The Heir To The North
Page 41
Gelis. Pelicos. Lend me your strength, your skill, your luck. She would either be a hero, or else dead.
She stepped forward to close him down, as he had taught her to do. Such a heavy blade needed space to swing and cause damage, while her own sword was more suited to close quarters. It was still nowhere near a fair fight. Meredith was worth ten or more of Yaihl, her last opponent.
Meredith was still in his opening guard stance. Now he sprang aside and his sword came down hard at an angle, a crippling cut aimed at her hip. At the last moment he hauled the blade up again to complete the v-shaped stroke, finishing exactly where Cassia would have been had she stepped inside the blow to attack him. The blade whistled through empty air. Cassia had darted ahead of Meredith’s movement, leaving him struggling to catch up as she twisted back and jabbed at his arm, tearing cloth and slicing into his flesh.
A hit! She would have revelled in her success, but this was no practice bout. She had cut him once, now she had to do it again.
Meredith grunted. He brought his sword around in an arc, forcing her back, the notched edge a bare inch from her stomach. Her strike already felt years distant. Meredith had to keep the heavy blade moving to remain a threat, but the weight behind it meant he could finish her off with a single blow. Cassia was painfully aware of her vulnerability.
She glimpsed his face as she sought safer ground. Even though his attention was on her, he seemed distant, withdrawn. He was not using his full strength against her, she thought. That angered her more than she had believed it would.
“Fight me, damn you,” she shouted. “Fight me or renounce your claim!”
She remembered how she had fought him in Hellea, using his forms against him. She broke up her own movements, scooping up a handful of dirt to throw at his face. A jab became a kick, in the manner of Galliarcan street fights. Still there was that sad smile on his face as he deflected her attacks and sought his own advantage.
She circled, feinted left, trying to draw him into committing. Meredith was by far the better swordsman. He stepped and swung through forms that never left him unbalanced, never lowering his guard, never taking his eyes from her.
She had scored once. He wouldn’t let that happen again.
And she was tiring.
Her ears still rang from the magical battle, and her sight was clouded by white spots she couldn’t blink away. Meredith’s sword seemed to leave a luminous trail in the air, drawing her attention away from him. Cassia’s breath came harder, and her limbs ached with fatigue. She feared dropping her sword every time she met Meredith’s own blade.
He pressed in suddenly and his speed overwhelmed her. Cassia was forced back, up against the fountain. She ducked and rolled, hearing the blade slice above her, brick chipping into her face. She slashed with her own sword at his unprotected calves.
But Meredith was not there.
Cassia rolled again, this time with no aim, just a reflexive urge to defend herself. She searched desperately for him as she scrambled across the ground, hearing Malessar’s shout of warning far too late.
Meredith’s boot landed under her ribs, sending her sprawling. Her blade was knocked from her grasp as the flat of his greatsword smashed against her wrist. She heard bone crack, and her vision flared white for an instant. She tasted blood, and the breath exploded back into her lungs with the pain of defeat.
Meredith stood a pace away, his expression remote. The point of his sword aimed down at her chest. Cassia didn’t need the surging pain in her right hand to tell her the fight was done. Her life contracted to the foreshortened steel blade in front of her.
No heroes to save her, no gods to hold fate in abeyance. Just a girl whose story was ended. She had been a fool to think she could ever achieve anything by this.
It’s over.
She stared up at the Heir to the North, knowing that his face would be the last thing she’d ever see. There might still be enough time to say –
“Cassia!”
Malessar’s voice. She had time for the briefest glance to see him holding his own sword as if about to throw it to her. She raised her uninjured hand to snatch the hilt as it curved through the air. A chance -
As her fingers closed around the warm, leather-bound hilt time slowed to a crawl. She felt every stitch of the binding, saw every tiny nick collected upon the blade over the countless centuries. The pain of every wound it had inflicted coursed through her blood.
Her world exploded into violence.
She screamed.
When the light receded, after an eternal second, she gasped. She had to force herself to breathe. Malessar’s sword had fallen from her hand and she grasped the bricks around the fountain, hauling herself upright, unable to explain how or why she was still alive.
Something has changed. Something is very wrong.
Baum and Malessar lay in untidy heaps on the ground, puppets thrown carelessly aside by the force of whatever had happened. Neither man was moving.
Meredith was as a statue before her, on one knee, head bowed. His sword lay at his feet. A vassal making tribute to his liege. Just as Pelicos might have once done.
“Meredith?” Nothing made any sense to her. Her failing sense of balance made the ground tilt like the deck of Sah Ulma’s ship. “Meredith, what’s happened?”
The Heir to the North did not reply. Cassia realised with mounting alarm that she could see no sign of him breathing. The wound she had inflicted did not bleed at all. She reached out to touch his cheek with a trembling hand. His skin was cold and unyielding, hard as stone.
Measured, even, emotionless. Words she had always used to describe him. Practised, efficient and unvarying. Not so much cold-blooded as bloodless.
Automaton. Shieldman.
It should have been so obvious.
I taught myself everything that Malessar ever learned. Everything.
But it made no sense. No sense at all. Meredith was Heir to the North . . .
Baum’s belaboured gasps penetrated her shocked silence. The soldier still lived, although surely not for much longer. She staggered over to kneel by his battered body, rising anger driving her on through pain and exhaustion.
Baum’s gaze fixed on her for a moment then slid away. “It is done. At last. Avenged. Revenged . . .”
“But Meredith—”
“Hah. A tool for the job. No more. I told you. Fooled him—” Baum coughed and fought for words. “Fooled them all.”
A tool. No . . .
My flesh and blood is of the mountains, he had said.
