Dawn of Swords

CHAPTER 23

Soleh had examined the handwriting of the Connington brothers, the king, Karl Dogon, and each member of the Council of Twelve, but it had led nowhere. She sent Pulo, Jonn, and Roddalin out to whisper among the merchants, including Matthew Brennan, trying to discover who might have a motive to sabotage her family. Still nothing. The only person she had yet to confront was the Highest himself, and that was only because he had yet to return.

If only Karak were here, she muttered to herself one cold morning. I’m tired of secrecy and games. Surely he would be able to tell with a glance who wrote it.

Once more she climbed her podium to preach Karak’s word. The crowd before her was in stark contrast to those who had gathered when she’d first begun her sermons. Now they echoed her every word and listened to her on bent knees. Just as she was finishing up, a convoy of horses trotted through the portcullis, Clovis’s white mare in the lead. Sure enough, the Highest sat in the saddle, his expression a mixture of irritation and bland resignation, the heavy shawl draped over his shoulders flapping as a cold wind blew through the courtyard. There were another fourteen horses behind him, ridden by his daughter Avila, his son Crian, and other high-ranking officials from Karak’s Army. All bore the red sigil of the lion over their chainmail.

She immediately thought of Vulfram-Vulfram, who now lingered in the Tower Keep, a shell of the man he’d once been. Often he cowered in his father’s studio, watching Ibis sculpt whatever masterpiece he was currently working on. Other times he stumbled aimlessly through the empty halls, drink in hand.

He had not been sober since the day he rode through the castle gates with mind bent on murder, and his outward appearance was starting to suffer for it. His formerly bald pate began to grow stubbly, and his posture, slumped and defeated. At all times his eyes were bloodshot from drink and lack of sleep. He was like a man wasting away, and Soleh feared for both his health and his sanity. The fear that she kept silent-the one she was reluctant to whisper even to herself-was that he might end up like Adeline, ranting and raving like a loon. It pained her that all she could offer him was a loving shoulder to cry on each night as he bemoaned the fate of his daughter and the treachery that had brought about that fate.

Staring across the palace courtyard at the arriving envoy, she wondered if the Highest might indeed be responsible for it all. Clovis was many things-rude, pompous, at times irrationally violent, and impatient to the needs and qualms of the common populace-but he was not a deceiver.

“Worship is done for today,” she announced, her eyes still fixed on Clovis, and she descended the podium amidst the confused mutterings of her parishioners. The convoy trod a wide path around the quad, heading for the rear stables. It was then, as she drew closer to them, that she finally peeled her eyes from Clovis and noticed the long red hair that was flopping over his son’s shoulder. She stopped in her tracks, jaw agape, as her flock slowly drifted toward the gates.

Red hair was an extremely rare trait east of the Rigon, so rare she could not remember ever setting eyes on it. In Neldar, those who originated in the north were typically fair skinned, with the characteristic silver, blond, or chestnut hair color, whereas those from the south, such as Soleh’s entire family, were generally darker of flesh, with curly tresses that ran the gamut from deep brown to black. Over the last ninety-some-odd years much interbreeding had occurred, causing some of the physical attributes to blend, but still…Soleh had never seen anything like that shock of red before in the east.

The red-haired girl riding behind Crian Crestwell leaned back, and Soleh caught a clear glimpse of her. She was small and looked very much like a child. Her cheeks were flecked with numerous tiny blemishes that seemed even brighter beneath the light of the deepest pair of blue eyes she had ever encountered. Unlike the northern Neldar blue, which seemed almost as clear as ice, this girl’s irises were solid, like the azure hue found on the chests of hummingbirds or in the sky when the clouds cleared after a summer rainstorm.

This girl-whose wary expression conveyed an agedness that belied her youthful appearance-was from the western Paradise. In fact, she looked very much like Isabel DuTaureau, the matriarch of the second of Ashhur’s First Families, whom Soleh had last seen forty years earlier, just after Karak had left his children on their own and she had relocated to this drab, chaotic city. She picked up her pace, lifting her dress so she wouldn’t trip on the hem. Why was one of Ashhur’s children here, and why was she riding so close to Clovis’s youngest, her arms wrapped around his waist?

