by David Estes
The crowd cheered, but Annise didn’t hear them. Lord Griswold might’ve smiled, but Annise didn’t see anything but her mother’s face, which was stoic and resolute and—
She mouthed something. Three words that forced tears to Annise’s eyes:
I…love…you.
Lord Griswold’s voice carried over all. “You are hereby sentenced to death by hanging. Executioner!”
The black-garbed executioner descended the steps and moved into position.
I love you too, Annise mouthed, unable to speak the words aloud. Her mother’s eyes softened and a shadow of a smile crossed her lips. It was the happiest she’d ever looked to Annise.
“Now!” her uncle shouted, and the executioner shoved the platform away.
Her mother’s body dropped rapidly, bouncing as the rope went taut, jerking her around like a ragdoll. Her hands went to her throat, and for several long seconds she fought against the inevitable, her body eventually going still, rocking back and forth gently in the breeze.
Tears stung Annise’s eyes. Her hands ached from gripping the railing. She whirled around to locate her uncle, but Sir Jonius blocked her view, his face ashen. Don’t, he warned silently. Annise wanted to scream in his face, to shove him back. She wanted to curse his inconsistency and willingness to let this happen.
Then she recalled the way her mother had looked at the very end. Strong, courageous. She turned away from him, clinging to her mother’s last three words, unspoken but heard by Annise’s ears louder than a shout.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Down below, a second platform and scaffolding were moved into position. Her mother’s body was cut down, covered with a white cloak, and carried off.
They hauled her away like a sack of oats.
Annise already felt numb, and then Arch and Sir Dietrich were marched onto the platform.
All feeling left her body.
Six
The Eastern Kingdom, North of Rue,
on the road to Ferria
Roan
Roan’s hind parts had never been so sore, but there was no relief in sight as the horse galloped beneath him. He dared not heal himself, not when it would be too obvious.
Worse, he was forced to ride behind one of the prince’s men, a thick fellow who rarely spoke but grunted often and had an aroma that suggested bathing was not part of his normal routine. Then again, Roan knew he probably didn’t smell much better; unfortunately, his lifemark could heal wounds but not body odor.
Although he hated to admit it, he’d rather be riding behind Gareth. Or the silver-clad woman. He couldn’t decide.
They’d been riding pell-mell ever since the messenger brought the news of the northern king’s demise. Roan hadn’t been sad to see Barrenwood fade away behind them, blotted out by the constant fog that seemed to hang over it like a gray blanket.
Now, with each new bruise on his backside, he was hating the eastern plains even more. The terrain was monotonous, the flatland of grass and bush seeming to stretch on to infinity. Somewhere on the edge of the horizon, Roan thought he could see something glinting in the sun, but he couldn’t be certain.
“How much further?” he asked, his fingers aching from clutching the thick cantle separating him from the nameless man. Though his hands were still tied, his feet were free, thumping against the horse’s ribs on each side.
The man turned his head and offered a grunt.
Prince Gareth Ironclad’s horse, a black stallion that never seemed to tire, pulled up beside them, keeping stride. “Ho, plague child!” Gareth called.
Roan pretended not to hear him.
“Drowned rat?” Gareth said.
Roan could see the prince smiling on the edge of his vision. He pretended to only just hear him. “Did you say something?” he asked.
“How are you enjoying the ride?” Gareth asked, slowing his horse’s gait to a trot. “Not too sore, are you?” Without being commanded, the rest of his men eased to a halt beside him.
“I’m wonderful,” Roan said, trying not to grimace as he slung his leg over the horse’s back and attempted to slide off. With his hands tied in front, he wasn’t able to steady himself and he ended up sprawling face first into a prickly tuft of grass. The brown mare nuzzled in beside him, munching on the grass.
The men laughed, the prince the loudest, his voice carrying over all.
“I thought we had a spy, but I’m fairly certain we’ve got a new court jester!” the prince said, much to his men’s appreciation.
Roan muttered a curse under his breath and managed to push to his feet. Why were the prettiest ones always the most annoying?
