“But there is one difference I fear you overlook,” Rayhan winced as a wave a pain rolled through him, and King Mekkai whispered to his guard to rush the healer’s arrival. “I am merely a servant to our laws, sworn by oath to enforce them. You are the law, Your Majesty. The rules live and die by your word.” Rayhan coughed, his voice rasping. “From where I stand, what happens next is your command, and yours alone.”
Jaspur hung upon his cousin’s words, amazed by his unyielding demand for justice, even as he stood bleeding before the elven king. Rayhan was right, but only to an extent. Though the decision was ultimately his to make, King Mekkai had thousands of elves to appease.
“General Redwood’s sentencing will be publically announced tomorrow morning. You will be ruled as innocent of all crimes in the eyes of the court. The people will know of General Redwood’s attempt on your life, and his demand for justice through your people’s method of keekidikya. However, I cannot force my people to accept it. Nor will I force Elessara into this arrangement.”
“Yet I can be forced into a fight to the death?” Rayhan shook his head. “Your Majesty, up until this point I have seen you as a reasonable and just king. You have given me the impression that the elves are people of honor, but...” he motioned to the floor where General Redwood’s body had been covered. “Where is the honor in this?”
The king frowned. “I am sorry, Captain Mendeley.”
The captain held up a hand to the healer approaching his side. “My people’s hearts, like mine, desired nothing but good to come of this arrangement. I have failed them by honoring this duel. It is a burden I do not bear lightly. Swear to me that this day will not affect the civility between our kingdoms.”
Mekkai gave a great sigh. “Captain Mendeley, son of Siren Mendeley, it is with great sorrow that I retract the hand of Elessara Redwood. Civil peace will remain between our kingdoms, but I ask that you leave Whitewood tonight. A letter to your king will be sent with you, with my gravest apologies and the insistence that this is no fault of your own. Tell your king that the people of Whitewood are simply not ready for this step, though we both desired it. Perhaps in a few years we can try again, when another suitor comes of age.”
Rayhan clenched his jaw before offering the stiffest bow Jaspur had ever seen. “So be it, Your Majesty.”
The rogue watched his cousin limp from the room, showing hesitation only when he passed Elessara’s weeping form. They looked at one another, each one swallowing back more words and emotion than they could bear.
“Go home, Rayhan Mendeley,” she whispered.
And so, with a heart heavy as iron, Rayhan did just that.
* * * * *
Jaspur began to follow his cousin, desperate to understand what happened next. From the rogue’s perspective, it had seemed the captain’s own code had been used against him.
So why did he keep it? Rayhan the Chivalrous remained dedicated to his oath his entire life. He had trained Jaspur to serve the same code when he was sixteen; led him to believe in the laws and tenets like they were solid truths in an unsteady world.
Why would he keep to Chivalry’s Code when it had failed him in Whitewood, just as it had failed the rogue?
Before he had the chance to ask, Jaspur felt the pull of the Veil. It happened out of nowhere, like the tremor of an earthquake. The floor that had once felt solid now wavered like water.
His surroundings faded beneath a flash of bright light, and he felt a pull upon his soul so strong, it left no room for debate. Jaspur gasped as he was yanked back into the Veil. Whitewood melted like wax on a candle, its surroundings replaced by the vague shadows and silhouettes that existed between planes. There, he could hear voices; re’shahna voices as their chanted prayers lifted in Tennakawa’s name. They had found a way to reach him and were bringing him back to the present.
“Wait!” Jaspur shouted. He wasn’t ready. Not yet. He felt the innate magic that gave him the freedom to pass through the Veil grow and swell within him. It was returning, and so was his life.
But Jaspur still had questions.
“Not yet!” he dug his fingers into the translucent floor, only to watch it dissipate into nothing. Closing his eyes, he called upon the magic inside of him, and imagined a door that stood upon the upper levels of Whitewood’s guest hall. It was made of red oak with vine etchings...
Beneath him, that door began to form. A praise to the gods slipped from his lips as his fingers clung to the white stone handle. With a twist, the door fell open and Jaspur tumbled inside.
Sprawled chest down upon the sitting room floor, Jaspur slowly lifted his head. In front of him, a young Rayhan Mendeley leaned against the edge of an end table, his back to the rogue.
