Creating a woman that never was, aren’t you, Torsten? he thought.
Light from the open gate filtered in as they approached. The high sun was impossibly bright so far south, but it was custom—a King should be married under Iam’s clearest gaze. Already, Pi was making history. The first King to marry anywhere but atop Mount Lister.
Then, Torsten noticed a disturbance in the ranks. Someone pushed their way back toward them.
Torsten stuck his arm out in front of Pi and stepped forward, other hand reaching for the grip of Salvation. Then he saw why none of the Shieldsmen cared to stop the intruder. Lucas Danvels stopped in front of them, panting, and barely with the energy to bow.
“Sir Danvels, what is it?” Torsten questioned.
“My Lords. Your Grace.” He paused to catch his breath, then looked straight at Torsten. “You need to see something.”
“You do realize what’s happening right now? Can you not handle it?”
Torsten’s mind raced back to the day of King Liam’s funeral when another Shieldsman—Rand Langley—interrupted with reports of the Shesaitju having razed a dozen villages on the outskirts of the Glass. He tried to ignore the omen.
“Of course, Sir.” He leaned in and whispered, “Please. I don’t want to cause alarm, but I need to speak with you privately for a moment. I would never do this unless it was urgent.”
“Always something,” Torsten grumbled, clenching his jaw. Then, he turned to Pi. “Sir Danvels has an urgent matter I must see to.”
“Torsten, you must be out there,” Pi insisted. “You’re on my Royal Council.”
Torsten regarded Lucas, and the young Shieldsman appeared like he’d seen a ghost. Months ago, Torsten may have scolded him, but they were both at White Bridge and in Panping. Lucas was right, he wouldn’t do something like this unless it was urgent.
“I’ll join you shortly,” Torsten said. “We can’t delay or show any sign of weakness. The sun is at its zenith. Iam’s blessing is upon us.”
Pi took his arm. “Sir Unger.”
“It’ll be fine, Your Grace,” he said. “If the Black Sands’ sages are as wordy as Dellbar, the sun will be set by the time we reach the vows.”
“He’s right,” Lord Jolly agreed. “Come along now, Your Grace. Your safety is more important than anything, and Sir Unger would never risk it.”
Torsten fixated on the pleading eyes of his King. He was too young to be married. Too young for any of this. Still, Torsten could see that he was ready. The young King who’d endured so much trauma before the crown fell upon his head was now prepared to bear the weight of leading while Torsten served as his shield.
“Look after him, Lord Jolly,” Torsten said. “As your brother would have.”
“Always.”
Torsten offered Pi a slight smile and a bow before managing to tear his gaze away and follow Lucas down a branching hallway. The line of Shieldsmen parted for them, and soon they were alone.
“This better be important,” Torsten growled.
Lucas didn’t answer. Instead, he picked up his pace, forcing Torsten to a jog just to keep up. They rounded another corner into a tunnel leading to a series of cavernous rooms within the undercroft.
“Lucas!” Torsten barked, clutching his wrist.
“He’s here, Sir Unger,” Lucas whispered, spinning toward Torsten.
“Who is?”
“Rand Langley. The Shesaitju guards found him standing at the gate asking to speak directly with you, and brought him straight to me.”
Torsten froze. The last time he’d seen Rand, he was curled up in a cell, haggard and pathetic, and begging to go after Sigrid. Then, Rand had called upon a blood pact to free her, and they disappeared. Whether or not he knew that Nesilia was controlling his sister’s already cursed body, wasn’t clear in Lucas’ description of what had happened.
“Torsten, if he’s here…” Lucas went on.
“We don’t know anything,” Torsten said. “He could be coming to atone.”
“Or for her.”
“She has an army. Send scouts out across the Black Sands—“
“They’ve already been dispatched,” Lucas interrupted. “Glassmen and Shesaitju alike.”
“Well done,” Torsten said. “If Rand came alone, we have to know why.”
“I agree. He’s being held close.”
Torsten glanced around the corner, back down toward the main hallway. The last of Shieldsmen escort went by. The ceiling quaked more intensely than ever from the crowd above. He couldn’t believe anything but a dwarven engineered structure could withstand such abuse.
