, nearly knocking him down. Odger stumbled backward, but his eyes resumed to their usual, good-natured alertness.

  He smiled down at the blackhound.“Handy having her around, isn’t it?”

  Without answering, Wardin grabbed Odger’s arm and dragged him off the practice yard where they’d spent the past two hours, Wardin casting a spell to open a cut across his palm, Odger one to stop the bleeding.

  It was challenging, advanced magic for both of them, and they’d stayed at it too long. Odger had begun to behave erratically, laughing for no reason, staring blankly out at the mountains as though in a trance. And now this.

  Wardin gripped the boy’s shoulders. “Have you not been keeping your balance?”

  Odger dropped his gaze. He was scrawny, small for his fourteen years, and he hated the physical activity required to balance his sage magic. “I haven’t been very good about it.”

  “For how long?”

  “A day.” He shrugged, looking down at his boots. “Perhaps two.”

  “Two days?” Wardin dragged his hand over his chin, combing his fingers through his beard. This was his fault. He should have realized what was happening. As if in agreement, Rowena poked him with her nose. Perhaps she’d been trying to warn him earlier.

  He sighed. “Come on, then. We have a long afternoon ahead of us.”

  Odger swallowed. “Are you going to tell my headmagister?”

  “I won’t.” Wardin jabbed a finger into the boy’s chest. “If you vow to me that you will never let it go this far again. You know the risk you take. It’s worse than irresponsible. It’s downright shameful.”

  “I swear it.” Despite his fervent tone, Odger’s eyes drifted away, growing bleary as his lips moved silently. Thankfully, he recovered before Wardin was obliged to give him a slap or a shake. “I hate feeling this way. I won’t ever let it happen again.”

  “All right, then.” Wardin nodded at the closest magister on the yard. “We’ll tell Magister Conrad that I’m taking a walk up the high trail to look for some wild crowliac, and you’ve offered to work on your balance by helping me.”

  Odger looked skeptical. “What would a battlemage need crowliac for? That’s a healing plant.”

  Wardin winked at him. “Says you. But things that can heal can often harm as well, if used in greater quantities, or in combination with other things.”

  “Are you working on a poison?”

  “Of a sort. To coat the weapon of a blade. I wouldn’t mind if we really did find some.” He took Odger’s arm and led him toward the magister, Rowena padding along behind them. “But for now, we need to get moving before you start howling like a beast.”

  It was clear from Conrad’s tight mouth and sharp stare that he saw through their excuse, as Wardin had known he would. The magister was no fool. But he was also a kind soul. The boy couldn’t go anywhere alone in his volatile state. Nor could he be around the other students, lest he get violent. Conrad wouldn’t mind sparing Odger the humiliation of being chaperoned by a magister. Wardin made an excellent alternative.

  As he often did. Though he still took his lessons alone with Magister Alaide, he practiced in the yard as often as he could. Over the course of the summer, he’d been matched with older and older students, of greater and greater skill. Magic was an intricate art, but he’d spent seven years as an adept, researching, studying, breaking complex matters down into manageable bits for the purposes of teaching and learning. All of that served him well now, and he was advancing quickly in his studies.

  Before they parted ways, Conrad pulled Wardin aside and whispered, “Just see to it that the boy doesn’t do it again, will you?”

  “I’ve already extracted an oath.”

  Conrad smiled. �
�You’d make a good magister.” He dropped his voice even lower. “Shame you’re a prince instead.”

  Wardin thanked him with a laugh, then set off with his young charge toward a narrow trail on the west side of the grounds. They’d only taken a few steps along it before Rowena stopped. She looked up at Wardin with a series of whimpers.

  “Are you all right?” He bent down to examine the blackhound, murmuring words of comfort, but he could find nothing wrong with her. She licked his face, then lay down in the grass, panting.

  Wardin snorted and stood.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Odger asked.

  “She’s lazy, that’s what. Seems to think it’s too hot for a walk.”

  Odger shrugged and tilted his head toward the cloudless sky. “She’s not wrong. I’ll be happy when the autumn comes.”

