Once We Were Kings (Young Adult Fantasy) (The Sojourner Saga) (17 page)

"Leit is a game of patience, my illuminated one," he said, as he surrendered his piece to her.  "Of strategy."

"Ah, but it is also a game of cunning, no?"  Her hand, cold to the touch, sent a shiver through his blood.  He quite relished the sensation for it excited him.

"Nevertheless.  A game it is, and a game it always shall be."

She pursed her ruby lips.  "You intentionally permitted me to dispatch your partisan.  Was such a sacrifice made in the name of strategy?"

"Or perhaps, cunning?"  Corigan lifted his siege engine, the piece with the emerald jewels, and captured her horseman.  And her cleric and her siege tower as well.

The bed pulsed with her slowly erupting laughter.

"What now?" Corigan said.  "You have lost your final line.  And this amuses you?"

She took his hand, turned his open palm upwards and stroked it with her fingernails.  Then she dropped the three pieces she had just lost into his hand, but they were too many to grasp.  One of them dropped to the bed.

"Well?"  Half a smile tugged the corner of Corigan's mouth.

"You well know, by now."

"Do I?"

"Apparently less than you realize, but yes.  You do."

"Pray enlighten me then, my elusive, exotic beauty."

Placing her fan over the top of her bodice, she stared out the window and sighed.  Her smile never fading—unnaturally so, but it aroused Corigan all the more—she sighed.  "A game of cunning."

"Indeed, but what do you find so amusing about losing your key pieces?"

"Don't you see, Your Majesty?" Another sip of Fire Orchid left her lips wetter and redder than before.

"I see many things, but this..." he tossed the captured pieces over his shoulder, put his hand upon hers and leaned in so close her cool, sweet breath  touched his lips.  "I prefer if you tell me.  In your own words."

"This game of Leit, which you have taught me so well, oh High King, is more truthful than you or I."

"Oh?  How so?"

She leaned over and brushed his ear with her lips and whispered, "You would never have penetrated my defenses, had I not desired it."  And with that, she brought her executioner piece from behind her last two partisans and, through the opening that Corigan himself had forced, captured his Prince's Castle.

Corigan grit his teeth.  Still two or three moves away, but once again, he had lost to her.  The roots of his hair tingled.  "You cheat!"  He swiped the pieces aside and climbed off the bed.

"I have done nothing of the sort."  She also stood, the hem of her silver gown alighting upon the ground.

"It is hardly fair, the way you distract me so."

"It is, nevertheless, a game." She fanned her bosom and turned her eyes towards the window again.  "Did you not say as much yourself?"

"What I said—!"  Finding himself in a deficit of words, Corigan paused.  He calmed himself, lest he once again surrender the upper hand.  "What I mean... that is to say, I..."

"You despise losing," she said patronizingly and placed her hand gently on his face.  At her very touch, his anger ebbed, giving way to feelings far more dangerous.  "Now look."  She pointed out the window to the northern sea where a line of lights underscored the black horizon.  "Once again, it is my move."

"How many?"

"Do not fret, Your Highness.  Only half of my armada.  And they have been instructed to stay clear of the citadel."

"But that is inequitable.  I sent only a quarter of mine, and only to the remotest, most backwards villages to which you alluded to as your most troublesome!"

Again she laughed.  This time it was more of a scoff.  "Ah, yes. Xingjia.  And you were so impressed with yourself for having dictated the terms to me."  Corigan's face burned.  He knew that his bridled rage only masked his humiliation for having been taken in by this dark, yet formidable temptress.  "And now," she said, with feigned humility and a half-hearted inclining of her head, "I shall take my leave."

"But you said you'd stay till morning."  Corigan's heart raced simultaneously with desperation and self-loathing.  "We haven't yet had a chance to—"

Her countenance, always calm as the placid waters of a pond at daybreak, now hardened.   Immediately, Corigan ceased his ranting.  Her gaze like ice, her words like frost, she smiled but only from one side of her mouth.  "You are just like Tian Kuo's dead Emperor—"

"Dead?" It seemed as though the entire ground had fallen out beneath him.  His collar seemed to shrink, his back tickled with frigid drops of perspiration.  This woman was far more lethal than he had ever imagined.

