The River King's Road

by Merciel, Liane

  The Blessed were Called. The ordinary were not. That was how the goddess made her will known in the world. Those she chose went to the pillared halls of the Dome for training. There they became yellow-robed Illuminers, tasked with shedding the light of truth across the land, or Sun Knights who protected the weak and dealt justice to outlaws. Those she ignored went . . . elsewhere. Out into the world, mostly. Many chose to take priestly vows and bring Celestia’s word to the people that way, with the authority of a solaros if not the power of a Blessed.

  Bitharn had no desire to become a solaros. Instead she stayed at the Dome of the Sun, playing along with whatever lessons the knights would let her share and spending long hours in the bowyard when they shooed her off. She became an oddity: a girl who could outshoot any of the boys and, in time, most of the knights as well. But that was fine, that was better than fine; that made her eccentric, as strange in her way as Kelland was in his.

  Even then, when she was barely more than a child, Bitharn had recognized how lonely Kelland’s path would become, and how direly he would need a friend. The Knights of the Sun were respected, revered, a little feared—but they were not befriended. They took the sorrows of others into themselves, but they could admit to none of their own. They stayed neutral in the conflicts of the secular world, and keeping neutral meant keeping a distance. They had no lovers, no confidants, no shoulders to cry on; they were always, always alone.

  It was a heavy burden to bear. Perhaps that was why so few were Called.

  So she stayed with him. Because he needed her, and because somewhere along the way, while she was playing with her arrows and he was learning the gravity of a graybeard three times his age, her love had changed from that of a child for a friend to that of a woman for a man.

  She loved him. And that was an impossible thing. Bitharn would sooner have swallowed her tongue than tell him, and doubted that he knew; but the truth of it was, she’d never leave him. Not back in Calantyr, not in the Sunfallen Kingdoms, not ever.

  A fluttering in the air caught her attention. A bird, winging toward the distant castle.

  “Pigeon,” Bitharn said, shading her eyes against the glare. Something winked on the pigeon’s leg as it descended toward the castle: a marking band, or a message cylinder, glittering briefly in the sun. It was too far for her to be sure. An instant later the plump gray bird vanished into one of the small round holes that ringed the eastern tower, where, presumably, Lord Eduin Inguilar kept a dovecote to receive it.

  “I didn’t see it,” Kelland admitted.

  Of course he hadn’t. Bitharn hid her smile. For all his skill at swordplay and prayer, the knight didn’t have her eyes. “It went into a tower,” she told him. “Carrying a message, most likely. It looked like it had something on its leg.”

  “Could you tell where it came from?”

  She shook her head, doubtful. “I’d guess east if I had to guess something, but it’s hard to tell with the trees.”

  “There isn’t much to the east.”

  He was right; there wasn’t. Not within a pigeon’s flight, at least. Pigeons were short-range birds, seldom used for carrying messages more than a hundred leagues. Messages that had to go further were entrusted to whitemauks, larger and fiercer birds whose ancestors had been taken from the sea centuries before the Godslayer’s War.

  A message on a whitemauk would not have been strange. But a pigeon?

  East of Thistlestone was the hostile kingdom of Oakharn. Northeast was proud Mirhain and the trackless shadows of Delverness Wood; southeast, beleaguered and bankrupt Thelyand, followed by the cruel ironlords of Ang’arta and the bloodmages they called Thorns. None of those seemed likely sources for a pigeon, and only Oakharn was close enough to send one. Most probably, the bird had come from somewhere inside Lord Inguilar’s own holding.

  “Why wouldn’t they just send a rider?” Bitharn wondered aloud. Thistlestone, like most of these border holds, was a small fief. A rider could reach Lord Inguilar’s castle from any point on its periphery within a day or two.

  Kelland shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t have one to spare. Maybe the message was so urgent it couldn’t wait for a rider to deliver it.”

  “Or maybe I was wrong about the direction.”

  The knight pretended to consider that. “No,” he decided. “You’re never wrong. No doubt we’ll learn the true reason in time.”

  “No doubt,” Bitharn agreed, and they rode on.

