Lucien

by James Moloney

  The royal hall resounded with voices as merry as his own. The guests were his courtiers, although in the privacy of his own chamber he called them leeches. What did it matter, though? The tributes from his religos kept the treasury full and he was happy to hold feasts like this in return. How many were here tonight? He guessed fifty, but with servants scurrying everywhere it was difficult to count. Or was it the wine that addled his numbers?

  He sat at the centre of a U-shape arrangement of long tables, in the seat of honour, as was proper. Each table was piled high with plates of meat — pheasant, chicken coated in herbs from distant lands, and a suckling pig. A pyramid of exotic fruit blocked his view to the left, but he didn’t care whose face he couldn’t see, or, indeed, whose he could.

  If he had taken a closer look, he would have noticed that among the faces flushed with laughter and too much wine were a handful who observed him with a mixture of loathing and malevolence. Tonight, the owners of those faces didn’t have to watch over their shoulders for Coyle Strongbow or Kemper Boreman, who were always quick to growl a brutal threat into the ear of anyone who didn’t smile like an obedient subject.

  ‘How much happier you all are this evening,’ Chatiny called to his guests. ‘Could it be because the Wyrdborn have taken … mmm, what should we call it? I know … a holiday at sea.’

  Everyone cheered. Almost everyone.

  The queen spoke up from the seat beside her husband. ‘How long do you think they will be gone, my darling?’

  The king took a gulp of wine. ‘I hope they stay away forever if the result is a free and friendly court.’

  The courtiers duly clapped and cheered, but some faces didn’t look so certain.

  Halfway along the right-hand table sat two men who made no effort to join in. The older of the pair was a visiting religo from the central region of Athlane, and beside him sat his son of twenty-two.

  ‘The king’s a fool,’ whispered the father. ‘If Coyle doesn’t return soon, Chatiny will quickly remember why he needs him.’

  Before the young man could respond, the carousing was interrupted by a banging at the door. ‘Let me in. I must see the king!’ cried a voice.

  The door was made of oak, sturdily built and locked against intruders, as it was every evening when the king dined. The man could knock all he liked but it would do him no good. Except, of course, if the king allowed him in; and on this night the late arrival was in luck.

  ‘I know that voice,’ said Chatiny. ‘Pull back the bolts.’

  A servant hurried to comply and moments later a dark-haired man in mud-splattered britches and riding boots marched into the hall.

  ‘Lord Perron, I thought it was you,’ called the king. ‘What’s so important that you must disturb my digestion?’

  The tall figure was well muscled and lithe like the best warriors. Although he had stopped his advance well short of the king, he could barely keep his feet still.

  ‘I’ve just heard the news,’ he said bluntly, without adding the expected courtesy of Your Majesty.

  ‘What news?’

  ‘That the lands east of Ledaris have been granted to Religo Lanfield.’

  ‘Yes, that’s so. I made the proclamation three days ago,’ said the king.

  Lord Perron’s response was loud and furious. ‘You promised those lands to me!’

  The dining hall fell silent. No one spoke to the king like this. Many tugged their heads tightly between their shoulderblades as people do after a flash of lightning, because thunder is sure to follow. At this point, one of the Wyrdborn would seize Lord Perron and throw him out of the palace. Or simply kill him. Tonight, though, there were no Wyrdborn present.

  The visiting religo leaned forward in his chair for a closer look. ‘Let’s see how Chatiny deals with this,’ he murmured to his son.

  The younger man was wise for his years. He knew what his father was saying. What one man can get away with, so might others.

  The king broke the awkward silence with a half-hearted laugh. ‘Calm yourself, Perron, and have a cup of wine.’

  ‘I will not share a drink nor a morsel of food with you until you give me what was promised.’

  The smile faded from King Chatiny’s face. ‘What I promise one day I may change the next. A king does not have to explain himself to anyone.’

  Lord Perron took three quick steps towards the king. ‘The crown, the throne, they are not your authority. You break your promises only because you command the Wyrdborn.’ He paused deliberately, turning a full circle to take in the entire hall until he faced the king once more. ‘But where are the Wyrdborn now? I say to you again: grant me the lands east of Ledaris, as you promised.’

