Elenai didn’t quite manage to turn away before she saw the result.
No one was left alive. In the time she’d handled one warrior Kyrkenall had killed five.
The leader lay facedown, his dark cloak soaking up blood from a widening puddle. His posture concealed his injury, but there was no missing the gruesome wound on the man whose neck was half lopped, for his head sagged to one side, as if upon a ghastly hinge.
Kyrkenall’s laugh was startling as a nearby lightning strike. At its sound she whirled to find him raising his bloody sword high in salute. He turned, taking in the scene, his peals of laughter giving way to shaking gasps of mad energy.
“You’re certainly thorough.” Elenai was astonished by how loud her voice sounded from her dry throat.
He seemed to see her for the first time. His shoulders heaved as he breathed in and out.
“Shouldn’t we have saved one to question?” she asked.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Um.” Elenai thought again of those frightened brown eyes. She doubted she’d ever stop thinking of them. Could she have captured that woman? “I was worried about the last archer.”
“I had him.” Kyrkenall bent to wipe his blade on the leader’s cloak, and chuckled again, an utterly mirthless sound. “Creep up to the hill’s crest and scout, Squire.” His voice was low and full of forced restraint. “Search with your ring and your sight.”
“What are you going to do?”
Kyrkenall stared down at his hand gripping the bow. It shook. “Try to find my arrows. And my balance.”
Elenai hesitated. More than anything she wanted reassurance. Was he okay? Had she acted rightly? Had she been useful? It didn’t really seem that Kyrkenall had needed her at all, which was astonishing and humbling both.
As she started up the hill she heard the alten chuckling once more, a mad, desperate noise. She felt a chill spread up her back and stiffen her arm hairs.
The stories about Kyrkenall were true, but somehow failed to capture the stunning degree of his prowess and his madness. Had he always been like this, or was it the result of years of warfare? What would she be like after staring into as many faces as he had, dealing death and remembering their eyes? Did he recall them as easily as she could call up that woman’s?
Was that why he was a little crazy?
She struggled to focus on the task at hand, as Asrahn would have told her, and reached the lip of the hill. There could be another one of those monsters just over the rise. Or maybe a reserve cadre of soldiers.
She looked down at the bloody sword in her hand. She hadn’t remembered she was carrying it. Maybe she was going a little crazy herself. And then she looked at her other hand, and the sapphire shining in her palm. It looked so incongruous there against her skin.
She had to pull herself together. Focus.
Kyrkenall had told her to “use the ring.” Very well. She wasn’t sure entirely what he meant, but she had felt the presence of the concealed attackers through it. Maybe she could do the same now, feeling her way into the distance without poking her head above the summit of the hill.
She sent her thoughts toward the ring and tried to peer through the inner world at the same time.
Working with the ring wasn’t quite like using her normal magical skills, and the sapphire certainly wasn’t as powerful as the hearthstone, but touching it with her conscious energy allowed her to sense the strength of nearby life forces. She felt Kyrkenall’s strong, swift heartbeat behind, and was momentarily worried about the other heavy heartbeat nearby until she realized that was his horse, Lyria. No life energy from the dead lingered, and she was glad for that. She’d rather not encounter battlefield remnants.
Lesser life forces, tiny flickering candles, bloomed across the landscape before her. None, though, was anywhere near the power of Kyrkenall or the horse, so she knew they were small animals and insects of the field.
Her senses through the ring didn’t extend very far. Kyrkenall and his mount seemed to be at extreme range. She had no way to know what lay within the tower, or beyond. The important thing was that nothing waited for them close by.
She relinquished her focus on the ring and discovered there was not the slightest fatigue after, as there was when tapping into her own inner sight, nor was there the untangling and utter exhaustion when she used the hearthstone.
An amazing tool. Had Kyrkenall been using his ring when they’d scouted the terrain earlier? Why hadn’t he said anything to her about it?
Because, she told herself, Kyrkenall had other things on his mind. He wasn’t especially focused on teaching her.
