All the King's Traitors

by Keylin Rivers

  Kuba walked over to where the Northerner was sitting close to the fire and took a seat next to her. The fire crackled, the only sound in the sparse forest on the quiet morning.

  “I was hoping we could have another lesson,” he said.

  “We need a storm,” she replied, looking at the skies.

  “To do a controlling wield!” Kuba exclaimed. “What if I want to skip right to summoning? Or conjuring?”

  “Slow your horses, kid,” Aurelia said, and Kuba could have sworn he heard her chuckle. “That’s skipping a lot of steps.”

  “But you said it would be easy, and if it’ll help get us to the Free-Wielders, then I want to learn! Please—it’s our best chance to help Aunt Evie!”

  “What I said was it would probably be easier to wield lightning than it would be to wield a bird—”

  “Please!” Kuba launched himself between Aurelia and the fire, hands together in front of him and head bowed.

  “Okay,” Aurelia chuckled again. “Calm down.”

  “Right!” Kuba exclaimed as he sat cross-legged in front of Aurelia.

  “How much do you know about lightning?”

  “It happens with thunder. It is a message that the skies are angry with us.”

  “Okay, I’ll admit, not a great start,” Aurelia said. “First thing to know, the world is much bigger than Azanthea.”

  “How much bigger?”

  “Lots. And there are storms happening all of the time, somewhere. That is what you need to use.” She stood. “Alright,” she said, “get up.”

  Kuba followed her instructions and hopped to his feet.

  “Get out your Godstonem” Aurelia said as she removed the hanging Godstone from her neck and cradled it in her hands, “and cup it in both your palms. Like this.”

  Kuba pulled his golden, glowing stone out of his pocket and let it rest in his cupped hands.

  “Now close your eyes,” Aurelia instructed, “and breathe deeply, like you do to help with the panic.”

  Kuba closed his eyes and focused on Aurelia’s deep breathing. She was inhaling slowly and exhaling even slower. He mimicked her pace. The long exhale was difficult for him at first, and he had to consciously force every bit of air out of his lungs. Eventually, though, a sense of calm washed over him. There was a moment between the inhale and the exhale where his mind was completely empty, which resulted in a feeling of peace so serene he could recall no other feeling like it.

  “Good,” Aurelia said, clearly having picked up on the sounds of Kuba’s breathing. “Do you feel the empty space?”

  Kuba nodded slowly.

  “Good, Kuba. That empty space is how you can let the energy from your Godstone in. Now picture a line from your brain through your body to your Godstone. Picture that connection.”

  Kuba didn’t quite understand. He tried thinking of the Godstone at first, picturing its subtle cracks and brilliant glow. That didn’t work. Then he tried picturing his thoughts flowing down to the Godstone, like a waterfall, from his brain down his neck. He visualised them pouring through his chest and out his arms, finding their home in his little rock. This seemed to work better. When Kuba was at the last bit of his exhale, in that moment of emptiness, he could feel the Godstone’s energy flow in, as if it was working its way against the current of the waterfall Kuba had created. The strange sensation made Kuba’s chest tighten and his arms feel jittery. It was so strange.

  When the Godstone’s energy finally made its way up the waterfall and into Kuba’s head, something changed. The feeling no longer made Kuba anxious. The connection with the Godstone felt like a realization—like the satisfying feeling of finding an answer that had been right in front of him the whole time. It was almost like a new light in the corner of his mind that he had never noticed before.

  “Good, Kuba, very good,” Aurelia said calmly.

  Kuba, his eyes still closed, felt Aurelia’s cold hands wrap gently around his own, forcing him to clutch the Godstones more closely.

  “Remember to breathe now,” she said, her voice soothing. “It will get intense.”

  The light in Kuba’s mind grew brighter as he grasped the Godstone tighter. It was blinding him from the inside. His heart began to pound, and he could feel himself breaking out in a sweat. It felt like the energy from the Godstone was taking over. The Godstone was drawing him in with its beautiful and eerily nonsensical calling—as if it were a song that only he could understand. He clutched the Godstone tighter.