He didn’t seem to notice Jaspur. He was lost in his thoughts somewhere, his eyes fixed on something in his hand as he absentmindedly rubbed the fresh bandages wrapped around his waist.
Jaspur picked himself up off of the floor and approached his cousin.
“Rayhan?”
The captain continued to stare at his palm. When Jaspur joined his side, he noticed it was the quartz arrowhead Elessara had given him.
“Will it ever go away, Jaycent?”
The rogue prince cocked his head. “Will what ever go away?”
“The pain in my heart,” his fingers wrapped in a fist around the arrow. “Will it lessen? Will I eventually get over it? Move on?”
Jaspur sighed. “In time, you will pull yourself together, but how you feel about her... I don’t think that ever changed.”
“Good,” Rayhan tucked the arrow into his pouch and resigned himself to start packing.
“Good?” Jaycent followed Rayhan to the bed chamber where the captain began pulling tunics from his wardrobe. “How is that good?”
“Because it means what I feel is real. If it is real, then I will never give up hope.”
Jaspur started pacing. What magic he had regained, he had used to step back into Rayhan’s past, but that didn’t stop his allies in the present. Jaspur already felt his magic replenishing inside of him, and with it the pull of their call. He would have to make this quick.
Rayhan stopped and looked at him. “What is on your mind, cousin?”
“After all of this, you are still ‘Rayhan the Chivalrous’, full of hope and optimism?”
“Of course,” he replied.
“But your code failed you! It’s the very reason you fought in that duel, and the very reason you lost everything you hoped to gain.”
“Chivalry’s Code didn’t fail me,” Rayhan tucked a stack of folded tunics into his trunk. “King Mekkai did. General Redwood had a right to challenge me. Had he come to Nevaharday and demanded keekidikya for the murder of his wife, I would have stepped forward and gladly granted him that right.
“But this was not about honor. This was about tearing two kingdoms apart. King Mekkai sat back and let me murder the general before his own daughter. A woman I love. He could have stopped the fight, but he did not. In his heart, he does not believe a Mendeley can bring our kingdoms together.”
“But if Chivalry’s Code didn’t demand that you honor the request for keekidikya, you could have refused.”
“Aye, but that would not have stopped General Redwood. Had I refused, he would have found another way to challenge me. Perhaps even years later, when Elessara and I were married and with children. Another war would have followed, and then where would we be?” Rayhan tucked his pouch beneath his tunic. “When a man is set to destroy another, nothing can stop him from trying. All Chivalry’s Code does is guide us, cousin. It teaches us to honor our word and do what is right by friend and enemy alike. That is not a trap. That is purpose.”
“General Redwood used your purpose against you.”
“Aye. He used his sword, too. What is your point?”
“My point is like his sword, your code can and will be used against you. It is a weakness.”
“All armor has its weaknesses. That doesn’t mean you should stop w
earing it.” Rayhan rested his arm on the shelf above the fireplace. “You were there when the elven spirit showed me how he died, were you not?”
“Aye,” Jaspur confessed.
“You could say he died because of me.”
“Your father planned that mission, not you.”
“Yes, but you could also say the loyalty born from the code blinded me to my father’s actions.”
“There was no reason to believe he would betray you. Anyone could have made that mistake, code or no code.”
Rayhan arched one eyebrow, and Jaspur started to understand.
With a shake of his head, the rogue answered his own question. “Sometimes bad things just happen.”
“They inevitably will. Yet no matter how dark things get, our purpose is only worthless when we give it up.” Drumming his fingers on the shelf, Rayhan cleared his throat. “Which reminds me. Do you remember what the ghost said to me that night?”
“That you would die for another to make up for your father’s sins?”
“Aye...” he closed his trunk and sat upon it, a perplexed expression on his face. Jaspur saw it then. Doubt. It was a strange thing to see upon the face of Rayhan Mendeley, yet it made his cousin less like an untouchable hero and more like a good person still prone to doubt and weakness. “Do you know how I died?”
Jaspur hesitated. “You keep asking me about the future, but it has yet to unfold here. Anything I say to you now could change the course of history.”