  The drowsiness caused by the wine was gone from King Chatiny’s face. Fury filled his eyes and when he spoke, his voice was heavy with menace. ‘You dare to come here making demands? You won’t have those lands now, Perron, not while there is breath in my body.’

  If a mouse had chosen that moment to dart across the flagstones, the skittering of its tiny feet would have reached every ear.

  The tension eased a little when Lord Perron repeated the king’s words in a softer voice. ‘Not while there is breath in your body.’

  He was backing down, it seemed to many of the courtiers. The visiting religo’s son was not so sure.

  ‘Perron has a knife in his belt,’ he said quietly. ‘We should move to the king’s side to protect him.’

  He pushed back his chair, preparing to stand, but his father placed a restraining hand on his arm.

  ‘It’s not for us to stand in the way of fate,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s see what happens. It may be to our advantage.’

  All eyes were on Lord Perron. The king’s last words had affected him deeply, it seemed. ‘Very well,’ he said, with apparent grace, and bowed — a slow tilt of the head and shoulders.

  The courtiers relaxed at last, returning to their conversations with the guests beside them, many sharing a sigh of relief. They quickly turned back when the queen screamed.

  Lord Perron moved like a leopard eager for the kill. In three powerful strides, he was at the king’s table and launching himself to dive headlong over the clutter of plates and cups. His dagger was already unsheathed and clutched in a murderous grip. Using his free hand, he seized Chatiny’s tunic, pressing him back against his chair, and, with a vicious thrust, plunged the blade into the king’s chest.

  ‘There won’t be breath in your body much longer,’ he shouted. ‘Then I’ll take what’s mine and to hell with the man who broke his promise.’

  King Chatiny stared up at his attacker, eyes wide in terror, his teeth gritted in pain. He tried to speak, but no words formed on his lips, only flecks of blood. The king died before his lungs could fill again.

  Lord Perron died only moments later. The first knife sank into his back, the second between his ribs. Unlike his victim, he didn’t see the faces of his executioners. The visiting religo and his son had moved at last, and who could blame them for taking immediate revenge against the king’s assassin.

  ‘Help me, help my husband,’ the queen begged, but now that Chatiny’s voice could no longer shout commands, the courtiers turned away.

  The religo and his son remained close by, however. As they wiped Lord Perron’s blood from their daggers, the father said, ‘Athlane will need a new king, one who doesn’t need the Wyrdborn to keep the crown on his head.’

  ‘It would sit well on yours, Father,’ said the young man.

  ‘And yours after me.’

  The religo and his son stood smiling at one another, while beside them the queen wept over the body of her husband.

  The voyage to Athlane took a week; seven days that I would happily never live again. The first was spent in a fog that swirled around the ship like a magician’s hands, hiding the surface of the ocean and the tops of the masts. We were well into the second day before the fog lifted and immediately I wished it would return when I saw our surroundings. We were among dangerous shoals t
hat had claimed many ships over the years, judging by the rotting hulls wedged on outcrops of rock, the timbers of each poking towards the sky like an animal’s ribs picked clean by the gulls.

  Not all were skeletons yet. The captain pointed to a wreck with only its hull staved in and muttered, ‘That one brought some of the Wyrdborn to Erebis Felan. The crew are all food for the fish by now, like your friend, and I can’t say I feel any sorrow at their fate.’

  Food for the fish. Poor Ryall. He hadn’t dived overboard simply to escape; he had been determined to find Lucien, I’m sure of it and … Even if he had made it ashore what chance did he have when the Felan would use their magic to track him down.

  Those words from the captain were the first he’d spoken to me since Ryall had dived overboard. His silence was copied by the crew. They’d been warned to be wary of us, I suspected. Further proof of this came in the way they kept Tamlyn and me from speaking to, or even seeing one another. Apart from a brief daily visit to the deck, I was confined to a stuffy cabin, while Tamlyn was a prisoner elsewhere.

