Sword of Jashan (Book 2) (7 page)

He heard Kirian say to Balan, “He is going to kill the King.”

He headed for the stables and his mare, Miri. The grooms were busy elsewhere, and the stable was quiet. He took the saddle from the tack room himself. He began preparing Miri for the ride to Sugetre, or wherever else the thrice-damned murderous King had gone to lair. Miri rolled her eyes at him, sensing his agitation.

“My lord, you cannot go!” Chiss arrived at the stable door, panting as if he had run from the manse.

“I damn well can. I will knock his head from his—” Callo stopped for a moment, his throat threatening to close with emotion. His hands were on the saddle, on Miri’s back; he saw red fire begin to trace them, rising from within. Miri felt it and shied.

“My lord.” Chiss’ voice was gentle. “It is terrible news. But you cannot go. He will be waiting for you. Don’t you think he knows how you will feel?”

“So he knows. I hope it gives him nightmares. I swear by Jashan’s hand, Chiss, I will . . .”

“
Don’t
swear.” Kirian was there now too, her eyes red with tears. “Don’t swear to anything now, Callo, while this news is so fresh.”

“I am going! Get out of my way, both of you.” He pulled the girth strap too hard, and Miri protested. She sidled away from him in the stall. He swore at her, his grief coming up to choke his voice, then stopped as he realized what he was doing. “Ah, Miri my good one, I am sorry.” His hand relaxed on her bridle.

“My lord, will you come back with us to the house?” Chiss asked.

“Stay away from me,” Callo said. “You have done your part to save your King once already. You won’t stop me this time, Chiss. Get back.”

His mind threatened to white out again. He could not stand to look into Chiss’ face and remember the manservant had saved King Martan from death at Seagard. But Chiss was right about one thing. If he went now to try to tear Sharpeyes’ bloody head from his shoulders, he would never make it inside Sugetre’s gates.

But Jashan’s eyes, hell, Som’ur’s brutal heart! How could he avenge his brother? He froze in a storm of grief, and the red tide of his color magery rose again, sparking through his fingertips, making Miri neigh, making Chiss draw back from him. He began to shake, at the mercy of the energy.

“My lord, easy now, please,” Chiss said. But Callo could tell the man was afraid. Then a smaller hand was on his arm, drawing him away from Miri and out into the light of the late morning.

“Callo,” Kirian said. Her voice was soft. “Stay here, until you have a chance to think.”

He no longer had a choice. The energy that roiled within him, that he could not really control, paralyzed him. His heart cried out for Arias, and the fire roared. “Get back,” he gasped to Kirian. “I don’t think I can keep it down.”

“Of course you can,” she said. “You have done it before.” Her hand was still on his arm. She stood right next to him, and he was afraid the fire would leap out and burn her.

He heard shouts as people came from the manse, heard Chiss say something he could not understand.

“Ah, gods, Arias,” Callo mourned.

“This will not help avenge Arias,” Kirian said, still too close. He clamped down on the magery hard, trying to stifle it.

“Please calm down, my lord,” said another voice. Balan had walked down from the house and was here, with Chiss and Kirian, trying to keep Callo here and sane. The man’s eyes were red and puffy.

Lord Zelan and a guardsman arrived from the manor house, having been warned of the crisis. Zelan looked at him with eyes that were calculating and hard. He had not known Arias. He said: “I don’t want anyone hurt.”

Callo drew a ragged breath and felt someone else’s hands join Kirian’s to support him as he stumbled on nothing, all his attention on crushing the color magery before it could consume him or harm someone else. After a few moments, during which his sight went white with anger or grief or color magery, he felt the energy recede.

“Good,” Chiss said. His voice sounded as if he were at the other end of a tunnel.

“Relax, Callo,” Kirian said. “Here, sit.” Hands guided him to a seat—he thought the mounting block. His breath rasped painfully. His vision cleared; his mind felt split in half. He heard, as if the voice were coming from a foot away, the King saying the color magery would destroy him if he were not trained. At the thought of the King, his grief flared up again.

“That murdering bastard,” he said.

“Yes,” Balan said. “He is.”

“Are you any better now, my lord?” Chiss asked, anxious.

“I will be. Thank you for coming after me.” He dropped his head into his hands. “I am sorry, Chiss. You knew him well, too.”

