Forsaken Kingdom (The Last Prince Book 1)

by J. R. Rasmussen

  He’d never considered himself a coward, but then perhaps he’d never been tested in quite this way. The word traitor still burned, throbbing, in his mind. “Have I got a choice?”

  “I suppose you could sleep here.”

  Wardin smirked. “And miss my appointment with the executioner? I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  He knew—felt—that this wasn’t the first time he’d passed through the damp, narrow tunnel. There was something familiar, a scent that pained him even as he inhaled as deeply as he could, breathing it in almost desperately. “What is that smell?”

  “Greymoss. Only found deep in these mountains. Usually near water, but we get a fair amount of it down here, too.” Arun stopped and held the lantern close to the wall, so Wardin could see what did indeed appear to be gray moss.

  “Looks unassuming enough, but it’s got a lot of magical properties,” Arun said. “Excellent for healing and treating minor balance problems, encourages focus, and acts as a conduit for enchantments. Or so I’m told. Even I can’t enchant things. Yet.”

  Wardin opened his mouth in feigned shock. “Not even you?”

  Arun chuckled as he started walking again. “Why do you think enchanted objects are so rare? Not one magician in a thousand can do it. Perhaps not one in ten thousand. We haven’t had an enchanter in generations. But I intend to be the first of ours.”

  The tunnel was perhaps a mile long, and sloped gently upward the whole way, so that by the time they reached the end it was lit with enough moonlight for Arun to extinguish the lantern as they approached an iron gate. There were more lanterns on the ground there, as there had been at the other end. Arun set his down among them.

  Wardin stopped short. Three—no, four—blackhounds watched them calmly from the other side of the gate.

  “You don’t have to worry about these ones.” Arun opened the gate and bent to scratch the neck of the nearest hound, who licked happily at his hand.

  Wardin followed him through, then gasped, dogs forgotten, as he stared at the hidden world that had materialized before him.

  They were surrounded entirely by mountains, including the one they’d just traveled through. Nobody, with the exception of birds, could know this place existed unless they were led through that tunnel. But despite being safely hidden, the area was dominated by a formidable keep, squat, dark, and ancient looking.

  To one side of the keep was a manor house that looked big enough to house hundreds. The smaller houses on the other side were no less fine—Wardin could barely count all the windows and chimneys.

  Outbuildings and fields were scattered around, and a rolling, laughing stream cut through it all from a waterfall splashing down the far mountain wall. It was quite some distance away, but Wardin could hear the echo of the rushing water. The air smelled of sweet woodsmoke—apple, perhaps—and roasted meat.

  Wardin just had time to take all of this in, overcome equally by wonder and intense longing, before a pain like fire, like lightning, raged through his skull. It was the worst yet.

  Don’t faint. Just don’t faint.

  That single directive carried him through it, and he managed to hold on to conscious thought despite being momentarily unable to see or hear. When his senses returned, he found that he was on his knees. The blackhounds nudged him with their noses and licked his face and neck. Arun was crouched beside him.

  Wardin laughed as he scratched the nearest dog’s ears. “Guess you’re right about not having to worry about these ones.” His voice sounded hoarse, like he’d been screaming for hours. Come to think of it, his throat was sore as if he’d been screaming for hours, too.

  “They remember you,” Arun said with a smile. “They never forget a scent. Some of them would have been pups, I suppose, the last time you tended the kennels.” He sighed. “We lost Sorrel just last year, not that you’d remember her anyway. Shame though, I’m sure she would have loved to see you come home.”

  Home.

  Arun’s face sobered, pale in the moonlight. “Are you all right? You cried out.”

  “Did I?” Wardin cleared his throat. “I’m fine.”

  “Are you—”

  “I’m fine.”

  “All right. Can you walk?”

  At Wardin’s nod, Arun helped him up and led him across the grounds. “Now, don’t let her intimidate you, and for Eyrdri’s sake, don’t show any fear. You don’t want to give her any advantage.”

  Wardin gamely tried for a laugh. “You make it sound like I’m going into battle.”

