Silasa entered. Her black dress, ripped and filthy with dirt and blood, rustled behind her, but her feet made no sound.
“Silasa!” Mershayn laughed, despite the sting in his cracked lip. He laughed again, filled with hope at seeing her, then said, “Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you. What kind of person would make me wait this long?”
“What kind of person gets locked up in a tower bedroom instead of a dungeon?” she replied.
“Haven’t you heard?” he said. “The dungeons are not secure. Guards dying left and right.”
“Is that so?” She gave him a wry smile, then stood aside. Another woman entered the room.
Mershayn opened his mouth and had a hard time closing it. The woman was stunning. She was what a goddess might look like. She was easily as tall as Mershayn, and she wore a sleeveless green gown with white fur trim. Her bare arms were muscled like a warrior woman’s, but her poise was that of a queen. And her eyes were brilliant emerald green, and they had...pupils like a cat’s.
“By the gods...” he murmured.
Stavark turned over on his side, flicking a glance at the blond woman. His eyes narrowed, then widened. He sat up.
“No,” he whispered. “Kaarksyvihrk! Vekisk syvihrk syt quavakar. Syt syksekkin,” he murmured in a language that sounded like a rock skipping across water. He clenched his teeth, and tears welled in his eyes. His fingers closed over the bars and gripped them so hard Mershayn could see the boy’s straining tendons.
“Ket syksekkin, syvihrk,” the goddess woman said in Stavark’s language. She turned to Mershayn. “My name is Bands.”
“Bands?” He flicked a glance at Silasa, who smirked at him. She nodded as though confirming his unspoken thought. He looked back at the blond woman. “The Bands? From the Wildmane legends?”
Bands waited patiently.
“You’re Wildmane’s...” He almost said “lover,” then stopped himself. It was too crass a word to use with this...goddess woman. “You’re his... You’re the dragon woman?”
“I am a dragon, yes,” Bands said.
That took a moment to digest. He felt that, with threadweavers and demigods and vampires running around, a dragon shouldn’t phase him. But it did. Dragons existed only in stories! With some effort, he recovered his composure.
“Is he with you? Medophae?” he asked.
“Lord Mershayn, as much as I would like to sit around and discuss my beloved, we have much to accomplish and very little time. I am told that you are the man who can do what needs doing.”
Mershayn glanced at Silasa.
“That wasn’t what I said,” Silasa said drily. “I said you were vain, cocky, self-absorbed, thick-headed, and stubborn.”
Mershayn looked back at Bands, confused.
“Are you that man?” Bands asked, ignoring Silasa.
“Vain, cocky, and stubborn?” he said. “Yes.”
“You came here to be a king,” Bands said. “You failed. I can change that, but I need to know if you can be the king Teni’sia needs.” She paused. “Can you?”
He hesitated. “Look, I didn’t come here to be king. I came to kill Sym because he killed my brother. A tiny band of ragtag guards called me king for a day and a half. I led them. We got slaughtered.”
She didn’t react.
He rolled his eyes. “You want me to be king again? Sure, I’ll be your king. Give me a sword and show me where Sym is, and I’ll be your king for as long as it takes.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I realize that you have been through an ordeal, but I am not joking with you. I do not make empty threats, and I do not make empty promises. I need you to rule this kingdom. Can you?”
“Teni’sia doesn’t need a king. It needs an executioner.”
“No, it needs a king.”
“Look, I’ll be your executioner, but I would make a horrible king. I have done nothing but fail since I got here.”
“So Silasa has told me,” Bands said.
“Well, there you have it.” He waved a hand. “Besides, I’m not even a noble. I can’t rule. But if you free me, I’ll kill Sym or die trying.”
“I don’t need a man with a vendetta.”
Mershayn slammed his cuffed hand on the stone. “I came here with one purpose: to protect my brother. And he’s dead now! I don’t do responsibility.”
“I see.” Her eyes narrowed like she was trying to see through him. “It is a horrible thing, to lose one you love. To know you might have stopped it. Can you get up after such a horrible thing and do what is right?”
