The Web Rulers Weave: Ruins of Unity

by J Glen Percy

  As if the stirrings of open rebellion were not bad enough, Ryecard had crossed paths with Queen Willa and her procession just south of the Fork. She had not seen him amongst the tumult but she could not miss the open signs of revolt. Later that day on the Shorefeld side of the bustling crossing, Ryecard had seen Prince Ceres and a guard of fifty men. Both mother and son looked as sour as unripe berries and would surely take word back to the capital. If the Lord Steward of the West did not act soon, there would be no West to act upon.

  Yes, he should have expected this and yet, how could he? A single glimpse of Aryella was all he could bear before leaving Wyn to stand watch over his daughter alone. Like a meal he had been struggling to digest for the better part of thirty years, the symbol marring her forehead sat heavy in his gut. He had worked harder ridding the world of that mark and its piece-parts than he had the Ferals. He had warped himself to spare the world its perverse power. Now his daughter wore it permanently. No, there was no expecting this.

  Meryam had followed Ryecard from Aryella’s room to their bedchamber where they were engaged presently. Frail though her shell was, her fire, her inner power, had lost none of its strength.

  “The keep stood tall in your absence, my lord steward,” Meryam said resolutely. “The books are in order, our cellars are full. Your sons are well, though I have seen little of them. The physicians can provide more details on Aryella’s condition, and Breccyn and Gabryel on the preceding events.”

  Lost in thought, Ryecard said, “The structure remains upright, that does not mean the house is free from messes. At the least I can count on Mykel to stay out of trouble.” Ryecard paused, releasing a long sigh in the process. “I am sorry for my part in this; Aryella is who my ire is meant for. The week has not been easy nor restful. The king’s mess is worse than our own, and on getting worse if I cannot pacify this province.”

  “Getting worse?” Meryam asked curiously.

  “Tobiah Jago is stirring a cauldron too large for me to peer over the brim and have a look inside. I warned Lord Ozias Stellen to keep a watchful eye. With the entire province singing our son’s name, and someone within Erick’s council driving towards division, conflict’s toehold is shaping into firm footing. Preventing an uprising is always easier than quelling one. Certainly less bloody. Time draws short. There will be little we can do to stop it.”

  “Should we?” Meryam asked, eyes webbed in red.

  “I cannot listen to your fantastical notions of independence right now,” Ryecard said dismissively. “Of course we should. We should do whatever it takes to prevent bloodshed between united brothers of the realm. Needless bloodshed.”

  Meryam fired back. “How can you call it needless? Did your time in the capital not wake you? Perhaps you took off that leather cuff and wore your mark proudly. A terror grips the provincial-born worse than any the Ferals inspired in us. Murderous miscreations can be endured, countermeasures taken with some result, but men cannot abide injustice. Nor should they. There is no counter. Royal lines a thousand years in the making were negated on the whim of a self-proclaimed ruler. Those same lines, the Fairfields, the Redmonds, they are ready to swear allegiance to our cause.”

  Meryam extended herself to Ryecard, but he stood forcefully in opposition.

  “Ready to swear? Our cause? What have you done, wife?”

  “Erick is a good man,” she pressed. “A little reason and a unified show of force, not to mention the Grayskins threatening us all; he will release the provinces back to their capitals.”

  Ryecard could not believe his ears. “I held Jago’s ambitions in my hands and threw deceit, betrayal, and a hundred other accusations in his face. I did not know my own wife played the game as deftly as he!” Pure, untainted disgust took Ryecard. For the moment he was struck speechless, though Meryam’s following statement quickly loosed his tongue.

  “Forgive me for not begging at the king’s feet when my child’s head is on the block and assassins are stealing into my home!” she cried.

  “Beg? The king spared our son because of my begging!” Ryecard stared down into his wife, anger and resentment carrying him swiftly towards a place of regret. A place he had never ventured before. His chest heaved and she seemed a fraction of herself next to him.

  “He did what?” she said hesitantly, almost a whisper.

  “Erick Romerian chose the ire of the Rosemarked over that of the Starlings’. Breccyn is fully pardoned.” Meryam’s eyes searched Ryecard’s as if he had just told her the oceans went dry, as if his utterance was a complete impossibility.

