Harbinger: Fate's Forsaken: Book One (7 page)

“What happened?”
Kael said.

Amos dunked his
hand into the bowl and jerked his head at the girl accusingly. “What does it
look like happened? She burned me!”

“But, how
—?”

“I don’t know,”
he snapped, which only worried Kael further: very rarely did Amos not have an
answer. He walked back to the girl, toting the bowl with him, and bent to look
at her wound. “Huh, it’s already scabbed over. Well I’ve never seen anything
like this … it must be magic. Yes, I’ll bet she ran afoul of a mage and got
herself hexed.”

“But how could
that be? I thought Crevan had all the mages in chains.”

Amos made a
frustrated noise. “Well she must’ve done something to get the King’s attention.
I can see no other way around it.”

Kael’s heart
leapt excitedly as an idea came to him. “You don’t think she’s a whisperer, do
you?”

“There wasn’t a
mark,” Amos said after a moment, and Kael felt disappointment slide back down
in the place of his hope. “No, I think it was a spell.” He looked at Kael, and
his gray brows shot up in surprise.

When he saw what
Amos stared at, he drew in a sharp breath. A drop of blood glistened on the
back of his forearm, bubbling wetly. Carefully, he touched a finger to it. The
blood felt warm, but not unpleasant.

“Remarkable,” Amos
breathed. “It isn’t hurting you, is it?”

Kael shook his
head. He looked back at Amos’s fingers, at the angry white blisters rising up
on them. Why didn’t the magic hurt him?

“We’ll have
plenty of time to figure this out later,” Amos said. He picked up his bowl and
situated himself at the table next to where the girl lay. Then he looked at
Kael expectantly.

“No.”

His voice was
hard. He felt the wall rise up in his heart — the one that always rose
when Amos tried to get him to use his gift. Healing was the weakest of the
three schools of whispering. And in Kael’s opinion, Fate gifted him just enough
to thoroughly ruin his life. So he vowed to ignore it. He tucked it away and
pretended to be normal.

“If you don’t
help her, she’ll die,” Amos countered.

Blast it all.

Kael flung the
dirty cloth against the wall and stomped over to the girl. Her face was smooth
as she slept; her chest rose and fell steadily. For some reason, the peace on
her face calmed him.

In the deepest
part of her wound, he could see where her skull was cracked. It was an angry,
scarlet line no longer than a fingernail. But he knew even a small crack could
turn deadly if left un-mended. Blood might leak inside, which would surely kill
her.

He took a deep
breath and put his finger in the wound. Warmth, wet and the hard, slippery
surface of bone — those were all familiar. He knew the textures, he knew
how they all fit back together. Slowly, he ran his finger along the line,
holding a memory in his head.

It was a memory
of his childhood. He used to spend hours playing in the ponds near the village,
building Kingdoms out of clay. It was an unsteady material, but clay had its
virtues: if one of his castle walls cracked, he could simply push them back
together.

With one finger
on her skull, he closed his eyes and thought:
You are clay
.

When he opened
them, he was no longer looking at a complicated mass of muscle, skin and bone:
it was all simple clay.

Now the bone of
her skull slid together when he pushed it, sealing under the force of his
thought. When the crack was healed, he pushed the folds of skin back towards
each other. Blood leaked out and washed over his fingers as he pinched the gash
closed. It was much warmer than normal blood, but it didn’t scald him.

When he’d sealed
the wound, all that remained was a thin white scar. He didn’t think the girl
would want a scar on her head, so he brushed it with his thumb until it
smoothed away.

“Very good,”
Amos said when he finished.

Kael didn’t
realize how focused he’d been. Amos’s voice sounded like it floated in from
miles away. He sat up and let the fog drain from his ears before he frowned at
the smug look on Amos’s face and said: “Now what?”

His frail
shoulders rose and fell. “Now we wait, and hope she wakes up.”

Across the
mountains and miles away, the great fortress of Midlan stood undefeated.

Its outer wall
was a colossus of stone: a great, gaping jaw that rose from the earth and
consumed the land around it, hemming every tree and blade of grass into a giant,
fortified circle. High towers stood along this wall like pointed teeth, their
heavy shadows draped over the barracks that covered the ground beneath them.