Kirian said, “Will you come up to the house now, my lord?” He thought Kirian was still afraid he would leap onto Miri and be off to Sugetre to challenge the King. He wanted to do that, desperately, but now the reasonable part of his mind was coming back, telling him he must plan; he must prepare or he would not succeed. He rose, his strength returning, but he felt as if his soul had been ripped in half. He let them escort him back up the hill. Chiss’ voice, behind him, ordered a groom to see to Miri.

The breakfast room doors were still closed, a servant waiting outside to discourage interruptions. Ander led them past the breakfast room and into his own rooms, where he waved them to chairs and sent a servant for whatever breads and tea survived the disrupted breakfast hour in the kitchen. The boy’s face was white.

“I am so sorry, Lord Callo,” Ander said. “It sounds as if it was a brutal thing.”

“He is a brutal man,” Chiss said. There was a thickness in his voice Callo had not heard before. “He does not deserve my oath.”

Callo took a deep breath and tried to focus. “He deserves to be destroyed. I was a fool to let my loyalty rule my decision not to slay him in the tower. If his own color magery burns him alive, it will not be too much.”

Ander fidgeted in his chair. “Lord Callo,” he said, “you must not let your grief blind you. He is still our King. This talk is treason.”

“I spared him in the tower though he Collared my brother and tried to slay Kirian and me. I thought, he is my uncle and my King. I thought, I will leave and go my way, stay out of his way and come to defend you from him here in Northgard—you, the rightful heir.

“Think of this,” Callo said. “The King wants me to succeed him—he offered the throne to me at Seagard Castle. I am the tool he wants to work some plan of his. Now that Arias is dead, Ander, only you come between me and the throne. There has already been one attempt on your life.”

“The boy is in great danger from the King,” Chiss said.

Balan snorted. “Lord Callo, you know as well as I that you would never be accepted as King. Not a man of illegitimate birth such as yourself. Forgive my plain speaking, but this is delusional. Did Sharpeyes really say that?”

“There are things you do not know,” Kirian said. “My lord said he would not take the throne, however. That’s what matters to us now.”

“If Ander were dead, he would take it quickly enough,” said Balan cynically, looking at Callo. “It may be putting the fox in charge of the chicken to ask Lord Callo to defend young Ander.”

Callo gritted, “I said I did not want it, and I meant it.” He tried to pace, found his intent frustrated by the crowded area, and ran his hands through his hair. He had to get out of this little space soon.

“You may trust my lord’s word, Hon Balan,” Chiss said.

“And yours, how do I trust yours? I know none of you well. Perhaps I have done a great wrong, vouching for you so you are allowed into our very heart like this.” The warrior braced his feet as if to deliver a blow, and said to Callo: “You left him there to be slain. I do not call this the act of a loyal brother.”

Callo could not reply. Kirian said, “He tried to convince him, Hon Balan. Lord Arias was sure he could turn aside the King’s anger. He would not come with us.”

The warrior sighed and seemed to deflate. “It sounds like Lord Arias,” he said. “Always sure he could win his way with charm alone. Jashan’s heart, I will miss him.”

Callo thrust aside his own grief and said, “I will guard you with my life, Lord Ander, until your position is safe. I will stay here rather than riding to Sugetre to put my sword through Sharpeyes’ heart. But when it is time, even if months have passed, I now swear on Jashan himself that I will avenge my brother Arias.”

“No!” Ander said.

“Chiss, if you cannot live with yourself without thwarting me, go your ways.”

“I will go where you go, my lord,” Chiss said. “I always have.”

And turn your hand against me when it counts?
Callo thought but did not say aloud. He began to be overwhelmed by the closeness of all the people, and made his excuses. Then he stalked out of the manor house and headed for the ring.

He tried to gain Jashan’s self-discipline in the ring. For candlemarks he moved in the studied speed of the god’s ritual forms. He moved until his arms were aching, his legs weak, and still he could not sense the usual purifying rigor of the ritual. Jashan had turned his face away. He worked until he was exhausted, then went back to the fortress.

