“Have you fallen so far?” Tolak asked.
Meesha knew the pain in her father’s voice was not from the sword on his chest but from the wound in his heart.
“Stop!” She leaped to her feet, her legs bumping the table and tumbling the tankards.
“Stop indeed!” A strong voice boomed from across the hall.
Meesha whirled around and gasped. “Valnor!” She left the table and ran to meet him.
The broad-shouldered man striding from the open door was taller than Kadesh-Cor. His hard stomach and thin hips were wrapped with the leather belts and weapons of the hunt. His square face was framed by a tangle of hair the color of straw along with locks of brown and sun-bleached white. He stared at Kadesh-Cor with cold, blue, unblinking eyes.
A enormous sea eagle was perched on his left arm. Her head was covered with a hood that had a plume of feathers and a pom-pom of red wool. Her wings were outstretched, her feathers feeling the air for balance. Her talons gripped the thick leather glove protecting Valnor’s arm.
“Lower your sword, brother, and do it quickly.” Valnor’s demand was quiet and calm, but his right hand gripped the handle of his sword.
“Keep him at bay!” Kadesh-Cor barked to his kingsrider, but the point of his sword did not move from Tolak’s chest.
The command caught the captain in an awkward position. He moved lest he disobey the grandson of the king, but slowly lest he escalate the foolish conflict.
“Katta!” Valnor barked and, with a forward swoop of his arm, put the huge bird in flight. The hood pulled free. Bells dangling on the jess rang as the eagle thrust upward on powerful wings. The feathers of her head were stark white against the rich brown of her body and the black tips of her wings. She looped high, then rolled and dove at Kadesh-Cor with talons poised.
Kadesh-Cor stumbled backward. His heel caught the edge of a stone, and he fell in a humiliated heap. His sword rattled away.
The kingsrider captain laughed out loud. Meesha suspected he would suffer a reprimand later but was grateful for the moment that broke the tension and ended the madness. The Huszárs tried not to snigger, but the lunacy of the blustering prince blown over by an eagle was too much as their mirth escaped in a rumble of chuckles.
The eagle reached the high vault with a few thrusts of her powerful wings, then swept over the floundering royal before returning to Valnor’s arm. Valnor dug a fish head from his bag and rewarded his remarkable raptor. By then Valnor was standing over Kadesh-Cor with Meesha at his side.
“I see your manners have not improved in the last thirteen years, brother.” Valnor extended his right arm to help Kadesh-Cor to his feet.
Kadesh-Cor rejected the offer and reached for Chor, who helped him from the floor. “Nimra!” he barked as he stood.
A squire hobbled forward on a misshapen foot rolled inward at the ankle, forcing him to walk awkwardly on the side of it rather than the bottom, but he showed no evidence of pain. He seemed oblivious to his misfortune.
Meesha recognized him as the boy in the coach and found herself staring at his foot. Me, of all people, she scolded herself.
The squire was young. Eighteen? Nineteen, perhaps. He was shorter than Meesha by a handbreadth and slight of build. As thin as the squire was, his sinew was taut and his muscles hard. It was as if the gods had given him a fine, strong body to make up for the mangled foot.
The squire retrieved the fallen sword. Kadesh-Cor returned it to his scabbard with a sharp clank of brass against quillon. “You make a grave mistake,” he said, his gaze moving from Meesha to Valnor to Tolak. “We will retire to our chambers. You have until the ninth hour to prepare the table for us. My squire will remain to bring us word. I trust you will come quickly to your senses. It is treachery to refuse a chosen vessel of the king his wish.”
Kadesh-Cor turned to go, then paused as he brushed past Tolak’s chair. He leaned down, his voice a guttural whisper. “I had thought to offer you a royal pardon if you were yet alive when I take my place on the Peacock Throne, but by the gods you are remorseless and unchanged. Your blood is a blemish in my body. You are not my father nor have you ever been.”
