by DAVID B. COE
Filib’s heart was pounding like a smith’s hammer. He reached into his wrap for his father’s dagger, cursing himself for not bringing the sword.
“It’s late for a prince to be about,” the man said. The accent was subtle, but Filib recognized it. Aneiran. He felt his stomach tightening.
Filib kicked at Galdis’s flanks, hoping to ride past the man to the sanctuary. But just as he did, he felt strong hands grab his leg and arm from the side. An instant later he landed hard on the ground, the air rushing from his lungs and his dagger flying from his hand.
His shoulder and chest ached from the fall, but he struggled to stand. Someone held him down, then roughly turned him over. The singer. He held the point of a blade to Filib’s throat.
“I have gold!” Filib managed, his voice little more than a whisper. “It’s yours! All of it!”
“My apologies, my lord,” the singer said, although there was little remorse in those pale eyes. “But someone wants you dead.”
Filib flailed at the man and screamed for help, but the singer and his friend held him fast. After a moment, the taller man covered his mouth with a callused hand.
The singer looked Filib in the eye for another moment. Then, with a motion so swift that his blade was but a glittering blur in the moonlight, he slashed at Filib’s throat.
It seemed to the prior that he had just drifted off to sleep when the screams awakened him. Out here in the wood, living among Kebb’s beasts, one heard many strange things at night. In the final moment of its life, as the talons of a great owl closed around its throat, even a simple hare could cry out like a wraith from the Underrealm. He had grown accustomed to such sounds over the years. He rarely noticed them anymore.
These screams were different. They had come from a man.
He lit a candle, dressed, and stepped out of his chambers. One of the novices was sleeping in the antechamber. Apparently he hadn’t heard the cries. The novice looked terribly young in Panya’s glow. The prior hated to wake him. But if there was someone in the wood in need of aid, it would be best if he was not alone.
He shook the boy gently.
After a moment, the boy rubbed his eyes and sat up.
“Yes, Father Prior,” the boy said sleepily. “How may I serve?”
“I heard something in the wood, boy. Fetch two torches and meet me by the gate.”
The boy nodded, although for some time he didn’t move. Finally he stood and shuffled toward the door.
“That’s a good lad,” the prior called after him.
He returned to his chambers for his healing bag, a small leather pouch that smelled of betony and common wort. He knew how to dress wounds and set broken bones, but in that moment he would have given anything for a Qirsi companion. He feared what he would find among the trees.
He hurried to the sanctuary entrance, where the boy was waiting for him, shivering slightly but looking a bit more awake. He took one of the torches and opened the gate.
“What’s your name, boy?” the prior asked, gesturing for the lad to follow him down the path.
“Arvid, Father Prior.”
“You’re new in the sanctuary, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Father Prior. I arrived here during Osya’s Turn.”
Osya’s Turn! the prior thought. That’s three turns he’s been with us. I need to give more attention to the novices.
“Where is your family, Arvid?” he asked, though he could tell from the boy’s accent that he came from Eibithar’s eastern coast.
“We live on a farm, Father Prior, just outside of Eardley.”
The prior nodded, scanning the forest as he did. He was walking quickly. Occasionally the boy had to run a few steps in order to keep up with him. The prior knew that he had been foolish to leave the sanctuary. Even with the white moon up, it would be nearly impossible to find someone in the darkness. He was about to say as much when he spotted a grey stallion standing just off the path a short distance ahead.
Seeing them approach, the horse nickered and stamped a hoof, but it didn’t move from where it was standing.
The prior felt himself growing cold. Even from a distance he could tell that this was no farm horse. It was well groomed and well bred, and it wore a fine saddle on its back.
Had he seen the body lying next to the stallion soon enough, the prior would have warned Arvid to stay back. But by the time he spotted the man it was too late. Arvid let out a small cry and then emptied his stomach on the forest path.
