The Karien boy stepped forward with a hesitant smile. “My Lady.”
“Look at you, Mikel! You’ve shot up like a weed! What are you feeding him, Adrina?”
“Hythrun army rations,” Adrina told her with a grimace. “I’m glad they have such a beneficial effect on small boys. They do absolutely nothing for my taste buds.”
“Always complaining,” Damin sighed, but he was smiling at Adrina, who glanced back at him warmly. The change in them was astounding. Adrina had never looked better, and Damin, who had always been a cheerful sort of fellow, appeared ready to burst with happiness. “Come on then. Let’s go sample the culinary delights of Hythrun army rations, and you can tell me how the hell you managed to get Hablet to send his fleet to our rescue.”
R’shiel slipped her arm through Damin’s and the three of them turned back towards the tents, as R’shiel began to relate how she had blown the doors off Hablet’s palace in Talabar.
Damin’s tent proved to be more luxurious than he normally preferred—no doubt a concession to Adrina, who made no secret of her desire for life’s creature comforts. Despite the dire warnings about Hythrun army rations, dinner was delicious, the wine excellent and the company entertaining.
The High Prince and his princess sat close together on the low scattered cushions and once Mikel cleared the remains of dinner away from the low table, Adrina leaned against Damin unselfconsciously as they shared their news from the past weeks. Damin draped an arm over her shoulder in a gesture that seemed as much possessive as affectionate. They still argued a lot, but it lacked the vicious edge of their earlier encounters—although Adrina’s caustic wit had not dulled, and neither had Damin learnt to take anything seriously.
Watching Adrina and Damin together, Brak wondered if Kalianah had taken a hand in their romance. He decided she hadn’t. They were too well suited to each other. Kalianah’s interference was required only when a couple would never fall in love unless she stepped in. She took a perverse pleasure in doing that, too. It gave her a sense of power. But the Hythrun High Prince and the daughter of the Fardohnyan king were obviously kindred spirits. He wondered idly whether if Damin had not been so keen to avoid Adrina earlier, their obvious attraction—which, according to what he’d heard in the Defender’s camp in Medalon, was apparent from the moment they laid eyes on each other—would have caused trouble sooner.
It might be a very different world if it had.
Damin was relating the tale of Greenharbour’s dramatic rescue by the unexpected appearance of the Defenders when Brak caught sight of Mikel out of the corner of his eye. He turned and watched as the child approached R’shiel. He was holding a goblet—a plain, metal cup with nothing to distinguish it from any other in the tent—but he held it reverently, as if it was an offering to the gods.
“So, there we were,” Damin was saying, “ready to burn Greenharbour to the ground and I hear trumpets in the distance. I thought I was going mad.”
“But why did the Defenders head for Greenharbour?” R’shiel asked. “I thought the plan was to muster them in Krakandar.”
“It was,” Damin agreed. “But somehow the messages got mixed up and the Defenders thought I’d left orders for them to move south. The irony of it all,” he added with a laugh, “was the reason they got there so damned quickly. Denjon and Linst were so furious that I’d left such high-handed orders, they pushed their men south as fast as they could move, just so they could tell me off.”
R’shiel laughed and glanced up at Mikel. She accepted the cup and turned back to Damin and Adrina. “I wish I could have seen the look on your face when you realised the Defenders had come to your rescue. How did the rest of your Warlords take it? It must have irked them no end.”
“By the time the Defenders arrived, I think they would have accepted help from just about anybody,” Adrina told her with a smile. “They’d already had to swallow their pride and accept my brother’s help, but grateful though they seemed, I think the Defenders were like rubbing salt into an open wound.”
R’shiel chuckled and lifted the cup to her lips. Mikel had remained standing behind her. His eyes were wide, his body tense.
“R’shiel! No!”
