The Demon King (31 page)

What about my own choice? Amon thought. Raisa would never be his; he knew that. But if he took himself off to Oden’s Ford, and after that to a posting at Chalk Cliffs, chances were the pain would fade in a decade or so. He was only seventeen.

What would it be like to be with Raisa constantly for the rest of his life, as her captain and counselor, to see her married, always within reach, knowing he could never have her?

Like his father and Queen Marianna.

But what if he said no, and something happened to Raisa? How could he forgive himself?

His father said he had a choice, and he did. The right thing and the wrong thing.

Amon reached across the table and gripped his father’s callused hands. “I’ll do it,” Amon said.

His father looked down at their joined hands. “You’re sure?”

Amon nodded. “I’m sure.”

“Then let’s go to temple,” Edon Byrne said, rising from his chair.

Although it was now four in the morning, Speaker Jemson was waiting for them in his study, dressed for ceremony.

His father had told the speaker they were coming. His father had known what his decision would be.

So much for choices.

“Captain Byrne,” the speaker said gravely. “And Corporal Byrne. This is most unusual, to preside over the binding of both father and son. Usually one captain passes on before the next is named.”

“These are dangerous times,” Edon Byrne said. “Still, the line must be protected.”

“Yes, it must,” Jemson said. He looked at Amon. “You have agreed to be bound to Hanalea’s line?”

“Yes.” Amon nodded. He found himself wishing he’d been able to bathe before coming here. He felt filthy and unworthy in his stained uniform, after a night patrolling Ragmarket.

As if Jemson had heard his thoughts, he extended a bundle of cloth toward Amon. “Remove your clothing and put these on. Then join us in the Lady Chapel.” Jemson and his father left him alone in the study.

Remove all of his clothing? Or just his uniform? Amon didn’t want to get it wrong. He debated, then stripped completely. The robes were rough-spun cotton, undyed, of the sort acolytes wore. He felt rather strange and airy under the volu-minous tent of fabric—as if he were still naked.

Amon padded barefoot across the cavernous sanctuary to the intimate Lady Chapel to the right of the altar. It was dedicated to Althea, Patroness of the Poor. Unlike the private chapels in the temple at Fellsmarch Castle, with their gold statuary and gilt and marble fittings, Althea’s chapel was stark in its simplicity, yet obviously well loved. The simple wood altar shown with hand polishing, and there were fresh flowers in vases to either side of the image of the lady. Cool moonlight washed through the clear glass windows, echoing their design on the floor.

Jemson and his father stood to either side of a long table. Several objects were laid out in readiness: a large stone basin, a glittering knife, a stone jar, a small crystal bottle, a silver goblet. Amon studied the display, questions crowding his mind.

Jemson smiled at him. “Your part is quite simple, really, for so important a rite. We mingle your blood with Hanalea’s, and you drink the result. The rest we pour into the soil of the Fells, to bind you to the land and the Maker. A sacrifice, of sorts.”

I’m dreaming, Amon thought. Byrnes don’t do these sorts of things. He thought of his triple sleeping in the barracks. Thought of Raisa back at Fellsmarch Castle, unaware of the link being forged between them. Was it fair to do this without her permission? What if she didn’t want to be linked with him?

He licked his lips. “Will she…will she know?”

“She may feel something,” the speaker said. “Or she may sleep through. If she does wake up she won’t know what to make of it.”

“Do you really have blood of Hanalea here?” After a thousand years?

“It is taken from her descendants, the queens of the Fells.” The speaker rested his hand on the stoppered bottle. “This is the blood of the princess heir. I will speak words over it.”

Jemson paused as if to see if Amon had any more questions. Then said, “Bare your arm, Corporal Byrne.”

Amon did. He scarcely felt the sting of the blade, and watched, a little amazed, as his blood dripped into the basin, forming a small pool at the bottom.