“What’s right?” He snorted. “Let me tell you what’s right. If someone pushes you, you push them back. If a weasel kills your brother, you chop its head off. How is that for a kingly code?”
“That’s the code of a grieving brother, of a guilt-ridden man seeking absolution. A king thinks of others first. Silasa told me how you thought of your brother first. Before yourself. Before anyone. So you have the ability. The question is: Can you turn that same passion to serve others besides your brother?”
“I doubt it,” he said.
“If I made you king and I asked you to spare Sym, could you do that?” she asked.
“Why in the world would I want to do that?”
“For Teni’sia. If the kingdom needed him, could you stay your wrath?”
“No one needs Sym.”
“If you are to be king, then you will need him.” She cocked her head. “Or can you not see that?”
He wanted to rage at her, but he saw what she was saying. If he really was king, he’d be a fool to kill Sym out of hand, before he wrung the little weasel for all the information he could give, before he could assure that all those nobles who followed Sym were brought to Mershayn’s side. If the king of Teni’sia killed Grendis Sym, the crown would lose the lords of Buir’tishree out of hand, not to mention at least two of the other noble houses. It would spark a rebellion.
But that wasn’t Mershayn’s problem. He wasn’t king and he could never be king. The nobles would never accept him. There were dozens of purebloods who should take the throne before him, and Sym was at the top of that list. The most Mershayn could do was avenge his brother, then go back to Bendeller and his old life.
“You’re in this up to your neck now,” Bands said softly, as though reading his mind. “Do you think if you killed Sym, the rest of the nobles would simply allow you to leave? Let you go back to your drinking and wenching?”
He opened his mouth, but couldn’t find anything to say.
“You stepped into the flow of power, Mershayn. You’re either a king or a traitor now. There is no middle ground. You either go up and take control or you go down, and they kill you. There is no leaving the game.”
He sat with that for a long moment, and he realized that his fate had been sealed the moment he came north with Collus to this god-forsaken castle. She was right. There was no way back.
“What if I told you,” Bands continued, “that, mere days from now, Teni’sia will be ashes and rubble?”
“What?”
“What if I told you that the only way to prevent this was your ability to unite the kingdom, including making a bridge to Sym?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Dragons from the north, thousands of them, each so powerful that just one of them could level this kingdom.”
“Why would...” he trailed off. “Dragons?” he asked incredulously.
“The dragon god wants you dead. All of you. He wants to take Amarion for his own, and he will get what he wants, because that’s what happens when you’re a god, unless we find a way to stop him. That means that we must do everything possible, take every chance, to beat him. That means you must step up to the throne and lead.”
Mershayn glanced at Silasa. “Dragon god? What is she talking about?”
“She’s telling you. You should listen,” Silasa said.
Mershayn had never believed in the gods any more than he’d believed in dragons. He would
concede that they might have once been real. But more likely was that humans had invented the gods to feel better about themselves, to feel like there was some order to the world, to feel like they weren’t alone. But there was absolutely no evidence of a human god save his name and some stories about him. Mershayn used Thalius’s name to curse or to emphasize a statement just like everyone else, but that was the extent of his religious devotion.
Except now he had seen Silasa throw guards as if they weighed nothing. He’d seen a mythical quicksilver move like a bolt of lightning. He’d been brought back from death by a threadweaver, and he’d witnessed the legendary Wildmane shoot a column of gold fire from his chest.
Suddenly, a dragon god didn’t seem so out of bounds.
“I don’t believe it,” he said.
The smallest curl turned the edges of Bands’s mouth. “Yes, you do.” She glanced at Silasa. “That’s a start, I suppose.”
The goddess woman Bands looked back at him, then knelt down in front of him. “You fought a usurper for your brother’s life,” she said. “Would you fight a god for all the other lives in Amarion?”
He looked around the room. Stavark and Silasa watched him with serious faces.
