Harbinger

by Shae Ford

In the time it took Kael to get the water, Amos had removed the girl’s filthy clothing and placed a thick wool blanket over her body, up to her chin. He handed Kael her clothes and placed the sword on top of the pile. “Set these in my office. I’ll clean them later.”

  “What sort of armor is it?”

  “Armor? Why do you think it’s armor?” Amos said, rather snappily. “What could a girl want with armor?”

  “I don’t know —”

  “That’s right, you don’t. So let’s just see if we can keep her heart beating through the night.”

  Kael tossed her clothes in the floor of the office and set the sword on the cluttered table Amos used for a desk. He took off his cloak and fished a patient’s shirt out of the pile that had just been cleaned. While he pulled the itchy tunic over his head, he got a strange feeling. He swore someone was watching him.

  He spun around, not sure what he expected to see. The only things in the room besides Amos’s clutter were the armor … and that sword. He wondered what the blade looked like. He wanted to draw it and hold it in his hand. He took a step closer.

  “A bowl of warm water and a fresh cloth!” Amos barked from the main room.

  Kael tore his eyes away from the sword and as he left, shut the door on it. All the while he worked, he tried to shake the odd feeling from his toes. He warmed the pail of water over the fire and stirred in a few herbs for numbing. The dried leaves slowly melted, turning the water a smoky blue. He poured some into a bowl and left the rest over the fire.

  Amos dipped a cloth into the mixture and dabbed the girl’s wound, his brow bent in concentration. “It’s going to take some time to get this mess fixed. She didn’t even try to staunch the bleeding.”

  Under the grime, the skin around her wound was red and inflamed. A huge scab had formed over the top of it — mixed with strands of hair and bits of debris from the forest. But the herb water did its job well: after only a few minutes of scrubbing, the wound was nearly clean.

  Amos set the now-filthy cloth to the side and scratched at the top of his head. His eyes flicked from the gash to different corners of the room, and back again. Kael knew he was trying to decide on how to seal it.

  “Do you want me to get the needle?”

  Amos shook his head, and his eyes went to the door. “I think I may try the other,” he finally said, and Kael understood.

  As Amos put his hands on either side of the girl’s wound, Kael stepped around to block what he was doing from view — because if anyone happened to walk in and catch them, they’d have to run for their lives.

  While Amos may not have been able to capture souls, he was certainly no ordinary healer. He was among the last of a dying race — an ancient people with extraordinary powers. They were called the whisperers.

  Unlike the mages with their complicated language of spells, a whisperer needed no words — only the power of his mind and the strength of his hands. An ordinary blacksmith required the hammer and heat of the flames, but a whisperer skilled in craft could bend iron with his fist and sharpen a blade with his thumbnail. Most soldiers spent a lifetime honing their strengths, but a whisperer skilled in war never grew tired, and he never missed.

  And if a whisperer skilled in healing studied long enough, there was no wound he couldn’t mend.

  Amos pushed his fingertips against the ragged edges of the gash, and the girl’s skin became like clay: molding obediently, softening under his touch. He worked with nimble precision, pinching the corner of each end together and sealing them. It was a remarkable talent, and one that could have saved countless lives … if only he were allowed to use it.

  Not so long ago, the whisperers served the King in Midlan. A child who was born a whisperer was accepted into the house of nobles without question, and given a room in the King’s fortress for as long as he lived. It was the whisperers who raised the impenetrable walls of the fortress, and kept the Kings alive long past their years. It was they who trained the army of Midlan to be undefeatable.

  Then two decades ago, a great rebellion changed everything.

  They called it the Whispering War, and it began when Banagher — a weak-minded and idle King — tried to turn the whisperers into his slaves. He believed they were property of the crown, his by right, and should be given no more privilege than the stones that paved his floors. Not surprisingly, the whisperers didn’t take kindly to this idea, and they rebelled.

  But what started out as a show of unrest quickly became something much more sinister. As they won victory after victory over land and sea, the whisperers began to realize what a power they had — and they wanted more. It wasn’t long before they marched on Midlan and tried to seize the throne for themselves.

