by Shae Ford
The specter twined the sharp tips of its fingers in the bed of its lap. “You hadn’t yet proved yourself,” it whispered.
Hadn’t yet proved himself? No King since the rise of the whisperers had managed what Crevan had done. This specter was a plague, a vision. He threw the goblet aside and raised his sword —
“Ah!”
Burning pain seared his flesh. He wrenched himself from the specter’s grasp and stumbled backwards. His arm stung as if he’d laid it among the coals. But when he rolled up his sleeve, he saw no wound.
“I know what you fear, Your Majesty. I know the question you whisper into the darkness. But you aren’t losing your mind … you’re mad with rage. And you should be,” the specter said, reclining in its chair. “Ultimate power should be yours. The entire Kingdom should kneel at your feet. But instead, a final enemy taints your crown. You’ll never be anything as long as she lives.”
Crevan clutched his wounded arm tightly and stepped back, inching towards the hidden door. “Have you come here to mock me, specter?”
“Not quite,” it hissed. “The old Kings once conquered these lands with the help of their mages, and theirs was the only voice of rule. My master has been watching you closely since you took the throne. She knows you plan to return the Kings to their former glory. You’ve defeated the whisperers. You’ve bound the mages to your will. Thus far, you’ve managed to control your Kingdom with the help of your Sovereign Five …” its ghoulish head tilted, “but now they’ve begun to fail you.”
Crevan knew what the Firecrowned King spoke of. Behind the veil of mist were the worried faces of his stewards. They were faded thoughts — memories made more distant by the anger that consumed him. But he could still hear bits of their panicked messages:
… merchants have overthrown Reginald … supplies from Lord Gilderick are running unusually late … Sahar’s shipment never arrived … no word from Titus …
The Firecrowned King cracked its bony neck, startling Crevan from his thoughts. “Yes, your throne is crumbling out from under you — while you fret over a single enemy. Such a weak King will never be worthy of my eternal crown.”
“The Dragongirl is no common enemy,” Crevan growled. “My army can’t stop her, my mages can’t find her — she’s even blinded my Seer! She is a beast without equal, and she’s sworn to kill me.” The dull tips of his fingers brushed involuntarily across his scar — the raised, jagged cut that sliced through his beard and stopped just short of his throat.
He’d been a fingertip from death.
“Without equal?” Tiny sparks flew from the jagged crack of its nostrils as the specter snorted. “Oh, now there’s where you’re quite wrong. For hidden in the maw of your fortress is a hunter even she will fear.”
Crevan forgot his pain. “What hunter? Where do I find it?”
The specter’s frozen grin suddenly became more menacing. “In the place you swore you’d never go again.”
Crevan sank back on his heels. His tongue was so dry he could scarcely form the words: “You mean …? No,” he growled when the Firecrowned King nodded. “There’s nothing in that chamber but curses and spirits. I won’t be lured to my death.”
“Death will take you eventually, mortal, whether I lure you to it or not. Mankind has but a dot of ink with which to leave its mark. A careful quill-stroke will surely fade, but a line pressed boldly may last an age.” The Firecrowned King spread its emaciated arms. “How will you die, Crevan?”
He didn’t get to answer.
The molten yellow lines of specter’s marrow swelled as the charred bones spread apart, expanding until they cracked. Rays of light shone through the ever-widening rifts in its skull. They flooded the room with heat that singed the hair on Crevan’s chin.
He threw an arm over his face as the specter exploded. A blast of flame and light knocked him backwards. The torches sputtered, the hearth fire choked and went out. Darkness swallowed the room.
Crevan lay paralyzed on the floor for hours after, covering his eyes against the many faces that watched him from the shadows.
Chapter 2
Frome’s Refuge
“To victory!” Uncle Martin cried. “To the end of a treasonous, treacherous tyrant — may Gilderick’s evil rot with him!”
The pirates raised their tankards high and took a hearty drink. They’d spent the last few days dragging their weary bodies down the highway through the Endless Plains. Now they were settled for the night in Frome’s Refuge — a tiny fishing village that sat on the border of the High Seas. With their homes lying just before them, the pirates were in high spirits.
