Honor Bound
Honor Bound
Tales of Sevrin #2
Thorn Trilogy: Book 2 of
3
Elaine Cunningham
This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales
is entirely coincidental.
HONOR BOUND
Copyright © 2012 by Elaine
Cunningham
www.ElaineCunningham.com
All rights reserved. No part of this
book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or
electronic form without permission.
SmashWords Edition
A withered figure moved through the
adept's gallery, his steps sure and silent. A maze of dubious
treasure surrounded him, all of it shrouded in darkness. The only
light came from the cloud-misted moon peeking through one of the
upper windows.
The old man gave the moon an
unsentimental glance and, out of long habit, looked for his
shadow.
For several moments, he searched the
dark marble floor in vain. A wave of panic crept up his throat and
tightened like icy fingers. Had he finally died and not quite
noticed?
No, there lay the shadow, thin and
bent and so faint as to be almost imperceptible.
He blew out a sigh and collapsed
onto a bench. Rhendish, the adept who owned this manor, had placed
the bench here for those who wished to contemplate a row of
portraits—famous alchemists ranging from ancient Palanir to last
century's giant, the lost prodigy Avidan Insa'Amid. Rhendish did
not include his own likeness in this august company, but a careful
observer could not fail to note that a space had been
left.
The old man rocked to his feet,
tottered, and caught himself on the iron bars surrounding one of
the displays. When he regained his balance, he found himself
face-to-face with three desiccated imps.
He blinked, certain that age and
moonlight conspired to mock him. But no, the vision remained.
Rhendish changed the displays of curiosities frequently, and for
some reason he saw fit to exhibit the monstrous servants Sevrin's
sorcerer lord had used up many years ago.
The surge of kinship the man felt to
these withered fiends surprised him. But then, old age always comes
as a surprise, and never did he feel so old as when he contemplated
the remnants of Eldreath's reign. Fewer and fewer of Sevrin's
people truly remembered that time.
He
remembered it. He remembered it all too well.
The crash and tinkle of breaking
glass came from a room across the courtyard, a faint sound carried
by night winds and lingering magic. Red light flared in the adept's
workroom.
Curious, he made his way to
Rhendish's workroom, moving through passages unknown to most of the
manor's servants. In a few moments he emerged from the hidden
byways into one of the workroom's curtained alcoves. He edged aside
the heavy drapes to watch and listen.
The curtain on a nearby alcove had
been swept aside to reveal a long, narrow skeleton, a macabre work
of art rendered in pale pink crystal. Before the alcove stood a
fair-haired man, his attention focused on the elf woman sitting on
a tall chair with an attached table. The arm propped by this table
had been sliced open to reveal not bones but slim metal bars and an
intricate mesh of clockwork gears.
"I will restore your sword arm now,”
Rhendish said. “The rest you will have to earn.”
The elf stared at him with
unreadable eyes. For long moments, the only sound in the room was
the soft
plink
of
blood dripping through the table drain to the basin
below.
The old man studied the elf's face,
wondering what lay behind those winter-gray eyes. Once, he might
have felt her intent as clearly as he experienced his own. He might
have known how she would respond. He might have been able to
anticipate—
The elf leaped from the chair and
snatched a knife from Rhendish's work table. She lunged at the
adept.
Rhendish lifted one hand in a swift,
sharp gesture. The elf slammed to a stop as if she'd run into an
invisible wall.
The weapon dropped from her hand.
She fell to her knees, but her eyes never left Rhendish's
face.
Clanking footsteps grew closer,
louder. Four clockwork guards marched into the workroom. Neither
elf nor adept broke their fierce stare. The guards faltered and
froze in mid-strike, adding a sense of tightly coiled menace to the
grim tableau.
The old man could neither see nor
sense magic, but he could not fail to perceive the silent battle
that raged between the elf and the adept.
He knew a frisson of alarm. Oh, he
had no doubt who would prevail, but the battle itself was
worrisome. It proved the elf knew Rhendish's deepest secret: The
adept was a sorcerer as well as an alchemist. Not much of a
sorcerer, perhaps, but then, after ten years of alchemical
experimentation and clockwork "improvements," the elf wasn't much
of an elf, either.
Still, he had to admire a
stubbornness that outlived flesh and memory. The things the elf had
withstood over the past ten years should have broken her mind and
killed her a dozen times over. Even now, with her face as bloodless
as moonlight on snow and her arm sliced down to her metallic bones,
she put up a struggle that raised beads of sweat on Rhendish's
brow.
The old man looked around for the
source of the crash. This was an alchemist's lab, and spills could
be deadly. Shards of glass littered the floor just beyond the
alcove, but thankfully no stain marred the carpet, and no
alchemical stench rose from the shards.
Old bones creaked as he stooped for
a closer view. His eyes narrowed as he noted a shard of glass
clinging to a familiar looking hilt. He slid one hand under the
curtain and grasped the hilt.
