Royal Bastards

by Andrew Shvarts

  “I’m Jax,” he stammered. “Jax of House…Stable…Hand.”

  “Really?”

  Jax looked down. “No. Not really. I made that up. I’m just Tilla’s half brother who works in the stables. I’ll be your guide, I guess.”

  “And I am deeply honored for your service. Anything I can offer you in return, please, just let me know.” She turned to stare down the tunnels. “Now, let’s get going! We only have so long before my uncle realizes I’m missing.”

  I started to ask what exactly he’d do to us if that happened, but decided it was probably better not to know.

  Most of the tunnels leading out of the castle had collapsed, but there still was one that led to Whitesand Beach. Unfortunately, getting there meant navigating a labyrinth of tight corridors and crumbling dead ends. Jax led the way, Lyriana followed, and Miles trailed after them, spouting Western history to no one in particular. Zell, though, lagged behind, walking alone. I didn’t feel like listening to Miles’s rambling or Lyriana’s coos of interest, so I fell back with him.

  “You seem awfully comfortable down here,” I said.

  Zell arched an eyebrow at me. “I grew up in Zhal Korso, a city carved into the side of a mountain. I’ve spent my entire life in caves and passageways.”

  “Right. Zhal Korso. Makes sense,” I said, even though I’m pretty sure that was the first time I heard that the Zitochi even had cities. “I’m sure it’s very nice….”

  Zell didn’t seem to be listening. “Your magical stone. May I borrow it?”

  “Magical…Oh, my Sunstone. Sure, I guess.” I reached up to the band around my neck and unclasped it. “It’s not magic, though. Or a stone. Miles’s mom invented them, and my dad got me this fancy one.” I handed it to Zell, a round leather disk that looked like a compass, except with a hot white fire burning behind its glass face. “It’s full of gas from this mine, special gas that makes the fire burn like that. You push that little lever on the side to spark it, and then you can twist it more to make it brighter.”

  “Clever,” Zell said, barely glancing at it. The Sunstones were a symbol of Western pride, a local invention that held its own against the fanciest magic lamps of Lightspire’s Artificers. I kind of expected Zell to be blown away, or at least impressed, but he seemed far less interested in the Sunstone than he was in the wall. He held the Sunstone up and reached out with one hand, and his nightglass knuckles sparkled in its light. With the tips of his fingers, he traced three weathered rifts in the wall.

  “What are they?” I asked.

  “Scars,” he replied, reverent. “From ancient battles, long forgotten. Lifetimes ago, your great-grandfather and mine fought in tunnels just like these.”

  I stepped close to him and reached out, tracing my fingers after his through the long, horizontal scars. He smelled like winter frost on crumbling leaves, like earth and rain. My heart quickened. “Maybe they fought each other.”

  Zell turned back to me. “What would they think of us now?”

  “Hey!” Jax called from around a corner. “Everything okay back there? He’s not trying anything, is he?”

  “We’re fine, Jax!” I shouted back. My cheeks were burning. Why were my cheeks burning? “Come on,” I said to Zell. “Let’s catch up.”

  Jax led us through a massive chamber, the single widest room I’d ever seen in the tunnels; the walls here had once been painted, but had long since faded away, leaving just the faintest ghosts of the murals that once had been. As a kid, I’d stared at them for hours, but the most I could make out was a big bear in the left corner, some stars along the ceiling, and a pale crowned figure with a long white beard. Even I knew who that was: Tenebrous Kent, the first of the Old Kings, who united all the pilgrims and settlers east of the Frostkiss Mountains and founded the Kingdom of the West, which his line would rule for the next five hundred years.

  My gaze flitted to Lyriana, and I felt a surprising pang of anger. Until the Volaris came along.

  We left the room with the murals via a narrow passage behind a pile of rubble and through a hallway with holes in the floor, where we could hear the rumbling of an underground river. We eventually came to a tight corridor we had to squeeze through one by one, and when we emerged on the other side, I could smell the softest hint of a salty breeze.

  Zell’s brow furrowed. “I hear voices. Is someone at the beach?”

