The Realm Rift Saga Box Set

by James T Kelly

  “You make it sound like we marched into the Provinces and took you by force.” Six seemed unfazed by Storrstenn’s anger. In fact he seemed amused by it, his lips quirking as he spoke. “You signed the treaty.”

  “I signed nothing.”

  Six shook his head, dismissing the point. “Your people.”

  “And what choice did we have, with Western soldiers in our cities and swords to our throats?”

  “Then you shouldn’t have been digging in our lands.”

  “You used a misunderstanding over a border as an excuse to invade.”

  “Enough,” said Neirin.

  “You were stealing from the Kingdom. What did you think would happen?”

  “Enough.” Neirin put a single finger to his forehead. He looked exhausted.

  “Do I deserve to be a slave for the crimes of another?”

  “Enough.” No more than a whisper.

  “You,” shouted Six, enunciating each syllable, “are not a slave.”

  “The Shield commanded you to silence!” Brega’s bellow echoed down the wooden halls and the argument stopped; the only sound was the hammer of rain on the roof and against the window. Storrstenn looked startled, looking at Brega as if she had appeared out of thin air. Six rolled his eyes but wilted under her glare, unfolding his arms and looking at his feet.

  Storrstenn raised a hand. “If I may, lady elf?”

  “You may not.” She didn’t even look at him. Instead she met Tom’s eye as she said, “There is no debate. Only what the Shield decides.” She paused, staring at him, waiting. Why? He hadn’t been arguing. But she said nothing until he nodded. “My lord, would you hear more details of what the dwarf intends?”

  Even Neirin seemed surprised. “I would.”

  She gave a firm nod, as if the matter was settled. “You four, search this place. Find clothes. Weapons, or the next best thing. Anything we might need on the road.”

  Tom thought Six might object but he said nothing. Instead he stalked from the room. Katharine followed him and Tom heard them go upstairs, voices in quiet and heated discussion.

  “You too, Tom.”

  Brega had excluded him before, in the merrow city. But it was he who had secured their release. He who had freed them from the rat pits. He who had delivered their new allies. Shouldn’t he be part of the discussion?

  “Tom.” Neirin’s voice was soft but questioning. The elf was watching his hand, his hand on Caledyr’s grip. Tom released the sword and took a deep breath, straightened, shook his head. “Go, Tom. I will seek your counsel should I need it.”

  Dismissed. Again. But it stung less now. Let them plot and plan. Whatever their path, his was bound for Faerie regardless. So he nodded, backed out of the room like a servant and closed the door. He heard Storrstenn begin to speak and thought of listening. But there were better things to do.

  The horses Sannvinn delivered were well-trained but they were not Withed stock. They were more wilful, needed more direction, more encouragement. Tom’s had reared as he’d approached and even after Six murmured something in elfish it seemed skittish. Tom rediscovered his nervousness of riding that night as the rain returned as freezing spray, the clouds casting the world into darkness, the ground very far away.

  Storrstenn led them through more farmland before joining a road for a time, a narrow thing cutting through the landscape, grassy hills on either side. Tom kept expecting soldiers to leap out in ambush. But they saw neither soldiers nor travellers. Either the weather had driven people indoors or Westerners didn’t travel at night.

  The rain did not let up, nor did the clouds part as the night came to an end. The cold, grey morning light seemed to leech the life from the world. Tom had scavenged simple trousers and tunic from the farmhouse and they were now waterlogged and cold. He was tired and hungry, and his eyelids and head grew heavier with each step. He could reach back and touch the sword, just for a moment, and feel revived and alert. But it didn’t last, and soon he was nodding again.

  Storrstenn took them off the road, following a path worn through the grass over many years. The ground was wet mud, leaving clear prints behind. What if they were being followed? They would be easy to track. But no-one seemed to worry about that and Storrstenn led them away from the hillside and to another house.

  This one wasn’t as fine as the farmhouse. It was much smaller, only two storeys, wooden walls old and stained. Tiles on the roof were missing, the porch was collapsing under the weight of time, and a wretched looking elf sat under what cover it still afforded. Male, skinny, his skin a deeper shade of gold than Six’s, he wore a huge, muddy shawl, old and tattered. He led them around to the back of the house, stopped next to a hatch in the ground and said something in elfish.

