Kingshelm (Renegade Druid Cycle Book 1)

by George Hatt

  “Why?” Paardrac hissed. “There is no ‘why.’ Only ‘what’ and ‘how’ exist for you. Now listen carefully. Refuse the hangman’s offer to strangle you before you meet the flames, but fear not. There will be a commotion when my brethren druids touch flame to the pyre. I’ll have bound you loosely to the stake. When you can, scramble from the ropes and run like a deer to the pool where I taught you how to fish. You’ll find a pack, your bow and a quiver of arrows. From there, sneak into Brynn Province and do the best you can for yourself in exile. Do you understand?”

  Barryn nodded dumbly, understanding but not accepting the implications of Paardrac’s scheme. “The clan will suspect you of treachery and hunt you down!”

  “As is only proper for loyal warriors of Clan Riverstar, for I will be the clan’s most heinous traitor,” Paardrac said, binding Barryn’s wrists. “And a merry chase I’ll give them. Come. It is time.”

  Barryn looked over his shoulder to the druid, who was now holding his bonds and gently pushing him toward the door. “Paardrac, who is Deva Ashara? Will she enslave me in the Howling Darkness when I die?”

  Paardrac stopped briefly and leaned in close lest the guard outside hear him. “She was a great holy warrior of old, a servant of the sun god Mahurin. She found and smote evil wherever it appeared in the world. But she went too far in her zeal and was exiled beyond our realm of existence. She is not evil, but will be a harsh mistress for you to serve. She will follow you away from us and let us be as long as you stay in exile. And I fear she will unleash her fury on us if we harm you.”

  “But that is heresy,” Barryn said. And then he understood. Other boys his age would ask why Paardrac, a druid and thus trusted above all others, could not just tell his kinsmen and call off the execution. He could even leave, without dishonor or mark of stain, and wander the face of the world carrying his spiritual burden. So others would argue. But Paardrac’s words were the antithesis of all the young man had learned through his years of druid training. To hint that the devas could be anything but dangerous fiends was unthinkable, and only the equally unthinkable circumstances and Barryn’s trust in Paardrac allowed him to countenance the notion.

  “You will learn more about her than anyone studying the Forbidden Lore, for I suspect she will tell you herself in her good time,” Paardrac said, anticipating the boy’s question. He led his captive to the door and gave three stern raps. “Now we shall see if you are truly under Ashara’s protection.”

  Craenstardt opened the door and allowed Paardrac to lead Barryn out of the defiled house. The warrior gave them a wide berth. Fearsome shield-bearer that he was, Craenstardt was just as loathe to go near the possessed child as the rest of the laity of the village. The front door opened into the village green, which was ringed with the other squat, thatched-roofed houses of the village aristocracy—druids, the chieftain, merchants—and stalls of the open-air market. Dominating the green was a 20-foot stake, cut hastily from the trunk of a fir tree. It rose from a rough platform atop stacked bundles of wood to thrust toward the cloudy sky, reaching toward the falling drizzle that dampened the murmuring spectators.

  The crowd parted, giving Paardrac more room than he needed to guide his prisoner to the stake. As he approached, Barryn noticed cloth sachets and bundles of flowers and herbs strung all around the stacked wood. Strange-smelling oils stained the pyre and formed small drops that clung to its surface, occasionally breaking free and splashing into the layer of fuel below. He knew the smell was foreign to him, but was too dazed to wonder what it was. He climbed meekly up makeshift steps onto the platform and let Paardrac tie him to the stake. The druid finished his work and deftly placed a stray end of the rope between the stake and the small of Barryn’s back, stealthily brushing it into the boy’s hand.

  A horn blast silenced the nervously chattering crowd, and two ranks of white-robed druids holding torches aloft escorted Barryn’s mother, who was similarly clad. The druids circumambulated the area around the crowd and the stake, chanting names of spirits, forces and elementals. That done, the druids cut through the crowd and surrounded the menacing stake and its captive.

  The High Druidess opened her robe and let it fall to the ground, revealing her nude, blue-painted body. She closed her eyes, took three deep, measured breaths, and raised her arms toward the sky. “Let the powers of air purify us and guide our spirits before this work today begins,” she intoned in a strong, clear voice that stilled the assembled village.

