ARC: Sunstone

FREYA ROBERTSON

Sunstone

THE ELEMENTAL WARS

BOOK II

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To Tony & Chris. My Kiwi boys.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

I

Procella leaned on the parapets of the gatehouse known as the Porta and looked down on the Heartwood estate.

The Baillium bustled with people and animals. Knights practiced swordplay in the Exerceo arenas, pages ran errands, horses stood patiently while stable boys tightened their stirrups, and chickens pecked amongst the flagstones fronting the central Temple. The early morning sun had warmed the building’s amber stone to a rich gold, and Procella’s heart warmed too at the familiar sight of her beloved home.

The Quintus Campana tolled, the bell echoing throughout the complex to mark the end of weapons practice. Usually she barely heard it, the hourly knell as much a part of the background noise of everyday life as the birdsong in the oak trees scattered in the grounds. But this time the resonant peal vibrated through the stone, up through her feet and into her bones, making her teeth ache and her head throb.

Unease rippled through her. The light was too bright. The figures moved too slowly, as if underwater. On the top of the Temple, the glass of the domed roof glimmered, reflecting not the green leaves of the Arbor beneath it but instead a reddish-orange, like the flicker of firelight. The skin prickled on the back of her neck and her stomach churned.

Then she felt a presence at her back, and she turned her head to see Chonrad standing there, looking down at the Baillium. His brown hair fluttered in the light wind. The sight of his handsome, bearded face brought a smile to her lips, and his hand on her hip, a protective gesture that would have irritated her were it any other man, only made her glow.

She blinked. Twenty-two years had passed since the day he had asked her to marry him. So where was the grey in his hair, the scar at his temple he had received in a brief raid on his home town several years later?

An icy coldness slithered down her spine. How come Heartwood – which had been razed to the ground after the attack by the Darkwater Lords – was still standing?

Chonrad raised a hand and gripped her jaw, forcing her to look into his eyes. They burned fierce and intense, as if he wanted to convey something important to her. She shivered and tried to pull her chin away, but he was too strong.

“You should not be here,” she whispered.

His blue gaze burrowed into her. Was he about to make some declaration of love? They had never been a romantic couple, but he had always been careful to tell her he loved her every night, to tell her what she meant to him.

Instead, however, he commanded in a low, deep voice, “Bring her.”

Growing angry, she pushed at his chest. “Let me go.”

His fingers bit into her flesh. “Bring her, Procella.” He spoke insistently, both his tone and his stare demanding she listen. Then, finally, he let go of her chin.

She opened her mouth to say something, but a glint of light to her left caught her attention, and she glanced around, the words unspoken.

The windows of the Temple flickered once again with red and orange. Fire was engulfing the building. Heat seared her face and she smelled ash and burnt flesh on the wind. Screams filled the air, and horses panicked and stampeded through the grounds. The crackle of burning wood filled her ears.

The Arbor!

Procella’s eyes flew open. Her heart pounded and her chest heaved as she struggled to work out where she was. Gradually, she recognised the master chamber in Vichton – Chonrad’s bed, as she thought of it. Chonrad’s castle. Even though she had lived there for over twenty years and borne three children there, she still struggled to think of it as home.

She sat up. Stars twinkled through the arrowslit windows, the sun not yet arisen from its bed. A candle guttered, burned low. Early morning, then; dawn a few hours away.

She swung her legs over the bed and pulled on a pair of fur-lined boots, then wrapped herself in a thick cloak. The oak door squeaked as she pulled it open, and she hoped it hadn’t awoken anyone. She wanted to be alone, to think about her dream.

She climbed the curving staircase to the top of the keep and stepped out into the cold air. It bit into her lungs and cleared the final dregs of sleep from her mind. She nodded to the guard on duty, who smiled and then politely looked the other way, used to the mistress of the house appearing at all hours of the day and night. Before she entered the army, she had spent years as a Custos, patrolling the walls around Heartwood, and she felt comfortable up high like this, looking down across the land.

The town was quiet; the only sound the occasional bark of a dog from a sleeping household. Rooftops of all shapes, sizes and colours spilled out from the foot of the castle, the streets a tangle of paved roads close to the wall, mudded lanes on the outskirts. A couple of guards walked the streets, distinguishable by their flickering torches, but it was too late for drunks, too early for even the most hardworking shopkeepers. The air smelled of salt from the sea a few miles to the east, as well as the usual aromas of horse from the stables and smoke from the dying fire in the Great Hall.

