The Broken Realm Read online

  Law didn’t look convinced, but he nodded. “You’ll be famished after that run, and I’ve some business with Steward Rutland. Shall we?”

  * * *

  They were housed in the old keep. The new one, so grand it could be seen from the sea, much like old Drummond, had been built under Erran’s grandfather. The castle, as they called it, was so grand, it was, Darrick thought, a vision of what a court under a competent and princely king should represent. Not the crumbling, grimy rocks of Duncarrow and a castle devoid of light and joy.

  But the smaller keep, nestled back toward where the forest began, was no beggar’s quarter. It was here that Erran’s wife, Mariel, tended to the men who streamed in from nearby towns and villages, sick, destitute, or simply without name or aim. She had a tender heart, one Erran rightly chose to let loose upon those who could most benefit. He’d gifted her the keep after she was finished bearing children, and it had become her new child. One of her daughters, Agnes, aided her. Agnes would not have a family of her own. The hunch in her back decided things. Many of the maids tending the lost souls in the old keep were daughters unfit for the marriage bed.

  Although Darrick came and went, for his daily exercises and sunshine—Godfrey, he was known by, when others asked for a name—his quarters were separate from the others. While most men languished in rows of cots, he and Ryan had a private room on the top floor. He assured the men that he needed no special treatment, but they insisted it was less for his station and more for safety. A false name was not enough protection against prying eyes and curious questions. Mariel’s patients were transient; it would be nigh impossible to control the spread of information if one came upon even a whisper of the truth.

  Law had left him at the entrance to the keep. Darrick continued on inside, flashing kind smiles at the ladies who bustled about with their pails and rags. He wound up the stairs at the back, leaving the noise and bustle of the infirmary below behind. By the time he reached the door to his room, there were no sounds at all, save the low rumble of snores from Hamish Strong, perched at the bedside of his son.

  Hamish stuttered back to life. He wiped the drool with the back of his meaty hand, struggling to regain his bearings.

  “Don’t trouble yourself, Steward Strong. You need your sleep. Guardians know, you’ve had enough stolen already.”

  “Oh, aye, uh, I dinnae need sleep, your... Prince Darrick. I jus’, ye see—”

  “It’s all right. When have you eaten last?”

  Hamish exhaled. “Oh, aye, I dinnae. But dinnae fuss yerself, sire.” His belly jiggled when he gave it a hard pat. “Reserves to spare.”

  Darrick smiled. “None the same, I can sit with him for a spell while you find some food.”

  “Oh, I donnae know, he’s my son and my responsibility.”

  “And he’s my friend and brother. It would be my honor.”

  Hamish flushed purple. He bowed his head and used the bed to help him stand. “If ye say it is so, well, I cannae argue against brotherhood. I willnae be long.”

  “Take the time you need. Grab a better sleep than the chair can offer you, too, if you wish. I’ll not leave him, Hamish.”

  Hamish nodded. As he left, he muttered something that sounded like, good lad. Darrick smiled.

  When he was gone, Darrick settled into the chair left warm by Hamish’s large frame. He looked down upon Ryan, who had never before seemed so at peace. He didn’t appear to be sleeping, or even dead, only completely, serenely still. There was color in his face, but it was a false hope, for he’d lost mass since arriving in Whitecliffe, not gained it. Darrick felt if he traced his finger over his cheekbone, it would feel sharp and uninviting.

  “Just us again. I daresay that I never foresaw a day where I’d miss your crazed ranting, but here we are, and here I am, missing it all the same.”

  Ryan gave no sign he knew Darrick was there. No twitch of understanding. He hadn’t expected one, but he’d nonetheless held to the hope that this time might be different.