  “Breathe, Kuba,” Aurelia said more sternly, her hands wrapping even more tightly around his. “You are doing great, just stay calm and breathe.” She was right next to him, but her voice was faint.

  Breathing calmly was becoming hard. The emptiness was gone, now filled by the overwhelming power of the Godstone. Kuba’s own thoughts had ceased to exist. He could feel the Godstone drawing upon his strength to maintain the connection.

  His breathing became laboured. He was hot, sweaty, and growing increasingly tired. The nonsensical music and the blinding light in his mind were becoming too much, it was draining him. Kuba felt his knees go weak. His thoughts raced, but they weren’t his thoughts, just a mixture of intense sound and light coming from the foreign thing in his brain. Kuba tried to focus on something he knew.

  His brother, who rescued him, whom he loved… What was his name again? The light and music swallowed it whole.

  Kuba felt his chest get tighter. What was his brother’s name? Flashes of light and loud crashes swirled in his head. It was so loud he let out a scream to drown it out. But he couldn’t even hear his own voice. It felt like he was losing his mind. Every second his thoughts became more entangled with the energy of the Godstone.

  He was losing himself. Kuba couldn’t handle it any longer. He was about to let go…

  “Hold on, Kuba,” a voice from the outside instructed sternly. It sounded familiar. Kuba could feel warm hands clenched firmly around his own, not letting him lose his grip on the stone. “You’ve got this. Let it take you, don’t fight its power. Own it.” Her voice was nothing but a faint ringing in the distance.

  Kuba was dizzy and tired from resisting the Godstone. He could feel his mind slipping away from him. Rational thought was gone and the world around him ceased to exist; the only thing left was the Godstone’s call. He couldn’t fight it anymore. His mind was completely blank.

  And then silence.

  Kuba gasped violently, his eyes shooting open.

  Something was different, the world was different. Everything was more vibrant. He looked at the girl, the voice he’d heard. Aurelia’s voice. Then to the Godstone in his hands. Everything seemed to be moving a fraction of a second too slow, like time itself was off.

  Suddenly, Kuba was frantically swinging his head around, his mind being tugged in all directions. Like the Godstone was looking for something.

  “You did it, Kuba,” Aurelia said, her voice sounding slower than normal. Kuba watched how her mouth began to pull back, her teeth emerging, as she slowly smiled.

  Kuba’s head spun around. He was being drawn to something.

  “You feel it, don’t you? The lightning?”

  Kuba nodded, forcing his attention back on Aurelia. He did feel it. He was being pulled towards it, but it was so far.

  “Try to bring it here,” Aurelia instructed, bringing her hands to his shoulders.

  Kuba focused as much as he could on the closest energy he felt. Far to the east, he could feel the lightning crash as if it were right in front of him. He gazed up at the sky, but there was no storm in sight. Kuba knew it was there though, off in the far distance. His Godstone told him so.

  Kuba tried to call it closer, willing the bolts towards him. He began sweating once again, his breaths coming closer together. His mind yelled at the lightning with all the might it could muster. He pulled at it with the same frantic hopelessness he had when trying to best his brother in a game of rope war. Unlike their game though, the lightning would not let him win.

&n
bsp; The silence and clarity provided by the Godstone began to withdraw. Once again, the noise and mind fog began to descend upon Kuba. He wouldn’t be able to hold on to it much longer.

  “Kuba?” Aurelia sounded concerned. She was shaking his shoulders slightly.

  “I… can… do it,” he panted, sweat trickling down his brow.

  “You did it already! You were great!” Aurelia exclaimed, but her voice was laced with subtle hints of concern. “You can stop now.”

  But he didn’t. He wanted to prove himself. If he could do this, he could save his aunt.

  “Kuba, stop,” Aurelia said, her face becoming stern.

  A wave of heat rushed through his body, from his core out to his fingertips, and he suddenly couldn’t handle it anymore. It was too much, pulling the lightning all that distance. He was drenched in sweat and his heart felt like it was pounding out of his chest, but he didn’t know how to let go. The in-between state was not a pleasant one. It was a confusing, mind-altering transition. Kuba was now connected to the lightning, and couldn’t find his way out through the noise.

