Flamecaster Read online

  DEDICATION

  To all of those writers who opened their veins and wrote the incredible

  books that made me fall in love with reading. You are the ones who

  kindled the hope that I might one day be a writer.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  1. Healer

  2. A Cruel Frost

  3. Riley

  4. Patriot

  5. The Voyageur

  6. A Long Fuse

  7. Oden’s Ford

  8. Hello and Good-Bye

  9. Tourant’s Party

  10. Blood Hunger

  11. Going East on the West Road

  12. In the King’s Garden

  13. The Way-Farrier

  14. Exiled in Delphi

  15. A Deal with the Devil

  16. Officer of the Crown

  17. The King Goes A-Hunting

  18. Lady of Grace

  19. Fire in the Hole

  20. Escape from Delphi

  21. Ash Meets the King

  22. Homecoming

  23. The King’s Healer

  24. An Early Morning Summons

  25. In the King’s Dungeons

  26. The Wolf Healer

  27. To the King’s Health

  28. Death’s Doorstep

  29. Visiting Hours

  30. Solstice Celebration

  31. The Empress’s Gift

  32. A Little Bad Judgment

  33. Playing the King’s Game

  34. The Emissary

  35. Off to Market

  36. Strange Bedfellows

  37. A Pledge and a Promise

  38. On the Waterfront

  39. The Devil’s Bargain

  40. Death by Dragon

  41. Flamecaster

  42. Back at the Castle

  43. Parting of the Ways

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Cinda Williams Chima

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  HEALER

  Compared to the freezing weather outside, the stable was warm and steamy and alive with the sleepy murmurings of horses.

  Adrian sul’Han pulled off his fleece-lined gloves and stuffed them into his pockets. He went first to see if his father’s pony, the latest in a long line of Raggers, was still in his stall.

  He was, poking his head over the stall door, looking for a handout as usual. So his father hadn’t left the city. Not yet, anyway. Adrian needed to talk to him before he did.

  He walked on down the line of stalls to look in on the piebald mare. She came forward to meet him, lipping hopefully at his hand. Adrian studied her critically. Her eyes were bright, ears pricked forward, and when he ran his hand over her shoulder, he could tell that the muscles of her withers were filling in.

  Sliding his free hand under his coat, he gripped his amulet and sent a tendril of power into the mare, looking for trouble. To his relief, the white-hot focus of infection was nearly gone.

  “You’ll be all right,” he murmured, stroking her head, proud that it was true.

  He heard Mancy’s step-and-drag footsteps behind him. “I thought that was you, boy,” she said, coming up next to him. “Here to see my Priscilly? It’s amazing, what you’ve done. I thought I had lost her, and now she’s like a brand-new horse.”

  “Actually, I’m looking for my da, and I thought I’d look in on Priscilly while I’m here,” Adrian said. “Have you seen him?”

  She shook her head. “Not today, no.” Worry flickered across her face. “You don’t think the High Wizard will come here, do you? See, I’m moving slow this morning, and I only just got the front stalls mucked out. I need to—”

  “Don’t worry,” Adrian said, raising both hands. “I just thought he might have stopped by.”

  Mancy was a soldier who’d been assigned to the stables while she recovered from a nasty leg wound courtesy of one of the kingdom of Arden’s collared mages. Now her wound drew Adrian’s attention like a poke in the eye. It wasn’t healing properly, he could tell, and he wanted to know why.

  In fact, Mancy had the smell of death on her.

  “Hey! Did you hear me?”

  That was when Adrian realized that Mancy had asked a question. “I’m sorry,” he said, wrenching his attention back to the conversation. “What was that?”

  “I said, is it all right if I put her back on her regular feed?” Mancy said, a little huffily.

  “Oh. Ah. Two more days of the mash, and then she can go back,” he said. Grain was hard to find after a quarter century of war. Nobody was getting fat in Fellsmarch these days.

  “I was telling Hughes at West Gate about you,” Mancy said. “I told him you was just a lýtling, but you can work miracles with horses.”

