Blood of the Falcon
Blood is currently undergoing thorough revision & expansion. I'm being brave and offering a sneak-peak at a tentative new Chapter 1. The same things happen, but in 99.5% new text. Disclaimer: the following is a pre-edited/proofread copy: there are probably errors and oddities.
Chapter 1
The storm awakened something in Kieryn. Excitement, like an electric charge racing down his arms and settling in his fingertips. Anticipation, like long-sleeping hope tipping on the verge of fulfilment.
His skin tingled, telling him within a heartbeat or two when the next bolt of lightning would strike. As a child, he’d thought everyone experienced storms this way. But his brother told him it wasn’t so, and warned him to stop saying such things in front of their father. Da would stop frowning at Kieryn if he kept his mouth shut. So Kieryn learned to keep his strangeness to himself.
Rain slapped the windowpanes. Thunder shook the slates on the roof. Wind hissed through crevices in the castle’s ancient stones. Kieryn longed to throw open the windows, turn his face to the lightning-lashed clouds, and let the rain baptize him with its chill touch. To run up the highest tower, open his arms, and invite the wind to give him wings.
But, like the good boy he had learned to be, he stayed abed, a book propped on his knees.
Tales from the Green was one of many outlawed books. The law was nearly a thousand years old, written shortly after the so-called Elf War. Kings of bygone eras refused to condone stories that turned elves and wielders of magic into heroes. Funny, the superstitions people once feared. These days, no one paid the law much heed. Many of the forbidden books had survived, and now people collected them as curiosities. Kieryn’s library was full of them. No one took the contents seriously. Not even himself, despite his overactive imagination. Elves had long ago died out, as everyone knew, and sorcerers were nothing but a concoction of shadowy legend. Hardly something to be feared and banned from a library’s shelf.
Kieryn had opened his dog-eared copy upon the story about the Dark Witch of Adreddán. The thunder shaking his window might be the lightning crackling from the witch’s fingertips as she decimated the hosts of Éshelon. The illustration captured his attention. The artist had painted a thing out of nightmare. Rage contorted the woman, turning her into a monstrous creature. A mouth open too wide, shrieking Goddess knew what curses. Gray corrugated skin, as though her face were fungus or melting wax. Red hair writhing like flames in a gale. Fingers pointed like claws. Lighting bursting from palms. And her eyes. Too open, too round, the whites swallowing acid-green pupils. The madness captured there offended him. Saddened him. He couldn’t say why.
At eighteen, he should’ve outgrown his fascination with these childish fancies and turned his devotion toward swordplay and battle tactics and intrigues at court, but legends of elven ladies and sorcerous foes drew him as nectar draws bees. His tutor, well-versed in his interests, claimed that behind the veil of every legend lies a kernel of truth. What truth lurked behind the dark witch’s tale? Was it a moral to be gleaned? A metaphor of creation, perhaps? Or did the story contain a little more factual substance?
Ah, who gave a damn? No one but himself and his tutor, that’s who. Kelyn certainly didn’t. Da hated all mention of magic and elves. Mother pretended to care, smiling politely and listening as Kieryn outlined his latest discovery among the shelves, but her eyes glazed over as her mind drifted to other things. More important things.
And this was the season for other things. Real things. Important things. Here and now.
The Assembly of the Highborns was about to descend upon the ancient corridors of Ilswythe Castle.
The Assembly was the sole reason Kieryn dreaded the arrival of spring.
The thaw of the lower reaches of the Avidan River were the first sign winter was nearing its end. The blooming of the moors announced that the season was at hand. Spring was all right in general, pretty and fragrant and all that. The month after equinox was the problem. As soon as the fires of the Turning Festival had been doused, Ilswythe embarked upon three weeks of frenzied preparations in anticipation of the arrival of dozens of people.
Early in his reign, King Rhorek, the Black Falcon of Aralorr, had determined that Ilswythe should host the annual Assembly. And so every room was opened, cleaned, and aired. Carts of exotic fruit arrived from as far away as Zhian, as did frozen fish from the western coast and porpoises from the Pearl Islands. Flocks of sheep and geese filled butchers’ barns, along with cages of pigeons and peahens, their docile gazes and irritated cries kept at a remove from those who would feast upon them. New livery was ordered for the household servants; even Lord Ilswythe’s family was measured for a new wardrobe, evening wear especially. Fresh paint was applied to the eaves and stables, the gates oiled, the house guards drilled out of a winter’s accumulation of laziness, the gardens trimmed, the ford across the river repaired, and the potholes filled upon each lane and stretch of Highway within Lord Ilswythe’s extensive domain.
The sheer amount of details to attend to made everyone cross, from the guards captain on down to the scullery maids. Kieryn, who, on the best of days, defined himself as a decorative vase on the wrong shelf, found himself painfully useless and underfoot. Unless he was summoned, he kept himself to his chambers or his library.
As agonizing as the preparations were, they weren’t the worst of it. That award went to the crowds about to flood the grounds, the corridors, the privies. Kieryn hated crowds, the crowds of the Assembly in particular. It wasn’t as if the highborns were coming for a party. Oh, parties were involved, of course, but their primary purpose was to present their grievances to the king and hammer out solutions to the problems troubling the kingdom of Aralorr as a whole. The false pleasantries, the vying for favor, the bombardment of opinions and arguments, all of it intolerable.
