The Fourth Runi (The Fledgling Account Book 4)

by Y. K. Willemse

  “Yes,” Rafen said, raising his head fractionally. He retched, and Lemuel quickly moved a step away, as much to prevent Rafen from vomiting on his boots as to prevent those around from noticing their communion.

  A moment later, he dared to step closer.

  “She is Amari,” Rafen said in his slurred voice. “Tell Etana…”

  “I’m not allowed to,” Lemuel protested.

  “Please.”

  Lemuel heaved a sigh and moved away.

  Rafen lay there, in an agony of suspense.

  Etana had been right. It was a girl.

  *

  When they were camping four nights later, within view of New Isles, Rafen woke to find only his ankles bound. He was leaning against a stone wall beneath an overhanging rock somewhat removed from the rest of the camp. The shadows hid him from the view of the soldiers, and if one of them chanced to come closer, Rafen’s hands had been placed behind his back so that it still looked as if they were tied.

  Experimentally, he tried kesmal again, and this time he managed a spark. While it wasn’t nearly enough to create a fire, it was a start. From his vantage point, he could see Lemuel was right about the number of philosophers in the camp. Rafen could have escaped on his own. However, leaving without Etana and Amari was pointless. He would wait until he had his full strength back, and then he would tear his family from their grasp, with Francisco’s and Sherwin’s aid. He sat there with his eyes closed, and his ears strained for any sound that might be dear to him amid the crackling of fires, the talk and laughter of the soldiers, and the snuffling of the horses. For the first time since that night in the Ravine, he wondered what had happened to Francisco and Sherwin. He wished Lemuel would materialize and quiet his fears.

  His phoenix feather was warm against his chest, and he derived vague comfort from it. Zion had not abandoned him. Nor would Zion have abandoned Sherwin and Francisco, who had served Rafen faithfully.

  They would all get out of this yet.

  “Rafen?” someone whispered near him.

  Rafen’s eyes flicked open. The blur of fires and spiky spruces and pines crowded his vision again. He ignored the spirits.

  “Rafen, I told Her Highness,” Lemuel said softly.

  “Lemuel?”

  Rafen extricated his right hand from behind himself with difficulty and groped in the darkness near him for the soldier. He found an arm and gripped it.

  “Yes, I am here,” Lemuel said.

  For the first time, Rafen became aware of some fast breathing near his ear. He turned as Lemuel shuffled forward on his knees and wrapped Rafen’s right arm around a warm bundle. He pressed it against Rafen’s chest and helped him support it.

  Rafen glanced down at the little sliver of face between the coarse cloths. The miniature chest rose and fell rapidly. He stared, unable to breathe, to speak, the fingers of his right hand playing with the blankets that scratched her cheek.

  “I thought perhaps you might want to hold her for a moment,” Lemuel murmured. “I would give her to Her Highness to hold, but she is too closely guarded. I scarcely got your message to her. Yet with you, Jacob is relaxing. Despite the other night in the Ravine, he thinks you too weak to escape.”

  Rafen clutched Amari even closer to his heart, where his phoenix feather was. He wanted to hold her forever. He wanted to be the rock in her life, the shelter from the wind. He would suffer anything and everything for her, would change the world for her.

  It didn’t matter how much they hurt him. Fritz had vanished, but Zion would strengthen Rafen and help him reunite the Eleven and destroy Nazt. That force would never touch this little thing, this perfectly pure element, this gift from another world.

  “Well, I hoped you would like it,” Lemuel said softly, sounding mildly indignant. Perhaps he felt Rafen was taking this all too stoically.

  “Dear Zion,” Rafen managed, turning to Lemuel with tears in his eyes. “She’s beautiful.”

  *

  When Rafen questioned Lemuel regarding Sherwin and Francisco, Lemuel indicated the two of them were bound and traveling much further back amid the “search party” as he termed it. Etana was near them too, although Rafen had been purposely separated from her.

  The last day of travel arrived. He still couldn’t manage more than a spark, and he knew that once they got to New Isles, it was going to be a nightmare to escape. But without kesmal, he couldn’t break the bonds that tied him, and he couldn’t fight for his wife and child. So it was a waiting game.

