A King's Bargain

by J. D. L. Rosell

  "Still because of Jonn?"

  "That, and Ox is still out there searching for him — he'd have made a far more believable traitor than Mikael. But our performance of Kingmakers and Queenslayers isn't making things any better."

  Wren slipped off her costume as a young nobleman, unveiling her underclothes with as little shame as the rest of the troupe. Garin quickly looked away, trying to move his thoughts back to safer waters, but they kept straying back to the brief glimpses he'd stolen of her bared skin.

  "Why put on a show anyway?" she continued, oblivious to his observations, her voice muffled as she shrugged on a tunic. "Avendor will carry on skirmishing with Sendesh come spring. Why bother with the pretense?"

  Garin shrugged. "For the spectacle, maybe. Or maybe King Aldric wants to make use of the troupe he pays for."

  She snorted lightly. "Kings and their expectations. Take a coin from a king, and he owns you — that's what Father says, anyway. Funny how he ended up doing it, though."

  "Maybe being bound for life isn't so bad."

  Wren turned her gold-green eyes on him. "Bound to serve someone else until the end of your days? Is that really the life you want?"

  Garin didn't know what he wanted. At the moment, not returning to a certain moonlit courtyard in his dreams every night, forgetting the ghouls spraying their innards across the castle corridor, would have been enough for him.

  "No, I guess not."

  "Don't sound too sure," she said mockingly. "I know I don't. When I'm seventeen and my own woman, I'm going to travel the span of the Westreach."

  Hadn't he wanted the same thing, to travel and see the World, just months before? Now, he wondered if he'd seen too much.

  Aloud, he said, "That's only two years away."

  "Only? It can't come soon enough." Dressed again, she turned and faced him, a hand on her hip. "But you only just got here. You probably still think it's wondrous and all that nonsense."

  If only she knew how little I believed that. He tried on a smile. "Something like that. But I guess this castle is as small to you as Hunt's Hollow felt to me. We want something other than what we're used to, I suppose."

  She cocked her head. "Is that why you came, then? With Tal?"

  "Why else? I felt closed up in my town. Though I thought I'd seen a lot when I first left because I'd visited all the towns in the East Marsh."

  Wren laughed — a loud, raucous sound that he found he wanted to hear more of.

  "Just wait," she said. "Someday, we'll see far more than that."

  His heart tripped over its next beat. We? Did she mean by that word what he thought, what he hoped?

  She was watching him, lips still curved in a smile. "Who does Tal think the traitor is?"

  That was a turn he had hoped they wouldn't take. When he'd woken the day after they'd drunk from the tun, his stomach sour and his head feeling as if it had been stuffed inside too small a skull, he'd hoped he'd imagined his revelation to Wren. But he'd always known it had been a fanciful hope.

  Still, the truth was that he didn't know any more than she did. Since the courtyard incident, Garin had wanted nothing more than to stay away from Tal's hunt for the traitor, and not just because he feared running into more ghouls. He had done and seen things, unnatural things. And he had no desire to repeat them.

  "I don't know," he muttered.

  Wren didn't bother hiding her disbelief. She leaned in closer, and despite himself, he breathed in her scent, earthy and sweet and floral at once.

  "Tell you what," she said in a low voice. "You tell me what Tal has learned from his probing about the castle, and in exchange, I'll tell you what makes him the Magebutcher. Agreed?"

  Garin only hesitated a moment. It was trading a penny for air, as the saying went. But though he was tricking her, he knew he didn't have to feel bad. After all, it didn't take him long to figure out why she'd questioned him about Tal after filling him up with Jakadi wine.

  He shrugged, trying to hide his eagerness. "Fine."

  A grin split her face, wide and bright, and under that smile, he found it hard to breathe.

  "Then let's go," she said, turning. "Father can orate it far better than I ever could, and telling a Tal story might put him in a better mood."

  Following her from the corner, Garin felt a pit forming in his gut, and not for tricking Wren. For some reason, he felt guilty seeking out this story, as if it were a betrayal to Tal. No more of a betrayal than revealing what I promised him I wouldn't, he thought wryly.

  But the way everyone said that name, Magebutcher… He had to know.