And then there were the voices. The real stinger. They were like the lightning. He realized very young that no one else heard them. When he was nine or ten he’d tried to explain the voices to his twin brother. “I never hear them when I’m alone. Not really when it’s just us either. You and me and Mum and Da. Only when there’s lots of people.” The more people the louder and more chaotic the voices. Small gatherings posed little problem. But when the numbers climbed toward a dozen and beyond, the jumble of voices came tumbling toward him[CE4.1].
“What do they say?” Kelyn had asked.
“It’s hard to make out because they’re all talking at once.”
“In a room full of people,” Kelyn said, with that condescending tone he sometimes got when he thought his twin was being stupid, “people are all talking at once.”
“No! It happens even if only one person is talking and everyone else is listening. Like when Da gives the welcome speech. Or when King Rhorek gives a toast. The voices are everywhere! I think I can tell who’s speaking, but when I look at them, their mouth isn’t moving. And sometimes, someone will say one thing, but the voice coming out of them says the opposite. Like when Lord Tírandon said he “lauded His Majesty on his wise decision,” the voice that sounded like him said ‘Idiot! The king is an idiot!’ ”
Kelyn had laughed at that. “Lander called the king an idiot?”
“No, the voice did!”
“Why can’t I hear it then?” Kelyn asked, as if something could be real only if he experienced it, too.
“Well, the voices aren’t in my ears. They’re in my head. After a while I get a headache. And sometimes my nose bleeds.”
It was then that Kelyn looked concerned. Even frightened. And this turned Kieryn’s annoyance with the voices into fear of them.
“Maybe it’s like those bad headaches Aunt Klari gets,” Kelyn said, hopeful. “Mum said she takes poppy wine for them. Maybe Master Odran can give you poppy wine.”
“No! Don’t tell anyone! Especially not Da.”
Kelyn must’ve decided that was a good idea because, to Kieryn’s knowledge, he’d never told a soul, not even Mother.
The voices hadn’t lessened in the years since. Sometimes a crowded room was so thick with them that the air was like a bubbling stew Kieryn waded through. They spoke nonsense, mostly. Random words or phrases that flitted around like butterflies in a garden, butterflies with mismatched wings. Some, though, rang clear and true, like declarations in burning ink. The voice that accompanied Lord Helwende, for one. His voice was all about food. The man outweighed Da three times, yet his voice muttered about nothing but food. Most of the voices, though, were more subtle, more chaotic, less single-minded.
Hard enough to ignore them. Harder still to put on his socially acceptable smile and nod as if nothing in all the world troubled him.
The babble waned only when he concentrated on a singular task: the steps of a dance, a conversation directed at him, the study of aromas in a glass of wine.
His special torment, he called it. As if the Assembly weren’t exhausting and overwhelming enough.
Unaware of the added discomfort, his mother only observed him grimacing and eyeing the doors as a prisoner eyes the key to his cell. “Be patient,” she was in the habit of urging him. “Just a few more days.” The voices turned the whittling of time into an acute torture.
The entire mess caused him to wish he were an insect so he could crawl into a hole in the ground. But it wasn’t as if Kieryn could bow out and hide in his library until everyone departed for home. He was the host’s son, which meant he had to play along. Smile when he was expected to, dance when he was expected to, be invisible when he was expected to. Tedious, draining, humiliating.
Why Ilswythe, for the Goddess’ sake? Yes, his father was the king’s dearest confidante, but surely Ilswythe’s exclusivity pricked the pride of the other lords and ladies of the realm. Couldn’t the Assembly migrate to a different holding every year?
He had presented this question to his father, but it went unheeded. Keth, Lord Ilswythe, had not the time nor the interest to pander to his soft son’s preferences.
The highborns would begin arriving two days from now. Coming from every corner of the kingdom, and from Evaronna, too, they knew well to time their journeys so they arrived promptly alongside the king. Without doubt, the storm bashing against Kieryn’s windows was putting their promptness and their tolerance for discomfort to the test.
The hour candle on his bedside table burned down toward midnight. A fire in the grate vainly tried to dry the dampness and thwart the chill in the air.
He ought to try to sleep, he supposed, covering the witch’s crazed eyes with his thumb.
The raising of the portcullis rattled him out of his thoughts. He mistook the rumble for thunder at first, until he recognized the shout of the guards captain, too.
What had caused excitement at this hour? One of the highborns, likely, breaking protocol and arriving early. Lord Tírandon might soldier on toward shelter when faced with such violent weather. Daring a storm to do its worst was well within his character.
Kieryn slid the book under his pillow and padded, barefoot, to the window. Beyond the runnels of rain, out in the moonless dark, windblown torches illumined sentries running along the ramparts. A growing number of garrison soldiers gathered atop the gatehouse, where Captain Maegeth [CE5.1]barked orders. She must’ve been sleeping: her dark hair drooped in a braid at her shoulder rather than pinned in its tidy knot at her nape, and her white undershirt glowed in the torchlight. Without her chain and plate armor she looked oddly vulnerable.
The guards dispersed according to their orders, and Captain Maegeth vanished from the battlements, only to reappear again in the courtyard. She slung her sword belt around her waist as she approached the keep, her stride long and urgent. The rain plastered her black hair to her forehead, and in a spark of lightning, Kieryn read the bewilderment on her face. She ran up the steps of the keep and hauled open the bronze doors. The floor under Kieryn’s feet shuddered as she shut them again.
