Legend Read online

  “Cyrus …” Vaste said, his voice halting.

  “I …” Cyrus stared straight ahead, at the wall of the barn, the grains of the wood running their curving lines down one of the planks. It reminded him of hair, pooled and flowing, and he saw a flash of yellow locks against brown stone, the sun gleaming down on it, shining.

  “Do you remember why we’re here?” Quinneria asked, soft and low, the whisper of a mother at her son’s bedside.

  Cyrus’s breathing was rough, like he’d just woken from a nightmare instead of a pleasant dream. “We were … it’s night, now …”

  “Cyrus,” Vaste said. “It’s been night for hours.”

  “But we’re in Reikonos,” Cyrus said, and the sight of red eyes burned in his vision, hateful eyes peering at him, a booming voice like a bellow in his ear. “Because …” He smacked his lips together, and it was as though he’d never even had that drink of water to slake his thirst. “Because …”

  A vision of scarlet blood pooling against the shining yellow hair appeared as he blinked in the darkness, a silver breastplate rent asunder, and eyes as blue as the skies losing all their luster as they faded into—

  “No,” Cyrus whispered into the silence, and he heard laughter in the distance, rough and unpleasant, echoing down the slum streets.

  “Do you recall—” Vaste began.

  Cyrus threw off the thin blanket and brought his feet to the dirt floor. His boots were missing, and he raised the lighted hand to reveal them against the side of the bunk bed on which he sat. He fumbled for them with his fingers, still lit by spell-light, and started to put them on.

  “He recalls,” Quinneria said quietly.

  “Then where is he going?” Vaste asked with rising alarm.

  “I have to—” Cyrus shoved his foot into the first boot violently in his haste to leave. The chainmail that wrapped him to the ankle rattled against the top of the boot as he let his foot drop, and he went for the second.

  “Here,” Quinneria said, and he looked up to find her holding a belt with two weapons in their scabbards, her face solemn. “I brought along the scabbard for Rodanthar.”

  Cyrus shoved his other foot into the remaining boot, then snatched up the belt and scabbards from her hands. He stood and went to place it upon his waist, struggling to clasp it as though he hadn’t done this thousands of times before.

  “Where are you going?” Vaste asked flatly.

  He knows the answer, but he asks anyway, Cyrus thought, struggling to finish dressing himself. He stooped to pick up his helm and gauntlets from the floor of the barn and put them on.

  “You know where he’s going,” Quinneria said, picking up Philos once more, her thin fingers running along the dull, perfectly ordinary staff.

  “I’m not convinced he even knows his name at this point,” Vaste said, coming off the wall and shaking the entire structure as he did so. The old barn rattled in the night. “I’d like to hear him say something—complete a sentence, really, as he hasn’t for a while now. I can see his head spinning from here, but I’m not really sure if he’s quite gotten himself together just yet.” The troll sauntered his way over to where Cyrus stood as though he were in the middle of a calm day of shopping in the markets. “Cyrus … do you remember what happened?”

  “Bellarum attacked Sanctuary,” Cyrus said stiffly, shoving the helm on top of his head, pulling hair, as he met the troll’s gaze. “And we ran, like first-year initiates of the Society—”

  “Cyrus—” Quinneria said.

  “We ran, yes, quite wisely,” Vaste said, “since he beat you senseless and killed—”

  “He did not—” Cyrus put a hand on Praelior and surged forward to come face-to-chest with the troll. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cyrus said, and detoured around Vaste’s bulk.

  “I know what I’m talking about,” Vaste called after him. “I was there. I was there after it happened. I used the bloody resurrection spell and—dammit, she was my friend, too, Cyrus!” he shouted, his voice echoing in the barn and filtering through the uneven planks into the world outside. “I damned well saw what happened, and no matter how enraged or emotional you are, charging off—wherever you’re charging off to—it won’t do a thing to bring her or Sanctuary bac—”

  “I’m going to the Plains of Perdamun,” Cyrus said, spinning about at the door. “I’m going to Sanctuary, and I’m going to go back to—”

  “Death.” Vaste nodded, casting his eyes down. “You’re going to death.”

