Chapter 30
30
S TANDING IN A shadowed corner of the tourney yard, Shrive Wryth studied the shining figure of the future king of the Hálendii—and tried to stifle his concerns.
As he pondered his dilemma, he ran a palm over the long silver-white braids tied around his neck like a noose. They marked his status as one of the holy Shriven, as did his gray robe and the tattooed black band over his eyes.
Not that anyone paid him any heed.
Across the yard, a raucous celebration raged.
Ale flowed from a pyramid of tapped barrels. Bards sang of ancient battles and valiant warriors. Minstrels and jesters capered, as drunken as the hundreds of the king’s legionnaires who reveled among the scores of bonfires. All had come out to rejoice in the successful assault on the northern coast of the Klashe.
At the center of it all stood the focus of their adoration, the young man who led that attack, his first foray following his graduation from the Legionary school.
Prince Mikaen still wore his full armor. Its sheen reflected the flames, casting the Hálendiian crest on his breastplate into a fiery blaze. The same Massif family sigil—the sun and crown—was also engraved into the silver mask that covered half his face. He made a striking figure and clearly knew it.
He stood amidst a cadre of Vyrllian Guard. They were the legion’s most elite fighters, battle-hardened with countenances entirely tattooed in crimson, both to mark their blooded status and to strike fear into their enemies. But the nine who kept closest to Mikaen were his personal protectors, the Silvergard. They had altered their appearances, adding black-ink versions of the Massif sigil to their faces, mimicking and honoring the prince.
Chief among the Silvergard was the mountainous Captain Thoryn, who had rescued Mikaen last summer following a savage ax blow to the prince’s face. Despite the best efforts of the kingdom’s healers, Mikaen remained disfigured, a hideous scarring that was hidden behind the shining mask.
Wryth knew it was emblematic of the prince’s spirit. Mikaen celebrated with those around him, showing his half-smile to all, but that merriment never reached the young man’s eyes.
Mikaen remained embittered, which was not unexpected. Yet, that was not all. There remained an ever-growing darkness, a poison that had seemingly seeped into him from that wound and continued to spread. It was a spiteful mix of fury, pride, and ambition. He had no patience for governance or counsel any longer.
Wryth knew Mikaen would never find peace until his twin brother was dead—and maybe not even then.
Still, the prince’s temperament was not what worried Wryth. That slice of an ax had not only scarred the prince, but it had cut the tether that bound the Shrive to the young man. For the entirety of the prince’s life, Wryth had been grooming Mikaen to be a king he could control and wield like a sword. But now Wryth had lost his hold on the prince. Mikaen barely spoke to him, ignoring him even here.
All that effort corrupted by a single blow…
Still, Wryth held out one hope. He watched Mikaen lean toward Thoryn and point toward the gates out of the tourney yard. The prince must have grown tired of feigning jubilance and looked forward to the journey ahead of him. In the morning, he would set off for the rolling plains of the Brau e lands, where his wife’s family—the House of Carcassa—kept a sprawling ranchhold. Lady Myella continued to reside there, kept under guard.
Mikaen was anxious to reach there—not so much to bed his beloved wife, but to visit his twins, a boy and a girl, born three weeks ago. The babes squalled out of their mother’s womb only seven months after the two were married. Few knew of their birth, which was kept secret to disguise the fact that they were conceived before the royal nuptials. No one wanted to risk muddying the bloodline with a rumor of bastards. In another month, the birth of the twins would be announced amidst stories of an early labor.
Still, if Mikaen had his way, he would have already heralded it.
It was what gave Wryth hope. The prince doted on his boy and girl, all but glowing in their presence, effervescent and happy. Wryth hoped the two babes might be the antidote to the corrupting poison. With their birth, Mikaen had a future to protect.
Wryth prayed it led to a steadier temperament.
One I can resume molding.
Wryth contemplated his options and waited until Mikaen left, escorted by his Silvergard. Once they were gone, he turned his back on the festivities and vanished into the darkness.
I still have one last concern to address.
D EEP IN THE labyrinthine bowels below the Shrivenkeep, Wryth stopped before a set of ebonwood doors. Still agitated, he needed a moment to center himself before entering the sacred chamber, the very heart of the Iflelen order, a secret buried underground for seven centuries.
He closed his eyes and gripped his priceless Shriven cryst, a leather bandolier that hung across his chest. It was studded in iron and lined by sealed pouches. It was awarded to those holy men who achieved mastery in both alchymy and religious studies.
The pockets of most Shriven crysts held nothing but charms and sentimental detritus, each pouch intended to memorialize one’s long path to the holy status of a Shrive.
Not so his own cryst.
