Rules of Ascension: Book One of Winds of the Forelands

by DAVID B. COE

  An image of his father’s face entered his mind and Tavis shook his head, as if to rid himself of it. Did Javan even know where he was? Did he think Tavis had died? For that matter, was he even alive himself?

  Another knock on the door announced Osmyn’s return.

  “Your food, my lord,” the man said, hurrying into the room and setting a platter of cheese and dark bread on the small table beside the bed. “I’ll bring some fresh water in a moment.”

  This was too much.

  “Haven’t you at least some wine?” Tavis asked, not even trying to mask his annoyance.

  The man stopped and stared at him. “Of course we do, my lord. But we don’t serve it on this day or through this night. You may have wine tomorrow.”

  It came to him in a rush: where he was, what this day had to be. Still, Tavis couldn’t help but ask.

  “What is today?”

  “The last day of the waning, my lord. Tonight is Pitch Night.”

  Their eyes met for an instant; then Tavis looked away.

  “I’ll be back with your water presently, my lord,” the man said in a low voice, reaching for the door again.

  A moment later Tavis was alone once more, and he walked to his bed, his hunger abruptly gone. It was Elined’s Turn, he knew, and he thought for a minute, trying to remember what the legends said about Pitch Night in the goddess’s moon. Something about the plantings—it had to be that. If the seeds sown for the crop weren’t up by tonight, the crop was doomed to fail. That was it. Not that it mattered. In this place, in the sanctuary of the Deceiver, all Pitch Nights were the same. Tonight, in the shrine, Tavis would meet his dead. He would meet Brienne.

  He was certain that he hadn’t killed her. He had tasted her lips and the soft skin of her neck. He had promised to guard her honor and had resolved to marry her. Murder had been the last thing on his mind that night. It had to have been someone else. That was what he had told her father and the prelate, and he had suffered greatly for it. Of course he was certain.

  Except that the door had been locked, and he had awakened to find his dagger in her chest. His memories of that night remained clouded and confused. He remembered her falling asleep. He thought that he had as well, soon after. But he couldn’t be sure. Not with all the wine he had drunk. Not after what he had done to Xaver.

  Tonight, though. Tonight he would see Brienne again, for good or ill. And he would know. The thought brought no comfort. just the opposite. He couldn’t keep from trembling and he feared that his legs would not bear his weight.

  Before he could make his way to the bed, however, the door opened again. Osmyn again, with his water.

  But when he turned toward the sound, he didn’t see the cleric, but rather Meriel in her black robe.

  He started, taking a step back away from her, before remembering himself. “Mother Prioress,” he said, fighting with only some success to keep his voice steady.

  She gave him an appraising look. “I heard you were awake and demanding food. I trust you’re feeling well.”

  “Well enough, thank you.”

  Meriel looked past him to the food on the table. “Our food isn’t to your liking?”

  “It’s fine. My … I’m not as hungry as I thought I was.”

  “Perhaps you need more rest.”

  He nodded, looking away. “Perhaps.”

  “Grinsa said to tell you that he would return in the morning.”

  “The cleric told me. Do you know where he’s gone?”

  “No. I don’t think where mattered very much. He didn’t want to be here tonight. He doesn’t wish to face his dead.”

  Tavis looked up at that, meeting the woman’s gaze. Her eyes were almost black and she wore a thin smile on her lips.

  “Maybe you’d like to leave as well,” she said.

  “You think I killed her.”

  “I barely know you. I can’t say whether you killed her or not. I merely serve Bian. When your time comes, he will judge you.”

  “No,” Tavis said, shaking his head. “There’s more to it than that. I see the way you look at me. I hear the things you say. You’ve already made up your mind about me.”

  For the first time he saw her hesitate. “I believe you’re capable of such a murder. And I sense that you fear this night. That’s all.”

  He shuddered. Her opinion of him mirrored his own misgivings too closely. “Shouldn’t I be afraid?” he asked, hoping she couldn’t read his thoughts. “Grinsa has fled the sanctuary, yet you find no fault with him.”

