The Sleeping King (22 page)

It chose?
Kadir spoke of this wand as if it were a living thing. Justin had picked up a few tidbits here and there over the years about magic—he had a habit of eavesdropping on the secret magic lessons that had been arranged for Raina over the years—but he'd never heard of a sentient magic item.

“Where would the wand take a stranger new to its use?”

Kadir spoke quietly enough that Justin had to press his ear to the door to hear the answer. “The grove of the rowan treant, Whisper, lies in Dupree. Guarded by dryads. Perhaps the wand went home to its maker.”

“The wand bears fae magic? Bah!” Charlotte burst out in disgust. “A fae spirit could have thrown Raina anywhere!”

Every story Justin had ever heard of the fae painted the mythical creatures as sly, conniving tricksters with dark senses of humor and a wide mean streak. And one of them had taken Raina?

Kadir spoke soothingly. “The fae are bound by the rules of their courts. I do not believe they would harm an innocent young girl.”

Justin scowled. Well, at least the man admitted that Raina was innocent in this entire affair.

“Where is this rowan grove?” Charlotte inquired.

“West of the city of Dupree.”

“Why on Urth would Raina be cast all the way there?”

Kadir's answer was grim. “I would not presume to know the workings of any fae magic. The timeless ones do not see the world as we do, and work for their own mysterious purposes.”

Justin leaned against the wall beside the door, cursing himself roundly. This was his fault. Raina'd asked for his help the night of her party and he'd ignored her. Sent her away from him. He'd known her all her life and never once had she given him cause to believe she was anything but honest and forthright. He should have believed her.

He'd heard enough. His next move was obvious. He snuck away from the solar on grimly silent feet. He'd helped make this mess; it was up to him to help fix it. If Raina was not in this rowan grove, mayhap the dryads there would know where the treant's rod had sent Raina.

He returned to his pallet in the dormer for the castle lads and quickly packed the gear he would need for a long journey. A stealthy trip to the kitchen to supply himself and he was on his way. Foreboding weighed heavy upon him. Raina was caught in the middle of something huge, and it was his duty to rescue her. The night was cold, but he did not feel it nipping at his nose as he set his feet to the north road at a steady jog.

 

CHAPTER

10

The footpath to Dupree was a treeless slash through the Wylde Wood, its margins trimmed back a good thirty feet on each side. Keeping this end of the path open fell to the men of the hollow to do each year and was a source of much grumbling about wasted effort. But today Will was abjectly grateful for the broad avenue of short greensward on each side of the actual track. No Boki ambush could be set in such a wide space.

After he spent a few hours walking the path nervously, Will's exhausted mind began to play tricks on him, questioning if he really was fleeing from Boki, actually racing to report an invasion of the borderlands and the slaughter of dozens of innocents. The journey took on an unreal quality as he grew light-headed with fatigue. Maybe none of it had happened. Maybe he'd imagined it all.

He would wake up from this strange dream having dozed off under the spreading branches of the old hickory during an uneventful night's watch. He would shake his head at his morbid nightmare and walk down the hill to get breakfast. He'd eat the last of the winter fat sausage, fried crispy brown in his mother's big iron skillet, and have a mug of oatmeal thinned with cream still warm from the milch cow.

But as hunger turned to sharp pain in his gut and fatigue turned to sharper pain in his thighs, his dream-like state also passed. And then the memories came. Wave upon wave in violent, excruciating detail that would not stop. The knot of vengeance unfulfilled grew in his gut and tightened into something akin to fury. He'd heard bleeding-heart greenskin lovers argue in the past that orcs and goblins and their kind were entitled to live and breed and die in peace. But the bleeding hearts were wrong. Orcs were vicious beasts with no respect for, nor right to, life.

He and Rosana walked on and on, and during that long march he learned to hate. He tasted rage, bitter and hot upon his tongue. He sipped of it. Then drank of it. Then gorged on it until he nigh drowned in its ichor, wrath suffusing the farthest reaches of his being. If he ever came across Ki'Raiden again, he would kill the Sixth Thane of Boki. Slowly. Painfully. By torturous degrees for each of the citizens of Hickory Hollow the thane had slaughtered.

