In the tremulous moment before shock shifted to action, Draken lifted Seaborn over his head. Several Brînians advanced, their hands on weapons. Draken shook his head. “Do not try me. Halmar, go get Elena and take her down to the gate.”
“But, my lord—”
“No questions. You agreed. Go.”
Another hesitation, and Halmar hurried away.
“King Truls!” Draken shouted.
As if it refused to participate in such treacherous schemes, the sword remained dull. Moments passed, and Draken’s anxiety grew with each echoing boom as fire after fire exploded in the city. The crimson moons shone down, sickening, impassive.
“You’re mine,” Draken told his sword. “You must obey me, no matter what task I put to you. The gods decree it. I decree it.”
In his peripheral vision he saw two brave Brînians edge nearer, swords drawn. They faltered as the tiniest glimmer sparked along Seaborn, drawing what white light was left in the world. Draken straightened his arm and the sword flared.
“I will kill again, as many as I need to bring him to me,” he said without turning his head toward them, and he raised his voice to a shout. “Come on, Mance King! If anything should draw you out, it’s death!”
“You dare to challenge me?” The horrible Voice resonated against the heavy, crimson air. Bruche writhed inside Draken’s skin, but they could still move. The words filled the hollow place in Draken’s chest. He drew himself up and pushed aside his fear. He was going to do this. He was doing this.
“I have seen the error of my ways,” he said, lowering his sword to aim it at the Brînian warriors who dared narrow the distance between them. Geord deserved it, he pleaded silently to the gods. But don’t make me kill any more of them.
The gods did not answer. Truls’ thunderous laugh made bits of mortar crumble and fall. “Now you try deception?”
Before the reverberation of the words had ended, Draken leapt from the wall.
Tentacles of magic wrapped around his body, tightening like a serpent, slowing his descent. Draken landed in a crouch, one hand on the ground, the other still gripping his sword.
From this vantage, things on the field looked very different. The Akrasians weren’t half so determined as they appeared from above, but a flock of arrows soared his way. Before he could move, they pierced the ground before him, sinking to the feathers. He’d seen the skill of Akrasian archers. Truls had diverted the arrows. Draken began to walk.
You’ve got his attention, Draken.
Another round of arrows peppered the air behind him. Two Akrasian Escorts ran toward him, but before they reached him they turned on each other. Banes. Draken didn’t shirk from the spray of blood.
“Why did you jump?“ Truls sounded truly curious.
“In my old country there is a game in which one child falls back and another catches him. It builds trust.” He looked all around, scanning the crimson skies, the columns of smoke, and the nervous Akrasian soldiers. Not a Mance in sight. The sea slapped against the cliffs behind Seakeep. “You earned mine. Now it’s my turn to earn yours. Where are you?”
“I am everywhere.” Draken felt Bruche shifting inside him from Truls’ deafening Voice.
The Akrasians held their arrows, apparently realizing shooting at Draken was fruitless. They watched him warily, their swords silenced, fires flickering golden in the red light, smoke drifting overhead like wraiths.
Draken’s laugh sounded papery in the smoky air, but he pressed on. “This world has plenty of gods, King Truls, and you’re not one of them. Not yet. Not without me.” He stopped walking. He didn’t want to get too far from the gates. “I’ve a gift for you—a war offering, if you will.”
“Do not insult me.” Truls’ resentment was a hot wind which burned Draken’s lungs. “I am no mortal to be bribed with moonwrought trinkets.”
What am I playing at here?
It took every scrap of fight not to run.
I cannot do this.
Bruche cooled the fear Truls wrought, filling Draken with his presence.
You started on the path. You must finish it now.
Draken closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, forcing himself to embrace the scent of blood and burning bodies. So many had died here today. Everything went quiet. Too quiet. He opened his eyes.
Truls stood before him, ten strides away, well out of sword range. Five Mance flanked him. Draken caught his breath at their stark, beautiful faces, each marked with the crescent moon. Not one cheek flinched, not one eye blinked. They were like silver statues, their skin like old mirrors. Still, they were so stunning Draken could not make himself hate them. Weakened by their familiar beauty, Draken lowered his sword and leaned on it. The point sank into the ground, still spongy with blood.
