The King's Blood (36 page)

"Is it really almost Soulday?" Aldrin asked as is tradition for every holiday since some caveman decided to declare that day important because he had the biggest club of them all and who was gonna argue with Ogg?

Ciara put down her book, a large tome about the mythical creatures of Arda where every sentence ended in a question mark. "It isn't Soulday without roasted pecans drizzled in syrup."

"We had that once, when a passing merchant was trying to start a fresh tradition in Ostero. Sir Brant stuffed the entire cone into his mouth and the wad lodged in his throat. It took two knights jiggling him upside down before the nuts came loose. I'd never seen a man or beast run so fast as that merchant after Brant recovered." Aldrin chuckled, trying to overlay a burning pang of homesickness with nostalgia, "It's all acorns and chestnuts up north, mostly burnt and then shoved inside whatever animal came too close to the lands during the month."

Ciara nodded. There were always feasts, oversized ones as most of the neighboring towns crowded in the castle to ward off the shadows on the longest night of the year. And what better way to keep the ravens at bay than with lots of drinking, singing, and…other things her mother said she'd tell her about later. "The Lord used to eat something similar. Pheasant under duck and suckling roasted turnips. Weird, rich food that everyone got a few bites out of and pretended they enjoyed."

Aldrin turned from the window to look over at her. He'd eaten much the same, trying to hide the more bizarre looking vegetables in his lap and scoot them to the hounds when no one was looking. He had no idea there were other options. "What did you have?"

"Bone soup was my favorite," Ciara said wistfully, "My mother would take the bones of every animal slaughtered for Albrant and stew them all in a pot with some onions for days. Then everyone would try to crack them to get at the marrow. It was said whoever got the duck would travel, the goose called to war, the deer married before the spring, and the bear probably just broke his hands."

The prince watched her eyes, millions of miles away and tried to imagine what was so festive about drinking bone flavored water the entire night waiting for the next sunrise. Even their dogs got real meat.
 

Ciara looked over and saw the disgust passing over Aldrin's eyes as she relived some of her happier childhood memories. He looked like he wanted to pat her on the back and apologize. She glanced down at her book pile and fumbled for another, this one without a real cover. Cracking it open to any page, she tried to focus on the words as the boy gazed once more out the window.

As Ciara re-read the same sentence three times he finally got the hint and wandered back to his own pile. She risked a peek over at the boy who'd been raised as a prince. His hair was almost to his shoulders and was so rarely washed it was losing that Ostero ice blonde shine for a matte tan. Whiskers, actual whiskers, dotted his chin and part of his jaw, giving him the appearance of a man who'd run out of his house midway through a sloppy shave. A nose, once far too large for the small face it was saddled with actually began to feel more at home with the general surroundings. The wider jaw provided more running room, and the rising cheekbones a place to settle down into.
 

He'd have passed for a wildman, or someone who did silly dances for coin in the street far more easily than a prince if it weren't for those sharp eyes. Where the poor ragged sot, fresh from the woods stared distantly into the past when he wasn't a cracked shell of a man, Aldrin zeroed in on the present, the clear grey of his stare analyzing each moment.

It made him look unsettling at times, a lazy face with a focused stare. Unsettling, in an attractive sort of way.
 

Wait.

No, that wasn't it at all.

Ciara's eyes flew back to her book, flipping through the pages like mad, banishing that thought to her brain's nether regions.

I mean, the back of her mind.

Gods, was it getting over warm again?

She shifted under her coat and held the book up to her face trying to hide the blush staining her neck and cheeks. Aldrin didn't notice as he was back to cubits and hogsheads as he read through the "Guide to Proper Latrine Building" with a small tale of Casamir scrawled in the back to keep the kiddos entertained.

Her eyes flitted across the text, most words little more than distant stars as one walks under the night sky, until she came across a familiar constellation. "...Liam."

The book dropped to her lap and she read the line again. "He never spoke directly of Liam, only vague inferences and hearsay."
 

