The Crimson Shadow Read online

  “Enough,” interrupted Katerin, rising beside him and taking his arm in hers. He looked at her incredulously, hardly believing that she would interrupt at so solemn a moment. When he stared into her face, though, he saw no apology for her unexpected action, only a pleading look.

  “Enough, Luthien,” she said softly, in full control. “Garth Rogar died as a warrior by the most ancient and hallowed rules of the arena of our people. Do not dishonor him.”

  Horrified, Luthien pulled away from Katerin. He stared at his fellows, at the fighters who had trained beside him for these last years, but found no support. He felt as though he was standing in a group of strangers.

  And then Luthien ran, across the field and into the tunnel, out into the open area near to the harbor and north along the beach.

  “It was unfortunate,” Gahris began, trying to downplay the events.

  “It was murder,” Ethan corrected, and his father looked about nervously, as if he expected one of Aubrey’s cyclopian guards to be lurking in the area.

  “Strong words,” Gahris whispered.

  “Often strong is the ring of truth,” Ethan said sternly and loudly, not backing off an inch.

  “I’ll have no more of it,” Gahris demanded. Still he looked about, drawing a disdainful glare from his judgmental son. “No more, do you hear!”

  Ethan snorted derisively and stared down at this man, this stranger who could be so cowed. He understood Gahris’s tentative position quite well, understood the politics of the land. If Gahris took any action against Aubrey, or any of Aubrey’s party, then the duke of Montfort would surely retaliate, probably with a fleet of warships. Ethan didn’t care, though, and didn’t sympathize. To the proud young Bedwyr, some things were worth fighting for, worth dying for.

  “And what of the Lady Avonese?” Ethan asked, putting a sarcastic tone on his use of the word “lady.”

  Gahris sighed, seeming very small to his son at that moment, “Aubrey hints at leaving her behind,” he admitted. “He thinks that her influence might be a positive thing for Bedwydrin.”

  “A new wife for Gahris,” Ethan spat out sarcastically. “A spy for Morkney in the house of Bedwyr.” His father did not reply.

  “And what of this woman who would so readily change consorts?” Ethan asked loudly and venomously. “Am I, then, to call her mother?”

  A spark of fury ignited within Gahris, and before he could control the emotion, his hand snapped out and slapped the impertinent Ethan across the face.

  Ethan didn’t retaliate other than to fix a glare on his father, his striking eyes narrowed.

  Gahris had not wanted things to go this far, but there was a danger brewing here, for him and for all the folk of Bedwydrin. In the flash of a passing instant, the white-haired eorl remembered his wife, who died in the great plague, and remembered the free time before that, before Greensparrow. But those times were gone, and the thoughts, like the instant, were passing, stolen by an unrelenting stare that amply reflected what the pragmatic elder Bedwyr knew he had to do.

  Luthien looked back from a high bluff toward the north side of the bay as the last lights went out in the town of Dun Varna. He still could not believe the events of this day, could not believe that Garth Rogar, his friend, was dead. For the first time, the sheltered young man tasted the rotten flavor of life under King Greensparrow and, inexperienced in anything beyond the arena, Luthien did not know what to make of it.

  Might this be tied to Ethan’s perpetually sour mood? he wondered. Luthien knew that Ethan held little respect for Gahris—something that the younger Bedwyr son, who saw his father as a bold and noble warrior, could not understand—but he had always attributed that to a flaw in Ethan’s character. To Luthien, Gahris was above reproach, the respected eorl of Bedwydrin, whose people loved him.

  Luthien did not know all the ancient rules of the arena, but he did understand that Gahris alone was overseer of the events. Garth Rogar was dead, and his blood was certainly on the hands of Gahris Bedwyr.

  But why? Luthien could not understand the reason, the possible gain. He imagined all sorts of wild possibilities—perhaps word had come that the Huegoth barbarians were planning a raid upon Bedwydrin, and it had been learned that Garth Rogar had been acting as a spy. Perhaps Gahris had even uncovered a report that Garth Rogar was planning to assassinate him!

  Luthien shook his head and discarded the ridiculous thoughts. He had known Garth Rogar for several years. The noble fighter was no spy and certainly no assassin.

  Then why?

