Seren remembered how loath Arianrod had been to touch the stone, how relieved she had looked once it was in the ground. But Seren herself had never felt a thing from it, not even a ripple of power. “I don’t think that I—”
Arianrod smiled. “No,” she agreed, “to you it was nothing, as I thought it probably would be. You’ll ask me why, I suppose, and, well, I’d like to know for certain too. Perhaps the answer is as simple as this: either you already have the things you want, or even magic could not give them to you.”
That left a bitter taste in Seren’s mouth, but it was true, wasn’t it? Was that why Elgar had chosen Lucius and Deinol and Seth—because what they wanted most was the release of their friends, and not any kind of power? “But you didn’t destroy it,” she said, because she didn’t think Arianrod expected to be enlightened on the subject of her wants. “You said you didn’t, right?”
“I thought it would be a waste, to be honest,” Arianrod said. “There had to be some way to make use of all that power without damning myself; I just had to find it. And then it finally occurred to me.” She leaned back in her chair. “If I compelled the magic to cover a very large area at once, I guessed the stone might lose its physical form. So I put it in the ground—in the soil itself. I used the stone’s magic to ensure that this land will remain fertile, that we will be free of blights and famines. It was something I did thoughtfully, not out of the strong passions that tend to drive these things awry. With any luck, we shall enjoy fruitful harvests until there is no longer any magic left—which may be quite a while indeed.”
Seren wasn’t sure if she ought to look as surprised as she was. “Well, that’s … that’s good. That’s … wonderful, even.”
Arianrod rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t go that far. But it’s a trick that has its uses, to be sure.”
Seren might have left the matter there, but then a new thought struck her. “But if you can’t use the wardrenholt, what are you going to do?”
“What, about Elgar?” Arianrod asked, stretching lazily. “I’m going to proceed just as usual, of course. What kind of ruler would I be if I needed a magical artifact to help me keep a fool from my lands?”
* * *
It would take another night to reach Mist’s Edge, thanks to the pace Kel was forcing the rest of them to set, but Eirnwin didn’t want to risk setting foot in another small-town tavern. No one was particularly happy about lighting a fire in the middle of a clearing and trying to catch a few hours’ sleep, but at least wolves wouldn’t care whether Lessa was pretty. They’d agreed to set out a few hours before dawn; they were so close at this point that Kel wasn’t the only one getting impatient.
The lumpy ground did nothing to help his legs, of course. He twisted and squirmed, scrunching them up and stretching them out, but nothing eased the ache. There was no way he was going to get to sleep like this, and he needed the rest. Instead he turned over, and looked up at Cadfael.
He was feeding twigs to the fire, looking into the flames without seeming to see them. His face was smooth, but his scar showed dark and red in the light, somehow angry. “Are you sure it’s all right to keep that going?” Kel asked.
Cadfael did not smile; Kel had quickly learned that either he did not like it, or else it wasn’t something he could do easily. “That’s why you have me,” he said. “Go to sleep. No one will bother you.”
“I would if I could,” Kel said. “My legs won’t leave me alone.”
“Well, I can’t help you there. Doesn’t your father carry anything you could use?”
Why hadn’t they come up with another story about what Eirnwin was to him? Kel flinched every time he heard the word. “We didn’t bring enough snow’s down for me to use it frivolously, and even if we did, it always makes my legs go numb. I couldn’t get up again in a few hours if I used it now.”
Cadfael released the end of the twig. “You’ve had to live with a lot, I imagine.”
Kel shook his head. “Just my legs. People like to look at them and feel pity for me, but there are so many other misfortunes I could’ve had instead, and didn’t.”
“Fair enough.” He shifted back from the fire a bit, reaching into his pack, and pulled out a flask and what looked like a whetstone. He took a sip from the flask, then poured more of its contents—just water, it looked like—onto the stone. Then he drew his sword, and soon established a practiced rhythm, easing it over the surface of the stone.
