Heart of the King kj-3 Read online

  What an unusual dream.

  He rested his head against the floor of the wagon, wondering what other dreams this sleep may hold. As his head touched, the left wheel of the cart hit a deep rut, rattling boards and jarring Graymon’s arm. Pain shot through his shoulder and into his chest; he cried out. The pain and the sound of his own voice startled him and he sat up, staring into the darkness.

  It wasn’t a dream.

  Chapter Six

  Khirro’s eyes fluttered open to see the washed-out blue of an autumn sky above. It calmed him, though whatever he lay upon pushed against his back, hard and uncomfortable.

  I’ve been here before.

  He recalled laying on the stairs of the Isthmus Fortress, when King Braymon saved him from a dead soldier’s rusted axe, then tumbling down the steps and nearly killing himself. Khirro closed his eyes and concentrated on remembering what happened after the fall down the stairs. Through his hazy and indistinct memory, the Shaman’s face came to him, then a soldier he once thought his friend. All at once, everything came back, and he saw his companions, their trip and sacrifices, their deaths. Everyone dead except him and Athryn.

  If Braymon hadn’t saved him, if he hadn’t fallen and put himself in position to be the one cursed to raise the king, he wouldn’t be wherever he was now and all his friends wouldn’t be dead.

  Then he remembered the Kanosee soldier in the tomato field with his sword raised skyward to strike the killing blow.

  “I am dead.”

  “No, Khirro. You are not dead.”

  Khirro turned his head toward the familiar voice and opened his eyes to look at the magician’s face. Athryn wasn’t looking at him, instead concentrating as he dipped the tip of his knife in a black liquid held by a cup-shaped stone. He pressed the point to a bare spot of flesh on his inner thigh and sucked breath through his teeth as a mix of black ink and red blood ran down his leg. It had been the job of his now-dead brother Maes to inscribe the spells in his flesh; this was the first time Khirro had seen Athryn do it himself.

  “Where are we?”

  “I do not know exactly.”

  Khirro’s brow creased.

  “How did we get here?”

  “I brought us.”

  “You brought us here, but you don’t know where here is?”

  Athryn shook his head.

  “Sounds a bit dangerous, don’t you think?”

  “And trying to best six warriors in battle is not?”

  Khirro sat up, the wounds he’d sustained during the brief battle surprisingly free from pain.

  He healed me, too.

  “Good point.”

  He saw he’d been lying on a stone path running between a number of buildings, all of them at least partially destroyed by force, fire, or both. A stout wall in similar disrepair surrounded the village.

  “Is there anyone else here?”

  Athryn’s knife dimpled his flesh again; he sucked another breath through his teeth and closed his eyes, collecting his thoughts before answering.

  “No one here alive but us.”

  The rotted faces of undead soldiers jumped to Khirro’s thoughts and he leaped to his feet, grasping for the hilt of the Mourning Sword to find it missing. Athryn paused in his tattooing and looked up.

  “The Mourning Sword,” Khirro gasped.

  “One of the soldiers knocked it from your grasp.”

  Khirro searched the ground by his feet, took a few steps toward the nearest run-down hut, but stopped when he thought of the ghastly undead soldier who came close to taking his life. He stopped short of the entrance. A pair of feet-one bare, the other clad in a worn boot-were visible just beyond the threshold. The flesh of the bootless foot was wizened like the corpses in the field.

  “Where is it? Did you bring it?”

  Athryn dabbed blood and ink from his thigh with the sleeve of his shirt, stood and walked to his companion’s side.

  “Khirro, I did not carry you here. The fallen soldier’s death gave me the power I needed to transport us.” He paused. “I could not bring the sword.”

  Khirro stared, anger roiling in his gut, but he held it in. The magician wasn’t to blame for him dropping the sword. On the contrary, Athryn was the reason he still lived. Again. No one deserved his anger but himself.

  “We have to go back for it.”

  “Go back where? We do not know where we are. And the sword will not be there. What soldier would not take it for his own?”