  The lack of fresh air and the constant pitch and roll of the ship made me seasick for days. Lying on my bunk gave me too much time to think about Ryall, and when I managed to push my despair aside, my concern for Lucien was lurking in the shadows, awaiting its turn. The more Lucien gave way to his Wyrdborn lust for destruction, the more likely he was to use the rope of hair in a brief moment of remorse.

  To shut out these fears and the relentless misery of a queasy stomach, I drifted into thoughts of home, of my mother going about the village with her sack of medicines and my father busy in the fields. When his work was done for the day, Ossin would take his hawks into the fields to hunt. This was how we had come by our name, Hawker. Sometimes Birdie and I would sit together talking, while we watched him command the birds. Such days were my happiest memories. It wasn’t my choice to be thrown back onto Athlane’s shores, but at least I would be reunited with my parents, and with Hespa and the many faces in the village that I longed to see again. I had missed them all more than I realised.

  The next morning when I was allowed on deck, I was surprised to see Tamlyn there, too. While I breathed in the sea spray and let the breeze play in my hair, I asked him what he thought Athlane would be like now that so many of the Wyrdborn were gone.

  ‘That depends on whether there are any left at all,’ he said. ‘If I’m right, every last one came to Erebis Felan, which means that Lucien killed them all.’

  ‘A land free of Wyrdborn,’ I murmured. It didn’t seem possible. ‘If there are no Wyrdborn …’ I began, then hesitated, because to imagine Athlane without them was more than I could manage.

  Tamlyn’s mind was working quicker than mine. ‘Life will be easier for people like your mother and father. King Chatiny and his religos used the Wyrdborn to intimidate the commonfolk, but with them gone forever, they can’t wield power in the way they have done for centuries.’

  ‘What wonderful changes that will bring,’ I sighed.

  It was a different land we were sailing towards, and from that moment I spent every precious minute on deck scouring the horizon for sight of it.

  The shout of ‘Land’ didn’t come for three more days, and even then Tamlyn and I had to wait another half a day because the captain wouldn’t go close in to shore while it was still light.

  ‘My orders are not to be seen,’ he told us, and only when darkness shrouded the sea and every lamp on his ship was extinguished did he set a course for the lonely beach he had spotted through his looking glass.

  We finished our journey home to Athlane in a rowing boat with only the oarsman for company. Like the rest of his crewmates, he said no more than he had to, not even a farewell after he had delivered us finally to the shore. Once he’d set off back into the swell, both he and the ship he was heading for might never have existed.

  We rested under a ledge where the beach met the slope sweeping down from the fields above, and at first light began searching for a farmhouse and someone to help us get our bearings.

  ‘There’s a road,’ called Tamlyn, pointing from the rise we had just climbed. ‘It must lead somewhere.’

  I pictured a sleepy village like Haywode, with children playing around a cluster of houses and old men sitting outside the inn to wave at travellers like us. If we were lucky, we might be close enough to my home for the villagers to know my parents.

  That dream warmed my heart until I saw the smoke. It rose from behind a hill in the distance; not the finger of grey that signals a farmhouse, but a thick cloud. Before we had rounded the hill we could smell it, too. Without a word, we quickened our step.

  The road continued to curve gently to the right. The view was blocked in places by trees, but we could see enough to know we were approaching a village. Once we emerged into the open, the source of the smoke was all too clear. One of the houses was ablaze, just as we had feared.

  Tamlyn broke into a sprint and I hurried to keep up with him, watching the road beneath my feet to be sure I didn’t trip. When finally I looked up, I gasped. Four men were advancing towards a second house with torches in their hands. Terrible screams came from a woman who stood by helplessly.

  The men with torches didn’t have a clear path to their goal. Three others stood ready to repel them and, as I watched, Tamlyn raced in to become the fourth. He’d armed himself with a paling yanked from a fence at the side of the road and charged in from the side just as the fighting began.

