The Misbegotten King

by Anne Kelleher Bush

  “As you say, Lord Prince.”

  Roderic shut the door and walked back into the bedroom, beckoning to Ben. The old man scurried after him. “What does it mean, Lord Prince?”

  Roderic pushed his hair off his forehead. “I don’t know, Ben. One of the Harleyriders here? The One only knows what it could possibly mean.”

  Roderic reached for his clothes and stripped off his robe. “Go back to bed, Ben. You need your sleep more than I do.”

  The old servant handed Roderic his boots. “I’ve been your bodyservant since you were twelve, Lord Prince. Won’t be the first time I’ve waited to see you to bed.”

  “No, Ben.” Roderic hid a smile as he tugged on his boot. “Though this is the first time you’ve waited because a Harleyrider has come to me.”

  Roderic was immediately sorry that he had told them to bring the Harleyrider to the council room. He had forgotten about the smell. The Kahn was a big man, tall as Roderic, but broader, his chest and arms huge slabs of muscle. He wore skins and leather breeches, and across his chest were thick silver chains. His hair was dark and hung in lank strands over his chest and back, and his beard was braided in what looked to be hundreds of tiny plaits. Four of Roderic’s men at arms surrounded him. He loomed in their midst and the soldiers snapped to attention as Roderic entered.

  “Lord Prince,” said their captain. “I hope I was not wrong, sir, to waken you. This—this man came in around midnight, demanding to see you immediately, and I thought you would want to know.”

  “Of course, Captain. You did right.” Roderic looked the outlaw over. “Why have you come to Ithan?”

  He pulled himself to his full height, and Roderic recognized the indefinable quality of nobility despite the grime. This man was every bit as much a Prince as he. “I need your help.”

  “Help?”

  “My people are in danger.”

  “Danger? What kind of danger?” Roderic knew that his amazement was plain on his face.

  “I want to talk to you alone, Prince Roderic.”

  Roderic looked at the soldiers, who exchanged warning looks with their captain. “Why?”

  “I didn’t come here to be a hostage. I’m here for some help.”

  “Surely you understand that the relationship between our peoples has not been an easy one?”

  “Do you think I’d come at all if I thought I had another choice?”

  “Wait outside.” Roderic waved the guards away and sat down in one of the chairs, as far away from the Kahn as he could get. “Now. What exactly are you talking about?”

  “Look, Man,” he said. Roderic raised an eyebrow at the Harley title of respect. “There isn’t much. Back about two winters ago, my old lady, my Mamma-Doc, had a spirit dream of death with two faces walking across the land. The pattern, she said, the pattern was broken, and had to be restored. And there was something about a tree, a tree that put forth many branches and had flowered in this generation. All sorts of stuff. None of it made much sense to me. I listen to my Mamma-Doc; don’t get me wrong. But it isn’t the right thing for a man to listen to his woman too closely, you know? And besides, death is everywhere.” He shrugged, and for some reason, Roderic felt sorry for him.

  “Go on, please.” Roderic nodded.

  “Then she had another spirit dream. This time was about her and me. We were walking through the Plains and the road split. We had to make a choice, she said, and she had told me to take one path, but it was the wrong path in the end, she said when she woke up. And she made me swear to remember that. That she had told me to take one path and that it had turned out to be wrong.” He shrugged again. “So I swore. Didn’t seem like it mattered much.” He paused and stared into the space over Roderic’s shoulder. “But then Harry Onrada came to me.”

  “Harry Onrada? Harland? The lord of Missiluse?”

  “Him.” The Kahn’s mouth twisted in outright disgust. “Said we had a chance to claim our space. So we went to meet him and my Mamma-Doc came along. We met the Ridenau—the one who claims your throne. And my Mamma-Doc—she told me to join with him.”

  There was a long silence. Roderic considered the man carefully. “What happened?” he asked at last.

  “So we joined up. We gave our word, sealed it in spit. With my men, I went to his fortress. I ordered them to obey him—”

  “Who?” interrupted Roderic. “Harland?”

  “Nah. Amanander. The Ridenau. At first it was all drills and practice—I thought nothing of it. And then, I began to notice changes in my men.”