Soleh neared the entrance to Tower Justice, hoping to reach the procession before it moved out of sight, when the door to the tower flew open. Captain Gregorian stepped out, chest huffing, his skin red beneath his collar. She stopped short, staring up at him, as his one good eye found her two.

“Minister,” he said, respectfully bowing. “Your presence is requested in the Arena.”

“By whom?” she asked, trying to peer around the broad Captain. She caught one final glimpse of those scarlet locks before they disappeared around the edge of the tower.

“I cannot say,” the Captain replied. “I only know that you must come. Now.”

His insistence captured her attention. Captain Gregorian was a man prone to neither over-excited utterances nor secrecy. His every word was measured and had been ever since he first stood before her, seeking judgment for his crimes. When he spoke with urgency, it was best to listen.

He nodded to her, silently communicating that she must go alone, and she brushed past him, dashing across the antechamber and down the stairs to the main dungeon. She shoved open the door to the Arena, running into the chamber so quickly that slamming into the sandstone balustrade was all that stopped her from toppling over the edge of the raised platform.

Soleh was surrounded by the flickering light of hundreds of torches, which revealed that the gates to the Judges’ cages were open. Kayne and Lilah lay in the center of the arena, their heads resting in Karak’s lap as he kneaded the furry flesh beneath their jowls. Her god’s eyes were fixed on the massive beasts, a loving smile on his face, while purrs of ecstasy vibrated from the lions’ throats.

“Sweet Soleh, come down here,” Karak said without glancing up at her.

She descended the staircase mechanically, joy spreading through her body, though not enough to quash the uncertainty of everything that had happened over the past few days. Walking into the arena, she kept her head bowed low in reverence to the one who created her, the only entity she had ever truly loved.

“You have been busy,” Karak said, continuing to knead the lions’ necks. “I am proud of what you’ve done. When I entered the city on this morn, I felt respect from all I came across. Mothers presented their babes for me to bless, and men fell to their knees to pledge their thanks for the lives they have been given. The city appears to be much more at ease, much more…ordered…than before.”

“I have only done as you asked, my Lord,” she whispered, reverence dripping from her every word. “All is not perfect, however. I still have much work to do.”

“You do,” replied the god with a bob of his divine head. “But I am proud of you nonetheless. You never cease to prove that you are my most precious of creations. However, that is not why I called you here this day. We have other matters to discuss.”

“What is it, my Lord?”

Karak lifted his right hand from Lilah’s fur and held it up to her, palm raised. “You are carrying a deep concern in your mind as well as in the pouch on your belt. I wish to see the letter.”

“You…you know?”

Karak’s eyes met hers, and in them she saw the benevolence he had always displayed to her, but those golden orbs seemed different somehow, duller.

“I know many things, sweet Soleh. I am your creator, and your heart in particular sings to me from miles away.”

She removed the folded parchment and placed it in the god’s huge hand without hesitation. Karak leaned back and opened it. The letter looked so small in his godly clutches, like a useless scrap and nothing more.

“Vulfram brought this to me,” she said. “It was given to him by the father of a boy he judged in Erznia. My son thinks it was written by the hand of the Highest, that there is a scheme to dishonor him and-”

“There is no scheme, sweet Soleh,” Karak said, shifting his head to stare at her. He pinched the note between two fingers and held it up in the air. It caught fire before her eyes, burning from one corner to the other until it was nothing but a tiny, glowing cinder that dissipated in the arena’s moist air. “This letter was not written by my Clovis.”

“Then by whom, my Lord?”

“I have no way of knowing for certain. However, I can tell you with the utmost certainty that none of my most precious children had a hand in it.”

“Could Broward Renson have written it?”

Karak shrugged. “Perhaps. It could be that the doomed man wished for the commander of my army to doubt his calling and hence spare him. But your son is a strong man, one of the strongest of my children, and I know that doubt does not come easily to him.”

