Dragonoak: Gall and Wormwood, page 26
Claire rushed over to me, hand on my back.
Don’t heal, don’t heal, I pleaded as tears streaked down my face.
The younger healer, unable to deal with the blood gushing onto the floor and pain spiralling in the air, rushed over and closed the wound for me. He washed the pain away as my skin knitted itself back together.
Knees weak, I clung to Claire’s arm.
“A bold display,” Queen Aren said. Screwing my eyes shut and forcing myself to focus again, I caught her eye and knew that it had never mattered if I was a necromancer or not. She only needed to give the appearance of believing I was. “Take Rowan and the Princess into custody.”
“Excuse me?” Claire asked.
“This is a necromancer’s deception, for all we know. You have long since been in contact with her, and I cannot allow you to so much as think about claiming the throne with this hanging over you,” she said. “The people will not accept you, with or without your bird.”
“If you attempt to restrain either of us,” Claire said in a quiet, terrifying voice, “I am entirely convinced that an eight-and-a-half-foot pane and the former Commander of the Kastelirian army will tear you in two. You are grieving, mother. This is beyond unreasonable, even for you. Let us return to my chambers, while you sleep on the choices you wish to make. Come back to me in the morning when you are level-headed, and I will forget all of this.”
Queen Aren’s eyes fixed on the blood smearing my knuckles. She hesitated, perhaps considering what Claire had said, or merely thinking how best to neutralise the threat in the corridor beyond. It did not matter. Her answer never came.
Bells rang out from the castle towers with the same ardency horns had sounded in Port Mahon.
No one was focused on me anymore. I was the only one staring down at my bloodied hand.
Claire placed her hands on my shoulders and said something to me, but it was lost to the thrum of the background. The doors flew open. It was no longer a case of us against them. Everyone gathered wanted answers, and the turbulence of mere minutes ago was forgotten.
People rushed around me. Minutes trickled by. Claire rubbed her hand against my bloodied one, and then I heard a voice call out. It was one I’d never heard before, and one I never heard again.
“It’s the Prince! He’s brought an army with him!”
CHAPTER XIV
Discord swirled around us like a whirlpool, hoisting me out of the room and into a current I couldn't fight against. Voices rose. Panic took command of sense and rationality, and fears and self-imposed threats were being yelled down the corridor. There had only been a dozen soldiers with the Mansels minutes ago, but now half of the castle had poured into the manor house, expecting it provide protection against an army.
I was vaguely aware of Claire's presence. She reached for my hand and squeezed my fingers every few minutes as one armoured person after another came to her, adding another ounce of dread to the situation with their latest reports. I couldn't focus. My head pounded to the rhythm of blood that no longer gushed from healed wounds, and all I wanted was to be gone. Away from the noise, the people that made it, and the room they filled.
Away from Thule.
I didn't care whether Rylan was at the gates or not. Either we would find a way to win, or we wouldn't. It was as simple as that. I didn’t need to play any role in it. Go, go. Back to my room, back to my blankets. Let Rylan break through Thule and into the castle. Let Katja come to me. I did not care. In my mind, I was so completely finished with all the business of Felheim and dragons and petty royals that I didn’t even shudder at the thought of encountering Katja again.
Akela's voice was the first thing to cut through the din.
“People! People! We are stopping this,” she bellowed, and climbed atop a cabinet. Akela could earn anyone's attention with ease, but to hear her roar like the Commander she was made everyone in the room believe time itself had ground to a halt. “There is not being an army at our gates! There is not being an army outside of Thule!”
The tension in the crowd was palpable. Everyone wanted to believe it so much that they wouldn't let their guard down.
“But the reports! The scouts spotted them!” Someone yelled.
“The scouts are spotting people, yes, but they are not seeing an army. Are you understanding the size of one? Are you understanding how slowly these people are moving, and how often they are having to stop and rest, resupply, all of these things? If they are approaching, we are knowing about it. We are knowing about it weeks ago. We are having scouts all across Felheim, and some, they are being in the old Kastelir. They are sending word. Ravens are reaching us! If they are sneaking up on us, then I am not thinking there are being more than fifty of them. And if there are only fifty of them, then I am not even needing my axe to be dealing with them!”
It was hard to argue with Akela when she put her heart into it.
“I will take a party and meet them head-on,” Claire said. “Kouris, fetch the horses and meet us at the front gate. Akela, find Kidira and regroup with us.”
Strange. I took in the conversation as though hearing was the only one of my senses still working. I did not see anything. More than that, I did not feel anything. People must've been bumping into me and I knew that Claire's fingers were there, but none of it was happening to me.
Luckily, my feet worked even without the awareness that they belonged to me. I crossed the castle, able to traverse open ground even if I could not bridge the disconnect between my actions and thoughts, and wondered how Claire was keeping up with us. Was her leg not screaming in pain? All I had to do was listen to it, but my mind was stuck on an endless loop of a droning buzz of whys and hows, but never formed a question beyond the initial empty desire to know.
“Are you coming?” We were at the castle gates. When had that happened? “Yrval?”
Kouris. That was Kouris speaking.