Fortunately, there were plenty of spirits to go around.
“Roll out another barrel, my dear. Brave men should never go thirsty!” Uncle Martin said, waving his cane at the nearest tavern girl. She quickly obliged — and returned from the cellar to a chorus of cheers.
They’d packed Frome’s tiny inn so tightly that Kael thought the walls had actually started to bend outwards. There were smiles on the pirates’ lips; many of their faces were tinged with a cheery glow. They sang and crashed their tankards together, toasting a hard-earned rest.
Not long ago, he might’ve been overwhelmed by the chaos. He might’ve retreated upstairs rather than try to brave the drunken revelry and constant roar of noise. But somewhere along the way, it’d all changed. Now instead of a rumble of nameless sounds, Kael heard the voices of his friends.
A familiar squeal drew his eyes to the other end of the table, where Captain Lysander had his face buried amongst Aerilyn’s golden-brown curls. He tickled her neck with the scruff above his lips. She tried to fight him off, but to no avail.
“Let me go, you horrible rogue!”
His lips only moved more vigorously. When she tried to squirm away, he pulled her into his lap.
It wasn’t long before she was nearly breathless with laughter. “Stop it! You’re supposed to be — gentle with me.”
“I am being gentle,” he insisted.
He pressed his forehead against hers, grinning as he teased her about one thing or another. She pulled playfully at the waves of his hair. There was a glow in Aerilyn’s face that had been growing steadily over the past few days. Lysander rarely took his eyes off of her anymore — let alone his lips.
“It’s all sunshine and sparkles now,” Uncle Martin warned from across the table. “But in a few months, there’ll be a lump the size of a garment crate between you. It’ll be a lot harder to steal a kiss, then.”
“It’s a good thing I’m an excellent thief,” Lysander murmured from around Aerilyn’s lips. He pulled back, an indignant look on his face. “And that lump is my future son — or daughter,” he added quickly. “I’d be fine with a girl.”
“Blasted right, you would be,” Aerilyn said with a glare.
When Uncle Martin came up from his drink, he’d added another full, foamy layer to his mustache. “They’re a blessed curse, children. On the one hand, they fill your house with laughter, the patter of tiny feet and so on. But on the other, your wife’s figure is never quite the same. It’s always bittersweet when a woman becomes a mother.”
“You are wrong!” This vehement cry came from Nadine — the desert woman who’d joined them on their travels. She had skin the color of sand and stood at only a child’s height. The contents of her tankard had already begun to take affect: she swayed dangerously in her chair as she scolded Uncle Martin. “In my culture, motherhood is sacred. There is no higher honor.”
“I wasn’t talking about the sacredness of childbearing,” Uncle Martin insisted. “I was merely mourning the loss of an exceptional figure.”
“Nothing will be lost!” Nadine swept her arm to the side and likely would have tumbled off the bench, had Aerilyn not caught her by the front of her dress. “She will grow more beautiful in the coming months than ever before, until she shines with the light of a thousand stars!”
“Well, I’m rather looking forward to that,” Lysander said.
>
Aerilyn giggled.
Uncle Martin ranted on as if Nadine had never spoken: “And it’s not just the woman who loses her figure. I used to be a thin man — now look at me!” He slapped the slight belly that protruded from his tunic. “It never goes away, either. Once you’ve got it, you’ll be buried with it.”
Lysander rolled his eyes and very firmly declared that would never happen to him. But moments later, Kael glanced over and caught the good captain staring worriedly at his stomach.
An argument erupted at the table ahead of him, drawing his eyes away. Something strange had happened to Battlemage Jake: he hadn’t quite been himself the last few days — a fact that hadn’t gone unnoticed by his companions.
They’d all tried to cheer him up. Lysander kept him busy, Uncle Martin kept his tankard full, Nadine and Aerilyn had even asked about his research. They were able to coax a smile from him every once in a while, but it never stayed for long.