  “What kinds of changes?” Roderic leaned forward, forgetting the stench.

  “They—they no longer respected me. No longer listened to me. It was as if they were always listening to someone—something—else. Someone or something I couldn’t hear. And then one day, I saw the son of one of my oldest friends die on the practice fields. It was an accident—I saw it with my own eyes. They carried his body away. And the next day, I saw him in the hall, by the Ridenau’s right arm.”

  “What?” Roderic sat back in disbelief.

  “Yah. Sounds worse than any dream, doesn’t it?” The Kahn gave a short, bitter laugh. “My men aren’t mine anymore. The ones who live are his slaves, and the ones who are dead walk still.”

  “You’ve seen him raise the dead?” whispered Roderic.

  “Nah. I don’t know how he does it. I can only tell you I’ve seen dead men walk. I should’ve remembered the spirit dream. For now my Mamma-Doc is dead, and my men are no longer mine.”

  “How did she die?”

  “My men killed her.”

  “What? Why?”

  “The men are killing all the women. And the kid-dens.”

  Roderic stared in disbelief at the man who sat at the opposite end of the table. “Your own people?”

  “Yes.” The Kahn raised his eyes to Roderic, and in their depths, Roderic saw utter hopelessness.

  “But why? Are these factions within your families?”

  “Nah.” The Kahn shook his head vehemently. “We do not crucify women or kiddens. It is the sacred death. We only crucify people we respect. Like you, Prince. We would crucify you.”

  Roderic swallowed hard. “I’m honored. How do you know it’s your own men?”

  “I’ve seen it happen.” He pressed his lips together. “I went with my men—though I knew even then they weren’t mine anymore—on a recon, to check out what was up ahead. And we came to what was left of Mamma-Doc’s family. And I saw the men doing it—nailing the women to the crosses and standing them up. I ordered them to stop it—ordered my men to take them down. And they refused. I saw my Mamma-Doc on her cross, and I had to fight ten of my own men to get to her. It’s a slow death, you know, and she was still alive. I cut her down, and took her away, and before she died, she told me to come to you.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I told you. Help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “The Ridenau must be stopped. If he falls, my people will be my own again.”

  Roderic shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “How do I know this isn’t a trap? Or that you’ve been sent here by Amanander with this story—”

  The Kahn moved in his chair, a vaguely threatening gesture which Roderic understood was born of frustration. “You have to listen to me. The men don’t die. They don’t need food and they don’t need drink. They walk with dead men’s eyes. Wide open. I have lived among them. They walk till their legs rot and they can walk no more.” His expression was one of disgust. He rose to his feet and paced to the window, where the first gray light of dawn lightened the sky.

  “I haven’t much to offer you, Prince, but what I can do to help you, I will. Someone must stop this, and stop it now.”

  “Can you tell us how to kill them?”

  “Cut off their heads. It’s the only way.”

  Roderic was silent, wondering what Brand would have said to this, and what Phineas would say. He shifted in his chair. “I will speak to my a
dvisors in the morning.”

  “You should know that over forty hundreds of my men have answered the Ridenau’s call. I have risked much to come to you. You will not answer me?”

  Roderic frowned. “I said I would take the matter under advisement. I will consider your request, as I consider all the appeals for aid to my court.”

  “Then you consider this, Prince. For centuries my people have roamed the Loma deserts and the Arkan Plains, and we go where we want, and do what we please. When we have to act, we act, and when we have to wait we wait. And we know the difference between the two. But you—you sit like spiders spinning webs. Don’t waste too much time. The enemy will come for you whether you listen to me or not.” His shadow loomed on the walls.

  Roderic stood up. He went to the door and called for the guards. When they had come in, he said: “Take our guest to the barracks and find him lodging there.”

  “Under guard, Lord Prince?”

  Roderic hesitated. “See to his needs: give him whatever he wants, except a weapon.”

  The Kahn laughed as he was led away. “Believe me, Prince, if I wanted one, you and all your men could not stop me.”