  “Let’s hope you’re not.”

  When they reached the manor, Arun pressed his palm against the ornate oak door, just as he’d done with the trap door at the inn.

  “Are all the doors like that?” Wardin asked.

  “Only the tunnel, the keep, and this one. But the keep and the manor are only fastened after sundown. Your hand will open them, same as anyone else’s here.”

  “Why would it?”

  Arun shrugged. “Because the doors never forget.” He opened the door and gestured for Wardin to precede him inside. “All right then, War. Time to meet the archmagister.”

  12

  Erietta

  Erietta refused to pace. She refused to be nervous. He was the one who should be nervous. This was her magistery, her territory. And Wardin Rath owed her an explanation.

  Besides, it made Hawthorn nervous when she paced. The blackhound lay by the fire, nose on his paws, watching while she sat at her small table, stood, sat by the fire, then returned to the table. When she met his baleful stare, he thumped his tail against the velvet rug, no doubt hoping sanity would be returning to his mistress soon.

  Communication between sages was not always a precise art, and was one of the few her brother had not yet mastered. All Jasper had been able to tell her was that Arun was on his way back with Wardin, and that she should expect them after sundown.

  Arun must have been satisfied that Wardin was a friend, if he was bringing him back to Pendralyn. But she worried that satisfying Arun in that regard might not have been challenging enough. Not for the first time, she wondered if she’d made a mistake. Perhaps she should have gone herself, after all.

  It was no good second guessing now. She’d get answers to her questions soon enough. But she would not pace. She would not tap her feet or drum her fingers against the table or poke at the fire yet again.

  When the knock finally came, Erietta took some small measure of pride in the steadiness of her voice as she called for her guests to enter. She stood stiffly beside the table, breathing slowly through her nose, not allowing herself to swallow.

  He’d grown tall. Broad shoulders, strong frame, neither thin nor overly bulky. He had a full beard and shaggy, unkempt hair of that same honey color she remembered so well.

  The two men’s progress across the room was slowed by Hawthorn, who after a perfunctory sniff at Wardin’s hand greeted Arun as though her brother had been absent for an age. But when he finally got close enough, she saw that Wardin’s eyes hadn’t changed either; they remained a blue so pale, so piercing it seemed impossible. They returned her cold gaze without the slightest waver. But then, Wardin had never been one to back down.

  There was no question that this man who stood before her was the boy she once knew. Even if he hadn’t come here with Arun, if she’d met him anywhere in the world, she would have known him instantly.

  She couldn’t decide whether to hug him or beat him.

  Erietta settled for a cool nod. He answered it with one of his own, equally wooden.

  “Really, Etta, you should try to be a bit more reserved.” Arun’s eyes sparked with amusement as he hugged her. “You’re always so boisterous and sentimental. It’s embarrassing. Aren’t you going to offer us some mead?” He sat at the table and stretched his legs out beneath it.

  She arched a brow at him. “Should I? Am I to consider this a friendly meeting, then?”

  “Absolutely.” He glanced back at Wardin, who had yet to speak. “Co
me and sit, War.”

  Still silent, Wardin chose a seat beside Arun. As soon as Erietta sat down across from them, Arun got back up again with a huff.

  “Fine, I’ll get the mead. Three?” He cocked his head at Wardin. “I suppose you’ve forgotten mead, too, have you? I don’t imagine they serve much of it at Witmare.”

  “No, I don’t believe I’ve ever had it.” Wardin’s voice wasn’t as deep as Erietta had expected, given his size. It made him sound boyish.

  She snorted. “Apart from all the times we sneaked it from the storeroom, you mean?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck as he looked at her. “Did we?”

  Erietta frowned, first at Wardin, then at her brother, although Arun couldn’t see it. He’d already crossed to the side table where the pitcher of mead sat, and was now pouring, his back to her. “When you say he’s forgotten mead too, you mean what, exactly?”

  “He’s forgotten a great many things.” Arun flicked her a smile over his shoulder. “I’ll let him tell you.”