Jemson lifted the crystal bottle and spoke some words in clan speech. Amon made out the words Raisa ana’Marianna and Hanalea. The speaker unstoppered the bottle and tipped a few drops into the basin. Then lifted it high, swirling the contents, reciting a long incantation.

Amon’s thoughts slopped around in his head, mirroring the mixture in the basin. He pressed his arm against his side to staunch the flow of blood and felt the wet seep through to his skin.

The speaker set the basin down, dipped the cup into it, and lifted it, dripping.

Jemson broke into Valespeech. “Amon Byrne, of the line of Byrnes, guardians of the line of Hanalea, we ask of you this thing: that you be bound to the line of queens, and specifically to the blood and issue of Raisa ana’Marianna, princess heir of the Fells. You will swear that her blood is your blood, that you will protect her and her line until death takes you. Will you?”

“I will,” Amon said, his voice sounding loud in the silence of the chapel.

“Then drink to signify.”

Amon accepted the cup and raised it to his lips, preparing himself for the salty taste of blood. But it was sweet, like summer wine. His surprise was so great, he almost choked. Thankfully he didn’t. He drank the full cup down and handed it back to Jemson.

The effect was immediate and dramatic, like being hit over the head with the broad side of a sword. Amon sank to his knees to keep from falling. Sensation flooded into him, overwhelming him, coming from wherever in the realm someone was thinking on the princess heir, or where something was happening that might touch on her future.

It was four in the morning, but Micah Bayar was awake, staring out his window in the castle on Gray Lady, his thoughts fixed on Raisa. The bakers in the royal kitchens shoved cakes into the ovens, thinking on the name day party for the princess heir, wondering if she would notice their efforts. Averill Demonai prepared to leave the city, worrying about the daughter he was leaving behind. Queen Marianna’s mind was muddied, clouded by a healer’s draft, but she still slept restlessly, dwelling on her daughter’s launch into adulthood.

“Shut it out,” his father said. “It’s the only way at first. You’ll get used to it.”

Amon pressed his hands against his head, trying to filter some of it out, focusing on the tower room five miles away, where Raisa dreamed in her bed under the stars. She, too, slept restlessly, and Amon was surprised to find she was thinking about him, and whispering his name in her sleep.

“Come,” the speaker said, and Amon’s father helped him to his feet, keeping a tight grip on his arm to prevent his falling. Jemson walked in front, carrying the basin, with Amon and Edon Byrne behind. They walked into the cloister garden, where the white spots of night-blooming flowers drew Amon’s eye, and their intoxicating fragrance seduced him.

“Amon Byrne, we bind you to the bones of the queens buried in the soil of the Fells. You are bound to the queendom as you are to the queens of the Gray Wolf line. You will defend it as their dwelling place. You may leave the Fells, but this will always be your home.”

Jemson poured the blood into the soil of the garden.

It was as though Amon were putting long roots down, deep into the soil, into the groundwater. He tasted the Dyrnnewater on his tongue and sucked in the breath of Hanalea.

As if in a dream, the speaker lifted his hand and slid the Gray Wolf ring into place on Amon’s right ring finger. It fit perfectly.

His father embraced him, and the speaker was smiling and saying, “It’s done.”

DESPERATE MEASURES

Although Bird still spent most of her time with the Demonai warriors, she and Han found many opportunities to meet—at the cave, at a shelter on Ghost Lake, or on the banks of Old Woman Creek. They even met at Lucius’s cabin a time or two when Han knew the old man would be out fishing.

He couldn’t have said why they felt like they should keep their new relationship a secret. It was as if they didn’t need to deal with all the conflicts around them, if they kept this part of their lives hidden away. Or maybe the whole thing seemed so fragile that it needed sheltering, a seedling that might get tromped on.

Or maybe, as it turned out, it was an instinct for self-preservation.

Bird made Han feel connected, like less of an outsider because she’d chosen him. He wished she weren’t going away. If she weren’t leaving, he might have settled into clan life and accepted Willo’s offer to teach him a trade.