Soleh dropped her gaze. Part of her was relieved to hear that no conspiracy was afoot, but relief quickly turned to dread when she thought of telling her god the next part of the sorry tale. She didn’t want to open her mouth but knew she had no choice.

“But you are wrong, my Lord,” she said softly. “Vulfram has doubted. His faculties seem to have left him, and he has turned to drink. Each day he spends wallowing in the Tower Keep, muttering to himself of murder, treachery, and conspiracies. I fear that if Lyana is not returned, he will never become the man he once was.” She knelt before her god, causing Kayne and Lilah to stir when she did so, and clasped her hands before her. “Please, my Lord, is there a chance of bringing Lyana back into the fold?”

Karak sighed, and Kayne and Lilah both lifted their heads from his lap, staring at her with shimmering golden eyes that seemed to convey more intelligence than ever.

“Sweet Soleh,” Karak said, “the choices your granddaughter made were hers and hers alone. Though deceived by Renson, she could have declined to spread her legs or murder her unborn child. These are the laws I have decreed, and the penalties are binding. You know this. Lyana will forever be a Sister until the day she leaves the mortal coil behind. I am sorry, but that is the way it must be. Vulfram’s wounds will heal. Humans are a resilient breed, and I have faith in him.”

Soleh dropped her hands into her lap.

“I understand,” she said. “And I hope you are right.”

“I know you do, my child, and I am,” said Karak. The god patted the lions on their heads and then shooed them away. They sauntered back into their open cages without hesitation, and Soleh couldn’t help but feel shock when she saw them standing at their full height. They seemed even bigger than ever.

“There is something else I must discuss with you,” the god then said. “I have returned from visiting the troops that have massed in Omnmount. The day of reckoning in Haven is fast approaching, and I require my most faithful to be completely dedicated to the task at hand. Did you catch sight of the convoy returning this morning? They must have arrived no more than a few minutes ago.”

“I did,” replied Soleh.

“And did you see something strange, something out of place in our land?”

“I did. The western girl.”

Karak nodded. “Crian Crestwell has been engaged in a long-standing courtship with Nessa DuTaureau, the youngest daughter of Isabel DuTaureau, of my brother’s First Families. In so doing, he broke the Crestwell family law and will therefore be stripped of his duties as Left Hand of the Highest. That duty is to be passed on to Avila Crestwell. Crian will be repositioned at the lowest rung of the City Watch, with his new residence in the Tower Keep.”

“A dishonored Crestwell is to stay in our home?” gasped Soleh. “But why?”

“The Tower Keep is not your home, sweet Soleh, no more than Tower Honor is the home of the Crestwells. It is simply a lodging, far enough away from the castle that father and son need not see each other. I consider Crian to be an honorable boy, and his betrayal was one of the heart and loins, not the mind. He will be an asset to this kingdom, no matter what his function. He never renounced my name, as his sister Moira did. He may be a dishonored Crestwell, but I still look on him with love and affection.”

“And what of the DuTaureau girl?” asked Soleh. “Is she to stay, as well?”

“She is, on the condition of conversion. In three days’ time she will be baptized in my name, or she will be sent back to the land from which she came.” The god laughed, and Soleh’s ears rang with the hollowness of it. “I do not expect that the latter will come to pass, however.”

Soleh swallowed hard. “And what of Vulfram, my Lord? What if I cannot break him from his stupor? What if he is not ‘completely dedicated to the task at hand’?”

The god’s eyes stared through her, chilling her very soul with their coldness.

“Then you had best make sure he comes around. If by the day of young Nessa’s baptism he is still meandering in sorrow and distrust, the Highest will have no choice but to replace him as Lord Commander. I am sure you do not want that to come to pass, do you, Soleh?”

She shook her head.

“Make sure his soul has healed by then,” the god said. Karak rose to his feet and walked past her, saying nothing else. The torches burning on the wall behind her were suddenly extinguished, pitching half of the underground chamber into darkness. Wind rushed past her ears, followed by a whoosh that rocked her on her knees, and when she glanced over her shoulder, Karak was gone.

“I will try,” she said, and then departed, leaving the shadows behind.

