Unfettered II: New Tales By Masters of Fantasy

by Shawn Speakman

  But the dying man’s grip clamped over his wrist with terrible determination. “They’ve not taken the queen-regent yet.” After a ghastly struggle, the flagging whisper sawed on. “You were meant to pose the diversion for her captain-at-arms to save the royal family. Tiorren’s wretched idea, to betray you as the less significant relative. But the misdirection spared no one. Saigad s’Gannley lies dead. All other clanborn are being slaughtered. You’re the only trustworthy hope left. Find her Ladyship. Get her away.”

  “Hush. Jaegan, be still.”

  A weak snort framed the ghost of ironic laughter. “Can’t move my legs, anyhow.”

  “You won’t pass alone.” Falion anchored his promise. “The queen-regent’s business can wait.”

  “No.” Jaegan arched, spasmed in pain.

  “It can.” Falion knew where her Ladyship would be found. He had time. While the bloody insurrection scoured the palace, a hurried move tempted disaster.

  He sat through Jaegan’s dying, without safer haven. The silence, and the steady drip of the water blended with the tormented rasp of hitched breath. The hand in his clasp was cold clay, wrung by spasms that faded as stubborn fight slowly waned. More than once, Jaegan tried to apologize. He wept, who had suffered a whipping before he admitted to wrong when caught with a sack of filched apples.

  Jaegan crossed in the bitter, bleak hour past midnight. Flux sense captured the moment amid forlorn chill, when the spirit spiraled away and the injured man’s labored heart ceased.

  Falion did as he must, and bloodied his sleeve cuffs as though his own hand had wielded the sword. Masquerade as one of the conspirators, and he had a precarious chance to win through, if Tysan’s queen-regent was not slain and his mission already forfeit.

  He brushed Jaegan’s eyes closed. Leylie’s ragdoll corpse he left as she lay, lest covering her should draw notice.

  Silence reigned past the splash of water and the drum of his anxious pulse. Falion unfolded his painful, cramped limbs. On his feet in the seamless dark, he slipped through the grille and left the sad tomb in the siege cistern behind.

  He followed the block wall with his fingertips, a throwback into his nightmare remembrance, when, as a small child, Tiorren had tied his head in a sack and abandoned him. After the taunts, cruel bets had been laid, vying how far he would wander astray in the dungeon, denied the advantage of clanborn perception. Fear and fury instead had forced his latent blood heritage to waken without the guidance of initiate training. The rough passage had scarred him, the blighted integrity of his senses upsetting the able dexterity required of a guild artisan. But yesteryear’s trauma let Falion trace the lane current through the palace foundation. He followed the ephemeral swirl downstream, guided at each turn in the passage by the signature stones the Paravian masons had embedded as signposts. The stairwell from the stores presently loomed ahead, limned in a faint shaft of light from above.

  Falion picked a cautious path through the wreckage of broken jars and smashed basketry left strewn underfoot by the looters. The wine cellar doors gaped on smashed hinges, the cavernous shelves raked relentlessly bare. His stealthy progress encountered no drunken roisterers. Above, the corridor was deserted and dark, the great tapestries ripped down and kicked into rucked heaps. He skirted a toppled pedestal, crunching over the fragments of King Halduin’s marble bust. An eddied flurry of quills whispered through the astringent scent of spilled ink, the sprawled bulk of the scribe taken down amid the tools of his trade. More dead lay, threshed like windrows felled by the scythe.

  Distant shouts and the whisper of furtive, rushed footsteps warned of vicious slaughter yet underway. Ambient light sliced through smashed lancet windows, night’s curtain parted by the outside flicker of torches, sweeping across walls splashed red and catching the gleam of splintered lacquer furnishings. Falion tripped, stumbled to his knees across a hacked corpse. More bodies littered the landing from the servants’ wing, all clanblood, cut down in flight like split fruit. Shouts erupted, and a scream from the courtyard garden ended another routed survivor.

  The relay captain at Karfael had never imagined the vicious extent of this bloodbath. If the queen-regent lived, Falion must run that gauntlet and find her without falling prey.

  He took stock, his sweaty hand on the long knife. Courage he had never possessed wore the horror of nondescript clothes, stained at wrists and knees with Jaegan’s let blood. He must cross the palace, with no cover except a band of mourning silk, and no affidavit but the town speech of his origins to stay the thirsty blades of the assassins.

