The Outlaw King: The Line of Kings Trilogy Book One (16 page)
Read The Outlaw King: The Line of Kings Trilogy Book One Online
Authors: Craig Saunders
The
Hierophant passed a sordid minute with the Guryon, which refused the price. The
reek of failure and the stench of death still hung around it.
He
sent for Jenin to test the veracity of the Guryon’s claims, that the man it
sought, and the line of kings, could no longer be scryed by magical means.
He
had never heard of the Guryon refusing to accept the price. The line of kings
was hidden from it by some means even the Guryon did not understand. He
understood the Guryon’s words, but sometimes even the soulless had plans of
their own. He could not rule out the possibility that the Guryon wanted the
Hierarchy exterminated, and so let their doom live. The realms of possibility
when dealing with the Guryon were endless.
The
Hierophant waited, staring at the clouds moving outside his window, until the
suns set and evening’s glow rose, unappreciated by his eyes, to spread across
the sky. Still Jenin did not come.
*
Jenin
took a long pull on the pipe, allowing his gaze to waver from the glowing
embers in the bowl. The thick smoke burned his eyes – it still made his eyes
water, even after all these years.
The
smoke was sweet. It hung around his face. He breathed it in through his nose
and his mouth then turned his red-rimmed, mottled grey eyes to the tallow
candle burning before him. He tipped the still-burning weed from the pipe bowl
and focused on the candle, until he could no longer see the candle, just the
orange haze around it. While he stared, light turned to darkness.
The
darkness grew, and he fell.
He
tumbled through the planes, through worlds and the hearts of creatures that
lived in the space among the stars. He could see the lives and deaths of
cosmos played out against the blackness, and then he was through, below the
worlds and the gloom upon which they sat. Underneath him, the lines of all life
in every universe swam like eels in a sea made of time.
Jenin’s
soul form swam to join them, seeking one path from the infinite. He found what
he knew of the form from previous visits to the sea of life, and after an age
(to Jenin’s body it would be a matter of hours – time within time was a strange
concept that defied all attempts at quantification) found the line. He followed
it, expecting it to still flow, but as he sought the line’s end, something
outside his experience occurred. Before his eyes the line that had been black
but for those that intersected it exploded with all the force of a sun, and
where one line flowed there were now thousands of every hue – millions –
running throughout time, far into the distant future, like an endless rainbow
chasing the rain.
To
a seer, the lines of fate appear as a random, insane sketch, life lines
pencilled crazily upon the fabric of time. But fate was always fickle, and many
lines joined and swirled around each other as mortals came and went and loved
and met and changed on a whim. Some lines were thicker than others. Those lines
necessarily touched more lives, and those touching lives were altered, their
courses veering off into the future at strange angles, sometimes becoming
longer, or thicker, or shorter themselves.
One
line stood thick above all others, and split many futures.
It
seemed as though the line died and that those around it became thicker instead.
The line disappeared, but some could see that it lived on in the others it
touched. Where it touched on other lives, those lives became somehow more
substantial, and they continued for many years. Those lines affected branched
into other lines, and sometimes, they converged again, only to spread and meet
through the ages.
No
one could tell time while entangled within the web of fate, but these lines
went on far into the futures.
Jenin
blinked and found the candle sputtering before it died.
The
line was endless, as if the king had died and been reincarnated in every soul
in Sturma.
The
line would live forever. To kill the line, the Hierarchy would have to
exterminate everyone living in Sturma, or find the line hidden within theirs.
Even the Hierarchy could not do such a thing.
*
Chapter
Forty-Six
The
weeks after Tarn left passed slowly for Rena. A new feeling, an ache she was
unaccustomed to, never left her, even when she curled on her bed, trying to
seek the solace of sleep.
Each
day, she begged and pleaded with her mother and Tulathia. Seek him, she cried,
bring him back, or keep him safe. Tulathia told her that she would not be able
to see the boy, but Rena stubbornly refused to believe it. She was still a
child in many respects. She would not believe it because she wanted so badly to
know he lived. She did not know this feeling, this crumbling reason, because
she had never been heartbroken before.
But
this day, Tulathia relented. Rena watched carefully while the old witch sought
out the owner of her heart with her mind’s eye.
Tulathia
opened her eyes and smiled at Rena. On the old witch’s face the smile warped,
her cheeks sunken where she missed her teeth, but Rena knew her intentions were
good.
‘The
soldiers are gone, girl. Tarn will be long away by now, and they will not find
trace of you or him. We are free from worry, for now.’
‘I
will never be free of worry. Not until he comes back to me. Did you see him?’
‘Peace,
girl. I cannot see that which is not there. Accept that which is given freely
with good grace. He is gone, and that is the best I can do.’
Rena
took a deep breath, shaking her head.
‘I
am sorry, old mother. I just…’
‘I
know. But there is no trail and Tarn is a child of the forest. He is safe.’
‘Thank
you for what you have done.’
Finally,
she felt calmness descend over her, with its warm arms and soft touch. She
wondered if the old witch had something to do with the feeling, but the old
witch merely watched her. She shook off her suspicions.
‘Where
is Tarn now?’
