Now Ban understood proving himself to those men meant accepting the very foundations of their star-addled beliefs, using the language they understood, taking up the very weapons that had been used against him.
But such things did not spur heat in his veins or give breath to his spirit.
He would go to Gaela Astore, as Elia had asked. He’d go, but he would show Gaela how to burn the island to the ground. Give the warrior what she needed most from him: his wild, natural power. And Regan trusted him; she needed him, she would agree. He would help them begin a new empire in a world not tainted by their fathers. He would say, Yes, you should listen to Elia though she requests the impossible, and then hold her there between you as we destroy everything your father wrought. I have done this, twice over, for my own father is dead. And I have abandoned the only king who ever cherished me.
If Ban could do it, they could, too. Now he was free. Free to be the island’s champion—to bring magic and rebirth back to starved land. But his first mission was to seek vengeance for the ruination Lear himself had wrought.
The forest had agreed, and in proof had delivered Ban’s lost sword, forged of whispering Errigal steel. A gift to aid his intentions. The trees and the wind had sung to him, leading him to the muddy hill where the sword waited, stabbed into the earth, glistening pure and clean in dappled sunlight.
Ban touched the hilt again now, and the sword sighed hungrily.
Something else sighed, too.
Not a tree, but—
Ban softened his breathing to silence and crept across a loamy sprawl of dead winter leaves, toward the sound.
Another sigh.
And another.
It was rhythmic. Someone—something—was asleep and snoring. An earth saint, Ban thought giddily, or perhaps even an old stone giant or forest dragon.
Ban’s heart thrummed in his chest. He would not even risk a whispered inquiry to the trees. They’d brought him here; they knew of whatever awaited him and had not revealed it until now, like a game for them to play. Ban reached a soft, small meadow. The last of the rain was evident in the muddy grass, and in the heavy flow of the creek bending around the edge.
An old man huddled, sleeping against the mossy face of a granite boulder along the creek. He wore a tattered robe, and his hair was tangled and damp. His long face drooped in heavy sleep.
The earth tilted beneath Ban’s feet. Blood rushed in his ears and he stood, stunned.
It was the king of Innis Lear.
Ban spun around, wildly, but there was no one else nearby. Birds chirped and the forest canopy shivered pleasantly, scattering tiny raindrops onto Ban’s forehead. He stepped into the sunny meadow, one hand curled around the hilt of his sword. The other he lifted, palm out, as if the sleeping old man were a wild boar, a lion or deadly bear.
Ban approached slowly, and began to smile.
He could do anything to this foolish man, left alone in the heart of the forest. Slide this hungry blade into Lear’s gut. Bash in his head with a jagged rock. Wake him with a whisper, before gently suffocating him. Ask the ash tree there to bury the king deep in the earth, until he was eaten by worms.
It would hurt Elia so very badly.
Ban ground his teeth together and hissed. But this old man, this awful once-king, deserved this and more, for all he’d done: not only to Ban, to his daughters, to his queen, perhaps—but even more for what he’d done to this island itself. The rootwaters should be free.
There might never come such a chance as this. But to murder him so secretly, without consequence, would do nothing for the island, prove nothing to anyone.
He bent and put his hand over Lear’s mouth, to feel the small puffs of breath.
Sometimes I cannot even breathe when he is near, the king had said of Ban, dismissing his very existence with a wave. The stench of his birth stars pollutes this air.
And so Ban knew what it was that he would take.
* * *
A WIZARD CROUCHED between two young hawthorns at the edge of a clear, rushing creek. Bare to the wind and roots, he’d painted muddy lines onto his chest, in spirals down his arms and legs, and with a tiny knife, he now etched his name alongside that of a former king, glistening blood against his own skin.
The hawthorns shivered and shook with thrills; they’d not worked such magic in more years than they even understood. This was death magic, magic of the worms that fed upon their roots, magic that brought food to the world, decay and rebirth and an excess of fluid.
The wizard breathed into his palms, where the two shells of a walnut were fitted together, missing the meat. He replaced the nut with his own blood and a stolen silver hair.
Breath and death, he whispered to the nut in the language of trees, glad the daylight drove all the stars away, so they could not witness this. Or maybe they did: the wizard knew not. He only knew the blood of the land and the chatter of leaves.
Breath and death, he whispered again, and the hawthorns echoed it back to him.
The spell would be his last weapon, a comfort to him wherever he went. A safeguard, a triumphant laugh, a final word to be remembered by.
He would not be forgiven for this.
GAELA
IT WAS A cold, crisp morning when Gaela led her retainers out of Astora.
They headed north across the foothills to Dondubhan Castle, where her husband had already claimed the winter throne, and Gaela was eager to join with him. Two nights of angry storms had
