Rise Of Empire (29 page)

The ruins of Amberton Lee stood splintered on the hilltop. Pillars, steps of marble, and slab walls lay fractured and fallen. Only three trees stood near the summit of the barren hill, all of them dead, leafless corpses, like the rest of the ruins, still standing long after their time.

“There’s a fire up there, but I only see Arista,” Royce said.

“Bait?”

“Probably. Give me a head start. Maybe I can free her before they know something is up. If nothing else, I should spring whatever trap is waiting and then hopefully you can rush in and save the day.”

It bothered Royce how quiet the hill was. He could hear the distant snorting and hoofing of horses and the crackle of the campfire, but nothing else. They had raced as fast as their horses could manage, and still Royce was afraid they would be too late. When riding, he had been certain she was dead.
Now he was confused. There was no doubt that the woman near the fire was Arista.

So where is Etcher? Where are those they intended to meet?

He crept carefully, slipping nimbly around a holly tree and up the slope. Half-buried stones and tilted rocks lay hidden beneath grass and thorns, making the passage a challenge. He circled once and found no sentries or movement.

He climbed higher and happened upon two bodies. The men were dead, yet still warm to the touch—more than warm, they felt … hot. There were no wounds, no blood. Royce proceeded up the last of the hill, advancing on the flickering fire. The princess sat huddled near it, quietly staring into the flames. She was alone and lacked even her travel bags.

“Arista?” he whispered.

She looked up lazily, drunkenly, as if her head weighed more than it should. The glow of the fire spilled across her face. Her eyes appeared red and swollen. A welt stood out on one of her cheeks.

“It’s Royce. You all right?”

“Yes,” she replied. Her voice sounded distant and weak.

“Are you alone?”

She nodded.

He stepped into the firelight and waited. Nothing happened. A light summer breeze gently brushed the hill’s grass and breathed on the flames. Above them, the stars shone, muted only by the white moon, which cast nighttime shadows. Arista sat with the stillness of a statue, except for the hairbrush she turned over and over in her hands. As tranquil as the scene appeared, Royce’s senses were tense. This place made him uneasy. The odd marble blocks, toppled and broken, rose out of the ground like teeth. Once more he wondered if somehow he was tapping into his elven heritage, sensing more than could be seen, feeling a memory lost in time.

He caught sight of movement down the slope and spotted Hadrian climbing toward them. He watched him pause for a moment near the bodies before continuing up.

“Where’s Etcher?” Royce asked the princess.

“He left. He was paid by Luis Guy to bring me here, to deliver me to some men.”

“Yeah. We found that out a bit late. Sorry.”

The princess did not look well. She was too quiet. He expected anger or relief, but her stillness was eerie. Something had happened—something bad. Besides the welt, there was no sign of abuse. Her clothes were intact. There were no rips or tears. He spotted several blades of dead grass and a brown leaf tangled in her hair.

“You all right?” Hadrian asked as he crested the hill. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head and one of the bits of grass fell out.

Hadrian crouched down next to her. “Are you sure? What happened?”

Arista did not answer. She stared at the fire and started to rock.

“What happened to the men down on the hill?” Hadrian asked Royce.

“Wasn’t me. They were dead when I found them. No wounds either.”

“But how—”

“I killed them,” Arista said.

They both turned and stared at her.

“You killed two Seret Knights?” Royce asked.

“Were they seret?” Arista muttered.

“They have broken-crown rings,” Royce explained. “There’s no wound on either body. How did you kill them?”

She started trembling, her breaths drawn in staggered bursts. Her hand went to her cheek, rubbing it lightly with her
fingertips. “They attacked me. I—I couldn’t think of—I didn’t know what to do. I was so scared. They were going to—and I was alone. I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t hide. All I could do was make them sneeze and boil water. I didn’t have a choice. It was all I could do.” She began sobbing.

Hadrian tentatively reached toward her. She dropped the brush and took his hands, squeezing them tightly. She pulled at him and he wrapped his arms around her while she buried her face into the folds of his shirt. He gently stroked her hair.

Hadrian looked up at Royce with a puzzled expression and whispered, “She made them sneeze to death?”

“No,” Royce said, glancing back over his shoulder in the direction of the bodies. “She boiled water.”

“I didn’t know—I didn’t know if it would really work,” she whispered between hitching breaths. “I—I had to change it. Switch the focus. Fill in the blanks on my own—invent a whole new spell. I was only guessing, but—but it felt right. The pieces fit. I felt them fit—I
made
them fit.”

Arista lifted her head, wiped her eyes, and looked down the slope of the hill. “They screamed for a very long time. They were on the ground—writhing. I—I tried to stop it then, but I didn’t know how and they just kept—they kept on screaming, their faces turning so red. They rolled around on the ground and clawed the dirt, they cried and their screams—they—they got quieter and quieter, then they didn’t make any noise except—except they were hissing—hissing and I could see steam rising from their skin.”

Tears continued to slip down her cheeks as she looked up at them. Hadrian wiped her face.

“I’ve never killed anyone before.”

“It’s okay,” Hadrian told her, stroking the back of her head
and clearing away the remainder of the grass and leaves. “You didn’t want to do it.”

“I know. It’s just—just that I’ve never killed anyone before, and you didn’t hear them. It’s horrible, like part of me was dying with them. I don’t know how you do it, Royce. I just don’t know.”

“You do it by realizing that if the situation was reversed and they succeeded, they wouldn’t be crying.”