Elenai glanced over her shoulder at him, found him dragging the soldiers’ bodies together in a row. Why, she wasn’t sure, but she saw him rooting through their belongings. Probably he searched for the sigils they’d mentioned, or for some other information.
At least he’d stopped laughing.
Elenai dug fingers into a patch of loose soil and liberally smeared cold dirt over her cheeks so there would be no reflection from her skin, then slowly poked her head above the rise.
The ground sloped gently down into a plain. Highlands rose steeply and suddenly to left and right, but flat grassland rolled on for the next half mile, up to a stone fort that filled a level region between the rocky uplands. From her vantage point she saw a few thatched roofs surrounded by a wooden stockade a quarter mile west of the wall, near the tree line. Wispy gray smoke rose from one rectangular chimney.
The long low buildings within the stone fort, though, looked neglected and abandoned. Climbing above all was a round, narrow tower, pale and stark, flying a ragged red flag with a white diagonal slash.
The tower she’d stolen from Cargen’s memory. Irion had to be hidden somewhere inside.
6
The Emptied Tomb
At dawn, Rylin wakened in his bed in the Altenerai wing of the palace. Still sleep-fogged, he half expected some leggy beauty to be lying beside him, but a turn of his head showed him he was alone.
He’d anticipated nights of revelry and several days of languid comforts, but then the news came in: Asrahn had drowned in the Idris. The shock still reverberated dully in his mind. The whole of the city continued celebrating N’lahr’s great victory, but the Altenerai Corps was in mourning, even without an official declaration.
Rylin rubbed his eyes to clear them. Back when he and Lasren were cocky second years—stupid, really—he used to mock Asrahn as a humorless has-been, drilling them endlessly from lack of imagination more than necessity. But he’d warmed to the master’s method after Asrahn put him in the dirt three times in succession, despite all the energy and bravado Rylin could muster for the sparring exercise. He recalled Asrahn helping him to his feet, each time calmly but clearly explaining to the assembly what Rylin had done well and how it could be countered. Others received the exact same treatment.
And they got better, or they got out, all with little direct advice from the famously stoic Master of Squires. Asrahn had been an unassuming but inspired instructor who worked tirelessly to pull the best from each of his trainees for the corps he loved. He was the only master most of them, including Altenerai, had ever known. There’d be no replacing him anytime soon. In speaking with Lasren last night, they agreed that Gyldara would try, but Rylin took less pleasure in the thought than did his friend, who joked she’d be a lot nicer for the squires to look at.
He sat up in bed and the sheets slipped down his chest. Today didn’t seem likely to be better than the one preceding. Meetings to divvy up newly vacant duties would be the least of his headaches. The expensive bottle of spirits he’d purchased for N’lahrin festivities remained unopened near the empty glasses he’d staged on his bedside table. He would have to remember to bring it to Asrahn’s remembrance ceremony after the funeral. He frowned. If he’d known he’d never see the Master of Squires alive again, last week he would have given him something at least as nice. Asrahn had quietly handled so much around here that it too
k ten in his absence to do little more than keep the place from falling into chaos.
It didn’t help that three additional Altenerai, a squire, and two members of the Mage Auxiliary had disappeared. Speculation was running rampant through the barracks. Kyrkenall, of course, hadn’t been expected to hang around long, though no one had foreseen his graceless exit from the tombside ceremonies with Squire Elenai. Lasren asserted with undisguised jealousy that the mad archer had gathered the others for a grand adventure that would cover them all in glory. Heading out without so much as a by-your-leave or an explanatory note was entirely in keeping with Kyrkenall’s character, as far as Rylin could ascertain, but it hadn’t impressed most of his fellow officers, who’d led search parties in increasingly wide patrols to hunt for signs of him and the others. So far they’d found nothing. And Rylin couldn’t shake the sense that this was no lark.
As he was considering how best to order the day, a bugle call rent the air. By the time the notes sounded a second time, Rylin was out of bed and pulling on his undergarments. He pushed the curtains apart, wincing at the stab of sunlight as he rooted quickly through the pile of clothes by the nightstand. In moments he was wearing his dark uniform pants.