  A commotion at the doorway pulled Ryecard’s attention that way. Meryam looked too. Collapsing to the ground was the son they had just been speaking of, their eldest, and he carried in his arms a cumbersome bundle wrapped in white linens.

  “Would that our king’s mercy extended to our young brother in my stead,” Breccyn slurred, apparently having heard Ryecard’s news from outside the doorway. His eyes watered freely and his skin matched the bundle’s cloth in shade. Gabryel stood just behind, looking every bit the ghost his older brother was. The younger boy wept openly.

  “What new evil is this?” Ryecard asked unknowingly. Perhaps not wanting to know. “Breccyn? Gabryel? Lads, tell us.”

  He received nothing from them but more tears. What could Breccyn possibly hold? Where was the youngest boy?

  “Burn the Five and all their creations.” Ryecard’s voice was hollow, brittle, trailing into an abyss where even light did not return. His entire being felt brittle, termites eating at his mind and soul, like old mortar ready to crumble.

  Ryecard stiffened his legs where he stood. Meryam realized the bundle’s contents at the same moment, taking a step closer before slumping onto the large horse-hair rug. Ryecard had supposed only two of his sons were present. In truth, all three were here.

  “No, no, no,” Meryam repeated over and over. “He was with me. He was with me. My sweet innocent boy.” Sorrow racked her voice, though her eyes remained dry. They had nothing left to give after days at Aryella’s bedside.

  “Who did this?” Ryecard rasped. He wasn’t sad, no more so than when he looked upon his defiant daughter. His beloved daughter. The emotion would come, sure as flies to pinch and barflies to pitchers, but there was no space at present. The sickening blemish on Aryella’s forehead had not been put there by man, Ryecard would stake his past on it. In that case, there was nowhere to turn his all-consuming rage but the sky. His youngest son, however, this was the work of a mortal. Cruel and without conscience, Ryecard would deliver his rage in kind. Perhaps then, grief could find a home. “Who did this?” he repeated coldly.

  “The prince,” Breccyn confessed with effort. “Burn his soul for it, it was Prince Ceres.”

  Ryecard’s expression was stone. The name should have provoked a reaction, but nothing was surprising when staring at your child’s corpse.

  “Are you not angry with me father?” Breccyn continued. “I could have stopped him.”

  “Or me? I was with Mykel,” Gabryel put in, gasps and sobs interrupting every other word. “I left him alone. I could not protect Ary. I could not protect Mykel.”

  Seeing Gabryel, the living copy of the body beneath the sheets, made the situation all the more poignant . Ryecard noticed that Meryam was purposely not looking towards her new youngest son.

  Ryecard considered for a moment. “There is more to this than an impulsive prince and his steel, I see. For the moment, I am satisfied that neither of you are the prince.”

  “At the least won’t you hear why, father?” came Breccyn’s plea.

  “Reason is only important if there is to be a trial. Prince Ceres will not be receiving that for this crime. Not for this crime. I need you to be strong. Both of you. Whatever your part in this, every man swings his own sword. There is yet more heartache and darkness down the road we tread. Be strong.”

  While he spoke, Ryecard worked the laces of the stallion-marked bracer on his left forearm. His habit was to
spin the thing round and round. Tugging at the chords, taking out the slack, he fastened the leather decisively.

  “Gabryel, call on Fennel to collect your brother’s body, but do so in secrecy. Have him post sentries outside your sister’s door as well. No one save the physicians and your mother are allowed entry. Be strong, young man. Today and forward, you are one of a kind.”

  Gabryel nodded sluggishly, sparing one last look for the severed form of his twin, then turned from the doorway.

  Ryecard forced his legs to function one at a time, closing the small distance to Breccyn. A raised lump disfigured the linens from true body form. He knew it to be Mykel’s head. His arms operated mechanically, taking his youngest from his oldest. Mykel was not a large child, yet Ryecard felt the weight of the withered world resting in his hands.

