Romonik was born of common blood but rose to become ruler of House Dressor, a minor house of Rokclaw. His mother was a peasant girl from Village Red Nullah, and his father was an itinerate fletcher, who taught him the craft of making arrows. That was before the war. Before the rebel Orsis-Kublan killed his parents and seized the Peacock Throne from House Romagónian.
Rokclaw was a settlement since ancient times. Other than the small wharf at West River where the water emptied into the fjord—a dock considered too dangerous for all but the smallest ships—Rokclaw was the only access to Dragon Deep from the lands south.
When the Mankins discovered blue crystal in the caves of Aktodas on the west slopes of the Mountains of the Moon, hordes of Mankin miners came in bullhide boats from their ancestral home at Harven to work the mines. The harbor at Rokclaw grew into a busy port and a dangerous place, taverns and brothels springing up along the waterfront like noxious weeds after a dousing.
When Kublan moved the Peacock Throne to Kingsgate, Rokclaw became the port from where the king’s share of bluestone, gold, and other gems from the pits of desolation could be shipped to the end of the Akeshen fjord where the king was building a colossal castle at Kingsgate.
Because of its strategic location and access to the open sea, Rokclaw was a battleground in every skirmish fought in the rise and fall of kingdoms from the beginning of history. Control of the kingdom depended on control of the southern access to the sea, which was controlled by Rokclaw.
In the war of rebellion, annum 1024, Age of Kandelaar, the rebel warriors of Orsis-Kublan marched on Rokclaw. It was the first day of the Beaver Moon of Rah Kislimu, season Kīt S’atti. The battle of Rokclaw lasted seven days and left the harbor stained in blood. Some said the water of Dragon Deep ran red.
Romonik’s mother and father fled with their two children when their house was set aflame. They took refuge in the woods lying just above the coast but were discovered and ran to the village where they were chased down by a warrior on a black horse with spikes on its iron shoes. Romonik’s father died with a sword in his hand. His mother was killed.
Romonik escaped by slithering into the sewer and disappearing into the tunnels that ran from the village to the sea. The putrid slurry sickened him, and he retched until he fainted and fell into dark dreams.
It was winter and bitter cold, and though it rarely snowed in Rokclaw, standing water froze and by morning, the trees were laden with frost.
When he woke—frightened, hungry, cold, and alone—it was nearly dark. He crept back to where his mother and father lay dead. The cobblestones glistened in the drizzling rain. He dared not look upon his mother. He fell across the body of his father and cried. Besides the pattering of rain and gurgling of the water in the drain below, there was no sound. The invaders were gone, gathered at the tavern in a drunken celebration of their bloody victory.
Then a baby cried. The boy’s heart leaped. Could it be that his sister, Katasha, had survived? With trembling hands, he pushed on his mother’s shoulder until she rolled onto her back. He kept his eyes away from her face. She was rigid and stiff, and, even through her wrap, felt as cold as a frozen pond. The baby girl was bundled tightly and protected by her body.
Romonik was seven years old.
Finding someone to care for his little sister was easier than he had imagined. There were so many dead, so many loved ones lost and so much sadness, the miracle of a child who survived was a glimmer of light in the darkness.
“Yab el cárim,” the woman cried out in the ancient tongue when Romonik placed the baby in her arms. “Miracle child,” she said again, then wept. Her own little girl had been killed. The woman wrapped Katasha with a blanket and looked at Romonik. “Better she never know,” the good woman said.
When Romonik left, he knew he would never see his sister again.
Romonik was not the name given on his day of blessing. It was the name he picked for himself. It meant “forsaken” in the ancient tongue.
He survived in the streets and stayed hidden in the stables. He stowed away on the boats that transported Mankin miners to Harven. He stole their food and drank the ale left in their cups. When he could, he’d lift a purse or steal a coin. Though Romonik was tempted to steal one of the precious bluestones, called Savin’s Fire after the Mankin who first found them, Romonik never tried.