“Quickly,” Torsten said.
Lucas led him a short way through the grids of tunnels beneath the grand arena. It was almost entirely empty until they reached one of the combatant waiting rooms. Three Glass soldiers stood right outside, since no more Shieldsmen could be expended. They saluted as Torsten and Lucas approached.
“He’s inside?” Lucas asked.
The guards nodded.
“Wait here,” Torsten told Lucas.
“Sir Unger, I—“
“Last time you were with him, he nearly killed you. I need him calm.”
Lucas opened his mouth to protest, then conceded.
The guards opened the door, then shoved aside a layer of seashells hanging on strings. They clattered as Torsten swept in. During their last meeting, Rand had been so devastated he couldn’t even stay upright. Presently, he stood in the center of the room. His beard was thick and messy, his eyes drawn back from over-exhaustion. The rags he wore were the same as those which Torsten found him in on White Bridge—still stained with Bartholomew Darkings’ blood.
“Sir Unger, you came!” he exclaimed, eyes like saucers, but at least they weren’t black with possession. He took a step forward, but Torsten’s glower sent him cowering to the back wall.
“Not this time, Rand,” Torsten said. “I’ve given you my sympathy, my help, but an assault on any of my Shieldsmen is an assault on me.”
“I didn’t mean it, I swear. It was her, everything. All her.”
“You demanded a blood pact on Sir Danvels!” Torsten roared. “After he brought you food and water. After he watched you, made sure you didn’t cut your own wrists. Maybe he should’ve let you.”
“I thought I was helping Sigrid…”
“And what about the Kingdom that you swore to shield from all evil? Perhaps if you’d stayed, I’d be able to look at you. But you ran again when Nesilia nearly killed us all. Deserter to redeemer and right back to deserter.”
“I know… I know…” he sniveled. He stared at the floor, tears running down his cheeks. Then his gaze snapped upward, bright with energy. “But I’m here now. I want to… I need to help.”
“It’s too late for that, Rand. Maybe you didn’t know, and it was all an accident, but it doesn’t matter now. Your sister became an upyr, murdered Queen Oleander, and then surrendered her body to Nesilia.”
“Sigrid is still inside of her, Torsten! I know it.”
“I was there,” Torsten said. “I fought her, watched her kill. There was no hesitation. Nesilia was in complete control.”
“She turned my sister into a monster…” Rand wheezed. “I didn’t believe it, but I know it’s true. I… I have to help stop her.”
“No. You’ve done enough, and I have done enough protecting you. You’ll be brought back to Yarrington, where you’ll be punished for crimes against our Kingdom. It’s time the people learn the truth about Rand the Redeemer.”
“I can fight!” he said. “You know I can fight. Let me help, and when we save Sigrid, I’ll lock myself in a dungeon myself, I swear it.”
“There is no saving her.”
“That’s not true,” Rand argued.
“All the legends say that a man or woman must accept becoming an upyr. It’s a choice, Rand. One she made, with horrid consequences.”
I know my sister, and even if she lost her way or became an upyr or whatever you al
l think… this isn’t her.”
“It is now.”
“Then, we have to destroy her!” Rand approached Torsten to plead.
Torsten promptly shoved him so hard his back slammed against the wall. All air evacuated his lungs and crumpled to the floor, a pathetic mess of a man. Perhaps he always had been, and Torsten was too blind—even then—to see it.
“I can’t have her remembered for this…” he wept, sucking in raspy breaths. “I can’t… I’ll do anything, Sir. Anything.”
Torsten clenched his jaw. His hands balled into tight fists. But as he watched Rand floundering, his stance softened. He could never escape the fact that Rand had been broken while Torsten was exiled by Oleander.
“Enough of that.” Torsten sighed.
He moved to the wretch and grasped him by the arm to get him upright. “Now, get up,” he said. “You’ll never fight with us again, but you can—“ As Torsten lifted him, Rand suddenly resisted. And not like a person having a breakdown, but a focused surge of strength.
Torsten’s shoulder came down, and as he pushed Rand off, his enchanted blindfold was torn from his face.
