Blood Storm: The Second Book of Lharmell Page 16

  ‘It’s my story. Very different from yours.’

  ‘You could write to me. At the palace at Xallentaria. Or Amentia. I’d get your letters eventually. And I’d write back.’

  ‘I will.’ She released me.

  ‘I don’t have many friends, you see.’

  Oilif smiled. ‘I promise I’ll write. Perhaps you could come and visit me one day.’

  ‘I would like that very much.’ I thought of us returning, free from both Lharmell and our duties to Pergamia and Amentia. Just as we were. Runaways who had found a new home. Sadness crested inside me as I realised that the obstacles between now and that future were too numerous to count.

  Uwin gathered me up in a big bear hug. I murmured ‘preibek’ a few times and he beamed.

  And then it was just Rodden, Leap, Griffin and I again, a few hundred yards from the village, facing two tethered and furious brants. They shrieked when they saw us, and Leap flattened himself to the ground. Magnificent they were, but cranky also. We sent calming thought-patterns to them and they quieted somewhat, but they still had a vicious glint in their eyes.

  ‘Easy,’ I murmured as I approached one. I sent the feeling with my mind as well. It was used to mental orders, and when I asked it to it crouched low to the ground and allowed me to mount. Leap jumped up before me, curling against my belly, and Griffin flew to my gauntleted wrist.

  Rodden mounted and gathered his cloak about him. ‘It’s going to be cold up there at night,’ he warned. ‘Are you ready?’

  I nodded.

  ‘All right then. To Amentia.’

  ‘Lucky, lucky me,’ I muttered, as the brants beat their wings and we lurched into the sky. We flew south-east, with the setting sun behind us and the pain of the tors between our shoulderblades.

  Amentia wasn’t quite our next stop. We rested the brants for several hours just outside Rilla before we attempted the ocean crossing. In the midnight darkness we stood on the outskirts of the city and we shared a flask of blood. My hands were stiff from my knuckle wounds and holding onto the brant in the cold upper air.

  ‘We’ll rest in Varlint for a day,’ Rodden murmured in the darkness. ‘These birds won’t make it all the way to Amentia without a proper rest.’

  ‘Varlint has plenty of unpopulated forest,’ I said, remembering from my trip there with Lilith and Renata to meet my sister’s first betrothed. ‘We’ve got supplies so we won’t need to approach a town.’

  We clambered back aboard our mounts. Between Rilla and Varlint the Osseran was narrow, but I still felt sick with apprehension. The sea was no longer my friend. It was a deadly, unforgiving force. We wouldn’t be so lucky this time if we were plunged into its briny depths.

  When dawn came, I saw the blue-black waters far beneath us and broke out in a cold sweat. My stomach lurched. There was no land as far as the eye could see. My brant was tiring. The muscle ache of its wings was becoming my own. I twisted in the saddle and saw Rodden a score of yards behind me and slightly to my right, rigid on his mount. Our eyes met briefly. I saw the white of his knuckles where he clasped the reins. We’d held the thread between us like a life-line all the long night so as not to lose each other in the darkness. As the sky lightened I felt his mind gradually retreat.

  Leap wriggled against me and I urged him to be still. It was a long, long way down.

  An hour after dawn, I spotted the coast. We flew several miles inland to what we hoped was uninhabited forest, and began a slow, circling descent. As soon as my bird’s talons thudded against the leaf litter, I slithered to the ground. My legs were numb with tension. I heard Rodden touch down a few seconds later, and wordlessly we led our exhausted brants to a nearby stream and let them drink their fill. I washed my face and hands and then sat back on my heels, watching Leap. He stood gingerly on a wet rock and lapped up water with a pink tongue.

  Rodden strung his crossbow with stiff fingers. ‘Meat for the birds,’ he muttered.

  I strung my bow as well. Griffin and Leap disappeared among the greenery on a hunt of their own.

  On the edge of an emerald clearing, Rodden and I picked off three rabbits and a duck. We fed them in gory pieces to our famished brants. I’d had enough of blood and guts to last me at least a week so ate some of the bread Oilif had packed for us instead.

