The Kingdom of Gods (71 page)

“Nor is it my nature,” he added, sounding positively testy now, “to waste time. If I had no desire to be with you, or if I meant only to attend your death, I would simply kill you to get it over with and return to the gods’ realm.”

There was that. He was nothing if not practical.

“Moreover,” he added, clasping his hands behind his back with the air of a man delivering a report, “you have become a thoroughly unpleasant, disrespectful, and irrational
creature — as I correctly predicted you would when we first met. Why would it, therefore, trouble me in any way to spend some trifle of time with you? As you suggest, I could readily go elsewhere.”

I pursed my lips, furious now. “Open this gods-damned door.”

The door lock unlatched itself with a loud clack. I put my hand on it and paused, as his hand landed on mine. It was visible, but no longer radiant, though it should have been. I could feel the dew lifting. The sun had begun to warm the air with the crest of dawn. In the old days, by this point, he would have been shining too brightly to see. Now he had control of himself. He grew only bright enough for my comfort.

“Perhaps you should even be grateful,” he murmured, his irritation gone now. “If not for my siblings, I would have been here with you all this time. I imagine we would have found one another insufferable by this point.” His thumb stroked the back of my hand suddenly, and I jumped, my heart doing a shameful little flutter. I was too old, far too old, for thoughts like this. He was going to kill me.

Then I registered his words and could not help laughing. He was right. A hundred years with him would have driven me insane.

“Shall I offer more rebuttals to your protests, Oree?” He had stepped close to take my hand; his breath stirred my hair. “Must we continue this needless discussion?”

A faint breeze crossed the deck then, stirring my house-coat and reminding me of how cold the morning was. I’d forgotten, with him so close and warm.

I turned to him, and though I could see him, I lifted my
hand to his face. My fingers explored the lines of his flesh, still familiar after decades and other faces and my own forgetfulness. His eyes shut, the lashes brushing my fingertips. I remembered how once, so very long ago, before the diapers and the wedding and the garden terraces and the town council and all the mundanities I’d surrounded myself with, a god had leaned his cheek into the palm of my hand. That moment was as vivid in my mind as if it had been yesterday.

It was yesterday, to him. And was that so terrible a thing, really? In his eyes, I wasn’t even old.

“I get to call you Shiny again,” I said softly. “Or anything else I want. And you can’t get angry about it. Make it a law of the universe, in fact. You can do that now, can’t you?”

Something washed across my vision, subtle but powerful, an outward wave of transformation. He sounded smug. “A small price to pay.”

He hadn’t heard the nicknames I was already thinking up. A hundred years might be nothing to him, but I was mortal after all — fickle, changeable, easily bored. Hopefully he was strong enough to deal with that now.

I sighed and turned the door handle, heading into the kitchen. He followed me in, closing the door behind us. I paused for a moment to listen, biting my bottom lip.

He took off his long coat and hung it on the hook behind the door. He wiped his feet.

Something that I had not known was tensed inside me went soft and still. I let out a slow, heavy breath, and he lifted an eyebrow, perhaps sensing the significance of the moment. Perhaps he even understood it. I didn’t really care if he did or not.

“Sit down,” I said, nodding toward the table. “You look like you could use a good meal.” He was a better cook than I was, I remembered. But that was all right. I would treat him like a guest for one day. He could start doing the cooking again tomorrow.

He sat while I headed for the pantry. We began again.

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THE KINGDOM OF GODS

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THE SWORN

by

Gail Z. Martin

1

“Every time you go, I can’t believe six months have passed already.”

Prince Jair Rothlandorn of Dhasson looked up as his father, King Harrol, stood in the doorway. Jair smiled and sighed as he closed his saddlebag and secured the cinch. “And every time I get ready to leave, I can’t believe I’ve survived six months away from the Ride.” Carefully, Jair folded his palace clothing into neat piles and placed them in a drawer to await his return. For the Ride, the only clue that would mark him as the heir to the throne of Dhasson was the gold signet ring on his right hand.