  No resolve prepared him for the murderous ferocity unfolded before him: the dark hallways, crowded with the mortally wounded, rifled of valuables where they moaned in extremis; the gore-soaked rooms glimpsed by the guttering wicks of spent candles, drowning in melted wax. The traumatized weeping of servants, left untouched, and others, less fortunate, subjected to brutal interrogation, their suffering granted no mercy until they betrayed the clanborn they sheltered. Falion could save none of them. Pause for anything, and he tossed the queen-regent’s life into jeopardy.

  He displayed the black ribbon under his bloodied cuff, told harrowing lies, and shamelessly eavesdropped for the passwords that let him through the conspirators’ checkpoints. Few eyes were left to disclose his identity. The knives of the reapers spared no one.

  Falion slipped through the massacre like a wraith, speaking only when spoken to. He passed jubilant ruffians ransacking the treasury, and pilferers who swarmed like locusts to pry gemstones and gold from antiquities. Choking on bile, he weathered the crass jokes, and the revelers frenzied on carnage. He tracked through strewn entrails, and skirted the frail carcass of a granddame dragged from her bed. At unbearable length, he reached the shaft stairwell that wound in descent through the core of the palace.

  Few ventured here, where the Second Age imprint of Paravian presence persistently lingered. The stone block wore the layers of bygone sorrow, spanned for the massive stride of the centaurs who had nurtured the world’s mysteries before Mankind’s settlement. Falion scrambled down the yard high risers. He breasted the wisped gleam where the flux currents draped the ancient haunts in cold phosphor, and flinched from the ghost-fingered cling of the cobwebs streamered in the drafts. His step gritted on the detritus of centuries, and he breathed the fust of moldering wood, where disuse had sealed the high, vaulted doorways, the far sides refashioned into recessed bookshelves, or cabinets, or cushioned lover’s nooks. Lower, he passed the royal vintner’s oak wine tuns, stacked to age in the cavernous niches. Farthest down, where the floor sparkled with salt seeped in with the storm tides, a child-sized tunnel once had let the diminutive Sunchildren take sheltered flight to the harbor during the Second Age scourge, when drake spawn attacked in winged numbers and drove the blessed nearly to ruin.

  After Avenor was ceded to Mankind, the escape exit had been locked for security. Tehaval Warden had fashioned a warded protection, keyed to the royal lineage, and to the stewards’ descent, through s’Gannley. Though the defunct access to the harbor was long since sealed over at the wharfside breakwater, the enchanted defenses perhaps still held, undisturbed across generations.

  Falion reached the hidden stone doorway, its finger hole access bearded with lichen.

  “Ath wept, let her be here.” He pricked his thumb with the long knife, smeared the s’Ilessid cartouche, and felt the panel give in soundless release. Lantern light flared from the recessed chamber beyond. Then the queen-regent’s query shredded his heartstrings.

  “Saigad?

  “No. Falion sen Ardhai, your Ladyship.” He stepped into the light, remiss for the grisly stains on his sleeves. Words all but failed him, no matter that her granite nerve never flinched. “Your captain is dead. I’m so sorry.”

  Armored in the composure that cowed state ambassadors, erect in no more than her nightrail, Queen-Regent Cindein released her hapless messenger from the savage burden of breaking ill news.

  “Don’t speak. We both kn
ew his effort was doomed.” She paused, her cupped fingers pressed to her mouth. The raw-boned frame that seemed awkward in state dress shuddered but once, the immovable rock that had steadied the kingdom shored up by adamant character. Sorrow muffled the antique cadence stamped into her use of the king’s tongue. “Although the apartments were overrun, and Eveny already lost, Saigad chose to draw off pursuit.” She paused, raised her chin, blue eyes focused beyond grief at last. “You should not be here!”

  Falion sank to his knees. “I was sent from Karfael with forewarning, too late.” No sense in miring her with Tiorren’s botched tactic, or the tragedy of Leylie and Jaegan’s brave diversion. Neither had Falion the will to deliver the other shattering blow, that her royal brother and nephew also had passed while holding the Mistwraith at bay.

