by David Estes
Lord Griswold slapped the bear away lazily with the back of his iron hand.
Her uncle stepped back to regroup, watching as the Ice Lord swept his hand across the last group of archers, who were firing fletched arrows into his icy skin. The second his fingers touched them, they froze into statues. When he swung his arm back the other way, they crumbled to ice dust under the blow.
Annise whirled around. There were so few of them left. Sir Dietrich was rallying a few soldiers to him, preparing for a final attack. Tarin fought on his own, bludgeoning her uncle with Morningstar while he looked down like a god, laughing.
Sir Metz had formed his own small pack, who now surrounded the Ice Lord, trying to hack his thick ice legs to pieces. She was surprised to see Sir Craig still alive, fighting bravely, a far cry from the staggering knight she’d known to fall first in tournaments.
Annise wobbled on her feet, trying to decide what to do. No option seemed right. Every path seemed to end in death, both hers and the few of her soldiers that remained. Somewhere in her battered brain she had a thought. An idea.
“To me,” she said, but it came out as naught but a whisper. Another soldier was frozen by the Ice Lord. A spearmen was crushed under her uncle’s metal boot. She took a deep breath. “To me!” she shouted, her voice rising over the clank of metal on metal.
All heads turned her way, and then, without hesitation, they ran toward her. All except for Tarin, who continued fighting her uncle, a tiny whirlwind in the midst of a tornado. Even Sir Jonius lumbered over to listen, though the other soldiers kept their distance from the bear, whose chest was ornamented with a bone shard.
Annise couldn’t think about Tarin now, not when her last two dozen men and her aunt were staring at her, waiting. Every second was a risk. Every moment carried a weight: the potential to be their last.
“Let the Ice Lord kill the Imposter King,” she said. “It’s the only way.”
At first all she got were confused looks, but then Sir Dietrich nodded in understanding. “Yes. Men, harry the Ice Lord from the side facing the Imposter King. When the Ice Lord reacts, flee toward Lord Griswold.”
The men nodded, their weary faces armored with determination.
As one, they charged back into the fray. Tarin was dodging axe blows from her uncle, and though he was but an ant next to the giant he faced, Annise swore he stood at least a head taller than before, his armor looking awkwardly small. She shook off the thought and raced after her men, who were closing in on the Ice Lord.
He reached out to touch them.
“Ahhh!” Dietrich yelled, dodging the touch, slicing off one of the Ice Lord’s fingers, which shattered when it hit the ground. The others shouted, too, and then Annise found herself releasing a war cry, swinging Evenstar wildly, hitting any piece of ice she could reach. One of her soldiers, who was no longer a man, but ice, crumbled to the ground. She accidentally brushed up against Sir Jonius’s thick coat, but he barely noticed, so intent was he on raking his claws across the Ice Lord’s legs.
“Retreat!” Dietrich shouted. The group turned sharply, like they were each a part of one creature, Sir Jonius included, and sprinted toward the Imposter King. Annise glanced back. As she had hoped, the Ice Lord, enraged at having had chunks of his legs slashed off, dove after them, long icy fingers outstretched, reaching for them. Reaching for her…
Annise threw herself to the side at the same time many of the others did. As she tumbled, she saw that one man had been a beat behind, turning to ice midway through his dive, shattering as his frozen body hit the ground.
Sir Craig.
A pang of sadness hit Annise, but she shook it away as she rolled to a stop. Now was not the time for mourning. Not yet.
She watched as the Ice Lord’s momentum carried him toward his master, Lord Griswold himself. The metal giant tried to dodge out of the way, but his size became his disadvantage. He was too slow by half, the Ice Lord’s fingers brushing across his calf.
Annise held her breath. Nothing happened, the metal gleaming in the sun. No, Annise thought. She was out of answers, out of ideas. How did one defeat a man made of metal, and a giant no less?
