Kinshield's Redemption (Book 4) (9 page)

Though he wasn’t going to get anymore sleep that night, he had time to spare before his companions would wake. He spent a few minutes gathering firewood and magically pulling the remaining moisture from it, and then built a cookfire in the cinders that remained from the evening before. He sat on his bedroll, staring into the fire’s flame as he went over the dream in his mind.

“Guardians?” he whispered. “Are you there?”

The Guardians faded into view in the fire. “We are always here. You have questions, Emtor.”

“Yeh,” he whispered. “Tell me how and why your essence came to be trapped in a crystal.”

“In our realm, kho and zhi are balanced perfectly by the birth of two ensouled individuals. These individuals are complements, and they grow up tempering one another through their thoughts. One of them is kho-bent, the other is zhi-bent. They’re bound together through their lifetimes.”

“Yeh, I’ve been to your realm. I understand that part. Who were you?”

“We were Poin and Poinna. Poin was the kho-bent, and Poinna was the zhi-bent. Long ago, when the Wayfarer was still a zhi-pure being named Carthis, she traveled to the midrealm and spoke to our village. She believed that by merging the kho and zhi, we could temper the darkness with light, the chaos with order. Doing so across all realms would reunite them as the world was in the years before The Sacrifice.”

Gavin had known of the Runes of Carthis. He used them to travel to times gone by and to summon Ritol back to its own realm. He’d always thought Carthis was a place, not a person.

“She came to the midrealm frequently,” the Guardians continued, “because there she could interact with those of pure kho without endangering her life.”

“Because the zhi-bent tempered them.”

“Yes. Inspired by the Wayfarer, we decided to try it. Our goal was to transfer our kho and zhi essences into a single crystal and then extract the combined essence so that we would be balanced as individuals, much like your people are.”

Gavin felt a slight chill and got up to pace. “What went wrong?”

“The body can survive only moments without the essence. Once decay begins, the body cannot be resurrected. The shaman combined our essences within the Nal Disi but could not extract them from the crystal, for our bodies had begun to decay.”

The notion of removing the essence temporarily to combine it with another excited Gavin. Could the key to fixing Feanna be found in that process? “So your essence was trapped in the crystal. How did it get into the wellspring?”

“The shaman who performed the ritual was banished and his complement along with him. He brought the Nal Disi into the mountains in the hopes that he could break our essence free from its prison. After many years, the shaman died, and his complement, unable to survive without him, threw the crystal into the spring before she, too, perished.”

Gavin shook his head in disbelief. “But all that happened in the midrealm. How did the crystal get here?”

“The crystal isn’t living matter, and therefore it exists in all realms, like the mountains and oceans.”

“Are you saying that your essence infused the water of all seven realms at once?”

“Yes, the water exists in all realms. Over the centuries the Nal Disi was submerged in the spring, beings of all realms have been affected by it, though we did our best to frighten them away.”

Daia stirred. Gavin waited to see if she would rise, but her breathing deepened once more into the steady rhythm of sleep.

“So Carthis was a Wayfarer,” he said, mostly to himself.

“One of the zhi-pure from the realm of violet.”

“How did humans become Wayfarer?”

“Carthis was said to have visited all the realms, including those of the pure kho and the kho-dominant—red, orange, and yellow. Carthis was killed in one of those realms, and the being of a strong kho nature became Wayfarer. This began a time of chaos throughout the realms as the new Wayfarer traveled and wreaked havoc wherever he went. It was King Landon Beresfard from your realm who slew the kho-bent Wayfarer and inherited the power. It has been passed down to your people ever since.”

“How do you know that? You’ve been stuck in a rock for hundreds of years.”

“Though our souls are bound to the essence, we are free to travel across the dimensions of time and space. We have witnessed these events ourselves.”

Whoa.
Gavin gaped at their ghostly form a moment. “Can you go forwards in time and see how this all plays out?”

