“Cobalt has the largest military in all Brittallia,” Dynan said as if they all didn’t already know. “You’re talking about something that will take years.”
“Many years,” she corrected, and the enormity of the problem, the impact it would have on his life, maybe the rest of it, took on another level of comprehension. The thought occurred to Dynan that he might not ever see his home again. “Which is why we need a base of operations. There are already refugees coming here.”
“What? From Cobalt?”
“Yes,” Drake said. “Quite a few actually. I’m having them processed through the Ilthain Base, but I see your point, Carryn. They could be put to better use. I’ll see what I can come up with. There might be something. Of course, I’m ordering a review of Palace security. Anything you need, Xavier, and I’ll do what I can.”
“This will be a hugely expensive undertaking, Your Majesty, and dangerous for you to be involved,” Xavier said. “We should ask you what you want in return, besides our undying gratitude.”
Dynan could tell by Xavier’s tone he was negotiating now, crafting the terms of the agreement the King of Trea and they would abide by for however long it took. Dynan tensed waiting for the counter demands. He didn’t have any idea what Xavier might offer in response. Yes, one day he would perhaps make it back to Cobalt and be in a position to offer Drake whatever he wanted, but now, he had nothing to give.
Drake smiled. “I want to see Dynan crowned the rightful King of Cobalt,” he said, and then shook his head at them to stop their surprise. “Xavier, this situation will undermine the stability of Brittallia the longer it goes on. Forty-two years since the last war ended isn’t long enough to forget old animosities. Other System leaders, especially Alexia and Creal will surely see this as an opportunity. They won’t stand by. It won’t take much to push us all to the brink of another all-encompassing conflict. Dynan can thank me from the Throne. That’s all I want.”
Dynan was still trying to fathom the number of years it would take to come up with a force of men - an invasion force is what they meant - and couldn’t see how, without it taking the whole of his life. Drake’s lack of demands didn’t register at first.
He thought to tell them no just then. Drake would have to make his peace with Kamien. He wouldn’t get involved with this incredibly expensive, time-sucking endeavor. Dynan could go off and spend the rest of his life in quiet anonymity on a farm raising horses. Anything seemed better than the eternity they wanted him to spend trying to take back a throne he never wanted in the first place.
He heard Kamien telling him to never say that out loud, or even think it, an incongruous memory of his brother that didn’t match his actions. A flash of anger went through him, followed by the certainty of the harshest reality.
There wasn’t a choice.
He was Ambrose Telaerin’s son. He couldn’t change that fact, even if he thought he might want to.
“Dynan,” Xavier said, nodding that he should say something about Drake’s generosity, accept it or decline it.
“I think you’re crazy,” he muttered and made Drake laugh. “You ought to know what’s involved here, the hugeness of it, and all you want is my thanks? That’s insane, Drake. Completely.”
“Yes, and also the right thing to do. I’m afraid, though, the undertaking is going to be far more difficult for you than me. I’ll help you any way I can.”
Dynan was going to tell him he was crazy again, but Carryn suddenly stiffened. A voice erupted in his mind, killing coherent thought.
“You needn’t worry about how long you have, Prince,” Maralt said, appearing in front of him. “You’re not going to survive.”
Dynan lurched away, knowing now if Maralt touched him, getting away from him would be impossible. He also knew this was a mental attack. He felt his body thudding to the carpeted floor, and voices calling him from a great distance. He thought he heard Carryn, but that soon faded amongst the dead grasses and hiss of reeds that now surrounded him.
Dynan started running. He was in a field that didn’t end, and he started trying to go some place else mentally in the hopes Maralt might not find him. The grass melded into a walkway, trees lining the adjacent road. Dynan recognized Brescott Way in Rianamar, running by the library. It started snowing. He raced by a giant tree and his old guard, Colyn Fryn stepped out, reaching for him.
For a moment, Dynan didn’t remember that Colyn was dead, so relieved to see someone who could help him. “Colyn!”