  She spread her arms at shoulder level. “Let the powers of fire purify us and guide our energy before this work begins.”

  She dropped her hands to 45 degree angles, hands open toward the ground. “Let the powers of water purify us and guide our emotions before this work begins.”

  The druidess circled her arms, palms up at her navel. “Let the powers of earth purify us and nourish our will before this work begins.”

  Barryn’s mother then began a complex series of incantations, eyes ablaze and face stony, in the ritual language known only to adepts. At intervals, the druids surrounding the pyre joined the incantation in unison, answering in the cryptic language when prompted during the ritual. The meaning of the chants was a mystery to the rest of the village, but Barryn knew the sacred language. The druids were hallowing a space into which Barryn’s spirit would be cast when the flames destroyed his body, a final purification that would draw the deva’s attention away from the village.

  Banton walked up the steps built into the pyre and started to put a rope around Barryn’s neck. He avoided looking in the condemned boy’s eyes.

  “No,” Barryn said. Banton looked in disbelief at him. Barryn swallowed hard, briefly regretting throwing away his chance at a merciful death.

  “Are you sure?”

  Barryn tried not to look directly at Paardrac, but caught him in his peripheral vision. He had never placed so much trust in a single person before. Barryn shook his head. “If Ashara has claimed me, then I can meet her in the flames.”

  This elicited a gasp from those who heard. Banton put away the garrote and nodded. He turned and walked down off the pyre and rejoined the circle of druids.

  One of the druids unsheathed Wyrm Smasher, their ritual sword, and brought it to the High Druidess. She raised the ancient blade high above her head, thrusting it toward the steel-colored sky. “By the Mighty Ones,” she intoned, “by the spirits of air, fire, water and earth; by the Gods of our land and by the ancestors of our people; let the stain of the deva be cleansed from our midst!”

  She sliced downward with the blade, cutting the air with an audible swish. The druids stepped forward and touched their flames to the wood. The pyre erupted in spitting blue flames and acrid smoke that singed their robes, pushing them back in disarray. The flames died beneath a thickening column of white smoke that obscured the stake and the boy tied to it.

  Barryn tugged the loose end of the rope in his hand and felt his bonds loosen. His eyes stinging from the thick smoke enveloping him, the prisoner wiggled, tugged himself loose, and scrambled off the piled wood. He darted between two coughing druids and shoved through the panicking crowd. Three warriors started after Barryn, but were stopped short when Paardrac intercepted them.

  “Let the boy go,” he said. “His deva will follow him away from our homes and fields. She will leave us unmolested if we do the same for her chosen servant.”

  Barryn ran blindly and zig-zagged between the houses and barns in the village. His legs propelled him furiously through the back gate in the palisade and toward the safety of the woods—and the oblivion of exile.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Barryn

  Barryn pressed on through the underbrush between the grizzled trees as quickly and quietly as he could. He had crossed through the village and open fields before the men could organize a pursuit and mount their horses. Now that the had disappeared into the woods, only the best hunters and scouts would have a realistic chance of catching him—if he was smart. If he made no mistakes. And, of cour
se, if he was lucky.

  Which one could argue both sides of that question. Goodness me, what stroke of fortune, he thought, allowing his body to carry him like a deer through the thickening forest toward his secret fishing hole. I’ll probably starve to death in the forest, true, but at least my own people won’t burn me alive! Huzzah to that.

  Barryn stopped to check his bearings. There should be a big rock tangled in the roots of an old tree nearby. He spotted it and hurried on. He was surprised that his mind had room for petulant sarcasm, considering the circumstances. But for the past few weeks, he had not been a child, but by turns an earnest druid candidate, a despondent prisoner and a hunted fugitive. In the woods, where he had hunted small game and played tricks on the older children, he was again a child of the Caeldrynn darting through branches and brambles like a lithe young fox.