As he lifted it, a blood-red drop
fell from the shard and stained the hem of his tunic. He lifted the
fabric to sniff. Blood, yes, but mixed with something else,
something acrid and complex and certainly alchemical in
origin.
He brought the glass blade closer to
his face. The break was smooth and regular, as if it traced a
natural weakness in the blade. It looked like the curve of a rose
petal.
Suddenly he knew where he'd seen
this hilt before.
He looked at the elf with deepening
concern. She'd substituted a glass dagger for the Thorn, an ancient
elfin dagger rumored to be the conduit for magic that lay beyond
the ambitions of wizards and the imagination of storyspinners. The
substitution was a clever trick, but it required more than
cleverness. It required the services of both a skilled weapon smith
and a talented alchemist.
Rhendish knew about the dwarf in Fox
Winterborn's band of thieves. He'd held the dwarf prisoner for a
short time. The old man wondered what Rhendish would do if he knew
that one of his fellow alchemists had thrown in with the City
Fox.
This was grim news indeed. The Fox
might be dead, but rebellions could be fueled by martyrs. Any man
canny enough to become an alchemist would know this.
A clatter of metal drew the old
man's attention back to the workroom. Every clockwork guard had
dropped to one knee. Moving as one, they lifted mailed fists and
thumped them to their chests in an unmistakable—and very
elfin—gesture of fealty.
“Release him, sister-self,” the elf
said.
The old man followed her gaze and
clapped one hand over his mouth to stifle his cry.
Rhendish's eyes bulged. His lips had
turned an unhealthy shade of blue. His hands tugged at the long
crystal fingers wrapped round his throat.
At the elf's command, the crystal
arms dropped to the skeleton’s sides. The gentle chiming of bone
against bone sounded like distant, faintly mocking
laughter.
The silence that followed was broken
only by Rhendish’s rasping breaths. Uncertainty twisted his
handsome features, but his face did not show the fear that would
come with true understanding.
The old man understood all too
well.
Twenty years ago, Sevrin had risen
up against their sorcerer lord. For twenty years, the Council of
Adepts had been waging a quieter war on magic. If the other adepts
learned Rhendish's secret, if they knew that one of the seven most
powerful men on Sevrin's islands was a sorcerer, they would join
forces against him and drag him out to sea. They would find the
biggest glacier within a tenday sail, and they would use weapons
not seen since the defeat of Eldreath to melt a hole in that
glacier twenty fathoms deep. Then they would drop the sorcerer into
this hole and stand guard until it froze over.
Unless, of course, they could think
of a more unpleasant and decisive ending.
The details didn't matter. Rhendish
was powerful, but he didn't stand a chance against the combined
might of his fellow adepts.
There was but one solution: Remove
the other adepts before they could learn what the elf
knew.
It did not occur to the old man to
kill the elf. She would die, of course, but not before she led him
to the Thorn.
Nimbolk's gaze swept the clearing,
looking for anything that might explain his unease.
All seemed to be in order. New snow
blanketed the Starsingers Grove, and a jeweled night sky bore
witness to the midwinter tribunal. Elves clad in nightfall blue
stood about in small groups, talking softly as they awaited the
queen's call to order. Tonight they would learn who had triggered
the Thorn's alarm and pass judgment on the traitor they'd sought
for many years.
A slim hand rested on his sword arm.
He looked down into the serene white face of the Forest
Queen.
"You are as restless as caged cats,"
she said. "Are you uneasy without a sword at hand, or are you
contemplating your reunion with my sister?"
"The two feelings are not
unrelated," he said in a dry tone.
Asteria, Lady of Mistheim and queen
of the forest folk, responded with an inelegant snort. Her
amusement soon faded, and with it, her resemblance to the warrior
who was her twin-born sister.
Most elves would say Asteria and
Ziharah were as alike as two raindrops. Nimbolk, who from his
boyhood had worshipped the future queen and wrestled in the leaves
and mud with her sister, saw no resemblance beyond a similar shape
of face and feature.
Asteria dressed all in white and
wore her hair long and loose, as befitted a queen. The snow-colored
waves fell nearly to the ground, more lustrous than the fine white
fur of her cloak. She had delicate hands and the wise, deep gaze of
one who heard the echo of ancient voices in the starsong they all
shared.
Grace
. That
was Asteria's shadow-name, the word that, in all its meanings, best
described her essence. Asteria embodied elegance, beauty, charm,
and divine favor.
Her twin possessed a sterner nature.
A warrior to her bones, she'd been named Queen's Champion at an age
when most elves were still learning runes and forest lore. She'd
earned the honor. Nimbolk couldn't deny this, even though he'd come
out the loser in this particular competition. And he had to admit
the role suited her, as did her shadow-name: