The Broken Realm

4. Crimson and Gold-1

4

Crimson and Gold

Drystan summoned all of his willpower to keep his face expressionless as Valen observed with scrutiny his dressing of the deer. The initial tear from his knife wasn’t the worst part, or even the several jagged attempts following. It was removing the entrails, still warm, that threatened to do him in. The residual warmth reminded him that this animal had lived, and only moments ago. That his hands had taken this life, and there was still some left as the force left the deer’s carcass not immediately but gradually. This power over life and death terrified him. It left him hollow and afraid, as if drowning.

Valen taught him first to hunt. It was probably best he’d started there, and not with the ritual of tending to the aftermath. Drystan couldn’t explain why delivering the fatal blow with an arrow was easier than sifting through the carcass, but Valen suggested the kill was less personal. To bury your hands in the body of another was a task designed for intimacy, whether animal or man.

Drystan simultaneously wished Valen away and desired his approval. He couldn’t explain this either. The man’s claim—that he, and not Holden Dereham, was Drystan’s father—was both preposterous and intriguing. When a man lied, he did so with purpose, and there could be no gain in feigning himself as Drystan’s father. If true, it removed Drystan as an heir to Wulfsgate and made him nobody. Nothing. Valen had abandoned the house of Sylvaine, and they’d given Rushwood to another.

If not true... to what end was the telling? To stir trouble in the house of Dereham? This was the question Drystan couldn't draw an answer from, and Valen himself would never say, if so. Unless Valen, or Ash, or whatever he called himself, had qualms with Holden, or even Gretchen, the claim seemed meaningless.

Unless it was true. The only way to confirm was beyond his grasp. If he could look into his mother’s eyes, he would see her truth. She was the only path to the answer, and the path was closed.

Ravenna could probably pull the truth from Valen’s mind, but the way to her was also shut, likely forever. Perhaps it had been shut even before they’d departed Wulfsgate. She’d made her choice, or fate had made it, but it was her own to make. His wounded heart would make peace with it, eventually, or maybe never, but had no power to change it, and his acceptance of this gave him hope Ravenna wasn’t the only one who’d changed since leaving home.

“You don’t have to be so dainty with it, Drystan. It won’t bite you,” Valen said. A sickening slosh sounded as he buried his hands next to Drystan’s. They wrapped around the ribcage and he shook; the deer flopped around as if in the throes of an episode. “Don’t think about the blood on your hands. It can be washed in the stream. Think instead of the task at hand and completing it with expedience and care. We cannot take too long or the meat will go to rot and our bellies will stay empty. The Medvedev gave us more land to roam so we could serve ourselves, as they will not.”

“I know,” Drystan muttered. From the corner of his eye, he saw Lisbet pass through the meadow, accompanied by those two sons of the chieftainess, with their violet hair and accusing eyes. If Drystan were a more capable guardian of his sister, he would have objected to their taking her away daily for questioning, challenging them to solve the matter by sword. But he was not. She came back each day, weary, with the same explanation of her time away. Yseult asked who we are. Why we are here. Who sent us. What we want. That’s all. And I gave her the same answers as I did the day before. And then she released me.

Things were better now, though they remained prisoners. For almost a week they’d toiled in the magic cages, and then they’d been moved to their own section of the vibrant and peculiar forest, with a durable tent made from the animals roaming the land around it, and a bountiful stream in which to fish, wash, and draw water. It was still a cage, only a larger one. The magic barrier stretching farther, but still there.

It means they do not yet trust us, but also don’t believe we’re an imminent threat, Valen explained. Drystan was coming to the same place with Valen as Lisbet had been all along. Questioning. Distrustful. Even disdainful. What troubles them most is that men understand their world is off-limits. To venture into it anyway is bold, and a sign of intent. They struggle to believe that we had no intent, other than the seeking of asylum.

Valen had led them there, knowing this. Drystan didn’t bother pointing it out. He’d only respond in vague, veiled words that created questions and answered none.

Then there were times Drystan felt his animosity toward Valen was unfair. The man had saved his life. Saved Eavan’s and Lisbet’s. He’d taught Drystan things even his father hadn’t bothered with, like how to properly hold and swing a sword, and now, how to kill and dress his own meat. The instructions traditionally passed from father to son.

“Better,” Valen said. “We’ll skin the fur as well, I think. Though Yseult was generous with her own furs, we're still in the throes of midwinter and the Hinterlands is not immune to storms.”

“Does it snow here?”

“Yes, in wintertide, and late season storms in midwinter aren't rare, either. It surprised me to see the land so green when we entered the Reach.”

“Magic?”

“Could be.” Valen went quiet.

“Maybe it has to do with what Eavan said. What Kian told her. About the Quinlandens enslaving Medvedev.”

Valen looked surprised at Drystan’s words. “Why would it?”

“Eavan said the Drumain and the other clahnns are all going to fight back, to protect the Saleen. What if they cleared the land because they’re preparing to march?”

“That’s what Kian told her,” Valen said. A tearing noise sounded in the air as he worked at the fur and flesh. “We must remember they are our gaolers, not our friends.”

“You don’t believe him?”