Brak threw himself across the low table, knocking the cup from her hand before she could take a swallow. Adrina screamed. R’shiel was thrown backwards by the force of his sudden weight and struggled to push him away, more startled than frightened. Damin was on his feet, his sword in his hand before Brak had rolled clear. Mikel froze with panic for a moment then ran for the entrance. Still on his hands and knees, Brak reached out and snatched at the boy’s ankle, bringing the child down. Mikel cried out in protest, but Brak’s vice-like grip allowed him no escape. Damin stepped over the cushions and picked up the discarded cup, sniffing it suspiciously.
“Jarabane,” he said. “It’s poisoned.” He hurled the cup to the ground then he turned his attention to the boy.
Mikel was stretched out face-down on the floor of the tent, trying to kick his way free, but unable to escape while Brak held him.
Damin nodded to Brak, who released him as Damin grabbed the child by his shirt and hauled him to his feet. He pressed the point of his sword into Mikel’s neck.
“Damin! No!” Adrina cried, reading the murderous look in her husband’s eyes. “He’s a child!”
“He’s an assassin,” Damin corrected.
Brak climbed to his feet, offering R’shiel his hand to help her up, and they exchanged a worried glance. There was no trace of humour left in the High Prince, and no trace of mercy.
“Damin, Brak and I need to take care of this,” R’shiel said. She sounded calm and reasonable, just as aware as Brak that at that moment, Damin was dangerously close to—and more than capable of—cold-blooded murder.
“This child is a member of my household. He tried to kill a guest under my roof. Even if you weren’t the demon child, R’shiel, the penalty for such a crime is death.”
Mikel had not uttered a sound. He was paralysed with fear. A small trickle of blood oozed from his neck where Damin held the point of his sword with his right hand, his left gripping the boy by his shoulder.
“If you kill him, Damin, we won’t be able to question him.”
“What’s to question? The child is Karien. He obviously follows the Overlord. What more do you need to know?”
R’shiel turned to Brak, her eyes silently begging him to reason with him.
“We need to know why he turned from Dacendaran,” Brak added. “The God of Thieves took a personal interest in this boy, and somehow he’s been subverted. I don’t want to interfere with your idea of justice, Damin, but if you harm that boy before we have a chance to talk with him, you’ll regret it.”
Damin glared at Brak. “Are you threatening me?”
“Yes, Damin,” he replied softly. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”
For a moment, Brak wondered if that had been a wise thing to do. He may have just said the one thing guaranteed to push Damin beyond reason. For a long, tense moment, the High Prince stared at Brak defiantly, then he lowered the sword and thrust Mikel at Brak.
“You have an hour, Brak. Ask him what you want, do what you want. But in one hour that child dies for what he’s done. R’shiel, I hope you will forgive this grievous insult.” He sheathed his sword as Brak caught the boy who was shaking so badly he could barely stand. “Oh, and by the way, don’t think to leave this camp with him,” he added with an icy glare at Brak. “If you do, I will simply turn around and go home. I’ll call off my Warlords, and the Medalonians can face the Kariens on their own and to hell with them.”
Damin strode out of the tent without another word. Brak pushed Mikel down onto the cushions and looked over at Adrina.
“Can you talk him out of this?”
She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him so angry.”
“You’ve got an hour, Adrina,” R’shiel pointed out coldly.
The princess nodded. �
�I’ll do what I can, but he may not listen to me. I was the one who brought Mikel here.”
“Then you’d better do something about keeping him alive, hadn’t you?” the demon child said unsympathetically.
CHAPTER 55
The God of Thieves appeared at R’shiel’s summons, although he looked rather put out by the call. R’shiel had told Brak that Kalianah thought Dace was sulking about something and he wondered if the reason had been Mikel.
The child was a study in abject despair. He sat huddled on the cushions, his knees drawn up under his chin, tears streaming silently down his face. He had said nothing. In the warm glow of the candlelight he was an island of misery and dejection.
“What do you want, demon child?” Dacendaran asked sullenly as he materialised behind R’shiel.
“What’s the matter with you?” she demanded as she spun around to face him. Although she knew he was a god, R’shiel had known Dace as a simple thief in the Grimfield first, and she often made the mistake of still thinking of him that way. Brak wished she were a little more cautious. He might look cute and adorable and wear an air of guileless innocence, but Dacendaran was still a god, and a powerful one at that.