Bluestone was highly prized and guarded by Mankins wielding swords and clubs and wearing strange armor. Mankin miners were short and squat and walked with a curious dodder, but they were as strong as bulls. They were known to cut a man’s legs off at the knee with a single slash of their two-handed blades. “’Tis the Mankin’s way a’ bringing an enemy down to where he can look ’em in the eye,” Romonik had heard one crusty Mankin sailor say.
When he was ten years old, Romonik formed a gang of orphans, beggar children, and abandon boys. By the time they matured into young men, the army’s ranks had grown to more than a hundred. They sought apprenticeships with blacksmiths and forged crude weapons in the cover of night.
Romonik taught them to make arrows. They learned to fight, not with the fancy skills of highborn boys trained for the tournaments but with the deadly skills required to survive at any cost. They worked at being inconspicuous, invisible. They swore an oath of secrecy sealed with spit and blood. They were children forced into maturity beyond their years. They lived by their daring but also by their wits.
The king enticed village locals to be his eyes and ears. In the eyes of Romonik and his band of orphan warriors, quislings and colluders with the King were worse than lowborn. They were betrayers of their own kind. Traitors. Romonik and his clandestine army of rebels were never found out. The mysterious disappearance of the king’s informers quickly changed what some thought would be easy coin to a deadly profession.
Romonik’s Army of Orphans was driven by revenge. They had all lost parents. They had all had their childhoods ripped from their bloody fingers. They refused to acknowledge Kublan as king. They were sustained by the idealism of youth and the optimism of ignorance. The young freedom fighters truly believed the day would come when they would march to the Romagónian castle of Rockmire Keep, drag the rebel king to the public square and put him in the stocks until the flesh fell from his bones.
That day never came. Instead, Romonik and his Army of Orphans marched to Passage to face the son of the king and a march of kingsriders. It was the day everything changed. The earth shook. The battle never came. A marriage was ordained that ended the fighting, if not the hatred.
Nearly half a century had passed before Valnor arrived at Rokclaw to begin his training under Romonik’s instruction.
Tolak made sure Valnor understood his years at Rokclaw would be punishing. He would be pushed to the limits of mind and body. He was also cautioned that, despite the family connection, he was not to call Romonik “uncle.”
On that first day, Valnor spent long hours wrestling with the other apprentices while Romonik watched. He knew that the way he distinguished himself in the first few days would determine his training and what consideration, if any, he might be granted by the tough old warrior.
On the second day, Romonik gave Valnor the biggest rock he could carry.
“This is your comrade-in-arms,” Romonik said. “You are responsible for him. You are to keep him with you at all times. Carry him with you wherever you go and sleep with him at night.” Carrying the dead weight of his “comrade-in-arms” all day made sleeping at night easy under any circumstance.
On the first day of the second week, the rock was replaced by a bigger one, and again for the third week, until Valnor was able to carry a rock very nearly his own weight. Even on the run.
He rode horses every day without a saddle until he could whirl them in circles with nothing but his knees.
“Earn your horse’s trust, and he will run for you until his heart gives out,” the warrior taught. “Then m
ake sure it never does.”
He learned to ride the destrier and to use the lance, though jousting was for tournaments, which held little interest for Valnor. Riding the long-legged coursers or heavier warhorses was far more demanding than the ponies he learned to ride in the shallow surf on the beach of Dragon Deep. He loved to ride and was willing to spend as much time in the saddle as possible, partly because it was the one place his stone “comrade-in-arms” did not go with him.
Valnor’s training at arms was concurrent with his education under the tutelage of the masters of Rokclaw. He learned the history of the realm and was tutored in the legends, myth, and mystery of the gods. An old man from the village taught him the language of First Man. He learned the way of the royal court. He even learned to dance and sing from a lady who came often to visit Romonik and would sometimes stay for days.
