Kingshelm (Renegade Druid Cycle Book 1) (20 page)

“Yes, my lady.”
 

Then, for what seemed like an eternity, Lady Sanguina in turns teased and assaulted his senses. She raised goosebumps on his skin with soft caresses and licks, then beat them down with the lash.
 

“And now for your special prize, little pet,” Lady Sanguina purred. She slipped the blindfold down. “You are strong, little pet. You don’t need this anymore. Open your eyes.”
 

He obeyed.
 

“See, little pet? You are good at this. Now stay right there. Not that you have anywhere to go, of course.” She strode to the brazier and fetched the branding iron.
 

Barryn meekly allowed his lady to turn him around so his back was to the post. He could barely hear her words, and the glowing brand approaching him became the rising sun…

Barryn rode on the back of a giant black swan flying over the sea toward the rising sun. He was clad in the plate armor of a Castle Dweller, black like the giant bird on which he rode. A blazing sword appeared in the sky, backlit by the radiant sun.
 

“Your path shall be one of war and blood,” Ashara’s voice thundered from the sky. “Find my sword, and deliver it to she who alone is appointed to wield it. Speak for her and do her bidding, for through my chosen I shall defend the nations from unknowable terrors.”
 

The light from the sword blasted through the warrior’s black armor and into his very being. Heat and pain and ultimate power coursed through Barryn. He unsheathed his own sword and held it aloft.
 

“I am yours, Deva Ashara!” the light spoke through him. “I am yours!” He let thunder a vicious war cry in the secret language of the druids and wheeled his flying steed back and forth across the morning sky. His very being glowed fiercely with the radiance of the sun.
 

When Barryn came to, he was half-buried in cushions and silks in Lady Sanguina’s chamber. The burn on his chest was dressed and barely throbbed; Lady Sanguina was even better at healing than she was at harming.
 

She stroked Barryn’s forehead gently. Gone were the black gloves and devilish getup. She was clad in a silken robe, and her eyes shone with kindness.
 

“I feared I had taken you too far, but you never uttered the Word of Truce,” she said.
 

“I had a vision…”
 

“I know,” she said. “Don’t tell me about it, for the vision is yours alone. You were crying out a name that wasn’t mine.”
 

Lady Sanguina stroked Barryn’s cheek. “Ashara’s name rings forth from the Age of Heroes. If it is truly her, Barryn, then obey. Follow the guidance she provides and do her bidding, for I could feel her power radiating from you.”
 

Barryn reached up and brushed his fingers down the side of her neck and across her collarbone. Lady Sanguina smiled and gently took his hand.
 

“Rest tonight. Tomorrow, we will have each other as equals. But…” she reached under the covers. “How are you to get any sleep with this lifting the sheets off of you?”

The M’Tarr pulled the sheets away. Barryn could feel her hot breath on his erection—and there was a frantic yet rhythmic knocking on the door.
 

Lady Sanguina flipped the covers back over her charge and clenched her jaw. “Enter!”

Jasmine entered the room and curtseyed. “Lady Tethys sends her very sincere apologies to both of you for the intrusion, but she has a message for Barryn to memorize and deliver tonight.”

“What the fuck,” Lady Sanguina growled, “is so important that it can’t wait until tomorrow?”
 

“Lady Tethys says the message is urgent,” Jasmine said, glancing at Barryn, “and is to be delivered in person to Duke Grantham himself.”
   

“Sweet Barryn,” Lady Tethys said to the young heathen when he and Jasmine entered the mistress’ study. “What has Sanguina done to you? I should never have allowed it…”
 

“No, Lady Tethys,” Barryn said. “I could have ended it any time. But I wanted to see how far I could go. I wanted to see how much I could take.”
 

“And no doubt the rewards Lady Sanguina offered were as delightful as the ordeals were diabolical.”
 

“Yes, they were indeed, Lady Tethys,” Barryn said. He was surprised at how matter-of-fact he was now about carnality.
 

