Gail Martin - The Sworn

“Perhaps.” She was silent for a moment, and then she worked up the nerve to say what had been on her mind all morning. “We need to think about having another one-”

Tris turned toward her, eyes wide. “You can’t be serious!”

“Completely.”

“No. Absolutely not. It’s too soon. You won’t have your strength back.”

“Aren’t I a better judge of that?”

“No. You’re far too likely to do the brave thing for the good of the throne.”

Kiara saw real concern in his eyes. “A second heir might ease the tension in Isencroft, if we had one son who could take the crown in Margolan and one who could become king in Isencroft. The idea of a joint throne fuels the Divisionists. And it’s been fodder for people like Curane, who don’t like sharing the Margolan throne with Isencroft.”

“Curane is dead. The plague’s the danger now, and it doesn’t care who’s king.”

Tris knelt beside her chair and met her eyes. “I nearly lost both of you the night you gave birth. I don’t ever want to come that close to losing you again. You had a hard time of it, almost from the time you got pregnant. I don’t want to risk it.”

Kiara smiled and leaned her head against his shoulder. “I love you for that. But as you’ve said so often, kings don’t get the choices other men have. Especially if… if something isn’t right with Cwynn, then there needs to be a second heir, just to continue a joint throne.”

Tris touched her cheek reassuringly. “You’re borrowing trouble. Cwynn’s growing well, and I’ve heard you complain that he has a healthy appetite.” He sobered. “I know that what you’re saying is logical. My head agrees with you, but my heart doesn’t, not yet. Please. Let’s see what the next months bring. The choices may be clearer then, if we have any choices at all.”

A quiet rap on the door ended the conversation. Tris went to answer it, as Cwynn stretched and Kiara moved to quiet the sleeping baby. Ban Soterius stood in the doorway. Even when not dressed for battle, everything about Soterius marked him as a soldier, from his stance to his dark brown hair, short-cropped for a helm.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Tris, but we’ve got a problem.” Ban Soterius, now Margolan’s youngest general, had been Captain of the Guard the night King Bricen was murdered. Along with Harrtuck the guard and Carroway the bard, Soterius had helped Tris escape with his life from the coup that claimed the rest of his family. Soterius and Carroway had been childhood friends of Tris’s, and along with Harrtuck, they went willingly into exile to protect Tris. When Tris launched the campaign to take back Margolan’s throne from Jared the Usurper, Soterius had rallied an army from those who had fled Jared’s depredations or deserted Jared’s corrupt army. His courage had earned him the rank of general, and his friendship with Tris placed him among the king’s most trusted advisors.

Tris let himself out of the room quietly. “What’s wrong now?”

Soterius sighed. “We’ve just gotten word of an attack on a village a candlemark’s ride south of the city.”

Tris frowned. “Who?”

“A better question might be ‘what.’ ” Soterius’s face was grim. “The patrols discovered it when they found a boy stumbling down the road, covered in blood. I heard the account from the soldiers who saw the boy themselves. They were pretty shaken up about it. According to the boy, something came out of the old barrow near the village and went on a rampage.”

“Rogue vayash moru?”

Soterius shook his head. “Not likely. For one thing, the boy said it wasn’t solid. He said it was a shadow that changed shape, but it was real enough to flay flesh from bone and to rip heads from bodies.” He paused. “When it was daylight, the soldiers investigated. They found the village as the boy said. Everyone was dead.”

“And the boy?”

“After that night, he hasn’t said another word. The healers tried to treat him, but the wounds are festering. He’s going to die.”

“Where is he?”

Soterius gestured. “Come with me.”

Two of Tris’s bodyguards fell in behind them as they quickly descended the steps. They left the large, grand entranceway to the palace Shekerishet and crossed through the bailey to the guard tower. The sun was just setting. “We didn’t want to bring him into the palace for fear of contagion,” Soterius explained. Harrtuck, now Captain of the Guards in Soterius’s stead, met them at the tower door.

“I thought you’d want to see this,” Harrtuck said, but his raspy voice sounded shaken. “I pity the lad.”

Tris glanced over his shoulder toward Dugan, one of his bodyguards. “Find Mikhail. He’ll have risen by now. Bring him. I’d like him to see this. And send Esme to me.” Dugan took off toward the palace. Tris returned his attention to Soterius. “You’ve had Esme look at the boy?”

“Esme says it’s not something her magic can heal.”

Prepared for the worst, Tris followed Soterius into one of the rooms usually used as a guard’s bedchamber. He caught his breath at the sight of a still, small form on the bed. A young boy in his middling years lay pale against the sheets. His eyes were tightly closed, as if against nightmares only he could see. Esme had cleaned the boy’s wounds, but blood seeped through bandages that covered his arms and chest, and a nasty gash sliced across one cheek.

“You wished to see me?” Mikhail’s soundless approach made Tris startle, although he knew the vayash moru seneschal could move quickly and without noise. Mikhail was one of Lord Gabriel’s brood, on loan for as long as Tris required his service. Since the vayash moru were immortal, Tris guessed that meant his own mortal lifetime.

“What do you make of him?” Tris said with a nod toward the boy on the bed.

Mikhail moved forward silently and bent over the boy. Tris hoped that the vayash moru ’s heightened senses might pick up something mortals could not. Mikhail frowned and looked up. “This is bad.” He met Tris’s gaze. “You know that vayash moru did not do this.”

“How can you be certain?”

Mikhail looked back toward the boy. “For one thing, he has his blood. The marks are wrong-claws, for starters. But not vyrkin, either. And there’s a residue of dark magic.” He looked up. “Bogwaithe?”

Tris nodded. “Or dimonn.”

Tris moved around Soterius to sit beside the boy, who had still not opened his eyes. Tris stretched out a hand and lightly touched the boy’s shoulder.

“You’re not real. You’re not real. You’re not real,” the boy chanted under his breath in the heavy accent of the Margolan farm country.

Tris closed his eyes and called for his magic. He felt the power rise, filling him. Tris raised wards of protection around the room, reinforcing the safeguards he had already placed around the castle. When the room was warded, Tris turned his attention back to the boy.

He could feel the boy’s pain and terror. Just from his touch on the boy’s shoulder, images flared into Tris’s mind, carried by the magic. He could hear the screams of the villagers and smelled fresh blood, along with the stench of entrails. In the torchlight of the village night, men, women, and children ran for their lives from the black shape that rose from beneath the barrow. That dark presence changed from horror to horror as it moved. In one glance, it seemed to be the shadow of a shrouded skeleton, its face lost to the blackness of its cowl. In the next breath, it was the shape of a two-legged beast, and then the impossibly huge, long-armed outline of a featureless man, with hands that grasped and tore.

Tris’s magic thrummed with the boy’s fear as his Summoning power read from the child’s soul. He heard the running footsteps as villagers ran for their lives, and he felt an icy chill as the darkness passed by him. Tris winced as the boy’s memories supplied a vision of the dark thing lashing out at him, claws tearing down through skin and cloth. And then, abruptly, the thing left him, gliding off to run the rest of the villagers to ground. Tris pulled back from the contact, but he could hear the boy’s screams echoing in his head.