Oathbreaker ch. 10.1 - Taint (Patreon)

Somewhere in the darkness, the monster moved unseen. I tightened my grip on my axe and pressed forward, weapon hand trailing and every muscle tense. The corridor was dark as deep night.

Someone was crying softly. The second door on my left lay ajar, and a splash of blood darkened the floor in front of it. I stepped over the body of a dead matagot. The feline chimera had been stripped of its skin and almost every organ, and even the bones were cracked open for their marrow. I only recognized it by the head, which remained intact. There was a broken broom handle, and of everything that image stuck in my head. Where had the other half…

The halls were deadly silent save for the weeper. When I reached the open door and cautiously peeked around it, I found a small servant’s bedroom and one of the castle maids hiding inside, face pale with terror and tear-stained. When she saw me, she pressed herself as far back against the wall as she could.

Fair. I wasn’t exactly a comforting sight, and her expression confirmed what I already knew. The danger was still here.

I pressed a finger to my lips. The woman — more a girl — was able to see me in the darkness thanks to the faint glow of red-gold light around my axe. She curled up into a ball and pressed her hands to her mouth as I turned back to the hallway.

This section of the castle was old — almost every part of Harren’s Pinnacle was old, but there were wings that’d been built centuries before the rest of the palace complex. This seemed to be one. I could feel it. For all my powers could be flashy and direct, most of them were subtle and difficult to describe with words. I could taste the age of these halls like I could smell the sea when I came near the coast and tell when a wine I drank was brewed with plants from unfamiliar lands.

These stones hadn’t come from Urn’s earth. Its ghosts remembered places I’d never been.

Something skittered nearby. Small feet and small hands on cool stone. My gaze swept the walls, the ceiling, another door — had that been open before?

Outside the narrow rays of soft light that marked the direction of my eyes, everything was drowned in darkness. Something growled.

I spun at the same time that it lunged, throwing my axe — not as an attack, but to get it out of the way — and then something small and very fierce was on me. There was a brief flash of large teeth and glinting dark eyes like an animal. It hit me like a small avalanche of fury, nails scraping along the steel of my gorget to find the softer tissues of my bare face, jaws snapping with audible clicks.

I bit off a curse, fought to get the kicking, snarling thing under control, and earned a bruise as a small skull rammed into my chin. I managed to get it an armlock, and strong teeth the color of polished ivory gnawed at my vambrace.

For a moment, I thought the hardened steel might bend.

Without my weapon occupying either hand, I managed to get both arms around my attacker and we struggled to the ground. He fought hard, and with a strength and energy that belied his size. He almost squirmed out of my grip and I risked applying more pressure.

And as I struggled to keep him restrained, I spoke in a soothing voice, or as best of one as I could manage while trying not to lose an eye or crush him.

“It’s alright. You’re alright, you’re safe. No one’s going to hurt you. Calm. Be calm…”

I held him and let him fight me and kept speaking to him until he’d exhausted himself. It took time, and he fought me for every second, but after several minutes he calmed and the shrieks and snarls abated. The slashing nails and strong teeth that didn’t belong on a boy so small stopped moving, and all at once he slumped in my arms.

Darsus began to sob. Small, quiet, broken sobs that quickly grew into the full-blown weeping of a scared little boy. My godson clung tightly to me, for comfort and safety now rather than in aggression, and wailed into the hard steel of my cuirass.

I held him and patted his dark hair. “Shh. It’s going to be alright. I’ve got you, my prince. Everything is fine. You’re safe.”

Lies. I had no goddamned idea what I was going to do.

I took my godson in one arm and retrieved my weapon, then looked into the room where the traumatized maid was still cowering. “It’s safe now,” I told her. “I’ll send someone back for you.”

