Forsaken Kingdom (The Last Prince Book 1)

by J. R. Rasmussen

  “No matter what happened between them personally, Bramwell wouldn’t hang a fellow monarch,” Arun said. “He’ll give him the dignity of a beheading.”

  “That’s a fast death,” Erietta added. “He won’t feel it.”

  Wardin knew he was meant to find that comforting. Draven Rath was finally and for the first time a worthy man. He was being spoken of with respect and admiration. That his son would be anxious over the pain of his father’s final moments was assumed.

  It was finally safe to love the man. Just in time to grieve for him.

  Erietta leaned sideways, looking around Wardin at the books and papers on the desk. “It’s just horrible, what you’re going through, and I’m very sorry for it, but I hope that book means you’ve been studying. You were doing quite a lot of battlemagic today, and I know it must be hard to concentrate, but—”

  “Eyrdri’s teeth, Erietta, this is not the time to turn into a nursery maid,” Arun said.

  “No, she’s right. Don’t worry, I’m taking care of it.” Wardin tried again to smile, although it felt stiff and dry on his face, like it had been drawn on with mud. “And I hope you’ve been doing plenty of meditating on your sins, or whatever it is you contrivers do to keep balance.”

  Erietta rolled her eyes. “Sins. Really. Only ignorant people think contrivance is dark magic. It’s based in imagination. Balanced by mundane work. I stayed behind to help wash up after dinner, that’s why it took us so long to come. We can’t any of us afford to get out of balance now. We need to be at our best. Better than our best.”

  “Why do you say that?” Arun asked.

  “How can you be my twin, yet be so simple?” Erietta pushed Arun’s shoulder. “All of Eyrdon is under Harthian control now. Prince Tobin’s control.”

  Arun waved this away as if she’d warned him about nothing more serious than a little coming rain. “Which is awful, for the rest of Eyrdon. But we’ll just go on as normal. Tobin can’t find us. He won’t even try, because he doesn’t know to look for us. Our king saw to that.”

  “He’ll try to find me, though.” Wardin swallowed, trying to ease a sudden ache in his throat. He hadn’t considered that until he said it aloud. “I’m the last of my house. Bramwell won’t be content to leave the last Rath on the ground, waiting to take root and grow again. I could be the center of another rebellion one day. I could have sons and daughters.”

  His friends had no response to that. Probably because they knew he was right, and didn’t want to follow his logic to its natural conclusion: Bramwell would want him dead.

  Wardin was glad when they left, and wasted no time getting into bed. He buried his face in the pillow and shamelessly pulled the blanket over his head, hiding from the Harthian king the same way he’d hidden from the monsters of his childhood nightmares.

  When his mother was alive, she would light candles and sing him back to sleep after those terrible dreams. But his father would close the bed curtains tightly enough to blot out even the light of the fire’s embers, and tug the blanket firmly back from Wardin’s face.

  “You can’t hide from darkness,” he would say. “Pretending you can will only make it worse.”

  “What am I to do, then?” Wardin had asked him once. “If I can’t light it away, and I can’t hide from it, how do I fight it?”

  On that, Draven had no advice to offer. He only smiled and said, “Can’t say I’ve ever really tried to fight it.”

  But perhaps his father was wrong, and Arun was right. Perhaps Wardin could hide from the dark. Pendralyn felt safe, with its protective circle of mountains, its great magicians, its formidable keep. All through the war, he’d believed that no matter what dangers lurked outside, they could not enter this secret valley.

  Now he had to hope that was true. He had to bet his life on it.

  2

  Wardin

  “See?” Erietta said. “They aren’t staring at you.”

  Wardin looked around at the long tables, some occupied by magisters conversing sedately between sips of mead, others by animated, chattering students. Servants passed with their usual pleasant efficiency, refilling pitchers and platters, while blackhounds lay in wait for falling scraps. Erietta was right; few paid him any attention.

  Just five days after the news of the war’s end, Pendralyn had settled back into the comfort of routine. Many were afraid for their families outside, but they also shared Arun’s view that the magistery was the safest place they could be. So they carried on studying and practicing, working and balancing. They kept to their traditions, including the customary hour of music and poetry after dinner. Several new songs were sung in Draven’s honor.

