Only the Bold

He had an image of a space out of doors, among a set of ancient stones. There was a fire set in the middle of it, slow burning with peat, but also with something that made the edges of the flames burn in shades of green and purple. Royce felt as if he were walking into that image then, moving forward to the edge of the firelight.

“I hoped you would come,” Lori said, the witch looking up at him. “Come, Royce, sit by the fire. Tell me what is happening.”

“Don’t you know?” Royce asked. He moved to sit by the fire, in a spot where a low stone served as a seat. Royce could both feel it and not feel it, there and not there, all at once.

“No,” Lori said, and now Royce could see just how worried the witch looked. “That’s the problem.” She cast something into the fire, the color of the flames changing once again, the edges burning with the orange heat of a forge. “Look into the fire, Royce, and tell me what you see.”

Royce stared at the flames obediently, looking deeper and deeper, assuming that if he stared deep enough, it would give him visions of what was to come. Compared with the many possibilities of the mirror, it was a crude method, but Royce would welcome any guidance that he could get.

“I… just see flames,” Royce admitted after a few minutes of staring.

“That’s the problem,” Lori said. “So do I. I should see more, I have seen more, but from the moment you looked into that mirror of yours, I have been able to catch only glimpses of things to come.”

“You’re saying that the mirror interferes with other magic?” Royce asked, thinking of the glass that even now sat safe in their boat.

“Maybe,” Lori said with a shrug. “Or maybe the fact that it has shown you so much makes my kind of prediction less certain.”

“Not being able to see anything might be disconcerting,” Royce said, “but it doesn’t have to be a problem. I’ve looked into the mirror. I’ve seen…” Even here, like this, he knew that he couldn’t admit exactly what he’d seen, and Lori was already holding up a hand to stop him.

“Don’t,” she said. “The future is too fragile. You’re treating it like some steel hawser, when it’s a gossamer thread. Be more careful, Royce.”

Now the worry in her voice seemed to have turned to outright fear.

“Lori,” Royce said, “I know you can’t see anything, but that doesn’t mean that anything’s wrong.”

“I didn’t say that I couldn’t see anything,” Lori said. “I told you, I still catch glimpses, and those glimpses are things of shadows and blood. I see violence, Royce, everywhere I look.”

Royce shook his head. “That’s one possibility, but it’s not the only one. I have found my father. We will return, and the people will follow him. They will see the true king returned, and everyone will understand that things have changed. If we’re lucky, even King Carris will back down and run.”

Lori laughed at that. “I sometimes forget how young you are, Royce, or maybe how old I am. Not everyone has seen… whatever you have seen. Not everyone has wisdom straight from a mirror, or your certainty that your father is the perfect king. People won’t just bow down to him because he returns.”

“I hope you’re wrong,” Royce said.

Lori smiled at that, but the smile was a brittle one. “So do I, Royce. So do I.”

The image of her by the fire faded, and Royce found himself back in the boat with the others. To his surprise, the sun had moved across the sky in the time he’d been conversing with the witch; much farther than it should have done in what had seemed like only a short time.

“You’re awake,” Matilde said. “That’s good. I think we’re getting close to shore, and we’re going to have to row when we get close.”

“You just don’t want to be the one doing it,” Royce guessed.

“After all the rowing in the Seven Isles?” Matilde shook her head. “I’ll leave it to you.”

Royce was happy that she and Neave seemed to have given up arguing for the moment. He went over to his father, who was still sitting in the prow of the boat, working on the obsidian sword.

Royce barely recognized it. His father had worked on the edges, turning the weapon into something smooth and sharp and deadly. He’d rewrapped the grip in leather, burning in wood above it to form a cross guard. Now he appeared to be fitting something into that cross guard, and it took Royce a moment to recognize—

“Your signet ring?” Royce said.

His father nodded, finishing pressing the symbol from it into a groove cut perfectly for the purpose.

“It’s not much, but I wanted the blade to be something personal, something that could only ever be yours,” his father said.