  “After a feast? Doesn’t surprise me.” Jax shrugged. “I mean, Whitesand Beach is the perfect place to bring a girl if you’re looking to get laid.” Lyriana gasped. “Or…so I’ve heard some of the guys say. I, uh, wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  I let out an amused snort. Zell just shook his head.

  We rounded the last corner of the tunnels, revealing a jagged opening in the stone wall. Through it, I could see the night sky. And it wasn’t cloudy, like I’d worried, but beautifully, wonderfully clear. The stars twinkled white, and the moon hung overhead like a pearl on a strand. An unseasonably warm breeze swept over us. Best of all, I could see the flicker of a gentle green glow, the telltale sign of the Coastal Lights. “Come on!”

  The exit from the tunnels let out on a high ledge of a cliff overlooking Whitesand Beach; a barrier of sandstone boulders and twisting vines hid it from view, but if you looked just right, you could make out a small path of loose rocks leading down. I stepped out onto the ledge and shoved a few vines aside. There they were, out in the distant sky: three brilliant emerald ribbons, dancing and twisting like serpents amid the stars, their length stretching as far as the eye could see. The Coastal Lights, the wonder of the West, with the wide Endless Ocean stretching out into the night and beyond. I turned to Lyriana.

  But, for some reason, she was looking down at the beach itself. “Is that my uncle?” she whispered.

  Yep, sure enough, there he was, standing barefoot in the center of the sandy cove: Archmagus Rolan himself. Dark waves lapped at the shoreline just past him. Two of his bodyguards flanked him, scimitars sheathed at their hips. We were maybe thirty feet above them, but I could still make out their faces. No one looked happy.

  Three people stood opposite them. I’d recognize Grezza Gaul’s hulking shape anywhere, not to mention the two massive axes strapped across his back. Next to him was Lady Robin Hampstedt, Miles’s mom, the night wind rippling through her straight blond hair. And between the two of them was none other than my own father. There was something off about him, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Something that set my teeth on edge.

  “What in the frozen hell?” I turned back to Zell and Miles. “Do you know what they’re doing out here?”

  Miles shrugged helplessly, and Zell just shook his head. “Listen!” Lyriana pressed herself against the boulders. “You can hear them!”

  We all leaned up against the rocks on the cliff’s edge. Lyriana wasn’t wrong. The walls of the cove were curved just right, so the sound of voices at its heart carried up the cliffs. Rolan was speaking, and his booming voice betrayed just a hint of anger. “I tire of your riddles, Lord Kent. Why drag me out here in the middle of the night? Do you know where my missing mages are or not?”

  My father stepped forward, and I saw a pair of daggers sheathed on his hips. That’s what was off about him. My father never went out armed.

  Why was he armed?

  “My apologies, Archmagus,” he said. “With matters this sensitive, I thought it best to talk far from inquisitive ears.” He gestured with one hand, and Lady Hampstedt stepped forward. She was a thin, severe woman with a judgmental frown that seemed permanently carved into her face. She held in her arms a small, undecorated chest, just bigger than a jewelry box. Next to me, Miles stiffened, tightening his grip on the stone. “Lady Hampstedt, would you please inform the Archmagus where his mages are?”

  “Dead,” she said coldly, and I winced. Lady Hampstedt was famous for her lack of tact, but come on, lady!

  “Dead how?” Rolan demanded, but his eyes were trained on that little lead chest. What the
hell was in it? And why was just looking at it making the hairs on my neck stand on end?

  “The Zitochi have a most unusual torture practice,” Lady Hampstedt replied, as if that were an answer, “reserved for only their most terrible and hated criminals. They call it ‘khai khal zhan.’”

  “Khai khal zhen,” Grezza corrected.

  “Khai khal zhen. It means ‘the breaking of the mind.’ There is a weed that grows in their lands, a brittle black flower that, when chewed, causes a person to experience intense and often terrifying hallucinations, not to mention a complete disconnect with reality. Zitochi shamans chew a single leaf and then commune with their spirits for days.” I was getting the feeling she really liked lecturing. “In the khai khal zhen, a prisoner is forced to eat fifteen leaves. And then, as they lose their mind, they’re slowly and methodically tortured to death.”

  “The Zitochi killed my men?” Rolan’s gaze narrowed at Grezza. “They performed this…this monstrous ritual?”

