For the Killing of Kings

by Howard Andrew Jones

  “What,” she said, her voice a croaking parody of itself, “is a hearthstone?”

  “You’re better off not knowing.”

  She blinked up at him and discovered he was wiping his rain-bathed sword, carefully, on a scrap of cloth. He then sheathed the blade and bent down. She thought at first he meant to offer his hand and planned to say she was too weak to stand, but he instead lifted his bow and inspected it.

  “Do you know,” he continued, as if they were simply having an exchange over dinner and weren’t surrounded by twisted bodies, “in the old days, N’lahr or Decrin or Kalandra were always there to pull me out of the fire. Or Asrahn,” he added, his voice shaken for a brief moment. “That would have been it for me if you weren’t here.”

  She eventually managed to climb to her feet and discovered Kyrkenall was watching her. There was pity in his voice. “You shouldn’t have come.”

  “I wanted to warn you,” she objected. “They came to question me. I told them where you were.”

  “Of course you did.”

  She wasn’t sure she’d heard him clearly until he offered a thin smile and an explanation. “I made sure a few knew where I was going, and then it was just a matter of waiting. Although I hadn’t expected them to bring a hearthstone.” Kyrkenall studied the sapphire ring glowing on his finger until it winked out.

  She could only stare at him. “You used me to draw them out?”

  He smirked. “Why did you fear for me?”

  “I just … How did you know Alten Asrahn was dead?”

  “Nothing would keep him from his proper place. Nothing. Duty was everything to Asrahn.” His hand tightened again into a fist. She saw it was shaking, and watched him stare at it until it stilled.

  “How’d you know Cargen was behind it?”

  “I didn’t until he came to kill me.”

  She shook her head. It was all too much. Kyrkenall bent and began rummaging through the garments of the deceased.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “First, I’m going to drag these four into N’lahr’s tomb. That might slow things down for a day or two. If the rain comes hard it might even conceal the tracks.”

  She involuntarily gasped at the profane suggestion. “You’re going to put them with N’lahr?”

  “He would have thought it was funny.”

  “Wait—you said four. There’re only three here.”

  “There’s another alten I killed around back. Surely you heard the scream. K’narr shifted at the last moment.” Kyrkenall sounded a little irked that the dead man had spoiled his shot.

  Not Alten K’narr. He had always been so nice, so … well, gallant. If he had been involved, could that mean that other Altenerai were as well?

  “Alten, what’s going on?”

  “I really can’t say.”

  “Can’t, or won’t?”

  “I’m not as mysterious as you might suppose—I don’t know.”

  “Why would Alten Cargen and these people kill Alten Asrahn?”

  Kyrkenall paused with his hand in Cargen’s side pouch. “Apparently, it’s about the sword. Asrahn didn’t think it was the right one. He told me about it last night. And this lot killed him for it. And would have killed us as well.”

  “But why’s the sword so important to them?”

  He looked at her as though she were foolish. “It’s the sword, isn’t it? The one fashioned for the killing of kings. Rialla told N’lahr he’d kill Mazakan with it, and supposedly even Mazakan’s been frightened of it ever since.”

  That added an extra piece of information to what Elenai had always been told about the sword’s power to thwart the Naor leader. And she thought the name of Rialla sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it. He must have seen the confusion in her look.

  “Everyone pretends the prophecy was really about the sword, not about the sword and N’lahr. They weren’t there. I heard what was said.” He shook his head. “It’s no good without him to use it. Now why anyone would kill Asrahn for questioning its authenticity or what they’re doing with the real sword, and how it links up with that nonsense about making a paradise I just can’t guess. Yet.”

  “Is the sword on display a copy, then?”

  “I think so. My bow and my sword were altered by the same weaver who helped forge Irion, and the sword in the hall feels different from both. I can only guess because I never wielded it. I’m deferring to Asrahn on that. Varama might be able to tell us more, but that would require a ride back in to Darassus, and I don’t think I’ll be returning anytime soon.”

  “Why?”

  He laughed without humor. “You think it ends here?”

