Exile (33 page)

The subsequent silence lasted long enough to send ceaseless thrills of alarm up Draken’s spine. He kept still and stared upward at the passing cliff. The moons showed themselves from behind the banners, and then the wind tautened the black fabric to hide them again. Finally the voice responded. “Who else is in your party?”

“Tyrolean, Captain of the Queen’s Escort, Prince Osias of the Mance, Setia of the Mance, Thom of the Gadye, and Princess Aarinnaie of Brîn.”

You forgot me
, Bruche intoned.

The Brînians above embarked on another lengthy silence. As Draken waited, he stared up at the brightest and biggest of the Seven Eyes, Ma’Vanni. Mother, let them see reason, he prayed. The Eyes hung like glowering orbs of white flame, impervious to the comings and goings of the quick and the dead.

Water sang through the metal gates, sounding like mallets on distant temple bells. It would have been a gentle, soothing song if Draken didn’t still have the echo of challenge ringing in his head. A chain clinked in the current, and Thom dipped his pole to pointlessly feel for the bottom. Horrible, cold silence underlay the soft chime of the water.

Finally the voice replied. “You may pass and a guide will take you to our King.”

“King” again. He and Tyrolean exchanged glances.

Everyone but Aarinnaie flinched at a metallic clank. “The boat-cave gate,” she said.

As she spoke, the noise settled into a rhythmic, dripping echo: chains pulling up the heavy metal gate in the cavern wall.

“We’ve no paddle, and we can’t reach the river-bottom with the pole,” Thom said. “How are we to enter?”

Aarinnaie gave him a wintry look as she got to her feet, her chains clinking. “Just be silent and watch.”

A slick, low wall rose in the river ahead. Water swelled against it, pouring into the cavern. The current didn’t make a swift change, but a gradual pull redirected the course of the drogher. They slid neatly through the cavern wall, under the open maw of the gate, gleaming from a long-established coat of slime.

“Weapons,” Draken muttered.

Osias, his eyes dark as a sea in a storm, nocked an arrow. Their withdrawal of swords was silent as could be, but Aarinnaie cried out, “They’re armed!”

Draken cursed and then grasped her to his chest as they bumped up against the underground dock. “If I go down, she’s going with me.”

“I can swim,” Aarinnaie hissed.

“With a slit throat? I doubt it,” Draken muttered back.

He scanned the men on the dock and thought he located the person in charge, a swarthy fellow whose face had been painted with a sneering visage, a horrible parody of a flirtatious Sohalia mask. He stood in front of his brethren, waiting.

Draken kept firm hold of Aarinnaie, but no one on the dock threatened them or even moved forward as the raft bumped up against the side of a stone pier. Periodic torches burned against the cavern walls, leaving blackened, oily marks and a foul, sooty stench on the air.

“Tie the raft, Thom,” Draken said.

Thom stepped off the raft, rope in hand, and knelt to secure the raft to a rusty ring. No one made an effort to help or hinder them as they made their way onto the dock, a stone ledge cut into the curving wall of the tunnel.

Despite the damp chill near the water, the Brînians’ brawny chests and feet were bare. Sword belts fixed wide-legged trousers about their waists. Their wrists and ankles were stacked with bracelets and their fingers were thick with rings. Every possible feature was pierced: brows, lips, nostrils, ears, nipples.

For a moment, no one spoke. Then the giant with the painted face stepped forward, jingling a little as he walked.

“I will escort you above, my lord.” Akrasian foreign and slow to his tongue, his lips formed each word with such difficulty that all lyricism was stolen from the language. The three rings piercing his upper lip didn’t help matters much.

He paid the princess no mind, but spoke to Draken as if he were the obvious leader. Gazes slipped across Tyrolean and Osias with some interest but no apparent hostility. Perhaps they would be welcomed as guests after all, instead of treated like intruders.

“Put them away,” Draken said, slipping his sword back into its sheath. Tyrolean and Thom followed suit.

But as the five Brînians encircled them and drew their swords, Draken’s back prickled with alarm. “We mean only to return Princess Aarinnaie to her father. This is a diplomatic visit.”

“The guards are for her protection, my lord, and yours.”

Draken nodded, but he wondered about possible threat on this narrow shelf of stone. Up closer, he recognized the features under the paint. “I saw you with Heir Geord at Auwaer. What is your name?”