“No, Emtor. The future isn’t written. Your choices, and those of every other being, have not yet been made.”

“So you’re saying there’s no such thing as destiny?”

“Precisely so.”

“Hah!” Gavin looked at Daia’s sleeping form, wishing she could hear this. Even after all that had happened in the last few months, perhaps because of it, she still believed in fate. “So you could go backwards in time or to anyplace in the present and get information for me?”

“We can witness events, as you wish.”

Gavin gestured to the sleeping forms of Daia and Cirang. “You used their fears to scare them away from the wellspring. How’d you know what they were afraid of?”

“Hopes, fears, and other emotions are communicated through the essence. It is how your mate can sense the feelings of others, though her ability to perceive the essence without physical contact is undeveloped.”

“So you could scare off my enemies,” he said hopefully, imagining being able to quell an enemy attack without bloodshed.

“We can frighten your enemies or inspire your allies if the Nal Disi is present, but we cannot travel across the sea to do so.”

“Oh, I see now.” Gavin felt an excitement he hadn’t felt in some time. This was possibly the most valuable, powerful tool a king could ever have. “Can I return the power of Wayfarer to one of Carthis’s people?”

“One would have to be present at your death to inherit the power. Unless you traveled to the violet realm moments before your death, the power of Wayfarer will remain among your people until the world ends or someone in another realm slays the Wayfarer and takes it. It is for this reason that we implore you to exercise caution when traveling to the lower realms. They’ll try to take your power, for that is the nature of the kho-bent.”

He nodded. Ritol had tried to kill King Arek for it, and later Gavin, hoping to become Wayfarer. With the Guardians’ ability to get information from any realm at any time in the past, Gavin had little need to do the traveling himself.

“You have my thanks,” he said. “Your information’s been helpful.”

“We owe you a great debt for returning our essence to the Nal Disi, Emtor.”

Daia opened her eyes and settled her gaze upon Gavin. “How long have you been awake?”

An orange glow lit the eastern horizon. “Not long. Been talking to my new friends. Oh, one more thing. You said that drinking the essence-infused water only affected someone’s essence once. Is there another way to reverse the water’s effect?”

“We cannot guide you in this, Emtor. We have learned from our past mistake.”

What the hell does that mean?

“It is best to leave the essence as it is,” they said.

“I can’t do that. My wife was affected, and she’s carrying...” He hoped it was his son she was carrying. It had to be. She’d conceived in the early days of their marriage. Even if she’d been having an affair with Adro, Gavin had requested her presence in his bed far too often for the baby to have been Adro’s.

“The kho-bent man lied to you, Emtor. He couldn’t have fathered a child with your mate.”

Gavin straightened, excited. “Are you sure?”

“What is it?” Daia asked, straightening.

“Rest assured, Emtor. The child is of your mating.”

“Feanna’s baby is mine,” he said. “That takes a lot off my mind.”

Cirang awoke and blinked the sleep from her eyes. “Is something wrong?” When she sat up, she pulled the cloak draped over her tighter.

“You’re awake,” he said. “Good. Let’s pack up and get on the road.”

“Where are we going first?” Daia asked, rising to her feet. “Do you need to go to that midrealm place?”

Gavin shook the dirt from his bedroll and began to roll it up. “Yeh, but first to Ambryce. I want to talk to Jennalia.”

Cirang handed him the cloak. “My thanks, King Gavin,” she said in a sincere tone.

“You’re too kind to her,” Daia said. “She can freeze to death for all I care. It’d be a slow, painful death that would give her time to reflect on all the evil she’s done.”

Gavin sighed. “Drop it. I haven’t forgotten that I owe her a death, but it’ll come when I say it comes.”

The old Cirang would have shot back an insulting quip. Gavin didn’t truly know the woman riding with them now, but from the way she averted her eyes and bowed her head, he suspected that her feelings of remorse for her actions were genuine and much deeper than Daia gave her credit for.