That made her think about the fire in her dream, and the way it had consumed the Temple. She had been there twenty-two years ago when the Arbor broke through the stone, causing it to crumble. She had been stunned at its sudden destruction, but it had not filled her with the foreboding and fear that the sight of the flames had.

She wrapped her arms around herself, remembering the press of Chonrad against her back in the dream. Never had she missed him so much. His death a year before almost to the day had been sudden and shocking, and yet somehow she had known he wouldn’t return from his journey to Heartwood the same man. The Arbor had needed him, as it had needed him all those years ago before they were wed, and just as she had dreaded, he had returned a shadow, practically on his death bed. He had tried to tell her what had happened down in the labyrinth beneath the Arbor, and she knew it was something to do with the tree taking his energy once again, but he had died before he had been able to explain it fully.

Now, she missed and resented him in equal measure. He had put the tree first, before her, before their children. Their children may be full grown, but they still needed their father, and she still needed her husband. But as soon as it had called him, he had gone running, and she hated him for that.

A tear rolled down her cheek. Hated and loved him. “I miss you,” she whispered to the wind. But nobody heard.

“Mama?”

The voice behind her made her turn and hastily wipe her cheek dry. Her daughter – the youngest of her three children – stood there, wrapped in a thick cloak over her nightdress, her feet clad in a small pair of leather slippers, her blonde hair snapping around her face in the breeze that had sprung up out of nowhere. Just seventeen, she looked little more than eleven or twelve; small and slight, slender as an arrow.

“You will freeze without your fur boots,” Procella scolded, glad nevertheless of the company.

Horada shrugged and frowned. “What are you doing up here?”

“I had a dream.” A wisp of the uneasiness that had stolen over her in her sleep returned to flutter in her stomach.

Her daughter clutched the cloak at her throat. “What about?”

Procella shook her head and smiled. “It matters not. It was just a dream.”

Horada looked out across the town. Again Procella marvelled at how slight she was, how fragile. So unlike her parents or her siblings. True, Julen was slight too, but he was over six feet tall and dark like his mother, and Orsin was built like Chonrad: broad-shouldered and brown-haired. Horada was almost ethereal, a dreamer who seemed continually in another world. Where had this delicate flower sprung from?

“I had a dream too.” Horada pushed her hair behind her ears. “About the Arbor. It was on fire…”

Procella stared. Her daughter had never seen the Arbor – Chonrad had always refused to take her there, even though both their sons had visited it at varying times. “Fire?”

Horada nodded absently. “I could smell it in the air, and feel the heat on my face.” She turned concerned eyes back to her mother. “I think…” She hesitated. “I think it meant something.”

Words failed Procella. In her head, she heard Chonrad say, “Bring her.” Had he been referring to his daughter? But it had just been a dream, she reminded herself. It wasn’t an omen or a portent or a glimpse of the future. It couldn’t be.

Procella had never experienced a spiritual moment in her life. Like all good Militis, while in the army she had carried out her evening rituals and worn her oak-leaf pendant around her neck, and she still bore the oak-leaf tattoo on her outer wrist, a constant reminder of her past life as Dux. But although she loved the Arbor and would have defended it with her life, it had always been others who’d had the spiritual connection with the tree.

So why was she dreaming about it now? And Horada too? Had her daughter somehow inherited Chonrad’s strange connection with it?

“What do you think it means?” she asked.

Horada moistened her lips. “I think it wants me to go there.”

Cold filtered down through Procella as if she had drunk a cup of water from a mountain stream. “That would not be wise.”

“But–”

“Your father refused to take you there,” Procella said sharply. “I have always wondered why, but now I am starting to think he was right. You saw what the Arbor did to him, and maybe he worried it would do the same to you.”

“If the Arbor calls, we should answer regardless.” Horada’s midnight-blue eyes shone with idealistic fervour.

Procella refrained from yelling the sort of swear word she would once have uttered to her fellow Militis in the training ground. She had gained more control over her language since having children and finding out they copied every word she said. But still her back stiffened with resentment. “Should we? Why so?”

Horada frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Why should we go running? The Arbor killed your father, remember?” She clenched her fists, fighting the surge of emotion.

Horada looked up at the stars. “I wish I could have spoken to him about it before he died.”

“Yes, well, so do I, but we were not given that luxury.”

“I know. And I know that you resent him and the Arbor for that. But he would not have wanted it any other way.”

