Nanavah Kholin. Ahven’s sister, Elhokar’s wife. This isn’t good, Jek thought with a foreboding feeling.
“You should not have come here, Nanavah,” Ahven said slowly.
“And why not?” the woman said. “Avy, someone had to come speak with you. Invading Alethkar? We’re your allies! Who convinced you to do this thing?”
Ahven didn’t answer, his face troubled. Across the room, Balenmar leaned forward with interest, and Nanavah finally noticed the old man.
“You!” she said with shock. “What is the meaning of this?” She paused, looking from Balenmar to Ahven, eyes widening slightly.
Balenmar chuckled. “No, child, I’m not the one who ‘convinced’ your brother to attack. He made that decision quite pleasantly on his own. I’m simply here in an advisory capacity.”
“Traitor!” Nanavah said.
Balenmar shrugged. “I wouldn’t be quite so accusatory, my dear. If you were simply coming to plead for your brother to cease his attack, why did you bring your son with you? Could it be that someone feared she was on the losing side, and decided to defect?”
Nanavah covered her embarrassment with the customary skill of a Kanaran noblewoman. She did not, however, deny Balenmar’s accusation. “The army was moving too quickly,” she finally said. “And I was slowing them. I came to plead the bond of kinship, and ask for protection and passage to Vedenar.”
A politically practical move, Jek thought. Very much a Kanaran noblewoman.
“Leave us,” Ahven said quietly, waving to the guard.
Nanavah looked up, her political visage melting slightly as she regarded her brother. “Oh, Avy,” she said. “How you’ve changed! It is a miracle, truly.”
She reached out, cradling the sleeping boy in one arm, brushing Ahven’s cheek with the other.
“You always did treat me differently,” Ahven said. “The others were so cruel, but you . . . you sang to me. When I could still hear, if only a little. You would sing, and those are the only songs I can still remember. The only things I can still hear . . .”
Nanavah smiled. “I remember,” she said.
Ahven shook his head. “I killed them, Nanavah.”
She frowned. “Who?”
“Our brothers,” Ahven said with a quiet sigh. “All four of them. I killed them one at a time, when everyone thought me an idiot.”
Nanavah. “No, Avy. You didn’t do that. They died by accidents.”
Ahven shook his head. “The more suspicious elements in court assumed it was Karathach, of course—especially when I let him assume command when I came to the throne. No one suspected me. Poor, dim-witted Ahven, a pawn in the Veden court. A man thought a fool simply because he lost his hearing as a child, and didn’t learn to speak when he should have.”
Nanavah didn’t notice the curling line of smoke around Ahven’s hand.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Ahven repeated. “Do you realize that when I take Alethkar, the old king’s wife and son will be the greatest threat to my throne?”
Nanavah looked too shocked to reply. “But, Avy . . .” she said. “You speak nonsense. Who is telling you these things? Let us speak to them—you don’t have to listen to what they say. You’re king.”
“Yes,” Ahven said. “I am king.” He stared at her for a brief moment, a deep sadness showing in his eyes. “I remember those songs still, Nanavah. Sweet. Beautiful. Like . . . a songbird.”
Ahven looked up, glancing toward Balenmar, then Jek, then at the door. Neither man needed further prompting.
This was one task Ahven would perform with his own hands.
When Jek returned, he found Ahven sitting quietly between two bodies. There had been very little screaming—even at the end, the woman hadn’t really understood what was happening. Even sharp political minds often had trouble seeing past familial prejudices.
Ahven looked up at Jek’s entry. Jek had expected to see grief, even madness, in Ahven’s eyes.
He was not prepared to face calm coolness instead.
Ahven stood. “The Aleth forces are traveling to Teth-Kanar,” he said firmly.
Jek looked up from the gruesome corpses of Nanavah and her son. “You’re certain?”
