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

  I leaped back and nearly stumbled on the uneven ground of the hillside. The wind of the sword’s passing ruffled my hair as I went to one knee.

  “Run,” I shouted to the others, then the hilt of my own sword was in my hands, the blade raised in defence.

  The Maeduni crouched in front of me. He flexed his wrists, his sword describing purposeful little circles in the air as he sized up my stance. He leaped at me. His blade met mine with force enough to knock me to the ground, and he staggered past me. The sword in my hands seemed to quiver with eagerness as I lurched to my feet. The Maeduni swung his sword again and somehow, my blade was there to meet it. Steel rang on tempered steel, then the Maeduni stepped back and swept his sword in a vicious stroke for my legs. I thrust my blade down and across and caught the other squarely. My follow-through snap of the wrist ran my blade slithering upward along his until it caught against the cross-guard. It jerked the Maeduni off balance and he stumbled. I lunged forward, the sword held balanced in both hands. The point of the blade thrust home in the Maeduni’s belly, just above his hip bone. His weight nearly pulled me down with him as he fell.

  The breath rasped in my throat as I tugged to free the blade. As it came free, the Maeduni’s body rolled down the hill. It finally came to rest, bent forward around a rock, and didn’t move.

  I scrambled up the hill, still panting, and stood for a moment to sheath my sword. The others waited for me there. “This way,” I gasped, and began to run.

  Cullin was already at the alder copse when we came stumbling up. He was mounted on his stallion and held the reins of three other horses. Seeing one of the men carrying the girl, Cullin bent forward and held out his arms.

  “Give the child to me,” he said quickly. “Then mount up.”

  The girl’s father handed her up to Cullin without protest. Cullin tossed him the reins of one of the horses, and he swung up into the saddle quickly.

  “Will they follow us?” the girl’s father asked.

  “I don’t know,” Cullin replied, shifting the girl to a more secure position across his saddle and against his chest. “Perhaps not. It depends on how badly they want you.”

  “Not that badly, I hope,” the second man muttered.

  “In any event, it’s not a good idea to wait around for them,” Cullin said. “Let’s go.” He wheeled the stallion and set off toward the road.

  We moved as quickly as we could. Running the horses in the dark was dangerous. We needed to put as much distance as possible between us and the Maeduni but none of us needed to break a neck if one of the horses stumbled.

  ***

  The moon rose presently, and we made better time on the road. An hour later, we came to a small village. It was little more than a huddled cluster of rudely built stone cottages, but it boasted an inn to accommodate travellers. Even then, it looked like nothing more than a rough sheepherder’s bothy, but it was dry and warm inside. A good fire blazed cheerfully in the hearth, and the common room was cleaner and more comfortable than we expected.

  The innkeeper’s wife, a short, roundly-built woman with cheeks as red as currant berries, made concerned noises over the unconscious girl Cullin still carried, and led us immediately to a sleeping room in the back of the inn. There was only one bed in the room, but it was wide enough to hold several people. The innkeeper’s wife made Cullin put the girl down on it, then bustled off to find hot water, clean cloths and her bundle of herbs.

  The girl’s father sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed the golden hair back from the girl’s pale forehead. She was very young, not much more than thirteen or fourteen. Even unconscious and pallid as ashes, she was very pretty, her features delicate and fine. She looked fragile as porcelain.

  The girl’s father looked at Cullin. “I wish to thank you,” he said quietly. “We tried to fight them when they caught us on the road. Rhegenn managed to wound two of them, but one of them hit Kerridwen on the head with the flat of his sword. She hasn’t regained consciousness since.”

  The man called Rhegenn put his hand to the other’s shoulder. “She’ll be all right, Jorddyn,” he said. He turned to us. “I’m Rhegenn ap Sendor. This is Jorddyn ap Tiernyn. We’re emissaries from my lord Jorddyn’s kinsman, Kyffen, Prince of Skai, in Celi.”

  Cullin’s eyebrows rose fractionally, and a glint of interest sparked in his green eyes. “You’re a long way from home,” he said.

  “Yes, we are,” Rhegenn said. “We were on our way back from Madinrhir in Falinor when the Maeduni caught us.”

