Destined for a King

by Ashlyn Macnamara

  And her thoughts felt clearer as well. In no time at all, the cloister’s buff walls rose before her eyes, nestled on the far side of a pond behind which rolling hills tumbled green and cheerful on the horizon. In the fervent hope her old tutor would supply her with answers, she cantered the final furlong to the gate.

  Chapter 14

  A wrought-iron barrier, a filigree of grillwork surrounding an inverted triangle in the gate’s center, separated the cloister from the outside world. Beyond, in the courtyard, chickens scratched in the dirt, much as they did in Blackbriar’s bailey. A goat or two cropped at a patch of grass.

  Calista dismounted and pulled on a rope that hung next to the gate. A bell’s chime echoed through the space. Presently, a barefoot brother meandered from one of the ocher-colored stone buildings within. “What might I do for you, my child?”

  “I’ve come to seek the counsel of someone more learned than I. Is Brother Tancrid here?”

  The breeze swept his rough brown robes about spindly legs. “What is your name?”

  “Calista Thorne of Blackbriar Keep. Brother Tancrid was my tutor when I was a girl.”

  Taking a step back, he nodded and swung the gate open. “Enter and be at peace.”

  Peace was an apt description. As soon as she crossed into the cloister, she felt as if she’d entered a different world. The brother led her into the low building across the compound, the brown hens clucking peevishly as he glided through their midst.

  The brother showed her to a tiny chamber, little more than a cell. A single window pierced a wall half as thick as the length of her forearm. No fire blazed on the hearth to burn off the musty scents of humidity and mildew. “Be seated, and I will inform Tancrid he has a visitor. I would offer refreshment, but few come seeking the wisdom of the earth these days.”

  She took a seat on a rough-hewn wooden bench. The only other furnishing in the room was a low table. Old scrolls of parchment lay scattered across the surface. She unrolled one to reveal a map denoting the boundaries of each of the Strongholds. At its center, a large star marked the location of Highspring Moor. The silence about her deepened until she could hear the rush of blood in her head.

  Before long, the soft padding of bare feet on cold stones ruptured the quiet. Calista turned to find her old master standing in the doorway. His rough brown robes brushed the floor, almost hiding his bare feet. His grizzled hair had lightened to gray and the furrows on his brow were etched deeper than she recalled, but his blue eyes still twinkled with their old curiosity.

  As she rose, she resisted the impulse to launch herself at him the way she had as a child.

  He stopped a foot away and looked her up and down. “Calista—or rather, I should call you my lady, as you are a woman grown.”

  At his tone, she nearly curtseyed. “How wonderful to see you again after so long.”

  He inclined his head. “I’ve always been here, never far. You could have called at any time. But tell me, what brings you now. I’d have thought you long since wed and moved away.”

  An odd statement, when he’d known so much about the families of the Strongholds and their allegiances. Could he not have known of her betrothal? “My father would see me wed to King Magnus.”

  He raised a pair of bushy brows, gone as gray as his hair. “Is that so?” Decorum would have dictated congratulations, yet he offered none, nor did he sound delighted at the news. “And what are your wishes in this matter? For as often as fathers try to decide their daughters’ fates for them, the daughters form their own opinions.”

  “That is why I have come to see you. I have a decision to make, you see.”

  “Indeed.”

  He turned to the door and closed it before indicating the bench. She resumed her seat, while he remained on his feet, almost as if their former roles were reversed. As her tutor, he’d always bid her stand before him to recite her lessons or read from one scroll or another, while he remained seated, hands clasped in his lap, and listened with interest, no matter that he must have heard such lessons repeated hundreds of times before. If the repetition vexed him, he never allowed the reaction to show.

  “Before I say any more, I’d like your assurance that whatever we discuss does not leave this room.” Torch had not wanted her to repeat his claim even to him in the privacy of her bedchamber, after all. Whatever else he had done or would do, she’d respect his secrecy for now. Unless Brother Tancrid could give her good reason not to trust Torch.