  “I’m going back!” Cyrus shouted, spittle flying from his lips. “We left without them, without any of them, and—have you—have you both been just sitting here for the last—however many hours?”

  “We were watching over you,” Quinneria said. “You collapsed in the square. We were worried you might have been injured in the fight, but after healing did nothing we concluded you were simply—”

  “You’re cracked,” Vaste said flatly. “As well you might be after losing your guild and your w—”

  “SHE’S NOT—” Cyrus drew his blade, and the glow of the quartal’s mystical nature gleamed in the still-going light of his spell. “Don’t you say that about her.”

  “Fine.” Vaste folded his arms in front of him. “Fine, then. Go on. Go to the Plains of Perdamun. Cast the spell.”

  “I don’t know it,” Cyrus said, Praelior wavering in his hand.

  “I’ll take you.” Quinneria stepped forward.

  “Are you out of your mind, too?” Vaste caught her with a hand upon her shoulder. “Do you honestly intend to take him right back to—”

  “It’s been hours,” Quinneria said. “They’ll … they’ll be gone by now.”

  “You assume. A dangerous presumption on which to hang your lives.”

  “I have to go,” Cyrus said, drawing Rodanthar for his other hand. “Take me there. Now, please.” His breaths came urgently, as though he were having trouble controlling them.

  Vaste made a hoarse gasping noise as he started to speak. “Isn’t it enough that you’ve lost nearly everything? Do you really need to go back and possibly lose your life, too?”

  “If you’d just left me there, where I belonged,” Cyrus said, locking eyes with the troll, anger and menace no longer contained, “we wouldn’t need to have this discussion now and you wouldn’t have to worry about the risks to your precious little life—”

  Vaste stiffened, bristling. “So that’s it, then. Fine. Very fine.”

  “Let’s go,” Cyrus said to his mother.

  “I’ll be going with you, then,” Vaste said, not taking his eyes off Cyrus. Even in the dark, they burned so obviously back at Cyrus that their normal onyx and yellow looked like red to him, and Cyrus shuddered involuntarily.

  “Why bother?” Cyrus asked.

  “Because someone ought to be worried about your life,” Vaste said as the spell magic started to rise around them, “since clearly you aren’t.” And the light of the spell rose to a blinding crescendo and carried them away.

  2.

  Here begins the account of Alaric Garaunt, Guildmaster of these halls and the first of my name …

  Let this telling serve as both record and confession, and let it be known that whatever might be said of me now—master of these halls, leader of these great people, killer of the Sorceress—every truth carries a lie, and every lie hides its own truth. So too it is with my tale, both improbable and true, and yet for so long I have hidden much, so much, from all but a very few. I learned to tell secrets and lies, to spin the truth to mask my true purpose. Those lessons are so deeply ingrained that even shedding my skin like a snake still leaves them imprinted upon my very flesh, and I cannot seem to reform myself to virtue.

  I learned the business of lies early, in a house where lies were not tolerated. I learned them to hide myself, my secret failings, from my father, who had perhaps never told a lie in his life’s entirety and whose virtue was an unquestioned mountain, so high I could scarcely see the foothil
ls from where I stood at the bottom, in a quagmire of deception, ego, arrogance and self-loathing. The virtues espoused by the House of Garrick were many and noble, pretty words that meant nothing to a troubled seventeen-year-old.

  On the day of a successor to the Kingdom of Luukessia’s royal throne’s majority, he chooses the words of his house, virtues that will define his rule and legacy. Five simple words, five simple virtues; a tradition designed to announce to the kingdom what sort of governance they could expect when the old king died and the new king ascended. Sometimes the words change over the course of a king’s life—we are not immutable beings, after all, we humans—but the words only change occasionally, and with great ceremony.

