The Shadowed Throne (44 page)

“It doesn't just have to be between male and female,” said Kullervo. “Parents love their children, and brothers love their sisters. Worshippers even love their gods.”

Senneck blinked. “I have seen how humans pair for life . . . Erian once tried to tell me . . .” She looked at Kullervo again. “This means nothing to me. And besides, you are not . . .” She trailed off.

Kullervo stared at his talons. “I know love. But I've never been loved. Not by anyone. When I was a child, I saw people around me, I saw parents holding their children, I saw lovers holding hands. But no-one ever held me. And if I reached out to them, they wouldn't reach back.

“When I flew North, I didn't really know why I was going. I thought my mother might be there, but I didn't really know why I wanted to find her. I knew she wanted me to die. But now I know why. I wanted to find her so I could reach out to her, so I could try to make her love me. But she was dead, and so was my father . . .” He shivered, and dared to look up again. “I've never . . . I've never been interested in human females—women. They just don't look beautiful to me. I've never seen one and wanted to touch her the way I want to touch you. When you touch me, when you groom me, when you talk to me . . . that's when I feel so right, like everything is perfect as long as you're with me. I think that's love. I think I love you.”

Senneck only stared at him, utterly uncomprehending.

Kullervo couldn't meet her gaze. “I've become my father,” he muttered. “My evil father. I love a griffin, gods have mercy on me. What will I do next? Will I become a murderer . . . will I kill again, and love it? Oh, gods, no. Don't let me be him. I don't want to be him . . .” Tears ran down his beak.

“Kullervo.” Senneck came closer and rubbed her cheek against his head. “Be calm. Do not say these things. You are upsetting yourself for no reason.”

Kullervo relaxed. “Just promise you'll stay with me, Senneck. I know I'm too young for you anyway. I won't do anything you don't want me to. I don't think I can be a father anyway. Mules are sterile, and so am I.”

Senneck crouched down by him and began to groom him again. “Rest now, Kullervo. I will take care of you. Skarok is gone, and I shall not leave you again.”

“Do you promise?”

“Yes. I promise.”

“—P
assed unanimously. The Master of Taxation was very pleased. Afterward—”

Laela turned several pages.

“—woke up and found her dead beside me. Of all the horrible things that have happened in my life, that was one of the very worst. I wish—”

Another page.

“—visited Fruitsheart with Iorwerth—”

And another.

“Yesterday, I returned to Malvern after a visit to Guard's Post. Skandar and I flew on beyond it to just past the mountains. It was the first time we had seen Southern lands in at least ten years. I was unexpectedly surprised to see they looked so much like my own territory. The sight of enemy lands and civilisation so close gave us both a terrible urge to keep going in the hopes of finding a fight, but while pillaging some pathetic Southern village was horribly tempting I had to admit it would be childish. Guard's Post was in good shape, anyway, and that was the main thing. I must remember to visit it again soon. I can't risk letting it weaken.”

Laela listened to her father's voice speak on for a while, then, growing bored, moved on.

Oeka's promise had been right. No matter what page of the diary she opened, every one read itself out loud to her. The voice had been growing fainter over the last few days, however, and she had begun to search through the book more thoroughly, fearing that it might stop altogether. Yorath had vanished without a trace and did not reappear even when she tried to have him summoned. Nobody seemed to know where he was. With him gone, she had nobody else around whom she trusted enough to read the diary to her.

In a way, the book had been keeping her company, but in all honesty, it only made her feel even lonelier. Hearing her father's voice like this was just a constant reminder of how much she missed him.

She missed the way he would smile with his eyes, the way he seemed to know everything that was going on. She missed what she had sensed in him—the terrible vulnerability that hid under his cool, neat exterior, the feeling he had given her that in a way he grieved as much as his victims for all the crimes he had committed. And even though one of the greatest of those crimes had been against herself and her family, part of her still refused to hate him for it. He had shown her the silent, lonely heart he kept hidden away from the world, and in a way she felt she had been entrusted with it, as if it was his greatest treasure.

And now she was discovering that the diary matched its creator, as in between dull accounts of the day-to-day duties of rulership, she found hidden pieces of insight. Sometimes, even in the middle of some dry description of law-making and finance, the text would take a sudden turn into something that read almost like a confession.

The only hard part was finding it.

However, Laela wasn't just going through the diary to indulge herself. If Saeddryn now had the same powers her father had had, then the more she knew about them, the better. And nobody could tell her more about them than Arenadd himself.

So she leafed through the pages, listening to snatches of different entries, searching for the knowledge she needed. The only trouble was that Arenadd himself seemed reluctant to write about them, as if his “condition,” as he called it, frightened or upset him too much. Or maybe he just didn't think about it much. Or, Laela thought suddenly, or maybe it had occurred to him that someone else might read his diary one day, and he didn't want that person to know too much.