  The Acolyte’s expression hardened, something she’d never seen before on his face. “I give you my word by my vows before the Three and to the earth beneath our feet that supports and sustains us all. Now, what have you come to ask me?”

  “I’ve come for a story.”

  Once again his expression changed, softening into the lines she remembered. A quiet laugh emerged from his lips. “You’re a woman grown and still asking after stories. I ought to make you work for it, but I suspect you’ll need to get back home before you’re missed. As much as I suspect you’ll be asking me about a story you haven’t yet heard.”

  “If it’s one you’ve told me in the past, I’d have remembered it myself.”

  He sniffed, the reddened rims of his nostrils flaring for an instant. “You always were asking to hear the same ones over again. I admit a failing there.”

  “How so?”

  “If I’d done my job properly and aroused your curiosity, you might already possess the knowledge you seek. So come.” He ran his index finger over his upper lip. The yellowed nail stretched past the tip of the digit, long as a hawk’s talon. “What story would you like to hear?”

  In spite of herself, she glanced around the chamber, as if she might find the walls riddled with holes and an ear pressed to every one. “I need you to tell me the story of Josse Vandal.”

  “And where have you heard that name?” He said the words low, as if he, too, feared eavesdroppers. “King Magnus struck that name from existence a score and five years ago when he rose to power. Even to pronounce it in his presence would be deemed treason. Pray you do not make that mistake should you wed him, or I fear he will seek a new bride in less than a year.”

  She ought to have expected such an ominous reply, but even so a shiver prickled up and down her spine. “Treason? For a mere name?”

  “There are those”—Tancrid’s voice fell to a whisper so she had to strain to catch his words—“who would claim Josse Vandal to be our rightful king.”

  She nodded. “That much I knew.”

  “And who have you been talking to that you even know this name?” The question carried caution and concern for her.

  “I prefer not to say. But can you tell me, if one exists who might possibly take the kingship away from Magnus, what sort of proof he might bear to back his claim?”

  “Is it not already proof that Magnus fears the name so much he’s had it all but erased? There is no written record of it, and it lives only in older men’s memories.” Her father, for one, but he was hardly likely to pronounce a name that would brand him a traitor. Not when he was such a staunch king’s man. “In another generation, that, too, will be gone, once the last who recall those times have died off.”

  “Yes, but should one appear who claims to be Josse Vandal himself, how would I know he’s telling the truth? Surely there must have been other pretenders over the years.”

  “Not until recently, for Josse would be a younger man. He was a boy of five when Magnus came to the throne. As for proof, there is none, for Magnus has been certain to get rid of all evidence, the same as he’s caused the name to be stricken.”

  A boy of five. Convenient that no one who’d known the child was like to recognize the man after all these years. But that put Torch at just about the right age for his claim to be true.

  “But if, as you say, Magnus has succeeded in erasing the past, how is it you know these things?”

  Brother Tancrid clutched at the carved wooden triangle he bore about his neck. But for his index
finger, all the other nails were cut short. Calista sifted through her childhood memories, but if he’d ever worn his nails in such a fashion, she’d never noticed. “It is part of the vows we take to become the Sons of Earth.”

  “Sons of Earth?” She’d never heard him refer to himself as such.

  “Acolyte is a descriptor thrust upon us by the outside world. Within these walls, we take our true name and declare our true purpose. Here we not only seek knowledge of all things, we preserve it, both the permitted and the forbidden.”

  She brushed a finger across the map, lingering on the raised ink of the star at its center. “Does your true purpose enable you to share the story?”

  “Enables me, yes.” He sniffed. “But be warned. This knowledge is deadly should you repeat it to the wrong person. In this chamber, it is safe, as am I. But you would carry it back into the world, where it might breed war.”

  “I think we’ve established I already know more than I ought.” And war was coming, no matter what. “Please.”