Still, as the time drew nearer for Bird to leave for Demonai Camp, and Dancer for Oden’s Ford, Han felt more and more as if he were sitting on a sandbar in a river of events, and it was rapidly washing away beneath him. Soon he’d be alone, marooned at Marisa Pines, while his friends among the clan moved on to new adventures.

Unless he left Marisa Pines and went to Demonai with Bird. He’d never been to the high country camp in the western Spirits, and he didn’t know anyone who lived there except a few of the traders. Still, if he was going to be an exile anyway, he might as well see the small part of the world he had access to.

If he couldn’t go with Bird and the Demonai warriors, maybe he could find work with a trader who traveled between the camps, and still see her sometimes.

He knew he’d need to ask Willo for permission, so he sought her out one morning when she was mixing medicines in the hearth room of the Matriarch Lodge.

“Bring me the blue bowl, Hunts Alone,” she commanded, gesturing toward her storage shelves. Willo was never one to let a person sit idle when she was working.

He handed it to her, and she emptied what looked like chunks of yellow chalk into her mortar and began grinding them into a brilliant powder.

“Willo, I’ve been thinking about moving to Demonai,” he said, squatting next to her.

She said nothing, but scraped the yellow powder into a cup.

“There’s a lot more trade going that way into Tamron because of the war in Arden,” he added.

“Fetch me the turtle weed,” she said, without looking up.

He lifted down the aromatic branches that hung under the eaves of the lodge and handed them to her. She pulled the leaves free, one by one, and dropped them into the mortar.

“So. I could work with one of the traders over there,” he said, unsettled by her lack of response. “Maybe you could introduce me.”

“I said I would find you work at Marisa Pines,” Willo said.

“I know. Thank you. But I just think Demonai might—”

“You cannot go with Bird.” She rammed the pestle into the mortar as if to emphasize her words.

He blinked at her. Willo’d always been good at reading people, but he’d thought he and Bird had been discreet. Was it possible everyone knew they were seeing each other?

“I wouldn’t have to travel with her. I could go on my own,” he said. “Or travel with one of the pack trains.”

“It won’t work,” she said, finally setting aside her mortar and dropping her hands into her lap. “You and Digging Bird, I mean.”

“What do you mean? We aren’t…” he began, but the look on her face shut off the lie. “Why wouldn’t it work?”

“You’re not right for each other,” she said.

“How can you say that?” he said. “We’ve been friends forever.”

“You were friends as children. Now Bird has been named a Demonai warrior. She must follow that path. You must go another way.”

“I don’t understand,” Han said, and he didn’t. “She’s not allowed to have friends? Or is it because I’m not clan?”

Willo didn’t look as if she was enjoying this conversation any more than he was. “It’s a calling, the Demonais. You must accept it. It’s not easy for any of us. There’s a barrier between Bird and Dancer too, that wasn’t there before. Because of who and what they are.”

“That’s Reid Demonai’s fault,” Han said. He stood, towering over Willo, and that should have made him feel powerful, but it didn’t. “I think the real war with wizards was over a thousand years ago,” he said. “Since then, the Demonai have been living off their reputations. They’re all saber-rattling and stories.”

“It is not Reid Demonai’s fault,” Willo said, her voice like silk plied with steel. “It’s tradition built on more than a thousand years of conflict between wizards and the clan. It’s the role of the Demonai to keep wizards in check—by force, if necessary.”

“So they’re fighting Dancer? They can’t find anything better to do? Or is it because he’s an easy target?”

It was a long time before Willo answered, and Han found himself shifting from one foot to the other.

“He is an easy target,” she said finally, looking up at him, her dark eyes swimming with pain. “Why do you think I’m sending him to Oden’s Ford? They’ll kill him otherwise.”

Han quit shifting and settled his weight squarely. “Then you can’t let Bird join the Demonai,” he said. “Make her stay here.”