  “In the tongue of men, if you will,” Storrstenn replied.

  “This is it.” His accent was thick, a drawl to his words.

  “Very good.” Storrstenn’s horse was too big for him. His dismount was ungainly and awkward, but he pretended otherwise. “We will stay but one day. If we remain undiscovered, I will consider the debt repaid. You will never see us again.”

  The boy nodded, all too eager to see the back of them. He looked miserable and kept an eye on his own windows. While he wrung his hands, Storrstenn opened the hatch and motioned everyone inside.

  “He will tend to our horses,” he told them.

  They climbed down a short staircase into a small, dark, musty cellar, filled with barrels. The weak, grey sunlight didn’t reach far and there were no candles.

  “Dank?” Tom asked and, without reply, the sprite struggled forth and cast its supernatural light for them.

  “Remember,” Storrstenn told their host, “we must not be discovered.”

  The elf nodded and closed the hatch. Tom heard a mechanism turn and a lock click closed. They were trapped.

  “You trust that elf?” he asked.

  “He owes me a very great debt,” Storrstenn replied. “Helping us is a small price to clear his ledger. He will not betray us.” Then he swore in guttural dwarfish as he tripped. “Confounded darkness.”

  Of course. He did not have the Second Sight. “To your left,” Tom said. “Now forward. There.”

  “How do you see?”

  How to explain it? “Magic.” Storrstenn smirked until Tom said, “Don’t pull faces.”

  “Curious indeed.” The dwarf peered blindly about the cellar. “What is the mechanism of this supposed magic sight you have?”

  Tom drew breath but was interrupted by, “Later,” Neirin said. He was further into the cellar, where a board had been laid over some barrels and covered in food. “This is for us?”

  “The food,” Tom clarified and Storrstenn told them it was part of the debt, provisions for the next leg of the journey.

  “It may take a few days,” the dwarf said. “And we dare not draw attention to ourselves by venturing beyond the walls around us.”

  “While we stay in Cairnalyst?” Neirin said.

  “Indeed.” Perhaps Storrstenn had forgotten they could all see him smirking to himself.

  “We’re staying somewhere?” Tom asked. “That doesn’t seem wise.”

  “For only two or three days,” Storrstenn waved a hand as if his objection was an irritating bug.

  “Why?”

  “We have a dwarf to recruit.”

  “More dwarfs?” Six had nestled in a space between barrels, arms crossed on his knees and his chin on his arms. He looked truly miserable.

  “All to our benefit, master elf.”

  “So you say.”

  Katharine sat by Six’s feet, rested a hand on his shin. The elf responded by offering her a small, weak smile. Tom wondered how he’d feel if someone told him he had to start a civil war in the duchies. If he had to topple Duke Regent, perhaps. Could he do it?

  “What then?” Tom asked Storrstenn.

  “Further north,” the dwarf replied. “Our new ally will bring us the tools we need to make good our path to Cairnaten
.”

  “Is that where we’ll find Proctor Renwyr?” Tom wondered if he would be anything like Gerwyn.

  Storrstenn nodded. “Renwyr and liberty,” he replied.

  There were few places to get comfortable amongst the barrels, so Tom slept fitfully. He dreamt he was back in Cairnalyr, in a rat pit where the water level wouldn’t stop rising. He dreamt Topknot had risen from his grave, rotten and decayed, and was driving an axe through his chest. He dreamt he was face-to-face with that dragon, the golden eye staring at him, considering him, weighing him up like a farmer weighs a pig.

  “It has been so long since we have talked like this,” a large, old voice said.

  He woke with a headache that throbbed at the top of his neck. Dank’s sprite was resting on top of a barrel, granting light by which to pick his way over cellar and sleeping bodies to the food. A pitcher of water slaked his thirst and he rubbed his neck as if he could rub away the pain.

  It was only then he realised he could hear the sound of someone drinking. The sound echoed, from within one of the barrels, and a small voice was talking to himself. Tom could smell whiskey and rolled his eyes.

  “Come out, Cluricaun,” he said.