Kel squinted at it. It was a beautiful blade, he could see that clearly: long and gleaming and perfectly straight, with a fine edge and a simple hilt made of darker steel than the rest of the sword. As for the blade itself, it was unmarred by any scratch or stain, and so clear and bright it seemed more like mirrorglass than metal. “What is it made out of?” he asked. “I’ve never seen a sword that looked like that.”
“It’s rare enough,” Cadfael said, never pausing in his task. “It’s known as vardrath steel—the hardest there is, without getting too brittle. No other steel could ever shatter it—or so my father told me, anyway.”
“Was he a blacksmith?”
Cadfael smiled; it was crooked, but he was trying. “No, no blacksmith. It was his sword first. Well, not like this—it was a different sword when it was his, but the steel was the same.” He tapped the whetstone. “He was the one who taught us to use waterstones, too—he never sharpened it with anything else. Of course, one of the benefits of vardrath is how well it holds an edge, but he was always vain about his sword, and he taught us that, too.”
Kel cocked his head. “Us?”
Cadfael’s smile disappeared instantly. “My sister and me. My father had a two-handed greatsword made of vardrath steel—he’d owned it as long as I’d known him, since before we were born. He never made any great fortune, but even though vardrath’s so rare these days that you can pretty much name your price, he’d never sell it. He told us it was our birthright, and when he died, he wanted us to take it and melt it down, and forge a sword for each of us. I wouldn’t have wanted to wield it as it was anyway—those over-the-shoulder types were always too heavy for my tastes. I made this instead, and gave my sister the rest.”
Kel propped himself up on one hand, rubbing his legs with the other. “What was your sister like?”
Cadfael did not smile again. “It’s a bit funny; she wasn’t like your sister at all, though when I first saw her, she did remind me, somewhat … just in the hair, and a little in the shape of the face. But my sister was a scrapper if ever I saw one—she’d go at trouble with both hands, and never think to hold back. She always had this … this fierce sort of certainty—she knew exactly what she wanted from the world, and what she wanted to be in it, and there was nothing she wouldn’t dare, for the sake of that dream. I felt that was true nobility, if it existed in anyone at all. I was never anything like that.” He looked down again, resuming his sharpening. “Well, it didn’t save her, and neither could I. Even the sword our father left her wasn’t enough in the end.”
Kel wondered if he was allowed to ask how she died. “Someone I cared about died once,” he said instead, while he was thinking it over. “He was—he was killed, just like Herren. I couldn’t do anything for either of them. But Lessa protected me, once.”
“And you did your best to protect her,” Cadfael said. “She’s still here, isn’t she? So you must be doing something right.”
Maybe, Kel thought. Maybe. Who was that assassin, and how had Lessa stopped him? Or had it been about Lessa at all? Did that mean he was going to attack them again?
“Do you know how your sister died?” he finally asked Cadfael.
Cadfael’s face grew stony, his brows drawing together. “Do I know who killed her, you mean. Aye, I know of him, though not so much as I’d like.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I haven’t killed him yet,” Cadfael said, “and that’s an omission I can’t let stand. I have a name, and a vague idea of a man. I don’t know what he looks like, or how he fig
hts, or where he is now, or how I might get to him.” He held the sword still. “I don’t know if he remembers her. But I’ll make him remember. I’ll make him tell me how and why, and whether he laughed to kill a girl with a sword. I’ll make him regret it, before I end him.”
“Maybe he regrets it already,” Kel said, and didn’t know why.
Cadfael’s expression did not change. “I hope he does. I hope he feels me closing in on him—if only I were! But I’m no closer than when I started.”
“Can you not find him?”
“Sometimes I can,” Cadfael said, “or nearly. Sometimes I hear of him, but only ever when he is surrounded by his men, locked in a tower beyond my reach. You must understand, it is not enough for me to die attempting to kill him—I am content to die, but only once I have seen him breathe his last. So I cannot blithely charge into the midst of his army, no matter how I might wish to. Then there are times I hear he has set out alone, but never precisely where; there are times I could swear I must have passed him on the road or in the forest, but he always seems to slip through my grasp. Even in Stepstone I was on his trail, but by then I had started to lose hope—the rumor I had put him two days’ ride from the Hallern border and heading east, but that was more than a week ago on the night we met. He’s got to be gone again.”