His vision swam, his stomach cramped, and yet still Vulfram tilted back the skin, pouring more stinging liquor down his throat. He stumbled down the corridor, bumping into walls, toppling end tables, almost starting a fire at one point when he knocked over a candle. He extinguished the flames with one of the many tapestries hanging from the walls, ruining the finely crafted embroidery in the process.

He didn’t care.

Using Darkfall as a crutch, the sword’s tip striking the stone floor of the Tower Keep with a hollow clunk with each wavering step, he continued mindlessly on his way. Images of Yenge, whom he had left behind without so much as a good-bye, and Lyana, who was even now performing whatever unholy servitude was demanded of her by the Sisters of the Cloth, wouldn’t leave his mind. He heard Adeline’s mad cackling echo from somewhere within the keep’s cavernous walls, and the sound made him tremble and cackle along with her.

You and I are the same, sister, he thought, laughing to himself. We will meet on the other side of sanity, and only then will we find peace.

He grinned, gripping Darkfall’s hilt with sweaty palms. His fanatical laughter turned to sobs as he thought once more of his daughter, of her childlike face staring back at him in torment and disbelief as he whipped the flesh from her back.

It was Karak’s will, he told himself. She only received what she deserved.

And yet he couldn’t make himself believe that. Lyana was his daughter, blood of his blood, a precious creature who should have been nurtured, not sent off to live a life of perverse servitude. Anger churned in his gut, turned his heart into an iron fist that slammed into his ribcage with nearly enough force to break the delicate bones there. All excuses washed away, leaving behind a single, simple declaration that repeated over and over again in the foreground of his thoughts, one he had never believed, for all the life of him, that he would ever utter.

Fuck Karak.

His angry sobs grew in intensity, and he took a final swig from his skin. When it was empty, he tossed it aside with so much force that he smashed a vase filled with colorful wild irises. He continued on his aimless journey, wanting nothing more than for the liquor to do its magic and send him into the oblivion he had so frequently sought since that fateful day.

Before long he found himself on the first floor of the keep, staring across the open hall at the bottom of the steep staircase. His shaky vision shifted to the entrance to his father’s studio. None of the usual sounds emerged-no clanking, no grinding, no grunts of exertion as the man whose seed had created him fashioned yet another stone monument to the god in whose image he had been molded. Father must be asleep already, he thought, which seemed odd. Vulfram hadn’t seen him all day-though in fairness, his thoughts had been locked in such a drunken stupor, he rarely knew when one day ended and the next began.

He stepped into the darkened studio, all the perfect renderings of Karak staring back at him in disappointment and accusation beneath the thirty-foot ceiling. Their features shifted in and out of focus, bathed in yellow from the flickering candlelight that filtered in from the hall. The same sort of gut-wrenching vertigo he always felt when inside this room followed, dropping him to his knees as bile rose in the back of his throat. Darkfall slipped from his grip and clattered to the hard ground. He crawled across the floor and rested his head against the raised threshold of the arched doorway, waiting for the feeling to pass.

He was breathing deeply, trying to quell the coming sickness, when suddenly the sound of rushing wind filled his ears. The door to the keep opened and closed, and then voices echoed off the walls, speaking in a hushed conversation that was peppered with uneasy laughter.

Curiosity momentarily curing him of his ills, Vulfram straightened up and peered around the edge of the doorway, his eyes catching sight of four people who were standing in the middle of the hall, locked in quiet conversation.

His mother was there, looking elegant in her purple dress, her shoulders covered with a heavy shawl. His father stood beside her, hands on his hips, not speaking, and Vulfram shuddered at the sight of him. When the other two figures came into focus, Vulfram furrowed his brow in confusion, for before his parents stood the Left Hand of the Highest, Crian Crestwell, Clovis’s youngest child. A broad smile stretched across the young man’s face, one that belied the cautious expressions of Vulfram’s mother and father. Even stranger, however, was the small wisp of a girl whose hand was locked in Crian’s. She was absolutely beaming, a perfect illustration of youthful innocence, with a shock of bright red hair and a lithe frame. She was gazing up at Crian with the same sort of naïve wonder with which his wife had once looked at him. It was a look that spoke of the clarity of dreams, the purity of love. Tears formed in Vulfram’s eyes once more, and he had to hold his breath in order to stay his faltering composure.

