Storm Without End (Requiem for the Rift King Book 1) (2 page)

~Kill.~
Kalen once again adjusted his grip on the hilt of the sword. Strength flowed through him. If he wanted to rise and take the steps, he would succeed. Within three breaths, he could strike.

“He’s one of them. He wears its sign,” Hareth replied, voice shrill with madness. The man yanked a dagger free from his belt and clutched it in a white-knuckled grip before lunging forward.
 

Kalen rose to meet the strike, parrying the wild thrust. Steel clashed against steel. Madness clouded the tall man’s eyes and spittle frothed and dripped from the corners of Hareth’s mouth.

Sliding his feet through the mud, Kalen came alongside Hareth and cracked the flat of the blade against the Kelshite’s unprotected ribs. Jerking the blade up, he let the edge slice through clothes and flesh. A line of darkness seeped through the brown tunic the man wore.

With a little more pressure and a twist of his wrist, Kalen could gut the man and be done with it.

~Kill!~

Spitting his disgust and shaking his head, Kalen disengaged and slipped out of Hareth’s reach. Shock paled the man’s face to white. Out from the shadows, several other men jumped toward them.

Hopping back several steps, Kalen braced for the attack. Roaring with inarticulate rage, Hareth leapt at him again.

It took several men to hold Hareth back and tear the dagger free of the crazed man’s grip.

“I’ll kill him,” Hareth snarled. “Murderous little runt.”

“Curse you, fool! He spared you.” Once again, it was the dark-haired man who spoke. The others remained silent as they fought against Hareth’s insanity and strength.

Kalen tensed and held the sword at the ready. The dark-hair man stepped forward but remained well outside of his reach.

“Why didn’t you kill him?”

The wind blew and thinned the fog, revealing the others waiting and ready deeper in the forest. Kalen retreated to the safety of the tree’s trunk. “Does he deserve to die?”

“Maybe, maybe not. That isn’t for me to decide. I am Derac. What is your name, stranger?”

“Kalen Alkasatoren,” he replied. Without letting go of the sword, he shifted his weight and stance to limit how large of a target he was.

“That is not a Kelshite name,” Derac said.

“I am not a Kelshite.”

~Truth but also a lie,~
the voice of the woman said in his thoughts. The malevolent voice and the chill of its presence were all but gone, leaving behind a faint sense of displeasure.

“Let me go!” Hareth screamed. “I’ll kill him for what they did to Aurorie.”

“He didn’t kill Aurorie. Frankly, you’re fortunate to be alive. He could kill us all, if he so desired.” A young man stepped out from between two trees and moved forward.
 

Kalen shifted his weight from foot to foot and longed for his boots. His toes were cold and the unpleasant tingle was back, threatening fully fledged pain.

At least the rain no longer fell. Biting back a sigh, he glared at the newcomer. Like Hareth, the young man’s hair was a lighter shade, but the deepening shadows hid whether it was brown or blond.

“What do you mean, Marist?” Derac asked.

Kalen’s mouth twisted in a feral grin when Marist pointed at the sigil that crossed over his chest. He glanced down at the mud-coated fabric. The metallic threads of the winged serpent glinted despite the mud and the dim illumination of twilight.
 

“I know this man. He’s not a raider or an outlaw. He is not a beast,” Marist replied with a shake of his head.

“Then what are you?” Derac asked. When Kalen didn’t answer, the dark-haired man turned to his companion. “Who is he?”

“He is someone far more dangerous.” Marist dropped to a knee and inclined his head. “I hope that you will forgive my companions.”

Kalen scowled. “Get up.”

“How dare you!” Hareth snarled. The men holding him let out startled cries as he broke free of them. A long, slim dagger appeared from a sheath hidden within his tall boots. Hareth slashed at Marist before twisting around to lunge at him.

~Kill!~

Kalen obeyed.

~~*~~

"What do you mean, you can't find him?" Breton didn't shout, and he was proud of that. He wanted to, but it wasn't Avern's fault. Not really.

No one could control the Rift King. Not even Breton, no matter how hard he’d tried. But, almost a month had gone by without word or sign of His Majesty. It didn't surprise him -- he'd learned long ago to trust that quiet, unsettling feeling that told him his charge was far away.

