Only the Destined

That just left one thing to do. Royce stood up on the railing, looking down to where the water frothed and swirled below. He put the crystal sword back in its sheath, hoped the armor he’d found in the tower was as light as it felt…

…and leapt.

CHAPTER FOUR

Raymond stood at a crossroads on the edge of the old duke’s territory with his brothers, knowing that he ought to press on, but at the same time not wanting to split away from the others just yet. Soon, he, Lofen, and Garet would have to go off and undertake the things that Royce needed; that all of them needed.

“Nervous?” he asked the others.

“Of course not,” Lofen said, the bravado obvious. Lofen was always ready for a fight, and maybe that would serve him well in going to seek out the Picti, but even so, Raymond found himself thinking that it would have been better if he’d had more than a map and a general idea.

“I’ll do what we need,” Garet said, obviously trying to look as brave as his brothers. Raymond wanted to tell him that he knew Garet was brave—he’d seen how strong the others had been when they’d been trapped down in Altfor’s dungeon. “I’ll get the bannermen for our cause.”

“I’ll find you the ones who will help,” Moira said, her horse next to Garet’s. Raymond wasn’t sure what to think about her presence there. The fact that she was a noble would help in getting the nobles on their side, and she had volunteered to help, but Raymond could already see the way Garet was looking at her, and he just knew that was going to be complicated.

“See that you keep safe,” Raymond said to his youngest brother. He turned his attention to Moira. There was no denying she was beautiful, and he wasn’t going to blame her for having been taken by the nobles, but even so, there was something about the way she’d volunteered for this that made him uneasy. “See that you keep him safe.”

“I’m not a child,” Garet said. “I’m a man, and I’ll do a man’s work of this.”

“Just so long as you get us the people we need,” Raymond said.

“I’ve the easy part,” Garet insisted. “You’re the one who has to persuade people to rise up.”

Raymond nodded. “They’ll rise. They’ll do it for Royce.”

He’d seen the way his brother had been able to persuade people to fight harder, and how Royce had been able to overcome the most dangerous of foes. He’d cut down a master warrior like Sir Alistair, and had rallied Earl Undine’s forces. People would rise up in Royce’s name.

“I guess this is goodbye then,” Lofen said. There wasn’t much emotion obvious in it, but Raymond knew it was there under the surface. Raymond just hoped his brother could make a more emotional plea when it came to the Picti. He also hoped his brother would be safe, because they’d all seen what the wild people of the land were capable of, up on the healing rock.

“It’s not goodbye for long, I hope,” Raymond said. “Just remember—”

“Gather them at Earl Undine’s castle, not at the old duke’s,” Lofen said. “Aye, I know. You’ve said it enough times on the way so far.”

“I was going to say remember that I love you both, brothers,” Raymond said. “Even if you are an idiot, Lofen, and Garet’s too wet behind the ears for any sense.”

“At least we’re not a mother hen clucking over everyone,” Garet shot back. He turned his horse and heeled it forward. “I’ll see you soon, brother, with an army!”

“I’ll keep him safe,” Moira said, turning her own horse to follow Garet.

“See that you do,” Raymond called after her.

“You’re being hard on her,” Lofen said, as the two rode away.

“It’s more the part where Garet’s soft on her that worries me,” Raymond said.

He saw his brother shrug. “At least he gets a beautiful woman with him who knows the people he’s going to see. Why I couldn’t have that Neave come with me…”

Raymond laughed at that. “You think she’d be interested in you? You’ve seen her with Matilde. Besides, Picti will be easy enough to find. Just wander the wild places until one of them shoots something at you.”

Lofen swallowed then. “You’re joking, but you’ll feel bad if I come back filled with arrows. Still, I’ll do it, and I’ll bring back my own army, see how people like fighting the wild folk.”

He turned and rode in the direction of what they thought would be Picti lands, which left Raymond waiting by the crossroads alone. Compared to his brothers, it felt as though he had the easiest task: persuade people who were already discontented throughout the kingdom to join their cause. After so many years of being abused by nobles serving under King Carris, they should be tinder dry kindling, waiting for the spark of his words.