The prolonged workout made him so weary that twice he found himself thinking of things other than Arias. Then the grief would come, strengthened by guilt at his fickle mind. Chiss was not there, but someone had left warm water and cloths so that he could clean up the sweat and dirt of the ring. Finally clean and with a cup of wine inside him, Callo sat in the chair by the window and stared out at the dusty sun of late afternoon.

There was a tap on the door. No doubt it was someone looking to offer sympathy. He said, “Go away,” but Kirian slipped inside anyway, closing the door behind her.

He stood and drew her into his arms, enclosing her in his embrace, her cheek resting on his shoulder. It seemed she held back for a moment, but then she sighed.

“Callo,” she whispered, “I am sorry.”

Callo closed his eyes and rested in her embrace. She was warm and soft, and she radiated comfort. Her short, spiky hair stood up as if it had recently been washed, tickling his chin. As they enfolded each other he could feel a small glow of renewal. He sighed and asked, “What did you do today, then?”

She shook her head, bumping his chin. “Nothing. It was not a good day to do anything useful. I watched you in the ring for a while, did you see me?”

“No. I am sorry.”

“It’s all right.” She drew him to the curtained bed and made him sit down. He leaned back on the embroidered pillow. She did not join him on the bed, as he hoped, but sat at the table and began working with some herbs she had carried into the room with her, stripping the leaves and letting them fall into a clay pot. The herbs exuded a sweet fragrance.

Gradually Callo’s shoulders relaxed, and he sighed and turned his eyes to her anxious face.

“Lord Ander was disturbed about your vow,” Kirian said. “But now he believes it was just the product of grief, and that you will not really harm the King.”

“What do you think?”

“I think that when your other obligation is fulfilled, you will do as you say.”

“You need not go with me to Sugetre,” he said. “I will be a little while yet, making plans. You should think of where else you might like to go.”

“Why would I not go with you?”

“I can’t name all the reasons. It is dangerous to be associated with me. I have sworn to slay the King after Ander is safely guarded. Once Sharpeyes realizes what I intend, he will give up his plan of making me his heir. He will declare me traitor, and my head forfeit, and those of any who helped me. This is not a good thing I go towards, Kirian. I would rather think you safe, back at Seagard, or in Sugetre if you choose.”

“I thought you would try to get rid of me.” She looked up at his face. Her eyes looked tired.

“I do not want to get rid of you.”

“Then stop pushing me away.”

“But it is not safe for you. You do not deserve this chaos, this running around Righar always on guard against attack, with no clothes or maidservants or even a predictable place to sleep every night.”

“Give me a little credit,” she said. There was a hint of sharpness in her voice. “I am not a fool, Callo, just because I am a woman and a commoner.”

“I never said that.” He rubbed his eyes, which were stinging again with grief and exhaustion. Her tone of voice eased.

“You are grieving, and not thinking.”

He sighed. It was true, he could not think. Every time he tried to consider the future, he would remember Arias, laughing or dragging him into some escapade, or challenging him—with endless optimism—to a contest in the ring Arias stood no chance of winning. The world would be a barren place without him.

“You wish to be rid of me, so you can pursue your vengeance without distraction,” Kirian’s soft voice said. “I did think, just this morning, that I might return to Seagard Village—but no, I cannot leave you under these circumstances.”

It was true that Kirian would be a distraction from the brittle single-mindedness he would have to cultivate in order to commit regicide. It would not be easy, keeping his sense of purpose for when he could safely leave the boy and claim vengeance for Arias. It would not be long, he promised himself—long enough to finalize the defenses they had set in place, and make sure there was a better way to defend against the possible use of color magery in an attack. Even more important than his vengeance was making sure Martan’s schemes were brought to nothing—and that meant making sure Callo was never forced to take the throne of Righar.
 

Chapter Five

Callo awoke the next day to an ominous pressure in his head. By the time he was dressed, he had snapped at Chiss twice and apologized twice. Standing at the door to his chamber, ready to go down to breakfast and then to confer with Lord Zelan, he stopped and felt the walls pulsing around him.

“Chiss, I cannot go down.”

“I thought something was wrong, my lord.”

“Another headache. I think it is going to be worse than the others.” Already the pressure had metamorphosed into a stabbing pain.

Chiss put a hand on Callo’s arm and drew him back to his bed. “This is the fourth one, Lord Callo. What is happening?”