Reign of Ash

by Gail Z. Martin

  Blaine let out a long breath. “Now somehow we’ve got to explain to Niklas that you were trying to save us from him, after his soldiers saved us from Pollard.”

  Geir winced. “My apologies, although that is insufficient.”

  Blaine shrugged. “You came to a logical conclusion. Under different circumstances, I’d be grateful for the rescue. But we’ve got to patch things up because if Reese and Pollard do attack, it would be helpful if your people and Niklas’s soldiers all know they’re on the same side.” He met Geir’s gaze. “But we’d better get back, or, if I know Niklas, he’ll send a war party after us.”

  Within half a candlemark, Blaine and Geir stood within sight of Niklas’s encampment, far enough away to be out of range of archers. They stood side by side, with Verran and Dawe behind them. A line of soldiers stood on guard, and after a moment, Niklas Theilsson stepped out in front. Just behind the line, Blaine spotted Piran and Kestel.

  “What’s going on, Blaine? We were trying to protect you.” Niklas looked as angry as Blaine had ever seen him.

  Blaine moved forward. “And these particular talishte were trying to protect us from you. They knew we’d been taken away from the barn. The last soldiers they’d encountered were Pollard’s.”

  Niklas glared at Geir. “I’ve got men who were dropped out of the sky or thrown across the compound, a camp that’s been torn apart, and you’re telling me it was all just a mistake?”

  “No one got killed, Niklas. Geir’s talishte were being careful. They could have made it a bloodbath,” Blaine said. “If they’d have walked up to the camp and asked nicely, what would your guards have done?”

  “Put a quarrel through their chests,” Niklas growled. He eyed Geir and the other talishte as if unconvinced of their intentions.

  “While we stand out here yelling back and forth, we’re vulnerable to a real attack,” Blaine replied. “Will your men accept a truce? It’s still a long way home, and we’ll be stronger together.”

  It was plain from Niklas’s expression that he wasn’t happy with the idea, but after a moment, he turned and shouted orders to his men. It might have been years since Blaine had last seen his friend, but he had not forgotten just how stubborn Niklas could be.

  “You have your truce,” Niklas snapped. “But it’s probably best if the talishte keep their distance until tempers cool and we get the camp functioning again.”

  “Understood.”

  Blaine turned back to Geir as Niklas walked away. “Since we’re the cause of the attack, the least my people can do is help them put the camp back together. Tomorrow, perhaps things will have cooled down. I hope to convince Niklas to ally with us.”

  “Raising an army?”

  “Why not? Pollard and Reese have their own soldiers. And they’ll be back to attack us. Niklas needs a lord to serve now that the king is dead. We could use the help. Better to have them with us than go it alone.”

  Geir nodded. “I can’t fault your logic, but I’d feel more sure of our next steps if Penhallow were here.”

  “Does your bond give you any idea of where he is?” Blaine watched Geir for a clue to the talishte’s thoughts, and as usual, saw nothing.

  “Whatever situation had put him in danger, I have the distinct feeling that Penhallow and Connor escaped,” Geir replied. “And an impression that they would rejoin us, after they accomplish… something.”

  “No idea what?”

  Geir shook his head. “As I’ve mentioned, the kruvgaldur is imperfect, especially at a distance. Flashes of strong emotion, brief pictures send much better than actual words.”

  Blaine grimaced. “So they’ll show up when they show up,” he said, making no effort to hide his impatience. A sudden thought struck him. “Geir, did your party encounter any scouts?”

  Geir frowned. “Two. I used the glamour to put them to sleep. I thought you might want to question them. They’re unconscious and bound just beyond the tree line.” He seemed to see something in Blaine’s expression that made him wary. “Why?”

  “One of them may be my brother.” Blaine turned to Verran and Dawe. “Go give Niklas a hand on the cleanup and tell Kestel and Piran what’s going on. I’ll be there as soon as I see whether Carr is among the guards.”

  Dawe and Verran strode off toward Niklas’s camp while Blaine accompanied Geir back to the forest. Two men in tattered, dirty uniforms lay bound and gagged on the ground. As Blaine approached, he found that he was holding his breath.

  Carr was just a child when I was exiled. Will I even recognize him? Blaine wondered, feeling his stomach tighten.

  He looked at the two unconscious men. One man was pale as moonlight, his face framed by lank hair the color of dried blood. No recognition stirred in Blaine’s mind, and his worry rose. He turned his attention to the other man. The second was tall and lean, and while he was still shy of twenty seasons by several years, his body had been toned and hardened by war. Muddy brown hair fell across one cheek, but even so, Blaine felt his throat tighten at the surge of recognition. “That’s Carr,” he said, his voice tight.

  Geir lifted the first man in his arms as if the soldier were a child. “I’ll take this one out where the others are, and I’ll lift the compulsion on your brother. Give him a moment or two to rouse. And be careful if you cut his bonds: he may wake fighting.”

  “One more thing we have in common,” Blaine murmured, thinking of how many times Piran and Dawe had complained back in Edgeland that Blaine often woke from dark dreams thrashing and struggling.