  “Until it does, and then you’ll be complaining about the rain.” Wardin grinned down at the hound and flapped his hand. “Go on, then, I’ll find you later.”

  Rowena was no fool to prefer the cool kennel; it truly was hot. They walked for nearly an hour, up the trail until they left the pines—and their benevolent shade—behind, and then another hour back down the sometimes treacherous terrain of rocks and dry grass. By the time they neared the bottom again, Wardin was sweating and exhausted, and Odger was near collapse.

  But despite his labored breathing, the boy looked healthier than he had when they’d left. Red cheeks were better than gray.

  “You know, that could have been permanent, if you’d let it go much longer,” Wardin said as they carefully descended the last rocky slope that would bring them back to tamer ground.

  “I know. I promise, it won’t happen again.” There was no resentment in Odger’s voice, despite the fact that this was the fourth time, at least, that he’d received the same warning. If Wardin was nagging, it was well deserved, and the boy knew it.

  Allowing one’s balance to falter was a grave offense at Pendralyn. The student who did so wasn’t just a danger to himself; he was a danger to everyone. If either Wardin or Conrad had decided to pursue the matter, Odger would have had to endure much worse than a lecture (or four). Headmagister Eldon could be ruthless, when he felt the occasion called for it. Odger’s balance might have been restored with physical torment rather than toil.

  “Well, you seem to be restored for the moment, anyway.” Wardin squeezed his young companion’s shoulder. “It’s been several minutes since you’ve said anything mad.”

  Odger grinned. “I am better. Thank you.”

  Wardin frowned at something in the trees to his left, something he hadn’t noticed on their way up. “What is that, on the ground at the end?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he walked to the small copse of pines and crouched down. Beneath the blanket of needles and scattered rocks was something metal, about the size of his palm: an iron ring.

  A handle. The dull throb in his head told him he’d seen this before. “Is this a door?”

  “It’s the old tunnels,” Odger said, coming up behind him. “They run all under the west side of Pendralyn.”

  “Where do they go?”

  “The keep. The kennels, perhaps. I don’t know where else. I don’t think they connect to the gate. One of my cousins claims he’s been down there, and he says they’re a lot deeper than the tunnel to Avadare. But nobody uses them anymore. You can’t.”

  Wardin tugged on the ring, and the square door in the ground began to yield. “It isn’t locked.”

  “Doesn’t need to be. There’s no point in going down there. They’re all flooded now. Something that happened in my grandfather’s time, or perhaps his father’s.” Odger shrugged. “Long time ago, anyway. Don’t know what happened.”

  Do you think we can use it to get to the storeroom?

  Only one way to find out.

  The pain in Wardin’s head intensified, but he’d learned not to flinch over such pangs. Nor did he react outwardly to the speeding of his pulse, the tightness in his throat. As far as the students knew, he was a visitor from across the sea, and they weren’t to ask questions beyond that. He could hardly talk to Odger about his returning memories.

  He stood casually, wiping his hands on his trousers. “Well, no point in spending what’s left of the afternoon in some dirty water, is there? Come on, I’m hungry.”

  “Me too. Sorry I made you miss lunch.”

  “No matter, dinner will be coming soon enough.”

  As soon as that dinner was over, Wardin sat at his desk, Rowena snoring underneath, and dipped a pen in his father’s inkwell. He’d used it many times since Arun’s discovery, to recover information from his memory. But his successes in that regard did little to ease his frustration. The lines he wrote were like reading someone else’s story.

  When true memories came, he snatched at them greedily. Anything that seemed to encourage them was precious to him. Which was why he wasn’t prepared to let that door go, whether it led to a filthy, flooded maze or not.

  Have I ever been in the tunnels under the grounds? he wrote. His usual method was to write a question, and then the answer, or whatever he believed the answer to be. He started to write I think I might have been. But when he looked down at the page he read:

  Yes, with Erietta and Arun. Several times. We had to be careful, but we used it to sneak extra honey cakes, or sometimes a taste of mead.

  Wardin smiled down at the paper, thinking of Erietta telling him that they used to steal mead from the storeroom. So this was how they’d done it.