Her breath rushed out of her as she saw it: a streak of white appeared on his calf, spreading across the metal, rushing up his legs, along his torso, and into his chest. Her uncle stared down, his metal mouth gaping open in surprise. His arms froze, and then his mouth too, still open. The rest of his head was consumed last.
Tarin swung Morningstar across Lord Griswold’s frozen boots, shearing through the ice like it was nothing but wet paper. His giant leg crumpled and the weight of the rest of him jerked to the side, snapping his other leg in half. When his body hit the ground, it shattered into a million pieces, a mountain of crushed ice.
The Ice Lord seemed so shocked by the turn of events that he didn’t even bother to defend himself as Tarin smashed Morningstar through him next, bringing him to his knees before landing a final blow to his skull. He, too, cracked and joined the icy rubble that had once been his master.
While the few survivors watched, Tarin brought his weapon down again and again and again. No one tried to stop him. Annise turned and walked away, unable to watch the spectacle any longer, going to comfort her aunt, who was sitting on the ground cradling a chunk of ice resembling Sir Craig’s head.
PART IV
Rhea Grey Raven
Roan Jai The Beggar
Annise
Though the fatemarked shall, at times, be pulled toward their individual destinies with such force they will feel powerless to stop their momentum, in the end they will each have the same choice we all have: to act for good or evil.
The Western Oracle
Thirty-Four
The Western Kingdom, Knight’s End
Rhea Loren
Ennis had painted her into a corner, and though at times Rhea was a wildcat, there was no clawing and biting her way out of this one.
He had chosen death, and she would give it to him and her people.
She was no coward, not anymore. No, that girl was trapped in Rhea’s past, a jumble of old crinkled fading memories: huddled in the crypts with the dead, cursing Grey Arris for abandoning her; sobbing as they ran through the castle, slipping on blood and tripping on corpses; quaking beneath the blade of the now-dead Fury who took her beauty and gave her strength; in the tower, just before the battle, soaking her dress with tears, feeling so utterly alone.
Never again.
Ennis had requested not to be bound, but to be free at the end, and she had not begrudged him this honor. He stood before her on the execution slab, his chest bare. “Do you have any final words?” she asked. A hushed silence fell over the audience, as they craned their necks forward to hear what the dead man would say.
Ennis looked at her without fear, without anger or malice. Only with sadness. “Only some advice, my queen,” he said. “‘Fire breeds fire and even a single spark can birth an inferno.’”
Rhea immediately recognized the quote from a favorite book of hers as a child, The Brave Mouse. She remembered how many times she asked Ennis to read it to her, and though he must’ve been bored with the same old story, he never refused her. In the tale, the mouse was forced to choose between saving his one true love from a fire, or sacrificing her to save the rest of the mouse village. In the end, the mouse watched his love vanish into the flames while he ran to save the village with a bucket of water. Once the fire was extinguished, he drowned himself out of grief. A morbid tale, to be sure, but one that Rhea always thought was so romantic, especially because the girl mouse ended up surviving with very bad burns, unbeknownst to the brave mouse, who was already dead.
Appropriate for the occasion, Rhea thought, but she wouldn’t let mere words pierce the armor she’d donned that morning.
“Wise words, Cousin Ennis,” she said. “But in this story, I am the inferno.” Rhea the Inferno. Add that to your list of names for your great queen.
The crowd grew restless as Ennis
continued to meet her eyes, refusing to do the decent thing and look away. So be it.
Rhea raised her blade and plunged it into his heart.
His eyes widened and he gasped, clutching at the hilt, but Rhea didn’t see him fall. She’d already slipped the knife—which was oozing with blood—inside her hip scabbard. She turned to face her people. A tear crept from the corner of her eye, rolling down her cheek. “Today my heart is heavy. My cousin was a good man, a servant of Wrath, but during the battle his actions were misguided. He believed my life was more important than the lifeblood of the realm.” On the edge of her vision, Ennis’s body stopped shuddering, going still. “To that I say nay. I am but one woman, a mere mortal, while the realm is eternal. Wrath is eternal, and God’s will shall be done long after I am gone. So to all of you I say, serve me, yes, but only to the extent that in serving me you serve the realm. My dear cousin forgot that, and it cost him his honor and his life. The seventh heaven will be barred to him, but I am hopeful he will gain entrance later, and that one day we will meet again, in Wrath’s holy presence.”
