Devlin's Luck

by Patricia Bray

  “Where do we start?” Lieutenant Didrik asked.

  Captain Drakken went over to the northern wall. She leaned forward, peering at the pictures as she walked down along the line. Then she straightened up. “Here,” she said. Devlin came over, with Lieutenant Didrik and Stephen following. Captain Drakken pointed to a medium-sized portrait. “Donalt the Wise.”

  Donalt, often called the last of the great Chosen Ones, was shown as a man in his middle years, with long blond hair done in a warrior’s braid. His features were harsh, and his blue eyes stared directly forward, as if they could see into the viewer’s soul. Across his back he wore a baldric. Only the hilt of the sword was visible above his shoulder.

  It couldn’t be. And yet …

  Devlin swallowed hard. “Is there a better picture of the sword?”

  “My age is beginning to tell, for I had remembered this differently,” Captain Drakken said. “Still, there must be another portrait in here. We should keep looking.”

  They split apart, one to each of the four walls. Devlin took the southern wall, the one furthest from the portrait of Donalt. His eyes scanned the pictures, but he was not really seeing them. It could not be, he told himself. His mind was playing tricks.

  He craned his neck upwards, and then he saw it. A young woman who bore an unmistakable resemblance to Donalt held the sword extended in front of her as she fought off an armored warrior. Behind her, crouching next to the uncertain shelter of a boulder, was a young boy. The artist had been truly gifted, for he had managed to capture not only the boy’s fear but also a sense of the woman’s fierce determination. One knew that she looked her own death in the face, and that she was not afraid.

  But any admiration for the artist’s skill was lost when Devlin contemplated the Sword of Light, which had been depicted with equal skill. It was clearly a long sword, with a tapering blade. The grip was unusual, for instead of a single curved crossbar there was a double guard of two straight bars, one longer than the other. And in the pommel was set a stone that shone with red fire.

  “The stone is wrong. It should be dark crimson, so dark it seems nearly black,” Devlin whispered, though a part of him felt like screaming.

  “It is dark,” Stephen said, and Devlin jumped. He had not realized that the others had joined him. “The stone glows when the sword is wielded in battle by the Chosen One,” Stephen explained.

  But Captain Drakken had understood what Stephen had not. “How do you know of the stone’s appearance?”

  Devlin took a step back from the wall, and then another, although his eyes did not leave the painting.

  “Because I have held that sword in my hands.” He tasted bile and for a brief moment he fought the urge to vomit. But there was no denying the truth of what he saw, or of what he knew.

  “How is that possible?” Captain Drakken asked.

  Devlin did not answer. He turned on his heel and began to walk away. He needed to get out of here. Quickly. Before he gave in to the urge to smash something.

  But he could not flee fast enough to escape his friends. Stephen caught up with him and grabbed his sleeve. “You have seen it? You know where it is?”

  Devlin shook his arm free. “The sword was lost at Ynnis, was it not?”

  Stephen nodded. “During the final hours of the siege, when Lord Saemund was killed.”

  “During the massacre,” Devlin corrected. His people had their own memories of Ynnis, and none of them were kind to the Jorskians. Lord Saemund may have been the Chosen One, but he deserved to suffer in the Dread Lord’s realm for all eternity for what his troops had done. Men, women, and even children had been slaughtered, and those not killed by the soldiers perished in the flames as the army set the city to the torch. Those who survived were too few to bury the dead, and to this day Ynnis remained a ruin, inhabited only by her restless ghosts.

  Still, Ynnis had been a small city, and the destruction there had not befallen the rest of Duncaer. Most Caerfolk, including Devlin, had done their best to put the siege from their minds. The war was long over, and there was no sense in brooding about the past.

  But now the past had come back to haunt them.

  Devlin ran his left hand through his hair, trying to think of a way to explain. “When I was a boy, my parents apprenticed me to Master Roric, a metalsmith. Like my parents, Master Roric was a survivor of the massacre at Ynnis.”

  “You say massacre, but that is not how it is recorded,” Captain Drakken said.

  “I care not what tales you tell, or what the minstrel sings,” Devlin said, his clipped tones revealing his anger. “My parents were both children who were lucky to survive, for all their near kin perished on that day.”

  His parents had been cared for by other refugees until they reached Alvaren and found shelter with kin so distant that they could scarcely even be called far kin. And yet they had taken the children in, raised them, and in time found trades for them. But those who survived Ynnis had a special bond that kept them a closely knit community within the teeming capital city. Kameron and Talaith’s friendship had ripened into love, and they had married when they became adults. When it was time to apprentice their youngest son, it was natural that they turn to one of the other survivors of Ynnis.

  “Master Roric was already a journeyman smith in Ynnis during the siege. He never spoke of how he managed to survive, or of what he had lost on that day. But he did have one reminder of the battle.”

  “A sword,” Captain Drakken said.

  “A sword,” Devlin agreed. “A sword so fine it was surely the work of a great master, made of steel that shimmered in the light, flexible and yet stronger than any blade I have seen before or since.”

  Master Roric had kept the sword in a chest, for it was both an object of great value and one that seemed to hold painful memories. From time to time he would bring it forth and let the best of his students study it as an encouragement to them in their own craft.

  “So you know where the sword is?” Lieutenant Didrik asked.

  “No. But I know where it was,” Devlin answered.

  After his uncanny revelations, the Chosen One had stalked off, and so plain was his anger that none dared follow. Captain Drakken exchanged a glance with Lieutenant Didrik, who raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

  Only the minstrel Stephen seemed oblivious to the tension. His face was transfixed with wonder as he murmured, “The sword. The Sword of Light.”