  One of the torch-carriers threw his flaming brand hard against a window. The glass shattered and the torch fell through after it. He called to one of his companions, who threw a second torch towards him. He was preparing to hoist this one onto the roof when Tamlyn slapped the flame from his hand with the fence paling.

  When Tamlyn started hammering the man’s head with the paling, the man’s friends broke off from the fight to drag him away. They retreated towards their horses and I could see their only aim now was to escape in one piece. Meanwhile, the flames grew bigger in the window and still the women huddled together, clutching one another and sending up a terrible wail.

  I was only a few paces short of them by now. ‘Where can I find a bucket?’ I shouted.

  Thankfully, one had the sense to point towards the back door of a nearby house. I charged inside and grabbed the bucket from the kitchen table. Water! Was there a well? Not that I could see, but I spotted something much more useful as I frantically scanned the village square. A tub for watering horses outside the inn.

  Filling the bucket with a deep scoop, I ran to the broken window and heaved my load into the orange tongues that were licking eagerly at the curtains. Some lingered defiantly, but the worst of the fire was doused.

  As I returned to the watering tub for a second bucketload, the thunder of horses’ hooves told me the fighting was over. The sound seemed to rouse the women, who realised there was still a house to be saved. The men joined in, Tamlyn among them, but still we were forced to watch as the first house surrendered to the flames.

  When finally there was nothing but a smouldering shell, the villagers seemed to notice us.

  ‘Thank you,’ said a man who came to shake Tamlyn’s hand. ‘You made all the difference. Are you a soldier?’ He seemed surprised when Tamlyn shook his head. ‘The way you launched into them, wielding that paling like a sword, I thought —’

  ‘Not a soldier, but I have fought men like that before,’ said Tamlyn.

  A woman came up to me, a two year old wedged on her hip in the way I had carried Lucien not so long ago. ‘That was my house you saved,’ she said. ‘If the flames had taken hold, then …’ She turned towards the remains of her neighbours’ home and immediately gave way to tears.

  ‘Why did those men attack your village like that?’ I asked.

  She seemed surprised at the question. ‘It’s the same everywhere, or that’s what people are saying.’

  ‘Everywhere? But why?’

  ‘Where have you been these last weeks?�
� she asked. ‘Surely you know the reason.’

  Tamlyn had joined us. When I couldn’t think of a reply, he did his best. ‘Er … Silvermay and I have been … spending some time away from towns and villages.’

  The woman gave us a peculiar look but accepted the excuse.

  ‘Where are the rest of your men folk?’ Tamlyn asked. ‘We didn’t see any in the fields.’

  ‘They’ve been taken away to the fighting,’ she told us, on the verge of tears again. ‘My husband among them. I haven’t heard a word since he left. He might be dead.’

  She gave way to crying and her neighbours stepped in to comfort her, leaving Tamlyn and me to stare at each other.

  ‘Who has taken her husband away?’ Tamlyn asked one of the older men.

  Now I noticed that all of the men who’d fought beside Tamlyn were grey-haired grandfathers.

  ‘Our religo,’ the man said. ‘Now that the Wyrdborn have all run off, religos all over Athlane are demanding that commonfolk fight for them instead.’

  ‘So those men serve a rival religo who has designs on this village?’

  To our surprise, the man shook his head. ‘They were sent by our own religo. He’s heard rumours that we plan to give our tribute to another. This was a warning to other villages. If you hadn’t helped us chase them off, only the gods know how many houses we would have lost.’

  ‘Hasn’t the king sent his own forces to stop the religos squabbling among themselves?’ Tamlyn asked.

  The villager was astounded by this question. ‘You truly have been out of reach,’ he said. ‘By now I thought the news would have spread to every part of Athlane.’

  ‘What news?’ I prompted him.

  ‘The king is dead.’

  ‘Chatiny! But there were no rumours of illness.’

  ‘Illness!’ The man rolled his eyes at our ignorance. ‘It’s a strange illness that plunges a dagger into a man’s heart. Once Lord Coyle abandoned Chatiny, the whole country lost its fear of the king. Now every religo in Athlane wants to sit on the throne in his place and they are all building armies to fight for it.’