Only the Bold Read online

  Clarity flickered through him, and he realized that he already knew where his father had gone. There had been papers among his father’s things, torn into scraps and seen by Royce for a matter of moments. There had been words on them, and now Royce knew what they meant, where they meant.

  Royce could see all of it then, everything that he needed to do. He looked up from the mirror. To his astonishment it was dark when he did so, the stars glinting down, moonlight spilling over the water, and the Seven Isles no more than a dot on the horizon.

  “Are you all right?” Mark asked, looking worried.

  Almost immediately, all the wondrous details that Royce had seen in the mirror started to fade. The complex web of choices and decisions was too much to hold at once.

  “I know where we have to go,” Royce said. He set his hand to the tiller, moving it and setting the boat turning onto a new course. He knew as surely as he could see the moon that this was the correct direction, and that his father lay ahead.

  “What are you doing?” Matilde demanded.

  Royce didn’t have the words to explain it, or rather, he could, but even attempting to form the words made all that he knew feel soap bubble thin, ready to burst into nothingness and chaos. He wanted to tell his friends, but telling them would change things in and of itself.

  “We need to go this way,” he said. “My father… I know where he is.”

  “Are you sure?” Mark asked. “We thought he would be in the Seven Isles.”

  “I…” Royce couldn’t explain. He couldn’t. “Do you trust me, Mark?”

  “You know that I do,” Mark said. Around him, the others nodded, one by one.

  “Then we need to go this way,” Royce said. “Please.”

  For a moment, he thought they might argue, that they might try to turn the boat back toward the kingdom, or tell him that he’d been addled by the mirror. But one by one, they sat back in place, waiting while the boat continued on its course.

  They were going to find Royce’s father, and this time, Royce knew where he would be.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Dust wandered the island while chaos reigned around him, barely comprehending what was happening. Fire burst around his feet, and he simply didn’t react. Instead, he staggered on, rocks tumbling around him, the whole island imploding in the kind of entropy that Dust would never have believed in before he looked in the mirror.

  “I was wrong,” he muttered to himself as he walked on. “So very wrong.”

  Once, he’d believed in a world where priests knew everything, and kept fate on its single, set course. Then, he’d been so sure that he could pick a path through fate. He’d seen the horrors to come, and he’d seen the death that was needed to stop it.

  Now, Dust didn’t know what to think.

  He stumbled on, while boulders tumbled on around him. Dust didn’t try to dodge them, but they missed him anyway, some hint of unreasoned knowledge putting his feet into the right spots.

  “How?” he asked. “How can anyone comprehend the vastness of it?”

  He understood now why the mirror was said to drive people mad, although no one had told him that, had they? It had just been another thing that he’d seen. He’d seen everything, and everything was far too much for one mind to hold. He’d seen all that he had seen before in the priests’ smoke, and a million other things besides.

  Lava burst near Dust, and he turned to face it almost blankly, eyes barely seeing it. There was no room for it when he could see all the things that might be, and had been, and would never be, tangled up in such a ball that it was impossible to pick them apart.

  “I’ve done so much,” he said, clambering unseeing over a stand of obsidian and not even feeling the spots where it cut into his palms. “I thought…”

  He could see exactly what he’d thought. First, he’d thought that the priests were right, and he’d done what they commanded. He’d done what the signs had seemed to suggest, even when it had meant killing people who had not been his enemies, who would never have been a threat to him. Even when he’d realized the games of the priests, he’d made choices that would hurt people. He’d poured ill fortune into a ring to cause chaos. He’d come hunting Royce…

  “I deserve to die,” Dust said. “I deserve it.”

  He staggered on, trying to work out the best way to do it, trying to work out what he should do. He wandered through a field of glasslike shards, not caring if they cut his legs. From the corner of his eye, he saw something running at him.

  Dust turned without thinking about it, swaying aside from a spear thrust aimed at his heart. A lizard creature hissed at him, drawing back its spear for another blow. Dust stepped in close to it, striking up with stiffened fingers into its throat. It stumbled back gasping, and now Dust was on it, stabbing into its heart with a knife, so close to it now that he could feel the heat of its blood on him. It seemed to be the only thing that he could feel right then.

  Even as the beast toppled, Dust cursed himself for fighting back. He could have stood still then; could have let the creature kill him the way he deserved for everything that he had done.

  “You can still do it,” Dust said. He regarded the knife in his hands, the shine of the sun off its edge almost mesmerizing in spite of the dark blood that coated it now. It would be so easy to run the edge across his own throat, or across the spots where the body’s blood ran close to the surface. Would-be Angarthim he had trained with had done it before, when the efforts of the priests had driven them to madness.

  If not the knife, then there were a hundred other ways to die. He could lie down at the feet of the lizard beings, or throw himself from a cliff. He could stand in the path of a falling boulder, or walk into a field of fire. He could even simply sit where he was. On an island like this, it was harder to keep living than it was to die, and yet Dust somehow managed to keep going.