  Five days before my eighteenth birthday, I stood before the throne of my father, the old king. He looked down upon me with that same sense of mingled worry that he’d adopted some years before, his long, greying hair visible beneath his crown. Since the death of my mother some ten years before, he’d aged poorly. He was an old king who had taken a young bride, and I’d heard the servants say that his vitality had drained in the years following her death just as surely as if she were dragging him slowly onward to meet the ancestors with her.

  “Ulric, my son,” my father announced to the near-empty room. His guards still stood at the doors and behind his throne to either side in the center keep of Enrant Monge, our family’s ruling seat for generations. “You have prepared the words that will define your rule?”

  I stood before him with my chin out, plainly defiant, as I had become of late. Years of hiding myself before my father had given way at last to a growing sense of disgust that I should have to hide my secret shame at my failings. My shame was fast becoming shameless, and I was beginning to wear my arrogance like a cloak of honor, my few friends in the castle eagerly reminding me that I would rule this land, regardless of my father’s dim view of my character. “I have, my father,” I said, my chest puffed out like a fat bird’s.

  He stared down at me with his eyes so full of fear, as though he knew what was coming. “I caution you to take heed in choosing the words to denote your rule. Words, once chosen, are difficult to take back, and they will flow forth from your ceremony to the corners of the kingdom, where the Grand Dukes in Galbadien, Syloreas, and Actaluere will hear them and decide for themselves what sort of man will sit their throne and rule their lands.”

  “I have chosen my words with care, father,” I said, but I was lying. I had not a care for what I said, and if I inflicted pain on him with my carelessness, I considered it a fringe benefit.

  Now I look back and feel nothing but shame.

  “What are the words that will define your rule, my son?” My father spoke quietly, perhaps hoping that some modicum of wisdom and care might follow his invocation. He was, of course, doomed to disappointment.

  “My words are as follows,” I said, unrolling the parchment before me with one hand as I rested my other on the pommel of the showy steel sword that I’d been carrying for the last several months. I had been training with it, with the army, with fervor. That was my task, to learn to lead the army while my father sat the throne, and then, when he died, to ascend, knowing how to lead.

  “Order,” I said, reading the first word on the parchment. “We will always strive to maintain the order of Luukessia. No disorder will be tolerated, nor will we allow the stain of chaos to spread across our map.” I took a breath, and went on to the second word. “Faithful. We will remain faithful to our steadfast friends, and will remain faithful to our enemies as well, though in a much less charitable way. Strength,” I said, reading the third word, “we will remain strong, always. There will be no room for any weakness in my kingdom. Unyielding,” I said, going on to the fourth. “Our enemies and troublemakers will be pursued with relentless force, hounded until they are trouble no more. And finally, Merciless.” I looked up at that last one, and saw my father’s thin fingers clutching the arms of his throne, white from the pressure of his grasp. It did, I am ashamed to say, make me smile. “Anyone who stands against the rule of this kingdom and this monarch will find no comfort nor an ounce of mercy anywhere in Luukessia.” I rolled the parchment back up and it made a satisfying crackling. “These are the words I will live and rule by.”

  My father sat there, thinking for a long minute, then another, his aging fingers now rubbing against his greying beard as he turned his head to stare out the window far, far above. I stood in silence, my smile fading as my anger rose. There was little I cared for less than being made to wait, especially for an old man who seemed to think that he had all the time in the land to ponder. “These are the words I will live and rule by,” I announced again, as though he’d missed this proclamation the first time.

  “I find your words very dissimilar to my own,” he said, pulling his fingers away from his beard at last.

  “I find myself very dissimilar to you,” I retorted.

  “This much is true, obviously,” he said. “I would not pretend to be a universally beloved king, by any means—”

  “That much is also true, obviously,” I said, just to be snide. Among the people, he was loved. Among my small subset of friends and courtiers, little love was expressed for him or his staid manner of rule.