Chapter 10

Edan stayed up well into the mirknight, reading Jaesh’s find at the small table in his bedchamber. He turned the wick on the lamp, brightening his light, knowing he would regret staying up so late but unable to stop reading. It appeared to be a diary of sorts, but less about King Arek’s—then Prince Arek’s—personal life and more about significant political events of the past that he would one day need to understand as king.

The history text Edan had read as a boy said the Beresfards had succumbed to a disease and died out right around the time of the First Cyprindian War. It was highly speculated that their new enemy had found a way to poison the king and his would-be heirs, as well as anyone of the surname Beresfard who might produce an heir. Natham Engtury was then crowned, and his family held the rule until Arek’s death in the year 1431.

Edan turned a page and found another list, this one of Beresfards, many of whom were listed with the same year of death: 1246. That must have been the poison, killing off the royal family. On the page, one name caught his eye.

Gavin Ronor
Beresfard
Kingshield 1238-1257

Edan blinked hard at the page, wondering whether he was hallucinating from lack of sleep.
Beresfard was scratched through and changed to Kingshield.

Could they have been trying to hide one of the Beresfards from the murderers? He flipped back to a page on which Arek had sketched the Beresfard family tree. Gavin Ronor Beresfard was the eldest first cousin of the last Beresfard king, Samuar. Since Samuar and his siblings died in 1246, Gavin Beresfard should have inherited the throne.

Except that Natham Engtury’s arse was already on it.

On the next page, almost a dozen more Beresfards, all men, were changed to Kingshields.

Edan stiffened in shock. Could Nathem Engtury have usurped the throne? Could he have been the one killing the Beresfards? He felt the blood drain from his head, and he clutched his writing table to keep from falling out of his chair. It couldn’t be. No, he mustn’t leap to any conclusions. He had to gather more information and examine everything with a clear head. It was late, and he needed sleep.

One passage seemed to leap from the page, demanding his attention.

My family’s biggest shame was perpetrated by my fifth-great grandfather, Natham Engtury, from whom my father inherited the throne of Thendylath. Not only did Natham force whomever was left of the royal family into servitude, he tattooed them and concocted a tale of how these so-called Kingshields were captured Cyprindian warriors whose lives he spared in exchange for their fealty and protection. Those who knew their true identities said nothing for fear of execution for treason against King Natham.

Edan looked at the names again, blinking hard to focus his tired eyes. What stuck out most about them, beyond
Kingshield’s
similarity to
Kinshield
, were the years of their deaths. They were all different: 1257, 1261, 1262, 1270, 1265, and 1277. All the Beresfards who hadn’t been changed to Kingshield had the same date of death: 1246. Those who’d changed their names to Kingshield were allowed to live, probably in anonymity.

“No,” he said aloud. “It can’t be.” He returned to the passage.

He used magic to garble their speech to perpetuate the myth that they were foreigners. Only the youngest and most cooperative of them were permitted to procreate, but they were required to pass on the surname Kingshield. It’s an atrocity of the utmost magnitude, but what is to be done? It was committed almost 170 years ago, and the guilty parties are mere dust and bones in their graves. Even my friend and champion, Ronor, doesn’t know that he’s descended from royalty.

“Hell’s bones!” Natham Engtury had usurped the throne and slaughtered every Beresfard who refused to change his name to Kingshield and serve him.

Edan had to speak with Gavin and show him this book. His name, his family name, shouldn’t have been Kinshield. It should’ve been Beresfard.

He rose and began to dress for bed, though his mind continued to churn. How daring had Natham Engtury been to execute such a devious plan? How mad? To think that Gavin might have inherited the throne anyway made his thoughts flutter. No, he supposed that wasn’t true. If Samuar Beresfard hadn’t been executed, his own sons would have inherited the rule, and Gavin would have been only a distant relative to the present day king—if he’d even been born at all.