The Blood of Kings

by Kyle Alexander Romines

  “I took a shortcut,” she said to Berengar, who looked at her with astonishment. “I told you I knew this city better than you.” Before the déisi could regain his footing, she tossed a blue powder in his face, and the man stumbled around blindly.

  “What have you done, witch?” he demanded. Faolán jumped on his back and pinned him to the ground.

  “Firstly, I’m a magician, not a witch,” Morwen explained. “Secondly, that particular mixture helps me hone my senses. On an ordinary human…well, I’d guess you’re feeling more than a little disoriented right about now. Don’t worry—the effects are temporary. But I’d say that’s the least of your concerns at the moment.”

  “That’s an understatement.” Berengar grabbed the déisi and shoved him against the wall. The killer struggled to free himself to no avail. “Talk! Who gave the order to kill the cupbearer? Who wanted Morwen dead at Cill Airne?”

  “I’m not telling you spit,” the déisi replied.

  “I think you’ll find I can be very persuasive when given cause.” Berengar shattered his nose. “I’m going to enjoy smashing your face against this wall until you change your mind.”

  “You have no idea what forces you’re meddling with, Warden. Munster will fall, and there’s nothing you can—”

  Berengar hit him again, and the man’s knees went wobbly. “Don’t go fainting on me.” He held the man up. “We’re just getting started.”

  Morwen cleared her throat. “Or we could take him back to my tower and I could administer a truth serum. He’ll tell us everything he knows then, though I can’t promise he won’t lose his mind first…”

  “Wait!” the déisi protested. “No more magic, please.”

  “Then tell us what we want to know,” Berengar said.

  The killer’s expression wavered. “You don’t understand. They’ll kill me if—”

  His words were cut short. An arrow struck him in the chest, and he slumped forward, dead, a trickle of blood running from his mouth. Berengar spun around, looking in the direction from which the arrow was fired. His gaze fell on the roof of a neighboring building, the only place from which an archer could have pulled off the shot.

  The spot was empty.

  That’s impossible. No one could move that fast. He unleashed a profanity-laced tirade that caused Morwen to blush and examined the déisi’s body, failing to find anything that might be of use.

  “We had him. We were so close,” Morwen said, and when Berengar looked at her, he recognized something in her face and realized at once why she had seemed so familiar when they first met.

  Suddenly, the cryptic nature of Morwen’s relationship with the king made sense. So did the Mór’s motivation for wanting her rescued from the monastery in the first place, and the reason why Morwen was so desperate to avenge the king’s death. Berengar could have slapped himself for missing it before. The truth had been staring back at him from the beginning. It was even there in her name—Morwen.

  “King Mór was your father, wasn’t he?”

  Berengar had little time to discuss matters further with Morwen before the castle guards appeared and found them with the killer’s body, after which he was immediately summoned to the castle to report to the queen. A very different scene greeted him inside the throne room than the one he’d encountered when he first arrived at the Rock of Cashel. Queen Alannah was seated upon her husband’s throne, wearing his crown. Although still adorned in mourning black, her face was no longer hidden behind a veil. There was no joy in her expression, not that he expected to find it.

  Thane Ronan stood at her right hand, keeping a watchful gaze over the chamber. From the way he wore his sword, Berengar guessed Ronan was a warrior. Thanes came from all walks of life—some were wizened old men or powerful nobles. It wasn’t uncommon for thanes to be selected from the military ranks, especially for the purpose of maintaining order. Perhaps the most famous thane, Thane Ramsay of Connacht, was a great sorcerer known across Fál in the years before the fall of King Áed and the Shadow Wars.

  The transformation in the throne room was startling. The blood that once stained the floor was gone, erased as if it had never existed—as were all signs of the king’s death. With King Mór’s corpse removed, the members of court once again occupied the room, and in great numbers. Judging from appearances, they were mostly nobles, although an impressive number of sentries were stationed inside, including two guards positioned between the crowd and the dais.