  Ahead the castle town greeted them with a rush of noise and color. Freeriders and hireswords had converged on Thistlestone for the impending Swordsday celebrations. The farmers were in from their fields, the shepherds in from their pastures. Boys with dreams of glory rubbed shoulders with hard-bitten veterans who had long ago lost theirs. Girls with flowers in their hair and embroidered sashes around their waists watched them, giggling and blushing at the ones they favored.

  By the standards of Calantyr or Mirhain, the Swordsday festivities at Thistlestone were small and drab. Eastern Langmyr was not a wealthy region, and the constant low-burning war with Oakharn had further depleted the border holds’ treasuries. No golden purses or immortalizing songs waited for the winners here. The hireswords who came to Thistlestone were the sweepings of the Sunfallen Kingdoms: men who were too poor to ride in Mirhain’s great tourneys, too new or unskilled to have a berth with one of the mercenary companies who sold their services year-by-year to kings. They were men for whom victory meant a better horse or a good steel sword, not a thousand silver solis.

  Even so, there were far too many people for the castle town to hold them all. Their tents poured out of its gates in a swirl of canvas and leather and the occasional bright blossom of silk. The scent of roasting meat rose from the firepits that dotted the earth between them, and the clamor of a hundred conversations in the Rhaellan trade-tongue. A brindle dog came from somewhere among the tents and trotted after Bitharn’s and Kelland’s horses, yapping.

  The dog was their most obvious follower, but it was hardly the only one. Everywhere the Celestians went, heads turned.

  They were not looking at her, Bitharn knew. However odd it was to see a woman dressed in huntsman’s clothes and carrying a yew bow across her back, she was perfectly unremarkable next to her companion.

  Kelland had the blood of Nebaioth. He had no idea who his parents were, any more than Bitharn did, but they had left him with the legacy of that land. Nebaioth, far to the south, where it was said the sun never set and the heat of endless days baked its people black as charcoal. Nebaioth, land of pearl-strewn beaches and red-quilled lions, where sailors from the northern realms were permitted to enter only a single walled city and were slain on sight if they left it.

  It was a strange, exotic place, more legend than land. Kelland had never seen it. He had spent his entire life within the sheltering walls of Cailan’s Dome, praying in its golden cathedral and practicing swordwork in its marbled yards. Yet Nebaioth marked him from half a world away. His skin was the deep brown of vehrwood, his hair pitch-black and tough as wire. He wore it in a mass of tight, sleek braids, each one capped by a white cowrie shell. Bitharn had found a book that said Nebaithene warriors wore their hair in such braids, and books were all either of them knew about that land.

  Books and superstitions. Everywhere they went, people believed Kelland’s blood made his magic stronger. They called him the Burnt Knight. It was not a name Kelland ever used for himself, but neither was it one he could escape. The power of the sun was part of his heritage, the commonfolk claimed; of course he was one of Celestia’s Blessed. They begged for his blessings and deferred to his wisdom, even when he had no inkling what the correct answer might be.

  At first the commonfolk’s reactions had surprised and embarrassed him—in Cailan he was only another Knight of the Sun, talented but not extraordinary—but over the years Kelland had become resigned to it. His appearance was another tool he could use to serve his goddess. No more, no less.

  The Burnt Knight’s unique app
earance was part of the reason they had been sent to Langmyr, Bitharn suspected. The High Solaros had never said as much, but it was not hard to read the signs.

  For decades the Celestian faith had been trying to end the cycle of bloodletting between Oakharn and Langmyr. The task had taken on greater urgency with the rise of Ang’arta and its Tower of Thorns; kingdoms weakened by internal feuding were easy prey for the ironlords. Yet it was not easy weaning men off their old hatreds, even with a new foe at the door. The Illuminers could cite history’s bloody lessons all they wanted, and Knights of the Sun could talk themselves blue in the face about the tactical futility of conquests across the river, but they could not make anyone listen. The temple had no real right to intervene in the border lords’ affairs, and favoring one side would alienate the other.

  All they could do, really, was soothe immediate conflicts and hope that time cooled both sides’ bloodlust. That, Bitharn thought, was why they were here. Celestia’s Blessed acted as a living reminder of her moral and magical force, and the Burnt Knight was more visible than most.