  “He has seen the sword,” Lieutenant Didrik echoed.

  “But what does this mean?” Stephen said.

  “It may mean nothing. Only that by some strange twist of fate, the Gods have sent us the man who can return the sword that was lost,” Captain Drakken said, trying to reassure herself as much as the others.

  But Devlin had worn the look of a man faced with painful memories, and she did not think he would be able to banish them as swiftly as they had come. And she could not risk this new revelation damaging the frail alliances that they had begun to build in service of the Kingdom.

  “Didrik, send word to the watch commanders. I want every guard to keep an eye out for Devlin and let me know when he is found. He may try to slip out of the city quietly, without telling anyone.”

  “You think he will go after the sword?” Didrik asked.

  “I do not know what he will do,” she answered honestly. “But I know he is angry now, and that may drive him to some foolish action, perhaps even leaving Kingsholm in the heat of his anger, ill-equipped and unprepared for a winter journey.”

  It took the guards less than an hour to report back that Devlin was in the practice yard, methodically destroying one wooden target after another with his great axe.

  Captain Drakken spent the rest of the day busy with her own duties, inspecting the watch at the city gates, meeting with a delegation of merchants from the great square who complained about an outbreak of petty thievery, and then approving the watch schedules that Lieutenant Embeth had drawn up. But even as she went about her tasks,
a part of her mind kept returning to the Chosen One and the mystery of the Sword of Light. She realized that it was only a matter of time before Devlin would have to go after the sword, for the sake of the Kingdom.

  And once his anger cooled, the same thought would occur to him as well.

  She worked through the dinner hour and late into the night. Each time she heard footsteps outside her office, she looked up, expecting to see the Chosen One. But he did not come. Finally, in the middle of the night watch, she decided she had let him brood long enough.

  Donning her cloak against the night chill, Captain Drakken left the Guard Hall and made her way across the great courtyard to the north tower. The guard on duty at the base of the tower saluted as he saw her approach.

  “All quiet?” she asked, returning the salute.

  “Yes, Captain. All is at peace,” the guard Behra said, in the traditional response.

  Her eyes glanced upward to the battlements, and Behra’s glance followed hers. “He is still up there,” Behra said.

  The guard opened the door to the tower, and Captain Drakken made her way inside, then up the narrow circular stairs that led to the battlements. As she opened the door at the top, she was struck by a chill blast of wind. The night air, cold enough in the protected courtyard, was positively glacial up here.

  She walked the perimeter battlements until she found Devlin on the south side. He had chosen the most dangerous perch, for he sat on top of the narrow railing. She was reminded of that night over a year and a half ago, when she had sought out the new Chosen One and given him his first quest. Then Devlin had been a stranger to her, a tool that had yet to prove its value. His past had been of little interest to her, or to any other in the city.

  Now they entrusted him with the safety of the Kingdom. And yet they still knew little of his people, or of his past. He had volunteered few details, and there had seemed no reason to be concerned. Until now.

  His head turned as he heard her approach. In the flickering torchlight she saw that his eyes were bleak, and his face shuttered and unreadable.

  “You must go after the sword,” she said, without preamble.

  “I know,” Devlin said. “Even now, the Geas tugs at my will. Soon I will not be able to ignore its call.”

  He turned his face away from her. There was a long moment of silence, then Devlin asked, “Do you believe in fate?”

  “No,” she said firmly. “From the moment we are born, each of us makes our own path and our own luck.”

  “So I once thought,” Devlin said. “Yet there are only a handful of folk who have seen the Sword of Light in the years since Ynnis. It passes all belief that my presence here as Chosen One is mere coincidence.”

  There was nothing she could say to that.

  “Perhaps they were right to name me kinslayer,” Devlin added, in tones so low she could scarcely hear him.

  “What do you mean?”

  Devlin leaned back, swung his legs around so they were on the inside ledge, then stood to face her. “If my family had not been killed, I would still be in Duncaer. I would never have become an exile, never have heard of the Chosen Ones, never been foolish and desperate enough to journey to this place. The Gods wanted a tool to return the Sword of Light.” He took a quick breath, his fists clenched by his sides. “Cerrie was killed because she loved me, and because I never would have left Duncaer were she still alive.”

  “No,” Drakken said swiftly. “You must not think that. I do not believe the Gods would be so cruel.”

  “Then you have more faith in the Gods than I,” he replied.

  “So what will you do?”

  He laughed mirthlessly, and the sound made her flesh crawl, for it was the sound of a man who stood again on the edge of madness. “I have no choice, have I? The Gods set my feet on this path, and now the Geas binds me to their will, regardless of what I think or feel. I will fetch the sword, as they command. But one day I will face Lord Haakon, and I will demand a reckoning.”

  His eyes glittered darkly, and such was his intensity that she had no doubt that in time Devlin would demand such a reckoning, regardless of the consequences.

  DEVLIN’S LUCK

  A Bantam Spectra Book / May 2002

  SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books,

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  Copyright © 2002 by Patricia Bray.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

  form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

  photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and

  retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this

  book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the

  publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any

  payment for this “stripped book.”

  eISBN : 978-0-307-41801-2

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random

  House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the

  portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and

  in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, New York, New York.

  www.randomhouse.com

  v1.0

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  To the two Jennifers

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  About the Author

  Don’t miss the next exciting installment in The Sword of Change

  Copyright Page