Behind her, three riders galloped through the gate and reined in among stablehands who had emerged from their warm beds. Soldiers of the garrison ran to aid them—an uncustomary fuss over guests. Several carried torches, the flames valiantly resisting the downpour. But one of the riders bellowed an order and every torch was immediately tamped out in standing puddles. The courtyard was plunged into darkness.
Kieryn’s smoky bedside lamp burned as bright as the sun. He blew it out and hurried back to the window. The riders had dismounted. Two of them helped the third up the steps and into the keep. When Kieryn needed the lightning most, it failed him; he couldn’t distinguish the riders’ faces. But he’d bet his entire library that he had seen a black horse among the three.
Why would the king ride to Ilswythe two nights before he was expected?
The castle no longer slept. Voices slithered into Kieryn’s suite. Doors closed nearby, and more underfoot. He pressed an ear to his door. Servants’ feet pattered quickly past. Confusion and questions colored the timbre of their voices.
He’d not be the last to learn what was going on. Cracking open his door, Kieryn found the head steward conferring with Da. Lord Keth was tying on a heavy robe. Behind his silver-flecked beard[CE6.1], worry and sudden wakefulness creased his face.
The servants flocked to him for orders. Kieryn slid into the corridor behind them, trying to be inconspicuous, but he stood a head taller than most of them, and head and shoulders taller than the rest.
“Everything is in hand,” Da was saying. “Go back to your rooms and stay there.”
Baffled, the servants bowed a hesitant departure and pattered back the way they’d come, murmuring uneasily.
Their retreat left Kieryn exposed. He straightened his shoulders. “Da?”
The dismissive flick of his father’s gaze pricked Kieryn to his core. His favored linen shirt and worn riding leathers were all Da needed to glimpse to know which of his twin sons addressed him from the dark. Keth’s frown conveyed instant irritation. “Go to bed. Now.”
Eighteen, and being told to go to bed? Did Da ever tell Kelyn the same? Besides, this was important. “But—”
“Do as I say! For once.”
Keth turned to his steward, who had the grace to play blind to Kieryn’s scolding, and said, “Turn up your lamp, Yven, I’ll follow. Hurry now and say nothing…” Keth’s whisper echoed away between the stone walls. Though he had ordered Yven to take the lead, Keth’s longer stride hastened him ahead of the steward before they reached the stairwell.
Kieryn remained in the corridor, swallowing his father's disregard as though it were shards of glass, a food all too common in his mouth. How could he return to bed with his questions unanswered?
Maybe he could find out a different way. Of the two, Kieryn’s twin was the charmer. If anyone could wheedle the truth out of Da or anyone else, it was Kelyn.
Though the night was half gone, a fire blazed in Kelyn’s hearth as if newly made. The bedchamber sweltered, and Kelyn had thrown aside his blankets. Two wine glasses winked from the bedside table, but Kelyn slept alone. His infatuation with the household maids never failed to bring the heat of embarrassment to Kieryn’s face. He gave his twin’s shoulder a shake. Kelyn groaned, rolled over onto his belly and burrowed his head under a pillow. No time for this. Kieryn reared back the flat of his hand and cracked it over Kelyn’s naked arse. He surged from under the pillow, cursing to bring down the moons. He recognized his twin looming over him, and struck by something resembling conscience, he glanced across the bed and over at the hearth.
“Don’t worry, she’s gone,” Kieryn said. “And don’t tell me who she was, I don’t want to know.”
“Well, whoever she was, she can make a hell of a fire.”
“I don’t want to know that either.”
Nearly mirror images of one another, the twins’ most telling differences lay in how they dressed (Kieryn for comfort, Kelyn to impress) and how they comported themselves (Kieryn with caution, Kelyn with a swagger). Generally, they got on well. As well as a two-headed coin whose faces gaze in opposite directions. The strife that comes with boys vying for the same affection, the same renown, the same place on top had mellowed into camaraderie, with either twin recognizing his niche, where he might claim the affection and renown all his own. Long ago, Kelyn had learned not to compete against Kieryn in academics, and Kieryn knew better than to compete against Kelyn in everything else.
Kieryn made for the window. The portcullis had been lowered again, and twice the usual number of sentries walked the parapets.
Kelyn came to his senses and shouted, “You Mother-loving—! It’s the middle of the night. What are you—?”
“Something’s wrong.” Kieryn found his brother’s robe flung over a chair and tossed it to him. “C’mon!”
Kelyn glared desultorily at the robe wadded up at his feet and reached for the wine glass instead.
“Goddess, Kelyn! There were riders. One rode a black horse.”
Kelyn took his time savoring the red wine like a jeweler admires the fire deep inside a ruby. “The rain tricked your eyes,” he said at last. “Rhorek isn’t due until the day after tomorrow. Why would he leave his entourage behind? And on a soggy cold night like this?”
“The boy can use adjectives,” Kieryn groused. “Get up!”
Kelyn finished off the wine. “It was probably crofters bringing supplies for the Assembly.”
“I’d like to know what crofter can afford a horse like that—or would dare ride a black one. Besides, they didn’t bring anything with them.”
“Messengers, then.”
“Willing to bet your manhood on it?”[CE7.1]
Kelyn threw the wine glass at him. Kieryn caught it against his chest.