  “Perhaps your appearance here and now is the sign that it is time to restore the balance.” He rubbed the space below his nose. “But the story does not begin with Josse Vandal. We must reach further back through the generations and annals of the kings, back to Josse’s grandfather. By the official records, he only married once, but depending on whom you ask, he either married at the age of sixteen to a dairy maid who bore the family name of Rathbone or at the age of twenty when he made a far better alliance. Either way, King Magnus and Jaffe Vandal were half brothers. The only open question is which one of them was legitimate.”

  —

  Blackbriar Keep glowed in the level rays of the setting sun as Calista made her way back from the cloister. Smoke seemed to cloud her brain after all she’d learned. Tancrid had once more couched his history in terms of a story, but all the unfamiliar names and places and events of ages ago seemed to swirl in her mind until it formed a simmering stew.

  And she wasn’t much closer to making a decision than she had been. “There can be no solid proof,” Tancrid had said. “If the queen escaped with her young son, they’d have had little time to collect anything from the palace. And the boy would long since have grown to manhood. If he had a claim, he’d have made it and produced whatever proof he had.”

  She hadn’t told him Torch was the claimant. Not that Torch had any proof, other than a strangely noble sword for one of his apparent upbringing. But he could have taken that during a raid. He could have plundered a corpse. Given his reputation, he’d sooner have done either one of those than carry a carefully preserved blade out of the royal armory.

  But the pommel bore a raptor, and the Vandal symbol was an eagle. Or at least according to Tancrid it had been once. Before Magnus came along and cast the entire palace in iron. He’d replaced the eagle on his banners with an arrow-struck crown.

  Once again the saying the king was so fond of repeating echoed through her mind: A swift arrow can fell even an eagle. That was what he’d done. Their father barely cold in his grave, Magnus had felled his half brother within a sennight of the man’s own coronation. He’d paid homage with steel and iron, sharp blades, and cruel bolts.

  If the queen had escaped the carnage, the matter was kept a strict secret. Magnus buried three corpses, but whether the bodies possessed any royal blood was still an open question. Of King Jaffe, there had been no doubt. The other two might well have been lowly servants.

  “I could ask Torch,” she muttered to herself, “but the most he can tell me are his vague childhood memories and stories passed along from his mother, retold so often they carry the ring of truth.” He might well believe he was the rightful king, but that didn’t make it so.

  And truth or not, did she wish to ally herself with him? Choose him over Magnus? How could she be certain Torch would rule justly? He had the assurance he was right in what he was doing, nothing more. That wouldn’t make him a good ruler, any more than Magnus had been.

  Magnus…A man who had attempted to erase the past. Perhaps he’d succeeded on even a grander scale. Tancrid had told her many stories in her youth, but were those stories true history or lies made up and spread by a monarch with something to hide?

  “Whatever else Magnus has done,” Tancrid had pointed out, “he must still fear the Vandals. Why else would he claim it treason to mention the name of a boy who was last seen at the age of five?”

  Though Calista had never met the king, for the span of a dream she’d inhabited the body of a woman who had experienced the effects of Magnus’s rule. Someone on the outside. Not the pampered daughter of one of his supporters. Jerrah had known a life of cruelty due to that man. Could Calista fault the brother for wishing to right such wrongs?

  “No one can tell what the future holds,” Tancrid had advised her at the gate. “None but the Three. You must listen with your heart.”

  She hadn’t even told him her dilemma, and yet he seemed to sense something of its nature.

  At the postern gate, she slid from the saddle and led her palfrey beneath the shadow of the wall. The bailey was in an uproar of servants dashing here and there. In the middle of it all, Torch’s men stood in ranks, armed, beside their mounts. Torch had hauled himself up on his charger and was shouting orders.

  “What in the name of the Three?” she muttered. Had they received word of Magnus marching on them already? Her heart seized at the idea. The defenses weren’t even halfway prepared. Torch had ridden in to claim Blackbriar so easily. Magnus would do the same, and he would not show the same mercy to the Brotherhood as Torch had shown the men of Blackbriar.