An immediate summons. It might mean anything from a decision on the new Master of Squires to word of some new Naor invasion. It probably concerned the missing, though. Whatever the cause, all Altenerai would report to the hall without delay.
He grabbed his shirt, sniffed it quickly and discovered it decidedly unfresh, then dropped it to the floor and threw open his wardrobe. There wasn’t a good shirt clean. Between the mourning, the disruptions, and the reveling, routine tasks went unaccomplished by the civilian help and squires alike. All that was left him was that blue bit with the ripped collar. He stepped back, frowning, then pushed into the outer chamber.
The Altenerai maintained a suite of rooms on the second floor of their palace wing. Like most, Rylin’s apartment consisted of a bedroom, a lounge, and a small office, and featured lofty ceilings, black marble fireplaces, and heavy wooden furniture generations old. Rylin strode barefoot through the open balcony doors, stepped past the wrought-iron cooking stove and utensils stacked on a table beside it, and grabbed the white silk shirt he’d tossed out four days ago. There’d be no getting that immense wine stain out of the front, and he’d thought it might be useful as a rag. But its collar was clean, and it smelled fine owing to all the rinsing he’d done in a futile effort to save it. He hooked it closed as he headed back inside.
He peered at himself in the bronze mirror. Not too bad. His eyes looked a bit puffy. He could use a shave, but that would have to wait.
An immediate summons didn’t leave him much time, but he dared not turn up looking like he’d just fallen out of bed, so he ran a brush through short dark hair, scrubbed teeth and face, then pulled on his khalat, socks, boots, sword belt, etc., and headed out. As he turned into the hall, Lasren was closing his own door, and he heard a woman call out from inside: “Strike as one!” The last word of the Altenerai battle cry was dulled as the door fell shut.
The full line, from an ancient play about the war with kobalin for the arid realm of Ekhem, was “when one of us has struck a blow, we have struck as one.” It had worked its way into countless speeches and the most rousing of the corps songs. He’d even heard N’lahr himself shout it before leading a cavalry charge. Apparently the somber atmosphere hadn’t fully dampened Lasren’s ability to enjoy life’s pleasures.
His friend grinned at him and pushed black hair back from his widow’s peak.
“Who was that?” Rylin asked.
“I think her name’s Lasren,” his friend answered. “At least, that’s the name she kept moaning last night.” He fell in step beside Rylin as they headed down the shadowy hall, their boots beating a rhythm on the tile floors.
Rylin’s eyes shifted to the doors on their left and right. Few Altenerai occupied their rooms regularly, as most were away from Darassus. “Are we the only ones in the suites this morning?”
“Yes, unless Cargen and K’narr have turned up.”
“I figured that was what the summons was about.”
“I hope it’s something we can act on this time.”
Rylin hoped the same. He might have earned the right to wear the ring, but he’d yet to accomplish anything heroic. By the time Kyrkenall and N’lahr had won their rings they’d already played a crucial role in a dozen engagements, and by the time they’d served for three years like him, the enemy could be panicked just by mentioning their names. He was fairly certain no Naor or kobalin had even heard of Rylin Corimel.
They reached the first floor and passed from the Altenerai wing into the main palace. The display of banners and paintings depicting famous moments from corps history continued on for several hundred paces, ending with the life-size bronze statue of a stern, sharp-nosed woman in interlinked scale armor. Her high brow was crowned with a circlet. One hand clasped the hilt of an unsheathed sword, the other was pressed to her chest in salute.
According to custom, Rylin and Lasren stopped to return the gesture, for this was the statue of Queen Altenera, founder of the corps. Thirteen hundred years before, she had led the strongest people of Darassus into battle against a kobalin horde, afterward establishing a permanent institution to train soldiers and hone the most gifted to serve and protect the realms.