Long northern winters infected the keep’s lower floors with a clammy chill. Kelyn complained of his bare toes. Though he had forgotten footwear, he had wasted precious time washing his face and combing his hair. Kieryn knew better than to rush him, though his teeth had ached with the waiting. Kelyn never left his rooms looking mussed from sleep or whatever else he’d been doing in bed.
The twins crept down the back way, through the library, down to the ledger vaults, past Etivva’s rooms and her shrine to the Mother-Father, and into the corridor lined with spare suites. Doors usually shut tight for much of the year now stood open. Each of the guest suites had been scrubbed and polished. The fragrance of lye, lemon oil, and perfume mingled so heavily in the air that Kieryn found it hard to breathe.
Trails of wet boot prints, smeared with mud and horse manure, led to the suite reserved exclusively for the king. Its door was the only one closed.
A knight in sodden black velvet and rain-glittered pauldrons stood before it, posture as forbidding as a barbed barricade. Trying to share the knight’s composure, Da’s young squire stood at attention, awaiting his next order. And at their feet, a wisp of a maid still in her night-dress scrubbed the filth from the floor with a sudsy sponge.
Kieryn elbowed his brother. “You see, I told you. That’s one of the Falcon Guard.” The silver falcon blazoned across the knight’s surcoat was indisputable.
Though the twins had hidden themselves in the vestibule of a distant suite, their whispers ricocheted down the corridor like ill-aimed arrows. The Falcon looked their direction. A gloved hand reached for a sword hilt.
Kieryn nudged his brother. “Go find out what’s going on before we’re cut to pieces in our own house.”
“Poor Kieryn, afraid of a little sword.”
“You there!” the knight called. “Come out of the shadows.”
The voice carried an unexpected octave.
Kieryn squinted at the shiny black helmet, the narrow knees below the surcoat, the sword belt cinched around a small waist.
Kelyn voiced Kieryn’s thought exactly: “Damned if that isn’t a woman.” He started into the light that spilled from the row of stained-glass lamps. His approach might’ve appeared the bolder had he not dragged Kieryn alongside him. “We mean no harm,” he said, smiling with easy charm. “We come with the property, like the rats.” He grinned at the squire. “Right, Laral?”
The boy crushed laughter behind his hand. “Your lady-mother has taught me to reserve my comments, so I shall[CE8.1].”
The knight in the Falcon helmet came up short in good humor. Eyes like hard black stones pelted the twins, settled on Kelyn’s grin which was becoming a bit smug, and her hand released the hilt of her sword.
“Got the king in there?” Kelyn asked.
The woman said nothing. Her mouth was a stern angry line. Kenneled hostility radiated from her. She was, perhaps, twenty-three, twenty-five, yet the creases of habitual displeasure aged her a solid ten years.
At a nudge from Kieryn’s elbow, Kelyn attempted a different tack. “I’d heard Captain Jareg named a woman his ranking lieutenant. You must be her.”
“She,” Kieryn whispered.
“You must be she, then,” Kelyn amended.
The woman’s face barely flinched.
Kieryn suspected that inside that helmet she was contemplating their tasteful disposal. He tugged his twin by the elbow. “Never mind, we’re wasting our time—”
But Kelyn hadn’t been dragged out of his sweet dreams for nothing. “Laral,” he said, “how about you be the lieutenant’s mouth since she’s forgotten how to use hers.”
The squire, though on the cusp of manhood, was small for his age. Large gray eyes darted uneasily between his foster-brothers and the Falcon with the blade. “I don’t know anything,” he implored, voice still trying to hit the notes that had been within range last year. “Honest. They won’t tell me either. Lady Alovi told me to stay close in case she needs anything, and that’s all.” He glanced sidelong at the lieutenant and added, “Master Odran’s in there though.”
The lieutenant gritted her teeth and took a half-step toward the boy.
Laral retreated, declaring, “Well, he is!”
If the household physician tended to the king … hmm. No wonder Da had looked worried.
“Listen, um,” Kieryn said to the woman, “we’re going now.”
But Kelyn would have none of it. He leaned around the lieutenant and raised a fist toward the door.
With a snarl, the knight slammed a steel-plated shoulder against his chest and thrust a wet leather hand up his robe.
Kelyn went abruptly still. The breath thumped from his lungs. A strained grunt squeaked from his throat.
Laral’s face registered naked shock.
The woman bared her teeth in unrestrained malice.
Stabbed. She’d stabbed Kelyn.
No, no, no, not Kelyn! Not his brother, his other half! Rage crackled along Kieryn’s nerves. His fingers curled into talons. He’d break her neck. Or die trying.
But Kelyn raised his hands away from the door as his lungs remembered how to take in air, and he lowered an astonished half-smile on the woman.
Her jaw worked as she ground her teeth in a fury. Color fanned into her cheeks. “Back. Away.”
Oh.
Laral snorted laughter.
Kieryn lowered his trembling hands.
In an effort to gather every measure of his dignity, Kelyn readjusted the front of his robe and cast the woman a winning smile. “A pleasure, lieutenant,” he said. “Do give our regards to His Majesty.”
Kieryn shoved him back the way they’d come, even while he marveled at his brother’s poise in the face of the woman’s assault. Kelyn prided himself on grace, which in his own words, was the epitome of fine, cultured behavior, especially in times of adversity.
