The Outlaw King: The Line of Kings Trilogy Book One
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‘Thank you for your welcome, old mother,’ he said. ‘I wondered how long it would take you to tell me what you know.’
‘The time was not right before. You needed to find your own path first. I would not have sullied your manhood trials with promises to fulfil, before you were even a man.’
Rena reached across and touched his hand, and he felt her warmth. He put the wooden cup on the hearth, empty, and turned his gaze from his lover to Tulathia.
Her face was no more wrinkled than when he’d met her. She’d been old for as long as he’d known her, and so always pictured her as old. He could not imagine a time when she had been young and full of life. And yet, despite her evident years, she remained robust. She worked as hard as the young witches of the village, now her home.
‘Tell me, old mother. What is my wish?’
‘To know who you are. You asked me long ago, and now I can tell you. But understand, Tarn, that I tell you this with no joy, for the knowledge will not please you. Are you sure you still wish to know? And have your path diverted?’
‘Yes,’ said Tarn. He did not hesitate. It had been his desire since he had been able to think, to understand why he was always on the run, who his father had been to be hunted so.
He was eager, but not a fool.
‘But no more of the future, old mother. It is the past that interests me. What comes will come. I understand what you told me long ago. Should I know what comes the path is apt to strangle me.’
Tulathia nodded. ‘You have wisdom, Tarn, but not enough. Sometimes the past can dictate the future. But still, as you will. When I tell you, the spell I cast upon you will no longer hold. I was only able to hide you from prying eyes for so long because you were ignorant of your destiny, and yes, your past. When you gain the knowledge of where you come from, and where you are going, you will no longer be hidden. You are safe while you remain with me, but no other. It will be a dangerous path, should you choose to take it. Are you still sure?’
This gave Tarn pause for thought. He had been hidden for so long. Surely no one still hunted him? Could he risk it? Would he be undone? But then, was he not resolved to run no longer?
Tulathia watched the young man’s eyes. Tarn did not notice the hunger there.
‘Rena, what do you think?’ he asked, knowing that Rena had as much say in his future as he did, for he loved her above all else and would have her in his life until death.
‘I would have you here always. I do not wish to run with you, hiding in the woods for the rest of our lives. That would be no future for our children.’
‘But we do not know that is what will happen. And if I am with you…’
Tulathia interrupted. ‘But when you know who you are, you will understand what will happen. You must decide. I cannot tell the future, Tarn, for your future is uncertain. Fate, it seems, has a place in her heart for you. You are in many futures. Which one, well, that is up to you.’
Tarn smiled through the smoke at Rena, and saw her nod her head. ‘Take what you desire, Tarn,’ she said. ‘I will stand by you.’
‘Tell me who I am, and I will take my chances.’
‘Very well, young Tarn. Open your mind. For you to understand who you are, you must see what has already been. Open your mind to the past, and so see the future.’
Tarn relaxed, seated cross-legged in front of the blue burning fire. He felt at peace. The women around him all loved him, in their own fashion. He had an epiphany as he sank – Tulathia loved him for what he could do. She loved the promise of the man, not just the man himself. He heard the witches speaking in low voices, no doubt casting some spell on him. But he put all worries asides. Their voices were soothing…how could he not trust these women, who watched him grow into manhood?
The voices faded, then they were gone, and he fell through the earth.
*
Chapter Thirty-Six
The dirt rose up to claim him, and he struggled against it. It was no use. It clogged his ears, blinded his eyes, and he could no longer breathe. He choked, covered in dirt. No air reached his lungs. He was dying. Then, without undue difficulty, the realisation came to him. He was already dead. Buried underground, and this was how the dead felt.
Panic abated, and he rose through the damp earth. Then, as suddenly as the feeling came, he was free! He rose into the night air, and danced as the stars danced, a being made of light.
The feeling did not last. Sucked violently across the face of Rythe, he screamed, No! I want to be free!
But some shackles cannot be broken.
He flew across Sturma, seeing with his spirit eyes the rivers’ paths, the groaning forests, the farmers’ patchwork landscapes, and then a castle. He was in the north. He could feel it in the texture of the air, the caress of the wind. And then, suddenly and painfully, his spirit was caged again.
He had eyes to look with. There – a hand. What was that? A feeling of warmth. There was no temperature in the spirit world. He was alive again. And his was the body of a warrior. He could feel his powerful muscles under the fine shirt of silk he wore. He turned and saw a man walking toward him across a great room – a throne room. There, at the end of the room, a great throne. And a weight upon his head. A crown.
A king.
The man approached – no! Do not let this man near me! The spirit within screamed, but the body without merely smiled and opened its arms in welcome.
The man, close now. The spirit could see murder in his eyes. A dagger flashed, and the king’s heart was pierced. The spirit held on for longer than the body. Remember those eyes. Remember the face, for you are the man that killed me and I will have my revenge.
A tearing. And then flight once more. The spirit did not resist the pull. To be inside a dying shell was torture. But it had seen what it came for – the murderer’s face. In my next incarnation I will seek him out, the spirit resolved.
