The Redstar Rising Trilogy

by Rhett C. Bruno

  “Torsten,” Oleander said, clearly irritated. She shook his arm.

  “Yes, Your Grace?” Torsten replied.

  “Did you hear a word I said?”

  “I’m so sorry, Your Grace. I must have missed it. My mind is on the forthcoming battle.”

  Oleander groaned. “Is there a man in this world that isn’t just like my husband?”

  “There is no man like him.”

  “Hey, careful with her or I’ll have your hands!” she snapped at the stablehand who had taken the reins of her horse to walk her behind them. She slapped the young man’s hands, then ran her fingers through the horse’s mane. Torsten couldn’t remember the last time she let her favorite horse out of the royal stables where she kept her locked up and safe like a piece of jewelry.

  “I… I’m so sorry, Your Grace,” the young man stuttered.

  “A light touch, and grace. If I hear a whinny from you pulling her…”

  “You won’t. My apologies.”

  Oleander rolled her eyes and returned to Torsten’s side. “The age of great men is clearly over.”

  Torsten forced a chuckle but didn’t respond. He’d been on the receiving end of her seemingly senseless scorn enough times to know how it felt. He snuck the stable hand a nod of approval before they continued down the Royal Avenue, flanked by Shieldsmen. Mansions belonging to Yarrington’s noblest families stood, nearly all of them for generations, the stone of their foundations hewn from Mount Lister itself. The newest belonged to the reinstated Master of Coin, Yuri Darkings. It was at the end of the row, still partially under construction but even more magnificent than the others.

  Yuri came from a family of no-names who rose up the ranks of the Winde Traders Guild until he was running the accounts. That was the greatness of Liam, he looked beyond established houses to raise men like Yuri and Torsten beyond their station. Now, Yuri had a crew of human laborers constructing the newest wing of his Old Yarrington home, including a giant for a foreman who was busy hefting a wood column as thick as the trunks in the Webbed Woods.

  A giant, yet the Crown could barely entice an experienced group of dwarves to repair the Royal Crypt. He blamed Oleander’s wrath for their lack of respect, but the truth was, it would’ve happened anyway. The people didn’t know all the real reasons behind why she had so many loyal servants hanged and most would fear their rulers regardless. Kings and Queens across Pantego had done far worse and been feared far more.

  Pi had been revived by a miracle of Iam and was greatly revered in the weeks leading up to a coronation barely anyone of worth showed up for. Nothing really changed. In the end, the people were thankful to Iam, not a child-king they barely knew. Oleander could have been the most beloved queen in history, and still, nothing would have changed. Because neither of them was Liam.

  “Forgive me if it is not my place to ask, but do you ever miss him?” Torsten said.

  “Who?” Oleander replied.

  “Liam. I know he didn’t always make your life easy, but…”

  “Of course, I do. Is there a reason you are so interested in my relationship with my late husband?”

  “It’s only that… I was there… at his funeral. The kingdom wept, yet you didn’t even shed a tear.”

  “Do you know how long I spent feeding him? Changing him once he fell ill—probably thanks to one of his dirty, foreign whores? How many times I watched Tessa clean him after he…” She drew a deep, solemn breath, and Torsten wasn’t sure if it was because she was finally stricken by what she’d done to her former handmaiden, or over the memory of Liam. He hoped both.

  “I was waiting for him to die and was relieved when he did,” she went on. “I bid farewell to that man long before his kingdom did.”

  Torsten’s head hung a little lower.

  “I never cared that he took me from my home and my people when I was but a girl because I had never seen a man so mighty,” she said. “It was as if Iam Himself had come to the Drav Cra in the form of a man.”

  “I remember thinking the same thing when I saw him down on the docks as a boy,” Torsten replied. “With his white armor shimmering, wondering how we could both possibly be counted among men. He was like a god.”

  “I hated seeing him so weak. I would miss the way he scolded me for not presenting myself appropriately for an audience or when I failed to produce a worthy heir for so long. By the end, I couldn’t bear to look at him. All I cared about was Pi and him getting healthy again, helping him become even a fraction of the man Liam was.”