  She turned back to Wardin and crossed her arms. “This should be quite a story.”

  “But a short one, I’m afraid, with me telling it. I don’t know most of it. Until late spring, I was the palace adept at Witmare. I—”

  “An adept?” Erietta’s laugh bubbled out unbidden. “You?”

  Wardin’s broad smile seemed equally reflexive, but he feigned a scowl for Arun as the latter put a mug down in front of him. “Why does everyone laugh when I say that? Was I stupid before?”

  “Not stupid.” Arun handed Erietta a mug as well, then resumed his seat to sip from his own. “But I wouldn’t call you especially studious. You hated all the extra sums you had to do to balance out battlemagic. We’d only recently chosen our affinities, when you left, but I think you might have been regretting it already. You hadn’t considered it would involve all that studying.”

  Wardin sighed and shook his head, as if having difficulty reconciling himself to the picture Arun painted. “I love doing sums. I’m quite good at them.”

  Their shared moment of humor had thrown her. How easy it was to slip into old habits, to feel she knew him again. But Erietta didn’t know this man at all. She cleared her throat. “Back to your story, if you please. I want to know why the king’s cousin has come to Eyrdon. To Pendralyn, no less. Am I to consider it an act of aggression?”

  Once again, Wardin met her eye without flinching. “I suppose if you’re going to consider it a willful act of anything, it should be one of cowardice.”

  “I don’t remember you as a coward.”

  “Nor do I think of myself as such.” He gave her another smile, this one sheepish. “But I was running away at the time.”

  “Not very well, I might add,” Arun said with a snicker.

  “Running from whom?” Erietta asked.

  “The king.”

  The king. He was running from the king. Perhaps he had come as a friend, after all. She bit her lip to keep another involuntary smile at bay. Even if that were true, it brought its own set of troubles. Bramwell’s relentless ire toward the house of Rath was, after all, the reason Wardin had left the magistery in the first place.

  “As for why I came to Pendralyn, that was Arun’s idea,” Wardin went on. “I’d only planned to cross into Eyrdon, perhaps disappear into the mountains, while I decided what to do next.”

  Arun leaned back to pull a piece of paper from his pocket, then handed it to her. A notice. A substantial reward. Erietta looked from the sketch of Wardin’s face to the man himself. “Odd. This doesn’t have your name on it.”

  “I imagine Bramwell doesn’t want people to know there’s a Rath at large in his kingdom.” Wardin took a sip of his mead and flinched.

  Erietta nodded at his mug. “You don’t like it?”

  “It’s delicious, actually. It’s just … you meant it, about us sneaking into the storeroom, didn’t you? I think I can remember my first taste of it.” His voice had become strained.

  Arun clapped Wardin’s shoulder and said, “He gets these headaches, when he remembers things.”

  Erietta pressed her lips together. Was she really to believe Wardin had forgotten mead? Had forgotten them? “Were you injured while you were making your escape? Some sort of knock on the head?”

  Wardin shook his head, his own jaw set. “I’m afraid the problems with my head go back a lot further than that. Until recently, I believed myself to be a ropemaker’s son, brought to the palace at a young age because I showed great potential as a scholar.”

  He narrowed his eyes at Erietta when she laughed again. She collected herself, with the help of several swallows of mead, and listened while he and Arun spun an increasingly implausible tale of a simple adept living a quiet, bookish life. A scout—a contriver, her brother insisted—leaping from a window. A trick that began to unravel.

  It was difficult not to interrupt, and it wasn’t long before she found herself chewing on the inside of her cheek.

  The story ended with an inkwell, and a daring escape. Wardin placed the former on her desk and tapped the lid. “The Rath family crest, I’m told. And you’ll find the letters BR inscribed on the bottom. Presumably for Baden Rath.”

  “As if that proves anything about this trick,” Erietta said shortly, but she picked up the inkwell and studied it. “This was your father’s?”

  “I assume so. I can’t say for sure.”

  “Right.” She scoffed. “Because you can’t remember.”

  Wardin’s face was impassive, but his voice was edged with anger. “You don’t believe me?”

