by AC Cobble
In truth, they were on just about the least efficient route they could have possibly taken to reach Spinesend, and that may be the one thing helping them. No one would expect them to be coming from the southern face of the mountains. Rew certainly never would have planned such a wandering path. Fortune, ill or fortuitous, had given them their most likely chance of arriving at the city unnoticed.
Rew was lost in his thoughts, musing about the bitter irony of tying his wagon to the nobles, helping those who were most entangled in the things he wanted most to avoid, when Raif cleared his throat.
“Cinda,” the boy asked his sister, “would you care to sing?”
“What?” responded the girl, a flush creeping into her cheeks.
“You have a beautiful voice,” responded Raif. “It’s been months since I’ve heard you use it. It’d be nice to hear you sing again.”
“It’s been years since you’ve heard me sing,” muttered Cinda.
“Not that long,” claimed Raif. “Don’t you remember when you and Worgon’s niece stole that wine? You sang all night.”
Cinda grinned at her brother and shook her head. “That doesn’t count, and you shouldn’t have been eavesdropping on us, even if she did fancy you.”
It was Raif now whose face glowed a rosy red.
“I know a song,” said Zaine. “It’s, ah, it’s a plain one. The men my father used to work with sang it, and the thieves knew it as well.”
“I’d like to hear it, then,” said Raif.
Sitting up, looking at the others over the fire and the roasting goat, Zaine began. Her voice had no training, but it was clear and sweet. The song wasn’t so much of a song as a poem she recited, and it was quite filthy. By the time she finished, Rew was cackling, and Anne was scowling between him and Zaine.
Grinning, Zaine admitted, “I know it’s a bit raunchy, but when I first learned it, I had no idea. My father’s friends thought it good fun to teach it to me. I think even my mother got a laugh out of it. She would never have admitted that, of course. That was… That was a long time ago. I can’t believe I still remember it. Funny, what you remember, isn’t it?”
“I don’t understand,” said Cinda, brushing a lock of dark hair behind her ear. “What does ‘ride the mare with no care, when she’s bare, pull her hair…’ Oh. Oh, I do understand. That and—Oh my. That’s just the beginning. It’s all quite inappropriate, isn’t it?”
Laughing, Zaine said, “It took me years to understand how bad it was.”
“It’s not about baking?” chuckled Raif, false surprise on his face. “‘Kneads my loaf like she kneads her bread, no breath for talk while we’re in her bed.’”
“That’s enough talk about that,” said Anne, giving Zaine a direct look.
Winking at the empath, Zaine said, “I’ve a few others, but perhaps another time?”
“I can give it a go,” said Cinda, “though I don’t know any songs as colorful as Zaine’s.”
Haltingly, Cinda sang a soaring hymn to the Blessed Mother that Rew guessed she must have heard the minstrels perform in her father’s or Baron Worgon’s court. It was meant to be accompanied by an instrument, but her rendition was as pure as snowmelt.
When she finished, the others clapped, and Anne sang a little rhyme for infants and then another Rew had heard when she was cooking or walking the forest looking for herbs. She forgot the words in the third stanza, but it was just as nice hearing her hum the remainder.
Raif offered a marching tune the soldiers would sing before they left on patrol. He stumbled halfway through when he realized he’d learned it from Worgon’s men, but he soldiered on, forcing his voice into a deep, bellowing boom and raising his fist at the end in a mockery of the men’s excitement. The others laughed at the performance, and he laughed with them, standing and offering a bow around the campfire.
“Rew?” asked Cinda, turning to the ranger.
“Rangers don’t sing,” he claimed.
“Ang and Vurcell do quite often,” mentioned Anne.
“I don’t sing,” grumbled Rew.
“No hiking songs, eh?” prodded Raif. “What is it that rangers do around the campfire after a long day? Surely you’re not always alone on an expedition?”
“Not always,” replied Rew.
“What do you do for entertainment? What do you talk about?” asked Zaine. “Scary stories?”
“Sometimes,” said Rew. He looked around at the others and then sighed. “Around the campfire at night, rangers tell each other true stories. History. The sort of history that isn’t in the books, that isn’t documented by the king and his scholars. We tell our history and of the rangers before us. It’s the real history of Vaeldon, a history passed down by those who witnessed it.”
“But you’re the King’s Ranger,” said Cinda. “The king is your liege, isn’t he? What sort of history would you tell that the king doesn’t want recorded?”
“Rangers can be a miserable lot,” chirped Anne, winking at him. “Give a man a little independence and look at what they do with it!”
Rew snorted.
“Tell us something,” said Zaine. “Tell us one of these true stories.”
“Yes, come on, Ranger,” encouraged Raif. “Tell us of the history of this land.”
Rew shifted uncomfortably. Perhaps telling them of the stories had not been wise.
“Tell us how the King’s Rangers came to be,” requested Cinda.
Rew lifted his eyes and saw the noblewoman looking at him, excited and innocent.
“Very well,” he agreed. He stood and turned their goat over on the spit before he began again. “You’re aware of how Vaisius Morden became the first king of Vaeldon?”
“Not really,” remarked Zaine.
