Chapter 31 #2
“The gods love human children,” Lavellin explains.
It taps its fingers against a small patch of unburnt skin on the back of its hand, frantic and pulsing.
“They crave them, because humans turned their backs on worship. So… we take your young and deliver them to the gods once a year. In return, they bless us with multiple magics. They do what they will with the children. Then we send them back over the border. Alive but…changed.”
The locks of Bassen’s pillory rattle when she speaks, looking up through the falling tendrils of her brown hair.
“How could they do that?” She takes a step forward and Torver follows the movement. “They’re children, Lavellin.”
Its eyes rim red as more tears fall.
“Do you not think I know that?” It sniffs loudly. It wipes its face with the back of its burnt hand, wincing viciously.
Torver holds his breath.
“But the stolen children weren’t changed at all.
” It looks up finally and meets Torver’s furious gaze.
“They were doubled. Their souls were split by the gods for whatever holy reason they don’t deign to share with us.
They double their sacrifices, presumably gaining something from the process—who are we to question the gods?
—and they give them back. I thought the children were changed and we sent them home, but Eveling… ”
“Eveling?” Torver presses.
Lavellin drags in a breath. “Eveling was sending the copies back home and keeping the children that had been taken. To build an army of expendables. Wearing the enemy down before the fae warriors attacked.”
Bassen hisses. “You said!” Her pillory clanks. “You said that the fae army was small!”
“I thought it was!”
“Not when it’s padded out with human children!” she roars.
Torver’s head shakes from side to side, exhaling at last, and he can feel his own horror being reflected back at him through his bond with Beast. The emotions circle between them.
“There’s been whispers of changelings in my Kingdom for centuries.” Dunmail twirls his dagger expertly in his hand. “Just think—how many children is that? How many of them grew up in the dungeons of the Rath? How many old men languish in Rheged, having never known another life?”
Torver knows what Dunmail is doing, but that doesn’t stop it from working. He feels sick.
Lavellin closes its eyes for a short eternity. When they open again, it continues in a shaky voice.
“This year,” Lavellin says. “Eveling wanted me to do the God Rite. To deliver the stolen children to the temple. I’m the heir, after all, and when Eveling’s long life ends, I will rule Rheged… Or at least I would have, if not for these.”
It brushes its fingers over its scars again, its marks of disgrace.
“It finally told me the truth.” Lavellin swallows hard before continuing, “It expected me to be as cruel and hard as my sire. It expected I would be happy when it revealed its plans to invade the human Kingdom. How with its inflated army, the magics of the gods, and the Beast of legend, we would be unstoppable! How Eveling and its line would take over all of Hen Ogledd. But I was horrified. We fought. I stole away to the dungeons of the Rath. The secret caves beneath. And I let the army of stolen humans go. I told them how to get to the border, how to breach it, how…”
The briefest flicker of hope sparks inside the deepest part of Torver. The palms of his hands sting where his nails dig in.
Lavellin’s hands come together in front of it.
“But…”
Torver inhales.
“Eveling killed them.” Lavellin’s voice is flat and bleak. It stares straight ahead. “It ordered soldiers to chase down and kill every single one, because I tried to free them. It preferred that they die than make it back over the border. Back home.”
Lavellin’s face contorts in pain, tears spilling from its red-rimmed eyes.
“So, my sire declared me disgraced, marked me, and banished me,” it cries. “But I managed to flee south, into the Kingdom that the children had come from and that’s… where I met you.”
Lavellin’s lips press together softly. It looks at Torver like he is the world, like it needs him.
“I’d already been told of the invasion before I was disgraced and I thought if I could prevent it… that might make up for causing the death of all those people. Those children. Slain by Eveling’s sword, because of me.”
And Torver recalls the only other time he has seen its eyes like this, lined in red, the pale opals of its irises bright and glittering—the night, he realises, it had almost told him about the stolen children.
When he’d been distracted by the sight of its distress.
The first night he chose to hold its hand, when he’d slept with it curled against his chest.