I could not say if I nodded, but my lack of arguing, the absence of my usual pleads to go with them, worked in my favour. Sensing something was wrong, Kouris put her arm around my shoulders and eased me towards the horses. Better to keep me close, lest something happen in her absence.
Claire was already with the horses, and Akela had returned with Kidira. Ash was pulling on her armour and doling out shields and helms to those around us. How long had it been since we had heard the news? Since I had grabbed the blade?
“We will address him together,” Queen Aren said, sat astride her own horse. The horse was brown. Black. White. It did not matter. “If you insist on going out to the field in your condition.”
Why weren't they arguing? Had there been an argument? It made sense for there to have been. Queen Aren would've told Claire she couldn't go, because of some reason fabricated on the spot, and Claire would've said that it was her place to go. It was her Kingdom, and he was her brother. Her family.
It must've happened. It felt right.
Word of an army had reached the city. Perhaps it had started there, in the streets, carried on the backs of workers and bellowed from one tavern to the next. People left their homes and businesses to watch the procession pass: their Queen and Princess, the former Kastelirians and a pane, countless soldiers, and Knights leading the charge. Some of the foot soldiers were carrying green and gold banners.
We were putting on a show. Half of the people we passed must've been convinced we were about to charge into a battle. Had Akela not said an army wasn’t at our door, I would've believed it too. I would've found a way to convince myself that this was the end, this was what it had all been building up to; but because Akela had spoken, I believed her without question.
Beyond the city, the ground was bloated with yesterday's rainwater. Our horses left deep hoof prints in the slick mud, but there was no more rain to be had. The grey clouds overhead drifted apart, and sunlight filtered down, turning the air thick with humidity. It was stifling, oppressive. The outside matched my insides.
No more than a mile from the outskirts of Thule, we found the supposed army. To say there were a hundred of them was a generous estimate. It was easy to see how it had become an army in the people's minds. One person reported a hundred soldiers approaching, and the next spread word that there were a hundred and fifty; soon, there were two hundred, and then three; people exaggerated, little by little, until there was an army of thousands at their front door.
One hundred. One hundred. There were only one hundred; I had to focus on numbers.
It was as much as I could ask of myself.
We left a quarter of a mile between us and the army that wasn't an army. Our forces, dwindled though they were, could've crashed down on them like a tidal wave. I headed forward when Kouris did, having let her guide me this far, and Claire and Queen Aren moved with us. Four people on the other side dared to breach the gap, and we met in the centre.
I could tell there was something unnerving about them. Their armour was the right colour, dulled gold with streaks of forest green, but the design was not Felheimish. There was too much bulk to it. The edges were too straight, and none of it was dented, scuffed or scratched.
They wore no sigils, either. There was no mark of Felheim, or of Rylan's army. And it wasn’t that they were all Agadian, though some undoubtedly were, because there were more than just men amongst their ranks. There were Felheimers there, former Kastelirians too, but they had been backed by Agados with its wealth of resources and labourers. I imagined the pane hunched over smiths’ furnaces, beating metal into pieces of war they themselves would never be able to wage.
Belatedly, it occurred to me that the first thing I should've noticed was that Rylan was not amongst those who'd stepped forward. Katja wasn't, either. It made no difference. The chosen soldiers would deliver the message, and once they'd said their piece, we would have yet another thing to fret over. Another problem to add to the pile. Rylan and Katja would make their presence known whether they were there or not.
Strange. Strange how Katja was a real, tangible person, even when I wasn't thinking of her. And that was not often. But she breathed, spoke, thought, slept, ate, drank, laughed, argued, cried, and I did not make the slightest bit of difference, when it came down to it.
She had her life, and—
Oh.
Talking. The soldiers were talking.
“We are here by the will of Prince Rylan of Felheim,” one of the soldiers said, all bluster and clenched fists. “We are here but to deliver a message.”
“What is it?” Claire asked, letting her horse draw closer to theirs than anyone else's.
“The Prince is returning to Thule to claim the throne that is rightfully his,” the same soldiers said. “In light of His Majesty's passing.”
Queen Aren's gaze shot to Claire's back, as though Claire was the one to be suspected of betrayal. Reason quickly overtook instinct. Even if Claire had contacted Rylan's soldiers with news of King Garland's passing, it would've taken them weeks or months to get word to Rylan.
“The throne that is rightfully his,” Claire repeated. The soldier thumped a fist against his chestplate in lieu of nodding. “My brother understands that I am next in line to the throne, does he not?”
Queen Aren remained silent, but even with her lips pressed into a tight, thin line, there was not a single soldier on either side who forgot her presence. Everyone's gaze skidded nervously over to her, though none were brave enough to meet her eye. I saw the way uncertainty clogged the throats of the Felheimish natives. She was still their Queen, in spite of the loyalties they'd laid at Rylan's feet.
“Prince Rylan challenges your claim,” a second soldier said. She was Kastelirian, if her accent was anything to go by, and found it easier to address Claire because of it. “His Majesty asserts that you forfeited your right to rule Felheim firstly when you betrayed your father and fled to Kastelir; secondly when you actively led Kastelirian troops against his forces; and lastly, by associating with a—”
Don't say it. Don't say it.