"I rode as far as Land's End. He wasn't there, and no one has seen him," Avern whispered.

Breton tried to convince himself he wouldn't get angry. Staring at the cluttered chamber didn’t help. The Rift King’s study was buried beneath towers of letters, missives, and tomes. Gorishitorik was sheathed and placed on top of the piles on the desk, waiting for its master’s return.

“Put out the call,” Breton said, and then huffed out a sigh. With Avern’s failure, a gathering of the Guardians was inevitable. Invoking it admitted that the bad had gone to worse, and things wouldn’t get better until they found the missing Rift King.

Avern ran out the door, a streak of black against the pale stone that Blind Mare Run was carved out of.

Breton slammed his fist against a stack of the parchments and vellum perched on the edge of the giant desk. They scattered to the floor and knocked over several other piles as they fell. “Hellfires.”

There was no one present to hear him use the Rift King’s favorite curse. He could almost understand the lure of the oath, since he would’ve been more than pleased to drop a torch in the middle of the mess just to be done with it.

“He’ll flay you when he learns you threw his work on the floor.” A woman’s voice said from the hall. Riran laughed, leaning against the door with her arms crossed beneath her breasts. The hem of her tunic had been pulled down low to reveal her cleavage.

Breton scowled and ignored the aging woman and her tricks to get his attention. He wasn’t an eager foal anymore. He did not need to prove he was a stallion. While she was talented with horses, he wasn’t about to let her rein him in.

“You haven’t found him,” she continued when he said nothing.

“Not yet,” Breton replied. “I’ll be the one to do his work.”

There was always someone who dealt with the constant stream of messages meant to serve as the Rift King’s prison. The aboveworlders only assumed one man handled it all.

The aboveworlders were fools, all of them. They were just kings and queens who sat on their precious thrones and vied for dominance while fearing a man they’d never met and worked hard to keep contained within the vast desert canyons.

Breton clenched and then relaxed his hand. It throbbed. How many times had he taken his frustrations out on the stone desk and its precarious stacks in the past few days?

“You’re worried,” Riran whispered, weaving her way through the maze of unfinished work. “He’s a strong man. He’s proved that many times.”

“You only consider him strong because he refuses to spear you and make you one of his Queens,” Breton retorted.

Riran laughed. “He’s still alive.”

The confidence in her voice didn’t surprise him. Even if he hadn’t confirmed the truth with her, the Rift Queens always knew. It didn’t matter if they were Queens of the current Rift King. If His Majesty died, they would know. Like him, the Queens had known the moment that Arik had been replaced by the very man who’d killed him.

That man had only been fifteen years old.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I wish to prove my craft. I would act as a Princess. All of us. All of Arik’s Queens would serve as Princesses to the Rift King.” Riran lifted her chin and her dark eyes were hard with challenge.

Breton kept his expression neutral. Taking up one of the missives from the floor, he thrust it to her and nodded at the desk. While he couldn’t stop her from trying, he could demand perfection from her and all of Arik’s Queens.

And he’d get it. “It won’t make you Queen again.”

“I know,” Riran replied. “This is my fault, and it could destroy us all.”

Breton waited in silence. If he spoke, the temptation to break the Code and strangle the woman would be too strong. She told the truth. Without her machinations to replace the Rift King with a man who’d make her Queen again, he would be glaring at a diligent young man rather than at a woman consumed by her thirst for empty power.

For all Arik had speared many women and sired over a hundred children, he had mated with a purpose. His Queens were intelligent and capable of matching any handwriting. They were wise enough to know when a Guardian’s touch was needed for a reply.

Some of them, like Riran, were serpents clad in human skin.

But Kalen wasn’t Arik, and few understood that. Most wouldn’t call the Rift King by name, because it would be an acceptance of all that he was. Breton couldn’t erase the name of the boy who’d grown to be the most feared man in the Rift.

“Breton?”

He shook his head and met Riran’s eyes. “What is it?”

“Do you think they’ll actually go to war this time?” she asked, lifting up the missive and waving it in the air. The vellum crinkled, giving it the appearance that it had been read and considered several times.

“That isn’t our concern,” Breton replied. He hesitated before continuing. “It wouldn’t surprise me. Kelsh and Danar have always been at war. The question is whether or not it’ll be official this time. Unless they call the Council, we can do nothing.”