“An army?” Kel asked. “Just what sort of man is it you’re looking for?”
“A man who’s destroyed much more than just my sister,” Cadfael answered. “They call him Shinsei.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Kel saw Mist’s Edge for the first time just as the sun was rising. The castle was both wide and tall, sprawling along the ridge and jutting sharply up into the sky. The whole of Second Hearth would not have filled half the space within its walls, and those walls, so high that Kel had to tilt his head near to popping off to see the top of them, were unbreached, stretching around the fortress in an uncompromising square.
The walls and towers looked faded in the sun, more like the mist of their namesake than stone. There was mist too, drifting in wisps about the ramparts, but it burned off quickly as they approached. Kel wondered how thick it got at night, whether it could seep through the windows and wend its way down the halls. This was the home of his ancestors, he reminded himself. The very first Kelken had lived here, had most likely stared out the window of the very same tower Kel was staring into now.
Cadfael drew warily closer, laying a hand on his sword that he probably wasn’t even aware of. “Where is it exactly that you intend to go?” he asked Eirnwin. “There’s nothing of note outside these walls, not for leagues around.”
“It’s what’s inside them that interests us,” Eirnwin said. “We’re going to enter the castle.”
“What? What do you want to do that for? It’s deserted.” But then he frowned. “This isn’t some kind of looting expedition, is it?”
“No,” Eirnwin said simply, and approached the gate.
It was standing open—there was no one left inside to close it. Kel wondered how long it had stood like that, free and open to anyone who might pass by. He was a bit nervous about passing under it, but the chains looked sturdy enough, and in the end they all managed to clear the threshold without so much as a pebble falling loose.
Surprisingly, the courtyard was hardly overgrown, with only vague tufts of grass poking through the well-trampled dirt here and there—perhaps even seeds had trouble blowing over the walls, or else two years hadn’t been enough time for nature to conquer the fortress. Kel had steeled himself to see a crumbling ruin, but it seemed Elgar’s soldiers had taken good care of the place until they finally abandoned it; there were some loose stones here and there, but no egregious gaps anywhere. He didn’t imagine they’d be so lucky about the inside, though.
He turned to Eirnwin. “What do you know about this place?”
“About as much as you—only what I’ve read in books,” Eirnwin replied. He squinted at the far tower. “I can’t help but wish it had been arranged in a way that made more sense; I can already tell I’m going to get lost, and more than once.”
Cadfael’s frown had deepened. “How long do you plan on staying here?”
“For quite some time, if things go according to plan,” Eirnwin told him, just as calmly as before. “But don’t worry, you’ll get your payment now, as agreed.”
“That’s not what worries me,” Cadfael said, but he didn’t add anything further.
The throne room at Second Hearth was hardly grand, but here it was dizzyingly huge, in a long hall with windows lining each side, so that shaft after shaft of light pierced through the gray. The room itself was full of cobwebs and dust, fallen so thick on the throne that Kel could scarcely see what color it was supposed to be. The throne at Second Hearth had been carved from wood and painted red and gold, but this throne was cast in steel, heavy and somehow threatening, even under all the dust.
He touched the arm of the throne, and then hesitated. “Lessa, do you think … should you wait outside?”
She shrugged. “There’s dust everywhere. I’ll just have to hope for the best, I suppose.”
“They don’t seem to have stolen anything, or let the place fall into disorder,” Hayne called from the other end of the hall. “Perhaps they thought they’d be returning again shortly.”
Dirk grinned at her. “See any ghosts yet?”
“Ha, very funny.”
“Wouldn’t be if you’d seen one,” Dirk said, but he couldn’t keep the smile off his face. “I hear they’re prodigiously hard to kill.”