Even so, as Raymond turned his horse in the direction of one of the villages and kicked it into a canter, he found himself wishing that his brothers were coming with him.

***

The first village was a place so small that it probably wouldn’t have shown up on most maps. It had a name, Byesby, and a few houses, and that was it. It was barely more than a glorified farmstead, really, without even an inn to draw the locals together. The best that could be said of it was that at least there weren’t any guards around, serving some local ruler, who might try to stop Raymond in getting people to rise up.

He rode to the center of the place, which seemed to be marked by a low wooden post for messages, set next to a well that obviously hadn’t been repaired in a while. There were a few people out in the street working, and more came out as Raymond sat there on his horse. They probably didn’t see many people in armor out here. Possibly, they even thought he’d been sent by whichever nobleman claimed the place.

“Listen to me,” Raymond called out from the back of his horse. “Gather round, all of you!”

Slowly, people started to come forward. Raymond had seen more people in battles, but it occurred to him as they slowly surrounded him that he’d never had to speak in front of so many before. In that moment, his mouth felt dry, and his palms clammy.

“Who’re you?” one man, who looked burly enough to be a blacksmith, demanded. “We’ve no time for raiders and bandits out here.”

He hefted a hammer as if to emphasize the point that they weren’t defenseless.

“Then it’s just as well that I’m neither!” Raymond shouted back to the man. “I’m here to help you.”

“Unless you’re planning to lend a hand with the harvest, I don’t see how you can help us,” another man said.

One of the older women there looked Raymond up and down. “I can think of a few ways.”

Just the way she said it was enough to send the heat of embarrassment spreading through Raymond. He fought it back, and it felt at least as difficult as fighting a swordsman would have been.

“Haven’t you heard that the old duke and his son Altfor have been overthrown?” Raymond called out.

“What’s that to do with us?” the blacksmith called back. From the way people nodded as he spoke, Raymond had the feeling that he was the one there they listened to. “We’re on Lord Harrish’s lands.”

“Lord Harrish, who takes from you the way the other nobles take,” Raymond said. He knew there were better, kinder nobles like Earl Undine, but from what he could remember of the ruler here, he wasn’t one of them. “How often do they have to ride into your villages, stealing from you, before you tell them that enough is enough?”

“We’d be pretty stupid to do that,” the blacksmith called back. “He has soldiers.”

“And we have an army!” Raymond called back. “You’ve heard that the old duke was overthrown? Well, we did it, in the name of the rightful king, Royce!”

In his imagination, his voice boomed out over the place. In practice, Raymond could see some of the people at the back straining to hear him.

“You’re Royce?” the blacksmith called back. “You’re the one claiming to be the son of the old king?”

“No, no,” Raymond explained quickly. “I’m his brother.”

“So you’re the son of the old king too?” the smith demanded.

“No, I’m not,” Raymond said. “I’m the son of a villager, but Royce is—”

“Well, make up your mind,” the old woman who’d embarrassed him said. “If this Royce is your brother, then he can’t be the son of the old king. It stands to reason.”

“No, you’ve got it all wrong,” Raymond said. “Please, just listen to me, give me a chance to explain it all, and—”

“And what?” the blacksmith said. “You’ll tell us how this Royce is worth us following him? You’ll tell us how we should go out and die in someone else’s war?”

“Yes!” Raymond said, and then realized how that must sound. “No, I mean… it isn’t someone else’s war. It’s a war for everyone.”

The smith didn’t seem very convinced by that. He strode up to lean against the well, no longer a part of the crowd, but the one addressing it.

“Really?” he said, looking out to the others there. “You all know me, and I know you, and we all know what it’s like when nobles fight. They come and they take us for their armies, and they promise us all kinds of things, but when it’s all done, it’s us who’re dead, and they go back to doing what they want.”

“Royce is different!” Raymond insisted.

“Why is he different?” the smith shot back.

“Because he’s one of us,” Raymond said. “He was raised in a village. He knows what it’s like. He cares.”

The smith sneered at that. “If he cares so much, then where is he? Why is he not here, rather than some boy saying he’s his brother?”

