Curse of Kings (The Trials of Oland Born, Book 1) (31 page)

LAND FORCED HIMSELF TO CONTINUE READING.

 

        
To my beloved son, Gideon,

 

These past three months I have spent in unimaginable anguish. You fled in torment, you ran, ashamed, and that I understand. I always took pains to hide my affliction from you. The night you uncovered my secret, through a simple unlocked door, I thought my world had ended.

    
Though I have kept you hidden, it was for your own protection. I want to tell you more about what this affliction means for you, Gideon, but I dare not write it in a letter. But, like it did me, I fear it will strike you in your nineteenth year. I first saw traces of it when you were two years old, and from then on, I did everything I could to find a cure. It was at two years old that my parents, having seen the same signs in me, gave me away. I vowed that I would never do that, that I would give you the life of love that I did not have.

    
I planned this coronation, thinking, foolishly, that it might draw you home. Alas, I fear you would have, by now, made yourself known. So this letter is my only hope. I have only revealed your existence to a trusted few: Wickham, Croft and Draefus, the general of my army. Croft is now dead. I am willing that Draefus will find you and deliver this to you.

    
I wanted everything for you that I did not have. I wanted you to read, to play, to laugh. But more than anything, I wanted you to be un-afflicted and free. I do not want my life for you. It is not a proud one.

    
I write this, not knowing where you are, not knowing if it will ever reach you.

    
I beseech you, Gideon, to please return to your father. I vow that I will do everything in my power to cure you and, if that is not to be, we shall face our affliction together.

 

        
Your loving father,

        
Villius Ren

 

Oland could barely breathe. It was his son who Villius Ren had been looking for at Dallen Falls, not Oland. It was the absence of his son that had made him wild with grief. Oland's cheeks burned at his confusion. Villius had been forced to confide in Wickham and Croft about Gideon. And that was why Wickham had killed Croft. To get rid of the only other person who knew. That meant Wickham could use the information to his advantage.

Oland was startled by an urgent hammering at the door.

“Master,” came a man's voice. “Master!” He knocked on the door, over and over. “Master Ren! It is Draefus, sir. I come with good news! I have found what you have been searching for! Open up, open up!”

Oland retreated into the corner of the room. All went quiet at the door. Suddenly, the general appeared at the opposite window. Oland ducked behind a cabinet. Draefus knocked on the window.

“Master Ren!” he said. “I know you are suffering, but please. I must take your letter immediately. Your son is in a shocking state!”

Oland stayed in hiding as Draefus walked all around the house, banging on the windows and doors. Eventually, he left. Oland stared down at the writing desk. In a gesture as involuntary as the rise and fall of his pounding chest, he picked up the letter, folded it up and slipped it into his pocket.

From outside, Oland heard a desperate scream. He ran to the window. Draefus was lying face-down in the garden with Oland's stolen knife buried in his back. Beside his body stood the newly liberated Frax, holding up a lantern, even though it was daylight. He waved it at Oland, smiling his black-tipped, tiny-toothed smile. His wings twitched.

“Your letter from King Micah was marvellous!” he shouted. “It caused Villius Ren much joy! He laughed and laughed at the idea of you doing anything of worth!”

Oland no longer cared about Villius Ren. He was dead and he could laugh no more.

“Speaking of worth,” said Frax, “I got these!” He set down the lantern and pulled a bag of gold coins from his pocket, shaking it, before putting it away again. “I saw you run across the garden!” he shouted, his tiny eyes bursting with excitement. “I came to see the screaming souls! I have found no trace of them! But I'll settle for a screaming boy!”

The sun suddenly struck a shiny trail that stretched from just in front of Frax to the house. Frax picked up the lantern and rose into the air. He laughed as he released it. As it struck the oil below the flames shot so high, he brought his knees to his chest, before soaring into the sky.