A joining. A new body. The same castle, the spirit understood. A warrior’s body. The King’s son. A man already. And in his hand a sword. Blood on the blade. Soldiers all around – their uniforms bearing the same crest as the man with the dagger, that of the hawk. The man that murdered – me?
But there is no me in spirit. Just a long succession of lives. And this one is near its end. It must be. So many soldiers, death on their minds. And yet, no blood on their blades.
One lashed out, and the sword in the spirit’s hand blocked and slashed through the throat. The body’s legs bunched, and leapt as more men charged in. Water all around, the sensation of drowning again, but this time in water, not dirt. And then bursting into the air, sucking life giving air into lungs. The spirit wishes that this shell could live.
A jump. The same man. Holding a woman, and a babe, and a witch is there. The babe and the witch look somehow familiar. The babe wails and the spirit hears its own voice. But the eyes are vacant. There is no spirit there, and the spirit realises it is absent because it watches its own birth through the father’s eyes. The witch tries to save the baby, still born. The babe will be fine when Tarn’s spirit returns, he knows.
The man loves the woman and the child. The same man that fought on the battlements. The spirit looks to the mother, and sees the love for the babe and the man there. It resolves to hold onto this also. It will take as much from this journey as it can, and perhaps with such knowledge it will make it back into the babe’s body, and find a home there.
Split. A sword lashes out and takes the man in the chest. The same feeling again. Warmth fading. With dying eyes the spirit looks around, and there is the babe, grown but still a child. Soldiers hold him now, their garb adorned with a boar’s crest. But the spirit understands that these are the same breed of soldiers the father fought with before. The warrior, the king’s son, watches his own son as he is taken away by soldiers.
The spirit realises the boy is him. There is a me in spirit. I am the son.
And Tarn awoke with tears in his eyes.
*
Chapter Thirty-Seven
It came to rest in the fields of Gern’s Crest, near the east coast of Sturma, after travelling through the planes like a bolt. Sturma was a small country in comparison to the others in the realms of Rythe, and even smaller still to a being of the Guryon’s particular talents. Still, with nowhere to start it could take an age. It thought on the problem, and came to the conclusion that it would not spend years hunting.
The dagger was a great prize, and the price was fair, but it would not waste time on an endless hunt. The man might well die of natural causes before the mark could be found. There were plenty of other deaths in far-flung realms that it could bring about more easily.
The Guryon resolved to make the attempt. It was an assassin’s right to refuse a mark, as long as payment had not been taken, and in this case payment had been withheld until after the deed.
Yet it hungered for blood. It disliked passing up a kill.
It needed a cool head. The cool head of a killer. Within its many minds, agreement was reached. One attempt, and then it would pass on the kill. There was only one thing it could do in such a situation. It hunted down those that were not touched by the spell, those that crossed the mark’s fate.
If it could find them, it would find the man there also.
Outside a farmhouse, a sturdy structure built from wood, the Guryon appeared. The planes, the places between worlds, called to it, but it held its being in stasis, resisting the pull, resisting the calls of other beings of power who summoned it. It was not time to go yet. It could sense the love here. Perhaps it would find the mark after all.
The man may be hidden, but there were many tools an assassin could bring to bear if he truly wanted to find someone.
It stepped through the door.
Gard jumped back from his chair, knocking it over, and placed himself between the shimmering, burning haze that stood jittering, stuttering, as it battled against the call of the planes, in his kitchen, and Molly, rigid with fear behind him.
‘Get out, demon!’ shouted Gard, one hand on Molly’s shoulder, pushing her behind him.
A reek pervaded the room, the stench of a thousand deaths, and a piercing whine came from the man shaped haze covering the door into the house. There was no mistaking its purpose. Evil seeped from it, darkening the room.
The thing spoke, but Gard could not make out its words. It continued to speak, and Gard realised that its words, while disjointed and filled with alien symbols, could be discerned.
It had come for Tarn.
‘You’ll not get him, you vile thing!’ cried Gard, and with that he shoved Molly through the door leading from the back of the house.
And as they emerged, the thing stood in front of them once again, blocking their escape. Gard looked behind him, into the kitchen, as if expecting this thing to be a double, but no, there was only one.
Gard did not know what courage was, and would not recognise it in himself, but he knew fear. It made his legs weak. But he steeled himself. He had to protect Molly and Tarn.
Roaring with rage to cover his fear, Gard leapt to battle. He swung a powerful right cross at the haze, reasoning if it could not be hurt he would lose nothing by trying. He did not feel the connection, but instead a sharp, burning sensation.
His fist was no longer there.
He held his scream within, although Molly screamed for him. He knew all was lost. Looking down, he saw the cauterised stump where his hand once joined his arm.
Something sickly came from the creature, and Gard realised it was laughter. He backed away, holding the stump of his hand.
‘I hope you rot in pieces through the many hells!’ he spat at the wavering form before him.