“This will be your home for the foreseeable future,” his mother said to the young couple. “There is a room for you upstairs, but mind you, the one next to our daughter Adeline’s. Her raving may prove an unwanted antidote for sleep. If it becomes a problem, please let me know, and I can prepare a chamber higher up in the tower.”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” replied Crian, gazing lovingly at the girl on his arm. “As long as Nessa is by my side, there is nothing we cannot overcome.”

“How quaint,” said Vulfram’s father.

The group made their way toward the stairwell. Vulfram caught a glimpse of his mother’s face, hardened yet striving for compassion, a look he had seen often of late as the pressures of her duty as Minister of Justice bore down on her soul.

She said, “I hope you realize how fortunate you two are. You assaulted your sister and deserted your post. And you, Nessa…you have blasphemed against your own creator. That is unprecedented in this land, and I imagine in yours as well. I have had men executed for lesser offenses. Crian, I do not know why your father has chosen to spare you both. What you did to your sister alone deserves harsh punishment. Though your lives will be difficult from here on out, you should look at this turn of events as a blessing. Your heads could very well be set on spikes right now.”

“I know, Minister,” said Crian, but the way he smiled broadly and held the young girl showed he didn’t truly understand the threatening words that came from her mouth. He was oblivious, as was this strange Nessa, the two of them trapped in a bubble of infatuation.

Vulfram and Yenge had been like that once. A long, long time ago.

That was when Vulfram noticed a strange rectangular object wedged beneath Crian’s arm. It was a mirror, framed with elegantly polished ivory. He had seen a similar one hanging from the wall in the Renson library. The sight of it set his blood to boiling, and his thoughts started spinning wildly.

The group started up the stairs, continuing their conversation, and when they were out of sight, Vulfram eased his way quietly out of the studio. He crept to the bottom of the stairwell, trying to decipher what was being said.

It was his mother’s voice he heard next.

“…as your father the Highest knows, the position is a difficult one. It is a lot of responsibility for one person, especially considering the duties he already holds. But should he take up the mantle for himself, I am sure he will make a fine Lord Commander.…”

The voices became muffled after that, as the four climbed higher up the tower. Vulfram felt faint and collapsed against the wall. The words he’d heard replayed in his mind, creating dark scenarios that threatened to undo the very fabric of his being.

His mother had betrayed him. His kingdom had betrayed him. His god had betrayed him. And though it didn’t come without its own form of heavy-handed guilt, given the way he had profaned against Karak this very evening, anger rose within him. He twirled around, making his way uneasily back to his father’s studio and snatching Darkfall from the ground. The sword had come to rest at the feet of a white marble sculpture of Karak, standing ten feet tall. He reared back and lopped the head from the statue with a mighty swipe. It clanked to the floor, cracking in two upon impact. The two halves rocked in place, both eyes seeming to stare up at him accusingly.

Vulfram slumped down, letting the sword trail out before him. In his inebriated mind, the conspiracy deepened. The mirror was further proof. They were all against him; they wished to devastate his family, take his mantle of leadership, and leave him a ranting lunatic like his sister. And then there was Crian. The man had broken his oaths, attacked his sister, and been caught red-handed with his red-headed tart. Yet Crian had been allowed a stay of punishment, given the opportunity to live his life in whatever way he saw fit, all the while holding onto the western deserter he loved.

But Lyana, whose only sin had been naïveté and fright, was being forced to perform heinous acts as a form of sadistic punishment.

The world spun out of control, and Vulfram collapsed, holding his head in his hands, wailing to the empty hall that he wanted a second chance, that he deserved it. He’d been loyal over the many years of his life, loyal as he bore down the whip and scarred the flesh of his beloved. He wailed and wailed over the fact that everything that had happened was, at its core, not fair in the slightest.