  Or so Wardin was told. He’d taken most of his own meals outside or in his dormitory until tonight, when Arun and Erietta had finally coaxed him back to the keep. And he had to admit, he was glad. Eating a cold sausage pie while wandering the grounds in the damp gloom of autumn didn’t compare to the smell of slow-roasted meat and honey cakes, or the taste of warm spiced cider.

  There were still some eyes on him, though, and not all of them friendly. He turned his attention back to his lamb, topping it generously with horseradish and rosemary jam. “Ransen’s staring.”

  Arun snorted. “Ransen’s from Tarnarven. He doesn’t care about the war. He’s still smarting from the beating you gave him in the yard yesterday, that’s all.”

  Wardin supposed it was ill-mannered to take joy in his decisive victory over the cocky, sarcastic Ransen, but he didn’t bother to suppress his grin. Smiles came rarely enough to him these days. “He’s an easier opponent than your sister.”

  “Is he?” Erietta gave the boy in question an appraising look. “I’d say he’s at least a stone heavier than you. And he’s a year ahead of us.”

  “That doesn’t matter, the big and strong ones aren’t a problem.” Wardin pointed at Erietta with his fork. “It’s you crafty ones I can never beat. When I die, it’ll be at the hands of a contriver.”

  Or at the hands of the Harthian king. Like my father. He lifted his mug to his lips to hide his falling smile. Jokes weren’t safe anymore, not when real death felt so close.

  “Well, I’m glad you don’t think he’s a problem,” Arun said, “since he’s coming over here.”

  Wardin assumed Ransen was coming to confront them because he’d seen their smirking and guessed he was being talked about in a less than flattering way. But it seemed the older boy had something else on his mind. His narrow face, out of place on his much larger body, was lit with spite. “I hear King Bramwell is looking for you, Highness.”

  Before Wardin could answer, Arun flapped a hand in dismissal. “Get gone, Ransen, what would you know about it? Been intercepting the archmagister’s couriers?”

  “Don’t need to,” Ransen said. “My sister’s a sage.”

  “So what?” said Arun. “So am I.”

  “She’s been here six years. And our uncle’s a sage, too. He’s in Narinore to discuss some business with the new Baron of Eyrdon.”

  Wardin still didn’t speak, but his chest tightened. They said some advanced sages could project their images to communicate with their fellows instantly. If that was true of Ransen’s sister and uncle, the oaf might actually know something.

  Ransen stepped closer to Wardin’s chair. “Prince Tobin’s already taken up residence in your family’s castle, and his soldiers are all over the city, asking people when you were there last, and where you might be found. I’ll wager King Bramwell wants to do to you what he did to your father.”

  Wardin kept his face still, but Arun and Erietta weren’t so practiced at appearing indifferent to Draven’s fate. Ransen took one look at their wide dark eyes and open mouths, and his sneer widened to a grin.

  “You don’t know, do you?” He turned back to Wardin. “Perhaps nobody told you because they thought you couldn’t bear it. Perhaps you’ll collapse, when you hear.”

  Wardin stood. “Perhaps I’ll take you down with me.”

&nbs
p; “Yes, you’re terrifying.” Ransen sighed and brushed a few cake crumbs from his tunic. “They did it at Narinore, in the public square, so all the Eyrds could see. King Bramwell was there. It seems a simple beheading wouldn’t satisfy him. He was more interested in vengeance than justice.”

  “He had him hanged?” A vein twitched in Arun’s tight jaw. “How dare he?”

  Heat flared in Wardin’s chest and spread outward toward his limbs. Hanging was a death reserved for lowborn thieves, rapists, and murderers. To execute his father that way would have been an unforgivable insult, a denial of Draven’s royal blood.

  “Oh yes, they hung him,” Ransen said. “For a start. Then they cut him down while he was still wriggling. Then the executioner stuck a hook up into his backside, and pulled out his innards. He burned those straightaway, so that the last thing Draven Rath would ever know was the smell of his own guts burning.”

  There was no point in accusing him of lying. Who could imagine the unimaginable? Certainly not Ransen.