  After three long and bloody years, the Kingdom finally won. Banagher perished in battle and because he left no heir to succeed him, his warlord was elected to take the throne.

  The warlord’s name was Crevan, and he was an evil man. Shortly after the war ended, he summoned all the surviving whisperers to Midlan. He said he wanted to make peace with them, to rebuild the Kingdom with their help. But it was all a trap.

  No one knew precisely what happened that day, but Amos said not a whisperer who walked into the fortress was ever heard from again.

  A week later came the decree: whispering had been outlawed. Anyone caught in the act would be executed immediately; anyone who turned a whisperer over to the crown would receive a bounty of two hundred gold pieces. In the war-ravaged Kingdom, that was coin enough for a man to live on for three lifetimes — and plenty took him up on the offer.

  And any whisperer left alive fled to the mountains.

  Though Amos had lived in Tinnark for as long as anyone could remember, he never told a soul of his abilities. “These people are superstitious enough,” he’d always say. “What do you think would have happened if I’d gone around snapping bones back together? They would’ve lopped off my head and buried it.”

  Not telling had ultimately saved his life.

  Kael watched as Amos sealed the gash. His fingers moved surely until he reached the middle, and then he stopped. “Her skull is cracked. I’m going to have to mend it before I can finish the skin,” he said with a frown. He slid his index finger gently inside the wound. “Let’s see. I think — ouch!”

  He let out a string of curses and jerked back, slinging his fingers around like he’d accidently stuck them to a hot cauldron. Kael grabbed the bowl of water, but Amos shook his head.

  “No, the cloth!”

  “But it’s filthy —”

  “I don’t care! Wipe!”

  The shrill in Amos’s voice startled him. He grabbed the cloth in one hand and Amos’s wrist in another. Fresh red blood covered his fingertips, but it wasn’t the normal sort of blood. This blood bubbled, and steam rose up from it. Amos groaned as Kael dragged the rough surface of the cloth over his hand. His stomach flipped when he saw how red and raw Amos’s fingers were. The blood soaked into the cloth and cooled, hardening almost immediately.

  “What happened?” Kael said.

  Amos dunked his hand into the bowl and jerked his head at the girl accusingly. “What does it look like happened? She burned me!”

  “But, how —?”

  “I don’t know,” he snapped, which only worried Kael further: very rarely did Amos not have an answer. He walked back to the girl, toting the bowl with him, and bent to look at her wound. “Huh, it’s already scabbed over. Well I’ve never seen anything like this … it must be magic. Yes, I’ll bet she ran afoul of a mage and got herself hexed.”

  “But how could that be? I thought Crevan had all the mages in chains.”

  Amos made a frustrated noise. “Well she must’ve done something to get the King’s attention. I can see no other way around it.”

  Kael’s heart leapt excitedly as an idea came to him. “You don’t think she’s a whisperer, do you?”

  “There wasn’t a mark,” Amos said after a moment, and Kael felt disappointment slide back down in
the place of his hope. “No, I think it was a spell.” He looked at Kael, and his gray brows shot up in surprise.

  When he saw what Amos stared at, he drew in a sharp breath. A drop of blood glistened on the back of his forearm, bubbling wetly. Carefully, he touched a finger to it. The blood felt warm, but not unpleasant.

  “Remarkable,” Amos breathed. “It isn’t hurting you, is it?”

  Kael shook his head. He looked back at Amos’s fingers, at the angry white blisters rising up on them. Why didn’t the magic hurt him?

  “We’ll have plenty of time to figure this out later,” Amos said. He picked up his bowl and situated himself at the table next to where the girl lay. Then he looked at Kael expectantly.

  “No.”

  His voice was hard. He felt the wall rise up in his heart — the one that always rose when Amos tried to get him to use his gift. Healing was the weakest of the three schools of whispering. And in Kael’s opinion, Fate gifted him just enough to thoroughly ruin his life. So he vowed to ignore it. He tucked it away and pretended to be normal.

  “If you don’t help her, she’ll die,” Amos countered.

