Kingshelm (Renegade Druid Cycle Book 1) (10 page)

“Enough!” the Emperor said. “First blood is drawn, and the guilty party is known.”

“All thirteen hells take your fucking leg, the cock you fuck your mother with and your filthy, lying black soul,” Delton snarled at his foe. The words were drowned out by Ardaxam’s screams and curses. He picked up the duke’s sword, knelt before Grantham and offered it to him on open palms.
 

“Many thanks, m-my lord. I’ve brought you your sword back.”
 

“Keep it. Let it signify your new rank.” Grantham looked at Betina and smiled. “And a token of continued friendship between Brynn and Relfast.”

Mithrandrates noted the barely audible sniff that Betina made. What was ostensibly an act of justice on Grantham’s part was in fact a masterful insult that Betina could not answer. “I think that is enough adjudication for this morning,” the Emperor said. “Court is adjourned. Let us have some refreshment.”
 

A warm, fragrant breeze swept through the trees and gardens in the great plaza between the Imperial Citadel and the Five-Sided Temple. The two great fortresses, one the seat of the Mergovan Empire’s secular power, the other the abode of its spiritual might, rivaled each other in ostentation. Spires thrust themselves toward the heavens, and those of the Temple were covered in writhing stone processions of heroes and saints and held aloft by flying buttresses and topped with the golden solar disc of Mahurin.
 

The towers of the Citadel were less ornate and were flat-topped. Great stone wyverns complete with barding, tack and bronze riders now topped the structures where more than 500 years ago, the living creatures and their masters stood guard. Great alcoves cut midway up the towers that once allowed war mages to hurl powerful magic at invaders now served as balconies for the Emperor and his dignitaries.

The Citadel and Temple were no mere defensive works, but testaments to the might of the Empire and the Church of Mahurin. The actual defenses for the two great structures surrounded them and the idyllic plaza. Three concentric defensive walls festooned with towers and battlements ringed the hill on which the fortresses sat. The fortified hill was surrounded by the rest of the capital, which itself possessed the most formidable city walls known to survive the last Cataclysm.
 

It had been nearly a century since the capital had last been under serious threat, but the defenses were still scrupulously maintained. The walls of the three concentric Star Fortresses surrounding the Citadel and the Temple were kept especially tidy, for the areas between the walls were now heavily trafficked public areas with open air markets, vegetable gardens for the city’s poor and reserved areas for throngs of pilgrims to erect orderly tent cities during religious holidays.

Duke Grantham and Duchess Betina walked in one of the small public gardens and paused to look between a break in the trees at the great spires of the Temple.

“It is magnificent, is it not?” Grantham asked.
 

“It is indeed,” Betina said. “You especially should appreciate the splendor around us. Your people, Grantham of Brynn, were among the first to accept Imperial rule so long ago. And the first to banish all gods but Mahurin.”

“We value order and prosperity,” he said, “both in the corporeal and spiritual realms.”

“And prosper you have.”

“Brynn has been a good steward of the Imperial peace for many years,” Grantham said.

“Peace? Ha!” Betina scoffed. “Brynn wars with its neighbors, just like the rest of the provinces. Our two dominions seem to be especially fond of antagonizing one another.”

“My sweet duchess, you do us injustice,” Grantham said. “Rogue counts execute vendettas across provincial borders all the time. That is, I would suggest, a far cry from war.”

“And yet Brynn’s ‘rogue counts’ dutifully pledge their spoils to Lady Drucilla and increase the power and holdings of their home dominion.”

“As do your rogue counts in Relfast—and the ones in Hastrus and Aternis, for that matter,” Grantham said. “As did the petty lords in Draugmere and Balgroth before those provinces sold themselves to Mergova.”

“Don’t you mean, ‘began upholding the Empire’s Peace?’”

“Duchess Betina, let us be honest with each other,” Grantham said. “It makes communication so much easier when we can dispense with the euphemisms and wordplay that pollute the language of court.”