“What was that, jester? Do you have a jape for us?”
Roan did his best to ignore the prince, but it was hard when the young man strode up beside him and clapped him on the back. “Friend, if you tell us the truth about yourself, this will all go much easier.”
The truth? Roan was so used to everything but the truth that the truth had almost lost all meaning. “The truth is in front of your face,” Roan said. “I was afflicted with the plague, sent to Dragon’s Breath, somehow recovered, climbed the wall, fought past a dragon, and was swept by current and fate into your snare.”
“Snare? We were but floating along when we happened upon you, battered and broken and clinging to your ‘dragon’s tooth’.” Gareth patted the fang, which hung from his belt. “We most likely saved your life, spy.”
“I am no spy.”
“You are also no jester,” the prince said, “despite the fact that you act like one.”
Roan was tiring of this conversation, so he changed the subject. “Who is she?” He gestured to the green-cloaked woman on the chestnut mare, now just a speck of greenish-brown in the distance. Unlike the rest of them, she hadn’t stopped when the prince stopped, continuing her feverish gallop across the plains.
The prince tried to hide the grimace, but Roan still noticed it. “So you’ve noticed her beauty, have you?”
Roan couldn’t deny her physical appeal, but that wasn’t the focus of his inquiry. There was something strange about her... “She’s different than us, isn’t she?”
That response seemed to please the prince. “Ha! What gave her away? Was it her yellow ore-cat eyes or steel-silver hair? She is a forest dweller. Her people have lived in the east long before our Crimean ancestors discovered these lands. The king conscripted her as a scout and a messenger because of her stealth and speed as a rider.”
“Conscripted? You mean enslaved?” Roan’s experience with monarchs was that they always got what they wanted.
“No, I don’t mean that at all. In the east, all men and women are free. She could leave the king’s service today if she wanted. But she won’t. My father is generous to those who remain loyal to him, and she is no exception.”
Roan chewed on this information, trying to decide how much to believe. His estimation of the prince was that he was arrogant to a fault, but not a liar. What he was saying was probably true, which surprised Roan. Could the people under the thumb of a monarch ever really be free? He set the question aside to consider later. “But is she…human?” he asked. He’d heard of strange creatures in the east.
“Depends on your definition,” the prince said. “Mostly, I’d say. But not as human as you or I. Not as flawed.”
“What’s her name?”
“Gwendolyn Storm. A strong name for a strong woman, don’t you think?”
Roan couldn’t argue with that, but that wasn’t what interested him. “What of her armor? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Her…kind…have power over ore. To them metal isn’t a thing, it’s part of them, like the air they breathe.”
“Her kind?”
“The Orians.”
Roan wished he’d listened more to his guardian’s lessons, but at the time Calypso felt impossibly far from the rest of the Four Kingdoms. He remembered hearing about the forest dwellers of Oria, but that was the extent o
f his knowledge.
“Will she wait for us?” he asked. Already she was the size of a pinprick, her green cloak nearly lost amongst the never ending plains.
“You’re fortunate I’m in a generous mood or I’d cut out your tongue for asking too many questions,” the prince said. “I’ve instructed her to scout ahead. Yes, she will wait. I want to present the good tidings of the northern king’s death to my father personally, though he may have heard already through the streams.”
“Why do you care about some dead king?” Roan asked. From his experience with royalty, a dead king meant little. There were always heirs, and a king was easily replaced.
“You really don’t know much, do you?” the prince said.
“I know survival,” Roan said, remembering the night he ran away from his guardian. The first few weeks on the streets of Calypso had been the hardest, especially when he refused to eat the scraps of meat occasionally thrown his way, holding out for moldy bread and cheese discarded by the marketplace vendors. “When you’re always searching for your next meal, for your next place to sleep, you care less and lesser about the actions of kings and their offspring.”
“You talk of us as if we are a curse on the land.” The prince was smiling. He always seemed to be smiling, a fact Roan grudgingly admitted appealed to him.