  Overlooked, she led her mare into the dark of the stable.

  “My lady!” Rand froze in his tracks, his hand clenched about the reins of still another mount. He was dressed in boiled leather over mail with a bow slung at his back. His saddle held a quiver full of fletched arrows.

  “What is afoot?” she asked the guard. “Is the enemy coming?”

  Beneath his helm, his brows lowered. “The enemy is within our walls and has been for the past fortnight.” He stepped directly into her path, halting her on the spot. Her mare jerked her head back and snorted. “Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me you’re not going to wed that upstart.”

  She opened her mouth on the verge of replying that she hadn’t made up her mind yet, when she realized it was none of his affair. “You seem rather eager for the answer to that.”

  “By the Faceless One, you were betrothed to a king.”

  “I still am.” Let him make of that what he would. “Magnus may come to claim me yet, and in the meantime, Father has yielded the castle to Torch. He gave you a chance to leave if you would not follow him. If you did not go, he is by rights your lord.”

  “And you would make him yours, would you not?”

  “I must obey my betters just as you must.” Part of her was uncertain as to why she was defending Torch when Rand had the right of the situation, but there it was. In any case, she didn’t need her father’s retainers and guardsmen making her decisions for her.

  “You there!” Calista could not see past the charger that Rand had been leading toward the yard, but she recognized that voice readily enough. Torch. “Rand, is it? Come along. We’ve no time to lose. The sun will go down soon.”

  “My lady is here.”

  “What? Why didn’t you say so?” Torch pushed past both guard and horse to eye her from the top of her disheveled head to her booted toes. “Where in the name of the Three have you been?”

  “I went for a ride. I had no idea it was forbidden.”

  Rand still stood, reins in hand, looking from one to the other. His eyes glittered in the dim light. Too interested by far, that one. Torch glanced over his shoulder. “Put that beast away along with this palfrey and tell Hawk to call off the search.” His fingers curled about Calista’s wrist, binding tight as a shackle. “You, my lady, will come with me.”

  She ought to follow him, ought to get them both out of earshot of any of her
father’s men, but something inside her rebelled. No one had ever seen fit to manhandle her in all her life at Blackbriar. She didn’t intend to start allowing it now. “Whatever orders you mean to give me, you can do it here.”

  “I prefer to carry out this conversation in private, if it please you.”

  She returned his glare. “Then unhand me.”

  “In your chambers. Now.”

  Chapter 15

  Calista nearly balked, but Rand’s eyes narrowed at Torch’s command. She wasn’t about to begin taking orders from either one of them. She yanked her wrist out of Torch’s grasp and preceded him across the bailey. As she passed, his men stopped to stare at her, their gazes weighing on her shoulders, but she held her head high, despite the burning in her cheeks, despite knowing how she appeared to them—a rebellious child in need of chastisement.

  Across the great hall, up the stone stairs at its back to her tower chamber—with every step Torch’s heavy footfalls thudded loudly in her ears. As did the oaken door when he closed it behind them.

  “Where did you go that you saw fit to leave this keep without informing anyone?” he asked without preamble. Once again, she met his gaze. His expression was set, his arms crossed over the expanse of his chest. He’d donned mail and covered it with a tunic of leather. From head to toe, he looked every bit a mercenary and a marauder, every bit as ruthless as his reputation painted him, a man hardened by life beyond his years. If his claim is true, his years number only a score and ten. The lines at the corners of his eyes and on his forehead were etched far deeper.

  “I went for a ride.” She crossed her arms in imitation of his stance. “I’ve done so often enough in the past without anything tragic befalling me. No one told me it was forbidden now.”

  He looked away for a moment and raked a hand through his hair. He’d removed his gauntlets and held them clenched in his other fist. “Yet you must have suspected I’d prevent you from leaving. Or else you would have told someone, not to mention using the front gate. I ask you again, where did you go?”