“It’s perfect,” Royce said, taking the blade from him. He tried the blade, and he could feel the adjustments that his father had made. It was lighter now, the balance refined, the blade singing through the air when Royce made an exploratory sweep with it. It wasn’t the shining perfection of the crystal sword, but it was something else in its own right, and it moved easily in Royce’s hand.

He stood there with his father, King Philip’s hand resting on his shoulder as they looked out in the direction of the kingdom. Soon, the dark line of the coast started to come into view, and Royce looked over at his father.

“We’re going home,” he promised.

“We are,” his father agreed. “And then the fight for it will begin.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Olivia wasn’t sure why the need to find Genevieve drew her south quite so strongly. Sense dictated that she should have stayed with her father’s forces, safe at the heart of a thousand men, rather than riding out here with only three.

Haam, Wells, and William looked nervous riding out like this into spaces that were still under the control of King Carris, but part of the reason Olivia had selected them for the task of protecting her was that they wouldn’t try to go against what she wanted, what she needed, to do.

She had to find Genevieve; Olivia didn’t know why, but she had to.

“Are you sure it’s safe to be so far away from your father’s forces, my lady?” Haam asked. Olivia knew he was just voicing the concerns the others had. She didn’t even blame him for it. This was a dangerous place for all of them.

“I have you to protect me,” she said to them.

That made them instantly sit up straighter with pride. These three weren’t knights, and the difference was obvious. Their armor was battered and probably pieced together from a dozen different sources, their horses more suited to pulling a plow than to war. Their weapons were plain, functional things, and it was obvious that they were nervous, looking around at every noise from the side of the road as they continued heading south.

“How much further though?” William asked, as they reached a crossroads. They came to a halt, trying to work out which way to go.

“We should think about turning back,” Haam said.

Olivia sat atop her steed, absentmindedly fiddling with the ring Royce had given her on their engagement; her family’s ring, but the symbol of their love nonetheless. She stroked it, and as she did so, she thought of Genevieve. She thought of the way the other girl had looked at the castle, and about how much she had obviously meant to Royce.

“We keep going, as far as we need to go until we find her,” Olivia said. “My guess is that she’s heading for the king’s encampment. We need to get to her before she reaches it.”

“And if we can’t?” Wells asked.

Olivia shrugged, but only because she knew she couldn’t say what she was thinking: that if necessary, she would tear down any wall, find a way through any army, to find Genevieve. Just the thought of her was like a hint of grit at the back of her mind that wouldn’t go away. Olivia knew she couldn’t be happy with Royce knowing that things were unsettled with Genevieve, with her out there still feeling that way about him. She needed to find her.

“Genevieve will have gone to Altfor,” Olivia said, dodging the question. “Altfor is with King Carris, so we know where she will be going. That gives us a chance to catch up with her before she can get there.”

“I hope so,” Wells said, “but we need to think about what point we turn back at. How far do we go before we need to return home?”

“We go as far as we need to,” Olivia said, her determination absolute. Right then, she knew that she would follow Genevieve into the midst of a blazing fire if she had to. “And we’re wasting time sitting here when we could be riding. Every moment we sit still on our horses is a moment when she is getting further away from us.”

Olivia set off in the direction that their information had said King Carris’s court was in, kicking her horse into a canter. She didn’t care if the others managed to keep up or not. Their horses hurried into place next to hers, and from a distance, they probably did look like a noblewoman riding along with her protector knights.

Eventually, they rode through some stands of trees, and then up onto the brow of a hill. From up there, Olivia could see King Carris’s army spread out below, banner after banner raised as nobles had joined him to show their support. There were thousands of men there, ordinary soldiers and knights, archers and spearmen. The nobles and the knights had their tents separate from the others, each with their small entourages of servants and hangers-on.

There was a keep at the heart of it all, solid and imposing. Instinctively, Olivia knew that was where Genevieve would be. Altfor would have gone in there to find the king, and Genevieve would have gone in there to find Altfor. She might have spent a little time out in the camp below, but Olivia guessed that it would have been only a little. She would have marched up in the direction of the doors, the way…