“You are no longer in charge of knots, Princess,” Tyrolean said.
Draken blinked at him. He shook his head a little and went back to Galbrait. Gave him a solid kick in the breast plate. It didn’t do him much damage but knock his wind, but it was satisfying. Draken stared down at him as he lay gasping on the ground. “Mistake to let him take your horse.”
“I didn’t—I—”
“On your feet. You have a long walk ahead of you. Good fortune for you the ponies keep a slow pace.”
As they checked tack, shoved Galbrait out front of them where they could keep an eye on him, and rode out, Aarinnaie said lowly, “Where are we going?”
Draken didn’t answer. Aarinnaie wasn’t going to much like it.
* * *
As they neared Cove Clan lands, they were ambushed by Oxbow riders. No arrows flew but bows creaked and blades slipped from sheaths. Tirnine looked extremely displeased to see them.
That’s you. Making friends wherever you go.
Draken sighed and dismounted. He had to look up at them from Bumpus’s back anyway and he needed to keep close to Galbrait, make certain he didn’t do anything foolish.
“Tirnine.”
“Khel Szi.” Her lip curled.
He ignored that. “Is the Queen still at Cove lands?”
“Not as like. Them what got their own war to fight, and we got ours.”
It took a moment to parse the meaning from her dialect. “Then we’ll go. I have to find her, and quickly.”
“You what started up fights again. Cove killed my people.”
Draken shook his head. “Why?”
“We brought you to her, aye?”
He took a step closer. A bow creaked. Galbrait looked from him to the Sept warriors surrounding them. Draken stopped, lifted his hands. “Don’t shoot me. It’ll only startle your horses.”
“The Queen ordered it. We knew where she was and wanted it secret.”
The air fled his chest in a rush. He cursed, but soundlessly. Surely she wasn’t so upset with him to make a stupid mistake that would leave two clans at war … She’d left him alive, after all. And there was Sikyra to consider. Anxiety itched at the back of his neck. He dragged air in, just enough for a few words. “You didn’t go after her?”
“She’s gone. Cove Clan what did the killing anyway.” Her eyes narrowed. “You come make it right.”
Draken gaped at her. “Me? How?”
“Not much caring. You talk to them. Make them reattribute it.”
He frowned at her misuse of the word, though her meaning was plain, and reached up to rub his eyes. His fingers found his mask. The daylight stung his vision even with it. “I don’t have time for this.”
“You what come to us, aye? The gods bring you. You make time.”
The gods … he didn’t doubt their complicity. He sighed. Looked at Osias, Tyrolean. Aarinnaie was uncharacteristically silent, her head bowed. Maybe trying to contain her violent proclivities for once.
“Damn it, no.” Truls caught his eye, flitting and frantic, bright in the sunlight. He looked like a torch illuminated against the shadowed woods. Beyond him, a figure darted away into the trees. Draken stared, ignoring the sting of sunlight.
“My lord?” Tyrolean, interminably calm.
Draken nodded and strode back for Bumpus. “I’ll come, Tirnine. You may have one day, no longer.”
Tirnine poked a finger toward Galbrait. “And him?”
“My cousin. He’s no harm to you but of value to me.”
Tirnine spun her horse without a word and led the way back along the river, water just breaking through the ice with an early thaw. A reminder the fighting would heat up with the weather, and how painfully little Draken had done to stop the invasion.
You were hamstrung by Elena, but fathers have a penchant for saving their children.
Do they now. I don’t really feel like one of those fathers at the moment.
Galbrait shifted to walk near Bumpus. When he spoke he was a little out of breath. “Why are you helping them?”
Draken growled. “They think I’m their Prince and this is what Princes do, if you’ve forgotten.”
Galbrait snorted softly. “Thank you for saving me from their arrows. It’s almost as if you’ve some sentimentality left for your old family.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. The only reason you’re still alive is because you claim you can take me to my daughter.”
He’s not entirely wrong, is he?
Bruche, I don’t need you as my conscience.
I think you do if the past few sevennight are any indication.
Draken snorted, a sound identical to Galbrait’s if he cared to admit it. You’ve killed plenty, and with less reason than I’ve had.
