Forsaken Kingdom (The Last Prince Book 1)

by J. R. Rasmussen

  He didn’t. Instead he said, “You see, it seems my father doesn’t need either of you to get us through your gate anymore.”

  Before she could even properly take in those words, Tobin raised a knife, and slid it across Jasper’s throat.

  One wet gurgle as the red line on his neck grew wider, and her friend was gone. Tobin released his grip, and Jasper’s chin fell lifeless to his chest again, blood flowing freely now, making sharp plinking noises as it dripped onto the straw, like rain dripping on the gable above her chambers.

  Erietta couldn’t breathe, much less cry out. She couldn’t even think, not really. For a moment as she stared at Jasper hanging there, she could only muse, almost from a distance, that she’d never witnessed a violent death before.

  There will be more to come. Let them be of your choosing.

  And once again, she reached for stillness.

  “Right, then,” Tobin said. “We had no use for the gatekeeper anymore, but the archmagister might still have a thing or two to tell us. How many magisters are inside your walls? What enchanted objects are there? Have you any enchanted weapons? Who are your supporters? Where do you get your silver?”

  He raised his knife, still dripping with Jasper’s blood, and looked her slowly up and down. “Tell me something that will please me, before I carve you like a pheasant.”

  She tried to swallow the bile that burned her parched throat. Tobin had succeeded in shocking her, which was no doubt his intent. Perhaps another prisoner might, in that state of shock, blurt out something that her interrogator wished to know.

  But his ignorance of magic once again worked against him. She was a contriver, trained for years to remain agile in both body and mind, to adapt, to keep her wits. To focus energy and emotion.

  To make herself still. To make herself ready.

  Revitalized by the very things that were meant to break her, Erietta’s thoughts sliced through rage and horror, exhaustion and weakness, and converged on a single point. She cleared her throat, making it sound even worse than it was, and croaked, mouth flapping open, as if she were trying to speak but couldn’t.

  And all the while, she prepared a spell.

  “Her throat is too dry,” said Ben. “No point in keeping her thirsty anymore, is there? Might as well water her so she can talk.”

  Tobin gestured impatiently at the guard behind her, who came forward, already removing the waterskin slung over his shoulder. He held it to her lips, and she drank the warm, stale water as though it were all she wanted in the world. That part wasn’t so difficult to play; it was certainly one of the things she wanted.

  But not all. Even more than to quench her thirst, she wanted just a few more moments to gather her power. By the time she finished drinking and the guard stepped back again, she was ready to release it.

  “Well?” Tobin asked.

  Erietta opened her mouth once more, but once more she did not speak. Instead, she exhaled slowly through rounded lips. And with each puff of air she blew outward, like her father blowing smoke rings with his pipe, another Erietta flowed into the room. Within moments it was full of them, turning solid, indistinguishable from herself. They moved to and fro, jumped, turned, rattled their chains; Erietta did the same.

  “She wasn’t supposed to be able to do magic!” Tobin screeched. “You were supposed to be putting something in her ale!”

  “Perhaps if you’d allowed her more ale,” Ben said lazily. But he strode forward, a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.

  Tobin swung his knife at the Erietta he guessed to be real. Thankfully, he was wrong. The room was shortly in chaos as the four men swung and stabbed at the illusions, while Erietta cast a cloaking spell to make herself less likely to be noticed. She multiplied her mirror images and filled the room with their screams, creating maximum distraction and minimum visibility as she came behind one of the guards. He bent to attack an illusion that had fallen to the floor. Erietta threw her arms over his head and choked him with the chain of her manacles until he, too, was on the floor.

  The other guard sliced her shoulder, his eyes widening in shock when he realized he’d hit the true target. He pulled back to slash again, but by the time he brought his blade down, Erietta had blinked behind him. Before he had time to react, she repeated the maneuver with her chains to choke him into unconsciousness.