Oland ran for the back door and searched the ring of keys for the right one. After three attempts he found it, his hand shaking as he unlocked the door. As he ran from the burning house, he realised that with Croft, Wickham and now Draefus dead, he was the only one alive who knew of the existence of Gideon Ren. Oland stopped running. He took the letter from his pocket, balled it up and threw it into the flames. He waited until it turned to ash.

As Oland made his way across the grounds of Castle Derrington, one thought plagued him, and he was sick to his core.

To deprive someone of a father is unpardonable.

LAND EMERGED THROUGH THE TRAPDOOR INTO THE
throne room. He closed it gently. As he crossed the floor, he heard his name being called. He looked up to see Prince Roxleigh staring down at him from the marble table.

“Oland, you have made a grave mistake by killing Villius Ren,” he said.

“I'm sorry,” said Oland, “but you don't know all the things he's done.”

“No,” said Roxleigh. “
You
don't know all the things he's done.”

“What do you mean?” said Oland.

“Fourteen years ago,” said Roxleigh, “the message I sent with Wick to King Micah was not just a letter, but a box of vials: distillations, extractions, essences and infusions – the research I had carried out on Curfew Peak. They are extracts of the—”

“Traits of insects and animals,” said Oland.

“How do you know?” said Roxleigh.

“Villius Ren must have found them years ago,” said Oland. “He approached two doctors with something that would encourage them to carry out their experiments…”

“But my notes were destroyed,” said Roxleigh.

“Are you sure of that?” said Oland.

Roxleigh considered his question. “Stanislas,” he said. “He must have rescued my notes. My poor, sweet little brother, Stanislas. Wherever he hid them, Villius must have uncovered them.”

Oland thought of what Malben had said. “I was told that, when Villius Ren was nineteen, he was sick, and he approached them for help…”

“Sick?” said Roxleigh. “In what way?”

“I don't know,” said Oland.

“When Archivist Tristan Ault was stripping the castle of its records on the night King Micah was overthrown, he must have uncovered notes about The Great Rains, and that they would return. This was why you were told to return before The Great Rains fell. The lines in your letter: ‘the mind's toil of a rightful king' was a reference to me and my work,” said Roxleigh. “‘A father's folly' was the tunnel my father built that failed to stop the plague; ‘his son's reward' meant that is where I would find the vials. King Micah realised that, if the rains fell, the Derring Dam would be breached, and the abandoned tunnel where he had hidden the vials would be flooded, washing everything into the river, poisoning the water or, worse still, remaining intact and falling into the wrong hands.

“Today, I went to the tunnel, Oland, while you were locked in the cell with Delphi. There was nothing there, no notes, no vials, but there were signs of recent activity.”

“Villius Ren,” said Oland. “Frax gave him my letter from King Micah. Villius worked it out.”

“And now he is dead,” said Roxleigh, “and we don't know where these essences are.”

“They can't be hidden too far away,” said Oland, “he wouldn't have had enough time.”

“But a winged Pyreboy could have carried them anywhere by now,” said Roxleigh.

Oland shook his head. “I promise you, Prince Roxleigh, Villius Ren would not have trusted Frax with them. He trusted few. And most of them were dead.”

“You've been gone quite some time,” said Roxleigh, “how could you know what new alliances Villius Ren might have forged?”

“It wasn't Frax,” said Oland. “I crossed paths with him again. He had gone to the walled garden, to visit the screaming souls.”

“What screaming souls?” said Roxleigh.

Oland told Roxleigh about how the Evolents had buried the bodies of their failed experiments.

Roxleigh was horrified at the tale.

“There is something more to this,” he said. “What was wrong with Villius Ren that required experimentation?”

“Benjamin Evolent said that he wanted to create amazing human beings, people with special gifts…”

“That still doesn't explain everything,” said Roxleigh.

He paused for such a long time, Oland didn't know what to do. Roxleigh's gaze was troubled and distant.

“I see it now,” he said finally. “I see it all.” He turned to Oland, his face haunted.

“Oland, did Villius Ren disappear alone before midnight every night?”