  I’m not a lýtling, Adrian thought. Maybe I don’t have my growth, but I’m already thirteen.

  “He’s got a moonblind horse that an’t getting any better, and he asked me to ask you if you might come by and take a look.”

  The West Gate was two days’ ride away. And Adrian was hoping to leave town in a week.

  “I can’t go out there right now, but I’ll send over an ointment that might help,” he said. He paused, clearing his throat. A lýtling healer might be good enough for horses, but . . . “How’s the leg?”

  Mancy grimaced. “It’s all right, I guess. It’s closed over, but it’s still giving me a lot of pain. Plus, I can’t seem to get my strength back. I been back to the healing halls three different times, but they don’t want to see me.”

  Mancy’s collarbones stuck out more than before, and Adrian noticed that she leaned on the stall door for support. “Mind if I take a look?”

  Mancy blinked at him. “At me? You do people, too?”

  Adrian bit back the first response that came to mind. “Sometimes.”

  “All right then. Be my guest.” Mancy sat down on an overturned bucket, and rolled back her uniform breeches. When he went to touch her leg, though, she flinched back. “You an’t going to—do anything, are you?”

  “Like?”

  “Hex it or something?” Valefolk were wary of wizards, for good reason.

  “I’m just going to take a look, all right?” The wound was closed, the skin tight and hot, the leg puffy all the way into the ankle. Adrian brushed his fingers over it, murmuring a charm, and saw that the infection had gone into the bone. He’d seen it before, in horses, and they always had to be put down.

  Adrian looked up at Mancy, chewing his lower lip. The leg would have to come off, but he knew she wouldn’t take that verdict from a thirteen-year-old untrained wizard.

  “Mancy,” he said, “your leg needs to be seen right away. Go back to the healing halls, and ask for Titus Gryphon. Don’t get shuffled off to anyone else, and don’t take no for an answer. Tell him I sent you, that he needs to look at your leg. Do it now.”

  Mancy blinked at him, her brow furrowed. “Now? But right now I need to muck out the—”

  “That can keep,” Adrian said. “If you want, I’ll put in a word with Jarrett.” The stable master owed him a favor.

  “You don’t need to do that,” Mancy said. She swallowed hard. “I’ll just let him know where I am. If you really think I need to go now.”

  “You do.” Adrian put a hand on her shoulder, soothing her. “You’ll be all right.”

  With Mancy on her way to Gryphon, Adrian continued his search for his father. Outside again, it seemed even colder than before. The wind howled down from the Spirits, sending bits of greenery from the recent Solstice celebration spinning down the street.

  He really, really needed to get a yes from his father befo
re his mother the queen found out what he was up to. His father, the High Wizard, was a little more flexible when it came to rules. Like the one that said that wizards weren’t supposed to receive their amulets until they turned sixteen.

  Adrian reached for his amulet now, as he did a dozen times a day, feeling the usual flow of energy from wizard to amulet. Wizards continually produced flash, a magical energy. Amulets stored flash until enough accumulated to do something worthwhile. Without an amulet, flash leaked away, and was of no use to anyone.

  His father had given him this hand-me-down amulet two years ago, on his eleventh name day, along with a lecture on all the bad things that would happen if he abused or misused it.

  Adrian had worn the amulet—carved in the shape of a hunter—on a chain around his neck ever since. He’d trained hard in the use of magic—most often with his father, when he was home; elsewise with some of his father’s handpicked friends. Yet it had made no difference. His older sister, Hana, was dead, and his little sister, Lyss, was heartbroken. And Adrian needed to get out of town.

  If his da wasn’t in the castle close, and if he hadn’t ridden out, he’d be somewhere in the city. Likely Ragmarket or Southbridge. Adrian headed for the markets.