  Khirro gritted his teeth, his anger at himself increasing as he realized he’d not only lost the legendary Mourning Sword, but that doing so left him swordless in the land of the enemy. He looked away from Athryn, chewed his bottom lip until he tasted blood.

  “You said we’re the only ones alive?”

  “Yes. Nothing but corpses like in the field. Many of them.”

  “But none of them are moving?”

  Athryn cracked a smile and put his hand on Khirro’s soldier.

  “No, none of them move.”

  Khirro walked toward the ruined hovels. He felt Athryn’s eyes on his back until the magician’s footsteps took him back to where he’d been sitting. A minute later, he heard him suck a pained breath as he returned to inscribing a fresh spell upon his leg.

  Khirro peered into the first hut. The desiccated corpse within looked to have been a man, but it was difficult to be sure. The eyeballs were missing, long chewed out by some vermin, and its patches of stringy hair gave no clue. Only the tattered shirt and dirty breeches suggested the dead person’s gender.

  In the next building, he found no corpses, though the table was set for a meal: three plates, three cups, three forks. They were picked clean by scavengers but for the last few crumbs of bread remaining on the wooden board set in the middle of the table.

  Khirro wandered building to building, peering into the ones still standing, occasionally toeing the charred remains of huts burned to the ground. He’d counted twenty-five corpses by the time he reached the shack that made him pause.

  It was half fallen-down and sparsely furnished, like the others, left as though life stopped in the middle of everything. A rocking chair sat beside a long burnt-out fire in a stone hearth; a woman’s corpse sat in the rocker. She wasn’t as badly dried-out as the others, her raven hair brushed and tidy, her gray dress without holes, her eyes closed. She looked peaceful as she sat with her legs crossed at the ankles and a bundle held to her chest.

  A familiarity to the scene caused a stirring in Khirro’s chest, but he couldn’t discern whether he recognized the place from a dream or from his life before being forced into the king’s army, before being cursed with his burden of restoring the king. That life seemed too long ago to remember, its contents hidden from him by the fog of time.

  He stepped across the threshold and found that the warm air inside smelled of dust and neglect, not death. The corners lay in shadow and his hand went instinctively to the scabbard where it would normally find the Mourning Sword, his fingers clutching empty air.

  “Gods,” he cursed and pulled his dagger instead.

  Each footfall raised a puff of dust as he crossed the room, eyes searching the shadows. Nothing moved. Five paces took him to the rocking chair where he stood, dagger in hand, staring down at the bundle the dead woman clutched, staring at the baby which she held to her breast even in death.

  A blanket, gray with age and tattered at the edges, swaddled the babe. Khirro pulled a corner of the blanket aside gently and saw the child’s cheek was plump, its skin smooth. Somehow, the child was the only thing he’d come across in his search that looked as though it may have been recently alive. He watched its face for a moment, doubting what he saw.

  The baby’s eyes opened and looked directly into his.

  Khirro gasped and stumbled back a step, feet catching; he tumbled to the dirt floor in a cloud of dust, landed hard on his backside and stayed there looking up at the woman and her bundle. The child made him think of another baby he’d seen in the
recent past in another ruined village, but the mud baby had been a dream. This time, he was awake.

  He clamored to his feet and brushed dirt off his breeches as he stood, eyes never leaving the grubby blanket until he heard a sound behind him. He spun around, dagger held out before him, but saw nothing.

  When Khirro faced the woman again, he immediately sensed a change. The child sat lower on the woman’s lap, as though she’d slumped and her bundle slipped from her breast. As Khirro looked, the corpse shifted. He jumped back. The swaddled infant rolled off the dead woman’s lap and hit the floor with a dull thump, the blanket’s corner caught between her knees. The bundle rolled toward him, gray cloth unwinding until it came to rest near his feet.

  The baby’s once-plump cheeks were sallow, its glossy eyes pasted closed. The wrinkled skin on its face made its head look like an apple that had passed months beyond rotten. A tiny, brittle-looking arm stuck out at an odd angle, reaching toward Khirro’s foot. He stared at the dead thing, confused.