“You could be right, but what if Tennakawa sent you here for this very conversation? What if I did? You said I had something to do with you being here. Perhaps I did it so that I would see you as you are, and have the courage I need to lay down my life when it is time.”
“Rayhan the Chivalrous fears he won’t have the courage to sacrifice his life for another?”
The captain chuckled to himself. “In truth, I do not know. Death is such a final thing. We think we have the courage to face it until we are lying on our backs, staring up at our own mortality. But if I knew this one thing…”
“What?”
“Was it worth it?” The heel of Rayhan’s boot tapped nervously against the floor. “My death, I mean. Did I die for something worthwhile?”
The question struck an old chord inside of Jaspur. One that had tortured and haunted him since the day he saw Rayhan’s throat slit in front of him. He recalled his cousin’s final glance. For so long, he had tried to place that look; tried to understand the unspoken words within it. Now he knew, for it was the same question Rayhan posed to him now.
Was it worth it?
“Yes, cousin,” Jaspur whispered, and inwardly, he swore he would do whatever it took to make that answer true. “You died for me, and I refuse to shame that honor.”
a hERO rEBORN
The hour was late when Patchi arrived to the ceremony wearing painted markings Tobiano hadn’t seen in over a century. Indeed, the last time this ritual was held, it was Tobiano lying in the water, not Jaspur. Only three of their people had successfully endured the Awakening trials in the last thousand years. Now Tobiano and Patchi joined each other in attempt to preserve a fourth.
Their role was simple compared to what Jaspur would endure, but there was still much at stake. Preparation of the body was a meticulous task. One misstep, and the spell would fail. Although Jakke was a more than capable cleric, Tobiano oversaw every detail as an added precaution. He and Jakke stripped and washed the rogue’s body in the pond, cleansing it of external impurities.
But it was the inside Tobiano was worried about. Shadow Silverhorn was a fine example of the Awakening gone wrong. Patchi warned them that if the rogue failed to be pure enough to accept the unicorn blood into his veins, he would die. It was a delicate way to put it. What he really meant was that if Jaspur was too tainted to complete the ritual properly, they would have to kill whatever the rogue became.
Unicorn blood worked one of two ways. For those pure enough, it adapted the unicorn’s strengths, gifts, and immortality to the consumer. For those who are not, it cursed them to embody their greatest demon.
Shadow was the only one Tobiano knew who had initiated the right of Awakening only to be tainted by his own darkness. His immortal equine form became a personification of that darkness, transforming him into the hideous creature his people called a dread stallion.
Such demons were remarkably powerful, but the price was torture. These creatures were driven into madness by eternal pain. They lived in suffering, and lashed out at anyone who fed their one fixation.
That fixation varied between cursed beings. For Shadow, it was envy. Should Jaspur fail, Tobiano feared what he would become, for the rogue held an even more dangerous yearning: vengeance.
Patchi cut a tuft of black hair from Diego’s mane, then tied the hairs tightly around a thick, dry stick. Rolling it across the torch’s flame, he set it alight, then used the ashes to mark Jaspur’s body with the intricate runes of purification until the rogue was covered from brow to foot.
Old power flowed through those runes. Even when Jaspur was submerged in the cold mountain pond, they did not smear or fade. Jakke staked two torches into the soggy ground beside Jaspur’s shoulders, his lips never faltering in a steady prayer to the goddess.
Tobiano noted how the fire light glittered off the water’s surface, illuminating the marks on the rogue’s face. He barely recognized Jaspur beneath the many runes. Should he survive the ceremony, Tobiano guessed he would barely recognize him then, too.
For those it did not curse, unicorn blood would share the personality of the unicorn with the one who consumes it. In this case, Jaspur would inherit the wisdom and immortality of Diego. A fitting match, but still a great change. Jaspur had no idea what awaited him.
“The dagger, Tobiano?” Patchi held out a hand and Tobiano pulled Jaspur’s dirk from his waist band. The blade had been replaced before the ceremony, the parchment colored hilt now paired with an ebon blade, newly carved. Tobiano had taken a piece of Diego’s horn from one of Jaspur’s gauntlets, shaping it into a dagger that would complete the ceremony.