His fingertips read the symbols burned into the leather. Each of his bless’d pockets hid dark talismans and tokens of black alchymies. Some hid the powdered bones of ancient beasts. Others held phials of powerful elixirs or ampoules of poisons. But the most treasured of all were the scraps of ancient texts scrolled into the tiny pouches, their faded ink indecipherable but hinting at the lost alchymies of the ancients.
Wryth cared little for the here and now. He sensed this world was but a shadow of an older one, a place of immeasurable power. He intended to gain their secrets. No knowledge would be forbidden to him. No brutality too harsh to acquire it.
Especially now.
The Crown was at a pivotal moment, with portents rife and war threatening. In his bones, he knew he was as close as ever to piercing the veil to that ancient font of power. It was why he needed this kingdom—and a prince he could bend to his will.
Otherwise, he held no fealty to Hálendii itself. It was but another realm that would be ground to dust. He had traveled most of the Crown. Born as a slave in the Dominion of Gjoa, hunted across kingdoms and empires, finally schooled on the Island of Tau. His youth was marked by cruelty, abuse, and humiliation.
Even now, after achieving so much, he could still awaken that old pain, to a time when he was at the mercy of so many others. It stoked the cold fire inside him, to never again be under another’s thumb. To ensure that, he intended to let nothing and no one stop him from becoming a formidable force, one more potent than any king.
With that goal in mind, he cast a prayer to the Iflelen’s dark god—Lord ? reyk—for the providence to succeed. Sixty-three years ago, Wryth had bent a knee and joined this order, one that many considered blasphemous and heretical, but such an uncompromising cabal offered him his best chance to realize his ambitions.
And now I lead them.
He opened his eyes and reverently touched the sigil inscribed on the ebonwood door. It was a curled asp crowned by thorns. The horn’d snaken of Lord ? reyk.
More resolute, Wryth pushed open the doors. Before he could cross the threshold, a sharp scream greeted him.
Inside, a gangly-limbed young acolyte—Phenic—struggled with the thin form of a boy enmeshed in a nest of copper tubes and glassine piping. The child was naked, writhing in agony, his chest cleaved open into a window that showed a beating heart and billowing lungs.
The gruff voice of Shrive Keres called out from the center of the chamber. “Wryth! Can you see to that commotion?”
Wryth hurried into the sanctum, a domed chamber carved out of black obsidian.
Ahead, Phenic fought to hold the child in place and looked panicked. “I… I don’t know what went awry. The boy woke and yanked the tubing from his lips.”
Upon reaching them, Wryth slipped a dagger from his belt and slit the child’s throat, stopping the plaintive cries.
Once done, Wryth took a step back and scowled at Phenic. “Do you have another bloodbaerne to replace this one?”
“Y… Yes.” The acolyte waved at the door. “A girl of nine.”
Wryth gripped Phenic’s shoulder. “Take a breath. Set about preparing the girl, and I’ll call for someone to remove the boy. It takes practice to properly seat a bloodbaerne. You’ll learn.”
Phenic bowed, balanced between relief and terror. “Yes, Shrive Wryth. Thank you.”
As the acolyte fled, Wryth crossed to the boy and used his palm to gently close those glassy eyes, offering a silent apology for wasting his life. Another three bloodbaernes continued in the boy’s stead, positioned at the other cardinal points of the chamber. The three young children, asleep and nested within their conduits and tubes, lay with their chests squared open. Bellows rhythmically inflated their small lungs. Their tiny hearts pumped life into the great machine in the center of the obsidian cavern.
Wryth took a moment to study the wonder before him.
A convoluted web of copper tubes and blown-glass tanks bubbled and flowed with arcane alchymicals. The apparatus filled the obsidian chamber, stretching from the floor to the arched roof. It huffed, steamed, and thumped like a living beast.
“Come see this!” Keres urged from the heart of the mechanism.
Concerned, Wryth bowed and twisted his way through the gleaming copper web, aiming toward its center—where a talisman of great significance lay hidden and wired in place, fed by the energies of the bloodbaernes.
To the eye, it appeared to be an ordinary bronze bust of a curly-bearded man. But it was so much more. Its bronze skin roiled with the energies suffusing through it. The finest of its curls and strands of hair waved, as if stirred by invisible winds. Crystal eyes of a violet blue glowed dully, blind to all around it.
The artifact had been discovered two millennia ago, but for centuries, no one truly knew what to make of it, only appreciating its beauty and workmanship. It had been studied, dismissed, until it finally made its way to Azantiia.
Over time, following the guidance found in ancient tomes, the Iflelen had learned how to fuel the artifact and stir it back to life. Still, it had taken centuries to wake the talisman from its slumber and glean what little they could. The head had spoken only four times. Each utterance was cryptic, whispered in a language no one understood. Those four messages were inscribed in the Iflelen’s most sacred texts, waiting to be deciphered.