“I’m busy,” Dace muttered, scuffing the rug with a boot that didn’t match the other he wore.
“I want to know what happened to Mikel.”
“You stole him from me,” Dace accused with a petulant scowl.
“I stole him from you? Don’t be ridiculous! I’m not a god! How could I steal him?”
“You gave him to Gimlorie.”
“Oh,” R’shiel said, suddenly looking guilty. “That.”
Brak glanced at R’shiel for a moment and then looked at Mikel. “Why did you give him to the God of Music?”
“I needed to make sure the Kariens would leave, so I asked Gimlorie to help.”
“What exactly did you do, R’shiel?” Brak asked suspiciously.
“I asked him to teach Mikel a song that would instil an irresistible longing for home in the Kariens. I knew it might be a little bit…dangerous…so I asked Gimlorie to make his brother Jaymes his Guardian. That way, if he got lost in the song, Jaymes would be there to pull him back.”
Brak muttered a curse. “R’shiel, have you any idea what you’ve done? A Guardian is only effective if he’s in touch with his ward. Once Jaymes left his side Mikel was vulnerable to this sort of manipulation.”
“Hey, how come suddenly this is all my fault? He tried to kill me!”
Neither Brak nor Dace answered her.
“I needed to turn them back,” she added defensively. “It seemed like a really good idea at the time.”
“Gimlorie’s songs are dangerous, R’shiel. They can twist men’s souls around. You should never have taught one to this boy.”
“I didn’t teach it to him. Gimlorie did. He didn’t seem to mind when I asked him.”
“Of course he wouldn’t mind. Every soul who hears it hungers for him. But it’s what it has done to Mikel that you should be concerned about.”
“Are you saying Gimlorie is the one who turned Mikel into an assassin?”
“No,” Dacendaran said. “Gimlorie wouldn’t do that. But what you did do was leave Mikel vulnerable to Xaphista.”
“Humans need faith to believe in the gods, R’shiel,” Brak added in a lecturing tone. “What you did was take away Mikel’s freedom to believe or not believe. You destroyed his free will and made him a creature of the gods. Any god.”
R’shiel turned to the boy and stared down at him impatiently. “Is that what happened, Mikel? Did you go back to worshipping the Overlord?”
Mikel shook his head silently, too distraught to speak.
“Then why? Who told you to do this thing?”
“The old man,” the child replied in a voice so low even Dacendaran had to strain to hear him.
“What old man?” Brak asked.
“The one in Hythria. At the palace. He told me to give the demon child a gift. He said it would help her see the truth.”
“What old man is he talking about?” R’shiel asked Brak.
“It was probably Xaphista himself,” Dace shrugged.
“Can he do that?”
The God of Thieves gave the demon child a withering look.
“Oh, well, I suppose if you can do it, so can he.” She turned and studied the miserable figure hunched on the cushions for a moment then turned to Brak. “Why Mikel?”
“Because he’s young, he’s impressionable, he’s feeling guilty for turning away from his god in the first place, and,” he added with a frown, “you left him wide open to manipulation when you opened his mind to Gimlorie’s song.”
“Well, how was I supposed to know it would do that? The Harshini sang it all the time in Sanctuary. It didn’t seem to bother them.”
“The Harshini are already a part of the gods, R’shiel. But even they will only share it among themselves. No Harshini would ever share the song with a human.”
“So what do we do with him?”
“I don’t know, but we’ve got about half an hour to make up our minds,” he reminded her grimly.
“Dace? Can’t the gods do something?”
The god shook his head. “You can’t unteach him, R’shiel, and he’s done the Overlord’s bidding. None of the gods has any interest in saving this child.”
“But he was your friend, Dace!”
The god stared at her. His smile faded and for a moment he let R’shiel see the true essence of his being. The lovable rogue was gone and there was simply Dacendaran, the God of Thieves, powerful, implacable and concerned only with his own divinity. Brak had seen it before and the knowledge of what the gods were truly capable of was at the core of his distrust of them. But R’shiel had never been confronted with it until now and it stunned her.
