Chapter 98

Arik

If history was going to repeat itself, then let it be like this.

I shouldn't have been pushing my horse this hard. The trip to Fallspire had taken twice as long as it would have my men, so we hadn't been forced to ride our mounts hard, but still. He'd earned himself a long rest in a well-appointed stable, with lads to brush him down and feed him hay. Instead, my heels kicked into his sides, my arse rising from the saddle as I rode the stirrups, every muscle tight as I chased my brother down.

Magnus was always a madman, but whatever the Raven had poisoned him with had given that barely suppressed insanity a channel to flow from. He whooped and shouted at the trees as he raced ahead, his voice echoing around the forest, driving birds from the branches, as if seeing enemies in the shadows. The duke reined Devil in, keeping pace with the king, but several horse strides back and I…

I glanced behind me, my belt knife finding its way into my hand as I saw the lordlings bring up the rear. Far, far to the rear. These idiots were always slow to get organised, but not us. I could throw this knife, the weight of the blade familiar and comforting. If it aimed true, it'd bury itself in my brother's back, have him dropping from his saddle like a stone, and then I'd jump down, stride over and plant my boot on his chest. I'd watch his life blood splatter my boots, just as my father's had.

"Not like that, son."

The ghost that rode the road spoke to me as if we were standing shoulder to shoulder, his words clearer than anything else.

"But Father—" I said.

"You'll have blood on your hands, and that's no way to become king."

This was a memory, not a real conversation, because that was the nature of ghosts. They couldn't form new thoughts, couldn't come to new conclusions. My father, the rightful king of Khean, had said these exact words to me when I proposed a similar solution to the problem of Magnus before.

"Then I'll never be king," I told the ghost of my father. "Because my hands are bloodied plenty already." I rose up as far as I dared, urging my horse on, the knife clasped in my hand, ready to strike. The lords that rode with us, gods, Fallspire himself could kill me when I was done, but this opportunity was too perfect to ignore. Magnus was alone, unprotected, no guards in tow. I could take him down and—

I was nearly thrown from the saddle when the stag rushed out onto the road. My horse came to an abrupt stop, rearing up, and I fought to keep my seat, but as I did so, my gaze caressed the form of the stag.

Every time I saw it, I felt a moment of shock. Part of me tried to convince the other half that I'd imagined its golden pelt, but as I saw it standing there, I knew. Everything I remembered was true.

Memories of the past plagued me. In the dark of night, with nothing to distract me, I saw them all too often. The crimes that Magnus had committed against me with the queen's approval, my father's inaction, but most of all, this.

The moment I killed the golden stag.

"Sent you to us then, did they?" one of the hunters said all those years ago, after I'd been banished by the queen. "Well, keep up, princeling. That brother of yours is to kill a very pretty stag today, and we'll be whipped bloody if it doesn't happen."

"What?" My question was ignored, the lot of them turning and melting back into the forest, forcing me to search the trees with my eyes, then stumble after them. "You mean Magnus is going to try and kill the stag."

"Try?" The man was older with a grizzled beard and a world weary look in his eyes. "That's not been the way of things for some time." He tapped his belt where I saw a line of ampoules, each one with its own slot. "They don't hunt the stag, we do."

"If we slit its pretty little throat, you reckon we'll get to wear the crown?" another man asked with a sly smile. He grabbed a few fern stalks from the ground as we walked and then placed them on his head in a crude approximation of a crown. "I reckon I'd made a damn fine ruler. King Micken, first of his name!"

"King Micken the Dick, you mean," one of the other hunters chuckled.

"They don't even hunt the bastard thing," Micken said. "We locate it, stalk it, drive it towards the bloody princes—"

"The king hunts the stag," I protested. "The king is the only one who can kill it."

Micken's eyes narrowed and so did the other hunters, as if they were only just seeing me.