  “He seems to be finding his footing.”

  Oleander frowned. “Yes….”

  “My Queen, I know you’re concerned for him; I am too. First, leaving no option but war without even consulting his Council, then allying with Redstar and warlocks. Whatever happened after his body died, it’s as if he feels he is all alone.”

  “It’s the Drav Cra in him,” Oleander said. “In the far North, a boy his age is sent out into the wilderness to survive on his own. To battle the wolves and bitter cold.”

  “He’s half Liam too. I didn’t know our great King at that age—I wasn’t even born—though I’m sure it took him some time to find his way, too. Pi can’t do it alone. You need to try to get through to him while I’m gone.”

  “His father would have broken his neck if he’d talked to him the way he does me.”

  Her horse neighed, and she shot a look back at the stablehand so fierce it could’ve frozen the air between them.

  “May I speak frankly, My Queen?”

  Oleander eyed him from head to toe, then nodded.

  “Don’t push him away,” Torsten said. “Endure his insults. Show him how much you love him. I’ve seen it firsthand the lengths you’re willing to go for the slightest chance at helping him.”

  They were in front of the castle fortifications now. Torsten made sure not to let his gaze stray toward the ramparts, where less than a Dawning ago, the Queen had strung so many up to die.

  Hers, on the other hand, flitted there, and just for the briefest moment, Torsten thought he saw a wave of regret pass like a shadow across her face. A sight he thought impossible.

  “Get him to open up, My Queen,” Torsten said, “so that we may begin to understand what he went through and what’s now going on inside him. If there is one strength within you to which even Liam paled in comparison, it is your undying love for your son. Show him that.”

  Oleander’s features grew hard as she folded her arms. “Do you have no fear, Wearer? Speaking so openly to the Queen Mother?”

  “I have many fears, but there is not one of them I wouldn’t face for this kingdom.”

  Oleander stalked forward, her smoldering blue eyes enough to make a man feel small. Not to mention that with her heels on she was taller even than Torsten.

  “Even me?” she asked. She lay both her hands on his shoulders, her nails clacking against his armor.

  “Anything,” he said, voice shaky. His mind took him back to the night in his chambers when she threw herself at him. To even think of Oleander in that manner made him feel ill, dirty.

  “Then do something for me, my honest Wearer.” She leaned in, her warm breath tickling his ear. “Slaughter those rebels in the name of your king and remind Pantego who his father was. And when you’re finished with him, see to it that Redstar never returns here. I care not how.”

  Torsten backed away, incredulous. “Your Grace?”

  “You know what must be done, so do it. And when you return victorious and free of this blight, I’ll see to it that ours is the only advice my precious boy will care to hear.” She grabbed him by the back and pulled him close. Then, she kissed him on the cheek. “Good luck, my knight.”

  She whipped around, her long, cerulean dress kicking up the powdered snow. “Come boy!” She clapped her hands, and the stablehand allowed her horse to trot to her side. She stroked the magnificent creature’s mane as she sauntered back behind the walls of the Glass Castle. Her guard went with her, not d
aring look at him or mutter under their breath about how close the Queen Mother was with the Wearer of White.

  It confused Torsten as well. When last he left Yarrington, he had been exiled by Oleander in her unchecked fury. When he returned, she was shattered mind and spirit until Pi came back to her. Now, he left in her good graces, somehow knowing that of anyone in the castle with Pi’s ear, she was perhaps the one he could trust the most, the one with the most honest of intentions—protecting him.

  Yet there was no denying what she’d just asked of him. Stabbing Redstar in the back was less than the man deserved but to do so was to betray the will of his king.

  Torsten looked at the statue of Liam in the castle’s entry bailey and remembered how simple things were with him alive. His eyes moved down the line of statues: Remy the Revealer, Tarvin the Fair-Handed, and even King Autlas the First. He wondered if any one of them acted as rashly as King Pi had.

  Then the castle gates closed.