Procella saw scarlet. “Do not presume to tell me what my husband would have wanted. I know he would have been glad to help, but he did not enjoy being at the Arbor’s beck and call. The tree revolted him – did you know that?” Horada’s startled gaze told her that no, she did not. “He hated the way the tree took sacrifices each year. He could not bear to watch it consume them – it sickened him. Yes, he had a special connection to it. But that did not mean he had to like it.” Her voice was sharp enough to chop an oak tree in half.

Horada’s bottom lip trembled. “Do not be angry with me. I cannot help it – I can hear it. I can feel it. It is calling me. I must go – I do not have a choice.”

“You are not going,” Procella said flatly. “Go back to bed.”

Horada studied her for a moment. Then, without another word, she turned and walked down the stairs.

Procella smacked her hand on the stone parapet, earning herself an alarmed stare from the guard in the corner who had tried unsuccessfully to ignore her raised voice. It was time for Horada to marry, to have children of her own, to throw off these fanciful dreams and come back down to earth.

But the taste of ash lingered in her mouth, along with the feel of heat on her face. And Chonrad’s words, “
Bring her”,
were to echo in her mind for the rest of the day.

II

Demitto roasted slowly in his ceremonial plate armour like a chicken in a pot.

Sweat ran down his back, soaking the tunic he wore under it, and beneath his helmet his hair stuck to his head and his eyes stung. He would have given anything to strip off and dive into the moat surrounding the castle in front of him, even though a layer of scum that covered the surface looked as if it would have dissolved the top layer of his skin if it came within contact.

But he was a trained knight, used to spending hours in the saddle, and his role as ambassador had meant a lot of waiting around over the years. So he sighed and contented himself with shifting into a more comfortable position, and passed the time by keeping an eye on the palm trees and ferns in the bush around him as they rippled in the warm breeze.

He would never have admitted it, but the lush greenery made him nervous. Born in Lassington, a coastal town surrounded by wheat and barley fields, the jungle areas on the southern and western edges of Laxony were alien to him; so different to the oak and beech forests to the east. Every year, it seemed the vines and creepers covered more of Anguis, a slow encroachment, which was nevertheless transforming the countryside he travelled through regularly. This was his first journey so far south, though, and here the thick, dense bush to the west had grown right up to the old castle moat, where surely once the building had stood proud and free, able to look down on the surrounding countryside like a superior nursemaid.

A huge dragonfly flew in front of him, and his horse danced nervously. He patted its neck, looking at the giant pink flowers lining the path to the castle, their leaves as big as his hand. He missed the daisies and buttercups in the meadows, the bluebells and daffodils. It was time to return home, he thought. He had been gone too long.

How long was he going to have to wait out here in the sweltering, moist heat? Mosquitoes were eating him alive wherever they could find a bare patch of skin beneath all the armour. Surely it couldn’t be much longer before the castle guard came out to get him? He was from Heartwood, after all. As a royal emissary of the holy Arbor, he was rarely kept waiting for long.

But the sun continued to beat down, and he was just starting to think that he didn’t care if the future of the kingdom depended on it – he wasn’t going to fry for another minute, when the drawbridge lowered, colour flashed beneath the portcullis, and a small party emerged carrying the blue and silver flag of Harlton.

He straightened in the saddle, watching as the horses approached the waiting party. He had wondered whether the Prince himself would be among them, but the leader was a woman, and she didn’t look happy. Tall in the saddle, slender in an embroidered blue and silver tunic over plate armour, she had long dark hair braided back off a severe face, with piercing eyes that turned him to ice in spite of the hot weather.

Even before she introduced herself, he was pretty certain he knew who she was. He had dreamed about this ever since the Nox Aves had given him his quest; had built it up into a historic meeting of great significance; had expected trumpets to ring and stars to fall out of the sky at the momentousness of it. He held his breath, waiting for the speech he was certain would go down in history.

She reined in her horse, rested her hands on the pommel and glared at him. “Come with me.” She turned the horse and started back for the castle.

Demitto’s eyebrows shot into his hairline. Disappointed, he glanced across at the four knights who had travelled with him from Heartwood, seeing his own resentment reflected in their hot faces.

He kicked the horse forward to walk beside her. “Good morrow to you too,” he said as he raised his visor, also irritated that he had been baked like a bun and yet no apology seemed forthcoming.

She cast her dark glance at him again, studied his face and then visibly softened, as if the sun had finally thawed her. “I am sorry. It has been a long day.”

