A set of fingers poked through the crack beneath the stone and began pushing the stone aside. Caile waited until the opening was wide enough, then thrust his free hand into the hole and grabbed a handful of hair. There was a startled yelp as Caile yanked the intruder up and held his knife to the intruder’s throat.
“Your Highness, it’s me,” the intruder whispered. “It’s me Stephen.”
“What are you doing here?” Caile hissed, letting go of Stephen’s hair.
Stephen rubbed his neck where Caile had drawn a bead of blood with his knife. “You missed our appointment.”
“I’m locked in my room.”
“We suspected as much. That’s why Roanna sent me to fetch you.”
“Roanna?”
“The sorceress. She needs to see you now, before she leaves the city.”
Caile swore beneath his breath. Lorentz would be furious, but there was no way Caile could get around it now. “Where is she?”
“Follow me. I’ll take you to her.”
Stephen’s head disappeared beneath the floor again, and Caile followed after him with another curse. The passage beneath the floor was cramped and dusty and four feet high at most. Stephen thrust a lantern into Caile’s hands and replaced the floor-stone in Caile’s room. Caile held the lamp up to get a good look at the stone so he could recognize it if he needed to find it on his own.
“This way,” Stephen said, snatching the lamp from Caile’s grip and hurrying away.
Caile followed as quickly as he could without smacking his head on the ceiling. They passed several connecting passageways, and at first Caile tried to make a mental note at each intersection of which passage led to his own room. There were dozens of turns and intersections though, and when he glanced down at the floor he saw that their footprints in the dust had left a clear trail to follow regardless, so he gladly gave up trying to memorize their route. The passage sloped continually downward and eventually opened into a wide corridor where they could walk upright.
“How is it the Emperor doesn’t know about these passages?” Caile asked, feeling more at ease.
“Lightbringer’s Keep is over 300 years old, and Guderian has been here for little more than thirty of them—there’s much about the keep and this city he doesn’t know about.”
“How long have you been around?”
Stephen shot a glance back at Caile over his shoulder. “Me personally? Or the guild?”
“The guild,” Caile replied quickly, not even knowing what guild Stephen was referring to.
“Since nearly the beginning, in the year 27 A.L., when the armies of the Old World first invaded the Five Kingdoms.”
Caile was dumbstruck. Who are these people?
The passage veered sharply to their right, and suddenly they found themselves in a sewer tunnel. Stephen led the way along a narrow ledge above the brackish water, but the stench nearly gagged Caile.
“It’s just a little farther,” Stephen spoke through his shirtsleeve he held over his mouth.
Caile followed suit and less than a hundred feet down the tunnel was a wooden ladder which Stephen motioned him toward. Caile climbed up without question and at the top found a wooden trap door.
“Knock five times,” Stephen instructed him.
Caile did as he was told and moments later the hatch opened and two sets of hands reached down to pull him up into an old wine cellar. Stephen followed directly behind him, and the two men who had assisted them then pulled up the wooden ladder and closed the hatch. Like Stephen, both of the other men wore nondescript clothing and appeared nonthreatening.
“Hello, Prince Caile Delios,” a voice said behind Caile.
“Roanna?” Caile asked, turning about to regard the woman who had hailed him. She was late in her middle ages and completely unremarkable in appearance. Her gray hair was bound back and tucked into a caul, and she wore a simple gray dress with a sagging black bodice that did little to hide her rotund shape. She was hardly what he expected of a sorceress. The firewielder Caile had confronted outside of Kal Pyrthin had exuded a mad aura of power around her, but this woman exuded nothing.
“I am Roanna,” the woman confirmed.
“I apologize for missing our earlier engagement,” Caile said, bowing slightly and trying not to reveal his disappointment in the tone of his voice. “After last night, I was assigned a new liaison and was unable to leave the Keep safely.”
“It’s of no consequence. You’re here now.”