The prior hurried forward and knelt beside the body. The poor man’s neck had been slashed, blood pooling around his head on the fallen leaves and glistening in the moonlight. There was a stab wound in his chest as well, and another in his stomach. And the ring finger was missing from his right hand. This had been sloppily done.
The prior glanced down at the healing bag he still carried in his hand. He would have liked to throw it into the shadows. Instead he placed it in a pocket within his robe. Then he leaned forward to look at the man’s face and let out a cry of his own.
Filib. The duke’s son, the king to be.
He shook his head, feeling hot tears on his cheeks. First the father, and now the son.
“Thieves be damned!” he said, his voice quavering. He knew that Arvid could hear, but just then he didn’t care. “Bian take them all!”
Chapter Four
Curgh, Eibithar, year 879, Amon’s Moon waxing
“Stand ready, Tavis!” Xaver’s father called, his voice as crisp as a harvest morning.”Keep your balance. Ready your sword.”
The young lord gave a quick nod and lowered himself into a crouch, battle-ready and perfectly centered, the wooden sword held before him.
“Commence!” the swordmaster said.
Immediately, the other three swordsmen advanced. They were older than Tavis and Xaver by a few years, and it showed in their height and brawn. But they were commoners, probationers for the castle guard recruited from the baronies near Curgh. They had little experience with swords and formal battle, and it showed in the way they held their training weapons. Tavis, on the other hand, was the duke’s son. He’d been fighting with swords of one sort or another almost since he could walk.
Their attack was clumsy and transparent. They rushed him as one, their swords held high, their bodies open to his counter. Tavis stepped forward, quickly closing the distance between himself and the largest of his opponents. The probationer leveled a chopping blow at Tavis’s head that the lord easily parried. The crack of their swords still echoing off the castle walls, Tavis stepped to the side, and, with a motion so fluid that Xaver had to smile, delivered a blow to the man’s ribs that drove him to the ground.
By then, the other two were upon him, but Tavis had used the motion from his last strike to put himself in the perfect position to meet their attack. Of course. His wooden sword a blur in the morning air, he blocked their blows in quick succession, stepped between them, and, pivoting like a Revel dancer, swung his sword first at one of the men, lashing him across his back, and then at the other. With this last blow, however, Tavis’s back foot slipped. Rather than hitting the third man’s body, his sword arced lower, catching the attacker just below the back of his knee. The man dropped to his knees with a howl of pain.
“Well done, Tav—”
Before Xaver’s father could finish, Tavis pounced on the third man again, hammering his sword down on the back of the man’s neck. The probationer toppled forward face-first into the grass and lay there unmoving.
“Demons and fire, boy!” Xaver’s father said, rushing forward to check on the man. “What’s wrong with you?”
“With me, Hagan?” Tavis asked with disbelief. He was standing over the man, his sword held by his side. He was breathing hard, and there was a slight sheen of sweat on his face, but he was unmarked. The fight had been a mismatch from the start. “You told us to fight as if in battle. In battle, that man would still have been a threat. I only struck his leg. I had to finish him.”
&
nbsp; “He was down, Tavis!” Hagan flung the words at him, an accusation, although he didn’t even look up. “Had these been real swords you would have taken off his leg! He wasn’t a threat anymore!” He turned the man over and bent his ear close to the man’s face to check his breathing.
“He still had a sword, and two good arms to use it,” the young lord said airily. He examined his sword for a moment, as if looking for cracks in the wood. “We Curghs don’t leave anything to chance when it comes to battle.”
Before Hagan could respond the man let out a low groan.
Tavis pointed at the man with his sword. “There, you see? He’s fine.”
“He’s only fine because you’re still too weak to give a killing blow!”
The lord’s face colored, and Xaver noticed that the hand holding his sword had begun to tremble. But he managed somehow to keep his voice under control when he said, “I take it we’re done for the mourn?”
“You’re done when I say so, whelp!”