  With a slow sigh, she looked down at Hawthorn, sitting quietly beside her, and stroked the blackhound’s head. He hadn’t barked when Wardin entered the room, or growled, or raised his hackles. But neither was his greeting especially enthusiastic. Perhaps that was because he was fervent in his affection for Arun, and had eyes only for her brother. Or perhaps Hawthorn, like his mistress, had been undecided about Wardin, waiting to take the measure of the man.

  She wanted to believe him. Arun did. But Arun was following his heart; he couldn’t know for sure any more than she could. A contriver could deceive, a sage confuse, but that was as far into the mind of another as magic could go. Nobody could read Wardin’s thoughts to find the truth there.

  It would certainly be convenient, to think that he was blameless. That this was all some dastardly contriver’s doing—as it so often was in such tales—and all they had to do now was break the hold of a trick. Then they’d have their prince back, as loyal and noble as ever.

  Yes, it would be lovely to believe. But it was simply not possible.

  Wardin Rath. Of all the things she’d feared he had become, she wouldn’t have guessed she would find him such a liar.

  Erietta’s fingers felt cold, her lungs brittle as she breathed. So it was no surprise, when she answered Wardin at last, to hear the chill in her own voice. “Pardon my lack of humility, but I’m the best contriver Pendralyn has seen for generations. I know my affinity quite well. A seven year trick? That made you believe you were someone completely different from who you are?”

  She shook her head, still staring at Hawthorn’s silken ear as she ran her fingers over it. “Days, perhaps. Most of your memories, perhaps. But all of them? For seven years?” Her eyes snapped to Wardin’s. “It’s impossible.”

  Wardin crossed his arms, his eyes crackling with defiance. But it was Arun who spoke. “The contriver cast the trick every day. Or at least reinforced it. They had breakfast together every morning.”

  Erietta turned her glare on her brother. “You can’t cast a trick that big, that often, on a closed and unsuspecting mind. He’d have noticed. He’d have known. I’m sorry, I won’t deny it’s a pretty fiction, but what you’re talking about can’t be done.” She gripped her mug so hard, she wouldn’t have been surprised to find her handprint cut into the wood. “And you’ve been an even bigger fool than I was afraid you’d be. How dare you bring him here?”


  Wardin rose and leaned over the table, knuckles white against its surface. But despite the reddening of his face, his voice was calm, almost soft. “Don’t direct your temper at him, when it’s clearly me you want to yell at.”

  “I assure you, you’ll have your turn with my temper!” Erietta looked back at Arun. “He could be leading Tobin’s men here right now!”

  “How?” Arun raised a brow at her, his expression stony. “Are you suggesting I don’t know when I’m being followed?

  “What would be the point of coming up with an elaborate lie, if all I wanted to do was attack you?” Wardin asked. “If I were leading Tobin’s men here, they would be here.”

  Erietta regarded him through narrowed eyes. “Perhaps you meant to infiltrate us again. To spy.”

  Wardin threw his hands in the air as he sat back down. “For what purpose?”

  But he’d moved too forcefully in his anger, and must have kicked Hawthorn, who’d slunk under the table at the first raised voices. The hound yelped and rushed to Wardin, licking fiercely at his hands, seeking reassurance. So much for being ambivalent.

  Wardin looked aghast. He leaned down and touched his head to Hawthorn’s, murmuring an apology and scratching the dog’s ears. In answer, Hawthorn slobbered all over Wardin’s cheeks and chin.

  Erietta was not as forgiving as her blackhound; it was all she could do to keep the furious tremor in her voice in check. “For any number of purposes.” She ticked off the possibilities on her fingers as she spoke. “To learn our secrets. To get the measure of us. To get names of the traitors who’ve sent children here. Perhaps to kill us all in our beds, for all I know. Why send soldiers when you can send one man to poison all the mead and cider?”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Wardin straightened up again and wiped his face with his sleeve.

  Arun jabbed his finger down on the notice that still sat on the table. “How do you explain this, if he’s in league with Bramwell?”