  ‘Travelling by brant,’ I said, mouth full, sitting on my cloak, ‘might be cold and exhausting and terrifying, but it’s the only way to see the world. No vomiting. No mad sailors.’

  ‘Just the attention of any harmings that might see us fly over.’

  ‘I’ll take the harmings over the mad sailors any day. We can handle harmings.’

  Rodden lay down on the mossy ground, his eyes already closing. ‘We’ll travel by darkness tonight and should reach the palace at Amentia at dawn.’

  I was filled with excitement and terror at the prospect. I was glad to see my home again, but fearful at the same time. ‘If you leave me there,’ I warned Rodden, ‘I will hunt you down and feed you to my brant.’ My threat was met with silence as he was already asleep.

  From the sky I could see the drastic change in my homeland. The rivers resembled thick lengths of rope. They were swelled with mountain melt and meandered across the countryside. The roads were still in an awful state, but even at this early hour they hummed with traffic.

  It was heading into autumn and by now the landscape should have been dulled by frosts. But the forests and pastures were verdant. Amentia had thawed.

  I was excited to see the change. Had Rodden and I done this? I hadn’t quite believed my mother when she’d written of the temperate weather, but now I was seeing it with my own eyes. Was this the first indication that things were turning in our favour?

  The castle was perched on high ground east of Prestoral, our capital, which was roughly the size of Jefsgord. We skirted the city, flying high above the neat houses, banked, and made for the castle. Among the ash and aspen I saw the Amentine banner flying above the battlements, a golden griffin on a rich red background. My heart swelled with pride. I was home.

  Manoeuvring to land in the tiny courtyard was tricky. I went first while Rodden circled above. The castle walls rushed up to meet me and the brant’s talons clicked loudly on stone. Griffin was jolted awake. Leap looked this way and that, as if unable to believe where he was, and then scampered straight to the kitchens.

  I jumped to the ground.

  From a stairwell, a serving girl carrying a pail was staring at me, struck dumb. ‘’Oo are you?’ she asked.

  At the sound of her voice, my brant swivelled and pinned the girl with its glittering black eyes. It opened its enormous black beak and hissed. She screamed, dropped the pail, and dashed inside the castle, her cries trailing after her up the stairs. Milk pooled white over the flagstones.

  I sighed, and searched the sky for Rodden.

  ‘What the heavens.’

  I turned. Renata strode through the main arch, encased in russet silk. Her red hair flamed and her eyes blazed. She took in the brant, my dishevelled figure, and she folded her arms. ‘Oh, Zeraphina,’ she said, managing to fill that one phrase with an avalanche of derision and disappointment.

  The sky darkened above us. Rodden’s brant, wings stretched to their full five-metre span, talons extended, was poised to land.

  Renata screamed, her lungs seemingly twice the capacity of the kitchen girl’s. Griffin, my brant, and I all winced. The bird landed, Rodden slid off, and Renata’s screams died in her throat.

  ‘You,’ she accused. ‘So it is true.’ She glared at both of us. ‘I did pray that letter was your idea of a joke. Just what has been going on?’

  Rodden, face impassive, clicked his heels smartly and bowed. ‘Your Majesty.’

  Renata’s desire to lose her temper warred with her need for composure. Propriety won out. She drew herself u
p to her full height. ‘Thank you for bringing my daughter back to me, Lothskorn, whatever state she might be in. See my steward for anything you may require for your return journey.’

  Her meaning was clear: Rodden was to get out of her sight as soon as possible.

  She turned to me. ‘Upstairs.’ She marched inside.

  I kept my grasp on the brant’s reins and looked at Rodden, white-hot anger burning inside me. ‘How dare she dismiss you in such a way? You’re the king’s man and you deserve respect, especially here in Amentia. She has a lot to be thankful to you for. Lilith’s marriage, for a start. And you were the one to follow me to Lharmell when I was taken there.’

  ‘It is the reception I expected.’ Rodden began to unsaddle his brant. ‘Now, where do you suppose we’ll put our birds?’

  ‘We’ll leave them right here,’ I said. ‘Right where she can see them. Besides, they’ll terrify the horses if we try to stable them.’

