Cinda Chima - The Demon King

“Is that all you’re worried about, Captain Byrne?” Bayar retorted, eyes narrowed.

Byrne didn’t blink. “Is there something else I should be worried about, my lord? Something you’d like to tell me?”

“Perhaps we should go on,” Queen Marianna said, decisively snapping her reins. “Micah and the others should have no difficulty catching us up.”

Lord Bayar nodded stiffly. Micah’s going to hear about this, Raisa thought. The High Wizard looked as though he could bite off someone’s head and spit out the teeth. She urged Switcher forward, claiming the lead. Byrne maneuvered his great bay horse so that he rode beside her, with the rest following after.

Their trail climbed through lush upland meadows sparkling with starflowers and buttercups. Red-winged black-birds clung impossibly to swaying seedheads left over from the previous year. Raisa drank in the details like a painter deprived of color.

Byrne looked about as well, but to a different purpose. He scanned the forest to either side, his back straight, reins held loosely in his hands. His men fanned out around them, riding three miles to their one, scouting the way ahead and monitoring their back trail.

“When does Amon come home?” Raisa asked, trying out her hard-learned conversational skills on the dour captain.

Byrne studied her face for a long moment before answering. “We expect him any time, Your Highness. Because of the fighting in Arden, he’s had to take the long way around from Oden’s Ford.”

It had been more than three years since Raisa had seen Amon—Byrne’s eldest son. After her three years at Demonai Camp, she’d returned to court at solstice to find that Amon was gone to Wien House, the military school at Oden’s Ford. He meant to follow in his father’s footsteps, and soldiers began their training early.

She and Amon had been fast friends since childhood, when despite their difference in station, a lack of other children at court had forced them together. Fellsmarch Castle had been lonely without him (not that she’d had much time to be lonely). When I’m queen, Raisa thought, I’m going to keep my friends close by. It was one more entry on a long list of good intentions.

Now Amon was on his way back to the Fells, traveling the hundreds of miles from Oden’s Ford on his own. Raisa envied him. Even among the clans, she always traveled with some kind of guard. What would it be like, choosing her own way, sleeping when and where she liked, each day brilliant with possibility and risk?

The hunting party turned west, following a trail that stitched its way along the side of the valley. Though they were hundreds of feet above the Dyrnnewater, the roar of its cascades floated up to them.

They passed through a narrow canyon, and it grew noticeably cooler as the stone walls closed in on either side of them. Raisa shivered, feeling a twinge of worry, a vibration in her bones as if the rich web of life around her had been plucked by unseen fingers.

Switcher snorted and tossed her head, nearly ripping the reins from Raisa’s hands. The gloom on either side of the trail seemed to coalesce into gray shadows loping alongside her, their bodies compressing and extending.

Gray wolves, the symbol of her house. Raisa caught a glimpse of narrow lupine heads and amber eyes, tongues lolling over razor-sharp teeth, and then they disappeared.

Wolves were said to appear to the blooded queens at turning points: times of danger and opportunity. They had never appeared to Raisa before, which wasn’t surprising since she was not yet queen.

She glanced back at her mother, who was laughing at something Lord Bayar had said. The queen hadn’t seemed to notice anything unusual.

Had Raisa been riding out from Demonai with her clan friends, they’d have taken her premonition as an omen, poking and prodding at it like a snake in the dirt, studying over its possible meaning. Being of the Gray Wolf lineage, Raisa was expected to have the second sight, and this skill was respected.

A voice broke into her thoughts. “Are you well, Your Highness?”

Startled, Raisa looked up into Byrne’s worried eyes, gray as the ocean under a winter sky. He’d come up next to her and taken hold of Switcher’s bridle, inclining his head so he could hear her answer.

“Well…um…I…” she stammered, for once at a loss for words. She thought of saying, I have a peculiar feeling we’re in danger, Captain Byrne , or, By chance did you see any wolves along the way?

Even if the gruff captain took her seriously, what could he do?

“I’m fine, Captain,” she said. “It’s been a long time since breakfast is all.”

“Would you like a biscuit?” he asked, digging into his saddlebag. “I’ve some in my—”

“That’s all right,” she said hastily. “We’ll have lunch soon, right?”

The canyon opened into a pretty, upland meadow. The deer herd had been seen grazing there a week ago, but they were gone now. In this season they were likely heading to higher ground, and with the wizard Lord Bayar along, the hunting group couldn’t follow. They were pushing at clan boundaries as it was.

They stopped for their midday in the meadow, just outside the mouth of the narrow canyon. The meal was an elaborate affair, laid out on fancy cloths, with cheese and cold meats, fruit, and bottles of wine and cider. While the rest of them ate, two of Byrne’s soldiers scouted ahead, looking for traces of the missing herd.

Raisa had little appetite. She sat, arms wrapped around her knees, still unable to shake the feeling of disquiet that pressed down upon her, pinning her to the ground. It was just noon, but the day seemed to darken, and the sunlight and shadow that dappled the ground dissolved away. Gray shapes prowled the gloom, returning each time she blinked them away.

She peered up through the leafy canopy overhead. Although the sky to the south was a clear blue, overhead it had gone milky gray, the sun a bright disk swimming in a gathering haze. Raisa sniffed the air. Her nose stung with the scent of burning leaves.

“Is something burning?” she asked nobody in particular. She’d spoken so quietly she didn’t think anyone had heard, but Byrne rose from his seat at the edge of the woods and walked to the center of the meadow, scanning the slopes on all sides. Frowning, he gazed at the sky for a long moment, then looked over at the horses. They shifted, stamping their feet and straining at their tethers.

Raisa felt the growing conviction that something was terribly wrong. The air seemed to catch in her throat, and she coughed.

“Load up the horses,” Captain Byrne ordered, setting his men to clearing the camp and packing up the picnic things.

“Oh, do let’s stay longer, Edon.” Queen Marianna raised a glass of wine. “It’s so pretty here. It doesn’t matter if we don’t take a deer.”

Lord Bayar sprawled next to her. “I can’t climb much farther without violating the Naéming and all that. But you go on, Captain Byrne, and find our princesses a deer. I will stay here and look after the queen.”

Raisa stared at the scene before her—the blanket spread under the trees, the darkly handsome wizard with his boots crossed at the ankles, bejeweled hand resting on the blanket. Her pretty blond mother, a confection even in her riding clothes, cheeks flushed like a girl’s.

It reminded Raisa of a painting in the galleries at home—a frozen moment that left you wondering about what had happened before, and would happen after.

“I’ll stay with you, Mama,” Raisa said, plunking herself down at the edge of the blanket and looking the High Wizard in the eye, knowing instinctively that they were enemies. Wishing her father didn’t spend so much time away.