Kingmaker's Sword (Rune Blades of Celi)

by Ann Marston

  Again, fragments of a half-remembered dream swirled through my head, and were gone before I could make sense of them. The slight breeze began to dry the shirt on my back, and I shivered with the chill of it. I clenched my teeth against the cold and stared at the starling in the apple tree. It cocked an impudent eye at me, then casually flew to another branch deeper in the tree.

  “Tell me something,” he said quietly. “How do you feel the name Kian fits you?”

  It was an odd question and I had to think about it for a moment. “I—I don’t know,” I said at last.

  “You answered to it well from the start.”

  I bit my lip, frowning. “Well, I like the name better than Mouse.”

  He laughed. “Aye, I can see how you might.”

  “Still,” I said, “I don’t see why I’m worth all the trouble—”

  “Kian, most of these last nine years, I’ve spent tracking down rumours of redheaded slave boys. I’ve been from Maedun and Saesnes in the north down to Laringras in the south, from the coast of Isgard to as far east as the Great Salt Sea. Nine years. I’ve seen a lot of redheaded slaves in that time. Some I bought and set free. I’ve told you how I feel about slavery. Most of them I left with their masters because they didna have the spark to thrive on their own. And most of them were either too young or too old to be the boy I was seeking anyway.” He shifted his position and reached up casually to scratch the hollow above his collar bone. “In nine years, I’d just about lost hope that the boy I sought still lived. That’s a long time to go on hope alone.”

  “Who are you looking for?” My voice came out tight and strained through the knot of apprehension gripping my chest. A muscle jumped near the corner of my jaw.

  He laughed. “Slaves with red hair,” he said. “Like yours.”

  “Why were you looking?”

  He smiled. A rueful gesture, not one of amusement. “I had to,” he replied. “Then I heard a story about a redheaded slave boy on a landholding in Falinor near the mouth of the Glaecyn River.”

  “Mendor’s Landholding,” I said.

  “Aye, so it would seem,” he said. “I almost decided to let it go. I’ve a merchant train waiting for me in Honandun, and I’ve not a lot of time. But I couldna afford to take the chance that this time, it might be the right boy. That this time, my search would be successful. That’s why I was there the night you escaped. I followed the Keepmaster and the bounty hunter to that dreadful inn.”

  I couldn’t look at him. Instead, I studied the whitened knuckles of my fists. “Was it?” I whispered. “Successful, I mean?”

  He shrugged. “I think so,” he said at last. “I wasna sure when I first saw you, but after today, after watching you use that sword.... Aye, I’m fairly certain it was successful.”

  “Cullin....”

  He looked down at me.

  “Is Kian really my name?”

  Again, he said, “I think so.”

  “Jorddyn thought you were my father,” I said. I glanced up at him. Even in the strong sunlight, he didn’t appear to be much over thirty, if that. Far too young to be father to someone my age. I had not even realized the hope had sprouted until I felt it wilt in me. “Are you?”

  Amusement gleamed in his eyes but didn’t touch his mouth. “No, I’m not your father,” he said quietly.

  “I thought not,” I said. I couldn’t tell if I was bitterly disappointed or vastly relieved. I had never belonged with anyone, and wasn’t sure if I wanted to. I didn’t know how to belong with anyone, to be part of a family.

  “Jorddyn was wrong,” Cullin said. He shook his head and the sun glinted in the copper red of his hair. “I’m not your father, but I truly believe now I’m your uncle.”

  ***

  The colours around me suddenly seemed preternaturally bright and glaring—the green of the grass, the blue and green of Cullin’s plaid lying neatly folded not far from my feet, the swiftly browning white flesh, still rimmed with red, of the apple core I had dropped on the other side of the patch of grass. For a long moment, I forgot to breathe. My heart seemed to be making a creditable effort to leap right out of my chest. When I finally found my voice, it sounded rusty and creaky.

  “You think you’re my uncle,” I repeated. “Does that mean you’re not certain?”

  He sighed, then smiled. “I’m certain,” he replied. “After that demonstration with the sword, I’m more than certain. Besides, you favour your father somewhat, and your eyes are the same colour as your mother’s were.”

  “My mother’s....” I said faintly.