The laughter followed him and then the creature was gone. He turned to see Molly’s fearful face, and then she was obliterated. Before him stood the thing once more, and Gard’s wife, his only love, was nothing but a thin red haze surrounding the creature. Gard had no time to scream, and would not, for the fear had been replaced by burning anger and hatred for the monster before him.
The thing asked him once again, ‘Where is the king?’
Gard, gritting his teeth against the pain and rage, thought he misunderstood. There was no king. There had not been a king since the old one was murdered, at the end of the civil war.
For a moment, he thought about saving himself, but then he thought of his honour and realised even if he spoke the thing would not, could not, let him live.
He stood his ground and said nothing, his mouth set in a grim line. If this was to be his death, then so be it. He had lived and loved well. He was ready to pass the gates. With all his heart, he prayed that Tarn would stay away. I am proud, he thought, and my death may be unsung but I’ll not scream for you, beast.
Even when it took his eyes, Gard made no sound at all.
The woman’s soul it took with it, but the man it left behind. He deserved to die in his own lands. He had not begged. He had not screamed.
The Guryon respected that. He could die in his own time. His soul could be free.
It was an assassin, not a hunter, but it searched nonetheless. It searched for the line in the past, and found it, but it could not travel through time. That route was not open to it. Its senses were like smells, and the line of kings like the smell of metal. But it split, shards going in every direction. It searched the present, and found nothing.
A hint, like ore in the earth, that it turned its thoughts toward.
Further on, it jumped, searched other years down the line. It sniffed and screamed. The line fragmented, became every man, every living thing. It screamed because it was like smelling itself. The line of kings, sensed, became a river, a torrent, an ocean of souls. For a time the planes’ assassin was rendered insensible. It shook itself, tried to hold onto its substance although its senses were pulled in a million different directions at once.
It could not be. The line of kings would become like the Guryon itself, uncountable souls, not within the planes, but within time, stretching for a thousand years. It was not impatient, but as it shuddered and pulled its essence back from the brink of time, the one plane denied it, it realised that it would fail.
The price could not be met.
The space where the Guryon had been blinked and nothing remained but the stench of rotting meat and bloated bowels.
The smell of the mark had been strong on the man and the woman, but still they did not tell the Guryon where the mark was. He tortured the woman’s soul for a time, but her soul rebelled with every strike, every shred of fear she had turned into venom for her tormentor. It had thought the woman would have been the easier of the two, but she proved just as unyielding.
Undone by a human, a mere mortal being. That one soul could deny its power!
Already it was being called to six different planes. The pull of the call was always strong, and the Guryon battled to hold itself together. But that was its curse. The greatest assassin in all the worlds, but to be so it had to obey the call. After all, what was an assassin without a master? Just another murderer.
It felt no compunction about hurling the woman’s soul from its being into the darkness between the worlds, between the thousand heavens and thousand hells reserved for creatures that lived and breathed. The Guryon’s respect for her was tainted by its anger at her rebellion.
She could find her own way past Madal’s gates.
*
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Tulathia rose and opened the windows, easing the murk within the hut not at all, as a heavy fog rolled in. While Tarn was under the spell many hours had passed, and the night was thick with magic a
nd foreboding. It was rare for there to be a fog in spring. Tulathia shivered as she looked out into the woods. She could barely see the trees.
‘What did you see, Tarn?’ Rena asked gently.
Tarn drew his hands back and rubbed the tears from his eyes. He smoothed his matted beard.
‘I saw my father, and his father before him. I saw the man that killed them both. He had on a hawk’s crest. After, his men wore the crest of the boar. The king’s crest.’
Rena looked startled. Mia and Tulathia merely listened.
‘The man who killed the king wants me dead for who I am. The king’s son.’
‘More than that, Tarn,’ said Tulathia. ‘You are the king.’
Tarn nodded. ‘And for my blood, I must die. Why did you not warn me, Tulathia? I do not wish for this burden.’
‘You asked me, Tarn. Remember that.’
Mia pressed the wooden cup into his hands.
‘The Thane of Naeth. I know now, Tulathia. My enemy is great indeed. The whole of the north will be looking for me. You were right. I am a fool for asking you to show me. I would have been happier in ignorance.’
‘But you are not ignorant, love,’ said Rena, holding his hand tightly. ‘And you might say that now, but I know it was your wish. The knowledge will never sit lightly with you, and you will not ignore it. But I will be with you, no matter what.’
Tarn granted Rena a small smile. In truth, he felt little like smiling. His head spun like he was drunk, and he knew fear. Anger, too, bubbling underneath the surface. Tarn did not care that he was the king, but the more he thought about it, the angrier he became. He almost forgot his fear.
‘The Thane of Naeth has killed my family. But what can I do?’
‘For now? Nothing but live. You must thwart him. As long as you live he can never be king, and Sturma is safe. The other Thanes will not suffer a Thane to rule them.’
‘I fear I am but a dead man walking. The Thane of Naeth is a powerful man. I cannot hide from him forever, and as you said, your spell will no longer work, Tulathia.’