Now poor Jake was trapped between Morris and Shamus — both of whom staunchly believed that a full belly could cure any ailment.
“Here, have a plateful of these roasted potatoes,” Shamus, the master shipbuilder of Copperdock, said. “Aye, shovel those down and they’ll keep you full for days.”
“I don’t feel like potatoes,” Jake mumbled. He stabbed half-heartedly at his plate, eyes distant behind his rounded spectacles.
“Well, how about some soup?” Morris pinched a steaming bowl between the nubs of his arms and lifted it carefully towards Jake. “Broth is good for the innards, lad. It’ll warm your heart — ouch!”
The soup sloshed to the side and onto the tender flesh of Morris’s arm. He yelped and dropped the bowl directly on top of whatever gravy-covered slice of meat had been on Jake’s plate.
He sighed. “I don’t feel like soup.”
“How about some bread?”
“No, thank you.”
“A nice mince pie’ll cheer your belly,” Morris croaked around a mouthful of dough. “Leastways, it cheers mine!”
“And the onions will clear your head,” Shamus added.
Morris frowned. “No, garlic clears your head. Onions make you smart.”
“You’ve been out of the water too long, you crusty old seadog. Carrots make you smart — garlic keeps the goblins away.”
“There’s no such thing as goblins.”
“Well, there’s no such thing as merfolk, either —”
“Merfolk are real! They only come out when it’s rainy, though. So it’s hard to spot them …”
While they argued over which food would keep what imaginary creatures at bay, Jake slumped further in his chair. The next time Kael glanced over, he had his arms flat on the table and his head buried deep.
“He’ll be all right.”
Kyleigh’s voice was little more than a murmur, but her words drew him in.
The flames behind her eyes smoldered as she stared at Jake; a slight smile bent her lips. “It seems our mage friend has finally come across a problem he can’t solve … but he’ll manage. He’ll be back to scribbling in that journal of his before you know it.”
Kael certainly hoped so.
He sat close to Kyleigh. Their arms rested on the table between them, pressed together from elbow to wrist. He could feel the incredible warmth beneath her skin: it passed through the scales of her armor and the fibers of his shirt, sealing them together.
No matter where he looked, he kept her in the corner of his eye ... and no matter where he went, he would keep her in his heart.
A hawk’s scream cut over the top of them, followed by a clatter of bones striking the table. The inn was so crowded that Eveningwing had decided to stay in his hawk form for dinner. Now he sat in the rafters and screeched for seconds.
“Go find your own meal,” Silas growled.
Eveningwing’s piercing eyes locked onto him. Silas glared and wrapped his arms protectively around the small flock of baked chickens he’d been busily devouring.
It had come as no great shock to Kael when he discovered that Silas was a shapechanger. The glowing eyes that sat beneath his dark mat of hair fit a lion much better than a man. What did surprise him was the fact that he’d chosen to follow them out of the plains when he didn’t much care for any of them — a fact he reminded them of nearly every hour.
Eveningwing screeched again.
Silas’s arms tightened around his prey. “If you wanted to eat human food, then you should’ve worn your human skin,” he said haughtily.
Kyleigh slapped his arms away and grabbed one of the chickens. “You have plenty to share.”
Silas hissed at her.
She leveled the carcass at his nose, brandishing it like a sword. “Do that again, and I’ll really give you something to mew about.”
Silas glowered a moment before he shrugged and went back to his meal. Kyleigh tossed the chicken into the rafters — where Eveningwing snapped it up.
Kael’s eyes trailed across his companions once more. He sat quietly, drinking in the noise of their chatter … trying to burn every detail of their faces into his memory.
“I think I’m going to turn in,” he finally said.
Kyleigh nodded. “Sleep well.”
He returned her smile with a fleeting one of his own before he trudged upstairs.
With so many of them holed up together, they’d had to squeeze in wherever they would fit. Kael shared his tiny chamber with a crowd of pirates. Their bedrolls were packed end-to-end all across the floor, creating a lumpy, uneven maze with very little bare space in between.