  There was a reason, Brand thought, as he squinted in the hot glare of the noon sun, that younger men went on campaign and older men stayed home. His back itched and his boots were full of sand. The light reflected off the pale yellow grit, and in the far distance, the walls of the garrison of Dlas seemed to shimmer.

  “There it is, Captain!” One of those younger men, a man at least thirty years his junior, raised an arm and pointed. The scouts had headed out at dawn, and now, seeing the walls of Dlas rising out of the desert, he understood why they had not returned. The march through Tennessy and into Loma had been fairly uneventful. They had surprised a few odd packs of Harleyriders here and there, but nothing of the scope the regiments fleeing back to Ithan had described.

  There had been one village, where the women and children had been crucified. Brand had paused a long time there, thinking. He had never seen a woman crucified. Nor a child, for that matter. The old Harley legends made it a sacred death, one reserved only for warriors and enemies worthy of their mettle. In all his years of campaigning in Arkan and in Loma, he had never seen the Harleys crucify even an enemy woman. He would have lingered there longer, but his men were impatient to be off and away from such a sight. But the image of those tortured faces was burned into his brain, and he thought it would be a long time before he was able to forget.

  Now, he turned and smiled at the junior officer, one of the newer ones promoted during the course of the last two years. So many men had been lost in this war, he thought, too many. He tightened his mouth in a grim line and refused to think about Jaboa.

  A small dust cloud in the distance disgorged two riders. He nodded. “Looks like Barran has sent a welcome out to meet us.”

  The smile died on his lips as he saw the state of the men on horseback. Their hair was lopped off in clumsy fashion, their faces were unshaven, and more than a few days growth of beard roughened their chins. Their uniforms were stained and reeked of sweat. Brand noticed his men exchanging glances. In the field, it was understood that proper grooming was not easy to achieve. But at the garrisons, even the outpost garrisons, it was expected that discipline would be maintained. He frowned. He would have to speak to Barran.

  The soldiers galloped up to greet him, and Brand turned away at the ripe odor emanating from their bodies. Even the horses looked as though they hadn’t been brushed in days. What in the name of the One, he wondered, was wrong with his son?

  But their salutes were crisp enough, and their voices properly subdued. “Your son, Captain Barran, sends you his greetings and begs us to take you to him with all haste, sir.”

  Brand coughed. “Lead on, then, soldier.” He gestured for the men to ride ahead.

  Within the garrison walls, the guards stood at ramrod attention and the dusty courtyard was neat and bare. Brand noted with satisfaction that at least something was maintained with military precision. He slid off his saddle and threw the reins in the direction of a waiting groom. At least, the man appeared to be a groom. They were all so unkempt, so stained and shabby, it was hard to tell. He waved away the guards who would have guided him. “I know the way.”

  He walked eagerly into the garrison. He knew the garrison at Dlas from all his years spent fighting here. And it looked as though nothing had changed, except perhaps the discipline among the men. Well. He would have a word with Barran about that, and then everything would be fine.

  A slight buzzing sound seemed to come from behind the closed door of Barran’s office, and as Brand touched the knob, he was struck by a faint, sweetish smell. The smell grew stronger as he opened the door. It struck him full in the face as he gagged at the sight before his eyes.

  Barran, or what was left of him, had been nailed to the open windowframe. Flies crawled over his rotting, bloated body. Brand grasped the doorknob as his knees buckled. He looked back over his shoulder, ready to demand an answer from the slack-faced sergeant who sat behind the desk, when he heard his men begin to scream. And then there was no more time to wonder what had happened.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  There was no moon on the night Jama came for them. The dark was as thick as the shrouds which draped the trees, as black as the moonless sky. On the walls, the torches cast flickering shadows. He hissed her name in the middle of that moonless night, and Annandale was instantly awake. She sat up, clutching the ragged blanket to her chest, her hair tumbling lank and heavy about her shoulders.

  In the darkness came the jangled sound of keys fumbling in the locks on the barred door, and across the room she heard Vere leap to his feet.

  “Lady, Lord Vere.” Jama spoke so softly she had to strain to hear him over Alexander’s labored breathing.