  “How…?”

  “It’s the magic. Athryn is right.”

  The unfamiliar voice startled Khirro and he swung the knife as he turned before thinking about what he was doing. If the woman had indeed been a woman, the knife would have opened a long wound across her belly. Instead, it passed through her.

  Khirro looked at the woman’s face, then down at the knife in his hand. His fingers loosened and the dagger tumbled to the dirt floor.

  “Elyea?”

  The word caught in his throat.

  “The Archon’s actions have broken the laws of nature and magic. Every time she raises an undead soldier, the life to sustain it must come from somewhere. They come from here.”

  She swept her arm in front of her indicating the building in which they stood, but Khirro knew she meant the village, or perhaps all of Kanos. He followed the sweep of her arm and saw again the slumping corpse of the woman, the dried-out babe at his feet, each of their lives lost in service of creating one of the hideous monstrosities he’d seen at the Isthmus Fortress. He imagined their essences as a stream of translucent color sucked out of them as the mother rocked back and forth, comforting her child. The streams of color twisted into a rope and seeped out the walls, escaped up the chimney, gone to fuel the rotted soldiers, the mother and child’s lives involuntarily given up for a cause they likely didn’t know existed.

  “How bad is it? Is all of Kanos like this?”

  Elyea’s ghostly feet carried her past Khirro to the dead woman’s side where she stopped and looked down into the shriveled face. Khirro reached out to touch her hair as she passed.

  “The Kanosee army has entered the Isthmus Fortress.”

  Khirro stared at the back of her head without seeing the waves of red hair which had tempted his touch seconds before.

  I must have heard wrong.

  “The fortress? What? How?”

  She faced him.

  “Therrador was proclaimed king after Braymon’s death. He opened the gates to the Archon and her troops.”

  Khirro’s gut shifted, his chest constricted. Anger rumbled at the back of his throat.

  “Bastard betrayer.”

  The words came from his lips, a growl fueled by rage, but they didn’t feel as though they belonged to him. Elyea tilted her head, looked deep into his eyes. The wan light in the room found the green in her eyes, made them sparkle. His chest loosened and he felt control return.

  “He had no choice. She took his son.”

  “Graymon?”

  He knew nothing of Therrador, yet the name of a child he knew in his dreams came out of his mouth as if he was the boy’s Godfather. Elyea nodded.

  “Therrador knows his mistake but the threat to his son clouds his decisions. Unless the boy is safe, it’s difficult for him to be on our side.”

  “Where is Graymon?”

  “They are bringing him to Kanos.”

  “Athryn and I could rescue him. Do you know where he is?”

  She nodded. “This is why I have come. They are going to the capital. If you follow the main road toward the land bridge, you will intercept them.”

  He didn’t say anything, instead looking into her lake-green eyes, at the spill of red hair across her forehead and shoulders, her freckled cheek. To stop his eyes from straying farther and bringing an ache to his heart, he looked at the floor.

  “I’m sorry for what I did to you.”

  “You did nothing but show me love and hope in a world I’d begun to think held none for me. Why should you apologize?”

  “But I killed you.”

  “No, not me. That was someone else.” She reached out and brushed her fingers along his forearm. “You loved me.”

  Khirro’s gaze settled on the baby lying near his feet. Was it a sign of things? Did it mean Graymon was close to lost?

  Or is it Emeline’s child? My child?

  So much time had passed since he last thought of them, long enough he felt shame for it. When once the woman meant everything to him-thoughts of her and of returning to her consuming his moments-now she seemed a memory of a one-time dream, barely remembered. But she was in Erechania where the Kanosee and their undead soldiers had taken over the Isthmus Fortress and controlled the king, where all were in danger. He looked up from the child; Elyea stood near the door.

  “Has this happened in Erechania?” he asked indicating the shriveled child.

