The tent remained silent as the two men regarded one another. Echathen, at the head of Dalenar’s Shardbearers, stood with a relaxed posture, trying to catch Elhokar’s eye in the hopes that he might be able to give the boy an unnerving smile. Elhokar did not turn toward him, however—Echathen always had been beneath the king’s consideration.
“You don’t have to do this, Uncle,” Elhokar finally said.
“You killed my son, Elhokar,” Dalenar replied in a tired, solemn voice.
“Your son was a traitor,” Elhokar said. “He disobeyed me and he disobeyed you. The kingdom has just suffered a civil war—you wish to put it through a second?”
Echathen snorted quietly, the noise finally bringing a contemptuous glare from Elhokar. Echathen smiled, showing teeth and narrowing eyes set in a scarred face, and locked Elhokar’s gaze. The king finally glanced away.
Oh, I see the truth in your words, boy, Echathen thought. So does everyone in this tent. You’ll never trust Dalenar again—not after this. He can’t back down now. You would just do to him what you did to Jezenrosh.
Dalenar finally sighed, his breath deep like the winds themselves. “Here is what we are going to do, Elhokar,” he said. “You will abdicate in favor of Ahrden, your son. You will take the vows of a monk, and renounce your titles and lands. I will let you live.”
Elhokar laughed. “You’ll ‘let’ me, will you, Uncle? How kind of you, especially since my scouts place the strength of my forces far above yours! I have the edge in troops, towers, and Blades! Your army won’t even be a bother for us.”
Dalenar took the scorn with a flat face. When it was through, he looked away from Elhokar, instead turning to regard the collected Shardbearers and lords who stood behind the king.
“My forces will wait one day before attacking,” Dalenar told the men. “Hear well—Elhokar refused my offer of peace. By attacking his country-men and shaming his honor, he has forfeited the throne. Before the Almighty, I take the regency in the name of Ahrden Kholin, the rightful heir.” He paused, then spoke with clear force. “If any of you wish to seek penance for what you did here at Crossguard, you may join my camp. Your aid will be welcome.”
Elhokar sat, stunned. “You actually think they would switch sides?” he asked incredulously.
Oh, now that’s not the right reaction, Echathen thought. Where’s that infamous Kholin temper?
Echathen leaned forward, placing a gauntleted hand on the table. “Oh?” he asked. “Look behind you, idiot.”
Elhokar glanced to the side unconsciously. His loyal soldiers did not display the looks of outrage that he had obviously expected. Far too many of them appeared thoughtful, and a few were even nodding. While they immediately tried to hide their expressions, the damage had been done.
Elhokar’s face flushed red at the sight.
“Give this up, lad,” Dalenar said quietly.
Elhokar growled, then stood suddenly, grabbing the side of the table and throwing it to the side with Plate-enhanced strength. Echathen smiled to himself, summoning his Blade as the wooden table smashed to the stones a short distance away. Looks like they wouldn’t have to wait after all.
Dalenar lay a hand on Echathen’s arm, and shook his head slightly. “We will not spread blood in the tent of parlay.”
Echathen frowned, glancing at Elhokar. The king obviously had no such compunctions. Smoke spouted from the boy’s hand, a Shardblade forming. None of the king’s men moved to join him, however, and Dalenar’s raised hand kept his own men from acting.
“You act so honorable, Uncle!” Elhokar spat. “But I know this is what you’ve been waiting for. An excuse! You don’t approve of me—you never approved of me. You and my sister always tried to control me; you never let me be king. Well, I’ve killed two traitors so far. Another will not prove so hard, I should think!”
Elhokar swung, Blade appearing even as his arm descended. Echathen tensed, cursing Dalenar’s reticence. He moved, but was too slow to block the Blade.
Dalenar’s hand came up. Blade met Plate as Dalenar caught the weapon on the back of his armored fist, then deftly turned his hand around and caught Elhokar’s sword on the back of its blade.
Elhokar yanked the weapon, but Dalenar’s grip held firm, Plate-enhanced fingers remaining tight. The tent was silent save for the sound of Elhokar’s curses.