  Stupid. With a moment’s more reflection she realized that without knowing which of the remaining Altenerai were involved, Kyrkenall might step right into a trap if he returned to the palace. “Do you know who’s behind it, Alten?”

  Kyrkenall’s lips twisted. “I’d say the queen. She was always a big one for secrets. And the Mage Auxiliary is pretty clearly involved. They’re the queen’s pets. I don’t think it was just these two. I wouldn’t be surprised if our dear commander’s in on it, maybe all the new Altenerai. I hope none of the old guard,” he muttered.

  “I think Commander Denaven might know something about it, sir,” she said slowly. “He was asking me about the sword today. I think he wanted to know if I’d been told anything by Asrahn.”

  “Right. So he is involved. Deciding if he needed to kill you.”

  He sounded so matter-of-fact. She tried to imitate the same manner. “I suppose so. I can’t believe he’d agree to killing Asrahn, though. Asrahn was … Asrahn trained him. He was loyal to the queen and the realms.” As her voice grew raw with emotion, she fell silent.

  “Asrahn was loyal to the code, to the laws,” Kyrkenall corrected. “And Denaven’s always been an ass,” he added.

  She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Hadn’t Denaven and Kyrkenall been friends? Could the commander of the Altenerai really be involved in murder? She was at a loss. “So … what do we do?”

  “I’m afraid you can’t return to Darassus.”

  She hadn’t quite reasoned that yet, though she knew the truth of it as he said the words.

  He explained, pointedly as if expecting protest, “They’ll find the bodies, sooner or later. And then they’ll look into all the doings connected with this group. And their successors will question all those that these questioned. They would come to you, and weave your thoughts, and learn what you’d seen, then kill you.”

  It wasn’t easy to accept. So much had changed in but a single day.

  She turned from him and considered the city even as a lightning bolt forked in the distance, lighting the gilded domes. The city, she thought, looked rather like the tombs that lay behind her. “What am I to do?”

  “For now? Ride with me.”

  Despite the horror, and the confusion, she felt her heart lighten. To her knowledge, no one had ever squired with Kyrkenall, probably the most enigmatic champion in five realms. “Where are we going? To that tower?”

  “Aye,” Kyrkenall said darkly. “I’m going to rip that sword out of the Chasm Tower and carry it against them. I’ll avenge Asrahn and stop their conspiracy if I have to carve open a thousand of them to do it.”

  4

  Storm Ride

  Dull white light suffused the whole of the landscape—the strange blue-stemmed bushes on her right, the gold sand, the black stones—but Elenai saw no sun. It was easy to doubt they traveled beyond the stable terrain of Erymyr for, apart from the odd scrub, the land features resembled country about its capital, Darassus. Even the wind-clawed clouds in the gray sky looked normal, but there really was no sun. It wasn’t hidden behind clouds, or sinking, or rising, it simply wasn’t there. And that meant, bright as things were, that there were no shadows. How, she wondered, did someone moving through the Shifting Lands gauge the passage of time?

  Out in the wild areas between the five realms
fashioned by the Gods, there was no knowing when a sun would rise, what characteristics it would have, or even if it would rise at all. The landscape might lie unchanged for a month, or a day, then transform entirely. She’d never traveled the Shifting Lands without a dedicated guide and had never glimpsed the horrors that were standard story fare on such journeys. Nothing moved out here besides herself, Kyrkenall, and their mounts, but Elenai kept constant watch for monsters, things born of madness that defied the rules of ordinary reality.

  Kyrkenall rode ahead, seemingly untroubled, though his ring glittered at full strength.

  At the thought of it, Elenai looked down to the band about her own finger, the back side of the ring that brightened her blue khalat where its light escaped her palm. Kyrkenall had taken both Cargen’s and K’narr’s, pocketing one and bestowing the other upon her. Too many had been lost through the years, he’d said, and he wasn’t about to leave these in the hands of their enemies.