  “Well, it had never been done on a mage before, not as far as I can tell. And it made for a truly fascinating experiment.” Lady Hampstedt’s mouth twitched, giving just the hint of a smile. “A mage’s Ring is the source of his power, but the mage’s mind is what gives the Ring’s magic shape and direction. Destroy the Ring, and you destroy the mage’s power. But what would happen to the Ring if you destroyed the mage’s mind?” Her tone was chilling, even for her, like she was talking about a funny story she’d overheard in the market.

  I was breathing fast. A drop of sweat streaked down my face. Something bad was going to happen. I knew it. I could taste it. I suddenly wanted very badly to go, to be back in the castle, to run into the tunnels, to be anywhere but here, on this beach, about to witness whatever this was. But my stupid legs didn’t move.

  “What I’m about to show you, Archmagus, will change the course of history.” Lady Hampstedt knelt, setting the chest down in the sand. She snapped off the two latches on the front and cracked the lid, just a bit. An eerie light glowed out, impossibly bright, flickering red, then yellow, then blue. “The incredible thing isn’t what the khai khal zhen did to the mages. It’s what it did to their Rings.”

  She threw open the lid to the chest all the way, and that bright, pulsing light lit up the beach, brighter even than the dancing green bands overhead. Lying in the center of the chest on a padded cloth was a leather disk, just like a Sunstone. But behind the glass face wasn’t the usual clockwork mechanism but something else, a thin multicolored gemstone that was the source of all that light.

  The gem from a mage’s Ring. A Titan stone. But what had they done to it? It pulsed and flared, changing colors almost violently, and in its sleek surface I could see swirling bands of gold and crimson. It was beautiful, insanely beautiful, and terrifying, like someone had bottled a hurricane or chipped a sliver off the sun.

  All the power of a mage. Trapped in a tiny little stone.

  The reaction from the others was instantaneous. Archmagus Rolan jerked back in horror, as if the box contained a hissing serpent, and his own Rings flared up a searing red. His guardsmen’s hands jerked to their hilts. Grezza Gaul wrapped his massive hands around the bases of his axes, and my father just smiled.

  Next to me, Lyriana gasped, and Miles staggered back, the blood draining from his face. “Oh no,” he whispered. “No, no, no…”

  “This is blasphemy!” Archmagus Rolan bellowed, his voice booming like a thunderclap.

  “No.” Lady Hampstedt stood up and lifted the disk up from the chest. She flicked a little lever on its side, the same one I would use to turn on my Sunstone, the one that made a little electric spark. “This is the future.”

  Then she tossed the disk at the Archmagus, and the gemstone inside sizzled and cracked.

  Lady Hampstedt and my father dove away. The Archmagus screamed and threw up his left hand, and the Rings on it flared a vibrant purple. A glowing curtain of light seeped out from his fingers, billowing back to wrap around him like a cloak. A magic shield. But it was too little, too late.

  Before the shield could even get halfway around him, the disk hit its shimmering surface, and it exploded.

  No. “Exploded” doesn’t do it justice. It blew the hell up.

  There was a deafening blast that shook the cliff face and sent Miles and Jax tumbling onto their backs. I threw up a hand to shield my eyes from the blinding burst of light that scorched up from the beach like an exploding comet, one that flared gold and crimson and a horrifying, sleek black. The taste of copper flooded my mouth. I could hear ice crackling and flames scorching, earth rumbling and glass shattering. This wasn’t just an explosion of force and fire, like the bombs used to clear rubble down in the mines. This was a blast of raw, untamed magic, and it tore through the night and trembled the earth.

  I managed to stay upright, even though my whole body was shaking, and blinked the colors out of my eyes. The cove below was a mess. A crater smoked where the Archmagus had been standing, the white sand scorched black, with a half-dozen tiny fires still smoldering around it, alongside a dozen glistening icicles and a few stony crags that poked out of the ground like probing fingers.

  The royal guardsman who had been standing to Rolan’s left, near where the gem had exploded, was completely gone, just a few scraps of bloody cloth scattered across the beach. The one who had been on Rolan’s right had been protected by the shield, so there was a little more of him left, a moaning, blackened husk in the sand, reaching up to the sky with a mangled hand. Grezza Gaul stepped toward him and brought down one of his massive axes in a brutal chop. The guardsman didn’t moan anymore.

