PART I
THUNDER WITHOUT RAIN
SMOKE AND ASH
MONWIKU CASTLE SMOLDERED. Kernyv was at war.
And so, too, was Iveriu.
Despite the mist from the moors, Branwen wiped hot sweat from her brow. Her mount thundered across the grass and her joints ached, unaccustomed to the stallion’s gait.
When dawn had lit the carnage at the castle, the True Queen of Kernyv was nowhere to be found. Neither was her Champion.
The howl of a lonely wind rushed over Branwen, troubling the bushes of spiky yellow gorse scattered across the moorland. She pressed on.
Tristan and Eseult were missing, presumed kidnapped by the Armoricans.
Branwen urged her stallion faster, desperate, searching. King Marc judged that the Armoricans would try to abscond with his wife by sea. The Royal Guardsmen left standing after the attack had been scouring the northern coast all day for any sign of either the queen or the king’s nephew.
Laughter like the sea’s murkiest fathoms swelled in Branwen’s mind. Deep down, she didn’t believe that Queen Eseult had been taken by the Armoricans. Not least because the small boats and dinghies used to stage the attack had all been destroyed.
No, the truth was that her cousin, whom Branwen had once considered closer than a sister, had abandoned her husband. Her duty to Iveriu. Her honor. She had run away with Tristan—the first man Branwen had ever loved.
It wouldn’t be long before Ivernic shores were once more razed, deluged with broken bodies. Branwen had failed in her most important mission. She’d traded her heart for peace but they had both turned to ash.
Dark fire simmered beneath her skin. The Old Ones, the Otherworld guardians of her island kingdom, had imbued Branwen with primordial magic to defend her cousin and her homeland.
But she was sick of saving Eseult and Tristan.
Dirt sprayed into the air from beneath her mount’s hooves. In the distance, she spied the enormous arches of the Aquilan water bridge that hulked over the moors. Rubicund snakestone glistened in the late afternoon sun.
Branwen recalled her first day in Kernyv. There had been a disaster at the mine that lay in the shadow of the great arches. A burst floodgate had buried men alive; others were maimed by rubble, their limbs contorted.
She shivered. The disaster was nothing compared with the slaughter at the castle. When the Old Ones had refused to answer her pleas, Branwen bargained with Dhusnos instead—the Dark One who ruled the Sea of the Dead.
To save Monwiku, to save King Marc, Branwen had made a terrible choice.
She would have to live with the horror that she’d unleashed. The unnatural deaths wrought by the Shades.
“Branwen!” called Ruan from up ahead, interrupting her spiraling thoughts.
The King’s Champion had brought his horse to a halt beside the Stone of Waiting. Visible for leagues in every direction, the emerald-colored longstone reminded Branwen of a crooked finger. Ruan claimed that if you waited here on a full moon night the face of your true love would be revealed.
The Kernyveu had a penchant for outlandish stories.
Branwen grunted and dug the heel of her boot into her stallion’s flank. She no longer believed in true love, but there was a kernel of truth in the superstition. The Stone of Waiting marked a place of in-between. A place where the Veil between this world and the Otherworld thinned. A place that belonged wholly to neither realm.
As she drew closer to Ruan, his mane of dirty blond hair, sweat streaked, wavered in the breeze. He was not only the King’s Champion but also the man who frequently shared Branwen’s bed.
She still marveled that she knew what he looked like without his clothes.
Ruan rubbed his knuckle against his lower lip, brow crinkled in concern as Branwen approached. He’d objected to her joining the rescue party for fear of her safety, but King Marc overruled him. The king had witnessed Branwen’s powers during the battle.
Ruan was dressed in the same clothes as yesterday, as was she. Clothes now stained with dirt and other people’s blood. He scanned the flat moors around them and the Morrois Forest to the west, one hand tensed on the pommel of his sword.
“You look exhausted,” he told her, face softening. When he smiled, Ruan’s eyes became a brilliant topaz and he developed a prominent dimple on his chin.