  Geir disappeared among the trees and Blaine was glad for the privacy, though now that the reunion awaited, he found himself at a total loss for words. With a sigh, Blaine knelt next to Carr, who was beginning to stir. Drawing his knife, he cut the bonds on Carr’s wrists and ankles, took Carr’s sword and the long knife that hung from his belt, then stood back. He sheathed his knife but stood ready for an attack should Carr suddenly launch himself at his ‘captor.’

  Carr struggled awake as the talishte’s compulsion cleared from his head. His eyes blinked and he stood up quickly, defensive and reaching for his missing weapons.

  “You’re safe,” Blaine said quietly.

  Carr’s eyes were wild with fear and rage. But as he fixed on Blaine’s features, Carr sat back down with a thud and the blood drained from his face. “Oh gods above, I’m dead, aren’t I?”

  “You’re not dead.”

  “Blaine? You can’t be Blaine. My brother’s dead, gone to Velant. People don’t come back from Velant.”

  “I did.”

  Carr reached again for his weapons, and this time he met Blaine’s gaze with suspicion. “Why take my blades, brother?” There was no mistaking the skepticism and mistrust in the last word, and Blaine winced.

  “I’ve awakened a time or two fighting my way out of nightmares. My mates objected to getting slugged for no fault of their own,” Blaine said with a shrug. “Your weapons are here for you.”

  “Why did you come back?” Now that he was fully awake, Carr studied his brother with a dark glare.

  “Long story better told when we’re somewhere else,” Blaine replied. He toed the weapons closer to Carr and stepped back. “Niklas will want to know you’re safe.”

  “Does he know about you?” Carr moved for his weapons without taking his eyes off Blaine, still alert for deception.

  “He knows. And before you ask, the talishte who captured you are on our side. They meant no harm. They thought Niklas had captured my friends and me.”

  Carr snatched his weapons and moved backward, out of reach. “‘Our side’? I don’t know whose side you’re on yet.”

  “There isn’t time —”

  Carr’s expression twisted with anger. “I was on patrol and got attacked by a pack of bloodsuckers. Now I wake up and my dead brother is back, talking to me like I’m still a child. For all I know, those damned biters got inside my head and you’re not even real.”

  Blaine extended his right hand. “I’m real en
ough, Carr. But we need to get out of here.”

  Carr sprang from where he crouched, landing a fist to the side of Blaine’s jaw hard enough that Blaine staggered back a step. Blood started from his lip. Unwilling to harm Carr, Blaine fell into a defensive stance but did not draw his sword. Carr stepped back, flexing and clenching the fingers of his right hand at the pain of the blow.

  “You’re solid. Doesn’t mean you’re real.”

  “By Torven’s horns! What was that for? I’m your brother for the gods’ sake.”

  “The brother who left us to starve? Dammit, Blaine, I know why you killed Father. I know he dishonored Mari. Gods above, I was sick enough of his beatings. But without Father, and without you, Aunt Judith and Mari and I had nothing left. The scandal meant that almost no one would trade with us, sell to us, buy our surplus crops. We were outcasts, unwelcome at court, and even the village peasants spit when we crossed their paths!” Carr was shouting now, and while his face was red with anger, tears glistened at the corners of his eyes. “We lost everything!”

  “So did I.” Despite himself, Blaine’s temper rose. “The king took my title, my claim to the land, and the sentence took Carensa from me,” he returned. “My betrothed married another man, bore his child. I spent three years in Velant, starving and freezing, under the commander’s boot. Three more years starving and freezing as a colonist, in the mines or on the boats. I would have preferred that Merrill execute me. But I went to Velant knowing that at least I had stopped Father from beating you and raping Mari, and that was enough.”

  “And after six years you show up out of nowhere and want it all back?” Carr challenged.

  “Keep the godsdamned title, if that’s what matters to you,” Blaine snapped. “But Glenreith is still my home. Aunt Judith welcomed us. That’s where we’re going, if I can ever get your stubborn ass out of this forest before we’re attacked again.”

  “‘Us’? You brought a bunch of convicts back with you? How wonderful. Did Judith tell you we sold the silver to pay for food, so there’s naught left to steal?”

  Blaine’s fists clenched at his sides, and it took all his will to keep himself from landing a punch. “There are bigger things at stake than your hurt feelings,” Blaine grated. “By Charrot! Grow up.”

  Carr fixed him with a baleful look. “Oh, I grew up, Blaine. I grew up working like a man in the fields when I was naught but a slip of a boy. I grew up hearing Judith sob herself to sleep because we had no food and no money to buy any. I grew up seeing my sister marry beneath her station because no one wanted the taint of the McFadden name. And I grew up with every kill I made in the name of king and country on the front lines.”

  “Carr —”

  “Damn you! I mourned you at first, and then I learned to hate you for what you cost us. So now you’re back. To Raka with you! We learned to get by without your help. Go back to Edgeland. We don’t need you. I can’t imagine why in the name of the gods you came here.”

  “Because I may be the only one who can restore the magic.” Blaine met Carr’s angry gaze as the other took in the words. Disbelief gave way to an angry smirk.