Prince Kadesh-Cor’s words were punctuated by a rumbling of movement and scraping of wood on stone as his entourage pushed their chairs from the table and strode from the hall behind him.
The youngest of the Huszárs shrugged his shoulders in an apology and walked in a wide arc to steal a breaded trencher from a kitchen maid before strolling away to catch his comrades. He winked at the girl, and she blushed.
CHAPTER 32
“Is everyone all right?” Valnor asked.
The guests were gone. Valnor passed the eagle to falconer Fooloo, who whisked the bird away.
“Well enough,” Tolak said as Katasha helped him to his feet. Valnor knew his father didn’t need help, but he appreciated how his mother was always at his side. “How was your hunt?”
“Dull compared to the homecoming.” He smiled, clasping forearms with his father.
Tolak motioned for the steward, who had barely begun to breathe again, and turned to Kadesh-Cor’s young squire. “The steward will take you to the kitchen and give you whatever you’d like. Afterward, he will find you suitable quarters. You needn’t wait for us to change our minds.” He took Katasha by the arm and left the hall.
Sarina rushed to Valnor and put her arms around him. “I’m so glad you’re back.”
When Sarina finally let him go, Meesha stepped in for her turn. “You always have been the master of the grand entry,” she teased.
“I came a bit too early.” He smiled. “I suspect you were about to use your marvelous talents to put the prince in his place.” He winked at her, and Sarina, who knew of Meesha’s training with the sword, laughed. He put one arm around his sister and the other around his wife, and strode toward the kitchen for something to eat.
Valnor’s first memories of his years at Blackthorn were of Meesha. He met her before she was born. His mother teased him that her swollen stomach came from swallowing a watermelon, but then she held his hand against her skin.
“It moved!” Valnor gasped in wonder. He was three years old.
“It’s the baby kicking,” she had said. “It must not be a watermelon after all.”
He was disappointed at first. There was something wonderful about a watermelon in his mother’s stomach. She had held his hand against her stomach a long while. Even now he remembered how vigorous the kicks had been and how he had worried about his unborn brother being trapped. It never occurred to him that the wriggling lumps beneath his fingers was a girl. No one talked about baby girls. No one seemed to want one, which made sense to a little boy.
He sat with his mother on the day she’d curled up in the great chair with her hands clasped to her stomach. She gazed out the window but seemed to be looking at nothing. Tears wet her face.
A few days later the baby was born.
He’d been told his baby brother was a girl, though he was not allowed to see her for a long time. When he finally saw his little sister, his father held him close and whispered in his ear, “The beautiful color of her face makes her a special child. You are her brother. It is your duty to look after her.”
Valnor was six years old when the family was exiled to Stókenhold Fortress. For a young boy, it was all a grand adventure. It was during the arduous journey from Blackthorn to Stókenhold Fortress that he took Meesha under his wing.
He held her hand when the short-legged horses clambered across deep ruts in the King’s Road and the jolting carriage gave her discomfort. Valnor discovered that he and Meesha could walk almost as fast as the caravan traveled. He preferred walking, and so did she. She loved to hold his hand and walk at his side. The villages, open fields, dark forests, and rolling hills looked different on foot than they did from the carriage windows.
Valnor and Meesha foun
d particular delight in walking beside the biggest of the wagons. Its wheels were taller than a man. Valnor showed her how to drag a stick across the wooden spokes and hop-skip to the rhythmic chatter. Every day was a new adventure.
One afternoon, when the caravan stopped to rest and Valnor’s mother and Meesha were sleeping, he slipped out of the carriage and walked to the end of the caravan. He wanted to see his father, whom he was told was riding with the kingsriders at the rear. He had not seen his father since they’d left Blackthorn. When he finally saw his father on his horse, he ran to him but was stopped by a hard-looking man on foot.
“Go back to your mother’s carriage, boy,” the gruff man said. “And do not come rearward again! You hear?”
