The RuneLords (23 page)

Instead, Raj Ahten's Days held a convocation with the Days of the royal family in an ancient alcove outside the bedchamber, where guards and servants often waited for their lord. There, the Days stood speaking briefly in code. It was often thus when Days from opposing kingdoms met. Iome understood none of their code, and simply closed the bedroom door on their chatter.

In the King's bedchamber, Queen Venetta Sylvarresta sat in a chair, dressed in her finest robes and regalia, staring out the windows to the south. Her back was to the door. She'd been painting her nails with a clear lacquer.

She was vain, with ten endowments of glamour--much more beautiful than Iome. Venetta had black hair and an olive complexion, like Raj Ahten's--both darker than Iome's. The diadems in Venetta's crown could not match the casual loveliness of her face. Her scepter lay across her lap, a gold column with pearls embedded in a ball at one end.

"So," she sighed without turning, "you've lost our kingdom." She sounded more hurt than Iome had ever heard her.

Iome's father pulled off his armored gauntlets, tossed them on the huge, four-poster bed.

"I told you you'd lose it," Queen Sylvarresta said. "You were too soft to hold it. It was only a matter of time." More painful words, unlike anything Iome had ever heard her mother say before. Unlike, Iome felt sure, anything she'd ever said.

King Sylvarresta unstrapped his helm, threw it next to the gauntlets, then worried at the pins on his vambraces. "I'll not regret what I've done," he said. "Our people grew up in relative peace."

"Without allies, without a strong king to protect them," Iome's mother said. "How much peace could you have really given them?"

The bitterness in the words stunned Iome. Her mother had always seemed calm, austere, a quiet support to her husband.

"We gave them the best I could," her father answered.

"And they love us little enough in return. If you were more of a lord, they would rise up in your defense. Your people would fight beside you, beyond all hope."

Iome helped her father remove his pauldrons, then the rebrace from his upper arms. Within a moment, he had his breastplate on the bed. Only then did Iome notice how her father was laying out the armor, like a man of steel, lying facedown, suffocating in the deep feather mattress.

Venetta was right. King Sylvarresta never got the respect, the admiration he deserved. An Oath-Bound Runelord should have drawn followers, should have had the respect of his people.

Instead, those people who gave endowments went to foreign kings, like King Orden, where they could sell their attributes at a higher price.

A king like Sylvarresta seldom got the support he needed, unless a Wolf Lord like Raj Ahten came along. Only when confronted with a usurper who won his endowments through blackmail would good people flock to the banner of a king like Sylvarresta.

Of course, that is why Raj Ahten attacks here first, Iome realized, when he could have laid waste other kingdoms closer by.

"Did you hear me, milord?" Venetta said. "I'm belittling you."

"I hear you," Lord Sylvarresta said, "and I love you still."

Iome's mother turned then, her face full of tears of love, her mouth tight in pain. She looked to be a young woman. Just as a faithful dog in great pain will snap at the master who tries to save it, Iome's mother had snapped at her father, and now Iome saw the regret there.

"I love you, forever," Venetta said. "You're a thousand times more the king than my wicked cousin could ever be."

King Sylvarresta pulled off his chain, stood in his leather jerkin. He glanced pointedly at Iome, and she left the room, gave her parents their privacy.

She dared not go out through the hall, into the throne room. Not with Raj Ahten there. So she waited in the alcove outside her father's door, and listened to the Days talk excitedly. In ancient times, guards and servants would have been stationed here during the night, but King Sylvarresta had never wanted either. Still, the small room with its benches was large enough to hold Iome and the Days.

Several long minutes later, Iome's mother and father exited their room. Her mother was still in her regalia; her father wore a lordly robe and a determined expression.

As her mother passed, she said to Iome, "Remember who you are." Her mother intended to play the role of queen to the very end.

Iome followed them, back into the audience chamber. To her surprise, two of the Raj Ahten's Invincibles had joined him. They stood to either side of the throne. The three of them made an imposing sight.

King Sylvarresta came forward, to the end of the crimson carpet before the throne. He knelt on one knee, bowed his head. "Jas Laren Sylvarresta, at your service, Lord. And I present my wife, your dear cousin Venetta Moshan Sylvarresta, as requested."

