The River King's Road

by Merciel, Liane

  Kelland didn’t pause to watch. He was perfectly confident in his magic; he didn’t hesitate to turn his back on the downed ghaole to confront the two that had finally worked their way around the invisible wall.

  He dispatched the nearer of the two with three swift strokes, forcing it to its knees and then sweeping off its head. The other he held at bay with his shield—only for an instant, but an instant was all it took for that one to be alone, and doomed.

  The sight of it simultaneously humbled Albric and filled him with pride. Hope flowered in his breast, bright and hot as the flare of Celestia’s holy light. This was the power and the glory of the goddess whose faith he had forsaken. This was what it meant to be a righteous man. Standing witness to the Burnt Knight’s valor brought him to the brink of tears. How had he lost his way so badly? How had he forgotten? Why?

  Beside him Severine pushed back her hood and strode forward. Albric followed, hesitant once more. Could he trust that the Thornlady had dealt with the child? If so, was he still worthy to stand beside the Burnt Knight? He drew his sword but held it loosely, the tip near dragging in the snow.

  “An impressive display,” Severine said as she came to the clearing. The three surviving ghoul-hounds slunk alongside her. The ghaole trapped on Kelland’s wall shrieked and spasmed, unable to tear itself free. “I can see why my mistress wants you.”

  “Then come and take me,” the Burnt Knight snarled. Sweat pearled on his deep brown skin and hung like dew from his braids, but he did not seem tired. He wrapped both hands around the hilt of his sun-marked sword and thrust its point into the earth. Between his fingers the golden pommel pulsed light with each beat of his heart, brighter each time: once, twice, and a third beat that filled the clearing with white radiance, dazzling as sunlight on snow. Albric could hardly bear to look up; it was like staring at the sun without blinking, a brilliance too great for mortal eyes to withstand.

  He averted his eyes from the shining knight and looked to the ghoul-hounds instead. They were blistering in the sunlight, dying where they stood. Their pallid skin rose up in hissing welts, then burned to gray ash and blew off their flesh. Withered muscle scorched and crumbled as Celestia’s fury tore through their bodies. The ghaole flung up their hands to shield their eyes from the sun that had come down to burn them, and the Burnt Knight’s power scoured those hands to webs of bare white bone.

  Even Severine gritted her teeth against the onslaught. Her good eye narrowed; her crystal one blazed in answer. “In good time. I might first wonder why you came alone.”

  In the clearing, the wounded ghaole exploded into ash against the Burnt Knight’s wall of woven light. The others continued their halting advance, stooped forward as if marching against a punishing wind. More of their skin blew away with each labored step. One stuck its tongue out, panting, and the sunfire seared off the appendage so that it came flapping back behind the ghoul like a ribbon torn off in a breeze.

  But Severine’s voice rose with iron implacability.

  “I might wonder,” she said, “if you left your companion behind to protect her … or because you could not afford the distraction.” She made a small, vicious gesture with her maimed hand as she spoke. For the briefest instant the Burnt Knight hesitated, but then he jerked his sword up to parry some unseen blow. Had there been a real strike, it would have skittered to the left, deflected by his blade … and even as the thought came to him, Albric saw the ghaole in front of him, to Kelland’s left, shriek and double over. The long bones of its arms shattered, pebbling its hairless skin outward with thousands of fragments sent flying by the force of the break.

  Severine did not seem to notice her spell’s misfire. “I might wonder,” she continued, inexorably, “whether you left her behind because you love her.”

  The ghoul-hound with the broken arms collapsed in a plume of sparks and ash. Its fall seemed the only sound in the world. Now there were only two left. But Kelland’s light faltered for an instant following Severine’s words, and Albric felt the knight’s moment of doubt resonate through his bones, fatal as the tolling of a mourning bell. He saw the Thornlady smile.

  A sudden coldness took hold of him, tracing down his back with chill fingers. What had he done? What had he said last night? He couldn’t quite remember, not the exact words, and cursed the drinking he’d done that day.

  “I might even wonder,” Severine said—and now she was triumphant in her certainty—“whether you love her more than you love your goddess, and thus you have broken your oath.”