The middle wall
was actually an impregnable keep. It leered from behind the cover of its iron
towers, its many slit windows stared unblinkingly — watching the four
horizons.

At the top of
the keep loomed another citadel, one designed to survive any blast or siege. It
was out of the archer’s reach, too powerful for the catapult and warded against
every spell. And it was from this highest, insurmountable point that King
Crevan enjoyed the view of a man with ultimate power.

From where he
watched, the soldiers of Midlan scurried across the fields like ants, doing
whatever he ordered. It was fear — the weight of his eyes on the tops of
their little ant heads — that kept them obedient. Yes, let them build his
cities, let them fight, die and bleed for him. Then when they grew too old to
lift a blade, he would crush their tiny bodies between his fingers …

A knock at the
door brought him back to the present. He turned and saw a steward peeking his
head through the slightest of cracks. “Forgive me, Your Majesty, but your
guests have arrived.”

He waited for
the King to nod before he darted behind the door and closed it. After gazing
out the window for a while longer, Crevan began his stroll to the throne room
— where his guests would be waiting.

The halls of
Midlan had a torch for every three stones. Crevan ordered that they remain lit
day and night. Shadows were the cloaks of thieves … and assassins. He wouldn’t
give them anywhere to hide.

At the end of
the hallway, a huge onyx dragon guarded his chambers. It bared its violent
teeth and reached out with curved claws. The black dragon had been the symbol
of Midlan since the time of the first King — a crest of power, the lord
of all beasts.

Nevertheless,
Crevan was careful to avoid its stony glare. He pushed the spines at the end of
the dragon’s tail, and one shifted under the pressure. It sunk down and
clicked. A segment of the wall to the left of the statue slid over with a
chalky groan, revealing a narrow passageway hidden in darkness. He grabbed a
torch from the hall and made his way down a tight spiral of steps.

Tunnels
crisscrossed through the fortress like spider webs. They wound behind every
door and under every corridor — and he kept them all a secret. Here in
the darkness, Crevan moved without fear. The passageway was sturdy and the
walls were thick enough to hide the heavy fall of his steps. A man could even
scream for hours on end, and no one could hear him.

This, he knew
for a fact.

At the end of
one tunnel was a small wooden door. He snuffed his torch and opened it slowly,
careful not to stir its hinges. Beyond the door was the backside of a tapestry.
As he peered through a worn section of thread, his throne room came into focus.

Five people
lounged about the long table in the center of the room. They were Crevan’s
chosen few: the Sovereign Five.

When King
Banagher … perished, several nobles fought to seize the throne, but Crevan
outwitted them all. He was strong, yes, and he towered over everyone else in
the King’s court, but his pride was in his cunning — not his strength.
And now he ruled the Kingdom the same way he’d commanded the King’s army: mercilessly.

Gone was the
tangled mass of lords and ladies that used to rule the realm. Purged were the
mumbling, argumentative old men and overzealous young nobles. Squashed were the
many noisy opinions and the general stench of democracy. Under Crevan’s rule,
there was only one voice — his. And when he spoke, the Kingdom listened.

He’d taken
Midlan and its vast army for himself, but there were still five other regions
to control. For these he assigned a small group of nobles, handpicked for their
particular brands of ruthlessness.

A woman’s laugh
drew his eyes to the hearth behind the table. Time could not touch Countess
D’Mere, ruler of the Grandforest. She was as alluring now as she had been
seventeen years ago. When the Countess tossed her golden-brown hair and batted
her pretty blue eyes, her enemies fell. No man could hold his ground against
her charms — or survive the kiss of her dagger.

Duke Reginald of
the High Seas smiled like a born swindler. His close-cropped hair rolled in
tight waves across his head. He tugged absently on the end of his goatee and
lounged against the wall; the firelight glinted off the sharp edge of his
smile. Though he feigned indifference, his eyes wandered repeatedly down
D’Mere’s liberal neckline while they chatted.