“If we don’t find him before someone else does, they’ll go to war with us.” Her brow furrowed as she picked up one of the root quills and dipped it in ink. The scratch of writing was the only sound in the room until she finished the reply. “We’ve been practicing since it happened.”

Breton didn’t need to ask what she spoke of. Something was happening, but he didn’t know what. No one did. He wasn’t certain if he could call it evil, but it wasn’t
good
either. There was one thing he was assured of: Whatever caused the feeling was dangerous and it was affecting all of the Guardians.

“Do Arik’s Queens feel it too?”

Riran nodded. “We want to help find him, but we can’t risk our mares. None of us have geldings or stallions. But, we can free you of this work and make it so you can go out and find him for us.”

She refused to meet his eyes, staring down at the vellum as though it held the secrets of the world within the letters written on it. The corners of Breton’s mouth twitched up.

“By ‘you’ do you mean me or the Guardians as a whole?”

Riran thrust the sheet of vellum at him. He took it and read through the document. The message from Kelsh was neither report nor letter, but the vague sort of missive that Breton hated the most. It wasn’t addressed to a man. It wasn’t even addressed to the Rift King or His Majesty. Even worse, the tone of the writing was so dismissive that Breton wanted to shred the page.

The sight of Kalen’s handwriting partnered with the careful and neutral tone of the Rift King hurt. The pressure in his chest grew until he wanted to lash out from the frustration of it all. She’d done it just right, even mastering the flicked curl added to many of the letters. It was a Kelshite habit that Breton hadn’t quite managed to convince the Rift King to remove from his writing.

“Are all of you this proficient?” Breton asked.

“Yes,” Riran replied.

“Get this mess cleaned up and I’ll think about it,” he said. He lifted Gorishitorik from the desk and held the old sword in the crook of his arm.

“We’ll need a few days.”

“Fine. Oh, Riran?”

The woman looked up from the stack of papers in front of her. “What is it?”

“Scheme against Kalen again and I’ll separate your head from your shoulders. Understood?”

Riran paled and jerked her head in a nod. Inclining his head, Breton turned and walked through the room, not caring how many of the stacks he bumped against on his way out.

~~*~~

Calling for the other Guardians would need to happen, and soon, but instead of heading straight for the library, Breton wandered through the carved tunnels of the underground city to the plains skirting the Foristasa.

The winds sweeping down from the cliffs dried out his nose and mouth with each breath. He sighed, lifted his fingers to his lips, and whistled. A whinny answered his call, but instead of his tall gelding, a much smaller horse charged at him. Underneath a flaking layer of yellow dust and brown, drying mud, the tiny King Stallion of the Rift skidded to a halt in front of him, letting out an explosive snort.

“Ferethian,” Breton greeted, clasping his hands behind his back. The stallion snorted again, both delicate ears turned back. A frayed rope halter hung on the horse’s filthy head, one of the nose bands severed. The others were close to breaking. Dark eyes bore into his, and with an unrepentant toss of his head, Ferethian presented the halter’s clasp to him.

Breton shook his head, but obeyed the animal’s command. The halter was caked in muck and was damp. “Where have you been this time, Ferethian?”

Ferethian ignored him. Draping the halter over his shoulder, Breton hesitated before holding out his hand to Kalen’s horse. The animal sighed and eyed him before relenting and bumping his fingers with his soft nose.

“I’ll bring him back to you,” Breton whispered. One of the stallion’s ears pricked forward.

The crunch of dry grass under foot approached from behind, quiet enough that Breton tensed and listened to the cautious steps. Ferethian’s ears twisted back, and the stallion’s snort was one of warning. A squeal startled Breton into whirling around in time to see a pale-robed figure leaping towards him, a short blade thrust out. Breton dropped his hand to his sword and he managed to get half an inch of steel free before something large and golden lunged out of the grasses.

Pale hooves lashed out, and bone broke with a crunch. Blood fountained from the figure’s mouth and nose before crumpling to the ground. Breton’s mouth dropped open. For a moment, he thought the bright chestnut was Kalen’s Honey, but when the animal whirled and galloped away, he was certain the horse was too large to be the Rift King’s mare—and he was a stallion.