Blood and Memory (29 page)

Maegryn brought the stallion to the King. “My lord, please let me saddle him,” he beseeched, fearful of what the proud beast might do.

“Take off the halter. I ride with the child, and bareback.”

Maegryn blinked. He must not contradict the King, even though he knew his leader was wrong. This huge horse was more than capable of killing. But the handler wisely understood that so was his king, and it would be his own neck at the end of a noose if he risked angering Cailech.

“I’ll mount him first, then you’re to remove all restraints,” Cailech instructed.

Maegryn gave the King a leg up and was relieved that the horse protested only slightly. Then it settled. He held his breath and looked toward his sovereign, who nodded. The horseman removed all the tackle and the stallion shook its head at the sense of freedom.

“Leave us,” the King said, and Maegryn departed, albeit reluctantly.

The wet nurse, waiting nearby, was also banished once she had handed Cailech the whimpering bundle she had brought. Once the King was alone, Cailech leaned over, laid his head against the strong neck of the horse, and as he stroked the beast he whispered to it.

“Now you are mine for good. Come, my friend, let us ride together.”

And the man once known as Lothryn, now called Galapek the traitor, took his first unhappy steps as King Cailech’s enchanted four-legged servant.

Watching from the shadows, Rashlyn smiled thinly, admiring his work.

Gueryn lay on the pallet in his dungeon space and faced away from the door. He had adopted this pose since Cailech had seen him fit and returned to his cell. He had spoken to no one in that time. Guards came and went about their business; the dungeoner was a nice enough fellow who regularly changed the straw and brought fresh food and water. He had tried talking with the prisoner, but Gueryn had pointedly refused to respond. Nowadays the man entered and left the cell in silence.

Today was different, though. When the man arrived he walked straight over to Gueryn and prodded him. “Come on, we’ve got orders to exercise you.”

Gueryn stirred. No amount of pride would permit him to resist the opportunity to walk in daylight and breathe fresh air—Cailech had promised neither during his incarceration, so this was quite a development. Obviously the King had paid attention to Gueryn’s threat and was as determined to preserve Gueryn’s life as Gueryn was to end it. Starving himself had not worked. Rashlyn had ordered him force-fed, and the starvation felt worse than dying because his body fought him all the way.

It was more logical, then, to cooperate with food and try a different tactic, for it was now very obvious that Cailech wanted him kept alive, if not comfortable. And so his only protest was silence. They would get nothing from him. More recently he realized that deep down he wanted to live too…if just to hear news of Wyl—if he still lived—and Ylena. He would stay alive and alert until he could somehow contribute toward bringing this Mountain Kingdom down.

Walking, after so long without exercise, sounded easier than it was and it took two men to support him. When they emerged from the dungeon, it was not into broad daylight, as Gueryn had imagined, but into the inkiness of night. An unbelievably beautiful starry sky greeted Gueryn’s return to real life and he inhaled the piercingly cold but most welcome night air and immediately began to cough.

“Take it easy, old man,” one of his aides murmured.

Gueryn growled something unintelligible through the cough.

“What was that?” the mountain man inquired, amused.

“I think he’s telling you your fortune, Myrt,” the man on the other side of Gueryn replied, and laughed.

Gueryn cleared his throat. “I said I’ll knock you senseless next time you call me old.”

Both men laughed and Gueryn chuckled deeply too. It felt suddenly permissible and even rather empowering to share a jest with others, even if they were the enemy.

“How old are you?” Myrt asked.

“Twoscore and five,” he replied, shuffling awkwardly between them.

“Then you’d better start acting like it,” Myrt replied. “The King wants you fit and healthy, not dying in his dungeon.”

“I gathered. How thoughtful of him.”

“Well, now that your wound has fully healed, it’s time you got your body well.”

“I’ll do it, just so that I can enjoy fighting some of you when my chance comes again.”

Myrt chuckled. “That’s the spirit. Can you manage on your own now?”

“Let me try,” Gueryn replied gruffly.

He doubled up to cough again but soon enough was able to totter more freely, if laboriously.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere,” he said to his captors, who smiled back.

“Dyx up there will see to it you have another nasty wound to live through if you try,” Myrt warned, his jaw jutting toward where an archer watched from a higher vantage than they.

Gueryn nodded. They probably knew he hardly had the strength to hold himself upright. In that moment he decided he would work his body hard from now on and would regain his former strength. He had to make himself useful to Morgravia…if only as a rather pitiful and captive spy.

As he passed by the two men on another agonizingly slow round, he heard the name Lothryn and his attention was immediately caught. He circled in a more shallow rotation so he could eavesdrop, turning his head away and casting a blank expression so he did not appear to be listening.

“…so have you see him?”