“It is out of my hands,” Willo said, picking up the pestle again. “She is called, you are not. You cannot go with Bird.” She looked up at him, appeal in her eyes. “Why don’t you stay here with me and learn about healing? You already know plants, and you’d be closer to your mother and sister.”

“I’m no healer,” Han growled, thinking he seemed to be better at causing pain than relieving it. “I don’t know what I am, but I’m not that.” He turned around and stalked out of the lodge.

Bird wasn’t any more help. That night they lay side by side on the bank of Old Woman Creek, connected by their clasped hands and recent kisses. The branches overhead leaked moonlight onto their faces. For once the music of water over stone failed to soothe him.

“I want to go with you to Demonai,” he said, staring up at the canopy of trees.

“I wish you could,” she said.

I want to go, he’d said. Not I wish I could go. Maybe he should have said, I’m going.

When Han didn’t reply, Bird hurried on. “It would be hard. Reid says we’ll be traveling the rest of the summer, and I’ll be learning way-finding and weapons and…and the rest.”

“But you’d be based there, right? After all the training?”

“Based there, but I won’t be there much. The Demonai warriors spend most of their time on the move.” Turning onto her side, she propped up on her elbow and brushed the hair off Han’s forehead. He resisted the urge to flinch away. “Maybe…maybe after I see how things are, maybe once this summer is over, you could come,” she said.

“Maybe,” he said noncommittally, wanting to wound her. “We’ll see.”

With that option closed to him, he turned back to his plan to go with Dancer to Oden’s Ford. He wondered how he could make it happen, when everyone around him seemed opposed to it. He tried going around Willo, approaching several of the silversmiths at the Marisa Pines Market, asking if they knew how to remove his cuffs, and if they’d make him an offer for the metal.

They tried their saws and cutters and knives with no effect. When he told them it didn’t matter if the cuffs were damaged, they tried their irons, heating the metal, burning and blistering Han’s wrists in the process. He needn’t have worried about damage to the cuffs. The silversmiths got nowhere. They didn’t even scratch the surface of the metal, or damage the runes inscribed there.

The answer was always the same. They were interested in the silver, intrigued with it, in fact, but had no idea how to get the bracelets off. Or how to work the silver if they did.

The only other thing he could think of was to retrieve the amulet that still lay hidden in the stable yard and find a buyer for it. He saw no reason why he couldn’t turn the amulet into enough girlies to support Mam and Mari and attend Wien House too.

No reason except Lucius, who’d told him to keep it out of the Bayars’ hands.

But he wouldn’t need to take it back to the Bayars. He knew lots of dealers from his previous life as a thief. He could sell it in Southbridge Market. What were the chances that the Bayars would ever go to Southbridge? They never had before.

He chose not to listen to the voice in his head that said that it wasn’t his to sell. That said, if he sold it in Fellsmarch it might still make its way back to the previous owners.

Anyway, he’d had nothing but bad luck since he’d picked the amulet up off the ground on the slopes of Hanalea. Maybe this was a chance to change his luck and improve his fortune.

The idea grew in his mind, until he became convinced that he had no choice.

He decided to leave for the city in the late afternoon, reasoning that he could arrive there under cover of darkness when the guard changed. He’d go straight to Ragmarket and fetch the amulet. He could be back in Southbridge when the markets opened and be on his way up Hanalea while the bluejackets were still wiping sleep from their eyes.

He slid his money pouch under his shirt, next to his skin. He’d made a little money working for Willo and running errands in camp for anyone who’d pay. Not near enough. He wrapped some smoked trout and flat bread in a napkin and tucked it into his carry bag. Finally he pulled a cap over his pale hair, hoping it would make him stand out less and not more, and it was cool in the mountains. In the Vale the weather would be warm, but when people described him, they always said, “The fair-headed one.”