The guard’s face changed. The familiar features altered, hair darkening, eyes turning a kind of black that made Dynan rear back in fear and realization.
A hand clamped around his arm. Pain blasted through him, instantly incapacitating him and made him want to scream. Maralt breathed in a gulp of air and laughed while Dynan tried to escape the invisible force that struck him. His vision cleared then, and he was back in the Palace on the floor of the King’s conference room. Pain receded as abruptly as it had come.
He heard someone being struck, Carryn it turned out, and through the clearing haze, saw her thrown across the room, followed by the terrible realization that Maralt was there. Somehow, he’d gotten through Palace security to reach into the heart of the Kingdom.
“Drake,” Dynan said, terrified he was dead now. He rolled to his knees and clawed up to his feet. He had to protect the King. It was the only coherent thought he had.
Drake was backed up to the hearth of the fire with Xavier, neither of them armed Dynan saw, and he got to them before he turned to face what was coming without a weapon. “You need to get out of here,” he said, and grabbed the iron fire poker, wishing it was flaming hot.
Maralt stood over Carryn, armed with a sword ready to use against his sister, who was stunned into semi-consciousness. Dynan lunged for him, welding the short metal rod to stop the descent of the blade only just before it would have struck her. Dynan swung a fist at Maralt next, throwing out the rules of fair play for more lethal necessities. But Maralt was trained in the same forms of combat.
He reared back, and Dynan ended up off balance, too close to the tip of Maralt’s sword. Using the prod again, Dynan kept the blade from sinking into his chest. It sliced into his left arm instead, across his bicep. He managed to keep it from cutting deeper, and tried to slug Maralt again. This time he connected with his jaw, but Maralt only laughed. He stepped back, disengaging a moment while he wiped blood off the corner of his mouth.
Dynan lunged again, hoping to push him back from Carryn and keep him away from Drake, who was trying to edge toward a companel in the table to call a guard. Dynan didn’t have time to think too long why there weren’t guards already.
“I killed them all,” Maralt said, answering the thought.
He lunged at Dynan, knocking the prod from his grasp, and smashing his hand down onto the back of a wood chair. Maralt shoved him down onto the table, pinning him there.
“Would you like to see how easy it is?” Maralt looked to Xavier, who stood defenseless with the King.
“No!” Dynan squirmed under the grasp Maralt had on his neck, trying to break free or distract him. Terrified he’d kill Xavier and Drake, Dynan lashed out, kneeing Maralt in the groin. The chokehold tightened. Black spots grew to take his vision. Drake collapsed to the floor, but just as the ability to see left Dynan, Dain barreled into the room.
Maralt had to let go of Dynan to stop Dain from running him through. He defended each thrust, each attack, metal clanging sharply against metal, a sound that was echoed by other battles raging in the outer halls. The very thing Dain feared would happen was happening now. A small, highly trained force of men, led by Maralt attacked the Ilthain Palace.
“There’s nowhere you can run,” Maralt said as he danced away, “nowhere you can hide where I won’t find you.”
“So you think I should lie down here and die for you? Is that it?” Dain said, charging at him again, the emerald blade flashing.
“Not at all, Dain.” Maralt looked to the d
oor. The noises coming from that direction told Dain that Ralion and Sheed were battling their way into the room. He only had to hold out another moment. “I’m going to make you watch everyone else die first.”
Maralt dodged under a thrust, parried, and reached with his free hand, grabbing Dain by the wrist. He attacked with his mind in the same moment, paralyzing Dain in sudden, unrelenting agony. He was forced to watch, held in place by an iron grip, as Ralion staggered down to his knees across the threshold of the doorway.
Out of the edges of trailing vision, Dain saw Xavier, an iron pan used to remove fire ash in hand, raised, swinging, impacting against the back of Maralt’s head.
But Xavier was in his nineties.
Dain threw himself backward and managed to break Maralt’s grip, punching him, striking back any way he could to keep him from turning on Xavier. Through collapsing vision, as pain coursed through his body, Dain saw Dynan pry himself off the table and lunge at Maralt, colliding with him, and knocking them all to the floor. Carryn got up, sword in hand and charged her brother even as he rolled back to his feet.
