The Misbegotten King Read online

  IN A TRAITOR’S HANDS

  Annandale looked up from the low pile of blankets on which Abelard lay. In the weeks of captivity since their arrival, there had been no change in his condition. The King’s eyes were closed, as usual, his breathing was shallow. The skin sagged from his cheekbones, and beneath the ragged garments he wore, his body was little more than bones and sinew covered with a leathery husk. She could feel his mind, however, and the never-ending torment in which he existed as his body and the last vestiges of his will fought Amanander’s enchantment, and she did what she could to ease the misery. But her attempts were futile; nothing short of her own death could wrest Abelard from Amanander’s control, and she knew that even were she to make such a sacrifice, the King would only die.

  A wave of loathing swept over her, nausea so acute she felt as though she might vomit. Hold fast, daughter.The voice whispered through her mind, like a scent of roses in the midst of offal. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the voice. Hold fast? she wondered. For how long?

  * * *

  “ENGAGING AND POWERFUL.”

  —VOYA

  ALSO BY ANNE KELLEHER BUSH

  Daughter of Prophecy

  Children of Enchantment

  PUBLISHED BY

  WARNER BOOKS

  Copyright

  WARNER BOOKS EDITION

  Copyright © 1997 by Anne Kelleher Bush

  All rights reserved.

  Aspect® is a registered trademark of Warner Books, Inc.

  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: October 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-7595-2668-6

  For Juilene Osborne-McKnight,

  Christine Whittemore Papa and

  Lorraine Stanton with love.

  Some things can’t be said with words.

  Acknowledgements

  Once again, special thanks are due to special people—Beal,Ms. Daae, EmeraldAngel, HappyAngel, Shadowheart, Jemimah, Jackdotcalm, Skiperino, Vixen, Esua, Synkie, Isolde, Leaslyric, Dragonspawn, Precious too, Wildfire Di, and Picmaker—you all know who you are. Also, my long-suffering children, Katie, Jamie, Meg, and Libby, who have learned not to mind quite so much, Kathy Tomaszewski, who kept me on track, Don Maass and Betsy Mitchell for patience beyond belief, and finally, to Donny, who worked a bit of real magic on New Year’s Eve.

  Prologue

  The warriors of my people believe that words are only sounds which fall and fade into empty air, the weapons of the weak. I thought so, too, once. But I am old now, and I know better. For warriors die, in battle or in their beds, and only in the tales the Keepers tell do their deeds survive.

  When I was young, my days were taken up with sword and bow, with lance and battle-ax and quarter-stave-weapons I wielded better than most boys. And for the other girls—the soft ones who spent their days learning to spin and sew, to cook and weave—and for the men and women we call the Keepers, those with wordskill, I had only scorn.

  Did I know then, wild and unschooled child that I was, that in language there is more power than in all the weapons of men combined? Who could have convinced me, Deirdre M’Callaster, rebellious daughter of the Chief of all the Chiefs of the Settle Islands? I cared more for my father’s title than any story men might tell of me.

  It wasn’t until he came to me, months after she had died—the woman who was his wife, the woman who should have been his Queen—that I began to understand.

  He came, proud King of a prouder line than mine, and on his knees, his eyes empty of everything but grief, to me he poured out his pain. What choice did I have but to listen? I, too, had sworn to uphold the kingdom and the King unto death, and there was about his mouth the drawn, pinched look I have seen on the faces of the dying.

  I tightened my fists and forced my face smooth, and I listened while the man I loved gave me the story of his passion for a woman as different from myself as sword from sheath. He had come to fulfill the bargain we had made between us, for he was a man of honor who always kept his word.

  He had come to father me a son, but he could not—not in those long grief-haunted nights, when the only fire which burned between us was the one within the grate, the only wine which flowed were the flagons he drained one after another, until I thought my cellars would be emptied. And certainly not in those gray, rain-shrouded days, when he lay upon my bed, fully dressed, and slept, clutching my pillow to his chest like a little boy.

  It was a full two weeks or more when the torrent of words finally ceased. He looked at me across the hearth, and for the first time, he seemed to remember who I was and why he was there. “I’ve talked all this time,” he said.

  I nodded, saying nothing. How could I answer the loss of a love so true, so deep?

  “I’m sorry, Deirdre.” He shook his head like a man waking suddenly from sleep. “I didn’t mean to talk so much—I don’t know what came over me.”

  I held up my hand. “The Tell is a sacred thing among my people, not given lightly. It is never refused.”

  “The Tell?” he frowned.

  “Among my people, after someone dies, and one feels the need, it is the custom to go to one of those with word-skill, those we call the Keepers, and tell the story of that person’s life. We call it the Tell. It is a sacred thing, for it is three times blessed—it honors the one who hears it, and the one who speaks it, as well as the one who died.”

  “You listened to all this—because you had to?”

  “No.” I glanced into the flames. “I am only a warrior, you know that. I was not trained to listen and remember. But when you came to me, you began to talk, and I could not refuse you.”