  Sensation prickled down my spine. I whirled around. A man with half-lidded eyes was leaning against a stone archway, watching us. He looked first at Rodden, then at me, cocking one eyebrow as he assessed our appearance. He was dressed in black, and his smartly pinned-up cloak was lined with dark red velvet. A sword was slung at his left hip – he was a noble then. I recognised his broad face as he smiled; an amused, faintly disgusted expression. Prince Folsum.

  ‘Hello, sweeting,’ he said.

  My hands fell from the saddle buckle that I’d been worrying at. There was dread in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t like that he was here, not one bit.

  ‘I should run you through with my sword, Lothskorn. What the deuce have you been doing to my bride?’

  Folsum’s face was impassive, but I caught the menace in his tone.

  Anger flared in my breast. ‘You have no right to claim me so.’

  The lidded eyes flashed. ‘But my dear, I do. I have the consent of both the Queen of Amentia and the King of Pergamia.’

  ‘You are forgetting my own right, my lord. The right to refuse you.’

  Folsum laughed. He cast a look at Rodden and the amusement died on his face. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something, Lothskorn?’

  Rodden’s jaw clenched with anger. He straightened and made to bow.

  I clutched his arm. ‘Don’t you dare bow to him.’

  Rodden pulled away and gave Folsum a cursory bow. ‘Your Highness,’ he growled.

  ‘That’s better. We can’t have you forgetting your place. Now, run along.’ Folsum made a shooing motion with his fingers.

  Rodden stared long and hard at Folsum. The prince fingered the gloves in his pocket as if he’d like nothing more than to slap Rodden for insolence.

  Rodden turned on his heel, and I just caught his muttered, ‘I’ll be with the servants.’

  ‘Far too much pride in that one,’ Folsum said. ‘He’s been given free rein in Pergamia. It would never happen in Ansengaad. We know our place in Ansengaad. Or we’re made to find it, damned quickly.’ He looked hard at me.

  ‘Rodden Lothskorn has done more for all of Brivora in six months than you could ever hope to achieve in a lifetime.’

  Folsum ignored me, his eyes on our brants. ‘Incredible creatures. I’ve read about them in esoteric travel journals. I thought them to be fictitious, or at the very least extinct.’ He stepped towards them across the flags. The brants watched him, black eyes flashing. We might have only recently stolen them from the harmings and pushed them to their limits of exhaustion, but both birds could detect my loathing of this man, and they’d decided they didn’t like him either.

  I slipped their tethers free while Folsum’s eyes were elsewhere.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he murmured, his eyes running over the brants’ wickedly curved beaks. ‘Imagine the possibilities for war.’ He reached for one and its hackles rose in warning. Folsum was either too stupid or too arrogant to heed it, and the moment his hand brushed the bird’s feathers it lashed out, snapping at Folsum’s shoulder with its beak. The leather of his jacket was sliced open. Folsum flung himself back, gasping, as the two birds advanced on him. They towered over him, wings raised, necks elongated. A low, steady hiss emanated from their open beaks.

  ‘Call them off!’ he yelled. He was backed against the courtyard walls. I directed the brants to herd him back out through the archway, urging them not to hurt him but to hiss as much as they liked. Finally, he turned and ran. The brants closed their beaks and returned to me.

  I raked my fingers through my hair and tried not to cry out in frustration. I should never have listened to Rodden. It had been a huge mistake to come home.

  THIRTEEN

  There was a steaming bath in my room when I finally climbed the stairs into the keep. When Renata turned from stoking the fire her face was an angry red.

  ‘Undress her,’ she snapped at the maid. It was another girl I didn’t recognise. There had been changes to the castle while I’d been gone. New tapestries and furniture. New servants. The place hummed with life, and with money. Renata herself was dressed head to toe in new attire, and she’d grown plump.

  I bade the girl to stop. ‘Thank you, but you may go.’

  Renata looked on, arms folded, as I stripped off the rough Jarbin attire.

  ‘Must you watch?’ I asked.

