“Impressive,” Faolan said. “Though I hesitate to ask whether you have managed to keep it within the budget provided…”
The head architect raised an eyebrow in smug unconcern. “Of course we have. Your kingdom is uniquely blessed with an abundance of superior building materials. The wood of the silver beech and emberwood trees is unsurpassed in quality. From these native species, we have been able to design buildings that best showcase the landscape.”
“Impressive,” Faolan said again. He could not help but be charmed by the illustration. It looked like a storybook kingdom, like something built with magic.
Harrow nudged Faolan. “What do you think, eh? He’s a brilliant architect.”
Faolan could only nod.
“It’s beautiful,” he overheard Leila saying to her scholar companion. “A beautiful mistake.”
The foreign scholar nodded grimly.
“You were well chosen,” Faolan told the head architect. “In your hands, Lostport will become the richest of kingdoms.”
* * *
Despite the way his last sailing excursion had ended, Doran felt lighter than he had in ages while aboard the ship that carried him away from Lostport. Just two days into their voyage, the flat, pallid Varrilan shore loomed on the horizon, and its approach meant a return to the miserable cripple he had been in Lostport.
He momentarily forgot his misery when the harbor town drew into view, a glimmering collection of houses built from dark glass bricks and thatch. He had never seen such vividly colored buildings before, nor so much sand.
They lay anchor as soon as they had drifted into the protection of the wide harbor, and rode a small fleet of rowboats onto the sloping sandy beach. Doran closed his eyes in shame as he was handed down to the first rowboat, but these sailors were obviously accustomed to unloading heavy cargo from their ship, as they handled him with much more care than he had expected.
No less than twenty Varrilans were waiting for them, armed and menacing in a way only Varrilans could be.
“Are you sure we’re welcome here?” Doran asked the sailor beside him. He hadn’t bothered to learn any of the crewmembers’ names on their short voyage, because he knew they were talking about him behind his back, and he did not want to fool himself into caring what they thought of him.
“That’s our escort,” he said, lifting a hand in greeting to the Varrilans.
“I thought it was meant to be a Cheltish convoy,” Doran said in consternation.
The sailor shrugged. “Probably because that’s what your father wanted to hear. Meaning no disrespect, milord.”
As they drew closer, four of the Varrilans waded into the water to help drag the rowboats to shore. Chestnut-skinned and strong, every one of them had their dark hair shorn to a short halo of ringlets; Doran did a double-take as he realized half of their number were women, dressed so as to be indistinguishable from the men.
When Doran’s boat nudged against the sand, two of the sailors leapt out immediately and lifted him from his seat, standing knee-deep in the languid waves as the Varrilans dragged the boat safely onto the sand.
Someone must have sent word, because no one looked at Doran twice, except with the respect he supposed he was owed as the heir to Lostport.
“We’ve got a new horse ready for you, son,” one of the sailors said under his breath. “We’ve brought the saddle, too.”
“And what about you?” Doran asked as he was carried bodily to a chair on the beach. It looked entirely out of place, the only wooden piece in sight, surrounded by soft yellow sand.
“We’re returning to Lostport after you’ve been safely handed over,” he said. Doran could not see his expression, yet he heard guilt in the man’s voice. “We’re merchants, milord, and we have to make a living somehow. We usually trade with Varrival’s capital city, and the glass we get in return goes onto the riverships traveling north up the Samiread.”
“Well, thank you for taking me this far,” Doran said, feeling like a terrible burden.
“No matter. It was just a slight detour.”
Several unwieldy trunks had followed Doran off the merchant ship, and he recognized the saddle sitting atop one of them. Their welcoming party had gathered all around Doran’s chair, and the sailors beside them; after a moment’s pause, one of the Varrilans dropped to his knees, and the others copied him. At first he thought it was an overtly formal show of respect—then he realized they did not want to talk down to him. His face went hot.
“We welcome you to Varrival,” one of the shortest men said in perfect Whitish. “Your father has requested our help, and as allies of Lostport, we are happy to oblige.
Allies? Doran thought in surprise. Varrival was the only kingdom that had completely rejected Whitish rule; if Lostport considered itself their ally, that was tantamount to treason.
“Your father would have preferred a Cheltish escort, but there was no time to arrange one. So we will have to do.”
“I am very grateful,” Doran said humbly. He wished there was even one Cheltish guard in their ranks, just so he could be sure they didn’t mean to kidnap him and hold him ransom, but it would win him no friends to voice these fears aloud.
“My name is Koresh, and these are—” He proceeded to rattle off twenty different names, none of which Doran managed to commit to memory. Each member of his new escort bobbed their head when their name was spoken. They really did look terribly similar; Doran had no idea how he was meant to tell them apart.
Koresh switched suddenly to Varrilan, speaking a rapid string of words to a woman across from Doran.
The woman sprang to her feet and barked something sharp in Varrilan, at which point all twenty of the sailors jumped up and began bustling about, saddling the lean, sand-colored horse, unpacking Doran’s three wooden chests into smaller saddlebags and satchels, and shouldering their packs.
