A Sovereign's Honour: A King's Head, #2

By David Waine

Callin is king, a national hero, and betrothed to the beautiful Xunin The ravening Draals are defeated and he has finally fulfilled his unholy pact with the Hag, rejecting her at last, so that his reign may be blessed.
Callin's past comes back to haunt him, however, as Avalind returns, seemingly from the dead.
'A Sovereign's Honour' is the second instalment of the fantasy trilogy, 'A King's Head'.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Waine
• Release date: Nov 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393506690

David Waine

David Waine was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, in 1949. He is the youngest of three brothers, all of whom went on to become teachers like their father. It was during his teaching career that he developed an interest in writing, initially plays, and his adaptation of Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' was performed at the Cockpit Theatre in London (the forerunner of Shakespeare's Globe) as part of the Globe Theatre restoration in 1991. He took up novel writing after leaving the profession, and his first published work, The Planning Officers appeared in 2011. He lives with his wife in the foothills of the Pennines. www.davidwaineauthor.com

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

SHE COULD SEE no barrier at all. The path crested the rise smoothly and then fell away gradually on the other side, disappearing around a jagged rock buttress only to reappear, clinging giddily to yet another cliff much further on. She could just make out the precipices above Brond: rough pinnacles clambering over each other in a headlong race to Ferullas’s shimmering spike. Any path that clung there was a heart in the mouth experience, or so she had been told since early childhood. The one from the hidden northern valley, however, had been easy: clear, broad and well-trodden, but not by any Draal. No Draal knew of this place.

Cabral had told her that he had explored to this point but could go no further. He could neither see nor feel the obstruction, but it was there nonetheless and would not permit him to pass. It was as if an invisible wall had been erected across the path specifically to deny him access.

According to legend, this could only be the Hag’s Highway, a fabled route long consigned to the mists of myth. The road from nowhere to nowhere, travelled by ghosts and the wind, a sinuous track winding pointlessly throughout the heights to a place that none now believed ever to have existed. Yet the shades of the dead and the blast of the elements could not beat such a path. The folktales she had absorbed so assiduously as a little girl made frequent mention of it, but even then, she had not believed that it might actually be true. Legend or no, the path was real and used, for its smooth surface bore mute evidence of the passage of many feet — or perhaps one pair of feet passing many times? Lifting her own foot, she cautiously stepped across the apex and placed it firmly down upon Kingdom territory. She had returned to her homeland.

So much for the barrier, she muttered to herself, commencing her descent.

Night was falling. This was not the ideal time to go roaming about mountains — especially these mountains with their treacherous surfaces and terrifying drops, yet the path was clear and the gradient easy. Darkness had already fallen in the valleys far below. She could make out little twinkling clusters of light in the gloom: glowing windows in happy homes or the flaming wreckage of the carnage she had left behind her? From this height, it could have been either. A wave of rank sickness swept through her at the thought.

She knew that she should have been much colder than she was. The terrible storm had blown itself out weeks since and it was now Michaelmas. Snow lay deep everywhere except where she walked. Shaded or exposed, it remained clear and the wind was no more than a pleasant breeze.

On she pressed into the gathering gloom. The peaks silhouetted against the purple of the sky, itself dimming to black, pitted with needle points of starlight. Her way remained clear, a snaking ribbon flitting between black bastions and lit by a steely glow from the waxing moon.

Then, rounding a fold in the mountainside, her progress was blocked by a very real barrier. A landslide had rolled across the path, obliterating it. The jumble of rocks was much taller than she was and offered no way around since it lay on the brink of an inky abyss. It took but a moment, however, for her family’s traditional pluck to reassert itself. She hadn’t come this far to be stopped by a pile of boulders. Taking her fear firmly in hand, she gripped the nearest rock and hauled herself carefully upwards.

The climb proved easy. The landslide was ancient, and the rocks had long become cemented together by deposits of earth and growths of moss so that it seemed more an integral part of the mountainside than something lying on it.