"Like you, he was weak, controlled more by his loins than his head!  There is a reason he is no more.  A very good reason."

Corigan dared not speak another word.  For she had him at such a disadvantage anything he said would be rope for his own noose.  "Perhaps then, it is indeed time for you to take your leave."

They stood, eyes locked, the High King doing all he could to keep his head erect.  And finally, her smile returned.  Corigan breathed again. 

"If all goes well, my dear King, I shall greatly enjoy your company in my palace.  It is quite lovely in the Spring."

"Yes.  Yes, of course."

She lifted the train of her gown, bustled it and went to the door, where no doubt on the other side, her ladies in waiting had been listening and giggling.  "Let it never be said that The Empress Dowager Xieh-Suh of Tian Kuo is anything but hospitable."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Perhaps it was Edwyn's advocacy—which Render imagined or at least hoped was passionate before The Honorable Judge Flogge—that afforded his incarceration to take place in his own room within Castle Mittelvald rather than a dungeon.

Render sat by the window, now covered with iron bars, and gazed upon the stars which dangled above in a heavy purple canvas.  He was engrossed with what that old man, The Prophet, had said yesterday.  More than that, with what happened to the centurion, an explanation for which escaped him utterly.

Hours had gone by without a word or sound from anyone but the guards who had delivered but one meal in a day and a half.  Worse still was the silence, the isolation.  Even the company of that black cat would have been welcome now.

The door creaked open.

The muscles in Render's neck tensed, anticipating a guard placing a tray of food on the ground while an archer stood outside ready to shoot.  But this time, someone else entered.

"Edwyn?"

"Quiet."  He turned to the men at the door.  "Guards, you may leave us, or wait by the door.  No harm shall befall me, I assure you."  They nodded, and backed away, never taking their firm gaze from Render even as they shut and chained the door from outside.

"How now?" Render's stomach churned as if it would dissolve itself.  He looked for food in his mentor's hands.  But there was none.

"Your trial before Judge Flogge is scheduled for tomorrow.  I cannot say just what will happen.  They believe you have murdered that soldier."

"Did I?"  He sat and hoped Edwyn would reach into his robe and produce a roll or a potato.  He did not.  "That is to say, I did feel angry when he hit me, anyone would.  But I could never kill anyone."

Edwyn sank into a chair, placed a satchel on the table.  "They are investigating me as well."

"You?  What for?"  Perhaps there was a morsel somewhere in that satchel.

"Never mind.  You are being charged as a co-conspirator with the old prophet for treason as well as murder.  Don't you see?  They think you are an infiltrator, a Sojourner.  Because you spoke the name of Valhandra."

"Val—?"  Render stopped, surprised at the freedom with which his mentor spoke that name which only yesterday seemed so unspeakable.  "Honestly, I'm bewildered as anyone by what happened.  It was as though a bolt of lightning had struck down the centurion."

"I couldn't see through that flash of light.  But because of the way his body was so horribly burned, some allege that you employed the use of incendiary substances.  Hid them up your sleeve, that kind of drivel.  For that, I am being scrutinized."

"They think you taught me alchemy?"

Edwyn nodded gravely.

"I hate to ask you, and I know this may seem inappropriate," said Render.

"What is it?"

"Would you happen to have some food in that satchel?"

"How can you think of your stomach at a time like this?  Do you not realize what is happening?"

"I'm being tried for treason, for murder.  I'll likely be executed..." He stood and reached for the satchel.  "If I don't starve to death first."

Edwyn yanked it away.  "Try to take things seriously, young man."

"I regard dying of hunger with the utmost gravity.  "

Instead of food, Edwyn reached into his satchel and produced a book.  The same book of which Render had stolen a glimpse in Edwyn's library.  "This is the Book of the Ancients that the old prophet quoted.  Years ago the cover had been altered so as not to betray its owners."

"The Sacred Songs of Valhandra."

"Yes."

"So this is a book of Sojourner religion?"