  “Your Ladyship, nothing matters beyond getting you out alive.”

  “Ath wept, Falion!” Cindein’s hawk stare pierced him. “Your mother and sister are also at risk!”

  “No.” Falion swallowed. “They are with the clans in the free wilds, and far from danger.”

  “They’re not safe.” Queen-Regent Cindein insisted. “This rising’s not limited to the s’Ilessid seat at Avenor. Saigad discovered we’re facing a broad-scale purge to extinguish the clan bloodlines and unseat crown rule across the five kingdoms.” Which disclosure defined a rebellion aimed to break the compact that ensured coexistence with the Paravians.

  While Falion reeled under the concept of this night’s assault, launched on the grand scale, Cindein’s steel nerve grappled the wider impact. Hardened by the difficult term of her brother’s absence, contending with surly trade guilds and restive factors who had hounded the yearly assize for changes that Charter Law dared not yield, she foresaw a worldwide disaster if the strengths of crown lineage failed to endure.

  “Humanity’s right to inhabitance will be revoked if our heritage is extinguished! You stand the better chance to win free. Do as you must and get through alive.”

  Falion refused. “I’m not going without you.” The best course, and the wisest, was to hunker down, wait out the violence, and slip off in the aftermath.

  The queen-regent shook her head. “We cannot delay.” Shoved upright to pace, she trampled resistance. “By the end of the night, Avenor will be firmly in the conspirators’ hands. Flight is still possible in the confusion, before the new order seizes control.”

  Where Falion wavered, nauseated by horror and the muzzy aftershock of a bashed head, the woman before him embodied the s’Ilessid tenacity, her ferocious grace cut from the ancestral cloth shaped to rule at the dawn of the compact.

  “You must run before dawn,” she entreated. “Right or wrong, the gravity of the stakes surpasses our personal conscience. The world’s mysteries lie at risk if you falter, and townborn well-being relies on our choices. Without the clan families, none will be left to withstand an unshielded Paravian contact. We’re not saving ourselves,” pleaded Cindein, “but forestalling the breaking of natural order, backed by the Fellowship Sorcerers’ irrevocable pledge of surety.”

  Falion scrubbed at his face, sickened by the slaughterhouse reek on his hands. She was right on all counts. He was best suited to blend with the crowd on the street. If warning failed to reach the clan outposts, his mother and sister and all other folk there were threatened.

  The queen-regent drove home her adamant point. “By your action, the s’Ilessid line must claim due redress and to restore the realm through crown justice.”

  Once outside the gates, Falion had access to horses under a courier’s credentials. Survive the night, find escape, and he could ride through the free wilds and bear word of Avenor’s revolt.

  Yet the debt bequeathed by Leylie and Jaegan refused to let Falion rest.

  “I can’t leave you entombed,” he objected. “If I fall, your Ladyship, and help never comes, you will perish of slow starvation.” The ward on the door answered only to bloodline, and already, both lineages hung by a thread.

  Queen-Regent Cindein bent and took his hand, her touch just as clammy with terror. “Then I won’t die alone. We leave together. My grim odds improve in your company.” Before hesitation, she demolished his protest. “Saigad planned the very same course. Now my children are gone.” Her iron voice wavered. “Above duty, what have I left to lose?”

  Falion raised the long knife upright before her in the traditional posture of fealty. “On my life,” he promised. “I will get you away.”

  The queen-regent tore the hem off her nightrail. The flourished embellishment, mistaken for embroidery, in fact was dried blood upon closer inspection. Whatever previous brutality had beset her, she tied the befouled linen over her gold hair. Lantern soot dulled her fair complexion and smutched her white chemise. The loan of Falion’s coarse jerkin salvaged her modesty.

  Before nerve forsook her, Cindein shoved past and swung open the door. The long climb up the stairwell taxed her wind, the steep risers like climbing a cliff. She drove onward, while the reechoed progress of the invasion shimmered the flux and shredded the gossamer revenants to mist. Upwards, three floors, with each archway impassable, she paused at the rear wall of the closet that serviced the needs of state guests.

  Falion kicked a hole through the plaster and lathe. Cindein followed his lead. Steady and without sign of a second thought, she emerged in the open. Together they clambered through the tumbled towels and stole into the servants’ passage beyond. The tangled fallen, each one, were known to the queen-regent. She surmounted the unending impact of shock, even curbed the raw leap of her panic when the lit torch in the hands of the mob rounded the corner ahead.

