by Ellyn, Court
Lord Raed frightened Arryk as much as Lady Eritha did. The man had eyes of steel, and he never smiled.
“Da refused to train Nathryk,” Istra went on, encouraging him with a subtle wink. “He must think better of you. I’d take the chance, if I were you.”
“I’ll think about it,” Arryk said.
After Nathryk became bored with the shulla nest, he continued along the cliff-side, so close to the edge that Arryk felt his heart in his throat just watching. Bhodryk danced after him, trying to catch the wheeling birds, his golden head shining. His laughter carried far and clear on the gusts.
“Do you want butter on your bread, Highness?” asked Nanny.
Arryk turned his attention from the cliffs and took the thick slice she held out for him.
“Getting left behind with us isn’t so bad, is it?” she asked, smiling.
Arryk wanted to tell her, “It’s worse than bad. Everyone thinks I’m a coward now,” but he kept it to himself. Too ashamed to eat, he stuck a finger in the butter and swiped an M in it, like a shulla flying.
Nanny didn’t scold him. If princes wanted to draw in their food, who was she to correct them? “If you want, I’ll finish the story about the kidnapped Valroi princes.”
“No, Bhodryk will want to hear.”
Istra set a heavy-bottomed mug beside him. Purple juice, pink bubbles.
“I don’t like grape juice,” he said, nose wrinkled.
Istra laughed. “That’s appropriate in a land known for its vineyards.” She snuck a furtive glance at Nanny, and when she wasn’t looking, Istra switched her own mug with Arryk’s. “Sweetberry cordial,” she whispered. “But don’t tell your brothers.”
Arryk smiled, feeling better, and took a big bite of his bread and butter. Istra contented herself with a cold chicken leg and idly tucked a windblown strand of hair behind her ear, baring the shiny pink scar that slashed across her forehead. It split her left eyebrow in two. Another crossed the bridge of her nose. He’d noticed them the moment they met, but never asked about them. She caught him staring, and a reflexive hand darted to her face.
“I didn’t think you’d been to battle,” he said, broaching the subject as politely as he knew how. “Did you fight in the war?”
She shook her head. Eyes rabbit-like, she glanced toward the cliffs and the shrinking figures walking there. “It was my fault. I lost my temper.”
“Nathryk did that to you?” Arryk scrambled to his knees, outraged but not surprised. “Oh, I hate him!” As soon as he said it, he clamped his teeth on his bottom lip. If Nathryk heard him, he would deal Arryk more than a bloody nose.
Istra offered a tentative smile. “One doesn’t cross royalty.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you!” No, because I’m too cowardly to lift a finger against so much as a fly, he accused himself. He caught the flies trapped in the windows, examined their shiny blue-black carapaces and translucent wings, then let them go. Finishing his bread with a lump in his throat, he resolved to smash the next fly he found and not feel sorry about it.
Voice flat and soft, Istra admitted, “It was bad enough that I was out of bed for only a couple of weeks when you came to live here.” She pressed at her side again. Earlier, when she asked him to help with the basket, she hadn’t been faking the pain after all.
Nanny’s mouth opened a fraction, but she refrained from voicing her concern. She laid down the butter knife instead and watched the boys walking along the cliffs.
“Broken ribs can lead to pneumonia because you can’t breathe right,” Istra went on. “That’s what my brother died of, so Da and Grandmother wouldn’t let me do a thing all spring. It was so boring. No sword fighting or archery or riding or anything. Doctors won’t let me resume training until winter. I’ll be completely out of condition. We can start together, Highness! Would you like that? Captain Bartran barks louder than he bites, and Da? Well, he squired both my brothers and has plenty of war stories to tell you about. He fought at Stonebrydge, you know.”
When he said nothing, she added, “In any case, it will make your brother jealous. And you’ll learn all kinds of ways to defend yourself.”
Yes, Arryk liked that idea. Fistfights were one thing, but what frightened him most was the knowledge that one day Nathryk would carry a sword—and command thousands. “Is it true what I’ve heard? Is it his fault we lost the war?”