I don’t deny it. But not for revenge. You’ve been clamoring for it since Lesle died.
And I’ll have it too. He kicked futilely at Bumpus’s sides, shoving him into a slow trot and forcing Galbrait to pick up his pace. Truls lingered in the shadows of the woods lacing the lakes. Draken saw no more signs of whichever god was tracking him now.
When they arrived at the crosspath that would lead to Cove Clan lands, he drew up and looked at his companions, beckoning them close so he could speak softly. “I’ll go on alone.”
“Dra—”
“No, I won’t hear an argument, Aarin. I need someone to watch the prisoner here. The Cove may think him valuable or dangerous, or both.”
“We will see he stays well protected until he is in Queen Elena’s hands, my lord,” Tyrolean said.
That was the assurance he needed. He turned down the path and walked on alone. If Truls followed, he didn’t know. Despite daylight flickering onto the path through the canopy, normal forest sounds, and the cheerful chatter of melting creek water running over rocks, he couldn’t avoid imagining arrows flying or someone rushing him with a blade. He could hardly be the clan’s favorite person.
Even anticipating attack, six armed men materializing from the trees startled both him and Bruche. They wore thick braids down their backs and furs against the cold. The spirit drew Seaborn, which glowed uncomfortably into Draken’s eyes. He shoved his will forward and his arm down.
“Why do you come?” one of them demanded.
His Akrasian was proper and hardly accented. Draken tipped his chin down, slightly. A gesture of respect, not compliance. “I’ve come to broker peace between your clan and Oxbow. I take it Queen Elena is gone?”
He had some faint hope she remained, that Tirnine could have no real idea what transpired inside lands she warred with. But the guard nodded. “Some sevennight. Come, my lord. My clanmaster will speak to you.”
He didn’t sound happy about it, or nearly enough surprised to see him, but they hadn’t turned him away. Draken urged Bumpus forward and they walked their horses around him. He felt oddly short, and it made him think of Setia. It had been some nights before he’d considered her at all, and he was ashamed. Osias must have thought of little else since Galbrait had told them Sikyra lived, though he didn’t speak of her.
They emerged from the tree-clad path as the birds quieted around them and the day had fallen enough for Draken to take down his mask. If the consort guards noticed anything wrong about his eyes, they didn’t indicate it. When they dismounted, so did he.
The clanmaster sat crosslegged in front of a fire. The guard who spoke to Draken strode ahead to kneel by him. They spoke and looked at Draken, who sat on the ground across the fire from him and held his stiff hands out to the warm flames. The air chilled sharply as the sun fell. The guard backed away, standing with his back to a wooden hut, hand on his sword.
The man was rotund, his great chest and belly rising and falling with heavy, labored breaths. Ritual scarring marked his cheeks and throat, pink against his flaccidly pale skin. Draken hadn’t met him before; Elena hadn’t given them time. But he was curious: he’d been told all the Sept clans were matriarchal. Nevertheless, he dipped his chin to the clanmaster
, who returned the gesture in kind.
“Draken vae Khellian of Brîn.”
“Khel Szi.” The words were a little wheezy.
“That remains to be seen.”
“One is born Khel Szi according to the gods’ wishes. It is not a prize to be taken or given.”
Draken, however, well remembered Elena putting the crown on his head. Brîn was subject to Akrasia and the Crown. But he didn’t argue, just nodded. “Call me as you wish.”
“I am Feslar, Khel Szi.” He offered no title or honorific, and as Khel Szi was considered a name, Draken went with it.
“You don’t seem surprised to see me, Feslar.”
Feslar’s eyes swept the area behind Draken. Considering the circumstances, Feslar’s nervous glance was a normal enough response with a potential enemy in their midst, but it made Draken’s spine crawl just the same.
“I came alone,” he said.
“Aye,” Feslar said. “And why do you come?”
“To broker peace … The Oxbow Tirnine’s idea, not mine.”
“Oh? And how does the Oxbow force Khel Szi to broker peace?” Again the visual sweep.