Raymond knew then that there was no point in continuing. The people here weren’t going to listen to him, no matter what he said. They’d heard too many promises from too many other people, back in the days before King Carris had forbidden his nobles from fighting. Only the thought that Royce might actually care for them would be enough to persuade people, and the smith was right: they had no reason to believe that when he wasn’t even there.

Raymond turned his horse, riding out of the village with as much dignity as he could find right then. It wasn’t much.

He rode out on the path in the direction of the next village, trying to think as he went, and ignoring the steady rain that started to fall around him.

He loved his brother, but he also wished that Royce hadn’t felt the need to leave to find his father. Objectively, Raymond could understand how much finding the old king would help their cause, but it was Royce people would follow, Royce they needed to see in order to rise up. Without him there, Raymond wasn’t sure if he would be able to pull together any kind of army for his brother.

That meant that when King Carris struck back, it would just be Earl Undine’s forces against the full might of the royal army. Raymond didn’t know how big that army would be, but since it would be composed of forces from every lord in the land… they would have no chance.

If only there were some way that Royce could be here, Raymond had no doubt he would be able to raise the army they needed. As it was, though, he found himself hoping that Lofen and Garet would have better luck.

“We can’t leave it to luck though,” Raymond said to himself. “Not when there are so many people who will die.”

He’d seen firsthand what the nobles could do to those who crossed them. There were the gibbets, the tortures on the healing stone, and worse. At the very least, every village that stood would find itself ravaged, which only gave those that remained more reasons not to join in the revolt.

Raymond sighed. There was no way to square the circle: they needed Royce, but they couldn’t have him while he went to find his father. Unless…

“No, that couldn’t work,” Raymond said to himself.

Except that maybe it could. It wasn’t as though anyone here actually knew what Royce looked like. They might have heard of him, might even have heard a general description, but everyone knew how stories exaggerated.

“This is a stupid idea,” Raymond said.

The trouble was that it was the only idea he could think of right then. Yes, it would be dangerous, because Royce was a hunted man. Yes, it would store up trouble for later: people would feel betrayed when they found out, some might even desert. More wouldn’t though. More would feel too connected to the cause once they were a part of the army, or would be too busy fighting to think about it.

“They might not even see Royce close up,” Raymond mused.

He realized that he had made a decision without exactly making it, and continued on his route toward another village. He chose one a couple of villages over, because he didn’t want stories spreading from Byesby and spoiling what he was about to do. This village was larger, with an inn and a great barn that served as a general store. It was large enough that the sight of one man riding into the village didn’t bring people out of their houses with the sheer strangeness of it all. It meant that Raymond had to sit on horseback in the village square, calling out again and again until people came out to him.

“Everyone, listen. Listen to me! I have news!”

He waited until people gathered around before he started to speak.

“War is coming!” he said. “You’ve heard the stories: that the son of the true king has come back, and overthrown a duke who ravaged his own people! Well, it’s true, and I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that this is just another squabble between nobles that you have no part of, but I’m here to tell you that you do have a part in it. That this is something different.”

“Oh, and why’s that?” a man demanded from the back of the growing crowd. Raymond had the feeling of things building up in the same way they had before.

“Because this is a chance to actually change things. Because this is not a squabble among nobles, but a chance to make a world that isn’t about a few nobles holding us all down. Because this is one fight where the people involved actually care about people like you, people like all of us.”

“Is that so?” the man asked. “Well then, stranger, who are you, that you know so much about it all?”

Raymond took a breath, knowing this was the moment when he had to either do it or not do it, and once it was done, it couldn’t be undone.

“Come on,” the man demanded. “Who are you, to say that some far off noble actually cares about any of the likes of us?”

“It’s simple,” Raymond said, and this time, his voice did boom out over the village for everyone to hear. “My name is Royce, and I am the son of King Philip, the true and rightful king of this land!”

CHAPTER FIVE

Royce was padding through a forest, the trees blending into one another until it became impossible to know the path. He was lost, and somehow he knew that this was a place where to be lost was to die.