“No,” Myrt replied. “And he’s not in the dungeon. I’ve checked.”

“So where?”

Gueryn, unable to see the men as he shuffled by again, assumed Myrt must have shrugged.

“Not dead, surely?” the companion queried, bewilderment evident in his tone.

“Loth always warned us that the King is unpredictable. No one, not even Loth, could gauge his moods, but he was the only one who seemed able to talk to Cailech when he was dark of spirit.”

“But they’re so close, as good as brothers,” the man qualified, aghast.

“Loth betrayed us, Byl. Don’t you understand? That’s about the worst sin he could have perpetrated on the King. Cailech demands loyalty above all else.”

His younger, less experienced companion grunted. “Seems odd then that he’s permitted to summarily execute one of our best.”

“They’re the rules. Loth would have known the penalty even as he broke them,” Myrt said unhappily.

Gueryn was thanking his stars for his keen hearing when a third voice broke out of nowhere.

“He’s not dead,” the new voice said, and Gueryn had to work hard to keep his face devoid of all expression as a figure melted out of the shadows.

It was the hideous medicine man who had saved his life but watched with bright eyes as they took Elspyth’s. “He is among you,” Rashlyn said with a trace of glee.

Out of the corner of his eye Gueryn could see both mountain men bristle at the approach of the wild-looking Rashlyn. It seemed only Cailech suffered the fellow gladly.

“I haven’t noticed him,” Myrt replied carefully.

“Oh, indeed you have, you’re just not realizing it,” Rashlyn said, glancing Gueryn’s way and changing the subject. “I see he can walk unaided now.”

Gueryn turned his back and imagined the two men nodding.

“This is good. We need him healthy,” Rashlyn said.

“Why?” Myrt asked, desperately wanting to know more about Lothryn.

“Ah, that I can’t divulge. But your king has plans for him.”

Gueryn felt his stomach clench. He despised the secretive nature of this man.

“Can you get a message to Loth for me?” Myrt asked, ignoring the sorcerer’s evasiveness.

Rashlyn laughed; it was a snigger filled with guile and knowing. “No, I can’t do that. Have you admired the King’s magnificent new stallion, by the way?”

“The best I’ve ever seen,” Myrt agreed, disappointed by the barshi’s lack of interest and annoyed by his irritating leaps from topic to topic.

“And do you know what Galapek means in the old language?”

“No.”

“Perhaps you should learn more of your ancestors’ tongue,” Rashlyn answered, and walked away smiling.

“Now what’s that all supposed to mean?” Byl asked.

“Search me,” Myrt replied. “His mind is as frenzied and unreliable as his appearance. He makes my flesh crawl. Superstitious or not, I don’t know how Cailech can stand him to be near.”

“Looks like our prisoner has had enough,” Byl suggested, noticing that Gueryn had stopped pacing.

“Come on, then,” Myrt called to Gueryn. “Let’s get you back to your cozy guest room.”

Gueryn said nothing more, other than to thank the men for the rare treat of being outside.

“Don’t mention it,” Myrt replied. “We’ll force you to do it each evening until you feel fit again.”

After the men had left, Gueryn allowed his mind to embrace the disturbing nature of what he had overheard from Rashlyn. Myrt and his friend might not have understood the sly message underlying the confusing words of the medicine man but Gueryn was classically trained. His great-grandmother, originally from the Outer Isles of the north, had been married off to a Morgravian noble. Although she had accepted her new life, she never fully relinquished her cultural background, particularly its language, and she had religiously taught it to her daughter, who had in turn instructed her own son.

Gueryn knew all too well what the word “galapek” meant in the old language of the north. It meant traitor! An odd name for a stallion.

He shivered in the damp of his cell and pulled the blanket tighter about him. What was the medicine man implying…that Cailech had named his new stallion after his best friend? Or was it more convoluted than that?

Rashlyn had said Lothryn was alive, roaming among them. And yet neither of those men, presumably friends of Lothryn and close enough to the King to be familiar with him, had seen the courageous mountain man. Yet Rashlyn had sniggered and intimidated about things none of them could understand. What was the link between the horse and Lothryn?

Gueryn drifted off into unhappy sleep pondering this, promising himself he would make more effort to talk with his guards tomorrow night. Now he too wanted to know where Lothryn was.

Meanwhile, in the stable, a man trapped and lost in the powerful shapechanging magic of Rashlyn threw his magnificently sculpted new body angrily against the timber doors of the barn and screamed for deliverance.

Knave could feel the pull of Wyl’s thoughts. He already knew the quickening had happened again and he had startled his companion the night before with a terrible howling. Fynch was far too sharp not to recognize this keening for what it might be. He recalled the last time Knave had made that sound. It gnawed away inside him that Wyl might have died once more and come back to life again—that he was now walking in a new body. But Fynch was too distracted by his own fear to allow that notion to gain too much space in his mind.

