“I understand,” he grated, his eyes still on the axe blade, on the blackness of it that seemed to shift and roil like shadows. He took a slow, deep breath, then turned to Matt. “Come, boy. It’s time to go.”
He started away, the boy slowly following, casting his gaze between Cutter and Shadelaresh as if there were a thousand questions he might ask, but ones that he could not seem to put into words.
Tell me, Destroyer, the creature said from behind him, now the serpent has its fangs returned, who, do you think, will feel their bite first? Not the serpent itself, no—I can hear your thoughts, but that will not happen. You cannot just as the serpent cannot. But someone will feel the bite, for the serpent must bite, Kingslayer. It is all it knows how to do. Will it be one of those men who hunts you even now, who trespasses into our wood, so great their need to see you dead? Or…will it be the boy?
Cutter ignored him, walking on, his shoulders hunched, feeling as if he carried some great weight. But that weight was not the axe. Now, as ever, the weapon felt as light as a feather in his hands, and he felt the weight of it no more than a man might feel the weight of a part of himself. No, it was not the axe. And yet…it was.
He didn’t think it was evil. That would have been ridiculous. A weapon could no more be evil than a horseshoe or a hammer could. But then horseshoes had not tasted the blood the axe had, and hammers were used to create while the axe was made to destroy. And destroy it had. Did its edge remember the taste of the blood it had spilled, Fey and mortal alike? Had it enjoyed it, that taste? Cutter knew it was ridiculous and yet he thought that maybe it had, thought, also, that it wanted to taste more.
“What did he mean?”
Cutter grunted in surprise, for he had been so distracted by his own thoughts that he had nearly forgotten the boy was there. “What?”
“The…the demon thing, back there. He called you Kingslayer and Destroyer…he said that your people called you a hero. What did he mean?”
Cutter met the youth’s eyes, saw the question in them, the desperate, hungry need to know. But he shook his head. He had never been much of a liar, preferred to cut to the truth as quickly as he could. Some truths, though, did not need to be spoken of, for speaking of them would do nothing to change them, only force him to relive them and that he was not ready to do. He shook his head. “It was just talk, lad. That’s all. The Fey are very strange creatures, and often their meanings are impossible to decipher.”
The boy frowned at him. “His meaning seemed clear enough. He didn’t like you, not one bit. He said you betrayed them.”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not going to tell me, are you? What he meant?”
“No. Now, come. We need to travel as much distance as we can today. We have to get out of the forest soon and my broth—that is, those men will be searching for us. If we don’t make it far enough, they’ll find us, and I promise you, boy, you do not want that.” None of us do. It wasn’t because he was afraid, at least not of dying. All men died, sooner or later. He had seen enough death—caused enough of it to know that it was a journey no man could avoid no matter how much training or luck he had. No, what he was afraid of, more than anything, was seeing his brother again. Fifteen years it had been, and yet it felt as if it had been no time at all.
For Shadelaresh had been right about another thing too—he was a traitor. Yet for all its ability to see to the heart of things, to know the truths men left unspoken, Cutter doubted even the Fey knew just how right he had been.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They were an odd bunch, the Crimson Prince’s inner circle.
Odd but powerful, some of the most dangerous people I have ever met, save only the prince himself.
But their talents at their own respective crafts were not what amazed me about them.
Instead, it was their loyalty to him, a loyalty that survived test after test.
I do not know where that loyalty came from.
In truth, I doubt they knew themselves.
—Exiled Historian to the Crown Petran Quinn
“Ah, there it is,” Chall said, smiling from where he lay as the woman above him went about her trade with an energy that could only be described as…energetic. Well, he wasn’t the poet of their team, he’d known that then and he knew it now. Their team. He didn’t know where that thought had come from, but he wished it would pack its shit and go back there, wherever there was.
Their team.
What a thing to think about, and now of all times. They had never been a team, not really. Any fool with eyes to see would have known that much. What they had been were fools, puppies following after a master that was destined to turn around and kick them sooner or later. Only, the master hadn’t been satisfied to just kick them, had he? No, instead he’d decided to go sticking his wick where it most certainly did not belong and getting a price on their heads high enough to give some mountains self-confidence issues.
Chall gave his head a shake, trying to focus on the woman above him, to let himself forget, for a time, about the