She motioned for him to sit at one of several wooden crates that had been arranged in a circle and took a seat herself at one of them. Caile nodded politely and sat across from her. Stephen and the other men took seats to either side of Roanna.
“Stephen and the others told me of your sister,” Roanna began. “I’d like to know more about her.”
“Of course,” Caile said, outwardly calm but frantically thinking of what to say. “What is it you’d like to know?”
“Tell me about her power.”
Caile nodded. “What assurance can you give me that you won’t just go off and kill her? I need to know you mean her no harm before I tell you anything.”
“Of course,” Roanna said with a smile. “Perhaps it would be best if we started at the beginning?”
“Yes,” Caile agreed though he had no idea what beginning she spoke of.
“You’ve lived in Sol Valaróz—you know that Guderian killed King Pallma and gave the kingdom of Valaróz to Don Bricio, I presume?”
Caile nodded.
“Well, the murder of Pallma scared the remaining three monarchs into subservience, including your father, who was newly anointed, if I’m not mistaken.”
“He was only fourteen,” Caile replied.
“I remember it well enough, but that’s about as far as most people know. The lesser-known story is how Guderian exterminated the sorcerer’s guilds. The guilds were a shadow of their former selves after the Dreamwielder War, it is true, but there was still much power in them. Do you know how it was that Guderian destroyed them, my young princeling?”
“Wulfram?”
“Wulfram is a mighty sorcerer, perhaps the mightiest sorcerer the world has ever known after the dreamwielders transformed him, but even he could not have defeated the guilds on his own.”
“How then?” Caile asked, getting caught up in her story despite himself.
“Guderian. He has no magical ability in any traditional sense. He can’t wield fire or storms or dreams, he can’t manipulate animals or see the future, but he is nonetheless of Sargoth Lightbringer’s bloodline. There is power in him—the power to stint sorcery. For hundreds and thousands of years, dating back to the Old World and the holy wars over Khail Sanctu, war has always been fought steel against steel, sorcery against sorcery. Armies would face each other on the field while the sorcerers fought behind the lines, trying to gain an advantage, always escalating the stakes, but usually counteracting one another. Guderian changed all that. With his immunity to any sort of sorcery, he himself faced the sorcerer’s guilds and cut them down with his steel blade, while Wulfram annihilated any troops or warriors who defied them. The two of them were unstoppable. I bore witness when Guderian clove the head from my father’s shoulders on the streets of this very city. I was twelve years old.”
Caile nodded. “I do not doubt your animosity toward the Emperor, but what do you want from my sister?”
Roanna smiled. “If your sister is who I think she is, she is Guderian’s one weakness. It has been foretold that a daughter of one of the five monarchs would be born who would be a sorceress, and that she would destroy Guderian. Such was the vision of the mightiest seer in all of the Old World on Guderian’s tenth birthday, many years ago when he was still in exile.”
“How do you know all this?”
“As you can well see, my dear boy, the guilds are not as dead as Guderian thinks them to be, and our connections go beyond the borders of his so called empire.”
Caile was silent for a mo
ment as he let everything sink in. “So you want my sister then, so you can throw her at the Emperor and defeat him?”
“If she is indeed the one foretold by prophecy, I don’t intend to throw her at anyone. My plan is to take her away someplace safe, to train her and cultivate her abilities until she is ready to face Guderian and destroy him. I would not throw a defenseless girl in harm’s way, Prince.”
“What is it you need to know?”
“I need to know if she’s the one. What sort of ability has she shown?”
“She’s a seer,” Caile said. “Ever since we were children she’s been able to see events before they happen. She saw the firewielder that attacked us outside Kal Pyrthin in a vision and warned us.”
“Has she done anything else? Started fires or brought on storms? Spoken with animals? Transformed anything?”
“Not that I know of,” Caile said, shaking his head.
“How old is she?”
“Eighteen.”