  He looked at me sideways. “Ye look a little as if I walloped you over the ear with the flat of my sword,” he said. That earned him a grimace of exasperation, and he grinned in sympathy. “Aye, well, I suppose it’s a lot to be taking in at once.”

  “Just a little,”I agreed somewhat breathlessly

  Cullin sat a little straighter. “You were born in the Clanhold of Clan Broche Rhuidh in the western highlands of Tyra,” he said quietly. “Within sight of the sea. Your father was my older brother Leydon. Your mother was his wife Twyla. She wasna a Tyr. She never spoke of her home, only that she had run from something or someone and Leydon had rescued her. There was never a doubt but that she was well-born. I always thought she might have been Saesnesi with perhaps a little Maeduni blood—her dark eyes, ye ken.”

  I asked the first question to pop into my head, inconsequential as it was. “Was she pretty?”

  He smiled. “Pretty?” He tilted his head to one side as he thought for a moment. “That’s odd. I don’t know. She was kind and she was gentle and she had a beautiful smile. But pretty? I don’t know. There was no mistaking it was a love match with her and Leydon. You just had to look at the pair of them to know it. Our father was upset about the marriage for a while. My eldest brother Rhodri had married the daughter of a neighbouring laird, and our father had picked out the daughter of another for Leydon. He was annoyed to see the chance of an alliance dwindle.”

  “What happened?”

  Cullin chuckled. “Aye, well. He got over being annoyed. He married me to the laird’s youngest daughter.”

  I looked up at him, startled. “You?”

  “Aye, lad. Me.” He shrugged eloquently. “We don’t get along all that well. Not that it matters. I spend most of my time away from the Clanhold anyway. Gwynna’s a good woman, and she’s borne me two fine daughters.” He smiled, and his pride in his daughters lit his eyes like a beacon as he spoke. “But Gwynna’s no a comforting woman to be around for long, ye ken. Ye might say we agreed to disagree.”

  I nodded. “I see,” I said, but I didn’t. I looked up at him again. “What of my father?”

  “Leydon?” He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and stared off into the distance. “Leydon was my favourite brother. He was eight years older than I, and I idolized him. He was tall and strong, quick as a mountain cat. He always had time for me when I was a wee lad. He never minded me trailing along after him. You favour him a little, as I’ve said, but his eyes were grey as smoke, not brown. I was ten when he left the Clanhold. He said he wanted to see something of the world before he settled into the position of Master of Sword for the clan. When he came home three years later, he had Twyla with him. You were born three months after they came home. Leydon called you Kian after our grandfather.” He laughed with the memory. “You were a lusty wee bairn. Good lungs you had. Healthy and robust as a young stallion. I used to carry you around on my shoulders when you were two and three. You ran me ragged trying to keep up with you. By the time you were four, you showed a lot of promise with both a sword and a bow. Sturdy as an ash tree, with a good eye. Quick and graceful as your father with the sword.”

  I watched him, fascinated. It was a captivating story, but it was a story about people I didn’t know, people I had no recollection of. Cullin reached out and put a hand to my head. His fingers found the ridge of scar tissue behind my ear.

  “You have no idea at all who I’
m talking about, do you, Kian?” he said gently.

  I shook my head. “No,” I said softly.

  “Because of this, I think,” he said and traced the scar with his blunt finger. “Do you know how you got it?”

  Again, I shook my head.

  He frowned and his eyes clouded. “You were almost seven. Twyla had been very quiet for a few weeks, then one day about two months before your name day, she told Leydon they had to take you to her father. To tell him he had a grandson. She said something about how you had to be presented in the shrine, and she owed at least that much to her father. So she and Leydon started out for Honandun. I went with them, along with a half dozen guards.” His voice trailed off and an expression of pain turned down the corners of his mouth.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “We were attacked as we came out of the mountains,” he said quietly. “Bandits. More than a dozen of them. They came so quickly, we hadna much chance to defend ourselves. It was almost dark, and we were just beginning to set up camp. I remember seeing one of them knock you down, then something bashed me in the head.”

  His eyes were curiously glazed and blank as he paused for a moment. He wasn’t seeing me, nor was he seeing the orchard and the stable yard at the little inn. I merely waited in silence for him to continue.