  The two guards now dispatched—though she didn’t know for how long—Erietta turned her attention to their prince, who seemed utterly lost in the sea of illusions. But they were beginning to dissipate now, thanks to her fatigue and the other spells she was casting at the same time. She needed to act quickly.

  Before she could, Ben knocked Tobin in the back of the head with the butt of his dagger. The prince fell into the pool of Jasper’s blood, out cold.

  Erietta blinked at Ben, as the illusions faded away around them. “What are you doing?”

  He bent to take the keys from one of the unconscious guards. “Helping you. Come on, give me your hands.”

  There was no time to make a considered decision. Acting on instinct, watching his face closely, she stepped forward and held out her wrists.

  Ben unlocked her manacles, then, without flinching, slashed his own arm. “A wound, courtesy of you. Here, take this. You disarmed me.” He handed her his dagger. “And this.” And then the ring of keys. “The black one will lock the cell. Lock us in here. When everyone comes around, I’ll be just as frustrated by being beaten by a woman as they are.”

  Once again, Erietta reminded herself that there was little time to deliberate. She must either trust him, or not. And she couldn’t see why he’d strike down his own prince as part of a trap. “Why are you doing this?”

  Ben shrugged. “I saw which way this was going. We Harths are out of practice fighting magic, and I’m afraid it shows. I’m worried for us, to tell you the truth. If we kick at your magistery until you rise up and fight back, keeping down the Eyrds won’t be so easy anymore.”

  She arched a brow. “Funny, you don’t sound worried.”

  “Because I have a safeguard. In the form of you. You strike me as an honorable sort. If we should meet again, under circumstances less favorable to me, you’ll remember I once did you a favor.”

  Erietta spared a moment to look at Jasper, still hanging from his cross. With a sniff, she kissed her fingers, then pressed them to his lifeless cheek. “Shame you couldn’t have done a favor for him, too.”

  “I do what I can.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I’m less cheerful about it.”

  “I will. What I won’t forgive is you continuing to chatter on until they all come around. Go.”

  “I’ll remember.” With that, she turned and left, locking the cell door behind her as instructed.

  Erietta tucked the keys away, then flattened herself against the wall and sidled to the nearest corner, where she took advantage of the shadows to catch her breath and listen.

  The gash in her shoulder stung and throbbed, but she couldn’t spare the time to look at it yet. For the moment, all was quiet. That luck would not hold long.

  Thank Eyrdri she was a contriver. She would have liked to disguise herself as a guard, but she was already overtaxed. She didn’t think she could maintain such a complex trick for long enough to leave the castle.

  Instead, she settled for another cloaking spell, one that would help her blend in with the murky walls, and make anyone she passed less likely to look in her direction. She crept along the corridor, then turned down another, until she came to an intersection. To her right, a short passage ended in a staircase. The way out.

  She climbed the stairs as quickly as she dared, alert for the sound or scent of anyone approaching. By the time she neared the top, there was a clamor from the way she’d come. Tobin, she thought, bellowing. It wouldn’t be long before guards were crawling all over the dungeon.

  The door at the top of the steps was locked, as she’d expected it to be. She tried key after key on her stolen keyring, her
chest tightening by degrees as each one failed. None of them fit.

  Eyrdri’s teeth. What now?

  This was no place to consider the question. Nor to give in to fear. They’d be coming, and the staircase offered less cover than the corridor. Trying desperately to maintain her focus, Erietta stole back down the stairs.

  There. Behind.

  A space between the staircase and the wall. She pressed herself into it, thinking she might remain hidden there, protected by her cloaking spell, until the uproar died down and she could steal a key.

  That hope was dashed when a hand darted out from the darkness behind her, yanking her elbow and dragging her backward.

  Erietta bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, but she allowed herself to be pulled into the darkness without resistance. Whoever this assailant was, one was better than many. Screaming or struggling in the open would only bring more enemies. A cold draft brushed across her skin.

  A passage. This is a passage, not a room.