She took a step back from Dacendaran in fear.
“Do what you want with the child,” Dacendaran said in a voice that chilled Brak to the bone. “His fate is of no concern to the Primal Gods.”
Dace vanished, leaving them alone in the tent. R’shiel appeared to be having trouble breathing. Mikel had still not moved, resigned to his fate—perhaps even welcoming it. He would soon be dining at the Overlord’s table.
Damin Wolfblade would see to that.
They came for him on the hour, three heavily armed Raiders who were there to stop them from trying anything heroic, Brak suspected, rather than any real need to escort an eleven-year-old to his execution. They didn’t try to prevent the men from taking the boy, even with magic. It would simply have angered the High Prince. The bind that Damin Wolfblade had placed them in was untenable: go to the rescue of those in the Citadel or stand back and watch a child put to death for the crime of being easily manipulated.
Adrina was waiting outside with Damin. Her eyes were swollen and she had obviously been fighting with him. Damin’s eyes were bleak and unforgiving. Behind Adrina were the Harshini who had come to aid the Hythrun in their quest to relieve the Citadel. Glenanaran stood at the front of the small gathering of Dragon Riders. Brak could feel their pain from the other side of the clearing. This was a vicious way to reintroduce them to the world of humans.
One look at Damin and Brak knew that Adrina had not changed his mind.
“You can’t order this, Damin,” R’shiel told him as Mikel was escorted across the clearing to stand before the High Prince of Hythria. “You can’t ask a man to execute a child!”
He looked at her. “I don’t ask anything of my men I wouldn’t do myself.”
“Damin, no!” Adrina cried in horror. She ran forward and grabbed his arm, but he shook her off impatiently.
“You don’t have to watch, Adrina. Nor do you, Divine Ones,” he added, looking over his shoulder at the horrified Harshini. “This is none of your concern.”
“Damn it, Damin, be reasonable!” R’shiel yelled angrily as he began to walk away with Mikel and the guards in his wake.
Damin stopped and turned to her, t
hen he walked back to confront her, his eyes blazing in the torchlit clearing among the tents.
“Reasonable?” he snarled. “Define ‘reasonable’, demon child. Is it reasonable that I let this child live so he can turn on you again? It is reasonable that I let an assassin reside in the heart of my family? Suppose Adrina had taken that cup? Suppose Brak hadn’t noticed something was wrong? What the hell do you expect me to do?”
“You cannot murder an eleven-year-old boy for something that wasn’t his fault. He’s a child, Damin, a tool. If anyone is to blame, it’s me.”
Her calming tone did nothing to deter him. “R’shiel, I have lived with assassins all my life. I grew up afraid of the dark, because for me, the darkness was likely to conceal danger. I will not have my child raised the same way. I will not have him sleep with armed guards standing over him. I want him to grow up playing with children his own age, not learning how to take down men twice his size in case he’s attacked. I want the whole damned world to know what I’m capable of if they dare to threaten me or mine. This ends now.”
“He didn’t threaten you, Damin, or your wife and child. He was trying to kill me.”
“You’re my friend, R’shiel, and he did it under my roof. It amounts to the same thing.”
“Do this thing and we won’t be friends any longer, Damin.”
Brak watched him hesitate for a moment, but the implacable rage that consumed the Warlord wasn’t something so easily swayed. Even faced with the horror of what he was about to do, Brak found himself sympathising with Damin. He’d been alive for seven hundred years and seen worse things done for lesser reasons. He didn’t know how many times they’d tried to kill Damin as a boy, but he could see now the scars that it had left on him. He was willing to do anything, literally, to save his unborn heir from the fear he must have lived through as a child, not realising that in order to slay the monster, he would become a monster himself.
Brak saw the look of horror in Adrina’s eyes and the pain of this confrontation emanating from the Harshini like waves of desperation. And he could see in Damin’s eyes the weight of the decision he had been forced to make. For Damin it boiled down to a simple decision: the life of a Karien child or the life of his own child.
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