  “Many in the town are worrying about you,” came a quiet voice from behind. Luthien didn’t have to turn to know that it belonged to Katerin O’Hale. “Your father among them, I would guess.”

  Luthien continued his silent stare across the still waters of the harbor toward the darkening town. He did not move even when Katerin came over to stand beside him and took his arm in her own, as she had done in the arena.

  “Will you come back now?”

  “Vengeance is not dishonor,” Luthien replied with a growl. He deliberately turned his head to stare into Katerin’s face, though he could barely see her in the gloom of the deepening night.

  A long moment of silence passed before Katerin answered.

  “No,” she agreed. “But proclaiming vengeance openly, in the middle of the arena, against one who names the duke of Montfort as his friend and relative would be a foolish thing. Would you give the man an excuse to kill you, and replace your father, for a moment of outrage?”

  Luthien pulled away from her, his anger now showing that he could not honestly disagree.

  “Then I make the vow now,” he said, “openly to you alone. On the grave of my dead mother, I’ll repay he who killed Garth Rogar. Whatever the cost, whatever the consequences to me, to my father, to Bedwydrin.”

  Katerin could hardly believe what she had just heard, but neither could she rightly berate the man for his honorable words. She, too, burned with helpless rage, feeling like a captive for the first time in her life. She had been raised in Hale, on the open Avon Sea. Her life was spent in danger in small fishing craft braving the swells and the fierce whales, living on the very edge of disaster. But Hale was a private place and a self-sufficient one, rarely visited. Whatever the news of Bedwydrin, or of Eriador and Avon beyond that, Hale was oblivious; and so in their ignorance were the proud folk of Hale free.

  But now Katerin had seen the politics of the land, and the taste in her mouth was no less bitter than the taste in Luthien’s. She turned the young man toward her fully and moved closer to him, using the warmth of their bodies to ward off the chill winds of the August night.

  On the morning winds of the next dawn, the black-sailed ship, proudly flying its pennants of Montfort and Avon, its prow lifting sheets of water high into the crystalline air, charged out of Dun Varna’s harbor.

  Katerin had returned to her barracks, but Luthien still watched from the wooded ridge. Long indeed would be his travels if he planned to keep his vow of revenge, he realized as the sails diminished. But he was a young man with a long memory, and up there on that ridge, watching the ship depart, Luthien vowed again that he would not forget Garth Rogar.

  He would have liked to remain out of Dun Varna for many more days; he had no desire at all to face his father, for what explanation might the man offer? But Luthien was hungry and cold, and the nearest town, where he certainly would be recognized, was fully a day’s march away.

  He had barely walked through the doors of House Bedwyr when two cyclopians came upon him. “Your father would see you,” one of them announced gruffly.

  Luthien kept on walking, and nearly got past the two before they crossed their long halberds in his path. The young man’s hand immediately went to his hip, but he wasn’t wearing any weapons.

  “Your father would see you,” the cyclopian reiterated, and he reached up with his free hand and grabbed Luthien’s upper arm hard. “He said to bring you, even if we have to drag you.”

 
Luthien roughly pulled away and kept his unrelenting stare on the brute. He thought of punching the cyclopian in the face, or of just pushing through the two, but the image of him being dragged into his father’s chambers by the ankles was not a pleasant one.

  He was standing before Gahris soon after, in the study where Gahris kept the few books his family owned (some of the very few books on all the isle of Bedwydrin) along with his other heirlooms. The elder Bedwyr stood hunched at the hearth, feeding the already roaring fire as if a deep chill had settled into his bones, though it was not so cold this day. Mounted on the wall above him was his most-prized piece, the family sword, its perfect edge gleaming and its golden hilt lined with jewels and sculpted to resemble a dragon rampant with upraised wings serving as the formidable crosspiece. It had been cunningly forged by the dwarves of the Iron Cross in ages past, its blade of beaten metal wrapped tight about itself a thousand times so that the blade only sharpened with use. Blind-Striker, it was called, both for its balanced cut and the fact that it had taken the eye of many cyclopians in the fierce war six hundred years before.

  “Where have you been?” Gahris asked calmly, quietly. He wiped his sooty hands and stood up straight, though he did not yet turn to face his son.