If only you knew the half of it, Roan thought. “We are all cursed, in our own ways,” Roan said.
“How…jaded you are,” the prince said, tossing him a water skin. “Anyway, drink your fill and then we ride on.”
Roan groaned, wishing his hands could be used to rub his sore arse.
Days passed in monotony. Each time the sun set, Roan peered into the distance and swore the glittering something he could see was farther away than when they started out. At least his rear end was beginning to build up enough bruises to make the journey slightly more comfortable.
Along the way, Roan remained vigilant, searching for an opportunity to escape. But on the endless plains where a man on horse or foot could be seen for leagues, he wouldn’t get far.
So he bided his time, waiting for his chance.
When they stopped to sleep, Roan was given food and water, but not enough to satisfy him. Thankfully, they never offered him meat, so he wasn’t forced to explain his unwillingness to eat it. In some ways it was humorous watching the prince taunt him with wild game that provided no temptation.
He’d also been given a white shirt and brown britches, as well as a sturdy pair of boots. “We stole them from a dead man,” Gareth had said with a smirk. Roan’s tattered clothes and shoes were burned in the campfire, and he wondered whether, despite the prince’s nonchalance, his story about the plague and Dragon’s Breath had been believed. Probably not. More than likely they were simply taking precautions.
While encamped, twice he tried to talk to the forest dweller, hoping to learn more about the origin of her armor, and twice she ignored him, going so far as to walk away to sit by herself.
Each time, the prince and his men laughed. “Smooth as silk, Sir Born From Dust,” the prince said.
“I wasn’t trying to be…” Roan started to respond, but then shook his head. There was no point in arguing with Gareth.
The third time he spoke to Gwendolyn Storm, she looked right at him, the last dying rays of the eastern sun illuminating her face. In the faux light, her eyes were as golden as the petals of the lumia, a desert flower that grew only in the south’s arid climate. The lumia was lovely to look at, but when its petals were ground into a paste it became a deadly poison if ingested.
The look she gave him felt kind of like poison.
And then she turned away, saying nothing.
“Why does she hate me?” Roan asked Prince Gareth, who was sitting nearby next to the cook fire, which was crackling happily. Roan had his back against a gnarled tree stump. The rest of the tree was gone.
“It’s not that she hates you,” the prince said, and, based on the prince’s tone, Roan knew immediately his question wasn’t being taken seriously. “It’s that she can’t stand to bear your ugliness for more than a spare moment.”
“Now who’s the jester?” Roan said.
The prince showed his teeth but didn’t laugh. “Sometimes I wonder if that plague of yours ate the small brain you were born with. You’re from the south, right?”
Roan nodded slowly, wondering where this was going. “I told you. I grew up in Calypso.”
“You think the East-West War has been going on for a long time? Well, compared to our little…disagreement, the war between the Calypsians and Orians is ancient. They’ve been doing battle for thousands of years, ever since Empress Someone-Or-Other hatched her first dragon and decided she should rule the entire realm. So yeah, she hates you.”
Roan shook his head. His entire life he’d been so focused on surviving another day, getting another bite to eat, that he’d never concerned himself with the broader world. After all, despite what his guardian had taught him as a young child, he would never be a part of anything larger than the dusty city in the south. And yet, here he was, cavorting with eastern royalty and their allies.
And now a strange but beautiful woman I’ve never truly met hates me simply because I grew up in Calypso. No wonder the war will never end…
Still… “She shouldn’t hate me just because of where I’m from. I had no choice in the matter.”
“Her father was killed in the Battle of Barrenwood,” Gareth said.
Oh. But wait. “You said that was more than eighty years ago. That doesn’t make sense.”
“I’m feeling more and more like your tutor,” the prince said. “The Orians live for well in excess of one hundred years. The oldest has been recorded to have survived to her one-hundred-and-ninety-fifth name day.”
Blazes. Roan had no idea. “But that would make Gwendolyn…” He turned toward where she’d gone and found her standing upright, a silhouette against the darkling sky. She appeared to be looking back at him. She seemed to be holding something, pulling on something. Aiming something.
