Table of Contents
Also by Michelle Sagara West
Title Page
prologue
chapter one
chapter two
chapter three
chapter four
chapter five
chapter six
chapter seven
chapter eight
chapter nine
chapter ten
chapter eleven
chapter twelve
chapter hirteen
chapter fourteen
chapter fifteen
chapter sixteen
chapter seventeen
chapter eighteen
chapter nineteen
chapter twenty
chapter twenty-one
chapter twenty-two
epilogue
Copyright Page
Also by Michelle Sagara West
Cast in Shadow1
The Sundered Series1
Into the Dark Lands
Children of the Blood
Lady of Mercy
The Sacred Hunt Duology11
Hunter’s Oath
Hunter’s Death
The Sun Sword Series2
The Broken Crown
The Uncrowned King
The Shining Court
Sea of Sorrows
The Riven Shield
Sun Sword
prologue
King Renar I of Marantine was a very tired man.
And here, in the privacy of his richly paneled, windowless study, he was allowed the luxury of showing it. He wore no crown, and his much-vaunted love of fine clothing seemed to have slipped; lamplight flickered disapprovingly over the rough twill of an unembroidered brown tunic.
Four months ago, the Maran House had once again established its right to rule over Marantine; four months ago, less two days, he had taken to the road with the small army that he had raised to visit the villages south and east of Dagothrin. He grimaced, allowing his furrowed brow to sink slowly into hands that would barely support it.
Lady Erin was a warrior; he had seen it proven countless times while she stood at his side, or by it, sword singing the chimes of day or night through the bodies of those who had thought to conquer. He wished in silence that he had her taste for battle.
The soft crackle of paper made him look up again; his desk, or what little could be seen of its polished surface, showed a hint of his face. Papers, all urgent, and all awaiting his signature and his seal, glared up in blank accusation.
He was certain his father had never felt so haggard. His hands curled into familiar fists, and he reached for a quill. Thinking about his father still brought him more anger than comfort.
Ink dripped onto the desk, making yet another stain for its surface. He could hear Molatten’s curt sniff, which worked about as well as his first lecture had. Fine furniture, sir, must be treated with respect.
Hells with it.
There was a knock on the door; it would have been loud even had it carried over conversation.
“Go away.” Fatigue made the words sound as petulant as they were.
The door swung open, and Gerald walked in. He checked his usual stride to avoid stepping on balls of crushed parchment—Bright Heart knew that some of it would probably have to be retrieved, smoothed out, and shoved under Renar’s weary nose.
“I’m busy,” the king said curtly; he’d enough time to drive the annoying whine out of his voice.
“I see. I won’t keep you then, but there are a few more orders that General Lorrence wants you to sign.”
The quill hit the desk with an unsatisfying swish. Renar lifted it in a panic, but ink had already blotched the edges of several documents.
With no show of sympathy whatsoever, Gerald neatly added another sheaf of papers to the farthest right corner of the desk.
“Gerald, do you want a job?”
“No.”
“Does anybody?”
“Not yours, sir.” He thought a moment. “Maybe Lord Cosgrove.”
“Ha. I’d see the Hells personally first.” He looked at the documents that bore Lorrence’s thick, clean writing. They were no doubt urgent. “I don’t see the point of this.” Renar reached for the documents. “I’m not going to read these—I might try, but at this time of night, none of it’s going to sink in. I’m going to sign them, the way I sign everything he sends me, and I’m going to send them back with a courier. Why doesn’t he just spare us both and sign them himself?”
“Already has.”
“You know what I mean. As far as he’s concerned, I’m just a figurehead. Why don’t we dispense with the formalities? Oh no. Not that frown. Please. I’ve had a bad day as it is.”
Gerald shook his head. He looked down at Renar and barely managed to keep the smile from his lips. “You weren’t trained for this.” It was as much mercy as he would show. “But it doesn’t matter.”
“Why do you only speak when you’re about to start a lecture?”
“I say what has to be said.” He thought about dragging one of the chairs from the comer, then decided against it. “You’re king, Renar. The men who follow Lorrence respect him, but you know that they follow the crest he bears.
“Lorrence didn’t take the city; you did. If the king had listened to your warnings in the first place, we would still have a readied army. Women would have their husbands and children, men their wives.”
“Yes.” The word burned the young king’s throat. “And Gregory might now be king. He’d have been the best Maran had ever produced.”
“You do better than you know,” Gerald continued. He would not refute his king’s words; they were undeniably true. “Your presence with the royal guards has strengthened the army; you give them Marantine to fight for, and they need it. We need it.”
“Yes.” Renar allowed himself a weary sigh. “But do I get any time to be myself?”
“Would you wish the Empire to rule still?”
“No.” It was soft, that word, and final. The truth of it kept Renar going as he reached for the red wax and candle.