It was only after Doran’s merchant escort had returned to their ship and Doran had been lifted into the horse’s saddle that he realized the others had no mounts.
“Are we walking the entire way?” he asked Koresh under his breath.
He gave a short laugh. “What would horses eat out here? It will be enough of a job keeping yours fed.”
“Do you walk everywhere?” Doran asked in disbelief.
Taking the horse’s reins, Koresh started through the village, the rest of their entourage following. “Of course not! You must think us savages. No, our border villages have horses, and the southern city uses ships. There is no reason to cross most of this desert. Nothing lies within.” He glanced over his shoulder and must have seen something in Doran’s expression, because he quickly added, “But the land is narrow here. It should only take ten days to reach the western sea.”
Doran tried his best not to groan. His body was already aching from the effort of staying upright. Without his legs to grip the horse’s flanks, it was his back that had to do the work, and a fierce throbbing had lodged itself at the base of his spine. As humiliating as it would have been, he began to wish he had allowed the horse-master to add a backrest to his saddle.
To distract himself, he cast his gaze across the rolling desert, a landscape so far removed from the lush hills of Lostport that he could not imagine how it sustained life.
There was a wild beauty in the desolation, the vast emptiness. The golden sand carved a bright line against the stark blue sky, utterly devoid of life. When Doran looked over his shoulder, the coast had already disappeared behind a dune, the merchant ship along with it.
When they stopped to make camp that evening, Doran remained perched uncomfortably on his horse until one of the men noticed and drew another man over to help.
“We heard this news,” one of the men said, gesturing at Doran’s immobile legs. “Terrible storm did this?”
“Yes,” Doran said shortly. The humiliation was still raw.
“You will—not rule?”
Doran shook his head. “I’d rather not discuss it.” He could only rule until
Whitland learned he could never produce an heir, at which point he would be humiliated and cast aside. Better that Laina married and gave the seat to her son.
The night before Doran’s departure, his father had come into his room and muttered that he hoped to find a magical cure for his son. “The Makhori in Baylore still trade with Chelt, and the coast is too long for King Luistan to keep a watch on every harbor. If there’s a cure out there for you, Chelt is where you’ll find it.”
“Just give up, will you?” Doran had grumbled. No one had seen a genuine Makhor in hundreds of years, and he was afraid their powers were nothing more than a fable. It was far worse to obsess over a false hope than to resign himself to his fate.
Now, as the sun began to set behind the dunes, Doran submitted to being carried from his horse onto a blanket that had been laid out beside a mound of supplies.
“Sorry, my king,” one of the guards said as they jostled him slightly on the way down.
“I’m not a king,” Doran said. “And I’m not fragile, either. Don’t worry.”
The man bobbed his head apologetically.
“Your Whitish is better than I expected,” he said as the men turned to leave. “You don’t really need a translator at all.
The second man quirked a smile. “You are kind. We pretend we have not your language so people talk more.”
Though the temperature began to drop as soon as the sun was down, the Varrilans did not build a fire; after sitting for a while in disgruntled silence, Doran realized there was nothing to burn out here anyway. Instead, his guards erected a circle of tents and sat all together in the middle, each one wearing a loose woven top like a blanket with sleeves.
Dinner was dried fish and dry wayfarers’ bread served with apples and pears and oranges, with a few swallows of water to wash it all down.
“Is this all the water we have for ten days?” Doran asked the woman to his left as he passed her the water skin.
She laughed. “No, we reach an oasis tomorrow, and another one three days later. Then we have to walk five days without water to the sea, but there is a freshwater stream through the town on the coast.”
Her Whitish was flawless. “Why have all of you agreed to do this? Surely you have better things to do.”
She leaned her head toward his conspiratorially. “Your father paid us very well. We are not as generous as you think.” Her white teeth flashed in another smile.
Looking around the circle, Doran realized he was beginning to tell his escort apart more easily. He could recognize the translator sitting past two others to his right, with a shadow of stubble on his chin and a deep line in his forehead; one of the men who had lifted him from his horse was broad-shouldered and stern-faced, with square features and narrow eyes. The woman to his left, on the other hand, was young and pretty, with a small nose and cheeks that rounded when she smiled.
“What was your name?” he asked. “I’m sure Koresh told me, but I can’t remember.”
“Nejeela,” she said. “You are not what I expected from a prince.”
“And you aren’t what I expected from a Varrilan.”
Her forehead creased. “What did you expect?”
Doran felt suddenly uncomfortable. Allies of Lostport or not, everyone spoke of Varrilans as untamed savages, warlike and backward, with no real civilization apart from their tradition of pillaging. “Well, I thought you had a few border tribes and a few nomadic tribes in the desert, and maybe a port city that all of our merchants trade with. But…”
“We have three great cities inland,” Nejeela said sternly, as though reprimanding a child. “All are fed by rivers from our great mountain, and all are much finer than your pitiful Lostport.”
“I meant no offense,” Doran said quickly. “And I’ve never been past the borders of Lostport, so I’m hardly one to judge. I was just curious.”
“You see us this way because we are not part of your Kinship Thrones,” Nejeela said, drawing her blanket closer around her shoulders. “What do you know of Varrival?”