Immediately she became aware that the air around her was warm and still. The path below had felt sheltered, but undeniably very high. Now she was in air that might have existed by the seashore on a calm summer’s evening instead of as it should be at these impossible heights and in winter.

A pale orange glow filtered through chinks in the final layers of rocks above her. She flattened herself against the nearest boulder, heart hammering. An orange glow meant fire. Fire meant people! She bore no weapon and her only protection, Adiram Cabral, was in their little cabin beyond the pass and unable to penetrate the barrier anyway. Then she thought again. A fire should flicker, but the narrow shafts of pale orange light that filtered through the gaps were as steady as moonbeams. Cautiously, silently, she edged the final few steps until she could peer over the topmost boulder.

She was alone. No dancing campfire met her eyes. Instead, the orange glow emanated from a perfectly circular cave in the vertical rock wall. The cave gave out onto a small, level plateau on which stood a smooth, glassy table on three pyramidal legs, which seemed to grow from the very rock beneath them. To find such things in such a place was beyond all understanding. Yet the cave, plateau and table were as real as the rock to which she clung.

Immediately, the urge to push on, which had dominated her mind for weeks, left her, replaced by a conviction that she had arrived and needed only to wait.

She soon lost pace with the passage of time. Black night fell, save for the orange glow, and the moon riding steadily higher. The distant, muted howling of the winds reached her ears, as they assaulted other perches, sparking spiralling plumes of spindrift, glistening in the moonlight, from proud peaks. Then she heard the footfalls.

Heart hammering again, she flattened herself against the boulder. The sound faded, wafted away on a breeze. Hardly daring to breathe, she waited, teeth gritted. Silence. Had she imagined it? Carefully, painfully slowly, she raised herself to peer over the boulder at the plateau. All was as it had been before. Her heart eased, and she sagged against the cool rock once more.

The footfalls returned. Louder this time and nearer. She could hear the scrape of gravel under a heavy boot. This time there could be no doubt.

***

CABRAL LOOKED UP sharply as the door creaked open. Where have you been? I searched the valley in both directions. You left the child.

She sagged against him, unbearably weary, numb with cold and shaking with the weight and import of her hidden burden. I waited until you were in sight before I went, she explained falteringly, I knew I could trust you to care for him. Resisting the support of his strong arms, she shook her head vehemently and motioned towards the simple table at the centre of his hut. He helped her across the floor and sat her down gently, her head hanging, and her hands clenched around a large bulge in her cloak. Only then did her tears begin to course. They fell without restraint as her spirit finally gave way to heartbroken sobs.

A blaze crackled in the hearth. Supper was ready — normally her function — and the table laid with its simple wooden trenchers and Cabral’s own knives. Unable to locate her by nightfall, he had placed his trust in her eventual return and tended to domestic duties and their joint responsibility, a baby. She sat, her head bowed, her face white from much more than the cold, her shoulders shaking and a glistening tear quivering on her chin. Now that she had brought her special burden to safety, the enormity of it all overwhelmed her.

Cabral checked outside to make sure she had not been followed. Satisfied, he returned to his charge: Avalind Vandamm, Princess Royal of the Kingdom. She had once saved his life, and his deepest joy was that he had been able to save hers in return.

She looked broken: slumped, shivering and weeping — a faint echo of her former self — the majesty of her blood driven out by the crushing sobs of a broken girl. The lustre had left her hair, those gleaming red tresses that he so admired hung lank and tangled about her shoulders. Her eyes leaked an inner agony that knew no end. An ache opened within his breast to see her so reduced.

The weeping slowed at last. She collected herself and looked up at him, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, a faint apologetic smile creasing her pale face momentarily. How is the child? she murmured.

Well, responded Cabral. He was almost as capable of looking after the little mite as she was. I fed him before your return. He’s sleeping now.

She nodded, the faint smile persisting, her eyes following his direction to light on the tiny snuffling lump in a makeshift cradle beside her bed. An infantile snort broadened her smile ever so slightly. His father would be pleased to know that.