“A necromancer,” a third soldier added.
Did they know the necromancer was there? Did they know I was the necromancer? Did they know that a necromancer was not a tower of rotting flesh, of swirling power, but small and scared and insignificant outside of their abilities, no matter what they did?
“Anything to tarnish my name,” Claire said dismissively. Queen Aren did not take the news in her stride, and glowered at me as though her gaze alone was enough to cause me to burst into light. “And when does my brother intend on returning to Thule? Will there be an army at his back?”
“Undoubtedly,” the first of the soldiers said. “His Highness will return within two months.”
“In the same way that he was going to return to Kyrindval in a month? Tell me, what trouble is he having with the Agadians? What has he promised that is not his to give?”
The soldiers were trusted to deliver a message and had little else of worth. Claire's question left them genuinely confused, and they did their best not to glance at one another when nobody answered. If they had been with Rylan's army, they might have had to depart from the bulk of his forces months ago. They may not have known that Rylan never returned to Kyrindval.
“Very well,” Claire said. “Go, then. Take a message back to my brother. Tell him that the King is dead, and that I will be crowned long before he stakes his claim on my Kingdom. Tell him that if he returns to challenge me, he will lose. Ensure he understands that this is the last chance to make peace he will ever get.”
The soldiers left. The constant buzz between my brain and skull and the fog clouding my eyes and mind made it difficult to measure anyone’s reactions. Most of what was said went muffled. I watched the soldiers’ backs and fixated on how I should open my mouth and call out to them; I should ask them where Katja was, what she was doing, so that I finally knew. I would finally be able to stop thinking of her.
But I did not. I only stared. I barely managed to tear my eyes away when Kouris took hold of my horses’ reins and led him back to the city.
“Do not give me that look,” Claire muttered under her breath. “What would you rather: that I take the throne, or Rylan does?”
“Do not make this so black and white. Rylan’s soldiers made an educated guess and little more. Had you not been so brazen with the truth, they would’ve had no proof to back up their claim. There are more options, Claire. Do not be hasty. Do not think that I have not made plans for Felheim that spread over years. Despite what you may think, I continue to have the Kingdom’s best interest at heart. Do not compromise that.”
Claire gave no reply. As we marched back to the city, Queen Aren’s eyes did not once leave me. I felt her plans take form behind her piercing gaze, and knew that she would not go easily. Even if Claire did claim the throne, Queen Aren would never hold her tongue when it came to what I was. Another problem of my making.
She would find a use for me. The smart thing to do was see that her desperate grasps at power were cut short, as Gavern’s were. The smart thing to do was be anywhere but there.
I blinked and we were back in the city. I blinked and that was that: it was as though I had been trapped in the depths of a dream, but had surfaced in the waking world once more.
I understood what was around me, and I understood it in relation to myself. Sound filled the air, no longer tunnelling in through my ears, and I picked apart the layers of confusion, anticipation, fear and hope. The masses were kept separate from us by a wall of soldiers, and as I looked over the streets from horseback, I saw that the crowd was ever-growing. People filtered down small side streets and poured from buildings, pushing themselves on tiptoes as though that would help them hear any better.
“Don’t do this,” Queen Aren said, but it was no order. She knew there was nothing she could do to stop us.
She was outnumbered. All of Thule was there to serve as witness, and with Haru-Taiki joining us once more, there were none who would’ve let Claire be silenced, let alone taken away.
Everyone was there. Kouris, Akela. Kidira and Sen. Eden had brought Alex, and even Ash and Laus were amongst the soldiers surrounding us.
All Claire had to do was say the words and Felheim would be hers.
She hesitated. She parted her lips but no words left them. Haru-Taiki stopped circling overhead in favour of landing on Claire’s shoulder, not needing to understand what was being said to know how important a moment it was. She looked at him and pushed down each and every emotion that belonged to her, rather than a future Queen. She steeled herself to speak of a dead King, not her dead father.
“People of Thule. Citizens of Felheim,” she began. Her voice hitched, barely noticeable, and she threw herself headlong into a momentum that made the hairs on the back of everyone’s necks stand up. “I am here today to tell you that there was no army at our gates. That we are safe. I am here to tell you that I will fight with all the fire has forged within me to ensure it stays that way.
“I am here to tell you that the King is dead. Healer’s bane has taken him, and I am his rightful heir. He has left me to rule, but I do not care about his wishes or his word. What matters is you. All of you. If you do not think me fit to rule, if you do not believe that I will be just, speak up. If there is another better suited to protect our lands and aid our neighbours, say so. I will abdicate before I am crowned, if that is what you wish.”
There were those who supported Queen Aren and there were spies in Rylan’s pocket spread throughout the crowd. I didn’t doubt that. There was those who believed Claire was unfit to rule because of what she had been through and the years she’d been gone, too, but all dissident voices were drowned out by the cheers of thousands.
Only I was close enough to see her swallow the lump in her throat. She’d doubted herself. She’d actually believed there was a chance her people might turn her away. The fact that she’d given them a choice regardless of that proved that she deserved to be Queen. To her, it was not about wielding power, but directing it in ways that helped her do the right thing.