Then, slowly, Dalenar stood. He released the Blade, causing Elhokar to stumble slightly. A full head taller than the king, massive and dignified in silver and blue, Dalenar seemed to tower over Elhokar—a king who was still little more than the spoiled boy who had visited Echathen’s court, jealous of the attention his cousin Sheneres had received.
Elhokar regained his footing. He appeared as if he were going to swing again, but paused, looking up at Dalenar.
Yes, Echathen thought. Look and see true nobility, Elhokar. See what you should have been, and be ashamed.
“One day,” Dalenar said, then turned and strode from the tent.
Echathen gave Elhokar one final smile, then turned and joined his friend as the men mounted up again. “That went well,” he noted.
Dalenar just shook his head.
“You didn’t really expect him to abdicate, did you?” Echathen said.
“Perhaps,” Dalenar said. “Elhokar is not an exemplary man, but he does have some sense of honor.”
Echathen snorted. “I haven’t seen any such.”
“He found and defeated his father’s murderer,” Dalenar said. “Even with Crossguard, I sense that I’m missing something—some part of Elhokar’s logic. His actions make ethical sense in his own mind, I think.”
“You give him too much credit.”
Mounted, Dalenar turned, glancing back toward the parlay tent. Elhokar stood at its edge, watching Dalenar, face still red.
“He’s a self-indulgent fool, old friend,” Echathen said, shaking his head. “He always has been.”
“Yes,” Dalenar admitted. “But that doesn’t make him harmless. He may be foolhardy, but he has passion. I’ve seen him kill men that had twice his skill, all because he fights with single-minded intensity.”
“Such men as he die quickly,” Echathen observed.
“True,” Dalenar said. “And we must see that he doesn’t take the kingdom with him when he goes.”
chapter 61
Jek 10
Jeksonsonvallano, Truthless of Shinavar, made very good time back to King Ahven’s camp. He and his soldiers had abandoned their disguises as soon as they were out of sight of Crossguard, rendezvousing with the other three members of their group, who had been left to watch the horses. Still, despite the speed of their travels, it still took them a day and a half of hard riding to reach the main body of the army—or, at least, the place where Jek assumed it would be.
Jek reined in his horse, calling halt to his group. The men—thirteen in number, as two had been left behind when their horses gave out from the exhaustive ride—did as commanded, slowing around him.
He scanned the horizon, looking for signs of the army’s passing. They were close, that much he could sense, but how close? The endless Kanaran hills rolled around him, similar to solidified dunes of sand. It was remarkably easy to hide even a large army among their valleys, if one were clever and set a very good perimeter.
And that perimeter was what worried Jek. “Dismount,” he commanded. “Teledach and Jansmere will stay with the horses. The rest will continue with me on foot.”
“My . . . lord?” asked Jershel, the squad captain. He was a smaller man, a quick and clever swordsman—the type that Jek preferred to work with. He also rarely questioned Jek’s command, which was another qualifying feature for any man Jek chose to serve under him.
This irregularity, however, was too much for even Jershel’s obedient nature. “We can ride forward without fear, my lord,” he said. “We have the pass-flag.”
“I know,” Jek said, climbing from his horse. “Do as I order.”
“Yes, my lord,” J
ershel said, waving to his men. The appellation of ‘lord’ still bothered Jek; as a Truthless, he no longer had a title. The men, however, tended to have trouble following anyone they couldn’t verbally distinguish as their better, so Jek suffered the usage.
A bit of light flashed in the afternoon sun, sparkling just briefly atop a hill in the near distance.
There, Jek thought, orienting himself. He watched carefully for a second sign of watchers, but unfortunately, nothing obvious presented itself. Forced to trust his instincts, Jek made the best guesses he could, then led his men quickly toward a nearby mid-hill valley.
Alone, he would have no trouble getting into the camp unseen. That, however, would be an unfair test of the army’s perimeter. He was trained to avoid Shin warriors; sneaking past easterners was more bothersome than it was dangerous. However, slipping an entire party of men into the camp . . . that would be a true challenge.
