Kingmaker's Sword (Rune Blades of Celi) Read online

  Kingmaker’s Sword

  The Rune Blades of Celi

  Book 1

  Ann Marston

  Five Rivers Publishing

  www.5rivers.org

  Published by Five Rivers Chapmanry, 704 Queen Street, P.O. Box 293, Neustadt, ON N0G 2M0, Canada www.5rivers.org

  Kingmaker’s Sword: The Rune Blades of Celi, Book 1 Copyright © 2012 by Ann Marston

  Edited by Lorina Stephens.

  Cover Copyright © 2012 by Lorina Stephens

  Interior design and layout by Lorina Stephens.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of the book.

  Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published in Canada

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Marston, Ann

  Kingmaker's sword [electronic resource] / Ann

  Marston. -- 2nd ed.

  (The rune blades of Celi ; bk. 1)

  Electronic monograph in EPUB format.

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-927400-17-3

  I. Title. II. Series: Marston, Ann. Rune blades of

  Celi ; bk. 1

  PS8576.A7593K476 2012 C813'.54 C2012-903575-0

  For good friends gone:

  David Bollinger and Brian Mulligan

  This is an exceptionally well-done Celtic fantasy....a multiple-layered prince-in-disguise story...a lively mix of action, romance and cultural details. This one grabbed me from the start.

  — Locus

  Tolkien fans take note! Kingmaker’s Sword has the spirit and the heart of Tolkien in it.”

  — Bookends

  With Kingmaker’s Sword, a beautiful and potent new voice enters the world of fantasy. Gleaming swordplay meets timeless romance in a novel of shimmering extremes.”

  — Mike Resnick, author of Stalking the Unicorn

  Ann Marston brings to life a fascinating medieval world of magic and mayhem, of love and honor, and of complex, engaging characters.

  — Adventures of Sword and Sorcery

  Kingmaker’s Sword is a fresh, highly entertaining tale, engagingly written. And the best part is that there’s more to come in the saga.

  — Sasha Miller, author of Ladylord.

  Prologue

  Part One — The Mouse

  I

  II

  Part Two — Kian

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  Part Three — The Search

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  Part Four — The Prince

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  XXX

  XXXI

  XXXII

  XXXIII

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Books Published by Five Rivers

  Prologue

  He dreamed again of the Swordmaster. He leapt, kicked and spun, the long, gleaming blade slicing arcs through the air around the ethereal figure opposite him. The twilight, neither dawn nor dusk, cloaked the Swordmaster’s face in shadow. The boy saw only the glitter of brilliant, intense green eyes in the indistinct face as he danced with the sword. Left hand to right hand, then in both hands, the boy’s sword sprang back and forth in answer to the Swordmaster’s flowing motions. The boy moved like a living flame, thrusting, parrying, attacking and defending. The sword felt like an extension of his arm, a living part of him just as surely as his hand and his arm were part of him.

  Around and around in the strange light they danced. The boy heard the Swordmaster’s voice, patient, quiet, calm, instructing—always instructing. Guiding him, directing him, focusing him.

  The Swordmaster allowed no mistake to go ignored or overlooked. Each error brought the dance to a halt, and the clumsy or incorrectly performed manoeuvre repeated until it was flawless.

  “You must flow like water with the blade,” the Swordmaster said. “You must swirl like leaves in a wind. You must never be still. Give your enemy no opening for if you do, surely his steel will cleave your body. You must seek out your enemy and learn his weaknesses before he finds you and exploits your own weaknesses.”

  So the boy danced until the sheer exhilaration of the contest swept him away. His body moved, lithe and precise, with the needs of each exercise. His movements, stylized and distinct, flowed together easily, and he knew the satisfaction of winning another step toward perfection.

  When the contest was over, the Swordmaster vanished. Instead of waking as he usually did, the boy found himself still in the dream landscape.

  He stood at the foot of an almost symmetrical hill in that mystic, transitional time between sunset and dusk when the sky to the west was still streaked with light and colour. Bands of red and orange flamed behind the hill, illuminating the triple ring of standing stones that circled the summit of the hill like a diadem. Imposing menhirs arranged in an outer ring stood starkly black against the luminescent sky, crowned in pairs by massive lintels. The middle ring of stones bulked slightly smaller, gracefully joined all around by capstones, polished like jet to reflect the incandescent glow of the sky. The inner ring, standing alone without lintels, was not a ring at all, but a horseshoe enclosing a low altar stone.

  Behind him loomed the vast, cone-shaped bulk of a mountain, taller than any of the other mountains in the soaring, crenellated ridge beyond it. He did not have to look at it to know it was there. In the dream, this place was familiar to him, known and welcoming. He knew all the rivers that gathered the waters of those mountains and drew them down to the distant eastern sea hundreds of leagues away.