  The light went out.

  And Albric howled, a wordless cry of fear and hatred and fury at himself for waiting too long, and swung his sword two-handed at the Thornlady’s back.

  Shadows flung his blade aside. They rose up from the folds of her robe and seized his steel with tendrils of darkness, too solid to be real, and turned his killing blow away more firmly than any shield. Albric staggered, thrown off balance. His foot skidded in the trampled snow and he went to one knee.

  The Thornlady whirled as he struck, her pale face twisted by hatred. In her eye—her good eye, her real one—he saw a rage to match his own, and a glimmer of what might have been fear. She brought her maimed hand up like an angry cat drawing back a paw, although he was well out of her reach, and then she seemed to catch hold of herself.

  “Kill him,” Severine spat, and turned back to her true prey.

  The last ghoul-hounds leapt to her bidding. Both were badly hurt, their talons reduced to yellowed hooks on skeletal hands, but they did not slow like living men and they still had the strength to flense Albric’s flesh from his bones. And although the Burnt Knight had faced them and killed them with Celestia’s holy power, Albric had only steel in his hands, and the ghaole had no fear of that.

  He sent up a prayer for Kelland, silent and heartfelt, and then they were upon him and his world shrank to a corner of a snowy glade with the fox’s blood spattered underfoot and the ashes of dead flesh blowing on the wind.

  It was nothing like a Swordsday melee. In his youth Albric had faced off against four challengers, five, and bested them handily—but that was on flat-beaten ground, against living men using dulled blades and with nothing but pride at stake. Today he was fifteen years older, and he fought over slippery snow and skittering leaves, against inhuman creatures with claws and fangs and unholy quickness.

  He did not fight for pride. Nor did he fight for his life; he had given that up long ago. He fought for Kelland’s, and Mirri’s. He fought for the hope of Leferic’s rule in Bulls’ March, and the chance his domain had to become, finally, something more than a poor border castle torn ragged by war.

  For that, he had to win.

  One of the ghoul-hounds raked at his throat. Albric dodged back and to the side, out of its reach, and brought his sword down in a razor-edged arc. Its arms had already been burnt to bone by the Celestian’s sunfire; Albric’s blade severed one at the wrist and left the other dangling by sinewed threads. The ghaole screamed, jerking the bloodless stumps away. Turning the momentum of his swing, Albric brought the sword around low, chopping into its thigh. The ghaole stumbled, falling, and his next blow took off its howling head.

  His sidestep had brought him into the next one’s reach, though, and Albric couldn’t evade both at once. The second ghoul-hound battered past his shield and tore into his side; he felt, with a tingling sense of disbelief, its talons catch against his ribs and twist in deeper. It thrust its face in for a bite and he slammed his elbow into its nose, crunching the brittle dead cartilage and the top row of its teeth back into its face.

  The ghoul never flinched, never wailed. Its tongue curled up under the ruins of its smashed nose, flecks of cartilage clinging to the swollen purple flesh, and wrapped around Albric’s arm. He swore—at least he thought he did; he couldn’t be sure of the words—and kicked at its knees, yanking his arm desperately to get free.

  It wouldn’t let go. He couldn’t free his sword to get a clean strike. In the corner of his eye A
lbric saw a flare of darkness and then another of light, white and gold and white again, before that was swallowed in turn by a wash of fell radiance in the red-streaked pale color of new ivory or bloodied bone. The salt-copper stench of spilled blood filled the air, and he knew he’d be getting no help from that quarter.

  If anything, the Burnt Knight seemed to need his help. Sir Kelland was backed almost to the tree line, and he was plainly exhausted. Blood darkened his surcoat in half a dozen places; every stroke of his sword came slower, and although Celestia’s holy fire still limned the blade, it was little more than a candleflame, faint as Albric’s own hopes.

  Severine, too, was wounded … but not as badly. Not near as badly. A thin cut on her cheek wept red, and she was favoring her right side, but her own blade moved quick as thought. It was a weapon Albric had never seen before: a needle of gleaming ivory, more long knife than sword, that tapered to a wicked point and seemed to have no edge. The hilt of that strange blade was fused to her palm, and the twisted basket of its crossguard wrapped around her hand and wrist like the coils of a constricting snake. Every time her ivory sword drew blood, Severine grew stronger and the Burnt Knight weakened. Already his fire was dying.