Indeed it had, and she had not been sweltering in a steel suit. He didn’t say that, however, slightly mellowed by her apology. “You do not seem particularly pleased to see us,” he observed.

“It is not you as such,” she clarified. “More the situation.” She shook her head. “Perhaps we should start again. I am Catena, Chief of the Guard at Harlton Castle.”

I know.
He didn’t say it, though. “Demitto,” he returned. “Ambassador to Heartwood.”

It was a title that usually made people gasp with admiration. Catena, however, merely rolled her eyes.

He chuckled. “I can see you are a difficult woman to impress.”

“Ambassador to a tree.” She waved a hand in the air. “I am in awe.”

That made him laugh out loud, a reaction she obviously hadn’t expected, judging by the way she looked at him with startled eyes. “By the oak leaf,” he exclaimed. “Someone must have really stoked your fire today. The Prince, maybe?” Her wry glance told him he had guessed right. “What did he do to earn your ire?”

She slowed the horse and surveyed him with interest. “You are very direct.”

“I am interested.”

“Do you really think this is an appropriate conversation? Considering that the Prince has been Selected, and I am to accompany him to Heartwood?”

Demitto shrugged. “As ambassador, my role is to improve communication between Heartwood and the neighbouring realms. Besides…” he said, smiling, “I am a good listener.”

She let out a long, slow sigh and looked at the rustling ferns. “It is a long story.”

“I have been here for hours. Clearly, there is no rush.”

The horses’ hooves echoed across the wooden drawbridge. Catena nodded at him. “Maybe later. Although I believe you will probably understand the problem very shortly.”

Leaving him with that mysterious comment, she dismounted, and he followed suit, handing the reins to one of the pages who had run out to greet the party.

He looked curiously around the outer ward. The castle lay just outside the mysterious Komis lands. Built a hundred years before, its design mirrored the concentric castles found throughout Laxony, but the carvings above the doorways were not the natural patterns he was used to, like leaves and flowers, but instead consisted of geometric shapes – triangles and spirals and dots in the Komis fashion.

Although trade relations in Anguis had improved a hundredfold over the five hundred years since the historic Darkwater attack, and Komis men and women had integrated with Laxonians to a certain extent, there was still something exotic about them that fascinated Demitto. He knew King Gairovald had married a Komis, and supposedly their son – Prince Tahir, soon to be that year’s sacrifice to the Arbor – had a very Komis look about him, but Demitto had yet to meet him.

Come to think of it, Catena herself probably had Komis blood in her, Demitto thought, watching her direct the household to secure the rest of the horses of the Heartwood party. Although she didn’t have the distinctive golden Komis eyes, her black hair and swarthy complexion suggested an ancestor of that description somewhere in her heritage.

“Come with me.” She jerked her head at him, and, removing his helmet, he followed her through the gatehouse into the castle proper.

Like the outside, the castle interior consisted of an intriguing blend of cultures. Demitto recognised the layout: the large central hall, the jumble of rooms, cool out of the heat of the sun. But the large tapestries on the walls depicted geometric shapes rather than the usual landscapes and battle scenes he was used to. Some he recognised as faces and animals and objects like trees, but they were composed of circles and squares, filled in with tiny colourful dots in the Komis fashion. He found them slightly disturbing, like something out of a dream.

Harlton kings had grown rich on the ores mined from the quarries to the west. Thick jungle now hampered the mining operations, but it would be a long while before the wealth they had accumulated vanished. Even in the castle, Demitto could smell the blacksmiths’ fires on the air, overriding the usual castle smells of cooking food and ash from the fire, and a strange tang of metal in his mouth set his teeth on edge.

Catena walked forward, gesturing for him to follow, and led him toward the dais. The King and Queen of Amerle sat in elaborate chairs side by side and watched him. Next to them, in a smaller chair, sat a young man who looked down his nose at the Heartwood party. Like his mother, the thirteen year-old Selected had raven hair braided back off his face with gold and jewelled clasps, dark brown skin, and eyes that – even from a distance – were a startling, bright gold. A large hunting dog sat by his side, and the Prince’s hand was clenched in its fur, the only sign that maybe he wasn’t as relaxed as he appeared.

Demitto approached the dais, stopped a few feet away and bowed. He closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated, remembering his purpose for being there, thinking of the Arbor, the way its leaves rustled when there was no wind, the soft beat of its heart beneath the bark. Then he opened his eyes and stood to face his curious audience. “Greetings from Heartwood.”