He continued onward, not knowing what else to do. Around him now, the trees closed in, and their branches whipped around in an unseen wind, buffeting Royce and lashing him. Their branches tore at his skin, and now there were brambles to go with the branches, ripping into him and holding him back. It took everything he had to keep going.

Why keep going, though? He didn’t know where he was, so why press forward like this, through the darkness and the uncertainty of the forest? His energy was fading, so why not sit down on the stump of a tree, waiting until he got his breath back, and—

“To stop is to die, my son.” The voice came through the trees, and even though he had only heard it in dreams, Royce instantly recognized it as that of his father. He turned toward the sound, starting forward.

“Father, where are you?” he called out, pushing in the direction the voice seemed to have come from.

The way was, if anything, even harder here. There were fallen trees to contend with, and Royce found it harder to leap over them each time. There were rocks protruding from the forest floor, and now it seemed that Royce had to climb as much as run just to get around them. The route ahead was still indistinguishable from the rest of the forest, and Royce could feel the despair of not knowing pressing down on him.

That was when he saw the white hart standing there, the deer waiting and looking at him expectantly. With the same strange certainty that he had felt before, Royce knew that this animal was there to show him the way. He turned to follow, running in its wake.

The white hart was fast, and Royce had to put everything he had into keeping up. It felt as though his lungs were exploding with the effort, and his limbs were on fire. Even so, he kept running, through the whipping branches of the trees and on into a space where the deer vanished, replaced by an armored figure rimmed in white light.

“Father,” Royce said, gasping the word. He felt as though he had no more breath, no more time.

His father nodded and smiled, then, inexplicably, pointed upward. “You need to go now, Royce. Kick, kick toward the light.”

Looking up, Royce saw a light above him, and as he tried to do as his father said, the light grew closer and closer…

***

Royce came to with a spluttering breath that seemed to involve as much water as air. He spat out sea water and started to sit up, but careful hands held him in place. Royce fought against them for a moment before he realized that it was Mark there, his hands pushing the water out of Royce’s stomach.

“Careful,” his friend said. “You’ll tip the raft.”

The “raft” in question was no more than a section of the ship’s mast that had broken off in the chaos, and then tangled with enough other driftwood to form a kind of temporary floating platform, buoyed up and down by the waves.

Bolis, Neave, and Matilde knelt on the makeshift craft, with Gwylim a little way away toward the edge and Ember flying overhead. Matilde had a gash on her side that might have come from a knife or a piece of wood, but either way blood was leaking into the water while Neave fussed over her and cut lengths of sail cloth into bandages. Sir Bolis was hastily trying to lash a metal fitting to a length of wood, forming a crude harpoon. Of his own armor and weapons, there was no sign.

Royce looked down quickly, and saw that the crystal sword was still by his side, while he still wore the armor that he had taken from Earl Undine’s tower.

“I don’t know how you managed to swim in that,” Mark said, “but you did. You popped up like a cork and I pulled you out.”

“Thank you,” Royce said, offering his hand to his friend.

Mark clasped it firmly. “After all the times you’ve saved me, you don’t need to thank me. I’m just glad you survived.”

“For now,” Bolis said from the prow of their makeshift raft. “We’re still in danger.”

Royce looked around, trying to make sense of things beyond the raft. He could see that they’d been washed further out to sea, so that the Seven Isles were a speck in the distance once again. The sea was roiling too, as if a storm might follow. Their raft was creaking under the strain of it all.

“Forget a spear,” Royce said. “We need to focus on tying the raft together.”

“You didn’t see the creature devouring people,” Bolis said. “It must have killed every sailor who was caught in the main wreck. That sea-wyrm is nothing I want to face unarmed.”

“And do you want to face it in the water when the raft falls apart or sinks?” Royce countered. He’d seen the creature Bolis was worried about, and he knew how big a threat it would be, but right then, the sea could kill them just as certainly.

There were ropes attached to the masts, and Royce pointed to one of them. “Everyone try to grab pieces of rope that aren’t already tangling things and use them to tie the raft together. That’s the priority, then paddle so that we can get to land, then weapons.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Bolis said, but he did it anyway. So did Neave and Mark. When Matilde went to help, she slumped back, grimacing in pain.