  The innkeeper’s wife came back into the room carrying a steaming basin of water and a pile of clean cloths. She shooed Jorddyn ap Tiernyn away and leaned over the girl. We watched her in silence as she worked. Finally, she stepped back, shaking her head slightly.

  “What you can do for her?” Jorddyn asked.

  “Not much, I’m afraid,” the woman said quietly. “The child’s taken a bad blow there. I fear her head’s broke. I can’t help.”

  Jorddyn sat beside his daughter again. “Have you no Healer in the village?”

  She shook her head. “None but me, and I’ve naught but my herbs, I fear, sir.”

  “A Healer?” I asked. A half-formed ghost of an idea glimmered in my mind. I took an involuntary step closer to the bed.

  Jorddyn looked up at me. He was as blond as his daughter, his eyes a clear hazel brown, flecked with green near the pupil. “In my country, we have men and women who can heal by touch,” he said. “I’ve not seen anything like it here on the continent, though.”

  I looked down at the unconscious girl. She breathed in short, painful gasps through half-parted lips. The delicate skin beneath her closed eyes was darkened, almost bruised. Before I realized what I was doing, I had stepped forward and sat on the edge of the bed, my hands reaching out to cup her temples between them. I was hardly aware of Jorddyn moving quickly to give me room on the edge of the bed. I was completely focused on the dark smudges of the girl’s eyes.

  I had been able to do nothing to save Rossah. Perhaps I could make it up in some small way by helping this girlchild—if this gift, or talent, or whatever it was, would work with others as it worked with me. All I could do was try. I owed it to Rossah, and I owed it to me. Perhaps I owed it to this girl, too.

  Carefully, hesitantly, I reached for that quiet place deep within myself. I don’t remember what I was thinking as I pressed the palms of my hands against the unnaturally cool skin of the girl’s head, but I do remember that her hair felt like finest silk under my fingers.

  It happened in an unexpected rush. Suddenly, I was swirling deep in pain that wasn’t mine. Images that weren’t my own flashed through my head, too fast to comprehend any of them. Mountains, tall and snow-capped even in the heat of summer. Placid blue lakes. White, boiling rivers. Gentle clear brooks. The sea breaking against the sheer faces of cliffs, throwing salt spume high into the air. Faces of people I didn’t know. Pictures of rooms I didn’t recognize. Voices singing songs I had never heard. Jumbled, tangled images, all tumbled together without order, without sequence. And through it all, a sense of rightness, of belonging. Whatever this wild fusion was, it was something completely and utterly right.

  Carefully, I pulled back slightly from the jumble of confused images and concentrated on the pain. I located its centre and focused on it, fixing my attention on the pain, and only that. Slowly, a picture formed of showing me what the injury had to look like when healed. I pulled at the pain, drawing it away from the girl and into me. Slowly, gradually, I imposed my picture of the healed place on top of the injury. At first, I was afraid it would not work, that I would fail and the girl would die beneath my hands.

  Behind me, I heard a man cry out as the girl began to thrash on the bed. Someone whimpered but I don’t know if it was I, or the girl. Her eyes opened, pupils wide and staring, leaving only a thin ring of glorious golden hazel around them. Her unfocused gaze fixed on mine and the link between us strengthened and solidified.

  It began to w
ork. I felt the injured place on the back of her head draw together, the bruising and swelling gradually disappear. I thought I could see the wound lose its angry, distended appearance and take on the healthy glow of normal tissue.

  The staring expression left the girl’s eyes and she looked into mine calmly and serenely. A gentle tranquillity settled over her features as pink spread under her skin again. She closed her eyes. A deep sigh raised the thin chest before her breathing settled into the quiet rhythm of profound and natural slumber.

  I could do no more. I hoped it would be enough. I staggered back from the bed, stumbled to my knees.

  “She’ll be all right, I think,” I gasped, my own head throbbing with what might be the memory of her pain, or my own from simple reaction to the exertion of healing. Cullin caught me even as I began to slip to the floor. I was very near unconsciousness myself as he picked me up as easily as he might pick up a child of five.

  From a long distance, I heard Rhegenn’s voice say, “A Healer, but untrained....”