  To call them “markets” these days was being generous. With Solstice just over, the shelves had been cleared of what little food there was. There was nothing on offer but some tired-looking root vegetables that had been held back till now so as to fetch the best prices. His father said it reminded him of the hard times during the reign of Queen Marianna, when there was never enough to eat. Or during Arden’s siege of Fellsmarch Castle, when they had contests to come up with new recipes for barley.

  Hard times are back, Adrian thought, if they ever left. For Solstice, the royal family had dined on venison, courtesy of their upland clan relations. Otherwise, it would have been ham and barley pies (light on ham, heavy on barley).

  Not that it mattered. None of them had much of an appetite. It was the first midwinter since Hana died.

  Around him, the market was waking up: first, the bakers, produce sellers, and fishmongers. Then the secondhand shops selling hard-worn, picked-over goods (all claimed to be clan-made). This was his father’s home ground. He’d once ruled this neighborhood as the notorious streetlord of the Ragger gang.

  Adrian always drew attention, too, when he walked the markets. He was too easy to pick out as Han Alister’s son, with his red hair and wizard’s glow. Today it seemed worse than usual—he felt the pressure of eyes upon him wherever he went, the prickle on the back of his neck that meant he was being watched. He guessed it was because he’d been in the camps in the mountains when Hana died, and he hadn’t been down to the markets since.

  He asked after his da in several of the market stalls. Nobody had seen him, but they all sent their good wishes for a brighter new year.

  Adrian had nearly given up when he walked into the flower market, where the merchants were just unpacking their wares. There was his father, his back to Adrian, bargaining with one of the vendors, a young girl in beaded Demonai garb.

  His da was dressed in the nondescript clothing he wore when he walked the city streets, but there was no mistaking the broad shoulders and deceptively slouchy stance. His sword slanted across his back, which was nothing unusual in a city filled with soldiers.

  His hair glinted in the frail winter light, more silver than gold these days. His amulet was hidden, but he wore the aura that other wizards recognized. He was known, especially here, on his home ground, as Han “Cuffs” Alister, the lowborn hero who’d become High Wizard. The strategist who continually outfoxed the Ardenine king. He was a former street thief—their former street thief—who’d married a queen.

  The flower vendor was flushed and fluttering at having such royalty in her shop, bringing blossoms forward and arranging them in a copper bucket to show them off.

  Adrian edged closer, listening as his father bantered with the vendor. In the end, he chose red foxflowers, white lilies, and blue trueheart, along with a few stems of bog marigold and maiden’s kiss.

  The girl wrapped them in paper and handed them over. When he tipped a handful of coins into her palm, she tried to give it back. “Oh, no, my lord, I couldn’t. I’m so very sorry for your loss. I used to see the princess in the mountain camps sometimes. Running Wolf was . . . was always kind to me.”

  Running Wolf was Hana’s clan name.

  His father closed her fingers over the money, looking her straight in the eyes. “Thank you,” he said. “We all miss her. But you still need to make a living.” He bowed and turned away, cloak kiting behind him. The girl looked after him, blinking back tears, clutching her hair in her fist to keep it from flying in the bone-chilling wind.

  That was when his father spotted Adrian lurking nearby. “Ash! This is a surprise,” he said, using the nickname he favored. A-S-H, for Adrian sul’Han. Striding toward him, he extended the flowers. “What do you think?” he said, almost shyly. “Will your mother like them?”

  “That depends on how much trouble you’re in,” Adrian said, extracting a faint smile from his father. They both understood what the flowers were for, and why his father was in the market on this particular day.

  Adrian’s older sister, Hanalea ana’Raisa, the princess heir, had died six months ago, at the summer solstice, in a skirmish along the border with Tamron. From the looks of things, she’d been the last one standing, taking down six Ardenine mudbacks before she went down herself. Her bound captain, Simon Byrne, had died at her side.

  The Ardenine general, Marin Karn, had severed her head and carried it back to his king. King Gerard had ordered it paraded through the captive realms, then sent it back to her mother the queen in an ornate casket.