  He wandered, and as he wandered, he tried to make sense of all that he had seen, but there was no making sense of it. He’d thought in terms of one pure line of fate that he could pick out, but instead, there were choices, spreading out in a latticework of possibilities, until no one could say that this thing or that would always happen.

  He’d seen all that he had seen before, with Royce’s brightness, and the darkness and blood that might follow, but Dust had also seen all the ways that it might not, and all the light that might lie beyond even that. He’d learned of his own freedom, but he’d forgotten that of every other being in the world.

  He’d forgotten hope.

  “Hope?” Dust demanded of the air. “What hope is there here, on an island falling into the sea? What hope is there to undo what I’ve done?”

  He already knew the answer to that. He’d seen a moment more powerful than the ones he’d seen in the priests’ smoke, more certain, more crucial. He’d seen a battle, and a figure standing in shining armor, wielding a crystal sword with almost impossible skill. He’d seen that figure cut down, and he’d known that moment was the one that mattered.

  Dust looked around and realized that somehow he had reached the coast of the island. There was a boat there that wasn’t his, but it was light, and it had oars, and it was easy for him to push into the water while behind him the island collapsed.

  He bobbed in the boat, looking up at the sky, trying to decide what to do next, but in truth, Dust already knew what he had to do. He sat up, staring out over the water, looking at the island he had passed on his way here, and contemplating what would be needed to save the world.

  He started to row.

  While he rowed, he considered the central problem of the next thing that had to be dealt with: a foe who seemed so well protected that it would be impossible to defeat them, that even attempting it might destroy him.

  Dust didn’t care about that though; he craved that destruction. If it came to him, he would welcome it with open arms.

  “No,” he told himself, “not before I have done what I must do.”

  As for the prospect of actua
lly doing it, he would find a way. He was Angarthim, with all the training that came with that. Perhaps he was the only one who could do this. He could slip silently onto the island, and…

  “That will not work,” Dust said. One glance at the clouds above the island he sought told him that. The signs there were filled with death and the prospect of it. He could be stealthy, but he would fail, and he would die. He needed to find another way.

  Dust let the boat drift now, knowing that the currents from the spot he was in would take him to the island he sought. Taking one of the oars and the sharpest of his knives, he started to carve. He could make another if he survived this.

  He whittled at the wood with steady hands, shaving curls of it from the oar’s haft until it started to come to a point. Dust refined that point steadily as the current dragged him in toward the island, turning it into something almost as sharp as the steel he carried, producing a javelin that was light, and balanced, and deadly.

  Taking a pouch from his belt, Dust mingled the contents with sea water, then dipped the tip of his makeshift spear into the results, the wood hissing as it contacted the potion he had produced. He threw the pouch out into the water, too dangerous to touch now that the powder had been wetted.

  He came in close to the shore, and already, Dust could feel the pull from the island, in the heady, sweet scent that seemed to fill every pore, making him want to draw closer.

  She stepped from the forest there, and she was the most beautiful woman Dust had ever seen, although a part of his brain also saw past that in the same moment. He saw a woman who was everything he had ever wanted, and at the same time saw the claws.

  He flung his javelin. It sailed through the air, and she twisted, fast as a snake, so that his throw barely grazed her. The point did break the skin, and Dust could only hope that the poison on it did its job.

  The creature didn’t fall, though. Instead, the scent around Dust intensified, and he knew that he had to throw himself forward, diving into the water and dragging his boat to the beach.

  She was waiting there for him, and now he realized that she simply was. She was impossible, because her beauty hurt Dust to look upon. He would have done anything for her in that moment. Anything.

  “I am Lethe,” she said, in a voice like molten honey. “What do they call you?”

  “Dust,” Dust said.

  “And do you love me, Dust?”

  “I love you,” Dust agreed.

  Lethe stepped toward him, arms open, her beauty complete, perfect, absolute.

  “Did you really think that your little spear would kill me?” she asked. Her mouth was open in a smile that was both beautiful and too full of teeth, all at once.

  “No,” Dust admitted.

  “No?” That seemed to take Lethe by surprise.

  “The poison on it does not kill. I had nothing that would kill you. But I have things that can weaken you.”

  “Weaken me?” Dust heard the fear there now.

  “I love you, but I am Angarthim, and we can kill what we love if the fates require it.”

  Dust struck out with a knife, the blade flashing across her throat. Lethe didn’t even have time to cry out as she fell. Dust had made her end as painless as he could, because what more could he do for someone he loved so much?

  He knelt there, and he wept in his grief. He wept both because of what he had lost in Lethe, and because he still needed to be the killer he had been made into for a little while longer.

  It seemed to take forever before Dust felt strong enough to stand again and make his way around the island. The place felt different now, as dead as the creature that had run it, lifeless and silent as Dust searched.