Darin sat in the two-story bay window that overlooked the main roadway into the palace courtyard. The stone was cool beneath him, but the glass-touched sun was warm enough to take the sting out of early spring cold. He looked up to see no trace of dust or webs and thanked the Bright Heart he didn’t have to clean here.
His arm was still swollen and tender to the touch, a gift from the king at their last sword lesson. He sighed; he was abysmal and knew it.
He flexed his elbow gingerly. He smiled. Today Erin and her unit—unit was the easiest word to remember among all of the the military ones that were thrown around—were coming home—for good. She was responsible for retaking the last village. The war was won. Or at least the battle for Marantine.
He had met with the three lords—Stenton Cosgrove, Tiber Beaton, and Tiras Colfeldas, who had given up the name of Brownbur—for daily discussions about the Line Culverne and the future of the Bright Heart in Marantine. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t comfortable, because they pressed him for answers he didn’t have.
But they treated him as an adult. At least they gave him that.
Erin, why won’t you tell me what you’re going to do now?
That question was foremost on his mind as he saw the heavy outer gates roll open and saw the unit march in. From here, the fighters looked dirty, and their step was off—but it was light, almost friendly, if soldiers could be said to be so.
Now that it was over, maybe she’d know.
But Erin couldn’t answer the question for Darin, when she wasn’t certain herself. And she knew how important it was to both of them.
/> She sighed as she peeled herself out of her armor. It was dirty, but the blood that had sunk into parts of the leather was old, and more important, someone else’s. The quilted padding was worse; it clung to her as if the sweat of the march were glue. She wanted a bath. And here, at the palace, she was finally likely to get one.
Her robes had been laid out across the bed; they were gray and simple, as befitted an initiate. She wore no other now. In a like wise, her room was small and spare. The bed was narrow and unadorned, and beside it sat a small, squat table. There was a modest wood stove, but no chair, no rug. The door was rectangular and narrow as well, and it closed by simple latch; there was no brass here, no luxury.
Well, that’s over.
She dropped her armor into a satisfyingly messy pile, then stopped at the one small window that seemed to have been carved as an afterthought. It faced south.
South and east.
She was cold of a sudden; the logs burning in the stove couldn’t take the edge off that chill.
Yes, it was over, but what of it? The shadow loomed in the distance, and while the Empire existed, Marantine would always be a target. Renar would not give the city over again, nor his children, she was certain.
But beyond that, who could say?
She shook her head. The braid rapped gently against her neck, and she began to unwind it in nerveless fingers.
The battles for the villages had gone well; better than any expected. Little of the enemy forces had been left there, and those that remained were easily defeated. But two villages had been razed completely before their enemies had realized that they weren’t fighting a retreat; they were being routed. Healing the wounds that they left in land and psyche would be hard.
Even for the Sarillorn. For though she could touch the Bright Heart at will now, His power seemed weaker each time she did so.
And why should it not? The lands were almost entirely in the Dark Heart’s hands.
Restless, she began to pace the floor, her bare feet taking the chill of stone and sending it upward. Tomorrow she would make her decision. The council meeting had already been called.
Today she would take a bath.
Acolyte Tentarion brushed his forehead against the stone. His hair traced its cracks the way a broom might. He stood slowly, taking care not to catch the back of his robe with his heels; he’d done that once, and it still humiliated him to think about it.
His cheeks were red as he reached for the real broom. One day, when he was older and his power stronger, he would not be wearing just plain, loose black. He would wear red, like a crown. And no one who’d laughed at him would forget that they’d done it. Not before they died.
They’d die here, too, here in this huge, square room, with its majestic ceilings. They’d be strapped down to the floating black altar; they’d writhe under the rippled edge of Karnari blade; they’d see the frescoes, ancient and admired, that adorned the closed ceiling between its rounded beams.
No. That was too good for them.
The broom scratched against the stone floor in the most irritating way. Soon, though, he’d reach the marble, and it would be quiet.
He walked the room from side to side, stepping carefully between the velvet-covered chairs that served as pews for the rich and the powerful. Tentarion had never been seated among them. His family was too insignificant.
But that would change.
The broom stopped its rhythmic motion as he neared the altar itself. The acolyte’s hood rustled furtively as his head moved from side to side. Good. He was alone.
The broom came to rest against the dark, carved wood of the foremost bench, as Tentarion’s young eyes looked with yearning at the altar itself.
It was beautiful as it hovered in midair. All around it his eyes could make out the trace of deep, bright red that held it so miraculously aloft. One day, this would be his.
He walked to it, taking great care to plant his feet silently. His black-booted toes left no trace; there was no dust here, now or ever.
As a matter of course, he spit into the pool that lay beneath it.
Here. He spread his arms wide, his fingers turned around an imaginary blade. The red lines seemed to swirl in anticipation, and his teeth flashed in a smile.