  Blast it all.

  Kael flung the dirty cloth against the wall and stomped over to the girl. Her face was smooth as she slept; her chest rose and fell steadily. For some reason, the peace on her face calmed him.

  In the deepest part of her wound, he could see where her skull was cracked. It was an angry, scarlet line no longer than a fingernail. But he knew even a small crack could turn deadly if left un-mended. Blood might leak inside, which would surely kill her.

  He took a deep breath and put his finger in the wound. Warmth, wet and the hard, slippery surface of bone — those were all familiar. He knew the textures, he knew how they all fit back together. Slowly, he ran his finger along the line, holding a memory in his head.

  It was a memory of his childhood. He used to spend hours playing in the ponds near the village, building Kingdoms out of clay. It was an unsteady material, but clay had its virtues: if one of his castle walls cracked, he could simply push them back together.

  With one finger on her skull, he closed his eyes and thought: You are clay.

  When he opened them, he was no longer looking at a complicated mass of muscle, skin and bone: it was all simple clay.

  Now the bone of her skull slid together when he pushed it, sealing under the force of his thought. When the crack was healed, he pushed the folds of skin back towards each other. Blood leaked out and washed over his fingers as he pinched the gash closed. It was much warmer than normal blood, but it didn’t scald him.

  When he’d sealed the wound, all that remained was a thin white scar. He didn’t think the girl would want a scar on her head, so he brushed it with his thumb until it smoothed away.

  “Very good,” Amos said when he finished.

  Kael didn’t realize how focused he’d been. Amos’s voice sounded like it floated in from miles away. He sat up and let the fog drain from his ears before he frowned at the smug look on Amos’s face and said: “Now what?”

  His frail shoulders rose and fell. “Now we wait, and hope she wakes up.”

  Chapter 4

  The Sovereign Five

  Across the mountains and miles away, the great fortress of Midlan stood undefeated.

  Its outer wall was a colossus of stone: a great, gaping jaw that rose from the earth and consumed the land around it, hemming every tree and blade of grass into a giant, fortified circle. High towers stood along this wall like pointed teeth, their heavy shadows draped over the barracks that covered the ground beneath them.

  The middle wall was actually an impregnable keep. It leered from behind the cover of its iron towers, its many slit windows stared unblinkingly — watching the four horizons.

  At the top of the keep loomed another citadel, one designed to survive any blast or siege. It was out of the archer’s reach, too powerful for the catapult and warded against every spell. And it was from this highest, insurmountable point that King Crevan enjoyed the view of a man with ultimate power.

  From where he watched, the soldiers of Midlan scurried across the fields like ants, doing whatever he ordered. It was fear — the weight of his eyes on the tops of their little ant heads — that kept them obedient. Yes, let them build his cities, let them fight, die and bleed for him. Then when they grew too old to lift a blade, he would crush their tiny bodies between his fingers …

  A knock at the door brought him back to the present. He turned and saw a steward peeking his head through the slightest of cracks. “Forgive me, Your Majesty, but your guests have arrived.”

  He waited for the King to nod before he darted behind the door and closed it. After gazing out the window for a while longer, Crevan began his stroll to the throne room — where his guests would be waiting.

  The halls of Midlan had a torch for every three stones. Crevan ordered that they remain lit day and night. Shadows were the cloaks of thieves … and assassins. He wouldn’t give them anywhere to hide.

  At the end of the hallway, a huge onyx dragon guarded his chambers. It bared its violent teeth and reached out with curved claws. The black dragon had been the symbol of Midlan since the time of the first King — a crest of power, the lord of all beasts.

  Nevertheless, Crevan was careful to avoid its stony glare. He pushed the spines at the end of the dragon’s tail, and one shifted under the pressure. It sunk down and clicked. A segment of the wall to the left of the statue slid over with a chalky groan, revealing a narrow passageway hidden in darkness. He grabbed a torch from the hall and made his way down a tight spiral of steps.