  Albric wanted to scream, but his numbed chest wouldn’t let him. The frigid paralysis was spreading. He couldn’t feel the side of the body where the ghaole’s claws had sunk in, and his legs were beginning to falter. Very soon he’d fall.

  Fighting to keep his sword hilt clenched between the fingers of his trapped right hand, Albric fumbled out his hunting knife with the left. He hacked awkwardly at the ghaole’s tongue. Slowly the ropy muscle gave way. It clawed at him, but its closeness prevented the ghoul-hound from slashing with much force; all it could do was rake and scratch, shredding his clothes and ripping open more shallow wounds.

  Albric couldn’t feel the blood. He couldn’t feel anything beyond cold and terror. Finally the ghaole’s tongue flapped loose from his arm, still licking at him but no longer attached to the creature’s mouth. Instead of jerking away from it as the ghoul expected—it had already set its claws to disembowel him if he did—Albric dropped his sword and grabbed the top of its head with his newly freed right hand, slashing at its throat with the knife. Dry skin and pink-webbed innards gave way much faster than the coiled tongue had; the ghaole was headless before it recovered from its surprise.

  Swearing weakly, Albric picked its claws out of his sides. Some were too slippery with blood or sunk in too far for him to pull out, and he left those where they were, leaving the ghaole’s hand to dangle from his ribs like some enormous bony tick. He stooped to retrieve his sword and nearly fell face-first into the snow; bloodloss had him dizzy, and the ghaole’s touch had turned his limbs to unresponsive ice.

  He’d never been so slow, so useless, in his life. But he couldn’t give in yet. There was one more thing he had to do.

  He walked toward Severine.

  She did not turn to see him coming. The Burnt Knight had fallen; his braids snaked dark across the snow and his sword lay at his fingertips, its fire gone. He was breathing, barely, with a shallow, stuttered quickness that spoke poorly of his chances. Severine hunched over the downed knight, chanting feverishly. Whatever she was doing, it completely absorbed her attention. Shadows danced around her like ebon flames, growing thicker by the moment.

  With every step, Albric prayed, and for once his unworthy prayers were answered. She did not turn.

  Albric plunged his sword into her back.

  It was a killing blow; he knew that as soon as the steel bit in, and thanked Celestia for giving him the strength. He’d been afraid that the ghaole had weakened him too badly, or that he’d been wrong about what the Thornlady’s wounds meant. But he’d guessed correctly: the fact that Sir Kelland had been able to hurt her meant her shield of shadows was gone. He could hurt her. He could kill her.

  Yet as his sword sank into the Thornlady’s robes, scraping past her spine, Albric felt it slide too quickly, too cleanly, as if it cleaved through something less substantial than flesh.

  Severine released her chant in a choking gasp and turned toward him. Around her, the shadows continued their frenzied dance, leaping higher and higher until they swallowed the trees. She bared her reddened teeth in an expression that was as much snarl as smile. “You are an extraordinary fool.”

  Yes, Albric tried to say. Yes, I was. But I made amends. He couldn’t make the words come. Icy bands constricted his chest; each breath came harder than the one before. He felt himself falling and leaned forward so that his dead weight would push the sword in deeper.

  The shadows were whirling around him, blinding. They whipped through the air like war-banners caught in a windstorm. Gathering around the Thornlady and the fallen knight, the darkness rose and engulfed them both in its treacherous, shifting depths. An instant later the shadows fell away from a suddenly empty space and were ordinary once again, moving to no more than the wind.

  Severine was gone. So was the knight. Blood turned the once-pristine snow to a wallow of red mud where they’d been.

  Without the Thornlady’s body to hold it fixed, Albric’s sword slipped and clattered to the ground. He slumped down beside it, unable to stand on his useless, frozen legs.