Such poise was lost on Kieryn. As soon as he shut the doors to the ledger room, he sank against them in relief, knees and hands awobble.
“You nearly got us killed!”
“I blame your curiosity.” Kelyn started up the spiral stair to the library. “But damn me if that woman isn’t fond of a handful.”
Kieryn groaned and followed. When his brother’s brain high-centered on the matter of woman-flesh, he was downright unbearable.
~~~~
Eager for news, Kieryn descended to the kitchen before the rest of his family was astir. He’d not gotten more than four hours of sleep, and tossed most of that time, his brain buzzing with worry and speculation. He’d woken, well before sunrise, tangled in a spiraling noose of sheets.
The service corridors, usually tidy, were a mess ahead of the Assembly, cluttered with crates of wine deliveries, hung with an excess of cheese and poultry, lined with mountains of bread wrapped in flour sacks. Even as Kieryn slunk into the kitchen proper, a maid bustled past with a tray of another dozen loaves to pile atop the mountain. Sweat darkened her bodice, and no wonder: the kitchen sweltered. Kieryn doubted the ovens had cooled in days.
The cook was venting her overwork on one of her helpers. “Fool girl! That batch is burnt. Have you no sense? Everything you touch, I swear! Fit for pigs, it is. And you’ll be the one feeding them. Take it! Out, out!”
The girl scurried from the kitchen with the ruined loaves, and the cook whirled about looking for the next urgent task, and spotted Kieryn.
“M’ lord!” Panic drew her glance toward the windows. The narrow slits set high against the ceiling were more for venting smoke than admitting sunlight. The sky had barely a hint of light in it. “Are we running late?”
The breakfast trays hadn’t been set out yet, much less filled and carried upstairs.
“No, Nelda, I’m early. Couldn’t sleep, what with all the excitement last night.”
The kitchens bred gossip like flies breed maggots, and the cook needed no other prodding.
As he’d expected, rumor had swept through the household staff like the Gloamwater Fever. It seemed King Rhorek had been poisoned, taken by a pox, thrown from his black Roreshan racer, stabbed in the back, and assailed by highwaymen who had managed to cut off his arm or disembowel him—Nelda wasn’t sure which version of events she liked best. But two elements remained consistent in every telling: the king had arrived amid the storm, and his soul was making a beeline for the Light of the Mother-Father.
But which story ought Kieryn believe? Rumor and speculation provided no solid answers.
As soon as the bells attached to the family quarters began to ring, the trays were set and carried out. Kieryn took the plate from his and, rather than eat in the kitchen (how inappropriate, his mother would say), he munched a warm scone as he made his way back upstairs. He took a detour to the guest wing. Every door was open, even that to the king’s suite. Inside, nothing was out of place, neither Falcon Guard nor king to be had. Last night’s excitement might have been naught but a frenzied dream.
On the floor above, Kelyn’s room, too, was unoccupied. He must’ve wolfed down his breakfast. The teapot on his tray was still warm, and only crumbs remained of the rest. Kieryn finally tracked his twin to the bailey, where, for him, it was business as usual.
Blunt practice sword in one hand, shield braced on the other, Kelyn pressed his sparring partner. He had pinned young Laral in a corner of the yard. With the stone wall enclosing him on two sides, the squire must’ve been trying to break an opening for himself for a while now and was growing frustrated.
“Be fair,” he said. Despite those soulful gray eyes, Kelyn offered no pity.
“Will your enemy be fair?”
“My enemy would’ve slain me by now. You’re toying with me!”
Kelyn’s shield blocked Laral from dodging aside. “Use your brain, boy.”
“I am!”
“Is your brain in your arm? A meager one you have then.”
Neither Laral’s shield nor his sword succeeded in shunting Kelyn aside.
Though he had yet to be knighted, Kelyn was as familiar with a sword as a horse was with hay. He had long ago mastered the lessons his father could teach him. All he lacked (and Kieryn was sick to death of hearing it) was experience on the battlefield. His dearest hope was to be stationed at Tírandon or Whitewood after his knighting, any place nearer the southern border, really, where he might cross paths with Fieran raiders and see some action. While Kieryn understood his brother’s desire to leave home and prove himself, he dreaded the day he’d find himself alone, without his twin to hide behind.
In the meantime, at their father’s request, Kelyn reinforced his skill by prenticing the household squire. And at the moment, neither teacher nor student cared about rumors of dying kings and empty rooms.
With a roar, Laral bashed Kelyn’s shield with his own, managing to push his mentor back by an inch. Having granted himself a little space, he took a running leap at the wall. His scrawny legs muscled a few feet up the stones and, with a mighty shout, he launched over Kelyn’s shoulder and out into the open yard.
Before Kieryn could cheer or Laral could gloat, Kelyn’s shield caught the boy square in the chest and sent him sprawling across the grass.
The rounded point of Kelyn’s sword tapped against the boy’s throat. “Well done. You did exactly what I forced you to do, in both anger and action. Now you’re dead.”
Laral pounded the ground with a fist and struggled to fill his battered lungs.
Kelyn aimed a grin at his brother. “Want a go?”
“Against you?” Kieryn laughed at the idea. “I’m not in the mood for humiliation, thanks. Laral, did you see anything last night, after we left?”
The squire hauled himself from the ground, dried his sweaty face on his sleeve. “Nothing Your lady-mother sent me for bandages though. And told me to keep my mouth shut.”