“Yes,” said Oland, wondering how he was moving from one topic to the next, and neither appeared connected. “How do you know that?”

“There are no screaming souls,” said Roxleigh. “What you heard was the sound of the wind whistling through the porous rock of Rigg Island. Villius Ren tilts the cap of the windmill every night to harness the prevailing wind.”

Oland's eyes were wide. “I don't believe it! The bodies were never screaming!”

Roxleigh turned to Oland, his face white.

“Those bodies were never buried, Oland. They never made it any further than the dining table of Villius Ren.”

LAND WAS STUNNED BY
P
RINCE
R
OXLEIGH'S WORDS.

“But how?” he managed to say. “What makes you say that?”

“I didn't tell you the whole truth on Curfew Peak,” said Roxleigh. “It wasn't just my time in the asylum that led me to believe that Rowe had been poisoned. I had witnessed something before I was ever sent away… something so shocking that… I have never before told the tale.”

“Please,” said Oland, “please tell me. I need to understand.”

“I know,” said Roxleigh. “You deserve to know. Rowe and I dined together often, taking lunch together most days. Not long after he came back from Curfew Peak, he began to miss these meals, and then he stopped altogether. One night, I walked in on him – he was eating – and… well, it was the most disturbing sight I had ever seen.” Roxleigh bowed his head. “I'd rather not speak of it, Oland. Suffice to say that was my first inkling that he had in some way been poisoned on Curfew Peak. I told him to meet me the next day, but he never appeared. He was my best friend, and I never saw him again. I wanted to help him. And he was gone.”

Oland's heart was pounding.

“Clearly, this affliction, this compulsion to feed on the dead,” said Roxleigh, “is passed on from father to son. Villius Ren was my dearest friend Rowe's son. When I met Villius Ren earlier, there was something between us that I could not pinpoint.”

The strange energy Oland had picked up on.

“But how were they afflicted?” said Oland.

Roxleigh had tears in his eyes. “My poor, dear Rowe,” he said. “How he must have suffered.” He wiped his eyes. “Oland, I shall tell you the whole truth about Rowe,” he said. “A truth I have never told anyone, as a mark of respect to his memory.”

“I will keep your secret safe,” said Oland. He had enough of his own to understand.

“As you already know, Rowe slew a drogue, and a drogue is part vulture. Because the myth originated in southern Envar, we knew that this was likely to have been the Aetian Vulture; they live to be two hundred years old. So the vulture, and therefore the drogue, has the very essence of long life in its veins.

“It was only years later when I went to Curfew Peak myself that I figured this out. I knew, because of what Rowe had told me, that the seventh vertebra of a drogue is weak. I came across a dead drogue on Curfew Peak and I extracted that bone and dissected it. There are four fluid sacs – one for each animal: vulture, bull, bear and wolf. It all made sense – it's simply nature at work. If anyone is foolish enough to strike a drogue at its weakest point, this fluid is sprayed into the air. The drogue will try to live on in any way it can. In the case of Rowe, he was infected with the dominant traits of the vulture.

“So I went to Curfew Peak,” said Roxleigh, “and I vowed to continue with my work. I was able to extract that essence from the drogue's spine, but I could also refine it, so it was just the essence of long life, without the rest of the vulture's traits. I tested it on myself. Clearly, as you can tell, it worked. Here I am all these years later.”

“And you never found Rowe?” said Oland.

“No,” said Roxleigh. “But I believe he is out there, suffering. And I hope to one day find him.”

“I will help you find your distillations,” said Oland.

“And I would like to also find the doctors who stole my notes,” said Roxleigh. He stood up. “Now, Oland, a celebration is about to take place, so we must set aside our fears.” He put his hand on Oland's back and guided him towards the door. “We shall rejoin our comrades and celebrate the liberation of Decresian,” he said. “And we can celebrate the knowledge that an affliction was taken to the grave.” He paused. “We are, at the very least, lucky that Villius Ren died childless.”