  He rocked back, drawing his knees up to his chin, and wrapped his arms around his legs. He rested his chin on his knees, and he looked no more than a child of ten or twelve. “You’ve never refused me anything, have you?”

  In the firelight his eyes were darker than the ashes beneath the grate, and very steady, and I had to swallow hard in order to answer. “You are my King. As you reminded me once, there is an oath which binds us.”

  “An oath,” he repeated. “And a bargain.” He reached for me then, across the space that separated us, and this time, when he wrapped his arms around me and drew me close, there was nothing of the child in his touch.

  Contents

  In a Traitor’s Hands

  Also By Anne Kelleher Bush

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Prill, 77th Year in the Reign of the Ridenau Kings
r />   2749 Muten Old Calendar

  It was the blood which Deirdre noticed first, the dark, liver-colored streaks which had dribbled down the face of the granite rock by the roadside and congealed in a muddy ditch into a thick, fly-speckled mess. The sight of it wrested her out of her mental rehearsal of the leave-taking speech she was planning to give her companions as soon as she found an opportune moment.

  The warm, damp wind rustled the heap of rags lying on top of the rock, and all her instincts, honed by six years of ruling the most contentious men in Meriga, told her there was a body under the tattered fabric.

  She reined her horse back and motioned to the tall man on her left who wore the insignia of the King’s Guard on his olive drab tunic. “We’d better halt, Captain. I think there’s a body on that rock.”

  Clearly startled, Brand raised his hand at once, and further down the line the sergeant of the company bellowed the order. Deirdre swung out of the saddle and handed her reins over to the bewildered standard bearer. “Careful with him, boy. He catches the smell of blood, he’s likely to get skittish.”

  She ignored the standard bearer’s nervous reply. Her boots clicked across the smooth paved surface of the ancient highway, and the breeze lifted the few wisps of red-brown hair which had escaped the heavy coils of her braids. She adjusted her sword belt, and automatically felt for her dagger. The damp wind shifted, and over the hurrying clatter of Brand’s following footfalls, she heard the horses whinny nervously as they caught the carrion stench.

  “Wait, M’Callaster,” Brand called, just as she touched the tip of one boot to the first rock.

  She ignored him, too. Although Brand, unlike some of the men who served Prince Roderic, never forgot to address her correctly, he still had a tendency to behave like an old woman when it came to letting her go first into any situation he perceived as dangerous. As did Roderic, for that matter. She shoved the thought of Roderic aside. When he had left for Ahga, to await the birth of his hoped-for heir, she had told herself she would not dwell on his absence.

  She tried instead to concentrate on the matter at hand: the campaign against the rebellious younger sons of the old Senador of Atland. Instead of returning with her men to the Settle Islands after the successful siege of Minnis Saul last summer, Deirdre had agreed to stay and aid Prince Roderic’s struggle to guarantee the inheritance of Atland’s oldest son and heir, Kye. So here she was on this muddy highway, which looped over the Pulatchian Mountains like a ragged ribbon, accompanied by Brand and a contingent of the Prince’s Army, intent on rendezvousing with Kye by sunset at a garrison town still many miles away. But it seemed that no matter how hard Deirdre tried to concentrate on plans to bring the rebellion to a speedy and successful conclusion, thoughts of Roderic had an annoying way of intruding when she least expected them.

  She bit down on her lip as she reached for the pile of rags, searching with a gloved hand. It was a body all right. She tugged, and the thing slipped off the top of the rock, tumbling and sliding, to lie face-up like a rag doll, staring blindly at the lowering sky. She shoved a balled fist into her mouth and looked away. Despite the mutilations, the third eye, centered in the forehead above and between what remained of the other two, and the terracotta-colored skin made it clear that the creature had been a Muten.

  Beside her, Brand stifled a gagging noise. “By the One,” he managed at last. “What kind of monster did this?”

  “It’s—it was a Muten,” she said. “Get Vere.”

  “Boy—” Brand spoke to the standard bearer, who was vainly trying to control both his own animal and Deirdre’s, “call for Lord Vere. At once.”

  There was an immediate stir through the ranks as the boy slipped out of his saddle and ran down the column of men. Deirdre stared at the ruin at her feet. Something—someone—had seared the eyes from the Muten’s head, wielding a pointed iron so deeply that the rubbery, grayish white matter of the brain lay revealed under the blackened flesh. Its mouth hung open, the jaw wrenched apart, and the remains of the tongue protruded from the jellied mass of clotting blood. The arms ended in bloodied stumps about three inches beneath the elbows. “Mother goddess,” she muttered. No matter what anyone might think of the Mutens, who swarmed like vermin through the hills and hollows of the Pulatchian Mountains, none of them deserved to die like this.