  He waited at the bottom of the mound, conscious of the weight of the longsword on his back. The air was warm yet and the fresh scent of crushed grass beneath his feet rose strongly around him. A breeze stirred gently and ruffled his hair, which glowed redly in the fading light of sunset. Casually, he lifted an unhurried hand to brush away a lock of hair that fell into his eyes.

  A man appeared in the opening in the foot of the horseshoe, dwarfed by the giant stone dance. He came forward slowly to look down at the boy watching at the bottom of the hill. The boy could not see the man’s face, but knew he was not smiling. Giving the impression of great age and wisdom, the man stood quietly, erect as one of the menhirs, unmoving, watching the boy there at the foot of the mound, and the boy found himself transfixed by that piercing, distant gaze.

  The man on the hill spoke. In spite of the great distance between them, the boy heard him clearly.

  “So,” he said, his voice soft and welcoming. “You are mastering the sword I sent you.”

  “A welcome gift, Swordmaster.”

  “It was always for you. I am glad you have awakened at last.”

  The boy smiled. “No,” he replied, speaking as quietly as the man. “I am here only in a drea
m.”

  “Of course,” the man said. “But in dreaming, you awaken.” He raised one hand. “The time will come when you will know.”

  “Yes,” the boy said. “It will come.”

  The last of the light faded, leaving the mound and the stone circle starkly silhouetted against the pale glimmer of the sky. As the boy turned to walk toward the black bulk of the cone-shaped mountain, the landscape began to disintegrate and disappear around him.

  Part One — The Mouse

  I

  Mouse awoke in the dark, shivering in the crisp, damp chill that came only an hour or so before dawn along the coast of Falinor. Fragments of his dream drifted like mist through his head but as always, he could remember nothing of the shape and substance of it.

  He held himself still through habit, listening carefully. It was too dark. Too quiet. He heard none of the familiar night sounds of other sleeping bodies close by, and a cold hook of apprehension clutched at his belly. Something was wrong.

  The chamber where he lay smelled damp and musty with an overlying stench of decay. Cautiously, he rolled onto his side. Pain struck his whole body at once and he cried out with it. The bruises on his face and arms throbbed, and his left eye had swollen shut. The open cuts on his back left by the lash burned like the fury of Hellas. He fell back, gasping, to the cold stone floor. Nausea churned in his empty belly. He gagged and retched, then spit out a mouthful of bitter bile.

  He shuddered as he remembered why he was there, naked and alone in the dark. He remembered what would happen to him when morning came. Tears stung his eyes. Impatiently, angry with himself, he lifted one hand to scrub them away. This was no time for tears. He was almost sixteen, and a man, and tears were not for a man.

  He shivered again. Almost a man. After they finished with him in the morning, if he still lived, he would be no man at all, and no chance ever to become one.

  And Rossah? Rossah, who had been meant as a gift to Lord Mendor’s son Drakon to mark his coming of age…

  Sudden visions flashed through his mind. The gleeful intensity in the faces of the house-guards as they beat him… The hideous rapture on Drakon’s face as he bent over Rossah with the dagger in his hand… Bright blood splashing on pale straw…

  Mouse bit his lip to suppress the cry that rose in his throat and he lurched to his knees. Agony scythed through his chest as the broken ends of a rib grated against each other.

  He knelt there on the cold stones, chin on his chest, breathing in shallow gasps as he waited for the pain to subside. The urgent need for revenge formed under his heart. Anger grew in his belly, a hard knot of fury that pushed the pain and grief to one side.

  He huddled into himself, concentrated on the cuts on his back, on the swollen bruises on his face, his chest, his thighs. There was a trick, or a gift, he had discovered by sheerest accident when he was a child. If he withdrew into a far corner of himself and focused on visualizing his hurts as whole and healthy again, the pain vanished and the injury healed itself. But the trick was not without cost. When it worked, it left him limp and drained and exhausted for a day or two, barely able to drag himself around to attend to his duties.

  With relief, he found it worked this time. The stinging agony in his back and shoulders eased, the ache of the bruises faded. The swelling around his eye subsided and he was able to open it. The stabbing pain of the broken rib abated.

  Then, even as the exhaustion of the effort began to creep through him, out of sheer desperation, he tried something he had never done before. He concentrated on the muscles of his body—arms, shoulders, chest, back, legs—willing them to a strength beyond that of a sixteen-year-old boy, seeing them as hard and tough and useful as a fully trained warrior’s in the peak of condition.

  Mouse got to his feet. All his life, they had beaten him. They called him disobedient, obdurate, rebellious, obstinate. He could add mulish and bullheaded to that list. They had not been able to beat it out of him. They had never broken him as they had broken the other slaves. He wouldn’t let them do it to him now.

  Foxmouse they called him—or just Mouse—because his hair was as red as the pelt of the little rodent. But he had seen the tiny rodent successfully fend off cats that threatened its young. If his namesake could defy enemies so much bigger and stronger than it, he could try to do no less.