  "Father!" Wren had the note of command as she strode up to her father, springy hair bouncing with every step. "Garin hasn't heard the tale of why Tal is called the Magebutcher."

  Falcon Sunstring, who had been staring morosely from the set and nursing a goblet of wine, looked up. "Has he not indeed? Come around, then, sit. It's a tale you ought to know, though I can understand why Tal wouldn't want to tell you."

  Unable to think of a response, Garin sat on the floor and looked up expectantly, feeling like a child sitting around a fire before an elder's story. Overhearing, other actors began to drift closer, waiting for the story to unfold.

  The bard gazed around at his audience for a long, silent moment. Then, without preamble, he began.

  "Tal had only just begun to earn a name for himself when he came to the Warlocks' Circle. Only twenty-one autumns old, tales were already circulating about him. How he'd slain Heyl, the demon who had set fire to half of Elendol. How the Queen of Gladelyl had beseeched his aid in tracking down the Silver Vines, a branch of the Cult of Yuldor that had spread throughout the elvish realm. How he had succeeded in infiltrating the syndicate and even killed one of the Extinguished themselves.

  "These rumors, however, hadn't reached the Circle by the time he arrived there. And so when Tal Harrenfel laid accusations of a warlock's murder, a warlock he claimed had been his secret mentor two years before, at the feet of the Cult of Yuldor, and that the Cult had a hold inside the Circle itself, the warlocks were torn between laughing him out and smiting him where he stood.

  "The loudest to scoff was Magister Kaleras. Later, Kaleras would break ties with the Circle and rise to become the Warlock of Canturith to hold the Fringes against the East, but at that time he was equal with the rest. He bade that the Circle lock up the young fool until he'd learned to hold his tongue among his betters. But not all agreed with Kaleras, and to Tal's gain, the Elder Magister wished no harm on him. So it was that the old warlock drew him aside, listened to his pleas, and heeded him. Long had he grown uneasy by the growing sympathies of the Circle with the East, and so Tal's accusations struck close.

  "The Elder Magister was a cautious man with more than a century to his life, but he knew he could delay no longer. So he told Tal that if he wished to gain justice for his mentor's murder, he must retrieve an artifact that would protect him even from the workings of warlocks: he must steal the Ring of Thalkuun from the Queen of the Hoarseer goblins.

  "And so Tal went to the edge of Reach lands, all the way to the Fringes of the East, snuck his way into the Hoarseer Lair, and stole the ring from the Hoarseer Queen. How he did that is another story, and how he earned the name Ringthief. Let it suffice to say that he managed it — but not without great cost.

  "For someone lay in wait. The Hoarseer Queen was not allied with the rest of the Bloodlines of the Westreach, but with the East, and a Soulstealer stood as her councilor. Though Tal managed to worm his way into her throne room, he could not escape the influence of Yuldor's servant. Long he struggled, but in the end, he succumbed to the subjugation of the Extinguished."

  Garin stared, wide-eyed, wondering if any of this could be true. "How?" he blurted. "How could he have fallen under the influence of the Extinguished and still be alive?"

  Falcon turned a sharp smile on him. "Hear the rest of my tale, and you will know."

  Wren arched an eyebrow at him, and Garin muttered, "Sorry." But he
couldn't silence the anxiety swirling through him, nor the vague sense of doubt.

  "As I was saying," the bard continued, his gaze sweeping over the rest of the company, "Tal became a slave to the Extinguished. But the servants of the Night's Puppeteer are clever and cruel, and so he gave him the Ring of Thalkuun to bear back to the Circle, and commanded him to put it on. And though he wore it, and it protected him from all further workings of magic, it couldn't negate the fell sorcery already placed upon him.

  "So Tal returned to the Circle, and the Elder Magister, astonished at Tal's accomplishment, gathered the Circle to witness the presentation of the ring. But once they had gathered, Tal drew his sword and slew every warlock there, to the last of them, including the Elder Magister who had believed in him and trusted him."

  Garin felt his throat close up. "Magebutcher," he whispered.