Lady Tethys smiled wistfully. “We of Caeldrynn blood are no prudes, Barryn. It is not the way of our people to be shy about lust and desire—without them, there is no continuation life. I do hope the gods grant you wisdom and sensitivity to use what you are learning from Lady Sanguina to bring joy to the women who will grace your bed. And to you. Whoring can take all the joy out of sex, and I hope the Mighty Ones forgive us for that.”
 

Barryn waited patiently for Lady Tethys to reach her point. He suspected, rightly, that she had not called him into her study in the middle of the night to talk about his new path as a sexual creature.
 

“What Lady Sanguina did to your physical and emotional innocence, I am about to do to you spiritually,” Lady Tethys said. “I am asking you to commit a message to memory and recite it to Duke Grantham. In our Druidic ritual tongue.”
 

“He understands it?” Barryn asked, his voice rising in surprise. “But he’s just a Castle Dweller.”
 

“Years ago, I betrayed the gods and our people by teaching the Druidic tongue to a select few who are not of our blood. The Duke was one of them,” Lady Tethys said. “I have profaned the language by turning it into a mere cypher for the elite among the Castle Dwellers. But it is a very effective cypher and has served me well. The message I am about to give you is very, very important, and I am too well-known to risk being seen at this hour. Otherwise, I would not ask you to be party to this blasphemy.”
 

She was a druid,
Barryn thought,
or else was learning to be one. And she still reveres our gods.
 

“My very existence is blasphemy against the gods,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “You were claimed by a deva at some point in your druidic studies—probably during your vision quest.”
 

“How did…”
 

“Dear Barryn, why else would a boy child with the knowledge flee his clan and seek refuge in the heart of the Empire? Our old ways have treated you so harshly. But can you aid the man who is warring against our people for my sake?”
 

“I am dead to the Caeldrynn and to the gods,” Barryn said. “Ashara is my goddess now, and she speaks to me through visions, not the Druid tongue. And I’m finding shelter and warmth in the Empire, not with the Clans. Give me the message for the Duke.”

“You have no fear of our ancestral gods, Barryn?”
 

“I fear none but Ashara.”
 

“Very well,” Lady Tethys said. “Jasmine, find clothes that will make our dear Barryn look like the noble man he truly is. And Barryn, I will need your best Castle Dweller accent you can manage, at least until you deliver the message. There will be no way to mask your Caeldrynn brogue when you speak the Druid tongue, but by then there will be no point to concealing it.”
 

This means war is breaking out both among the Castle Dwellers and with the Caeldrynn,
Barryn thought as he hurried down the abandoned market streets and made for the bridge. The Duke’s villa was on the other side of the Mother River from the House of Portia. He would have to cross through the bridge castles and talk his way into the villa, but Lady Tethys had given him the names and passwords that would grant him passage.
 

She had also lent him fine clothes of brocades and velvets, along with a borrowed sword, to help him along. If anyone asked, he was to say he was a young nephew of the Duke sent to tell him another distant relation had suddenly taken ill and now lay on her deathbed.
 

The real message was even more urgent, but of a different nature—an attack was imminent on the Duke’s border with Relfast. The terse message translated into a mere five words in the holy Druidic tongue.
 

I could kill him,
Barryn thought suddenly.
Kill him, strike a blow for the Clans. Kill the man who led the Castle Dwellers against my people this summer. But they aren’t my people anymore. Ashara says I will travel the path of blood, and I will wear the armor of the Castle Dwellers on that path. I have no people—only Ashara. And Lady Sanguina. Sanguina’s tits in my mouth and blood on my armor. I am a Castle Dweller now.

An hour later, Barryn stood before Duke Grantham of Brynn. He bent a knee just as Lady Tethys had showed him.
 

“My duke, I bear news for your ears only,” he said in what the thought was a hokey, overwrought Castle Dweller accent.
 

“A moment alone, if you please,” Grantham said to the functionaries standing next to him.

When they were alone, Barryn delivered the message. He felt nothing but mild bemusement at what should have been the height of sacrilege, the profaning of the ancient, mystic words.
 

The Duke nodded his head. “That treacherous little sot.”
 