But that didn't make any sense, Casamir mentioned his sword often. There was even a popular children's tale about
Liam the Talking Sword.
And then
Liam the Talking Sword that Saves Soulday.
 

She flipped back a few pages and a new confusion arouse. "Sir?" she asked.

"Yes?" Medwin responded, his own mind still back on the coastal Soulday that involved a large pot of clams and an even larger pot to throw the shells into.

"Why does this book refer to Casamir as 'Cas?' And there seems to be an unnamed woman here."

Medwin chuckled, "You have fallen down the research rabbit hole I'm afraid. The further back one delves, the more the stories change."

Of course, everyone knew that there were always a few things altered to suit the audience. How many harpies Casamir rode into battle, if he was on his third or fifth wife before the Battle against his second cousin on his mother's side. And if he actually died or not. But the rest was fact, told enough times to become truth.

"So Casamir was known as Cas in previous ages?" Ciara asked.

"What is the date on your book?" Medwin asked, uncertain which he'd handed her.

She flipped through the front cover to find something etched in red by a foreign hand. It was clearly one of the older ones, done up on those presses that littered the land before the Empire crashed. "The 'Shade Era...maybe?'" she recited to him.

Medwin tapped his lips, his mind pulling back the curtains and shattering most of current history, "Yes, that would be nearer to the suspected era in which a barbarian named something approaching Cas existed. The prevailing theory among most scholars is that over time the name was modernized to fit better with changing audiences."

"You sure know a lot about some mythic backwater hero off the top of your head," Aldrin observed, a set of magnifying lenses slipping off his nose.
The Big Book of the World (pocket edition)
could only be read by someone holding two magnifying glasses together, and no one could make sense of the footnotes until someone invented the telescope.

Medwin's head bobbled, an acknowledgment of the new voice, "Yes, it is a subject that I immerse myself in from time to time. It was very dear to my daughter. She would always ask me to tell her about Cassy and his mighty adventures."

"Was?" Ciara picked up on the past tense, having spent much of the past two years feeling the sting every time she spoke of her own brother.

The Chancellor winced a bit and then waved his hands, ending the conversation. "But you are looking for this sword, yes? Not whatever name Casamir may have gone by."

"There is a mention of a Liam in here, but it doesn't appear to be a sword," Ciara said, standing up.

"Where did you find this?"

"In one of the Translator's Notes in the back. After he talks about how he drank exactly five quarts of weak white tea while transcribing every chapter."

"Read me the passage," Medwin said, rising from behind his desk and walking closer to her.

"'He never spoke directly of Liam, only vague inferences and hearsay. But there are some who believe that Liam was either a dear friend of Cas or, as some of the more romantic poets suspect, was a lover or husband,'" Ciara fell quiet at that passage. Aldrin scratched his head, seeming to be lost in the pronouns.

Most of the tales about the Greatest Hero involved him either killing or bedding anything in his way. He was the manifestation of what every little boy was supposed to want to grow into; what every maiden was supposed to lust after. Not that there weren't a few tales involving Casamir and his loyal servant Humphrey that got a bit more exotic when the men were out of the room. But no one put any stock in mythfiction.
 

But Medwin skipped over the implications of Casamir having a husband, "Is there anything more?"

"'All that is known of Liam is that he came from the Northeast near Carthas and he passed early into Cas's career.'"

Medwin clapped his hands together and jumped in the air twice. "Of course, how could I not see it?" The man old enough to be her grandfather giggled like a schoolboy released home for winter break.
 

"See what?" Aldrin asked, towering over his castle of books and trying to follow the conversation.

But Medwin had already spun about and began to rummage through his one filing cabinet. Fingers counted past tabs, each marked with little holes to mimic the alphabet. Midway through he pulled out a sheet, stained to the color of a dark tea, and laid it upon his desk. Ciara climbed over to stand behind his shoulder as he leaned over and spread it out. Aldrin, having a harder time of it, weaseled through the library labyrinth and tried to see over top of Ciara's shoulder before tipping up one of the crates and standing on it.