  While Elenai could scarce remember a time when she hadn’t craved the badges of Altenerai office, she’d expected to earn them, not to have them handed to her freshly looted from a murderer’s corpse. She thought it inappropriate to wear a ring with the stone showing, so she’d turned its face. Regrettably there was no way to disguise the iconic khalat. Cargen’s garment was broader and shorter than ideal, but still far lighter and more flexible than her squire’s armor. Kyrkenall had insisted she wear it, bloodstains or no. She would, he had told her last night, need its protection when they were followed, just as she would need the magical shield of the ring.

  Elenai had noted even then his assurance that they would be followed. He apparently had no doubt.

  Kyrkenall had said the tower lay along Erymyr’s lonely, mountainous northern edge, so she’d been puzzled when they rode more westerly.

  “We’ve got to confuse them,” he’d explained. “So long as we’re in Erymyr they can send message birds ahead and requisition fresh mounts from staging posts. It’s harder to track people through the shifts. We’ll divert into them and ride just outside the border before we angle back in for the northern peninsula. With any luck that will slow the pursuit so we get to the tower first.”

  She supposed that made sense, though Kyrkenall seemed to take travel in the wilds a lot more casually than anyone else she’d ever met. They had to ride hard, well into the night, before they exited into the Shifting Lands, a shorter journey than during his youth, Kyrkenall had commented. They’d continued to trek into an unrelenting “day,” with no breaks for rest, and weariness weighed on her. Elenai had no idea how used she was to regular meals and sleep until she was without them. She ached in unfamiliar parts of her back and legs, and her thoughts meandered sluggishly in fruitless circles of unanswered questions. Kyrkenall remained silent here, so Elenai imitated his example. She expected he was concentrating on unseen dangers, or calculating their next moves.

  Some several hours on, or so it seemed, they halted. Kyrkenall led them to a high dry spot, poured water into an eelskin bowl, and offered it to his horse. While the animal drank greedily, the archer sipped from a worn looking wineskin.

  Elenai slipped stiffly down from Aron, arranged water for him in the metal helm they’d pulled off Alten K’narr’s body, and joined Kyrkenall in the consideration of the horizon. She resisted the urge to collapse to the invitingly verdant ground, hopeful that she’d rest easier knowing more of his plans.

  “Do you feel that?” he asked.

  He wasn’t touching her or even looking at her, so she supposed he meant using her other senses. Was there some danger here? Wary, she exerted more effort than usual to reach out through the inner world. Everything in the Shifting Lands felt … tenuous. It looked real, like a carefully crafted stage backdrop, but she was worried that if she probed too hard she might accidentally puncture a hole through the simulated reality. Was that even possible? But she detected no imminent threat.

  “Do you mean the Shifting Lands?” she asked him.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve felt their energies before, but I’ve never journeyed as deep. Not without a guide.” Was he trying to introduce her to elementary sciences? Why weren’t they discussing more urgent matters, like how close he thought the pursuers were and what conspiracy might really be under way and what they were going to do when they reached the tower?

  “Try again.” He stamped his right foot, twice, upon the ground. “We’re on a splinter. A tiny one, no more than a half mile wide. It’s real. Feel without weaving. You’ve got to be able to sense these things.”

  Elenai did as she was bade, and swiftly grew frustrated. It was difficult not to use her inborn connection to the inner world, and draining whenever she inadvertently did. She cleared her throat and ventured a thought. “Alten, maybe you’re using sorcery and just don’t know it.”

  He shot her a weary look. “Maybe you should take orders and not question them.” Kyrkenall gestured back to the landscape and took another swig.

  She was too exasperated to try again. “Are we going to make stop for the day? And how do you even know when a day is over?”

  Infuriatingly, he ignored her query and inserted one of his own. “Why are you so angry all of a sudden?”

  “Why am I…” She spluttered in disbelief. She hadn’t meant to sound angry, but now that he mentioned it … “I pledged my life to the Altenerai and now I’m on the run and probably hunted by them, an enemy to the crown!” His derisive snort angered her even further. “But you’re just talking to me about the Shifting Lands! How are we going to clear our names?”