“There are no ghosts here, or anywhere,” Kel said firmly. “And even if there were, they wouldn’t hurt me.”
Dirk looked askance at him. “You, sure. But what about us, eh?”
“Why wouldn’t they hurt him?” Cadfael asked. He’d been agitated the whole time they’d been in the throne room, pacing up and down, biting the corner of his mouth absently.
Dirk and Hayne looked at each other, and then looked at Kel; Lessa was looking away. But Kel looked at Eirnwin, and then they both nodded.
“Because I’m supposed to be here,” Kel told Cadfael. “This is my place.”
“Your place?” Cadfael said. “But this isn’t anyone’s place, not now. It was abandoned by Elgar, and by the kings of Reglay before that.”
“It’s the place the Rayls come from, and where they lived,” Kel said. “And I’m one of them, just as my father was.”
“The Rayls?” Cadfael caught his breath, his face growing dark. “Then … you’re the prince of Reglay?”
“Well,” Kel said, “strictly speaking, I’m the king now, but I haven’t been—”
But Cadfael’s fingers clenched hard on his sword hilt, and he stepped away. “I liked you much better as a merchant’s son.” He nodded at Eirnwin. “I take it this isn’t your father? And—”
“Lessa is my sister,” Kel said, before he could get any further. “But Eirnwin is my advisor, and my friend.”
“Hmph,” Cadfael said. “Do kings have friends?”
“Why shouldn’t they?” Kel asked, and thought, suddenly, of Prince Landon.
“So you’ve come to claim Mist’s Edge,” Cadfael said, beginning to pace the length of the hall again. “I understand it now. Well, you’re welcome to it as far as I’m concerned, though Elgar no doubt thinks differently.” He walked up to Eirnwin. “I’ll take that payment you promised, and I’ll be on my way.”
Eirnwin held up a hand. “Wait. You’re welcome to the money, of course, but—”
“If I’m welcome to it, I’ll have it, and I’ll leave. If I’m not welcome to it, I’ll just leave. Either way, good-bye.”
Eirnwin reached for his purse but paused before he drew it out. “You weren’t so quick to be rid of our company before. What changed?”
“Too much,” Cadfael said. “I would like to be gone, before you and the boy and the girl make me the offer I know you’re going to make. I like you well enough, and the younger ones better, and I don
’t want to seem a hard man. So let me go.”
“Why don’t you want to be in my service?” Kel asked. “Is it because of your quest for Shinsei? Or is it because you think I’ll make a bad king?”
Cadfael shook his head. “It isn’t like that.” He finally released his sword hilt, tracing his scar with one finger. “I followed a king’s orders once, to my greatest sorrow. I cannot do so again.”
“Why?” Kel asked. “What happened?”
“The same thing that happens to all men who follow orders too well,” Cadfael said. He turned to go. “I wish you only good fortune, boy—or king, if such you are—but I had best return to my pursuit of Shinsei. I will not find him here.”
“Wait.” This time it was Lessa who spoke, and Cadfael turned to her abruptly. Kel wondered if she sounded like his sister too, even if their personalities were as different as Cadfael had claimed. “This Shinsei you’re after—do you mean Elgar’s commander? He might come here, if you’re willing to wait for him.”
He squinted at her, his jaw tightening. “Explain yourself.”
“My brother reclaimed this castle so he might hold his coronation here,” Lessa said. “He means to invite the rulers of all the surrounding countries: Issamira, Esthrades, and Hallarnon. If Elgar comes, and he must come without an army, will he not wish his most trusted general at his side?”
Cadfael was still staring at her, stony-faced. “You’re mad to invite him. Elgar will never come here.”
“He will,” Kel insisted. “Or, well, we think he will. He won’t want to be left out, and his superstitions will—” He sighed. “Look, it doesn’t matter. We think he’ll come, and Lessa’s right—if he does, it’d make sense for him to bring Shinsei with him.”
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