  A hush spread across the throne room as the warden entered, and all eyes fell on him. Berengar suspected many had already heard the rumors of his presence at the capital, but this was the first occasion on which he had formally appeared in public since answering King Mór’s summons. A series of shocked gasps and murmurs ran through the court, no doubt speculation as to why one of the High Queen’s wardens had appeared so soon after the death of Munster’s king.

  The crowd shrank away from him, clearing a path forward as he approached the throne. Berengar stopped a respectful distance from the two guards and waited for the herald to announce him. Marcus O’Reilly, standing to the queen’s left, leaned forward and whispered something into Alannah’s ear.

  “That will be all, Marcus.” She waved the royal adviser away, and her attention fell on Berengar. “From what I hear, it appears you’ve had an interesting morning.” She held up a hand before he could respond. “Not here. Let us speak in private.”

  “As you wish,” he said, mindful of the interest of the members of court.

  She led him into an adjoining room, a somber chamber carved entirely from limestone. Based on appearances, it was probably where the royal council met to discuss matters of importance to the realm. Large maps of Munster and the other kingdoms of Fál hung from the walls. Golden sunlight filtered in from a wide balcony that overlooked the city, shining on the smooth surface of a long alderwood table that was fixed in place, unlike the moveable trestle tables in the great hall.

  Berengar waited for the queen to speak. He had been hoping for another chance to converse with Alannah, as their previous interaction in the great hall had been far too limited to ask her any meaningful questions.

  “I apologize for leaving you so abruptly yesterday,” she said without wasting a moment. “Now that the burden of the crown has fallen to me, there are many demands on my time. It seems you’ve been equally busy. Laird O’Reilly tells me Matthias is dead. I take it he was the one who poisoned my husband?”

  Berengar briefly recounted the bloody events that had transpired in the city. “Matthias might have added the poison to the king’s goblet, but he was not acting alone. Someone else was pulling his strings—the same person who paid the déisi to attempt to murder Lady Morwen. We pursued Matthias’ killer, but he fell victim to an assassin’s arrow before he could tell us what he knew.”

  The queen’s expression briefly betrayed her surprise, but she quickly recovered. “If the déisi were involved, this is the first I’ve heard of it.” Her eyes narrowed at him suspiciously. “What exactly did my husband tell you before he sent you to Cill Airne?”

  For the first time, it occurred to Berengar that King Mór might not have shared everything with his wife. Was it because he hadn’t trusted her with the information? Perhaps Alannah was testing his loyalty. Berengar grimaced uncomfortably. These types of situations were exactly why he tried to avoid becoming entangled in royal affairs.

  “King Mór believed the realm was threatened by unseen forces. He sent Morwen to the monastery at Innisfallen to see if magic was involved.”

  “I should have known. My husband had a preoccupation with magic, Warden Berengar. After the horrors he witnessed in the Shadow Wars, he was determined that Munster should never again come under magical threat. He spent a small fortune educating our court magician for that very reason, and he forged a peace with the Witches of the Golden Vale. It was never enough. Mór came to believe he was cursed…”

  “Laird O’Reilly told me as much. He said there were
rumors that a crone dwelling in the Devil’s Bit had placed a curse on the king’s family that resulted in the death of your son.”

  The queen paled, and her cheeks tightened with restrained anger. “I do not share my husband’s fondness for magic. Let us leave it at that. My husband’s murderers are flesh and blood, I assure you.” She sighed, and her anger faded as quickly as it had appeared.

  It must be tiring, Berengar thought, having to project strength while in such pain.

  “I loved my husband. I grieve for him, but life continues whether I will it or not. It is my responsibility to keep Munster safe—to keep my family safe.”

  “I didn’t see Princess Ravenna in the throne room,” he noted.

  “My daughter has little use for life at court. Ravenna prefers to come and go as she pleases. She has her father’s spirit, which caused Mór no little frustration.”

  “I gathered as much from the conversation I had with her. She suggested they had a troubled history.”