The King stood and gave him a soldier’s salute. Demitto returned it, then stepped forward and the two men grasped wrists and rested a hand on each other’s shoulder.

“You are most welcome,” Gairovald said. He looked relieved. That puzzled Demitto. “And we are sorry to have kept you waiting. My son was keen to look his best for the Heartwood party.”

Demitto’s gaze slid to the Prince. He didn’t look as if impressing his guests was of particular importance to him. He looked bored and impatient, as if this was all a huge waste of his time. An interesting attitude for a person who was about to dedicate his life to a holy cause.

Demitto glanced at Catena. Undisguised impatience flitted across her face before she caught him looking at her and wiped her expression clear. He filed that look away to think about later.

The formalities continued. Gairovald introduced him to the Queen, then to other members of the court. There were lots of them, people having travelled from far and wide to see the Heartwood party and to say their last goodbyes to the Prince – officially, at least. Demitto noted that nobody paid any interest to the Prince at all. He sat to one side, flipping through the pages of a book, seemingly removed from the festivities.

After the introductions, they all sat down to eat, Demitto and the rest of the Heartwood followers at the high table, everyone else on benches that ran the length of the hall. Servants placed elaborate dishes of stuffed swans resplendent in their feathers, whole roasted pigs and hundreds of cooked chickens on the tables, along with pitchers of ale and large bowls of fruit.

Demitto had a headache after sitting too long in the sun and was desperate to remove his armour and have a long soak in a bath, but he ate politely, made conversation and watched the entertainers, conscious all the while of Tahir’s bored and detached demeanour, his superior manner to those around him. Demitto looked longingly at the ale, but purposely steered clear, wanting to keep his wits about him, at least until he had performed his official duties.

Finally the meal ended. Tahir tossed a half-eaten chicken leg onto his plate, got up and walked off behind the dais to the upstairs rooms without a word to anyone, his dog close behind him, earning him a glare from his father, who nevertheless did not rise to go after him. Catena – who’d eaten sparingly at the end of the table near Demitto and answered any questions asked of her in monosyllables – watched the Prince go, then stood and said, “It has been a long day for the party from Heartwood, my liege. They have travelled far and we have to start a long journey soon too. Perhaps we should excuse them for now?”

Gairovald waved a hand, clearly as relieved as his captain of the guard that the day was over. “Yes, yes, of course. Please, show our guests to their chambers.”

Demitto rose, bowed and followed Catena out of the hall.

“Thank you,” he murmured. “I am exhausted. It was only my armour keeping me upright.”

She laughed – the first time she had done so – and it lit up her face like the sun. “I am presuming before you go to your chamber you would like a bath?”

His answer was immediate and heartfelt. “Oh, roots of the Arbor, would I.”

“Follow me, then. I think I will join you. This cursed heat has melted my patience.”

She led him outside to the bath house – a separate stone building with a hypocaust system under the tiled floor to keep the baths hot. She, Demitto and the other Heartwood knights stripped and sank into the water with a collective sigh.

“Bliss,” Demitto said, leaning his head on the back of the bath and closing his eyes. They had added the usual rose petals to the water but it also had a strange smell he couldn’t place, something like cinnamon or cloves, sharp on the nostrils. Komir spices no doubt. He didn’t like it particularly, but he was too tired to complain and ask for a separate bath.

For a while they soaked in peace, and he let the heat of the water dissolve away the aches in his bones. Heartwood to Harlton was a good ten or eleven days’ ride, and he was glad of the brief respite before the return journey.

After a while, Catena spoke. “Following your bath, I expect you will want to retire?”

He opened his eyes and rolled his head on the tiles to look at her. She looked younger without the heavy armour, and strands of her black hair curled around her neck where they had escaped the knot on the top of her head.

“After this I expect to visit every inn in town,” he corrected. “I have not had a decent ale all journey.”

Her lips curved. “You drink ale? I am shocked!”

“Why?”

“You did not have any at the table. I presumed it was because you had taken holy orders?”

He shrugged and closed his eyes again. “We swear to protect the Arbor, but we are not monks. Those days are long gone.”

She fell quiet for a few minutes and they soaked in companionable silence. Then she said, “How long have you been escorting the sacrifices to Heartwood?”

“I have been ambassador for eight years,” he said. “I do not escort every year. This is my fifth time.”

“And are all sacrifices spoilt brats?”

He opened his eyes again, amused this time. He studied her for a while, long enough to make her shift uncomfortably in the water and say, “What?”