Cabral’s eyes narrowed. She had not mentioned the baby’s true parentage since he rescued them, other than to hope that the mother — a serving girl, called Mussa — had escaped the oncoming Draal army as well. Cabral doubted this as it had been Mussa who had personally smashed a wine bottle over the princess’s head and taken her ring and cloak to impersonate her, thus throwing the ravening Draals off the scent. He had never mentioned it, but he knew the fate that poor Mussa would have suffered at the hands of the Beast Prince, Kubelik Furak.

Callin Vorst? he said, naming the child’s true father. If he survived.

A cold look came into her eye as she stared pointedly into the fire. Oh, he survived, she said bitterly.

His face darkened. You have received word? He glanced nervously at the door.

No, she replied, shaking her head. I have seen him.

Reaching inside her cloak, she produced the heavy bundle in a deep, crimson bag and deposited it on the table with a soft thud. Cabral eyed it warily, unwilling to guess at its contents, but all too aware that the dark stains around the base were caused by leakage from within. Recognising his reluctance, she told him flatly.

That is my father’s head.

So, the story came out, punctuated by many sobs and once by the baby’s cries. She told him of how the vision of that path had haunted her since they had arrived, how it had grown daily stronger until it became an obsession. She told him how she had stolen away while he was out gathering food and had crossed the barrier unhindered. Finally, she told him of what she had witnessed at the entrance to the Hag’s lair.

Cabral listened in horrified silence. He made an unholy alliance with the Hag? he asked at last.

She nodded. Before either of us had even met him. Even then he was plotting to overthrow the Vandamms and place himself on the throne. Her face crumpled, And I thought of him as my friend!

Cabral sat back, brow furrowed, the ache in his heart deepening with each revelation. So, the legend is true, he murmured. You said he murdered his brother?

She nodded, grimacing through the tears.

But Count Dorcan died in battle. I saw his body myself. His mind swept back to that fateful night when he had managed to avoid the marauding Draal invasion army, only to come across her coach attacked by a foraging party. With the help of her guards, he had beaten them off, but found Count Dorcan Vorst, Lord of Nassinor, dead on the coach’s floor with a Draal arrow through his heart.

Not Dorcan, she sobbed. Simack. She went on to describe the death of Callin’s eldest brother, the weedy Simack Vorst, whose ghastly descent into the grave from an unknown malady that bled him white from within, she had personally nursed.

So, his death was not natural?

She shook her head. I don’t know how he did it — he was in Brond when Simack fell ill — but he did do it. I heard him confess it to her.

This brought a new question to Cabral’s lips. Despite his natural revulsion at her news, a certain curiosity was taking hold. Did you see her?

Avalind shook her head. "She did not come out, but I heard her say, Goodnight, beautiful boy, as he left. A woman’s voice. I took my father’s head and came away immediately, lest she should take it."

He nodded soberly. Of course.

A silence fell between them as the firelight flickered and an occasional spark shot out and fluttered to the bare stone hearth. On this bleak January night, a new chill had stolen into Cabral’s little bolthole that no fire of Man’s could dispel. It seeped, like a deathly, creeping mist, from their hearts into the remotest corner and crouched there, malignant and terrifying, poised to overwhelm them both.

The silence was broken at length by Cabral, fighting down his own anguish with an effort. So, … Your Highness…

What?

He gritted his teeth. There is no kind way to say this, but if King Rhomic is no longer… with us — and Callin Vorst is king…

She took his meaning with a fresh burst of tears. Soth is also dead! Yes, I know.

This simple statement about her elder brother, Crown Prince Soth, hit him like a hammer blow. And so, at least officially, are you.

Her sobs subsided slowly. She raised her face to his, her eyes wide and questioning. The fire set sparks glittering in the tears that still streaked her cheeks. A cave had opened up within her breast, an aching emptiness that could never be filled by an eternity of kindness. The life that she had known since the cradle was gone, smashed forever. A new world had arisen from the ashes and, for the first time, she realised that she did not belong to it. What am I to do? she asked faintly. My family is dead and so am I, to everyone except you and a baby who isn’t even mine.