Patchi knelt just before Jaspur’s head, his bare knees sinking into the mud. His flaxen hair had been tied back into a short, jagged tail, revealing a face painted midnight blue with golden spots dappled across the bridge of his nose and over his cheeks. They were the markings of Skalabur, the unicorn whose blood ran through his veins.
Tobiano, too, wore the paint of his “sire”. Represented by a golden bolt of lightning, it ran through his left eye and across the bridge of his nose to meet the jawline on his right. His ceremony had taken the blood of his namesake, preserved in a bottle by his family upon the death of the legendary elemental stallion, Lightning Dancer, and a larger piece of the shard that now hung around his neck. The face paint was part of the ceremony; a tribute to the immortals that gave them their gift.
Patchi first used the blade to cut Jaspur’s hair, shaving the sides of his head so that it resembled a brown mane. Around them, the re’shahnas’ chant tumbled into a faster rhythm, led by Jakke. Tobiano and Patchi joined their voices, the prayer growing louder until it reached an ear-piercing crescendo. Patchi rose to his feet, his left hand holding the dagger out to the side. Immediately, the chant stopped and all fell silent.
“Seladay,” Patchi’s voice was low and quiet, and all ears were pricked to hear him.
Diego sloshed through the pond, his heavy black hooves stirring up sand in dusty clouds beneath the water. He came and stood over the body of his rogue companion. With a grunt and a blink, the stallion’s silver eyes brightened into a luminous glow as he summoned the remnants of his innate magic.
“Etsu de hatsa gwa,” Patchi held the blade before the stallion, speaking the words of offering.
Tobiano and Jakke held Jaspur in place as Diego nodded in acceptance. Lifting his neck up high, the stallion allowed Patchi to make a clean cut across the side of his chest. Jakke handed his chief a small bowl, and Patchi used it to c
ollect the stream of precious blood. He then wiped the blunt sides of the blade across the wound, coating it in the pure, crimson liquid.
Taking a step back, he held both the bowl and the blade before Diego. “Seladay,” he bid.
The stallion breathed over them and tiny flecks of silver glimmered. Patchi then said in the old tongue, “With this gift freely given, we beg Tennakawa to guide Jaspur through the Veil and back to us, so that he may serve in immortality as a guardian to his people.”
Jakke forced Jaspur’s mouth open, and the chief poured the blood of his companion down his throat. Closing his mouth, Patchi then held the rogue’s nose shut, forcing him to swallow. When he did, Patchi poured the rest of the blood into the torches’ flames.
They flared in a burst of silver, then launched into the air, crackling loudly. The pillars of flame leaned and joined one another before spiraling into the water with a deafening roar. The gathered re’shahna watched in silence as the flames consumed Jaspur. It haloed his skin, burning away most of the runes, and with them any remaining impurities.
Patchi stepped forward, his dark brown eyes fixed upon the one remaining rune on Jaspur’s chest. Located over Jaspur’s heart, he waited as it glittered blue, then silver, and eventually red.
“Upon your word, brother,” Patchi looked to Diego.
The stallion reared, his head thrown back in a mournful cry that echoed through the night. The dagger in Patchi’s hands flared silver, and the chief brought it down with a sickening thump, its tip sinking through Jaspur’s faintly beating heart.
Blood spilled forth, staining the water as the light of Diego’s magic poured through the hole in his chest. It spread from his heart through every vein, illuminating Jaspur's body in a strange weave of silver and blue as his companion’s magic knitted with his own. As the water became a pool of blood, Patchi rested his fingers on the pulse in Jaspur’s neck, not daring to breathe until he knew for certain the rogue’s heart beat no more.
“Jaspur,” Deley’s voice broke the hush as she pushed through the crowd to the front of the scene. She held her breath, waiting for the rogue to stir; groan; do something! A minute felt like a century, with nothing to give them any sign of hope. Then Jaspur’s eyes snapped open as he was pulled from the Veil into his body. The rogue sat up, a gasp escaping his dry throat. He felt a terrible ache in his chest and looked down to find his dagger sticking out. With two hands, Jaspur pulled it from his chest, his face scrunched in agony as he gave a primal scream.
The Rogue Trilogy Page 73