  Falcon nodded slowly. "So he earned his name. Not all of the Circle had shown for the gathering, however. Kaleras, delayed by an errand of his own, returned to find his peers slaughtered, and Tal, with his sword still bloody, sitting at the Elder Magister's table, a terrible smile on his lips, the Ring of Thalkuun glinting darkly on his finger. Kaleras immediately understood what had happened and knew better than to pit his power against the artifact. Instead, he sealed the doors to the gathering chamber shut and collapsed it, seeking to bury Tal within.

  "By what miracle Tal survived, not even he could tell. From what he's told me, his memories of his time under the Soulstealer's influence are hazy. All he knew was that suddenly, everything came into sharp clarity, and he stood outside the chamber, clothes stiff with dried blood and dust, and the Extinguished stood before him. 'How did he take the ring?' the fell warlock demanded of him. 'How did Magister Kaleras survive where the others did not?'

  "But Tal could not tell him. He had no memories of the encounter, but when he looked down, the Ring of Thalkuun was no longer on his finger.

  "In his rage, the Extinguished sought to make him suffer. And so he told him of all that Tal had done — how he had slaughtered the Circle, down to the old Elder Magister. And though the bodies were buried within the chamber, Tal knew it to be true from the blood upon him. He sank to his knees. 'Kill me,' he begged. 'I can't live with this guilt.'

  "But Yuldor's servants are cruel to their cores, and all the more when you have drawn their ire. And so, though death would be punishment, the Extinguished deemed it far worse to let him live, a broken man to be hunted by those who remained of the Circle until the end of his days."

  Falcon fell silent. No one stirred.

  Garin drew in a ragged breath. "Is that it?"

  The bard shrugged. "Hardly. Afterward, he came to us, the Dancing Feathers, his mind feeble and his morals lost. But after another encounter with Kaleras the Impervious, as the warlock became known afterward, he fled as far north as he could in the Westreach. Then came the years when he was a mercenary for the dwarves, fighting the horrors that spawn from the Deep and earning the dwarven name Khuldanaam'defarnaam, which means 'He Who Does Not Fear Death, For He Is Death's Hand.' And the years after, when he fought the northern marauders with such reckless bravery and brutality that he earned the name Red Reaver. Years when his name spread, to be sure, but years when he barely knew the face he saw in the mirror."

  Garin remembered Tal in the courtyard, chopping ghouls apart, a savage grin on his lips. That's part of him, he realized. The warrior. The butcher. He wondered if he truly knew his wanton mentor.

  But he hadn't just known him as Tal; he'd also known Bran the Chicken Farmer. Bran, always breaking out a smile no matter how hard the labor, ever making him laugh with obscene jokes. Bran, who slipped him sweets and sent home freshly roasted chickens for his family's table.

  The kindness and the killer — they're both part of him. The realization didn't make the man as strange as he'd thought it would. Knowing what demons lay behind that haunted look of Tal's finally made Garin feel as if he was truly beginning to know his mentor.

  As he rose, he found Falcon was watching him closely, the fingers of one hand tapping the wrist of the other.

  "Thank you," Garin said, uncomfortable under his scrutiny. "For the story."

  The Court Bard smiled, but it wasn't soft with his usual humor, but somehow sharp and brittle. "One of the truest I've ever told. And the most illustrative of my old friend, to be sure."

  Uncertain what to say to that, Garin turned away. But before he'd taken two steps, Wren had seized his arm and was pulling him out of the door. Only when they were in the hallway did she speak.

  "You should have told me!"

  "Told you?" Garin asked, perplexed. "Told you what?"

  "The King — if Tal is still here in the castle, and he's tracking a traitor for the King, it can only be one enemy." Her eyes were wide, the gold frantically spinning in them, as her voice dropped to a whisper. "He's hunting one of the Extinguished. Here, in the castle."

  Garin stared at her, his mouth dry. He'd known there was a traitor. But as he thought over her words, he saw how obvious it should have been now. The visit to the Ruins of Erlodan, the knowing glances between Tal and Aelyn, the King's concern — it could only have pointed toward the worst of Yuldor's servants.

  "They can enthrall people to their service," Wren continued, eyes dancing back and forth to make sure no one else was nearby. "They can take on other faces. That means they could be anyone in the castle. And Jonn! Garin, don't you see? The Extinguished must have taken him!"