  Once she was well inside it, she lashed out with Ben’s dagger and tried to summon some power, praying she had one last trick in her. Her opponent jumped back to avoid her blade and whispered something she didn’t catch. As her eyes adjusted to the low light, she saw that the man was tall, and armed.

  And I’m so tired.

  She slashed again, but her focus was slipping away like water now, and she was wounded. She would never hold him off with a dagger alone.

  “Etta, stop it,” the man hissed.

  Shock at his use of the pet name stilled her for the moment he needed to spring past. Quietly, slowly, he pushed the door to the passage closed, plunging them into complete blackness. The footsteps and cries coming from the stairs above made his next whisper impossible to decipher.

  It didn’t matter; she’d caught a glimpse of his face in the last of the light. A dark blur, barely enough to recognize him. But recognize him she had.

  “Wardin!”

  20

  Wardin

  Erietta leaned on Wardin for support, and allowed him to lead her through the passage. That more than anything told him how desperate her circumstances must be. She would hate to be rescued like this, hate looking helpless, or anything less than in complete control. But judging by how slow and weak she’d been with that blade—and how she hadn’t even used magic to try to fight him—helpless was exactly what she was.

  He didn’t risk a light, but felt his way along the wall for several minutes, until he judged it safe enough to stop and let her rest. They would be below the north wing now, well away from the dungeons. There was no sound of pursuit. His hope was that the Harths didn’t know about the secret passages that ran through the castle. After all, it was unlikely that anyone had given their new masters a thorough tour after the war.

  “Catch your breath for a bit,” he whispered. “Are you hurt?”

  “Nothing that can’t wait. How did you get in here? How did you know about this passage?”

  “I spent a lot of time here as a child. And I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the stories of my family, but …” He lowered his voice even further, as if imparting a great secret. “My father was a bit of a rascal.”

  The hoped-for chuckle did not materialize. Instead she blurted, “Jasper is dead.”

  He’d figured as much; she would never have left without the innkeeper, if he were alive. Wardin reached out awkwardly, trying to find her shoulder, and ended up squeezing her neck instead. It was clammy with sweat. He wondered if she’d been hurt worse than she was letting on. “I’m sorry.”

  He listened as her breath went from ragged to steady again. “Where is my brother? Is he with you?”

  “He’s waiting for us at a cheesemaker’s shop in the city.”

  “Varin’s.”

  “Yes.” Of course, she would know him. Varin was the sage who gave Arun news from time to time, and had been introduced to Wardin as an old friend. He’d been a great help since their arrival in Narinore, including helping them isolate and ambush a city guard the day before, providing Wardin with a disguise and a sword. They left the unfortunate man wandering the streets, thoroughly confused and suffering from what was no doubt a monstrous headache.

  Varin had also painted a scar on Wardin’s face that morning, and combed ashes through his hair. It wouldn’t fool anyone who looked too closely, but at a distance he little resembled the sketch that, he was told, was still circulating around the city.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” Erietta said crisply. “Either of you.”

  Wardin was glad she couldn’t see him smiling at the sudden reappearance of the cold archmagister. Let her be a shrew; it meant she was getting her strength back. “Now now, don’t gush so, you’ll embarrass us both.”

  “It’s not that I’m ungrateful.”

  “No? Because you sound ungrateful.”

  “I have to think of my duty first. If you knew I’d been taken, you knew Pendralyn was in danger. You should have stayed to defend it. Or even gone for help, like you wanted to.”

  “Bartley said the same thing.”

  “Bartley was right. Bringing a single magister home does you little good.”

  “Perhaps we value your leadership that much.”

  She snorted. “Perhaps you hoped you could get to me before I told them anything useful.”

  “Did you? Tell them anything useful?”

  Her breath hitched again. “I didn’t, but when he killed Jasper, Tobin said that a gatekeeper was of no use to him. That his father had written to say he didn’t need us to get him in.”