The light brown strip of dirt before the two of them wended its inexorable way north, back toward the heart of the colony and more heavily populated areas. Will knew the path well, having walked it every spring since he was big enough to push a handcart loaded with boots his father had made over the winter.

It was nearly noon when the footpath widened out into a pair of wagon ruts and another hour before it widened again into an actual road. The forest gave way to fields dotted with cottages, and eventually Will spied the massive stone outcropping of Giant's Fist in the distance.

“What's that?” Rosana asked abruptly, breaking the long silence that had held between them for most of the morning.

“The Giant's Fist. Story goes that a giant was turned to stone here and buried.” Will had always thought it a silly story, but if the hearth tale of the Sleeping King was real, who was to say that this one was not as well? His mother maintained that someone had merely embellished the natural shape of the rock, carving it a bit to look like fingers with rough nails and craggy knuckles. His father only shrugged when asked his opinion on the matter.

Perhaps Ty had known more on the subject than he was willing to say. Maybe he knew whether or not it was possible to turn a giant to stone in such a fashion. What else had he known about magic that he'd never shared with his only son? Will cursed his father anew for not deigning to teach him more of the ways of magic beyond a few simple spells.

Rosana's only response was a skeptical noise.

They walked on in silence, each immersed in their own loss and pain.

Several hours beyond the Fist lay Castlegate Falls, the largest market city in the region. It boasted an Imperial Army outpost and its population swelled to nearly a thousand people on a big market day. It was steady at about half that between times.

Ironically, this was what Will had always dreamed of as a boy: coming to the city on a hero's errand. Unfortunately, he'd failed to imagine the tugging grief and sickening loss that accompanied such an errand.

As he neared the town, his apprehension grew. The ravages of the Empire upon the countryside became more apparent in decimated forests and ugly pits where ore and precious gems had been crudely torn from the earth. The soothing presence of nature around him ebbed.

He and Rosana shuffled through the short line of people waiting outside the walls for a cursory search by the town guard prior to being allowed inside the walled city. After a small eternity, it was finally Will's turn. Rough hands patted down his ribs. “What's yer name, boy?”

“Will the cobbler's son.”

“Where ye from?” Hands rudely grabbed his crotch and then slid down his legs.

“Hickory Hollow.” He knew the next question—asking for his purpose in being here—so he went ahead and answered it. “I'm here as escort to yon healer.” Normally, Will would have reported the Boki attack upon her caravan, but his father's instructions to speak to no one of the orcs but Aurelius rang in his ears.

The soldier replied scornfully, “Why'd ye be keepin' company with the likes of a gypsy?”

Will shrugged. It was never wise to rise to the baiting of the army. They had heavy fists and the law on their side.

Behind him, Rosana snapped to the guard rudely patting her down, “Orcs attacked a Heart caravan. They killed the guards and left me for dead. I must go to the Heart house immediately and make my report. Unhand me and let me pass!”

Will winced. Gypsies were not well liked in the best of times in these parts. He turned hastily to make an apology for her, but was startled to see the guard gesture for her to move along. Did the Heart colors carry so much weight, then, that even a snappish gypsy wearing them was shown a modicum of respect?

The first soldier muttered, “Straight on to the town square, then. The Heart's among the other guild halls.”

“Thanks be,” Will mumbled as he took Rosana by the arm and hustled her out of range of the guards. He half-whispered to her, “You should not be so high-handed with soldiers. Around here, they despise your kind for being thieves and cutthroats.”

“My kind are despised everywhere!” she retorted. “I was lucky the
Kaer
took me in when I showed a talent for spiritual magic. It was they who protected me from slavers and bigots like those back there. I was barely three years old when the
Kaer
found me after the Boki insurrection.”

He stared, shocked. “Do you remember your family?”

“No. The Heart is my family, in truth. That is why I call it the
Kaer
. That is an old word for family among my kind.”