  “Your horse, Sir Unger?” the stablehand offered, returning from the bailey.

  Torsten nodded and waited for the young man to return with his horse, then he rode down through the heart of Yarrington. Wardric met him in the markets, which were simultaneously more crowded and quiet than usual.

  “Did you find what you were looking for in the cathedral?” Wardric asked.

  “Always… and never,” Torsten replied.

  “Sounds about right.” Wardric laughed, then grew stern. “I went to the kid’s home to see if he’d march with us, just like you asked. Sister didn’t even let me through the door.”

  “She’s tough, that woman.”

  “Aren’t they all? At least Rand’s got a better chance of surviving here.”

  Torsten surveyed the market. The people were roused, but none haggled, hawked wares, or exchanged autlas. Instead, they watched as soldiers flocked through open city gates. Mothers embraced their conscripted sons, father’s their wives and young children. They begged Iam for protection and for victory.

  Torsten, like Wardric, knew how many of them would never return. How many would die in the name of Iam and His chosen kingdom?

  “I never thought I’d live to see another war,” Wardric said.

  “Let’s hope this one ends quickly so we can rid our castle of unwanted guests,” Torsten said.

  “I wonder, do you mean the Caleef or them?” He nodded toward the gate. Redstar leaned against the stone in the opening, biting a chunk off a loaf of bread. Beyond him, a group of Drav Cra warriors knelt around the warlock Freydis, her breasts exposed. Her body was covered in white paint, chipped and cracked from the cold. Her head was black except for two streaks of blood under her eyes which dripped down her cheeks and neck. A circle of blood, bright against the snow, was painted over the frozen farmland and in its center stood a goat. Freydis held a knife to its throat; a sacrifice to their Buried Goddess in the name of victory.

  Redstar glanced back, noticed Torsten and Wardric, and smiled while he waved with his bread. Not a care in the world.

  XII

  THE MYSTIC

  Sora gasped awake, her heart racing as she scanned her dark surroundings. The air stank of mildew. Light from the moons filtered in through a circular panel of stained glass, a film of dust covering most of the imagery. She could just barely make out the Iam’s Eye sprawling across it in gold.

  A church?

  She’d only been in Troborough’s chapel, but she recognized the stone walls and glass windows when she saw them. Cobwebs glistened in the faint light, draping from every corner. The memory of the giant spiders in the Webbed Woods gave her a shudder.

  She tried to get a better look around but felt something tight against her wrists. Her arms were stretched taut above her head and spread apart, her feet dangling. She hung from two chains running down from a structure beneath the hipped roof clearly meant to hold a bell. When she stretched her neck to look behind her, she noticed it, a cracked bell on the floor, infested by spiders.

  She whimpered softly.

  She was in a church steeple, abandoned by the look of it. She felt so exposed under the blurred Eye of Iam, still wearing her glittering evening gown, arms and legs bare. She still had the coin purses they’d earned from selling that trader’s silks, which meant whoever did this to her had no interest in money.

  “Help!” she screamed. “Help!”

  “Nobody will ever hear you way up here.” It was the voice of the white-haired man from Tayvada’s house. The harsh accent could only be Breklian, far in the northern portion of the continent, beyond even the Dragon’s Tail and Brotlebir. Traders from the area had passed through Troborough very rarely, but their kind were hard to forget.

  Sora’s head whipped toward him, her skin crawling with fear. He wasn’t there.

  “I’ve waited so very long for you to wake,” he said.

  She felt a hand stroke her back, a cold finger tracing the line of her spine. She shuddered but didn’t give him the benefit of hearing her scream. But she wanted to. More than ever before, she wanted to.

  His voice was bad enough, very harsh consonants hanging in the air like the hiss of a serpent. But his touch... it was like what she felt every time she called upon the powers of Elsewhere, like there was some great evil trying to take her over.

  “Get away from me,” she spat.

  He chuckled. “You will learn to appreciate me.” His tongue ran up the side of her jaw. She wanted to crawl out of her skin.

  “You’re a monster.”