Onward, Prince. Their beauty reflects your rightness of action.
The cold spreading from his hands to his biceps prodded Draken.
“Open the gates,” he told Truls.
“We’ve no ram—”
“You just caught me in a hundred handspan freefall,” Draken said. “You’ve been playing with these people.”
Truls’ smile dissipated. “As you played me when you jumped?”
“The games are over.”
“You don’t behave as one who would ally to me, especially considering we were so recently enemies.”
This had been Draken’s greatest fear. Blessed anger came to his rescue. “How should I behave? I thought I could save all these people and I’m wrong. I bow to your magic and your war.” He dropped to one knee, but kept his eyes on the Mance King’s pale face. “Better to be wrong and alive than right and dead. Now open the bloody gates.”
Instantly, without Truls so much as lifting a finger toward the wall, the gates shattered into a thousand splinters with the marrow-chilling reverberation a great tree makes when it falls. His father’s body disappeared into the confusion and dust.
Draken tightened his jaw to prevent himself from reacting. The echo of the destruction died out on the seas and into the crimson sky, not to return. Neither Akrasian nor Brînian spoke, realizing they were among greater powers than even their collective thousands. Truls might not be a god, but he was damnably close to one.
Draken called out, “Halmar, bring her.”
Two figures emerged from the dusty opening between the stone keep walls, stumbling over the debris. Halmar had Elena’s arm, but she did not try to get away. The Brînian towered over her. She hesitated once—when she laid eyes on Truls—and then she walked on, head up. When they reached Draken’s side, she pushed her hood back to reveal her face.
The Mance never knelt to Elena, but she looked ready to demand it. “I understand you are the cause of this.”
Draken’s determination flickered at the sight of her proud face until Truls answered.
“I was in your employ when I killed Prince Khel, after all,” he said. “It’s only right you should atone for your Lord Marshal’s sins.”
Reavan splashed through Truls’ image: the hollow cheeks, the dark, lined eyes, the haughty expression, and then King Truls returned, an apparition in the smoke, wide-set eyes begging to be believed, pale, perfect lips smiling from spite and hate rather than love and friendship.
“A mistake to trust you,” Elena said. Her gaze slid to Draken.
Now that she stood here, so beautiful and proud, he did not know if he could make her pay the price for the lives of their peoples. What cruel gods had created the path to this moment? Perhaps Truls was right. Perhaps they were the playthings of gods and even his own hatreds were cards in a divine game.
Truls spoke again, this time to Draken. “The Brînians would have killed Elena soon enough, furthering our war. Why did you save her to present her to me now?”
Draken’s fingers tightened on his sword hilt. His hand was warm, completely under his own power. Bruche, though he condoned what Draken would do as a righteous path to peace, would not participate.
This is your battle, and the first blow shall be struck by you.
“I needed her alive to prove to you that you have my sword.” Draken spun and thrust Seaborn into Elena’s chest.
Elena did not cry out, just gasped wordlessly. She fell to her knees as he yanked the sword away, and she crumpled to the dirt. Draken and the Mance King watched as her body stilled and her blood drained out on the ground.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A
roar started in the field, and heedless of the Brînian archers at the ready, the remaining Akrasian army surged toward them. His attention torn from Elena’s body, Draken tightened his grip on his sword, black to the hilt with Elena’s blood. Was it banes or honest fury at the death of their Queen?
Truls sounded pleased. “Come, Prince Draken. We mustn’t stand in the way of their way of killing each other.”
Draken didn’t even get to glance at Halmar before the magic tendrils took hold of him once more. They deposited him near the river, well away from the renewed battle, but close enough to make out the confusion around the gates. He shifted on his feet, unease pressing on his heart. What had happened to Elena’s body? He couldn’t see Halmar’s hulking form any longer. Turning from the melee, he stared unseeing at the river in its canyon. He hadn’t counted on Truls destroying the gates. Stupid, but he’d assumed the Mance King would just open them.
In the darkness tinged red by the moons, his eyes took a moment to adjust to the murky depths of the river gorge. The canyon looked even deeper from above. A fall from this height would surely kill someone. Too slowly to be certain he wasn’t recreating them from memory, the wall paintings came into focus. Giant battles, moons reflected white against a crimson sea, and impassive visages of the gods overlooking it all. He’d done as they said, but it had been wrong. It had only furthered Truls’ war on the people of Akrasia.