She was still covering her mouth with her hands and pale with fright, but she nodded and I turned to leave. The boy clung tightly to me, unwilling to let go as I carried him through the castle. I ignored every eye and every nervous whisper from the courtiers and servants. People made way for me, but that wasn’t anything unusual. I stood six-and-a-half feet tall, was neither lanky nor lean, and wore battle-scarred black armor from neck to foot. People tended not to malinger where I walked.

I only stopped once, when Kaia Gorr found me in the halls. Tall and thickly muscled beneath the silvered-blue steel of her Karlesian armor, the royal guardswoman cut a striking figure with her shock of ashy hair and red-brown skin. She rested a hand on the bronze pommel of her Alheidic saber, a nervous habit.

“You found him,” she said needlessly, seeing the boy sitting on the crook of my arm. He’d fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion, his dark mop of hair resting against the side of my neck.

“He was hiding inside one of the old wings back that way.” I made an attempt at a gesture that wouldn’t jostle the prince. “There’s a dead cat and a scared maid.”

Ser Kaia nodded. “I’ll see to it.” After a moment’s hesitation she added, “You’ve made a habit of rescuing the prince, even as I’ve made a habit of losing him.”

The raw bitterness in those words had an edge to cut, even not aimed at me. I lowered my voice so any eavesdroppers couldn’t hear. “You need to stop blaming yourself for what happened on the road last spring. That was the scheme of a faerie queen, not a gang of bandits.”

The woman’s expression darkened. “And yet you managed to thwart it and save him on your own.”

I shrugged. “I’m—”

“You should get the prince to his rooms,” Kaia said curtly, cutting me off. “The castle is already full of whispers, Ser Alken.”

She was right. The fewer people who saw the prince in this state the better. I gave a short nod and moved past her.

I reached the prince’s rooms and set him in his bed, and only then did I take a solid look at him. He was covered in blood, none of it his own, and even asleep he shivered and twitched like an anxious animal. Had he always been that pale, or had a pallor that gray?

He needed a change of clothes and a bath, but it could wait. All I cared about was letting him rest and staying with him.

To guard him, and to guard the rest of the castle from him.

I was sitting by the young prince’s bed when his mother arrived. Rosanna Silvering swept into the room with all the grace and authority of the monarch she was, but the expression on her coldly beautiful face when she saw her child snoring softly on his side was very human.

“You found him,” she breathed. The mixed relief and strain in those words made them barely more than a whisper. She hadn’t slept in almost a day. Neither had I.

“He was in one of the old wings,” I explained. “I think because it was quiet and dark. He was scared, and…”

When I trailed off, the Empress’s royal countenance became stern. “I can handle it, Alken. Tell me.”

I nodded. “And hungry. The taint is getting stronger.”

Rosanna’s gem-green eyes vanished for a long moment behind dark lashes as she closed them and took the time to collect herself. She’d always been like that, never allowing grief or fear to rule her emotions. She had emotions — I’d seen plenty of evidence of that over the twenty years and more we’d known one another — but she was also Empress of the Accorded Realms and High Queen of the Southern Kingdoms, and she did not crumble.

“What do we do?” She asked after she’d mastered herself.

I wanted to shrug, almost made the motion to do it, but tiredness and the weight of my armor ended up making it more of a twitch. “Honestly? I don’t know, Rose. I’ve read every scrap of lore I can get my hands on, but this curse is ancient.”

More than a year ago, Darsus Silvering had been infected with the taint when a warband of ghouls stormed the Emperor’s palace in the north. They’d taken hostages, one of them Darsus, and forced their captives to taste the meat of the dead. The infection gave him the same hunger as those creatures, a ravening desire to consume dead flesh and bone marrow. If he indulged, then his own flesh would be preserved in a state between life and death, making him strong and hard to kill.

So far, he hadn’t killed and eaten anyone. There were a few incidents with animals, like the matagot earlier, but Tzanith told me that he needed to devour human essence for the change to truly take root. I’d hoped that simple abstinence would eventually cause the corruption to recede, but…

It was just getting worse. And I’d sworn to find a way to help him. He was my own godson.