  The prioress shrugged, the movement seeming odd for such a formidable woman. “I suppose I understand your fear. It’s never easy to meet one’s dead, no matter the circumstances. As for Grinsa, I’ve known him for many years, and I understand his grief. Many years ago he lost his wife, my niece, under … difficult circumstances. I believe he fears meeting her.”

  Tavis wasn’t certain how to respond. “I’m sorry,” he said, knowing how awkward he sounded.

  She gave a queer smile, and looked at him for some time.

  “You’re a strange boy,” she said. “You can be rude, as you were to Osmyn just now. Yet you can also be kind, though it makes you uncomfortable to be so. It think it is well that you’ll never be king.”

  Tavis blinked, not quite believing what he had heard. “Of course I’ll be king. After my father, I’m next in the Order of Ascension.”

  She shrugged a second time, though this time there was no uncertainty in the gesture. She was humoring him.

  “I must be mistaken,” she said. “Forgive me, my lord.”

  He heard irony in the way she addressed him, and he opened his mouth to demand an apology. But something stopped him. It might have been simply that she was a prioress of Bian and they were in her sanctuary. Or perhaps it was that somehow she already seemed to know him better than he knew himself. Whatever the reason, Tavis said nothing. He nodded, though he wasn’t sure why.

  “Osmyn will be in with your water in a moment,” Meriel said, turning to go. “Be in the shrine at sundown. I’ll await you there.”

  “Yes, Mother Prioress,” he said, sounding like a dutiful child.

  She started toward the door, then stopped. It was raining harder, though the thunder had moved off and sounded like a low whisper beneath the wind. “If you’re innocent, as you say,” she told him, “you have nothing to fear from Brienne’s spirit. Seeing her may bring you grief, but she cannot harm you. If you’re innocent.”

  Tavis nodded, then watched her go. I am innocent, he wanted to call after her. I have nothing to fear. But the words wouldn’t come, and she wouldn’t have believed him anyway. She could see how scared he was.

  The rest of the day seemed to last an eternity. Tavis tried to sleep, but after two days of rest, he could only lie in bed staring at the rain and listening as thunderstorms drew near and receded like Amon’s tides. Eventually he ate the bread and cheese the cleric had brought him, though only because he knew he should. He wondered if he’d ever be hungry again.

  When the sunset bells finally tolled in the city, Tavis nearly leaped to his feet, hurrying out of his room into the steady rain and the gathering darkness. His heart was hammering against his chest and every part of him was trembling. For just an instant, he had to fight an urge to run, to leave the sanctuary and brave Aindreas’s soldiers in the streets of Kentigern. If he was to prove Meriel wrong, however, and reclaim his place in the Order of Ascension, he had to do this first. But even more than that, he had to know for himself. He wanted to believe that someone else had killed her, but unless he faced Brienne, he would never be certain. In a way, the god was offering him a gift: a chance to find peace, one way or another. He would have been a fool to refuse it.

  Tavis slowed as he reached the shrine, his apprehension growing. He had expected to find clerics standing before the doors to the temple, but there was no one. Entering the building slowly, he saw that it was empty as well, though candles lined the walls and covered the altar. He took a
n uncertain step toward the great portrait of Bian on the window, the soft slap of his bare foot on the floor echoing off the ceiling.

  “I wondered if you would come,” a voice said from the far side of the altar. “I thought you might be afraid.”

  “I am,” he admitted, walking down the center aisle of the shrine. “But I wanted to prove to you that I didn’t kill her.”

  “You needn’t prove anything to me.”

  Tavis froze. This wasn’t Meriel’s voice. It was too high, too youthful. And even as he drew closer to the altar, it still sounded like it was coming to him from a distance.

  “Come forward, my lord,” the voice said. “You have nothing to fear from me.”

  In that moment, as the last faint remnants of daylight faded from the colored glass image of the Deceiver, Tavis saw her, his breath catching in his throat.

  She stood before the altar, suffused with a pale white light, as if she held Panya in her hand. Her golden hair hung loose to her waist and her eyes glowed with the soft grey Tavis remembered from their night together. She wore the same sapphire dress, the one in which she had died, though there was no blood on it, no marks from the dagger.