“Redemption?” Kelyn asked the squire.
“No, I’m done for the day.”
“Are you?” Kelyn drove at him again.
Laral scurried to reclaim his sword and missed collecting his shield entirely before his mentor was upon him.
Kieryn made a seat in the grass, leaned back on his elbows. The sun had crested the eastern wall. Its warmth pooled in the bailey and settled deliciously on the crown of his head. Spring wasn’t all bad, he supposed. He closed his eyes and listened to finches singing in the great tree in his mother’s garden. Once, he had imagined he understood the meaning in their music, but that was silliness tolerated only in babes. What a ridiculous child he’d been.
The stirring of that old memory brought an unexpected pang of sorrow. What a ridiculous child he still was.
Better to open his eyes and tune out their tittering. He did not need their voices adding to the onslaught about to bombard him.
The basalt towers of Ilswythe cast enormous chill shadows across the bailey.[CE9.1] The proud pillars seemed to carry the sky upon their shoulders. According to Da, the curtain wall that connected each of the towers was the oldest part of the castle. Centuries ago, when walls were little more than rows of upright sticks, Ilswythe’s builders had fashioned its wall from stone brought down from Mount Drenéleth. At the base of the wall, incorporated among the dark basalt blocks, were massive oblong white stones, six feet high, forty feet long. Not marble, but sandstone from some mysterious quarry. Yellow and red lichen obscured their surface, but when the light slanted just right, carvings became visible. A language of a vanished time, a vanished people.
When Kieryn was a child, six or seven, he’d asked about the origin of the carvings. Da had said merely, “Elves,” and spat.
Beating at the heart of the fortress, the Great Hall. Graceless and grim, the stack of dark stone glowered down on the yard and out across the greening meadows. Visible for miles in every direction, Ilswythe Castle guarded the only ford across the Avidan River. Though enemies hadn’t assailed its gates in two hundred years, the fortress’s intimidating presence did a fine job of keeping highwaymen in check.
Exquisite stained-glass windows attempted to brighten the formidable façade. Though they painted the rooms and corridors in a rainbow of color, on the outside they were as dark and dour as the rest.
Even now the windows were undergoing a final polish. Nimble youths on spindly ladders ragged the stains of last night’s rain from the panes. How Da had cursed when the storm swept in and began spattering his spotless windows.
In truth, even with Kelyn and Laral locked in combat, the sparring yard was a calm island amid the chaotic sea of last-minute preparations.
Kieryn observed the frenzy with a highborn’s detachment and a scholar’s sensitivity. At the rear of the bailey, grooms had brought the garrisons’ horses from the paddocks to sponge off the dust and brush away winter coats. Stableboys shoveled straw and manure and hauled it away in two-wheeled carts, as if Rhorek didn’t know, and shouldn’t be told, that horses shat. The falconer swept out the mews’ collection of feathers and droppings, and scattered fresh sawdust. Nelda’s assistants chased hissing geese who seemed wise to the fact that the goose who straggled would be the goose who graced a king’s table.
The castle gate stood open to the road, as it usually did from dawn to dusk. Da’s game ward rode through it with a brace of white snow elk slung over a pair of mules. A swineherd from Ilswythe Village entered with a crate of fat squealing piglets. Another with a wagon of sloshing ale barrels.
Washer women at the well talked conspiratorially as they scrubbed spare sheets and tablecloths, likely embellishing the rumors Kieryn had heard at breakfast.
“We could speak to Master Odran,” he said. The household physician would have all the grisly details.
Kelyn cast Kieryn a sideward glance, as if he’d forgotten his twin was present. “Did that.”
He batted aside Laral’s thrust. The poor boy, still lacking his shield, was having to work twice as hard to defend himself against a shielded opponent.
“He was as silent as the lieutenant. Lissah.” Kelyn waggled his eyebrows. “I learned her name.”
Leave it to mention of a woman to slow Kelyn’s reflexes: Laral’s pommel jabbed him below the sternum, and he doubled over with a whoof.
Laral reached to steady him. “Shit! Sir, apologies. You all right?”
“You gonna apologize … to every Fieran sheep-thief, too?” asked Kelyn, gasping.
Kieryn laughed. “You’re having a run of bad luck, brother. Rudely molested by a woman and bested by a pupil.”
“Just wait … till I catch my breath, scholar.”
Kieryn hated to admit that he envied Kelyn’s martial excellence. He’d spent his entire childhood trying to keep up, , more to please their father than to compete with his twin. A lack of martial acumen was considered especially shameful in the son of Aralorr’s War Commander. Da had schooled both his sons on tactics and strategy, but Kieryn hadn’t the slightest interest in war unless it raged across the history pages. These shortcomings, as even Kieryn deemed them, had driven a deep wedge between father and son.
To compensate for his lack of talent with a blade, he had taken up the bow instead. Da had been equally unimpressed, brushing off Kieryn’s choice of archery as a commoner’s sport. So what was the point in trying? He hadn’t touched a bow in over a year.
Compared to the sleek silence of the arrow, swordplay seemed brutish. Clash, bang, grunt. Kelyn remained the only swordsman who, in Kieryn’s eyes, turned combat with a sword into a dance. His brother’s speed and foresight with a blade had yet to be bested within Ilswythe’s walls. When it came to a contest of arms, Kieryn never wagered against his brother.