They were sitting at the edge of a dense brush on the northern rim of Briavel, known aptly as the Thicket. For most, it was simply the barrier that discouraged any unsuspecting traveler from heading into the famed and sinister Wild. Beyond the Thicket was the small tributary joining the major River Eyle, which all but bisected Morgravia and Briavel. This rivulet, ominously known as the Darkstream, was the only access into the region known as the Wild.

“Are you sure, Knave?” Fynch whispered once again.

The dog nuzzled his face. It was answer enough. Knave would not let anything bad happen to him. As it was, the dog had somehow managed to get them from Baelup to the north of Briavel with dazzling speed. Fynch knew Knave used magic; accepted it now. All that mattered was finding his way to Elysius, and although they had begun using traditional means of travel such as accepting transport with friendly tinkers and merchants, Fynch had soon come to realize that they covered a lot more distance when they traveled alone. It occurred at night, while he slept.

“How do you do it?” he asked his friend, who stared back at him with liquid, dark eyes. “I mean, I curl up with you in one spot and I wake up in another. Do you carry me,” he wondered aloud, scratching gently at the dog’s ears, “or do you just ‘send’ us from one place to another, like I did with Elysius?”

Knave groaned with pleasure. It was the only answer Fynch was going to get. Even he estimated that traveling from Baelup to this northern point in Briavel at the foothills of the Razors should take weeks. They had been traveling for just a few days and were already at the Darkstream’s mouth.

“I guess I shouldn’t put it off any longer,” Fynch said, hoping to find some comfort in the rallying words. Knave nudged him. He wanted Fynch to move. “I’m frightened,” the boy admitted.

He knew the tall tales of the Wild from his mother’s stories. She had terrified him with dark notions of what must happen to the intrepid explorers who took fate in their hands. All travelers choosing to use this tributary had to register, he remembered. It was how the authorities monitored who had gone missing over the years. Fynch felt his legs go watery at the thought. What if he were never seen or heard from again? How would Wyl know where to find his body? What would happen to Valentyna?

Knave growled softly, reminding him to move. Fynch unraveled the thong of Romen’s he had taken to wearing about his own tiny wrist. He tied it now to a branch, casting a prayer to Shar that someone might find it—someone being Wyl—not that Wyl even knew to come looking here!

Fynch took a steadying breath, summoned his courage, and stepped into the Thicket. It was dusk outside, but beneath the tangle of yews it was brooding enough to make the surrounds look and feel as dark as the night. Was it his imagination, or did the branches bend, as if to touch him? He kept his eyes fixed on Knave, who led the way through shrub and foliage with seeming ease. There were no birdcalls, no animal sounds. Not even an insect chirped. The silence was heavy enough to make Fynch curve his shoulders inward and wrap his thin arms about his body. He could hear the rush of the river somewhere nearby, keeping close to their path. He broke into a trot to stay up with Knave, who was pushing them more quickly now.

Fynch suddenly realized he was casting a repetitive thought.
I mean no harm
, he mentally repeated again and again. Perhaps it was his susceptibility to magical elements that convinced Fynch that the Thicket answered him, although he could no more articulate exactly what was said than sprout wings and fly.

After he had cast his mantra for some time, the Thicket no longer felt threatening. The whispers—which was the only way Fynch could describe the sensation—felt increasingly gentle and warm. What had initially struck him as sinister now felt oddly friendly. Leaves softly trailed against his face no matter how agilely he ducked and weaved. With each brush of a leaf or twig, he felt a tingle of something pass through him. There was no time to stop and consider it, though. He was all but running after Knave.

Finally they emerged on the other side. It had felt like it had taken an age to cross from boundary to boundary, yet Fynch understood—now that the weight of the Thicket’s presence had lifted somewhat—that they had traveled barely minutes through the gloomy denseness.

Fynch experienced a curious tingling in his body, but its strange presence was quickly forgotten as his glance fell upon the Darkstream, which had indeed kept them company through the trees, but only now did they see it properly. It did not move as fast as Fynch had suspected, nor was it nearly as wide as it had sounded. It was sinister, though, its waters inky and intimidating. Across a small wooden bridge, surrounded by the first rocky mounds that would become the Razors, stood a hut from which an oddly cheerful column of smoke rose. A path led down to a jetty nearby, attached to which bobbed a trio of small rowboats, neatly tied to wooden poles. It was an unexpectedly comforting scene and yet the gurgle of the deep waters that passed by warned Fynch that this was not a safe place.