Cassia put her hand to her mouth, horror hammering into her heart. The courtyard had become a cold, inhospitable place, despite the heat of the smouldering garden. Again, there was a precipice under her feet – but this time she had already stepped over the edge.
Meredith was no prince. He’d looked and acted the part, but that had been deliberate. Part of the design. In the end he had been nothing more than a decoy, intended to distract Malessar – distract him from . . .
Oh gods, no . . .
“I knew. Knew his temper. Knew he’d return. Save the child – my duty . . . Jedrell taught us both, you see . . .”
Baum reached up suddenly to grasp her shoulder. “Show your enemy what he expects to see, Aliciana.”
Cassia pulled away, horrified, and Baum fell back, too weak to help himself any further.
“You bastard.” She wept openly now. “You bastard. What have you done?” It was all she could do not to kick him as Meredith had kicked her, to finish him off.
Aliciana. I am descended from Aliciana. And from Jedrell. And Malessar passed his sword to me.
“The curse is broken.” The truth crashed down around her, powerful as sorcery. “He gave me his sword freely . . .”
Baum’s eyes had glazed. “Aye,” he whispered. “The curse is broken. The High King returns. I can feel him. Aliciana . . .”
Malessar’s dhar was silent once more.
Cassia stood at last, painfully, and looke
d around her as she scraped her hair away from her face. She had been played false, played for a fool. Everything she thought she knew was a lie. Baum’s quest, Meredith’s heritage, Malessar’s sorrows – none of them had told her the truth. In her own ignorance she had set in motion this terrible train of events.
Malessar lay unconscious, face down in the dirt. He was breathing, which more than could be said for Baum and Meredith.
She rested her hand on the shieldman’s head as she limped past. At the very last, Meredith had tried to stop this happening. He had tried to warn her – he had become almost independent. He had become a man, and in defending Malessar she had unwittingly taken that away from him. Had he known what would happen? Had his last thought been of her?
She blinked back tears and went to Malessar’s side. The least she could do now was to try to take care of the warlock.
And then . . . the High King would return.
The world already felt colder, more hostile. Cassia felt exposed in the courtyard, even with the high walls that enclosed it on all sides.
High above, the sky darkened. Cassia felt the storm gathering in the far distance.
I am the Heir to the North.
This is the end of Heir to the North.
The tale concludes in The High King’s Vengeance.
Acknowledgements
There are a lot of people to thank, so let’s get to it!
Sammy, Zoë, and Joanne for allowing me into the KI/Grimbold house. And all the friendly folks who live in that house!
Jorge Torres and Ken Dawson for the heroic cover; Joanne Hall (again!) for liberal application of the red pen.
Amanda Rutter, Lee Harris, and Elizabeth Bass were instrumental in encouraging the outward journey. The Incredible Inkbots also deserve a hundred loud huzzahs and your attention – Wes Chu, Laura Lam, JB Rockwell, Emma Maree, John Dixon, Rob Haines, Nate Green, KC Shaw, Josh Vogt, Andrea G Stewart, Lee Collins, Michael Pack, Megan Grey, Vonny McKay, and Michael F Stewart.
The very brilliant Sheffield SFF Writers’ Group heard the whole story – most recently, Dave Lee, Dave Kirby, David Sarsfield, Mathew Presley, Chris Joynson, Spleeny, Kathryn Wild, Steven Harrison, Jo Johnson-Smith, Darren Johnson-Smith, and Sara Smith.
All the excellent folks at Brian Turner’s SFF Chronicles – including but not limited to Culhwch, Teresa Edgerton, The Judge, Sue Boulton, Jo Zebedee, Boneman, Harebrain, Pyan, Chrispy, & Panu.
Also big shouts to Alex Bardy, Andrew Reid, Anne-Mhairi Simpson, Alasdair Stuart, Ian Sales, Jo Thomas, Adele Wearing and the Skulk, Alex Davis, Andy Angel, Gary Compton, Richard Webb.
Of course, none of this would have happened if my uncle Andrew Hunt hadn’t emigrated to South Africa, leaving behind three fridge-sized boxes crammed full of assorted genre fiction. And it certainly wouldn’t have happened if my parents Judith & Ralph Poore hadn’t encouraged all of us young ’uns to read above our years. A thousand thanks.
Most importantly, thanks and love to Rachel Rose, first reader and equal in all.
A Selection of Other Titles from Kristell Ink
Cruelty by Ellen Crosháin
Once a year, in the caves deep below the house, the Family gathers to perform a ritual to appease their god. But Faroust only accepts payment in blood.
Eliza MacTir, youngest daughter of a powerful Irish family, was born into fae gentry without the magical gifts that have coursed through the Family’s veins for millennia; she was an outcast from her first breath. Desperate for freedom, Eliza’s flight from rural Ireland is thwarted by the Family’s head of security. The only weapon she has to fight her captor is her own awakening sexuality.
Drawn into the world of magic and gods, Eliza must find a way to break free, even if it means breaking the hearts of those she loves, and letting her own turn to stone.
Cruelty, it runs in the Family.
The Book of Orm by A.J Dalton
This exciting new collection brings together the writing talents of international fantasy author A J Dalton, Nadine West (Bridport Anthology) and Matt White (prize-winning scriptwriter). Magic, myth and heroic mayhem combine in a world that is eerily familiar yet beautifully liberating.
Fear the Reaper by Tom Lloyd
All Shell has ever wanted was a home, a place to belong. But now an angel of the God has tracked her down, intent on using her to hunt the demon that once saved her. The journey will take her into the dead place beyond the borders of the world, there to face her past and witness the coming of a new age.
A stand-alone novella from the author of The Twilight Reign series and Moon’s Artifice.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Acknowledgements
A Selection of Other Titles from Kristell Ink