“Wrath be with you, Queen Rhea,” the people said as one.
She nodded solemnly, pressing her fingertips to her lips. She kissed them and then turned to close Ennis’s eyes.
That’s when she heard a voice carry through the crowd. “Sister, what have you done?”
The voice was too deep to be Bea or Leo’s, and who else would call her sister? One of her cousins perhaps? But when she spun around, her eyes narrowing, squinting across the brightly lit courtyard, she saw someone else making their way through the human tide.
Her heart rattled in her chest. “Father?” she whispered.
But no, he was too young, without the streaks of gray in his hair nor crow’s feet on the edges of his eyes. He was tall and built like a bowstring. His long hair reminded Rhea of her mother’s.
As the man swam through the crowd, Rhea’s furia crowded closer together to block his passage. The blond man with her father’s features stopped. “Rhea. It’s me. It’s your brother, Roan. At long last, I’ve come home.”
Rhea was just a suckling babe when her brother had vanished mysteriously, sixteen long years ago, at the age of only two. Three years after that, her mother had killed herself.
Her father had rarely spoken to Rhea of Roan or her mother. And when he did, the words had seemed to choke out of him. Thus, much of the information she had gathered about her lost sibling was gleaned from rumors. A particularly bratty lordling had told Rhea that Roan had run away from home because his parents were as cold as snakes. Rhea had been so angry she’d sputtered and fumed and, eventually, walked away from him. It didn’t even matter that the story was clearly untrue—what two-year-old child could run away from home? That night, she’d hidden a beehive under the boy’s bed. His screams could be heard throughout the entire palace. But the most popular opinion was that Roan had been kidnapped by a man from the south—a gray-skinned Dreadnoughter named Markin Swansea, who’d been a friend of her mother’s. They said he was secretly a Southron spy who wanted to destroy the royal line by removing the eldest heir. There was even talk of murder.
As far as Rhea’s mother went, some said Cecilia Loren had gone mad after her son’s disappearance, becoming a raving woman with little control over her own actions. Others said Cecilia Loren had stabbed herself after receiving a message while in court. Rhea didn’t know what to believe, and she’d long ago given up on knowing the truth.
Sometimes the truth is as impossible to reach out and grab as a star in the heavens, Rhea mused now.
She waited on her throne, alone, save for the blank-faced furia lining the walls. They weren’t very good company, so Rhea remained silent, lost in her own thoughts. She’d only been three when her mother had died, so any memories she had of her were fuzzy around the edges, like a piece of parchment soaked in water and dried in the sun. But she’d always remember her golden hair, the way it cascaded around her shoulders like a sunlit waterfall. In her faint memories, her mother was an angel.
The door opened and she shook her thoughts away. Mother is dead. Father is dead. I am alive. And this man claiming to be my long-lost brother, Roan? He is a ghost.
And yet when she saw his lustrous blond hair, all she could think about was her mother.
She tried to focus as he was escorted through the court. As she’d instructed, he was not in chains, permitted to walk freely like any other petitioner. If this was truly her brother…
She shook away the thought.
One of the furia stuck out an arm to stop him when he reached the steps up to the throne. “Sister,” the man said.
The furia kicked out the back of his knees, so he was forced to kneel. “Your Highness,” she corrected. Rhea raised an eyebrow. Soon the furia would need to choose a new Fury, or even all Three, considering the other two still had not been heard from. The warrior with the thick red eyebrows had potential.
The man claiming to be Roan grimaced, but didn’t cry out. He looked up at Rhea. “Your Highness, Queen Rhea, my sister, I implore you to listen to what I have to say.”
“Implore me?” Rhea said. “You claim to be my brother, the lost prince of the west? How daft do you think I am?”