  ‘Indeed I must,’ she insisted. She glanced at my stomach as I pulled off my shirt. ‘You don’t show. Not yet, at any rate.’

  I frowned in confusion, and then flushed as I understood her meaning. ‘Mother. I’m not with child. Rodden never touched me.’

  She sniffed. ‘We’ll see. You’re nothing but skin and bones so we shall know soon enough.’ She began rolling her sleeves up. ‘Gallivanting all over the world without a chaperone, and with a man such as he. What was Lilith thinking letting you go?’

  ‘Lilith didn’t let me do anything. It was my decision.’

  She pointed at the tub with an imperious finger. ‘Scrub.’

  I stepped into the tub and the hot water enveloped me. ‘Being a harming does not make Rodden depraved or wicked. After all, I’m –’

  A basin of hot water was tipped over my head, making me gasp. I sat in sullen silence while she worked my hair into a lather.

  After several more basins of water had been tipped over me without warning, and Renata was working oil through my hopelessly tangled hair, I asked, ‘What’s he doing here?’

  ‘He, if you are referring to Prince Folsum, is here because I invited him. He’s an extremely suitable match for you. Not only will he be king of Ansengaad one day, but he’s willing to overlook your recent indiscretions. As well as . . . other things.’

  I stiffened. ‘Other things? What other things.’

  Renata was silent.

  ‘He thinks I’m a bastard, doesn’t he?’

  Renata tugged her fingers viciously through my hair. ‘Watch your tongue.’

  ‘Ow! Mother, how could you let him think such a thing, about both of us?’

  ‘What else can I let him think? There are no portraits of you father anywhere but everyone knows he was fair as can be. And your eyes. How else am I to explain you?’

  ‘The world has gone mad. Why not the truth? Why is everyone so afraid of the truth? There are monsters in the north!’ I began to holler at the top of my lungs. ‘There are monsters in –’

  Another basin of water was dumped over my head and I came up spluttering. ‘Stop doing that.’

  ‘Keep your voice down. Do you wish to lose your head? A harming daughter,’ Renata moaned, ‘and her sister wedded to the future king of Pergamia. We shall all be burned at the stake.’ She grabbed a scrubbing brush and began attacking my skin. ‘You must marry, Zeraphina, and it must be soon. I haven’t forgotten your birthday. You’re seventeen now. It’s time you did your duty, just like Lilith has.’

 
‘Happy birthday to me,’ I muttered, pushed this way and that as Renata scrubbed at me.

  ‘Ansengaad is far to the south, and I think that’s for the best. Far away from Lhar–’ She caught herself. ‘That place. And from Pergamia. It’s too dangerous for you to ever go northwards again. I’ve told Folsum you must stay in the south and he has assured me he will see that my wishes are carried out.’

  ‘How could you do such a thing? Am I to be a prisoner in Ansengaad, my husband my jailer? Am I never to see my sister again?’ But it wasn’t the thought of my sister that made my throat ache with despair. If I was never to go north, I would never see Rodden again. Not even across the high table at Xallentaria.

  ‘She may come to you,’ Renata said. ‘And you may visit me here after you have provided your husband with an heir. Until then you must stay away for your own good.’

  I watched through blurred eyes as she began scrubbing the dirt from under my fingernails. A prisoner who must bear her foul husband sons. Between the two of us, what sort of monstrous children would we have?

  Renata saw my anguish. ‘And of course, there’s the other reason why it’s best you stay away from the north.’

  ‘Nothing happened, mother,’ I insisted, my voice thick. ‘He never touched me.’

  ‘Maybe not. But you wanted him to.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘I saw how you were mooning over him when you returned from Lhar– that place. Doubtless he saw it too. If you’re speaking the truth, and he hasn’t touched you, Lothskorn may have some honour after all.’

  Tears spilled over my cheeks. ‘He’s the best person I’ve ever known.’

  Renata sighed. ‘Do stop blubbering. We all have crushes when we’re young, and we grow out of them. Now, out of the tub.’

  She wrapped me in towels, sat me in a chair and began clipping my ragged nails and rubbing lotion into my roughened hands and feet. I let her, too limp from exhaustion and heartache to do anything else.