Baron Sahar of
Whitebone Desert had the dark skin of his people. His mines in the sand filled
Midlan’s treasury with gems and precious metals. The many jeweled rings on
Sahar’s fingers sparkled in the torchlight as he inspected the golden goblets
on the table. If there was a flaw in any of them, Sahar would find it.

The man to his
left was not as concerned with the cups as he was with their contents. Earl
Hubert sucked down glass after glass of an array of liquors, his watery red
eyes watching greedily for the bottom. Though his vineyards in the shadow of
the Unforgivable Mountains produced some of the best wines in the Kingdom,
their flavors were wasted between Hubert’s gluttonous lips.

The last ruler
was Lord Gilderick the Gruesome of the Endless Plains. If someone took a bit of
skin, stretched it over a skeleton and topped it with a mop of lank hair, they
might end up with something that looked like Gilderick. But it would take some
dark magic to make it half as wicked. He lurked in a shadowy corner, watching
the room through sunken eyes — and the others pretended not to see him.

Crevan rarely
bothered with gathering the Five together: as long as his coffers and
storehouses remained full, he didn’t care what they did. But today was special.
Today, one of them would die.

The steward
entered the throne room, and Crevan saw his chance. While their backs were
turned he darted out from the tapestry and strode up behind them. “Hello, my
friends!”

They all jumped
and collectively dropped to one knee. “Your Grace,” they mumbled in unison.

Crevan waved
them to their feet. “Come now, there’s no need for kneeling. And you may leave
us,” he said to the steward, who scuttled obediently from the room.

He ordered the
Five to take a seat at the table and lounged in his own chair at the head.
Sahar had to jerk his hands out of the way as Crevan dropped his boots squarely
on the tabletop.

Ah, silence.
Nothing told more than a bit of silence. He put his hands behind his head and
waited, looking at each of them in turn.

It was Reginald
who spoke first. “To what, Your Majesty, do we owe this rare privilege?”

Reginald was a
gutsy man. After all, one did not come to own every ship on the High Seas by
shying away from negotiation. But Crevan wasn’t interested in playing business,
and he didn’t have to. “Surely a man with your connections must know why I’ve
called you.”

Reginald
blinked. “My Lord — if something troubles you, all of the High Seas are
at your disposal. We move at your command.”

The others were
quick to add their vigorous nods and pledges of allegiance. He let the Five
murmur their promises for a moment before he raised his hand.

Silence.

“Now that I
think about it, I
am
troubled by
something. One thing. And what could that be?” He leaned back in his chair and
tapped the side of his face in mock contemplation. It was a common enough
gesture, but to the Five it meant something particular. None of them would look
at where his finger tapped.

“We’ve all
tried, Your Grace, and we’ve all been wounded,” D’Mere said. She kept her eyes
wide and serious. The Countess knew better than to use her powers on the King.

“Yes but to be
fair, Hubert’s squandered more opportunities than the rest of us combined,”
Reginald said.

Hubert stopped
slurping long enough to gasp. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t know what
I mean, eh?” Reginald leaned forward and fixed his sharp eyes on Hubert’s.
“Every time you take some half-hearted jab at her, she flies off and wreaks
havoc on the rest of us. She’s sunk three of my vessels. Three! Do you have any
idea how expensive it is to replace a ship?”

Hubert shrugged.
“Well I don’t see how that’s my faul —”

“And the last
time she was in Whitebone, she dropped a net full of trolls in the middle of my
palace,” Sahar said, inspecting his rings. “The stupid, slobbering beasts ran
wild in the halls for days before we managed to find them. And I’m still trying
to air the stench from my silk cushions.”

Hubert snorted.
“Trolls? Really, I find that hard to —”

“And why do your
vineyards never scorch?” D’Mere interjected. “Why have my forests been burned
when she hasn’t so much as bruised a single one of your grapes?”

Hubert didn’t
seem to have an answer for that. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish
gasping for air. Little indignant sounds escaped from between his lips while
the others gutted him.

“An excellent
point, Countess,” Reginald said. His eyes glinted as he moved in for the kill.
“Yes, I do believe I’m beginning to see a pattern: every time Hubert fails, she
comes blazing from the mountains, breathing fire down our necks —”