“We’ve got this,” Royce told her. “How bad is it?”

“I’m not going to die from it,” Matilde said. “At least… I don’t think I am.”

“Why does she get to sit there and rest?” Bolis asked.

Neave was immediately there in front of him, a dagger in her hand. “Give me one reason not to gut you and throw you to the fish, invader.”

Royce moved to step between them, but Gwylim was there first, the bhargir’s bulk pushing them apart.

“We can’t afford to fight,” Royce said. “We have to work together, or we’ll all drown.”

They grumbled, but they went back to work, and soon, the raft felt a lot more stable than it had before. From where she sat, Matilde was already working on lashing a plank to a longer piece of wood, creating a kind of oar. Royce joined her, and soon, they had an oar for each of them.

“Which way?” Bolis asked, and Royce pointed. There was only one way possible on a makeshift craft like this.

“Back toward the isles,” he said.

“And the creature,” Mark pointed out.

“Maybe we’ll be lucky and slip by it,” Royce said.

“Maybe it will have eaten its fill,” Neave said with a look that said she hoped everyone on the ship had been a part of its meal.

Royce didn’t know how likely that was, but there didn’t seem to be any other option; they had to try to get back to the islands.

“Row together,” he said. “Ready?”

They paddled the raft in the direction of the islands. All of them, even Matilde, helped. Even with all of them paddling, it was still hard going, because their oars weren’t really designed for the task, and because the waves seemed almost determined to pull them back out into the sea. Royce knew they couldn’t let that happen. Out there, they would sink, or die of thirst, or fall prey to some other creature of the deep. Their only hope lay on land.

“Paddle harder,” Royce yelled, trying to encourage them. “We’re making progress.”

They were, but it was slow. Through Ember’s eyes, they were a mere dot against the vastness of the ocean. That dot was moving in the direction of the islands, but barely faster than it might have if it had been bobbing along on the tide. Even so, they were growing closer, in among the mist and the rocks and the rest of it.

“We’re nearly there,” Mark said, and his friend sounded hopeful at the prospect. Looking at it all from above using Ember’s sight, Royce could still see the jagged maze of rocks around the islands, the swirling tides around them seeming almost determined to drag any ship that came too close onto them.

The closest of the islands had beaches around its edges, but those beaches were ringed by rocks and reefs, with a tide before them that seemed to rush far too fast. Looking at it all, Royce thought that perhaps it might be better to head for another of the islands, avoiding this first one completely in spite of the danger of their situation.

Then Gwylim howled, long and low and warning. The sound was enough to make Royce have Ember wheel back toward the raft, giving him the benefit of her view as she looked down. From up there, Royce could see the shadow in the water powering forward toward them…

“The creature!” he yelled, snapping back to himself just as the beast reared up out of the water in sinuous coils, eel-like and blade-finned, its teeth shining in the sun.

It plunged down into the water near the raft, and the wave plowed into them, almost tipping the tiny vessel. A part of Royce guessed it was what the creature intended; maybe it had worked out that people were easier to eat once they were in the water.

He drew the crystal sword, not knowing what else to do.

The creature flowed up out of the water once more, and Royce slashed at it, only able to graze it as it towered over him. The thing looked down at him, as if trying to work out what this thing was that was causing it pain. It struck out toward Royce, jaws gnashing, and Royce jumped back as far as the raft would allow, cutting at it. Gwylim was there, leaping at the beast and biting.

It lashed out again, and Royce spun away from the strike, feeling the force of the thing’s fins slam into his armor. Without it, he guessed they would have torn him in half, and even as it was, it knocked the breath from him, sending him to his knees for a moment.

The creature spun again, and Royce knew there would be no chance to dodge this time.

Then Bolis was there, his improvised spear at the ready, flinging it like a harpoon at a whale, aiming for the beast’s head. It struck the sea-wyrm in one of its massive eyes, bringing a shriek from it that echoed across the water even as the thing slammed into Bolis, knocking him from the raft.