"Is that what they tell you, up in that fancy palace of yours, Bastard?" I flinched at that epithet now, even though he said the word with no more malice than the others did at court. "Is that what this Magnus is going to tell himself when he rides back to his bloody castle? Whatever you think you know about the hunt, boy, let me tell you." He paused for a second. "It's all bullshit."

"No." I took a step backwards. "No, I read… My father told me—"

"You'll find out soon enough," the bearded man said with a sniff. "Now keep up or we'll leave you here." He shot me a long look. "Which is better than what the queen proposed. Had her man come down to Fallspire waving around gold coins as payment for the man that ‘accidentally' cuts you down, Bastard."

My hand strayed to my sword's hilt, but he just laughed.

"The Duke pays us well enough not to follow that bitch's orders." He pulled out a gold coin from the pouch at his belt. "There's more to be had if we get you back to the king in one piece once this debacle is over, so keep up, boy."

I'd stumbled into that forest thinking myself a man. I was tall enough, strong enough to be considered one, but it was only what I saw on the hunt that made me transition from child to adulthood. My feet moved swiftly, stepping where the hunters did, mimicking their near silent steps, right up until we reached here.

"Down, lad…" the bearded man hissed, the lot of them flattening themselves against the rise to stare down at the small stream below. "There he is."

I'd blinked and blinked, unable to believe what I was seeing. There were deer heads mounted on the walls all throughout the palace, each one a symbol of the reigning king's right to rule, but their pelts were disappointingly dull. Little more than a dark orange, I'd stared and stared at them when walking the corridors of the palace alone, trying to understand how they got the label golden. Now it became clear. A stray ray of sunlight broke through the canopy of the forest, aiming for the beast who drank at the river. That light seemed to set the stag's pelt alight with an unearthly glow.

"Pretty thing, isn't it?" Micken whispered with a grin. "Seems a pity to lop its head off, but it seems we must. Jakey."

The bearded man drew his bow off his shoulder, pulling an arrow from the quiver, and I watched in disbelief.

"You're going to kill the stag?"

Was every story I'd been raised on a lie? My head felt like it was too loose on my own neck, ready to float off untethered. My father was king because of this. The gods themselves endorsed his reign because he had proven himself worthy by killing the sacred stag.

"Kill it?" Micken shrugged. "Nah, but give it a little nick? Damn right we will. Make sure you slather the poison on it thick, Jakey. The bitch queen was insistent that her little darling not be in any danger from the stag."

"Gutless little prick," one of the other hunters muttered, staring at the stag. "No more a right to rule than any of us. What makes him so special?"

"His mother and father have deep pockets, to ensure this all goes off without a hitch for one," Micken said with a nod. "Go on, Jakey."

The bearded man seemed somewhat embarrassed as he cracked an ampoule and then carefully dipped his arrow point in the thick liquid within.

"Be careful, lad," he told me. "This stuff is potent. Clouds the mind, has the muscles twitching and jerking, outside of your control. You don't want to get any of it on you. Do the queen's work for her, it would."

My mouth was dry because it was hanging open, something Jakey noted with a dry look, right before he drew his bow. The green gunk on the arrow's point seemed to glow just as brightly as the stag, though in a way that had me shrinking back, not drawing closer. I watched him suck in a breath, then let it out, his eye closing down as he sighted the arrow, and then released it.

It wouldn't hit the stag, I'd been sure of that right up until the moment the arrow buried itself in the beast' haunches. The gods would intervene. They couldn't stand by and watch the animal jerk, then roar, before stumbling away from us.

"Hunt's on, boys," Micken said with a wild grin. "Harry, blow the bloody horn to let the toffs know we're driving their stag towards them."

Harry did just that as Jakey rose to his feet, slinging the bow back over his shoulder. "Come on, lads. Time to earn that gold."

They all moved as one, obviously having done this job before. It was the moment when my eyes were opened to the other side of the story of the kings and the stag. Much later I learned that no one leaves the transfer of power to accident. Not the Raven to his heir, not the generals to their officers, or the merchants to their sons, so why would a king leave such a thing to chance? I swallowed hard, but that didn't help keep the bile in my mouth down.