“I have been honest with you, and I shall continue to be so,” Betina said. “Power is consolidating in the Empire, and the old ways of constant small wars will soon be dreams of a distant past. Draugmere and Balgroth’s merchants have their provinces latched tightly to the Imperial teat, and thus gain more riches from peace than they could carry home from war. A few years from now, they might even send troops when the Emperor calls. Aternis is still broken from our betrayal and the trouncing it received at the hands of Mithrandrates during the last Uprising. And Hastrus will wither and die when someone finally takes the Shoraz-Athar Rift and we no longer need to detour through that waste of land.”

Betina stepped closer to Grantham and caressed his cheek with the backs of her fingers. “That leaves only us, Grantham. Without the strength of Brynn and Relfast stopping them, Imperial troops would not be content to patrol their cobblestone roads—they would occupy our cities and castles. My Lord Torune and your Lady Drucilla would then be true governors—administrators collecting taxes and repairing granaries for Emperor Mithrandrates. Only our dominions combined can stop that happening and keep Mithrandrates’ creeping reforms on the paved highways where they belong.”

Grantham gently took Betina’s hand and lowered it to her side. “Lady Drucilla and Lord Torune would never share power in such unified dominion. One must prevail over the other.”

Betina smiled. “That is why war—real war—between us is inevitable. Do not believe the other Representatives if they tell you otherwise. Prepare yourselves.”

“So why do you tell me this?”

“Perhaps I lie,” Betina said. “Maybe Hastrus plans to attack you from the north, and Duke Philo offered me expensive trinkets and baubles to trick you into sending all your forces south to defend against a phantom army that never comes. Maybe Hastrus and Relfast plan to split your dominion between us.” She touched an icy blue gem that hung above her full breasts and turned as if to walk away. “Or perhaps I tell you the truth, and I give you time to prepare out of genuine respect. Our two dominions are the last truly deserving the names of the old kingdoms they once were.”
 

Grantham let her leave with the last word. When he was alone, he continued his walk. The duke thought best when he was walking, and the breeze whispering through the leaves refreshed his racing mind. He felt at times that he was the last one from whom Lady Drucilla should take counsel, but his advice to her had always proven sound. There were even those who credited Brynn’s recent fortunes to the duke’s steady hand. But behind every steady hand is an analytical mind, he thought.
Such a mind I wish I had
.

But errors come when one thinks too hard, so he walked. That Betina was trying to play a mind game with Grantham, and by extension Lady Drucilla, was certain. But which game? Grantham stopped to examine a tree that was gloriously clothed in thousands of tiny, light pink flowers. For a moment, his entire world was filled by one of the delicate flowers, and the rest of the branches, the tree, the Citadel behind it, faded into a blur.
 

Grantham could have no productive thoughts yet about Betina’s threat of war, so he thought of the other words she said, words invoking the former glory of their provinces’ shared past. One could argue whether Brynn and Relfast were the greatest provinces of the Mergovan Empire, but there was no questioning that they were the greatest of the sovereign Kingdoms before the Empire subsumed them all. It was a point of pride for their people, even if those days of liberty had long faded into a beguiling mix of history and legend.
 

The duke shifted his gaze to Temple and let his mind drift to the heavens. Is Mahurin the greatest god? Or is He the only true god? Perhaps there are no gods at all. Perhaps all three questions are equally meaningless
…

Grantham laughed softly to himself and continued his walk. This was no time to face his theological questions, even though he had found himself deferring those questions over and over.
Someday, soon, I will face my questions, Great Mahurin. I will bring them before You, and we shall have a reasoned discussion. This I owe to you, whether you exist or not
.

He chose to postpone his brewing crisis of faith yet again, but not the political decision before him. Grantham
 
selected his next course of action and walked with purpose back across the plaza toward his borrowed apartments at the Citadel.
 
