The Fourth Runi (The Fledgling Account Book 4)

by Y. K. Willemse

  “I am not Rafen,” Francisco said for what felt like the hundredth time in his life. He quivered with anger.

  “You are his brother?” the same voice said. “Well, we shall need to keep you in this state a moment longer then.”

  Something hit him on the head, and darkness descended around him forcefully.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The

  Search Party

  Rafen heaved himself to his feet, his body throbbing in every possible place. “We have to find Francisco.”

  “Sherwin,” Etana said, “you must take us back to Lord Cyril Earl’s the moment we have Francisco with us. Grandfather told me you would. Then Rafen can—”

  “No.”

  Sherwin stared at her. For the first time, Rafen noticed how pale and haggard he looked.

  How did they even get here so fast? Rafen thought.

  “Wha’ do yer think I am?” Sherwin said loudly. “I’m not doin’ tha’, Etana. I’ve ’ad enough.”

  He lowered himself onto the ground and huddled there, feeling the stone with his fingers as if it carried some sentimental memory.

  “Sherwin, you must,” Etana said, trying to keep calm. “I beg of you. I know you do not normally do kesmal—”

  “An’ wha’ abou’ the Naztwai?” Sherwin said, his head snapping up. His eyes were alight. “Who made them all go crazy and start eatin’ the wrong person? And I took ’im on, Etana, when ’e were takin’ Rafen to Nazt. Tha’s the last time I’m touchin’ this stuff.”

  Rafen stared at Sherwin. “What do you mean? The Naztwai…” A horrible thought was forming in his mind. Did Sherwin bear some kind of connection to the Lashki?

  “Sherwin, for Zion’s sake!” Etana cried.

  “Fer Zion’s sake, the less I do of this, the better,” he snapped. “In case yer haven’ noticed, it makes me a different person.”

  He was breathing heavily, his face twisted.

  “We’ll discuss this later,” Rafen said. “We have to find Fran—”

  A spasm from his arm made him black out momentarily. He struggled to stay conscious, forcing himself to absorb his own kesmal from his fingertips. Already, a cold despair was sweeping over him. Fritz was gone. There was no way Rafen could prove his Runiship in the royal court now unless he revealed his phoenix feather. And since Richard had done such a thing first, everyone else would accuse Rafen of stealing his. Additionally, Rafen was loath to remove it from his shirt a third time.

  “Finding Francisco will not be necessary,” someone said from the opposite side of the Ravine.

  Rafen lifted his blade, and Sherwin loosened his sword in his sheath, his expression hardening. A torch flared, outlining General Jacob Aneurin’s shape. Wearing a vibrant scarlet coat, soiled from travel, the general watched them all with blue eagle eyes. His thin moustache and the cleft in his chin added to the austerity of his appearance. Only the warped nose, crooked from previous breaks, stole from his dignity.

  “Jacob,” Etana whispered. And then louder, “Thank Zion it’s you.”

  Rafen’s relief was partially checked by Richard’s reference to Jacob in his speech, some four months ago. But Jacob had surely just mentioned Rafen to the prince in passing; he would never condemn him. After all, Jacob had trained Rafen to fight, and saved his life several times.

  “Your Highness is not hurt?” Jacob said.

  A body of eighty men was gathering behind him, numerous philosophers among them. Rafen was disturbed to see an Ashurite amid the Sartians there.

  “Where is Francisco?” he said, moving forward.

  Jacob moved his torch so that it lit up a figure held partially upright by the Ashurite. Unconscious, Francisco was stiff in a glaze of white kesmal, and another soldier had a blade to his throat. The blood rushed to Rafen’s face.

  “What does this mean?” Rafen said sharply. “Has the Sianian General enlisted for the Lashki’s army?”

  He made to lunge forward, but Sherwin restrained him. Rafen lurched, the pain from his arm blinding him. Little lights popped in his vision.

  “I am under orders,” Jacob said, “and his Runiship has the best intentions possible. If you want your brother to live, I suggest you come here, Rafen – and only Rafen.”

  “What are you going to do to him?” Etana burst out.