Ahven nodded sharply. “I can see it in their movements. Teth-Kanar is the largest city in this region, and will have soldiers and gemstones to lend. Its lord, Intara Teth, is a sot. Like Dalenar, he refused to join with either Elhokar or Jezenrosh—but he also refused Dalenar’s call to arms. He would probably just squat in his keep forever and let the kingdom fall around him, content to his parties and his grief, but he won’t be able to ignore his countrymen if they arrive in such a state.”
Jek frowned at the change in Ahven’s demeanor. The king was certain again. In control.
“Clean this up,” Ahven said, stepping over the body of his sister without looking down. “Make certain no one discovers what happened here. It wouldn’t be good for morale.” With that, he left the tent.
Jek stood in the stillness. For the first time, he realized that the chest in the back of the room was open. He approached, and found the cage inside was now empty. The last two birds lay dead at the cage bottom, their necks snapped with a quick, efficient hand.
Ahven had no birds left. Jek looked up, staring after the king, wondering what the move meant.
He killed his sister, the only person I’ve ever seen him show affection for. Perhaps what Jek had seen in Ahven earlier—the indecisiveness, the emotion—was not madness. Maybe it had simply been humanity.
And it was gone now. Ahven had become the perfect leader he had spoken of—a man free from conscience. He had no room for love, guilt, or sorrow.
He had already destroyed everything that could have produced any of the three.
chapter 80
Merin 16
Merin stood in his accustomed place at the ship’s bow, trying to look supervisory as the sailors quickly prepared for the highstorm. There was a practiced anxiety to their motions as they worked, wrapping the sails tight, securing ropes and furniture. The ship itself huddled with a half-tenset others in a sheltered cove, one of the many along this section of the coast. They had spent the better part of the day finding shelter for the fleet—an annoying delay, but a necessary one. Land-side highstorms were bad enough; at sea, they were terrifying. Merin was constantly amazed that the storms—with their furious waves, groaning woods, and terrible winds—didn’t leave his fleet decimated.
Yet his sailors were skilled. They worked efficiently, securing his flagship quickly, despite the fact that Merin had insisted on seeing to the rest of the fleet’s safety before seeking shelter himself. He hadn’t left them much time—the fleet stormkeeper warned that the storm would arrive within the hour. Merin could already see the horizon darkening.
“Do you believe in omens, my lord?” Kalden said from his side.
Merin eyed the tall Shardbearer. During their few weeks of travel, Kalden had begun to open up slightly. He was a steady, emeraldic man—not slow of mind, but someone who had been content with his place as a guard. The more time Merin spent among the nobility, the more he came to realize that there was a division among the aristocrats of Kanar that was as stark as the difference between citizens and lord. The lesser nobility—men without cities to rule or Shardblades to wield—were lords in title only. Kalden’s forefathers, for instance, had been twentieth lords for generations. For him to receive a Shardblade had been nearly as monumentous an event as Merin’s own acquisition.
“Omens?” Merin asked. “What kind?”
Kalden nodded to the side, toward the rocky beach. Merin could barely make out something whitish brown lying on the shore. At first he thought it was just a rock, but it was too uniform a circle. Long and flat, it looked like some kind of massive disk, perhaps as wide as a man was tall.
“What is it?” he asked curiously.
“Shanadal,” Kalden said. “An ocean creature. They’re supposed to be immortal.”
Merin pau
sed. “But this one is dead.”
Kalden nodded. “It is a very bad sign, my lord. Only a portent of great doom can kill a Shanadal.”
Merin studied the corpse—more of a shell, he noticed, and from a distance it seemed that the creature’s body sparkled with quartzine encrustings. Noblemen weren’t supposed to be superstitious, he had learned—or, at least, Aleth noblemen weren’t supposed to be. Many of the things Merin’s family and friends had taken as undeniable facts were considered foolish rural mysticisms by Merin’s fellow noblemen. Yet what was Renarin’s strange power, if not mysticism?
Merin breathed deeply, looking up into the skies. The air rivers flowed with particular turbulence, like they always did before a highstorm. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes and didn’t look at the winds, but instead just experienced them, he thought he could . . . feel things. Not emotions, or even sensations, but hints of both. Perhaps he was just fooling himself, trying to project for himself the same abilities Renarin displayed. Yet . . . there was something. A foreboding.