Let’s see just how good your watchmen are, Idiot King, Jek thought, whispering his men some basic instructions, then leading them in a careful path toward what Jek guessed was the center of the camp.
They moved quickly at first—they were still far enough away that there was little danger of being spotted, so long as they kept to the backs of hillsides. Once they got near to where the perimeter probably began, Jek whispered a halt, then crawled up to the top of a hill to scout.
The stone was cool beneath his fingers. Not rough, like most rocks back in Shinavar, but instead uniformly smooth—except, of course, for the palm-sized rings of stone that marked where long-dead rockbud polyps had once clung to the hillside.
There were living buds too, though they were closed at the moment. Jek crouched beside a particularly large one, its dome as wide as his forearm.
Odd, he thought, running his fingers across its brittle, rocky shell. Even the plants are blasphemous here. They use the stone to their own ends.
Of course, it wasn’t really stone that the rockbuds used to form their shells, it was the crom. The ubiquitous substance fell with the rain, providing nutrients for the rockbuds and other plants, as well as giving them minerals to grow their shells.
Jek sighed as he lay against the stone. This wasn’t the way land was supposed to be. Instead of endless hills of rock, there should have been plains and grass, trees and streams. In Shinavar, there was no crom—who would have thought that a bit of brown sludge could make such a difference?
That sludge, however, hardened over time. In the Kanaran Peninsulas, dust could not settle and dirt could not form, for the crom fell and hardened everything into the same uniform stone. Buildings grew stalactites over time, and any object left alone for too long would eventually become one with the stone. It took years, but it would happen. This is what made the lands to the east both holy and desecrated—they were lands where stone truly ruled, lands where men were not meant to live. Only in Shinavar, where the steep mountains surrounded the entire peninsula, could man find soil and life. Green life—Jek had almost forgotten what real plants looked like.
This geography, however, was very good for hiding. The numerous hills of the Kanaran lowlands allowed Ahven to set up a very strict perimeter. Keen-eyed scouts could watch from hilltops, spying intruders both intentional and accidental. Anyone who wandered into the perimeter was killed. No mistakes could be suffered.
Unfortunately, Jek couldn’t find any outposts. He studied the hilltops for a few careful moments, then decided he must have misjudged the distance to the camp’s center. He turned and began to slink back toward his men, then froze in reflexive alarm as his senses warned of unseen danger.
The arrows began to fall a few seconds later.
Jek’s men cried out, pulling out useless swords or hiding behind shields. Jek was close enough that several arrows flew toward him, and for a brief, joyous moment, he thought one might strike him.
His hand snapped out and grabbed the arrow. Death would not serve his master, and would break his vows. End his punishment. That could not be allowed, no matter how much his heart wished that it was an option.
Two more arrows flew his direction, and he unfortunately was able to snatch them both. Below, Jershel pulled the pass-flag from beneath his cloak and held it high.
Jek smiled despite himself. He hadn’t ordered the man to bring the flag, nor had he ordered Jershel to display it. However, he had no right to complain—one did not choose clever men as companions if one did not wish them to do clever things.
The arrows stopped falling as a group of ambushers revealed their position atop a nearby hill. Five of Jek’s men had taken arrows, two of them serious wounds. Jek passed through the valley and walked up to meet the archer’s commander as Jershel saw to the wounded.
“My . . . lord!” the commander said with surprise, recognizing Jek. “We had no idea it was you, my lord! We would never have fired if we had—”
“Your orders are to attack anyone who passes into the perimeter unless they raise the pass-flag,” Jek snapped. “Even me.”
“Um, yes, my lord,” the captain said with embarrassment.
“I was watching for you,” Jek said, trying to keep the testiness out of his voice. “How did you remain hidden so well?” Failing to find Lady Jasnah was one thing, but letting himself get ambushed . . . Had it finally happened? Had he spent so long among the heathens that he had begun to lose his edge?
The captain waved to a member of his squad, who pulled up a deep brown blanket, crusted with a rocky substance—probably clay that had been Awakened to stone.
“The watchmen now lay beneath these,” the captain said. “It was King Ahven’s idea.”