Upon further study, their order also discovered that the holy talisman produced a strange emanation, not unlike bridle-song. It was as if it were forever calling out to the world. To monitor this keening, the artifact was surrounded by concentric bronze rings, lined by crystal spheres that contained lodestones suspended in oil, which served like hundreds of tiny weathervanes.
Then, last summer, another artifact was discovered—not just a bust, but an entire bronze figure, one that melted to life. Before they could secure it, the treasure was stolen.
Wryth’s hands curled into fists.
So close…
Still, he refused to give up. It was why he had come down here.
Keres waved him to the side, to where a new addition adorned the web, siphoning off a portion of the apparatus’s energy to fuel it. “Something strange is going on. The signal stopped its course and has not moved all day.”
“Show me.”
Keres made room for Wryth. The other Shrive, two decades younger, bore a matching gray robe and tattooed eyes, but exposure to corruptions long ago had flaked his skin, leaving him hairless, unable to grow the braids of most of their order. Many shunned him, but Wryth valued his brilliance.
Keres pointed to a waist-high dais. “Look for yourself and see.”
Atop the table rested a perfect cube of crystal, veined through with copper. At its core, a golden fluid pulsed and undulated. Wires ran from the vast machinery surrounding them to the cube. The artifact had been discovered at the location where the bronze woman had slept, deep in the mines of Chalk.
Another of their cabal—Skerren—a true alchymical genius, had come to believe the cube functioned like a tiny flashburn forge, but one of limitless power. With it, he had engineered a listening device capable of detecting emanations from the stolen bronze woman over a great distance.
Unfortunately, even genius took time.
Above the cube, a crystal sphere hung in a nest of wires that ran down to the pulsing artifact. The sphere was divided into two hemispheres. One had been cast in azure hues, the other in pinkish crimson, representing the Urth’s two halves. Between them circled the green band of the Crown.
Keres pointed to a softly glowing yellow blip far out into the Frozen Wastes. It marked the location of the bronze woman’s emanations. Sometimes it shone brighter; sometimes it was barely discernible.
This morning it had flared so intensely that it had cracked a web of lines into the crystal. It was what had troubled Wryth all day. He feared the listening device might have been damaged.
Wryth leaned closer, noting that the glow had shifted slightly from where the sphere had cracked—but just barely.
“And it settled there?” he asked. “It’s not moved?”
Keres nodded. “Not as of yet.”
Wryth frowned, struggling to understand what had happened. Still, he saw an opportunity. “This may serve us.”
He reached to the sphere and hovered his fingertip over another glow, reddish in hue. It also shone out in the Wastes, only farther to the east. It marked a fleet of craft—three swyftships and one battle barge—that Wryth had dispatched across the ice. Skerren commanded the barge, wielding an instrument that continually emanated the same bronze signal, one that Wryth could track from here. Skerren also carried a fist-sized sphere of lodestones to locally monitor for the bronze woman’s presence—though it could reach only so far.
Months ago, when Skerren had first tested the listening device, it had quickly detected the signal out in the Wastes. The location had made no sense at the time. Even Skerren had thought his calculations might be off. But many lowborn along the Crown’s eastern border had been questioned. Gold and torture soon revealed the truth.
The girl Nyx, along with her allies and the bronze woman, had indeed set off into the Wastes. But no amount of gold or torture could reveal why they had set off on this course.
Regrettably, the enemy had a month’s lead on them. Still, Wryth had the resources of the entire kingdom at hand. Ships had been quickly modified for icy travel and heavily fueled. The hope was to close that distance.
Wryth stared at the glowing yellow blip.
“This may be our best chance to reach them,” he whispered hopefully.
He wished he had a way to communicate with the fleet, to share this knowledge. Before leaving, Skerren had devised a clever method to share information, but it was one-way. The fleet could blink their signaling instrument in a code that could be detected here and deciphered. Skerren had already sent back messages, but they were of no significance or import, mostly just mundane updates.
But now…
Wryth stared at the two blips, growing inexorably closer.
I should be out there.
Initially, he had considered leading the fleet, but Skerren was the expert on tracking that signal. If anything went awry, he was the best one to address any problems.
Plus, Wryth was needed here in Hálendii. With war inevitable, he needed to be close by. Confounding matters, there remained the problem of Prince Kanthe. Mikaen’s twin brother must have washed ashore in the Southern Klashe for a reason.
Some other plot is surely afoot.
Still, Wryth could not look away from the sphere. He glared at the glowing blip in the Frozen Wastes. One quandary above all dominated his thoughts.
What is happening out there?