  “No. Not yet, but it is why the Archon seeks to conquer your country. She needs lives to fuel her army of the dead. If we don’t stop her, Erechania is just the beginning.” She stepped into the sunlight streaming through the doorway and disappeared.

  “Elyea?”

  A second later, Athryn appeared framed in the doorway, a look of concern on his brow.

  “Khirro? Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have been gone for hours.”

  Athryn’s words surprised him. It didn’t feel like he’d been away for more than thirty minutes. Khirro swallowed hard around a lump in his throat.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “We should go.”

  “Yes.”

  Khirro looked back at the child on the dirt floor, at its bony finger pointing at him. Accusing him? Choosing him?

  Both.

  He kneeled and placed both hands beneath the child, careful not to damage its dried-out skin and brittle bones. Its flesh felt rough against his fingers, furrowed and hard. He scooped it off the dirt floor, crossed the two paces to the rocking chair and placed the babe back on its mother’s lap. Athryn waited patiently in the doorway while Khirro looked at the mother and child.

  “There,” he said and faced his companion. “Now we can go. We must head for the land bridge.”

  Athryn nodded. Khirro stepped past his companion and into the light of the autumn sun. Feeling its warmth on his face drove the hut’s ill feelings from him and he looked to the sky. It was still blue, the Heavens still in their place despite what happened here. He sucked a deep breath and expelled the last of the musty, dust-filled air of the building from his chest.

  “We have a boy to save.”

  He started toward the edge of the ruined village, the magician following without comment as if he already knew what needed to be done.

  Chapter Seven

  Therrador paced the room, hands clasped behind his back, boots padding the stone floor. The pain in his hand had diminished after the surgeon’s maggots did their work, but it still throbbed against the fresh bandage. He ignored the discomfort by shifting his thoughts to his son, which in turn transferred the pain from his missing thumb to his chest, squeezing his heart as if the Archon had inserted her hand between his ribs and encircled it with her fingers, threatened to pierce it with her nails.

  “Oh, Graymon,” he muttered to the empty room. “I’m sorry.”

  “He doesn’t blame you.”

  Therrador whirled at the sound of the voice, surprised to find he wasn’t alone. The ghostly woman
sat on the divan near the huge stone fireplace, her wild mane of wavy red locks covering the shoulders of her simple white dress and spilling down over her chest. The king stared at her, taking in her face and form. In the dungeon, in the dark and gripped by hunger and despair, he hadn’t really seen her or formed a sense of her. Now, in the open, in the light, with his wits about him, he saw her beauty. He took a step toward her and felt calm emanating from her.

  “You’ve seen him? Is he safe?”

  She nodded. “As safe as he can be given his situation.”

  He sat beside her, not close enough to touch but near enough he saw the translucency of her. He looked into her green eyes flecked with black, and searched them to see if she could possibly be real.

  “You’re a ghost.”

  “I am no longer living in the manner you are.”

  “Why are you here? Are you one of the Archon’s tricks?”

  The expression on her face soured at his mention of the other woman.

  “I have nothing to do with Sheyndust.”

  “Then why?”

  “I have come to tell you that the king-bearer and his companion are on their way to rescue your son.”

  “What? Graymon?”

  She nodded her response. The constriction around Therrador’s heart expanded to include his lungs.

  I’ve given up my son’s best hope to the enemy.

  “I have to do something. I told the Archon of his coming.”

  The woman touched his forearm and it surprised him to feel the pressure of her hand despite her lack of opacity. He looked down at her fingers, at the paleness of her flesh. The tightness in his chest diminished.

  “I know,” she said and smiled. Therrador saw a hint of sadness in the expression and a shiver of guilt threatened to rock his spine. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. Things must happen the way they must happen and you are a part of that.”

  “But I-”

  “Arrangements must be made for what’s to come.”

  Therrador looked from the woman to the door, thought about the undead Kanosee soldier standing guard on the other side, then looked back at her. She had taken her hand off his arm and he felt the lack of it.