  Tunnels crisscrossed through the fortress like spider webs. They wound behind every door and under every corridor — and he kept them all a secret. Here in the darkness, Crevan moved without fear. The passageway was sturdy and the walls were thick enough to hide the heavy fall of his steps. A man could even scream for hours on end, and no one could hear him.

  This, he knew for a fact.

  At the end of one tunnel was a small wooden door. He snuffed his torch and opened it slowly, careful not to stir its hinges. Beyond the door was the backside of a tapestry. As he peered through a worn section of thread, his throne room came into focus.

  Five people lounged about the long table in the center of the room. They were Crevan’s chosen few: the Sovereign Five.

  When King Banagher … perished, several nobles fought to seize the throne, but Crevan outwitted them all. He was strong, yes, and he towered over everyone else in the King’s court, but his pride was in his cunning — not his strength. And now he ruled the Kingdom the same way he’d commanded the King’s army: mercilessly.

  Gone was the tangled mass of lords and ladies that used to rule the realm. Purged were the mumbling, argumentative old men and overzealous young nobles. Squashed were the many noisy opinions and the general stench of democracy. Under Crevan’s rule, there was only one voice — his. And when he spoke, the Kingdom listened.

  He’d taken Midlan and its vast army for himself, but there were still five other regions to control. For these he assigned a small group of nobles, handpicked for their particular brands of ruthlessness.

  A woman’s laugh drew his eyes to the hearth behind the table. Time could not touch Countess D’Mere, ruler of the Grandforest. She was as alluring now as she had been seventeen years ago. When the Countess tossed her golden-brown hair and batted her pretty blue eyes, her enemies fell. No man could hold his ground against her charms — or survive the kiss of her dagger.

  Duke Reginald of the High Seas smiled like a born swindler. His close-cropped hair rolled in tight waves across his head. He tugged absently on the end of his goatee and lounged against the wall; the firelight glinted off the sharp edge of his smile. Though he feigned indifference, his eyes wandered repeatedly down D’Mere’s liberal neckline while they chatted.

  Baron Sahar of Whitebone Desert had the dark skin of his people. His mines in the sand filled Midlan’s treasury wit
h gems and precious metals. The many jeweled rings on Sahar’s fingers sparkled in the torchlight as he inspected the golden goblets on the table. If there was a flaw in any of them, Sahar would find it.

  The man to his left was not as concerned with the cups as he was with their contents. Earl Hubert sucked down glass after glass of an array of liquors, his watery red eyes watching greedily for the bottom. Though his vineyards in the shadow of the Unforgivable Mountains produced some of the best wines in the Kingdom, their flavors were wasted between Hubert’s gluttonous lips.

  The last ruler was Lord Gilderick the Gruesome of the Endless Plains. If someone took a bit of skin, stretched it over a skeleton and topped it with a mop of lank hair, they might end up with something that looked like Gilderick. But it would take some dark magic to make it half as wicked. He lurked in a shadowy corner, watching the room through sunken eyes — and the others pretended not to see him.

  Crevan rarely bothered with gathering the Five together: as long as his coffers and storehouses remained full, he didn’t care what they did. But today was special. Today, one of them would die.

  The steward entered the throne room, and Crevan saw his chance. While their backs were turned he darted out from the tapestry and strode up behind them. “Hello, my friends!”

  They all jumped and collectively dropped to one knee. “Your Grace,” they mumbled in unison.

  Crevan waved them to their feet. “Come now, there’s no need for kneeling. And you may leave us,” he said to the steward, who scuttled obediently from the room.

  He ordered the Five to take a seat at the table and lounged in his own chair at the head. Sahar had to jerk his hands out of the way as Crevan dropped his boots squarely on the tabletop.

  Ah, silence. Nothing told more than a bit of silence. He put his hands behind his head and waited, looking at each of them in turn.

  It was Reginald who spoke first. “To what, Your Majesty, do we owe this rare privilege?”

  Reginald was a gutsy man. After all, one did not come to own every ship on the High Seas by shying away from negotiation. But Crevan wasn’t interested in playing business, and he didn’t have to. “Surely a man with your connections must know why I’ve called you.”