Jair walked to his window and looked out over the city. Valiquet was the name of both the Dhassonian palace and its
capital city. The sun gleamed from the white marble and crystalline sculptures that had earned Valiquet its reputation as “The Glittering Place.” Long a crossroads for commerce and ideas, Dhasson was perhaps the most cosmopolitan of the Winter Kingdoms. Its long tradition of tolerance for all but the Cult of the Crone had spared it the conflicts that often tore at the other kingdoms and had made it a magnet for scholars and artists. Beautiful as it was, for the six months Jair was home, the city felt like a glittering prison. Jair sighed and returned to packing.

Harrol watched as Jair gathered the last of his things. For the last eleven years, ever since Jair’s fourteenth birthday, he had made the Ride. Although this trip would take Jair away from the palace, Valiquet, and Dhasson for six months, Jair’s belongings fit neatly into two large saddlebags. “You miss her still.”

Jair turned back to look at his father. “I miss her always.” He was dressed for the road, in the dark tunic and trews that were the custom in the group with which he would ride sentry for the rest of the year. Jair slid up the long sleeve of his shirt, revealing a black tattoo around his left wrist, an intricate and complicated design that had only one match: around the wrist of his life-partner, Talwyn. On his left palm was an intricate tattoo that marked him as one of the
trinnen
, a warrior proven in battle. He stared at the design on his wrist for a moment in silence. “I wish—”

“—that the Court would accept her,” Harrol finished gently. “And you know it’s not to be. Even if it did, Talwyn is the daughter of the Sworn’s chieftain and she’s their shaman. She can no more leave her people than you can renounce your claim to the throne.”

“I know.” They’d had this conversation before. Although every heir to the Dhasson throne made the six-month Ride, only
two before Jair had married into the secretive group of warrior-shamans. Eljen, Jair’s great-great-granduncle, had renounced the throne, throwing Dhasson into chaos. Anginon, two generations removed, had worked out an “accommodation,” accepting an arranged political marriage in Dhasson to sire an heir while honoring his bond to his partner among the Sworn by making it clear the Dhasson marriage was in name only. Neither option was to Jair’s liking, and it was at times like these that the crown seemed to fit most tightly.

“You may find that this year’s Ride leaves little time for home and hearth,” Harrol said. “Bad enough that plague’s begun to spread into Dhasson. What I’ve heard from Margolan sounds bad. I know the Sworn stay to the barren places, where the barrows lie. Please, avoid the cities and villages. And be careful. Nothing is as it should be this year. I fear the Ride will be more dangerous than it’s been in quite some time. I have no desire to lose my son, to plague or to battle.” Harrol embraced Jair, slapping him hard on the back. But there was a moment’s hesitation and the embrace was just a bit tighter than usual, letting Jair know that his father was sincerely worried.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be home before Candles Night. And perhaps this time, I’ll bring Kenver with me. The Court can’t argue that he’s my son, whether or not they recognize my marriage. Whether he can take the crown one day or not, they can get used to the fact that I won’t deny him.”

Harrol chuckled. “If the boy can be spared from his training, by all means, bring him. If he’s half the handful you were as a lad, it should keep you busy fetching him out of the shrubbery!”

Neither Jair nor his father said more as they descended the stairs to Valiquet’s large marble entranceway. There was no mistaking the two Sworn guardsmen who awaited Jair. They were
dressed as he was, in the dark clothing and studded leather armor of the Sworn, wearing the lightweight, summer great cloaks that would help to keep down the dust and discourage the flies. Jair shouldered into his own cloak.

“Good to see you once more, Commander.”

Jair recognized the speaker as Emil, one of the guardsmen he had known since he’d first begun making the Ride. Emil’s greeting was in Dhassonian, but his heavy accent made it clear that that language was not his native tongue. His companion, Mihei, a warrior land mage, echoed the greeting. No one would mistake either of the men as residents of Dhasson. Both wore their dark, black hair straight and long, accentuating the tawny golden cast of their skin. Their eyes, amber like the Sacred Lady’s, marked their bloodline as servants of the goddess. A variety of amulets in silver and carved stone hung from leather straps around their necks. The leather baldrics that each wore held a variety of lethal and beautiful
damashqi
daggers, and the weapon that hung by each man’s side was neither broadsword nor scimitar but a
stelian
, a deadly, jagged, flat blade that was as dangerous as it looked, the traditional weapon of the Sworn.