  “Brienne,” he whispered, taking a faltering step toward her, then another. He felt tears on his face, and he wiped them away with a trembling hand. At the altar he halted and held out a hand to her.

  “No,” she said, backing away. “We cannot touch. It would mean your death.”

  “I don’t know that I care.” His voice sounded raw to his own ears, as though he had been crying for days. “You’re even more beautiful than I remember.”

  She smiled shyly. It was so easy to forget that she was a wraith. “You look tired, my lord. You’ve suffered greatly since my death.”

  He wondered if she knew what Aindreas had done to him. It served nothing to tell her, he decided. “I’ve missed you,” he said instead. I so wanted you to be my queen.”

  “As did I, my lord.”

  “Are you … ?” He hesitated, unsure of how to ask the question. “Are you in the Underrealm now?”

  She seemed to take a breath—did the dead do that? After a moment she nodded.

  “What is it like?”

  “He forbids us from speaking of it with the living. He says such things are only for the dead to know.”

  It took him a moment. Bian. She was speaking of the Deceiver.

  “You’ve seen him?” he breathed.

  She nodded again.

  A sob escaped him. “I hope he’s been kind to you.”

  “Please, my lord—”

  “I’m so sorry, Brienne,” he said, his tears falling freely once more.

  The spirit offered a sad smile. “For what, my lord?”

  “I feared … It was my dagger that killed you. And I’ve done things recently—terrible things, that I can’t explain. So I was afraid that maybe …” He stopped, unable to say the words.

  She shook her head. “No, my lord. You didn’t do this to me.”

  “I didn’t save you either. I was right beside you. I must have been. And I didn’t protect you.”

  “Had you tried you would have been killed.”

  “I would have preferred that.”

  “No, Tavis. It would have been for nothing. He would have killed both of us.”

  Tavis stared at her. “He? You know who killed you?”

  Brienne nodded, glowing tears appearing on her cheeks as well. “I was asleep when he came, but since my death I’ve seen it. All of it.” She closed her eyes briefly. “Too many times.”

  “His name!” Tavis said. “Tell me his name!”

  “I don’t know it. It was one of the servants, the man who brought us the bottle of wine we carried from the banquet.”

  The young lord scoured his memory of that night, but he couldn’t remember the man of whom she spoke. “What did he look like?”

  “He was tall,” she said. “And quite thin. He had long dark hair and a beard. His face was lean and his eyes pale blue. He had a pleasant face. He even smiled at me. As I said, he was a servant, but he wouldn’t have looked out of place as a member of my father’s court.”

  It seemed to Tavis that she could have been describing nearly anyone. But as she continued to speak, something appeared beside her. At first it looked like little more than a swirling cloud of white mist, an ocean fog turning in the wind. Gradually, though, the mist took shape and Tavis saw a man’s face forming at its center.

  “Is this him?” he asked, his voice dropping to a whisper once more.

  The spirit glanced toward the image she had conjured. She nodded, her eyes widening, as if amazed by what she had done. “Yes. That’s the man.”

  Tavis stood utterly still, staring at the face, afraid that any move he made would frighten the image away. After some time, it began to lose its form, becoming a mist once more and then fading entirely.

  “I know him from somewhere,” the boy said, as much to himself as to Brienne.

  “Yes, from the banquet.”

  “No, that’s not it.” He closed his eyes, fighting past his grief and the haunting memory of Aindreas’s dungeon, trying to recall where he had seen that face. The answer danced before him, just beyond his grasp. It was almost as though he were chasing his own shadow. Except that he felt himself getting closer with each moment.

  “My lord?”

  He raised a hand, silencing her. There was a song in his mind, one that sounded familiar, though elusive and faint. But it, too, was growing clearer.

  “He was a singer!” Tavis said, abruptly opening his eyes. “I heard him sing during the Revel.”

  “This year’s Revel?”

  Tavis nodded. “I spent much of the Revel alone, wandering the streets of Curgh, watching the dancers and listening to the musicians. I only saw this man once, and briefly at that. But I remember him because he was so good.” He paused, but only for a moment. “The Paean. He was singing The Paean to the Moons.”