Keep goin',
she told herself.
He didn't tell yeh all his secrets right away when you knew him. Why would he start now?

She turned another page and listened to his voice yet again.

“Caedmon left Malvern today, along with Shar. I don't think he plans to return any time soon. It was my fault in a way, but maybe it's better this way. A few weeks ago, I wrote about poor Sionen. The girl was half my age, but she loved me all the same. I suppose since I looked like I was her age, it made no difference to her.

“After she died, Caedmon confronted me. I could tell that he had been crying. He was mad and wild; he screamed at me and outright accused me of murdering Sionen. He had been secretly in love with her himself, the poor fool. He didn't have to tell me that. His claim upset me, and I flared up in response. I think that if he weren't afraid of me, he could well have attacked me on the spot. In the end, Skandar drove him away.

“After that, he avoided me for a long time and didn't return to his lessons with me until I commanded him to. When we began to practise combat, he lost his head. He was never able to land a blow on me, and I think it had always secretly made him angry. And now that he believed I had killed the woman he loved, he went mad. He snatched up a real sickle and came at me. I honestly think that he really did want to kill me. I quickly disarmed him, and he responded by attacking me again, this time with his fists. In the end, I knocked him down and sharply reminded him of who I was and what the consequences of his actions could be.

He stormed out without a word, and, today, I was informed that he has left Malvern for parts unknown. I know perfectly well that he hates me now; most likely he also left because he thought I might have him arrested if he stayed.”

Laela listened to all this, wide-eyed and fascinated. She had never met Caedmon and didn't know that much about him. Iorwerth had hinted that he'd fallen out with Arenadd, but what she was hearing now was far more serious than she had ever imagined.

“What a terrible mess my family has become,” Arenadd's voice continued. “First Saeddryn, and now this. I had put all my hopes in Caedmon; when I look back through this journal, I see constant references to how proud I was of him and how much progress he was making. He was my apprentice, my heir. I always told him that if anything ever happened to me, he would be King, but what he didn't know was that I had secretly planned that one day, when I thought he was mature and ready for it, I would abdicate the throne in favour of him. I may be immortal, but I know I can't rule forever, and Caedmon could have been a great ruler.

“As it is, now that I know he won't forgive me and come back to finish his training, my plan is ruined. I have publicly destroyed the documents naming him as my heir, and so far I have not chosen a replacement. But I hinted to Saeddryn that if I found no Taranisäii worthy of that position I could choose someone outside my own family. Great leadership is not an inherited trait, and simply being a Taranisäii is not enough to make someone worthy of Kingship.

“Saeddryn, of course, is not pleased with me at all. She thinks I am losing my touch—and possibly my mind as well. The woman is impossible. Maybe I shouldn't have made her High Priestess; she spends far too much time worrying about what the Night God thinks and wants and doesn't have the humility to just ask me. I think it annoys her that I won't take a more active role in the Temple, but in all honesty I have no use for religion. Let the imaginary version of the Night God comfort ordinary people; only I have touched her, and only I know how cold her skin is. Her love is even colder. I may not know much, but I do know that the only kind of love a human being needs or truly benefits from comes from other humans.

“How can someone so cut off from us, so unable to understand what really drives us, how can someone like that know us well enough to love us properly?

“Oh, Caedmon. You've let me down. You've let us all down. If you only knew how disappointed I am in you. If you only knew how much like a son you felt to me.”

Laela closed the book thoughtfully. No insight into Saeddryn's powers, but plenty of insight into the sad state of the Taranisäii clan. No wonder there had been so much coldness between Saeddryn and Arenadd. And no wonder someone had tried to assassinate him. So far, there was no proof that the assassin had been sent by Saeddryn or anyone in her family, but if they weren't behind it, then she, Laela, would eat her own boots.

She put the diary aside. “Who would've thought big families could get so complicated? Thank gods I got a sensible upbringing.”

Thinking sadly of her foster father, she made for the door.

Someone had propped a chair under the handle.

Laela's neck prickled. She turned, looking around quickly. There was nobody else in the room, and the only other entrance led into Oeka's deserted nest. She went in there, but there was no-one in there, either.

“What the—?”

She went back into her own room, and there was the chair, innocently blocking anyone from opening the door. Nobody else had come in, and if they had, there was no way they could have left again. And Laela definitely hadn't put the chair there herself.

Her hand went to her belt, where she had taken to keeping her father's sickle.

It wasn't there.

Laela searched frantically, but the weapon was nowhere in sight, and she would surely have felt it fall out of her belt.