“The usual way. At spear point.” Draken resisted glancing over his shoulder. “What’s this about? Why did you kill the Oxbows? Their help to me caused your clan no harm.”
“The Queen required her presence stay secret.”
Odd way to word that. Bruche silently agreed. “So she ordered you to kill them.”
Again the crawling feeling of unease. Draken held back on asking what was really going on and waited.
“Not in so many words.”
“Then why?”
Feslar’s lip twitched.
I don’t like this, Draken.
Draken didn’t much like it either. He gave into his urge to look around. At first glance, things had seemed normal. But now that he really looked, he saw what amounted to a deserted village. Beyond the guards who had escorted him in, the buildings were quiet. No smoke filtered into the night beyond the fire at his knees. No cooking smells. Just the sound the lake lapping its shores and the nervous breathing of the man across from him.
“Where is your clan?”
No answer.
Draken shifted on his knees, ready to get to his feet. “Are they attacking Oxbow? Is this a distraction?” He didn’t stop to think how Feslar might have orchestrated such a thing …
“No. I sent them away to safety,” Feslar said.
Bruche murmured, How did he know you were coming?
“Because you had word I was here?”
Feslar’s eyes darted, and he shifted. The effort made him wheeze, which took some time before he could answer. “Of course not. It’s a dangerous time.”
Draken released a breath. “The war, then? Plague? Gods, man, speak plainly.”
Feslar shuddered, visibly shuddered, his jowls trembling over his thick neck.
“You’re frightened. Of what?” Draken said.
“I am not craven.”
“Fear and cowardice are not the same.” He was feeling plenty of fear himself at the moment. This man had grown old and fat leading a clan of warriors. He’d learned to pay close attention to such leaders when they were nervous. “I would never accuse you of cowardice. I don’t think your people would tolerate it from you. And the Queen trusted you enough to let you host her. I suspect it takes a deal to frighten you.”
Direct questions seemed to only lead to evasion; he let the words trail off without it.
Feslar settled, oddly, shoulders slumped and breathing slowed. Almost a submission. His wheezy voice turned to a whisper. “We did not choose to fight. We did not decide to kill the Oxbows.”
Draken leaned forward. “Aye, I’m aware. The Queen—”
“No. Something else.” Feslar’s eyes locked on him and Draken missed the sensation of someone watching his back.
Bruche felt it, too. Something else well could be.
Feslar fell quiet. It took a few breaths before Draken could fill it. He tried to keep his tone conversational. “I have seen some damned odd things since the Monoeans attacked Akrasia, and before. Unexplainable things.”
“Magic.”
For the first time, Draken wondered if the Sept had any, and how it manifested. “Beyond even that. I carry a sword that gives life as readily as it takes it. I can heal myself with magic. And I can see well enough that these creatures are different.”
Feslar nodded slowly. Either his breathing had stopped or his wheezing had suddenly cleared. His chest still rose and fell.
Draken’s voice felt hollow and his words too quick. He pressed on anyway, sensing an opportunity to test the man. “Someone murdered the Mance, all but one. They are necromancers, filled with the strength of many spirits. They command the banes. I have been under the control of a bane. It is no small thing and the Mance were strong. I wonder who could do such a thing, kill Mance.”
“The Lord God Korde.”
The whispered words had no ire or fear in them though; only reverence. They prickled over Draken’s spine on their way to his mind.
Draken swallowed in his dry throat. “You are not Feslar.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Nor was he Korde. Even so, Draken didn’t wait for a response. He shifted and drew, shoving to his feet with his good leg. The other knee still ached, damp, cold, worn from riding. He didn’t pay it much mind and Bruche rushed to chill it with his presence, erasing the pain.
Whoever held the clanmaster in thrall didn’t move.
“You’re no better than a bane, holding this man captive. Which one are you?” Draken said. His mind sifted through the possibilities. Shaim who had tried to make peace. Agrias, who might have chased him. His eyes narrowed, trying to sort through the moon phases. Who had been missing? He’d avoided the Eyes and so hadn’t kept track …
“You seek which god you have betrayed.” Aye, the wheezing was fair gone, as if it had never been.