Hadrian slipped a finger under her chin and tilted her face. He cleared the hair stuck to her cheeks and brushed his thumbs under her eyes. “It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault. You did what you had to. I’m just sorry I wasn’t here for you.”

Arista looked into his eyes for a moment, then nodded and took a clear deep breath and wiped her nose. “I’m really ruining your impression of me, aren’t I? I get drunk, I wolf down food, I think nothing of sharing a room with you, and now I …”

“You’ve nothing to be ashamed of,” Hadrian told her. “I only wish more princesses were as worthy of their title as you.”

Royce made another survey of the hill and a thorough check of the seret, their horses, and their gear. He found symbol-emblazoned tunics, confirming their knightly identities, and a good-sized bag of gold, but no documents of any sort. He pulled the saddle and bridle off one horse and let it go.

“There’s only the two?” Hadrian asked when he returned. “I expected more.” He stirred the coals of the fire with a stick, brightening the hilltop. Arista looked better. She was eating a bit of cheese. Her face was washed, her hair brushed. She certainly was showing more resilience than he had expected.

“Gives you a whole new respect for Etcher, doesn’t it?” Royce said.

“How do you mean?”

“He never planned to bring all of us here, just her. He’s a lot brighter than I gave him credit for.”

“He wasn’t too smart,” Arista told them. “The seret cheated him out of thirty gold Luis Guy had promised.”

“So this was Guy’s operation, not Merrick’s,” Hadrian said.

“Not sure,” Royce responded. “Seems too sophisticated for Guy, but Merrick’s plans don’t fail.” He looked at the princess. “Of course, not even Merrick could have anticipated what she did.”

Hadrian stood up and threw away the stick, then looked at the princess. “You gonna be okay? Can you ride?”

She nodded rapidly and followed it with a sniffle. “I was pretty scared—really missed you two. You have no idea—no idea how happy I am to see you again.” She blew her nose.

“I get that from a lot of women,” Hadrian replied, grinning. “But I’ll admit, you’re the first princess.”

She managed a slight smile. “So what do we do now? I haven’t a clue where we are, and I’m pretty sure there isn’t any meeting with Gaunt.”

“There could be,” Royce said. “But Cosmos doesn’t know where we are to tell us. I’m sure Etcher never carried any message about Hintindar back to Colnora. I should have told Price before we left, but I didn’t want to take chances. Just stupid, really. I was being too cautious.”

“Well, you know I’m not going to argue,” Hadrian told him. “It was withholding information that got us into this.”

Arista looked at Royce questioningly.

“I told him,” Royce said.

“No bruises?” she asked. “Not even a black eye?”

“We never got that far, but maybe later when we have more time,” Hadrian said. “Turned out we had to hurry to save a woman who didn’t need saving.”

“I’m real glad you did.”

“We should head to Ratibor,” Royce said. “We aren’t too far. We can reestablish connection with the Diamond there.”

“Ratibor?”
Hadrian said suddenly.

“Yeah, you know, dirty, filthy rat hole—the capital of Rhenydd? We’ve seen where you grew up, so we might as well stop by my hometown as well.”

Hadrian started searching his clothing. “Hunting a boar!” he exclaimed as he pulled out the note from his father. He rushed toward the firelight. “‘A king and his knight went hunting a boar; a rat and his friends were hunting for lore.’ A rat and a boar—Ratibor! The king and his knight are my father and the heir, who must have traveled to Ratibor and were attacked by lore hunters.” Hadrian pointed over his shoulder in the direction of the dead men. “Seret.”

“What’s the rest of it?” Royce asked, intrigued.

“‘Together they fought, till one was alive. The knight sadly wept; no king had survived.’”

“So they fought, but only your father survived the battle and the heir was killed.”

“No king had survived,” Hadrian said. “An odd way to put that, isn’t it? Why not say ‘The king died’?”

“Because it doesn’t rhyme?” Royce suggested.

“Good point.”

“What comes next?” Arista asked.

“‘The answers to riddles, to secrets and more, are found in the middle of Legends and Lore.’”

“There’s more to the story, apparently,” she said, “and you can find the answers in ancient lore? Maybe you should ask Arcadius.”

“I think not,” Royce said. “There’s a street in Ratibor called Legends Avenue and another named Lore Street.”

“Do they intersect?”

Royce nodded. “Just a bit south of Central Square.”

“And what’s there?”

“A church, I think.”

“Royce is right. We need to get to Ratibor,” Hadrian announced.

Arista stood up. “Trust me, I’m more than ready to leave this place. When I—” She stopped herself. “When I used the Art, I sensed something unpleasant. It feels …”

“Haunted,” Royce provided, and she nodded.

“What is this place?” Royce asked Hadrian.

“I don’t know.”

“It’s only a few miles from where you grew up.”

Hadrian shrugged. “Folks in Hintindar never talked about it much. There are a few ghost stories and rumors of goblins and ghouls that roam the woods, that kind of thing.”

“Nothing about what it was?”

“There was a children’s rhyme I remember, something like,

Ancient stones upon the Lee,
dusts of memories gone we see.
Once the center, once the all,
lost forever, fall the wall.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Hadrian shrugged again. “We used to sing it when playing Fall-the-Wall—it’s a kids’ game.”

“I see,” Royce lied.

“Whatever it used to be, I don’t like it,” Arista declared.

Royce nodded. “It almost makes me look forward to Ratibor—almost.”