  “My daughter has had a difficult life.” Alannah’s voice was full of regret. “She was very different when she was younger. A happier child you’ve never seen. So full of life…” A wistful smile briefly graced the queen’s face. “She and her brother were always going off on one grand adventure or another.” Alannah looked away, as if overcome. “I don’t think she ever forgave us for sending her away. Mór said it was a good match, and I supported the decision. I didn’t believe the stories about her husband until…” She trailed off and fell silent for a time. “But I forget, you’re a warden, not a priest.”

  “You were closer to King Mór than anyone. Is there anything he might have said that could point me in the direction of his killer?”

  “My husband was a man who kept secrets. Sometimes I wonder if I ever really knew him at all. Follow the web of secrets, Warden Berengar. That will lead you to the truth. I’m sure of it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to be alone for a moment before I return to court.”

  “Your Grace,” he said courteously.

  A messenger was waiting for him outside. “I’ve a letter for you, sir.”

  Find me in the tower, said the letter, which bore Morwen’s name. Come at once.

  It was a long climb to reach the magician’s chambers. Berengar made his way up a winding stone staircase with only Faolán for company. Finally he came to a lonely door he assumed was near the tower’s peak. Far above the rest of the castle, the spot was an ideal place for a practitioner of magic to study and work spells free of distraction or interference. Berengar raised his hand and rapped loudly on the door, which swung open of its own accord.

  If Morwen was different in many respects from the typical magician, the room visible from the doorway appeared more in keeping with the traditional image he pictured in his mind. There were books, scrolls, and stacks of parchment everywhere—crammed on shelves, topping tables, and heaped in corners. Vials of powders and potions of all manner of colors were arranged in rows in cupboards full of herbs and various alchemical ingredients. Candles burned throughout the room, despite ample natural sunlight entering from the window.

  Berengar sniffed the air when he crossed the threshold, and the scent of sulfur tickled his nostrils. Most of the space was devoted to the magician’s laboratory. He glanced at an open spell book on a desk as he passed, before noticing the living quarters. A small bed stood in a cramped area of the room beside the window, where Morwen’s staff rested beside a pile of runestones of different colors.

  “Over here,” a familiar voice said from the other side of the room, and Berengar noticed Morwen hunched over her alchemy workbench, her back to him. She was dressed once more in her blue magician’s robes; the gray cloak and nondescript disguise she’d worn earlier hung on the wall.

  Faolán dashed forward to meet her, and Morwen turned around and scratched the wolfhound behind her ears. “Hello again, little wolf.” Faolán let out a contented yelp.

  Morwen wore a strange lens over her right eye that seemed to magnify everything on the other side. Behind her, steam rose from the king’s goblet, which sat over a fire on the workbench. The steam coursed through a peculiar set of glassware before distilling a dark substance into a flask.

  “It is true,” he muttered softly as he looked her over. “You’re the king’s bastard daughter.”

  Morwen’s mouth turned downward in a frown at the word bastard. Berengar was from the far reaches of the north, where illegitimacy carried far less weight. Things were different in Munster, even for a royal bastard.

  “King Mór was my father, yes,” she replied hesitantly, as if waiting for him to level an insult at her. When he did not, her face acquired a more quizzical expression. “How long have you known?”

  “I’ve only just figured it out.” The physical similarities she shared with Mór were unmistakable. “Does the queen know?”

  Morwen shook her head. “I’m not sure, although I believe Princess Ravenna suspects the truth.”

  Ravenna. Berengar remembered her wounded reaction when he told her of the message Mór left, requesting that Berengar protect his daughter with his life. It suddenly struck him that Mór might have meant Morwen instead of his legitimate heir, and he felt a swell of pity for the princess.

  “And your mother?”

  Morwen shrugged. “He never told me her name, only that she’d died. I was brought to the castle to be raised from a very young age. King Mór introduced me to court after my magical abilities were discovered.”

  “You loved him. I can see it in you.”