  “—but I have lived and ruled for quite some time,” my father went on, apparently undisturbed by my savage repartee. “There are lessons I feel I might have failed to impart to you. Lessons I wish to—”

  “I have learned all you have to teach me,” I said, looking away. I caught a hint of movement behind the throne, and one of my father’s most faithful advisors, Stepan Thomason, stepped into view. He had been lingering in the shade of the mighty throne, its high back designed to allow advisors to stay in its shade and speak to the king, unseen. That he stepped out told me he wished to look upon me with his own eyes, to express his horror and condescension in person. Stepan had let me know, many times, exactly what he thought of me. Neither had I been reticent in holding back my opinion of him. Across the space between us, I met his eyes with the relentlessness and lack of mercy I promised in my words, and he offered the same in kind.

  “You have learned naught,” Stepan said quietly.

  “Stepan,” my father said, patting him on the arm to stay his fervor. My father turned his attention back to me, thoughtfully stroking his beard again. “My son, harken to my words. Truth, that we may never lose our way in the shadow of deceit. Honor, that we might always remember our actions speak for us everywhere we walk. Defense, that we should take up swords to protect those who cannot take up their own. Charity, that we might remember to give to those less fortunate. And Law, that we should remember a king should not be a tyrant to rule over his people as property rather than as citizens.” He swallowed so heavily that I watched his beard shake. “Do you not see the difference between our philosophies?”

  “I have seen the difference between our philosophies since the day I was old enough to form an opinion of my own,” I said, not holding back a single hot word from being slung in the service of my righteousness. “Here is what I have realized—you cling to the idea of truth when it makes you weak. You speak of honor as though it is a shield against our enemies when in fact it is a shield for them. You talk of defending the common people as though there is some just cause in standing before a flock and keeping them from a timely shearing. You cling to charity to keep the weak and useless with us rather than dead in their own richly deserved graves, and you talk about Law as a virtue rather than what it is—an impediment to doing what is necessary at any given moment. Our kingdom quakes under the weight of foolish sentiment, foolish restriction when it could surge and be strong. They laugh at us in Syloreas, in Galbadien, in Actaluere, and every virtue you stubbornly cling to makes those wolves grin with delight at your weakness.” I scowled at him, my disgust boiling over. “I will not be weak, and I will not have them think me weak. I will show them—I will make this land Ordered and Faithful through my Strength, Unyielding and without Mercy.” />
  My father sat there, his jaw open just a trace beneath the wisps of his mustache, eyes frozen on me. I could almost taste the bitter disappointment wafting off him. “Stepan?” he asked at last.

  “My liege,” Stepan said, coming out from behind the throne. I wondered if there were other of his lackeys back there, still hiding. When my day of ascension came, I resolved that the first thing I would do would be to separate these fools from their heads.

  “Stepan … do you recall the missive we received from Syloreas this very morning?” my father asked, back to stroking his damned beard.

  “It would be hard to forget it in so short a span of time, my liege,” Stepan said with a very courtierly dip of his head. Subservient to the last, Stepan.

  My father looked down at me. “We received word from Syloreas of strange occurrences in the far north. There is a village up there that has seen peculiar movements in the mountains. What looks like armies marching through the passes.”

  “I doubt a village saw or did much of anything,” I said smartly. “Perhaps you speak of the idiot goatherds that live there?”

  My father blinked, more likely from my rebuke of the people than his inelegant phrasing. “They are people of our kingdom, my son. Their reports should be given some weight, investigated.”

  “There is nothing in the northern frontier but ice and snow,” I said.

  “How do you know this?” my father asked, setting the trap so that I might charge eagerly into it.

  “Because unlike the villagers of that ancestors-forsaken land, I know how to read.” I smirked when I replied, for my arrogance was boundless.

  “I think you should see for yourself,” my father said, and only then did I see the trap close around my leg.

  My mouth went dry as I realized how he’d effortlessly maneuvered me. “Northern Syloreas is a journey of months!” I sounded panicked and helpless to my own ears. Stepan wore a satisfied smile across his smug, thin face. He stood with his arms folded across his chest, back stiff as he stared down at me from my father’s side.