  “Father, I-”

  “Wyn remained at your sister’s side when last I saw him. Collect him and meet me at the stables.” Ryecard’s command left no room for questioning, but neither was Breccyn satisfied. The young lord turned hesitantly to leave, resistance dragging at his every move. “Son,” Ryecard called to him. “We can discuss guilt another time. Gathering your brother and swaddling him for burial is a task no man envies. Perhaps your penance has already been served. Now go.”

  Left alone with the remains of their son, Ryecard laid Mykel’s body on the bed.

  “Where are you going?” Meryam asked. She had not moved from the rug and stared aimlessly into the surrounding floorboards.

  It was in that moment that Meryam’s betrayal of his trust stung the deepest. She needed him. He needed her. Pain, anguish, devastation; these were meant to be shared, lifted by each other into a single sufferable load. His engulfing arms, her soothing words, shared comfort through their once unbreakable union. Mountains and valleys stood between them now, the distance seeming as eternal as their bond.

  Ryecard stood at the bedside, ignoring his wife. “We bring children selfishly to this world knowing they will die, the sweetness of their life worth the pain. Now that it has come to it, I am not so certain it is.”

  “Where are you going?” Meryam asked once again, her tone as brittle as Ryecard felt.

  “To avenge my son and start the war that others prepared,” he replied callously.

  “The prince is not here. He and his mother left yesterday.”

  “I am aware. I saw them on the road.”

  “Then be aware if you go, you go to war of your own accord. Remember that husband.”

  Ryecard pondered her words, attempting to see further than his dead boy, further than the limit of his physical eyes. Cairanthem’s future was shrouded in a blackness he had not felt since the Feral Wars, the hope and prosperity of a young, redrawn kingdom crushed beneath its infinite weight. The future was too dark to make anything of it. His family’s future was as bleak and unknown.

  When at last he spoke, an emotionless frost clung to every word. “Every man swings his own sword.”

  CHAPTER 30

  “Our brother is dead!” Breccyn cried out, putting more shoulder than necessary into Aryella’s shuttered bedchamber door. The heavy maple slab swung open the full extent of its hinges then rebounded, catching him roughly. The blow went unnoticed. The tragically familiar agony that he had experienced upon finding his brother’s corpse revisited him instead.

  Gaining speed as he had crossed the covered bridgeway from his parents’ chambers towards Aryella’s where Wyn was to be found, Breccyn still felt as if someone had taken a cudgel to his gut and every other inch of his body. Discovering Mykel had come as more than a blow. It wrung his stomach until the last of his digestive juices were on the guest apartment’s floors, and then it wrung him some more. He then wept alone until Gabryel had shown up. Crashing into his sister’s room, he was shamefully thankful that his stomach had nothing left to give. His lungs did however, and he found himself gasping for breath.

  “Wyn?” he just managed.

  The Fellsword had jerked upright upon Breccyn’s entrance, deaf to the news Breccyn carried. It was the first Breccyn had ever witnessed the man startle, and it was not without reason. Wyn’s lips had been fixed to his sister’s, who herself remained fixed in a sleeplike trance beneath a comfortable layering of wool.

  “Wyn?” Breccyn mustered once more.

  Wyn Fellsword’s snowy complexion did not color a grain, but his face reflected shame purer than the clearest mountain spring. Another first from the man. “Please let me explain, my lord,” he began.

  Breccyn recovered somewhat. “Explain? What is there to explain? You were kissing my sister!”

  “I was,” Wyn admitted plainly. “I love her.” Shame in his features, his words were sincere. Repulsively sincere.

  Breccyn’s knees trembled, and he cursed the gods he did not believe in for making him relive the same unthinkable pain he had suffered at Mykel’s side. What had he done to deserve all this? What had his family done?

  “Does she know?” Disgust twisted his words.

  “Of course she does,” Wyn replied, insulted.

  “You’ve no right to that tone.” Breccyn’s eyes strained to produce moisture, succeeding as he considered further. “You’ve no right to my sister, or any woman.”

  Wyn approached Breccyn. “If you will please let me explain, my lord.”

  “Do not come near me, oath-breaker! How long have the two of you kept this up? You truly believe my father would approve? His daughter paired with his oath-breaking liegeman?” Breccyn did not know why Wyn had taken the oath. He was quite certain that only his father and Wyn did. Repayment of some debt, expression of eternal gratitude; the reason did not matter. “How could you do this?”

