Kitabı oku: «The Valisar Trilogy»

1

Though the two men walked side by side they looked anything but companionable.

‘Did you feel it?’ the younger one asked.

Greven didn’t want to admit it but there was no point in hiding much from Piven these days. While his mind was essentially his own, his actions were not. It didn’t matter how hard he fought the bonding magic, it had him completely at its mercy. ‘I felt it,’ he said, gruff and disinterested.

‘And what do you think it is?’

‘Why are you concerning yourself with what I think? I just do as I’m told.’

‘Is this how it’s going to be from now on, Greven?’

‘What did you expect?’

Piven made a soft scolding sound, clicking his tongue. ‘And I can remember not so long ago your telling me just how much you loved me and wanted to protect me.’

‘I did. But my love was given freely then. And I had two hands then. And I didn’t know what you were then.’

‘And what am I? No, don’t, let me say it for you. A monster? Is that the right word?’ When Greven said nothing, Piven continued, ‘Because I really haven’t changed that much, you know. I still love you, Greven. I always have.’

‘You once loved your brother.’

‘Ah, but you haven’t deserted me as my brother has. He must pay for that.’

‘Your sister had no choice in her desertion.’

‘This is true,’ Piven admitted, slapping at some tall grasses at the side of the Tomlyn road. ‘She was helpless. But she is helpless no longer, and you know as well as I she will try to destroy me now. That disturbance we just felt was likely none other than her returning home.’

Greven was genuinely startled. ‘I felt the disturbance but hadn’t given it much thought … of course you’re right. Are you frightened?’

Piven threw him a wry glance. ‘No,’ he replied with a gentle scoff. ‘I have you.’ He pointed to where the main road forked. ‘We go left to the capital.’

‘Let’s go right, Piven. Let’s head south, keep you safe.’

‘I am safe. You are here.’

‘I think you are depending on me too much.’

‘But that’s the role of the aegis. To be entirely dependable. Come on,’ he said, increasing his speed. ‘And don’t claim fatigue; I know you don’t even feel it. That must be amazing. No need for food or water, rest or any form of sustenance.’

‘Does that not strike you as a living death?’

Piven smiled openly. ‘Not at all. It’s surely immortality. I envy you.’

‘Don’t. Just tell me why we are going to the capital, please.’

‘Ah yes,’ Piven said, a skip in his step as though he were enjoying their awkward journey. ‘I was saying that I am a loyalist and indeed a royalist. My family’s throne has been usurped. I intend that a Valisar will rule from that throne again.’

‘Then you should throw your support behind Leonel. Imagine what the pair of you could achieve together. The people would flock to the idea of the rightful heir trying to reclaim his throne.’

‘That is a nice thought, Greven, and I applaud your charming notion of fraternal harmony, but sadly Leo squandered his right to my support when he abandoned me to the tyrant.

I’m afraid I can’t forgive him. And besides, I’m not as sure as you of the people’s support. Life doesn’t seem to be so bad under Loethar. I can’t imagine Denovians will happily go to war again for a family they consider long dead.’

Once again Greven was struck by Piven’s maturity. The boy was nearing sixteen but carried himself like a man a decade older. It was deeply unnerving, particularly as just a few anni ago Piven had been so juvenile — charming, even — in his childishness.

‘In fact I would leave the whole ruling thing to Loethar,’ Piven continued expansively, ‘if he had not brutally stolen my father’s crown and were I not truly Valisar. No Valisar could let theft and murder of his own go unpunished.’

‘Well, what about your sister? Let her rule.’

Piven looked at Greven sideways. ‘Why would I? She is younger than me. We must do things properly, Greven,’ he admonished, as though explaining to a child. ‘If she wants to, she can fight me for the crown. Besides, we hail the Valisar kings down the ages. We have never bowed to a queen.’

‘There’s always a first time.’