“If you will only hear me out. They say you are righteous, sister.”
“Stop calling me that,” Rhea growled. But those eyes, as blue and fathomless as the crystal-blue sea, just like her father’s had been. They were unmistakable.
“You cannot fight the truth.”
“I am the truth. I have conquered the northern armada and Summoned Wrathos from the sea.”
“So I’ve heard. That is good. Lord Griswold is an evil man.”
“I don’t know you. Your opinion is of no import to me.”
The man sighed deeply. “You are right. I have bungled this introduction, badly I’m afraid. Let me start at the beginning.”
Though Rhea was tempted to stop him before he started, she didn’t, and once he’d begun, she couldn’t bring herself to do anything but listen as he told his tale. If it was a lie, it was well-spun. He told her how their mother had given him over to the Dreadnoughter, Markin Swansea, charging him with keeping Roan safe. How he’d grown up on the streets of Calypso after running away from his guardian at age eight. How he’d contracted the plague, but somehow managed to fight off the infection and escape Dragon’s Breath, washing up on the eastern shores. Then came his chance meeting with Prince Gareth Ironclad—Rhea couldn’t help but lift her eyebrows at that part—and his brief stay in Ferria, the Iron City, before marching to Raider’s Pass and participating in a bloody battle with the Gärics in the north. Not Lord Griswold, but Archer and Annise, the son and daughter of the Dread King, both of whom were her cousins. And, finally, how he’d departed in defeat, fording the Snake River and fighting through the Tangle to eventually arrive in Knight’s End.
When he’d finished, Rhea brought her hands together in a slow clap. “Bravo,” she said. “But if I’d wanted fiction, I’d have visited my personal library.”
“You think I’m lying?”
“Either that or you were born with an addled mind.”
“Please,” Roan said. “I came here in good faith.”
“Why?” Rhea said. “To claim the throne for your own? Even if you are my brother, you are no heir, not anymore. I am the anointed queen, Rhea the Righteous, defender of the west. You have no claim here.”
“That’s not why I’m here,” Roan said.
Rhea stared at him, considering. “There was a crucial element missing from your story. An unanswered question.”
The man nodded. “Yes.”
“Why did my mother, Cecilia Loren, send you south with Markin Swansea? You said she charged the Dreadnoughter with keeping you safe. Why would you need to be protected when I did not? What made you different?”
Instead of answering directly, he said, “I came here to visit the Western Archives, not to steal your crown.”
Rhea f
rowned. The faces of the two dead archivists floated across her mind. The burnt documents. There are no coincidences. “For what purpose? Tell me before I send you to the gallows.”
“Research.”
Her frown deepened. “Another vague answer. My patience is growing thin. Another one will be the end of you.”
Roan sighed, his lips pursing. He seemed to be considering something. “Sister, I am tired of lies and secrets. So tired. All I want is answers. I want to know who I am, why I grew up in Calypso while you were here in Knight’s End. I want to know what my true purpose is.”
“And you believe the Western Archives can tell you all that?” She was missing something.
“Yes. All I want is information on the Western Oracle.”
It took all of Rhea’s concentration to keep her expression steady, though underneath her skin her blood was rushing through her veins. “The Western Oracle was a dark sorceress. Why would you seek to read of her dark magic?”
“Because of the fatemarks,” Roan said. His eyes were boring into hers, searching for something.
“You mean sinmarks, I presume.” Fatemarks fatemarks fatemarks… The word echoed in her ears.
“That is the name you give them now. But it wasn’t always that way.”
Rhea had discovered as much in her own research, but how had this man come to that same knowledge? “Let’s say I believe everything you’ve told me, though that is an enormous assumption. What does any of it have to do with understanding your purpose? What does your quest offer me?”
He closed his eyes, holding them like that for a while, so long that Rhea wondered whether he’d fallen asleep. When he opened them, his eyes flashed with certainty. He’d made a decision. “Do you have a torch?” he asked.