  The tiny cell contained one unglazed window. It showed as a pale oblong in the dark stone of the wall. Two iron bars transversed it vertically. Even without the bars, it was too narrow for a grown man to climb through. But Mouse was not a grown man—not yet.

  Mouse went to the window and put his hands to the bars. Taking a deep breath, he began to pull. He strained until the muscles and sinews of his arms popped and stretched with the effort. But the bars remained stubbornly and firmly straight in their mortar bed.

  Gasping for breath, he let go. He thought about the house-guards who would come for him with the dawn and drag him to the pens where they castrated sheep, where they used the same filthy pincers on troublesome slaves. He thought of them laughing as they left him to bleed to death or recover as best he could after the gentling.

  “No,” he whispered. “No! By all the gods, I won’t let them do that to me.”

  And he had to avenge Rossah….

  Cold rage flooded his belly, seeping through his body like oil into a wick. His muscles tightened, shivering with the intensity of his anger. He clenched his fists until his fingernails dug painfully into his palms.

  Mouse turned his back to the window and reached up above his shoulders to grasp the bars firmly. He used the entire weight of his body, the full strength of his anger and grief, the leverage of his hips against the stone. The effort caused bright sparks and whorls to dance before his eyes and the blood roared in his ears. The rough stone ground cruelly into the naked flesh of his hips. Every muscle distended and strained, and began to tear. He gritted his teeth hard enough to crack his jaw, and pulled harder.

  The bars gave way so suddenly, he staggered forward and sprawled full-length onto his belly, cracking his forehead painfully into the opposite wall. Bright flashes exploded behind his eyelids. He shook his head, trying to clear it. It was a few moments until he could find the strength to sit up. He still held the two iron bars in his hands.

  The mortar, he thought fuzzily. It must have been old and rotten, weakened by years of exposure to the damp, salt air.

  He got to his feet, then had to reach out to steady himself with one hand against the cold stone of the wall as another wave of dizziness and nausea washed over him. When he finally trusted his balance again, he went back to the window.

  Dawn was coming quickly. Already, a pale glimmer of light showed above the eastern wall of the landholding. Mouse dropped one of the iron bars to the floor and tossed the second out the window. It took him only seconds to scramble up to the broken sill. He took a deep breath, then expelled it to make himself as small as possible as he squeezed into the narrow opening. The rock frame scraped his skin raw and he felt warm blood trickle down his back and chest. He bit his lip against the pain and strained harder.

  He popped through suddenly, and tumbled to the packed earth below the window, knocking all the wind from his body. He lay there gasping for a moment, then groped around until he found the iron bar, and scrambled to his feet.

  To his left, the back wall of the holding rose two man-heights. Beyond that wall lay the river, a sheer, dizzying drop to the deceptively smooth water below. To his right lay the main gates, guarded day and night by Lord Mendor’s most trusted house-guards. Ahead of him, across an expanse of open courtyard, stood the stables—and a hiding place.

  Limping, Mouse ran to the back wall. Roughly built of raw stone, it provided enough chinks to serve as hand and footholds. Tucking the iron bar under his arm, he swarmed quickly up the wall. At the top, he paused to look down at the dark, glimmering river and the swirling whirlpools that were plainly visible in the first light of dawn.

  No, not that way. Die one
day he undoubtedly would, but not now. Not that way, and not before he made a determined effort to avenge Rossah. He had no wish to drown in that turgid, yellow water.

  He turned away. Balancing carefully, he made his way along the narrow wall toward the stables. He was nearly to the stable roof when the reaction from the healing hit him. He stumbled, then caught himself barely in time to prevent himself tumbling off the wall into the river. He went awkwardly to his hands and knees. The sharp rocks dug cruelly into his flesh, drawing more blood. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead and chest, stinging in the raw abrasions. His body trembled with fatigue. He closed his eyes and clung desperately to the wall, fighting off dizziness.

  Finally, he crawled unsteadily the rest of the way to the stable, gripping the edge of the wall with a strength born of terror. Using very nearly the last of his stamina, he slithered under the eave of the thatched roof and fell heavily to the floor of the loft. Below, one of the horses snorted, startled.

  Mouse had spent most of his life in the stable. He knew it better than anyone else knew it, even the Stablemaster. As a child, he had found secure places to hide from the Stablemaster’s wrath. One of those places was right there in the Stablemaster’s own stable, a small cleft in the thatching of the roof, barely large enough to conceal a full-grown man, but roomy and comfortable for the boy Mouse had been. He still fitted into the small hollow, but the fit was tighter now.

  Even in the thick gloom shrouding the loft, Mouse had no trouble finding the hiding place. He crawled up into it and wrapped himself in the old horse blanket he had stolen so many years ago. Trembling and shivering with exhaustion, he closed his eyes. Only sleep could replenish the strength and energy healing himself had cost. Once he was strong again, he would find a way to exact his revenge.

  His last conscious thought was of the dogs. But they would track him to the wall and think he had gone over into the river. Perhaps they would think him dead and not bother hunting any further.