“What do the winds say, my lord?” Kalden asked.
Merin cracked an eye. The rumor that he was a Windrunner had grown quite widespread among the fleet’s troops. Though Merin quickly denied that he was the reincarnation of Jezrien’Elin—as some had begun to whisper—honor forbade him from refuting the Windrunner comments. His silence was rightfully taken as acquiescence.
“The winds are pensive,” he said slowly. “Something . . . something’s coming, Kalden. More than just the storm. Something’s going to happen.”
“Something bad?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” Merin confessed, feeling the winds twist around him. “But it’s something important.”
“There!” Kalden said.
Merin opened his eyes to find Kalden pointing with his Blade toward a small boat scuttling around the edge of their cove. Merin instantly recognized the scout ship, and cursed quietly. “They take a great chance,” he said, glancing up at the darkening sky and spinning winds.
“They must have news, my lord!” Kalden said eagerly.
“I’d rather they survive and bring it to me later than risk getting caught in that storm,” Merin muttered. However, his worry was obviously unfounded in this case. The scout ship quickly scooted up beside Merin’s flagship, pulling in its oars and settling between two larger vessels to shelter itself from the oncoming winds.
The messenger, Merin noticed with discomfort, didn’t seek the king’s ship first, instead climbing up the ropes to the deck of Merin’s flagship.
“Lord Kholin!” the messenger said in accented Aleth, approaching and falling into a one-kneed bow, according to the Lakhenran custom. “I bring news. We’ve located the rest of your army!”
My army? Merin thought. “You mean Alethkar’s forces?” he asked.
The messenger nodded eagerly. “We encountered some Veden scouts. Our captain was able to convince them that the fleet is still beneath Veden control, and got news on troop movements from them. The Aleth King is retreating to the east, and King Ahven follows behind, trying to force Alethkar into battle. If the fleet hurries, it can meet with them as they cross the Point of Chomar!”
“That’s only a few day’s sail away,” Kalden whispered eagerly. “Good news indeed, my lord.”
Merin nodded. The kneeling man was still waiting for something. “Good job,” Merin admitted, and saw the man swell with pride. “But you took a great risk in bringing this to me now. The news could have waited until after the storm.”
“There was no danger, my lord,” the man said. “With you in command, none of us need fear the winds. We haven’t lost a single ship to the highstorms since the convoy began!”
Great, Merin thought. “Take your message to the king and his councilors,” Merin said. “Tell him I recommend making for the Point with all haste.”
“Yes, my lord,” the messenger said eagerly, bowing his head then backing away.
Kalden was smiling beside him, his ‘omen’ from before obviously forgotten in the excitement. Kalden’s attitude was not unique—Merin sensed a strong anticipation from both the sailors and the troops. They had spent decades as a conquered people; they were ready to strike against the kingdom that had oppressed them.
Merin shook his head. These were the same men who hadn’t been willing to overthrow a few Veden captains just a few weeks before. What was it about a people that they would turn from slaves to revolutionaries at the beck of a foreign leader? They were the same men now—they must have had the same anger, the same desire for freedom before. They hadn’t been willing to release it until Merin arrived.
I am their symbol, Merin thought. The concept made him uncomfortable, especially when the men continued to whisper about Jezrien’Elin despite Merin’s angered denunciations. This was one fact about which Merin was firm—he might, indeed, be a Windrunner, though he still found the idea strange—but he was no Herald. The men who followed him would receive no divine supernatural protection. They would die just like other men.
And Merin feared that when they did die, they would do so cursing him as a liar.
“What is it?” Kalden asked.
Merin sighed, breathing in the cool, wet wind. “That wasn’t it, Kalden,” he said, realizing for the first time what was making him so apprehensive. “That wasn’t the event I was anticipating.”
“But what else could it be?”
Merin shook his head. The feeling was still there. The messenger’s arrival had been a coincidence—his news, while important, tangential to whatever Merin had sensed on the winds.