‘She is a child, let’s not forget!’ Greven gave a grim gust of a laugh. Piven ignored it. ‘She will have no idea of how to rule at such a tender age. Frankly, I’m intrigued to see who has been protecting her and where she has been. Definitely not in the empire — if she has been, I would have sensed her long ago. No, Greven, this is why I think my sister is a threat: she is too young at ten to be making decisions for herself and so has been returned by someone who wishes to make use of her powers. We must ask ourselves who her the puppet master is.’

‘Her aegis perhaps?’ Greven offered, distaste flooding his mouth at the idea.

Piven shook his head. ‘No. Impossible. I doubt any aegis would freely offer himself. And if my sister — funny, I don’t even know her name — has been living a long way from here it’s unlikely that her aegis is aware of her or she of the aegis. I am guessing they are still to find each other.’

Greven silently acknowledged Piven’s grasp of situations. His cunning and agile mind had already thought through every scenario that could threaten him, it seemed. ‘Which makes her vulnerable.’

‘Exactly. I’m hoping to meet her long before she has that protection.’

‘So you plan to kill your siblings and the emperor?’

‘And all who support either. A Valisar will sit the Penraven throne again. I will make my father proud.’

‘Are you sure of that?’

Piven laughed. ‘Well, we’ll never know but I like to think so. My father was ruthless, Greven. You need to understand this fact. He adored his sons but he could still make some very hard decisions — he was able to leave Leo as a nemesis for Loethar and was comfortable leaving me to whatever fate dished up. He didn’t get much of a chance to love his daughter but he loved her enough to get her away so that she could offer up a challenge in the future. You see, everything for my father was about the Valisar name and duty. He was a good man, there’s no denying it, but in truth he was more ruthless than even Loethar.’

‘Whatever makes you say that?’ Greven asked, astonished.

‘Because if my father had been in Loethar’s shoes, he would not have hesitated to have killed me. He would not have taken a chance on letting any child associated with the throne live, whether it were an invalid or adopted or both. Loethar showed mercy — and now he will pay the price for his tenderness.’

‘Tenderness? You are jesting, aren’t you? The man has killed more Denovians than I care to think about.’

‘He killed his enemies, Greven; that’s very normal for a conquering ruler. But if you scrutinise what he did, he didn’t kill randomly. He killed opposing soldiers, and his only real targets were the royal families. He wanted no challengers. If people submitted, he did not punish or humiliate them. He didn’t even segregate them … unless they were Vested. If anything, Loethar has been a pioneer. He has not only unified the realms and their people into one cohesive empire but he has unified two diverse cultures and succeeded rather well at it. He’s actually far more impressive than my father.’

‘You shock me.’

‘Good. I’d hate to be predictable. Come on, I’m famished. I’m hoping there’s a village ahead because I’ve tired mightily of your stale bread and dry fruit.’

Greven paid no attention to his complaints. His mind had already begun to race as to how he could find and get a message to the Valisar girl.

A cold air bit at Evie’s cheeks. She heard birdsong, the rustle of leaves and the sounds of what was probably a stream, she realised. And then she heard Reg’s voice. ‘Take it slowly. Here, drink this,’ he urged gently.

Evie struggled to sit up, squinting open her eyes. ‘Reg?’

‘Hush, just drink.’

‘Is this more of your spiked —’

‘No. It is the cleanest, most beautiful water you’ve ever tasted. Trust me.’

She gave him a mirthless smile. ‘I’ve fallen for your trust me line before.’ She sipped and did indeed taste the sweetest of waters, chilled enough to make her gasp. ‘Are we alive?’

‘Very much so.’

She coughed once, blinked hard and forced herself to open her eyes fully. ‘And this isn’t a dream?’

He shook his head. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Confused. Bruised.’

‘I wasn’t trying to kill you.’

‘That’s not how it appeared.’

Reg sighed. Evie looked up to buy herself some time to think clearly. ‘What is this tree?’

He sighed again. ‘If you knew your trees,’ he said, with a tiny hint of admonishment in his tone, ‘you would probably know this as a wych elder. Here, they are known as wychwoods.’

‘Here?’ she said, looking around, noticing the stream she’d heard not very far away and mountains in the distance behind. ‘Where exactly is here, Reg?’