“Torver, I’m so sorry,” it chokes.
Dunmail steps forward, once more using his smoke to take hold of the fae whose tears litter the ground.
Torver’s pulse stutters and he feels Bassen tense beside him. Her body is as rigid with horror as his.
“So now you know what I know,” Dunmail says, voice slick with reproach, stepping towards Torver casually. As if they are on the same side of this. “Just awful, isn’t it? Think of all those poor children.”
Dunmail leans in so the breath of his words caresses the shell of Torver’s ear.
“All those poor mothers…”
With that, he brings Lavellin close to the edge of the cage with his smoke, holds his dagger with two hands.
Torver’s trembling hands grow damp with sweat. Bassen reaches for his shoulder but her pillory knocks him hard, jolting him. They share a look and in the pit of his clenched body, Torver thinks it might finally be time.
“I think the life of the fae heir would be a fair exchange for all those innocent children,” Dunmail says. “Wouldn’t you agree, dragon rider?”
The Forever King’s powerful arms shift, ready to bring the knife down into the centre of Lavellin’s chest.
The chest Torver had spent so many nights sleeping on—the heart inside it that he wants for his own even despite its deceptions; all the reasons he shouldn’t.
And he knows that it’s time.
NOW!
Torver screams the command through the bond.
Dunmail is thrown to the floor as the palatial hall, the castle itself, shakes and the stones of the wall behind them splinter as if made of driftwood.
Beast roars and her smoking spittle rains down in a vengeful shower as she bursts into the chamber. Her gait is uneven on her injured leg, her stalking slow and measured like a prowling wolf with a herdwick in sight.
‘You.” Dunmail’s face slacks as he stares down the creature he had slaughtered.
The creature whose death had granted him immortality, a kingdom to rule forever from the shadows. Whose body he had watched rot, who had been reduced to porous bone by the ages, while he lived on.
The same creature roars in his face, the force of her breath scattering the dust from the shattered walls.
Glittering motes skitter in the air as Dunmail’s hand tightens on his dagger, as he sprints towards his wooden throne. He casts smoke as he goes, but Beast dissipates the black wisps with a jet of dragonfire that heats the room to a fever pitch.
If a dragon can grin, Torver can feel that she is doing it now as she stalks towards Dunmail, shoulders rolling, scales rustlings. She’s going to do this slow, going to enjoy it. He doesn’t want to delay her but—
Lavellin! Get Lavellin out of that cage!
Beast reluctantly tears her gaze from the man who cost her a thousand years. The man who cost the riders who lived and died without their holy bond.
Dunmail casts fire and smoke, calls gusts from the air—every magic of which he seems to be capable. But instead of fighting back, Beast obeys her master.
She uses her claws to rip apart Lavellin’s cage and Dunmail dares to take this as an acquiescence.
He relaxes, sauntering through the room towards his ornate dais.
Torver ignores him and rushes to the bent iron bars. Lavellin collapses into his arms and Torver is delirious with relief, breathing in the scent of its hair, touching it softly where it isn’t burned.
“You saved me,” Lavellin sobs into Torver’s still-bare torso.
Where their skin touches, it’s warm, and Lavellin’s voice is muffled against his collarbones. He holds it while Bassen rushes forward towards the dais, her rowanwood restraints knocking heavily.
“Oh, stop it, deathmancer!” Dunmail laughs coyly. “I told you, it tickles!”
Bassen growls in fury. The air grows chill, then cold, then icy, but nothing happens to the Forever King, cackling as he reclines in his wooden throne. His confidence seems to inflate by the second.
“It’s the rowanwood, Bassen,” Lavellin grits out, before it releases Torver and stands, shaky but tall. “No matter how hard you try, your magic is sedated inside you in its presence. He knows what he’s doing.”
Lavellin turns to face the King of its enemy Kingdom. Its narrowed eyes are defiant. Bassen scoffs a frustrated sound and the temperature of the room drops again.