  Yet a crazy hope was burning in his chest all the way to the New Isles palace, despite whatever waited for him there. The tiny ivory face, the perfectly black eyelashes, and the unbelievably soft, black hair kept appearing in his mind’s eye.

  How would she grow up, he wondered? What would her personality be like? Closer to Rafen’s or Etana’s? Would she be studious and earnest, or capricious and lighthearted like Kasper had been, right until the end?

  She was going to be as beautiful as her mother, and he would have a difficult time keeping the young men away. And he would make them all wait for her. He smiled through his pain.

  *

  The jolting had stopped at last, and someone lowered him from the horse’s back and leaned him against a thick wooden post. He was sodden after traveling through a thick rain. His hands were now bound behind his back, and he felt a little blood on his left arm. He wondered if he had somehow cut it.

  The atmosphere around them now was dry and warm. Very warm, since his time in the Mountains. He inhaled it luxuriously. Amari was somewhere close by. He was breathing the same air as her. Zion had given him an exquisite gift.

  “Can’ yer at least give ’im some water?” Sherwin said from further away. “Come on. It’s not as if tha’s goin’ to tear down the kingdom.”

  A soldier answered him smartly, and a ringing slap resounded. The snuffling of horses told Rafen he was in a vast stable – the New Isles stables. He now became aware there were many voices speaking, and one rang out above them all:

  “Give me that child, and I’ll put an end to this. The evidence will be removed.”

  A sword was torn from its sheath. Etana shrieked something unintelligible, and panic surged through Rafen like a current. His eyes flew open, and he pulled violently against his bonds with a cracked cry.

  His eyes wild, Richard stood in the middle of philosophers and soldiers. He had Etana’s arm in a vice-like grip and was brandishing his gleaming sword with his free hand. His face was perfectly white.

  “WHERE IS THE CHILD?”

  Rafen lunged forward, his head spinning. Standing nearby, Jacob closed his hand fiercely on his shoulder, jerking him back. The prickle of a knife touched the back of Rafen’s neck.

  “Lemuel had it last,” a philosopher called out.

  “Lemuel is not here,” another soldier said. “He is not with us.”

  Rafen stared around himself. It was true; there were eighty men with them, and Sherwin and Francisco stood against a stall door across the hay-strewn aisle from Rafen, though Lemuel was nowhere to be seen. His muscles relaxed.

  Richard gazed around too, his normally civilized and handsome aspect disfigured by emotion. Then he rounded on Jacob, who had released Rafen’s arm.

  “And who let him go?” he said, approaching the general with his raised sword. In the pale golden light that streamed through the meshed, arching windows in the stone walls, he appeared otherworldly in his anger.

  Jacob, a full head taller than Richard, actually flinched.

  “M-my Liege,” he stammered, “I did not know he had turned traitor.”

  The dignity Rafen had detected in the stern lines of Jacob’s face years ago seemed to be mere façade today. Age had turned the yellow moustache and hair into a feebler, indistinct color mixed with white. His eagle eyes were hardened, and now they darted with panic over his men, as if he expected someone to defend him.

  “Perhaps Rafen knew,” he said, staring down at Rafen with contempt.

>   “And perhaps you should have known before Rafen,” Richard said, his hands vibrating on his sword hilt. He let out a manic yell and made to bring it down on Jacob’s skull, but a hoarse shout caused him to freeze, mid-swing.

  “NO!”

  Rafen realized a few seconds later, when Jacob was gazing down at him in wide-eyed disbelief, that the voice had been his. And Rafen wasn’t even sure why he had done it. Jacob’s hostility toward him hadn’t started in the Mountains. Besides refusing to train Rafen any further, he had already spoken against Rafen to Richard, as Richard’s speech in the marketplace had demonstrated.

  “No?” Richard said, eyeing Rafen with disgust. “Ha! You would seek to defend the general? This is worse than the worst accusation. Why would he defend you, Jacob?”

  Jacob opened his mouth and shut it again.

  “You can’t just kill a man… in a stable,” Rafen said.