  Barryn heard the tiny falls in the stream and knew he had navigated true. He turned downstream and angled toward his fishing hole. As Barryn picked his way down the bank, he noticed a pile of driftwood that was not there the last time he had fished at the hole. He paused behind a tree at the edge of the bank and scanned the area upstream and down before approaching the strange pile. Sure enough, it yielded a filled shoulder satchel, a green woolen cloak bundled and tied with much more cord than was needed to keep it in a tidy roll, his belt with pouch and knife in a scabbard, and a short bow with a quiver of 23 arrows.

  And, at the bottom of the pile, was his favorite hunting stick. Barryn hefted the crooked, smooth instrument and smiled. He had taken more rabbits and squirrels with this throwing stick than many of the older hunters had taken deer with their arrows. Luck seemed to finally be with him.

  Barryn spent the next fortnight traveling under the cover of darkness and sleeping by day, looping through the forest in a rough clover-leaf shaped path toward an abandoned Imperial road that he had heard of but never seen. He dared not build any fires lest he be discovered, so he went to sleep cold and hungry and awakened even colder and hungrier. He ate enough roots, berries and other plant parts to stay alive, but barely.

  A few days into his flight, the tormenting voice in Barryn’s stomach overcame his fear of capture. He spent half a day hunting squirrel and another full day drying the scraps of meat from the two he was able to kill. But the anxiety he felt waiting for the morsels to cure overwhelmed his desire for cooked meat. By the time he came to the ancient road, he was greedily eating live grubs when he could find them.

  The road appeared at first glance to be a dry and overgrown creek bed, but it was too straight and the shapes of the stones were too regular. Barryn traveled parallel to the road, keeping it ten yards from his left until one afternoon he heard rushing water ahead. A 50-foot deep canyon cut through the woods, and the weathered, tumbled remains of an ancient stone bridge frothed the water of the Crone River below. Barryn stopped and slept near the ruins of the bridge until dawn. He did not want to risk the dangerous climb at night.

  Barryn stared at the two moons through a break in the trees—Kyn and Taer. They were waxing bright, Kyn shining white and Taer a bloody red. He wondered if Ashara could withstand their light and protect him this night. He was afraid to ask her, and was loathe to pray to the gods he knew. He descended into another fitful sleep.

  Barryn spent much of the next day climbing down the steep bank and looking for a safe way to cross the galloping, treacherous river. He scrambled and hopped across the river using the stones and wreckage of the Imperial bridge. Barryn traveled downstream several hundred yards looking for a place where he could begin the climb back out of the canyon on the other side. Instead, he came across an eight-foot length of driftwood that he deftly cut into a fishing spear. Soon, he pulled a fat trout out of the cold water and feasted on it raw. Barryn threw the scraps into the river, washed his hands and continued his search for a way out of the canyon.

  The boy climbed up the steep bank and found the road on the other side with a few hours to spare before nightfall. He rested until the moons awoke him, then followed the road. Over the next several nights, the road led Barryn out of the forest and he did his best to remain concealed, but the rolling hills provided fewer and fewer stands of trees as he moved farther away from the woods.

  He traveled for another week down the ancient road before he saw any cultivated lands, but he avoided contact with people and gave the farm houses he found a wide berth. It was becoming far more difficult to stay both hidden and nourished. The land offered fewer edible plants, but—cruelly—far more small game that Barryn could kill but not cook without betraying his position. He got sick of counting the rabbits that he flushed in the evenings when set off on the night’s journey. Hunger was his most dangerous pursuer now, and it was upon him.

  Barryn stopped to rest one night after an hour’s walk. He wrapped his cloak tightly, intending to let his tired legs regain some strength for just a moment before he continued his trek. He awoke under a bright, clear morning sky with the end of a walking stick poking him in the chest. A fat, bearded man with high boots and rich but shabby clothes was looking down upon him.

  “Ey, there, lad. Are you alive or dead?” the man asked.

  Barryn jumped to his feet and turned to flee, but his strength gave out and he fell a yard away from the man.

  “No need to run, unless you’re afraid of a tinker and his ponies,” the man said, offering Barryn a hand up. “My name is Dub. What brings you out here with nothing but a fine barbarian short bow and tattered cloak?”

  Barryn accepted the man’s hand and stood on quivering legs. He was too weak and hungry to think of a lie, or even a reason to. “My name is Barryn. I have been exiled from my clan.”