The other two probationers exchanged a look, and Xaver stared at the ground rather than look at either his friend or his father. No one else in the castle save the duke and duchess would have dared speak to Tavis in such a way. Indeed, in his capacity as captain of the guard, Hagan never would have either. But here, in the city ward of Curgh Castle, in the shadow of the armory tower, Xaver’s father was swordmaster, and Tavis his apprentice. Hagan could say anything to him, call him any name, no matter how insulting. He could take the young lord over his knee if he deemed it appropriate. Once, when Tavis and Xaver were nine, Hagan had done just that. As good as Tavis was with a blade, he was still just a student. Hagan MarCullet, on the other hand, was the best swordsman in the dukedom. Everyone knew it.
“Run the towers, boy,” Hagan said. “Then you’ll be done.”
Xaver cringed.
“The towers?” Tavis complained. “But all I did—”
A withering look from the swordmaster silenced him.
“The towers,” Xaver’s father said again.
“Yes, sir.”
Tavis returned his training sword to the stand by the armory and started up the stairs of the tower.
Hagan looked over at Xaver. “You’d better go with him.”
Xaver nodded, returning his father’s smile. Then he turned and ran to catch up with the duke’s son.
Running the towers was perhaps the most onerous of all his father’s exercises, which was saying a lot. One started with the nearest tower, ran up the stairs to its topmost turrets, then returned to ground level before running to the next tower and doing it again and again, until every tower had been climbed. Curgh Castle had eighteen towers in all. Some of them, the gate towers of the east and west barbicans for instance, were rather small. But most were quite high, at least fifty fourspans. The spire towers, which guarded the south gate, each had two hundred and sixteen steps. Xaver and Tavis had counted them more times than Xaver cared to remember.
Xaver caught up with his friend on the forty-second step of the armory tower. Without breaking stride, Tavis glanced at him briefly and grinned.
“You, too, eh?”
Xaver shrugged, and they continued up the winding stairs.
“I don’t know what got Hagan so bothered today,” the lord went on after a short while. “All I did was follow his instructions.”
“You nearly killed that man, Tavis,” Xaver said quietly, keeping his gaze fixed on the stairs. “You’d won already. You didn’t have to hit him.”
“In any real fight, that man would still have been a threat,” Tavis said, his voice echoing loudly off the round stone walls.
Xaver said nothing, and for several moments the tower was silent save for the rhythmic beat of their feet on the worn steps.
“Is he all right?” Tavis asked at last.
At least he asked. “He will be.” Xaver looked sidelong at the lord and smiled. “I don’t imagine he’ll be asking to help the duke’s son with his training any time soon.”
“Probably not, though they didn’t fare much better against you.”
“Do you know when the Revel will be arriving?” Xaver asked, eager to change the topic. Even when Tavis was offering compliments, it was usually best to avoid discussions of their swordsmanship. Like Tavis, Xaver had been raised with a sword in his hand. Both of them were acutely aware that swordplay was the one endeavor in which Xaver was, and always had been, the lord’s equal.
Tavis regarded him for several moments, a mischievous grin on his face, as if he knew exactly what Xaver was trying to do. In the end, however, he relented.
“Father expects them to be here by the midday bells.”
They reached the top of the tower, emerging from the shadows of the stairwell into the bright sunlight. They paused there for just an instant to catch their breath and to stare out at Amon’s Ocean, calm today, and sapphire blue.
As usual, there were two guards atop the tower, and they looked at Xaver and Tavis with amusement. “Captain’s got you running the towers, eh?” one of them said.
Tavis glared at the man as if he had called the duke a coward. He turned, and began to run back down. Xaver smiled weakly at the men, then followed.
“The city children are probably lining up for their gleanings already,” Tavis said, as Xaver fell in step with him again. “Most of them probably haven’t slept since the start of this turn.”
“Have you?” Xaver asked.