  Finally, he shook himself like a dog shedding water. He glanced down at me. “When I woke up, the bandits were gone, and so were you. Almost everyone else was dead.” His fists clenched in his lap and he grimaced. “I found your mother. She was dead. I wept for her, Kian. It hadna been an easy death for her.”

  I remembered Rossah and shuddered, grateful he gave no details. I knew well enough what happened to a woman used by men little better than beasts.

  “And my father?” I asked quietly. “Your brother?”

  “I found Leydon still alive, but dying. Ah, Kian, he had taken so many wounds.... But he sold his life dearly, for all that. He took five or six bandits with him.” Cullin shook his head. “He told me he saw them take you away, and he made me swear I’d find you and either take you back to the Clanhold, or see you home.”

  “See me home?” I repeated, unfamiliar with the expression. From the way he used it, it meant something different from what just the words suggested.

  “A clan thing,” he said softly. “I promised him. And when he died shortly after that, I saw him home, too.”

  I sat quietly for a moment, trying to assimilate all he had said. It was too much. It made my head whirl. I reached up unconsciously and touched the scar hidden by my hair. “I don’t remember at all,” I whispered.

  “Aye, well,” he said. “I’ve heard of a blow to the head doing that. Sometimes memory comes back, sometimes it doesn’t. It may be that you sealed it off when you discovered the way of Healing.” He looked at me, again with that thoughtful, speculative expression. “Twyla had it, too, ye ken. The Healing. That’s where you got it from, along with the eyes. And she could sense magic, too.”

  I took a deep breath, held it for a long time, then finally let it out. “I—see,” I said slowly. I looked up at him again. “And ti’rhonai. That means nephew?”

  “Aye. And foster-son, too. There’s no much difference, ye ken.”

  “I called you ti’vati once I remember. Uncle?”

  He nodded.

  “Or foster-father.”

  Again, he nodded. He laughed. “You might say I inherited you,” he said. “Rhodri’s three sons of his own. I’ve two daughters but no son. You were my responsibility from the time I swore to Leydon I’d bring you home.”

  Emotions I couldn’t identify jumbled together into one huge, tangled knot in my belly. I’d been no one’s responsibility but my own for as long as I could remember. Suddenly finding myself with not only an uncle, but aunts, cousins and a grandfather as well, left me feeling hollow and empty as a blown egg.

  Cullin put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s no so bad, Kian,” he said with a smile. “It’ll be at least three seasons before we go back to the Clanhold. Ye’ll have time to get used to me by then, and I’ll tell you all ye need to know about the others.”

  VI

  We left the small inn early the next morning and reached Honandun a sevenday before Samhain. The merchant-train he had contracted to guard was ready the next morning and we left before I had a chance to explore the first city I had ever seen. A fortnight past Midwinter saw us in Banhapetsut in Laringras, on the coast of the Great Salt Sea where Cullin introduced me to some of the more bewitching delights a city offered. I subsequently discovered what wine sickness could do the morning after to a man’s will to live.

  There was another merchant train, this one carrying silks, spices and exotic fragrances, eager to contract for Cullin’s services for the trip back to Honandun as soon as the passes were free enough of snow to travel. We arrived a fortnight after Vernal Equinox and Cullin announced we were leaving for Tyra the next morning.

  It was still a fortnight before Beltane when the hills and mountains showed a faint bloom of soft green and the lochs reflected the gentle blue of the sky, when we left Isgard and entered Tyra.

  Cullin was right. In the three seasons since I met him, I had grown used to him, although it still gave me an odd sensation somewhere under my breastbone when I thought too hard about the fact that he was my uncle.

  During the long journey south, then back north, Cullin spent the evenings with me, practicing with the sword or bow. He was patient, but implacable about mistakes. He let me get away with nothing clumsy or poorly executed. I sweated freely, practicing sequences over and over until they met with his approval which was never grudgingly withheld, but difficult to attain. For three seasons as we travelled, he told me about his home and his family, so when we finally left the lowlands and began winding our way through the passes and glens of Tyra, the land looked almost familiar to me. Cullin pointed out towering crags as we rode, naming them, and I thought I should recognize them.