 

Paardrac traversed the wildernesses between the Clans, wandering through forests and craggy gullies that were too wild even for the bravest hunters. This was not the realm of man, but of kor-toth, of wandering ghosts and forgotten demigods. What little magic remained in the world coursed with the frigid rivers that splashed from their homes in the mountains to the forests below and pooled around barrows and dolmens more ancient than the druids’ most hoary legends.
 

This realm, borderless and beyond the reach of the Caeldrynn and the Empire alike, was Paardrac’s refuge now. It was also his larder, for he knew every edible root, berry and grub within reach. And increasingly as he strayed farther into the unknown, the wilderness became his companion. Kor-toth stalked him, but let him be. The creatures left the evidence of their presence—deer carcasses savaged by their claws and proboscises, as well as the occasional wolf or lion—almost as if they wanted Paardrac to find them.
 

The druid also felt the presence of the land wights more and more strongly as he made his way deeper into the wilderness. A druid could always see the personality of individual trees and rocks, and could tell whether it was ready to be cut down or rooted out. Thanes and jarls often wait patiently for weeks before building a longhouse while druids discuss what to do with a particularly large stone that has to be moved before it can be built. But now Paardrac could hear their names whispered through the early morning fog or rustling softly behind the midday breeze.
 

The terrain became steeper as Paardrac stalked into the wooded foothills of the Stone Kingdom Mountains. He had no compelling reason to go there other than the mountains were far beyond the reach of Clan Riverstar. But so was the rest of this wilderness. However, the land spirits were not telling him stay away. And that is what distinguished experienced druids from neophytes—the knowledge that peaceable silence from the spirits is often the only endorsement a man can expect of his actions. When the land wights are displeased, Paardrac had told Barryn more than once, they will fill your soul with terror. When they favor what you do, you will hear nothing.
 

The afternoon wore on, and Paardrac found a sheltered place on top of a wooded hill to make his camp. He spoke to the trees, stones and the hill itself and made himself known to them. He asked the spirits for permission to build a fire with fallen wood and a shelter from coniferous branches he would carefully harvest from living trees. Weeks had passed since Paardrac had heard another human, and now he could hear the voices of the spirits quite clearly.
 

Paardrac dreamed that night of three red-haired women, unabashedly nude and ageless, speaking to him from the woods under a starry sky. In the distance to the north, the stars were obscured by dark clouds whose bellies flashed with lightning. The druid realized he was dreaming, but he kept himself asleep long enough to speak to the dream women.

“We have been watching you since you left your kind,” the one in the middle said. They looked like triplets, and as Paardrac looked closer he saw they all looked like the High Druidess. “We have been wandering your dreams and learned your language while you sleep.”

“Who are you?”

“We are the First Ones, those who were here countless ages before your kind arrived in the world.”

Fear crept into Paardrac like icy water soaking into his woolen tunic. In the ancient tongue of the Star Runes, the druid quietly said an incantation to dispel illusion. The women glanced at each other,
 
then their shapely legs and bellies exploded into writhing, scrabbling masses of chitin, spines and bulbous, arachnid shapes. They reeled but quickly regained their footing. The torsos of the three women remained, but they now extended forward and upward from the bodies of three kor-toth.
 
“It knows magic,” the one on the right said to her compatriots.
 

“Perhaps its will is strong enough to speak to us while it is awake,” the left one said.

“No. Not yet. He must remain asleep,” said the middle one. She ambled toward Paardrac on her five pairs of cane-like legs, her bulbous abdomen expanding and contracting behind her in rhythm with her breathing. “Why are you venturing into our hunting grounds?”

“I seek refuge from my own people,” Paardrac said. “I broke my vows as a druid, so I am banished to the wild places where the First Ones roam.”

“Do they follow you into our woods and valleys? Your kind kill our kind, and not without good reason. You are soft, and your flesh is sweet,” she said, leaning close to Paardrac.