  “That very well may be true.” The man backed away and sat across from her on a moldy barrel. He removed two knives from his bandolier, one being Sora’s. Sora flinched, but he merely set them against each other as if preparing to carve roast duck.

  Sora closed her eyes and focused on Elsewhere, on that haunting feeling she knew so well. The man was right about power coursing through her, just as her old master Wetzel had been, and with all her willpower she begged for it to come to the surface.

  But the wound she’d earlier traced across her hand was sealed and freshly bandaged. Whoever the man was, he knew how to block her.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked.

  “Everything.” Sparks flew out from Sora’s blade as he used the other to start sharpening it. Sora wished more than anything she could summon sparks of her own and burn the floor out from under him.

  “Is this about Whitney?”

  “There you are, mystic. Smart and powerful. When that grotesque little man hired me to kill the thief, he severely underestimated you.”

  “Darkings,” she realized, all her fears coming true. She was right to be afraid of that vengeful wretch. Whitney had calmed her back at the Traders Guild, but she was right. “Is Whitney…” She couldn’t even bring herself to say it.

  “Not until sunrise, unfortunately for me. Darkings wants to make a public show of it, fool that he is, and until the kill is made I cannot touch my quarry. I may ignore many of my order’s doctrines, but the blood pact is sacred. I may neither eat, drink, nor… play, until his life on this plane is over.”

  “Well, you’re wrong. I’m no mystic.”

  “I think I’ll keep this.” He raised Sora’s knife, spun it, then grinned as he stowed it. In the faint light filtering through the stained glass, Sora could see now how young he was despite his white hair, how handsome. Yet beneath all his striking features was menace unlike any she’d seen before. Not even Bliss, with her eight eyes and eight legs, could compare.

  “You are so much more than you know,” he said. “Your blood radiates energy only so few of your people are born with. I could smell it across the city, not like any blood mage or Drav Cra warlock who can’t so much as make a spark without gashing themselves. Tainting themselves.”

  “That’s exactly what I am.”

  “No, you are raw, unfocused power—with a master who either did not see so or was, himself, too weak to properly instruct you.”

  “How do you know about him?” sh
e questioned. The idea of him digging through her mind had her wriggling, desperate to shake free. But her struggle only seemed to entertain him.

  “Relax, my dear. I’m capable of many things but reading minds is not one of them. However, I have walked this plane for a long, long time. I know what it is to see wasted potential.”

  She shook again. “When Whitney breaks free he’s going to kill you!”

  “Kill me? I am beyond life and death, but your friend? He will die. There is no escaping it. Because I must have you.”

  “Please, no. You can take every autla on me and leave, I won’t tell a soul. It’s...it’s enough to buy a ship.”

  “I already have one.” In an instant he was before her, dark eyes piercing her soul. His hands grasped her waist, and he slowly leaned in toward her neck. She turned her head away, but there was nowhere to go.

  “His death is the only way,” he said. Then, hovering there beside her neck, he exhaled into her flesh, his breath cold as freshly fallen snow.

  He backed away, closed his eyes and shivered. His eyelids flickered as if just the scent of her was enough to give him a rush. He licked his lips, and as he did, she noticed fangs as sharp as any dire wolf.

  “What are you?”

  He drew a deep breath to calm himself. “I am Kazimir.”

  “What…”

  “My kind have been called many things throughout the ages. You may know us as fangs, vampires, even some call us undead. I prefer upyr, the name Brekliodad gives us. Call me sentimental.”

  Sora swallowed the lump forming in her throat. Wetzel’s text mentioned the upyr from time to time. Men and women trapped between Pantego and Elsewhere, unable to die, yet not truly alive, thirsting for the blood of man lest they lose their tether to the mortal realm and go insane.

  Most books thought them a myth—or extinct. The terrible feeling in her gut told her he spoke truthfully.

  “You look horrified,” Kazimir said, a trace of disappointment passing across his face. “You have no reason to be afraid. Your blood is too precious for me to waste. For centuries upyr took the mystics as wives, using their blood so they may cross the light at will.”