“I never asked to be liege to any of you.”
“You are an earth-crawler. You are in liege to us whether you want it or not.”
Draken’s fingers tightened on the sword. “You call it betrayal. I call it freedom.”
Even as the name left his lips he knew it was wrong. The god shook his head, an irritating smile playing on Feslar’s pale, fleshy lips.
“I killed Zozia. Shaim is a god of peace. Khellian and MaVanni still ride the skies. So—” Draken’s eyes narrowed and he forced strength into his voice, though the notion of speaking to another god made his skin crawl. “Agrias. But you’re all about the land and food and animals. Why do you have your fingers in this?”
“You use my land, my living world, to heal yourself. Every time you do so, you break a little part of what’s mine.”
Of what’s mine? Was Agrias claiming the whole of the earth and stone? “I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t ask for any magic.”
“No. And you have been most ungrateful. I am here to take it back.”
I’ve a feeling the only way for him to take it back is to make you very dead. Bruche lifted Draken’s arm and reset his grip on the sword. He came around the fire. As he did so, Agrias lifted a knife. Instead of shifting Feslar’s heavy bulk to strike at Draken, the god turned the knife on his own body. The edge of blade sunk into Feslar’s chest and started to slide down the skin, slicing it off in a neat, if bloody, wide strip. The big man didn’t so much as flinch.
The sight stayed Draken’s blade; even Bruche held. “Stop! You’ll kill him.”
The god carved another strip of flesh from Feslar, baring white fat and marbled muscle. Blood ran down, harsh against Draken’s darksight. “And how do you intend on killing me? You have to go through him to get to me.”
“Why are you doing this?” He had to force the words through painfully clenched teeth.
Agrias didn’t answer. Something squiggled amid the blood, shifting beneath it, causing gruesome, bloody ripples under the raw flesh.
Fing
ers. Bruche’s voice was more awe than horror.
Pale fingers, like sunless dirt slugs, broke through the thin strands of uncut muscle, emerging bloody as a newborn horror. The god had hidden inside Feslar. Not a bane, but like a parasite. It split through Feslar’s chest and leapt at him, gangling fingers and arms stretched for him, a pale, writhing thing so pale it had never seen the sun. Draken didn’t think, didn’t hesitate. He shifted his weight and slashed. Seaborn struck the creature—wrinkled and hairless with wide, white eyes and limbs unfolding like a spider’s. Rank-smelling dirt sprayed from the wound, worse than gutter sludge in Reschan. Agrias screamed inhuman shrieks that burned the mind. Even wounded, the god attacked, fingers scrabbling into Draken’s stomach, tearing and ripping his skin. Draken gasped in agony and fell back with Agrias on him. His sword tumbled away. The god’s tearing fingers squeezed Draken’s throat. He couldn’t pry them off. The great rend in his stomach started to knit, a confusion of pain as the edges tried to find each other from the inside of his torn gut. The fingers squeezed tighter. Black sludge filled Draken’s vision. Ghosts twitched in his periphery. He reached out for his sword, throwing his arm down flat across the rough ground. He found the edge, cut himself, but dragged it closer. Still holding it by the blade he stabbed sideways into the god.
The body writhed over him, jerking like a doll on strings. The grip weakened. Draken dragged in air and threw him off, shoving to his feet, mindless of his bleeding hand and the healing pain in his stomach. He struggled closer on his knees, stabbing again and again until Bruche grasped control of his muscles from the inside, cooling his limbs and his ire. The dirt roiled beneath, tearing grass roots and upending the stones encircling the fire. It spread out in waves until the body of the god was in several pale pieces. His blood sizzled softly as it drained onto the ground. Dusty, stinking smoke rose from it. It dried and sank deep into the bare dirt.
Draken’s palm stung like nettles burned inside the cuts, and there was nothing for it. They didn’t heal. He growled and tore the scarf from his neck to wrap around the wound.
The entire ground to the trees and the lake was furrowed in circles as if great bladed plows had run through it. Draken stared at the ruined god, panting while the black sludge-blood dripped from his sword.
Enemy Page 31