Roanna rubbed her chin, lost in thought. “It’s possible she will develop more powers. I myself saw visions long before I developed my greater abilities as a mature woman. If she’s seeing clear enough visions to warn you of danger, her ability is stronger than most.” Roanna stood and smiled. “Thank you for your help, Caile. It’s unfortunate you had to learn so much about us, but I suppose there was no other way. You seem like a nice boy.”
Stephen and the other two men stood and each pulled a dagger from their belt.
“Wait,” Caile said, jumping from his crate and grabbing his boot knife. “I gave you what you want. I hate the Emperor too. I can help.”
“In other circumstances, perhaps,” Roanna said, “but you’re a ward of Guderian now and you know too much. You’ll slip up eventually, and he knows how to get information out of people, willing or not. We can’t risk him finding out about us.”
The three men had backed Caile up against the old wine racks lining one wall. Caile scooted to his left to position himself in the corner of the room and crouched into a defensive position. None of his assailants were fighting men, and if he had his sword, Caile was certain he could kill them all handily, but with only his boot knife he knew he stood little chance if they all attacked at once.
“All at once,” Stephen said. “On the count of three.”
Caile swore and gripped his knife tighter.
“One…two…”
Caile didn’t wait for three to come. He lunged forward at the man who stood to his far left and slashed at the tendons on his outside knee. The man went down with a cry and Caile sprung up just in time to block Stephen’s knife thrust. Caile let his momentum carry him into Stephen and wrapped his arms around him in a bear hug that kept Stephen’s knife hand pinned to his side. The third man feinted toward them, but Caile spun Stephen around as a shield and the man backed away.
Roanna was yelling. “Kill him, Stephen. Kill him!”
Caile couldn’t help but grin at the madness of it all. He freed his right hand and held his knife to the side of Stephen’s throat. “Let’s all just calm down now. There’s a door behind you, Roanna. Take your other two friends out with you, and Stephen and I will just head on down the ladder. We’ll all go our separate ways, and no one else gets hurt or killed.”
Roanna glared at him. “I’m sorry, Stephen.”
It took a moment for it to register in Caile’s mind that she said Stephen—not Caile—but by then it was too late. Roanna made a terse gesture, and suddenly Stephen screamed as his chest burst into flames. Caile pushed him away with a curse and scurried toward the trap door in the floor, but Roanna yelled out some guttural phrase and the door burst into flames too. The injured man on the floor grabbed at Caile’s ankle, toppling him to the ground, and then the other man was on top of Caile, trying to force his dagger into his chest.
“Quickly,” Roanna yelled. “Kill him!”
Caile could feel the strength in his arms waning as the man on top of him used all of his weight to force the dagger downward. The injured man had a firm grip on Caile’s legs, keeping him from twisting free. Caile let loose an animal-like scream as he tried to push the man on top of him away with all his might, but to no end. Caile’s surge of energy quickly left him, and the dagger continued its inexorable and agonizingly slow path toward his chest. Caile couldn’t help but wonder if this was how his brother had died. Lorentz warned me, Caile chastised himself, thinking it would be his last thought, but suddenly there was a massive explosion and the man atop of him was blown sideways into the wall. Caile choked on the dust and rose to his knees just in time to see Roanna run past him and plummet down the trap door into the sewer below.
Disoriented, Caile looked about the room, trying to discern what had happened. The main door leading from the cellar had been blown off its hinges, along with half the doorway and the surrounding wall. In the ragged opening stood a woman. She was dressed similarly to Roanna but looked younger and had darker hair, though it was hard to make out her features clearly in the choking dust. Still, she looked familiar to him.
The turnip lady! he realized as he rubbed the dust and tears from his eyes. She regarded Caile for a moment, then motioned for him to follow her as she lowered herself down the trap door into the sewer. Caile glanced toward the blown-out doorway leading upstairs but heard shouting and yelling from that direction and decided it best to follow the turnip lady.
She stood waiting for him in the sewer. “Roanna has fled,” she said. “No doubt, she’ll leave the city and not return now.”