Da’s familiar bellow descended from atop the northern wall: “No, no, no, you sons of an elven whore!”
A hush spread across the bailey.
Kieryn’s stomach clenched as hard as a sinking stone. What have I done now?
Twins, servants, and soldiers stopped what they were doing and checked themselves, to ensure the scolding belonged to some other poor bastard. Lord Keth had never addressed his sons in such a vile manner, not even Kieryn on his worst day, and he wasn’t addressing them now.
Bristling like a mad dog, Da leant through the crenels, glaring at something happening on the hillside outside the fortress. “I told you,” he shouted, “the pavilion goes over here! Close to the wall. The sun won’t shine on it here.”
Relieved that Lord Ilswythe’s wrath was aimed elsewhere, the household resumed their duties, albeit at a slightly sharper pace.
Kieryn’s enjoyment of the spring morning had vanished, as effervescent as mist in the sun. “Every year, the same damn thing,” he muttered.
“He’s not usually this short with everyone,” Kelyn said.
They watched their father’s stride carry him back and forth along the parapet, much like that of a stallion aching to escape the paddock and trample the stableboy. Apparently the workers charged with setting up the spectator’s pavilion made the mistake of dragging the canvas up the hill, for Da roared, “Tear it and I’ll hang your hides from the battlements.”
Laral’s gray eyes widened. “Would he really?”
“No,” Kelyn assured. “But I’ll bet the threat got them moving.”
“Whatever happened last night must’ve shaken him,” Kieryn said.
“He’s worried about the king, you think?” asked the squire.
Kieryn shrugged, unable to summon sympathy for his father. “This wouldn’t happen if Rhorek held the Assembly at Bramoran. Da could tell him it’s too much trouble.”
Kelyn slung the practice blade behind his neck and stretched his shoulders. “I’m surprised at you. You, the All-Knowing Historian, ought to appreciate tradition. The Assembly has been held at Ilswythe for, well, longer than we’ve been alive.”
“History, brother, is all about the breaking of tradition, and this tradition only gives Da an annual apoplexy.”
“A what?”
“Never mind.”
“Choke on your book words! If Rhorek held the Assembly someplace else, you’d have to leave your library behind.”
Kieryn leant back on his elbow, as languid as a cat in the sun. “Here are some more book words for you. Bramoran boasts a library of prodigious proportion, which would amply suffice.”
Kelyn scowled. “Laral, does he ever make you feel stupid?”
The squire nodded.
“So you don’t know what apox . . . apopel . . .”
“Apoplexy,” Kieryn supplied.
“. . . means either?”
“Afraid not, sir.”
“Good,” Kelyn said. “In that case, you’re dismissed.” He extended his practice sword, hilt first. “Polish them properly and put them away. Because a knight never neglects … ?”
“Cleanliness of weapon, horse, armor, and self. In that order, sir.”
“Excellent. Go.”
Laral hung the shields on their stand in the practice yard, then battled his way to the armory, a sword in each hand and phantom foes on every side.
Keeping a watchful eye on Laral’s technique, Kelyn asked his brother, “So what does ‘apoplexy’ mean?”
Kieryn turned his face to the sun and laughed. “Not gonna tell you.”
Kelyn kicked him in the thigh. “You like to make me feel stupid.”
“Whatever fits.” Kieryn swung a leg, hooked his brother’s ankle and pulled his foot from under him.
Kelyn staggered to the ground and stared agape. “You prick of a cowardly elf.”
Kieryn roared at that one, rocked himself to his feet, and lowered a hand. “If I’m an elf’s prick, so are you.”
Kelyn ignored the proffered hand, but sprang forward, flung his arms around his brother’s waist and tossed him onto the lawn. The eighteen-year-olds wrestled like eight-year-olds, a tangle of arms and legs, flying hair, laughter and squalls. Kieryn thought for one exhilarating moment that he’d pinned Kelyn down, but the latter twisted, and before Kieryn could shout ‘surrender,’ he found his mouth full of grass clippings.
Pressing a forearm into Kieryn’s nape, Kelyn said half-laughing, half-panting, “You yield?”
Kieryn was about to shout a wholehearted ‘Yes’ when his left eye, the one without the grass in it, spotted the Lady Alovi approaching from the gardens. One dark, fire-and-ash-threaded braid hung maiden-like over her shoulder; a second trailed down her back, swinging against her silk skirt. Her mouth was pinched tight, drawing on full cheeks.
“Mother’s coming,” Kieryn grunted. The pressure of Kelyn’s arm let up. They jumped to their feet and tried to brush away incriminating grass.
Alovi drew up before them, green eyes conducting a severe scrutiny. On the wall, the Lord Keth bellowed another round of curses.
“You see the state your father is in?” she asked.
Kelyn snorted with repressed laughter. “Hear it, you mean.”
Alovi’s eyebrow shot up, and Kelyn bit his lip. Though she looked as delicate as a butterfly, she didn’t need a sword to command anyone. She brushed grass from her sons’ shirtfronts and pulled it from their hair.
Nearby, a scullion dragged a goose by the neck, and though she lowered her eyes, she was grinning.
Heat bloomed in Kieryn’s face. “Mother, we’re not little boys.”
“You behave like boys, I treat you like boys,” she retorted, brushing off his back and giving him a sound slap on the rear.
