Finnikin of the Rock

Sir Topher stood, looking from Finnikin to the priest-king. 'I pray to the goddess ... the goddess complete, that our heir will live to see the new day in Lumatere, but if that is not to be, our kingdom will have a leader and that leader will have a First Man.' His eyes rested on Finnikin. 'I accept.'

There was a cheer in the room as people began to chant Balthazar's name. Finnikin felt as if his breath had been wrenched from his body.

Her blood will be shed for you to be king.

He had not prayed since that day in the Valley of Tranquillity, but as the others celebrated, he began his mantra. Be alive, Balthazar. Live forever, Sir Topher. He looked over to where his father was speaking to one of Lord August's men, Matin. The steward was showing Trevanion something he had retrieved from his pocket, and Trevanion, in a rare show of emotion, drew the man toward him in an embrace.

On shaking legs, Finnikin made his way across the room to where Evanjalin stood, tears in her eyes.

'Resurdus,' she whispered to him. Her lips trembled and she held his face between her hands. Suddenly Sir Topher stood between them.

'Evanjalin is tired, Finnikin,' he said firmly. 'She needs to sleep. Let Lady Abian take her.'

Later, the sounds of Lord August making love to his wife echoed through the house. Their cries were earthy and raw, and the paper-thin walls ensured that their guests heard each murmur and groan.

'What is it with the nobility?' Sir Topher muttered, putting a pillow over his face. 'The queen and king were always at it like rabbits.'

Moss groaned. 'If they do this every night, I'd rather give myself up to the king's prison.'

Froi shuffled where he lay under the window.

'Froi, if I hear one sound coming from you,' Trevanion warned.

'Must I remind you that we have the priest-king of Lumatere among us?' Sir Topher said.

The priest-king chuckled. 'I'm used to hearing people dying, Sir Topher. Why would I be threatened by the sounds of people living?'

But all Finnikin could think of was the scent of sandalwood soap and a golden face scrubbed clean, and with every thrust he heard, he imagined himself inside her until his body ached for release. And the evil within him that wished for the death of Balthazar, and the realization of the prophecy spoken to him in the forest alongside a doomed princess, rejoiced that if he were to be king, he would make her his queen.

Chapter 19

Sometimes Froi of the Exiles thought he dreamed it, what happened at the crossroads. That it seemed like forever, not just a few days, and that the difference between left and right and north and west meant everything and nothing.

It began with tears when they left the home of the duke. His daughter was the worst, sobbing like a baby as she held on to Evanjalin, as if they had known each other forever rather than just two nights. She cried even more when Finnikin gave her the Book of Lumatere to keep safe. They were stupid like that, these Lumaterans. Not that he minded the duke's house. The fireplace always seemed to be working, and there was lots of food. But too much touching and kissing. Sometimes the duke's wife hugged Froi and he would try hard not to growl and shove her away, because when her arms were around him and her chuckles were in his ear, he felt calm. As if his blood wasn't beating hard all the time, urging him to fight.

Then they left and traveled north. To the crossroads. Nobody grumbled, because soon they would reach the valley outside the kingdom of Lumatere, which meant nothing to him really, because they still said, 'Froi, make yourself useful!' and Evanjalin still made him practice his words with that look on her face that said she was in charge. Sometimes he would dare to look at the captain and his face didn't seem angry or hard like it usually did. It looked the way it did when he was looking at Finnikin, and it always made Froi feel strange in the stomach when he saw the captain look at Finnikin. It made him wonder if anyone had ever looked at him that way.

But things changed when they found one of the exile camps they were searching for and met one of the Guard who had been traveling with Ced. He was waiting for them, and he wasn't smiling like they had smiled when they were with the others in Pietrodore. Froi couldn't hear much about what was going on, but he saw the look on everyone's faces and he heard words like Moss's grave, which was strange because Moss was with them. And then he heard it again and maybe it was mass grave, but they were speaking too fast for him to understand. The captain, he walked away with his hands on the back of his head and he crouched by the river after that, and he kept his hands over his head for a real long time. When he stood up, there weren't tears on his face, because the captain wasn't one of the crybabies, but he looked like he wanted to kill someone, so Froi stayed out of the way and just made himself useful and looked after the priest-king. He could tell the old man wasn't traveling too well, and he was glad when Sir Topher said that they needed to find a safe place for the priest-king. Froi liked the priest-king because he treated him like he was as important as everyone else and when he taught him words in Lumatere he didn't laugh at the way he said them. He just showed him the right way.

And then they moved on, all quietlike, and reached a clearing with at least ten tracks heading in different directions, and Froi remembered looking up from the back of Perri's horse to see the sign. He knew this was the crossroads, and Finnikin explained that the border of Lumatere was one day's ride from here. There were so many arrows on that one signpost and so many words and Sir Topher read them out because they were written in Belegonian: east to Charyn/Osterian border; south to Belegonia; west to Sendecane; north to Lumatere, except someone had scratched out Lumatere as if it didn't exist, but Finnikin took the stick out of his pack and wrote the word again. The captain picked one of the arrows to follow that didn't have any words near it and Froi couldn't understand why he would pick an arrow to follow that hardly had a track, but nobody ever questioned the captain.

They traveled for what seemed hours and Froi truly thought it was night because it was so thick with trees and no light crept in. But then he saw the shine in the distance and the forest turned into a meadow, that was the word Sir Topher used, and the meadow had the tallest grass with so many yellow flowers that it hurt Froi's eyes to look at. But he didn't look away because it was a different kind of hurt, one he hadn't felt before and he found himself walking through the long grass and yellow flowers just to see what they felt like against his skin. Behind the meadow, there was a barn with shutters hanging, deadlike, from its room in the roof. Inside it smelled of every animal that had ever been there and it was where they put the priest-king, in the barn, and then the captain spoke, deciding that this was a safe place for them, that nobody would find them here. And that Froi and Evanjalin would stay behind with the priest-king while the others traveled to where Ced was at an inn waiting for them on the western road to Sendecane where there was the grave that belonged to Moss or Mass. And everyone pretended everything was all right.

They did a lot of pretending, these people.

So when Evanjalin didn't complain about being left behind, Froi watched Finnikin pretend that he wasn't going to be bothered by the fact that Evanjalin looked tired and pale, and Froi got irritated and wished that someone would tell him to make himself useful so he didn't have to stand around through the good-byes.

Finnikin kept on saying that all they needed was a bit of rest, pretending there was nothing wrong with the priest-king, and Froi tried to tell them that it looked like fever and he had seen enough fever to know, but then Perri told him to make himself useful and fetch water from the stream, so Froi got his wish and was almost saved from watching Finnikin pretend he was leaning in to tell Evanjalin something important and then forgot what it was he had to say. Which meant that they both stood close to each other, their heads almost touching for a long long while.

And then the others were gone and things got worse.

On the first night they lay in the barn listening to the priest-king talk about Lumatere as if he wanted them to remember everything because he knew he was going to die soon. The priest-king told him about the Song of Lumatere and how he would sing it at the Harvest Moon Festival when everyone in Lumatere would sleep out in the open and they'd dance and sing and laugh and how it was bad luck to sing it outside the kingdom. Froi didn't see anything wrong with the priest-king singing it now because it wasn't as if they weren't used to bad luck. And during the night Froi stayed awake and tried to hold the priest-king down in that barn because his body was shuddering