Petrus pushed the stew around his bowl. “And the curse is in Vaere now?”
“Yes. Ivek crafted it to rise in the east and pass across the kingdoms until it set in the west, like the sun.”
“Only much slower,” Gerit said, leaning forward to throw another branch on the fire. Sparks rose like a cloud of fireflies.
“How slow?”
“At the moment, about a league a day,” Dareus said. “Three or so miles. We believe it’ll move faster once it reaches the first anchor stone. Within a year, all the kingdoms will be infected.”
“Infected?”
“The curse is waterborne. Drink one drop of infected water, and you’ll go mad. And since everyone needs to drink, everyone will go mad.”
Petrus looked up at the rain, falling steadily beyond the shelter of the overhang. “Water?”
“Rivers, lakes, wells. The curse is bound into the soil, so rain is safe until it reaches the ground. Then it becomes infected too.”
“What about animals? Does it affect them?’
Dareus shook his head. “Only humans.”
“So...how do we stop it?”
“Ivek crafted the anchor stones so they can be destroyed. He called it his joke against the Thirteen Kingdoms.”
“Joke? How’s that a joke?”
“The anchor stones can only be destroyed by a royal prince or princess descended from the house of Rutersvard
and
a mage. Something Ivek knew was impossible.”
“Sick son of a whore,” Gerit muttered.
“Why a Rutersvard?”
“Because the purge was led by a Rutersvard.”
Petrus chewed slowly, trying to think of something else he could ask. Something Prince Harkeld wouldn’t know. “Can you lay curses?”
Dareus shook his head. “None of us can. The ability to cast curses is rare.”
“Just as well,” Gerit said.
“Casting a curse is a very personal thing,” Dareus said. “It usually requires physical touch. It’s...think of it as un-healing.”
Petrus nodded.
“What Ivek did with the anchor stones is extraordinarily complex. He somehow managed to bind his curse to the land itself. We’re still not certain exactly how he did it.”
“So Ivek un-healed the Seven Kingdoms? Thirteen Kingdoms, I mean.”
“Thirteen, Seven...” Dareus shrugged. “It means the same thing: the entire continent. Yes, that’s exactly what Ivek did.”
Petrus gestured at Prince Harkeld with his spoon. “And only he can undo it?”
“Only his blood. And his hand laid on the anchor stones.”
“But...he doesn’t have to be alive?
Dareus shook his head. “As far as we can tell, no.”
“How much blood will it take? It won’t kill him, will it?” Out of the corner of his eye he saw the prince pause in his eating. Petrus was careful not to grin.
Scared you, huh?
Dareus shook his head again. “No.”
Petrus stirred his stew. What else could he ask? “If the prince has mage blood, is he a mage?”
“It’s possible,” Dareus said, with a shrug. “Prince Harkeld would have to undergo testing to know that. By breath and by blood.”
“You should do it, sire,” Petrus said.
Prince Harkeld glanced at him. He uttered the only word he’d spoken since sitting down to eat: “No.”
“But don’t you want to know? I would.”
“I am not a witch.”
It’s
mage,
you surly son of a whore.
Mage,
not witch.
Petrus shrugged.
“Can’t know that,” Gerit said. “Not unless you take the test.”
Prince Harkeld ignored Gerit. He continued eating.
“If all the mages were killed, how does the prince have mage blood?” Petrus asked, his tone innocent.
Gerit uttered a snort of laughter, and changed it into a cough.
“For the past two hundred years Sentinels have been coming here in secret,” Dareus said. “Monitoring the Rutersvard bloodline, looking for a child who could break the curse. When it became clear it wouldn’t happen naturally, we decided to intervene.”
“Intervene?”
“To introduce mage blood into the other royal houses in the hope that one of the children would marry a Rutersvard. We waited three generations for it to happen.”
Prince Harkeld put down his bowl. His movements had the rigidity of rage.
“Why was marriage necessary?” Petrus asked. “Couldn’t a bastard—”
“It was one of the first things we tried,” Cora said.
Prince Harkeld turned his head to stare at her.
“Who was the bastard?” Petrus asked.
“A boy called Kiel. His father was a legitimate Rutersvard prince, his mother was a Sentinel mage. She’d been pretending to be a servant.”
“What happened?”
“Kiel’s blood and hand were tried on all three stones.” Cora lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “It didn’t work.”
“The child has to be born in wedlock,” Dareus said. “It has to be legitimately royal. Ivek worked it into the anchor stones.”
Prince Harkeld stopped looking at Cora. He frowned down at his bowl.
“So why didn’t you just ask a Rutersvard to marry a mage?”
“We did that when Kiel’s blood didn’t work,” Dareus said. “One of the Sentinels approached the Rutersvards and explained the situation and—”
“They killed him.” Gerit spat into the fire. The flames sizzled for a moment.
“They thought the curse was a tale. A century had passed since Ivek’s death. A century with no sign of anything wrong.” Dareus shrugged. “Do you know what they say here, when something’s never going to happen?”
Petrus shook his head.
“They say it’s as certain as Ivek’s curse.”
Petrus grunted. “They won’t be able to say that any more.”
“No.” Dareus rubbed his jaw. The close-cut beard rasped beneath his hand. “Where was I? Oh, yes. They killed the Sentinel. So for the next hundred years we watched and waited, until finally it was decided that we
had
to act. So we created an opportunity to break the curse.”
“Prince Harkeld?”
Dareus nodded. “Once he was born, there was a lot of debate about what to do next. Should we steal the child and raise him in the Allied Kingdoms? Should we leave him where he was?”
Prince Harkeld lifted his head. He stared across the fire at Dareus.
“In the end, the Council ruled that we couldn’t take away his birthright. Harkeld had been born a prince; he had the right to grow up a prince. The question then became, how to inform him of his destiny—and when.”