  The soldier holding the sword to Francisco’s throat applied pressure, threatening to break the skin. Rafen threw off Sherwin and moved forward, thinking frantically. He had to buy time.

  “Why are you doing this?” he said to Jacob.

  “Her Highness Etana should step into the light,” Jacob said.

  Etana stepped forward, the silver scepter still in her filthy hand. The men began muttering when they saw her swollen abdomen. Jacob hissed.

  “This is what I was told would have happened. I did not believe it.” He inhaled. “Rafen, I saw you attack his Runiship in the marketplace that day – I was there. I had hoped that incident in the armory when you were twelve was an accident, a mere flare of temper that could be corrected. I was wrong. You showed potential last year, albeit some alarming traits – a preoccupation with the Secra among them.”

  “If you were there in the marketplace, you knew some of the things Richard said weren’t true,” Rafen said, desperately trying to stay upright on legs that felt like water beneath him. “You knew I didn’t leave the Hideout and the nobles to save my own skin.”

  His voice was rising. Jacob cut across him.

  “I’m afraid I judged you wrongly. I thought you noble, a servant of Zion. Yet I see you have had many false aspirations as your motives. His Runiship may have been mistaken in some matters, but he was not incorrect on others. You are as your father, as the Tarhians you grew up with – crafty, plotting the saving of the people of New Isles all for your own benefit and the increase of your influence in Siana. All these years, I have tried to protect the royal family, and now you have defiled the Secra.”

  “No!” Rafen cried. “No, I married her.”

  Horror rolled over him as he realized what everyone must think of him – all these Sianians here.

  “You married her?” Jacob said. A bitter smile spread across his face. “Who do you think you are, Rafen? The Runi?”

  “Yes,” Rafen said. “Yes, I am the Fourth Runi. Don’t you see all the corpses around us? Surely you know who was here moments ago – who attacked me because I am the Runi.”

  Jacob laughed outrightly now. “You’ve had a tangle with some demon-dabblers in these Mountains, and you expect me to believe the Lashki himself was here, threatening you? I am sure all these corpses were caused by a greater force than your current numbers, Rafen. These Nazt-worshipers fought amongst themselves before the survivors fled and hid from my company. And it appears you were among them and did not run fast enough.”

  “Why won’t you believe me?” Rafen said.

  “Why?” Jacob said scornfully, and Rafen already knew the answer.

  “I’m not the Runi you want,” he said in despair. “You want Richard. You want someone groomed for the throne – someone conventional – not a human.”

  “Drop your sword,” Jacob said, and as he spoke, a roar of indignation sounded behind Rafen.

  Rafen glanced backward to see a group of men had crept behind Sherwin and seized him, beginning to bind his hands. Sherwin lashed out and Etana made to protect him with kesmal, but the soldier with his sword against Francisco’s throat only had to press harder for them both to fall quiet. Sherwin’s eyes betrayed his desperation as the men tightened the knots around his wrists. A philosopher near Etana pointed his blade at her.

  “Stay where you are, Highness.”

  “Rafen, drop your sword,” Jacob spat.

  A bubble of blood appeared beneath Francisco’s Adam’s apple – Rafen’s sword landed on the Ravine floor with a clatter.

  “Now,” Jacob said, and a Sartian philosopher from among his men sent a silver ray at Rafen’s head. Rafen remained perfectly still, his ang
er building up inside him. All his fighting, for nothing!

  The ray hit him, and black started to wash over him. He fought wildly to keep consciousness, the kesmal in him escalating to fever pitch, the searing of his arm blotting out any sound. Another ray hit him, and another.

  “Jacob, please!” Etana cried. “Stop it – he hasn’t hurt me; why are you doing this?”

  “All philosophers,” Jacob commanded in frustration. His mouth trembled as if he were unsure of what he was doing, as if he were reconsidering.

  Innumerable beams of kesmal struck Rafen in the head at once, and at last a dark curtain swept over him and his body hit the ground…

  *

  Rafen woke in a cave, his mouth and throat dry. His limbs were either unresponsive or bound – he couldn’t tell which. The gloom around him was velvety, occasionally pierced by a tendril of light from beyond the cave. He supposed he was still alive, but the Lashki had him. He must have him; the moisture was telling him so. He was probably still in the Ravine camp, and doubtless, the others had been captured too.