The last thing Dain saw as the darkness came in was Carryn battling back and forth, and Maralt retreating from her, except he was laughing and didn’t seem afraid. He was there again, in Dain’s mind, tearing away at his soul.
“You can’t hide from me,” he said, breathing in his ear. “I will find you. No matter where you run. I’ll find you both.”
Flames licked at his body, burning away skin and muscle. Devouring agony took his breath, leaving the screams to echo only in his mind before the dark stopped the pain.
~*~
Chapter 4
Consciousness brought with it the awareness of fear.
The sound of screaming echoed in his head.
A cool hand touched his arm, brushing to his face, and stopped the noise, pulling him away from the dark. A deep voice spoke.
“Is he waking?” Boral asked. “Is the same thing going to happen?”
“I don’t know yet,” Geneal said, and drew her fingers across his forehead, pausing there for a moment, cool and soothing. “Dynan.”
“I’m all right,” he said, or meant to. His head hurt, but it wasn’t an incapacitating pain like before. And he remembered everything.
Before his eyes could focus, he started looking for Dain, and found him in the bed across the room, unconscious, but alive. Geneal patted his arm again, and after reading the monitors over the bed, left Boral to fill him in. Dynan watched her leave and thought she looked tired.
“Xavier?”
“He’s all right,” Boral said. “Drake is all right. He woke up not long ago with a bad headache and a slight gap in his memory, but nothing worse than that. We don’t know about Ralion yet, but Carryn says he’ll probably make it. She doesn’t think Maralt had enough time to finish him off. He hasn’t come around yet. As for her, she seems to be recovering. She’s a little beat up.”
“Bastard.” Dynan pried himself upright, relieved everyone would be all right, and worried none of them would ever be the same. “We have to get out of here.”
“I know we do,” Boral said, leaning back in his chair.
“I’m not going to stay here and put Drake and his family in more danger.”
“The sooner we are away, the better.”
Dynan looked at him when Boral kept agreeing, knowing there was more to it and that they couldn’t just leave.
Boral cocked an eyebrow at him. “But...”
“We don’t have any place to go.”
“We do not,” Boral said and clapped him on the back. “Not off Trea at any rate, but away from the Palace, yes. Drake has a place in Galar, a friend’s place that they sometimes use that they don’t advertise as a retreat. As soon as you are both up, we’re evacuating.”
“Galar,” Dynan repeated. He’d never heard of it. His arm stung where Maralt had sliced it and he winced when he put pressure on it. “And then what?”
“We move again. Drake’s LC is doing what he can to track Maralt. It appears he had help in the city. There are a lot of dead Palace guards. He walked right in, just like Dain said he would, with a small Special Forces unit. Some of whom I recall.”
“The same ones who attacked me that Xavier showed us?”
“The same.”
“With Maralt again.” He shook his head over it. Something didn’t feel right. “Father appointed him Kamien’s advisor.”
“I wonder,” Boral said. “Melgan mentioned something about it to me that Ambrose abruptly changed his mind about Maralt. He wasn’t welcome before that. No one knows why Ambrose didn’t want him around. No one knows why he changed his mind. I’m guessing there was intent to make it so. Well, we know now, and Carryn is going to help you sort out how to stop Maralt. I know Dain questions listening to her, but you have to trust her. Her military experience tested her out at the command level. She knows what she’s doing there. I’m certain she’s going to be your only hope of getting through this. I believe her.”
“I believe her too,” Dynan said, watching Dain sleep. “He may never.”
“As long as you know how you’re going to deal with that.”
“I don’t.”
Boral laughed. “Maybe some good has come from the beating you gave him. He now knows you can.”
Dynan shook his head at that, knowing it would never happen again. Dain knew it too. “I suppose I should try to wake him.”
“I’ll com Geneal. It’ll help to have a pretty face when he comes around.”
“And I get stuck with you,” Dynan said, making Boral laugh again.