  “Have you figured the cost, dear brother? I’ve been saved once by you, and the price was too damn high.” With that, Carr strode for the edge of the forest, shoving his way past Blaine and disappearing into the darkness.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “I

  t’s hard to believe that only half a year has gone past since…” Connor’s voice drifted off to nothing, but the others did not need him to finish the sentence to know where his thoughts strayed.

  Castle Reach, once the bustling palace city of the kingdom of Donderath, was now a ruin. Much of the city had burned in the Great Fire on the night that Donderath fell, when a ribbon of fire, called down by the battle mages of Meroven, laid waste both to Quillarth Castle and to the city around it.

  Trapped at the top of the castle’s bell tower, Connor had watched the city fall. In the rubble of the castle and the Fire that consumed the city, Connor had lost all he had: his master, his king, and his home. All that had remained was duty, and his dying master’s charge to safeguard the disk and the map that Connor had found hidden in the royal library. A map Penhallow had hoped might change the course of the war, found too late to stop the carnage.

  “For once I did not see such things happen with my own eyes,” Penhallow replied. “I have seen so many things come to ruin in my time.” There was an edge of sorrow in his voice.

  Connor felt for the wooden map box that he kept in a pouch beneath his cloak, and the obsidian disk on a leather strap under his shirt. He did not want to think about how many times the vampire had seen kings and kingdoms come to ruin.

  “I don’t know how you manage it,” Connor said quietly. “Once was more than enough for me.”

  Penhallow did not reply, and Connor wondered if such things were beyond words, even for one of the immortals.

  Before the Great Fire, the king’s census had numbered more than eighty thousand people in the environs of Castle Reach. Thriving, noisy, bustling with life, the palace city had teemed with merchants, sailors, criminals, soldiers, wanderers, scholars, and all manner of travelers. The air had smelled of cooking meat and the press of unwashed bodies, of cart horses and torch smoke, and on occasion, of the flowers, incense, and perfumes offered by merchants in the crowded market. A forest of ships’ masts once filled the wharf front, and the shouts of stevedores and the clatter of the cargo they moved mingled with the salt air. The din of wagon wheels and the shouts of street vendors had echoed from the walls along the narrow, winding streets, and raucous music spilled out of the dark doorways of the innumerable taverns, public houses, and brothels that met the every need of Castle Reach’s residents and visitors. Now…

  When the magic failed, so did the protective spells that held back the sea. The wharves and the street nearest the seawall were now buried beneath the tide. Many of the buildings that had not burned, collapsed when the small magics used to patch and support them disappeared. The war with Meroven had never brought an invading army to Castle Reach, yet the city looked as if it had been besieged, overrun, and cruelly conquered.

  The streets were quiet, but not empty. Though the night was cold, ragged forms huddled in the shadows of the burned and ruined buildings or shuffled along the scorched cobblestones. The air still smelled of salt spray, but the ships that once filled the wharves were long gone, fleeing the city’s devastation or burned to the waterline where they sat at anchor. Connor had managed to get a place on one of the last ships to leave the city in the aftermath of the fall, and he had watched the skyline burn as the ship set sail, course unknown.

  That ship had taken him eventually to the northernmost site in the world, Edgeland, a place so harsh and unforgiving that it was colonized by force with exiles and criminals. There he had met Blaine McFadden and discovered that the map and disk he carried might yet play a role in bringing back the shattered magic.

  “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself,” Treven Lowrey said. Connor stole a glance at Lowrey, whose expression of shock and dismay so clearly mirrored Connor’s own feelings.

  “I watched from the castle tower as the Fire fell,” Connor replied in a voice just above a whisper. “And I still can’t believe it.”

  “Stay sharp,” Penhallow murmured. “We’re being followed.”

  Connor rested his hand on his sword. Lowrey gripped the walking stick he had cut in the forest, a stout stave at least six feet in length and almost as thick as a man’s wrist. Penhallow did not reach for his weapon, and Connor knew why. Unless they faced other talishte in battle, Penhallow’s speed, strength, and fangs presented a formidable array of weapons.

  Moving through the alleyways, Connor could feel unseen eyes watching them. Here and there, groups of men huddled around small fires, talking in low tones. The lower floors of the least-damaged buildings had been reclaimed, and lamplight spilled from the glassless windows, along with
the unmistakable smell of rough-brewed whiskey and cooked fish.

  “Lookin’ for company, are you?” a woman’s voice called from a doorway. Clad in tattered, tawdry finery, the woman swaggered toward them. She looked as raw as the whiskey on her breath, and her thin face was gaunt and wan.

  “We have no need of your services,” Penhallow said quietly, but Connor felt the tingle of the talishte’s compulsion.

  The woman returned to her place with a dazed look, and Connor had no doubt that within a moment, she would not recall their passing.

  “If you can send her away, why not get rid of whoever’s following us?” Connor whispered.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Penhallow said, and despite the situation, he managed a terse chuckle. “I wish it did. I can only compel one person at a time. Keep your eyes open. Our ‘friends’ are getting closer.” Walking single file, Penhallow led the way as they moved through the small crowd outside the reclaimed tavern, doing their best to pass unnoticed.