Finnikin of the Rock

' 'And he will hold two hands of the one he pledged to save.''

' 'And then the gate will fall, but his pain shall never cease,'' Finnikin continued.

' 'His seed will issue kings, but he will never reign,'' they ended together.

After a moment the priest-king smiled. 'It has taken me ten years to translate it. Please do not tell me it took you less.'

Finnikin smiled ruefully. 'I spent my fifteenth year in the palace library of Osteria,' he confessed. 'Not much else to do but listen to excruciating lectures from our ambassador and train with the Osterian Guard.' He felt a strange mixture of emotions under the priest-king's gaze.

'What is it you fear, Finnikin?' the holy man repeated.

'I was the childhood companion of Prince Balthazar,' he found himself saying. 'And many times he said to me, 'Finnikin, when I am king, you'll be captain of my Guard. Just as your father is captain of my father's Guard. But then some days we will swap so you can be king and I can be Captain Trevanion.''

'Child's talk.'

Finnikin shook his head. 'Each time Balthazar spoke those words, a fire would burn inside of me. I wanted to be king, and I began to envy Balthazar for it.'

'Then your desires were small, Finnikin.'

Finnikin made a sound of disbelief.

'When I was eight years old,' the priest-king confessed, 'I wanted to be a god.' The holy man looked around the ragged tent. 'Perhaps this is my punishment, but between you and me, I do not believe that the desires of young boys cause catastrophic events. The actions of humans do.'

But Finnikin knew there was more. Her blood will be shed for you to be king.

'Take Evanjalin north to our king, Finnikin,' the priest-king said. 'But know that if we follow her, we take a path to salvation paved with blood.'

'There is nothing for us north,' Trevanion said firmly from the entrance. He was standing alongside Sir Topher. 'Isn't that right, Finnikin?'

Finnikin could not reply. He could feel his father's fierce stare, but his eyes were on Sir Topher. His mentor had been respectfully distant since Trevanion's return, but Finnikin needed his guidance now.

'She bewitches you,' Trevanion said. 'And she is yours for the taking. Any fool can see that. So take her and get whatever needs to be gotten out of your system.'

Still Sir Topher would not meet his eyes, and Finnikin knew he would have to make this decision on his own. That perhaps he already had.

'I stood in a pit of corpses yesterday. Stepped over the body of one just my age. Do you know what went through my mind? Rebuilding Lumatere. And as I watched the lad carrying the dead, I thought the same. I imagined he would be a carpenter. I could see it in these,' he said, his hands outstretched. 'In a pit of death I imagined a Lumatere of years to come, rather than of years past.' He was staring at his mentor. 'We have never done that, Sir Topher. We collect the names of our dead, we plan our second homeland, and we construct our government, but with nothing more than parchment and ink and sighs of resignation.'

Sir Topher finally looked up. 'Because any hope beyond that, my boy, would be too much. I feared we would drown in it.'

'Then I choose to drown,' Finnikin said. 'In hope. Rather than float into nothing. Maybe you are right, Trevanion,' he said, turning back to his father. 'But it is her hope that bewitches me, and that hope I may never get out of my system, no matter how many times she's to be gotten. Can you not see it burning in her eyes? Does it not make you want to look away when you have none to give in return? Her hope fills me with... something other than this dull weight I wake with each morning.'

Trevanion's eyes bored into him. Had he found his father only to walk away from him?

'She says the young girls inside Lumatere are dying,' Sir Topher said quietly.

'Why do we hear so little about these walks she takes in her sleep?' Trevanion demanded. 'If she has the power, why do we know so little about Lumatere? Because she lies.'

'She has a gift—' the priest-king began.

'A gift for deception, unable to bear my presence for she knows I understand the nature of her vice,' Trevanion snapped. 'What of her lies about Sarnak?'

'There was no lie,' Finnikin said.

Trevanion made a sound of frustration. 'Finnikin, she could not even tell us where those people came from, let alone what happened.'

Finnikin swallowed hard, remembering the perfect handwriting in the Book of Lumatere. 'Most were from the river village of Tressor,' he said quietly.

He watched his father falter. The people of Tressor were Trevanion's people, the people he had grown up among. He had visited them each time he was on leave from the palace, sat with them at their tables, and listened to their stories with his son on his knees.

'The girl is an empath,' the priest-king said. 'She cannot bear your presence, Captain Trevanion, because you feel too much. Hate too much. Love too much. Suffer too much. It is why she was happiest in the cloister. The novices of the goddess Lagrami are trained to keep emotions and feelings to a minimum. There she found peace.'

But Trevanion would not listen. 'I travel south,' he said, his voice heavy. 'And I will do all I can, Finnikin, to convince you to travel with me rather than take a path that may destroy you.'

'If you travel south, I am already destroyed,' Finnikin said.

Sir Topher's eyes met his. 'Froi!' he called out. The boy came to the entrance. 'Make yourself useful and fetch Evanjalin.'

'I am here,' she said softly from the flap of the tent. She looked past Sir Topher to Trevanion. 'What would you like to know about walking the sleep, Captain Trevanion? That I journey with a child of no more than five? We are as real to each other as you are to me. No illusion or ghosts. Flesh and blood. This child belongs to the living and she has always been the guide, but we have never been able to hear each other or converse. We do not pick and choose who we visit. We hold each other's hand through our walks; hers is soft and tiny and trusting and strong. Sometimes I sense another who walks with us. I believe they are there not for me but for the child. We see only what our sleepers see and think. They are unaware of us, and most of the time we stumble through a gray mist. Last night I dreamed of the chandler who finds it strange that it's his work to provide light, yet all he can see is darkness. The armorer despises himself, for he makes weapons for the impostor king and his men, knowing they will be used against his own people. I have walked through the sleep of the plowman and the blacksmith and the tanner and the weaver and the merchant and the nursemaid. But my favorite sleep is that of the young, for they still know how to dream and they dream of the return of their king, believing that the captain of the Guard will guide him home to Lumatere.'

Trevanion shook his head and turned to go.

'Her strength, it comes from you,' she said quietly.

'What?' The question was like a bark, but she did not shrink back.

'Beatriss.'

There was a sharp hiss of breath, and Finnikin found himself in his father's path as Trevanion advanced toward her furiously. 'Beatriss is—'

'Do not speak her name! Do not dare taint her memory,' he raged.

Evanjalin did not move. 'Sometimes when people sleep they agonize about decisions made. Other times they think back on the past. She spends much time doing both. I do believe it is Beatriss who has worked through the dark magic to find me.'

'You lie to taunt me!'

'Enough, Evanjalin,' Sir Topher ordered. 'Beatriss is dead.'

Finnikin felt his father flinch at the words, but Evanjalin held Trevanion's gaze.

'Most nights she is restless. There are too many people to worry about, and she wonders how she will be able to make things right. How can she be someone other than Beatriss the Beautiful or Beatriss the Beloved? But then, just when she's about to lose hope, she remembers what you would whisper to her, Captain Trevanion. That she was Beatriss the Bold. Beatriss the Brave. To all others she was a fragile flower, but you would not let her be.'