“I believe that Aiden Quinlanden reached too far this time, and that he'll answer for it. But the clahnns of the Hinterlands have existed for hundreds of years in peace... separately. Their history isn't for us, but what we do know of them tells us that there was a division, long before men populated the kingdom. They separated into clahnns, and have remained so ever since. There is love between them, kin to kin, but there's no amity. No alliance.”

“My mother says men find alliance in common foes.”

“Your mother has always been wise, but men aren't Medvedev.”

“No, but...” Drystan paused, thinking over his words. “Surely men have overstepped with the Medvedev before. What did they do then?”

“Minor violations. Not at this scale. Not thousands of Medvedev subjugated at our hand.”

“How? That’s what I can’t understand. How, when their magic is so much greater than ours?”

“Than ours, yes.” Valen’s knife separated meat from bone. “But there have long been rumors of the abilities of the Rhiagain sorcerers, who aren't from this kingdom. Immortal, they say, with magic unlike ours, in kind and power. There are two in Duncarrow, or were.”

“Not even the Medvedev or Ravenwoods are immortal.”

“Hand me the longer knife, Drystan. Thank you.” Valen grimaced. His muscles swelled under his tunic as he tugged at the meat. “When Aiden Quinlanden laid Rowanwen at the king’s feet, they say it was not without reward.”

“Another sorcerer?”

“I assume that's what Kian meant when he referred to Aiden’s magician. An army the size of Lord Quinlanden’s doesn't come free, not even for a king. I can't think of any other way to subdue the Medvedev magic than through a stronger magic, which doesn't exist in this kingdom as far as I’m aware. Not even from your beloved Ravenna.”

“Have you met a Rhiagain sorcerer?”

Valen paused his butchery. “No. But their existence isn't speculation, only the extent of their magic, which has gone the way of legend.”

Drystan sometimes got the sense that Valen enjoyed his inquisitiveness, and other times, like now, that he wished Drystan would learn to quash it.

He buried the rest of his questions and returned to helping Valen finish up work on the deer.

Many were not aware that the great Whitewood wasn't named for the pale, peeling bark of its stalwart inhabitants, but one very specific tree. Only the elders in the town of Whitewood, which perched at the edge of this same-named forest, even bothered to remember such a trivial fact.

Storm told Brandyn this as they waited at the base of the massive ghost arboria.

“And why would you know or care about such a thing, then?”

“My father is the steward of these lands. It befits him to be in possession of all number of facts he can use to regale the guests who pass through.”

Brandyn cracked a small, humorless smile. “He tell this to any Quinlandens?”

“Truth is, we received very few guests here in Whitewood. They’re much more enamored with their holidays at Wildwood Falls, or the rolling valleys of Windwatch Grove. Our position on the wrong side of the Seven Sisters keeps us safe, but also painfully isolated.”

“Capture by Quinlanden men would be painful. I’d much prefer isolation.”

“Don’t trouble over it. Even the few who actually listened to my father’s words over the years wouldn’t know the location of The Ghost Queen.”

Brandyn judged her from his peripheral. “That’s really what you call this thing?”

“Trees aren't ‘things,’ Brandyn. They live, same as you or me, though their lives are quite different obviously. And if you hadn’t noticed, men traded cleverness for clarity when they named this world.”

Brandyn didn’t give a fig about a tree. He had more pressing matters on his mind. He’d never seen so much crimson and gold in the Westerlands. It sank his heart into his boots. How fast Lord Quinlanden had settled and taken root in a land that was not his own. He had to have been planning this treachery long before the Right of Choosing. But how had he foreseen circumstances would develop there that would leave the Westerlands absent of their leader and ripe for takeover? That would leave Brandyn’s father vulnerable?

A seer, no doubt. One better than him.

Most of the ride from Briarhaven, and the Sepulchre, had taken them through the Easterlands. They’d doubled the time needed for their voyage to keep even farther from the path than the last time they’d passed this way, with Hollyn—which now seemed an entire lifetime ago. They’d mercifully had no trouble, but as soon as they crossed into the Westerlands, they had to disappear deeper into the woods. Banners of crimson and gold, flying high into the sky, set to the sounds of hundreds of hooves, were an immediate assault to the senses. And so far from even the main roads, which meant the towns would be swarming with them.

We won’t know if we can make it into Whitewood without capture until it’s too late, Storm had said, reading his mind. And I can’t enter even without you. I’ve been missing too long. Quinlanden will have figured out by now that I’ve been with you.

We have to do something. We can’t stay here, and we have nowhere to go. I won’t go back, not until I’ve restored my mother’s lands to the Blackwoods.

That will not be so easy hiding in the woods. But I have an idea.

Storm’s idea had been to send a raven into Whitewood with a coded message. Brandyn wasn’t keen on this. Anything coded could be deciphered, and with as many men as Quinlanden had milling about on sentry in the Westerlands, it was a significant risk. But she insisted their code was different. It was, she said, not actually code at all, but a message written with the innocence of childhood.

When I was a girl, my father was a busy man. But when he had time for me, it was at this remarkable tree, The Ghost Queen, that we would meet. We would see who was fastest to the stream, and we marked our times upon the bark. Although he could've shouted across the keep to get my attention, he sent me a raven, simply saying: a prince requires his princess for a quick game. And I would know precisely where to meet him.