I rubbed at the bridge of my nose, and felt the light pressure of Rosanna’s hand as it rested on my shoulder. I looked up to find her pensive gaze on the prince.

“I won’t give in to despair,” she told me. “Our world is full of old curses and old magic. There is a way to help my son. We will find it.”

The hand I’d lifted to massage a growing migraine slid down to cover my mouth. “If Lias were here, he might—”

“He isn’t.” Rosanna’s voice became cold and dispassionate. “That was his choice. I won’t waste any more tears on him.”

She drifted to the bed and sat on it, reaching out to brush Darsus’s hair back. He’d inherited her midnight-black locks, which were grown long in the past year. Karlesians tended towards longer hair styles than in the northern capital.

This boy is supposed to inherit this kingdom, I thought. To lead all of the southern realms. No one will accept him as monarch while he’s like this.

There was his younger brother, Josric, but he was still an infant. And Malcolm, his older sibling, had taken his father’s name and would claim his father’s throne in the north one day, inheritor of a different nation. Rosanna Silvering and Markham Forger were husband and wife, Empress and Emperor of the Accorded Realms, but those were elected positions and not inheritable. Their children’s inheritance had been split, a compromise to build an alliance between the northern realms and the southern without truly unifying either.

Darsus would take Karles in the south, and Malcolm would take Reynwell in the north, and both the House of Silvering and the House of Forger would be preserved — bonded, yet independent and sovereign.

But House Silvering was still wounded from a coup that’d nearly destroyed it more than twenty years before, leaving only a single survivor — Rosanna. She was restored now to her own ancestral throne, having returned from years in the north attending her husband and the troubles of the Accord to take direct command over the southern kingdoms as their Amarantos, their High Queen. She had but two blood relations who shared her name; Darsus, her heir apparent, and Josric, who was years away from knowing how to talk, much less rule. The southern lords were fractious and many of them were ambitious, and their ruler had been away for many years.

God. I haven’t thought of all of this in more than twelve years. I’d barely thought about it even when I’d served Rosanna as her First Sword, before she was Empress. Back then, I’d been content to merely fight when and where I was told and keep anyone from putting a blade in Rosanna or Lias, the wizard who’d been the third part of our trio.

But I wasn’t just royal champion anymore. I was the Headsman of Seydis, and a servant of the Accorded Realms by my own choice and actions. There wasn’t any room to turn a blind eye to the politics of the thing.

Even if I was fucking terrible at politics.

The silence lingered a while as Rosanna and I watched the sleeping prince and retreated into the privacy of our own thoughts. I broke the quiet first.

“You should forgive Kaia,” I said gently. “She’s languishing.”

I watched my queen’s painted lips compress. “Should I?”

Telling a monarch what they should and shouldn’t do was a dangerous game. It bordered on social taboo, and Karlesians especially were notoriously traditional. Always safer to suggest, to advise with soft language and allusion. Though I’d had my start down here, in some ways the bluntness of northern aristocrats and the relaxed conventions of the Accord’s leaders in Garihelm had been easier to manage.

Here in the city of Harrengate and especially within the walls of Harren’s Pinnacle, the great castle of House Silvering, Rosanna was in every way that mattered the icon of her realm and its customs. I trod on shallow ice.

“She’s devoted to you,” I said in what I’d started to think of as my diplomatic tone. I’d had a lot of practice with it recently, from a summer spent in the Bannerlands and in the weeks since arriving in the Karledale. “She’s a talented warrior and an excellent knight, and your coldness is eroding her confidence in herself. It already took a blow when—”

“When she allowed my son and heir to be taken by the Sidhe?” Rosanna cut me off. “Or when she failed to protect my children in Garihelm, and…”

She turned her face away from me, so a veil of black hair obscured her expression. I was grateful for that, because it hid my reaction as well.