  “We live in each other’s heart.”

  “You do not have a heart!” Breccyn screamed. His blade was out, his feet closing the remaining distance. In the practice yard next to the blacksmith, Wyn routinely disarmed nine capable swordsman from a lesser advantage than he had now. Breccyn had seen it; he was often one of those swordsmen. His blade rested on the Fellsword’s throat now purely because the man had allowed it. “Duty to my father is your only love,” Breccyn growled.

  Wyn was untouched by fear. Shame and sorrow, but no fear. “A fair chance at a moon blade you have always wanted, my lord,” he spoke gently. “It is yours for the taking.”

  Breccyn stood fast, ignoring the tears that fell. To say he did not want a moon-marked blade was a lie as blatant, if less damaging, as Wyn’s. He had never wanted Wyn’s, and certainly not like this. He removed his steel from the Fellsword’s skin. “Death is an escape too easy,” he grated finally. “Gather yourself and follow me to the stables. My father has need of us.”

  Wyn looked to the bed and Breccyn’s sister. “My place is at her side, my lord.”

  “Your place is where your liege lord says it is,” Breccyn responded coldly. “Right now that is at his side.”

  “She very well may die.”

  “Then Mykel will have a fearless hand accompanying him to the house of our sires, and Aryella a gallant one to keep her out of trouble.”

  Wyn did not miss the news a second time. “What did you say? What of young Mykel?”

  “He is dead, Wyn. Killed by the prince with your blade’s brother.”

  Wyn’s eyes, polished onyx in both color and hardness, melted to black puddles beneath a starless sky. Then the man said distantly, “I promised your mother I would care for the lad.”

  Breccyn felt no sympathy. If anything, his ire grew. “If she’d known your word was less than an idler’s purse in worth, she never would have asked it.” It was petulant he knew, but neither did he care. This was Wyn Fellsword, a pillar of all that was right in the world, a shelter from all that was bad. Warrior. Mentor. Friend. Brother. Liar. “My father has real need of you, Wyn. If a sliver of decency remains, do not fail him in this. Then you can take your godforsaken feelings over the cliffs, or wherever that sliver would have you bury them.”

  Wyn absorbed the cr
uel words, taking Aryella’s motionless hand in his own. Tenderness, not spite, drove his actions. Steel drawn and temper hot, he was chancing death regardless of the motivation. Breccyn could scarcely watch but made no move other than to squeeze the sword hilt until his fingers burned. He had lost two brothers in as many days, and his blood boiled for it.

  “My oath forbade the feelings that Aryella has stirred within me,” Wyn said finally. “Yet it would be a mistake to say she is the only Starling that I love.” It was the only justification he offered and the only explanation Breccyn allowed. With that, Wyn Fellsword turned from Aryella’s bedside and left.

  The stables were mostly quiet save for a gathering at the far end where several hands reveled the day’s labors away. Soft music – a tin flute and something with strings from the sound of it - drifted through the otherwise silent expanse. The small hearth-built flames at the gathering’s center served as company rather than warmth. Unpleasant as life had been since the two drunkards had forced his sword, half of Breccyn truly wanted to roll up a barrel and plant himself there. The other half had more than a full share of anger to release, and an at large prince whom would serve more competently than any sparring dummy.

  At the near end, Breccyn and Wyn stepped into a flickering stall where several boys that had undoubtedly been pulled from the merriment were assisting Lord Ryecard with the tack. More greeting passed from man to mount than between men, such was the general gloom. And whether for the hour or their masters’ moods, the three magnificent horses themselves were irritable and out of sorts. Breccyn’s dun danced nervously, provoking more than one agitated nip from Wyn’s black, whom herself was stirring the straw with restless hooves. Lore, the most magnificent of all, did not lower herself to the misbehavior of the others though she too sensed the wrongness in the occasion. Ears were perched forward and erect atop a head that was held as rigid. Tendons tight with anticipation twitched and quivered, muscle spasms releasing energy that could not wait for the fields ahead. Dhaneb and Anchor did not dare nip at her.