  The sentence sounded ridiculous once it left his mouth, even though it made sense in his head. After all, he couldn’t reason that Jacob didn’t deserve death – he did. For what he had done to Etana, he certainly did. And talking about putting him on trial seemed ridiculous, because Richard would condemn him in the end for something Rafen actually supported.

  Richard stared at him blankly for a moment, deciphering Rafen’s words. He looked as princely as ever, his blond hair swept across his forehead in dashing Sartian style, and his gold embroidered coat, beige breeches, and black boots immaculate. When he realized what Rafen had said, he burst into laughter.

  “How absurd,” he said. “Did you hear that? Ha! Ha! I think the human is feverish. He does not appear to be in his right mind.”

  The soldiers around him started laughing too. While Richard was speaking, Rafen noticed that Francisco’s face was very pale. Through his partially opened collar, Rafen glimpsed his brother’s wound, now a vigorous, black, spidery stain. He could hear the rasp in his brother’s breath from where he stood.

  The healing Etana had started at Cyril Earl’s had obviously not been finished.

  “It is enough,” Richard said loudly, signaling an end to their merriment. He sheathed his sword. “You, Jacob, will lead the contingent of twenty that will search for this reprobate. When you find him, I want him strung up on the gallows in New Isles. As for the child, do not bother bringing her back. It is a her, is it not? The human did not have enough manhood to have a son of his own. Bring her remains back in a sack.”

  Rafen had snapped the ropes around his wrists at last; a feeble spark of kesmal had ignited into a flame that had sufficiently weakened them. Now with a roar, he flung himself at Richard, his right hand seizing the perfectly pale throat and squeezing inexorably. Richard’s sharp scream became strangled. Yet Rafen didn’t see Richard before him – he saw twenty men hunting down a baby; he saw a soldier impaling a child that couldn’t control the movements of her own fingers; he saw Jacob carrying a sack with pride, as if it had the head of a notorious criminal within it. Rafen’s fingers had energy of their own.

  Before Jacob or a soldier could pull Rafen back, Richard’s frantic hands had found Rafen’s left arm. He twisted it violently. With a cry of pain – Rafen almost blacked out – his grip on Richard’s throat lessened, and Richard tore himself free as Jacob seized Rafen from behind and jerked him back. Rafen fell to the stable floor. Richard had whipped his sword out again. He screeched at Etana, whom numerous philosophers restrained, “See here the man you called ‘husband’!”

  Then he brought the sword down, and although Rafen scrabbled to crawl forward or roll out of the way, the pain of his left arm made him so dizzy that every movement seemed to take a century. Someone appeared at Richard’s right and grabbed his sword arm, pulling it up at the last second. Richard swayed, thrown off balance by the change of direction.

  “No, Richard,” King Robert bellowed, his medium-length red hair disheveled. “You cannot—”

  “It is My Liege!” Richard roared, shoving him backward and swinging his sword across King Robert’s left thigh. The king clamped his jaw in an effort to control the pain. Blood appeared even through his brown breeches.

  “Father?” Etana said in a tone of numbed shock from behind him.

  “My Liege,” King Robert implored, compelled by the wound to fall to his knees, “think what the people would say if you killed a man without a trial. You must at least give him a trial.”

  He stared up at Richard, the gold circlet set with the amethyst shining palely on his forehead.

  “Is that so?” Richard said, breathing heavily. His left hand nursed his throat, where Rafen’s fingerprints were still apparent. “This is not the first time he has tried to kill me, Robert. But perhaps you are right,” he said, staring down at Rafen who was starting to rise.

  Deliberately, he slammed his foot down on Rafen’s left hand. Rafen tried desperately to push Richard’s boot away with his other arm. This time, he did vomit. His muscles were already contracting in the familiar way.

  Etana’s voice formed the background to his pain. She was sobbing, begging. King Robert protested while Rafen lay fully on the ground, writhing.

  Amari, Amari.

  He would think of her – yes, he could already see Jacob tearing her from Lemuel’s arms and dashing her to the ground. She fell like a rabbit’s carcass, unable to prevent her own fall.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Richard’s

  Hospitality

  Someone was cleaning his arm.