"There," Medwin said, his fingers following along a crease.
 

Once again, a cruel thought struck Ciara and she wondered just how little the Chancellor could really see. How did he know that this was the correct map he wanted to show them, and not, say, a drawing of the goddess of love, Nila, nude and riding an octopus.
 

But sure enough, his hands came to rest upon a small town with the name Carthas, still visible in a hasty script. Perhaps the fact the ends of the map were chewed off by sharp teeth was what hastened the cartographer.
 

"Now," he laid out the second sheet, a proper map of Arda, drawn before the Empire started collecting lands like they were limited edition vases. "What town has it become?"

Sure enough the rivers, the mountains, even some of the larger landmasses matched up from the ancient half eaten map and the fresh one. Ciara flipped up the new map to look at the older, and pulled it down, then a bit to the right until the dot below was joined by a much smaller one named "Putras."

Ciara said the town aloud, and looked at Aldrin. "Sounds like a place the ill go to die," he said, lifting the map up to stare at the one below.

"You are not far off, princeling. Putras is the last vestige of the Church of Nostrum for the Goddess Hospar where those facing certain death make one last plea, one last roll of the die, before the raven."

"Charming," Ciara said, shuddering at the thought of hundreds of ill people, moaning, dripping and oozing green things while dying about the crumbling halls of an almost godless church.

"And that is where you must head," Medwin said solemnly.

"Wait, what? Why?" Ciara said, she'd quite like to spend as little amount of time near any barbers as possible. The fact the barbers also buried the people they failed to save didn't alter her resolve.

"Carthas is rumored to have housed a library, an ancient library, dedicated to Casamir. It seemed suspect to me, as the hero was never mentioned visiting that land in any of the primary texts. But if Liam was from there, then perhaps Liam can lead you to his namesake."

"Monks can't read," Ciara said, thinking back to the few priests who passed through the Albrant's halls promising blessings upon the castle in exchange for a bit of bread which quickly turned into a four course meal for a fortnight. They'd sing a few prayers, substituting in one god for another, promise to send whoever didn't believe in that particular god straight to the depths of the underworld where they'd spend lifetimes climbing through the slits in the earth hoping for another chance. Then off they bugger, looking for the next rich person who had more blood on their hands than they thought was acceptable.
 

"True, the humbler priests of Putras do not read nor write, keeping the sermon in song as is tradition. But they still maintain most of the library. Many clerics pass through and pay the Bishop a rather handsome sum to watch over some more controversial tomes of theirs."

Medwin's fingers slid out searching for the edges of the map, and he picked it up, expertly folding it up without putting strain on the crease. "You will require some documentation before they'll let you into the stacks, but I think I still have a few passes in my drawer," the chancellor muttered, returning the maps to the filing cabinet.

Aldrin coughed into his fist, "Does this mean you won't be coming with us?"

Medwin paused as he crawled back to his chair and his white eyes turned on Aldrin, causing the boy to gasp, "The Historians are not welcome amongst the church. I cannot risk the lives of everyone under me for research, no matter how tantalizing it may be." The white eyes continued to bore into Aldrin's soul, "A choice lies before you. We will wait at the fork of the road in the North. There you can turn either to the left and on to Tumbler's End, or right and on to Putras."

Aldrin looked over at Ciara. He seemed to yank his next statement from out of a prepared pocket, "I cannot ignore my duty to the witch, but I would not ask you to risk your own life again for me when the end is so close."

She leaned back, surprised at the choice the boy laid before her. Ciara was used to everyone deciding her life for her. Her mother was training her to take her place; her father tossed her into the wide world with little more than the clothes on her back. And would it be so bad to roll into Tumbler's End, give the army the Prince, and let them decide whether or not it was worth indulging a witch's whims when Aldrin was protected by over four hundred strong sword arms?

"I said I'd get you to Tumbler's End alive, and that's what I'll do. Even if it means having to take a detour through a hospice," Ciara said, knowing she was going to regret it the moment the choice left her mouth.