The pews filled with ghosts, each face a mirror of his own.
I summon the Darkness. His hand came swinging down.
And the Darkness came.
Tentarion took two steps back as it pooled in a cloud over the altar’s surface. Suddenly, the pews were empty, and the room itself deathly and chill.
No. No, I didn’t mean it!
But the shadows that formed paid him no attention. They gathered, growing in density as they sapped the very heat out of the air. Then they lengthened, a moving, roiling pillar.
Tentarion was no fool. He leaped out of the way, taking little care now to see that his footsteps were silent. The broom he forgot as he raced past, hiking the folds of his robe well above his knees.
The doors swung shut; the air cut past his cheeks, they moved that quickly. Terrified, he turned to face the shadow, his face white, his lips trembling.
And the Darkness wore form, almost human, but too gray. Too lifeless. One limb was raised, one claw pointed at his heart.
“Acolyte.”
It was no formality that brought Tentarion to his knees; they would no longer support him.
“Tell the high priest that the First has returned.”
chapter one
The room was silent.
The silence might have been less remarkable in one of the small studies or sitting rooms, but here, in the largest conference hall, it seemed to wait for even the slightest restless movement.
Lord Tiber Beaton’s gaze remained firmly fixed on the delicately creased vellum of an intricate map, although he raised one tired hand to massage the back of his neck. He wore family colors, the blues and the reds spun round with hints of gold, but these were no longer crisp or fresh.
For Lord Stenton Cosgrove, the map across the pale wood of the conference table held less interest than the people grouped about it.
Renar, his grandson, in Maran colors, cast a short shadow in the pale gray light of morning that filtered balefully through the windows. Both of his hands gripped the underside of the table. Tiras stood at his side to the left, wearing only black, always black; his bloused sleeves curved around his back. If he was tired, he alone in the room chose not to show it; it was, in Stenton’s opinion, disgraceful for a man of his age to be so well composed. He sighed.
The patriarch of Culverne, on the other hand, seemed to be nodding off; he could think of no other reason why the boy’s forehead would be nearly plastered to the line staff. This, too, Lord Cosgrove disapproved of, but for less selfish reasons.
If his interest hadn’t been caught by the look on Lady Erin’s face, he might have said something.
She stood alone, her finger trembling over a web of roads on the map. She wore the robes of her lineage, the hood pulled down to gather around her shoulders. Had he not heard reports of her skills on the field, he might have thought the small sword she bore an emblem of rank. But no, he knew she could make it dance, and the grim set of her lips beneath the tight, severe braid told him she wanted to do so now.
“These,” she said at last.
“Lady?”
Her eyes met the king’s. “These were Cormont lands.”
He thought a moment, then nodded sharply. “Yes.”
“And this is the capital?”
“Malakar.”
Darin tensed at the sound of the word. Erin noticed it and raised an eyebrow.
“I served there,” he said, his voice so soft even Erin had to strain to catch it. There were quieter, deeper scars than the one on his arm. She saw them in his eyes now; she had never asked what caused them.
“Would you go back?” And there was more to that question than the four words she spoke.
“Why?”
She took a deep
breath. “If this map is accurate, the Gifting of Lernan is there. The second Wound of God.”
Darin’s eyes grew wide; those words had an import to the lines that was lost on the gathered nobility.
“What is this Gifting?” Stenton asked.
“Old,” she answered. “Old. The lines called upon God through it.” Her eyes never left Darin’s face. They were very green.
Lord Cosgrove was not a man who liked to be ignored. “Lady?”
“Would you go back?”
“Would you?”
“Lady?”
“Yes?”
“The Gifting?”
She frowned for a moment, and then decided. “The blood of the Bright Heart flows through it. More strongly than it does through either Darin or I; it is as close as one comes to God.” She closed her eyes. “If it is in Malakar, Darin should have known of it.”
“How?”
“We just feel it. If all is well.” Her shoulders slumped downward. “It’s old, Lord Cosgrove, and I think the Enemy has used it to weaken God.”
“But if the Bright Heart’s blood is so powerful, why didn’t he strike out through it?”
“He can’t. It’s only through us”—she gestured at Darin—“that the blood works.”
“And is there much power there?”
“Yes.”
Lord Beaton didn’t like the direction the conversation was taking without his expert guidance; he chose this moment to correct the absence. “It’s not going to do us any good; it’s at the heart of the Empire. Might we not think instead on how we continue to hold our lands?”
“Tiber.” Lord Cosgrove held up one ringed hand. His friend subsided.
Erin smiled bitterly. “No, Lord Beaton, we don’t intend to march an army there. We’d never make it through Verdann.”
“Not yet,” Renar said softly. It had the sound of an old argument, because it was.
She thought of the Empire’s Lord. Was he watching somehow? Did he know? Did he prepare even now? “Not ever.”