  It was a rugged country, all rocky, snow-covered peaks, wide valleys and narrow gorges. In the glens, we rode past small herds of black cattle with wicked, curving horns, flocks of small sheep whose fleece looked faintly blue. Tiny villages, some no more than five or six stone-built houses, nestled into the flanks of the valleys, but none of them too small or too poor to offer a traveller welcome with a meal and a pallet by the hearth for the night. The men, like Cullin, wore kilts and plaids, and the women wore gowns with a plaid of finer fabric draped over their shoulders. I saw a lot of different tartans as we rode, varying from predominantly red, through brown, yellow, black and green. Eventually, the tartans the people wore began to show predominantly blues and greens, much like Cullin’s tartan, and Cullin announced we were now on Broche Rhuidh land.

  It was still nearly a sevenday before we reached Glenborden where the Clanhold stood. I got my first view of it as we topped a small rise in the glen and stood looking down the vast sweep of the broad, green valley. I reined the sorrel to a sudden stop and simply sat there and stared, my mind gone suddenly blank.

  I had been expecting a manor house similar to Mendor’s Landholding in Falinor, I suppose, large and solid but not overly imposing. The Clanhold of Broche Rhuidh was large and solid, but there the resemblance to Mendor’s house stopped. Broche Rhuidh was stone-built, rising gracefully from the top of a small shoulder of the mountain. Behind it, the sheer face of the granite crag towered high enough to scrape the belly of the clear sky. The living rock of the cliff itself formed the back wall of the Clanhold. Crenellated towers stood at each corner behind battlements fashioned of the same rock, but the massive gates stood flung wide in the warm late morning sunshine. Behind the walls, the Clanhold itself stood huge and graceful, solidly rooted in the mountain.

  I looked at Cullin, aware that my mouth hung open. “You didn’t tell me Broche Rhuidh was a palace,” I said faintly.

  Cullin looked at the Clanhold judiciously, then at me. “Aye, well, I suppose it’s big enough,” he said. “A
nd it’s comfortable. Cold in winter, though.” He urged the stallion forward, leaving me still gaping on the brow of the hill.

  I kicked the sorrel into a canter to catch up. “Cullin?”

  He turned, grinning at me over his shoulder.

  “Cullin, is your father a king?” I pulled the sorrel up even with the bay stallion and reached out to touch Cullin’s arm.

  Cullin laughed. “A king?” he repeated. “Hellas, no. But I must have mentioned he was Clan Laird.”

  “Aye, you did,” I said, looking at the awe inspiring structure ahead of us. “But you didn’t tell me what it meant.”

  He grinned. “In Isgard, the title would be prince, I think,” he said. “There are no kings in Tyra.”

  “A prince,” I repeated faintly. “That makes me—”

  “A young lord,” he said matter-of-factly. “Merely the son of a younger son. If we hurry, we’ll be in time for the noon meal.”

  I followed him, still slightly stunned, remembering those fantasies of my childhood. In my imagination, the father who came to rescue me was always nobly born, sometimes even a prince. But those were daydreams. At least, I thought they were mere daydreams. “A young lord,” I muttered to myself. “Hellas-birthing. A young lord....”

  They came out to the courtyard to meet us as we rode in. I recognized them from Cullin’s descriptions as they stood on the wide, stone steps leading up to the broad, carved doors. The tall, straight man with red hair fading to grey was Medroch, Cullin’s father, the Clan Laird. Beside him stood another man, his hair the colour of polished oak. Cullin’s brother Rhodri was not quite as tall as their father, but he had a good expanse of shoulder narrowing to lean, muscular hips. The woman at his side, slightly plump and smiling, was Rhodri’s wife Linnet. Three boys, ranging in age from twelve to sixteen stood on the step behind her—Rhodri’s sons, Brychan, Landen and Tavis.

  Slightly apart from them was another woman, tall, slender and beautiful, her hair the red-gold of a sweet maple leaf in the autumn sun. She held a young girl of about three by the hand, her other hand on the shoulder of another girl of about six who stood in front of her. She had to be Cullin’s wife Gwynna. The children were Elin and Wynn. Both the girls had hair like freshly minted copper coins, and stood gravely regarding their father as he dismounted in the courtyard, the youngest with a finger in her mouth.