  Hana was only twenty years old. She’d been the golden child who combined her father’s good looks and street-savvy charm and her mother’s ability to bring people together and lead. She was one who could walk into a room and command it within minutes. She’d been a symbol of hope, the promise that the Gray Wolf line would survive.

  If the Maker is good, and all-powerful, Adrian thought, then why would this be allowed to happen? What cruel twist of fate sent a large Ardenine company into the borderlands in an area that hadn’t seen fighting for nearly a year? Most importantly, why Hana? Why not Adrian? She was the heir; he was in every way the spare.

  “What brings you to the markets?” his father said, draping an arm around Adrian’s shoulders. He was never afraid to show affection in public. “Are you buying or selling?”

  “I wanted to talk to you. Privately.”

  His father eyed him keenly. “You’re selling then, I believe,” he said. “I have some time right now. Come to breakfast, and we’ll talk.”

  2

  A CRUEL FROST

  They chose a place called the Drovers’ Inn, a hostelry on market square that Adrian had never been to. Everyone knew his father, of course; the server led them to the very best table, near the hearth, and clunked steaming mugs of cider down in front of them. “I’m so sorry, Lord Alister,” she said, her cheeks pink with embarrassment. “All we got is porridge and a wee bit of ham, but the bread is fresh this morning.”

  “I was hoping for porridge,” his father said, signaling for her to bring two bowls. Setting the bouquet carefully aside, he leaned his sword against the wall and slung his cloak over the back of a chair and sat. He always sat facing the door, a throwback to his streetlord days.

  He looked tired, the dark circles under his eyes still visible against his sun-kissed skin. He’d lost weight, too, during the long marching season. Adrian resisted the temptation to reach out and grip his father’s hand so he could look for damage. “Da,” he said. “Are you . . . ?”

  “I’m all right,” his father said, taking a deep swallow of cider. “It’s been a hard season for all of us.”

  “But now you’re leaving again.” Adrian had promised himself that he wouldn’t sulk like a child, but he came close.r />
  At that, his father hunched his shoulders and darted a guilty look his way. “Your mother’s seen wolves every day for the last week. Something bad is about to happen, and I need to figure out what it is, and how to prevent it.”

  Visions of gray wolves appeared to descendants of the Gray Wolf line of queens in times of trouble and change. They were actually the dead queens—ancestors of the living queens of the Fells, come back as a warning.

  “How can you figure out how to prevent something when you don’t know what it is?” Wolves had appeared in the days before Hana died, but it had happened anyway. To Adrian, a vague warning was worse than none at all.

  The porridge arrived, steaming, with the promised bits of ham arranged on top for show.

  When the server left again, his father said, “I think that the attack on Hana’s triple was more than very bad luck. I think she was the target.”

  “How would they know it was her?” Adrian asked. “How would they know where she was?”

  His father leaned across the table. “I think someone told them. I think Arden has a spy on the inside.”

  “No,” Adrian said, with conviction. “Who would do that? Everyone loved her. And why would Arden target Hana in particular? She’s the heir—I know that—but wouldn’t it have made more sense to go after General Dunedain?”

  “Not if the goal is to break your mother’s heart,” his father said. “Captain Byrne and Shilo Trailblazer have been over the killing field dozens of times. From the looks of things, it wasn’t just a platoon—it was an entire company. Hana was smart, and a strong fighter, but it’s unlikely she would take down a half dozen Ardenines before they killed her—unless they were holding back, trying to take her alive.” He paused, glancing around for eavesdroppers. “There’s more,” he said. “It appears that her death wound was self-inflicted. We believe that when she realized that she was about to be captured, she shoved her own dagger through her heart.”

  Adrian felt like he’d been daggered himself. “She killed herself?”

  “What would you have done, in her place?” his father asked.

  Adrian shuddered. On this one point, they all agreed—it had been a blessing that Hana hadn’t been taken alive to Ardenscourt, to the dungeons of the monstrous king of Arden, Gerard Montaigne. It was one thing to break their hearts; it would have been worse if he’d held their hearts in his hands.