“You want me,” he asked incredulously, “to fight a god?”
“Yes,” Bands said.
He didn’t speak, and the silence stretched. Despite himself, excitement flooded through him. And hope. Long ago, when Mershayn was a boy, he’d imagined himself leading—a king, shining in his armor, beloved by his subjects. He had been young and foolish, but at this moment when everything else was ludicrous, maybe young and foolish was a perfect fit.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay, what?” Bands pressed, her dragon’s eyes glittering.
“I’ll be your king,” he said.
“Why?” Bands demanded.
He almost said, “because you asked me to,” but he stopped. Leaders did not have thrones given to them. They fought for them.
He cleared his throat. “Because I can lead.”
“Why?” she persisted.
He stared into those captivating, unearthly eyes, and he understood the trap. A leader didn’t convince others he was strong enough to lead. He led. Others followed, and those who followed either believed or they didn’t.
“Because you need me. Because your alternative is Sym, and if you think he’d make a better king, then go ahead. You deserve what you’ll get.”
After a moment, the dragon woman smiled. She turned and gave Silasa a nod. “Okay, I see it now.”
Bands gestured and spoke an incomprehensible word. The locks on his manacles creaked open and fell away.
She murmured again, making a small circle with one finger. Three bars of the quicksilver’s cage turned to mist, rising up toward the ceiling. She pointed at Mershayn, still murmuring. His body tingled—his face, his arms, his ribs.
He sucked in a breath and fell back against the cold wall. He stared down at himself, miraculously healed once again. He would never get used to that.
Bands let out a slow, tight breath, as though in pain, then she looked at him. “I embrace you, Your Majesty. Embrace the rest of the people in this kingdom. Embrace the people throughout Amarion.”
Mershayn stood up.
“Come, Your Majesty,” Bands said. “It’s past time to set this play in motion. We take the stage an act too late.”
Silasa wrinkled her nose and said, “If he’s climbing on stage, he’ll need a new costume. No one is going to follow that stench.”
“Thanks,” Mershayn said wryly.
“My pleasure, Your Majesty,” Silasa said.
4
Grendis Sym
As Grendis Sym lay down for the night in his royal bedchamber, he felt everything was going fairly well. With the help of the spirit, Zilok Morth, Sym had routed the rebels. The bastard was locked away, and the formidable Captain Medophae was gone. Even the feral little silver-haired monster was in a cage.
In addition, this morning he took Lord and Lady Vullieth prisoner as conspirators against the crown. He put Vullieth in a private chamber for questioning, but he’d stripped Ari’cyiane bare and chained her to a column in the throne room for all to see while Sym held court. Anyone in the kingdom who wished to gawk at the bastard’s whore could do so. It was an effective deterrent to any other Teni’sians who might have treason in their hearts.
Of course, he’d unchained her when the day was done and chained her up in the bedroom on the other side of these royal chambers. Sym wasn’t so cruel as to risk the lady’s health on a cold dungeon floor all night in winter, not when she could be a deterrent to possible traitors.
He looked forward to the morning, to the moment when he told her she was going to spend another day chained naked to that column in the throne room.
Satisfied, he lay back and drifted off to sleep.
The clink of metal awoke him with a start. Cold fear prickled his scalp, and he sat up. He’d told his guards not to disturb him. Sym touched the sword hanging from his bed post, then slid the blade from its jeweled scabbard.
He got up silently. The stones were cool on his bare feet as he moved toward the archway of his room.
There was another clink of metal and whispered voices, and this time he could pinpoint them. The intruders were in Ari’cyiane’s room, which was on the far side of the royal sitting room next to his bedchamber. Who dared sneak into the king’s own chambers? How had they slipped past his guard? He silently swore that Captain Gael’ek’s head would adorn a pike tomorrow.
The sitting room was silent. The shapes of the desk and the two sitting benches seemed undisturbed. He strained his ears to catch even the smallest sound—
Ari’cyiane gave a muffled cry in her room, and someone else whispered to her, telling her it would be all right.
