The Godspeaker Trilogy (47 page)

If you enjoyed
EMPRESS,

look out for

THE RIVEN KINGDOM

Book 2 of the Godspeaker Trilogy

by Karen Miller

T
he king of Ethrea was dying.

Rhian sat by her father’s bedside, holding his frail hand in hers and breathing lightly. Her world was a glass bubble; if she breathed too deeply it would shatter, and her with it.

This isn’t fair, this isn’t fair, this isn’t fair . . .

Droning in the privy bedchamber corner, the Most Venerable Justin. One of Prolate Marlan’s senior clergy, sentenced to praying for her father’s soul. His shaved head was bowed over his prayer-beads, click-click-clicking through his fingers till she thought she would scream.

I wish you’d get out. I wish you’d go away. We don’t want you here. This is our time, we don’t have so much that we can share.

She had to bite her lip, hard, to quell fresh tears. She’d wept so often lately she felt soggy, like moss. And what was the point of weeping anyway? Weeping wouldn’t save her father, he was broken, he was slipping away.

I will be an orphan soon.

She’d been half an orphan for ten years, now. Without the portraits on the castle walls she might not even remember Queen Ilda’s sweet face. A frightening thought, to lose her mother twice. Was she destined to lose her brothers twice as well? Ranald and Simon were dead only two months, she still heard their voices on the edge of sleep. She thought it was likely, and after them her father twice. All these double-bereavements. Where was God in this? Was he sleeping? Indifferent?

Mama, the boys, and now dear Papa. I know I’m the youngest, nature’s law dictates I’d be the last one left . . . but not this soon! Do you hear me, God? It isn’t fair!

As though sensing her rebellion, the venerable paused in his bead-clicking and droning and said, “Highness, the king will likely sleep for hours. Perhaps your time would be better spent in prayer.”

She wanted to say, I think you’re praying enough for both of us, Ven’Justin. But if she said that he’d tell her chaplain, Helfred, and Helfred would tell Prolate Marlan, and Marlan would be unamused.

It wasn’t wise, to stir Marlan to anger.

So she said, her heart seething, “I do pray, Ven’Justin. Every breath I take is a prayer.”

Ven’Justin nodded, not entirely convinced. “Admirable, Highness. But surely the proper place for your prayers is the castle chapel.”

He may be a Most Venerable, but still he lacked the authority to command a king’s daughter. She looked again at her father’s cadaverous face, with its jaundiced skin pleated over fleshless bone, so he would not see her anger. Her voice she kept quiet, sweet and unobjectionable. Be a lady, be a lady, be always a lady.

“I will go to the chapel, by and by. For now, Ven’Justin, even if he is asleep, I know His Majesty takes comfort from my presence.”

Click-click-click went Most Venerable Justin’s prayerbeads. He picked up his droning where he’d left off.

On his mountain of pillows, her father stirred. Beneath his paper-thin eyelids his eyes shifted, restless. The pulse in his throat beat harder. “Ranald,” he muttered. “Ranald, my boy . . . I’m coming. I’m coming.” His voice, once treacle-dark and smooth as silk, rasped in his throat like ugly rusted wire. “Ranald, my good son . . .” His exhaled breath became a groan.

A basin of water and a soft cloth sat near at hand, on the bedside cabinet. Gently, Rhian moistened her father’s cheeks and lips. “It’s all right, Papa. Don’t fret. I’m here. Please, try to rest.”

“Ranald!” said her father, and opened his eyes. So recently the deepest blue, clear and clean as a summer sky, now they were rheumy, their whites stained yellow with the failing of his liver. For a horrible moment they were clouded, confused. Then he remembered her, and sighed. “Rhian. I thought I heard Ranald.”

She dropped the cloth back in the basin and took his hand again. His fingers felt so brittle. Hold him too tightly and he’d break into pieces. “I know, Papa. You were dreaming.”

A single tear trailed through his grey stubble. “I never should have let Ranald go voyaging with Simon,” he whispered. “I was selfishly indulgent, I cared more for Ranald loving me than I did what was best, and now they are dead. My heir is dead and so is his brother. I have failed the kingdom. I am a bad king.”

It was, by now, a familiar refrain. Rhian kissed his cold hand. “That’s nonsense, Papa. You have been the very best of kings. Every great man’s sons go abroad to see the world. Not a lord in your kingdom has once told his sons, ‘No, you must stay at home.’ Your own father didn’t forbid you the world, even though you were the heir. You could never have denied your sons that adventure. Ranald and Simon had bad luck, that’s all. It’s not your fault. You aren’t to blame.”

In the corner, Ven’Justin’s beads clicked louder. The church frowned on superstitious beliefs like luck. She spared the man a warning, glaring glance. Venerable or not, she wouldn’t have him upsetting her father.

“Rhian.”

“Yes, Papa?”

His fingers tried to squeeze hers. “My good girl. What will become of you when I’m gone?”

She could answer that, but not in front of Most Venerable Justin. Not in front of anyone who would carry her words straight back to Helfred, and Marlan. “Hush, Papa,” she said, and smoothed her other hand over his thinning hair. “Don’t tire yourself talking.”

But he was determined to fret. “I should have seen you betrothed, Rhian. I have failed you as I failed your brothers.”

A single name rang like a bell in her heart. Alasdair. But there was no point considering him, returned to duchy Linfoi and his own ailing father. Besides, a husband would only complicate things.

“Papa, Papa, do not excite yourself,” she soothed. “You need to rest. God will take care of me.” Another glance, over her shoulder. “Isn’t that so, Ven’Justin?”

Grudgingly, the Most Venerable nodded. “God takes care of all his children, to the length and breadth of their deserving.”

“There,” she said. “You see? Ven’Justin agrees.” Then added, even as she felt the hot tears rise, “Besides, you’re not going anywhere. Do you hear me, Papa? You’re going to get well.”

“Throughout my life I have not been the most reverent of men,” her father said, his voice reduced to a whisper. Then he smiled, a gummy business now, with all his teeth rattled loose in their sockets. “But even I know, Rhian, that God does as God wills. I will leave when I am called and not even you, my bossy minx, can dictate I’ll stay.”

My bossy minx. It was one of his pet phrases for her. She hadn’t heard him use it in the longest time. “Yes, Papa,” she said, and again kissed his cold fingers.

Soon after he drifted back to sleep. Ignoring the Most Venerable Justin and his pointed sighs, she held her father’s fragile hand and, defiant in the face of God’s apparent decision, willed him to live, live, live.