He thought deliberately slowly. He could see that panic was beginning to take control of her, and he would have to pick his words carefully were he not to propel her further into despair.

Well, that is a beginning, he replied stoically. If one man knows the truth now, so can many. In time. Gathering power and resolution, he rose to his feet and announced stoutly, You are the rightful queen, and a usurper fouls your throne! I will restore you to your birthright — my oath on this Michaelmas night! His voice filled the tiny cabin. The sight of him standing there, silhouetted against the fire — his large, powerful frame outlined by its glow — did, she felt ashamed to admit, make him look vaguely ridiculous. She was too good a person to pass that on to him, however, so she buried it and dried her eyes.

She smiled sadly and shook her head. I am grateful, Master Cabral. Heaven only knows I owe you so much already. But what can one man do?

One man brought down the Vandamms, he growled. Another will restore them! He underlined his resolve with a thump of his fist that made the stout wooden table wobble on its four unequal legs.

She laughed bitterly. That one man had the Forces of Darkness behind him — not to mention a Draal invasion. Will you do the same?

He shook his head. Even if I could, I would not. Evil does not serve justice. But there will be a way.

The next morning, she found him seated on a rock some way from the cabin. Beside him was a mound of freshly disturbed snow where they had buried the late king’s head in its bag to preserve it.

You seem lost in thought, Master Cabral, she observed with a cheeriness that she did not feel.

With the Hag seemingly a real being, he responded without looking up, I surmise that she was drawing you to her lair deliberately to witness Vorst’s confession.

I suppose, she reflected, but why?

Why else would she let you through the barrier when she would not let me?

Perhaps it only admits women.

No, he replied firmly. If one approach to her lair is barred, then so are they all, yet he got through. After you took your father’s head, what did you do?

I came straight back here.

You encountered no resistance?

None.

Cabral slapped his thigh and leapt to his feet. There! She wanted you to have it.

Avalind stared at him. A minute glow kindled within her. Amid all her despair and grief, she marvelled at this loyal, noble man who had repaid his life debt to her and who now dedicated himself to her entirely.

Vorst thinks that he is now rid of her. Is that right? She nodded. But she outwitted him by summoning you.

Why?

He rose again and paced further off, his hands clasped behind his back. Turning, he replied, What you witnessed suggests that the war is over and that the invasion failed, otherwise Kubelik would have been on the throne. I will discover the truth today. My banishment expired months ago. We will know when I return tonight.

I’ll come with you.

No! his face was firm. Your likeness hangs in every hall in the land. You would be recognised in minutes. Better let him — and everyone else — believe what they wish for the present. The sternness of his expression relaxed at this point and he permitted himself a rare smile. A great oak tree can grow from an acorn if it takes root, but an acorn can be eaten by a squirrel if it does not. If Callin Vorst was prepared to murder his own kin to advance himself to the throne, he will not give it up because he discovers you are still alive.

Minutes later they both sat before the fire. He carefully stitched a repair to the sleeve of his leather hunting jacket with a needle fashioned from bone, and narrow strips of leather that he had cut from a hide. She watched him, cradling the baby in her lap.

You are the only man I have ever known who repairs his own clothes, she remarked with a smile.

The returning smile carried a self-deprecating chuckle. When a man has to see to himself, he has no choice. No seamstresses for the likes of me.

I did learn needlecraft at the seminary, you know, she replied. I could do it.

He put the jacket down. No need, he said. It’s done. Thank you anyway — but I’m sure your stitching would have looked far too neat. How can I maintain anonymity in Brond if it is obvious that there is a woman looking after me?

Is that such a rare thing?

No, he conceded, but if I am to pass for a rough peasant, I must dress like one, and no such man would ever have access to seminary standard needlework.

You made a neat enough job of that fetching black outfit you wore when you rescued me, she smiled.