‘I
cannot see such things. I don’t think anyone can. Still, perhaps you can. One
day. You have a closer tie than me.’
‘I
would see the future as you have seen it.’
‘You
don’t want much, do you?’
‘Well,
can I see Tarn’s future?’
‘Of
course. If you close your eyes, rub very hard and then open your eyes and stare
directly at the sun while smoking seer’s grass, you could see – a pale
reflection of the patterns that make up fate’s great mosaic. To know the future
is impossible, child, perhaps even for a god. The children of many a god have
died and been forgotten since the last cataclysm, and a million more before
that. No, Rena, there is no way to discern the future, just to see the ghost of
futures that could be, floating in space like spirits before the gates.’
Rena
huffed and pushed herself up from the floor. ‘I am going to help mother with
the washing.’
‘Perhaps
one day you will not be rebuffed so easily,’ laughed the old witch. She tutted
as the girl walked out. It’s not her fault, thought Tulathia. She is but a
child herself.
A
child, in love with another child. She spared a thought for Tarn. Whatever the
girl was going through would be nothing compared to Tarn’s trials. Winter would
come soon enough, even though now it was less than a memory, hiding in the
frozen north, sleeping and gaining strength. She knew well enough that there
would be no warm embrace for the young warrior for many years to come.
But,
she mused, creaking as she pushed herself off the floor, at least he’s got young
bones.
She
opened the front door to her home, as she had come to think of it. She sniffed
the air and poked her tongue out. Winter would be hard, of that she was sure.
She could feel it in the wind, smell it in the trees.
‘Take
what warmth you can, young man,’ she told the wind.
She
huffed and closed the door behind her, returning to the fire.
*
Survival
was a trick, a set of the mind, nothing more. If you had the knowledge of where
to look, and did not mind being unkempt, or eating bugs, you could live in most
climes. Survival in the forest, for one with a childhood such as Tarn’s, was no
great feat, just a matter for the mind. The body would follow.
No
matter how much he longed for a stew, or a pasty, or even unsweetened porridge,
game would suffice. Wherever there was a lack of meat on the hoof, or wing,
Tarn foraged and scraped at bark for the grubs that lived there. He ate well
most nights, and walked throughout the day. He put many miles between himself
and the home of his heart. Home was a luxury he could no longer afford. He
would take the memory of it only on his long journey, and even that was burden
enough to bear. He travelled hard every day, and made a cold bed every night,
never risking a fire while people were nearby. He skirted villages, even though
he longed for hot food, ate raw meat, and slowly, stubbornly, made his way
north.
Eventually
he deemed himself far enough from his old home that he began to risk cooking
over an open fire. He had grown so accustomed to Molly’s cooking that for the
first few weeks he found himself hungry despite the fare, and weak early on
from a sparse amount of meat that he caught, and lately from an endless diet of
spit-roast rabbit and bark-baked mirs.
Vegetables
were rare in the woods, but mushrooms were plentiful, as were tubers, and
autumn berries could be found. Tarn counted himself lucky. He knew how to
forage. Silently, on the long flight, he thanked his father and wished he were
still by his side to share in the hunt.
Tarn
thought back to the first time he tried to make a fire, under his father’s
unforgiving eye.
That
night they had slept in a cold camp, his father refusing to light a fire if his
son could not. Tarn vowed never again. He did, he realised, miss Gard more than
his real father, and for that he was sad.
He
missed Rena’s ready smile and soft, warm touch also, and as he stared at the
fire growing in the kindling, wondered what she did while he sat all alone,
with the evening cold growing all around him.
Soon
the snows would come, and Tarn knew from bitter experience how much he would
miss all that warmth.
Eventually
the fire took. The fire was colourful, the rabbit bland.
He
ate with no passion. Sadness bore heavily on him, as it did each night of his
exile. He set thoughts of revenge aside while his heart was weak from loss,
the loss of his second parents, their cold murder, the loss of his home, all
unforgiving and hard injuries to bear. He was too caught up in his own sorrows
to spare much thought for the future. He did not think of all he must do to
return to his life, again, to return to Rena, in whom all his remaining love
and hope lived. He did not think of the death of the Thane, or Tulathia’s
visions of the future. He was, in short, swallowed whole in a deep depression.
During the day he could walk to forget, and set it aside. Yet at night the very
air clouded with despair from which he could not escape, as if the cloud
followed him at a slower pace, and could only catch him when he rested.
The
fire grew low, the bones of the skinny rabbit were buried, and Tarn rolled
himself upon the floor to sleep, and hoped that his dreams would keep him warm.
He prayed for dreams of Rena, and her tender arms.
Deer
barked in the depths of the woods, and wolves howled. Sometime during the night
a short-sighted badger wandered close to the camp. Perhaps sensing the fleeting
warmth of the fire it turned around and returned into the cold woods. Badgers
did not like the smell of humans, but were eternally curious.
Tarn
awoke and stretched out next to the embers of the night’s fire. He dreamt that
his father, in a crown made of some dull, heavy metal with a silvery sheen,
refused him permission to wed a witch who he loved. The dream made him feel sad
upon waking, but he brushed the feeling aside. What could his father know of
witches?
It
was, after all, just a dream.
*