“Well,” said Rew, “it’s a long story. One we don’t have time for this evening, but so you understand what comes after, you should know that after the wars with the Dark Kind and the conjurers who brought them to our world, these lands were in the throes of great turmoil. Mankind had beaten back the Dark Kind, but much had been lost in the war. King Vaisius Morden the First’s reign did not begin in peace and prosperity. None of the official histories will admit it, but there was great dissension amongst the people of Vaeldon. Many were terrified of the threats they faced, and not all were happy with how the war was won or who had done the winning.”
“Not everyone wanted to bow to the new king?” asked Zaine.
Rew nodded.
“He was a great hero, though, wasn’t he?” asked Raif. “I thought that after he led the people against the Dark Kind and won, it was more or less unanimous?”
“Unanimous, I suppose, but one could wonder if that’s because Vaisius was a venerated hero or because his enemies knew better than to openly challenge the most powerful necromancer the world had ever seen,” said Rew. “Few raised their voices in complaint, but many spoke behind their hands in whispers. Vaisius Morden did throw back the Dark Kind, and he did rescue our world from being swept beneath a horde of those evil creatures, but the cost was high.”
Cinda blanched.
“A necromancer’s power ebbs and flows on the tides of death,” continued Rew, giving the girl a tight smile, “and Vaisius Morden took power from many of the dead. People’s friends, people’s allies. Rarely his own. Early in the war, he released the power of the lost as you did back at the battle, Cinda, but as the years passed and the fighting intensified, he held onto what he took. He claimed he needed the strength and that without it, all would be lost. Maybe, maybe not. He raised hordes of the undead to face the Dark Kind. The need was great, but… People’s friends and family died in battle, and then rose again, dancing on the strings Vaisius Morden held.”
“There were rumors that Morden used his influence to steer his enemies into harm’s way, and it was they who suffered the greatest losses,” continued Rew. “His power waxed and waned with the tide of the war. When mankind faced its darkest hours, he was the strongest, and when the Dark Kind were throw
n back, he was weakened. You can understand that there was resentment and suspicion when he named himself king. Some of those whispers went further and speculated that perhaps it was Morden or his allies who had breached the ether between our world and the Dark Kind’s, and that the new king had been responsible for the flood of evil that came through.”
Raif chortled. Rew turned his eyes to him, and the boy said, “Well, that’s impossible, of course.”
Rew shrugged. “Is it? It’s what some whispered when they thought they would not be heard. Of course, they were heard, and King Vaisius Morden the First began a new campaign, this time against those he felt did not offer true fealty. He purged the whisperers—or at the very least he tried to. Some families were more discreet than others.” Rew stretched out his legs, looking at the party around the fire. “It was a time of great sorrow and great fear. Even the common people were aware of the machinations in the nobles’ halls, and there were rumblings of a rebellion. The people were tired of war. They spoke of one last fight that would end it all. There was a movement to overthrow the nobility. The king and the other nobles kept their armies close, for their own protection, but that meant there was no one to face the remaining Dark Kind. It made the resentment against the ruling class bitter, but individually, the nobles were too afraid to send out their armsmen. No one trusted anyone. The entire kingdom was on the verge of utter ruin.”
“Our tutors never taught us anything like this,” murmured Cinda.
Rew smirked. “I am too humble to say it, but others have claimed that is when King Vaisius Morden had his most brilliant insight. The rangers were the answer. They were envisioned as a force independent of the nobility, free to enact the king’s law, tasked with protecting the people of Vaeldon. They were men and women recruited from amongst the common people—no nobles—and they were selected because they were skilled at what they did. Birth, affiliation with a particular lord, none of it mattered within the King’s Rangers. Units were assembled, and they were tasked with hunting the Dark Kind and the natural beasts terrorizing the villages. The rangers never interfered with politics. Their one mandate was to protect the people of Vaeldon. In a land raised on a tide of treachery, the rangers were the ones who brought trust and faith back to the people, and bit by bit, the rangers helped resettle a kingdom that had been nearly burnt to the ground. Each year, the rangers would push back the shadows that clung to these lands, forcing danger into the wild places and away from the king’s people. Eventually, it was the King’s Rangers who established Vaeldon’s borders as we know them, and for the last fifty years, it is the rangers who have held those borders.”
“I never knew that about the rangers,” said Zaine with a low whistle.
“Have all eight of the Morden kings been necromancers?” wondered Cinda.
“They have been,” confirmed Rew.
“Powerful ones?”
Rew nodded, meeting her gaze.
“The child is always more powerful than the parent,” murmured Anne.
“Assuming the bloodlines are bred carefully,” reminded Rew.
Cinda blinked. “But… Vaisius Morden… All of the kings have been named Vaisius, have they not? The princes… None of them are named Vaisius. Whoever triumphs in the Investiture will adopt the name?”
“They will.”
“T-There’s no queen…” stammered the girl, pushing her hair back again. “There are three sons. There are always three sons, but there has never been a queen, has there?”
Rew grinned at her. “Just now realized it?”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” claimed Zaine. “How could—“
“One queen would result in one bloodline,” explained Rew.