  “I’m here,” she called softly. In the murky gloom, she saw Vere stand, a gray ghost, and swiftly cross the room. The door swung open with a creak of ancient hinges, and in the silence, it sounded like a scream. Annandale jumped.

  Jama stepped past Vere, and in his arms he carried a large bundle. “I have uniforms here—please, put them on over your clothes.”

  Vere caught Jama’s arm. “What is your plan?”

  “The guards are changing in two turns of the glass, Lord Vere. When the gates are open to let the guards in and out, we will slip in amongst them. There’s a wagon waiting in the grove of trees past the bend in the road. Hopefully the night is so dark no one will notice six extra men.”

  In the darkness, Annandale heard Vere’s quick intake of breath. “It’s a long shot, Jama-taw.”

  “It’s the only one we have.” He handed Vere several pieces of clothing. “Here. Put these things on.”

  Annandale took the cloak and leather tunic he offered her, shrugging it on over her clothes. It reeked of old sweat, but it was not the smell which turned her stomach. A miasma clung to it, as though the last person to wear the garments had died while wearing them. Which, she thought, pressing her lips together, was exactly what had happened.

  She helped Vere pull the tunic over Alexander’s head and helped him stand. He leaned weakly against the wall, waving them away. In the darkness, the two of them fumbled to wrap a cloak around Abelard.

  Vere motioned her aside and picked Abelard up, lifting him as easily as he might a child. Annandale winced to see how frail the King had become. She hastened to Alexander’s side, and beckoned to Jama. He wrapped an arm around Alexander’s waist and turned his head to look around at Vere. “Come,” he whispered. “We must go swift and silent.”

  Only Alexander’s steps dragged across the ancient floor. From the depths of his robe, Jama pulled out a slender cylinder. There was a soft click and a small beam pierced the thick night. He smiled around Alexander’s bulk at Annandale. “Cold fire,” he whispered.

  “Yes,” answered Vere. “Explain the miracle to her when we are safe outside the walls.” He gave a soft snort of derision.
/>
  Jama subsided into hurt silence. Annandale clutched Alexander closer. She could hear the heavy beating of his heart, the wheeze as his lungs struggled to breathe. She gripped his back harder, fighting the seductive urge to heal. She had no time now. Later, she promised herself. Later, when they were beyond the walls and safely on the way to Ithan—then, then she would give into the demanding call of the healing.

  The corridor was long and straight, and they were forced to go so slowly, it seemed the corridor would never end. Finally, Jama gestured with the lamp. “This way.”

  Annandale looked up. A thick cobweb hung in the air. With a deep shudder, she tightened her arm around Alexander and helped him up the steps. The door swung open with a painful creak, and she jumped. Slowly, she and Jama managed to haul Alexander to the top of the steps. Vere followed with relative ease. Annandale turned to look back and saw, with disbelief, the King open his eyes and stare at the star-studded sky.

  “Vere.” His voice was less than a whisper, not much more than a sigh.

  “Dad?” Vere looked down at the man in his arms in disbelief.

  “Be—” The King’s voice ended in a choke.

  Jama made a kind of strangled noise, and Alexander drew in a deep breath. As Annandale turned back, she gasped as her eyes met Amanander’s.

  “Good evening. A pleasant night, indeed.” His eyes glittered in the starlight and his voice was colder than the basement dungeon.

  Jama gazed at Amanander, his face blanched white with shock.

  “If you thought the prisoners needed an airing, Jama, you had but to suggest it,” Amanander continued. He stared at Jama the way a spider might at a smaller insect.

  “What in the name of One do you think you’re doing with us, Amanander?” Vere asked through tight lips. Annandale looked at him over her shoulder. He shifted the King’s long frame as easily as he might a child’s and met Amanander’s cold stare with one of his own.

  Amanander slid his gaze over each of them in turn and Annandale quivered, feeling as though something foul had brushed against her bare skin. “My plans don’t concern you, Vere.” There was no hint of taunting malice in that voice, and it was the lack of it that made Annandale shudder once more. “But, Jama, it’s as well you brought the King from below. It’s time to send him home.”