Clever, Jek admitted, studying the stiff contraption. The stone coloring blended very well with the hill rock. From a distance, a man hiding beneath it would be impossible to see—though the covering would be horribly hot during the day.
“We almost didn’t see you, my lord,” the captain admitted. “Actually, we only noticed you because one of my men heard your group scraping the rock.”
I should have had them remove their boots. “It is a good thing you did see us,” Jek said, eyeing his wounded men. “If I had managed to get a group of twelve soldiers past you, King Ahven would likely have had your head. Lead me to the camp—I have important news for His Majesty.”
Jek was already in a sour mood from the ambush—what he heard when he entered the royal tent did not improve his disposition.
Ahven was in council with the Aleth man, Balenmar, again. Jek paused just inside the tent door, frowning to himself. It was alarming how quickly Balenmar had gone from prisoner to advisor, and even more alarming how quickly Ahven had apparently come to trust the stormkeeper. They didn’t even know whether or not Balenmar’s map through the caves would lead to Jasnah’s capture, yet Ahven already treated the aging man as a respected councilor.
The tent room was lush, as a king’s should be, but Jek knew from experience that Ahven cared little about such conveniences. He kept the rugs, pillows, and wood furniture out of a desire to maintain appearances, and nothing else. The pavilion itself was large, with four rooms, but Ahven kept mostly to the open central chamber. It was in this chamber that Ahven now stood, speaking carefully with Balenmar, who sat in a plush wooden chair beside the tent wall.
The two men stopped speaking when Jek entered. What were they discussing? he wondered with annoyance, then was further annoyed that he should care. He didn’t trust Balenmar, true, but what did that matter? Jek wanted Ahven to fail—all the better if the king were betrayed by one he had so foolishly accepted into his confidence.
“You’re back early, assassin,” Ahven said with his firm, yet not overly loud, voice.
“Dalenar Kholin marches on Crossguard,” Jek announced, walking into the room.
Ahven hissed a long, quiet breath through his teeth. “You are certain of this information?”
“No,” Jek said. “I was unable to validate my source. However, I believe the fact to be truth. When I entered Crossguard, I notic
ed something odd about the Aleth army, but couldn’t quite place it. I later realized that the camp looked too . . . orderly. Too on guard. It wasn’t the camp of a group that had just won a war, but rather that of an army preparing for battle. King Elhokar executed Dalenar’s heir when he took Crossguard. Apparently, this act finally spurred the Tyrantbane to action.”
Ahven’s frown deepened, and he leaned one arm against a large wooden cabinet in thought.
“That does sound like Dalenar, Lord Ahven,” Balenmar said. “Though why he would let his son ride to Crossguard baffles me.”
“Aredor Kholin was allowed to become too independent,” Ahven said off-handedly. “He wasn’t raised to be the heir, and was given far too much leeway. He must have gone to Crossguard without his father’s permission.”
“You know this from the songs?” Jek asked.
Ahven nodded slightly, his thoughts obviously still troubled. He tapped his fingers against the cabinet—the one piece of furniture Jek knew the king valued. It was the one that contained his birds. Only three remained alive.
“Yet,” Jek said, catching Ahven’s attention, forcing him to read Jek’s lips, “you didn’t predict this possibility? You claim to have known that Dalenar would stay out of the war, but he has not. What of your clever knowledge now?”
Ahven’s eyes thinned. “You will not mock me again, assassin,” he ordered. “Even subtly.”
Jek’s face flushed, and he noted a glint of mirth in Balenmar’s eyes. Control yourself, Jek told himself. Do not let these easterners rile you.
“Dalenar Kholin is . . . a problem,” Ahven finally said. “No, I didn’t predict this. I’ve had trouble understanding Dalenar recently. He used to be an easy man to predict—he was straightforward, a lover of strong martial ballads with firm, unyielding beats. But recently his tastes have become more . . . longing. He still favors battle epics, but rather than songs of brilliant victors, he requests ballads about men who fight and tragically lose. Introspective pieces. Questioning pieces. Dalenar is not the man he once was, and I don’t quite know what he has become.”
The Way of Kings Prime Page 68