  He saw the little fay climb out of an opened barrel from the corner of his eye. “Thomas,” he declared with the exaggerated joy of the drunk. “You’re awake!”

  “Quiet.” Tom gestured to the others. “You’ll wake them.”

  “Sorry,” the fay replied in a stage whisper. Small, perhaps no more than a foot tall, Cluricaun was painfully thin, looking not unlike an elderly scarecrow save for his very fine clothes. Dressed in trousers, waistcoat and long-tailed coat as grey as his hair, the little drunken gentleman tried to clamber from one barrel to another, but fell both onto his face and into a fit of giggles. His hair had fallen free from its tail into disarray, his hat and cane were missing, and his face was red with drink. He was boorish, foolish, and Tom couldn’t stand him. But, what one fay knows, all fay know.

  So he said, “Fond greetings to the fay.”

  Cluricaun snorted. “Frond?” He snorted, covering his grin with a hand. “Frond?”

  Tom held in a sigh. Easier to humour him. “As you will, Cluricaun.” And when the fay sniggered, he asked, “Why are you here?”

  “For the whiskey!” He threw his arms in the air in exultation and almost knocked himself over. Brega stirred and Neirin grumbled in his sleep. The fay held a finger to his lips and whispered, “But don’t tell anyone.”

  It was too much of a coincidence that Cluricaun had picked the one cellar in the kingdom they were sleeping in. “What news from Faerie?”

  “News?” Cluricaun frowned like there was a bad smell. He began to clamber towards Tom from barrel to barrel. Tom hoped the fay wasn’t in a mood for hugs. Emyr’s teeth, not a hug. He couldn’t cope with the tears.

  “Yes, news.” But when Cluricaun tripped and fell on his face, Tom couldn’t hold in his sigh. “How much have you drunk?”

  Cluricaun squinted at his hand and began to count fingers. He got lost after the third. “How much.” He screwed up his face. “How much.” Peered up at Tom like a little blind kitten. “How much is a lot?”

  Why did Tom ask? It was always the same answer. He rubbed his eyes and sighed again. “A lot.”

  “Thassright!” The fay guffawed and went to slap his thigh, missed and staggered. He knelt at the edge of the barrel, looked down at the floor, and said in a small voice, “We wish we were bigger.”

  No hug required this time. But Tom wasn’t going to listen to a half hour tantrum. “Were you sent here, Cluricaun?” he asked. “Do you have a message for me?”

  “Not like a woodkin,” he whimpered. “Just a normal size. Like you.”

  “Cluricaun.”

  The fay looked up, eyes wet. “Why did they make us so small, Tom?”

  “If you don’t have a message for us, you should go.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the whiskey you’re drinking belongs to an elf protecting us,” he said. “What will he do when he finds out its gone?”

  Cluricaun frowned with the effort of thought. “Make some more?”

  “He’ll blame us,” Tom snapped. Brega woke, surging upright with a knife in her hands. “It’s okay, Brega,” he said. “It’s just a fay. There’s no danger.”

  “Well we’ll be a…” Cluricaun frowned. “A something. Thomas Rymour telling a lie.”

  “What lie?”

  “About danger.” The fay was peering at his own hands, watching his fingers move. “It’s not true.”

  Tom’s hands went cold and he didn’t want to ask. But he knew he had to. “Is there danger, Cluricaun?”

  “Why do you think we drank his whiskey?” he slurred. “The dog has sold you out, Tom! He gave you up for a few pieces of silver.”

  “How long do we have?”

  “How long is not very long?”

  His stomach tightened. “Not very long.”

  The fay shook his head. “Less than that.”

  “Brega, did you hear that?”

  “I heard it.” She was already waking Neirin.

  “I think we should leave.”

  “I agree.” She spoke in a low, urgent murmur. “My lord, we are betrayed. We must leave.”

  “Betrayed? By whom?” Storrstenn peered at them blindly.

  “By the elf you said would shelter us.”

  “Never. The boy is too afraid of me.”

  But there were voices outside, trying to be quiet but failing to go unheard.

  “Is there another way out?” Brega asked.