  Wardin’s heart lurched. “Then he must have found out some other way. We need to get back.”

  “How far will this passage take us?”

  “Not much farther. But it will take us to another one, and that one will take us to a drainage tunnel. The water may be high, but it will get us away from the castle. After that it’s just a matter of walking through the city. I’m wearing a guard’s cloak and carrying one of their swords.”

  “So I’m to be your prisoner?”

  “That was the idea, if I’d gotten you out myself. But now that you’ve escaped, and apparently caused an outcry, the sight of you is likely to draw attention and interference. Can you cast a trick?”

  Erietta sighed softly. “Have you got any water?”

  Wardin pressed his waterskin into her hand. For a moment there was no sound but her gulping, then she said, “I’ll try to look like a guard too, but I won’t be able to keep it up long. I’m exhausted, and I did a lot of magic to get away. I’ll have my balance to think about.”

  “You can clean Varin’s shop when we get there.”

  There was a chuckle, if only a small one. “Lovely, thank you. Let’s go.”

  Wardin pulled Erietta into the shadows of an alley. “Drop the trick. Your own face will be less noticeable than an illusion that keeps flickering in and out.”

  With a sigh, she closed her eyes, and the short guard with the thin mustache transformed back into the woman he knew. Now that he could see her true face, Wardin noticed how pale and sickly she looked.

  There was also an inconveniently large bloodstain on one of her shoulders. That worried him, not only for her sake, but for their journey home. They couldn’t afford to tarry and let her rest.

  They’d managed to get out of the castle without incident, apart from being stopped by another pair of guards who wanted to know why they were so wet. (They claimed to have been searching for the escaped prisoner in the drainage tunnels, earning them a compliment for quick thinking.) But they hadn’t gone far through the streets of Narinore before Erietta’s trick began to falter.

  “We need to keep going,” Wardin said. “It’s only a short walk now, and I’ll stick to back alleys and lesser known streets.”

  “Lesser known, but known by you?”

  “It’s amazing, how quickly my memories returned when we got here.”

  Quickly, and painfully. The city had brought back countless outi
ngs walking the streets with his father, or the walls with his uncle. The first sight of the castle had left him aching and breathless, as though he’d been thrown clear across the practice yard. For some reason, it reminded him most of his mother, whose face he could not recall, but whose laugh haunted the edges of his memory.

  His excursion into the hidden passages had been a somewhat nauseating mixture of longing, joy, excitement, and worry for Erietta. His father had first shown them to him, but he’d spent most of his time there exploring with his few friends, boys whose names were lost to him now, finding places the adults didn’t want them to see, hearing things they weren’t supposed to hear.

  It seemed everywhere Wardin looked there were memories of his family—and the time they’d spent as the rulers of this city, the time when Eyrdon had belonged to the Eyrds.

  That time would come again. But it would have to wait. First he had to get Erietta safely home, and secure the magistery.

  “And won’t there be thieves, in these dark alleys you intend to walk me through?” she asked.

  “None who are fool enough to challenge an armed guard. Not unless it’s a pack of them, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  No sooner had he assured her of their relative safety, but a pair of guards rounded the corner and called out a challenge to them. Erietta seemed to shrink beside him, though her chin was set. She was in no condition for a fight. He was fairly confident he could subdue two on his own, given the advantage of magic, but the noise of a struggle might draw more.

  Wardin had a better idea.

  “Good, you can help me.” He grasped Erietta’s elbow and strode toward the guards, head high, arms loose. Behind his confident smile, his mind conjured a black well. “I’ve wounded her, and she’s only a little thing, but they say she’s a magician. I don’t like the idea of bringing her back on my own.”

  The guards moved forward to meet him. Wardin drew from that imaginary well, gathering power from the menacing whispers and acrid smells that rose from it, the soft splashes of hidden monsters below. The power of fear, and of being fearsome. The power to inspire a racing pulse, twitching limbs, the uncontrollable urge to flee.