“All right,” she said aloud, straightening up in the centre of the room. “This ain't funny. Come out, whoever yeh are. Don't make me come lookin', because when I find yeh, I'll kick yer teeth in.”

Silence.

“Oeka?” Laela ventured. “Are you playin' games with me again? I told yeh not to. C'mon, this ain't funny.”

No reply, and nothing moved.

Sensing danger, Laela went toward the door to remove the chair. As she reached out to touch it, something slammed into her side-on. She fell hard, and before she had a chance to get up, her attacker was on her. A hand grabbed her by the hair, wrenching her head sideways, and as she threw up a hand to defend herself, pain split her wrist.

Pure fighting instinct took over. She kicked upward with both feet, hitting something that lurched away and, moving with a speed that astonished her, she rolled away and got up.

Half-crouched and ready to attack, she paused for the fraction of a heartbeat to look, and saw something that put ice into her blood.

Saeddryn. Saeddryn, snarling and savage in a way that made her look horribly familiar. Saeddryn, black-clad, holding Arenadd's sickle, her dead eye exposed and vile.

In the instant Laela saw her, she knew that she was looking at death.

But the half-breed Queen was made of sterner stuff than that.

She hurled herself toward the door and wrenched the chair away, turning in the same movement to swing it as hard as she could. Saeddryn, already behind her, gasped as a leg hit her in the stomach. Winded, but not seeming to care much, she rushed in to attack.

Laela had not had much practice in fighting. But what she did have was the tavern-brawling, rough-and-ready, improvised combat that came from her foster father Bran, and from her own, unsophisticated, tough spirit. She had been made to punch faces and kick groins, not dance with a sword, and it worked perfectly well.

She put her back against the wall and used the chair as a combination of weapon and shield, blocking the sickle and keeping Saeddryn out of range by jabbing her in the face with the legs. When Saeddryn came in low to attack under the chair, Laela smashed it over her head.

Saeddryn fell onto her face and scrabbled away, crying out in rage and pain. Laela came after her, not giving her any room to move, and began to kick her, stomping on her hand so hard that she felt bones break under her boot. Saeddryn screamed and lost her grip on the sickle, and Laela snatched it away.

But Saeddryn was not finished yet. She rolled sideways, and vanished into the shadows.

Panting, Laela darted over to the fire-place, where the light was strongest. Blood had run down over her hand, making the sickle sticky in her grip. She wiped it quickly on her dress. “Come out, then, yeh withered bitch,” she growled. “I'm ready.”

“Ye shouldn't have done that,” Saeddryn's voice said. It came out of nowhere and sounded hollow and chilly.

Laela spat on the carpet. “Why, ain't yeh happy? Yeh wanted to be like Arenadd, didn't yeh? Now yeh got broken fingers just like him. Lucky ole you.”

Saeddryn said nothing. She didn't seem keen to come out of the shadows.

Laela thought fast and decided her best bet was to keep her busy so she couldn't come up with a plan. “You sure yeh wanna go up against me, Saeddryn? After what I did to the last one of your sort? You wanna know what really happened to Arenadd?”

Silence.

“I killed him,” said Laela, which was more or less true. “Yeah, that's right. The stories are true. I killed Arenadd. Real nasty, it was. After what I did, all his bones broke an' he started bleedin' until he turned white as snow. I stood there an' watched him die. Horrible way to go, but he deserved it. Is that why yer here, then? Did yeh wanna go out the same way? Well? Do yeh?” She sneered.

“That's enough,” Saeddryn said at last, icy as her predecessor. “Don't try an' fool me, half-breed. I know the truth. Ye have no power. Yer nothin' but a peasant brat my cousin pulled out of the gutter to amuse himself.”

“That's rich, comin' from you,” Laela shot back. “'Cause I heard some story about you being some peasant from a tiny village in the middle of freezin' nowhere when you was my age.”

Saeddryn stepped back into the light. “I'm a Taranisäii,” she said. “My blood is pure.”

Laela made a rude gesture at her. “Yeah, well, you can take yer fancy breedin' an' shove it where the sun don't shine. Now, are yeh gonna come get me or what?”

Saeddryn charged. Laela had prepared herself while she hurled her insults, and now she lunged forward, holding the chair out in front of her, intending to push Saeddryn back with it and trap her against a wall or the floor.

But Saeddryn had done with fighting like a mortal. In mid-run, she dove head first—straight into Laela's own shadow.

As Laela turned, trying desperately to defend herself against an enemy she couldn't see, the chair twisted and tore itself out of her hands, so powerfully it made her arm give an audible crack. The sickle, which she had tucked into her belt again, was yanked out by an invisible hand. Unarmed, she kicked out blindly and hit nothing.