Queen Sylvarresta watched her husband bow, stood uncertainly for a moment, then bowed slightly, eyes wary, watching the Wolf Lord.

When her head was nearest the floor, Raj Ahten leapt forward, his body a blur, and drew the short sword from his sheath.

Venetta's crown, snatched from her head by Raj Ahten's blade, went flying, rang off the stone ceiling.

"You are presumptuous!" Raj Ahten warned.

Iome's mother watched the Wolf Lord. "I am a queen, still," she said in her own defense.

"That will be for me to decide," Raj Ahten said. He drove the sword through the cushion of the Queen's throne, left it as he sat back down. He pulled off his gauntlets, tossed them beside him on the Queen's throne. He clutched the arms of his chair, betraying to Iome just the slightest nervousness. He wanted something from them. Needed something. She could tell.

"I've been more than patient with you. You, Jas Laren Sylvarresta, financed knights who attacked me without provocation. I've come to insure that such attacks cease. I require...an acceptable tribute."

Iome's father said nothing for a moment. Her mother knelt near the throne. "What would you have of us?" King Sylvarresta asked at last.

"Assurance, that you will never fight me again."

"You have my word," Sylvarresta said. He looked up now, focused all his attention on the Wolf Lord.

Raj Ahten said heavily. "I thank you. Your oath is not a thing I take lightly. You have been an honorable lord to your people, Sylvarresta. An evenhanded lord. Your realm is clean, prosperous. Your people have many endowments to give me. If times were not so dark, I would like to think you and I could have been allies. But...

"We have great enemies massing, south of our borders."

"Inkarrans?" Sylvarresta asked.

Raj Ahten waved his hands in dismissal. "Worse. Reavers. They have been breeding like rabbits for thirty years. They've laid the forests of Denham bare. They've driven the nomen from their sanctuaries in the mountains. In another season, the reavers will come against us. I intend to stop them. I'll need your help, the help of all the Northern kingdoms. I intend to take control."

Iome felt confused by this. Apparently, her father was just as confused. "We could beat them!" Sylvarresta said. "The Northern kingdoms would unite in such a cause. You don't need to prosecute this war alone!"

"And who would lead our armies?" Raj Ahten asked. "You? King Orden? Me? You know better than that."

The heart seemed to go out of Iome's father. Raj Ahten was right. No one could lead the Northern kings. There were too many political divisions, too many moral strifes, too many petty jealousies and ancient rivalries. If Orden led an army south, someone would stay to attack his weakened cities.

Least of all would anyone trust Raj Ahten, the Wolf Lord. For hundreds of years, the Runelords had attacked any leader who sought too much power, who grasped too far. In ancient times, certain robbers, greedy for any power they could get, would use the forcibles to take endowments from wolves, and thus became known as Wolf Lords.

Men who desired an uncanny sense of smell or hearing often took endowments from pups, for dogs gave them willingly and required little in the way of support thereafter. Even stamina or brawn were taken from mastiffs, bred for just that purpose.

Yet men who took endowments from dogs became subhuman, part animal themselves. Thus the euphemism Wolf Lord became a term of derision used for any man of low morals, including men like Raj Ahten, who might never have taken an endowment from a dog.

No king of the North would follow Raj Ahten. Men who earned the title Wolf Lord became outcasts. Honorable lords were duty bound to fund the Knights Equitable in their wars and assassinations. Like wolves caught in the sheep fold, Wolf Lords were accorded no mercy.

"It doesn't have to be this way," Sylvarresta said. "There are other ways to prosecute this war. A tithe of knights from each kingdom..."

"It does have to be this way," Raj Ahten corrected. "Would you dare dispute me on this point? I have a thousand endowments of wit, to your..." He gazed into King Sylvarresta's eyes a flickering second, studying the intelligence there. "...two."

It could have been a guess, Iome thought, but she knew better. There was a saying: "A wise king does not garner all wit, instead he also allows his counselors to be wise." In the North, it was considered wasteful to take more than four endowments of wit. A lord who did so remembered everything he ever heard, all he ever saw or thought or felt. Sylvarresta would not have taken more than four. Yet how had Raj Ahten recognized that Iome's father had but two endowments active?

Raj Ahten's declaration, that he'd taken wit from a thousand, took the breath from Iome. She could not comprehend such a thing. Some lords swore that a few more endowments of wit granted a Runelord some benefit--extra creativity, deeper wisdom.