Sym moved into the sitting room quickly, sword raised. The intruder would soon find this blade in his back.
He drew up short. Scant moonlight outlined a tall woman in a sleeveless gown standing by the arched window of the parlor. Somehow, Sym had overlooked her at first glance. She murmured something, and his muscles bunched, freezing up. He remained where he was, fixed to the floor, sword up and unable to move.
The room was nearly full dark, yet he could see the green of her eyes. They glittered like emeralds.
“Leave my chambers this instant!” he demanded.
“You are responsible for the lady in the other room?” the tall woman asked calmly.
“She is a traitor to the crown.”
“The punishment for treason is execution,” she said. “Why is she bound and naked in your rooms?”
“She required something more creative.”
“Humiliation?”
“I demand to know who you are!”
“You are done demanding, I think.”
Abruptly, Sym began to move, but not by his own command. He drew a surprised breath as he clomped awkwardly toward Ari’cyiane’s room. The tall woman fell in behind him.
The bastard knelt by Ari’cyiane’s bed, whispering softly to her. Standing behind him was a frightening woman in a ragged black dress. She looked dead. She had smears of blood on her chin and neck. Her skin was as white as alabaster, her hair as dark as night, and her eyes were filmed over like she was blind. His heart began to race when she moved, turning a hungry gaze on him.
Another figure moved in the shadows, and Sym spied the damned silver-haired boy. This was a nightmare! They were all loose, in his rooms. He struggled against the invisible force, but all he could do was grunt. The quicksilver struck flint on steel and lit a lantern.
“Let me have him,” the dead-looking woman said.
“No,” the tall woman replied in a calm tone. “We talked about that.”
“We didn’t talk about this.” The white-eyed woman pointed at the softly sobbing Ari’cyiane.
“Silasa—”
“I’ll use a dagger if it makes you feel better,” Silasa said.
/>
“Let Mershayn decide,” the tall woman said.
The bastard helped Ari’cyiane sit up, wrapping the blanket around her.
“Stavark, please help her,” he said. The boy went to the bed and helped Ari’cyiane to her feet.
The bastard turned to Sym, and orange light played across his dirty, bloodied features. Only a few hours ago, Sym had kicked that face, but it didn’t seem swollen or scraped at all. The fury in Mershayn’s face made Sym struggle again. The bastard was going to kill him.
Mershayn wore one of Sym’s swords belted around his waist, obviously lifted from the sitting room. He drew it and walked toward Sym, and he braced himself for the sickly punch of steel through his flesh.
“Let him go,” Mershayn said.
Suddenly, Sym’s limbs obeyed him. He stumbled backward, holding his sword in front of himself, stunned.
“Defend yourself, if you can,” Mershayn growled. Sym felt a moment of elation. The bastard was going to give him a “fighting chance” through some skewed sense of honor.
The bastard launched his attack, slashing down. Sparks flew as Sym blocked the swing, and he smiled tightly. Everyone knew the bastard was talented with a blade, but almost no one knew how good Sym was. Unlike the bastard, Sym didn’t flaunt his skill. Instead, it was a secret he guarded selfishly. Sym had been trained by the best swordmasters in Teni’sia since he was little. There wasn’t a single person in this castle he couldn’t best with a blade.
Mershayn roared and attacked again. His sword flicked left and then right. Sym blocked the first, but barely got to the second. It had come at him like a flicking finger, almost too fast to see.
Sym emptied his mind as he had been trained, stepped back, and focused on his technique. Mershayn attacked again, and Sym parried, then parried again. He readied to attack, then had to parry again. Sym pivoted, trying to gain room, but Mershayn followed, slashing, thrusting. Sym parried, blocked, parried again. He tried to stab back, but the man never let up. Sym tried a stop thrust, and Mershayn leaned to the side like a tree in the wind, dodging the strike, then slashed Sym’s forearm. Sym hissed.
Threads of Amarion Page 4