  “I needed to be away,” Luthien replied, trying to match his father’s calm.

  “To let your anger settle?”

  Luthien sighed but did not bother to answer.

  Gahris turned toward him. “That was wise, my son,” he said. “Anger brews rash actions—oft with the most dire of consequences.”

  He seemed so calm and so logical, which bothered Luthien deeply. His friend was dead! “How could you?” he blurted, unconsciously taking a long stride forward, hands bunched into fists. “To kill . . . what were you . . .” His words fell away in a jumble, his emotions too heated to be expressed.

  Through it all, the white-haired Gahris cooed softly like a dove and waved his hand in the empty air. “What would you have me do?” he asked, as though that should explain everything.

  Luthien opened his hands helplessly. “Garth Rogar did not deserve his fate!” Luthien cried. “A curse on Viscount Aubrey and on his wicked companions!”

  “Calm, my son,” Gahris was saying, over and over. “Ours is a world that is not always fair and just, but—”

  “There is no excuse,” Luthien replied through gritted teeth.

  “Not even war?” Gahris asked bluntly.

  Luthien’s breath came in short, angry gasps.

  “Think not of bloodied fields,” Gahris offered, “nor of spear tips shining with the blood of fallen enemies, nor turf torn under the charge of horses. Those are horrors that have not yet been reflected in your clear eyes, and may they never be! They steal the sparkle, you see,” Gahris explained, and he pointed to his own cinnamon orbs. Indeed, those eyes did seem without luster this August morning.

  “And were the eyes of Bruce MacDonald so tainted?” Luthien asked somewhat sarcastically, referring to Eriador’s greatest hero.

  “Filled with valor are the tales of war,” Gahris replied somberly, “but only when the horrors of war have faded from memory. Who can say what scars Bruce MacDonald wore in his heavy soul? Who alive has looked into the eyes of that man?”

  Luthien thought the words absurd; Bruce MacDonald had been dead for three centuries. But then he realized that to be his father’s very point. The elder Bedwyr went on in all seriousness.

  “I have heard the horses charge, have seen my own sword—” he glanced back at the fabulous weapon on the wall “—wet with blood. I have heard the stories—other’s stories—of those heroic battles in which I partook, and I can tell you, in all honesty and with arrogance aside, that they were more horror than valor, more regret than victory. Am I to bring such misery to Bedwydrin?”

  Luthien’s sigh this time was more of resignation than defiance.

  “Breathe out your pride with that sigh,” Galiris advised. “It is the most deadly and most dangerous of emotions. Mourn your friend, but accept that which must be. Do not follow Ethan—” He broke off suddenly, apparently rethinking that last thought, but his mention of Luthien’s older brother, a hero to the youngest Bedwyr, piqued Luthien’s attention.

  “What of Ethan?” he demanded. “What part does he play in all of this? What has he done in my absence?”

  Again Gahris was cooing softly and patting the air, trying to calm his son. “Ethan is fine,” he assured Luthien. “I speak only of his temperament, his foolish pride, and my own hopes that you will temper your anger with good sense. You did well in walking out of House Bedwyr, and for that you have my respect. We are given a long rein from the duke of Montfort, and longer still from the throne in Carlisle, and it would be good to keep it that way.”

  “What did Ethan do?” Luthien pressed, not convinced.

  “He did nothing, other than protest—loudly!” Gahris snapped back.

  “And that disappoints you?”

  Gahris snorted and spun back to face the fire. “He is my eldest son,” he replied, “in line to be the eorl of Bedwydrin. But what might that mean for the folk?”

  It seemed to Luthien that Gahris was no longer talking to him; he was, rather, talking to himself, as if trying to justify something.

  “Trouble, I say,” the old man went on, and he seemed very old indeed to Luthien at that moment. “Trouble for Ethan, for House Bedwyr, for all the island.” He spun back around suddenly, one finger pointing Luthien’s way. “Trouble for you!” he cried, and Luthien, surprised, took a step backward. “Never will stubborn Ethan come to learn his place,” Gahris went on, muttering again and turning back to the fire. “Once eorl, he would surely facilitate his own death and bring ruin upon House Bedwyr and bring watchful eyes upon all of Bedwydrin. Oh, what a fool is a proud man! Never! Never! Never!”