“Each of the princes has a different mother!” cried Raif. “Blessed Mother, that’s crazy. They’re set against each other to prove which bloodline is the strongest. That’s… that’s terrible.”
Rew nodded and did not respond.
“But why?” asked Cinda. “Does each Morden king care so much about their legacy that they are willing to commit to such an insane plan? Has there never been a son of the king who rebelled, who… I don’t know… did something?”
“None that made it into the king’s history books,” replied Rew with a shrug.
“They’d have to turn their back on the throne, face their own father,” said Raif, shaking his head. “How could they rebel?”
“They could do something,” muttered Cinda, frowning at her brother.
“Maybe they have,” said Zaine, watching Rew. “Maybe they rebelled, but they failed. It’s only the winners that write the books, eh, Ranger?”
Rew shrugged. There were some stories the rangers told that the children weren’t ready to hear yet.
Anne tsked at them and leaned forward, smelling the aroma of the goat. “Enough of this talk. We keep it up, and none of us will be sleeping tonight. I think this is done. What do you think, Rew?”
Rew drew his hunting knife and poked at the goat. The flesh was crisp on the outside and tender inside. He dug his knife deeper, feeling how firm it was and inhaling the scent of the cooking meat. He declared, “I agree.”
“Hold on,” said Cinda. “I have more I want to—“
“Not tonight,” said Rew. “You asked for a true story, and I told you one. Let’s leave it there. The deeper you delve into the history of Vaeldon and the Mordens, the more questions you will have. Trust me, there are no happy stories to be told from that dark history—in the books or out of them.”
“I don’t know why you expect me to keep my mouth shut after what you’ve told us!” exclaimed Cinda. “The king, the princes, they… It’s awful!”
Rew grinned. “I cannot make you keep your own mouth shut tonight, but I can promise that no more words will come from mine.”
Then, he began carving off hunks of the goat and dropping them into bowls Anne had already prepared with slices of tuber she’d found in the valley. She’d cooked the root vegetables on the embers of their fire. Flavored with the juices of the goat and the salt they’d had in their packs, it was quite good.
True to her word, Cinda continued to ask questions, but true to his, Rew did not answer.
17
After two more days of difficult travel through the mountains, they finally stumbled across a narrow, barely perceptible path. There were no signs of what it was used for, but Rew judged it worth the risk to speed their travel. Mountaineers or hunters who traversed the rough trail through the remote mountains were unlikely to be active spies in Duke Eeron’s service. If they were like the wanderers who occasionally passed through Eastwatch into the wilderness, they probably wanted nothing at all to do with the party—or with anyone else—but as the party walked along the footpath, worn into the side of the mountain from decades of use, they saw no one. Whoever traveled this way and then disappeared into the wild wasn’t doing so now.
Nearer to Spinesend, the bone-white stone of the mountain began to crumble, opening gaping ravines. Boulders scattered the slope where they had tumbled from above. Vegetation found better holds, and tough bushes and twisted trees sprouted up where before the terrain had been barren. The path they were on kept them clear of the worst of the obstacles, but there were several times they had to walk carefully around dangerous drops or climb over rock that had fallen in the way.
Even with the path, it was a tiring trek, but as they reached the end of the Spine, Rew had to admit it’d been just about the easiest stretch of the journey since they’d left Falvar. There’d been no secret attacks by the ranger commandant or bandits, no surprise encounters with soldiers, no capture by nobles hoping to use them in some deadly way. It was just them against the mountain, and that was the type of conflict Rew had learned to enjoy.
It was a pleasant diversion, working together to climb over and around the rocks, exhausting themselves hiking each day, collapsing in contented heaps in the evenings, and complaining about their unchanging menu. The challenge of their mission came cr
ashing back when they finally crested a ridge and overlooked the city of Spinesend.
It was several times larger than both Yarrow and Falvar, and it had the imposing defenses of a seat of the duchy. Fifty pace-high walls encircled the city, and a deep, cold lake lapped at its foot. The city rose against the mountains of the Spine, some of the higher towers carved from the rock of the mountain itself rather than built of quarried stone. Soaring bridges spanned the open air from tower to tower at the tops of the city, and thick forest spread between the mountains and the lake. The desolate landscape they’d been moving across finally retreated beneath the surface of the land, covered by the fertile plain that lay beyond Spinesend.
Several leagues away, Rew knew that fields and farms lay like a patchwork quilt. Spinesend perched at the border between the harsh rock of the Spine and the cultivated soil beyond, but it was no mistake that the city had grown there, in the foot of the mountains, instead of where the crofters tilled their land. The founders of Spinesend hadn’t been farmers. They’d been warriors, and the city was located in the mountains because it made it almost impossible for enemies to approach. Their party had Zaine’s thieves’ gate, though, and they could only hope it was still accessible.
“You’re certain the duke won’t be watching?” asked Cinda, her voice tinged with worry now that she was faced with the enormity of what they were attempting.
“I can’t be certain,” replied Zaine, “but if the duke knew about it, surely he would have shut it down long ago? Before the Investiture stirred things up, I can’t imagine the duke would be happy about thieves sneaking in and out of his city.”