“Of course. I know just what my Fating will show. I’m going to be king after my father. If old Aylyn would just step down and be done with it.”
It had been over sixty years since the death of Skeris the Fourth, the last Curgh king. Under the Rules of Ascension, the dukes of Curgh did not get many opportunities to wear Audun’s crown, but with all that had happened over the past few years in Thorald and Galdasten, Javan of Curgh stood next in line for the throne, and Tavis after him.
“What about you, Stinger? You worried about your Fating?”
Xaver smiled at his old nickname. A stinger was what the guards called a child’s training weapon, and since his father had long been called the Sword, it was only natural that they should call Xaver Stinger. Few people used it anymore—his father, Tavis, a few of the older guards—but he was still fond of it.
“Sure,” he admitted. “A little bit. What happens if you leave me here when you go to the City of Kings and I have to start earning an honest wage?”
Tavis laughed. “I think you’re just afraid to find out that you’re to marry a farm hag.”
This time Xaver laughed, just as they emerged from the tower into the ward and turned toward the next tower.
“It sounds like the two of you are enjoying this too much,” Xaver’s father called. “Do I need to double your run?”
“No, sir,” Xaver answered, turning to face his father so that he ran backward for several strides.
“Good. Less chatter then. Stop your dawdling.”
“Yes, sir,” both of them called at once.
Xaver faced forward again and they hurried to the next tower.
By the time they finished their run, the sun was high overhead and the midday bells had long since been rung. Xaver’s father was nowhere to be found—no doubt he was off enjoying a fine meal with the duke.
Xaver and Tavis returned to the prison tower and used the sally port in back to reach the small yard between the moat and the outside wall of the castle. There, they stripped off their sweaty clothes and dove into the cold water. In another few turns, when the rains slackened and the moat waters grew stagnant and rank, they wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing. But for now the moat was reasonably clean, especially here, behind the one section of the castle that had no privy shafts, and this was quicker than having servants draw bathwater from the well.
When they finished swimming, they climbed out of the moat and lay on their backs in the yard, letting the sun and the soft wind dry them.
“Do you remember your Determining?” Tavis asked sudd
enly.
Xaver, who had his eyes closed, smiled at the memory. “Of course. I was terrified.”
“What did yours show?”
“Just what you’d expect. I saw myself as captain of the guard and swordmaster, just like my father.”
“Mine showed me as duke.”
“Of course. What—?”
“Duke, Xaver. Not king.”
Xaver opened his eyes, shielding them from the sun with a hand, and looked over at the young lord. Tavis was sitting up, staring at the moat.
“I’ve wondered about it since Filib was killed. What it might mean.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Tavis shrugged. “I don’t know.”
But Xaver did, almost as soon as he asked the question. Such a realization would have been terrifying for anyone, implying as it did any of a number of tragic fates—early death, disgrace for himself or his family, renunciation by his father. For Tavis, however, such a possibility would have been particularly devastating. He was a Curgh, Javan’s son. That such extraordinary circumstances had combined to make it near certain that he would be king had been acknowledged only briefly. Since Filib’s death, Tavis and his father had behaved as though their impending ascension to the crown had long been a given. Others in Curgh had looked upon their good fortune similarly, including Xaver’s father. For centuries, the people of Curgh had been famous throughout Eibithar for their pride. Not just the Curgh family, but all the people of the dukedom. Never mind that their house ranked below Thorald and Galdasten in royal ascendancy or that nearly half of Curgh’s eleven kings had died within five years of taking the throne. That was the past. None of that mattered now.
What did matter was that Curgh Castle was the most glorious fortress in Eibithar save for Audun’s Castle in the City of Kings. Curgh’s soldiers were the best trained and the most feared in battle. “Those who awaken the bear,” it was said, referring to the great brown bear that adorned Curgh’s crest, “will perish under its claw.” Even Curgh’s pale wine was said by the men and women of the dukedom to be the kingdom’s finest.