Because part of me, a small, secret part of me deep down in my soul, hoped, prayed that I might be the one to bring down the stag. The gods had to smile down on me, didn't they? The thought that they would condone Magnus' casual brutality was something I just couldn't accept back then.

It was today that I learned that the gods were just like my father.

They kept a distant eye on things, only intervening when the urge came to them, but largely they left the lot of us to scrub around in the dirt and see to ourselves.

Jakey barked at me to keep up and my legs moved without thought.

I was the one that hunted the stag truly. In the company of the hunters and with their expert skill, we trailed the beast. They even showed me how to tell which direction he'd gone in, by the prints in the dirt, the broken branches and tufts of hair left behind. We followed him as he ran through the trees, his powerful haunches carrying him forward, right up until the poison started to work.

I'd heard the roar of stags before. My father kept hunting grounds just outside the capital that none could enter but the gamekeepers he employed or those he invited to hunt with him. I thought the sound powerful and majestic the first time I heard it. A beast fit to be the royal sign of our house, to be emblazoned on every flag, every wax seal my father impressed his signet into. The sound this stag made had none of that majesty now. His cry echoed throughout the forest, but it wasn't one of challenge, but of pain.

I could barely see or hear the hunters now because I didn't need them to help me trail it. The stag was lurching haphazardly from bush to bush, dragging his massive body past trees as his head shook. It felt like I walked in his footsteps, my own feet catching on logs and twigs, the ferns themselves gripping at my heels. We were trying to get free. We were trying to escape some terrible thing that was happening to us and nothing we did seemed to correct it.

And somehow we ended up here.

The light of the sun hit my eyes hard as I emerged from the forest and onto the road, the stag doing the same. Both of us belatedly realised we had an audience. Lords and their sons, my father and my brother all ringed the beast in a large, loose circle, bearing witness to its downfall. The stag tried to mount a defence as my brother slipped from his horse, lowering its head, but that threw it off balance. Its hooves clattered on the stone road, struggling to gain purchase. The sound of Magnus' snicker felt like icy fingertips walking up my spine. I knew it well, that it was a warning that yet another act of cruelty was about to take place.

And that's when I searched the crowd, finding my father's eyes.

There was no surprise in his eyes, no outrage. He expected the stag to look just like this. He merely watched impassively from horseback, the Duke of Fallspire by his side.

This was the moment when Magnus drew his sword and put the beast out of its misery. He'd have the crown of antlers, be officially declared heir to throne if he just thrust his sword point into the creature's side. We'd both been taught to find the spot for the cleanest kill, but that would never satisfy my brother. Why end an animal's suffering when he could glory in it?

"Ha!" The lords all chuckled as Magnus threw up his arms and lunged at the stag, some dutifully, some with real hunger in their eyes, but they all caught the moment when the stag went stumbling back. "Stupid beast," Magnus said with a curl of his lip. "You know what I am."

My hand found a tree trunk, my fingers digging hard into the rough bark. That sting, it brought back too many memories, but I couldn't stop them then, just like I couldn't now.

"I am your death," Magnus announced.

"Make it quick," Father said. "Make it clean. We'll be back at Fallspire manor within the hour, and then the feast celebrating your ascension can take place."

My father always made the mistake of thinking he could reason with Magnus, unable to believe that a son of his blood was incapable of rational thought, not yet aware that there was no blood tie between him and this ‘prince.' He kept his voice firm but not insistent, not wanting Magnus to fly into a rage at such an important moment.

"You have recited every single tale of the king's hunt to me since I was a child," Magnus replied and somehow that hurt. Part of me wanted to believe that only I had received that honour, but I was the bastard, the spare in case something terrible happened to Magnus. "Each one of the kings before me did things differently."

Magnus' focus shifted to the stag who was frantically trying to rake the air with his rack of antlers as an attack, but the movements were so feeble, the beast's muscles twitching, his roars reflecting his confusion, his dismay when his body failed to obey him.