  Kyrkenall replaced the container at his side, frowning. “Things didn’t quite work out the way you wanted. I do sympathize. Really. They didn’t work out the way Asrahn wanted, either.” His mocking tone stung her. “How nice it would be if you could simply close your eyes and live in that placid little bubble where you thought everything was perfectly fine. Here’s the thing, Squire. It wasn’t. It hasn’t been ‘fine’ for a very, very long time. You just didn’t know.”

  Kyrkenall barely paused for a breath, sounding angry himself.

  “Shift storms raging all the damn time somewhere and belching out monsters to rampage the fringe. The Naor raiding with near impunity. And not only does our queen do nothing to protect the people of the outer realms, she actually weakens us futher by having her pet Denaven siphon off our best mages and equipment to that auxiliary of hers.” He’d grown more agitated as he spoke, as if he lectured an invisible audience rather than her alone. “Why do you think so many of the old guard stay away? Only Tretton, Varama, and Asrahn, the ‘duty first’ diehards, station themselves in the center—and Tretton’s off on patrol as much as he can be.”

  “But Commander Denaven—”

  Kyrkenall cut her off. “Why do you think Decrin and Cerai and Enada are usually off on the frontier? Why do you think Belahn’s in The Fragments, and Aradel resigned?”

  Almost she retorted it was because Belahn was old and Enada was battle hungry. While Elenai was still struggling with an answer, he spoke on, sounding a little more conciliatory.

  “You’ve been dealt some surprises. But then so have our opponents. And we’re making good time. Now…” He raised his other hand and opened his palm to reveal a little gray rock.

  “What’s that?”

  “What do you think it is?”

  She was worn out and annoyed, but she forced calm and resisted the impulse to consider the rock through the inner world. He seemed to want her to study it with her eyes, so she did. It was rounded and plain save for a line of white through its center. “I don’t know.”

  “They not teach you much about traveling the shifts?”

  “No, sir.” She resisted the impulse to vent her frustration again.

  “It’s a rock from Erymyr, pulled from the Idris itself, near the edge of the city of Darassus. As long as I’m holding this, I have a sense of where Erymyr lies in relation to me. You could probably sense it better, being a magic wielder an
d not having to rely on a ring.”

  “Oh,” she said. Almost she added that she knew about focusing agents, but she guessed she sounded ignorant enough already. Her necklace talismans were focusing agents of a different sort.

  Kyrkenall lowered his hand and patted a small black pouch on his belt. “We all carry a collection of rocks or other things to make travel easier.”

  “Isn’t it hard to tell the focus agents apart?”

  “That’s why you pick distinctive items. N’lahr used to carve little letters on his.” Kyrkenall snorted. “He was terrible at this. But Kalandra—she didn’t need any objects for focusing agents.” He looked off into the distance and fell silent.

  “Do you really think someone’s following us?”

  “If not, they will, eventually. I’m hoping the rain will obscure our tracks and complicate things. But I’m not counting on it. If they’ve recruited Tretton to follow us, he won’t be slowed in the slightest. And a talented mage might be able to follow the passage we carve through the shifts. We leave a tiny echo of order until those lands change over substantially.”

  “Oh.” Elenai was starting to suspect there was a vast amount of information out there she wasn’t aware of. She was just about to ask another question when he continued.

  “And we’ve got another problem. The hearthstone I’m carting around is still active. A weaver who knows how to look for them can hone in on it with another hearthstone and follow us practically anywhere.”

  She’d had no idea about that particular problem, but then she’d never heard about hearthstones until yesterday. “How easy are they to make inactive?”

  “Not easy at all,” Kyrkenall said grimly. “It takes great skill.”

  That probably explained why he hadn’t brought the matter up with her. She tried not to let her disappointment show. “Why don’t we just drop it?”

  “Tempting.” She saw his lip curl, briefly. “But I’ll be damned if I’m turning it back over to them. What I wouldn’t give to have a pair of ko’aye. We could fly to the tower far ahead of anyone else without much trace. But that wagon lost its wheels when the queen broke the treaty.”