Knave walked a few paces across the bridge and then looked back at Fynch. Again the boy became aware of the tingling and realized it was connected to Knave. They were somehow linked via this sensation. Once more his awareness of it was diverted as he gathered that he was supposed to follow the dog across the bridge. He questioned for a moment whether he might be imagining the tingle, for it passed as quickly as it arrived and Fynch was left wondering what his fears were doing to him. He stepped forward, finding grim amusement in the thought that the bridge should yell out “friend or foe?” as it might have done in the old fairy tales. And then behind the door of the hut should be a troll.

He knocked at that same door now. No troll. It was the normal voice of a man, friendly enough, suggesting he was coming as fast as he could.

“Now then,” the man said, pulling open the door, “Shar strike me down, look at the size of that thing.”

“He won’t hurt you, sir. He’s just big,” Fynch reassured, relieved the person was far from threatening and appeared nothing like a troll.

The man looked at him somewhat quizzically. He was pudgy and the action made the flesh of his face pucker in a genial manner. His ruddy complexion only added to Fynch’s notion that this was a good-natured soul who enjoyed a tipple and perhaps some company on the rare occasion it presented itself.

“Come in, then, boy. Your…beast can wait outside.”

“He’s a dog, sir.”

“Whatever he is, don’t dawdle and let the cold air in, child.”

Fynch glanced toward Knave, who had already settled on his haunches. The dog knew what to do, so Fynch followed the man’s large backside into the hut. The smell of soup reminded him that he had not eaten in a long time, despite the freshly killed rabbits Knave had brought to him most evenings. He imagined it was about now that the seemingly friendly soul he sat with would throw him into a cupboard and fatten him up for cooking in the soup pot later. He shook his head free of the silly childhood stories.

“Well, now, lad, what brings you through the Thicket?”

Another deep breath. “I must travel into the Wild, sir. I need to hire one of your boats.”

“I see. And why do you need to do this?”

“Is it by law that I have to answer your questions, sir, no offense meant?” Fynch asked earnestly.

“That you do, son. Without my approval, you’ll be heading straight back through those trees.”

“It was my impression, sir,” Fynch began carefully and seriously, as was his way, “that the Boatkeeper could not refuse anyone to journey on the stream.”

The man sighed and his gray eyes gleamed from deep within his face. “This is true. You are well informed.”

“So you can’t deny me passage?” Fynch qualified.

“Not if you have coin to pay, no. I can, however, do whatever I can think of to dissuade you from the journey, young man. You are so young to be here.”

“I seek someone,” Fynch replied, in answer to the original question.

“Someone lost?”

Fynch nodded. This was not strictly true and he hated to tell lies. Somehow not speaking made it easier to approve the lie.

“Family?”

“Possibly.”

“How old are you?”

“Old enough.”

It was obvious the man did not believe him.“ You understand how perilous this place is, boy?”

“I do. I have my dog to protect me.”

At this, the man laughed. “Priceless. Come and sit by the fire, lad. Let me fetch my ledger.”

Fynch did as he was told, relishing the warmth. “Do you live here alone?” he called to the man, who was rifling through a chest.

“Yes. Have done all my life.”

“No family?”

“Not since my parents took the fever and died.” The man grumbled to himself, looking beneath books and cloths. “Raised myself in the foothills…a traveling monk taught me my letters. He stayed awhile and left when he felt I knew enough to get by.”

“How long have you been the Boatkeeper?”

“I’ve always been the Boatkeeper. Ah, here it is,” he said, blowing dust off the large black book he had pulled from the bottom of the chest. He carried it to a desk. “Can I interest you in a bowl of soup, child? I’ve more than enough for myself.”

Fynch grinned awkwardly. He could use some hot food. “Thank you, sir.” He wondered if it was poisoned, considered that this might be the way the seemingly friendly man entrapped his unwitting guests. He shook his head. He had to stop this.

“Polite one, aren’t you? There’s a bowl on that shelf. Help yourself while I find my place in this book.”

The soup was simple vegetable broth, but it pleased Fynch greatly and it was far from poisonous. He ladled a small bowlful and sat at the rickety table to enjoy it.

“Bread?” the man asked, not looking up.

“This is more than enough.”

The Boatkeeper grunted as if to suggest it was hardly anything. “Right then, lad.” He cleared his throat as he began his official speech, fixing Fynch with a steely gaze. “I am obliged to tell you that the Law of the Wild was set two centuries back or so. Both Morgravia and Briavel agreed upon it. All their peoples have access to the Darkstream, but no rescue parties would ever, have ever, or will ever be sent in search of the missing. They are always presumed dead. Do you understand?”

Fynch looked up from his food, his brow furrowed. “I understand, sir, but if no one ever returns from the Wild, sir, how come you always have boats. They don’t look new to me.”

“A sharp lad you are too—what’s your name?”

It could not hurt, he figured. Celimus was hardly going to check the records out here. “Fynch.”