  Tom cast a look towards the back of the cellar but knew the answer before Storrstenn said, “No. I didn’t want to have two doors to watch.”

  Brega started giving orders. “Tom, take the centre ground. Wield the sword, draw them in. Six, Dank, you and the dwarfs stand with him. Katharine, we’ll wait either side of the stairs. Stab their legs as they come in. My lord, you’re with me.”

  “We haven’t got anything to fight with,” Six said, but Brega drew a few knives from a bag. They came from a kitchen, not an armoury, but they looked sharp enough. She kept two, gave two to Katharine, gave a poker to Six.

  “You want me to poke them.”

  She ignored the barb, turning instead to the dwarfs. “Stay behind them. It’ll be safe.” But Storrstenn drew his bow and Sannvinn held a knife in her hands, so Brega said instead, “Take flanking positions. Use your bow.”

  “I can’t see.”

  “They’ll have torches.”

  As they slipped into position, Tom just stared at the door. He half-expected Topknot to lead the charge. Could he kill again, if he had to? His palms were sweating and his heartbeat felt weak and irregular. “How many, Cluricaun?”

  The fay grumbled. He was curled up on his barrel.

  “How many?” he whispered. But the fay said nothing.

  “Tom.” Brega’s voice was low but firm. The voices outside were quieter, less frequent. Because they were almost ready.

  Tom stepped forward, with Six and Dank either side, and drew Caledyr. Trembling excitement began to war with the dread and the fear and he felt his lips smile while his brow broke out in a sweat. He’d been lucky before, when he’d fought Topknot. But these would be trained elfs. He should surrender now.

  No. The fight. The enemy. The victory.

  The thought felt so much like his own. But it wasn’t. He shook his head. No time to think of that. Calm, he told himself. Calm. It reminded him of Emyr’s mantra. The father and the prayers, and fasting and charities, and calmness of the soul until death.

  There was silence now. No sound except his own, faltering breath.

  The father and the prayers, and fasting and charities, and calmness of the soul until death.

  A single voice called through the door in elfish.

  “She demands our surrender,” Six translated. He looked at Neirin, who looked embarrassed to have no means to defend himself.<
br />
  Yet he still managed a stately, “Tell her we will never surrender.”

  Six called back in elfish and received only a single word in response.

  The cellar doors rattled. Banged. Locks snapped and bolts groaned.

  Then the doors were heaved open and Westerners poured into the cellar.

  Calmness of the soul until death.

  Chapter 8

  The elfs entered with a roar, brandishing halberds and rushing towards Tom with singular purpose. To his shame, his courage wilted and the point of his sword sagged. He felt an urge to drop to his knees and beg mercy. How could he fight trained soldiers?

  But he saw their golden skin, heard their elfish demands. Remembered the rat pit where they had denied him his humanity and left him to swim in his own filth.

  The first elf didn’t reach him; Brega hamstrung him from the staircase. Katharine sent the second tumbling with a stab of her own, and Storrstenn took down the third with a bolt to the shoulder. The fourth quailed and stumbled over his fallen comrades. But the fifth clambered past them all.

  She thrust her halberd at Tom but he stepped back, and the point pierced only air. She stabbed again, using it like a spear; the cramped quarters mean she had little other option. Tom stabbed back with Caledyr but the sword was too short; she was well out of reach.

  Six swung his poker and swore. Sannvinn gave ground, holding her knife close to her chest. Dank had already retreated to the far wall, his sprite hiding in his hair. Torchlight from outside revealed more elfs crowding into the cellar.

  No room.

  Again, his thought but not his, nor the thought that followed. But Tom obeyed nonetheless. When the elf thrust again, he rolled onto the barrels next to him, lying on his back. She grunted, frustrated, and scythed the halberd through the air. But Tom had already raised Caledyr and the two blades struck, the impact pounding down Tom’s arms and hammering his joints. He stared at the halberd for a moment, torchlight dancing on the edge. It would have split his chest.

  The elf grunted again and pulled, but Caledyr had bit into her weapon, notching the metal so deeply the two blades were caught. She pulled again, wrenching Tom’s complaining joints, but they were caught fast. And, in that moment, Six swung his poker into the back of her legs and she went down.