“Don’t. Move,” Gareth said.
As if he had time. Before the second word was out of the prince’s mouth, a thin shadow darted from the gloom and sliced through Roan. He cried out, and when he tried to move his arm, he found it tethered to the tree stump.
The men were laughing. He looked to the side to find a narrow metal shaft protruding from the wood. He felt no pain, so it had missed him. Barely. But it had caught a loose bit of fabric hanging from his shirt just beneath his armpit, the impact so powerful it had pinned him to the old tree like a trophy on a board. With his opposite arm, he tried to yank the arrow out, but found it impossible.
“Need a hand?” the prince said, still chuckling. He snapped his fingers and two of his men stepped forward, each grasping part of the shaft, leaning back, and bit by bit, tearing the bolt from the stump.
When Roan was freed, he leapt to his feet and searched the terrain for Gwendolyn Storm. He spied her hunched form sitting cross-legged, facing away from them.
“She could’ve killed me!” Roan said, taking a step in her direction.
The prince extended a hand to stop him. “If she’d wanted to kill you, she would’ve. That was nothing more than a message.”
Roan frowned. “What message?”
“Stay away from her.”
There had to be more to the story of her father’s death at Barrenwood. “You said it was the Dreadnoughters who fought your people in the dead forest.”
“Actually, I said savages, but aye,” the prince said, sitting on a rock by the fire.
“But the Calypsians have nothing to do with the Dreadnoughts. Yes, they are within the bounds of the realm, but the Sandes family does not exercise control over them. So her father’s death doesn’t explain why she hates me.”
There was a sly gleam in Gareth’s eye. “I thought you knew nothing about royal politics.”
“I don’t, really. Just gossip on the street.”
<
br /> “I said the Dreadnought warriors led the battle, but they weren’t the only Southrons there.”
Roan frowned. He was sick of missing crucial details. Why hadn’t he asked his guardian more questions before he’d left? Clearly the prince was implying something, and there was only one answer that fit. “The Calypsians?” Roan tried to picture the royal family tree. The Sandes sisters were born of Vin Hoza of Phanes and Sun Sandes of Calypso, before mistrust and deceit ended their marriage and thrust the south into civil war. And Sun Sandes had been the eldest of three daughters of Jak and Riza Sandes. But neither had been of age a hundred years earlier. Who came before them? The answer struck him like a metallic arrow to the brain. “Roan Sandes,” he whispered.
The prince nodded. “Gwendolyn’s father would’ve survived if not for the second wave of attack, provided by the Calypsians. Roan Sandes was riding a red dragon larger than the trees of Ironwood. They say the beast cooked Boronis Storm alive within his armor. So not only are you from Calypso, but you bear the first name of her father’s murderer. Not to mention you claim to be ‘born from dust’, which isn’t far from Sandes. Can you really blame her for remembering the worst day of her life every time she sees you?”
Roan shook his head. He couldn’t blame her.
“Just be thankful she sent a message and not an arrow through your eye.” The prince laughed.
On the seventh day they reached the place that had been glittering in the sun for days. To Roan’s surprise it was another forest. But Roan had never seen a forest like this. Whereas Barrenwood had been dead and dying, the great Ironwood was very much alive. The forest seemed to be in constant motion, growing, changing before his very eyes. Branches stretched and shook out their leaves, which, glinting with metal around the edges, fell across his shoulders.
But that was only the start of the curiosities hidden within the bounds of the forest. The trees were sheathed with iron, which formed intricate patterns on their flanks, much like Gwendolyn Storm’s armor. Every time the sun peeked through the clouds, the trees glittered as if studded with diamonds, which explained what they’d seen from afar. Metallic arches and platforms swept overhead, and from time to time Roan saw swift-footed creatures racing across them, moving so quickly he never got more than a glimpse. Above the trees, enormous winged birds swooped and soared. Their wings were as silver as the edges of blades.
