Rowena Daniells - The uncrowned King

'When the real target was the abbey,' Fyn agreed.

'Clever!' Old, half-blind Silverlode buckled a chest plate by feel.

'What of the boys?' the abbot whispered. 'We must protect the little ones.'

'Feldspar's taken them down to the mystics' inner sanctum,' Fyn said. 'It's big enough for all of them and the doors lock from the inside.'

'Well done, Fyn.'

'Abbot?' Hawkwing shuffled to the front of about forty lads of fifteen and sixteen. 'We're ready.'

'Good. Now listen. Their Power-workers must not steal our sorbt stones,' the abbot announced.

Fyn cursed under his breath. Of course. The stones held power drained from Affinity seeps. In the wrong hands…

'We should have destroyed the stones!'

'Power is like fire, it is only a tool. Evil is in the heart of the ones who wield it,' the abbot told him. 'They'll be heading for the great stairs — '

'To the stairs!' Hawkwing yelled and charged out the door and down the corridor, followed by eager shouting acolytes.

'There goes the element of surprise,' old Silverlode muttered, then ran after them.

Fyn was drawn along in the mad rush. He quickly outstripped the old monks.

Like the spine of a great animal, the abbey was united by the great spiral stairs, which connected the mystics' inner sanctum far below to the libraries and offices of the abbot far above. Between them lay seven floors containing the workshops, the kitchen, the bathing chambers and dormitories.

When Fyn reached the stairwell, the youths were milling on the large landing, whispering excitedly.

'Quiet!' Fyn warned. 'Quiet!'

At his order they fell silent. Far below, the rapid tattoo of running boots echoed in the stairwell, getting further and further away.

Fyn cursed just as the abbot and the old monks joined them. 'We're too late. They've sent scouts down to the inner sanctum.'

The abbot turned to the gardens master. 'Hold the stairs, Sunseed. Fyn, come with me.'

Piro had been in hiding since Illien of Cobalt had turned her father against her. As lord protector of the castle Cobalt had ordered her arrested, but she still had friends. And so she waited in the scullery for the cook to bring her food. For years she had been coming to the kitchens to collect the special meals prepared for her pet foenix. Now she was living on scraps and dressed in a maid's pinafore stolen from the laundry.

Rolenhold Castle was home to six hundred people. And Piro knew each one, from the lowliest stable lad to the lord protector. Tonight all those people had been fed and the last pots from the last meal of the day had been polished and hung on their hooks, gleaming in the light of the kitchen's remaining lamp. Like the kitchen boys and girls who slept under the tables, Piro was terribly tired. Soon she would slip into Halcyon's chantry and crawl behind the nave to snatch some rest. So far she had chosen a different sleeping place each night.

The spit-turners had crept off to their bed bundles and now only the cook remained awake, planning the menu for the next day. When the last of the whispers died away and it was clear the kitchen children were fast asleep under the long wooden tables, the cook put her notes away and rose, glancing to the scullery where Piro was hidden. Piro's stomach rumbled in anticipation. Just then two servants returned with laden trays.

'What's this?' the cook demanded. 'Didn't he touch his dinner? But it's his favourite.'

Piro went very still.

'The king suffers something awful. Won't eat. Can't sleep for the pain and there's nothing the healers can do for him,' the servant explained, sliding the tray onto the table. 'It's terrible to see.'

Piro's heart went out to her father. He was not the man he had been at midwinter. Back then King Rolen's deep voice had boomed across the great hall as he demanded a second serving. It was nothing for him to sit down to a meal that lasted for four hours, consuming great qualities of rich food and fine Rolencian red wine. She had always felt so safe with him but now… now he had been diminished by the renegade Power-worker Cobalt had placed in his service.

Under guise of treating her father's old war injuries, the man had been leaching the king's strength, making him dependent on a concoction of herbs that stole his will and left him a shell of the man who had saved Rolencia at eighteen. Piro and her mother had uncovered the trickery and removed the manservant, but the damage was done.

Despite her father's sudden frailty — no, because of it, Piro loved him fiercely.

She had to see him. She was certain she could do more than the healers. Back before these troubles began, one of the spit-turners had burnt his hand and she'd helped ease his pain, using her Affinity to draw it off, and no one had been any the wiser.

The cook glanced once in Piro's direction and dismissed the servants. Piro waited until they had gone and hurried out on soft slippers.

'I must go to Father,' she whispered, no longer hungry.

'Cobalt's sure to have told the guard to be on the look out for you,' the cook warned, plump jowls wobbling with worry.

'I know. But I must go.'

'Cobalt's offered a bag of gold for your recapture,' the cook revealed.

Piro frowned. 'Only one?'

The cook smiled briefly. 'Take care, kingsdaughter. Cobalt cannot be charmed.'

'I know,' Piro whispered. 'For he has no heart.' When she'd learnt how his bride had been murdered by Utland raiders, she had tried to ease his sorrow, and found only emptiness behind his tears.

The cook shook her head as Piro slipped away.

Byren woke with a smile on his lips. He'd come up with a simple, elegant way to save the child and the Affinity beast. True, he could not defeat a Power-worker, but the Utlander had revealed the very tool that could kill him. Byren should have seen it right away. His only excuse was that he had no Affinity, so he wasn't used to thinking in those terms.

He mustn't fall into that trap again.

Rubbing sleep from his eyes, Byren checked the position of the wanderers against the backdrop of stars. Good, it was nearly midnight. Rising carefully, he went to find the sentry. Another man had taken the same place as the other and was dozing at his post, shrouded in a thick fur cloak. From this angle he would not see Byren enter the seep.

The hollow glowed softly, lit by the accumulated power in the sorbt stone. Byren's skin crawled as he approached the stone. It was the knowledge that this thing pulsed with untamed Affinity that made him wary, not an innate ability to sense Affinity. He'd been tested as a child and found to be blind to it, unlike his brother. Poor little Fyn.

His mother had put on a brave face when the six-year-old had to go to the abbey, but she had wept when she thought no one was looking. As a lad of barely ten summers Byren hadn't known how to console her. All he could do was hug her and bring her pretty things he'd collected especially for her.

Now Byren picked up the sorbt stone, grateful for his gloves and his lack of Affinity, and tucked it inside his vest. He needed his hands free for the sentry.

Byren did not enjoy killing a man while he slept, but it was necessary. The sentry didn't know what happened. With luck, the others would not discover his death until dawn.

Body thrumming with the heightened state of awareness that came during battle, Byren glided down into the dip and approached the Utlander's snow-cave. It had been built on a slight slope. A man does not like to sleep with his head lower than his feet, so Byren guessed that the Power-worker would be sleeping with his head at the highest point.

Feeling at his waist for the hunting knife, Byren began to cut a window in the snow-cave. This was the most dangerous part, for if the snow had not been packed tightly enough, fine powder would fall on the sleeping Power-worker and wake him. Or, when Byren tried to ease his knife under the circular window, he could lose control and it might drop into the shelter.