  Whack!

  Aurelia’s hand made hard contact with Kuba’s face. His eyes fluttered back to normal and his mind immediately snapped back to reality.

  Kuba rubbed his stinging cheek. “Ouch!”

  “I told you to stop,” Aurelia said. “Are you alright?”

  “Yeah,” Kuba started, still massaging his puffy face and catching his breath. “I couldn’t get out.”

  “But you got in,” Aurelia said with a genuine smile. “That’s pretty impressive.”

  Kuba gazed east as a bead of sweat trickled down his cheek. “I almost had it. It’s just over there.” He nodded in the storm’s direction, though the sky showed not even a sign of rain.

  “It’s great you even found it,” Aurelia said, also turning her gaze east.

  “I could just… feel it.” He brushed the streak of sweat with his sleeve. He was exhausted. “How do you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Get in and out so quickly?”

  “Oh, you mean connect?” Aurelia asked.

  “Yeah. How do you connect and disconnect with the Godstone like you do?” Kuba asked, letting out a groan as he took a seat on the ground.

  “You just have to be able to let yourself go, let the Godstone’s powers in. You can’t fear it,” Aurelia said, her blond hair flowing in the breeze as she dropped down next to Kuba. “And you have to always be able to find yourself again, through the exhaustion and through the power of the Godstone.”

  “Huh?” Kuba huffed, still catching his breath.

  Aurelia laughed. “Honestly kid, it just takes practice.”

  Chapter 15

  The Deadlands, 9th Day of the Month of Warmth, 1114 A.F.F.

  Vallich unraveled the scarf he had tightly wrapped around his face and tossed it into his pack. In the Deadlands, there was no point in hiding who he was.

  He pat Arion’s side. The horse was uneasy in these wastelands; even animals knew that this place was unnatural.

  Vallich’s long, dark hair caught in the cool breeze that rolled across the land from the storm ahead. He could hear the vicious thunder rumble and see the sheet lightning illuminating the sky up ahead. Horrendous storms were the norm in the Deadlands.

  The grey steed trotted across the decayed soil. The Deadlands were a product of the ancient humans, or so he had been taught. They were a toxic patch of land that had not been rejuvenated by the First Fall; nothing grew in the Deadlands. There were constant lightning storms, but it never rained, seemingly defying nature itself. He had always liked the Deadlands as they contradicted almost every book he had ever read. It was believed that, apart from the known lands, this was what the rest of the world looked like.

  Vallich was fascinated by the ancient humans. They had been both marvelous and terrible beings. There had been billions of them, and they stretched to all the corners of this earth. They tamed nature with their machines, and they created technologies so far advanced that he could barely even comprehend. The remnants of these machines, those not kept by the House of Historians, were long buried by the chaos of the First Fall.

  It was unfortunate though, he would have liked to see their world, so he could appreciate their genius. But with their genius had come their downfall. Their physiological evolution outpaced their physical one. Their needs grew beyond being satisfied with the basics they needed to survive. The ancient humans developed wants and lusted for comforts. They tamed the earth so they could live in gluttonous excess. And they multiplied; they multiplied to over thirty billion.

  That was the teetering point. The excessive number of people and comforts was not sustainable, and the world began to decay with more and more places turning into Deadlands. Millions began dying. Then millions turned into billions. Then the ancient humans began fighting wars over what was left, over what they hadn’t yet ruined.

  And then came the First Fall—a gift from the skies above.

  The First Fall cleansed the earth. Meteorites washed away most of the world’s filth, including the filth that was humanity. Most people died and the toxic planet to recovered—at least in parts. Those who remained were presented with a beautiful gift: the Godstones.

  And the Godstones were most certainly not a gift that should be hidden from the world, controlled by one man.

  Vallich trotted along, the scarcity of the Deadlands reminding him of the texts of old. The air of the old earth had barely been breathable in some places, the water was no longer drinkable, and the soil could no longer harvest food. Just like in these Deadlands. No human could survive longer than a few weeks in here. Not before they rotted away from starvation or suffocated on the poisonous air.