"And this is how I will bring my stag down."

That vicious grin, it was the embodiment of his knife blade as he raised it up in an almost ceremonial gesture, right before he slashed out.

The scream of a stag was not a sound I'd easily forget. As I rode now after Magnus, I felt like I heard it again. Cutting through me as Magnus left a shallow wound in that golden pelt. The hair was quickly matted with blood, the light animating the beast starting to fade before Magnus' hand rose again.

"No…"

I didn't shout then or yell, the belief that anyone would come running to save me well and truly extinguished the moment I came to live in the palace. Instead, my lips moved, forming the words, though putting no air behind them to be expressed.

"Come away, lad," Jakey said, looking at me in concern, but I shook his hand off when he went to squeeze my shoulder.

"This is an ugly business." Micken shook his head and then jerked back, as if my brother's cuts were being stabbed into him, not the stag. "What the hell is he…?"

They thought me young and untried, but in this I had experience over them. I had battle scars on my body that I'd earned trying to survive my brother and no act of cruelty he did shocked me anymore.

But it did hurt me.

I couldn't look away, the screams of the stag rousing something in me. I saw the servant boy Magnus whipped until his back was bloodied for bringing him coffee that wasn't to his liking. I saw the maids that shrank back every time he passed by, some wearing mysterious bruises. I saw the weapons tutor he had beaten by his personal guard for the impertinence of besting him in battle. Hurt after hurt after hurt, they layered on top of each other, until I saw the moment my father's brows drew down. He had gone pale, whatever tolerance he had for my brother's behaviour quickly fading, and perhaps that's why I acted.

"Magnus, for the sake of the gods, end this!" he snapped.

"No!" My brother whirled around with all the fury he directed at those weaker than him, because for the first time, that's how he saw my father. Blood covered his hands, splattered against his face. "I will be king after you! I will rule! Khean will be mine to do what I see fit with…"

I didn't mean to jerk Jakey's bow off his shoulder. I certainly didn't mean to snatch an arrow and notch it. Right now, the stag and all of Magnus' victims were the one thing. It was a child he was cutting into, a woman, a man.

It was me.

My focus narrowed down to just the end of the arrow, my mind seeing where it needed to go before I loosed it, and sure enough, the bolt flew true, burying itself in the side of the stag. His bellow was almost one of gratitude I liked to imagine, right before he collapsed to the ground.

A sharp whine rang in my ears as my hands went slack, the bow falling to the ground. Everyone seemed to start talking at once, but I only heard one voice. My father dropped from his saddle, the Duke of Fallspire at his back, other lords following suit soon after.

"My son has killed the golden stag," Father said to a deafening silence, right before he swiped his fingers through the stag's blood and then dragged them down my cheeks. It felt hot, too hot against my skin. "A heir has been chosen."

"You have killed the stag?" The queen sounded jubilant, the ladies arriving belatedly and Ariel found my eyes across the crowd. "Oh well done, my darling."

Because she didn't know.

"Crown Prince Arik," my father said, holding up my arm, "he will be king after me."

When I saw the stag on the road now, it felt like I was staring into the dead eyes of the beast I killed then, not this one. A new one, born from somewhere in the depths of the forest, fated to be killed by kings to validate their position. Magnus leapt from his saddle, struggling to wrench his sword free of its sheath, but that was his mistake. There was no cloudiness about this stag's eyes. It had not been drugged, subdued by the Duke's hunters. He had his chance to bring down an already beaten foe, and now he would face the personification of the entire country at its full strength. The stag now dropped his head down, staring at my brother.

The king thought he was about to meet his enemy on the battlefield, but the stag made clear his thoughts on the matter. He snorted, then turned tail and ran off down the road.

"I will end you," Magnus growled. "You will not escape me, not this time. Not this time!"

"Only the gods know that," my father said, right as Magnus nudged his horse forward.