Not for the first time, Rylin wondered what it would have been like to serve under so active a monarch, wistfully thinking he might have been better suited to live in earlier days. Back then there had been constant action and a lot less paperwork.
As one, he and Lasren finished their salute and pressed open the dark paneled doors that Altenera’s tribute guarded.
The thrill on entering the venerable Altenerai council chamber remained, even after three years, and Rylin smiled a little as he breathed in the scent of dark paneled wood that adorned the six walls. His gaze swept to the lofty white vaulted ceiling, pierced with semicircular windows now aglow with morning light. Stained glass scenes below the dome depicted each of the five realms to either side of a white glazed pane adorned with the slim silver crown of Altenara suspended above a shining sapphire, opposite the door. To the right were the artistically rendered green fields of Erymyr punctuated by the domes of Darassus shining beneath cerulean skies. To its left were the forested mountains of The Fragments. The dunes and palm-lined central river of Ekhem shone brightly farther left. Behind him, he knew, other windows featured the mesas of Arappa and the plains of Kanesh.
In the center of the blue-and-gray chevron-patterned flooring stood the famed hexagonal table, four chairs to each side but that beneath the image of the crown, which only held three. Here the Altenerai had gathered for long centuries to conduct their most important meetings.
And he, Rylin, had earned a place in their number. If he’d yet to achieve greatness, he’d at least come farther than most.
Today the table was empty save for two veterans, Decrin and Tretton, sitting in close conversation.
Rylin stepped up to his chair and found the familiar worn spot in the polished wood where generations of Altenerai had grasped it in the same place. Like the table itself, the chair was scuffed and notched, and handsomely crafted with archaic flourishes and snarling beast faces.
Even Lasren wasn’t entirely immune to the overwhelming press of history, for he’d fallen quiet, striding past Rylin without a word. Rylin would have preferred to sit directly beside his friend, but the chair between them had to remain empty until such a time as a trio of Altenerai voted Kalandra dead, and not simply missing. Rylin had known the gifted alten during his early squire days in the war, so he understood the reluctance—but seven years was too long.
There were twenty-two Altenerai posts in all. With Kalandra officially missing and eight vacancies that hadn’t been filled, not to mention three who almost never turned up, the chamber was more than half-empty most of the time. The queen attended only rarely, and as usual her
chair, directly beneath the symbol of the crown, was unoccupied. Rylin’s eyes drifted to the seat left of the queen’s, reserved for the Master of Squires. It was like staring up into the night sky and noticing the moon had vanished.
Rylin tightened his lips and nodded to Decrin and Tretton. They returned the gesture before resuming their talk.
Tretton held himself stiffly, radiating icy control. Areas of gray were prominent in his short, dark hair, and almost completely dominated his spade beard and mustache. His black skin was weathered by long days in the sun. For all that he appeared as fierce and implacable as ever, his gaze still seemed a little hollow. Tretton had come up through the ranks only a few years after the Master of Squires, and the two had been close. The loss would perhaps have been less jarring if it occurred in the line of duty.
Decrin was of a younger generation than Tretton, though a seasoned soldier with almost two decades of experience. He was also the largest alten in active service, a huge, fit man whose uniform was tight over his broad chest as he flourished his arms to make whatever point he now emphasized to Tretton. Olive skinned with curling brown hair, he, like Tretton, was native of Ekhem. Though most of the veteran Altenerai maintained a somewhat formal distance with the newer ranked—and Rylin had never decided if it was deliberately affected or the result of their combat experience—Decrin seemed never to have met a stranger and was always ready with a warm word or a friendly smile. But today he seemed as solemn as his companion.
As neither was inclined to invite him to join their conversation, Rylin looked away, his gaze drifting over the rest of the room.
There were four double doors into the chamber, and only the one Rylin and Lasren had entered by saw regular use. It opened wide again as Commander Denaven himself pushed through. Rylin rose with the others, open palm to his heart.
Denaven returned the salute crisply as he strode for his chair, to the right of the queen’s. “At ease.”
For the Killing of Kings Page 12