  Dub raised his eyebrows when he heard the boy’s deep Caeldrynn accent. “Well, Barryn, you are safe from the pursuing barbarian hordes. We are less than a day’s hard ride from Greystone Keep, and we will soon be in heavily patrolled territory. It’s good that I found you, in fact, before the patrols caught you. They’d have you in irons before you knew what happened, wandering alone with no good explanation for yourself.”

  Dub rummaged around in his wagon. It looked like a little house on wheels with a curved roof and pots, tools, and buckets hanging off the sides at crazy angles. At one time it had been painted in bold, festive colors, but the elements had bitten hard into the wagon and made it as shabby as an old barn. Dub pulled out iron cooking ware and two small wooden crates. “This is as good a place as any for an early supper,” he said.

  Soon, the tinker had a tiny cooking fire raging under an iron tripod suspending a kettle of water. Barryn and Dub drank tea while the fire died down to ruddy coals. Just the smell of the smoke made the starving boy’s mouth water. As the fire died down to coals, Dub placed a cutting board on the tail gate of the wagon and minced a several links of dry sausage and drew a flagon of ale from a small barrel. He tossed the minced sausage into a three-legged iron cooking pan, poured in a measure of the ale, and stirred half a dozen eggs into the hash before setting it in the coals. When the meal was through cooking, Dub had to dole it out in small portions so Barryn would not make himself sick wolfing it down.

  After a few days of traveling and eating with Dub, Barryn’s strength returned. He helped the tinker as best he could in return for the food and second-hand shirt and breeches—castle dweller clothes!—that Dub insisted he wear as they traveled through the strange lands. He watered and grazed the ponies every evening when they made camp and fetched tools and wares when the tinker stopped at farms and villages to ply his trade.

  Barryn also roved the meadows and heaths hunting rabbits with his throwing stick. Thus, Dub cooked rabbit every day or two and traded the hides as they went.

  The tinker asked Barryn few questions about his home or the circumstances leading to his flight from the Caeldrynn, but answered the multitude of questions Barryn asked. They were, Dub explained, nearing the heart of Brynn Province, ruled by Lady Drucilla of the Waters. It was one of six provinces of the Mergovan Empire.
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  “And I use the term ‘empire’ loosely,” Dub explained one day as he let Barryn try his hand at steering the wagon. “Emperor Mithrandrates controls only the province of Mergova and the growing highway network between the provincial capitals. The provinces—‘dominions,’ they call themselves with straight faces, if you can believe it—run absolutely amok, waging incessant wars between and among each other. It’s bad for business, unless you’re a sutler following an army.”

  Barryn was all too familiar with Brynn, but Clan Riverstar had no dealings with the other provinces. The Sea Clans sailed widely along the coasts and rivers of the Empire, but they seldom crossed the mountains to share their goods and stories with Barryn’s former clan. He did not know the names of the other provinces and had no idea that they warred with each other. In his mind, the Castle Dwellers were a great, monolithic whole menacing the Caeldrynn’s borders.

  “Is that why the tax collectors seldom come to steal our money? Because they’re busy fighting each other?” Barryn asked. That question would have been close to sacrilege where he came from. The answer, according to his former brethren, was the Caeldrynn were too mighty to be defeated by fat, lazy Castle Dwellers who usually knew better than to challenge the mighty clans.

  “That is exactly right. But if just two of the provinces could join forces for longer than a year, they could push your heathen tribes into the sea,” Dub said. “Three of them could take Mergova and overthrow the Emperor.”

  Dub fell silent as six men-at-arms in half-plate armor rounded the bend ahead and trotted past the wagon. Barryn looked at them with a twinge of fear and admiration. The riders’ sallets swept back gracefully, and the cuirasses and armor plates strapped over their maille hauberks and leggings made them look like iron-scaled dragon men from the Sagas. Longswords hung from their saddles, and they held lances that seemed to reach to the sky like steel-tipped trees. The thought of facing them was terrifying. But, for the first time in Barryn’s life, he suddenly imagined riding with them, not hiding in ambush to slaughter them. The thought gave him a thrill he could not explain.