Her demeanor and voice was nearly unrecognizable from how she’d acted the night before when they’d met in the street. She had been hunched over and spoke with a distracted voice when trying to sell her turnips to him, but now she carried herself and spoke with authority.
Us meeting was no accident, Caile realized. She was following me.
“Can you find your way back to the keep?” she asked him.
“I think so.”
“Go then. Hurry back before you’re found missing. The scent-hound will have certainly detected what Roanna and I have done, and soldiers will be searching the city soon.”
The woman turned to go off in the other direction.
“Wait!” Caile said. “Who are you?”
“A true ally and more than a turnip farmer. That’s all you need to know for now.”
12
The Meeting
Makarria and Parmo saw Pyrthin’s Flame long before anyone on Pyrthin’s Flame spied their tiny skiff. It was mid-morning and Makarria at first thought the white sails on the horizon were nothing more than clouds. When she realized that it was actually a ship, she was overjoyed, hoping they would be rescued, but Parmo shook his head in worry and told her to lie down out of sight as he yanked in the oars and crouched down beneath the rail to join her.
“That’s no fishing boat, Makarria. It’s a naval brig if I’ve ever seen one. Two masts, fore and aft sails…” Parmo glanced around frantically for his sword. I haven’t even had time to take off the rust and put an edge on the blade, he lamented.
“You think it’s after us?” Makarria asked, peeking up over the rail.
“I hope not. It’s best not to find out, so stay down and out of sight.”
Makarria saw that her grandfather was worried, but she didn’t find herself the least bit scared for some reason. “It’s flying a red and yellow flag. Aren’t those the colors of Pyrthinia, Grampy—I mean, Parmo?”
Parmo found his sword still wrapped up in the burlap but paused to glance over the rail at the ship to see if Makarria was correct. Pyrthin’s Flame had gotten closer but had not altered its westerly course, which was merely tangential to the northwesterly path they were on.
“It looks like the gold and red stripes of Pyrthinia,” Parmo agreed. “That means nothing, though. The Emperor could have sent word to King Casstian.”
Makarria didn’t believe it. “I think they’ll help us. We should wave at them with the sail.”
�
��No, we’ll stay put,” Parmo said, his tone making it clear the matter was not up for debate.
Makarria sighed and rested her chin sullenly on the rail of the skiff and Parmo turned his attention back to his sword.
On board Pyrthin’s Fire, the sailor assigned to the crow’s nest glimpsed Parmo’s skiff, but even through his telescope, it was so small and distant, he could discern little more than that it was a single-mast skiff—drifting aimlessly in the current without a sail, it seemed.
“Fishing boat, starboard side, looks to be abandoned or stranded,” the sailor yelled down to the first mate on the main deck.
The first mate turned to the starboard and saw the skiff as an intermittent speck bobbing up and down on the swells in the distance. They were already a full day out from Kal Pyrthin Bay, which was farther from the coast than most fishing boats would dare venture, and normally the first mate would change course to check on a boat in distress, but the captain had made it clear this was no normal voyage. Their orders had been strict: stop for no one and make for the East Islands with all due haste. The first mate sighed inwardly at having to leave fellow mariners stranded at sea, but orders were orders. He turned from the starboard rail, intent on heading to the quarter-deck, and nearly ran smack into Taera.
“Your Highness,” the first mate stammered in apology, “I didn’t hear you approach.”
Taera hardly heard the man speak. She had been in her cabin and seen a small boat in her mind. “There is a girl on that boat. We must rescue her.”
“Your Highness, we are on strict orders to not delay for any reason.”
“It’s not a request—it’s a command, sailor.”
The first mate hesitated for only a moment, then dashed to the quarter deck to relay the orders to the helmsman.
Taera made her way to the forecastle as Pyrthin’s Flame came about to the starboard side. The captain found her there a few short minutes later watching the skiff slowly loom larger in the distance.
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