  “He was a good father, even if he couldn’t be so publically. I wanted for nothing. King Mór saw to it that I had the best tutors his gold could buy.” She removed the lens and set it on the table before wiping her eyes. “Now do you see why I won’t rest until I find the person who did this to him?”

  “I do.” Berengar understood the thirst for vengeance better than most.

  Morwen started to speak but stopped short, as if overtaken by a new thought. “The message hidden in the king’s cloak—it mentioned a debt you owed my father. What did he mean by that?”

  “He saved my life once, during the war. When we were both much younger men.” Even as he spoke, he saw the battle in his mind’s eye. The horrific events of that day would never leave him. “The battle was lost. My forces were surrounded at the River Shannon. I was pushed back to the water’s edge, two arrows in me, watching as my men fell one by one. Then the Poet Prince arrived. I saw his forces break through the enemy ranks just before the water took me. I would have drowned that day, but Mór cut a path to the river and pulled me from the water himself.”

  “Then let me help you,” Morwen insisted. “We have a better chance at finding justice for my father if we work together.”

  Berengar weighed her request. “I can see you have your father’s stubbornness. Very well, but remember—if we do this together, we do it my way. Understand?”

  “Of course,” Morwen answered with a grin.

  “Good. It’s just a shame we came up with nothing earlier. I would have liked to hear what that mercenary had to say under the influence of your truth serum.”

  Morwen laughed. “You don’t actually think I have any truth serum on hand, do you? It’s a devil to make, and it costs a fortune. I was just trying to get him talking. People are more afraid of magic than you’d think.” She reached into her robes. “Besides, I wouldn’t exactly say we came up with nothing.” Morwen produced the silver medallion given to Matthias by his killer. “Don’t touch it,” she warned. “It was made to look like a healing medallion, but it’s actually enchanted with a paralysis curse triggered by contact with the skin.”

  “The déisi was wearing gloves, so he wasn’t affected,” Berengar realized aloud.

  “That’s right, and there’s only one place in Munster where he could have obtained something like this—from the Witches of the Golden Vale.”

  “It’s time someone paid that coven a visit.”

  The fir
e under the king’s goblet went out without warning, and the last of the distillate dripped from the glassware into the flask. “Not just yet.” Morwen turned back to her project. “There’s another reason I asked you here. I’ve almost identified the poison used to assassinate the king.” She strained and filtered the distillate into several components in different bowls. “Hand me that book, will you?” She pointed out a book on one of the shelves without bothering to glance up from her work.

  Berengar retrieved the book—a particularly heavy volume titled A Treatise on Poisons—and passed it to Morwen, who placed the book on her workbench and began flipping through the pages. Berengar, who loomed behind the magician, watching her work, observed several illustrations of nasty-looking poisons and their various effects.

  “Here it is.” Morwen showed him a particular entry with no small amount of pride. “The Demon’s Whisper. As I suspected, the recipe calls for a lock of the victim’s hair. The poison has no cure. The king was a dead man the moment he drank from the goblet. This is a very difficult poison to make—even I probably couldn’t pull it off. A number of the ingredients, including the Mitragyna leaf and the Amanitas mushroom—more commonly called the Death Cap—are very rare in Fál.”

  “What does that tell us?” Berengar asked, struggling to follow the alchemy jargon.

  Morwen’s smile widened. “There are only a few places these ingredients could be acquired, meaning whoever manufactured the poison has to have left a trail for us to follow.” The magician slammed the book shut and crossed the room to retrieve her staff and gray cloak. Then she walked toward the door, stopping only to cast a glance back in his direction. “What are you waiting for? We have work to do.”

  Berengar shook his head and started after her.

  Chapter Six

  Though a loner by nature, the warden was accustomed to working with others when circumstances dictated he do so. Nevertheless, in all his years he had never been led around by a girl no older than fifteen—much less one who happened to be a magician. Life was not without a sense of humor, it seemed. Berengar wiped a bead of sweat away and followed Morwen into an upscale district, trying his best to avoid those in his path. It was a hot summer day, and the air had only grown warmer since he chased the déisi through the streets that morning.