He spoke to Branwen in her own language, as he always did when they were alone. Branwen was the only person besides his mother and sister who knew that Ruan was not the heir to Prince Edern—King Marc’s uncle—but the bastard son of an Ivernic prisoner of war.
With a mischievous tilt to her mouth, Branwen replied, “Mormerkti,” in Kernyvak. Thank you. “As do you.” But she was. She was so exhausted she felt nearly intoxicated.
Branwen sidled her mount next to Ruan’s, and he stroked a hand over her long, tangled black locks. He lifted a small swath of her curls—they had turned whiter than a Death-Teller. A breath buckled in her throat as if she’d seen one of the Otherworld women who presaged your demise.
“Are you well, Branwen?” Ruan said, his voice low. “I didn’t think fear could truly bleach someone’s hair.”
It wasn’t fear that had whitened her curls. It was magic. Her life force was tied to her powers, and she’d used a tremendous amount fighting the Armoricans.
Branwen shrugged him off. “I’m as well as can be with my cousin missing.”
Ruan held her gaze for a charged moment. Her statement was a challenge, a dare to see if he would tell her what he was really thinking. He’d long suspected Tristan and Eseult’s relationship to be more than simply that of a queen and her Champion.
If her cousin’s betrayals brought more war to Iveriu, perhaps Branwen should let her burn. The thought was treasonous, but then, the True Queen had already tried to assassinate her.
Coughing pointedly, Ruan offered Branwen the waterskin dangling from his saddle. “Here. Drink,” he said. “With Lugmarch’s blessing.”
She accepted and drank thirstily. Lugmarch was reputedly made the first king of Kernyv after ridding the land of giants by serving them tainted mead.
Another ridiculous Kernyvak tale.
“Night approaches,” Ruan noted offhandedly, watching the shifting clouds, their undersides painted with pink light. “We’ll have to call a halt to the search.” He may have affected a casual manner, but Branwen knew better.
As she returned the leather waterskin to him, his hand caught on hers; he removed the waterskin and turned her right palm skyward. Branwen gritted her teeth at the ache in her swollen wrist, which had deepened to a mottled purple from her struggle with the assassin.
Ruan’s eyes widened. There was no ignoring the blackened scar in the center of her palm.
After her deal with Dhusnos, the Hand of Bríga had changed shape and darkened.
Branwen was grateful that Ruan wasn’t versed in the ancient Ivernic language of trees. If he were, he’d be able to read exactly what Branwen had become:
Slayer. Killer.
“It’s nothing,” she said. Wind teased her cerulean cloak.
“Branwen.” Frustration edged her name. “I saw those … those creatures. Did one of them hurt you?”
She shook her head. The Shades had defended Branwen because she’d allied herself with their master. Half man, half a carnivorous seabird known to the Kernyveu as a kretarv, the Shades were hideous to behold.
Their souls were condemned, indentured to Dhusnos for eternity. They sustained themselves by feasting on those with a beating heart, human or animal. Sucking the life from them, making their flesh wither. The Shades had laid waste to the Armoricans in stomach-turning fashion.
“Please, Branwen,” Ruan said. “I can see the gears of your mind turning.”
In exchange for their aid, Branwen had made a vow to the Dark One. By the New Year festival of Samonios, she would provide him with another wretched soul to crew his spectral ships. If she didn’t, he would take the soul of someone she loved.
A fresh shiver racked her shoulders. Ruan traced his forefinger along the black stain, a tender yet demanding gesture.
“The creatures didn’t touch me,” she assured him. “I burned myself. It’s not serious.” Ruan parted his lips to protest and Branwen pressed a finger to them. “I’m the Royal Healer, and I would know.”
She saw another rebuke in his eyes, but a shout rose from the forest. A man’s voice. “Someone’s been found,” Ruan said, translating the Kernyvak.
She snatched back her hand. “Let’s go,” Branwen said, and kicked her stallion into a gallop. She reached the edge of the forest first, Ruan close behind, and entered a tunnel made from curved branches. Light fell across her in a lace-like pattern.
Copyright © 2020 by Kristina Pérez