Istra and Nanny exchanged stone-faced glances. Arryk had heard Rance and Lord Raed talking. Apparently, Nathryk had run away from Éndaran, snuck aboard a ship and gotten himself captured by Leanians. The enemy presented him on the battlefield, but the White Falcon had refused to surrender the fight in order to reclaim his son. Arryk also heard that Father had been so upset that he fled the field, and that’s when the enemy won. Talk of an avedra cropped up in most of the rumors, too, but Arryk couldn’t figure out where that detail fit in.
“I don’t think wars are won or lost by one person alone, Highness,” Istra answered. Her fingers brushed the back of his hand. “And we must never speak of this again. Do you understand?”
Only too well. Arryk doubted Nathryk would be the kind of king who ignored rumors that his foolishness had led to Fiera’s greatest shame.
His brothers drifted around a deep curve in the fluted cliff. Shullas shrieked at the intruders, veered in great circles, then dived close to scare them away. “I wish they would come back and eat.” The Leanian guards had fallen back a bit, unwilling or unable to keep up with two tireless boys. Arryk climbed to his feet. “I should’ve gone with them.”
“Eat up, Highness,” said Nanny, more snappish than usual, and started down the hill to fetch them.
Istra sighed. “You won’t be able to relax until they’re back, will you? All right, then. Let’s go with her.” Descending the hill side by side, Istra tried talking of small things like the book she’d finished reading (she had discovered he liked books), or her brother’s new wolfhound puppy, or how Arryk liked Master Graidyn as a tutor. But Arryk’s attention belonged to the orange coats in the distance and his brother’s golden head shining almost as brightly as the guards’ helmets. Fear clawed at his belly worse than vinegar. He broke into a trot and passed Nanny.
“Highness, slow down,” Istra called.
He ran faster, trying to keep his eyes on Bhodryk while hopping stones and avoiding a broken ankle. Istra caught up to him, holding her side, and didn’t try to stop him. She watched the figures ahead, too. “Bhodryk!” he called, but the wind whipped his voice in the other direction.
“The guards are keeping watch,” Istra said, short of breath now. “There’s no need—”
He called for Bhodryk again. Whether or not he heard, this time he raised a skinny arm to wave and started back along the cliffs. For an instant, Arryk heard Bhodryk’s laughter swirling among the cries of the gulls. Then he was falling.
Bhodryk screamed like the birds, plummeting toward the sea.
“Catch him!” Istra cried and her long legs carried her ahead. The Leanian guards ran too, boot heels kicking high.
Bhodryk collided with a jutting rock, and the screaming stopped. Limp as a rag doll, he tumbled in a cartwheel, falling, falling, then vanished in an explosion of sea-spray.
Arryk had never run so fast, or so slow. When he caught up, the guards tried to hold him back, but he squirmed free of grasping hands and dropped to his belly at the edge of the world. Far below, Bhodryk lay on a ledge of black rock. Waves exploded in white foam, and the tide pulled at his little body so that he seemed to move. “Get up!” Arryk screamed, but Bhodryk didn’t get up.
“Highness,” he heard. A guard’s strong hand gripped his shoulder and tried to pull him away.
Arryk kicked at the man until he left him alone, and all the while he heard his own voice wailing. He couldn’t make it stop. He was crying and screaming and he couldn’t stop and Bhodryk didn’t get up.
A pair of skinny arms latched onto him and dragged him back from the edge. Istra’s yellow hair ble
w into his face. “What happened?” she demanded.
The guards looked at each other, none wanting to be the first to speak, then one by one, their gaze settled on Nathryk. When he felt them staring he stopped looking at his brother’s broken body and turned to face them. His black eyes glared them down, and that glare promised poison, arson, and skulls broken in the night.
“Prince Bhodryk was running,” one of the Leanians answered. “He tripped … that’s all.”
Nathryk broke the stare and exhaled an exaggerated sigh of sorrow. “One of you dolts better decide how you’re going to get his body back. What will you tell my aunt? The regent will hang your heads on pikes. But don’t worry. If you take me out hunting tomorrow, I’ll lie for you. No one will ever know that you stood by while my little brother fell.”