“Halmar, my lord. If you’ll follow me.”

As they walked along the narrow stone dock, to which all manner of sea-craft were tied, Draken asked Bruche,
What do you think?

I love Brîn and they’re my countrymen. But I rarely trusted one longer than it would take for him to slit my throat,
Bruche said.

He glanced at a large boat, punctured by ten oars, riding low in the water. Chains and lines clinked as water rolled against the stone walls. Draken wondered how deep the cavern went beneath the surface. The black water barely reflected the glimmer of the torches, which filled the cavern with oily smoke. It smelled only slightly stronger than the reek of rotten fish and sweat.

Halmar led the way on the torch-lit stone dock, the jingle of his many chains belying his fierce countenance. Voices died as they approached and other Brînian guards leapt aboard secured boats to make way, riding the sway of the water easily, their dark, suspicious eyes on Draken and his friends.

Halmar stopped and lifted a torch from its bracket. “In here.”

A black man-sized hole had appeared within the rock, flanked by torches, only wide enough for one to pass comfortably. Halmar ducked through the opening without looking back. Draken pushed Aarinnaie in, but he muttered, “Don’t get too far ahead.”

“As if I am in a great hurry to get back to Father.” But her tone wasn’t as sharp as usual.

The floor of the enclosed tunnel sloped up, gradually at first, but within twenty strides it resolved into steps, spiraling ever upward. They climbed for a long enough stretch that Draken felt the strain in his thighs. He wondered if some noxious gas had infiltrated the twisting tunnel. The air certainly smelled bad enough; it was thick with the scent of sweat and body waste. Finally Aarinnaie slowed and allowed Halmar to gain a few steps.

“Go on,” Draken urged her.

She turned to him, still climbing, but reluctantly. “Do not do this, I beg of you.”

Her plaintive tone caught him off guard. “Aarinnaie, we’re nearly there.”

“Will you protect me from him, then? As you protect the others?”

“Go on, Aarinnaie.”

But this belated plea was unnerving. He’d heard fear in her voice before, but not like this. He took a deep breath and determined he would stay calm, no matter how the Brînian Prince taunted or threatened.

The steps ended at the top of the cliff, outdoors, and Draken took a great breath of sea air to cleanse the stink from his lungs. They were in a cliff-side garden, protected by high walls and shrubbery. The winds were cold and damp, but clean and scented with salt-spray. Far beyond, hundreds of horse-strides away, lay gray city walls. They stretched away into darkness, hugging the sea-side cliffs and disappearing into thick woods inland. The city inside glittered with several soft lights, but nothing to indicate how busy it was.

Brîn
, Bruche said.
I never thought to see her again And look there. The Temple Tower. Seakeep. Where we made offerings to the gods.

Closer, on the point of cliff joining the river and the sea, a graystone tower soared into the sky. A great fire burned in a bowl at the top. Scouring Bruche’s memories told Draken all he needed to know of the tower. It was designed for offerings of flame and blood to the God Khellian. Sacrificial slaves were tossed from its peak at High Holy Days and the bodies hauled back up to feed the eternal flame. Draken traced Khellian’s sigil on his forehead before he quite realized he’d done it. He realized it was Bruche’s gesture, not his.

Or maybe partly his. He, too, had prayed for Khellian’s guidance in war and in revenge, but he’d never asked for it by the blood of another.

A small group had gathered at the opposite end. One man stepped forward and spread his arms wide. “Welcome home, child.”

Despite his resolve to stay calm, Draken started violently. He couldn’t yet make out the man’s face, but he knew the voice. Unaccompanied with a whipping, or slights, or cuffs to the ears, but still he knew it. Torches flared, the man took another step, and his face came into view. Lined, changed, grayed.
No.
But even as Draken’s heart denied, his mind confirmed.

Aarinnaie shrank back against Draken, and he unthinkingly tightened his arm around her.

“The Seven Eyes damn me,” Draken whispered in Monoean. “It can’t be.”

Aarinnaie twisted in his grip to stare up at him, but he couldn’t look away from the Prince.

“Why are you here?” Draken felt very cold and flat, but for violent trembling. “
How
are you here? You were a slave, a mercenary—”

Prince Khel twitched, jingling his chains, but he recovered quickly. Dressed in traditional Brînian attire, he was so gilded with moonwrought he glowed in the light of the six moons. “I am no slave. I am King.”