  Behind me, Miles had his hands clasped over his eyes, and Jax was still lying on his back with surprise. Zell sucked in his breath, digging his fingers into the stone. Lyriana started to shriek, and, moving on pure impulse, I clasped a hand over her mouth and trapped the scream.

  Time seemed to slow down. My ears were ringing, either from the blast or from the rush of blood. My heart thundered in my chest so hard it felt like it was going to explode. And the truth tightened around me like a clenching fist.

  Change is coming, my father had said, and with it, tremendous danger.

  He hadn’t been talking about negotiating with Archmagus Rolan. He’d been talking about killing him.

  Farther down the beach, something was moving, something ragged and bloody and gasping. I could barely believe it, but it was Archmagus Rolan. And he looked terrible. The explosion had thrown him back at least two dozen feet. He lay on his back in the sand, gurgling red foam from broken lips. His left arm was gone completely. Half his face was scorched raw, and his left eye was a dripping socket. A few bright blue crystals poked out through his skin.

  And yet despite all that, he was still moving. With a throaty gasp, he lurched up and threw out his right hand, the one that was still there, the one still covered in Rings. They flickered a bright, hot white, and the air crackled with the electric pulse of magic. A scorching bolt of lightning burst out of Rolan’s hand and struck Grezza’s shoulder, hurling the Zitochi backward across the cove. He slid across the sand, leaving a long, broad streak in his wake. Rolan turned his arm toward a cowering Lady Hampstedt, a second bolt charging between his fingers. She threw up her hands in terror….

  And then my father sprang to his feet and sprinted across the beach. The Archmagus swiveled his hand and let out another blast of lighting, but my father veered to the left, dodging it, and then suddenly he was right at Rolan’s side. In one seamless motion, my father whipped his dagger out of the sheath on his belt and sliced it through the air. Rolan’s fingers came off his hand, tumbling into the sand, and the bolt of lightning vanished with them. My father slammed his knee into Rolan’s face, knocked him onto his back, twirled the dagger, and then plunged it down through his wrist, nailing it into the blackened sand.

  It was over. What good were Rings if you didn’t have hands?

  Lyriana squirmed, but I held her tight, refusing to release my grip
on her mouth. Tears streaked down her cheeks, hot against my hand. I didn’t know much. But I knew I didn’t want our parents seeing us up here.

  “Grezza! Robin!” my father shouted. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” Lady Hampstedt replied, and Grezza pulled himself out of the sand with a grunt. His armor was scorched through on his shoulder, and smoke billowed off the burned and bubbling skin exposed. He didn’t seem to care.

  “You swore your mage-killer would end him.” My father stood tall over Rolan’s form. “And yet he still breathes.”

  “I hadn’t counted on him casting his shield. It absorbed too much of the blast.” Lady Hampstedt looked the giddiest I’d ever seen her. “But think! Think! That was the weakest gem with the lightest charge, and it still was enough to shatter the Archmagus’s own shield! Think of the power at our hands!”

  “I don’t know…what madness this is…” Rolan gasped out. “But please. Please. Don’t hurt Lyriana.”

  “Your niece?” Grezza walked over to my father’s side, collecting his bloodied axes out of the sand. “My elder son, Razz, is in her room now. Slitting her pretty little throat.”

  Lyriana trembled in my arms, and I felt her heart pounding in her chest, her breath against my hand.

  “It’s true.” My father’s teeth sparkled bone white as he hunkered down by Rolan’s side. “An unfortunate necessity, Archmagus. Your niece is already dead.”

  “No!” Rolan moaned, and for the first time, his voice sounded pained.

  Behind me, Jax leaned against the wall, pale and distant. Miles sat in a quivering ball, his face hidden in his hands. Zell had turned away, disgusted. And I just stood frozen in place, holding Lyriana tight against me, hoping, wishing, begging, that this wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be true. My father would never kill an innocent girl. He was a good Lord. A good man!

  Yet there he was, hands dripping blood.

  “You will pay for this,” Rolan whispered. “All of you. The King will come for you! He’ll send an army!”