  Darrick’s memory of their escape from the Wastelands had not been fully restored to him. Once they’d taken the herbs, a strange dizziness had come upon him and his next recollection was of jostling around in the back of a wagon. The decaying stench of moldy wood, mixed with the lingering remnants of rotting cabbage. Something wet, sticky, pressed against his cheek. Days, it must have been. Days lost. From what he knew of the herb, meant to bring a man near death but just shy of it, he might never possess knowledge of the events following their “death.” Of how they came to be escorted out of the wretched lands that would have killed them, had they not found another way to use death to their advantage. He’d whispered for Ryan, with no response. He’d even called him Andy in his delirium.

  When he was next conscious, he was no longer being jostled along an uneven road, but was still, lying against something unrecognizable at first. Fresh linens. Behind his head was a pillow; a real pillow, not straw bundled together. He heard voices; men he didn’t know. A strong smell. Bone broth, he’d learn later, when a young woman ladled the hot relief into his mouth.

  You are safe. Be well.

  He remembered those words. So curious. Did she know who he was? Or was it simply something she said to all the men she tended? You are safe. Be well.

  “Who are you?” were his first words spoken. The bustle of energy in the room shifted, and all the voices from before swarmed around him. He’s awake. He lives.

  “They call me Missy,” she said. She patted a damp cloth around his face.

  “Missy. Curious name.”

  “It isnae my name. Tis only what they call me.”

  “I see. Missy.”

  “And yours, sir?”

  “Godfrey,” a man said, answering for him.

  “Godfrey,” she repeated, with a smile, as she wrung the cloth in the basin. As Darrick drifted away, he heard her soft voice say, “What a stately name. Like a prince.”

  When he awoke next, Missy was gone. In her place were two men. He didn’t know if this was less men than before. The same ones, or different. So much of the world was in pieces.

  “He’s waking,” one of them said.

  “I am awake. Unless I am dead, and this is the Unpromised Future?”

  “Welcome back to the kingdom, Your Grace.” This was who he later learned was Erran Rutland. “We have never been so invested in a man opening his eyes.”

  Law gathered at his side, speaking, about the future, about all they would accomplish. But all Darrick remembered was the sound of Hamish’s cries as he waited for Ryan, too, to wake, and join in their joy.

  They’d done it. Those were the words Darrick grasped to, for the first time, after a week of delirium. He was free. They were free!

  But only he was free.

  Ryan was in a new prison; one they’d not yet figured how to break him from.

  Now, weeks lost to it, hope was waning.

  If he will not wake, why does he not die? Law had asked Missy.

  I know not, but there is a fire in him that isnae so easily extinguished. He is at war with the darkness.

  Who will win?

  I cannae say, sir. I pray it is him. I beseech the Guardians each night, as I do for all men I look after.

  Can’t we bring in a healer? An Enchanter? Darrick had asked, when she’d left to refill her basin with clean water from the stream.

  It isnae a risk we can take, they’d said, but what they meant was, it isnae a risk we can take for the one who will not be king.

  And anyway, they said his body was healed. It was his mind refusing to return to them.

  Darrick leaned close to Ryan and whispered, “Did you know... well, yes, you probably do know, but it sounds like something you would say. That statue? They call it Drummond’s Cock. Is that your handiwork? I can see you spreading that around the Reach with glee.”

  Ryan remained impassive.

  “Ryan, I will not, I refuse, I abjectly refuse to believe the Guardians have weighted my life t
o be worth more than yours. We both know how you love a good jest, but you have to know when a joke has run its course, brother. It’s time to wake up.”

  Would he have done it, had he known this outcome? Darrick toiled over this subject daily. Would he have sought his freedom at the price of Ryan’s life? It was an impossible quandary. The kingdom, for his friend. One life, against many. A question with no answer; none that left his soul anything but restless.

  He wrapped his hands through one of Ryan’s and brought it to his mouth. Pressed his lips against Ryan’s still warm flesh. “Esmerelda is waiting for you. Your beauty with the emerald eyes and fire on her tongue. If nothing else stirs you, draw deep upon the memory of her in your arms. Your joy does not have to be what it is for these men who conspired to send you in and bring me out. Yours can be as simple, as powerful as love.”

  A bright light flashed outside the window. He’d been so consumed he didn’t notice the darkening skies, or the din of fresh rain peppering the earth.