Torsten swung a mighty fist, meeting only air. He swung with the other arm, and as he did, exposed his flank. Something sharp stabbed through a weak point where Torsten’s plated armor cuirass met—one only a former Shieldsman would know about.
“I’m so sorry, Torsten, but she needs me,” Rand whispered.
Torsten caught Rand by the forearm. What Rand wouldn’t have known about was that Torsten now wore zhulong skin beneath his metal armor, a gift after White Bridge. The blade barely pierced his flesh. He smashed his heavy boot down on Rand’s foot, causing him to squeal and pull away. The blade fell out, and Rand broke free, hammering Torsten in the back with an elbow. As Torsten fell forward, Rand stole Salvation from Torsten’s back-sheath.
“Stop him!” one of the guards shouted.
Torsten heard sounds of struggle—grunting, then the clanking of metal. One of the guards shrieked.
“Get off him!” Lucas yelled.
Torsten heard it all. Lucas charged, and his body slammed into Rand’s. They flew across the small room, Salvation scraping across the floor. Lucas cursed like no Shieldsman should as Torsten heard the familiar sound of a fist crunching against Rand’s face.
“I’ll kill you!” Lucas screamed as he punched again and again. Torsten didn’t need eyes to know who was winning.
“Lucas, don’t,” he said through clenched teeth. “We need to know what she needs. I—“ His words trailed off as he collapsed to one knee and clutched his side. The left half of his body where Rand had stabbed him went suddenly numb.
Torsten heard the thump of Rand’s body dropping.
“Sir, stay awake,” Lucas said, near him now, voice shaking, struggling to help keep him from lying down. “Help me with his armor!”
Torsten gripped some part of either Lucas or the other conscious guard and squeezed. They yanked his body this way and that to remove his armor and get a better look at the wound.
“It’s not deep,” Lucas said. “Your leather kept it from—“
“My blindfold…” Torsten managed to squeeze through his lips. Now, his fingers went numb and lost grip. His left foot felt like dead weight. Torsten has been stabbed enough times to know that he should be in pain, yet, there was none.
“My blindfold!” he repeated.
“Get that!” Lucas ordered.
The two other guards tripped over themselves, and a few moments later, Torsten felt the familiar feel of his sweat-soaked, enchanted blindfold being pulled over his head. The world formed before him in swathes of white and black, light, and the absence of it.
“I swear… we checked…” one guard stammered. “He had no weapon.”
“What is this?” Lucas asked. While supporting Torsten with one arm, he examined what looked like a long talon in the other. He clearly didn’t recognize it, but Torsten did.
“It’s a grimaur talon,” Torsten said.
Even speaking was difficult as the paralytic toxin expelled by a grimaur scratch moved through Torsten. It wasn’t deadly, but it would be enough to stop a man’s motor functions. Only Torsten’s size and the fact that he’d caught Rand before he could stab too deep kept it from completely immobilizing him.
“The King… Rand is working with Nesilia…” Torsten shoved off and lumbered toward the door. His left side was now entirely numb, and his right limbs felt like they were tied to anchors. He staggered out into the tunnel and hit a wall, where Lucas caught him again.
“Sir, you need to lie down,” he said. “I’ll get a healer.”
“Get me to the King!” he shouted.
Lucas looped under his shoulder and helped him down the tunnel. With every step, Torsten expected his feet to give out. He could barely feel them, only a slight pinpoint of pressure.
“One of you help me!” Lucas yelled back at the remaining guards.
“What about him?” one asked.
“He’s not going anywhere.”
“Watch him anyway,” Torsten demanded.
One stayed with Rand, the other reached Torsten and helped them along. Torsten was glad his eyelids had been burned off; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to keep them open. His blessed sight allowed him to stay cognizant.
They turned once, then again into the central passage. By then, Torsten’s right foot dragged slightly, and both Lucas and the guard groaned from the stress of carrying him. Now, there was no dust falling from the ceiling. The crowd was silent as they headed straight for the arch leading outside.
“Torsten!” Rand bellowed.
They all stopped and looked back.