"It is the last and only thing that connects me to my parents.  As an only child, I had no other family.  And like you, I was raised as a ward of King Rospican, father of King Corigan."

Render rubbed his sore neck and fought to ignore his stomach which all but screamed in protest of the neglect.  "Your parents were Sojourners?"

"I was but a boy."

"The son of terrorists"

Edwyn's gaze wandered off into an unknown realm.  "They slaughtered them in front of all the children.  Every parent.  Every brother and sister above the age of seven."

If there hadn't been enough to cloud Render's mind, there surely was now.  His head felt as if it might burst.  "So you are a Sojourner, by blood."

Edwyn's eyes glistened in the light of the dour moonlight, even as a low pitched rumble arose in the distance.  It sounded like thunder.  Right away, a chill clawed its way up Render's back.

"All they had to do was to say it," Edwyn said, his lips pulled thin, angry tears welling up.

"Say what?"

"Just a couple of words and I'd have grown up as a normal child, loved by his parents, not as an orphan."

The booming thunder grew louder, closer, more frequent.  Light flashed into the room, casting a shadow the shape of the barred window.  Render shifted uneasily.  When would Edwyn ever come out of this sorrowful reverie?  "You know, I think something's—"

"Why, oh why, could they not just lie?  My parents didn't really have to renounce their beliefs.  All they had to do was say they did!"

Render stepped over to the window.  Over the citadel walls, towards the coast, light flashed in the sky, yet not like lightning, which would have been in the sky.  A flickering amber glow began to rise up from behind the trees.  "Something's happening."

"All these years, I have been taught to abhor the evil ways of the Sojourners, their terrorist activity, their backwards superstitions and their murderous zealotry.   I have resented my parents for abandoning me as a small child for their fanaticism."  He stood and slipped the book back into the satchel and handed it to Render.  Confused, Render accepted it.  "But I have read the entire book, and though I regarded it as poetry, or at best, fiction, what I witnessed yesterday shakes my beliefs to their very foundations."

"What do you mean?" Render said.  "The Prophet?  The death of the centurion?"  Behind him, out the window, the faint sound of people shouting caught his attention.  He turned around to look.  Before he could warn Edwyn to get down, Render leapt headlong at his mentor knocking him to the ground. 

Just as a fiery explosion blasted open the stone wall of his room.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

It had been days.

Bai Juang had long since ceased getting sick at the putrid stench of bodily excrement that wafted with buzzing flies.  He had seen the light of day briefly perhaps four times since the Torian soldiers hauled him away from his village and locked him in the back of a horse-drawn wagon.

Like livestock.

With barely a few holes in the wooden wall, just enough to stick a finger through, he could barely breathe.  No one removed the bucket in which he was expected to eliminate—it could not keep from tipping over in the dark anyway.  And the few times they opened the door was to toss a raw potato at him, or to slide a cup of bitter and gritty water in.

His bare feet had grown numb from exposure and constant chaffing against the splintery boards upon which he sat.  His fingernails grew long and he constantly broke his own skin from scratching—something he didn't realize in the utter gloom unless a drop of sweat touched the open and most likely festering wound.

The only thing that kept him from giving up and killing himself, after watching his wife and son slaughtered before his own eyes, was the fact that Ahndien was still out there somewhere.  She had one of his sacred swords, which she loved to carry with her when she ventured into the hills, but had she the ability to use it properly?  Never had anyone thought she would need to, what with the Tianese line of defense that was supposed to have secured the village, outlying the central capital though it be.

If only somehow he could return to the Sojourner's Council.

Oreus or Hephesta might be able to divine the upcoming chain of events.  If he could somehow bring Ahndien and that sword together with its counterpart before the council, they might just bring about a vision, a sign, any clue as to what should happen next.

But there was no way to tell which direction his captors were taking him, nor why they had taken him alive.

Right. 

Alive. 

If you could call it alive.  His head spun, his lungs hurt, every joint in his body ached from the limited range of motion, as his hands and feet remained bound.  From head to toe, the heat burning through his skin, the stinging sweat made him so miserable that death would have been a welcome relief.