  His head was spinning. "You're right," he said faintly. "You're absolutely right."

  But even with the revelation, why did he feel, most sharply of all, guilt?

  The Fox Among the Fold

  His breath hissed through his teeth as he ran yet another lap around the training yard.

  "That's twenty!" one of the guards called down from the wall above. "Isn't that your usual?"

  "Twenty-five today!" Tal yelled back as loud as he could. His muscles and lungs screamed for release as he forced himself into a sprint again, holding his sword steady at his hip. It was an awkward run, but a necessary exercise. Running without it, after all, wouldn't prepare him for when he needed to do it in a fight.

  Tal felt the gazes of the guards following him as he darted past. When he'd first shown up two weeks earlier before dawn broke, they'd worn mocking smiles, expecting another performance such as in the courtyard, the rumors of which had spread across the castle like fire on a summer-dried field. But as the sun peered over the horizon and Tal carried on with his exercises, day after day, their smiles began to slip away. A week in, they were offering to spar with him.

  This late in the morning, he'd already beaten all of those on watch thrice each.

  Five laps later, he allowed his leaden legs to stumble to a halt and released his sword's hilt to lean forward, gasping for air. He only noticed the footsteps on the dirt when they were nearly before him, and he straightened to see Falcon wearing an amused smile.

  "Not very good for your cover as a drunken dandy, is it?" The bard gestured at him as if his sweat-stained tunic said it all.

  Tal shrugged as he gathered enough breath for a reply. "Staying alive is more important than a good cover."

  "What's to fear now? You killed all the ghouls, didn't you?"

  "But we haven't found Jonn's murderer."

  Falcon's jaw tightened, and he looked away. "We should speak," he said softly. "Privately."

  Tal nodded and followed him up the wall's stairs.

  A few minutes later found them on the ramparts, dozens of paces away from any prying ears and the wind stealing their words in any case. Tal basked in the cool air, even as it began to chill his shirt. "This must be serious for you to leave the comfort of the castle. What is it?"

  For once, the minstrel's expression was serious. "I know what you hunt, Tal."

  He smiled by reflex. He hadn't told Falcon everything, much as he wanted to. But this task called for secrecy from as many people as possible. Even his clo
sest friends.

  "Do you?" he asked lightly.

  Falcon didn't return his smile. "Yes. The same twisted bastard who took Jonn. You hunt one of the Extinguished."

  His smile faded. The curtains have closed on that act, then. "How long have you known?"

  "Only a few days — though, as you know, I suspected you were up to something from the beginning." His friend's eyes searched him as if for something he couldn't find. "Why, Tal? You were done with this life. Why come back to it? Haven't you gathered enough scars? And you know I speak selflessly, as the return of Tal Harrenfel can only mean more songs for your bard to compose."

  Tal sighed. "I never left the war behind, old friend. While I was in Hunt's Hollow, I told myself I'd hung up my sword and bow, even as I took them down to hunt the beasts that came down from the mountains."

  Even as I struggled and despaired of deciphering that ancient, evil tome, night after night, he thought. But that, at least, he still kept to himself.

  "But I can't leave the war behind. The war lives within me, now and always. The best I can hope for is a quiet front for a time."

  Falcon stared over Halenhol, and Tal followed his gaze, eyes squinted against the wind. The heat of exercise had faded, and now the coming winter's cold was starting to stiffen his sore muscles. But he didn't fetch warmer clothes but looked to the east, to the unseen mountains that always cast their shadow over the Reach Realms.

  "Why return now?" the bard asked again. "Aelyn?"

  "He was the impetus. But I'd felt the old restlessness stirring in me for some time." He lowered his gaze to his hands. "I found myself thinking of old friends, old mistakes, and scores never settled. Sleep seemed to come less and less often."

  "The war never sleeps," Falcon murmured.

  Tal glanced at the bard. "How did you find out, anyway? About the Extinguished?"

  His friend sighed. "My daughter and your mentee. Garin told Wren about it, apparently, and they've been whispering in corners for a week. I thought it was just the usual youthful sneaking, but it seems they've stumbled onto avenues far more dangerous. It's part of the thing I wished to speak to you about. Why involve the boy at all?"