  Then Jorddyn said, “You must be proud of your son.”

  “Yes,” Cullin replied. “I am.”

  As he carried me from the room, the warm, soft darkness swept down to enfold me. Fuzzily, I mumbled, “Son? No, they’re confused because we both have red hair....”

  “Vhair ne, ti’rhonai,” Cullin said, his voice fading into the dark pressing closer about me.

  I think I heard myself say, “L’on sahir, ti’vati,” before the world winked out.

  V

  I awoke in the wide bed where the girl had lain. I was, alone. There was no sign of the girl, nor of Jorddyn and Rhegenn. Nor of Cullin, either. I had no idea how long I’d been sleeping, but the day outside the narrow window was bright and clear, and the sun high in the sky. No trace of a headache fogged my mind as I sat up, and nothing remained of the weariness and exhaustion. Obviously, I had slept for a long time.

  I found the innkeeper’s wife in the common room, supervising a small boy who turned a spit by the hearth. The smell of roasting meat filled the air and my mouth watered. The woman looked up, saw me, and smiled.

  “Ah, awake, are ye?” she said. “There’s bread and cheese to break your fast, and nice fresh apples. Picked ‘em myself this morning.” She led me to a table and fussed over me while I ate.

  “Where is everybody?” I asked wolfing down bites of bread and cheese. I was ravenously hungry, and the bread was still warm from the oven, and the cheese golden yellow and well aged.

  “The girl and her father left with the other man two days ago,” the woman replied.

  I looked up at her. “Two days? I slept for two days?”

  “Closer to three,” she replied.

  “And the others left already?”

  She nodded. “Aye. In the morning, right after they awoke. Your friend was still asleep, too. Two days ago. Ye’ve been sleeping a long time, laddie. Ye must have been nigh exhausted.”

  “I suppose I was,” I said. “I’ve never done that before. Healed someone, I mean. I didn’t realize I could do it.”

  “Well, the child was still sleeping, too, when they took her with them. For the coast, her father said. They had to meet a ship.”

  I finished the last of the bread and cheese, then picked up an apple and bit into it. The taste of the juice, tart and sweet, filled my mouth like a burst of sunshine. “Where’s Cullin? My friend? He didn’t leave, too, did he?”

  She laughed. “Leave you here by yourself?” she asked. “He’s not likely to do that, is he?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Where is he?”

  She made a motion with her head toward the door. “Out there, behind the stable. He left word for you to join him when you were able.”

  Picking up a second apple, I thanked her and went outside. I found Cullin right where the innkeeper’s wife said he would be, behind the stable on an open patch of short grass, practicing with his sword. He had stripped off his plaid and his shirt. His bare chest gleamed with the sweat of exertion, but his face was calm and relaxed, showing no sign at all of the strain of his efforts. He moved lightly on the balls of his feet, lithe and flexible as a dancer. He skipped with sinuous grace through the last form of the sequence, then spun to face me.

  “Pick that up,” he said, pointing to the sword I had taken from the bounty hunter. It lay atop Cullin’s neatly folded shirt and plaid at the edge of the small lawn. “You say you’re untrained. We’re about to change that.”

  I finished the last of my apple and went to pick up the sword. The hilt fit my hand easily and naturally. The balance of the blade felt perfect as I hefted it. Before I could turn, I heard Cullin shout, “Guard yourself!”

  I whirled around to see him coming at me, his sword describing a glittering and deadly arc through the air as it swung toward my head. Without thinking, acting on pure instinct alone, I flung up my arm, met the slashing blade with my own. My weight balanced on the balls of my feet, I bent and swung my blade down as he stepped back and swept his sword backhanded in a wicked slice aimed at my legs. Somehow, my sword was there, and his slithered harmlessly off the blade I thrust down to catch it. Three more times Cullin attacked and three times I parried successfully. Finally, he lowered his sword and stood there, watching me with that disturbing mixture of appraisal and speculation.

  “Enough,” he said quietly.

  I lowered my sword, suddenly angry and confused. I was out of breath and sweating freely in the mild autumn air. “You deliberately tried to kill me,” I cried. I had trusted him. Trusted him, damn him, and he attacked me as if I were an enemy. I should have known better. I should have known that friendship and trust were not for the likes of an ex-slave who could not even name his own parents.