  “Etana?” Rafen whispered, his eyes still closed.

  It had been a long time since they had been alone together. He wanted nothing more than to be with her, to comfort her, to tell her how sorry he was that all of this had happened.

  “You don’t need to,” he murmured, his voice still thick. “You must be tired.”

  “I am not Her Highness,” someone sneered.

  Rafen’s eyes flew open.

  A Sartian philosopher with long, plaited yellow hair was tending his wound. He wore a black embroidered robe and had uncommonly thin lips.

  “Where am I?” Rafen asked, staring at the creamy ceiling above.

  He was lying in a bed, and it was unusual after being in the Mountains, deceptively pleasant.

  “You are in—” the philosopher began, but Rafen snatched himself free of his grasp and swung his legs over the edge of his bed, reeling.

  “I have to go,” he said, standing up and catching himself from falling over.

  Somebody planted a hand on his chest and shoved him back toward the bed. Evading the second philosopher, Rafen tried to rush past. The yellow-haired man pushed Rafen back by the face so that he fell onto the bed.

  “No,” Rafen said sharply, “you don’t understand!”

  Zion, make them let me go.

  When he made to rise again, the second philosopher slammed his hand on Rafen’s torso. Right now, it felt like having an anvil land on him. Rafen swung his left arm up and a narrow beam of flame tore from his fingers and flew toward the second philosopher’s face. His left arm shrieked in response. The philosopher ducked and answered with a ray of white light. It hit Rafen in the chest and pinned him to the bed. He struggled in vain to push himself up.

  “Release me!” he roared, raising his shaking left arm again.

  “Let me go,” the yellow-haired philosopher imitated in a cracked, high voice. “Oh, please.”

  A small current of flame leapt from Rafen’s fingers, and he felt very faint. The yellow-haired philosopher swept away his kesmal impatiently. The other philosopher continued to watch Rafen from above with an austere expression on his oblong face.

  He was still not strong enough to fight with kesmal, Rafen realized, horrified. Simple force would have to do.

  He tried again to roll out of the bed. Another burst of white light filled his eyes and nostrils like smoke. The world swayed around him. Panic rose like vomit in his throat.

  “Etana,” he said, “I need to—”

  “I am sorry,” the yell
ow-haired philosopher broke in, “but you will be sleeping alone tonight.” He guffawed as if this were tremendously funny.

  “Let me go,” Rafen growled, snatching at the unseen kesmal that was holding his torso down. He kicked off the covers that the yellow-haired philosopher was forcing on him. “What have you done with her? Let me see her!”

  His voice had risen to an agonized scream. They weren’t answering him. He was in some kind of bedchamber in the palace, and it probably didn’t even have a door. He couldn’t see any windows. They had closed him in, and she was locked away somewhere with Richard. He was touching her, and she was so weak.

  “LET ME SEE MY WIFE!”

  The yellow-haired philosopher had snatched his left arm. Rafen tried frantically to free it, because he knew what was coming. The man had some ointment on his fingers. He applied it to Rafen’s skin, and it was like he had placed a white-hot brand against it. Rafen couldn’t breathe. He wasn’t going to give up; he had to find Etana. He kept kicking and struggling. More ointment was rubbed into his cracked flesh. The searing was so terrible he was wetting himself.

  The pain went on and on, like a never-ending road…

  It had layers, and once he had fallen through the first layer, it was easier to bear. It was a quieter form of Hell, eternal, yet somehow calmer. The third layer was even better. He lay there, and they did what they liked to him. Every movement, he discovered, only intensified his sufferings. If he was very still, the fiery aching covered him like a blanket, though it was somehow spread thinner and easier to bear. He didn’t see anything or think anything. It was a state of meditation.

  He became aware it was night, and they seemed to have finished their treatment for now. One of them was giving him some kind of water mixed with vinegar to drink. It was vaguely sickening, and he only drank it because his throat was dry and raw. He was too tired to speak and lay there, uncertain of who he even was. The yellow-haired philosopher was speaking to him in a calculated, clinical way.