  “Please find your way back to us,” Darrick pleaded. “You are my true brother, the one the Guardians should have sent me.” He bowed his head. “If the cost of my freedom is your life, it will not be a debt I’m capable of paying. Nor will it be one I can live with. We are both only men. No matter what the others may say, my life has no more value than any other.”

  Darrick looked up just as lightning struck. “And this belief is what has brought the kingdom to its knees for too long.”

  4

  Crimson and Gold

  Drystan summoned all of his willpower to keep his face expressionless as Valen observed with scrutiny his dressing of the deer. The initial tear from his knife wasn’t the worst part, or even the several jagged attempts following. It was removing the entrails, still warm, that threatened to do him in. The residual warmth reminded him that this animal had lived, and only moments ago. That this life had been taken by his hands, and there was still some left as the force left the deer’s carcass not immediately but gradually. This power over life and death terrified him. It left him hollow and afraid, as if drowning.

  Valen taught him first to hunt. It was probably best he’d started there, and not with the ritual of tending to the aftermath. Drystan couldn’t explain why delivering the fatal blow with an arrow was easier than sifting through the carcass, but Valen suggested that the kill was less personal. To bury your hands in the body of another was a task designed for intimacy, whether animal or man.

  Drystan simultaneously wished Valen away and desired his approval. He couldn’t explain this either. The man’s claim—that he, and not Holden Dereham, was Drystan’s father—was both preposterous and intriguing. When a man lied, he did so with purpose, and there could be no gain in feigning himself as Drystan’s father. If true, it removed Drystan as an heir to Wulfsgate and made him nobody. Nothing. Valen had abandoned the house of Sylvaine, and Rushwood had been given to another in his absence.

  If not true... to what end was the telling? To stir trouble in the house of Dereham? This was the question Drystan could not draw an answer from, and Valen himself would never say, if so. Unless Valen, or Ash, or whatever he called himself, had qualms with Holden, or even Gretchen, the claim seemed meaningless.

  Unless it was true. The only way to confirm was beyond his grasp. If he could look into his mother’s eyes, he would see her truth. She was the only path to the answer, and the path was closed.

  Ravenna could probably pull the truth from Valen’s mind, but the way to her was also shut to him, likely forever. Perhaps it had been shut even before they’d departed Wulfsgate. She’d made her choice, or it had been made for her by the powers of fate, but it was her own to make. His wounded heart would make peace with it, eventually, or maybe never, but had no power to change it, and his acceptance of this gave him hope that Ravenna wasn’t the only one who’d changed since leaving home.

  “You don’t have to be so dainty with it, Drystan. It won’t bite you,” Valen said. A sickening slosh sounded as he buried his hands next to Drystan’s. They wrapped around the ribcage and he shook; the deer flopped around as if in the throes of an episode. “Don’t think about the blood on your hands. It can be washed in the stream. Think instead of the task at hand and completing it with expedience and care. We cannot take too long or the meat will go to rot and our bellies will stay empty. The Medvedev gave us more land to roam so we could serve ourselves, as they will not.”

  “I know,” Drystan muttered. From the corner of his eye, he saw Lisbet pass through the meadow, accompanied by those two sons of the chieftainess, with their violet hair and accusing eyes. If Drystan were a more capable guardian of his sister, he would have objected to their taking her away daily for questioning, challenging them to solve the matter by sword. But he was not. She came back each day, weary, with the same explanation of her time away. Yseult asked who we are. Why we are here. Who sent us. What we want. That’s all. And I gave her the same answers as I did the day before. And then she released me.

  Things were better now, though they remained prisoners. For almost a week they’d toiled in the magic cages, and then they’d been moved to their own section of the vibrant and peculiar forest, with a durable tent made from the animals roaming the land around it, and a bountiful stream in which to fish, wash, and draw water. It was still a cage, only a larger one. The magic barrier stretching farther, but still there.