  A hint of a smile twitched at the corner of the wide mouth. “Aye,” he admitted. “So I did at that. Now it’s your turn to try to kill me.”

  I watched him closely for a moment, wondering how he possibly expected me to do any damage to him. But I was angry, and the anger made me reckless. It almost felt as if the sword itself initiated the movement as I raised it again. I sprang forward, taut with tension and purpose, moving automatically in a sequence as familiar and as practiced as walking. Cullin leaped nimbly back. His sword came up to parry the vicious swing I aimed at his chest. I spun and cut at his legs, and, as he swept his sword down to deflect mine, reversed the swing to thrust for his shoulder. In amazement, I saw sweat bead on his forehead. We danced around that small patch of short grass for a long time, thrust and parry, sweep and repulse. He adroitly eluded every attack I launched at him, but I avoided his proficiently enough. Finally, he merely stepped back and leaned away from one of my swings, and lowered his sword.

  “Enough,” he said again.

  It took me a moment to realize he was no longer fighting. I caught myself in mid-lunge at him and stumbled, then stood panting and staring at him for a moment. My shirt was soaked with sweat, the waistband of my breeks sodden. Chest heaving from the exertion, I flung the sword down angrily. “Why?” I demanded. “Why were you trying to kill me?”

  “Pick up the sword, Kian,” he said quietly. “Never insult a good blade like that. He deserves better treatment.”

  I stood staring sullenly at him for a moment without moving.

  “Pick it up,” he said again, an edge of steel in his voice.

  I bent to snatch up the fallen sword, wiping the edge against my breeks to clean off a few shreds of grass. “You tried to kill me,” I said again.

  “Are you dead?” he asked mildly.

  “Of course not,” I said hotly. “But certainly through no fault of yours.”

  He retrieved his scabbard from the grass by his plaid, then saluted me with the sword before he rammed it home into the scabbard. “Kian, you told me you were untrained.”

  “I am.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Then pray explain how an untrained boy could parry each thrust made by an expert swordsman. And how could that same untrained boy ma
ke me work like a demon to fend him off?”

  I stared, first at him, then at the sword in my hands. Echoes of a dream drifted through my mind, but I remembered no shape or substance. Only fragments, like images seen through smoke.

  “I don’t know,” I said at last.

  Cullin bent lithely to pick up his shirt and plaid. He slipped into the shirt and spent a moment carefully fastening the laces at wrists and throat. Finally, he looked at me and said, “I think I have an idea why.”

  I looked at him blankly.

  “Come wi’ me, Kian,” he said quietly. “We’re due a talk.” He walked across the yard and sat on the low stone wall that separated the stable yard from the orchard. He motioned me to sit beside him. “You’ve been asking a lot of questions since we left Falinor. I suppose it’s time I answered as many as I can.”

  I hesitated, then went to join him. Apprehension settled in a hard lump in my belly as I hoisted myself up onto the wall beside him. I sat there, my fists twisted into a knot on my knees. Unable to speak, held frozen by emotions I dared not even try to identify, I waited for him to begin. He sat quietly, collecting his thoughts, his gaze fixed on a starling teetering precariously on a branch of the nearest apple tree. Finally, he drew in a deep breath, let it out in a sharp gust and leaned back, clasping his hands about one raised knee.

  “You asked why I bothered to bring you along with me,” he said.

  I nodded dully. “Aye,” I said. “It seemed a lot of trouble.”

  “Well, it might seem so at first,” he agreed. “But it isna so much trouble when you realize you’re a Tyr, a clansman true born for all your eyes are brown and not green or grey.”

  “But I—”

  He held up a hand to stop me. “Hear me out,” he said. “Twice I’ve spoken to you in Tyran, and twice ye’ve answered me in kind. Part of you remembers. And then there’s the sword work today. Every Tyran clansman by the time he’s seven has spent three, sometimes four, years with a swordmaster.” The corners of his mouth curled up briefly. “You’ve just proved that, even if your head forgot how to handle a sword, your body certainly didn’t.”