Getting dressed exacerbated the aches and pains. Everything hurt and he moved with the care of an aged man. It was the dead of winter in Ilthain. Dynan could feel the chill into his bones, but the clothes were layered and thick. “Is Queen Marella all right?” he said, guilty that he hadn’t asked before. She had certainly made sure he had new things to wear, among other small details of comfort. “The children?”
“They were all safely away from the area, and didn’t know there was a problem until the alert went out. The whole place is fairly well shaken, and well, the Trean System knows we’re here now.”
“Are we going to have the chance to go to Galar, Boral?”
“The Palace has responded well to the threat and is better equipped to deal with the possibility of another attack. On the political front, the Queen is a formidable woman, as you know. In the King’s absence, Marella is fully in charge and unmoved by the calls for our immediate expulsion. Don’t argue with her over it. Won’t do any good. I already tried to convince her we could leave, but she’s not having any of it.”
Dynan smiled at that, even though there wasn’t much to be happy about. He knew now that Maralt would come back, as promised. He knew they couldn’t stay, regardless of the wishes of the Queen.
Boral left to find Geneal to be there when Dain woke up. Dynan walked into a vision of his brother thinking he was burning, the last thing Maralt had left him with, skin charred down to the bone. There was almost nothing left of him, in a state of near non-existence that plunged Dynan into the immediate fear his brother was going to die. He was pulled right into it and didn’t know what to do.
“Wait,” he told himself and told Dain, on his knees beside him, afraid to touch him. “This isn’t real. Dain, it isn’t real. You have to wake up. Open your eyes.”
Dynan realized he had to leave him, get outside of him or it would be too late. The Medic room swirled back into being. Dynan leaned over Dain, shaking him and surprised Geneal, who couldn’t tell that something was wrong. Dain jerked awake finally, still feeling on fire. Dynan pulled him up, holding on, keeping him in the room until the inside image matched the outside reality. It took a while for the shaking to stop and for Dain to regain his composure.
Anger replaced fear and pain. It was a kind of rage Dynan could feel, lashing outward and bowling over anything in its way, making him want to run from it.
&
nbsp; Boral must have sensed it too, or seen it in others enough to recognize it in Dain. “You’re going to have opportunity soon enough to channel all that rage into something other than the desire to kill a man, Dain. I know what you’re feeling. Maralt took a great man and a dear friend from me, from you, from the world. I want to see him dead as much as you. But those thoughts will poison your soul if you aren’t careful. Justice is one thing. Revenge is another, and beneath you.”
That advice was hard to take and harder to keep in mind.
It took longer than the day to recover, but not long later, they were collected and on their way to Galar, a province in the Traicen Region. The mansion was perched on a hill along the lower range of a mountain chain. It wasn’t possible to approach without being seen. They went in by transport instead of on the XR-30. They sent the ship to the Ilthain Base into a covered hanger with the highest security access code, which meant no one without the King’s permission could get in.
The mansion reminded Dynan of Beren, except again there was no lake, and it had an interior courtyard instead of outdoor gardens. It was a big square block of a building, and larger in almost every sense. It was not pouring snow like it was in Ilthain, and Dynan was thankful to sit outside in the warming sun within the courtyard enclosure, though a sense of security remained elusive. They didn’t know where Maralt had escaped to.
Everyone recovered, for the most part. It took some longer than others. Ralion joined them after a few days, shaky on his feet and overly tired, but insistent he’d heal faster with them rather than in Ilthain. Carryn and Xavier came with him, feeling about the same way. Carryn had bruises on her face from where Maralt had hit her.
Dain occupied himself working with Gaden Ahreld, trying to submerge the boiling anger he felt over this new life they now had to contend with.
It didn’t go well for Gaden. It was hard for Dain to pull back that far to the young man’s level of skill. Carryn sat with Dynan on the wall in the evening sun about two weeks after arriving and watched while Gaden got his practice sword knocked from his hand yet again. He never gave up, running to get the weapon and turning to face Dain again.
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