The sound of the rushing river pushed its way into the forefront of his thoughts. Draken squinted down. Red in the eerie moonlight, the Erros was rising steadily, sloshing through the gates, swallowing the paintings from below.
The din of the fighting sounded far away, like an echo of a memory. Fresh apprehension clawed his insides, momentarily erasing the pain and fear over what he’d just done to Elena. “Look at the water.”
Truls’ lips tightened into a narrow line, but he did not answer.
Not something he expects
, Bruche said.
I don’t like it either.
As they watched, the water swelled alarmingly, lapping the walls a man’s height below where they stood.
“We should get away from here,” Draken said.
“No,” Truls said. “This is an attack, and we will wait for it.”
“An attack...?” His voice faded as his eye followed the river’s path as it widened at the sea. A glimpse of iridescence, like the glow of a colorless moon peeking out from the clouds, reflected out on the bay. Draken looked up at the sky. Perhaps the crimson radiance had lessened a bit; the air didn’t feel so horribly oppressive and dark. He drew his sword again and held it out over the Erros. No mist hung over the river canyon, and despite the red moons, its reflection glowed clear white against the rising waters.
“Sheathe that sword!” Truls hissed, snatching at his arm.
Draken jerked away and swung at Truls in a sweeping arc, but the blade met empty air.
“I knew it was a lie,” Truls said, a bodiless voice. “You killed your beloved Queen for nothing.”
Draken turned to face the Mance King as he reappeared behind him. Draken swallowed. No use in pretending now. Even as he spoke, the water topped the edge of the canyon and reached for Draken’s boots. But Truls was well away, too far to strike.
“Enough of this playing, as you called it,” Truls said. He spoke in his own language, words of uncompromising hatred. For a moment, nothing followed but the water swirling around Draken’s ankles and soaking the hem of his cloak.
As commanded by Truls, Bruche threw down Seaborn, wordless, pitiless. Truls lifted it.
“You did me the favor of killing Elena,” Truls said. “Her loyalty to you was a bit of a concern. Still. It’s clear you’re more liability than of service.”
Virulent cold seized Draken. His spine cramped in sudden agony and he fell back, body locked in rigor. His scream drowned in the waters of the Erros. His blood froze in his veins. His heart fought to pump, once; it lurched in his chest and then stopped. It could not pump ice. Only one point of heat: a bane, burning in his chest.
Bruche moved under his skin and through his muscles. His quick, sharp jabs felt as if they would tear Draken inside out. The old warrior did not speak, just moved and spun as he fought the poisonous bane. Draken couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t fight. Loathing and hopelessness flamed within him. The beckoning heat coaxed him nearer. It would be a relief just to give in—
NO!
Bruche’s frantic voice in his head.
I just want to sleep
. Every muscle protested the strain of resistance, but Bruche refused to let him go. Water lapped across his face.
Scorching white fire split the crimson skies above him. Draken stared, unable to so much as blink, eyes streaming hot tears. An aftermath of hot wind swept down, boiling the water around him. Bruche continued to fight the bane in glacial silence. The din from the battlefield kept tune with Truls’ lighting. Akrasians and Brînians were burning. The water would never reach them in time. Pointless to fight it—
Do not turn from me now, Draken. It’s the bane. This is not you.
Bruche’s voice was a breathless wraith, sweeping across his face, chilling his skin, but it couldn’t penetrate the hatred streaming through his veins. The spirit warrior thrust himself into Draken’s heart. His cold courage flooded Draken’s chest, and then scorching hatred swept him back again. The ragged, hard-won battle line distorted, broke, reformed.
Ethereal cold gained purchase and teased at Draken’s conscience and logic even as the water swelled past his lips and filled his nostrils. It was warm as a bath, heated from the fury of Truls’ firestorm. Draken’s lungs began to scream for air. His head split with pain as Bruche and the bane clashed again. Hatred scorched his lungs and rose like lava in his throat. A litany of death paraded through Draken’s mind: Shisa, Osias, Setia, his father, his sister...