  He found what he was looking for set a little way from a cabin-like home, discarded in a pile together as if they simply didn’t matter. Then, Dust guessed, they hadn’t mattered compared to the love of Lethe. Dust took the crystal sword, unsheathing it only long enough to admire how the blade shone in the moonlight before he put it away again. He wrapped it in the armor, taking both and moving back in the direction of his boat.

  It took him another hour to carve a replacement oar, an hour beyond that to gather fruits and fresh water from the forest. Dust piled it into his boat and pushed it out into the water.

  He started to row for the mainland, knowing that destiny lay ahead, for him, for Royce, for everyone.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Genevieve was finding that life in the king’s court was very different from life in the palace of Altfor’s father. For one thing, people actually looked at her as if she were noble, rather than giving her the looks of pity and disdain that had marked her out as a stolen peasant girl before.

  For another, there was the constant sense of threat that came from knowing any misstep could get her killed.

  “Will Lord Ber’s men be here before the final push against the enemy?” King Carris demanded of an advisor, standing from his throne and pacing the width of the audience chamber where he was discussing plans.

  “There is no news yet, my king,” the man said.

  “Which means that he doesn’t plan to be here,” King Carris snapped back. “He’s waiting to see who will win. Do our chances look so bad?”

  “No, my king,” the man said. “Shall I send more messages to him?”

  “Just one,” King Carris said. “Tell him that if he does not have his men with my army in time, I will kill him, and his family, and anyone else who stands with him. This is a fight against people who would take my kingdom from me; if he is not with me in that fight, then he is my enemy.”

  “At once,” the man said.

  More advisors and messengers came, each one with some fragment of news about the coming conflict. One lord came forward and knelt.

  “My king,” he said. “I am Sir Verris of Yall. I have brought three hundred men with me to serve with your army.”

  “You have my thanks, Sir Verris,” the king said. “You will be rewarded. Your place will be with the force that strikes from the north.”

  Genevieve stood toward the back of the crowd of people, trying to take note of the names and the numbers as men came to swear themselves to the king’s cause. She would have written it all down to be sure that she got it, but someone would see.

  Altfor would see. He stood toward the front of the room, where he could be seen by everyone there, as close to the king as possible. Even so, his eyes seemed to be following Genevieve, daring her to make a mistake in the dangerous game she was playing.

  “Jani will return soon,” Genevieve said to herself. “I will remember everything until then.”

  She had to hope that the spy who worked for her sister had gotten back to Sheila. With the information Genevieve had sent, maybe Royce would be able to win this without all the deaths that the coming battle promised. Genevieve had already sent information about the seaborne assault that would be coming from the north. Now, she hoped to be able to find something that would help them to win outright.

  “Tell me about our flotilla,” King Carris said.

  A man in what looked like expensive versions of sailors’ clothes stepped forward, jewelry adorning him that looked as though it had been stolen from a dozen different sources.

  “We are ready and waiting to carry your forces, my king. Just as soon as we are paid.”

  “Money is traveling from my treasury as we speak,” King Carris promised.

  Genevieve found herself wondering if there might be some way to sabotage that delivery. If she could get that information to Sheila, then it might be possible to arrange for the money to be stolen, or at least delayed. She was about to find a reason to excuse herself from the hall when she stopped, feeling a wave of something like cold spreading through her.

  It wasn’t the kind of cold that had anything to do with the physical world, though. Instead, it felt to Genevieve as though something papery was whispering across her soul, and she found herself turning automatically toward the door. Everyone else in the room did the
same, moving as one mass to face the figures who walked in together.

  There were a dozen of them, gray-skinned and shaven-headed, although several of them had beards, or golden chains wound around their skulls, or tattoos in the shapes of mystical symbols. They wore deep gray robes, some with the hoods up, and most of them looked around the room with piercing eyes. The one at their head was old enough that he had to walk with the aid of a staff, leaning on it with every step. His eyes caught Genevieve’s for a moment, and Genevieve shuddered involuntarily.

  “Who are you?” King Carris demanded. “And why are you here, in my court?”

  “We are the priests of the Angarthim,” their leader said. “We see all that must be, and we send the Angarthim to ensure that it happens as it should. I am Justinius, highest of the priests.”

  “That still doesn’t tell me why you’re here,” King Carris said. “Or why I shouldn’t have you killed.”

  “We are here because your cause is ours, King Carris,” Justinius said. “The boy named Royce can never be allowed to be king.”

  “You’ve come across the sea to tell me this?” the king demanded, and for a moment, Genevieve thought he might react with all the anger she’d seen before, when he’d been killing prisoners himself.

  “We looked into the futures, and we saw the destruction of our order in the rise of Royce as king,” Justinius said. If he was scared of King Carris, he didn’t show it. “We sent one of our Angarthim to kill him, but somehow, he has failed us.”

  “So you’re failures?” King Carris demanded.

  The air rippled, and in that moment, it seemed to Genevieve that something was standing beside her; something with claws and teeth and hunger. It took everything Genevieve had not to scream. Many of those there were not so brave. Several drew blades, and one man fell, clutching his chest.