  Erietta made a choked sound. Wardin watched as if from a great distance, as one of the blackhounds came out from under the table to lick her hand. There was something wrong with his vision. It was going dark at the edges.

  “My uncle was there. He saw the whole thing.” Ransen cocked his head. “Perhaps you should be honored, Highness. King Bramwell invented a whole new manner of execution, just for your dear father.”

  The dark edges went red. Wardin’s ears pounded. His whole body pounded. He lunged for Ransen, thinking nothing, feeling only yielding flesh and crunching bone and the black satisfaction of blow after wonderful blow.

  Magister Alaide, the headmagister of battlemagic, did not discipline Wardin for attacking Ransen. She claimed that since Wardin hadn’t used any magic in the assault, it was technically not against magistery rules. The archmagister disagreed—officially. He declared that it would be a severe lapse of his duty to allow such a thing to go unpunished, and assigned Wardin a week of kennel duty.

  Ransen seemed more insulted by this minor penalty than if there were none at all. He spent the day after the fight proclaiming (in a thick, peevish voice that was difficult to take seriously, thanks to his broken nose) that the magisters had taken pity on Wardin because he was a pathetic orphan, the prince of nothing, and the son of an executed traitor.

  If the magisters had been motivated by pity, they weren’t the only ones. All that day, as word of Draven’s grisly execution spread, Wardin was bestowed with sympathetic smiles, deferent nods, oranges, honey cakes. When he went back to his dormitory, he found an extra candle on his bedside table, and a second blanket on his bed.

  His father was not directly mentioned to him again. Not even by his friends. They made a game attempt at their usual good humor, and distracted him as best they could.

  None of these kindnesses could ease his horror. Reminders of Draven’s fate were relentless and inescapable. Every drop of rain was a splatter of hot blood, every fork or knife a cruel hook. Every fire he passed smelled like it had been stoked with human flesh. Every voice heard across the practice yard sounded like his father’s screams.

  Wardin didn’t sleep, for fear of what the darkness and his dreams would show him.

  But at breakfast the next morning, Arun brought him a fresh source of dread: one of the sagacity students had been fetched home by his father in the dead of night. Nobody seemed to know why.

  “Why are you looking like that?” Arun asked, after he finished delivering this news. “You don’t think Thomas leaving has anything to do with you?”

  “Why shouldn’t it?” Wardin rubbed his suddenly sweaty hands against his trousers. “You heard what Ransen said. The Harths are looking for me. Anyone might turn me in, hoping for some favor, even a pardon for a prisoner. Bramwell is probably offering a reward.” He glanced over his shoulder, half expecting the king’s men to burst into the keep.

  Arun, on the other hand, peered intently at the platter of sausages, seemingly more concerned with choosing the best one than with the threat of king’s men. “Thomas’s family owns a mine out west, hundreds of miles from Narinore. His father probably doesn’t even know the king wants you.”

  “Even if he did know, it wouldn’t matter,” Erietta added. “Nobody would betray you as long as you’re here. Not even someone like Ransen, let alone a loyal Eyrd. They can’t say where you are without exposing themselves, their families, the magisters, everyone they know as complicit in the existence of a magistery. And we’re in a barony of Harth now. That’s treason, punishable by death.”

  Despite their attempts to reassure him, that day was even worse for Wardin than the one before. Now he had more than just his father’s screams to contend with. He listened constantly for them to be joined by those of his friends and fellow students, the magisters, the blackhounds. Anyone who might get in the way of the soldiers he felt sure would come for him.

  Pendralyn was hidden—better than ever, thanks to his father—and strategically located so as to be highly defensible. It was the home of skilled magicians. He knew it was possible that he could be kept safe there.

  But at what cost?

  These worries proved unfounded—for the moment. Arun whistled his way into dinner that evening, and clapped Wardin’s back as he took his seat. “Told you you didn’t have anything to worry about. Thomas’s mother is dead.”

  Erietta’s mouth dropped open. “Arun! Honestly!”