He sat down opposite her and she was surprised to note that the haunted expression her friend had always possessed — the one which seemed to speak so loudly to others that he should be left alone — was gone. In fact, Reg looked almost relaxed for the first time since she’d met him.

‘Here, Evie, is a place that was once known as the Denova Set. I have no idea if it still possesses that title. But if I’m not mistaken, I think this particular spot where we sit is at the base of a place called Lo’s Teeth, which is east of Gormond, west of Droste, south of Cremond, north of Dregon.’ His smile widened mischievously. ‘Does that help?’

She shook her head. ‘You’re making fun of me. Have you any idea how it feels to be me right now, wondering what the hell has just happened?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said sheepishly. ‘I haven’t lied to you. The place I have described is where I believe we are. This is woodland known as Whirlow and that stream, which has a name that I can’t remember right now, runs into Lake Aran, to the south.’

Evie was astonished to see moisture gather in his eyes. ‘Reg, are those tears?’ she asked. ‘I’ve never even seen you get misty.’

He wiped his cheeks. ‘It is good to be home, Evie. Are you hurt?’

‘I don’t believe so. But I don’t understand why not. Mind you, that query pales by comparison to my lack of understanding as to how we’re both not splattered across the pavement outside a city hospital right now. We leapt from a dozen storeys high!’

He allowed her anger to pass, looking down, saying nothing.

Evie gave a sound like a growl. ‘I need an explanation, Reg, or I am going to explode or kill you … make a choice.’

He didn’t smile. ‘Will you stay still and silent while I tell you everything that I can?’

‘Why does that sound as though I should leap up now and run screaming from you?’

He nodded. ‘You’re right — what I have to tell you is frightening. But you need to hear it and you need to hear it all, or nothing will make sense to you. I need your promise that you will listen until I’ve told you the whole story.’

Evie licked her lips. ‘You’d better start at page one!’

‘Indeed. I suppose the beginning is my name, which is not Reg. My name is Corbel.’

‘Corbel?’ she repeated, feeling anger starting to suffuse her confusion. ‘Not at all Reg-like!’

‘My father was Regor de Vis. I borrowed from his name.’

‘How convenient for —’

‘Be quiet. My father probably didn’t survive the rage of a man called Loethar, who hailed himself the king of the barbarian horde. He came from the east.’ Evie saw the pain on his face as he pointed. ‘The barbarians were from the plains, an area known as the Likurian Steppes. Loethar was a tyrant who murdered all in his wake. From what I could gather before I left, he was killing all the royals of the Set — that was a group of independent realms with common interests — and I suspect he left my king to the last. My father was the king’s right-hand man.’

‘What does that make you?’ she said, working hard to keep all sarcasm from her tone, knowing she needed to humour her friend. She could tell that, delusion or not, this story was incredibly hard for him to speak of.

‘It makes me the son of a high ranking noble and the twin brother of Gavriel de Vis.’

‘Twin?’

He nodded. ‘I was forced to leave my family.’

‘By whom?’

‘The king.’

Definitely delusional, Evie thought. Yet in her heart she couldn’t really believe it. She had never known a more sane person than Reg. Should she humour him now, call him Corbel? ‘King?’

‘King Brennus, eighth of the Valisars. We are from Penraven, which is southwest of here.’

It was all getting too much to keep clear in her mind. ‘Reg … er, Corbel, if you prefer —’

‘I do.’

She took a steadying breath. ‘Corbel, why are you telling me this? What does King Bran or whatever his name is —’

Now his gaze flashed angrily at her. ‘His name is Brennus and I served him faithfully.’

She was stung by the force in his voice. He had never taken such a tone with her before. ‘All right,’ she began again, calmly. ‘I want to know why I am here. What does all of what you’ve begun to tell me, including King Brennus, have to do with me?’

‘Plenty,’ he said flatly, eyeing her with a hard gaze. ‘This is the land where you were born. Your real name is Genevieve. You are a Valisar. And King Brennus is your father.’