  The Burnt Knight’s sword had fallen nearby. Albric watched the snowflakes collect on its pommel, blotting out the golden sunburst. Blood darkened the blade’s silvery edge. He stared at the blood, hoping it was enough, that it meant she was dead, and let the darkness fill his sight until his eyelids grew heavy.

  A scream pierced the stillness. Footsteps crunched through the snow; the blood in it was freezing hard again. A blurred shape fell to its knees beside him, and when he blinked through his exhaustion Albric saw that it was the Burnt Knight’s companion. Bitharn. She had her bow strung and her hair knotted back in a loose, half-finished braid. The buckles of her leather armor were unfastened on the sides; she had thrown it on and run. So foolish. So brave.

  “Is she dead? Is … is he dead?” Bitharn picked up the knight’s sword, brushing off the snow. The tracks of tears were bright on her cheeks.

  A great unseen weight pressed down on Albric’s chest. Breathing was like trying to suck air from the bottom of the sea. He could feel nothing but leaden heaviness in his limbs, and numbing cold everywhere. Still he struggled to speak.

  “Don’t know,” he managed to croak.

  “He promised me. He promised me. He said he wouldn’t fight alone.” The girl’s hands trembled on the hilt. She wiped away the melting flakes, closing the sunburst between her fingers.

  “Not alone. I was here.” The words were unintelligible to his own ears. Albric could not tell if Bitharn understood him, but he had to try. “Shadows. Took them both. Hurt … hurt bad. Should have died.” He fought for another gasp of air. His ears were filled with the roar of rushing waves. “Mirri. In my tent. Ghouls got her. She’ll need help.”

  Bitharn nodded, and Albric let go of the impossible effort of speech.

  It was snowing again. He did not know when it had begun. A light fall, only: soft whiteness drifting from a pearl-gray sky. Snowflakes stuck to his eyelashes and fell on his eyes, and he did not have the strength to blink them away. The first ones melted; he could feel the warmth of them trickling down his face like tears.

  Then they did not. He was already that cold.

  19

  The ride from Tarne Crossing to Thistlestone was a blur.

  Bitharn remembered circling around the clearing where Kelland and the Thornlady fought, and where the corpse of the man who had betrayed her was slowly shrouded by snow. She remembered trying to make sense of the fight through its tracks, and halfway managing it before all the trails ended in corpses or vanished into empty air. She remembered plunging into Albric’s tent and finding Mirri there, already cold as death, with a confession tucked into her shirt.

  The confession explained everything and nothing. Bitharn took it because she had no other clues. She took Kelland’s
sword, too; she couldn’t bear to leave that among the dead. Then she left, riding for Thistlestone like there was a company of Baozite reavers on her tail.

  That part, she hardly remembered at all.

  The healers at the Dome of the Sun once told her that great shocks could sear themselves into one’s mind, blazing memories as sudden and indelible as the scars that lightning left on blasted trees. That was why old men remembered their first loves’ perfume, why the survivors of burnt-out villages could recognize their attackers’ faces after ten years of peace.

  But the opposite, Bitharn learned, was true as well: sometimes instead of vivid recollection there was only a hazy fog. Sometimes the mind recoiled from holding onto such pain, or simply could not take it and thus could not call that memory back. It lay black and buried at the bottom of one’s soul, too heavy to be dredged up.

  Fleeting images were all she kept of that hellish ride: days of snow and thudding desperation, Mirri’s body like a block of ice before her, meals snatched hastily in the saddle. Bitharn had always been careful with her horse, but on that ride she nearly killed the poor beast, and only spared it because she couldn’t afford to walk if it foundered.

  Finally, when horse and rider were both on the brink of collapse, she came to the low towers of Thistlestone.

  The castle town was even more crowded than it had been at Swordsday. Half a hundred banners flapped from the tents and pavilions that ringed the castle’s hill like so many colorful blossoms in a wreath. Every inn in town wore a banner, and most of the larger houses too; flags of silk and heavy cotton flapped in the breeze, showing everything from hedge knights’ clumsily painted arms to the crown-and-sun of Craghail. They made a sound like a flock of pigeons all taking wing at once, and yet that noise was dwarfed by the clamor that rose up from the streets.