What else could it be? Destruction from the highstorm? A hidden threat?
No, it wasn’t an event so . . . tangible. It was something far smaller, yet far more implicative at the same time. Monumentous but small.
And suddenly Merin realized what it was. Perhaps the winds really did whisper to him, or perhaps unconscious intuition led him to the realization. Either way, he immediately recognized the source of his discomfort.
“Renarin!” he said, looking toward the cabins.
Kalden’s surprised question faded behind as Merin turned and dashed in the direction of the ship’s cabins. He burst into the small hallway, then scrambled toward the last door in the row.
It was locked.
“Renarin!” Merin yelled, throwing his weight against the wood. It didn’t budge.
Merin cried out in anger, throwing his hands forward and summoning the winds. Air howled in the hallway, and his wrist burst into flaming agony—the first since his battle on the Nanah docks.
The winds obeyed his unconscious command, slamming against the sturdy door and ripping it free from its hinges. Splinters exploded into the air, and Merin’s ears popped painfully at the sudden pressure in the hallway. The door burst into the room, tumbling and collapsing against the glyph-covered floor.
Renarin stood at the center of the room, in the direct center of the glyph writings. The same patterns extended from him as in the other rooms. Detailed, arcane, foreboding.
The same hole remained in the center of the patterns. The hole Renarin hadn’t been able to fill, despite three tries filling three separate cabins with his insane scribblings. This time it had fallen at the exact center of the room’s floor, and Renarin stood within it.
Renarin turned toward Merin—expectant, yet determined. He held the onyx chip in his fingers. He met Merin’s eyes.
“Renarin, no!” Merin yelled. The air around him writhed as he jumped toward his friend.
He was too slow.
The air fell. Not quiet, but still. Completely motionless, inert and frozen. Renarin gasped sharply, his body and face growing stiff with a sudden jerk, and Merin knew he had done it. The boy had reached toward the onyx, calling to it, no longer just seeing, but influencing—like Merin did when he called the winds.
When Merin commanded the winds, the action brought pain. However, pain wasn’t what Merin saw in his friend’s face at that moment.
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It was fear.
Something reflected back in Renarin’s dark eyes. Even as Merin dashed forward, he caught an indefinable image in those eyes. Its vastness washed over Merin, oppressing him like a brilliant light seen through closed eyelids. It was terrible and awesome at the same time. Despite only sensing a shadowed reflection, Merin knew that whatever Renarin saw, it was too massive—too incredible—for one man’s mind to hold. It was everything. It was enormous. And it was terrible.
Merin caught Renarin as his friend fell backward. Merin gripped the trembling body, watching helplessly as Renarin’s eyes quivered in horror, staring into space at something Merin could barely even sense. Renarin’s mouth opened slightly, as if to scream, yet the whimper that escaped Renarin’s lips was far more terrible than any shout could have been.
And then, Renarin grew stiff, the light of consciousness fading from his eyes.
“No!” Merin screamed, shaking Renarin’s suddenly loose body. “Renarin, don’t go! I need you!”
Renarin’s lips suddenly moved, his eyes burning to life for just a brief moment, locking onto Merin’s face.
“I am the answer!” Renarin hissed with a passionate intensity.
And then Renarin’s life fled. Like a campfire light stirred by the winds, then doused by the same, the flame that was Renarin slipped away. The eyes grew dull again, and while the boy’s body still lived, Merin knew that the mind within was gone. It had been destroyed by the terrible vastness that it had seen but could not comprehend.
Merin lay the limp body—little more than a corpse despite its continued heartbeat—down on the wooden floor, directly in the center of the hole in the glyphpattern. Merin waited through the entire highstorm, ignoring the men that gathered in the hallway, ignoring the howling winds outside, ignoring the bucking ship around him.
The light never returned. Renarin was gone.
chapter 81
Dalenar 9
Hours after the retreat into the Rift, Dalenar’s anger had finally cooled enough for him to admit that his argument with Elhokar had been a terrible mistake.
The Way of Kings Prime Page 89