She rocked back against the tree, stunned. Then in the silence that followed, which Reg clearly wasn’t going to fill, she hauled herself upright. She felt momentarily dizzy but the drug was wearing off and the water had helped. ‘Reg, this is not going any further. In fact —’

‘Look around you, Evie. Does anything look familiar? Smell familiar? Taste or sound familiar?’

She could feel pinpricks of perspiration and the hairs standing up at the back of her neck. She’d been trying to shut out all of the foreignness of where she was, hoping that as the drug wore off, so would the sense of dislocation. And while she couldn’t understand how they had not been splattered across concrete, her logical mindtold her that there had to be a rational explanation, no matter what insanity had taken over her friend. But it was true, nothing felt familiar. This didn’t feel like scenery from a world she knew; the air was cleaner, fresher and the land around them looked virgin.

Ignoring her silence, he continued, ‘None of it is familiar because we are no longer where you think we are. We have travelled through time and lands.’

‘You’re beginning to scare me, like you scared all the other people I used to defend you against.’

‘I never needed your defence.’

‘But still I gave it, because I loved you.’

He flinched as though slapped. ‘Evie, you’re going to have to trust me. Nothing you see from here on is going to be familiar to you. Hospitals don’t exist here, neither does any of the technology you have taken for granted. I know you think I’m crazy but I am all you have. And I promise you that I am sane.’

‘Why am I here?’ she demanded, her confusion mounting to the stirrings of panic.

‘I just told you. You were born here. I had to return you to your home.’

‘Return me? So you’d already taken me from it once … is that what you mean?’

‘Yes,’ he said, shocking her. ‘I took you from this world when you were a newborn.’

‘Twenty years ago?’

He shrugged. ‘Yes, but perhaps time passes differently in the world I took you to. How old do I appear to you?’

It was her turn to shrug. ‘I don’t know. I suppose beneath all that terrible beard and unruly hair you are in your late thirties, early forties. Why? How old did you hope to be?’

He nodded sadly. ‘I was just eighteen when I was given the task of taking you to safety.’

She needed to keep him talking while her mind tried to make some sense of what was going on. ‘So my father — the king,’ she said carefully, nodding at him to show that she was trying, ‘asked you, a young noble, to rush me away to safety from this Loethar fellow who was killing all the royals.’

‘Thank you for paying attention.’

‘So that makes me a princess.’

‘Yes. That’s why we had to protect you.’

She couldn’t help herself. As much as it galled her to humour this ridiculous story any further, she was intrigued as to where he’d take the tale next. ‘Do I have siblings? Fellow young royals?’

‘Two brothers, one of whom is adopted.’

‘Ah, so they were whisked off to other places, were they?’

He shook his head. ‘No, only you. You had to be hidden. The Valisar dynasty has never had a surviving daughter. In centuries of rule, all girls — until you — have either died in the womb or soon after birth.’

She hadn’t expected that and felt a fresh wave of panic. He really looked like he believed all this. ‘So I’m the first surviving female heir of the Valisars and they had to get me away. Why? Isn’t a male heir more important, or do they do it differently in the Denova Set?’ Even she could hear the sarcasm biting and hated herself as she watched those words batter against someone she loved.

‘Your brother, Leonel, is the primary heir. But Leonel is not gifted in the way we suspected you could be … and I now know you are. We were right to take the precaution.’

‘Gifted?’ She felt goosebumps rise on her flesh. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The talent that was beginning to show itself through your work as a healer will actually have been severely suppressed in the world I took you to. Here, it will presumably manifest itself far more dramatically. At least that’s what I’ve been led to believe.’

‘You’re losing me, Reg.’

‘Call me Corbel … please.’ She really did feel lost, and she assumed it showed because his expression softened. ‘Let me tell you everything I know and then you can make up your mind.’

‘About whether to stay, you mean?’

He shook his head. ‘There is no way back, Evie,’ he said gently. ‘Hear me out, hear it all and then decide whether you still trust me.’

Her mind was reeling but she didn’t feel as though she had much of a choice. Carefully, she returned to her position against the tree and nodded. ‘All right, Corbel de Vis, tell me everything you know.’