Jair was dressed in the same manner, but it was obvious to any who looked that he did not share the same blood. Tan from a season outdoors, he was still much lighter than his Sworn companions, and his dark, wavy, brown hair and blue eyes made his resemblance to Harrol obvious.

“It’s been too long,” Jair responded in the clipped, consonant-heavy language of the nomads. “I’ve been ready to leave again since I returned.”

Jair knew his father watched them descend the sweeping front steps to the horses that waited for them. Even the horses looked out of place. They bore little resemblance to the high-strung,
overbred carriage horses of the nobility. These were horses from the Margolan steppe, bred for thousands of years by the Sworn for their steadiness in battle, their intelligence, and their stamina. Jair fastened his saddlebags, shaking his head to dissuade the groomsman who ran to help him. Then the three men swung up to their saddles and rode out of the palace gates.

They did not speak until the walled city was behind them and they were on the open road. Mihei was the first to break the silence. “When we stop for the night, I have gifts for you in my bag.”

“Oh?” Jair asked, curious. “From whom?”

Mihei smiled. “Kenver—and his mother. Kenver chased me down the road to make sure I’d packed the gifts he made for you.
Cheira
Talwyn didn’t chase us, but I wouldn’t care to face her displeasure if I were remiss in making sure you received your welcoming gift.”

Jair smiled broadly, knowing that he had packed several such gifts for his wife and son in his bags as well. “Are they well?”

Emil laughed. “Kenver is a hand’s breadth taller than when you left, and begging for a pony to ride with the guards. Talwyn’s driven us all mad these past few weeks with her wishing for time to pass more quickly.”

“Tell me, where do we join the tribe?”

Mihei’s smile faded. “The Ride’s taken longer this year than in any season for many years.”

“Why?”

“Many times, we’ve found the barrows desecrated.
Cheira
Talwyn says the spirits are unhappy. We’ll join the others just across the river, below the Ruune Vidaya forest,” Mihei replied.

Jair didn’t say anything as he thought about Mihei’s news. The Sworn were a nomadic people, consecrated thousands of
years ago to the service of the Lady. They were the guardians of the barrows, the large mounds that dotted the landscape from the Northern Sea down through Margolan into Dhasson and to the border of Nargi. Legend said that long ago, the barrows had continued, down into Nargi and beyond, to the Southern Plains. But when the Nargi took up the worship of the Crone Aspect of the Lady, they destroyed the barrows and fought any of the Sworn who dared cross into their lands. The Sworn had left them to their folly, and the legends said that the Nargi had paid dearly for destroying the barrows.

Within the barrows were the Dread. What, exactly, the Dread were, Jair did not know. No one had seen the Dread in over a thousand years. Only the shamans of the Sworn, the
cheira
, ever communicated with their spirits, and then only through ritual and visions. But it was said that as the Sworn were the guardians of the barrows of the Dread, so the Dread were guardians of the deep places, and it was their burden to make sure that a powerful evil remained buried.

The three men rode single file, and Jair noted that both Emil and Mihei seemed unusually alert for danger on this leg of the trip. Normally, the two-day journey from Valiquet to meet up with the Sworn was uneventful. Now, Jair realized that the others’ heightened vigilance had affected him, and he found himself scanning the horizon.

“Look there,” Jair said as a small hamlet came into view late in the afternoon. Any other year, the fields would have been full of men, women, and children working. Instead, even from a distance, Jair could see that the fields lay untended, although it was only weeks until harvest. As they drew nearer, an overpowering stench filled the air, and Jair saw shifting gray clouds hovering over the village and the pastures.