“Not enough,” Doran conceded. “I know the first king from the original Kinship Thrones was murdered, and Whitland has seen your nation as traitorous ever since.”
Nejeela laughed without humor. “Thousands of years ago, long before any written records, our people were formed from an intermixing of pale Whitish migrating south and dark Makhori moving north. Together they set up a great empire in what is now Varrival. It was lush forest when we arrived, and we stripped it back to plant our crops and herd our beasts. But unlike your Kinship Thrones, the soil did not survive the attack. Our lands gradually became drier and drier, until a great famine took hold of us and the winds drove the last moisture from the land.
“We retreated to the great mountain, our life-giver, and have lived there ever since, in three great cities that surpass any you will find in the Kinship Thrones. We were living there when the arrogant king of Whitland sent one of his sons to rule over us. His nation was new, and his people were uncivilized. We did what any sensible country would do—we got rid of the arrogant foreigner.”
The story was remarkable, not least because Nejeela told it in eloquent, flawless Whitish. “I wish Lostport had done the same.”
Nejeela smiled. “Your nation is still in its infancy. If the heir of the high king had come to us at a different time, we might have welcomed him with open arms.”
“I will have to come back and see your great cities someday,” Doran said. “If I find a cure for my legs, that is. Did you say you’re descended from Makhori?”
“The magic my people practice is subtler than what you need. We have no healers who can work miracles. As far as I know, that was never a Makhori talent.” Nejeela glanced at his legs, hidden beneath a blanket. “You could sail to our capital, you know.”
Doran shook his head. “I would be an embarrassment to Lostport. I must represent my nation well, which means staying out of sight until I’m cured.”
“And if you never are?”
He met her eyes. “I know I’ll never be able to walk again. My father believes I’m going to Chelt to search for a cure, but I never intend to return.” He expected her to argue against his defeatist stance; instead she watched him with a curious look as though he were a puzzle she wished to solve.
“The Drifters of Itrea are thought to have exceptional healing powers,” she said at last.
“Forget it,” Doran said glumly. “I would go mad if I kept waiting for some miraculous cure to come along. I may as well get used to this.”
“At least Chelt is nice.”
Doran shrugged. “I suppose. Have you been?”
“My grandmother is Cheltish. I spent every summer in Redcliff until I was fifteen.”
That would explain her flawless Whitish.
“You should not worry. All will come right someday.”
“I hope you’re right,” Doran said.
Only then did he realize that several other guards had been listening closely to their exchange. After what he had seen so far, he had every reason to assume every one of them could understand him. He hugged his coat closer about his shoulders, wishing he could disappear. But no, he had to go through the embarrassing ordeal of being carried to one of the tents and tucked into a sleeping roll with twenty pairs of eyes following him.
As he lay in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling of cured hide, he tried to force himself to stop worrying about it all. He was hundreds of leagues away from anyone who knew him, surrounded by endless desert in every direction, and the problem of Lostport’s succession was no longer his to solve.
* * *
Conard paused in his disconsolate trudging to wipe a damp, grimy piece of hair from his eyes. Though the sun was still low in the sky, his stomach was already gurgling unhappily.
Five days had passed since Conard left Bogside. He could not tell how far he had walked; the muggy, featureless landscape betrayed no sign of relenting, and he certainly could not see the forested mountains of Los
tport anywhere in the distance.
Five days had not seemed like much before now. Conard had a newfound appreciation for whoever had first explored these miserable lands. The tangled, unforgiving wilderness of Lostport was nothing compared to this.
“Damn you, Laina,” he muttered, skirting around a short mound. His feet were aching. More than once he had considered wading into the river and allowing the current to carry him downstream—it could hardly make his clothes any wetter than they already were. Most of his food had gotten damp, too; everything he had not managed to eat was either moldy or so saturated with rank swamp water that he could hardly eat it anyway.
He could turn back. He could still turn back. Not that it would do him any good at this point, though, with five days to trudge back to Bogside and no provisions to tide him over.
The sun ducked behind a layer of morose rainclouds. Conard paused briefly to shake a cramp from his calf before slogging on.
When a tinny bell rose above the water, he first thought he had imagined the sound. He had been hoping so desperately for any sign of civilization that his mind had supplied one. Swatting a gnat from his eye, he hoisted his pack more securely on his shoulders and continued walking.
Then the bell chimed again. This time the sound could not be dismissed. Not daring to hope, Conard slowed and looked over his shoulder at the formerly empty river.
There was a boat.
Unhitching the straps from his shoulders, Conard let his pack clatter to the ground. He ran clumsily down to the river, where he stopped with the water lapping at his ankles.
“Oi!” he hollered. “Come here!”
The boat was still too far upriver to notice him. As it wallowed closer, he could see that it was small and a bit makeshift, more like a gypsy craft than a proper trading vessel. That suited Conard just fine.
“Hey! Slow down! I want a ride!” Conard waved his hands over his head and splashed water toward the center of the river, trying everything he could think of to catch the attention of someone on board. He still could not make out any of the figures on deck. Was the boat actually slowing, or had he imagined it?
The Fall of Lostport Page 9