  “So he followed you from Curgh?”

  “He must have.”

  “But why did he kill me?”

  Tavis gazed at her sadly. She was crying still, and he wanted more than anything to wipe the tears from her face.

  “He killed you,” the boy said as gently as he could, “so that I would be executed for your murder and our houses would go to war.” There was an ache in his chest, as if Aindreas had laid one of his torches there, searing his heart. “You’re dead because we were to be married.”

  “Are our houses at war?” she asked, sounding so young.

  “Not yet. But I barely escaped your father’s dungeon. Even now his guards hunt for me.”

  “Then you must find him, my lord. Don’t allow my death to be the cause of a civil war. Please.”

  “I’ll find him,” Tavis said. “I swear it to you in the presence of Bian and any other god who will listen. I’ll find him and I’ll avenge you.”

  But Brienne shook her head. “Revenge is nothing. Prove your innocence and save the kingdom. The rest makes no difference to me.

  e nodded again. “I will.” In his heart, though, Tavis repeated the rest of his oath. The musician would die for what he had done. Even if it meant Tavis’s life as well.

  They had been in the prison tower for only two days, but already Fotir sensed that all of them were feeling the strain. The rooms were cramped, the air sour and still. The servants, all of them, had been given two chambers, and the forty guards who had accompanied Javan to Kentigern had been placed in five others. Fotir and Xaver were in one room together and the duke had the last chamber to himself.

  To his credit, Javan asked Aindreas to put him in with Xaver and the first minister so that his soldiers might have another chamber. Kentigern refused, however. He never explained why, but the reason seemed obvious enough to Fotir. The soldiers’ chambers were below them in the tower, where the men could neither see nor speak with their duke. Had Javan been allowed to give up his chamber for some of his men, they
would surely have been in an adjacent room. Aindreas could not risk that. As it was, he appeared uncomfortable having Fotir so close to Javan, but his prison tower only had so many rooms, and the smallest ones could be found on the uppermost level.

  During this second day of their captivity, Fotir had heard shouting coming from the tower’s lower floors. Already the men of Curgh were fighting each other or their Kentigern jailers. And today it had rained. Had the sun shone, heating the tower and its chambers as it had the day before, matters would have been far worse. No doubt they would be soon, unless Aindreas let them go.

  With dusk and the arrival of some food, all had grown quiet once more. The meal didn’t consist of much—some dried meats, cheese, bread, and fruit. It was more than a prisoner in the dungeon would have gotten, and it was offered in ample amounts. But they had eaten the same foods in the morning and at midday, and twice the previous day. This would only add to the restiveness of Javan’s men.

  Xaver had spent much of the past two days staring out the narrow window of their chamber. He said even less than usual and ate little of his food, until prompted to do so by Fotir. The duke was silent as well, leaving the Qirsi to pace the small room and ponder this latest turn of events.

  Aindreas had left them alone, and, aside from the guards who brought their meals, so had his ministers and men. Fotir had no wish to be interrogated, especially after seeing what the duke of Kentigern had done to Tavis. But a part of him wished that Aindreas or Shurik had come to ask them questions or threaten torture. At least then he could have been certain that Tavis and Grinsa were still safe. As it was he could only hope the very fact of their imprisonment meant that Aindreas’s search for the boy had yielded nothing.

  “Fotir!” Javan called from his chamber.

  The Qirsi and Xaver exchanged a look. Even more than an interrogation at the hands of Kentigern’s duke, the first minister dreaded questions about Tavis’s escape from his own duke. He knew that he could deceive Aindreas, and Shurik if he had to. He felt less certain about the MarCullet boy’s ability to lie, but he hoped that Aindreas would ignore him, seeing him as little more than a child. Javan, however, was a different matter. He loved his son in his own fashion, and Fotir knew that he would have given his life to save Tavis’s. But if he knew of Tavis’s escape, and the condition the young lord had been in when Fotir found him, not even his devotion to the boy would still his tongue.