Gerit snorted. “They debated that for nearly two decades.”
“Finally it was decided to follow diplomatic channels. This was a chance to forge a relationship between the Seven Kingdoms and mages. A delegation was sent to Osgaard, to speak with King Esger. I was one of them.”
“Weren’t you afraid they’d kill you?”
Dareus shook his head. “We carried a diplomatic seal granted by the rulers of the Allied Kingdoms. It guaranteed us safe passage. King Esger took some convincing that we spoke the truth about the curse and his son’s blood, but he took the news surprisingly well. Much better than we’d expected.”
“When?” Prince Harkeld demanded. “When did you tell my father?”
“When you were eighteen.”
The prince’s mouth tightened. He turned his head away.
“Why didn’t you speak to the prince, then?” Petrus asked.
“We asked to, but King Esger said Harkeld was too young, too immature. He requested more time and asked that we not approach the prince directly.” Dareus shrugged. “We agreed. There was no urgency; we thought the curse would be dormant for decades.”
“But weren’t you worried about the prince’s safety once you’d gone?”
Dareus shook his head. “Esger promised to protect his son. He swore an oath on the seal we carried. To break it would have been tantamount to a declaration of war against the Allied Kingdoms.” He drained his mug and placed it on the ground.
“We returned three years later, but the king declined to let us speak with Prince Harkeld. He said he was still too immature.”
“We should have ignored the fat bastard,” Gerit said. “Should have just gone in and—”
“We carried a diplomatic seal.” There was an edge in Dareus’s voice. “We were bound by oath to act with openness and honesty.”
Gerit pushed to his feet, scowling. He stamped off into the darkness, his shoulders hunched against the rain.
“The curse took us by surprise, Justen,” Cora spoke into the ensuing silence. Her voice was calm, matter-of-fact. “We thought we had plenty of time. Decades. King Esger’s stalling didn’t worry us overmuch.”
“But then word came about the curse shadows,” Dareus said. “And we knew we had to act immediately. Whether Esger agreed or not.”
Petrus nodded, and then realized that the prince wouldn’t know what a curse shadow was. “What’s a curse shadow?”
“Anyone who’s been cursed has one,” Dareus told him. “It’s like a shroud. Only trained mages can see them. There have been curse shadows across the Seven Kingdoms ever since Ivek laid his curse, but they’ve been extremely faint, almost impossible to see. In the weeks before the curse became active, they became noticeably darker.”
“And now?”
“Now they’re very dark.”
Petrus looked across the campfire at Dareus, seeing the shadows cast by the firelight and the one cast by Ivek’s curse, a dark and unwholesome stain. “Do I have an extra shadow?”
“We all do. Anyone who sets foot on this continent does.”
“Until they leave,” Cora said. “Or die.”
“But...I’m not cursed, am I?”
“You’re cursed, in as much as everyone in the Seven Kingdoms is cursed, but you won’t go mad until you drink infected water. The curse shadow is...think of it as a promise of what’s to come. If you stay in the Seven Kingdoms.”
A shiver crept up Petrus’s spine. “What happens when Ivek’s curse reaches the west coast?” he asked, placing his bowl to one side. “Will it spread across the ocean? Will it reach the Allied Kingdoms?”
“The scholars think not,” Dareus said. “But the truth is that no one knows. There’s a chance it will poison the whole world.”
“So we’d better break it,” Petrus said.
“Yes.” Dareus turned his head and spoke directly to the prince: “Thank you for agreeing to come with us, Prince Harkeld. Things would be even more difficult if you hadn’t.”
“Would you have killed me?” the prince asked. “Taken my blood? My hands?”
“If necessary, yes.”
The prince’s lip curled contemptuously. “You’re not allowed to kill.”
“It’s one of our Primary Laws,” Dareus said. “But Sentinel mages have the authority to break those laws, if the need is great enough.”
The prince lost his sneer. His eyes narrowed slightly, as if he didn’t know whether to believe Dareus or not.
I
T WAS STILL
raining in the morning. Harkeld pulled on his sodden boots and buckled the sword belt around his hips.
Justen held his shirt to his nose for a moment and grimaced, before shrugging into it. “Ach. I’m growing mold.”
Harkeld grunted. “Me too.” Everything smelled dank—his clothes, his hair, his skin.
Justen took a small cloth-wrapped object from his pocket and carefully unwrapped it. “The paint’s coming off.” His voice held a note of dismay.
Harkeld stepped closer to see what his armsman held. It was a tiny portrait painted on wood, smaller than the palm of his hand.
Justen held the painting out to him. “Doutzen. We’re betrothed.”
Harkeld took it carefully. The armsman was correct: in places the paint was peeling from the wet wood. Doutzen’s face was untouched. She was a smiling, plump-cheeked girl.
“She’s waiting for me,” Justen said, pride in his voice.
“You’ll have a happy marriage,” Harkeld said, handing the portrait back.
If we survive.
A hawk landed while they ate breakfast. Petrus. “The pass is misty,” he said. “Can’t see an awful lot.”
“Soldiers?” Dareus asked.
“Not that I can see. There are some on the next ridge, though.”
“Keep an eye on them.”
“Shall do. Is that bowl for me, Cora?”
“And on the other side?” Justen asked. “In Lundegaard. Have you seen any soldiers?”
The witch shook his head. He began to eat.
“Prince Harkeld?” Cora said.
Harkeld glanced up.
“How well do you know King Magnas?”
“I lived in his court for two years when I was a boy.”
“Why?” Justen asked.
“I was fostered,” Harkeld told him. “It’s common practice here among noble families.”
“What’s your opinion of King Magnas?” Cora asked.
“I doubt he’ll seek to stop us. He places higher value on human life than my father does.”