  Etana!

  Even at seven months pregnant, she had come to rescue him, like a fool. His heart beat wildly. Where was she now?

  Light flared near him. Someone approached with a lantern, and their shadow fell over him. Rafen tensed his muscles in readiness, and shocking pain from his left arm vibrated through him.

  Obscured both by darkness and blinding radiance, the stranger put something to Rafen’s cracked, puffy lips. Water trickled into his mouth. Rafen’s aching muscles loosened at the sensation, and he gasped in desperation, choking.

  “Easy, easy,” a man’s voice said.

  The accent was very similar to Kasper’s: clipped and crisp. Rafen supposed he was hallucinating. Kasper eased more water into him, and Rafen swallowed with painful difficulty.

  “Don’t treat him with too much kindness,” someone said from behind him. “You know what the general says he is guilty of.”

  Footsteps receded into the darkness. The stranger above Rafen heaved a long sigh.

  “Yes, not that I blame you or anything,” he said, the traces of a rueful smile in his voice. “She is terribly pretty and all that.”

  “Kasper,” Rafen said thickly.

  “Actually, I’m Lemuel,” the man said.

  Rafen made a movement to grab the man’s arm with his right hand. Resistance and throbbing in his wrists told him his hands were bound tightly behind his back. With tremendous effort, he channeled some kesmal through his left arm toward Fritz’s ring. The kesmal responded slowly and stopped moving even before it reached his elbow. The searing that resulted was enough to make him vomit. He realized with horror that he had overworked himself in the Ravine, and now his body was taking a break, whether he liked it or not. He had sapped himself unbelievably, and who knew when he would recover?

  Besides which, the combining of the times could likely never happen again. If he wanted the king back, Rafen had to resurrect Fritz. He groaned.

  “Yes, that’s most people’s reactions,” Lemuel said. “I’m not tremendously popular in the army. They give me the easy jobs, like throwing water down a dying man’s throat, and so on.”

  “Etana,” Rafen said. “Where is she?”

  “On the other side of the camp. But, no offense I hope, I was instructed not to mention her to you.”

  A cry in the night caused his hairs to rise on his scalp. He wondered if he had dreamed it. He panted dryly and tried to sit up. Lemuel forced him back down.

  “Let me go!” Rafen roared indistinctly. “She’s in trouble!”

  “She’s in labor,” Lemuel said. Fritz had been right. Rafen had been a fool to impregnate her so early, and now both he and she were paying for it. She was less to blame; he had forced things. And now he lay there on the stone ground, bound, bruised, and infernally weak, while she was in the insurmountable pain of premature childbirth somewhere else, within hearing though not within reach.

  He pressed his eyes shut, trying not to listen. Yet now that he had heard one cry, it was succeeded by another and another, and he wasn’t sure how much was in his mind and how much was real. A picture of a wrinkled, red stillborn floated before his mind. It was too early for her to give birth, and the Mountains were no place to have a child. Violently, he attempted sitting up again, and Lemuel pushed him back down with an effort. Rafen tried to kick him, only to discover his ankles were bound too.

  His eyes watered in humiliation.

  Did Zion care about pain, he wondered.

  If You care, spend it on my wife. Not on me.

  “I am sorry,” Lemuel murmured. “Really, I am. Are you listening?”

  Rafen looked upward and met Lemuel’s gaze fully. Lemuel had a pale, yet honest face. His childlike blue eyes were sympathetic, and his perfectly yellow, wavy hair made Rafen think of a masculine version of Bertilde.

  “Ah, I see you do understand,” Lemuel said earnestly. “Well, Rafen, once she has given birth, I’ll scout everything out, I promise. I’ll find out everything about the child, and if they won’t let her take care of it, I will. But I really can’t let you communicate with Her Highness as your relationship with her has been, er, improper. Additionally, I think you ought to know…” He cleared his throat in embarrassment. “They are unsure which of you three fathered the child,” he said, the color mounting to his cheeks.

  “Me,” he said in a slurred voice. “I married her. Didn’t Jacob tell you?”