Much of the tension between the Empress and her First Sword suddenly made a great deal of sense. Failing to safeguard the royal heir once was a shame that would have ruined many knights. I’d never considered that Rosanna might also blame her champion for what happened to Darsus during the Vyke crisis.

My gaze rested on the softly snoring boy. He didn’t look like a monster in that moment, just a tired child. I clasped my fingers together and chose my words cautiously.

“Rose…” I risked using the diminutive despite the anger I sensed from her. “That night was madness. The Vykes used sorcery no one could have prepared for to scatter us. Bleeding Gates, I spent the beginning of that mess distracted by Yith! No one should be blamed for that.”

Rosanna’s voice sounded more contemplative than cold, but held a note I didn’t like. “Then, it was the tricks of the Mistwalker Company that defeated her, and later on the powers of the Sidhe. I am starting to think that I made a poor choice of First Sword. She might be a skilled fighter, but she isn’t equipped for the weapons of this new age. Even her Art leaves much to be desired.”

I knew Kaia had a sorcerous technique — most Urnic knights did, but it hadn’t benefited her much during either of those battles.

“You intend to replace her?” I asked.

The royal countenance turned to regard me then. “I was wondering if perhaps you might return to your old office. I never officially dismissed you from it.”

We regarded one another coolly over that short distance, both trying to read the other and masking our inner thoughts at the same time. During the previous spring, I’d told the Choir Concilium, the collective of immortals who governed Urn behind the Houses and the Church,  that I was done being their axeman until they got their shit together and stopped quarreling among themselves. So far there hadn’t been any ramifications for that, but I knew it was only a matter of time.

And I had to wonder if Rosanna knew. If someone had told her.

Was it Lisette? I wondered. The cleric was technically still Rosanna’s woman and only on loan to me, so it wasn’t exactly a betrayal. However, the only one who’d been witness to my meeting with Nath and her sister that year had been Emma, who wasn’t indiscrete but might have mentioned it to the others.

Vicar and Tzanith were both there too. Were they playing games?

I didn’t like not trusting the people close to me. I’d lose sleep over this.

“You know that’s difficult,” I said. “For one thing, I was knighted — restored to knighthood — by your husband. I’m also still an Alder Knight in every way that matters. I answer to all the realms, not just to Karles.”

“Your original oaths were to me,” Rosanna said in a cold voice.

I nodded. “They were. But the world has changed. We’re different people.”

“And that’s all it takes to break an oath?” She asked. “That vow was for life.”

“Damn it, Rose!” I didn’t raise my voice for fear of waking the sleeping prince, but strain did enter my words. “I am not your enemy, and by God you’ve got plenty of those. Can we not do this?”

All at once, the coldness and tension seemed to go out of my queen’s posture. She nodded and sighed, rubbing at her temples with fingers laden with precious stones. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Al, it’s just…”

“A lot. I get it.”

I couldn’t imagine what she was going through. For all my fear for Darsus, he wasn’t my child. He wasn’t the future of my kingdom and my bloodline.

Rosanna made a motion with one hand, and her exhaustion took some of the imperiousness out of the gesture. “You should rest, Ser Headsman. The council is meeting first thing in the morning, and I expect you to be there.”

“I can stay with him tonight,” I offered, nodding to the prince. “Best he’s not left alone.”

I didn’t say what we both already knew — that it was best we didn’t leave him alone with servants.

She just shook her head. “No. I’ll stay with him. And… send Kaia to attend me. I will speak with her.”

Feeling a wash of relief, I stood and gave her a bow. “As you wish, Your Grace.”

Her smile held only a hint of mischief behind the cold regality that was both her birthright and her armor. “We are in Karles again, Ser Alken. The correct way to address me is as Amarant.”

Her gaze went back to her son, and I watched a crack form in her armor. “What are we going to do, Alken?”

I wished for all the world that I knew. I was good at slaying monsters, not saving them.