  Cindein snatched his wrist. “Use the knife, take me down. Play the assassin’s role, and survive to send word to the high king at Earle!”

  Falion stared, frozen. “No. Go back. I’ll find some other way.”

  Cindein whispered, angry, “There’s none. Rise to the necessity. I am the marked victim, with no possible means to escape this!”

  The grisly epiphany tore Falion’s heart. “You came out only to force me away?”

  Her bravery shamed him. “Don’t waste my sacrifice, or my children’s memory.”

  But what reason embraced, emotion rejected. Falion’s gentler hand would not obey. Neither could he do all she asked. With the High King of Tysan already fallen, the terrible charge she demanded was senseless.

  “Your Ladyship,” he gasped, while the torches swarmed in. “Don’t ask this.” He owned no such stern mettle. Cold-cast logic meant nothing as the flare of the oncoming light unveiled the regret hammered into her features.

  She felt him stiffen, and knew. He would not strike her, but disregard her command for the folly of a suicidal defense. Cindein reacted first. She yanked off her headscarf. Torchlight caught her blonde hair like a beacon, and woke the pack in the hallway to yammering recognition.

  Cindein said, urgent. “Warn the high king! You must!” Then she spun and slammed her weight into the blade he held braced in grim earnest to fight. Flux-roiled perception hindered his reflex. He failed to pull back the fatal point that slid into soft flesh.

  His queen-regent’s cry of agony was nothing feigned, and the descent of the horde closed in, quick. While her hot blood gushed over Falion’s hand, he released the weapon. He sank to the floor with her shuddering body over his folded knees. His captain’s steel was not the blade that dispatched her. But the spurt of her life’s blood mingled with his tears as her attackers stabbed the felled quarry served up in his place.

  Falion felt the shift when Cindein died, leaving him among three last s’Ilessid survivors. Oblivious as the rabble surged around him, he gasped under the shift as the gifted endowment bound into the royal bloodline transformed him with a magnified force that upended every priority. Justice harnessed him to the queen-regent’s will, come whatever the cost, else every life lost to his shortfall would harrow his conscience forever.

  An exultant backslap jolted Falion’s anguish. “Friend, you�
�re a hero. Claim the honor and bear up your trophy. The crown is thrown down and the old bloodlines are gutted. Stand with us and celebrate Mankind’s liberation from tyranny.”

  Falion shouldered Cindein’s slaughtered flesh. She was slight as a feather for a spirit as mighty as her most renowned royal forebears. He saw her carcass desecrated alongside of her murderers, and kept his mouth shut as they dragged their prize through the ravaged streets. As her Ladyship asked, he feigned the callous role of her killer, jostled along by the barbaric frenzy that rampaged the length and breadth of Avenor. The long knife of his captain took no other life. Yet the horrors he witnessed to reach the post house gate, take a horse, and flee the ravening madness branded him beyond all requite.

  The nightmares pursued him the rest of his life, his helpless revulsion relived until he woke, gasping and soaked in sweat. Her Ladyship had left him one charge, which he could not complete as she had wished, given his lapse let her die unaware that her brother and nephew preceded her crossing.

  History’s archive recorded the uprising’s outcome in dry words on a musty page, stored in the library at Althain Tower. Falion’s mother survived, and his sister, whose offspring continued the living descent of the s’Ilessid lineage throughout the upended chaos that followed. Falion sen Ardhai forsook his birth name and answered the Fellowship’s call. Invested as the next High King of Tysan, he wielded the might of the ancestral crown jewels and died on the line, when the Mistwraith broke from containment and surged northward, smothering Falwood to the border at Lithmere.

  But one slip of paper, handwritten before his death in crown service, was salvaged for posterity along with the s’Ilessid genealogy . . .

  Whoever claims I was the savior of the royal heritage, and whatever ballads commemorate the courier who brought timely warning to the clan outposts in the free wilds, the legends are wrong. The noble accolades were none of mine. Queen-Regent Cindein’s sacrifice offered the decoy that got me away, and her selfless courage alone is worthy of revered remembrance.