  It means they do not yet trust us, but also don’t believe we’re an imminent threat, Valen explained. Drystan was coming to the same place with Valen as Lisbet had been all along. Questioning. Distrustful. At times even disdainful. What troubles them most is that men understand their world is off-limits. To venture into it anyway is bold, and a sign of intent. They struggle to believe that we had no intent, other than the seeking of asylum.

  Valen had led them there, knowing this. Drystan didn’t bother pointing it out. He’d only respond in vague, veiled words that created questions and answered none.

  Then there were times Drystan felt his animosity toward Valen was unfair. The man had, after all, saved his life. Saved Eavan’s and Lisbet’s. He’d taught Drystan things even his father hadn’t bothered with, like how to properly hold and swing a sword, and now, how to kill and dress his own meat. The instructions traditionally passed from father to son.

  “Better,” Valen said. “We’ll skin the fur as well, I think. Though Yseult was generous with her own furs, we are still in the throes of midwinter and the Hinterlands is not immune to storms.”

  “Does it snow here?”

  “Yes, in wintertide, and late season storms in midwinter are not rare, either. I was surprised to see the land so green when we entered the Reach.”

  “Magic?”

  “Could be.” Valen went quiet.

  “Maybe it has to do with what Eavan said. What Kian told her. About the Quinlandens enslaving Medvedev.”

  Valen looked surprised at Drystan’s words. “Why would it?”

  “Eavan said the Drumain and the other clahnns are all going to fight back, to protect the Saleen. What if they cleared the land because they’re preparing to march?”

  “That’s what Kian told her,” Valen said. A tearing noise sounded in the air as he worked at the fur and flesh. “We must remember they are our gaolers, not our friends.”

  “You don’t believe him?”

  “I believe that Aiden Quinlanden reached too far this time, and that he will answer for it. But the clahnns of the Hinterlands have existed for hundreds of years in peace... separately. Their history is not for us, but what we do know of them tells us that there was a division, long before men populated the kingdom. They separated into clahnns, and have remained so ever since. There is love between them, kin to kin, but there is no amity. No alliance.”

  “My mother says men find alliance in common foes.”

  “Your mother has always been wise, but men are not Medvedev.”

  “No, but...” Drystan paused, thinking over his words. “Surely men
have overstepped with the Medvedev before. What did they do then?”

  “Small violations. Not at this scale. Not thousands of Medvedev subjugated at our hand.”

  “How? That is what I can’t understand. How, when their magic is so much greater than ours?”

  “Than ours, yes.” Valen’s knife separated meat from bone. “But there have long been rumors of the abilities of the Rhiagain sorcerers, who are not from this kingdom. Immortal, they say, with magic unlike ours, in kind and power. There are two in Duncarrow, or were.”

  “Not even the Medvedev or Ravenwoods are immortal.”

  “Hand me the longer knife, Drystan. Thank you.” Valen grimaced. His muscles swelled under his tunic as he tugged at the meat. “When Aiden Quinlanden laid Rowanwen at the king’s feet, they say it was not without reward.”

  “Another sorcerer?”

  “I assume that is what Kian meant when he referred to Aiden’s magician. An army the size of Lord Quinlanden’s does not come free, not even for a king. I cannot think of any other way to subdue the Medvedev magic than through a stronger magic, which does not exist in this kingdom as far as I’m aware. Not even from your beloved Ravenna.”

  “Have you met a Rhiagain sorcerer?”

  Valen paused his butchery. “No. But their existence is not speculation, only the extent of their magic, which has gone the way of legend.”

  Drystan sometimes got the sense that Valen enjoyed his inquisitiveness, and other times, like now, that he wished Drystan would learn to quash it.

  He buried the rest of his questions and returned to helping Valen finish up work on the deer.

  * * *

  Many were not aware that the great Whitewood was not named for the pale, peeling bark of its stalwart inhabitants, but rather one very specific tree. Only the elders in the town of Whitewood, which perched at the edge of this same-named forest, even bothered to remember such a trivial fact.