  She glanced up to see Vere striding forward, his long, green cloak billowing around his knees. She still did not quite understand Vere’s role. She knew he was the second of all the missing King’s illegitimate children, born to some Mayher’s daughter from a village near Ahga when Abelard was no more than fifteen or sixteen. She knew that Vere had run away from Ahga years before, in his own youth, long before Abelard had married Roderic’s mother. She knew that he had returned to the court last summer, and that it was common knowledge that he had lived among the Mutens. It was also common knowledge that Roderic relied upon Vere in his dealings with the Mutens. Once again, Roderic’s face flashed before her, the familiar shock of fawn brown hair falling across his brow, lean cheeks and squared jaw rough with the faintest haze of beard. With a curse, she forced herself to think only of the situation at hand.

  Without a word, Vere dropped to his knees, his cheeks pale behind the swirling tattoos—Muten markings—which were visible above his gray beard. Beads of sweat laced his forehead, despite the damp breeze. His hand rested briefly on the matted locks of blood-clotted hair, then he heaved a heavy sigh and rose to his feet. “Any others?”

  “There’s another one there—” Brand nodded at a body lying in a misshapen heap near another rock and pointed to another still, ragged form lying a little distance away. “At least one more there. You think the Pulatchian Highlanders did this?” He gripped his swordbelt with both hands and looked around, scanning the forest on either side of the road, his dark brows knit. Droplets of water off the trees gleamed silver in his steel-streaked hair. At forty-nine, Brand, the eldest of all of Abelard’s children, was the Captain of the King’s Guard, the commander of the elite corps of troops who were charged with the protection of the King’s person, as well as the second-in-command of the Armies of the King. No other man in Meriga, save Roderic himself, wielded so much power, and Brand’s loyalty to his father and his half-brother was absolute.

  The men who dwelled in the Pulatchian Mountains and called themselves Highlanders hated the Muten Tribes and fought endless squabbles with them over the scarce patches of arable land in the mountains. If anyone was responsible for this breach of the peace, surely it was one of their factions. The thought that anyone could conceive of such a horrible killing made Deirdre, hardened as she was to the sights of battle, nauseated.

  She glanced from one brother to the other and flung her brown-and-red battle-plaid over her shoulder impatiently. “We haven’t the time to worry about who’s responsible for this if we’re to rendezvous with Atland’s son at dusk. Leave a detail to bury these poor wretches.”

  Vere dragged the toe of a worn boot through the mud. “I’ll stay. There’re things which ought to be said over them. I’ll see to that, then catch up.”

  Brand nodded and Deirdre shrugged. The first drops of rain stung her cheek. The warm wind blew harder, through the tangled mass of long gray locks on Vere’s shoulder. As Brand turned on his heel, motioning for the sergeant, Vere tapped his brother on the shoulder. “I don’t know why this happened, but I can tell you it wasn’t the Highlanders who did this.”

  Brand frowned. “Why are you so certain?”

  “What was done here was a parody—a travesty—of a secret ritual. This was done by other Mutens.”

  “You’re sure?” Brand shot back. “If the Highlanders have violated the treaty, Roderic needs to know immediately.”

  Vere only nodded, hanging his head as though in shame. As Deirdre swung back into her saddle, she saw him admonish the soldiers to treat the body gently. Poor misfit Prince, she thought, not quite one of them, not quite one of us. Like me, she thought, not one of the men, not one of
the women. Not that it made any difference now. She had fought and won her title six years ago, when she was barely twenty-two, and no man dared challenge her right to rule her father’s estate, or to ride to war with the lords of the kingdom.

  She flapped her reins and the horse trotted off down the road, eager to be away from the stench. “Why would anyone do something like that?” she asked Brand as he rode up.

  “Who knows why the Mutens do anything? Just as long as it doesn’t complicate things for us. This situation is bad enough already.” His mouth was set and grim.

  There wasn’t much to smile about, thought Deirdre as the road dipped down into a slight valley, and the light rain spattered the black surface. Two and a half years ago, Abelard Ridenau had disappeared on a journey across the Arkan Plains. At the time, Roderic had been in the middle of his first command, the first Muten rebellion in more than ten years. Repeated searches across Arkan and Loma had proved fruitless. Abelard had simply vanished, leaving his eighteen-year-old heir to deal as best he could with a country smoldering under an uneasy peace.

  Although Amanander, Roderic’s traitor brother, had lain since the previous summer an unconscious prisoner in Ahga, there had been rumors that he showed signs of waking from his unnatural sleep, and Deirdre suspected it wasn’t Roderic’s concern for his wife and the impending birth alone that had prompted him to return to his capital more than a month ago. At least, she preferred to think it wasn’t.

  If that child were a son, thought Deirdre as she tightened her grip on the reins, Roderic would be released from his vow of fidelity to his wife and free to fulfill the bargain they had made between them—that in exchange for ten thousand of her men to be used in his struggle against Amanander to secure the throne of Meriga, he would attempt to give her a child. The Chiefs of the Settle Islands were so contentious Deirdre knew that only with the support of the throne would her son succeed her in relative peace.