  But as always, facts he could not feel did not satisfy him. Knowing wasn’t enough. He wanted to remember.

  First thing tomorrow, he would plead a headache to get out of his lessons with Magister Alaide, and go retrace those footsteps.

  Well, he’d expected filth, and he wasn’t disappointed. Wardin held his small lantern a bit higher, examining the dank space around him. It was barely tall enough for him to stand in, but it was wide, at least. Mud and water lapped over his toes. The tunnel was flooded, all right, and it smelled sour and fetid despite the hint of greymoss beneath the harsher odors. The floor seemed to get deeper toward the middle—he didn’t want to know just how much deeper—but there was a thin strip along the edges that wasn’t under water.

  He moved the light closer to the wall, and found a knee-high mud line that showed him how high the water could get. There must be an opening or collapse somewhere that allowed rainwater in. Or perhaps there was some connection between these tunnels and the stream the waterfall flowed into. Either way, he supposed he should be glad the driest season had not come to an end quite yet.

  Had it been summer when he’d come through here with his friends? Had they ever waded through the tunnels when they were more flooded than this? Wardin stood still for a moment, almost wishing for a headache. But there was no pain.

  There was only one way to go, east, but that suited him fine, as the keep would be in that direction. He stepped forward cautiously, not forgetting the lesson of the mud in the moorlands. Though this wasn’t peat, but a layer of slick clay atop hard rock. He was in more danger of falling than of sinking. Shuddering at the slimy feel of it, he put a hand on the tunnel wall to steady himself.

  Before long he came to a split in the tunnel, one branch continuing directly eastward, one veering north. Wardin closed his eyes, trying to picture the land above. Perhaps the north tunnel led to the old hall. But the keep was still to the east, and that was where they’d gone as children. If there were any memories to be found in this dismal place, that was where they would be.

  He continued east for no more than a minute or two before he heard a splash and a soft scurrying sound behind him. He turned and lowered his lantern to look at the tunnel floor, expecting to see a rat making its way through the muck. But there was nothing there.

  A moment later, another splash, closer. And then the sound of moving water ahead.

  Wardin stopped, wishing he’d brought a bigger lantern, and peered into th
e darkness. Just how aggressive were the rats down here?

  Another splash behind him.

  Thankfully, he’d brought a dagger. He drew it as a leathery black snout, perhaps the length of his finger, glided through the water and into his circle of light. A head followed, with wide-set eyes and what looked like fins on the side, flattened against the creature’s neck. As it emerged from the water a stride or two away, Wardin decided it was some kind of lizard, with its low legs and long tail.

  It stopped and opened its long jaws, revealing fangs like a snake’s at the front, and sharp teeth behind. Then it let out a long hiss, and the flaps at the side of its head snapped outward, framing its ugly face.

  Wardin backed against the wall and raised his lantern, expanding its ring of dull light to reveal four of the creatures, all stalking toward him. They were no bigger than the blackhound pups he’d visited at the kennel a few days before. But those fangs almost certainly meant venom, and even small beasts could do a lot of harm with poison.

  He readied a shield spell, imagining a ring of swords around him, dancing, rapping against each other, their scraping and clanging reverberating through the tunnels. He’d instinctively thought of blades, when he’d learned the spell, and only later found out from Arun that he’d used the same shield as a boy.

  Without warning, one of the creatures ran forward and jumped at him. Wardin slashed at it with his dagger, while kicking another hard enough to launch it back into the water.

  He released his spell just in time to avoid the fangs of a third; it screeched as his invisible blades knocked it back. That one fell stunned into the mud, but more were coming out of the water now, all making the same high-pitched noise, half hiss, half shriek.

  Confident in his shield, Wardin turned his attention instead to the same slicing spell he’d practiced the day before. Between his blade and his magic, he would open the bellies of as many of these beasts as he could.

  But it seemed that confidence was misplaced. One of the creatures jumped again, and this one somehow made it through the shield, landing on his left arm. It dug into his forearm with its claws, and sank its fangs into his hand.