He opened a small wooden box on an ornate table and withdrew several gold coins. “Take these to Lady Tethys and give her my sincere thanks. And these are for you, young man, again with my sincere thanks. Now go in peace by whatever route Lady Tethys has told you to return. Mahurin be with you.”
 

And just like that, his brush with royalty was over. Barryn left the villa through a small doorway in the postern of the complex and took a different set of streets and alleys back to the House of Portia. It was just like any of the other missions carrying innocuous or incomprehensible messages for Lady Tethys.
 

Well, he gives a generous tip,
Barryn thought as he traced his way back along the dark alleyways to the House of Portia.
I could pay one or two of the girls for a good roll in the hay with this. The brand just means that Lady Sanguina can have me any time she wants, not that others can’t have a go at me. But gods, I’m tired. Maybe tomorrow.
 

Lord Marek strode across the cold, muddy bailey of Helgard’s Watch, one of two castles anchoring either end of the great bridge crossing the Helgard River in Relfast. His armor was freshly polished, his sword honed and oiled. Fifty mounted knights and men-at-arms were arranged in a column and awaited his signal to ride out.

“Well met, my lord,” his squire greeted him and helped him mount his waiting palfrey.
 

“Has the letter gone?” Marek asked.

“Yes, my lord, at first light.”
 

“Good. Our complaint against Sheriff Cotrian on behalf of my dear cousin Rufus must be lodged with the Imperial Court before we cross into Brynn. Approximately.”
 

Marek rode to the head of the column flanked by his standard-bearer and squire. He looked down at his chamberlain and Sir Gaston, his brother-in-law.
 

“Am I leaving you enough men to hold the Watch?” Marek asked.
 

“It is a bit late to ask that question, is it not?” Gaston replied.
 

Marek nodded his chestnut-colored head. “It is that, brother-in-law. It is that. Well, don’t worry. All the reinforcements you would ever need are just across the bridge. Duchess Betina wouldn’t let you twist in the wind while you guard the front door to all Relfast.”
 

“I do hope so,” Gaston said. “You’ll provoke a full-scale war with Brynn with this little foray.”

“Lord Stoddard was too timid this spring,” Marek said. “He stayed on his side of the border while he made his rounds collecting taxes. Against orders.”
 

“The Duchess wants to make another go at it, then. And she’s serious, else she would not send you,” Gaston said. “Has she made you aware of the overall strategy? I only ask because the Watch will be a key element when Brynn counterattacks.”

Marek scratched his stubbly jaw and looked ahead. “Fuck it. We can take those assholes.”
 

“Is that the reasoning behind the war we’re cooking up, or is that the strategy?” Gaston asked.
 

“Both, I suppose,” the mounted lord said mirthfully. “All for some stolen chickens. Our cousin shall be revenged, and honor restored to our family!”
 

“Mahurin be good to you as you ride forth and meet your foes in combat, Lord Marek!”
 

“Mahurin is good!”
 

The column rode out the gate of the formidable castle toward his cousin’s holdings on the contested frontier with Brynn. They traveled lightly, sacrificing long range capabilities in favor of speed. Marek and his cousin’s combined forces would launch a series of raids from friendly territory and systematically destroy the lightly defended villages under the Sheriff’s protection. The plan was to either draw Sheriff Cotrian into a pitched battle in the dead of winter—or lay waste to all the productive lands supporting his stronghold. Both possible outcomes would serve Marek’s purpose. He had no intention of actually taking the Sheriff’s castle, so there was no need to plan and provision for a siege.
 

“And if the Sheriff hazards a counterattack against your cousin…well, that would be grounds for war, would it not?”
Duchess Betina had asked Marek when they were hatching the plan months ago.
“You will, of course, need to keep your men close enough to render aid. But not too close, you understand. Give Sheriff Cotrian time to do some appreciable damage before you come riding to your cousin’s rescue.”

“I understand, Duchess.”
 

I never really liked Rufus, anyway,
Marek thought as he rode.
I hope the Duchess knows what she’s doing, regardless. Shame to lose a blood relative on account of a shoddy plan.