He paused at the door and didn’t turn. Waiting.

“What I have to do would have been easier with you at my side but I will do it nevertheless. And I will tolerate no obstacle. Believe me when I say I should hate us to be enemies.”

He glanced back at her. “Thank you for showing me your garden, Highness.”

She inclined her head and turned her gaze back to the sky. He was dismissed. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen, bathed in moonlight. It was a truly captivating sight, one he found himself fervently wishing he never saw again.

Part III

It pleases me to report the excellent progress made by Lord Al Hestian’s command in recent months. Many Deniers have paid the appropriate price for their heresy or fled the forest in fear of their lives. The spirits of the men are high, rarely have I encountered soldiers so enthused by their cause.

Brother Yallin Heltis, Fourth Order, letter to Aspect Tendris Al Forne during the Martishe forest campaign. Fourth Order Archives.

Verniers’ Account

He had fallen silent as my quill continued its fevered track across the parchment. About me lay the ten scrolls I had filled with his story. Outside night had descended and our only illumination came from a single lantern swaying from a deck beam above our heads. My wrist ached from hours of writing and my back was strained with hunching over the barrel on which I had chosen to rest my papers. I scarcely noticed.

“Well?” I prompted.

His face was sombre in the dim glow of the lantern, his expression distant. I had to speak again before he roused himself.

“I’m thirsty,” he said, reaching for the flask the captain had allowed him to fill from the water barrel. “Haven’t said more than a few words a day for five years. My throat hurts.”

I put my quill down and rested my aching spine on the hull. “Did you see her again?” I asked. “The princess.”

“No. I expect she had no use for me since I refused her plan.” He lifted the flask to his mouth, drinking deep. “But her fame grew over the years, the legend of her beauty and her kindness spread far and wide. Often she was seen in the poorer quarters of the city and the wider Realm, giving alms to the needy, providing funds for new schools and Fifth Order sick houses. Many nobles courted her but she refused them all. There was talk that the King was angry with her for failing to wed a conveniently powerful husband but she defied his will, though it pained her greatly.”

“You think she still waits for you?” The tragedy of it stirred my writer’s soul. “That she mends her broken heart with good deeds, knowing that only this will win your approval. Although, for all she knows you have been dead these past five years.”

The look he gave me was one of amused incredulity. After a moment he began to laugh. He had a deep, rich laugh. A laugh that was both loud and, on this occasion, very lengthy.

“One day, my lord,” he said when his mirth had subsided. “If your gods curse you, you may get to meet Princess Lyrna. If you do, take my advice and run very fast in the opposite direction. Your heart, I think, she would find far too easy to crush.”

He tossed the water flask to me. I drank quickly, hoping it disguised my anger. Everything he had told me about the princess bespoke a woman of intelligence and duty, a woman who wished to honour her father and serve her people. I suspected I could find much to discuss with such a woman.

“She hasn’t wed because a husband would be a shackle for her,” Vaelin Al Sorna told me. “She does good deeds to curry favour with the common folk. Win their hearts and she wins power. If she has a heart then it’s power that stirs it, not passion.”

Silently I resolved to make my own researches into the life of Princess Lyrna. The more this Northman told me the greater my compulsion to travel to his homeland. Although I suspected he had little appreciation for the artistry and learning evident in the culture he described, I lusted for it. I wanted to read the books in the Great Library and view Master Benril Lenial’s frescos of the Red Hand. I wanted to see the ancient stones of the Circle where he had spilled the blood of three men. We had thought the people of the Unified Realm little more than illiterate savages, and in truth, many of their warriors had been just that. But now I could see there was more to their story than simple barbarism and war lust. In a few short hours I had learned more of his realm than in all the years of study for my history of the war. He had kindled something in me, the desire to write another history, greater and richer than all my previous work. A history of his realm.

“Did the King keep his promise?” I asked. “Did he impose his justice and save the woman in the Blackhold?”

“The men I named were executed the next day. The woman and her son were packed off to the Northern Reaches within the week.” He paused, he face heavy with sorrow. “I went to see her before she left, Erlin arranged the meeting. I begged her for forgiveness. She spat at me and called me a murderer.”

I took up my quill and wrote down his words, taking the liberty of exchanging “spat at me” with “cursed me with all the power of her Denier gods.” I like to add a little colour where I can.

“And your part of the bargain?” I continued. “Did you do what the King had commanded? Did you kill Linden Al Hestian?”

He looked down at his hands resting on his knees, flexing the fingers, the veins and sinews standing out clearly amidst the scars. Killer’s hands, I thought knowing they could choke the life from me in a few seconds.

“Yes,” he said. “I killed him.”

Chapter 1

A Cumbraelin longbow was over five feet long when unstrung and fashioned from the heart-wood of a yew tree. It could propel an arrow over two hundred paces, almost three hundred in skilled hands, and was quite capable of piercing plate armour at close range. The one Vaelin held was slightly thicker than most, the smoothness of the stave evidence of the extensive use it had seen. Its owner had a keen eye, sending his steel tipped arrow clean through the armoured chest of one Martil Al Jelnek, an affable young noble with a fondness for poetry and a somewhat tiresome inclination to talk constantly about his betrothed who he claimed to be the fairest and kindest maid in all of Asrael, if not the world. Sadly, he would never see her again. His eyes were open but had lost all vestige of life. His mouth was stained with blood and vomit, the signs of a painful death; Cumbraelin archers tended to coat their arrowheads in a mixture of joffril root and adder venom. The bow’s owner lay a few yards away with Vaelin’s shaft in his arm, his neck broken by the fall from the birch in which he had hidden.

“Nothing,” Barkus said, trudging through the snow, flanked by Caenis and Dentos. “Looks like he was the only one.” He kicked the dead archer’s head, making it swivel on a twisted spine, before kneeling to divest the corpse of any valuables.

“Where’d all the soldiers go?” Dentos asked.

“Scattered,” Vaelin said. “Probably find most of them in the camp when we get back.”