“This can’t be right. How can I never have come into contact with rowanwood?” Bassen’s voice is laced with fury. “Those trees are everywhere.”
“Those young trees are everywhere,” Dunmail corrects, half-laughing, half-snarling. “Why do you think I banned the old language? Too much knowledge in it. You don’t know half of what there is!”
The words hang in the air like the dust of the shattered walls.
“It takes aged rowanwood,” Lavellin’s voice is solemn.
“The most aged rowanwood in the Kingdom,” Dunmail says proudly, running his fingers along carved arms of his throne.
“I carved this throne myself, when I was still a prince. All that time ago. Even if I hadn’t conjured you that lovely necklace…
I’d still be safe as long as I’m sat right here.
” He taps the wood with the end of his bejewelled finger.
“You’re smug,” Torver frowns. “Like you think you’ve won.”
Dunmail tilts his head slightly.
“You forget,” Torver says. “That she isn’t the only one here with the power to kill you.”
Dunmail’s eyes widen a fraction, he swallows.
“You’re not going to kill me, rider,” he says. But his voice is thin suddenly. As if he’s no longer entirely sure. “You only came here to rescue Eveling’s whelp and I’ve shown you that you can’t trust—”
Bassen stands next to him on one side, Lavellin on the other.
“That’s rather personal, my liege,” Torver chides. “I suspect me and Lavellin will sort that out in our own time.”
Dunmail pales, his eyes searching the cavernous room. He shouts hoarsely for Eskett, for Irton, for Thwaite and Lineth.
“You think if your Meddera were still alive, we would have gotten in here?” Torver asks.
Beast jostles behind him, her muscles tensing. The bond between them is straining with her desire for vengeance.
The Forever King inhales. His eyes dart between the gods-sent dragon whose fangs are dripping onto the marble, and the man in front of him.
The nobody from the north. Unregistered, magicless. Once stupid—but not anymore.
Dunmail rises from his throne.
His face is gaunt and pallid as he realises the severity of his situation. He has none of his enchanted weapons, his Meddera are dead. He is alone.
Slowly, licking his crooked teeth, the Forever King drops to his knees.
Torver tastes the power as if it sits on his tongue.
Dunmail removes the gold and ruby crown from his head. He examines it for a second.
Then, he offers it to Torver on hands splayed like platters.
“Is this what you want?” Dunmail’s voice is quiet. “To be a king? A god?”
Torver clacks his teeth together.
“You can have it.” Dunmail tightens his jaw until it looks like it hurts. He holds his crown higher—an offering in exchange for his life. The Forever King resplendent in defeat. “Torver, the Dragon King.”
Torver steps back. Blinks. The crown reflects the light even through the dust hanging in the air.
“It’s all yours,” Dunmail grinds out. “If you want it.”
There is a silence.
Before Torver shakes his head.
“All I wanted was to go home to the Mere,” he spits.
Beast’s mind bristles inside his, asking him—begging him.
He pulls Lavellin into his embrace and it twines its arms around him. He burns with all that’s inside him.
“It’s not about what I want anymore,” Torver says at last.
He locks eyes with his dragon.
He’s all yours, Beast.
As if sensing the end drawing near, Dunmail bursts from his throne. A final attempt.
His dagger cuts through the air as he launches it at Beast, roaring a battle cry that cracks the air. His eyes are wide, crazed with the mania of a thousand years lived in the shadows. Smoke and fire gush from Dunmail’s hands splayed open like claws as he launches attack after desperate attack.
But Beast will not be slain again.
Blinding light and the searing heat of dragonfire fills the room.
King Dunmail screams when the fire first hits him. He screams and thrashes until his throat is burned away. His charred body sinks to its knees, then slumps forward, convulsing.
With the sound of charcoal and smouldering flesh splattering on the marble—Dunmail comes to rest.
The room is silent but for Beast’s satisfied growl.
“No gods, no kings,” Bassen declares.
“No gods, no kings,” Tover replies.