Kieryn’s face might as well have been on fire, and Kelyn could no longer stifle his laughter.
Alovi grabbed her sons’ elbows and pulled them close. “Listen. All is not well. My mouth is closed on the matter, but the trouble has put your father on edge. So I insist you not contribute to the chaos. For his sake, hmm?”
“What happened last night?” Kieryn whispered.
Alovi released them and folded her hands primly. “You were there?”
Kelyn rubbed his shield arm, which had taken a beating. “The lieutenant wasn’t exactly enlightening
“What did she tell you?” their mother asked.
“Nothing.”
“And Laral?”
“Not much more,” Kelyn said.
“It was the king, wasn’t it?” Kieryn said.
Alovi’s stiff silence too closely resembled that of the lieutenant. “His Majesty paid us an unexpected call last night—”
“Mother!”
“He was well enough to ride out again early this morning. Likely, his entourage never knew he was away. They’ll arrive tomorrow as scheduled. Do we have an understanding?”
The twins exchanged a glance but said nothing.
Alovi took silence for acquiescence. “Good. Kelyn, wash up, then report to your father. See what needs doing. Kieryn, help Etivva straighten the library. I popped my head in this morning, and you’ve not done as I asked. This evening, your brother and I will help you plan your wardrobe.”
Kieryn grimaced, opened his mouth—
“No arguments,” she snapped. With a glance that withered any thoughts of rebellion, she left them, calling for Master Yven.
Kieryn glowered after her. “Everybody knows but us.”
“Nobody knows but Mum and Da,” Kelyn said. “And that’s the way they want to keep it.”
Sulking, the twins started for the keep.
“Looks like Mother’s not going to let you repeat last year’s offense,” Kelyn said.
“What’d I do?”
Kelyn looked incredulous. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe you showed up at Opening Banquet in your wrinkled shirt and riding leathers?”
Kieryn glanced down his lanky height at his wrinkled linen shirt, now grass-stained, and brown riding leathers. “It’s comfortable.”
“Comfort is not a requirement of formal events.”
“It should be! And I resent the fact that you and Mother think you need to take care of me.”
“Riding leathers, Kier?”
Even when he was sweating and massaging bruises, Kelyn looked dashing. He knew exactly what to wear and how to carry himself in lordly fashion. This morning it was a form-fitting tunic of lightweight wool, finely embroidered with silver thread, and, over it, an oiled leather jerkin stiff enough to absorb a sword’s blows.
There were subtler ways to tell the twins apart. Kelyn’s shoulders were broader from the weight of sword and shield, and in strong light, Kieryn’s hair was a shade paler and shot with gold. His eyes were several shades of blue, but Kelyn’s irises were brightened by tawny sunbursts. Once upon a time, the Ilswythe twins had made use of their sameness to play pranks on their family, but soon enough their differences had become more important, for no boy likes to be in the shadow of another. Kelyn couldn’t hide his love of the crowd, his need for the adoring smiles and flirtatious banter, any more than Kieryn could suppress his desire for solitude and quiet reflection and food of words. Still, the twins found amusing the case of double vision they seemed to inflict upon strangers.
They rounded the bulk of the Great Hall.
As their mother had mandated, they adopted an air of remoteness from the general confusion. Settling on a topic that was unlikely to incite another contest of strength or wits, Kieryn said, “Laral’s improving. His father will be proud when he arrives.” Lander, Lord Tírandon, would foster his sons with no one less than the War Commander himself. His oldest, Leshan, had completed Keth’s rigorous training and returned home last fall. He was expected to accompany his family among Rhorek’s court and be knighted on the last day of the Assembly.
Kelyn replied with a vague, “Mm hmm.”
When Kieryn paused on the flagged path, Kelyn paused as well, mindlessly. Following his brother’s gaze, Kieryn found a laundry maid wending her way from the well to the Hall. “By the Mother, Kelyn! Is there a single female who fails to catch your eye?”
Kelyn shook his head. “There is little in this world more beautiful than a laundry maid.”
Kieryn looked to the heavens. “Oh, Mother’s mercy …”
“No, really. Look.” Kelyn pointed, following the girl’s progress with his finger. “See the way her spine bends against her burden, and her arm out straight, balancing the basket on her hip.”
“You shagged her yet?” Kieryn asked, caustic. “Oh, no, wait, of course you haven’t, or you wouldn’t be interested anymore.”
“She’s shy. But she’ll come around.”
“Like the groom’s daughter?”
Kelyn cast him a wounded frown. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” He hastened for the front doors.
Kieryn pursued. “Her father sent her away in disgrace, Kel.”
“What was I supposed to do, marry her? She was a groom’s daughter.”
“Which was the perfect reason for you to keep your pants on and your hands to yourself.”
Kelyn took the front steps two at a time and sped through the imposing bronze doors, which stood open to the spring air. His boot heels echoed sharply under the vaulted ceiling of the Great Corridor. . To each side, lamps of Harenian stained glass extended graceful necks and winked like red-and-gold eyes, aware and accusing.
Kieryn let him go.
There were more important things to worry about than Kelyn’s nightly escapades. All is not well. What wasn’t Mother telling him? Not knowing was like having a splinter stuck under the skin. If he picked at it, he was liable to do himself harm. “Forget it,” he muttered and followed Kelyn up the stairs.
~~~~