Chapter 21
Chapter twenty-one
The Lesson
Patience .
Skyre slowed his exhale.
Perception.
His gaze narrowed. Lowering his arms into a steady stance, he leveled the end of the cudgel at his enemy.
Power.
He thrust forward, the cudgel striking the target’s center. The collision vibrated through his hands as the grain sack rattled on its hang.
“Weak.”
“Quiet, priest,” he snarled, but Othrik’s voice wormed into his ear.
“It should have been settled. A more clever king would have known better.”
Skyre’s fists tightened on the wood. “What more could I have done?”
“Your reign has barely begun, and a waif unsettles you.”
“I said be quiet!”
“Skyre,” Medhin whispered. He squeezed shut his stinging eyes. Sweat beaded on his barren skin, yet the cold chewed his flesh like a rooting boar. “Look at me.”
He refused.
“You needn’t worry, my child.” A hand grazed his face. His lips. His throat. “Soon, it will be done.”
“Yes.” Othrik jeered. “Let the water do your work, boy. A man would have buried him with his own hand.”
Skyre, once more, locked his gaze upon the target. He gulped breaths, his mind painted with images of a pale form, bound in burning flame. He shook them away.
“We should have burned the druids long ago. Cleansed the heathens in the eternal fire, in the name of your father—”
Skyre’s fingers cracked against the wood.
“The one true god.”
His nailbeds bled.
“AEon’Righ!”
His grip loosened on the cudgel, but he did not… could not move. The druid stood before him, bathed in moonlight. His silver hair ghostly on a sea of night. Skyre could neither press forwards, nor retreat, as Medhin’s words haunted him.
“The lake will take him. The cold will carry him down. And you’ll be free. The lone flame in all your fury. By full moon’s rise, it’ll all be over, and he in his dark crypt…”
“No…” he murmured. The druid watched him with a boundless gaze.
The man who will live forever.
Skyre staggered. “… he mustn’t…”
You sent him to that grave.
Their voices rose behind him.
“Kill the druid.”
Louder.
“Kill the heathen.”
And louder.
“No, he cannot die!” He spun to face them, his cudgel lashing out.
But the weapon met only air.
Skyre shook, breaths ragged between his lips. The pitch was empty, but one familiar figure stood watching from the gate.
“R… Rask?” His mentor stared back in quiet judgement. “Declare yourself,” demanded the king, but the words were toothless. “Or are you a figment come to haunt me, too?”
“I assure ye, I am flesh and blood.”
Skyre dropped his cudgel, stumbling back. “I’m losing my mind.”
“I begin to question if ever you had it.”
Skyre laughed sharply.
Weak.
“Tell me,” he said, watching the clouds drag across the sky. “How many who enter Loch Luin ever leave it?”
“The number is few. It is said, but six a tenyear.”
“Then it’s true,” lamented Skyre. “I sent him to his burial. I sent the Moon’s Chosen to die.”
Rask came forwards. His weathered face betrayed nothing, yet the king knew the question before he spoke it. “And do you regret it?”
Skyre was still. His mind and heart warred while his body pled. “Should I?”
“Your rule is to be long. You will put many enemies in the ground. What is one small wisp? In a season… in ten, you willnae remember his face.”
“Enemy…” The thought gnawed at him. “He asked me to go.”
“The Moon is a dark force,” said Rask, “and She would send deceivers.”
That’s right. The druid appeared gentle, and that was his weapon. Skyre had wanted to believe him; believe the lies poured forth from those sinful lips. Even now, he could remember the way they looked, wrapped around his voice. Skyre hated them. Wished he could bite into them and make them bleed.
“Weakness.” It wasn’t Othrik’s eerie chant, but Rask’s rasp that drove his feet into the ground. “Men are like beasts. They can smell blood on the air.”
The old warrior walked over to the fallen cudgel.
Picking it up and spinning it straight, he lodged it deep into the sand like a war banner.
“A thousand stabs would end a war, but only a nick need start it. My father was there the night that borne the Black Revolt. The night a king was caught in another man’s bed. ”
Few knew that truth, but in his teachings, Rask had only ever given Skyre honesty, even when the fire dared him not.
Rhon preceded Lach’Dun as divine laird of Cullach. A Vaich that nearly led the kingdom to ruin. In that time—like this one—the south had grown hungry, and with one selfish misstep, Rhon had been drawn into a vicious war.
These days, if you asked the men of the peasantry, they would say Rhon was a fierce king who beat the rabble down. Few realized he was also the flame that brought them to boil.
He’d been bold and made advances on a Lady from Goin Dugh, who told him she was the wife of the laird there.
When he heard she was wedded to that no-good chump, Rhon pursued her violently.
What recourse did such a woman have against a king?
She told her husband, who bellowed it from every rooftop in the tír.
When word reached the ears of the An’Atherin, their recourse was swift.
They polluted the people with stories of false treason, giving them reason to act against the laird in virtue.
And they did—razing Goin Dugh like a plague colony.
With a blood-slicked thong against the back and a sword at the throat, the sect vanquished any idea that their king had acted in the wrong.
But Dunn Kennigh, lying in wait for the feast, had pounced through the opening torn in the fence.
They rose up in revolt, and five years of death followed.
Rask scowled. “Every man shall stand against a storm, but victors are not uprooted by its winds. Indecision is as much a sin as wanton lust and brazen hunger, Skyre. That is why…” He pulled up the cudgel, tossing it to the Vaich, who caught it across his palms.
A single nod towards the target and Skyre took a ready stance again.
“That is why you must be flame,” Rask said. “You must be fury. And with patience…” Skyre gripped tight. “Perception…” He stepped forwards. “And power will you guard yourself.”
Skyre drove the cudgel forwards, and with a thud! the grain sack plunged from its hang, spilling the sand with tawny kernels. Rask nodded with muted approval.
“There are many wars to fight,” said his mentor. “Will you break against your very first?”
A smile teased Skyre’s lips, but seeped away before taking shape. “You have always taught me how to fight against man. Shall now I fight against God?”
“There is only one true god,” said Rask, bracing a hand against his shoulder. “And he chose you as his vessel. Now, go and wash up. We ought prepare for our ride.”
“We go to a funeral,” Skyre muttered.
“Then let the Vaich learn early how to break bread over graves. Come, the wind will sober you up.”
Perhaps that was all he needed. The wind and the run to knock the havoc out of him.
By noon, they had set out from Rhyd-hal on the road to the north. The Augeri and the Luin Cáronach awaited. Skyre left that gate as executioner, and rode, deep into the night, to fell the axe once and for all.