He chuckled softly. There is a tailor in Grovan who is still wondering where his bolt of black cloth and matching reels of thread went. Suddenly his face hardened again, and he looked at her gravely. Hidden you are for the moment, but the day will soon come when we have to smuggle you back into the Kingdom. I have enough left to make one for you also.

He left within the hour. Alone with the baby to care for, Avalind could do little more than play the peasant, a role for which her training had ill prepared her. She smiled softly as she dusted the little cabin, fed and changed the baby and set about preparing a meal for his return that night. With such a journey behind him, he would be hungry.

Cabral’s bolthole was a direct result of his banishment from the Kingdom more than a year previously. Exiled from his homeland, he had crossed the mountains into Draal and stumbled across this little valley by accident. It was well away from any recognised road and effectively hidden from view either from above or below. He soon discovered that he could light a fire by day or night without fear of discovery. There he built his base, a simple stone hut, and there he stayed, apart from his raiding trips into Draal and his periodic (and illegal) returns to the Kingdom, dressed and masked all in black. It had been on one of these visits that he rescued the daughter of his previous employer, Lissian Dumarrick, from brigands and delivered her to Avalind’s care.

A stream ran through the valley and the climate was sufficiently benign for him to grow a few simple crops. He had also managed to use his brigandage skills to steal meat from Draal farms in the lower valleys, so he was self-sufficient in food. He had a soldier’s skill in being able to fend for himself.

Since bringing Avalind there, he had observed his code of chivalry punctiliously. At first, he had insisted that she sleep in his bed while he passed a wretched night on the floor. The following day he had constructed another simple bed, which she had accepted graciously. He had even managed to contrive a makeshift barrier between them at night so that she could enjoy some privacy. In return, Avalind had shouldered most of the responsibility for looking after Mussa’s baby and keeping the cabin fit for human habitation.

The cooking they shared, somewhat unevenly. Her education at the seminary in Brond had taught her many of the finer points of cuisine. His experience had taught him all about trapping and a little of agriculture — so between them, they made an effective culinary partnership. Day after day he would return with fresh meat to roast, which she garnished with herbs he had never heard of and contrived rich sauces out of the bits he usually threw away. The simple life, she concluded, had its compensations.

She stood on the brink of the huge cliff that separated their hideaway from the rest of Draal. She knew in her heart that she could never truly embrace the rustic way of life any more than a peasant could be a princess. This unreal interval was really a hiatus between horrors that she dared not imagine. How many Kingdom women now keened over the bodies of their menfolk while she enjoyed the quiet of her little mountain retreat? How long before further heartbreak was to be heaped upon them as a direct result of her return? Not for the first time in recent weeks, guilt stabbed through her mind, dispelling the beauty around her as a vapour.

The stream babbled over its rocky bed to the very edge of the precipice, where it issued forth into a sparkling spout that dissipated into floating mist long before it reached the ground. There was movement on the plain below. The white carpet, flecked here and there with patches of dirty green and brown, stretched away to the glittering strip of the Belya River in the middle distance, fading to blue as it merged with the vast flatness that was Draal. From her vantage point, she could make out tiny rivulets of traffic moving steadily, northward to the river. A migration or military manoeuvres? Why would so many people be leaving?

A pot of rabbit stew was simmering over the fire when she heard the hoofbeats approach. Rushing to the door, she opened it just a crack to look out, wary that their hideout should be discovered. He had already dismounted and was seeing to the horse’s needs before entering the cabin to see to his own. Smiling a greeting, she closed the door and set about laying the table. His stew was ready in its bowl in front of his seat when he did finally appear.

He was, indeed, hungry, having not eaten since breaking his fast that morning. Recognising this, she allowed him to eat without badgering him for news. As he emptied his bowl, she refilled it and he ploughed on without speaking.

Finally, he was finished and pushed his chair back, wiping his greasy mouth with the back of his hand, a satisfied look on his face. That was good, he said.

Well? she asked, trying to sound composed despite the churning in her stomach. Did you discover anything?