When he was fourteen, Valnor spent a year as Romonik’s personal squire. He had done well, and being chosen was a high honor. He dressed him in the morning, served him meals, maintained his armor and weapons, cared for his horse, and cleaned the stalls. The tedium of physical tasks was forgotten. The lessons learned were mental and emotional. Discipline and self-control. Obedience and diligence. They would serve him well in the training that meant the difference between life and death.
Valnor’s training with weapons was extensive. He learned to use short swords, arming swords, two-handed great swords, long swords, broadswords, and the foil. He mastered archery with both the longbow and the short bow. He was startled to discover that the exquisite arrows he was given had been fashioned by Romonik himself. He took it as a silent statement of approval.
He learned to use a shield and how to fight with a variety of pole-weapons as well as weapons made to bludgeon and cleave. Among them were strange and horrible instruments of battle that Valnor had never seen and never wished to use. When he said he saw little purpose in learning to use a weapon he would never choose to use, Romonik explained that it was important for a warrior to become familiar and skilled with every weapon there was.
“You don’t want to see a flail with a spiked ball on a chain for the first time in the hand of a man running toward you,” Romonik told him.
One of Valnor’s favorite memories of his training was the day his cousin, Hiskim, had come to watch.
Hiskim was an angry, troubled boy of seventeen. Romonik’s wife had died in childbirth, so the boy was raised by a gaggle of nursemaids and servants. For all his prowess as warrior, Romonik had no interest in being a parent.
Hiskim took as much malicious delight in tormenting Valnor as he did in inflicting pain on other living things. He often came to torment or heckle Valnor during his training.
Valnor was practicing against the quintain—a large, heavy sack of sand shaped like a man. It was fitted with a shield like an armed opponent and hung on a pole fastened to a central pivot. When struck, the quintain spun around with great force, demanding he move quickly to avoid being knocked to the ground.
Hiskim circled the quintain’s pivot to make sure Valnor saw him making vulgar gestures and rude remarks.
Valnor took his stance and tensed himself to strike as if he didn’t see his archenemy at all. Rather than strike, though, he dropped the sword and slung the bag with both hands, full force.
Hiskim saw it coming but could not clear the circle in time. The heavy sack knocked him on his buttocks. In his anger to get up, he stumbled and was hit again by the swinging bag.
The inevitable retribution was stopped by the sound of Romonik’s voice. He had been watching from the balcony overlooking the yard.
Valnor almost wished Hiskim’s double-fisted advance hadn’t been stopped. He was ready to test himself against the arrogant older boy. Romonik never said a word to him about it, but Valnor was excused that evening from his duties in the kitchen, and, when he retired to the loft, there was honey cake to eat and goat’s milk to drink.
He thought for a long time the feeling he enjoyed that night was the pleasure of revenge. In time he understood it came from knowing Romonik knew and cared. After so many years, the hardened old warrior had finally let him know he approved of him, even though he said it without words.
It was one of two times Valnor felt like kin.
The second came near the end of his training. He was invited to dine with Romonik. He assumed he was one of several invited to feast with the master, but he was the only one. Not even Hiskim was there. The pang of hungry anticipation was replaced with a knot in his stomach that felt like a stone. He had remarkable respect for Romonik, even affection, though it was not a feeling he’d confess, even to himself. He wondered what he should say or whether he should speak at all.
Other than the expected formalities of welcome and appropriate grunts of satisfaction to compliment the cook, they ate in silence.
Romonik had never spoken about himself, his past, his exploits, or how he got his scars. There were plenty of stories, but none of the boys knew which of them were true and which had grown into legend. Valnor had heard all the stories, but there was one he desperately wanted to hear—needed to hear—from his uncle’s own lips.
After Romonik finished his third tankard of wine, took a deep breath, and breathed out with a smile, Valnor dared his question.
“How did you find your sister again? My mother?”