Standing there with the hard-looking man hurting his arm, Valnor stared at his father, who nodded reassuringly.
“Get on back with ya now!” The gruff man pushed him so hard he stumbled.
On the way back to the carriage, he wondered why his father rode with the kingsriders instead of with his mother. He knew the man who would know. The blacksmith, Rusthammer, seemed to know everything
The old blacksmith had become his friend the year before when Valnor had run away. He couldn’t remember why he had been so angry with his mother, but he remembered the kindness of the blacksmith. The old smith had found him hiding in the hay, and, with a twinkle in his eye, had put a finger to his lips in a promise to protect their secret.
The blacksmith had picked him up, sat him next to a horse, and told him a wondrous tale filled with mythical beasts. He whittled a piece of wood as his words created a fanciful world. Every twitch of his lips and crinkle of his face brought the characters of his story to life. By the time the tall tale had ended, the lump of wood had been carved into the very dragon the story was about.
Valnor did not find the old blacksmith in the caravan and got nothing but shrugs the two times he asked after him. It was almost an hour later before he caught up with his mother and Meesha.
Valnor dug the wooden dragon from the bottom of his bag. “Why didn’t the blacksmith come with us?” he asked his mother when the caravan started to move again.
Her face tightened with sadness. “Only a few from our household were allowed to come with us. Most were commanded to remain at Blackthorn.”
Valnor was intrigued by the huge campfires around which the men of the company gathered for the night. His mother’s tent was always set a distance away. When Valnor asked if he could go to the fire with the men, his mother knitted her brows and shook her head. “Men talk about things that six-year-old boys should never hear,” she said, then pinched her lips as if that would censor whatever was spoken of at the fire. She might as well have poked the curious boy with a sharp stick and told him not to jump.
More than once, Valnor sneaked away when his mother and Meesha were asleep. He crept as close as he could to the fire, hoping to hear what six-year-old boys should never hear. Slithering over rocky ground in the dark left him with scabs on his elbows and scrapes on his knees. Sometimes he got close enough to hear voices and laughter, but that was all. Mostly because he got caught every time and sent back to his mother’s tent with a cuff to his ears or boot to his buttocks. Every time but one.
He had crawled to the edge of the fire and laid in the grass a long time listening to the muted voices. The night was cold, and he wanted to sleep. Just before he disappeared into his dreams, he heard one of the men speak his father’s name.
“Tolak’s a bloody fool.”
“Done it to himself, sure enough,” another scoffed.
“A prince w’out’en a castle is no better ’en a pauper w’out’en a pot!” The first man belched, and the others laughed.
Valnor was never sure if what he heard that night was the vulgar talk his mother had warned him about. He dared not ask. Whether it was or not, he remembered the aching sickness in his stomach when the men laughed at his father.
He never crawled to the fire again.
When Meesha was too tired, Valnor walked alone beside the kingsriders on their elegant, long-legged destriers. He stepped to the cadence of the iron shoes that hammered the hardened road in a shimmer of feathered hair above the massive hooves. He listened to the dissonant clank of music made by metal touching metal and the groaning creaks of boiled leather. He squinted his eyes when the banners passed before the sun, their bright colors bursting into flame. When he saw that the sigil of his father was missing, he wondered if the king’s bannermen had forgotten to bring it.
On one of the days Valnor walked beside the kingsriders, the darkening clouds burst with rain. The road winding west from Knight’s Tower was churned to mud. Clumps of wet clay clutched at his feet and pulled him deeper with each step. In the instant he felt doomed to succumb to the relentless monster of mud, a strong hand gripped his arm and lifted him onto the rump of a warhorse.
Valnor sat astride the woolen pad across the coupling and gripped the high wooden cantle with both hands. He could smell the boiled leather of the kingsrider’s armor. He felt like a warrior of the first order.
“What is your name, boy?”
“I am Valnor, son of Tolak.” And then in case the warrior didn’t know, he added, “My grandpa is the king.”