  He raised his hands, palms toward his sister. “I’m not saying it’s good news for Thomas, but it is for Worrying Wardin here. And you can’t say War isn’t due for a little good news. Thomas’s mother fell ill suddenly, and his father rushed here to get him, so Thomas could be with her at the end. He’ll be back when his mourning period is over.”

  Even Erietta smiled then. “See, it had nothing to do— Wardin? Aren’t you relieved?”

  Arun’s eyes narrowed as he watched Wardin rubbing the back of his neck. “He doesn’t look relieved.”

  Wardin dropped his hand, and feigned interest in his leek soup. “Of course I’m relieved.”

  But he wasn’t. Later, as he fed the blackhounds their meal of leftover boar sausage mashed together with potatoes and a bit of partridge, Wardin turned his circumstances over and over in his mind, always hoping his reasoning would lead him to a different conclusion. It never did.

  “It wasn’t today. But it will be some other day,” he told Sorrel, his favorite of the dogs. Sorrel offered a supportive paw, but no advice.

  He moved on to fill the dish in the next stall. “It wasn’t Thomas’s father. But it will be someone.” This dog apparently shared Arun’s carefree optimism, because he merely thumped his tail.

  While Wardin made them all beds of fresh straw, he considered the thousand ways word of his whereabouts might get out. A student, a servant, one of the villagers. One of the girls from the kitchen would tell her sweetheart. Someone’s drunken uncle would let something slip by accident. Sooner or later, Bramwell would find out that Wardin wasn’t stowed away somewhere in Tarnarven, or dead, or whatever other tales people were trying to spread to protect him.

  He sat on the stone floor, arms across his knees, and stared up at the timbered ceiling. The Harths would come for him. And if he was at Pendralyn when they did, everyone there would pay the price right alongside him. The magistery would be destroyed. Magic would be snuffed out forever. Because of him.

  For the first time since the archmagister had delivered his news, Wardin’s chest tightened not with grief or fear, but with a deep, raw anger toward his father. How could Draven not have anticipated this? Had he thought of Wardin at all, in his last days? How could he have schemed so elaborately to save Pendralyn, yet made no arrangements for his son?

  Perhaps he should have. But that didn’t change anything.

  Wardin was a Rath. His grandfather would never have hesitated to do anything required of him, to protect his people. Nor his uncle. Even his self-serving, traitorous father had found the cou
rage to give his life—to save this magistery, the last magistery. Wardin couldn’t spit in the face of that sacrifice, just for the chance of saving himself.

  He’d always hoped to prove that he wasn’t like his father. Now he had to prove that he could be just as strong, just as capable.

  With a low whine, Sorrel sat beside him and pressed her heavy head against Wardin’s shoulder. Wardin slid his arm around the dog’s warm bulk, and buried his face in her fur.

  Running wouldn’t be enough. Anyplace, anyone who harbored him would be in danger. Neither could he hide. If he did, whether by bribery or force, at some point someone would help Bramwell track him—and retrace Wardin’s steps. If the King of Harth kept asking, eventually he would get an answer. One that led him here.

  Enough. I know what I should do. Wardin sat up straight, nodded at Sorrel as if the blackhound had spoken, and faced the facts he couldn’t escape: Pendralyn would never be truly safe while Bramwell looked for him. And Bramwell would not stop looking.

  Not until Wardin was found.

  Wardin sat alone on his favorite rock by the waterfall, just after midnight. This close to the stream, the air was thick with the yeasty, slightly spicy scent of greymoss. He thought it was the best smell in the world; he wondered if he would ever smell it again.

  His pack was beside him on the ground, heavy with enough rations pilfered from the kitchen after dark to last him four or five days, if he was careful. He also had a map, a waterskin, a dagger, and an extra cloak. The signet ring he would “accidentally” let someone see, when the time was right, hung from a chain around his neck.

  He was prepared. But he wasn’t ready. He couldn’t quite bring himself to walk out and face what awaited him outside Pendralyn’s gate.

  If the stories were to be believed, his Uncle Lional had already been accomplishing feats of strength and daring acts of heroism at twelve. His grandfather Baden (the Great, as he was called) had probably wrestled dozens of dragons and led several armies by that same age. But Wardin didn’t feel up to his family’s legacy. He felt small and young and unskilled.