“She never told you?” His look of surprise turned to a wrinkle of smiles that Valnor had never seen. Romonik chortled.
“I’ve only been told you saved her as a baby and spared her tragedy as an adult, but I don’t know what that means.”
Romonik laughed again. “You don’t know your mother at all, I’d say,” he said, the smile never leaving his lips.
“Tell me,” Valnor begged.
“You’d best ask her.”
“I have, but she said she doesn’t like to talk about it, and I don’t even know when you found her again and—”
“I didn’t find her. She found me—found us. She searched for our Army of Orphans and joined with us. She must have been fourteen. I bragged in those days about escaping, going back, and saving my sister. That’s how she knew who I was.”
“She knew you were her brother?”
Romonik nodded. “She did, but I had no idea who she was. After a few weeks, there were some who became curious about how similar we looked. That’s when she finally confessed—a bit of pride in being kin, I like to think.”
“What did she mean that you ‘spared her’?”
“I refused to let her fight or carry weapons or task a target.” Valnor had heard stories about what happened to the members of the army who ratted out for coin and knew better than to push for details.
“And when you marched with Ormmen and Army of Orphans against my father?”
“She stayed behind. She was not happy, but I demanded she remain behind. I did not want her to die, but it was more than that.” Romonik inhaled deeply. He closed his eyes, but the wrinkles that covered them quivered. He expelled the air through his nose with a sound like wind through dry grass, and then opened his eyes. “I did not want her to have to kill.” He paused for a long time, and Valnor could see the burden of regret and guilt, even though he could not begin to understand the depth. “I did not want her to ever experience the horror of taking the life of another. I spared her from that tragedy.”
He looked at Valnor. “In the life of every man there comes a day that defines who he is. I was fortunate to have two such days. The day I saved my baby sister and the day I stopped her from marching to Passage.” Romonik shook his head, and Valnor thought he heard a chortle hidden deep within his throat. “And to think she would one day marry the man I’d marched off to kill.” He returned his gaze to Valnor. “If you remember anything of my training, remember this: What you do when your day comes—and sure as the sun will rise in the east, it will come—it is what you choose to do that dete
rmines who you are. Nothing else.”
Valnor nodded in solemn understanding. “I am most grateful you failed that day in the battle of Passage.”
“Call me uncle,” he said.
The following day, Valnor and those who had trained with him were honored in a traditional ceremony. It was all very proper and very stern, but when the laurel wreath was place on his head, Uncle Romonik winked.
CHAPTER 34
The king coughed blood. It left a crimson stain in the grizzled white of his beard. He wiped it away with the heel of a frail hand. Tonguelessone moved quickly to clean him with her woolen rag, but he pushed her hand aside.
The sky was dark, the air wet and cold. The heavy rain had passed and left behind a persistent drizzle, lashed about by the winds blowing in from the fjord of Akeshen.
“If there be one of you here assembled who decries the justice of this sentence, let him speak.” It was hardly a trial, but the offer soothed the king’s conscience. He scanned the solemn faces of the men who huddled like sheep at the scent of a wolf. They were brothers of the secret order of mystics: the Wizard of Maynard, Magus Zuwor, Vorrold, Bawork, the Mankin, and Than-lun, the alchemist who was about to die.
Than-lun was stripped to the waist with his hands tied behind him. His chest was pressed to a thick stump, his neck exposed. His hair was black in the rain and dangled from his head like the yarn of a dirty mop.
The cult of mystics was gathered in an abandoned courtyard in the old section near the north wall to witness this clandestine execution. Weeds grew in cracks, and the stones were matted with wet leaves. It was a place rarely visited and seldom seen. In ages past, it had been a wing of the ancient castle of Akeshen.
The old king coughed again. His body trembled. He gagged and nearly retched. A gurgle of blood and bile choked up from his throat. He spat it out and wiped his mouth. His hand was a bony claw covered with translucent skin. His fingers were frail, his nails long and yellowed.
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