  He was a symbol. It was not a role he enjoyed—Kelland had always shied away from the adoration of the commons, to Bitharn’s amused incomprehension—but duty had thrust him into it, and he was never one to shirk duty.

  Bitharn, however, was not a symbol, and that meant she was free to do as she liked. Some things, at least.

  Thistlestone’s Swordsday competitions were well within her grasp. Not the melee, of course; she was a poor swordfighter at best, and the others would make short work of her once they recovered from the surprise of seeing a woman in the ring. Nor did she have the strength to compete at the stone toss or shield races.

  Archery, though … archery was hers.

  She scanned the names on the scroll pinned to a post outside the archers’ field. The scribe had a good hand; he had written large and clear, and by the time her horse ambled past she had read all the names and recognized none of them. Smiling to herself, Bitharn settled back in her saddle.

  “Planning on entering?” Kelland asked. Amusement warmed his eyes. He could seem forbidding, even dangerous, to strangers who saw him only as one of Celestia’s Blessed. The knight had the grave features of the old kings’ statues: high cheekbones, a wide brow, a mouth more given to frowns than joy. But when he smiled, all the weight of his duties fell away, and he was purely beautiful to her sight.

  Bitharn wanted to keep him smiling this last little while. She winked. “Bet on me.”

  “You know we aren’t allowed to gamble.”

  “It won’t be a gamble,” she assured him, and was rewarded with a laugh.

  The memory of that laughter warmed her as she washed off the travel dust in their inn that afternoon. The match would take place in a few hours, shortly before sunset. First she had a little spying to do. Kelland gathered information in the course of his work as a Blessed; Bitharn listened for the rumors and grievances that commonfolk muttered among themselves. Between them, they learned far more than either could alone.

  Surreptitious listening required hiding who she was, at least for a while. Bitharn wove her long honey-gold hair into a tight braid and knotted it beneath a cap, bound her breasts tightly to her chest, and pulled on a loose-fitting leather jerkin to cover what the bindings couldn’t hide. A few smudges of dirt on her cheeks disguised their smoothness. She’d never pass for a hard-bitten mercenary, but a fresh-faced boy just off his father’s farm . . .that, with the right cast of voice and clumsy attempts at swagger, she could do.

  She hoped so, anyway. The Langmyrne spoke Rhaellan, as did all the people of the Sunfallen Kingdoms. Before the Godslayer’s War, when Rhaelyand was a grand empire, the western kingdoms had been united as its provinces: Langmyr, Oakharn, and all the others, each with its own Prince and crowning castle.

  The flower of Rhaelyand died on the Field of Sorrows, over a thousand years ago, in the last battle of the Godslayer’s War. The empire, mortally wounded, fell soon after. The princes became kings, the provinces kingdoms, each one claiming to be the true heir to Rhaelyand’s crown-and-sun. All that truly remained of the old empire, however, were a few fading maps, the hollow name of the Sunfallen Kingdoms, and the two languages it left in this part of the world. Rhaellan, the trade-tongue, which had splintered and diffused so many times that its dialects were near languages in their own right, and High Rhaelic, the tongue of priests and scholars, which was the nearest echo of what Rhaelyand’s original language had been.

  Bitharn, like all the children educated at the Dome of the Sun, could speak and read High Rhaelic. She knew a few dialects of Rhaellan, too, but her teachers had hailed from Mirhain and Thelyand, not Langmyr. Here, her accent would mark her as a foreigner at once.

  Still, at this time of year, that wouldn’t be so odd. In any other season, the commonfolk might bite their tongues if an outlander came near. But Swordsday brought a flood of glory-hunting foreigners, and there’d be nothing strange about one listening to local gossip today.

  By the time she went downstairs, the common room was crowded with competitors, proving her guess correct. Bitharn slipped past a pair of soldiers in well-worn leather armor blazoned with the thorny wreath of Thistlestone. She pressed against the plaster wall, making herself small in the shadows while she gauged the room’s mood.

  A trio of archers sat around the smoky fire, cursing and laughing over mugs of sour ale. They wore no lord’s colors, and the mismatched scraps of leather and chain that served as their armor suggested that if they were hireswords, they were not good ones. Next to them was a table of farmers, and next to that four old wives sharing black beer and gossip.