Arryk roared, voice raw in his throat, and he struggled against Istra’s grip. He would shove Nathryk over the edge! That would show him. But Istra held him close and whispered, “Shh, shh,” into his ear until he stopped fighting. Through the flaxen cloud of her blowing hair, he saw Nathryk gazing at the body. A grin ghosted across his lips.
~~~~
2
Hammer and chisel
A careful stroke,
A mountain falls.
—Songs of Stone
“Cold is the road that leads to nowhere,” Lord Degany grumbled to himself. In the shadow of the mountain the wind blew frigid, shaking loose a dry dusting of snow that perched on the branches of the spruce trees. It sifted down onto the rocky road and settled on the back of his neck. He tugged a fur collar tight under his bearded jaw. Behind him, a line of men struggled up the road. The clatter of their hobnailed boots striking the stones echoed across the gulf between mountain slopes. Gray clouds hid the peeks as if they were faces weeping behind a veil. Ragged tails of mist rolled over the mountains’ shoulders to fill the valleys. Winter had come to the Drakhan Mountains, a month earlier than expected.
Degany cursed the change in weather, as did the men marching along behind him. They had sweated in shirtsleeves on the day they left Zeldanor. A good thing Truva had thought to pack his warmest cloak for him. Never failed, though. Embark upon a mission of unprecedented importance and complications quickly mounted.
“What was that, m’ lord?” asked his squire. “Did you need something?” Wolf, a younger son of Lord Whitewood, trotted up beside Degany. Though his cheeks were blotched red, he seemed untroubled by the cold. Youthful resilience. “Are you warm enough, sir?”
“Don’t make me sorry I brought you along, boy.”
Wolf kept pace but shut his mouth for another mile or so, while the party maneuvered along a narrow stretch of road barely clinging to the mountain’s shoulder. Then he asked, “What do the dwarves mean when they call you ‘stone-son’?”
“That means I have a hard head and I’m true to my word.” A lie, but it satisfied the boy’s curiosity. He also avoided telling his squire that his legs ached and not only from the cold. They were too short to straddle the sturdy, broad-backed mountain horse properly. He took a pull from a flask to ease the pain.
Surely Wolf had heard the rumors and hoped to trick his foster-lord into revealing the truth, but the boy was not clever, and Degany, as his father before him, was a well-practiced liar. If the dwarves preferred to deal with him over many another lord, it was because they knew his ancestry, even if Degany himself denied it.
His past negotiations with the clans had mostly revolved around bargaining for lower tolls on trade roads. His present assignment was inexplicably more delicate. Gold was a touchy subject on the best of days, but after the White Falcon’s stunt in robbing the Drakhan dwarves of their new-found treasure, the matter, if not handled with extreme care, might put an end to his long-standing friendship with the clans.
“Now is the time,” King Rhorek had told him. Newly returned from the peace talks at Nathrachan, the Black Falcon had looked worn and sick with exhaustion. Still, His Majesty reminded Degany how formal and well-groomed life was at court compared to that at Zeldanor. Standing in the Audience Chamber, Degany smelled horse on his trousers, hounds on his gloves, and he hadn’t considered polishing his boots or trimming his beard until the meeting was upon him. If the king had taken note of his uncouth appearance, he had the grace not to mention it. “Fiera is in upheaval, and the Princess Regent is not as discreet as her brother was. She let it be known that she wants nothing to do with the gold that, she believes, led to Shadryk’s death. When her temper cools, she may feel differently. Therefore, we must act now. Before she realizes her error in judgment and sends a delegation into the mountains.”
Degany had urged the king to wait until the temper of the dwarves ebbed, but Rhorek wouldn’t hear of it. “I do not expect them to give us their treasury, Lord Zeldanor,” he’d said. “Just make inroads. Get them talking. Find out what they mean to do with this gold and what they want in trade. One must start with a single cut to whittle down a mountain, am I correct?”
This first cut might take Degany all winter, or a single day. So he sharpened his chisel and headed into the Drakhans with his two brothers and his brother-by-marriage, along with twenty men of Zeldanor’s garrison, four squires, and two supply wagons.