  “Married her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh,” Lemuel said slowly. “That changes things I suppose. Still, that doesn’t make the marriage right… unless you are the Runi.”

  He laughed at his own joke, and Rafen joined him internally. It was, really, very funny.

  “I am,” he said drunkenly.

  Lemuel stared at him. “Zion’s blood, I hope you’re not,” he said. “You look as if you’re ready to bid the world goodbye. Get some rest, and I’ll tell you all shortly.”

  He hurriedly moved away from Rafen, leaving him to lie there, the rope digging into his wrists and ankles.

  Etana’s shrill cry pierced the night again and fell to Earth like a stone. He purposely swung his face into the rocky ground below him so that he could feel a little of what he had brought on her.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Amari

  When Lemuel shook him awake, Rafen found himself trussed like a slave over the back of a moving horse. Every hoofbeat jolted all his painful bruises. He felt like he was going to be sick as he jerked up and down, his head hanging above the stony ground. His left arm had swollen incredibly. It felt like a dead weight – a tubular, sausage-like chunk of gangrenous meat – and yet, it felt perpetually on fire too. Every five seconds, spasms traveled up it and into his chest. The black stain on his hand was a physical presence, a kind of sticky tar that he felt beneath his skin, poisoning his blood and his sensations. But somehow, he was able to fight it. The thought of Etana’s sufferings kept him sane and drove him mad at the same time.

  While they journeyed, Rafen attempted kesmal several times. Again, it barely got past his shoulder before it died in his veins. He had all the time in the world to observe the immense protection Jacob had around his party, including thick shields that Rafen could see with his Spirit Awareness. Over half their company was philosophers. Apparently Jacob understood the Lashki might attack them, even if he didn’t want to believe Rafen was the Runi. However, the Lashki would likely hold off after his spectacular losses in the Ravine. He didn’t know Fritz and his men were gone.

  “Rafen,” Lemuel muttered, trying to look surreptitious, squinting in the opposite direction as he spoke. “She had a little girl last night, and the philosopher who has charge of the child is giving it something at intervals. Her Highness has not named the child, and is in much pain and very low spirits this morning.”

  Rafen said nothing. It seemed Zion did care. His daughter and his wife had survived. He made a move that blinded him wi
th pain.

  “Please don’t,” Lemuel hissed, as if he could read Rafen’s mind. “There are many philosophers here, over forty, and they would kill you before you could fight, even if you broke the ropes. You will have no help from your friends, who have been disarmed.”

  Rafen felt his blood boil. His wife was being treated like a shabby prostitute, and her own child had been torn from her arms, most probably the moment after it was born. And who knew what they intended to do with his daughter? Drop her in the nearest river? Leave her in a tied sack somewhere on the mountain?

  If Rafen rested, he would be stronger; he would regain his kesmal and be able to fight. He forced himself to calm down, though his thoughts rambled on.

  Perhaps they were taking his daughter to Richard. This was possibly the worst option yet. Rafen had permanently made enemies with Richard that day in the marketplace. He had turned Siana against himself as well. His daughter would be even less welcome in the palace than he was.

  And then, Rafen wanted to hold the child, more than anything else in the world. He wouldn’t mind living another fifty years in exactly the state he was in – bound, bruised, wounded, and weary beyond belief – if only he might hold his daughter once. His daughter! The dream, which had in parts been a nightmare, was now real. What had seemed intensely fearful was a beautiful truth, like a beam of sunlight that was entirely his own to caress in his private times.

  What did she look like? What would she look like? What did her small voice sound like? How would she feel in his arms? How tiny and how marvelous was she? He wanted to kiss her smooth little forehead and bestow on her all the blessings in the world, to protect her against all its imprecations. He wanted to ask her forgiveness for who he was and to thank her for all she was.

  He supposed Etana felt the same mad longing. After all, the child was the only thing to keep them going. If only he could touch her, and know this was real…

  “Did you hear me?” Lemuel said out of the corner of his mouth.

  Around them both, the sounds of the other men tramping down the slope filled his ears. The clattering of their pots, the shaking of their harnesses, and the rattling of their weapons created a kind of rhythm that provided a background, a shelter against consistent, tiring pain.