“You’re no King. Nor a prince.” Draken spat, furious. “Not when I knew you.”

The thick, pierced brows dropped. “You lie. I’ve never—”

Draken drew himself up. “Surely you know your own son.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

P
rince Khel smiled. It made a ghastly slash in his dark face. “I sired a few bastards in my time, truth, but—”

“But you only sired one with Monoean royalty. And then you left me, a slaveboy in the King’s house.”

The Prince took a step forward. “It cannot be. I had a son called Drae, once, true, but he died…”

“I did not die. I am here, and I am your son.” Draken drew Seaborn with his ice-cold hand and shoved Aarinnaie out of the way, to Tyrolean. “And I ought to kill you where you stand.”

The clatter of dozens of drawn swords and raised spears answered his draw. But Prince Khel just stared at Draken’s sword. “Gods praised, there she is,” he whispered. “Home again.” He blinked and refocused on Draken’s face. He laughed, gleeful. “In the hands of my son, no less. Truls did it.”

Draken scanned the faces of the sizable, hardened guard contingent. Halmar had gone to stand by his liege, Heir Geord, who bolted closer, armed with a mocking sneer and a curved sword. The Prince raised an arm, and Geord took a step back. But he didn’t relent on his draw. Draken got the sudden sense of how large a threat he’d become to Geord in the past moments. Geord would kill him at the first chance.

“How far back does this plot go?” Draken asked, still holding his sword up, pointed at the Prince. “When did you discover I was here?”

His father’s lips parted. He blinked hard and his gaze skittered. For a long moment, he said nothing. When he did speak, he sounded revelatory, prophetic. “There is no discovery, my son. Only orchestration.”

Draken’s sword tip dropped a little. Bruche caught his hand with a ghostly chill and raised it again. “Orchestration by whom?”

Prince Khel clapped his hands, a sharp sound that jolted through Draken like thunder. “Collect the sword and bind my son.”

“You had my wife killed,” Draken said. “Why?”

“I will take you to ones who have the answers you seek, and more.”

“Right. And that would be?”

“The gods.”

As the Brînian guards advanced, Draken lifted Seaborn, his hands icy with Bruche’s readiness, his heart pumping hatred into his veins. He could fair see Seaborn separating his father from his head, and he knew he could die content. But Elena flicked across his mind. Thank whatever gods were listening she was safe at home in her Bastion. For now. Killing the Prince would be an act of war.

And nigh on a selfish one
, Bruche said.

Draken trembled all over, barely able to fetter his rage.
He killed my wife.

You don’t know it for certain.

Osias spoke. His voice was soft, but it carried well enough to Draken’s ears. “Stay your blade, Draken, and hear me.”

“I’ll take plenty of them with me before I die,” Draken said through tight teeth.

The Prince’s eyes narrowed and his lips curled in a slight smile. Draken realized with a jolt he had his father’s attention, maybe even his respect. For the first time. A pang of longing made him feel sick. Remembering the past was dangerous. No good could come of it.

“You know me,” Osias continued, addressing Prince Khel. “Or of me. I am Prince Osias of the Mance and to quarrel with me is to quarrel with the gods. Your battle is not with me, nor your son, Prince Khel.”

Draken nodded inwardly. Keep the Prince thinking and talking and the longer they could put off the attack of the many eager Brînians around them. But, should he get to thinking too hard, Khel might come up with a worse idea than simply taking them captive. Draken had lived it, when he was the slave boy Drae.

“Why are you here?” Prince Khel asked the Mance. “Why do you protect my son?”

“I think your will is not quite your own, Lord Prince,” Osias said, stepping past Draken. “You can be your own master again. Let me help you.”

“You insult me with the suggestion of enchantment?”

The Brînians tensed all around and Osias spoke quickly. “Not enchantment, my lord, but of mislaid alliance. I’ve long waited for your ear. Forget your petty squabbles over swords and who rules. A greater foe lies in wait for all of Akrasia.”

Prince Khel stared at Osias, eyes hard, expression opaque. Several moments passed. “I would hear more,” he said, and flicked his hand. The Brînian sword points dropped.

“Eidola has a forbidding air of late, does it not? Nothing grows upon the mountains for fear of being trampled by the risen dead.”