Kael had his things in the spot closest to the door. He knew this meant he was likely to get trampled when the pirates finally came upstairs, but he was all right with that. He wasn’t planning to sleep for long.
“Evening, Thelred,” he said as he slipped off his boots.
He got no reply.
Thelred had claimed the room’s only bed. He lay atop the sheets, one arm slumped across his eyes and the nub of his leg balanced upon a stack of pillows. The plate of food Aerilyn had brought up for him lay untouched on his bedside table.
As Kael stared at the bandages around Thelred’s knee, the room dropped away and thrust him into a memory: he heard the blast of Finks’s spell and saw Thelred’s blood paint the walls.
It’d all happened too quickly — nobody could’ve possibly moved fast enough to save him, his mind whispered. But the memory lashed him again.
The force of colors and sounds, the raw red of the blood and Thelred’s piercing screams — nothing could erase what his eyes had seen, what his ears had heard. He found no solace in the assurances of his mind, nor any comfort from the mouths of his friends.
For the memory spoke the truth.
With the black beast finally thrust from his heart, he felt as if a window had been opened before his eyes. He’d spent days combing through the memories of what he’d done in the plains. He saw the tattered edges of his plans, worn frail by his anguish. His face burned fiercely each time he reached a tangle in the threads — a mistake that could’ve easily been avoided.
There were many worn patches, many bunched-up knots. He watched himself fumble through that season of his life with his lip curled over his teeth. He’d fallen so easily to his sorrows — he realized that, now. He saw his recklessness and his apathy for what they were: the twin wings of his great black weakness.
It reminded him of the stories Roland used to tell — the ones that always ended badly. The heroes he’d spoken about had all had one great flaw. Their weaknesses slowly consumed them as the tale went on and by the end of the story, they’d paid dearly for their mistakes.
That was what burned Kael worst of all. He deserved to pay the price for what he’d done. Instead, he’d walked away unscathed. The pirates and giants filled the grave he’d dug for himself. Others bore his wounds. It should’ve been him lying broken upon that bed, but it wasn’t.
Thelred was a monument of his mistakes, the embodiment of all his error
s —a living reminder that he’d been selfish. And Kael knew he had no more hope against his weakness than any of Roland’s heroes. The path he was on would eventually end. But no matter where it ended, Kael would be standing there alone. He alone would pay the price.
Of this, he was determined.
*******
A knock on the door woke him.
He was back in Gravy Bay, asleep in one of the stuffed chairs in the mansion’s library. Someone pounded on the front door — three sharp raps. Kael pulled himself from the chair and trudged out into the hallway.
His eyes were still heavy with sleep. Though he tried to blink it back, the darkness kept creeping in. The next time he opened his eyes, he was standing at the front door.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Hold on,” Kael muttered as he fumbled with the door’s latch. It felt much heavier than usual. The door groaned and almost seemed to fight him as tugged it. When he finally pulled it open, he blinked at the man standing on the other side.
He was incredibly thin, with a lank mop of hair and eyes like pits. Angry waves of red and orange billowed up behind him. Screams rode the ash-thickened air, drifting in from the village below.
Gilderick smiled — as if he could feel the terror that gripped Kael’s chest. Hundreds of shadows gathered behind him. They were taller than men with eyes that burned white-hot. Their arms and chests glistened with the wet blood of the villagers.
“I knew I’d find you here.”
Gilderick’s lips didn’t move, but Kael could hear his voice in the depths of his ears — as if it’d spoken from within him.
“Come with me,” Gilderick whispered. “And don’t worry about your friends … they can come, too.”
His pitiless gaze swept over Kael’s shoulder, and he saw his friends had gathered behind him. Their bodies were shadows; their eyes were white and lifeless. He screamed as their arms wrapped about him, but they didn’t stop.
Lysander and Thelred pulled down. Aerilyn kicked the legs out from under him. It was Kyleigh who grabbed him by the roots of his hair and jerked his head back — forcing him to lock eyes with Gilderick.