  Arion suddenly reared onto her hind legs, putting Vallich on high alert. He patted the beast to calm her down, removing his hand from Arion’s side only once the horse had relaxed. He surveyed the area, looking for any signs of life. There were only two trade routes that passed through the Deadlands, and Vallich was on neither. Escaped Northerners and criminals occasionally fled to the Deadlands, just to leave one hell and make home in another. But there were none in sight.

  The rumbling of thunder caught Vallich’s ear. He looked at the storm ahead of him; something had changed. The storm’s sheet lightning had turned into bolts, and all the bolts were firing in the same direction: west. He watched as the bolts seemed to reach through the sky, stretching incredible distances in perfectly parallel lines. Even for the Deadlands, this was an odd sight. Vallich had never seen lightning behave like this before. It almost looked as if the lightning was being pulled towards one spot…

  Vallich’s eyes widened with realization and a smile crossed his face. A lightning Godstone. That was certainly something he had never seen before. The bolts suddenly turned back to sheet lightning.

  What an incredible power.

  Vallich immediately crouched down on the horse, pulling the reins closer to his body, and tapping her the sides with his heels. He was going to follow the lightning.

  Chapter 16

  The Redcliffs, 11th Day of the Month of Warmth, 1114 A.F.F.

  Aurelia had never ventured this far south before, but this was her chance to make it to freedom. Her feet dangled from the side of the cliff as she leaned back on her elbows and soaked up the southern sun. They were just north of the City of Sable. When she was a child, she used to hear stories from the Northern Wielders who would make the journey south to help the Free-Wielders. She had heard tales of the place she was sitting now, the Redcliffs, and the meeting of the seas. The beauty of the Northern and Southern Seas meeting had not been exaggerated.

  The forest had thinned out into flat plains that included the main trade routes in and out of Sable. The plains were too dangerous for them to travel as they could be spotted from miles away. The Redcliffs were dangerous, too—not for their exposure, but for their terrain. There were no paths, just jagged rocks. The Redcliffs were hundreds of feet
high, their sharp edges jutting out of the ground. They looked as if the earth of the mainland was crumbling into the sea. Steep ledges and long drops into the ocean surrounded them. One wrong step and you were down the cliff into the water below or skewered by one of the lower, jutting rocks.

  Aurelia inhaled the salty air of the sea and let the sun warm her face. They hadn’t made much progress over the last couple of days as they worked on a strategy to get past the southern wall. She’d heard that Hectar kept the entire region under a tight watch. He inspected anyone and anything that came in and went out of his city, mostly to catch people smuggling illicit items sold to them by the pirates of Raknabrooke. Aurelia could only imagine what the capital would be like.

  Aurelia stared out at the sea. She’d come here to contemplate their problem, but she was easily distracted by the astonishing view. The ocean was sparkling blue near the shore, but she found the most spectacular sight when she cast her gaze out onto the horizon. Far away from the shore, she could see the magnificent colliding of the Northern and Southern Seas. To the north, she could make out a distinct line in the ocean, where the deep purple-like water of the Northern Sea met the cyan blue of the Southern Sea. She had only heard of this place in stories told back home, but never did she think she would finally be a witness to the meeting of the seas: the Línea Inconnu.

  “Hey, Aurelia!” Kuba called from behind her, breaking her peace and causing her to sit up and turn around. The two brothers were together, joking around, which made her smile.

  “Hi, boys.” She smiled back at them. “How was it?”

  “Great!” Ion exclaimed, dropping a couple of birds on the ground. “Kuba got two with his makeshift slingshot.”

  “Fantastic! I got some driftwood from the ledges below. Let’s get cooking.”

  Normally, she and Ion gathered food together, but she was becoming more confident in Ion’s hunting skills. It was something he was very good at.

  She placed her blue blanket on the ground and the three of them got to work building a fire and plucking the birds. Aurelia had noticed that in the past two days that both the boys seemed to be in better spirits. She was convinced it was some combination of the weather and the fact that they were finally getting close to their destination.