The dwarven city of Ristencort lay on the far side of the first range of mountains in the canyons of the Ristbrooke, a three day journey from home. Would the stone-fathers there turn him away? Or would they escort him to the hidden City of Elders where surely the gold was hoarded? Degany forbade himself to hope for an easy negotiation but prepared himself to set in for a winter-long siege and much bootlicking.
“Drys might like to go,” Truva had said when she learned of his mission. “He’s old enough now and has been to war besides.”
“This isn’t a journey for high-spirited boys, Truva. I take Wolf only because it’s his duty. But to Drys, this business will likely be dull and disappointing. Until I know what to expect, I won’t send for him.” Truva’s cocked eyebrow told him what he already knew. The words were empty excuses and Degany himself was full of shit. The straw-haired boy that Degany had carried on his shoulders had grown into a stranger. In the service of Blue Mountain, Drys had ridden off to war while his father stayed home with orders to guard the hinterlands from any Fierans trying to sneak into Aralorr by the back door. None did. And when his son rode home with tales of valor and conquest, what had Degany to offer? Nothing. Besides, he wasn’t any good around strangers. Learning to speak each other’s language was a painful, tedious business and caused all sorts of trouble. Best to do the job yourself and get acquainted with strangers over something less crucial than a king’s errand.
More excuses still. Degany decided his horse wasn’t as full of shit as he was.
A horn bellowed ahead. Gehart, his brother-by-marriage, and three men of the garrison had ridden ahead more than an hour ago to find a suitable camp and possibly elk for their spits. The horn’s echo sounded and resounded, deep in the gullies, high in the clefts. Degany reined in and waited. Wolf and the rest of the party did the same. One blast meant danger. Two, company. Three, campsite established.
The clouds swallowed the echo. None followed it.
“Trouble,” Wolf said.
Degany tugged his sword haft to make sure the blade hadn’t frozen to the scabbard, then dug in his spurs. His brothers thundered after him. The garrison slipped into double-time.
The clearing, sheltered between wooded slopes, had become a killing ground. Blood had melted the snow, and fresh snow had fallen on top of the dark pools, reminding Degany of those sugary confections that Truva was fond of. He dismounted, grunting and grateful when the ache in his legs waned, and stepped carefully around the bodies. Dwarves, forty or fifty of them, lay torn and broken and turning gray in the icy air. Most still held khorzai in frozen fists, and many of the points on those pick-axes were stained with blood. Or something like blood. Many of the pools, too, were a brighter color than they ought to have been.
“Are the
clans at war?” Wolf asked. He stood amid the slaughter, turning slowly.
Degany’s brothers spread out, hunting for valuables, or the lack of them, that might attest to why these dwarves had been slain. The column of soldiers caught up, and Gehart motioned them to stay out of the clearing.
“These dwarves are of a single clan,” Degany replied.
“How can you tell?”
“Same mark on their picks. Same beading in their beards.” He should have brought Drys. It was Drys who needed to know the dwarven culture, not this lowlander’s son.
“Oh, yes, I see now,” Wolf said, bending close to one of the bodies. He straightened again as if someone had lashed him in the backside. “What was that?”
The boy’s ears were sharp; Degany heard nothing, but two of his brothers had come to attention at the same time. At the edge of the clearing, a gray-green bough near the ground shivered contrary to the wind.
“Wolves, likely,” Degany said. “Come to investigate the stink of blood. Relax, will you? They’ll take a body before they attack able-bodied men.”
“Do you think wolves killed them in the first place? I mean, look!” The boy pointed, disgust twisting his mouth. Neither his eyes nor his instincts failed him. Degany couldn’t deny that many of the wounds looked like ragged teeth marks, but others were certainly dealt by blades.
“Diggs!” called Dastyr from across the clearing. Degany hated that nickname, but he couldn’t remember a day he hadn’t owned it. “What do you make of this?”
Joining his younger brother, Degany examined the snow. Deep drifts under the trees had been disturbed, pressed flat in places, and that bright blood, curdled to ice, left a clear trail deep into the forest.
“See? Wolves,” said Wolf smugly. “They dragged some of the bodies away already. They got a den up there, I bet. Should we hunt ‘em down?”