Oh yes, he nodded. Firstly, the war is over, and we won. He told her of the assaults over the pass and on Graan, the victories of Sir Simian and Sir Keriak — tempered by the tragic losses of General Vlaan and Baron Coreth — of Killian’s stunning victory at sea and of the climactic battle at Brond. He described her brother’s mysterious death and her father’s heroic one, culminating in the new King Callin’s attack on the Draal flank, his apparent immunity to bolts of lightning and his destruction of Kubelik when seemingly at the Beast Prince’s mercy.

Avalind’s eyes were wide. So… total victory?

He nodded. The invasion was smashed. They had built a tunnel through the mountains to land an army secretly on our side. Once they had given up, Vorst led an invasion of their territory through the same tunnel and forced a humiliating settlement on Sulinan. He had to cede the land between the mountains and the Belya River to the Kingdom and rebuild the pass road. Graan is no longer an enclave.

That would explain the migration I witnessed earlier from the top of the cliff, she remarked softly.

Are they leaving? he asked, hardly surprised. Better the devil you know, I suppose.

Silence settled between them for several minutes before Avalind asked softly, And my family?

Your father, mother and Prince Soth lie in a makeshift tomb in the cathedral. So, they tell me, do you.

She rose, eyes wide. He raised a placatory hand to quell the outburst before it came. There is a woman’s body there, Your Highness. Prince Soth came across the coach on his return from Dragotar. All were dead within it and it was ablaze. Everyone was burned beyond recognition. They found your ring on one of the bodies and assumed it was you.

Avalind returned to her seat, white-faced, her hand over her mouth in horror. Mussa, she murmured faintly.

Believe me, Your Highness, it is well that Mussa died as she did, confirmed Cabral, equally softly.

Avalind’s face now paled to grey. She had not considered this. A gaping cavity had opened up within her chest. Her head drooped at the name of the brave serving girl who had willingly sacrificed her own life for that of her princess. Poor, faithful Mussa. What justice existed if a murdering tyrant should reign triumphant when far worthier souls laid down their lives out of love? A tear gleamed in the corner of her eye as she fought for the appropriate words. In a shaking whisper, she ventured to ask, How many of our folk were lost in this war?

Over ten thousand, was the grim reply. We inflicted at least five times that number on them, but our casualties include women and children. Victims of Kubelik’s barbarism.

A horrified sob tore itself from her throat. Half turned away from him, her head in her hands, she wept uncontrollably. Sharing her agony, he left his chair and sat beside her, cradling her limp body in his arms. She clung to him, shaking, her tears coursing onto his clothes.

Ten thousand, she blurted, and women and children. Oh, Cabral, Cabral! Why did you bring me here? I should have died with them! I should!

No! He seized her roughly and forced her to look him in the face. Her eyes were wide, frightened. You said that back at the coach, but Mussa would have none of it. She sacrificed herself so that you could live. Has that no meaning for you? You are the hope of our nation.

I am dead, Cabral! she screamed, tearing herself from his grasp and backing away in horror. Reaching the doorpost, she clung to it, shaking, lest she should collapse altogether. My body lies in a makeshift tomb, she sobbed. That’s what everybody believes, so why should it not be so? The Hag has won! The Vandamms are no more and Vorst is her puppet in Brond. She rules through him and she keeps him alive by her sorcery. I suppose he is a national hero?

Yes, he is.

She rounded on him. It is over! What chance do we have? What chance did we ever have? She turned away, her forehead pressed against the rough wood of the door. When she spoke again, the panic of anguish had left her voice, replaced by a quieter tone, steeped in despair. Understand me, Cabral, I am grateful for your rescue and I am truly humbled that a simple serving maid would lay down her life for mine. But what has been achieved? The Hag is enthroned through her minion and Mussa died for nothing! She turned her glittering eyes, brimming with tears, back on him. He stared, aghast, at the naked agony on her face. We can embrace being peasants now, she gasped, "for it