At that the kingsrider put a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder. It felt safe and comforting.
Valnor rarely walked again, even when the sun was shining, which made Meesha sad, but he couldn’t resist riding proudly on one of the beautiful horses.
For a lad of six years, the journey from Blackthorn to Stókenhold Fortress seemed to take a year. Valnor could hardly remember what it was like to sleep in a bed, though he wasn’t certain he ever wanted to again. He remembered the night he announced he was going to sleep outside like the kingsriders instead of in his mother’s tent next to his sister.
To his surprise, his mother was pleased. She stood beside him at the opening of the tent, staring at the night sky and the canopy of stars. She placed her hand on his shoulder.
“If you look very closely, your future can be seen in the stars,” she told him. “Some say they can even see the writings of the gods.”
He was never sure where to look for the writing of the gods, but he loved listening to the men talk about the eleven monsters created by the goddess of the ocean and seeing the pictures they drew of them from the stars in the night sky.
On all but a few nights, Valnor curled in his furs and stared into the endless vault of heaven. The points of light filled him with such wonder they lifted his thoughts until he felt as if he floated in the air above his body. He could never remember when consciousness ended and the dreams began.
Within hours of their arrival at Stókenhold Fortress, Valnor and Meesha began exploring their new world. Their explorations were cautious at first, lest they got lost, but once begun, they never ended. The two only became more daring as they grew older. Over time, they discovered and explored towers and turrets and the labyrinths of passageways with endless doors and chambers, gateways and stairways. There were great halls and tiny rooms. Much of the old fortress was in ruins. There were areas in such a state of deterioration they’d been abandoned, blocked off and boarded up.
Meesha and Valnor were never supposed to go to these places, but being forbidden made the exploration even more enticing. Valnor and Meesha made up stories about the men and monsters that still lived in those secret, undiscovered places and shivered with delight.
The one place they did not go was the catacombs below the damp and musty cellar where the ancient dungeons were again being used as a prison.
One day a keeper of the prison snagged them by the scruff of their necks and warned them of a secret pit with a trapdoor where naughty children were put. It was enough to keep them clear of the lower levels of the old fortress, even though they were sure the story was nothing but a scary tale.
They d
iscovered it by accident. They had stumbled into a secret passage concealed behind the stones of a fallen fireplace in a chamber below the north tower. The passageway descended in a steep, stone stairway to the burial crypts in the limestone caverns deep in the cliffs. In the flickering light of their torch, the burial chamber was the scariest place they’d ever been.
“I want to go back!” Meesha said without breathing.
“Just a little farther,” Valnor encouraged.
“Only to the edge of the light,” she agreed.
Before they had taken a second step, they heard an anguished human cry.
Meesha didn’t wait for the light. She turned and ran and struck her foot and fell. As Valnor helped her scramble to her feet, the light of the torch washed across a nearly rotted trapdoor made of wood. The ghastly sound was coming from below. They ran and didn’t look back.
There was no better place on earth for a boy like Valnor and a girl like Meesha to grow up than Stókenhold Fortress. It was not until they were much older that they realized their family’s exile was intended as a punishment. It had never seemed so to them. From the day they loaded the great wagons at Blackthorn to this very day, it had all been a grand adventure.
CHAPTER 33
When Valnor was twelve years old, he went to Rokclaw to be trained by his mother’s brother, Romonik. Given the history and conflict between Tolak and her brother in earlier years, Katasha’s suggestion was unexpected, but much had changed over the years.
Tolak agreed there was no one better than Romonik. “If Valnor can endure the rigorous training of his body and tutelage of his mind, he will have an advantage over other men for life. Romonik’s severity and discipline will serve him well.”
Romonik, son of Mersoon, was not an easy man to be around. The hardened lumps of skin that scarred his body told of tragic tales of war. His face was a pitted remnant of the pox and held in a perpetual scowl by scars that wouldn’t heal.
The Immortal Crown Page 24