  Gahris had worked himself into quite a state, pumping his fist into the air as he spoke, and Luthien’s first instincts were to go to him and try to calm him. Something held the young man back, though, and instead he quietly left the room. He loved his father, had respected him all of his life, but now the man’s words rang hollowly in Luthien’s ears—ears that still heard the fateful crossbow click and the pitiful wheeze of Garth Rogar’s last breath.

  CHAPTER 4

  WET WITH THE BLOOD OF A FALLEN ENEMY

  WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN had the parents of a king not met? What might have been had a hero been cut down in his or her youth by an arrow that whizzed harmlessly past, cracking the air barely an inch away? Often does the simplest chance affect the history of nations, and so it was that August night, when Luthien walked out of House Bedwyr to the stables, where he found Ethan readying a horse, saddlebags stuffed with provisions.

  Luthien moved near his brother, eyeing him curiously, letting his expression ask the obvious question.

  “I have been sent away,” Ethan answered.

  Luthien seemed not to understand.

  “I am to go to the south,” Ethan went on, spitting out every word with disgust, “to travel with the king’s soldiers who would go into Gascony and fight beside the Gascons in their war with the Kingdom of Duree.”

  “A noble cause,” replied Luthien, too overwhelmed to consider his words.

  “A mercenary cause,” Ethan snarled back. “A mercenary cause for an unlawful king.”

  “Then why go?”

  Ethan stopped tightening the saddlebags and turned an incredulous look upon his naive little brother. Luthien just shrugged, still not catching on.

  “Because the eorl of Bedwydrin has ordered me to go.” Ethan spelled it out plainly and went back to his work.

  It made no sense to Luthien, and so he did not reply, did not even blink.

  “It will bring honor to our family and to all Bedwydrin, so said Gahris,” Ethan went on.

  Luthien studied his brother carefully, at first jealous that Gahris had chosen Ethan for the campaign over him. “Would not Blind-Striker serve you better if you go for the honor
of House Bedwyr?” he asked, noticing the unremarkable weapon sheathed on Ethan’s belt.

  Again came that disbelieving, condescending look. “Can you be so incredibly blind to the world?” Ethan asked, and he got his answer when Luthien winced.

  “Gahris sends me,” the elder son went on, “following the whispered suggestions of Aubrey. Gahris sends me to die.”

  The casual way Ethan spoke struck Luthien more than the words. He grabbed Ethan roughly by the shoulder and spun him away from his horse, forcing his brother to face him squarely.

  “I am not his choice for the succession,” Ethan spat out, and Luthien, remembering his earlier conversation with his father, could not disagree. “But the rules are clear. I am the eldest son, thus I am next in line as eorl of Bedwydrin.”

  “I do not challenge your right,” Luthien replied, still missing the point.

  “But Gahris does,” Ethan explained. “And my reputation of disloyalty has gone beyond Bedwydrin, it would seem.”

  “So Gahris will send you out with the army to win glory and restore your reputation,” Luthien reasoned, though he suspected his line of thought was still traveling the wrong direction.

  “So Gahris has sent me out to die,” Ethan reiterated firmly. “I am a problem to him—even Aubrey has heard of me and understands the difficulties of my potential ascension. Perhaps it is my arrogance, but I do not think Morkney’s cousin’s only purpose in coming to Bedwydrin was sport.”

  “You think Aubrey braved the breakers of the Dorsal, came all the way to Bedwydrin, merely to have you sent away?”

  “Beyond that, my young brother,” Ethan said, and for the first time, a ring of sympathy was evident in his harsh tones. “My young brother, who has never known freedom, who has lived all his life under the rule of Carlisle and Montfort.”

  Luthien crinkled his brow, now thoroughly confused.

  “Aubrey toured the northern islands,” Ethan explained. “Caryth, Marvis, Bedwydrin, even the Diamondgate on his return trip, to ensure that all was as it should be in the northland, to help secure Morkney’s tethers. Politicians do not take ‘holidays.’ Ever they work, living to work, to heighten their power. That is their way and their lifeblood. Aubrey came to Bedwydrin in part to deal with me, and also because the duke has no eyes out here. That has been remedied.” His work on the mount done, Ethan swung up into the saddle.