In the chaos, Torsten had forgotten his weapon—how could he have been so careless?
The traitor stood, carrying Salvation, coated in the blood of the guard they’d left to watch him. It would have been threatening if he wasn’t propped up on the wall, his vision lagging from head trauma, and holding a weapon too heavy for his emaciated frame. More blood dripped from his mouth and a cut over his eye, courtesy of Lucas’ beating.
Rand’s features suddenly transformed from rage-filled to concerned. “You need to run,” he said. “You all need to run.”
“Enough of this,” Lucas growled, then turned to the other guard. “Get Sir Unger outside. I’ll deal with the traitor.”
Torsten tried to speak, but the effort it took just to open the left side of his mouth made a coherent word challenging to form. Lucas stepped out alone and drew his longsword.
“C’mon, Sir,” the guard groaned, struggling under Torsten’s weight.
Torsten looked back as he was slowly dragged toward the arena.
Lucas charged Rand and had him on the defensive, the loud clangor of their blades echoing across the empty undercroft.
Torsten’s neck muscles gave out, and his head drooped. Through the sunny opening, he could make out the figures of those partaking in the wedding ceremony. He saw Pi, across from Mahraveh, standing atop a low pedestal, so they were the same height.
They held each other’s hands. A cloth bearing the Eye of Iam wrapped them together, while Dellbar the Holy spoke to an entranced and silent crowd.
Adrenaline flooded Torsten’s system upon seeing them. His left fingers twitched as he started to regain tingling sensation.
“My King!” Torsten forced himself to scream. It was still slurred.
All eyes snapped toward him in the archway. Before Torsten could do anything else, a deafening boom shook the very earth. The struggling guard lost his grip, and Torsten collapsed.
His head hit the packed sand first. Then, all he could hear were screams…
XVI
The Caleef
Mahi’s bare foot slapped down in the shallow stream of water encircling the Tal’du Dromesh arena. The crowd silenced in a heartbeat. She gazed up and around at all the thousands of Shesaitju eyes fixated on her.
Throughout the boisterous walk out
of the undercroft, showered in dust from the pounding feet throughout the stands, Mahi remembered fighting on these very sands. She remembered the adrenaline pumping through every muscle, the fire in her bones, the bloodlust. The quiet changed that. It unnerved her. Made her hear the steady thump-thump of her heart between the distant cawing of gulls and the waves pounding the beach and stone on the other side of the arena’s southern rock wall.
Her gaze shifted downward toward Tal’du Dromesh itself. Serpent Guards and Shieldsmen stood at arms around the circumference and within the stands at every entrance and aisle. Their alternating gold and silver armor, and pink and gray skin, would have seemed otherworldly if not for what was in the center of the sands.
King Pi stood there, dressed in elaborately crafted armor, a light blue cape flowing from his back and draping around his feet to hide the low pedestal, making him appear taller to the crowd.
Or is it for me? Mahi wondered.
During the only meeting they’d had prior to this, seated alone at the feast, they’d talked openly and candidly. He hadn’t seemed self-conscious about anything. Quite the opposite, actually.
Behind him stood the High Priest, bare white robes cascading down his body like snow-capped mountains. A shorter distance away was one-armed Lord Jolly and a few other noble-looking Glassmen who’d made the journey. Torsten was inexplicably absent. Though, even only knowing him so briefly, Mahi imagined he was somewhere, high up in the boxes, watching for the safety of his King.
Across from the Glassmen stood Bit’rudam and Tingur. Sages dribbled nigh’jel blood along Mahi’s path and toward the center, humming prayers in Saitjuese. Others stood atop the rocky dam, facing out to the Boiling Waters. Over it, the angled sails of two warships could be seen, the fabric bright against a backdrop of looming storm clouds. Thunder rumbled in the distance, also now perceivable with her people quieted.
Within the Tal’du Dromesh, however, the sun was bright and hot. If there really was an Iam, it was hard to deny he was watching.
“And so, your rebellion ends, Father,” Mahi whispered to herself. She closed her eyes and breathed in the moment, salt spray from the sea and all. Then, drums broke the horrible silence, and she strode across the sand.
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