There was little traffic on the trail into Fellsmarch at that time of day, mostly hunters and traders on their way home. He made a wide circle around Lucius’s place, not wanting to run into the old man. Han hadn’t seen Lucius since the day he’d found him mourning Han’s tragic death. Han wondered if Lucius had got another boy to take his place. That stung a little.

He passed through the city gate just at dusk with a crowd of acolytes from the local temple, all about his age. They’d been gathering blackberries on the slopes of Hanalea.

He kept to the back ways until he reached South Bridge. It seemed that things had cooled off after all. Two sleepy bluejackets manned each end of the bridge, and no one seemed to be looking for Han Alister.

Lucius had told him word was out that he was dead. Han decided that being dead made travel through the city much easier.

Once across the bridge, Han wove through the familiar web of Ragmarket, heading for home. It was still not fully dark, though the sun had descended behind Westgate, and a few stars pricked the pale sky. This far north, the days were long in midsummer. Those enterprises that required the cover of darkness were compressed into a few intense hours.

Han’s heart beat faster. He loved summer nights in the city, when music poured from the open doors of taverns and vendors grilled sausages and fish on the sidewalks, and the drunks in the alleys never froze to death. Fancy girls joked with the bluejackets, and people played hard, intoxicated by the notion that anything could happen. And probably would. The streets were more dangerous, yet in some ways more forgiving in the summertime.

The last time he’d been home, Ragmarket and Southbridge had been unnaturally quiet, spooked by the series of Southie murders. Now it was more like he remembered it, when he was running with the Raggers.

As he neared home, he began seeing yellow flags nailed onto doors or hanging out of windows, signifying the presence of remittent fever. In the summertime, the yellow flags sprouted in certain neighborhoods, like a crop of garish death flowers or the bright yellow brain fungus that sometimes grew on dead trees.

That was the dark side of summer.

Some said the fever was due to bad air. Willo said it was caused by bad water. Whatever it was, it was confined to the Vale. It was never a problem in the upland camps.

When he reached the stable yard, he looked up to the second floor of the stable and saw a yellow rag stuffed between sash and sill.

Han slammed his way into the stable and took the stairs two at a time. When he flung open the door, he was met by the stink of every kind of sick.

Mari lay on her pallet next to the hearth. Although the air in the room was stifling, the fire was lit and Mari was piled high with blankets, shivering uncontrollably. Mam sat on the floor next to her, leaning against the wall. She blinked up at Han, like she’d fallen asleep sitting there.

“She was better this morning,” Mam said, “but the fever’s coming back.” She said this matter-of-factly, as if she was too weary to react to his sudden appearance after a month away. Her hair had crept out of its plait, half of it hanging around her face. Her bodice was soiled and stained, hanging loose on her body as though she were using herself up.

Han crossed the room and knelt next to Mari’s bed. He laid his hand on her forehead. She was burning up. “How long has she been sick?”

Mam rubbed her forehead. “This is the tenth day.”

The tenth day. She should be recovering by now. If she was going to.

“Is she eating and drinking?” Willo said a high fever dried people out, so you had to keep getting them to drink. Plus, the fever gave you the runs.

Mam shook her head. “She don’t want to take anything when the fever is high.”

“Are you giving her willow bark?” This was the extent of his knowledge of healing—the botanicals he collected for Willo and others.

“I was.” Mam stared down at her hands. “We’re out now.” She looked up at him, hope kindling in her eyes. “Do you have any money?”

“A little. Why?”

“There’s a healer up in Catgut Alley. People say he can work wonders. But he costs money.”

Han took his eyes off Mari and focused on the room around them. It was more barren than usual. There were no baskets of laundry, no sign of food, nothing.

Mam put a hand on his arm. “Would you send your washing where they have the fever?” she asked, as if she could read his mind. “Besides, I haven’t been able to leave her on her own, to pick up and deliver.”

A bucket of water with a dipper sat next to Mari’s bed. “Where’d this water come from?” Han asked Mam.