Raj Ahten folded his hands. "I've studied the reavers--how they are spreading into our kingdoms in tiny pockets, each with a new queen. The infestation is wide.

"Now, Sylvarresta, despite your peaceable assurances, I require more from you. Lay bare your flesh."

Clumsy from nervousness, with all the grace of a trained bear, King Sylvarresta untied the sash of his robe, shrugged off the midnight blue silk, till his hairy chest lay bare. The red scars of forcibles showed beneath his right nipple, like the mark of a lover's teeth. Raj Ahten read Sylvarresta's strengths in a glance.

"Your wit, Sylvarresta. I will have your wit."

Iome's father seemed to cave in on himself, dropped to both knees. He knew what it would be like, to pee his own pants, not knowing his name, not recognizing his wife or children, his dearest friends. In the past day he'd already felt keen pain as memories were lost to him. He shook his head.

"Do you mean you will not give it, or cannot?" Raj Ahten asked.

Lord Sylvarresta spread both hands wide, shaking his head, unable to speak.

"Will not? But you must--" Raj Ahten said.

"I can't!" Iome's father cried. "Take my life instead."

"I don't want your death," Raj Ahten said. "What value is that to me? But your wit!"

"I can't!" Sylvarresta said.

To give an enemy an endowment was one thing, but Raj Ahten would take more than just Sylvarresta's wit. Because Sylvarresta was already endowed, Raj Ahten would make King Sylvarresta his vector.

A man could only grant one endowment in his life, and when that endowment was granted, it created a magic channel, a bond between lord and vassal that could only be broken by death. If the lord died, the endowment returned to its giver. If the vassal died, the lord lost the attributes he had gained.

But if a man like Sylvarresta granted his wit to Raj Ahten, he would give not only his own wit, but also all the wit he received from his Dedicates, plus all wit he might ever receive in the future. As a vector, Sylvarresta became a living conduit. He would give Raj Ahten the wit he had taken, and might even be used to channel the wit of hundreds to Raj Ahten.

"You can give it me, with the proper incentive," Raj Ahten assured him. "What of your people? You care for them, don't you. You have trusted friends, servants, among your Dedicates? Your sacrifice could save them. If I have to kill you, I won't leave your Dedicates alive--men and women who can no longer offer endowments, men and women who might seek vengeance against me."

"I can't!" Sylvarresta said.

"Not even to buy the lives of a hundred vassals, a thousand?"

Iome hated this, hated the pregnant silence that followed. Raj Ahten had to get the endowment willingly. Some lords sought to assure the necessary degree of longing through love, others by offering lucre. Raj Ahten used blackmail.

"What of your beautiful wife--my cousin?" Raj Ahten asked. "What of her life? Would you give the endowment to buy her life? To buy her sanity. You would not want to see such a lovely thing ill-used."

"Don't do it!" Iome's mother said. "He can't break me!"

"You could save her life. Not only would she keep it, but she would remain on the throne, ruling as regent in my stead. The throne she loves so much."

King Sylvarresta turned to his queen, jaw quivering. He nodded, hesitantly.

"No!" Venetta Sylvarresta cried. In that moment, she spun and ran. Iome thought she would hit the wall, but realized too late that she'd not headed for the wall, but for the full-length windows behind the Days.

Suddenly, faster than sight could account, Raj Ahten was at her side, holding her right wrist. Venetta struggled in his grasp.

She turned to him, grimacing. "Please!" she said, grasping Raj Ahten's own wrist.

Then, suddenly, she squeezed, digging her nails into the Wolf Lord's wrist until blood flowed. With a victorious cry, she looked Raj Ahten in the eyes.

Venetta shouted to her husband, "Now you see how to kill a Wolf Lord, my sweet!"

Iome suddenly remembered the clear lacquer on the nails, and she understood--the Queen's distress had been a ruse, a plot to get Raj Ahten near so that she could plunge her poisoned fingernails into his flesh.

Venetta stepped back, holding her bloodied nails high, as if to display them for Raj Ahten before he collapsed.

Raj Ahten raised his right arm, stared at the wrist in dismay. The blood in it blackened, and the wrist began to swell horribly.