  The long bar was more promising. There she saw two men wearing the white blossom of the Brotherhood of the Rose: mercenaries, but ones who claimed to fight for principle as much as coin. They looked well-off, and likely were; Brotherhood mercenaries commanded high prices from employers who valued their gloss of legitimacy along with their skills. Lesser hireswords and locals clustered around them, vying for a moment’s attention. The mercenaries were here to look for promising young talent on the field, but that never stopped anyone from trying to impress them off of it.

  They would do nicely. Bitharn pulled down her cap and pushed off the wall, adopting an awkward swagger. She bellied up to the bar and ordered a mug of ale, putting a crack in her voice as she did. The nearest man sniggered, but beyond that no one paid her much mind; a boy getting drunk was nothing worth notice.

  “We could use you lot around here,” one of the farmers was saying to the Brotherhood’s men. “Always a need for good swords on the border.”

  The Brotherhood mercenary didn’t reply at once, so Bitharn took the opportunity to interrupt. “Isn’t there a peace now?” She took a swig of her ale, too fast on purpose, and coughed on the thick foam.

  The farmer gave her a glance and dismissed whatever he saw. “By the sound of your tongue you’re not from here, so I’ll forgive your asking. There’s no peace. Oh, the lords might put on smiles when they meet, and that prancing twit from Oakharn might call Lord Eduins ‘cousin,’ but we who’ve our feet on the ground and our heads out of the clouds know better. We haven’t forgot what they did. My own father marched for revenge against Owlsgrove, and I’d have gone after the Slaver Knight’s friends myself if I hadn’t been cursed with a bad leg.”

  “The Slaver Knight?”

  The farmer spat on the floor. “Aye. Must’ve been … four years ago, now? Five? The year the rain ruined the harvest.”

  “Five years back, that was,” one of the other locals put in.

  “Five years, then. That was a long hard winter, no denying, but we Langmyrne came together and shared what we had and made do. The Oakharne, on the other hand …” He spat again. “That for them. The Slaver Knight, he was one of them, one of their brave anointed swords. You can see what those oaths are worth to an Oakharne.

  “When they got hungry, they didn’t scrape and struggle to get by. Oh, no. They took
their prisoners, their petty thieves and poachers, and sold them to the ironlords for food. All the border lords did it: Owlsgrove, Bulls’ March, even pious Lady Vanegild of Breakwall, who hands out pennies to her peasants at Midwinter. Those pennies came at a dear cost that year. When they’d emptied their dungeons, they took to kidnapping commonfolk—commonfolk from our side of the river. Good, honest men and women whose only sin was living too close to the border, hauled off at swordpoint to face blood sacrifice or the breaking pits or some other horror in Ang’arta.

  “Couldn’t keep that secret for long, of course. But when our lords came asking, the Oakharne claimed it was one rogue knight who did it all. Just the Slaver Knight, all on his own. You’d have to be dimmer than old Bollos to believe that, but that’s what they said, straight-faced.”

  “The lords believed it, didn’t they?” Bitharn ventured. “If there was no war.”

  “Lord Eduin’s too trusting,” the farmer said. “He’s a fair lord, and I’ll not speak ill of him, but he let them off too gently. The Oakharne handed over the Slaver Knight, and Lord Eduin hanged him in the square, aye … but we knew he didn’t act alone. Plenty more out there needing necklaces of their own. There’ll be no peace for the likes of them, whatever the lords say.”

  “Seems to me your real grievance is with the ironlords,” Bitharn said. “This Slaver Knight might have handed them the victims, but they’re the ones did the torturing. Am I wrong?”

  The farmer hesitated. He glanced at the door, then back at Bitharn, chewing at the corner of his lip. “No. They’ve got no grievance with us, and we’ve none with them, far off as they are. No reason to go looking for more trouble when we’ve got enough on our doorstep. That sort of thing … that’s for the lords to decide, anyway. Not the likes of you or I.”

  “Not afraid of them, are you?” one of the Brotherhood mercenaries asked, amused. He was a rangy man, no longer a youth but not quite grown into the fullness of his body. About her age, Bitharn guessed: a year or two past twenty. “The Iron Crown’s soldiers are only men. They die like any other, and deserve it more than most.”