FIVE YEARS AGO, EASTERN BORDER OF AREMORIA
BAN ERRIGAL WAS alone, and dying.
He gripped the tear in his gambeson, wishing he knew any words to whisper that might stop this gush of hot blood through his fingers. Words to knit flesh together, words to slow his heartbeat, or words at least to dull the pain until he could find a healer. But then, what did it matter if he knelt here to die; none would even notice.
He’d not even been given mail or breast plate, only this foot soldier’s leather armor, buckled cheaply across his chest, and a quilted shirt. Nothing better for the bastard cousin from Innis Lear, foisted upon the Alsax though they’d rather have had his half brother Rory, the legitimate heir. Ban had not been given a choice, either.
A quarter mile behind him the sounds of battle continued: a constant rush of noise like the crashing of ocean waves or autumn winds through the White Forest’s canopy.
This wound had come from a Diotan soldier, bigger than Ban—though everyone was bigger than Ban—who knocked Ban off his feet and tore away his buckler. As Ban had rolled against churned mud, reaching desperately for the small shield, the soldier had kicked him, then stomped down on his shield arm. The pain of a cracking wrist bone was enough to whiten Ban’s vision and give the soldier an opening for a fatal stab.
Only the sudden arrival of another Aremore foot soldier saved Ban’s life. The sword had skewed sideways, catching the quilted edge of Ban’s shirt. It tore through the gambeson and into Ban’s side, instead of his heart.
He’d scrambled away, leaving buckler and his own dropped sword behind, toward the edge of the battle. Ignored or unseen, Ban had made it free of the melee, head pounding and blood hot, with a roar in his ears that drove him to his feet again. Dazed, he’d stood, panting through clenched teeth, and stared at the slope of the battlefield. Aremore soldiers cleaved through the forces from Diota, winning. Cavalry to the southeast, foot soldiers pressing hard, all wearing the bright orange of their young king.
Ban wore it, too, under the leather chest piece. The long gambeson, thinly quilted, was dyed that sunrise orange, now streaked a brilliant scarlet.
He felt strength draining out of him along with the blood, and tucked his broken wrist against his chest.
What am I doing here, he wondered then, hazy from pain and weariness.
He took a step away from the battle, away from Aremoria itself. Pain surged from his sword wound; this would kill him. Hissing with every careful movement, Ban made his way toward … peace, he supposed dully. Shade and quiet.
If this were Innis Lear, the wind would tell him where to go, the trees beckon him with teasing secrets and the promise of help.
Ban walked too slowly. His boots crushed thick summer grass as the sun beat down, hotter than ever it did at home.
He had no home.
Blood soaked through the hip of his pants, sticking the wool to his skin. It trailed along his thigh, until Ban’s entire right side darkened with thick, crusting blood. He was only fifteen years old, but he would die here, and nobody would care.
His mother, perhaps, for a moment might think sadly on Ban’s fate, but then she’d turn her attention again to the people of Hartfare, her other strays and homeless witches, the lost and found of the island to whom Brona devoted herself even before her own son.
His father would cry false tears, wail with the singular passion for which he was known, and tell stories of Ban’s young wildness: stories that always would deteriorate into a reluctant condemnation of his bastard stars.
Rory might miss his brother, but only long enough to play at avenging his death here against Diota.
And King Lear—
Ban stumbled, grunting as he caught himself on a sore knee, jarring his broken wrist. His skull throbbed. A blessed numbness had spread along his wounded side.
Ahead was a low, grassy valley beside the dark towers of a forest. Three cranky-looking hawthorn trees clutched the north, windblown slope. It was a good place to die. Small, sheltered on two sides by the roll of hills and one by the forest, and the other faced only the sky. Ban’s vision blurred.
The king of Innis Lear would be glad he was dead.
And perhaps never tell Elia.
Ban drew a long, slow breath—it grew more difficult to breathe deeply. He walked toward the hawthorn trees.
A year ago, he’d have stayed alive for her. A year ago, when Elia loved him, and he returned it with a thrilling joy unlike anything he’d known before. Almost like balancing in the center of the land bridge to the Summer Seat, terrible cliffs dropping a hundred feet on either side to those tearing, wicked ocean waves. Almost like fire coming to life at the tips of his fingers, starlight and root magic joined in a singular spark of magic. Almost like that kiss.
Tears brushed off his eyelashes, and Ban realized he was crying. He slid a few paces down the slope to the dappled shade of the cranky hawthorns. Touching the hard wrinkles of bark, Ban left a bloody handprint. Hello, hawthorn, he whispered in the language of trees. Would trees in Aremoria know the words? Or did only trees of Innis Lear understand? Would they listen to a bastard if they did, even if he was also the son of a witch?
It hardly mattered. He was so very tired.
Ban sank to his knees, his shoulder against the trunk of the first hawthorn. Its roots curled through the sloping earth, hard gray snakes. Blood dripped from his wound, plopping against the roots and dusty ground in perfect tiny splatters. Ban blinked, and his tears fell, too.