“And those other words you used?
Prala
and … and
gaj
?” His tongue stumbled over the unfamiliar syllables.

“
Prala
means brother.
Gaj
is mother.
Pena
is sister, and
daj
is father.” She shrugged. “I do not even know what gypsy clan I come from. I think of the
Kaer
as my family, so why not call it that?”

He shrugged back.

She grabbed his hand and hurried forward. “Come.”

He'd never gone into the town of Castlegate Falls proper. His father always veered left just inside the gate and headed for the open field of the farmer's market to sell his boots and shoes. This moment marked the end of the familiar in Will's journey. From here on out, all would be new. A burst of excitement momentarily overtook his fear.

The street was a morass of mud and dung at first, but as he approached what he estimated to be the middle of the town cobblestones replaced the mire. He gazed up at the marvel of three- and even four-story buildings. Normally, he would revel in the sheer noise of the place. But today it was an obscenity. Didn't they know a terrible tragedy had happened? That innocents had died and their murderers were on the loose, perhaps headed here to wreak their violence next upon these laughing, oblivious fools?

Shopkeepers gossiped and shouted, oxen bawled, chickens pecked and clucked underfoot, and everyone seemed in a great rush to get somewhere. But then, so was he. Moving as quickly as the heavy foot traffic would allow in the clogged street, he and Rosana made their way to the Heart.

The thoroughfare spilled into a square large enough to fit all of Hickory Hollow inside it. He gazed around in amazement at the gaudily decorated buildings ringing the plaza. The familiar green and brown of the Forester's Guild. The purple and black of the Merchant's Guild. The red-and-gold sunbeams around a red heart on a white field of the Heart. A couple more guilds he didn't recognize. That building with the gray-and-black door and stylized mountain shape must be the Miner's Guild. Next to it stood the red and black of the Slaver's Guild with its distinctive chain-link motif. And beyond that, the blue and gold of the Imperial Mage's Guild.

Even if he hadn't known the Mage's Guild's colors, he'd have spotted the building in an instant. It was surrounded by a faint shimmer of magic, visible from the corner of his eye when he didn't look directly at it. There must be some sort of magic shield around the entire building! Such a display of power awed him.

He angled out into the square to avoid walking directly past the Slaver's Guild. He was human, a citizen race not subject to enslavement on sight, but the place gave him the jitters anyway. Slavers were known for randomly grabbing locals and impressing them into slavery to fill their quotas—usually later in the summer, though, after the planting was done and well before the harvest. Still, there was no sense in taking any chances. After all, he was in excellent health and on his way to becoming a tall, strapping youth.

Rosana threw the Slaver's Guild hall a disgusted look but gave it as wide a berth as he did.

He murmured, “They cannot take you as long as you wear Heart colors, right?”

“They would not dare,” she muttered back. “The Royal Order of Sun would annihilate them all. There would be many dead bodies before the Order stopped killing over such an outrage. And not many people would be inclined to heal dead slavers, would they?”

Good point. The Heart building was whitewashed, its trim painted in alternating red and yellow. It, too, was surrounded by a faint magical glow. When they approached the steps, however, a young fellow standing in the open doorway ducked inside for a second and the glow disappeared.

Rosana started up the steps confidently. “Well, what are you waiting for?” she demanded while Will stood rooted at the bottom of the stair.

“Is it safe? That magic shell won't harm us?”

She grinned down at him like he was the most uneducated bumpkin she'd ever seen. “It's only a wizard lock. The initiate has already let it down for us. Even if it's not down and you run into it, the magic will only repel you and not let you approach the building. Wizard locks won't hurt anyone.”

Oh.
Feeling stupid, and feeling irritated at feeling stupid, he tromped up the steps after her. The common room of the Heart house was shabby, albeit welcoming, with a cheerful air about it. An unfamiliar hint of magic tingled faintly in the air. It made him uncomfortable, but Rosana seemed to breathe it in like the smell of fresh bread warm on the hearth.